KinetiKindred History
By age 13 star ing out a classroom window at my future to the teacher's disapproval I knew then what I wanted to do, music for the rest of my life. I studied in school for the next three years to further my education.
During this time I was given the option to board the flight to Edinburgh with either a Casiotone keyboard or my guitar as hand luggage, making the guitar my instrument of choice.
After enrolling in school again I gained the opportunity to perform with other
musicians in my spare time. In the attic I found a Bass guitar that originally belonged to Alex Harvey. We descended down the ladder, dusted it off, strapped it on and were in awe, a different animal entirely. I began enjoying the fact that it had no carry case along with the attention I received because I could just throw it over my shoulder and walk the kilometer to the practice hall. After a phone call, to my surprise it was presented to me to keep. Even after sleeping with it for a year I still decided on my trusty six string for my hand luggage on the return flight. Returning the bass to the attic once more.
As part of my duties at a fireplace restoration shop on the weekends I was required to don a top hat, black face make up and a sweeps coat and tails with two sandwich boards walking the cold cobblestone lanes of Edinburgh.
We returned to Australia via Hong Kong where I was enrolled in school. 6 months later I left home to begin employment. Shortly after leaving home I decided to take a fishing trip with my friend Dave to Monkey-Mia a local West Australian fishing spot. We bought our supplies, loaded the boat licensed to carry five passengers with enough jerry cans of fuel for the journey. At that time I was a smoker (I have beaten that habit), half an hour out of the city a cigarette butt had landed in the back seat that we did not notice where all the fuel was stored. I asked my friend, " can you smell something burning"? He said there is some smoke over the horizon; there I replied, "No, it smells a bit closer than that", and turning to my surprise to see a pair of jeans burning in the back seat we
SSSSSSSccccccccccrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeccccccchhhhhhhhhhh to a halt and jumping out threw the jeans to ground dousing the flames.
My friend tells me he knows people that we should visit since we are in the area. We met a couple of local ladies and all had an interesting night. I had to go horse riding with the local ladies in the morning and of course they picked the horse for me. The ladies must have known what was about to happen as the horse had a mind of it's own and it was saying this rider in this tree. So I ended up in a tree thankfully with no broken bones but with a new respect for horses. Having said our good byes we resumed road travel.
We found our fishing spot, which we later learned, was named Eagle Point. As soon as we had erected our camp I was heard to yell, I think I just stood on a cigarette but it really felt like a cigar. Dave shone the torch on the ground and to our horror we found I had stepped on a scorpion. I fell to the ground grabbing my foot with my toes tingling and burning now beginning to throb. I remember thinking and feeling that I am going to die and that death was imminent and the only Scorpio I know is my Mother.
Could this have been an omen to return home?
Dave captured the scorpion in a half coke can and put it in the boot of the car
When I had managed to hop over to the car Dave then says upon starting the car, only 30 kilometers to Denham where the only hope is the Silver Chain Nursing home for an anti venom. By this time the poison had risen and was making my ankle more painful by the minute. Traveling over the dirt roads and sand dunes the trip seemed to take forever because of the nature of the terrain with Dave continually urging me to hang in there mate. I turned to say Yes with a worried face as the pain surged further into my body. At this time I remembered some first aid and applied a tourniquet around the knee joint. We arrived in Denham and by this time the pain was now paralyzing my leg, and getting even deeper into my blood stream. I hobbled from the car at the nursing center after it's closing time and knock on the door only to be greeted by an angry old woman in curlers and slippers . We inform her that I have been bitten by a scorpion and she does not believe us saying I have had Stingray bites, shark bites sea snake bites but in all my years not once have I had to treat a what scorpion bite you say? Come on she says so Dave goes to the boot and brings the coke can back and upon tipping the contents onto the ground, the woman screams THAT IS A SCORPION!!
Then she treated me for this bite and she sprayed this substance on my foot and I can remember thinking, Is this actually going to work. She rings a doctor in Perth who instructs her to give me shot of something and giving me these blue pills while informing me that nobody ever dies from a scorpion bite.
We returned to camp for the night. Next morning we took the boat out………..TOOOOO FFFFAAAARRRR……. OOOOPPPPPS. This will make a good fishing spot says Dave. The waves were lapping at the side of the boat turning tidal as we lost the power to row the oars and the motor was not working. Again overwhelmed by the feeling of death looming, I have almost drowned three times in life already I thought as I baled scoops of water out. We managed to row back to shore after several hours of intensive labour. We went rock fishing at Steep Point Wa and enjoyed ourselves for the first time on this whole trip.
When we tried to return to camp we discovered that the alternator had blown up and that the vehicle would not run with the lights on.
