 Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart Vanderzee and today I'm honored to be joined by Mr. David Frangione. David, welcome to the podcast. Bart, it's great to be here. Hello, everybody. What an honor. I love your podcast and I'm just so excited to be here today with you and everyone listening. Thank you. Really appreciate that. So I think most people know who you are, but you're the CEO of Modern Drummer. A very impressive background as a technologist. You're an innovator in a lot of different fields for a lot of different companies, which I knew a little bit about, but there's a really cool video that I watched about you that I'll include in the description of this so people can see it and go into more depth with cool visuals. But for starters, I want to just give people kind of an update on what's going on with Modern Drummer post COVID. It's been a crazy time. It's 2023. We made it through. So what's new with Modern Drummer that you want to tell people about? Well, thank you for that. You know, you and I are drummers and fans of Modern Drummer as well. So I guess, you know, we're all together here. So Modern Drummer, you know, when I purchased my wife and I purchased Modern Drummer, it was February 15 of 2020, which who knew within a month of that date? Because it's hard to believe in hindsight that we could say this, but on February 15, 2020, the pandemic was as real as, you know, the earth coming to an end in a month. Like it just wasn't anything anyone was really considering as a serious possibility. A month later, of course, that all changed. And here we go. When we took it over, the magazine was is a strong brand, very passionate and important community. The number one drum magazine and kind of media resource for drumming in the world. You know, as we talk more about my life and career, it's all been about passion and perseverance. And I was in a position with Modern Drummer where I thought, you know, if we can take, you know, some steps back and make some changes, we can save this thing and we can kind of give it its new lease on life because it was going on as what it had been. But when the magazine was started, print was the only media format really that was that drummers, you know, had to consume. Of course, this is long before the internet. This is before VHS tapes were purchased as a consumer format. So this is real early days, right? We're in 77 when the magazine starts and Ron Spagnardi, the founder, just such an innovator and such a brilliant man. And I wish I had been able to get to know him firsthand as opposed to just through his work, which we've all been impacted by. So I was very affected by what his vision was and how many innovations he really created. But having passed away in the early 2000s, Modern Drummer had gone through the Y2K decade, just kind of on cruise control. And by the time 2017, 2018 comes along, you know, there just had to be a lot more innovation that had then had occurred. So by 2020, it was really in peril, quite frankly. And I thought that it was important that we quote unquote, sit not only saved it, but reimagined it, right? It's just creating the same thing over and over and over, right? We're kind of back to where we started, which clearly wasn't working as a sustainable business model, nor should it have been because a print magazine is one component of how the modern drummer community can be really effective and how our passions can be shared and realized and grown. So it really needed a much stronger digital component and all of these other tentacles that that are part of any modern company, right? Even even the name Ron came up with Modern Drummer was so innovative and ahead of its time. I mean, at the time, technology almost didn't exist. Certainly not anywhere close to how it does today. So just having the foresight to say we're going to call it Modern Drummer. It's as applicable as hip today as it was in 77. But in order to live up to that, you know, there's a lot of innovation that needed to occur. So, you know, I'm excited to say that we're now a part of consequence media group, you know, consequence of sound, which is consequence.net, right? They have a massive reach in the digital space specifically online. So this is going to really help us reach more drummers and just more musicians and just have greater projects. I mean, it's all about passion and perseverance. I can't say that enough and we can explore what that really means. But that's really the theme behind why we have Modern Drummer and why it's so important that the drumming community, you know, has this to, you know, to celebrate and more because it celebrates drumming. Exactly. You know, it's the one place where drummers are out front in a sea of singing and keyboardists and guitarists and bass players and everything else. And this is our world. This is our click, our community, our place to geek out and to be inspired and to inspire. So 2023 is shaping up to be the year that 2020 was supposed to be if we didn't have a pandemic, right? But that's like saying, you know, you know, if we didn't have the Great Depression or we didn't have this, we didn't have that. I mean, we did, right? So it's really irrelevant other than, you know, part of this interesting story that's occurred, but we've had to navigate it and we have. So now 23 is about, okay, what was I going to do in February of 2020 and beyond? How were we going to do it? And what are the pieces and building blocks to bring this brand back stronger than ever to the drumming community, which is the whole reason we do it, we do it for the drummers and we do it for the advertisers so they can reach and impact drummers and that's it. We're a conduit to those two groups. And that's why modern drummer was founded and that's why it's going to continue to grow. That's a great way to put it. I mean, it's it's by drummers for drummers. Absolutely. The previous episode, either last week or the week before, depending on when I released this was with Earl Bennett and it was all about the history of drum magazines and Earl did a great job and a lot of research and what we talked about in it, though, and hopefully people have listened to that before this, but you can still go back and check it out. But everyone had to pivot. Everybody. It's it's not like a thing where it's just MD. It's it's your local newspapers. It's all sorts of magazines. It's just it's not really the way people, you know, get their media anyway. So I think it makes perfect sense to do that. But of course, I think everyone's wondering then the question of like, what does that working with consequence, which is huge, and you gotta do those things and join up and work together to reach a wider audience. What are some changes people could expect in the