This is from the 1986 Culver City High School Awards Assembly. That's me all the way on the left on guitar. We're playing "The Greatest Love of All," of course, and I'm throwing in as many Hendrix ballad moves (think "The Wind Cries Mary") as possible.

Here I am rocking the red P-Bass with a band called Mud at the UC Santa Cruz Porter College Fireside Lounge. This is fall 1988, I think. A lot of people at this show were on hallucinogens; I felt obligated to treat their mental state cautiously during our set.

The last couple of years I was in Santa Cruz, 1989-1991, I played in a lot of groups. Here's Fat Wallet, a kind of hippie R & B party cover band. We played "Moondance," "Low Rider," some James Brown, stuff like that. Here were are at the UCSC quarry. No, I couldn't get the picture to be clearer.

Another Santa Cruz band, the Twisty Noodles, rocking Sluggo's Pizza. This was my two roomates and me. That's Rocky on drums. Peter and I took turns on the pointy metal bass and the Tele. Maybe I didn't have the P-Bass yet; I might have broken a string before the gig & not had a spare. Who can remember? This was a conceptual band. At this, our first show, we played all TV theme songs. At our second, final show, we played every song from The Eagles' The Long Run album. We had fun.

One of these things is not like the others...

This is yet another Santa Cruz group, Willie Maykitt and The Final Frontier. Hippie country music: Dylan, Hank Sr., The Band, The Dead, bluegrass, "Act Naturally," "Don't Pass Me By," you get the picture. Guitar, bass, drums, and fiddle doubling guitar. Everyone except me sang. Once in a while I'd swap the bass to the guitarist and we'd do a Stevie Ray Vaughan tune. This being Santa Cruz in the late '80s, I was trying to digest Les Claypool, Flea, and Mike Watt, which didn't make me a very good bassist for a country band. Then again, the drummer couldn't use his legs, so there was no bass drum to get in the way of my overplaying.

Back in LA, in 1991, trying to play Freddie Green on a Strat at a Venice street fair with the Westside Jazz Ensemble. I played with this big band on and off for about 18 years, doing guitar and bass as needed.

Skip ahead a few years, and here I am onstage at Easy Street in Bowling Green, Ohio, with the Bill Morrison Group, trying to do a Jaco & Joni thing, putting different textures between the acoustic guitars and the hand drums. That headless bass played and sounded amazing, but it cost me a couple of gigs with touring bands because it looked so wack. "Give me an advance & I'll buy whatever bass you like." No dice.

Outdoor gig on the Bowling Green State campus as a hired gun with a country/rock band called The Network. I can't believe I wore a pink Sun Ra shirt for this job; it must have been a hostile gesture. The red headless got swapped for a Carvin fretless Jazz in a nice neutral dark wood. This is me in my bloated Brian Wilson phase...

I did a lot of guitar & electronics stuff in Ohio, looping and processing, mostly solo. Here I am onstage at Howard's Club H around 1997 during a duo set with drummer Louis Simon.

Part of a Surrealestate rehearsal at UCLA around late 2000. Kaye Lubach on tabla, David Martinelli on drums. Photo by Cynni Murphy. Very happy to be playing free improvisation on the string bass.

Surrealestate live at the ARC in Santa Ana in 2001. From left: Jonathan Grasse, Phil Curtis, Robert Reigle, David Martinelli (on the floor), me, and our host, Paul Carman, sitting in.

Here's a snap of Lance Grabmiller (laptop), Simon O'Rorke (percussion), Mike Khoury (violin), and me at the 2003 Big Sur Experimental Music Festival

This is the 2003 City of Santa Monica holiday party in the lobby of City Hall. Gene Higgenbotham on drums, SMPD Sgt. Dave Thomas on piano. I don't think I met most of the singers, but they rocked.

and here I am with Helena Espvall-Santoleri (electric cello), Fred Malouf (headless electric guitar), Matt Davignon (turntable), Kristin Miltner (laptop), Jon Shiurba (six-string banjo), and Simon Wickham-Smith (laptop) at the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, May 2004.

MESTO holiday concert, Dec. 12, 2004. Finale with San Fernando Valley Men's Chorus and Anna-Suzette

Drone/Shift March 12, 2005 at 21 Grand Oakland. Photo by Peter B. Kaars. This is the big all-hands-on-deck finale. Try to spot Gino Robair, Rent Romus, Bob Marsh, Thomas DiMuzio, Matt Davignon, and many more of your Bay Area favorites...

MESTO at an opening gala for the Arab-American National Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, April 23, 2005. John Graves on electric upright, me on a rented Kay (with a Spongebob sticker on the back). David Martinelli and T. J. Troy on percussion. With a rhythm section like that, what else do you need? We're in a tent, and it's snowing outside.

Rich West group at Ventura New Music Festival, May 6, 2006. Click image for more.

Cold Storage String Orchestra at Concert for Peace, August 27, 2006, downtown LA. Click image for info.

updated February 5, 2007