Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 5, 1991 TAG: 9104040038
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JOE TENNIS/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
This was the same guy, they said, who had jumped onstage during the band's performance while guitarist Lowell Sale teased the college-age audience with a few bars of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird."
Lead singer Rick Plastic recalls: "I was just dancing around and the next thing I know I look and there's this guy with a big ol' jug of whiskey standing onstage with long hair down to his hips."
Trying to ease the situation, Plastic pointed to the door, and the man left. But not for long, of course. "I think he went back and got his ax handle," Sale said, chuckling.
Rick Plastic and His Rubber Band have caused quite a stir in the New River Valley during the past year with their guitar-oriented rhythm-and-blues act. Last month, the band won Radford University's first "Battle of the Bands" competition.
The group plays stringy guitar doses of blues classics such as "Gimme Some Lovin'," but what attracts the audience, the members believe, is their "cheese element."
"Yeah, the cheese factor," said Sale, a "fourth-year" Radford student majoring in history. "It's our thrift-shop clothes, nylon capes."
On stage, Sale, bassist Eric Johnson and drummer John Pinkerton wear dress pants and plaid blazers while Plastic, whose real name is Kemp Morris, jumps around in a cowboy hat.
Plastic, draped in a cape, is escorted on stage by two bodyguards wearing trench coats and sunglasses. Sometimes the guards stick around during sets to keep an eye on things from the back of the stage.
All shows open and close with the "Rick Plastic Theme Song," a hard-charging, guitar-saturated opus band members admit is a rip-off of "Cool Jerk" by The Capitols. Mid-way through the piece, Sale approaches his microphone with a rapid-fire monologue he says is "almost like speaking in tongues."
Sale recited his most frequently used introduction: "Ladies and gentlemen, there are seven acknowledged wonders of the world. You are about to witness the eighth. Let me introduce the conqueror of the Byzantine empire, the Grand Poobah of soul, the minister of rhythm, the deacon of blues: Rick Plastic."
The crowd goes wild as Plastic, a short, chubby fellow with close-cropped blond hair, pulls out a harmonica and begins to bellow the blues.
"The idea is to get as much hype going as possible," said Johnson, a Radford junior from Blacksburg who is also majoring in history. "That's also part of the cheese factor."
The bodyguard and the cape, they admit, is a routine borrowed from soul singer James Brown. Often, though, the band is mistaken for a somewhat twisted replay of the Blues Brothers rhythm-and-blues show. Band members say that is a misperception.
"I think it's more James Brown, a little of the Flintstones maybe," said Sale, who came to Radford from Fredericksburg.
Plastic is not unlike John Belushi's Joliet Jake, lead singer of the Blues Brothers. Both are short, chubby guys who play harmonica and growl the blues. And both play to keep the style of music they love - the blues - alive.
"It's a great kind of music, and I don't want to see it die," Plastic said, claiming his influences as "white blues" singers such as Elvis Presley, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Yardbirds and John Mayall.
Since the group's inception, it has played at the Iroquois in Roanoke, Whistler's in Richmond, Lucky's in Radford, Buddy's in Blacksburg and at "Bargerfest," a block party held occasionally near the Virginia Tech campus.
The idea for the band came from Sale, who one day drifted off during a history class lecture and said he had a realization "that there was a need in this world for a Rick Plastic . . . but at the time, I didn't know who it would be."
Sale and Johnson, who had played together in another band, hooked up with Morris early last year. But Morris had some reservations about the "crazy" ideas Sale had for the act.
"I wanted to get the band established first," said the Radford junior from Raleigh, N.C. During shows, the "craziness" of Rick Plastic and His Rubber Band doesn't stop with Plastic. Sale, while not missing a note, often flops around in a full circle like a fish out of water on the stage floor, much like guitarist Angus Young in the recent AC/DC video "Money Talks."
All the band members except Pinkerton realize their music days may end when they leave Radford. The music business, they said, is too hard to break into. But then again - who knows what might happen? After all, "what can you do with a history major?" asked Johnson.
What's more, the musicians say they don't expect their audience to take them too seriously. "I just want them to have a good time," said Pinkerton, a liberal arts major and Radford senior from Blacksburg. "I think it's pretty unrealistic to think we can send some blues message to the world."
The band will play at Lucky's on Norwood Street in Radford on April 6.
by CNB