December Newsletter

It's December so it is okay to mention Christmas. Here are a few last minute present ideas.

If you're buying someone an MP3 player for Christmas, then you could load it up with a festive audio book or two. There's a range of them on my Bandcamp page including my readings of popular Charles Dickens Christmas tales.

A Kazoo Christmas with Steve Oliver is my debut album featuring ten festive favourites as you have never heard them before. It is released on my Bandcamp on Saturday 12th December and I ask everyone to share and tweet using the hashtag #kazooturday. The album will be free to download with the option to pay any amount you like.

This is the album cover

It is now too late to order t-shirts and bags for Christmas presents I am afraid, although they make nice presents any time of year, and the bags will pay for themselves by avoiding the 5p charge for carrier bags. It is also too late for a festive kazoo dedication video due to me not having the time, but worth considering for Valentine's Day?

As with all of my projects, all money raised will go not in my pocket but put straight back into creating short films, podcasts, comedy sketches, and documentaries that I will make freely available online in return for your gift. 

In other news:

The Random Saturday Sessions: Series one is all online now and at the time of writing this newsletter, episode two with Jay Brow is available now. There's an extended Christmas Special being released on Christmas Eve with Brett Sinclair, The Idolins, Gerry Trimble, George Gadd, Josh Kemp, Jay Brow, Alexa Hawksworth and a duet between Lisa De'Ville and Cibele. The version of 'Fairytale of New York' is something that has to be seen to be believed. 

The Sunday Alternative Podcast: Still going strong and available for free every Sunday, 2016 sees the fifth anniversary with a special concert. 

Steve Oliver's Nottingham Noise 2015 is a special four part podcast with my favourite releases from the city of my birth. The first part drops on Christmas Eve with the series continuing on Boxing Day, December 27th, and New Year's Eve.

Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol): Due to not having time to give it publicity, I will be postponing the release of the audio book until January 1st 2016, the perfect start to the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, if you buy one less drink when you go out and donate the money instead that would make a massive difference.

November Newsletter

Like it or not, Christmas is getting closer and so in the spirit of the season I am here to give you some present ideas. First though, the news.

The Random Saturday Sessions has kicked off and at the time of writing this newsletter there are two episodes already up from Paul Warnin and George Gadd. This doesn't cost anything to film (although it would be nice to have money available to pay everyone's travel expenses at least) but the editing is a time consuming process.

A Kazoo Christmas With Steve Oliver, my debut album, will hopefully be ready for release at the beginning of December. For financial reasons it will only be available as a download but with your help I could set aside some funding to make it available as a CD. LP, and cassette for Christmas 2016.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast will have reached 70 editions by the end of this year and there are no signs of me giving it up. Not only do I record and upload it for free, I also make it available for free. Everything I make will be available for free in return for your generous gifts.

Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be available very soon. It has been recorded and should be released early December as an audio book. If you're buying someone an MP3 player for Christmas, then why not load it on there as a bonus present. It'll be a free download with the option to pay what you want, and all the money goes into the fund to make entertainment for you.

The Sunday Alternative Live has finished for this year and may return if I have the time next year. Every band and musician has been brilliant but the project has been fraught with problems behind the scenes. My intention to make this into an online series has had issues from the start, both with the filming and the audio (I received two gigs worth of audio back - August and September - at the end of October). We are now working on getting them out as soon as possible and there's already one up to watch. All the door money was shared out between the artists and I took nothing, just saying.

Now for some shopping ideas!

The Sunday Alternative T-shirt, with or without the back slogan.

The Sunday Alternative bag helps you look cool and beat the 5p carrier bag charge.

T-shirt and bag are available from my shop page.

My audio books are all available from my Bandcamp page.

My books are all available from my author page on Amazon.

For £2 I will write a letter of complaint to the business of your choice, example.

For £5 I will record a cover of your favourite song on the kazoo, or maybe you'd like to dedicate a song to a loved one? Here's how.

Don't forget that all money raised goes into the fund to help make entertainment that I will make freely available. In the long run, it is better value than the TV Licence. 

BRAND NEW OFFER.

For £20 I will make a one-off unique cassette for you. Here's how it will happen:

1 - Hit the PayPal button and donate £20

2- I will receive an email notification from PayPal that contains your email address.

3- I email you to confirm receipt and to thank you.

4- You email me 10 songs of your choosing.

5- I record the songs for you with a special message and a bit of in-between song chat on a cassette that will be exclusively yours. Only one copy of this tape will ever be available*, you are free to share it online if you wish - it belongs to you.

6- I will make you a cassette sleeve that is just for your cassette and post it to you.

*One copy will be made and placed in my archive, this will never see the light of day, so not strictly unique but yours will be the original.

In 2016 I want to get cracking on a number of delayed projects that need your financial input, once made they will be available for everyone to enjoy free of charge. These projects include the delayed pilot episode of Saturday Breakfast (which will cost about £500 to make on the cheap), a radio drama in front of an audience that may pave the way for a series, a chat show in front of an audience which is provisionally a series of six episodes, an all day free entry gig on September 11th to celebrate five years of The Sunday Alternative, and of course the ongoing weekly Sunday Alternative podcast along with The Random Saturday Sessions series.

Please consider making a donation if you enjoy my daily blog or weekly podcast, either a one-off or a regular contribution would make a difference and enable me to make these projects a reality. If you can't afford to then please enjoy them anyway but make sure you share and tweet for me so that maybe someone you know can help. 

If you're a business and want to sponsor one of my projects then please get in touch. It could be the podcast or something else, email me and we'll talk.

Thank you.

Follow @SteveOliver76

steveEoliver@gmail.com

Like me on Facebook

August Newsletter

We are now in the eighth month of the year and at a standstill as far as work is concerned. In unrelated news, it is my birthday on the 27th of this month so a nice present would be a donation using the PayPal button. This would be spent on creating podcasts, documentaries, short films, comedy sketches and various other entertainments that I will make available to enjoy online for free.

The above t-shirt and bag is also available to buy, all the money goes to the same creative fund. They are on my shop page.

I'll play you a kazoo song request, find out how here.

Letter of complaint written for you for £2, here.

Fundraising news and kazoos!

The PayPal donations have been a bit thin on the ground just lately, (although I am grateful to those who have contributed) and I am trying to raise the funds to film a pilot for a cookery and music show among other things; those other things are:

• A live talk show filmed in front of an audience.
• A radio style drama, again in front of an audience, to be made available as a free download.
• The comic-documentary about Woolly and Worth, (the puppets from the Woolworths adverts) that has been on every bloody to-do list since 2009.
• A documentary about The Sunday Alternative (possibly to be screened in Nottingham and London) to commemorate the fifth anniversary in 2016, which will be extra special because it lands on a Sunday.

There are other things too and they cost money, not a fortune - I'm not trying to remake Star Wars or something, (I'd remake American Graffiti, the best film George Lucas made), but more than you'd think. Although I will be using the money to create all sorts of stuff (comedy sketches, documentaries, podcasts, short films, musical projects, art installations) that will be available to enjoy for free. Even if you paid £2 a month that is helpful to me, and more value for you than your TV licence. Ideally I would like to be able to draw a modest wage (I don't have a lavish lifestyle) and go full time self-employed but that is for the future, if I'm lucky.

There's a range of ways to donate by buying something over on my shop page, but I have come up with an idea.

For every donation of £5 or more, you get to request a song. I will film myself playing your request on the kazoo and post it on YouTube with a dedication to you. I am Nottingham's premier session (kazoo) musician and some people* call me the 'beating heart of Soft Silly'.

Just hit the PayPal button and donate £5 or more. The notification email from PayPal will contain your email address so I will write to you as soon as I can to ask for your song choice which I will then record just for you.

Deal?

