GUITAR ARMY John Sinclair (Douglas)

To most people, John Sinclair looks like just another mutant dinosaur relic of tne First Golden Age of Psychedelic Apocalypse. But that's not any more accurate than the idea shared by a smaller, if more vehement, gang who claim that this whale-bellied "cigarchomping psychedelic gangster" is Chairman Mao with rock'n"roll moxie.

It's harder to write about some old friends than it is about others. For the last five years, Sinclair has been the Titan of Motown, in many ways, and he certainly has influenced me, and CREEM, in some crucial respects. But as an author, John seems to be a better poet than philosopher, better propagandist than political theorist, better band manager than music critic.

The best parts of Guitar Army are the moments when Sinclair drops his guard and lets the emotion of a moment take over: the descriptions of the formation of the Artists" Workshop/TransLove/White Panther/Rainbow Com-

munity (in decreasing order), the orgiastic ecstasy of the MC5 era, the tragicomedy of his sentencing for the dope charge that put Sinclair in the penitentiary for two years.

Mostly, what's good ahout Guitar Army are the early works, the "street writings." The "prison writings" suffer from a lack of awareness of what is going on in the outside world. While Altamont and a dozen other dooms were being visited on the countercommunity at large, Sinclair was celebrating the wonders of Woodstock. And through it all there is a sort of deification of the white, suburban and finally consumer-oriented youth culture for which Sinclair claims class status ... and this is the part that bothers even old friends.

The "rainbow culture" was a good idea, maybe, in 1968 and 1969, when it still seemed likely that the suburban youth would become a committed, maniac band of political/cultural revolutionaries. But by 1971, the notion of a "Guitar Army" had begun to sink, and by now it seems trite, dated and pathetic.

There is an intense spirit of elitism in Sinclair's vision of surburban youth as

the "post-western" alternative to western civilization's ills. As a result, smack in the hippie community becomes the fault of some nebulous, unproven conspiracy of the government rather than the ultimate reflection of the misdirection of the youth culture at its inception. For John Sinclair, the kids are always all right, and behind their fuck ups — more precisely, behind our (which includes his) fuck ups — must lie some vast conspiracy to debilitate the dreams of the middle sixties.

Well, if Guitar Army often seems like the ultimate Hollywood fantasy of what the spirit of the "60's was about, it is also true that the "60's seemed like a Hollywood fantasy while we were living them. Guitar Army, lost as it is amongst a never-ending array of slogans, catchphrases, immense sentences and interminable, obtuse paragraphs, is a better book than any of Hoffman's or Rubin's, and Sinclair is a more honest post-leader — leader of the hip-yip left. At least John Sinclair really likes rock'n"roll and smoking dope, which is something the Haydens and Rubins and Hoffmans can't say.

But it is also true that Sinclair makes the classic "60's er^or in opting for the absolute superiority of the rainbow/ youth/counter/alternative culture. "The rainbow culture is what we call it, and if it is a rainbow then rock and roll is the sun that shines through it and gives it its definition ..." begins Guitar Army. My reaction is that that is not only a very large but also a very tragic "if". I wish it were like that again, too, but I can't live in 1968. It's 1973, for real, and a whole new hand has been dealt. Maybe the kindest thing — and the most accurate — I can say about Guitar Army is that it has a multitude of relevance to how we got here, rather than where we seem headed for. Once upon a time.

Dave Marsh

FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE COLISEUM Geoff Winningham (Allison Press)

Professional wrestling has been a big draw in Houston for over fifty years. Every Friday night the Sam Houston Coliseum presents a program; week in, week out, 52 weeks a year the show goes on before 10,000 plus fans. A half million a year watch it live in Houston alone. And TV? The matches have been carried weekly on the tube for 24 years, the longest continual show in the country.

The questions people ask are just astonishing. "Do the punches really hurt?" "Did he really kick you?" "How do you land so that it doesn't hurt?" Let me tell you that when somebody pickes you up over his head and throws you down on the mat, it hurts like hell. You should take a look at the ring. It is a steel framework covered with plywood and then canvas, which is the most horrible thing imaginable because canvas burns your skin.

