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travels only bringing us to having about 50 ex-band members and 20 ex-band names through the ages? Embarrassing ourselves at the Coleraine Yacht Club in June 2003 in the name of comedy? Well...
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News Archives 2003
News Archives 2004
News Archives 2005
News Archives 2006
Updated site, just need to upload some pictures and stuff. |
Happy 17th Birthday to our genius ex-guitarist, Emma! |
Merry non-comercial Christmas! |
Rick has joined the band as lead vocalist, practice will hopefully be resumed once Christmas, New Year and GCSE mocks are out of the way...Or something like that. |
Happy Anniversary to Emma and Chrissy - 1 full year together! Woo! |
Practice finally with Rach, Vinnie, Chrissy and Nikki...We hadn't practiced in about 2 and a half months and the timing was suprisingly awesome, tried The Four Horsemen and it was decent enough, we have a totally new setlist and have started on a new original single-handedly written by Rach - Thrash metal complete with a mellow part and a solo in the key of A Major. The new set will be posted up asap, when I can be bothered. We're currently looking for a lead vocalist. |
Ok so we haven't practiced since the 10th of September and it has become obvious that Battle Of The Bands won't be going ahead. This is due to the fact that Chrissy and Emma quit and so we didn't bother posting off the entry form, it was meant to be with the organisers on Friday 10th September but we were only completely sure that we were going ahead with the contest on Saturday the 11th thus too late. Oh well, maybe next time! |
Practiced tonight from 7-10pm as planned, to start with it was just Vinnie, Nikki and I but with about half an hour or so to go, Rick turned up just in time to go through some songs quickly. He's made up a really nice bass line with fills and all that for our mellow original. We practiced through most of the usual set and tried some Whiplash which ended up pretty sucessful. We're going to go ahead with Battle Of The Bands and I have come up with an order to play the songs in: Metallica - Last CaressSystem Of A Down - Shimmy DRAYVEN - Right Here Right Now Slayer - Raining Blood/Metallica - Enter Sandman DRAYVEN - Suckin' Diesel Metallica - Whiplash Rick has confirmed that he will be playing along with us for Battle Of The Bands and as far as I know, we now have him as a member of Drayven! |
Alright we have 3 interested bassists and...A singer? Anyway! 2 of the bassists who are interested in joining are grade 8! We're practicing with one of the grade 8 bassists this Friday from 6-10pm at Nikki's house. We may just be able to play Battle Of The Bands if enough preparation is put in (which it never is) We're gunna rustle up some originals and some new cover material like Slayer - Raining Blood and Bloodline, Metallica - Whiplash, System Of A Down - Shimmy, Iced Earth - Stand Alone, Iron Maiden - The Wickerman and that kind of stuff |
The band is now a 3 piece due to Emma and Chrissy focusing their time more on their AS Levels so we are on the look-out for a fast-learning, decent, metal playing bass master and we're going in for Battle Of The Bands end of September/start of October so get in touch with Rachel! |
Nikki returned to the UK (again) yesterday at about 7pm, Emma returned on Tuesday but she's now away on Duke Of Ed. That gig isn't going to go ahead in case you hadn't already guessed but hopefully the Battle Of The Bands in Newtonards will. Practice will hopefully be resumed shortly. |
Ok...Practice tonight, without Emma and Chrissy *rolls eyes* so it was just Nikki, Vinnie and I...Practice wasn't great as we haven't done so in like 3 months, the songs we once had perfect now sound like we only just learnt them and were trying to time them for the first time. We then attempted "Whiplash" by Metallica, it's pretty hard to time that one, we got a very small amount of that done...Then we tried "Shimmy" by System Of A Down which didn't work too well either...Emma is going on holiday on Thursday to Athens to see the Olympics and Nikki, believe it or not, is going on ANOTHER holiday this Thursday for one week to Ireland...Woo! We were gunna have another practice tomorrow at Emma's before she went on holidays but she is packing for holidays, then Nikki said we could practice at hers with just Chrissy and I but apparently Chrissy is playing football instead and Vinnie is working (fair enough) so...Yeah...Apparently we have a gig on Friday 27th August in Newtonards which I don't see going ahead as Nikki only comes back on Thursday 26th August and Emma on Tuesday 24th August |
