and again

ok. I’ll start again.

I’ve started this so many times and scraped it for various reasons. Getting what your thinking out there isn’t as easy as it sounds. I just need to get this first post done with. I’ve thought about it too much.

So anyway,I thought I’d start blogging because so many unusual things have been happening this year. For example I should be sorting out some sort of backup for my gig at the isle of white festival this sunday but instead I’m on the train, off to De Beauvoir town in Hackney to watch Jonathan Price dance all day , in a community hall, to the first tango I’ve ever written, for a film by my mate Luke Losey. Brilliant!

By the way, just incase you don’t know, Jonathan Price plays Sam Lowery in the Terry Gilliam film ‘Brazil’ that inspired me to give up work and aim for a life in music.

I had a crap job in an office  where my Mum used to work , she saw the film and recommended it to me , so I watched it one night and cried throughout the second half . Gave up my job two weeks later and went to art college . That’s one of the things you did if you wanted to be in a band back then. If you do nothing else today , go and watch brazil.

But it has been a mad year and, over the next while, I’m going to tell you about it as well as what’s currently happen as we go along.

I think I want to talk about how I’ve started again. I’ve gone from wielding the massive machine that was orbital , from selling out the Albert hall and playing with Stephen Hawkins at the Paralympics opening ceremony to returning to the very beginning again and playing in a bowling alley while people still bowl. Playing in the street in Brighton under a small tent type covering, 40 minutes late at ‘the gig where everything went so wrong, then went so right’( I’ll tell you about that later).

Gone are the tour busses, trucks full of synths and lights and video walls, no more tour managers , lighting designers, front of house sound engineers , stage managers , caterers, merchandise sellers and last but not least, no more riders.Its now just me, an occasional back line tech and two and a half suitcases of gear. And do you know what? The bowling alley was far more fun than the Albert hall.

I think I’ll leave it there for now, my first entry, wasn’t so bad. So much I want to say but I just needed to get something going , get it started. Again.

There I’ve done it now, no going back…