Pink Gold

Pink Gold

Pleasantly, but unexpectedly, Frijid Pink have struck literal gold with their single “House of the Rising Sun”. The single will be certified as a million seller later this week.

The Pink9s startling rise to mass popularity, with the first major white hit record since Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels’ and the Amboy Dukes’ successes of a couple years ago, has been accompanied by a plethora of bonuses.

It starts off May 4th and 5th with an NBC-tv special which will also star Guess Who and the Iron Butterfly. The show will be taped in early May for probable viewing in early June. The program will be filmed in the West Indies,

This will be followed by a tour of the South and, shortly thereafter, the Southwest and West coast. The 29th of May takes the Pink to Vermount for a pop festival (name as yet uncertain). The band has also been approached for pop festivals in Monterey, Montreal, and Toronto.

The heavy shit really starts in July when the group goes to Britain, and also does a couple of dates on the Continent. The album and single are enjoying success in Europe parallel to their success in the U . S. The record, besides being ranked in the Top Twenty, in all American trade papers, is ranked number three in Switzerland and West Germany and number 21 in Great Britain.

The dates on the Continent include an appearance at Sid Bernstein’s Appledoorn Festival (which is not being held in Appledoorn but then Woodstock was actually held at New Bethel).

The group has also been approached by Arthur Brinkhart and Mike Ncbbia (Alice’s Resturant) in regards to doing a motion picture. Frijid Pink would do the soundtrack for the film, with lead singer Kelly Green featured in an acting role. Tentative shooting title for the picture is “Life Study”.

Present Pink plans also include an East Coast tour for the rest of April, with the 3rd Power. According to the band’s managers, the group will be

attempting to take an Ann ArborsDetroit area band along with them on as many of their tours as possible, a practice which can only be commended.

The album’s meteoric rise to popularity got a lot of Michigan rock people off-guard; with the recent tightening up of their stage act, it looks like the Frijid Pink may be in the very vanguard of Midwestern rock acts.

Iggy Stooge In Sherwood Forest

What?

DAVISON, Mich.-The dangerous Stooges once again proved their prowess at freaking hondos—only this time the freakees turned out to be a pair of small time, trying to get big time, promoters here in the hometown of noted Ann Arborite John Sinclair.

Sherwood Forest is a rock club located in Davison, the legendary home of Sinclair and a true outpost of all that is teenclub, lowlife Amerika (one of the prime attractions of the vicinity is the notorious Whoopee Bowl, a sort of slummy rural second hand shop which crawls with human, insect and rodent pestilence). It’s run by a pair of Flint area disc jockeys, Pete Cavanaugh and Johnny Irons, of WTAC in Flint. WTAC is the biggest station in the second largest market in Michigan and that gives it one hell of a lot of responsibility for any Michigan group’s AM radio success or failure. And that implies one hell of a lot of power when you also book a club. (Irons and Cavanaugh actually book two; the other being Mt. Holly, a sort of reformed ski lodge cum teen club.

Anyway, according to Stooge bigwig and general Good Guy Jimmy Silver, the Ann Arbor anarchists were nearing the end of one of their casually chaotic sets when Irons pulled the plug. Iggy says he didn’t notice (“Sometimes I’m just not aware that the music’s stopped.”) So he just got on with it, swinging a chair about with one hand while he stared down a biker dude who was upset because Iggy had messed with his chick.

In his haste to prevent any more nasties by the naughty Mr. Stooge, Irons raced into the crowd and pulled on the mike cord (wrapped at the moment around Iggy’s neck), causing it to whip around and break the biker dude’s chick’s spectacles. Iggy was of course accused of this later, when the real shit came down.

In the midst of all this Cavanaugh stood on the stage and narrated the action, “like Chris Schenkel or somebody” in Iggy’s words. “Yes, it looks like everyone’s getting uptight down there. It looks like one of the Stooges...yes, it’s Iggy himself’.

Irons regained the stage and began telling the audience about how “we

don’t want any acts like that here do we?” Do they? Well, Silver and Iggy say the crowd responded with like minded cries of “Fuck you, Irons” and “Eat shit”.

To top off the piss-off, Irons then refused the group their evening's wage. The Stooges had a “no obscenities” clause in their contract but there weren’t any obscenities involved; unless touching is obscene, which one might be skeptical of. As Jimmy said, “I wasn’t worried about that, he never does anything obscene.” Even the local police had to agree. Silver said that one of the cops standing near the stage told him, “If he’d given me the least opportunity, I woulda hauled him off right away.” The owner of the club concurred, said Silver. “It’s a little far out for out here, he told me, but you can get away with stuff like that in the Big Cities like Detroit.”

It shouldn’t have been totally unexpected on either end. The Stooges had played the club before and the set that night varied only minimally in detail from a usual Stooges set, according to reliable reports.

But some people have claimed that Irons has a bad habit of occasionally refusing to pay groups, in the best d.j.hop tradition; this can’t really be substantiated though. No small time band can afford to risk a Big Time Disc Jockey’s wrath.

Silver said that Irons had harassed the band from the moment they walked onstage; “Are you ready to go on, are you ready to go on”, he continually asked and finally, twenty minutes after they’d walked into the door, they did. Then Irons began his performance. With the Stooges assembled on stage he began an interminable rap about how the Stooges would be on in a moment but first let me tell ya who we’ve got next week folks. A bad mistake; Iggy suggested he shut up. As a matter of fact, he didn’t just suggest it, that’s exactly what he said. “Shut Up”. (In fairness to Iggy, he said the same thing to J.C. Crawford the night before when the band was being introduced. Or nearly the same thing.) Irons responded that that was a good way not to get paid, according to Iggy and Silver (who commented “I should’ve split then”) but the show went on immediately as the first Asheton cosmic boom of the night sounded immediately thereafter, beginning the show and effectively drowning out Mr. Irons.

Silver said that after the plug was pulled, he sort of checked the situation out, got the band and the equipment crew and headed home. The case has been referred to the union, who are supposed to be checking into the matter but the speed of beauracracy being what it is, we won’t know the results for months.

Oh by the way...the price for the evening had been raised from the usual two buck fee to $3. Because the Stooges were there.

Dave Marsh