About Bob Campbell
So, what would you like to know about me?
(click on the link to go to that section)
- Likes and dislikes
- Where am I from
- My dyslexia
- My career
- Sports and stuff
- My introduction to music
- Writing poetry and songs
- My tin whistle books
- My plea to you
Likes and dislikes
Fun, love, friends, music and social justice are the key elements of my life. I have a lot of unusual interests and have a lot of great stories to tell. I care about people, not least those in greatest need and consequently my politics is unapologetically left wing: I am anti-gun, anti-war, anti-cruelty, anti-greed, I stand up for the down trodden and am against all that is wrong in our society: racism, sexism, misogyny, the attitudes of most 'old people' towards teenagers, bullying, abuse of any kind and I hate bitching (the gossipy critisism of others) whoever does it. I am a champion of inclusion and love to celebrate diversity. I am very much a conservationist: I dedicated 21 years of my life to that professionally. I am an innovative problem solver, a deep thinker and I am perpetually positive. Also - I fell madly in love with Marie, I am crazy about her and i want everyone else to fall in love too. I want everyone to find that happiness. I have very few inibitions, I am proudly immature and never want to be a grown up. I have a warped and sometimes surreal sense of humour and do like to shock people.
But there are many things that most people enjoy that I don’t: Religion (although I am tolerant of other peoples beliefs), hot weather, pop music, all reality TV (with a passion), TV soaps, garlic, pizza, sauces, spices, spectator sports: I once said about spectating football, “why should I watch them play: they are not going to let me join in: it’s a bit like being bullied at school all over again?” But that is not to belittle what you like, it’s just one reason why I playing sport but don’t watch it. (I have been asked that question a lot)
My Mum was born in the family house in Fochabers, near Elgin, Scotland and spent her childhood in Longniddry, East Lothian and India during WW2: Her father was a Leutenant Colonel, disabled from WW1, but teaching the Raj Batarna Rifles to fight in India during WW2. Mum was and still claims to still be fluent in Urdu. My Dad was from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis and grew up there. As such he was a Gaelic speaker (has the Gaelic) and learned English at school Neither of them shared their languages with us. Dad couldn't write in Gaelic - in those days Gaelic was not allowed in school
I was born in Stornoway too, but we went to Capetown South Africa when I was 18 months old and returned to Scotland when I was 5 with a strong South African accent.
On our return, as we moved around small villages in Scotland (mainly in the East - from Elgin to Fife) I went to lots of schools and as I remember I was the only asthmatic in all of them. Asthma seemed rare then. I was bullied badly everywhere we moved to. As an asthmatic I couldn’t even run away.
When I was 9 (1976) we moved to yet another small village: Meigle in Perthshire but that’s when the bullying stopped. That really is where my life began. So I like to think that I am from Meigle, but we moved from there when I was 17 to Kingussie, where I re-sat my Highers. Years later my parents returned to Meigle, but by then, I no longer knew anyone there: and no-one there knows who I am, so I don't really feel I belong any more.
Bar a year in Shropshire and a year in Motherwell, I have lived in the North East of England throughout my adult life and Middlesbrough since 1992 where I met and fell in love with and married Marie: the love of my life. Our son Jamie was born and grew up here.
But I am still a Scot, even if I live with and amoung the English, so I just don't know how to answer that question - where are you from? There is no simple answer to that.
My dyslexia
My writting skills are really good to be honest, they always were, but I hate reading with a passion: So that you understand - for me it's like you were reading through a smarties tube - you take in a word or part of a word and have to put the pieces together and when you reach the end of a line and have to find the start of the next one, you often miss, and start reading the same line again before realising your mistake. Add into that a short term memory problem that sometimes you have forgotten the beginning of a sentence before you reach the end of it and you have to start it again: at times reading the same bit over and over before giving up and walking out in frustration. You come back later and you are fine. Dyslexia comes and goes - it's not the same all the time - sometimes you can read ok, but it's always tiring and you always get bored because the amount of information you are taking in is a lot slower than your thinking processes. So consequently I don't like reading and never will: e.g. it took me a year to read the first book of Lord of the Rings, I gave up on the rest. A story should not take that long in the telling, but with reading, for me anyway, every story does. So if I don't do research to independantly verify everything I post on Facebook, please understand that research is not one of my strengths, quite obviously I am not going to do that. But dyslexia, bazaarly comes with other strengths that more than compensate for this.
