Dino DiMuro is an independent composer, musician and producer.

Training

DiMuro's musical education began with piano lessons, from his grandmother, and his uncle, composer Harold Owen.

At age 11, inspired by the Flatt & Scruggs soundtrack to Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...

, he acquired a banjo

Banjo

In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

. He acquired his first electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

 at 13 (inspired by The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

). By age 18, he was very good with guitar and bass

Bass (instrument)

Bass describes musical instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles...

. At age 26, he acquired his first synthesizer

Synthesizer

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

.

DiMuro is rated by some as an excellent guitarist of the Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 variety, utilizing blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, all available processing, odd phrasing, elements of noise and 20th century polyscale ideas.

Technique

DiMuro tends to construct six to eight track songs, previously using a four track recorder and a two track DAT. In 2003, he upgraded to a Macintosh

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 Pro Tools

Pro Tools

Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation platform for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, developed and manufactured by Avid Technology. It is widely used by professionals throughout the audio industries for recording and editing in music production, film scoring, film, and television...

 setup. He generally overdubs all instruments, though has worked with drummer Eric Scott (3 records in 1986), with partner John Gibson in BERTH (1969 onward), and with live performing bands (1995, 2001). He achieves complete band results, when working on his own.

DiMuro has occasionally used "found sound" from garage sales as the basis for songs, such as his full vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 arrangement, over top of an amateur singing - in a variable tempo - "Rockabye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody".

Style

His output includes 8 track home recorded Pop music, oddball little songs, Rock and Roll, unconventional humor, and elegantly arranged keyboard compositions. There are parodies ranging from punk rock with banjo, to the most known unknowns in contemporary music (such as: The Residents

The Residents

The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....

, French Frith Kaiser and Thompson, NXS, The Pogues

The Pogues

The Pogues are a Celtic punk band, formed in 1982 and fronted by Shane MacGowan. The band reached international prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. MacGowan left the band in 1991 due to drinking problems but the band continued first with Joe Strummer and then with Spider Stacy on vocals before...

, and Garrison Keilor).

Leo Kottke

Leo Kottke

Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is widely known for his innovative fingerpicking style, which draws on influences from blues, jazz, and folk music, and his syncopated, polyphonic melodies...

 style instrumentals exist alongside Chipmunk vocals, songs about Nudists and other odd subjects, many unconventional love songs, marching band

Marching band

Marching band is a physical activity in which a group of instrumental musicians generally perform outdoors and incorporate some type of marching with their musical performance. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments...

 or orchestra productions on synthesizer, quirky biographical numbers, avant-garde works, and experiments (such as an effective guitar solo, processed to sound like rubber bands).

He seems to walk the line between idiosyncrasy, and audience acceptance.

As one enthusiast noted in 1996:

Musical career

DiMuro's fan base varies from a few dozen, to about five hundred cassette buyers per album, yet thousands of people world wide are familiar with his name.

, a boolean search at Yahoo for Dino DiMuro, yields about 22,000 pages.

He began selling and giving away cassettes of his music in 1983, through OPtion

Option

- Legal rights :*Option , an instrument that conveys the right, but not the obligation, to engage in a future transaction , or in a futures contract...

 and Sound Choice magazines.
With Rivalry Insanity (1984), compositional daring increased, although he had already produced multi-instrument Captain Beefheart

Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet January 15, 1941 December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12...

style music. There were other albums that were merely good. Albums that resist categories include Composite, A Real Pretty Rose, Snoutburger, I Have a Purpose, and Sunday at the Airport.
He has produced albums for other home tapers. This allowed DiMuro to give his listeners a Trojan horse, called Poindexter Holloway: L.A. Kingpin!. It had intentionally nasal vocals, and a style ranging from grouchy to manic. It was deceptively packaged, presenting the unknown "Poindexter", as if he were a major star.

In 1991-1993, DiMuro spent two years on a major production, Gower Street, his best known work. It turned out well, despite being hampered by the L.A. riot, and moving from his long established address. Two albums from that time, Vermont Avenue and Stopgap Sam's Steaming Stew, were simpler, surprising, and almost as good.

DiMuro married Julie in 1994. Julie was in a car crash, and died in 2004.

With the release of Simple Chance of Life in 1995, DiMuro switched to CD releases. Establishing a touring band was cut short, by the birth of his two children.

Train Going Nowhere was a basic, professional studio-recorded rock album. That album took six years to finish, due to glitches, money troubles, and resistance from his wife.

He abandoned an album called Unfinished. It had exotic surprises on it, including a song for DiMuro's son, "You Gotta be as Rich as Bill Gates, to Play with Toy Trains".
In 1997, a stranger, 3,000 miles away, created The Unofficial Dino DiMuro Homepage.

DiMuro is a long time friend of many home tapers from the west coast of the U.S., including Don Campau, who guests on many DiMuro albums, and who recorded a collaboration with him, in 2007. Campau now releases DiMuro's CDs on his Lonely Whistle Music label.

Discography

• Sleep Alone Tonight! (1982)
• Adults Are Just Children with Longer Legs (1983)
• Rivalry Insanity
• Composite
• Too Cool To Go Swimming
• Please Do Not Exit Thru Playland (1984)
• The Best of Dino DiMuro (1985)
• Trouble at the Mutual Admiration Society
• DiMuro House
• Snoutburger
• Vegas Train (1986)
• A Real Pretty Rose
• Poindexter Holloway: L.A. Kingpin! (1987)
• I'll Be Good
• High School Football Game
• I Have A Purpose
• She's A Climber (1988)
• Sunday at the Airport
• Gower Street (1993)
• Vermont Avenue
• Stopgap Sam's Steaming Stew Tapes 1, 2 + 3 (1994)
• The Wedding Tape
• The Simple Chance of Life (1995)
• Train Going Nowhere (2001)
• Unfinished (2003)
• Sleeping Highway (2004)
• Outtakes Universe (2005)
• The Ultimate Love Song Collection (2005)
• Don Campau and Dino DiMuro: Playdate (2007)

Secondary discography

• Contains "Carving The Fat I, II, and III," ANDY (synthesizer collaboration involving DiMuro's cat), Nasty Doctor, Berth Reunion Rehearsals I II & III, Phantom Sampling (Lumpy Gravy Meets Rutles Christmas Album disturbed video soundtrack), and more.

Tertiary discography

• Contains "Veteran's Day Massacre," guests spots on albums he produced and distributed for Ted Lee, (such as "Highway Submerged For Canine Transit,"), Don Campau, and others, L.A. Cellular, Wave at the Train (west coast home tapers' documentary) and more.

External links

• Dino DiMuro at last.fm
• DiMuro Soundclick Page (not recommended for dial-up connections)