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Tuesday 14th April 2008 - After a year out of action, Lap Records is back!! We have a bunch of forthcoming releases for 2008, including the debit LP from 3-piece swamp-garage-rockers Long Bone Trio, and a single by The Shame. There's also a few LPs "in the can" by The Deets and Mr Jason, both of who are me. Also there's still a scheduled Animal Planet debut LP, with a load of previously unreleased or recorded songs. That might not appear for another few years though at this rate.

Saturday 28th April 2007 - Sorry for the lack of activity for nearly 9 months. To cut a long story short, we spent every day from May til September 2006 building our new recording studio (Old School Studios) by hand. We've now been open since mid-Sept 2006, and are very busy recording lots of cool bands there. We also took a 6 month break from promoting our weekly Planet Beet gigs from June 2006, but we re-started them in December 2006, back where they started, at The Priors Inn, Bury St Edmunds, and we'll soon be having our 250th gig celebrations, which may include our 3rd FREE LIMITED EDITION COMPILATION CD, so keep checking back here and on the Planet Beet and Old School Studios websites.

The idea for our 3rd compilation is to have all the bands that have appeared on our radio show (YES, we also do a weekly radio show!) sofar. It remains to be seen if we have the time to get this CD done, or the money to do it (cos it'll be given away FREE again), but if it does happen, here's some of the artistes that will appear on it:
The Shadow Project, The Morning People, Rosalita, Fingersmith, The People's Choice, Al Lindsay, The Four Kicks, Minute Before Dusk, Social Group, The Foster Kids, Monroes, Cheeky Cheeky & The Nosebleeds, Fuzzface, Citizen Band (formerly CORD), On The Balcony, Neil Rayson, Steph Hope (from Comic Book Heroes), Bathwater, Killola, The Lost Levels, and a bunch more bands who we haven't YET recorded. Our radio show is called "BTR Live @ Old School Studios, UK" and it goes out every week on BREAKTHRU RADIO in the USA. Or rather, it's on the internet, so once the show's online each Saturday you can go and listen whenever you like, and even download it. The station gets 600,000 listeners per day, and they had 80 MILLION listeners in their first year online, so it's a pretty cool thing to be involved with. You can find direct links to all our shows on the Planet Beet and Old School Studios websites.

We have MORE news for you lucky people:
We'll be releasing the debut single by young indie-pop tykes "Social Group" towards the end of the summer. We start recording in a few weeks time. Check them out, either on their Myspace, or by listening to the radio session that they did for us.

And even MORE news:
The Mr Jason LP has been put on possibly indefinate hold, as he/I now has a new band called "The Deets", whose set includes a bunch of Mr Jason songs. Don't miss their debut gig on Saturday 16th June for Planet Beet. This gig also happens to be my/his Birthday Party, so please come along and give him/me/them your support. Also playing that night will be our new signings Social Group (mentioned above), and there'll be solo acoustic sets from Sammy Ault and Al Lindsay. Check the Planet Beet site for details and for tickets.

Saturday 12th August 2006 - BBC Radio One are playing "Takeaway" by Mr Jason on Tuesday 15th August on their OneMusic show, which is presented by Huw Stephens from 11pm-1am, so tooooon in! The show will also be available online to listen to for 7 days after the broadcast. www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 CLICK ON ONE MUSIC

"It will also be included in Radio 1's Best Of Unsigned Podcast which can also be downloaded from the Radio 1 website. The podcast is available for download on Tuesday 15 August . The more people that subscribe to it, the higher it gets in the podcast chart..and the more people get to hear your music..so mail this link out to as many people as possible and watch it snowball!" (that's Radio One's wording by the way)

They've also asked Mr Jason to cover Suspicious Minds, by Elvis Presley, which Mr Jason has indeed done, and that will be played on OneMusic's special cover versions show in a few weeks, so listen out for that too. ALSO, there will be a Mr Jason track on the BBC's OneMusic website for free download. It'll be up for about a month, so grab it while you can.

