Aug. 1, 1970: Burned

 

Another prominent presence in Buffalo’s music milieu – Jerry Meyers, promotion man extraordinaire – turns up in this little story  and we’ll encounter him again in two or three months. In the early 1980s, at a music biz party at his house in Williamsville, I met Dolly Parton. I have a photo with her somewhere. I look 35 years older now. Dolly doesn’t. 

Aug. 1, 1970 

‘Burned’ Like to Do

The Unexpected 

        Radio stations in Rochester and Syracuse ignored it, but Burned’s “All Those Who Enter Here” made it to No. 12 or so in Buffalo last March and sold about 7,000 copies – enough to be rated a local hit.

        The thing about the song is that you never could be sure what it was talking about.

        The words would roll out of the radio like waves onto the beach. It felt like they had some sort of timeless significance, but just try to explain them: 

        “Unapproachable lime-green forms

        Of phantasy emotion clouds

        Self-destruction in milk-white voices

        Promise to subdue the whims of crowds.

        You will never understand

        The reasoning behind

The loss of friendship in times of need

Is not so hard to find …” 

Now if anyone would know what that means, it would be Pete Palmisano, Burned’s bass player. After all, he wrote it. Sang it too.

* * *

THE CHANCE to find out came last week as Pete and the rest of the group – rhythm guitarist Don Eckel, lead guitarist John Robilotto and drummer Jordan Stanley – sat around Don’s living room in Cheektowaga.

“Well, people keep asking me if it’s about drugs,” Pete says. “Like this girl came up to me one night and asked me if I smoked. I told her no and she said she didn’t mean cigarettes and I told her I’m not into drugs. That turned her off completely.

“I don’t want to be known as a crusader against drugs,” he adds, “but that’s not what the song’s about. I don’t know what it means. It’s just me.”

* * *

THE SONG struck a responsive chord last summer when Burned played it for Buffalo producer Jerry Meyers.

“He said: ‘I might want to take you guys to Cleveland for recording. How about next week?’” Pete recalls. “Except school was starting. So he said: ‘OK, we’ll go the next week.’”

And they did. It took four hours to do both sides.

“I was surprised,” Pete says. “I was surprised we went in the first place.”

“Pete still thinks the bass guitar is a passing fad,” Jordan puts in.

* * *

BETWEEN THE recording in September and the release in February there were a couple of hang-ups. Contracts. All the group had to get parents’ signatures. Master tapes had to be reprocessed. Things like that.

“Before it came out, you’d play the song and nothing would happen,” Don says.

“We play it now and we always get a hand for it,” Pete adds. “People will come up and say: ‘I was wondering who did that.’”

“Because of the overdub part, the horns and strings, everybody accuses us of not being in the record,” Don says, “but we’re all in there. In fact, John wrote the violin part. He played a lead on the guitar and that’s what they based it on.”

* * *

IT CAME OUT on Intrepid, a division of Mercury Records, and there was another problem. Not enough copies. Don says kids bothered record stores for it for two weeks.

“It hung around 98 on a record store chart,” he notes, “then they got a lot of copies and in a week it shot up to 8.”

Having a record out also meant a deluge of bookings, both through Don and through Mrs. Connie Stypowany’s Great Sounds in Music.

Tonight they’ll be at East Aurora Community Center. Every Tuesday they’re at Maryvale High School and every Wednesday at Club Lakewood in Youngstown. Next weekend they’re at Cuba Lake. And Aug. 13-16 they’ll be at Lang’s in Buffalo.

* * *

THEY’RE looking for another record after Jerry Meyers opens his eight-track studio in Buffalo next month. All four of them have songs to offer.

“Right now we do a couple of John’s songs and a couple of Pete’s,” Don says. “We’d do more, but you get to a point where you have to do what the club owners want.”

“John’s are easy to understand,” Pete says. “John’s first song – ‘Her Wild Eyes’ – is about a guy who punches his girl and pushes her off a bridge.”

* * *

THEY SAY they try to reach their audiences by doing the unexpected. Nothing’s planned in advance. A long improvisation may start sounding like a song someone requested. John may drag out his violin for “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” or go into a political rap.

“Sometimes we’ll do a polka and throw in ‘Hall of the Mountain King,’” Jordan says. “Anything to get the people loosened up.”

“In ‘Feelin’ All Right,’” Don says, “Pete’ll play the piano with one hand and a maraca with the other.”

“It’s more interesting,” Jordan says.

“Exciting,” says John.

“Funny when he drops it,” Don observes.

* * *

“WE HAVE a real variety,” Pete adds. “Something for everybody. Jordan will retune his drums between songs. I’ll change my bass settings. John’ll play piano, harmonica, 12-string guitar.

“A lot of groups will pick a big group and imitate their style,” he says. “It’s a sad state. That was Vee-hic-cal by the Ides of March. Come a-gain to-morrow night. This is Burned. We are a re-cord-ing. Good night.”

“We just have a good time, you know,” Pete points out. “And if people know you’re having a good time, they’ll have a good time.”

“We just want to get where we’re going and not think about where we’re going,” Jordan says.

“To be appreciated for what we do,” Pete adds.

“And,” Jordan says, “to make people happy too.” 

The box/sidebar 

Hard to Find a Name 

Pertinent and impertinent information about Burned:

Don Eckel, 19, rhythm guitar, Taurus, Maryvale High School, student at Villa Maria College.

Pete Palmisano, 20, bass guitar, Capricorn, Bishop Neumann High School, student at Canisius College.

John Robilotto, 18, lead guitar, Libra, Williamsville South High School, student at UB.

Jordan Stanley, 20, drums, Scorpio, Maryvale High School, student at Canisius College.

* * *

PETE, JOHN and Jordan had been together 3½ years under various names – The Frantic Four, The Mortals, The Brothers’ Keepers, The Trends – before Don joined them a winter ago.

Jordan was the one who actually picked him up. Hitchhiking. And they got to talking about the band and Jordan asked Don to come around.

“They were more concerned about my musical equipment,” Don says, “than how I played. Their equipment was terrible then.”

Don, a veteran of The Drastic Measures and a bunch of other groups, also had a list of phone numbers from booking the other bands, so he became unofficial business manager.

* * *

AS FOR THE name, it came to them as they sat around thinking up a name just before their first job at Amherst Community Church. Jordan said: “This is really burnin’ me that we can’t figure out a name.” And there it was.

“We pretended we knew it all along,” Pete says. “We didn’t even tell anybody until the second set.”