the casual thoughts of martin oldgoth

Google +

2011-07-13T00:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know, yet another social network to be a part of, let get out of control and then abandon, but bear with me because this one appears to work and might actualy be worth joining.

Think of it as the best bits of Twitter and Facebook combined with a clean interface, just as intuitive and having the all those useful Google tools already there. I'm really impressed with the Documents feature, I'm given 1GB of storage and the upload speed is really fast. This means I can work on music and upload it to a folder for others to access far easier. Next step, integrate the calender. It's still at testing stage, but so far appears to be working fine.

If you're there and want to find me I'm HERE

Been a while..

2011-05-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Yep, been a while since I posted anything, been really busy sorting things for The Whitby Goth Weekend and then afterwards planning for the next one.

It was quiet but "just like the old days". It's all I heard on the Sunday. Not just from a couple of people, but dozens, everyone that I spoke to after Saturday night had that recurring message to pass on to the WGW team. In the 'old days' a couple of thousand people would head to the town, most heading to the Spa Pavillion (main venue) in the evening or just chill out having spent the day shopping or just wandering around the town (and pubs) being able to be themselves for a few days. No invasion of people for the weekend 'dressed up' for the weekend, and no army of pervy old blokes snapping away at any female in a corset or short skirt. So we lost the 'day trippers' and were left only with those there for a music festival, and it was great.

Without doubt it was a turning point for WGW, with so many people saying that it felt like it used to, when people were there for the bands and music and just having fun, and I think they're right. I can't remember a previous weekend for a long while like this one, even the ones that sold out, the atmosphere in town and in particular in the venues was fantastic.The Spa DJ's did a great job of keeping people there dancing after the bands finished each night

We can only build on this now and get the numbers back for the people that just come to stare and take photo's, or dress up and wander around not even knowing that there's a music festival on. We don't need them, thats been obvious from this weekend, but the town needs their money, and for that reason alone I look forward to them being there. I can do without the being stopped for photos every few yards, and the TV crews with their clueless interviewers..

Now we start planning for November, and hopefully more of the same.

Between then and now though I have a few interesting things coming up...

May 7th, London - Salome en Noir - click the link and check it out, its a night of goth/industrial DJ's, silent movies and tribal fusion bellydance, Not to be missed

May 29th - Gotham X11 -at the )2 academy, Islington. Bands include Specimen, Gene Loves Jezebel and I'll be DJing this as well as the aftershow party at Synthetic Culture (at the Egg Club) with Cavey Nik.

After this of course it's WGT where I'm Djing the most important gig I've even been booked for, When We Were Young, working alongside Yggdrasil (Graveyard Sessions, PT) and Kevin Bigo (Deaf Blind Dumb/Rip It Up, DE) on June 11th. This is the equivalent of playing Wembley for me, a highpoint that will seriously take some beating.

There's more to come after this, but for now this is what I'm concentrating on.

Hope to see some of you there!

New radio shows!

2011-01-30T09:49:00.000-08:00

Yep, after a two month gap or so where the three stations broadcasting my shows have had to air repeats to to me having a dead PC I'm finally happy to announce that new show is in the can and will be aired from February 2nd.

I'll be going monthly from now on, or at least at first, as things have changed a lot while I've been off air and I've got a lot busier than I normally am so can't devote the time on a weekly basis. This may change but for now that's the plan at the moment.

I've also got myself a nice shiny new mic that I'm currently getting used to, so bear with me if I sound a bit odd! For the record I'm now using a Blue Snowball USB mic and can highly recommend them.

The Return of InsanitoriuM

2010-12-22T15:27:00.000-08:00

When we first planned this night booking the week before Christmas seemed like a great idea, everyone is in party mood and you can't go wrong can you? Well, seems Mother Nature had other ideas and dumped six inches of snow across the south east in the space of about two hours. Bitch.

Still, we've never cancelled a night and weren't about to start now, especially with it also being Evil Stu's birthday. I have to start by thanking everyone that made the effort to get there, you restored my faith in the scene. A few special mentions though have to go to the following..

Devilish Presley:
Massive thanks to them for fighting the elements to give it 110% in front of a small crowd, mere thanks are not enough and if anyone was ever in any doubt about how hard this band work then last night should prove it.