Monday 8th May 2006 - We have a few upcoming releases in the works, at long last. Animal Planet and Mr Jason LPs are on the way, with the Mr Jason one looking to be finished first. Mr Jason's debut long player will be 10 tracks of pure quality. Animal Planet have yet to decide which songs will make their LP, but I'm sure it'll have all yr favourites. They're been in a bit of a writing frenzy actually, adding 6 new songs in the past few weeks, so there's an awful lot of songs to record. The first fruits of this is "Rebel In Sector G", which was recorded at our very own "Old School Studios" in Bury St Edmunds, and you can download the song from the Old School Studios website. Check out their websites for more details on each of them. In recent times, both the Mr Jason and Covert Stylist websites have turned into ".co.uk" domains, so update your favourites lists. There's also a long awaited Covert Stylist single on the way, although not quite yet, cos the stylist only has 2 songs for us at the moment, and we want 3 for the single. Value for money is our middle name/s!

Monday 28th November 2005 - Further to what I said below in the last update, I've added a listing on the "shop" page for our "Beetbox 2 - Electric Boogaloo" compilation CD. It was a 27 track CD compilation that we made happen in 2 days, including compiling all the tracks, mastering them, copying 200 CDs, designing the sleeve, getting it printed etc.. We then gave it away FREE at (what at the time we believed would be) the LAST EVER PLANET BEET gig, which took place on Thursday 28th July 2005 at Pot Black in Bury St Edmunds, after we'd just been chucked out of our venue of nearly 3 years, The Priors Inn (currently closed down). We'd been planning on having Planet Beet's 3rd Birthday celebrations at the end of August, but then found ourselves suddenly without a venue. Not wanting to let people down, we frantically searched the town, and sorted a venue for the "Last Ever Planet Beet", compiled the CD, booked a bunch more bands, to make the gig a real "event", and it ended up being a classic gig. The venue sold out very early on in the evening, and it was hot as hell in there. On the CD there were 27 tracks, including some funny hoax phonecalls by my friend Dave Richards (who sadly took his own life in 2004). There were also a bunch of songs recorded "live" at Planet Beet gigs, and I've put up MP3s of all of those on the "shop" page, so go and grab them if you don't already have them.

Monday 12th September 2005 - Sorry for the lack of Lap updates recently. I've been busy re-housing Planet Beet, and sorting premises for my new recording studio. We compiled a Planet Beet compilation CD called "Beetbox 2 (electric boogaloo)", which we gave away free at the last Planet Beet gig. It's not available for sale. It was strictly limited to that night. As soon as I've got some time I'll put info on all the bands from the comp onto a page on the website, with website addresses and stuff like that, cos I think they're all brilliant, and even though we put the comp together (including designing the sleeve, getting it printed, manually burning all the CDs etc..) in less than 2 days, I'm really proud of everything about it. Lots of the tracks on it were recorded "Live at Planet Beet" by me, and they sound fantastic! I might put those tracks up for free download actually. Yeah, that's a great idea! Feel free to remind me if I forget to do that soon...

OTHER NEWS: The Secret Hairdresser will be recording in late October and November in a few different places (hopefully in the new studio!), and have lots of brilliant songs to record. So expect a new TSH CD on Lap before the end of the year. There's talk of some of the new songs being used on Compilations, and Wrath Records might be releasing more TSH stuff. There's new Mr Jason and The Covert Stylist CDs being (occasionally) worked on, with no release dates planned yet. Animal Planet will eventually come back to life, and they still have over an Album's worth of unrecorded songs; all of which are potential singles. We're still planning to release the Volunteers "Live at Planet Beet" CD, but need to discuss it with the band and work out a release date.

Wednesday 2nd June 2005 - TSH's "School Of Hair" CD is now available on CD Baby, and here's the direct link to the LP's page. BUY IT NOW!!

Other News - It looks like we'll be releasing a "live" CD by Bury St Edmunds old-skool hardcore punks "Volunteers". It's a recording of their recent 2nd LP Launch gig at Planet Beet @ The Priors Inn. You can hear the band in one speaker, and the audience in the other, and it's really fun switching between both, or just one, or the other! More news on that once we've had a meeting with Volunteers to discuss the details, but I'm hoping it will be the whole gig, completely unedited, cos that's how I've been listening to it, and it sounds great like that.

