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	<title>A short riff, with overdone comments</title>
	<authors>Jimmy O'Regan</authors>
	<copyright>Copyright 2004 by Jimmy O'Regan</copyright>
	<comments>\section{The Riff}

Another Slayer sounding riff - so sue me. My friend Maurice gave me a loan of \textit{``Soundtrack to the Apocalypse''} yesterday, so it's to be expected :-)

\section{Lengthy Comments}

While I'm rabbiting on, I'm going to feel free to continue. GuitarPro has a problem with really lengthy comments, so I'm going to see if Songwrite has a similar problem.

Having discovered it's possible to use a certain amount of \TeX{} formatting in Songwrite as well, I've redone quite a lot of this.

\section{Reminiscences}

Thinking back, it's strange to me that I ended up getting into Slayer - I used to be afraid to listen to them because of their Satanic image, and at one stage I was a pretty devout Catholic (I was an altar boy).

\subsection{Musical beginnings}

When I got into music first,\footnote{Actually listening to albums, not just staring at MTV. Though I did like Depeche Mode, Snoop Dogg, The Cure etc then} when I was 14, it was grunge. Nirvana first. (\textit{``Nevermind''} was the first album I bought, on my 15th birthday. I rushed to my grandparents (my mother had taken my sisters to my aunt's on holidays), put the tape in the player, and gasped in horror as the machine ate the tape). Then Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Therapy? Smashing Pumpkins.
I had been afraid to listen to metal, because the guys around my area who listened to metal were the guys who used to push me around when I was a kid, and were basically stupid people\footnote{To this day, more than a decade later, there is still a piece of grafitti in my area, saying ``Supultura'' in 5 feet tall letters}. So I got into grunge, and punk, then into hardcore. I listened to some Metallica - the friend who got me into grunge taped \textit{``Siamese Dream''} for me, and put ``One'' at the end of the tape. (Besides, \textbf{everyone} knew the ``Black Album'', right?)
My cousin tried to get me into metal, and did eventually, when he played Sepultura's \textit{``Chaos A.D.''} for me. All I'd known about them before that was that their singer grunted, but hearing the album was pretty much a hardcore punk record got me into it. After that, I started to listen to more metal on the 2FM ``Metal Show'' every Sunday - Morbid Angel etc.
It was a slow progress into metal - I liked Sepultura, Metallica, Pantera and Machine Head, but still preferred punk. I'd heard ``Gemini'' by Slayer, but didn't think much of it. I was given a loan of the first 5 Megadeth albums (on vinyl!!! And I still have them, come to think... Delroy, my son's uncle, and owner of these records \textbf{has} asked for them back, but never came for them), but was put off by the massive amounts of guitar wank\{footnote{``Hangar 18'' in particular, now one of my favourite songs}, as well as their terrible cover of ``Anarchy in the UK'', but I got into them eventually.
While secondary school was a rich time for music for me, with friends listening to Radiohead to Machine Head, Rage Against the Machine to the Prodigy, Green Day and Carcass, Helmet and Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg and Pearl Jam\footnote{Our musical tastes were broadened by soundtracks mostly, esp. for ``The Crow'', ``Judgement Night''. ``Spawn'' came a bit too late, IIRC}; college was a relatively barren time. (Althought I did find \textit{``Master of Puppets''} in the digs I was staying in - one of the woman, Maura's sons\footnote{Mark, whose girlfriend found me after my second time drinking in college, and the first time drinking after my son's mother drumped me. Though my friend Dave had left me passed out on my bed, I had decided to go to the toilet during the night, and decided the distance across the hall was too great, and curled up under the bath mat. After checking my breath with a mirror to make sure I was still alive, he left me there, cause I was dead weight :)} had been a huge metal fan, but decided to get into club music instead, and started DJing. I was told that had I been there a month earlier, I could have been given his whole record collection, instead of some Italian dude getting them). I isolated myself pretty well in the first month by blasting metal at every available opportunity (I'd discovered Korn in my first week - I \textbf{was} still a teenager), and though my friend (``Big'') Martin got me into some great stuff like Ministry and System of a Down, and Paul got me into Busta Rhymes, I liked most of my friends \textbf{despite} their tastes in music. In my last year though, my friend Keith got me back into metal by telling me about Slipknot. 

