Guys hoping to woo girls are grateful to Mike Damone for this eternal truth: “This is most important . . . when it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.”
Fans of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” that 1982 coming-of-age teen comedy flick, are grateful to actor Robert Romanus for bringing to life the Damone character, a high schooler who scalps concert tickets and styles himself as a suave love guru.
Romanus, whose film and television credits also include “American Pie Presents: The Book of Love,” “The Facts of Life” (as Snake), “Days of Our Lives,” “The Young and the Restless,” “CHiPs,” “21 Jump Street,” “MacGyver,” “Will & Grace” and many more, will be channeling Mike Damone when he comes to Flagler Beach this weekend. The occasion: Romanus will be featured in a film shoot on Sunday (June 29) at the Flagler Pier for a video of the pop-rock band the Cherry Drops, led by singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, radio deejay and Flagler Beach resident Vern Shank.
Shank, who spent the ’80s kicking around Los Angeles, growing hair down to his butt, playing in a hair metal band known as the Cheap Sneakers, and making connections and friendships in the music and film industries, says Romanus is “a longtime pal.”
For this weekend’s shoot for the new Cherry Drops tune, “I Dedicate This Song to You,” the video, like many Cherry Drops films, “will have a storyline – there’s always a storyboard with a beginning and an ending,” says Shank, who founded the band in 2012. “I was honored that our video for our song ‘Outta’ Sight’ (from 2013) won Best Short Film at the Flagler Film Festival.”
When Shank isn’t performing rock ’n’ roll, he’s operating Pyramid Productions, a multimedia entertainment company he founded that includes event deejaying and running radio station Surf 97.3 FM, whose studio is on the Flagler Pier. He is also the producer of Flagler Beach’s First Fridays.
For “I Dedicate This Song to You,” “Bob will be filmed as he gets out of his car and walks to the radio station,” Shank says. “A few people outside of the pier recognize him and go, ‘Hey man, you got any tickets for the Cherry Drops show?’ – a reference to his famous role in ‘Fast Times’ as a dude scalping Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick and Earth, Wind and Fire tickets.”
Alas, Shank adds, the handful of extras needed for the video shoot has already been lined up.
The new video is just part of what are heady times for Shank and the Cherry Drops, whose music he describes as “a modern take on the retro vibe” – music that echoes ’60s rock, bubblegum pop and the power pop of the ’70s, as exemplified by the Beach Boys, the Archies, the Beatles, the Raspberries, Cheap Trick, Badfinger and others. (It’s no small matter that Shank is also helping to keep Flagler Beach in the limelight while giving the 98-year-old Flagler Beach pier its last burst of stardom before it is demolished and rebuilt as a concrete pier.)
Recent Cherry Drops news includes a long-delayed, just-released animated video featuring Archies singer Ron Dante, and in April 2024 the band was inducted into the California Music Hall of Fame, a reflection of Shank’s ties to the state.
Along with co-founding lead guitarist Josh Cobb, the Cherry Drops’ lineup has been steady since 2018 and also includes bassist Jamie Markowski and drummer Jimmy Mason.
Shank grew up “halfway between Philadelphia and Lancaster, where the Amish live,” he says. In the 11th grade he landed a role as an extra in the Harrison Ford movie “Witness.” He didn’t get paid, but the gig led to an awesome perk: He and his parents were able to attend the movie’s premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
“They picked us up in a limo,” Shank says. “I had a tuxedo on. Of course, nobody knew who I was but I got to walk the red carpet and I was like ‘This is what I want to do.’ So as soon as I graduated high school I went to LA. I had a little job all those years. I went to music and film school, and I lived in my car for about six months behind Pauly Shore’s Comedy Store.”
“Fast forward” (a favorite Shank phrase), and circumstances led Shank to move to Daytona Beach in 1999, and he relocated to Flagler Beach in 2004.
“But I kept all my ties that I had in California,” he says. That goal was facilitated greatly when he bought a travel trailer that he stores in a Hollywood RV park when he’s not using it as a temporary residence in La La Land.
Shank confesses that he “springboarded the radio station as a means to get to know some people if I didn’t know him already from LA. I would do interviews with them and then while I had them on the phone afterwards, I would take the opportunity to kind of slide in there: ‘Hey, I’m a huge fan of your music. I’m in this band called the Cherry Drops, and if we wrote a song that’s kind of like something you guys would have done, would you consider maybe being a part of it?’ ”
Thus the Cherry Drops, Shank adds, “have been incredibly lucky enough to work, record and-or perform with legendary artists such as Mark Dawson of the Grass Roots, Dennis Tufano of the Buckinghams, Steve Boone (a former Palm Coast resident) of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Tony Valentino of the Standells, and the late Gary DeCarlo of Steam.”
