Bio
I still remember the very first time I noticed music as something more than just background sounds and trying to hum words to the song American Pie when I was still just a little tike about 5 years old in the back of my Mom’s car. Growing up in Altadena California as a kid I was introduced to all the sounds of Motown and my music taste started to grow by leaps and bounds as I was indoctrinated into the sounds of soul and R&B music. The Ohio Players Album A Taste Of Honey made me really want to be able to play that style of music, but as soon as I heard the very first KISS album I knew my heart was in rock in roll. As kids me and my friends used to all play brooms and other household items as our instruments pretending we were a real band. Growing up I sang in the church choir, school plays and basically anywhere I could get my voice heard.
By the time I had reached my teens I had already done TV and movie appearances as an extra and even hung out with many Hollywood people to the point of losing all nature of the term Star Struck. I spent a few years acting in an effort to find out exactly what I wanted to do and be. In high school I used to sing in my room to Judas Priest, Scorpions and Iron Maiden records, and one day a buddy from school Randy Green asked if I would sing for his band at the time Alluvium. At that point I started learning cover tunes with by buddy Robert in an effort to get a set down to start playing gigs for my first real rock and roll experience. Like most kids we played wherever we could and back in the eighties there was not much of a pay to play presence as you see now so we had a lot of fun. We finally broke up after several incarnations of members and names, but Randy and me my first drummer, have remained life friends.
I got married right out of high school and went straight into the army after that and had no success withy the military way of life or with that marriage as a matter of record, but I did get my daughter Christine and life moved on. For a long time I wandered around Washington and Oregon, I even really got a chance to experience the twilight of the hippie crowd at the Oregon Country Fair meeting the likes of Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia’s daughter Sunshine and even though I was never a hippie in mind or reason, I truly enjoyed and thank God for the ability to just let me have a glimpse into that lifestyle and meet some truly unique people. In Oregon I also started blowing glass and ended up forming the Original Heavy Glass with Jamus Sundstrom, an industry that really took off and at that time only Jerome Baker and us were the real players in that game. When they arrested and prosecuted comedian and famous Bong-Master Tommy Chong, I sold my company to a friend and moved back to California at the request of my then wife Carlene.
Not having had what anybody would consider a real job I just decided to start over in computers something I was very interested in high school about and took all my money and just started working on computers, taking whatever dead end job I could get in what was then an almost totally Asian industry, and that was to change the direction of my life for the next 15. Marriage and raising my son Arran and computers was my life and lifeblood until I was forty years old. I went from building to, designing to selling computers until I decided to take a stab at writing. Motherboards.org was and still is my daily job, only now I focus more on videos on Youtube than writing. The whole falling back into music is accidental or fate depending on how you view things as I originally started looking with my son for gear we could start recording some of the songs we had written together and build a little mini studio for us. During that time we went into a local Sam Ash Music store where Arran said he knew a dude that knew about music equipment Jonathan Morrison. While there Jon played me some demo of him playing guitar and I was like WTF I really like this stuff and asked to borrow his songs so that I could write some lyrics and make some down and dirty recordings so I could make a demo of my voice. My son at this time started listening to music that was a bit heavier than I was into so he went and played with his friend Eric and I started working with Jon.
For a year Jon and me worked on a variety and believe me if you heard all the music we recorded it was if anything a variety of styles. I was very sick when I met Jon and had already almost died twice and was fighting diabetes so to me it was an almost now or never situation to get something really good written and recorded and so the Pain Cylinder Project was formed with Jonathan Morrison on rhythm guitar, his little brother Jared on Bass, and Jesse Hunter on lead guitar and his little brother Chris on drums. We wrote and recorded the original scratch tracks for many of the songs on our first debut album with this lineup. After finally getting our members in order we changed the name to simply Pain Cylinder and with new bass player Clinton Clark recorded 2012. When it came time to support the CD we hired a different guitar player for the rhythm section for our live shows as Jon does not like the music scene and prefers to work in the studio. Heavy Metal has changed and even though Pain Cylinder is still alive and recording our 2nd studio CD, getting proper exposure and decent non-paying gigs is not an easy task when everyone has a full time job to support themselves, but for the love of the music we endure.
For a long time now Jon has been pushing me to try a different style of music and more modern approach to the entire process of the business, and since is my producer on my video projects and other music ventures, I am giving it my solid attention. In my heart I yearn to write songs that people would remember and sing songs about serious issues that make you think. Heavy Metal is about focused power and high energy and Pain Cylinder covers that; I want to make music that touches the human soul by way of emotion through song. I am now in the studio recording my first ever solo album, but the members most likely will remain the same with just a different twist to the music. I do a lot of different work on multiple projects on the web and on YouTube, which you can see on my links page if you are interested, its manly computer and tech related stuff. The first song, name of the album and single, wow did I get that in one sentence, LOL, is American Beautiful. As we record the album we will bring you constant updates press releases, and for my newsletter subscribers free stuff including, exclusive media downloads, T-shirts and more. I designed the studio we built in my home of which we will discuss as we go along. Randy Green built it, Jon helps me run it and we all hope to bring you something you can remember, as we get ready to end the summer of 2011, and start the holiday seasons.
Thank you all and God Bless You,
Elric.
