Alpha_Alternative_School_1972–2012-Yumpu

Then I was in an acci dent in 1978, I got run over by a car, and I spent two
years in bed. So I did a lot of gui tar play ing in those two years. When that
was all done I got into a band with some friends. We were called Slightly
Dam aged, we did psy che delic punk rock. After that I moved on and got
a rep u ta tion as a good gui tar player, so other bands would hire me, and
I did some ses sion work.
When I was 18 my com puter skills landed me a great job at Col oriza tion,
doing ani ma tion on a Dub ner com puter. I was also in a band called Neon
Rome, and I was accepted to the Fac ulty of Music at U of T, so I had to
decide what I was going to do. I decided to work with Neon Rome. We were
going to be signed to Vir gin Records, and Bruce McDonald’s first film was
about us. We had a treat ment and every thing, and it was all ready to go,
and then our singer decided that he was going to take a vow of silence for
a cou ple of years, and basi cally we didn’t do the movie and the band fell
apart. It was very sad. Our singer Neal’s lit tle brother’s band ended up doing
the movie, and it won the first prize for the film fes ti val, and he went on to
become very suc cess ful, and our band would have gone on to be very success
ful if our record had come out and our movie had come out. But things
hap pen for a rea son, and you can’t let it get you down. I kept doing my
job—I decided that being a musi cian wasn’t the life that I wanted, I didn’t
want to travel all the time and be poor, I wanted some stability.
I was still work ing at Col oriza tion, and I learned a lot about com put ers and
ani ma tion, and I man aged to get a job at Canada A.M. doing the weather
graph ics. Since then I’ve worked mostly in tele vi sion and sports, so it all fit
together, what I learned at school and what I ended up doing. Ani ma tion
is what I do now. I have worked as an art direc tor, cre ative direc tor, and
man ager. I had a band called Crock star, and we broke up around 2003, but
we still get together, and we play shows quite a bit. In Crock star I write the
songs and I sing them, and I play the gui tar and the har mon ica some times,
and once in a while I play the piano. I also play the vio lin, the man dolin,
and the accor dion, but I don’t do that in the band.
The most impor tant les son of ALPHA was love. So many won der ful Alpha
peo ple taught me to love. A John Lennon quote says it all for me: “There
are two basic moti vat ing forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull
back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with
pas sion, excite ment, and accep tance. We need to learn to love our selves
first, in all our glory and our imper fec tions. If we can not love our selves,
we can not fully open to our abil ity to love oth ers or our poten tial to create.
Evo lu tion and all hopes for a bet ter world rest in the fear less ness and
open-hearted vision of peo ple who embrace life.”
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