THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Porter Wagoner & Dolly Porton Live In...Berkeley?

“By the way,” John said, as I was picking my records up off the counter, “Porter and Dolly are coming to Berkeley Community Theatre on the ninth.” Good Lord! Is that a fact? Country music shows come to the San Francisco area about as often as they come to Harlem. “Wow,” sez I, “I’ll call up RCA tomorrow and see if we can’t get tickets.”

No problem, the man in LA said. He knows I’ve been a big fan of Porter and Dolly for years now, and I’ve never seen them. Just call our guy in San Francisco and he’ll set everything up. An interview, just a short one, maybe? Sure, sure.. Maybe on the bus, resplendent in its $250,000 interior that was just added last year? Sure. The RCA guy in San Francisco was eager to help, said, just go to the boxoffice on the night of the show and pick up yer ducats.

Exciting? Sure! See, I knew that Porter Wagoner is one of your more ..conservative country performers. He refuses to play package shows containing performers who, in Porter’s estimation, set a bad example and do not provide family-style entertainment. He is strict with his band, *but they’ve stayed with him for years nonetheless. And here he is, the show in Berkeley to fill in the gap between Thursday night?s 'show in Stockton and Saturday night’s show somewhere further north. What Porter doesn’t know, and what I suspect, is that there is gonna be more hair in that audience Friday night than he’s ever seen in one of his audiences before. And sure enough, Joe Kerr, who manages Commander Cody and Asleep at the Wheel, calls to ask if I’ve got tickets and if I’d like to sit with the Ozone folks. No -thanks, I said, I’ve already got mine. See you at the show. He’s getting a block of 30 tickets. This is gonna be weird.

Plus, of course, Dolly will be there. That’s the reason that John’s slobbering all over the steering wheel of the van as we head towards Berkeley. I’d talked to the RCA guy again, and he said that he didn’t think I’d get the interview, because they were tired, but he’d call them later in the afternoon and see. I tried to reach him later, but he wasn’t in. “There’s the bus,” everybody choruses as we pass it. No big thing, just a GMC. I’d expected a Silver Eagle, at least. Inside are three suites,. Porter’s, Dolly’s and their manager’s. And a quarter of a million’s worth of interior decorating.

Well, there’s Cody, killing Old Grand Dad on the steps. Lady at the box office says that my comp tickets aren’t in yet, but she’ll ask the RCA guy when he gets there. We stand around in the cold. The Ozone crew arrives with their tickets. “We got an extra,” says Laura. No, mine’ll be here soon. Not a lot of people here from the looks of things . . . Applause from inside and — hey! Doily’s singing “Muleskinner Blues.” The show’s started. A man with grey sideburns appears. “No more free tickets. If they aren’t in the boxoffice now, they won t be. But ... “Sorry, he says. “So buy some tickets,” his eyes say, plain as day, So we do. Five tickets at $5.50 each is $22.00. Forget going to see the Wheel at the Longbranch afterwards, folks.

Boy, the auditorium is empty tonight! “Sit anywhere,” advises the usher. The seats behind the Ozone block are empty. And the show is good. Can’t hear the band worth a hoot, but Dolly sure can sing. “There aren’t many of you out there,” she says, “but you sure can clap loud!” Huge applause. Intermission, then the band and comic Speck Rhodes. Then Porter and then the duo. Old songs, new songs, one unrecorded song about a polecat that’s pretty funny, A real tight stage act that they must do every night, but it looks spontaneous. Rock groups take hotice: Which in fact some are: all Cody’s band; Asleep at the Wheel, a new swing band called the Oso Family, assorted Grateful Dead and all the New Riders are here tonight.

Porter calls time out, and delivers a little speech about how he’s never played before a, uh, college-type audience before, but he’s been bowled over by the response and so as a special token of how pleased he is, he and Dolly and Speck will stay and sign autographs after the show. “And I’m not just saying that, either. I’m as honest as the day is long, and that’s the truth. This has been a re-cordin’.” Chuckle.

