CREEMEDIA

Remember rock 'n' roll? You know, that uncouth jungle music synonomous with teenage rebellion which parents feared was a threat to civilized order? First it became big business, and shortly thereafter, show business. Now movie stars gaggle like so many preteen groupies backstage at Rolling Stones concerts, while jet set sycophants bicker for invitations to subway press parties for a millionaire band whose lead singer once stuttered something about “my generation.” But even if you accept the fact that rock is stuck with its respectability, even if you remain optimistic that the music will continue to flourish as the cornerstone of a $2 billion a year industry, the first Rocky awards program was still a disappointment.

Don Kirshner, (Rock Concert, Monkees, Screen Gems publishing) impresario extraordinaire, envisioned the Rockies as an alternative to the Grammy awards, which still treat rock as some kind of wayward child. But the presentation of this successful network package (ratings-wise no other network was close in the 10 P.M. Saturday night slot) was indistinguishable from the tacky self-congratulation that mars perennials like the Grammies or Oscars telecasts.

We should have known something was amiss from the very beginning, when the program was opened by a ( dance group doing June Taylorish ' choreography to an orchestra that played shoddy showbiz arrangements of “You’re No Good,” “Philadelphia Freedom” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll.” It wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll at all.

Then there were the hosts, Elton John and Diana Ross. Elton, though nervous, maintained a comic presence sqmetimes bordering on the flakey, when he flustered a line and muttered “after only one quaalude!” But Diana Ross (pregnant, she seemed, and dressed, she noted aptly, like a Big Bjrd) n either knew how to relate to the camera nor deliver a line with any -intelligence or wit whatever.

Sixteen Rockies were awarded, in categories similar to the Grammies: Best single, best LP, best male vocalist, best (new) female vocalist, best production et al. The five finalists in each category were chosen by a panel which included critics like Dave Marsh, Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Al Rudis and Ellen Willis, and a number of radio people. Then, a few thousand rank and file critics and dee jays were given formal ballots to choose the win ner in each category. The only qualification: each finalist had to have sold over 200,000 copies of an album. The rule made a certain commercial sense: one couldn’t expect some 40,000,000 Americans to watch an unceasing parade of obscure critical favorites. Yet we could have all benefited by greater exposure for some of the innovative vanguard of new artists (Springsteen, Eno, Nils Lofgren) who have yet to join the “establishment,.”

I don’t mean “establishment” loosely . It seemed rather odd that on a telecast honoring rock so many of the presenters had only the most marginal connection to the music. Ella Fitzgerald might’ve been the greatest artist on stage that evening, but on a rock show? What about Valerie Perrine (even in a great match-up with cop leathergarbed Alice Cooper)? Sonny Bono and Mike Douglas? Come on now.

For all the stellar personalities, there was little that could actually be called entertaining, except for the spirited zaniness of Keith Mopn, Alice and Elton. Musically, it was drab, with one nadir reached by an obsolete stock film , of the Rolling Stones with Mick Taylor on guitar. Chuck Berry performed with more zest than usual just prior to being the first inductee in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, which leads to yet another quibble: with Elvis, the Stones, Lennon and McCartney the other nominees, wouldn’t it have made sense to induct all of them? With one nominee a year, th^; Hall of Fame should be ready to admit Little Richard by 1985. And didn’t Bob Dylan deserve a nomination in that category too? -

I won’t argue with the choice of winners, since the balloting was dominated by radio people. Pluses: glad to see Phoebe Snow hailed as best new female vocalist, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder as the best vocalists.

But if there is anything new about the best new group, Bad Company, I’d like to know about it. And if Dan Fogelberg is the best new male vocalist, and the Eagles the best group, then rock ‘n’ roll seems to be doing nothing more than treading water.

Wayne Robins

Will The Real Potato Please Stand Up?

Pringle’s Potato Chips are just exactly what you’d expect potato chips made by Proctor & Gamble to taste like. It even makes sense, from a conservation-of-energy standpoint, for a soap manufacturer to go into potato chips. You see, rather than hire a bunch of ex-sailors to peel the raw potatoes, it’s easier to throw ’em into ai lye-like substance serving a dual purpose of burning the skins off and making the potato softer without cooking it. At this point, it’s relatively simple to transform the mushy stuff in the'vat into instant mashed potatoes, potato flakes (same way you’d make Ivory Sn ow), of potato colloid wafers (Pringle’s) /molded, mixed with a bit ot oil and salt, and baked. No wonder they’re all the same shape. And, since they are still mostly potatoes , they taste mostly like potatoes . It’s just getting used to the carbonated feeling on your tongue as they melt away.

Americans (or at least Americans in 49 states) are forgetting about what potatoes really are. The exception, of course, are those lucky Hawaiians, who get to eat Maui Potato Chips, which remind one with every crunchy, solid bite that one is eating a thinly sliced, quick-fried vegetable.

In fact, the processed potato is becoming such a fact of life that the price of genuine potatoes is going up. It becomes a luxury item when the growers have to take some of the crop they’d ordinarily ship to the processors and ship them to the stores instead.

