TS crew End of Year Picnic!

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Taking you behind the scenes of Foo

A week has passed since the Foos rocked Melbourne and we were so close to getting them to jam on a tram. We delivered the 2500 signature petition to the tour manager, got a personal letter to Dave and were in the front row of AAMI Park waiving a life size cut out of Dave chanting "Jam On My Tram".



Even though the campaign didn't deliver the Foo Fighters, previous Tram Sessions' musicians got a lift by a huge increase of traffic to tramsessions.com and to their videos. We were also lucky to generate some great media attention which included many of our past bands. This is one of the cornerstones of what we want to achieve. We want to showcase all the great music Melbourne and Australia has (and we even throw in some cheeky international acts once in a while). There's so much talent out there, and not enough platforms for them to shine!

Initially we were thinking of doing a write up, taking you behind the scenes of the Foo Fighters campaign, but something got in between. That something was Mary Cruz. She decided she wanted to do a radio documentary about the adventure. We loved the idea and gave her access to pretty much every meeting and interview we had (there were quite a few...). Hopefully it gives you some more insight in what we try to do and how lucky we are to attract all these great people that make it happen! Click the link below to have a listen.

ONE TRAM JAM TO GO PLEASE!

Stay tuned for the last session of the year, which will be announced real soon. Until then - Happy Commuting!

Join us to get to Dave!

Help fellow commuters,

We need your help! It's only a few days until the Foo Fighters are here in Melbourne. And we want them to jam on a tram. Badly.



We would be ever thankful if you could help us by posting messages on FB-pages like:

- Triple J Super request / Triple J / Channel V / Triple M

Please write the messages in your own words. It doesn't have to be advanced at all (examples below). Would be great if you could have the post to link to any of the links below. Just to make it easier for media to follow what's going on.

SAMPLE MESSAGES
- Make history @Foofighters, jam on a tram! It would make my year! http://vimeo.com/28335831
- I dare you to jam on a tram @foofighters! http://www.facebook.com/events/264898576870475/?ref=ts

LINKS:
Promo video: http://vimeo.com/28335831
Facebook page: just write @tramsessions in the post.
Petition page: http://www.facebook.com/events/264898576870475/?ref=ts

Their Record label and Tour Manager have been following the campaign for months and we've been in regular contact with them. This is the final stretch people! This is where we all need to show them that Melbourne wants this. That it will be something never done before, something people will talk about for years to come. And you can be a part of it!

Happy Commuting!

Foo update

It's time for another update (yep, we know it's been a while). It will be about Tram Sessions in general, but of course also about the pledge to get Dave Grohl and the boys to jam on a tram in December. It sure is getting close...

Let's start with the campaign. Our petition on Facebook is ever growing which is great fun! The last time we looked a bit over 2000 people had signed up. Only in the last week or so, 300 people joined in. Please keep it up good friends!

What's more fun though is that we now have been in contact with the Touring Company! After a few very friendly stalking efforts (picture taken outside their office) from our/Dave's behalf, they're now aware that we're out there (rumour says that they've heard about our plans months ago...). Thanks for all your support friends! And rest assure, we won't rest until we have them jammin' on a lovely Melbourne tram!

Besides the campaign we're continuing to film sessions, the last one with New Settlement Road. We're also developing a new website, which is super exciting! Have a look at the screen shot and let us know your thoughts. It's still a few weeks away for it to go live.



I think that's enough for now, but if you want more updates, head to our Facebook page as you'll get heaps of small updates from there.

Happy Commuting!

New Settlement Road

This was a bit of a special session. We brought the tempo down and the delicate tunes up. Waz and the boys in New Settlement Road really put on a suiting set for the commuters on Tram 8 to Toorak.

We went all the way to the end stop and decided; why not just play a few songs on the way back as well? Lucky we did because the band made the day for the chef Scott, who missed his stop and then decided to stay on for the reminder of the set. "This is brilliant. Who needs to go home?", he said with a cheeky smile.

The band had travelled all the the way from Mt Eliza for the session, so they were pumped to play some songs after a long drive. A big thanks for the dedication boys!

Foo Fighters jam on my tram!

UPDATE: SEE BLOG POST DECEMBER 11

If you build it, they will come. That's the theory behind Tramsessions' latest tram mission;­ getting the Foo Fighters to jam on a Melbourne tram.

Hit 'attending' on our Facebook event to show your support, and we promise we won't rest until we get the Foo Fighters to jam on your tram. We already have enough support to fill an entire fleet of trams!

