LOONEY TOONS

What I’m beginning to discover is not only that anything is possible — everything is.

During a brief editorial controversy a couple months ago, concerning whether or not to publish Craig Karpel’s “The Great Indo-China Medicine Show” (CREEM, July), one of the central objections raised was that maybe it was a little too far out — nothing even remotely like it could ever happen.

Warren Beatty, Carole King and James Taylor shot that one in the head. You’ll pardon the American Independence of my expression.

So I wasn’t all that surprised when a friend, who’d recently left the record business, called to explain that my worst suspicions were true.

The 18 year old vote really was lobbied into ,office by the record companies.

As much a canard as this may seem at first, think about it: all record company ads in 1972 have carried some sort of get-out-the-vote message. And those companies are not known for their philanthropy — not Warnercom (nee Kinney), nor CBS nor MGM nor MCA nor even Gulf & Western. Not a radical in the bunch. Liberals, yes; radicals, no.

Sort of like the radical group who were approached — at a meeting 2,000 miles from their home, yet — by a CIA operative, who suggested that the two organizations —Radicals X and the softwhite-underbelly of the Establishment — could work in tandem on a few projects.

“After all, socialism is the government owning everything. We want that system too.”

It didn’t take my friends long to inform him that he could do just fine with that program. Meantime, they’d take care of who owned the government.

Anyhow, according to my truly unimpeachable source (who doesn’t want his name revealed for the obvious reasons — “After all,” he said, “would YOU want to be the Daniel Ellsberg of the music biz?”) the scenario went something like this:

After the 1968 elections, someone in a particularly high position at a major label came up with the plan to legalize eighteen year old voting. After all, went his reasoning, the function of voting is to suspend the voter’s alienation temporarily. The function of the 18 year old vote would serve not only to sever his alienation from the government, but also partially terminate his alienation from the record labels themselves. Voila! The 18 year old vote was good for business!

The record companies wfere in an ideal position to implement the proposition. They had their lobbyists in Washington, working diligently to enact a new copyright law, in order to vamp all the bootleggers who were then wreaking such quasi-legal havoc with their major acts. The RIAA (check the back of an album jacket; but their function as standard-setters is mostly a front for their position as industry lobbyists), NARAS, the label organization which gives out the Grammy back-slaps annually and even the American Federation of Musicians (the musicians “union”) could all the see the benefits of letting the kids in for a sliver of the pie.

With that in mind, the 18 year old vote was a cinch. It had been voted down so oftep previously only because no one could, find a means to make it economically viable. The media conglomerates provided the answer.

The next step, after the Washington lobbyists had done their trick, was to get the states to ratify the amendment. They only needed 38 to do the job. Each legislature had simply to pass a resolution ratifying the amendment.

It was a cinch.

Record companies maintain local lobbyists as a matter of course. On both state and regional levels, and in all major cities, they have what they euphemisticly term “promomen” whose function it is to hype — i.e., lobby — radio stations, writers and other media-icons into pushing the companies’ product. The legislators were goners; pushing the 18 year old vote through was like promoting a Rolling Stones single that was written by Bob Dylan and John Lennon and produced by Phil Spe'ctor.

In lobbying for the 18 year old vote, said our informant, the record labels used the same tactics and promotional devices that have made them a Jack Andersonian legend. Free records, free women, free dope, free booze. Even Congressmen’s kids listen toT.Rex and the Stones, you know. Ask Kim Agnew.

And, of course, the vote was passed. Then the record companies could turn their incredibly effective promotional expertise — oft known to build castles from the thinnest air — to what they were most familar with: influencing the consumer . . . the 18-20 year old voter.

To do that, they needed a candidate. McCarthy wasn’t really viable, because the companies haven’t been having much luck with poets this year. Hubert Humphrey was like trying to book Jerry Vale into the Fillmore. Edmund Muskie looked like just another session-man. But George McGovern —George McGovern was from the midwest, and that the record companies have begun to understand.

Labels who do a lot of countrywestern business are probably kicking themselves in the ass. The Wallace ground swell took everyone but Buck Owens and Merle Haggard by surprise. But I betcha he took Bakersfield in the primary.

But the rock labels are chortling. After all that James Taylor, Carole King and the Beach Boys have done for Gorgeous George, it probably wouldn’t surprise anyone — certainly not me — if the McGovern inaugral turned out to be the first time the jams got kicked out electrically in the Blue Room. And of course, the companies will be right there to record the show and film it.

I can see it now: Pennsylvania Avenue Rocks!, starring James Taylor, the Beach Boys, Carole King, and Chicago. And introducing: George McGovern. They’ll use Cheech and Chong to capture the ethnic vote.

After 200 years of “Hail to the Chief’ it’s definitely a change for the better. At least aesthetically.