Feb. 14, 1976: Record promo men Bruce Moser and Barry Lyons
In which we meet a couple guys who went on to become major movers in the music industry.
Feb. 14. 1976
'Superfans Get New Hits Played on Radio
AS A RULE, record promotion men don’t
have to display any more basic qualities than any other soldiers of fortune do.
All they have to be is totally
dedicated and totally cynical at the same time – an attitude that’s best
developed via a career in radio.
So the first time I laid eyes on Bruce
Moser 18 months ago in a ticket line at Artpark, I wondered whether he’d cut
it.
The guy’s too nice, I suspected.
Altogether too innocent and young – he was 23 then – to be out there battling
on the front lines of the music biz.
He certainly didn’t fit the rule. No
radio experience, aside from listening to it. Bruce’s main qualification is
that he’s a fan. No, not just a fan – a superfan.
He’d been a singer with a group called
The Restless. He’d collected more than 1,000 albums and kept a scrapbook of
every rock concert he’d attended since 1965.
His attic bedroom on Buffalo’s East
Side is papered with countless pictures of his favorites – Beatles, Rolling
Stones, Joni Mitchell (lots of Joni Mitchell), Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young and
Jim Morrison, among others.
After he got his degree in history
from UB, he did what any self-respecting superfan would do.
He found the biggest pile of records
in Western New York – giant Transcontinent Record Sales in
The step from warehouse man to promo
man came because Bruce is not one to let a gripe go undeclared.
He took his complaints to
Transcontinent president Leonard Silver, who looked him over and pegged him for
bigger things.
* * *
SO
BRUCE got a
company station wagon with 100,000 miles on it, a corner of the warehouse for a
desk, an ever-swelling pile of deejay record samples, a phone, a territory from
here to
Currently, there’s
“After all,” Bruce shrugs, “somebody’s
got to get the hits on the radio.”
That’s the job, basically. Bruce pays
weekly visits to major stations here and in
Which isn’t easy. Some weeks as many
as 100 singles come out and radio stations generally add only two or three
records to their playlists.
* * *
OFTEN
THE success
or failure of a record depends on whether a promo man can get it played and the
promo man gets blamed if he can’t.
Bruce says he’s heard every one of the excuses on the Top 40 Reasons Why We Can’t Play It list beside his desk. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm and persistence have worked small wonders.
He got Eric Andersen onto local Top 10
lists last year, broke the Bay City Rollers here ahead of the rest of the
country, established Ambrosia and Crack The Sky as local progressive favorites
and Supertramp as a local sensation.
That’s not all. Whenever someone like
Melissa Manchester, Dan Hill or Charlie Daniels is in town, Bruce hustles them
around to the stations to meet deejays and do interviews, all of which helps
their records.
Daniels gave Bruce a gold record for
making
For local-grown Andersen, Bruce
arranged for a key to the city from Mayor Makowski.
* * *
OFTEN,
SIDEKICK
Barry Lyons rides along.
Barry’s been in the music business
since he was 4. His father, a record distributor here in the ‘50s, runs Midtown
Record Stores, a 22-outlet chain that stretches from
“I made up grab bags for him when I
was 8,” Barry says. “I got a penny a grab bag. My record was one day when I
made $8.48.”
Barry got a degree in cinematography
from
“I was clerk for three days,” he says,
“and then they made me manager. It was run like a retail store.
“You did your own ordering. I managed
that record department for two long years. Ooooh, how did I do it?”
From there he went to Transcontinent,
where he was in charge of merchandising and distributing.
Essentially, Bruce gets the records
played and Barry gets them into the stores.
* * *
THESE
DAYS
Barry’s handing national marketing and merchandising for Transcontinent’s
fledgling
Barry’s a superfan too, generally a
more vehement one than Bruce.
He’s not quick to forgive a bad word about his raves (notably the Dudes) or a slight of DJM’s current rock release –
ex-Fleetwood Mac member Danny Kirwan’s “Second Chapter.”
“My ultimate interest … well, I’m a
fan more than anything else,” Barry says. “To boil it down, I heard rock ‘n
roll and I lost control.”
“Me too,” says Bruce. “Say there’s somebody you’ve been a fan of for 10 years and you get a chance to help them and meet and work with them. That’s what makes it all worthwhile for me.”
* * * * *
IN
THE ILLUSTRATION: Barry Lyons, left, and Bruce Moser, center, sing promotional praises
of Danny Kirwan’s “Second Chapter” album to WYSL music director Harv Moore. It
took a while, but the station added Kirwan’s single, “
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: Bruce Moser is a beloved
figure in
Bruce and Doug found their groove in
promoting to the FM rock stations on “the Thruway chain” from
Barry Lyons went on to work for record
labels that mostly favored the kinds of music he loves. Beginning in 1978, it was
Elektra/Asylum, where he was Midwest regional promotion man, based in
Onward to a couple years with Irving Azoff’s Giant
Records, where he was VP of rock promotion. Then four years at Polygram, running the
rock departments, first at Polydor, then at
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