All my life as far back as I can remember I have been into music. I always felt a sense of freedom and joy whenever I heard music playing in our house. The radio station I was brought up on was 104.3. It was here that my music odyssey begins. The songs I heard formed the backbone of my music vocabulary. Songs like "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals, The Box Tops "The Letter", The Doors "Hello, I Love You" and of course Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" became perennial favorites. However, it was until 12 that I received a musical revelation. In middle school our music teacher played an orchestral version of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565". I was blown away. I realized that music could be powerful on its own terms. Based solely on melody, where the notes themselves were so lyrical that it didn't necessarily need words to be proven effective. Listening to that music, it was the first time I envisioned music in a pictorial way. Filled with all the images my subconscious projected, it amazed me how a melody could resonate and last over centuries. It was dark, mysterious, moody, and spine chilling. I had to find more music like this. I would quickly find what I was searching for and it would forever change the path of my life. Before I loved listening to music but it wasn't until I re-discovered the Doors that I realized that music could be art and that I realized I wanted to be a part of it. Because of them, I saw how far rock music could go with their epics, particularly the 11-minute song "When the Music's Over" and the 7-minute plus "L.A. Woman". No longer did I just want to listen to songs but I wanted create them. Always an avid writer, I began to write poetry and lyrics in earnest, amassing notebook after notebook, journal after journal. Eventually I realized that I needed an instrument to create music to my words. This happened shortly after I turned thirteen. While at first I wanted to play keyboard ala Ray Manzarek, I soon decided to switch to the guitar. The two guitarist that solidified it for me were Jimmy Page and John Frusciante. Page's guitar work on "Physical Graffiti" and Frusciante's playing on the "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" album (especially the songs "If You Have to Ask" and "Sir Psycho Sexy") made me want to be a guitarist. My instrumental journey had now begun. Fast forward to when I'm 14. I discover punk rock and form my first full real band The Deviants. Punk music had a big hand in teaching me how to write compositions. Bands like The Misfits, Black Flag, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and Bad Religion's "How Could Hell Be Any Worse" providing the most inspiration. Since then, I have made it my goal to play an eclectic range of music correlating with exotic instrumentation. Until it's time to turn out
the lights...

Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/briansmallwood

 

"Refusing to have tunnel vision, to see life from one point of view, one becomes, in a sense, infinite, able to intertwine with the lives of others. If I am tuned in to you, if I know your thoughts as well as my own, then we begin to share a common consciousness& Opening ourselves to the minds and hearts of others helps to prevent the buildup of ego-centered hostilities. The infinite person is free of rigid prejudices and never works consciously to restrict others from exercising their right to assemble, speak their minds openly, practice their own religion, and follow their own preferences, so long as, in being free, they do not themselves limit the freedom of another."

Name: Brian

Likes: Poetry, Prose, Stories, Philosophical Musings; Composing; Creating; The Doors; Adagio for Organ and Strings in G Minor by Tomaso Albinoni and arranged by Remo Giazotto; Vampires; Werewolves; the Universal Classic Monsters especially The Wolf Man and Dracula; Hammer Horror; AIP's Vincent Price Poe Films; the Gothic Novel;
Gothic Fiction; Marlon Brando films; Hanging w/ my girlfriend; Ravi Shankar; Red Wine; Jack Daniels; Tecates; Elvis Presley; Glenn Danzig; The New York Dolls; Sitars; 12 Strings; The Brian Jonestown Massacre;
Funk; Jazz; Everlast;hihuahuas and Dogs, Woody Woodpecker, Donald Duck, Batman, Bruce Campbell

Dislikes: Cruelty and/or Experimentation to/on Animals, Closed minded and dogmatic people

Favorite Movies: Last Tango in Paris, Goodfellas, The Count of Monte Cristo (w/ Gerard Depardieu in French), Braveheart, Taxi Driver, Fight
Club, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Horror of Dracula, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Kiss of the Vampire, Twins of Evil, Vampire Circus, The Vampire Lovers, Masque of the Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Black Sunday, The Last Man on Earth, The Passion, Night of the Living Dead (both versions), Dawn of the Dead
(1979 Version), Bubba Ho-Tep, Disney Animated Classics

Favorite Books: The American Night: The Writings of Jim Morrison, Tropic of Cancer, Under the Roofs of Paris, Time of the Assassins, Complete
Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-
1962, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me, The Doors by the Doors, The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, Book of Blues, Old Angel Midnight, Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, The Flowers of Evil, the Encyclopedia of the Occult by Charles Walker, The Complete Tales from the Crypt, The Complete Vault of Horror,
The Complete the Haunt of Fear, Tales for the Midnight Hour, More Tales for the Midnight Hour, Still More Tales for the Midnight Hour, Even More Tales for the Midnight Hour, Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep ,The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight: More Poems to Trouble Your Sleep, Halloween ABC, Spooky ABC, Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook