Born. Or, so they tell me. Seems I was also surgically removed. If you haven't heard about us C-types, we're often unsatisfied and rarely surprised. Actually, I just made that up - but it almost makes sense. For the pie eyed crystal wavers out there, I'm a Capricorn with a Full Moon and Leo Rising - near the cusp of Aquarius.

This momentous event occurred in Port Huron, Michigan. Soon afterwards they moved me to St. Clair Shores - which, as one may suspect, is on the Shores of Lake St. Clair - a charming suburb of Detroit and the boating capital of North America. They also wanted to be convenient to my grampa's place, on the water, with docks, (my parents, I mean - I'm an only child, as far as I know). Eventually, I learned to play - and this remains a favorite pastime of mine to this day. I started out small, with blocks and my own drool, eventually moving up to architecture, building little forts out of all the books given to me - in hopes that I'd read quietly for 25 years, and transform myself into a doctor or a lawyer - I was more the Indian Chief type, however.

Alice Cooper once said that the Detroit street kid is the greatest rock and roll critic in the world - and he may be right: he's from Detroit himself. So is Madonna. Also Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and Grand Funk Railroad more or less. Kiss and the J. Geils Band did very well there. I was not so lucky. Lily Tomlin's from Detroit. So was Gilda Radner.

Attended Grosse Pointe Academy for first grade. Yes, I skipped Kindergarten. I already knew how to read (Hooked on Phonics, or something). Mom was motivated and Dad was proud. They gave me tests so I wouldn't have to finger-paint. At five years of age, my IQ was measured as 143. Well, I've taken a few online tests since then, and it seems I've lost a few points. Such is life. Must be the radiation. Actually, I'm pretty sure now, they just wanted me to be someplace all day. I might've done better with the extra sleep.

My parents took me to see Jesus Christ Superstar in the theater - also Tommy - and I listened to those albums endlessly until every word, every note was tattooed on the inside of my skull - and then I listened to them again. I made a pinball machine from a slanted board, a superball, magic markers for flippers and some pet rocks for bumpers. My grampa heard of this and got me a real pinball machine for Christmas and birthday - he was so very wise. The highly reactive and intuitive bings and bongs instilled in me a strong and ever intensifying percussive sense (live jams will get faster and faster until it appears that I'm playing backwards).

There were piano lessons, but not enough to learn Chopsticks or Heart and Soul. My mom played show tunes, Streisand, Manilow and The Carpenters - and my dad was into "longhair" classical music, operas; but bought a few 8-tracks for me: Black Sabbath, Janis Joplin ... and later on, Billy Joel. Jim Croce was my favorite, though. The picture above did not age - that's the color everything was back then. We really were looking at life through rose colored lenses.

Attended public school: South Lake Schools - the best of three school systems in all of St. Clair Shores (so I wouldn't have to feel ashamed for sitting in the back of the class). My mom was active in the Gifted program there; also at the county and state levels - a desperate endeavor, since the parents looked at a couple "smart kids" schools, but they couldn't afford it. Instead, we got a boat, the Scrambler, capable of 75 mph; and thus traded up to The Floating Suite, a quiet cabin cruiser; but eventually stopped taking her out because gas was 87 dollars a gallon. I have my sea legs, I can tie a knot and I'm also a good swimmer. The condos had an olympic size pool with two diving boards. Once, the lifeguard grabbed me by my pinky toe until I squeeled like a piglet over easy, and gave me a three minute tour of the shallow and deep end. This made me cry, and taught me that hero worship is for the weak and innocent.

Several paper routes taught me independence, economics, advanced organization and how to make a decent hot chocolate (Nestle's Quik in the microwave). The surrounding subdivision was an interesting tree lined maze, scrunched up near and along the border of somewhat more affluent adjacent burbs which only main roads led into - there was a message in there somewhere (subliminal, subversive). I was a natural: one of those kids who knows every shortcut through every neighbor's yard, every dog and every broken fence; and takes a different way to school every day (a habit that would come in handy in high school). But I made maps - marking off every stop, so people could sub for me, with different colored dots for Daily, Saturday and Sunday. The parents required three seperate maps (not because they weren't very bright, mind you - it was very early in the morning, and usually dark out). An amazing fortune amassed, and my first vinyl purchase was Elton John's Greatest Hits Vol 2. When my third grade teacher returned from paternity leave, I put on The Bitch is Back. She was not amused. It just happened to be the first song on the album side. I got the joke myself several years later.

Comic books rock. I had a subscription to Spiderman, X-Men, The Avengers - more into Marvel Comics than DC: because they had storylines, art, and were not put out by the man. By fourth grade, I was putting out a local newspaper that all the grown ups thought was very cute. The Lakeshore Village Gazette had a circulation of about 50 and grew to about 100. My dad and I would sneak into his work after hours and borrow one of the first Xerox machines. Five pages, black and white, for 25 cents, once a month. There was a Comics and Puzzles page - and I even sold Classified Ads. I contracted out for the Sports section. That was the hardest part: finding other contributors - and it remains an obstacle to this day.

My children, if I ever have any, will be privileged to benefit from my wisdom and never attend public school - of any manner, sort, or conflagration - if I have anything to say about it, which I hope and intend to. In every class there is someone who gets picked on alot and never fights back; and this is not the most popular approach. I was a year younger and smaller anyways (being of Elven decent, I suspect). Even a few teachers were criminally cruel and administration was vastly unsympathetic. By middle school, my grades were all over the chart - full spectrum.

The parents divorced when I was 12. I knew it wasn't my fault, but I asked anyways (it seemed the polite thing to do at the time). My mom got all the furniture, and my dad got the house, me and the dog. My mother found a place she could afford in the same school district, so I could retreat there in case of emergencies. But I bounced back and forth between their two places, depending on what emotional crisis one or the other was going through at the time.

I was on the swim team in 10th grade - and was also a diver. High score of 143. Something about that number. I also played a little Dungeons and Dragons (still got the dice) and took a little computer Programming class where I learned BASIC - which has since become VB because it turns out computers caught on some since.

I got a bass guitar for early Christmas and birthday. Pawn shop special. This is what ten years of begging gets you: finally a purpose in life. I still have it. Red with orange flames. I quickly learned Smoke on the Water, Iron Man, Paranoid, Whole Lotta Love, Sunshine on Your Love, Oh Well, etc. - and mastered the hammer-on pull-off technique ala Eddie and Randy. I was in bed with a real bad cold when Van Halen's Jump first played on the radio. Maybe it was the Ny-Quil, but I cried for the future of rock music. I still have prophetic moments like that.

Family tensions force me to drop out of high school shortly after my 16th birthday. I worked at a car wash and began writing songs, seriously. Some time before this I had come up with the name, Shadows, for the band I would form one day with people of like mind and intensity. Let me know if you see, meet or chance hear about anyone matching that description.

This was also about the time I first started cartooning more than kids draw for fun - developing characters, creating scenarios. Iggy was a germ. Apparently there were several comic books before I had actually taught myself to draw. Nuclear Man was my one shot out of the suburbs and I blew it. Also, Finger Mouse and Flash were the hard copy version of a puppet show I developed personally. That was actually when I was way younger, and I only put it in this section to wrap sufficient text around the above pic - but Flash was a turtle.

Attended a new High School. Loy Norrix in Kalamazoo, MI. This was cool because it was all new. Remember The Breakfast Club? Neat little town, too. At this point, I decided that I wasn't going to worry about college prep courses or anything - just concentrate on graduating, forget the fancy stuff. Having dropped out, no real college would even consider me. This took a lot of pressure off. That's OK, I wanted to be a rock star anyways. I took Art, Creative Writing, Woodshop. You get the picture. Got an A in Economics, but failed the course for being more than 15 minutes late more than 5 times in the semester. Ah, well. Took the train home to Detroit about every other weekend to stay with my ma and hang with my friends.

