Gerry Grosz spent the first 13 years of his life known as "The Alligator Boy" in a traveling circus freak show. One night, after a show outside Butte, MT, he was abducted by the government and taken to the Area 51 Facilities. Grosz cannot recall the next several years. But somewhere around age 19, he found himself in a field in Iowa, and hopped the next bus to Hoboken, NJ. It was there that Grosz, whose lifelong dream it had been to teach the hearing impaired how to jumprope, discovered jazz.

Grosz bought his first piano from the money he made running numbers for the mob, and taught himself how to play through a mail correspondence course. In 1996, he sold everything but his pet zebu and a paperback copy of "The Complete Works of Stephen King," and moved to the Bay Area. Currently hawking blenders on city street corners, Grosz is also a former elevator operator, aspiring underwear model, and supporter of the Pro-Brussels Sprouts Movement.