Cinematically Jazzacious Ambient Bug Biff (Classitronical Punk)
Born in Maine, Ben grew up in California, Washington, and Oklahoma before graduating high school in Colorado.
As a drummer and percussionist, he has been touring the world as a sideman since 1985 with r&b, funk, and rock bands, jazz trios and big bands, avant-garde electronica ensembles, in Broadway shows, on international cruise ships, and with opera troupes and symphonic orchestras.
He is a 2006 Independent Music Awards Finalist in the Film/TV-Multimedia category.
Makinen maintains a busy schedule producing and performing. He recently landed a role in the zombie movie Lucky Stiff. He is currently writing music for television and film. One of his many goals for 2006 is to complete production on a documentary film he has shot.
I always play live! I am most alive when on the move: on the street, in the clubs, on stage and in the studio. When I teach I feel I am playing live...
One of the "most special moments" I've had playing live happened about 10 years ago: I was touring with a hard rockin' blues trio. We were booked at a polka festival in Rock Springs, Wyoming (our agent must've been on drugs...). We played four notes and everyone got up and left. Everyone except a toothpick-thin 10 year old girl and her hugely overweight mother. As the mother watched from a table this petit little girl in a dress walked to the center of the large and empty dance floor and began the most beautiful solo ballet performance imaginable. It was sureal and almost haunting to beat the drums with electric guitar bouncing wildly off of the hard walls and empty surfaces while this gentle young soul completely lost herself in dance on the deserted floor in an empty hall at a desolate truck stop of a town. Her biggest fan that night, beside her mother, was me!
Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Babatunde Olatunji, my Mom, John Cage, Erik Satie, Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, Lee Morgan, Albert Einstien, I Ching, Black and White Photography, Joe Zawinul, Elvin Jones, Alec Guinness, Duke Ellington, Louis Bellson, Nancy Wilson, Rolling Stones, James Brown, Pizza, Ojibwa Tribe, Tai Chi, Gene Krupa, Miyumoto Musashi, Indian Curry, Zakir Hussien, Toshiro Mifune, Louis Armstrong, Water, Dump Trucks, Crowds, Door Hinges, Cuckoo Clocks, Silly People and Sad People, Scary People and Happy/Mad People, etc...
What I don't use could be more interesting.
I'd like to teach myself to type faster. I'd love to visit the Mariana Trench in a tiny sub, and I'd like to walk on the Moon. My dying wish would be to travel into a black hole with enough life left to see what happens.
