salomeU2000
The Fly
[SIMG]http://bonovox.interference.com/tribute/zsthumb.jpg[/SIMG]
By: Amy E. Myers
2003.07
?I?m not a look-alike or an impersonator,? says Chris Pataky, the front man of Zoo Station, the U2 tribute band based in Cleveland, Ohio. ?I was dressed in black long before this happened. I can?t help it that I?m short. I don?t really think I look too much like Bono. I?ve never cut my hair to look like his. Some shows I don?t even put on the sunglasses or the jacket. I mean it just depends on what?s going on,? and he emphasizes, ?I?m not an impersonator.?
Zoo Station is described on the band?s website as, ?four very different players, with four very distinct styles, celebrating the music of U2.? Chris Pataky, bassist Jeff Ross, drummer Chad Karnik, and guitarist Felix Duprey gave this interview during the weekend festivities of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum U2 Fan Celebration. Three U2 tribute bands performed over the course of the weekend. Zoo Station played a gig at The Mercury Lounge on Saturday, June 14. The musicians spoke about the unique sound of band, gave their thoughts about being in a tribute band, and shared their feelings about their audience and fans of U2.
?Zoo Station has been to together for a little over ten years. We started doing this in 1992, right about the time ZooTV came out and have been gigging steady for a long time. We?ve been all over the country and we just pretty much have a good time with it,? Pataky explains.
Zoo Station plays frequently at The Mercury Lounge, Brendan O?Neill?s in Westlake, and many Irish pubs in the region. They also have toured in Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Panama City, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York.
For those U2 fans that were in Cleveland for the Rock Hall celebration and were fortunate enough to see one or more of the talented tribute bands perform, they will naturally compare the differences between the bands. Each band has their own range of musical expression, style, and theatrics. There are no standards of right and wrong. Some bands attempt to recreate a U2 concert with costumes and choreography. Others stray from the path of imitation and attempt to follow their own style. The guys in Zoo Station want to make clear in their own words that they are following their own path.
What should the audience expect to see at a Zoo Station show? Simply stated, Zoo Station is four guys in a room playing loud rock and roll. The theatrics are minimalist. They do not rely on background tapes, keyboards, or expensive recreations of U2 costumes. Pataky wears stylish black clothing, small silver hoop earrings, and maybe Bono shades. Ross wears designer camouflage pants, glasses, and smiles like Adam Clayton. Karnik has a few more tattoos on his arms than Larry Mullen, Jr. Duprey wears a flashy pair of ZooTV studded jeans and a trademark Edge hat. It?s all very simple.
But maybe it?s not that simple. Zoo Station is more than just four men playing loud rock and roll. They rely on years of experience, professionalism, friendship, musical style, and synergy to deliver the performance.
?As a theatrical performance, I think the band interacts with themselves as the band would no matter what music we were playing. Yeah, I think we are a little bit more theatrical than most bands that you watch, as opposed to the band in the corner that?s playing and everybody?s having a cocktail and they don?t pay attention to them,? Pataky says. ?I think that people are forced to pay attention to us when we?re playing. I do like to command the attention.?
The audience can?t ignore Zoo Station. Both Pataky and Duprey talk to the audience between songs to strike up a rapport. Between sets, they all go out to meet the audience. Pataky frequently singles out women to serenade during ?One,? ?Mysterious Ways,? and ?With or Without You.? He jumps on tables and grabs ladies? hands. Duprey and Ross reach over to pluck each other?s strings in a mischievous display of their talents. They all smile, even Karnik smiles from behind the drums. Clearly these guys have a good time playing the music of ?the best band in the world.? Their friendship is contagious and the audience becomes part of that.
?When I?m up there,? Duprey says, ?I?m one hundred percent into what I?m doing. I?m not going through the motions of playing a song. Every song that I play, I find myself in it.?
Pataky says, ?I think that we mean it. That?s what I think draws people?s attention to us. We do add our own thing to it, and we do switch it up and we?re smiling and having a good time. That makes people want to have a good time.?
