Killer Show

by John Barylick

  Michael Derderian replied, “You’ll be all right.”

  After the brothers shorted his pay two weeks running, Costa quit.

  The Derderians knew that, while they had to negotiate with national acts to appear at The Station, local bands could be used — and abused — on the cheap. Musicians’ recollections of their gigs at The Station strike a consistent chord.

  Thomas Walason, of the bands Rock Show and Catch-22, played at The Station “nine or ten times.” (Walason’s girlfriend, Kathleen Sullivan, would escape the ill-fated Great White concert in 2003 with serious burns.) As he later told the police, “Jeff usually shorted us.”

  Geoffrey Read, a volunteer firefighter who would help fight the Station fire, managed a local band called What Matters. The last time Read’s band played at The Station, Jeff Derderian refused to pay him half the agreed price, claiming it was “a slow night.”

  Justin Pomfret, who escaped from the fire with his wife, played with another local band, the Hype. He was shorted $100 “by one of the brothers” when his band played The Station.

  Paul Dean, a carpet installer by day and musician by night, echoed the refrain that “Jeff Derderian shorted me $100 on our agreed-upon price.”

  Even if a musician had other business relations with the club, he was equally likely to get stiffed by the Derderians. Richard Antonelli, who designed the club’s website, thestationrocks.com, appeared several times at The Station with his band, Sky High. They played the night of September 28, 2002, for their usual $200, which just about covered expenses. When Antonelli saw Mike Derderian in his office for payment at the end of the night, the club owner asked, “What are we gonna do about tonight?”

  Antonelli was perplexed.

  Derderian spelled it out: “About the money.”

  “I guess the usual two hundred,” shrugged Antonelli.

  “Two hundred? You want me to pay you two hundred dollars for 100 people in here?” sputtered Derderian.

  “Yeah, that’s the agreement we had,” said Antonelli.

  Derderian continued, “We don’t pay bands $200 to bring in 100 people.”

  Dumbfounded, Antonelli said, “I don’t know what to tell you. That was our agreement.”

  Then Derderian put it to him. “All right. Are you sure you want to do this? If you take this money, that’s it. You guys are done here. No more shows. Nothing.”

  Antonelli took the $200, then went outside to talk to his band. After a short conversation, his drummer walked back inside, handed Derderian back the $200, and told him Sky High would not appear there again.

  The Derderians’ business reputation became known to booking agents, as well. According to Richard Carr, who booked bands at The Station with prior owners Skip Shogren and Howard Julian, the brothers initially said they’d “honor the same deal Howard gave him,” then reneged. “Word quickly spread that the Derderians’ word meant nothing,” he said.

  In the fall of 2002, Jeff Derderian hired nineteen-year-old Anthony Baldino to paint a rock-themed mural across the club’s façade. (Typical of Rhode Island’s interconnectedness, Anthony’s father’s girlfriend was the sister of Jeff Derderian’s wife.) At an agreed rate of $10 per hour, Baldino spent seventy-two hours painting likenesses of Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Steven Tyler, Jimi Hendrix, and Ozzy Osbourne on the club’s street-side wall. When it came time to pay for the work, Jeff Derderian gave Baldino only $600, claiming he wasn’t satisfied with it. However, Derderian dangled “the possibility of more mural work inside the club.” Baldino, incredulous, declined.

  Not that the Derderians didn’t give aesthetics a high priority at The Station. Lewis Cook had the unenviable task of cleaning the club after each show. He recounts having to clear the floor of cups, bottles, and other detritus with a snow shovel before more conventional cleaning means could be employed. When the cheaply constructed men’s room door got punched through enough times (eventually creating a hole large enough to step through), the Derderians simply left it off.

  If the brothers were to succeed as rock impresarios, they would have to book national acts. Negotiating with “name” bands involved a set of skills entirely different from simply stiffing the locals. Touring bands were booked months in advance, and their contracts commonly called for a minimum fee, paid half in advance, with the balance paid on the day of the band’s appearance; this, plus a percentage of the “gate.” Accordingly, the club’s capacity would be an important factor in attracting acts.

