about
early childhood
As early as I can remember I have been involved in, and in love with, music. My earliest memories involve music and come from two sources.
The first source comes from a mother singing to her child. As a child growing up, there always seemed to be a song on the lips of my mother. She spent many sleepless nights singing to her son, a son plagued by night-demons. The impact a mother has on her child is immense, and the use of music by my mother as a means to sooth my troubles instilled in me a deep love and respect for the power of music.
The second early influential source of music in my life was that of the ecclesiastical brand. I was raised, like many in the Christian tradition that music is to be involved in the worship process. Every Sunday we spent roughly two hours in song. This was especially true during these younger Sunday school years. Children love to sing and we were no exception. The songs became friends, sources of enjoyment, and a way to escape. As a result of my love for these songs my mother purchased a tape of the songs for my brother and me. In singing these songs, I of course developed my favorites; and well, the majority of these favorites were on the A side of the tape, so I took it upon myself to claim that side for my own and give my younger brother the B side, which contained what I thought were the less desirable tracks. I went so far as to write with permanent marker our names on each side according to the aforementioned preference. My brother was old enough to know to argue due to the “seemingly” unfair nature of this assignment. As a result of my brother’s dissatisfaction he exclaimed that it was a matter he would take to our mother, in the fashion of, “I’m telling.” The issue was settled by my giving to him a toy he had wanted. The songs were important enough to me to lose one of my favorite toys.
the teen-age
Leaving behind the boy, the October of innocence, I was entering the stage of the dreaded teenager. The war of the hormones, a first kiss that took place under a blood red sky; I was becoming a youth wide awake in America. During these trying years I latched onto the music group U2 to bring me through to the other side of adolescence. It was the era of The Joshua Tree, and the film Rattle and Hum was playing at one of those hole-in-the-wall theaters where all of the arty films are screened. My best friend of the time had an (cool) older sister that took us to see a midnight showing of the film, as I watched/listened I was taken to a place I had never been. The years passed and Achtung Baby was released, I fancied myself one of those four lads from the Emerald Isle. In the beginning it was the sound that The Edge created that drew me in. I wanted to be like The Edge, to create those soaring anthems that drove U2 somewhere celestial. In the end I just wanted to be like Bono, the lead man, the singer, King-B. As many left the U2 bandwagon when Zooropa and Pop hit the air waves I was only strengthened in my resolve to be as they are, living a life in what they love, their passion: music. It only made sense, I shared that same passion. Music is all that you can’t leave behind, even if you are trying to figure out how to dismantle an atomic bomb.
This passion for The Edge’s sounds and rock n’ roll in particular led me to beg my way into my first series of guitar lessons. As a few years marched on I put down the guitar and picked up the microphone as my focus began to rest on that of “the front man.” It was at this time that I put together my first garage band. Playing some rhythm guitar and taking the microphone as lead singer. At this time I also begged my way into my first series of vocal lessons to accompany the guitar lessons. As a band we were obsessed with doing our own thing, creating our own brand of organized confusion, which we called music.
I was also quite taken at the time with the new and exciting dance sounds of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Snap, and C&C Music Factory. In fact, whil’st in Junior High I choreographed and starred in a hip-hop dance routine featuring the new dance single Rhythm Is a Dancer by Snap. Two of my friends and I performed the routine numerous times, as we were requested to do so in assemblies and at intermissions in school plays. I still recall the feeling that the music created: blood pumping, a need to move, to dance. It still has that power today.
