I remember liking music from a young age.

I used to play my sister's keyboard and make up songs (little more than riffs). I remember thinking how great it was that pressing this key after that key sounded good, but pushing this other key didn't.

I don't remember having much opportunity, beyond playing the recorder, at making music during primary school.

We used to have a day where we all sang songs from a book that was probably in every primary school, called "Sing!" or something like that. I remember I asked for one for a present once. Cheesy covers of popular songs. I didn't know they were covers, I just liked the music.

They used to make us sing in high-school too. I sang tenor, not very well. I am, and will probably always be an awful singer. To this day I find it a pity as I think singing is one of those important ingredients to song writing. I have difficulty writing melodies, and my lack of singing ability has a lot to do with it.

In year 10? or 11? I picked up the guitar. I muddled along playing single finger riffs for years. I didn't learn any chords beyond a Nirvana powerchord until I went to university. I didn't need to. I didn't want to.

I eventually bought a guitar/amp combo from a neighbour and started recording. A cheap microphone plugged into an ancient stand alone tape deck in front of my cheap amp playing cheap guitar. I thought I sounded amazing.

Listening back... I'm impressed mostly by the riffs I was coming up with, and my ability to play them so well. I had no editing tools, so my four minute long riff fests were all done live. Some of what I played back then I can no longer do. I can't play fast enough.

My influences are reasonably obvious... I listened to Nirvana, Metallica, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins. I used to download guitar riffs from this new fangled interweb and play along to songs. I could almost play whole albums. I still remember so many of these riffs. They don't go away.

I still have no trouble coming up with these kinds of riffs, but these days I reject most of them. If it is easy, it can't be fun. Ignoring simple riffs is the path to the indie wankism of deliberately bad chords just to be different. I know this, so I try to record everything. I usually come back to it at some point...

Soon I started giving tapes to friends. They were, to my surprise, pretty encouraging, so I kept doing it.

I started figuring out how to record and mix on the computer. I also bought an effect pedal, the Zoom 505. This thing was so inspiring I pretty much wrong a whole demo in a night. Loved it.

Unfortunately around this time was the rise of the MP3. MP3s took all night to compress, they must have been good quality right? Some of my earliest recordings now only exists in 128kbps Xing MP3s. They're listenable, but it makes me cry.

I managed at one point to play a gig. I believe it was in Noble Park in a cafe. Friends watching, I played some songs, including Nth and a few other tracks I still like. I didn't sing. As such, I was mostly ignored. I was discouraged... but I think I played pretty well. I had a tape recorder there, but I was so nervous I forgot to take it off pause. I would kill to hear that gig again. Oh for a time machine.

It wasn't until I finished university that I'd take the idea of putting a band together seriously..

New Melbourne Record Store Opens [Mess&Noise]

The Arthouse music venue closed recently. My band played once there in 2002. I remember the electricity wasn't earth properly so my amp buzzed through the whole set. I also had the flu. Bad night.

Regardless... it is always a pity to see a music venue go.

In its place is a new cafe/record/comic store. Records, not Compact Discs. The idea of just selling records seems... weird to me. I hate vinyl. People talk about it sounding better. Bull. Shit. It is very easy to do a Compact Disc badly (overly compressed, digital clipping, dodgy soulless mixing) but a Compact Disc done properly sound eight-hundred-trillion times better than any vinyl, even one played with a frickin' laser.

Vinyl is like broadsheet newspapers. It costs more, it is inconvenient, but people like it for some undefinable reason.

I will admit to loving vinyl sleeves though. CD sleeves just don't cut it in comparison to a nice gatefold. Imagine Ipecac/Mike Patton putting the effort into a vinyl sleeve he puts into his CD albums?

But... new record store. Yay! And they sell comics!

Meanwhile, the second hand CD store Collectors Corner, a favourite haunt of mine in the 90s merged with Missing Link, which is now up for sale [Mess&Noise]. I like Missing Link. It's a real music store, covered in posters and selling obscure Jazz next to the obscure Indiefunkmetalsoul.

It would be a pity if it was bought and run into the ground. I hope someone who cares buys it.

For a while there I was drinking a beer a night. Sometimes I'd have some Cognac or Whiskey, sometimes a gin&tonic. Some kind of drink, every night, for months.

I started to getting head-aches when I had a beer. I put it down to being tired... but it didn't stop.

So I thought, I'm going to stop drinking for a month. Just to see what happens.

So I did. I broke only once, having a Coopers Red last weekend. I was tempted every weekend but held off. I went out a few times for drinks with friends or family and managed to only drink Coke Zero.

I had a couple of beers last night with friends. I feel fine today. No head-aches then or now.

I don't feel any better or worse. I'm not any thinner. I'm not sleeping any better or worse.

But it didn't kill me either. It was easy. It's like they say, "I can stop any time". So prove it. So I did. Mostly.

I'm going to try to stick to a drink or two once a week, unless ordered otherwise by a medical physician. Why? *shrug*