So now I have a much broader taste of music. I still adore Regina and I like all kinds of Indie/Folk music. I like listing to Nitin Sawhney on a long drive or if I’m doing something creative. Rock and alternative is for when I’m feeling a bit more upbeat and I’m even throwing a bit of Pop in there with some Lady Gaga. You got to love a girl that can have yellow hair and sleep in an egg. Music will always play a big role in my life as I feel an attachment to most songs deeper than other things. Music makes me laugh and cry, smile and frown and compliments and completes every emotion I have. I may never be a famous singer/song writer or guitarist, I may never be able to play the organ on stage in front of an audience, I may never master that art of music or read it perfectly but I sure know how to enjoy it. And if there is one thing in life you need, that is a passion. Something that makes you happy and fulfils you. So I’m going to go off now and chuck on some Lisa Mitchell and dance around my lounge room with my cat. I really am the coolest person I know….!

I started moving on from that crowd and then came my new love. Indie/folk music like Regina Spektor, Death Cab for Cutie, Dashboard Confessional and Sarah Blasko. The music had passion and soul and the lyrics were always so heart felt and deep. And sometimes they would sing about something as simple as a red shoe or a tangerine and make it sound simply spectacular. These were artists that not only wrote their own music and lyrics but played it as well. So I picked up my guitar again after all the inspiration from my favourite artists and tried my hand at playing again. Sadly I still sucked but I didn’t care as much anymore because I knew I would never make a career as a famous musician. One of my all-time favourite songs is Samson by Regina Spektor, when I listen to that I feel like she is singing to me or reading from my diary because it really tugs on the heart strings. In fact my partner and I love her so much that when she came down to Australia for a tour we saw both of her Melbourne shows one night after the other. She was brilliant!

Then came my chill out, Café Del Mar stage, when I would only listen to things like Moby and Massive attack and yoga became my sport of choice. Organic hemp became the clothing of choice and Moroccan food was all the go. I remember the deep bass filling my ears and taking over my body. I would dance like no one was watching and feel at one with the world. It was my phase when I thought I could save the world and was sure that if everyone was just a little nicer to one another that we could change the world. It’s funny how music makes you act a certain way, or maybe it’s that acting that way makes you choose a certain type of music. I started exploring more international music like Nitin Sawhney and Annokah and found that it was even more interesting and intricate than what I was previously listening to. The drums and bass especially were so deep and unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It brings back memories of working in the salon with some of the coolest people I’d ever met, colouring my hair black and green and chilling back with a cigarette in hand and a glass of vodka.

Ok so bigger and better things never really came. But my love of music had certainly not died. But my taste did end up broadening quite a bit, to the extreme actually. I started listening to hard core techno, house and trance. The fashion also came with it. I was wearing those ridiculous reflector pants with an inappropriately small crop top, covered in glow sticks and candy beads. Totally unattractive but i thought I was so cool. My friends and I would go out to trashy clubs and sprinkle talcum powder on the floor so we could shuffle to the music. Better still if there was a podium free we could show off on that, dancing our bums off. It was hideously daggy, but we had a ball doing it. Worse still my brother and I would do what was called Chap Laps or Mainies. It’s when you borrow your dad’s car (because it’s better than your own) and play the loudest possible techno with the heaviest bass you can find and drive up and down the busiest street in your city. Sadly we did this most weekends for at least a year. But that’s what we all did at that age.

And so began my guitar lessons. Little did I know how hard it would be learning from someone that had very little English and never taught anyone before. The other problem was that Warren was your typical musician. Unreliable, irresponsible and all over the place. He moved house almost monthly (due to never paying his rent) and often wouldn’t be home when I came over for my lesson. I put up with it for roughly 8 months and probably only 10 lessons and decided to find a professional. That’s when I met Craig. Craig and I would sit in his garage and smoke a pack of cigarettes and jam till the sun came down. He showed me all the basics and theory of guitar but also taught me how to play some of the cooler songs like Lenny Kravitz’s “Are you gonna go my way”. Sadly though, as a guitar player I sucked! After a couple of years of lessons, I never really improved much. If only enthusiasm could have made up for lack of skill because I would have been the greatest player in the world! So I put down the guitar and my dream of a rock band and decided to move on to bigger and better things. Or perhaps something I could actually do.