Other News 2 - We've started compiling the 2nd in our Beetbox CD Compilation Series. It features a bunch of Jason's fave bands/acts that have played Planet Beet (since Beetbox Vol.1), and a bunch of special guests, including Montevideo (from Montpellier, France) and 2 projects that are offshoots of Jason's fave band, WEEZER!!! It will be out in time for Planet Beet's 3rd Birthday celebrations at the end of August.

Saturday 30th April 2005 - We've put together a compilation of Secret Hairdresser stuff to introduce TSH to those that are only just discovering the band. The LP features tracks from the last three TSH singles, (including the forthcoming Wrath Records 7" single "Copier") and some other recordings that haven't been officially available til now. There's 12 songs in all, and this LP will be available exclusively from the CD BABY Website. The songs will be available seperately as digital downloads from iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster etc.. Check the "Shop" page for tracklisting and song clips. There WILL be a direct link to the LP's page on the CD Baby site, but that won't be up for a few weeks. We'll let you know when it's there.

Thursday 21st April 2005 - I've now changed loads more of the site, added some buttons and pages, that kind of thing..

Tuesday 19th April 2005 - I've re-worked the whole website, to get it to look better in different size windows and to also make it more easy to update for me. I've also set-up the new Lap Records Pocast feed. The idea is, you get download Podcast software (I recommend iPodder), and "subscribe" to our feed. We'll be adding free mp3s to the feed when we feel like it, without warning or announcement, and if you're subscribed you can download them. You can even set iPodder's scheduler to automatically download them for you, so you don't have to keep checking the website or anything like that. I think that's pretty damn cool!! Try it out by clicking the Podcast button to the left there.

The Secret Hairdresser have a bunch of gigs coming up in May to promote the release of the "Copier" single. Check out the "Tours" page for the latest confirmed gigs. I've been working on new songs for forthcoming releases by both Mr Jason and The Covert Stylist. There's 7 Mr Jason songs sofar, probably 5 of which will go on the next CD, and the rest will be available for download as free BONUS tracks for those that buy the CD. There's one finished new Covert Stylist song, and one that I started yesterday, which is sounding great so far. Needs a lot of work though. Animal Planet is out of action for a while, but will be back eventually. There's yet more brilliant reviews on the AP, TSH and Mr Jason sites by the way.

Sunday 13th March 2005 - Our next release is looking like being a new Mr Jason E.P. The first one (I'm Leaving) only got great responses, and this one has suddenly crept up on us without us knowing that it was even being made. Jason has of course played, sung & recorded everything, apart from a special guest appearance from The Secret Hairdresser's Lotty on bass for 2 songs (Takeaway, & The Bells). Newest song, "Blame It On The Bottle" is 2/3 complete, and The Bells has vocals ready to be recorded, once inspiration strikes. It'll probably be 5 tracks again, although there may be a bonus track...

The Secret Hairdresser's song "Copier" (from their recent "We Did It On Purpose" CDr single) is featuring on a split single with Stuffy & The Fuses, as part of Wrath Records excellent "Super Sevens" 7" singles club. You can subscrie to the new scheme through mail order (just send us a cheque for £18 to: Wrath Records, The Cardigan Centre, 145-149 Cardigan Road, Leeds LS6 4LJ stating your name, address and email), or online right now at the following location: http://www.oxfordmusic.net/product.php?id=28&cat=s
You will get a whole series of SIX very limited and delicious split 7" vinyl releases featuring the might of the Wrath roster plus some rather interesting and distinguished guests. At the end there will be a CD compilation of the whole shooting match. These first two (including TSH's) should be ready by the end of April.

Mon 31st January 2005 - The brand new TSH CD "We Did It On Purpose" is on the "Buy" page. 3 solid gold tracks for £2. We've had reports of people seeing the Animal Planet single in various huge record shops around the UK, so that means that Backs/Shellshock Distribution are doing their job, which is a relief. I've updated the "Buy" page with track titles and MP3 clips, so that you can try before you buy.

Tue 18th January 2005 - Both TSH and A.P have gigs coming up, and have plenty of new songs, and both are also planning on recording some of the backlogue (?) of unrecorded songs in the coming month. The official European Release Date for A.P's Special Care single is 24th Jaunary, so it remains to be seen as to whether anyone actually buys it, hehe. If you know of any decent music magazines that would review it, please give us their contact details.

