THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Paul Aid Pelvisl Dowrifne®l>e

Paul MeCartney’s latest adventure in mass culture, his ABC-TV special, was so bad he can hardly be blamed for doing it under a pseudonym. “James Paul McCartney” probably wasn’t a bad show, considering that its star has been dead for several years, but it did bring out everything that is stereotypically vapid and sterile in the Estranged Beatle.

One. occasidiiilly think we.n hear ing something like "Maybe I'm Amazed" or IS wonderfit version of "Love Is Strange," that. the had~rappirig of McCartney is more a. result of his refusal to reap his moolah at the. feet of Allen the Klein than any artistic defi~ ciency; hut "J.P. McCartney" went out of its way to prove that even his most vehement critics aren't all wrong. The motif of the show was expressed in a ngle image: "Maybe I'm a man who's ill the in~ddJe f i~e~ 1~ii ne,' Th~ t he doesni reaLly understand.' The only redenij~iive moment canle with a screaming VCtSi( n &~i 44Long T~iH Sally

tt B~ tk~ wtt~. ahei~dted hig rnLnt~ of' the Kmg s p~r~on the Mn lumselt stepped oul nights earh~r and proved McC~ir~ney has pr. •g~es~ed ost sui~eJy in. the Pelvi&.. tradi t1C)fl.~..

•El:vis throws himself amund the stage with 4 total.gracelcssness that reveab~.a: true mastery of utter contempt. Why he isn t bigger among the younger portion of rock's rapidly decaying au4ie:nceisa't altogethe.r clear. (Maybe they aren't. prepared to cope with the real thing?j. Presley isn't just*decadent in the euphe mistic sense he makes the exploitation of his artistic cKct~ a pleasure The retisoii h~ doesn't make trashy movies; invmore if von were sondering - is that even that 11. flOW.: too high...•quaiity for him.

He manuged~ 1:0 appear for a fuH ninety minutes With0~Ut do~ng anything at aR except perspiring a lU:tle hit; without. making a single grand gesture except thrifl*g his jewelled cape away at. the end (Sd 5j:flCC it had been nmaltuncttomn.g.e ver since tIC put it ..tt even th:at m~.ve was mostly a gesture of grand ft :tulance); without placing any emotion into anything he sang, though he &most blew. it with "I'm So Lone some I Cbuld fly,"

11 yOU: think this makes a performance, yoifre right. We w:erc nasty, at ni~~ house, to those diseourt COilS enough to phone during this holy ritual, We cheered when we were sup po~e 4. to. a n4 (for the most. party avoided co~s.jclerafton of content. Elvis is stifl Kipg. Thank God: if he'd rnade:.~ sing le mistake, it. old have been un beaShle:.

Time says rák. is the biggest part of the entertainment. industry now. Ap~ pa:rently the TV execs think that this means rock, is. just a musical. me.dium which grabs people. And so. one gets, one. of two, things: "in Concert' and blvis “Aloha From Hawaii,” which are more-distant views of what you pay $6.50 to see at your neighborhood coliseum; or “Midnight Special” and “James Paul McCartney,” which are hip variety shows.

Variety shows are the biggest tuneout on TV. They always were; nobody under thirty ever watched ’em for anything but the rock groups anyhow. The “In Concert/Aloha” presentations merely reflect a pathetic lack of imagination at the production level. Alice Cooper could really do something in the context of a situation comedy; Randy Newman might be a brilliant, Oscar Levant-ish talk show host; and Taj Mahal would be a wonderful replacement for David Carradine on “Kung Fu.” (Not that David Carradine couldn’t use a replacement, wonderful or otherwise.) The stage is the stage, on Broadway or at the Fillmore. Rock “concerts” on the screen — movie or TV — are just as boring as “Playhouse 90” or film musicals. The “In Concert” approach will stiff like the rock-tour movies.

So who needs it? Us, probably. TV* certainly. Someday, maybe, when the schlock-meisters and the defensive culture-vultures are shoved aside, we’ll get some TV — and even some rock TV

— that is entertaining and sane. Until then, most of the rock audience will probably keep watching old movies and reruns, and an occasional episode of “Kung Fu.”

T.V.I.

