[A Slice Of English]

For me it started with Madness. Quite literally. The band were the first one to actually hook me to the point where I bought something they produced. I was brought up on a diet of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Ocean, Eddy Grant, Queen and Status Quo, which were artists regularly played in my fathers car as he drove me and my brothers from place to place as kids. These set the stage for me and I loved rock music, low-level reggae and some light-ska as I grew up throughout the 1980's.

I discovered Meat Loaf in 1993 along with the "Bat 2 Generation" and I discovered the album through a friend of mine who I am still good friends with now. I was starting to get into Dungeons & Dragons at the age of 12 when this album came out and my friend used to play the album over and over again as we played our sad little games of dice and monsters. From there, my mum showed me her LP of Bat and I discovered the wonder that was "Bat Out of Hell" and holy shit, I was hooked for life.

From there, I started to expand upon my music preferences and absorbed the metal culture to some extent. Iron Maiden, Metallica, Dream Theater, Edguy, Avantasia, Dio, Nightwish, Rammstein, Hammerfall, Heaven & Hell, Nickelback, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper followed by some more rock-style bands in AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, Dire Straits, The Goo Goo Dolls, Poison, Bryan Adams, Rooster, Kiss, Aerosmith & The Rolling Stones. But I also found some pop artists seemed to get me smiling also and I actually really like Avril Lavigne, Erasure, Go West & Roxette.

I have absorbed many different music styles and seem to find pleasure in bands as diverse as The Calling, Blues Brothers, Blues Traveler, Chas N' Dave, The Beautiful South, Chris Rea, the Darkness, The Offspring, Elton John, Embrace, Evanescence, The Fratelli's, Florence & The Machine, George Formby (!), Hanson (!), The Hives, James Blunt, Jason Mraz, Katie Melua, Kula Shaker, The Levellers, Morcheeba, Mumford & Sons, Muse, Oasis, Razorlight, Robert Palmer, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, T Rex, Tenacious D, Tina Turner, U2, Toto & The Spin Doctors.

As you can see if you managed to read all that, I really enjoy quite a broad spectrum of artists from the brilliant to the ridiculous. I rediscovered Springsteen in 2002 with "The Rising" and have bought every album of his since. The Boss is truly astonishing and one day I would love to see him live. Madness still hold a special place in my heart also and I literally fell in love with their "Liberty of Norton Folgate album".

Music stirs my soul. Without it, I would be incomplete.