TEENAGE KICKS: One day we will wake up early and record something beautiful. Until then, I'm sleeping in, writes Tom Shepard
Since September 2005, and throughout 6th year, the words of Bob Dylan adorned my homework notebook. Scrawled across the back cover was a verse ending in the words "Let me forget about today until tomorrow". Through that last regimented, humdrum school year, the final verse of Mr Tambourine Man seemed the antithesis of what bored me. School was restrictive, music was freedom. Finally out of school, I got stuck into a summer of such freedom.
Music festivals, though ultimately about the music, are also something of a survival test. Last month I plodded off to Oxegen, which is probably the closet most of us there will get to a war zone. By Sunday night, the campsite was filled with fires and drunks. Dietary concerns are forgotten faster than the Leaving Cert in July. A typical day's eating consisted of a biscuit for breakfast, crisps for lunch, and a dodgy burger for dinner, eating just enough to stave off hunger.
There are also the dreaded Portaloos, which can be traumatic. The faces of people coming out of them is an image I'd rather not keep, and the frequent cries of "Oh dear God" carried along with the stench still haunt me.
Yet, despite all the negatives, it's somehow worth it. I occasionally wonder what makes concerts so special and I think for most people music is an almost spiritual experience. Aldous Huxley said "after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music", and sharing with 80,000 people the supreme pleasure of hearing The Who blast out Won't Get Fooled Again certainly felt beyond the power of words. It also made that Saturday night in Kildare that much easier to bear.
Unfortunately, festivals last mere days, and as a young man in search of adventure, I need more to occupy me for a summer. Hence, our soon-to-be world-conquering band, known as Yet Another Wonder (talent scouts, take note), holed ourselves up in a friend's house for a week to write and record.
We went for the full-on "struggling musician" experience - microwave dinners, late nights with acoustic guitars, strange working hours. However, talking about music is easier than actually making it, and thus things progressed slowly. The fact that we teenagers enjoy our sleep didn't help matters either. Soon, our week of band work descended into something like Spinal Tap crossed with Big Brother. Petty squabbles carried on for days (the guitar tuning debate was the source of much vitriol).
It is fun to play the musician for a week though: to talk about "direction" and how you are "really feeling" a particular chord progression. In the end, our masterpiece album wasn't recorded; we shall blame "touring commitments" for that one.
One day, though, we will wake up early and record something beautiful. Until then, I'm sleeping in.
Part of the "struggling musician" experience was the search for a job, which inevitably would be low-paying and menial. All musicians have had them - Bob Geldof was a pea canner, Eddie Vedder was a gas station attendant - but things are harder when you're 18 and a fresh-faced youngster just out of school. There are two ways a teenager can get a summer job: to have already had one, or to have "connections".
I know that by my age, kids in the past would have inhaled bellyloads of soot in the mines, or in other parts of the world today will have stitched thousands of trainers. This is little comfort when I must swallow my pride, curse the hardships of the music business and head into town with a handful of CVs that wax lyrical about my B in Junior Cert Spanish, or that swimming competition I won in 4th year.
It can be humiliating and, more often than not, unsuccessful. I offered a CV to one newsagent, and then had a brief impromptu interview. The manager asked me if I had any experience "on the till", I said I hadn't, but was willing to learn. He laughed at me. Quite loudly. Clearly I still have a lot to learn about the world.
The summer for me began at a Bob Dylan concert in Kilkenny, days after my Leaving Cert finished. It'll end, results known, enjoying Pearl Jam at the Reading Festival in England. It seems to me that music is what best articulates the freedom of a teenager's summer, with few boundaries and limitless possibilities. As Louis Armstrong once said, "what we play is life".