March 26, 1977: Rasputin

 

Everybody with fond memories of McVan’s always mentions these guys. 

March 26, 1977

Rasputin Spelled With $ Signs

Since Band Used Kiss Makeup 

RASPUTIN LOOKS LIKE KISS expanded to a quintet in the big color photo in Paul Steinbruckner’s living room on Union Road in Cheektowaga. As with Kiss, it’s hard – no, impossible – to tell who’s who in Rasputin without the makeup.

          For instance, Paul here. Glance at the picture, then at Paul, then at the picture. It’s no use.

          “Which one are you?”

          “I’m the drummer,” he says.

          “Oh, you’re Peter Criss.”

          “Yeah, it happened to work out that way.”

          Just because everybody in Rasputin happens to match the corresponding member of Kiss, don’t think that this veteran Buffalo bar band is a total Xerox of the group Rolling Stone magazine deems the “pagan beasties of teenage rock.”

          Sure, bassist Ralph Phillips is tongue-wagging Gene Simmons. Guitarist John (Boo) Schmidt is Ace Frehley. And singer Doug Kalosza is Paul Stanley with the star on his eye.

* * *

BUT THERE are differences. Guitarist David Yax is without precedent. Boo does Gene Simmons’ fire-spitting act instead of Ralph. And the group plays selections from a lot of different heavy metal bands, not just Kiss.

          That’s because for five years before Rasputin hit the greasepaint, they’d been struggling to bring to clubs the music kids generally listened to at home. Stuff like Spooky Tooth, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull and Blue Oyster Cult.

          As a result, they saw little action in clubs favoring the Top 40. Instead, they landed a steady gig at McVan’s on Niagara Street and built a cult following. Then, two Halloweens ago, they decided to do Kiss.

          “We were going to do it for one set a night,” Paul says, “but we didn’t realize how much it involved. It takes an hour and a half to put it on and another hour and a half to take it off.”

          “We didn’t see how we could incorporate it into our set,” Ralph puts in, “but it went over so well that we just kept doing it.”

          Rasputin’s career took off. These days they maintain a crew of three roadies (Dave Neal on lights and special effects, Mike Duscherer and Guy Ohlson on sound) and they work a steady five nights a week, carrying their own mirrors and fire extinguishers.

          “Now,” David says, “Rasputin is spelled with dollar signs.”

          Mondays they’re at Joe’s Convention Lounge in Niagara Falls. Tuesdays it’s the Poorhouse West in Hamburg. Wednesdays they hold forth at McVan’s. Weekends they travel.

* * *

TONIGHT THEY’RE at the Fat Cat on Hertel Avenue. Next Friday and Saturday they go to Brush Gardens, Route 16, Chaffee. April 8 finds them at the Four Corners in Silver Springs. They visit the Alleys in Batavia April 9.

          Their manager, John Titak of Artist Talent Agency in Lockport, has sent Rasputin off to acclaim in Detroit and hopes to get them into 25 states, Japan and the Mediterranean. He signed them up after seeing them one night at McVan’s.       

“I’d come to see another band from Ohio,” he says. “What I saw instead was the hottest band in Buffalo. And nobody knew it. Nobody wanted to take a chance on them because there was no absolute money in it at the time.”

* * *

THE GROUP had to weather the retirement of its old singer as well. He was Peter Morath, a teacher, who gave up the band to get married.

          They found Doug, a 23-year-old musician and actor, via the classified ads.

          In a group that trades in fantasies, Doug is the biggest put-on artist of all. The others laugh about antics like the time he conned several different people into crawling on their hands and knees for an alleged lost bottle of Insulin.

          In time, Rasputin expects to alter the Kiss makeup and work more of themselves into the show.

          “We feel that when you go see a band, you should see something,” Paul says, “not just some guys up there playing. You’ve got to have the music plus something.”

          Other groups imitate their choreography and paint, but few can duplicate the fine lines on the makeup, the fire, the smoke, the blood and the costumes, like the bat-winged outfit Paul’s woman, Mary Ann, made for him.

          They go through boxes and boxes of Stein’s greasepaint theatrical makeup, six sticks for $10, same as Channel 7 uses on its weatherboard.

          “We buy them by the case,” Paul says. “We’ve been having problems with them lately. The white’s been cracking like crazy.”

          The biggest hassle is sweat. They have to dab at the beads that come through the greasepaint and the layer of cocoa butter underneath, then touch up the ragged edges between sets.

* * *

SOME OF THEIR problems are humorous – like the people who want to taste the imitation blood off Ralph’s chest. Others are more serious, like when Boo spit flame and his long hair caught fire.

          “I tell everybody the same thing Simmons says – don’t fool around with that stuff,” Boo relates. “We were doing an encore and my hair flew up too close. I got first-degree burns on my face. The makeup saved it.”

          “Somebody put him out with their black leather jacket,” Ralph says. “People thought it was part of the act.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: From left, Doug Kalosza, John (Boo) Schmidt, David Yax, Ralph Phillips and Paul Steinbruckner.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Guitarist John “Boo” Schmidt and drummer Paul Steinbruckner are still playing together in the Stonehouse Rock ’n Blues Band, according to an anonymous post on a McVan’s nostalgia site. Sometimes they go simply by Stonehouse, which is how they’re billed for their next gig Oct. 30 at the Sportsmen’s Tavern as part of the 19th Annual Female Musicians Fighting Breast Cancer Benefit.

The same post on the McVan’s nostalgia site mentions that singer Doug Kalosza and guitarist David Yax both passed away in 1999. By then, Kalosza, who succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 44, had graduated from UB Dental School and had practices in Cheektowaga and Lockport. Comments on the McVan’s Memories page on Facebook note that Kalosza and some of the others had a band called Sailor after the end of Rasputin.

Another post on the McVan’s nostalgia site notes that guitarist John Daly worked at M&T Rug Cleaners, which was owned by Joe Terrose, the guy who owned McVan’s. Joe was my backyard neighbor when I had my third-floor garret apartment on Auburn Avenue in the 1970s.