Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
| StoreTags: doofgoblin, bio, experimental, noise, idm
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Okay my turn:
I was born in a small, woodsy town in Connecticut, USA. In the fourth grade I was turned on to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets,” and began dubbing tapes from friends’ older brothers…stuff like Anthrax, DRI, Iron Maiden, and Megadeth. When I was in the 5th grade, my parents gave me my first electric guitar for Christmas. I plugged it in, couldn’t play it, so I stashed it in my closet for a couple of years until I needed it as a prop in a talent contest in the 7th grade. A kid who was in the 8th grade was playing all these bluesy solos and stuff and I thought to myself “hey if another kid my age can do this, I should be able to also.” So I went home that afternoon and plugged my guitar in and figured out the opening riff to “Somewhere In Time.”
I spent the next 5 years learning songs from tablature, by ear, guitar magazines, and playing along with tapes and cds. I was the singer/guitarist in a speed metal band and we played our first club gig when I was a senior in high school. I enrolled in the music performance program (with emphasis in music business) at the University of Massachusetts in 1994. It was around this time that I was introduced to Ween’s albums “The Pod” and “Pure Guava.” So, inspired and mind-blown, I bought a four track and a Boss DR5 drum machine and began writing and producing songs myself. My music began leaving the realm of speed metal and entering a world of odd and impromptu ditties of tape speed and effects experimentation.
The next big musical event for me was when I was introduced to the music of Mr. Bungle “Disco Volante” and Eskimo “Further Tales of der Shrimpken,” which had a cover version of Snakefinger’s “Kill the Great Raven” which is actually by The Residents whom I was told was a big influence on Les Claypool (let’s just say Les owes almost everything to the Residents) and so it was in the back seat of a crazy man’s car on the way to a punk show (Into Another) that I first heard The Residents and it scared the hell out of me so much so that I knew right then and there that I needed to listen to them all the time… back at school for my sophomore year, a fellow Ween friend plays for me Aphex Twin’s “The Richard D. James Album.” This is my first experience with “techno” that has absolutely no likeness to anything I ever imagined “techno” to be. I understand that what I am listening to is very important, but the effort that it takes for me to listen to it forbids me from listening to more than one or two tracks at a time for several weeks.
I saved up that year to buy a PC that would record audio. Again, with Christmas help from my parents, I get my very own computer – a Celeron 486 (which I still have and still use in my studio). I start trying to figure out to make the aphex sounds with Rebirth v1. My four track music continues to get stranger and stranger. During my early-morning freaky music radio show “The Snooze Bar,” I discover an album in the trash bin called “Eyesore,” and think of The Residents (their image centered around eyeballs for many many years). I pull it out and sure enough it’s a tribute album to them. I take it home and listen to it and again my mind is blasted wide open. The bands are amazing, and they’re not simply covering these songs, they’re claiming them. I notice that a handful of the bands are also on the label that issued the tribute, Vaccination Records. In my junior year of college and uncertain with what to do with my pending degree, I email Vaccination Records and volunteer my services as an intern for the summer. After having to convince them (him) that I am serious about this, I am invited out for the summer. I save up all the money I can by waiting tables at the Bickford’s Restaurant near my school and buy a train ticket from Massachusetts to Oakland, California. Never having been further west than Pennsylvania, I hop on the train, all alone, for my three and a half day voyage across the country.
The year is 1997 and I am in the San Francisco Bay Area. That summer of interning was a defining time in my life. Fortunately, the label and the artists are all wonderful, inclusive, talented, supportive people who offer me experience after experience. They feed me foods I’ve never heard of, raise topics of discussion I’d never conceived of, copy tapes of bands and artists I never knew existed…they take me to shows and take me on tours. I get to be a part of two tours with one of my favorite bands on the label, Idiot Flesh (hey, these guys are now known as The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum). I save up enough money to make it back to the east coast in time for my final year of college by working at the Piedmont Theater (just a name drop for any bay area readers), where I meet another life long friend.