But it’s true. Two tables are brought out after the show, and folks line up along the left of the stage. I clutch my copy of their latent (and best in a long while) duo album, We Found It, and join the throng. I even have some witty remark in mind to say to Porter about how he had long hair before anyone else, and I notice that I’m actually nervous. Diane wants to take a picture of us all with Porter and Dolly. Finally, I’m right up there. I hand Porter my album and ...

Nothing. Nothing comes out of my mouth, and we’re staring at each other. He is decidedly upset. What, didn’t he expect this when they told him he’d be playing Berkeley? But there is fear in his eyes. We line up behind them, and' Diane snaps the picture. Dolly signs the album and I thank them. John has two giant pictures to hang in the store, and they sign them, too. As we walk off the stage, there are at least 200 more people, mostly hippies at that, waiting. Porter Wagoner may never be the same again (Dolly took it right in stride, but then she’s pretty young) but if that’s what it takes to get more country music to San Francisco, it’s worth it.

Ed Ward

Brian Jones Is Alive In Nicaragua

Did you ever wonder when your fave rave rock star kicked the bucket if it might not be just another OD or osterizer accident, but part ,of some larger, more cosmologically sinister scheme? It’s worth maybe an insomniac mull or two if your black light goes on the blink, just like all those discussions we used to have around the campfire about whether there was a God and if ghosts really existed, and it leads to the same place: some chintz mystification to spook yerself with for a few minutes.

Some folks have found more profitable uses for such juju handjobs, though; thus it was that we at CREEM received one of the classic disgusting press releases of our era. There it was, right beneath a mesmerizing computer print-out psychedelic design: “MUSICIAN BERRY OAKLEY, PART OF ‘UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES’ FOUND IN DEATHS OF ROCK CELEBRITIES”.

The release went on to state that a couple of “serious students of the Occult and reporters covering concerts in the metropolitan area” who won’t be named here “believe they may have stumbled upon several ‘very strange’ coincidences while researching the deaths” of guess who. (Not Burton Cummings.)

“Many of the similarities are quite obvious and have already been explored,” stated one of the undergraduate necrophiles. “For instance,. Berry Oakley and Duane Allman were both from the same group and they both died in a motorcycle accident within a few blocks of each other and almost a year apart.”

These and other vibrations from the ectoplasmic mulch are bantered over in a hot new book called Rock Raps of the ’70’s, which consists of the two researchers discussing “the ‘Jinx of the J’ which has to do with the fact that Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison were all part of a curse which doomed them to die at the peak of their career because their names began with the letter ‘J’

. Don’t worry about things you don’t need to, though: “Some people thought this would continue through to Mick Jagger but I think if there is anything to this jinx business it has to do with the first name and not the last. There are even those who suggest that Brian Jones may have been Jagger’s replacement in the death curse,” darkly hint the study team.

So you can start making charts right now of whose records you can and can’t cross off your next Christinas gift list. Among the pop czars who ain’t got no J’s hanging around and can rest easy: Rod Stewart, Brian Wilson, Harry Chapin, Dick Cavett and Earl Scheib. But Johnny Carson, Jac Holzman, Johns Lennon and Fogerty, Joe Alioto, Jeff Beck and Jim Dippy are in hot water, and Joni James has had it. Such borderline cases as Michael J. Pollard .and the Jackson Five raise questions not even the authors of Rock Raps of the ’70’s are prepared to tackle yet.

They are concerned about the even darker parallelism in “the fact that six of these deaths were of rock stars who had eleven letters in their names: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Billy Murcia,” the last followed by an asterisk and the notation below: “Drummer for the Dolls”.

But, worthless as the book is, it overlooks as much as it obfuscates. The authors miss (perhaps intentionally???) the bizarre coincidences surrounding many other famed rock deaths, such as the fact that the combined total of letters from the names Big Bopper, Buddy Holly (notice the weird cluster of B’s) and Ritchie Valens is 32, the same age at which Jesus (he was a J too) was crucified, along with the 32 choruses in John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” and the 32 frames of the Zapruder film of John Kennedy’s assassination.

