She Wants Me

Mike Peralta
With more than 150 songs to his credit, Mike Peralta says his musical influence started with Nirvana and an old guitar his mother gave him.

It wasn’t as easy as he thought and on the verge of giving up trying to play guitar, a high school friend taught him to play ’power chords’, a simple technique, he says, it makes you look like you’re good and sound like you’re good, without actually being that good.

With renewed hope and ambition, Mike and Alex could be found rocking out in Mike’s parents’ garage after school and every spare minute, playing random songs. Mike would practice for hours everyday until he finally was able to play and sing Smells like teen spirit one of Nirvana‘s hits. He went on to play bass guitar, keyboard and drums and started recording his own music. He bought a TASCAM 4-track recorder (the kind that turns a cassette tape into a 4-track) and recorded song after song after song.

He still thought his singing was less than amateur at best but he didn’t give up.
He obsessively wrote his own songs for the band to play. With his confidence soaring, Mike played in several bands in high school Which were basically just regroupings of the same 10 friends over and over again. Each time one of us would quit or rejoin, we would change the name he recalls with a grin.

Some of the bands he played with in high school were, "Enemy dog", Products of Society, Tommy in Shorts and Anal combustion. Mike recalls, I was always the singer/rhythm guitarist and songwriter even though I clearly still did not know how to sing, he laughs. But the guys thought I could so I kept doing it.

None of the bands that Mike joined in high school stayed together.

Mike recalls, If the lead guitarist was good, the drummer wasn’t and if the drummer was good, the bass guy wasn’t. We just couldn’t seem to find the right players to make the right sound.

Mike learned very quickly that the bands he joined would come and go like the common cold. That meant that songs came and went with the owner of the song. Mike wanted to be able to play the same songs regardless of who he played with in the band. Because of that and the fact that he was the sole songwriter in most of those bands, he learned to copyright his music with the library of congress and kept writing songs on his own and then brought them into each band he joined. When the band would break up, I would take the songs with me because they were my own original work and use them for the next band and the band and the, well, you get the idea. He explained.

One of Mike’s first gigs was to play "Sundae night live", (the main event for the local high school’s Drama performance ) with his two friends and band members Oliver and Brian. Parents and students had to buy a ticket to get in so, it was a huge community event, Mike recalls. He and his band buddies would rock the house and then everyone (including the band) scurried out for scrumptious sundaes!

Mike and his best friend at the time, John Simmonds, also played in a city-organized concert called, "Band Fest '97" at Hart Park. It took a lot of convincing but he finally talked his sister Amy into playing drums that day for the event. He went on to play the Whiskey a Go-Go and some cozy cafes before taking a break in 1996.

His newest CD titled Music of My Youth was recorded during his fling with the band Project PS. Check it out right here on CDBaby!