Curriculum vitae
posted on 27 Oct 2004 under category History
First listened to metal in 1982, when a friend came back from vacation with Ozzy’s “Speak of the Devil” album. He played it for me and riffs like Iron Man, Paranoid, and Symptom of the Universe just blew me away.
First guitar when I was about 14 or 15. Got nowhere with it, and gave up on it for a few months.
Sold the guitar to a friend, Paul, in February 1989, when I was 16, so that I could use that money to buy a bass. We both joined a band that broke up immediately after we joined. We kept playing together, adding another friend Ben on vocals. Over the summer of 1989 (June-August) we formed Rampage and recorded some shitty boombox demos.
In Fall 1990 I went to College, met a few musicians, and by January 1991 formed my first ‘real’ band Early Warning. Early Warning was a prog-metal type band, more from the Queensryche/Fates Warning type of school than the uber-nerd Dream Theater type shit. We existed from early 1991 as a three piece (me on bass, Dave on drums, Frank on guitar), solidified our ‘real’ lineup in October 1991 (Dave, Frank, and I, and guitarist/singer/frontman/main songwriter Chris), and continued from then until I quit in January 1995. Over that time we recorded a couple of demos, some fuckaround tracks, played a lot of shows, and managed to open for a few ‘big’ acts: Dream Theater, Steve Vai (when he had a solo band, fronted by Devin Townsend), Catherine Wheel, Live (right when their first big hit was breaking), Lillian Axe, and a few I’ve never heard of before or since (Giant Metal Insects? Edan?). During most of that time I lived with Dave and Frank, and in doing so always played around with Frank’s guitar and taught myself some stuff.
I tried forming a band with Eyes of Ligeia main-man Toby after I quit EW, but nothing came of that. In the summer of 1995 I joined Skiptoe (a thrash band) on bass, and stayed with them until April 1996. We played a few shows, recorded two demos while I was with them, and the last night I played with them was captured on the “Live at WREK” radio show from Georgia Tech’s radio station WREK.
When I quit the band I traded guitarist Danny one of my bass cabs for a guitar, because I knew I’d be doing the solo musician thing from then on. I had been writing a few songs over the years in other bands, but starting in April 1996 I really started working with the help of Paul (who I’d stayed in contact with over the years). I basically resurrected the Rampage name and Paul and I did a couple more boobmox demos from 1996-1997, where most of the stuff on the first three Rampage albums were worked out.
In 1998 I started recording all these songs, and have been at it ever since. Lately I’ve started doing some session work, filling in on bass and some guitar for Chemikiller and Death Beast.
Also, I’ve been doing studio recording/production work for several UHR bands since 1999 (when I first recorded another band, Festering Sore), and some mastering for the UHR releases.
(Even though I haven’t done that much in the intervening decade since I posted this, I better update this one day. Not just for things from 2004-present, but for some things I forgot/overlooked/left out on purpose. Again, it’s like one of those old snapshots, only this isn’t an embarrassing one.)