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February 25, 2008
LETS HAVE A MEETING
I truly love living in Los Angeles. The coffee flows all day long, the sky is blue (most of the time) and the opportunities are all around if you open your eyes and stay willing. I have had a great few days - last week I took a business trip to Nashville with a good friend of mine. We dropped by the Gibson offices and got given the tour - which for a player like myself is just an amazing experience. When I toured with The Cult, we did the Custom shop so this time we did Gibson USA. All I can say is SO MANY GUITARS!! It's incredible to see flying V's, SG's Les Pauls .... all getting made everywhere you look. Thank you so much to Frank, Henry, Ari, Joey and Caroline for hooking it all up and giving us a great day.
I have been in meetings for what seems like a week!! Talking about this, discussing that... SO much talking! Haha! I suppose you have to talk before you do, but it always surprises me just how many afternoon lunches we take in this business. If half the stuff I have been discussing comes to fruition, it will be a busy year. Just how I like it. I also did a piece for the LA Weekly today - comes out in a few weeks so I'll give you a heads up when that hits the streets. The DirecTV game show that Circus Diablo did with Meatloaf aired the other day. I would LOVE to get a copy of that to put up on the sites so if someone can help me out, just let me know please. We won, by the way!!
What else? Well obviously Camp Freddy have the May shows at The Roxy, but we also have a charity show at The Knitting Factory in a couple of weeks - March 14th to be precise. Camp Freddy will be performing at the "Give Me Shelter" benefit for teens. Tickets are available for $35 at The Knitting Factory: 7021 Hollywood Blvd, LA CA - 323 463 0204. And of course, the Billy Morrison album, "Stimulator" comes out in April on I-Tunes worldwide. Plans for a video to the song, Modern Primitives, are still being put together. I'll give you an exact date when I get one. Oh, and check out this coming weekend's Camp Freddy Radio. Thanks to Paul, we have last weekend's show up on the Podcast page, and because Dave and I are out of town this coming Saturday, we have taped another "Hair Metal Special" for you all. Another two hours of 'turning it DOWN at a red light' coming your way on Saturday!
So thats it. I think I need to take another lunch, have a meeting, discuss the agenda, make some plans. Fucking hell people. Enough talking. Lets do it!!
Peace.
Billy
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Posted by vivelerock at 08:58 PM | Comments (10)
February 22, 2008
FREDDY ROCK THE ROXY
The weekend is here yet again. Last week Dave and I were both in Las Vegas (although on different missions!) but today we have an all-new CFR to look forward to - live tonight on Indie 103.1FM at 6pm PST. A few exciting things happening in FreddyLand, not least the five shows in May. As you can see, artwork is getting done, tee shirts are being printed, and we are looking forward to rocking the "The month of MAYhem"!!
Also, the album "Curtain Call" has been released, which features four American Idol finalists doing three songs each. Ryan Starr performs three songs on the album that I wrote and played on, so check that out. I did the songs a couple of years ago so its cool that they finally saw the light of day. The rest of the week has been a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and a bunch of meetings, so as and when things come to fruition I will let you all know. Some cool stuff in the blender at this time, so I am pretty excited. For now - Adios, Amigos!!
Billy
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Posted by vivelerock at 07:07 PM | Comments (6)
February 17, 2008
CAMP FREDDY MAYHEM!
I am pleased to be able to tell you that Camp Freddy will be taking over the world famous Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles every Thursday night during the month of May for our very first residency. Each week we will perform a different set list and the evenings performance will culminate with two or three songs featuring our very special guests of the night. We will NOT be advertising these guests in advance. The band will be joined each week by our good friend, and longtime Camp Freddy cohort, Mr Mark McGrath. Mark will perform each week with us and will join Donovan in hosting the evenings festivities. I am sure that a friend or two might appear onstage at each gig as well. Tickets WILL be available to everyone and I will give you all more details when we have them. Lastly, the CFR Podcast page has been updated and the recent shows are now available.
