Diver Down

It's a Friday night, and the Station nightclub in West Warwick is already hopping by 10. The music being played inside is so loud that the walls of the single-story roadhouse seem to throb. Rows of gleaming choppers and tricked-out cars jam the parking lot and an adjoining street. Tonight has that feral, anything-can-happen vibe.

Seven bucks at the door allows entry, up from $5 on other nights. But for those gathered here, the show is well worth the extra clams. It's a double bill to end all double bills: The Who and Van Halen. Whoo-hoo! OK, not really. The actual performers are a pair of the area's best tribute bands -- the newish Who's Next and Diver Down, a well-known group of Van Halen imitators who formed in 1984.

The Station is no stadium, but a good 100 people are crowding the stage. Another 100 hang out at the back bar and by the pool tables. "Roger Daltrey" takes the stage, grabbing the microphone by the cord and swinging it around. Tall bottles of Bud are clenched high among members of the crowd, whoops are hollered, and a good 20 pairs of devil's horns flare. It's time to rock!

The chords to "Baba O'Reilly" blast out of "Townshend's" boss twin Marshall stacks. "Entwistle," as always, stands to the left, stoic and unmoving, except for the quietly incessant twaddle of his fingers on the bass. "Keith" sounds as loud as ever, bashing the skins with presumably booze-fueled fervor. The band rocks on and on, each song ending with raucous applause. Even the tough-looking guys playing nine-ball stop give Who's Next a hand.

After a short break, Diver Down takes the stage. From appearances alone, things are looking good -- these guys have it all: Alex's kit sports not one, but two, flared-out kick-drums. Just like the real deal, Eddie's sporting a red-and-white striped jumpsuit and guitar. Bassist Michael Anthony doesn't look much like the real guy, but this is somehow appropriate, since the nondescript Anthony is occasionally referred to as "The Luckiest Man Alive." The three musicians begin to warm-up the crowd with some wild guitar-bass-drum rave-ups. Suddenly, a shock of blond hair pops out from behind the amp stacks to the right of the stage. Diamond Dave is here, and he's drinking a Heineken.

An aside: credible rock fans universally agree that Van Halen's golden years came during the period when the band was led by flamboyant front man David Lee Roth. Though the group found some success in the '80s and '90s with singers like Sammy Hagar and former Extreme bad boy Gary Cherone, the later stuff doesn't really count. Actually, almost all of it completely sucks.

Through the PA comes a hoarse, leering, oh-so-familiar voice. "Hellllo Rhode Island! You are about to enter a Hagar-free zoooone!" The crowd, already panting in collective anticipation, goes ballistic. An appropriately 40-something version of Lee Roth, replete with painted-on leather pants, a do-rag, and assorted bangles, storms the stage as the unforgettably slutty opening riff of "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" blasts out of the speakers.

An attractive young woman near the front rail breaks instantly into a spirited bump-and-grind, and her chubby, tattooed male companion follows suit. Soon the entire room is grooving, even one generally stoic member of our group. Diver Down plows through one Van Halen hit after another, performing each tune with precision and boundless energy. Sure, "Roth" seems to be wearing a hairpiece, and if you take a mental step back, the whole scene is steeped in camp.

But most importantly, down to the night's closing number, the country-tinged chestnut "Happy Trails," Diver Down keep their promise to the faithful: absolutely, positively, no Hagar.

AS A SPECIES, tribute bands are far more than kitschy, camped-out creatures of the pop-culture fringes. While reviled by original musicians for copping someone else's tunes, club owners covet them. And although aping the Beatles represents a way to make solid cash, this ritual is also seen by some musicians as an opportunity to honor their musical heroes.

In Rhode Island, as elsewhere, fans vote with their wallets. While the Providence area can lay claim to a decent local original music scene, the best-attended shows in the region on many weekends feature tribute bands. Familiarity, as the saying goes, sells.

An important distinction marks the difference between "cover" and "tribute" bands. Musicians have been performing covers of top-40 hits and standards for decades, offering entertainment at countless weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other functions. Tribute bands, though, go the extra mile, not only copping a particular act's music, but also making a strong, even obsessive, effort to duplicate the original look as well.

Pop culture has become only more derivative, of course, since Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones, among others, appropriated the style and phrasing of earlier originals. But tribute and cover bands have surprisingly deep roots, according to professor Robert J. Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. "This has actually been going on for a long time," he says. "Before the phonograph became popular, often artists would perform a given song on the vaudeville circuit all across the country, and the goal was to sell the sheet music. [Seminal jazz singer] Al Jolson would make a song famous, and then everyone would try to at least emulate Jolson's singing style, if not copy it. It's not all that unusual."

