JET CITY AMPLIFICATION... First gig with my new head, the all valve JCA20H

I had my first gig with my new head a JET CITY AMPLIFICATION  JCA20H all valve 20 watt head.

The gig on Monday was a great night. We had been due to be first on of three or four depending what poster you read, but in the end we were main support. Main support at The Underworld ain't bad for gig number 3!

The guys from NINJA GUN were great, and I borrowed a cool old Marshall 1960A to run the head through from them. It was an unusual night for us though because we played as a four piece with just one guitar. Stevi couldn't make this one so Mr Sober Dave took over on bass for the show. I did feel a little exposed being on a decent sized stage with no rhythm guitar to hide being, but I soon got over that when we started playing.

Any how, back to the new amp :-)

This is it, the JCA20H, it looks great and has a blue light on the front.
Plenty loud enough to gig with and at about 10kgs light enough to get places without having to spent the next day in bed. That really is  a big plus for me, I've always been quite happy with my MARSHALL TSL601 combo but at about 30 kgs it's just to big for me to get around, so I started looking for something lighter and I found this! It's still a good size, I wouldn't describe it as a Mini-head in the Orange Tiny Terror style, but it's probably 2/3 the size of my old TSL60 but a lot lighter.

But what does it sound like??

Here's a youtube video I put together from a few of my favourite solos from the gig so you can here what it sounds like and marvel at the little blue light!


I'm looking forward to a lot more gigs with this behind me!

Playing at THE UNDERWORLD in CAMDEN 29/03/10 and some pics from Oxford

First two gigs have gone really well.

Next one is is at THE UNDERWORLD in Camden. I've played there a couple of times, but not since 2003. 

Last Time was supporting SHEEP ON DRUGS with DUST:RETOX. That  show was a bit of a drunken shambles. A good night of glitter covered shirtless fun I guess even if a bit too much tequila was involved and Paulo the guy controlling the samples fucked up literally every time. That was a fun night but I really think THE SOHO COBRAS show is going to be a lot better!

It's also going to be my first gig my my new amp, so I'm looking forward to trying out the JCA20H. More on the new amp though when I can get some video shot.

We're playing on Monday 29th March with NINJA GUN, I think we're on first so get there early.

Tickets available at:

TICKETWEB.CO.UK

STARGREEN.COM

SEETICKETS.COM

I've also found some cool pics from the gig last Friday in Oxford. There a few examples below or you can check out the whole gallery at Pelicoophotography.com.

HAZEL in action

© Pelicoo Photography

ME looking off to one side.

© Pelicoo Photography

ME and DAVE rocking out.

© Pelicoo Photography

www.pelicoophotography.com/
info@pelicoophotography.com

See you at THE UNDERWORLD on the 29th of MARCH!!!

THE SOHO COBRAS Live in Oxford 19/03/10

We played in Oxford on Friday. I hadn't really been back there since PISTOL KIXX broke up, so it was really cool to get  there and say hello to some familiar faces. Again, a big thank you to John for booking us and having the faith to give us a gig before he'd even heard a note.

We had quite a wait between sound check and playing so we did sink quite a few drinks... maybe to many, but things were a lot more relaxed now that we have gotten rid of the first gig nerves.

I did get to meet some interesting locals while standing around boozing including the owner of possibly the nerdiest and most glorious tattoo I have ever seen. Check out these winged storm trooper helmets! Who would have thought to combine tits and Star Wars in a single tattoo...? This chick, that's who! :-)

The gig itself was great fun. The sound wasn't so good, but now that we've lost our live cherry we were all giving it a bit more in the jumping around and gin-spitting departments.

I did have some technical problems which threw me a bit. My guitar kept sounding like the volume was backed off no matter what I did, and then my crappy Behringer tuner froze on me... (time to finally buy the Boss one I've been promising myself.) I spent most of the night convinced that my fantastic Marshall TSL601 was on it's last legs, but once I got home and had a chance to look into it, it turns out my pick-up selector switch was full of dust and crap and wasn't connecting properly. It all seems fine now, but worst case scenario, I have to replace a £10 switch rather than an £850 combo, so it's all good.
It did mean however that the guitar sound wasn't great on the night and kept cutting out on me, but I put on  a brave face and did the best I could.

We also unveiled our comedy cover. WARRIORS OF GHENGIS KHAN by BAD NEWS.

Anyhow, here's some video:






The sound isn't as good as the video from THE GAFF, but I think that's half down to my guitar sounding a bit shit and the sound in the room just not being as good.
Still, having said that it was a great night.

I can't wait until the the gig at The Underworld in Camden on the 29th of March.

OXFORD Here we come!

Gig number two is just a day or so away and I'm very excited. It'll be good to be back in Oxford, we had a LOT of really cool PISTOL KIXX shows there, so in a way I'm quite glad we've gotten over the first gig nerves before we get to strut our stuff there again.

