THE BEAT GOGS ON

THE BEAT GOGS ON

Snap Crackle & Pop Meet The Boxtop Boogie

If you’re like me, bucko, you sit down every morning to a heapin’ bowlful of vitamins and goodies known as dry cereal. Who wants to mess around with frying those messy eggs and that whole business, anyway? Just fill up a bowl, pour the milk and dig in. Nothing better. For the first two decades of my life, I was a staunch General Mills fan. Nothing but Cheerios and Kix: the best cereal and the best deals on the boxes. You could send away for all kindsa neat stuff: midget telescopes and magic decoders you could wear as rings, rocket ships, pocket-sized atomic bombs.

I thought I would stick with GM the rest of my days until a few weeks ago when the woman who buys food for me came home with box after box of Post cereals, that stuff from General Foods. Traitoress, I hissed at her. What will Gen. Mills think?

Wait, sez she. Wait’ll you eyeball the goodies on the backs of these here cartons of goodness. She whipped me up a crispy bowlful of Raisin Bran, ripped the back off the box and slipped it onto the turntable. I damned near had a heart attack. You can’t play the back of a cereal box, I screamed. This one you can, she sez, and she was right. About two seconds later, I hear none other than .the dulcet tones of Bobby Sherman crooning “Little Woman.” I’ll be damned, sez I. There’s more, she sez. I got all five of Bobby’s records, on the back of Rainsin Bran and Rice Krinkles, and the Jackson Five on Rice Krinkles, Alpha-Bits and Super Orange Crisp.

So now we got the complete series of hi-fi 33 1/3 RPM records in the Post series and our complete consumer survey is as follows:

JACKSON FIVE: “ABC” tastes like hell. It was soggy and flat and generally uninspired. “I Want You Back” and “I’ll Bet You” and “Darling Dear” were a little crispier and crunchier. . “Maybe Tomorrow” was a work of genius: excellent taste and plenty of bulk for the lower tract.

Alpha-Bits had by far the best sound, tight and well-produced and soulful. Rice Krinkles, after you added the milk, just sat there and sogged. There was, admittedly, a fuller quad sound to Super Orange Crisp and we really got off, if you’ll pardon the phrase, to the deep bass and clear treble it put out.

All of the Bobby Sherman line — “Little Woman,” “Hey Mr. Sun,” “I Think I’m Gonna Be Alright,” “Show Me,” and “I’m Still Looking for the Right Girl” — were uniformly bland to the taste, almost like cardboard. My stool, you should pardon the term, was black for days. The Raisin Brand, though, kept a steady 4/4 time for almost ten minutes, until it all collapsed into the milk. The Rice Krinkles, again, just sogged.

MORE JACKSON FIVE: “Sugar Daddy,” “Goin’ Back to Indiana,” and “Who’s Loving You” were delicious, but hardly the sort of fast food a child should be exposed to. I found that three singles with milk and sugar would sustain an adult until lunchtime. A new batch of Super Sugar Crisp, on the other hand, was exicting and is my nominee for cereal of the year. It opened with a rich staccato intro, which mellowed into a steady chunka-chunka rhythm which in turn gave way to a crackling sugar solo which had us up and dancing on the breakfast table. Until the neighbor’s dogs ran in and gobbled everything up, that is. They got no taste for culture, though. Now I’m waiting for the latest Dylan single, which will soon be on the back of 40% Bran Flakes. It’ll be called “Bran New Day.”

Chet Flippo

Munster Meets Punster

Ghoul Rock fandom is currently at a pitch of ecstasy, because one of the foremost little monsters in the history of television is rockin’ out and gettin’ down. Where once stood a half-pint, pointed-eared ghoul-baby now stands a sexy, 5’ 7”, blue-eyed, 135 pound Leo dream. The one-time Munster child Eddie has grown up — into a handsome, multi-talented Butch Patrick. And thousands of Patrick devotees across the country seem to like what they see.

A bit of a rebel, who could and maybe even should be in college, Butch is instead pursuing a career with Metromedia Records. (Which figures, since The Munsters is still syndicated on Metromedia stations.) But after years of being a Munster and his current starring role in Lidsville, a Saturday morning television show, as well as dozens of other movie and TV roles, Butch seems to know what he wants.

Despite recent teen magazine articles like “Take A Bubblebath with Butch,” Butch’s romantic life is not confined to bubblebaths. “I don’t like going with just one girl,” says Butch, “although I could fall in love if the right girl came along. But she just hasn’t come along yet, gosh darn it,’ he adds wistfully. So here’s your chance, girls! A common interest that the right girl will have to share is Butch’s love of music and the type of music that he loves: people like the Faces, Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Victor Lundberg, the Dolls and Ten Years After.

Presently, the television - Butch Patrick lives in Lidsville, a Saturday morning drug education show on the ABC network. But he enjoys reminiscing about his past. “You know I really like everyone on the Munsters show,” Butch relates (does he ever!). “But you know something? Everyone on that show was weird. I mean really weird. It used to make about an hour and a half to just put on makeup. Now, at Lidsville, I’m working mostly with midgets. All those big talking hats are really midgets. First ghouls, then midgets. Quite a career, huh?”

