The Early Years (1981 to 1992)
Born as Jared Rowbotham in Christchurch, New Zealand on April 4, 1981, I had what I would consider a fun childhood. I not only thank my family for making this possible, but also the fact that it was indeed the 80's. What a decade to be alive.
Early inspiration for music, etc, come from growing up during this time, and having various different music tastes in each of my family members helped make my own become very mixed. My father was into oldies and country, my mother into oldies and some of the popular songs from the 80's, my oldest sister was the resident Wham!/George Michael fangirl, and finally my second older sister being not only into the latest pop/rock songs, but also a bit of metal and glam. Any of you reading this who know me well will now be seeing how I grew to love so many genres. I would later develop more music tastes over the years, particularly during high school (I'll get to that in a moment).
I was also an avid fan of 80's and early 90's cartoons, etc. "Transformers" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" were my overall favourites at the time. My love for shows I'd watch would inspire me to do a little bit of voice acting (also will be coming back to this).
Overall, my childhood years were among my favourite eras of my life. If Doc Brown could just get that time machine invented already, I'd be paying him a visit very soon...
Early inspiration for music, etc, come from growing up during this time, and having various different music tastes in each of my family members helped make my own become very mixed. My father was into oldies and country, my mother into oldies and some of the popular songs from the 80's, my oldest sister was the resident Wham!/George Michael fangirl, and finally my second older sister being not only into the latest pop/rock songs, but also a bit of metal and glam. Any of you reading this who know me well will now be seeing how I grew to love so many genres. I would later develop more music tastes over the years, particularly during high school (I'll get to that in a moment).
I was also an avid fan of 80's and early 90's cartoons, etc. "Transformers" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" were my overall favourites at the time. My love for shows I'd watch would inspire me to do a little bit of voice acting (also will be coming back to this).
Overall, my childhood years were among my favourite eras of my life. If Doc Brown could just get that time machine invented already, I'd be paying him a visit very soon...
Let the Music Begin (1993 to 2000)
I officially caught the 'music bug' sometime in 1993 as I was about to finish primary school (shout out to all my fellow Woolston friends, by the way). Technically, I had a bit of a bite from the music bug around 1986-87 when I would be constantly raving about my first ever favourite band - Bon Jovi. Just ask my teacher at the time... I also started considering Simple Minds to be my favourite band around 1992/93. But it would be Sweden's own Roxette who would win me over enough to make me think, "OK, I really want to do what they do for a living."
For the remainder of 1993 and throughout '94 (my first year of high school - yay, Linwood!), I would wear out my Roxette tapes (so glad I upgraded to CD) from constant replays. Finally in 1995, an opportunity to make my dream a reality would come my way. Free guitar lessons once a week at the school's music block. "I'm there, dude!" I would use an old guitar that my oldest sister had (but never played), until Christmas that same year when my parents bought me my first electric guitar - a Fender Telecaster (like the one seen in Roxette's video for "Listen to Your Heart")!
To make things even more special, I started writing my own songs towards the end of 1995. Starting with titles and eventually some lyrics, a new era of my music emerged. Eventually at the beginning of 1996, my good friend from school, Forbes King, offered to join me in my musical quest. I accepted. Together we formed a near-fictional band named Swede, which sadly never really took off (more on that later).
After not really doing anything, Swede was momentarily canned in favour of a new opportunity - joining a real band! In the second half of 1997, I helped form a group known as Supertrip with 4 others (3 from Linwood, 1 from Cashmere High). We would play rock music together until sometime in 1999 before disbanding for various reasons (a detailed story on this can be found on the Supertrip website).
As Supertrip was beginning to disappear (right as I was about to myself), I co-founded a band with a friend from my old church, Darren Roverts. The band would be called Driftwood, and with the help of guitarist/vocalist, Jared Hatcher, we would play alternative rock, punk, metal, etc, but with Christian lyrics. Mostly covers though.
Along side of Driftwood, I was briefly in a band with some other Linwood students called Kerfü (pronounced 'curfew'). Not much happened here and is not really worth saying much more about (no offense, guys, but it was more of a catch-up session than a jam session).
In September 2000, I would eventually move into my own flat. Because of this and having no drivers license, I had no way of attending either of the bands. Could they come to me? Sure, if the neighbours weren't in such close range of the noise we would've produced. So, I basically left the music scene. At least the live bands anyway...
