(for your amusement and edification, anything underlined links to a relevant website)
I've played the drums professionally since 1976, when Danny Adler called me to join his London-based band, Roogalator. We worked our nuts off for 22 months! I owe Danny for the technical discipline/indiscipline and torture-survival I learned at that time, and still exploit today!From there I worked with the Roogs manager and artist-in-his-own-right, Robin Scott, on his project "M", which produced the single "Pop Muzik". Next stop was Nick Plytas ' band, The Hired Men, from which I was poached to record Lene Lovich's 2nd Album, Flex. This led to world touring and more recording for two and a bit years ('79~'81).
The wonderful Joan Armatrading rang me to tour her "Walk under Ladders" album in 1982, which led on to the same thing the following year for "The Key" album tour. She was in the habit of using top American session players for recording at that time, leaving the real work to be done by us young English boys! In between those 2 tours(end of '82), Tom Dolby asked me to record his 1st album, "The Golden Age of Wireless", which led to his 1984 tour of Europe and USA.
1985 saw a bunch of albums with Stuart Levine/Femi J's production partnership- Albania, (ex-Specials AKA) Stan Campbell, (ex-Reflex) John Baxter, Blancmange , Thrashing Doves , more LLovich, more TDolby, some Joan A, and some which required real drums to be added to the now-too-soft productions where electronic percussion tracks didn't impress anymore.
This was fun and led to more touring- '85 Blancmange. '86 Thrashing Doves, '87 re-launch of Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen dual-billing round Europe, '88 Nina Hagen USA and Europe, '89 Maggie Reilly (ex- Mike Oldfield).
Then it all went quiet as the live audience discovered the thrills of the computer age. Played through the doldrums with various bands in a period of self-assessment (AKA poverty and dayjob), and met/played with a lot of people, including: Saiichi Sugiyama , Tony Shevlin, Diplomatics, Blues Agents, Desperate Dan Band, Blue Bishops, Pierre Le Rue, Free Again , Electric Experience. Plus many one-off deps etc- Papa George , Steve Simpson , Noel Brown, Liane Carroll , amongst others.
Some of these I am still gigging/dep-ing with:
Blue Bishops are just finishing their new album, recorded with the almighty John Leckie (just Google his name!!) and the legendary Stuey Epps . Superb keyboard contributions from Rod Argent and John 'Rabbit' Bundrick top it off! This will be huge!!
Others include Electric Experience and The Desperate Dan Band - and I'm very happy to be so eclectically involved.See my giglist...
I'm very happy to be endorsed by Pro-Mark to use these, and I use Noble & Cooley drums and Zildjian cymbals
Only the best !!!
Now beat it!