*** A SPECIAL REPORT *** - Conversations with Dave Holmes. Part I
"Music was my first love And it will be my last Music of the future And music of the past To live without my music Would be impossible to do In this world of troubles My music pulls me through"
I have the honour this week of writing the story of Dave Holmes! It's something I've been wanting to do for a long while but the timing wasn't quite right, until now~! I met Dave Holmes 2 years ago on the 'social network' Facebook and our mutual love of sound in the form of music became our common ground! - Well, that and laughter!
"Music is my first love, and it will be my last" were the words Dave used during part one of my interview with him and I have come to know this as an absolute truth about Dave! I can't recall the last time I knew someone like him, one who embodies so purely, the truth of this song by John Miles~ "Music"
When the chords of this song began, 3 seconds in, the tears poured from my eyes, my heart and my soul! I wept for nearly an hour afterwards as the powerful words, harmony and intensity took me somewhere I'd truly never been before! This arrangement is the very essence of who Dave Holmes is and the reason he does what he does! I can honestly say this, "Dave knows music" and will work tirelessly to bring music to a world that is in dire need of the music he finds and promotes, or the music that finds Dave!
In Dave's own words here is the start of his personal journey involving music;
"Never really heard a lot of music at home (pre-teens) the only time I heard any sort of music up to the age of 11 or 12 was when the ‘wireless’ was put on at Sunday lunch times to listen to ‘Two way family favourites’ and as I recall a radio presenter by the name of Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart who appeared to have a massive collection of about 6 records! (lol) we would be subjected to the same artists each week... ‘The Seekers’, ‘Rolf Harris’, ‘Petula Clarke’, Peter, ‘Paul and Mary’ etc etc"
Well Dave Holmes, I say, "at least you had that much to start with. My own start was so much less and centered on sacred music, to the exclusion of and being forbidden to hear any secular tunes ever until much later in life!"As is typical of the Dave I've come to know, mainstream music was not even a preferable option for either one of us back then was it? So yes for both of us, music by The Beatles and other pop tune artists of the day was happily left to the swooning lasses and kiddies of that time!
As is often the case in families with multiple siblings an older one will forge the way for the younger ones to break the barriers of parental censure for the younger ones coming along. In my case my "first love" came in the form of the song "Downtown" by Petula Clark! A song that later got me a right good slap on my face for daring to hum this tune around the house. Here's Dave's "first love" in his words (slightly edited by Moi)
"My older sibling was lucky to save up enough pocket money to buy one of them new fangled ‘solid state’ transistor radios. When she joined the army I ‘inherited’ the trannie ( as it was hip to call those things back then) and I spent many evenings furtively listening to 'Radio Luxembourg' as it faded in and out and felt positively rebellious when I found that I could receive 'Radio Caroline' which at the time was a pirate radio station broadcasting from a ship out in the middle of the North Sea. Fearful of being caught listening to this illegal radio station – thereby being guilty of criminal activity – I would bury myself down under my bed sheets to listen in to whatever was being played. One evening a new record 'Indiana Wants Me' by R. Dean Taylor was played for the very first time, and I almost had a heart attack when, halfway through the song, the sounds of police sirens and bull horns could be heard. I quickly switched off the radio and hid it under the bed – it would be another month before I discovered that the police sirens and bull horns were part of the song, and Radio Caroline was not being raided and I was not about to be arrested for being a ‘rebel without a clue’ Some of the ‘Disc Jockeys’ on Radio Caroline (Tony Blackburn and Dave Lee Travis) went on to join the BBC when it launched Radio 1 which to this day is the main station in Britain to hear ‘Pop music’.
Radio Luxembourg also launched the career of DJ/VJ David ‘Kid’ Jensen!"
In his high school years Dave was fortunate enough to be in an A~Level art class with an innovative teacher who brought in a phonograph player for the class and encouraged his students to bring in any kind of music they liked! Dave needed no further encouragement!
"I liked hearing some of the more ‘obscure’ and non-mainstream records that were being played on these stations, and so it was that by the time I started High school I was fairly conversant with artists that you would never hear on the BBC. I soon made friends at school who dispelled my fear that I was a bit of an oddball for liking artists and genres that were a million miles away from anything that our contemporaries were ‘digging’. A show that became ‘must see TV’ was ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test, presented by ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris who would showcase artists so ‘left field’ it well and truly satisfied my teenage rebelliousness (if my parents hated it then it must be worth listening to!).
I think I was aged about 12 or 13 when I first got interested in Blues and R ‘n’ B (that’s Rhythm ‘n’ Blues – not whatever it is that has adopted that tag nowadays) John Mayall was, and in fact still is, a major player on the British music scene, his band ‘The Bluesbreakers was where many great bluesmen ‘served their apprenticeships’ - people like Eric Capton, Peter Green, Aynsley Dunbar, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Walter Trout, Mick Taylor, Jack Bruce .... and so on - a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of musicians who (a few, at least) went on to take - and still retain to this day, the titles of ‘the all time greatest’. Another band that got my attention was The Yardbirds’ although they were more ‘pop’ orientated, they did have a distinctive ‘and unique fuzzed guitar sound that appealed to my desire for music that didn’t sound like it was churned out mass-production style from some music factory! The Yardbirds was another band that Eric Clapton had played in, as did Jeff Beck and also one particular guitarist who, when the band split up, went on to form a band whose second album was the first I can recall possessing.
That guitarist was Jimmy Page and the band he formed was of course Led Zeppelin.
Some of the bands I really got heavily into were: The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, Lindisfarne, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Grand Funk Railroad, David Bowie and Pink Floyd (‘Atom Heart Mother’ being the second album I bought and introduced me to the genre ‘prog rock’ and the whole idea of ‘concept albums’. If nothing else, High school was a terrific place for me to learn about what was happening on the (non-pop) music scene."
Well Dave, my introductions to "The Road Less Travelled" in the world of music has only just begun in comparison to yours! It was about 3 years ago when I stumbled across my very first talented young artist by the name of Neil Mitchell who led me to Blues and Roots Radio and my journeys are now in full swing as a result of that chance encounter. Neil's song "St Kilda's Mailboat" is another one of those songs I really "felt" and listen to regularly!
Next week I'll be writing more about Dave Holmes and how his love of music is all encompassing and has certainly drawn my attention as well as many Independent and unsigned artists both locally and on a global scale!
