The Steal

THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER.

2010-01-07T12:44:00.000Z

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

2009-10-07T23:33:00.002Z

Just A Band

2009-09-15T08:21:00.003Z

Hey,

So we had our first practice in 8 months last Sunday and it went well, the cobwebs were well and truly dusted off, the cogs were greased and my hands were bleeding by the end... friday should be good fun. Also, in between bouts of tea, coffee and discussing the finer points of Dave's magical prowess we decided that friday would be the last gig we play as the Steal. We think it's a nice end being at the Peel, where we played our first gig 4 years ago. Also playing with Paint It Black, whose member's current and past exploits were a primary influence on us playing the music we do, is a nice touch. We think the band has come to it's natural end and we wanted to give people a heads-up if they wanted come see us one last time.

Thanks.

Keep Moving Forward.

x

B-complex. Pulses.

2009-07-20T11:13:00.000Z

"After 7 long years Dillinger 4 return to play 7 gigs in the uk.

December

Thursday 10th London - Underworld, Camden with Hard Skin and The Arteries
Friday 11th Exeter - The Cavern with The Steal and Annalise
Saturday 12th Bristol - Fiddlers With The Steal, The Cut Ups and Captain Everything's New Band
Monday 14th Brighton - Engine Rooms with Hard Skin, Four Letter Word, Southport and The Steal
Tuesday 15th Newcastle - Ouseburn House Community Centre with Leatherface, Cop Out, Offshore Radio and Pure Graft
Wedensday 16th Glasgow - The V Club with the Murderburgers
Thursday 17th Leeds - Brudenell Social Club with Leatherface, The Magnificent and Offshore Radio

please put these on myspaces, websites, forums, magazines etc

cheers"

Distractions

2009-07-15T09:21:00.006Z

Hey there,

So we've been pretty quiet on 'The Steal' front of late... We're pretty savvy with this band thing, as my dad always says, "A funny thing happens when you don't promote... nothing." So yeah.
We put out our second record almost a year ago, which is the best thing we've done. Did a tour which was the best/worst tour we've ever done... best - the shows, worst - constant draining illness. Ho hum. Since then you might say we've done a total of fuck all... however you'd be wrong.

Dave wrote, recorded and released his third solo album, "Intersections" went on tour with the amazing Lemuria and has been holding it down in Kingston selling misc. genres and helping the kids dance.

Pavey has been building his DIY printing empire, creating glorious posters, t-shirts and putting on exhibitions (for good causes) with his talented partner in crime in good old Brighton town.

Lindsay has been studying hard and creating a near constant stream of music and noise in London Town. Including the mystical Tough Magic album, which he's giving away for free.

Richard (me, I) released a 7" with the other band I play drums in, Hot Damn. Released an EP with The North Pole, which I play bass & sing in and released a remix of a song luke & I did by the mighty Fall Of Efrafa... all on my housemates & I shambolic label. I've also been painting a whole lot.

So yeah, on top of all that we work and blah, blah, blah... you know, life and things. We're not planning on moving back to our parents' houses anytime soon, that's for sure.
As well as updating you on all that boring shit, we are actually going to be playing some shows! holy crapola. One is with our friends in Paint It Black and the others are with the almighty Dillinger Four. We'll let you know more when we know more. ok? Should be fun.

Uh, yeah i'm pretty bored now... hope you enjoy all the hyperlinks.

Love,

Richard.
x

Kayla Budddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

2009-06-09T16:08:00.003Z

yessir

chaps chaps chaps chapschaps chapschaps chapschaps chaps chaps chaps chaps chaps v v v v vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

2009-04-02T19:11:00.002Z

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7"

HOT CAKES

2009-03-17T17:43:00.002Z

For a limited time only...

Really expensive copies of the S/T record

Doppler Effect

2009-02-17T00:03:00.002Z

DV HSE IS GETTING BUSY.

Keep the peepers peeeeeeled.

Form a band

2009-01-16T10:39:00.001Z

So the franchising thing has been done, i'm highlighting my ignorance of a band we ripped off. Oh well, who wants to start The Steal 2?

Garlic Twin Pack / Mr. Feynman

2009-01-14T01:09:00.003Z

We done tour. It was good. Many thanks to everyone for making all the shows pretty much amazing. If you ever want to know how to put on a show get in contact with any one of the promoters who helped us out, holy crapola they were good.

We were fair to middling, we were ill... we didn't even get the chance to go insane. kinda figures when it's minus 11 and there's no heating anywhere. Summer tours ONLY from now on yeah guys?

I'm sure we'll put up some links to media related internet age business promotion fun times, if you have any 'shots' from any of the 'shows' we love seeing ourselves in the midsts of the high, with everyone along for the ride, so yeah, tell us where to look and we'll look.

Uh, AGAIN, we ARE breaking up... sometime around september. cheersthen.

Basically, THANKS, the tour showed us that punk rock CAN work and there are tons of amazing people out there doing their thing, doing it well and doing it for the fun of it, without any motive for reward or praise. yeah! great stuff...

(not really, they do it for the money, always for the money. the shits.)

Um, our series of 7" is starting in a couple of months by the way... they're all going to be secret. Look for clues.

New Year Tour

2009-01-04T08:18:00.003Z

In a hope that we will start as we mean to go on, here is a video of a few songs from our New Years Day Kingston show to get the people up north excited. It was filmed by Treat, he is lovely.

The Steal - 'Kids With Kids' / 'The Steal' from Mike Hemsley on Vimeo.

Party at Sean's house.

x

The Steal on the radio

2008-11-19T15:58:00.001Z

Specifically on the Radio 1 Lock up show with Mike Davies.
So recently we went back to the BBC and spent a very plesent day in Maida Vale 4. The resulting live session was broadcast last night at about 2 in the morning. We played 4 tracks on the show (Disconnected, The Angles/Fashionless and Dave gets mad) and also rambled for about 30 minutes to Mike about the album, the Steal, life in general and about the collective noun for a group of hornets (which was unfortunately edited out of the final broadcast). We also recorded Got Ideas which will be played next week.

Check out the Full Broadcast here (this is only available for a week!)

Or hear the edited Steal Interview highlights on the podcast here

Thank you very much to Mike and Radio 1 for letting us come and play. When we were at MV4 I sat on the same stool that Beyonce had sat on a few days previous, imagine that.
Super big thanks to John from the Don Ramos Players who we drafted in to play second guitar and beef up the Steal's sparse normally Salad Based sound.

The Steal Maida Vale Bright Grey Picture

One for Old times sake

John Ramos Players looks lonely

Limited Edition Glow in the Dark Shirts

2008-11-15T20:18:00.001Z

Hello Friends,
I have just updated our big cartel merch page with a new glow in the dark tshirt design. The design is going to be printed to order on the 2nd December and is available to pre-order for 2 weeks until the 1st December. After that the screen will be cleaned and the design wont be reprinted. Rich drew it and I'm going to print it. I'll even throw in a few goodies with the first few orders. The Shirts are white American Apparel shirts in Xs,S,M,L,XL and the print will be a greenish blue and glow in the dark. They will be shipped in time for xmas. They cost £8 + £1 p&p.

I have also put a few extra things up on the merch page like some of the left over bags and shirts from our record release show.

That is all, how are you?

xx
Mark

sexy seeing

2008-09-21T14:26:00.002Z

yep, we're going on tour! i couldn't be bothered to type these out again so i just nicked them from another source... so if you replace 'The Steal' (that's us) with "Our Time Down Here" then you will have a more accurate picture of what's going on in January.

WHO starts a tour on New years Day? a bunch of fucking idiots that's who... prepare for sounds.

here are those dates, do come along, it's definitely a weird time to tour but we like shooting ourselves in the collective feet.

1 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! Fighting Cocks - Kingston
2 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! King Alf’s - Southampton
3 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! The Cowley Club - Brighton
4 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! The Retro Bar - Manchester
5 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! TBC - Glasgow
6 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! The Star and Shadow Cinema - Newcastle
7 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! TBC - Leeds
8 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! The Cavern - Exeter
9 Jan 2009 20:00
w/ The Steal & Hot Damn! Sigma Bar - Swansea

oh, and direct from Dave's mouth - sadness - "The LP won't be ready for the Lp release show", fucking classic... oh well, you'll just have to do with some ogg vorbis rips of the songs till we do get them out to you, or something.

oh, and we're playing in brighton on sunday the something...28th of september and a bunch of other bands too, including fast point who i picked up their album the other day and it 'rrrrips'.

over. stop asking us to play gigs.

oh, wait...

shoot yourself in the face

2008-09-20T12:41:00.001Z

Sir Ben Kingsley STOMPS into the shoes of Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.

MEEJA HOR

2008-09-11T11:57:00.001Z

I've got and idea, let's write a song, we'll call it, 'Bright Grey' and you'll sing along.

HYPE 3.0

2008-09-05T14:07:00.001Z

Potential for success

2008-09-04T16:32:00.002Z

If you're as old as 3 quarters of us are and played in a punk band when you were at an age when it was slightly more acceptable then you will have ventured into the wonderful world of demo cassettes... Running around your house utilising every available recording deck to try and get as many done before the gig that night, using the lower quality 'high speed' record function that 9 times out of 10 would fuck up the tape and not actually save you time, having to effectively listen to your badly recorded demo over and over and over again so you knew when to stop the tape until you hate every last second of its poorly played existence, also doubly hating that extra 'secret track' bit you put on at the end because it was funny at the time but actually having to sit there and wait 10 minutes before it even starts is now the opposite of funny, like really not funny at all. Wow, those were the days.
Well we're taking ourselves back to those days... to co-incide with the new record we're putting together something very special with our friend Matt over at Suplex cassettes and you will shortly have something to play in your car, if it's a bit old, or you parents stereo.

WATCH THIS SPACE ----> <------- for more details.

yes.

HYPE

2008-08-29T15:03:00.002Z

So yeah.

We called that one Breathe In. Which is something you should do... then hold it until the 29th September. Then do the other one...

No brainer

2008-08-27T18:10:00.001Z

Enlargement

2008-08-20T15:32:00.002Z

Ok ok ok ok....

So there's this -

Yup, we're releasing a new album. Near the end of June we wrote the first song on the album while we were waiting for pavey to turn up to practice... that was the first song to be written. We booked the recording a week later for the end of July, wrote some more songs, had a couple of practices, then headed down to Devon to see Mr. Peter Miles. Whilst in Devon we wrote some more songs, spent 2 days in one room going insane, writing lyrics and fighting hornets. Then we spent 2 days recording everything we'd managed to come up with in the month previous. We then cut some stuff out, made sure there were no gaps and we ended up with our second album 'BRIGHT GREY'. We're all pretty stoked. We've then spent the last few weeks putting together the artwork for the album, with Pavey being the workhorse/focus of insessant emails demanding change, this time around. It got sent off this morning, we'll get it in a months time and then you'll get it in your hands here -

LP Release show: Weds Sep 24th - Bacchus, Kingston

or Pre-order from here -

http://www.banquetrecords.com/index.jsp?item=9817

These are the details of the record -

Released on CD & LP
Vinyl info: First UK press - 300 copies on one sided Clear / Grey "Colour inside a colour" LP

1. The Possibilities are endless
2. Disconnected
3. Dave Gets Mad
4. No Control
5. Fashionless
6. The Angles
7. Repeat
8. Keep Moving Forward
9. Got Ideas
10. Horror Vacui
11. Breathe In
12. Statues
13. Kids With Kids
14. Keep It Simple

We have some other shows coming up soon (check the 'SHOWS' page, duh.) and we will also be heading out on their first UK headline tour in January and will hit Kingston, Guildford, Brighton, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Exeter & Swansea. Details to be announced soon!

So there. should be fun.

x

The Possibilities are Endless

2008-08-06T15:56:00.001Z

Get on the Boogie Train

2008-07-08T21:56:00.005Z

Hi,

So i've been meaning to put something up about this for ages... as always i've procrastinated to the point of ridiculousness so now i'm going to do it when I should really be going to bed.

ANYWAY. As you might have seen/heard we have a split 7" out with a band called Beat Express. I'm pretty sure most people who are into our band probably thought, "Who the hell are Beat Express?!" and if they bought the 7" put on their side and were surprised to not hear double time and shouting.

Well, i thought it was probably best to explain and give some context to what we've done.

We've effectively done what I consider to be a pretty big first in music history and put out a record with a learning disabled band (Correct me if i'm wrong on this but I couldn't find anything else of it's kind when I researched it). We all thought this was an amazing opportunity to try and do something different and break out of the mould of a typical hardcore split 7" and maybe even try and educate people a little... as racism/sexism/homophobia issues are all well covered within punk rock we thought Disability Rights could have some attention. Especially now.