I was so positive that I was going to be in a famous rock band. I hadn’t learnt to play yet and I wasn’t part of any band, but I was sure I would be famous! I would dress up in my ripped jeans and black make up and stand in front of my mirror holding my guitar pretending that I was on stage playing to a cheering audience. So the next step for me was to get some lessons. I wasn’t sure where to go as I didn’t have much money left to pay for them so I bided my time until the right teacher came along. Fast forward 6 months to Warren. I was sitting on the train on my way to school as an Indian man dressed in a floor length trench coat and grey woollen beanie with the price tag still on it came on to my carriage with an acoustic guitar. He sat down and began to play the most intricate and complex tune that filled the train. I was mesmerised. So when he got up to get off at his stop I chased him down and asked if I could have lessons from him.

Music started becoming more of an outlet or chance to express once I hit my teens. No longer was I listening to 60’s rock music and ballads or boy bands like the Backstreet Boys. I had moved on to heavier and deeper music. Grunge, alternative, metal, indie. Whatever you wanted to call it, but it was loud, dark and moving. There were a few albums that defined my teens; Silverchair’s Neon Ballroom played probably the biggest part, but also Grinspoon, Korn and Marilyn Manson. I remember sitting in my bedroom with black make up around my eyes and black lipstick staining my lips whilst painfully singing along to Silverchair wishing that I could be understood. That’s when I picked up my first guitar. I’d saved up all my pocket money and weekend job money to buy this beautiful instrument. I took myself down to the local music store which I had been visiting almost daily trying to find the guitar that not only I could afford, but also looked the coolest! I found it, a glittery ruby red Yamaha Stratocaster and a small Marshall amplifier. It was perfect, my first true love. This was the guitar that was going to make me famous.

I sat in the audience whilst the other kids played and thought to myself secretly “I can do better than that”. When my turn came up I walked on to the stage, sat on the organ seat and instantly felt ill. I turned and looked at the audience and panel of judges and burst into tears. Uncontrollable sobbing! Once I had slightly composed myself I decided to give my song a try. Disaster. I couldn’t turn the organ on. I couldn’t find the on button anywhere. Nicole ran up on stage and turned it on and got the beat started for me. I started to play. My fingers wouldn’t work, my feet weren’t moving to find the pedals and I was completely out of time with the beat. I was in the wrong tune also, so it literally sounded like a complete novice or crazy person had been let loose on an organ to play whatever they wanted. Once I had finished my attempt at the song I couldn’t turn off the beat and just sat there with tears streaming down my face whilst a silent audience sat there awkwardly not knowing where to look. All in all it was a complete disaster. I think possibly the worst bit was when I sat back down in the audience next to my mum and Nicole, the kid next to me (who was a musical prodigy) leant over and said “good job”. Surprisingly enough that wasn’t the last eisteddfod or concert I ever did. Perhaps a glutton for punishment as they all seemed to turn out the same way. Yet there I was, still going back for more. But if there is one thing it taught me, is to have the courage to be myself no matter how daggy or uncool it is.

When I started school it wasn’t long before I realised that musically and socially, I was very different to the others. I distinctly remember being in the playground dancing around the monkey bars singing “Wooden Heart” a song from the 60’s and not realising until well after I had finished that about twelve children were standing around looking at me with a mixture of confusion and amusement on their faces. No one else knew that song. Just me (and perhaps the parents of all the kids!).

Along with the happiness that music brought me, it also brought torture. When I was seven, my music teacher Nicole decided it would be a good idea to enter me in an eisteddfod. I had no idea what it was but she told me all I had to do was play a song really well in front of an audience. That sounded fine, I was sure I could handle that. So she had me practicing a Beatles song “Yellow Submarine” day and night until I had it perfect. The day of the eisteddfod came and I was so confident that I would do such a fantastic job that I wasn’t even nervous.

My love for all things musical began at an early age and will live forever. As long as I remember I have had a passion for it. Whether it be sitting in the back seat of my father’s car listening to 60’s rock and roll on a family holiday or playing it myself on my second hand (or perhaps fifth hand) organ. Yes the kind that has 24 pedals.

I’m not sure exactly how I chose the organ as my instrument of choice, but I began getting lessons at the age of four. My music teacher Nicole was this incredibly extravagant, creative genius with wildly curly and uncontrollable hair and had jazz flowing through her veins. She would sit me down next to her on the seat of an outrageously expensive organ and play her version of a Thelonius Monk (a jazz icon) tune whilst singing at the top of her lungs. I loved it! She was crazy in all the best ways and taught me that music was to be enjoyed and expressed in whichever way felt right to you. It was a lesson that has stayed with me for life and helped me through the darkest of times and also the happiest of times.