Tim Woods

Did you hear what happened to Tim Woods? He was wrestling in Indianapolis and they had one thousand dollars for anyone who could stay ten minutes with him without getting pinned. The first two times they did this nobody took the offer, but the third week a big guy that was the leader of a motorcycle gang came down. He weighed about 250 pounds, six foot four or so, and he's got about thirty of his buddies there with him, and he came down to wrestle Tim for that thousand dollars. So the guy takes off his shirt and boots and gets in the ring in his levis. Now Tim had to pin the guy in ten minutes or the guy wins the money. But the guy has it all planned, he stays close to the ropes. Finally after five minutes Tim got him out in the middle of the ring, really putting the squeeze on the guy, about to pin him. So that sucker bit down on Tim's finger and took it right off, spit it out in the ring.

Wahoo McDaniel

Friday Night in the Coliseum is a book of photographs of the action made by Geoff Winningham, a Houston lensman. There are over 130 original high contrast shots of the matmen and the fans who make the sport the great attraction which it is.

Wrestling isn't simply a sport; for the faithful it is a way of life, a place to go, a valve for urban and personal tension. They would no more miss Friday night than their daughter's wedding. They come from all walks of life, though "blue-collar workers*" provide the backbone of the audience. They come alone, with friends or even with their mates.

Many bring along the kids. The adults A drink beer and the littler ones crowd the ring, begging for autographs. Everyone gets real excited, for wrestling somehow evokes the most intense responses from its viewers. The villain of many a match has had to literally fight his way through hordes of enraged fans simply to get back to his dressing room. I can still recall a night during my impressionable years when they chased El Lobo clear up the stairs to his quarters, kicked the door down and no doubt would have dismembered the grappler there and then, had there not been a fire escape by the window.

Winningham's book presents an accurate picture of the event. There are no gimmicky pictures. Indeed, when there are showmen like these clobbering each other with real blood spattering everywhere who needs double exposures, solarization and other lab wizardry? The author wisely turns his camera to the fans often, for somewhere within their minds is the answer to wrestling's broad appeal.

Are you recording all this? Well, I guess that's alright. One thing you ought to know, though, it's in my will already. When I die I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes scattered on Friday night in the Coliseum.

The photographs splendidly capture the spirit of organized mayhem that is professional wrestling. Quotes from fans, family and fellow wrestlers dot the pages; there is also a zowie section of old pictures of folks like Moonman, Bull Curry, Sockeye McDonald, Gorgeous George, Whiskers Savage, Ivan the Terrible, Kinji Shibuya and The Mummy among others. Plus a brief survey of the Houston mat history, by Paul Boesch, long-time announcer and current promoter. He explains therein that he thinks wrestling has an obligation to the community. The promoters and the wrestlers both understand that if, say, Johnny Valeptine takes time off to visit a crippled children's hospital, then climbs into the ring to get bashed in the head by Toru Tanaka's illegal brass knucks, well then some folks are apt to get right stirred up. You see it might have been their kid in the hospital.

This book may be viewed as merely a set of pictures. Or it may be thought of as an attempt to explain the mystique this activity holds on the thought of thousands of Americans. The snapshots likewise can be enjoyed alone as stark testimony to an ancient sport or together with the attendant social theories. If you haven't been to a match, this'll show you what you've been missing; if you've been this volume will help you remember what you saw.

But when I hit that floor, I thought I was dead. My head was bleeding bad. You get used to that too ... You know last year I took 161 stitches. I wrestle every night, three hundred twenty-three nights last year. Wahoo McDaniel

John Lomax

REALLY THE BLUES by Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe Doubleday-Anchor

If you think you know anything about smoking dope and/or talking trash without reading this book, you'd best jump back, Jack, "cause you're about to get your peepers crazed and amazed. Mezz knows the secrets of slang and swing, the blues and boo, and he ain't foolin" around AT ALL.

