Archival Buffalo News feature articles

  Kraftwerk was the headliner on this show, an off-the-wall offering of that season’s fashionably alternative bands in the Century Theater, but I was there for the act that was second on the bill.   April 12, 1975   Head-Spinning Sparks Bring Welcome Breath of Fresh Air             As the cheering rises to a shriek in the dark Century Theater Friday night, a single spotlight picks out a rock ‘n roll dandy at the side of the stage. A riding crop is stuck into the top of one of his high boots.           It’s Russell Mael. He sings for a few moments in a frantic falsetto until a spotlight hits the thin, starched figure at the keyboards, the guy with the tiny mustache and the short hair slicked back.           Charlie Chaplin? No. That’s Ron Mael, Russell’s older brother.           Together they’re Sparks , expatriate Americans and the newest darlings of British rock, the group that outpolled Bad Company to be Melody Maker magazine’s top band of 1974. * * * WHILE RUSSELL

  In which we meet up with one of the grand old men of Buffalo music.     April 19, 1975   Eli Konikoff’s Trombone Puts Dixie Into the Morgan Street Stompers   WHEN IT COMES TO LISTENER LOYALTY , Dixieland jazz trombonist Eli Konikoff is a hard man to beat. Once a bandleader fired him because folks thought it was Eli’s band.           That quirk of popularity still seems to apply Friday and Saturday nights at Jafco Marina Restaurant on Niagara Street with the Morgan Street Stompers.           But drummer Jack Bacon, leader of the Stompers, doesn’t seem to mind as people come up to Eli left and right – old fans, new fans, younger players, music teachers. * * * IT DOESN’T bother the other four Stompers either – pianist Paul Kozmalo, who’s a champion airplane builder; bassist Lloyd Heppner, trumpeter Dean Lilack and clarinetist Mike Milaka, who teaches at McKinley High School .           After all, Eli was the Buffalo area’s premiere Dixieland band leader from

  An April snowstorm did not prevent from Buffalo News review crew from making its appointed rounds. Three of us reported for duty that night and came back to tell about it.   April 5, 1975   Personality Not Enough for Redbone             There’s never any doubt that Leon Redbone would make it to the biggest show of the semester for UB’s UUAB Coffeehouse Friday night. Probably blew in with the storm. He’s that kind of guy.           Redbone has perpetrated one of the great mysteries of our time. Dressed as he is in pearl-grey trousers, old high-lace shoes, sunglasses, a black velvet coat and hat, his concealment is complete.           Nobody knows who he is or where he came from. Rolling Stone said he grew up in Toronto , but that’s not so. All you know is what he shows you – the mannerisms of Groucho Marx and the raspy, wispy Al Jolson voice singing ‘30s jazz tunes.           Four students near me during the second show in Norton Hall’s Fillmore Room wondered if he was wea

  I’ve been a union guy all my years at The Buffalo News and it’s one of the reasons I’ve had such a long career there. Once upon a time when I was in a band, I also was a member of another union, Local 92, American Federation of Musicians. They threw only one gig our way – a little concert in a municipal park gazebo for teens. It was memorable, though. The kids all wanted our autographs afterward. First time we felt like stars.   March 15, 1975 Rock Musicians, Union Leaders Discuss the Rules   “I DON’T KNOW WHY I’m even in the union. I get the paper every month and I pay my dues. Otherwise, they don’t do anything for me.”           That’s a young rock musician talking. He’s been a member of Buffalo Local 92, American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO, for more than five years.           Every week his group plays five or six nights and grosses $1,000 to $1,200. He says they break union rules every time they go onstage.           “If we went by the book,” he explains, “we’d

