#1399: La Flavour

80s Snapshot:

• Number of songs on Hot 100: 1
• Highest peak position: 91
• Cumulative weeks on Hot 100: 2

Disco will always be associated with New York City first and foremost, as well as other multi-cultural population centers across the United States and Europe. The small town of Massillon in Northeast Ohio (population roughly 30,000) certainly doesn’t match that profile, but that’s where we’re heading for today’s profile.

The core of the band La Flavour were four childhood friends and classmates from Massillon: twin brothers Steve and Pete Nervo, Gino Milchak and Craig DeBock. The group experimented with a multitude of genres, especially in their early years. Before finding their footing, they vacillated from covering British Invasion-style rock, to Motown classics, to the horn-based classic rock of Blood, Sweat and Tears or Chicago. Throughout these early years, they performed as The Blues Soul.

The group changed its name to Ragweed in the early 70s and expanded to a 6-piece act as it incorporated choreography and comedy routines into their performances. The rise of disco and its eventual ubiquity gave the group the opportunity to blend their rock sensibilities with the prevailing sound of the day, and their star began to grow across the Northeast Ohio / Western Pennsylvania region.

In the late 70s, the band was signed to Midwest Records, who had recently had success with another band from Ohio in Wild Cherry (of “Play That Funky Music” fame). Upon their signing the band was renamed La Flavour and released an unsuccessful single with “As Time Goes By”.

La Flavour began working with musican/songwriter/producer Mark Avsec, whose ties to the region include being a former member of the aforementioned Wild Cherry plus his longstanding friendship and recording/touring history with Pittsburgh icon Donnie Iris.

Working with Avsec, Flavour put together their debut LP, which featured more variety than a typical disco album of the period, featuring influences of funk, rock, jazz and R&B as well. The album would come to be called Mandolay after the release and success of the band’s next single of the same name. “Mandolay”, a Latin disco track which features infectious percussion and acoustic guitar, was released in late 1979 and became a floor-filler across the country. The track debuted on the Disco Top 100 chart in mid-December and peaked at #7 on that chart across an impressive 24-week run. “Mandolay” even was able to cross the Atlantic, making the Top 20 on Italy’s single chart.

Though “Mandolay” performed very well in the clubs, by early 1980 the popularity of disco was beginning to wane and the song never reached the Billboard Hot 100. Also impacting La Flavour’s promition and potential chart success was their record label: their material was the first independently-distributed recordings from Sweet City Records, a Cleveland-based offshoot of Midwest which only featured a few acts (including La Flavour and Wild Cherry). The next two singles from the album were showcases of the band’s versatility, but “When The Whistle Blows” (a blend of R&B and jazz) and “To The Boys In The Band” (a more rock-centric song) were not commercially successful.

For their fourth and final single, La Flavour released “Only The Lonely (Have A Reason To Be Sad), a guitar and sax-driven midtempo R&B ballad in the vein of The Brothers Johnson or Dr. Hook’s hits of this period. Sufficiently distanced from disco, the track performed better on the pop charts than “Mandolay”; after spending one week bubblig under the Hot 100, La Flavour made their Hot 100 debut at #93 on the 6/14/1980 chart. “Only The Lonely” climbed to #91 in its second and final week on the Hot 100, also reaching #63 on the Hot Soul Singles chart.

With disco in freefall, La Flavour rebranded once again as Fair Warning, attempting to capitalize on the rise of harder album-oriented rock. The group worked on a self-titled album with Avsec once again composing, but the project quickly hit a snag when Van Halen, one of the most popular acts in this vein, released their 1981 album also called Fair Warning. Fully sinking the Fair Warning project was the decision to have the album’s first track “She Don’t Know Me” recorded by burgeoning band Bon Jovi for their debut album (their version would eventually reach #48 on the Hot 100 in 1984). Though some promotional copies exist, Fair Warning never received any official releases.

In the 4 decades that followed, the group’s core quartet remained intact, sticking with the La Flavour name that gave them their greatest success and focusing on live performances of both contemporary covers and their own material. While their robust touring schedule once included stops around the country, Northeast Ohio has always been their primary hub. Still playing an average of over 50 shows a year, the band was dealt a blow in late 2024 when two of their founding members (Gene Milchak and Pete Nervo) plus their touring drummer of 25+ years all passed away within months of each other. Despite the losses, La Flavour has continued to perform in 2025, dedicating their busy summer of performances to the memory of their departed bandmates.

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