I have used coloured glasses to help with my reading, and they are increadible, sometimes, but only if the lighting is right: but it seldom is: Aparently strip lighting is the best, but that isn't so simple to install at home or conducive to a home environment and few workplaces have it - so in truth, the glasses only helped me that much once - when i was using a University library with huge windows on a sunny day. For anyone wanting to try coloured glasses to help them, find a optomotrist who does colourometer testing
I was diagnosed as dyslexic when I was 14, but I was in denial of it for 20 years: I believed that my bullying and disrupted education from the age of 5 to 9, explained my difficulties with reading and untidy writing and spelling errors, so I refused all help through my education and the exams system brutally punished me for that decision
I sailed through my O'levels, but not as well as I should have done but failed my Highers twice including English, and I was: despite my dyslexia and reading very little, ever, top of the class in English. So I did an HND because I didn't have the qualifications to do a degree and I failed that too. (No one EVER fails an HND). When I resat it, I grudgingly ‘allowed’ them to take my dyslexia into account.
It wasn’t until I started a Master’s Degree years later, (2000) when I was reassessed for my dyslexia, that I spoke to their support team psychologist and learned that with or without my disrupted education: I would have had the same problems. They also showed me how it affects my short term memory and information processing (it’s not just about reading). They showed me the benefits of dyslexia, which far outweigh the problems caused by it and I realised that everything I have achieved in life is because of and not despite it. From then I started to understand myself better and dyslexia and was able to help other dyslexics. Now I wouldn't want to be without it.
As a dyslexic I have a damaged short term memory: which makes it hard to remember names and other 'read or hear and regurgitate information'. Everything I learn, I have to learn into long term memory: which means that I either have to understand it or have a strong emotional link to it: and you can't do that with a name, so that is: 'in one ear and out the other'. So I learn slowly but when it's in, it's there forever, and it's understood, so not only is my head a huge database, I don't just use that information in the discipline where I learned it, I re-apply it in new innovative ways as a naturally out of the box thinker. It is not always appreciated but a lot of dyslexics do this.
So while most people cram learn for exams and do well, and three months later can't remember anything they did in their degree (consequently, they have learned nothing in those three years), I have to work a lot harder than they did when I'm there and am penalised by an assessment process that only tests short term memory, I learn more and benefit more from it: I retain everything I understand, and that contributes to everything I already know. But society only cares about the results. This is a common frustration.
This use of my long term memory, is the reason why I am so innovative and such a good problem solver and project manager and why I am so good strategically: I see the bigger picture all the time and the implications of decisions on wider issues. It is why I am so good at managing partnerships and engaging the resources of other organisations. It is why I am so good with words, why I see the World differently and why I find that so easy to articulate and where I want to - to put that into verse. Sadly I can excel in everything apart from exams and interviews: question and answer scenarios. As such I have been and am being denied lots of chances in life. More importantly employers are missing out on my skills and a lot of what I have to offer is going to waste.
Dyslexics see the World in a different way to everyone else: which goes a long way to explaining my opening paragraph. It also explains my sharp and warped sense of humour
My career
I worked on fruit farms and game estates from being a small child
I taught skiing and outdoor pursuits for 3 years, starting when I was 16, I was a Countryside Ranger for 20 years where I did everything you could think of in wildlife conservation in the UK, in promoting countryside recreation and teaching children about the natural World. I led up to 3 teams and personally specialised in inclusion & disabled access to countryside: that included setting up a national charity to provide disabled access to countryside information.
I also had a business writing, printing and selling books that make music easier and more fun to learn and that make composition child’s-play. Those books used tin whistles as a medium and are described in the next section and are sold on this site now.
Because of Conservative Party cut backs to local government I was made redundant from my countryside work in 2011 and set up a first aid training company that looked to set new standards for that sector. I stopped trading because of Covid in March 2020 and have not returned.
Since then I have focused on my music and my family.
I had so much fun and valued what I did so highly in all of these jobs that I never really considered any of them as work and loved to put in some extra hours.
Sports and stuff
Despite the asthma, I played lots of sport: and being dyslexic, I saw things differently to most people,. So an early aptitude with swingball meant that even as a small child I beat whoever I played. So no-one would play with me, not even my older brother and so I learned really young that to be the best at something isn't a good thing.
Then I learned how much fun it was to be uncompetative. I realised when I learned to ski (aged 10) that - a slow speed is more auxhillerating to a beginner than a fast speed is to someone proficient, so I used snowplough (a beginner skill) for three years not wanting to be good. I played badminton for the school and skiied for them - making sure I lost the first round so that I could have the rest of the day off with my friends. When I was in a school basketball team that got to the final, and I couldn't make it to that final I forgot to ask if they won. I still don't know. I have never seen winning as important. Indeed, I prefer to have a close match than to win by a large margin or loose by one. I enjoy the game - not the result. And if the game matters, like in a competition, my game goes to pot anyway.
