THE EMOTIONAL capacity of an artist probably compares favorably with that of a lunatic, and doubtless strikes members of both their families as exhilarating one moment, and exasperating the next.

I try not to claim to be an artist. Fearing the self-characterization too presumptuous, I line up for public categorization with the practitioners of other crafts. Whenever somebody accuses me of artistry, however, I am charmed, satisfied and honored beyond expression. So, I must suspect or need that identity, if secretly. I certainly am no scientist, nor any kind of businessman. I rarely look for a bottom line; I look instead for depth and breadth and often cannot describe or explain what I encountered in the search.

But I am blessed and cursed with the temperamental extremes that accompany whatever energies drive a man to seek fulfillment in endeavors more subjective than objective. I am impetuous, and I frequently ascribe gigantic, personal importance to serving impulsive needs that must seem absolutely frivolous when I try to communicate or share them. Still, I try to share them, especially those from which I draw pure, simple joy.

Two of the more ostensibly frivolous of my private passions are being at Gilgo Beach and listening to the Jim Small Band. I have been indulging the one for more than 35 years, the other for about 10. Mostly, when I tap into these life delicacies, I am alone, but I have tried to share my enjoyment for one or the other with my children, among others, and in the case of Colleen, to share both.

Three years ago, when our relationship was not yet as strained, distant, confusing and painful as it ultimately would become before it began to develop an adult form, I visited Colleen at SUNY-Plattsburgh. Hesitantly - I suppose because the change in state law regarding the drinking age had not yet been seamlessly matched by the change in custom and practice in all college towns - she asked if I would join her and some friends at a bar later that evening. She said she had discovered a band she wanted me to hear, the Perry Nunn Band, if I remember right. I said I would, but for some stupid reason I tried to hide how wonderful I felt that she had asked. Worse, I succeeded.

The place was typically crowded, but with great faces and broad smiles, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the reception I got from each of her girlfriends, as they shook my hand exuberantly and said, "You must be Colleen's dad! It's great to finally meet you!" Evidently, my daughter had revealed much more affection for me than to me, and the discovery gave me back some hope.

I told her that Perry Nunn was fabulous, and I meant it, but I also begged her to save me a Thursday night the next time she returned home. Every now and then, I confessed to her, on a Thursday night, when I am still awake and everyone else in the house is not - and especially when I feel real good or real bad - I walk a half mile to the Dakota Rose and listen to the Jim Small Band perform an hour's set. I said that the band's relaxed precision and easy excellence had never failed to amaze and then restore me. I had sought them out when my youngest son was born and when my father died. Knowing how deeply she appreciated a wide range of music, but particularly fun and funky jazz and rock, I promised that she would feel the same. I swore it, guaranteed it.

The plan backfired, for a while.

Toward the end of last summer, on a weekday afternoon, when the parking lot at Gilgo Beach was nearly empty, I spied a bearded face - vaguely familiar but out of context - and suddenly realized it belonged to Phil Reilly, a singer-guitarist with Jim Small. I told him the story: that I'd brought Colleen to see and hear the band, and that they were so good, and she so overwhelmed, she felt I had belittled her.

"Sure," she had said, "I bring you to see Perry Nunn, so you blow my brains out with this. Great. Thanks a lot."

Reilly laughed. On an impulse, I guess, he yanked an acoustic guitar out of his trunk and sat atop a picnic table. We fiddled with songs I hadn't played or sung since my girls were little. Reilly said he had not been to Gilgo before - wasn't even sure why he drove there that day - but he liked the place. I said I understood, probably better than anyone.

During the winter recess last month, on a Thursday evening, Colleen asked if I thought I would be up late enough to take a walk to the Dakota Rose. I beamed. I said I would nap if I thought I required it.

Later, on the way, we chatted and marveled at what an unseasonably warm and beautiful day it had been, though windy. Colleen said, "Yeah, the ocean was beautiful today, the way the wind blew back the tops of the waves." She had driven to Gilgo Beach at about 2:30. I laughed. I told her I had been there, too, from around noon until just after one o'clock.

When the Jim Small Band had finished their first set, Reilly walked over to say that he and his wife had driven to Gilgo Beach at around 1:30; where was I?

I still laugh aloud when I think of it.

