THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Country Joe Borneo Live at the Big House

“You mean if there’s a riot here we may get shot?,” Ginny Whitaker, the frail dynamo of a drummer, is whispering to Country Joe. Joe, already edgy from the two-hour bus ride from the Best Western Inn that they’ve holed up in on Long Island, is somewhat cruelly feeding Ginny’s paranoia. “Just look, they’re being so sloppy here because they don’t care if we get taken as hostages!,” Joe darkly murmured.

Just then, the guard, ahem, correction , officer who’s . responsible for . our security is lumbering up the aisle of the bus, checking the baggage. “If ..there’s a riot here, will we get shot?,” Ginny blurts out as he passes, her. He just chuckles and starts his way back to the front -of the bus, then turns around and addresses the audience consisting of Joe’s All-Star band* the four people from Hospital Audiences, Inc. who have arranged this prison mini-tour for Joe, and your intrepid CREEM correspondent. “Stay together as much as you can,” he lectures us, “And whatever you do, don’t wander Off.” With that even Dorothy Moscowitz, one of the more sophisticated musicians playing rock & roll (having been a central figure in the United States of America, an ultra-serious electronic bozo band of the late 60s) involuntarily gulps.

We file off the bus; go through the metal detector tunnel, file back on the bus, drive through the innermost gate of .this massive' institution called Sing-Sing, file back off the bus and get shuffled directly up two. flights, of stairs that leaves us backstage of the all purpose chapel/ concert/ lecture hall where at 2:30, Joe will entertain almost all of the 500 cons that call this forlorn place home.

But wait a minute. Joe has to piss. “Where’s the head?,” he drawls to one of/ the blue-blazered, white-shirtand-tied, newlook correction officers, commonly known as “bulls.” “Just follow me,” one volunteers, and a procession of the more weakbladdered (or just curious) file downstairs to an old office used now as a coffeebreak room for the “trusted” cons that are looking busy as we march by. One of them, green-suited, making him a state prisoner doing time after sentencing, about 35, recognizes Joe from the Fish days and TV. A short rap about music, jail conditions, doing time and the prospects for the future ensues, until all who have to have availed themselves of the head. Joe turns to leave but the con reaches out ..to touch his shoulder, not a threatening gesture, just some contact, “Don’t forget to say goodbye before you leave,” he pleads.

By the time we file back, half the pews are filled up, one-half hour before showtime; a sea of uniforms, green, red for the city prisoners awaiting trial and white for the mess hall Crew. But the faces are mostly black. And somber. /Checking out those freaks up on the stage who are plugging in, bustling with wires; but wait, Ginny has seated herself behind the drum set and Dorothy is playing around by the electric piano and a great'chorus of cheers, wolf whistles and general mayhem breaks out.

Joe, pony-tailed, with twotoned bluejeans, steps up to the mike, says hello, and strums into “Hold On, It’s Coming.” Peter Alhin is cooking on bass, Ginny is positively pounding the shit out of her fiberglass drum set, ana Dorothy’s plugging any holes with a funky piano line as Joe wah-wahs his way through the number. Next up is “On the Road Again,” with the chorus, “The best things in life are free if you steal them from the bourgeoise,1” ringing ironically through the heavily-guarded hall. Then “Mr. Big Pig,” and it’s obvious that Joe is pulling out all his political stops.

And the cons are beginning to get into it, digging this chubby hippy talking about pigs,. rip-offs, and Tricky Dick. And they’re positively ready when Joe asks for the inevitable F. Amazing, the Fuck cheer here in Sing-Sing Nation. Leave it to Joe. And the cons are wild, shouting back the U, C, and K like refugees from the Rose Bowl. Joe is getting loose, loose enough to dig back to his old, old Fish days for a James Brown sendup on “Rock and Soul Music.”

But the biggest rise comes during the final number, “Sexist Pig,” when Ginny takes center stage to do a frenetic drum solo, all ninety, or so pounds of her thumping those skins with the deadly and powerful regularity of those huge machines nestled somewhere in this cavernous place that stamp out those N.Y. state license plates that this place i$ famous for. And the cons go wild.

“Thank you,, goodnight,” Joe yells, but the audience ain’t buying. Joe comes back to the mike, “Should, we do another song? Don’t you have something important tp do?” But they don’t, it’s election day in N.Y., a state holdiay , and those voteless felons are free, at least for the rest of the afternoon. Joe leads the. AJl’-Stars into “I Don’t Know Why I Love You But I Do,” then they push into “Dancing in the Streets,” Ginny salutes the audience with hpr gin bottle full of water, more cheers and shouts fill the hall, asking Joe to introduce the band.