  Howard Julian routinely told bands that The Station’s capacity was more than its then-permitted 317 in order to get them to sign contracts. He probably figured they’d discover the deception once they saw the club, so prior to the March 2000 W.A.S.P. concert, Julian faxed Jay Frey, W.A.S.P.’s booking agent, with the terse message, “CAPACITY DOWNGRADED TO 350. New Fire Marshal (Asshole Maximus!)” Of course, there had been no downgrade. And no new fire marshal.

  The Derderians caught on to the capacity game quickly. Even though the club’s legal occupancy under their ownership could not exceed 404 (with all tables removed), the 2003 Talent Buyers’ Directory, a music industry guidebook used by agents to book acts, listed The Station’s capacity as 550. The guide, which relies upon owners for their clubs’ capacity information, listed Michael Derderian as the “owner and booking contact.”

  The brothers’ contracts with national acts similarly overstated the potential gate. Great White’s contract for an April 2000 appearance at The Station represented a capacity of 500; Warrant’s, for later that month, the same. A contract for Poundhound in May 2001 stated that 550 patrons could fill the club; the agreement for Anthrax to appear that October also read 550. Eddie Money and the Dead Kennedys were each promised a club with room for 550 when they played The Station in 2002. So was Quiet Riot.

  Apparently, the Derderians were no more candid with their patrons about permitted capacity. At 6 o’clock on the evening of Great White’s final appearance at The Station, Frank Canillas called the club to see if there were still tickets available. He was told that there would be 100 business cards (used as tickets) available for purchase at the door, that the last show there had drawn 480 fans, and that the club “fit about 600 people.” He would later recount this to the police from beneath bandages in his hospital bed.

  Barry Warner’s house was the closest neighboring structure to The Station’s stage door. About one hundred feet distant and up a small rise, the house was separated from the club property by a thin stand of trees. On concert nights the bass speakers at the club would sometimes rattle pictures on Warner’s walls.

  Warner or his wife called police with noise complaints numerous times when Skip Shogren owned the club. When Howard Julian operated it as the Filling Station, the Warners continued their crusade in letters to the town council. By the time Julian sought to transfer the club’s liquor and entertainment licenses to the Derderians, the Warners had had enough and vocally opposed the transfer unless something was done about the noise, parking lot fights, and overcrowding.

  Transfer of a liquor or entertainment license in West Warwick requires sign-offs by the building inspector, the fire chief, and the police chief. In 2000 the police chief was Peter Brousseau. He spoke with Mike Derderian in May of that year, “strongly advising him that his entertainment license would not be approved unless he corrected the noise problems.” “He is going to speak to the neighbors to work on issues,” wrote Chief Brousseau in a memo dated May 12.

  On a quiet afternoon that same month, Barry Warner and his son, Matthew, were sitting on their back porch when two clean-cut young men rounded a corner of the house and introduced themselves. They were Jeff and Mike Derderian. They’d just bought The Station, you see, and they wanted to assure Warner that they would be “good neighbors.” Warner listened as they explained how they “were very proactive” and wanted to do a good job running the club. At one point, the brothers offered to buy him an air conditioner so that he could keep his windows closed, and the noise out, on summer
nights. Warner passed on that. Then the Derderians gave Warner their personal phone numbers and stressed that if noise were ever a problem, he should call them directly, rather than the police.

  The Derderians’ awkward social call on Barry Warner was drawing to an uncertain close when Warner spoke up. “One option might be to use polyurethane foam for sound insulation in the club.” It appeared that he had caught their attention. Warner continued. “I work for American Foam. . . . I know that people purchase foam for sound deadening. There’s different qualities of foam you can use.” The brothers asked Warner if he could bring them some samples; then, sensing that they had stumbled upon a relatively easy solution to a difficult problem, they took their leave.

  Back at the club, Mike Derderian spoke with manager Tim Arnold about the Warner meeting. “Well, I’m going to buy some soundproofing from this guy because it’ll kill two birds with one stone. He’ll be happy we bought it from him to stop the noise and probably put some money in his pocket,” Derderian explained.