For the remainder of 1993 and throughout '94 (my first year of high school - yay, Linwood!), I would wear out my Roxette tapes (so glad I upgraded to CD) from constant replays. Finally in 1995, an opportunity to make my dream a reality would come my way. Free guitar lessons once a week at the school's music block. "I'm there, dude!" I would use an old guitar that my oldest sister had (but never played), until Christmas that same year when my parents bought me my first electric guitar - a Fender Telecaster (like the one seen in Roxette's video for "Listen to Your Heart")!
To make things even more special, I started writing my own songs towards the end of 1995. Starting with titles and eventually some lyrics, a new era of my music emerged. Eventually at the beginning of 1996, my good friend from school, Forbes King, offered to join me in my musical quest. I accepted. Together we formed a near-fictional band named Swede, which sadly never really took off (more on that later).
After not really doing anything, Swede was momentarily canned in favour of a new opportunity - joining a real band! In the second half of 1997, I helped form a group known as Supertrip with 4 others (3 from Linwood, 1 from Cashmere High). We would play rock music together until sometime in 1999 before disbanding for various reasons (a detailed story on this can be found on the Supertrip website).
As Supertrip was beginning to disappear (right as I was about to myself), I co-founded a band with a friend from my old church, Darren Roverts. The band would be called Driftwood, and with the help of guitarist/vocalist, Jared Hatcher, we would play alternative rock, punk, metal, etc, but with Christian lyrics. Mostly covers though.
Along side of Driftwood, I was briefly in a band with some other Linwood students called Kerfü (pronounced 'curfew'). Not much happened here and is not really worth saying much more about (no offense, guys, but it was more of a catch-up session than a jam session).
In September 2000, I would eventually move into my own flat. Because of this and having no drivers license, I had no way of attending either of the bands. Could they come to me? Sure, if the neighbours weren't in such close range of the noise we would've produced. So, I basically left the music scene. At least the live bands anyway...
Acting & Film (1993 to present)
As mentioned earlier, I watched a lot of TV. Because of this, I often mimicked voices from cartoons, etc. I was also into a lot of comedies and other such shows/movies. The ones that got a lot of praise from me were "Mr. Bean", the "Blackadder" series, "Whose Line is it Anyway?" and some stand-up comedy recordings from Bill Cosby. This led to me entertaining some of my friends in primary school. It made them laugh, so it made me happy.
Rowan Atkinson is one of my main influences in acting and comedy. I particularly loved his live stage show with such sketches as "Pink Tights & Plenty of Props", "Elementary Dating for Men" and the controversial "No-One Called Jones" where he played the school teacher giving a roll-call in a class full of students with rather inappropriate names. Was I an innocent child? Of course I was... Another influence of mine would be TV personality, Jason Gunn. Watching "Jase TV" and "Son of a Gunn Show" on a regular basis made me like puppets more as well.
The first bit of acting I took part in was a play in primary school. It was fun, but learning the lines and knowing so many beady little eyes would be staring at me were both terrifying - but I survived. The same could be said about my first TV appearance on an episode of "What Now?"
But the most fun I would have would be the home videos. My dad had purchased a video camera for my mother's Christmas present, which she seldom used (I wonder why), and the things I would get up to with that little gadget. Just like what Jason Gunn did on TV, I added puppets to the equation. A few of which I still own, come to think of it...
But filming never really got overly technical for me until 1998 - my final school year. Forbes and I during our post-Swede era of our friendship led to us hatching a plan on making a comedy film project. Inspired by comedy sketch shows that were being played on TV4 at the time, we decided to make our own. It got so in-depth, we even made forms to fill out for ideas and plans for each sketch. Starting to look like a business. I wrote a sketch called "The Making of an Archer", which was unfortunately never filmed (hopefully one day?). I still enjoy reading it to this day.
The end result of our film wasn't quite what we'd planned, but what we ended up with is still enjoyable to watch either way. It would be named "The Comic Wit of Jared & Forbes", but would later be cut down to just "Comic Wit". Filmed entirely on location at our old high school within the final week of the year, using the school's own VHS camera, we caught so much randomness...right up until we had the camera confiscated (Why? Watch the video on the Stuffed Duck Productions website and find out!). Good times.
