By Florence McNair

Stephen Douglas McNair (alias Steven, STEM, DJ Sted, etc), an icon of Family rock and punk music since 2005, was born in Shizuoka, Japan, on August 30th, 1987, into a family of 10. He set his first record as the heaviest baby of the family, weighing in at 5.2 kilos.

"My family was always into music." Steve says. "Growing up, we were singing and dancing regularly in our Home's show groups, like other kids, except more. Being in a show group where I was drumming or singing and sometimes dancing (I hope you never have to see that) was a normal part of life from when I was a little kid. My parents are musical people too; my sister Chiyoko (alias Sunny James) is one of the best vocalists the family has ever seen."

He first found himself behind a drum set at age 12. The home had acquired a Drum set as part of an incentive for the boys in the teen home to pick up musical instruments. "It was a 'learn-to-play-an-instrument-so-we-can-have-a-band' type of idea at first. I learned from Sam how to play a beat on the drums, because I was 'Do or Die's' [the name of the boy's band] fervent fan. When I was 11, with all the "band" mood floating around, I decided I wanted to become a bassist. Mainly because it seemed the easiest thing to play back then. So Jesse started giving me classes once in a while, and at one point I was "practicing" one hour a day. Then the home decided to invest time in converting a shed on the property into a studio. In the end it was quite sound resistant and nice inside. When I was 12, Do or Die had a show to do, But Sam the drummer had to attend a wedding the same day. They needed me! Since I knew most of their songs anyway, they decided I would fill in for Sam." Steve became the youngest member of the band. Steve, the easily excited and ready boy that he was, ventured into the life of a wannabe musician with a passion, playing in several makeshift bands, with different guitarists, on and off until the present day.

At the age of 15, Rick Blackrock visited Steve's home to play guitar in their band and set him up with the basics of electronic music. He got a hold of a 200 mhz computer and spent his freetime for the next two years working hard at making garbage. During that time he made about 20 (he estimates) trance songs. When the time came for him to compile his songs into his first makeshift album, he gave himself the name of DJ STEM, which narrowly won over DJ STED. (STEven Mcnair as opposed to STEven Douglas) The feedback from the album was less raving than he'd expected, mostly consisting of shepherding regarding some less than "righteous" bonus tracks on the album.(Called 003 projection, it was released in 2003. There are only 7 copies of the CD in existence today. He hopes you never find one.) He was 16 at the time.

Jesse moved back into Steve's home, and they started working together. When Steve had exhausted his supply of midi samples, he began experimenting with audio. Their first project together was Dancing Trees, a song which established Steve's less-than-favorable reputation with the sort of people who didn't take kindly to his decomposition of the song. It wasn't the last time Steve struck controversial gold--Phoenix, his trance remake of Michael Piano's ballad written for Palestine, sparked rumbling criticism. Some said Steve had gone too far with his mutilation of the arts--the teenage boy should stop making fun of heavenly music. A month into the Renewal, when teenagers around the world were desperately trying to find things to do, Steve turned his sights toward "Doublespeak", a rock song by Philip (Brother Son) which had always been a favorite of the McNair family. With permission from the songwriter, he began his reconstruction of the song. At the suggestion of Aaron Cross, who still needed just a few more CVC vocational hours after filming the video for "Dancing Trees", they put together another music video for Aaron's first blue-screen experiment. The result was Steve's second publicised music video--at age 16.

Steve was surprised at the reception his music received. Many homes considered his trance and rock remakes to be unsanctified, and outlawed it along with System music. "It was a big discouragement for me." Steve remembers. "I thought I was making music to help the Family's young people to get trough the renewal because they weren't allowed to listen to System music. I was trying to give them the style of music they wanted, and at that time I was into trance, and so were lots of other people. I realized there was a lot of opposition in the Family toward trance music. Recently that's changed, and that's been changing more and more; I think more people are tolerant of music without words now than they were then. Dancing Trees was another controversy; the whole idea was not so much to mock the song as to make a crazy fast song that has a funny meaning, that is ironic because the meaning is anti to the whole fast thing. That seemed perfect at the time, but I know some adults got offended and stuff. Anyway, I hope they're over it now, and I'm sorry. I didn't have any idea what I was doing musically back then either, so it was mainly an experiment. I didn't have any idea it would get around as fast as it did. It kind of made me realize the hunger for underground music in the Family. We just wanted to make an all-out crazy song."

The first hurtful stigma arose when people began to label Steve a "remake artist". An artist that "pawned off of other artists, more talented than he was." "I thought people enjoyed my remakes--definitely more than they would enjoy some 'new, oringinal songs' by some little wannabe producer in nowhere'sville. I didn't have songs to record and didn't think it was worth my time writing new ones when there were so many good songs that were buried in the past." It was a difficult habit to give up. In April 2005, when work began on the project "Recycled", 12 songs were lined up for production--half of which were remakes. People enjoyed the remakes, but after the initial explosion of the album release died down, people began to express the desire to hear more of Steve's original music. Major, Red, and Say Goodbye (co-written with Rick Blackrock) had been big hits. Could Steve follow them up with something better?

2006 Steve began moving from his home of 14 years, and little happened on the music front. In August, Jesse hopped over to begin recording. For the next 2 1/2 weeks they covered 14 songs--drums, bass, and all guitars. Over the next four months, busy with new home duties, Steve was able to work on the vocals, re-recording parts of the guitars, and mixing the tracks. The result was "Heavenly Music", the title that emerged victor among several other ideas like "Hard Rock and Pebbles", "Slyrph" and "It's Super Good" ("Have you heard the new Steve CD? It's super good!") With only 1 short remake of another DTD tape song, "Enjoy yourself."--Also the message Steve wants to send to everyone who hears the new CD. Steve is always hopping at the chance to make more and different music. Although he leads the life of a disciple (currently a Home member of the HCS), he will always retire to his studio to make more music for anyone who will enjoy it.