THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Bury My Heart At Vera Beach

Many moons ago, the entire southern half of the Floridian peninsula was just one big swamp. The Everglades encompassed everything from Lake Okeechobee south. Then, the real estate developers moved in with bulldozers and cement trucks. With the help of the US Army Corps of Engineers, they started paving their way north from the beachhead they established in Miami. Before you could even say “Ecology,” they were past Pompano and heading for Daytona.

While all this was going on, Houdini, an American crocodile, wallowed in his swamphole west of Vero Beach, just minding his own business. Happy. Peaceful. Content. His swamp was full of food and Houdini happily, peacefully, and contentedly feasted on anything that was smaller than he was.

Houdini was twelve feet long. He weighed over six hundred pounds. He never worried about what the white men were up to, either. He stayed out of their way and, needless to say, they stayed out of his.

But one day, somebody decided to drain Houdini’s swamp so they could build a golf course/ condominium. Like the Indians, Houdini had been there first — by about 112 years (it wasn’t even close), but that never helped the Indians too much either. When the construction foreman noticed Houdini crawling around the seventh hold going “What’s going on? Where’s my swamp?”, he called the Fish & Game Commission.

Houdini was captured and interned at Lion Country Safari.

For the trip up' the river, Houdini’s mouth was taped shut and tied with heavy nylon ropes. Then, his body

was tied to a sturdy wooden pole so he couldn’t move. But he moved anyway, working free of his bonds and scaring the bullshit outa the two guys who were guarding him in the back of the pick-up truck. That’s hqw he got the name Houdini.

Houdini musta liked his name, too, because only six short days after they tossed him into the alligator pit, he climbed over a five foot cement wall and the threeand-a-half foot chain link fence on top of it and escaped into the dead of night.

He was quickly tracked to a lake on Lion Country grounds, and despite massive efforts to bring him in, Houdini remained at large, a fugitive. They tried snagging

him with grappling hooks and baiting traps with wooden stakes, but Houdini managed to confound and outwit his would-be captors for close to two full weeks before Neil Branch finally nailed him with a snatch hook.

For his failure to conform to the System, Houdini was subsequently banished to the barren wastes of Everglades National Park. But the damage had already been done. Long suppressed and exploited, hounded by civilization and driven almost to extinction by ruthless poachers, Florida’s alligators and crocodiles are showing signs of increasing discontentment and rebellion. Some months prior, a teenage girl was killed by an alligator near Sarasota. Several days after that, an-

other alligator attacked a young boy in Dania. A confrontation seems imminent, and many in the Establishment fear that Houdini, who has already become a cult hero, may be able to supply the dynamic leadership which could organize the legions of reptiles into an awesome guerilla army.

In the meantime, Houdini’s gone underground and the situation remains extremely tense.

Jim Esposito

We Could’ve Danced All Night, But Mick Said No

“The bottom line” is a traditional music business phrase relating to the ultimate music business question: are we gonna make money on this? Where factors of taste, judgement, and dubious commercial potential are involved, Nouveau Tin Pan Alley execs ask themselves “what’s tjie bottom line.”

New answer to the old question: it’s a nightclub. Housed in what used to be The Red Garter on West Fourth Street in famous Greenwich Village, it’s the lovechild of Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky, two guys who used to book other Village music clubs who decided to do something about the fact that there has been virtually no place in New York City for civilized humans to hand out and listen to first-rate music besides Max’s (civilized?) or The Bitter End (no booze, therefore also uncivilized).

The Bottom Line seats 450, has a big stage, a rangy backstage area for musicians and dignitaries to psyche-up or out, a swell sound system, even food. Opening night was one of those gala opening nights for press and big-wigs of various sorts. Dr. John topped the bill (handsome Gary Farr opened the show), and the Doc pretty* much blew the place apart.

The real action, though, was for those whcCstayed to

stagger around after Dr. J s set. Joining Turn on stage were Stevie Wonder on keyboard and Johnny Winter on guitar; half an hour of that trio on “Superstition” was pretty neat medicine.

Among those in the audience too shy to step up were Edgar Winter, Garland Jeffreys, and Mick Jagger. Mick was accompanied at most points by a large group of friends and acquaintances, including Atlantic’s ace Ann Ivil, Don Kirshner, A1 Aronowitz and anxious papparizzi who clicked the night away. When he came close enough, we invited Mick to dance with v us while the exotic supertrio rocked on. He decided to pass.

Wayne Robins

3 Dog Night Flip o Bone

Trust the Mormons to make book on good old moral rearmament in 1974. Utah hasn’t imported a new brand of soda pop since 1948, and the Law of the Old West of the Pecos still prevails in many sections of downtown Salt Lake City. The rest of us gotta settle for cop movies, but at Brigham Young University they still drive the rascals into the Red Sea, er, Salt Lake. Said rascals being in this case none other than Three Dog Night.

