well ... as a kid i drew cartoons and painted lots of pictures. somewhere along the way music took over. and i mean: TOOK OVER! it was a bit of an obsession for a long while, to the detriment of many things -- my sanity, my marriage, my bank balance, my social standing ... i think i have things under control now.i've lived & loved in the lush & leafy melbourne hills in the southeast part of australia for the last few years, drawing much inspiration from its creative centre, belgrave. its been good, but i'm thinking i'll need a change pretty soon.i won't bore you with stories of playing led zep songs with my brother on drums, or the succession of bands i was in from about age 10, with names like nightmare, cupo'wunder, tangled eve, ovagene; etc. everyone has those kind of stories anyway -- needless to say we had a lot of fun (& arguments, especially when i tried to get my brother to play smiths songs).i do want to tell you that between 1995 and 2007 i played in an ace band called hoopiron. in the early years we played lots of gigs & gained a real following. then we split up, reformed, rejigged ourselves slightly, & later only played occasional gigs. we loved playing and hanging out together. our music is generally heavier & trippier than my own solo material. shazza, grant & brett (& my brother paul early on, who has gone on to play with many great melbourne bands) are a fine bunch of people & have appeared on many of my solo endeavours, & for this i am internally grapefruit. we have a new CD 'everything must change' out NOW -- find it on iTunes. while you're there you can also check out some older hoopy stuff.anyway, back in 2002 i realised i wanted to record my songs with my own vocals & instrumentation, & step out of the shadows from behind the considerable vocal talent of hoopiron singer brett j. wallace. thus, 'short term hedonist' was born (after i was given this label by a $150 shrink -- i didn't go back to her again). later, in early 2005, i found the confidence to actually get out there & perform solo for the first time ever. for me, this was a major breakthrough.between late 2002 & early 2006 i had a big burst of activity, ending up with over 100 songs being recorded. i roped in a lot of friends for these sessions -- they are great people & i thank them all from the heart of my bottom. i've also returned the favour by playing on various peoples' material, including aventine's 'slip through my fingers,' and alaisha's 'heart on fire.'anyway, i then asked myself, "how am i going to get this music out there? do i have to make endless amounts of CDs & harangue record companies, or is there another way?" in a rare moment of clarity, i decided that it was best to place my stuff on paid download services such as iTunes, MusicNet, etc. this way i get to maintain control by bypassing the record companies, and not have to worry about putting out traditional albums. so far, my most popular downloads have been 'coffee,' 'swiss cheese' & 'grant's bucket bong.'which brings us up to the present -- early 2008. recently (after a stint in the short-lived band 'the sealords'), i teamed up with a fine singer/trumpet player called karen haranis. she's also a talented arranger, and has helped me to realise my new musical ideas with the aid of a 10-piece choir. the resulting songs are now available on iTunes and in the form of an album based on my experiences of living in the melbourne hills. i'm really, really proud of this stuff.my pet hates are: capital letters, capital cities (except melbourne), capital punishment (unless i've been really bad), capricorns (only joking), baseball caps and cappucinos.pet loves: pets (yeah, even dogs), pet sounds, petulance, petanque, people calling me 'pet' or 'petal.'cheers, stevo.
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