The way it came about was I started volunteering for a charity called Carousel just under 2 years ago now and through that I started working with Beat Express. At the beginning of 2007 I started playing second guitar and helping facilitate and support the band so they could rehearse, play gigs and do outreach. They're amazing people and a brilliant band. I always thought that they were way more punk than any band that I had been in. I was slowly finding out more and more about what they had to go through to just exist as a band, and this still blows me away. Their sheer love of writing and playing music, and their work ethic is unbelievable. I always wanted to find away to share their music and the things that i've learnt from joining the band.

Beat Express has a history that doesn't exactly follow conventional rock band stories I guess. They formed initially five years ago from a music project run by Carousel. The thing that puts aside Beat Express from a lot of bands is the difficulties they face in just being 'in a band' as 3 out of the 5 members have learning disabilities. This also gives context to their songwriting and the honesty of their lyrics, when Lee, Claire and Chris are screaming, "We Need SPEED!" you might be able to understand that for these guys visceral experiences can be hard to come by, often caught up in a labyrinth of risk assessments and often encountering people that treat them like children. Their songs are about themselves but reach out to their community, talking about their lives and offering a voice that understands them without being patronising or condescending.

If it wasn't enough for these guys to be in a band, writing songs, practicing and playing gigs around the south-east and London, they also work collaboratively with other art-forms and work really hard within their own community, as educators and positive role models. In 2006 they wrote, (in a staggering 24 hours over 12 weeks) the story and 14 songs for a Rock Opera called Debbie Rock Angel. This was a collaboration with learning disabled film makers from Junk TV and Carousel's Dance Company, 'High Spin'. It was performed live to two sell out audiences at the Komedia in Brighton and at several other locations across the south-east of England. The band for the last few years has also run outreach workshops in schools and after-school clubs for people with learning disabilities. Going in, helping groups write their own songs and perform them in front of the rest of the school. Beat Express have also been running a year long OCN accredited music training course, so far extremely successful, this has been an incredibly positive experience for all involved, teachers and students, creating a space where their skills and confidence can grow.

Ok, so i nicked a load of that from a press release i wrote for them, but you get the idea...

They're in a band, they write all their own music, rehearse, play gigs, record themselves, release their own records, go into schools to help kids to write their own songs, run a music training course for people with learning disabilities, educating and acting as positive role models... basically they're amazing.

I can't really say enough good things about them.

So, I hope this clears up a little of the confusion which may have arisen from the split 7". I do hope you enjoy it and I hope if any of this seems interesting to you you might want to do some research . A few starting points -

Self Advocacy
Social Model of Disability
Carousel
Ouch!

Thank you for reading,

Richard "Telecaster Man" Phoenix.

Summer Updates

2008-06-19T20:36:00.003Z

Hello friends!
So we have finally got off our arses and released our split 7inch with the band Beat Express. It is £3 from most places and features 2 new tracks from us called "The Score" and "451" and track by Beat Express called "We Need Speed". It comes wrapped up in a sexy 2 colour A2 screenprint designed by longtime Steal friend Wil Exley. You can either buy it straight from us at shows or through our webstore. You can also buy it from the lovely people at Banquet Records in Kingston and also the equally lovely people at the Punker Bunker in Brighton.

As well as the split I have updated the webstore with new stock of the Steal Crest shirts and also the A3 screenprinted poster I produced for The Don Ramos Players Record release show.

On the Summer shows front we have 2 booked, one supporting Fucked Up in Kent on the 3rd July and one in Leeds with The Don Ramos Players (amongst others) on the 18th July.

Whilst trawling the internet I found some pretty good videos of when we played the Punktastic Unscene Release show filmed by Gary Lancaster. Either check them out on his youtube page or you can watch them as embeded files on our media page.

Thanks very much to everyone that made it down to the Against Me! shows as well as the Don Ramos Release show, it was really rad seeing some faces of people I had not seen in over 7 months! Hope to see some people I recognise at the next few shows.

lots of love
Mark

xxx

and, ummm...

2008-06-04T13:54:00.002Z

This is the band we're releasing our split with -

Check them out, it's good shit for your ears.

NEWS ON RECORDS - we have them. you can't buy them yet though. That gig in Kent might be the release party, who knows? i certainly don't.

Go see Dave in Brooklyn, he'll let you in on the secret.

ur, yep.

2008-06-04T13:18:00.002Z

We are playing a gig on the 3rd of july at the Tap 'n Tin in Chatham in Kent with Fucked Up, Ghost of a Thousand and Tortuga.

ok?

Half Term Holidays RULE!!!

2008-03-19T18:13:00.003Z

It would appear that for the first time in almost 8 months all of The Steal will be in the same place at the same time.

We've barely seen each other since our last show back in August. Rich works with kids and we all hate the idea of depriving them of his wisdom so that mixed with playing shows with our other bands means 99% of the year we can't play.

However this half term The Steal get together again for 4 shows opening for Against Me!

Mon 14 Apr Bristol Academy 2
Tues 15 Apr Liverpool Academy 2
Wed 16 Apr Sheffield Corporation
Thurs 17 Apr London Garage

It's a real shame we can't book any smaller headline shows but it's so rare that all of us are available at the same time we just have to go with it. Maybe at some point our conflicting work schedules will be more allowing but these are the only shows we're planning to book in the near future!

The Steal

Woah, woah, woooaaaahhhh!

2008-02-28T12:10:00.002Z

So another band we love have called it quits... They formed purely out of an idea, just from always going to shows and thinking, "I can do that."
They booked a gig without having a band and went from there... and achieved loads in the process. The nicest bunch of guys (and girl!) you'd have the pleasure of meeting and they always reminded you why you'd chosen to dedicate yourself to a sometimes frankly ridiculous genre of music... FUN!

Ok, it's a massive round of applause, a huge "WOOOOAAAH!" and an even bigger "THESE BATTLES CAN"T BE FOUGHT ALONE!"

yes, Heroic Doses.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

P.S. they're all doing shitloads of other stuff, they're not dead it's ok... off the top of my head - Earth Dies Screaming, Small Mercies, toby's zine - The New Wave Of Cut And Paste is one the best in the country right now, hunt it down... uh, plus waaay more. get involved.

New Year, New Rear.

2008-02-05T21:13:00.000Z

I was just wondering why we hadn't done anything for over 6 months... then it hit me.

In tribute our friends in the Mercury League, angular post-crust mimicry.

yeah, yeah, we know... won't be long now, call it a siesta... or a sabbatical maybe. Just on a personal note, I work really hard, I enjoy what I do, I like to challenge myself and as most people that know me well I am typically full of shit. "Ceep Moove ing Frord!"

New Merch Store

2008-01-31T21:07:00.000Z

Hello!
How is everyone?
Good new year?
Great, excellent yeah.
Right, now the niceties are out of the way let's get down to business. In an effort to further provoke discussion and spark controversy I have updated the merch page so that it now runs of a Big Cartel store, this basically makes it really easy to keep track of what we have in stock and speeds up the whole paying process and represents a major technological break through for the Steal. Why not go check out the merch page now to see? I even printed up some new bags with a sexy gold print.

I heard a rumour that we were playing soon, the person that told me seemed fairly adamant about that fact. But then I also spoke to someone who claimed we had definitely broke up and gone off to form electro pop bands. Which do you believe? Which is true? Who knows! Certainly not me.

In other news we were all very sad to hear that The Mercury League have broken up, we played some rad shows together guys and both us and the Uk scene will certainly miss you. On the bright side I saw a very good band last night called Our Time Down Here, you should definitely check them out.

x

2007-11-17T20:54:00.000Z

Anything but that bloody word...

2007-11-13T16:35:00.000Z

hello friends,

we are having a little break but don't fret because we'll be back in 2008, with more shows and new records. Rich is living in Brighton playing in Hot Damn and I Am Sparticles and working for and with the children. Mark lives in Brighton too, whipping the internet into shape and drinking high-end water. Dave is touring with JOY and having a nice time co-steering Kingston-Upon-Thames into a glittering future. Lindsay is keeping it real, haunting East London working in fashion and sipping martinis.

OK, cool! say hello if you want to.

US Tour Diary

2007-11-09T16:00:00.000Z

The Steal - US Tour August 2007

It's been two months since we returned home to the loving shores of Britain. It's safe to say that the trip I'm jut about to tell you about had a profound affect on me personally and I'm sure the same can be said on behalf of Mark, Lindsay & Rich too. The Steal has always been about acting on ideas, not just dreaming about things you're never going to do, if you want to do something just make it happen. Six months after we decided to "Go to America" we found ourselves packed up and ready to leave...

I wrote parts of this at home and parts of it on the road so excuse the bad English, I also received the grades E & F for English GCSE so thet'd do it aswell!

The tour really started in England, playing two shows with our old friends Set Your Goals. Kingston & Brighton are where The Steal feel at home so it felt totally natural to yet again grace the stage of The Peel & The Engine Rooms. It's been an odd year for us, I can count on one hand how many times we've practiced so it was a real stroke of luck we were able to get back in to the swing of things just before we left for the US.

After the Brighton show we headed back to Rich's house and after a few games of Wi bowling we hit the sack. Alarms ringing all at once we awake as a group and put the operation into practice. Yes, we have plane tickets, yes we have passports, no we don't have an adequate amount of clothes or supplies but that doesn't matter (I'd like to point out that even by 'tour' standards we didn't have alot of clothes, I think Rich and Lindsay had 2 t-shirts and a pair of jeans) . We did however had to make ourselves look really smart for the plane journey, I won't go into details but i'll just say that America doesn't really want punk bands in their country and as we didn't want any reason to be questioned we all wore our "Generic Male" outfit and I'll tell you it worked a treat.

After many delays at Gatwick we headed out on Zoom 101 to JFK. It was one of the first budget trips to the US and this was a pretty big factor in the tour happening at all so thanks ZOOM! We had a pretty good flight watching Shrek 3 and Simpsons...oh and a comptely clear view of Greenland which was amazing and like nothing I'd ever seen. The plane flew along the east coast of Canada down to our first destination NYC.

It took a few hours to get along with the NYC subway but eventually we made it to Brooklyn where we met up with our buddy Andreas. He's been working in New York for a couple of years as a photographer the jammy cunt. We went to his sweet warehouse conversion (exactly like you'd imagine a New York warehouse flat to be) and sat up on the roof having a bbq for a few hours with our new friends (this strangely included the dude from Masterdon that was in town that night too...weird but fun). We walked down to the edge of Brooklyn and got on to another roof of an apartment building that pretty much gave us the best view of the skyline possible and the fact that we'd finally arrived sank in. This is already the best holiday i've been on in my life.

We all slept in Andreas' room with pretty much no need for covers, this place is HOT HOT HOT. Our driver Jimmy Doyle, who we had never previously met swung by the warehouse about 10am and after a little introduction we headed into Manhatten to pick up a drum kit & bass guitar from another NY resident that once frequented the UK punk scene, Pete from the Bombjacks. Baring in mind none of us really knew Pete all that well apart from Rich and even then it'd been a good few years we were amazed at the kindness of him and his girlfriend Lindsay for lending us the majority of the gear we needed for the tour, they saved us ALOT of money and time and we owe them!

Driving down to Philadelphia was next on the the days agenda for us which was a great way to start the gigging aspect of the tour. The Church ruled, it was like a gathering of all the Philadelphia hardcore scene under one roof so we hung out with all those guys all night at the most insane Kareoke bar ever...that place went off. Went to a couple of partys around the city, ate some Philly soft pretsels straight out the oven and headed back to Josh from Paint It Black's house (with Jared too) where he lived with the bass players from Hot Cross & Dillinger Escape Plan. It was at this point I realised that the US punk / hardcore scene is quite alot like the UK one, the bands are more established and well known on a worldwide scale but they all know each other and share houses and go to each others shows just like we do.

We hung in Philly for a few hours, went for a vegan philly cheesesteak which actually didn't live up to it's rep however if we hadn't have gone to Giana's cafe we wouldn't have met up with Team Yes! A few of us had me them at the kareoke bar but the night before as they were in town to see Armalite but we didn't know how much of a big part they would play in our lives for the next 36 hours. After going to the Rocky steps, Love park, FDR skatepark we headed to Richmond, Virginia where they lived.

We rolled into town ate some chips and gave them a call. We had a few places to go when we arrived, a kinda college party which was exactly how it is in the movies...I spent most of the time discussing UK / US politics with a student guy while the others played beer pong in the garden. We left pretty swift and met up with the Richmond girls and they took us to a bar. People still smoke in bars here as it's the tobacco capital of the states, but it was cool hanging out with everyone and talking about their area and the local music scene. We hung out all night and got up really early and went round town. The girls took us in to their group and showed us some great places to get food, let us into their houses and lives entirely. It was the coolest thing ever. We went down to the river James in Richmond and went swimming. This was amazing, I couldn't ever imagine just hanging out in a river like this back home, I had a real great time and Andreas was contantly taking photos of our sunburnt bodies.

