KIRBY STARS SHINE BRIGHT IN HIS HEART

 On its 10th anniversary, assistant GM looks back on those that have graced the Kirby stage

By ALAN K. STOUT

Times Leader Staff Writer
September 15, 1996    

 WILKES-BARRE -- From wonderfully warm, down-to-earth icons to pompous, ego-maniacs, John Cardoni has seen them all in his decade of work at the F.M Kirby Center for the Performing Arts. As assistant general manager and technical director of the venue, Cardoni has been dealing with some of the world's top entertainers for more than 10 years. Through it all, he's been charmed by George Burns, entertained until the wee hours of the morning by Rodney Dangerfield and slugged in the face by comedian Hal Roach.

One thing he makes clear, however - the good experiences have far outweighed the bad.

 “There's some wonderful stories that come to mind,” says Cardoni, reflecting on the center's 10th anniversary this month. He says most of the big stars who have performed at the venue have arrived with no big, Hollywood attitudes, and offers as a prime example Wayne Newton's willingness to help hang the stage lights.

 “Newton's lighting company's truck was held up somewhere south of Washington,” says Cardoni. “They'd had a blowout of a tire or something, so we decided we'd make use of the Kirby's lighting system for the event - which meant we had to re-hang all of the equipment.”

Cardoni says he and his crew, plus the union and road crew were discussing what to do when the star of the show arrived on the scene. “Wayne came up with a pair of blue jeans on and a crescent wrench in his hand and said ‘What can I do to help?’”

Rodney Dangerfield, says, Cardoni, is just as zany off stage as on.

“There's always something happening with him,” he says, telling the story of how he, Dangerfield and the show's promoter were discussing Dangerfield's interest in opening a few comedy clubs throughout the country. Dangerfield was asking about Wilkes-Barre, and Cardoni told him about a recently vacated restaurant right on Public Square.

 “Oh, that would be perfect,” said Dangerfield. “We've got to go look at it.”

 At 1 a.m., Cardoni, Dangerfield and the promoter headed out to the square, where Dangerfield enthusiastically began envisioning plans for his comedy club.

 “Kids were cruising the square - this was a Saturday night - and they're yelling  ‘Hey, Rodney,’ ” says Cardoni. “ ‘Hey yourself,’ ”  he'd yell back. “I'm coming to Wilkes-Barre.' He just stood there yelling at kids as they drove by. We were out there until 2:30 in the morning before he finally wound down and said ‘OK, I gotta go have dinner.’”

Cardoni says rumors of Diana Ross's rude behavior before her 1990 Kirby show are completely untrue.

“She was a lovely lady to deal with,” he says. “She very much treasures her privacy - but other than that - once she came into the building, she was demure. She introduced herself, went down to the dressing room, came up, hung out with the crew for a while, did her soundcheck - no different that the hundreds of artists that have been through here.”

Cardoni names pianist/comedian Victor Borge, who appeared at The Kirby in September of 1986, as one his favorite performers to grace the stage during the venue's early days.

“I've always admired Victor Borge from when I was a child watching him on television,” says Cardoni. “To actually have him here to perform was a wonderful moment for me, personally. He was remarkably pleasant.”

Cardoni says Borge also had a wonderful sense of dry wit and was obviously unimpressed with the Kirby's then brand new 7-foot grand piano.

“He walked over to it, played a few keys and said ‘Oh, look, a toy piano’ and walked away. That told me what he thought of that particular brand.”

The unpretentious demeanor of mime great Marcel Marceau also left a deep impression.

“He behaved in such an unassuming way,” says Cardoni, “yet this is somebody that was probably responsible more than anyone for teaching the art of mime and mimicry in the world. Here he was in Wilkes-Barre - he just walked in the stage-door carrying his own suitcase.”

Cardoni says Bill Cosby packed a bunch of Abe's hot dogs for his return trip to Philadelphia, and David Copperfield's stage-smoke effects once set off the Kirby's fire alarms. “David didn't realize they were going off,” he says. “He though it was another sound effect from his show, so he just kept going.”

Of the hundreds of shows that Cardoni has helped produce at the Kirby, only two entertainers stand out in his mind as being extremely difficult. The first, he says, is rock 'n roll pioneer Chuck Berry.

