I grew up playing DJ with a tape recorder and every 45 I could get my dirty little hands on. I was a Beatles fanatic, and many people find that my music is "Beatlesque", which is fine by me. My first band was "The Tigers", when I was five years old. We modeled ourselves on The Monkees, but none of us knew how to play anything besides drums, so we used to make up songs and run up and down the block screaming them out. The neighbors were not exactly fans, but we weren't discouraged. I used to build my own guitars in my basement out of anything laying around - cigar boxes, screw-eyes, toothpicks for frets, heavy fishing line for strings. Some of them actually played, but they weren't very tunable. My oldest brother played blues leads, and recruited me to play endless rhythms for him. Five and twelve-bar blues were ingrained into me by the time I was twelve. My Mom finally got sick of hearing me cursing at my crappy guitars, and bought me one at the drugstore for twelve dollars. Little did she know that I would torture her with it for the next ten years or so... until I moved out permanently. But we're getting ahead of ourselves... I was in a few bands in High School, most notably The Trio, with John and Mike McMahon, and Gizmo, a.k.a. Gadjet, a.k.a. Captiain Neptune and His Flying Floundermobile, a.k.a. Ion and the Electrolytes, a.k.a. Custer's Last Band, with my friends Gary Banville and Jimmy DiNofrio. I did the solo acoustic thing for a while after High School, playing the local clubs as "Mugz", and having way too much fun for my own good. I started doing some shows with my friend Jon Geffner, which later turned into "Good Dog Nigel", which is still going today. Jon and I started a band with Roy Wilson and Jon's kid brother Dave Geffner on drums, called "The Rockefellers", a rockabilly band that played all the local dives and had many adventures. The Rockefellers turned slowly into The Honkytonk Boys and became more country oriented. I was a partial member by this time, because I was playing in a few other bands, including Make Jane Cry (phase one, with Mike McMahon on bass, Steve Courdray ..boards, Mae Courdray on vocals, and a Roland drum machine, later replaced by a drummer or two, notably Patty Something) and The Sporting Bachelors, with Gary Banville again, and John Battaglia on guitar, and Paul on lead vocals, and a couple of different other guys that were in-and-out so fast that I really didn't catch their names. If you can find the album "Loveletters to Joanna" by the Batchelors on Dionysus records do so. It's a great garage album. Meanwhile, the Honky Tonk Boys added a few new members, including a guy named Don on pedal steel, and Miss Terry Day (sigh) on bass. Jeff Somerstien, drummer to the gods kept the rock-steady beat. When I moved to Huntington, Long Island, New York and joined a metal band called "Unbound", featuring "DJ" on guitar, Wayne MacGregor on bass, and the inevitable Jim Ruszkai on killer drums, but I never really fit-in and found a replacement for them. I was just doing lead vocals for them, as a favor to Jim Ruszkai. I loved this band, but I didn't have that metal kind of style, or hair, so I joined a band called "El Kabong". After a horrific event where two other bands named "El Kabong" showed up at the same gig, we changed our name to Make Jane Cry (phase two, with Mike McMahon on bass, John "O.B." O'Brien on vocals, and Chris Adikes on drums) because Mike still had all the banners and other stage equipment. We recorded an album featuring Wayne MacGregor on bass, and ex-Billy Joel band member Doug Stegmeyer, also on bass, because it was his studio and he wanted to. Oh, and we wanted him to too, of course. Mike McMahon and I also played bass too. Not all at once, or on the same song, by-the-way. I bet you always thought it was drummers that got changed all-the-time in a rock-and-roll band! The album "You Worry Me" on Mad World records can be found in the cutout bins if you look really hard, or on ebay sometimes. I had a great time with that band. I started doing solo shows again, and built a computer specifically for recording purposes. Some of the early demos are available at http://www.garageband.com/jimmulligan. I moved to Florida for a while and hosted a web-casted open-mic show from Daytona for a year or two at the Seabreeze Coffee Connection. If you go to http://www.coffeeshoptv.com you can still catch some of my shows in re-runs. Say hello to Charlie and Annie! I moved back to New York City, to Brooklyn, and here I am. I've been recording and playing out with Jon Geffner and Good Dog Nigel again. There's been a lot of ups-and-downs in my life, sometimes both at once. I've survived because the music keeps me going and gives my life focus. I like to think I can express a universe of emotions, like a second form of language through the different aspects of music. Every time I pick up a guitar it feels like I'm five-years-old again, and I'm running down the street screaming.