Stirred, Not Shaken : Known for its two-guitar barrage, the band Cocktails From Hell has cleaned up its act a bit and is bent on building success, two members say.

Cocktails From Hell will bring enough bad personal habits to astound even Deadheads and a two-guitar rockin’ blues assault to Nicholby’s in Ventura tonight for the ever-affordable free show.

Cocktails has played everywhere, amazed many, laughed at the others and partied all across Santa Barbara over the last decade, but now the band members have straightened up their act to the point where they can actually play a few times a month.

Sort of the Raging Arb & the Redheads of Santa Barbara, the band is driven by the dual guitars of Eric Eisenberg and Bill McLain. Aaron Cheverez plays bass and Troy Thacker beats on the drums. Cecil B. DeMille--yup, the famed director’s grandson--is the swaggering front man, a onetime party animal of epic proportions but now clean for weeks on end.

Eisenberg and DeMille, who have been in the band the longest, talked things over during a recent interview.

You guys have been around longer than everybody, so now you’re getting the cool gigs, right?

Eisenberg: We’ve graduated from Wednesdays and Thursdays to the Friday before St. Patrick’s Day and the Friday before New Year’s Eve. So we’re finally playing weekends, but crummy weekends.

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Who’s to blame for all this?

DeMille: I invented the name, me and a bunch of people who couldn’t play or sing. We got a gig before we could even play, then all the guys that could sorta play quit five days before the first gig. There were fledgling Cocktails in 1984, but it really didn’t get going until 1985. Eric joined soon after.

Eisenberg: We played at a Get the Tan Out of Town gig at La Casa de la Raza. Something like 11 bands played, the Tan got all the money and went to England. Then, we were kinda like Guns N’ Roses before Guns N’ Roses.

DeMille: Yeah, or maybe closer to a punk-rock thing, Black Velvet Flag. I was wearing dresses on stage, and I like to milk people’s expectations. But the decadent rock-’n’-roll thing kinda got the best of me. I used to take tons of drugs, but now I’ve been clean and sober for seven weeks. We used to demand and get a bottle of vodka and a bottle of whiskey, which we drank before we went on stage. Then I used to have to take two hits of acid to come down enough to remember the lyrics to the songs. And I was the one that got the least (messed) up.

Eisenberg: Now I’m the most (messed) up. Anywhere we played, we figured we’d never be coming back. Our reputation preceded us, and it was only slightly inflated. One time we played at Joes II, and we broke something like 200 glasses, so they paid us not to play the next night. We were always the anti-let’s-have-a-good-time thing.

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The Cocktails went away but they wouldn’t stay away?

DeMille: Yeah, after a couple of years, I decided I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was in another band, Bitch Magnet, then Cecil B. DeMillions. When I started the band again, it was basically a reconstruction of the old group. The band is and always was about freedom. We do something they don’t understand.

Eisenberg: But our freedom undermined people’s self-confidence. We didn’t validate what they were doing. And all the offensive lyrics were just for fun. Before, Cecil was the general; I was the prime minister, the other guys were the church.

DeMille: Before, we were the Cocktails From Hell. Now, we’re the Cocktails From Heck.

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When you guys can stand, the band totally rocks.

Eisenberg: Thanks. We do sort of a blues-based thing with a two-guitar barrage. I want to be the Jeff Beck guy.

DeMille: That’s a reach, man.

Eisenberg: The views expressed by members of the band are not necessarily those of the band.

DeMille: The guitar stylings aren’t necessarily correct.

Eisenberg: A lot of what we do isn’t correct--we don’t even know when the songs are supposed to end, or maybe that’s just the current version of the band.

DeMille: Before, we had a tendency to work against each other. Now, we’re working together. . . . Now, when I think about those days--it’s scary.

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So what’s the new attitude?

Eisenberg: New bands like to play, old bands like to party. We’re so unimpressed by all the bull, people don’t understand what motivates us. We don’t look up to anybody, but we’ll look straight across at anybody. We’re not better than anybody, but nobody’s better than us. We don’t do a lot, we just do it good. Our guns are loaded and we’re ready to kill something.

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Is there a master plan that will inflict the Cocktails From Hell on an unsuspecting and unworthy world?

Eisenberg: We want to continue to support our lavish lifestyle more successfully over time. The band doesn’t support us--it doesn’t pay for itself. We’re not worried about money yet. We just wanna get better. It’s almost impossible to build a crowd unless you already have a crowd going. Only Spencer the Gardener and Big Bad Voodoo Daddyz are able to pull it off in both Ventura and Santa Barbara. We’d like to go on the road, but playing more than twice a week is very difficult for us, especially when you can’t even remember the last set.

Details

* WHAT: Cocktails From Hell.

* WHEN: 9 tonight.

* WHERE: Nicholby’s, 404 E. Main St., Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: 653-2320.