The Last Cry:
They left home (near Brighton) around midday and had to fight to even get to where their gear was stored, having done that they drove for hours to get within 8 miles of the venue only to sit in traffic going nowhere for about two hours, before finally being told by the police to turn round and go home as no traffic was getting into Colchester. At this point I still don't know if they made it.

The couple from Pontefract:
Sorry, I didn't catch your names. but thank you so much for making the effort to get there, driving for hours before abandoning your car to walk the last few miles was crazy but a great example of the level of determination some people have in this scene. Next time we meet I owe you a drink. A big one.

The Twist:It was good to be back, a shame that it wasn't with a lot more people, but the new people are great, and they deserve more support and we'll run more events there next year. I really hope they manage to make it work as its a great venue... if it wasn't we wouldnt have waited 6 six years to get back in there again!'

So, the night... My journey of around a mile started with trying to get into my car as the doors had frozen shut, took about five minutes to get in through one door Forcing the others open from the inside. It then took 15 minutes to drive the 50 yards to my house, where I loaded the gear in. Then all I had to do was drive up the hill... The journey of about a quarter mile took half an hour, I got stuck twice, the first time pushed on my way by a couple of blokes from a car going in the opposite direction that stopped, and then the second time I had to get out and dig the ice from the road around the tyres to get enough traction to move. Got to the venue eventually after a little over an hour. From there on in everything went really well though, and to the 26 people that turned up, I salute you, so good to see that the InsanitoriuM Synchronised Drinking Team aren't put off by a bit of bad weather.

You'll find the playlist on my website.

25 years..

2010-11-14T10:48:00.000-08:00

Well, with Whitby out the way for another few months and having worked the two weekends following it DJing at the GMM Grand Charity Ball in Manchester and then last night at the March Violets aftershow party (for their first London show in 25 years!) I'm looking forward to this...

It will have been over two and half years since we last ran InsanitoriuM, and the three of us have not worked together since. It'll be good to get together to play all those tracks that made the club so popular, before we each went our seperate ways. Add to that two great bands that played for us in the past and it should be a really fun night.

After this I'll be DJing on New Years Eve at the Elixir Bar in Camden again and I have a really busy 2011 planned, all the info for that is listed on the 'Incoming' section of my website - http://www.martinoldgoth.co.uk - There are still a few dates waiting to be to confirmed so the list will grow once I get permission to announce them. I'm aiming to make my 25th year of DJing a good one.. I started in November 1985.

No rest for the wicked.

So? Whats going on?

2010-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Been a while since I've posted anything here so I figured it's about time I did. Over the past couple of months I've lined up a load of DJ work which is coming up soon, and all of it is pretty exciting.

Firstly on Halloween its Nostalgia, the twice yearly club night I run at the Whitby Goth Weekend, and a night I'm really proud of in so many ways, mainly as its a night I've always wanted to run, a 'proper' old style goth night brought up to date, and one that a lot of people didn't think would work, but has actually turned out to be highlight of the weekend for a lot of people. I have to really thank everyone that goes to it for making it what it is, since everyone understands the basic idea behind it, no industrial, no EBM, no metal, and no songs that are played to death in other goth clubs. A simple premise, but sadly one not picked up in very many places. Looking forward to working with Rachel again, this time joined by Cruel Britannia and Katy Kitten.

The weekend after this (Nov 6th) I'm in Manchester, for the GMM charity ball, (Gothic Meet up Manchester) spinning between Rhombus and Luxury Stranger live sets and perfomances from burlesque artists, alongside DJ Lucretious. This is the first time I'd have worked in Manchester and I'm really looking forward to it.

The following weekend (Nov 13th) sees me in London for the March Violets first show there for 25 years, where I'll be DJing the aftershow party at Slimelight, not my favourite club by a long way, but hopefully we can make it a bit darker for a few hours! Its a real honour for me to be chosen for this, having already done anniversary shows for Specimen and Alien Sex Fiend is great to be chosen by yet another of the 'big names'.

I get a bit of a break after this which will give me me time to promote a very special night, a one off return of InsanitoriuM. For ten years we were the biggest and longest running goth/alternative club in East Anglia but a succession of bad luck (thieving venue owners and equipment theft amongst it) meant we called it a day on the tenth anniversary, in April 2008. We'll be doing this back at the Ollie Twist on December 18th with live appearances from Devilish Presley and The Last Cry, to remind people of the fun we had, and the way clubbing used to be.

