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.
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:
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!
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 :-)
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:
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"
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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 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!
Been having a busy few weeks. I'm really excited about how things are shaping up.
Despite four of us getting so drunk in Crobar the other hight that Dave passed out, then Colin puked, then Dave had to be carried out and promptly fell in Colin's puke, we've been getting a lot done.
First up, as an interim measure before we can get into the studio properly and just because it was fun, we've recorded a few acoustic tracks. I am really keen to get some proper demos done of all the new material, but for now here's a slightly drunk me and Hazel:
Playing some rough n ready acoustic versions. They are simplified "campfire" acoustic performances, so you get the basic song minus the solos and... well any of the fiddly bits, but like I said were great fun to play, so here's
Just a quick note to say that we have done a couple of tracks acoustically so we can get our new singer Hazel's voice out there for you to here as fast as we could.
A couple didn't come out that great, partly because I had drunk 2 bottles of wine and partly because I am not great on acoustic guitar.
There's a world of difference I think between "playing acoustic guitar" and being an electric guitar player that occasionally bashes out a song on acoustic. I have been spoiled I think playing my beautiful hand made French widdle machines, so it was a bit of a shock to suddenly have huge string and a highish action to wrestle with. I wanted to do a better job with the guitars since the vocals are really soaring, but I think all things considered the guitars came out ok.
There's a mini player below where you can check out the track. This is HERE AGAIN (acoustic), by THE SOHO COBRAS
