Dec. 31, 1979 review: Pat Benatar at Harvey and Corky's Stage One


Sending out the ‘70s with a bang.

Dec. 31, 1979 

Pat Benatar Gets a Really Warm Welcome

         Somebody pinned a big “Welcome Back to Buffalo, Pat” button on tiny rock singer Pat Benatar Sunday night and what a return trip it turned out to be.

         Benatar has sufficiently impressed the local folks as an opening act back in November. For this – one of the few shows, major or minor, to enliven the holidays – Harvey and Corky’s Stage One had sold out a day in advance.

         The little song belter from Long Island proved that her first sizzling stop here was no fluke. If the club weren’t so intolerably sweaty and airless, there’s no telling how many times she would’ve been summoned back for an encore.

         How hot was it? It was so hot that a roadie spent both encore numbers (same ones as November – The Rascals’ old “You Better Run” and Richie Valens’ even older “Come On, Let’s Go”) fanning the drummer with a big piece of cardboard.

         But Benatar and her band were even hotter than the club. Temperatures rose the minute she stepped out in her purple and black zebra-stripe bodysuit.

         Trim and diminutive, with wide eyes and a wider smile, she seemed a bit too sweet and modest for the hard attack of her songs and lyrics. Only when the set closed with her single, “Heartbreaker,” did her eyes match the anger in the music.

         Her hard-driving quartet, however, showed no mercy. Blasting through triple columns of speakers, they cranked metabolisms up even further with bold and showy solos by greaser guitarist Neil Geraldo and drummer Glen Hamilton.

         Only a professionally trained singer could stay in front of those four guys without blowing up her vocal cords completely. That’s a credit to Benatar. Her three-octave range was flawless.

         Not so flawless were the special effects on her voice. For instance, on “We Live for Love,” her answer to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” Benatar’s ethereal echo turned foggy and fed back. Things were better when they left her voice alone.

         Opening was an outrageous new Buffalo quartet called the Toys, which might best be described as a punked-up version of Cheap Trick.

         They perpetrated their outrages with great skill and enthusiasm. After several original numbers, they assaulted Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” and revised Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” in ways that can’t be recounted in a family newspaper.

         They left the sell-out crowd shouting for more. A few more exhibitions like that and they’ll be Buffalo’s first phenomenon of the ‘80s. They appear next at McVan’s on Thursday.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Pat Benatar in her zebra stripes. 

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: The next time Pat Benatar came to Buffalo, in September 1981, she headlined the Aud with David Johansen as the opener. By then she’d been on the cover of Rolling Stone. Here's what she and her band played that night at Stage One, according to setlist.fm:

If You Think You Know How to Love Me

So Sincere

I Need a Lover

My Clone Sleeps Alone

In the Heat of the Night

We Live for Love

No, You Don't

Just Like Me

Heartbreaker

(encores)

You Better Run

Come On, Let's Go

         This was an early glimpse of the Toys, who were quite the sensation. At the heart of things were drummer Kevin Starr, a/k/a Kevin K, and guitarist Rocky Starr, a/k/a Alan K and Kevin Rat, who originally had a punk band called Aunt Helen.

         As their bio on the 13th Street Records website relates, they brought guitarist Mick Tyler and bassist Joel Slazyk, a/k/a Meat Cleaver, aboard in the summer of 1979 and "word quickly spread about their outlandish theatrics and dynamic stage presence. This was not your usual hardcore, angry punkers a la Sex Pistols – not at all. This quartet (was) more like a cross between Alice Cooper, the Dead Boys and The Tubes. On any given night you could expect to see toy dolls being hacked apart during the Alice Cooper song 'Dead Babies,' mannequins being blown up, objects lit on fire or Meat Cleaver (his name originating from the fact he used to dress up in a butcher’s outfit) playing in his underwear. You could always count on ... Mick Tyler doing his 'Elvis Fuck-up' impression, in which he paid homage to The King by reworking the lyrics to 'All Shook Up' to 'All Fucked Up' ... rolling around on the stage floor shaking and enacting a drug induced frenzy."

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