LightningFire

Story

I'm from Southern California but I've been all over the world, I started playing music when I was in elementary school at 8 years old, I spent the first of my 20's in the air force, did that to get away from my parents. When I got my honorable discharge I moved back to L.A. and got back into bands. I'm just now 60 yrs old and I've been doing the music thing for 54 years. Started on violin, gave that up and became a drummer. I did more than alright as a drummer and all through the years played with more than 30 bands...then the worst nightmare of all musicians happened. I was in an accident, my guitarist was killed and I lost 70% use of my right arm. That was in 2000. No more drummer. It happened in Vegas where I was playing with 6 bands, one was a paying gig at Excalibur, $400 bucks a night and 5 others that were trying to do something. I was doing alright...but the car accident stopped me dead. I came back to L.A, went and got a full scholarship to an art school and got my Masters degree in design and digital art. Opened a business building websites for companies, 5 years later I had to close my doors. Then I had to move out to the valley where I still live but another tragedy killed me when my girlfriend of 15 years died...suicide was weighing heavy on me...I locked myself in my studio...6 years later when I came out of my studio, I had made 5 metal albums all by myself...I taught myself to play guitar and bass and I used a DAW to compose my own drums, even with using only one arm and part of my right hand works ok. I needed to play something and instead of killing myself I poured all my pain into music. I just finished all the music to album 5 and I've started writing all the lyrics now...that's where I'm at now. To me it's not about making it...I played on stage more than 500 times, the accident left me some money to survive every month barely, but when all those years ago I decided to play metal, to me, that's when I felt I made it...the rest is just money and fame and it looks better than it is, Lemmy told me that...

Profile

Instruments

Genres

Influences

Equipment

Languages

What is music to you? What does it give you?

Reality of my created sound. Music is practice, practice, practice...but passion is probably the ultimate word because that's what music is to me, and it's also what it gives to me. And if I'm being passionate when I first create a song, the end result is overwhelming and can only be compared to, maybe the powerful act of physical lovemaking, or maybe a roller coaster ride. All I know is that music saved my life from a suicidal time in my life when I lost the love of my life to a fatal seizure. From that point and a very short time later my mother passed away, so I locked myself away in my studio for 6 years and at the beginning of that time, suicide weighed heavily on me. It was all I thought about from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning until the moment I closed them in an attempt to sleep at night...but one morning I woke up to an itch, an eternal itch. The kind of itch to create music. No idea how to do that. For almost 40 years of playing drums in bands, and when I was in that car accident in 2000 in Las Vegas that caused me severe nerve damage in my spine and right shoulder losing 70% use of my right arm, therefore forcing me to retire my entire drumming career, and all that music I played drums to for the bands I played in, none of that music was mine. After 40 years of being a drummer, and now I had nothing to show for what I did. So now I had this "itch" to create my own music with no knowledge how to do that. So instead of killing myself over the grief of losing the love of my life, my woman, then losing my mother, I chose to scratch that itch and poured all my grief into making my own music. So I started figuring out how I was going to write a song. An old guitar playing friend had told me about a way to make music using a D.A.W. (digital audio workshop). It's a program where you go online and search for music instrument loops that players of guitars or drummers or whatever instrument they play, record a few bars of them playing what could be a song, they then put that sample loop on a website for anyone to use. Well I thought about that but I didn't want to use other people's music, so I went and bought a Kramer Baretta Special 6 string electric guitar and a small amp and since my teachers told my parents when I was a young boy, they believed I was a prodigy, considering how quickly I learned how to play the violin, I figured I could teach myself to play guitar all by myself. And I did. Over the next six years I wrote and recorded my guitar parts and I learned Bass guitar as well and wrote and recorded that for the songs, and then also I would compose my own drum notes and then apply sampled sounds of my old drum set and Zildjian cymbals from old demo tapes I had recorded with old bands I had been in, then applied the sampled sounds to the notes I composed that would complete the drums for the instrumental I would finish. I even attempted and wrote lyrics and attempted doing vocals to the songs but I had no very good voice for singing even though I recorded my vocals to fit the music, but the recording of my voice, it didn't come out very well. But after doing all that, 6 years later I had written enough music to complete 4 full albums of music for myself. Now I had my own music and that music saved me from killing myself. What did music give me you ask...Music saved my life!

What is your music dream?