Think about it, citizen. Would you want Three Dog Night to appear at your

school? Would you actually go so far as this 25,000 strong student body of Briggers did, and elect them your unanimous fave pik for the Annual Spring Rock Concert? Really now, mustn’t the line be drawn somewhere?

Fortunately, the co’s and coeds of Briggamater were spared the sonic blitz and surreal drug lyrics of the Dog Nighters, whose very name comes from a hoarily obscene idiomatic regionalism known to the natives of the! Upper Watts, Calif., the literal folkspeak meaning of which is: “Spot, you know what it means when the wife goes bowling on Thursdays.” .

Providential coincidence had it that the scheduled March concert was announced just a day or so after Brigham Young’s most popular sermon for the month of January. Mormon Elder Boyd Packer laid it to ’em. In the six-hour lecture, entitled “Jungle Gibberish As Seen in the Light of Revelations 12,” Elder Packer mounted to an impassioned climax with the ringing words: “A drum is a weapon! No one is safe! Jitterbugs have eaten planks of the Republic! California is a swamp! Turn off your hearing aides or die! The ear is a shameful appendange! Nixon is a Pete Seeger dupe! And don’t anybody forget, ten A.M. sharp tomorrow for the big AM radio bonfire out by Lake Chuck!”

THE COOP'S NO PANSY!

There's a lot of lilty limpos sashaying around these days, and some of them have gone so far in their escapades as to actually slander Alice Cooper himself as just another prancer in their parade of poopsy-doopsies. Well, let no man (???) cast asunder another man's gender, else he get his skull split ballbeen and rightfully so as Judge Roy Bean would have it and has on several occasions. Here we have a perfect case in point. Wolfman Jack, noted tubular oralist (and you know what they say about all those guys in radio!) tries to lay a big sloppy one on our mighty man, only to quail and wheeze under his just comeuppance a microminim later. All of which in case you thought we ran the homos into the ground last year, well we've exploited 'em dry now and it's time to lop em off. Be the first on your block to atrophy.

Brigham Young authorities took quick steps to implement the sermon’s gist on their unsullied campus. Students were ordered to surrender all phonograph albums to the custodial staff for incineration. A sophomore, caught in his dorm at 3 A.M. with a Don Ho album and a pair of stereo headphones, was given a ceremonial pedicure and hung on a buffalo overnight. Another, discovered reading a copy of Downbeat while ostensibly sitting on the toilet, was compelled to wash

his ears out with Great Salt Lake lye. And Three Dog Night’s scheduled appearance was, of course, cancelled immediately.

“We want to make sure that we don’t bring a group to BYU that will lower the school’s standards,” said Mark Alexander, student social office director. “We have conditions with the church which we will have to meet.”

A lone radical piped up to timidly enquire if this meant that musical events at BYU were now a thing of the past.

“In light of Elder Packer’s talks, we are taking a closer look at groups we are booking,” snapped Alexander. “One thing always leads to another, so 1 don’t see why we have to stop at rock music; in fact I think it might be time for a reexamination of the possible lascivious overtones of square dancing, as well as possible subliminal rhythms on Stand Up and Cheer. This problem may reach much farther than we realize, though I’m hoping we won’t have to throw out our TV sets until baseball season’s over.”-

Last late-breaking development at presstime: confiscation of a zither. (The following is an actual RCA Victor press release, reprinted verbatim because we like a little perfection occasionally ourselves - Ed.)

CULT, IGGY, AND OOM-PAH BAND ASSAILED BY JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE

Shown above is the world famous Oom-Pah Band, Luchow's house band, performing recently at New York's Academy of Music. They appeared on a New Year's Eve bill with Columbia Recording Artists Blue Oyster Cult, a concert which was protested by the New York Chapter of the Jewish Defense League. According to Blue Oyster Cult Producers, Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman, the JDL protested the flying of the BOC flags on the grounds that they were "politically offensive." According to Mr. Krugman, a spokesman for the JDL quoted as sayiiig "we're not fooled one bit," and, said Krugman, threatened to have the BOC flags torn down if they were displayed in public againThe Cult's follow-up appearance at Portchester's Capitol Theatre saw the addition of "The Dictators" (another Pearlman/Krugman discovery) replacing the Oom-Pah Band for musical as well as protective reasons.

