A beginning...

Well I have restisted this for a while, but it seems I have too much to say and too strong a desire to say it.
So here I am, this is not my first blog, there are attempts on a myspace page, but it is too closely linked to my band to be able to speak completely freely so this might be a good alternative. We'll see how it goes. It is quite possible that like with many things, i'll be all enthusiastic at the start, but gradually the enthusiasm will wane and my entries will become as sporadic as phone calls to my grandmother. We will see...
Hmm where to start???
I guess by explaining the name.
I have played the piano since I was seven, and have sung in choirs since Mrs Mac finally let me in the prestigious A Cappella Choir in Year 9, following an audition of Mary Had a Little Lamb. In Grade 5 my friend Bianca and I used to play Record Companies, setting up an office in the family room, making mix tapes of our favourite Kylie & Jason and Bon Jovi hits, and taking orders on our Care Bears phones. We also used to dress up my cousins and make them mime to the B52s and Milli Vanilli for our film clips. Other early indicators of my rockstar ambitions were getting up at 6am on Saturdays to watch Rage & Video Hits (not cartoons like the other kids), holing myself up in my bedroom every Saturday night for four hours to tape my favourite songs from Take 40 Australia, organising a concert every Christmas where my poor long-suffering younger cousins were forced to dress up and mime as my backing singers/band to Right Said Fred, Belinda Carlisle and god knows what else.
Fast forward to the summer of 1996... I had just graduated from high school, turned 18 and discovered boys. I was a very late bloomer, thanks to being a scholarship student at an outer suburban all girls private school, and not being able to afford to take ballroom dancing classes, tennis lessons, horse riding, or any other of the expensive ways my friends met boys.
During the latter years at this school my musical tastes had become more refined, culminating in an obsession with Pearl Jam. This had led me to bond with a couple of girls outside my usual group, and I started going to underage gigs with them. One of them had a twin brother, and I started to hang out with him and his friends a little bit. Of course I was completely terrified of boys, and had no idea what to do when I liked one, but it was a start. I invited this gang to my 18th birthday party and had in turn been invited to a few others around the same time. Things were developing...
So, I think the turning point was New Years Eve - at least half a dozen of us loaded up the Bruiser (blue land cruiser) with alcohol and sleeping bags and drove down to Lorne for Rock Above The Falls - a 3 day music extravaganza (now known as The Falls Festival). During this time I sealed my new friendships with spumanti under the stars and a smorgasbord of indie bands and hare krishna food.
You can imagine my delight when the boys invited me to come 'jam' with their band. I was very nervous, especially when the audition involved me being shut in a room with a tiny keyboard and a 4-track. I was to come up with an organ track for their new song.
Somehow i passed the test and jamming with the band became a regular thing. They didn't have a name, or any gigs, but we had a ball playing covers of our favourite Radiohead and REM tracks.
This band lasted for four years, during which time we found a drummer who could actually play, went through 4 guitarists (one twice!), worked on some original songs, made a demo, and played at almost every small band room in Melbourne. I was convinced we were going to be huge, we just needed a bit more focus (all our drummer wanted to do was play Alice in Chains covers down at the Berwick pub) and enough money to finish the studio (the singer's parents had generously donated their double garage to be converted into a recording studio. this project was neverending.) Then our bass player went to London to do the UK working visa thing. Work on the studio continued, but rehearsals and gigs were not an option. I decided that it was a good time to go overseas myself, as there wasn't much keeping me in Melbourne. I applied to do my last uni semester on exchange in Canada and was accepted.
Bored yet? I didn't expect this entry to be my whole life story!! But now that I'm on a roll...
So, had a brilliant time in Canada, made some life long friends and got a new perspective. Four years studying music at uni had been tough, standards were high and I had found it very hard just to pass the performance part of the degree. So the break from music was very timely and allowed me to focus on other parts of who I was.