Back on the east coast with my new ideas, I float through senior year and celebrate graduation with a road trip with best friend Pete. We set off exploring with little more than a tent, a four track, a cooler, and some clothes. It’s when we stop off in Oakland for a visit that I am taken back to its greatness and I decide to move there. I save up some money at home and make the move in January 1999. I take back my job at the theater and get a job at an internet startup called Reel.com, working customer service. In addition to these two jobs, I’m working for the label for free. And then a month after moving out there, as if by fate, The Residents management ask Dren (Vaccination Records label owner) if he would be interested in taking over their merchandising/label business Ralph America. Dren asks me to help him with this. I am beside myself with this opportunity to work for these anonymous musicians who single-handedly changed my perception of music and art. Ralph America is transformed from a paper mail order-based business to a secure online system and business is way up. With this infrastructure in place, Dren has the brilliant idea to start another company. Clamazon.com is born and serves as an online store for experimental, independent music from around the world (basically an online consignment shop). With new music pouring in from the area and from all over the globe, my senses are overloaded. I hear, for the first time, the electronic sounds of the Bay Area electronic music scene: Kit Clayton, Matmos, Electric Birds, Balance Man, David Kristian, Blectum from Blechdom, Timeblind, and so on. (I go to many shows where these folks are playing, but I don’t really get it…I wish I could go back in time and see these shows now, with the experience I now have.) Some astute person at Amoeba Records recommends Autechre’s LP5, so I buy that.
Meanwhile, I am still making more music than ever. However, it’s all by myself in the bedroom of my apartment which is a beautiful old house by Lake Merritt, with three roommates that I have no relationship with. It’s somewhere around then when a couple of things happen: I am gifted a copy of NI’s new program, Generator, and I figure out how to multi track efficiently with my computer. Generator gives way to the first release of Reaktor. My recordings are containing less and less guitar and voice and more and more strange clicks and squeals. I’m still lacking the confidence to play with my Bay Area friends, so I keep reclusive in my room staying up all night with my toys. While trading mp3s on IRC, I decide to try and get some feedback on my electronic sounds for the first time, from someone who is interested in electronic music. He digs what I’m trying to do, and invites me to the #.idm chat room. I remember getting a good amount of positive feedback that night. I always chose a random handle when signing on to IRC, and the random handle that I had chosen for the night was “Doofgoblin,” and I wanted to keep this consistency now that I seemed to have found a receptive community. I have kept it ever since.
Now it’s 2000. Work is good, I’m seeing an uncountable number of inspiring performances and landscapes, and I meet my girl. In 2001, we decide to take a huge road trip and then relocate to the east coast, back to the woods, where we both happen to be from. Of the many places up and down the coast we have to choose from, we choose Charlottesville, Virginia. I get a cushy job as a department director at a big online music merchandising company and am still writing lots of music. I self-release my second cdr as Doofgoblin in May of 2002, which is probably about 5 months after discovering two electronic music communities that have been instrumental in my development as an electronic musician: em411 and ElectronicScene.
On the answering machine, winter, 2003…back to back messages…the first is one of her favorite poets notifying her that she has been accepted into a prestigious MFA program, the second is for me. It’s a call from a new label who is interested in releasing the next Doofgoblin cd. It was a surprise, considering I had never sent out a demo in my life.
In autumn 2003, “Marblebarrel” is released on Unschooled Records and I play a series of shows on the east coast and then in California. I get to meet a ton of folks that I had only known from online (Sonic Wallpaper, Headphone Science, Diagram of Suburban Chaos, Ignatious, Portland, Trash80, Mike Cadoo (n5md), Captain Ahab, 1980, Pietro and Francesca (Digital Nimbus)…a great little tour. The EP “Album RL” is released, even though technically it contains music that is older than what’s on Marblebarrel.