“Oh yeah, I forget,” Joe is mumbling and the inevitable roar goes up for both Ginny and Dorothy* “And I’m Joe Borneo. Hope I never see you again in here,” Joe getting in one parting shot before he strolls backstage, and the bulls shift nervously, - shrugging tfyeir sportscoated shoulders as tbe pews empty out to ah accompaniment of canned soul music. Yudda, Yudda, Yudda Warden.

Larry Sloman

Coll of the Wild

Another myth destroyed by modern science. Johnny Weismuller got considerable help with his famous Call of the jungle: the bleat of a camel, the howl . of a hyena, the growl of a dog and the plucked string of a violin were all superimposed over the yodels of four actors with hefty lungs. The bloodcurdling yell. was pieced together by studio experts in 1934 and reused /for all the Tarzan movies. For more revealing tales of Tarzan, turn to page 56.

Batman Should Only Be Alive to See This

Then again, maybe not. But who'd have ever thought that his affectionate ward, Robin (center) should stoop so low as to join one of the skateboard clubs which have been terrorizing Manhattan for two months now with the most warlike new fad since the wah-wah. Here we see a typical clutch of "rollies," as the scumsters call themselves, messing up another streetcorner with their rude talk and jujubes. Derisively glaring at the camera like primordial savages in New Zealand, they celebrate a fresh "kill" by preparing to drool all over their vanquished off-camera prey, a 63 Nash containing three Slavic immigrants and a midwife. We can only wonder as the apprehension mounts how much more of this sort of thing our urban jungles can bear before they break down completely. Incidentally, Robin looks like that because he still hasn't remembered to wipe off from last year's CREEM Lou Reed Lookalike Contest. And if you can write in and tell us exactly what this picture has to do with the 1910 Fruitgum Company, we'll not only print your reply, but send you something insulting to boot.

The Good Rots: American Band via Long Island

You couldn’t find a more classic showcase for the Good Rats than Ubie’s O.T.J. in West Islip. Monday night means beer blast at Ubie’s, Wednesday’s it’s mugs for a quarter, and weekends are oldies but goodies, with Danny and the Juniors or Ben E. King or Tony and the Fists. But Thursday nights belong to the Good Rats, a recently revived firSt generation Long Island rock ’n’ roll band that is playin’ for keeps.

The kids understand. High on borrowed proof and a couple of draft beers, they move away from the “pong” machine and the jukebox (which features half a dozen Good Rats singles made from a two year old demo ffccord) and push towards the stage.

Visually, the band is hardly exotic, but they are interesting. Peppi Marchello, the lead Singer and songwriter for the band, wears two layers of sweat sox under his knee high sneakers, one of which is red, the other blue; Peppi warms up by swinging a swift new aluminum baseball bat, which is his main stage prop: he plucks it like a bass, jumps halfway to the ceiling with it, and occasionally, to sacrifice and advance a runner, he bunts.

“If you can’t hit a baseball as far as Bobby Murcer, you’re nothin’,” says Peppie, and he means that both literally and symbolically. A Long . Island MVP at 14, Marchello was one of the younger players scouted by the New York Yankees. A long illness as a teen scratched Peppi from a pro career, but the Rats have a standing challenge to play ball against any rock band in the country. Meanwhile, Peppi’s brother Mickey is loosening up his fingers on some Mahavishnu Orchestra riffs.

Mickey looks like the Italian kid from the neighborhood who went to Tibet, and in six rrionths moved from Stealing hubcaps to trading licks with the Dalai Lama. Saddle shoes peek out from beneath ' his ankle length Asian print robe, Muggs McGuinness meats the Bowery Swami. Like his older brother, Mickey sports a beard. Not so much, like Peppi’s, which drops straight from his chin and seems to be thinning in direct Correlation to the recession bf his hairline, Mickey’s is bushy, thick, and covers almost all of the exposed skin beneath his forehead.

“I don’t wanna waste time washing my face,” says Mickey. “I get up, pick up my guitar, and practice. That’s all there is.”

The Test of the band: Mike Raff oh lead, Lenny Kotke on bass, anddrummer Joe Franco* ready up. The amps surge on, and it’s time for some bar band music: “Been on the road for forty days... we’re an American band...” It’s an exuberant cover, and as good as it is necessary for any band on Long Island to make a living by -doing other, group’s hits. And if nothing else, the Good Rats may be the last, and one of the best, of a great breed: the Long Island band.

