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One of my haunts on the Gower Coast.
MY SOUL LIES WITHIN THE OCEAN
Am I the one that hides the pain, feel my heart it's slowing down.Let the river flow, through my callused hands, and take me from my own, the eyes of the damned. It makes my stomach turn, and it tears my flesh from the bone, how we turn a dream to stone, and we all die young.Just like my other main passion "surfing", music has always been a huge inspiration on me, I grew up on bands like Van Halen, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Boston, Sabbath, Al Di Meola, Kiss, Rainbow, Billy Joel, Motorhead, Cheap Trick, Mother's Finest, Journey, Whitesnake, Dokken, Pat Travers, Yes etc..... , I've been a fan of some many styles within the rock spectrum, I hate categorsing music, a song is a song to me, I either like it or I don't.I started getting more involved in writing in early 90's but it wasn't until the mid 90's that my first printed articles came into play in Powerplay magazine, with a feature interview I wrote on Joe Satriani. I wrote for a further few issues for Powerplay during which time the internet came my home and I hooked up with Gabor at Strutter Magazine. Many of my articles are still up on the Strutter website at www.strutter.8m.com . It was a fun time in music and we enjoyed discovering and writing about new obscure bands, a passion the both of us still die for today and we also remain friends to this day.I also contributed articles too a few other websites and joined up in 1999 with the guys from independent rock magazine Sound Barrier, and featured interviews with bands like Mr.Big, Nelson and Lillian Axe etc. Moving on into the new Millenium I found myself hooking up with Hans owner of www.aordreamzones.com . We helped each other for next two years, helping the labels and bands to get signed, running an online unsigned bands contest each month and eventually getting sponsorship from the melodic rock labels.During this period, I put together my first CD, which ended up being two CD's, this was a mammoth two year project that I put together for guitarist Jason Becker who shot to fame with David Lee Roth but became very ill with Lou Gehrigs disease, check out the info on the CD here. http://www.lionmusic.com/jasonbecker/jasonbecker.htm
So we did the CD and Lasse @ Lion Music backed us and released the two albums, both of which were double albums. I felt very humbled to haveworked along side such pioneers as Steve Vai through to Marty Friedman, Jeff Watson, Vinnie Moore etc, all who freely gave up their time to help Jason. The press reaction was good to the album and we even had the late Tommy Vance comment on the album as well as TV advertsiments for the albums.
Moving on, AOR Dreamzones became a very popular website, to the point that we eventually put out our own FREE CD which we gave away to our readers, again many of my articles are still on the website www.aordreamzones.com . During the course of this time I helped many bands to get signed. Over the years I had the pleasure of helping artists such as Ken Tamplin, XYZ, Rox Diamond, Silent Rage, Ronnie Le Tekro, Steelheart, Talon, Urban Tale, Crystal Blue, Takara etc....
My next plan of attack was Classic Rock magazine, I started writing for them for 2 or 3 issues only to find that they never paid me for the articles, and to this day they still owe. A few personal issues arose after this, resulting in a bit of banter here and there between people, and in this time I became disillusioned with writing the same things about the same rock ballad and rock anthem etc..it seemed that magazines were afraid to be musically open minded.The 9/11 terror attacks on New York bring us to the next phase of my musical writing career. The shock of this sent waves through the world and music industry and many bands felt they had something to say to those who lost their lives in the tragic events. Along side many bands and a record label, I spent the next two years constructing a mammoth project whcih was to be a charity CD for New York's Red Cross, which featured a diverse range or artists all wanting to pay respect to those fallen. I even arranged for actors Steve Guttenburg and Meg Ryan to feature a spoken narrative part for the CD, contracts were all signed for the label, and to this very day the label has still not issued the project, infact the label has now folded and a subsequently missed a golden oppurtunity to do something that was a huge challenge for many of the artists involved.So it was with this and a few other issues that I became jaded with this scene and finally quit writing Everywhere you go in this small music scene, people seem to want to rip you off, their is no honesty. However three years later at the request of a band who had a new album to promote and needed my help, I found myself refreshed and back in the hot seat again, writing once again for Fireworks magazine on a new column called "The Music is Out There" for new bands, a column I orignally started seven years ago, damn has it been that long?So here I am, fighting the cause, fighting the future for what seems to be even darker times for AOR and melodic rock in general than what it was back then, everyone is cutting corners trying to save a buck, labels issuing albums with bad productions which to me is an insult to the fans who are the ones spending the money and keeping this scene alive. It was tough for bands back then too. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, with shows like the Firefest creating huge buzzes here in the UK and attracting fans from all over the globe the scene once again is surviving and moving on. So pick your bums up off your seats, and get yourself down to this years Firefest in October, and let's rock this shit out the place.
