Once upon a time, as all good stories go, there was an impressionable young man who was lucky enough to have been introduced to the world of music at a relatively young age. Pre-teen exposure to the delights of bands who always seemed to have exotically coloured names, strange scientific allegory, or exceedingly garish logos, melded with the art of doing one's homework at two in the morning whilst appropriating the family transistor to listen to Radio Caroline under the covers, and an almost stereotypical fascination with Science Fiction, led to the development of a love of the genre known, for its sins, as Progressive Rock, which in a rather modified form is still with me today.
The music links page will illustrate some of the soundtrack, but I wanted to be more than a listener. Unfortunately, my musical development was something that happened fairly late in the day, and thus it was at the slightly less than tender age of 17 that I picked up my first instrument, the ubiquitous "Les Paul Copy". Which, together with my Big Muff distortion unit and trusty practice amp, came to live with me at University. And found it's way into my first "real" band :
COLTSFOOT
In 1983, there were the vaguest stirrings of a return of the extended opus, the vocalist with face paint and delusions of grandeur, and musicians who really, no, really wanted to "play their instruments". Hence the birth of the 1980's progressive rock movement. And, in a very small way, I was there. Or at least my hair was.
(From left : Geoff Proudley - keys, Stuart Martin - vocals, yours truly - guitar and bass)
Coltsfoot as a musical entity were equal parts rustic folk, early Genesis and mid period Barclay James Harvest. Stuart was at the time taken with elves and goblins and non-perfidious Albion. Which came in useful in later life, as he now sells D & D-type paraphernalia via Games Workshop to smaller versions of folk who are at one with the small folk. Or something. Geoff was/is a fine keyboard player, who has had some success, richly deserved, with soundtrack and incidental work for television. During the day he plays with gyroscopes.
We released a couple of tapes before we went our separate ways (the ubiquitous musical differences - I was a bit too "noisy" a guitarist for them, and I really wanted to get out in front of an audience (damn exhibitionist) whilst Stuart and Geoff were from the Ant Phillips school of stagecraft.) One of the songs we worked on ended up on their first CD - cover below:
I'm on the last track, playing guitar and bass. And tinkly bits that sound like a synth but aren't. Extremely not-very-well-known-fact: A very young Steven Wilson, of Porcupine Tree fame, was my immediate replacement, and plays guitar and keys on one of the tracks here. Go out and buy it, you know it makes sense. Some of it is here, in mp3 format.
Up next, Tribune : the story of the Incredible Shrinking Band
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