After swimming we met up with everyone we'd met in Richmond and went out for dinner. I can't express how cool this was, it'd like we'd known them for years, the girls of Team YES!!! literally made us feel at home in the most literal sense. If we were to go home now i'd think it was already worth the money. As we were leaving things took a small turn for the worse when Rich realised his bag (containing his passport, the small amount of clothes he had, phone etc) was missing. We looked around everyones house and couldn't find it. At that point there was nothing we could do about it so we set off on the massive journey South without it.

We drove all night on our way to South Carolina, the journey was pretty horrible, more so for Jimmy as we arrived at about 10 am having driven all night and been questioned by the cops about our travelling intentions. It seemed over the top but I think they are just really concerned with drugs getting distributed around states, I think they realised that wasn't really our bag and sent us on our way.. It was now mine and Rich's birthday and we were in the furthest southern point of the trip. I went out for a bike ride around greenwood on a borrowed bike on my own. It was a great feeling to be totally relaxed and distracted from the everyday stuff that would normally cloud my life with worry. I didn't have my phone or any money with me and it didn't even matter, It was such a nice feeling to just be in a position where I only had to make short term decisions. I needed this holiday.

Ken & Ryan who were putting on that night's show took us down to another river with really strong rapids where we hung out for a good few hours. I could really do this every day, just playing around in an entirely natural surrounding without a care in the world. Amazing. I got totally sunburnt again and beat up on the rocks but that just added to the evenings performance at the local skateboard / bike shop. We're still pretty tired and not 100% on form but for us this is more about seeing the country for us, which has so far been pretty unreal!

Everyone we've met here so far has been so amazing to us, I think over here the punk scene is actually properly alternative just because of the way the country is. People have taken days out of their lives just to show us the best parts of their towns & cities and we were intergrated into things that we would have never found otherwise. Amazing! Ken & Ryan's friend Melissa made us some awesome Vegan food and made me and Rich some special birthday cake...oh yeah have a look

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We left South Carolina and drove for a good few hours before we stopped for our first Taco Bell and eventually a little trip to a Mexican themed service / tourist area called "South Of The Border" that was full of huge animal sculptures and shops like "Hats of The World". We decided to buy some really short shorts and put them on straight away for an intense photo session.

We pulled up to the show in Greenville, North Carolina about 9:30 pm, we've discovered it's pretty much impossible to get to any of the shows early even with driving all day but luckily this was a late show anyway. The line up was pretty varied but we had a great show, the place went off! Alot of the local kids told us they haven't had any punk bands or anything with "that much energy" in a long time so we were pretty stoked on that. What could have been an awful show turned out to be pretty damn cool.

We had to drive all night again to get to a place called Brunswick, Maryland where we were staying. It was a really nice proper American house, similar to the Dischord house you see in all the old Minor Threat photos with a basement and everything. It was a a shame we didn't get to hang here more as the people that put us up were yet again super nice and waited up until we arrived at 7:30 am just to make sure we had everything we needed.

After a very very short sleep we got back in the van and headed to the next show. It was at Asbury Lanes, a bowling alley in Asbury Park, New Jersey. We arrived too late to really have a look around the surrounding area but the alley itself was a 50's styled rock n' roll hang out situated right near the Jersey shore. We played a few games and drank soda until the bands started. One Win Choice were kind enough to lend us their gear and were so supportive of our efforts to come to the US off our own back they actually gave us all their pay...amazing! Also on the bill was long time friend of The Bouncing Souls, Pedro who did a couple of spoken word sets and our new favorite band Dirty Tactics. We went back to Kate (Is Great)'s house with Dirty Tactics and while the others were hanging out and inventing another fictional band my tiredness got the better of me and I went to sleep in the Chunksaah label room because it reminded me most of my bedroom with all the CD boxes around!

I got up first and sat out on the porch area for an hour or so, it was really relaxing and I had another one of those "America" moments watching the world go by. We stopped off in Redbank, NJ and popped into Kevin Smith's comic shop "Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash". It was pretty cool and all the staff that work in the shop are people you'd recognise as extras in all the films. We grabbed a coffee and a panini in a nice little cafe, it turned out the guy that worked there had been at the show the night before and he sorted us right out. Again, another instance of strangers going above and beyond the call of duty. The debate rages on in my mind, is it that people are just nicer here or is the punk scene just alot more "alternative" than in the UK and the people within that group are just really supportive of everyone in it.

An unfortunate moment of realisation came as we left for the show in Washington DC. We had simply left too late to get there in time to play, that's something that doesn't happen too often at home!

Hanging our heads in shame we went north to Long Island, NY where Jimmy lived. We had some much needed food and a swim in his pool before getting the train into Manhatten. I'd never seen anything like it, a double decker train! We went to meet Andreas at his place of work, the studio was pretty unreal decorated by shots of some of the worlds best known actors & world leaders. With our bands mutual interest in design we were all pretty keen to see some photo retouching techniques in action however the majority rule was to go to a bar. I don't drink myself so after an hour or so I got a bit bored of sitting around so when the others moved on I decided to go on a little wonder of my own. I walked from the lower east side about 50 blocks north to the Empire State / Times Square area and just walked around until about 8am. This was very cool up to the point where my bare feet in old school vans decided to give in and the blisters on my feet developed at lightning speed. I hobbled around for a bit longer, every step an absolute killer but eventually got on to the subway to Brooklyn where I caught up with the others and was able to sleep for a couple of hours.

We caught the subway into town to try and sort out Rich's passport problems at the British embassy. Everything seemed to be going well and they told him to "come back at 3" and it shouldn't take more than 30 mins...bonus! The reality however was that the embassy shut at 1pm, did the other guy even work there? who knows! So the embassy was shut and wouldn't be open again until monday which was 3 days away when we're supposed to be 200 or so miles north in Buffalo. Everybody is super tired and frustrated when we board the train to Hicksville, Long Island but Jimmy picks us up and after his family fed us up super well we're all feeling much more with it. The show was at the bar Jimmy works at, a small bar called Mr Beerys. My feet were killing but somehow as soon as we started playing the adrenalin / a shot of red bull syrup kicked in and i was able to break through the pain barrier for a solid 25 mins and we played super fast with every song back to back..it was rad!

We fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow and awoke to find a much needed NY breakfast waiting for us on the table.

We left pretty sharpish as todays show was in the afternoon, or so we thought. We arrived at the hall in Windsor, CT which appeared to be in the centre of nowhere. It turned out we didn't play until second to last but it was a good fun show fueled by Jimmy's BBQ mushrooms / A1 sauce. We also got to see Jimmy's band "The Fad" who totally rule, they sound like a more hardcore version of Big D & The Kids Table.

My feet and legs still fucking kill but I find getting through the shows pretty easy...the other 23.5 hours are painful though. We stayed at Chris from Aspestos record's house with some of the other bands including Rick Johnson Rock n' Roll Machine which is a Mustard Plug solo project with Jeff BTMI playing guitar and some other cool guys. Had a chat about Billy Bragg with him and pretty much went straight to sleep.

We were in no major rush to get to Windsor, CT as it was only an hours drive at most so we stopped off at a retail park and mall complex somewhere on the way. After another quality bagel we split up and bought the necessary items like boxer shorts, socks and New Era baseball caps before heading into the cinema to watch "Superbad" which was a lot funnier than I expected so check that out when it's around in the UK. We arrived at the venue around the same time as all the other bands who all turned out to be super nice and super good. I forget the name of the first band but they were exactly the kinda hardcore that hardcore should be...these were real kids singing proper youth crew anthems about getting shit and wanting to skate. They sounded a lot like the first Bold band Crippled Youth. The singer is blatantly gonna be in a huge hardcore band in 5 / 10 years. A post hardcore / "real" screamo band called Lautrec from Chicago were next up and they ruled. Those guys were an example of what you can do in the US, they formed their band and instead of playing a first show they booked themselves an entire tour and just went on the road. Awesome, look them up. A metallic crust / hardcore band called Black Ships from Canada and a tech thrash / grind band whose name escapes me also played the veteran run community centre and were both as intense as a good village stoning. Immense!

We drove back to Long Island, NY that night and stayed with Fad guitarist Ricky. Ricky is safe as fuck and introduced us to the US version of the Mighty Boosh - "Flight Of The Concordes" and his 5 week old kitten that he found abandoned in a park. I really like Long Island, I guess for me it's like home...far enough out from the city that you don't have the bullshit attached to it but close enough that you can just get a train in anytime you want. He drove us to the train station while Jimmy was still passed out on his floor.

Today's the day we were supposed to be playing in Buffalo however as a group we decided that it was more important for Rich to sort out his passport than drive 12 hours and just worry about it. We separated in NYC for the afternoon and went about on our own little missions. I personally had about $10 left in the world so I just had another bagel and sat down for a couple of hours in Time Square, just chilling out and trying to find an internet cafe. After we all met up we realised we had nowhere to go so we gave the Brooklyn show promoter a call and even though we were 2 days early she met up with us, took us out in Williamsburg and let us stay in her warehouse apartment. Me and Pavey could see the direction the evening was taking when the others needed to get more booze at 5am so we went and huddled up on Stella's sofa and prayed to the god of social standards to make Lindsay & Rich shut up so we could go to sleep. Needless to say I was pretty tired the next day but nothing another bagel and a cup of "Good Morning America" couldn't sort out.

We had another day roaming the streets of NYC, we went all around the lower east side, a brief trip into Queens to go to an art gallery that was shut...the usual. Rich noticed a tattoo shop that one of his friends from back home worked in for a while so we popped in and 15 mins later Rich was getting a light bulb tattooed on the inside of his right arm by supposedly one of the best artists in the game!

Andreas was back from a shoot later that night so we went to another bar and waited for his arrival. We stayed in his warehouse again, that place is rad, I can't even express how much of a good space it is. Everyone was ready for bed pretty sharpish so much sleep was had by all, until Pavey's "Alarm that you can't turn off" was on an endless cycle for long enough that we all went insane, except Pavey who managed to sleep through it.

So, our last real day in the USA was here. Pavey really wanted to go and see an exhibition in Manhatten, at this point I was actually down to about $4 plus $6 on my Metrocard so I declined and Rich suggested that we go down on the Staton Island ferry so I could see the Statue Of Liberty. It was a rainy day and to be honest it didn't look all that impressive but the experience is to be had. We met up back at the apartment to do some photos with Andreas, Jimmy and other Fad guitarist Cody met us there too all set to take us to the final venue, The Charleston, Williamsburg. This was the perfect way to end the tour, some of the friends we made had come out, Pete and his wife Lindsay were there, Al Paxton from Stapleton was there aswell as other randoms from back home. It was indeed the perfect way to end the tour and one of the best shows we had on the trip. Here's the final song...

VISIT IF YOU MAKE IT

Unfortunatly the last day was mainly spent stressing out about getting to the airport, filling our bags with remaining merch, eating bad food and standing in ques. We flew out of JFK at 17:30 hrs and arrived back in miserable Gatwick at 6:40am red eyed, depressed and longing for a bagel.

Thank You: Jimmy + family & all of the Fad, Charles Get Outta Town, Andreas Konrath, Pete & Lindsey, Ken & Ryan, Emily, Tiffani, Michelle, Laura from Team Yes, Dan, Andy, Josh & Jared from Paint It Black, Kate (is great), Dirty Tactics & anyone who let us be a part of their lives while we were in town. AMAZING!

C to the E, to the R, to the N, hot damn they're fine lookin' men...

2007-10-11T11:41:00.000Z

Hello!

My arm is getting better, thanks for asking. Turns out it wasn't broken or even fractured, just very badly bruised... LAME.

So we still haven't sorted out all those releases, haha. If anyone ever asks why we need record labels in the world it's because musicians for the most part like making music (no shit) but dislike the annoying details like sending masters off to the pressing plant for example, or deciding on artwork... Ho Hum. Maybe we should just do a Radiohead.

Anyway, in this age of enlightenment of free stuff to the consumer, thereby building and maintaining the brand, i've stuck up the entirety of our album for CONSTANT STREAMING. whoa. AND AND AND... our Radio One Lock Up Session that only two songs were ever broadcast, in a "Best of British (cleaning out the session closet)" type affair.

This is all to keep you peachy as we go through the slackest period of our existence... bear with us please.

In other news, The Dagger and I went to the line between this world and the next; the cusp of science; the future; through the looking glass; the border between Switzerland and France, last weekend. Holy shit, if we didn't have our minds blown by the end of our tour of the Atlas experiment, then the 30 hour sleep deprivation brought us through the doors for sure.

Right back to our pale imitation of life...

BYE!

