Solos for SOBER DAVE AND THE SNOWMEN

Just been recording some solos for the SOBER DAVE AND THE SNOWMEN christmas sillyness.

All went pretty well I think, but waiting to hear back from Mr Sober about how well it all meshes together.

You can here me playing the solos on "Fairytale of New York"

DOWNLOAD IT ALL FOR FREE HERE!!!!!!!!!!

I'm quite looking forward to hearing how it all comes out now, and I think I need to sort out a better "Home Studio" than cluttering up the spare bedroom sittling around with a PODxt and headphones plugged in to my lap top. I'm going to have to start building  decent home set up to play about with...

It was nice to get out the Cherry Burst LAG RF1000. Last time I played it live, PISTOL KIXX broke up on stage, but this time it was a bit less stressful.

I must finally pay for REAPER, it's all working so well and so easily, I actually feel guilty every time I press "Still Evaluating."

EIGHTBALL VOODOO Single...

After a good long wait, the first EIGHTBALL VOODOO single is out to buy

It's a cover of the old geordie folk song "Blaydon Races"

You can check out a preview on youtube below or buy it on amazon or itunes




Buy it here on amazon!

New live video...

We played our first THE SOHO COBRAS show in a while on Friday.

We haven't gigged for a few months so it was cool to get out and play, especially somewhere cool like St Moritz in Soho.

I've never played there before so it was great to finally get a chance.

It was good to see my JCA20H handling a small gig easily, even just running through a 1x12 cab.

We have a few more gigs lined up now, so it's time to rehearse and add some new tunes to the live show.

Watch this space!

Sneak preview...

The Cover art for the Eightball Voodoo single, A cover of "Blaydon Races."

(yet) Another new toy...

I've just got my hands on an absolutely beautiful TAYLOR T-5.

This is definitely going to be my last new guitar for a while, because I have been treating myself to a few to many goodies lately, but I was offered it at a price I could not refuse.

I really got lucky with this, since if I had the choice of any colour, this would have been what I'd have gone for and even the case is cool.

There is a tiny ding on the front of the guitar which on a top end guitar like this knocked a lot of the second hand asking price, but I can't even get the mark to show up in photos so I'm not bothered by it at all and anyway, I bought this to play not hang on the wall and look at :-)

I just cannot say enough good things about this.

The build and feel are just amazing.

As an acoustic guitar it sounds fantastic, lovely very natural acoustic sound and it's surprisingly good in electric mode as well. It's not a compromised half way house, it really is a great acoustic guitar AND an electric guitar.

It plays well, I can get acoustic sounds and play all THE SOHO COBRAS solos on the same guitar.

Just phenomenal!

OK, waffle over, here are some more pics!

Another Roxane....

My addiction to obscure French made guitars continues...

Thanks to my good friend MAX who finally buckled and sold me his beautiful LAG ROXANNE VINTAGE.

It's 10 years old and has the old two "N" spelling.

French made LAG number 5 for my collection!

I'd seen his pics of it maybe a year ago and I've been nagging him to let me have it since.

I guess it finally got a bit much and the deal was done!

A guitar shaped parcel arrived for me at work a few days ago, and I'm still full of new guitar joy!

I think that's going to be it guitar purchase wise or a while, but I have enough of a guitar-harem to not be too bothered if I have to gig the same ones for a while.

Here she is!

NEW ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC...

The subject just about says it all...

Not a lot been going on lately. We just had the first THE SOHO COBRAS gig with Charlie on vocals (Video to follow) but I'm moving house and that has kept me busy. I have a new place sorted which will mean there will be a lot more space and being able to leave my gear set up will mean that there'll be a lot of videos and stuff on the way.

Watch this space.

I have finally invested in a decent Electro-acoustic. My recent Miyavi obsession and a few looming acoustic gigs meant I had to really.

I tried quite a few but I finally opted for a Yamaha APX900.

It's tuned to D and getting the shit, miyavi-slapped out of it, right now. I am just so impressed with it. It sounds great acoustically, especially when you consider that it's a small bodied acoustic with a cutaway, but plugged in, in is just amazing.

It's also just thin enough that I can play it behind my head and it's black!