I learned to swim when I was three years old in South Africa and have always been a good swimmer - I don't race, but I have swam up to 10km (in 3 hours - I could go longer but can't get longer in a pool locally). I also excelled in swimming lifesaving; I played badminton from the age of nine and have played 4 - 6 hours a week ever since. Skiing became my main sport, although I don't get a chance these days. I got into squash, canoeing, mountaineering, rock climbing and indeed my first career was teaching outdoor pursuits and skiing.
Looking back, none of the sports I did involved running: It is particularly running that triggers my asthma. Outdoor pursuits also suited someone who was non-compretative.
Because my son plays it, at the age of 52, I joined my local Roller Derby club (his former club): my first ever team sport (OK I did a little basketball - but not for long) and I started to learn to skate: a huge learning curve. That was interupted by covid, but I am committed to the team and progressing nicely. My size (6'5" and 24 stone) should be an advantage?
My introduction to music didn’t get off to a good start: My parents were ardent church goers, but while I loved them, I haven’t ever believed in God and hated being forced to sing hymns in church and at school from the age of 5 praising a Lord I don't believe in. It was blatant indoctrination and I rebelled against it for as long as I remember. And with the exception of a few tunes I hated the drivel they played on the radio too especially at Christmas! Most other people love the music of that era: Late 70's & 80's. I am not one of those people! And there was no way to get away from it – people and shops played it everywhere you went. It was so cringey.
My parents didn't really play music, but did occasionally take me to local folk music events: I liked that but those events were so infrequent. So pretty much the only music I loved was on Disney films, other musicals, adverts on TV or childrens programmes.
I got into punk in 1977: I was 9. So did 3 of my friends from primary school: It completely blew my mind. This was music I could really love. This was music that talked to me and had real energy to it. There was nothing else like it. Later in my 20’s blues was the music played in pubs and I loved that too: but not with the same intensity. Still you can’t beat live music? And I still liked folk music too.
I went to a different secondary school to my friends so until my 30's/40’s my friends weren't punks indeed I didn't know any, My friends tolerated rather than shared my music. But it had become a very large part of who I am. I loved it, played it loud and whenever I could and I built my record collection by spending hours in record shops on my own: That was literally the only place I could find it.
For a while I listened to John Peel on a night on Radio 1, but it was hugely over-rated: There was only occasionally something good, but you’d listen all night every night hoping just in case. And then, the good stuff he played, you wrote it down and then couldn’t find it anywhere. I do like the man, but I soon gave up on listening to John Peel.
Even in record shops: finding punk was like looking for that needle in a haystack: Mostly record shops sold the mainstream drivel and had just a sprinkling of punk and you had to search for it.
Although I largely listened to it on my own, my music collection meant the world to me: but money was tight, record shops were not easy to get to and I had very little spare time or money to shop for records. The little money I had from picking berries from the age of 7, pheasant & partridge beating from the age of 10 and teaching outdoor pursuits & skiing from the age of 16 was quickly spent on sporting interests like skiing or under-age drinking, but I’d still creatively stretch what I had and grab any moments I could to search for vinyl. A lot of the time I just bought albums because I liked the cover or on a friends recommendation: There was literally no other way to find new music. That for me was pretty much what it was like being a punk in the 1970’s and 80’s.
I stored my records in the order I bought them: cataloguing them meticulously. The order made sense to me and no-one else ever looked through them so it’s not like I was making it easier for other people to find anything. The first album was The Great Rock and Roll Swindle and I played it repeatedly for 4 months. My cheap record player started again as soon as it finished a side: I liked that: posher ones just stopped and you had to break from what you were doing and cross the room to start the music again every 20 minutes: I do have a collection of singles too, but didn’t ever bother with it for precisely that reason. It is hard to imagine those problems today. I bought better equipment when I was 21 when I got my first full time job. (Managing Bingo in Gateshead)
There is a lot of UK Subs in my collection: it is staggering how many records they released and I still didn't have them all. My friend Peter and I used to compare our UK Subs collections: we did that for decades. At least half of my collection is on CD now: and those are not catalogued at all. I do use an i-pod in the car now: but my entire i-tunes collection is copied from CD's. I have still not bought or downloaded a single digital track. So I still haven't gone digital and don’t use spotify. To the contrary, I have reserected my vinyl collection.
