Nov. 27, 1976: A Niagara Falls/Lewiston band called Piper

 

Another episode in the eternal struggle between a band’s ambitions and the expectations of a club crowd. 

Nov. 27, 1976 

Piper Changes Music Strategy –

Hopes Ride on Original Tunes 

IT’S PIPER’S SECOND NIGHT in the battered finery of a bar and restaurant complex in Niagara Falls, Ont., called the Boarding House and this time around the four of them figure they’ve got to change their strategy.

          “Last night we ran into the most hostile audience,” guitarist Jay O’Rourke was saying as the group gathered in the house they share in Lewiston before the gig.

          “They kept calling for Rolling Stones. Sure, we do a couple of their songs. You have to keep your sanity.”

          The guys in Piper have their own priorities, which include a fistful of highly likeable original tunes and Jay’s showy Bruce Springsteen numbers, but tonight they pull back.

* * *

THE MAIN compromise is the first set. Though it’s not much after 9 p.m., they pack in the acoustic guitar numbers like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” early and it’s not a moment too soon.

          “C’mon, play something funky,” a male voice yells from a side table as Piper switches to electric guitars. That first yell provokes shouts for Led Zeppelin, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and ZZ Top.

          But instead, the band holds the shouters temporarily at bay with a couple original tunes, notable second guitarist Joe Sundram’s “Eulogy” for a cousin who died.

          Then they lower the boom – a steaming rendition of the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” – delivering it as off-handedly as if they’d been asked for the time of day.

          “That’s how this crowd works off their energy,” bass guitarist and singer Fred Moore observes at the break. “They sit there and hassle the band. The next set we’ll have to play some dance music.”

          Piper’s been together for a little more than a year now – long enough to master the art of playing clubs and to chafe under what they have to do to subsist at that level.

          “A lot of emphasis has been taken off our original material,” Jay was saying in Lewiston earlier. “The first six, eight months we were together, it was all originals. Now we’re more commercial than original.”

          Piper’s gotten together over original material, which was all that its predecessor, a Niagara Falls group called Henry Pigeon, had cared about.

          Pigeon turned into Piper after Fred came off the road with a commercial group and hooked up with the band via drummer John Pitarresi, an old bandmate from high school in Niagara Falls.

          The other members of the group included Jay and Joe, who’d met in Lewiston-Porter High School.

* * *

JOE, BORN IN Bombay, India, and son of a Niagara University professor, was student teaching. Jay, whose father is a Carborundum Corp. executive, was one of his students.

          The day the two of them brought their guitars to school, other classes stopped, opened up the room dividers and listened.

          Jay and Joe’s guitars are particularly well coordinated as Piper zips into an Allman Brothers tune to open the second set.

          From there, they sprint through Commander Cody’s “Too Much Fan,” not leaving a gap for hecklers, followed by Pink Floyd’s “Money.”

          Still no dancers as Jay, wearing a hat, finishes with Springsteen’s “Spirits in the Night.”

          Piper’s hopes are riding on a tape of original tunes they recorded in the basement of the communal house in Lewiston. It’s good enough to take fishing for a record contract.

          The other alternative is to go on the road.

* * *

“WE’RE ON the verge of ending our day jobs,” Fred had said in Lewiston. “John left his. Joe’s leaving his. We’re starting to work now for an agent who wants a gimmick, like the Dennison Stars.

          “The Dennison Stars aren’t from England, you know,” he added. “They’re from around here.

          “I went to school with the drummer. We’re more into using film to express our ideas. As far as makeup, we’re not into that.”

          One of their film ideas happened during a group photo session. Along came a hunter, who they talked into pretending to rob them. A sequence of four pictures follows the action.

          “It’s like making your own comics,” Jay observed.

          Piper’s dual guitar attack stumbles at the start of the set when Jay breaks a string in “Bluespower,” but Joe fills the interval with a tasty acoustic number and their reward comes soon after.

          The dancing begins. To the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” but at least they’re finally on their feet for something. The dancers keep going through a medley of Beatles hits. The hecklers have left.

          “I’ve watched them evolve,” says road crewman Jon Adamson, “and to me they’re like a breath of fresh air. The rest of the music now, it’s just too commercial. It’s neither disco or heavy heavy.”

* * *

THE BAND figures more evolution’s in order, namely the addition of a keyboard player, someone who could double on synthesizer.

          “We’re all pretty busy on stage and that cuts down on the showmanship,” Fred says. “We have to add a musician. Maybe we can find a woman keyboard player with roller skates that sings harmony and doubles on saxophone.”

          The second night turns out to be the turning point of Piper’s six-night stay at the Boarding House. By the end of the week, band and patrons are getting along fine. They’ll be asked back.

          “They’d still yell ‘Led Zeppelin’ at us,” Joe reports, “but we got ‘em to see it our way too.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: From left, Joe Sundram, John Pitarresi, Jay O’Rourke and Fred Moore.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: It hasn’t been easy tracking the Piper personnel down on the internet. I thought John Pitaressi would be the easiest to find, but the guy who comes up most often is a Niagara Falls native who became a longtime sports reporter and outdoor columnist for newspapers in Utica and his timeline is all wrong. So now I’m thinking he might be the John Pitaressi at South Shore Physical Therapy in Hamburg.

I'm pretty sure that Joe Sundram lives in Boulder Creek, Calif., and owns Sundram Services, a consulting firm in the health care industry, but not much else about him.

I struck out completely on my search for Fred Moore, but I had better luck with Jay O’Rourke after I started looking up his father, who was renowned as a corporate turnaround executive. That helped determine for sure that Jay is the Jay O'Rourke who emerged in Chicago in the 1980s, playing lead guitar and producing a roots rock group called the Insiders, which had a hit in 1987 on Billboard’s mainstream rock singles chart, “Ghost on the Beach.”

He was mastering engineer for more than 20 releases on Alligator Records and worked with Warren Zevon, Urge Overkill, Liz Phair and Robbie Fulks. In demand as a session guitarist, he has a home recording studio in Chicago and for live dates he played clubs with the Lucky 3 Blues Band, which has turned into the Jay O’Rourke Band. In recent years, he has released three CDs.