I Dreamed of Pop Stardom

The story of my music career

Making friends with music. Trujillo, Peru, June 2004

Mum sang in bars. She had a big songbook of pub favorites and practiced while my sister and I ran up and down the hallway, laughing and singing along.

Dad played the guitar. He could get any bonfire charged up with his huge repertoire of hits from the 60s and 70s.

Road trips were opportunities to put together our own arrangements of the songs we loved. Harmonies and back-up vocals to Beatles and Elvis songs.

School choir was awesome. I loved the feeling of notes that rolled on top of one another, and that vibration when they fit together just right.

Our primary school had a dedicated and talented music teacher called Mr Holland and everyone learned the recorder, which I loved and embraced. Could play the fast bit in 3 Blind Mice perfectly. And I did, over and over again, which must have been an absolute joy to my parents and siblings.

When I got to high school, we could choose a proper instrument and I took up the trombone. Not the most convenient choice considering I had to take two buses to school, but there were no spots left for the trumpet. It turned out to be a blessing because when I missed out on roles in the school musicals, I was always welcome in the orchestra. Trombone players were scarce.

I made friends with the other trombone players (Hi Faith!) and joined the school stage band, brass ensemble, and symphonic band. I got one of only nine spots for private singing lessons, and joined the chamber voices as an alto. I went to rehearsals before school, at recess and lunchtime, and after school. I played in the Melbourne Youth Symphonic Band on Saturday mornings.

Music was ‘my thing’. Formative and fun.

When high school ended, I explored options to study music in the UK, but it was too expensive as a non-resident. I applied for and was accepted to a Bachelor of Performing Arts at Monash University in Melbourne.

But then I deferred my place for a year and skipped off to Europe.

At the end of the following year, I was living in Paris, sans trombone. I had spent many months traveling and then working and all the while thinking about what I wanted to do with my life.

And music wasn’t it.

Not because I didn’t love it, I did. But because in my heart of hearts, I didn’t think I was good enough. At school, I just had to turn up. But I didn’t get roles on stage, the play I wrote for a house competition came last by miles, and I struggled to remember scales. I wasn’t a natural and I knew it. Pursuing music would be a hard slog with no guarantee of reward.

Staring at the Parisian sky through the window in the sloping ceiling of my attic apartment, I thought hard about what university was for. Was it for making myself employable? Perhaps, but more importantly, it was my last chance to be in an environment where learning was the ultimate goal and where handing in set work was sufficient to succeed. I decided it was an opportunity to absorb as much information about the world as possible and see what called me.

I reapplied, changing my preferences for combinations of Arts, Science, and Computer Science and eventually enrolled in Arts/Science at Monash University, a course with no pre-requisite subjects and the curriculum of practically the entire university to choose from.

I picked subjects as broad and fundamentally interesting as I could, from maths, that clashed with my natural ability, to Spanish, that would build on my French, where I had a head start, since I was almost fluent already, as well as biology and philosophy, that were both somewhere in between.

But I also picked up a guitar.

The thing about the guitar is that it’s pretty easy to get to a point where you can play whole songs and sing along. Just like my dad, I’m good at remembering lyrics and loads of songs have only 3 or 4 repeating chords. Try it. Look up Zombie or Creep or What’s Up. I knew quite a few chords thanks to Mum teaching me as a kid, and the more I played, the more I chose songs that had different picking patterns and more complicated structures. I went to open mic nights and picked up the occasional gig through friends.

One day, for some reason I can’t remember, I thought I’d have a go at writing a song. Just to see if I could. I played some typical chord progression and started writing down whatever words popped into my head. As it flowed out of me, a meaning started to emerge around my experiences over the past couple of years, particularly when I lived in Paris. A few lines in, I realised it was about one night stands.

I will pop a recording and the lyrics at the bottom of this post if you’re interested. Yes, it has too many key and time changes, but don’t be too harsh, remember this was the first song I ever wrote.

And anyway, I liked it. I called it “Conquest”.

A friend came to visit and I played it for her. Afterwards, she laughed and said she was relieved she could honestly say she liked it. I was relieved too.

