For those who've never seen...........

Steve Moore, drummer with Rick K. and The Alnighters has become an internet legend with this, and many other performances like it. You can check them all out on You-Tube, but for those who've never seen....This is Sharp Dressed Man

Studio Investment - update

Thanks to our continued success we are able to carry-on the programme of updating our equipment throughout the summer months.
There have been two recent additions: one to the rehearsal facilities and one to the recording environment.
We have been able to obtain a vintage laney Linebacker 100w reverb head amplifier which has been placed in room 1. This incredibly versatile amp has many outstanding features including gain boost facilities and eq boosts on both channels.

Secondly we have purchased two MOTU 8 pre audio interfaces for the Apple Mac allowing quality 16 track recording that is extremely portable. We hope to have this installed for the next "Baseline Gig" as well as adding new versatility to our control room.

These two items alone have required an investment in excess of £1000 as we continue to invest the income from the bands who use the studio into their musical development.

Baseline Gig - July 1st

Treat yourself to a mid-summer sensation with four great bands. Red Line Ratio, The Rays, Atik Attack and of course, our house band, The Picture. Doors open 7.30, show starts at 8. Great music, cheap beer.

THE PICTURE

And our usual fantastic sound and lighting brought to you by our engineer James "The Mac" Callaghan. Tickets £3 in advance, £5 on the door. Text "tickets" followed by the number you require to 07979 653412 and we'll reserve advance price tickets for you to collect on the door by quoting your mobile telephone number. Full details by return text.

House Band - The Picture - in the News

The Stourbridge News in fact........

The picture will also be playing a short set as House Band at The Baseline on 1st July.

STEVE'S BIG GIG

Kinver Community Centre - Friday July 15th

Celebrating the life of Steve Cutler

1959-2011

Live Bands, Disco, Late Bar.

Entry £5

All Proceeds to Memorial Fund

COMING SOON - TEENSTAR 2012

We are working on a competition that will be launched later this year to find the TEENSTAR of 2012.

Teenagers will be invited to audition to appear at THE BASELINE in the finals that will take place next year.

There will be more news soon but you may want to have a sneaky look at :

http://www.basement-teenstar.webs.com/

Although the site and competition won't be officially launched until around September if you are 13-19 and want to enter then download the application form and return it to us here at The Basement and we will be in touch,

James

STARTIME VARIETY

We are pleased to host Startime Variety from Halesowen for a whole day next Monday as they prepare for their summer show.

Startime provides excellent family entertainment and The Basement is proud to collaborate with them in providing rehearsal facilities for their excellent band and singers.
More details about Startime Variety can be found on their excellent website http://www.startimevariety.co.uk/ which is well worth a look.

Another Basement Band @ The Robin2

Halogen Pulp are following in the Footsteps of Target by Numbers in entering the 2011 Robin2 Live Band of the Year. They are playing their set on Monday 20th June and, should they be successful, will meet Target by numbers in the Monthly Final a week later. Good luck to Halogen Pulp on the 20th. If you want to support them the heat starts at 7.30pm. The Robin is in Mount Pleasant, Bilston.

Baseline Gig July 1st - Line-up confirmed

Supporting Red Line Ratio at our next gig on July 1st will be The Rays and Atic Attack. More details on these two bands soon. Tickets available from June 10th.

Target by Numbers hits the bullseye

Well done lads. Target by Numbers won their first heat of The Robin2's 2011 Battle of the Bands Competition and now progress to the monthly final on 27th June.

Winners of the monthly final progress to the semi-finals in the autumn.

Baseline - Next Gig July 1st.

It is with great pleasure that we are able to confirm that Red Line Ratio will headline our next gig. They put in a stunning performance at our opening night back in February.

This is what reviewer Matt Dooner (see earlier article) had to say about them

"The hour is late and the crowd is starting to thin out; those that remain are treated to

a set from Red Line Ratio, who play the good kind of indie rock; effect-drenched

soundscapes and well constructed lyrics creating a hugesounding,ethereal atmosphere.

There isn't a "trump card" as such, but to pick any one element from Red Line Ratio would

be missing the point. They're remarkably tight and the songs are very well written and executed, the lead guitar hits the right amount of notes to be busy but not overly intrusive, the easily-overlooked rhythm section do as much as they need to carry the songs. Relying on your songs to carry the band's set is a very nice position to be in."

GOOD LUCK - T.B.N

Target by Numbers - Battle of the Bands 2011 - The Robin2, Bilston - Tomorrow June 6th - 7.30. Good lock fellas from bands and staff of The Basement.

Matt Dooner and The Fakes

Matt Dooner of The Fakes, who also wrote the review of The Baseline's opening night, has his own excellent blog that can be found here:      http://matt486gigs.blogspot.com/

Here he cronicles all the gigs he plays, mainly as an acoustic solo artist, but also as a member of bands. Here is what he had to say about the Fakes when they played at The Baseline in April.

"For those of you who don't know, The Fakes are my indie-rock covers band that keep quite a low profile but always do great shows. We've known Frank and James literally since they started the Basement studios and it's a pleasure to play in their venue.

For the uninitiated, a quick history of the band and my involvement with it: I was asked to join on bass guitar back in 2004 when I answered an ad in what I believe was the Dudley Chronicle. It turned out Drewey on the drums and Harvey the singer had been in bands before, they pulled Matt on guitar in from Drewey's work and Steve on guitar from... somewhere, I never found out where. We spent the following couple of years putting together a set of different popular songs, basically choosing them on the basis of what we enjoyed playing. Gigs were not regular because of various other bits and pieces the band were involved with (they're all a bit older than me and were getting married, having kids, etc.) Steve had to leave in 07 when he hurt his hand to the point that posed a significant risk to him should he continue to play guitar, and after floundering around for a while, we eventually recruited Steve (different Steve) on bass and I switched to lead guitar. 6 gigs in 7 years is not great, but you know what, we've kept it together for that long which is more than you can say for any of my other bands...

So this was our first gig in a while! I'm not going to do a track-by-track review of our own gig here. We knew it was going to go well because it always does; we play the right kind of music for the right kind of people. Yes, there were mistakes, there always are, and sometimes I joke that we trade on the idea that everyone's hammered and can't tell if we're mucking it up. Being far less cynical about it, it's more likely that we like to make sure that EVERYBODY in the room is having a good time, all of the time.

The original plan was 10 songs, because of the way things work at the Baseline. So we chose 10 of our heavyweights and got ready to play them, to discover that one of the bands had pulled the gig and it was actually 14-15 songs we could play. Highlights of the set... Opening with She Sells Sanctuary is something every cover band should do at least once, and is not a moment any of us are likely to forget. I was very pleased with myself when we nailed She Bangs The Drums. Our ska version of 7 Nation Army wasn't as well-received as I'd have liked, perhaps we need to work on that a bit more with more references to the style of music. Set closer Dakota was by far the best one we did that night, and possibly ever.

Criticisms? Well, the crowd were reluctant to let us leave the stage - which, for all the gigs I've been doing this year, is a rare and pleasant feeling - but we stuck around for far too long playing songs that we hadn't really rehearsed, and it showed. We know the songs well enough to get all the way through them, but the cracks were there and were getting ever larger. Kudos to Frank for calling a halt to proceedings when he did. Being drunk (as a band) and high as a kite on adrenaline is not a good combination and we need to be a bit more disciplined about that in the future.

For now, though, let's take a moment to remember the most enjoyable gig I have done for a long, long time..."