New Single – Midnight

What’s this you say? New Year? New single? New website? A new, more focused and determined Rosie? (hah!)

That’s right chaps! I’ve just spent bloody hours making you a shiny new website with a countdown to the next single. Head over to www.rosietheband.com to check it out (if it doesn’t work refresh the page). If you click on the countdown (or click here) it will bring you to the pre-order page for the single, go and do it! More money for us = crazier release gig.

That’s all for now, we promise to keep you updated with stuff from now on (new Rosie and all that :P). 

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HELLO ROSIE FANS!

If anyone ever actually read this blog, you will be glad to see that we are finally updating it again after two long years of using Facebook and Twitter instead. It has been a very busy time for us, with good things happening and bad things happening (mostly good though!) which I will try to sum up for you lovely readers here…
Last summer we released our debut album Aftaparty, (which you can download here), and so far we have sold about 350 copies! Amazing! People seem to like it, but that might just be because they can hold it up to their faces and pretend they have real facial hair:

We also recorded a video for our new single “Fever,” which is currently being created by Ross Anderson, a crazy Scotsman with a fancy video camera. We had a lot of fun making the video, part of which was recorded during a gig at Fibbers (we had to play the song 5 times to a very understanding crowd, who tried their best to look interested each time) and partly in Ross’s attic, which was EXTREMELY cold (but that didn’t stop Doug getting naked anyway)! Hopefully you will be able to view this masterpiece of film quite soon, but don’t hold your breath because it has been 6 months since we filmed it and there’s still no sign!
Lastly, we have managed to get ourselves two shiny new backing singers! They are called Izzy and Jaz and they have done a few gigs with us now – we think they are awesome and a vast improvement to the Rosie sound. They also do a good job of covering up Doug’s terrible tuning when he sings live! Here is a picture of them from a very weird angle (they do usually look a bit more normal than this)! Credit to Luke Foster for the photo:

Anyway, I think I will leave it at that for now, we have a big gig at the Cockpit coming up that we really need to practice for – if we win, we get to play at Leeds fest! Oh, and you can buy tickets here if you want to come down and support us :)
Lots of love!

The Hoff on the moon! We should’ve seen it coming.

David Hasslehoff; Television Legend, has accomplished more with his life than many dream of, but recently he decided it wasn’t enough. He called a press conference last Wednesday at the Hilton hotel to tell the world of his new plan, to; in his own words, “Cure every disease in the world. Ever.” This was of course, taken with mixed reaction. Dedicated fans off the Hoff have every bit of faith in their Baywatch hero, claiming that if he can help Spongebob, he can help them. Some speculate how he will manage this seemingly impossible task. And pretty much everyone else thinks he’s an idiot, and he’s gone insane.

But how will he cure every disease? In his press statement he acknowledged the main reason for there being no cure already was that; “The scientists don’t have enough money.” And that he would raise the extra cash by doing a sponsored swim… to the moon. This as many of you will know, is impossible, for more reasons than I can care to list. All the same, the Hoff seems to think this will save the world, and is determined to go through with it. You would of course, imagine that someone would tell him, and that this whole insane charade would judder to an embarrassing halt. But we do not live in a world of woulds and shoulds. No, rather than enlighten him, the authorities are going to keep him in the dark, literally! The plan is to convert the San Alfonso del Mar Seawater pool in Algarrobo, Chile, the largest indoor swimming pool in the world, into an artificial outer space. In the hope that poor David will swim the distance across the fake space, and onto the fake moon, (also in production.) This may seem like a waste of money, but the “Fake Moon Hoff Swim” has actually already collected millions in donations from people who just want to see an idiot swim to the moon. All of the money is of course going into medical research, and will fingers crossed, cure every disease in the world. Ever.

Yours,
Doug Wallace

A Day in the Life of Rosie MK2

Welcome to Monday Blog Number 2. Ok, so the other blog was on a Tuesday, nobody cares.

I’ve been listening to a lot of reggae this week, possibly because I can’t find my headphones and my old vintage speakers are good for nothing else, but that’s a different story. Notable mentions are Mattafix – “Angel” (probably not strictly reggae, call it pop reggae/old school R&B), Bedouin Soundclash – their album “Sounding a Mosaic” (“When The Night Feels My Song” was on an advert and a few films – again reggae nuts would probably slap my wrists for classifying them thus, if they could be bothered to move, but for the sake of argument we’ll call it pop reggae) and Harry J and the All Stars (they did the infamous “Liquidator” – it’s stupid but I love it).

I’m not really sure why I just told you about some random reggae bands, I can’t imagine that’s at all relevant to you guys. No worries, broaden your minds a bit – listen to reggae and get stoned (actually, that probably won’t broaden your mind at all… ah well).