  Later that week, Patricia Byrnes, an entertainment booking agent, stood with Jeff Derderian and Paul Vanner before the stage at The Station while her band client “loaded in.” She noticed several colored twelve-by-twelve-inch squares of foam laid out on the stage floor and a man explaining the differences between each. Byrnes pointed to one of the samples and kidded Derderian, “You can’t put peach foam up in a rock club. That’s a decorating faux pas.” They all laughed. There was no discussion of fire-retardant foam being an option.

  After the foam salesman left, Byrnes told Derderian that she used special fireproof carpet for sound insulation in her home studio, and offered to show him a piece of it that she had in her van. Derderian demurred, saying, “No, no. I’ve got to get it from this, you know, this guy because the neighbors are complaining.”

  Warner thereafter created an American Foam quotation sheet for “25 blocks” (fifty three-foot by seven-foot sheets) of polyurethane “sound foam” to be sold to The Station. Price: $580. He would later admit that this was “the cheap stuff — the ‘Ford Taurus’ of foam.” According to Warner’s secretary at American Foam, Desiree Labrie, it was not a common practice by anyone at the company to advise a buyer of a fire- or flame-retardant option.

  Around the same time, Todd Bryant of B&G Gutters Inc. was asked by Michael Derderian to prepare a quote for installing sound insulation at The Station. Bryant had previously done work for both Derderian brothers at their homes, so he agreed to meet Jeff at the club to scope out the work. On May 18, 2000, he provided a written quote to “Mike Derian [sic], 211 Cowesett Avenue, West Warwick, R.I.” for the installation of fire-retardant blown-in cellulose insulation in the main ceiling and roof slopes of the club, along with fiberglass insulation in a knee wall. Bryant’s price was $1,980. He never heard from the Derderians again.

  On June 9, 2000, Mike Derderian wrote to Barry Warner at American Foam: “Please accept our order for 25 blocks of sound foam.”

  Three weeks later, a truck bearing the markings of American Foam Corporation pulled up outside The Station. As its driver loaded over one thousand square feet of corrugated foam sheets into The Station, he might have wondered why a rock club needed so much cheap packing foam.

  Over the following week, club manager Tim Arnold glued sheets of the charcoal gray, corrugated “egg-crate” polyurethane foam over the walls and ceiling of the entire west end of The Station using 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. He covered the south wall, too, above the wainscoting, all the way to the corridor leading to the men’s and ladies’ rooms. Arnold lined the sloped ceiling over the dance floor on the south roof pitch with the gray material, as well as the unusual double-thickness door that served as the band’s load-in door on the end nearest Warner’s house. He even glued the gray polyurethane foam directly on top of the stiff, seventeen-inch-square blocks of two-inch-thick white foam (later spray-painted black) that Howard Julian had screwed onto the three walls of the drummer’s alcove back in 1996. Surely this would deaden the sound and silence Warner’s complaints.

  Neither Jeff nor Mike Derderian quit his day job to run The Station. Jeff continued reporting for WHDH in Boston. Less than a year after he and his brother lined the club’s walls with polyurethane foam, he appeared on-camera in a story on the fire hazards of foam mattresses. Shot in the apartment of one of the TV station’s producers, the story was one of several Jeff recorded that day.

  Jeff Derderian was known at WHDH as “talent” who could arrive on-site, glance at his producer-written story line, and do a stand-up with minimal preparation. He would ad lib and “punch his words for dramatic emphasis,” according to producer Michael Boudo. On the afternoon of the mattress fire shoot, he was definitely on his game, hitting his marks in a single take. “Another problem is what’s inside the mattress: polyurethane foam,” Derderian gravely intoned. “Fire safety experts call it ‘solid gasoline.’ It can cause a smoldering mattress to burst into flames.” Then, he unclipped his microphone and left for his 4 p.m. assignment.

  CHAPTER 4

  ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL

  FOR MOST, THE TERM “HARDSCRABBLE LIFE” conjures up images of dustbowl Oklahoma, or Appalachia. People tend not to think of America’s smallest state, with its hundred-plus miles of lush coastline, as Steinbeck country, where life is hard, and fun times, few.

