the beatles, the rolling stones, DYLAN, smokey robinson, son house, leadbelly, DAVID BOWIE, prince, marvin gaye, STEVIE WONDER, mountain, portishead, jeff beck, rod stewart, RADIOHEAD, U2, the police (not sting solo), creedence clearwater revival, aerosmith, OBAMA, the who, HENDRIX, the stooges, sex pistols
"A creature who can only perform good or evil is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but it is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil" Anthony Burgess on A Clockwork Orange.
"Wound up by God or the Devil" - now there's a term that you would easily apply to Billy Boy on Poison's frantic, rock superstar in the making, young Davis LeDuke. Born and most definitely bred in LA, Davis and his fellow Droogs, Ryan, Greg and cousin Jessi make up the glitter-bombed, glam-soaked, Rockasaurus Rex that is Billy Boy on Poison.
The band who took their name from Burgess' seminal novel "A Clockwork Orange", have spent their formative years plying their trade up and down the Sunset Strip. While their classmates dodge groundings to come and check out the band, this LA four piece have made musicology their major. The raw power of the rabble rousing ten tracks that appear on their debut album 'Drama Junkie Queen' is their song sheet.
Davis LeDuke rolls up his left sleeve. Like so many American rock gods in waiting, he has a tattoo. But this is no fake sleeve of random color-splurge that marks out the common or garden emo, this is ornate script curling around his forearm from elbow to wrist, reading thus: 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'.
“This is a Ginsberg quote, the first lines of 'Howl',” he explains. “He's definitely my favorite poet but I read Burroughs, I read Robert Frost, I read a lot of philosophy, I just read the Communist Manifesto just because I felt like it. I got to the end of the book and thought 'Wow, if only people could be perfect'.”
Billy Boy On Poison's erudite and literate singer isn't your average LA rock freak, but then Billy Boy aren't your average LA rock band. Their glam sparkle is gleaned from Bowie, not Motley Crüe. Their garage punk crunch is Hendrix, New York Dolls, The Strokes and The Stooges, not 70s Aerosmith and Dogstar. Their lyrical inspiration is beat poetry, not breast enhancement. And unlike the Sunset Snort Set, Davis had his sex and drug years already; as a moody and reflective artist he did his teens entirely the wrong way round.
“I matured very quickly,” he says, a fallen product of the US school system. “I've been told that I have an old soul from an early age and that I grew up quickly. I started to get in trouble at twelve years old, smoking pot, doing drugs, having sex.” You were, to quote your debut album title, a 'Drama Junkie Queen'?
Davis laughs. “Maybe not the drama, but a junkie queen, yeah. At that young an age I didn't get that bad but I'd fuck around in school, I'd piss my parents off, not things where I'd get arrested, I just felt rebellious towards everything, I cut God out of my life and do to this day. I chose the completely opposite side of life.”
So, having been brought up on John Griffin, Glen Miller, Miles Davis (after whom he was named) and classic rock (his abiding childhood memory is of his father sitting him and his brother down and air-guitaring along to Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song') at the age of thirteen, Davis sold his old soul to rock'n'roll. With three songs written with mentors Michael Gurley, Chris Sorenson and Stu Brantley, Davis started Billy Boy On Poison at the start of 2006 on a mission to meld his childhood influences with his favorite bands - The Velvet Underground and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Psychedelic glam rock, it transpired, would never sound so modern.
Shunning the original idea of a solo project because “I didn't want the focus all to be on me”, he roped in guitarist Ryan Wallengren (a true child of Aerosmith) through a musician friend and saved his cousin Jessi Calcaterra from the mile long mountain town of Middle Park, Colorado (they'd play baseball against South Park) by recruiting her on drums.
As Davis gradually developed the skills to write songs without his svengali trio, in Hard Drive Studios in North Hollywood the threesome and a revolving cast of guitarists and bassists pieced together a debut album, 'Drama Junkie Queen'. They wrote songs about girls ('Saturday's Child'), sex ('On My Way') and being attracted to people who'd had the fucked up childhoods they never had themselves (the staggering Weezer-esque epic 'Four Leaf Clover'). Davis was a precociously talented melodic virtuoso singing unreconstructed rock hog lyrics like “I'll make it to your bedroom honey/I can make you wet” to songs that took in The Hives, The White Stripes, The Strokes' "Last Night", The (International) Noise Conspiracy and Weezer's "Pinkerton".
