ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

Sly Stone is being sued for $18,415.65 by Village Recorders in Los Angeles. The suit charges that Sly rented recording equipment for use in his home studio, agreeing to pay $100 per hour for each hour the equipment was in use.

The Rubber Dubber, legendary/ notorious record bootlegger, has been busted. Warrants were issued for a number of Dubber people, by various music publishing companies, on charges that he has not paid royalties to the various groups. (There is an escrow account for each group, according to RD sources.)

Interestingly, the Dubber operation was busted right after the Scoop Nisker bootleg. Scoop’s news program, on KSAN in San Francisco, was one of the most radical adventures in rock radio from a couple years ago, and that record really needs to be heard. It’s gonna be available, probably, one way or another, so keep your eyes peeled. (The title is “If You Don’t Like the News Go Out and Make Some of Your Own.”)

Rubber Dubber promises to be back in operation shortly.

Although Thai embassies and consulates were warned a year ago to discourage long hairs from heading for Bangkok, the pressure seems off at last. A temple in suburban Pakanong is once more freek head-quarters. The efforts to ban hippies have come because of an advertising and promotional campaign designed to lure straight tourists to Thailand.

Bobby Kennedy, Jr., 17 year old son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, was ordered to pay $50 in court costs on a loitering charge after he allegedly spat ice cream into a cop’s face. The incident occured in the ancestral Kennedy abode, Hyanis, Mass.

The police officer contended that Kennedy was talking to a girl in a parked car which was obstructing traffic on a busy street. He said Kennedy refused to move when harassed.

Kennedy, long-haired, sandaled and reasonably surly for a member of the ruling class, pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) when arraigned in' Barnastable District Court.

Because he “lacked money” Judge Herny L. Murphy gave him one week to raise it. A practice some other sorts of defendants might find interesting as precedent.

This was Kennedy’s second arrest. His first, with R. Sargent Shriver, Jr., son of JFK’s Peace Corps director, was for dope. They were put on a^year’s probation and the case filed.

David Peel and the Lower East Side have broken up, with lead guitarist Billy Joe White out to form his own electric rock and roll group.

GI’s caught using drugs may no longer be allowed to re-enlist, according to a military spokesman. “Soldiers desiring to re-enlist must have a negative urinalysis/ he said.

The National Lampoon put forth the opposite government position; suggesting that all the military’s problems could be solved by having .an all junky army. Controlling the supply of smack and/or other addictive drugs “. . . would clearly provide a positive plus in the three key areas of manpower acquisition, manpower utilization and control, and manpower retention.”

The Lampoon’s Octqber issue further noted the tremendous dollar savings in pensions and the elimination of a need for higher pay levels to attract volunteers. The question of whether recruiters would be allowed to provide samples as part of their “selling job” remains unanswered.

The FCC has come out with a declaration opposing Free Form Radio - Free Form Rock Radio in particular. According to the Commission, a Free Form format “gives the announcer such control over the records to be played that it is inconsistent with the strict controls that the licensee must exercise to avoid questionable practice.”

Nicholas Johnson, as usual, was the only FCC commissioner to disagree.

Steve Stills has donated $ 15,000 each to the Washington Free Clinic and the Black Man’s Development Center to fight drug abuse. Stills just beat a cocaine rap.

Margaret Mead’s latest pronuncement: now that women spend as much time in the office as they do at home, society needs a taboo against interoffice affairs as strong as the taboo against incest. Really! She said that. And added, “If you’re going to run an efficient world, you’ve got to keep sex out of it.”

Dr. Tim is about to let us know how he flew the coop. Maybe.

A new book’s been written, and while U.S. publication rights are being negotiated by various Leary agents, various agents of the State Department would like to negotiate preview rights; just to “ . . . avoid the possibility of any erroneous description getting to the public ...” ya understand. A government spokesman further stated: “We don’t have any reason to interfere with the publication.” Which don’t mean a thing to the N.Y. literary agent in whose waiting room a G-man has been waiting (what else?) for a few days.

The book, titled It’s About Time, is said to describe (in 400 pages) how Leary skipped , the California prison farm, got a passport (to one jail after another, it seems) made it to Algeria, Jordan and still another jail in Switzerland. At least the Swiss fuzz, allowed bail while Leary fights extradition to the U.S.

