The DTs, top image

The DTs, a band from Robin Hood's Bay, Whitby and Scarborough, playing covers of good music you can dance to from the likes of: P J Harvey, The Beatles, Lipps Inc, Puddle of Mud, T Rex, Mud, Lo Fidelity Allstars, Bobby 'Boris' Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers, Hot Chocolate, Prodigy (oh yes), The Fugees, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Groove Armada, Louchie Lou And Michie One, SL2, Elvis, The Sugababes, The B52s, Odetta, The Temptations, Blondie, Lou Reed, Bob Marley, Macy Gray and Rogue Traders.

Want us to play near you? Email us: john@johnallsopp.co.uk or call 01723 376477.

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News history

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24 May 2007: Here's a panorama of the field in which the Falcon Festival will take place. The stage will be at the end of the field centre, to the right, the beer tent, behind the photograph, the stalls, and to the left loos. Over the wall towards the left of the picture and into the field beyond is where the parking and camping will be. Click to see the bigger picture.

Falcon Festival, the field, before

We've arranged fine weather for Saturday. If you want directions to the Falcon, try this.

We have developed since we last played. We are working on approaching the whole thing with a DJ's head, taking the best bits of the songs we play and merging them together to make longer pieces for people to dance to, so for the first time you'll hear us merge together Walk on the Wild Side with the Lo Fidelity All Stars' Battle Flag, and Macy Gray's Relating to a Psychopath with Groove Armada's I See You Baby. Plus, first listening of our cover of a Prodigy song. Now that's got to be worth seeing (John).

12 April 2007: I've uploaded some incidental pics of The Flask party. Lots of pics of the hand drummers, and lots of Jamie setting up, here. I've also made the pics link work better, it gives you ten randomly selected pics from the whole collection (John).

4 April 2007: What an amazing, inspiring night, thank-you to all who attended and played with us when we played at a private party on Saturday the 31st March.

We had asked people to bring hand drums along and we had a DJ, Morg. Morg started the night with some drum and bass, then we played our first set, this is where the magic began. After our first set Morg started dropping some techno beats in and a corner of the room picked up the hand drums and started working in rhythms along with Morg. I can't find the words to describe it, and I wish we could post the vid we took of the night but we can't.

Anyway, as we were about to start our second set, I asked Morg to work it up to a crescendo with the drumming and then to slowly fade out and we would morph into our first number Pscho by Macy Grey... John joined in on his electric drum kit, then Andy on Bass and then Jamie on guitar, it was sounding wonderful, so I turned to Morg and said fade now... 2 minutes later I turned to him again and said 'Please Morg, we want to get going with the set, would you fade out?' to which he replied 'I have!!' I was amazed and in awe of the sound that was coming from the band and the drumming in the corner. It was truly amazingly good! We were then able to slip into Pscho and the drumming continued over us and was a real plus to the sound of our set. A very experimental night, but one that I won't easily forget.

Thank-you again to all involved (Leafy).

30 March 2007: Well, we came 4th (out of 4) in the Battle of the Bands heat last night, but it's not as bad as it sounds. We were scored according to our sound, stage presence, songs and audience interaction by the other bands and a (secret) panel of independent judges. The most anyone could score is 175 (but the highest anyone has, so far, is 106), and the least anyone has scored so far is 30. Vivaz's Paul said the winning band in the first heat scored 86 points, and in the second heat the winner scored 106 points and the second band 98. In this, the third heat, we scored 73 points. With 86 points were Table For Four, Oscillator scored 98 points, and with 106 points The Forefathers. We certainly never expected to win anything over The Forefathers who have been doing their most excellent thing for five years, and the other two bands are studying for the local Music Technology degree. We've spent a year working on covers, and three practices working on the songs we did last night. But the points say we did a good job and we certainly enjoyed it. Quote of the night, from The Forefather's Steve "the last time I was in here I'd spent five minutes outside adjusting my lipstick". Well done to them, they absolutely deserved to win, it's an honour to know them (John).

27 March 2007: We appear to have had a clear-out of people. No big argument or anything, just natural subsidence. Kyle has his own projects so he hasn't been in for a while, but we recently decided Leafy ought to be our lead singer with Helen and Karen as backing, however Karen's now left so it's just Helen on backing. Jo is also finding much success on her own so is concentrating on that although she may still guest with us occasionally. Leanne, too, has left for family reasons (John).

