How the "Rabbitman" came to be
In 1997 i was travelling in america, i was in los angelos and wandering around venice beach admiring enourmous wall paintings of jim morrison on the sides of buildings and marvelling at the oddball ecentric street entertainers and musicians along the pedestrian walkway. Back in britain a year later, and wanting to hit the road again touring europe.. i decided to try and make things easy on myself and pass my driving test and buy a campervan. Also at this point i had invented my own street entertaining act of marrionette dancing puppetry..the act i called the "rabbitman and his dancing rabbit". I hit the road in late 1998, and was on and off travelling for two years, doing britain, holland, germany among others inside out.. and sort of became a modern day medieval minstrel of europe type of geezer. I have always been full on creatively and always looking for new things to do and although my main love and passion in my life has always been songwriting. ..songwriting and being in bands was always my main pre-occupation sacrificing any thought of say "passing a university course" things like that went out of the window.. travel also a big driving force in my reason for living. In 2000 i was wacked out!, while i had been away busking, sitting in my camper at night reading music magazines, i realised their was something going on back in the world of mainstream persons. It was possible to buy new digital recording equipment that made it possible to record music to a proffesional level, sort of a "big recording studio" but all inside a little modern box. Also at this point in 2000, something called the internet was kicking in, and websites like "peoplesound.com" (now defunct) were calling on all bands and songwriters to join with them, stating "upload your music onto the net, get heard, cut out the music industy and get paid!". Wow i thought is this really it?.. has the music industry finaly had its day and at last all of us little musicians and bands can now begin to at least make a living at our art?.. well i thought its worth a last try, i mean i got nothing to lose. And anyway i need a break from all of this crazy gypsy travel. So in early 2000 i got myself a little country cottage in the middle of nowhere in north northumberland.. england..bought some new fangled recording gear and started writing.
Writing songs again
The first songs came thick and fast, in reality i never have a problem coming up with songs, ideas, anything really my head is always crammed full of creativity, im prolific because its in my dna. I always feel like i need eight arms to keep up with the ideas pouring out of my head, music, art, making stuff..whatever it is, if i knew how to read and write music i would find writing symphonys for classical music very easy.. for every one song i write their are twenty in my head that never see the light of day, gone forever. My genius if thats what it is.. is this enourmous sea of creativity in a tiny human skull. My brain moves at a million times per second, its a nuclear fusion reactor in there, but i can switch it off too. I imagine my brain is a water tap, flowing water (ideas) i switch it on and off when needed, when its switched off then mundane stuff like eating walking and sleeping is possible, when i release the tap out comes the art. simple. If i didnt have this ability to switch off my head then i would be driven crazy by my fast mind.
Gefrin
Early on i knew what i wanted from my new music project, it would reflect my favourite music..obviously the beatles, kinks,who,bryds,moody blues...the whole sixties thing was always my biggest inspiration to me.. and i always felt i was born in the wrong era. Like i wished i had been in swinging london or san fancisco in 68 and been part of that amazing time. My music for this project would be based around this my favourite period of modern culture. The costume was an obvious choice since i was continuing to street entertain and be creative making puppets and all sorts of wacky ideas in my country hideaway which had now become a sort of mad proffessors laboratory with bits of marrionette body parts, paint tins, and music equipment everywhere. The rabbitman hat and the coat will fit into the vibe of what gefrin will be i thought. I decided to use the name "gefrin" as it sort of just worked, in the small village where i lived kirknewton, an ancient village settlement was discovered where our ancestors lived, it is called "gefrin". Cool thatll do for a name, but i also noticed a large plack at the site with the words "Gefrin" carved!.. "that will be good when im dead" i thought, "for when the bus loads of japanese tourists come to pay homage to the late and great rob matthew redhead!.. their music hero!!. Okay got the name, the concept, the music, the videos..the monument..so then the potential was and has turned out to be.. that gefrin, is the best musical portfolio of my creativity..ever. It encompasses visually and in sound what im all about, which is creative H bombs going off. The original gefrin project was from 2000-2003 but was put on hold in 2004. I had become disallousioned because it had become apparent to me that the internet and websites like peoplesound.com were not going to save the bacon for struggling hermit songwriters but instead the internet was beginning to look like the final nail in the coffin for us musicians. In 2004 i decided to go mainstream with my puppetry and i created a full sized original puppet theatre, it was powered by a PA system..and i recorded audio/special effects as backing tracks to accompany the experience. It was a pretty ambitious project but my puppet theatre worked a treat!.. nothing has ever been seen like it before or since and it lasted for two summers, whereupon i entertained at village fetes/shows, events, kids parties etc.
