By Matt Zeidel
The British Invasion that inspired them may have long since come and gone, but some of Sheepshead Bay’s good old boys still manage to rock and roll — and rekindle decades-old friendships. That’s what The Bay Rockers, as they’re known, will be doing in their 14th annual reunion concert (Saturday, Jan. 6, 8 p.m.; Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club, 3076 Emmons Avenue; $5 suggested donation). They’ll be bringing together at the waterfront a smattering of classic rock and standards, as well as their old neighborhood friends. The Sheepshead Bay area has produced legends like Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond, inspired by the rock and roll revolution taking place around them to fuse styles old and new. The result: bluesy, jazzy classic rock which has endured to this day. Of course, the classics weren’t the only ones to give the world of music a try. “We were all bitten by the Beatle Bug back then,” said Barney McMahon, who helps organize the Bay Rockers show. “Everyone had their various little bands, and then there were such cliques that went along with such bands.” Those bands — and their groupies — would fill dance halls with kids paying a nominal entry fee to dance the night away. Everyone had fun, and the bands tended to do well. Eventually, though, most would fold. But not everyone let that stop them from keeping up their playing. McMahon, for one, is still the front man of a band called The Resstock Revue (a name hewn from “Woodstock” and the last name of a pair of its members, the Restains) which plays “pretty much anything,” including standards, country and of course classic rock. The Resstock Revue and the other acts that will take the Yacht Club’s stage — The John Earl Walker Band, Johnnie Whimple and Friends, Peter Frank Santovito and Friends, and Nelson Ferrer — have kept the tradition alive for decades. It started with a bunch of old friends messing around on their instruments. “Every time we’d come up, we’d have a recording session and jam,” said Santovito, now a musician in Florida. “Then people started coming to the recording studio … so we started to bring it down to the clubs.” First they would perform down at the old Captain Walters. But that quickly became too small, so the guys took advantage of someone having a cousin on the Yacht Club’s board, and a tradition was born. Since then, shows have often packed the place, and often proceeds went to charity; this year, it’s all about the music. “It brings back all these people who have moved away,” said Ralph Favilla, 52, formerly a teen musician and now an accountant who himself lives in Marine Park. “It’s a real happening in the neighborhood.” Hundreds of Sheepshead’s middle-aged (don’t call them old) hands turn out each year to see their prodigal brothers come home, and this time around the atmosphere promises to be as close-knit as ever. “Our audience is made up of a lot of people who went to our school and the area schools, and friends of friends,” McMahon said. “Perhaps there’s one degree of separation between the members of the audience and the members of the bands.” Even so, McMahon said, all are welcome, and nobody will be turned away. “Just come to the Yacht Club after 7:30,” he said. “It’s a celebration of everyone who’s grown up in this neighborhood, and the rock and roll music that has kept us together through hard times and good times,” McMahon said. “And, may I add, many of the ladies have aged very nicely. They’ve given a whole new cosmetic spin on the term ‘middle age.’”