This is an outrage. Potato chips aren’t the easiest things to make at home (it can be done if you slice ’em thin enough) , but french fries are, and that’s what most of your potatoes get processed into.

In the interest of reminding you all that the toothsome tubers are edible in their natural state, I have obtained from Mr. Skip Curley", a San Francisco chipsman, the following recipe:

SKIP’S CHIPS: Take a couple of potatoes, wash them, and let them soak in cold water for 30-60 minutes. Heat a pot of oil. Slice each potato in half lengthwise and slice each half into chips. They taste better unpeeled. When the oil’s hpt, throw ’em in. When they’re brown, take ’em out and drain on paper towels. Salt and eat. Sprinkle with malt vinegar for authentic British > taste. You pan strain the oil and re-use it several times, too.

Petaluma Pete

Drive-In Saturday— CHAIN-SAW MUSEUM MASSACRE

Some derangedperson has wormed his way into the programming end of the film department at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York. How else can one explain the recent scheduling of the screen choker, The Texas Chain SAW Massacre at this citadel of culture? But there it was, plain as a smear of Stein’s Make-up Blood on the monthly list of film showings, head to head with the Griffiths, Fords and Renoirs: “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. 1974. Tobe Hooper. With Marilyn Burns, Gurinar Hansen. (Bryanston) 83 min. Recommended for adults only.”

In case you’re not familiar with it, or if the screen was obscured by clouds when it played yopr local dpve-in, Chain Saw is a shoestring budget film. shot in arid around Austin, Texas, and has been raking in the box office $ in a s uccess story similar to that of George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead.

A year ago, Chain Saw wasplaying at the Lyric Theatre, one of the livelier schlock houses on 42nd Street, to the usual assortment of goggle-eyed creeps, riodders, and the odd corpse still awaiting discovery by the sweep-up man on the dawn patrol. Now here it is at MOMA. What’s going on?

Pandemonium, that’s what. On screening night, there are rope barriers to contain a line that stretches out to the street. There’s a frowzy woman 1 have to personally threaten with a chain saw (she thought I was trying to snake in ahead of her), and all this a half hour before the movie is to be shown. There hasn’t been this much exPitement at the Museum since Picasso’s “Guernica” was disfigured by some kook who would have been a lot better off watching a cheap horror film at the Lyric.

Forty-second street is very much in mind as the lights dim and a sign is flashed: no talking, eating, or smoking during the showing of the movie. Recently this has become a fixture at Museum screenings but tonight it seems strangely inappropriate. For such an outrageous demand at the Lyric, there would have been raucous obscenities, flying bottles, maybe even arson. At MOMA, there is only nervous acquiescence.

The picture gets going. We haye already been advised in a program that the film is “exceedingly viQlent and unrelentingly brutal,” but the skittish audience reaction to the opening scenes (grave desecration, self-mutilation, light stuff mostly) indicates that there are quite a few Nervous Nellies on hand. On 42nd Street, the audience gives as much as it gets and, if the customer isn’t always right, at least he is always loud.

Much of the movie’s violence occurs inside an innocent looking frame house. All but one of the victims are suckered in the front door. The Times Square crowd foynd this difficult to accept. As each person approached ^he house, there were groans and derisive exhortations to haul ass out of there. Though each character was logically motivated in going up the porch steps, the audience seemed annoyed at the suggestion that they would be likely to fall for the-same ploy twice. Of course, some of the people at the Lyric had never been in a frame house. The MOMA audience barely makes a peep. Maybe they are still reading their programs.

In one 15 minute segment of the film, an actress named Marilyn Burns qualifies for a couple of Olympic track medals by outrunning the arch-villian who spurs her on to faster feats of foot by waving the ubiquitous chain saw inches from her back. The Lyric audience ate this up . Action always appeals to that crowd, probably because most of them are so incapable of it themselves. The Museum people just grow restless. When the film ends, they file out after expressing mixed reactions, butthe hisses outnumber the cheers.

The problem is that films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are made for grunge-saturated environments, where the audience is not that much less strange than the film. Still, drive-ins and sleaze palaces are not to everyone’s liking and congratulations are in order to the “deranged person” at MOMA who had the courage to bring Chain Saw s accomplished shock horror to the attention of some people who might not otherwise have seen it.

Remember that bile Linda Blair vomited up in The Exorcist? Everyone said it looked like pea soup? In Beyond The Doot, ap actress by the name of Juliet Mills opens her yap and out pours Clairol’s Herbal Essence Shampoo.

She plays a young4housewife who is pregnant with something devilish. Sound familiar? Fans of bad acting will want to catch the performance of someone named David Colin Jr. as the concerned husband. You’ll be seeing less of this lad and soon. The movie’s exteriors were shot in San Francisco, the interiors in Rofne. No wonder the actors looked so confused. At a recent screening of the film in New York, every reel was out of synch and not a single person complained to the management. Sleep. It’s wonderful.

Edouard Dauphin

Edouard Dauphin {a.k.a. Ed Kelleher) has been a contributor to CREEM,as well as the subject of a CREEM profile {Mar. ‘74), and is the author of such memorable films as Invasion of the Blood Farmers and Shriek of the Mutilated. ♦