Punk to me was urban folk music: Music by the people for the people and about their lives - about my life (or growing up in a little village - what I imagined urban life to be). That and it was pumped with energy - and that helped me when I was angry and needed a release: Actually it helped with all of my emotions from happiness to fear (e.g. I used it to drown out the dentist drill with it: Dead Kennedy's was best for that)
As I said above punk music wasn't on the radio or TV and we couldn't go to gigs as children, and very few bands played that far North anyway, so all I knew about the bands was written on their album cover: it was immensely frustrating. Consequently my son and his friends all know more about the bands I love today than I do.
In 1985 I went to college (Polytechnic) in Sunderland and did at last get to gigs, but to be honest there weren't that many. Even then I was largely on my own and didn't speak to anyone. (Mind you, being commited to a career teaching outdoor sports - I spent every weekend either with the Polytechnic's Ski or Mountaineering clubs in Scotland - and went home during the holidays to teach outdoor pursuits or skiing)
In 2003 I went to my first Rebellion Festival (it was called Holidays in the Sun then) to get it 'out of my system' and I got my first ever mohawk: a double mohawk that was wafer thin and the colours rose like flames. It amused me that people treat me differently after my cut to before it: I was literally the same person. As an extrovert I enjoyed turning heads and shocking people.
My son Jamie, was listening to punk before he was born and loved it as a toddler, then didn't like it because it was mine. Thankfully he got into skateboarding and Tony Hawks on the PlayStation and found punk for himself. Then it seemed that our musical tastes were almost identical. I took him to Rebellion in 2006: He was 9. He was blown away by the line-up even before we got there. And we have gone together ever since and indeed made a lot of friends there. I have a crazy haircut and literally dance to every band - for 4 days. He set up a band when he was 16: The Antiseptics and they played Rebellion twice. The Antiseptics were reall good - I used to drive them to all their gigs, film them and dance.
After every Rebellion Festival I shave my head bald and don't cut it for a year: I get a lot of grief from my wife Marie for having a horrible mullet for half the year and then I have a blank canvas for a new piece of art. I tell people "I am going to muck about with my hair while I still have hair to muck about with".
Not just at Rebellion, but I dance a lot at every gig: I don't think about it: I just do it and I just don't have any inhibitions: I really don't care what people think of me and I just go where the music takes me. Music I love goes through me in a way that it makes me dance.
I am usually the first up and with support bands I am often the only one, but there are those who join me at the front. At Rebellion Festival I dance from mid-day until 2 am for 4 days: People tell me they saw me and thought I wouldn't be able to keep that up and then they see me at the next gig and the next one – everywhere they went, always at the front and always dancing. My son’s band thought it was funny that they’d see me struggling to walk from venue to venue and then dancing the moment I got there.
A bouncer at the Rebellion Festival in 2007 called me ‘the one man mosh pit’ and that title stuck. (Admittedly because I made a t shirt that said that soon after). Down the years a lot of friends introduced themselves to me because I do that.
Years ago there were a lot of big people in the pit and I’d have a chance to get the shoulder down and take them on: I am big - so I'd take them all on. They're not there any more. The pit is a violent but friendly environment. Over recent years, at 6’5” and 22 stone, I tower above everyone in the pit so I have to tone it down: there don’t seem to be the other big people in there that there used to be. I used to protect my son in the pit when he was small and as he grew I started protecting other small people in the pit, particularly young girls who are perhaps venturing into the pit for the first time. Some of those are in their late 20's now and are still friends of mine.
There is another side to this: the music sounds better at the front and I am 6’5” tall. If I just stand still – wherever I stand, the people behind me tell me not to stand in front of them because they can’t see and so many push in front of me that I find myself at the back of the room: It never sounds good there and I can see so little that I may as well sit at home with a record on? Indeed this is so frequently said that I am always self-conscious about it. But when I dance nobody minds me being at the front – in part because I keep moving and don’t block anyone’s view for long.
Rebellion Festival, if you don't know, is the biggest punk festival on the planet: it's 4 days long and has 7 stages running concurrently and it's all under one roof. On the last night, after Rebellion there are party's all night long and Jamie and I like to party with punks until breakfast (without going to bed): Only then I used to have to drive home. That is not a safe journey for anyone and I hated that drive. So in 2018, in part because I now know most of the punks in the region, I started running a bus picking up in all the main towns and cities in North East England before going to Rebellion. That is one serious party bus, it also raises money for charity & has a Rebellion band playing on board. Most importantly: it also means I don't have to drive home. So I am now also known for running that bus.
If there is a gig on the Monday night in Newcastle, Jamie and I stay on the bus and go to that gig too believing that if you haven't been to bed on Sunday night then Monday is still Sunday to you and the Rebellion Festival is, for us at least, still going. That has become a tradition now. A few friends join us for that.