So, all in all, what's been going on, and more importantly what's going to be going on, is quite a lot. Hope to see some of you at one or more of these shows.

Anniversary musings

2010-08-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today is the third anniversary of the death of Sophie Lancaster, the young goth girl that was brutally attacked and who died of her injuries later in hospital. Ever since that sad day I've done what I can to help raise funds and bring attention to the charity set up in her memory, The Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

On this day of all days I'm feeling more than a little let down by the 'dark alternative' scene that rallied behind this cause three years ago and helped me raise a huge sum of money for a memorial bench in Whitby, home of the bi-annual goth weekend. A while ago, well, May 22nd, World Goth Day to be precise, I launched am album to raise funds for the charity . It featured 15 tracks from some of the scenes biggest names, including some unreleased material and a couple of tracks that had been written for the campaign. It sold for a mere $12.00 (that's £8.00 for the Brits in the country where Sophie was kicked to death for being a goth, if you live in London that's not much more than the price of two pints).

So far it's sold a little over 150 copies worldwide. Now I know I shouldn't complain, as its all money for a good cause, but I would have liked to have seen it sell a lot more if I'm honest. In the three months since it's launch I've worked hard to spread the word and get people to buy it. Eight months of work went into it's release and a lot of artists went out of their way to help. By far the biggest audience to have been told about it was the 19,000 odd members of the World Goth Day facebook group, so you'd have thought there would have been a few sales there, but no. Lots of nice comments, but no actual cash.

And this set me thinking...

If this is what its like for bands these days then no wonder the scene is suffering, how is anyone supposed to make a living let alone recoup their losses? It's had some great reviews, and to be fair the magazines and DJs worldwide have got behind me on this project from day one, but the general CD buying public have largely ignored everyones efforts.

I had planned to start looking into doing a second volume, featuring newer bands for next year, and would have started in a month or so now I know how long it takes, but I'm not sure whether to bother. There's a lot of work involved and I'm sure there are better ways of raising money than trying to offer people a truly amazing collection of songs for next to nothing, that they all think is a great idea, but won't spend the money on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up with fundraising, I'll still be doing what I can for the charity, but I'll be thinking of something else next time. I'll be spamming it heavily at this Octobers Whitby Gothic Weekend of course, I like to think that there may be some more sales after that, and if you're one of the people that haven't seen this album yet them head to http://www.stayindie.com/hope and check it out. Buy if it you have some spare cash, your money will be going to a great cause, or at the very least help me point it out to a few people.

Thanks

The Wake and why somethings missing..

2010-08-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Wake are one of my favourite bands, if you check my website you'll see them listed as such.

Over the years I've been chatting to James (bass guitarist) and have seen them reform, release a CD/DVD package ("Blacklist", that you really should own) and a brand new single (Emily Closer). I consider James to be a good friend of mine, and I know that he's itching to play live again. He's not the only one, in fact most of the band are, but one member needs convincing.

The Wake to me are one of the greatest goth bands of the nineties, and it seems to me that a band that only exists in a studio are only half a band, no matter how good they are, and so getting them to play live again is my next aim, luckily I'm not alone wanting to see this, a lot of infuentuial promoters and DJ's are already behind me. Nightbreed Radio DJ's are, and over the next few weeks you'll notice a lot more tracks from the band being played on the station. But this is not enough and so I'm calling on people to show the band that there is a demand from them to play live, and part of that is a Facebook group calling for them to hit the stage...

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=117523804966228

So if you're on Facebook, please sign up, add you're name to the campaign, lets get some decent numbers on there and comments from people to let them know that playing live is not only the next step, but one that logically is the only one to take..

Cheers!

thirteen13 on Cathedral13

2010-07-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

From this week the shows that are played out on Nightbreed Radio will be played on Cathedral13 a week later. I'm really looking forward to being heard on another station, it'll hopefully give me a bigger audience as well as being able to help bands reach that audience.