Now, you may think that a book about jazz jams in the never-never of 1925-1945 is as antiquated as a symphony, fit only for dumbcluck historians and nearsighted rock critics, but that's bullshit. Mezz Mezzrow was so deep into being a dope smoker, jazz musician and pseudo-spade, he convinced himself he'd turned black, that his lips had grown thicker, his hair gotten nappier and that he'd just generally gotten down so low that he was more than "colored," he was the real deal. All this from a nice Jewish boy, too. And if that ain't what this whole c-c rainbow started out to be about then God's gonna rain little green apples all over Indianapolis this summertime.

Next time you hip somebody to something, or dig whatever it is you dig, or smoke some weed, you bet your ass you oughta stop for a minute and thank Mezz Mezzrow and his pal$ for bequeathing such a holy, poetic tongue to you. Really the Blues is an instruction book in the beginnings and usage of hipster jive, which hasn't changed half so much as we have after fifty years of everyday looselip on the street corners of the world.

And talk about rock'n"roll music, any ole" way you choose it! Nobody ever loved outrageous noise more than Mezz, even if his was being played by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and a horde of other black jazzmen fifty years ago instead of primal thumpers right now. -

Mezz is the original killer, the champeen walker and talker and he never did lose that beat, even though,he was poisoned by a weirdo jones for a number of summers, and you owe him a real debt. You might think Wolfman Jack's your granddaddy, but until you read Really the Blues, you ain't even begun to imagine what your great-granddaddy was all about.

Get it? Get it.

Dave Marsh

THE QUEEN'S VERNACULAR: A Gay Lexicon compiled by Bruce Rodgers (Straight Arrow)

Bruce Rodgers spent twelve years collecting over twelve thousand entries for this dictionary of gay slang. Twelve thousand entries, with pronunciation keys, derivations, localities and years of usage, explicit definitions, synonyms, and usage examples.

Who needs a gay lexicon?

Well, a pilgrim ("sexily dressed straight man, unaware of the rise he's getting") who's bopping along the street in his basket pants ("basket: the overly emphasized bulging outline of male genitals crammed into too-tight pants ... "Did he have a basket! It was like walking into Safeway!"") and is ogled by a basket watcher and invited to engage in a basket lunch ("blow-job performed without completely removing the pants.") might, were he familiar with this dictionary, manage to defer politely and ingeniously, by saying something like, "Sorry, sister, but my shop door opens only when there's merchandise to cop — and I don't mean no scepter and jewels." A firm declination, sweetened by an off-handed compliment. Much better than saying, "Uh, duh, I'm not into that."

And an auntie ("middle-aged homosexual") might manage to retain some of that highly-touted youth by staying on top of what's in and out in slang, via Rodger's book.

Meanwhile, the social researcher would find The Queens" Vernacular to be an invaluable research tool, were he investigating prison brutality and homosexuality, lesbianism, homosexuality in the armed forces, geographic variances of homoerotic practice, homosexuality and drug usage, or many other subjects that are explored in depth through the definitions in this book.

And, of course, the straight writer who needs some realistic gay dialogue isn't necessarily going to hit the teahouse ("public toilet") for realism's sake. And he won't have to, if he picks up a copy of this dictionary.

If I sound a bit light or flippant about The Queens" Vernacular, it's an outgrowth of the book's humour. Gay slang, as the child of oppression and discrimination, is full of humour, wit, self-denigration, sarcasm, and irony. Laughing is a prime survival aid for all oppressed people.

Yet the book is to be taken quite seriously, as both a cultural and etymological achievement, and as a tribute to the gay culture, a stamp of recognition of the gay underground. Even if the book were a dull, useless bit of scholarship, it would be laudable in these terms. Gay slang has been exploited without being credited. For years, gay terms, like black and jazz slang terms, have been filtering down to the broader base of language, through the media and through cultural mixing. The word "camp", for example, was not invented in 1968 by Life, but has been in usage among gays for years. And its meaning for gays still goes well beyond our own cute usages.