"Comic Wit" would eventually get its long-awaited release online, but it would be a very long time before doing so. On its 10th anniversary in 2008, a soundtrack album was released as a form of proof to our audience that such a recording existed and it wasn't just a fictional story to keep people interested. Finally though, the video itself would come out a few years later. Settling the argument, I suppose.
Between "Comic Wit" being shut down from production in 1998 and 2007, no new videos were ever produced. This came from the lack of a camera. But in 2007 this would change once I learned how to use Windows Movie Maker. This would eventually lead to the use of webcams for small video productions, before getting an actual video camera near the end of the 2000's. Once entering the HD world, things got a little interesting. It was time for me to get creative (check out the site's Video page)!
Rowan Atkinson is one of my main influences in acting and comedy. I particularly loved his live stage show with such sketches as "Pink Tights & Plenty of Props", "Elementary Dating for Men" and the controversial "No-One Called Jones" where he played the school teacher giving a roll-call in a class full of students with rather inappropriate names. Was I an innocent child? Of course I was... Another influence of mine would be TV personality, Jason Gunn. Watching "Jase TV" and "Son of a Gunn Show" on a regular basis made me like puppets more as well.
The first bit of acting I took part in was a play in primary school. It was fun, but learning the lines and knowing so many beady little eyes would be staring at me were both terrifying - but I survived. The same could be said about my first TV appearance on an episode of "What Now?"
But the most fun I would have would be the home videos. My dad had purchased a video camera for my mother's Christmas present, which she seldom used (I wonder why), and the things I would get up to with that little gadget. Just like what Jason Gunn did on TV, I added puppets to the equation. A few of which I still own, come to think of it...
But filming never really got overly technical for me until 1998 - my final school year. Forbes and I during our post-Swede era of our friendship led to us hatching a plan on making a comedy film project. Inspired by comedy sketch shows that were being played on TV4 at the time, we decided to make our own. It got so in-depth, we even made forms to fill out for ideas and plans for each sketch. Starting to look like a business. I wrote a sketch called "The Making of an Archer", which was unfortunately never filmed (hopefully one day?). I still enjoy reading it to this day.
The end result of our film wasn't quite what we'd planned, but what we ended up with is still enjoyable to watch either way. It would be named "The Comic Wit of Jared & Forbes", but would later be cut down to just "Comic Wit". Filmed entirely on location at our old high school within the final week of the year, using the school's own VHS camera, we caught so much randomness...right up until we had the camera confiscated (Why? Watch the video on the Stuffed Duck Productions website and find out!). Good times.
"Comic Wit" would eventually get its long-awaited release online, but it would be a very long time before doing so. On its 10th anniversary in 2008, a soundtrack album was released as a form of proof to our audience that such a recording existed and it wasn't just a fictional story to keep people interested. Finally though, the video itself would come out a few years later. Settling the argument, I suppose.
Between "Comic Wit" being shut down from production in 1998 and 2007, no new videos were ever produced. This came from the lack of a camera. But in 2007 this would change once I learned how to use Windows Movie Maker. This would eventually lead to the use of webcams for small video productions, before getting an actual video camera near the end of the 2000's. Once entering the HD world, things got a little interesting. It was time for me to get creative (check out the site's Video page)!
The Origins of Radio (2001 to present)
I've always enjoyed listening to radio, but in my early years I never thought I'd ever see myself being the one behind the microphone. It wasn't until the beginning of the 21st century when I was listening to such local radio talent as Simon Barnett, Phil Gifford, James Milner, Chris Parkin, Kerry Treymane, Natalie Canton, and some outside talent like Jeremy Corbett, etc, when I would start considering the option of hosting a radio show. I loved music and entertaining people. Where could I go wrong?
I came up with an idea for a show, but to help me put it into motion I requested the help of my fellow project buddy, Forbes, to sit in as my co-host. This would become what is now known today as "Ducksel FM". It started off as attempts at making a recording I could take into a radio station to show a potential employer what I could do, taking the shortcut instead of Broadcasting School. Each time we'd make an episode, I'd have a problem with it and want to do another one to replace it. Eventually I gave up and just let it be a fun hobby of ours, which led to it becoming a comedy series set in a radio station environment. It was here where I (along with Forbes) would exercise my voice acting skills. It wasn't expected, but "Ducksel FM" would last for an entire decade (2001 to 2011, 12 episodes/1 bonus)!
