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Michael startet playing on pots and pans when he was 13. Influenced by Steve Negus and Ian Paice he begann with Rock drumming at the age of 14 on his first own Pearl drumset. Soon Michael was not satified with the “easy style” of this way of drumming and searched for something more interesting. He discovered funky drumming by listening to the music of James Brown. Drummer like Simon Phillips, David Garibaldi or Billy Cobham helped him to understand that drumming is more than keeping the rhythm. When he finally saw Buddy Rich at the Berlin Jazz Festival he knew that his heart beats for Jazz, Swing and Rock’n Roll drumming. With two friends from school he founded his first band "Gentleman of Boogie Woogie". Playing Blues and Boogie Woogie Michael had to reduce his drumming to basicly the snare drum. Rudi Martini teached him: "You can play everything you play on the whole set on only your snare drum." 17 years old Michael started to practice and understand the power of a nicely played snare drum. A new experiece was made with the Big Band project "Rock Live Revival". It gave him the understanding how to keep 9 musicians together. Doing two Open-Air Concerts has been a good practice for this. Playing Thursday night with 4 famous Boogie Woogie pianists (Christian Willisohn, Martin Schmitt, Thommy Weiß, Christian Christl) was hard to do. There was no space in the night club, so Michael had to play with only Snare and HiHat. Two brushes against 8 hands – imagine how much work that was. A very nice experience has been the concert with "8 to the bar" when Michael played with this incredibel three guys from Hamburg, especialy Joja Wendt. It was just a "one night stand" without any tryout. After doing different recordings, Michael took a time off his musical career. Coming back on sceen with a new Big Band project called "The Roaring Roosters", Michael played live with this 9 piece Rock’n Roll Band, even one Open Air Concert. That was when Michael met Simon for the first time. He then finally met Rocky who search for a new band. When the band "Brass Knuckle Boogie" was founded, Rocky asked Michael to play the drums. He simply said "Yes". He became the drummer of "Brass Knuckle Boogie" - pure Hardcore Boogie from Munich. The idea was to start up a Rockabilly, Boogie Piano thing, not the simple crap, only good composed music with a straight forward rockin attitude. If you like music with more than 3 chords and a Snare drum that knocks you out, you will love this style. More on brassknuckle.de At the end of 2008 Michael did leave the band to dedicate more time to his familly. But then "The Rocket Apes" needed a drummer. Stay tuned on .. The Rocket Apes