Spitfire Bullets update July 2015

Its all quiet in the spitfire bullets base....

After the highlight gig of supporting the Ramonas back in march with their stand in drummer
things have been quiet too quiet.

There has been rumours about the band quitting and packing up for good
and they are probably still going about right now.

30th of June spitfire bullets had released their newest single New York City on CD
with 4 already sold things are going steady with reviews of the CD due to be coming
in during the month, we have already heard good things about it.

the newest release

so over the past 3 months the band has been quiet apart from recording the single

and also going to a few gigs seeing a few local bands and saying hi to a few familiar faces

HAVANA AFFAIR

it seems spitfire bullets made it in to communist territory recently

back in 2014 i was on a family holiday in cuba taking in the sights of that wonderful

communist country, meeting the locals and checking out all those beautiful classic american 1950's cars. 

all in all it was a great time. Until recently.......

I received a email in june of some photos from two people in Cuba holding what appears to be

the spitfire bullets EP. eventually i found out my mam had been chatting to some locals in

the hotel who were also on hoilday and were very interested in music and so a spitfire bullets

CD was sent over with out me knowing, it was a surprise i can say that and very exciting.
below are the photos i was sent along with a caption of the locations.

taken on the steps of the Loma de la Cruz, a place that represents the City of Havana, Cuba.

this was in Key Bariay, historical place of our island, the bay the Spanish Admiral Christopher Columbus and his crew had 3 ships discovered the island of Cuba on 28 October 1492. This place is located in the municipality Rafael Freyre, Holguin province.

this was in Key Bariay, historical place of our island, the bay the Spanish Admiral Christopher Columbus and his crew had 3 ships discovered the island of Cuba on 28 October 1492. This place is located in the municipality Rafael Freyre, Holguin province.

New York City Single

New York City Single

You may have heard this song live at one of our shows or on YouTube or even heard our demo on sound cloud, but after a year of meaning to get it recorded, we have finally recorded it ready to be released!

Though it will not be available to download off the internet, we are doing it the old-fashioned way of putting it on CD with two bonus live tracks but we aren't telling you the names of them so you gotta get this CD to hear the tracks!

Just like when a band in the 70's released a single 45rpm vinyl with a A and B side. S

Such exciting times waiting for the album to come out and playing the single over and over again.

There will be a limited number of these CDs released in June so once they are gone they are gone!

the reason why we have decided to release our single on CD instead of being available to be downloaded is because we want to keep it as a physical piece so you can hold it and look at it and not just stare at some tiny picture on the screen

it may not be a vinyl record but it does have some character to it, even looking at the cover makes it more interesting.

cover photos by Lisa Volpe

What has been happening?

What has been happening?

So as most of you know our drummer John had left us back in February and we began the long and painful search for a full time drummer.

With us having to cancel a few gigs and being lucky enough to have played with the Ramonas thanks to a temporary drummer, but ever since we have been advertising in music shops on Facebook and on the internet with no luck on getting a drummer from the local area we are just sitting about and doing nothing but twiddling our thumbs and strumming guitar and asking every one we know if they know a musician but it seems there is hardly a drummer about, even a lot of bands seem to have lost drummers this year alone.

New York City.

You probably heard it at one of our gigs on YouTube or sound cloud, our fifth song "New York City" was planned to be rerecorded in 2014/2015, and it finally has. with help from Herrington Rock skool music teacher bob and his recording studio and Elliot on the electric drum kit, the full song was recorded over a couple of days and is now in the process of being mixed and mastered ready to be uploaded to sound cloud and sent to a few radio stations most notably radio Boise and radio Northumberland.

Wanna buy our EP?/

over a few weeks i have distributed the bands EP  to two local Sunderland shops

Hot Rats Records and Riff Raff Guitars, so e sure to pop down to the shops and have a look about

or even buy one!

