Plasmabat Bio Information

My name is Hugh Caley, I was born in rural Michigan at the end of the baby boom.  My childhood was completely idyllic; I was raised on a non-working farm with zads of pets to play with and miles and miles of land to explore.

I was never really good at much of anything.  Once puberty hit I was shy and sex-crazed as well.  Just for something to do I joined the high school choir and found that I was the best in the school at it, greatly increasing my self-esteem.  It is a near-religious experience to just dissolve your ego in a group of other performers, I loved it dearly.

Sometime in 1976 I really listened to the guitar solo in the Beatles "Nowhere Man", the sonority of the twelve-string and the little harmonic at the end of it, and decided that I really wanted to be a guitar player.  I've been pursuing original music ever since.  My first band played a lot of Neal Young covers, and broke up in less than a year.  Two of the other guys became Jesus freaks and one went to jail for robbing a liquor store.

I spent the 80's making my living playing in various cover bands, from country to metal to progressive to 60's.  Did you know there is no such thing as a bad kind of music?  You either play it well, or you don't, IMHO.

I bought my first computer around 1980, an Apple II, just to run a certain synthesizer card on it.  What I really wanted was a Fairlight, like Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush had, but $30,000 was a little steep.  My little system (the Apple II and a card called an Alpha Syntauri) sure taught me a lot about sound theory, though.

I did two semesters in the commercial music program at Oakland University.  I never finished a single class.  What utter depression; I just didn't know of anything else to do.  I learned to do a little dancing, but mostly I played bass for the singing goups.  I did do my first sessions in recording studios with these people, which was good training.

After my aborted college adventures, I went to work for my Dad for a while at Basin Oil Company, and learned a bit a geology and land law.  It was fairly interesting, but ultimately not my cup of tea.  In retrospect, it was lucky I didn't stay there as the Michigan oil industry didn't last long after my quitting.

In 1985 I bought a Commodore Amiga computer, with the vague idea that I would get into doing music video (man did I love MTV in those days).  Computer-rendered video was in its infancy, but I believed it was the future of movies.  I learned a lot, but soon found that my talents for graphic arts are severely limited.  Also, it would take the computer a whole 24 hours to render one frame of NTSC video; patience was sorely tried.  Loved the machine, though; more powerful than the comparable Atari's and half the price of a comparable Mac at the time, with much more powerful graphics too.  Commodore let it die; what a shame.  I have no idea what the new owners of the Amiga name are up to.

Around 1987 I got around to releasing my first album, Plasmabat by Hugh, which got great reviews and few sales (what did I know about marketing?).  However, what an ego boost, to do my own album and write, play and record everything; it made me feel really special and I was never plagued with too much self-doubt again after that.

I launched various incarnations of Plasma Bat bands after releasing the album; from a duo with electronic drums and sequencing in the background to a three-piece prog rock group.  I never found bandleading to be a very rewarding experience, though; too many worries and a need to make things go my way tended to make the experience kind of aggravating.  Kind of a waste of talented people, including my own brother, my one-time (and first) girlfriend and a drummer of Mahavishnu orchestra calibre.

I did a whole lot of drinking and drugging in the late 80's and early to mid 90's.  Nothing injected, but still, interesting times.  It was fun at the time, but now I just drink the occasional glass of wine or shot of single-malt scotch because I know they are good for your heart.  Times have changed, eh?  Never did learn to smoke, although a couple of cigs saved me from some boughts of drunken vomiting a few times.  Did you care to know this?

Around 1989 I realized I needed more time to pursue my original music, and decided to get a real job.  I quit my last 60's cover band and started looking.  I did do three days at 7-11 but quit because the opening the garbage canisters several times a day really hurt my ears, and I need them!

Since I came from a long line of lawyers (but didn't want to go back to real school) I got a quick paralegal certificate and went to work as a legal secretary for a Worker's Comp lawyer in Birmingham, Michigan.  This lawyer happened to be one of the only lawyers I've ever seen that used Macintosh equipment, and as the best Windows available at the time with Windows 3.0, I just fell in love with the great GUI and beautiful displays of the Macs.  I quickly rewrote most of our software using Filemaker Pro, and found that I like the machines more than the law.  I quite the legal biz and got into IT.

Meanwhile, in 1994, my latest band, Loomer, was starting to take off in the Detroit/Michigan area.  Since this basically gets you nowhere (or got you nowhere in those pre-Kid Rock days) and we all wanted to travel, we decided to move the band to San Francisco.   However, on getting there, we almost immediately dissolved, and I had to start over.  Luckily, these were the days of  the IT boom in the San Francisco Bay Area, and IT work was plentiful.  I've been doing it ever since.  I also married the ex-girlfriend of the other guitar player in Loomer who had decided to stay behind and work on the automotive line in Michigan.  I can't help but think that I really, really got the better of that deal.

So, Loomer now being defunct, I decided to release my own second solo album, Compost. Now the challenge is to sell it.  I hope to document some of this journey in my blog.  And also to express my own opinions on technology, politics (of which I know little, but learn more as I get older), sex, etc. I'm over 40; too old to join a boy band, too white to join a hip-hop band.  The music thing is going to be a challenge, but that makes it interesting.

Hope you enjoy this thingy.

Hugh