Dude! Nikki has returned herself to the UK from Switzerland (How many holidays is she gunna go on in one year! That's 3 in the past few months - France, Florida, Switzerland!) Anyway, things were looking bad for a while there, Chrissy and Emma refused to play Slayer as the lyrics Slayer use are "too satanic" which is a fair call I suppose, however, Vinnie, Nikki and I were pretty peeved that we couldn't play some "Raining Blood" or "Bloodline" but Vinnie and I quickly replaced Slayer with some ACDC, Iced Earth, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica, Thin Lizzy etc, have a look at the Setlist under "Songs for the possible future..." Anyway, I've been feeling really quite down lately, not that any of you would care, so I wrote a pretty crazy and depressing song called Bleeding, it's about some people in particular and the lyrics aren't just random things about death, read into them and understand before you judge...so read it, like it and compliment me, or read it, hate it and shut up. I don't care what you say because I'm not ashamed of my feelings so... *does finger* ... *runs* |
Right! Once again, lack of practices! Nikki got her drum legs back at least, currently I don't actually know if Nikki is in the UK or not...I think she is possibly in Switzerland on a Physics trip for a week and if she is, then I don't know when she left or when she's getting back which is a worry..."Call her" I hear you say? It's more complicated than that, I won't go into it. Anyway! Not many gigging opportunities arising at the moment which could be a good thing as we haven't practiced and we can't even remember "For Whom The Bells Tolls" never mind working on new material, a few practices and we'll be back to normal though. I added a few more song lyrics onto the Lyrics Page By Chrissy so go check them out, his influences lately has been basically SLAYER! |
HOLY SNIZLE! IS that a practice I hear?!? OH AYE SUR tis indeedy! Well Vinnie couldn't go because he was working, but manager/roadie Bolster came along instead to help us out. Yeah we went through the usual setlist which has now been done to death and we couldn't play it lol because we haven't practiced in so long! Then we tried to make an original that Rachel had written which ended in the band getting very agrovated with one another, Nikki told us all to get a new Drummer and Rachel was on the verge of walking out but things were resolved and a new original of the metal variety was contructed (finally) called Suckin' Diesel. Rachel has made a start on them and should finish them soon probably! Rachel is going away this Saturday 24th July for one week while Chrissy leaves on Tuesday 27th July and returns late on that Friday night (29th July) We're hoping to record between the end of summer and Halloween! Then once we have an EP, we'll work towards gigging in pubs between Halloween and Christmas, then continue doing that until next summer when we will hopefully do a mini UK tour! Probably won't happen but nice to have a bit of wishful thinking! |
Ok, I've finally got round to writing reviews for all our gigs so go check those out if you really can be bothered! It includes our setlist used for each gig and how much money we made from them and a general review written by me...meh! Oh Nikki has now gone on holiday to Florida for 2 damn weeks! So no practice AGAIN and I'm sooo bored!! She still hasn't got her drum legs back but Daves Not Here (who accidentally took them when we played at Exodus, Coleraine) are posting them to her because she didn't have time to go and get them...or something? Anyway, that's the updates for yas! There probably won't be some more for a while I don't think unless I get extremely bored and decide to jibber on like I'm doing right now...Ok well it's 2:15am at the minute but I'm going to count it as being the 1st July instead of the 2nd because...I feel like it... |
Chrissy, Rachel and Vinnie arrive at the destination of the gig, Exodus at 6pm, the stated time.
Nikki is providing the drums for all 3 bands and she left the equipment at Emma's house so it could be at
Exodus earlier as Nikki was going to be rather late. Emma's car decides to over-heated in the extremes of
traffic for the North West 200 and she had to walk from the marina to Exodus, her brother and DouG brought
all the drums except the bass drum. Then Nikki arrived and some time later the bass drum finally arrived,
with the organisers and other bands being incredibly annoyed at us. We were not allowed to play any Metallica
as the organisers wouldn't allow us? So we played Paranoid instead along with our mellow original which we
made the night before *lol* called "Right Here Right Now" and finally our own rendition of Teenage Kicks
which went down a storm. Over all, I think the crowd were pretty pleased by us and this has been a very
enjoyable gig so I would like to thank Trevor and the whole Exodus team for giving us this opportunity!
Hopefully we'll come back and play for you again...?
