User:Ezuma/MickeyDiamond

Brent Evans (born 9 February 1989, Perth, Western Australia), more widely known by his stage name, Mickey Diamond, is the main songwriter, founder, vocalist and guitarist of the Australian rock band Rock Shout City. He is well-known for his technical skill on guitar and on-stage antics, which involve dancing, rolling around and "air-humping" whilst playing. He is also known for his mannerisms whilst playing guitar solos; often looking deep in concentration when playing easier solos, and looking the complete opposite when playing fast, or intricate, solos. He often dances, stares at the roof, shouts at the audience, crawls on the floor or plays with one hand during the latter.

1989-2004: Early life
Mickey Diamond was born in Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, to a Welsh-Italian father and an English mother. His father worked as a police officer and was frequently relocated all around the country, so Diamond was constantly travelling. His mother served briefly in the Australian Air-Force before his birth, and quickly became a housewife after Diamond's sister was born. At age 2 his parents divorced, and he remained in Perth with his mother while his father, with his sister and new wife, relocated to Queensland.

At the age of six, Diamond told his mother he aspired to be like Billy Ray Cyrus, his favourite singer at the time. He first picked up a guitar at the age of eight, but didn't start really playing until age 12, when his father had relocated back to Perth, and Diamond chose to live with him, instead. His primary school didn't teach guitar in music class, so Diamond settled for the piano, but stole the sole guitar from the school during a private practice session, and practiced with it after school.

He bought his first guitar at sixteen, a Washburn D10S "Dreadnought" acoustic guitar. Diamond states that the music stores in Perth didn't really cater for left-handers, so he had to pay $450 to have a left-handed version imported. He still owns and uses that guitar as his primary acoustic, and says he also kept the one he stole from primary school. He bought his first electric guitar in the same year, an AXL "Mayhem Series" Jacknife guitar and, after just two weeks of owning it, he had already changed the pick-ups, inserted a toggle switch, modified the tone and volume knobs, and given it a new finish.

2004-2006: The problem years
Mickey Diamond grew up as a shy child, and with his mother working full time to support her and her son, Diamond grew up almost friendless and felt isolated for most of his pre-teen years. He moved in with his father at age ten, changed schools, and quickly became one of the most popular kids in class, but Diamond felt even lonelier come his high school years. Most of his best friends gained scholarships to larger, more established schools, so Diamond almost had so start all over again when he started high school. With the loss of friends, and the victim of bullying, Diamond attempted suicide in 2004, but was discovered by one of his schoolmates.

After a brief stay in hospital, Diamond was sent back to school, and quickly found what he calls, "a misfit group of guys who were nothing without each other, but everything together." This new group of friends is where Diamond went on to meet fellow Rock Shout City bandmate Väsz Def'herenż, Three Days Unshowered co-founder, Jarryd Meade, and help form the band, Volatile. Diamond certainly appeared at home within this new group.

But things took a turn for the worse in June 2004 when, reminiscent of his early high school years, several schoolmates started bullying Diamond for no "reason whatsoever," says Diamond. In his tell-all interview on talk show, Enough Rope, Diamond said:

"They'd just come up to me randomly during or after school and give me shit just because I wasn't part of their group. They'd push me and call me names, or just say stupid shit like, call me gay or some stupid shit like that, so I'd ask them why they thought I was gay and the best thing they could come up with was, "You're just gay man.""

One day after school, Diamond snapped. He was harrassed by "at least six of 'em," says Diamond, and one of them took a swing, but Diamond ducked. He swung back, knocking the boy down. The other five pounced. Diamond says he lasted a while, and managed to take two down before the numbers game took the better of him and he was beaten. He spent three months in hospital and medically-imposed home-isolation to recover from a broken nose, shattered ribs and a ruptured spleen. This began his slow descent into drug addiction and alcoholism.

Diamond says he first drank alcohol at the age of fifteen, at Jarryd Meade's birthday party, but didn't do any drugs until that incident after school. He says he used to take higher doses of painkillers, at first because he felt they weren't working enough, but soon gained a dependency, and continued to take them long after his recovery.

"After the prescription painkillers, I'd just go to the chemist everyday and buy some of the over-the-counter shit. Panadol was my favourite. I'd go home and shove seven or eight of them down my throat. But after a while I got sick of feeling numb, and needed something to make me smile. Then I smoked my first joint and felt a lot better."

