NL-X: Northern Lights eXperience

Since a few different channels have linked to his site, something is better than nothing. I'll fix and redesign in 2005. Pictures, artwork, video stills from Experimental Products live, maybe video and audio samples, much more detail and ?????. (Some bonus early Ex Prod video is available on a page linked, see bottom of NL-X homepage..)

Summary

I worked with Trenton/Princeton and later NYC band Again&Again&Again mostly as a "visualist", but also on occasional trumpet and keyboards. When they dissolved, I was referred to early electronic musical duo Experimental Products. EP had a minor but historically significant dance club hit with "Glowing in the Dark" (1984) .. which lives on as a cult DJ favorite. They are noted as being one of the first and finest minimalist electronic bands (based on the distribution of Glowing to club DJs). I earned a Film Festival Medal for my work with them, and was invited to tour with the father of all industrial bands.... Ministry. Later, rejoined with ExProd keyboardist for performance duo work (Experimental Cafe - years unknown but I'd guess about 1987-88 or so). Years later (1995), I produced a live CD and video of my favorite, Patrick Moraz. I attempted to put together some corporate work and had passing contacts with the finest progressive keyboardists. They are wonderful individuals.

Forward to 2004.. now I'm doing my own thing. I've got several albums in the very least cooped up in my brain, with even more after that. Who needs an iPod.. I have the constant music machine runnning in my head. So, now that I'm not worried about eating like I was shortly after 9/11 and the recession, Maslow's heirarchy of needs allows me to pursue a creative endeavor. Parenthood and straddling two businesses and tending to a 150 yr old farm house consumes most of my time.

The much longer winded version of this follows, and really needs to be split into several pages. 'Met up again with surviving Experimental Products founder Michael Gross, came to a "cease fire" (!). Maybe we'll contribute somehow to each of our next respective releases. Or never really see eye to eye. It simply doesn't really matter.

 

Intro

Music, and stellar musicians have long been a significant part of my life. In my early teens, my parents would take me to a restaurant in Strafford, PA, where Ward Marston would be playing piano. Ward is now famed with many jazz recordings, and as the leading convertor of old lp recordings to CD. Blind, he always had a guide dog faithfully laying at his feet while he played.

At age 17, I toured Austria for 3 weeks as lead trumpet in the Radnor high school jazz band. Also in the band: the talented and very dedicated Michael Hausman (later drummer with the group 'Til Tuesday, who had the hit "Voices Carry", now a music manager) AND some tuba and trombone playing guy who would turn out to be actor-comedian Thomas F. Wilson. Tom played Biff in the "Back to the Future" trilogy of movies. I experimented with a self made electric trumpet, utilizing a Barcus Berry pickup (that usually had a loose wire) through a Mutron III envelope pedal, plus echo. Fortunately, it DID work the last concert we presented before graduation, so at least I left with one long smoking electric solo.

A non-musical name dropping tangent to this is that I got an order from KISS bassist Gene Simmons for a comics fanzine I published during my teens ("Graphex"). I had no idea who the letter was from as it oddly crossed out the Salt Lake City Hilton address and provided a NYC one. Later, I opened a friend's KISS Alive or Alive II and saw his signature... and matched it up with the letter. My not-far-from-the truth joke is that 60's and early X-Men comics will fund retirement.

 

College

At Princeton University, I was very fortunate to have lived in the same "eating club" as the ridiculously skilled guitar wizard Stanley Jordan. Stanley was at the top of the jazz charts for years and still is the diamond standard of fret guitar tappers. He set the stage for everyone from Eddie Van Halen (who did some fretted solos) to bass and Chapman Stick monster talent Tony Levin. Stanley is a nice shy guy, I was lucky to meet up with him in 2002 after a show at the Sculler's Jazz Club in Boston. He astounded me in saying that I had inspired him to work harder, as I was always heading off to my art studio for 11:00pm to dawn painting sessions. I had an early marraige and still remember the wedding band begging off from letting him play at the reception with them as he didn't have a "union card." Well, we persevered, and Stanley sat in.... and their jaws hit the floor. At least it was in time with the beat.

When I went to my final department exams, there was some guy there I had never really run into, Michael Lewis. He went on to write several business best sellers (starting with "Liar's Poker") and contributes to the New York Times. There is a point to this: Early in 2004, Michael wrote a review of the Apple GarageBand program where he said something to the effect that "this will do to music such as early desktop publishing lead to the plethora of ransom note style posters..." I thought, time to get the real software! Or, at least make my own ransom notes with much more sophisticated tools.