Rich Gets Fucked

2007-09-11T10:45:00.000Z

So two fairly big bits of news today.Firstly as some of you might have seen from our myspace blog Richard"RIM"Phoenix has broken his arm skateboarding.The repercussions of this is that we are obviously gonna be out of action as a performing band for the next few months,hopefully we will be playing shows by November depending on how his arm is.We can all take solice in the fact that I have been assured he did it while busting rad air over over a hip.It seems he got over confident tweaking out his nose grab and just got cocky trying to land it in a manual.Yeah thats definitely what happened, its not like he was just carving up a concrete bowl and just fell over for no reason...nope he would never do that.....So anyway what this does allow us to do is actually get organised and finally finish off those pesky records we have been talking about for the last year,hell we might even get them done in time for our two year anniversary.Our side of the The Mercury League Split has been remixed by Dave for the 20th time and last night we re-recorded the vocals for the lightyear release.I have to say both sound pretty sweet, but then im probably biased arent I?

xBOKx

first light of the universe...

2007-09-03T08:12:00.001Z

The Short Shorts Super Team!

2007-08-31T13:49:00.000Z

As some of you may have noticed, from the fact that we played a show in the UK a few days ago, WE ARE BACK FROM THE USA!Now that the jet lag has worn off and we are begining to realise just how crappy not touring is as the wave of real life responsability crashes into the steal HQ I thought now would be a good time to say a few words.On the whole our experiences in America were amazingly positive and we are eternally indebted to certain groups of people for taking a bunch of lost brits under their collective wings and treating us like we had known them our whole lives (and not like the unwashed drunks that kept you all up when we stayed at your houses).A few words of thanks here can't really sum up how grateful we all are to the people that helped us when we were 3000 miles away from home, but suffice to say you all made it the best holiday/tour ever and we hope you stay in contact.

Super Duper thanks go to
-Jimmy "Disco" Doyle of the Fad for driving us on the tour and not calling us idiots for booking shows that were 12 hours apart (it didnt look that far on the map!).
-Andy,Josh,Jared and Dan of PIB for sorting us out with a rad show,taking us to kareoke and letting us sleep on your floor (not to mention the 4am pretzels).
-The Richmond Horror Girls for letting us abuse both your flats and being our den mothers (and for putting up with the extra Love Knife members).
-Ken,Ryan and Mellissa for all the fun down in South Carolina as well as the birthday pie for Dave and Rich.
-Kate and the Ashbury Lanes for all the hospitality in New Jersey and for having one of the coolest venues ever.
-The Doyle household for feeding us("But what do you eat if you dont eat meat?"),cleaning us and letting us swim in your pool.
-Missy and Gemma for a memorable night/morning on the streets of New York.
-The Punknews dudes and dudettes for streaming the album and being so much help.
-Stella for a rad night out and an even radder last show.
-Simon for the amazing bbq.
-Andreas for letting us crash on your floor so many times,being such a good friend and a cool dude,Love Knife misses you Bruno.
-All the american kids that came to our shows, sorry to anyone that went to one of the shows we had to pull out of expecting to see us.
-All the promoters for taking a chance on helping us out.
-The Fad for all being cool people and for not getting angry at us stealing their singer away for 2 weeks.
-Charles at Get outta town records for putting out our cd in the usa,sorting us out with so much help and being an amazing dude.
-Pete and Lindsey for lending us so much stuff at such short notice.
-All the people at www.enemyink.com for sorting out our merch etc.
-All the people that i have no doubt forgotten to name check, sorry my memory is rubbish!

These bands are amazing check them out
The Fad, Dirty Tactics, Small Arms Dealer, Unicorn Basement, Dynamite Arrows, Eat and Run, Paint it black, One win Choice, Sensitive Ghost(sigh), Short Shorts Super Team and the amazing Love Knife.

Much Love - Check out the whole USA tour experience in the Usa Tour zine (on its way in a month or so)

x The Steal

Roast Egg

2007-08-29T14:36:00.000Z

We're playing with Dean Dirg from Germany tonight at the GYC. We lost most of our plasti-flock, but at least we'll be playing our own guitars again!

des laser

2007-08-12T15:24:00.000Z

we made it!

we're now here in america, in richmond. come on.

love you.

x

Stream, stream, stream, stream, stream...

2007-08-07T08:44:00.000Z

Those lovely chaps and chapesses at Punknews.org have our entire album up for stream on their site in celebration of our album being put out by Get Outta Town, you can celebrate with everyone else here and here.

We have a few more dates confirmed for the tour. Check the shows for details. ta.

ALSO we're playing tonight at the Kingston Peel, bring your dancing shoes.

x

Busy Bee.

2007-08-03T10:28:00.000Z

For all the kids who like to sing along... LYRICS!

and and and and... i made a Steal VIRB account which we're going to use eventually to stream all our songs, I just put up the songs from the split we did with Set Your Goals last year. Bonzer.

Over the Sea and far away...

2007-08-01T12:03:00.001Z

Right, for once we have a load of actual real useful information to give you. Come on.

Firstly our album, The Steal, is getting released in the United States of America!!! The wonderful chaps at Get Outta Town records are doing this with us and we're stoked that they're into the album enough to put it out over there... so much so that we'd like to collectively hug and kiss them. This is what they had to say about us...

"What would you get if you crossed Kid Dynamite, Descendents and Gorilla Biscuits? The catchiest and most incredible love-child ever, THE STEAL! UK's THE STEAL have taken the traditional forms of melodic punk and hardcore and churned it into something of their own. Packing more hooks than a tackle box into songs less under a minute long, THE STEAL has proven that be it a house show or packed venue, they understand how to keep the spirit of punk and hardcore going strong.
THE STEAL has shared the stage with such bands as Lifetime, Shook Ones, Good Clean Fun, Set Your Goals (with whom they released a split 10") and Paint It Black. Be on the lookout for these dudes to hit US shores for a northeast tour in August 2007! Just when you thought there couldn't be any catchier, faster, and more melodic music...."

...Scooter comes along and saves the day!
Anyway, what can we say Charles? flattery will get you everywhere.

This will be released in time for our second major news announcement...

Our US East Coast tour! Hooray!! As with everything we do, it's all turning out to be quite last minute. We leave next Thursday, the 9th of August and return on the 24th. Holy shit, that's a week away!
What we have so far is on the shows page, and they'll be a few more TBC's confirmed over the next few days.

Other things that should know about is the 2 shows we're playing with Set Your Goals before we head of to the US of A... Next tuesday in Kingston at the Peel, and the wednesday in Brighton at the Engine Rooms. these should be a lot of fun, and it'd be nice to see some friendly faces before we head off into the great unknown of TOUR...

"this is a car park, not a hotel.
this is a packet of crisps, not a meal.
give me my bloody job back.
this is a tour, not a holiday."

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS CALAMITY.

2007-07-05T11:21:00.000Z

Hooray!

No smoking in venues again!

My lungs may now have a chance to return to their normal state after all.

ANYWAY.

Download this.

It's great.

Our music video for breakout (at last!) -

goodbye, half a million quid

2007-07-03T09:37:00.000Z

The high cost of selling out

You've got the band, you've got the talent (or you'd like to think so) - all you need now to make the big time is that killer hit ... and about half a million pounds. Dave Simpson reports on the price of fame or, more realistically, the cost of squandering money on a lost cause

Friday June 29, 2007
The Guardian

Advance: £150,000
An advance is the money a record company gives to the band when the contract is signed - it's cash the label plans to recover from the earnings the band will make from future CD and download sales. It is meant to cover the band's living expenses over the cycle of a recording, releasing and promoting an album (which is usually around 18 months). The advance is split between the four members, and the manager will take 20% off the top. That works out as less than pounds 35,000 each over a year and a half, which isn't enough to make throwing TVs out of hotel windows a viable financial option.

Recording costs: £100,000
A hundred grand, staggering as it sounds, is an average figure for a band to spend on recording an album. They'll have run through the recording in a decent studio with a reasonable producer - for that kind of money they can't afford to spend eight weeks rerecording one tom-tom. A chunk of the money - around £30,000 - will go to whichever whizz kid producer is entrusted with the task of turning tuneless reprobates from Rugby into a collision of the Beatles and the Stones. More will go to recording engineers, remixers, as well as towards studio hire and the costs of mastering the record.

Videos: £90,000
In 1995, Michael Jackson's record company spent more than $7m making the video for Scream ($53,000 alone was spent on breaking guitars), but a band can now make a decent promotional tool for as little as £5,000, though a major label will spend more than that to get a shot at rotation on MTV2. A new act would ideally be partnered with a hip promos director, such as Wiz (who shot Kasabian's Empire but charges a minimum of £80,000), but it's more likely band and label will reach a compromise, maybe £90,000 for videos for two songs shot by someone who'll work for less.

Advertising and posters: £95,000
The age-old industry tool of a "blaze" of publicity has not got any cheaper. A half-page ad in NME might cost £5,000, while an advert on MTV2 or Kerrang! TV costs £10,000 per single (that's the price of airtime plus the costs of making the ad). A good poster campaign costs £10,000 per single and £15,000 for an album, but posters can be wasted money, as our expert explains: "All Saints had a massive comeback campaign but the record bombed. You can't take those posters down, whereas if they'd booked TV airtime they could have switched it to a different act."

Clothing: £200
Many rock bands don't spend money on stylists, at least until they're in contention for glossy magazine covers - they're scruffy blighters because their fans think filth looks cool. Generally, the only time a rock band will shell out on outfits will be for a certain look for a video, and that's covered by the video budget. "Bands like Hundred Reasons or the View have not spent money on clothes," says a music industry expert, "although we recently had to give one band's manager £200 to get them some new trainers, because their feet smelled."

Touring: £40,000
Bands start to make money from touring once they're successful, but before that the record company must pay to send them round the country, with a sound man. Rising bands typically lose around £20,000 over three UK tours in a year this way. Bands seeking to get major exposure as support to an established act may even be forced to pay to get on the bill, depending on how unscrupulous the headliners' management is. More money - another £20,000 - goes on travelling to TV and radio sessions and hiring equipment. Bands claw this back through merchandising: a £10 T-shirt makes six quid a time for the group.

Retail and displays: £53,000
Not many people know that those eye-catching window displays in record shops are actually bought and paid for. Getting the likes of HMV and Virgin to stock and put up instore promotion for a CD costs around £10,000 for a debut single, £18,000 for a higher profile follow-up and £20,000-£25,000 for an album. Similar deals are done for piles of beans in supermarkets, although you wouldn't put them in your CD player.

Photos: £10,000
It will take a top rock photographer to turn the four former butchers and builders from Plymouth into four budding and brooding Johnny Borrells. A master of the moody image such as Kevin Westerberg (famed for shots of the likes of REM and Thom Yorke) won't take the lens cap off for less than £10,000, and that's before the cost of hiring studios, lights and so on. Luckily, a lesser name can do the whole package for under £5,000, while for those on a particularly tight budget there's always the photo booth in Boots.

Conquering the internet: £20,500
It costs around £3,000 to create the band's website, but you've also got to hire a publicist to bring the band to the attention of music websites, make tracks available digitally and pay someone to update a band's MySpace site. Another bare minimum of £4,500 (£500 a month over nine months) goes on paying a firm to set up "street teams" - armies of highly motivated whippersnappers who promote a band because they love them. Street teams themselves don't get paid, but they get to meet the band at the soundcheck, get a T-shirt and a copy of the album. Flyers and other tools for these pesky kids add another £3,000.

Creating a buzz: £36,000
Around £12,000 goes on retaining a TV plugger for six months to take your video to the TV stations. That is vitally important when a show such as Later with Jools Holland can massively raise a band's profile. "Later's not easily pluggable, but you wouldn't get on the show without a plugger," the Guardian is told. "They'd never put a band on who they stumbled across in the pub." You need a different plugger to get you on to radio, and another publicist to deal with the print media - and you'll be paying them the same as the TV plugger.

Total cost: £594,700
Launching a band is ludicrously expensive, but it's not all dead money. Of the expenses quoted above, the label will generally recoup around 50% of video costs once the band starts to sell records, and they can also claw back some of the costs of touring, recording - and, of course, the advance will come back once the band have earned that much money from sales. But the rest is lost, and as our expert puts it: "Obviously, if the band flops, all is lost." And that's the key point: most band are destined to fail. So, goodbye, half a million quid.

women in love

2007-06-28T10:43:00.000Z

Drugs and Violence

2007-06-18T21:49:00.000Z

Hello,

In response to some rumours we've heard recently, yes, A&R men & women we would like to be taken out for free dinners and drinks...

We are a flexible bunch, into everyone getting involved, if it's your money you should have a say we think... Tell you what, i even watched MTV2's red button chart today and enjoyed at least 5 songs on it... We are capable of writing pop songs that would blow your mind too so we're definitely worth investing into for the future, if this hardcore malarky doesn't create a market in the mainstream alternative field then as i say, we're flexible...

