I started learning guitar at age 13 by watching what was then a very young and guitar-focused MTV network. My first proper job was at age 17, playing guitar in orchestra pits for such shows as “Bye-Bye Birdie,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Evita,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and “Man of La Mancha.” Rock-and-Roll-wise, high school covers and originals bands included Voyager, The Lovecoats, and the semi-famous Restroom Poets. Over the last 20 years, I’ve written and home-recorded about 20 albums worth of music (which keeps me off the streets) and continued to play in rock and jazz bands—most notably with this current Sky Burial line-up (which keeps me ON the streets).

Hi, I’m the LV (Lead Vocalist, not Louis Vuitton enthusiast), Jimmy Vulture, and I come from the fringe of Alphabet City, New York, where the smell of cannabis and knishes fills the air. Before joining the rowdy Sky Burial gang here in Taipei, I sang for my spiritual soul in a Lower East Side quartet known as The Gospel Ship. When I’m not exorcising my rock ‘n’ roll demons, I devote my spare time to assisting the local EMT workers, specializing in mountain patrol.

I've spent most of my life playing jazz, classic rock, and jam-band music. My first professional gig was playing the bass in the pit band for the musical Godspell when I was 14 years old; there were no other bassists around, so I got the gig, even though I'd only been playing the bass for about a year. My next paying gigs were all jazz gigs with a local college jazz quartet. I think I was 16 at the time, and it was so cool to be playing in bars and drinking beer even though I was underage.

In high school, I foolishly sold my beautiful Fender Precision to buy an electric guitar. After four years of playing lead and rhythm in jam bands, I returned to the bass, my first love. To tell you the truth, I don't know much about bands or albums. I spent most of my formative years listening to classic rock, so those are the only bands I really know anything about.

I had never seen Sky Burial live before the first time I played a gig with the band. Actually, I had heard about the band, and I knew they needed a bassist, but I wasn't really that interested until I met Lance. But immediately, I could see that this guy had personality. I have to admit that I originally joined the band to enjoy what I referred to as the "performance art" aspect of it. Now, I totally love the music.

Some of Lance's lyrics still make me a tad uneasy, though.

Hey, I'm Alfie, dragged up in the soul centre of England, Bury, near Manchester. After nanoseconds of hammering on pots, pans and biscuit tins with coathangers, my parents decided to give me my 1st kiddie kit one Xmas, I was 5. On my 9th birthday I was given an acoustic guitar. After playing percussion with a brass band and a youth orchestra I finally got a real kit and took off musically with some school friends and we formed Opus Fluke at De La Salle College, Salford, a 3 piece rock group which dabbled into the punk genre in 1977. I haven't changed much musically since then.

I've spent years at home in makeshift "music studios" playing, recording and doing that which I have the greatest passion for - making music.

I've dreamed of playing with a band that has the sound niche I like to emulate and I was asked to play with Sky Burial. Fuck Yeah! Now I get a chance to dress up and put some make-up on.