Dec. 2, 1977 feature: A new version of Talas

 

A legendary Buffalo power trio makes a major transition. 

Dec. 2, 1977 

Talas Gears Up for Big Time 

          The parking lot wouldn’t have been any fuller if they’d been giving away free snowblowers at the discount department store next door. Talas, Buffalo’s reigning rock copy band for the past few years, had regrouped and fans had come from far and wide to check out the new lineup.

          There hadn’t been much time to put it together. Two weeks of practice and a warm-up week at the Gasworks in Toronto. Ready or not, they faced their local premiere on a night the old Talas made its own – Monday at He & She’s, the vast rock music arcade in Fun & Games Park in Tonawanda. To top it all off, the group’s new set of original songs would be broadcast live over WBUF-FM.

          Originals were what held the old Talas back. They didn’t have any, to speak of. On more than one occasion, that fact foreclosed their chances of getting a contract with a record label. As a result, the first area band to do the Tubes’ “White Punks on Dope” in 1974 was still around to do Kansas’ “Carry On, Wayward Son” in 1977.

          The new Talas began by reaffirming that it hadn’t lost the knack of serving up the latest in heavy-music anthems – a hearty, headstrong “Hello There” from Cheap Trick’s second album, thundering through it as if it were made for them. Their set would include Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down,” Bebop Deluxe’s “Sister Seagull” and Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever.”

          With its wall of Marshall amplifiers and guitar-fired rhythm, the new Talas turned out to be not that much different from the previous model. Here was drummer Paul Varga, his vocals having evolved to where they could pierce a lead vault. And next to him, guitarist Dave Constantino, master of the power chord.

          Then everyone’s eyes shifted to stage left, where towering bassist Bill Sheehan used to cavort in his tall platform boots. Sheehan was supposed to be part of another new group, but opted to go with Max Webster, the Canadian band, instead.

          In his place was Dale Croston, a be-moustached former bass-thumper for Rochester’s rock powerhouse Wale. And next time him, guitarist Michael Marconi, a virtual double of Constantino in matching ruffled shirt and green velvet jacket. Marconi was well-matched musically too.

          The double guitars fit together with a dimension and fullness that the old trio couldn’t have attained unless Constantino sprouted another pair of hands. Marconi’s vocals, like Constantino’s, could have used some beefing up to surmount the blazing instrumental attack alone, but the two of them held sway when they got together in the harmonies.

          They played with the fire of a new band and the smoothness of veterans. When it came time for their originals, there was no departure, no nervous mutation of their established style. They simply gave their own tunes the punch and drive they’d given everything else. Whether the new numbers will propel them to glory is a question time will answer. Not too much time either. This is clearly a volatile combination.

          That impression was echoed as Talas and manager Fred Casserta from Starstruck Productions talked about the future later that week.

          “They’re going to be the first band that’s going to bust out of this market,” Casserta predicted. “I can see them being another Foreigner.”

          The band shared his enthusiasm. Marconi, for example, had just quit the faltering Billion Dollar Babies, an outgrowth of Alice Cooper’s old touring band, and saw possibilities when he was home in Rochester for a few days in October.

          “I was keeping my ear to the ground,” he said. “I had a few other things in mind, but they weren’t as exciting. This showed a whole lot more potential.”

          Marconi and bassist Croston, who’d played together in bands in Rochester, were present for the old Talas’ final night at He & She’s, just as Constantino and Varga watched Croston do his last gig with Wale. The trio buried their differences for the finale. They hugged, shook hands, toasted each other with champagne and went out with just a little twinge of regret.

          “A few people were bitter when they heard we were breaking up,” Constantino explained, “but I hope they realize we’re trying to give them what they’re asking for, a group that’ll be nationally successful and is writing songs to be nationally successful.”

          Then the work began. Two weeks of 10- and 12-hour days in a shuttered-up nightclub. They started virtually from scratch. Out went 90 percent of the old songs. There were new ones to be learned – bass and drum combinations, lyrics, harmonies – and new ones to be written.

          When it came to creating tunes, the old Talas and the new Talas were like night and day. Change has proven to be an inspiration. The last rehearsal before Toronto found them one song short of filling out their set of originals, so they sat down, fooled around for about 90 minutes and came up with “Thick Head.”

          “I used to say I couldn’t play with any other guitar player,” Constantino said, “but the first time we got together Michael and I jammed for an hour and a half straight. I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before in other bands. This is the first time I’ve been in a group that did 30 percent original material. When people clap for it, they don’t know how good it makes us feel.”

          The new Talas would like to be doing two originals for each copy tune, but that ratio won’t be effective until after they get an album recorded and switch from nightclubs to concert tours. It might not take long. Among the producers scheduled to look them over is Aerosmith’s Jack Douglas, who was to check them out this week.

          Casserta’s plan is to get them started by working nearby major cities – Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, Boston. Right now, however, they’re still in the area. Tonight it’s the Primitive Scene in Batavia. Then come Lockport’s After Dark Saturday, He & She’s Monday and Tuesday and Bowinkle’s in Depew next Friday.

          “We’re going to do it the classiest and best way we can,” Casserta emphasized. “If we have to starve, that’s what we’ll do. This is the shot.”

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IN THE PHOTO: The four-man version of Talas. Dave Constantino is in front. Standing behind him is Mike Marconi. Paul Varga is on the left and Dale Croston is on the right.

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FOOTNOTE: Talas enjoyed its greatest success after Bill Sheehan came back to the band about a year later. Its self-titled first album was released in 1979 and the group toured with Van Halen in 1980. In 1983, Sheehan, Dave Constantino and Paul Varga, individually, were the first three musicians to be inducted the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame.

          Sheehan, who has gone on to be one of the gods of bass guitar, revived the Talas name briefly in the late 1980s with other players. Meanwhile, he’s played with Van Halen’s David Lee Roth, and put out nine albums his own group, Mr. Big, and another nine with his jazz fusion band, Niacin.

Constantino and Varga have continued to work together, reviving the Tweeds, the band that first brought them success in the 1960s, for more than 10 years, and then with a group called Shyboy, which also is the title of a song from the second Talas album, "Sink Your Teeth into That."

The original Talas reunited in 1997 for a sold-out show in Kleinhans Music Hall, which was recorded and released on Metal Blade Records, did a tour of Japan (where Mr. Big was huge) and came back to Kleinhans for another sold-out show in 1998. They came together again in 2012 for a date in the Hard Rock Café in Niagara Falls that also included another legendary Buffalo band that regrouped for the occasion, the Road.

For Mike Marconi, who left the band when Sheehan came back, Talas was the end of the trail. He told an interviewer in 2012: 

"Frankly, I was getting very tired, very worn. I had been playing in bars – starting at the age of 16, and by the time with Talas I was just getting tired of the whole scene; it was wearing on me. And so really, they kind of did me a favor, because I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to see what it’s like to get a real job,’ because I’d never had one. I always supported myself playing guitar from the time I was 16 years old. 

"I wound up getting married, and getting a job working with a carpet guy, making minimum wage – ‘no experience necessary,’ and next thing I know I have a little boy. So I learned the trade, and went off on my own, had two more kids. And the next thing you know, that was my whole life, I took a totally different road. I was then a family man, a provider, had a nice home ... And that really was the end of my musical career at that point with Talas. It was the last time that I would play in a band."