That should be fairly obvious!

Right now I don't perform live but I hope to again.

I think they can offer an artist a great amount of exposure they would not otherwise get but at the same time, it allows for easy theft of copyright material. I am totally against music theft. Most musicians struggle enough without having their songs stolen.

I doubt that any major record label would be interested given that my disabilites would make live performance and promotion of my material difficult and infrequent but never say never!

I have been a music fan from a very young age - probably due to my Mum's influence. After briefly flirting with the violin at junior school I took up the clarinet when I went to secondary school and stuck with it. I played in the wind band and also a jazz band. I still have the clarinet although I rarely play it now.

I joined my first rock band Suspect when I was 16 or 17 and was the oldest member of the band. For most of the time that Suspect were together we did not have a drummer and instead used drum tracks programmed into a computer as MIDI parts and played them back through a Roland MT32. We then recorded these drum parts onto cassette and used them as a backing track. Most of the hard work in putting together these tapes was done by Derek who owned the equipment. I was the singer and also played occasional keyboards. Suspect never performed a single gig due to our lack of a drummer (it was still some time before bands playing to backing tracks would become acceptable - especially rock bands) but we recorded all of our songs (originals and covers) using a 4-track. Richard joined us on drums briefly but to be honest it didn't really work very well as is evident on the one track we recorded with this line up. Suspect didn't survive for long after I went to university. We had a couple more rehearsals during my first summer holiday but then we called it a day. Steve was later one of the founding members of the band Collapsed Lung who had some chart success and provided the music to one of the coca-cola adverts. Mark now lives somewhere in part of what was Yugoslavia. As far as I know neither Mark or Derek has been in a band since Suspect.

Suspect were:
Simon Fox - Vocals/Keys
Steve Harcourt - Guitar
Derek Whayman - Bass/Keys
Mark Daniels - Guitar
(Richard Winter - Drums)

I started the band TDL when I went to Keele university. Unlike Suspect which had been very much a joint effort, TDL was really my band. Steve - the bass player - was also playing guitar in a band called Sanction (and later a band called "Dark Horse") and TDL played second fiddle to these other projects for him. A general apathy among the other members of the band ensured that I spent as much time trying to get everyone together for rehearsals as we actually spent rehearsing. Adrian wrote the music to a couple of the tracks but otherwise the writing was all by me. We only did one performance under the name TDL before changing the band name to Spirit (none of us realised that the name had been used before which caused some confusion at one gig). Despite being together for over two years we did just three gigs - two at Keele and one at the Square in Harlow which was recorded. Due to the complexities of one of the songs we performed (requiring two keyboard parts in some places and two guitar parts in others for example) this is the only band in which I have ever had to play any guiter. Thankfully this consisted of just strumming a few power chords - about the limit of my guitar playing ability. Before splitting up we recorded our original songs on a 4 track. By this time we had changed the band name to "Ten minute Syndrome". Steve and I got together again later in the band Night Circus. Adrian joined the band "Karmic debt" shortly after Spirit split but I don't know what he's done (musically) since. He now lives in Australia. As far as I know, neither Adrian or Paul are currently in bands.

Spirit were:
Simon Fox - Vocals/Keys/Guitar
Adrian Wallace - Guitar/keys
Steve Hall - Bass/Guitar
Paul Stinton - Drums

After the break up of Spirit I did a little work as a sound engineer mixing gigs for Keele bands "Dark Horse" and "Tribal Vibes". I also recorded a 4-track demo for Tribal Vibes before taking a bit of a break from music to study for my finals.

