Sept. 16, 1972: The UUAB Music Committee faces the facts of life

 

The Institute For Rock ‘N Roll Studies guys, who we met last semester, take over the concert programming at UB and discover the hard facts of life in the music business: 

Sept. 16, 1972

A Struggle to Present Top Shows for Students

State UB Music Committee Still Signs Up Name Talent 

AMID THE ENTHUSIASTIC splash of posters on the walls of the UUAB Music Committee’s inner sanctum on the second floor of UB’s Norton Hall is a little clipping that stops you with a chuckle.

“Capitalism can’t last forever,” it says.

Talk with the committee for a while and you discover that it hits right onto what dampened the bounce and boundless idealism they had over the summer – capitalism, economics, plain old money, the root of all evil.

Money wasn’t supposed to be a problem this year. Especially after the 1972-73 UUAB leaders, feeling knowledgeable and inspired, went to their funding people – Sub-Board 1 – and made them an offer that was hard to refuse.

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IN EXCHANGE for a fat $156,000 subsidy, the UUAB Music Committee promised a dynamite series of concerts and the return of at least $115,000 by the end of the year.

Last year, by comparison, music got $51,000 and had to give back $40,000.

The committee, incidentally, is responsible for all musical programs brought from outside onto campus. The Tanglewood-style Buffalo Philharmonic concert on Rotary Field Friday night was their idea. Folk, soul, classical, ethnic – all are included.

“We have a guy over in Middle Eastern studies,” one of the committee says, “who wants us to bring in The Whirling Dervishes. They’re only $1,800.”

UUAB treasurer David Keiser, last year’s Student Association treasurer, says the idea this year is to have a big enough budget to put shows in Memorial Auditorium downtown.

Ticket prices for UUAB’s Aud shows would be about the same as any other Aud concert (UB students would get a slight discount) and the profits would go to cover losses from cheap-admission on-campus shows.

“We’re recycling the money,” says big Joe Fernbacher, a guiding light of the Institute For Rock ‘N Roll Studies who became Music Committee chairman, then stepped down in the summer to become temporary program director for all UUAB-sponsored cultural events.

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“THE MONEY we earn from music,” he explains, “goes back to provide more music.”

“We may have to do five or six Aud shows,” speculates UUAB president Walt Behmke, a graduate student who the others call “our Horatio Alger hero” because he worked up through the ranks from helper to film series head to top office.

“At first, we thought we’d have to do three or four. When we came into this we had high expectations, but now we see we’re going to have to proceed a lot more in advance and a lot slower.”

The Music Committee’s plan to stage shows in the Aud raised apprehensions at first in the city’s leading promoter, Buffalo Festival’s Jerry Nathan, but a couple of conferences assured him that UUAB wasn’t out to undercut his business.

In fact, the committee is bending over backwards to try to avoid scheduling conflicts with other major shows in town. For example, a Bonnie Raitt-Taj Mahal show was canceled after they learned that another school was bringing Steve Miller here the same night.

* * *

THINGS LIKE THAT have blown away the dream schemes of last summer, like UB folk festival organizer Beryl Handler’s brilliant pairing of John Prine and Randy Newman in July. Incredibilities like Wilson Pickett with Al Green in the Aud for $3 a ticket aren’t discussed much any more.

The Pickett-Green dream show would never happen, it turns out, even if, by chance, luck and convincing, UUAB was able to get the Aud between basketball, hockey and other concerts. And get the two performers in town on the same night.

“Most of the really big acts work for a percentage of the gross receipts,” says Jeff Nesin, titular head of the Rock ‘N Roll Institute and Joe’s successor as music chairman. “And what that means is that gross is determined by the ticket prices.”

“We were dickering for a concert with The Kinks and The Beach Boys,” says last year’s music chairman Paul Rosen, who’s staying around to help this year, “but they’d sooner go with a regular promoter because the ticket prices will be higher and the gross will be bigger.”

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THAT’S WHAT the clipping about capitalism is all about. Not only has it taken the edge off the Music Committee’s energy, but it also limits the sort of shows they can offer the students, 14 percent of whose activities fees provides UUAB funding.

“Take Jefferson Airplane,” Walt says. “Kids here want them more than any other group, but to get them you have to go through all the rock capitalism thing.”

