Alright, so we don’t really know how it works yet, but we’ve got ourselves a SoundCloud. If you want to send us music to play at the clubnight, or to be considered for review in the zine/online, or indeed if you just want to send us stuff, then you could fling it there. Anyone with any tips on how this thing works, we’d appreciate em!
So you should hopefully know by now that this website is actually just an added extra on top of the paper fanzine which we make. You know, the fanzine that Steve Lamacq has been talking about on the radio?
Thanks to the magic of the internet you can now go through an archive of our back issues on this very website. Point yourself towards the Fanzine page to have a look! What next, man on the moon?
We have been having a bit of a spring clean here at PYT Towers, and I’ve found a box of CDs which I released with some good friends with my old fanzine. Popular Culture (No Longer Applies To Us) was active for about 18 months or so, during which time we put on the first ever show by Troubles (ex-Hope of the States) and the first Manchester show by Los Campesinos! (at the Star and Garter – AMAZING). Alongside the zines and gigs we put out a compilation album which perfectly caught the mood of late 2006, a great time for new music.
The album was called We’re Stupid, But We’re Happy (a Los Camp! lyric, though you already know that) and featured some of our favourite bands. The track listing is below. Steve Lamacq made it has album of the week on 6Music and played a track every night. I’ve just been and looked up old reviews of the record, Drowned in Sound gave it 9/10 and said it was essential. Heady days.
1. Los Campesinos! – It Started With A Mixx
2. Former Bullies – You Are Free
3. The Answering Machine – Oh Christina
4. Sky Larkin – Keepsakes
5. The Star Fighter Pilot – Another Penny (feat. Rachael Kichenside)
6. Modernaire – Shall We Disco
7. Ed Cottam – No One Quite Like You
8. The Waverton Collective – Trans Siberian Express
9. My Side of The Mountain – Winter People
10. Sir Yes Sir – OK
11. Air Cav – Alliance
12. The Search Map – You Are The Loops
13. redcarsgofaster – 24 Passes
14. Shut Your Eyes And You’ll Burst Into Flames – Signal Noise
Basically, I was really proud of this record. Still am. It is criminal that I’ve still got copies of it left, so I am putting them on sale here for TWO QUID. Click the button below and I’ll send you one. Simple as that.
Quick update for you all. Long time no speak and all that, Team PYT have had to switch focus to finishing up a load of deadlines and going to see amazing bands at ATPavement. We are ready to go again now though!
First up, thank you SO SO MUCH to everyone who was involved with Sounds From The Other City. Anyone who came down to the Postcards From Manchester stage will know that it was packed all day long, and we were treated to really special performances from all the bands. My personal highlights were Windmill playing ‘Start a War’ by The National, seeing the waves of confusion and excitement when Islet started playing ‘Jasmine’ and bounding around the room, and obviously the madness that ensued once The Rural Alberta Advantage started. It was taking three of us to hold the speakers up during The RAA because you lot were enjoying it so much. That we then went on to drink the bar dry during the disco after which included pub long jumps and limbo dancing just topped it all off! There have been some ace reviews of the day in the NME, Pigeon Post, Artrocker. Here is a little taste of the day…
So, moving on from that. PYT news.
Number one, the bad news. Due to all of the other work we’ve had on, the new issue of the PYT zine is going to be a wee bit late. Rather than coming out at this week’s PYT at Common (Wednesday night, 8 till midnight, fun fun fun!) The new zine is looking ace, so will be worth the wait. It’ll be out at the start of June rather than the end of May – sorry folks.
ONTO THE FUN STUFF!
This week isn’t just a PYT on a Wednesday week, it is also a return to PYT putting gigs on week! We have got some ace ace bands coming to play, and we are dead excited! SO, Thursday =
Pull Yourself Together presents…
Foxes! – ‘the first attempt in musical history to wrangle winsome C86 indie with prog rock’ Alexis Petridis, The Guardian
Curly Hair – ‘I love it, I absolutely love it… an absolute delight!’ Marc Riley, BBC 6Music
http://www.myspace.com/wearecurlyhair
Saki Bar (Upstairs)
Wilmslow Road, Rusholme
Thursday 27th May
8pm – £5 / £4 with an animal t-shirt!
To celebrate the Bank Holiday we are heading over to Eurocultured where the lovely folks from Red Deer Club are hosting the Arch stage, and have asked us to come along and play some songs in between the ace bands they’ve got playing, including PYT favourites Young British Artists! Again, it’s £5, and that’ll get you into all of the stages all day.
