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The Princess Alice
Newport Road, Middlesbrough
 Long established as a live music venue The Princess Alice goes from strength to strength in its support for live music. New management took over at the start of 2009 and the new owners have proven to be huge advocates of Live Music.
In addition to their long running Saturday night live bands and the more recent Unsigned night for original music every Friday, they have also started to hold an open acoustic night every Wednesday as well as a battle of the bands - the first held on Wednesdays and the next one due to be held on Thursday nights. A Karaoke every sunday gives us a whopping 5 nights a week of live music and its all free!
In addition to all of that, John and Sharon immediatly recognised the need to make the bar more music friendly and are currently in the process of refurbishing the premises, the original boooths that seperated the pub have all been removed making it more open and the stage viewable from the far side of the bar. Also the stage area which was very small and quite often meant the bands playing had to overflow onto the dance area at the front has been extended with a new hardwood floor. Finally the back of the bar which had been unused has also been pulled out offering more seating area and again a full view of the stage area. The remodelling of the interior has transformed the Alice into a serious venue and we anticipate that demand to play there will be high.
In the short time that they have been in charge of The Alice we have seen some really high quality entertainment put on for regulars and newcomers alike. With comedy nights and Hypnotists as well as the live bands there is usually something going on in The Alice. Our unsigned nights every Friday were reliant on the bands playing bringing their own crowd in the past, however we are now finding that we are attracting a regular audience who are coming in purely for the love of live music and enjoy seeing the diverse and new talent that Teesside has to offer.
The Alice also has a brand new menu with delicious food available throughout the day at very reasonable prices. Their Sunday lunch has become very popular as well as snacks available on an evening. We here at NEL are very excited with what the coming months has to offer at The Alice, the vision that they have in there is to make it one of the places in Middlesbrough to be and to be seen. Already next years diary is filling up with cover bands and original bands clamouring to play there.
 The management and staff alike are fully committed to the live music scene and get involved with anything they can. In July this year one of our regular Friday bands approached us to ask if we could put a charity event on in aid of her baby cousin Reef who has a life threatening cancer. John and Sharon got fully behind this and we arranged for a full weekend of fund raising which resulted to us raising just under £1000 for baby Reef. There was live music for two full days with all of the bands giving their time for free and many local businesses donating raffle prizes - all arranged by John and Sharon. On the Saturday night Sharon and a lot of the regulars got dressed up as part of the fun and the bar staff donated their tip tin to the fund. Bar Manager Andy Jackson agreed to be waxed to raise funds and one of the regulars also payed £20.00 to play drums with the Saturday night band The Princes of Monte Carlo.
 The Gables in Middlesbrough also got involved with the event and they also held a fund raiser on the Friday as well as the Party in The Carpark in August in aid of Baby Reef - more about the Gables when we do the focus on them soon!
One thing is for certain, The Alice may be just a little bit out of the town but you can be certain that if you make the trip down there you will have a fantastic night and a very warm welcome!
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