  But Rhode Island of the twenty-first century is not the Gilded Age mansions of Newport. Neither is it those Industrial Age monuments to middle-class prosperity, the textile mills. Instead, Little Rhody is a state that, for many, is a land of modest educational and employment opportunities. For a goodly number of its inhabitants, life in the Ocean State means hard work and conservative aspirations.

  Home for many Rhode Island thirty-somethings is an unassuming rental, or even a bedroom in the parents’ house. Work, if they can find it, tends to be of the kind that rewards longevity or political connections, rather than cutting-edge skills. Rhode Island’s total population has not changed materially over the last forty years, hovering right around one million. Most who are born here stay here, and rarely venture far from home.

  Even fun, when the opportunity presents itself, is for the most part on a modest scale. Rhode Islanders don’t weekend in the Hamptons or jet to Aspen for the holidays. A summer day at Scarborough Beach, where oiled sunbathers bask in sea-lion proximity and serious neck jewelry is de rigueur (for guys and girls), might be the recreational high point of the year. And, in the depth of winter, it can get even bleaker. Cabin fever sets in around January, and by February, a night out in a rock club, where sound levels dull pain and body heat raises the temperature to summertime, can look pretty attractive.

  Erin Pucino worked the 6 a.m. shift at the self-serve Shell station in Warwick that the Derderian brothers had purchased two months before they bought the Station nightclub. She had worked for the gas station’s previous owner, but shortly after the Derderians bought it, the brothers set her straight about finances. “Things are going to be different now,” instructed Michael Derderian. “From here on, instead of your regular paycheck, you’re going to get half your salary in a paycheck and the rest in cash.” “And, by the way, turn the outside lights off as soon as the sun comes up. And keep that damned electric heater low. It’s too expensive to run.”

  Pucino, shivering in her drafty cashier’s shack, thought, “You cheap bastards.”

  Erin was the single mother of a six-year-old boy, and she worked two jobs. With her red-streaked black hair, multiple facial piercings, and tattoos, Erin looked every bit the heavy-metal rock fan, but economic realities prevented her from actually following the bands she liked.

  Working for the Derderians at their newly acquired gas station was a switch from working under its prior owner, Danny Saad, and Pucino found it to be a change for the worse. Saad had paid her by check with full contributions to such niceties as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. The Derderian brothers’ inveterate cheapness and penchant for und
er-the-table payroll were hardly outweighed by the occasional discount coupon she’d receive to see some national act play at The Station. But that was the deal. Work for peanuts, and sometimes she’d get comped into their club for a show.

  Pucino put up with it for a couple of years, then finally had enough. She gave her notice in late January 2003, a few weeks before Great White was scheduled to play at The Station. But when another clerk was absent on that concert night, Erin reluctantly agreed to cover for him at the gas station — on the condition that she could leave in time to hear Great White’s first song. Pressed for help that night, the Derderians agreed. At the time, Pucino thought she’d struck a pretty good deal. Her escape from life’s tedium would be purchased with a few more hours of work tedium — for many Rhode Islanders, the coin of the realm.

  Mike Iannone was not what could be called a regular at The Station. But he was a good friend of Steve Mancini, Keith Mancini, and Tom Conte — whose band, Fathead, regularly played there. Iannone hung out with his Fathead buddies and even helped them load their equipment into the club on occasion. He shared their excitement at opening for Great White, and planned to be there cheering them on.

  Mike knew where he was going in life, and it was far beyond any dingy rock club. By 2003 Iannone was a senior education major at Rhode Island College. In just a few more months, he’d have his bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate for high school mathematics. He had purpose, drive, and a sense of what felt right in a given situation — and what didn’t.

  One night at The Station in 2002, while he was listening to a band called Rebellion, Iannone’s sense of something being “not quite right” triggered quick action on his part. He was standing near the stage when two flashpots on either side of the band erupted in five-foot tongues of flame. Iannone “just didn’t feel right” with the flame effects because the club “just seemed too small” for them, he later explained. So, he simply walked out of the club, unimpeded. Mike Iannone was, apparently, the only person at The Station who was troubled by Rebellion’s pyrotechnics that evening.