The Obelisk Questionnaire: Nick Davies from Serpent Venom
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Nick Davies from Serpent Venom
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I play bass and write music for Serpent Venom. I suppose my main musical job is to keep the groove, such as it is, going whilst the others keep it more interesting. It came about originally as Paul and Garry (drums and vocals, respectively) were looking for a bass player for a new band and a mutual friend put my name forward.
Describe your first musical memory.
It was really just from my very early childhood. I have an unusually long memory and recall being in a cot and certainly being a toddler. My mother had a record player and would put on a bunch of singles and albums that she had, whilst I stumbled about the place or sat on the sofa with my teddy bear babbling nonsense. Usually I’d hear a mixture of the Beatles/Lennon, the Carpenters and singers like Nat King Cole. Lots of Top of the Pops albums from the ’60s and ’70s too. My older brother used to blast out Iron Maiden growing up, so I was exposed to Heavy Metal and Hard Rock at a fairly young age. It stuck with me along with all the stuff my friends were listening to throughout those formative years.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I have so many, it’s hard to pin point. I’ve definitely had the best memories playing in bands over the years and more so with Serpent Venom. We didn’t have any expectations, yet managed to play lots of shows at home and abroad with our peers, established bands and heroes. From the smallest local shows, to big deals like Roadburn. It’s an incredible honour to share the stage with everyone as I can say that I generally haven’t met that many idiots on the road. The friendships that have formed over the years keeps me smiling to this day and I am truly grateful to have that. Even having two physical records out there blows my mind and makes me feel proud.
There’s also been many years of the good stuff as a punter, like just being caught in a moment at a show where the riff is so good, looking over to someone and pulling that ‘oof’ face and them responding the same. I’ve shared some truly moving moments watching live music with mates, along with some balls to the wall mosh pit chaos and all of it has given me an incredible feeling. I cut my gig teeth locally and my friend Ben was in a band we shared gigs with. We reconvened years later at Damnation Festival where we played a set and then I was watching him up on the main stage with Carcass. We both reflected on how far we had both come and it was really good to see that this daft hobby we started as young adults has really surpassed anything we may have thought possible. We were laughing about how we are in ‘grown up’ bands now whatever that meant. But a lot of ale had been consumed. I take great pleasure seeing my friends do well and getting out there with music. He’s done really well. The git. Haha.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Everyone has an opinion, so I suppose it is fair to say that my beliefs are challenged on a daily basis. Whether social issues, politics etc. I work in the building trade, so there’s a lot of people traffic in my professional life and everyone has something to say.
The most life changing of all (apologies in advance, it’s a long one) was that I thought I was invincible when I was younger and lived a very excessive/careless lifestyle. When I hit 30, I managed to push myself too far and ended up nearly dying. One binge too many on top of a chest infection and constant heartburn tore my oesophagus, leaked air into my chest cavity which could have touched my heart and ended it there and then. I woke up with a brutal hangover one Monday, after disappearing for three days on the piss, and threw up a tonne of blood.
Took some pain killers and went to work and was promptly sent home. I thought I’d recover, but ended up taking myself to hospital on the second day (that’s how firmly I felt about my own fortitude, stupidly) where I was rushed to another hospital which specialised in illness relating to the gastric system. They discovered the horror story above and put me into intensive care. I had endured 48 hours of puking black dead blood filled sludge, which continued for a little while until the anti nausea medicine kicked in.
My body was literally eating itself from the inside out. The consultants said that my chance of survival was slim and they would poke a camera down my throat and if they found the tear, cut me open and stitch it up and see what happens. I woke up from a general anesthetic, but my throat had closed up as it was a melting mess so they hooked me up to saline drips, antibiotics and painkillers intravenously. I had a tube feeding me through my intestines and a tube up my nose that went into my stomach and sucked the contents out all day into a bag.
It was putrid. On top of a soundtrack of a heart monitor and oxygen being pumped up my nose. I was there for a few months whilst they monitored everything, tested me, treated me. I would trip balls on morphine and hallucinate in fever dreams where I’d see a lot of dark faces mocking me. It was pretty messed up. I had to face up to the fact that any moment could have been my last so decided to make the best of it and have a laugh and joke with my fellow patients. Myself and George, an 80-something-year-old man who’d just had his ninth cancer operation tried to plan an escape for the hell of it.
So George and I grabbed our drip trolleys and made a break for the front door during the nurse shift changeover, in our backless gowns (no underwear for maximum impact) and got from the fourth floor to the entrance before a bemused and annoyed security team caught us. I must say on record that I didn’t coerce him into it either. He was 70 percent instigator.
