Great gig at the Wheatsheaf in Oxford

We just played a great show at The Wheatsheaf with Oxford's Smilex. There was a pretty good crowd, a good atmospere... just all good!

I had a minor panic when Carli was doing his usual spit/spill beer everywhere trick and about half a pint landed on my pedal board, but the were no sparks, and I didn't get electrocuted so it was fine. I just need a splash guard for them in future.

I broke a string for the first time in ages and had to play the last two songs with only 5, but it just made the chaos more fun.

I made it through pretty unscathed with just a burned little finger for my troubles!

We had a few cool pics from Johnny Moto and Nikki Sikk, some of which are below, but there should be some video to follow.

I'm looking forward to playing there again on January 10th.

Rocking out in Oxford

I've had a pretty cool month. I bought TWO new guitars, a beautiful LAG Roxane Classic in a natural mahogany finish in the pics below and a LAG Roxane RF1000 in Cherry sunburst. Both are amazing French made models. More pics of my new toys will follow.

We also had a really fun gig in Oxford on friday. I guess we played pretty sloppily, but we went down really well and had a fantastic time. Two things really stood out for me, a guy in a wheel chair climbed up a flight of stair with just his arms to see us, and for the first time ever we had literally everyone in the place singing along. I could hear people shouting the chorus to a couple of songs over my half stack! So it's all good.
We also got some cool pics from Johnny Moto a few of which are posted here.
There was also some live video to the last song "Triple-X" which we probably shouldn't have played until we had rehearsed it more, but we had run out of songs for the encore!

Here's the video anyway, you get the end of "FDR" and all of "Triple-X".

Enjoy.

I've had a couple of cool gigs since the last update, there'll be a pile of live footage from our gig at the White Swan in Aylesbury. It was a fantastic night, I can't wait to see the footage and get back there to play again.
I did have one nightmare where one of my string had popped out of the saddle, so I had this high pitch noise when ever I strummed. I spent two songs wishing whoever was making the stupid noise would sort it out before I realised it was me.

We also had our set at the Purple Turtle in Camden recorded. The 28 minute set was recorded. It was too big a file to upload into the reverbnation widget, so you can click HERE to go to our Glamnation page where you can stream the whole thing. I'm really pleased with how the solos sound live even if Carli did start singing over my favourite one.

EDIT: The link won't work unless you're a member, so here's the player instead:



Find more music like this on Glamnation


We also had photo shoot this weekend with the lovely Sabrina of Mademoiselle S. Photography we felt like tits posing round all day, but the tequila kicked in and it all went ok.
There's a couple of pics below:

Another review in Oxford's NIGHTSHIFT Magazine...

The Mighty PISTOL KIXX got another review in NIGHTSHIFT the oxford music mag.

There was also of a review of gig we played at, but the reviewer got there after we played, or was so appalled by us he omitted us!

Either way we missed another mention.

All good fun though.

The text of the review in the October 2008 issue went as follows:

PISTOL KIXX
This month’s obligatory….well, Pistol Kixx
demo. Since this
is their third offering in the
last few months. In fact this demo
was recorded at Keynote Studios as the band’s
prize for winning Demo Of
The Month earlier in the year. These blokes don’t mess about,you
know: “Recorded with the help of cheap
booze”, shouts their scrawled
letter. “More of the same!” it pronounces, and they ain’t
wrong. But then why fix what ain’t broke?
What’s broke, by the way, is probably all
the furniture in the studio and anything else that
isn’t made of concrete or girders. So
anyway,`Backdoor Beauty’ is a simple Oi! punk
thrash fronted by a gruff
B&H rasp, while `City Sniff’ is, well,
more of the same. Two songs,
five minutes, wham bang thank you mam.
They won an entire day’s recording for that
previous Demo Of The Month so to come out with five minutes of music suggests the
cheap booze took up most of the
time. Admirable behaviour in every respect.
People take notice: this is
how proper rock bands
should sound and
behave.

Somebody there get's it anyhow. Now if we can just convince the rest of the world...

Just a quick one. I just got some live footage from the gig at the Bullingdon Arms last weekend.
We had a really cool night, had a few drinks and it was a blast playing ona decent stage.
There were a few alchohol induced fuck ups, but all round it was pretty cool.
It seemed a lot less rock n roll when I had to get back to London and sleep for 4 hours and go to work, but what can you do!

