I grew up in a musical family where my dad played the button accordian. Whenever we got together with our relatives they would play waltzes and polkas as my dad's brothers all learned an instrument, banjo, violin, accordian, drums. Later on they formed a band which gave me access to a tube amp and home made speakers hooked up to an RCA stereo, in my teens. As I was learning to play drums I would play my drums to rock music.

What got me started with my own taste or identity of music was when one of our neighbors stole two lp's and left them at our place. One was the Troggs and the other was Best of Deep Purple. I liked Deep Purple which was different than anything I heard up until that time, particularly the song 'River Deep Mountain High'. After that I was hooked on hard rock. Then came stuff like In-a-godda-da-vida and Deep Purple-Made in Japan, my all-time favorite album.

As for electronic music, my friend got my hooked on that when we went job hunting out of High school, to Edmonton. He would listen to cool stuff like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis.

When I moved back to Saskatoon shortly after, I bought my first stereo which was a Bryston 2B amp, Technics TT, Hafler pre-amp, ESS speaker Model 10 and Stax headphones. It all got stolen from my apt. except for the speakers and TT. After that I just used a ghetto blaster or listened to car audio while driving taxi. Then I sold my taxi (another story) and built my home theatre stereo system. I should have paid off my taxi debt's right away, but having a stereo was more important.