My story began as John Michael Piper. I was born in Los Angeles California in the year 1963. I have a story to tell...I spent the first part of my life from being born to my crazy ways that I am after my first year on this planet, I went from dad, mom, me to dad, stepmom, two step brothers and me when I was only 5  so I became the black sheep very young. Teenage years were fairly normal and most of my 20's was in the air force. I enlisted to get away from my step family. When I got my honorable discharge I moved back to L.A. I got a job as a welder (that's the trade my father taught me all about). I also wanted to get into a band playing drums again. I started playing music when I was 6 years old and I've been playing music for more than 50 years. I started on violin in elementary school up until playing first seat violinist in my junior high school orchestra, but when I started high school in the 10th grade, they didn't have an orchestra. So I basically stopped playing the violin. That's when the greatest thing happened to me and I became a drummer. That happened when a friend of mine came by school and picked me up and we ditched that day. We went to his friends house and when I walked through his studio door, I saw the biggest drum set I had ever seen and I was super inspired when he let me play it. I did more than alright as a drummer and all through the years I've played with more than 30 bands and continued to play for 35 years until an accident caused me nerve damage and took 75% use of my right arm and forced me to retire my drum career. That was in the year 2000, and I came to realize that playing drums to their music in all the bands I did, none of that music was mine whatsoever, so I had nothing to show for 35 years of my blood, sweat and sacrifices I endured...that really hit me hard.
After some serious thinking, I decided what I should do and I moved back to L.A., California. Then I decided to go back to school and when I was looking where to go, I scored and got a scholarship to a prestigious art school and got my masters degree in multimedia website and digital design. I started my own website building and pc repair business, but after 5 years I had to shut my doors. I also had fell in love with a woman and continued creating artwork which I've always done from a very early age. I am very much a professional at creating my works of art, but in 2016 my girlfriend of 15 years had a fatal seizure and died shortly after losing my mother in 2010. That just sent my life into the chaos of the deep end and I really wanted and contemplated to just ending my own life...

I locked myself in my studio and thought heavily about suicide...while I was trying to figure out how to end my life I kept having an itch to play music again. That's when a good friend of mine told me about a new program that had just come to market called the D.A.W. (digital audio workstation) and told me I could make my own music by using loops of music and making music...after checking out a trial version of a program I discovered I didn't want to make electronic music and fall into the gap of hippin n hoppin and poppin or rapping, I loved playing the hard  hard challenging complexities of metal music. So instead of killing myself I poured all my pain and anguish into music. I bought a guitar and taught myself how to play it, then I got the D.A.W. (the one I purchased is called Mixcraft Pro Studio) and mastered that program and over the course of the next 6 years I created enough music for 4 full albums of my own metal styled music and figured out how to play the guitar and bass and composed my own drums with my sampled sounds of my own drum set that I used to play with and added my drum sounds to the notes I composed for the music and using the DAW, I made a lot of music instead of taking my life. I think she would've been happy that I poured my pain into creating my own music. Music saved my life. Recently I have finished my 5th self-made album all created by me. I guess I can be proud of what I've done, but nobody will ever know who I am because I don't know how to do the marketing of music the way the music business is today. I do have a music label distribution company that gives my music all the ISRC codes so that my music is protected and I try to get my music out to the masses in every free kind of way I can find to do that, but I think it takes more than my believing in myself and who wants to hear my brand of complex type of heavy metal anyway when it seems the record companies have brainwashed the world into listening to hip hop skippy and rap n crap and all the rest of that mundane over and over beat of which I can't stand and makes me cringe whenever I hear it knowing it's not real music. The record companies are robbing the people of real music by real musicians and it's killing the real writers of great music that no one will ever get to hear because where the companies just don't care about us real musicians anymore. They have killed the world of the great music and replaced us with shit and worse shit...what can I possibly do to make it good again and who would listen to an unknown like me...I guess that's life. Thank you so much Warner and Sony and Capitol and all the rest of the assholes that turned the greatest time of music up to the early 90's and from then on it has all been nothing but shit that steals other shit then plays that shit over and over and over and over and over and...I feel so sorry for all of you that have become saturated with crap sounds of digital music and the makers of the worst products ever created like the clones of Bieber and all like him and after him. Pathetic...and yet I still continue trying to make good music and realistically I love my music and at least I now have my own music where, if I had given up after my accident I never would've known that I could make my own music and after all the comments my music has received and more than 150,000 people that have heard my music and given me many thumbs up, I suppose I should be happy with that and I am...It just breaks my heart knowing all of you out there in the music listening world how much you're missing out on...that the record companies are robbing you all of great music...I'm so sorry...but you can always listen to mine right here at any time of the day or night!
Thanks for the visit and for having an interest in what I do!

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J. Michael Piper
LightningFire

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