Many years ago I had long hair, a leather jacket and even leather trousers and a bullet belt. Oh yes. I was a rock-n-roll wild child geetar-hero wannabee. I was even in a few bands, and played maybe 100 gigs around the south of England with them. I still have fond memories of kebab places in chelmsford (great times man…great times…), sleeping on the beach in cornwall, and one gig somewhere where the local biker gang was ‘security’ for the gig. It was all very rolling stones, only with less money and longer guitar solos.
Me (on left) and dave hobbs, in the band ‘blazon’ playing at some pub in hastings. “HELLO CLEVELAND!”
Anyway, today marks the end of an era of sorts, because I threw my old fender amp in a skip at a recycling center. It was a bit crackly and unreliable, and not really worth anything, and it’s fine because I got a lovely new modern fender amp last Christmas anyway, so it was redundant. Still… that trusty little box followed me around the UK and belted out many a sweep-picked arpeggio, I can tell you. It was kinda sad to throw it out, but then you can’t lug around all your childhood possessions your whole life. That’s living in the past, and I tend to think of my boat building self, my guitar-playing self and my suit-wearing IT consultant self as like my previous hosts, in DS9 speak, and you can never go back. I’ve still got the trusty ibanez guitar though, the one with the cool monkeygrip handle :D.
Dave Hobbs, me, Stu Clark and Mark ‘it’s not a perm’ Susans. I think we were ‘power metal’? posing before one of our many gigs at Tiverton, in Devon.
It’s a sign of age when your youthful exuberance was captured on celluloid, not binary.