John had been talking about posting some sort of "Bio" on the site for some time. The other day he calls me up and says, "Dude, send me a Bio, I posted mine already". So I went and looked at what he put up. Jesus Christ!!!! Yeah, he is that good, but what…… I’m playing with Arthur F’ing Fiedler here…. Who Knew? I can’t compete with THAT, so I won’t even try. Maybe, I thought I should go in a completely different direction, take a different tack as it were, that might work..eh? So here goes

There! That settles that. OK maybe a little more substance would help. I once read an article about "Sting" (one of John’s favorite artists, by the way). He said that the band, "Runs between my rails. I’ve got the bottom (bass) and the top (vocals), which is a great place to be". I kind of liked that and related to it as well. All my life, that has sort of been me, at least musically speaking. (At the other end of the spectrum Frank Sinatra frequently referred to himself as a Saloon Singer. And I kinda like that concept too). Yeah, and so what? Well, I was playing to over 8000 people in Villanova University when I was still in High School. I shared a dressing room once with that "Bowser" guy from Sha Na Na. (We opened for them) Did some studio work in NYC. Taught Bass in North Jersey for a period of time. Played around in a lot of the clubs in Bergen and Rockland Counties. Took a brief hiatus to get married to Alison (the Love Of My Life and Reason For Being) move south and have three exceptional children (Isley, Garrett & Lani.) I started playing a little bit again and eventually ran into a ruthless gang of horn toting brutes who called themselves "Contraband". Actually they were all talented players in their own rights and, I thought, my kind of people. They reminded me of the horn band I was in when I was in High School (see above). They were kind enough to ask me to play with them (OK, what really happened…I did a gig with ‘em at the Holiday Inn in Toms River and blew them away pretty good…. I think. They were all kind of talking into their cuffs and disappearing around corners and glancing in my general direction, you know? At least that’s the way I remember it. At the end of the night they asked me to join.) That "Contraband" eventually became this Contraband. But I grow weary of all this self-serving scrofulous blather. Let’s do something else.

A: Black (Naah not really. I just thought it sounded, you know, dangerous!)

A: In C’Band? Bass, Trombone and some harmonica. At home, guitar, piano and

sousaphone (yes, really!)