Strange Magic> Simple Pleasures offers rock ‘n’ roll as it was meant to be – big, loud, wild, local and live

loading...

The Oronoka was rockin’ and rollin’. The seven-member band Strange Pleasures was on a 20-minute jam. Young women danced in front of the stage, their hair changing hues with the pulsing colored lights. “Hang on Sloopy” flowed into “Brown-Eyed Girl” which ignited “Johnny B. Goode” and lured even the most reluctant feet to the dance floor.

The big guy with the harmonica paused to mop his face with a kitchen towel and hitch up his baggy jeans before wailing out a mournful sound. He closed his eyes, fell on his knees as his face turned red from exertion and his cheeks puffed. He looked like a bald blowfish, stripped of the spiny spikes.

Behind him two drummers pounded out the beat. One was clad in a Superman T-shirt, the words to unfamiliar songs scrawled on a piece of notebook paper spiked on a cymbal. At his feet the band’s name was crudely painted on the front of the bass drum. A hole was cut in the skin and a microphone placed on a pillow inside the instrument.

Next to this drummer sat another. With his wooden sticks, he pounded on a set of cowbells. They made a pop, pop, popping sound that snapped his head back, his long, dark ponytail bouncing with the sound.

The guitar players — lead, rhythm, bass, acoustic — intently watched each other’s fingers, imitating one another’s chord changes. The bass player barely shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

But the guy with the amplified acoustic was all over the place, sometimes bumping shoulders with the harmonica player, sometimes backing into the drummers’ platform. The other two were somewhere in between the statue and the animated maniac.

This was rock ‘n’ roll as it was meant to be — big, loud, wild, local and live. It is also the kind of live music that has not been a big part of the music scene in northern Maine since the 1960s and ’70s. But Strange Pleasures is riding the wave of a small revival in live performances by local rock bands.

A year ago a group of students at the University of Maine formed the band, and after only three practice sessions won the campus battle of the bands. That earned them a spot on the Bumstock line-up last spring, and convinced the members of Strange Pleasures that rock ‘n’ roll was the way to go.

“We decided we wanted to spend the summer playing, so we all decided to move down to Old Orchard Beach together, even though we didn’t have any bookings,” said Ryan Waning, 21, of Auburn, the band’s harmonica player and self-appointed front man.

“I went into a bar and asked the manager if he’d booked all his bands for the summer. `Just about,’ he said. So, I asked him, `What if the price is right?’ `How much?’ he asked. `Free,’ I said. So we played one night for free and after that we started playing for money. Until the end of the summer we were playing six nights a week,” said Waning, who has taken time off from his studies to manage the band.

Drummer and lead vocalist Ryan Cyr, 21, and acoustic guitarist John Clavette, 21, grew up in Madawaska and played together in high school. The same is true of 19-year-olds Phil Alarie, who plays percussion and drums, and rhythm guitarist Dennis Gaines, both of Saco. Keith Mann, 19, of Patten, who plays bass guitar, and Richard Corson, 19, of Damariscotta, who plays lead guitar, round out the group.

“All the bartenders in Old Orchard know each other,” recalled Clavette. “So once we had a job in one place, the bartender would call another bartender and hold up the phone, saying, `You gotta hear these, guys. These guys are great.’ We got a couple of gigs over the phone like that.”

Mann added that although he’d played in a band during high school, the experience of living and working together last summer was intense.

“We got to know each other a lot better,” he said. “Now, we’re more like a family than just a band. I hope to continue playing with the band. This is something I’d like to do for the rest of my life.”

To that end, Waning has been working on getting the right material together and enough money to record a CD and market it at their shows. They did well enough last summer to purchase a refurbished school bus in which they could haul the band’s equipment.

“We were bringing our stuff to gigs in three separate vehicles and last summer one of them was in a minor accident on the way to a show,” Waning recalled. “No one was hurt, but the car had to be towed and we wound up not playing because we didn’t have our equipment. It was a mess. With the bus, that’s not a problem.”

Waning admitted that coordinating the music with seven different musical tastes and styles was challenging. He said they play classic covers by bands such as the Allman Brothers, Phish, the Grateful Dead and the Beatles, with a few original tunes thrown in.

“But what we really like to do is jam,” he added. “Once we did a 25-minute jam of all the songs we know in the key of G. It’s a crap shoot from night to night on what we’ll wind up playing.”

Although Waning said the band is booked every weekend through December, mostly on campus, it’s questionable whether a local band can be successful playing live rock ‘n’ roll year round in Maine. Two men who played during the glory days of the local rock scene are doubtful.

“There is a slight resurgence in live performing locally,” said Tom Gass, who performed with the Barracudas during the ’60s and ’70s. “But it still seems to be predominantly country bands around here.”

Singer and guitarist Mitch Geel, who described his age as “40ish,” agreed that it is more difficult for local bands to succeed in the ’90s.

“There’s no middle class in the [popular] music biz anymore,” he said. “Bands have to make it really big, or they starve. You can do OK as a duo, but it’s not nearly as much fun. … Now I’m back playing blues. What’s really making a comeback is three-chord blues.”

Geel, who works at a music store during the day, and Gass, the sales manager for WABI-TV, Channel 5, agree that there is a minor resurgence in live music in northern Maine. Neither expects live music to return to the level it reached 20 to 30 years ago, however.

“There were tons of groups then,” said Gass, “and there was all kinds of work. The `World Famous Brewer Auditorium’ had a dance with a live band every weekend. All the schools hired bands for dances, so did recreation centers and big community halls. And there were clubs, like the Bounty, to play, too.

“But as school dollars tightened, the money for bands disappeared, then disco came in, and the technology changed, so it was cheaper to have a good sound system and a disc jockey than hire a band,” he said.

Geel said changes in the music itself and stricter OUI laws did as much to limit performance venues for bands as the advent of disco.

“In the mid-’80s when disco got big, country music started to get big and take on elements of rock ‘n’ roll,” Geel said. “Lots of older guys like me started doing country because we hated what was happening to rock.

“Nowadays, people are afraid to have a couple of beers and drive. That’s killed the bottle clubs in the outlying areas that aren’t within cab reach. These day, if you can get a two-nighter every week, you are doing well.”

The young members of Strange Pleasures are undaunted by such warnings. The band is booking summer dates in Old Orchard Beach and Portland for 1998.

“We want to go as far as is humanly possible,” declared Waning.