Peace
Billy
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Posted by vivelerock at 09:08 PM | Comments (36)
February 11, 2008
STIMULATOR
Well, I’ve decided to go all the way. All the tracks that I recorded in 1997 with Terry Warville on rhythm guitar and Jason Bowld on drums will be released on I-Tunes worldwide on April 7th as a BILLY MORRISON album appropriately entitled ‘STIMULATOR’. This is not the planned solo album that I am currently writing……that will still (hopefully) be released later in the year. This is a way of liberating some fantastic older tracks that were just gathering dust on the shelf and providing some product for me to get my teeth into right now. I am planning on making a video to accompany a song from the album. I figured that it made sense to finally get the songs out properly, and have formed King Mob Music as my own label. And the Stimulator album will be the first release. I will give you more details as we get nearer to the release date, but I am very happy to have finally collected all these songs together and got them out to the world. The tracks available right now on the SNOCAP site are part of the record, but the entire 14 song album will be available on I-Tunes UK, Europe, Japan and United States. The track listing is as follows:
1) Modern Primitives
2) L.I.V.
3) Red Shift
4) Cold
5) Four More Ways
6) Rush
7) Swandive
8) YouKnowMe
9) Nailed
10) Driving Me Mad
11) Silencer
12) Stories For Boys
13) When I Close My Eyes
14) Hard To Swallow
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Posted by vivelerock at 12:40 AM | Comments (12)
February 09, 2008
BIRTHDAY BOY
I described myself recently as an Oxymoron .... a punk rock brain in a new age body! And today, on my birthday, I feel closer to that analogy than ever before. The shit that rattles around between my ears could get me arrested, and I am fucking glad that its only me that hears it all!! And yet I strive on a daily basis to be more loving, more caring, more creative ..... to look after myself and to actually care about other people. When I was 20, it was only luck (and probably the Big Guy Upstairs) that kept me from dying a very unceremonious and messy death in an alley somewhere - and now, in what seems like a completely different life, I wake up on my birthday with a craving for life. I have more in my life than I ever thought possible.... and I am not talking about the amount of sneakers I own!! I'm talking about family, friends, career, opportunities, love, respect etc. So I suppose what I am getting at, is that no matter WHERE you are in your life, or what you THINK is happening, there is ALWAYS room to change, grow, shift your perspective and start over. Just a thought. That tends to happen on birthdays! As well as the consumption of a few pints of Ben And Jerrys!!! YES.
OK - so what's the news? Well as you will see by the post below this one, I am appearing at the Fangoria three day Convention at the LA Convention Center in April. I will be heading up a panel from one of the movies that I did last year, EVILUTION, which seems to be getting some nice buzz about it. Not really sure what being 'on a panel' actually means, but it sounds very important!! Haha! I am just glad to be able to help promote the film - it meant a lot to me that I got to do it, and I look forward to hanging out with all the horror genre fans down there.
The Camp Freddy charity show at The Knitting Factory is shaping up nicely. I know the tickets are going pretty quickly - its on March 14th and the tickets are $35, available from the venue box office, or from www.knittingfactory.com. We have a few friends lined up already and I think we'll be delivering a nice rocking set that night. Come down, support a great cause and see some killer rock and roll at the same time. Good deal.
I am also happy to say that the new BILLY MORRISON SNOCAP store is available by ...... yep......clicking on the STORE button! If it gets good response, I will be adding more tracks to the store. Right now there are nine unreleased Stimulator tracks up there - go check it out. Its also up on my new MySpace profile - www.myspace.com/billymorrisonmusic. The tracks are from the unreleased Stimulator album and although a few of the tracks from that album were put up by me for free a while back, you can now purchase the rest of the album by visiting the store and creating a simple SNOCAP account. Its easy. So do it!!
Camp Freddy Radio is live tonight - and even though our very own Paul is here in LA right now (I know, cos we ran into each other at the Velvet Revolver show the other night!) he tells me he is gonna record the show as usual. We all appreciate his efforts. Tonight I have actor Dax Shepard coming in to hang out, play music, take calls, and give away a signed DVD or two. Mr Matt Sorum is also threatening to swing by, so we have the makings of an epic show!! Tune in at 6.00pm on 103.1FM or www.indie1031.fm on the web. I'm off to put my playlist together. See you lot soon.
