This isn't what you think, it really isn't. I'm not name checking someone you've never heard of to prove a point. Well I am, but not the point you think. Listen to the song (www.myspace.com/askalicetheband) and that vague thudding sound in the back is me, as for a brief period I was the bass player in Ask Alice.... No, that's not the point I'm making either. This isn't a career boost. It never was a career, it came out a simple fact- Music inspires.... and it always has. When I first became obsessed with music I had bought a guitar almost as quickly as I bought my first handful of albums (AC/DC, Motley Crue & Metallica). As much time as I spent listening to these albums, I spent an equal amount of time writing (very,very simple) metal songs with my friend or designing album covers for LP's we would never quite get round to recording. It was driven by something inherent in the shrieking vocals and howling solos, the need to express yourself. it found it's way out in my low quality mullet, my outsized basketball boots, my exercise books covered in perfectly rendered Anthrax or Metallica logos.
....and it continued. I found new music but I found the same messages, messages that drove me to create. From entirely improvised non musical efforts (I still own the only copy of the Brian Glover Project's debut "Fist Fucked by a Face Hugger... with it's crudely crayoned cover- hard to believe it's the work of supposedly intelligent men!) to my first proper band and it's achingly pretentious efforts at lovelorn lyrics about relationships I never had. We never got beyond two rehersals but the urge was still there, and it found it's way out in lyrics and riffs and two chord vamps that I'd play for the next ten years. Even as a grown up, with a grown up's job and responsibilities I still responded to those messages, and found myself playing covers of R and B and Soul songs to disinterested punters in dodgy high street pubs. They might not have been my songs, but it was still an effort to respond to the messages I'd first heard 20 years previously in poorly recorded AC/DC tapes. More covers, more borrowed messages and eventually I met the guys that would comprise Ask Alice. I think we lasted another month after the demo, insecurities, doubts and reality got in the way. But to me it didn't matter, I still keep playing and I write this because music will always have that effect on me. And returning to a recurring theme even in our "X-Factor" obssessed days where celebrity seems to be as big a driver in music as pure and simple love of song I know there's a new generation hearing the same messages. The studio we recorded our Demo at had a fairly prosperous sideline in providing studio parties for kids and when we there a beaming young girl sat in the rest area with her proud parents either side of her. "She loves singing" said her mum "and we couldn't think of a better present than this". It's not a career, it's about the messages we hear and the passion they inspire. I've no doubt that that girl will look back in 20 years and realise that day in a cramped studio in Tunbridge Wells was a high point in a life long relationship with music. It will be for me
Recommended Listening: "Fist Fucked by a Face Hugger" The Brian Glover Project
"Back in Black" AC/DC
Recommended Reading: "Love is the Drug" edited by John Aizlewood
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well said, music is the same for me, its the fire that drives me.
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