1981 - living in queensbridge at the time, all that was played in the streets was hip hop. lots of people breakdancing on the playground having battles, rap battles, drug deals, and occasional fights, stabbings, and shoot outs. when i was breakdancing with my crew (i was more of the body popper, moonwalker, top rocker type since i was never good at windmills and head spins and stuff) and numbers computer world 2 by kraftwerk came on on the mixtape playing. i was asking my friends about it, none of them knew of course, but one of my friends older brother made the mixtape and told me who it was, then gave me a copy of the mixtape a few days later (it was eaten up by a friends tape deck about 8 years later). around this time, my parents weren't happy with the life style i was choosing (breakdancing and graffitti). so they tried to ban me from listening to hip hop and graffitti and even sent me to catholic school. but after one of my dads drunken hang outs with his friends enabled them to bring him home and steal everything from the apartment, pissed off my mom, she almost divorced him, he wanted to change but thought we all need a new environment to change because things would just get worse in queensbridge... a year later, we moved to Los Angeles, California!

1982 - we make it to california, i meet up with cousins, go to a new school... and everybody listened to michael jackson... i hated michael jackson these years. i tried to inject some breakdancing knowledge to my new friends but they just thought i was some weirdo... but then they were doing the same thing about a year later! this year was also my introduction to a little radio station that had yet to blossom called KROQ! i came across this station because of my dad since he liked post punk stuff and KROQ played a lot of it at the time. but what caught my attention was a track called "blue monday" by new order... it didn't jump out at me like the kraftwerk track did, but i thought it was different at the time and i connected with it automatically. then i discovered depeche mode but didn't get into them until a few years later when black celebration came out (black celebration is actually the first cassette i bought).

1987 - around this time, depeche mode were my favorite group. i had robert smith hair and wore multi colored converse! i was staying at my grandmas house one night and the room i was staying in had an A.M. radio. i was bored and started turning the dial and i stopped on cue to "BROTHAS AND SISTAS! I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS WORLD IS COMING TO!" then started the track "rebel without a pause" my scalp got really tight and my legs got a little weak, and my head started nodding on it's own (try imagining a robert smith hair do nodding to PE!). i bought the record a few months later.

1988 - hip hop became my favorite genre, but i still listened to lots of synth pop. my dad picked me up from school and he was playing some really wierd shit... i asked my dad "what is this?"... he didn't know the name of the group but called the music "factory music"... i started thinking "what the hell is factory music"... then i found the cassette case and it was "cleanse fold and manipulate" by skinny puppy... and i told my dad "oh... you mean industrial!"... he then said "whatever... some dude at work lent it to me!" i listened to SP for a few years then stopped around "Last Rights"

1993 - Hip Hop, House, Techno, and Industrial was all i listened too... went to france when i was in the navy... walked into a record store... "ON" video by aphex was playing on the monitor... of course i was automatically into that distorted bass... i asked around for help in finding the cd... someone helped me... i bought it... that was all i listened to for months!

1999 - is probably the last time i was affected by something musically. very much into "ABSTRACT ELECTRONIC MUSIC" and ambient and still hip hop! i discovered Autechre a few years earlier on AMP... but wasn't really blown away. it was the "second bad vilbel" video. since then, heard a few tracks here and there, but wasn't enough for me to buy their material. i bought a magazine around 98 that had a "Nothing Changes" CD in it and had 2 AE tracks on it (vose in and corc)... those tracks i was like "DAMN"... then bought LP5... a year later, i see AE at coachella... the music was incredible that night... then, they played blifil with eric b. and rakim's accapella of "microphone fiend" and i was totally blown away... that was the moment when AE became my alltime favorites (and still are), that was the moment i wanted to make my own music aswell!