NEWSDAY, THURSDAY, JULY 2, 1992

Jamming All Night Long

And You Thought Paper Bags Were for Groceries
By Denise Flaim

There's one musical event we truly look forward to all year, and it takes place this Tuesday at Paradise (50 Broadway, Island Park, 889-2404)

Infused with a sense of loopy musicianship and unavoidably addicative once you attend, the annual Paper Bag draws together dozens if the area's tightest musicians, who churn out a painstakingly choreographed, gleefully sweaty show.

Named the Paper Bag after its theme song - actually, the pithy and nonsensical "Paper Bag / What a drag," is more like a theme lyric - this all-night jam traditionally draws more than 1,000 audience members, though you'll never see it advertised anywhere.

To get into the spirit of things, hike over to a supermarket and bag the goods for a costume - pun intended. Last year, we spotted everything from paper-bag fedoras to entire business suits made out of the brown stuff.

In the mid- to late 1980s, I would walk from my house to a long-gone place called the Dakota Rose to listen to live music, mainly the Jim Small Band. Their second or third set branched out from rock and roll into big band tunes, opening with Glenn Miller's classy "In the Mood" and closing with Paul Simon's brassy "Late in the Evening."

Other musicians invariably would arrive in time to jam specifically for that set: Dennis Wilson, a veteran trombonist with the Count Basie Orchestra; Val Angrosini, a trumpet player, and Lenny La Pinta, a saxophone player and a music teacher in West Islip. Arriving always with a wide smile and an enthusiastic handshake, Lenny practically badgered band member Mike Guido into going back to school for his bachelor's and then his master's in music education, insisting that Guido would make a great teacher and would love the work. Guido now is a great music teacher who loves the work.

Until two years ago, I did not know that Lenny was out late playing music in those years to save his mind. At a chance 1999 dinnertime encounter in the Grille Room in Hauppauge, he told me - and with palpable reservations - that in 1984, his mother had been convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his father and sentenced to 25 years to life. He said he was producing a videotape to accompany her plea for clemency. He was not sure why he was telling me, except as a friend. He was not sure if he wanted any publicity. I told him I wouldn't bother him about it. It took me almost three years to wrap my brain around the story, anyway.

In the riveting, 2-year-old videotape, Lenny and his brother, Anthony, of West Islip, tell about growing up amid routine domestic violence, in a household where there would be "hell to pay" if they revealed to anyone what transpired in the house. Their mother, Marie, reminisces about her childhood in Sicily, her arranged marriage, her acceptance of spousal abuse as normal, the night of the killing, her regrets, her sorrow and her dreams. Both sons recall sitting frozen with dread at the table while their mother lay on the floor bleeding from a head wound caused by a serving plate their father, Michael, had hurled across the room at her, because he was dissatisfied with dinner. They remember him standing over her, threatening to cut out her tongue. Anthony, a lawyer, talks about watching his father "go crazy" because Marie's brother, Leonardo Crociata, the only member of her family of origin living in this country, violated a new rule, forbidding him to ever visit his sister.

Marie La Pinta is 66 and has been a resident of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for 17 years. She will be eligible for parole when she is 73. She was born in Castellamare del Golfo, Palermo, Italy, the third of seven children and the only daughter of Antonio and Marie Crociata. According to Marie, both in the videotape and in the papers Lenny submitted to the New York State Executive Clemency Board, her father was fiercely protective of his only daughter, and fiercely brutal to his wife. The family physician once reported him to the police for wounds he inflicted on his wife when she was pregnant with Marie. When Marie was 8, she watched her father beat her mother senseless with a horse bridle.

Michael Guido sang, "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round," 72 times on Monday.

Guido, 52, of East Northport, spent the past 10 years of his professional life as an enormously popular middle school music and band teacher in the Garden City School District. He also served in the teachers union there, as middle school building representative; still does, in fact.

However, in June, on the day after the last board meeting of the academic year, with four school days remaining, Tim Rehm summoned Guido into his office. Rehm is the assistant to the superintendent, Stephen R. Leitman. According to Guido, Rehm said, "This will come as something of a shock to you, but, you're being transferred to the K-1 schools."

Suitably shocked, Guido asked, "Why?" He said Rehm answered, "It's in the best interest of the students." Thereafter, nobody in the Garden City School District's Board of Education or administration would say any more about the transfer. Rehm refers all questions to Leitman, who declines to comment.

Clearly, Guido had ticked somebody off.

