Alright, where do I start...
My name is Sean. April 20th, 1986, I was born in Philadelphia. Same birthday as Hitler...same year as disasters like Chernobyl and Challenger. Foreshadowing? My mom was a teacher, teaching at a school for the retarded in NJ, and my dad was working as an office space designer for Aramark (still ARA at the time) without a college degree.
We lived on South Street (and 12th). For all of you unfamiliar with it, it was/is a big "hip" place where a lot of cultures combined. Lots of cool underground stores, like the punk store Zipperhead and about 5 different Rasta stores. My mom would stick my hair in a mohawk and take me walking around with the punks. Nowadays it is much more commercialized, but Zipperhead is still there!
Then my mom and I got mugged when I was about 2, and I guess combined with other reasons, my parents decided it would be best to move out of the city. We moved to Collingswood, NJ, a little urban town in the shadow of the Philly skyline, and next to the infamous Camden, NJ. That's where I grew up, and still live.
My mom got a job at the high school, teaching special ed (still works there) and my dad continued working for Aramark designing office space, managing security systems, and from what he tells me, a load of other random stuff.
I grew up in a very musical oriented family. My dad loved just about every kind of music, was always buying the newest stereo equipment, had huge a record/8track/cassette/CD collection. Music was always playing in my house. I started taking Piano lessons at the age of 4, with my mom's friend who was the music director at the high school. I continued taking them with him up until age 18, when he moved about an hour away, and I didn't want to start up with a new teacher. We were pretty close and I would say he was a mentor to me.
I grew up listening to lots of different kinds of music. For a long time I was really into traditional Irish music, I bought a Bodhrán and learned how to play. I guess sometime in middle school I started getting into a lot of punk, ska, and reggae. That's pretty much stuck as my favourite music types, although I've always been trying to expand my horizons.
By chance, I got into hip-hop. In middle school, it was always either, you liked "rock or rap". And I never really gave it a chance. Although I do remember hanging out at my friends house, listening to "N**** Please" by ODB on cassette and thinking it was the funniest thing. My friend and I were hanging out one day after school in 2002 and decided to make a stupid band. We used sound recorder and my Yamaha PSR-550 to make some stupid hip-hop songs. Well we're still doing that, although I've gotten a LOT better at my recording methods. We called the band "Well, Since It".
About 2 years ago I picked up guitar and taught myself to play. I also got a bass and taught myself. Most of my friends were in garage bands, but because certain people hated me, I was never able to join a band, even though I had the most musical experience out of any of them. So once I got tired of waiting around, I decided to do something myself. I started Liberty City Sound System as a one man ska/reggae/dub band. I just released my first self-produced EP a month or two ago. And so also by chance, I got interested in recording music. I've been doing it totally amateur for a couple years now, just with a computer mic, and whatever random programs I can get.
***shameless self promotion alert***
http://www.myspace.com/libertycitysoundsystem
Last November, I started playing Bass in a band with two friends of mine, high school sophomores. That's been pretty fun, even though I'm only an amateur at bass, and I'm much better at guitar.
So writing/recording music is one of my biggest hobbies. I got into graffiti a bit, but I never really got too good.
Highschool was okay...kinda boring. I didn't really like most subjects. I started taking Latin in 8th grade, and took it all through high school. That was a really fun class. I became a state officer (co-historian) for two years, went to four national conventions, which were awesome. In 10th, I decided to take German, one of the best choices I've ever made. That really became my favorite subject, and I excelled at it. I did really well, and even got one of the best scores in NJ on the national exam (98%). Unfortunately, my first teacher was a frail old lady with really bad arthritis, and during my second year of German, tripped over someone's bag and hurt herself badly. So for the rest of the year we had a fill in sub, and the next year (my senior year)e we got a whole new permanent teacher. Because of this, I never got to go on the student exchange. Luckily, I talked to the teacher, and he's letting me come along for the tour of Germany and Switzerland this summer, with the high school. I can't wait for that.
I just turned 19 on Wednesday. I'm a freshman at Rutgers University - Camden, majoring in German. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, and will probably end up in the gutter begging for change!
My political views are probably pretty known on ACF by now, I doubt I need to explain. I'm one of the board's token anarchists!
Damn that's a lot...I could probably write more, heh. Anything else you want to know?
[Edit] something got messed up...
