This is a slightly delayed "introduce yourself" in many ways. I suspect that in the long run my presence on steemit will largely be semi-coherent rants on politics and economics, but it would be misleading to say these are my areas of expertise. So I'll just bash out a quick summary of life so far, along with a little shameless self-promotion. I'm not very experienced at the latter, so if I misjudge the tone, I apologise...
I'm a musician. I have, for most of the past 25 years, played loud and proud, devil-horned metal and nu-metal. I still have my first proper guitar, a Gibson Flying Vee bought with the money my grandparents gave me to go to University, which in those days in the UK was still state-funded. So rather than learning the intricacies of mechanical engineering, which is what both grandparents and, presumably, the generous and tolerant state thought I was doing, I was, in fact, getting pretty good at making a noise. This did not result in high levels of academic achievement - let that be a lesson, kids ;)
That Vee, battered but onbowed
After leaving Uni I got involved in a number of voluntary sector projects, as the mid-nineties were a bit of a boom time in that sector. Successive right-wing governments had cut central government spending by franchising social provision into the private and charitable sector and I ended up doing bits and pieces of work, both paid and unpaid. I guess this all makes sense from a government's point of view - after all, why pay people to do things that some people will do for nothing, out of a sense of conscience or obligation? Of course, in poorer parts of the world, and S Wales is one of these when measured in a European context, this is an unsustainable solution, as people are too poor to have much leisure time to spend "doing good". Looks good on the government financial returns though, and helps the party funders make nice profits on their shareholdings in the corporations that increasingly have secured most of the so-called voluntary sector contracts. Neat.
So in the late 90s I was working in a small place in the Welsh Valleys called Ogmore Vale. As it happens, my mother was born there and she had returned there with my brothers from the south of England, where I and my siblings were born. My eldest brother was in school and his social group, along with some other young lads in the area, were very keen on music - Nirvana, Metallica, my kind of thing, along with some of the newer, noisier bands breaking through at the time. The success of Welsh bands in the charts around then, the Manics, Catatonia, even the Welsh-language Super Furry Animals, made this a good time to start a music project. So, which some help from some good people in the local authority, and in the face of opposition from some less good people, local authority and otherwise, we set up in an old school building then used as a youth club, but since demolished. We'd occupy an echoing old Victorian-era schoolroom, high-ceilinged, large windowed and full of reverberation. Or squeeze into an old storeroom which was as compact and sonically "dead" as the classroom was the opposite.
A group coalesced out of the young attendees. Not a band, initially, but a loose grouping of a few bands that took their music very seriously. We arranged a mini-festival, in a local tradition, and I booked the Stereophonics, a month or two before the release of their debut, along with a couple of other bands that have since vanished. My then band played, the kids I was teaching played, a couple of thousand people on a rugby pitch in Nantymoel sat and danced in the sun and drank, a fight nearly demolished the bear tent while I was playing (and partially forgetting" Joe Satriani's "Surfin' With The Alien". I handed £30 to the Stereophonics manager while they lurked in the dark near the car they'd come in, not far for them, went back to the party...
That group of youngsters never stopped playing. They formed one band, in the end, though personnel changed from time to time. They were Jeff Killed John for a bit, but finally, after kicking out their bassist, a quiet hedonist called Nick Crandle, and replacing him with a kid a couple of years younger, called Jason, they settled on the name of Bullet For My Valentine. They're still going - though they kicked out Jason recently...
Onstage somewhere, looking at the bassist and singer and wondering how much of what they've taken...
I spent most of the 2000s trying to get bands together, becoming a parent and discovering the joys and trials of actually being a grown-up with responsibilities. Turns out its not so bad! By 2010 I had recruited said bassist, Nick Crandle, and he and I and another ex-student of mine actually recorded an album, in my living room. But then life intervened, and for one reason and another I never quite finished mixing the album. I still haven't. Currently the music PC (built in 2004) sits in pieces, dead as a door-nail. I've spent hours rebuilding it, replacing components and crossing my fingers, all to no avail. So, in order to avoid having to mix the whole lot again on a more up-to-date machine, I'm going to buy a cheap WinXP machine to do one job. To install the necessary software (all rather out-of-date now), and then mix an album. I'll post it on here when it's done. When, not if...
Black Swan onstage at the Milkwood Jam, Swansea. Nick Crandle on bass, right of pic
But as for me, what now? Well, maybe there's life in the old rocker yet. I'm planning to move to Italy, given the catastrophe of Brexit, and go back to University. To study Economics. Which brings us right round to the start. Maybe now, quarter of a century later, I'll have enough discipline to actually do some proper studying. If I can get my head around Italian paperwork, that is...
And who knows? Maybe I'm still fast enough to play football at a decent level in that home of cautious football, Italy. Maybe I'll bump into some scruffy long-haired guys looking for a decent, experienced guitarist... Or maybe there's a market in Siena for an acoustic set featuring some grunge and metal classics, along with some original material. Only one way to find out...
A celebration of Dylan Thomas - who else, in Swansea?!
Thanks for reading, and if you want to hear those tunes, drop me an upvote, as I am that stereotypically bankrupt bohemian and am hoping that maybe, just maybe, Steem will fund that music PC...
Cheers!