Berry's contract, says Cardoni, was loaded with bizarre clauses designed to earn him extra cash. Berry required obscure musical equipment for each show, and if the venue didn't have it, they could rent it from him, which he conveniently carried on his tour bus. When Cardoni was able to come up with all of his demands, Berry seemed peeved.

“I admire Chuck Berry's music very much,” says Cardoni, “but his whole approach to this facility was that this was a backwater town and he was doing us a favor by coming in.”

Cardoni says Berry gave a shortened, generally lifeless performance and then stormed out of the building.

One performer went a step further in his rude behavior. Irish comedian Hal Roach actually struck Cardoni.

“He punched me flat in the mouth in the lobby,” he says. “He didn't want to pay his merchandising percentage of sales tax. The state of Pennsylvania requires tax to be collected on non-clothing items. I don't have any control of that. That's the law. I was about to turn to my house manager and tell him that we'd pay the tax and it wasn't worth arguing with this guy, and as I turned, he slugged me, grabbed his money, and ran to the dressing room and locked himself in.”

Still, Cardoni says that “two (bad incidents) out of 10 years and over 1,500 shows isn't too bad.” He describes the 1991 performance by the late George Burns as particularly special. In March of that year, Cardoni underwent open heart surgery and nearly died on the operating table. Following the operation, he was told he'd need up to 11 weeks of recovery time at home. But George Burns was scheduled to perform at the Kirby in April.

"I decided that this was an opportunity I didn't want to miss,” remembers Cardoni, setting the Burns show as his goal to return to work.

Without Cardoni knowing it, one of the stage hands had told Burns of his recent surgery and that it was his first night back at The Kirby.  Soon, Cardoni was being summoned to Burns' dressing room.

“I heard you had heart surgery,” the nearly 100 year old entertainer said. “Have a cigar, kid ...

"You've got a long way to go."

(Originally published in The Times Leader in September of 1996 as part of the paper's coverage noting the 10th anniversary of the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts.)

 Jett’s set for no-frills rock show

Rocker will play at Tink’s on Sunday

By ALAN K. STOUT
Times Leader Staff Writer
April 26, 1996

  "It was like you were in the eye of the hurricane," says Joan Jett, recalling the spring of 1982 when her single, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," hit number-one on the country's Hot 100 singles chart.

  "You'd see Billboard and things like that and it was exciting - but you didn't really know what was going on or how people's views of you were changing. The Blackhearts were this punk garage band that nobody would even deal with, then all of a sudden we have this number-one song and we're mainstream. It's all perception. We didn't change a thing."

  With more than 20 years of professional experience under her belt, it could be said that the hard-rocking, straight-shooting Jett still hasn't changed a thing. From playing in a national touring band at age 15 to scoring a number-one hit single and more recently, becoming an outspoken leader of women's safety issues, Jett's career has been marked by a sense of contemporary validity and progression, while never straying too far from her early punk roots.

  Her career began in 1975 as a member of the all-girl group The Runaways. When Jett was only 15, the band was signed to a national recording contract, and by the time the group dissolved in 1978, they'd toured the United States, part of that time opening for the Ramones.

  Jett says that although she and other members of the group were extremely young and were often perceived as an industry-created project, the music was always paramount to the band. She says the fact that most critics never could get past their sex-pot image was disturbing.

  "That was really frustrating," she says. "We had the enthusiasm to talk about the music and people always got around it - I guess (they were) threatened by teenage girls that wanted to play rock 'n' roll ... As soon as we let people know that it wasn't a phase -- that this was something we wanted to do - that's when people got strange."

  Although the group was frequently panned by critics and ignored by radio, time has allowed Jett to recall that period with fondness.

  "The thing that I remember overall is that we had a good time and I really enjoyed myself," she says. "It was a lot of work because we were always on the road, and when we weren't on the road, we were making albums."

  In 1978, The Runaways disbanded, and in 1981, Jett's solo debut, “Bad Reputation" was released. In late '81 came Joan Jett & The Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," with the single of the same name soaring to the top of the charts.

  Jett continued to record and tour throughout the '80s, going gold with 1983's “Album,” and platinum with 1988's “Up Your Alley,” which featured the top-10 "I Hate Myself for Loving You." She hit the top-40 again in 1990 with a cover of the AC/DC classic "Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)."