Long Island bands as a unique genre, started sometime in the mid-sixties. 1964 isn’t an unprecise year to choose, though the breakthrough occurred in 1965, when the Taylors and Burtons and Lawfords minked and sweated through their Hampton nights at The Barge, where a quaintly dressed quartet known as The Young Rascals set the standard for all Long Island rock bands ,to come.

The definition was simple. Take a lot of Motown, Memphis and AM Soul, mix it with English style, and live with your parents in Franklin Square or Babylonor Baldwin, the latter of which happens to be where the Marchello Brothers are from.

A number of these bands had success or minor success, and many of the musicians found recognition far beyond Long Island’s in-shore limits. Groups like the Vanilla Fudge (with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, who staffed Cactus and were last seen with Jeff Beck). The Vagrants, who sported Leslie West. The Hassles, with Billy Joel, and a ..host of others, with names like Aesop’s Fables, the Young Blues, the Smubbs and the GoodRats, who were among the biggest of hundreds of bands that dotted the highways of Long Island. During those years, there seemed to be a band for every Wetson’s and McDonald’s on the Island.

The Rats came close. in those days. They cut an album for Kapp Records that aficionados of punk believe to be one of the high-energy classics of the late sixties. But after years of the kind of frustration thaCplagues Long Island bands — repetitious gigs, low pay, lack of attention — the original Good Rats disbanded. Peppi went to work in his father’s print shop, where he still puts in hours to keep his wife, two kids, and parents solvent when the recession starts to bite. Mickey pumped gas to support his wife and child.

But Peppi kept up with his music. He composed a minor hit for the Cherry People, wrote some commercial jingles, and thought about the Good Rats. Last March, he and Mickey 'put the band back together. Raff, Kotke and Franco had been playing East Village clubs for a few years, and were all solid, patient musicians familiar with the Long Island survival grind.

Since then it’s been barck on the circuit. “Bands on the Island are making the same money they were six years ago,” says Peppi. “There’s always some sixteen-year-old kid who’ll borrow his brother’s draft card and play with his friends for $80 a night.” So for the Rats, it’s 5 or 6 nights a week at clubs like Ubie’s or the Oak Beach Inn in Island Park or Bobby Mack’s in Wantagh. \

The Good Rats, however, have a secret weapon that separates them from die bar band tradition and that should spring them big miles from their home base. The weapon is called songs. Peppi is a prolific and often substantial songwriter, capable of expressing himself with a wide variety of styles and modes. Among the best are the delightfully jazzy “Tasty,” the straightforward rock of “Indian Joe” and “Fireball Express,” and the melodic abandon of “KlashKa-Bob.” Evenmore serious tunes like the self-descriptive “Songwriter” and the ballad “Yellow Flower” stand up well in their bar sets, mixed between piercingly accurate versions of “China Grove,” “Brother Louie,’? “Free Ride” and Lou Reed’s “Rock and Roll.”

There are signs that the Good Rats rock ’n’ roll with a pop sensibility is beginning to stir up some record coinpany interest, but the boys are, being patient. Right now, there’s work to do. Peppi is reaching into a garbage pail on stage, hurling large rubber rats into the audience with an experienced sidearm curve. There’s 3Q0 or 400 kids chortling in sweat and beer, doing the Rheingold shuffle for a'last few minutes before band and audience separate into the Suffolk County night.

Wayne Robins

FromOutof the Cognac

What with all the exorcisms, flying saucers and other jiggery pokeries going around, it's no surprise a Creature walks among us. This fiend without a face can be recognised by its blue spittle, ingrown talons and general alcoholic couthlessness. Here we see it being subdued by a fraternity from Muslim, Alabama. Authorities later identified the beast as Ray Milland.

Truckin’ / at the Rodeo

Cafe and truckstop menus are normally as interchangableas the traders behind the cabs parked outside. But here we are in Denver’s Currigan Exhibition Hall for the finals of the 33rd annual National Truck Rodeo, and upstairs on the mezzanine level the: Araserv people are doing brisk business. Men wearing crisp uniform jackets emblazoned “P-I-E,” “Ruan,” “Milne,” “Yellow Freight Lines” and “Matlack” across the back are queued up to buy cheeseburgers (95 cents) and fiotdogs (50 cents).

