Aug. 5, 1977 feature: A band called Fantasy

 

Plenty of talent, a well-thought-out career plan and a big head of steam. Did they make it? See the Footnote. 

Aug. 5, 1977 

Fantasy 

          Tom Blenker celebrated Independence Day last year by giving his old band its freedom. All he needed was the name – Fantasy – and he made sure nobody took it with them. He went down to County Hall and registered it. What he wanted to do was build a fresh Fantasy.

          A year has brought Fantasy to the borderline of the stuff dreams are made of. The group’s aggressive, dressy rock and disco favorites set them up as prime fare for adult nightspots like Mean Guys East on Niagara Falls Boulevard, where they finish a stay tonight and tomorrow.

          After that they head off for a couple weeks at the Ramada Inn in Ithaca, followed by what their manager Lenny Licata calls “a long-overdue vacation.” By the time they return to work at the Spectrum on Elmwood Avenue right after Labor Day, they should know whether their first shot at Bigger Things has been a hit or a miss.

          It’s a 45 rpm single, two songs the group wrote, played and produced at Trackmaster Audio’s old Seneca Street studio this spring. A number of things could happen to it:

          – A sales rep for one of Fortune’s top 500 corporations might buy a copy from them between their sets some night and play it for a friend of his in the music business.

          – A disco deejay might get such response to his promotional copy that word of mouth introduces it to the dance circuit.

          – It might be a winner in a local radio station song contest and be included in a best-of album.

          – It might catch the ear of Bill Szymczyk, the Eagles’ producer, or one of dozens of other record industry folks who were sent a copy.

          One side, “Without You,” is a grandiose ballad a la Bee Gees, much in the manner of their most winning stage material. The other side, “My Ocean Lady,” is a love reverie with a guitar solo in it worthy of Steely Dan.

          Fantasy’s right where Tom Blenker imagined it should be after a year. Tight on stage, financially secure and shooting for a break.

          “The money’s there,” he says, “and we do a lot of things I think are important. There’s the presentation – looking well and acting well – and everybody takes that on. I’m a bug about that. I think that’s a big asset to the group.

          “We’ve got a couple good years ahead of us. We’re just starting to understand each other right now. We’re trying to get going on the record route and the concert route. Other people have done it this way. There’s Vicki Sue Robinson. And Gino Vannelli.”

          “Put it this way,” says Mike Blenker, Tom’s brother and the drummer in the group, “we aren’t going to give up.”

          Mike’s as happy-go-lucky as his older brother is businesslike. The two of them did rock bands together here as teenagers, notably Underwood Exchange in the early ‘70s. After dressing up and quieting down in a band called Crystal Revelation, they went their separate ways – Tom with a top touring band from Akron, Ohio, called Rhymes, Mike to the steel plant.

          Music called him back, though. A stint with a jazz group, two years of lessons with local master Louie Marino and finally a lot of one-nighters with a group called Argus, which continues to play some of the same rooms Fantasy does.

          Mike was one of the first players Tom thought of when he decided to rebuild Fantasy. The first was bassist and electronics specialist David Hosie, who had done nearly three years with a commercial rock group called Calaban, married one of that band’s singers (“Leah, the blonde,” he says) and settled down to run his own store and repair shop.

          Hosie contacted one of his mates in Calaban, guitarist Greg Popadaris, in California. Keyboardman Jim Lecksell, who wrote the music and arranged the two songs on Fantasy’s record, was a last-minute addition. A music grad from Fredonia State University College, Tom had seen him playing in another band.

          “One week off from the old Fantasy and we were out with the new Fantasy,” he adds. “It was so abrupt, but it was done systematically. A lot of people thought the new band would be totally different, but the format was the same. It’s just that finally the ideas that should’ve worked became a reality.”

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IN THE PHOTO: No photo of Fantasy with this article, but I found the label of their single online.

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FOOTNOTE: What’s remarkable about Fantasy is that they disappeared with hardly a trace. There’s nothing on the Internet about their record. Their names barely pop up on Google. Even Frank Sansone of J R Productions, who booked them, can’t offer much help.

The only reference to guitarist Greg Popadaris is a recording session he played in the early 1980s at Tonmeister Studio at Fredonia State. Only reference to David Hosie is a death notice from 2007. According to Frank Sansone, he struggled with a chronic ailment. He was just 53.

Frank also provided a clue to keyboardist Jim Lecksell. He works as a club deejay and sometimes does double duty as a cocktail pianist. And now that I have the correct spelling of his name from the label on the 45, I discover that he also tunes and repairs pianos. 

Tom Blenker kept playing music. I found a club listing for him in Gusto in 2004. He died in 2020. As for his brother, Mike, nothing at all.