Let's go back to a 16 year old Dropout:
After dropping out of high school, I was a pretty lost kid. All my friends were applying for college and I was busy abusing drugs, thankfully I had a friend who was as dumb as I am, so instead of persuing education or a career, we started an indie rock band.
"wait...what should we call our band?"
"well, your name is Nigel, and I'm a dropout, why don't we call it 'Nigel & The Dropout'
(the name stuck ^)
So I picked up a guitar and started googling how to play it, Nigel grabbed some synthesizers and drum machines and we started a two piece indie rock band. We downloaded a copy of FL Studio on The Pirate Bay and within a couple years we recorded our first Album: "Slice of Infinity":
IF I ONLY HAD A DOLLAR FOR EVERYONE WHO ASKED WHY I SING BRITISH (I wish I could tell you why)
Thankfully I frequented The Pirate Bay to steal software as a broke teenager, because I saw they were having a contest. "The Promo Bay" was a chance for an unknown band to get featured on the front page for 3 days.
Now at the time (2012) The Pirate Bay was the most visited website in the world besides Google, so I did not have high hopes. But I submitted and somehow our music got selected out of 20,000 submissions 🤯.
They invited us back for a second time and urged us to make a music video, so I bought a GoPro (even though I had no idea what I was doing) and tried to chop something together:
200,000 plays was a pretty big deal online in 2012 (especially at 19 years old), it even landed us on the front page of Reddit. It blew my mind, I remember getting thousands of emails in all these different languages from people all over the world who loved our music and thinking: "holy shit, the internet is so cool, everyone should be on here".
But the hype from The Pirate Bay faded, and since we were starting to bicker like a married couple, the band broke up after 1 final album together: "Folderal"
I wrote some of my favorite guitar licks on this last record before we finally parted ways and I was just beginning my adventure in programming live show visuals:
After the band broke up I decided to ditch the guitar but keep the name: Nigel went on to become 'Nydge', and I became The Dropout (goodbye '&' 😔) I picked up the alto saxophone and went solo!
When I think about the music that inspired me to stop using drugs and really work towards something in life, I think of the music I made in this band. We have some gems hidden in this forgotten corner of the internet if you feel like digging through my british singing and teenage agnst:
Listen to the Nigel & The Dropout Discography on Soundcloud
If you're reading this, I want you to know that the fact that you're going this deep on my music means a whole lot to me ❤️
- The Dropout