Winners of the Beatlefest Battle of the Bands in 2004 and 2005

The Mystical Majesty Band is made up of five talented musicians from the northeastern United States, and they won two years in a row at Beatlefest's Battle of the Bands. They are very versatile and can do a lot of the Beatles' early songs as well as their late material. Reverend Flash, the percussionist and vocalist, recorded a tribute to John Lennon that was broadcast on a radio station in New Jersey, WDHA-FM. He and a different Beatles tribute band won at Beatlefest in 2000. Reverend Flash is also a legally-ordained minister and writer. Ron Zito, the band's drummer and vocalist, won the Beatlefest Sound-a-like Contest in 2001.

The band uses guitars, drums, keyboards, percussion, and P.A. equipment from manufacturers such as Epiphone, Fender, Hammond, Ibanez, and several others.

The Mystical Majesty Band is available for bookings in and around the New York City tri-state area. For more information, you can check out the band's website, e-mail Reverend Flash at flash@freepdx.com, or call the hotline at (320) 210-6459. Scroll further down this page for gig information and a list of songs the band covers.

Here is a list of venues where the Mystical Majesty Band can be seen at:

Cool Beans, Oradell, NJ
Crossroads, Garwood, NJ
The Crow's Nest, Paramus, NJ
The Fone Booth, Franklin, NJ
Joe & Joe's Restaurant, Pearl River, NY
The Loop Lounge, Passaic Park, NJ
The Mojo Lounge, Jersey City, NJ
The Mouse Trap, Rochelle Park, NJ
The Orange Lantern, Paramus, NJ
The Tribeca Bar, Manhattan, NY
The Underpass, Elmwood Park, NJ
Whiskey Pete's, Palisades Park, NJ

Some songs you can hear the Mystical Majesty Band play include but are not limited to:

"A Day in the Life"
"A Hard Day's Night"
"All You Need is Love Life" (Beatles/Rutles)
"Birthday"
"Can't Buy Me Love"
"Dear Prudence"
"Do You Want to Know a Secret"
"Eight Days a Week"
"Flying"
"Glass Onion"
"Got to Get You Into My Life"
"Hello Goodbye"
"Here Comes the Sun"
"Hey Jude"
"I Am the Walrus"
"I Want to Hold Your Hand"
"In My Life"
"Lady Madonna"
"Love Me Do"
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
"Magical Mystery Tour"
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"
"Penny Lane"
"Piggies"
"Please Please Me"
"P.S. I Love You"
"Revolution"
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
"She Loves You"
"Something"
"Strawberry Fields Forever"
"Ticket to Ride"
"Tomorrow Never Knows"
"Twist and Shout"
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
"With a Little Help From My Friends"
"Your Mother Should Know"

They take requests as well. Email them to flash@freepdx.com.

The following is an interview I did with Reverend Flash, from May 18, 2005. Thank you, Reverend, for taking the time to answer these questions!

Q: How did you become a Beatles fan?

Reverend Flash: My father got me started on The Beatles at an early age. I may, in fact, bethe world's first second-generation Beatles fan, having dug them as a tot in the 70s. Little by little, my dad gave me all his original Beatles records, until there was nothing left to hand me but Dave Clark Five albums. A similar story probably goes for our drummer Ron, whose uncle actually worked with John Lennon. Our keyboardist Ed seemed to discover them on his own, and a lot more recently than the rest of us. Of course, guitarist Gary and bassist Jim were around to witness the mania firsthand. Gary even saw John Lennon live at the One-to-One concert.

Q: Were there any bands you played in before the Mystical Majesty Band?

RF: Jim, Gary, and I used to be in a generic cover band together. We had no gimmick; nothing to separate us from every other cover band. Ron and Ed are still playing in a Rolling Stones band together. Of course, we've all been in our share of cover bands and original projects, including other Beatle-themed groups.

Q: How and when did the Mystical Majesty Band get started?

RF: We got started as a lark in early 2003. I had this idea to do just one show where a group of guys would play the whole 'Magical Mystery Tour' LP live, which is my favorite Beatles album. After working hard on learning everything from the 'MMT' LP, our old keyboardist thought it had the potential to turn into a full time gig. I proceeded to fashion a full-length expansion of the original one-off to include non-album film material and an entire set of music by other artists that was inspired by 'Magical Mystery Tour'. The band vetoed a lot of the crafty stuff, and with the inclusion of The Beatles greatest hits and the diminishing presence of the 'MMT' songs, we've somewhat devolved into a more typical Beatles cover band, except that we sound pretty good.

Q: Has the current lineup changed in the past two years?

RF: We got together for the first rehearsal and there were six of us. We had another guitarist that day. But it was decided that three of us were going to form a Beatlefest act for that March, and that we would all reconvene for the MMB idea afterwards. When we got back together, we were five, the extra guitarist having had a change of heart. Turns out we didn't really need him, anyway. A few months and a few gigs later, we made the painful but necessary decision to replace our original keyboardist who, as talented as he was, sounded like he only just learned the songs yesterday. Ed sounds like he's been playing them forever, and he's half the age of his predecessor.

