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The ZO2 Story: Heavy-metal trio's exploits become 10-part comedy series
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Published: August 31, 2008
NEW YORK
Patrons of Arlene's Grocery, a Lower East Side nightclub, have long known Paul and David Zablidowsky and their good friend Joey Cassata as ZO2, a shaggy-haired, heavy-metal trio whose set usually precedes the Monday-night karaoke party. They might also know that in 2004 the band realized a dream when it was tapped for a 40-date tour, opening for Kiss and Poison.
But even the most ardent ZO2 fans may not realize that to make ends meet -- even after that big break with Kiss -- the three musicians moonlighted on Saturday mornings as a sought-after children's birthday-party act called the Z Brothers. Had there been T-shirts for their dayside tour crisscrossing the metropolitan New York region, they would have listed dates playing for the children of Robert De Niro, Michael J. Fox, Chazz Palminteri and Al Roker.
With their Jekyll-and-Hyde repertory -- Wiggles by day, Judas Priest by night -- it was probably inevitable that television would come calling. And IFC (channel 157 in Time Warner's digital movie pack) is now showing Z Rock, a 10-part comedy series based heavily on the real-life adventures of ZO2 and the Z Brothers.
The series premiere, which first aired last week, will be repeated today at 11 p.m., followed by the second episode in the show's regular 11:30 p.m. timeslot.
In the show, the band members play fictionalized versions of themselves, exaggerating their actual experiences -- including a pitched rivalry with other children's musicians in the New York area-- pursuing the recording contract that long eluded them.
"Television is what radio used to be," said David Zablidowsky, 26, who plays bass and who, like his older brother, Paul, is known professionally only by his first name and last initial. "If you're anybody, you're on television now. That really is the way to get your music out there."
Viewers inclined to watch the series with their young children, beware: IFC likes to refer to itself as "always uncut," and Z Rock is no exception. It features plenty of topless groupies and simulated sexual acts, between, among others, the band members and some of the young mothers seen doing the hokeypokey at the daytime shows. Which raises a question: Just how true to life were some of those scenes?
"There were always hot moms," Cassata, 30, the band's drummer, said wistfully.
Like the dialogue in Curb Your Enthusiasm and This Is Spinal Tap, much of that in Z Rock is improvised, though with the players working off highly detailed outlines. For the three band members, who had never previously acted, the approach proved a blessing. Most of the situations in which their characters are placed by the show's writers and producers -- who include Mark Farrell, a former producer of Curb -- are adapted from tales the band told in hours spent sitting around a table.
"They created a world that was familiar to the guys," said Lynn Lendway, who manages the real-life ZO2 with her husband, Bob Held. "Then they said, ‘Speak the way you speak.'"
For a supporting cast the producers surrounded the musicians with stand-up comedians and improv players, including Lynne Koplitz (who plays the band's dedicated if addled manager, Dina); Greg Giraldo (as a powerful record producer, who delivers an endlessly profane reprimand to Paulie Z after the band is late for his son's birthday party); and Jay Oakerson (as a club manager who repeatedly propositions Paulie, who is straight).
Among the many musicians playing fictionalized versions of themselves in cameos are John Popper of Blues Traveler (who agrees to sign the Z Brothers, not ZO2, to a recording contract, but only after Dina sleeps with him); Dee Snider of Twisted Sister; and Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors. Joan Rivers plays Joan Rivers, but reimagined as Dina's aunt.
Where fiction and reality diverge most sharply in the series, Cassata said, is in the TV band's propensity for being "very self-sabotaging."
"It seems on the show like we're reckless, but we're not in real life," he said. "We never put the ZO2 career in jeopardy. That stuff is definitely artistic license."
The band's roots are in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the Zablidowsky brothers were raised by their mother, Doris, who worked in a hospital cafeteria, and their father, Marty, the manager of an electronics warehouse. Marty was also a guitarist who played in a rock trio, called Z, that included his brother.
"I honestly didn't know any kids' songs," Paul said, "because we grew up listening to Black Sabbath."
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