Rock-N-Roll Drummer

Rock-N-Roll Drummer
I guess throughout our lives we do wear different “hats”. I have worn a few myself. There was a time when I couldn’t see myself in any “hat” except that of a rock-n-roll drummer. That is really all I ever wanted to be. I started playing drums at age five and by thirteen was on my 3rd drumset. It is the drumset I still play to this day. I love it and couldn’t imagine trading it for any other drumset, though there are many I would like try out or have too. Still it is those old Slingerland’s that are in my drumroom right now that keep me playing as much as I do. There is an interesting story behind my drumset as they are made of teak wood. Slingeralnd Drum Co bought the surplus teak from a bankrupt yacht builder and acquired enough teak for six drumsets, only one being a double-bass set with six toms and that one became mine. It is a rare instrument and has the most warm and full sound I have ever heard. They just thrill me even now almost 30 years after I first played and heard them. Many musicians can understand what I am saying easily enough because most of them have their own favorite instrument that you couldn’t pry from their hands either. But as I said, my only real ambition or dream in life has been to be a rock-n-roll drummer. Notice please that I am specifying which kind of drummer. I love jazz and swing and even blues but especially rock-n-roll. And don’t think for a second you can make me play or even listen to country music. I just hate it! Always have and not for no good reason.

You see, it was country music which I left school at 15 to go on the road playing as my first “professional” drumming job. To be a “pro” you have to get payed you know? I grew up playing music for people and “on-stage” but never was payed for it until I was 15. Halfway through my sophomore year I quit school and went on the road with my cousin playing country music. I had never even heard country that much as it has always irritated my allergies. So I admit I never really gave it a chance but some things you like and some things you don't you know? I’m sure you are that way too about something. We had alot of fun though and had the chance to stand out as some of the premier young players on the country circuit at that time, 1982-83. I remember one festival we were playing in which my old Slingerland drumset had been left behind because it was said I could play on another set but when the time came the old country drummer whose drumset I was supposed to play backed out and wouldn’t let me. I guess I played too hard for him or something. So a last minute dash began and my set arrived just in time. I played and as always the crowd responded very well. Better than they did for the old country players and that may have been part of the problem for that drummer too, I cant say. But I can say that at a time when country sucked the most, I was trying to drive it out of it’s misery and mine by playing as much like a rock-n-roll drummer as I possibly could. And people did respond and notice. I am not the only reason country music is better today but I am one. That is kind of cool to know. So when you hear a big bassdrum or a smoking beat in a country song, think of me.

But at a certain point about a year and a half in I was homesick and sick of bars and drunks, etc. I was beginning to think that everyone in the world were the types I seen in the bars every night and was getting down on humanity. Not to say that everyone who goes to a bar is a bad person but bars do attract more of humanities garbage than most other places. So by 17, I was back in high-school where I was supposed to be. After graduation it seemed natural for me to go back into music and the opportunity was there but I had done that and knew already that being stuck behind a drumset made me feel very removed and separate from people and I wanted to be among them instead. I think that it is natural for alot of people who grow up on-stage to feel distant or removed from the world and that was my feeling too. So I decided to go to work for the richest man in the world and at the most public place in town, Wal-Mart. It was great in the beginning. Sam Walton was a very interesting and inspiring man who seemed to possess none of the miserly traits usually exhibited by rich folks. He was very down to Earth and approachable. Almost like your grandpa, in fact that is exactly who he reminded me of, my grandpa. And Wal-Mart was the most community minded business in town then and made me proud to be a part of. It was fun work, hard work at times but fun almost all the time. The ideas that I fight for today I first heard expressed by my grandpa and then by Sam Walton and Wal-Mart. I felt at home.

Little did I know that Sam was more shrewd than I knew and also more greedy. This really all became apparent after he had died so there still lingers the hope within me that in the last few years of his life, his company was betraying his convictions behind his back. But truthfully I do not believe that. I think he knew very well. Wal-Mart had a “Buy American” program that was being undermined by Sam’s own overseas buying office, a first in American retail, by flooding the stores with inferior, cheap and largely slave made merchandise that was directly in competition against US manufacturers who were located in every town Wal-Mart did business. That is why Wal-Mart is the largest company in the world, they were the first to open US retail markets to slave labor produced cheap junk. If I were lying I’d be sued off the face of the planet by these lawyers folks but I’m not even in court and I live in Arkansas! The stores didn’t like this kind of merchandise because no one wanted to sell that junk to their neighbors but the managers liked the profit margins and pushed it out the door as the company directed. I became involved with that reality early on and tried to get an American-made department added to the new Supercenter design late in 1987 but was nearly assaulted by Wal-Mart attorney and Board member Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have recounted this story already so I wont bore you with it again though it was anything but boring.

Fast forward 20 years and now I have been publicly writing an impossible book to get published for two years now by myself, without much help and against the will of the press, publicly proclaiming truth to power and to you. Believing it is better to try and fail than to fail to try. I never wrote anything until 2 years ago. Hell, I even spent the last six months running the Peace Party of America against the two War parties here. There’s a “hat” I never thought I’d wear but it was fun. My exwife says I sound very “preachy” and please don't tell her this but she may be right. There was just no good way to write that. But if that is the case and I do just seem like an ass to you then I apologize and will try harder to say what I must, in the nicest way I know how. I intend to play that old drumset for you again someday soon but first I have a giant to kill, or two. Do hope you will help. So I can put back on my favorite hat of all, that of a rock-n-roll drummer.
Politics can rock too, if you can hear the groove. Peace and love, David Michael

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