Q: Do you remember the first venue you guys played?

RF: The first gig we played was at The Loop Lounge in Passaic Park, NJ. It was a bit of a coup, as that club frowns on cover bands. But I was in an original band that night and got us on the bill. We made a pittance, but it was finally good to get out of the rehearsal studio after a year.

Q: Could you describe the band's shows?

RF: Our shows are spirited, relaxed, and fun. We give the crowd a nice mix of some of The Beatles best material. We do an album spotlight midway - a block of songs from one album. I try to talk the audience about the songs we're playing to help kill the transition time between tunes. I'd like to make trivia a regular part of the show, and maybe even an occasional Beatles-related joke. I'm also considering buying some toy percussion for audience participation.

Q: What song(s) do you enjoy playing live? Are there any particular ones that seem to get great reactions from crowds?

RF: The moptop rockers always get the place stompin'. We really enjoy having mastered 'Day Tripper'. We strategically rearranged 'Nowhere Man' to put the solo in a later part of the song. 'When I'm Sixty-Four' is dead on. 'Penny Lane' always manages to go over well. 'Revolution' and 'Silly Love Songs' are a coupla post-mop songs that get people dancing. I think people like our finale sequence, which is usually 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' into 'Hey Jude' (the group's two biggest singles), followed by the 'Sgt. Pepper' reprise which we've personalized into our own band's sign-off. That goes into the epic 'A Day In The Life', of course, and just when you thought you've heard everything, the final chord of 'ADITL' actually turns out to be the first chord to 'A Hard Day's Night', so we end the show with one song about a day and one about the night that follows the day.

Q: Do you have any plans to perform outside the New York/New Jersey area in the future?

RF: We played a gig in Pennsylvania last year. It got us a nice write-up online. Also, I was just talking to someone I know who thinks he could find a bunch of clubs for us in West Virginia that would be glad to hire us. We also know agencies who might be able to send us out of the area for the right price. We're seriously considering going to the Chicago Beatlefest this year and trying to replicate our Big Apple battle success in the Windy City. Personally, I'd like to do a Northeast tour of lower New England since Cambridge is supposed to be a burgeoning music scene. I also have a sneaking suspicion that classic rock will be making a big comeback in a couple of years, and we'll be ready for it.

Q: Any plans to change the musical program?

RF: Now that we're getting more gigs and building up a following (and after having won twice at Beatlefest), we'll probably start adding in some more unexpected material: album cuts, solo tracks, songs from The Beatles' club days, music by their British Invasion contemporaries or their family members, medleys, parodies, tributes, music that influenced the Fabs or was influenced by them, their collaborations with other artists, and even our own Beatlesque originals. At the same time, however, we don't want to get so obscure or unconventional that we alienate people. The audience should be able to have a groovy Beatle-music experience as opposed to simply feeling that they were just seeing an adequate cover band doing some Beatles songs. Of course, we wouldn't just change overnight. It wouldn't be good for anyone if we just shifted gears without any warning and used up all our surprises in a short period of time.

Q: What about the look of the band?

RF: We're going to be giving ourselves a bit of an image makeover so we can look as much like entertainers as we try to sound. That doesn't mean we'll be dressing up like The Beatles, though. We're not impersonators. First of all, we don't have the same lineup as The Beatles. We're a vocalist, a guitarist, a bassist, a keyboardist, and a drummer. So, if we dressed up like the band, we'd be aping Yoko Ono, George, Paul, Billy Preston, and Ringo. Secondly, our drummer Ron is adamant about not dressing up in costume, and isn't even that crazy about finding better stagewear. In a way, though, the dissention makes us more authentic, since Pete Best also didn't want to adopt a new look like the rest of the band.

Q: I know that you are also a writer. What kind of things do you write, and do you have any books of your work out?

RF: I've yet to write The Great American Novel. I don't have the inspiration, patience, or time to write a book now. Mainly, I write songs (as do most of the other members). I also can write poems, short stories, editorials, and reviews. I need instant gratification, ya' know? I also try to write on the internet as often as I can. Emails like this and posts to blogs, forum, lists, and groups keep me in practice. I'm (feebly) trying to break into journalism. I just submitted a resume to a local newspaper in response to a want-ad, and I just found a website that is soliciting writing contributions. I think I would be an excellent music journalist - especially being graded on a curve, if what's out there is any indication of journalistic professionalism.

Q: What advice would you give to someone just starting their own Beatles tribute act?

RF: Stay outta North Jersey! We saw it first! (And take off those ridiculous wigs.)

As he mentioned in the interview, Reverend Flash writes quite a bit. He sent me a mock-review he wrote on the Sgt. Pepper album, and I decided to post it on here. It's all in jest, just written to prove that you really can write a bad review about anything if you set your mind to it. With that in mind, click here to read it.

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