Posted July 27, 2010 (from Tony Gagliano)
I’d like to relay this story of my time in a rock band as it not only relates to the Navy but also involves three people that are Navy veterans. There is also a connection between the band I did join and the well known “Beachcomber Lounge whose name was changed to the Comic Book Club. One of my neighborhood as well as high school friends was stationed at Cecil Field in Jacksonville. His name is Steve Pellegrino and he was also lead singer in a rock band who played mostly around the Jacksonville area and I used to go see him sing on occasion. After my separation from active duty in 1968 I decided to take up playing the organ and to see if I could form a band. I ran into Steve at the beach one day when I learned that he too was also looking to get back into a band and resume singing. After a few auditions our group was born and we decided to name it Nirvana. This is not to be confused with the well known band “Nirvana” with the popular Kurt Cobane. (although I’ve always wondered if they stole our name after we split up). I started out with a portable organ and was still learning as I went along but apparently I was good enough to play with others. We started to really click as a band and things were starting to look up after so many practice sessions. We were starting to gel. At the time I was following a lot of well known bands around NY such as the Vagrants, Vanilla Fudge and the Soul Survivors. I was in a club while the Soul Survivors were on a break and was lucky enough to talk to one of the lead singers whose name was Richie Ingui. Next to us on the floor was a beautiful organ I was salivating over. It was Richie from the Soul Survivors that explained it was a B-3 Hammond organ which he said was the Cadillac of organs. I was sold on it and had a Hammond a week later. When I brought it to our first practice we were all astounded of the sound we now had with the new Hammond organ. We thought we sounded great and were ready to start doing gigs. We toured all over New York and were having a great time and pulling in big crowds and doing larger clubs. Clubs so big that we had to buy a new P.A. system, extra guitar amps and an extra Leslie speaker for my organ as well. Our lead singer Steve knew the manager of the Comic Book Club and we received an offer from him to come down to play in his club. He suggested we make a demo album so he can send it to his contacts in Atlanta so we followed through on that shortly after. He liked what he heard and told us he could get us good pay and do some nice clubs down in Florida. We all made the decision to quit our jobs and become full time musicians and go on the road.
We decided to add a light show and I asked my closest steaming buddy Bobby Rispoli to be our lighting technician and roadie and he jumped on it as I was hoping he would. Bobby and I were almost inseparable aboard the Farragut and we always went on liberty together when we could. So off we went to become full time musicians or bust. My first night in the Comic Book club was surreal. I was thinking of all the times I came here on liberty to listen to bands. I remember when it was at the Beachcomber Lounge I saw The Allman Brothers play there when they were the Allman Joys and did mostly Righteous Brothers music as Greg Allman definitely had the voice for it. Later on we got to jam on stage with Lynyrd Skynyrd before they made it big. At the time I thought they were really good musicians. I couldn’t understand why we had a bigger following but I guess it was because we were from New York.
Our manager who was also manager of the Comic Book Club suggested we merge with another local Jax group known as Cherry Kijaffa. His vision was for us to become a show group ala Three Dog Night. We merged, practiced together then played a few gigs together in the Comic Book Club with success. Now it was time to go on the road to Miami for the top paying clubs like the Castaways Lounge. With all the auditions, photographers appts. and traveling between Jax and Miami it started to take it’s toll on a couple of the new band members who were married. They decided to quit the band without giving it a good shot and it kind of knocked the wind out of our sails. Thinking long and hard we decided to call it quits ourselves and head back to New York and home. I really didn’t want to quit but the majority didn’t want to start all over again after being so close. I understood, and bit the bullet. But other than my job in the Navy, being a full time musician was the best job of my life. It was a good experience for a young guy. Lots of traveling, meeting people, and oh the partying on the way. They were a good bunch of guys I played with and we had chemistry. I managed to have two of the songs from our demo album put up on YouTube and will attached them here for anyone to view and listen to. I’m glad I’ll always have this memory to listen to anytime I choose.
Here are the video links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
