it had to write this shit out twice…

I spent an hour or so writing a blog entry out before only for my computer to fuck up and lose it. Which is annoying because I’m now writing it out as I can remember it and I wasted a good hour. Anyway, as I said in the last draft of this, it’s been a while since I wrote. I’ve said this probably each entry, so there is doing anything out of the ordinary and not putting it… plus this way I get to be self deprecating which is pretty in right now I think.

We’ve been pretty busy, although in all different ways in the last few months. I mentioned the February Marquee show in the last blog entry, which went really well and raised a decent amount for Haiti. It also seems like a good time was had by all. Neither Throats nor Hammers were able to play in the end, but Lonewolves proved brilliant headliners and Wolfbeast Destroyer- a really good d-beat/hardcore band from Boston played instead, so it wasn’t the end of the world by any means. We actually got the best reception and reaction I think we have ever received which was brilliant. Our last couple of songs ended up being pretty ridiculous with everyone piling on and pinning me to the ground, as the picture below shows.

There are more pictures from the show on our Myspace if you are that way inclined.

It ended up being Jack’s final show with us, as I mentioned before, Console Wars are gonna be bigger than The Stranglers so he hasn’t got enough time for the demands of being in Norwich’s most unpopular 80’s throwbacks… let alone us. As I said before, we are sad that we won’t have such a great guy in the band anymore, he was the inspiration for the dystopian classic ‘Dog City’ and in general is the exact kind of person you would want in a band. Luckily for us we managed to find a pretty brilliant replacement with relative ease. Nic also plays in Sharp Teeth- www.myspace.com/wearesharpteeth and is from Norwich. He got in touch having seen us live a couple of times. We started practising in January with him and never really looked back; he has learnt the songs, helped write new ones and is an all round great guy and everything seemed to fit pretty much straight away. We played our first show with him in March at the Marquee which was pretty good and have plenty more lined up. Initially it looked like he was going to play the February show but he managed to pierce his eardrum a few days before, so we had to get Jack to fill in. It ended up being a pretty good move (apart from the horrific injury) as it was a good way to end things with Jack and move onto the next chapter of the Dorian Gay saga.

Two of us have also started/joined new bands as well as our Dorian Gay responsibilities. My new band are called Jackals (www.myspace.com/wearejackals) and we play fast hardcore. We have a 7” out soon, you can get it from www.whatwouldhenryrollinsdo.bigcartel.com. Pete has joined Teratoid  www.myspace.com/neglectuk and plays drums for them too.

We have put ‘Dog City’ up for free download, if you want it but resent giving us a couple of quid for a tape or CD then you can have it here- http://www.mediafire.com/?yywfgn4ulym  of course if you want to buy it you can still do so at www.doriangay.bigcartel.com

Also in our show we have some new t-shirts than to the good people at www.myspace.com/vinosangre look at them…

As the cultured /fans of famous naked people among you will know, it features Ginsberg and Peter Olovsky, who was a big fan of the band, as the logo on his chest indicates. They are 6 quid, come in the usual sizes and are printed on Starworld t-shirts which are really soft and nice, and ethically manufactured too, so everyone is happy!  As if that wasn’t enough, we’ll chuck a free EP in with every t-shirt. As everyone knows, hardcore isn’t about the physical product, it’s about sweet t-shirts.

We’ve got a couple of shows in the pipeline, including an awesome string of dates we are lining up for the summer. More on those later. Our next confirmed show though is this one…

All the bands rule (I would think that as I’m putting them on, but whatever). Come see us play.

I didn’t mention it last time, but we got mentioned on the Artrocker website. This means I’m cooler than you yeah?  www.artrocker.com/node/20308

I think that’s everything for now… I’ll update this next time there is something worth saying/I can be arsed, whichever comes sooner.

Severed pig head of state…

I say this in every single entry that I do of this blog, but I really should update this more regularly. This term I have an excuse though because I’m not studying something that I actually fucking love (history) so doing Uni work is something I actually like doing now, rather than finding anything to do instead. But I’m sitting in my warm bedroom in Southend right now, so I’ve got time to do stuff like this.

So what have we been up to since the end of October? Quite a bit…

We played 5 to 10 to an empty room

I’ve not updated this for quite a while and as a result there are quite a few things to talk about…

T-SHIRTS! are on sale now at www.doriangay.bigcartel.com and cost £7.50. You can get the EP with a t-shirt for the slightly cheaper price of £10 too. They are available in Orange, Green and Purple, depending on what we have left. Size-wize we have YL, S, M, L. They look like this (warning crappy photographer alert)…

The design featured is the one on the previous blog entry. It’s a nice t-shirt basically.