A few requirements maybe contained within future contracts though, and to save some hassle i'll outline a few of the more important ones...

- The budget and resources must be made available for the writing and performing of our 'looped universe theory' song at the centre point of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

- Help with starting the first ever franchised hardcore band, whereby we need never leave our homes to go on tour, we have auditioned counterparts all over the world "rocking the face off every motherfucker in the room" simultaneously. Meaning we don't get bored of playing the same songs, over and over and over again and develop unwanted drink and drug habits from the sheer boredom of our glamorous lifestyles.

- U2's old zoo tv stage gear.

- Someone to write our second album for us, we can't be bothered, we can give you the outline... we just need someone to 'fill in the gaps' like music and the actual words.

- Sign our unborn children into the contract too. They'll thank us when their older.

- Let us write an album (i guess number three this will be) about how everyone likes us but that's really shit because no-one really understands us really and we're all lonely because it's lonely being a star and we get sad and have had some problems but we're working through it but it's not all that great at the top you know it's a bit shit. And it'll be a bit awkward and not that good because we'll deliberately be trying to be something we're not and experimenting really badly and trying to show people we're not confined to this box you put us us in man, we're totally something else, get off my case, etc... BUT You will have to make it a hit record or else we'll complain that you're a shit label and did market us properly or advertise it well enough, you shits.

- During the 2 months that the people who liked us at your label are still employed there we get to decide what everyone wears.

there are more... we can discuss these at dinner.

x

New shirts available!

2007-06-15T20:24:00.000Z

Hello, we have new shirts and bags available, check out the merch page for more info.

the world is my fuse

2007-06-15T11:24:00.000Z

"When I was DJing, playing Can, Liquid Liquid, ESG, all that kind of stuff, I became kind of cool for a moment, which was a total anomaly. And when I heard other DJs playing similar music I was like: ‘Fuck! I’m out of a job! These are my records!’ But it was like someone had crept into my brain and said all these words that I hate. Did I make the records? Did I fuck! So, I started becoming horrified by my own attitude. I had this moment of glory though. People would use me to DJ just to get them cool. They’d be like ‘It’s the cool rock disco guy’ and this was really weird. And to be honest I was afraid that this new found coolness was going to go away. I was horrified by my own silliness. And then it became a wider thing about people who grip onto other people’s creations like they are their own. There is a lot of pathos in that character though because it’s born out of inadequacy and love."

Pinpoint the Death of Innocence

2007-06-13T10:09:00.000Z

"That'll do..."

2 hours late for 730 club twice this week, it's not good.

The reason why i was late today is that last night we were finishing off the vocals for the split we are doing with The Mercury League. It got hot, it got tense, t's were pronounced, crisps were eaten, minds were lost but we got there, now all Dave has to do is listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and overandoverandover again whilst doing things until it sounds perfect. And it will sound perfect.

The Mercury League are finishing off their side next week i believe... We then do other stuff and then magically we have 7" records in our laps, holy crap it's really that easy. These will now, we've decided, come out at these two shows...

7th of August at the Peel in Kingston
8th of August at the Engine Rooms in Brighton

These will be themed and this theming will be mandatory. no arguments. Fun will also be mandatory as we're leaving to go somewhere the very next day.

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that, shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass."

Walter Schreifels

2007-06-08T07:56:00.000Z

http://www.myspace.com/walterschreifelsmusic

Country interpretations of 'Start Today' and more. haha.

Dennis Lyxzen looks a little bit like rod stewart back in the day.

2007-06-06T00:14:00.000Z

"I carry a log--yes. Is it funny to you? It is not to me. Behind all
things are reasons. Reasons can even explain the absurd. Do we have
the time to learn the reasons behind the human being's varied behavior?
I think not. Some take the time. Are they called detectives?

Orthokeratology.

2007-06-05T10:43:00.000Z

Hello.
Thought I'd put up some visual entertainment of our day in Brixton on Sunday... where we had a very good time indeed, thank you to Treat for putting the show on, Failsafe for sorting us and everyone else out proper with their backline... AND everybody that showed up and making it extremely fun. menage.

I was pleased to see today though that the possiblity of me getting a lodestone resonator for christmas is increasing exponentially. Now all we need is the Æsahættr.

We might have some more gigs coming up soon and release dates for the records shortly. HOLD YOUR BREATH.

thanks to Luke Thomas Scott.

"Goodbye, May Kasahara."

2007-06-01T09:55:00.000Z

I spent the other day accidentally trawling myspace for people I used to go to school with... yes, accidentally. What prompted this fit of voyeurism in me i do not know, could've had something to do with the wedding of an old friend I attended last weekend, seems i'm at the age now where marriage isn't something totally out of the question and shouldn't be greeted with the response, "are you insane?!". Ho Hum, i tried my hardest to not act like a grown-up, the free bar helped, but i was beaten in the anti-grown up behaviour by some surprising people in attendance... Anyway, it was strange to say the least, the wedding and my snooping into people's lives on the internet, through various hints and clues finding out that my delusions that I am actually still 18 aren't true... how sad.
The refining of my answer to the ultimate social gathering question, "so... what do you do?" was a toss up between -

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

"Uh, i work at an after-school club and play in bands... yes, that is kind of the same thing i was doing when I was 16."

smash

2007-05-31T07:58:00.001Z

apparently, 'they' can now predict which songs are going to be solid gold hits and which aren't.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10442377&ft=1&f=5

two good bands to listen to are

thee shitty limits

and

eagle boys.

x

It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing...

2007-05-24T09:21:00.000Z

Don't spend your life worrying...

Let's have a bobble, everybody bobble, let's bobble, bobble, bobble along.

we're playing tomorrow in London at the Underworld with Big D and the Kids Table, i think we're on about 8:30. They're amazing we're under-rehearsed, but holy shit we're going to play at least half of the new album in our 25 minute set. are you ready?

Waiting for the Simple Life...

2007-05-09T07:55:00.000Z

Hello Everybody,

As some of you have noticed (it took us a while to notice too) a photo from one of our shows is being used to advertise Macbeth shoes on a global scale. As a band we're all pretty unhappy about such a perfect show (and indeed brilliant photo) being used to promote "an image of punk rock" as for us it goes against everything we stand for as a band and things we sing about.

Because of this we feel the need to tell you that we are not endorsed or will ever be endorsed by any clothing / punk rock image related company. The photo was taken by our good friend Owen who did indeed sell it to the Lowlife / Atticus / Macbeth company thinking as it wasn't directly of 'The Steal' and it was someone in the audience wearing Macbeth shoes (who has since thrown them away and in no way agreed to be a poster boy for anyone) that it would be ok. If we'd have known I think we would have matched the offer for the photo but we don't blame him at all...we still love him.

Anyway, point being there's not alot we can do about the photo being used without starting punk rock WW3 as it was sold to Macbeth by one of our friends, and indeed some of the people who work at Macbeth UK are also our friends. However we'd like to state the fact that we have no affiliation with Atticus / Lowlife / Macbeth. The photo was taken when we were playing in someones front room, the height of DIY...the irony is that the photo absolutely captures "an image of punk rock" we just don't support that being used to sell anything, even to punks!

Cheers

The Steal

+++++++++

Spinoza eh?

+++++++++

In other news...

We've been up to a few things recently... although not THAT much the real world keeps getting in the way.

We had a weekend of fervent activity a week and a bit ago... we played at the cowley club, in brighton on the friday night which was a lot of fun. Pavey even got up to some Eddie Vedder style antics. Then on the saturday we descended upon a practice space in brighton for 9 hours and completed the music for the the 2 records we ARE releasing (yes, i know we've been banging on about these for a while but they're coming, we promise). We did our best despite the efforts of an extremely loud, techy, repetitive, loud, metal band next door trying to multiply the cabin fever by about a trillion. Apparently according to dave it 'sounds good' so far... THEN the sunday we played at the concorde 2, yes, you guessed it, in brighton. With Capdown & the King Blues, Pickled Dick, etc... this was grand, a bit of performing monkey syndrome but fun nonetheless and the King Blues totally blew me away. which was nice.

The US tour is still happening, we now have tickets... haha. I almost crapped myself at the first show we're hopefully playing too... oooo, if it happens it'll be good.

ok... remember kids that photo you saw of the macbeth party the other day wasn't an event created so someone could sell you a lifestyle choice with a pair of shoes... rather a bunch of people who managed to create something out of nothing just with an idea. Also i heard that this is a more accurate representation of an macbeth party... allegedly,

peaches en regalia

2007-04-26T12:46:00.000Z

we're on second. come if you like?

RE-EDIT RE-EDIT

Unsere geschworenen Feinde, das Diebstahl können an der Cowley Verein heute abend erscheinen. Ihnen einen Zoll nicht geben, weil sie eine Meile nehmen. Und wenn sie einen Guitarre Verstärker borgen konnten, der gut sein würde, vielen Dank

Crowd Killing apparently.

2007-04-11T08:09:00.000Z

News, news, news...

lots of interesting stuff going on in the world right about now then, we might be on the cusp of something terrible happening, which is worrying... and obviously someone didn't want Barry Gibb's dentures and hairspray littering up the place.
Also in other interesting news, the guardian a couple of weeks ago published an article on 'new dance crazes'... luckily though there's apparently no transatlantic crossover potential of 'Crowd Killing' becoming a hit with the kids in the UK...

"HxC Dancing, The Floor Punch, Crowd Killing
Where: Eastern seaboard
As seen in the music video: AFI The Leaving Song Part 2

Don't really know martial arts? Never actually been in a fight? You shouldn't let this stand in the way of you mastering this pugilistic hardcore punk dance style. A camp, non-contact take on moshing, hardcore dancers stand with feet apart, windmill their fists through the air and high kick imaginary opponents (teachers, ex-girlfriends, dinner ladies), while listening to their favourite Sick Of It All CD. There's plenty of footage out there, although this doozy is quite a treat. The comments, at time of writing, ranged from "did you plan the uniform?" through to "every single one of you guys are losers".

YouTube tags: HxC hardcore, dancing, floor punch, crowd killing
Transatlantic crossover potential: 0/5"

Brilliant.

As for us, things are ticking over nicely thank you very much... as ever we have plans, big plans. None of which can be announced as of yet but we're working on it, trust us. Things with all these magazines getting in touch are getting kinda hectic though, we're having to make some big decisions on what direction we're going to take. The pressure to become the leaders of a new genre are surprisingly heavy, i mean we know hardcore can be used to describe 2 quite opposing styles of music but we're still not sure about how it's sounding at the moment, i mean is it too much of a cash in? We're told if we do it we'll have the full backing of some very influential people though and we all know we don't make our own decisions when it comes to taste, we can be easily swayed... one way or another.

jouer ecosse

2007-04-05T12:57:00.000Z

"Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up Thine own life’s means!"

TOPS OFF

2007-04-01T22:10:00.000Z

thanks to anyone who made the trip down to see the show yesterday. RIP 48A. anyone reading this from europe should check out attack! vipers! and mercury league on their 10 day assault, which will be stupendous as long as they remember not to put petrol in their diesel van again.

I'm a newly wed, not a divorceeeeee.

2007-03-26T23:54:00.000Z

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 :)

++++

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.

++++

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

2007-03-26T10:37:00.000Z

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

Willie and the Hand Jive

2007-03-24T12:09:00.000Z

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.

++++

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.

++++

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.

++++

that is all. thank you.

total. fecking. gone. blog.

2007-03-21T09:04:00.000Z

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.

++++

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.

++++

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.

++++

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.

Stringnet Liquids, jah?

2007-03-08T21:43:00.000Z

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

Dave and Designs.

2007-03-01T12:00:00.000Z

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

go here for specifics...

++++

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!

++++

Dream kiosks

2007-02-26T08:28:00.000Z

ello and welcome to yet another incarnation of our website... personally i think this will work the best so far. At least i hope so because i'm not getting embroiled in any more html nightmares... seriously.

We played a couple of gigs this past week, one with Capdown, Howards Alias and The JB Conspiracy at the drinking establishment of the capitals intelligensia, in which we showed off our slick professionalism in all it's glory... we were quizzed afterwards about whether we had just played a show or had performed an art installation. no joke. and honestly i couldn't tell you either way but if somebody wants to submit it to the turner prize, that'd be grand...
We also played in south london at another drinking establishment but one where the clientele may not end up working in positions of extreme power... This was lots of fun and we got to play with the lovely 11IQ or eleven IQ... i have no idea how they would prefer to be known. Here we also sorted out the next few concept albums we have in the pipeline, get your excitement hats on that's all i can say. Thanks to all individuals involved in making these events happen, it is much appreciated.

At these shows we had a load of new shirts and bags for sale produced by the hand of dagger in his underground porn dungeon, i believe he has images and these will be on here soon enough with plenty of details and ordering gubbins... if you don't care what will be displayed on your breast and need one now, now, now... email us here - thesteal@gmail.com to get one.

