a failed search for inspiration

It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. I’ve really got no energy to write blogs that much, and nothing particularly exciting write about, but I feel a sense of duty which demands that I put some effort in. Nothing particularly gripping comes to my mind right now, so I will regale some retrospective rubbish to fill up some time and space. It seems that increasingly now, many of my friends have become slightly confounded by my music taste, and I am often questioned about how I got into all these strange and wonderful bands.
So, having been raised on a diet of bands like Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, T.Rex and copious amounts of Pink Floyd, I have always had an affinity for hard rock. I remember seeing in my childhood a few of those retrospective type documentaries on the punk movement that one occasionally finds on the TV and it always interested me a bit. I remember finding my Dad’s original ‘Anarchy in the UK’ 7” (now one of my most prized possessions) when I was about 10 and recognising the name and wishing I could work the record player, to little avail. But I can’t say that I ever really got into punk until my early teens, so fast forward a few years.
It is summer 2003, and I have just celebrated twelve years of existence. I am watching television, my chubby, youthful face parked around 10 inches from a boring, mind rotting stream of daytime TV. One advert in particular strikes me; it is an advert for the Extreme Sports Channel’s ‘Skate to Hell: the Extreme Skate Rock Collection’ CD. I had been skateboarding (well, trying to skate) for around a year at this point and was really interested in the history and culture of the sport, so I became intent on obtaining this CD. After a few weeks of hounding and whining at my parents about it, my darling mummy finally bought me a copy, perhaps because she loved me and wanted me to be happy, but probably just to shut me up. Needless to say I was ecstatic and proceeded to put it on, destroying one of my mum’s prized Bruce Springsteen albums in the process (at the time I hated Springsteen and was actually quite pleased with the way it snapped as I rammed it out of the disc drive, but since then that album has become one of my favourites). I immediately fell in love. That album became one of my favourite albums and remains so to this day; in fact, I’m listening to it right now. As some may know, skateboarding and punk rock (particularly the California scene the early hardcore movement) went hand in hand in the late 70’s and early 80’s and many punk bands were fronted by or almost entirely made up of skateboarders. Accordingly, the majority of the bands on the Skate Rock collection were punk bands, such as Black Flag, Slaughter and the Dogs, Bad Religion, Drunk Injuns, Gang Green, The Stooges, Rancid, Dead Kennedys and The Faction, to name but a few. At the time I was totally unaware that any of these bands fell under the banner of ‘punk’ and I was only marginally aware of what punk rock actually was. But I adored the speed and the energy of the bands on the CD, as well as the general attitude and grittiness of their sound. This was also the album which got me into Drum n Bass and hip hop, as it featured tracks by the Prodigy and Public Enemy.
When I went back so school after the summer holidays, my best friend Shane, who is probably the funniest and most generous person I’ve ever met, told me about this awesome album that he had been given over the summer. This was ‘Jubilee’ by The Sex Pistols and I loved it. We listened to it religiously on the field and on the bus. That Christmas I got ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and The Clash’s singles collection and the Clash soon became my favourite band and they remain one of my all time favourites. I also got the soundtrack to the Jackass movie, and this also featured various punk bands such as The Ramones, Misfits, The Rezillos, Smut Peddlers, and Black Flag. These four albums between them formed the mainstay of my musical diet at the time, alongside bands like Green Day, Bullet for my Valentine and My Chemical Romance (I feel that at this point it’s important to mention that this was pre-‘American Idiot’ and that MCR’s ‘3 Cheers for Sweet Revenge’ is still an awesome album).
Somewhere toward the end of 2004 my sister introduced me to her friend Rachel, with whom she had started a band, and who was really into The Distillers, another awesome band. They told me to come to a gig at our school, at which Rachel’s boy friend Matt’s band was playing. Matt’s band was called Die a Hero, and they were awesome. I was blown away by Matt’s hair, which was masterfully crafted in to a HUGE mohican, it was epic. I started hanging around with Matt, Rachel and their friends more over the next year or so, and they introduced me to a ridiculous amount of ridiculously good bands. They are some of the nicest, coolest people ever and some of the most awesome friends ever. From Matt and Tom in particular, I contracted what my best friend Martin once described as an “obsession” with music. Over the course of a few years I believe I have borrowed almost the entirety of Matt’s extensive and quite impressive CD collection, which is epic, so many thanks to him for that.
So yeah, that’s pretty much the story of how I got into punk rock, all very retrospective and that. I’m tired, hung over and hungry, time for pasta and to see the lady.