The dream? Well my dream was to be playing live on stage in front of large audiences who had purchased my albums of my brand of music that made me successful and to see the appreciation in each and every one of those fans faces as well as to see cute women taking off their shirts and throwing their bras at me so I can see their boobies with their hope I'll invite them backstage and letting me have my way with them in the privacy of my hotel room and maybe marrying them so that I can have love in my life again. And all that means is being able to sell my music in great abundance to millions of people, which in turn would grant me financial freedom to live the life of a famous musician and be able to love and live again...but I would settle to having the music I create to be used as music soundtracks in movies or even a television show or even in commercials. Playing and performing live I think ended when I lost 70% use of my arm in that vehicle accident...so I have chosen what best could suit me now. I taught this older dog (myself) a new trick and I still have the gift I was born with, but I think I'm to the age of no return of being 60 years old now and any dream I could've had is never going to happen even though I have been fighting for it my entire life, I guess it just wasn't in the deal life dealt me to begin with. Not everyone, even those of us that were born with talent can win against an industry that has set itself against making dreams come true for us gifted human beings...instead, record company greed and those individuals who were born to money, whether they have talent or not can do whatever they want, never really knowing that they have killed the real people whose music was supposed to be heard and loved by the population, not the crap they brainwash into every teenager alive in today's society...

If you could change the world - what would you start with?

The change I would want to happen the most in this world is for people to do what they had promised and said they will do. No excuses. I do exactly what I say I will do, or be somewhere when I say I will be...no excuses. I used to wish for world peace, but in reality, people can't even get along with their own families most of the time, so that's my alternative choice. More and more as time goes on, people's "Word" most of the time isn't worth a s..h..i..t But I promise to you that I consider my "word" and what I promise that I say, to be priceless in a world with so much b..u..l..l..s..h..i..t. that it's amazing we aren't up to our ears in feces from all the human cows...

Which is the most memorable song from your childhood?

"Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, but also "Yankee Doodle Went To Town" from far back into my youth before I got a taste of Rock n Roll and Heavy Metal.

Who are your favorite musical artists or bands?

I would have to say my favorite bands are: Led Zeppelin, Rush, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Ronnie James Dio, Black Sabbath (With Ozzy and Randy Rhoads), Deep Purple, AC/DC, Triumph, Pink Floyd, Fight (With Rob Halford), Megadeth, Dream Theater, Motley Crue, Aerosmith, Alice In Chains, Manilla Road, Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Kansas, Journey, John Denver, Exodus, Testament, Ratt, Slayer, Queensryche, Quiet Riot, Sammy Hagar, The Doors, Tom Petty, Foreigner, Skid Row, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Great White, ZZ Top, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven and other classical Masters. I will say right off the top of my head in that frame of reference.

What inspires you to make music?

In the beginning because I loved being able to make music with the bands I was part of. I still love to make music, but now I make my own brand of music which makes me love it even more, for the fact that, because of technology, and hard work, blood, sweat and time, I'm able to continue doing it, but not one of my past guitarists riffs, or a past singers song, but because I Am Doing It All and doing it all with just one arm and two hands to play my guitar, and record it!

What is the message you want to send with your music?

I want the music business to stop making their own "Production" musicians and bands and go back to the traditional ways of the way it used to be done, where bands competed with each other and on the days of the week nights, the best bands get the headline slots to play in the clubs and have had to work their way up by writing QUALITY MUSIC and then being able to play it, get seen by everyone and noticed by the business labels and companies that could then work with and sign the right bands that the audiences would like on their own, advertise them so that the PEOPLE HAD A CHOICE OF WHAT THEY LIKE, AND NOT HAVE THIS C..R..A..P THEY MAKE BRAINWASHING PEOPLES HEADS...WHICH IS PURE B..U..L..L..S..H..I..T AND IS NOT RIGHT AND VERY UNFAIR...because there are alot of great bands out there that the music business is depriving the world of experiencing! Music that I hear on the radio has no subject matter or inspiration or creativity and absolutely NO QUALITY. Music is about Guitars, Drums, Bass and the players who have inspiration from the greatest events and players all the way back to the masters whoever it was before that made successful careers. Real Music from real players. That will always be the bottom line...The music business has sold their souls to the almighty satanic green idol and GREED and will burn in HELL for not promoting quality hard working players and bands and artists whose true hearts and souls deserve the chance for us to be able to share what we've created for the love of having a talent to share with the world.

How do you feel when you perform in front of an audience?