Diamond says when he first started smoking cannabis, he and all his friends did it after school almost everyday. Friends say Diamond was rarely seen without a bag of weed on him, and would even light up on school premesis. Despite being a member of what was known throughout his high school as the "stoner group," Diamond was the only one to try more "hardcore" recreational drugs, including LSD, Psilocybin mushrooms and Ecstacy. Diamond says he'd always carry an "X" pill around with him in case he had a bad trip when taking LSD.

"I'd smoke weed everyday with my mates after school, but when I got my hands on acid, man, that was it. No one else would try it so they'd all sit there baked off their fuckin' heads, laughin' about shit like funny patterns in the wall, and I'd be sittin' in the corner havin' a tea party with Elmer Fudd or fuckin' jammin' with Clapton or some stupid shit."

Diamond's dependence on alcohol and psychedelic drugs became a huge talking point and cause for concern among his schoolmates and, in a great show of support, his entire class held a fundraiser and rallied enough money to send Diamond to a rehabilition clinic. After just three months, Diamond was certifiably clean, and was keener than ever to get back to his studies and finish school. Diamond says one of the techniques they employed to help rid him of his alcoholism, was just give him glasses of coke whenever he felt thirsty, instead of water. "

"Because I drank a lot of bourbon and shit like that, I'd always have coke or some shit in it, so the doctors told me that by drinking coke, I'd still be feeling similar feelings, so my body would trick itself into thinking there was alcohol flowing in. But rehab was funny, man. Like, I went there to get through all that, all my addictions and shit, and I ended up picking up like three new ones. Like now all I drink is coke."

Diamond reportedly gave up playing music for the rest of his final year to catch up on all the work he had missed out on, and eventually graduated as one of the top five students in the class, and was awarded an honourary award for "Incredible Achievement," although the details of why weren't explained at his graduation.

2007-present: A new Diamond and Rock Shout City
Mickey Diamond vowed to change it all in 2007. Sworn off alcohol and drugs, Diamond quickly went back to his first love in music, and took up a music course in college, just so he could, "play music all day long." Midway through the year he declared, "All this shit's outta the way, I've cleaned myself up, and music is what's keeping it that way." Rock Shout City was soon born, with Diamond the sole member. Before the band had any members, Diamond used to write lyrics, compose melodies, and play various instruments including guitar, bass guitar, drums and piano, and join the separate pieces together on his computer to make what he called, "complex compositional garbage."

Although never seriously considering this as a music-making pursuit, Diamond quickly abandoned his "one-man band" and put the word out he was looking for band members. High school friend Väsz Def'herenż contacted him, as did college friend, Mitchie Rich. The three got together and jammed, with Diamond on bass and guitars, Rich on guitar and Def'herenż on drums. Def'herenż introduced his bandmates to bass player Ben-Scott Thompson, and the four of them jammed together, and performed one gig (a setlist of covers) as a four-piece.

Soon, Rich suggested best friend Jimmy Kidd (of Mickey Flash fame) as a potential vocalist for the band, and Ben-Scott was subsequently fired from the band when Diamond learnt of Kidd's ability to play bass. After Ben-Scott's dismissal, Kidd told the band of his desire to perform solely as a vocalist, so Def'herenż switched to the bass guitar, while Mickey Diamond occassionally played through a session as a drummer.

Techniques and Influences
Mickey Diamond is often praised for his great technical ability when playing guitar, and is well-known for mixing Rock Shout City's hard rock sound with blues, thrash metal and ska-type guitaring. He lists Metallica as his main influence, namely rhythm guitarist/frontman James Hetfield who is well-respected for his extremely tight, metronome-like rhythm. He says James was the reason he wanted to play guitar, but he is also heavily influenced by bands such as metal band Lamb of God, classic rock bands Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and influential '90s groove metal band, Pantera.

Diamond has no formal training, and used several bands of varying genres to increase his playing skills. Rarely using visual aids to help with his technique, Diamond has developed a very unsual fretting and picking style, and is one of the few guitarists to make frequent use of his pinky finger when fretting, and also has a unique string-muting style, often sliding his fingers between the pick-ups, and muting the strings from underneath, rather than using his palm. He also uses his thumb on his fretting hand to completely reach around the neck of his guitar, using it as either an extra finger when fretting, or using it to barre the strings in barre chords, instead of using his index finger, which is the traditionally accepted way.

He also combines several techniques from other genres ranging from speed and thrash metal to blues and funk. These techniques include heavy palm-muting,  bass-heavy riffs, frequently deadening notes, funk/ska-like strumming, and heavily blues-influenced melodic solos. He is also considered one of the best implementors of the "hammer-on, pull-off," a technique he has developed so well that he often plays fast solos with just his fretting hand.