June 21, 1975: Cock Robin

 

Anyone out in the rock clubs in Buffalo in the late 1970s has fond memories of this group. 

June 21, 1975 

A Danceable Mixture in British Rock Band 

COCK ROBIN TOOK THE PLUNGE this week. They quit their day jobs. That wasn’t too hard for guitarist Dave Bienek, who works in his father’s restaurant, the Depot. But for guitarist Bill Shaver, who’s head chef in the kitchen of a leading Niagara Falls hotel, it was a big jump.

          “It’s been a big problem,” Bill says, “working and playing part-time. We could only play three or four nights a week – maximum. So we planned this a couple months ago and set a date.”

          Cushioning their leap is the imminent release of their first record on the Amherst label. It’s entitled “Very Fine.” It’s due out in about a week and it looks like it could go places.

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WRITTEN by bass player Steve Keenan, it has everything a great summer rock tune should have. Catchy choruses. Fun-loving lyrics. And a beat that won’t let your feet stand still.

          Mercury Records execs offered the use of their New York City studio in return for the right to have first crack at it after hearing the demo the group made at Buffalo’s Trackmaster Audio.

          Then when Mercury eventually opted to pass, Lenny Silver, head of Amherst Records and Transcontinent record wholesalers, decided to pick up on it.

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AT RADIO STATIONS where advance copies have been previewed, they say it’s got “hit potential.” And when it pops up in Cock Robin’s repertoire, usually in the second set, the reaction is enthusiastic.

          “On record it sounds a little like Bachman-Turner Overdrive,” drummer Mike Piccolo says, “but when we do it live, it’s a completely different story. Then we really put the drive to it.”

          Although Cock Robin is one of the city’s most capable club bands, that live drive sometimes gets bigger than the room they’re playing in.

          At a recent date in the Red Balloon, a well-upholstered, precision-sized Sheridan Drive nightspot, the music was drowning out WYSL deejay Pete Stacker’s live remote broadcast.

          “We turned down as far as we could get,” says Piccolo, who handles most of the group’s business affairs. “I warned ‘em that we’re a loud British rock band.”

* * *

IN A LARGER ROOM, however, soundman Lou Cavaretta, who studies electronics at UB, can balance things out on the 12-track mixing board very nicely. And the music isn’t really all British rock.

          Sure, there’s some Led Zeppelin and Bowie’s “Jean Genie.” But there’s also some BTO and even Billy Joel’s “Captain Jack,” with a synthesizer solo by keyboard man Jim Sommers. All in all, a highly danceable mixture.

          Great Lakes Booking Agency will have them purveying it tonight at the Poorhouse West in Hamburg, next Friday and Saturday at Mother’s in Lockport and July 2 to 5 at He & She’s in Tonawanda.

          Cock Robin’s musical philosophy remains much as it was when its five members, veterans of numerous local bands, got together in early 1974.

          “We didn’t want to get stuck with any one type of music,” Bienik explains. “We wanted to do songs that weren’t really worn out and that people would like.”

* * *

THEY PRETTY MUCH built themselves from the ground up, plowing most of their musical earnings back into equipment, drawing in family and friends to build speaker cabinets and assemble their now-considerable sound system.

          “Cock Robin,” says Piccolo, “actually consists of about 30 people.”

          Sommers’ brother, Buddy, laid off from a local auto plant, rebuilt the engine in their 20-year-old panel truck. Equipment man Joe Grabowski struggled with the truck and the ever-growing collection of amps.

          Cavaretta, who has a second-class radio engineer’s license, worked out the kinks in their extensive miking and lighting scheme and devised new powder for the smoke bombs they sometimes use on stage after one club was stifled by the haze.

          “It’s all been trial and error,” Cavaretta says. “We’ve scrimped and saved and starved and we’ve made a lotta mistakes.”

          Until now, practice in a soundproofed shed behind Sommers’ Cheektowaga home has been whenever they can squeeze it in.

          For all their wise-cracking and fun-loving, the band has gotten few free moments to play the pool table or pinball machines in Buddy Sommers’ basement.

* * *

“WE REALLY can’t do that much fooling around, playing part time,” Bienik says. “There’s always that gap between where you are and where you want to be. And Bill, I don’t think he ever sleeps.”

          The record, they expect, will change things. They’d like to travel. They joke about going to England if the records sell that Lenny Silver sends there.

          “But let’s get one thing straight,” Piccolo advises. “We’re not depending on this record to do everything for us. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: From left, front, Lou Cavaretta and Joe Grabowski; rear, Jim Sommers, Bill Shaver, Dave Bienik, Steve Keenan and Mike Piccolo.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Cock Robin disbanded in 1981, but drummer Mike Piccolo was gone long before that.

          “Cock Robin rehearsed five days a week and played seven nights a week,” he told me when I wrote about one of his new projects in 1990. “We went to Ohio, Pennsylvania, all across New York and up into Canada. We did 110 straight one-nighters without a day off. Then we went into the studio, demoing in Buffalo for what we cut in Nashville. We were pretty well frazzled.

          “Then,” he continued, “the album never came out. I liked the band a lot, but I decided it was time to go to Nashville. One thing about Nashville, if you’ve got an ‘in,’ you can work.”

          Piccolo, who first appeared in these columns in 1971 with a group called Jennifer’s Family, was known as Mike James in Nashville. He stayed about 10 years, doing sessions and touring with second-line country singers.

          On one of those tours, he met a woman in Winnipeg, married her and returned to live on the other side of the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie. He wrote songs, released records and performed a bunch over there. He died in 2018, but he can be seen in action on his memorial page at blueshamilton.blogspot.com.

          You can see and hear Cock Robin in action in several places on YouTube, both from the 1970s and in the years since they reunited in 2002 with sell-out nights at the Tralf. A current edition of the band still is playing local clubs and summer festivals.

          Guitarists Dave Bienik and Bill Shaver joined with Ned Wood of Weekend after Cock Robin broke up to form a band called Dear Daddy that did only original material. One of their tracks was on 97 Rock’s first Buffalo Rocks album in 1981.

          Bienek is now in Granbury, outside Fort Worth, Texas, where people also know him as David Charles. He sings and plays with a band called Lula’s Gun and has a website. Shaver may or may not be the Bill Shaver who lived in rural Holland, south of Buffalo, and died in 2015.

          Keyboardist Jim Sommers built his own recording facility, Loft Studios in Cheektowaga, and has guided a lot of local recording projects.

          Bass guitarist Steve Keenan returned to his native Rochester, became a senior systems analyst at Kodak, adopted the upright bass and began playing jazz and classical music as well as rock. He currently performs with an electrified folky band called Java that’s appearing at the Little Theater in Rochester at 6:30 p.m. March 11.