Charity covers gig...

Just a quick note to say November 6th I'll be playing a charity covers gig...

We've got a load of people from a bunch of bands to form a bunch of covers bands doing themed sets

It's been a bit of a squeeze learning a load of tunes in a very short time, and to be fair, most of them aren't ready, but we're going to do it any way!

That's the all action crazy kinda guys we are

Set list was a bit of a stickcing point, and we lost two weeks arguing about what to play leaving just two weeks to learn them all, but it'll go something like this:

SET LIST.

"Talk Dirty To ME" by Poison
"Suckerpunch" by The Wildhearts
"Living On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi
" Dead Ringer For Love" by Meatloaf
"Kickstart My Heart" by Motley Crue
"Youth Gone Wild" by Skid Row
"We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister
"Crazy Crazy Nights" by KISS

It's going to be soooooo much fun!

I'm going to video the whole thing, and some of the video may get online depending on how funny/proficient we are.
Some of the video may never be spoken of again!

SIMPLE RIGHT HAND PICKING EXERCISES FOR GUITAR

Just a quick update to post some simple right hand picking drills.

The drills in the widget below should help you work on right hand picking speed and technique. Your left hand is pretty much on holiday in them so you can isolate the right hand and work on that.

Remember to use a metronome and start slow.

There a free metronome on my blog, check out the menu on the right hand side of the site.

CLICK HERE FOR A FULL LIST OF ALL THE FREE GUITAR RESOURCES ON MY BLOG!

SINGER WANTED...

The search for a new singer continues...

We're looking for somebody to join our punk, sleaze rock and guitar solo fueled travelling hangover machine.

Dave and I had a go, and it was OK, but I really think we lose something having the singer permanently trapped behind a guitar. So we're going to carry on looking for a while and see if we can find a strong front man or front woman.

Worst case scenario, we're not going to go on hold for a year looking for somebody who can sing and isn't a total cock, but I think we'll give it a month or two before we start playing again and I have to do it, just so we can get out and make some noise. Lot's of gigs waiting and I'm getting tired of turning them down right now.

We're looking for somebody with a good voice and a lot of stage presence. We are equal opportunity sleaze fiends though, so we're happy to audition male or female singers, they just have to not be shit, and be exuberant attention seeking lunatics... but in a good way.

Previous live experience preferred but not essential.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in trying out then please pass on my email address:

rob@rob-silver.com

And tell them to say hi.

If you want some tracks/links to show anyone who might be interested then depending on where you're reading this, you should be able to hear all the tracks in the media player on the right hand side of my blog, but if you're reading this after it's RSS'd into somewhere else like facebook, then click here:
rob-silver.com

There is a lot of live video there as well over the last few pages, but if you want to see loads in one place then just hit youtube and search for "the soho cobras"
There will be loads!

Another post in praise of my JCA20H...

Just a quick post...

I just played my first gig using my Jet City Amplification JCA20H where it wasn't mic'd up.

A lot of people have been asking my how it stand up volume wise to live drums and how useful it would be for small gigs without being mic'd through a PA so I've thrown together a quick compilation from the video of the show of a few solos so you can hear it next to a full live band in a small venue.

All my previous gigs with it had been through a PA which worked great but this was the first time it had to stand on it's own as it were. It has been working fine at rehearsals without any help from a PA so I was sure it would cool and it did work out really well, it sounded great and was plenty loud enough to play a small or medium sized venue on it's own I think.

I just cannot recomend one of these highly enough.

Any how, enough waffle, here's the video:
JCA20H demo: Live solo clips, un-mic'd with a full band.

HAZEL has decided to leave the band...

Not a lot else to report, our fearless  gin-fueled front woman has decided to leave the band.

Her voice, stage presence, mid solo gin pouring and shoulder climbing antics will be sorely missed.

I wish her luck with what ever she does in the future.

In the short term, Sober Dave and I will be singing. So far this has been working out OK.

We both sing so we're not cancelling any shows. I'm kind of in two minds myself as to whether we should just go with that option, or find a new singer.
I sing OK, and Dave has a good punk voice and has sung lead vocals before so I'm not worried about how it will sound, but I do think we do lose something when the singer(s) are trapped holding guitars. For now anyway, Dave will be doing most of the singing and I'll be doing one or two tracks.

We have placed a few adverts looking for a new singer, but I guess we're not really in a hurry to fill the slot. If somebody amazing comes along, then that'll be cool, but if they don't, I'm quite happy for things to carry on as a four-piece.

If you know of anyone male or female who would like to try out, then get in touch.

In the mean time here's some footage off Hazel drinking gin of the floor :-)

HAZEL DRINKS GIN OFF THE FLOOR...  

Great gig and a solo with Hazel on my shoulders... Pics and video

We had a great show at THE WHEATSHEAF in Oxford on Friday.

It was a great night of drunken guitar driven fun. I really enjoyed the show, there were a lot a friends down for it, and unlike the last gig there, no technical problems.