After my semester in Canada i wanted to backpack around Europe, visiting the friends I had made in the last few months. I started with my old pal, the bassplayer, living in London with his girlfriend. He gave me his blue acoustic guitar, saying he didn't want to lug it around when he went travelling, so I carted it round with me instead, feeling very bohemian. Unfortunately I'm not very good at the guitar, but noodling around on it gave me something to do when I ran out of money.
When I got home from my 'big trip' I started working full time almost straight away in a finance job. It wasn't what I really wanted to be doing but I had bills to pay and this job sounded like a 'great opportunity' and would give me excellent 'transferrable skills', you get the drift. So I worked hard and soon had a company car and was living in a share house in South Yarra, a rather posh inner suburb of Melbourne, home of the shopping mecca Chapel Street. During this time I had been dragged along to a dance class by a friend, loved it, and had become obsessed. I was terrible at first, but improved gradually and to my surprise was asked by an advanced guy called Adam if I would like to compete with him in a national competition in Sydney. Yes! was my immediate answer (he told me later he was prepared for all the possible ways I would reject his offer but not the yes I blurted out!!) and we began rehearsing a routine to Vanilla Ice and Salt n Pepa. Yes, I know, it was 2002 but we wanted to stand out from all the J-Lo routines happening at the time.
Adam and I were a hit, we didn't win of course as I'd only been dancing for a few months and it was an open competition, but our musical choice and entertainment value gained us respect from the other dancers and many laughs on the night. Shortly after the competition, a friend had a party, Adam and I got very drunk, and the rest is history. The next day I fell off a horse.
Don't worry, I was ok, if this were a movie I would have been in a coma and there would be a montage of all the beautiful moments Adam and I had spent together before he had to switch off my life support system, but just before he does, I blink, and he pulls the tubes out of my mouth and we kiss passionately and live happily ever after. This is not a movie.
What happened instead was that I got very bruised and sore and have since had chronic neck & back pain. It is much better now but has taken a long time to heal. Which meant dancing started to be less fun.
Also, I was miserable at work. It had been great for a while, and I did indeed learn lots of great skills and make good money, but my boss was getting on my nerves and I felt like my life was getting a bit off track. I hadn't spent 5 years at uni studying music/commerce to spend my career selling loans for cars which cost more than a house and land package in the suburbs. I hated the clients I was dealing with, I hated car salesmen, I hated being one of the only females in the workplace, I hated maths (and was doing lots of it) and I missed playing in a band.
Adam, being his wonderful supportive self, convinced me to take some time off and look for a new job and maybe a band to join. I found a couple of bands whose demos I liked and started jamming with them, and things started to look up. Shortly afterward, I found a new job at a books/music store and things felt a whole lot better. Sure, I took a paycut going from a fancy finance job to a lowly bookstore clerk, but I was finally working with people my own age who shared my interest in music & culture, and although customers were still a pain in the ass, they were only buying a CD from me, not a two hundred thousand dollar loan, so it was easier to not let them get to me.
Gradually a few bands became one and now, in October 2006, we have just released our first official CD. It's a 4-track EP with an album waiting in the wings. The Melbourne EP launch was last week and went brilliantly, and it feels like although we have been playing together for several years, the journey is just beginning. It is a very exciting and busy time, and a few months ago I left my full-time job as a PA (yes the bookstore didn't last long, I'm just too ambitious darnit!) to concentrate on my music career. I did a short course in small business management, and the band is now behaving more like a business than a hobby. In the last month or so we have taken on a manager and a publicist, and are looking to tour interstate at the end of the year. I am very excited about the challenge of taking the business from a money pit (recording is SOOO expensive!!) to a profitable business - at this stage I predict that it will start breaking even in about 12 months, and by the end of the second year we will have recouped all personal investments so far. Time will tell I guess...
So that's how I came to call my blog The Trials & Adventures of an Aussie Rock Chick - not the most catchy name, but hey I'm a musician, not a writer. But I'm looking forward to sharing my adventures with you, and having somewhere not affiliated with the band that I can whinge, bitch, spread viscious rumours, etc etc. Oh, and get excited when something good happens!!
I hope you enjoy - and maybe one day you will be able to say you knew me when...
ARC xo