The Ukulele Instructional Song and Iain Lee

"Mummy, we done another sing".

At Christmas we get pretty busy, so I couldn't do this blog. It's January, we're not especially busy, so I'm doing it now.

Just before the madness of Christmas, or "Chrimbo", as some people insist on calling it, we made another song. It's the 3rd song/video we've put on our You Tube channel. And it's by far the least popular. Yeah!

It's a song about the ukulele. Not only is it "about" the ukulele, but it tries to teach you how how to play the ukulele. Then, when you've learnt the three chords in the song, you'll be able to play the song itself. I'm confusing myself.

By a stroke of luck, whilst we were recording it, Iain Lee asked us if we'd print his t-shirts for him. We wet our pants a little, but remained cool enough to ask him to feature in our new video. When he agreed, we really did wet out pants. For real.

The video features lots of our friends and shop customers, thank you!

Our First Year and The Custom Bar

It seems incredible really, but after trading online for what seems like a decade (probably more like 7 years), it was almost 1 whole year ago that Balcony Shirts opened up on the High Street. Incidentally, the High Street of our hometown; Uxbridge. The custom T-shirt printing website (a work in progress).

Uxbridge gets a lot of stick, not least from me, but really, and honestly, I actually like the place. I like the way Windsor Street (where we are) with its 500 year old pubs nestles in the shadows of a monolithic JJB Sports. I like the way an Irish drunk will grab you by the arm and tell you you have lovely hair. I like, in a masochistic kinda way, the fact that Reebok wearing, gold sovereign ring toting, Staffordshire-Bull-Terrier walking Kevs own the high street but effete indie boys, tattooed emo kids and Brunel intellectuals are always (half) willing to give a bit back. Not a lot back, granted. But a bit.

Anyway, barring some sort of natural disaster, or a fire-bombing, it looks like we should survive our first year. It's been good. Hard work, but good. For those that are familiar with our shop, we have just built a "Custom Bar" in the back section, where patrons will be able to design their T-shirts and have them printed in front of their eyes. It should be good and will hopefully increase trade a little during our next 12 months.

Thanks to everyone who's popped in, had a chat, bought something. We hope to have some surprises in store for our 1st Birthday.

Balcony Shirts - keeping Uxbridge High Street a little bit weird, and defiantly independent, since 2009.
xx

You hum it, we'll play it.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case it's probably true, not least because the man playing the trumpet should be behind the counter in the 'Scoffs' sandwich shop opposite juggling with bits of bread, and the man playing the guitar should be behind our counter doing whatever it is that he does there. To name the guilty parties it's Geno on trumpet and Leigh on guitar, and it gives us chance to mention the fact that we can now get musical instruments and accessories in the shop to order. We got Geno his trumpet and he loves it. He's probably blowing it at the moment. Who can blame him?

AS SEEN ON T.V.

Tuesday morning at Balcony Towers, and great is the excitement thereof as a television advert for the 'Help For Heroes' Appeal is being filmed in the street outside our shop. In the pursuit of shameless self-publicity the t-shirt team revealed themselves to be hopeless opportunists by donning Balcony t-shirts and sunglasses then performing high fives as the Army were being filmed marching past our front door. It should be on T.V. throughout October so look out for us - we're the slightly awkward looking blokes in Balcony t-shirts and sunglasses performing high fives outside the Balcony Shirts shop.

Balcony Shirts Shop

For those that don't know, we opened a little shop in Uxbridge just before Christmas. We sell a selection of things that we sell on the website and some things we don't. We sell Mozaikits in the shop - with them you can mozaik your house 'n' stuff. They're cool. Anyway, the best thing about the shop is we get to meet people and they can give us ideas for tees and stuff. We also offer custom T-shirt printing where we'll print your favourite Balcony Tee on a colour of your choice. We also do little runs of Tees for local businesses and shizz like that. If you're ever in Uxbridge - pop in and say hello. We're down Windsor Street - it's that little "oldy worldy" road opposite the station.