Other, frankly astonishing, news can wait for another time.
Have a nice day!

x

Squarks?

2007-02-15T20:17:00.000Z

The Cowley Club...

yes.

Thanks to Tess for the show, it was much fun, way better than the walk from home with all my stuff, that was rubbish.

ok, so next week we're playing with Capdown at the ULU in London... last time i was there i saw Andrew W.K. who was frankly incredible, i was even involved in a stage invasion at some point... i mean who can't love someone whose encore is just 10 minutes of headbanging? nobody, that's who. nobody. so i guess compared to that it'll be a total disappointment. c'est la vie.

Rough mixes have been done to songs, progress is being made, etc, etc...

One request, if anyone reads this thing, is that with the Lightyear 7"/10"/whatever it ends up being... we're going to have a booklet of stories & photos n' that and we're currently trying to gather as many as possible, if you have a lightyear story, remembrance, photographic evidence, whatever, please could you send it to us here - thesteal@gmail.com.

thank you.

appropriate behaviour.

2007-02-09T12:18:00.000Z

we are playing our first gig of the year tonight. whoop. It is being looked forward to...

It is at the Cowley Club in Brighton, on London Road and it is with
Astpai (who if are like of any of the other Austrian bands i know will be really tight, have plenty of literature and will show us up for the charlatans we are)
Andy Fiction
and los mendozas
prepare for technical wizardry ahoy-hoy

i'm sure we will see you all there. ok.

Other stuff - we're going to be ripping off someone else's idea soon (yeah i know, us? crazy) i think if i say more i'll curse it. We have a zine we made aaaages ago that might see the light of day at some point in the near future AND we want to play 2 weeks worth of gigs on the east coast of America in the summer and we need help. If you think you can help us please get in contact - the steal@gmail.com. We need transport, equipment and gigs. not much then... haha.

up the punx.

facts, factoids and information.

2007-01-30T11:32:00.000Z

thanks to cazz

We've now had 2 whole practices this year so far... wow. We've also begun the recording process for the next 2 releases... In what seems now our customary fashion we bundled into a practice space for a couple of hours with at least half of what we needed (thank you to my housemates who lent us the stuff we forgot) and Dave's new fangled recording machinery to 'lay down' the drums for 5 songs. Despite a touch of red light fever we were pleasantly surprised at how it all turned out. Hopefully we'll have it all done and dusted in a month or so but then again who knows...

We have t-shirts on their way... hooray! We have some gigs coming up and a few other projects have been in discussion, could you ask for more? yes? ok, here you go...

funkyzeit

2007-01-23T09:41:00.000Z

andy is a good egg and allowed me to waffle on at length, not even drawing the line when i came out with 'perpetual discourse with no action was a bit futile'... . haha. You can get the rest of the fanzine by emailing him at thatsnotskanking@hotmail.com.

GAZE UPON IT NOW

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Sk8bored kIcKfLiP!

2007-01-17T13:49:00.000Z

I went skating for the first time in years the other day... it was amazing. It made me feel like i was 16 again but also at time made me realise i'm sadly not 16 anymore, muscles and bones ached to buggery the next day. managed to get a few ollies over the funbox which i was stoked about (god, i sound like someone on t.v. who's 'down with the kids') and fun was had. The point of this rambling though is to say i am very happy that i can now be associated with some good skateboarding at last...

summer promo

this is from the chaps at The Geek Mafia and if you know where that concrete park is let me know, it looks amazing... also do as they say and support your local skater owned shop (they may look intimidating at first but i'm sure they're lovely people.) do it. now.

Less fighting, more writing...

2007-01-15T11:05:00.000Z

We now have some gigs confirmed... go to the word 'SHOWS' up there and 'click' on it with your 'mouse' then use your 'eyes' to 'see' where they are. great!

In other news we had our first practice in absolutely ages on saturday and it went swimmingly. We got loads done despite pissing about for ages and making mark do his face. All this hard work will eventually be channelled into 2 new releases we have planned... A 10" split with The Mercury League and a tribute 7" to Lightyear (if you go to that link, i think it has some of the finest message board fighting i've ever seen... my favourite quote -

"how about i elaborate cumming on your face you little cunt. i'm sure chaz could do a nice big shit in your mouth. if you don't like ska, don't listen to it bitch. i don't go around whinging about poppy american bands or miserable metal bands. i like bein happy and havin a fun time so i listen to ska you fuckin animal. fuck you and your sick ideals cunt features. south london if u want a fight."

Brilliant.
Anyway. so they'll coming out soon enough... we're even planning practice #2 as we speak. We have no merch at the moment but i'm sure the hand of dagger will be busying himself soon enough down in his dungeon to produce the finest product for you to buy.

Enjoy your day!

Bloody hell this is incredible!

2007-01-13T19:16:00.000Z

new website? shit.

me? i'm flabbergasted...

mark.

roadtrip

2006-12-13T11:55:00.001Z

we played a show in southampton in oldschool & andy's giant haunted tudor era house with attack vipers!, chillerton and you me and the atom bomb and then with gainsville folk punk wild stallions defiance ohio in brighton.all these pictures taken by owen richards, king of photography. I'm not joking. he's a supernatural lensman. also check out joe singer of A.V!'s photo page here!

look!

god* bless punk rock

*or whoever, you know

oh hello, here's what you're doing on 26th November..

2006-12-13T11:53:00.002Z

++++

3 days spent with lifetime and 1 with ad7 was pretty amazing. I kept having to remind myself what was going on. It's so weird to think back to writing some of the songs in my bedroom to actually playing them on a big stage in support of one of our direct influences. Quite surreal. Thanks to everyone who showed up, particularly our friends to wish us well. We appreciate it more than you know. All of the shows were great, even if newport was freezing cold (in plain contrast to the vegan curry we ate there; akin to eating red hot coal briquettes. our lips = burned off...) So then, very good all round really. I did forget to ask Ari about Zero Zero though..

++++

we have sold out of t-shirts, and are currently investigating the possibility of hoodies and/or sweatshits.. it's nearly winter after all.

++++

Lets Just Pretend fanzine is a fucking sweet deal..aesthetically pleasing and is written in a style that says as much about its author as it does about the subject matter. The Cut Ups and Raise The White Flag are in it! Basically, it's well worth your time, so seek it out at any and all costs..

++++

the houseshow in southampton on october 20th should be brilliant.

news-magnum , fact-bullets

2006-12-13T11:53:00.001Z

In a disappointing case of life imitating art, our friends in Adequate 7 have taken their own advice somewhat too literally and have decided to call it a day. They had this to say on the matter but if you ask me, it was just a question of time when you're dealing with trousers whiter and tighter than any man should wear.
Sartorial speculation aside, we're honoured to be playing some of their last shows in Southampton (5th Oct) and London (30th Sept). It ~~should~~ will be fucking amazing. If they're playing near you, do the right thing and go see them because bands like them don't (and won't) come around very often.

++++

Speaking of fucking amazing, we're astounded that Lifetime asked us to support them on their handful of UK shows. Like the man from Del Monte, we said 'yes'. We can't wait!

++++

Shook Ones are touring here for a couple more days, go see them if you like having a good time. Also make sure to demand a re-enactment of 'grunge night' over and over as I did. They didn't do it, but then the police did catch me redhanded (or 'yellowhanded' if you will) doing a wee on the beach. So perhaps karma really did have its way in the end.

++++

also, this guided tour-cum-documentary of washington dc hardcore's most sacred spots is really interesting. check it out if that kind of thing floats your boat. GO!

++++

oh look, it's 2.28am. goodnight!

lac x

We Jam Econo

2006-12-13T11:50:00.000Z

if you're interested in DIY/punk rock culture in any way - do yourself a favour and see 'We Jam Econo - The Story of The Minutemen'. Their sound was almost completely out of step (haha) with what their peers were doing at the time and everything they accomplished was on their own terms, without compromise. Truly inspiring. You can buy the documentary on dvd HERE..

video for 'king of the hill'.

the minutemen on wikipedia - check this out for a full history and discography on the band.

LAC

SYG Tour - A Journey Through the Photographs of The Dagger

2006-12-13T11:49:00.001Z

Lock Up

2006-12-13T11:47:00.000Z

the steal do a session for the lock up!

we slept on dave's floor so as to get an early start on what turned out to be absolutely non-existent bank holiday london traffic.

catalogue posers. it is fair to say that i am fairly excited here.

grand entrance to maida vale four

amazing

"_____________" was here

fastidious setting up

commence one take wonderlust

posebreak. note to self - get a fucking haircut

miti did demmamussabebonk.

when in rome

souvenirs, thanks licence-fee payers!

.

The Steal - Release Info

2006-12-13T11:40:00.000Z

Hey everyone.

Super stoked to tell all you guys about the first two Steal releases ever.

Firstly a compilation 'Past, Present, Future' - Gravity DIP Records

& The Steal - s/t album - also available throuhg Gravity DIP in the UK.

Past, Present, Future dip010 25 tracks - £2

The much anticipated Gravity DIP sampler has a whopping 25 tracks from past, present and future bands on the label. Features previously unreleased tracks from the likes of Capdown, Tellison, Jacob's Stories, classic favourites from Stapleton, Douglas and Instruction and rarities from Hundred Reasons and Larry Hibbitt's nutigerduo. Plus contributions from new bands such as positive hardcore crew The Steal, rising stars DARTZ! and Hundred Reasons Singles Club 3 winners Orko. Plus a lot more besides!

See the tracklist and buy here

The Steal .. s/t dip027 Pre-order up soon. Finished stock available from us / Gravity DIP end of April .. Shops in June.

Breakout (Available to steam on our page)
Little Dip
World Wide World (Available to steam on our page)
Libidon't
Waiting For The Simple Life
The Steal

Clothing Rack
Stregnth In Community
Living For The Weekend
Up In Smoke
Door To Door
New Friend

Loudest Voices
Wonderstuff

CD only, LP will be available at some point in the future.

Thanks to everyone for coming out to all the shows recently, we have a few in April that are defiantly worth attending. We also have a 10 " split with Set Your Goals on the horizon to co-incide with the UK tour in June which will include a brand new track and a cover of a well loved late 90s Wakefield punk anthem!

See you at the shows

Silver Drive HC

2006-12-13T11:37:00.001Z

silver drive HC

recording an album in your house is fun!

first, you have to know pete miles. who knows what he's talking about, but goddamn if he doesnt understand 'cable spaghetti' and has loads of really old expensive equipment.

here he is on the 'traps'.

then, you have to draw up a tracking sheet so you know what you've done and what remains to be done.

this part is important, perhaps THE most important stage of the process so make it count. (crayons and colour-coding optional - but strongly advised)

now record the drums and the bass and the left-hand side guitar simultaeneously. make sure your arms are moving faster than light at all times

...and ensure your leg is cocked at a ridiculous camp angle

fruity theatrical masks are mandatory when you're going to be spending all day doing tough guy gang-vocals in your kitchen

stare blankly at the giant microphone until it's time to bellow like a wounded bear

scowl and make a fist when you are particularly enraged/aroused by the sound of your own voice.

this will make you tired

make sure the nuts to raisins ratio in your oversized yellow bowl is 3:1 and no lower

mix it up nice

when your tracking sheet is completed, it means you have no more parts to record and your album is complete!

FIN(n)

New Website!

2006-12-13T02:12:00.000Z

So, hopefully this works... in an attempt to push my web designing skillz (yeah) to the limit i made this badboy of a website, i bet you're impressed.

It feels like it'll fall apart at any second, but i put a shows thing up & hopefully that'll have a lovely looking layout of all our past gigs too. wow.

So it's easily updated and it's black white and gray... exciting stuff.

x

SHOWS!

2006-12-13T01:40:00.007Z

All the gigs we ever played-

Dec 8 2005 - The Peel, Kingston, UK
Our first show! We are first on supporting Capdown & Boom In The Diamond Industry

Jan 15 2006 - Chinnerys, Southend, UK
The Steal play with Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly & others at Chinnerys

Jan 19 2006 - Cavern, Exeter, UK
The Steal (7 Seconds, Kid Dynamie blah blah) and The Cut Ups (The Lawrence Arms from Exeter)

Jan 24 2006 - The Peel, Kingston -Upon-Thames, UK - flyer
JR Ewing / The Steal / Gallows / Last Kiss @ The Peel

Feb 8 2006 - Bacchus, Kingston, UK
Description: Captain Everything! & The Steal play Bacchus nightclub. 80 capacity.

Mar 3 2006 - Somewhere in Cambridge, UK
The Mercury League, Thinkpol & the steal play Cambridge

Mar 17 2006 - The Roundabout, High Wycombe, UK
You Me & The Atom Bomb / Fuck With Fire

Mar 23 2006 - Exeter, Cavern, UK

Mar 24 2006 - The White Lion, Braunton nr. Barnstaple, UK
w/ Captain Everything!