A major part of the money problem is there’s no place for UUAB to throw a heavy or middleweight concert (see box). And, if that wasn’t enough, fate fouled their plans for an outdoor orgy of free concerts, boogieing and slurping Boone’s Farm on the lawn to commemorate the opening of school.

Noel Redding’s group Road couldn’t make it. Pearls Before Swing canceled because leader Tom Rapp came down sick. Pure Prairie League, a fine country-rock group, dropped out after their leader was killed in a car crash.

* * *

DESPITE THAT, the committee intends to maintain their ideal of presenting good music without exploitation. They succeeded last Monday with a Connecticut group, Repairs, managed by former Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham.

“They were six very nice guys,” Jeff says, “intelligent, been to college, very much like us. And they needed a place to sit down and rest, a place to stay, money to buy food with, just like anybody else.

“We worked from 10 a.m. to midnight for that show and at the end of it there were about 15 people left, dancing around and really getting off on the band. That was worth it, it was really nice. Nobody was exploited except us.” 

The box/sidebar 

Find ‘Em a Hall 

Lately the UUAB Music Committee has felt like a carpenter trying to build a house with a toy hammer. The problem is how to satisfy mass student tastes when there’s no place on campus big enough to seat a mass of students.

“UB has the worst facilities for the presentation of cultural events of any university its size in the world,” UUAB president Walt Behnke says. “It was built for a private school of 8,000, not for a public university of 25,000.”

* * *

THE BEST you can do at UB is Clark Gym, which holds only about 1,800. After that, you have to go off-campus to Kleinhans Music Hall or mammoth Memorial Auditorium, which already is booked nearly solid until next May.

For last spring’s UB Folk Festival, organizer Beryl Handler rented a chilly, damp tent for $3,000, but at least it held 5,000 people. Somebody proposed an inflatable dome for the campus, seating 9,000. Cost, however, was $27,000.

There’s no relief in sight at the new Amherst campus. The new decentralized student union won’t even have anything like the Fillmore Room. Biggest room is a 350-seat theater. There are plans for a union with a 6,000-seat hall eventually.

* * *

“WE COULD have gotten Neil Young on his winter tour,” music chairman Jeff Nesin remarks, “if we had an auditorium that sat 7,000 to 10,000. And if we had a place on campus to put him, everybody would love us.”

As it is, it’s a hassle even to present a good middleweight concert like the one in Clark Gym Sept. 29 – Dr. John and the Phlorescent Leech & Eddie.

“We have to do two shows,” Jeff says. “That’s harder on the audience, because we have to rush them out after the first show. It’s harder on the artists and it’s harder on the people who have to work on it.”

* * *

BUT THE committee isn’t giving up easy. Good quality concerts coming up include Southern country bluesman Johnny Shines and Larry Johnson at the Norton Hall coffeehouse tonight.

Wishbone Ash and Blue Oyster Cult in Clark Gym Oct. 14 (“Strong boogie value for your money,” Jeff notes.) and Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina in Clark Gym Oct. 26.

“It’s not for us to reason why,” Jeff exclaims, “it’s just for us to do and die.”

“Do and buy,” Walt puts in.

“And buy the buy and buy,” Jeff laughs.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: UB’s music people, from left, Jeff Nesin, Beryl Handler, Joe Fernbacher, Walt Behnke, David Keiser and Paul Rosen.

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FOOTNOTES: We first met Jeff Nesin and Joe Fernbacher in the Institute for Rock ‘N Roll Studies in the spring of 1972. As you’ll recall from the footnote to that article, Jeff just retired as a college administrator in Memphis and Joe, before he died in 1999, was a freelance critic for the major music magazines.

Walt Behnke got into marketing and publicity. He was communications manager for the launch of the BMW plant in South Carolina in the mid 1990s and was vice president for marketing for Indian Motorcycles when the brand was revived in 1999. Since 2006, he’s had his own firm, spending a bunch of time in Istanbul, where his clients include Coca-Cola Turkey. He lives downstate in Rockland County.

Beryl Handler graduated cum laude from UB and wound managing and marrying one of the artists she presented here – the marvelous, mysterious Leon Redbone. She also ran his record company, August Records. She now resides in New Hope, Pa.