 

The Club Scene and Experimental Products

I was determined to be the "Eno of imagery". MTV was just starting. Peter Gabriel had declared that every band would have a visual artist member within ten years...... Still in college, I joined darkwave group Again&Again&Again (calling them during a radio interview), from the same Princeton-Trenton scene that produced the drummer and bassist for Henry Rollins (Andrew Weiss and Simeon Caine, I believe...then in a trio called Regressive Aid), and later Ween and Blues Traveller. After they disbanded, and more on them later, the DJ from City Gardens (music writer Randy Now), suggested I check out Experimental Products.

Experimental Products is a whole can of worms in and of itself. One of the first electronic duos, they scored a cult DJ hit with the EP and song "Glowing in the Dark" circa 1984. Glowing has been re-released on compilations twice in the last year by the famed German DJ-musician-producer DJ Hell. A third release is apparently in production. Glowing (with a cover designed by yours truly) sells for about 50-75 dollars on eBay, while their first record, Prototype, regularly is bid up to 350. In an odd twist, my cache of records is the greatest sum ever realized, or funded my current oodling. An ex-Manager has a case of records in storage.

I was a visual member, creating elaborate slide shows using up to six projectors and hundreds of slides. We once opened up for Ministry, and the then manager hooked me up with lead singer Al Jourgenson, who asked that I also do visuals for their performance. I used paintings from my college days, where I studied under adviser Sean Scully. He was once named by a Time magazine art critic as "the greatest American painter alive today". I read this while flying on business, and almost fell from the sky. Apparently Sean got so huge, he ignores or disavowed his Princeton days.

Al asked me to be part of a supergroup Ministry tour that would have included Jah Wobble on bass, Luk von Akker on guitar, and some crazed avant garde Germans on percussion... I can't spell the name of the band off hand.. but it translates as "Buildings Falling Down". The tour did not come about - lack of record company funding. Ministry later opened for the Police at a huge JFK show, and bought themselves out of their contract with the proceeds.

My submission to the International Film and TV Festival - NYC was around this time as well, where I was the youngest recipient -- recognized with a bronze medal for the Experimental Products visual environments. Their success on the club dance charts I believe changed the band, who were less willing to push out into new venues in NYC (even Again&Again&Again had played CBGBs at least four times...and had a host of dates and prime opening spots.) ExProd reached as high as number 12 or so on the midwest dance charts, and were the only independent band to make the top 100 for the year.......Perhaps it was the expense and success of recording... and the band seriously needed to update their equipment, as the instruments and technology were rapidly evolving. Also, third keyboardist Mike Simmons left the band after what seems like a short stay.. and was key in adding to the live sound of earlier and current compositions. Unfortunately, his song writing style was different, and the personalities didn't mesh as the founding members held tightly onto their reins. 'Always tough to figure them out.....A golden opportunity was missed by all as the original "Mannequin" movie--with the then unknown actress Kim Catrall--was being filmed in Philadelphia. Mannequin was another song on the EP, and never got the notice that Glowing did.. and yet.. the opportunity was right there. As is typical in music, a taste of success and everything went blooey. They later released "Experiment/Who is Kip Jones" which didn't do nearly as well.

The first manager of EP, Steve Fritz, who had hooked me up with Ministry, also arranged an interview with Group 87 and solo trumpeter-keyboardist Mark Isham. Mark is mostly a film scorer these days, but still releases respected CDs and occasionally performs live. He's one of my heroes - a great trumpet player/synthesist.

I have some of the very few live tapes of the band from both before and during this era. I will release or post "RAM", a video experiment song that later evolved into "Work the Beat" On it, I have a brief harmonized trumpet part . On an audio tape of a live shows from City Gardens (pre-Glowing) -- the flip side includes Mark Wilde teaching/rehearsing "Glowing" with Michael Gross and may have been from one of my first meetings with them. Plus, a live radio broadcast from WXPN, featuring the only known live recording of "Glowing in the Dark", with the inclusion of Mike Simmons on keyboards. Mike also has a copy of this latter one. He is busy playing and recording with an "Americana" band 2004-2005, and hints at solo recording this year.

I left the band, frustrated... I did one show with the departed keyboardist, great long-term friend and commercial sound engineer Mike S., in his "August" project. Just a few years later lead singer Mark Wilde was one of the early wave of AIDs casualties. Surviving keyboardist Micheal Gross, party buddy, decent pool player and surprisingly good scrabble player (or was I simply... very.. tired.... late at night?) and I teamed as the perfomance duo "Experimental Cafe" at Philadelphia's famed Electric Factory (1989?). There, I pumped computer graphics still and motion imagery from a Mac IIci -- utilizing what was then a $5000 dollar video card, the NuVista+ --mixed in with motion and distorted video imagery, using a Rube Goldberg switching array pieced together from Radio Shack pieces..........one of the earliest examples of club and rave world VJing (video jockey).

