ROCK & ROLL NEWS

ROCK & ROLL NEWS

Well, winter’s just about over and to settle the matter and/or celebrate it, Michael Forman’s Concert Hall Productions (Concert Hall is also the underground press’ advertising agency) is throwing a Winters End Pop Festival, March 27-29.

This year’s first in the series of the often dismal (Toronto Pop No. 1), sometimes newsworthy (Toronto R & R Revival,,Woodstock, Altamont) and more often festivals for festivals’ sakes (a festival’s sake is usually money) is to be held in Miami. It’ll feature Canned Heat, Cocker, County Joe, Grand Funk, Ike and Tina, B.B. King and Johnny Winterthe mandatory acts. Maybe they won’t let you have a festival unless you promise to book these acts? Anyway, also appearing will be our own S RC and the infamous Up.

The site is 400 acres of land with, of course, “complete environmental facilities” (toilets, concessions, bazaars and medical centers). Trans Love Energies has been asked to help the HogFarmers help the people keep things together and will have a White Panther information booth. Adding to the atmosphere will be the Trans Love light show, People’s Power and Light Co. American Indians will be conducting workshops on crafts and native lore. Underground and experimental films wil] be shown from 3 to 6 am each morning. And...there will be “play areas” on the grounds and within the shelter of a 150 foot inflatable Buckminister Fuller plastic bubble.

The promoters and helping, organizations feel the importance of the fact that this festival run smoothly as it is the first major rock festival to follow in the* “wake of the beauty of Woodstock and the disaster at Altmont.” It could very well be a hint as to how the upcoming summer gatherings and festivals will go.

NEW YORK-It looks like the lp and tape bootlegging has gotten a little bit out of hand. “The very health of the industry is at stake,” exclaims Billboard. An organized committeeMusic Industry Emergency Committee for Legislative Protection for Artists, Publishers, Record and Tape Companiesis pushing the passage by the U S Congress of a Federal Tax Stamp bill to fight bootlegging. The law would call for the placing of a stamp tax number on master recordings and tapes, therefore making the masters covered by the existing federal counterfitting laws and making it more hazardous for unauthorized persons to press or tape recordings.

They say that Phil Spector, producer of Onolennon’s “Instant Karma”, may be the fifth partner in Apple and that Spector is moving to New York to be closer to Britian. Spector would produce solo albums by each of the Beatles as well as the Plastic Ono Band.

When Miles Davis performed at the Filmore East a few weekends ago, Columbia records taped the entire standing roomi only performance and may release it as an album.

Simon and Garfunkel’s new single will be “Cecelia” off their already gold album Bridge Over Troubled Water.

There is a real Morrison Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Ray Manzarek, the Doors organ player, found the hotel and that was were the album cover was photographed. The album has now been declared a million seller. And Jim Morrison’s new movie Hiway will be shown for the first time in Vancouver on March 27th. With Morrison’s movie will be the film Feast Of Friends, which was produced by Frank Lisciandro. The Granada T.V. Film on the Doors may be included in the show. The entire event is sponsored by Vancouver’s art magazine Poppin. No matter what anybody says Jim Morrison hasn’t signed a contract yet to do a solo album. So far the whole idea is sorta in the wouldn’t-it-be-great-if-stage.

Shocking Blue are hung up with immigration; thus their tour to promote their hit single “Venus” is being delayed. They’re the first of the Dutch bands to make it in the United States but you can count on more and more coming over soon.

NEW YORK-Promoter, Sid Bernstein’s Holland Peace Festival has been on again off again for several weeks now. And it seemed last Thursday that it was completely off, largely because the proposed site at Apeldoorn was too small. Then Bernstein’s office recieved a cable from the Apeldoorn government urging him to continue with the festival plans in Holland.

Led Zeppelin turned down $240,00 to play Wrigley Field*

Chances are that, by the time you read this, the present Amboy Dukes will be no more; it looks like Ted Nugent and maybe organist Andy Solomon will be the only two of the present Dukes left. Greg Arama, the group’s ace bassist and drummer Dave Palmer, apparently dissatisfied with the direction of the group or else, as is usual, offed by the terrible temper of Nugent, will be leaving. K.J. Knight, now With Jack Burningtree, will almost definitely be the new drummer, rumors have John Sauter, presently with Steve Booker’s new group, as the new bassist.

Dennis Hopper’s new movie (the star is so obvious we won’t even mention him except he’s Jane Fonda’s brother) will be produced by Peter Lewis, formerly of Moby Grape. The flick is called The Last Movie and is a film-within-a-film thing. Umhmm.