The band members do not take their style or years of experience for granted.
?For ten years, I still get nervous before each show,? Duprey says. ?We go through all of that. Every show we let loose. I let loose every time. It doesn?t matter if it was ten years ago or today, it?s the same energy.?
How does Zoo Station sound without background tapes and keyboard tracks? Duprey explains how Zoo Station performs stripped down versions of U2 songs.
?I always wanted to be able to play rhythm, sneak in a lead, and play the melody all at the same time,? Duprey says. ?As a guitar player, you say to yourself, ?How am I going to recreate this? Which part am I going to stick with?? because it?s live and we?re not going to have all this background stuff. So what I do is I just play the different phrasings. I?ll pick and choose my parts as I want them.?
Duprey adds, ?My style is very close to the Edge?s. I was into The Police and The Fixx and David Gilmour, and a lot of people that use effects and know how to use space correctly, as opposed to playing one thousand notes. As a guitarist, you can always make a guitar sound huge.?
Pataky elaborates on the band?s synergy. He says, ?We?ve come to a certain point as musicians where we know how to play with each other to achieve one common goal. We?re team players.?
Duprey says, ?When we all gel together, you can tell. And that?s what I think most people get out of it when they see us, when they see how we are into it and not just going off a set list and not having a premeditated show.?
U2 fans get one thing with Zoo Station that they won?t find so easily at a U2 concert: audience participation. They can shout out song requests to the band and hear them played, especially songs from U2?s early catalog. Since the band doesn?t strictly adhere to a set list, they can accommodate fans? requests and keep the show moving forward.
Zoo Station is not a group of U2 impersonators or look-alikes. Make no mistake. They are a band of individuals with their own identities and musical styles.
Karnik says, ?We?re not trying at all to make anybody think that they?re listening to U2.?
They apparently have no delusions about what they?re doing.
?We don?t really even have the same personas as they do,? Karnik continues. ?Felix talks through the show. The Edge never talks. With me and Jeff, we don?t sit back and just play like Larry and Adam do. Me and Jeff play off each other way more than Larry and Adam. We are very animated about it.?
?I think the Edge is a little bit more laid back,? Duprey says. ?I?m a little bit more out there. There are some differences. I have fun with it. I remember the first couple of shows I would hold back. And after a while I didn?t want to hold back anymore. I would do different things just to have fun.?
Zoo Station is distinguished from other U2 tribute bands in applying their own musical influences to reinterpret U2 songs. Each member stresses the importance of not exactly imitating U2?s style.
Ross explains how the band mixes different styles of each musician. He says, ?There are always different ideas. I mean that?s what makes a band a band. Music is made by four different people. Like DNA, right, the chain is a little bit different with each person and everybody has their traits.?
Duprey says, ?I listened to jazz a lot, Charlie Parker, stuff that made a player more open to experimenting and improvising. That music allowed me to get my own voice. I liked horn phrasing, keyboard phrasing, more than the guitar. I always thought that if I?m with a bass player and a drummer that I can play keyboard parts and phrasings using different effects.?
?Well I have more of a Motown and blues influence. So in playing this music, I put those influences in. I?m forever changing my bass lines,? Ross says.
Karnik says, ?My drumming style is influenced heavily by old school funk, George Clinton, James Brown, Bootsy Collins. Basically a cross between that, and some heavy metal. Some of the stuff I listen to is very dark and chaotic. It does come out every now and then when I?m playing and if you listen closely you can hear it.?
?Certain songs that we do we?ll alter the entire song, alter a rhythm pattern or something, where it?s my style,? Karnik says. ?These guys have just kind of evolved over the years and picked it up there with me. And in a situation like that the audience will know it and they?ll respond to it.?
Although they mix in their own influences into U2 songs, the blending of styles is done to avoid parody. They don?t take completely radical reinterpretations.
