Frut Rocking On Despite Adversity

Frut Rocking On Despite Adversity

The Frut of the Loom, fast rising “57 rock” band from Detroit’s bad north-east side, have been the subject of a huge wave of pig repression in the last year or so. They have been “busted” on totally bogus charges 3 times, they’ve been beaten up and otherwise abused by local and state narcotics pigs, and their name has been slandered in an attempt by the various suburban power structures to wipe out rock and roll and tis related pleasures, dope and fucking.

Last September 28, the conspiracy to destroy the Frut went into high gear when Warren, Clinton Township, state, and other pigs forced their way into the Frut farmhouse in Warren and planted dope there. Five members of the Frut were charged with possession. Duane, a friend of the band, got his stomach pumped because the lying pigs said he “swaliov'ed some dangerous narcotics” but they didn’t find anything. Duane is now in the process of sueing the pigs. Right on!

Two weeks before the September bust the mayor of Warren, a pig named Theodore Bates, told the Frut’s landlady that the Frut had to be out “in one week or we’ll find the means to get them out.” A Warren pig dick told a friend of the Frut’s that he would do anything to put them in jail “even if we have to stop their cars and throw the dope into them!”

The Fruts were forced out of their place in Warren but they soon found a new hideaway in Sterling Heights. This cooled things out for a little while but on January 24 (the day the Frut were supposed to play at the Free John Sinclair concert at the Grande) the bass player, John Cozmo, and Corky, one of the equipment men, got stopped driving through Novi and the pigs claimed they found “one-hundreth of a gram of cannabis sativa” in their car. Corky, and John, who had the band’s longest mane by far, got their hair chopped to the scalp at the Oakland County JaH. The Frut went ahead and played at the John Sinclair benefit anyway, on both nights.

John and Corky rotted in the Oakland County pigsty for three weeks before they went to court on Friday, February 13. The pigs had blown the arrest (and the amount of ‘dope’ was too small to be analized anyway) so they had to let them goin just enough time to make it down to the Eastown to play the gig they had there that night.

The Frut were getting ready to go play at the Eastown again on Saturday the 14th when they got “busted” again, this time by a mob of Fraser and Sterling Heights pigs led by a dick named Baker. Baker had bragged to Frut equipment man Charley’s girlfriend that he was going to “put the Frut in jail for life!” Pig Baker and his boys planted a bunch of dope in the Frut house and arrested 17 of the band and assorted friends and onlookers, including: one girlfriend of the band that was charged with “illegal possission of narcotics”her diet pills that her doctor had given her a prescription for, and Dennis the Warble, who the pigs walked in on while he was taking a shitthey claim he “threw dope out the window” and they “caught” it.

The local newspaper claimed the pigs found “packages of alleged heroin” and toher dope. This is obviously bullshit because the Frut knew that the pigs were coming and the place was cleanand they know “heroin is just bad dope. Our whole thing is totally oppossed to it.” Because of the lies that have gone down about the Frut their reputation in the music business has been all be ruined - thy’ve had jobs cancelled and a lot of club owners are afraid to book them now.

Norm, the lead singer says: “The revolution started back in 1957. That’s when people started getting rowdy...that’s when they stared thinking. Man, they were letting it out...they were holding all this stuff inside of them for so many years and rock and roll was the way they got it out...

“We said, ‘Let’s refresh, let’s go back, let’s give em the enthusiasm that started the revolution.’ We want to give it the heaviness it had back then...the heaviness came from the guys that were playing it. They got everybody goin' so much, the vibes were so good...That’s our whole thing with 57 rock. We enjoy it so much our practice sessions are like playing at Olympia to 50,000 people.

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“The pigs understand it more than the kids, they say, ‘Jesus Christ, here them guys are starting it all over again...startin the goddam revolution all over again!!

“And the second time, man, will probably be the last.”

John and Neil the Warble had to sit in the Macomb County pigsty for 15 days as a result of the latest phoney “bust” but the Frut are all back together again and kickin’ 'em out like never before. They just got back from Cleveland where they played 3 nights at the Rock Pile and reports are that everybody flipped out over them.

The Frut aren’t taking any of this shit sitting down, either. Since they’ve had a hard time getting bookings in the area they’ve been putting on their own “teen-age hops” out on the east side with killer bands like the Brat, and the popularity of the Frut just keeps on growing. They’re sponsoring a giant “come together” show at the Jewel Theater in Mount Clemens on Easter Monday, March 30. Along with the Frut will be the Parliaments, the Funkadelics, Alice Cooper, the Stooges, and the Brat Whew!

The Frut don’t intend to let themselves get pushed out of their own territory. They’ve built a big following on the northeast side and they love the kids and the scene. A couple of weeks ago pig Baker came to their house AGAIN and busted down the door on some jive-ass pretense, so the Frut of the Loom have been sort of layin low at their parents’ houses until they find a new place to call home. But they’re staying right out in the suburbs where they came from, pigs or no pigs. “Besides,” Norm says, “the only “safe” place for a band like the Frut right now is “on the moon”!

Franklin Bach Up,

Minister of Culture (music) Youth International Party (White Panthers)