News blog thingy

2011

Spring!

It's been a long time since I rocked and rolled...an update following request from Gid

What's happened? Well we are now getting pretty busy, we have around 40 bands in most weeks now, which is great but does mean most bands need to look at booking further than one week ahead.

We've got a full second set of mic grilles for our SM58s so we can wash them more regularly. We have 3 more quality mic stands (K&M).

Thanks to ebay we will soon have compressors on the room PAs to provide a better sound and hopefully help guard against tweeter destruction from feedback.

We have a few more guitar amps - Marshall AVT150 head, Crate combo.

2010

2010..er what happened? Well Dawn's winter/spring BOTB was awesome then we had a summer, I think...

2009

Autumn!

Playing Aloud are pleased to be providing PA for Aurora Promotion's regular Saturday night gigs upstairs at the Duke of Wellington. Dawn from Aurora puts on different themed nights such as metal, punk and indie. Bands have the opportunity to make money from the gig by advance tickets sales. If you want a gig at the Duke for your band then contact Aurora Promotions.

June

Added page to this site introducing our Gig Rescue Service and Room 4.

Well hoo-ray! Website is being now being fixed after breaking free from ntl/Virgin Media. We now use 123-reg to host our website.

2008

Room 4 was opened late summer & has been busy since!

Bought a lovely new Allen & Heath mixer from Raw Power to replace the old Mackie that had become unreliable.

The highlight of this year was undoubtedly recording a complete album for local band Internus (Illusions and Lies), an excellent slice of modern neo-classic rock. If you have ever liked rock music you should get a copy of this.

June

Building work is in progress on Room 4 which will be slightly smaller than the other rooms but better soundproofed. It will be mainly for recording but also available for small bands to rehearse in.

May

Dunc had some health problems since January which were finally resolved by acupuncture. Now he has no excuse not to carry amps & speakers around.

We bought some nice high quality PA speakers (Peavey UL15 and McGregor PS15) so we can do louder & better quality PA work.

April

We thought that stoopid long cold winter would never end...still at least we had mains electricity this year...

March

Plagues Fire have been in recording.

February

Kallous are the latest metal band in for recording.

Recording local comedian Steve Barclay.

January

We acquired a Laney valve half stack and a Line 6 Spider II 2x12 combo with floor controller.

Recorded local band the 'League of Mentalmen' vocals over a live recording that had no vocals on it.

Arcanum recorded five songs of searing metal.

Dunc was finally made redundant from his day job. Various broken stuff of ours and belonging to customers is now getting fixed.

2007

Did an excellent end of summer PA job at the Black Dog at Grantham.

Recording started August 2007 with local metal heroes 'Dead Sentinel' being the guinea pigs.

Dunc changed to working 4 days a week at his day job in May due to increased studio custom.

2006

Starting recording was held up for a while because some morons stole our electricity supply cable. We had to run on a generator for almost a year before a proper electricity supply was restored.

2005

Due to the vagaries of estate agents, landlords etc the business opening was delayed until September 2005 when semi-pro band 'Stoner' were our first customers, that weekend also co-inciding with a break-in at the premises where thieves stole the vacuum cleaner. They trashed £500 of door for a cleaner they probably sold for £25! Idiots!

Anyhoo the business grew initially fairly rapidly which was encouraging. Dee left her day job to be available to open in the day time. Dunc was still working 5 days a week at Siemens.

Not long after starting, DefNation requested us to do PA work for them at 'a small pub' which turned out to be the Travellers Rest, the start of many PA jobs around Lincoln.

Customers often asked if we did recording. This was not part of the initial plan as we thought there were enough recording studios in the area. It turned out that no-one was covering the bottom of the market adequately so steps were taken to start recording digitally on a pc, using mics originally purchased for live work etc.

2004

Dunc designed the room construction and acoustic treatment himself as there was little information available and several architects consulted did not have relevant experience.

2003

Playing Aloud was conceived back in 2003 when Dunc was in a band called Bereft and had nowhere to rehearse. Inspired by Archways (rip), Big Wheel and Stayfree in Leicester and Magnet in Nottingham, Dunc resolved to build a band rehearsal room business in Lincoln.