?I like to give the music as much respect as possible,? Pataky says. ?And we do like to do it as good as we can. But at the same point we do add our own thing to it. That?s what makes us a band in ourselves. Why do it if it?s gonna be exactly the same as it?s been done a hundred times anyway??
The members of Zoo Station are concerned with retaining their own identities and not being stereotyped as their U2 counterparts. When someone approaches Pataky and calls him Bono, he corrects the person and says, ?I?m Chris.?
?A lot of times people come up to me and they go, ?Hey, aren?t you some singer in a U2 band?? and I say, ?No, I?m not.? But a lot of people ask me that. Really, what do you say at that point? ?Yeah, dude, I am the guy in the U2 band.?? Pataky adds, ?I?m a singer in my own right. And fortunately I sound similar to one of the greatest singers in the world, which is ok with me.?
However, Ross cannot distance himself from the stereotype as easily has his band mates. People frequently comment on his resemblance to Adam Clayton. ?I look like him. There?s no lie to that. I?ve only been told that twenty million times. And I don?t try to look like him. I just was born that way,? he says.
When asked if he defines Zoo Station as a cover or tribute band, Karnik says, ?I don?t think there really is a label in the industry for us. Like I said, we are the literal sense of a tribute band. If you take the definition of a tribute, that?s what we are. But that?s not what the industry standard of a tribute band is. So in all honesty, I don?t think we have a label. We?re definitely not look-alikes. We?re not trying to impersonate them at all, obviously. And we don?t play the music exactly like they do.?
Ross agrees with Karnik on the term. He says, ?We?re a tribute band. We?re paying homage to U2. We?re not trying to be them. We most likely don?t play the parts just like they do. Our past experience is that didn?t work for us because we all have our own individual styles and techniques.?
Karnik wants the public to know about Zoo Station?s longevity among the recent development of many new U2 tribute bands. He says, ?We?re listed on Tribute City, which is a website of tribute bands all over the world. And over the course of the last couple of months, there?ve literally been five or six new U2 tribute bands that have popped up on the website. We didn?t jump on this, you know, when All That You Can?t Leave Behind came out and won the Grammy Awards. We?ve been doing this for ten years.?
Ultimately, tribute bands survive because of fans. They demand to see tribute shows while U2 is in the studio making new albums. A vital part of the fan experience involves going to concerts and bonding with one another through live music. But while U2 is busy, the fans form communities of friends and go out to support their local tribute bands. U2?s popularity is beneficial for Zoo Station. They have a full schedule to perform in the Cleveland area.
Pataky comments on his favorite venues and audiences. ?Irish festivals are great. I love outdoor events,? he says. ?Anything outside where I get to play to kids or parents with their kids or dogs running around. You get to connect to people who normally wouldn?t come out to see you. It?s great to play at high-class club, a nice place where you get a big, eclectic crowd because they always appreciate it. But it?s also good to turn that Harley rider on to U2 and watch him come up to you and go, ?Hey, dude, that was really cool.? I mean because you never thought that guy would really like that song. It turns out he likes the mushiest song out of your whole set. You can?t judge by appearance I suppose.?
Ross says, ?It?s about the people now, isn?t it. So you can be the best players in the world. But if nobody comes out to hear you play, you?re not the best. If you play in the amphitheater, you have to sell tickets at the amphitheater, right. No matter where you go, that?s what your job is. And that?s what we try to do. We try to make the club owners happy, the amphitheater owners happy.?
Pataky?s goal for each show is to connect with the audience. He says, ?I wanna make people happy and have a good time. I wanna make them feel good and forget about what ever the hell it is that?s going on in their lives that sucks. It?s inspirational music. And I?m fortunate to be able to play it. That?s what it?s really all about. That?s what it does for me. Therapy for me is to get up there and make people feel happy. And when you connect with that first person, from that point, that?s when the show starts. You make people dance, or see their head bob, or their hip tingle, or you see people smiling or singing along. Even if they?re singing the wrong words, or you?re singing the wrong words, that?s what makes it.?
