THE BEAT GOES ON

The Beat Goes On

Almost Brothers: Roadie Rock

If you're lucky enough to score a seat when the Allman Brothers Band comes to town, you can be pretty damn sure that Gregg Allman's organ will be in tune, Dicky Betts" amp won't hum, and the sound will be crisp and clear as Georgia dew—no small feat in their usual venues of cavernous coliseums and filled-to-capacity football stadiums. It's a top-notch team that transforms the Brothers" 18-tons of metal into one of the best-sounding shows ardund, " and after Pioneer's P.R. barrage last year, the ferric feats of superroadies such as Red Dog and Twiggs have become as much associated with the Allman Brothers Band as Dicky's stinging guitar riffs and Gregg's gutsy wail.

But after six years on the road, the countless natural and unnatural disasters that the Allman road crew are called on to counter have become about as routihe for

them as picking so many seeds from a watermelon. Most of their work is finished hours before showtime, and lately, they've been using the interim to make music of their own; not unwittingly, they've named their roadie band Almost Brothers.

"After years of leaning everything about drums, setting them up and repairing them, I figured it was time to get it together and start trying to play," barked the notorious drum-roadie Red Dog during a recent Almost Brothers rehearsal in Macon. Their first jam session took place well over a year ago, but it was only on the last tour that he and Twiggs (keyboard - roadie / guitarist), Buddy Thornton (sound technician/bass), Michael Artz (sound technician/ drun>s), guitarist Trash Cole and pianist Virginia Speed began gettin" down every' chance they'd get. When they returned home to Macon, they continued their sessions in an unused loft at the Willingham Cotton Mill, where the* Brothers store their road gear. Last month, when they made thdir April Fool's eve debut at Macon's Grant's Lounge, their chops were sharp enough that when Richard Betts, Chuck Leavell,. Jaimoe and Butch Trucks of their brother-band stopped by to jam, they held their own—almost.

"Chuck Leavell thought of the name Almost Brothers," drawled Twiggs as he looked up from tuning the Barney Kessel six-string that was a present to him from Dicky,

adding with a grinning snort, "I guess Virginia's the almost!"

The Almost Brothers have about 90 percent of which is original material, but Twiggs warned, "We ain't looking for something to do instead of being roadies for the Allman Brothers. We're looking for something to do in addition to it. We don't want this to ever interfere wjth the other thing." Nonetheless, Twiggs has

left room for at least one pipe-dream. "Chuck and Butch and some of them said that if we ever got it together to play a concert, that they would set up our equipment—so I had an idea/" chuckled the wily roadie. "Start admitting the people at 8 o'clock in the morning, but don't start setting up "til about 9. So that part of the show that you would get to see would be Blondie, lugging his organ . . . Dicky stacking his speakers... Butch and Jaimoe, setting up their own drums., .anS all of them, trying to stack a PA and put the bpard on the tower! But I don't know if it could ever be put together, and I don't know if anybody r\^ould want to come at 9 o'clock in the morning to watch that."

Double Scoop To Burn

The winners of the Wayne County, Texas Fire Department Women's Auxilliary masquerade ball promenade to the assorted cheers of the fellow firefighters and wives. While Cherry Vanilla look-a-like Sally Bistro of Hedgeford, Texas accepts gracefully, her husband, Maxwell Bistro of the Division Avonue Hook and Ladder Squad muses on a rosy future which, he says, could include a run for Congress in 1976.

Rock'N" Roll Derelict Does The Strand

Well, we finally located Lou Reed again (bat you were holding your breath), washed up on the beach at Fire Island, sunglasses intact and seemingly none the worse for wear image-wise (looks more like Troy Donahue every day, in fact). When approached for a quotable, Lou responded with a typically aphoristic quip: "Ow, ow, my arm I"

To which Red Dog ragged, "I wouldn't miss it for the world!," winking,) "I hear some of our groupies are putting together a oand..."

Would you believe The Allwoman Brothers Band?

Ellen Mandell

BURP!

100 Beer Cans On The Wall

MILWAUKEE-Congratulations, America! The U.S. Brewers Associatio reports that Americans downed a record 4.5 billion gallons of beer last year. That works out to an average of more than 100 12-ounce cans of beer for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Jim Dandy: The Antichirist?

HARRISON, ARK. - An altercation between a Baptist evangelist and the boys from Black Oak Arkansas has left Dandy Jim Mangrum and the other hippies an injured party seeking a defamation of character type lawsuit,

while the Reverend J.D. Tedder of Harrison, Ark. just keeps getting off all of the best lines. The dispute began when a committee composed of five area preachers, two physicians, and the good reverend sought to block plans that Black Oak had for a benefit,performance, the proceeds of the show to go to aid the Marion County Health Department, which is a little short on funds these days.

The band had attempted to arrange the concert since December "74, but had been met with continuous civic opposition. When it appeared that the concert would finally be staged,, the committee sought an injunction to prohibit it through the Harrison City Council. In his soul stirring harangue, the Reverend Tedder complained that Black Oak was "a mongrel group of satanic origins that is i promoting drugs, sex, and revolution. This is one place in America that hasn't been injected with the 20th Century heathen^ ism that rivals 1st Century paganism. Harrison does not need the trash immorality and drug related problems that these mongrel groups bring with them." After the council refused to honor the committee's request for the injunction,' the Reverend said, "We'll pray for rain. If we're right with God, He'll answer our prayers."

The benefit was held as scheduled under cloudless skies. God, of course, remains unavailable for comment at this time, but Reverend Tedder insists that he'll lobby for city and county laws prohibiting future rock concerts in Harrison or Marion County.