  “Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” lays an egg on Main Street .   Dec. 19, 1974   Gabriel’s Good Idea Lost in the Performance             “The concerts should work more like a film,” Peter Gabriel, lead singer for the theatrical-minded British rock group Genesis, is quoted in the latest Rolling Stone.           Very much like a film was the Genesis concert Wednesday night in the sold-out Century Theater, what with that three-part screen flashing images on high while Gabriel prowled the stage as Rael, hero of the group’s new double concept album, “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.”           You could call it a rock opera, too, this journey from the streets of New York City to some surrealistic hell and back by way of the Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging.           Like grand opera, it helped to have an idea of the libretto. But unless you possessed intimate knowledge of the new album, which lays out Rael’s entire trip in the liner notes, then Gabriel might as well have been si

  I was a big Van Morrison fan in the early 1970s (saw him at the Lion’s Share, a club in San Anselmo, Calif., in August 1971, which remains one of my all-time favorite evenings) and like fans everywhere, I was a bit jarred by his transition in 1974, when he shed his big Caledonia Soul Orchestra in favor of a stripped-down live show and more reflective songwriting, as heard in that year’s “Veedon Fleece” album.   Oct. 31, 1974   New Morrison Sound Takes Getting Used To             Can this really be the legendary Van Morrison? This ruddy, chubby little guy with the wispy red hair and the wire-rims and the old leather coat?           It took a couple of minutes Wednesday night at the Century Theater to get used to the idea. After all, it’s been four years and that upbeat opening song isn’t familiar. But who else can flash on the wistful intensity of “Street Choir?” It’s him, all right.           But he’s a different man this time around. Brusquer, less at ease, less content

  Even with all the love and acclaim he continues to receive, it’s still startling to rediscover how totally transcendent Stevie Wonder was in the Fall of 1974. When his tour brought him to Memorial Auditorium, he was riding high on a string of hits and the latest of them – “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” and “Boogie On Reggae Woman” – were on his newly-released “Fulfillingness’ First Finale” album.   Oct. 19, 1974   Stevie Makes It His Night By Outstunning Them All             It was Stevie Wonder Day Friday, officially proclaimed for all of Buffalo by Mayor Makowski. And it was Stevie Wonder Night, officially signed, sealed and delivered with love for all of Memorial Auditorium by the man himself.           There were two ways to greet the occasion. Au naturel was the old denim route. The other was as a stunning creature. Furs, feathers, faces and fancy platform shoes would do the trick.           “Flyin’?” observed my associate, who spent most of Stevie Wonder Day working up

  First we witnessed Eric Clapton’s notoriously drunken set in Rich Stadium in the summer of 1974, then along came this sodden performance. Sept. 27, 1974 No Mad Dog, Cocker’s Just an Ordinary Joe             Joe Cocker mutters something about his hour being up and, just as the idea sticks, he signs off with the rollicking hit that cushioned his fall from stardom to stumblebum, “High Time We Went.”           But the lights don’t go up and the diehards among the 2,000 in the Niagara Falls Convention Center Thursday night stomp their feet and strike their matches. It works.           Appropriately enough, he calls for “I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends,” a showstopper in his high-flying Mad Dogs & Englishmen days and still a showstopper, the one flash of bare-wire excitement in his whole set.           For Cocker, the comeback trail is still in the lowlands. His legendary lung-busting voice flickers in and out, steadied by two Black ladies singing backup. Inst

  For a bright moment in the mid 1970s, Buffalo had two radio stations that featured jazz – UB-based WBFO at 88.7 FM, under the leadership of John Hunt, and WEBR, at 970 AM, which had a memorable but too-brief excursion with Jazz in the Nighttime host Al Wallack.   Feb. 8, 1975 Another Era: The Count Live on Radio   “THIS IS THE SECOND greatest thrill of my life,” program director Steve Lapa, a piano player himself, tells Count Basie after they settle arrangements to air one of Basie’s sets live from the Statler Hilton over radio station WEBR.           It isn’t the first live show WEBR has done from the Statler either – Lapa already has broadcast Jackie & Roy and Ruby Braff from the Downtown lounge – but it’s certainly the biggest and most likely to foul up.           Not only will they have to make sound checks during Basie’s first set, they also will have to contend with Basie’s own microphone plan, which is designed for the room, not the radio.           Plus they