At four o'clock in the afternoon we decided to draw straws for a solo journey to get help. I lucked out I had to go, and the directions he gave was stay left all the way so I urged him to hang in there mate and set off up the track leaving the torch because it was still daylight. ………….Dumb
I felt I walked at least a couple of hours when night fell, who needs a watch on holidays anyway? In the twilight my vision was impaired by the impending darkness I began hearing the creatures of the bush creeping about me as I walked. I started singing to myself when a fork in the path brought me to a halt I turned and started looking and began to think am I going in the right direction hoping that the bush creatures would not devour me. My eyes hurt more than my legs when I dimly perceived a very small orange glow, which I headed towards. As I got closer I could see the faint silhouette of three people who were not aware of my presence. Seeing me step from the darkness they rose to their feet with the firelight revealing two males and a female. After a brief introduction and an explanation of our plight we worked out that they had the same alternator problem that we had. The only operational machinery here is a generator for the freezer to keep frozen the 180 Snapper that they had caught. The woman begins cooking a meal to which I was invited, and one of the men throws me a beer. I noticed that they had two tapes, T-Rex and Status Quo so I started telling them how Marc Bolan was a sorcerers apprentice at 15 and had worldly powers bestowed upon him with the one proviso that he had to pay by his thirtieth birthday. I explained how he was decapitated in a Morris Minor with friends 8 days before his thirtieth birthday. They cooked me some more fish and gave me more drink and told me I could sleep in the back of their vehicle for the night and that I could possibly flag down a salt mine worker in the morning. I slept. In the morning there was more food and drink and I thanked them and said good-bye. As I stepped out on to the track in the morning haze, I was lucky enough to spot a salt worker approaching me. Uncanny I thought. I flagged him down and explained my predicament. "I was not due out here for three weeks" he said but I had to come out early for work. You are so lucky. He gave me a lift towards where we were broken down. There was a sense of unease as the distance increased he said "how much further is it mate?", I said surely it has to be over the next set of hills, "Ok", he said, not entirely believing, me but continuing anyway. He begins to become extremely agitated informing me we have traveled quite some distance and how far till we get there. I know, I say, the people could not believe it either, and he says "what people?" as he said this we crested another rise to find Dave asleep in our vehicle.
A tap on the window awakens Dave with a ghostly look on his face, which soon turned into a broad grin. The salt mineworker fixed our car and finally we were able to head home.
I progressed to working a lighting desk when I was 17 for a period of 12 months controlling light show sequences on one stage and two dance floors in Perth at the Piccadilly cinema with a 120 can rig which at the time was one of the largest of it's kind in the world. Working with DJ John DeBalous we entertained regular crowds of up to a thousand people nightly of 12 to 18 yr olds. Arriving earlier than usual one night I poured a glass of lemonade and placed it on the bench space and began going through some of the evenings light sequences when I accidentally knocked the glass of lemonade onto the wiring harness for the strobe light and in my haste I began wiping the wiring loom down when I touched the bench and the wiring loom I was blown right across the room dumping me onto a record rack. John said I saw you as I walked in to start my shift I turned the corner and looked at the stage just in time to witness you get picked up and thrown. So again I have nearly died. Music is frightening sometimes I am finding out.
At Nineteen I entered a talent quest to sing a couple of cover songs but lost to a Baritone singer and a girl do a tap routine to The Good Ship Lollypop. I won a consolation bottle of Champagne and went home kicking myself against my better judgement as an original song may have saved me.
When I reached this point I decided to concentrate on my composing and lyric writing abilities. I wrote a song consisting of Guitar and Vocals, which I took to a home studio for amateur recording. I recorded it with extra instruments and synthesised percussion and bass line. Happy with the result I took the song to a popular nightclub to attempt to get it played. I introduced myself to the DJ he listened to the track on headphones and nodding to me began to cue the track to play through the club system. I left to investigate the dance floor and had a great thrill to see people dancing and enjoying my music but was a total surprise to see Ross Wilson aka Daddy Cool, grinning with thumbs up in the air towards me indicating that he liked it. Which was so encouraging for a budding artist.
Between the years of 1980 until 2005 I have been involved with the composition, performing and recording of my own material. During this time I became aware that I needed to enlarge my sound repertoire. My guitar, which had served me so well for so long, needed friends to help support it's musical journey. I needed to sound more multi-dimensional so I sold my guitar and began the hard learning curve of sequencing synthesisers, altering parameters and constructing my own sounds and mixing them to an acceptable standard. Where the guitar took me through philosophy, electronica took me through machine enlightenment and KINETIKINDRED is the result of this transformation
