Jay Ziskrout (born September 8, 1962) was the first drummer for Bad Religion, forming the group with schoolmate Brett Gurewitz in 1979 when he was 17 years old. He performed on Bad Religion's self-titled EP and eight tracks on their debut full-length album How Could Hell Be Any Worse?. He decided to leave the band with only half of the songs recorded due to a misunderstanding regarding the band's new press photos. Bad Religion hired another drummer in Jay Ziskrout's drum roadie, Pete Finestone, who took over drums to complete the album and subsequent releases, until he quit the band permanently in 1991.
Shortly after leaving the band, he moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he worked for many years with Clive Davis as Vice President of Album Promotion for Arista Records. Later he returned to his punk roots by joining Epitaph Records in Amsterdam, where he served as Managing Director of Epitaph Europe/International working to break such artists as The Offspring and Rancid. After Epitaph Records, Jay returned to New York to launch two Latin Alternative music businesses, Grita! Records and LatinoVision.com. From 2001-2005, he served as COO of The CMJ Network where he led a turnaround effort and a return to profitability.
Jay currently works as Founder and CEO of Dympol, a technology start-up focusing on the convergence of entertainment, social, performance, and cause marketing. The company's core product, Charitable Checkout, is a free cause-marketing service that enables music artists and other influential people to partner with their fans and brand sponsors to raise money for their preferred charities. When fans give to celebrity-endorsed causes, they get brand-sponsored discounts and are publicly thanked by their heroes in social media. The service can live in e-commerce checkouts, Facebook or other web pages, in mobile apps, or packaged as Charitable Ad Units distributed across online ad networks.
Jay splits his time between, and maintains company offices in, his adopted home of Vermont and New York City, New York.
Famous quotes containing the word jay:
“Wherever you see a man who gives someone else’s corruption, someone else’s prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)