Pryce "Pryceless" Surplice aka "The Serpent"

A 'career' in the 'Music Business' is a pretty piss poor way to describe what I do to pay the rent [that's my excuse anyway] apart from being an egomaniac who's chronically obsessive and criminally self centered.

I don't mind admitting it's a hell of a lot better way to earn a living than the misery most of humanity is sentenced to endure, and for that I'm eternally grateful and imperceptibly humble.

I know it sounds like a sweet way to pass the time, but trust me it's a gyp, in reality the music business is a bent casino where the odds are stacked and the house never loses.

Even when you think you're due for a win and have the killer hand, you're about to get the shit kicked out of you and driven to the desert to dig your own shallow grave.

Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Duo Jets and Les Paul TV Specials,

if these can't entice you away from flogging bullshit to suckers.

You have no soul.

When I was a kid [during the early 1970's] my primary school had a fife and drum band, not the rock star drowning in a sea of Jack Daniels flavoured vomit kind; but the marching around a parade ground wearing a bass drum like a dickhead kind.

Overlooking the glaring lack of sexual magnetism you ooze when tapping out "Cock-O-The-North", I persisted with social suicide and eventually fell madly in love with playing drums, Heavy Metal, Glam Rock, Punk and New Wave.

It's not surprising then that when you put me behind a standard kick, snare and hats kit

[where I require the concurrent use of both hands and feet]

I'm totally, completely, autistically dysfunctional.

Sometime around the middle of my primary school years I began taking acoustic guitar lessons, first finger picked classical, rapidly gravitating towards steel strings, plectrums and open/custom tunings.

Like some deaf, dumb, blind kid I discovered The Who and after being promised me 'just one night' I awoke in a swimming pool, addicted to pinball and Rock Opera for the rest of my life.

I was certainly more interested in learning how to play 'Horror Movie' by "Skyhooks" then 'Jeremiah had a Bullfrog' while mastering "The Roy Smeck Method" so my guitar teacher and I soon parted by mutual agreement.

By the time I crashed into my late teens and was old enough to steal

I'd become a pathological Jazz Bass enthusiast

[mostly fretless, later some slap/funk and finally heavy rock]

serving out my mandatory 'apprenticeship' by embarking on a live Pub career.

Growing up as an artsy effeminate Army housing brat in Queensland during the Joh Bjelke-Petersen administration [my father was a professional soldier and my mother was a war protesting Hippie Nurse, Academic and Psychologist] I was forced to take sides and have the courage of my convictions.

This didn't 'just' earn me on my father's eternal ire, but placed me squarely under the burning gaze of Queensland's Special Branch, Regional Task Force and various other subsidiary enforcement divisions.

My Grandmother once commented: she saw me more on television than she did in person ...

The die was irrevocably cast and I'd never be able to divorce my life from social justice causes and political activism, if I 'had' to earn a living it would need to be somewhere where my artistic bent and revolutionary ethic wouldn't instantly make me a pariah.

After working the obligatory 27 shit jobs [and some pretty cool ones like industrial chemistry and mechanical engineering] I was fast getting the picture the 'real world' and I were never, ever, going to see eye to eye.

[I must add at this point that from here on in apart from anything else I'm doing professionally, I'm always playing in bands and/or writing/playing/producing music in one form or another]

So by the time I'd reached twenty I'd decided I' would only ever pursue my pot of gold within the enchanted forest of the music business; luring me down the bong stained road into the dank caves of audio engineering and technical production [both concert and recording].

Not withstanding the bureaucratic stigma,

even my side trips to straightsville have essentially remained rooted within

the boundaries of industry specific applied sciences and production logistics.

One fateful day I was sitting in a friend's flat playing bass guitar and smoking pot, when a guy I'd never met exploded through the door complaining [via a string of garbled expletives] that his Lighting Operator had quit days before a tour and could anybody here do lights?

Of course I lied like a machine that's designed to tell lies, and put up my hand promising 'Fuck Yeah' of course I can do lights.