Mar 25 2006 - The Star, Guildford, UK
Matinee Show w/ Grabass Charlstons & Black Cougar Shock Unit

Apr 11 2006 - The Face Bar, Reading, UK
We support I adapt & another iclandic hc band featuring members of fighting shit.

Apr 12 2006 -Windmill, Brixton, UK
w/ The Cut Ups

Apr 20 2006 - Cavern, Exeter Cavern, UK
w/ THE BOUNCING SOULS!!!! holy shit...even i'm gonna drink beer and wear addidas. This is also the day we get the album back from pressing!!!

Apr 25 2006 - The Garade, London, UK
w/ BOLD, Down To Nothing

Apr 26 2006 - The Plug, Sheffiled, UK
w/ BOLD, Down To Nothing, The Legacy

May 19 2006 - Guildford Youth Centre, UK
w/ FIGHTING SHIT, We played this then headed off into London to play...

May 19 2006 - The Square Social Centre, London, UK
Square Social Centre, 21 Russell Square, London. Starting at 7pm. Door tax is £5. Other bands - You Me And The Atom Bomb, Chillerton & More we're on last i believe with DJ's after until 2pm.

May 29 2006 20:00 - Maida Vale, London, UK
Lock Up Session!!!! HA, Amazing!!!

SET YOUR GOALS / THE STEAL tour 2006 -

Jun 15 2006 - London Underworld, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS, For Friendship's Sake

Jun 16 2006 - Boom Bar, Hull, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS, Chaos Days

Jun 17 2006 - Glebe, Stoke, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS

Jun 18 2006 - Double Top, Northampton, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS, Chaos Days

Jun 19 2006 - Old Angel, Nottingham
w/ SET YOUR GOALS, Daggers, Cop Out

Jun 21 2006 - Freebutt, Brighton, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS, Abandon Ship also play...Rad

Jun 22 2006 - Le Pub, Newport, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS

Jun 23 2006 - The Furnace, Swindon, UK
w/ Evergreen Terrace / SET YOUR GOALS. The swindon SYG show has been combined with the Evergreen terrace tour

Jun 24 2006 - The Cardigan Arms, Leeds, UK
w/ THE TAKE, It's Broken! headline show while SYG are in europe..do come!

Jun 26 2006 - The Peel, Kingston, UK
w/ SET YOUR GOALS

Jul 2 2006 - Push Bar, Soho, London, UK
w/ Clorox Girls and Crash The Pose. Should be rad. come early, it's tiny and gonna sell out.

Jul 20 2006 - The Spead Eagle, Shorditch, London, UK
w/ Black Tax, Heroic Doses & Chief

Jul 24 2006 - The Charlotte, Leicester, UK
w/ LIGHTYEAR

Jul 28 2006 - The Peel, Kingston, UK
w/ GOOD CLEAN FUN, Mike Park

Jul 29 2006 - Mean Fiddler, London, UK
w/ LIGHTYEAR, King Blues

Aug 11 2006 - The Joseph Well, Leeds, UK
Leeds OUT OF SPITE IX Fest weekender..oh yeah!

Aug 28 2006 - The Fenton, Leeds, UK
w/ PAINT IT BLACK
oh yes...what amp ya got?

Aug 29 2006 - The Peel, Kingston Upon Thames, UK - flyer
w/ PAINT IT BLACK!!! Oh yeah!!!!!

Sep 23 2006 - Cricketers, Sheffield, UK
w/ The Mercury League, You Me & The Atom Bomb, Dauntless Elite, Leif Ericsson, FDK,

Sep 24 2006 - Jabez Clegg, Manchester, UK
w/ The Mercury League, You Me & The Atom Bomb, Dauntless Elite, Leif Ericsson, FDK

Sep 25 2006 - The Engine Rooms, Brighton, UK
w/ Against All Authority

Sep 30 2006 - The Underworld, London, UK
w/ Adequate 7

Oct 5 2006 - Nexus, Southampton, UK
w/ Adequate 7

Oct 6 2006 - Josephs Well, Leeds, UK
w/ LIFETIME!

Oct 7 2006 - The Mean Fiddler, London, UK
w/ LIFETIME / Gallows

Oct 8 2006 - TJ's, Newport, UK
w/ LIFETIME / Night & The City (amazing)

Oct 20 2006 - houseshow in southampton, UK
w/ymatab, chillerton + attack! vipers! basically, this will be 'off the chain' - its an ex-jets vs sharks brodown, so you should come unless it's sort of secret in which case forget you saw this, alright?

Oct 21 2006 - The Cowley Club, Brighton, UK - flyer
w/ Defiance, Ohio, Julian Tulk, Dave House

Nov 4 2006 - st lukes hall, overton, UK
i can't remember the line up, but it should be the usual overton craziness... (in fact it wasn't, it was terrible.)

Nov 26 2006 - The Face Bar, Reading, UK
w/ fall of efafra, plague mass, eat your crusts. this will be good.

Dec 1 2006 - GYC, Guildford, UK
GYC Endfest 2, w/ Mercury League, Attack Vipers. The re-sheduled first day of the Guildford weekender.

Dec 10 2006 - Concorde 2, Brighton, UK
w/ Propagandhi, Hard Skin, The Briefs, Random Heroes

Dec 11 2006 - The Engine Rooms, Brighton, UK
w/ The Briefs, Hard Skin

Feb 9th 2007 - the cowley club, Brighton, UK
£5 donation
members and guests (you just have to sign in)
with Astpai, Andy Fiction, Los Mendozas

Feb 22nd 2007 - ULU, London, UK
w/ Capdown, Howards Alias, The JB Conspiracy

Feb 24th 2007 - The White Hart, New Cross, South London, UK
w/ 11IQ

March 2nd 2007 - The Lincoln arms, station approach, Dorking, UK
with Heroic Doses and a couple of local bands

March 6th 2007 - The Peel, Kingston, UK
with Comeback Kid

March 31st 2007 - THE HOUSE, Southampton, UK
w/ Gordon Gano's Army, Little Flags (+ more, possibly Mercury League & Attack! Vipers! not sure though...)
Get your dancing shoes on and wear something stupid, it will be fun.

April 4th 2007 the dome, Tufnell Park, London, UK
w/ fast point, the deadswans, cop out, the outpatients, headfirst, jailbait

April 27th 2007 - Cowley Club, Brighton, UK
Between the Lines Fest

April 29th 2007 - Concorde 2, Brighton, UK
w/ Capdown, Pickled Dick + others...

May 25th 2007 - The Underworld, London, UK
w/ Big D & The Kids Table

June 3rd 2007 - The Windmill, Brixton, London, UK
all dayer w/ Dauntless Elite & more TBC & a FREE BBQ!!! come on.

July 7th 2007 - Parmiter's School, Watford, UK
w/ Don Ramos Players + more...

August 7th 2007 - The Peel, Kingston, UK
w/ Set Your Goals / No Trigger / FFS

August 8th 2007 - Engine Rooms, Brighton, UK
w/ Set Your Goals / No Trigger

US EAST COAST TOUR!!!

August 10th 2007 - First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia PA, USA
w/ ARMALITE!!!!, THE ERGS!!!!! & PINK RAZORS!!!!
Holy Shit, our first ever US gig and it's Armalite's first show in a year and a half... at the first unitarian church. Excited doesn't even come close.

August 11th 2007 - Being Tourists!

August 12th 2007 - Richmond FUN!

August 13th 2007 - 2nd Floor East, Greenwood SC, USA
w/ Landlord, Disaster Stalls
Landlord are from Bloomington, IN. Members of the Door-keys and Defiance, Ohio... Disaster Stalls are from Greenwood, SC. Members of A Nuclear Winter, God N Moses, The Wrex ALSO... two, yes TWO members of the steal celebrate their birthdays today along with John Logie Baird the scottish inventor of the TV. wowzers.

August 14th 2007 - The Spazzatorium, Greenvilee NC, USA

August 15th 2007 - Asbury Lanes, Asbury Park NJ, USA
w/ Dirty Tactics, One Win Choice

August 16th 2007 - NEW YORK NEW YORK fun/hell

August 17th 2007 - Mr. Beerey's, Long Island NY, USA
w/ Small Arms Dealer + more

August 18th 2007 - St Casimirs Hall, Windsor CT, USA
w/ The Fad, Rick Johnson Rock n' Roll Machine + more

August 19th 2007 - Florence VFW, Florence CT, USA
w/ RELICS (Last local show w/ Meghan) THE STEAL (Fast Hardcore/punk) from the UK! BLACKSHIPS (hardcore/punk) from Montreal SHORT ANSWER (ex:Fist Fight)

August 22nd 2007 - The Charleston, Brooklyn NY, USA
w/ organized sports, dynamite arrows, apeshit!

August 29nd 2007 - GYC, Guildford, UK
w/ Dean Dirg, The Shitty Limits, Los Mendozas

March 30th 2008 - Borderline, London, UK
w/ Lots of bands off the punktastic Unscene compilation.

April 14th 2008 - Bristol, UK
w/ Against Me! and Kill Casino

April 15th 2008 - Liverpool, UK
w/ Against Me! and Kill Casino

April 16th 2008 - Sheffield, UK
w/ Against Me! and Kill Casino

April 17th 2008 - London, UK
w/ Against Me! and Kill Casino

April 30th 2008 - The iBar, Bournemouth, UK
w/ The Don Ramos Players, Chillerton, Los Mendozas

July 3rd 2008 - Tap 'n Tin in Chatham, Kent w/ Fucked Up, Ghost of a Thousand and Tortuga.

July 18th 2008 - Leeds w/ Down & Outs, SSS, Cold Ones, Counts Of The Netherworld and the Don Ramos Players.

September 12th 2008 - GYC, Guildford, UK w/ AIM, Serf Combat

September 24th 2008 - Bacchus, Kingston, UK - LP Release Show (with no LP's!)
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
September 28th 2008 - The Hobgoblin, Brighton, UK - w? ??? ah, can't remember

UK WINTER TOUR! w/ Our Time Down Here & Hot Damn

1 Jan 2009 The Fighting Cocks, Kingston
2 Jan 2009 The Joiners, Southampton + The Don Ramos Players, Break The Habit
3 Jan 2009 The Cowley Club, Brighton + The Sceptres, Break The Habit
4 Jan 2009 Retro Bar, Manchester + The Shitty Limits, The Sceptres
5 Jan 2009 The 13th Note, Glasgow + Hey Vampires!
6 Jan 2009 The Cooperage, Newcastle + Pure Graft, Rip It Up (-OTDH due to illness... ack)
7 Jan 2009 The Packhorse, Leeds + The Dauntless Elite
8 Jan 2009 The Cavern, Exeter + The Cut Ups
9 Jan 2009 Sigma Bar, Swansea +

September 18th 2009 - The Peel, Kingston, UK
w/ Paint It Black, Ceremony & OTDH @ The Peel
Our last show.

MISC PHOTOS

2006-12-12T19:43:00.000Z

History is fun...

FLYERS

2006-12-12T19:42:00.000Z

LIVE PHOTOS

2006-12-12T19:41:00.000Z

The Steal in Dorking courtesy of Ed Schofield. ta.

++++

Playing with lifetime at the Mean Fiddler. Photo by Owen Richards K.O.P.

++++

This was a benefit gig that Last Hours and friends put on at the Square Social centre on Friday 19th May 2006 - Photos by Edd

++++
Southampton House Show - Oct 20th 2006... photos by sexy bear joe of Attack! Vipers! infamy.
word.

Records!

2006-12-12T18:24:00.008Z

Bright Grey (download)
Buy from Banquet Records

1. The Possibilities Are Endless
2. Disconnected
3. Dave Gets Mad
4. No Control
5. Fashionless
6. The Angles
7. Repeat
8. Keep Moving Forward
9. Got Ideas
10. Horror Vacui
11. Breathe In
12. Statues
13. Kids With Kids
14. Keep It Simple

S/T (download)

1. Breakout
2. Little Dip
3. World Wide World
4. Libidon't
5. Waiting For The Simple Life
6. The Steal
7. Clothing Rack
8. Strength In Community
9. Living For The Weekend
10. Up In Smoke
11. Door To Door
12. New Friend
13. Loudest Voices
14. Wonderstuff

Split 7" w/ Beat Express (download)

1. The Score / 451

Split 10" w/ Set Your Goals (download)

1. Long Song Titles Are So Two Thousand And One
2. That Fucking Hurt (originally by Chopper)

Radio One Lock Up Session 2008 (download)

Radio One Lock Up Session 2006 (download)

Merchandising!

2006-12-12T18:22:00.000Z

We have new shirts... printed by the hand of dagger on No Sweat 100% union made apparel... alright!