future in 2023? Well, it means a lot more comprehensive digital experience. You know, we have our monthly digital magazine, we have our bimonthly printed magazine, because the drummers have spoken and they want the print component, no matter what, you know, even if it's a few times a year, they really want the print. So we're going to give it to them as much as we possibly can. You know, when I took over Modern Drummer, it was we were selling, you know, this we wasn't really we because it was prior to myself as I express. But but in that moment, MD was selling, you know, an issue to a subscriber for like three or four dollars an issue. And that's almost what it was costing to make it, right? But we had advertising and and the whole business model was just really upside down. But that's kind of where it landed at that moment. As we sit today, it's closer to $10 an issue to print. So things have changed dramatically. Now, no one could have seen that coming and no one could have seen all the the other shifts that are occurring with supply chain and all this other craziness. So that said, we are still committed to the print side of things and just trying to figure out the economics of it more than anything. Editorially, it's all there because we're producing 12 issues like we have going on 47 years. The digital issue, we're continuing to innovate and do a lot better with how it's produced and how it interacts and what can be done that can't be done with the print component. Of course, keeping the print component and then expanding all of the offerings, you know, how we do our festivals, you know, education, podcasts, you know, it's just a myriad of, you know, of drumming lanes that modern drummer, as you mentioned as a part of consequence, will now be able to explore, you know, and a much deeper dive to a much wider audience. That makes perfect sense. And I think as you mentioned podcasts, we got to give a shout out to our buddy, John DeChristopher, who is basically one of there's you guys have had many great podcasts over the years, but John DeChristopher live from my drum room is being put out by modern drummer and he is doing a phenomenal job and everyone just likes John. And I think he's just the most genuine guy and has the experience that very few people have in this industry. So perfect person to do it. Well, thank you. You know, John and I have been friends for over 40 years. We're both from Boston. Wow. And I first met John. He was working just for a fast second. He was working at Freddie G's drums, et cetera in Maldon Mass, right? And I walked into that that drum store and I met John. I wasn't there long because his career ascended so quickly and so brilliantly as we all know. But he was there for a quick second. He was super young. I mean, you know, we're both teenagers, basically. And we've been friends ever since and just seeing his incredible career. So it only made sense that we integrated, you know, what he's doing and what modern drummers platform is for podcasts and we'll be expanding and and, you know, growing our podcast offerings as well. But John's podcast is a flagship. Always will be. And it's just he's an amazing guy. He's had an amazing career and we're very honored to, you know, to be able to present his podcast. Yeah. So that's exciting. I mean, I think I didn't know because I think there was a question with with a lot of people of, you know, is print coming back? Where did print go? And it makes sense to do it every other month. If I realize how expensive it is, I think everyone does that. It's just like it's crazy. Things have changed so much. But it came up in that previous episode. Something about holding that magazine is very powerful and everyone just loves that. And it's something special about it. So it's cool you're doing at least something with it. Thank you. Yeah, it's really important to us too. I love holding the magazine. I think there's nothing like collecting modern drummers. I've been a lifelong subscriber. And I get, you know, messages from people literally every day that they have modern drummer collections stacked from the floor to, you know, to chest high, you know, and that's just really saying something about the loyalty and again, the passion of our community and all the drummers out there who are doing this for that's the whole purpose. So it's a very big responsibility that we have to, you know, to grow modern drummer from where it is. And it's just been, you know, to say it would have been a huge challenge under just normal circumstances. It's been an indescribable challenge under the circumstances of the past few years. But, you know, in many ways, it's made us stronger. And for all the pivoting that we've had to do, you know, the end result, even though the process getting there has had some real pain, the end result is going to be a sustainable and really important modern drummer product for our community. Yeah, you don't take it lightly, which you can't because it's like messing with someone's like childhood, their background, their love of this brand. So you got to, I mean, I have, I have moved, I have two or three bins of modern drummers that I've had been getting, I've been getting since I was 10 years old. And the amount of times from like, you know, being a kid and moving houses. And then as an adult, I have moved these bins to like three or four, five different houses and carried them with me everywhere I've moved throughout my life. And and they're not light, a bin of magazines. So it's, it's, but I got to have them. And because, you know, it's, it's, it's ever green content. It's always valuable to look back and, and see everything that's going on. And Eric Letterman from late night with Seth Myers, who does the sitting in with the band, the rotating drummer stuff who was on the cover with Fred Armisen, he was just on. And I said, what's one of your favorite things or something along those lines? And he said being on the cover of modern drummer was the most important thing to him. Well, thank you. That's awesome. I mean, we hear that from all the drummers that the grace to cover because there are so few, you know, think about how few drummers will ever be on the cover of modern drummer relative to how many drummers there are. So it is a great honor. And it's one that we do hold, you know, in high, high importance. And, you know, we're, we're just going to keep, keep growing this and just, just not stop until it's really dialed in. And, you know, we're creating a great magazine, a great media consumption product for our community. And, you know, we're, we're trying to engage more advertisers because when I took over the advertiser world, a lot of them had already kind of moved on because modern drummer didn't have a digital strategy. Thank