July 2008 (List all)
 

We are Shirley - July Edition

Shirley Shows

Sat 5th – Melting Pot @ The Jericho Tavern, Oxford
Thurs 24th – Native Tongue, Epsom

A look ahead to August...
Fri 1st – Port Mahon, Oxford
Sat 2nd – Arcane Festival
Thurs 14 – Jericho Tavern, Oxford

For full details, and in case of cancellation, visit http://www.myspace.com/shirleytheband before travelling.

News

The Children of Helen House
On Friday 25th we are doing a gig for the teenagers of Helen House, where our drummer Sanna works. The show will be filmed by the BBC and featured in their follow up to the hugely successful series ‘The Children of Helen House’, which was first screened in 2007.

Set up 24 years ago by the visionary Sister Frances Dominica, Helen House in Oxford was the world's first centre to provide respite and end of life care for children with life-shortening conditions. Helen House has transformed the world's attitude to the care of children with life-shortening conditions. In an age which fears illness and death, the community has shown that a short life does not have to be a tragic one.

National Anthem
Our post Twickenham trauma inspired us to compose a piece of music that would be perfect as a National Anthem. We got a tip off that Anguilla in the Caribbean didn’t have one, so we approached Lenox Proctor, their Director of Youth and Culture, only to discover that they use ‘God Save The Queen’. Undeterred we have contacted David Kendall, a leading world expert in the field of National Anthems and are awaiting a response as to whether any countries out there might be interested in hearing our composition!

Studio
We’ve just been back in the studio with the legendary Geez’ to record ‘Killer on the run’ and ‘Desert Sky’. Just waiting for final mixes.

It could be You!

This month’s lucky winner of the Shirley prizedraw is Charlotte Mills.
Don’t forget everyone on our mailing list gets automatically entered each month, so don’t miss out, make sure you’re signed up. (http://www.shirleymusic.co.uk)

A lot of People have been asking us...

Why it wasn’t us stepping out in front of 60,000 at Twickenham to support Bon Jovi this weekend just gone. Certainly it remains a mystery as the public vote on the website of The London Paper clearly showed us as having qualified for the slot with 22% of the vote. Our commiserations go out to ‘My Friend Eject’ who came first and also walked away empty-handed and undoubtedly equally mystified and distraught. It was a tough one believing that we’d done it, only to find out a day later that we hadn’t. Worse than the dubious official final result was the fact that we were told the result would be made public at midday last Thursday. Three hours later there was still no news. The fact that the paper had a feature on the result of the competition that very day, this unbearable suspense was totally unnecessary and avoidable as they would have known the outcome much earlier in the day in order to make the going to press deadline. Unforgivable.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all our fans and friends who voted for us, especially the hard-core who went to such extreme lengths to help us get one of the coveted slots and we recognise and appreciate that a lot of you have made your dismay known to the organisers. We have informed Bon Jovi, not though sour grapes, but rather that they be made aware that a competition run in their name and that meant so much to all the bands involved was run in such a dubious fashion. Hopefully something similar can be avoided in the future with a fairer system than public voting, which is always thwart with underhandedness. In fact when the competition was first announced a public vote was not even on the agenda.

We applaud the spirit of fellow finalists ‘The Meenies’ who are looking to organise an event for the 18 bands who made the final cut, but missed out. We’ll definitely be getting involved.

List all Shirley newsletters