Fake Plastic Penguins: Random History Of Sugar Frosted Pacific and Chester Graham

When I first launch a blog called "Fake Plastic Penguins" years ago, I used it for my music ventures. It was my goal years ago to prove that I could release music of my own all over the web. Get people to listen to something I created on my own. I decided to create a band back in 2008.

Before 2008, I never thought of making music on my own. I was always told that I wouldn't amount to anything music wise. Basically it would never happen. Just a laughing point for some people. Maybe you could call it bullying? I never gave up though.

I started working on music around 2008 after deciding on a name. The name came out of nowhere. Literally. I just looked at a box of "Sugar Frosted Flakes" and thought of the Pacific Ocean for some reason. That's how the name came about. Sounds like a random name. I wanted to make it unique. Once the name was created I looked into music programs.

At that time I just have a windows laptop. No access to Garage Band at all. Well until 2011-ish, but that's a different tale that will be told later on. I needed up using random programs like FL Studio to work on my first single under Sugar Frosted Pacific. I actually took the time to work on the single. The single wouldn't come out until January 2009. This single was called Pop Button.

Pop Button is my first and still one of my favorite songs I've ever worked on. I consider it one of those three songs into one song type of song. The song was inspired by all the house parties I went to during my sophomore and junior years in college. More specifically the parties that were busted by the cops during my sophomore year. I don't remember getting busted my junior. Pretty much the song starts with a "pop" from a champagne bottle aka entering the house party and ends with escaping the party once its busted. I am very proud of this song and at one point has a great idea for a music video. The video never got out of the planning stages and school/work took over a my time.

How I released Pop Button was interesting to think about now. At the time I didn't want to push the release on Facebook. I wanted to focus on marketing the song in a different route. I ended up uploading the song as a "RAR" file on Mediafire. At the time, I thought it would be easier to share the song through Mediafire as a "RAR" file because I was getting most of my music through the site. Actually I would end up sharing the link on Tumbr sites and a privately shared site called It-Leaked.

It-Leaked was a site I would use a lot until I graduated from college. I would end up uploading my own albums on there and spamming the chat with my own links. This is how I got my name out there on the web. It-Leaked and spamming comments on Strike Gently (very interesting website). Let's just say both sites were seized by Homeland Security because they were towards the end of my college year. This would end my "main" marketing strategy with Sugar Frosted Pacific. It did encourage me to make more music after seeing that I had over 1,000 downloads for Pop Button.

After Pop Button was released. I decided to make more music in spare time. I would end up releasing two additional albums that in the end were not my favorites from my time under the moniker Sugar Frosted Pacific. One of those albums was called "We All Have Staches". This album was an ambition attempt in copying what Girl Talk did with Feed The Animals. There was some backfire on this album.

Tons from the sites I used to market the music. I would end up taking a break from music and decided not to take Sugar Frosted Pacific that route ever again. I would go back to my original plans for Sugar Frosted Pacific and make a more ambitious effort than before. The double album.

Roma would be 2nd full album released. It took me a while to work on this one. Started working on tracks in the fall of 2009 and ended up finishing up in the spring of 2010. This album was heavily influenced by electronic music and the variety of it. At first I was just going to do a single album, but it ended up as a double LP. I guess the White Album by The Beatles also was influence on Roma. The album itself went through a couple name changes though before ending up with Roma.

I tired to go full Italian title for the 2nd album, but the post instantly got denied on It-Leaked. You can thank that site for changing the titles of albums to what they are called now. I think I was going to name Roma "borsa viaggiatore" aka traveling bag in italian. Roma is a better name though. I am just lucky they allowed me to upload my own music on there anyways. The mods at It-Leaked could of said no. I am proud of the album though. It was initially going to be my last under Sugar Frosted Pacific because I soon became bored of making music. That did change after graduation.

After my college graduation, I decided to take Sugar Frosted Pacific out of hiatus. During this time I discover a new program that I would use for the rest of the albums I would release under the name Sugar Frosted Pacific except for one album. That's a different story which I will explain later. The program I used is Magix Music Maker. I discovered it randomly and all found it that the program can automatically make songs for you. Cue my laziness.

Thanks to the "song maker" of Magix, I was able to create songs quicker before. I ended up releasing five additional albums in 2010 thanks to Magix: Fiddy Yum Yum DevilOH!Devil Devil’s Children and Devil Gaga. The last three were clearly cover albums aka let's lower the singers voice down to sound like the devil. All five albums were pushed on Strike Gently heavily through the comments on random posts. I did get a lot of downloads. 2010 was probably one of the best years for Sugar Frosted Pacific. I spent more time marketing it on the web than I did before. That caused me to get more downloads and attention.

