Archival Buffalo News feature articles

  What grew up to become one of Buffalo ’s premiere recording studios takes its first baby steps.   Feb. 16, 1974 A Trio That Puts Layers of Voices on Record   ALAN BAUMGARDNER catches his falling lock of hair with a well-practiced backhand and rubs his palms against his pants. No luck. That olive drab adhesive for the wood paneling sticks just as tight to hands as it does to the walls.           “We’re fixing this up as a waiting area for groups,” Alan says with a glance around the half-renovated front office of his recording studio.           It’s called Trackmaster Audio. An eight-track facility nestled in a cove on the second floor of the massive Larkin Warehouse on Seneca Street , it’s a good bet to become the leading Buffalo recording studio. At least until someone brings a 16-tracker to town.           “We want to make it a comfortable room,” Alan continues, “a place people will feel at home in. Hey, Kim, that brick’s falling out.”           Kim Ferullo, the dimi

  One of my transformative experiences in the late 1960s was a Blues Project concert in Floral Hall on the Chautauqua County Fairgrounds in Dunkirk . If I’m not mistaken, Eric Andersen was the opening act. Imagine my excitement at running into one of those Blues Project guys in 1974, right in my back yard, so to speak.   Feb. 9, 1974 Co-Co Morgen Plays as if Born to Boogie Beat   THE WORD sifted up from Colden Valley much as the word does when the snow has finally blessed the ski slopes and the city is still cold and dry.           It usually went like this: You remember Roy Blumenfeld, the drummer from the Blues Project? He’s got a band down at the Belle Starr. Last week the crowd wouldn’t let him stop playing until 3:30.           And the Coldenites weren’t just telling tales. It was indeed Blumenfeld. A little stockier, a little happier perhaps and more patriarchal than on the “Projections” album, but that was seven years ago. He was only 22 then.           Blumenf

  One of the major local rock bands of the day and predecessor to some equally wonderful aggregations down the line.   Feb. 2, 1974 Blue Ox Wants Aggressive, Bitey Sound   AS BLUE OX themselves will tell you, a lot depends on the crowd.                    One night they’ll be sitting there in the Bona Vista on Hertel Avenue like good old boys and girls on the bayou, bobbing in their private dreams to the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin.’”           A few nights later, at an even more tender hour, the tiny dance floor is full of folks boogieing their heads off to the very same tune. * * * “IF YOU LISTEN for a whole night,” guitarist-organist Charlie O’Neill says, “we go through all kinds of styles. But sometimes the slower stuff is rough when you’ve got a bunch that wants to bounce around.”           Variety, for Blue Ox, has been a matter of trading and balancing between a club crowd’s boogie urge and the band’s own preference for subtler, more complex tunes, including a fe

  Buffalo’s folksong stalwart steps out of the Limelight … his Limelight Gallery coffeehouse, that is.   Jan. 26, 1974 Folk Singer Raven Plays a Strolling Minstrel   JERRY RAVEN rests the trident fork in mid-salad and cocks an ear to the taped music floating like an Elizabethan perfume through the elegant Saturday night multitude assembled in the great Hall of the Park Lane Manor.           “Hear that?” he whispers in revelation. “It’s Steeleye Span!” * * * IT CERTAINLY IS . And nobody else knows it. When the British folk-rock group fades into an 18th century jig without a trace, there’s an impish grin on the creator of that private joke, that modern kink in that Olde English tape.           Like the tape, there’s more to restaurateur Peter Gust Economou’s new medieval world enterprise on Gates Circle than meets the eye. Jerry’s good for those revelations too.           Such as how the architect began as a set designer (“You’ll notice how the lighting brings certain t

  An early incarnation of one of Buffalo ’s most popular nightclub bands of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of these guys became even more famous in later life. See the Footnote.   Jan. 19, 1974 Hernandez Serves a Special Latin Spice   HERNANDEZ . You wonder if David Hernandez didn’t maybe think of Carlos Santana when he christened the group. Santana. Hernandez.           As it turns out, fully half the band is Hernandez. David on guitar, brothers Ralph and Robert on congas and drums, respectively.           Together the three of them give Hernandez a special Latin spice that distinguishes them, even though their selections aren’t that much different from other bands that do plush little clubs like St. George’s Table, Delaware and North, where Hernandez holds forth until Feb. 9. * * * IT PERKS UP songs like “The Love I Lost” (“By Harold Bluenote and the Melvins,” jokes singer Chuck Toarmino), that subtly insistent rhythmic drive. It flavors the Doobie Brothers’ “Long Train Run

  I don’t recall much about this earnest, but obscure outfit, but I can still picture the manager, who was a relentless promoter.   Jan. 12, 1974 Domino Revue Drifts Toward Progressive Rock   DOMINO IS WEARING coats and ties for their first night at Eduardo’s on Bailey Avenue and it gives them the air of those British groups in the 1960s that dropped down from the Midlands for their first big shot at London .           As with those British groups, the coats and ties are their manager’s idea.           The manager, stocky, young Sir Bernard, removes his own coat and proudly proclaims himself as being, among other things, the city’s only Black booking agent and an alumnus of the same Boys’ Club as disc jockey Dan Neaverth.           “We weren’t there at the same time, you understand,” he adds. * * * IT WASN’T SO LONG AGO that Eduardo’s compendium of Mediterranean décor provided the city’s foremost setting for high-priced, high-rolling club entertainers. Las Vegas typ