Peace
Billy
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Posted by vivelerock at 09:30 AM | Comments (11)
February 07, 2008
FANGORIA CONVENTION
Posted by vivelerock at 02:44 PM
February 04, 2008
APPLE AND BLACKBERRY PIE
Whats with naming the hottest pieces of technology after items found in the produce department? And why am I staring at both an I-Phone AND a Blackberry and going slowly insane? Because I don’t wanna get it wrong, thats why. I am full of fear about making the wrong decision. God help the man who picks the wrong device to hold his entire life. What happens if the Pop3 email server doesn’t respond? How can I function if my calendar doesn’t sync? And who the fuck leaves the house these days without at LEAST a TV Show or two to watch on a tiny 3″ screen? I mean, God forbid we actually find ourselves without …… content to devour! And I am sucked into this swirling mass of materialism, becoming every ad man’s wet dream. I sit here as I type this, looking at the Blackberry Curve, my trusty communication device for the past year or so, and the brand new, just activated I-Phone. The new kid on the block. Sure, its a cool toy, and guaranteed to have a few extra people looking over your shoulder in Area/Hyde/Baja Fresh when you’re chilling out browsing the web with its slick touch screen interface and killer web apps. But then that guy will walk past, glance at you with a knowing smile, and drop something like ……”yeah, I tried it too. gave up when I realized you cant send pictures via text. missed the BBM as well. it just isnt that good yet”…… and just like that, you feel cheated. Just like I do right now. I should be thanking the Communication Gods that I have both devices and that I am lucky enough to have the choice. But the sweat is starting to come, the voices in my head saying - “Take the Blackberry. Its a serious phone. The other one’s just a toy” And then I tap the I-Phone YouTube button, watch the ‘Slash Shreds’ video…..ON MY PHONE…… and fall in love again with the completely over the top web features of the I-Phone that I will never use! What ever happened to that OG cellphone that came with its own charger - the huge heavy thing that looked like a car battery? The simplicity of just dialing a number and saying …. ‘hello’ …… I miss it sometimes. But….hold on……I gotta go…..someone’s just sent me an MMS on the BBM with a JPG attached. And my life might end if I dont take a look immediately.
So the keen-of-eye amongst you will have noticed, over on the right hand side of this site, a new button that says “STORE’ ….. yes I finally decided that as part of 2008, I will figure out the inner workings of Online Commerce and actually provide a few nuggets that you might (or might not!) want. I plan on a tee shirt or two, and some more tracks on SNOCAP to tide things over while I write and record this album. And the Circus Diablo album link will be working very soon – so that’s up there too. Hopefully you will enjoy the Stimulator album tracks – they come from the middle to late 90’s and were SO much fun to record. And now finally I can get em out to you. Check out the pic below of us onstage, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the UK - I'm the one in the middle with the IBANEZ!!!!
Jay… yes it is a PRS. Busted it out for a couple of different tunings at that show. And the setlist was a reduced Diablo set with Ziggy and 1970 thrown in. But we are now rehearsing and writing for this solo album and plan on changing the setlist up and doing a few shows with some of the new songs. We’ll see – we are a way off yet. The NYC DJ gig?…… someone write me a check and I’d LOVE to come out and spin some rock for the East Coast!! Haha!! Oh, and while I remember - BIG shout out to my homegirl Jenny (you know who you are!) - get yer Podcast together and lets get you on the radio!!!
Finally, I want to tell you all to tune in to Camp Freddy Radio this coming Saturday, as I will be joined by my friend, and one of the funniest actors around at the moment, Mr Dax Shepard. Dax, who starred most recently in “Employee Of The Month” and “Lets Go To Prison” will be co-hosting the show with me this coming Saturday. Indie 103.1FM from 6pm to 8pm West Coast time, or stream it live on www.indie1031.fm.
Gotta go – late for life!
Billy
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Posted by vivelerock at 08:19 PM | Comments (17)