Nikki Q came down and got some great live shots of us, you can check out her work HERE or have a look at the gallery of shots of us from the show here:

THE SOHO COBRAS live at THE WHEATSHEAF, Oxford (28/05/10)

Holly got some video done as well, including me playing a solo with Hazel sitting on my shoulders. It did take a me a bit by surprise, but I guess it's nice to be spontaneous and keep me on my toes. The acrobatics start at about 2' 30"

THE SOHO COBRAS- GET IT ON Live, 28/05/10

TRIADS AND CHORD SCALES FOR GUITAR

Finally a lesson on chords!

I found a bunch of notes I wrote out when I was maybe 19 and fumbling through working out all this stuff from magazine articles and a huge pile of books. I couldn't be arsed to redo them all in nice crisp digital versions, so I've just scanned it all in.

I have added a little bit of additional theory to make sure you understand exactly what it is I'm waffling about, not too much though, the scans were huge files and kept crashing word for me.  I'm sure it will all make sense once you start actually playing the shapes though.

EDIT: (12/05/12) The widget that used to display this as a PDF kept crashing so I have re added the pages as Jpegs.

 

CLICK HERE FOR A FULL LIST OF ALL THE FREE GUITAR RESOURCES ON MY BLOG!

CHROMATIC SCALES FOR THE GUITAR

I haven't put up any guitar stuff for a while, so here's a little something.

This is a little hand out that shows you several different figurings of the chromatic scale for the guitar. There are 3 note, 4 note and 5 note version as well as diagrams showing the scale all over the neck expressed as intervals and as scale degrees.

The 3 note per string ones are especially funky because as Paul Gilbert pointed out in one of his videos, you can use that fingering to play all you standard 3 note per string sequences within the chromatic scale. It'll sound horrible but glorious :-)

I'

Any how here it is.

  CLICK HERE FOR A FULL LIST OF ALL THE FREE GUITAR RESOURCES ON MY BLOG!

THE SOHO COBRAS Live shots and our first promo pics

As I've already ranted, we had a really great show on Saturday at AQUANET at South of the Border. It was fantastic night of gin fueled fun.

First surprise of the night, Colin unveiled THE SOHO COBRAS printed bass drum skin; Very fucking sexy.

While we were there we had a few cool live shots taken by Gareth Thomas, so a big thank you to him.

We also had a few promo shots done by Hannah Thomas, so again a big thank you to her for making us look so rock n roll, if not quite as good as she made Hazel look.

There are a few examples of each here for your viewing pleasure:

PROMO SHOTS FIRST...

NOW SOME LIVE SHOTS.

...and finally a big thank you to Shady Dave of Shred-reviews.co.uk for featuring our track "BOYZ NIGHT OUT" and it's sweep-tastic solo in his LATEST UPDATE.

Live at South of the Border 08/05/10

We had a great gig on Saturday. It was THE SOHO COBRAS live at AQUANET a new 80's rock themed night on Old Street.

It was a cool venue, Mexican themed and under a Mexican restaurant. We had some band pics done as well since the place looked so cool, some of these will follow but for now it's just live and carnage related video.

The was a lot of waiting around because we were the only band on. We hit the stage at about 11 o'clock so we had a few beers under our belts, maybe too many but it was so much fun it just didn't matter. Hazel was getting bought a LOT of drinks while she was on stage so if she wasn't drunk when we started she was when we finished :-)

I guess the "highlight" of the night was Hazel getting dared to drink spilled gin off the stage... and doing it!
Video of that and some music below:

HAZEL DRINKS GIN OFF THE FLOOR... THE SOHO COBRAS LIVE

GET IT ON By THE SOHO COBRAS Live at SOUTH OF THE BORDER

FULL THROTTLE By THE SOHO COBRAS Live at SOUTH OF THE BORDER

BAD NEWS cover by THE SOHO COBRAS Live at SOUTH OF THE BORDER

BOYZ NIGHT OUT By THE SOHO COBRAS Live at SOUTH OF THE BORDER

OR CLICK HERE FOR FULL PLAYLIST

Live at THE WHITE SWAN 24/04/10 and Dickie gets a new tattoo

We just had a gig at THE WHITE SWAN in Aylesbury. It was an unusual show. We had booked it before Hazel joined the band and it turned out that she was having to jet off, well car and ferry off to Belgium because of work on the day of the gig.

It was only a small pub gig so rather than cancel, I stepped in to sing for one show. I was a bit unsure about it, but I thought fuck it, give it a go. I had been singing at rehearsals while we were looking for a singer, so I knew I could "sing" but doing it live while playing the guitar was another thing!

In the end it was OK I guess, I really had fun doing it and it was in tune, but not  a great vocal performance. I guess my rhythm playing suffered quite a bit. I think I rely on seeing the guitar neck a bit too much and looking at the video, I can see that I need to work on making sure that I my mouth is pointing at the mic when I shout in it!  An interesting learning experience, but I'll be very glad to have hazel back where she belongs for the next one.

So so vocals aside it was a great night with excellent performances from THE INFAMOUS and FOREVER VENDETTA.