The entire scenario is spread out on the floor below: a myriad of different sized and shaped trucks huddled at one end, a difficult obstacle course with a longhaired C&W band set up in the middle, and about 300 people, truekers and their families, busy eating hot dogs and hamburgers, chatting and watching the competition. The obstacle course markings are more visible from up here, too. Like the Crosswalk. That’s where the truck — “vehicle” in trucker’s parlance — must come to a smooth stop within six inches of a line, as if even his bumper goes over the line it’s a washout. No points instead of 50 big ones (the whole course, including points tacked on for,/ finesse, is worth 500). On the hall’s floor that line tends to blend in with the light concrete surface, but up here the problem has some drama. But not a whole lot.

In fact, rodeo much like baseball — appears to be a non-event sport, dependent on statistics to captivate an audience. Truckers and their wives kibitzed, watched other awestruck truekers get introduced to the striking platinum blonde who looked like Miss Hurst Shifter of a few years back, watched the man from radio WWVA in West Virginia interview people, and kept score in the official program. Occasionally they would look up to see how the Oklahoma four-axle champ or whoever was doing on the parallel parking problem.

Out on the course it’s different. The drivers couldn’t be more nervous if they were competing at Daytona ©r Indianapolis. “You’re under so much tension you could spit cotton when you get out of there,” Bob Gardner, this year’s national fouraxle champ tells me.

Gardner, a short, graying man from Indianapolis, has just clinched his first national title. Friends shake his hand, the .WWVA man interviews him and he kisses the Indiana delegation wives. Winning isn’t a new thing for him though; he has been Indiana champ eight times and been to national meets in Cincinnati, Miami Beach and Louisville — as well as Denver once before, in 1968. He might have gone to rodeos in a few other cities but there’s a two year limit, you can only go twice in a row — even if you win the state title again. He’ll have to sit out next year.

Driving isn’t a new .thing for Gardner, either. He’s been “in the industry,” as they say, for 28 years. He drives

Hot Times ot Hookey Chateau

In case you were wondering how El and Bernie manage to keep each other amused those long winter nights. Here we see them relaxing by the hearth in a little vignette straight out of Thomas Hardy. Note the girth of thigh — we're not usually into beefcake, but my god, would Star magazine or After Dark pass on such a splendid specimen o' the gentry? Clearly ol' Bern is merely jealous of El's newly-attained bicepsuality (either that or he just learned how to write a scale), although from the angle of the knife you might think he was indulging in postfrontal suicide, which is the fad of the new year. 1973 is over, dahling. Cocoa butter? for Pacific Intermountain Express (PIE); and they give him and another driver $175 expense money to come. The trucking coriipanies gave newuniforms to contestants in the national competition. Which explains the new uniforms with “National Truck RodeoAT A-Denver-1973” patches and v the cabbie style hats. The wives of the Minnesota delegation are also in the act, they all have neon-yellow jackets with MINNESOTA screaming off the bdcks. Team spirit must * be high, because they were ail there late Monday afternoon when almost nobody else was, and they have the oniy noncompany poster on the wall — just below the refreshment stand. It reads: “Land of The Thousand Lakes Minnesota,” with the names of their guys listed below the companies they drive for:. “Dentury Dick, SuperValu Harlan, Indianhead^ Bob, Murphy — LeRoy, Ruan — Allie.”

The first “Champions of the Highway” were crowned in 1937. The American Trucking Association (ATA) adopted the idea, first conceived by a New Jersey carrier, to promote the industry and their concern for safety (something not all turckers would agree the carriers are that concerned about.) The rodeo started with one class, semi-trailer, and now has seven.

A rodeo Babe Ruth? In the 1971 competition Cletus Frank of Akers Motor Lines, Charlotte, North Carolina became the biggest champ in rodeo history — he captured his sixth title in the straight truck class.

Back oh the floor, two truckers — one had been introduced to the Miss Hurst Shifter look-a-like only minutes before — are discussing their Denver times:

,. that one pi’ fat galj she was really tearin’ it up.”

“Wasn’t she, though? For ij big gal she could really move.”

“Y’know, back in Arkansas, people get paid on Fridays and...”

The PA announcer has changed. Before there was a Jack Burns-type: “Here is your unofficial field score for your Minnesota champion in your straight truck class, Richard Gillespie...” In a slow moment, the new announcer tells a joke. “Two Texas Aggies were going to visit a sick friend, but before they got there he died. The next day they 'visited the funeral home to pay their respects. The first Aggie looks down at the dead friend and says, ‘You know, he don’t look too bad.’ The second Aggie turns and says, ‘Well he shouldn’t, he just got out of the hospital yesterday.’ ”

TURN TO PAGE 80.

Truckin’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24.

Dan Gordon