Harry Merry

Dear visitor!

May I please introduce myself to you? My name is Harry Merry, songwriter and entertainer. My age amounts to the number of thirty and I try to earn my bread in the capacity mentioned above. Maybe it is better if I will start at the beginning......
I was born on November 15th 1971 in the West of Rotterdam. My aunt was the happy owner of a cafe in Delft. When I was a few years of age and when my mother and me were visiting that place regularly, I always went to stand on a chair in front of a juke-box, which was situated there in a corner with the purpose of overviewing the happenings that occured behind the glass. I was hypnotized by all these vinyl-singles constantly rotating with those specifically coloured lable-etiquettes in the middle. You know how it was in the seventies. My most favourite ones were from Apple-records, Pye Records (especially the dark pink one) and CBS-records (the old orange one; not the ugly later one). So whenever I hear a song from Mungo Jerry I see the Pye-emblem turning round in my thoughts. At home my parents bought for me a small record-player with singles, that granted me many an hour of pleasant distraction. A few years later I began to play the piano. My older brother obtained the Dutch/German Odeon-compilation-album "Beatles' Greatest" (in countries outside of Holland this LP has become an expensive collector's item; in Holland you can fortunately still buy it for 5 Euro. It still is my most favourite Beatles compilation.) and thanks to him I also got in touch with Walt Disney, whose animation-films we watched with the whole family by method of a Super 8 film-projector projecting the moving images on the wall. Yes, my friends, those were the happiest years of my life during which time I fully absorbed everything I beheld......
In 1979 my family and me moved to the North of Rotterdam where I got my first piano-lessons. I also began to collect records with the little pocket-money which I got from my parents. In the late eighties I discovered all the well-known British acts from the sixties and I read bookworks on the Swinging London-happenings in Carnaby Street with its accompanying soundtrack and fashion-line. It is typical how the teachers at school were taking offence from the theory that according to my interests I only abided in that world without paying attention to the dull every-day-reality which took place along me. Fee-Fie-Fo-Fum; that was not my problem......
In the nineties, after years of piano-lessons, I decided that the time had become ripe to begin composing music myself. This interest was aroused by the many groups and artists from the Rock 'N' Roll-era which I admired. I was especially impressed by the way in which many musical artists put their products together and messed around with it until they finally accomplished the satisfying result built out of different layers. My early attempts in this field were of an abominable nature due to my unfamiliarity with the science of chord-structures and scales. However, I still have them on cassette-tapes and maybe one day they shall be released......
Yes, yes, dear website-watchers! We must all start somewhere, don't we! Since those early days I always wanted to bring my songs in front of an audience into hearing in audible proportions, but as long as I was not satisfied over the works that emerged I saw no sense in all that higgledy piggledy rooty-tooty. All those things make it more desirable to develop a bit more into it and to experience a bit more into it. Yes, my dear readers, through the years I gradually discovered the sundry mechanics that accompany the realization of a properly proportioned song, thus I developed the technique of writing down everything that I compose with pen on paper. Now I'm ready for it......
The musical genres that have been adopted by me on this Roland-keyboard, which I bought just across the street from my housing-address, are as follows: Rock'N'Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Beat, Ballads, Schlager, Latino, Chansons, Liedjes and lately also some Slovenian Pop and Serbian Turbo-folk. Charles Dickens is also a source of inspiration for me. I'm reading "The Old Curiosity Shop"now after having read "The Pickwick Papers", "David Copperfield", "Little Dorrit"and "Ä Tale Of Two Cities". And records? Too many to mention now, because the biography is already long enough as it is. But you can draw your own conclusions from the links that accompany this website regarding the artist-stable. But that's only a small formality. After all, we have an electronical highway to deal with, don't we?
For the purpose of some rhythmical accompaniment I play the pre-recorded drums as saved on and downloaded from diskette. As far as the melodies are concerned I am equally regularly being influenced by classical music from the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler and Sibelius, especially in the performances with Herbert Von Karajan as the orchestra's conductor and in that respect the BBC-documentary "Ghosts Of The Past - The Making Of The Liverpool Oratorio" has naturally been for me very educative. I hope to write an Opera before I'm forty.
In October 1996 I achieved my very nervous stage-debut during the Singer-Songwriter-Festival in Rotterdam's Rotown, where I went through to the Finals to my big surprise. I was scared, believe me. But fortunately it came intact out of the paint. More intact even than it would later be at some occasions. Ya-win-some-loose-some! Then I played in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag, Breda, Tilburg, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Hannover, London, Liverpool, Salisbury, Ljubljana, Postojna, Roma, Trieste, Zagreb......and in the end there was Paris. All of that in the course of the last five years, of course. But in those years I met, got acquainted and learned to know much more people than I had done during all the previous years of my existence. That can be difficult; we cannot underestimate this. Nevertheless, I hope that I can entertain as many people as possible as much as possible. There's nothing else left to do......
Well, well, well! Anyway, I hope you will like my music enough in order to download it to your desktop for listening pleasure or for proposing some kind of a formal contract. All I can do is to guarantee that I am a hard worker who's always working on a new song. I try to improve myself on every front at all times. In this thing called Showbusiness one can never be too young or too old to learn new things and to develop new technics and tactics again and again and again. Don't forget that! The learning-process never ceases to amaze; it is time and time again a step to something again higher than before. Maybe it will even deliver some money into my wallet. Who knows? But I have quite a considerable number of fans, if I may use the liberty of pronouncing this supposition all by myself. I hope to have impressed you sufficiently with all that was revealed by me until now. What furthermore is left still for me to announce from in here to all of you out there behind the computer reads as follows: "Judge For Yourselves!"

Sincerely Yours

HARRY MERRY



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