Their blog is here..

http://cathedral13.com/blog13/cathedral-13-welcomes-dj-martin-oldgoth/

Joining me soon on the station will be Scary Lady Sarah, so look out for that

Selling History

2010-07-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

For years I DJ'd using vinyl, I like to think this gave me a better ear for mixing, being far more 'hands on'. These days it seems anyone can be a DJ if they own a laptop and some illegally downloaded software, but so far I've yet to be impressed with laptop DJing, its cold, very rarely flows well, and the mixing is usually bad, maybe there's something to be said for having no choice for years but to use vinyl, it taught me to think about timing, and how tracks flowed together.

By the mid nineties CD's had all but taken over, and I was forced to stop using vinyl as bands simply weren't releasing material in that format anymore. The vinyl I'd used for years sat on a shelf, gathering dust while I slowly replaced it with CD's or burnt it to MP3. Well, I've finished that now, and I need the space, so I'm selling it at an Alternative Bring and Buy sale tomorrow.

I should feel sad about this, its my DJing history going cheap, but truth be told I need the space, and the money, and I'd rather someone owned it that would appreciate the warmer tones that vinyl offers, complete with pops, clicks and crackles. I hope the new owner treats it well, its been around and would have some great stories to tell if it could...

Radio News

2010-07-18T01:52:00.000-07:00

After a brief lull in broadcasting after the end of Radio Nightbreed, we've been working hard to relaunch the station, and from today we're happy announce NIGHTBREED RADIO

Our intention is to play a wide selection of tracks covering the classics as well as the underground releases of today from the Goth, Darkwave, Deathrock, Industrial and Dark Alternative genres. Even the automated playlist consists almost entirely of hand-selected tracks by its DJ's, so that you will experience less of that 'album filler' broadcast when you tune in at any time.

So how do you listen to this station?

1. You can head to our page at http://www.nightbreedradio.com/

Once you are there you can click on the page player or use any of the links to open the stream in any media player of your choice such as Itunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp

2 You can also get an iPhone app to listen to our station whilst you are on the move on your Iphone.

Just download the "Tuner" app from the app store (which costs about £ 3.00). Add the link below, name the station, then click 'add to bookmarks'.

http://listen.radionomy.com/nightbreed-radio

Bands -we want your music to be part of Nightbreed Radio. Get in touch!
Promoters - send us your event details so that we can spread the word.
Everyone - tune in and please help us spread the word. Let us know what you think of the station as Nightbreed Radio will only be as good as the people it serves!

Join the revolution!

Podcasts and radio shows now online

2010-07-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

It's taken me a few days but I've now converted all the thirteen13 podcasts from 2006 to 2009 and the radio shows from when I started them in October 2009 to the same bitrate and collected together all the playlists for them. You'll now find them all on my website to be downloaded. They're saved at 96 kpbs which should make them relatively quick to download, but also means they'll still sound OK on your favourite player, be it the desktop type or MP3 player.

From now on I'll be adding to the radio shows after each one has finished being broadcast on Nightbreed and Cathedral13, and speaking of which, we should be back on air very soon. We're just running a few tests and we'll announce the relaunch everywhere we can when we go 'live'.

The next step for me is to test an RSS feed for the website to make it easier to keep track of updates for when new shows are available, I'm working on that at the moment...

Coming soon...

2010-07-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

I've started to convert all my podcasts from 2006 to a slightly smaller bitrate so that I can put them all online for download. Special thanks to Cruel Britannia for his spark of genius in working out the best way to do this. I'll be posting them as 96kbps, that way they're OK to listen to for personal use but it'll stop anyone DJing with them, which has happened in the past.

It'll take time but in a few days I hope to be able to unveil an updated 'podcast' page on my website where you'll find links to download them, and see the playlists for each show. I'll still keep the player on the 'radio' page for the past few shows as I quite like that feature. Once I'm happy that everything works I'll close the podbean site that I currently use for hosting the podcasts.

In other news, we're getting closer to launching the new radio station, can't wait to get back to recording weekly shows again..

More radio news

2010-07-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Yep.

The news cannot be contained any longer. Following the demise of Radio Nightbreed, (assuming anyone noticed after the hassles of the past two months) we're now preparing the relaunch. We will be changing the name to Nightbreed Radio, available at first via a new, more reliable, Radionomy stream, and then shortly after through iTunes again. It'll be a fresh start but most of the original DJ's have signed up for it so we're expecting the same, if not better quality now that we all have a better control of the content. Were currently building the library of tunes that rotate when there are no 'proper' shows being broadcast and I can tell you now, looking through it, its reallyy impressive!

