bio

Anthony Volpe was born on December 1, 1970. His mother claims he could read when he was 2, draw when he was 4, and play piano and organ when he was 6. His mother chose not to give him piano lessons out of fear that he'd become a child celebrity and instead allowed him to focus more on art. He wouldn't actually start writing music until he was a teenager; citing hs admiration for do-it-yourself musicians such as Prince, Anthony's family therapist encouraged him to take up music as a hobby.

Volpe listened and formed a hardcore rap group with his cousin when he was 14 and recorded hip hop songs onto cassette tapes. He wrote his first pop song when he was 15 and spent the next several years amassing hundreds of songs in a collection of notebooks.

It wasn't until he met Bill Gow in 1990 (his boss at a supermarket) that he finally got the opportunity to make his songs come to life. In January of 1992 they formed a two-man band named Death Before Disco and put out six albums in the next eight years, each one increasingly better than the last. During that time Anthony also collaborated with several of his friends and recorded two electronic albums under the name The Impaler Squadron and one unreleased goth-pop project under the name Isolation Industry.

With Bill Gow concentrating on his family and with Death Before Disco in hiatus, Anthony continued on by himself and in 2002 he recorded a gigantic 33-song solo album called 15211 West Main St., an album Anthony currently considers his masterpiece. 15211 contains just about every possible genre of music Anthony was capable of creating all rolled up into one album. Four years later he released a 9-song EP called Disastrophe which was meant to when people's appetite for his next, and possibly final, set of solo material, Existence.

Volpe currently resides in Collegeville, PA and works as a graphic designer and website developer.
 

©2009 Anthony Volpe. All rights reserved.