Yes, I'm rockstarandy... at least on Gmail. Sometime in the mid-'80s, I began expressing an interest in making music, rather than just listening to it. I'd been part of a Baptist church choir briefly, and my parents bought me a small Yamaha keyboard to tinker with. There was a recorder in the house I barely learned to play, too, and my sister eventually gave me the acoustic guitar she'd never really spent much time with.
In the meantime, I began attending the Dean's Summer Scholars Program at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1987. Stumbling upon a song parody-writing session in the lounge one afternoon, I contributed a line or two to "Newark, Newark," and shortly thereafter, I joined (possibly co-founded, but who can remember?) the Hellevators. I brought that little Yamaha keyboard with me to Rutgers, and though I couldn't play very much, or very well, I was the only original member who could play anything. Heh... We were soon augmented by Sue Schleck, with a better keyboard and better talent with it, and we went on to perform two shows for our fellow Summer Scholars and record a cassette's worth of bad parodies.
The Hellevators never officially disbanded, but the end of the Program effectively spelled the end of the group. I did re-record our first song, "Newark, Newark," solo a few years later, for a lark. In 1989, after dropping out of college (the first time), I decided that an electric guitar would console me quite nicely. Not that I'd really gotten any good with the acoustic yet... Roxanne, as I call her, was not a flashy rock guitar, just a black Gibson/Epiphone knockoff of the Fender Stratocaster, but she served me well during the early Not An Exit days. Although she's a right-handed guitar, I've always strung her lefty and played her "upside-down," like Hendrix did. Makes getting to the last few frets very difficult, but... hey, it works, and I don't often play that high up on the fretboard anyway. She's got a 'PAID' sticker (from my Toys "R" Us days) between two pickups, and any number of minor dents from being battered around, but she still plays well, slung way down low.
I'd have to say that I started getting 'serious' about my music in 1991. That's when I first tried recording songs that weren't just parodies, and that's when I first tried my hand at writing music and lyrics. My guitar-playing in the early days, though, was very stiff and basic. I didn't even try to learn any real chords until the mid-'90s, because it just seemed too difficult and painful on the fingers. However, once Jon Wardell and I formed the duo Not An Exit in 1992, I had a reason to devote a little more time and attention to Roxanne, and I started to improve. Actually, our first few recordings were rather experimental and didn't utilize much guitar at all, with the exception of several versions of "Dead." In the summer of 1994, Brazil's World Cup win inspired me to improvise the "Victory Samba." Late in 1996, I recorded a few covers (and a version of "Human Thing"), and by then I was able to lay down some acceptable rhythm guitar. Since mid-'99, I've been spending more time in front of the amplifier, and I've steadily improved. 1999 found me recording the techno/gabber "Troll Doll," the industrial "J-ded," and a rock 'n roll cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." The following year, I finally sat myself down and got that cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Terrible Lie" out of my head and onto digital media, and I began recording songs for Joy in the New, my debut album.
While I'd written the occasional song since 1992, it wasn't until I penned "For Dana" in 1999 that I seriously considered recording my own album of material. Since then, my various dwellings in Franklin Township, Nutley, and Lyndhurst (all in New Jersey) have played host to my home studio, based on a Macintosh or two. My original optimistic schedule anticipated the album being fully recorded by the end of 2001. Um...
After the untimely death of punk legend Joey Ramone in early 2001, I wrote the tune "Joey Ramone's Dead," having decided I'd give the album the same title. I soon realized that at least two years would have flown by before I was ready to release my CD, and it wouldn't have made sense to have called an album Joey Ramone's Dead in the summer of 2004, after Dee Dee had also expired and shortly before Johnny shuffled off this mortal coil, too. Besides, both the track listing and the overall vibe of the album had changed since those darker days, and Joy in the New seemed more appropriate by the time I was recording the last few songs.
After years of promises, propaganda, and procrastination, Joy in the New, an album's worth of original music (with one Not An Exit 'cover'), began shipping in August 2004; you can read the official press release here, and an August 2004 article from local paper the South Bergenite here. The release date was pushed back three times, but hey, it wouldn't have been an Andersen Silva production if there hadn't been delays involved. It's about as DIY as you can get; I played all the guitar, bass, and keyboard parts myself, programmed/sequenced the drums, and applied my voice. The recording and mixing was done by me, too, all at home. A little of the package's artwork was done by me, but most was volunteered by two good friends, great artists, and fellow Toys 'R' Us survivors, Steve Augulis and Jon Wardell. The only way this could have been more do-it-yourself is if I'd printed the booklets and CD trays and duplicated the CDs personally.
Two of the album's tracks have been released elsewhere; "For Dana" was included on Kid Antrim Music's 2002 Rock Compilation CD, and the pop-punk "Blond on Blonde" is on Crankspiv Records' Volume III compilation (also released in 2002), along with great music from other bands. My songs are also available on numerous Web sites; look under the Music heading in the menu above.