I'd pretty much given up on guitar in college. I used to play constantly, from Christmas 94 when my parents bought me my first guitar onwards. I presumed that they couldn't afford to get me lessons, but they gave me a book of chords with the guitar. 
I'm happy to this day that I started playing on that little Spanish guitar, with it's unbelievably high action and chasm between strings - it made me feel all the more defiant about playing; the burst blisters on my fingertips being a badge of pride.
It got better when I was given an electric guitar for my next birthday, with one of those tiny amps that come with a belt-clip. (My uncle Mick got it on my parent's behalf, and as far as I remember, wouldn't take their money - he nicked it from his brother, I think). A few months after I got the electric, Joe got interested in playing guitar. Partly because the electric guitar was more noisy, easier to play, and more like the sound of the music he liked (just Nirvana, Therapy? and RATM then - I remember him throwing my NIN tapes out the window\footnote{...which he then started jumping on, when he found it unharmed on the ground}).
Another part is, though I doubt he'd admit it, Joe has always followed me into doing things, once I'd stuck at them long enough to show they were worth doing. (It's probably down my enthusiasm\footnote{In case you're quite unobservant, I can go on at length about some things}).
Joe knew about me, John and Jimmy wanting to start a band, and knowing that we wanted a bass player, always spent more time learning bass lines than riffs. Now, around 9 years later, Joe is acknowledged as the best (or one of, at least) bass player in this town. Joe goes on at length about my guitar playing to people\footnote{My biggest fan, bless!}, in the hope that he can get me into one of his bands, but it never works. :(
Saying I didn't have any lessons isn't strictly true. My uncle Jim taught me how to tune the guitar, and told me to stick to the simple chords on the first few pages of the book. Paul Cahill taught me hammer-ons and pull-offs, power chords and my first song (Zombie by the Cranberries. Yuck) and a temp teacher at school showed me the E-Minor pentatonic. All in all, I think I was shown as much as I showed Joe.

I was pretty na\"ive in my first few years of playing guitar - I thought I had to learn \textbf{all} the chords in the book, and every time I saw something done on tv or in a magazine I was convinced that you had to be able to do it to call yourself a guitarist. 

\subsection{A band}

Now, the reason I'd wanted to play guitar in the first place was because of my friend Jimmy Doyle. He used to write lyrics, and one day while reading through some of them I started to hear music for them, so I annoyed my parents constantly until I got a guitar. A few months later, the other friend in out little trio, John, got a guitar, and the two of us started to push each other.
I gave the guys a tape with about 70 riffs on it, just each riff played once - intro, verse, chorus, bridge, next. It was all punky stuff - I had some acoustic stuff, but since my guitar only had the low E, A and B strings left I could only manage the punk and grungy stuff. John's first tape "Tomo the Demo" followed, and had the songs arranged from start to finish, with more variation. My next tape did the same, his was more punky. I'd play weird noises, he'd have weird timing changes and rhythms; next time round vice versa. I'd play whole riffs in harmonics, then he would; he'd play riffs with a lot of drones, then I would.
We three tried to start a band, but no-one we knew could afford a bass or drums. We managed to get to practise with a whole band in 2002, but John went to work in Dublin, Jimmy went back to college in Waterford. They missed our last practise - Jimmy's daughter Skye was born that day, John was gone to a job interview. That lead to me, my brother Joe (bass) and our neighbour Dan (drums) trying to keep going as a three piece, but we never got past the practise stage. 
We got on great for a while, when we were mainly influenced by RATM and Helmet, but after hearing my friend Trev's band Epitaph play, I got totally into Slayer, and Joe would never agree to fast tempos or timing changes, so that band has been on hiatus for about a year. (It didn't help that Joe quit his job and sold his drum kit, which Dan had been using)

So to come to an ending here... Songwrite doesn't have a problem with comments that are way too long for the health of the average reader.

I feel like I should have a thanks list here :)
You know, the metal type that goes
Thanks to: Jimmy ``Tico'' Doyle (``Bleah!''), John ``Bubbles'' ``Captain Sensible'' Stokes, Trevor Slattery (``I am nature's greatest miracle!''), Rhona Dorney, Maurice ``Party Boy'' Walsh (``Needless to say, he emptied his bowels''), Richie ``I'm HUGE'' Norris, Mark ``Chuck'' Norris, Billy Noble, Kenny Noble, Lorraine Shanahan ``He will have his come-uppance'', ``Big'' Martin Smith, Martin ``Milkshake'' O'Sullivan (``WHEN you knock someone down, tissue type them - you'll need the liver'', ``I'd ram her over and bend it into her'')  \footnote{I'm thanking him despite the fact that he's a Celine Dion fan}, Mark Sheedy, Eoin Noonan, Cliona N\'i Riabhaigh, Paul Power, Keith ``Beeotch'' Kennedy, Philip ``Crypty'' O'Brien, Shane ``Morris'' O'Neill, Dave ``Moneygrabber'' Burke, Mary O'Sullivan, The Bastards (Dermot, Joe, Dave, Trev, Audrey, Edel), Everyone who worked at Websters (esp. Olivia, Keith, Alan and Leo) except Shane, everyone at McLoughneys (esp. Keith and Brendan) except Rory, Paddy ``In order!'' Croke, Joe Cleary, Liam Brett, Willy ``Lobes'' Hackett, Chris Fogarty, Peter Fogarty, Christine Fairbrother.

No, really, I am done now.</comments>
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