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by Jackie Musick
Born John Grech and raised in Melton on the western outskirts of Melbourne, John began teaching myself to play guitar and write songs from the age of 12. For John music has always been as much a part of life as eating and breathing. My song-writing has ranged from Rock, Pop, and Gospel to Country and back again.
John's earliest musical influences where found in his mother's record collection. These included the likes of The Beatles, Elvis, The Shadows, Johnny Cash and Johnny O'Keefe.
Learning to play guitar at the age of 12, John began by to play songs by The Beatles and Elvis, trying to emulate their style in his own early songwriting.
He soon discovered artists such as Icehouse, Cliff Richard, Kiss, Split Enz, Gary Numan, David Bowie and Lou Reed. He was attracted to the sounds that these artists delivered as varied as they sounded.
Over the next few years, John became involved in the youth music group of his home church, plus becoming involved in playing in several garage bands. Playing at youth events and various community and private events. Not being able to imagine my surname on a record cover, he did what so many musicians have done over the years and adopted John Manly as a performing – stage name.
In 1985 John recorded his first demo tape which consisted of four songs, including a song called "Without Jesus By My Side". A song which John had performed on a regular basis in his home church. This was followed by another two song demo in 1986.
In the next couple of years John had discovered the music of American Christian Rock legends such as David Meece, Rick Cua and Kenny Marks, amongst others.
At a Rick Cua concert in Melbourne in 1988, John had the opportunity to meet with him after the show, which blew john away. After a brief chat and prayer, John asked for Rick's autograph, Rick added a Bible reference with his autograph. Mark 8:38. When John got home and read the verses, it was to determine what he would be doing with his music for the next period of his life.
In October 1990 John put together a cassette-single; "I'm A Rebel". Sending it out to various community radio stations around Melbourne, which resulted in it receiving steady airplay on several of Melbourne's community radio stations, including 3WRB and 3RIM. Two more cassette singles followed "I'm A Rebel". "Get Wise" (July 1991) and "With Love" (April 1994) that feature Merelyn and David Carter (Carter & Carter) on backing vocals and guitar respectively.
During this period John performed in various churches, youth groups, coffee shops, retirement homes and other community events in and around Melbourne. While not having recorded any new material during the time, John was always adding new songs to his live set, which he performed acoustically.
For the later part of the 90's John stepped away from music, concentrating on personal areas of his life, dealing with both a marriage breakdown and a nervous breakdown. It was during this time, when he began writing country songs, where he focused on the stories in the songs. It was these songs that were like a breath of fresh air to him.
In early 2006, while John was living in Hervey Bay, Queensland, he was encouraged to do something with the country songs he had written. John decided to have a go at country music, including several covers from the likes of Lee Kernaghan, George Strait, Adam Brand and Troy Cassar-Daley. It was his first live performances front of an audience in a decade. These were basically small open mic gigs, where He’d do a small 5-6 song set.
John had a new determination and passion with these new songs which were back to the basics of a single voice and guitar. The country songs were about life, the good, the bad, the ugly and at times the humorous.
In late April 2007, John put together a 4 track demo CD, "Out of the City", containing basic vocal / acoustic guitar arrangements. These tracks received positive comments from around the world via his MySpace page. These came from both the public and other country artists, along with some airplay on a handful of Internet based radio stations.
Also, around this time John was doing a music course at TAFE to obtain a Certificate IV in Contemporary Music. The course covered songwriting, recording, music business, production, music theory and live performance. While doing this course he dusted off some old songs he'd written in the late 90's for the recording and production components.
Putting the resulting recordings on MySpace as a side project. This side project was christened "Rhythmic Tide." These were tracks such as "Wire and Walls" and "Pages of Dusty Old Memories". Due to the reactions to these tracks, in late June 2007, under the name of Rhythmic Tide, John released the debut EP called "Wire and Walls."
The "Wire and Walls" EP was followed by a single "Depths of Insanity" in (September 2007) and the full length album "Mind Fragments" (October 2007). May 2008, again under the Rhythmic Tide banner, John released a four track instrumental EP titled "Sonic Interlude".
Over the next 12 months John wrote another album worth of instrumental tracks, which was released in June 2009, titled "The Color of Blue."
Now in October 2009, John has taken yet another twist in his always changing musical life and is currently writing new material and dusting off some of his older songs to return to performing and recording Christian Pop/Rock songs.
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