A great night anyway.
The video footage is of a track called "WILD WEST" great guitar solo and even some guitar behind the head action!

The video player seems a bit temperemental, so if it won't play in the blog, click HERE and it should open up for you ina new window.

Wild West

Back at Sanctuary in Burnley

Sunday 24/08/08 back in Burnley...

I had an absolutley great time. Weirdly Sober Dave was not drinking and actually sober, so nobody got to write on him!


We played a great set and there should be some video footage to follow. For now here's a few pics:

My uber tight leopard print trousers got a cool debut!
there's aload more pics on Stevi's myspace if you fancy seeing a few more.

I just ordered my Backyard Babies ticket so it's all good!

A couple of short vids from the Water Rats show...

I was browsing on youtube and I found a couple of vids that had been uploaded from the show at Water Rats.

Thanks to Helen for filming and uploading!

Video 1 is a "Strip Club Skank" and video 2 is "The Filth"

Enjoy!

A great show at Water Rats

We played at Monto Water Rats on Saturday. We had a really good night, soundchecked quite early, but managed to avoid getting too drunk before we played, despite filling the 6 hour gap with a trip to Crobar and some jugs of White Russians!

I made myself smile by hurling "Rob Silver" plectrums at people, but the real thrill was having great sound!

Actually being able to hear what we were doing was a rare treat. Knowing that everyone in the audience could hear it as well was cool, rather than just having the piss poor sonic mush you have to put up with at a lot of venues.

A big thankyou goes out to Kris Gruber of Kris Gruber Photography who took some great pics of us. There are a few pics below, but yuo can check out the full gallery at his site here.

"Fast Loud and simple..." Pistol Kixx on BBC Radio Oxford

I've been on BBC Radio and got a couple of cool new toys this week.

First off, my beautiful new amp, a Marshall TSL601 in British racing green arrived. It was second hand, but the "bedroom use only" claim was true. Indistinguishable from brand new.

Secondly the plectrums with my name on that I had ordered ages ago finally arrived and have been making me smile all week. Maybe making me smile a bit more than personalised plastic triangles really should, but what can I say, I'm a happy camper!

Now to the really good bit, PISTOL KIXX have been on the radio again in Oxford, on BBC Oxford's new music show. I missed the broadcast, but Stevi recorded our 2 minutes from the podcast that was availble for the week after broadcast. I've uploaded theMP3 to the music player which should be in the top right corner of this page.

In other news...

We're playing in Burnley again on the 24th of August which will be really cool, we'll have to get drunk girls to paint more faces on Dave's genitalia and sing kareoke!

A couple of PISTOL KIXX live videos

New amp should be here soon, I'm getting a TSL601 in british racing green. Hpefully it will be getting it's first outing at th gig at Water Rats.

Not a lot eelse been going on, but here are some PISTOL KIXX live videos.





I was using a borrowed head with only one channel so the guitars don't sound great plus you can't hear the solos, but hey... it was good fun.

The new band tee shirts arrived as well.

Cool as fuck!

PISTOL KIXX review in Oxford's NIGHTSHIFT magazine

Just a quick one, another great review in the Oxford Music Mag NIGHTSHIFT.
Somebody there really likes us which is all good!
I'm also excited like a child on Christmas Eve waiting for my pleactrums with my name on to arrive. They should be here next week. I just can't wait to throw them at somebody!
The text of the review went as follows:

Nightshift July 2008

Perhaps The Spoons could take a few lessons from this lot, previous Demo Of The Month winners and a band who know all about the Wham Bam Thank You Mam school of rocking out. These two songs are almost Cro-Magnon in their old-fashioned approach to punk and metal, something of a meeting point between Motorhead, The Exploited and Backyard Babies, as subtle and simple as a village idiot armed with a machine gun and an old Cockney Rejects album. The singer's whisky'n'gravel croak is wonderfully bluesy and the lo-fi sound can't distract from it's determination to get to the bar and drink heavily as quickly as possible, stopping only for a quick guitar solo on the way. There's a great oafish terrace chant feel about 'Fucking, Drinking, Rock 'n' Roll', and really , the title alone is all the review you need of Pistol Kixx.

Now I just need to go out side and stop watching the Ghost in the Shell 2nd gig boxed set...
645 minutes of hot chick cyborgs fighting robots is probably more than I can resist, so I'm probably gonna just stay on the couch all weekend!