We didn’t play the garage show we were supposed to because Tom was ill, which sucks but can’t be helped. I went and it was good (although totally would have been better if we had played) and a great time was had by all.

LADS LADS LADS

 

The last time I updated this we had just played the release show for our EP. I mentioned then a few upcoming shows, but I’ve not got any new flyers for those yet, so I’ll just post them as they are done.

Anyway, most recently we played 3 shows in the space of 4 days. One of them would be generous to call a show really, but I’ll get to that. Anyway, the first was up in Nottingham, for ‘Corefest’. We were all pretty excited about this as previously we had only played one show outside the fine city, and that was in Windsor. We are looking to play more shows around the country in the coming weeks and months. Basically all I want to do is tour for a few weeks and have fun with some of my best friends, but for now this will suffice. Robbie was back for all 3 shows we played this week, as he had a break in between his summer job in France, and starting uni, also in France. It was good to have him back. We met him up in Nottingham, and played without having a prior practise because we are punx. Getting up there was quite frankly an ordeal, as I was feeling a bit worse for wear, due to a lack of sleep, drinking too much wheat beer the day before and not being a good traveller. It was still pretty fun, spraying beer out the window, eating stuff from petrol stations, shouting along to The Cure and discussing the laddish merits of different things such as windfarms (in my opinion, very much laddish) with Luke, who was kind enough to drive us, asking for only petrol money and some food. He’s a champ.

It’s been a month since i last wrote anything here…

One of the main reasons behind this is the fact that I’ve been at home and not doing very much, so things on the band front haven’t been too busy.

There are a few interesting things to update people on though.

The EP’s have all been printed and stuff, all that left is to finalise and print the artwork and they will be on sale! The release date we’ve got for them is 4TH SEPTEMBER 09, and conveniently on that date we also have a show, which is a release show of sorts.

I’ll post a picture of the finished articles when they are done, as well as an online link to buy it should you wish to give us your money. The EP will be released on CD, Tape and Download. (Keeping it old school and new school at the same time)

So that is next up, and following that we have COREFEST, as previously mentioned on the 12th, as well as another show at The Marquee on the 14th, but that is yet to be fully confirmed. Robbie is going to be back from France to play both shows, and we can’t wait to have him back… not that we miss him both personally or in band terms, but we feel a bit sorry for him.

There’s a load of other stuff coming up after that as well, including a show in our friends garage in Norwich on the 26th. Flyer…

If you want details about where it is, get in touch with us.

More on stuff after that closer to the time… I will say this though, a third WWHRD house show is in the pipeline. Hopefully from September (when I move back to Norwich) we will be able to get a load of new songs done, I’ve built up a lot of ideas for songs over the summer and I’m itching to get back into things full time. We also have a couple of covers planned, including one band which you might not expect.

We have just got a page on facebook, so if you are reading this and you use facebook, add us up! It’s actually easier to use than MySpace and good for instant updates, but harder to make it personal or put up songs. Oh well.

Finally, I will just mention our last gig…

We kind of got asked to do this last minute, but I’m rather glad we did. Although we didn’t play to too many people, it was good to see some of the regular faces again. We also played probably the best set we have without Robbie, and it’s up there with our best sets overall, even if I did fuck up the lyrics to one song. I think I might attribute some of the success to the free food and beer provided by Lucy, Pete and Dempsey which went down rather nicely, but we also should take credit for being awesome I suppose. Thanks to Dempsey for putting us on, and thanks to James Hull, a fellow Norwich regular who played first and put up with me heckling him (in a friendly way of course), I enjoyed his set, it’ll be good to see him again around the fine city. Zapian and Above Them also played, with both playing a sort of melodic punk. Zapian recalled Jawbreaker and stuff like that and were really good, and Above Them sounded like they are big fans of Hot Water Music (I mean that in a nice way). Anyway I had a good evening before heading off to the Bell and Waterfront with Wes and co. I miss Norwich when I’m not there.

Until the next time I can be arsed to update this… oh and I’m still planning to write about the last house show, at some point anyway.

Matching ‘I dont want to grow up’ t shirts

It’s been a while since the last proper update, and whilst i am sure no one particularly cares, i felt bad for neglecting the blog in recent weeks. So instead of doing much needed revision for an exam on Thursday i am shitting myself about a little bit, i’ll update everyone on what we have been up to.

As it was the Easter holidays we had a few weeks off  from proper band time. Whilst i still avoided any form of productivity in terms of revision by thinking about band stuff most of the time, we had not got together between playing 1UP Fest and our practise last Thursday. We were expecting to be a little rusty, but thankfully that wasn’t the case at all. We chose to just run through out planned set for a couple of hours, but we nailed it pretty much in the first run through. I think this probably is due to the fact we have played these songs countless times, but i would also like to put it down to us being amazing musicians.