Check out Spitfire Bullets. Review by Surrounded by music

check the site out hereCheck out Spitfire Bullets

Posted on 12/03/2015

In an era of perfect production and polished songwriting, the music scene is heaving with bands who cite classic punk acts as inspiration, yet there are so few genuine punks out there. Splintering open the door with a metaphorical hobnail boot and sweating venomous malice, meandering all the way from Sunderland, the mercilessly red raw delivery of “Spitfire Bullets”, a band that genuinely have a sound akin to the Ramones in their earliest recordings. Reeking of bad attitude and couldn’t carelessness (so it’s not a word, well we’re making it one, we’ve been listening to Spitfire Bullets, haven’t you been paying attention?), their self titled EP has been around for a while, but it’s brutish honesty really makes it worth a listen, it’s REAL punk and not for the faint hearted, but with tracks like the full throttled “Spitfire” and Ramones-esque “Psycho Girl” (replete with 1,2,3,4), “Head In The Toilet” and “She’s a Punk” this is pure homage to the New York and London punks of yesteryear.

Like we said, it’s not gonna be to EVERYONE’S taste but as far as we are concerned …Spitfire Bullets – “Gabba-gabba-we-accept-you-we-accept-you-one-of-us” https://www.facebook.com/spitfirebulletsband and https://soundcloud.com/spitfire-bullets

THINK TANK 28-03-2015 THE RAMONAS

Spitfire Bullets @ THINK TANK

Newcastle 28th march 2015

Supporting Dead By Dawn and The Ramonas

Before i start to review this gig.

none of this would have happened with out the help of Luke

who took up the offer of playing the drums with only two practice sessions of 7 hours in total managed to help us blast through the set that night.

with a cloudy day over the North east and the little Spitfire Bullet mobile all loaded up with the gear we headed off to Newcastle to support one of the most amazing all girl Ramones Tribute band The Ramonas.

finding the venue was easy just working out how to get in was tricky after working out which secret back door to open by pressing a call button and accidentally locking connor and sophie outside not knowing how to open the door again we managed to get into THINK TANK. with the stage already christened with the Ramonas back drop and back line, there was a feeling that we had gone back to 1975 to standing in CBGB'S where the 4 guys from forest hills began to make a mark in history.

after sound checking tuning up and double checking everything our time on stage was 7:15pm

I had a feeling we were all nervous for myself it wasn't the first time i supported a tribute band going back to 2012 the early line up of Spitfire Bullets supported the well known Sex Pistols Experience. But with only a short few hours of rehearsals with a temporary drummer i worked twice as hard playing to a small crowd while attempting to cue the drum changes, we kicked off with stepping stone with screeching feedback and grovelling vocals we tore into the next track of battle cries of the song SPITFIRE!!

With no thought i dedicated the next track Psycho Girl to all the crazy one direction fans slitting their wrists over some karaoke singer leaving the group, i mean come on all one Direction fans are pretty psycho. Then crashing through with a cover of pretty vacant and our newest song New York City a short and fast tribute song to the city, CBGB'S and the Ramones.

With the band going at 100mph of snarling vocals over driven amps and crashing and pounding for cymbols and snare we ended our 30min set with a old classic house of the rising sun, with a slow and chilled out intro from the original animals version into a sonic blasting cranked up snarling punk crazy version (it really gets you hammering the guitar like mad)

next up was Dead by Dawn a crazy psycho-billy rock"a"billy horror band with a huge double bass a green sparkaly gretch and female fronted ghoulish vocals they kicked off with a full set of horror ghoulish original songs including a one called "Psycho Girl" (different to ours of course) while adding in a misfits cover of London Dungeon.

And finally The Ramonas took to the stage using the sound track from the good the bad and the ugly (clint eastwood film) they walked on stage with silence ready to unleash a lighting war. with the chant heard around the world BLTIZKREIG BOP! playing through two classic albums in track and album order Ramones and Leave home within 30 min's they blast through both albums just like the Ramones did in CBGB'S with a crowd of encores they went through classics such as kkk took my baby away, cretin hop, i wanna be sedated. 

in the end of the night when everyone left, we got a few good pics and had some good conversations 

Johnny Ramone and Rohnny Ramona

Spitfire Bullets

Ramonas and Spitfire Bullets

The Ramonas

15-01-2015 The Three Tuns with the Iron Hearts

its a cold thursday night, my car's heater fans are busted and the band was all over the uk literally!!

nothing like chaos before a show!

