John Slick

John Milo Slick (born September 28, 1953 in Fort Wayne, Indiana) was a Christian rock musician from the legendary Christian rock band Petra. Slick is currently retired from music and works in the computer industry.

Biography

Slick received many years of classical piano training, studied at Indiana University and Belmont College and earned the B.A. Music, in 1981.

In 1981, Slick joined Petra and played on their albums "Never Say Die", "More Power To Ya", and "Not of This World". After leaving the band in 1983, he worked in the Nashville music industry, composing musicals, transcribing piano-vocal songbooks, and playing on various recording projects.

Eventually, Slick left the music industry in favor of software engineering. Slick 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 Miami Sound Machine, CNN, Barbra Streisand, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Frank Zappa, Sting, Paul Simon, Pat Metheny, and many prominent sound studios in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

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".

A fortuitous encounter 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.

Slick later 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#. He is presently a senior software engineer and systems architect with Computer Sciences Corp, working on General Dynamics in-theater military support systems for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Slick recently renewed a hobby interest in music, and subsequently bought a 1963 Hammond B3 organ for the study of jazz organ trio stylings.

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.

External links

* [http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/ip/sigs/arts/music/christian/artist/petra.a Petra FAQ]
* [http://www.petramerchandise.com/ Petra Merchandise official site]
* [http://www.thepetrazone.net/ The Petra Zone]
* [http://www.petraband.ca/ PetraBand.ca (Canada)]