Fan Boy.

Ya gotta start somewhere and I did back in 1967. I lived in a little Michigan town located in the vicinity of Boofland and Bumfuck. Population: Me and no drum instructors to speak of. Oops.

In a time before cable TV, the Internet, drum magazines and instructional videos, a ten-year old larval drummer living in a place where pick-up trucks and tractors go to die is apt to be starved for information and I was. To feed my drum gluttony I sent away for the latest drum catalogs so I could at least daydream and sort how the damn things were supposed to be set up but catalogs were useless when it came to figuring out important things like how to hold the sticks, when to hit the big drum and what in the hell I was supposed to do with that damn cymbal foot pedal on the left.

No, for the real dirt I had to rely on the four or five available television stations and monitor them diligently for any real live drummers in action. Options were scarce. If I was lucky I might catch some pop band miming their single on a variety show like Sonny and Cher or Johnny Cash's show. Usually the drummer was awkwardly air drumming five or six inches over the drums and cymbals trying to pantomime to a drum part someone else recorded, probably Hal Blaine or Earl Palmer, not that I noticed. On Saturday mornings I could always count on yet another fake performance on good old American Bandstand. In fact, I swear I saw a band like the Grassroots start miming a song on AB and then, in the middle of the song, start breaking down their gear as a joke. I think I was probably stunned that they weren't actually playing live and, in retrospect, I suppose it was my first glimpse into the black hole that is the music bidness. (The memory is crystal clear even though I've never been able to confirm that it actually happened. And if it is not true, it certainly should be.)

Slowly but surely I put together enough information to start pounding away on my Dixie drums set. The finer points of my technique would eventually be addressed when I joined the school band but for now, I was ready to rock. But to what? Even as a young drum geek I quickly grew impatient playing the drums solo, a trait I still harbor, but I sure as hell didn't know any other musicians.

But I had me a Montgomery Ward stereophonic record player with detachable speakers and, better yet, I had a patient mother willing to join the Columbia Record club! Yes!!! Twelve records for a dollar and the promise to buy a gazillion more at full retail and shipping and woe if you forget to send in the card every month because the “pick of the month” that shipped automatically was usually some piece of dreck.

I loaded up on my first dozen records and over the next couple of years I built a collection of fine mid-sixties pop and roll with a heavy emphasis on CBS/Columbia artists. And among those records were two very special LPs that are the crux of this story.

One summer there was a top 40 single all over the CKLW airwaves and this song had the most awesome, fucking killer syncopated drum break. It was called “Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon” by Paul Revere and the Raiders featuring Mark Lindsay. And they were Columbia recording artists! The album with the single, “Hard and Heavy with Marshmallow” (hey, it was the 1960's) and the following LP, “Alias Pink Puzz” (see previous parenthetical bit) were pivotal to my drumming development.

Now the titles may be dated and desperately hip but the music was good and, even more importantly, the drumming was a revelation to my ears. I didn't quite realize why they were so cool back then but the slightly swingy, R&B style drumming and the fat, punchy drum sounds weren't anything like the staid drumming I was usually hearing on the radio.

The drummer was an Afro topped, tall drink of water named Joe Corerro, Jr. and I blatantly ripped off a whole lot of stuff from Mr. Corerro, stuff I still use on a regular basis to this day. Excluding Ringo, Joe was the first drumming influence I could put a name and face to.

Fast forward to 2007-ish.

I'm attending the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California and I'm killing time on a Saturday night at the Anaheim Hilton. During NAMM the lobby of the Hilton turns into a mass of bodies, music, booze and people desperate to see and be seen. Having had my fill I searched out a relatively quite hallway and plopped down on a couch to rest my feet and my mind.

A few minutes later two gentleman asked if they could share the seat and as they sat I noticed a name on the tall one's name badge; Joe Corerro.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to spend time with a handful of well-known musicians and even a few bona fide rock stars and, as interesting as that can be, I was never star struck. But upon realizing that I was sharing a couch with the one and only Joe Corerro, Jr., I turned into a blithering fan boy. This was the guy that literally defined much of what I do with and behind a drum set. Thankfully I regained my composure and proceeded to have a nice conversation with a very pleasant, if slightly bewildered, ex-Raider drummer.

It's always been my theory that life is a series of cycles.

I still play along to Paul Revere and the Raiders.