From http://whitecollarpunk.com/wcpunk/timon.html : Timon Marmex is a high-powered programming contractor living in Los Angeles, California. That being said, indeed, many of the songs on White Collar Punk are, in fact, about the stress of working long hours as a programmer in the video game industry. Certainly, songs like Hello Sailor and Running Down wouldn't exist otherwise. In the past I've worked in everything from your typical large company "Dilbert-esque" environment to running my own little development effort. I've seen companies, large and small, crumble around me. These situations provide me with great musical inspriation to this day. The stress I felt was very real, and very intense, and the resulting lack of sleep had a tremendous impact on certain songs. More recent songs on my new album, The Drama, have been influence by my relationships with other people here in Los Angeles. Musically, I've been active since the mid 1980's as part of the Maryland-based band Hoi-Polloi... who were completely ignorant of the other band with the same name that actually had a recording contract. This band never toured or released any tapes except to a few friends, which is probably a good thing. Eventually, the band members went their seperate ways and can pretty much be considered disbanded at this point. Many of my newer songs deal with the growing physical and psychological distance between myself and my friends, including the songs "I Don't Think So (In the Mirror)", and "Calm Down". One of my "Post-Hoi-Polloi" songs called Age of Magic appeared on the Magic: The Gathering MS-DOS demo disc (3rd or 4th track) distributed at one E3 trade show (94 or 95?) This all-synthesizer work may suprise folks who have only heard White Collar Punk. Actually, most of my work prior to White Collar Punk is nearly all synthesizer. Originally, I became interested in music through video-game theme music, and the first album I ever bought was Computer World, by Kraftwerk. I have been tremendously influenced by 80's synth acts such as Kraftwerk, Thomas Dolby, Lene Lovich, Devo, Human League, YMO, Gary Numan, The Eurythmics, The Cars, and The Art of Noise. Growing up in Maryland exposed me to a great deal of the original "Progressive Rock" through the local radio-station WHFS, so I am sure that I have been influenced by many, many punk and progressive bands whose names I could not possibly remember. A few which come to mind (in no particular order) are The Violent Femmes, The Smiths, The Cure, The Cult, The Buzzcocks, Voice of the Beehive, The Breeders, Elvis Costello, The Buzzcocks, Depeche Mode, The The, Gang of Four, Killing Joke, Romeo Void, Lou Reed, Joy Division, Pop Will Eat Itself, Yaz, Yello. More recently, exposure to Nine Inch Nails broadened my interest in music to include guitar-based music, and popular bands such as Nirvana and Greenday convinced me that lack of guitar vitruosity was no barrier to creating interesting music. These days, I am quite influenced by the early post-punk material of Gary Numan, contemporary electronic rock from Jesus Jones and Tomoyasu Hotei, the humorous techno of Denki Groove, the pre-manufactured synthesized Japanese idol pop of MAX, various Japanese anime BGM music, including Urusei Yatsura's hyperactive synthesizer solos. Even more recently, neo-new-wave bands like Ladytron and The Faint have proven quite inspirational. My other interests include Japanese anime and console games, electronic gadgets, popular building blocks from Denmark, collecting classic arcade games, Atari computers, TV dinners, science fiction and heroic fantasy. My turn-offs are drugs, sex, religion, politics, the environment, apple computers, Star Trek, SPAM, telephone solicitors, advertisements, sports, sitcoms, air travel, hotels, and things which suck.