THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Take One Rubber Soul As Needed

PHILADELPHIA - Pyschologists at a Philadelphia psychiatric institute have virtually eliminated offensive behavior in six chronically disruptive children by playing them Beatles’ songs. The five-to-seven year old kids were told that the Beatle music piped into their classroom would continue as long as they did their work. When disruptions occured the Beatles were turned off. The psychologistsnoted that it required only a few sessions with such hits as “All You Need Is Love” and “With A Little Help From My Friends” before the children’s usual incorrigibly bad behavior almost completely disappeared. Of course, all this raises serious constitutional questions: Can the F.D.A. really regulate Beatles music? Is Magical Mystery Tour a dangerous drug?

Robert Duncan

Blow My Tubes

SAN FRANCISCO - Here come the Tubes. Step aside, Alice Cooper. This San Francisco rock-theatre group are finishing up in the studio with Al Kooper right now, having signed a six-figure contract with A&M, and are preparing for a nationwide tour. So what, you say? Well, for one thing their act includes a sequence called, “Mondo Bondage,” which will probqbly keep them out of places like Tulsa,.Oklahoma. And maybe even New York City, for that matter.

After 45 minutes of rock ‘n’ roll satire and a few costume changes, Fee Cranson, the groups lead singer, slinks across the stage, wearing an old trench coat, hiding his face between its high-buttoned lapels. Seconds later, a spotlight hits the coat, and Cranson “exposes” himself, revealing a leather bondage outfit and knee-high boots. He flexes his muscles, dangles a microphone between his legs and is joined by a young, female attendant named “Re” (that’s all she calls herself) wearing a similar but even more revealing outfit and carrying a whip. Her breasts are bare, with the exception of the snips of black tape which don’t quite cover her nipples. Re throws Cranson to the ground, first kicking him and then flailing away with the whip. But the one-sided action doesn’t last long. Cranson gets back on his feet and throws Re over his shoulder, while she continues the flagellation. Moments later, Cranson overpowers his assailant, and Re finds herself flat on her back, legs parted, lying beneath her male conqueror. And while the rock music blares, the lights dim.

Think We Could Crash Here, Man?

Stars For Seaweed

All the stars cam* out to help the San Francisco school system. Dylan, Nell Young and the Band all got together onstage. Marlon Brando made a rare personal appearance, and, naturally, such Bay Area heavies as Jerry Garcia, Tower of Power, the Doobie Brothers, and the Jefferson Starship were in force at the Bill Graham produced benefit. Only trouble is that the S.F. schools have decided they don't need the money after all. Graham's comment on this late news: "For all I know, it (the money, over 200 grand) could go to improving seaweed plantations off Fiji."

Sound like, more than you’re ever likely to see on Midnight Special? Well, if you think their performances are limited to places like Big Al’s or Carol Doda’s Condor on the Broadway sleaze, skin, and “nude girl wrestlers” strip, you’re dead wrong, They recently highlighted Bill Graham’s “New Sounds of the City” program at Winterland, and after their closing number, “White Punks on Dope,” the highschool age mob of better than 2,000 roared for an encore, which, by the way, never came. There was one 16year-old dissenter, however, who commented, “Shit, this is the same show I saw these guys do two years ago.” Now that’s what I call jaded.

Dave Patrick

The Return Of The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

AUSTIN, TEXAS - “What other songwriter can you name that’s written about science and dumptrucks?” ask-

ed Norm Odam a.k.a. the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

Nossir, he wasn’t your typical singing sage of the West and sure wasn’t your average 1960s pop star, but in his own unique way, the Cowboy left an indelible imprint on the recording business and, furthermore, made old people choke on ice cream back in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, or so he said.

Mercury promoted his only hit “Paralyzed” as the World’s Worst Record. On the first day of release in 1968, it Sold 48,000 copies. The infinitely unintelligible vocals earned him a spot on TV’s Laugh-In as Tiny Tim’s successor. But the visual and aural shock of a garbled West Texas coyote playing a multitoned apd highly syncopated bugle with drum accompaniment didn t sit well in America’s living rooms. Laugh-In dropped him after one show. Besides another television shot on the Cleveland Christmas Parade riding a float preceding the cast from Gilligan’s Island, the Cowboy slipped back into obscurity. Six months later he was arrested in Fort Worth on vagrancy charges.

