LOONEY TOONS

I couldn’t imagine it happening but there I was — swaggering, and jiving, again like I did at Mt. Holly back in ’66 — and there HE was, swaggering and jiving, again like HE did at Mt. Holly back in ’66.

Yes, friends, ? and the Mysterians have re-formed and they’re better’n’ever if only because of a lack of competition.

It began when Pete Cavanaugh, from Flint’s teen/rock station WTAC, informed Charlie and I that they would be appearing at his club, Sherwood Forest (which is located in Davison, which is the home of John and David Sinclair and if you don’t know who John is by now, heaven help us all) the following Sunday.

Needless to say, it was impossible, even after two nights running of Tina Turner, to miss such a landmark exposition of punk-rock. So we piled into Charlie’s ’66 Mustang — the perfect car for the occasion, much like piling into a ’56 Chevy back in ’61 — early Sunday evening and commenced the hour and a half drive.

Now I don’t want to insinuate that Charlie’s car is a death-trap, and it was probably my own phobia about post-sunlight auto rides that did it, but even sober it was a harrowing ninety minutes. For one thing, the doors don’t close too well, and for another the car began to over-heat as we approached Pontiac. Which is my old home-town . . . visions of emergency wards danced in my head.

But we did finally arrive. Walking up to the club, we were greeted by a six foot two greaser, thin as a rail, smoking Lucky Strikes and spitting on the sidewalk — honest to god!

Sherwood’s clientele is even more bizarre — a sort of limited versio n of the mid-sixties teen clubs where I gtrew up. The kids may be stoned and string out, rather than juiced, now but the aura is the same — cruisin’ for action, waitin’ to be a) old enough to drive on b) old enough to leave the armpit of America where they reside.

Up on the stage, the strangest band in the world. On drums, a hardl-lookin’ chic a no type, bearded and stocky, crashing away at a furious pace, determined less by the rhythms of the music (often as not) as the cons umables that flowed through his veins. O n bass, a typically post-collegiate hippijie type, who knew how to dance and j play off the drummer and bob his head and sing harmony and generally get it on to everyone’s delight. These tw|o might have been in the original band, aridaccording to Cavanaugh they w;re.

The other two Mysterians .were new — still with hunks of baby-fat flab clinging to their facial structure, the organist looking like Froggy :from the Spanky and Our Gang serials. Tj'he guitar player, who is the band’s prime deficiency, mostly out of an over-love for his ever-ready wah-wah pedal, is nearly as heavy and maybe even younger. If either of these can buy alcohol without a thorough i.id. check, Michigan has changed more th/an any of us suspect.

No matter, though. Frontin g it all is the man himself. There’s no j! question about it —? and the Mysterians do indeed possess the original, th|; one and only -QUESTION MARK HIMSELF.

He is a heavily-bearded ]|(although shaven — Nixonesque?) Mexican, about 25. Luxuriant, jet-black hairi wavy to the point of curl, but not quit e, falls to his shoulders and covers his (forehead. His thin, even emaciated, I chest is covered by an orange, lace, se|e-through blouse and dangling still from h[ds neck is the quixotic symbol of mlbdern-day rock‘n’roll in the midwest:

?

His flamenco-dancer’s legs are! sheathed in pants of some vague brown! material, his boots are pointy-toed and 'possessed of two inch heels, which he uses to great effect.

For ? is the greatest dancer in the history of rock’n’roll. True, Mick Jagger and Iggy Stooge can shake tjheir asses competently, but were '? a woman, he could get a job at any go-go joint in the nation. He’d win contests.

He stamps his feet in flamenco-like fury, writhes his limber :i loins in paroxysms of self-parody, and moves each of his limbs in a different! direction as if calling upon all the forcies of the universe to propel his energy straight into the very essence of the poor, uncomprehending souls who vegetate nightly on this no-longer-used dance floor. It .goes on like this, the band fine if of

not excellent, hampered by a lack of power in the p.a.,? running through numbers like “If I Can’t Have You Bitch — I’m Gonna Make You Like Me (But You’re Not Gonna Bring Me Down)”. Shades of ’66. When’s the last time you heard a singer insult his audience because he wasn’t gettin’ laid enough? No, now it’s odes to the woman who “gives me sweet, sweet head/As she kneels beside my bed.” And I’ll bet someone would’ve written those words in an actual song if I hadn’t just made ’em. up. But the apex of the evening comes that climactic of

during that climactic moment of transition _ between, “Trudi, Trudi, Eloise” (a vaudeville-acid song, v which finds Question Mark engaged in finest satire of a flapper, which is satire of rock‘n’roll dancer, which is, once again, self-parody) and the stomp into the legend-that-was! TOO MANY TEAR DROPS FOR ONE HEART

TO BE CRYIN’ This is it; even before the first words are out, while the is still

organ still pumping

out its insanely repetitious and enthralling initial notes, I find my ass beginning to shake of its own volition — I ani not alone. We are witnessing the first appearance in two years of the original bizarro band, the one who had the nerve to do it before Beefheart and Iggy and Alice, the dude who was insulting audiences and being way too far out for almost any keeper-of-the-cool. Yes, ? was not only back but up to his old tricks.

Down on his back, legs flailing the air:

YO’ GONNA CRY - 96 TEARS!!!

YO’ GONNA CRY - 96 TEARS!!!

CRRRRRRY, CRRRRRRY, CRRRRRY

(falsetto:) Ninety-six teauhs,

ninety-sixty teauhs,

LEMMME HEAR YA CRY!

Then up again, a threat to the audience, dancing like a maniac and all of a sudden, he’s doing the knee-drop, and the splits and every other James Brown move. He’s the only one in punk-rock who’s still got ’em and he’s makin’ a comeback. For the last two years he’s lived on a bean farm in Clio and he’s makin’ a comeback and he can still dance and he can still sing, real good at that too.

Goddamn, what a holy moment!