God for manufacturers like DW and Gretchen and others. You know, I can't name all of them. You know, there's a whole list of them. So I'm certainly not only picking two for any specific reasons just off the top of my head because they're inside cover. But there's been a number of them that's really stuck with us that have been God sense on the advertiser side to keep messaging the drummers and keep the whole modern drummer, you know, family alive. And at one point, every single drumming manufacturer, whether it was an accessory, a symbol, a drumstick, a drum, a drum head, you name it was in modern drummer. That was the place to go. Yeah. And it's really a shame that, you know, so many of them had left Dern, you know, this, this what I'll call, you know, period of transition, technologically, right? If you look at like 2010 to 2019, you know, there that we didn't have Facebook, you know, early on or Instagram or TikTok or, you know, a number of other things where, where people go to consume. And so what as we did modern drummer, you know, was not keeping up with that was not, you know, hip to how how the sea change was occurring. So some advertisers one by one just kind of said, Okay, we're going to take a different tack. And so we're creating, you know, all of the avenues that they need between consequence and modern drummer so that they can come back and they can reach the community because the community is there, you know, we're reaching the drummers. It's just a matter of packaging it and putting it together in a way that's much more comprehensive than it was before Carolina and I took over. Yeah. I mean, so Earl Bennett, who did the magazine episode, we talked about how we like the ads. You look forward to the ads pictures of drums. I mean, it's pictures of symbols. It's new drums and new symbols. Exactly. Stuff that you hadn't heard. And yeah. But advertising is hard. I mean, I have ads on this podcast. And I think that people know when you hear an ad, it is straight up. That's going and that money is then going and paying for like the recording software like Pro Tools. That's expensive. It's very important. So I think it's smart that you guys are doing that and people realize that ads are a part of it. It's just you got to get the people. It's hard to get advertisers on board for anyone. But if anyone can do it, it's M.D. I mean, it's the biggest name in drums. So I think it'll thank you. Yeah, we believe that too. And we believe in it because it's real, you know, like that is this is the place where drummers have always gone and they're still going. And so what the problem was that M.D. didn't do a good enough job for, you know, that period of time, a very, very important transitional time to be comprehensive. They just didn't do it. So the advertisers one by one, we're saying, all right, well, we'll just go direct to consumer. If you guys don't have an offering, we'll go direct to consumers. So now we have an offering and we have bigger offerings than ever. So we're kind of going back and saying, all right, let's re explore this. And a lot of the people that were at these manufacturers for so many years, especially during COVID aren't there anymore. So you know, you're telling the story to, you know, some people that aren't even aware of M.D. in some cases, but 99% of them are, you know, it's a reimagining of modern drummer. And if it weren't so important, and it didn't bring so much value to persist the passion that we all have for drumming and drummers learning, being inspired, really getting under the hood, you know, from every angle, because there's drummers that are drum geeks, like you and me. And there's drummers that just love the drums. And it's not so much about, you know, a 19, you know, 53 Radio King and this and that it's, it's about, you know, what's going to sound best on my gig or what's going to sound best in the studio or what's going to last the longest, you know, because I'm going to be touring in this capacity and like, so every drummer has a different need. And modern drummers, you pointed out, and I agree with you wholeheartedly as a subscriber, it has has kind of fit every need, you know, and over the course of 12 months every year, you get every style of music, you get every genre, you get every view, you know, male drummer, female drummer, rock drummer, jazz drummer, Latin drummer, percussionist, what do I use for accessories? What should I check out for really great content? You know, what are the hot DVDs or or online streaming videos that are really hip? You know, what are people playing for drum kits? What did people play that inspired these drum kits? I wrote that book Crash, the world's greatest drum kit, you know, we take excerpts from that. And, you know, we have this coffee table book where you've got all these amazing drum kits that we've curated over the years that we have in our modern drummer Hall of Fame drum museum. It's all part of the storyline. Any one thing is cool. But collectively, it's modern drummer. Yeah. That's a great way to put it. I mean, it's it's just curated and it's all put into one nice thing. And I think it's ours, Bart. It's ours. We're drummers, right? It's ours. Guitarists have guitar world and guitar player base has bass player like keyboardists have keyboard engineers have mixed magazine like everybody everybody's passion is represented in at least one place. And as drummers, we have modern drummer. And that's that's enough. That's really special for all of us. And when you make that cover, or you win in the reader's poll, you know, it's got it's got an unprecedented 47 year history. There isn't another drumming community that can state that it's been around for over 40 years and has had that many decades of impact and inspiration. And there's some great drumming communities out there. Your podcast certainly being one of them. And I'm not just saying that because I'm on here. I'm sure I'm a fan of the podcast and I love the subjects and the guests that you have because I love drumming. Yeah. So wherever the most high quality places are that I can learn or hear great stories or be inspired or or all of the above, that's where I want to put my time because all of us are on so little available time that you've really got to pick like, where am I going to use my time and how am I going to be the most impacted? And the great thing about modern drummer every month is you read it when you want. And even if you go cover to cover, it doesn't really take that long to get through it. But it's just all inspiration and information all packaged into one. And I think that's important for us to have. If you imagine a world where we didn't have that in drumming, there wouldn't be anything left in that lane to feed our passion. Yeah, you