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!

Update on the Spitfire Bullets

Well its a very rainy evening and mixed emotions are in the air, probably from the cold temperature outside!

For the past few months and weeks Spitfire Bullets have had a high speed flight with twists, turns and loop-the-loops in this modern era of 2016.

From hanging out with the Ramonas back in march to meeting Richie Ramone! and catching up with old friends and bands.

We have of course played our fair share of gigs supporting numerous bands and putting our backs into working hard at every show and of course not to mention myself drying out every pen i have writing down new songs and snapping strings on my faithful SG, coming up with riffs and ideas.

In all of the commotion through out 2016 and leaving the EU, we have managed to get some T Shirts printed and on sale!! but a limited quantity, until we get more in.

I even got round to having a Band camp site set up too!! where you can finally download our "Spitfire Bullets EP" and the New single "New York City" for a couple of your English pounds or whatever currency you use!
you can check out the new band camp site right here and don't forget to buy our merch and music!! >>> Spitfire Bullets Band Camp

Over the few months i've been going through Spitfire Bullets back catalogue of demos and CD's looking for any old early demos of the band's old songs, i was lucky enough to find them all in one folder on my back up hard drive!
So you can look forward to hearing some very early Demos of our tracks from the EP and the single, there is also a few bonus tracks that have never even been played or performed live, they just never made the cut sadly. but you will have a chance to hear them!

In other news, we had sadly parted ways with our drummer John aka Ed Sheeran aka Craggsy, he has moved on to a music adventure in another band we are sure to see him in.
but in the mean time we will be sitting about twiddling our thumbs and penning songs while we try our best to get drummer Number 3! to join us in our Punk journey.

But in the meantime while we look and advertise for a drummer to join us, we will be writing songs and of course selling our merch and myself and gilley will be doing the odd acoustic gig, round the city.

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

Museum Vaults 08-05-2016

Sunday's show was a very eventful one! with Support from some great local bands! Fire Lady Luck and new young punk band Symbient. this is one for the blog!!

It was a very hot Sunday which would mean a lot of thirsty people and plenty of pints going down.

I was down nice and early moving tables and chairs, while setting up the PA system ready for the bands, after hearing the PA was on the blink and blew up last time. So there was no pressure to make sure the system worked fine and nothing blew up!

soon all bands turned up and things kicked off, apart from the last min issues of missing HI hat stand and, a few repairs. Symbient kicked off their covers and original set, with the band playing fast, loud and Daniel giving it all he could on his vocals. Their main bassist had ended up in hospital from a very bad asthma attack so lewis of Fire Lady Luck stepped in on the bass to help them out, with only one day practice with them, he pulled it off well! then another issue popped up of a runaway bass drum! young jay's beatings was sending it off so with a few bricks that was fixed straight away.
with Symbient playing a great set of covers and originals they dedicated their set to their bassist who was in hospital. good on the guys!

Photo credit
Stephie Jay Budge.

Fire Lady Luck took to the stage opening their set with some tracks from their new album. some which i haven't heard before. But with blasting through a great 45 min lively set of originals from their new album and tracks from their previous albums. With Lewis changing from bass to his trusty Les Paul junior.

Photo credit

Stephie Jay Budge

Soon it was time for ourselves to take to the stage, setting up and sound checking with some help from lewis running the PA we kicked off our 45 - 1 hour set of covers and originals with our favourite opening track by UK Subs CID! going through our very long set list, blasting out our two new tracks "I Don't Remember" and "Flying Fortress" which had a great reaction from the crowd, we kept blasting through the tracks, but a gig wouldn't be a gig without the odd hiccup on the PA which was easily fixed, we soon ended our set with a few encores and a new cover we only had a rough rehearsal on, which was none other than white riot by the Clash! And finally ending our set with a fast punktastic cover of House of the Rising sun!

all in all Sunday's gig was very eventful with the sun out and a good all round feeling chatting to various friends and making new friends on the day, it was a great show!

big thank you to Symbient and Fire lady luck for performing some great songs 

check them out on Facebook and give them a like!
Fire Lady Luck

Symbient

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!!!!

  

BottleNeck - The John Doe Experiment & Spitfire Bullets | The Borough | March 18, 2016 | REVIEW

BottleNeck did a review of our recent gig at the borough you can see the original article here >>BottleNeck

Nestled upstairs in The Borough on a chilly Friday night, two local bands scurried around trying to get the “stage” set up, stage is said loosely, as it was just a corner of the pub next to the bar. The backdrop of the “stage” being a large black flag sporting the words “The John Doe Experiment” in big red letters. The venue is very small, sort of ‘U’ shaped, with limited seating, meaning most punters had to stand, not that it was a problem. The music was worth it.

Photo credit to Chris Baker.

As more and more folk congregated in the tiny upstairs area, it was almost time for the first band to take to the floor – Spitfire Bullets. The embodiment of punk, Spitfire Bullets formed in Sunderland in early 2010, and consists of Rob with vocals and lead guitar, Gilley on bass, and John on drums. The trio are clearly influenced by The Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash, among others. Playing a handful of songs, from covers to originals, Spitfire Bullets well and truly ripped apart The Borough, Rob’s downpicking was so ridiculously fast that it was impossible to see his hand without it being blurred. Starting every song with a “1,2,3,4” chant like any good punk band would, Spitfire Bullets ended their set with a Ramones cover. But that wasn’t enough, the audience wanted more. The guys made the snap decision to play an intense punk cover of House Of The Rising Sun, which was absolutely mind-blowing. It was clear to see that Spitfire Bullets had a great time playing their set, and it was a shame for it to end!

But next up was the headlining act – The John Doe Experiment. Bottleneck interviewed them beforehand, and they are a bunch of the most down to earth guys (and gal), that you could wish to speak to, they all lead very different lives, but one thing they have in common is their love for music. Coming from all over Tyne and Wear, The John Doe Experiment consist of Louise Snowdon as the lead vocalist, Tom Holmes playing the lead guitar, John Hughes on rhythm guitar, Mark Young on drums, and Mike Todd on bass. Together they create something pretty special which is much to be admired.

Starting their set with a very catchy intro singing “we are The John Doe Experiment and we play rock ‘n’ roll”, the band were absolute crowd pleasers playing covers such as Blitzkrieg Bop and many of their originals such as Psycho Killer and Roxy. The different band members complement each other perfectly, and their banter between songs is great too. Getting heckled from the audience doesn’t seem to phase them either, often having long conversations between songs with various different people in the audience.

The band played one of their original songs, Kryptonite, which is a “standard superhero song”, which starts a conversation between the band and the crowd about who Louise’s favourite superhero is. Kryptonite is just an all round feel-good, fun song, which had everyone bopping around and having a good time.

Sadly though, all good things have to come to an end, and this was so for The John Doe Experiment’s set. The whole night was a success, the pub was packed full of like-minded music lovers, and both bands put on an absolute stellar performance.

Listen to The John Doe Experiment performing Kryptonite below:

Check out Spitfire Bullets and The John Doe Experiment on their Facebook pages.

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!!