Auction

From time to time, Room 512 runs auctions to raise funds for specific causes or charities.

Our first auction was held in September 2006 for a prop guitar used by Martin Gilks in The Wonder Stuff's Sleep Alone video.    The auction was held to raise funds for CARE, the charity nominated by Martin's family for donations to be made following his death earlier in 2006.

Now we are holding another auction for which which we hope many of you will dig deep into those pockets.

Avid followers of The Wonder Stuff will know that in the very early days (1981 to be exact) Miles Hunt and Malc Treece used to be in band called From Eden along with Clint Mansell, Adam Mole and Chris Fradgely.  After From Eden split up, The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself were born.

Chris' son, Oscar, was born in June 2003 with the extremely rare Hanahart Syndrome condition.  Although no problems were diagnosed prior to Oscar's birth, he was born without hands or feet, a short tongue, aortic valve disease, facial palsy and eyesight problems.

Despite this, Oscar has battled on through and tries to lead as normal a life as possible but obviously he has needs for specialist or adapted equipment.

Donations from friends, family and supporters have helped to raise more than £80,000 so far and earlier this week Oscar received a new set of artificial legs which can cost up to £10,000 each.

In June 2007, for Oscar's fourth birthday, members of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned's Atomic Dustbin held a special charity concert to help raise more funds for Oscar which was originally going to include an auction of items which had been donated to the family by Miles Hunt.  Unfortunately this did not take place but Room 512 stepped in and are now going to host the auction via the internet.

From 9am on Monday 30th July until midday on Monday August 13th, we are going to be auctioning the seven items donated by Miles plus three exclusive canvas artworks that have been designed exclusively for the auction by Andrew Forcer.

To bid on any items in the auction, you must be a member of the Room 512 messageboard (but why aren't you anyway?).  The auction site requires you to log into it directly but your login details for the messageboard will be the same as those used on the auction site.

You can find the auction site here.  There is also a link from the messageboard.

On behalf of everyone involved with this, we would like to thank Miles and Andrew for their kind donations and also hope that as many of you as possible will help support Oscar.

The complete list of items available is as follows:

Give Give Give Me More More More - 10" acetate*

Acetates are used to check the recording quality of a record prior to them being pressed for release.  They are not playable on home media equipment and are commonly bought more for rarity value than for listening pleasure.  Only a small number of acetates are ever made - in this case this is the only one making it unique.

Acetates are normally supplied in a plain sleeve but this is even more unique (does that make sense?) as they contain lyric notes for a song that Miles was working on  in 1988 that was never finished.

The Eight Legged Groove Machine - white label album promo*

White label copies of album and singles are issued to the media by the record company to promote the artist and their release.  They normally contain the same tracks as the standard release but to reduce costs are supplied in a plain sleeve with handwritten or printed labelling.  Only a limited number of copies are pressed and released.

Don't Let Me Down Gently - 12" acetate*

Hup - white label album promo*

Circlesquare - 10" acetate*

Circlesquare (Paranoia Mix) - 12" acetate*

Sleep Alone - 12" acetate*

By The Time I Got To Jersey - canvas artwork

Long-time Wonder Stuff fan, and artist Andrew Forcer has specially designed three canvas artworks for Oscar's auction.  They are approximately 2 feet square and are based on original artwork for two of Miles Hunt's solo releases plus the last Wonder Stuff album.  They are not the original artwork designs for the sleeves, but Andrew's own interpretations of them - and they're bloody good!

5 Songs EP - canvas artwork

Suspended By Stars - canvas artwork