1.1 - d-Wizz History

1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)

1974-75
I entered the world in the Maternity Ward of the Royal Brisbane Women's Hospital, on Thursday, 1974-08-08. At that time, Mum & Dad lived in Salisbury, a suburb about 10km south of the CBD of Brisbane, Australia. After getting married in Sydney the previous year, Mum & Dad had decided to move to Queensland to raise their family because the costs of living were cheaper.

1976
I don't remember the house we lived in at Salisbury. In 1976-01, I was a toddler, and like most toddlers, I was very inquisitive. My curiosity landed me in hot water - quite literally. Grandma had just made a pot of fresh tea and had left it on the bench. I wanted to know what this thing was, so I reached up and grabbed it - and very soon I was howling! Mum rushed me to the hospital and they grafted skin from my legs and put it on my chin and down my right shoulder. I still have the scalding marks to this day where they grafted the skin on. And now I've got leg hair growing on my chin!

During the time Mum was in hospital giving birth to my brother Keith, we moved to Acacia Ridge, about 5km further south. Mum & Dad still live there today, and all five of us kids were raised there.

1977-79
I remember going to church and Sunday School in the late 70's with my brother. I remember my sister Caroline being born, but I don't think I realised at the time exactly what was going on - just that Mum went away for a few days. When my sister Sharon was ready to be born, Dad took all three of us up to see Mum in hospital and by that time I was old enough to understand why Mum was in hospital.
I didn't go to pre-school because Dad didn't believe it was necessary.

1980
My first day at school. I went to Watson Road Primary, which was about 100 metres around the block from where I was living. My teacher's name was Miss Yonkers. The only thing I remember from Grade 1 at school is when we had to sing our names - it might have even been on the first day...

1981
Mum and Dad wanted me to have a Christian education, so they enrolled me at Goodna Christian School for Year 2 in 1981. I remember going to the open day, probably the previous year. This is a private school, which at that time only went as far as Grade 6 - the school only being 6 years old when I first attended. Now known as Westside Christian College, it caters for students from Year 1 all the way to Year 12. Mum would drive about 2km to a nominated pickup point for the private bus which took us 15km west to the school. I remember the bus driver's name was Mrs. Zomer.

1982
My brother joined me at Goodna Christian School for his Year 1. I remember going to the XII Commonwealth Games Schools Open Day at QEII stadium with my class. We all got a train from Goodna station to Banoon, and then a bus took us to the stadium. I don't remember much about what went on at the stadium, but I do remember that the aluminium seats were hot! I think the date was 1982-09-30, but I'm not sure about that.

1983
Mum and Dad decided they could no longer afford to send me or my brother to Goodna Christian School, so we went back to Watson Road. My Year 4 teacher's name was Fay Stubbs.
1983 was also the year I made my very first recording. I recorded a theme from the TV for a show called "That's Incredible!" by holding the tape recorder near the TV speaker. I also discovered radio later that year while playing with Mum's tape recorder. I soon started recording stuff from it too. Dad did not like rock music and I had not heard any of this stuff before so I was fascinated by these new sounds. Until then, all we heard in the house was Dad's music, which was largely European instrumental music, Al Martino or Seekers.

1984
Year 5 at school - my teacher's name was Mrs. Glendenning. I didn't like her much because she smoked cigarettes and her breath smelt bad. My interest in radio and popular music grew exponentially. I started to collect my favourite songs on tapes so I could listen to them later. I had about 20 tapes by the end of the year.

1985
My Year 6 teacher was Mrs Meteyard. I remember going to her house for a party or something. She let me play one of my radio tapes on her stereo which was a big buzz for me at the time. I remember she had a 7" single of Billy Joel's "You're Only Human", which was one of my favourite songs of that year.

