HOW IT ALL BEGAN

My name is Jon, and its been, ummm 38 years since I first heard the sort of music I now write about every day. It was the autumn of 1973 when I spent a weekend at my friend Tim's house. His elder brother who had a moped, sideburns and a blonde girlfriend called Christine who looked a bit like a goldfishk, played us this weird record called The Dark Side of the Moon and neither me or Tim had ever heard anything like it before. But it blew me away, and I realised for the firtst time that there was life outside the top 20.

Then the next spring one of the older boys on the school bus gave me a copy of something called The New Musical Express and I read it avidly from cover to cover. The nextr week I bought my own copy, and soon I was reading all of the music papers each week. Then one day in the summer term I read in the pages of the NME that a band called Gong were selling an album for 49p. Gosh I thought, and I went and bought it.

I had no idea what it was going to sound like. I vaguely thought that it might sound a bit like a Deep Purple album that someone had taped for me, and was totally confused by it when it didn't. But it was the only LP I owned and I had spent several weeks pocket money on it, so I persevered and grew to love it. And so, my life was changed for good.

Cos it was through my love of Gong that I met Rob Ayling in 1988, and if I hadn't met him and spent the next twenty years blagging free CDs off him until he finally decided that it would be better if he gave me a job, then I wouldn't be here now, and my world at least would be an entirely different thing.

Thank you for letting me share that...