Before getting into the adult industry, I worked in the music business as a songwriter, performer, musician, singer, arranger, engineer, producer and mixer.
I started out playing guitar when I was 13. The first song I ever learned was "Wipe out." Soon I started playing piano, bass and drums. I was living in the New Haven, Connecticut area and played in several bands. I once was in a band with Michael Bolton back then.
I started out recording on a VM (Voice of Music) tape recorder which had an "Add a Track" function. I would play the rhythm guitar part on one track, add a lead guitar in sync on the second track, and play the bass live. Eventually I saved up enough to by a Tandberg tape deck, which could do "Sound on Sound." I would record a track, then mix that track to the second track along with a new part, then repeat the process. This requires a lot of forethought, as once two tracks were bounced together, there was no going back if several generations later, one istrument was too loud or soft. I worked on a lot of original songs that way. At one point in time, I was offered a recording contract with Paramount Records, but before the deal could be done, the company went out of business.
Eventually I built my own home studio, using a 8 track Tascam recorder and I recorded many local bands, in addition to working on my own songs. Later I went to work as an engineer for Sound Stage, a 16 track studio in New Haven. I also was still playing in bands. In 1977, I decided to try doing a solo act, and utilizing the studio, I would play and record all the parts except for the guitar and lead vocal, then mix it down to cassette. I would then perform the guitar and vocal live to the pre-recorded background tapes.
In 1979, the owner of the studio I was working at decided to move from New Haven to Seattle Washington. He invited me to follow him out there. We slowly built up quite a clientele, and I started getting more into producing and arranging. In late 1979, at the height of the disco era, an artist named Salazar came into the studio wanting to record a disco version of the classic hit, "1-2-3." I was just the engineer on the session at the time. The song did not come out all that great, so Salazar invited a couple of local disco deejays to come in and give their opinions of the track. They wanted to make so many changes to the arrangement that at one point, I jumped in and suggested that it might be more efficient to rerecord the song from scratch with all their ideas rather than trying to build upon a weak foundation. At that point, the producer/arranger admitted that he not only didn't know disco music, he didn't even like it and suggested Salazar get someone else. I offered to rearrange and produce the track myself, so we did a new version of "1-2-3" which came out much much better.
Salazar got a local record company, First American Records, to release the track, and it got up to #60 on the Billboard dance charts, and was very popular at the local discos in Seattle. The label gave us the money to do an album, so we went back into the studio and recorded among other songs, a disco version of "Let's Hang On," originally done by the 4 Seasons. I wrote the string and horn charts for all the songs, and "Let's Hang On" featured a soon to be famous Kenny G on sax. This song was released as a single and got all the way up to #22 on the Billboard Dance Charts. We also did a very rough Video of the song.
In 1980 I had teamed up with Jack Robinson, a producer and lyric writer whose biggest claim to fame was producing "Dancing in the Moonlight," which was a number one hit for King Harvest. We wrote a song together called "Keep on Talking," and I produced and arranged a dance version and got a local talented female singer, Carrie LaPorte, to sing on it. First American Records put it out in the US, and Jack got a French label to release it in France. It was a huge success on the dance floor, and was a Billboard Pick Hit of the Week.
Also around this time in 1980, I heard of a local girl singer/guitarist who talked very dirty on stage. I went to check her out and was very impressed with her talent, so I invited her to come into the studio to do some demos. Her name was Meredith Brooks. My friend Jack got her signed to a French label, and we co-produced an album with her and her band. A single was released but the album never came out. Later she moved to LA, and eventually got a record deal and became a "one hit wonder" with her song, "I'm a Bitch," which was released in the mid 90's. Around that time, a friend told me he saw the original album I had produced with her in Tower Records. Turns out that Jack had made a deal with a small label in Los Angeles to release the album we did with her in hopes of capitalizing on her success. The album was titled, "Through My Eyes." However, because she only had the one hit, there wasn't much interest in what she had done 10 years earlier.
In 1981, rap music had just started to become popular. I got an idea to do a "chipmunk rap album." I wrote 2 songs initially, "I'm Little Ray Rapper" and "Get that Future Punk." Little Ray Rapper was actually me, with my voice sped up to sound actually more like a munchkin. The single came out in America and in France. I put together the album, and it was due to be released on First American Records, but they suddenly went out of business so it never came out.
Throughout the 80's I continued to work on music projects. For one project, I hired Sir Mix-A-Lot to come in and rap and scratch. This was just before he became famous with his hit, "Baby Got Back." I also played in a local top 40 band for a few years, as well as doing a solo act. I was also responsible for producing and arranging over 100 jingles in the Seattle area, about 20 of which I wrote and sang the lead on.
In 1984, I had worked with 2 different singers for jingles, and both of them had long red hair. I had a couple of dance tracks I had been working on, both remakes, "Wa Watusi" and "Do You Love Me" that needed vocals. I put the 2 girls together and called them "Redz." I was able to sell the master to a small dance label in San Francisco, C&M Records. They released the single on red vinyl and it was a Billboard Pick Hit of the Week. However, just as the record was about to come out, the owners went out of business so nothing came of it.
Around 1985, I bought my first computer, a Commodore 64. I learned to write my own programs, partly in BASIC and partly using machine language. I wrote a music program called "Easy Guitar," which taught how to play guitar on the computer. Later I wrote a program called "Strum-a-Long Songs," which provided the drums, bass, and melody to popular songs while the screen displayed which chords to play. "Easy Guitar" was named one of the top home applications of the year by "Run Magazine," one of the Commodore 64 monthly publications. I sold about 100 programs on my own through mail order, but I never really tried to sell the program to any of the major softward firms.
In 1990, I moved to LA. At the very end of 1991, I had received a video camera for free as part payment for a jingle I did for a video store. It was one of those old bulky VHS cameras. I had been a fan of porn all of my adult life, and this was around the time that amateur adult videos were starting to become popular. I thought it would be fun to make my own porn movie, so I hired a couple to make my first amateur film. The rest, as they say, is history. For most of the 90's, I created a number of "soundtracks" to put in my movies, mostly done first on an Ensoniq KS-32 keyboard work station, then advanced first to using "Bars and Pipes," a midi sequencer which worked on the Commdore 64, then I advanced to using Vision on my first Mac.
More recently, I've been practicing playing finger picking style acoustic guitar as well as getting back in shape on lead guitar, bass and keyboards, hoping to yet become as successful in music as I have been in porn. I'm working an a few songs on my current Pro Tools HD home studio. I will be adding lots of music, both new and old, to this site. Stay tuned.