I joined the band Night Circus when it formed shortly after I left university in 1993. We rehearsed in a pub basement in Crystal Palace which was somewhere between where Steve and I were sharing a house (in my home town of Harlow) and where the other band members lived, in or near Croydon. We rehearsed twice a week for nine months before doing our first gig and by that time we were very tight despite the fact that the songs we were performing were much more complex than any I had performed before. The complexities were mainly down to Mike who had a real gift for arrangement. He would regularly say things like "let's try putting an extra few bars in here" or "what if we change this chord just in one verse" to which we would all say "It'll never work" but he'd usually be right. Unlike my previous bands I was not the vocalist in this one - I just played keyboards. By the time of our first gig I was playing better than I have ever played, before or since. Our first gig was at "The jolly gardeners" pub in Wandsworth where we played to a small but enthusiastic audience who loved our two sets - one mainly consisting of covers and one of mainly original material. At the time I would have preferred to stick to original material but Mike had argued strongly (and probably correctly with hind-sight) that it was easier to get pub gigs if you threw in a few covers. The singer in Night Circus was Richie Cooper who had been the singer in Steve's previous band "Dark Horse". Night Circus' second gig was at "The Swan" in Fulham where we were the last band out of four on the bill (the third being the main band). As a result we got onto the stage very late and many people had already left. I remember playing very badly that night although having listened to the recording since it was not as bad as I thought at the time. Shortly after this gig the other band members kicked me out (apparently for not being committed enough although I've since heard the full story and it's somewhat different). A couple more gigs were done under this line up, they recorded a couple of demos and "Restless Soul" got played on a local radio station. Richie was also later dropped from the line-up and Mike took over on vocals. Other priorities meant that the band rehearsed and performed less and less often but still got together for reunions occasionally until Steve, continuing the trend of members of my previous bands, moved abroad in 2002. He lived with his wife and Children in Canada for 10 years before recently returning to the UK. I'm still in touch with Dave (who is playing in a covers band) and Steve and have recently got back in touch with Mike but have lost touch with Richie. The songs we did while I was in Night Circus I still view as being among the best I have done so far and I find it quite a compliment that even after kicking me out of the band, the others continued to end their live set on the only Night Circus song for which I wrote both the lyrics and music ("Under different skies").

Night Circus were:
Dave Forsdyke - Drums
Richie Cooper - Vocals
Mike Cunningham - Bass
Steve Hall - Guitar
Simon Fox - Keys

While playing in Night Circus I was also rehearsing with a covers band with people I knew from work. We were called "Twisted General" (not a name I had a say in) after the fact that we all worked for General Portfolio. We did just the one gig - at the Ski Lodge bar in Harlow - because by the time we were rehearsed enough, both the bass player and the guitarist had left General Portfolio and were no-longer working or living in the Harlow area. Like Suspect, Twisted General had no drummer and performed to a drum machine. Someone made a video of our gig but unfortunately hadn't realised that making a music video is a bit different from making a home video. Whoever did it kept stopping the camera to set up the next shot so the music jumps about too much to really listen to. After Twisted General split up the singer, Anne went on to form "Bride" who I later did some mixing for.

Twisted General were:
Simon Fox - Keys
Anne Jones - Vocals
Gideon Fraser - Guitar
Phil Dimes - Bass/Vocals

After being unceremoniously dumped from Night circus it was a long time before I got around to forming another band. In the mean-time I spent some time working as a sound engineer for a two-girl cover group called "Bride". Sound engineer may be over stating the case a little since I was basically mixing two mikes and a backing tape through a 400 watt PA. Over time Bride became quite popular - especially at pubs and working-men's clubs - and I eventually stopped working for them when they were getting two to three gigs a week and it was eating up all of my time. They bought their own PA after that and did the mixing themselves.

It was about 1997 by the time I finally formed another band. This time I played keyboards and sung vocals. Sally (my girl friend at the time, later my wife) played bass, Murray (who I knew from work) played drums and Andrew (a close friend of Sally's since school and who I also knew) played guitar. For Andrew, this unnamed band was a side project because he was also playing in the already established band "The little dog laughed". This band got together for it's first rehearsal in a studio just outside Harlow. We all came prepared, having worked on a few songs we had circulated on tape in advance including "Under different skies" - the song I originally wrote for Night Circus and a song called "In Gladden fields" written by Sally. We also worked on a couple of covers - I can't remember which ones. I can honestly say that I have never played in a band that gelled so quickly and easily. "In gladden fields" was practically performance quality by the end of the rehearsal including some great harmony vocals by Andrew.

Unfortunately I've reached the 10,000 character limit so if you want to know what happened to the unnamed band and what I've done since you'll have to visit my website.

Dream Theater, Marillion, Rush, Spock's Beard, Peter Gabriel

On a hill somewhere in the Peak District.

Cubase Studio 4, 2xUAD-1, M-Audio Delta 1010, Edirol UM-2
Outboard: GoldMike, JV-1010, CM32L, SY35, Prophecy, MultiMix 12FX, Adam A7, Rode NT1, Nt1a, NT5 (pair), M3, Shure SM57.