EIGHTBALL VOODOO

I've been recording some guitars at home for another EIGHTBALL VOODOO Track. I'm very new to recording my own demos. I usually just defer to somebody who likes fiddling with computers, but this time I thought it was time to bite the bullet and do it myself. So armed with a copy of REAPER and my very battered PODxt I got it done!

This did remind me that I hadn't mentioned EIGHTBALL VOODOO here yet, so here goes:

At the moment, the band is an online collaboration. We are going to be playing live once we have an ep together and with band members in London, Australia and South Africa that opens up a lot of possibilities for some foreign guitar toting adventures!

I'd always bean a fan of Jay's voice, well filthy snarl since I'd seen him perform with JACK VIPER so I was really excited when he asked if I wanted to provide some guitars!

We've demoed one track already, "The Devil's Country" which was a reworking off an old PUREDECAY tune. (I've just added the demo to the player on my blog.) There was only ever one PUREDECAY gig, so I'm really pleased that some of the material is getting a second life. Plus there are a bunch more tunes coming shortly.

Eightball voodoo was formed in 2010 by Jay R, the former lead singer and award winning frontman of leading U.K sleaze rockers, JackViper. Jay has recruited the rest of the band of talented rockers from around the world. The low slung guitar attack is led by Rob Silver of The Soho Cobras and formerly of Pistol Kixx and Deangersmith, legendary South African guitarist who has played with numerous important bands from the South African rock/metal scene and more recently the British heavy metal band Mouthful of Flies. Bringing massive thundering metal style drumming is Ralph Margo formerly of Misericord and now also with South African metalheads, Boneyard.
Between them they have logged up multiple releases, soundtracks, hundreds of live shows, radio and television appearances, magazine, newspaper and webzine features and much more!
Proudly sleaze rock with a liberal injection of metal and a dash of punk, Eightball Voodoo create an urgent contempary style. Throw Sunset strip rock, Jack Daniels, gritty real life lyrics, fuck you attitude and gasoline into a mixer and throw in a match and you get Eightball Voodoo.
The Voodoo rockers are here to take the scene by the throat and make sleaze vital for the new generation. Get ready to have your hearts and minds infected by the sleaze rock apocalypse that is EIGHTBALL VOODOO...

FIND EIGHTBALL VOODOO ONLINE:

HOME PAGE
MYSPACE
FACEBOOK
REVERBNATION

ACOUSTIC DEMOS

Just a quick note to say that I've just added a couple of acoustic demos to the player down the side of the blog.

We are recording some proper studio recording thanks to the studio skills of Mr SOBERDAVE but we were having an acoustic run through, and just thought, "why not."

So using the advance home recording trick of getting my video camera, pointing it at a wall then ripping the audio off later we recorded a few "campfire" versions of some tunes and had a run through provisional arrangements of two new tracks: "Like a Drug" and "Stained Tattoo."

I was really pleased with how they sounded and I was glad to have a chance to let everyone hear Charlie, so I've put them online so you can all have a listen.

Right now, they are tracks 1-5 on the media player on the right hand side of this site.

Our first gig has been booked as well this week, so it's good news all round. It's a little way off yet, so we're hoping to book another show before then.

More news as we get closer to the date.

Badges and Plectrums and stuff...

In anticipation of THE SOHO COBRAS getting out and playing live again soon, I finally ordered some more ROB SILVER plectrums.

They turned up this morning and I've been smiling all day.

Clearly personalised pieces of plastic really shouldn't make me this happy, but they do. I just can't wait to get some gigs booked and start throwing them at people.

I also got a huge bag of THE SOHO COBRAS badges, which we will be giving away at our shows over the next few months.

The plectrums came in four colours, so  have quite a bit of variety now!

There were only two badge designs, but more will follow I'm sure.

In other news...

Rehearsals with Charlie are going really well, we're starting to book some gigs now, so live dates will follow shortly. We've also started recording vocals for some new demos that should all be sorted shortly thanks to the production skills of Mr Sober Dave.

Here's a very hungover Charlie recoding vocals last Sunday in her finest Dennis the Menace jumper.

I also got around to watching my 20th aniversary DVD re-release of SHOCK EM DEAD now available to buy at SHOCKEMDEADMOVIE.COM.

This is probably my second favourite 80's metal horror movie after TRICK OR TREAT. It's awful, but get's a lot of bonus points for excessive breast shots and Michael Angelo Batio playing one of those guitars, that's like a double guitar with plastic horns stuck on his head.