Don’t know why the State Dept, is concerned — with all the troubles Leary’s jiad since he split he sure ain’t doing things right.

Everybody has to see Marvin Gaye’s acting debut in Chrome and Hot Leather. It’s a must.

A Miami department store that tried to market a Playboy weed game called “Feds’n’Heads” has found itself jammed. Hundreds of protests poured in immediately.

Jordan Marsh — the department store chain — then pulled the game off the shelves and sent the bunnies it had rented (!) to promote it back to their hutches. They’re not sure they can get their money back -4 they’d purchased over a hundred of the sets, which retail for eight bucks apiece.

The game instructions call for a Monopoly like situation where a player collects a lid every time he passes Go. Penalties include “You are busted and must become an agent informer in order to protect your miserable hide. You lose five ounces of dope and all your friends.”

Among those who protested the sale of the game was Hy Rothstein, a drug abuse consultant to the Dade County (Miami) public schools. “The game undermines everything we’re trying to achieve in drug education,” he said. “I also told them I did not think the game was in good taste.”

Three of five judges in Marin County, Ca., where Angela Davis shortly begins her trial, have admitted belonging to the exclusively white'Fraternal Organization of Elks.

Captain Beefheart has finished recording his latest record. All the session work was done at 3 A.M. in the Record Plant in L.A. The record is to be called The Spotlight Kid, and is rumored to be Cap’s shot at a mass-level audience.

Chances are good that the Beefheart tour movie, Old Fart At Play, will not be shown. However, Beefheart himself is supposed to be engaged in scripting another film, while manager Grant Gibbs works on a pair of flicks of his own.

Taj Mahal is to star in Sounder, a film about mid-Thirties’ Louisiana sharecroppers.

WABX-FM’s Detroit Tube Works is going into national syndication via the National Educational Television network. Tube Works will be simulcast over FM rock stations in the various cities in which it is shown, as has been the case with WABX and WXON-TV Gust down the road from CREEM in suburban and sunny but polluted Walled Lake).

Northwestern University in Evansville hosted a Russ Meyer film festival at the end of September, featuring Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Harry Cherry and Raquel and Vixen. Meyer also appeared at a seminar at the university.

The murder trial of Twiggs Lyndon Jr., the Allman Brothers’ ex-road manager, began in Buffalo last month. Lyndon is accused of stabbing a Buffalo club owner to death in a dispute over the group’s payment last April.

David Bowie has signed to RCA. Does this .mean David will be able to write songs with Lou Reed and Ray Davies?

FOR RELEASE: IMMEDIATE

DATE: 15 SEPTEMBER 1971

RE: CHINESE OPERA TOUR

Columbia recording group, the FIRESIGN THEATRE is presently in negotiations with representatives of the Red Chinese All-Peoples’ Opera.

“There are 270 million Chinese who stand in an open field and sing the same song almost in unison,” says liason officer Phil Proctor. “We’re trying to rent the state of Nebraska for our kick-off concert

BIZARRO RAT DEATHS LINKED TO “POT” SMOKING:

By injecting rats, via stomach tubes, with THC — the real stuff, not the garbage for sale in the streets — two biochemists -have managed to induce what they described as “bizarre” behavior.

They were more surprised that some of the rats went into convulsions and died, though, after they were given dosages roughly 30 times as potent as that joint you’re smoking.

Unfortunately, the scientists are not sure they can duplicate the experiment with humans. A person would have to toke about 50 joints q day to get the necessary dosage.

Oh, incidentally, what’s a “chronic marijuana smoker?”

Beach Boy Carl Wilson has won his draft battle. The lead guitarist was granted permission to carry out a “most unique” alternative service program under the U..S. Selective Service Act. The court action ended five years of legal wrangling between the musician and his draft board, including a year or so when Carl wasn’t even registered.

Wilson will now be allowed to fulfill his draft obligation by performing at prisons, hospitals, and orphanages. “Entertainment,” said Federal Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson, “is certainly in the national interest.”

Wilson had refused induction in 1967, saying he was opposed to all war. Granted C.O. status, he then refused to report for “alternative civilian duty” as a bed pan changer in L.A. Veterans Hospital, citing the fact that the alternative job would not make use of his talent at all.

The action was Wilson’s final hope in court; he had already been turned down by a Federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court had refused to hear his case.