Ice Cream Cone Autobiography
(written on behalf of urbansmarts.com)

I'm from Boston, Massachusetts, in these United States. I started making beats circa 1990, using a simple editor called SoundEdit. The beats were wack for a long time. In '93 I began a late late night radio show on WZBC, with my friend MC Defunk. Also in '93 I met up with the GMD, and we formed the RPA with some other cats. This was my first crew, and the beats got somewhat less wack. We had some limited edition cassette releases, but there weren't many venues for hip hop in Boston back then so we only played out at parties. Still using SoundEdit at this point, I was now matching beat ratios with a pocket calculator. I had jury-rigged the left and right channels of my mac through a mixer, effectively making two-track production. One of the better MCs I worked with during this period was TAPM, aka Pyro, who is a Cambridge legend.
As we got older, and various adult responsabilities forshadowed our artistic careers, it seemed inevitable that the RPA would have to break up. I resigned myself to being a hobbyist, and never got any serious equipment. I used to drop off my limited edition cassette releases to Billy at Biscuithead records, and to various local artists. (I came close to working with 7L and Esoteric, and once rode in a minivan with Ed OG!) I generally would spend more time goofing off on the internet than promoting or producing releases.
Following the lead of internet goof-offs everywhere, I went to San Francisco. I wanted to taste that sweet nectar that was the dot com bubble. Unfortunately, I didn't move out there until 2000, so I got to watch the city collapse from a William Gibson novel to a Charles Bukowski story. Thankfully I was taken in my the kind souls at the Unicorn Precinct XIII, where I was given food and sheltar in exchange for ritual abuse and sarcasm. It was there that I decided, for cathartic reasons, to create a CD with the equipment I had lying around. From thus was born the Ice Cream Cone. A turntable, a radio, 2 macintoshes, a pocket calculator, and my old friend SoundEdit was the crux.
The CD took me about a year to create, and I could not have done it without the encouragement of the Unicorn, as well as Lumin, Mud Buddha, K the I???, Madame Sabertooth, Squimpy, k0re, and Mr Mittens. I'd also like to thank the Int0rnet for providing much of the connections. Lord knows I can only get so far with my limited social skills.
Soon after I finished the CD, I had to move back home to Cambridge, dead broke and homesick. I have to say that even though the weather sucks here and you can't buy a six pack on Sundays, I am having a lot more fun than I thought I would.
I am currently recording with and playing out with Distorted Megabytes, a Cambridge crew of gifted and intensely weird young men. I produced one track on the Oranur Effect EP, and there are more than a few tracks with the Megabytes that I will produce in the future. Be on the lookout for the new Distorted LP & 12", solo EPs by Mud Buddha and K the I???, and an instrumental project with Dr. Holmes. I also remixed a track for Lumin's EP.
So anyway that's the (abridged) story of Rev. Al and his Ice Cream Cone. If you want me to send you a CDR, instructions can be found here: http://vax.hanford.org/zsoul/icc.html