Jon Storm has been playing and writing music since his teens, and has worked with a number of bands, playing bass or guitar and singing. He was a founder member of Temple Zone in the eighties, a rock band based around the classic concept that if you can't be tight, at least be loud. He also played bass with Kent-based Fnarr Fnarr, and occasionally guested with South London thrash band House of Darkness.In the early nineties he was a member of the original ANOMIE, only dropping out when deteriorating health made it increasingly difficult to play live. He still plays occasionally with ANOMIE and Temple Zone veterans StuArt Barton and Colin Wilson, both of whom were heavily involved in Storm Warning. He also worked with Colin and Jenny Lesle in the short-lived but much-acclaimed Foundation.
More recently he has got into synths and making music with his computer, and these days plays keyboards much more than guitars. (One might have thought that since he has been using computers and making music since his teens, he might have thought of combining the two a number of years ago, but anyway...) He quickly found that there are many huge advantages to making music via MIDI, not least that you can edit out all your mistakes, and do almost everything from a horizontal position.
Jon's professional background is in PC support and training, with strong minors in network architecture, design and administration, and technical writing. With typical perversity, his degree is in Spanish, which just goes to show... well, something. He was Network Administrator and chief IT troubleshooter at a prominent City of London law firm until early 1996, when poor health made it impossible to continue working. He suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as CFS, ME, CFIDS and various other acronyms. Take it from me (er, I think I mean him), it exists and it's no fun at all. Basically you spend a lot of time feeling completely knackered and needing to lie down, which makes it difficult to do much of anything at all. Overdo it and you collapse, and then have to spend days resting just to get back to where you were. People do recover from it completely sometimes, but unfortunately so far it hasn't happened for Jon. Which is why there hasn't been a tour to promote the album.
He retains his sanity (some would say this is a moot point) by fiddling around with his computer, which is cunningly rigged so that he can use it lying down, his synthesizer (ditto) and the internet, and pandering to his weakness for writing long sentences with lots of parentheses ( ) in. Not to mention finishing sentences with prepositions if he feels like it.
Jon started foolin' around with HTML and creating websites a few years ago, upon which his friends immediately started jumping up and down and saying things like "Wow! Will you make me a website? Can it have....{everything impossible you ever thought of}?" This led to the creation of a number of websites, including the popular Dictionary of Computer Jargon, a set of online HTML tutorials, and Thoughts. He has actually managed to achieve one or two of the less impossible bits!
Jon had also been fooling around with MIDI for a year or so, and achieving some pleasing results despite the whole having to be horizontal thing, when StuArt Barton sent him a CD single (the stunning I Feel Real), which he had just created with his newly acquired CD Writer. Jon thought : "Hey, that's a good idea", bought himself a CD Writer, and before he knew it was creating an album. The result was Storm Warning. It took over a year and several minor relapses, but he is pleased with the result.
With the album finally completed, Jon is examining the interesting problem of how to promote an album when you aren't well enough to do any gigs. Websites and the internet are obviously going to be a big part of it, so make sure you check out this site often!
Last update : 27 June 2006.