The reason we had practise again… other than it being what bands do, was this show…

The Dead Formats (who are from Southend as i am, and drink in my pub- nice guys) couldn’t play which was a shame, but the other bands helped make up for their abscence, i really enjoyed all their sets. And i’m not just saying that. Anyway, check them out. It was organised by the lovely Jugs who is one of the nicest people in Norwich, alongside Mike, who is known for putting on a lot of good shows, and is equally nice. Cheers to both of them for putting us on.

We played really well, or at least we think we did. Overall i think it was probably our best show so far. I think the sound was better than the other shows, at least from where i was standing (in front of the stage) it was, and we seemed more comfortable as a band than we have so far. It basically has made me eager to play as many shows as possible. We played…

Intro

The Great Shatsby

The Unbearable Shiteness of Being (not yet recorded)

The Money Will Roll Right In

Theme

Dog City

10 Steps to Middle Class Rebellion (not yet recorded)

Your Missing Cat Is Dead

Nervous Breakdown

Although i was screaming and jumping about for much of the set, it seemed we got a pretty good response, and a few people came up to me (who i didn’t know) to say they enjoyed it etc. and some nice praise was lavished upon us. We also managed to give out a fair few copies of our demo on CD, as its probably easier to get someone to listen to you by giving them a CD as apposed to a download link. Its something i think we will continue to do in the future. During the set a rather drunk Wes joined in on Dog City, as well as heckling me for much of our set. By the time Nervous Breakdown started you could tell he was itching to do something silly, which he duly did. Having been given a spare microphone to join in with, Wes proceeded to smash into everyone in his way, including a speaker which fell from the stage to the floor. No one thought to stop it as it crashed down, and i didnt see what had happened until we had finished playing. This meant a sheepish Wes and I had to apologise, but no harm was done, and it was fucking awesome.

We’ve been busy this week beyond the show, with us all meeting up over a ‘Spoons curry with the sound engineer from Purple Studios, Andy, to discuss what we hope to sound like when we record in June. I had the Royal Thali, which whilst costing a quid more was well worth it as i got 4 curries and a variety of other things. Good value. Anyway, we came out of that with some more concrete ideas for recording, and a few more things to think about. I know i speak for the rest of the band when i say i cant wait to get in the studio, get our friends on gang vocals, and just produce something that we are proud of and feel reflects how we can, do and want to sound. And hopefully a few people like it too.

We are still deciding how we want to release it, although i am firmly in favour of a 7″ although the costs are far higher as far as this is concerned, and it will depend on how much money we have available.

With the student loans coming through, stuff like this is now a more affordable prospect, as is the proposed weekender just after recording. Only one date of the 3 is confirmed as i write this, the first show in Birmingham, with Moby Dick, Manuscripts, FxRxOx and Lucky Ones Die First, which should be awesome. Its been a bit of an arse sorting this out, but hopefully now, and when exams are finished i can make some headway on the organisation of it. Additionally we have a few shows in the pipeline, one in a barn for the excellent Hope and Glory Tattoo shop’s 1st anniversary, with a load of other bands, but thats still being sorted, more info when we get it. We also have one for September in Nottingham, but again thats yet to be confirmed, and another in Windsor in June which is being organised at the moment. It’s cool we are being readily offered these shows, and we are trying to play as many as we can, as we want people to hear us more than anything.

Other stuff we have been doing/have done includes thinking about recording a couple of post punk covers, and trying to get some more bands to contribute, and releasing a compilation online. We are still planning this, but we are looking at the liklihood of doing it, and it depends on whether other bands do it. It will be cool if it occurs.

We also had some photos of us taken by my lovely girlfriend the other day, before the show. Somehow Pete and Jack managed to connect and decided to wear the exact same t-shirt for the occasion. Robbie had to swap his shirt with Jack to prevent us looking like a complete jackass band, although some might argue we do anyway. You can see the best pictures on our myspace profile, and in the pictures section. www.myspace.com/doriangayhc

Finally, we were interviewed for the wonderful Norwich punk ‘zine ‘Mild Peril’ which should be out in a month or two, but we will post more about that when it is out. We have also considered concepts for a ‘Dog City’ music video, but thats one for after exams.

Think thats everything…

First Post

This blog was just set up as an improved way of letting people (at the moment probably none) know what we as a band are getting up to.

First it might be a help to just update you on who we are/what we do. We are Dorian Gay, and we took our name from the clever and fun game of taking a book title and changing a word to make it ruder. We also do this with songs, if we can’t think of a name for it otherwise. Hence ‘The Great Shatsby’, our seminal pop classic.