Christopher Mele: Drums, Debauchery and Dilaudid
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Greetings...available for live performances and recording sessions. many years of live, studio, as well as, both national and international touring experience. Jazz to Hard Rock. Vintage to Modern and Electronic. Below is a biography below is for a group I am currently performing with from the tri-state area. Thanks for even caring enough to bother reading this!
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Amongst fire and ice, this Monster is thirsty, unstoppable and vicious. This master of the morose is often forced to ride the fence between his conservative professional life and his forgiving artistic apparition as he rolls out the big beats of the Monster. Christopher is accused of appreciating what some might call the macabre and the darker sides of life much like an Edgar Allen Poe parodist - without the opium baggage.
What began with a childhood veneration of Bonham, the rudimentary teachings of jazz legend Sonny Igoe and the piracy of his big brother’s drum kit has brought us to this destination. Local notoriety from his involvement with many NYC projects led Christopher to a thrash-funk line-up. Their independently released EP landed them on The Red Hot Chili Peppers Mother's Milk tour.
Alas, there is nothing more powerful than the rhythms of inertia, as Christopher soon found himself in deep with a Lower East Side gang of vagrant musicians, known as Piker Ryan’s Folly, who exploded onto NYC’s "lounge-noir" music scene. Combining elements of dark lounge with punk, jazz and swing, Piker Ryan's Folly earned quite a reputation among Manhattan's most notorious pubs and saloons. Their music even made its mark across the Atlantic. In 2006 Christopher "The Butcher" Mele crossed the pond for a drumming stint with headliner Piker Ryan on the notorious New York Noir Tour, filling venues from Iceland to Berlin… and back. They will soon embark on a tour of US and European dates this fall for New York Noir II.
From a world of Doc Martens, dark eyeliner, lunch box girls and endless nights on the bowery emerged the challenge to compete among the many NJ cover bands with the creation of Raise Me Mad in 2001. This project was billed as “NJ’s best cover band in 10 years†by club owners and local music industry folk. Christopher got these first chops in the cover world as this successful project performed in many of the tri-state area’s most prestigious venues.
It was through this quite privileged introduction to the cover scene which led Christopher to his current position behind the kit for the Monster since 2003.
Christopher punched his ticket and has seen every brand of Rock n’ Roll absurdity the scene has to offer. He paid hard for that ride and now sits reverently on the talented altar of the Monster - for eternity.