Category: Corey Stewart

By on 1 Comment

I remember Sting’s Bring On The Night concert as it was yesterday…

A group of five of us stayed over a mates place (who lived close to the venue) the night before to ensure that we got a good position in the queue. As it turned out, at 8am the next day we were the second group in the queue.

The whole day was full of us taking in turns going into the city and generally hanging out listening to music on one of those huge cassette players (now I’m showing my age here). The air of anticipation became thicker and thicker the closer we got to showtime.

When the gates eventually opened there was a mad rush to the front. I managed to position myself front and centre of the stage… It couldn’t get any better than that!

Seminal Aussie band Hunters and Collectors were the support act for that night and they had just released their landmark album “Human Frailty” that same year. They were fantastic but of course all eyes and ears were waiting for the main act.

When it was time for Sting to start there was a roar of applause from the capacity crowd and by this time anyone who was sitting on the ground were standing.

First to appear on stage was drummer Omar Hakim who kicked things off with an incredible drum solo that seemed to last forever but it was probably around 10 minutes at the most.

WOW!

Then, Sting and the rest of band graced the Memorial Drive stage and proceeded to blow everybody away for the next 2 hours.

For me, this concert represented the closest thing I have come to a religious experience and after the final note was played I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and today, I’m still doing it.

Below is an example of what I experienced that night. The song is a medley of Bring On The Night and When The World Is Running Down from the Bring On The Night live album. Enjoy.

What was your first concert experience and how did it affect you? Let me know, I’d love to hear about it

Peace,

Corey 🙂

By on

As a rule, I try not to watch that much television but one of my favourite TV programs going around is RockWiz on SBS.

On the show, every participant on the program is asked one of two questions as part of their introduction.

1. What was the first record you ever bought (or was bought for you)?
2. What was the first concert you ever went to?

Today I’m going to answer the first question regarding my first record… It was Jeff Wayne’s “War Of The Worlds”

My Aunty Pat (Mum’s sister) got the double LP for me for my 9th birthday because every time I went over to her place I would take her copy of War Of The Worlds and put on some headphones and spend all night night listening to it over and over and over again while looking through the extensive album notes and pictures.

I still have the album even now, it’s still a treasured part of my music collection.

The album captured my imagination plus it turned me on to the concept of modern orchestral music even though I didn’t start studying music until I got into high school.

Here’s a video of my favourite songs from the album “Forever Autumn” performed by Justin Hayward (Moody Blues) and narrated by the great Richard Burton.

I’ve got to say… Richard Burton still has the best speaking voice EVER.

What was the first record you ever purchased (or was bought for you) and how did it affect you? Let me know, I’d love to hear about it.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

By on

So far the merging of all of my external songwriting and music business content into Corey Stewart Online has been a successful exercise but there have been many times throughout this merging process though that I’ve asked myself the question, “Why do I blog?”

Why do I even bother sometimes with this urge to write down my thoughts and activity into my blog and then share that information with the rest of the world?

Well, I blog for a variety of reasons…

  • To help me remember what I’ve done
  • To reach out, communicate and collaborate with others
  • To fully engage in my love of writing and language
  • To empty all the stuff that accumulates in my head
  • To help me learn new things more effectively
  • To make my life journey less of a lonely one
  • To build communities of like minded individuals
  • To become more mindful of what I do in life
  • To help me become a better person

I‘m not pretending to be an expert on anything that I write about here. All I’m really doing is writing about what I know, what I’ve experienced and what I’ve learnt along the way in my chosen fields of passion and interest.

In an earlier post, I made a decision recently to become more mindful of my life and to stop living on autopilot. Creating Corey Stewart Online is the best way I can think of to slow my life down enough to examine what I do through writing it down and then having the option of publishing it online.

This blog is the most literal way I can think of to demonstrate my willingness to be mindful plus, writing things down is the best way for me to learn new things more effectively.

At the end of the day, Corey Stewart Online is all about me creating a community of like minded individuals who can come together, get to know each other through common interests and to help one another out on our respective individual paths.

Plus, if I can interest a few of you in checking out my music along the way that would be awesome too.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

By on

Hi there,

My name is Corey Stewart and I’m a singer/songwriter/musician/blogger from Australia.

I’ve been writing, recording and playing music for over 30 years and in that time I’ve seen a lot of changes in the music industry especially in the way that musicians such as myself get their product out to a wider audience.

When I first started on my musical journey it was still a really big deal to independently release your own material. The reason being that, the only way to “make it” was to send out lots of demos and hope to get signed to a record label.

Way back then, being an independent musician wasn’t really a viable option financially. There were no broadcast quality home studios in those days so if you wanted to record independently you needed to have a fair bit of money behind you.

Record labels rules the airwaves and independence was only afforded to a very few artists.

Fast forward to today, especially with the internet being a huge influence on society as a whole, the tables seemed to have turned. Home studios are everywhere, distribution of music is much easier to manage and putting out a CD independently is now the done thing for bands and artists.

It’s almost like releasing an independent CD is a right of passage for musicians these days. In fact I released my own CD “Seeing Stars” in 2012 and still have plenty of physical copies of it available (as with most artists who release an independent CD).

However, in spite of it all, this is where my Grand Experiment begins.

You see, since 2000 I have been fascinated and excited about the possibilities for musicians who market themselves online and it’s been since 2004 that I’ve dabbled in creating and maintaining a songwriting and a music industry blog which has enabled me to branch out my experiences to include web development and online marketing.

Over the last few years I have been wondering if it’s really possible to have some sort of success as a singer/songwriter/musician through using the internet and open source software.

I’ve been doing some research and I realise that my ideas are not necessarily treading over virgin territory. Artists such as Brad Sucks, Scott Andrew, Jonathon Coulton, Andy Othling and Ben Walker have paved the way before me, producing great music and using the internet to their fullest advantage at the same time.

Reading their stories and watching what they do (I subscribe to a lot of songwriting and indie music blogs and video channels) inspire me greatly.

I’m not necessarily doing all of this to be some sort of trailblazer, all I want to do is to put my music out there to anyone who wants to hear it, perform my music to anyone who wants to see it and produce my music for anyone who wants to share it/use it for their own projects.

This website will document my journey, warts and all. My quest is to be a self sufficient, independent, online music artist.

My journey starts now.

Peace,

Corey 🙂