Duprey thinks the shows provide the means by which people connect with each other. ?We provide the lubricant for the gears of courtship,? he says. ?What I mean by that is you could have a non-U2 fan in the group out there, somebody who?s not really into U2. And during the course of the evening, as we play, we provide that lubricant. Things are just moving along and the gears are flowing. The next thing you know, what I like to see out of it is people actually feeling it, feeling the music, singing ?One,? hugging somebody, two people meeting, somebody saying, ?Wow, U2 is really good.??
Ross gives an anecdote of an unexpected audience connection made at a Zoo Station show. He says, ?I had a guy walk up to me one time and he said, ?Dude, I?ll never forget this band. I saw this band six years ago. I met this girl there and now I?m married to her.??
Another unexpected consequence of attending a Zoo Station show is the creation of new U2 fans. Karnik says, ?We get the people who come up and say, ?You know, I heard ?Sunday Bloody Sunday? or ?Pride? and was never really a fan.? But they come to watch us guys play a couple times and they run out and they buy five or six albums. You know they buy the whole catalog, all the way back. They were never really exposed to the old catalog.?
In paying tribute to U2, Zoo Station also pays tribute to the fans. Pataky says, ?I?ve always tried to be respectful and nice simply because of the fact that they come out to see us. I appreciate that. If no one came out to see us, then I wouldn?t be able to do this. I get a lot of people who come to me a go, ?you?re great, you?re great, you?re great.? But I?m thinking that they?re great. Because without those people coming out to see how great we are and to enjoy the show, we wouldn?t be anywhere. It?s a trade off.?
?At the end of the night,? Pataky concludes, ?if I think it was a great night, and the crowd enjoyed it and the adrenaline was up, there?s pretty much nothing that can top that.?
Visit Zoo Station?s website to find show dates and photos:
www.zoostation.biz
To find a U2 tribute band playing in your part of the world, look up Tribute City:
www.tributecity.com
By: Amy E. Myers
2003.07
?I?m not a look-alike or an impersonator,? says Chris Pataky, the front man of Zoo Station, the U2 tribute band based in Cleveland, Ohio. ?I was dressed in black long before this happened. I can?t help it that I?m short. I don?t really think I look too much like Bono. I?ve never cut my hair to look like his. Some shows I don?t even put on the sunglasses or the jacket. I mean it just depends on what?s going on,? and he emphasizes, ?I?m not an impersonator.?
Zoo Station is described on the band?s website as, ?four very different players, with four very distinct styles, celebrating the music of U2.? Chris Pataky, bassist Jeff Ross, drummer Chad Karnik, and guitarist Felix Duprey gave this interview during the weekend festivities of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum U2 Fan Celebration. Three U2 tribute bands performed over the course of the weekend. Zoo Station played a gig at The Mercury Lounge on Saturday, June 14. The musicians spoke about the unique sound of band, gave their thoughts about being in a tribute band, and shared their feelings about their audience and fans of U2.
?Zoo Station has been to together for a little over ten years. We started doing this in 1992, right about the time ZooTV came out and have been gigging steady for a long time. We?ve been all over the country and we just pretty much have a good time with it,? Pataky explains.
Zoo Station plays frequently at The Mercury Lounge, Brendan O?Neill?s in Westlake, and many Irish pubs in the region. They also have toured in Kansas City, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Panama City, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York.
For those U2 fans that were in Cleveland for the Rock Hall celebration and were fortunate enough to see one or more of the talented tribute bands perform, they will naturally compare the differences between the bands. Each band has their own range of musical expression, style, and theatrics. There are no standards of right and wrong. Some bands attempt to recreate a U2 concert with costumes and choreography. Others stray from the path of imitation and attempt to follow their own style. The guys in Zoo Station want to make clear in their own words that they are following their own path.
