Prestopia

27/03/2025

Hey hey we are still live and happy to receive contributions of mp3s of Preston bands past!

19/08/2024

New Preston bands/Prestopia discord! Join now!

https://discord.prestopia.com

Or if that doesn't work for you...

https://discord.com/invite/3NfTCfRm

Check out the Prestopia community on Discord – hang out with 3 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

18/02/2024

Yeah, I'll be mentioning this a few times over the next couple of weeks, so... er... suck it up. It would be lovely if you came and joined us at The Ferret on March 1st, everything is better with more of you there. Perhaps you think you made up your mind about us long ago... but hey man, people change. Today I ate an olive.

Not only that, we're celebrating Zoë Cauwood's birthday, and she's made of ACTUAL MAGIC.

And we're going to debut a new song that is probably ready, but shaky enough that you have the possibility of observing a massive onstage car crash. No risk, no reward.

And it's not just us, you know - hell no - there's the gravy-coated goodness of Decade & A Day and Dreadnought - each act very different from the last, none of this homogenous jigsaw gigging here.

ANYWAY, come to this gig, come on, say you'll come. Mark yourself as coming on the event below - buy a ticket from Skiddle, to encourage yourself to not be one of those people who changes their mind at the last minute because not going out is the new going out or some s**t.

Get yourself away from the algorithms and the endless YouTube Shorts and smell the pheremones of a whole bunch of meat covered skeletons in situ, up close and personal.

Zvilnik with Decade & A Day, Dreadnought & DJ Connie Von D | The Ferret, Preston - 01.03.24

12/04/2023

I HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION. I think the site's been down for a bit. Anyway, I now think I have fixed it. Let me know if everything is fine or otherwise.

10/11/2022

I've spoken before about the thing, and how that can stop our beloved The Ferret from becoming yet more student accommodation in the greasy hands of some property developer who doesn't give a s**t about culture or goodness.

Time, however, is getting a bit tight - the Ferret's stay of ex*****on has nearly come to an end and the building will be able to go on the market again, and from there... well it's likely only a very short matter of time.

So all hope is lost. F**K NO - hope, my friends, springs eternal.

The Ferret is on one final, desperate push to raise £150k to make up the shortfall and enable them to have a serious crack at owning the building to secure the future of the venue, and in time to expand the building into becoming a protected cultural hub for Preston.

Every band on this page has played The Ferret or a place like it, they probably got their first live show at a Ferret. It's ours and it matters more than ever after this country spent all its financial and emotional capital in becoming as s**t as it possibly could.

So - I assume that if you like Prestopia, you like and give a s**t about music. If that's the case, then PLEASE donate to try to save The Ferret.

The final push! Help us Save The Ferret, transferring it into community ownership & ensuring we can host live music for generations to come.

25/09/2022

Here is an interesting artifact, Steven Garner has kindly taken the It's Not Cricket DVD (an all day event featuring a bunch of bands from this site) and stuck it on YouTube!

24/09/2022

Just one teeny new feature added today, on the front page we now feature the RANDO BANDO OF THE DAY!

24/09/2022

I'd really like to add more stuff to the archive - if you have any old CDs lying about or MP3s cluttering up an old hard drive somewhere and could maybe rip them and submit them to the site, that would be amazing.

It would also be brilliant if you could provide the stuff in a format I can just throw straight at the site and it will just work! I don't mind sorting out the stuff, but it makes my life a little easier if some of the work is already done for me :) Check out the guidelines attached.

HOWEVER, I would rather receive stuff I have to faff about with than not receive stuff at all!

Happy to answer any questions or offer any help people need, just ask below :)

23/09/2022

You know what? I'm going to suggest you listen to one of my bands! Yeah! I've been coding for days, so it only seems fair. From 2005-2012 and through a constantly revolving door of membership, we were Bikini Black Special.

It's hard to pick a personal favourite out of the stuff we recorded (full disclosure, there's a lot) but I was particularly proud of Physioterrorists, which was written and recorded as I recovered from a smashed ankle with a giant metal frame stuck on my leg and a near endless supply of dihydrocodeine.

Anyways, here we are, as we were: Bikini Black Special

22/09/2022

Sorry, broke something there temporarily. However, I've now got initial edit capabilities in - if anyone would like to put in genre/active period/brief description for any bands, gimme a shout and let me know which ones!

21/09/2022

They said "never forget about Star 27" and it's safe to say nobody ever did. Without a doubt one of the finest bands of their era in Preston, this brainchild of Frank Beaver was a piano led wondershow of devilishly memorable tunes. Of particular note are "Diceman", "Bukowski's Secret" and of course their king of tracks, "Find A Bridge". Get them in your ears now.

21/09/2022

Nerded out this evening and completely refactored the entire site again, which should make it even faster and easier to add features to. Sorry if the site was a bit bouncy as I kept releasing new versions.

Also improved the band list (again). Now I'm starting on editing and uploads, which will take a while.