I started writing songs with a vengeance. Suddenly, I had a new way to process things that were going on in my life.

My housemate had a psychotic episode and I wrote a song about that. I went to the psych ward and played it to him while his eyes flittered around, distracted and confused. That night, he ran away from the hospital and went home.

I wrote a song about my dad’s suicide.

I wrote about going clubbing (Drugs ‘r’ bad, m’kay?) and about my philosophy on life (Happy).

I got hooked on what I call the ‘creativity high’. When you make something out of nothing and it feels like it comes from somewhere else.

In my third year at uni, I went on exchange to South America. Just like when I’d gone to Europe as a naïve and idealistic youth, I went alone, but this time I had a friend: my trusty guitar.

It was a pain to carry on endless planes and trains and buses, but it gave me something much more valuable. A way to communicate.

Being surrounded by all that gorgeous latin music gave me plenty of material to learn and broaden my skills. With no song books or apps to use (it was 2003), I tried figuring out the chords to Shakira and Bacilos from listening to CDs, and found that it was pretty easy and very satisfying. Almost as much as writing my own songs.

After the two semesters at La Pontíficia Universidad Católica de Chile, I took six months leave of absence from uni to travel from one end of the continent to the other. Having the instrument helped me make friends and filled in the gaps while I was learning the languages. Music spoke to everyone.

A friendly guy on a bus in Brazil invited me back to his place, and later got me an interview on Brazilian radio. One of the producers told me I would be successful if I stayed in Rio de Janeiro, but I moved on. You want to know the real reason? I’ve never admitted this, but it was because the friendly guy was too hot. I couldn’t live in the same city as him and not fall for him and I knew it.

Could you share a city with this and not wind up with a broken heart on a weekly basis? It wasn’t just the smokin’ body and that jawline - he was a genuinely nice guy!

I went north. I spent around two weeks without sleeping in the same place twice, moving from cities to overnight buses to multi-day hikes without breaks.

I finally landed just outside a remote city called Juazeiro, where I stayed on a project with young people who were learning farming techniques to carry back to their homes, scattered around the backcountry. Each evening, I gave free English classes and whenever someone asked, I pulled out my guitar and sang a few tunes. I learned songs that they could sing along to in Portuguese and I learned to dance the forró.

After traveling through every country with a coastline on the continent, I arrived back in Santiago and soon after, flew home to Australia to finish my final two years of uni. I wrote more songs and learned more covers. I was probably a bit precious about my songs. I wanted them all to be real so I decided to record them for posterity.

I organised to sing them all live and record the performance.

I would make an album. Cheaply. I asked a friend to mix and master it and found a cheap place to print them. Another friend was into photography and said she’d be happy to do the artwork. Said I could do whatever I wanted.

Without much reflection, I said I wanted to paint my naked body as a rainbow and stand in front of a rainbow backdrop. To symbolize how my music was naked and raw, straight from my heart and recorded live, just me and my guitar.

I’ll put the cover in a paid post. Subscribe to see it!

I took it to all the indie record stores and put it on the shelves, sent it to distributors, and booked myself into gigs.

And then the big one. I graduated university and had a long summer stretching out before me. I decided to take myself on tour around Australia.

TO BE CONTINUED

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CONQUEST
by Shoni

Verse 1 
We’re here, it’s clear,
I’m glad it’s so
I feel unreal
But it don’t show
It’s so much easier when I’m all alone
But I know that just can’t go on

Chorus
I’d like to be with you, but I know what this could do
I don’t feel any way but you could make me say
That you’re the only you and I’m the only me
And we could find the truth eventually

Verse 2
Tonight, it’s right
We’re feeling warm
Don’t wait, it’s late
Tomorrow morn
We’ll stop pretending and get on with our day
And so it goes in the same way

[Chorus]

Bridge
No need to wait, there’s no too late
You’re all the same, it’s just a game
Just look at me and I will smile and tell you it was worth the while
x2

Verse 3
It’s true that you
Are only one
Of few who too
Could make me come
I won’t call you if you don’t call me
I know, just go
We’ll wait and see

Bridge to end
No need to wait….