This was where I had, what you could say, was my first band ... kinda: me on bass, and my best friend on guitar (and once his neighbor as a drummer, and once this other guy as a singer). The two of us once walked several miles, and back, to see Pink Floyd's The Wall, midnight showing. It was at this point when I decided that I too must compose a rock opera.

Finally graduated High School. Yay. Specifically, Paul K. Cousino High School in Warren, MI - a part of Warren Consolidated Schools, or Warren Con for locals. This was my favorite year. I was the new kid again, and this time I was on the radio. Yes, it only had a range of about 5000 yards, but I had the Friday night slot and got to play what I want. Someone stole all my Zeppelin albums though. And the 45 too. Drag. Last show, my bud talked me into playing Big Balls by AC/DC. Boy did I get in trouble. I hear that tune on the radio once in a while now. and remember how Dr. Johnny Fever got fired for saying "booger."

Like I said, this too was a new place, but well within range of my old friends in the neighborhood where I grew up. I joined a basement band, with my first real drummer - three guys, two amps and one 5 piece kit in the smallest spider closet you've ever seen dramatized on cable. We did What You're Doing by Rush and Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy. I also worked nights and midnights at gas stations; where my buddy lent me his acoustic guitar to help me stay awake. I eventually acquired it permanently for about 40 dollars in gas money. Turns out, cleaned up, it could be worth several hundred. I will never part with it, but I am still occasionally this mind-bogglingly fortunate in contemporary times. You never know.

More or less one year of a two year program in Electronics at the National Institute of Technology, NIT - which was somewhen in there bought out by NEC, the National Education Corporation; and yes, it is as lame as it sounds. It was a mill. But I got a huge discount, because my mom worked there (at the time, as a sales rep), and that's about the only reason why I went there. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had a passing interest in electronics; but I really wanted to go to Specs Howard, a local, and industry famous post secondary operation in the art of Broadcasting (after a year off to pursue a budding musical career, perhaps). But studying how electrons flow through transistors was almost similar. So, I was temporarily biding and musing on the possibility of designing amplifiers and sound effects, but I soon lost interest when I couldn't get straight answers to any of my questions, but was instead directed to assimilate and digest the corporate textbook. Bah. Denied clearance. Ah, ran out of money anyways: couldn't continue classes and defaulted my student loan besides. Technically, I got half an Electronics Engineering degree. But considering the source, I'm not too disappointed. Whatever. I already knew how to solder.

Worked as a roadie for my friends' band Hunky Dory. Also ran lights, wrote out setlists, fetched drinks, designed the logo, drew up fliers and eventually teamed up with another roadie to form another band. We did Black Diamond by Kiss and Falling Off the Edge of the World by Black Sabbath. But before that, I was the hired gun bass player for my first "real" band, called Perl White (after the silent movie actress). We did Bastille Day by Rush and about a dozen originals. Won demo quality studio time at a jam nite. One astoundingly over-populated back yard party, while the other guys set up, a buddy of mine in the crowd yelled "bass solo!" People applauded. After the show, I rated a groupie, until the place got busted by the cops (cuz people were parking on the highway). She said I was the best lead guitarist there. I never got her number. This is the continuing story of my life.

During this time I managed to land a job, through a friend of a friend, under the table, subcontracting, driving a van and later a truck, delivering and installing appliances for Sears. 7am until 9 at night, during the Christmas rush especially. I never got the paid vacation I was promised, so one day in mid January, during peak returns, I collapsed during my lunch hour. I was immediately fired, but brought back a few times afterwards to save the day for 10 bux an hour. Gratitude. It's good for ya.