My plans to host a radio show didn't quite go to their original plan for some time though. Eventually, I would get my chance. In 2014, I had been contacting the local community radio station, Plains FM, for a possible slot. At long last in May of 2015, "Forgotten Favourites" went on-air for the first time. It has been running once a month ever since.
I came up with an idea for a show, but to help me put it into motion I requested the help of my fellow project buddy, Forbes, to sit in as my co-host. This would become what is now known today as "Ducksel FM". It started off as attempts at making a recording I could take into a radio station to show a potential employer what I could do, taking the shortcut instead of Broadcasting School. Each time we'd make an episode, I'd have a problem with it and want to do another one to replace it. Eventually I gave up and just let it be a fun hobby of ours, which led to it becoming a comedy series set in a radio station environment. It was here where I (along with Forbes) would exercise my voice acting skills. It wasn't expected, but "Ducksel FM" would last for an entire decade (2001 to 2011, 12 episodes/1 bonus)!
My plans to host a radio show didn't quite go to their original plan for some time though. Eventually, I would get my chance. In 2014, I had been contacting the local community radio station, Plains FM, for a possible slot. At long last in May of 2015, "Forgotten Favourites" went on-air for the first time. It has been running once a month ever since.
Let the Music Continue (2002 to present)
After a bit of a break from the music scene, I would eventually make a bit of a comeback. In 2002, I attended a music course at my old high school for a year. During this time I found myself being inspired enough to work on a digital music project, which would eventually become my solo act, n-Somnia. Back in 1999, fellow Driftwood bandmate, Darren, helped me compose what would be our first ever digital music track called "Red Alert". This song would be adopted by my n-Somnia project.
n-Somnia would last until about 2006 when I retired the project in favour of a new one I started with Forbes, called Kingrow. With basically the same idea as n-Somnia, but with Forbes' input using the PlayStation software, "Music 2000" as his instrument, Kingrow would be active from 2004 to 2012. Kingrow ended as a result of the 2011 earthquake, which had an impact on Forbes, leading to him having to step down from all the projects we had at the time. As a result of Kingrow's early demise, I woke up n-Somnia from retirement in 2011 to release the first album, "The Awakening" (until then, only singles, promos and EP's had been released). n-Somnia has been out of retirement since.
Since disbanding, I had various attempts at reunions with my former Supertrip bandmates. All of which failed, except maybe for the one time former vocalist, Stephen Armstrong, took part on the "Encore" EP in 2009. After this, an attempt at celebrating the band's 20th anniversary (2017) by composing an instrumental album on my own came and went, only to have 1 song produced from that session along with a brand new website (this was mainly due to personal events in life I couldn't avoid).
As for Swede, there are plans for a chance at re-working, recording and releasing some of the songs I wrote back in high school with Forbes, but getting it started has proven to be rather tricky. We'll see how it goes in the long run. Watch this space!
Meanwhile, n-Somnia celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022.
n-Somnia would last until about 2006 when I retired the project in favour of a new one I started with Forbes, called Kingrow. With basically the same idea as n-Somnia, but with Forbes' input using the PlayStation software, "Music 2000" as his instrument, Kingrow would be active from 2004 to 2012. Kingrow ended as a result of the 2011 earthquake, which had an impact on Forbes, leading to him having to step down from all the projects we had at the time. As a result of Kingrow's early demise, I woke up n-Somnia from retirement in 2011 to release the first album, "The Awakening" (until then, only singles, promos and EP's had been released). n-Somnia has been out of retirement since.
Since disbanding, I had various attempts at reunions with my former Supertrip bandmates. All of which failed, except maybe for the one time former vocalist, Stephen Armstrong, took part on the "Encore" EP in 2009. After this, an attempt at celebrating the band's 20th anniversary (2017) by composing an instrumental album on my own came and went, only to have 1 song produced from that session along with a brand new website (this was mainly due to personal events in life I couldn't avoid).
As for Swede, there are plans for a chance at re-working, recording and releasing some of the songs I wrote back in high school with Forbes, but getting it started has proven to be rather tricky. We'll see how it goes in the long run. Watch this space!
Meanwhile, n-Somnia celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022.