Guido and I pondered the rationale all summer: "best interest of the students." Save for their parents, nobody in the administration or staff had yet seen this year's kindergarten students. How would anybody know their best interests? Guido's undergraduate, graduate, in-service training, and his 10 years of experience was entirely in secondary school music, not elementary school music. Surely, no administration would consider an inexperienced, untrained kindergarten music teacher in the best interests of kindergarten students. Maybe the administration felt transferring Guido to kindergarten was in the best interests of the middle school students.

Nah. Not according to the middle school students, or their parents, or Guido's colleagues, many of whom flocked to an early summer board meeting to register their support for Guido. To accommodate the crowd, the board relocated the meeting from the administration building to the middle school cafeteria, where one teacher after another, one parent after another, one student after another, rose to say what a spectacular and inspirational music and band teacher was Mr. Guido. A Little League coach even complained that his team had been losing good ballplayers to the middle school band because of Mr. Guido. Peggy Griffin, retired after 43 years teaching in the district, delivered, to thunderous applause, an impassioned speech in Guido's behalf and submitted a petition containing hundreds of signatures of faculty, students and parents supporting him.

The superintendent said nothing. Board members said nothing. Board president Kenneth J. Monaghan said, "The board and the administration have received a number of letters and phone calls asking us to open up a dialogue on this. The board is more than willing to listen, but what you must understand is that we cannot comment. Don't take our lack of response as being close-minded, but there will not be a dialogue."

Later, when publicly cornered by a clever father who asked what those present might expect the board to do, now, following such an outpouring of support for a teacher and such universal condemnation for a transfer, Monaghan fell sheepish. Not only would there be no comment, he said, there would be no vote in executive session, nor any discussion, nor any action by the board. The people could expect nothing for their efforts. There would be nothing. Subsequent letters that appeared in the pages of a local newspaper from parents and students, addressed both to the editor of the Garden City News and to Leitman, went unanswered. Wednesday, Leitman said to me: "It's a personnel issue. You know we're not going to discuss a personnel issue."

So, Guido started his K-1 music teaching career last week. The job requires visiting four buildings and 31 different classrooms, seeing groups of students once every six days, for a total of about 620 kindergarten and first-grade pupils.

I want my mommy!

First day of school, Guido had five consecutive kindergarten classes. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, jeans and sneakers.

It's okaaay, son, that you went to the bathroom before ... you actually went to the bathroom. It's okaaaaay. But, now you have to see the nurse.

He had asked the administration for assistance, some kind of preparation, or in-service training, or a pamphlet - anything. He got zero. His daughters, Sara, 9, and Emma, 12, rented him a copy of the movie "Kindergarten Cop" the day before school opened.

The sheep on the bus go "Baa baa baa."

"The kids love it when I act confused and mix up 'Wheels on the Bus' with 'Old MacDonald's Farm,'" Guido said.

A full-time, professional musician until he was almost 40, Guido plays flute, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, baritone horn, trombone, tuba, drums, bass and bass guitar. "In my new job," he said, "I have to play piano and guitar. I don't. I'm learning. I'm up to two chords on guitar, C and D. I played and sang, 'Happy Birthday' for a little girl, and when it was done, I said, 'That wasn't very good, was it?' She said, 'No.'

"It's hysterical. I'm being set up to fail, and I won't. They think I'm going to quit or get an attitude, but I'm working my face off. I'm having fun, too. The kids are having fun. They're unbelievably cute, too, although 'cute' doesn't really balance the equation. By education, training, experience and temperament, I'm a middle school music teacher. I was born to be a middle school music teacher. If I'd submitted my resume for this job, I wouldn't have gotten as far as an interview."

I have known Guido for 20 years. By now, you can ask any Garden City kindergartner what he or she likes best about school, so far. The answer will be, "Music!"

They're back! Perhaps Long Island's greatest live act ever, The Stanton Anderson Band, a band whose powerful live show and popularity helped create the buzz for the Long Island scene that went a long way in opening the door for acts who followed like Twisted Sister, The Good Rats and Zebra, have returned to reclaim their place as Long Island music royalty.

In the 1970s all roads to Long Island rock went through Stanton Anderson. Highlights of the band's run included a legendary live concert broadcast on WLIR from what was then the Mecca of the Island scene, Rum Bottom's, and a gig on the Nassau Coliseum stage on a bill with The Marshall Tucker Band. Stanton Anderson called it quits in 1982, and the band ceased to be until almost twenty years later, when the band reunited and set out to recreate the magic that put Stanton on the rock n' roll map.

