Oct. 2, 1971: Magic Ring (return from summer hiatus)

To herald my return from a summer spent motorcycling across the country – one of the loudest psychedelic rock bands in town. 

Oct. 2, 1971

Eyeing the National Scene

‘Magic Ring’ Sees Albums, Concerts in Its Future 

        It was like a wish come true – Magic Ring going down to New York City to record demo tapes in Electric Lady, the studio Jimi Hendrix created just before his death last year.

        “Purple Haze” and that first Hendrix album back in 1967 lifted them from the Top 40 stuff they had spent their first year playing in church halls and high school gyms. They’ve been following that inspiration ever since.

        “I heard three or four songs,” says guitarist Paul Vastola, “and I said to myself: ‘This is IT!’”

* * *

THE STUDIO, they say, is just as unique, just as futuristic, just as much Hendrix as his music was. From the entry via a long red velour tunnel to the pillow-filled studio with its soft contours and futuristic lighting to the $20,000 restroom with its enormous collage. Walls everywhere are covered with murals of female figures.

        “It’s almost hypnotic, the effect in there,” singer Gordon Blake says.

        “We always wanted to go into Electric Lady,” says drummer Jim Knobloch, “but we never thought we would.”

* * *

IT STARTED early this summer, when Magic Ring shared the bill with Cactus in one of the final shows at now-defunct Gilligan’s. Accompanying Cactus was Eddie Kramer, producer of Hendrix’s “Cry of Love” album and the live Cream album.

        Kramer liked the group’s work, got talking with their manager, Gilligan partner Steve Goldstein, and invited them down to the studio. They went in August.

        What they did there was a tape to send to record companies – four songs in about eight hours. Three of their own numbers and a heavy version of Stephen Stills’ “Black Queen.”

* * *

PAUL WENT back to the studio last weekend, spent four more hours helping mix the vocal and instrumental tracks and brought the results home.

        That’s what resounded through Goldstein’s tiny stone cottage in woods in northern Amherst early this week. The quality of the recording was incredibly good, even though Gordon’s vocals often got buried in the massive instrumentals.

        Magic Ring works its own hypnosis around powerfully stated progressions – guitar underlined with bass and organ – that seem to reach in and shake the depths that you thought only monster movies and ancient church organs could touch.

        The wah-wah guitar intro to “Keep On Movin’” is swallowed in a heavy syncopated riff, alternating from major key to relative minor. The instrumental part breaks into a sprinting rhythm until Derek Hilburger on organ comes out of nowhere to rip the beat apart and get back into the verse.

* * *

“PLATINUM Iguana” – someone describes it as a Buffalo song – has a melody reminiscent of an old folk or blues song and evolves into what could be a Gothic hymn, full of thundering bass progressions and eerie organ.

        The repeated riff in “Look Out” sounds like Led Zeppelin with the edges softened. In “Black Queen,” the Stills original is filled with subconscious possibilities.

        “Sure, you’ll hear Mountain and The Who and Hendrix in our sound,” Paul says, “but it’s like when I heard Led Zeppelin for the first time. It reminded me of other things, too. But the more I heard it, it became its own sound.”

* * *

THEIR Hendrix-inspired music was putting them on the wrong side of Buffalo audiences three or four years ago. Clubowners complained because they were too loud or because they didn’t wear matching outfits.

        One dragged them over to look at the jukebox to see if they would play “some of these songs.” They tried passing out bubblegum and flowers to their crowds as a gesture of love and peace and the crowds threw the stuff back at them.

        They had the same luck with their first single a couple years back. It was called “Moon Maiden” and it was Record of the Week on one station here and made a bit of a rise in Seattle, then it was sold to a Nashville producer and it dropped out of sight.

        “It was in the same vein,” Gordon says. “Very heavy, spacey. And of course it didn’t appeal to Buffalo as much as we thought it would.”

* * *

“WE’VE BEEN fighting the grain here for a couple years,” Paul observes. “In Detroit, they wanta hear what you’ve got. Here they want Three Dog Night.”

        “All along, we’ve wanted to get a moving thing,” says bass guitarist Glenn Skadan. “You know, a deep thing. Something you can feel in your body.”