7 March 2007: Alicia the photographer at Popp Pictures has put up some pics from our Vivaz gig here. I think prints are for sale, in case you want one up on your bedroom wall :-) (John)

7 March 2007: We've had another vote for new tunes. Top came Hot Ride, Prodigy. Oh yes! Second, Ready or Not, The Fugees. Then Scooby Snacks, Fun Lovin' Criminals. I see you baby, Groove Armada. Shout, Louchie Lou And Michie One. Tears of a clown. On the Ragga Tip, SL2. Groovy, eh? (John)

4 March 2007: The Rifle Club gig went really well and the night raised over £800 for Macmillan and a hospice (St. Catherines?). There is impassioned discussion among the DTs over whether Panda Lasagne were better than The Forefathers or vice versa. I advocate the former, but you'll have to read my own blog to get the full story.

We were cut short a little by the club opening later than the organiser really wanted, so we played about half an hour, starting with Sexy Thing, He Hates Me, Overload, Standing There, Loveshack, The Wind, and BattleFlag. Well done Rachel for organising it all (John)

26 February 2007: We enjoyed the Vivaz gig last night, I expect some pictures, videos and/or audio of the night will be published on upforit.tv in due course. I couldn't stay for the night, but German band Uniting the Elements seemed well sorted in the soundcheck and the beard-off (in which about ten real men (and one woman) who had grown noteworthy beards for the night received audience acclaim) went surprisingly well, so a good night: well done to Cap'n Ants for working it all out.

The setlist: She Hates Me (Puddle of Mudd), Voodoo Child (Rogue Traders), Relating to a Psychopath (Macy Gray), The Wind (P J Harvey), Battle Flag (Lo Fidelity Allstars) and 20th Century Boy (T Rex) (John)

19 February 2007: A piece appeared in the Whitby Gazette publicising the Cancer Relief gig on the 2nd March, so we know a bit more about it. Nice, we should get maybe three quarters of an hour or so. I imagine we'll be first or second so plan to be there early-ish. (John)

Whitby Gazette article on Cancer Relief gig, Rifle Club

14 February 2007: We present:- tunes for you to download. Go look, then click, then listen.

6 February 2007: We played The Grosvenor (Robin Hood's Bay) last night along with Colourfine (before us) and Coldshot (after us). Infidel's singer had lost his voice (and we were going to use their drum kit) so we used the electric kit as normal. All the feedback was good from our bit, apparently we reminded someone of The B52s (we do play Love Shack but didn't this time), sounded to someone else like The Clash (I hardly think so, but then we do combine rock with reggae), and to someone else we did She Hates Me better than the original. Nice. Well done for Leanne for organising it. I really liked Coldshot, who played after us.

The setlist was: 20th Century Boy (T Rex), Voodoo Child (Rogue Traders), She Hates Me (Puddle of Mudd), Overload (Sugababes), The Wind (P J Harvey), Three Little Birds (Bob Marley), Relating to a Psychopath (Macy Gray), I Saw Her Standing There (The Beatles), Red Dress (Sugababes), and Battle Flag (Lo Fidelity Allstars) (John)

24 January 2007: Apparently this page of drummer jokes is funny. Can't see it myself :-) Update: Mark said "I laughed out loud at the drummer jokes!!!" Careful. One could get upset. (John)

23 January 2007: We'd like to welcome any newcomers to our website, and with this being the first news this year, we'd like to wish you all a Happy New Year! We have recently updated the website and now have an 'about us' section, where you can view details on individual members of the group. Please feel free to email your comments about the band, the website or if you've seen us somewhere and have something you'd like to say, let us know and we'll post some views on the site. (Leafy)

17 December 2006: The Robin Hood's Bay Village Hall gig went really well. A huge thanks to Leafy for organising it.

We started the evening off, and straightaway hit a few problems when my (I'm the drummer, John, btw) amp failed halfway through the first song. Since the output from that went into the desk, I think it failed for the audience too. For the next song .. I play an electric kit .. there was no monitoring but we could feed drums to the audience, so what we heard was the drums echoing off the back wall with about a quarter second delay, which was seriously off-putting. But I could more-or less ignore that and just play along with Andy's bass but it was really disrupting for everyone. For the third song, Jamie'd worked out some monitoring for me and we were back on form. Behringers, eh? Mine's a KX1200, people said Behringer is unreliable, and this one has proved to be. It's not the first time it's failed, although it's the most spectacular.