Sam Lay and Joe Kelly, who used to be with the Shadows of Knight (of “Gloria” fame, after Them) have formed the Joe Kelly Blues Band. Lay said that he left the new Siegel/Schwall band because it was too small. “I’ve been using at least six pieces and Corky only,had four”, he explained.

As to whether he’d do another Blue Thumb lp Sam said “I don’t know but if I do it’ll be better than the last one.” That album by the way, as shitty as it is, features Mike Bloomfield, Mark Naftalin and Applejack, Elvin Bishop’s harp player.

Lay also reported that Jeff Carp, Mike Bloomfield and some others had been jamming in Mill Valley but didn’t really know whether reports that the original Electric Flag was reforming were true.

Ringo’s album will be called Ringo Stardust; he’s also apparently contemplating a second, which would be composed of country and western tunes.

Rock and roll goes to college:

UCLA has started a course in the aesthetics of rock. It involves only listening and writing critiques. And Paul Simon will be teaching a contemporary music course at NYU, which will be open to advanced) students only. He’s expected to bring his friends in, however.

NEW YORK-Following heavy consumer mail order response for spoken work albums (i.e. Ain’t No Ambulances for No Nygguhs Tonight, A Night At Santa Rita, Massacre at My Lai, etc.) Flying Dutchman’s president Bob Thiele has set up an Audio Quarterly Series for consumers. By this, a subscriber receives five albums for $20 (29.90 retail). Thiele feels he’s making his contribution to Amerika with this series of albums exposing the “faults and inadequacies in the system”.

Massacre, has been getting a lot of shit from retail dealers refusing to stock it. The series will make this and future albums more readily available to the people, and Flying Dutchman is commendable making a giant step towards raising the level of consciousness of the people through a medium we can all relate to.

More spoken word albums...Lenny Bruce’s To is a Preposition (Come is a Verb) is the first in a series of upcoming goodies from Douglas Records. Douglas will be releasing products considered “culturally valid”, including Tim Leary spoken word lp (accompanied by rock stars whose identity is a big secretcontractual reasons) and an album called Last Poets; featuring a group of black poets previously associated with Malcom X. “Niggers are Scared of Revolution”, a cut from the latter, may be featured in the Mick Jagger-Rolling Stones movie, Performance.!

From the latest OTHER SCENES by John Wilcock...

STARS...Peter Townsend, the British asshole who knocked Abbie Hoffman offstage at Woodstock because obviously music is more important than John Sinclair’s jail .. sentence for grass, has now let it be known that he’s given up smoking the weed himself. He should be clean enough to play television soon... The “new” Bob Darin (I just couldn’t stand to do that plastic shit anymore”) has 'released a record, “Baby Mae”, which ostensibly explains the real reason for Art Linkletter’s daughter’s suicide...Rod McKuen’s Datebook and Calendar ($4.50), described by one of the trade magazines as “the ego trip of the year”, not only contains McKuen’s non-poetry but also lists all of his concert dates.

QUOTES...London Observer’s Tony Palmer described the recent Rolling Stones concert over there as “a disaster” and wrote that Jagger and his colleagues have remained “retarded adolescents” while “everyone else has grown up”...“The cover (of Business Week) was designed by currently fashionable Peter Max who will probably grace history as afootnote symbolizing the current age of mediocrity in design”. (Leon Garry in Magazine Industry Newsletter).

STARTRIP...Highspot of the 7'/2th New York Film Festival must undoubtedly have been the threehour Diaries, Notes and Sketches of Jonas Mekas-five reels of one or two minute segments featuring almost everybody in the New York underground scene caught informally and casually by the formost documenter of these times. In an introductory program note, Jonas, explaining that they’re unedited, unpolished images, goes on to list what happens briefly at every minute of the five reels so that viewers can just watch the parts (or people) he wants to see. Among those filmed are Warhol, John Lennon, ther Rolling Stones, Stan Brakhage, Judith Malina, Tim Leary, Paul Krassner, Ray Johnson, Mailer, Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and the Velvet Underground

INPRINT...Record company advertising departments like to deal with the underground press, says the Mad Ave mag Media Decisions, because they usually write back with much warmer business letters than the straight media. “They sign ‘love’ or ’peace’, never ’yours truly’,” one remarked...

Led Zeppelin is reportedly considering an acoustical number or two for their next album; John Bonham would play a percussion number with vibes and trimpani, too. But Jimmy Page said that “it’s still a heavy band” and that it would be “rash” to make a total change of direction at this point.

