In the early days of the year 1980, a child's wailing broke the silence of the night in a dingy London hospital. After a brief cleanup period and checking all the essential bits and pieces were in the appropriate places, my parents held in their hands a child whose future had been written in the heavens since the beginning of time. This child was born for one purpose and one purpose alone....to lose his hair at a ridiculously young age and be the grower of a beard (and do some other stuff as well).
Armed with some impressive chin fluff and freshly into early manhood, this now rather skinny and funny looking individual pursued many different hobbies, places and experiences and decided that the time was right to make a website for all this crap so not only can he keep track of it all, but so the good people of the world who may want to take an interest have a place to seek evidence and news of his goings on.
And lo, it was delivered half arsed, a bit rough around the edges and rather full of Bulls**t, just like himself.
MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY
Music has been a part of my life longer than I’ve had pubic hair. Like pubic hair, that music has come in many shapes and forms, textures and fluffiness.
Starting at an early age on the piano, I proceeded to around the grade 4 area in my lessons. Playing typical grade classical pieces starting getting rather boring, but luckily I had just been introduced to the music of the legend that is, MEAT LOAF! So my attention was drawn into learning all the songs from both bat out of hell albums and led me to giving up my lessons.
By the time I had hit my early teens I did what any ropey looking, unattractive and insecure teen did, channel their passions into something that wasn't girls. As the female of the species terrified me in these delicate years, music became my muse, my lover and my sanctuary. I had caught the Britpop bug and Oasis's Noel Gallagher inspired me to pick up the guitar and have a bash. My father, being a guitarist, gave me a few introductory lessons and then I self-taught my way through various oasis albums. Acoustic was my first love, but my father also gave me his electric guitar and an amp to play through, so that was me set for the next few years.
After leaving the arsehole experience that was my school life, I was free to get a job and finally, for the first time in my life, actually have money of my own. I went down the local music shop and one of the first things I saw was a rather large red drum kit to which I instantly fell in love. Never really having played drums except for a little bash about on a small jazz kit my parents had bought me, this was a whole new world of excitement and hitting things with sticks! Whilst purchasing said kit I happened to bump into an old school colleague and have a brief chinwag. I mentioned that I had just bought that kit and he proceeded to tell me that it was his old drummer from his band's kit and that they were now looking for a drummer.....Now some of you may say fate doesn't exist, and you'd be right, so we won’t bother with that crap :)
Three weeks later after a rather intense spell of trying to get my act together and play something that remotely sounded like a few drum beats, I was in the band. This was one of those nirvana inspired grunge outfits that a lot of kids who were just learning their instruments would form to bust out some teen angst ridden riffage. The Guitarist who I had met in the shop was also a drummer, which was a godsend for little old me who was well out of his depth at this point. He introduced me to the music of Nirvana and the power that was Mr. Grohl and also bands like Placebo, Marilyn Manson and various others. I spent a year with these guys, playing local gigs, becoming part of the local scene and enjoying that rather bizarre new experience of people coming up to me and saying "hey, you're in that band!".
After leaving this band in around summer 1998 I then went on to play with various different groups who played various styles from punk, to rock, to indie and metal. With various degrees of local scene "success" I then happened to once again be in a local music shop and happened to get chatting to the chap behind the counter. Now by this point my musical taste had changed from indie, to new wave metal, to black metal through to power metal, and I happened to mentioned to this guy about my love for German power metal. His eyes lit up like a priest at an altar boy convention and after a quick exchange of band knowledge, a kinship and friendship was forged. He told me his cover band was looking for a singer and did I happen to know anybody that sang. Now I had sang doing backing vocals with a covers band a few years earlier and had always had a dabble at singing, but never anything serious. But I took the plunge and said I could sing, so he invited me to try out in a few weeks’ time at one of their rehearsals. Now I have tried out and auditioned for bands many times, but never have I turned up to find myself in a one to one vocal showdown with another singer! The band thought to save time they would audition us both at the same time and have us sing off at each other one song after another. I was so nervous I could have easily filled my breeches with a poo-slide of bumtastic proportions, but luckily the dam held, brown rivers did not overflow and I gave it my best shot. It was clear very quickly that I didn't have really anything to worry about. The other singer for some obscure reason had chosen to sing songs that were out of his range and comfort zone. After a few rather squeaky numbers and constant complaints of "I can’t hear myself" and "it’s a bit different to singing in the shower" on his part, we left the audition with the guitarist giving me a look of "you've got it mate".
This began a whole new chapter in my musical life. Now I had played semi regularly with another covers band for a while on drums, but never had the experience of being upfront with a whole 2 hours to fill of singing and crowd entertainment. The first shock was how out of shape my voice was. I would find myself pretty much dying at the end of the first set and struggling all the way through the second with barely enough voice to talk at the end. Doing this a couple of nights in a row I soon realized that if I didn't sort myself out, this would be a very short lived career. So later down the line I signed myself up for a few singing lessons to try and improve my technique so I could get through a gig without sounding like an Alsatian being put through a meat grinder powered by a team of overexcited and very squeaky mice.
As time went on and my singing abilities improved I found myself getting approached by other bands asking if I would stand in for their singers on occasions, be asked to join their bands and various other things. I noticed that people seemed to have a serious problem when it came to finding bass players to cover when members were unavailable so I decided to take the plunge and learn the bass. I had played a bit before, just for shits and giggles really and maybe for writing and recording my own little ditties, but never properly or with a band. Having played guitar for quite a few years now I had enough knowledge to be able to jump over pretty quickly and get myself up to a standard decent enough that could just about cope with your usual pub gig. So now with getting musical work on 3 different instruments, vocals, bass and drums I found myself gigging regularly almost every weekend. Also I had begun working on my own projects and had start writing my own music in the form of one of my most favorite genres, power metal. So coming up to date I have found myself playing in various countries with all sorts of different bands and artists. I have done some session tour work, I gig regularly on various instruments and session and play on various albums, some more noteworthy than others.
It’s not a bad life; I could be sitting at home with my finger up rectum, or worse, could be a mortgage broker. Details of the bands and projects I have been and are involved with you can find on the "musical dalliances" section of this site. This is just a little bit of background to what I do and how it happened. I'm no dickens, more dickhead, so if my writing sucks balls....well, tough shit really xx