need to see the stuff. And and I want to I want to get to you and talking about your background. The last thing I'll say about it is the importance of you said the cover or winning the reader's poll, those are like the the, you know, the top dog kind of categories. But just to be featured in any capacity with modern drummer in text of some kind or a photo or gear review. If you make make something is a huge deal for everyone where it's just like something for people to work towards. And it just automatically gains that respect of like, oh, I was in this magazine. It's a huge deal. Still, it still remains to be a huge deal. Thank you. I agree. As a kid, I always dreamt to be an in modern drummer. And as a drummer, I never was. And I worked really hard and I played tirelessly in clubs as a very young person, 11, 12 years old into my teens. And I always dreamt of the cover. I studied with Joe Morello, as I know you you're you're aware of, you know, some of the teachers I've had Alan Dawson, Louis Belson, Lester Merle took lessons with Rod Morgenstein. I mean, these are just giants of drumming. All who have been on the cover of modern drummer, of course, at least once. And I studied with these these greats and learned so much and was so driven. And modern drummer kind of was one of the, you know, one of the ingredients to that that potion of drive and ambition and looking at it, saying, man, imagine if I would get covered in modern drummer. But in my case, as a drummer, I was I didn't contribute enough. I never made it far enough. Even though I studied hard and could play a lot of different things, it just it's another level to be able to get featured and to be able to be in a place where that spotlight is, you know, I'll say deserved, even though that might not entirely describe it, but recognized. And I just never was in a band or as a solo drummer, you know, at a point where where I would earn that. So my career ended, of course, taking a whole nother trajectory and my calling, you know, was and is music technology with drumming as my passion. Yeah. Well, that's a perfect transition. I do love, though, that the CEO of modern drummer. I mean, that puts it on the perspective of lifelong drummer. We all want to be in the magazine, but not everyone can be in. And that puts into perspective of the CEO of the company. It's like, yeah, I wanted to be in it and I didn't get in it as a drummer. It it's a big deal. But so going back to what you just said about your your what was your calling and what what, you know, your career path ended up being, let's go back and just hear more about you because you've let's take it back as a kid because from watching the video about you, I mean, starting off as a young kid, having eye cancer, correct? Is is yes. Everyone understands stuff. But now that I have young kids, I realize that more the weight of that. It's heavy. It's devastating, right? But it's devastating. So it is. Yeah. To see a child like that. Yeah. Tell us about that. And then we'll get into your amazing career and all that stuff. Well, you know, my parents were married almost 20 years and for whatever reason could not have kids. And they went to all the doctors and no one could explain why. And this is in the 60s, right? So, you know, and they were they were very, you know, blue collar. It's not like they had a ton of resources to get the finest doctors in the world or whatever. But but they tried and all the answers they got were basically, you know, we have no explanation. Keep trying. They have my brother in 1964. No explanation why again, it just makes no scientific sense, but they have him and he's healthy and he's great. And then they have me in 1967 and that forms our family. It's for the four of us. Wow. In 1969, out of the blue sky, I get diagnosed with retinoblastoma, which is cancer of the eye. And three things can happen from retinoblastoma, one of three things. Either you're totally blind, half blind, or you die. So can you imagine, you know, you and I both have children. So, you know, my parents have, you know, they always said to their last breath that they died in 1969. And my dad lived to 96 and my mom to low four. And we're always extraordinarily close. But I never really got that until I had children. What the impact of that statement really means is that when you see a child suffer and you see that kind of crossroads in all of our family's life now, you know, so what's gonna happen? To say it's a trauma, to say it's life changing, you know, is an understatement. So that's what happened. I went through my childhood, half blind. I got the best, you know, the three choices I got the best one. So I'm very thankful for that. And I never knew what it was like to see out of both eyes. So that was also a blessing. Some people lose eyesight later in life and you have to adjust. So that was another blessing is that I never really had to make any adjustment in that regard. I've only known this. Having a prosthetic was a huge challenge as a kid. And again, another blessing from this card that I was dealt was that I became early on very introverted and isolated in the sense that, you know, kids would make fun of me and it was a tough childhood and I was in and out of doctors and eye doctors and treatments and, you know, all this stuff that was, you know, very heavy. So when I wasn't in that mode, I wanted, you know, room, I wanted like a, you know, a place where I could go that was of peace and inspiration. And, you know, I don't know that as a kid, I just know that I want something bigger and better than eye doctors and other screaming children in treatments. And I found music and I found a few things. I found music, which of course in my case was through drumming, but just music in general. I not only was playing on, you know, tabletops and that kind of thing, but I was listening to a lot of music and getting really immersed and discovering music. You know, that time period Bart, when you're a child from six, seven years old till 15, 16 years old, whatever means, whether it's online now at the time was records and eight tracks and radio. That time period where the first time you hear Led Zeppelin, the first time you hear Buddy Rich, the first time you hear Paul Palmer, the first time you hear Joe Morello do Castilian drums. Like these are things you'll never forget as long as you live. And especially as passionate as we are about this, that you just want more and more and more. So I just immersed myself and was very blessed that my parents were very supportive. We didn't have monetary means, but we had a lot of love and support in our family. And they encouraged me, you know, to find that solace through these, what I'll call healthy outlets, which music, drumming, I loved movies. You know, of