Wild Blue Angels

Tribute bands as we know them first turned up in the early '70s, with the first wave of Elvis impersonators. By the late '70s, tribute acts of all stripes had burst onto the scene. As their ranks grew, a certain credo formed: nearly every band takes its name from either a popular song or album title. Seventies-era pioneers included Power Windows (Rush) and Physical Graffiti (Zeppelin). The tradition continues with bands like Human Clay, a popular Creed tribute that regularly plays the Providence area.

While '70s rock acts are popular subjects for tribute bands -- attesting to the music's lasting power (or its easily caricatured nature) -- almost every style and period of modern pop can be found if you look hard enough. And in some cases, the imitators have existed longer than their sources. The Atomic Punks, a leading Van Halen tribute, have been performing since 1978. Jimi Hendrix impersonator Randy Hansen is pushing 20 years on the job, as are those Rolling Stones doppelgangers, the Blushing Brides.

Noted musicians have "crossed over," and vice versa. Former Boston lead singer Brad Delp fronts Beatlejuice, a popular Beatles tribute. And in 1995, Tim "Ripper" Owens of Pennsylvania realized a dream when the real-life Judas Priest plucked him from a Priest tribute act, and onto stages worldwide, as a replacement for the departed Rob Halford. Owens's story inspired Rock Star, the recent Mark Wahlberg film.

The tribute genre even has its own booking agents. Springfield, Massachusetts-based AAA Entertainment Consultants boasts the heaviest roster around, including Believer (Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath), People of the Sun (Rage Against the Machine), Wicked Garden (Stone Temple Pilots), Get Your Guns (Guns N' Roses), and even Throwing Copper, who imitate Live, the faded, goody-two-shoes alt-rock act.

Mike Derderian, owner of the Station in Warwick, says a number of factors, particularly the market and the saturation point of a given band, influence a tribute group's popularity. Big draws are female-friendly acts, like a Bon Jovi outfit that recently played his club. "Bands like that attract so many women, they tend to attract a lot of guys, too," Derderian says.

In general, he says, between 300 to 500 fans come through the doors on tribute nights. "Without getting into specific numbers, let me just say that we've never not had a successful night [with tribute bands]," he says. "There have been times when a tribute band has outdrawn national acts. There have been nights where we've had to actually put a sign up that said `Sold out,' and had a Warwick cop come down to keep people out." Looks like mime does pay, after all.

In some ways, though, the tribute life can constitute a Faustian bargain. Although Itchy Fish, an Attleboro, Massachusetts-based Pearl Jam tribute band, could still draw crowds, its members recently decided to break up because they felt stifled by years of playing the same cover tunes and eclipsed by original acts that once opened for them, like Godsmack, according to the Boston Globe.

This sheer variety and preponderance of tribute acts can certainly amuse. Yet upon further retrospection, it's also a little depressing. Tribute acts, the recycling bins of the music business, thrive in a country that brought forth the Bill of Rights, baseball, and jazz, and which produced such inspiring leaders as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Talk about a coarsening of the culture.

Thompson agrees with the sentiment, with some caveats. As he concedes, "Sure, here we are in America, we've got this rich vein of history, and why are we recycling it?" But there's another view, Thompson adds. "I mostly compare tribute bands to things like the Living Museum in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania. To a certain extent, we're seeing a living museum of popular music in what these people are doing."

THE IDEA OF TRIBUTE BANDS as caretakers of popular art might induce sneers among some. But for those who revere them, it's no joke: paying tribute isn't just a fun way to make some clams and ape your idols -- it's a way of life.

For the past several years, Ohio resident Howard Fineman has operated the popular "Howard's Hammer" Web site. The site lists, ranks, and links to more than 400 (at last count) tribute acts from the US and around the world. Also prominently featured is information about Fineman's own band, Howard's Silver Hammer, a Beatles tribute in which he plays the drums. Fineman can be termed a tribute band purist, and he's certainly one of the form's most ardent defenders.

"I think tribute bands should be equated with playing in a big orchestra," he says. "You're celebrating music that people love. You're keeping it alive." The problem, says Fineman, is that not enough tribute musicians take their role seriously, and do a poor job. "There's definitely a stigma [to playing in a tribute band]. But it's got to change on both sides. You've got to be good, really good. It's not about becoming some other band. It's about not being taken as a joke."

To this end, Fineman has established the Tribute Band Voting Academy on his Web site, http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/howardshammer/myhomepage/me.html. Visitors appraise and critique bands, which are recognized accordingly.

That Fineman performs in a Beatles tribute is no accident. Judging from a pair of conversations with him, he seems to be among the seminal pop group's biggest fans. "I've actually written some songs of my own that I feel were channeled to me by John Lennon," he notes. One, a pleasant, late-phase-Lennon flavored number, titled "Wake Up," is available on Fineman's site.

