User:Cjmarsicano/biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CJ Marsicano (born July 17, 1967) is a musician and writer from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, known regionally as a founding member and bassist of the hard rock band Bigg Trouble in the late 1980's; an internet journalist specializing in pop culture (specifically, rock and pop music, and professional wrestling), and more recently as an electronic dance music musician. He is a member of the Luzerne County, PA Green Party, and was their parlimentarian between 2003 and 2005.

Contents 1 Early musical career 2 Writing career 3 Political career 4 Return to music

[edit] Early musical career

A multi-instrumentalist, he initially played lead guitar, synthesiser and harmonica in a Beatles and Stray Cats-influenced high school garage band named Woodstock (named after the Peanuts character rather than the rock festival) before quitting the band over musical differences after he began following punk rock bands like Black Flag, The Minutemen, and The Ramones. After he graduated high school in 1985 he began playing professionally in area cover bands as a bassist, and became sought-after for his musical skills.

During a hiatus from performing in the early 1990's, he completed college, did some early recordings on a small home studio setup, and participated in a local comedy/music radio show called Beyond The Ridiculous, where he wrote comedy pieces, contributed voices, and often brought in records from his own personal collection to supplement the previously recorded and written comedy material.

[edit] Writing career

In 1997, he helped found an online e-mail professional wrestling newsletter, The Outsider Edge, considered to be one of the first e-mail wrestling newsletters. In the newsletter, which he edited between 1997 and early 1999, he began writing a weekly column, Breaking Kayfabe. The newsletter soon begat a website, OutsiderEdge.com, which also began hosting the official homepage for ECW valet Francine Fournier -- the first ever official homepage for an ECW personality -- in 1998. The demand for his column on other websites grew to the point where he chose to put the newsletter on hiatus in order to concentrate on both his column and Ms. Fournier's website.

By the summer of 1999, his column became part of one of the Internet's largest and longest running wrestling news sites, Scoops Central (later called Scoops Wrestling), and he also became a contributor to ECWNews.com. By the spring of 2000, Breaking Kayfabe began appearing exclusively on Scoops Central, and he became a paid contributing writer to the site until its demise in 2001. His column, while frequently serious in tone and concentrating on His contractual obligation forced Marsicano and Fournier to split as partners on her website, since most of ECW's websites were being hosted by a company run by a rival wrestling news site.

When Scoops was shuttered by its parent company in 2001, Marsicano and many of the other Scoops writers started a site of their own, WrestlingBytes.com, which soon spawned a music news and information webzine, Project X, later that year. Project X led to Marsicano interviewing, and quickly becoming friends with, one of his long time heroes, Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt. An article critical of the tactics former members of Dead Kennedys against their lead singer and primary songwriter Jello Biafra (so critical, in fact, that Marsicano refused to refer to the other Dead Kennedys by their well-known pseudonymns in the article; Marsicano gave as his reasoning that that the ex-Kennedys had disgraced their past with their actions and no longer deserved to be referred to by their stage names) led to Marsicano getting an e-mail from Biafra's record label telling him to phone the veteran punk singer at his home (Biafra doesn't own a computer); Biafra then told Marsicano how much he appreciated the article in question. The same article also led to some reportedly snide e-mail directed at both Marsicano and Project X's editor from Biafra's "replacement" singer Brandon Cruz and guitarist East Bay Ray.

[edit] Political career

A lifelong Democrat since he first registered to vote, Marsicano became interested in the Green Party after discovering their Ten Key Values in 2000; he subsequently supported Ralph Nader's candidacy that year. He did not formally became a Green until 2002 when he became involved in the gubernatorial campaign of Michael Morrill during the hotly contested race (subsequently won by Democrat Ed Rendell); he became the parlimentarian of the Luzerne County (Pennsylvania) Green Party in 2003, a position he held until 2005 when he vacated it, citing demands on his free time.

During the 2004 presidental campaign, he supported Greens in local and regional elections but also actively campaigned for Democrat John Kerry, believing that the best way for the Greens to infilrate mainstream politics is by starting from the bottom up by winning local elections, rather than from the top down by winning the presidential race.

[edit] Return to music

In 2002, preparatory to a trip many WrestlingBytes.com and Project X staffers were taking to attend WrestleMania X8 in Toronto, Canada, Marsicano recorded a five-song techno music EP, WMX8, in the weekend prior to the event. The titles for the songs anticipated the activities he and the other WrestlingBytes.com members would partake in that weekend -- "The American Invasion", "Toronto Nightlife", "Morning After In Ontario", and "Chairshot To The Skydome". The odd song out amongst the other four tracks was a slower piece, "Angel Song", which he had initially began writing and recording when he first started to experiment with digital hard disk recording the previous summer. He burned several copies on his home computer to give to his fellow writers; the reaction from everyone encouraged and inspired him to release the CD EP to the general public through MP3.com. He followed the release up with an uptempo remix of "Angel Song" later in 2002.

A year later, he began work on a series of two-song singles, each track of which was titled after a sequential number in Japanese. He also began writing and recording two other projects in the electronic dance music field, a second EP entitled Birth Control (the title of which is said to have been inspired by an ex-girlfriend's reckless infidelity) and an EP of downtempo/chill music, The Ambient EP. He had begin writing an album entitled Escape From Babylon, which he had planned to be the first techno music concept album, around the same time as Birth Control, but he has shelved the project indefinitely.

In 2005, CJ started his own public weblog, "Being CJ Marsicano", to supplement his "friends-only" LiveJournal, which he has been operating since September 2003.

CJ lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania with his girlfriend, Tara Welsh.