The Forefathers followed, and then I think band of the night goes to Sludge Ghaut with their version of Last Christmas, with the audience up on stage doing mayhem backing. Magical.

Back with the Forefathers, and then us again. This time, we rocked, loads of people dancing, and both the other bands complimenting us on our set. We are very different things, but it worked really well. Here's to the next time .. so don't just sit there, get us a gig somewhere! (John)

15 December 2006: One of the people involved in the Whitby Rocks event said, unprompted, to one of us, that we were the best band of the night. Then someone else who we didn't know, stopped one of us in the street in Whitby and said how good they thought we were, she thought we were really different and very good. A work colleague of one of us said her dad said we were the best act he had seen in ages, and it turned out he was one of the sound men, so knew what he was talking about. Obviously other bands will have audience members with matching tastes saying the same things to them, but if people are coming up to us unprompted, they are really making an effort and that's a measure of how much they really did appreciate us. Wow. Thanks :-)

We practiced a couple of nights ago and it really was the best practice ever, we chose our best songs for the set on Saturday, everyone was there, and it really worked. I was so high from it when I came home I watched our bit of the video of Whitby Rocks, and our version of P J Harvey's The Wind, with extra rapping from ProJo .. it just blows you away. I can't help, every time I see it, but jiggle around in my chair. So we're on a high. Magical things may happen here. (John)

13 December 2006: We've been pranked. A friend works at the Scarborough Evening News, and I sent him an invitation to our Saturday gig. Which he then published! (John)

Scarborough Evening News writeup of Saturday

10 December 2006: On being asked about a set list for Saturday, Jamie's plan is revealed to be "yeah, I was thinking we could start with 8 mins 40 of bass feedback building to a crescendo of tribal drumming and shouting the phrase 'I think there's something wrong with the monitors' over and over again. Followed by an original version of the old classic 'Get the fuck away from the equipment with those drinks you drunken bastards." (John)

9 December 2006: Wow, last night's Whitby Rocks gig went very well and it really was a great night overall. The Forefathers stole the show for me (Andy, their bassist, is ours too), and Sludge Ghaut were good too (featuring our rhythm guitarist, Kyle, in figure hugging shorts). So we all decided to play together this coming Saturday 16th December. A special Christmas party at the village hall in Robin Hood's Bay. All welcome, £1 entry (to cover the cost of hiring the hall), bring your own booze. (John)

16 November 2006: Here's a press cutting about the forthcoming Whitby Rocks event. That's not us in the pic. (John)

29 October 2006: Last night's private party gig went really well, we got the room to dance which was brilliant. Check for pics here (it was halloween, so we dressed up). (John)

25 October 2006: We had a vote for some new tunes .. I was so excited. Anyway, maybe we'll work on six new ones so, in order, we plan to have a bash at:

  1. Battle Flag, Lo Fidelity Allstars
  2. Voodoo Child, Rogue Traders
  3. Mmmmm Bop, Hanson
  4. Three Little Birds, Bob Marley
  5. Red Dress, Sugababes

and then joint sixth were

You've gotta like some of that! Oh, and an Elvis Christmas song. It makes me smile so much :-) (John)

18 October 2006: We were graced at last night's practice by Jo from Con-fe-dance. She's a rapper. Did you see her at Beached? It was one of the highlights. She made a great contribution to our sound and it looks like we'll be involved together long term. Cool. (John)

11 October 2006: Feedback from the gig is all positive. We got some pictures back too: (John)

The DTs at The Grosvenor Hotel, Robin Hood's Bay, 13 October 2006The DTs at The Grosvenor Hotel, Robin Hood's Bay, 13 October 2006

10 October 2006: Well, the Grosvenor gig went pretty well, barring some minor sound issues. We got people dancing. Tiger Feet went well. Our encore of Love Shack and 20th Century Boy was rather storming and I understand we've been asked back. Sorted :-) I should have some pics to follow.

Whoops, quick change of date: Our next gig is at The Grosvenor Hotel, Robin Hood's Bay, on Saturday 7 October from 9-11pm. We checked the venue out last night, it's a very nice, popular local pub, good beer (Landlord, Deuchars IPA), two rooms knocked through, and mostly seated. Apparently it gets very busy on a Saturday, and it's quite warm in there. I took two pics and crudely glued them together. You can download our poster here, it's a 3Mb PDF. (John)

The Grosvenor Hotel, Robin Hood's Bay, 3 October 2006