Back to Burnley!

The Mighty PISTOL KIXX were back in Burnley again. We had such a cool time last time we had been really looking forward to this.

We were on quite arly during a S.O.P.H.I.E. fundraising gig so we took advatage of the early finish to get really drunk. Beer tokens didn't help either, so things got really messy!

Just before mid night we were all offered a trip to a kareoke bar nearby which being drunk and extroverted ego-maniacs we decided was a really cool idea. With Fran and Leandra as our native guides we got Kareoke crazy!

This is a text book example of why I should drink less at gigs, although not as good a warning as what happened to Dave when he passed out!
All Hail "DAVE MAUL"

All in all a great night, I just feel bad that poor Miss Warlock still has scars from it... literally!

Back in the studio

A couple of months ago we won the Demo of the month prize in Nightshift the free music and live mag in Oxford. It was huge surprise to us since it's a pretty indie centred mag from what I've seen, but it was cool to see somebody there adding some diversity.

DEMO OF THE MONTH PISTOL KIXX “There is nothing clever about our music”, state Pistol Kixx bluntly, and they’re not wrong. But let’s be honest, which would you rather sit through, a three-hour lecture on quantum physics or a sci-fi blockbuster packed with heavily-armed spaceships, exploding cyborgs and scantily-clad futuristic freedom fighters? If you go for the first option, you’re reading the wrong bloody magazine. Anyway, Pistol Kixx: they cite New York Dolls, Ramones and Nashville Pussy as primary influences and have a guitarist called Sober Dave who is also the singer in local hardcore monsters Thirty Two and who is doubtless ironically named. Musically each of the four tracks here are pretty much interchangeable: straight-downthe-line rockaboogie thrash that sounds like Motörhead in Mid-West trucker mode. Roadhouse blues gets a hairy metal makeover and it’s down with that bottle of JD and off down the freeway til dawn. `Wild West’ would make a decent soundtrack to a saloon bar brawl, while `Rock’n’roll Trash Queen’ is so unreconstructed you can almost hear it scraping its knuckles along the ground. It doesn’t matter much that the whole thing is a living, breathing cliché. “Hopefully it’s as much fun to drink to as it is to play,” continues the accompanying scrawled letter. Absolutely. We’re off to the spirits cupboard right now.
Nightshift issue 152 March 2008

Our prize for this was a free day in the studio. Which we finally claimed a couple of weekends ago. It was a bit of a surprise when we got there because the engineer wanted to try and record with as live a vibe as possible. Not what we were expecting, but hey, it was free... and we were up for trying something new, so we all jumped in playing at he same time.

It did all end up being a bit more scary than it needed to be because we were trying to record two very new songs, "Triple-X" and "Backdoor Beauty," and by new I guess I mean, couldn't quite play properly yet! We could have got them down I think laying parts individually, but in the end we only did one new track BDB and an old track "City Sniff"

It was an odd experience recording the solos live, ie. rather than recording the rhythm guitars then just dropping in to do leads, I recorded my rhythm parts and solos in one take, so all my parts are one track. It was an interesting experience, and something that helps you look very closely at how you sound live. With hindsight I think I would have preferred to drop in, but it was cool to give it a go like that.

It came out ok in the end, and you can here the results on the player in the corner of the blog.

We have a few more tracks on the drawing board to demo before we sort out an EP, but it is all going very well!

Rob

Showing off, sideburns, guitar fantasies and Burnley

At long last somebody has managed to get a picture of me playing the guitar behind my head. So thank you Mina. I mean what's the point of showing of, if you can't re-live the experience later on the internet?

So I'm happy, but a little suspicious that I should maybe try and get out more.

I have also become obsessed with the idea of playing rockabilly guitar and have been spending hours on youtube looking for lessons. I think deep down part of me thinks this is an attempt to validate my sideburns by embracing a subculture where they will be more widely appreciated, or maybe it's an excuse to buy a Gretsch or at least something with a Bigsby...

Pistol Kixx are back in the studio on the weekend which will be fun and I'm really looking forward to the triumphant return to Burnley for another live show the weekend after. It was very messy last time, but at least if I hit a travel lodge rather than taking 15 people back to Dave and Amanda's house, I can get drunk without feeling bad about the carnage!

ROCK!