Archive for the ‘Fun Stuff!’ Category

Funky Profiles – Undercover Superstars

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Band Name: Undercover Superstars

Describe what you do in less than 10 words: Undercover singing act (waiters, guests, firemen) booked to surprise and entertain. (That was almost 10!)

Top tune you like to perform: ‘Dont Stop Me Now’ always works well as the begining is slow and often we do that bit from out of site so therefore the guests are thinking ‘where is this voice coming from!?’ then we burst out into view as the song gets going and as it’s a really high impact song, it gets everyone buzzing!

Favourite gig ever: There are so many amazing stories with this act. Because every gig we do involves a different scenario, we have out set scenarios but every event is different so it always involves a little thought. One gig I will be a waitress, the next I’ll be an Army Office! It’s so exciting! My favourite gig however would be one we did many years ago down in Torquay. I think this was actually one of our first events and it was just amazing to see the reaction from people. We had a waitress and a waiter who broke out into an argument half way through service, then after the waitress had stormed off our lovely waiter Tommy decided to make it up to the crowd by singing them a song. The show unfolded from there and we literally had people dancing on the tables. It was madness!

 

Best piece of advice you can think to give someone planning an event and booking an undercover act: Just to let your imagination run wild! There are so many possibilities of songs and scenarios, think outside the box and make your event different. We can help tailor make the scenario to your event but just give us as much information as you can on the timings/ the types of people at the event / what music you like or think would work well. It is so much fun to plan these gigs!

Tell us one performance you are looking forward to right now: It’s hard to talk about the events in advance as often we are the surprise element, so I don’t want to spoil any surprises by mentioning them however! We have a fantastic Wedding coming up where the Bride & Groom have really thought about the event and created something fantastic with us.

www.undercoversuperstars.com

Happy International Womens Day!

Friday, March 8th, 2013

Happy International Womens Day!

To celebrate we have put together just a few of our favourite Women in Music:

 

Beyonce – such a powerful woman who is insanely talented!

Tina Turner – a true entertainer and again, an extremely powerful woman

Chaka Kahn – we get a lot of requests for this tune, and it always gets people dancing!

 

The late Amy Winehouse – we still get a LOT of requests for this song.

Song of the Week: Skyfall – Adele

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

Getting in to the theme of the recent Oscars, our song of the week is ‘Skyfall’ by Adele.

Funky Profiles – Motown Supreme

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

Band Name: Motown Supreme

Describe what you do in less than 10 words: Motown Tribute act, performing at parties & events worldwide : )

Top Tunes you like to play: ‘Hit The Road Jack’ and ‘Can I Get A Witness’ are very much favourites however the Jackson 5 numbers always go down really well. We have recently added a few modern, Motown-esque songs into the set which also work really well along with the oldies. Things like Rolling In The Deep, Rehab…they always get people singing along!

Favourite Gig Ever: There are so many amazing events we play at, it’s extremely hard to choose. There are quite a few bookings where we have been booked back the following year, Trentham Gardens for example. That’s always a fantastic event! It is set in an open air theatre amongst the Trentham Gardens and the crowd are always up for a boogie! We always really enjoy that one, and it is really nice going back to an event year after year.

Best piece of advice you can think of to someone planning an event and booking a band: I think ‘know what you are booking’ is pretty important. It sounds obvious but some people for example book a ‘funk’ band and not realise how obscure funk can be! We are a Motown band, so we specialise in Motown music however we do add in a few modern numbers, but we predominantly are a Motown Tribute band.

Tell us one performance you’re looking forward to right now: We are looking forward to the Spring wedding season as we do love performing at weddings! There is so much love in the room and that really electrifies the audience!

Motown Supreme are available as either the full 7 piece live band line up or the trio of female singers performing with backing tracks. The trio works well for smaller events with space or budget restrictions.

Funky Profiles – Funkadelics

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

Band Name: Funkadelics

Describe what you do in less than 10 words: Perform at amazing events and parties all over the world : )

Top Tunes you like to play: We play a real mixture…love all the old disco and Motown tracks…’Disco Inferno’ ‘You Cant Hurry Love’ …but also a lot of the modern songs we do are really cool ‘Forget You’ ‘Firework’ ‘Price Tag’…..there are so many to name! Although! Thinking about it…the ABBA Medley we do is probably one of the top songs, mainly because it always has such a great reaction from the dancefloor.

Favourite Gig Ever: That is a very hard question to answer….. NYE’s in the UAE spring to mind…there was this really lovely wedding we did once in North London where the bride and groom joined us for our second set dressed in 70′s costumes! We always offer a costumed 2nd set, and when people do choose them they are always great fun! But this was extra fun because the bride and groom joined in, they had really cool, authentic 70′s outfits. They joined us on the dancefloor with some 70′s moves for the first number and then handed out lots of fun accessories for their guests to wear. It was a really fun wedding and really intimate and thought out. But every gig we do is awesome and special in some way, it’s very hard to choose one!

 

 

Best piece of advice you can think of to someone planning an event and booking a band: I think the timings are really important. The worst thing is when you put the band on too early and no one is ready for dancing! The later you can put the band on the better really. If you want to have the first dance earlier, then perhaps ask the band to do 3 sets rather than 2. For exmaple we offer 2 x 70mins or 3×40′s. Generally the 2 sets works better than the 3 but in a situation where you want the first dance early (7/7.30) wewould suggest this. It’s also really important to make sure you are not wasting your band by having them playing at the same time the buffet is out. We always suggest to leave a 45minute gap for the buffet to be served and digested!