But The Queens" Vernacular is not a dull bit of scholarship. It's full of all kinds of information and insight into the gay world. If the unknown breeds fear and knowledge breeds trust, then this book should loosen up a lot of straight, thinking about homosexuality. Most entertaining and mind-expanding are Rodgers" usage examples — quotations involving several slang terms that causes the reader to hop all over the book for definitions and further information.

No, it's not the kind of book to read from cover to cover. But I can't think of a better bit of reading for the bathroom, while you make foo-foo dust and clean out the ol" A-hole.

Larry Bush

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS by Hunter S. Thompson Straight Arrow

Las Vegas is a stone drag. People throwing their money away and then going back home. Interesting if you've never seen it, but how many times can you watch the same cartoon?

So when Hunter Thompson says he wants to find the American Dream, which he defines as "Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas," you want to tell him to shove Las Vegas and go somewhere else. But he's got all these drugs — two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of blotter acid, a salt shaker of cocaine, ups, downs, tequila, rum, Budweiser, ether and two dozen amyls h shit, he's dying to do a Kerouac, straight off the shoulder "everything that happened to us is here on paper" book. Besides, Sports Illustrated is footing the bill, since he's supposed to cover a motorcycle race there.

When Gnossis Whatshisdopolis was doping up and putting on the straights, that kind of scene was already withering. Volumes of print and miles of film and video-tape have sealed the coffin and buried it. "Hey man, I'm stoned!" "Well, golly, gee willikers! Wait til I tell the folks back in Massapequa!"

Thompson's problem is that he wants to write a book of Gonzo journalism, but there's no action anywhere.

Thompson can find no fresh blooms on the movement scene; nothing new to compare to the Hell's Angels or the Merry Pranksters or the San Fran Sixties. What's left are the soap opera Seventies.

Thompson calls it "the doomstruck era of Nixon. We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties." So Thompson and his attorney sidekick set off to trip their way through Vegas because Hunter claims it is the American Dream.

Their Vegas adventures are often funny, but the humor in watching them lay a new druggie fantasy on everyone they meet wears a bit thin.

Hunter Thompson can be a great journalist, when he sinks his teeth into an interesting subject. In Fear and Loathing, unfortunately, his teeth are clenched together from nothing but speed; there's nothing between them.

Carl Lowe

OFF THE WALL

THE INVESTIGATION OF RALPH NADER, by Thomas Whiteside (Pocket Books): The subtitle is "General Motors versus One Determined Man," but frankly, the story seems a little skimpy for a whole book.

WINTER BLOOD - John Roc (Pocket Books): Instinctively, one is inclined to dislike this plodding tale of a pair of conscience-stricken slumlords cast into a search for the Philosopher's Stone. The instinct is probably correct the writing isn't very good, except in flashes — but there are nice macabre sequences, not quite enough to give you nightmares, but definitely something to think about. Roc understands the new occult pretty well, and that's the temper of the times.

EVENT 1000, by David Lavallee (Paperback Library): Moby Dick it ain't. 83

men are trapped for a month in a nuclear powered submarine 1200 feet beneath the sea. Some of them escape.

THE OSMOND BROTHERS AND THE NEW POP SCENE, by Richard Robinson (Pyramid): Richard's done it again, and it can all be yours for only $.75. If you think Crazy Horses alone puts the Osmonds up there with the biggies, this is your chance to find out the real scoop. Nobody makes books like this anymore, and we sort of miss "em.

GETTING EVEN, by Woody Allen (Paperback Library): America's funniest humanoid strikes again, with a thin but volatile volume of collected pieces from the New Yorker, Playboy and assorted other hot spots. Recommended for those who like to read — and laugh — out loud.

GRAY MATTERS - William Hjortsberg (Pocket Books): Hjortsberg probably thinks he's like Kurt Vonnegut, y'know. Or Burroughs. Heh. Not writing science, but speculative, fiction. Despite that, and a certain attitude of self-importance, Gray Matters makes it as a peek into the ultimate extension of behaviorist thought. Has it occurred to the eastern luminaries, or to B.F. Skinnerites, how terribly close they are to one another? Has it occurred to them that mass lobotomy might be the ultimate extension of their philosophy? One might safely suppose it hasn't.