My show has also been picked up by Cathedral13 who will broadcast the shows a week later than Nightbreed Radio for those that miss them. Cathedral13 is currently rated 17th out of 200 stations on Radionomy and has been broadcasting since 2002).

So from the ashes we rise. Stay tuned for linkage when the station goes live.

In the meantime you can still get your hands on old shows via podbean or my website, links to the right.. that's it, over there.. down a bit.. yep, thats it.

Its all very exciting isn't it?

Ch Ch Ch Changes

2010-07-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

They're coming...

Radio Nightbreed has gone. I'll still be carrying on with the thirteen13 radio show and making announcements about that soon, but for now I'm off the air. Watch this space, and all the other online places I hang out, for news when I'm able to post it.

Football

2010-06-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

Its a funny old game they say.

Could have fooled me, I just gave it a go and only laughed once, and that was when our goalie messed up. Won't bother with it again

World Goth Day - the aftermath

2010-05-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

So it finally arrived. Months of planning and hard work and the day has been and gone. Right up to the last minute we were still dealing with the "its goth day everyday" brigade who still didn't get it, but luckily they didn't put a damper on what turned out to exceed even our wildest expectations of what we could acheive.

The idea was simple, get the goth scene to have fun, to use the day as a Halloween that we didn't have to share with the rest of the world and just celebrate all that was good about the scene. We saw EBM nights playing goth instead, we had radio stations playing goth tracks, (in the case of Phoenix Radio give us a whole 12 hours to fill), we had people dressing up a little more than usual and over 8000 people voting in the 'World Goth Day Awards' where we encouraged people to recognise all thats great about the scene. Details are still coming in from around the world on how the different events went, but so far it seems like a roaring success.

Of course, the nay sayers are right in that for a lot of people it is goth day everyday, but for the people arranging a special meet up in Sarajevo I bet it isn't, or for those in South Africa doing likewise. For a group in West Virginia it was an excuse to get together in force and allow those under the age of 21 to join in, don't forget, for a large part of the US you can't even get in to a club until you're that age. So yeah, it might be goth day everyday for some of us, but yesterday was a special day for a lot of people who don't always have the freedom some of us have.It united a scene and in some cases showed us in a different, more positive, light. It built peoples confidence, it raise a shedload of cash for different charities, all over the world.

For me it was partly spent in London's Regent Park for the Race for Life, a women only 5k run/jog/walk to raise money for cancer research. I was there with the London Gothic meet up group, some of who's female members, 17 of them including my wife Brigitte, walked the course in full Victoriana, in temperatures of around 80 degrees. They raise over £1200 and ended the day with a picnic attended by around 30 people.

I also released the fundraiser CD for the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, "Hope" which is already selling well and looking to raise money for the charity.

So.. Same again next year? I'll be there, and I'm pretty sure a lot more others will be too. Start planning.

World Goth Day - getting closer!

2010-05-16T02:47:00.000-07:00

This time a year ago DJ Cruel Britannia and I had only just begun to hype the idea of a "Goth Day", after discovering that the BBC6 Music decided to dedicate a weekend to musical subcultures and the 22nd May was goth. It was nothing other than a laugh at the time, something to do to see how far we could push it, and we had a small amount of success, a few local radio requests and a handful of people joining in the fun.

Well, like most things that are fun, if its worth doing once, its worth repeating, and so in January we started working on trying to make it a worldwide event, and quite frankly the response has been incredible. People all over the globe are putting together events, and doing things to celebrate the scene, from full scale events, to small club nights, coffee shop get togethers and picnics. We're actaully taking this so seriously this time we have merch for sale!

The World Goth Day awards were created for people to honour those they felt had shaped our scene and the results from those will be announced on the day. A CD I've put together to raise funds for The Sophie Lancaster Foundation will be released featuring some of the scenes biggest names, all giving tracks for free. More on that later when I can post the download info.

