Okay, alright, yes I'm Jay, Jay Norem.
Last year my wife gave me a bodhran as a gift because she knows that I've always wanted one. I didn't ask her to do that, she did it on her own.
I have no idea how to play it. I can't get anywhere with it. I'm not even lousy at it. I just can't play the thing.
I was indeed banned from this forum for being disruptive. And I was being disruptive and I said some things that were stupid. Really stupid. But I didn't see that at the time.
So I went for months without being able to even see what was going on here,
One day I found that I could actually get into the Drummerworld site, I don't know why, and I could read the discussions taking place so I decided to register under an alias, "Con Struct." I decided to call myself Conrad.
See, I've always liked talking about drumming and all things related. Drums excite me. I know about drums and drumming and this is the best place to come to for discussing drums and drumming and what makes us tick as drummers, thank you Bernard.
I am actually a drummer. I'm fifty-six years old now and I started playing professionally when I was eighteen. I'm basically retired now, but I'll still play if people ask me to.
So there it is. I am Jay Norem. I'm a drummer with a lot of experience and, yes, a big mouth.
I need to say that I respect this site, I think it's an excellent example of what can be expressed on the internet and I hope that I am allowed to stay here.
Jay,
I for one appreciate this initial step, and would like to bury the hatchet after some mandatory air clearing.
FYI, many of us knew who you were the moment you started posting. In my case, I just played along when the trolling con struct persona showed up to agree with posters you normally would spit roast at your real home the allboutjazz forum, where you have close to 7000 posts, and are popularly regarded as one of the most zealous jazz snobs in Internet history. It was the hypocrisy here that made me roll eyes, to say nothing of unprovoked attacks you leveled at me and others at both sights. And yes this was why you were IMO yet another in a long series of trolls who were old enough to know better.
I also remember my dad saying he had a nice conversation with you about his North Korea jazz thing. Ironically it was me who asked the State Department people
through dad to play your music once all that came together/ an event that still will occur, and one where I will be the drummer.
I mostly remember you getting banned here, then slamming DW in big time ways at aaj again and again, while invoking the name of Monk when you couldn't think of something more clever to say/ an old jazz snob tactic. Despite all that I secretly pulled for you as you persevered to put that forum jazz band into a New York jazz club for that gig last summer, and hoped that the Atlanta scene would pick up enough to give you more to do, while at the same time watching you squander incredible time on the Internet attacking people who attended jazz/popular music school programs, people's drum sets, chops that you implied weren't
dirty enough, people with endorsements, and young players who all supposedly sounded the same when you actually couldn't name all that many working young players with any clarity.
I remember last summer your trying to imply I wasn't playing a gig one Saturday night because I wouldn't identify what Atlanta club you figured I was lying about, when several here knew I was one of the Smashing Pumpkins auditionees in LA, and I didn't know how to even explain such a thing to you. And even if I had I done so, what would have been the point?
Frankly I didn't understand all the attention and wondered how many others you were also playing this game with. I took care of my Atlanta gigging problems by leaving Atlanta. I would assume the same opportunity is also available to you. But then that would mean less time doing this stuff, and putting your playing where your mouth is without having 1000 different excuses. That to me was why your attacks against Steamer Stan were so silly. He's out there sticking his neck out while you complain.
But I think what surprised me most about this whole schtik was the number of older DW posters who embraced this Jay/con struct thing, as if bad form received a pass when you get older.
Yep, there are jazz snobs. I was attacked by some here when I was a speed drummer champion. Personally I just used those Internet guysto improve my debating skills and thought it funny how they would preach this silly naive high road when I was up to my neck in very serious jazz. And yes they were really silly people.
Contrarily I have never
ever seen anything that came close to the reinventionist jazz hating minimalist who moves heaven and earth to prove a musicality issue in clumsy awkward terms, based on a career of surrounding themseleves with erratic players, while convincing themselves they were hearing something else, to the point of actually labeling their POV and attacking others who don't say they're hearing what they're actually not hearing either. And don't tell me that never happens. The worst anti WFD people I ever saw weren't jazz guys by a long shot. It was those guys.
So yes in a perfect world it would be great to all join hands in a big tub thumping sing along, but that's just not real life. Forums especially have people from every sector of the music world, all yabbering at each other in configurations that would never exist in real life. I think after all these forum years, I've learned that the object is take what you can use, discard the rest, and let the ones who are just talking post and post and
post while everybody else plays gigs in a real world situation. And by saying that, none of it is an indictment. It only is what it is.
. I'll add you cannot just imitate. Well, you can, and you can make a lot of money doing it. . I teach piano as well as drums, and one of the things I teach the students to do is harmonize a melody. That happens pretty early on too. It's important that they can hear the music, or else you can play I-V7-I, over and over again never realizing by ear what is going on. 