If I could still do it I would be doing it...but because of a drunk driver one early evening in Las Vegas Nevada, that car accident took the life of my guitar player John Edward Grossman, May He Rest In Peace, from this world and it took 70% use of my right arm from playing the monstrous drumming that used to be mine. I used to love it all come what may...I've got many stories, but how it made me feel, was humanly connected and as long as we fed the audience with great sound and music, they fed us back. Driving an audience playing drums was a thousand times better than driving a 200 miles per hour Lamborghini on the Autobahn and even down to the many sexual encounters I've had in my life, and that's the truth! I know it sounds strange and maybe perverse to some degree, but when the stamina had to be there and the sweat was dripping from everywhere on my body because of how hard I played those drums, that's the only way anybody would be able to understand what I put into my playing live was like...Sex sweats me just as much, but I got to turn a lot more women on banging on my drums, WEEeeeeeee!!

How do you see the musicians’ reality nowadays? What could be improved?

I have to say, when it comes to the variety of stations on the radio, as well as the music played on most of them...I don't hear substance or quality and true originality anymore because what the world is so now exposed to is the music businesses idea of a band or musician...they might as well just build them on an assembly line and mass produce non-talented clone production players who have NOT Paid Their Dues to get offered contracts for their hard work and talented products of the music they've created! Most jobs people apply for are given to those with the best qualifications and experience that person has shown proof of when applying for that job...I would like to see it changed with that kind of process kept in mind when introducing a new music or band to the world! The business has sold itself out to Satan, and they need to pay the price for how much great music has been lost due to their greed and lack of professionalism! I'm hoping to change that and get it back on the path it should've stayed on, a path with many branches, but never changing the leaves. I want to see REAL MUSICIANS, and I WANT TO HEAR REAL MUSIC ON THE RADIO...So until the business becomes what treats the real musicians with respect for their hard work and talent, the business of music, the A&R guys and the label executives can go pay for their huge mistakes themselves and die in hell for what they've done to all of us.

What do you think of Drooble?

I'm glad this website has returned but I'll be watching it very closely now. I'm hoping as I think this site is a great change from all the soundcloud and reverbnation dot com hum drums...and yes I'm on those sites too, but that's why I like this place, it's another avenue to getting a musician's music out to the masses, and gaining knowledge and meeting new friends but it's a refreshing new place to do it on! Thank you so much for creating this place for everyone...it feels like a home here rather than an ice cold warehouse in the Arctic...It's like a home filled with brothers and sisters and most of us just get along as if there wasn't anything wrong in the world.

What frustrates you most as a musician?

This is what frustrates me...The music business and their way of selling out to their false idols, production self made players who have less talent than a toad, yet become so famous that they might as well go live on their own planet and love each others c..r..a..p for they are failing to recognize the people who aspire to have what their talents have been able to produce for them...REAL MUSIC FROM REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL TALENT.

Do you support your local scene as a fan? How?

My former young roommate and his friends support it very much, and I watch and follow what he's doing sometimes, kind of like being on the ride but sitting in the back and observing it all, and once in awhile being surprised, but very rarely surprised, but very happy when I do get to be surprised.

What qualities should a musician nowadays have in order to get their music heard by a larger audience?

Youth always helps and in my case, having a whole band to play live and tour would be a definite help. But my advice to all musicians, is to be as cool as you can be, especially when you have a good band and a good sound, and stay together...bang heads and argue all you want, but when a lottery ticket is found, don't rip it up and quit. Longevity is a major component to success...love what you do and prepare for anything...otherwise you'll become a nobody, or worse...and no one is happy following a dead star...but on top of it all...Fight. Fight for your music to be heard and fight the companies that have sold their souls to Satan. The record companies are literally s..c..r..e..w..i..n..g all of us Real creators of music, by self-making their own little production players, then write and record music for them, then mass promote, produce and advertise them to all the young people, using these unqualified people to make millions of dollars and forgetting about all the rest of us hard working players...the music world took a turn for greed and self promotion rather than giving those of us a chance to letting us be able to do what we were meant for, something we were born to do, and throwing us in the garbage can instead. So until they get back to what they're supposed to be doing, the top music business companies and executives can go take their music and themselves and their little cloned copies of themselves all the way to hell and beyond, because that's not what they're supposed to be doing! They used to have it right and headed in the right direction, but what the business is now is what happens when the almighty greed of money and power does to the human beings not prepared for it...until they start caring for us real players who were put on this planet to entertain with what we were born with...they can kiss my music and my white royal heiny Not For Their Greedy Use!

Share some awesome artists that we’ve never heard of.

Visigoth...Manilla Road...there are too many to list, and those two are off the top of my hatter.