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 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 types like Frank Sinatra Jr. Sir Bernard recalls Wayne Cochran and His C. C. Riders:

          “Wayne was just wild. He’d say if you aren’t ready to dance and clap your hands and have a good time, then don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

          “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 Kenmore, their experience dates back to the mid ‘60s.

          Bob, oldest in the group at 27, and Bill Zannie, 25, were in the Rat Pack, a summer sensation in Angola in 1965-66.

          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 Jamestown as an alternative to military service, he registered for classes at Buffalo State and called up Bob.

          “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 Buffalo State and met Joe, who’s 20, on a part-time job.

          “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 West Seneca West High School and Bob works in the Westinghouse Engineering Department.

          Bob is a native of Italy, son of a semi-professional opera tenor. He came to America – Akron, Ohio – five years ago and after his marriage he came to Buffalo. His wife has relatives here.

          “When I was small,” he says, “I’d sit outside the apartment building all day and sing ‘Ciao Ciao Bambina.’ In Italy, you get to hear and appreciate songs from all over the world.

          “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 Sheridan Drive east of Niagara Falls Boulevard next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

          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 Buffalo’s City Honors High School and directed a production of “Urinetown” there. As of April 2020, he was organist for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Eden. Elsewhere, there are brief mentions of him playing in the bands Chapter 5 and Frenzy in the 1980s and an “amazing” duo he had with his wife Irene.