INFORMATIVE YEARS

My first musical project was playing cymbals in a marching band - after a great deal of whining I graduated to the bugle.

As you know the bugle is a wind instrument that has no valves. It resembles a pair of bike handle bars that have been involved in a particularly nasty accident. The bugle is second only to a car alarm in terms of its musical charm and subtlety (it also turned my dog against me).

On being taught the instrument I was told it only had five notes. I mucked around with it a bit and found three more that no one else knew were there. I was informed these notes were NOT REAL. This threw my entire world into chaos and the quality of my playing really suffered as a result.

My next musical fracas was some years later when I embarked in the first 'clean metal' band ever to practice in a garage in Plymouth. Electric guitars were played though a bass amp with no over drive, we had no drummer but we did have a bass player who utterly resented the fact he had to learn to play the instrument in order to be in a band. He would sit and shuffle all the way through practice, chain smoking, grumbling and criticising my H.P. Lovecraft inspired songs.

We were called Internal Fracture (at the time I didn't stop to wonder what other kind of fracture a human being could have). I left town and they carried on without me eventually acquiring overdrive, another name and songs about autopsies and disease - just imagine Death Metal songs sung with a Devon accent!

Further down the line I became involved with a 'soft folk' outfit in Sheffield. We did a world tour of Sheffield and then everyone left town except me. It must have been something I played.

THE CROSSROADS

Everybody goes to the crossroads sometime, Robert Johnson, Old Nick, Benny. When Johnson came back he was a different player so they say.

All the decent crossroads are in the States, so that's where I went. I went with nothing but metal under my belt and a nasty habit of writing songs that had no repeating chord structures or words...

Yes, I vanished from the shores of Albion in 1990 and when I came back I wasn't any better than when I went (the devil must have been having a day off).

My first ever gig was up in the wooded hills of Pennsylvania. Some of the folks down town looked like they'd walked straight out of a Tom Waits song and it was rumoured that a Dragon of the KKK was holed up somewhere nearby. Was it a coincidence that the first ever piece of music I ever learned some eight years earlier was the Duelling banjos?

I sang my crooked songs to the hill dwellers, songs that were odd, even by my standards. I escaped with my life.

While I was there I did get to see the fantastic guitarist Keith Hinchliffe (whom I would later meet here in Sheffield). Keith did such mind blowing stuff on the guitar that it made me want to go and smash mine up and throw it out the window.

THE DEVIL'S DEGREE

Everyone has their dark secrets. You want to know mine?

I did a business degree.

I ended up in the states for a year - visited the empty crossroads and spent much of the rest of the time at a Liberal Arts College studying Economics, Marketing, Accountancy and Witchcraft.

I became aquainted with the Maleus Maleficarum, the Compendium Maleficarum, Magick, 17th Century broadsheets and the Golden Bough amongst other 'demonic' texts.

It didn't hit me till later just how much magic mumbo jumbo had in common with economics.

Anyway, the Witchcraft module was great, I highly recommend it. The premise of the course was "Why you would be mad NOT to believe in Witchcraft in the 17th century."

I read many many contemporary accounts which consisted mostly of neighbourly disputes. For example, when a man couldn't get it up he blamed his wife's sister for putting a hex on him. When a woman burned the cooking she believed the teenager next door had cursed a dead hedgehog and put it under her sofa.

It was like Jeremy Kyle or Ricky Lake except that people literally suffered humiliation, torture and death in front of their whole community because someone had pointed a finger at them. Hmmm.

My favourite story was the one about the chap who claimed that a witch had stolen the entirety of his genitalia.

The male judges took this crime very seriously.

The court gave the witch a very hard talking to and made her vow her allegiance to Satan and all his little helpers. Eventually she yielded and revealed the whereabouts of the tackle.

She told them it was hidden up in a bird's nest.

The court demanded she return the gentlemen his jewels which she did, apparently.

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Overall I did very badly at Economics, Marketing and Accounting but I did get an 'A' in Witchcraft.

Yes it was a fascinating course, sadly there were no practicals.

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