Taking place at the Kings Cross Scala, there’ll be a popcorn cannon (really), live music from a Ukele cover band (no, REALLY) and Not Advised will be playing a set as well. For full details, and to download a flyer for discounted entry, head over to the event’s Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=156394571072466

Get your hands on CDs and t-shirts from the likes of Not Advised, Just Surrender, Pegasus Brigdge, The Morning Of and Portia Conn at special festive prices!

Forests keep with the trend with it being their first ever show but despite stating they’re nervous it doesn’t visibly show. They converse well with an understated crowd in both numbers and enthusiasm. They wake them up a bit with a much rockier sound than Page Avenue but struggle to hold my interest. They become a little more jam orientated towards the end with their first single ?Wolves? that they mention a music video has also been done for. They need to decide if this is how they want to be portrayed though and if not what they want to be known for. They lack any real type of emotion and certainly aren’t as hooky as I expect the bands that follow them to be. For a first gig though they do just fine but don’t leave a lasting impression.

2/5

They Sink Ships are the final support for the evening and I finally feel as if the night has begun. That’s a little harsh on the two acts before them but these guys really brighten up my evening. Despite not being the greatest technically they certainly make up for it in enthusiasm, especially vocalist Tom who starts to get very frustrated with a less then receptive crowd. There’s good variety here with a bit of synth on ?Good As Gold? however ?Tired Eyes? proves a highlight. This is possibly one of the hardest crowds I’ve seen at a Manchester gig but I definitely will enjoy hearing more of what these guys produce. They’re are one of many decent uk pop punk bands (Not Advised being another) currently trying to break through and good luck to them.

3/5

Not Advised finish things up tonight and it’s a shame they have to do without vocalist Jim with Ash taking over. This means we have a shorter set than normal (about 30 mins), under the circumstances this is understandable. All the recognisable favourites from ‘After The Fight‘ are on show though. ?Jane Says Left? really gets the crowd going and ?A Red Light Situation? goes down very well indeed and is my predictable favourite. Overall it’s a reserved crowd but there’s still a few rows who really get into it and Jim’s absence has been well hidden. The amount of exposure they’re likely to get from their tours later in the year with ?A Loss For Words? and ?Canterbury/Francesqa? will give a clearer picture as to just how far these guys can go. They’re definitely on their way to a good start though.

3.5/5

Jamie

Playing their debut EP ?After The Fight? in pretty much its entirety, tonight is a predictably hook-laden affair, despite the absent master of ceremonies .The lack of Jim?s energizer-bunny stage antics makes it a whole lot less of a visual spectacle, but to the rest of the Not Advised boys? credit (and special guest Canada Water?s Tom Macleod?s), they pull it off convincingly enough to keep a busy Academy crowd interested. Makeshift frontman Ash Oliver is more than equipped with the necessary vocal requirements to lead us all through rousing renditions of ?Right Now? and ?The World?s Not Ready? and by the end of it all even Jim manages to squeeze a smile side stage, impressed as we all are at team Not Advised?s contingency plan coming together.

Paul: Although you’ve been featured in a recent Kerrang! feature Not Advised has been going for a while now. Can you bring us up to speed of how you formed and how you’ve managed to get to where you are today?
Jack: When we were in school me, Andy and Greg started the band. Then we met Ash and Jim through other bands and created some sort of local super group! I honestly believe we’ve got were we are today through a hell of a lot of hard work. We understand that for a band to be successful you can’t just sit back and wait for things to happen, and so we’ve always made sure we’re doing everything we can be to make sure the band is moving forwards.

Paul: You’ve got a reputation as being one of the UK pop-punk scene’s hardest working bands. You tour a Hell of a lot – even though the internet makes it so much easier for bands to promote themselves, do you think getting out there and playing is still the best way to get known?
Jack: I think it varies from band to band. We’ve never been one of those internet buzz bands and for us that’s worked really well. It’s forced us to get out there, go on tour and build a fanbase. You have to be extremely lucky to be a successful band without putting in the touring and hard work, we realized that a long time ago and just decided we’d go out and tour constantly building a fanbase and making our own luck. Finally it seems to be paying off!

Paul: You’ve just released a brand new EP which is obviously brilliant. Are you surprised at how well it’s caught on with people? Does any part of you think ‘about time’ after all the hard work you’ve put in down the years?
Jack: We’ve been really humbled by the response we’ve had so far from the CD. We’re 100% happy with it ourselves but we never expected it to go down as well as it has done. A year ago when our band seemed to be getting nowhere I would have said “yeah it’s about time” but now things are on the up I don’t feel like that at all. That may seem a stupidly obvious thing to say but i’m glad we put in all the hard work and are slowly starting to see it pay off, it’s a really satisfying feeling and spurs us on to work even harder to get to the next stage. I know that any success we may have will be backed up by the effort that’s gone into this band. I’ll confidently argue anyone who tells me our band doesn’t deserve to be where we are.

