Dale Anderson's Gusto stories

  If the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame is looking for another candidate to induct, this man is available.   Aug. 19, 1977 Big Band: Young Upstart             Big jazz bands have gotten almost as rare as Stanley Steamers. The ones that survived the bop era and the rock ‘n roll deluge are mostly shepherded by senior citizens like Count Baise and Stan Kenton and Lionel Hampton. When a new one shows up – like the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band a couple years back – it’s welcomed like one of those Japanese infantrymen who didn’t know the war was over.           There’s one place, however, that the big-band spirit still flourishes. That’s in the schools. Any high school or college with a serious music department is more than likely to have rounded up its most adventurous players and put them in an ensemble much like the old big bands. Stage bands, they’re called.    ...

  Hot pursuit of the next Gusto cover story leads to another amusement park.   Aug. 19, 1977 Skateboarding             All it takes to slide into America ’s latest craze is to live in close proximity to someone too young in body or spirit to have any respect for the laws of gravity. Give them a piece of pavement and off they go, riding a device that for all practical purposes is a suicide machine. They make it look so simple.           It’s estimated that 20 million have become hooked on the precarious joys of skateboarding since the boom began in California two years ago. That state is now paved over with skateboard parks, all full of rolling daredevils. There’s even talk of giving skateboarders observer status at the next Olympic Games.           The components have been around for a long time. The Hawaiians fashioned the firs...

                                                                                                   Aug. 12, 1977 Rock            The people who make Barbie dolls must have taken over the Top 40. The charts have treated us to an endless summer of cute, cuddly Peter Framptons, Peter McCanns, Shaun Cassidys, Stephen Bishops and David Dundases. It’s enough to make a serious rocker sell his AM radio for scrap.           But heart-throbs, after all, are one of the constants of the music business, like bread in the supermarket. Since the current batch devotes itself to exploitation instead of breaking new ground, sooner or later it’ll run out of yeast.   ...

  One of the joys of writing Gusto cover stories was the chance to get away from daily deadlines and stretch out into something that would include interviews, research and personal perspective. Here’s my first ride along that trail.   Aug. 12, 1977  Roller Coaster             First the metal bar locks down in front of your chest. It’s kind of reassuring, watching the attendants check them all out, but to set the mind completely at rest it would take a parachute or at least one of Ralph Nader’s air bags.           It’s different on the Matterhorn roller coaster in Disneyland . There you relax, secure in the knowledge that Old Walt wouldn’t let you get hurt. Neither would the folks at Crystal Beach, but as the Comet rolls away from the platform, all the old reassurances get shaky.           The first wave of panic sets in as t...

  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 “...

  Not all of the fun on the barroom beat was at night.   Aug. 5, 1977  Merlin’s Magic Strikes Out             The Rutherford B. Hayes administration 100 years ago left two enduring doodles on the American tablecloth. One was the Civil Service system. The other was major league baseball.           For some reason, though, standard history books seem to gloss over the question of why baseball suddenly became so popular back then. Thirty-odd years after it was invented and pow! – it’s big time. Occasionally, the historians will drop a hint. Something like: “Widely played by veterans returning home from the Civil War.”           How much more straightforward it would be if historians could bring themselves to say our forefathers were out there demolishing kegs of beer. When great-grandpa told great-grandma he was going down to t...

  A legendary hangout.   July 29, 1977   The Locker Room             The first time the Locker Room, 1389 Delaware Ave. just north of Gates Circle , made culinary history was the year of the Pan American Exposition. Legend has it that President McKinley’s ambulance drivers stopped by at what was then Gaughan’s (correction, it was Gohn’s) for some of the kitchen’s newly-invented roast beef on kimmelweck sandwiches.           There’s no horse-drawn caissons double-parked at the curb for the first day of Elmer & Vi’s Famous Chili Dogs, but nevertheless there’s a lot of folks taking advantage of the fact that it’s a nice day to linger over lunch and plot out the pleasures of the weekend.           They fill most of the tables, front and back, and line the length of the old mahogany bar. There’s enough room, however, to step...