        Things started looking better once their old booking agent put them into Gilligan’s. Steve Goldstein, who was looking to move a Buffalo group into the big time, heard them, liked them and took over their management.

        That was Spring 1970. Shortly afterward, Derek and Jim joined the group. Goldstein took them out of the Buffalo club circuit and started getting them second billings at rock ballrooms in Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, New York City.

* * *

MOST OF this summer they spent in a garage in Glen Park, getting ready for the recording session. Now they’re back in pubic, reappearing three weeks ago when Goldstein’s Ironspur Productions put on a concert in UB’s Rotary Field.

        Next local outing they have scheduled is Nov. 8 in an  Ironspur show in Memorial Auditorium with Deep Purple, Buddy Miles and Fleetwood Mac. Until then, the group is arranging some Canadian bookings.

        “But it feels good to do good things here in Buffalo, too,” Paul says. “It’s just that you gotta play to people who are receptive to what you’re doing. It’s a matter of reaching the people and having them respect you.”

* * *

GOLDSTEIN’S partner, Jim Pappas, says they’re looking for acceptance of the demo tape by one of two major record companies “within a month.” After that, it’s back to Electric Lady to do an album.

        “Once the record is out,” he explains, “we’ll get into national bookings. National concerts are what an album opens up. Already we’ve gotten calls from as far south as Georgia.” 

The box/sidebar: 

They Tap Psychic Energy 

Pertinent information about Magic Ring:

        Gordon Blake, 22, vocalist, Cleveland Hill and East High Schools, single.

        Paul Vastola, 22, guitar and backup vocals, Williamsville High, UB graduate (business with a music minor), teaches guitar, single.

        Derek Hilburger, 22, keyboards and backup vocals, Cheektowaga native, single.

        Glenn Skadan, 23, bass guitar, Williamsville High, Buffalo State grad, single.

        Jim (Woody) Knobloch, 20, drums, Cleveland Hill High, teaches drums, single.

* * *

THEY BEGAN as Twiggs back in 1966, two guitarists and no keyboards then, doing Beatles songs and the like. Paul and Glen were original members and Gordon came a few months later, having played with Paul in an experiment group called Op (“as in Op Art”).

        Derek was a veteran of the Sunday Morning Wonderland Band and a few groups before that when Glen met him last year. Jim, who had played with Hobbit, The Pacers and some jazz groups, joined about the same time.

        The name Twiggs was tied up by a Nashville producer a year ago, so Gordon, who was reading Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy at the time, suggested the new name.

* * *

ALL ARE recent graduates of Silva Mind Control International, which they say taught them to control their brain wave frequencies. They say it allows them to bypass conventional consciousness and pick up forgotten things from their memories. Sometimes, they say, it can be psychic.

        “We were kind of apprehensive about it at first,” Paul says, “but it’s actually like self-hypnosis. It’s especially good if you’re playing because playing puts you in another consciousness anyway.

        “You kind of tap into the energy and transmit it to the people. I think it worked for us in Bradford. That was our first job in a long time and the crowd really got into what we were playing. They really got excited about it.”

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Keeper of the flame for Twiggs and Magic Ring is Gordon Blake, who’s created a whole Facebook page to celebrate the era. Lots of old photos, including a picture of the poster for that Memorial Auditorium show with Deep Purple.

It gives us his complete name – Gordon is Gordon Blake Kapsar. It also notes that his father was leader of the Jack Gordon Trio, house band at the Town Casino and Chez Ami back in the glory days of fancy nightclubs in downtown Buffalo in the 1940s and 1950s.

The page further informs us that Glenn Skadan passed away in 2018. It also reproduces the band’s entry in Rick Falkowski’s “History of Buffalo Music & Entertainment.”

His other Facebook page, as Gordon Kapsar, reports that he’s alive and well in Los Angeles and working as a director and playwright, having studied theater at Buff State, film and theater at UB and theater at UC Berkeley.

Paul Vastola, meanwhile, became a professional recording engineer and is former owner of Rocky Mountain Recorders in Denver.