King Tut's SOLD OUT!

posted by Joe.

Yo! So, I'm delighted to let y'all know that the gig at King Tut's has been sold out for days now. We're really looking forward to the gig and we're hoping to convert a few Paolo Nutini fans into Opal Sky disciples. If you want to hear any of Paolo's stuff before the gig, one of his tunes is the free download of the week on itunes. If you didn't get a ticket in time, don't worry we should be playing a few more gigs in the central belt in the not to distant future.
Another thing we thought you'd be interested to know was that our first music video is now finished and we're soooooooo excited about it! The video is an animation that our good friend Tudor has been working on for months now. It looks absolutely incredible and we're so chuffed! A massive thanks goes out to Tudor, who has been working on it full-time all this while for next to hee-haw. In the immortal words of En-Vogue: "What a mighty fine man!" We are hoping to set up some big screening for it somewhere. Some ideas have popped up such as renting a screen at the Dominion (lovely old independent family-run cinema in Edinburgh) and getting suited and booted for a premier showing with a red carpet and limos and all that jazz! Whatever happens we'll let you know about it. (I think I might go in my arse-less trousers...hmmm).
On a bad note, our guestbook on the main website has become the latest casualty of evil spamming b@$t@*Ds! I saw that Amplifico's also came a cropper too not that long ago. I don't know what those eejits are up to. I hope they can't sleep at night and I bet they've got rubbish faces and abnormally large knees and stuff. (That's the spammers and not Amplifico!)
Anyway, we're still planning on having the album finished and touring it for October, ambitious I know, considering that we've still got vocals, piano and a load of guitars still to put down, but we're optomists and have nice knees so we're sure we're gonna do it! Come to think of it, there are loads of other things we still have to record as well! We're planning on having brass and strings on the album too! Aaarrggh! We actually had a wee rehearsal the other day with some brass players for Karina's University singing exam. She's doing an old Ella song ("It's All Right With Me") and has had the horn part scored out and everything. She's drafted in Tom from Bombskare and a few of his mates to play and it sounds immaculate! Tom wrote out the score and everything, so Kaz wanted me to say a massive thanks to him on this entry. So excited about getting them on our recordings! After that, there's just the small problem of getting the score done for the strings, finding good string players and having some funds to release the record! Like I said, we're optomists!
Anyhow, that'll do for now. Hope you're all well and looking forward to our upcoming gigs. See you all there.
Lots of love,
Joe.

a wee(k long) Germany trip

posted by Thilo

Hi folks, how is it going?
Thought I'll let you know about my wee trip to Germany the other week, just to show we're still alive, n aw that!.
I had a school reunion (a sure sign that I'm getting old), plus it was Mother's day that Sunday - which was a good enough reason for me to jet off to my homeland and seeing some friendly faces, hurray!

I arrived on Friday, which was pretty boring as I was stuck in traffic for about 4 hours on the way home from the airport - totally forgot how busy German roads are compared to Scotland. I mean people complain here about the M8 - but that is only ONE road in the whole of Scotland! Germany's a bloody nightmare, I tell thee!

Anyway, Saturday was much better: In best German manner my mom had decided to do some spring cleaning while I was there - which is a great thing and generally should be applauded, BUT: it makes moving around the house much harder ("You can't go to the bath room, the floor's wet!") and unfortunately my mom likes to take things always a bit further than normal people. This time she cleaned the front door with a pretty powerful hose, which had the unwanted side effect that the buzzer system got soaked in water and therefore rang NONSTOP for the rest of the day. Trying to write a bloody email without being able to go to the toilet AND the buzzer ringing full volume constantly is a bloody nightmare, I can tell you!
Anyway, it was time for me to leave the house and go to the reunion. After a further 20min wait (the floor was wet in the hall) I grabbed my mom's set of keys and left.

What a fantastic time I had! Met loads of people I hadn't seen in ages: 5/6th of the members of my former band DEWJAM for example, my first girlfriend (who got married last week, congratulations!) and loads, loads more. Great stuff, didn't realize how much I missed these guys!

Around two o'clock we got chucked out of the bar we had the reunion at, and most of us proceeded to another pub, where one of my friends used to work, which meant we were able to stay way past closing time. Nevertheless, around half four the barman had enough of us, so we grudgingly left.

Around fifteen of us decided to go back to a friend's flat for a wee while longer. As we couldn't be asked to call a taxi we just all crammed in the back of a VW van to get to his place. It was bloody good to see that everyone is still as irresponsible as they have always been - I mean, if we would have got caught most of us would have been in serious trouble. Got to love that stuff!
In the flat we spent another fun-filled 2 to 3 hours, as everyone started to get their stories out about other people in the room. As it was mainly concerning embarrassing first-love-incidents, I wish I would have recorded the lot: I would have had a lot of material to blackmail people, that's for sure!

Anyway, about half seven I finally arrived back at my parents place. I was quite looking forward to my bed as I knew that I was going out for a Mother's day meal with my parents, aunt and grandmother in about four hours time.
Well, unfortunately it turns out that the keys I took earlier from my mom were the keys for her work, not the house keys... Hm, "dumm gelaufen" as we say: The last thing you want to do on mother's day is ringing your mother out of bed at half seven on a Sunday morning in a eh... slightly intoxicated condition, I can tell you! What a great present that is!

Anyway, there was no way around it, so I rang the door bell...
Weeelll, as it turned out my parents had finally got fed up with the buzzer ringing constantly and therefore decided to take the battery out. Great stuff, no buzzer either...

