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Free gig

Thursday, June 20th, 2013

One for all you cheapskates: free gig on 12th July in Islington, N1, along with the Fish Mittens and Les Tosseurs. (If you like our stuff, you’ll like theirs too; this isn’t the usual collection of random bands slung together on the same night by an uninterested promoter). Full details on the flyer. Should be a couple of new songs ready…

In other news, this blog has finally bowed to the weight of spam comments, and now requires registration before posting a comment. Sorry to legitimate people, but such is the way of the net these days, Subbuteo.

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Sheashon’sh greetingsh

Monday, December 24th, 2012

Klepsie, Shazomei, Camrath, Blacksnip and Ullan would like to wish all their friends, fans and listeners the compliments of the season. Bah, humbug.

Things have been a bit quiet at Donutsh Central for a couple of months due to new jobs (two) and house moves (one) in the band, but we should be gigging again in the New Year, and even recording more new material. Songs continue to be written for the Difficult First Album.

A piece of advice for your new year’s resolution: people will sometimes tell you to “dance like nobody’s watching”. Well, sod that. Based on our experience, there is only one way to dance, or indeed to live your life in general, and that is to conduct yourself as if everyone is watching, and applauding you frantically.

Remember folks, support independent music in 2013, or there may be none left by 2014.

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And the beat goes on

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

It’s becoming more and more clear that the Donutsh are like the US Mail, or a glacier; a force which moves when you’re not looking and which is quite impossible to fight against or stop in its tracks.

The “We Are All Strange Jane” EP has been scoring some fab (and possibly even gear) responses. Take TV Smith, for instance — a musician whose vegetarian Doc Martens we are not worthy to moisten with our tongues: “Deliciously odd, totally convincing, I love it!” Or DJ Alan Dorey of Forest FM: “What a fine EP it is: the production is first class, the sound has been well mixed and it’s clear that the band are a pretty tight unit and know what they’re up to.”

Alan will, incidentally, be putting his money where his mouth is and playing us in his show, adding to other radio stations such as Camden Unsigned, XRP Radio (for whom we did a live session a few weeks back) and Federal Radio (where we regularly feature in their Top Ten unsigned artists as voted for by listeners).

So if you haven’t already headed over to Bandcamp to get your copy, do it now — act without thinking! It’s a mere £3, which won’t even buy you a frappucino in Starbucks these days… http://donutsh.bandcamp.com/ is the address you’ll be needing for that.

Another way to get it is to come to one of our gigs, and we have two of those coming up within the next week:

Friday 28 September: The Artisan, 11 Hall Lane, Chingford, E4 8HH (8pm); £5 with flyer (get it here). Easiest way to get there by public transport is a bus to Chingford Mount, and it’s right by Sainsbury’s.

Wednesday 3 October: Camden Rock, 18 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 9NX (8pm): also £5, and you don’t need to bring a flyer, but we’ve done one anyway ‘cos we like doing flyers. Right by Camden Town tube, this one. Other bands include JJ Appleby, Montego Bay, Stroke Of Luck and Dewa — all more or less alt-rock.

We shan’t remind you to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, because you’re all sensible people and do that already, right?

Until next time, sugar-pies!

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Ethel! Those filthy musicians are at it again!!!

Friday, July 20th, 2012

The trouble with blog posts is that one never knows quite how to begin them, I find… So let’s just forget the niceties and cut to the chase: next Donutsh gig is Monday 23rd July, once more at the Water Rats in Kings Cross. Half a dozen bands on the bill; it’s £8 on the door, which makes it all the more important for you to tell us you’re coming in advance (sign up at http://www.facebook.com/events/262518140519376/) because that way you get in for a mere £4. Cos we can do that. We’re just that awesome, and that generous. There’s a couple of new songs that will be making their public debut, into the bargain, so you don’t want to miss this one, do you? Besides, it’s the last gig we shall be playing before the huge squawking vulture that is the Olympics descends on London and rips the guts out of the city’s finances, transport and social life. Unlike the Olympics we promise not to paint special lanes on the roads or have Boris Johnson blethering endlessly on telly about how good we are (although if Mr Johnson wants to do that he’s more than welcome, on reflection. We’re not proud, we’ll accept anyone as our fanboy).

