Artist description Ziggy Plato is Thomas Howard, a one man home recording hobbyist. Why Ziggy Plato? Good Question. I was signing up with a website one day and I needed a name to use. It just came to me. Another day I was contemplating what name I should use for a CD like this one. I asked myself: Thomas Howard? Tommy Howard? T.R. Howard. Thomas Raymond Howard? Now I don't hate my name or anything, but none of these really sounded right so I wondered about using a "stage" name. Somehow I remembered Ziggy Plato and it stuck. I pondered the significance of this name.... Ziggy could be the character from the early David Bowie song "Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from mars." "Ziggy played guitar." Incidentally, I also considered using "Major Tom" also from David Bowie's "A Space Oddity" album since it was a nickname some friends used to use. Or Ziggy could be the troubled little comic strip character. Do they still run that? Plato is of course, the ancient philosopher with whom I seem to identify. If you kind of mix them all together, you get Ziggy Plato. It's me. Not my alter-ego, but my alter-id so to speak. Why unfinished business? Well, simply because none of these songs are really complete in my mind and if I were to cut a commercial CD, they would all need a lot of work and re-doing. I have several excuses lined up for why they are unfinished. First of all I don't have professional recording equipment. I don't have a multitrack recorder, so each instrument or vocal that is overdubbed adds noise and reduces the overall quality of the recording. This limits what I can do and still have reasonable, if less than professional results. Given the limits of my equipment, I could still make changes and improvements on many of these songs, BUT... Many other factors come into play here..... One is that now I have so many unfinished projects that it's hard to decide which one to work on. Occasionally I think about writing all my songs down on little slips of paper and picking one out of a hat or something. A random way to decide what to work on. Another is my health.(Fibromyalgia) With constant fatigue, headache and all-over pain, it is very difficult to feel motivated to sit down and work on this stuff like I did a few years ago. Just typing this is a bit of a chore. I wish I could copy and paste thoughts from my mind into this document. Being alone was another thing that allowed me to accomplish more a few years ago. Not that I wish to be alone again, I don't. My son moved in with me a couple of years ago and for a little over a year now I've had a significant other in my life too. Oh, and a couple of cats too, but they don't really distract me too much. So these are just a few of the excuses I have for unfinished business. Some of the songs just need a vocal track added, some need a guitar or whatever. Some need to be redone because I'm not happy with the sound. A few have glitches on the master recording where I accidentally erased a second or two and I'd have to re-do a whole track. Some I want to completely start over because I'm just not happy with the music or chord progressions or arrangement. Some were just practices that I never got any further with and don't even have all the verses...blah blah blah...

Music Style eclectic... I do so many different styles I don't know if I have a style.

Musical Influences Again, I have a wide variety of influences from Beethoven to Zappa. Les Paul is a hero of mine.

Similar Artists everyone and no one...

Artist History Born in Milwaukee in 1963, I taught myself to play piano at the age of 9. A few years later I began to play around with guitar. I met a fellow piano player in high school who eventually became my best friend. I started hanging around the band he played keyboards for. They needed a bass player so I offered to fill in as best I could until they found one. I eventually taught myself how to play the bass and became the official bass player. The name of our band was The End. We played a lot of classic rock and punk and a few originals. After the band broke up I traded some of my equipment in for a guitar and amp and a chorus pedal. I still have the same guitar which is what I used on this CD. It's a Vantage copy of a Les Paul classic. It's not a real Paul, but it has served me pretty well over the last 16 years. Some of the songs I wrote were written back in high school and over the years I wrote more lyrics and made up a lot of stuff on the guitar. About 6 years ago, my freind Steve Carey, known as "Dodger," brought his ensoniq SQ80 keyboard over and has let me use it ever since. It has become the centerpiece of equipment for the songs I record. It has allowed me to add drums, bass and keyboard to my songs without having to try and put a band together which would have been very difficult and impractical to try while I stumbled from job to job and helped to raise a couple of kids. Dodger will always have my gratitude for letting me use the ensoniq.

Group Members Just me. I play everything, but I will have occasional guests. My son Dylan and I have collaborated and will again in the future.

Instruments guitars, keyboards, some percussion

Albums unfinished business...

Press Reviews The press has no idea that I exist. For now I guess that's fine, but someday someone should alert them of my evil plot to rule the world.

Location Appleton, WI - USA

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