Dear Sweet Eleanor

Way back when Rocko and the Devils first got together to rehearse for our big night in Hawaii, we were all on time off from working for Journey and U2 in January of 2006. We had gotten permission to use Journey's equipment in their secret warehouse north of San Francisco. The guys in Journ ey are the greatest and were very helpful to us all through our adventure. We had to go out there anyway to pack up the gear for a one-off Journey show in Phoenix, so we just came out 6 days early and rehearsed. We were still not locked in on what we would play yet, so we just started messing around by jamming in the key of "E" since my limited voice range works well in that key. After trying several variations on a basic Metallica theme, for reasons I will never understand I started singing the words to Eleanor Rigby over this heavy rhythm of the old "Peter Gunn" bass line. It was just something we did and then looked at each other and went "WOW, this is cool! We continued messing with it.... trying 3 part harmony on the verses (made it sound too much like Yes), speeding it up, slowing it down, but it always came down to the version we played in Hawaii. For all of us the Beatles were the greatest songwriters ever, so it was important to us not to do anything disrespectful to any of their music, so if Sir Paul ever hears this version, please know that it was done out of pure love. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed playing it!

Love - Rocko


Link to the video with the Eleanor Rigby performance from the Hawaii concert:
http://www.rockoandthedevils.com/video/video.htm

And on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAwszCY5gxE

Happy St. Valentine Birthday, to all the animals!

Today is a very special day- February 14th. This is the day that each year my wife and I celebrate our pet's birthday. Since our pets have always been acquired through Animal Shelters or Forgotten Four Paws, we aren't really sure of their official birthday. So we decided to consolidate them into one day that we could easily remember. Valentines Day just seemed like the best day because it's basis is pretty much centered around love, and the pets just overflow with unquestioning love for us. No matter how long I am gone.....6 minutes or 6 months, they are overjoyed at my return. We have 3 cats....all girls, so you don't tell their age.... their names are B.B. (as in B.B. King), Kiki (as in Kiki Dee), and Minky (as in...Minky!) Then there is their big brother....a Norwegian Elk hound, German Shepard mix who's name is Sharky. They are super-friends to them selves and us. We don't really consider them our pets as much as our furry children. To celebrate the occasion we are going to let them split an entire(de-boned of course)roasted chicken. They enjoy this more than you can imagine, and tolerate us singing "Happy Birthday" while they politely share the bird. So to all of you and all of them.......Happy St. Valentines Birthday!!!
Love - Rocko

Hola from partly sunny Florida!

Well, here it is, my first Devil's Blog!! Had a few questions from everyone on the guestbook the other day, so here goes.

Germana- Yes, I do enjoy a good bottle of wine! I have been big on Australian wines lately. So much great wine, for a reasonable price! I am always up for suggestions on new ones, so lay some on me!! As for my everyday life? There are some things that happen on a daily basis when we are on the road, like unloading the truck, setting up the gear, doing the show, and putting it all back in the truck. However, it's the new faces and places that keep me out here. I love to travel, and experience new things, and being on the road, for me, is the ultimate way to see and learn something new every day. Not to mention, I get to play with cool toys!!!

Donna, I will visit my myspace later today.

Tina- I actually use my pedals on stage (did for the hawaii show) to get "my sound". I build them to keep me out of trouble when I am off the road. Got to have something to do with my free time, or I get stir crazy!! I also sell them through a friends store in San Francisco. As for a tropical island....... Had a fruity adult beverage or two, played a big rock show, and took a week off in Maui with my Girl!! Life is good!

Anyway, I would reallly like to say a personal Thank You to all of you who come and share in our little den of iniquity here on the web. I do check the message board almost daily, and really enjoy reading everyones comments and thoughts. Keep them coming!! Now, let me see if I can get some other Devilish figures to say hi!

Scott

Technology and the world

Unbelievable! It is incredible to me that by smacking a bunch of buttons with letters and numbers on them that you can reach the entire planet. Even more so that the planet can talk back to you. And taking it one step further that we can share/relive that incredible night last December in Hawaii by putting one of our songs we performed on our web site and on YouTube.