With a breakout year in 2010, I wasn't ready for it. I didn't realize how hard it was to keep up especially with changes on the internet. I tried to create a Twitter page for Sugar Frosted Pacific and ended up using it for not even a month. The Twitter page is still up, but I cannot remember the password at all. After the downfall of both sites I used to use, I didn't come to a realization how much it effected Sugar Frosted Pacific at the time. Now I do.

Instead of focusing on marketing Sugar Frosted Pacific, I decided to push more music out. I believe this was the downfall of Sugar Frosted Pacific. Even though I kept pushing myself to create albums like Closet Preachers (personal favorite) and SEXY LADY IN THE WINDOW I didn't really have a website to post them on. I didn't want to put them on iTunes also. I just didn't feel like this type of music would qualify to be purchased on iTunes.

Actually I was pretty content with making no money off of Sugar Frosted Pacific. I did put the band on MySpace back in 2009 and honestly my music is still up on MySpace. I just recently search it on Google and it's still up. Just forgot the login information so honestly the page will never update. I would still need to get my music out there. I would ended up using a tumblr site called "Legal Free Music". That's how Sugar a Frosted Pacific really get big after It-Leaked was shut down thanks to the feds. I would get tons of downloads from that site. Get my name out there. It didn't last long though. That site was closed down just like the others. So I decided to finally create a Band camp page.

Bandcamp is easily one of the best sites to use for a band just trying to get their name out there. I thought it would be better to put new music on one site rather than spamming the Mediafire link. Since 2012-ish, all new Sugar Frosted Pacific are now uploaded on the Sugar Frosted Pacific Bandcamp Website. Honestly making the decision to use Bandcamp was one of the best decisions I made for the band. It's an easier format and honestly you don't need to download the music to listen to it. You can just listen to it on the site. The only problem I have with Bandcamp is that everything has to be a .wav file. This became a pain in my ass when I decided to release an album I did in 2012 in 2017.

That album became my 2nd double LP under Sugar Frosted Pacific. It would be simply called Sugar Frosted Pacific. Why a self titled album? Well sometimes you just run out of ideas. Plus I haven't released a self titled album. Honestly I feel like releasing a self titled album is kind of a lazy move. At that time I was getting lazy.

Nowadays it's not all about the downloads for me. It used to be in the first 5 years of the band. I did end up getting over 15,000 downloads which isn't bad for a band I created for fun. After awhile it wasn't fun. Around the fall of 2012 I decided to take a hiatus away from Sugar Frosted Pacific. Around that time I had made 10 albums under Sugar Frosted Pacific and over 100 songs. I accomplished what I wanted to do and I decided to do something more ridiculous. Cue Chester Graham.

Chester Graham came straight out nowhere. I was starting to get burned out making Sugar Frosted Pacific albums. I started looking at other avenues for music. Once I found out that Apple had released Garage Band on the iPad, I wanted to take the chance. The chance to actually make my own music instead of inserting random loops in random places. I decided to start a side project. This side project would have me singing which I was like let's just do it. Again I wanted to prove that I would release an album with original songs and lyrics. I had my doubters, as always, but I knew this is something I wanted to do.

Once Garage Band was installed, I was ready to go. The band name was there yet. I went from Puppies & Kittens to Man-Eating Penguins to finally Chester Graham. I also thought of doing the chipmunk voices. I actually released albums with that voices as trial and ending up getting a copyright infringement which was bull shit. How can you infringed on your own voice? Well I fought them and won. Take that LeakID.com. You worthless site. Fake News.

In case you are wondering how I got the name Chester Graham from, it's my moms maiden name with a perverted sounding first name. I wanted to make music that would make you want to take a shower after listening to it. I think I did accomplish it.

Honestly, I had to make up the persona of Chester Graham before laying down the lyrics from the beats. I would also like to point out that I never wrote one lyric down. All lyrics came straight from my head after listening to the beats for the first time. I did have some hiccups, but if I had the lyrics in my head ready to go when I had the time to record. I would end up recording all the songs under Chester Graham within a year. After doing some research earlier, I noticed that my last songs recorded were on August 22, 2012. I guess that was the last day I called it quits recording for the time being.

I did end up releasing four albums under Chester Graham. 2 full albums, 1 double album, and an unreleased extended play. The first 2 albums were released in 2012. The reason why I released 2 albums was the amount of downloads I received from the 1st album. If I didn't receive over 1,000 downloads, I would never made the same mistake like I did with Sugar Frosted Pacific. That mistake was pushing too much at one time. The constant spamming of the download link on random websites just to get some attention. Well I did get some attention from the 1st album.

The 1st Chester Graham album was called 1st Conviction. This album is a gem to me. 1st one that I have ever sang on. All song titles and lyrics came from me. I even wrote a Track by Track blog on the original Fake Plastic Penguins Blog. I could on detail about the album but that original blog post from 2012 is spot on. 1st Conviction would be released on September 23rd 2012 just 1 month after I stop recording Chester Graham songs.