It was also my second gig with my JET CITY AMPLIFICATION JCA20H and I used my LAG  ROXANE RF1000 for the first time since I played it at the gig where PISTOL KIXX broke up live on stage!
Here's a quick collection of excerpts from solos so you can here the JCA20H live on a guitar with P-90's

Jet City Amplification, JCA20H. Another live demo

And here are 2 tracks from the gig:

HERE AGAIN By THE SOHO COBRAS (Rob Silver filling in on vocals)

BLACK HEART By THE SOHO COBRAS (Rob Silver filling in on vocals)

In other news, Dickie got "I *HEART* Colin Vipurs" tattooed on his arse for a bet... well he says it was a bet, but there's no smoke without fire if you ask me...

Who would have thought Dickie had a thing for drummers.

This is a lesson to anyone who get's drunk around tattoo equipment! 

DON'T DO IT

See you all at AQUANET on May 8th!

LIVE AT 12 BAR 16/04/10

We got offered a gig at 12 BAR last week. It was for the following Friday but we jumped at a chance to do a show at there even at 4 days notice!

I've wanted to play there since I saw THE STEREO JUNKS rip the place up a few years ago and since Hazel had already played there a few times with GINKINTA her last band I was feeling a bit left out of all this 12 BAR gig action, so a massive than you to LONDON CALLIN for putting us on.

It's weird in, any reasonable way the place is an awful venue, the stage is tiny, I've seen bigger dining tables and obscured by a balcony, but it's just SO FUCKING COOL you can't help but love playing there.

We had a pretty good crowd despite being first on. Opening the night combined with the difficulty of changing over gear in such a small space meant I had to leave my lovely new amp at home and we all used the headline bands gear, so a big thank you to ELECTRIC RED DRIVE for sharing amps. I got to play through a huge Fender combo, great amp, but not really my thing, so I guess I struggled a bit with it at first, but once we got going it was all cool as fuck.

The sound in the room was pretty good, but it was loud as hell. So far I've had excellent sound on the video with my camera but I think finally the noise levels were a bit much for it in a quite small space. Even though the sound isn't great I've stuck up all the videos because I think the atmosphere more than makes up for the sound quality. It was just a great night from start to finish!

You can find a couple of the videos below along with a link to a playlist of the whole show.

VISH came down as well and took some cool pics, some of which you'll find below the videos.

BLACK HEART by THE SOHO COBRAS live at 12 BAR. 16/04/10

Boyz Night Out by THE SOHO COBRAS live at 12 BAR. 16/04/10

YOU CAN FIND A PLAYLIST OF THE WHOLE SHOW HERE

And these are some of the pics that Vish took: 

We've already been offered another slot at 12 BAR but we couldn't take it because we have another gig booked for the 24th. My singing debut in Aylesbury!

Hopefully we'll be back on stage at 12 BAR soon though...

PISTOL KIXX album available for free download

It's been a long time coming but despite the band no longer existing, the PISTOL KIXX debut album is finally online for your listening pleasure. The whole thing is available to stream of download for free at last.fm right now.

It has taken a while but thanks to our rhythm guitarist and resident studio whizz Mr Sober Dave (Nickname may be ironic)

All the demos we did have been remastered and embiggened  for your listening pleasure.
It was really fun being in the band, and even the break up that involved people storming off stage mid gig was quite a spectacle..
So click on the link below and get some filth sleazy southern blues punk :-)

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THE WHOLE ALBUM FOR FREE HERE

Live at THE UNDERWORLD, 29/03/10... vids and pics.

I guess the title sort of says it all.

I've just got a link to some pics from the show taken by our good friend, photographer and all round drunken camera toting perve VISHAL VASHISHT. There are a few examples below as well as a link to where you can find the whole gallery.

I've also posted a few videos from the show. I did get film of the show from start to finish, but I think the lights on stage may have been confusing the auto focus a bit because  a couple of the tracks came out to blurry to use. Most of the gig is up on YOUTUBE now though, so it's all good.

In other news, or next gig on the 24th of April is looming. We're playing at The White Swan, opening for the very excellent FOREVER VENDETTA and THE INFAMOUS. This will be quite an unusual show because I'm going to have to sing...

We booked this one before Hazel joined the band but unfortunately her job is dragging her off to a Belgian music festival, so rather than cancel, I'll be stepping up to the mic and filling in on vocals. I've sung on a few recordings before for my studio project PUREDECAY and I was singing at rehearsals while we were looking for a singer, but this will be my first outing on vocals in front of real people. I guess I'm equal parts excited and terrified, so it'll either make for some glorious or hastily deleted live video! 

Only time will tell.

Anyhow, I said something about vids and pics...

ANOTHER DRINK Live at THE UNDERWORLD 29/03/10

HERE AGAIN Live at THE UNDERWORLD 29/03/10

GET IT ON Live at THE UNDERWORLD 29/03/10

LA '86 Live at THE UNDERWORLD 29/03/10

BOYZ NIGHT OUT Live at THE UNDERWORLD 29/03/10

and here's some of the pics for the show thanks to Vish:

Hazel

Me

Sober Dave (Covering Bass for the night)

Colin

You can check out all the pics in the gallery at VISH'S SITE