The Power of Music

Wouldn't you fucking love to be the fly the wall of your favorite rock star?  Oh hell!  Wouldn't you love to be the fly on the wall of ANY rock star?!  Imagine the stories we never hear.  Well, I got one rock star to open up a little and let me tell his story.  It's a story of pain and perseverance, of love and hope and of course.... of music.  The rock star is Johnny AK from The AK Band and this is his story....
Johnny AK was a budding musician starting to see success with his band, The AK Band in the 1980's.  The AK band consisted of Johnny AK on guitar, Nev on vocals and bass and Maz on drums.  They were signed with RCA and had played with well knowns such as The Kinks and Joe Cocker.  Their style, a self described Rock/Reggae was categorized as Power Punk....a very popular sound in the 80's.

Then fucking disaster struck....Johnny suffered a horrific accident and was crushed underneath heavy objects, sending him to the hospital near death.  After weeks of being touch and go, with the aid of intense medical therapy Johnny came out of the danger zone and started to slowly recover.  Now I tend to believe we all have those people in our lives that serve as angels when we need them.  God knows I've had mine.  As it turns out, Johnny had one at that critical time too.
A significant other in Johnny's life at that time also happened to be a general and psychiatric nurse...who worked using music therapy to help heal mind and body.  Could you fucking possible think of anything that Johnny might have needed more at this time?  Neither can I.  In any case, Johnny was released from the hospital and into her care.  After several months of intense medical treatment, Johnny's angel started Johnny on musical therapy, slowly bringing him back to what he loved with small sessions.
As his therapy intensified, Johnny used the tools that were available to him...in this case, recording equipment, and started the Fat Bastard Sound Therapy recordings.  As Johnny was quite removed from the music business at this point, family members were recruited to join in the recordings to back him up and to sing.

For 10 years Johnny lived his own fucking personal hell of pain and suffering.  Through the power of love and music, Johnny was able to recover, to take back his life and make music once again.  He calls Portugal home and in the years since 1999, he has played to audiences in Turkey, The Balkins, The Caribbean and others.  Along with the Fat Bastard Sound Therapy recordings there is a demo album of tracks entitled Beyond Devastation as well as the pre-production Tequila Sunset in which Johnny had worked on with The AK Band.  Johnny continues to write songs including one entitled Hope in which he describes as being a sum up of his life.
We can all learn a lesson from Johnny and his devastating experience.  Music lifts us and heals us, hope lives within us and we can rise above anything with a little help from our friends....... ; )

To keep up with Johnny and his music you can subscribe to his youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/FatBastardSound follow him on twitter at twitter.com/AkBandThe or friend him on facebook at www.facebook.com/The.Ak.Band