CRANDE BALLRM

CRANDE BALLRM

Keelan: If a big enough section of man is attempting to make music—it’s life— a very powerful force, which is what it’s into now. I don’t really see how anything harmful can come out of it unless the whole reaction is crossed with something totally evil. As long as there are honest efforts in music, then music is sacred.

Creem: But over, say, the last fifteen years, there has never been a large concentration on music, and a very large concentration on the business of music—the machine, and now that we have the concentration on the actual music too—then the machine could be the necessary evil. As for example, a company will release between three and ten new groups per month, and 90% of those groups will die because any money being made from their albums will go to feed the machine of ad-man, promotion-men, etc.

Keelan: Yes, so when we get rid of the machine part, then all the bread will go to the groups instead.

Creem: The nice part is that some groups are starting their own labels such as Apple and Bizarre and trying to cut out the middle men and the hypes. Like—B.B. King, for instance—virtually unheard of until Eric Clapton name-dropped. And with labels messing artists up, like with Electric Howlin’ Wolf, which Wolf himself said to be garbage.

Keenlan: Yes, but that’s because those people are under very severe, longstanding contracts whereas the young artists now are aware of these contracts and avoiding them. What I want to get into is where any person would go into a studio and cut a master and take it to a record company and the company would just be able to buy that one master instead of the artist.

Creem: What, by way of changing the subject, do you think of Hie MC-5 album?

Keelan: Well, they’re doing their thing. Actually, they are the living epitome of doing one’s thing, to coin a phrase. But puns and cliches such as that can really be fun. When I work in my lyrics, I sometimes work in terms of taking these clichees and splitting them with a few other words into a different phrase. Like one I worked with was—I took “wrought iron” and the phrase came out as meaning “wrought from iron-clad affection” which obviously is not as effective when taken out of context of the song it was written into. I invent words too. I don’t think I do it in songs, but—

Creem: How do you mean?

Keelan: Well, like “hencequently” and when you go through old magazines and newspapers in your garage you “thumpage” through them. Good friend of mine—Jerry Carr—when he’d speak he’d get confused and come up with a word like “misconfuse.” Last night he was trying to describe paranoia and terror, and he came up with “parafied.”

Creem: Yeah, when I was at college in England, we would invent words which were onomatopoetic. For example, if you were to sneakily steal something, in England, it is known as “snaffling”, Any way— where do you play now, Richard?

Keelan: Well, I play the Ichthus Coffeehouse March 8—places like that. Things generally get a little slow around this time of year, but there are several coffeehouses opening in Canada soon that I hope to get around to.

THE CONTINUATION OF THIS INTERVIEW WILL APPEAR IN A LATER EDITION OF CREEM MAGAZINE

GRANT RIVER at BEVERLY.