I decided to follow my friends, and my dreams, and try to make it as a musician in LA. This was about 5 minutes before grunge happened. Take money. On the way, I stopped by to visit a few old friends in Albuquerque. This was the first time I was really on my own, and I really enjoyed it. Again, take money.

During my tour of the great western expanse, I worked as a mover, and once at a mail-order CD warehouse. I had worked in the library, in middle school, so I enjoyed the cataloguing aspect of it, but it wasn't paying enough to get my own place, and most of the people I actually knew were sleeping on couches or floors because it was $900 to $1200 for a two bedroom apartment anywhere safe. So I went home. Did I mention to bring money?

I moved into a buddy's house, a jam house, just to rent a room at first, but eventually became a regular musician in the main band associated with the place. Pearl Jam and The Black Crowes were spuuposed to team up with Soundgarden and The Cult to save rock and roll from the commercialization damnation situation - we waited in vain. Still a dedicated songwriter, and having a wealth of material from my time out west, I enjoyed casual collaboration, deliberate distinction and righteous roadie rights with nominal names like: Distant Reality, Silverwood Blossom, The Travel Agency, Dudes on Ludes, The Cringe ... and ... (wait for it) ... The Emissaries. I keep (and maintain) about 30 of "their" tunes from that era, and most have been tweaked some since. This was an extremely prolific time for me songwriting wise. I wrote as many tunes as I ended up adopting. Also, there was time and presence of mind to arrange all the material I had come up with out west. Desert music, man. Desert music.

To make some extra cash, I would sub on my neighbor's paper route; and soon got my own - and eventually combined both routes into one giant territory. I hadn't done this since I was a kid, but there were practically no kids doing this anymore, except as members of entire families. I worked there for almost a year, until the strike. Corporate management had refused to renew the contract for people who had made this their life, like my boss. Negotiations went on forever, and they kept drawing the line further and further back from the middle. They even went so far as to fly in several hundred people from out of state (some whose farms had gone bust, and would've done anything) and put them up in hotels for $20 to $30 a day each, months in advance, in preparation for an engineered empasse, resulting in a walkout. Now, I wasn't in the union (most carriers weren't), but my dad was a Teamster's Business Agent. He organized and negotiated contracts for starving workers from truck drivers to city employees and janitors for the Detroit Public Schools. I won't cross a picket line. I watched on the news, nightly, as my fellow carriers picketed while new truckers drove half loads of half editions through screaming mini mobs of single moms and out of work grandfathers. I could have kept my job. Paper boys are an entirely separate discussion. I even needed the money. Point of fact: the National Labor Relations Board has found that the Detroit Newspaper Agency utilized unfair negotiation practices and were guilty of breach of contract - but the US Court of Appeals reversed themselves and overtuned that decision, predictably. Basically, no penalties were enforced, nobody got their old job back, and the case remains unsettled to this day. Sometimes I wish I would've picketed. This should go down in your checklist as integrity. Also loyalty. Maybe even patriotism, but the good kind.

A chance sleepy adventure to a garage sale across the street produced a COCO2 for about 20 bux. Remembering my BASIC from high school, I programmed a personal version of Missile Command; but I had to leave the thing on for weeks at a time because there was no disc drive, and none available, even then. I still have the handwritten code. The intro splash is an impressively primitive rendering of Marvin the Martian.

Macon, GA. Of all places. Allman Brothers are from here - also Little Richard and Otis Redding. Neat. Now, I'd like to say that I moved down south for the weather (and I do not miss the three months a year of 20 below windchill), but I really didn't have anywhere else to go. My mom is not as healthy as she used to be, so she did move down here for the better weather, and also she has some family down here, but me ... I had run outta roommates. There wasn't anything happening musically for me in Detroit. The jam house went into foreclosure from a chronically dwindling border count, and everyone else I knew was married. I almost moved back a couple of times, though.

