The way I see it there is nothing original...

Contemporary music is, and always has been, derivative.

There is music in all of us. As the neural circuits - do it - they make sounds, fizz pop hum, and we dance, it is chaotic, it is the sound of life, the sound of life feeding upon itself in order to recreate itself, we and all the rest of what our senses tell us, are its manifestation, doing exactly the same thing, feeding upon ourselves in order to recreate ourselves, which, in its turn, makes a lot of noise, so much that we cannot hear the original sounds and even though we dance to the tune we remain deaf to the music. So we make our own
And every now and then someone gets close to the original and upon hearing it something happens with our emotions and we FEEL alive.

When I was 15 - 1962 - I heard Mississippi Fred McDowell and something happened, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Big Joe Williams, there was so much of it, Muddy waters, Howlin Wolf, Sleepy John Estes, there seemed to be an inexhaustible amount of this blues stuff and all of it was pure no shit beautiful, it made me feel alive, in touch with something inside. I been searching for that experience ever since. I was in Leeds looking for like-minded folk. Every one just wanted to get stoned and talk about it
I wanted to do it. I moved to Harrogate and found some people who wanted to do it. It became a band called Wally. We did it. We made music. It went around the world

I was a slide guitar player in Wally. I never set out to be a slide guitar player. I was a bass player in Wally. I never set out to be a bass player. All the time I was writing stuff - angsed prose - I was looking at the world and people around me. They seemed to know what they were doing and why. It looked like blind faith (good band) to me. I was compromising. I never wanted to compromise. I don't want to be Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson etc.

Got involved with other bands after Wally. Freddy Alva etc. etc. etc.
Too much compromise.
So started a business get a mortgage get a wife.
Inevitably it goes pear shaped so I think fuck it.
It's now or never.
Started playing.
But now
My own stuff-
Nothing is original
Can it be peculiar?
Should I have done this 30 years ago?
Could I have done this 30 years ago?
No
Now is the time

Here is the Band, sometime in the early 1990's ( left to right - Paul, Rick, Buck, Ben & Phil). I think the one with the mullet is at the Rum Runner/Old Tradition/Honest Lawyer/Iron Duke place but in the eighties so it is probably the Old Trad.