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Steveről néhány szó alább, majd az zenei workshophoz szánt gondolatai.

Steve started his professional music career as the singer and principle songwriter in The 25th of May. Prior to that he was a sound engineer in Pinball Studios Liverpool. They recorded their first album 'Lenin and McCarthy in 1992 with Arista Records and Warner Chappell music publishing. The band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Russia and New York (touring with other acts such as the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy.
After leaving Arista the band Steve had a number of releases on the UK indie label Copasetic. In 1994 he was employed as a DJ in Liverpool's new radio station Crash FM. In 1995 he formed a new band Manbreak which signed to Bjork's One Little Indian label in UK and Almo Sounds in USA and Rondor Music Publishing. The band toured throughout the US in 1997 promoting their album Come and See. The majority of the venues they played, supporting the US band LIve, were in excess 12 000 capacity.

A number of songs from the album were used in various Hollywood movies most notably Mortal Combat 2. In 1999-2000 Manbreak recorded their second album in New Jersey with the Jazz/Funk producer Bill Laswell. In the same year Steve was invited to Miles Copeland's (one time manager of the Police) Printempts de Troubadours in France. The event brought together various rock and pop luminaries such as John Bon Jovi, Timothy B Smidt (the Eagles), Jim Valens and Dominic Miller (Sting's guitarist). The event gave Steve the opportunity of collaborating on 8 songs one of which was recorded by K D Lang.

In 2001 he relocated to Barcelona Spain and continued writing and recording. Steve also worked as a freelance scout for the Graham Hatch the one time owner of 2Dance Record's in Portugal. In 2002 he released a dance recorded with the same label under the name of Omaha. In 2003 he returned to the UK and wrote an album for the Anglo-French singer Georgia Hardinge. The first single Come To Me was released in the UK, Poland, Russia, Spain and Israel.

In 2004 he enrolled on the Music Industries Masters Degree at the Institute of Popular Music the University of Liverpool. He successfully completed his Masters in in November 2005. In Jan 2006 Steve was asked by the University to conduct seminar classes for undergraduates on the Popular Music degree course. The topics range from Adorno, Post-Structuralism, Reception Theory and the Recording Industry.

Since October 2007 he has been continuing his academic research for my PhD which is investigating why certain second albums by UK artists fail to achieve the commercial success of the first.

He has also been writing and performing a one-man musical called Vote Richmon which is, ostensibly a musical performance in the form of a political rally.

Az április 24-25-én zajló workshop vezérmotívumai:

"Imitation is the means not the end........those who think that to learn technique is the fetter of genius, have no genius at all"

Sir Joshua Reynolds. Discourses On Art.

Popular music is a syntactical system with a specific grammar. Its rules are self-evident if one spends the time to learn them. Modality and its relationship to harmony is central to the architecture of competent songwriting. Balance is central to the overall schema. Great lyrics don't always get housed in great songs. The voice is the unique selling-point, an audience is seldom fooled for too long.

Social context and cultural relevance is imperative to an audience and industry that prides itself on the always new while valorizing the old masters. One has to know the history of the language to communicate it effectively.

Fordism has more in common with great pop than the rock propagandists care to admit. Lou Reed was a staff writer for the sound-alike record label Pickwicks before founding the Velvet Underground.

In popular music, the recording and publishing industry does not have a language for describing the musical object. For the artist in their employ it can't even guarantee you'll be more skilled when you leave them, than when you first met them.

Most record producers are not songsmiths, they are sound engineers looking for their next meal.