Hi from Mark

[markmcclelland]

Hi

I kinda feel I'm cheating on another bass website I'm on right now. I spend a lot of time over there but have also heard a lot about Basschat recently so thought it was about time I got involved.

Been playing a little over 22 years, have been a professional and am having a damn good go at doing it full time now in London which I moved to just over a year ago from Madrid. Some great musical memories from there but absolutely sweet potato adams in the way of real opportunity. So London it had to be once I got the chance. I now live in Kentish Town, just a few minutes walk down the road from Camden town and have played quite a few pro gigs and done a ton of jam sessions meeting loads of cool guys for hang outs and contacts.

I first started to try to go pro on the Costa Blanca in Spain last year when I decided to go there with my bass during the summer rather than endure another summer camp somewhere in the Spanish countryside teaching English in 40+ degrees.

This experience led directly to me getting an office job in London and living in a caravan wedged between two lorries on an industrial estate. From there, following a brief period of homelessness, I wound my way to a bar job in Kentish town and right into the London music scene playing every jam I could and hooking up with my first London professional band and an aspiring singer/songwriter who'd worked with some of the best musicians around.

I diaried the whole thing, am continuing to do so and just this week it was first put up publicly - up to now, it's only been available on a subscription website - so it's a year behind the ongoing diaries give or take. The diaries are my journey to attempt to become a professional bass player and I've taken them through the Costa Blanca with Alicante, Benidorm and Javea, into Madrid and then onto London. There are some disasters, there are some triumphs and there are some bits you'll read with eyes through fingers. But hey, I'm still here and typing on Basschat right now as I type. As for getting online with them, I have to credit loyal reader Sybilline from the previously not mentioned website who prompted the idea and took on the task of administering the wordpress site and the process of putting the entries up. They're basically being posted in bigger segments than I wrote with breaks being made at appropriate times.

Well, I've had fun introducing myself. In fact, if you enjoyed reading this half as much as I enjoyed writing it then I enjoyed it twice as much as you.

All the bassed

Mark McClelland