And playing music live over the following year, Billy Boy on Poison dazzled. Decked out in full make-up, bleach blonde locks and spandex and covering 'Suffragette City', Descanso's 'Heart Is A Whore' and 'Speaking In Tongues' by Eagles Of Death Metal, a Billy Boy show at Silverlake's Safari Samʼs club understandably drew the eye of Ironworks Music in 2007, a label co-owned by habitual foiler of terrorist masterminds Kiefer Sutherland and producer/songwriter Jude Cole.
In the time since signing with Ironworks, Billy Boy on Poison have changed in all but Clockwork Orange-inspired name. Guitarist Greg West was lured away from a course at the Berklee School Of Music to join the band, hooked by the Myspace page that described Billy Boy as sounding like 'hot, wild, abusive, dirty, hair pullin, ass spankin, pillow bitin, moanin, groanin, howling sex!'. Bassists came and went like Spinal Tap drummers and they finally decided to remain a four-piece. They became the first band to be signed to the UK offshoot of Geffen Records, toured the US south, wrote a potential single called 'Doctor Danger' with the DeLeo brothers of Stone Temple Pilots and had one of their raw early songs 'Dirty Bomb' used as the theme to a VH-1 show and released on the limited 'Sweet Mess EP'. Furthermore album opener and single ʻOn My Wayʼ featured in the hugely popular US TV smash ʻGossip Girlʼ. And, most pivotal of all, they have begun to grow out of their glam postures and started mining a rich seam of brooding darkness.
“I used to try and go for the whole Bowie thing,” Davis explains, “and something clicked in my mind 'Why are you doing this? What sort of role are you trying to play? This has already been done'. When we all started getting depressed and went through this dark time when we were switching members I wasn't feeling it as much anymore. One day I was like 'Alright, I've had my fun'. We went from bright colors to black. I don't want these kids to look at us and be like 'oh just another one of those bands'. If you see a band that's wearing all black you don't know what to expect.”
So the glitterburst of youthful punk energy that is 'Drama Junkie Queen' arrives. And so it stands, a wonderful record of filth, fury and overt exuberance alongside the artfulness of their more recently penned tunes and the creative lyrical depths that Davis now dredges daily.
“I'm writing poetry every day and eventually I'd like to write books,” he says. “I feel like the songs on this record are good songs because they're hooky and they're catchy and they mean something, they have a message. And now I have a different way of approaching it, I can look more outside the box, use my art and test myself. Now we're moving forward because we want to move forward, not because people are telling us to.”
Watch close: you're about to see the best minds of our generation enhanced by madness…
Thank You for being my friend! i so appreciate having you!!! You got it going on!! It's amazing what we can accomplish with desire, hard work and believing in ourselves!! If you get a second i'd appreciate you check out my version of Etta James classic AT LAST!!!
IMAGINE THE FEELING OF KNOWING YOU "MADE IT" IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
How would that change your life? Or the life of those around you? I'll let you know a secret; one of the main reasons main stream artist's are so successful is they have a great marketing team on their side. That's why you sometimes see "unknown" artist's with way more talent remain an unknown. They don't have a good marketing team working for them.
Marketing is ESSENTIAL in any musicians career and without it they won't be getting too far. You can have the best song in the world, but if you don't have a professional team of marketers out there telling people about it. Nobodies every gonna know about your great song.
THAT'S WHERE WE COME IN
If you are trying to get exposure for your band, live that life you always been wanting, expand your fanbase, GET THOUSANDS OF MUSIC PLAYS, PROFILE VIEWS AND FRIENDS, then this might be the most important message you'll ever read on myspace
(WE DO ALL THE WORK FOR YOU!)
