Archival Buffalo News feature articles

            In which an object that’s not easily moved meets an irresistible force with red hair:   July 15, 1972   ‘December’ in Sunshine All Year Long   DECEMBER , that’s the name of the group, is wailing some Janis Joplin song at the club on Buffalo ’s upper West Side . December is all fancied up in tuxedoes. And wearing those little bow ties. All except the singer, whose ruffled blouse is open at the throat.         “Yes, I’m rea-day,” she and the guitarist and the bass guitarist are doing in this rich little Three Dog Night harmony on the Pacific Gas & Electric song.           When Big Fred Casserta, assistant to booking agent Fred Saia, talked about December, he mentioned that Dolly Durante was a potent singer, but he didn’t say how potent. * * * ON STAGE , she cuts a commanding figure, long red hair and all. And she has a real belt-it-out voice, low...

            The problems that Ann Harris and the members of her mass chorus are addressing here, unfortunately, are still with us.     July 1, 1972   Going Beyond Anger to Black Awareness   Joy, Power Harmonize Within Imani Music           Before you get down to other awarenesses in the Humboldt YMCA’s tiny upstairs gym, you have to get past the awareness of the gym itself.           The Imani Music Workshop knows how to do it.           One dose of the rollicking churchiness of “Swing Down Chariot,” the opening song, and you forget about the yellow-painted bareness of the place because by now the music has got you feeling good.           Maybe that’s why Ann Harris waits before she talks. Nothing before “Swing Down Chariot” (Ann wrote the song), but when it’s finished she leans into the mic...

  Here’s the man who achieved renown as the Polka King back when he was still just a prince. More about him in the Footnote.   June 17, 1972 Is Polish Music Revival Shaping Up in Buffalo ?   “PLEASE EXCUSE me,” Jan Lewandowski says as the pierogi arrive. “I must eat before the show.” There’s half an hour left before Jan and his two sidemen take the stage at Buffalo’s Polish Village on Broadway, so he turns to his plate while drummer Andrew Lochocki, who’s 31, tells how he knew Jan originally. Seems they both were in intermediate music school together in the beautiful Baltic port city of Gdansk, back before they lost track of each other when they went on to separate colleges in Warsaw. Andrew got into the University of Warsaw Music School, best music school in all Poland , and earned a PhD, while Jan took to a college of advanced drama. * * * HOW THEY MET again is something of a global coincidence. Until three years ago both had good arts-entertainment ...

            And now for something completely sweet and innocent:   June 10, 1972 ‘Nite Riders’ Follow the Beatles Trail Fame Is Their Goal, Too   SOME OF THE most idyllic moments on TV these days come in shows about rock groups. Like The Partridge Family. It’s the stuff that dreams are built on.         The Beatles started it all. Before them, rock was anti-social, the root of all evil. But then along came “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!” and suddenly being a rock star looked like the best riff on earth.         Fantasy, yes, but very real fantasy. I mean, all you had to do was make it and you could do anything you wanted. Girls, clothes, big houses, cars, fun. You could goof on the whole world. Nobody knows how many frustrated teenage guys saw those movies and went out to find salvation by buying electric guitars.         T...

  My companion on this excursion to one of the far corners of Erie County  was Frank Maraschiello, who did the T-shirts for the Institute for Rock ‘N Roll Studies.  Since I was ostensibly a single guy again at this point, it looks like I ran into him on a Saturday night when I was hanging out in a bar.  June 3, 1972 Okra Rock Group Finds Own Style and Harmony   CALL IT a stroke of pure luck. Just as I’m ringing up all my after-midnight energies for the long run out Broadway – some 25 miles to Alden – up saunters Frank.         “OK if I come along?” he wants to know.         Having Frank along – in full beard and some esoteric T-shirt he silkscreened by the dozens for UB concerts – is like having an extra adrenal gland.         The object of this mission is to hear a band named Okra. “What about them?” Frank asks. “Any good?”   ...

  For anyone whose nerve endings were nourished in 1972 by thought-stimulating rock music on the airwaves, this development was a major catastrophe:   May 20, 1972 Free-Form Rock Radio Is Tied by New Rules   ALL ACROSS the nation, progressive rock FM stations are going through their most significant metamorphosis since they started playing “underground” music back in 1966-67. After steadily gaining popularity while acting as a free-form non-competitive alternative in a system ruled by tightly-formatted AM Top 40 rock, the progressives now are succumbing to pressures to be “more commercial.” The result has been the adoption of lists of top albums from which the deejays are required to make their selections. And restrictions on deejay talking – a style which gave the progressives points in the Los Angeles and Houston rating sheets. The format was adopted at Buffalo ’s progressive WPHD-FM on Monday, April 24, prompting one announcer to quit on the air. Three o...