And finally, another gig we are involved in. If you’ve been over to our website in the past couple of months you’ll know that we love both The School and Hexicon. The School play the best 60s tinged girl-pop around – if you’ve not seen them before we can guarantee you’ll fall in love. Hexicon are well worth a watch too, so don’t miss ’em! Friday 4th June: Postcards from Manchester present… The School and Hexicon at Saki Bar
WOW. I was sat having a brew on Friday last week, listening to Steve Lamacq’s wonderful show on 6Music, as we usually do of an afternoon in PYT Towers. From nowhere Steve started talking about how nice it was to get a proper printed fanzine in the post, and you could hear him flicking through one in the background. It was only our blooming zine he was talking about! Given that Steve is one of our heroes we are over the moon that a) he likes the zine and b) he gave us a plug on the radio!
If you want to give it a listen you can do here for the next few days, it is about 39 minutes into the show!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s6l03
“A lot of 6Music listeners will like it, it’s nice, compact, tidy and free.” Steve Lamacq
If you are in and around Manchester you are probably more than aware that it is Sounds From The Other City festival this Sunday in Salford. Here at PYT we are absolutely delighted to be involved in the festival this year, co-curating a stage with the rest of the Postcards From Manchester team. We aren’t going to try and give you a full guide of who to see where and when, as there are loads of them knocking about already, with the guides at Erase Erase and Manchester Music being particularly good.
There are loads and loads of great bands playing all over the festival. Somewhat handily, ours is the last stage to open, so we get to see some other bands before we have to start working! The timings for the Postcards From Manchester stage, which is downstairs at The Old Pint Pot are below. We would also suggest keeping your eye out around the bandstand and our beer garden for extra secret sets…
11.15 The Rural Alberta Advantage
10.00 Islet
9.00 Windmill
8.15 Help Stamp Out Loneliness
7.00 Just Handshakes (We’re British)
6.00 The Cavalcade
DOORS: 6pm till 1am – Underachievers Please Try Harder + Pull Yourself Together + You! Me! Dancing! disco after the bands!
If you want to get into the atmosphere here is a Spotify playlist with a taste of our stage. Tickets are really close to selling out, we’d suggest rushing to Piccadilly Records, Common, Fuel or clicking here pronto to make sure you don’t miss out!
PS – Unfortunately The Lovely Eggs have had to pull out. We will be working on getting some other great stuff going on in and around our venue to make up for this!
In the summer of 2007 a friend asked me whether I wanted a vinyl or CD copy of an album for my birthday. He gave me no indication of what the album was, or who it was by, other than that this band were going to be my new favourite band. He was right. Within one play, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters (on record by the way) by The Twilight Sad was firmly placed in the top bracket of my record collection. The Twilight Sad are the perfect mix of mournful feeling, visceral energy and sheer punctuated noise for me. A few weeks later they tore apart The Phoenix on Oxford Road, and their incredible live show confirmed everything I thought about the band.
Skip forward to 2010, and the band are touring in support of their second LP, Forget The Night Ahead. This is where we can excitedly step in, and offer one of our readers the chance to experience the band live at their upcoming show at The Ruby Lounge on Thursday 25th March. It’ll be bloody brilliant.
So, to be in with a chance of winning the tickets just answer this dead simple question – Which Yeah Yeah Yeah’s track did the band cover on the Killed My Parents and Hit the Road EP? Aim your answer towards hello[at]pullyourselftogetherzine[dot]co[dot]uk. We’ve also got a couple of copies of Forget The Night Ahead for two runners-up. We’ll have to close the competition at midnight on Wednesday 24th when we get in from Pull Yourself Together at Common, and will email the winner on Thursday morning.
PYT are very excited to be joining up with David of Asparagus Next Left for our brand new indie-disco clubnight You! Me! Dancing!
A simple proposition. You! Me! Dancing! We aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, we just want to play great popsongs so that you can have a good old dance on a Saturday night.
Don’t expect (much) pretentious waffle. Don’t expect any cheesy floor fillers. Do expect Pull Yourself Together and Asparagus Next Left DJs to be playing cracking music from the likes of Belle & Sebastian, Los Campesinos!, Dutch Uncles, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Lovely Eggs, British Sea Power, The Divine Comedy, Deerhunter, Au Revoir Simone, Sky Larkin, Art Brut, Blur, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, The Lightning Seeds and more!
If you are looking for a great disco party in the middle of the Northern Quarter then Night & Day is only place to be on the first Saturday of the month!
Launch Night is this Saturday, 6th March – featuring guest DJs Underachievers Please Try Harder!
11pm – 2am
£3 (or £2 with valid NUS)
Hello there! Welcome to Pull Yourself Together, it is lovely to see you.
We are in the process of sorting out this little website, so bear with us if it doesn’t all look quite right yet; we are far better at writing the words than making it look pretty! One of the main things that you will spot is that we have got loads of interviews up. These are all people that we have interviewed for the PYT fanzine in the past couple of years, and make for good reading. Hit the ‘Interviews’ category over there on the left to find them all.
Cheers,
PYT xx
Pull Yourself Together Zine 