JNJ at the Ground Round 1980
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From: Chuck Darling
May 1st, 2025
Back in 1980, my fiance and my sister
and her boyfriend, and several friends
from St. Gerard's Saturday Night.Folk Group,
would go to the Ground Round at least once a week.
The Ground Round Bar/Grill/Restaurant
had several locations in Buffalo.
We discovered JNJ, Joe, Nan
and Jim, at the Ground Round.
We followed them to other locations,
and made JNJ fan T-Shirts.
JNJ played live acoustic music for
about 4 hours, on Friday and Saturday nights.
We sat at a table right in front of the stage,
the applause was ours.
Joe played 6 string Martin, and 12 string Guild. He solos on Blackbird.
Nan played 6 String Epiphone, Banjo, Autoharp, and Pennywhistle.
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I built a tuned Bamboo flute for Nan,
she gave it to her husband Keith,
because the finger holes were too large for her. She bought a Mandolin after she saw mine.
Jim was a Studio Musician, he played
Conga, Bongos, Zildjian Cymbals, and Harmonica. He sings on White Collar Hollar.
JNJ played for my wedding reception.
I asked our 300 guests how they liked the music, and they loved it.
My Sister baked the wedding cake,
Her first ..
My visiting Uncle was panicking
when he saw her baking it...!
It was 3-Tiered
Yellow buttercream frosting, yellow cake
with Raspberry preserve filling, and a
Precious Moments couple on top of
the Carrot Cake top layer.
Our Nephew David was the ring bearer,
and he cried when he dropped the ceramic
Precious Moments couple.
I had Superglue handy, and repaired it.
I offered JNJ wedding cake, and I had to
protect Joe from a scolding waitress, explaining that they were friends of ours.
***
Ground Round's food was excellent,
and they provided peanuts in the shell,
and popcorn...for free!
They told us to throw the shells on the floor,
It was good for the wooden tiles.
They also had a couple video game consoles, Space Invaders, and Asteroids.
My sister's boyfriend asked if he could
tape them as they played, and they said
yes, it's a free concert, we've paid our
ASCAP fees.
Lee patched his tape deck into their
Soundboard...
It took 20 years for Lee and Cindy to
lend me the tape, and I played it through
a Magnavox boom-box with EQ,
into my HP Pavilion, which came with
MediaRack software.
I compressed the files into MP3s with
WinAmp. (They had a LAME MP3 extension which was very flexible, allowing the use of WinAmp's Graphic Equalizer...)
These song files have been floating around
the internet on my sites, since 2000.
This week, I put the songs together into
a single file.
Click on the image.
Chuck
This was life before Computers, and
Smartphones.
The Music was REAL.
The Song list:
Maybe Uncle Don can help bring back
the Ground Round. Good Friends, Good Music.
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