What should the audience expect to see at a Zoo Station show? Simply stated, Zoo Station is four guys in a room playing loud rock and roll. The theatrics are minimalist. They do not rely on background tapes, keyboards, or expensive recreations of U2 costumes. Pataky wears stylish black clothing, small silver hoop earrings, and maybe Bono shades. Ross wears designer camouflage pants, glasses, and smiles like Adam Clayton. Karnik has a few more tattoos on his arms than Larry Mullen, Jr. Duprey wears a flashy pair of ZooTV studded jeans and a trademark Edge hat. It?s all very simple.
But maybe it?s not that simple. Zoo Station is more than just four men playing loud rock and roll. They rely on years of experience, professionalism, friendship, musical style, and synergy to deliver the performance.
?As a theatrical performance, I think the band interacts with themselves as the band would no matter what music we were playing. Yeah, I think we are a little bit more theatrical than most bands that you watch, as opposed to the band in the corner that?s playing and everybody?s having a cocktail and they don?t pay attention to them,? Pataky says. ?I think that people are forced to pay attention to us when we?re playing. I do like to command the attention.?
The audience can?t ignore Zoo Station. Both Pataky and Duprey talk to the audience between songs to strike up a rapport. Between sets, they all go out to meet the audience. Pataky frequently singles out women to serenade during ?One,? ?Mysterious Ways,? and ?With or Without You.? He jumps on tables and grabs ladies? hands. Duprey and Ross reach over to pluck each other?s strings in a mischievous display of their talents. They all smile, even Karnik smiles from behind the drums. Clearly these guys have a good time playing the music of ?the best band in the world.? Their friendship is contagious and the audience becomes part of that.
?When I?m up there,? Duprey says, ?I?m one hundred percent into what I?m doing. I?m not going through the motions of playing a song. Every song that I play, I find myself in it.?
Pataky says, ?I think that we mean it. That?s what I think draws people?s attention to us. We do add our own thing to it, and we do switch it up and we?re smiling and having a good time. That makes people want to have a good time.?
The band members do not take their style or years of experience for granted.
?For ten years, I still get nervous before each show,? Duprey says. ?We go through all of that. Every show we let loose. I let loose every time. It doesn?t matter if it was ten years ago or today, it?s the same energy.?
How does Zoo Station sound without background tapes and keyboard tracks? Duprey explains how Zoo Station performs stripped down versions of U2 songs.
?I always wanted to be able to play rhythm, sneak in a lead, and play the melody all at the same time,? Duprey says. ?As a guitar player, you say to yourself, ?How am I going to recreate this? Which part am I going to stick with?? because it?s live and we?re not going to have all this background stuff. So what I do is I just play the different phrasings. I?ll pick and choose my parts as I want them.?
Duprey adds, ?My style is very close to the Edge?s. I was into The Police and The Fixx and David Gilmour, and a lot of people that use effects and know how to use space correctly, as opposed to playing one thousand notes. As a guitarist, you can always make a guitar sound huge.?
Pataky elaborates on the band?s synergy. He says, ?We?ve come to a certain point as musicians where we know how to play with each other to achieve one common goal. We?re team players.?
Duprey says, ?When we all gel together, you can tell. And that?s what I think most people get out of it when they see us, when they see how we are into it and not just going off a set list and not having a premeditated show.?
U2 fans get one thing with Zoo Station that they won?t find so easily at a U2 concert: audience participation. They can shout out song requests to the band and hear them played, especially songs from U2?s early catalog. Since the band doesn?t strictly adhere to a set list, they can accommodate fans? requests and keep the show moving forward.
Zoo Station is not a group of U2 impersonators or look-alikes. Make no mistake. They are a band of individuals with their own identities and musical styles.
Karnik says, ?We?re not trying at all to make anybody think that they?re listening to U2.?
They apparently have no delusions about what they?re doing.
