I was a drummer for 37 years playing with a couple serious bands and many bands that didn't amount to anything and didn't even have a name or a dream... and after all the extreme playing I did, I had no success at all for my extreme efforts, and none of the music I played with any of those bands belonged to me, and none of that music ever went anywhere...I felt like I wasted all those years for nothing... Then tragedy struck me down from a car accident that took 70% use of my right arm with spinal and shoulder nerve damage that forced me to retire my drum career... All those years of dedicated playing and recording with nothing to show for it... But still, nothing was going to stop me from making music somehow... And a short time later, even with the death of my mother, and then my long time girlfriend dies...what more could I endure... So I locked myself in my studio with suicide weighing heavy on my mind...and slowly six years go by... Then I emerge from my studio over 6 years later with 4 self-made albums of my very own music that I created from the pain and tragedies life had taken a toll on me.. And now recently, I took on the mega job of putting together a film about my life, my art, my music, my history that includes all the tragedy that almost made me give up so many times. Now I have been on social security disability (a fixed income) and don't know how I'll ever get this film financed and licensed and out into the world... My film project is called: PiperSins *Blood From A Vikings Horn* - A Documentary on the Mystery Music Life of Artist/Creator/Musician - John Michael Piper PiperSins Updated 1/20/2022
First off, music is practice, practice, practice...but secondly, passion is probably the ultimate word because that's what music is to me, and it's also what it gives to me. And if I'm being passionate when I first create a song, the end result is over whelming and can only be compared to, maybe sex or a roller coaster.
The dream is to become a successful musician, and that means selling my music. The music I create I want to be used as music soundtracks in movies or even a television movie. Playing and performing live I think ended when my last bands guitarist died and I lost 80% use of my arm in a vehicle accident...so I have chosen what best could suit me now...but I have progressed to where I've improved my arm to about 50% and since I cannot really play drums as my career has been on drums, I figured I was a prodigy when I was a kid I was told, so I went and bought a guitar at 52 years old and have taught myself to play it...I taught this older dog a new trick and I still have the gift I was born with...just listen to my songs that I also wrote the lyrics and did the vocal tracks and guitar as well.
People doing what they say they will do. No excuses. I do exactly what I say I will do, or be somewhere when I say I will be...no excuses. I used to wish for world peace, but in reality, people can't even get along with their own families most of the time, so that's my alternative choice. More and more as time goes on, people's "Word" most of the time isn't worth a dime...but I still consider mine to be priceless.
"Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, but also "Yankee Doodle Went To Town" from far back into my youth before I got a taste of Rock n Roll and Heavy Metal.
I would have to say my favorite bands are: Led Zeppelin, Rush, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Ronnie James Dio, Black Sabbath (With Ozzy and Randy Rhoads), Deep Purple, AC/DC, Triumph, Pink Floyd, Fight (With Rob Halford), Megadeth, Dream Theater, Motley Crue, Aerosmith, Alice In Chains, Manilla Road, Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Kansas, Journey, John Denver, Exodus, Testament, Ratt, Slayer, Queensryche, Quiet Riot, Sammy Hagar, The Doors, Tom Petty, Foreigner, Skid Row, Whitesnake, Def Leopard,Great White, ZZ Top, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven and other classical Masters I will say right off the top of my head in that frame of reference.
In the beginning because I loved being able to make music with the bands I was part of. I still love to make music, but now I make my own brand of music which makes me love it even more, for the fact that, because of technology, and hard work, blood, sweat and time, I'm able to continue doing it, but not one of my past guitarists riffs, or a past singers song, but because I Am Doing It All and using that 50% of my right arm that I Can Now use to be able to play my guitar, and record it and engineer the mix and mastering it all myself and using my own written lyrics I vocalize to it on top of it all...Because it doesn't matter if anyone likes it, although it seems people are liking my brand of finding the "Imperfection" in the Metal music and developed my own style of the Heavy Metal Genre...I can't stop doing this original thing I found and figured out...and no one else can see it yet...
I want the music business to stop making their own "Production" musicians and bands and go back to the traditional ways of the way it used to be done, where bands competed with each other and on the days of the week nights, the best bands got the headline slots to play in the clubs and had to work their way up by writing QUALITY MUSIC and then being able to play it, get seen by everyone and noticed by the business labels and companies that could then work with and sign the right bands that the audiences would like on their own, advertise them so that the PEOPLE HAD A CHOICE OF WHAT THEY LIKE, AND NOT HAVE THIS CRAP THEY MAKE FORCING IT INTO PEOPLES HEADS...THAT IS PURE BULLSHIT AND NOT RIGHT AND SO VERY UNFAIR...because there are alot of great bands out there that the business is depriving the world of experiencing! Music that I hear on the radio has no subject matter or inspiration or creativity and absolutely NO QUALITY. Music is about Guitars, Drums, Bass and the players who have inspiration from the greatest events and players all the way back to the masters whoever it was before that made successful careers. Real Music from real players. That will always be the bottom line...The music business has sold their souls to the almighty satanic green idol and will burn for not promoting quality hard working players and bands and artists whose true hearts and souls deserve the chance for us to be able to share what we've created for the love of having a talent to share with the world.
