When it was that I realised that you could actually be a music journalist and make a career out of writing about music, I don't recall.
Maybe it was pouring over what was then the best music magazine in the world Kerrang (more on this shocking fall from grace another time), maybe it was when the career adviser from the RAF told me that because I once used an inhaler I couldn't join the services, despite the fact I played first team Rugby and Hockey for an impressively sport fervent private school in Bath and most importantly despite the fact I had my sights on a desk job...
Nope, unequivocally nope. Please allow me to smash these dreams and write off your plans for the future.
Oh well, the law was boring and to be honest with you I can't see myself liberating oil from the clutches of those evil Arabs anyway so I guess having 'feeble' lungs probably left me richer in my soul, although considerably lighter in the pocket.
Being an only child and having parents with fairly old school values, I didn't get a TV in my room until I was 18 and I bought it. Hence music and reading were the chief occupiers of my time and as such I spent years reading about the likes of Iron Maiden, Metallica, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Ozzy etc, I probably knew more about some bands through reading than I did by listening to their music.
It was pure escapism - people joke about my knowledge, but I really didn't have anything better to do with my time. Music was my only real friend and companion for a while when my mates left after GCSE and I say with complete and utter sincerity that if not for the music I listen to I would not be here, simples.
At some point it occurred to me that I should write about music for a living, I didn't have the drive to fight my parents over the musical instrument of my choice and my voice was passable at best, so I knew I stood no chance of being in a band. In time honoured tradition those who can't contribute, critique. Or Criticise anyway. The halcyon days of Kerrang were fading, even metal itself was in one of it's customary slumps and slowly but surely Metal Hammer emerged as the one thing that seemed to say 'Fuck You' to the idea of pandering to the mainstream. What's more they had recruited all the disgruntled Kerrang writers I grew up reading and whose opinions I had digested as a kid.
Whilst at University studying English the stars seemed to align - Future Publishing now resided in Bath, I was going to get my degree, learn as much as I could about making magazines, go home after graduation and work for Metal Hammer.
Again, simples.
Roughly ten years on from that it obviously takes a fair bit of squinting and standing on your head to understand how I live in Devon and work for a manufacturing company. Surely as the stars align, they wheel off again into the night....
Metal Hammer (quite sensibly) moved back to London (taking a guy who I knew from the local night club with them - perversely he was the editor within 5 years) and being Londonphobic after periods of 24 hours there, coupled with a blossoming relationship, a couple of grands worth of immediate debt, never mind the student loan and that dream sailed away into the night... my passion actually fired by the missed opportunity rather than dulled.
You see that sad bastard shaking his head and pointing out tiny errors in that magazine - that's me.
You fuckers got my dream, at least treat it with the respect it deserves...
So it's a hobby and this is the background preamble - you probably didn't want to read it, didn't want to know, but tough! Here there is no deadline, no agenda, no editor to answer to and I don't work with a bunch of cunts I can't stand; so in that respect my dream remains alive always the shining beacon of what it is.
I review albums for a site called The Sleeping Shaman, which I have to say is a much better gig than writing for Copro's magazine, and now I have this.
Content?
Don't count on it... this is the gospel according to Mark.
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