We’ve also been working on a redesign for the website — watch this space for further developments, very shortly…

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Double punch!

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

LEFT HOOK: As you may have seen on Twitter/FB we’ve been roped into an ultra-short-notice gig this week, because we’re so crazy keen like that: Monto Water Rats, Kings Cross. Thursday 22 March, 7pm. Supporting one of our local heroes here in Walthamstow, Rob Pyne, formerly of the Rifles and now with his new project, Last of the Troubadours. Should be a blast! Post a comment here, or click on the Facebook event, to confirm attendance, and we’ll add you to the cheap door list at £4, cor blimey, guv, how do they do it so cheap?

RIGHT CROSS: We got impatient — not to mention we were running out of excuses to give some of you who kept asking when they could buy downloads of the EP — so the answer is: now. A proper sales/merch page on this site will appear shortly (when our wonderful webmistress isn’t in the throes of moving house) but meanwhile, go to our Bandcamp page and you can download We Are All Strange Jane, or any portion thereof, for a wholly nugatory and derisory pittance. As the Bastables put it, “If what we have written brings happiness to any sad heart we shall not have laboured in vain. But we want the money too.”

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Donutsh *not* defeated by frosting

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Why is it that every time we have a gig in the winter, it snows? It hardly seems like a year ago when our very, very first live show ever got snowed off entirely…

Thankfully the snow started too late to completely wreck our Water Rats gig last night, and we got a good showing — extra credit to all the brave souls who showed up from as far afield as Southend and Kingston. To all those who couldn’t make it owing to the weather, don’t worry, we understand (just come to the next gig instead, you lightweights…)

It was a pretty great night — not a duff band on the bill, a decent venue with a sound system and engineer that actually worked (this is less common than you might think) and that most intangible of assets to any music venue, an Atmosphere. This last can only have been assisted, in our case, by the presence of a large blue dog costume called Clive dancing happily up the front throughout our set. If only his name had two syllables we might have been tempted to change “Johnny Don’t Care” to “Clive Don’t Care”. The new songs “Demon Core” and “Drive On, Driver” both went down very-well-thank-you; we’ll be playing both them again, for sure.

We finished the show, staggered outside for a fresh air and fag break… and gazed at the still-falling white mantle of snow that was draping itself upon London like a satin cloak on the shoulders of a pro wrestler. Oh dear, we thought. We’re going to have fun getting home, we thought.

And lo, it was so. Here’s a tip for anyone thinking of forming a band: if you’re going to play gigs in winter, make sure your bassist’s house isn’t at the bottom of a steep hill on an estate with only one way out of it. Or if you must have such a bassist, make sure his house has comfortable sofas. Having almost burnt out Klepsie’s clutch trying to escape from the roughest estate in north London, Klepsie and Shazomei wound up having to spend the night in Camrath’s living room, menaced by his enormous fluffy cat. We repaid his hospitality by drinking his last bottle of Rekorderlig, though, so the night wasn’t entirely a dead loss…

Should have the date of our next London gig confirmed shortly, so watch this space and keep your diaries free for March until we tell you you’re allowed to schedule anything else. Okay? Okay.

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Holy crap, here it is 2012 already

Saturday, January 28th, 2012

Must be time for us to swoop down and cram another news update into your open ears like a worm down the throat of a baby bird.

First off — on Saturday 4th February, we play the Monto Water Rats at King’s Cross in the evening. This is actually the first gig we’ve had on a Saturday rather than on a school night, so no excuse not to come to it. There are scads of bands on all evening if you want to make a night of it, with The Deltorers headlining. It’s eight pounds on the door, BUT if you tell us you’re coming (or even may be coming) in advance, we’ll put your name on the Cheap List with the promoters and if you get there by 7.30pm, that’ll cost you just six squids. Leave a comment here, or click the button on Facebook, or talk to us or… something.

