Grasshopper (musician)

Grasshopper (Sean Mackowiak)
Grasshopper performing with Mercury Rev in 2010
Background information
Birth name	Sean Thomas Mackowiak
Born	(1967-05-25) May 25, 1967 (age 49) Dunkirk, New York
Genres	Alternative rock
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Guitar, clarinet, keyboards, bass guitar, harmonica,
Years active	c.1985 - present
Associated acts	Mercury Rev, Harmony Rockets, Grasshopper and the Golden Crickets, Hopewell, Nicolai Dunger, The Flaming Lips, Luna
Notable instruments
Fender Telecaster

Grasshopper (born Sean Thomas Mackowiak, May 25 1967) is an American musician with the band Mercury Rev. He has also appeared with Rev side-project Harmony Rockets, his own band Grasshopper and the Golden Crickets, and as a guest musician on numerous other recordings.

Mackowiak's early years have been colored by a 1991 interview given to music publication Melody Maker, which claimed that he met Rev singer Jonathan Donahue in Camp Sunshine, a reform camp for juvenile delinquents, at the age of ten.

Grasshopper was throwing dead squirrels and rats into a lawnmower when Jonathan met him. The blood spattered over a watching group of retarded kids and they screamed and yelled. They yelled, "Now throw the possum in! The Possum! The possum too!" Muses Jonathan, "When you're younger, these things make a more vivid impression. I remember huge adrenaline rushes as the guts flew and hit people on the legs. I don't know what Grasshopper had done to get in there. He doesn't talk about it much."

The reliability of the story is unknown, though the claim to have met in a reform camp was repeated to the NME in 1998.

Grasshopper was born in upstate New York and was introduced to music by his uncle, an Atlantic Records employee who gave him records by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis, as well as novels by Jim Carroll. Growing up close to the border, he was in range of Canadian radio stations, further broadening his musical education.

In the early 80s, Mackowiak was a member of The People's Front (name taken from the Monty Python film Life of Brian), which played concerts in Fredonia, Dunkirk and Buffalo, NY. There was a film made of the band but has since gone missing. The film showed the band in concert and in a mock documentary with the storyline predicting great success not in the US, but "across the pond" in England. The film ends with a crash that was a foreshadowing of the fate that befell the actual guitar player for the group, Kyle Gaszynski.

Grasshopper undertook a BA in the renowned Media Studies program at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1984–1988) where he studied with avant-garde filmmakers Tony Conrad and Paul Sharits as well as Viennese action artist Peter Weibel. He later received a master's degree in the same subject at New School University, 1990-1993.