Meanwhile Butch Stone, Black Oak manager, told an AP reporter that the band "has made definite plans to sue Tedder" for the aforementioned verbal slight, -claiming "he willfully, wickedly, wrongfully, and maliciously defamed the band." They are demanding $70,000 compensatory damages, and $500,000 punitive damages.

Joshua Wayne Orange

Crime Wave Continues! Rod Stewart Mugged!

"I have something in my pocket! It might be a gun or it might be something worse!" the unidentified bandit told an incredulous Rod Stewart, who moments before had been casually sipping some port in the men's room at Grand Central Station. "Gimme your scarf, your necklace, and the name of your hairdresser...or else!!!"

Dr. Rock's Dancing Brain Tumor

SAN FRANCISCO-Rock "n" roll died here several months ago and I bet you never even noticed. The death, due to "irreversible cessation of brain function" was attested to by Eugene "Dr. Hip Pocrates" Shoenfield, and documented by a genuine State of California death certificate. The scene was a ballroom in the plush Nob Hill Stanford Court Hotel, and the event, if it could be termed an event, was a press conference by the self-proclaimed "world's greatest authority on rock'n" roll; Eric Israelow, a/k/a Dr. Rock.

Israelow entered the mirrored room in a coffin, and the photogs went wild. Standing at the rostrum, smashing 78's, he declared thcit "the last five years have seen the total deterioration of rock'n"roll," and that today's music is mindless depression music whosb only message is "Don't worrylet's dance." Asked if that wasn't right in the spirit of 50's rock'njroll, which was an escape from the drudgery and repression of that era just as this music is an escape from the boredom and depression of this one, he countered by saying that playing for the fun of it was a thing of the past and that most bands today were just in it for juicy recording contracts.

' Dr. Hip came up and felt the patient's pulse.The press asked a few questions which Israelow answered in his uniquely -elliptical style. Local media didn't cover the event, but UPI put it out on the wires. The drummer who drove me home decided he'd go play the gig he had that night, death or po death.

The wake oughta be a motha.

Petaluma Pete

The World's Shortest James Taylor Interview

Our indefatigable CREEM correspondent cornered the flakey master of bongo pud after a stirring concert in an unsterilized midwestern gymnasium and didn't waste any time getting to the meat of the matter:

CREEM: James, how did a dupe like you ever latch onto a balls eraser like Carly Simon?

JAMES (to man with cigar): Take this puke for a ride, willya Porky?

Venereal journalism marches on.

Rick Johnson

A Friend

Ralph J. Gleason

1917-1975

BERKELEY, June 5-Ralph J. Gleason, who . died suddenly two days ago, was famous for a life devoted to music—and; though he assured me more than once that all of them were crazy to musicians. He practiced his craft as a jazz and pop music writer in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, and later in Rolling Stone, for close to thirty years. He wrote about, and interviewed, virtually everyone who mattered in that time: Elvis Presley in 1955, Hank Williams six months before he died, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles' every jazz and pop performer he thought was worth his time and many who he likely thought were not. Ralph was a tough man, and he fought certain battles particularly well. He fought to keep Lenny Bruce alive and out of jail until Bruce died, and he fought until his own death to keep Bruce's memory alive and his myth straight. Almost singlehandedly, he fought to keep the Fillmore open when, in the early days of the San Francisco Sound, the city tried to close the dancehall down. He wrote column after column, anything to keep the issue burning, until he won. He . worked with great pleasure to insure that Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davjs, and countless others got the audiences and the respect he was sure th£y deserved.

He made movies, TV shows, founded Rolling Stone with Japn Wenner, produced records, shared his knowledge freely, taught courses, held grudges, read endlessly in politics, literature, and history, raised a family with his wife Jean, and hated Richard Nixon as only a man who has had to hie himself to the polls seven times, to vote against the same crook could hate Richard Nixon.

He wrote it all down. He had just finished correcting the proofs of a new book, Celebrating the Duke and Other Heroes, when he died; he was impatient for it to come out, eager to^get on to more books, including one about growing up in New York in the Twenties and Thirties. Atlantic-Little Brown will publish his book this fall; should memory fail, his boolf should keep his name alive.

That, then, is the briefest precis of Gleason's work one can manage—but though I read his columns, usually five times a week, for twenty years, from the fall of 1955 to last Sunday, I think of Ralph in somewhat different terms.

We became friends in 1969, when I first began writing about music. I would go to his house, have a beer, arrange the ashtray, and listen to him stalk. For two, three, four hours, he told me what he knew, about music, writing,' the music business, record collecting, American history, the perfidy of publishers, press agents,and politicians, Ralph taught me—among others—most of what I know about the ethics of being a critip: the how and why of refusing favors, keeping one's distance, telling the truth, and believing nothing you were toldfinlelss you had a damn good reason to believe it. An angry, good-humored patriot, Ralph often wrote as a moralist^ and that angered many readers. But he justified that stance,, which he might well have denied, by living a moral life and by looking people in the eye when he talked to them.

After twenty years, and a score of pieces I will never forget—on the Free Speech Movement, Bob Dylan, the Band, Hank Williams, Louis Armstrong, and more—this is wh&t I value most. Like many others, I often tended to take Ralph Gleason for granted as a writer. But as a friend I never did, and never will.

Greil Marcus

5 YEARS AGO

POWDER RIDGE FEST BOMBS!

Around 40,000 people (at $20 a shot) showed up for the "Woodstock of 1970," but hostile Connecticut authorities and a court injunction prevented the promised stars from performing. Disappointed that neither Janis, Ten Years After, Grand Funk, nor Sly appeahed, the crowd still remained peaceful and were entertained by plentiful free dope, various local bands, and a surprise free show from Melanie.

CURTIS MAYFIELD LEAVES IMPRESSIONS, SOLO LP COMPLETED!

RIOT AT SLY NOSHOW IN CHICAGO'S GRANTPARK!