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IndexI like most music, performing and listening.
Projects: I have been in many bands and performances over the years and have always had home studio equipment to some degree and composed on my own.
My first real band was a punk 4 piece named "Black Belt Jones" after the blacksploitation movie of the same title. I played bass guitar and sang backup vocals .After the band's breakup in the early 90's there were many spin off projects from re-hashed old BBJ songs to post punk hardcore involving other people and most went nowhere, of course by that time the punk thing in town was about dead. (most would argue that it was dead long before that though).
When the fame and stardom associated with being in a punk rock band in a medium sized mid western town got to be too much for me to handle I decided to change direction to something more subtle. That is when I began my electronic music experimentation, knowing nothing of this type of music it was only natural for me since I am an electronics tech who plays music and stuff. So I pulled a Sony reel to reel out of someone's trash and fixed it up enough to use for my purposes. Someone clued me in on where to find a broken Octave cat SRM analog synth and a friend introduced me to the world of vintage guitar pedals. I began modifying things and building things and blowing things up while taping them, manipulating the sounds and tapes and creating stuff that only a freak could appreciate. (or so I thought). Later on in life I learned that there were "composers", real people throughout history that did he same stuff, and they were called "composers" not freaks with too much time and a reel to reel. Somehow this new title added validity to what I was doing. Anyway, I eventually ended up doing performance/ live compositions where a few friends and I went on small stages and tried to get our old broken equipment to do things. We used reel to reels, tape decks, turntables, overhead projectors, strobe lights and misc. other wonderful audio visual implements. At the end of a performance it was traditional to make a sacrifice to the gods of slack and destroy things that we were using. The audience would usually come back just to see what all of the smashy smashy was all about thinking that someone pulled the plug and threw us out.
At this point I began recording at home and listening to bands like The Swans, I made more melodic compositions and played in few live bands. Over the years my collection of junk and really expensive recording equipment grew. I eventually ended up selling off most of my equipment preferring the old style of recording that I was most creative with. There are some great archives of this stuff floating around between my friends and myself, someday I should create a compilation of these things.
Currently I am working on playing guitar in a project with some previous band members and friends, nothing spectacular as of yet. A few years ago I enjoyed local success in a band playing 60's garage rock and Captain Beefheart style jazz/ blues / surf noise. Unfortunately I work a lot and don't have much time to perform live or practice more than once a week.
Influence: I really enjoy lots of different music, to list all of the crap I like would be impossible so I will just name a few favorites and you can assume that I like anything that fits into that range/ era of music. Hawkwind, The Swans, Lothar and the hand people, Beefheart, Steely dan, Polvo, Low, Frank Black, Vivaldi, Anything Big band, Herb Alpert, Most jazz from the 50's + 40's, Anything from the Nuggets compilations, Roky Erickson, Tangerine Dream, Shellac, Kyuss (most stoner rock), Most psychedelic, Slayer, Some older goth, Spacemen 3, The Exploited and old punk (uk and east/ west coast), Spore, The green pajamas, Porcupine tree, Stereolab, King Crimson, Hovercraft, Neurosis, Blues explosion, Psychic TV., Controlled bleeding, Einsturzende Neubauten, and Old Pink floyd w/ Syd. I am sure there are others but I think you get the point.
Most used equipment (current): 90's american Fender strat, Kramer bass w/ aluminum neck, Korg poly 800, Schecter telecopy from the early 80's, Ampeg vt-22, Univox amp from 60's w/ 2-10's, Misc.. homemade effect pedals and vintage goodies, Revox A700, Dulcimer, Bagpipes, GrundigTK-340, and misc.. High end tape decks. Minidisk recorder for remote recording apps.. and my trusty old Alesis quadraverb.
See some bad pictures of my old modular synthesizer here: I am sad that I sold it.
oops, the Revox A-700 above has been sold. I guess I will miss it too. Oh the 60's univox anp mentioned above is gone as well. I have gotten rid of a lot of music gear lately. I have, however been building a vacuum tube modular synthisizer. I have 2 voltage controlled oscillators, one working, one needing debugging. I have parts gathered for a simple voltage controlled amplifier. Here are some photos. I had to dismantle my trusty old Northeastern Engineering tube frequency counter (a.k.a. boat anchor) to get the parts like tubes and sockets and sheet metal. Anyway here are some pics from the new basement lab: