New York Band Plays Glittering Hollywood Bash

Buffalo, NY (Buffalo News, 12/4/1999)—Most area bands glance up in mid-set to see a half-dozen burly guys holding their beers, and the rest of the crowd intently watching a Sabres game on the corner TV. Tonight, when Nik and the Nice Guys look up, they'll probably see Michelle Pfeiffer go-go dancing giddily with her husband, David E. Kelley. And Lucy Liu (Ling on Ally McBeal) mamboing madly with Dylan McDermott (Bobby on The Practice.)

For when the Rochester-based party band gets together with the cast and crew of Kelley's two smash hit shows for a let-your-hair-down, no-press-no-cameras -no-microphones-allowed Hollywood party, "anything can happen" says band manager Gary Webb. "And we're just the band to make sure it does."

How did Webb hook up with the award-winning Kelley? And how did a Rochester band wind up playing Hollywood's hottest holiday bash of the year? The story reads like a classic Kelley script. One winter in the mid-'70s, the Princeton hockey team showed up in freezing Canton to play the St. Lawrence University hockey team. A shaggy-haired Kelley wound up opposite an equally shaggy-haired Webb. "We hated each other," Webb says. "Instantly."

Numerous body-checks and loosened teeth later, Webb became a CPA, settled in Rochester in the early '80s, formed Nik and the Nice Guys—a high energy "jock and roll" outfit known equally for its outrageous on-stage stunts and its music—and in 1990 saw it become the house band for ESPN's irreverent The Lighter Side of Sports. Kelley, meanwhile, became a lawyer, moved to L.A. and built a name for himself as the hot young writer for NBC's irreverent L.A. Law.

When both men wound up on the Hollywood All-Star Hockey Team a few years later and faced each other on the ice once again, now 20 years since their first confrontation in Canton, they laughed. Kelley, says Webb, wound up coming to all the post-game parties to watch the band "pull all this totally crazed, out there, nutso stuff, which is exactly what David is all about."

He didn't forget them, either, when fame finally arrived. When Kelley held wrap-up parties, years later, for his first critically acclaimed shows, Picket Fences and Chicago Hope, Nik and the Nice Guys were his first choice. They played both gigs.

Kelley—who last September became the first writer in TV history to simultaneously win the Best Comedy and Best Drama Emmys for Ally McBeal and The Practice—plans to celebrate both the season and his double-Emmy win. So he's booked the posh Hollywood Athletic Club for a cast-and-crew only, catered, ultra-private affair. Private, as in 500 to 550 people, with roughly a third of them major stars. "It should be interesting."

Laurie Githens, Buffalo News