The Borough 18-11-2016

Well what an unusual night it turned out to be for us!

it was a cold night to start off with and the Borough was ready for the punk rock night!

with local rockers Bleach for support on the line up and from what we saw in the borough down stairs, which was a lot of punk rock fans. turned out to be a huge huge let down on the local music scene.

With only a hand full of people, came down to support bleach and ourselves on the night, and after all the work we had put in to our drummer bringing her drum kit from home, myself and mike sorting out the back line and PA system on the night. it was a let down for both bands and the local music scene.

so with the band loaded in and ready to go, Bleach set off their set of wild screaming vocals, ear piercing feedback screaming guitar and thundering drums to the small crowd. 

with a room big enough to hold 30 to 40 people only a 3rd of that was there to watch the bands play. 

Bleach finished up their set and we were in mixed emotions for tonight's set, with being used to playing crowded bars and a relaxed environment. i was quite on edge for the nights gig. i had no clue what or how anything was going to happen during that set.

we kicked off our hour long set with UK Subs CID, going through the set at 100mph in your face punk rock, but still no one showed up. So eventually the gig became a sort of intimate gig playing to the small crowd of local punkers who showed up to support both bands.

all in all is was a night of mixed emotions but still was a great night and more experience for our new young member of the group harmony who is still getting used to playing the punk gigs round the pubs and clubs.

Let's Talk Punk With Spitfire Bullets from the UK Interview By: Lisa/PunkrPrincess

We recently did a interview with  Lisa/PunkrPrincess for punk globe magazine! here is the article
you can also see the original article here >>> PunkGlobe Magazine

Let's Talk Punk With
Spitfire Bullets
from the UK
Interview By: Lisa/PunkrPrincess

Spitfire Bullets are an awesome band from the UK always supportive and rockin great tunes if you can see them live do and check out their sites:
http://spitfirebullets.wix.com/spitfirebulletsband
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/spitfirebulletsband/?fref=ts
Bandcamp
https://spitfirebullets.bandcamp.com/
and most other social media sites.

PUNK GLOBE: Hello guys and thanks for the interview, can you tell us the current band line up?

Spitfire Bullets: Hey Lisa thank you for interviewing us, at the moment our main line up is myself Robert on Lead Vocals and Guitar Michael on Bass Guitar and vocals And john on Drums, but he has just recently left the band.

PUNK GLOBE: How long have you been a band and are you all original members?

Spitfire Bullets: The band has been going for 4 years, and Rob and mike are the main original founding members, we have been playing together since 2010 when we first started out in a rock band together.

PUNK GLOBE: Tell us about your music scene in the UK.

Spitfire Bullets: The music scene in the UK, well in our area it varies from each year sometimes a big music scene then nothing!, but across the country its quite a big scene, with new bands forming almost every month!

PUNK GLOBE: Where are some of your favorite venues to play at?

Spitfire Bullets: we do have a few haha, our main venue we enjoy playing at is The Black Bull in Gateshead, its pretty much our version of CBGB’S! There is also the Borough pub in our hometown, where mike and me played our very first gig.

PUNK GLOBE: Who are some of the bands you have played shows with?

Spitfire Bullets: we have played with Rotunda, Logoz, TV Smith, The Ramonas, The Sex Pistols Experience, Angry Itch, Happy Spastics, that’s all I can think of.

PUNK GLOBE: Any tours in past or future?

Spitfire Bullets: we never done a tour before, but we would love to do one in the future just a mini tour round the UK, playing with the bands we previously played with.

PUNK GLOBE: What inspires you?

Spitfire Bullets: Lots really, The Ramones are a big inspiration to the music, and the writing but its mainly our lives growing up in Sunderland what inspires us more than anything else.

PUNK GLOBE: When and why did you start playing?

Spitfire Bullets - Rob: I started playing at 17 years old, I was in college doing a course to be a car mechanic, and just thought it might be fun trying out to play guitar and learn a few chords, 7 years later and am still playing so I must be good haha.

Spitfire Bullets - Mike: I took up guitar first in school during music class but I had a hard time playing cause it was too small for my hands, until my teacher gave me a bass to try and that was it. I just couldn’t put it down.

PUNK GLOBE: Which famous musicians do you admire? Why?

Spitfire Bullets - Rob: I do admire Johnny Ramone, just because of his playing, I know people say it a lot but when I first saw a video of the Ramones playing live and saw Johnny’s Guitar playing, at the time of still learning the guitar I really didn’t know you could do that on a guitar, I always thought it was up and down strumming, not strum down really hard and angry and have no guitar solos, it was perfect!

Spitfire Bullets - Mike: Cliff Burton is one of my favorite bassist, I do like Metallica, and his playing style really got me into playing bass, it just made me want to play like him and own a Rickenbacker

PUNK GLOBE: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town?

Spitfire Bullets - Rob: the best memory I can think of is the time I saw PIL in Sunderland playing a small festival and I stood right in front of Johnny Rotten staring at him in amazement. I was so close to him I could shake his hand.

Spitfire Bullets - Mike: Its probably the time me and rob played Houghton Feast in 2012, we were told we’d be playing in front of a crowd of 1000 people or more, but it was actually 10 or 20,000 I can’t remember, we played a cover of God Save the Queen, and Rob was very nervous that day after being told how many people we were performing in front of.

PUNK GLOBE: What are the best and worst things if any of being a musician?

Spitfire Bullets: The best things, is being able to write your own music and express yourself in your own way, the other best thing is you get to meet some awesome bands and hang out with them! the worst things, is just trying to find the same like minded members or even work round your day job to play and perform in a band.

PUNK GLOBE: Do you get nervous before a performance?

Spitfire Bullets - Rob: Yep but it depends on the gig, like when we supported the Ramonas I couldn’t sleep the night before, and on stage I stuttered a lot during breaks between songs But if its just a plain old local punk band supporting punk band gig and its mainly friends at the show, my nervousness just goes and I end up very calm.

PUNK GLOBE: What advice would you give a new band starting out?

Spitfire Bullets: Practice hard no matter how bad you think you are, just practice hard write terrible songs if you have to or play covers and play any gig you get offered, even if its an open mic, “A GIGS A GIG” as we always say start from the bottom and work to the top.

PUNK GLOBE: Describe your music making process.

Spitfire Bullets: This is a tricky one, usually its Rob who comes up with the lyrics and guitar parts, he would come up with a song idea from either reading a book, watching a film or just having conversations with friends. Then he would play about with it, write down the lyrics and try and work a guitar style round it, sometimes he would listen to a certain band to get the drum beat idea or even how the guitars would go in his song. Mike comes up with any bass lines that can fit on either instrumental parts of the song, or what would fit round the vocals. And John would record our little jam and come up with a beat at home on his drum kit, then we would practice it until its perfected.

PUNK GLOBE: Any upcoming shows or news you would like to announce?

Spitfire Bullets: We haven’t got any shows booked just yet, but we would like to announce we do have two demo tracks of our newest original songs on Soundcloud and we have recently released our EP and single for Download on Bandcamp! We also have T shirts!!! And patches on sale at the bandcamp site too!!

PUNK GLOBE: Any shout-outs you would like to give?

Spitfire Bullets: I wanna give a shout out to Richie Ramone, Charlie Harper, Lisa PunkrPrincess, Punk Globe Magazine Readers, our good friends Logoz and all of our friends who support Spitfire Bullets and our Music!

PUNK GLOBE: Thanks for the interview and your continued support You Rock!

Spitfire Bullets: Thank you PunkrPrincess and Punk rock globe for interviewing us!!! It was fun!

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!!