After six years underground, the elusive Legendary Stardust Cowboy recently re-emerged to talk to the press about his new name -simply Stardust - new image, new outlook. Dressed Western in all black with a white tie he explained he’s shunned his country roots. “I’d rather be a rancher on top of a skyscraper, living in a high-rise apartment, herding catttle by remote control.”

Stardust has also gone soft on rock: “I listen to easy listening music now. It’s, the best music in the world! I like Jack Jones, Jerry Vale, Frank Sinatra.” His brand of performance, once described as a “cross between John Cage and Little Richard” will suffer little from the change of direction. During the course of our conversation, he still found the energy to demonstrate a piercing facsimile of an Elephant Cry, showed us the Voodoo Twist - a hand language dance much like the Hula - and rolled his eyes at will! His song titles are as sharp as ever. Old cuts such as “I Met My Love in a Wrecking Yard” are up for re-interpretation, along-

Rock Dreams Contest Winners!!!

Fooled yo! No, this is not the eagerly anticipated announcement of the contest winners. No, dream on, folks. This is merely a final warning that the announcement of the Rock Dreams Contest winners will be... May I have the envelope, please? ... I can't believe iti The winners will be announced in the INCREDIBLE JULY ISSUE OF THIS MAGAZINE 111 (Doesn't that mean I have to buy the July issue? Of course. Else how you gonna know if you won or if your weird friend down the block won or if your normal friend down the block, who it turns out ain't so normal, won. Don’t ask stupid questions.)

Martoonis At The Taylors •.. Sixish

"Hi, Dick. Hi, Madgo. How aro Yaf How's tho kids? Good. Oh, |ust fino, thankyou. Good to soo you again, too. Ha, ha, ha. You bo good now."

side new instant standards, “Standing in a Trashcan Thinking about You” and “We Made Love in a Telephone Booth.” I wondered aloud if the latter song wasn’t difficult to do? “Not if you’re singing it,” he replied.

Contray to popular opinion, the Cowboy shuns the use of drugs. “My motto is try LSC, not LSD.”

For his lyrical inspiration, Stardust explained, “1 just sit down like Rod MuKuen and write the first thing to come to my mind. Now I’m gonna go back to get ’em again. Gonna hit ’em hard this time,” he promised, twirling his bugle around like a six-shooter. Any particular targets? “Welp, since Ed Sullivan kicked the bucket, it’s hard to tell.”

For a star ahead of his time seven years ago, the question remains “Is the public ready?” The Legendary Stardust Cowboy’s answer is hidden deep in the lyrics of “Kiss Me”: “I can change musical instruments faster than I can kiss a duck.” Joe Patoski can give back energy through death, but he also can, and must, learn to do this while he is still alive. And this is what I am learning to do.” Did I hear somebody make a feedback joke? Well, the entropy’s on you, buster.

Eric Van Lustbader

NotWithA Bang, ButaWimp

LONDON - To all you cynics out there who thought that it wasn’t the end of the world when King Crimson broke up, boy, is the joke on you! At least according to Crimson mastermind turned guitar teacher Robert Fripp. “My studies have led me to cer-

tain inescapable conclusions about myself and about the world.” Fripp’s conclusions (not to be confused with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity) indicate to him that the 1990’s will see an immense global catastrophe.

In the meantime, with the apocalypse bearing down hard on us, Fripp doesn’t want to be caught diddling around in a rock ‘n’ roll band -hence, the King Crimson split - and instead has launched himself into the guitar teaching - apocalypse averting business. Over a health food lunch, Fripp elaborated on his bleak outlook. “The earth is a complex personality. Man, being on earth, cannot expect to simply take energy from it, but must give energy back to it. If this does not occur - and it has not - the balance is thrown off. Now, man

Roll Out The Bath Tub, We’ll Have A Barrel Of Fun

HOLLYWOOD - Like Gerald Ford, Liberace has opened his house to the public. He has declared his million dollar Hollywood Hills mansion a museum, and set an admission fee of a mere $5.90, which will«go to the Liberace Foundation for the development of performing talent. There will be no guide, and museum patrons will be free to wander about and view his piano-shaped swimming pool, antiques, pipe organ, and collection of 580 miniature pianos. ‘Ace says they can even “peek in the bathrooms if they like.”

