From GETSIGNED.COM by Melinda Dillon / September 1999

While plenty of 1980's crop of up and coming musicians might have been starting their careers off by learning Police covers on beat up Fender guitars, Arlin Godwin, the man behind Washington DC's DARKANGELES (Arlin's former project) , was experimenting with what would eventually become his signature sound of club beats and rock textures in a 4-track studio owned by the Moral Majority. Seems Arlin's father worked for none other than the Reverend Jerry Falwell (yes, the Jerry Falwell) and managed to get his son a job at Falwell's radio studio. Although Arlin's mother loved music and played the piano quite expertly, his father had no real interest in such frivilous things and the job he lined up for young Arlin was only meant to get his teenage off-spring started in the workforce.

"I got the job through parental worry I guess. My dad told me to either go back to school or go to work. I'd had enough of school so he arranged this job for me and I kind of showed up begrudgingly," Arlin describes his fateful beginnings in the world of recording. "Initially what I did was pack tapes into cans, put mailing labels on them and send them out for some radio show they were doing. Some religious broadcast. But at night when everybody had gone home I would just live in there...recording all night long. If I got tired I'd sleep on the floor, wake up an hour or two later and record another song. This went on for years." Soon the job became more than just a way to make a few bucks. Arlin discovered that he could record on one track and then play it back while recording on another (the basics of multi-tracking). This process was a revolution as far as he was concerned and Arlin was certifiably hooked on making music this way. Over time he began building up a huge catalog of what he'd been writing on guitar and piano and keeping in his head for years. Falwell and Arlin's parents had no idea what he was really up to in that studio at night. After all, this was a boy who had to hide under the covers when he was a kid just to listen to rock and roll stations on his transistor radio. Arlin explains the need for security in those early years of experimentation, "I grew up in a very, very religious environment, to say the least. Rock music was considered a seriously bad thing and maybe it is. But I loved it. I love all music. But it's absolutely certain that if Falwell had known what I was doing in his studio he would have had a meltdown. I would've been out of there as fast as you can say 'Jesus Christ'!"

And speaking of equipment, Arlin eventually went on to buy his own 8-track Tascam recorder (the kind Eurythmics used to do "Sweet Dreams" and Nirvana later used for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ) and in doing so he began a gear addiction that eventually led to building his own fully loaded MIDI-based 256 track digital home studio. He's a true one-man band who composes, performs, records, produces and mixes all of his own music. And the years of experience are more than obvious when one hears his expert blending of techno, rock, dance and pop influences as displayed in abundance on the critically acclaimed 1997 EP "Raygun". But that's not surprising considering DARKANGELES was garnering major attention with its very first release in 1994, the 7" vinyl single "StereoPornoGroove".

In addition to his musical responsibilities with DARKANGELES, Arlin also takes on all the marketing duties, and "StereoPornoGroove" was his first big success. As part of his marketing strategy for that release, he paid to have the records pressed using red , orange and clear vinyl and then sent them out to various college radio stations.

"I just decided that I would press a bunch of discs and send them our to radio to see what would happen. To this day I think the vinyl gets more attention than CDs," explains Arlin. "I'm sure there are a lot of technically superior college stations out there, but I think a lot of the college stations still kind of pride themselves on being contrary to the modernized commercial stations. So, maybe they've got these old turntables and then this piece of orange vinyl comes in amongst 2,000 CDs and it kind of sticks out. It's a little trick that seems to have actually worked. We know that 'SPG' got played on at least 60 college stations because they let us know. We got plenty of requests for additional copies because a lot of them wore out the the first ones we sent out. I remember especially the station at the Univeristy of Minnesota asking us for more copies and they were also playing the B-Side "Ed's Place" which was a song about Ed Eckstine (President of Mercury Records), Vanessa Williams and my pals at Polygram. I think 'SPG' did so well in Minnesota because the record sounded like old-school Prince from the "Dirty Mind" days. And that is Prince-territory up there after all."

"StereoPornoGroove" not only got a lot of college radio spins across the country, it also brought DARKANGELES to the attention of major record labels like Sony and Hollywood. While nothing of substance ever came out of those early label inquiries, Arlin kept plugging away at his music while holding down his 'day job' as a graphics artist working in broadcast television. Proving that he's a magnet for opportunity, Arlin's day job led to editing a video for Parliament Funkadelic. This in turn led to what turned into a year long music video project for disco-diva superstar Donna Summer.

"I got to go to New York a number of times to meet with Donna which was incredible because I'm a life long fan of hers. She's amazing. I will never forget walking into the conference room up on the 19th floor and she was already in there trying to stuff a three-quarter inch video tape of "Love To Love You Baby" into a VHS machine! She looked beautiful - very classy - and she was a lot of fun to hang out with and talk to. Very intelligent and charming."

The Donna Summer project went on for quite a while because, among other things, Ms. Summer decided to remix the track in the middle of editing which meant starting over again with the picture elements. This was before computers made that sort of thing much easier.

In any event, the Donna Summer project allowed Alin a chance to talk with an A&R exec at Mercury/Polygram. Arlin explains, "He already knew about me and had listened to my stuff earlier," explains Arlin. "He was very nice and talked to me for a while but told me that I was too 'versatile", which I took to mean that they didn't know what to do with me or how to market somebody who was into so many different styles. He told me to narrow my focus which I find extremely hard to do because I like all kinds of music."

Even though Mercury had a hard time pinning him down, the Washington Area Music Association (WAMA) in Washington, DC did not. With 4 EP releases to its credit, DARKANGELES has managed to garner 11 WAMMIE Awards nominations in various categories including Best Rock Alternative Male Vocalist along side super-star Dave Matthews in 1996. Even though he lost that one to Dave, Arlin did take home 2 trophies for the 5 song collection "Raygun" in 1997 and received additional nominations for Songwriter and Producer of the Year.

"Producer of the Year was actually the one nearest and dearest to my heart," says Arlin. "I thought it was really cool to be recognized by those people as a producer since I work alone and I'm playing everything myself and turning all the knobs. There's just so many things to go wrong when you're by yourself so if you get it right and they give you a nod for doing it well, then that's the finest compliment I could be paid."

Although it took him a little time to bring home some WAMMIEs ("my friends were starting to refer to me as the Susan Lucci of the WAMMIE Awards") Arlin has managed to land a publishing deal through TAXI---a deal that came about as a result of the very first submission he sent in.

"I had some dance stuff laying around and I put it in the computer and edited it down to shorter versions and then I put it all on a cassette and sent it in. A month later I get a phone call from this company in New York and they send over a contract. My lawyer looked it over and I signed up. That's actually how I got my ASCAP membership which is a catch 22 kind of thing. You can't join unless you've been published and you can't really get a publisher's attention without hooking up with ASCAP or BMI. So, that got me in."