Pineapster

Pineapster is a web site, online community and arts collective whose purpose is to promote independent music in the East Midlands region of the UK.

The site was initially created, with charity funding, in 2001 by Charnwood Arts, Cuttlefish.com, and The Left Legged Pineapple (an indie record shop in Loughborough) to help work with local bands, musicians and artists. The website has been used, abused and benifited from the following artists (amongst others):

Love Ends Disaster!, Minnaars, Misterlee, The Displacements, Herra Hidro, Ist, Kevin Hewick, and Kyte

Pineapster Communion & Pineapster Social

From August 2004 until August 2007 , the site ran a monthly club night `The Pineapster Communion` within Leicester to provide a varied line up of local and away from home bands for people to watch. Unusually the door takings were split equally between the bands to ensure payment to artists.

The Communion inspired a wide range of equivalent nights across the leicester music scene, and was thus retired, having deemed to have worked to inspire others to increase the local variety of musical events.

These gigs, continue (from early 2008 onwards), albeit more sporadically, under the Pineapster Social title.

Bands that have played the Pineapster Communion include RedCarsGoFaster, Cousin Scampi, Love Ends Disaster!, TEAM, [Misterlee] , Parisman, The Neutrinos, Lo-Ego, Kevin Hewick, Perfect July, ist, Hinterland, Don's Mobile Barbers, The Displacements, Vitriol ID, House Of Spon, Jamie Says,

Charity Events

Following the success of the communion club nights, the co-operative have moved to host a series of unusual one off events, raising money for charity and/or musicians.

In January 2006, the co-operative combined forces with Steve Dyer and Sean Tizzard to work on the Moolah for Malawi project. Dyer, a medical student was due to spend eight weeks working in Ekwendeni Hospital in Malawi. Pineapster worked with the men to run an All Day concert at Firefly bar in Leicester. Over 250 people appeared during the day to donate to The Moolah for Malawi project raising over £3,000, to help the
Ekwendeni Hospital purchase urgently needed antibiotics.

Upon August 10th 2006, Pineapster presented the Summer Sundae warm up party. An extraordinary Communion which occurred, as a warm up event to the Summer Sundae festival in Leicester. The co-operative ran the event, in Firebug bar. An audience of nearly 400 people gathered to raise £2,000 for LOROS, a local Leicester hospice.

In December 2006, the co-operative promoted the first Leicester music week event, featuring two Communion launch parties for Sorted Records acclaimed release `Hollow Smoke`, a cd of the best and most acclaimed current Leicester musicians,

The Summer Sundae Fringe Festival

The musician community run the Summer Sundae Fringe Festival which occurs annually during the week before the main
Summer Sundae festival.

A Taste of Summer Sundae 2008

Pineapster also went into partnership with the Summer Sundae festival to create a series of taster events for Summer Sundae, creating an event every March in Leicester to highlight some of the bands from the forthcoming festival. These gigs have been entitled "A Taste of Summer Sundae," and the first one occurred on Saturday 1st March 2008 at Firebug, Leicester. 400 people once more gathered in Firebug to celebrate the launch of the 2008 festival. Door entry was a deliberately low £2, just to cover the costs of bands and equipment hire for the evening.

External links

* [http://www.pineapster.com Pineapster]
* [http://www.summersundaefringe.com Summer Sundae Fringe Festival]
* [http://www.charnwoodarts.com/ Charnwood Arts]
* [http://www.cuttlefish.com/ Cuttlefish.com]
* [http://www.left-legged.com/ Left Legged Pineapple]