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Cevin Soling
Born	Cevin Daniel Soling August 5 New York City, New York, USA
Occupation(s)	producer, musician and writer
Years active	1992 - present

Cevin Soling (pronounced "KEV-in SO-ling") is an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, musician, music producer, and artist. He is known for his Rumpleville book series, his bands The Neanderthal Spongecake and The Love Kills Theory, his film work including A Hole in the Head, Boris the Dog, and The War on Kids, and his writings and essays. He is a member of Mensa.

Biography

Cevin Soling was born in New York Hospital in New York City, and grew up in Scarsdale, NY. His father, Chester Soling, was an architect and real estate developer who founded at Syracuse University. His mother, Carole Soling, was an ESL teacher. He has two older sisters.

In 1994, Cevin produced Robert Church's Smile Zone album, along with Church.

Cevin wrote and directed the short animated film, Boris the Dog, which aired on MTV in 1998 and later on the BBC. Also that year, he produced the documentary A Hole in the Head on the history of trepanation which was broadcast on The Learning Channel. In 2008, the documentary found new life with a screening scheduled for April 30, at New York City's Anthology, plus the rights of the movie reverted back to Cevin, and he made the movie available through mail order.

In 1998, his band, The Neanderthal Spongecake, released their debut album, The Side Effects of Napalm. Soling and keyboardist Bill Brandau produced with backing by Buffalo-based band Scary Chicken. The songs, This Thing and the acoustic cover of Metal Health with Quiet Riot vocalist, Kevin Dubrow, singing, both received extensive airplay on college and commercial radio in the United States. In addition to tours, the band had a large following in their hometown of New York City, while the Village Voice listed the group as one of the top five bands performing in 1999's CMJ music conference. The Neaderthal Spongecake song. "Tastes Like Chicken" has been played on the Dr. Demento show. The song Buffalo was featured in the closing credits of the A&E series Confessions of a Matchmaker.The band broke up in 2001 with the departure of then bassist Mark Tomase and drummer Martin Trum. Additional songs credited to The Neanderthal Spongecake after 2001 were solo recordings by Soling.

In 2002, Cevin served as executive producer of the album When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear, which is a collection of popular songs recorded by artists unlikely to record them. After convincing Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot to record a mellow version of Metal Health, he got the idea for the project and began recruiting musicians to participate. Some of the songs on the album include a version of Unforgettable by Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan, which he co-produced with Ani DiFranco, Blondie's "Call Me" by Alex Chilton and his band The Box Tops, and a cover of Shock The Monkey by Don Ho which Cevin also produced. Cevin was writer, director and producer of the film The War on the War on Drugs which won the award for best experimental feature film at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in 2005, as well as the High Times Stoney award for best documentary.

In Spring 2009, Cevin's movie, The War on Kids won "best educational documentary" for the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. While the movie had a week-long run at New York City's Quad Cinema, Cevin was invited to appear on the in which Cevin explained how schools have been transformed into "effectively prisons" now days. Cevin is lead singer and songwriter of the band The Love Kills Theory. Their album Happy Suicide, Jim! was released in January 2007.

He is currently working on a graduate degree at Harvard University where he is studying philosophy and literature. Outside of entertainment, Soling wrote programming code and was published in the computer journal On Three magazine. His poetry earned him the title, Pharaoh of Fluff at the 2009 Fluff celebration in Somerville, MA. Soling travels quite a bit. He has visited exotic places including Borneo, Sumatra, spent time with the headhunting Iban tribe in 1991. Soling has placed his cat Dr. Claw on his web site's homepage; he adopted the tuxedo cat in 1989.

References

1. Hypernews
2. Songfacts Interview
3. IMDB Entry

External links

• Official Site
• Cevin Soling's documentary, The War On Kids
• Spectacle Films
• Xemu Records
• Jerry Casale of Devo talks of Cevin Soling

• Living people
• American documentary filmmakers