| Unlit will be touring the UK throughout this year, so join the mailing list and check the gigs section to see when there is one nearby, then just, be brave and turn up! Bring your own booze, and some food if you like, bring your friends... only thing I say is to be nice to the host and respect their house! |
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either email me at jont@jontnet.com and I will see if we can organise
one together as part of the current tour, or follow the easy steps below. You see, much as I'd like to convince you that you do, you don't really need ME there at all... |
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hold it in your own home, or someone else's |
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make it free and open to anyone |
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a mixture of a party and a gig |
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a gift for people you don't know and people you do |
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feature a set of live music from a varied bill of performers |
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do it the way YOU want to do it,the way YOU think it will work |
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REPEAT |
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Unlit is a night I started putting on ten years ago which now is a free event that takes place in people's homes. I wanted to create something that would be the best possible event I could imagine going to... a gig which was a party, a party which was a gig, but tailored around the audience not the performers. Instead of some endless jam (which can be good too but just wasn't what I wanted) the live music at Unlit lasts about an hour, is normally without any amplification, and is performed by a bill of three or four acts (mostly musicians but we've had almost everything you can think of) chosen by me and the host.
It is free to get in and I try to make sure that the person who's home it is is treated like a hero for the night. Cos they are a hero! They are taking the leap of faith to open up their house often to a lot of people they don't know, trusting that if you do something with a good heart and welcome strangers with gifts there is little to be lost and a lot to be gained. In this environment, where nobody quite knows who is who or why they are there, I've seen some incredible performances, often by people who in another context I probably wouldn't have picked up on.
Something about the intimacy of Unlit really brings out something beautiful in every performance. People bring a bottle, sometimes food and by the end of the night – the space enlivened by the hour of performance – it's normally a pretty amazing vibe. Some Unlits are big – about 100 or so – with djs and impromptu music sets continuing til dawn, while others are in little flats that can only fit 30 people at the most and are all about the live set of music (some of these have been the very best).
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In the summer of 2006 I wrote to my friends on Myspace in America to see if any of them wanted me to come over and do Unlit in their house. They did! About 20 people replied saying "yes" so I went on an amazing road trip across the country putting on Unlit in the houses of people I'd only ever met on Myspace, most of the time just crashing on their floor or sofa. The resulting video blog series filmed by my friend Dave Depares was seen by thousands of people on Youtube as we made our way round the country. You can see and download the beautiful little films he made on my website.
We met some incredible musicians and lots of very generous, friendly people who all seemed to dig the Unlit vibe. What was interesting was, as we travelled around, it became clear that music is much more than what it seems cracked up to be in the press these days... all about fame and notoriety... Music is the way we express ourselves, the expression of our personality. People will write, and play in bands, and get together to hear music and sing songs til the end of time... a few of them will become well-known and deservedly so. But the majority will be barely known at all, outside of their town or local bar.
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is the name of the series of ten minute movies Dave Depares made of our trip across america. He edited and uploaded them as we made our way across the country so that thousands of people could follow our progress and go on a virtual road trip themselves. Subsequently the BBC asked me to organise an Unlit as part of the Electric Proms and my three favourite acts from the tour came over to play. You can see this video and all the videos so far edited from the US tour in the video section.
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is the name of the new series of films Dave Depares is making of the current UK Unlit tour. They will be shorter in length (each one the length of a song performed at Unlit) and include the same mix of interviews, music and vibe that only Dave knows how to put together. You can see them in the videos section and on the front page of the site.
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