July 14, 2017 – David Z (Zablidowski) was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1979.
He formed his first band, Legend, as a freshman at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School and attended Brooklyn College.
“I was in music class at FDR and spotted a few kids with long hair and we formed a band,” David Z said, adding that his older brother Pauli joined the band six months later.
They played at city nightclubs and bars, but the band fell apart shortly after high school. Then, the Z brothers approached drummer Joey Cassata to join their band. Z02 was born. David by that time had already joined the early incarnations of TSO (Trans Siberian Orchestra) as they started performing their Christmas shows. This exposure opened many doors for him. In 2004, the guys, who where in their early and middle 20s, scraped together money to release their first album, and soon were touring with the likes of Kiss, Stone Temple Pilots, Poison and Alice Cooper on the VH1 Rock the Nation tour.
“In the beginning, rather than waiting tables, we would play for kids,” said Paulie Z. “It’s just that instead of playing AC/DC, we were playing ABCD. But we kept that a secret from our adult fans since there is not a lot of street cred in being a kid’s band.”
For that purpose they formed the Rock Asylum Foundation, an organization that provides free rock concerts to New York public schools in an effort to inspire children to succeed in their education and they had their own semi-scripted TV program for two seasons.
In late 2013 David Z was charged with reckless endangerment as a small helicopter drone he was operating crashed near Grand Central Station in New York.
Adrenaline Mob was formed in 2011 with a lineup of seasoned metal band veterans, including members of Symphony X and Dream Theater. David Z and his childhood friend Joey Cassata (replacing AJ Pero who had died earlier from cardiac arrest) joined in 2016 and toured with Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and the Jeff Scott Soto band SOTO and in recent years also played bass for the Eighties Strike Back Show by Rubix Kube. He had toured Europe with SOTO recently.
While en route from a gig in Biloxi Mississippi to St.Petersburg Florida, a tractor-trailer veered off Interstate 75 into two vehicles carrying members of Adrenaline Mob as they stopped to fix a flat tire. David Z died on impact. He was 38. Several other members of the tour were seriously injured in the accident.