In the late 60s Vocalist and harmonica player Mark Fowler, a New Orleans transplant, made the trip up north and would up hooking up with guitarist Rick Silecchio and bassist Larry Luby who were working on sounds in a basement practice place in Valley Stream. By 1972, the original line-up of the Stanton Anderson Band was in place, and the band began booking themselves into local bars and clubs.

The Stanton Anderson live show mixed blues, rock and soul influenced originals, with carefully chosen R&B classics, as well as covers from bands that were part of a new genre being labeled as "Southern Rock." A relentless touring schedule kept the band before the public, and only a few years later, the reward for their hard work came in the form of receiving slots on bills with major national acts including The Allman Brothers and Southside Johnny, as well as the opportunity to play the Nassau Coliseum as the opening act for The Marshall Tucker Band.

What has always been true about the band is how they had a way of taking cover songs and making them their own. Fowler and Silecchio jokingly refer to this as "Stantonizing," while reminiscing about how "Knocking On Heaven's Door" became part of their set, a remake that could easily be described as the definitive cover of the Dylan classic. "I was driving out to a soundcheck for a show in the Hamptons," the guitarist remembers, "and I heard it on the radio. When I got to the sound check I said let's try this. By the second night playing it, it became one of our killer songs. There was just a magic to it." "With the band," Fowler picks up, "It's always about a guitar sound, or a keyboard sound. It's always some kind of hook, and there's something there. There's a seed, and we start working it." However, an affiliation with the Southern Rock genre led to the Stanton Anderson Band being tagged as falling into this same category. And much like some other acts that wore the Southern Rock label, the members of Stanton Anderson felt that the genre name did not fairly describe the sound of the band. "We were lumped into that in a weird way because we opened up for those bands," Fowler explains. "But Stanton was not Southern Rock."

As the 80's began, Stanton Anderson were still at the top of their game. However, with the sound of new wave clawing its way into the mainstream, and he foundation for what would become the air-band era being laid, the Southern rock phenom had run its course. Playing to smaller crowds meant lighter paydays. Then when Silecchio found himself selling off one of his guitars just to make the band's payroll, both he and Fowler saw that it was time to close the book on Stanton Anderson. Members went their separate ways, each landing in other bands and meeting with varying degrees of success over the next 17 years.

For the fans, Stanton Anderson was a band gone, but certainly not forgotten. Over the years, people would come up and ask us about Stanton," says Fowler. I'd be in a deli or something, and someone would come over and say how they used to come to our shows. They would be like- what happened to you guys?" There was some minor rumbling between the members about putting the band back together, but it would be almost twenty years before he reunion would finally take place. Yet, once the rebirth of Stanton Anderson was announced, things seemed to pick up right here they left off when the band ruled the Island. "People came out of the woodwork," Silecchio laughs. They were dying to see the band. And we weren't even thinking about that, that there would be that kind of reaction. And yeah, the first few shows were a bit rough, but now Stanton Anderson isn't just a reunion band. This is a viable band."

Today the Stanton line-up consists of Fowler, Silecchio and original bassist Larry Luby, with Bobby Simons at the keys, drummer Linda Mackley, Tom Pecororo on guitar, and Tom and Lola Foy on backing vocals. The band is also joined by the Skid Row Horns, led by Pete Tursi on trumpet with lan Platt on sax and Mike Guido on sax and clarinet.

Silecchio allows himself the opportunity to take a sentimental tone while speaking about how it feels to be on stage with Fowler and rest of Stanton Anderson. "In the seventeen years Stanton wasn't playing, I'd been in other bands, and it was good. But there's something about being up their standing behind Mark. Maybe we didn't get all the attention other Island bands like the Twisted Sisters and Zebras did, but when Stanton Anderson is onstage and I look out and see the crowd, and even the club owner and bartenders are just being blown away by what we're doing, that's what really matters to me."

Stanton Anderson fans are going to get a rare opportunity to catch the band live in an intimate setting on July 31, when the band takes the stage at The Nutty Irishman in Bay Shore.

One of the cardinal rules, or warnings, pursuant to attending the annual, riotous, one-of-a-kind, all-Long Island, rock 'n' roll musical insurrection known (far and wide, and yet, not so) as "The Paper Bag" is the admonition on every ticket, brochure and song list: "We strongly urge you to take the next day off."