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Chrissy and Rachel arrive at Emma's house at 6pm or so, Vinnie arriving a short while later followed by Doug who's there to watch. Nikki arrives a long time later at 7:30pm or something like that. We finally get into a practise and realise that we won't have Rachel's original ready by the Exodus gig (Tomorrow) so we decide to work on Emma and Rachel's Mellow Original "Right Here Right Now" and Rachel makes a simplistic but effective solo to go with the song. Everyone finally agrees with Rachel to do our own rendition of Teenage Kicks by the Undertones inspired by Emma...We also hope to play For Whom The Bell Tolls or Enter Sandman by Metallica if Exodus allow us. |
Chrissy in Manchester, Vinnie unable to turn up, leaves Nikki, Emma and I to work on the original. This has got to be one of the most amazing practises to date! We got class new bits added to the original and it's sounding excellent, we also made an incredibly beautiful mellow original called Right Here Right Now and it's really nice :-) Oh yeah and Nikki got a new drumkit and it's bloody amazing as well as an amazing double kick pedal and a new crash cymbal! Check her bio for more info on it... It's gorgeous and amazing sound too!!! £650!!! |
As Chrissy and I were on our way to practise, we got a phone call from Nikki saying that she would be late because her mum was mad that she found once again involved in the very same “incident”!! argh! Anyway she eventually turned up and we didn't get much done but basically finished all the riffs and Vinnie is still in the process of making up a solo and me in the process of making up lyrics and we have like 2 weeks to complete this original and get the timing correct to play infront of about 200 people?!? ARGH!! It's called "A Death Divine" oh and also Emma made up a metal song and it actually sounds really cool, I had also made a solo ages ago that kinda goes with the notes that she is using and it's really cool solo as well if I do say so myself...anyway, that is all, we will try and get as many practises as possible in before Exodus *scared* |
FINALLY! a practise! well it was without Emma and Chrissy but we started (finally!) on one of my many single-handedly made originals (A Death Divine) and with everything playing together it really does sound bloody awesome man! and then to top it all off, Vinnie randomly spewed out this amazing solo and holy Jeebus it really is something to drool at!! the timing for this song is immense and difficult, I just hope we can have it ready for exodus... |
We played at Ballywillan Church Hall tonight, Vinnie wasn't there, was working :-( ...the PA was amazing! excellent sound all round really, crowd were very good and enjoyed the set even the Metallica haters loved us! very pleasing gig! thanks everyone! |
Well we played the CYC gig after all... The PA was very disappointing, really let us down big time. It made us sound really bad when we really aren't and I must say that Drayven will not be playing in the CYC ever again unless there is a guaranteed good PA system. So we're just going to save up for one and then we can play any where and sound as good as we really are :-P |
Well we haven’t practised in a while, eh? Anyway, Nikki has ONCE AGAIN been caught involved in the same particular “incident”, her mum went bezerk and said she couldn't practise tonight or play at the gig tomorrow, so we were we all pretty mad at her for being so bleeding stupid!!! Well she didn't come to practise tonight so the rest of the band just had a 30min practise at Emma's house without Mrs Nikki... Nikki called me later on while Chrissy, Emma, Doug and myself were watching a film and much to our delight confirmed that she will be allowed to play drums for us tomorrow!!! Yay!!! We haven't practised in like 4 weeks so it may not go to plan!!! Grrr!!! Oh well we will give it a shot, this is going to be our first proper gig!!! :-D PLEASE COME!!! |
Practised with the band, minus Emma. We got two new songs one being the simple "Nirvana - Polly" and the other being the deadly to time "System Of A Down - Chop Suey!" and we were pretty pleased with ourselves when we accomplished that! We started work on the new original as well but didn't get much done. We also video recorded ourselves and we're sending that the Nikki's cousins in England... Erm... Yes, anyway! Not really much more to report so roll on next practise and hopefully we will get this new original sorted this year!!! |
The whole band were dispersed and unknown to the fact that we were playing in but an hours time! Nikki calls Rachel and immediately (as usual) the responsibility annoyingly passed to her! Rachel makes about 20 phone calls wasting all her money calling the band and organising lifts. The band arrives at St. James Hall, Ballymoney... Rachel, Emma and Chrissy spend at least 10 minutes convincing the guy to let us play, he says he won't let us play because he doesn't know us and he wants to speak to some sort of minister or something that knows us?!?!?! That gets sorted and we start playing without Vinnie as we're forced on stage, we play tourettes... Vinnie arrives and we play bell tolls with the crowd singing along with Rachel who is meant to be singing but forgets the words due to nerves but picks up after the first verse. The crowd are incredibly supportive and I really would genuinely like to thank everyone who was moshing and singing and cheering at the end of the song when we got kicked out for saying that we're going to play "Black Sabbath - Paranoid" and we all got told at the end that we're awesome and that we have number one fans! Class! Oh well, we really need like a proper gig now! This is annoying! |
Ok, phew, the band problem is sorted but unfortunately we had to lose Dean from OUR band because Nikki's mum wasn't happy?! Yeah the guy organising the Salmon Leap decided to be a moron and mess up the gig so we decided not to play because he was being a total asshole about it but my birthday party gig is still going ahead THIS SATURDAY!!! |
