Monday, March 26, 2007

I'm a newly wed, not a divorceeeeee.



thank you minty.

Uh, practice. yes.
We have been productive... it was fun. Songs have been completed, plans are afoot, secrets are waiting to be revealed... Saturday should be fun :)

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We decided that we're going to re-record all the stuff for the Lightyear record and the Mercury League split... Just so you, the listener, can have a higher quality aural experience. Also we know the songs now, which will improve things no end.

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US tour is going well, thanks for asking, still need a few dates and apparently it's not the done thing just to turn up.

bugger.

Huxley huxley

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Willie and the Hand Jive







e just got this mail through about the show we did in Dorking a couple of weeks back...

"...hey guys, it's Joey here. This afternoon, after I finished my first (well, technically second) day as a Biffa binman, I went to deliver the money to the Us In A Bus charity office. They were just about to have a trustees meeting and I gave the lady Janet £1460...raised by us, with help from you and Heroic Doses also. It was the money from four shows in total I think. Anyways, I thought you'd like to know and could maybe put something on your site. The website of the charity is www.usinabus.org.uk . Thanks again for playing. Joey. x"

amazing. If you're in a band, go play Dorking.

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The NME stuff is going a bit weird, we got a few emails about the photo shoot and that and we're not sure about how they want to portray us... I think they're trying a play on words with hardcore but we're really not sure about dressing up as builders... hmmm.

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If any of you people out there in the internet are Americans, or more specifically Americans based on the East Coast of America, we need help with a hairbrained scheme we had a while back... a tour!

This is what it looks like at the moment -

Aug 11th - NYC - ABC No Rio - Status - BOOKED
Aug 12th - New Jersey - Status - NO IDEA YET
Aug 13th - Philly? - Status - Awaiting Response
Aug 14th - ???
Aug 15th - Washington DC - Status - NO IDEA YET
Aug 16th - Pittsburgh Penn - Status - Awaiting Response
Aug 17th - somewhere in north Penn - Status - NO IDEA YET
Aug 18th - Hartford CT - Festival - Status - BOOKED
Aug 19th - Easthampton Mass - Status - BOOKED
Aug 20th - Boston Mass - Status - NO IDEA YET
Aug 21st - Ithaca - the Abattoir - Status - BOOKED
Aug 22nd - Back to NYC - Status - NO IDEA YET

so we need help with the dates in BOLD can you help? can you? can you? can you?

email us here - thesteal@gmail.com and we will lavish you with affection.

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that is all. thank you.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

total. fecking. gone. blog.


a few show updates to be had...

The house show in Southampton on the 31st of March I believe is now with -

Mercury League
Attack! Vipers!
Gordon Gano's Army
Little Flags

... amazing.

If you want to come, i'd get in touch with Little Flags via myspace as Andy from the band lives there... do it. we are hoping to have a few surprises in store for it too, exciting stuff.

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we are now also playing on the 4th of April in London at the Dome in Tufnell Park with -

fast point
the deadswans
cop out
the outpatients
headfirst
jailbait


hardcore-o-rama! i can't be arsed to do all that fancy html linking thing this time, sorry, it'd probably take you about 5 minutes to find all these bands by typing myspace+"name of band" into a search engine of your choice anyway.
I believe the Outpatients we played with in Guildford once, when they were un-named and they're ex-Raise the White Flag, so that'll be dead good. We also played with Cop Out in sheffield and they're bloody fantastic.



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We just agreed to a show in Reading too, on the 14th of July with -

Chief
Little Flags
Once Over


This is at the Face Bar and is a long way away... don't panic.

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Also, we had some good news this week... our 'industry insider' said that we're going to start getting a lot of coverage in more of the mainstream alternative press in the upcoming months.
I believe the NME have shown some interest in an 'upcoming' type article and Kerrang! are hoping to start building up coverage in their pages, putting a few good live reviews in there (i think they're coming to the Dome show) and small articles here and there to get us into your subconsciousness then the full media onslaught will commence.
We're hooking ourselves up with a switched on manager in a week or two to see ourselves through this, thankfully he's had experience in this sort of thing before, he was even at the 100 club show to see the sex pistols in '79, he knows his punk rock. With his knowledge we'll be able to break some untapped markets in the UK and hopefully spread our influence overseas too.
He'll start whipping the major labels into a frenzy for us. I think the plan is to get the major to create or invest in a DIY label to release some 7" and things, just to retain some credibility within the punk scene and then re-release our album (with added extras and stuff so you'll have a reason to re-buy it). Although our album might not be of a major label standard in sound, he thinks we can spin it to our advantage, citing its 'raw-ness' and making it a point of it being 'punk'.
We realise that all these changes soon are going to be putting pressure on us as a band and as people so in the next few weeks we're going to be holding a vote to see which members of The Steal are the most expendable. We have to go with the populist vote if we start to have 'musical differences' I mean i'm all for changing our sound just a tiny little bit, cleaning it up and that, especially if it means we get our message out to a wider audience, but others many not.
Oh, that's another thing we're working on, our message, or 'selling point'. Everyone has to have an angle these days... we might continue with the 'positive' thing for the time being but i don't know if that will catch the attention of the youth (there's always been a big market for disaffected teens ). We might have to go for something a bit more nihilistic, you many even hear mark say "i don't give a fuck" onstage at some point, it is punk after all.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Stringnet Liquids, jah?


