JIMI: AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPH By Curtis Knight

Ripping off the late great has always been a fascination of rock, but Jimi is something else. In terms of sheer ripoff value, it has Going Down With Janis beat hands down. Not that it’s anywheres near as interesing.

Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Knight are both products of the seamy underside of the Greenwich Village— specifically McDougal Street — rock club scene, the sort of cirucuit that Baby Huey and the Baby Sitters, the Blues Magoos, and Lothar and the Hand People came out of. MacDougal Street, in the mid-60’s, became New York’s mod showcase, a place where dollies from the Bronx and Queens sat on stoops, rapping to brothers from uptown and Bed-Stuy and white suburban boys in Bobby Dylan caps. The Big Little Store sold buttons, the holes in the wall sold meatball sandwiches, and places like the Cafe Wha? sold sounds. The Street was an intellectual sump of sorts, one I remember fondly and to which I wouldn’t return if you paid me a fortune.

The one thing that characterized the music at these places on and around MacDougal Street was its low quality. Bands either played the jukebox or did some sort of ersatz soul. Record company people would come down there in search of talent and wonder why there was so little of it. Like the band at the Wha?, with its no-talent singer and left-handed guitarist who was real flashy, but not very talented. Ah — but he wasl Chas Chandler/realized that, and brought the kid to England, and you know the rest. And Curtis? Well, he continued toplay the circuit. He never was too terribly good.

See, the thing about this book is, since you probably do know a bit about Hendrix, you’d only be likely to read a book that would tell you more — What were the Village days like? What was he like in Seattle?'What did he think of this and that? And this book is not going to tell you anything because Knight is so busy tooting his own out-of-tune horn and because. he comes off as such a stupid asshole that the few insights you might get off the book are negated by such incredible stupidities as Eric Dolphy, the great jazz musician, telling old Curtis how hard Jimi’s death hit him and Coltrane. Which it probably would have, but for the fact that Dolphy died in 1964, Coltrane in 1967, and Jimi in 1970.

I am told that a young Black poet over in Berkeley is at work on a scholarly, insightful, and definitive biography of Jimi Hendrix. The man certainly deserves one, and the two to date haven’t provided us with one yet. Save your money — this one ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

THE JOB OF SEX National Lampoon’ (Warner Paperback Library)

There is no joy in sex, Mighty Casey has struck out. Yes, as Casey well knows, trudging in and oUt of Mudville’s swinging singles joints, sex is a job. It’s a job getting a partner, and then it’s a job keeping that finicky partner happy. Finally, thank God, the subject is out of the closet with the release of the National Lampoon’s The Job of Sex. Here is the nitty-gritty that The Jdy of Sex so carefully avoided. Screw theory and philosophy. Here, in this little paperback, is actual on-the-job technique. It’s a true “Workingman’s Guide to Productive Lovemaking,” thrusting deeply into such hitherto untouchable areas as underpants (“This is where your genitals live.”), palm hair (“Very sexy”), and “inner erogenous zones” (“Getting ‘head’ becomes getting ‘lung’ ”). And it’s “illustrated with pictures!”

In only 142 pages you can learn the arts of “feigning an erection,” “transcendental menstruation,” arid “organic sex.” If you’ve got real imagination try “bumpage” or “identage a deux.” It came as a surprise to me that one of my favorite things, and practically a surefire mate pleaser, is included: “Bandage: tlie skilled placement of a swatch of clean gauze on aq abrasion or laceration.”

Sure, The Job of Sex drags at times and appears to have been thrown together hurriedly and a bit awkwardly by some funny folks with a parody fetish (not to mention an eye for green). But in these most difficlut times of payola, marijuana, TV violence, environmental holocaust, ford, and so much hatred and other bad stuff (like Olivia Newton-John), one small giggle or two or more is actually a giant guffaw for mankind (and that includes Korean orphans!). Essentially I find myself in agreement over this book with the Uganda Examiner (as quoted in the flyleaf by National Lampoon): “Ugga booga booga Catch 22 ga zuzu boog googa The Godfather. ” Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go to the bathroom for another Band-aid.

Robert Duncan

THE HAWKLINE MONSTER: A GOTHIC WESTERN by Richard Brautigan (Simon & Schuster)

Two hired guns. One a compulsive counter of things. They get a job. The job is to follow a young Indian girl. Th& young Indian girl leads them to a house in Eastern Oregon. It is hot in Eastern Oregon, but the house is cold. The house has ice caves beneath it. There is a monster in the ice caves. It is trying to get Miss Hawkline r twin sister of the Indian girl, who isn’t an Indian girl after all. In fact, the monster isn’t Tn the ice caves. The hired guns know this. They fuck the women and then they get rid of the monster. Everything is happy.

Richard Brautigan’s whole schtick is the slightness of his pieces. At his best, he crystallizes something in his' distinctively obtuse way and lets it lie there for you to discover. At his worst he is merely obtuse and his similes are fprced, instead of ingenuous. Before The Hawkline Monster, though, there’s always been enough to any given Brautigan book to make it a mixed blessing, at least. But The Hawkline Monster is terrible — easily his worst book.

Why? Hard to say, exactly. I mean, I can describe the symptoms, but I can’t for the life of me see how Brautigan could have let something this weak get into print. No plot, no particular glimmer of the Brautigan poetry, one of the silliest endings since the last made-forTV comedy you saw, and an overall writing style that resembles a juniorhigh-school kid parodying Brautigan. Add to this the fact that it doesn’t have one of those disturbing Edmund Shea photos on the cover and it’s only available as a $5.95 hardback, and you have a review that comes to the conclusion that there is no earthly reason ‘why you need this book, like this one does right now. (See, even I can do it...)

Ed Ward