Archival Buffalo News feature articles

Kiss at the peak of its powers and popularity.   Jan. 26, 1978 review Fiery ‘Kiss’ Melts Ice Out of NHL Territory             What a difference a night makes. A mere 24 hours earlier, it was sudden death overtime in Memorial Auditorium. Wednesday finds the NHL All-Stars gone with nary a trace, leaving only the Wales and Campbell signs on a scoreboard that’s now hung with extra speakers.           This time the attraction is fire, not ice. Kiss, the most popular rock band ever to paint its faces, packs more pyrotechnics into its act than anyone else around. The Aud is its 43rd straight sell-out.           Though no official figure is available, it’s quite possible that the announcement of a record crowd is correct. With standees packed shoulder to shoulder all the way from the fence in front of the stage to the back of the floor, ...

  A lunch at Chef’s Restaurant that’s stuck around in my memory for 45 years.   Jan. 21, 1978 feature/review   Meat Loaf’s Powerful Rock Is Sizzling Despite the Cold             “Don’t tell Steinman about the weather forecast,” the rock singer Meat Loaf advises as we get ready to disembark into a drift outside a downtown Italian restaurant Friday. “He’ll do something crazy. His idea of perfect weather is 70 degrees and overcast.”           Songwriter and keyboardman Jim Steinman is totally unprepared for the depths of winter hereabouts. And since the Meat Loaf tour is about to veer toward the sunny South, he doesn’t want to prepare. He wraps his head in a hotel towel and slip-slides to the door in his Adidas sneakers.           The heavy snow and the storm warnings don’t bode well for the latest chapter in the odyssey that...

  Too soon gone, Sinéad O’Connor. When she made her first U.S. appearance at Buffalo State College in 1988, the reviewing duties fell upon one of the stringers, Jeff Johns. Here’s his report:   March 24, 1988 Sinéad O’Connor Impressive in U.S. Debut             “The Lion and the Cobra” proved to be a fitting title for Sinead O’Connor’s debut album, as she embodied those mystical beasts Wednesday night in her U.S. concert tour debut in Buffalo State College’s Student Union Social Hall.           Although the stage setting is minimalist in approach, O’Connor’s stage presence is massive. With a stunning voice and delivery, she is at once sly and smooth, like the cobra, and then she strikes out with the strength of a lion’s roar.           Although her movements are kept to a minimum, she proves to be a charismatic focal point, de...

  Tony Bennett would not be with us much longer – we all knew that – but I still couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of loss when I woke up to hear Scott Simon talking about him in the past tense today on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” I never met him or reviewed one of his shows here in Buffalo , but one day 38 years ago I got a chance to talk with him on the phone.   Gusto Events & Openings Sept. 20, 1985   Two Times an Artist           “It gives me great balance,” singer Tony Bennett says of his newly-recognized avocation – painting. “I’ve been sold out all over the world since ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco ’ and now, to have another career. Painting’s such a quiet thing and the theater’s so extroverted. But I’m not a Sunday painter. I do it every day – in the hotel, on my way to New York or maybe waiting in an airport. I take this portable equipment with me. I committed myself 27 years ago to become, hopefull...

  1977 was more memorable than most years in the rock music realm. Here’s a summing up.   Jan. 6, 1978 Sunday feature 1977: From the Critics’ View             Rock and popular music was full of ferment here during the previous year. The event that loomed largest, however, was the Blizzard of ’77. Virtually every performer who took the local stage paused somewhere to say something like: “You folks sure had a lot of snow, didn’t you?”           Inevitably, they’d get applause for that. The only one who got to see just how much snow we really had was Bruce Springsteen, who trekked through the driving ban into Kleinhans Music Hall Feb. 9 with his E Street Band for a rousing couple of hours that probably hastened the spring thaw.           Springsteen was the first entertainer to slide in after the Blizzard. Harvey & Corky had t...