ASFG

Thanks for the support man.

Recording is on our to-do list, it's just organising a good time for everybody with a studio.

Alternatively, I could just figure out how to use this Yamaha AW1600 digital multi-tracker right next to me....

Who knows?

Im fishing to see if anyone might have any decent gigs on offer for a new Aberdeen rock band in the vein of Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, Biffy Clyro, Brand New.

We had our debut gig on the 18th of October at The Moorings Bar. We were given the headline slot. We had our own promotional material printed. We brought a crowd.

For obvious reasons I can't accurately assess how good we were, but in the words of the promoter's missus, "To be honest I was secretly hoping you guys would be shit, but you weren't."

Wow. You don't get praise more glowing than that do you? You do? Well boo to you.

Well take a serious look at anything on offer; varied line-ups are fine and were always more than happy to take a part in promoting the night.

(On an anecdotal note, after the last gig, James Allen turned up and tried to gatecrash our after-show party. With a few choice words the frontman of Glasvegas was turned away - and if that doesn't speak volumes for our musical credentials, nothing will.)

Getting back on topic, if you think you have something that might suit us please get in touch. I'm thinking towards the middle or the end of November.

PM Me.

Thanks,

ASFG

Thanks to everyone who came along and offered their support, it was much appreciated.

Oh, right, I just thought you were devil-me-care mavericks who didn't care who you booked.

Tonight, tonight!

But alcohol at the bar from much much earlier...

Thank you fudge for taking a risk on an unknown quantity such as ourselves...

i thought everyone knew who albyn school for girls were...

Even in my wildest dreams I couldn't hope that our flyering would accomplish so much.

I agree Biz.

I truly believe that anybody who has recently moved to the area would be interested in this gig, as well as people who have lived here all their lives, or even people who have stayed here for an intermediate period of time.

I can say with complete confidence that this is the sort of gig you'd be interested in no matter how long you may have been residing at your current address.

So bear in mind that the gig is on THIS Saturday @ The Moorings Bar.

At this moment we can neither confirm nor deny exactly who is in the band, but feel free to speculate.

Um, it was a reference to Albyn girls being slappers.

Oh, I'd not heard about that.

We haven't played a gig yet so that's not the case.

I think it's a good name for a band.

The boys at Fudge posted this up in their forum. Since I'm ignorant I don't know if that naturally makes its way into the calendar. The long and short of it is that I'm making sure it does. So, in the words of Fudge... (take it away boys!)

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER

MOORINGS BAR, 8pm-1am, 3 door

ALBYN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

MySpace.com - Albyn School for Girls - UK - Rock / Indie / Pop - MySpace.com - Albyn School for Girls - UK - Rock / Indie / Pop - www.myspace.com/albynschoolforgirls

SLICKS KITCHEN

MySpace.com - Slick’s Kitchen - Hagen, DE - Punk / Rock - MySpace.com - Slick’s Kitchen - Hagen, DE - Punk / Rock - www.myspace.com/slickskitchen - Hagan, Germany

THE INVALIDS

Nae website

MAN OF THE FUTURE

MySpace.com - man of the future - UK - Rock - MySpace.com - man of the future - UK - Rock - www.myspace.com/therealmanofthefuture - Aberdeen, UK

For your convenience allow us to pigeon-hole ourselves,

swagger newcomers Albyn School For Girls, We make music

in the vein of; Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, Biffy Clyro, and

Brand New. The bad news is we can't tell you exactly who we

are or what we're all about, because, well... it's a bit of a secret.

Who we are isn't all that important. The question is where we're

going, and once you get to know us, whether you'd like to come.

Thats probably supposed to sound sinister. And it does.

Whitesnake, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent: all three and more have

been fortunate enough to share a stage with the main men

behind German metallers Slicks Kitchen. Now theyre touring

the UK with Enos and promising a fabulous live show. We

suggest you hit Myspace for a dose of Cum In My Kitchen.

The Invalids are making a swift return to the bar after their

summer show. They play proggy sorta rock kinda stuff. Youll

love them.

Man Of The Future are a noisy two-piece. Thats all we know.

The refurb definitely helps it as a music venue.

At this stage further details are still sketchy.

We can tell you we're called Albyn School for Girls and that our debut gig is on Saturday the 18th of October @ The Moorings Bar and that everything I've said in this thread about the band is dead-on-balls-accurate.

