Why should you listen to me?

Why should you listen to me? Well, to keep it short and simple, you shouldn’t. Always go out and make up your own mind. Go to the gig, have a beer – or whatever your vice is – and enjoy the atmosphere, buy the music, hit play and crank the volume up and enjoy it. My opinion is exactly that, its MY opinion and you should always have your own. Having said that, if my opinion can help point you in the direction of some good music that you might not have heard before then that’s great.

So I guess maybe some sort of introduction might be something useful. I’m a gigging musician, or at least I’m the guy that hangs round with musicians (yeah I’m a drummer) and I’ve been doing this for 20 odd years, my first gig was at the age of 17 in a battle of the bands in The Zone, now the site of the Grand Hotel on high street, and my most recent gig at time of writing was a couple of weeks ago at the age of….. well…. lets just say A LOT closer to 40 than 30 at Le Pub in Newport. I’ve spent all that time playing in bands that write their own music, there’s been the odd cover here or there but no “cover bands” they have their place, but my place is not in them.

So yeah I’ve been doing this band thing for a while and I’m still not rich and famous, 17 year old me would be disappointed, nearly 40 year old me is just happy to still be able to do it.

Should I mention something about my musical tastes? I’m gonna anyway since somebody out there might find it interesting or relevant. I’d like to think I’m quite open minded, although I’m definitely more “rock” orientated. I like stuff played with a passion, I cant / wont / don’t do bland, play it like you mean it or let someone else do it. I Had terrible taste in music as a child but I mostly blame my parents for that the first single I bought with my own pocket money was actually two of them “The Frog Chorus” by Paul McCartney and the original Band Aid single, people seem to forget there’s actually been three of them, in my defence I was only five and it sounds a lot cooler when I say my first gig a year or two after that was a Paul McCartney gig in Birmingham NEC. I had what can only be described as a musical awakening as a young teen when I first heard Nirvana so that’s shaped a lot of my musical life, I like stuff heavy and loud but I also like a catchy melody, Pop sensibilities as I remember seeing it written often when reading music magazines as a teenager. A few years later Kyuss was another musical turning point for me heavier guitars again but with plenty of groove and feel to the music and vocals that still weren’t too “shouty” I’ve mellowed a little as I’ve got older I guess, I can appreciate subtler stuff “acoustic” is no longer a blasphemous word, good well written music is just that. As I said earlier though I don’t do bland stuff, so the evil irish band who’s name shall not be mentioned can piss right off, as can blandplay and any boy / girl bands, Ed Sheeran’s got no chance of being played near me either.

I’m waffling on a bit now so I’ll summarise and get back to my original point. I’m a guy that’s been doing this live music thing round south Wales for quite a few years now, if my thoughts and opinions help you find some good music you wouldn’t have found otherwise then that’s awesome, but, and its a big but, not kardashian in size but big, there’s loads of good music out there being played in those small little venues all over the place and loads of great bands putting their music out online, go look around, go find some of those great bands, if you do let me know and I’ll do the same for you. Hows that for a deal ? Sounds good to me.