Shank notes that he has been a “longtime friend of Christian Love,” a singer-guitarist who has been in the touring band of the Beach Boys with his dad, band co-founder Mike Love, since 2005. “So, I’m kind of in that circle of the Beach Boys,” Shank says.
Shank became “buds” with the Archies’ Ron Dante, the flesh-and-blood lead singer of that prototypical fictional band, after sending him a demo of the Cherry Drops’ version of the Archies song “Everything’s All Right.” Baby Boomers will recall that the Archies were the subject of a Saturday morning TV cartoon series in the late 1960s, with Dante and other session musicians crafting such sticky-sweet bubblegum pop hits as “Sugar Sugar” and “Bang-Shang-A-Lang.”
“Ron goes ‘Oh my God, no one has ever done an Archies song justice, but you did,’ ” Shank recalls. “He gave a few tips, just to raise some of the harmonies and stuff like that, and he loved it and then he gave us a huge quote (a public endorsement).”
The song, which appears on the band’s 2015 album, “Life Is a Bowl of Cherry Drops,” opened the door to Dante collaborating with Shank and company on the song “Happynessville,” which is included on the Cherry Drops’ 2018 album, “Good to the Last Drop.”
Meanwhile, in 2014 the Cherry Drops song “Outta’ Sight” was selected as a weekly “Coolest Song in the World” pick by Little Steven Van Zandt for his syndicated rock ’n’ roll radio show, “Little Steven’s Underground Garage.” Yes, that Little Steven, who played guitar for Bruce Springsteen and portrayed a mob captain in “The Sopranos.”
Such activity led to the Cherry Drops’ induction into the California Music Hall of Fame in April 2024. The band performed at the induction ceremony, and they were inducted by Tufano, whose group the Buckinghams scored a No. 1 hit in the 1960s with “Kind of a Drag.”
Past inductees include Dante, Tufano, Ritchie Valens, LeAnn Rimes, BJ Thomas, Rick Derringer, Canned Heat, Gary Puckett, Cannibal and the Headhunters, LeAnn Rimes, Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night and others.
Shank and his fellow Cherry Drops scored another honor just last week, one that has landed them in the elite company of U2, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Kiss, the Ramones, James Brown, Britney Spears, Metallica and other rock and pop stars: They’re now cartoons!
While those superstars appeared in animated form on “The Simpsons” and other TV shows, on June 20 the Cherry Drops released a new animated video for their 2018 song “Happynessville,” which uses the original recording featuring Dante. The video, with Shank and his fellow Cherry Drops looking sort of Archie-ish along with a modern-day cartoon version of Dante, is the culmination of a six-year, tragedy-plagued journey from conception to completion.
Animation artist Sue Bielenberg, a friend of Shank’s, had worked on “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” Rug Rats” and other animated series prior to beginning work on the Cherry Drops video in 2019. But Bielenberg died unexpectedly of a heart attack halfway through the project, Shank says.
Craig Clark, a special effects animator, worked with Bielenberg as “an understudy” on the project, Shanks says. Clark’s many credits include work on such films as “Forrest Gump,” “Mask” and “Big Trouble in Little China” – but Clark didn’t have access to Bielenberg’s files.
“Fast forward, and like three and a half years go by, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere I get this email from Sue’s daughter,” Shank says. “She goes, ‘You don’t know me but I’m Sue’s daughter and I have something that might be of interest to you. We finally got around to getting my mom’s computers and we extracted these files and it appears there’s this video she had been working on.’
“She had found my contact information on Google and she goes, ‘Do you want these files?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh my God yeah!’ ”
Shank contacted Clark, who “put the finishing touches on it about a month ago, and it debuted now.” The video can be viewed on Shank’s Facebook page, and is scheduled to be available on YouTube and other streaming platforms, he says.
While these days the Cherry Drops perform live only infrequently, and the band mostly releases intermittent singles instead of dropping an entire album at one time, Shank has committed himself to releasing two videos a year: on the first day of summer, and on his birthday, Nov. 21.
With the new video of “Happynessville” now out in the world, Cherry Drops fans can look for the release of the video for “I Dedicate This Song to You,” replete with a guest appearance by Robert “Mike Damone” Romanus, on Nov. 21.
–Rick de Yampert for FlaglerLive
