March 27, 1971: Pop Fly

 

Meet a lovable hippie band, complete with the Country Joe “Fish” cheer – a very 1971 slice of life. 

March 27, 1971

‘Pop Fly’ Grabs a Following

Now, while the other guys in Pop Fly do their little tuning things before the next set, now seems like a good time to do it.

“We got any Canadians here tonight?”

“Yeah-h!” some two dozen voices answer, proud to be over here at the Grant Street Beef & Ale House.

There’s more that don’t answer – girls, guys looking kinda innocent next to the Buffalo State students, drinking pitchers of American beer and giving away their nationality every time they pull a cigarette from their boxes of Exports or Players or Craven A’s.

Americans may be less refined, but there are certain rewards in old bordertown Buffalo. For one thing, you don’t have to stay a kid until you’re 21.

* * *

SINGER Frank Viola says some nights he can ask for Canadians and get a response that almost lifts the roof. Previous weeks, the Beef & Ale was packed like it was a couple years ago, but this Friday night the crowd from both sides of the river is a bit off and Frank feels he has to apologize for it.

“Every night’s a good night,” bass guitarist Bob Hudson had philosophized earlier. “The most important part of playing is to have a good time.”

So what you do is have a good time with the crowd. This night they’re a little bottled up or something, but the Canadian question is one way out. Or if they aren’t clapping after a good effort, Frank’ll bring them around with: “Thank you for that thunderous round of applause.”

* * *

“WE HAD one really good night over at Lang’s,” Bob Hudson remembers. “We had ‘em all up front and everybody was asking us, do the Country Joe cheer, you know? Everybody was yelling it, all the chicks were yelling it. We didn’t want to quit that night, 2:30 came and we wanted to keep on playin’.”

Pop Fly also likes to get to the club owners, person to person like, which isn’t always so easy for a bunch of guys who live more or less permanently in old blue jeans and have some of the longest hair in town.

They laugh when they think back to their first job last summer down in Angola. The owner was expecting suits and ties! Luckily, the place also was hard up for a band, even a long-haired, blue-jeaned band, and the group stayed four months.

* * *

“THERE was one guy in Buffalo,” Frank recalls, “when we came in, he really hated us, but we got to know each other and when we left, we were really like friends. We were one of the groups he felt he could talk to.”

How they look shouldn’t make much difference, they feel. Even for a wedding like the one they played at Niagara Falls Air Force Base. Only one guy walked out. And that was after they played Steppenwolf’s “Monster.”

“Last year nobody had heard of us,” Frank says, “and they didn’t want to book us here. Now it’s almost all in Buffalo. We’re starting to get some sort of following. We played at Lang’s six or seven weeks and a lotta people heard about us and came down.”

* * *

THEY SAY they get on well at the Grant Street Beef & Ale too. Well enough so they’re asked back this week for their fourth straight Friday and Saturday.

“We’ve had people tell us we do the most variety of music they’ve heard,” Bob Hudson remarks. “Jethro Tull, Creedence, Buffalo Springfield, James Gang, Spooky Tooth. We’ll do things by people who aren’t popular yet. And we do four of our own. Everybody writes but Roger.”

* * *

“WHAT DO you want to hear?” Frank asks the Beef & Ale crowd. Half yell back “The Pusher” and half yell back “Rock and Roll Woman,” which is the one they decide to do.

Bob Hudson sings lead on this one and Frank and Bob Deeb do the high harmonies. Everybody comes down energetically on the accented beats and the solo section finds Bob Hudson zambing the nylon strings on that old Hofner bass while Frank whomps a frenzied tambourine.

“We like to move around, put on a show,” Bob Deeb says.

“Of course, you can’t put on a show on a card table,” Bob Hudson adds. “You gotta have room. How many times have I hit you in the head, Frank?” Frank shakes his head.

“We’re at a point now,” Frank says, “it may sound corny, but I think we’re starting to blossom. We’re all getting into it. But we don’t think we’ll record for a while. We want to be ready for it when we do it. Why go cut a record when no one even knows you?”

“At least we admit it,” Bob Hudson puts in.

* * *

A FEW songs later, they go into a three-part thing of their own called “Gone Fishin’.” Full heavy rhythmic background with Tom McGurrin’s lead guitar sweeping through it like a needle and thread.

And that feedback ending. Not like feedback you hate because it hurts your ears, but low feedback, nice feedback that makes your body vibrate.

* * *

THE GROUP mentions it sometimes has trouble getting jobs just because there’s no horn players.

“We had a guy come down and say I’ll try you on Mondays and Tuesdays,” Frank says, “but I hesitate to put you in on Friday and Saturday because you’re not a big enough group. The idea is that people won’t dig you if you haven’t got horns.

“People are sick of the big groups, I think. People we’ve run into are really happy about the change in sound we give them.

“We had one kid come up and say he wasn’t going to come to some place one night because he thought we’d be the same old thing and he was glad we weren’t.”

* * *

“BOBBY and I both play horn,” Bob Hudson suggests. “We coulda gone up there with horns and it would have been a change. For us, but not for them.”

“Right,” Frank agrees. “You know, even Chicago isn’t playing Chicago these days.” 

The box/sidebar 

All Musicians from Other Groups 

Pertinent and impertinent information about Pop Fly:

Frank Viola, 22, vocals, Riverside High School graduate, Niagara County Community College, UB, attending Buffalo State, student teacher at McKinley High, single.

Bob Hudson, 19, vocals and bass guitar, Riverside High, helper at a collision shop, single.

Bob Deeb, 18, vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, Riverside High, freshman at Buffalo State, single.

Tom McGurrin, 18, vocals and lead guitar, attended Lafayette High, single.

Roger Butkowski, 21, drums, Riverside High, attended Niagara County Community College, machine operator in a foam factory, married, one child, two step-children.

* * *

POP FLY is essentially a combination of guys from the old Beat Controversy (later just The Controversy) and Tears. They got together a year ago, practiced four months, then called Mrs. Connie Stypowany, whose Great Sounds in Music handled the other bands. She’s been booking them since.

Actually, everybody but Tom knew each other in high school. Bob Hudson and Roger are the Controversy veterans. Bob Deeb (son of country musician Bobby Deeb) and Tom are from Tears.

Frank came in last, when the four others decided they needed more vocal power. “I first knew these guys when they used to borrow my sound columns all the time,” he says. He was in the Incredible Insanes back in 1967, then in the Castaways and the Sounds of 68 or 69, whichever it was. He has an almost identical twin brother, who sometimes sings with the group.

* * *

THE GROUP’S name originated among the old Controversy one night on the way to Psycus. “We were goin’ down Seneca Street,” Bob Hudson says, “and there was this old man in this old suit from like 1900. One of the guys called out of the car, ‘Hey, Pop Fly,’ like it was his name. And so it went on, like a joke, until we started this group.”

* * *

FOOTNOTES: The Country Joe cheer is formally known as the “Fish” cheer, F-I-S-H, except it’s a different four-letter word beginning with F. Country Joe and the Fish used it as an intro to their anti-war anthem, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.”

A search for singer Frank Viola led to the “Buffalo NY Garage Bands” Facebook page. Great old photos from the 1960s there and he's in at least one of them. Couldn’t find Frank elsewhere, though.

Guitarist Bob Deeb has a Facebook page, which tells us that these days he lives in Franklin, N.Y., near Oneonta. He notes that his nephew Pete Deeb’s Lebanese restaurant, Poppa Pete’s at 265 Kenmore Ave., just got a good review from Ben Tsujimoto on The Buffalo News website.