The Beat Goes On

The Beat Goes On

In The Future, Everybody Will Be Nobody For 15 Minutes

CHICAGO—New religions come and go. There was Tim Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery, artist Ralph Benedict's Christs In Cardboard and more than one variety of Fundamentalist Curtain Sects, as well as the Roman Catholic Church. But one listless young nulnode named Gene Townsend may have finally come up with the true 70's religion.

Townsend's creation, the Church of the Living Apathists, is dedicated to doing absolutely zero. Their bible is an empty spiral notebook. Their cross? "It's a gray rectangle," says the founding vacuum. "It symbolizes nothing." A high priest in their faith would be a person who never turned up for services.

The designing dud feels that their potential is boundless. "If wev call a meeting1, chances are no one will come and that will mean the meeting is successful. Already, I think ten percent of the American people are members. Maybe one hundred percent."

Well listen, window-brain, if you're such a pulsing vacancy in the Universal Duh, why do you bother to spread the word? "I guess you'd have to say I'm not a true believer. I'm a borderline apathist."

All together now: Who cares?

Rick Johnson

Rough Trade: Cruising For A Bruising

TORONTO—On two successive evenings in a dingy Chinese cafeteria cum bar, Margaret Trudeau (former flower-child and First Cady to Pierre) and Alice Cooper (Sorry, no Bud here Spud) tapped their fingers on halfempty bottles of Labatt's 50. Turning heads and setting feet loose on the dance floors Pf Grossman's Tavern in Toronto were the latest sensation, Carole Pope and Rough Trade.

Carole's been covered by every major Canadian mag from Chatelaine (a wishywashy Canadian Seventeen) to Esprit (a wishywashy After Dark). A few years ago they gushed over a gym teacher from Nova Scotia, the virginal snowdrift Anne Murray. Now it's this dish in a turquoise wet-look jumpsuit, zipper plunged down way beyond propriety. Sometimes it's cowboy drag, holster and spurs. Maroon Sassoon zigguraut hairdo; bloodied red lips, eyes, and nails. By the time her riding crop hit its target, the typewriters are in motion. Sample lyric:

Molesting innocent women and young boys with her gang of lesbian college co-eds/They made every man's penis shrivel in fright. *

Since Canadian culture runs like clockwork four years behind everyone else, Rough Trade has been tagged as one of those decadent disco bands. You know, the fall of the Empire stuff. The songs are varied and pointed: "Lipstick on your Dipstick/' "Restless Underware," "Auto erotic Love." All are delivered with the same sardonic mickey-take and x self-effacing smirk. Of the hip, to the hip, and from the hip.

\A/hat might* appear to be just another boring, jaded trendy band is actually the guise of Rough Trade. The band manages to step on everyone's toes: straight, gay, quad and eunuch alike.

Says Carole: "All my songs are about sex. I'm showing the stereotypes that control everypne. It's all taken so seriously. By pointint out the obvious maybe I can help change all this. But I go after everybody. I demean both sexes, myself included..."

It's my fault I'm his whore.

It's my fault he's going gay.

It's my fault I'm a female faggot.*

Rough Trade are undergoing the Big Launch. Eddie Kramer has just signed a production deal with the band, and the first units will be ship-

ped shortly. Dr. John recorded Carole's "Birds of a Feather" for his Hollywood elpee, but luckily the track was not released.

Underneath Rough Trade's fetish flash lies apostSeventies morality. Shellshocked and disco dazed, a prototype romanticism rises armed with Style.

Beauty it can wound you like gunfire,

With a few well-planned manoeuvres you can murder them with Style.*

Steven Davey

*Dream-on Music, Capac

Big Laundry Star

People, this Is it. It's come. No shuck. No |ive. We present you ... The Next Big Thing. Why? Ask that and we'll shove it down your throbbing little throat sideways. This is Ian Dury of Kilburn High Roads. And why he and his bpnd are The Next Big Thing is that not only are they scorching the' British pub circuit with a highenergy show that brings together the best of the corner Piggily-Wiggily with the finest of the more sophisticated monopolies, but that on the side they also own and run a diaper service and that means they'll never be laying about the streets scrounging a living because the diaper service business knows no limits; it is endless; infinity. Infinity. So leave it alone. Worship it. Worship Kilburn High Roads.

Barry's Got A Brand New Bag

Altho it ain't exactly new, sez he's been a follower of God the Son for years now. This TV show he's got on the subject is of recent vintage however: sure wasn't no twice-a-week video without commercial interruption for BARRY McGUIRE in the days of "Eve of Destruction!" No he hadda wait till all that Haysoose Freakery of which he was a part reached sufficient local dimension in his very own Southern Cal for there to be whole goddam UHF stations devoted to same and ushered in by the smell of that real fine tax-free mazuma ("Sharing the love of Jesus Christ, this is KXLA, channel 40"): hence Anyone but Jesus at 12:30 Thursdayaft. opposite Courtship of Eddie's Father and 8:30 PM Friday opposite Chico and the Man.

Comes out bearded and glowing and all, standin & pickin & singin "This Little Light of Mine," his mike clipped rather conspicuously to the neck of his brand new dark blue t-shirt with the storebought creases still in it, a far cry from those bland sharkskin and seersucker muthas the standard glowing but unbearded religious show goons standardly wear. But that's what they musta hired him for to begin with, to be nouveau Christianity's casual poet/philosopher/hipster-at-large for our carelessly casual times. / Which is what he noticeably islhe moment he opens his non-singing mouf: "Hi — huh huh huh — you been shining for Jesus,, you been reflecting the illumination of Christ on all the world's insanity. And you know the darker it gets the brighter the light gets; the worse the world gets the more obviously relevant Jesus gets.". All delivered with a gushing spaced-out naivete you could never accuse his slick tube cronies of cause they don't gush and they ain't spaced-out nor are they naive.