course the only way to see a movie at that time was to go to the theater when you're that young and you don't have any money, you're not going to a first run theater. So we would go to the local theater, which was 25 cents to get into the matinee. So I'd go as many Saturdays as my mom and dad would let me. So I fell in love with film and then sound hits you watching the films and that kind of circles back around and you start to connect all these dots. You don't understand it like we can describe it today, but you just know that it makes you feel a certain way that's unique and that's passion. And that's where ambition and drive get put into that stew. And when you, you know, roll it all together, it can turn into some amazing results. So those were my very, very early days of discovering music, discovering film, discovering drums. And then while I'm going to the theater and I'm finding things that a kid can do by himself, I discover collecting, which in this case is movie posters and baseball cards. No one would ever guess that a baseball card in August of 2022 would sell for $12 million for a single piece of cardboard. God, wow. Right, I mean, so when I was collecting, I had that exact card, not the one that sold for $12 million, but the same specimen. And, you know, at the height of my collecting, spending $5,000 for that specimen, everybody thought you were crazy. So we go back and at the time, it's a kid going to flea markets, flipping cards. We go to today by no means that I have that foresight, but it just turns out that one of the things I was passionate about is turned into, you know, a $25 billion industry. So it's incredible how things can evolve. But I wasn't chasing a $25 billion industry. I was chasing what I loved. And I think that the impact of going through those traumas as a kid really served me incredibly well because I was able at that time to connect with things in a very meaningful and urgent way that had I not been going through what I'll call that suffering or those challenges, I might have taken a more laxadaisical approach. And that urgency has been a big reason why, you know, my career has turned out well. I mean, that's so, that's also, it's incredible. I mean, that it turned out the way it did. And I like how you said the drumming, you picked a healthy, productive kind of hobby to have because you could have been, I'm sure it was depressing and I'm sure it was miserable. So to sit there and then to pick drums though and kind of and collecting and music, obviously music, but just all this stuff is very, it's things you can do for the rest of your life. So you clearly picked good, good hobbies. Thanks to my parents. It was my passion. I mean, they definitely let me find my passion, but they then encouraged it and Bart, what they did that you just hit right on the head is that they were able to identify, oh, these are healthy outlets. He's not like destroying things to get his frustration out or he's not like looking for substances, whatever it is that you could go down as a road when you're struggling, they were able to see really early on, you know what? We might not get music. We might just like to listen to Barry Manilow or the theme from the Godfather or whatever we did in Italian homes at the time. But we know that he loves it and there's something that's really fueling him. And so what they did besides the support of that is they encouraged education. So here I am as an eight year old kid dealing with all this stuff. And they said, you know what? You're gonna, we're gonna take you for drum lessons. But before we spend a dime, right? Cause we're certainly, they didn't have any disposable income. We're gonna enroll you in the school drums, which at that time you could actually take drum lessons at school if you signed up and it was free, right? So I did that and they saw that, oh, you know what? He comes home, he practices, like he's actually following the plan here. So then they graduated me to a bi-weekly lesson at a local music store on a Saturday. And they said, we're not gonna buy you a drum set. I poured through the drum catalogs at the time you remember those Ludwig drum catalogs. They were so amazing in the 70s cause every page just had a different drum kit with different amounts of drums and different finishes. I was just like, oh my God, this is heaven. And so I would pour through those, but they would say, look, we're not buying you a drum kit until we know that you really deserve one, that you've earned it, that this makes sense. Because what happens with kids, and of course we didn't know that as kids, but now we do as dads, is like a kid says, yeah, I want that and you get it. And then two weeks later, they're done. Yeah, it's at the bottom of a pile of stuff that's never played. Oh my God. In the try it for the moment stuff. And so they wanted to make sure that that wasn't the case with drumming. So I studied for two years on, I don't know if anybody remembers these, but phone books, right? Before Google, you had this big thick book that they would drop off at your house. I had phone numbers in it. And so I would collect a bunch of them and I would make them my snare, my rack tom, my floor tom. And then my drum lessons would be circles that represented which phone books they were. And Mr. Woolley, my drum teacher at the time at Lexington Music Center, would draw one, two, three, one, three, two, and he would say, okay, you're gonna do singles for this many measures. I learned to read. I learned to even write a little bit and understand just how to play, not only play drums, but read drum music. Get it out of your brain onto the paper, yeah. And it was life changing, right? As we go forward, because once I learned to read, now every drum book out there is a possibility for me to study in. But again, that goes back to my parents saying, look, if you're gonna do this, you're gonna do it right. They did the same thing with my brother and he ended up going to Harvard getting three degrees from Harvard, including a PhD and an MD. And another degree from Harvard and MIT. So he's got like this incredible academic pedigree that he's earned. But my point is the roots of all of that were not my dad and mom going to country clubs and networking, it was the opposite. My dad was a me-cover, my mom was a legal secretary. It was my parents saying, put the work in, focus on what you love and be educated. Don't take shortcuts and don't take the fast way to doing something. I mean, everybody loves instant gratification. I'm no different. But they said, this isn't just gonna be about that. Yeah, do the things that make you happy in the moment and then put the work in and get it right. So by the time I was 12, I could read music. I was going through all the books, syncopation, stick