1986
Year 7 was tough for me. My teacher, Mr. Bell, was a strict disciplinarian and did not take too kindly to my consistently arriving 5 minutes late for school almost every day. I spent most of the first hour of my day writing lines. Mr. Bell gave all the pupils of his class a special code number between 1 and 100 which he would draw out of a box when he wanted to ask one of us a question. My number was 70, and that of my best friend, Thomas, was 33. About this time, I was becoming more and more interested in popular music. I religiously followed the Stereo 10 Hot 45 from 1800 every Wednesday night, and I went to the record shops to collect the chart. I've still got most of those charts. I also bought my first pre-recorded tape in 1986. It was a double compilation called "Jump & Jive". Later I bought "1986... Just For Kicks" as well.

1987
High school. I was in form class 8.3. I made my first compilation tape from my (by now) large collection of over 100 radio tapes. I called it "Blazing Hot '86/'87", and brought it to play at Year 8 camp. I remember spending a lot of hours at the typewriter typing all the lyrics out. I made a lot of mistakes and misinterpretations of those songs, being only 13 years old! Needless to say, the sound quality wasn't all that good either. For some reason I still can't explain, I seem to have missed a lot of music from 1987; in later years I discovered lots of music from this year that I didn't recognise.

1988
The biggest thing of 1988 was most definitely World Expo '88 (referred to by most locals as simply "Expo"). Mum had bought all of us Season Passes so we could go in there anytime we wanted. I (like lots of other schoolkids) did the "Home - School - Expo - Home" routine at least 3 days a week. I often came home after 2200 hrs. It was a lot of fun. I made another tape to play when I went to Expo - it was called "Stereo Spectacular '88", because almost every song was recorded from FM radio (Stereo 10 was an AM station [1008kHz] - although AM Stereo was introduced on 1985-02-01, my radio was incapable of receiving a stereo AM signal, so all these recordings were mono). I went to the Queensland pavilion and put a "Queensland" stamp on the tape inlay sheet. At school, I was in form class 9.1.

1989
My interest in chartology (the study of music charts) really gained significant momentum in 1989. I think I still have (somewhere) a folder with all the ARIA (Australian Record Industry Association) charts for the year in it, collected every week at a record shop.

At school, Thomas and I were in the same form class for the first time; we were in 10.3. My grades for Year 10 were my worst for high school probably because I was chatting with Thomas too much. I got my first and only "D" for Maths that year. Interestingly, Thomas had a very good Year 10 academically. Could there have been a connection?

1990
Into senior high school, which meant a change in uniform from green shirt to yellow. This is also the year I got very serious with music stuff, especially chartology. I had made a phone call to ARIA near the end of 1989 and spoken with Ian Wallace, the chart manager. He had told me there was a new report starting in 1990, so I subscribed to it. The ARIA Report, delivered straight to my mailbox every Thursday for only $4 a week was a chartologists' weekly update on the world of popular music in Australia. It contained not a Top 50 (as available from record shops), but the Top 100 singles and albums, and international charts, plus new release information and heaps of other interesting stuff as well. I have found this info very useful, even today. The big bonus was that I got the chart before the weekend video clip shows, so I knew exactly what was coming up when. After a while, I started showing it to other people at school, and soon after that, every Friday morning, my classmates would test my memory of the singles chart by reading the This Week (TW), Last Week (LW), Time In (TI) and High Position (HP) to me and I would recite the Title, Artist and Catalogue Number info.
Also in 1990, I began to take an interest in membranophonics, although I don't think I took it seriously at the time. But I do remember tapping two pens on the study desk in my bedroom - two songs I often played along with were Ben Liebrand's Rough n' Ready remix of "Black Betty", by Ram Jam, and the DNA remix of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner".
I was watching Video Hits one morning and saw the clip for "Pacific" by 808 State. It quickly became my favourite song. I had trouble tracking it down because it only reached #82 on the chart. But I eventually found out how to get a copy, and I picked it up on 1990-08-08, my 16th birthday. That cassette is very, very worn now! And, yes, "Pacific" is still my favourite song of all time.


1.1.2 - Part II (1991 - 2002)

1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 - d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters

0 - Home Page