I leave my job because I am completely bored of trying to boost merchandise sales for crap bands who shouldn’t be making money anyway. Plus I’ve got “spring fever” here in the summer of 2004. I spend all my time alone in the basement apartment in the woods making music and videos, mostly unemployed but working the odd job here and there, and come out the other side in the winter of 2005 with “Know the Situation.” Unschooled also releases my 7” “Songs From the Blue Ridge.” I play the Sonic Circuits music festival in DC and have a transformative performance. I’m ready to leave Virginia and move up to Providence, RI to meet up with my girl who is then halfway through the writing program. In Providence, I decide to flip through the yellow pages and start calling recording studios at random, offering my services as engineer or video editor or whatever. Believe it or not, within one week of this it gets me a job. Through that job I hook up with a producer who needs a video editor/audio engineer/additional camera work for his documentary. I take it immediately.
I book and promote my first “real tour” for spring of 2005. Twenty-one shows in twenty-eight days. Best part of all, I get to tour with long-time internet friends and reciprocating enthusiasts of each other’s work duo from Iceland “Plat,” and friend and event organizer from Baltimore “Katastatik.” We play shows from Providence to Miami, through Nashville and up to Chicago and points in between. It’s a fantastic experience on all levels, and I begin to really feel a deep confidence in not only my live music but my music in general. Again, I get to meet and perform with folks I’d only known from online: Books On Tape, Xanopticon, Quantazelle, Logickal…
After the tour, I finish the movie (it premieres September 2006 in Providence!), and my girl and I decide that we really want to be back in Virginia. We move there in autumn of 2005 and rent an old farmhouse on someone’s 2,000-acre farm. We grow lots of vegetables and are learning all we can about sustainable agriculture. I play shows often, and obviously am still writing a ton of music. The “next album” has been done for a while now, as is an EP, a live CD, and so on…just trying to decide what to do with it all. Oh yeah, and we are getting married in two months!
So, that brings you up to speed on my life. | |
Comments
06/21/06
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bleen
damn, what a great story!! congrats on the impending marriage, too. 
06/21/06
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sohcahtoa
"The Pod" is one of those intensely inspiring albums for myself as well. I still love it so many years after first experiencing it.
Great blog! Pleased to meet you!
06/21/06
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nagrom
wow. very inspiring, and interesting.
06/21/06
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astroid
great story, your life
06/21/06
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orac808
a true page turner. no im kinda glad that the intro i just wrote got wiped by me studidly opening a new page to fine a picture for it but not in a new tab . DOH. i think there is a film in there somewhere. it would be a great sound track anyway. oh and it would end with one of those album launch/wedding type sceens.
think... High Fidelity with more traveling meets robin hood prince of thiefs (for the ending)
06/22/06
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yghartsyrt
wow doofgoblin. that was an amzing read.
it's awesome to read all this enthusiasm between in the lines.
it stil can remeber, when you posted some live videos from you here on the em411. must have been 2003 or something. i'm still amazed by them. and your elephant performance
06/22/06
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Bonz
You seemed to have led a pretty good life
06/22/06
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Zanf
top story. Good to read about someone who is getting involved in permaculture. Its one of the reasons I really want out of living in cities - to go live on some land and grow my own food.
all the best on your forthcoming marriage
06/22/06
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doofgoblin
wow, thanks everyone. your thoughts and well-wishes are very much appreciated!
I guess I really had some time on my hands yesterday!
this whole trend - new site, introductions - is refreshing. I've been enjoying reading everyone's autobios...I've been conversing with some of you for years and years and know little about your history. so this is real nice.
long live em411! yay!
06/22/06
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pierlu001
well, sure you did not wait for it to knock on your door! nice story. i like the part when you talk about your first approach with guitar... my thought was exactly the same, "if he can, i can". lol, thanks and all of the best.
Recent blogs: first blog!
06/23/06
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jogn
Really great read! I like the way you're into sustainable agriculture.
edited: Jun 23 2006
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doofgoblin
jogn said: "I like the way you're into sustainable agriculture."
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