I was quite in hysterics I have to say, there were just too many funny coincidences for that to happen!
So still giggling I decided to make my way to my friend Jens who lives in the same part of town - the only solution I could think of. If he wouldn't open the door, I would be in serious trouble.
But fortunately Jens is pretty damn Rock'n'Roll: he opened the door and happily offered me his couch to sleep on. What a man! I owe you big time my friend!
So I finally got my three hours sleep before going to the family meal.
Needless to say that I wasn't very communicative that day... sorry, family!

Anyway, cheez, that was actually I quite long blog I wrote - don't think I wrote that much since leaving uni! So better go, but not without mentioning the next set of gigs we do in June. Hope to see you guys there, should be great! Can't wait to get the whole live thing moving again!
Lots of love,
Thilo

A satisfying wee quicky...

Posted by Karina

Hiya folks. Just thought I'd skive for a few minutes and say hi. This uni stuff is driving me round the bend. I'm missing out on so many social events (including my sisters birthday! (sorry Rach!), Matt's birthday, a couple of blinding Amplifico gigs (feckin' ace Edinburgh based band), Sammy's night (Pollokshields residents will know what I'm on about here) and many, many, many, many other things!!!). It's driving me to the crazy madness, so it is. Not to mention the fact that I miss my family and my friends so much it's nuts. Ah tell thee!

However, I am being mega productive and have even handed a couple of things in early (yes, that's right folks, it aint no spelling mistake!). Gnarly dudes!

Just got my singing assessment and my big bastard of a major project left to do. The sleeves are rolled up and I'm ready to kick the arse oot o' this shiznit! If anyone fancies coming to my singing exam, yer more than welcome, there will be some large beers going on afterwards, and your all invited to come along and watch me shiting myself (not literary, that would be gross dudes). Let me know if you're up for it and I'll give you the details...

It's a weird kind of half O.S life I'm leading just now. Miss gigging with the boys so much. I keep getting we updates of what's going on though, it's all sounding fab. Strange not being so involved though. Roll on the 2nd of June when all this is over!

Anyhoo, I better go, the minutes are ticking on and I'm on a 'tighter than a gnat's muff' schedule!

I love you dudes. Keep it real, take it sleazy and I'll see you all real soon.

Much love, frae Kaz-o-rama-fest xxx

P.S - here's a picture of my wee sister Joolz, she wanted a mention on the blog so here's her mental self (poser or what?)! (That is once one of the boys kindly adds it to this post, cos I cannie do it here, bum!). Love ya sis x

Word!

posted by Joe.

Word up party people! How d'ya do? As I was saying in the last blog, we're setting up some gigs in June at the moment and we've had some cool news. We'll be playing King Tut's on Sunday the 11th of June, supporting a guy called Paolo Nutini. He's actually from Paisley and not some lovely exotic Mediterranean location as his name suggests but that doesn't make him any less talented! He's just been signed up by the legendary record label, Atlantic, and will soon be playing the Carnegie Hall in New York (lucky boy!). You can hear some of his stuff on his myspace site. Should be a really good gig and we're thinking of running a bus through from Edinburgh. Give us a shout if you're up for it. You can get tickets online here.
Sorry that we've not been in contact much through the medium of inter-web e-mail-ness. That's coz we're trying to swap over mail out servers right now. This shouldn't take too long to rectify.
Karina is finishing off loads of her Uni work right now (she's studying music, the same course Dave, Thilo and I finished last year) so she's trying to cut herself off from any social activity. Our rehearsals are being focused on her performance exam at the moment. One of the songs we've been working on is Stevie Wonder's "Summer Soft" which we're nailing! It sounds cool as! Thilo's got the keys down and Dave and me are just grooving away while Tony's tying it together in the background. Karina sounds great as always too. Maybe we'll pull it out the bag at one of the gigs in June.
The Chili Peppers' new double album came out today. Sounds pretty good. There are some cracking tunes on it. I bought Anthony Kiedis' autobiography for three bucks in Fopp the other day and it's a great read, a real page turner go and check it out. You can't say fairer than three quid!
Anyhow, hope to see some of y'all at one of the gigs in June. Here is a list of the dates so far:

King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow - Sunday 11th June
Tolbooth, Stirling - Friday 23rd June
Cafe Drummond's - Saturday 24th June.

Love and Peace.
J. x

Diggin' it!

posted by Joe.

Hi ho. So, as Thilo was saying, tis a bit rubbish at the mo coz we're not playing and stuff but we're still really busy as always and we really can't wait to get across to Germany and play our first gigs abroad. Thought I'd let you all know that Grant from the Three From Leith podcast has put loads of photos from the TFL showcase gig we played last month up here. There are some nice ones of Merchandise Matt throwing some tasty shapes. Get in my son!
Just bought the film "Dig!" yesterday and watched it today. It's really good. If you don't know what it's about you should check it out. Basically, before the Dandy Warhols got big, they were mates with a band called the Brian Jonestown Massacre who are a bunch of drug addict lunatics who fall out with the Dandys when they get famous and it all gets a bit nasty. It's pretty funny as well checking out how mental the Jonestown's frontman gets. There is footage of him kicking his fans in the head from the stage and things like that. Don't know how much of that Kazza could get away with! I think she should try when we're next playing Bannerman's or something. Anyhow, the Brian Jonestown Massacre are playing the ABC in Glasgow soon, so if you want to see a fight get tickets and call Anton, the singer, a dobber and watch it unfold!
Keep it real kids...look out for our gigs in June. We'll be doing a bunch of gigs in Scotland. One in Glasgow, one in Edinburgh, one in Stirling (in the Tolbooth on the 23rd) and one in Aberdeen (in Cafe Drummonds on the 24th).
Loads of love. Joe.