?We don?t really even have the same personas as they do,? Karnik continues. ?Felix talks through the show. The Edge never talks. With me and Jeff, we don?t sit back and just play like Larry and Adam do. Me and Jeff play off each other way more than Larry and Adam. We are very animated about it.?
?I think the Edge is a little bit more laid back,? Duprey says. ?I?m a little bit more out there. There are some differences. I have fun with it. I remember the first couple of shows I would hold back. And after a while I didn?t want to hold back anymore. I would do different things just to have fun.?
Zoo Station is distinguished from other U2 tribute bands in applying their own musical influences to reinterpret U2 songs. Each member stresses the importance of not exactly imitating U2?s style.
Ross explains how the band mixes different styles of each musician. He says, ?There are always different ideas. I mean that?s what makes a band a band. Music is made by four different people. Like DNA, right, the chain is a little bit different with each person and everybody has their traits.?
Duprey says, ?I listened to jazz a lot, Charlie Parker, stuff that made a player more open to experimenting and improvising. That music allowed me to get my own voice. I liked horn phrasing, keyboard phrasing, more than the guitar. I always thought that if I?m with a bass player and a drummer that I can play keyboard parts and phrasings using different effects.?
?Well I have more of a Motown and blues influence. So in playing this music, I put those influences in. I?m forever changing my bass lines,? Ross says.
Karnik says, ?My drumming style is influenced heavily by old school funk, George Clinton, James Brown, Bootsy Collins. Basically a cross between that, and some heavy metal. Some of the stuff I listen to is very dark and chaotic. It does come out every now and then when I?m playing and if you listen closely you can hear it.?
?Certain songs that we do we?ll alter the entire song, alter a rhythm pattern or something, where it?s my style,? Karnik says. ?These guys have just kind of evolved over the years and picked it up there with me. And in a situation like that the audience will know it and they?ll respond to it.?
Although they mix in their own influences into U2 songs, the blending of styles is done to avoid parody. They don?t take completely radical reinterpretations.
?I like to give the music as much respect as possible,? Pataky says. ?And we do like to do it as good as we can. But at the same point we do add our own thing to it. That?s what makes us a band in ourselves. Why do it if it?s gonna be exactly the same as it?s been done a hundred times anyway??
The members of Zoo Station are concerned with retaining their own identities and not being stereotyped as their U2 counterparts. When someone approaches Pataky and calls him Bono, he corrects the person and says, ?I?m Chris.?
?A lot of times people come up to me and they go, ?Hey, aren?t you some singer in a U2 band?? and I say, ?No, I?m not.? But a lot of people ask me that. Really, what do you say at that point? ?Yeah, dude, I am the guy in the U2 band.?? Pataky adds, ?I?m a singer in my own right. And fortunately I sound similar to one of the greatest singers in the world, which is ok with me.?
However, Ross cannot distance himself from the stereotype as easily has his band mates. People frequently comment on his resemblance to Adam Clayton. ?I look like him. There?s no lie to that. I?ve only been told that twenty million times. And I don?t try to look like him. I just was born that way,? he says.
When asked if he defines Zoo Station as a cover or tribute band, Karnik says, ?I don?t think there really is a label in the industry for us. Like I said, we are the literal sense of a tribute band. If you take the definition of a tribute, that?s what we are. But that?s not what the industry standard of a tribute band is. So in all honesty, I don?t think we have a label. We?re definitely not look-alikes. We?re not trying to impersonate them at all, obviously. And we don?t play the music exactly like they do.?
Ross agrees with Karnik on the term. He says, ?We?re a tribute band. We?re paying homage to U2. We?re not trying to be them. We most likely don?t play the parts just like they do. Our past experience is that didn?t work for us because we all have our own individual styles and techniques.?
Karnik wants the public to know about Zoo Station?s longevity among the recent development of many new U2 tribute bands. He says, ?We?re listed on Tribute City, which is a website of tribute bands all over the world. And over the course of the last couple of months, there?ve literally been five or six new U2 tribute bands that have popped up on the website. We didn?t jump on this, you know, when All That You Can?t Leave Behind came out and won the Grammy Awards. We?ve been doing this for ten years.?
