Chris Gibbs (vocals)

Chris’s passion has been singing & performing live his whole life. One of Chris’s first live performances had him singing with just a microphone & an amp, the stage was a set of steps leading from the side of his school hall down to the school yard where his fellow students & teachers had gathered to watch the show. With an ambition to perform original material he began writing at 14 with the basics, pen, paper, acoustic guitar, a borderless imagination & heaps of versatility. As a solo artist Chris’s potential was recognised by two management companies who decided to back Chris as a joint venture.
After a couple of years, finding that both management & Chris had too many conflicting views on which ‘niche’ if any, to put him in, they departed company. Undeterred & fuelled with determination, Chris’s thirst for the stage soon had him searching for other, like-minded musicians & songwriters. Several years passed filled by working with various bands in a number of different genres, writing, performing & recording. Chris, although gaining experience, still hadn’t found what he’d been looking for, a single band with attitude, unbound by generic commercialism or ‘rules’ & unlimited by one or two genres, a band able to combine various genres of music & wrap them around an original ‘core sound’ or ‘feel’ with a willingness to experiment with all aspects of musical compositions, including style, method & structure.

A phone call from an old school friend later & Chris was on his way to a jam with a newly formed three piece looking for a vocalist. The jam almost immediately began to show a more than promising amount of progressive chemistry & as it turned out, this was the birth place of Crazy 88 & their first song, ‘The Silence’.

Influences:
Incubus, U2, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Audioslave, Pearl Jam, Korn, Bob Marley, System of a Down, Elvis, Crowded House, Rage against the machine, Seal, Prodigy, Stereophonics, Billy Idol, Papa Roach, Blur, Green Day, Faithless, Nirvana, REM, Foo Fighters, Lou Reed, Alterbridge, Gorillaz, Queens of the Stoneage & KALD. ..to name but a few.

John Priest - Guitars and Backing Vocals John grew up listening to the true guitar greats that he would dig out of his father’s record collection. From such as early age, John was already seeped in the inexorable influence of virtuoso performers such as Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Peter Green, and David Gilmour.

It was this fantastic array of performers that inspired John to pick up a guitar and try to play his heroes’ songs, and as time went by he discovered other bands and artists that would go on to inform his guitar style and song writing abilities. Among the most prominent of these were Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Audioslave, Jeff Buckley and countless others.
John started playing locally around Essex in 1999 but was soon exposed to the London music scene, where he opened up shows with his former band, Pride and Joy.

As the front man of this venture, he opened up for the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Hoax, Stan Webb, The Yardbirds, and Whitesnake at the London Astoria.

John has developed his own style that includes soulful solo performing developed with a guitar tone that stands out from the mesh pit crowd and riffs that entangle the Rock, Funk Blues. and Metal music that infuses Crazy88

Sebastian Cheek - Drums In short then, Sebastian - or Baz to those who know him - had a friend who owned a drum kit. After a few enthusiastic attempts at holding down a steady beat, Baz thought this was cool and set about finding the means by which he too could be seen as cool.
And so the seeds of percussive curiosity were well and truly sown in his young and impressionable mind. He had just turned fourteen when he took his first drum lesson.
The guru he was fortunate enough to have nurture him in the initial stages of his rhythmical journey was a somewhat eccentric, yet totally legendary French tutor, Gingi Romano. Gingi’s playing was mesmerising, being both technically flawless and with a natural command of groove that flowed effortlessly from each limb; a style that Baz soon picked up upon and always tries to emulate whilst jamming with the band.
Added to this basis he embarked upon a series of lessons with UK session maestro, Pete Riley, before the commitment of moving away to University was thrust upon him.
With a laid-back, approach to the drum sets Baz is the backbone of Crazy88 Musically, he is enthused by anything rhythmical, but draws particular inspiration from the big drum sound affiliated to Chad Smith (Blood Sugar era) and Brad Wilk’s work in Rage Against The Machine. He lives by the cliche that to play for the song is the critical factor in drumming and prides himself on laying the groove down as it should be: tight and funky with a hint of embellishment to add a splash of colour to the sound!Influences: Chad Smith, Dave Grohl, Travis Barker, Brad Wilk, Gingi Romano, Pete Riley, Tre Cool.

Ian Megee - Bass Guitars It began with a song, really. At the age of fifteen, Ian picked up his father’s acoustic guitar and humbly began to learn The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, gradually overcoming the frustration of not possessing the dexterity to switch easily between the chords of such a simple song.As if faced by a nemesis, a patience grew that allowed for the frustration to fade into experience and self-teaching; the old adage was proven right that you can never learn by getting things right all the time - you learn from mistakes. After a while, a capability had been achieved, and it was at this time that Ian’s best friend from college played him the seminal album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Flea’s influence made a massive impact, and Ian began to hunt out more material from the Chili Peppers until he discovered One Hot Minute. It was the inimitable riffs of Aeroplane that struck him made him learn to play the bass guitar.Since then, Ian has played in several bands, at venues in Essex and in and around London. Now, settled into Crazy 88, things seem right - as if they were meant to be. It is more than a band, you see, it is a band of brothers that at times seems to have developed a psychic link. It is a perfect blend, something that will be around for a while.