32 reversed is 23, a very young age for a popstar to die, especially since both 32 and 23 are 3+2 or 5, which is the number of letters in the first names of Janis, Duane, Berry, Billy, and even Jim and Jimi if you call them both James like their parents did when they christened them, which is particularly devastating in the light of the facts that all of these stars AS WELL AS ALL THE OTHERS NOW DEAD had five fingers on both hands, which is one for each of the Rolling Stones as well as the Beatles if you include Murray the K.

Mike Brody

Marvel Goes Mad

Those idiotic days of dumbshit comedy are just about over. I mean, if it’s sophisticated and smartass and especially if it’s pulled from the doze-barrel, The National Lampoon, then it’s supposed to be funny. But that just ain’t my brand of humor. The kinda yuk yuk I prefer is spoken’ with a kool hint of beatnik bop vocabulary with no pretenses about being dumb. The Golden Age of course, was the fifties and the Big Daddy was Mad.

And yet, Mad had gobs of imitators, and despite lack of popular support, all of ’em were dumb enuff to be funny. There was Sick and Cracked and Brand Echhh and all of ’em had this special finger-snapping lingo which let you know that you were reading a mag put out by some real kats. It’s the same smell that'tingled yer goosebumps when ya began reading Zap Comix. I mean, if you were from.Hicksville, Indiana, you felt secure knowing that other maniacs were trucking likewise all across this crummy nation. And this same sense of security is mainly what reading those early humor mags was all about.

But then goddamn college, socially relevant pamphlets started coming out. Grump was distributed and bored everybody until they finally got guilty over not reading enuf Lenny Bruce.

And not even the substandard comic-dweets like Soupy Sales, Ernie Kovacs or Jerry Lewis could fight it. It was time now for the hip standup comedian who’d tell race and drug jokes and do a tap dance to “The Age of Aquarius.” The only relief was the comedy TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies or F Troop, but there was still a literary vacuum. (I’m omitting the three issue rag put out by Maynard G. Krebs called Bongo Beat, for the simple reason that it was so hard to get hold of.)

At last, however, I think there’s a renewed interest in what I call “dumbshit humor,” and leave it to that aging and wornout excuse for a beatnik, Smilin’ Stan Lee, to come through with a clever humor comicbook which almost recaptures that spirit. It’s called Crazy! and it’s stupid enuf that it’ll zonk ya out immediately with those old familar words like “nutty” or “sheesh” or “batty” or “smack dab” or “swatteroo.” You know that expressq flavor I’m talking about.

And what it contains is the tale about a superhero fighting team called Echhs-men who tilt you over with their shouts of “Like, Zapsville, man!” Marvel is poking fun at the superhero syndrome and nearly every Marvel hero gets their just dessert in Crazy! The guest stars are Magneat-o, the Toadstool, the Scarlett Wench and Slicksilver and there’s no plot for the narrative - just plenty of wisecracks.

Of course, there’s the usual corner graffiti which you have to search the panel to find. For instance, just When Dang the Conqueror, a super-villain (natch), zings off on an evil mission his false teeth clack out into mid-air and underneath the artist has deposited a letter which reads:

Dear Black Panther,

Keep outta my part of the jungle.

Boomba, the jungle boy.

Or there’s a laundry bag with the inscription “Groovy Bag (If found, return to Murray the K).” And Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band even shows up to ask Forbushman, who goes around with a pot over his head like Johnny Appleseed and muttering “Curb your Ore,” if he’d like to be on their next glitzy album cover. None of which makes any sense, but that’s why it’s so much fun.

So if you don’t think you’re too old for corn and haven’t yet outgrown idiocy, then I suggest you get yourself a copy of Crazy! It’ll zonk ya right off your feet.

