Has there EVER been a better opening to a track….

Than this?

News, glorious news

4 or 5 Magicians CD and tour
We’ve had huge delays on this one but finally the 6th and final part of our 3″ CD singles club is upon us! ‘Forever On The Edge’ by 4 or 5 Magicians is a rawkus teen rant about the lifestyle of being in a band. Imagine a cross between Weezer, Pavement and Art Brut and you’re on your way to understanding this band. The 4 track single, including 2 exclusive b-sides and a brilliant Tom Waits style version of the a-side, is available to buy now from www.ilovealcopop.co.uk for just £3

The band are on tour next week. Dates are…

14.10 – Brighton, Barfly (w/ The Mooney Suzuki_

17.10 – London, The Social (Huw Stephens Introducing night)

18.10 – London, The Macbeth

19.10 – Luton, George 2nd (w/ Meet Me In St Louis)

22.10 – Wakefield, The Escobar (w/ Napolean III)

24.10 – Hereford, Watercress Harry’s

25.10 – Bath, Moles Club (w/ Popular Workshop, Untitled Musical Project)

26.10 – Bristol, The Cooler

27.10 – Cardiff, Callaghans

28.10 – London, The Windmill (w/ Johnny Foreigner)

29.10 – Oxford, Port Mahon

31.10 – Brighton, Ocean Rooms

Sam Isaac single
It’s with great pleasure that we can announce Alcopop! will be releasing the new single from Malvern’s finest, Sam Isaac. The single, due out on 10th December on 7″ and CD, will be a split with our own sister label, Big Scary Monsters (www.bsmrocks.com) as part of their new ‘Meet & Greet‘ singles series. With each copy of the single you will find a password offering free access to a secret Sam Isaac website, filled with exclusive recordings, videos and more!

Sam, just incase you haven’t already heard him, is brilliant. He writes amazing pop songs about whatever’s on his mind, bringing together influences such as Ed Harcourt and Bright Eyes, with hooks that will stick in your head for days.

You can catch Sam being interviewed and playing live on MTV2 tomorrow night (Saturday 13th Oct, 9pm) as well as at Manchester’s In The City event next weekend. After that he’ll be hitting the BBC Electric Proms, supporting none other than Edwyn Collins, before heading out on the Proms tour, playing 5 (free entry!) shows around the country. Check out this link for more info and a video. The excitment doesn’t stop there though, as Sam is also scheduled to appear at Huw Stephens Swn Festival in Cardiff in November. He’s a busy boy!

Full list of dates and MP3s are available at: www.myspace.com/samisaac

Alcopopular! Vol. 2 – Compilation tape

December will see the release of Alcopopular! Vol. 2. Following up on the 3″ CD compilation which came out in January, this one will be a cassette (that’s right, cassette! Analogue all the way this time!) and very limited edition. It features 15 tracks from the likes of Johnny Foreigner, Sky Larkin, Dartz, Jeremy Warmsley, Windmill, Dave House and others. More details will be announced shortly.
That’s it for now. Keep your eye on www.ilovealcopop.co.uk for a new website, due to launch next month, and www.myspace.com/alcopopinmyblood for all your audio streaming needs

4 or 5 Magicians to preorder – and a party (what fun!)

Yup! It’s all good news in the Alcopop! camp with 2 nice pieces of news up, up and on the blog.

1stly) Oh yes – 4 or 5 Magicians CD is up for preorder! It’s a cracking 4 track single and the last in the current singles club series. Only £3!! The boys are on tour in October too, so take a look – and buy, buy, buy (via the button on this very MySpace page). As ever, ltd to just 500 copies and 3″ with hand-made, numbered, ltd edt. CDs

2ndly) We’re one! Yes indeed, after 6 handsome releases, lots of gigs and much bevvying – Alcopop! are proud to reach our first birthday – and we’re having a party… Would be lovely to see you there- there are 3 excellent bands all with Alcopop! conncetions (DSP, Dave House and Johnny Foreigner), cake and goody bags for the first 20 through the door. Monday October 22nd at The Social, W1 – Just £5 in advance or £4 for singles club holders.

New gig announced

It’s about bloody time but we’ve finally announced details of our next gig, and it’s a good un, in fact, it’s out 1st birthday party! Come down to The Social in London on 22nd Oct to party the night away with us, with musical fun supplied by Data.Select.Party, Johnny Foreigner and Dave House. There’ll be cake and everything. Details of a new compilation release will be online soon, and you can pre-order 4 or 5 Magicians single right now, so go and do that, yeah?

Alcopopping

This majestic post was taken from Blog Scary Monsters, a worthy read. Thought it should be repurposed here too -

As well as BSM I also co-run Alcopop! Records with my former housemate and good friend, Jack. After leaving our shared house in June, Jack moved west to Bristol with his girlfriend. This put an end to our nights of cutting and folding CD sleeves infront of the TV and ridiculous midweek drinking binges dreaming up hairbrained schemes for the label… Or that’s what we thought! Last night Jack came down and our “meeting” panned out as such:

Arriving at 7pm we downed a couple of large vodka’s and came up with possibly the best gimmick the record industry has ever heard of (tbc). We caught the bus to Cowley Road where we met a couple of the guys from a local band (whose name, for now, will remain a secret. Note: they have a digital release coming out soon and you might have heard of them, but that’s all I’m saying) for a curry and to discuss a future release or three, arriving late as we stopped off, sorry, went out of our way to get to, the dodgy off licence where everything is 50p and 2 years+ out of date. The curry and drink went down, ideas were discussed, plans were made and we set off on our way back home with a couple of cans of Pimms for the road. 50p each, of course, years out of date, obviously. A cocktail of leftover alcohol was created and we hit the office around midnight, stumbling up the stairs and spilling drink everywhere just in time to tune into Huw Stephens. In the following few hours we, drunkenly, designed a flyer for our next London Alcopop! show (see below), listed the tickets online, wrote a press release, started a Facebook event and updated the website with the info. Turning our attentions to 4 or 5 Magicians and their upcoming single we sorted the artwork and sent the master off to be pressed and updated the website and Myspace with pre-order details. Moving onto the next release, a compilation tape due out in November, we listened through the 15 tracks, decided on an order, plotted a couple of promotional and marketing plans, worked out the artwork and then mastered the tracks to make sure they were all at the same volume and the gaps were correct. With all of this complete we allowed ourselves some time for more stumbling around, to send texts into Huw’s show, hoping they would be read out on air and embarrass our friends, we checked out and laughed at some terrible, terrible bands on Myspace, poured another large cocktail and talked proudly about our earlier plan. You know, the best one to ever hit the music industry (tbc).

I rolled into bed at 4.30am, tired yet satisfied after another successful Alcopop! “meeting”. Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, this is rock n roll.