Anyways, while waiting for enough cash to accumulate so I could purchase my very own computer, I started hanging out in libraries, going online, and eventually learned a whole buncha HTML. By the time I too became one of the original Dell dudes, I had about 30 websites (mostly Geocities, but back when they were still kinda cool), and had started helping people with their own. Sitting in front of this thing every day, I now speak HTML fluently enough to be able to explain in utmost detail why WYSIWYG is bad (m'kay) and still end up coding myself out of a job, because it's the right thing to do. Hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby.

So I was in a new town and sought out fellow jammers. One bar had a jam nite setup dealie - a couple times a week - and I would thus, naturally, attend religiously. But I ended up spending more on beer than is reasonable for someone without any other applicable reason for being - and as my investment had proven increasingly less justified, I sought other avenues. I even answered jam ads from Atlanta, a two hour drive away - this was to prove equally fruitless. The frustration accumilated - and I became a pseudo web geek, spending endless hours online and developing my web skills to levels such that they are legendary even in my own mind, but only because few others have even heard of them.

Eventually, I amassed enough data to warrant my own domain. Everybody else was getting one - I nabbed dudeman.net - which is home to about 10 major websites and 5 minor ones. Just about everything on there is entirely my own work. Except this - I shopped this one out.

So a friend of a friend worked for the City of Warner Robins, an Air Force town, about 20 miles out, in the IT department at City Hall. Somehow, I ended up designing and managing their website, on a monthly basis, for a couple of years, until they went pro, with a company that could integrate the site with their internal systems. Bastards.

A buddy of mine works for Disney now, out in LA, workin on webpages, etc. I showed him a little HTML and he just ran with it. Took a couple classes and got in before the bottom fell out of the whole job market out there. He showed me some javascript and introduced me to CSS - I prefer the latter.

I had been jamming with a local guitarist for about a year when we decided to give Athens a try. A nice college town, from whence had sprung the B-52s and REM. But, when we moved there, we found that everybody else was either 20 or 40, and no one really wanted to hear what we had to play. Besides, drummers and singers are really hard to come by, and we needed both. So roomie got married and I stuck it out for another several months before packing it in and moving back to the parental unit in perpetual embarrassment. At least I'm online.

Somewhere around this time I was made aware of Beth Hart, Ben Harper, and Neil Finn - not so much because of local radio, but the internet. These are my new latest inspirations - genius, soulful, singer songwriters. Man, I am so late. Sometimes I just sit and stare at the neatly organized list of 300 some odd originals and feel guilty. Funny how being a perfectionst can turn into procrastination after only 20 years.

A friend of mine, who I met online, lives in Seattle, and plays a pretty mean guitar. We trade files over instant messenger programs and plan out our sonic strategies over webcams. A few other guys constitutes a growing network of musicians, and we're planning a proper CD. One of them keeps me busy maintaining his websites - for his business and his bands.

Music - Classic Rock, Blues, Folk and Progressive inspirations
            (Led Zeppelin, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, etc)
Math - an almost spiritual fascination with numbers
Art - creative insight, lettering, logo design

HTML - specializing in CSS and tables like puzzleworks, man
Corel - better than Photoshop for a dozen or so reasons
Bryce - 3D generated virtual environments

Astronomy - specializing in local stars and newly discovered planets
Writing - Fantasy, Science Fiction, Science Fact, Left of Center Politics
Genealogy - dozens o cousins - one line traces back to pre Civil War era
Fonts - over 500 currently installed, just on this machine (one's even mine)
Comic Strips - occasional further dabbling in the caricature-istic satirical genre
Digital Art - desktop wallpaper, Winamp skins (retro)
Video - photography, animation - design and production
Audio - composing, performing, recording, mixing, burning
Midi - it's so much fun, I jus hadda put it in here (n tab too)
MP3s - collection approaching 2000 files totaling 7 GB (128/44)
TV - it's usually always on, monitoring something worthy of interest
Frisbee - wanna tip ?


"Amazing powers of observation"
~ Pink Floyd