Sky TV’s hot new channel ‘Red TV’ have commissioned Live and Unsigned; the national competition involving thousands of talented contestants around the UK. SKY TV will be covering the regional finals across the UK and the National Grand final in London in a series to be broadcast starting 22nd April.
Battling it out in regional finals everywhere, the contestants will be filmed and broadcasted on SKY TV’s new ‘Red TV’ channel at their best – Live! Live and Unsigned has been chosen and commissioned by Sky TV for its excellent exposure for undiscovered and original artists. The program has been granted primetime broadcasting with time slots on Tuesday and Saturday evenings between 8-9pm from April the 22nd 2008.
These programs will follow the competition’s live finals, alongside the undiscovered artists hoping to make it through to the Grand National final held in London in June. As well as interviews with judges from the music industry, the program will give its audience a chance to get to know the acts and witness their development through the final stages. Everything from the competitive live shows and performances to the crowning of the Live and Unsigned winning act will be exposed, including all the back stage gossip!
Live and Unsigned is a national music competition for unsigned bands and singers to compete live. It stands as the biggest music talent search for original music in the UK. The difference with Live and Unsigned is that the acts taking part are encouraged to do their own thing; be individual, original, perform their own genre and style Live.
Chris Grayston, Events Director of Live & Unsigned explains “This cannot be compared to any other talent searches as the acts talent is the show. We are interested in discovering and exposing talent at its best; live! It is as simple as we say Get Live, get signed.”
Red TV on SKY 186 is committed to showcasing new Talent from around the UK, existing shows like “Maddy’s Got Talent” have received a thoroughly positive response. Now Red TV are eager to expand this genre by Nationally Broadcasting the 2008 Live and Unsigned competition. Producer Pablo Garcia said “this will be a huge show, this is an established talent show with national following and Red TV are very pleased to be bringing the 2008 series to the TV Screen”
The contestants featuring in this program are from over 10, 000 registered competitors that applied in the hope of being crowned the UK’s best ‘Live and Unsigned’ act of 2008. Witness the surviving contestant’s battle for the final, with the possibility of grabbing that break through recording contract. The overall adult winner of the competition wins a Recording and management contract with Future Music with an investment of up to £20,000 to release their single with Future Music.
The series will also cover the all important climax of the competition; the Grand live National Final at Fairfield Halls, London on the 28th of June. With the best of unsigned British talent on display battling it out Live, this should not be missed!
OK, it’s been too long - especially as it’s over a week since our most important event so far this year.
In case you haven’t heard already, we performed at the Live & Unsigned Regional Semi-Finals on March 29 at St George’s, Bristol. We all had a really cool time, especially as we were joined by around 25 faithful friends, family and supporters on a coach for the evening. Beer was dispensed, laughter was heard and we did our thing on stage to the sound of cheering and people singing along.
Following a mention from the judges during an unscheduled pause in the show (that unfortunately we didn’t hear directly but fortunately did hear about a lot on the way home!), we waited backstage with the 14 other acts to await our fate.
Knowing we had done our best, we weren’t dreading or anticipating - we were just there, waiting until we heard our name called first by the presenters on stage… and after a split second as it sunk in, there were four cries of YES! from the humble members of The Knott as we bounded down the stairs to take our place in the Finalist line-up on stage.
We’ve already written new song for the final, called ‘Live In Doubt’, which we debuted on Saturday in the Town Centre - more on that in a minute. But basically we’re just so excited for the next stage now and we’re hoping we can better the supporter figures on 20th April this month. We’re doing well already having sold just over a third of the coach seats already. If you want tickets, email us using the address on our contact page. Tickets are just £15 including the coach and we may even chuck in some beer as well (should you wish to partake - it’s not obligatory). You can get tickets from us without the coach as well, just £7.50.
If you DO want to catch the coach though, please contact us quickly, these tickets are going fast. Especially since we found out on 3 April that Sky TV have just commissioned the rest of the competition to be broadcast in a series on Red TV (Sky 186) starting on April 22, 2 days after our Final.
We are only 1 performance standing between us and the National Finals, we can’t wait and it would mean a lot to us if you were there too!
OK, so what else has been going on? Well on Saturday 5 April, we performed outside The Parade as part of Frequently in Swindon. Swindonweb.com were there too, filming each band’s performance.
A video of our performance of Gone Fishing is below…
as well as the interview that we did with SwindonWeb…
And then, yesterday (Sunday, 6th) we went back into Brunel FM for a chat with them about the L&U competition, the results of which (in case you missed it) can be heard in their podcast on the website, although, again, I’m just waiting to receive an mp3 and I’ll be posting it here when I do. Also, make sure you listen during the evenings this week on 107.7FM in the Swindon area as you may just hear a couple of Knotty mentions during the prime-time shows - as well as a possible play of Gone Fishing.
Ultimately, we think the motto of this post is that we are blessed with great fans, great family and friends, great friends in the local media all of whom genuinely want to suppport what we’re doing and we can’t thank you all enough!
The Knott have made it through to the Regional Semi-Finals of the Live & Unsigned competition to be hosted at St George’s Bristol on 29 March and now we need people to come and help us get through to the final. The prize is a £20,000 recording investment to give us the ability to record and realease an album and a 100 date tour along with the other finalists. We want to win and we know we’ve got a shot if we can raise enough support!
The evening will be a showcase of all the regional semi-finalists and finalists will be chosen by a combination of audience votes and Judges’ points. Each audience member will be asked to vote for TWO bands that they want to go through to the final, but to ensure as good a chance as possible to succeed we need as many people as possible to make their way to Bristol that night.
Tickets are £6 each and because we appreciate that the distance to travel is going to be a negative factor for a lot of people if we can get 50 people from Swindon going, the band are going to supply a coach to get everyone there and back that night.
You can buy tickets from us at any of our upcoming gigs (see our artist page on Facebook or our myspace page for details of upcoming gigs as our giglisting here on this site isn’t currently working ) or if you’re not planning on coming to the gigs then email us in order to get details of how to buy them.
If you mark yourself as attending this event, we will contact you to let you know how to get hold of a ticket.
Don’t hang about though - we’ve only got a month to get this together so please, invite your friends, tell them about it even if you’re not planning to come yourself and spread the word.
OK, it’s been too long - especially as it’s over a week since our most important event so far this year.
And then, yesterday (Sunday, 6th) we went back into Brunel FM for a chat with them about the L&U competition, the results of which (in case you missed it) can be heard in their podcast on the website, although, again, I’m just waiting to receive an mp3 and I’ll be posting it here when I do. Also, make sure you listen during the evenings this week on 107.7FM in the Swindon area as you may just hear a couple of Knotty mentions during the prime-time shows - as well as a possible play of Gone Fishing.
) or if you’re not planning on coming to the gigs then email us in order to get details of how to buy them.