About

scary!records is not a record label.

In 1993, when I was seventeen years old, I bought my first multi-track recorder: a Tascam Porta07 4-track cassette deck. After years of playing in bands, I’d discovered something magical that allowed me to do everything myself. No longer would my creativity be tainted by the influences of other people! For the next twenty years or so, recording music (primarily by myself) was the most important concern in my life and how I defined myself. It was only a matter of time before the world became aware of my genius.

Narrator: It’s wasn’t.

No, I wasn’t and never will be a creative genius of any kind, that’s the truth. However, regardless of the quality of the final product, I was in-fact highly motivated, prolific and organized.

From the outset, my desire was to package what I created in ways that allowed my friends to seamlessly place them in their music and video collections. (Remember, this was back when people had such physical collections.) The cover of my first collection, Terror, featured a picture of a ghost that I’d created from bed sheets during Halloween weekend when I was a freshman at college. The collection was attributed to “Scary Music!” which then became “scary!records” on the next collection and onward. Each collection marked the end of one part of my life and the beginning of another. The organization of the recordings and creation of the packaging was a type of ceremony for me.

While the temptation to curate the content of this site was strong, I resisted the urge because it would’ve been dishonest. No, I never was and never will be a creative genius of any kind, and most of what I’m sharing here makes me cringe when I listen and view it again. But, it’s my truth and the culmination of a vision I had from the beginning.