John Slick
John Milo Slick (born September 28, 1953 in Fort Wayne, Indiana) was a Christian rock musician for the legendary Christian rock band Petra. Slick is currently retired from music and works in the computer industry.
Biography
Slick received seven years of classical piano training. He studied at Indiana University and Belmont College receiving a B.A. Music, in 1981.
In 1981 he joined Petra and recorded their album Never Say Die. He recorded two more albums with the band before leaving in 1983. He continued to work in the Nashville music industry, composing musicals, transcribing piano-vocal songbooks, and playing on various recording projects.
In 1988 Slick left the music industry in favor of computers & software engineering. He worked five years as a product specialist for New England Digital, the manufacturer of the renowned Synclavier digital recording system. Slick's responsibilities included supporting the technical needs of N.E.D. customers including CNN, Barbra Streisand, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Frank Zappa, and many prominent sound studios in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
In 1989, Slick spent a month in Miami, Florida, working as a Synclavier specialist on the Miami Sound Machine album, Cuts Both Ways. Slick received an album credit for his "Synclavier chops".
In 1992, a chance meeting at the Las Vegas COMDEX trade show led Slick to a software engineering job with Aware, Inc., located in the heart of the M.I.T. engineering community in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended graduate courses in computer science at Harvard University and participated in the development of a real-time audio decompression application, "Speed of Sound" reviewed by New Media magazine in 1994.
In 1995, Slick joined Nortel Networks as a software engineer specializing in multi-platform CD-ROM's for technical product documentation. Slick continues to design and develop software applications in Java and C#.
In 2003, Slick renewed a hobby interest in music, and subsequently bought a 1963 Hammond B3 organ for the study of jazz technique.
Trivia
- Slick has an artistically gifted son named Marlon, who also goes by the name of "Cafei" (Caffee-i).
- Slick resides on the tranquil shores of Old Hickory Lake, in Hendersonville, Tennessee.