Dale Anderson's Gusto stories

  Any time Frank Zappa comes to town in the 1970s, I am invariably right there. Oct. 7, 1977 review   Nihilism in Rock Is Old Hat to Zappa             When Frank Zappa’s got an inspiration, the clues aren’t hard to spot. A year ago, there were the disco clothes and the big beat of “Bionic Funk.” This time around he has a black T-shirt with no sleeves and greased-back hair.           As he opens his two-hour concert Thursday night in Memorial Auditorium before about 8,000 rowdy, fireworks-popping fans, he veers off from the daffy “Peaches En Regalia” and settles on the most hideous number from last year’s show – “The Torture Never Stops,” a grisly saga inspired by political developments in South America.           Yes, this is the night of the iron sausage. The New Wave is old hat to Zappa. He’s been making his own rules and thumbing his nose at convention ever since his first album, “The Mothers of Invention Freak Out,” in the mid-1960s.           Even so, it’s hard to kn

  Local bands didn’t enjoy the same spotlight in Gusto that they got in TV Topics. This story was nestled into some spare space on two widely-separated pages in the back of the magazine.   Oct. 7, 1977 How to Evolve A Rock Group             When Don Kraus and Ted Lehman decided to form the newest edition of Pepperwood Greene last spring, they scoured the city for new talent. They put up signs everywhere, which brought them guitarist Paul Miserantino and bassist Joel Thomas. They haunted open mike sessions, discovering singer-songwriter Robin Greene at the Tralfamadore Café. They even walked down Elmwood Avenue asking folks if they could play, which is sort of how they met Andrew Suggs, their new drummer from Memphis .           Kraus and Lehman are past masters at throwing unlikely combinations together. And making them work. They began as a duo – Lehman on guitar, Kraus on clarinet (“Ted & Don, unique folksinging group,” says a four-year-old club ad in their scrapbook).

  Another slice of life served up in a Gusto cover story.   Sept. 30, 1977   Trouble Is, Unlike Picasso, They Can Dent Your Artwork             The urge to paint one’s wagon goes back to man’s discovery that he could extend his personality by rolling it about on wheels. From that moment on, history has abounded with gorgeously appointed carriages. Napoleon had his brocade and his matched horses. Diamond Jim Brady’s personal railroad car was the last word in elegant travel. The automotive age evolved from pin-striping to flames to metalflake creations floating in oceans of angel hair at custom car shows.           But then America discovered the virtues of the lowly, steel-sided delivery van, which has become the most sought-after vehicle in the land. Sitting stern and unadorned on the dealer’s lot, the van is functionalism first and foremost. But with the proper applications and a bit of cash, it can be transformed into a mobile objet d’art .           “A lot of people wou

Under the cover of darkness, a venture into radio’s untamed frontier.   Sept. 23, 1977 Nightlife   3 AM – What’s Happenin’?             The all-night disc jockey is one of the mythic figures of the modern age. Ennobled by lonely, darkened radio offices, freed from constraints of daytime programming, the solitary announcer has the power to take the airwaves and conjure with them.           Deejays have done wild and wonderful things with the night. Public TV raconteur Jean Shepherd started out spinning tales into New York City ’s wee hours in the ‘50s. And it was fitting that the final quest of “American Graffiti’s” young hero ended at the studio citadel of one of the original jive-talking big daddies of rock ‘n roll, a role custom built by Wolfman Jack.           Like everything in broadcasting, there are commercial reasons why nighttime radio is the way it is. For one thing, the major ratings service doesn’t count what happens between midnight and 6 a.m. Neither, for the mos

  A Nightlife story lands on the cover of Gusto. Those who are able to remember anything at all about these boozy nights on Allen Street consider them some of the best times of their lives.   Sept. 2, 1977   Allen Street Boogie   If you wanta know a secret, You’ve got to promise not to tell. And if you wanta get to heaven, You’ve got to raise a little hell … – Ozark Mountain Daredevils             Buffalo ’s longest-running barroom revel was born of the need to get to heaven on a Monday night. Mondays, you see, have traditionally been known as saloon-keepers’ Sabbaths – the day when the wreckage of the weekend is shoveled aside and the customers stay home.           In the crazed, combative summer of 1970, a group of newly returned Vietnam veterans concluded that this arrangement was just too slow. Clearly, something had to be done about Monday. If the city’s most ebullient bartenders and hardiest hangers-out had nothing else to do, why not get them together?   

  Aug. 26, 1977  Cut a Record? Read This             Robert Klein has a comedy routine about being in a high school harmony group that sang in the boys’ room. The echo in there was so intense that they all sounded like Dion & the Belmonts. So they decided to make a record.           Trouble was, when they got to the studio, they discovered to their dismay that they couldn’t recreate their sound. Something was missing. Namely, the tile. Without those tile walls all around them, they were just another bunch of kids with adenoid problems.           Klein and his cohorts aren’t the only ones to get the recording itch. Millions do every year. Just as actors dream of having their names in lights, musicians fantasize about being immortalized on vinyl. But, like Klein, most of them go into a studio with little or no idea of what it takes to do it.           The studio is where the artistic end of the music world meets the business end. A musician goes in with an idea and emerges,

  The man who gave us Star Trek comes down to earth.   Aug. 26, 1977 Gusto   Trekkies, Read On             Gene Roddenberry, the TV producer who created the pioneering Star Trek science fiction series in the ‘60s, showed his home movies in the Niagara Falls Convention Center Thursday night and virtually sold the place out.           Long lines at the box office obliged the organizers to delay the start of the program for half an hour. Meanwhile, inbound cars jammed up for half a mile on the barricaded Robert Moses Parkway , their drivers no doubt wishing for a transporter unit that would beam them to their seats.           Roddenberry’s own coordinates were fixed on good news for followers of the show, which has been rerun almost continually here since 1970. Star Trek II is in pre-production. Shooting of a two-hour movie-of-the-week version will begin late this year. It’ll be done by February.           More than $2 million is being spent on that first episode. “ Paramou