thanks to Jan

Uh, so... steal update, wow. let's go!

First off, a well-wisher pointed me in the direction of an internet forum where we got described as "totally the biggest dorks in hardcore", how cruel... even if it is meant in a nice way. As of late we've been trying to cultivate a more macho orientated image; i got some old school tattoos, dave stopped shaving for a while, Pavey invested in some 'Rollins style shorts' and Lindsay has been taking his top off more frequently, so to hear this is a severe disappointment to say the least...
Also, as i got distracted looking around this forum i stumbled upon an argument over the use of the word 'shows', apparently it's a major faux-pas these days to use such an Americanism... dang, we're screwed. Or should i say "bugger, we're done for". Lingustic Xenophobia eh? it's a funny old game.*

So we played a couple of Super Happy Party Times this past week and the overall verdict has been... amazing!
we played in Dorking last friday and it was 100% fun-o-rama, they have themselves sorted out with a rad scene there, the show was put on by a collective of volunteers who not only were nice as pie but also sold vegan ginger snaps, wowzers. The money made from the Super Happy Party Time (SHPT) is going towards a local charity called "Us In A Bus", here is a little bit about them -

"Us In A Bus is an independent, not-for-profit organisation working with people who are often isolated and can seem ‘difficult to reach’.

Our clients are people with profound learning difficulties. They may find the everyday things that we take for granted – talking to friends, sharing a joke, choosing what to eat – a huge challenge. This may also be because many will have complex needs, often physical, which can make life difficult.

What Us in a Bus aims to do is to cut through some of these complexities and concentrate on what makes us all the same: the need to connect and communicate with each other in a way that means something to us."
Which i think is an amazing thing to be doing, not only because it's something i have had first hand experience with and can understand how important and life-affirming these things can be, but also because it's something involving their local community. I think sometimes these days the concept of charity has been skewed somewhat, more often than not you could be way more helpful giving up your time volunteering somewhere that is trying to improve your local environment or community rather than sending your money off to some far-flung place that has no relevance to your own life.

Anyway, that's enought of that... The other concert we performed at was in Kingston at our beloved Peel. We played with Comeback Kid and the place was, as they say, "Rammed". More Art, more fast and it took a while but the ex-ska kids were teased out eventually... BINGO!

Uh, over the course of these days we sold-out (bar, 4 shirts i think?) all of our merch, the tote-bags went down a storm... leaders not followers, trust us. So you'll have to wait again till the dagger deems it appropriate to stay up all night intoxicating himself with ink and fabric.

We have a few gigs aligned up... the 31st in Southampton at THE HOUSE, now this is going to be the last ever show at this place and the time we played before was one of my favourite gigs EVER, so we're all dead excited... also playing are Gordon Gano's Army (amazing!!!) and Little Flags (pete miles playing drums... amazing!!!). We are also playing on the 29th of April with our chums Capdown at the Concorde 2 in Brighton, sunny day by the beach anyone? I think there are more... i willl find out for you all, lovely.

Also... we are waiting for vocal takes and mixing then the records will be complete, waiting, waiting, waiting...

BIG LOVE.

THE STEAL.
x



*P.S. 'show' is way easier to rhyme with than 'gig'... twig, pig, lig, jig

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Dave and Designs.



as promised here is the new t-shirt design courtesy of xthe daggerx

go here for specifics...

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In other news, Dave has recently completed his second album, "See That No One Else Escapes" and it's getting released on the 16th of April... it is on pre-order now, along with a split 10" with "the other white meat" jenny owen youngs. The album looks and sounds beautiful and the 10" has Dave's frankly incredible cover of Kid Dynamite's 'Death & Taxes' plus the first song off the album, which you can hear here... i think it sounds like the Beatles which is no bad thing for sure.

Congratulations Dave!

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