who is betty donelly - the early days

who is betty donelly?



more information can already be found, scattered throughout the worldwide interweb ...

as for my musical schooling, i must say that thanks to my dad, i
started out very early when he send me to music school to study the
violin and music theory at age seven...

apparently i was better with my instrument than i was with the theory,
because after a few years, i was a couple years ahead on the violin,
due to having failed a few times in music theory

that was really no fun anymore, because on the violin i was presented
with materials that hadn't even been covered in my theory class, so i
quit when i was fourteen years old..

a bit later i got hold of an old spanish guitar, and learned slowly at
first, by playing along with music mainly from the band the cure, who's
music eventually shaped my life, my soul and my beliefs and way of
thinking

at seventeen, having stripped our high school band from their guitar
player, we formed our first band, which i got the honour to name..the
name choice was a no brainer for me, i called the band the fear...

i used the 'the', because i wanted us to be included in the long
traditional hall of fame list of bands that start their band name by
'the', including the beatles, the rolling stones, the byrds, the cure
and such

i used 'the fear', because that was my main emotion at that time...i
was in particular very aware of the feeling i was born in the wrong
era, the feeling of being born a couple hundred years too early...i was
constantly feeling alienated from this current primitive society...a
humanity still in it's puberty, with all its testosterone induced wars,
power games, cold wars and groce injustice...

the music of the fear, in which i played the bass, was obviously very
dark and somber, painting an image of a depressed state of mind, and
love sorrows mainly...there is one song of the fear online over HERE , a tune called one last time, one of our early gemstones

after a fight with the guitar player/singer, the three piece
(guitar/vocals, drums, bass), disintegrated and shortly after i was
able to form another band called the elephants, a band name i had once
again chosen myself, and which reflected my already deep rooted
concerns about the earth's environmental decay...in particular, listen to
the song 'deep' on the same page as mentioned just above..

the elephants existed for four or five years maybe, with a kickstart in
the end of the eighties, until the band once more disintegrated back in
1993

the musicforte page could be considered a tribute to my early years as
a band member, and still holds deer and fond memories in my heart...it
was a great period after all...we managed to gig regularly and created
a regional buzz and following, ending up playing gigs in venues that
supported 500-800 people, playing local festivals and youth clubs...

after a long period of just working to earn my daily bread, i managed
to record two songs on my computer in 2004, all by myself...my first
solo songs...

these two songs, 'my untouchable friend' and 'the void', can be found HERE

this marked the start of betty donelly solo....

have a wonderful day

betty donelly