In Youngstown, Ohio lt~ Still 1965

Where are all the great rock ‘n’ roll bands coming from these days? England? New York? San Francisco? Nope. It’s Youngstown, Ohio. OK, that’s an exaggeration: the greatest musical talent in the world is not languishing on the banks of the^ Cuyahoga River, but there is a new wave of fresh air being blown up in those parts by four guys who call themselve^ Blue Ash. (I told them they oughta change their name because people would confuse them with Blue Oyster Cult or Wishbone Ash, neither of whom they resemble in the slightest, but they’ve got a song with the lyrics “I needed some cash/so I called Blue Ash,” so I guess the name sticks.)

And, believe it or not, being a rock band in Youngstown does have its advantages. For one, the boys are never short of work. Over the four years Blue Ash has been together, they’ve performed a seemingly endless string of one-nighters across Ohio and Pennsylvania; They’ve gained a steadfast following in that area, having learned to get the local yokels to listen to them by sprinkling their own compositions (there are over 2,000 of them!) in among Stones and Beatles tunes. Also, the relative isolation of Youngstown allows the group and their manager, Geoffrey Jones, to operate free of the. moneygoround of the larger markets. The cordiality and informality with which the group conducts its business is matched only by the enthusiasm and seriousness with which they deal with their music.

Blue Ash could definitely be categorized, if one wished to categorize them, among the new crop of groups which are returning to some kind of pre-Sgt. Pepper sense of teenage music. Frank Secich, the bassist and main composer, does not write melodies and words. He writes songs. And they all sing like their voices were echoes of Beatles VI or Younger Than Yesterday. But, unlike their fellow Ohians, the Raspberries (they’ll kill me for even mentioning their cross-state rivals), they sing with force and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll zeal rather than jaded camp or nostalgia. Secich, along with Jim Kendzor (lead vocals), David Evans (drums), and Bill “Cupid” Bartolin (lead guitar), seem to enjoy what they’re doing so much that one begins to wonder whether they don’t, in fact, live in some sort of time warp, al la Twilight Zone, where music is still a simple matter of singing love songs and having fun. The sheer innocence of which is belied by their week-in and week-out experience at the hands of the quaalude culture in the midwest and their offhand musical expertise.

I’m not saying that I’m ready to run right back to Youngstown, y understand. Once was enough. But I would, if only to catch a glimpse of Ohio’s most precious resource, a group called Blue Ash. Hopefully, though, with their first album being released now by Mercury, I won’t have to go that far to see them. They should be starting to tour around the country and spreading a little of their rock ‘n’ roll cheer to people and places a long cry from Youngstown.

Gary Kenton

Andy Zwerling Wants To Be A Star

Andy Zwerling is a 20-year old kid who lives in a nice house on Long Island with his mother and teenage sisters. Andy wants to be a teen heart-throb and rock and roll star, but his mother wants he should go to law school. He’s perfectly willing to go to law school, but he just thinks he should have another chance to be a star. He sits upstairs in his room banging on his guitar, then banging on his typewriter, writing songs while his sisters watch.

And they’re very good songs indeed. Not like the songs on his first album, Spiders In the Night, which Kama Sutra released a yvhile back/ They were pretty ... abstract. No, these new songs deal with very universal teenage themes: love, radio, dancing, TV, meeting the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen and losing her almost immediately. They’re really fine songs, even if people like David Geffen at Asylum Records — for one — doesn’t share my enthusiasm. In fact, nobody in the record biz seems to.

Not that Andy’s worfied: ‘ They’ll wake up when I get famous. And I will be famous. 1 mean, if somebody takes a chance on me . . If the little kids, the ones I care about, the 8-to-14 year old crowd, if they get exposed to my music, they’ll understand it and love it. Look who they’ve got to look up to now! David Cassidy who, if you don’t mind my saying so, is getting old and tired. The Osmond Brothers, who make good music but whose politics — and I don’t just throw words like this around — are kind fascist. Bobby Sherman? He’s through. He got married.”

He’s got a point. And the reason that most of the record company people who’ve been passing on Andy’s living room tapes can’t hear his songs could be that maybe you have to be thirteen years old somewhere deep inside to hear them. But a song like “High School Girls” is universal, all about how high school girls tease high school boys “who drive so fast they/ Crack up a lot’ into marrying them. Or “Angel Woman,” about a short vacation-time love affair taking place one afternoon around the juke box at a French Canadian hamburger joint. Or “Summer Songs,’ a wistful updating of the standard summer romance theme (Maybe I’ll never see you again, but every now and then we’ll hear this summer’s songs on the radio). Or his masterpiece, “Snow Beach,” which 1 simply cannot describe, but which is one of the most moving songs I’ve heard in a long time.

