Business pros reunite as band for benefit

No one would mistake any of the members of the Rockets band for Justin Bieber. That's because any of the six members of the Rockets could be Bieber's father.

But the Rockets -- all of whom are now in their late 50s -- last Sunday did what Bieber does, and seemingly with as much ease. Forty-two years after they first began playing together at Great Neck High School South, the Rockets -- now all professional business people -- stepped onto a stage at Flower Hill Park in Manhasset and played their '70s music to help raise funds to battle ovarian cancer.

The event was arranged by Liz Oppo, whose 19-year-old daughter, Katie Oppo of Manhasset, died of the disease in April 2011. She was a pre-med student at Johns Hopkins University.

The Rockets are Barry Douglas, the band's Hammond organist and keyboard player and a plastic surgeon at Garden City-based Long Island Plastic Surgical Group; Corey Bergman, guitarist and vocalist, now retired in Florida but who flies in for practices; Alan Pomerantz, percussionist and vocalist and a docent at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens; Eric Kraus, bass guitarist and an attorney in Manhattan; Ken Applebaum, lead guitarist and an assistant district attorney in Queens; and Daniel Pincus, drummer and a Manhattan-based cantor and shofar specialist. Douglas, Bergman, Pomerantz and Kraus are all original band members. Pincus and Applebaum joined the group later.

"We had lost track of each other," Douglas said. But he looked up one or two others a year or so ago, and they looked up others. Pretty soon, they were talking about a get-together, and band practice. They got together at Douglas' Oyster Bay home.

Then they were asked to play at the benefit. They played songs from Santana, the Allman Brothers and The Band. They played for an hour.

"We were ready to do more," Pomerantz said.