Jan. 12, 1974: A band called Domino
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
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.
“
“He’d run over to the bar while he was singin’ and line up
a whole row of shot glasses in front of people and fill ‘em up. At the end of
the week, he’d have a couple hunnerd dollar bar bill. What an entertainer!”
Simple economics stopped the parade of high-priced high
rollers. The medium-priced medium rollers too. When Sir Bernard approached
Eduardo’s, he found the club suffering from empty tables after the dinner hour.
He figured he’d give it a go.
* * *
“THE DOMINO REVUE?” one of the group asks Sir Bernard quizzically. He’s seen the sign out
front.
“That’s just to give it some extra appeal,” the manager
advises. “Don’t worry about a show. Just get into your old rock ‘n roll numbers
the second set.”
It turns out to be good advice. The first set finds the
group working off its nervousness and the tables are filling, half with college
students, half with slightly older groups.
Everything catalyzes when Domino comes back playing the
catchy Van Morrison number that gives them their name. A long, glimmering
Mark-Almond piece, “The City,” cements their tight ensemble sound. Wally
Odden’s piano and Bill Zannie’s guitar predominating.
When the rock numbers come up, singer Joe Delena steps down
to dance with his wife while Wally wrestles the more raucous vocals to
“Lucille,” “Splish Splash” and “Johnny B. Goode.”
By the time things slow down for an Allman Brothers’
“Melissa,” the college kids have danced themselves breathless and that
good-time feeling has settled in.
* * *
DOMINO’S BEEN TOGETHER less than a year but, as the group relates over
coffee and cookies the next afternoon at bass guitarist Bob Carlone’s house in
Bob, oldest in the group at 27, and Bill Zannie, 25, were
in the Rat Pack, a summer sensation in
Wally, who’s 22 and joined the band a month ago, played
keyboards two years for National Trust, a mainstay Buffalo band from 1969 until
its recent breakup.
Starting the group was Bill Zannie’s idea. Back from
working at a children’s home near
“I’d sold all my equipment from before,” Bob says, “and I
was the day after I had my appendix out.”
“I told him it didn’t matter,” Bill says, “we’d take it
slow.”
Bill Zannie met drummer Bill Mach, 21, at
“We started singin’ on our lunch hour and wound up singin’
all day,” Bill says. “Consequently we got each other fired.”
* * *
PRESENTLY, THREE OF THEM hold daytime jobs. Wally teaches music at School 72.
Bill Mach will be a student teacher next semester at
Bob is a native of
“When I was small,” he says, “I’d sit outside the apartment
building all day and sing ‘Ciao Ciao Bambina.’ In
“I remember liking ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday’ by the
Beatles. I didn’t understand the words, but I liked the sound of them.
“My dream,” he adds, “if I stick with music, is someday I’d
like to see some Italian songs make it over here and see people tuning in to
things they can feel rather than just understand.”
* * *
THOUGH THE GROUP started out aiming for supper clubs (Bill Zannie’s favorite
songwriters are the quiet ones – Jackson Browne and Paul Simon – the music has
drifted toward more popular progressive songs.
“That’s why we got a piano,” Bill says. “We needed
something to help fill up the sound.”
Wally also rounds out singing and harmonies and is
shouldering a share of the music arranging as well. Doing the old rock songs
was his inspiration.
“Sir Bernard would like to add horns,” Bill Zannie says,
“but we don’t think we’d like to be that kind of a group. We’d like to
concentrate more on vocals than anything.”
Domino will return to Eduardo’s tonight and go to the Cross
Bow on
Still beaming with their first night’s success, the group
adjourns its meeting at Bob’s house with a discussion of what to wear for the
second night.
“Maybe the brown things,” Bob is saying. “Now we can do
something less formal than the coats and ties.”
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO:
Front row, guitarist Bill Zannie, left, and bass guitarist Bob Carlone; back
row, from left, pianist Wally Odden, drummer Bill Mach and singer Joe Delena.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: The only one of these folks I’ve been able
to track down on the internet is keyboard man Wally Odden. In 2009, he was a
music teacher at
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