My Mother was a taylor, my Father was a smith

When I was a younger man, I played the guitar. Not so much these days, the closest I came recently was the one and only go I've had on guitar hero! However, my youth say much guitar playing. Those were the days of the mighty Ph7!

It started in school, I was talking to a friend one day (I believe we were queueing to watch a school "talent show"), and he mentioned his guitar playing, and before long we were talking about forming a band. We knew a drummer (without a drumkit), and I got a bass. We were away. Over time I traded the bass for a guitar, passing the bass duties to another friend making us a 4 piece.

We started on covers, "Highway to Hell", "Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)", amongst others, before moving into writing are own. Some of the greatest unheard songs of our time were created! Our grand finale was at a birthday of a friend of ours. His house had a large cellar into which a large number of us piled, and 2 or 3 of our year's bands played. Our version of "The Ace of Spades" is still talked about today.

As for the titleof this post, one of the songs we used to play was "House of the rising sun", and whilst transcribing the line "My Mother was a tailor" I spelt it wrong. This, obviously, led to the version above and much hilarity.

Upon leaving school, I tried a couple of times to form a band at uni, but nothing came of it. Not living on campus, and therefore not having access to a drumkit put a hold on things. I still played a lot, but only to taped recordings, or straight off sheet music.

It was a couple of years later, at work, I got talking to one of the helpdesk girls on a night out, and she mentioned that she sang, and was interested in performing. We got together, with another friend of hers who also sang, and I started transcribing music for just an acoustic guitar and singer. We were pretty good. We played a couple of bars at open mike nights, and generally had a good time.

Fast forward another couple of years, and I've moved to St. Albans, met up with another singer, transcribed a couple of her songs, and am playing a mixture of covers and original songs at the various pubs and open mike nights around Hertfordshire.

Then I moved to Newcastle, met my wife, and became far too busy to find the time to play.

I was driving to the station this morning, and "Save Tonight" came on the radio. As this was one of the songs we performed, and a personal favourite that I haven't heard for a while, it brought a smile to my face. I now have a hankering to do our version of "(Hit me) Baby, One More Time" just once more!

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