  More recently, Jett has worked on a project called Evil Stig, a band made up of members of The Gits, a Seattle group whose lead singer, Mia Zapata, was raped and murdered. Jett, who was living in Seattle at the time, dedicated her video "Go Home" - a song about being stalked - to Zapata, and began dedicating the song to her at live shows.

  Jett later befriended the band and played with them on a short tour, singing Mia's parts. Benefit shows were held to raise money to finance a private investigation into Zapata's murder, and the shows were then recorded and released as an album. Her murder also inspired the formation of Seattle's “Home Alive” program, a women's self-defense program. "I thought it was really wonderful that something positive could come out of such a tragic thing," says Jett.

  Currently, Jett is having success with her rendition of "Love Is All Around," the theme of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. ESPN asked her to record the song to promote women's basketball during the NCAA tournament, and now, radio has begun spinning the track.

  "I was more than happy to help," she says. "I'm a big sports fan and I'm an advocate of women doing what they want to do."

  Jett says those heading to Sunday's show in Scranton will see a no-frills rock 'n' roll show, with a wide selection of material spanning her whole career.

  "It's straight forward," she says. "No flash-pods or anything like that. It's just us and the audience ... Hopefully it will be hot enough for some sweating - to me, that's very important."

IF YOU GO:

Who: Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Where: Tink’s, 519 Linden Street, Scranton
When: Sunday, April 27
Tickets: $8
Info: (570) 346-8465

 

 

 

Making their own way 

Mere Mortals strike a chord with original music

By ALAN K. STOUT
MUSIC ON THE MENU
APRIL 19, 1996

Billy Lieback, drummer of the band Mere Mortals, has simple advice for any group considering playing original music.

“If they like it, they come back,” he says. “If they don’t - it’s just like anything else - they don’t come back. Obviously, we’re doing something right. ”

Obviously.

Flashback to December 1995: The recently re-formed Mere Mortals wins “Best Original Band” in Sound Choice II, The Times Leader’s second annual reader’s poll.

Update to April 1996: The Mere Mortals new album, “Grin” is completed; a record release party is planned for Saturday night at Casey’s in Wilkes-Barre.

A steady following of local fans continues to grow, the band opens for The Badlees before a crowd of 1,400, is added to the bill of the Wilkes-Barre

Music Festival, and the new album is featured on WZMT-FM’s “Cellar Full of Noise.”

“Doing something right” is an understatement. Simply put, this band is rollin’.

“Grin” is the follow-up to the band’s 1992 debut “In Search of Simple Things.” Self-produced, the album was recorded from June 1995 until March 1996 at Sound Investments in Scranton and was engineered by Tom Borthwick and Joe Wegleski. Vocalist Eddie Appnel says the band is pleased with the end result of their second voyage into the studio.

“It’s a really honest record,” he says. “We can still present the songs live. We didn’t over-produce it.”

Production, says Lieback, is one of the great joys in recording an independently released album.

“Being that we’re not signed with a record company, we may as well (enjoy) the freedom while we can,” he says. “We produced our own instruments and got the sounds that we wanted.”

 Formed in 1991, The Pittston-based Mere Mortals include Appnel, vocals, acoustic guitar; Lieback, drums, percussion and backing vocals; Pat Flynn, lead guitar, backing vocals; and Mark Kiesinger, bass, backing vocals. Appnel, who does most of the songwriting, says he’s been stockpiling song ideas for years. Inspiration, he says, comes from everywhere - including, oddly enough, the remote control.

“I’m inspired a lot by TV,” he says. “I do a lot of channel surfing, and I mostly listen for little lines that sound interesting and would jive with a certain melody that I have bouncing around.”

In addition to the TV, Appnel says his biggest influence remains The Beatles - a sound that frequently pops up on “Grin.”

“It’s no secret that I’m a huge Beatles fan,” he says with a laugh. “If you’re going to be influenced, be influenced by the best.

“I love all music,” he adds. “I can’t listen to the radio too much or watch too much MTV because I’m easily drawn toward the flavor-of-the day. It really does have an effect — all of the influences that you may notice (on the album) are probably conscious efforts.”

Appnel, who began playing guitar and writing songs at age 12, says he’s always found songwriting, or “putting words together with a catchy melody in a four minute time frame,” the best creative outlet for his own personality.

“I always wanted to tell a story, but I don’t have the patience or the attention span to write a novel,” he says. “The pop-song format is perfect for me.”

