Nov. 13, 1971: A Buffalo band called Rush
In which two future
Nov. 13, 1971
No More Horns,
Rush Still Rockin’
The last thing you’d expect to find on the wall of booking
agent John Sansone’s office is historical perspective. Not that John doesn’t
appreciate the fine points of the past, it’s just that there isn’t a big market
for yesterday unless it’s got enough age on it to be nostalgia.
But there it is. Another group with brass making a steady
thing out of feeding that huge popular appetite for Chicago and even Blood
Sweat & Tears that’s been going on for two years now. Lookit, there’s 10
guys in that picture.
The revelation here is that the shot was taken last spring.
You can find three of those faces in the band today, but now it’s a six-man
organization. And there are no horns.
* * *
FROM THIS,
it would be pretty flimsy reasoning to say the Chicago-BS&T brand of
jazz-rock has run out of steam. There’s still mileage in it. But when
And then there’s the band in the picture, this group called
Rush. They were blazing along great, horns and all, until late this summer.
“For a while, it was nice,” says guitarist Stu Ziff. “Every
horn band was into their
* * *
“
“It really got bad in September. We didn’t know how to please
them. We play ‘Store Bought, Store Thought’ by The Flock and they’d all sit
around, but they’d dance to Neil Young’s ‘
It came to a head about seven weeks ago. The horn players
wanted to do more commercial stuff. So did the old bass guitarist and organist.
More money in it. And they could outvote Stu, vocalists Jim Flynn and Craig
Korka and drummer Ted Reinhardt, who just wanted to rock.
“But no matter how many conflicts we had offstage,” Craig
says, “on stage we really got it together because none of us underneath wanted
to put on a bad show.”
* * *
AND THE
parting was just as friendly. If it didn’t work out in a month, the horn
players would come back. If it did, they’d be reimbursed eventually for the
money they’d sunk into equipment.
“It was really strange at first,” says Stu, “‘cause it came
down from having nine guys at practice and a situation where everybody’s got to
super-know their parts to just having six guys. It was a lot easier to work.
“What helped was that everybody knew what they wanted to do
and everybody all had the same interests.”
With two new members and a job less than two weeks away, they
concentrated on songs most of them knew already. It turned out they knew a lot
of Neil Young.
“Any Neil Young song that we do, we put just a little more
into,” says Stu. “I love the way he plays guitar. We usually take his
arrangements straight off. Anything by Neil Young shouldn’t be tampered with.”
* * *
SINCE THEN
they’ve also started getting into Traffic and Procul Harum and songs from four
or five years ago.
“In other bands,” Carl says, “they figure out what other
people like. In this band, we figure out what we like and it turns out that
everybody likes it anyway.”
Neil Young is still strongly represented. Last Friday night
at an Erie Community College French Club beer blast, there were four of his
songs in the first two sets.
Rush confessed to a weak first set. But then, this was the
first time they’d even seen their brand new Voice of the Theater vocal system
(equipment men Chuck Marotta and John Carey do all the setting up).
It didn’t help that they figured the featured band would blow
them out of the room. And then Carl, crowded by Ted’s drums, fell of the stage,
organ stool and all, twisting his wrist. And that didn’t help either.
* * *
THEY CAME
back strong, however, outrocking the other band with the James Gang’s hard-edge
“Funk 49.” Then some Neil Young, all the crowd dancing, Jim Flynn taking the
high parts in the harmony.
And they did “Whiter Shade of Pale” with its organ riff to
end organ riffs. “Stormy Monday Blues” with Stu singing and getting a good
organ complement to his guitar. And “Heartbreaker” with its jumping finale.
The rest of the weekend was like that. Saturday afternoon
without Craig (who had to work), they taped a show for Amherst Cablevision.
“It was super pressure,” Stu says. “They said three minutes
in the middle of a song and I thought they meant three minutes were up, so we
cut. But we saw it later and it came out OK.”
* * *
AND THAT
night, because they were tired and because, after all, it was a formal dance,
they softened down and the music came out so well they think they’ll try some
more that way.
“‘Down by the River’ sounded just like a recording,” Jim
says. “And for the last set, the kids were all sitting on the floor listening
to us.”
“And the way we put ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ into the middle
of ‘I’m a Man,’” says Stu. “It came out perfect and we never rehearsed it
before. We’re really getting conscious of each other.”
Tonight they’re at the Belmont YMCA, Town of
“Everybody’s so improved in the last month,” Stu says. “Jim
always was a good singer, but since ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ I really get hung up
listening to him.”
“I think we got lucky this time,” Jim says. “We got the band. No more changes.”
The box/sidebar:
So Meet the Six
Pertinent information about
Rush:
Jim Flynn, 18, vocals,
Craig Korka, 18, vocals, Kenmore West, works at tuxedo shop,
single.
Stu Ziff, 18, guitar and vocals, attends Kenmore East,
single.
Carl Bundschuh, 18, organ, Kenmore East, UB freshman, single.
Tom Tripi, 20, bass, Williamsville South, attended
Ted Reinhardt, 18, drums, Kenmore East.
* * *
STU IS the
only remaining member of the original band, which began in September 1970 as
Uncle Meat, although Jim and Ted joined four months after the group was formed.
Craig came during the past summer. Carl and Tom were brought
in when the band regrouped and shed its three horn players about seven weeks
ago.
All were veterans of various Kenmore East aggregations. Carl
and Stu played with Psychic Soul. Ted, Tom and Craig were together in
Symposium. And Ted and Craig had just left Opus One, generally considered a top
brass group until it developed personality problems.
* * *
THE OLD name
was dropped last May. “We thought it was kind of a rip-off on Frank Zappa,”
says Jim, who first suggested the new name. “Also it made a few people uptight
and that wasn’t good for us.”
Calling themselves Rush reflects their admiration for Neil
Young, whose songs make up the backbone of their repertoire. “Like his album
‘After the Gold Rush,’” explains Jim. “And it kinda symbolizes a lot of
different things.”
* * * * *
PHOTO CAPTION:
Foreground, leader-guitarist Stu Ziff; seated on sofa, bass guitarist Tom
Tripi, left, and drummer Ted Reinhardt; rear, from left, vocalists Craig Korka
and Jim Flynn and organist Carl Bundschuh.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: Stuart
Ziff’s talents first took him to
Drummer
Ted Reinhardt was a larger-than-life presence wherever he sat, which included
Rodan, the Dave Constantino Band, Junction West, Gamalon and Spyro Gyra during
their breakthrough years in the late 1970s.
In a
tribute to him after his death in the crash of a light plane in
As for the others in Rush's lineup, a 2008 posting on Buffalo Rising notes that singer Craig Korka was
part of another leading local band, Ian Quail, along with Stu and Jim Flynn in
the late 1970s, and was living in Miami. There’s a YouTube video of him
introducing Ian Quail at the Ted Reinhardt tribute concert, for which he was
co-organizer in 2015.
A
2007 Buffalo News article about his daughter Chelsea being a finalist in the TV
reality show “The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll” noted that Craig was running a
pair of strip clubs.
Organist Carl
Bundschuh, meanwhile, was invited to join Bob Seger’s band in 1971 after
Seger's sidemen heard him playing in Poor House West, but turned it down
and went on to graduate from UB Medical School in 1979.
While
doing his residency in 1983, he says in a biography online, he laid down four
songs at Select Sound Studios and was offered a recording contract. He declined that, too. He became a radiologist, set up a practice in
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