It will be just like any other Tram Session; the Foo Fighters plays a secret set of songs, it’s recorded and the world can enjoy it on tramsessions.com. And for a handful of lucky commuters, a zone-1 ticket will score them a front row seat!

Help us spread the joy and Happy Commuting!

Johnny Rock and The Limits

Johnny Rock and the Limits. The name really says it all. This is pure rock, delivered in a fun and captivating way. Johnny, yep it is his name, seems to love to be on a stage/tram seat and has that ability to get people engaged. We're super impressed by how he pulled off the the grand sing along segment halfway through the clip!

The tram ride on the 57 started at Flinders Street and continued through North Melbourne. Being the first late session during day light savings we managed to get some nice locational shots, so I hope you North Melbournians recognise the tram ride!

The band had a ball, so did we, and the audience didn't really accept that we had to leave in the end. So to all you commuters who enjoyed the session, head to The Espy tonight for some more Johnny Rock and The Limits action!

PS. And an extra thanks to Mr Maracas man.

Hey Rosetta!

A six piece band, a bloody fast tram, happy commuters and sunny weather made this session to an absolute gem of an experience. The feeling on the tram made us once again understand why we're insisting on putting bands on Melbourne trams!

Canadian indie rockers Hey Rosetta! gave it their all, and I can assure you that the commuters were all stunned by the beautiful sound the award winning band put on.

One of our favourite moments during the session was when an old lady stepped in to the tram (about halfway through this clip). She had a moment where she was thinking; "where should I take a seat". A band member saw the confusion in the lady's face and offered her his seat (thanks Adam). We love seeing random things like this happen. And judging from the lady's smile, we think she loved it to!

Well, there's plenty more to say about the 96 tram ride from St Kilda to the City, but let's leave it at that, and instead enjoy the engaging tunes from our new favourite band.

Foo Fighters, sessions and media

Oh boy we've been having fun lately. On Monday we got the front page page of MX Melbourne, on Tuesday Melb Magazine wrote a piece about us, and on Wednesday The weekly Review had us in an article about the Awesome Foundation.

On top of that we've been loving filming sessions. The Messengers was a hit, going through the city on the 86. Johnny Rock and the Limits was filmed on Wednesday (online this weekend) and we're off again today to film the multi award winning Canadian band Hey Rosetta at 2pm today.

We also have to mention the success we've had in the quest to get Foo Fighters to Jam on a Tram as well. The number on our online petition keeps growing and the support we get from people around us is phenomenal. However, we need to keep at it! If you're not 'attending' the event, please do. And if you haven't invited your friends, please do that as well. We can assure you that we won't rest until we have Dave Grohl & co on a tram in Melbourne.

New Frankie & the Heartstrings video

As we can't get enough of music we thought it was appropriate to upload another clip from a past session. This time it's Frankie & the Heartstrings, who visited Oz a few weeks back, and their song Want You Back . The guys from Sunderland were loving it and the commuters did as well, especially the guy who in the middle of the clip walks up to Frankie (the singer), taps him on the shoulder and says "SUPER, SUPER". We just love those moments!

We hope you enjoy it, and Happy Commuting!

The Messengers

What a day to record a session! Brendan, vocals/guitar, from the band in question, The Messengers, found it fitting enough to have his birthday the same day as we recorded. Of course we made him a gift (yep, the present in the beginning is his), which we hope he found useful.

Another person to be happy was our filmmaker Hayden; you could almost think it was his birthday too. He had just received a new camera lens, which weighs a tonne but makes a tram with band look absolutely gorgeous.

The session itself didn't want to end. The commuters on the 86 didn't take no for an answer, so The Messengers just had to keep playing, and with the first ever keys on a Tram Session, they didn't disappoint! It was pop, it was blues and it was happy smiles everywhere!

Dead Letter Chorus

It was all set up for a comfy ride up the 86. When the unexpected happened, (and lets face it, it happens quite a lot to a project like Tram Sessions) another tram caught the eyes of Dead Letter Chorus' band members. And it wasn't just any tram, it was the old, beautiful, and slightly outdated City Circle tram who entered the stage. And as the band originates from Sydney I guess they thought it would be suiting to try the Melbourne version of Sydney's Monorail.

The night had more surprises in place for us. We had a stream of Melbournians, tourists (it seemed that Brasil was the most common country of origin) and country folks (perhaps Keyneton was the winner in this category) that thoroughly enjoyed the great tunes from our Sydney friends. For a while I think all tram passengers joined in on the tunes and they stepped closer and closer to where the action took place. Even a sneaky Dave Grohl got pretty close...

