John Swerdan was born in Flint, Michigan, where he recalls JFK waving to him as a young boy as he crossed the Court street bridge. Swerdan's family moved him to California at the tender age of seven; first to Sacramento where he saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, and later to the San Francisco Bay Area where he's lived ever since.
Inspired by the Beatles and other 60s music, Swerdan took up the guitar at age fifteen. Songwriting and recording soon followed. His aspirations remained purely musical until he discovered Steve Jobs with the birth of the Mac. After providing live-in tech support for his graphic artist girlfriend's Mac, Swerdan worked at a service bureau for several years, and now currently runs an all-Mac computer lab at an elementary school.
"I think Jobs and Wozniak wanted to be rock stars, but ended up being tech guys," he professes. "I wanted to be both." And he followed through on his plan by recording and releasing his first CD, StartupSounds: Songs about Computers and Technology Sung and Played by a Human Being. "Startup/Hard Drive" is the first song off the album, which Swerdan describes as "a song where I sing about a souped-up customized Mac with all the same religious fervor as the Beach Boys when they sang Little Deuce Coupe."
90% of StartupSounds was recorded in his computer lab, "On a Mac G4, of course!" Because he's grown weary of using drum machines in his music, Swerdan has been slowly putting together a drum kit. In reference to his photo he sent, he says, "I couldn't afford a kick drum so I used a box that an iMac came in." Bravo.