Paul: What’s the story behind the mini-album title?
Jack: We were sleeping in the van in a service station last winter trying to come up with names for the CD. We knew that the CD had this whole underlying theme of the struggle of a band on tour and being the underdog but loving life and feeling passionately about something at the same time. We came up with nothing at first and then later on we were going through our lyrics and in “Right Now” there’s the line “You think you’ve won but we are never gonna fight you for this”. We thought that summed it up perfectly and so Fight For This was chosen!

Paul: I read somewhere that ‘Red Light Situation’ was so named because of an incident with traffic lights. That right?
Jack: Close, but not quite! There’s a red engine management light which keeps coming on in our van, it drops the speed of the van to 30mph on the motorway and we have to pull over onto the hard shoulder and bump start the van every time! The amount of times we’ve turned up late to a gig because we’ve hard to get out on the motorway in the pouring rain and push our van up some hill only for the same thing to happen 5 minutes later in unbelievable! Anyway the song is about how these “red light situations” are some of our best moments as a band and in the song we tried to convey that even though everything seems to be going wrong sometimes we wouldn’t change this for anything, and we’re having the time of our lives.

Paul: Why did you choose to self-release the EP? Did you have any other label interest?
Jack: To be honest it just seemed like the perfect way to release the CD. We had some offers from some really cool labels but when you’ve worked hard for years, put all of your savings into something and really given 110% it’s hard to give all the control to someone else. This way we got to set up our own record label and stay in complete control over every aspect of the release. I think in a way it makes sense for the CD to be released by us, we’ve written 5 songs about being a band on tour, working hard, doing things the right way and doing things for yourself and for me releasing it ourselves is the exclamation mark on what we’re trying to get across. For future releases we may well do something with another label, I just think this was the right thing for this CD at this point in time.

Paul: When you were looking to press the album did you think too much about how well it would do on CD and MP3 downloads? As a touring band do you find people still want to buy a CD at shows or has your merch expanded to try and make people buy other things to sustain life on the road?
Jack: To be honest we didn’t really have a figure to aim for with regards to sales because this is our first proper release so we’ve nothing to compare it to. We’ve been really happy with the amount of pre-orders but it will be interesting to see when it’s released how digital sales compare with physical sales. We’ve taken the CD on tour with us so our fans could hear it a month before the official release and although we’ve sold way more than we expected you definitely have to put the effort in these days to make a sale. We’ve found at least 50% of our CD sales at shows have been through us walking about with stacks of CD’s and asking people if they’re interested in buying one. So many times people say they want them right away and I always wonder whether they’d have come and picked up a copy from the merch table had we not approached them. With regards to keeping things interesting with merch we used to sell a lot more obscure things than we do now. When we didn’t have a CD we had to find other ways to make ends meet as lots of people don’t have the money at shows to buy a T-shirt at £10. We used to sell snap bands at shows which went down really well as they were a bit different and much cheaper than a tee. Plus it’s strangely addictive slapping them on your wrist! At the moment though we’re really just pushing the CD.

Paul: What’s the Southampton scene like? Any bands you’d recommend from down your way?
Jack: The Southampton scene keeps getting better and better. We had a time when it seemed no one was into local bands and gigs but now it’s thriving! I’d recommend everyone checks out Lost on Landing, Our Time Down Here, Waiting For Sirens, Bury Tomorrow, Ghosts on Pegasus Bridge, Burn The Fleet, Openroom and Mess of Mine

Paul: A lot of UK bands are starting to break out and get well known internationally – bands like You Me At 6, Gallows, The Blackout, Kids In Glass Houses… why do you suddenly think people are paying attention to bands who have been slogging it out on the toilet circuit for years?
Jack: I think a lot of it has to do with how accessible music and bands are today. One quick google search and you can find out everything about a band and probably hear their whole new album without going to see them liveand I think this makes it easier for bands on the toilet circuit to create hype on the internet without spending millions. I think this is a good thing, the fact that You Me At Six, a band who started in a similar scene to ours is now out on warped tour and selling out 3000 capacity venues in the UK is a great thing for UK pop punk, it gives us all hope that our bands can follow suit.

Paul: What’s next? Are you already writing for the next release? Any tour plans for the rest of 2009/early 2010?
Jck: We started writing our album already on the road last month. I think we’ll tour the rest of this year promoting the CD and probably release a new single from it later this year and try and find a cool way to release it. Then we’ll keep touring next year until this CD has run it’s course. Then hopefully we’ll go back to the studio and record the album and work on getting that out there.

Paul: If you have any last messages please leave them here!
Jack: Thanks for all the support we’ve been getting recently, we honestly appreciate it so much.

Please check out http://www.myspace.com/notadvised http://www.twitter.com/notadvised and http://www.facebook.com/notadvised

Also if you like what you hear please pre-order our CD at the following link, you’ll get 3 free bonus acoustic tracks making it 8 tracks for £5, I think that’s pretty good!

http://www.recordstore.co.uk/productdetail.jsp?productPK=unittest-7IpVhXyS7AKwCvSZpN3IEb-1