Not like the good old days
Fearing that my life was going to turn into a lifetime of respectable childrens entertainer?.. i decided to not be a puppet show bloke afterall. Basically i had while performing become aware of some peoples own paranioa about how safe their children are around other adults. New labour were in government at that time, and together with the media it felt like if you were male?.. then you were a potential suspect for criminal activity?. I had all of my police checks sorted out.. for insurance reasons mostly, but i felt the whole vibe was getting out of hand, the then nanny state of the left where even preparing to have parents needing police checks before they could visit their local school to watch their "own children" performing in christmas plays?. I realised with my two year experience of my going mainstream with the puppet show that the world had definitelly changed and it was no longer an innocent time like the 1960s or 70s anymore. But also i didnt want to be mr puppet man anyway.. i realised that it was the actual making designing creating the whole puppet theatre that was what had got my interest in the first place. The actual performing wasnt what i wanted to do, which is what i am like with bands too, i have never really enjoyed performing onstage, i was always more interested in the actual songwriting and recording. In 2005 i rebounded completely from bright colours puppet man, to all out (again) heavy metal guy GGRRR.. but thats another story.
God
2005 and 2006 was spent growling and chest beating in my heavy metal band Agankast(see links). In 2008 i returned to my gefrin project, it hadnt seemed like four years since i last recorded a gefrin track?.. the time was flying by. I wrote and recorded another fifteen songs as well as a new solo metal project called dethkreid. In 2009 i headed off for a long spell in europe busking again..with the rabbitman and his dancing rabbit. Travelling in my converted van and with my trusted best friend with me "sox" my dog. By this time in 2009 i had passed through a bit of a mid life wobble.. and had found myself on a pathway to god. Everything from my past become clear suddenly, i opened my eyes and for the first time had basically become "me". In 2010 i was back in a rural cottage but now in the scottish borders and i created a large portfolio of art for the local art gallery (see links).. this venture like all other mainstream creative endeavours also failed, i by this point had realised that the world we now live in of globalisation, capitalism etc.. wasnt designed for the benefit of everybody but only the few. My enlightenment, wisdom and god, enabled me to see the whole picture, back front behind upside down round and round and so a feeling of peace came to me. But not the peace as the word describes, words being illusion, god, god is the truth, and what is ..is. In 2011 i basically out of bordeom created some new music and a handfull of new gefrin songs and created videos to go with them. But in the winter of 2011 i felt that it was time to move on once and for all from this creative waste of time. The me that people know me by. In a different world then if i had have been able to make a living doing the gifts that god give me then fine?.. i would have continued writing and recording, and creating art. but thats not the reality we find ourselves in. My life now is simply survival, survival in the law of the jungle. Maybe ive been a rabbitman for too long but in finding god i have realised how much i hate the human race. I am peace and love but im also war and hate, both. This is i suppose reflected in my varied taste in music, from acoustic to metal. Ive realised now that it is possible to be creative purelly in thought within ones own head.. and this thinking progresses the mind into wisdom and god. It is a retreat from humanity, but by retreating.. you (discover) humanity, everything and the ultimate... god. My mind is a great place to be..my music and art i leave behind as my human legacy, pretty pictures and nice tunes, oh and some cool vidz.