Aaron Russo, the demi-Bill Graham, has formed his own label Kinetic (after the Playground, get it?). The first release is a thing called “Give It to Me” b/w “Good” by Chris Moon; it’s quite good actually.

Yes, indeed, Ultra Violet will record on A&M, the same label that brought us the Baja Marimba Band and Spooky Two—fitting, ain’t it?

The Amboy Dukes (whiizz!) almost had to retape their new Marriage album because, it seems, Nugent and Company had swiped Bartok’s second movement, Second String Quartet on their cut “The Inexhaustible Quest for the Cosmic Cabbage”. The estate gave Polydor the go ahead to release; probably figured the brief would read like a science fiction novel anyway. A cappella of course.

The Who’s sequel to Tommy will be their long awaited live album, if present indications run true. It was recorded here in the States. The group is also planning a movie of Tommy, to be released by Warner Brothers.

The material from which the album was taken includes segments of Tommy of course, as well as the group’s incredible collection of oldies like “Shakin All Over”, “My Generation” and “Can’t Explain.” At least a portion of the album will be from a show at the Boston Tea Party.

Linda LaFlamme has split Its A Beautiful Day with the publishing rights to all the songs.

Sweetwater is going to be featured on NBC’s documentary First Tuesday series; the group is to be filmed at their group therapy session. Seems they started it to work out internal hassles in the group and kept it up.

The Stooges are splitting for California in mid-April for a month and a half sojurn in the West. While there they’ll be cutting their next album with the venerable Iggy Stooge his own self producing.

“\^e’re in a real state of growth”, Iggy told us. The band has added a new rhythm guitarist, raising the complement of the stoogedom to five (six if you count manager Jimmy Silver, who is everpresent). The new axeman is Bill Cheatam, formerly the band’s roadie. His purpose is to liberate Ron Asheton for even more forays into guitar technology.

The Stooges have been getting rave receptions whereever they go lately; at the St. Louis Pop Festival they and the Amboy Dukes were the only two bands to receive standing ovations. They’ve equally flipped out audiences on the East Coast. Looks like its time, guys.

Reports from Hollywood have Joan Baez (Harris) running for a Senate seat. And Abbie Hoffman’s out on bond.

More groups who will appear in Zachariah include our own James Gang (whose ABC album is a bitch) and the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble.

NEW YORK-Flying Dutchman Productions has picked up on a Jamaican-based music called reggae (meaning ragged and describing, more or less, the beat) and formed a new label, Reggae, initially specializing in this type of music, but with future plans to include Latin American and Mexican music. Reggae’s first single is “Man and Woman Reggae” by a Reggae group, Superman. There are at least four more Reggae albums already in the making - “The Reggae Beat” by Superman, “Super Reggae” by the Liquidators, “The Reggae Thing” by the Ironmen and “Doin’ the Reggae” by the Heavy Reggae Machine. Reggae on.

Watch for two new bootleg albums in the next month or so. One will be the long-awaited Isle of Wight performance of Bob Dylan and the Band. The second will be called “Best of the Best” with (hold yer breath, this is the best yet) cuts from the Isle of Wight album(whose quality is niggardly poor), 3 or 4 UNRELEASED SONGS FROM1 THE SERGEANT PEPPER SESSIONS ($) and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and a couple of other tunes from the live Stones.

The Isle of Wight album, say our sources, is of shitty quality; no one we know has ventured a guess as to the quality of the Sergeant Pepper cuts except to say that they were “stolen right out of Capitol’s vaults”. Aha!

The two performances of Ginger Baker’s Air Force at Albert Hall have been taped and it looks like they’ll be released on Atlantic. The complete complement of the group included Baker, Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, Graham Bond, Jeannette Jacobs (ex-Cake and Dr. John), Remi Kabaka, av Ghanian prince, Denny Laine, one the original Moody Blues, Chris Wood from Traffic, Harold McNair, who used to play flute with Donovan, and Phil Seaman, one of Ginger’s best friends.

But it doesn’t look as though the group will stay together; Steve, Chris Wood and Ginger are all working on solo albums, Graham Bond just formed a group called the Imitations and the others are off doing various and sundry other projects.

But the group may make an American tour in a month or two. They just don’t want to end up like Blind Faith, who wound up hating each other vehemently, so they say.

All in all, whatever the Air Force did must have been incredible; Chris Welch described them in Melody Maker as “the best British band I have heard in many years and the first one to give me hope for the seventies.”