They are £9.50 including postage and you want to email the dagger to get your mitts on one.

++++

We have got a few small, medium and large girls vests in these American Apparel tops. They are white with a red front and back print. Apparently Positive Approach is actually a band, Dave bought their 7" recently, and says it's "ok". So I guess it's a split t-shirt. kinda.

++++

These shirts are for totally awesome chaps and chapesses and they are white shirts with black print. We only have small or mediums in these left.

++++

These bags can look equally good in scenarios such as, shopping for your Celtic Frost records at your local independent record shop, or buying some vegetables from the market for that lasagna you're making to impress that Vegan girl or boy, or carrying around a fashion dog... luckily they are only £3.50 including p+p.

Wow!

sexy.

MEDIA!

2006-12-12T12:56:00.001Z

MUSIC -

Stream loads of stuff from our Virb account here

Lyrics to all our songs here

VIDEO -

Punktastic Unscene Compilation release show 2008 by Gary Lancaster

"Breakout!" - Live at 48A, Southampton (not a cave) -

"The Steal" Live at the Kingston Peel, March 2007 -

"Breakout" & "Living for the Weekend" at the Black Sheep Zine launch gig weekender, Manchester Oct 2006 -

"Breakout" Live at the Peel, Kingston -

"The Steal" Live at The Peel, Kingston - thanks to punkrockvids.com

'Wonderstuff' Live at the Star in Guildford -

'The Steal' Live at the Cavern, Exeter -

SOFA PICS

2006-12-12T11:08:00.000Z

a douchebag, a captain, member of team zissou and a "cyberpunk from akira".

you think you're too old?!

Students these days eh? not like in myblah blah blah...

phoenix towers

yes, that is the girl from popworld... yes, that is john ex-twofold... omg!!!111 yes, that is simply luke leighfield... oommgggzzz!!!111111111111 yes, that is the old drummer from Placidstorm!!!! OMGGGGG!111!!!11111111ZZZZZZzzzzz! !

norman style sofa pic

Lounging in Maida Vale, Studio 4

Lyrics!

2006-08-03T09:14:00.000Z

THE STEAL

1. Breakout!

Is it too late for this machine to stop?
The worst thing is knowing that you’re a cog,
Wake up for another day to pass,
How many times has this year gone too fast?

Its your life, are you fulfilled?
Or do you see time as something to be killed?
Is life there to be embraced?
Or are you just looking to escape!

Breakout! claim this time for yourself.
Breakout! You’ve got to live for you & no-body else.

I’m not here to preach but I want to say,
There's got to be something wrong with all work & no play.
Survive to work, or Work to Survive?
When do we get to feel alive?

On our package holidays,
With our pre-packed food?
Packaged entertainment, all for me & you.
Sit down, switch on the TV,
Check your pulse, check you’re still breathing!

Breakout! claim this time for yourself.
Breakout! You’ve got to live for you & no-body else.

At times like these it’s hard to know what to say,
as you can only live your life your own way,
But there are things that bring me down and make me sad,
that I don’t want to hear anymore.
Like the people who tell you, your dreams should be ignored,
you can tell them from me that that’s bullshit.
and the people so obsessed with the ‘real world’
that they don’t even live in it anymore, they just...

run in circles, (running) round & round,
waiting for something to break them out.
run in circles, (running) round & round,
waiting for something to break them out.

2. Little Dip

I have a theme for my first heart attack,
Its called strange fruit and it's louder than ever.

Pressure and tension,
the storm and stress,
my blood is boiling,
my blood and sweat.

Pressure and tension,
the storm and stress,
my feet like concrete,
i'm failing this test.

There is no way for me to escape this,
I'm a dead man digging my own grave.

Pressure and tension,
the storm and stress,
my blood is boiling,
my blood and sweat.

Pressure and tension,
the storm and stress,
my feet like concrete,
i'm failing this test.

Now theres no more happy endings.

3. World Wide World

You do a lot of talking,
because you got a lot to say.
It doesn’t seem to matter,
No one wants to hear you complain.
Still you keep talking,
with your negativity,
Just tap-tap-tapping away at your computer screen.

Theres a great wide world out there,
A world for you and me to have fun,
But you’re just sitting in you chair,
Thinking people care about your opinions.

When I see arguments like this,
And you’re all acting like little kids,
Bickering about your opinions,
Screaming “im right you’re wrong”.
You’re putting others down,
To make you feel better about yourself,
But will I see you around,
To try and make things better?

Theres a great wide world out there,
A world for you and me to have fun,
But you’re just sitting in you chair
Thinking people care about your opinions.

Theres a great wide world out there,
Theres a great wide world out there,
Theres a great wide world out there,
But no one seems to care.

4. Libidon't

Internal dialogue tells me that it is wrong,
It always falls on deaf ears,
My self control just disappears.

Whats your number?
Whats your name?
Night after night,
Its all the same.

Temptation, hard to resist,
Curse myself, “chauvanist pig”
It’s time I learnt to say no!

My advice... LI BI DON’T!!!

5. Waiting For The Simple Life

An obsession with celebrity,
Has consumed our society.

Everything’s media led,
Important words now go unsaid,
Make up cannot hide your scars,
So why paint yourself on the outside.

You think that you, you are beautiful,
You changed you face but you can't hide your soul.

Everything’s media led,
Important words now go unsaid,
Make up cannot hide your scars,
So why paint yourself on the outside.

What you want is not what you need,
Kicking screaming to succeed,
From your first cigarette to your last breath,
Adverts, adverts are all that’s left.

6. The Steal

We’re not that different and we’re not that great,
It could be you up on the stage.
We’re taking it back, to when it was fun,
When we first learnt guitar bass and drums.
You don’t need an agent to play some shows,
You don’t need endorsement to wear the clothes,
We set on our way,
We went off the track,
We’re right back on course
And we’re stealing it back.

Look at us, we got it together,
Our past, our future.
Get your own piece of the action,
Start something, cause a reaction.
Look at you, you’re all together,
Try your best in your endeavours,
Don’t you ever give up on yourself...

...And your friends, who share these ideals,
The music you play won’t loose its appeal,
As long as the message is honest and true,
People will always be good to you.
So be good to them and the circles complete,
Like what you want, you don't have to join the elite,
We set on our way,
We went off the track,
We’re right back on course
And we’re stealing it back.

Look at us, we got it together,
Our past, our future.
Get your own piece of the action,
Start something, cause a reaction.
Look at you, you’re all together,
Try your best in your endeavours,
Don’t you ever give up on yourself!

Don’t care what you critics say,
they wont help you anyway,
don’t take to heart what they renounce,
your friend's opinion is where it counts.

7. Clothing Rack

I don’t know if I still feel a part of this,
When all I can see are well-dressed clenched fists.
I want to know when we’ll get back,
Punk rock from the clothing rack.

When did stop being about the music?
And does anybody still care?
When was the last time you stopped to look around?
Or can't you see because of your fucking hair?

I want to reclaim all the reasons I once fell in love,
With a sound and not a fashion statement.
We sing these songs at the top of our lungs,
But it seems these days, that’s just not enough.

When did stop being about the music?
And does anyone really care?
When was the last time you stopped to look around?
Or can’t you see through your fucking hair?

We are a band, not a fashion statement
Not a fad or a demographic(x lots)
We are a band

8. Strength In Community

I told myself we wouldn’t be the same,
We’re breaking off to try and make a change.
So what’s the point in thrown fists?
Friendships while this scene exists.

And if I had one wish, what would I change?

So whats the point in perspiration,
Honesty leads to the same situation.
For all the times that we tried,
Violence is never justified.

And if I had one wish, what would I change?

Lower your fists,
Raise your voice,
Who you are is about free choice.
Lower your fists,
Raise your voice,
Who you are is about free choice.

Lets make this more than a scene,
We can find strength in community

9. Living For The Weekend

You say, "I can't wait for the weekend to come"
So put on the clothes and lets have some fun.
I'll get wasted and start some fights,
I love being a punk on Saturday night.

For me it's pretty different,
Because this music is my life,
We spend all week building back up,
What you destroy with no insight.

So are you going to the show? (At The Weekend)
And staying at home (On The Weekdays)
Expecting everything to come to you.
So are you going to the show? (At The Weekend)
And staying at home (On The Weekdays)
Complaining there's nothing to do.

So now you've got your own band,
And you expect everyone to come,
To see you play on a week day,
And "Bring this town some fun!"

But you haven't got a clue,
About the scenes and all the crews,
We just haven't got the time or patience,
For a weekend punk like you.

So are you going to the show? (At The Weekend)
And staying at home (On The Weekdays)
Expecting everything to come to you.
So are you going to the show? (At The Weekend)
And staying at home (On The Weekdays)
Complaining there's nothing to do.

10. Up In Smoke

Your convictions are going up with the smoke that you’re blowing in my face,
You'll boycott all the evils you know, as long as there’s no nicotine trace.

I cant stand to watch it,
that little stick between your lips,
tells me all I need to know about how you really think.

11. Mr. Door To Door

Mr Door to door comes knocking again,
selling things that we don't need.
He's praying on your weaknesses in order to succeed.
You know, you don't have to let him in,
You know you don't have to answer.
You don't need all the products we're told are life enhancers

It's a problem, that the more honest you are,
The more people take advantage and things go way too far.

I saw a homeless man, he shrugged then got up,
He had brand new shoes on and his girlfriend just drove to pick him up.
Taking peoples money that he doesn't deserve,
while the real homeless men and women, they shiver and starve.

It's a problem, that the more honest you are,
The more people take advantage and things go way too far.

Get Out,
My House.

12. New Friend

You make trouble for yourself,
And then you turn to the cause.
I'm sick of forgiving these actions,
So just put your life on pause.

Then you try and justify,
Your reasoning behind,
You say It's your job,
You work too much,
You need to unwind

I say you could have always come to me,
But instead you chose the drink,
To blur your unhappyness away.
So now you've got a new friend,
And it sure as hell ain't me,
You feel more at ease when blinded,
Than dealing with what you know you see.

Time is called, it's time to leave
But you need to party.
So you pick a guy and go to his,
You wont be happy in the morning.
You wake up with your head in hands,
Saying you'll never drink again,
But you'll be out in 12 hours time,
Doing the same thing.

I say you could have always come to me,
But instead you chose the drink,
To blur your unhappyness away.
So now you've got a new friend,
And it sure as hell ain't me,
You feel more at ease when blinded,
Than dealing with what you know you see.

13. Loudest Voices

Don’t tell me what to think,
I have my reasons why I don’t drink.
Its my own choice and its yours too,
I’ve got better things to do,
Than trying to explain to you.
Its my own choice and its yours too,
Just have the conviction to follow it through.

Have the strength to be yourself,
because your lifestyle can affect your health.
Know the facts about your choices,
The truths not always from the loudest voices.

Im not going to say what to do,
There are many doors to walk through.
But your choices should be your own.
If you got straight edge,
or you broke it in two,
I still want to be friends with you.
But your choices should be your own,
Don’t live life as anothers clone.

Have the strength to be yourself,
because your lifestyle can affect your health.
Know the facts about your choices,
The truths not always from the loudest voices.

Free choice,
The loudest voice.

14. Wonderstuff

The date and time are noted,
The flyers on my wall.
I couldn't be more excited,
I'm just waiting for that call
From my friends to pick me up outside,
so we can go to the show.
we're going to have fun tonight there,
even if there's no-one we know.

To these friends i haven't met yet,
These songs i've not yet sung.

On the way there we're singing every song we know,
Talking about failed romances,
whose done what & who said so.
I could never have thought that on that night
Just dancing on my own,
It'd change my whole life,
to what i do & who i know.

To these friends i haven't met yet,
To these songs i've not yet sung.
I didn't know it could take you this far,
I don't want to stop now, (So hurry up!)
There's still so much to be done.

If you're standing at the back - and you don't want to know
If you don't want to clap - are your hands to cold?
If you think you're too old - You're never too old!
remember why you came here, instead of staying home!

SET YOUR GOALS SPLIT

1. The Steal

It's right above you!

2. Long Song Titles Are So Two Thousand And One

It's what you've always wanted.
What do I do now that i've got it?
You're always crippled by your self-doubt.
It's hard to change.
I know, but you make it harder staying the same...
staying the same!

When it comes around will it flip the switch inside?
What i've been waiting for won't make me run and hide.
I can't tell you what to say or do,
you have to realise your fear is what's controlling you.

I'm not listening anymore, I'll see this through.
It's time to find what's in store for me and you.
I'm not listening anymore,
it's held me back too long.
I'm not listening to you.

It's what you've always wanted,
What do I do now that i've got it?
It's what you've always wanted,
What do I do now that i've got this?

It's hard to change.
Harder to stay the same.

3. That Fucking Hurt (Chopper cover)