Good times.

New Toys...

I've invested in a few new toys over the last couple of weeks.

My tired old pedal board will have a few new additions once I have a few hours to play with them all! :-)

A couple of my new acquisitions will be for home use only I think, but my new Digitech Whammy Pedal will find a new home with me live. I'm looking forward to doing hands free dive bombs live.

I'm holding off on changing anything else though because of the imminent arrival of the JET CITY AMPLIFICATION JCA22H, the new 2 channel version of my glorious JCA20H valve head.

So in no particular order, I'm very happy to be goofing around with:

A BOSS RC50 LOOPER

A DIGITECH WHAMMY PEDAL

and I have finally bought my own cab. I got the JCA12S to match my head.

THE SOHO COBRAS... Rehearsal with the new line-up going really well

Rehearsals with Charlie, the new singer are going really well.

We've only rehearsed three times and I think I would happily gig tomorrow if one was offered.

I think we're probably going to wait a few more weeks before booking some shows though. We've already got a new song sorted. I'm especially happy that the new tune is using some of Charlie's lyrics. Writing seems to be going really with Charlie as a wing-man. We have another few songs that we're playing around with, so I think we'll give it another few weeks to get those sorted, since it would be cool to relaunch the live band with a few new tunes under our belts.

All is very good...

Gigs coming soon :-)

THE SOHO COBRAS have a new singer

We've been out of action for a while. We tried playing live a few times with me on vocals and guitar which was not great, and Dave had a go (which we just don't talk about. EVER) but after a test run on acoustic and then rehearsal today, I'm glad to anounce that we have a new singer.

I can finally breathe a huge sigh of relief because I hated mutil-tasking and to be honest... I'm just not very good at singing anyway so I really didn't want have to do it myself. More inportantly though I think even if I had been better, I always felt we lost something performance wise having the singer trapped being a microphone. There's just no running around when you sing and play guitar at the same time.

I guess we'll be rehearsing for a month or so, then booking shows again which I am really looking forward to. It's just been too long since I got to play guitar behind my head in front of a room full of strangers! :-)

So I'm very pleased to welcome Charlie Thaine to THE SOHO COBRAS

I can't wait to be playing live again, so watch this space for gigs.

Been offline for a while...

Thanks to the untimely death of my laptop, updates have been a bit thin on the ground, but i'm getting a new one in a few days so expect a pile of new guitar stuff.

The covers gig went really well, but the bloody camera ran out of battery half a song in, so there's no video, which sucks, because I rocked! Rehearsals start for the next covers gig next week though. It's going to be really fun, and we're even playing a Winger song! :-)

I have been recording for a new band though. EIGHTBALL VOODOO is an online collaboration between a few geographically displaced sleaze heads...

I had a little smile on my face today because we got a little mention on the mighty sleazeroxx.com!

 

Eightball voodoo was formed in 2010 by Jay R, the former lead singer and award winning frontman of leading U.K sleaze rockers, JackViper. Jay has recruited the rest of the band of talented rockers from around the world. The low slung guitar attack is led by Rob Silver of The Soho Cobras and formerly of Pistol Kixx and Deangersmith, legendary South African guitarist who has played with numerous important bands from the South African rock/metal scene and more recently the British heavy metal band Mouthful of Flies. Bringing massive thundering metal style drumming is Ralph Margo formerly of Misericord and now also with South African metalheads, Boneyard.

Between them they have logged up multiple releases, soundtracks, hundreds of live shows, radio and television appearances, magazine, newspaper and webzine features and much more!

Proudly sleaze rock with a liberal injection of metal and a dash of punk, Eightball Voodoo create an urgent contempary style. Throw Sunset strip rock, Jack Daniels, gritty real life lyrics, fuck you attitude and gasoline into a mixer and throw in a match and you get Eightball Voodoo.

The Voodoo rockers are here to take the scene by the throat and make sleaze vital for the new generation. Get ready to have your hearts and minds infected by the sleaze rock apocalypse that is Eightball Voodoo...

Click HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

Laptop death has slowed EIGHTBALL VOODOO progress, but once I'm back online full time, expect a lot of new tracks in the near future :-) and if your feeling friendly, say hello to the band on FACEBOOK 

Get some sleazy rock n roll!