Thu 16th December 2004 - The Secret Hairdresser & Animal Planet came 1st & 2nd in Burysound 2004. On principal, we're not fans of band comps, but the extra equipment that TSH can now buy will help both bands with rehearsals and recording. Handy! TSH plans to record a whole load of songs early 2005, and if we can raise enough money we'll be releasing some of them in some form.

The Animal Planet singles are now in the hands of the Distributors, so it's fingers crossed that they manage to sell some.

Tue 9th November 2004 - EXCITING NEWS!!! We've just sorted distribution out! Lap Records are now distributed by BACKS & SHELLSHOCK!! This will mean that our records will be available all over the UK & Europe, and maybe even USA and other places. Chances are you'll have to go into your local/not-so-local indie record shop and order them, unless they decide to stock them, but it's the best news I could have hoped for today. Because of the time you have to allow for the distributors to schedule & sort stuff out, a provisonal release date has been set for Animal Planet's "Special Care" single of Monday 24th January. This is so that it doesn't get lost in the Xmas rush, and to leave enough time for Backs to try their best to persuade shops to buy it. Also, we have to stick barcodes onto every CD case, which will take us a while, hehe. We're very excited about this. By the way, new Special Care reviews are cropping up all the time, so goto Animal Planet's Website to keep uptodate.

Fri 15th October 2004 - Apologies for lack of recent updates. TSH and Animal Planet have both been very busy. TSH have played numerous gigs (including Norwich, Leeds & Bury St Edmunds this week), and AP have their new single out, and have also played gigs (also in Leeds & Bury St Edmunds funnily enough). Reviews have started appearing for AP's Special Care single, which is nice, and there will continue to be more, and some interviews later in the year. Fingers crossed for radio plays..

So, next plan is to continue trying to sort distribution for Lap Records, and then early 2005 we'll hopefully release TSH's debut single (if we can get the money together), which we're very excited about! Single only lose money unfortunately, but the thing is, we don't have any plans to release any LPs yet, so whether or not we survive is up in the air at the moment..

Tue 19th Aug 2004 - The forthcoming Animal Planet single is almost ready for the manufacturing factory. The video is finished, and funny, with talking stuffed monkeys and everything! The CD sleeve is nearly finished. The B-sides are finished, and include a song that Jason & Tasha improvised onto a walkman about 5 years ago in Jason's old flat.

Weds 16th June 2004 - The release date for Animal Planet's Special Care single will be Monday 27th September. The Launch Party will be Friday 24th September at The Priors Inn (of course), Bury St Edmunds. A.P will be recording the single's B-sides in 2 weeks time, and the Video will start to take shape in July.

Sun 23rd May 2004 - We've found a local company to manufacture our CDs, which is dead handy.

Thur 13th May 2004 - Mr Jason has his own brand new website! www.mrjason.tk. Also, the Animal Planet site has had a total revamp. www.animal-planet.co.uk.

Sat 8th May 2004 - The video for Animal Planet's "Special Care" is gonna be made by Lunafish Productions. They'll be filming the next 2 A.P gigs, and filming a bunch of other stuff, and hopefully something good will come out of it.

Weds 28th April 2004 - Things are moving ahead. We're now sorting out boring stuff like Distribution, Press, Pluggers etc... Also we have to work out how we're gonna make the video for the Animal Planet single. We may re-format it, and call it "Special Care" after the main track, and record new B-sides, cos we think that the other songs from "Volume 2" ("Action Station" & "Part 2") are maybe worthy of being future single A-sides in their own right. So, we'll record a bunch of songs after the next few gigs, and see what we think. Anyone got any ideas for a video? If so, email us at jason@laprecords.co.uk, or I might put a Lap Records forum on the Planet Beet site...

The 2nd Lap Records release will probably be something by The Secret Hairdresser. We're planning to record a whole load of songs after the next gig. These songs will probably include:

Rock 'n' Roll Rejection, My Lovely Assistant, Taurus, I'm Leaving, What's The Point, Leap Of Faith, That's The Thing, Coulda Shoulda Woulda.