There should be at least one or two new songs which will see their first performance at the Water Rats, by the way, including “Demon Core”, our story of the Los Alamos nuclear scientists who were killed in a criticality accident while working on a nuclear warhead with… a screwdriver. (Srsly.)

Meanwhile there’s lots of interest in the “We Are All Strange Jane” EP, including (gosh) some radio play, especially from the highly esteemed XRP Radio‘s Thursday Breakdown show. The 4 tracks will, therefore, be available on Bandcamp very shortly; watch this space. In addition, in a fit of hubris we’ve had some snazzy T-shirts printed up with the EP cover design, white on black. These will also be flogged on the Bandcamp page shortly, but meantime, if anyone can’t wait, here’s a SPECIAL OFFER: email us (info@donutsh.com) saying “OMG I want a T shirt” and it’s yours for a flat tenner, including postage anywhere in the world. Cuttin’ our own froats, aren’t we, guv. Awright.

More gigs should be in the pipeline after this one, so keep ‘em peeled.

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Small earthquake in Holloway

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Dotting in momentarily here to let you know that we have another London gig for y’all, this one a short-notice affair at the Nambucca, Holloway Road (Holloway Road tube, or Upper Holloway overground) this Wednesday. This is a new venue for us, in our continuing campaign to take over all of the capital. We’ll be just one of a glittering line-up who you can see for £4 entry if you print off the flyer linked just above (don’t forget, or else it’s £7 on the door!)

Plans continue to be hatched to make the EP “We Are All Strange Jane” available for purchase as well as listening, both as a download and in physical form. Keep watching the skies!

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One door closes, another opens

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Well, so much for the poor old Standard Music Venue. (A most inaccurate name, I always thought; it was an awesome music venue, and not standard in the least!) We saw it off in style with our rawkin’est gig yet, assisted by two bands we’ve played with before, Kickstarter and Third Wave — with whose members we ended up outside the back door at one point, a dozen of us all confessing our love for Weezer (!) and naming our favourite songs by them — plus some new names to us, The Stabilisers, who let us use their drums and bass amp, and who played bloody well. Kickstarter and Third Wave both have EPs out and both are worth checking…

… but naturally we hope you’ll look at our EP first. All four tracks are now listenable right here on the website, replacing the rather mouldy old demos we had here before. And if you want downloadable copies, or a CD version (with spiffy cover art and a joke on the back cover) … watch this space for further announcements — plus a surprise! — shortly.

“Strange Jane” has already been played on a US radio station, which makes us feel extremely smug.

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“Tonight Matthew, we’re going to be musicians”

Monday, October 31st, 2011

So… yes. We’ve completed what is either our first 4-track EP, or else our first proper demo tape, depending on which way you look at it. And we’re really pleased with it; it sounds astonishing. Soon we’ll be announcing what you can do to listen to the tracks — keep watching!

Meantime, don’t forget the gig at the Standard on 10th November is coming up soon.

But for now, here’s a quote from Mark Radcliffe’s autobiography “Thank You For The Days” which rang a loud bell with us:

“I’ve been in a band since I was fourteen years old… I’d never been good enough at sport to warrant being included in a proper team, and always rather envied those who experienced the camaraderie you get when you’re all pushing towards a common goal. Once I was in a band, though, I realised that here was the gang I’d been looking for. Bands are small private clubs in which peculiar roles apply, unspoken hierarchies prevail, despite lip service being paid to the vague notion of democracy, and shared adventures are guaranteed. Since I discovered all that, a band is just something I’ve had to have to make life seem complete.”

Which pretty much sums up our position to a T. You out there — yes, you – if you have the faintest interest in music, go and get a band together. Now. Don’t wait. Don’t wonder. It’s the best thing in the world and anyone can do it.

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