Hello, MD readers! Everyone’s always asking me what I’m doing with all my spare time these days. Well as it turns out, I don’t have as much spare time as I thought I would.

I still wake up early, but on a typical day by the time I’m done with my third espresso and my morning run, I have barely enough time to eat breakfast and take a shower before The Rockford Files comes on at 11 am. And a few times, I’ve missed the beginning of The Rockford Files, which is one of my favorite things about that show. You know—the funny message left on Jim’s answering machine, usually about him owing someone money. Then it goes into that really cool, really ’70s-sounding Mike Post theme song. If you know the show, I guarantee you’re humming the theme song right now. After Rockford, it’s almost lunchtime. Then after lunch, it’s almost time for Bonanza (with another great theme song!), so you can see what I mean about not having much spare time.

Ok, all kidding aside, after leaving Zildjian (where I worked for twenty-four years—nearly half of my life), plus the four years previous to that when I worked for Simmons Drums in 1985 and Drum Workshop between 1986 and 1989, and having made lifelong friendships and invaluable contacts, I knew I couldn’t completely walk away from the music industry, especially drummers. I like drummers. Drummers are my friends. I’m a drummer! But I knew I didn’t want to jump back into the music industry and essentially do the same job with a different company. The business is going through a strange period. I feel very fortunate and very blessed to have had longevity in this business and was honored that companies expressed interest in working with me. But as I said, I wasn’t (and am still not) ready to jump back in full-time. Another idea that was floated by a good friend, who’s also a well-known drummer, was the possibility of managing artists/drummers. How ironic would that be—me being on the flip side of that phone call. Although I won’t rule that out completely, it’s not something I want to do now.

Then I had dinner with two friends I have great respect for—Brad Baker (former VP of marketing at Zildjian) and Gary Greenberg (VP at A&G advertising agency)—and they both encouraged me to start a blog. Actually they said, “Start blogging!” Which leads me to here. So I’m giving it a try to see how it goes. I’ll talk about drummers (I know a lot of them) the music biz, sports (but only when my teams are winning), running, food, wine, travel, music, drummer trivia, and anything else that comes to mind. I’m still in contact with many of my artist friends, so I’ll post pics and stuff like that too. I’ll try to keep it interesting. I hope you enjoy them and thanks for reading! Advertisement

 

For more on what JD is up to, visit johndechristopher.wordpress.com.