History

My musical history started a long time ago. At grammar school I was one of a bunch of cool guys (we believed) who rejected most mainstream pop for the emerging more exciting and revolutionary sounds of Hendrix, Cream etc. I was even cooler, I thought, and followed even more obscure bands like The Nice and Vanilla Fudge.

When Led Zeppelin exploded onto the scene I had the first LP the day it came out. I heard John Paul Jones play bass and keyboards, and felt that was my thing.

Couldn’t play a thing, had flunked music at school (although I could sing in tune), but I bought a totally cruddy acoustic guitar from a second-hand shop for thirty bob (1.50). The action was about half an inch at the 5th fret, so god knows how I held a chord down. Weird really. Like many players, you start out on instruments that sound shit and are impossible to play, and then years later, when you can play a bit, you acquire guitars, basses etc that are a piece of piss to play.

I went through a series of groups with players of differing skills, shall we say, before I found myself in an outfit with musicians on a new level to what I’d been used to. This band became Zirk Dextron, in which I played bass and sang most of the lead vocals. I also wrote most of the material. In fact, songwriting was what I really wanted to do; bass playing was of lesser importance.

We gigged a bit, and eventually there was some record company interest. They liked my songs, and we did demos etc. Nothing much came of it. You have to get lucky in the music business. Talent alone ain’t enough, nor was it ever.

I kept writing songs. I became more enamoured of American bands like Steely Dan, Toto, Earth Wind & Fire and generally funky and jazzy music, which influenced both my songwriting and, particularly, my bass playing.

Bozo was my next group, a strange jazz/fusion type thing with keyboards, sax, but no lead guitar. Didn’t last long and morphed into Double Life, another funky and jazzy thing, with lots of great players like Dave Clayton, Danny Cummings, Simon Eyre and others. Again, record company interest, but no results. Once that fell apart, I tried a bit of UK type power pop, in the band Daily Planet. Very vigorous that was.

I’m going to put examples of the songs I wrote for all these outfits on this website in time, for my own benefit, if no-one else’s.

I played bass with Karl Heard in Steppin’Out, a hot blues/rock band of the early nineties. Not original but fun.

Switched to keyboards and played with the classic rock covers band Rodger from 2000 to 2015 when the band folded.

Currently I’m playing and recording in a prog rock project with my good friend Pod, on guitar, and various others who come together to do the odd rather rare gig. Playing in that band, The Pearson Memmott Conspiracy, has inspired me to get writing again, not just the prog stuff, but retracing some of my old favourite styles, with a bit more soul and jazz influences.

Any road up, its all a bit of an ego trip, but as virtually no-one will ever look at this or listen to the songs, its not really!