Sat 10th April 2004 - We're planning to turn Lap Records into a "proper" record label, rather than just releasing CDrs. This will hopefully include making cheap, crappy videos for our singles, and getting CDs (and hopefully vinyl t some stage) pressed up professionally, cos CDrs just aren't taken seriously, no matter HOW BRILLIANT the music is. Our first proper release is looking like being ANIMAL PLANET's "Volume 2" single, cos we think it's just toooo good to be ignored. Lucy (from The Secret Hairdresser) has joined Animal Planet, so that their gigs will now have the extra moogs and harmonies that their recordings do.

Thur 8th Apr 2004 - Our website address is now www.laprecords.co.uk, which is exciting, probably only for us...

Weds 7th Apr 2004 - We're getting a small-but-regular stream of orders for CDs now. We have some SERIOUS plans for Lap Records, but it relies on MONEY, which is something we're not at all familiar with... Fingers crossed...

Weds 10th Mar 2004 - Me, Anna & Lucy spent last night copying CDs, printing and cutting out sleeves, writing on CDs with marker pens, and writing press releases for the most recent LAP RECORDS Releases. It was really fun, and I might even put the BIOGs on the site, cos they're so entertaining!

Sun 7th Mar 2004 - We have 2 new releases for you:

And we've also put ANIMAL PLANET's "Volume 1" & "Volume 2" CD singles on the site. All 4 CDs are now on sale on the "BUY" page.

Mon 12th Jan 2004 - You can now buy The Secret Hairdresser's "Hairdressing For Everyone" CD from the "Buy" page. We'll soon be adding Animal Planet's "Volume 1" & "Volume 2" CDs, and a new Animal Planet badge...

Mon 16th Nov 2003 - There is now lots of things to buy on the, wait for it, "BUY" page!!! The Beetbox CD has sold out. There are Badges and CDs from The Secret Hairdresser and Animal Planet. There'll be a brand new Animal Planet CD on there as of next week.

Mon 25th Aug 2003 - Well, the All Dayer went well, and people love the CD. No plans to put anything else out for now, apart form maybe another TSH or Animal Planet CDr (both bands have tons of new songs)...

I've decided to give away the remainder of the "Beetbox" CDs for free! I've already lost a lot of money, but I think the bands on the CD should be heard, so if you haven't got a copy (PLEASE don't ask for one if you already have one) then ask for one at a Planet Beet gig, or they're also available from Hardcore Hobbies, St Johns Street, Bury St Edmunds.

Those of you in or around East Anglia might have been to some of the PLANET BEET nights at The Priors Inn in Bury St Edmunds. Well, the next Lap Records release will be a compilation CD to celebrate Planet Beet's 1st Birthday. The comp will feature my personal fave bands that have played gigs for us, as well as some bands that I think you should hear, and also a few bands that will hopefully be playing gigs for us in the future.

release date - Sunday 17th August 2003 - (it'll be FREE at the PLANET BEET 1st BIRTHDAY ALL-DAYER (at The Priors Inn, West Rd, Bury St Edmunds.), then it'll be on sale for a few quid at all our gigs.

mohair (watford), we start fires (darlington), donderevo (cambridge), antihero (stratford-upon-avon), stars of aviation (brighton), cord (norwich), the exiles (bury st edmunds), the vaults (stowmarket), cosy cosy (cambridge), bouvier (cambridge), real shocks (scotland), the visit (cambridge), tyro (from atlanta, usa), traening (from copenhagen, denmark), tinear (from philadelphia, usa), um (cambridge), opposite the hotel (bury st edmunds), and of course my 4 fantastic bands: the secret hairdresser, animal planet, volunteers & the covert stylist (all based in bury st edmunds).

The CD is going to include a photo by Anna B (planet beet dj). It'll be FREE at the All-Dayer initially, and then if there's any left they'll be onsale for £3. We'll be fitting as much as possible on the CD, so it'll be nearly 80 minutes of brilliant music, and a true bargain. It might be distributed nationally, but fundamentally it's "A LOCAL CD FOR LOCAL PEOPLE".