Dale Anderson's Gusto stories

  A longtime Buffalo rocker finds a new direction. Nov. 4, 1977  Tom Calandra: Ace Jingle Writer             The college football pep song has turned pro. No longer does a winning big-league team have to settle for mere spoken or written praise. Its prowess can be sung to the rooftops, courtesy of a perky little ditty composed and recorded in a place where gridiron glory has scarcely shined for the past couple autumns.           A recent morning found the man who gave Pittsburgh Steelers fans “Half a Ton of Trouble” and laid “Knockin’ on that Super Bowl Door” on followers of the Los Angeles Rams is down in the basement studio of his North Buffalo home. He’d been putting the finishing touches on a number that urges parents to get their children immunized.           He’s Tom Calandra, a familiar figure in the local music scene si...

  When you love an artist madly, you come to a show expecting that it will transcend troubles and cares. But sometimes troubles get the upper hand. Oct. 29, 1977 It’s Bad Night All Around For Phoebe Snow              Phoebe Snow never has a bad night, her bus driver responds backstage in Shea’s Buffalo Friday after the show. But Toronto was better, he adds. Tonight, he says, she was a little tired.           The main question, however, concerns how to get to the Boardwalk Café & Electric Company on Delaware Avenue , where a dinner party awaits, when the singer emerges from her dressing room.           She’s smaller than she looks on stage, 5 feet plus her high shoes. This highly-evolved stylist has become a kid in jeans and dark jacket. She says hi and says she was tired and the size of the crowd didn’t help either.     ...

  These days it’s hard to fully appreciate what a phenomenon Mulligan’s on Hertel Avenue was when it was in full flower in 1977. To take its measure, Gusto needed two reporters and a cover story in three segments. Barbara Snyder did the serious work, setting the scene and providing the feminine point of view. As for me, I strolled in, ordered up a cocktail and made myself at home. Café Society   By Barbara Snyder             Mike Militello doesn’t manage his nightclub, he merchandises it, like a fine department store.           Armed with ideas from the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue , the galleries of the Museum of Modern Art and the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine, Mike makes sure Mulligan’s Café and Fine Arts Emporium keeps step with the latest of “in” fashions.           And like the fashion industry he emulates, Mulligan’s cr...

  One of the concerts that totally blew my impressionable young mind in the mid-1960s was the Blues Project at Floral Hall on the Chautauqua County Fairgrounds in Dunkirk. Little did I suspect at the time that there was a Buffalo connection. Oct. 21, 1977 Music as a Craft            Andy Kulberg, at age 21, was on the front line of a musical revolution. It was 1965 and he was bassist and flute player for the Blues Project, a New York City-based sextet that turned Greenwich Village from the folk revival to rock. Kulberg’s skipping-along instrumental “Flute Thing” brought the electric flute to rock ‘n roll.           Two years and three albums later, the group was broken up. After introducing thousands of musicians to the new magic, the members of the Blues Project went off to pursue separate visions of it. Some did well – keyboardman Al Kooper founded Blood, Sweat & Tears. And some just kept plu...

  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 thu...

  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 o...