control, Chapin, you name it. By the time I was 15, I was able to get accepted, which was an audition process to Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, which was all reading. And of course, classical and really intense. I met Jim Riley, the drummer now from Rascal Flats, but he and I were Greater Boston Youth Symphony bandmates in that, that's what we met when we were 15. We became lifelong friends. It was just so crazy how the world comes around and how these relationships all persist and circle back the way the universe works. And then I went to New England Conservatory after my study with Alan Dawson and Joe Morello, I was able to get into the conservatory on a jazz drum scholarship. And that's where the transition occurred, just as I was getting into the conservatory with getting out of my dream of a full-time drummer and into my dream of a music technologist and someone who saw the world from a different lens, but yet just as passionate about the music and even the drumming side. But I was able at that point part to say, okay, I've played a thousand gigs as a drummer. I've seen Buddy, I've seen Louis, I've seen Tony, you know, Billy, you could just on and on and not just see them, but sit stage left, help them load their drums in, like just immerse myself at a very young age in the entire drumming world from all sides. And I do not wanna be a full-time drummer was what I determined simultaneous with what I did want. So it was a conscious decision to say, I don't really love the lifestyle of gigging seven nights a week, being on the road. Just personally, it wasn't something that I saw as my life's path. Funny enough, as I became very successful in other businesses, I traveled like crazy, but it was very different than the tour bus grind that, you know, a drumming life can contain. And then simultaneous with that though, I found what I did want. And that's what was so magical is I was able to say, I love music and technology, which I found through drumming. Because I was attacking all sides of drumming, we're in the 80s now, electronic drums were starting to become part of the drummers vocabulary. And at first I was very resistant towards them. I said, I don't wanna know about drum machines. I don't wanna know about anything electronic drum wise. That's just like a bunch of zeros and ones that just look really complex and not musical. It's the enemy. We don't need that. It was the enemy and I didn't understand it. And I really resisted it at first and then thank God early on, I didn't. I started to kind of explore it. And I found that I had such a natural instinct for it that I didn't realize it was because I was passionate about it, right? I just realized that it came initially very natural to me. I wouldn't read manuals and I would show everybody how to use all the equipment. People would be like, wow, you're an expert in this. Man, Jesus, what? I'm still going through the manual and you've just run circles around. And it was, I hadn't even read the manual. It's just clear. It just makes sense. It made so much sense and on such a large scale. And that was the beginning of my music technology career. Now we're in the mid 80s. And at the time people used to say to me, oh man, technology, who cares about technology? I mean, it sounds so blasphemous today, right? Everything's technology, yeah. Exactly, but then, right, it sounds idiotic. If you were to say to somebody today, technology is irrelevant and it's very niche and that's what they were saying to me then. But I wasn't doing it to make money or to be a celebrity or any of that stuff. I did it because that's what I loved. And the power of passion, couple with perseverance is really limitless. Just, it's funny you saying all this because we have some very serious parallels where I've gigged my entire life, but in, I was in, I believe, like fifth grade and there was a garage sale down the street and I was looking through and I found a little four track cassette Yamaha recorder, four input and that literally changed my life. Finding that recorder for $75. And I'm the same way though, where I've played tons of gigs, I love doing it, but I just kind of knew that that wasn't my like, ride in a bus, do that all the time thing. But I went to school at the College Conservatory of Music here in Cincinnati, but for electronic media. So very similar where it's like, my passion is recording. My passion is video and audio and we would do news broadcasting classes and things like that. I understand that completely and I think a lot of people listening might think that as well, where there's lots of different roads you can go down to. Like literally we're both in the drum industry. You are more, you're kind of at the top of it, but it, you can still be involved and not be a famous touring drummer. It's still very much possible. Absolutely and the passion is what fuels it. Look, there's, it really was a day of kind of resolving to the lane that fits us. When I realized I'm not gonna be Dave Weckel, one of my favorite drummers of all time and a great friend and a great guy and an inspiration my whole life really. I'm not gonna be Buddy Rich. I'm not gonna be Joe Morello, et cetera, et cetera. My point is it wasn't just about playing like them. It was about what that really encompasses. That is a very conscious choice of how you're gonna live your life because that's their calling. Buddy was on the road 300 days a year. For his contributions, he's considered the greatest drummer of all time and he made his mark on millions and millions of people before we had anything other than, before even TV. I mean, we'll just go to LP and then maybe AM Radio or I mean, we literally could go through every sea change of media consumption and Buddy was there and I'll call it doing it the hard way. But see, it didn't matter because that was his passion. He was gonna go to every city and play whether we had the internet or not, right? So it's really, it was really about their calling and these drummers who make these impacts, it's their calling. And we have amazing drummers all the time coming onto the scene and it's their calling. And that's where, you know, that's again, where modern drummer and where your podcast comes in is to amplify that and to share it and to really let people know what these contributions are or give them insight into the contributions they're aware of so you can kind of get behind the curtain a little bit. But you said it exactly right, like everybody's got a different calling and what I thought was my calling and what you thought was your calling early on which we had to have that in order to get where we are, right? If I didn't think I was gonna have a shot at being the greatest drummer, I might have gone a whole different