Terry Scott Taylor

THE ONLY OFFICIAL AND GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED TERRY SCOTT TAYLOR BIO.



An illegitimate child purportedly born in L.A. around 1950, and one time resident of Pomona, Norwalk, Downey, Bell, Bell Gardens, Dana Point, San Jose, Los Gatos, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, and parts unknown, Terry Scott Taylor has recorded at least two dozen or so band and solo albums, sold hundreds of thousands of records, and is perhaps one of L.A./Orange County's most shadowy underground music figures who may have once killed a guy. A prolific songwriter, performer, and producer of alternative rock and pop, alt-country and gospel, speed polka, Amerciana, yodel and punk, among his other distinctions is that of writing his first song at the age of six (6), putting on puppet shows and creating spook houses for the neighborhood kids at age nine (9) and reading Charles Bukowski when his friends weren't looking. He performed his first major gig at age 17 while living in the San Francisco/Bay Area, his band (The Cardboard Scheme) opening for Janis Joplin's Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service.



Among his many heroes are Zorro, The Cure, Anne Lamott, The Ramones, T.S. Eliot, Willie Nelson, Larry David, Pancho Villa, Echo and the Bunneymen, Leonard Cohen, Brian Regan, JFK, Roger Maguine, The Kinks, Sitting Bull, Bob Dylan, both Elvises, Sandy Koufax, Martin Luther King Jr., Social Distortion, C. Philip Hoffman, Dennis Miller, Jon Stewart, Frederich Beuchner, Johnny Depp, Flannery O'Conner, Neil Young, Brian Wilson, C.S. Lewis, Rosa Parks, Wilco, Saint Paul, Phil Hendrie, Muhammad Ali, The Cohen Brothers, The Salvation Army, Emmylou Harris, David Mamet, Blaise Pascal, Jackie Robinson, Johnny Cash, Rembrandt, Modest Mouse, John Lennon, Aslan, Teenage Fanclub, Billy Graham, Vincent Van Gogh, the Founding Fathers, and that Latino guy who clerks over at the liquor store.



Over twenty years ago Taylor and his band Daniel Amos debuted in Orange County at a local church, and early on he and the band recorded several popular gospel/rock/pop/jug band records until, because of his musical hijinks and creative jones for the strange, the obscure, and the musically inaccessible, he and his band fell out of favor with the religious crowd---as well as with his own mother. Despite this setback (which was linked by many to be the work of Lucifer), Daniel Amos (or DA) went on to be among the first alternative groups to perform at the now-defunct and infamous Madame Wongs, and over the past 30 years, in addition to local gigs at almost every major club on the Strip, Taylor has performed in living rooms, clubs, concert halls, and outdoor arenas and festivals, as well as street events, backyard barbeques, prisons, and one particularly frightening burger bash. He continues to the present to perform nationally and internationally.



Taylor's work has received recognition and praise in USA Today, The Door, Time Magazine, and numerous national and regional newspapers and magazines, yet his career has essentially flown under the radar, perhaps due (and this is speculative at best) to bad management, dubious friends and colleagues, liars, cheaters, scam artists, and Taylors' habit of biting people in the middle of a conversation for no apparent reason at all. Be that as it may, the Los Angeles Times listed the Taylor-produced Starflyer 59 record Leave Here a Stranger as a Top 10 album of 2002, and further acclaim was garnered for Taylor's soundtrack work on The Neverhood Chronicles (Dreamworks' first interactive PC game), Playstation's Skullmonkeys, and Nintendo Game Boys' Boom Bots. Yet again, despite these accolades, hardly anybody really knows who the hell he is, including his best friends, himself, and some very puzzled members of his immediate family.



Taylor's music can currently be heard on Nickelodeon's newest cartoon hit CATSCRATCH, which airs Friday nights and Sunday mornings. (CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS OF COURSE.)



Terry (or Tucky, or Scotty, or T-Bone as some, to his great dismay, refer to him affectionately) has been the recipient of various gaming music awards (Tom Clancy's video game music composer Bill Brown, calling the Neverhood and Skullmonkeys soundtracks "The best of any of them, the only music other than mine that I really like"), Taylor and his interactive soundtracks have led GMR ("Gamer") Magazine to proclaim The Neverhood Chronicles music as the Best of 2003, and Best Game Music of the Year, addtionally raving that "Skullmonkeys' bonus room song is the funniest tune ever written for a video game."



Despite the fact that to this present day Terry Scott Taylor continues to create relevant, modern alternative rock, pop, and country through his seminal alt-rock pop band Daniel Amos, and his fake band The Swirling Eddies (under his alias Camarillo Eddy), and as a currently contributing member of The Lost Dogs' alternative country/gospel stylings.yes, despite the fact that he is preeminent among Orange Countys' first alt music pioneers, or that he's a fairly healthy old man, Taylor remains an obscure local figure to the Southern California public at large. As inexplicable as his obscurity is, Taylor does share an affinity and/or personal friendship with a number of new and old, local and national bands, not to mention his rabid almost cult-like and scary stalker fan base. Taylor continues to be an influential friend and patriarch. His mother even claims now to like a couple of his tunes.



Tucky continues to attract a modest but steadily-growing fan base not only here in America, but internationally as well. Scattered throughout the world, including Canada, Japan, England, Russia, Australia, and Holland, Taylors' followers are without peer in their devotion to the sheer genius of his phenomenally extensive musical work, the poignant accuracy of his biting social commentary, and the symmetrically transcendent cut of his stage pants.



Terry Scott Taylor lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area, and aside from his musical pursuits, he is currently working on his first book, which he calls "a collection of terrifying essays fraught with bloody theological horrors, dubious tributes to Sinatra and Black and other people with the first name Frank, culminating in a mordant account of Satan's uprising and subsequent downfall as it pertains to the fine art of maximizing your fun at Disneyland and the Balboa Fun Zone."