John Morthland

Culture With A Cracker Box Backdrop

AUSTIN - On my first John-, ny Mack Brown Night at the Ritz Theater, the soundtrack was strained through pea soup and I never could figure out what a cowboy star like Johnny Mack was doing saving his damsel at a football game. My wondering ceased as the reel fell off the projector in the balcony, grazing one of the musicians watching the movie below.

And you thought hippie rock emporiums went out with the 60s, huh? Obviously you haven’t been to Austin, podnuh, where good vibes and a sagebrush version of Kalifornia Kulture are all part of the ticket price.

The Ritz is a former downtown skin flick house with absolutely none of the trappings -save for seediness - of those grand old Art Deco movie theaters so much the vogue with the rock ‘n’ tux crowd. The wood and metal upholstered chairs are jes’ fine for jumping on and you spill shit on the carpet without getting thrown out.

“It’s essentially the same,” acknowledged co-owner Jim Franklin, a locally infamous cartoonist known for his popularization of the Armadillo as Texas’ own peace symbol. “We’ve got live entertainment and film just like Elmo (the original owner) had. He didn’t have rock and roll, but he had cowboy bands.” Elmo also didn’t have a bevy of dancing girls to flash cheek before the main act. The Ritzettes are a house fixture with a routine that’d make Miss Kitty blush - Lloyd Thaxton lip synchs and this side of topless humps and grinds in front of a giant cracker box backdrop.

Congrats And A Tip Of The Can...

This dirty old man roally does think he's going to score with sweet Suzi here Just because he's presenting her with the coveted CREEM Sex Object of the Year award she won in the 1974 CREEM Readers' Poll, but little does he know that her mom's sitting outside In the Chevy with a glass of milk and some cookies. Go away, nasty man I

Since last fall’s Grand Opening complete with searchlights, red carpets, and a ’57 Buick limo, the theater has presented a loser of a Tennesse Williams play (Small Craft Warnings), classical stuffed shirt music, the first (and probably last) 70s rockabilly spectacular, and a trained dog act known as the Cold Nose Five in addition to the usual compost of trashed country and rock.

“It’s really silly to hear people say ‘Theater’s daid, they’ve reached the end of the lahn,’ ” the balding Franklin drawled. “All it takes is just one good show and you’ve got ‘Theater live’.”

Joe Nick Patoski

Back To Brylcreem

SAN FRANCISCO - Thirtytwo year old Clyde Foster is suing the greasy kid stuff outta the Dry Look people in a case which is certain to cause drool-from-the-mouth fear among disc-jockfeys and daytime TV,game show hosts. Foster says his hair, eyebrows, and chest hair made like a torch when he lit up a stogie after spraying his hair with some of that sticky stuff. The dry look he was searching for turned out to be a bit more arid than expected.

Montezuma’s Revenge

MEXICO CITY - The maestro was a real trouper, up there waving to the orchestra, profusely perspiring, coaxing every classical note outta the boys in the band with his likewise wildly waving baton - but then, sudden like: - wok! - a punctured chest cavity within the sweltering magic of the movement. The conductor urged his symphonic cohorts on with his free hand, whilst der Fuhrer bravely extricated the accidentally lodged baton from its painful resting place with the other hand. The symphony members no doubt smiled in adoration at their leader’s gameness as the blood spurted across his rented tux, never leaving his position until the final strains echoed across the Mexico City music hall.

J .W. Orange

No-Prize Of The Month

This is a photo of Mothortruckor. Remember them? No? Well, guess which two have since become Amish.

_

Seeing The Light With Liquor

TOKYO - The Japanese, ever wary of the public interest, have developed a device designed to make drunk drivers a moving light show. Introduced by the Nissan car corporation, it is basically a breathalyzer that sits on the dashboard directly in front of the driver. When it detects a small amount of alcohol on his breath, it makes all the car’s lights - inside ones as well as headlights, flash wildly, warning others on the road to run for cover. Now their only worry is what to do about day drinkers.

Why You Should Still Love Lucie

HOLLYWOOD - Lucille Ball, explaining just one of the many reasons why Lucie Jr. is such star material: “Lucie’s got a good business head on her shoulders, too. She bought a beautiful home in Cheviot Hills, and you know how she got it? She went to the funeral of a friend, found out her house was for sale, and grabbed it .before it was even placed on the market.”

John Morthland