Martin
Tocci
Mar's
Flamingo Lounge
9723 NE Sandy Blvd., 252-2888
8 pm Fridays
A hot afternoon burns out into evening gold, the kind of
bath-warm night that makes summer. Mar's Flamingo Lounge
cinches its Venetian blinds tight to keep that out.
The bar grows out of a Travelodge where Northeast Sandy
and 96th merge with John Doe strip-joint hinterlands. The
lounge, indeed, deploys flamingos as a sort of interior-design
leitmotif. There are flamingos etched into the mirrors behind
the bar, some flamingos breaking up the wallpaper, which
apparently came in Nicotine Yellow to save time. The room
is long but not wide, with some broken-down booths and Chinese
food of uncertain merit.
Four of the most horrid drunks in Oregon, happily, share
a table. One of the ladies explains, "He's so fuckin' stupid
because he got the shit kicked out of him." Her man leans
stupor-bound on her shoulder, then she tells him to fuck
off. ESPN and CNN glare silently on two TVs. Some guy starts
shouting and punching a video-poker machine in victory,
and a cocktail starts sounding very good right about now.
"It's a long way to the top," observes Martin Tocci,
sitting behind the curving piano bar that dominates the
good end of Mar's Flamingo Lounge. He arches an eyebrow
and softly plays the opening notes of the Twilight Zone
theme.
On Friday nights, Tocci presides over a loyal klatsch of
sing-along enthusiasts, mostly older women who start showing
up around nine. The women have a few cocktails and take
a shot at their favorite lounge standards. Tocci provides
proto-karaoke backup, wincing in pain when he has to play
"Memories." He manages to slip in some of what he likes,
classic jazz with an improvisational edge. He knocks off
at about one.
For a guy who started on the keys as a 5-year-old in the
Borough of Queens, it's just the latest in a long string
of jobs.
"I've been in this business for 30 years, and I know what
to expect," Tocci says, his vowels still direct from New
York. "It's been a long process. In the early days, there
was a lot of 'Get lost, kid, come back when you can play.'
Back then there was no compassion."
Tocci describes an Odyssey of a career. He played in a
U.S. Army band during the '60s, exempted from Vietnam but
consigned to the percussion section. He's played weddings,
bar mitzvahs, a running gig at Burt Reynolds' bar in Florida,
where he had to entertain braying celebrities.
"People say, 'Oh, that's so exciting, playing for famous
people! How can you go from that to playing in a little
Chinese restaurant?' Well, I got bored with 'em. I'd rather
be with the blue-collar crowd," Tocci says.
His closest brush with success on his own terms came as
half of a piano duo that scored some ink in The New York
Times before breaking up. Still, he's only had to supplement
music with "real" work since he and his wife, a hopeful
but unpublished mystery writer, moved to Portland in 1990.
With opportunities for classic clubside piano men running
scarce, Tocci sells gambling tickets at Multnomah Greyhound
Park to pay the bills.
"I'd like to be doing something more performance-oriented,"
he says. "There just aren't too many venues for that. There's
been a shift, I think. People don't want to actually listen
to music, they want to talk over it."
Still, despite the highly variable quality of some of his
volunteer accompanists at Mar's Flamingo Lounge, Tocci's
fervid and inventive playing is starting to draw a little
notice beyond the sing-along crowd. Some younger faces have
started popping up around the piano bar, including some
musicians eagerly absorbing Tocci's well-schooled chops.
And the truth is, when he gets a chance to cut free on something
he likes, he's something to behold.
His olive face draws into monastic concentration as he
takes off on an improv digression. Early in this night's
set, he burns through an oddly hot take on "California Dreamin',"
transplanting a palpitating Cuban heart into the chilly
pop song. In his hands, the chintzy style of "Satin Doll"
unravels in a harpsichord-like burst, an echo of his youthful
classical training.
Tocci's tough dedication to his craft seems like more than
enough to sustain him--and provide Mar's Flamingo Lounge
with a higher class of entertainment than it has right to
hope for. Beyond that, if his corps of true fans does grow,
it will only bear out the optimism Tocci himself preaches.
"There's a timeliness about things in our lives, I really
believe that," he says. "My philosophy is, when something
negative happens, something positive comes along to make
up for it. Now, my wife always argues with me about that,
but it feels better to look at things that way."
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