I was immediately hired on the spot and for the next week I read every book I could about the subject [at the time there really wasn't any books to read on the subject, so I bought Roadie magazines].

Luckily for me [not necessarily so for the band] on my first load-in I did so much financial damage to a foldback speaker that the band had to keep me on for six months [at least] to repay the damage bill.

It soon became obvious that like dancing and graphic arts, Theatrical Lighting was something I should be prevented doing by law, so I swapped gigs with my crew mate taking on F.O.H sound duties and to everybody's surprise, discovered I was a natural engineer.

My new found vocation took off like a rocket and my feet hardly hit the ground for the next two decades, F.O.H, Monitors and Studio engineering became the bedrock on which I built a lifelong career.

Somehow in the mid 80's [right place, right time] I became Captain MIDI the Propellerhead.

Actually it was a no brainer, keyboard players were last year's piano/organ players with no more natural inclination towards programming than a monkey has at being an Astronaught; and I was sick and tired of them blowing up my speakers with poorly normalized volume levels across patches.

Synthesizers, samplers, computers and software seemed to ooze out of my every pore 24/7, like contracting a disease that even though you've finally recovered, leaves you horribly disfigured displaying unsightly scars and a pronounced limp.

It was the Fairlight CMI and Steinberg's sequencing software "Cubase" that finally opened doors for me to backdoor into recording studios, first as a programmer/engineer and eventually a Producer.

As a result of my failed rehabilitation process

I continue to manifest Pavlovian reactions whenever I'm around

voltage controlled filters, low frequency oscillators and ADSR envelopes.

Every so often I'd sneak back out on the road [or in through the loading dock] to chase the next big challenge; and after a fortuitous move to London I was fortunate enough to work for some of the biggest and most iconic names in music history.

Sadly I also ended up working on gigs that required MI5 security clearances and I provided production services for numerous Royal events, UK and European Heads of Government, Capitalist promotions of every sordid variety and all manner of shit I'm not eternally proud of.

At the insistence of the UK immigration services I returned to my beloved Australia where I began the third act in my twisted tale of degradation and self flagellation.

After intense therapy I've developed an unhealthy obsession with all things electric guitar, and albeit [thanks to Jim Barnes] I'm never too far from a Hammond Tone Bar Organ, it's Les Paul that deserves the biggest credit for my eventual return to the warming breast of humanity.

Even though I've pledged my soul to Lester's frankensteinian love child and still play electric bass regularly, I'm seriously getting jacked on acoustic instruments again [still more Lester than Chester].

It's becoming so chronic I've upped the ante to include Fender resonator guitars, and when I'm seriously hallucinating on peyote and absinthe: Lap Steels and slide guitar.

I promise if I start sniffing mandolins or banjos,

I'll immediately euthanize myself with a traditional Irish Folk record.

It's become painfully obvious to my doctors I'm a hopeless case and will inevitably suffer the ravaged constitution associated with habitual record industry types [despite increasing my dosage to potentially lethal levels].

You see I'm suffering from a more aggressive sub-set of afflictions that fester with age and experience like rancid Limburger in the Queensland sun.

For my sins I'm doomed to remain a computer geek for the rest of my life; lest terminal brain necrosis sets in and I forget how to re-install Windows where I'm banished to another planet entirely.

I'll maintain that I could use any of the preceding excuses for my remaining a musician and songwriter till the day I die; but the inconvenient truth of it is, I've been addicted to music for so long it's fundamentally altered my DNA.

Eventually [when I reached 1000 years old] I dipped my snout into what I hoped were more lucrative feed bags, and already a long time technical journalist I became a teacher of applied sciences, computer programmer, network engineer and surprise surprise a public speaker.

These days I still consider myself a full time musician, but I'm proud to say that as an activist and social justice/equal access antagonist, I'm finally hitting my stride and finding ways I can make a positive difference [in my own enigmatic way of course] ...