Naturally, when David Brinn – who officially retired last month after 35 years (with a five-year sabbatical) at The Jerusalem Post – was approached for a photograph of him drumming, to be used with a review of a book about drummers who shaped rock music, his reaction was that he did not belong in such a category. Yet, aside from his notable career at the Post, he is a drummer, guitarist, and singer-songwriter, creator of the melody and lyrics for the haunting wartime rock ballad “Rimon’s Song,” performed by Libbytown and inspired by the story of former hostage Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav’s captivity and homecoming – one of the songs on Brinn’s second album.
Brinn told Deputy Managing Editor and Op-ed Editor Aaron Reich in an interview last year, “Music is a creative outlet, besides writing and besides being focused on the news, and so it enables me to explore that other area where I have somewhat of an amateur, semiprofessional aptitude.” Even so, in his farewell column, Brinn writes that he is intent on becoming a successful rock star before he turns 70.
The affirmation is partly playful, but he already has a trajectory as a rock musician in Israel. In addition to live performances with various bands, such as the one-time Post house band The Grateful Deadlines and more recently, the journalist-heavy The Nightcallers, Brinn has released two albums.
The second album
While he is proud of his 2021 debut album, King for a Day, it was written when he was still trying to find his direction and consists “mostly of pop-rock songs with no particular theme,” he told Reich. Brinn's second album, A Little Something, released last year, was shaped by passion ignited by the Oct. 7 massacre, the Israel-Hamas War, and the situation of the hostages.
Brinn began drumming in 1968 with his first rock band, The Frog, when he was in fifth grade, playing at school assemblies. He only returned to drums in 2019, when former Post staffers Larry Derfner and Bradley Burston recruited him for their band, The Nightcallers. “I’m not very good technically,” he says, “but I make up for it with feeling.”
“My musical inspirations go back to when I was a child,” he told Reich, citing The Beatles’ historic 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show as a landmark in his life.
Now, stepping down from his senior role at the Post will allow him more time for music. But, as he writes in “Stepping back from the news after 30 years at ‘The Jerusalem Post’”: “This isn’t goodbye – it’s saying l’hitraot” (jpost.com, January 22).
Luckily for all of the Jerusalem Post team, Brinn stays on as a part-time staffer, coming into the offices for occasional night news shifts, and anchoring The Jerusalem Post Sessions at jpost.com, “in which I talk to some great Israeli musicians” like Rami Kleinstein, David Broza, and Lazer Lloyd. No doubt, he’ll be tapping his toes as they perform.