On the actual day Phoenix Radio, normally a rock and metal station with a weekly one hour show presented by Cruel Britannia, will be handing over 12 hours of airtime to us, the schedule for this reads as follows (times are UK GMT):

12.00 - 80s & 90s Gotherama
13.00 - Charnel House WGD Special
14.00-16.00 - Wolfmans Monster Mash
16.00 - Oldgoth's Girlie Show_Mix
17.00 - Trinity Show World Goth Day Special
18.00 - Winterborne
19.00-21.00 - Fadeout WGD Special
21.00 - Hex In The City Revisited
22.00-00.00 - thirteen13 WGD Special

Radio Nightbreed, the dedicated 24 hour a day goth station, will also be broadcasting special World Goth Day shows thrpughout the day. My show is playing at it's normal time of 9pm, for one hour (just before the Phoenix one if you fancy listen to me talk crap for three hours!).

So yeah, its bigger than last year. If you want to find out more, or check the forum for something near you head off to the World Goth Day website. Looks like the day is here to stay, a part of the goth calendar, no going back now, we've created a monster!

Happy Goth Day!

Catching up

2010-05-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

Going away and doing nothing is great, but I'm back now and wondering how the hell I'll get everything done that I need to now that we've back in the cold wet and polluted UK.

The 'To Do' list is below, I figure if I post this then I'm legally obliged to complete it on time, or else something evil will happen to something small and fluffy somewhere, or both my legs will drop off. Or something.

Anyway, it reads like this:

Record a 1 hour World Goth Day special for Radio Nightbreed
Record a 2 hour World Goth Day special for Phoenix Radio
Design the cover and liner for the SOPHIE CD "Hope"
Build the download page for the SOPHIE CD
Get the promo stuff sent out for the SOPHIE CD
Sort out banner ad for Nostalgia
Sort out artwork for Nostalgia
Sort out tickets for Nostalgia

I figure that the last two can wait a week or two but the rest really has to be done this week. There's more but this is the music related stuff, I'm pretty sure nobody cares that the car is due an MOT or that the cat is due a trip to the vet.

Someone remind me why I do a normal day job. Oh yeah, the mortgage and bills...

I know, lets blow up a mountain..

2010-04-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

OK, who's dumb idea was it?

I'm fairly organised when it comes to the DJing and promoting side of things, and up until this time last week had everything pretty much sorted with regard to my work at the Whitby Gothic Weekend, even down as managing to sort out fringe events and a last minute addition.

So you can imagine the fun when Ey Up Jaffa Lolly or whatever the hell it's called went off and closed the UK down to air traffic. With a headline band unsure whether they'd make it, the additional event looking very unlikely too and a UK band member trapped in Malta things looked grim. Add to this a few other backstage issues and for 48 hours it really did look like the weekend was not going to happen, or at least if it did it;d be the last, the fallout from what could have happened was that bad it could have lost us a fortune, thereby closing the event one short of its 15th Anniversary in October. On top of this on Saturday night I found the WGW forum had been infected with malware and the site had to be shut down until fixed right at the moment when we desperately had to get news out.

But hey, I've heard all about the Dunkirk spirit in the last few days and in one of those rare moments feel proud to have seen what we Brits can do when up against it.

I found a replacement when The Deep Eynde couldn't get here that's not only a suitable headline act, but in some ways may even save my reputation, Justin Sullivan, frontman of New Model Army and one of the first people to get behind me for the Sophie CD has agreed to play an acoustic set, if he weren't almost a hero to start with, he is now. Sadly we've lost Autumn Cannibals for the Sophie night, which would have been the last minute addition but they too worked tirelessly to find a way round things and only gave up today.

Special mention has to go to Tim, (frontman of Pretentious Moi) who found himself in Malta. I have no idea how but he got to Rome, and then proceeded to drive across Europe with his other half Claire to catch a ferry home, the man is a legend in my books.

We had cancelled hotel bookings as well, and Whitby Jo was left running around trying to find last minute accomodation in a town rammed to the hilt already, but she did it.

Add to this the cast of dozens who pulled together to make things happen and I have to say I am so proud of this scene I'm a part of. Jo Violet who kindly agreed to lend an acoustic guitar, Evil Stu for letting us borrow a bass guitar, Jim from BBC radio Shropshire for lending a guitar to DJ Cruelbrit for us, all three instrumetns no longer needed now but these people came through when it mattered and help me remain sane. Screaming Banshee Aircrew for standing by in case Tim couldn't make it and all the countless others who have helped repost news when the WGW forum was down.