direction and been working at a law firm or something, you know, after 15 or 16. But I never gave up on the idea until I finally found my passion and it turns out that all that I learned about drumming, about music, about reading music, notating music, et cetera, et cetera, all through the drumming world, the electronics and everything else included have served me to this day. Right now as we're on this podcast up to 20 minutes ago, had I not learned that? Do you know how often I use, you know, charts, you know, just producing a record or mixing a record, you know, or understanding time signatures when I'm putting together a sequence? I mean, these are things that you can take for granted but all of that was learned back then through these drum books and through studying and having great mentors. I mean, I think that's true in life. Everything you do kind of just good or bad, I guess, it really does like it, everything helps everything in your future, your past stuff you've done. If you put any time in on the drums, it'll help you in your life somewhere else down the road. But- Yes, I agree. So let's talk about as we kind of get closer, I mean, we could talk for hours here but I thought it was in your video, your experience, you were on the Osborns, which is just kind of funny that you were in the studio with Ozzy, but just in general, what was your experience working with all of these amazing artists? Like what would your role be working with, let's say, Steven Tyler, Ozzy, Brian Out, Adams, Paul Stanley, as I'm looking at your website here, what would you be doing in those roles? Well, I was the music technologist for a long time, for a good, I don't say 20 years, the role of a person who would be the one-stop-shop person for an artist's technology needs was something that was very important in that time period. Today, that would be a very different role with a very different need, right? And hence, my careers evolved past that, quite frankly, and into other things. But at that time, for that 20-year period and working with a lot of the artists you just mentioned and fortunately a lot of others, my contribution was the guy that came in, put the studio together, start to finish, ran the studio, helped the artist realize how this technology was going to be a tool for them without there having to necessarily learn how to use it and making sure that when I was completed with whatever projects I was doing, in the case of Arrowsmith, I was in-house with those guys, they were in Boston, I lived in Boston, we had great chemistry, great collaboration, I ended up doing seven records with them and a lot of projects and a lot of really amazing experiences and memories. In the case of Ozzie, I worked with them for about 10 years. Other artists, I would do one record or one studio and then the project would be complete, maybe we would upgrade it, maybe they would decide they don't want a studio anymore, that they like going to the commercial studios or they don't want such a complex studio or there's a number of things, every situation was different, but what was kind of uncommon in that 20 year span to answer your question was that all the artists kind of needed the same thing, they needed somebody they could trust who would come in and take and wear all the hats in one efficient way so that they did not get overwhelmed by technology, got all that they needed from it and worked with somebody who understood how they worked and was able to get them to get results quite frankly because as an engineer, as a producer, as a technologist, I was able to kind of wear all the hats in one with technology really being the centerpiece of all of those roles so that they could just create and then the idea, you gotta remember Bart, coming from the 70s into the 80s and then now from mid 80s to like even 90s and then beyond as those transitions are occurring, the idea that an artist can say, I'm gonna sing this part and now I'm gonna have a harmony on it three seconds later that I didn't even sing yet so I can hear, oh, that's what the harmony's gonna sound like, oh, you know what, that's gonna sound good, I'm gonna sing it or leave it like it is, I'm gonna sing over it. Okay, now what would that sound like if we doubled that at the outro? These things we take for granted today, these things take five seconds to do, you can do them in free software for goodness sakes, right, everything like this, but for that 20-year period, that and many, many, many other things, literally thousands of different possibilities were cutting edge and they needed somebody who understood it from every side, not just the technology, not just the application, not just the music, not just the audio quality, not just the production or arrangement, not just the configuration and integration and wiring, not just the word clock and the digital signal flow and routing, not just the software, not just the hardware, not just the computer centric side, but all of those together and that's the role that I had. I think it speaks to being able to do all those things and just putting in your time and learning them, but also you clearly had an inherent kind of draw towards it where like you said before, it sort of clicked for you early, but you also and you did the work, but you can do all this stuff for fun, but clearly you took it and made the jump to make a business out of it because I think that's another side of your brain where actually making money off of your hop, your passion and your hobbies, you know, let's say you tinker with stuff at home, okay, great, how do you make money out of that to be able to support yourself? Clearly you did it and it worked out very well and you've worked with some amazing clients and doing cool stuff with just building studios. It's very impressive and it brings us up to, I guess, all that stuff and then bringing modern drummer into it. Well, modern drummer wouldn't have been possible for me to save had I not had the career prior, right? Cause it wasn't a sustainable business. It wouldn't be something a business person would buy and say, okay, I own a McDonald's, I own a landscaping company, I own a computer tech company and I own modern drummer. Like that's not where this fits in. This is, I wanna save a really important community that I think needs to last another 100 years as long as drumming does and how can I do that and can I do that? Do I even have, besides having the experience in music and drumming and these other things, do I have the resources to do it? Do I have the vision for how this is gonna work, right? Cause again, just owning it and doing the same old thing was gonna get the same old result, which we already knew where that was gonna go, which wasn't gonna work. So, you know, this was a whole nother thing