Actually, Butch has worked with more than miscreants — he’s performed with some of the finest actors around, including Judy Garland in his film debut, A Child Is Waiting. But although he will continue to broaden his scope with television and movie roles, he sees his future in the recording industry. Butch’s first record, just released on Metromedia, is “Rat Salad,” a Black Sabbath tune given the unique and distinctive Patrick treatment, backed with “I Want Sugar,” which features the razor-sharp shave-and-a-hair-cut-two-bits line popularized by Life Savers commercials. Just for the record though here’s a rundown of where he’s been:

Butch has starred in The Two Bears with Eddie Albert, Iron Collar with Audie Murphy, Munster Go Home and The Phantom Tollbooth as well as many other movies. He has appeared in such

television shows as The Real McCoys, where he had a running role (he played Jester Finch, a local bootlegger), The Munsters, of course, The Untouchables, where he played a Godson, Time of the Tonsils (for Alcoa, with Eddie Albert), Pistols and Petticoats, and General Hospital, where he also had a running role (as a track star who came in daily as part of an amphetamine research program). In addition, he has been featured prominently in commercials for Clearasil, Duz, Mattel Toys, Eldon Toys, Kellogs’ Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Cheerios, Chevrolet, Standard Oil and L’Eggs.

The Wolf Don’t Need No Doctor

Sometime on August 16, Pete Andrews, busy promoting the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, got word that Howlin’ Wolf, the great bluesman scheduled to be a headliner at the festival, had died. The evidence seemed unimpeachable; the caller said she was Wolfs wife.

It was not unexpected news. Wolf has been suffering from a heart ailment for years, and everyone who loves the man and his music is both aware and fearful of the coronary possibilities.

The news travelled quickly. Everyone who heard, cared, and the geometric effect was staggering. Somebody called Billboard in Chicago, and someone put Associated Press on the case. And then someone called Chess Records.

Chess called Wolf. “The Wolf dead? Naw, man, I ain’t dead. I’m just down here fishin’ and relaxin’.” Hmmm ... Andrews was freaked. For a time the central question became, who had done the dirty deed?

The answer was more innocous than the event. A certain musician, well known for his ability to mimic Detroit street vernacular and possessed of a

somewhat macabre sense of humor, had been trying to get in touch with Andrews. Andrews was busy on other lines, and he hadn’t gotten through. Finally, all in good fun, he left a message something like, “This is Mis’ Wolf. Howlin’ Wolf jus’ died. But don’ worry. I got another act for ya, who’ll do jus’ fine . . Stubby Kaye.” That was supposed to be the giveaway.

The message got to Pete without the punchline, unfortunately, and things mushroomed out of control.

Andrews was mortified of course. “I haven’t got time to go creating publicity stunts like that,” he said injuredly.

It’s hard to take, but in a business so paranoid, so rumor filled, that’s the kind of information one has to operate on. Maybe what we need is Rock‘n’Roll Rumor Control, designed to dispel silly stories about deaths, phony appearances (Is Dylan really gonna be at the Soda Pop Festival?) and generally straighten out bungled information.

One thing’s for sure: it’s nice to have Howlin’ Wolf back, even if he wasn’t away for long.

Will The Real Bob Dylan Please Stand Up

Ever since Bob Dylan took a motorcylce spill in 1967 and decided not to come back for awhile, a series of “new Dylans” have marched with thirsty boots across the face of rock and roll. Anybody with a vague sense of peotic theivery and the ability to sing consistently off-key possessed the credentials for candidacy. More often than not, these carbon-copy troubadours had the “new Dylan” moniker hung around their necks by a public more than willing to settle for surrogates, but they all shared one things in common: none of them got very far.

Though he’s now defined a personality all his own, Loudon Wainwright was the unwilling recepient of such attention in the early stages of his career. People on the New York-Boston coffeehouse axis marveled at his potential of Dylanesque acceptance, and the talk apparently reached the Master himself. The two met at a then-popular Village hangout called the Kettle of Fish, and Dylan gave the young Loudon Wainwright a solid-gold harmonica rack and a solid piece of advice: ‘So you’re the new me,” Dylan said with amusement. “Well, I’m the old me and the only me. There’ll be no other me but me, so start being you.”

Wainwright took the advice, and has consequently been one of the few to escape an early death. Now who’s gonna tell John Prine?

Dealers Over Barrel In Seattle

You just can’t win. The way they’ve got the odds set up today, the game is going to fuck everybody, no matter which side of the truncheon you’re on. Take the case of some righteous smack dealers in Seattle, Washington, who recently discovered that not only has all authority been turned upside down, but you can’t even hit it sideways anymore.

The whole thing began when a local radio station formed an organization called TIP (Turn In a Pusher). In the most discriminating spirit of radiclib, the program was. applied solely to dealers of “hard” drugs: a 24 hour hotline was set up at the station, and if somebody you were pissed off at happened also to be in the business of peddling heroin, cocaine, laudanum and the like to schoolchildren, factory workers, executives or what have you, you could obtain not only sweet revenge, but up to $500 as well with a simple telephone call.

Once you’ve finked, the call is processed, checked for validity in some manner not entirely known to us, and the resultant leads are sent to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Gendarmes are then dispatched to arrest or harass the subject. If the evidence is sufficient for conviction, all that’s left is for the fink to read about it in the local paper, after which he calls the radio station, identifies himself by a code name and receives his reward in unmarked bills delivered in an unmarked envelope at a mutually designated time and place..

One must admit that it looks good on paper, but as usual in cases of this type there’s a hitch. The program’s local co-ordinator, Gene Wicker, said that although they have had 15 to 20 legitimate calls since the program started in May, no convictions have resulted so far. According to Wicker, almost all of the callers are pushers themselves who are interested in wiping out competition. Sighs Wicker: “They aren’t concerned with the reward at all.”