Steve Isaacs was born, but then again weren't we all. He at a young age was fascinated by storytelling and art, and spent most of his young years reading comic books, sketching away in notebooks and avoiding homework. In his entire time at school, he only read one of the assigned books, Cyrano De Bergarac. His nose is of no unusual size.
At fourteen he began to play the guitar and fabricate a vision of a romantic life spent experiencing this strange world and translating it into music. On his eighteenth birthday he moved from his childhood home to seek out this vision in the big city of Los Angeles. His first job in Southern California involved plastic Elephants, Khakhi shorts, and a gun.
A poem by The Doors' Jim Morrison had an effect on his life's direction at that point; illustrating that were there to be an apocalypse and just the barest of necessities left to the few remaining people, that only songs and stories - the verbal tradition - would survive.
...Only songs and stories.
He attended Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California desperate to expand his musical knowledge, and hopeful that he would soon play guitar really really fast, cause that's what the girls liked at the time. He never did learn to play very fast, but did discover while in music school, that he was a singer.
After a year of growth at music school, he found himself co-proprietor of an artistic happening called "The Mad Hatter's Espresso Bar". This late-night hangout was a haven to art school kids, young musicians, drugged out performance artists, and the locals that called its rough Los Angeles 'hood home. The creative crossbreeding had a powerful effect on all who came there, and this led Steve to begin in earnest his life as a singer-songwriter - writing by night and playing his songs at the coffeehouse's open-mic shows, which he also hosted.
This talent for bullshitting led to a position hosting another open-mic at a larger Los Angles coffeehouse, "The Highland Grounds" where he was discovered by MTV and soon after was hired as a VJ in New York City.
This tripped Steve out entirely. Here he was, living in the greatest city in the world, and being paid to talk about music, see shows, and travel - a wonderful position for a young man hungering for adventure. The only thing missing was his own music. He satisfied that yearning with the idea that someday, someone would be talking about a video from his band. Someday.
During his brief tenure at MTV, he ran with the bulls at Pamplona, helped Pearl Jam to get on the channel, pissed off Michael Jackson, and drank way way too much. The bars close at 4am out there, by the way. His contract was terminated early.
An interesting sidenote: The "M" in MTV stands for "music".
A friend sent his picture to the casting people for "The Who's Tommy" Broadway production, and he soon found himself giving his first acting audition playing "Pinball Wizard" for The Who's Pete Townshend. Against any and all rational probability, he won the title role of "Tommy" and spent the next year and a half touring the U.S. In that time he sang 500 shows in 32 cities, and wrote his own music late at night in hotel rooms. He quite enjoyed the tour's stop in Boston.
In this time on the road, he became fascinated by the growing oddity that soon grew to become the mind of the world - The Internet. He taught himself computer graphics, website design and even created the first Internet comic book: "Demonica".
Once the tour finished, he settled back in Los Angeles to create the band "Skycycle". Named for the rocket-powered vehicle Evel Knievel famously attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon with, Skycycle played the clubs for 2 years, then were signed to MCA Records. Steve thought people were joking when they called it "The Music Cemetery of America", but was mistaken. The band released an EP called "Breathing Water" (produced by Ken Andrews), but was dropped before the release of their completed full length CD, "Ones and Zeros", which remains unreleased. One of the most popular Skycycle songs was "Ramona the Palm Reader", a song from Steve's unrecorded Rock Opera "Strawberry" - written while on tour in "Tommy".
The disappointment of so much time and creativity vanishing in the blink of the corporate eye led Steve to leave the business of music and get down to business. His skills as a web designer led to steady work and solo acoustic shows kept him creatively pacified.
("pacified" = "deeply resentful").
It was at one of these acoustic shows that a common friend of he and Dave Navarro's was in attendance. She brought Steve's music to Dave, Stephen Perkins and Chris Chaney's attention, the three most recently serving as the muscle behind Jane's Addiction, who had been searching for new musical possibilities. Steve never imagined those early jam sessions would become an entirely new band, he was just pleased to have the opportunity to play with some of his musical heroes.
After a humble start in drummer Stephen Perkins' garage in the Summer of 2004, the trio from one of Rock's best bands and the man with the ear for songs and stories found common ground in chasing the creative dragon together and The Panic Channel was born. Or re-born you could say. Depends how you look at it.
Steve lives in Los Angeles most of the time. If there is an apocalypse anytime soon, he will be ready.