and I really dug deep in my heart and soul of like, the passion wasn't questioned but do I really, you know, I had to believe in myself. Do I really have the way forward for this? Is this gonna be the solution? And I came up with the answer that yeah, it is and it is. It's gonna take time. I wish I could snap my fingers. I wish everything could just, you know, appear and work out and everything penciled and everything was created and there it was. But, you know, my whole career has taken a lifetime of progressive hard work, tremendous risk and sacrifice starting from zero. I had no connections. I had no, you know, resources of any kind. I just had myself, my belief. I had no evidence. If anything, the only evidence I had was people making fun of me because I didn't look like anybody else and I was in and out of doctors and hospitals all the time which was weird to kids. So I had even, I had even evidenced the other way. And so it was really about digging deep and believing that if you really are passionate and if you really serve, if you really look at what's good for the greater good. Not what's good for me. That'll work out fine as long as I serve the greater good. And it's always, my mom was like that. My mom was always giving, giving, giving and everything she got back was because she gave. And it wasn't, she didn't do it because she figured that out. She did it because that was her natural belief. And that's my natural belief is that modern drummers for the greater good and when we get it right which I think we're doing now, you know people will respond and it will be something that can survive. And last, I've learned that through my other businesses as well that we're not anything like modern drummer. But I had been in publishing and writing, as I said, I wrote for EQ and I wrote for other magazines. And so I was always involved in how to contribute to the narrative, how to contribute to the industries that I've been a part of. Because as you can tell, besides the client lists and all that other stuff I've just been really driven to make an impact. I've never been satisfied just kind of going along for the ride. I've always wanted to lead and always wanted to be out front by contributing as much as I possibly could. And sometimes that hits and you make great contributions and other times you take risks and it doesn't and you have to kind of lick your wounds and start over but either way, it's an undying faith and it all comes down to passion and persistence and perseverance. Yeah, just right off the bat. It is contributing and being a part of the community. You gotta have both sides where people enjoy receiving the information but it's pretty fun to be a part of the conversation as we're doing right now when people are listening in the community, it's cool to contribute. And I think that leads us up to why don't you tell people, I mean obviously moderndrummer.com, all that good stuff but why don't you maybe tell them where they can find you and plug some MD, signing up and all that good stuff as we wrap up here. Well, thank you, moderndrummer.com. Of course, at moderndrummer for all our socials, you can subscribe there. You can check out our swag shop, our educational books and those offerings, davidfrangione.com for the different career offerings that I have, my consulting, my home theater, pro studio and other related businesses, music, technology, et cetera. Frangione Media for integration, AllexusIDA for artist development, My Crash and Icon books at amazon.com, Icon, Clint Eastwood Icon is and the expanded and revised edition and Crash the world's greatest drum kits are all available on Amazon and as Kindle. Although as a coffee table book, they're really cool. And of course my drum libraries, I have the distinction of having one of the biggest selling drum libraries of all time. At the time, it was 1991 with East West and Drum Dance Industrial. Now we have a library of great drum loops of Brian Frazier Moore and Jim Riley and Todd Soekerman and they're now produced by modern drummer with Yurt Rock, our great friend Ryan Gruss. So go to Yurt Rock and Y-U-R-T Rock and check out the libraries if you're producing or programming anything, these drum libraries I think are really, really effective and can really go a long way. And of course consequence.net, our new parent company, they're a leader in music, film and television, fan consumption, the website's fantastic as are their socials. And so I look forward to seeing everybody through my travels and online and I appreciate your time everyone and I especially appreciate your friendship part in the years that we've known each other and keep up the great work. This is an awesome podcast. Well, thank you very much. And before we finally wrap up, first off, I'll put all the links in the description here. So David, that's so much cool stuff. I'm gonna have you send me everything and then everything to be included, just all your links to make sure I don't miss anything. But before we end, I wanna give a shout out to two people. First off, Dom Familaro for connecting us again. Oh my God, one of my closest friends. God bless Dom. Dom is the man. He sent an email, I was checking in on him and saying, I hope you're doing well. Cause I re-released one of his episodes that was great. And he said, you should have David back on the show. And I said, absolutely. And then, and then here we are. But Dom is great. And then this, this is just something completely kind of random. But I just wanna give him a mention. A friend of the show, Josh Konusky. Josh, I hope I'm saying your name right. Right before we started, I was getting some stuff ready. I was pre-making dinner cause I knew my wife would be doing this with two kids. So I got a chicken ready for her. But he sent me his brand new album is out called The Quiet Writers. And I want to just mention that it's awesome. And I really enjoyed listening to it today. And it's just funny timing right before we started. So I just wanted to give him a shout out and say, you guys should check out that album. I'll put a link in the description because I think everyone will like it. Great drumming, Josh. And thanks for sending it to me. Go Josh. Great. David, this is just awesome, my friend. I appreciate you being on here. Keep up the good work. I think you've got follow, you know, follow your path, you're doing the right thing. And I have had a blast talking to you today. So thank you for being here. Thank you. The pleasure is all mine. Thank you everyone for the amazing support of Modern Drummer and all aspects of my career. I'm very, very grateful without you. You know, we don't have this amazing community. So it's all about you. And we're very grateful for it on behalf of the whole team. And Bart, thank you again.