With the success of 1st Conviction, I went ahead and started tracking the next album. At the time I wasn't ready to start working on another album. I think I was just ready to push more Chester Graham songs out on the internet. I should of just focused on marketing album I spent most of my summer working on. Instead I was like let's go and get this train wreck rolling. So next album to come out came in November 2012. That album was called Keep Back 200 Feet.

Keep Back 200 Feet was never considered a sophomore slump. It was more like a "hey I think I was this Garage Band thing down and let's make more songs" kind of thing. Still a 11 track album with everything song wise coming straight from me. At that point and on I never wanted to do cover song. I just wanted to do original songs. Another point I wanted to prove I can do. The 2nd album prove that. This album was solely influenced by my random thinking throughout workdays. There's a song call "My other girlfriend, Jill" which is basically about calling your hand you use to flap one off. Clearly a top charter. It's that type of album.

After the release of Keep Back 200 Feet I actually took Sugar Frosted Pacific out hiatus to release yet another album. Up To No Good was one of those albums I decided to release on the fly. Just to see if there was any more attention I could get. Well I ended up not getting much after this release and decided to go back on hiatus. Something interesting about this album is that it was never made available on Bandcamp. One of the last self-releases before the Bandcamp years of Sugar Frosted Pacific.

After the one off Sugar Frosted Pacific album, I took a year off before releasing anything new. I still had tons of completed songs on my computer ready to be released, but I felt like I still needed to hold off on releasing anything. During that time I decided to release the Sugar Frosted Pacific Bandcamp for future releases. Like stated before, I wanted somewhere I could provide future releases. I did not want to do the same for Chester Graham. I will explain why.

Chester Graham was it's own beast. A persona that almost had its own podcast (The Chester Graham Program) at one point. I only wanted to do a podcast because I thought the name was catchy enough to get someone's attention. That never panned out. Well nothing panned out for Chester Graham because of my self confidence. I knew if I was going to get some big attention for Chester Graham I knew there would be some questions needed to be answered. Yes most of the songs were dirty. Very dirty. I knew the next album (double album) would get tons of attention.

There were tons of songs on that album that were about my cousin. Orange Peeps and For The Birds were two examples. This album would be the last release album under Chester Graham. Chester Graham was the 3rd album released under Chester Graham. This album would easily be the dirties album I have ever written. I had to wait to get this one released just get some attention from it. Once again my marketing tactics failed and Chester Graham became the least downloaded album under Chester Graham. It's a decent album and I'm proud it even though I have to shower after every listen.

I would end up recording an additional album, but I never got the chance to release it. The next album was a country album. More like a county EP. This album would be the last Chester Graham album ever released. Last recordings I did of Chester Graham. That album was called Lonesome Road and I just released it now.

Lonesome Road would be the last Chester Graham album ever. Most of the songs were recorded in August 2012. I knew at that point that I made enough songs for at least four albums. I think that's a lot of music for one band to record in less than a year. That just tells you how many ideas were going through my head in 2012. They still today, but I am still lazy to record any music Chester Graham wise. Going back to Lonesome Road I wanted it to be a country album. In my honest opinion, country music is easy to think of. Most of the songs on Lonesome Road is about living in a small town with a pickup truck. Easy shit to think of when you grew up in a town of 1500 people. I'm more country than these city folks thinking they are country. I just wanted to prove it once again.

I knew at the end of recording Lonesome Road, I would put Chester Graham on indefinite hiatus quietly. No big news about it. Maybe some tweets here and there. At the time I was also moving to Ohio so I knew I wouldn't want to continue Chester Graham further. On the other hand I still had Sugar Frosted Pacific in my back pocket.

Once I settled down in Cleveland, I decided to record more Sugar Frosted Pacific. I would focus all new music to the Bandcamp page. I would end up releasing 1 album in 2015, 3 in 2016, and 2 doubles (I'm at in again) in 2017. That was a lot of music but it was easier just to make new music than to convert the old music to Bandcamp. I would still use the same program and would actually for once buy the program. I wanted to make music just to say I made music in Cleveland. In 2018 I decided to take a break and slowly market the music I released in the last few years. Let's just say I haven't made much once I put my music on Bandcamp.

Nowadays I am decided to take another long break from making music. For some reason it hasn't stop me though. I recorded a song last night for some reason. So it's likely that I will release another Sugar Frosted Pacific album in the future.

As for Chester Graham, that ship has sailed. Honestly I don't see myself recording music like that again. Especially in the social environment we live in today. I have tons of ideas for songs, but it's not worth. The songs are a little too dirty for me to record. Don't worry I have already taken a shower after thinking about one the other day. Plus I'm a father of two. Don't want them to discover the songs I "sang" in my 20s. I would rather have them find out about all the electronic songs I have created under Sugar Frosted Pacific.

I will end this "history" with the discography of both Sugar Frosted Pacific and Chester Graham. Just a friendly reminder..all music is free.

Sugar Frosted Pacific: