MI7®

I wasn't born into a ‘musical family' although Dad did play a mean piano accordion. My sister did a bit of time with the guitar but gave it up for rock and roll, which came to us over the garden wall. Our neighbour was a radio presenter with tame musical tastes. So, by the age of 8, I was listening to Procul Harem and Iron Butterfly. A little later I got to hear Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull - all in their original incarnations. And I suppose, this affected me quite a bit.

I started by playing some really wild ‘air drums' but soon graduated to Mom's knitting needles, which were used as drumsticks as well as a conductor's baton. But when my folks bought me my first pair of Regal Tip 5B's, the die was cast. And the rest, they say, is history.

I ‘did my time' in live performance very early on, during my last three years of high school. The band we formed - all first time musicians - got a regular weekend gig at the local country club. I must have played more than 150 gigs in three years. From there it was on to university where I took to punk, ‘new wave' and reggae. While at university I co-founded the Kalahari Surfers - a band I recorded with and which exists till today under the sole leadership of Warrick Sony. After university I worked in film and played with some of the prominent ‘anti-apartheid' groups of the time. I also spent a while running South Africa's only ever ‘resistance' record label, Shifty Records.

My commitment to music wasn't always sustained and my career is a zigzag of years spent either following art or science. But since my divorce, ten years ago, I have remained true to my musical vows. It has been hard. The music industry in South Africa is small. There are few live gigs and limited media exposure for groups. Added to this is the fact that CD's are priced as a luxury item, beyond the reach of most people. So piracy is huge business in South Africa while the sale of 25 000 only units gives you a Gold record!

In 1996, with my divorce looming, I started having an affair with crack and heroin. This imposed some severe limits on what I could achieve musically. But now, having tamed that beast - and hopefully having gained some perspective - I see there's little time to waste. Blessed by Reason, I have stayed fairly productive and have produced a lot of instrumental material, across a number of genres.

Since the new millennium I was involved with two record labels - one of them my own - which put me in touch with the massive talent that we have in our ‘black townships'. Try as we did to get exposure for some of these artists, both labels failed, despite a lot of hard work. This just reaffirmed to me the limitations of the South African music industry. I have remained aware of the potential audience offered by the Internet but, having been somewhat distracted, didn't take full advantage of what was possible.

Today, with a little more focus and a lot more drive, I plan to make full use of what Net2, in particular, offers us, in this, the global music community... Thanks for your time in reading this. I have posted a few pieces, across genres, as a start to my Internet presence! With more to follow.....