I had a strained encounter with Macromedia as I had included some heavily color distorted imagery of a shadowy alternative encounter used in the Experimental Cafe shows in a Developer application. They showed no "graphic parts" and I thought nothing of it other than "artsy". Silly me. These days it is so old hat. But, we got over it. I can pass for respectful these days when I remain quiet. My politics are a mixture of libertarian plus the two parties. Everyone has rights, as long as they don't impose on the rights of others. Macromedia later used an AIDs animation I had done for Merck - painting cell parts from video grabbed steak (!) in a Developer's Showcase tape.

 

Patrick Moraz

(1988-89) very determined.. I get to meet Patrick Moraz backstage at a live WMMR radio broadcast from Atlantic City.. I had won the opportunity to sing live on the radio--and actually won the prize, in pinstripe wool suit, with leather briefcase and sunglasses--for my version of "The Monday Morning Blues". I had written the lyrics on the spot. Optimistically, I had brought a several page proposal asking for a kingly sum of money to develop the VidEOS, a video synthesizer. Patrick called me at work within the next 24 hours....He later explored options for a "StarPeace" concert to celebrate a major Swiss anniversary. His ideas were written up in Keyboard Magazine, but somewhere along the way the project was halted. Some say it is that interview which predicted his departure from the Moodies.

This did lead to the confidence to start my own computer graphics company - VidEOS Multimedia. Vid being "to see" and EOS being the goddess of the dawn. Also, the Video Image Design and Editing Operations System or Synthesizer....... Just as it was starting to take off, a dear friend asked me to walk away from it all to be the first Quicktime Video Evangelist at Apple Computer. Having had some great successes in working on an HDTV movie doing interactive set graphics and a large corporate launch....... having just made a big investment in expansion.... I regretably declined. The road not taken.. that was a big one. I don't look back, but that is one of two large regrets I have in life.

Jump forward 5-6 years, and Patrick has left the Moodies and is doing a very low key informal "living room" tour... and I meet up with him after a show in Litiz, PA. He remember our earlier meeting. I pitched the idea of a "legal bootleg" video recording from the tour.. He was so pleased with the audio (recorded by noted engineer Paul Antonell), that a CD and Video "PM in Princeton" were produced. A year or two later, even as a new electronic record and tour were planned, unforeseen family matters came up for Patrick and we drifted apart.

 

Domesticity and Vermont, Highs and Lows

1997-98: A move to Vermont, a new life, a studio fire that destroyed all in 15 minutes and cleansed away the past..regular work for Glaxo on product launches and ever more ambitious (for my small cormer of the world) business shows for American Express. A career peak, designing and creating events, until those planes hit the trade center just months later. It was a challenging 2 years of rebuilding, but was blessed with a lovely baby boy, and in September 2003.... things start to come back together. The internet craft business continued to grow by leaps. We "accidentally" buy a 1927 Poole upright grand at an auction, get it restored, and my wife (since tragically deceased from an accident) is so happy playing again and relearning piano. (I couldn't let it go for $50-75 dollars, waved my program. And the guy said "sold!" She cracked up laughing saying, I can't believe you just bought a piano.

Now it is early 2004 , and I'm out working on a corporate meeting job. The sound man has been selling music to the Weather Channel and getting royalty checks. A wonderful PA, Augie Alexander, has at least 3 CDs out.......I say, Augie, I can't take it any more.. what do I start with? He suggests Reason from Propellerhead. I fill up an external hard drive and begin, setting up a separate audio area in an extra bedroom. I get a book, read a few chapters, start with a tutorial and then think, well, I'll just write a song... and out came "Sun Through Clouds." The music starts to flow out, granted with effort at the "peaks", and I get a lot of positive feedback from those I share the initial results with.............I start writing this first step of this project.....just for its own sake.

Phish announced a festival in northern Vermont. I followed the planning progress with the intent of selling my woodworking at their farewell show. How could I not go? Another set of circumstances all happened seemingly at once.....Michael Gross contacts me asking for new copies of Experimental Products videos....and I resist knowing that something is up. (Michael was pushing for a new deal for himself with DJ Hell - Glowing in the Dark was re-released with a new re-mix in 05).

The Summer and Release

The Phish Coventry event comes very close to being rained out, and is a biblical quagmire of mud and modern traffic jam. However, the younger crowd is very, very positive on the ambient tunes, which warmed my very tired heart.

...Near misses, a series of peaks...a whole different take on the long "Advance to Peak..." more to follow (as well as the condensed version!), and these pages will be restructured....also how New Age Keyboardist and what I call art psychologist genius Don Slepian fit into the picture.....besides inviting me to his Art Coffeehouse show. You are great Don, can't wait to see you! I'll bring the tape of you playing with Patrick.

Personal Tragedy

Fate is indeed brutal...the completely unexpected loss of my wife seemed near infinite. Adjusting and grieving take time..perhaps I'll indulge in some "music therapy." We'll see.