So last week we did Writing and Practice. I guess we should have a go at:

Gigging

This is something we’ve always had trouble with. The issues are mostly technical, if something isn’t broken, it’s about to. It is almost relieving when something simply explodes; one less thing to worry about (like our poor Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, which is currently awaiting parts). It can make it very difficult to play, when all you can think about is “please let it hold together for one more gig”. We’re not sure whether it’s the crappy bodged gear we use, a simple part of being in a band or just horrendously bad karma. All I can say is we’ve only ever bailed on one gig. The computer failed on our second ever gig and we tried literally everything to fix it. We were sitting in the middle of a field surrounded with computer components franticly screwing.

On the way to the Hambleton Forum Battle of the Bands we decided to wear dressing gowns. Good times.

I should tell you a bit about how we work, because, while I wouldn’t say we do anything hugely wacky (sorry, no circuit breaking here – at least, not that kind) we go about our music in an unusual way. Next week I’ll see if I can bribe Tommy into telling us a bit about his afro-caribbean rhythms and his paradiddles for all the drummers out there, but this week I’ll do the tech stuff (that’s what I do baby!). For those who really don’t give a crap about this kind of thing, just skip the block quotes (apparently that’s what those are).

Inside “The Box” (pictured below) is a rackmount PC (on XP SP2, SP3 caused some performance issues for some reason) running Plogue Bidule. Bidule is a modular host whose capabilities I have barely scratched; it pretty much lets us route anything into anything, and do all sorts of things in-between. It is currently acting as a complicated MIDI router, a mixer, a softsynth host and a sequencer. I play with 3 keyboards, an old Evolution MK461 does the bass and some of the synths (the ones that don’t require touch sensitivity usually, it doesn’t play very well) a Korg(asm) SP3 does the Piano stuff (it’s weighted… very weighted) and my lovely Novation Remote 25 SL handles most of the mixing, program changes and the rest of the synths. They’re all on a USB hub so I can connect them (power and all) via one massive cable (except for the Korg, which I MIDI into the Novation, and power with a power bar attached to my stand). I’m told this is a very bad idea as USB doesn’t like to travel long distances, but it seems to be one of the few things that hasn’t broken yet.

This actually a pretty old picture, things have changed, but you get the idea.

I’m thinking of doing a quick mid-week post on actual synth playing. It is something that I found really difficult adjusting to after playing piano (I still have trouble with it). It seems to be a much overlooked subject. The actual synths used are mostly freebies found floating around on the internet (KVR is a great source for things like this). Until recently we used a software amp for the guitar, but we found we get a much more separated sound, and of course better monitoring, with a real amp. It also works for gigs with a smaller PA system (it can be a bit much running bass, keys, vocals and guitar through one PA).

I won’t go into more detail here, but feel free to hit me up on facebook or your social media network of choice to talk tech. Or find Doug or Tommy if you want to talk about girls and parties.

Now that we’re blogging properly (emphasis on the WE, the others WILL be helping), we could really use some feedback because, honestly, I have NO IDEA who you are. I could be writing for some 90 year olds who have no idea what I’m talking about, or a bunch of 13 year old girls who… also don’t know what I’m talking about. So Contact us, Facebook us, Twitter us, ReverbNation us, Soundcloud us, Myspace us! Even if it’s just a “Hi, I’m a 90 year old and I read your blog, what the fuck?!”, at least we know who we’re shooting at.

A Day in the Life of Rosie

Ever wondered what it’s like to be in a band?

Writing

I’ll start with songwriting, because that’s what we’re doing at the minute. A song writing session usually starts at around 7pm (after much kerfuffle). We seem to have two different kinds of songs; live songs and recorded ones. The live ones are fairly straightforward; someone plays something awesome, everyone joins in, song. Hence Twisted Calculator, Charlie Don’t Surf, Poison Alan. The lyrics are either something Doug had beforehand, or he just does them on the spot (with some unhelpful remarks from me and Tommy).

The “recorded” ones require more thought. Me and Doug usually sit down at The Box and build on an idea someone had. We mostly use a simple drum machine and Tommy adds a real beat later. Most of the time we write these ones just before a recording session so we don’t really worry about whether we can actually play them live. Feel Electric and Little Old Blue both started like this. We’ve found that these sit-down writing marathons can go one of two ways; we either stay up until 6am engrossed in whatever it is we’re doing, or we argue for half an hour and give up. We mostly argue…

The Sound Plank - I cant remember if I blogged this already, but this is the reason the Charlie Don't Surf single sounded so damn good.

Practice

As you can probably tell, we don’t practice as often as we should (ahaha). I could think of a pathetic excuse, but I think it’s mainly because we don’t really like each other.

Ok, so assuming we’re in a particularly determined mood, the normal routine would be to practice the songs we like playing for around half an hour, decide everything is shit and go and do something else for a while. Eventually we’ll have another play, and things will be looking up, at which point Tommy leaves to get a cup of tea and doesn’t come back. We’ll find him ten minutes later, in his dressing gown completely intoxicated. End of practice. Me and Doug play catchup.

