Next Gig

Next gig is booked for the new yearLocation: Spotted Dog, New Canal Street, BirminghamSupporting: The MagnificatzTime: 8.00pmCost: FreeBe therehttp://www.virb.com/douglasfurs/shows/139967 

 

Spotted at the Dog

Hey. Just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who showed up at (the correct) Spotted Dog last night. Despite a few technical hitches, we had a great time, and really enjoyed Rick Hughes and Imogen’s Kiss.

There were plenty of photos and videos taken (Thanks Helen) so keep an eye out here for them in the future.

-DF

 

Birdclock – Live

Following on from the previous video of Russia, here’s a rerun of Birdclock from the previous Alternation night. Technorati Tags : douglasfurs birdclock 

 

Russia – LIVE!

Here’s a short video of Russia played at the Barleycorn in Bearwood a few weeks back. Cheers Ant Helen! Technorati Tags: douglasfurs russia barleycorn 

 

Burnt Fingers and Spotted Dogs

We were in the recording studio (or at least where we record) for another session a few weeks back so we’ve got a whole new selection of recordings which you can now listen to at Virb or MySpace.

We’ve also got our first proper gig booked. We’ll be supporting Imogen’s Kiss and Rich Hughes at the Spotted Dog in Digbeth on 7th December at 8.00pm. So please come along and check us and the other bands out. If it goes well we’re hoping to be playing gigs more often in 2008.

We’ve also got a few new songs in the works so look out for them soon (hopefully). And you might even get a chance to hear Dom on the guitar and James on bass in the future. So that should be interesting.

Hope to see people there.

 

Douglas Furs take on Music Live (minus a drummer)

So today, James, Nick and my went to Music Live 2007 at the Birmingham NEC. Here’s a few highlights.

First, James plays Russia in a busking competition to win a Boss Micro BR 4-track recorder.

Nick checks out some pedals at the Boss stand

And James again with his head focuses on the chorus pedals

See you there next year! Oh and James didn’t win unfortunately.

See more on Flickr

 

Phew! Its hot at Robannas

Date: 7/8/2007
Location: Room 7, Robannas, Birmingham

After one hell of a hiatus, we finally got back together for a rehersal. It took a while since Rich Bitch seems to be out of order at the moment (why can’t we find out whats going on?! Oh yeah, too lazy).

Anyway, we tried out Robannas in town (which is NOT next to Sound Control, despite somone’s instructions). Anyway, we made it there, hiked our gear up the mountain of stairs and got our room (you pay at the end..intriguing). The room left a lot to be desired. It was small, which wouldn’t have been such an issue had the sun not been blinding us and making the room unbearably hot. So much so that we were all sweating like pigs. The gear wasn’t much good either. The bass amp and head were a bit dated, and didn’t seem to do a lot, plus the volume was all over the place. The guitar stuff was much nicer. The PA for the vocals?! A joke. The system was older than my amp, half the switches and dials were missing and the sound was just awful.

Anyway, we made do (even me without a tuner…probably was a bit off) and played our way through the usual songs. To be honest, our playing was rubbish. The vocals were rubbish. The room was too hot, we were all exhausted. It wasn’t pretty

But it was good to get back together and play. We’ll be trying out Madhouse next time, at least until Rich Bitch gets its act in order and we can get back there.

In the mean time, be sure to check out our virb page and have a listen to our songs, add us as friends, check out the photos and watch us playing Birclock live.

 

Gigs and Failed Gigs

As you will have seen on the previous post, the Douglas Furs played their first live gig to a crowd of dozens at the Bear Tavern in Bearwood on 22 May 2007.

After being the first ones there, we got on the list, went to enjoy some food while being nervous, we were told we were 3rd on the bill.
After sitting through a guy on an acoustic guitar, and a guy playing  Gary Moore with his massive pedal, we took to the stage. Our set list went as Russia, Sequoia, Birdclock, and finished on Dog in a Garden.
It seems like the cowbell alone got a lot more cheers than some of the songs, which is a shame, but I’d put it down to not knowing the songs.
As said before, you can check out the photos on Flickr, or the video on Revver.

After the half-success of the first gig,  we planned to return on 12 June. Unfortunately, I had a call from James to let me know that the gig was cancelled. The whole night was. Apparently there was some trouble with fighting, and the night got permanently cancelled.

And as you would have it, the Douglas Furs take a short break. The other guys are in moving season and houses are scarce, so practice and gigs have been put on hold until July.

Hopefully, we’ll be back with a bang, with a new song in tow (and one less song thanks to a missing notebook). We may even get back to record again.

So until more happens, keep listening!

 

Douglas Furs hit the stage

On the 22nd May, the Douglas Furs had their first gig in history. It took place at the Bear Tavern in Bearwood during the Alternation open stage night.

You can catch some of the highlights at Flickr and even watch the live version of Birdclock.

More gigs will appear there. Check out Virb.com/douglasfurs for dates.

 

Band Recording: 6 April 2007

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, and finally decided to.

On 6 April 2007 (mark this in your DF journal) we stepped into the recording (dance) studio and did our first ever recording. Wanna know how hi-tech it was? We used mini-discs.

The way Rich Bitch works, they have a professional recording studio, where you can pay about £400 for 10 hours of studio time to get proper recordings. Or, you can hire the Dance studio for the standard price (£12.50ph) and record for free to your own minidiscs. So thats what we did. We booked our normal 2 hour slot  and went in armed with a few discs. You can ask the technicians to come and set your levels right and then start the recording. So we got the man in, did a run through of Russia, and let him adjust the sliders and dial and switches that make us sound just like U2. There is even a Bono slider for the vocals. Weird.

Anyway, we pretty much just went through the set a few times over, took a few takes to get it right but we did each song about 10 times so we came out with a good few trials.  The session went quite well. It was cool to play on a stage, with a full rig, and monitors, and the room was really cool too. Very hip (or whatever is the cool word the kids are using)

Anyway, recording was the easy part. Since we recorded to minidisc, the trouble next we getting it from MD to my laptop (I took charge of this fun task). I did some searching and found the only way was to do it through a line -in port and a 3.5mm mini-jack. So that meant recording in realtime. So I set the thing to record, hit play on the MD player, and buggered off for a while.

A bit later, I had 3 .wav files recorded in Audicity, that I could play with. I brought them into Logic Express and just used the cut tool to snip around takes of songs, then dragged them to a track for each song. This meant I could easily export all versions of one song in one go.

After tediously listening to the whole thing (almost 2 hours) I had split the tracks. They were then exported to wav files, and i used a open source program called Max to convert them to MP3’s, and finally, imported into iTunes and set the ID3 tags. Phew!

The only problems with all this is, the recording level was low so the songs are all really quiet (at least the raw tracks), and its all as one track, in mono, so can’t do any adjustment of each instrument. To be honest, I thought the bass should’ve been louder, and I didn’t like the sound much, and the guitars were a bit loud. So some tweaking needed.

Anyway, some of those tracks are now up on Virb, and if you really want, you can have the raw wav files, and can do some editing of your own. A challenge for any amateur music producers. See what you can do. email us at douglasfurs at googlemail dot com for info.