I would have, and probably should have, but here, on the afternoon following the 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. event at Mulcahy's in Wantagh, I feel incapable of any useful efforts, save possibly to share such joy as The Bag's madness inspires.

It was the 28th annual Paper Bag, where the world's only band with 60-plus rock 'n' rollers plays virtually unrehearsed music for six hours at a time, and my 15th visit as a guest of Michael Guido, its sire, its symbol, its heart and soul, and its despotic leader (when he is not standing otherwise unnoticed in the midst of a local band for whom he might be playing either flute, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, baritone horn, trombone, tuba, drums, bass or bass guitar, or serving as the sound engineer).

I was standing in the foyer Tuesday night, chatting with Guido siblings and members of the security staff, when a "Whoop" erupted at the doorway. I looked to my left, and there appeared the broadly smiling face of saxophonist/clarinetist/music teacher Lenny La Pinta, of Sayville. He was holding hands with both the source of and the template for his wider-than-ever smile, his mother, Marie La Pinta.

The crowd went berserk wherever they appeared. All night.

Back story: In 1999, Lenny La Pinta revealed to me that during the mid- to late 1980s, when I saw and heard him jamming weekly with the Jim Small Band at the long-gone Dakota Rose in Amityville, he was using music to stave off what anger, disappointment and sadness so constantly had pursued him since his mother was sentenced in 1984 to 25 years to life for her participation in the murder of his father, Michael.

I was rocked. Lenny did not want me to write the story--not yet. Following family tradition, Lenny had not talked about it for several years, until he finally confided in two members of the Jim Small Band. He and his brother, Anthony, who was attending law school with the intent of one day rescuing their mother, still disagreed on taking "family business" public, but Lenny was beginning to think that public support might be the only way.

He told me about years of beatings that took place in front of the boys, and fits of rage that even extended out into the front yard. He said his father made it clear that there would be "hell to pay" if he or Anthony were to talk about it to anyone.

The arranged marriage collapsing fast by 1984, and Michael La Pinta already planning to move to Florida, Lenny invited Marie's brother, Leonardo Crociata, the only member of her family in this country, to West Islip to "settle a few debts." Michael La Pinta had forbidden Marie to talk to or see any member of her family. Crociata arrived. A fight ensued. Michael at some point brandished his gun, the weapon that killed him during the struggle. Marie and her brother subsequently were seen trying to dispose of the body at a local landfill. Both were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.

In 2002, Lenny and Anthony went public with the story, through me, a new web page (mercyformom.org), and a deftly produced videotape. They soon had garnered support from thousands, worldwide, who pleaded repeatedly, officially and unsuccessfully, for executive clemency from Gov. George Pataki.

Finally, last month, Anthony's efforts in court drew a victory for Marie from Justice Robert W. Doyle, who overturned the 1984 conviction on the grounds that Marie and her brother had been represented by the same lawyer. Her battered spouse status had never made it into the courtroom. She pleaded to a lesser charge and was freed.

In the meantime, during those years, Lenny had badgered his friend Guido, encouraging and finally persuading him to go for his bachelor's and then master's degree in music education and become a middle school music teacher. With all that was on his mind at the time, Lenny convinced Guido that he would be one of the best music teachers and would love the work. Guido, an 11-year veteran middle school music teacher now working in the Island Trees School District, is one of the best music teachers and loves the work.

In his Paper Bag brochure, Guido wrote, "...I have never been happier about an event in my life as I was the day I saw Marie's kind, smiling face on the cover of the newspaper with the headline indicating that my friend's mom was coming home."

I gave Marie La Pinta two extra earplugs I had in my pocket, saying, "You're going to remember me for days for this; trust me."

Lenny took me aside and said, "My mother is in another dimension. This is her first night, ever, in a club, and there's 70 musicians on stage and 1,400 people in the audience. You should see her at the house. She stays at my house during the week and at the West Islip house with my brother on weekends. She has to walk slowly down the stairs, because she hasn't walked on carpeting for 22 years, and she's afraid she's going to trip on it.

"I took her out to Tanger Mall," Lenny said. "I spent about $1,000 on clothes. It's the most clothes she's ever had in her life."

At the band member meeting in a restricted area outside the club, just before the 10 p.m. opening of the show, a clownishly tuxedoed Guido mounted a makeshift stage and introduced a "rookie" Bag member. The crowd roared.

On the back of her official Bag Band Member T-shirt was her official Bag Member nickname: "Free at Last."