After this time of being on top of the world (or so it seemed while in front of all my peers, chanting and screaming for more), I was requested to teach a few of my not-so-rhythmically-inclined friends how to dance. I agreed, and opened the first (and last) RobVox School of Dance. A couple of months rolled by, and my friends were graduates of the program, ready to dazzle all of our friends and peers at Church and after-school dances. Which by the way they did, and did very well, or so it seemed at the time. (Bravo DD, AF, and JW.)
young adult
During the high school years I focused most of my attention on the rock band, writing songs for my band and songs for a band some of my other friends had put together. I was pulled my sophomore year into the junior/senior musical clique. The kids that were “cool” because they were in bands and could play rock instruments, you know, the kids who played in all of the pep rallies. Well, that was fine by me. If I had to suffer through high school at least I would have fun along the way. The only creative difference I had was that these new friends always shied away from playing their own material, opting to cover other bands when they performed. I felt that this was artistic suicide for any band that wanted to gain an audience of their own, instead of a support group of fans/groupies that just needed a fix from their favorite band no matter what form it came in. To complicate things more I am a purist, and being in a cover band was the antithesis of how I felt a band should remain pure. I did, however, relent on one occasion: I was persuaded into performing the U2 song “The Electric Co.” I took The Edge’s place and a friend (MP) took the position that I really wanted, yup—Bono’s. Well, we rocked. The school had never seen such musical potential (not even from our nemesis, Colors), but it was to be just one fleeting moment (the only performance before an audience in a rock band I ever experienced). I enjoyed the crowd immeasurably, but watching the front man doing what I wanted to again strengthened my resolve to put down the guitar.
During this same period, as teenagers do, we found ways to get into the night clubs. My friends always wanted to go downtown to the clubs where the local bands would play, but I would more often than not take off across the street and down the block to the real night scene. It was the late 90’s and euro style dance/trance was just finding its way into my hometown, and again, like my first experiences with U2, I was taken to a place I had never been. The mid-to-late 80’s dance sound was weak in comparison to the tracks being spun by the likes of Paul Oakenfold, DJ Tiesto, Carl Cox, etc. The raw energy and power of the music to make you move was alive in a way I had never experienced. It was not important to have someone to dance with, that was not the connection being sought out, no, we were connected to the music. Single dancers, each individual taken someplace different and yet coherently connected by that one common experience, the music. Music was once again magic, and the DJ was in control of the spell. I finally understood why they called it Trance; then came Robert Miles’s “Children” (enough said), that was the begining of the path that I am on today.
beyond elementary education
You know the story, post-high school, friends get married, others move off to university, others in pursuit of answers to life’s questions. It was no different for us, the band broke up and scattered as its members left their convictions about being the next biggest, baddest band in the land. Due to frustration, age, direction, I too headed south for the winter; it turned out to be a two-year winter, landing in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. My journey into the Bible-Belt was a fruitful one; I discovered who I was and what I was about. Sometimes you have to lose your home to find it. I returned with a stronger conviction than ever before that I wanted to live life in my passion: music.
I enrolled in University, and got a band together. Much like before I fought, and fought, and fought to keep my band mates happy, going through one, two, three, and four drummers. I was back on the vocal training, and longing to be what I had set out to become. ‘Round about the time I lost the fourth drummer, while striving to keep the others (JM) inspired enough to practice, I sold my band equipment and bought some turntables, a mixer, and more vinyl than my father owned as a disc-jockey in the late 60’s, a time when it was nothing but vinyl. “Well here I am, Father, the age you were when you spun your vinyl on KZAN,” the son in the shadow of his father.
the question remains
Today I am wading through the gray-matter of life. The process of University education seems to have created more unrest and searching for answers. However, the question remains: How to stay true to my dreams without being swallowed by a prosaic existence. It is an uphill battle to “make it” in a way that society recognizes as relevant, as valid in the extraordinary realm. Typically we grow, we school, we work, we retire, and we die, with the majority of our time spent doing the routine things that support our true passions. Few pillars stand as witnesses of life being lived in their dreams, U2 have done it, Armin van Buuren has done it, and others, but the real question is: “Are each of us doing it?” Not exclusively people in the media, whatever our dreams may be, are we being true to them? This is a question that haunts me as the battle to climb that hill wages on. In closing it seems apropos to quote a supreme image of inspiration in my life, “And the battle’s just begun / There’s many lost but tell me who has won / The trenches dug within our hearts…. (Bono, 1983).”