If I could still do it I would be doing it...but because of a drunk driver one early evening in Las Vegas Nevada, that car accident took the life of my guitar player John Edward Grossman, May He Rest In Peace, from this world and it took 60% use of my right arm from playing the monstrous drumming that used to be mine. I used to love it all come what may...I've got many stories, but how it made me feel, was humanly connected and as long as we fed the audience with great sound and music, they fed us back. Driving an audience playing drums was a thousand times better than driving a 200 miles per hour Lamborghini on the Autobahn and even down to the many sexual encounters I've had in my life, and that's the truth! I know it sounds strange and maybe perverse to some degree, but when the stamina had to be there and the sweat was dripping from everywhere on my body because of how hard I played, that's the only way anybody would be able to understand what I put into my playing live was like...Sex sweats me just as much, but I got to turn on a lot more women banging on my drums...
I have to say, when it comes to the variety of stations on the radio, as well as the music played on most of them...I don't hear substance or quality and true originality anymore because what the world is so now exposed to is the music businesses idea of a band or musician...they might as well just build them on an assembly line and mass produce non-talented clone production players who have NOT Paid Their Dues to get offered contracts for their hard work and talented products of the music they've created! Most jobs people apply for are given to those with the best qualifications and experience that person has shown proof of when applying for that job...I would like to see it changed with that kind of process kept in mind when introducing a new music or band to the world! The business has sold itself out to Satan, and they need to pay the price for how much great music has been lost due to their unprofessionalism! I'm hoping to change that and get it back on the path it should've stayed on, a path with many branches, but never changing the leaves. I want to see REAL MUSICIANS, and I WANT TO HEAR REAL MUSIC ON THE RADIO...So until the business becomes what treats the real musicians with respect for their hard work and talent, the business of music, the A&R guys and the label executives can go pay for their huge mistakes themselves and die in hell for what they've done to all of us.
I think this site is a great change from all the soundcloud and reverbnation dot com hum drums...and yes I'm on those sites too, but that's why I like this place, it's another avenue to getting a musician's music out to the masses, and gaining knowledge and meeting new friends but it's a refreshing new place to do it on! Thank you so much for creating this place for everyone...it feels like a home here rather than an ice cold warehouse in the Arctic...It's like a home filled with brothers and sisters and most of us just get along as if there wasn't anything wrong in the world.
This is what frustrates me...The music business and their way of selling out to their false idols, production self made players who have less talent than a toad, yet become so famous that they might as well go live on their own planet and love each others crap...for they are failing to recognize the people who aspire to have what their talents have been able to produce for them...REAL MUSIC FROM REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL TALENT.
My younger roommate supports it very hard, and I watch and follow what he's doing sometimes, kind of like being on the ride but sitting in the back and observing it all, and once in awhile being surprised, but very rarely surprised, but very happy when I do get to be surprised.
Youth always helps and in my case, having a whole band to play live and tour would be a definite help. But my advice to all musicians, is to be as cool as you can be, especially when you have a good band and a good sound, and stay together...bang heads and argue all you want, but when a lottery ticket is found, don't rip it up and quit. Longevity is a major component to success...love what you do and prepare for anything...otherwise you'll become a nobody, or worse...and no one is happy following a dead star...but on top of it all...Fight. Fight for your music to be heard and fight the companies that have sold their souls to Satan. The record companies are literally fucking all of us Real creators of music, by self-making their own little production players, then write and record music for them, then mass promote, produce and advertise them to all the young people, using these unqualified people to make millions of dollars and forgetting about all the rest of us hard working players...the music world took a turn for greed and self promotion rather than giving those of us a chance to letting us be able to do what we were meant for, something we were born to do, and throwing us in the garbage can instead. So until they get back to what they're supposed to be doing, the top music business companies and executives can go take their music and themselves and their little cloned copies of themselves all the way to hell and beyond, because that's not what they're supposed to be doing! They used to have it right and headed in the right direction, but what the business is now is what happens when the almighty greed of money and power does to the human beings not prepared for it...until they start caring for us real players who were put on this planet to entertain with what we were born with...they can kiss my music and my white royal heiny Not For Their Greedy Use!
Visigoth...Manilla Road...there are too many to list, and those two are off the top of my hatter. Metal has a class, that keeps Kicking Ass...So keep on Rockin to keep people Talkin!