The severity of the damage means I have to take medication for life and cannot be operated on to fix the Hiatal Hernia that the brutal vomiting caused, due to excess scar tissue. I frequently have to massage my stomach back into place as it likes to pop up into the throat. If I don’t, there’s a risk of bad acid attacks which will lead to oesophageal cancer, so I’m essentially a ticking time bomb. I could be sad about it I guess, but worrying doesn’t stop bad things happening, just wastes headspace. I decided to live better and try my best to be better. That’ll do me.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I feel that it leads to steady change overall. It’s a journey that moves in tandem with our lives. If you keep an open mind to new ideas, you can incorporate them into whatever you are creating. If it works and helps, great! If not, never mind, keep exploring your own goals and progression and see where you end up. Just like life, it will have it’s moments of frustration, anger, apathy. But it will also have some moments of inspiration, genius, joy and gradual improvement. I’m not the same person I was yesterday and when I write music, it will have it’s differences to past stuff. It’s still me, so there will be elements of familiarity. Whether for better or worse is up to others to decide.
How do you define success?
Success for me is just living as happily as possible and doing things that bring me joy. It took a catastrophe to teach me that annoyingly. I used to judge my own achievements based on the apparent success of others. It could be a bit of a headache. However, I tend to walk to the beat of my own drum these days, and focus on building the life I want. It’s not easy, but it makes sense to me.
Some people get so bogged down with using others as a benchmark for their own sense of self worth and it really isn’t healthy. I think people are generally taught to be competitive and bombarded with marketing that makes you feel inadequate (unless of course you buy whatever shit the advert is peddling, because of course it works! /sarcasm).
What’s the point of worrying if I cannot match someone’s standard at anything in life, when I can focus on things that are important to me? That’s not to say I am so stubborn or dismissive that I wont want to learn new things or strive to be a better human being. I want to keep my own corner of the world as tidy as possible and make sure I’m on good terms with people. At the end of the day I can’t swim faster than a shark, but I can run faster than one. So the comparison with someone else’s excellence in a field is only going to stifle my own progress if I worry about them and not try things for me. And if I find myself in a triathlon with a shark, I’m pretty sure I can cycle faster than one, so I’ll beat him easy. Unless he gets a bit bitey.
All jokes aside, I would encourage everyone to list down their own achievements, from learning to walk and talk, learning languages or whatever it is, and tell them to be proud of themselves for it. Go find some stuff that keeps you going and stick with it. If it isn’t going to plan, just have a day and make it to tomorrow. Then give it another try. You’ve already achieved so much to still be here.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
The dark side of the music business where coked up self-congratulatory tossers pat each other on the back whilst simultaneously fucking each other over. It’s a bit sad really. That or the amount of sexual abuse cases that are prevalent in certain corners. Do better lads. That could be your partner, sister, mother or daughter. Don’t be a cunt.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’d love to have to the finances to open a music venue, rehearsal/recording studios and work with underground bands to realise their aims. I’d love to work with the community and get more young people into music as schools, colleges and arts councils have had their budgets slashed constantly for years. Aside from that if I ever won a big fortune on the lottery I would purchase property and set up a foundation that allows people to move in, pay the deposit back in low rent (non profit, which then goes to more acquisition or repairs) and hand them the keys so that they can have their own home.
The property market in the UK is a criminal racket and less people can afford to own their own place. I grew up with little and to be able to do something to help others would be an incredible thing to achieve. It would also be a large middle finger to the land barons getting rich off people’s desperation.
Or a green energy powered rocket trebuchet that fires the small percentage of psychopaths that are ruining the world straight into the sun.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To me at least, connection with others. A picture can say a thousand words, there’s a song for every emotion or circumstance. Look at us with our musical community. We are all drawn to it. We feel that we relate to the people making the music, have shared experiences and commonalities with each other and build this greater good out of it. Friendships, camaraderie and celebrating for the sake of it.
Having an outlet away from the drudgery of working life is crucial to retaining sanity. Art by it’s definition is a method for expression and the artist is showing us a part of themselves. Art bringing us together is establishing another form of connection in an ever increasingly disconnected world.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to the day that we can go out into the world without fears of the current pandemic and hold those we appreciate and have missed. And a big holiday somewhere. Preferably with a beach. Or a big snowy mountain as I’ve started learning snowboarding. Probably a stupid idea in your forties, but there you go.
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