With Connor calling me up telling me he is in work in Wales! and our ed sheeran lookalike drummer craggsy busy doing a university exam, a plan of action and precision was required for this night.

The Iron Hearts

Spitfire Bullets

it begins with a phone call

(not the actual conversation happened but it was close)

Thursday 14:00hrs   

(rob is green Connor is Purple)

"Rob its connor am at work today i'm in wales but al be back in time to play tonight can you pick my bass up and take it to the tuns i will be getting a lift there"

"what the hell wales!! ok al pick it up no problem man. Why can i hear sheep in the back ground"

"cheers and what sheep there's none here" (baa baa) "Shush you"

and just like that a plan was being worked out.

1. pick connors bass up
2. get my gear
3. head to the Winchester and have a pint and wait for the whole thing to blow over. 

but like shaun of the dead. plans can go wrong.

Heading home from work i picked up connors bass headed to my place and picked up my gear

while feezing my ass off from the icy wind we headed straight over to the tuns, amazingly we were the first band to show up.

7:30pm

finding out we were on at 9pm connor was somewhere in a van on the M1 and craggsy was still in uni

the iron hearts turned up and we had a good chat with them about gigs and veunes while sharing stories of how long the bands had been going for.

8:45 pm 

i can't remember if this was the time but our drummer turned up with his gear ready to set up

since we were first on my gear was set up as well as connor's but there was no sign of connor.

9:30pm

there was a change of plan and the iron hearts went on first with no sign of a bass player we got worried our connor was killed or kidnapped (turns out he wasn't far away)

so the Iron hearts went on first and played a killer set of original songs as a 4 piece band they kicked out some loud noises. their guitarist is one crazy guy.

round about 10:30 just as the iron hearts finished off their set in comes running a long haired person from the cold exhausted and tired, Connor had arrived. Late but least he was alive which is a good thing.

we started getting our gear set up on stage while connor caught his breath and had a quick rest, 

tuned and sound checked we kicked off with our adrenaline fuelled set one song after the other like a high speed train crashing through a station. During our song Head in the Toilet the ending solo i ended up walking off the stage to give it a bit edge since there was only a few of us in the room and plenty of space to walk about, The iron hearts guitarist came up to maybe give me a hug while playing (there is a photo of it further down) and his sister who came along shouting out "do a solo" so i gotta give what they want and a full blast guitar solo for the small audience was done!

in total for the show it was a great fun exciting and exhausting night with a band that only just got together in time on the night from work and university to play a 30 min set we some how managed it
and get some great reaction.

if you wanna check out The Iron hearts check out their facebook >> The Iron Hearts

myself and the iron hearts guitarist

  

A bit late but Happy new year / Spitfire Bullets at the Roxbury

Happy new year everyone we hope you had a great start to the year already!
i know we did!

Sweet Ammonia

Spitfire Bullets

We kicked off our 2015 with our first ever show in blyth supporting Sweet Ammonia the grungy rock band from Newcastle. we got down about 7:30 pm for load in, we got in very early as Vince the man who organises these great shows was still setting up the pa and the guys of sweet ammonia were busy setting up their amps ready for a sound check and to go through a few songs.

we set up our gear and had a quick sound check and had some spare time to chat to sweet ammonia who turn out to be Ramones fans, its great when we all have that favourite band to talk about.

so roll on 9:30pm and we go on and kick off with our set of covers and originals with only a few people in the room for our audience we shot through 13 songs within 30 mins kicking off with our usual intro song i'm not your stepping stone.
We finished off our set with our fun punk rock piss take cover of house of the rising sun.

Sweet Ammonia came on next with their full hour set of originals a few i reconsigned from listening to their sound cloud a few days ago you can hear them here > Sweet Ammonia's Sound Cloud
they are a great bunch of guys who enjoy what they are doing with a passion you should check'em out sometime. check out their Facebook page if you want >>> Sweet Ammonia Facebook