Then of course I can't forget Brigitte, my wife, for the tea and putting up with me being stressed for a good 72 hours, and Captain Morgan for helping me sleep.

Thank you goth scene, you are awesome.

Sophie Charity CD

2010-04-02T00:44:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months I've been working on a top secret project!

An idea put to me by Andi Sex Gang last September started to take shape in January of this year when I began work on trying to put together a CD to be sold to raise funds for the Sophie Lancaster Foundation a charity I've supported since her death, when I helped raise funds to place a memorial bench in Whitby. I aimed high figuring that if you don't ask, you don't get. I'm glad I did, as the end result I think is pretty impressive.

I'll be launching the promotion for the CD at the Whitby Goth Weekend, during the Thursday night fundraiser, it will go on sale from May 22nd (World Goth Day) as a download only release, with 100% of the money paid for it going the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. The CD will include the following artists:

New Model Army
Joolz (who also kindly provided the cover art)
The Last Dance (unreleased track)
Faith and the Muse
The Eden House
The Mission (unreleased track)
Alien Sex Fiend (remix)
Collide
Autumn Cannibals
Uninvited Guest (a song written for Sophie)
Sex Gang Children
UK Decay (special remix)

And a few other 'big names' that I'm still waiting for confirmation on...

I'll be adding a few special tickets to the raffle on the WGW fundraiser night for six people to win a free download each. Everyone else will have to wait til May to buy it when it will sell for £8.00

I'll blog a reminder with more information on how to get hold of a copy.

A Quiet Month

2010-03-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

March is a quiet month for me, no DJ work lined up and so I've been catching up on my plan to rip all the tracks I need for the radio show to MP3 and put them into a 'library' of sorts on an external hard drive to save having to find discs everytime I need to record a new show. So far I'm on about 28Gb and 6500 tracks and already rediscovering some great stuff I'd forgotten I had.

I'd recommend this to any DJ, if not the whole library thing then at least going through all those discs that are laying around that you've forgotten about, or can't remember what they sound like, or put aside years ago as you just didn't rate them that highly. Like me you might surprise yourself. I've found myself wondering how I'd missed such good stuff, I'm guessing that there must have been subtle changes to my tastes over the years, but don't worry, I'm not about to fill the show with metal or EBM, just a few new (old) goth tracks.

I've also been updating the site with a couple of missed interviews I found copies of, and I'm planning a rebuild of the Nostalgia webpage to make it more of a mini site.

Next month it's back to DJing again, with Dead and Buried, Gotham 11 and Nostalgia, and of course Bats Day after that. After these of course it's World Goth Day, and hopefully the thirteen13 show will go weekly once the station moves onto Sirius and starts going out on US cable channels. So with that in mind, I'd better get on with it...

Bats Day 2010

2010-02-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting on this one for about 6 months, but last October I was offered the opportunity to DJ this amazing event in California, but couldn't announce it until now. I've always wanted to go to this event, for starters, two or three thousand goths visiting the "happiest place on Earth", what goth wouldn't want to?

The whole thing takes place over the weekend of April 30th/May 2nd and begins on the Friday night with a pre event dinner and meet, then on the Saturday there's a huge market followed by the Dark Park festival where I'll be DJing. Then Sunday the big event, thousands of goths in Disneyland.

Quite apart from this I'm looking forward to getting out there to meet up with some great friends, and spend some time in the place I'd be moving to tomorrow if the opportunity came up (no not Disneyland, SoCal).

One of these days...

http://www.batsday.net

A big number

2010-02-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

I just had news through that my radio show, thirteen13, on Radio Nightbreed has just broken station records with listener figures of 117,000. We've never broken the 100k mark before so to say I'm a bit pleased is a serious understatement, I think rum may be in order.

If you've never listened then it plays out at 9pm and 4am on Wednesday and Saturdays (UK GMT) should you be interested, you can also find Radio Nightbreed on iTunes radio under the alternative rock section.

... and relax.

2010-02-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

So here we are on the other side of the three gig weekend, I'm tired but it was worth it.

Friday night, Colchester. My first gig in the town for 22 months and not quite the glorious homecoming I'd imagined, but then this is the arse end of Essex, and not exactly known for it's hoards of goths. Good to see a few familiar faces though and I had the chance to play a pretty varied few sets. Great to work alongside penfold again too, in a pub to a small crowd of weirdos and bikers, a bit like when we first started.

