Pipeline Show Pics and Memories

(Click to see more photos)

We recently helped the 86 List celebrate their 10 year anniversary at Pipeline Cafe in Honolulu. It was great to get together with some bands that we have been friends with for a long time. I had a flood of memories and I thought I'd share some of them here.

When UY first started playing in 2001 we regularly played with The 86 List and Buckshot Shorty at a place on King St called Coffee Factory. The underground scene was pretty active there and I clearly remember people swinging from the ceiling, while people passing by would stare in the window.

How 'bout the Halloween show at Pink Cadillac where Steve from Buckshot was dressed as Space Ghost and had to rip off his costume due to overheating. Or the Day Killers killing it on stage. And being a little weary of the Extra Stout fans, but appreciating their Adidas. How about the Sticklers final show there at Pink Caddy as well... watch out for the boogie man...

Of course there were some great shows at Club Pauahi, with the central air dripping on everyone, and the transvestites playing pool, and Vax screaming on stage. Hell Caminos teaching everyone about Rock'n'Roll. Black Square showing the kids that Reggae can be hardcore. Our bass player at the time fell off the stage, but didn't miss a beat and our sax player had to leave in the middle of a song once.

Buckshot came out to play a show with us at the Kahuku Sugar Mill and it got shut down before the end of their set because people at the hospital were complaining of the noise.

How about the time we played a show right after Demitri got his tonsils out. Or when I had strep throat.

How about all the times we've hit our heads on that low cement pillar at Anna Banana's.

And our CD release show for A Sense of Urgency at the Loft where we felt like rock stars.

We've played bars, bowling allies, churches, schools, parks, clubs, streets, coffee shops, and we aren't going to stop.

UY loves you.

Just didn't want you to forget :)
<3

Shows for the Month of May

News Update

Again UY must reach out from the depths of their busy lives to affirm their continued existence and passion for the life of music. We’ve been busy this year so far with the success of winning for the 4th time a Hawaii Music Award. UY has one an HMA for every recording we’ve done since our first project Trying to Stand in 2002. Also, Upstanding Youth has been nominated for a Na Hoku Hanohano Award. This is like the Grammy’s of Hawaii and we consider this nomination to be one of the biggest honors UY has received in our over 7 years of performing and recording as a band. It’s an achievement to have our genre of music acknowledged in a forum that is so widely respected in Hawaii.

One of the biggest successes UY will experience this year will be the addition of more children to the UY family. We’ll be taking a few months off from June until who knows when to get the new kiddies settled. Before that we’ll be playing multiple shows in the month of May.

May 16th UY will be playing at BYUH opening for long time friend Cubworld. We’ll be doing our first live acoustic set. We’ve never done an acoustic performance featuring the whole band before and really look forward to the opportunity to showcase some songs with new arrangements to better fit an acoustic setting. In the past Marc would take up some time playing some songs acoustic at bar gigs but we’ve never made the time to prepare an acoustic set. Also, on May 20th we’ll be at Hot Topic in the Pearlridge Mall for another acoustic set. It’ll be a kind of meet and greet and acoustic performance. We’re really looking forward to this. Hot Topic in Hawaii has really been doing a lot to promote and help local bands. Some friends of ours like Pimpbot and Busekrus have performed already and been really successful.

On top of all of this UY has been considering new ways to improve the business aspect of the band and find creative ways to promote and expose the band to a wider fan base. Keep in touch and we’ll let you know of some of the new things we have planned. One potential idea to surface is a UY sticker contest where the person who can submit a photo of a UY sticker the furthest from Hawaii will get an amazing prize. Stay posted and you’ll hear more about all that. Until the next show or next record…much love.
-UY

12 different herbs and spices.

We have had a lot of cool things going on and wanted to give you a report-
We had a blast at the Hawaii Music Awards a week or so ago. We got to hang out with some great friends and bands from the scene, and we performed "Sing to Me" for the audience. This was our 4th record to win an award at the HMA's so it looks like we've got a good thing going.

Lately we have been working on revamping some of our material to fit a more acoustic mold. We have a few upcoming "unplugged" shows and we are having fun finding ways to arrange our music to fit that format. One of those shows is in support of Cubworld who is returning to the island, and it is always a pleasure working with him and his crew. The other unplugged performance is slated for one of the Hot Topic stores in May. We'll provide more details on those shows when we get them. If you can't get to one of the unplugged shows I'm sure we will have some footage up on the old youtoob.

Now that MySpace is letting artists put 10 songs on their profile we thought it would be a perfect chance to feature some live and rare tracks. We are thinking of keeping a good rotation on our MySpace player so keep checking back to see what's going on there. Right now, besides some album tracks, we have live recordings of 3 Page Letter, Paint by Numbers, and This One's for You. We also put up an alternate version of 451 featuring Kui's rhymes towards the end. Fun stuff.

We just launched TheUYMerchStore.blogspot.com as a temporary place to sell our goods until we get our actual webstore more current. You may notice some good deals so check it out. Payments are secure through PayPal and we package the orders ourselves, so yeah.

Lastly! We are now on Twitter. Nuff said; are we hip enough for you yet!?

Anyway, we are very busy in our personal lives but are trying to fit in as much UY time as possible. Don't forget to keep in touch.

<3
UY

Have you missed UY?

So we had a lot of fun with this blog last year. It helped us keep in touch with you while we were in the process of writing and putting out a new record. You got to see a few things and hear a few things and it felt like we really connected. Since then a lot of things have changed. There's a new sheriff in town, Obama. The economy has gone to crap and we really felt it when we went to Maui in November to promote the record. We had amazing support from radio stations there as well as the local newspaper, but the gigs were heinous. We've never had such a bad experience as we did there and a large portion of it can be attributed to the economy, as well as other business practices.
We got back from Maui and took a few months off - in order to take a breath after hustling our new record out the door and so people could finish school. It's been a sweet little break and we're now back together trying new ways to spread our music to the world while balancing our familial and financial responsibilities. We also sent our trumpet/vox member off to the mainland, Aaron Eskaran. It'll be really hard to have to same vibe on stage without him, but we wish him the best in his new place on the mainland.
As for what we're doing now, UY is trying to focus our efforts outside of Hawaii as much as possible. We feel like the economy has really tapped the music scene in Hawaii and we've decided to play at fewer bars, spend more time promoting ourselves outside of Hawaii, and take care of our music from a business perspective. There's a lot of the business side of our music that we have greatly neglected. We have decided to tackle all the hurdles necessary in order to get our publishing/licensing taken care of. Think you know someone who would like to help us take care of that? Let us know. Also, once that is taken care of we can finally answer all the people who have approached us to get our music into tv/film/radio/commercials. Once this fundamental part of UY is finally taken care of we feel like we can really start making music take us to where we want to go. It's been a huge stumbling block to us up till now.
On a side note, our CD release shows were EPIC!! We had an amazing show at the LOFT in China Town, Honolulu 18 Oct 2008. The place was packed and we had a great time with great friends. For those of you who missed it, here is Warning Call from the night. Enjoy!
-marc