If we try and continue past that point this happens:

Occasionally we’ll have a good session and actually do something useful, but this is rare, and it always comes when you least expect it…

So, in the interest of… something, I’ve decided we need to blog more, so from now on I’m going to do a weekly blog every Monday (you’ll have to facebook me or something so I don’t forget). Next week we’ll do Gigging and Internet Stuffs. I also want to try and include an abandoned song with each post. We seem to have collected loads of tunes that never made it. Each one with it’s own little story! It’s quite sad really.

For now I’ll leave you with a photo taken on a Rosie countryside walk (not shroom hunting):

Richmond Live

Blog blog blog…

I’m listening to Alessi’s Ark on FuzzedOut. Love the site, love the band :)

Why is it you get more done at 4am than at any other time? I blame http://theocmd.com/ – like StumbleUpon for music.

Richmond Live was pretty cool. It was nice to see some familiar faces. It makes us a happy band :D. Highlights of the day had to be:

Kill Cafe – Really cool solo act, he made some crazy noises with those little machines.

Project 142 – This is Neash’s band (he’s the dude who’s always breaking things at 6k gigs). They kick ass live, even though the guitarist was too drunk to play (it was his birthday) and there was a huge hole in the bass drum.

We’re playing with Project 142 again this tuesday (I guess that would be… tomorrow) at the New County Arms in Northallerton. It’s going to be a mental night of dubstep, drum’n’bass and electro rock (I think that’s probably what we are). I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to a gig more!

In other news Donate For Great has snowballed into something quite interesting! It seems to be popping up everywhere. You can get tickets here. If you want to know more… come.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Nick making something. This is how Rosie was created:

Clowns

We did a gig at the Northallerton Carnival this weekend. There were clowns…

Now I have nothing against clowns, I’m sure they are very nice people when they’re not painted up, squirting people with water and being generally pervy. Our dear friend Kim was having some fun with said clown when Nick (security) decided to take it a bit further.

He went and bought a bucket (with band money I might add), filled it with water, and hid around a corner while Kim lured him in. Unfortunately he spotted nick at the last minute. Anyway, not to be deterred, Nick chased him across the front of the stage. In his haste (you cant blame him, Nick’s a big guy) the clown ran straight into an innocent bystander, completely totalling her. Nick snuck off while the clown fervently apologised to the poor lady.

At this point we felt it would be better to lure the clown into a false sense of security, so we all made friends. We got him about 10 minutes later.

You also have to watch this video. It’s sweet:

The Making of Charlie Don’t Surf

Ok, so I wanted to do a blog post for each track (like Hope and Social did for their album “April”), but I thought I’d tell you about the cover first (as that’s the bit you see first).

We wanted to do something a bit special for the cover, being that it’s our first single.

The thing with first singles is, hardly anyone buys them, but the people who did can say “I was there at the beginning, I helped this band become what they are now” (whatever that might be). This meant it had to be handmade, and preferably a bit unusual, so we turned my kitchen in a makeshift sweat shop and set to work.

Ages ago we had this idea to arrange the covers into a big square and paint across them, so that each one is a little piece of something bigger. The beauty of it is, that’s essentially what you get when you buy an album/single, you buy a piece of the band. You’re watering the plant, as it were.

Now, here’s what we want you to do. Everyone who buys the single (either from the bandcamp page or at a gig) has to take a picture of themselves holding the single and email it to info @ rosietheband.com. It doesn’t necessarily have to be you if you’re shy. It could be an awesome guitar, or a little furry kitten. The photos will be going up here, just click on your square to see the photo.

That’s all for now, I’ll leave you with a view of Doug’s arse as he paints.

On All Things Rosie

We’ve been out of the loop for a while… again. I attribute this to some mild insanity. We were so busy making pirate costumes, rape flags and sweet firing cannons that we forgot to be a band.

Anyway, we’re back again, with some very important news:

First off, due to popular demand, we have done a killer live version of John The Frog! It will have it’s debut performance at Cultureshock on the 3rd of July.

There is also a new website up – www.rosietheband.com – most of you have already seen in, but if you’ve been hiding in a hole for the last few weeks, check it out. Also, if anything breaks, it would be really helpful if you sent us a message in the contact box so I can fix it (or if it’s working fine, you can send a message telling me how awesome it is).

We have released a new single “Charlie Don’t Surf“. It is available as a download or on a disk, and you can pay whatever you think it’s worth! (that includes nothing if you think it’s rubbish, or you’re broke). We are contemplating doing a video for 5 Pints of Wine, in which doug does exactly that (with amusing after effects I imagine).

For now, I’ll leave you with a photo from the last battle of the bands we did (not the pirate one).

Baby Sloths!

Courtesy of ESS3969 :)