We thought that the session was so great that we decided to join the band for their album launch at the Northcote Social Club on the last day of September. After that night we went home with big smiles and a CD that's been on repeat for quite a few evenings now. We hope you enjoy the session too and please let us know your thoughts on Facebook.

Frankie & the Heartstrings

UPDATED: New video is online (see below) - Want You Back

They came all the way from Sunderland, UK, to Australia. They craved some serious sunshine after a grey summer in Europe. What they got? Well, just before we jumped on tram 112 it started to rain and it couldn't be more than 15 degrees in the air. Melbourne weather can be tough some times!

Lucky for us that Frankie & the Heartstrings are great chaps who doesn't say no to a challenge (playing on a bouncy tram in the wet spring of Melbourne certainly is one). As the band has been going great guns in Europe we had good following on our live feed on the website. One of those people was of course Tram Sessions co-founder CJ (now living in Sweden), who got really excited when he heard that the band wanted to play on a Melbourne tram with us. His Twitter fingers couldn't stop typing of excitement!

The session took place during the day this time around as the band was playing a gig at the Forum later the same day, together with WA friends Eskimo Joe. We can assure you that you'll hear more about the guys from Sunderland. Great music, great energy and they seem to love touring. A pretty good mix, don't you think?

An update and our first TV appearance

If you have had time to follow our Facebook page, and petition page for 'Foo Fighters jam on my tram', you would have seen that we've been busy, very busy!

It's been a fun ride so far and we're pretty happy with what we've accomplished so far; 1200 people have signed up to the petition, great bands are approaching us every week, and quite a few activities are in the pipeline. However, there's always more to be done and we won't rest until we got the Foos on a Melbourne tram.

The latest media gig we did was with the show 1700 on Channel 31 (see photo: Nick with hosts Mike and Gee, and a not so camera shy Dave Grohl). Together with the Twoks, we joined the TV crew for a live to air experience that was heaps of fun. It's always a pleasure to try new things isn't it? A big thanks to the people at 1700, so professional, and they're all volunteers! We sure hope they land great jobs in the industry soon; they deserve it.

I'll leave you with a teaser. In the next few days we'll launch a competition where you can win some beautiful craft beer fromMountain Goat brewery in Richmond, Melbourne. Keep your eyes open...

Happy Commuting!

New Little john Video

It is time. Time to let you enjoy another video from our session with Little John. This song is called Angel Band, and it's absolutely beautiful.

Thanks boys.

Media frenzy

What an end to last week!  We got asked by the editor of Melbourne Life (a section of the Age) if a reporter and photographer could join in on a session. We thought, 'why the hell not' and the rest is, recorded, history. We were lucky that we had the amazing band Little John on board and that they were up for the challenge. The City Circle Tram was on fire for a while when the band mixed their bluegrass vibes with some great rock'n'roll. The passengers, reporter and photographer certainly loved it!

On the same day as the article was out we got three emails from different radio stations about interviews. Did I mention that this was all before lunch time! One interview got done on a tram in Richmond at 12pm and aired the same day at 3pm. Another was live to air at MTR's studio in Burnley on Saturday. The third and last interview was recorded on the Friday and will hopefully be on air this week on ABC Radio National, Breakfast with Fran Kelly.

It's been an absolute whirlwind of a weekend and I hope the momentum will continue as we're proceeding with our mission to get Foo Fighters to jam on your tram. This has only made us, if possible, more determined to get the Foo to play on a Melbourne tram in December. We just won't rest until it's reality!

Happy Commuting!

MTR's radio interview: Tram Sessions MTR 2011-08-20 13-54-53

New campaign image!

You might have seen this on our Facebook page, but if you haven't we want to share it with you here as well. During the past few days we've been working hard behind the scenes to establish a nice design for our ambitious campaign trying to get Foo Fighters on board for a session in December. Just a few minutes ago the design went official and it felt great to see it come together.

A big thanks to Paul who's done the design and please let us know what you think of it on our facebook site. It feels like it's starting for real now. But it's only with the help of you that we can make our dream a reality. To help us out, go in to our event page and click 'attend', then invite your friends to join.

For everyone's commuting pleasure!

New song from the The Twoks

Hey friends,

We're glad to give you another clip from the session with The Twoks. One word; magic!

