ABOUT SIMON PARKER

Simon Parker is an author, songwriter and self-confessed music junkie.  This is how he describes his career as a musician:

"All I really ever wanted was to be involved with music. I began by just listening to it and then I started making it. Finally, I got around to selling it. But I’ve always been around it. New Wave and Post Punk were my first loves because I was just a little bit too young for that initial surge of Ramones, Sex Pistols and The Clash.

Since 1987, I’ve formed numerous bands and played hundreds of gigs in seedy backroom bars, usually to little or no acclaim. Sure, I did get to the heady heights of being a signed musician on a couple of occasions, but generally this left me even more broke than usual. Glamorous it wasn’t.

But I couldn’t stop myself because, I’m in it for life, me"

Simon's career in music hasn't just been about writing songs and playing in bands. This is how he describes the rest of his career:

"Here are just a few of the things I did to pay the rent -  I spent over a decade running a promotions company called Cable Club which staged gigs for the likes of Kasabian, Keane and The Cribs, often giving rising artists their first breaks in Brighton. I taught classrooms of aspiring teenagers how to get noticed by ailing record companies whilst paradoxically doing nothing of the sort with my own. I toured with some of my musical idols, and a lot of idle musicians. I’ve been paid by cash-rich indie labels to discover more talented and prettier artists than myself, and on more than one occasion, been given money just to stop playing and go home. I’ve managed embryonic bands to major record deal status and then trudged through the mud at Glastonbury like a novice roadie trying not to drop their expensive amplifiers. I have worked in a number of corporate and indie record stores. I’ve chewed the fat and drunk late night whiskey with Mark Eitzel (American Music Club) and totally misheard Michael Head's (Pale Fountains/Shack) kind offer of class ‘A’ drugs. Embarrassingly, I was totally convinced that Ride were wide-eyed schoolboys when I first saw them support The Soup Dragons (which was why I offered to go to the bar for them, officer). And then there's that 'Road To Nowhere' music memoir which tells my story in all it's gory glory!

On top of all this there’s the not-so-little matter of my record collection, amassed from over forty years of fervent purchasing. In the early days I supported my vinyl habit by working for HMV and Virgin.  More recently, I founded Vinyl Revolution!"

You can learn more about Simon Parker and hear his music by visiting www.simon-parker.com.