STREET BEAT FEATURECRUSHED: The Region’s Party Band by Tom Lounges 
Guitarist Tom Vienna has been playing virtually non-stop in regional bands since attending Calumet City’s T.F. North High School in the mid-1970s, where he formed his very first band with Kevin J. Friend, who went on to become a local legend with the band Mammoth. “I got more into the jazz and horns stuff like [the band] Chicago after high school,” he said, which resulted in his spending the disco days of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s in an early incarnation of the still active regional show band, Together. Vienna still loves the classic rock and R&B cover material he had grown up performing over the years, and still gets to play his share of it while moonlighting these days with Timepeace. But he said that current modern rock hits constitute a good deal of the repertoire he now plays with his current full-time band, Crushed. “A lot of people think Crushed broke up because I recently started playing with Timepeace, but that is not the case,” stressed Vienna, who has been a long time friend of Timepeace vocalist Robby Celestin and was happy to step in to fill a void that opened in the popular R&B/Latin group. “With Crushed, we do play some classic rock stuff by Tom Petty, the Stones and Led Zeppelin and all that, but I would never actually call Crushed a classic rock band,” he said. “We generally play to whatever audience we happen to be in front of at the time. There are some nights we play more classic rock than others, because of the particular club we are playing at, but a majority of our sets usually features newer stuff by bands like Nickleback, Incubus, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.” Vienna credits Crushed’s heavy leaning on latter day rock offerings to the fact that his three bandmates are all in their mid-Twenties. Because of his “old school” history and their “new school” input, the group’s sets run the full gamut of ‘70s standards, ‘80s MTV hits (i.e. Duran Duran), ‘90s grunge and brand new radio fodder currently heard on stations like Q101 and The Zone. For this reason, the tag “classic rock” does not hang well on Crushed. “We like to bill ourselves as an ‘Alternative/Retro Party Band’, because we really do cover a lot of musical ground,” stressed Vienna. The guitarist is a computer systems analyst during the week, so he said that stepping on stage every Saturday night is like therapy. “It’s a chance to have fun and blow off steam,” he said. “I’ve been playing music my whole life and it’s great that I can still pick up my guitar and do this.” Crushed has been together for two years, though not with the current line-up. Only Vienna and vocalist/percussionist, John Hendricks, remain from the original quartet, which formed out of the ashes of the popular local club band, The Concrete Suits. “The Suits were a good band that only lasted about a year or so before breaking up. The best thing about the Suits is that it enabled me to meet John,” said Vienna. At the beginning of the year, Mario Saminego (ex-Wookie Luv/ex-Bedheads) became bassist for the band, while Shane Jenkins jumped on the drum throne to keep the beat. “Surprisingly things moved along really fast,” said Vienna, of the new rhythm section came on board and kicked things into high gear. Jenkins came to the group fresh from having spent a few years pounding his kit behind the master of X-Rated Rock –– Stevie Starlight –– one of the more colorful characters populating the Chicagoland music scene. “Shane is more of a straight ahead rocker I think,” said Vienna. Both latter day members have dabbled in original music projects on the side in the past, which has started to infected this once exclusive cover band with “writing fever.” “We have a few original songs now that we play out,” said Vienna, himself a longtime closet songwriter. “We may put some of them down eventually [on tape in a studio], but it would be mostly just to have them for ourselves I think, not because we have visions of making it big.” Saminego was an old acquaintance of Vienna’s from the 1990s, when they played together in the dance rock group, Out Of Time. “Mario has a lot of R&B in him just like I do,” said the guitarist. “With him in the band now, you might see us get a little more funky in the future.” |