To see the video, click here or go in to the sessions page and choose The Twoks.

Best of luck to them playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!

Foo Fighters jam on my tram

We have a lot of things to share at the moment, but we thought we should start with something a bit different.

Some of you have already seen it and, very kindly, supports it. So what is it? Well, we're getting Foo Fighters to jam on a tram.

We'll take the help from music lovers to get behind us and nag (very nicely of course) the Foo:s to play on a tram in Melbourne. It will be just like any other Tram Session. The band plays a few songs, we record it and let the world enjoy it on our website. And the lucky ones that's on the tram will of course have the time of their lifes!

Just imagine; you're going home from uni or work. You're tired, bored and just want a bit of energy. Then all of a sudden you see some some musos step in to the tram. Followed by a camera and mic. You're getting more excited, as well as slightly worried, and when the band is getting up close you see who it is. It's the Foo Fighters! On a tram. Your tram. In Melbourne. What the f$*+#!

To make this happen we need some help. Help from you. Hit "attending" on our Facebook event to show your support. It's our way of showing the band that this is something that their fans want. Badly.

When we have enough guests on the site, we'll start the next phase of the campaign. Contacting the band. During the months leading up to their concerts in December we'll arrange a range of activities to spread the word and to make this dream a reality.

We promise we won't rest until we get the Foo Fighters to jam on your tram!

Tram Sessions part of the State of Design Festival

We have some great news for you friends.

Tram sessions will present on the opening night for the State of Design festival at ACCA, Wednesday 20 July.

We’ll be part of the Pecha Kucha series, which means you have 6min 40sec to talk about 20 images, ie 20sec per slide.

We’re pumped to present alongside great people such as cartoonist/philosopher/poet/artist Michael Leunig and Danielle Wilde, inventor of the HipDisk.

The event is free and you can book tickets here.

It would be amazing to see some friendly faces there!

Happy Commuting!

Rescued from the floods

Peew, we were a bit afraid that we would have lost some of our videos thanks to some heavy rainfall in Copenhagen during the weekend. The room where the servers were located were apparently flooded!

The guys at Surftown did a good job though, and the site was only down for a day. We can now proceed to upload the latest session with Dirt Farmer, which is super exciting. You can expect to see it on the site by tomorrow morning.

Just wanted to give you guys an update and let you know that nothing can stop Tram Sessions now, not even the weather Gods!

Happy Commuting!

PS. And now we know that the servers are in Denmark, who would have thought?

Dirt Farmer goes live

Another beautiful night, another beautiful session. This time it was the band Dirt Farmer who joined us for a trip around Melbourne. While waiting for the proper clip to be edited you can go in to the live section on our site to get a teaser. Until then, enjoy!

New Lanie Lane clip

That's right people, a new clip is up. Have a look here and enjoy. We certainly did!

Here's an interview

A while back I had the pleasure of meeting a serious music lover. Her name is Paige X. Cho and runs the blog Paper-Deer. A few discussions led to an interview, which now is online here.

It's great to meet passionate people like Paige and we'll sure be seeing each other soon enough as she's invited to a future session. With which band is yet to be decided, can't give it all away :-)

Happy Commuting!

Loren video

[caption id="attachment_431" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Photo by Bushturkey Studio"][/caption]

The last months have been busy for us, but it's been hard to share much of the progress on the site. Mostly because it has involved a lot of meetings and planning, but also because we think it's quite boring for you to read about :-)

In an attempt to please your precious music souls we've uploaded another session, never released before. It's taken from Tram 96 and the session we had with Loren. As most of you know by now, his voice is one of my personal favourites. So far, his videos have been very popular, and we hope it can continue with the release of the beautiful 'Hall of Mirrors'.

In the next few weeks we plan to release some of Lanie Lane's songs that she performed with us earlier, with other words there's more love coming! In terms of up-coming sessions, well we hope to release information in the next week or so. There's quite a few bands in the pipeline...

Happy Commuting!

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Live at The Famous Spiegel Garden

Yes, it's official! We'll be filming today at 6.15 at the Tram Bar (Stop 14 1/2) next to the Arts Centre. Please come down and join us. We think it can be great fun!

I personally look forward to see Lanie Lane in action, it was a while ago I had the opportunity to enjoy her live.

Happy Commuting!

UPDATE: The session was great fun! Thank you to everyone that made it special. See the live feed here. We'll have the video clip up for you shortly.