Saturday it was off to Camden to Min and Dex's wedding reception, an awesome couple who are always happy and deserve each other, managed to cover pretty much all the requests and even fit in some psychobilly and swing at the ened of the night, had a good chat with Dave Exile and Faith, drinking and discussing all thats good and bad about the scene in London. We eventually got home at 4.30am, tea and bed... only to be woken up by the moron next door playing techno and MC Hammer at about 10am.

Sunday night was the Arts Centre in Colchester for the Eden House gig, with support from Evil Stu's band, Bad Moon, and Lilygun. A real pity that they suffered the curse of this town in that a band that should really have packed the place played to a quarter full venue, people around here never appreciate when something good happens and yet moan nothing ever does. Arseholes. Still, the band were awesome, and seeing them in that venue, an old church with fantastic acoustics, was sometihng those there wont forget, Amandine and new vocalist Valenteen work really well together.

And so here we are, Monday again. In order to fund the rock n rock lifestyle I have to return to the day job and sell my soul for more nights out. Back to reality.

Playlists are posted on the website - if you didn't find this blog from being there already there then it's HERE

3 gigs, 3 days...

2010-02-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

I have three seperate DJ gigs next weekend and all of them will need a different approach and the frantic repacking of my CD cases in between each of them.

Firstly Friday night, the 12th. I'll be doing a guest slot at Electrocracy, the night started by Penfold in Colchester. I haven't worked in the town since we stopped InsanitoriuM after ten years of working together and swore I wouldn't ever work in this town again, but hey, never say never right? So I said yes. It'll be fun working with him again.

Saturday night I'm DJing at a wedding reception at the Elixir Bar in Camden for Dex and Min, whos wedding we went to a few days ago, that'll be more of a party night so a lot of old classics and fun stuff along with the couples requests.

Sunday I'm spinning between the bands at the Arts Centre back in Colchester for The Eden House gig and playing more mellow sets to suit the headline act, I know Evil Stu's band, Bad Moon, are supporting, but I have no idea who the other band are (if there is one), should be a good night, be interesting to see how many people turn up for it, goths are pretty thin on the ground in this town!

So there you go, my Colchester DJ sets are a bit like buses, nothing for ages (well, 22 months) and then two at once. If you can come along then please do, because this time I mean it, never again*

*probably.

A clear out

2010-02-04T07:25:00.000-08:00

I hate getting rid of CD's, but sometimes the pile of demos and stuff gets too big. Music is something that people take time to create, they work on it as a labour of love and quite often I'd imagine it's hard to to let it go, to release it into the wild and let others judge it. Well I've been judging today, and I judged that about 80 CD's I had taking up vital space were not quite as good as the cases they came in so I did some 'recycling' (I kept the cases!).

Do I feel guilty? A little bit maybe. I appreciate the work that had been put into the music, but as a DJ if I'm never going to play it, what's the point of keeping it? None of it would ever be of any value or it would have gone to Ebay. No doubt other DJ's have to do this now and then, and I hesitate to say that what I got rid of was rubbish, as someone would have liked it, but not me. I wonder if they feel bad?

Anyone know of a good use for a bunch of old CD's before the dustmen think they've struck gold?

Hmm. Blog.

2010-02-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning figuring it'd be fun to have a blog on the site, and now I've got one, I'm not sure what to with it so I'll start by spamming World Goth Day on May 22nd.

World Goth Day Website

Basically a day where us goffs get to celebrate our own being, a day where we can pretend it's Halloween only not have the hassle of having to share it with the rest of the world. Our aim is a simple one, to bring everyone together and have a massive worldwide party. You'll find links on the site to the forum, where you can get ideas for the day, post what you'll be doing, and maybe find something near you to head to. We're trying to get some life back in our scene so even if there's nothing happening on the day near you, then sometime during the month do something to support your scene. Go to that club you kept meaning to, or go to a gig. Whatever you do though, enjoy it!

Apart from that it's been a great day, gothtart and I spent it at the wedding of two great friends, Dex and Min. A lovely day celebrating with two people made for each other.

More when inspiration strikes, don't hold your breath...