HISTORY: David D'Ascoli was born and raised in New York City. It wasn't until he was 10 years old that he started playing the guitar. Although he didn't receive any formal training, he was introduced to guitar theory from his older brother and playing along with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin records.
"Some Friends at school were going to start up a band, I bought some no name guitar for 100 bucks, the brand was Cruise, and a really cheap portable amp with distortion for 30 bucks that had it's own strap! Nobody actually decided to stick with their instruments except for me."
He was in his first band, Blink, in high school. Playing mostly cover songs, the band only performed a few talent shows and friends' parties. After high school, he studied music theory at the Hunter College School of Music in New York City. In the fall of 1997 an add in the Village Voice (a local Manhattan newspaper) caught his attention. After an audition for Jeff Levy, singer and founding member of
The Spirit Valentine, David D'Ascoli became a member of the band. .
"One of our first meetings was at his old apartment. We started to come up with some really cool material. That stuff turned out to be some guitar parts on Name Your Poison. So we both knew we would work well together."
While being in The Spirit Valentine, David has also touched on electronic music experimentation with his project Technical XTC. It only produced a rough demo and live show with friend and bassist Tom Rogers.
"I bought some equipment and learned how to program it. This was my first time trying to write complete songs. I look back and think of those songs as my learning process for writing. They're kind of interesting, to me anyway. As far as the gig we did, it would have been ten times better if we had some animatronic robots on stage instead of me and Tom or some explosions." |