Link to Rocko and the Devils on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/rockoandthedevils

Link to the "I Don't Wanna" video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_c6_IDREHs

Sharing is a good thing, and we love doing it. I am sure that if we had a recording contract, we would not be able to do this for free, so enjoy it while you can........and take big bites. We would love to put "Eleanor Rigby" and "I wanna be sedated" videos up on the site as well, but I have yet to get permission from the publishing companies to do it without paying up the ying yang. Maybe if the YouTube video gets enough views and "5-star" ratings it will make the industry sit up and take notice..........or maybe not!?! You people have the power, how you use it is the question.......

Love - Rocko

I Don't Wanna

Greetings Devils Advocates! As you may have noticed, we now have a VIDEO of one of the songs we played in Hawaii up on the web site. Thank you to "The Doctor" for putting the technology together to do this. As I said in the last blog, there is a bit of work involved with putting any thing in the cyber domain without going through the legal stuff. This song was written by a friend of ours from Nashville by the name of J Paul. The first time I heard it on his myspace page ( www.myspace.com/jpaulmusic ), I really wanted to try to play it with the Devils. We had to change the key that it was written in originally, because I just can't sing that high!! We wanted to wait until J Paul actually heard our version of his song, to make sure he didn't hate it, before putting it on the Rocko and the Devils site. He wrote me back after seeing it and had very nice things to say about our performance. What a great guy, and what a talented songwriter. Check out his myspace, I think you will like his stuff.

I would love to put more stuff up, and I will in time, but please enjoy this one and let us know what you think. Please don't bother with any comparisons of his version to our version, ....that's boring! We love and respect J Paul for letting us play his song, and we hope you enjoy both versions!!! Talk at ya soon!!!

Love - Rocko

Hello...... what's this?

Blog? Blog? What is this? Blog? Blog! .....BlogBlogBlogBlog!! Well.... it is fun to say anyway! Greetings to you all from your old pal Rocko. Sorry I have been a bit scarce on this web site of ours. I told myself that I would concentrate on doing all the little things around my home that I have said I would do "when I get time". I gave myself the deadline of Super Bowl Sunday to complete these tasks, and I have done a relatively good job of knocking them out. Today, I am putting the final coat of paint in my office, and then I am pretty much done..... until I find some more things to do!

Our new webmaster, who I call "The Doctor", has done a fantastic job of making-over the web site. The pictures that people have sent to us from the Hawaii show are unbelievable. Thank you all so much for sending them to us. If any more come to us we will add them to the rest.

A lot of you have asked about T-shirts, CD's, Video, or bootlegs of our show. Herein lies the problem with our little rock band in the real world. We don't have a record company, manager, or any more songs recorded...... yet! We did take some video of the show, and we have some cool stuff ready to show you, but then the "legal" issues come up. We cannot put anything on the Internet that we did didn't write unless we receive permission from the entity that owns the publishing rights. This can be relatively expensive for some songs. Now if we had a record company and a manager, this could all be subject to negotiation. At this point we have neither.

Since we first started this project, we have not made a dime on any of our songs because..... well, we have pretty much shared our music for free! Record Companies tend to frown on this kind of behaviour because it is not how they do business. We of course would like to become real rock stars and get a record contract and quit our jobs as road crew and play music for the rest of our lives, but it ain't gonna happen by next week. So we will still be working for artists that we love and doing the music on the side. As far as putting out our own video of the show, or printing our own T-shirts, or releasing a CD..... the up-front money to finance this is more than I can afford right now. After all, I am unemployed right now..... but not for long I suspect.

Now that's not to say we are giving up on the Devils by any means. I have been in my basement writing new songs, and I am pretty proud of them! I hope to get together with the rest of the guys soon and see what they sound like with their ideas as well. I do however want to share some of the video we have from Hawaii. I am just working out the details of some legal issues, which I should have very soon. So I hope you will be patient for just a little while longer, and I think you will find it is worth the wait. Stay tuned my friends!

Love - Rocko