Music has always been – and will forever be – a huge part of my life.

From the time I was born in 1969, music was always around me. Dad, and Mum especially, liked listening to their favourite hits from the ‘50s and ‘60s. As a boy, this was the music I knew and mostly enjoyed. This was my introduction to artists like Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Johnny O’Keefe, The Supremes, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, The Rolling Stones.

Luckily, my parents didn’t just live in the past. When the radio wasn’t broadcasting the football or cricket, it was on commercial radio and I always enjoyed listening to the current popular music of the ‘70s as a boy, especially looking out the car window with the radio playing the latest hits.

Aside from always singing around the house, Mum also sang on the Rolf Harris Show. My twin uncles played in pop bands during the late-60s and early-70s with some success; one of them being flown from Australia to London to record some solo singles, written for him by Neil Sedaka. I remember watching them play as a little kid, loving the loud sound of the instruments and vocals.

I also loved singing and spent some primary school years in the school choir. But I grew tired of hymns and God, instead turning instead to a new religion in 1979. I was gripped by a rock phenomenon that controlled many other kids at the time: Kiss. Their November 1980 tour here in Australia shattered concert records and received an enormous amount of media and public attention. Although deemed too young to attend the shows, a permanent rock’n’roll scar was left on me.

As I entered high school in the early ‘80s, I was playing a lot of football and always listened to uplifting songs to get me pumped before games. My mates and I were still predominantly listening to chart music, with favourites including INXS, Split Enz, and Billy Joel. Seeing David Bowie live in November 1983 as my first concert gave me more of a taste and I started exploring his back catalogue.

Through my early teen years I took hold of the radio dial and started listening to the stations run by universities. This triggered my appetite for music as I was discovering alternative bands like The Cramps, Violent Femmes, The Cult, The Birthday Party, Alien Sex Fiend, and The Stooges. I used to like introducing my friends to these cool new bands.

Further varied listening then introduced me to all sorts of punk music and I really enjoyed early English giants The Clash, The Damned, Generation X and the Sex Pistols. While I loved the melodies of these bands’ songs, my testosterone levels pushed me to choose the bands with more snarl.

The Dead Kennedys were one such favourite that continued to expose me to different styles. Lots of American hardcore punk bands then occupied my turntable, like Channel 3, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Fear. So much so that in 1986 a friend and I were spending some late nights at a university radio station, playing hardcore and other punk music for listeners. This was my first taste of DJing.

I continued to enjoy exploring punk music listening to the more English punk bands like Subhumans, The Exploited, Angelic Upstarts, The Partisans, and the Clay Records trio: English Dogs, Discharge, and G.B.H. It was these latter three I liked the most, and when I sang in my first band called Barbary Corsairs in 1987, I belted-out some versions of our favourite songs from these bands. Coupled with punked Rose Tattoo, Devo and Sixto Rodriguez covers amongst our set of originals, we found ourselves frequently opening for local act Cremator.

Cremator were the first speed metal band in hometown Perth Australia, influenced by the likes of Slayer, Possessed, Dark Angel and Metallica. I found myself getting into this heavier music more and more. Slayer’s Reign In Blood and Metallica’s Master of Puppets wore thin on my turntable as well as discs from bands like Whiplash, Exodus, Anthrax, Onslaught, Death Angel and Death. I loved listening to these bands but after a while found myself preferring a slower pace with a heavier groove. Enter Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus, Trouble and some Led Zeppelin.

As 1988 came around, The Cult’s Electric was all over the night scene and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction was just breaking ground in Australia. It was not only the hard rock sound that grabbed me but the image style these bands had. My discovery of these bands and a re-discovery of Kiss had me exploring more hard rock and collecting many bootleg videos.

I was soon digging up vinyl on more of these hard rock bands. I remember buying import records of Skid Row, Faster Pussycat, Dangerous Toys and Poison, and turning many friends on to them. It was at this time I met the girl-that-became-my-wife through a mutual friend from the punk days. We clicked instantly and it was Sara that then introduced me to Aerosmith and Mötley Crüe – my favourite band of all time.

As the hard rock charts changed flavour in the nineties from hair metal to grunge, I continued to listen to keep across what was hot. While liking songs by Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Kyuss, Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, I generally preferred to spend time exploring more of the back catalogues of the artists that I liked most. At this point in my life, I knew what music I liked best.

I stopped collecting Kiss memorabilia and focused more attention on my favourite band Mötley Crüe. My first tattoos were inked in the nineties, drawing upon many rock'n'roll inspirations and influences for my own designs.

I got involved with Internet publishing in a professional capacity and produced my own website on Motley Crue for fun. The pages of my acclaimed rock website Chronological Crue have now been viewed more than 4 million times since 1997. Chronological Crue is considered THE definitive source of fact on the world’s most notorious rock band and its members – Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil & Mick Mars – and is used by TV networks, music industry journalists and critics as an invaluable reference.

Early success led to a variety of other Mötley-related music projects: I was honoured to write the liner notes inside Mötley's double live album, before contributing to the band's autobiography The Dirt that spent record-breaking time on the New York Times Bestseller List. I produced an award-winning Mötley tribute CD and have also now authored five books on the finest purveyors of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.

However, I didn’t just want to write about rock – I wanted to create and perform it as well. So I fronted my own hard rock band SkinInc. and as the nineties turned into the new millennium we had quickly earned minor success with national radio airplay, video airtime on Rage and Channel V, a track on an AC/DC tribute album distributed globally, as well as a spot on Australia's famous Big Day Out festival. The next step was to relocate to Australia’s rock capital Melbourne as we reviewed a proposed record deal. I made the move – the others didn’t.

I found myself in many of Melbourne’s cool bars and clubs thinking ‘why the hell can’t they play some good music in this place instead of all this doof-doof and dance-beats giving me a headache.’ Instead of putting another band together, I decided to entertain those who love rock by DJing instead.

In November 2003, I began DJing at Back In The Day on its opening night and quickly became 'the voice' of the club. As the resident DJ, I spent two solid years playing all the hard rock hits of the 70s and 80s for the punters, who lapped it up.

Keen to broaden my available play-list to incorporate today’s music and other classics from years gone by, I soon took up a regular residency at Cherry bar in AC/DC Lane, where I still enjoy driving the rock’n’roll party atmosphere on a Saturday night and get to draw on all the wonderful influences that have formed the soundtrack to my life and probably yours.

I've always loved the arts and entertainment as a creative outlet for my energy. I guess this little showcase website is another example of me producing something creative to hopefully entertain you in some way, plus giving you the opportunity to get to know me a little better, wherever you may be on this planet.

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