Derek Releford's Thursday Night Brainstorm 11/05/09

John Custer began his career as a studio session guitarist. By age 23, Custer was providing guitar tracks for the #1 scoring house in America, New York's Vision Sound Studios. Custer played guitar on National Television Ads for VH-1, Ford, Jovan, Mazda, Revlon, and Coca-Cola. At age 25, Custer returned home to Raleigh, North Carolina to produce and develop original artists. Punk-metal crossover giants, Corrosion Of Conformity hired Custer to produce their first major label disc, 'Blind' in 1991. The disc was hailed as an instant classic. . CREEM magazine writers chose Blind as "One of the top 25 most influential metal recordings of the last 25 years". MSN's Ed Rivadavia wrote, "The album's fiercest moment, "Vote With A Bullet" is a sonic precedent for the countless aggro-metal bands (Korn, Fear Factory, Limp Bizkit, etc.) which dominated the late '90s. Years ahead of its time, BLIND is simply one of the most important heavy rock albums of the decade." SPIN magazine raved,"Combining the heavy groove of the 70's with the hardcore political stance of the 80's, COC has set the metallic standard for this decade." The success of 'Blind' brought the attention of Columbia Records, who signed COC in 1993. Custer produced COC over the next 18 years. In that time, they received a Grammy nomination in '97 for the single, "Drowning In a Daydream," and two COC tracks appeared in major motion pictures CLERKS and THE FAN. By 1992, Custer landed two major label deals for Raleigh bands he'd been developing since 1989. Cry of Love, and Custer's own funk creation, Dag, both signed to Columbia Records on the strength of Custer-produced demos. Cry Of Love's first Columbia single, "Peace Pipe" went to #1 on Billboard's Rock Radio charts. It remained at #1 as the most requested song in the nation for an entire month, and was the 5th most played song of that year. The next single "Bad Thing", which Custer co-wrote with the band, went to #2 in Billboard. Funk band Dag was Custe