In addition to Roxanne, I own and play Nena, an aqua left-handed Danelectro 56-U2 guitar, a black lefty Kramer bass guitar, a Traveler Escape MK-II 'traveling' guitar, a Kona acoustic/electric, and an M-Audio Ozonic MIDI controller keyboard, as well as a recorder, a harmonica, and a few odder items. My recording setup during the sessions that resulted in Joy icluded an old Apple Power Macintosh 7200 (beefed up with a G3 processor and some extra RAM and hard disk space), Dana (my iBook SE), a Behringer 18-track mixing board, an Alesis SR-16 drum machine, a Shure microphone and two Realistic mikes, an EBow Plus, some effects pedals (overdrive, a wicked 'Punkifier' punk distortion, delay/flange, a seldom-used Crybaby wah, and a customizable multi-effects unit), and a guitar amp and bass amp. I did most of that recording and editing with the help of what I consider to be the best shareware program I have ever found for Mac OS 9 (and 8, and 7), Sound Sculptor II by Jeff Smith. Before I got the drum machine, most of my drum tracks were programmed on my Macs using Virtual Drummer, which is wonderful freeware. Nothin' like the early days of Not An Exit, when we 'multi-tracked' by using multiple cassette decks, seriously compromising audio along the way... These days, I record directly to my MacBook Pro or PowerBook G4 in OS X, using the Ozonic as both a MIDI controller and an audio interface, which means that I can plug the Shure and/or the guitar/bass into the keyboard, which is plugged into the laptop. If I were recording a full band, this wouldn't supply me with enough inputs, but for a singer/songwriter working alone, it's just fine. GarageBand, Deck, Peak, Reason Adapted, and Audacity all make recording and editing such a breeze.
Several people are fans of my (to-date, anyway) sole techno/jungle venture, 1999's "Troll Doll," and were disappointed that it wasn't included on Joy and that I have no intention of re-recording it. It's got so many Metallica samples that James Hetfield would probably personally kick my ass, though. Heh-heh-heh... I enjoy the track myself and had a lot of fun putting it together, but it's not going to be revisited. I've recorded a number of covers over the years just because I felt like it, but none of them will appear on an album, unless I get so wildly popular that a) there's a huge demand for my covers, and b) I can afford to start thinking about the legal stuff involved. For a while there, right around the turn of the century, I was doing more covers than original songs, and it was hard to fight the temptation to record songs I already knew rather than creating my own. Got out of that rut, finally..."Hannah's Song" was really recorded for Gina and Hannah, and not for the rest of the world, but Gina urged me to make the lyrics less specific and re-record it as a song for children everywhere. Perhaps one day...
I'm currently writing and recording new material (albeit slowly) for my follow-up, to be titled Tougher Than Flannel. I like to think of the title as a tip of the hat to Run-DMC and a poke of the tongue to grunge bands at the same time. Joy in the New had a vague story arc, about enjoying an all-too-brief happy moment in life, descending into depression and indifference, and eventually getting a second chance and finding joy again; Tougher Than Flannel is shaping up to be about accepting the end of romance, writing as catharsis, and getting tougher as a result. Or something like that. Hey, I just write the stuff... Hopefully, I'll be able to pick up the pace; I'm shooting to have it ready in 2012.
My modern classical classic, "The Hate Theme from 'Waiting for X,'" will probably be included on the new album. This was my only attempt at songwriting during a two-year dry spell (1998-99), and the title came from an error message a co-worker and I noticed on his computer about a year earlier, something about 'waiting for x.' I thought it sounded like a movie title, and then I thought that that movie needed not a love theme, but a hate theme instead. Not that the music sounds especially hateful, but it is a bit dramatic... I recorded a demo at the time, back in '98, and a new one early in 2005, and I'm determined that I have to get it out of my system. It's probably going to sound more electronic than I'd initially intended, but the tympani will still be there. "D.V." will most likely be recorded as a thrash-metal type of song, as per the second demo I recorded. The title "Too Loud to Be Eaten with the Naked Eye" materialized in my mind around 1999, and I composed and recorded the moody, jazzy instrumental that bears that name six years later, in July 2005, a week after coming up with a surf song, "Down the Shore." A week after that, I put the finishing touches on "Heavywait," and "Christmas Lonely" was recorded in November 2005, in time to generate some interest for the holidays. Since then, I've finished up "Souls Broken," "Frendy Tucker," "Rock and Roll Day," "Six Months," "Dangerous Babies" (and a 'decider mix'), "Drabbard," "Rockhopper," and "Loster."
I haven't planned out the entire album yet, but in addition to the "Hate Theme" and "D.V.," I will most likely record and include "We Go On," "I'll Live," and "When Giant Giants Attack!" on Tougher. There are other songs I'm still writing, or thinking about writing. I'm trying not to end up with a backlog of twenty written songs that are just waiting around to be recorded; as I've already got several unrecorded tunes, I kinda put the brakes on the songwriting for a while, though I'm starting to feel the compulsion again. There are songs I've written in the past (like "Dorable" and "The Tunnel") that may get recorded by Not An Exit (if the dynamic duo do record again) but probably not by me. Of course, anything's possible. "The One" has a definite sound in my head, but I'm not sure I want to touch it this long after conceiving of it. The Roy Orbison-inspired "Lonely Blue Dreams" was written more for fun, though maybe I'll give it a go sometime. I'm not too sure of what to do with "Sandsong." For a while there, I thought about recording it in a techno style, but if I do it at all, it's probably going to be slow and moody rather than frenetic.
I don't expect to become a rock star or a 'singer'/songwriter sensation, but I don't totally discount the possibility, either. That's not why I started making music, though, and if I don't 'make it big,' I'll be more than satisfied with having created my own art. After saying for years that I should really get out and try to play a live gig, I committed myself to performing during the second annual Make Music New York on June 21, 2008, when public spaces (sidewalks and parks, mostly) throughout New York City were opened up to musicians and listeners free of charge. Before that gig, my friend and fellow singer/songwriter Margarita Shamrakov helped me work up the nerve to perform twice at the open mic at the Lower East Side's Banjo Jim's where I'd spent several Saturdays watching her and others perform. Hell, yes, I was nervous, and made my share of mistakes, but I consider all those performances, and my repeated appearances for MMNY (twice at Duane Park and once at Sheridan Square), to be valuable learning experiences. I've got schwag for sale, too, which you can buy from the Shop!
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