Lieback says that although many local artists frequently complain about the local original music scene, Mere Mortals have been able to find an audience.

 “Since we started with this back in 1992, it’s taken a complete 180 degree turn,” he says. “When you’re sitting there on the stage and see the people singing the words to your songs and they’re really getting into it — that’s what makes it worthwhile.”

 “I’ve heard a lot of bickering about the original music   scene lately - which I don’t like to hear,” adds Appnel.   “It’s not going to happen overnight, but (now) it’s more   affordable for people to record, and things are really   starting to open up. People are starting to listen and   show up in the clubs for original bands.”

 Appnel says immediate plans for the Mere Mortals   include shopping “Grin” to major labels and local   commercial radio. In a few months, he says, the band   will be back in the studio working on album number   three.

 “We’re just going to keep on doing it until we get   someone’s attention and we can take it to the next   level,” he says. “Every time we do it, we’re just trying to perfect the craft.”

Mere Mortals are regulars at Casey’s in Wilkes-Barre, and can also be found hitting the stages at Jitterbugs, The Staircase, Mantis Green and Market Street Square. Appnel points to the fact that the group has garnered support from local press and specifically mentions Mike Naydock of WZMT’s “Cellar Full of Noise” and George Graham of WVIA-FM’s “Homegrown Music” as some of the band’s strongest supporters. He also thanks family, friends and fans for being among the band’s biggest backers.

“We’re really fortunate,” he says. “It’s a good support team between the fans and even the club owners who are letting us come in and do originals … there’s no reason it can’t happen. We’re playing the best clubs in the area on prime nights. There’s nothing to complain about here.”

He also praises his bandmates for choosing the more difficult path of playing original material — a path which may ultimately bring a greater reward.

“Mark, Billy and Pat should be commended for the commitment they’ve made,” he says. “Here I am with these songs, and these guys are giving every effort. They could be playing in the best cover bands anywhere, and they’ve chosen to give that up to pursue this.”

REVIEW: ‘Grin’ should bring smiles to listeners 

Right from the first track on the Mere Mortals’ new album, you know you’re in for something special.

An ambitious project featuring 11 original numbers, the album offers elements of pop, rock and alternative, with high production value and an ample selection of radio-ready songs. Titled “Grin,” the sophomore effort from the Pittston-based band showcases tight musicianship, great harmonies, unformulated arrangements, witty, intelligent lyrics and a fresh sound that remains cohesive while never becoming mundane or contrived.

Kicking off with mid-tempoed “If This Is Hell,” the cleverly-arranged mood-setter features driving rhythms, a distorted Beatle-esque vocal break and soft, well-placed harmony backdrops that immediately set the tone for one of the best regionally-released indies to come across this desk in quite some time. “Resoluto” brings an early ’80s alternative vibe, while “Killing Me” showcases the band’s heavier guitar sound and offers one of the catchiest choruses on the record.

Throughout the album, vocalist/acoustic guitarist Eddie Appnel’s songwriting reveals a wide array of influence and intellect, while the rhythm section of bassist Mark Kiesinger and drummer Billy Lieback holds everything together with a solid backbeat and frequently steps up for notice. Pat Flynn’s lead guitar work consistently packs a solid punch, yet always remains within the songs, never becoming too flashy. 

“Ashes To Ashes” hints towards a U2 influence, with Flynn’s soft, melodic solo fitting the song perfectly, and elements of jazz/fusion appear throughout “Funny Animals.” The album’s title track, “Grin,” showcases the group’s folksier side, offering a mid-’60s, Beatles “Rubber Soul” flavor, while “Blind Will Lead the Blind” also reveals a Fab Four influence, only this time with more of a mop-top sound.

“Mountainslide” - possibly the album’s finest track - offers some of the record’s best and most intriguing instrumentation; the Police-like “Footlights” again brings the kind of dynamic tempo and arrangement changes which prevent the band from falling into any formulated traps. The radio-friendly and instantly likable “Keeping Up With The Jones” showcases some funky reggae rhythms and is clearly one of the album’s highlights, and the riff-heavy, post-Beatle McCartney-sounding “Goodnight Calabash” closes the album with a bang.

The end result? A very pleasurable listening experience. And a guaranteed “Grin.” - Alan K. Stout