Ultimately, tribute bands survive because of fans. They demand to see tribute shows while U2 is in the studio making new albums. A vital part of the fan experience involves going to concerts and bonding with one another through live music. But while U2 is busy, the fans form communities of friends and go out to support their local tribute bands. U2?s popularity is beneficial for Zoo Station. They have a full schedule to perform in the Cleveland area.
Pataky comments on his favorite venues and audiences. ?Irish festivals are great. I love outdoor events,? he says. ?Anything outside where I get to play to kids or parents with their kids or dogs running around. You get to connect to people who normally wouldn?t come out to see you. It?s great to play at high-class club, a nice place where you get a big, eclectic crowd because they always appreciate it. But it?s also good to turn that Harley rider on to U2 and watch him come up to you and go, ?Hey, dude, that was really cool.? I mean because you never thought that guy would really like that song. It turns out he likes the mushiest song out of your whole set. You can?t judge by appearance I suppose.?
Ross says, ?It?s about the people now, isn?t it. So you can be the best players in the world. But if nobody comes out to hear you play, you?re not the best. If you play in the amphitheater, you have to sell tickets at the amphitheater, right. No matter where you go, that?s what your job is. And that?s what we try to do. We try to make the club owners happy, the amphitheater owners happy.?
Pataky?s goal for each show is to connect with the audience. He says, ?I wanna make people happy and have a good time. I wanna make them feel good and forget about what ever the hell it is that?s going on in their lives that sucks. It?s inspirational music. And I?m fortunate to be able to play it. That?s what it?s really all about. That?s what it does for me. Therapy for me is to get up there and make people feel happy. And when you connect with that first person, from that point, that?s when the show starts. You make people dance, or see their head bob, or their hip tingle, or you see people smiling or singing along. Even if they?re singing the wrong words, or you?re singing the wrong words, that?s what makes it.?
Duprey thinks the shows provide the means by which people connect with each other. ?We provide the lubricant for the gears of courtship,? he says. ?What I mean by that is you could have a non-U2 fan in the group out there, somebody who?s not really into U2. And during the course of the evening, as we play, we provide that lubricant. Things are just moving along and the gears are flowing. The next thing you know, what I like to see out of it is people actually feeling it, feeling the music, singing ?One,? hugging somebody, two people meeting, somebody saying, ?Wow, U2 is really good.??
Ross gives an anecdote of an unexpected audience connection made at a Zoo Station show. He says, ?I had a guy walk up to me one time and he said, ?Dude, I?ll never forget this band. I saw this band six years ago. I met this girl there and now I?m married to her.??
Another unexpected consequence of attending a Zoo Station show is the creation of new U2 fans. Karnik says, ?We get the people who come up and say, ?You know, I heard ?Sunday Bloody Sunday? or ?Pride? and was never really a fan.? But they come to watch us guys play a couple times and they run out and they buy five or six albums. You know they buy the whole catalog, all the way back. They were never really exposed to the old catalog.?
In paying tribute to U2, Zoo Station also pays tribute to the fans. Pataky says, ?I?ve always tried to be respectful and nice simply because of the fact that they come out to see us. I appreciate that. If no one came out to see us, then I wouldn?t be able to do this. I get a lot of people who come to me a go, ?you?re great, you?re great, you?re great.? But I?m thinking that they?re great. Because without those people coming out to see how great we are and to enjoy the show, we wouldn?t be anywhere. It?s a trade off.?
?At the end of the night,? Pataky concludes, ?if I think it was a great night, and the crowd enjoyed it and the adrenaline was up, there?s pretty much nothing that can top that.?
Visit Zoo Station?s website to find show dates and photos:
www.zoostation.biz
To find a U2 tribute band playing in your part of the world, look up Tribute City:
www.tributecity.com
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