Archival Buffalo News feature articles

       April 1972 had an incredible lineup of must-see events. Our concert-going cup ranneth over. And that was the problem …   April 1, 1972 Is Concert Overload a Symptom Of Uncertainty in Pop Music?   “A COUPLE years ago,” Paul Rosen was saying, “if there was a concert coming, I’d be psyched up for a week. I’d go and watch it with my mouth hanging open down to here and after it was over, I’d be smiling for a week. That doesn’t happen any more.”         There’s scarcely been an open week for smiling between rock concerts in Buffalo this season. In April alone, pop music lovers are faced with more possibilities than a Roman at an orgy. * * * NEXT WEDNESDAY there’s Elvis at Memorial Auditorium, Friday the Aud has The Osmond Brothers, while Smokey Robinson comes to Kleinhans Music Hall on his farewell tour with The Miracles. Next Saturday, Emerson, Lake & Palmer are at the Aud.    ...

  Appearing in a cameo role – a certain dark eminence who currently is cooling his heels in the penitentiary out in Alden:   March 25, 1972 Music Is Danceable – Crowds Keep Dancing Flesh & Blood Mixes Rock, Commercial Sounds   WHEN ALLENTON , Pa. , lost its spice for Flesh & Blood sometime last year, they called up a guy they used to know from another Allentown band, the Hi-Keys.         “We’d been around too long, you know?” guitarist Tom Lombardi says. “People were taking us for granted.”         The friend was in with a booking agent, booking into New Jersey , New York and New England . If Allentown was going to take Flesh & Blood for granted, well, it was time to hit the road.         After two months of it, early November or so, their yellow van pulled into the Yellow Monkey out at Main Street and Transit Road for a week they expected...

  And here’s that first record review from March 4, 1972:   RECORDS: ROCK ‘n POP Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ a Reaper; New Discs Receive Critic’s Rating           NEIL YOUNG’S long-awaited “Harvest” (Reprise MS-2032) was expected to be a super significant album long before it finally came out. An album that would get right inside and let us feel how things are. It is, but not the way we figured.         How deceptive it is at first, how much like the old Neil Young. The bare and deliberate rhythmic guitar solo which opens into the catchy first cut, “Out on the Weekend,” could have slipped out of any of his other three albums.         His melodies (find myself humming every one of them) keep on being simple and totally infectious, perhaps more than ever. Even in the two full production numbers, which sound like the background for a heavily emotional movie scene....

After much lobbying of management, life took an upturn for us music writers in March 1972. Not only did this open the floodgates for free promotional LPs from the record companies, but it also was considered freelance work, a little bump in pay. 

  Wherein the writer reveals his meandering mental processes before finally getting down to business with an early version of a  band that was part of the Buffalo scene for many, many years:   March 18, 1972   A Winding Road To Junction West           THE LONG and winding road to Junction West began with one of my favorite reveries. A promo man’s phone call last week started it off.         “How’d you like to come down to The Nugget in Rochester next Tuesday and talk to Harry Chapin?” he offers.         “You know,” I say, “ Buffalo could use a place like that, bringing in people once a week like Chapin and Shawn Phillips and all. Nobody’s doing it here since Aliotta’s and Gilligan’s shut down.”         That old fantasy about opening up a real music showcase club with local and national groups, there’s alw...

          Introducing a loud, loud band that’s still echoing through the ages. Revelations galore in the Footnote:   March 11, 1972   Bethlem Steele: Original Music And a Big Sound           No, it wasn’t the loudness that got Rick Hilberger. His brother was in Magic Ring and they were LOUD.         He was wrapping up his gig as Mother Courage Recording Service, packing away the mikes and the tape machine after taking down four tracks of Bethlem Steele all one Friday night at The Pub in Buff State ’s Student Union and he kinda shook his head at drummer Bill Kopcho.         “He told me he couldn’t believe I had only two cymbals,” Bill says. * * * YOU NOTICE that from the tape playing in guitarist Rich Fustino’s living room. Not loud enough to catch the bass, though. The bass, Bill says, it goes right through you. All 950 watt...