I am staying at a friend’s place at the moment. She has a piano so I get to play it from time to time. I have forgotten a lot of the tunes I used to play but I remember a few. I started learning instruments when I was 4. My mum and I had moved into a commune in the country side. The people there had a band and played a lot of shows at music festivals and local venues. My very first public performance was at one of those shows. Someone gave me a drum and told me to play along with the band – from that moment on, I was hooked.

The keyboard player in the band offered to give me piano lessons, which I happily accepted. A couple of years later, I started playing guitar. Later, I picked up bass guitar and also the drums. I would often switch between different instruments and go through long cycles of favouring one instrument over the others.

Over the years, I have played in a lot of different bands. I also love improvising and I would often get together with other musicians to play whatever came into our heads. One of our practise rooms was inside an old box van which we used to take out into the country side to play in a field or forest. There was a generator inside the van that powered the amplifiers and even a little cooker to make cups of tea during the breaks.

 

Sadly, no recordings survive from the “van sessions” – at least none that I know of.

My first enduring band project was called “Camp Blackfoot“, which was a punk / jazz / rock band that existed between 1996 and 2001. We did one tour of France and Italy and released on album called “Critical Seed vs. the Spartan Society”. I played bass on all but one song but I also play lead and rhythm guitar on some of the tracks under the pseudonym “Lex Fontaine”. You can listen to the epic opening track “Exorcismo Di Paulo” here:

Between working on Camp Blackfoot and studying, I made a scarce living playing in different Jazz bands among which was a saxophone and guitar duo with the fabulously talented Alex Ward. We played pubs, cafes, hotel bars, golf clubs, shopping streets – you name it. Here is a track from our original demo – the beautiful “Goodbye Porkpie Hat”:

After Camp Blackfoot came a new band called “Vin Mariani”. We never progressed past the song-writing stage but our demo recordings survive. Below, you can listen to one of our tracks called “Art Rat” which I co-wrote with Nich Eglin and Luigi Cibrario. On this track, I play bass, lead guitar and keyboard.

The demise of Vin Mariani was followed by two years of musical inactivity during which I worked for Harley-Davidson, who had just opened their European headquarters in Oxford. Working for Harley-Davidson was an interesting experience which I might describe in a different post. Suffice it to say, that I was not cut out for a corporate career so I decided to start writing music for film. It all started with this demo:

In my next post I might entertain you with more stories from my career as a film composer.