Well this has been an eventful day... Rachel called Nikki at about 8:45am and Nikki's mum answered, Rachel got shouted at quite a bit because Dean is in the band and Nikki's mum doesn't like him (even though it was a band decision, but Rachel is always blamed for everything anyway as she has the responsibility of the whole band on her shoulders for reasons unknown) so now Nikki's mum is really annoyed and has personally kicked Nikki out of the band...AGAIN…FABULOUS!!! |
Well at the "gig" at Suzette's party, we personally played reasonably well for considering that we didn't bother to actually soundcheck first but the crowd were all a bunch of spides who wanted DJs with dance music put simply... |
Wow!!! Practise today at Nikki's house (minus Emma, she's in England and can't go to the gig tomorrow) it went awesomely well, we got all the songs off to a fine art and Dean has now officially joined the band!!! His singing today really clinched it, it was very good indeed! well we look forward to this gig at Suzette's birthday tomorrow, however, I am somewhat nervous! what am I talking about, I’m bloody terrified!!!... Also, Rachel has had an idea about the 4 guitarist problem, we are going to have 3 guitarists and an alternate vocalist, in other words: if one of the 4 available guitarists (Dean, Vinnie, Rach, Emma) specifically want to play guitar to a certain song then they can do so and the left over guitarist that isn't really bothered will sing instead of guitar! :-) |
Alright, everyone attended today with an exception to the singer, Simon is pissing about so we decided to try out for a new singer going by the name of Dean (Rachel's "guitar technician" lol) anyway, his singing was considerably better than Simon's as the whole band pointed out and he is one amazing guitarist, seriously! You gotta hear this guy!!! He puts us all to shame! But only thing is we can't really have 4 guitarists!!! so we'll sort something out... He's not OFFICIALLY in the band yet as we need to talk in person and sort some stuff etc, but we'll keep you updated. We're playing at Suzette's birthday party on Saturday of this week so we're practising again on Friday! |
Only 3 out of 6 band members attended today, Nikki, Vinnie and Rachel... Didn't get much done really so not much to report... But the Salmon Leap gig is definitely going ahead, suzettes birthday is going ahead and Rachel's birthday is going ahead! No word on the CYC gig yet though! |
Practise didn't really compare to our usual practises, Rachel got her new guitar just before practise and the stupid thing wouldn't work so everyone's timing was off. However, Simon came along to practise as we wanted to try him our for vocals and well I couldn't really make him out on a 10watt amp but I could hear him on for whom the bell tolls and it was pretty awesome so we now have a separate singer and 6 people in the band lol no word for the CYC gig yet *sigh* but I will let everyone know ASAP! Practise will be much better next week as I have a new guitar and I know how to work it now :-P oh well, later folks! |
Full practise today, got 7 songs to perfection including an original called "My Helpless Cry" which is mellow but none-the-less, very good! We've decided to add 3 more songs onto the set for the gig as we have been given extra time because we can't get to the upcoming gig as Emma will be in England! D'oh! So we will be having a gig on the first or second Saturday of March but the gig at the CYC on 21st February will go ahead without us (bah!). Also, Bolster came along to our practise and recorded just two of our songs (Tourettes and Paranoid) but didn't bother with the rest because recording on a mini disk player with but one microphone to cover all the instruments doesn't provide very good quality. Also, all the new pictures I promised are up so check ALL the pictures sections!!! |
Well we only had 4 out of 5 members attending today, Chrissy didn't show for reasons unknown. As we found out, it's very difficult to resume good timing without a bassist (especially one of such excellence) so we didn't really get through as much as I'd hoped, we did so with significant difficulty. We did however create a pretty cool original, which we will be playing at the CYC gig, it is mellow though so sit down and sway with us! Emma made up everything there, bass lines, guitar lines, Nikki made up drumming right away and it sounds class... I also made up lyrics like on the spot, as the song was being played for the first time I just started singing random words and it worked so go and have a look at them |
Full practise today. Went awesome as always when everyone's there. We added a new song onto the setlist for Nikki's benefit (damn her) and that song is "Teenage Kicks" and I refused to play it so I was made sing and well it all sounded pretty good! We tried Enter sandman today for the first proper attempt at it and we got it perfect after a few goes at it (come on the timing is really hard!) and it sounds class!!! For next week we'll have Wickerman probably nailed and will be working on an original |
Practised today sorta, no Vinnie though as he was away in Belfast purchasing a huge big beast of an amp so we couldn't do any of the new songs that we wanted to try because Vinnie would have been playing the enter sandman solo and the breakdown solo to Wickerman *rolls eyes* but we will do them next week for definite. During practise we thought it would be fun to start an original so Rachel sat down and came up with some riffs that, if I do say so myself, sounded pretty class... So we're just missing the pre-chorus riff and the chorus riff everything else is taken care of... even the lyrics! Keep you posted! Oh yeah and we're supposedly gigging at the end of this month...erm...? |
Happy New Year! Went to exodus to see CircleFish and Plus Special Guests and they were both excellent bands I must say... But I much preferred Special Guests as they were heavier and more to my liking (metal) rock on guys! \m/ |
~Drayven™2003~
Artwork and All Pictures Copyright © 2003-2004 Drayven
All rights reserved. Used with permission of Drayven Band