Officially chartered in 2006, the band's roots date to 1999, when Clemente and drummer Alan Ware decided to develop a concert version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's groundbreaking 1970 "rock opera," "Jesus Christ Superstar."
"I felt like every other interpretation out there lacked any kind of rock-'n'-roll sensibility, that it had been corrupted by musical theater groups," he explained. "But it's very much a rock-'n'-roll piece. The original version had [members] of Joe Cocker's group."
Clemente and Ware worked for years on the project and finally booked a Boston venue. A band was assembled, tickets were sold. Then Webber's lawyers got in the act, legally preventing the live performance of more than five songs from "Superstar."
"To fill out the rest of the night, we decided to play songs that never got played live, songs that could have been in rock operas," Clemente recounted. "When we played that stuff in front of people, they lost their minds. We said, 'I guess we're onto something.' "
While it's true that tunes like the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" and Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" have been in-concert staples for the artists for decades, Clemente is especially proud of the pieces - e.g. the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - that have never received live airings by their creators.
Even "Bohemian Rhapsody" is done in a way Freddie Mercury and company couldn't achieve. "They never performed [the song] live with the vocals," he said. "Even Queen used tapes."
Clemente noted that URO is not necessarily interested in painstakingly recreating every note in the manner of Montreal's the Musical Box, which virtually clones concerts performed by Genesis during the era when Peter Gabriel fronted the band.