(GET THE EXPOSURE YOU NEED AND DESERVE)
What happens when we promote your music page:
1. Increase MySpace Plays 2. Increase Profile Views 3. Increase Friend Count 4. Obtain Higher Chart Rankings 5. Attract New Fans, Promoters 6. Attract, Radio Stations, Record Labels 7. Get recognized by AnR's 8. Get ahead of your competition 9. On the road to achievement
DON'T LET YOUR MUSIC CAREER NEVER TAKE OFF CAUSE YOU DECIDED YOU DIDN'T WANT GOOD MARKETING.
How it works - To get us to promote your music page simply pick one of our marketing packages on our myspace page or website and once your claim is received we will begin marketing your music.
GO TO OUR MYSPACE PAGE OR WEBSITE TO GET STARTED ON A CAREER OF A LIFETIME...DON'T LET THIS OPPORTUNITY PASS YOU BY.
Thank you, Myspace Marketing Done Right www. marketingdoneright. webs. com
Hi Billy boy on Poison, thanks for the add, glad you like our sounds. Please do tell your friends about us, and don't forget to add us on Facebook too, the link's on our page, thanks.
ELECTRO AND HIP HOP NIGHTS WITH BANDA AT MALECON EVERY THURSDAY...THURSDAY 3/18/10, REGRESAN LOS SERENOS DE LA SIERRA, CLIKA NORTENA, Y BANDA ORGULLO SINALOENSE ...THIS EVENT WILL SELL OUT!!!
How music comes to life in film... or how one of our instrumentals found a new life in a film about San Francisco For the whole story, check out our latest blog or visit www.vimeo.com/10148100
ELECTRO AND HIP HOP NIGHTS WITH BANDA AT MALECON EVERY THURSDAY...THURSDAY 3/18/10, REGRESAN LOS SERENOS DE LA SIERRA, CLIKA NORTENA, Y BANDA ORGULLO SINALOENSE ...THIS EVENT WILL SELL OUT!!!
Hi long time no speak...hows you ?? Just wanted to show you our latest video interview we did a couple of weeks ago....we are in the studio working on our next album at the moment but should be doing some gigs in the spring/summer time dont forget to pop over to our page and leave us some love ha xxx 10 reasons to live - Band in a box 10 Reasons To Live | MySpace Music Videos
ELECTRO AND HIP HOP NIGHTS AT MALECON EVERY THURSDAY.THURSDAY 3/11/10, BANDA ORGULLO SINALOENSE, GRUPO LIBERADO, SERENOS DE LA SIERRA,Y ALFREDO FERNANDEZ....THIS EVENT WILL SELL OUT!!!
Editor & Journalist for Country Music Christian Lamitschka An der Pfingstweide 28 61118 Bad Vilbel Germany Phone: ++49 6101 544613 Mobil: ++49 171 6903352 E-Mail: Ch.Lamitschka@t-onine.de E-Mail: Info@CountryMusic-Magazin.de www.MySpace.com/ChristianLamitschka
Treasuring freedom and compassion, we cultivate an ethical life not as an end in itself, but as a means to serenity and wisdom. It is sometimes said that if you want to know about your past, look at your mind now. If you want to know about the future, look at your mind now. We sow the seeds of our future experience through what we commit ourselves to in this moment. There is a powerful relationship between integrity and simplicity. Dedicated to integrity, we are directly caring for the quality of our mind and heart, and all of life.
A living integrity liberates us from the guilt driven thinking that ensues from actions and speech born of habit or dishonesty. Each time we speak, act, or think in ways that harm or undermine others or ourselves, we are left with a residue of regret, fear, or guilt, that clouds our capacity to be present and awake.
“How can we expect to deepen in understanding if we do not live an ethical life?
Living without integrity we endlessly create the conditions for unpleasant mind states and feelings to arise.”
A commitment to integrity is a commitment to living a life without residues, a life of loving kindness and freedom. Words, thoughts, and actions of loving kindness and integrity leave no trace of regret in our minds and hearts. Stillness and calmness are the children of integrity; simplicity is the companion of integrity.
Hey there Billy boy on Poison, just a quick note to say hi. We have been really busy lately booking shows and writing new material for our first proper release we are hoping to record over the coming months.
Come and listen to our tracks and let us know what you think, theres some videos on our myspace too.