The idea behind the Wipers started off as only a recording project.
The plan was to record 15 LP's in 10 years without touring or promotion of any type.

My thoughts were that the mystic built from the lack of playing
the traditional rock & roll promotion game would make people
listen to our recordings much deeper
with only their imagination to go by.

I thought it would be easy to avoid press, shows, pictures, interviews.

I looked at music as art rather than entertainment.
With that concept in mind I thought music was personal
to the listener rather than a commodity.

I think I got that concept early on as a kid.
I was very lucky to have my own professional record
cutting lathe when I was in 7th grade due to my father
being involved in the broadcast industry.

I would cut records for friends at school of songs off the radio and
learned the art of record making long before learning to play music.

I would spend countless hours studying the grooves I would cut
under the microscope that was attached to the lathe and loved
the way music looked, moved and modulated within the thin walls.

I might have spent too much time studying music through a
microscope because it gave me a completely different outlook
on what music is and a totally opposite understanding of it as well.

There was something very magical and private when I zoomed
into the magnified and secret world of sound in motion.

I got to the point that I needed to create and paint my own
sounds and colors into the walls of these grooves.

Bass was my first choice of instrument I wanted to get into
because the low tones made larger and much cooler looking
grooves due to the slower modulations.

Basses were harder to find and much more expensive when I
was in grade school, so I had to go with guitar instead.

After several years of playing and recording guitar I felt I wanted
to do something different in music, and being labeled as a band
seemed to be the first tradition and standard I should try to avoid.

I started recording records under the name Wipers in late 1979
with a 4 track reel to reel tape machine.

I wanted to make my own recordings, manufacture and run
my own label myself without and one else's financing.
To keep it a pure and unfiltered as possible since everyone
as an opinion, and too many chefs makes for shity slop.

I soon found out that it was almost impossible to fulfill this idea.
Even being as independent as I was in the era of independent
music during 1980-1988 there was not one label or distributor
we worked with who understood or would support such insult to
the tradition of rock & roll.

Punk rock was all about independence and tearing down set
standards,but when it came to business, it seemed you were
not allowed to rub the fur the wrong way.

Even when it was cool and hip to say you were independent
you were not cool if you didn't play the game.

I was once told by an PR person from Virgin Records
that I was the only independent contractor in the business
as if it were an oddity
and was called the Black sheep of the industry by another.

I learned that it is almost impossible to be a true artist
in the sense of the meaning I stared off with
and that survival is to learn to compromise.

I kept the Wipers alive (on record) longer than I wished for.
I really felt that the "Circle" LP should have been our last
as it was recorded to be.

I felt that I could no longer keep making more and more
compromises and stay true to what I originally wished to do.

I think I had a harder time saying No to people
than anything else.

But on the positive side, we made "Siler Sail" the "Herd"
and the Fin being
"Power In One".

I think the idea behind Wipers is still much alive
since it ended
much as it started.

When "Electric Medicine" comes out, I don't think many
will feel the Wipers idea is really over.