THE BUZZ TO END 'EM ALL

We've heard of killer hot licks, but this is ridiculous. Here we see lead bassist Marvey Handel, of hump and coming new glamrock bund Kiss, just seconds before his near-fatal brush, or should we say slurp, with the Other Side of the looking glass. Marve was so deep into his music on this particular night at the Waukegan Casino that he reared back and in a spectacular display of Wank Theatre touched tongue to the big K (nickname Murray) in the group's 988,000 watt neon logo banner just above their heads. Near-electrocution was fortunately averted, as Kiss are old tongues at this sort of self-abuse in the cause of art, and the closest thing to a casualty sustained was that Marvey's hair was a little straighter for approximately three days after, which did no harm to his groupie status at all.

SUPER JAM UP & JELLY TIGHT!

That's what they were, right there all over the floor of the Lemme Kahluah Sweetheart lounge in Canarsie, N.Y., where the SUPER JAM OF THE CENTURY took place. These kats kicked garbanzos akimbo as they wailed a packed joint of rock me babies straight to bangla dishevel ment. They did indeed party hearty, and this historic jig off the giants will be available soon from Harmony House in a fierce slab of wax called Basement Tapes From Attica State. L to R, we see main stems Al Kooper (who whopped the meanest solo on shades of his entire career that night), Kal Rudman (who came dressed as the Rock Writers of the World), Alice Cooper (who came as squeezed Charmin), Maria Muldaur doing his famous impression of Frank Gorshin, and Buzzy Linhart, who OD'd on alum before the show but pulled it off commendably anyway. Koduz to one and all.

Lamont Blankenship: The Next Todd Rundgren?

Lamont Blankenship, the only son of an Albanian Monk and her husband an Itenerant Italian ices vendor, was born Blankenship Lamont on a cold July day in Elko, Nevada.

His early life was taken up following his parents’ flea circus and electrolysis emporium as it wandered about the Great American Northwest.

While still a child, Lamont, or Blankenship if you will, started singing with the darkies that worked as skills for

his parents’ electrolysis business. “They sang dem ole blues” remembers Lamont, or Blankenship, “and it was only natural that I should join along.”

Heaving the road, Lamont then went East where he got a job selling turkish taffy and baklavah to people at Israel Bond Drives. After two years of not selling any taffy, Lamont moved on to New York City where he got a job selling iced tea at Broadway shows. When the bassoon player in Hello Dolly was mugged and couldn’t make a show, Blankenship got his big break and filled in for Carol Channing who was also the bassoon player.

From these on it was one hit after another. Hair, Fiddler On The Roof, road company of Jesus Christ Superstar, Lamont hoped he could be in anyone of them. Instead he was promoted to selling cigars and iced tea.

An astute RCA executive picked Lamont out of the gutter in front of the Polish mission to the U.N., and offered him a record contract, which Blankenship promptly signed.

Today he is the holder of

three RIAA certified gold albums for his Lamont, Stills, Nash & Young (LSP-5732); Tm Just a Blankenship, (LSP-1114) and Transformer (LSP-6324). Though recording has made him rich, Lamont still is the simple country boy he was back in Elko. He still drives a pink

and charcoal ’59 Edsel, with pleats and rolls. His hair is still short, although'he wishes it was in the middle of his head rather than in his nose, and he is still kind to dwarfs and Sicilians.

According to Lamont, it’s all “Tootie Frootie, all a rootie.”

ROC K '1ST ROLL HOOCH I E KOOZED OUT

Aw, hell fellas!

You never know what you're missing till somebody douses you, and CREEM's never been an organ to let any true connoisseur of. the sollychollies down. This month's primo awshucks is the absence of Fanny's little annies from the slicker wicker pages of Playboy, that wonderfully entertaining rag also known as So's Your Old Man.

Seems this bazoomiful bevvy of nookettes, whom you may remember from such manwich waxings as Charity Ball, got a call from the Hefner organization offering to allow them to pose in the bufferino for P.Boy, including according to a release from Fanny's PR outfit ''showing their pubic hair."

Heavy breathing was heard in the executive washrooms across Bunnyland at the thought of these rock 'n' roll nubies undraped and airbrushed, not to mention the group's millions of pubescent male fans who already got naturals down their lifelines after four albums, but the Fannies themselves took a strong line in favor of symbiotic exploitation or at least equal spread, and were having none of it.

"We'll pose nude when Hugh Hefner poses for the centerfold with a hard-on," said Jean Millington of Fanny to the Hef's henchman. "Let them show Mick Jagger's cock first or somebody cute."

No offers have been forthcoming from Viva yet, although it is known that Fanny also turned down a chance to be CREEMmates of the Month in spite of the fact that we'd already proven our transcendence of erotopolitical oinksmanship by running a centerfold of Martin Mull's tushie in what passed for living color.

C'est la oui. There are still some ballsy broads elsewhere, and in spite of Fanny's penultimate wimpout we intend to present nothing but the finest CREEMmates of every gender. One might even be you.