I've just got a battery for my wireless system as well so I'm looking forward to a bit of jumping about and all that.

I've also uploaded the video of the whole show from THE GAFF to zshare.net because it was too long to put up on youtube in one bit, so you can view the whole thing from start to finish by clicking below:

THE WHOLE SHOW FROM THE GAFF 12/03/10

So if you're in Oxford on Friday, get yourself along to this:

THE SOHO COBRAS official debut show bootleg...FREE MP3 OF THE WHOLE SHOW

Not a lot else to say.

I'm still very pleased with how the show went, I just posted links to video for the whole night, but here's your chance to steal the whole thing as MP3s...

It's nothing very spectacular, just the audio from the MP3's has been ripped off and placed on my reverbnation.com player for a  few weeks

You can either download them form the reverbnation media player at the side of this blog (if you can't see that, you may be reading it somewhere else so go to: http://rob-silver.blogspot.com/ and the media player will be down the right hand side of your screen)

What ever the main article is check down the  right hand side for downloadable MP3s.

Or you can click on the link HERE and listen to or download the whole thing :-)

all in all a great night :-)

Here's a few random live shots from what I've found so far...

The first SOHO COBRAS show!

Well fuck me that was fun :-)

All nerves disappeared once I was actually in the venue. THE GAFF  is cool as fuck can I just say. We all got a few drinks in us, actually got a sound check despite being on first of four and had a really cool time.

It was just a total blast from start to finish. The actual gig was great. Everything went so well, and this line-up fucking rocked! I knew Hazel was quite "extroverted" shall we say, but I was  so impressed to see her throwing herself into things like the gin-fueled rock-lunatic she is :-)

 Usually me and Dave make it our job to jump into the people and generally make menaces of ourselves, but in the end we just sort of let Hazel fly free! She was menace enough for all of us on Friday :-)

I think with it being the first show as well, I was a little more subdued myself, I just wanted to make sure we really could play the shit live!

Turns out we can!

It was great night guitar wise.

I got to play through a really cool Marshall Mode four stack. A big thank you to Davey from New Gen for letting me borrow it. It was really cool. The only guitar fuck up I had was a little wobble in the solo to "Boyz Night Out" but I think I covered it well, and bearing in mind that I still couldn't play that solo standing up last week, I think I did OK.

It was brilliant from start to finish!


There was one particularly funny moment during New Gen set. They ended with The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop" and got everyone from the other bands onstage to help out with the "Hey Ho's" and so on, I finished my drink mid "Hey ho" so I lobbed my glass into the crowd without thinking (It was plastic, I was being exuberant/antisocial not a psychopath) and it hit this chick in the front row right between the eyes

She took in the good humour it was intended though, so I didn't have to have a fight with her boyfriend.

Apparently in the same song, Hazel snogged the singer from Vanity Ink, while I was standing next to her, but it seems that I was so caught up in drunkenly shouting "hey ho, lets go" that I missed the sapphic floor show next to me.

Anyhow, I have just uploaded videos of the whole set to youtube so here we go:








ROCK! :-)

First gig just a week away... THE GAFF here we come!

Rehearsal has been going really well so far and I've been writing songs faster than we can learn them.

We're also demoing three more new tracks in the next few weeks. These will be the first completely new full band demos since "GET IT ON" had been written and demoed some time ago for PISTOL KIXX. We never used it, or even played it live, so we decided to get Hazel to record vocals for it and use the track with the new band.

 That's all well and good, but eventually you have to get out of the rehearsal room or studio room and do things for real. Now with the first gig only a week away it's time for things to get serious.

Our first gig had been booked for the Friday the 19th in Oxford. (more on this soon) and a big thank you to Johnny Moto for having the faith to book us without having heard a note, but a few days ago we were offered a slot at THE GAFF by Nix from PURERAWK opening up the HIGHWAY TO HELL club night.

I don't think I've ever turned down an offer of a gig I had even the slightest chance of actually getting to, so we decided to bite the bullet and bring the debut live show a week forward. We're first on of four bands so it'll be a nice short set to ease us in to a longer set higher up the bill the following week in Oxford.

We're playing with New Generation Superstars, Violent Divine and Vanity Ink so it's going to be a glorious night of filthy rock n roll!

We were taken a bit surprise by all this, we didn't even have any pictures of us all. In the end we threw this together from random live shots of us all:

Luckily there seems to be lots of red and black walls in all the pics, so it looks a bit like they were all taken at the same gig, although Hazel doesn't look like she's just crawled out of a TV any more.

So... anyone who's free on Friday March 12th, come and check us out at The Gaff on Holloway Road:

Only £5 for four bands and a club night! You just can't lose can you!