The Black Bull - Supporting The Band for Disease Control and Prevention 28-05-2016

It was another one of those last minute decisions that we had on a late Friday night!
with all the guys having a free Saturday and nothing to do we needed to play a gig for the night
and behold there was an opening at our favourite punk pub the world famous Black Bull!


The Band for Disease Control and Prevention we're playing and there was no support bands confirmed for the show, until a quick phone call to shev soon sorted that out right away!!

Down at the Bull nice and early to set up our gear, we had the usual hiccups with equipment, since our good 'ol drummer hopped in the car with us, saving the journey in two cars, we could only bring what would fit in a tiny Nissan Micra, which is amazing in the list of items we actually fitted in the car. p.s google Nissan micra to see what i mean, its a 5 door one

3 Guitars in cases
1 Marshall amp
2 pedal board cases
1 merch case
1 bag of drum cymbals
1 snare
1 bass drum pedal
1 bass player
1 drummer
1 guitarist/ the driver

eventually we got sorted and kicked off a very intense 45 min long set, of blood sweat and snapping strings, kicking off with our favroite song CID by uk Subs we blasted through the set list and enjoying the view from the stage, and we could see T,B,F,D,C & P watching us perfrom and i spotted lead vocalist Marcia dancing along to our tunes! always great to see that during a show!!

coming close to the end of our set, we we're running out of songs and during the song R.A.M.O.N.E.S pop goes the string on my trusty SG, looks like my heavy strumming did it again!!
so quick guitar swap during the song and carried on, ending on the clash's White Riot!!!

old black strat had to take over for the end of the set

With our set over and sweat dripping down the side of my face, it was a good time to get off the stage and make way for the headliners T,B,F,D,C & P! which i've been wanting to see for a very long time!

they kicked off the set with a very loud track! but i missed a few of the songs during the set as there was a little issue involving a car sitting very very close to my dad's and spent most of the time looking for the owner to see if he could move it....but anyway back to the band.

T,B,F,D,C & P blasted through a great set of originals, and of course their very own version of blondie's 11:59 track which is something you must hear yourself!!

be sure to check out  The Band for Disease Control and Prevention on facebook >>> T,B,F,D,C & P

North East Unity At Graft Night @ The Black Bull 22-04-2016.

Well this was a very exciting night, for myself and Spitfire Bullets, our main drummer boy was unavailable to play the gig as such short notice due to his work schedule so i asked a young lad i know very well called Elliot to hop on the drums and learn our full set within 3 days for the gig, and he didn't disappoint us!

We got to the Black Bull nice and early to load in, have a quick game of pool and an adventure to burger king for something to eat.

poor lad was in the back seat with all the gear

once we got back, Anord were busy setting up and sound checking, soon it would be us to set up sound check and kick off the night of Punk Rock!!

8:30 soon arrived, we hopped on stage, did a quick check on sound tuning, making sure Elliot remembered the set and kicked it off with our opening track CID! taking things slow for this gig we blasted our way through our usual set list of covers and originals within our 30 min set finishing off with a high tempo of Beat On The Brat!!

Anord took to the stage with their Anarchy hardcore angry screams and grunts about David Cameron, being stuck on the dole and Katie Hopkins with a back line of screaming feed backing guitars and awesome Mowhawks. 

Keyside Strike took to the stage as the main headliners blasting out some wall of sound hardcore punk, with snarling vocals wah wah wailing guitars, heavy bass lines and good laughs even covering a few very very short songs such as "You Suffer" By Napalm death

All in all it was a great night as such short notice, its amazing when a group of punk bands can come together and instantly get a gig sorted within a week!!

Spitfire Bullets would like to thank the Black bull, Anord and Keyside strike for having us and a big thank you to Elliot for jumping on the drums for us at last min to play a great set list!!

Be sure to check out Anord and keyside strike on facebook and buy their merch!!!!

  

The Borough 18-03-2016 Supporting the John Doe Experiment

So before i set off talking about how great it was playing in The Borough a some 100 year old pub in the centre of Sunderland with lots of history and stories, lets go back 5 and a half years ago to the 17th of September 2010 where a younger me in a rock band was in the same spot with the same cherry red SG and old Marshall amp while getting very nervous for playing his very first gig. did i mention the founding memeber of spitfire bullets *Gilley* was in this band too?? well he was and here is a photo of us together messing about

But you can see this very first show here on YouTube >>> CLICK HERE! as you probably saw it was the worst show i played and if you were there you would know what it was like. so after that very first show i promised myself i won't step foot on the stage in this bar until i had a great rocking outrageous band to play with.

so eventually after 5 years with a new band we took to the stage playing one hell of an outrageous show!

For the night it seemed it was going to be a packed bar, with plenty of people coming in and taking seats and drinks, this was something we were not used to. A crowd?? for Spitfire Bullets this was very odd, we got that used to playing in front of 5 people we forgot what a crowd looked like!

it rolled on to 9pm we sound checked and fired up the Marshalls and kicked off with our loud and favourite cover UK Subs C.I.D, going through a set of covers and originals, ending one song and screaming 1234!! to jump into the next one like a proper punk band should! we blasted out our two new tracks "i don't remember" and "Flying fortress" then ending our set on R-A-M-O-N-E-S. But it wasn't over yet!
the crowd asked for more! so with a panic on what to play craggsy our drummer said lets do house of the rising sun and God save the Queen since we cut them two songs out of our set.

At the end of such an exciting and very exhausting intense set, the John Doe Experiment took to the stage blasting out their own set list of covers and originals, the one song that stood out for me was kryptonite, with a batman style na na na na na on the guitar, this was a catchy tune!

lets hope we don't have to wait another 5 and a half years to play the Borough again!!