But the be'st part is watching Andy — sometimes helped by his 16-year-old sister Leslie — perform the songs. With his cherry-red Fender guitar or his gigantic 12-string strapped around him, he jumps around, positively exploding with energy, singing these great songs and well, it’s magnetism. I don’t see how he can be stopped if he ever gets on stage.

“All I want to do is sing my songs to the little kids of this country. I really think they need me after what they’ve been getting* I’m really not in this for myself. I know that’s hard to believe, but I’m not. I really love the kids of this nation, and they’re the only ones I care about.”

Andy is so disarmingly sincere that you just have to agree with him. His family believes in him. I believe in him. He has hundreds of songs, ready to go. Now it’s all up to some record company out there somewhere.

And of course, the young teenagers of America.

Ed Ward

(Bona-fide inquiries from interested record companies will be forwarded to Andy.)

Bowling For No Reason At AIL

Nothing beats hanging out ’cause hanging out means doing nothing. But the rules of the game, as all keedz know, is to find some place to waste your time where nobody’ll bother ya with hippie philosophy and beatnik chants. Like, you used to could go to pool halls or drag strips or even slot car racing joints and the latest thing to cuddle up next to for a drunken snooze is a pinball machine. But I got something that’ll whizz yer tweeter better than any of those monkey-scooter gymnasiums and that’s bowling alleys.

Now don’t jump to any conclusions. You don’t ever just go there to bowl. You can do it if you want, but it takes energy and you gotta reserve most of that for munching on candy bars and squirreling up to pimply stacked scags and besides, all you wanna do is watch the racket anyway.

So who bowls? What’s So fun about bowling?

Well, actually only losers bowl. Bowling is a loser’s game. It’s not a ruff’n’tuff sport like boxing or football and those hockey bastards keep away from it. It’s recreation like miniature golf (stay away from those places, tho, ’cause every nite is family nite and that’s a drag) so you don’t gotta do nothing but sit around and laff at everybody and play the jukebox and eat garbage at the concession stand.

And there are types who bowl, also. This don’t mean you have to take a notebook and jot down all the standard kooks like I do, but you should be able to recognize the usual load of deviants like yourself so you won’t get ’em mixed up with regular bowlers. So here’s who you watch out for:

I. Janitors — thass right, when they ain’t getting their heads bashed in at bus terminals, they’re at the bowling lanes sweeping the alleys with their snot. No real janitor knows how to bowl; they just go there to look tired and it makes ’em feel important.

II. Pregnant women — ever since doctors got on this kick about how the female balloon needs exercise or it’s gonna be one helluva decayed fetus, the pregnant populace has been croppin up on a regular basis to clobber a few pins. All of ’em are grumpy and sweaty, and once in awhile they work so hard at it that they miscarriage on the alley.

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III. Chubby little girls — they ain’t cute. Usually they get their fat little fingers squashed by the bowling ball, and the family giggles.

IV. Rednecks — they come just so they can toss the bowling ball around and drop it and put cracks on the floor. W7hen they play the game, they never keep score, and there’s always a drunken brawl. Some poor cracker always gets his skull cracked.

V. Dykes — dykes are so boring they just gotta bowl.

The other people who don’t bowl like yourself are the greasy dropouts. They think they’re hotshit hustlers and that bowling is a hotshit racket. They laff at the types, too, but it’s got a lot more vicious gargle than just a hangingout chuckle. These guys want trouble. Which spoils your fun. Which means hanging out ain’t safe.

That’s why you can’t act too cool in a bowling alley. You might get away with it with your high school buddies at your streetcorner pool hall. But bowling alleys are the dungeons of the world. Hell, it’s like Frijid Fink playing at an insane asylum. Or more like asking for a snoot full at a prison. Bowling may not be a rough sport, but it sure does attract some nasty creeps. And I don’t mean just juvenile delinquents, pardner.

So, the next time you got a few minutes drop on in your neighborhood bowling alley. You won’t make any friends, and there’ll be plenty of hostile sneers and it’s not nearly as exciting as a Deep Purple concert, but what else you gotta do? Robot A. Hullabaloo