Playing live, says Fineman, is a cathartic experience for him. "The vibe in the room is that the people want you to be someone else," he says. "You realize that, and you lose yourself in the moment."

WHILE SOME TRIBUTE BANDS are staffed by a given group's most rabid fans, the reality is more melancholy for most working musicians: it's the only way to make a living playing music.

Diver Down's "Eddie Van Halen" is actually Amos Sanfilippo of Plymouth, Massachusetts, an English expatriate who came to New England from Los Angeles after his wife's company transferred her here in 1997. While in L.A., Sanfilippo fronted the now-defunct hard-rock outfit Tribal Soul. Even before that, he achieved a decent measure of rock success, touring with Whitesnake in 1987, and at age 18, having one of his early compositions recorded by British blues-rock guitar god Gary Moore.

Upon arriving in Massachusetts, though, Sanfilippo found himself at a loss. At the time, he was a stay-at-home dad, and the routine got to him quickly. After a few months he answered a "guitarist wanted" ad placed in the Phoenix by members of Diver Down. The rest, he says, is history. "I learned 33 songs in three weeks, and was on stage in no time," Sanfilippo says.

That might sound like a tall tale, but it's no joke: Sanfilippo is an accomplished musician, having studied at both the London Conservatory of Music and the Berklee College of Music in Boston. "I've got a really fast learning curve," he says. "I hadn't even been a real fan of [Van Halen's] playing. I wanted to go for more of the live Van Halen vibe, for Eddie's raw, `brown' sound of the mid- to late-'70s."

In other words, no massive rack effects for Amos, unlike Van Halen's setup in recent years. "I've got a DOD flange, an MXR chorus, and maybe a little reverb to give it that `wet' sound. But that's it," he says. Just like Eddie, Amos uses a Marshall power gate, which allows a fully amplified signal without resorting to full volume. If this seems obsessive, that's the point, says Sanfilippo. "I'm a bit of a perfectionist, in that if I'm going to do something like this, it's going to be done right."

That said, says Sanfilippo, "I don't take it too seriously . . . I don't think I'm Eddie Van Halen or anything. But it's great when people come back after the show and say, "Fuck, yeah!' "

And the guitarist can't avoid admitting some further measure of satisfaction. "There's really no one out there who can do what we do, as far as a tribute act is concerned," he says. "I really think we do a good job of duplicating what Van Halen was doing [when Roth was in the band], especially when you've gotten a couple of beers down your neck."

In ideal times and conditions, Diver Down performs three to four times each month. "We'll go anywhere, as long as we get paid," Sanfilippo says. Exactly how much the band gets, he won't say, but a good guess might be between $1000 and $2000 per night. "I'm in this business to make money, not to lose money. It's about putting on a great show and making some cash."

Keeping the gravy train rolling is a constant concern. Currently, Diver Down is working with a new "Dave," John Mellini, to help fill the gaps left by current howler (and founding member) Charlie Bonanno. "He's [Bonanno] a quahogger," says Sanfilippo, "a fisherman, you know? He'll be back some time in [the fall]. He's just making so much money right now, it's tough to get him off the Cape. [The new guy] is actually kind of scary, he sounds so much like Dave. He's really working on the kicks and the splits as well."

Sanfilippo dismisses outright the barbs of critics. "God bless them. For me, I repeat what [Roth] once said: `If it weren't for people like me, there wouldn't be people like you.' "

This stance comes from an interesting stew of stolid pride and knowing defiance. Yet Sanfilippo's brio is excusable: his bandmates and he reside in the vanguard of the tribute world. For five, seven, perhaps $8, plus the price of a belly full of beer, Diver Down and its peers will most certainly rock your world.

Others, even the most talented, amount to little more than human jukeboxes. For example, in a recent performance, the Brad Delp-led Beatlejuice was aurally flawless. Any hint of passion, however, seemed to have departed with the automaton-like band's 400th run through "Eleanor Rigby."

In our experience, most tribute bands are staffed if not by seasoned pros, at least with people like Fineman -- super-fans who decided to pay (and play) their ultimate respects.

Call it outright theft. Dismiss it as low-rent cheese. Chuckle and smirk at the excess or lack of originality. All are valid criticisms of the tribute band world. Yet there's something that even the most hardened critic can't deny: a good, committed tribute band, like a highly energetic historian, can transport you through time to a happier, cooler place, when your favorite band was the hippest thing going -- and was still alive.

Chris Kanaracus can be reached at cjk98@yahoo.com.

Issue Date: October 26 - November 1, 2001