Hopefully some of you can make the gig.

In fact I might be the oldest on Aberdeen Music... unless someone knows different.

Sorry to take the title away from you, but I suspect you're not. On the bright side, at least no one can ever take your big badness away from you.

We're a band. Hope you can make the show.

Okay, we could only consider gigs at the very tail end of October or in November now as we've confirmed a date at the Moorings on the 18th of October.

Thanks.

But I'm not relying on it.

But this is a discussion forum, and I was contributing to the discussion.

Good luck with getting gigs. I'm sure someone out there will give you a show (I suggest you contact Hen at The Tunnels - he's always willing to give almost any band a platform on which to show what they can do. If you promise him a decent number of people along then he'll give you a chance.

When you do get a gig, I suggest you ask the sound engineer if it is okay to record your set from the sound desk via a mini-disc player.

Just so you have an audible insight to what you actually sound like to stick online.

Thanks for all your advice, it's appreciated.

I do a spot of promotions and I am not going to make the effort of contacting the band/artist to find out what they sound like, when it is the band/artist that is looking for gigs. The most investigation I would ever do is type in a myspace address or click a link.

And if a promoter doesn't care what an artist or band sounds like then why are they promoting? If a promoter doesn't really care what you sound like then I suggest you're playing gigs for the wrong promoters.

I realise this post makes me sound really arrogant. It's not meant to, but it's the only way I have of articulating my point. I, personally, as a live music promoter, would never book a band if they didn't have recordings accessible online, unless I had seem them perform live before or they went to the trouble of contacting me to offer a CD or an MP3 of at least one or two songs.

I respect your attitude and passion but when a fisherman casts his nets into the water he doesn't expect to catch every fish in the ocean. Yes, I'm looking for a gig, but there are plenty of promoters looking for bands.

All I'm doing is politely declaring our future availability to the wider world... and should any promoter fancy taking the risk of booking a new Aberdeen rock band comprised entirely of gig-experienced local musicians who will help with the promotion for what could very well be their debut gig and who play music in the vein of such popular bands as Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, Biffy Clyro and Brand New I certainly hope they get in touch.

I would also add that the few posts you have made in this thread making what was, and still is of course, a perfectly valid point probably expended more energy than a PM asking for an mp3 and offering us a gig might have.

To close, and in case there were any doubts about this method of gig-seeking, the last time we did this we were offered a fantastic gig from a very well known Aberdeen promoter which we accepted. Sadly, the gig was cancelled. After this circumstances meant we had to turn down a number of other interesting offers which we might otherwise have accepted.

Perhaps this time we'll be offered nothing, but returning to the initial point I don't see why we'd not bother enquiring about gigs simply because we don't have a myspace page with an mp3 on it.

At risk of sounding patronising, I'd advise it's best to record a few songs and put them on myspace or the likes before asking for shows. If you see it from a promoter's perspective, it's a bit of a risk putting on a band that they've never heard. I mean, at least some dodgy recordings on an mp3 player would do, but if you can borrow someone's 8 track or do a session at the likes of the Foyer, even better.

Just a bit of advice.

I appreciate that. Thank you for taking the time out to offer it. What youre saying certainly has some merit but from personal experience I think there are, as Original Spies says, alternative routes to explore which might be better.

I do think every band should make the effort to record a demo, and if it is of a high enough standard should put it online to garner interest. What I dont subscribe to is the theory that any recording is better than no recording at all; if your approach to recording is half-assed, your band will come across as half-assed.

My personal feeling is that putting a bad recording online is the equivalent of playing a gig unrehearsed.

More specifically, I can't remember a single time when I had to go down the route of sending a demo to a promoter in order to get a gig at this level. It just doesn't happen - at least not to me. If a promoter specifically has a gig offer (or offers) for me and specifically requests to hear some of our work I will send him/her an mp3 of one our songs.

All this is presuming that the promoter really cares what the band sounds like anyway. I suspect many promoters would just be happy to find a band that could turn up on time, do what was asked of them, bring a decent crowd along and not piss about too much. Imagine that?

In summary, if you ARE a promoter, please PM me for details.

You should probably include a link to your music.

If I had such a link that would be ideal, but I dont.