Tell us one performance you’re looking forward to right now: We have one coming up next week at a venue we have played at before (quite a few times now!) called Captains Club in Christchurch. We are very much looking forward to it because not only are the parties there always fab, but they have an amazing dressing room which is basically an apartment overlooking the harbour, and the staff are really lovely.

Song of the Week!

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

We are LOVING this tune in the MIB office today! Bruno Mars is a fantastic artist and his live performances really showcase that. Loving this cool, 90′s vibe track off the 2nd album ‘Unorthodox Jukebox’

 

Top 5 Christmas Motown Tunes

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

 

As it’s that time of year…and we are a Motown band..we thought we’d take a look at some great Motown Christmas songs!

Here are our top 5 – we would love to hear yours though so please do join in with the comments below:

 

1. ‘What Christmas Means To Me’ Stevie Wonder – we love a bit of Stevie!

 

 

 

2. ‘ I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus’ Jackson Five – we love this fun, Christmas song!

 

 

3. ‘Silent Night’ Temptations – a classic Xmas song, beautifully put together by Temptations

 

 

4. ‘Christmas Everyday’ Smokey Robinson - often forgotten, but a great tune!

 

 

5. ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ Supremes – a great version of this song by Supremes.

 

 

Undercover Superstars hi-jack B&Q!

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

I wanted to write a little about what we got up to yesterday!! We were asked as the Undercover Superstars, to hi-jack a B&Q conference! It was great fun, and a really good example of the kind of thing Undercover Superstars can be used for…a corporate flash mob!

It was a super early morning – we had to arrive at 7a.m at the big B&Q head offices in Southampton (which meant leaving as early as 4.30am for some of our singers! Thats the time we usually get home from a gig, haha). 8 of our vocalists (including myself) turned up to an empty building, and began to rehearse our performance of ‘Our House’ by Crosby, Stills and Nash, which has been used on the B&Q adverts. We had a wonderful mix of singers, and we don’t often have so many booked on one event (generally it will just be 3 vocalists) so it was lovely to hear all the voices working so well together.

Once people started arriving to work we had to blend in. We were all dressed in ‘corporate casual’ wear, as this was the way everyone else dresses in the office. Its a huge estabolishment, so we were able to blend in without people wondering who we were.

Employees started to gather in the huge canteen/reception area – around 2000 of them! We placed ourselves around the room, scattered amongst the other employees, chatting away and pretending we’d been working there for years. The presentation started, which was a really interesting talk  (honestly – we all learnt loads!) about branding, and more specifically, B&Q’s branding and their plans for the next 2 years.

Towards the end of the presentation, the introduction to ‘Our House’ started playing over the PA, and suddenly Damien, one of our singers, jumped up out of the audience and started singing. Everyone seemed pretty shocked but they all had a huge smile on their faces! After the first verse, all 7 other vocalists stood up from wherever they were posted in the conference, and began to sing, making their way to the front of the room. Everyone reacted really well and all the employees were singing along, and waving their hands in the air!

It was great fun, and a really interesting experience seeing the inner workings of B&Q and how they run. They sure do have a fun work ethic, and their employees genuinely all seemed to love what they do. In fact, a lot of us were so inspired by their presentation, we forgot we were singers for a minute and were 100% B&Q employees, haha :)

Thanks to Contraband Events for getting us involved in this! And here’s a picture of us with Pudsy the bear!! (B&Q do a lot of charity work, so he was paying them a visit too!)

Funky Profiles – MIB Band

Friday, September 28th, 2012

This is the first of our new ‘Funky Profiles’ blog series… a chance to find out a little more fun info on our MIB Music bands!

First up, we have MIB band!

Band Name: MIB

Describe what you do in less than 10 words: Travel the world playing amazing events & making people dance dance dance! :) (ok sorry thats a bit more than 10… but dance needed to be said 3 times to have the right effect)

Top Tunes you like to play: Currently our faves are probably ’Moves Like Jagger’, ‘Finally’ by CeCe Penniston, ‘Ain’t Nobody’ by Chaka Kahn, ‘Dont Stop Believing’ by Journey, and ‘Lets Dance’ by none other than Mr David Bowie! Our favourites tend to change as time goes by though, its usually the most recent songs we’ve added to the set. There’s something magical about playing a new song that you haven’t played a lot before!

Favourite Gig Ever: Can we have 2? (There are too many to consider really!) Obviously the Royal Wedding Hyde Park gig will always be unforgettable for us, and we also just got back from playing an AMAZING wedding in Beirut which was just unbelievable – really well organised, great fun and incredibly original. Just a few highlights – the dance-floor was built (in glass) over the swimming pool, the PA rig was big enough for Wembley Stadium and the DJ booth was lifted up half-way through the evening by a huge crane and left hanging 60 feet in the air above the dance-floor for the whole night! CRAZY!

Best piece of advice you can think of to someone planning an event and booking a band: Hmmm. There’s lots of great advice we could give, but no 1 in our minds right now would be to book a band that you love the sound of, and then just enjoy it! People can find event organising quite stressful sometimes, so we always encourage our clients to let us deal with everything so they can just enjoy themselves…. :) Book a band that has experience and you can trust, and let them take care of all the details so you can relax and have fun! (Thats what we’re here for afterall!)

Tell us one performance you’re looking forward to right now: We are off to Abu Dhabi for New Years Eve, which will be fun! We’re also playing a big celebrity wedding tomorrow night, which we’re a little nervous about!!! Eeek!

 

Song of The Week – ‘Love on Top’

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

We had a little ‘MIB Music’ social get together last week (belated Xmas gathering, in March!) and I have vague memories of this being ‘tune of the night’, so I figured it better become our ‘song of the week’! What a great song. I can’t wait to start playing this!