Robot A. Hull

Standelis Meet The Tedium Medium

Where does your average rockstarved TV viewer turn to if he wants to squeeze a bit of The Beat out of the very tube before which he probably spends most'of his day? Well, American Bandstand and Soul Train have the Top Twenty or so plus the tastiest dancers, but there’s a nasty tendency for them to be pre-empted by the Phil Silvers Utah Golf Classic or any available college basketball game. Then there’s the Great Wastedland of In Concert, where the only dancing is of the straight-up-anddown variety and you have the incongruity of a supposedly live performance being interrupted for Love Generation Hygiene Spread and Forty Monster Hits ads. If you’re really desperate, there’s always Rollin’, where Kenny “Earring” Rogers & The First Edition cover the hits with twice the musical aplomb and none of the high spark of mindless creation that the Raiders exhibited on Where The Action Is.

Where the action really is, however, is in that .great bargain bin of the airwaves called Daytime TV. Aside from the standard rock & roll movies that grace Dialing For Dollars from time to time like “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Sing And Swing” (English ’64 — “the main thing is to get the right sound and the right steps”) or “Gonks Go Beat,” which film-rock critic Charley Beesley calls “the original space-rock-operama,” almost every situation comedy filmed since Beatles ’65 has worked a rock act into at least one episode. And where are all the sitcom cutouts totfay, but fighting it out with the talkers, the soapers, and The Hollywood Squares, allowing for every fast legend from Phil Spector to the Standelis shining the old Sony on Gilligan’s Island inside of one week.

Take for example a recent rerun of the Dick Van Dyke Show, with Chad & Jeremy as Ernie & Freddie, the rockin' Redcoats, who are forced to hide out at Dick’s house when souvenir-hungry fans eat their hotel room. Bet you never pictured Mary Tyler Moore as a closet-rocker, but she can barely .suppress her lusties as the Redcoats slouch about the living room, singing songs and falling asleep. Needless to say, the fans find out where the boys are staying, and a teen hoard smashes down the door, devours the plastic sofa covers, and leaves pee stains on the dinette set. Dick’s a good sport though, since the Redcoats are “really nice kids, and they’ve got kind of a funny sense of humor.” Funny strange or funny ha-ha?

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Next up is the ever-popular / Dream Of Jeannie, starring Barbara Eden’s navel and a number of boring astronauts. Jeannie, pissed at one of the space boys for claiming that rock bands are no better than “any four guys off any street corner,” conjures up four duds from any street corner and magically transforms them into her dream garage band, with herself on drums. And wouldn’t you know it, two of the guys turn out to be Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, so when they amaze everyone with their pop acumen they’re rushed into the office of record exec Phil Spector, who flips over Tommy’s kissy face and Bobby’s bowed guitar (an idea later stolen by Jimmy Page) and immediately signs them up. Phil was especially good on telephone. I missed the rest, but no doubt Jeannie turns them back into monkey punks and another supergroup bites the dust.

Meanwhile, over at the Munster’s pad, the fantastic Standells are having a wild, wild weekend in the best sitcomrock tradition, with bearded beatniks beating bongos and riffing heavy poetry — “hip is Hip/ and groove is Groovy/ life’s a wild Fellini movie!” The classy part ends quickly enough though, as the band plugs in and rips into “Come On And Ringo” (it’s a dance) and their own version of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” complete with ? and the Mysterians underwater organ. Herman, apparently enslaved by the crazy rhythms, throws a frugging Frankenstein while declaiming “they’re almost as good as Kate Smith!” Gimmie babies!! Everybody gets off, and the Standells split for some big gig, but not before leaving little Eddie with a pawful of autographed pix inscribed “to Eddie Munster, a real gone gasser.”

Rock acts don’t seem to be a big enough draw to make it in the sitcoms they’re grinding, out these days, so the future of rock in the afternoon starts to look pretty dim once you’ve caught the same Dick Van Dyke Show for the eighth or ninth time. Maybe with a bit of luck, they’ll start rerunning the Midnight Special someday, and we can all wait for Helen Reddy to go through her pregnancy again. Until then, just keep yer hand on the dial and remember these inspirational words from Herman Munster: “I’m going to sleep a lot better tonight knowing that the future of America is in the hands of boys like The Standells.”

Dick Johnson