The UK and now theglobal punk scene has grown enormously. There are a LOT more bands, festivals and gigs now than there ever was and a lot of older bands still tour. Jamie and I go to gigs most weeks now and can go to 2 or 3 gigs some weeks: Well we did until covid hit in 2020. This is punks hay-day and will be again when the pandemic is over.
I started writing poetry at school when I was 10: I took to it quickly and was very good at it and indeed had two poems published. I have written poems ever since, including thousands of love poems for my wife. I started writing songs in 1998, initially to tunes taken from songs I knew, but I soon started writing my own.
Increasingly I worried that no one would ever hear or read what I'd written and that one day they'd just be thrown out when I die. I wanted more for them than that. I looked at publishers and discovered that there is no market for poems. I tried giving them to bands, there was some interest but singers largely want to play songs they wrote or ones that everyone already recognises. I kept putting them on Facebook and friends liked them and persuaded me to self-publish.
Up to 2020 I had written around 80 songs, during the Covid pandemic that quickly became over 200 (By the end of 2021 that was over 300) and I self-published the first 211 as 2 books. Those who bought them complimented me on my 'poetry', which without giving my audience the tunes, I suppose is all they were.
It became clear that my songs would only see the light of day if I sang them myself and I couldn’t sing. I mean really I couldn’t: so in 2020, I did an on line singing course with Chris Liepe and that made the World of difference: I now know how to sing and my voice is good. I then recorded my songs, without musical accompaniment at home. They are without accompaniment because right now I don’t play guitar or keyboard and I don’t have anyone to work with. I am working on that, but even if I had a band now, it would take years to record the first 211 songs in my first two publications. and I have another 100 that need working on and indeed plans for a third book.
These early recordings are available as links through an e book version of my first two publications now. I did this in part so that people who buy my song books know how my songs go: so that they are no longer just regard them as poems. But also to show to musicians who might like to join me in setting up a band. I am now trying to set up that band with a view to recording my first album. In the future, even when I have a band playing full versions of my songs, ‘fans’ (assuming I have any) may still like to hear these ‘original recordings’?
I am a late starter aspiring to set up my first band now at 54 but then I only learnt how to sing in 2020. And - I have never really considered myself a grown up: so age is no barrier: e.g. I decided to learn to skate and play Roller Derby at 52.
I have taught professionally throughout my career and I am very good at it. In 1996 I needed a second income, I had just learned to play the tin whistle and could see glaring problems with how it and indeed how music is taught: A good teacher can take the most boring subject and make it fun and yet every child loves music and hates music lessons: and the drop out-rate for learning instruments is phenomenal. Indeed, there aren’t many of us who haven't tried and given up an instrument?
That speaks volumes! There are huge and obvious problems in how music is being taught. e.g. They try to teach you a subject you don’t know (the instrument), in a language that you don’t understand and with a book full of tunes that you don’t know and have no interest in playing. One of the basic principles in teaching is not to teach two things at the same time: I might teach you Physics or Spanish, but I wouldn't teach you Physics in Spannish unless that was your first language: But that is how they try to teach music. It is so wrong. Then you work hard and persevere, and they just give you harder and harder tunes to play that don’t interest you – until you give up: at no point do they ever make it fun. It is all work and there isn’t a point when it becomes play. And the language they use is the only language where you are taught to read it and not write it. You work your butt off to become semi-literate? That is no way to teach any language. And that’s just the start, I identified a lot more that was wrong with how music is taught that’s just been ignored for years. Indeed the small number of people who doggedly persevere and eventually succeed with our bad teaching system are deemed experts in music and they go on to fail to teach music in the same terrible way to the next generation. By comparison, in India, hundreds of thousands of children as young as 5 play this instrument on the street and everything they play is original: they are perpetually composing. If we had one Western child doing that we’d call them a genius.
With this as a starting point I invented a whole new way to teach music that revolves around the simplicity of the tin whistle, which is in itself an easier instrument. I wrote and developed books for adults and children, musicians and beginners understanding that their needs and interests vary. Those books, the first edition of which was sold in 1996, are now sold on this website. (The 1999 edition)
Please buy my books, listen to my songs, tell your friends, be my friend, consider forming a band with me and if you have one of your own: please use my lyrics and tunes. Just tell me and acknowledge me. Music is for sharing. Keep it fun.
There may be barriers to achievement, but there are no limits to what you can achieve, whoever you are and whatever you are facing: keep pushing those boundaries: Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something (least of all yourself): because you can do anything if you set your mind to it: but also that you don’t have to do anything alone: it is always easier to work together! The World is full of people, all of whom have different skills and attributes and we can achieve so much more together than we ever could alone
Even if no one else does - I will believe in you !