Repeating The Future: A journey Through Life

Shaping a Future Through Music

How does one start ones blog? Indeed how does one start ones life?

I know how my life started. I know how my life has gone for the last 33 odd years. The question is where will I end up? Who will I meet? What will I be wearing?

I invented cuteness

To give you an insight of how I am programmed - I am the son of your ordinary New Zealand single parent working class family. You know the kind - 2 kids, a cat and a mother who works hard to keep her kids fed and clothed all the while instilling in them the rights and wrongs of the world. Growing up in a city and farming backdrop I was happy in the knowledge that I would make my way in the world and be a success. I mean it looked easy. Alex P. Keaton could do it. Right?

There are certain memories that shaped my childhood and made everlasting impressions on me and I do believe changed the way I looked at the world not only then but also now and into the future. Memories of playing rugby on a frosty morning in bare feet, dagging a sheep for the first time, seeing a naked girl for the first time, eating too much sugar ( I am referring to the coconut ice incident of March 85' but that is another story ) and getting my very first cassette tape. Music has always been an outlet for me. Ever since I can remember our house always had music playing in it. Whether it was the Disco punk tunes of Grace Jones, The musical poetry of Queen or the feminist groanings of Carole King, we always had it around us. So you can imagine my delight when in 1986 I was asked "what do you want for Christmas?" Well I didn't want a new bike or the latest Transformer or other repetitive Hasbro product, No. I wanted what everyone wanted that year. I wanted 'Slippery When Wet' by Bon Jovi!

My Bon Jovi days

This album was my first. It was my own. It was my precious. I listened to it in the morning, The afternoon, in the evening and made my mother play it in our orange 76' Vauxhall Chevette. I think I drove everyone mental with my insatiable need to listen, sing and dance to this album. But like every kid with a new toy, you see what the others have and you immediately want it. I slowly grew jealous of my younger brother who also chose an album to be dropped in by Santa on his way past our house. He had received the sterling album 'Diesel & Dust' by Midnight Oil. I still even now can remember the first time I heard the blasting trumpets on 'Bed's are Burning' and the haunting whisper of the Bullroarer at the start of the song by the same name. It still to this day takes me back to growing up in the outback of the backblocks of NSW, Australia, pre 1984. I really believed that this was the album that changed my life and opened my world to music. Apart from rugby ( which was mandatory in our household ) music became everything to me.

21 years old and well and truly a music fan

Now I am not going to bore you with my pre-adolescent years and all the horrible music I listened to from Bobby Brown to Kid n Play to Vanilla Ice. No I will fast forward to when I was being brainwashed by teenage girls into listening to New Kids On The Block. This was an impressionable time for me and I was trying to fit in with the older kids. The problem was - I actually didn't mind the music. It was around this time the older brother of said teenage girls started feeling sorry for me and let me hang out in his room. He was the typical cool guy with the surfboard and models of 1960's cars. He shared his room with his brother and each were into their own music - One side covered in alternative rock posters, the other Iron Maiden and AC/DC. I looked around the room for something familiar and was instantly drawn to the vinyl cover poster of Midnight Oil's Diesel & Dust album. A talking point at least. It was through this connection that we got onto other musical subjects and a cassette was placed in my hands. At the time I was happy that I was getting anything from this 'Cool Guy' but I did not realise the connotation of the gesture or what I actually held in my hands. It was only years later that I realised what this 17 year old guy who played the drums and embodied all that was cool had actually given me. 'Mothers Milk' By The Red Hot Chili Peppers. This started a thirst for all things rock, roll and funky for the next 22 years and beyond. I had never heard anything like it. The melodies, the horns, the funky bass, the weird lyrics. It was genius on so many levels that even now I still listen to that album. It pushed me to find more music, more information about music, learn about music, immerse myself in music. I was becoming music.

24 years old in my own personal music revolution

I still remember my first job. Real job. I was a milk run boy in the Hastings western suburb of Flaxmere. I got paid pretty well. This meant I finally had an income that was expendable. My music collection started increasing. Firstly the back catalogue of The Red Hot's, Next came Fishbone and Suicidal Tendencies, Wu Tang Clan and Jane's Addiction. I was addicted. I was out of control. I was mainlining at the music store. I was buying albums of bands I had never heard of but if the cover looked cool it was purchased. I loved being able to walk in and be on first name basis with the guys who worked there. I reckon I would of been close to their best customer. By now it became so bad that an intervention was done by my mother about saving and buying something big. She was right. I still remember the first time I plugged in my Technics separate components system ( I think she had something like a car in mind ). It was loud. So loud. It lasted 17 years before it was sold at a garage sale. I was so tempted to keep it. Needs must through...........

Moving on I delved into the horrible scene of nu metal for which i still shiver at the thought of. Rage against the Machine may have started it with its rap/metal genre but Limp Biscuit sure as hell destroyed it. Still even though I was getting my music from anywhere I could like the junkie I had become, I still found solace in funk music. Lying on my bed and flicking between 90's alternative funk was my heroine. My drug. It relaxed me when stressed with school, with flatmates and with family issues. I was going back though. I had found a new love for Stevie Wonder and George Clinton. I was digging James Brown. This music helped me through tough times. But I was not confined to just this. I still had that thirst for more. What could I listen to that would energise me? That would get me up and going like funk? Metal. Not just heavy metal. Death Metal. Sepultura, Nailbomb, Cannibal Corpse and Slayer. It was as far removed from Funk that you could get but to me it still did the same thing. It moved me. It charged me and helped me study, to play and to work. I was done. I was sorted. I had done the full revolution from one side of the musical map to the other, If I wasn't listening to Boz Skaggs, I was listening to Annie Lennox or Gravediggaz or Ohio Players or Machinehead, I was happy.

Music shaped me

I really thought my musical journey was complete. It will never be complete. Music is an inspiration of love and will continue to grow. I have an open mind to all music and can usually find something good in everything ( except Creed. I will NEVER find anything good in Creed ) and will embrace it until they wrap me in a blanket and chuck me in the ground.

Moving around, going on holiday and living in different places changes ones perception of things. I have changed. I have grown and I have seen and heard things that have made me laugh and cry. Thankfully never a Nickleback concert.
I am currently in East Africa and digging the Kenyan jazz scene. Who would of thought I would be here all those years ago after growing up in a small town in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand...........

Prologue:  So here I am sitting in my office at work 120km from central Nairobi in Kenya and I am writing this blog for the first time and listening to the sultry smooth voice of Curtis Mayfield while I do it. Funk is still my most favourite style of music, its fun, its sad, its happy, its groovy and it speaks to you. No other musical style can do that I believe.

I also think back.

I think back to that Midnight Oil album pinned on the wall in 1989 and I think - If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be  the man who I am today and who I will become in the future.