Raptus Regaliter

Listening to some of the stuff that I've written and played, some of you (the charitable ones at lease) might consider that I'm musically gifted. (With the possible exception of Chris King, who had the misfortune to hear some of my early demos)

Wrong.

Music didn't come easily at all. It was a long, hard, frustrating slog - which is probably why those of us who have gone through learning an instrument tend to get pissed off at some twat who whacks together three samples of other people playing in incompatible keys and calls it music. (oh yes, there's at least one 'hit' I've heard on the radio where this happens. Musique Concrete has a lot to answer for.)

Unlike a lot of children, I didn't start with recorder (the whistle, not tape) and work my way up to the Höhner Melodica - a late 1960's plastic abortion that looked like a cross between a piano keyboard, mouth organ and penny whistle. For some reason I didn't even get the chance. I wasn't even asked, probably something to do with starting quite late at school. I also had a little Hohner 3/4 guitar, but never managed to work out how to play it, because no-one pointed out that I was left-handed and was framing the chords wrong.

In fact, I didn't get offered music lessons until I was at comprehensive school, when it was mentioned that there were two trumpets available. I told my parents about this, and all of a sudden, I was in possession of a Boosey and Hawkes Bb trumpet and having lessons.

The problem with the trumpet is that, firstly, it's fairly difficult to get to the point where you're making a noise that doesn't sound like a fart. I spent a year playing the damn thing, making sounds that weren't far-off similar sounds generated by the digestion of typical 1970's school dinners. I actually managed to work out the first bar and a half of "Star Wars" including what sounded like an impressive portmanteau effect of sliding up a note by releasing one of the valves. But, mainly, after a year, I could do a version of "Home on the Range" that sounded as though it was being guffed by the cowboys in "Blazin' Saddles".

Secondly, this was 1978. Punk was in full-swing. This was the time when "Here's three chords, now form a band" was the cry. Trumpets weren't about to get a look-in. Trumpets only appeared in bands like Haircut 100, and were mocked by my peers.

Thirdly, there was the role model. Simon Parkes was strutting about with his Fender copy and a DA closely modelled on Slim Jim Phantom, others went for the mean and moody Keith Richards look. Who the hell did I have? Certainly not the elegantly-wasted Miles Davis. "Sketches of Spain" hadn't penetrated as far as Rugeley. The nearest I'd got to Miles Davis was a TV performance by Dizzy Gillespie - a man who inflated his entire head whilst playing. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be listening to the music or waiting for the point where blood started to fountain out of his ears.

This did not look as though it would serve as a role model.

Fourthly, the whole yucky aspect of the trumpet itself, which requires regular venting of the saliva which has been blown into it by the player. If you don't vent it, then hideous green things start growing in the tubes. It is not hard to work out why most trumpet players drink a lot, and enjoy a bit of the hard stuff.

The final point was the embrouchure. This is the bit of your lip which hardens up as you learn to play, and which makes the parpy sounds into trumpety sounds as it hardens up. Unfortunately, in my case, it didn't so much harden up as break out in a big green scab. This is not something that you want to happen when you are beginning to take a tentative interest in the opposite sex and osculatory contact thereof. Empirical evidence rapidly built up that girls do not like big green herpes sores, and, anyway, they were too busy ogling the guitar-playing boys to pay any interest to farty-sounding country standards.

So I gave up, and didn't touch music again, despite the best efforts of Mr. Key, one of the most inspiring teachers I ever had, and Mr. Brazil, whom, at junior school had cleverly tricked us into writing music by getting us to draw dots on a c major scale, and then playing them on his recorder.

In fact, I didn't touch music until my final year in University, when I picked up a guitar that had been loaned to my sister and attempted to play it. Some help from a fellow student and I was on my way to owning far too many guitars, and resembling the subject of the poem "Every Guitar Should Carry A Government Health Warning" by Martin Newell.

So let this be a lesion to you.