News and acts

Oh boy, we’ve been busy. So busy that we haven’t updated the blog too much lately. Our apologies.

I thought I would give you a short update on what’s going on at the moment. To begin with, we’ve secured another 12 months with Yarra Trams. This means we’re allowed to keep doing what we love, film music on trams. Thank you.

Secondly we’re planning a lot for the future. Unfortunately it’s hard to share too much as a lot isn’t confirmed yet. However, we can share that our session now are being aired on Channel 31 regularly. This is great news for us, as we love the channel but also because more people can enjoy the great performers we’ve had on the project so far.

Thirdly. And this is exciting. We now have secured our next session. This time with gorgeous singer Lanie Lane. If everything goes to plan the session will happen on Tuesday (yes in two days!) at a very special place. As soon as we have the confirmation from the venue (I guess you can call it that) we’ll share it with you all on Twitter and Facebook. We want everyone to enjoy this particular session!

I believe that was all for the moment, we have heaps of exciting stuff coming up, but I’ve already taken up too much space with too much text, so it has to wait.

Happy Commuting!

This is to the people on Brunswick Street

I thought it was time to share another song by Fourth Floor Collapse. This one is called 'Cold Ambition'. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as the people on Brunswick Street did.

Beat that!

Hi there good people,

We have some exciting news. A few hours ago our friends at Beat Magazine decided to write a little piece about our project. Great fun! Have a read of what they said here.

Loren, again!

Hey guys,

Want to see another Loren video? Click here to check it out.

New friends

Hey people, and happy March to you all!
February has been a hectic month to say the least, and we've had some fun moments at Tram Sessions. To name a few; The Quarry Mountain Dead Rats rocked Melbourne when they performed a rainy Friday night on tram 112 (our wettest session yet), we've been talking to loads of potential tram performers and the new promo images have finally been shot and retouched. But we've even had a lot of things going on behind the scenes. And I thought I would share the one we're most happy about now. It's the latest addition to the TS team, Hayden and Lachlan from Lachdown Productions. With Lachdown we'll be able to get some help with beer drinking, laughter and good times. However, they will also help out with filming and sound recording when the kegs are getting empty.



Surf in to their Facebook page to say hi, or to watch some of their video clips. My favourite involves some Eurovision, mullets and a pink shirt.

So cheers to a new partnership and plenty of great music!

To the QMDR

Just so it's official, thank you very much for a great session on Friday. I especially liked the walk back to the pub, after the Melbourne CBD flooded and no trams could go down to South Melbourne. No one around us could stop smiling when you put on a show playing great music while walking down the street. Cheers fellows, and good luck with the upcoming gigs!

Nick

Tram Sessions live, again

Head over to the "Live" tab and you can follow the Quarry Mountain Dead Rats live from about 7.45pm tonight. And yes, one of the guys plays on a wash board.

Give Away Shows

Just before Christmas something beautiful happened.

When Beirut released their second album The Flying Club Cup they collaborated with the master, and starter of the whole music-recorded-in-public business, Vincent Moon of Take Away Shows, and recorded all the new songs in various urban places to promote the album. This was about 3 years ago. The films were up on Beirut's website for a while but has since then been taken down since the films were released on a one-off DVD. Up until now, if you didn't buy the DVD, the films have been hard to track down. Some can be found on youtube and vimeo etc but they're not all up. This was all until a Beirut fan contacted BaDaBing Records and asked them how to get hold of the films. After a few emails back and forth he got his answer:

Hey Chris, we just heard from La Blogotheque, and they’re fine with you sharing the video files wherever… since there aren’t any more dvd’s, I’m guessing you’ll need us to rip the files for you? Let us know if you have any expertise on how to go about that, but I’m sure we can figure it out. Sweet!

On the 15th of December all the films were uploaded in high-quality by Chris and can be found on his website.

Check out the whole story on Chris's website and download the films over here from his server.

That's a musical tearjerker story. How great to see a thing like this happen. Free culture for everyone!

Happy 2011

Happy 2011 dear commuters!

Lovely to see that you made through your holidays, hopefully with a lot of good food, great friends and wonderful Christmas music.
Both Nick and I were back in WA and got a great dosage of sun, beach and swimming so we feel extremely rejuvenated. And so we thought we might post another Fourth Floor Collapse song.

Head over to their session page and watch them perform Stories Unglued.

cheerio.

Videos on iPhone

Finally we've managed to get all the videos to work on iPhones and smart phones. This means you can look at the videos anywhere and anytime. Good times!