A Vermont-bound defector and his friends say parting will be such bittersweet sorrow.
By JON WILSON
Published April 28, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - It started in Bayfront Medical Center's emergency room, a good place to talk music, as it turned out.
There, a chance conversation led to the birth of the Barracudas, for more than a dozen years one of the Tampa Bay area's most popular bands for big events and parties.
Playing vintage instruments and dressed in 1960s garb, including Beatle boots, the Barracudas built a reputation for note-perfect renditions of British Invasion-era songs born of the mid '60s and early 1970s.
It comes to an end Friday night at the Coliseum, 535 Fourth St. N. It is the Barracudas' last gig. The band is breaking up. Drummer Pat Ranieri is moving to Vermont, fulfilling a promise to his wife, Alice, who was born in next-door New Hampshire. For the other band members, it seemed like a timely moment to move on, too.
"Lots of mixed emotions," said Scott Struthers, who plays keyboards and guitar. "These have been some of my best friends."
Bob Carter, who owns a public relations firm, plays guitar. Maurice Brazil, a pediatrics nurse practitioner, plays bass.
All are 50ish, except for Ranieri, a lad of 48. They came of age when the music they play now was changing the pop scene.
But all have diverse musical resumes. Carter, for example, played with the Travellers, a well-regarded 1960s folk group modeled on the New Christy Minstrels. Brazil played with the Destinies, another folkish group, and Struthers and Ranieri played during the '70s in a rock band called the Struthers Brothers.
But back to the Bayfront emergency room. At the time, Carter was a hospital vice president, Brazil was chief flight nurse for Bayflite, the helicopter rescue service. They bumped into each other and started talking about getting up a band. They recruited Struthers, a service adviser at Dew Cadillac. They found a drummer. They tried a practice. Afterward, "We looked at each other and said . . . this'll never work," Brazil said.
But months of perseverance paid off. The group played its first gig, a party at Albert Whitted Airport. The guys didn't know how things would go. Louie, Louie was the first song, the crowd went crazy and the Barracudas were on their way.
Ranieri joined them later, settling the band's roster for good.
Besides keeping an era's music alive, the group has opened for such names as the Beach Boys, Paul Revere, Steppenwolf, the Turtles, Ray Charles, Bill Haley's Comets and Spyro Gyra.
When they opened for the Association at Harbour Island in Tampa, 60,000 people attended. Butterflies whirred in musicians' bellies. "I could hardly eat before we went on," said Ranieri, who had just a month to learn the band's songs.
The group also had a taste of the convention circuit, playing for rowdy crowds in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Nashville.
Heck, they've ridden floats in Festival of States parades.
"It's been a thrill," Carter said, marveling at how the band has managed to resolve disputes that often cause groups to dissolve.
"It's incredible, actually," Carter said. "We practice once a week. We're on the road together, too. It's kind of funny, we really are like brothers. You know how brothers get along, sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. But everybody always winds up caring about each other."
Leaving the band and St. Petersburg is "bittersweet," said Ranieri, who owns Pat's Body Work here.
Struthers said he isn't sure what his musical future holds.
But Carter and Brazil plan to continue playing, this time with a different format. They hope to organize a larger band, take on some horns and feature a female singer.
"We're not ready to lay down our guitars," Brazil said.
The Barracudas' Friday finale starts at 8 p.m. The Coliseum's doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $16, and proceeds benefit the Help a Child charity.
