My journey begins in 1993 in an old Scarborough basement in front of an old wood television set. At the age of 8 I would sit down and watch the Hitlist on YTV which back then played more things beyond whatever it plays now or what its been playing the last 10 years. The first music video I ever watched was Disarm by the Smashing Pumpkins which to me was a stepping stone for where I would be with my life 14 years later. The video that followed after was Pet Cemetary by The Ramones which also captivated me and showed me a world of both image and sound that to me was never properly exposed until that moment.
A couple years of bouncing around from Nirvana to Korn and music for me was becoming something truly magical to me at a young age. Soon more and more extremes kept pooring in capturing my imagination. Artists like Marilyn Manson, Pantera, Korn, Primus, Sepultura, Tool and so ..ed growing on me rapidly as I started entering my teen years. In 1999 a time where syrup soaked rap and pop music were the norm for a good percentage of young people in Toronto my family moved me up to a little suburb above Toronto called Richmond Hill. There I met and encountered lots of different types of what is now refered to as "scene" people. In the beginning of high school (also the beginning of my "expiermental" days) I found myself in almost a diplomatic situation when it came to socializing with others. You had all different types of people and in this high school you only ran with your people. I'm sure high schools are still like this today. But for me I got a taste of everything. Each crowd in high school be it the hip hop kids or what I like to call "the last remaining kids of the grunge era" it didnt matter because it seemed even with my tastes stretching from every aspect of music I was still accepted and liked amoung the different crowds. Even when I left high school at the end of the day the socializing and the experimenting and the learning never stopped. I met all sorts of different people throughout those years that have shaped how I view things around me today. Good and bad expierences alike but all in all the good definately weighs out the bad.
Fast forward to December 2001 a time where I would be coming back to Toronto and forgetting all about those days in Richmond Hill. In the summer of 2000 I was taken to my first show being Korn with Kid Rock and Powerman 5000 as the openers. It was very hard to convince my at the time stepdad to let me go to concerts even with friends but eventually he was out of the picture in the spring of 2001 which opened a lot of doors for me. When me and my mother moved back to Toronto I started going off on my own to things. Seeing more concerts and going and exploring parts of the city I had never seen before. In late 2002 I began seeking the more extreme to what the city and the world had to offer in the ways of music. My tastes always changing and always yearning for something new lead me to explore more underground groups and people. Thus begins my journey in the underground. In 2004 I was priviledged to be working at the University Of Toronto's FM radio station CIUT doing small paper pushing and answering phones. It was a small but very rewarding expierence as I learned much about the rules and practices of Canadian media and radio. In 2005 I began doing photography for a local webzine and promotional group called No Official Capacity. I shot some of the best groups in underground and extreme metal. Groups such as Seven Witches, Neuraxis, Strapping Young Lad, Necronomicon, Cephalic Carnage, Dead To Fall and a lot of other international and local groups. Sadly lots of these photos never made it to the zine and have since been destroyed because of computer malfunction. The expierence lives on as up until now I've met so many of my heroes in this industry and had incredible expierences with them as well as making a lot of awesome friends on the way. In the fall of 2007 I was approved to air my own radio show on the UofT's sister station Scarborough Fusion Radio. The show would be called "Northern Shrubbery" taking meaning from the wonderful north land that I live in here in Canada and for the wonderful godlike plant that is CANNABIS! I guess I didnt mention that marijuana also played a huge role in where I am today musically and even spiritually. This show was meant to bring different types of sounds and people in a time when 9 or 10 years ago we had the pop and rap taking over and is still now the driving force to peoples everyday listening expierence. I wanted a show to bring people beyond their mundane Xbox and LuLu Lemon lives. To show them people and friends of mine that are out there expiermenting with sound and doing there best to keep the changing of sound alive but in a positive way. The show ran from October 2007 till May of 2008. It was an overwhelming positive expierence for me to have my own radio show and to pick and say what I want. I'll never forget it.