The Record Store Day Video (working title)

The filming of The Record Store Video (working title) is going ahead (all going well) on the weekend of Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th March, and will be released on YouTube on the day itself. It's a short video about the ethos of RSD and my opinion thereof.

We are doing this on a reasonably low/none existent budget but as always could use a little help. Please do consider making a donation via the PayPal button above to help towards this and other entertainments, all of which will be available to enjoy completely free of charge online. If you can afford to give something then please know that it is much appreciated. If you can't afford to give anything then please could you share/tweet/Facebook the life out of it when it comes out?

Thank you

The Sunday Alternative needs you!

I am always looking for ways to improve the podcast and keep it constantly evolving as it is now in the fourth year of operation. To bring back the feeling of the old radio show I want to start doing it from a studio with facilities to host live music sessions and extending the podcast to an hour or more.

Here's the request for help:

I am looking for a studio that can help, the podcast would have to be recorded in the week and edited together before the finished audio is handed over for me to upload on Sunday morning as usual.

This needs to be a fairly long term project and I will want to agree on a legally binding contract. I want to be safeguarded against cancellations that are not my doing.

I will negotiate on the studio costs, and will be willing to run an advert for the studio within the introductions and name-checks; "This is the Sunday Alternative podcast recorded at (studio name and address, website, twitter handle) studios..."

I will retain all copyright on the podcast and the audio archive will not be kept by the studio.

With this in mind, I am once again shaking the collection tin. The podcast will now incur costs BUT will still be made available as a freebie to listen to and download. Please consider buying something from the 'Shop & Donations' page or making a donation using the PayPal button above. Whether you donate a penny, pound, or more, it all helps and I thank you in advance for it.

If you have a studio and would like to get on board, please email me steveEoliver@gmail.com 

Music and Cooking!

I have had the go-ahead to make a pilot episode of a music and cookery show that will hopefully become a series, either later this year or in 2016. The series has been mentioned on my blog in the past, and unless I can come up with a better title it will be known by its working title of Saturday Breakfast.

When/if it becomes a series, Saturday Breakfast will appear on YouTube every Saturday morning, and will provide live music and a breakfast recipe. Let’s face it, there just isn’t enough cookery in the media is there! The pilot episode will appear on YouTube but more importantly it will be used as the video on Indie Go Go to raise the money needed to make a full series.

Blue Vulture are the band appearing in the pilot, Oliver Smith Productions will be filming it and doing all the technical stuff, and the highly recommended Café 101 have allowed us to use their premises.

There are inevitably a few expenses involved in making a show like this, so I politely ask you to consider making a PayPal donation. If you want something in return then I will send you an audio book or a copy of Bowie Day, just email me with ‘I paid a pound or more’ in the subject box and your choice from the Shop & Donations page in the body of the email.

Don’t forget that all the money that comes my way will be used to make this and other entertainment such as podcasts, comedy sketches, documentaries and loads more which will all be available free of charge.

Thanks in advance for your generosity.

Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol)

Today is David Bowie’s birthday and the day that my short story Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) is released. I have put the book on the Kindle after a lot of faffing around and it is still processing so who knows when it will get properly published. Not to worry, as I can let you have it anyway. All you have to do is donate one pound or more using the PayPal button above and then email me with ‘I paid a pound or more (Bowie)’ in the subject line, I will send it straight to you by email.

As always, this money will be used to create free online content such as podcasts, comedy sketches, documentaries, and short films. Feel free to donate at any time out of the goodness of your heart, or claim something for your money with something from this list.

My email is steveEoliver@gmail.com

The T-Shirt Wearer's Guide To The Ramones

A one-off podcast explaining the band to people who bought a t-shirt in Primark (other cheap and nasty sweatshop clothes emporiums are available) despite having never heard a single Ramones track. This was concieved in February 2014, written in March and finally recorded on 24th June 2014 but has remained unreleased until now.

It is a free podcast for you to stream or download, although I do ask as usual that you consider the PayPal donation button. This will enable me to continue to provide free online entertainment.

The podcast is available from here.