Give the above message some bicentennial import and you've got "one of the heaviest songs I've ever had the...uh...fortune...to be associated with," and "Eve of D" type blockbuster with lyrics like "Don't blame God for the sins of America, livin by the dollar she'll be dyin by the sword" and/"Freedom just a mockery, communist democracy," like he's still basically anti-e^tab or whatever only it's God's kingdorq — monarchy! — that's the solution this time around ("Dawn of Correction" revisited). (Sung with a definite Tim Hardin drone/)

Then he brings out his 4eyed Joan Baez-y Western Ontario folksinger dame with neurosis twistin her lips outa shape like a goddam snake and a tale of how faith pulled her thru the recent death of her baby and temporary loss of her "head voice" (hepcat talk), brings her out to help him elucidate a little of the lqgic of lobotomy, to wit: you don't hafta impress Jesus; sheep don't hafta impress the shepherd, all they gotta do is follow along. Inotherwords singers just sing cause they been axed to by You Know Who. Uh huh. In fact: maybe so! (Doh't sound no further fetched'n J. McLaughlin useta when he was saved.)

And lest we be confused by common earthy love and such: "As much as I love my wife I can't receive my strength from her." Yowza!

In short: one of the great R&R programs of all time (I mean Little Richard was a minister for 7 years or somethin and you ain't crossin him off the list!). Folk-rock lives! Hey Bo Diddley!

\ R. Meltzer

La Belle Cuisine De Chaka

DETROIT - What glamorous lady singer for a hot R & B group (Hint: she is known for her sexy feathered get-ups and acrobatic vocal chords) is pining away in sunny El Lay for the grunge and sleaze of the bleak East? No, not Cher, but tawny tigress Chaka Khan, curvacious front woman for Rufus.

Chaka stretched langorously. in the back of her limousine in Detroit, sighing kittenishly from being up since six o'clock. Fatigued or not, she impressed passing motorists, who rubbernecked eagerly into the depths of the limo. Who is that exotic lady in white furs with the billowy Afro? Noses pressed against cold glass.

And what would milady desire for lunch? Crepes? Detroit is an" old French town, don't you know. Perhaps some lobster salad, a little champagne?

Chaka's face lit up momentarily.

'-Has Detroit got any White Castle hamburgers like in Chicago? Oh, I can't get anything like White Castles out in LA."

Does Detroit have White Castles? Does Newcastle have coal?

For Eskimoes and asylum inmates who don't know, a White Castle looks like a miniature white service station and produces round oily projectiles that people have been known to eat. Wl^iite Castles proliferate wherever the weather is cold and the livin' ain't easy.

Chaka snuggled back into her fur as the limo speeded down the cavernous Jbhn C. Lodge freeway into the iron depths of Motown.

"Ah, gray skies. Ah, rain. No gray skies in LA. Just palm trees, palm frees..."

Susan Whitall

Krautian Thesaurus* gazing

HAMBURG, GERMANY According to the etymological researches of a Hamburg professor, the seven most frequently-used words in the lyrics of German top ten songs since 1900 have been, "beautiful, small, alone, dear, good, lucky," and "sweet." Hate to .spoil your fun, Herr Prof, but with the recent onslaught of Kraftwerk, Amon Duul II, and other "space-rock" groups on German pop music, the lyrics list might bear some revision. Put me down for "whirr, buzz, zapp, whoosh, zoom, whizz," and "extraterrestrial."

Richard Riegel

5 YEARS AGO Jagger Married!

Mick Jagger and Bianca DeMacias were married in a quiet Catholic ceremony, attended only by friends, on May 12th at a rural chapel in the south of France.

Jane Goodall, Eat Your Heart Out!

DAVENPORT, IOWA — You can forget ELP, SHF, CSN&Y and all the rest of the monogrammed supergroups, because from now on D JBH rule. That's right — Monkee vets Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones and their former songwriters/producers, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart are now touring the States as "The Great Golden Hits Of The Monkees Show." After being obscured by crowds of more than 20,000 at D-cup attractions like Knott's Berry Farm in California and the St. Louis Six Flags parks, they're now barnstorming the pitlands in a beat-up Winnebago. True rock/n' roll ^tyle.

/ CREEM caught up to them at the Col Ballroom, one of those temporarilyconveVted - to - rock places with Red Cross tablecloths, A greased Keith Allison opens the show with a matched pair of Hollywood automatons on bass and drums, rocking through a set of bar faves like "Honky Tonk Women," "fakin' Care Of Business," and anything else they can think of that night. "We call 'em as we see 'em," Keith explained later. Pick up riffs or not, they perform eii a precise tubal lubectomy on the , local jailbait (who outnumber the nostalgia-sniffs 10-to-l) who were

up and dancing from the start. The water level in my sneaks went up anunch.

After minimal farting around between sets, Keith and the boys moved into backup position as the Monks hit the stage—Mickey in yard-wide sunglasses, Davy looking rather ragged but still foxbait in his new short haircut, and Boyce & Hart at their Balsam - commercial - with - slight -paunch best.

In the finest show I've caught since the Raiders debuted "Hungry" at my high school, DJBH ran through all, the hits — "Daydream Believer," "Steppin' Stone," "Valeri," "I'm A Believer," "Last Train To Clarksville," a heavy "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and their great new single, "I Remember The Feeling." All the famous dumb huftior too — pianos falling, Dolenz's Capt. Klink impersonation, and huge cheerleader cards to help the crowd fill in the SHE and HEY parts during "She," narrowly avoiding spelling SHIT all the while. Boyce and Hart also did a medley of their own hits like "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" and "Alice Long," swaying across the stage like Dick Clark-designed Slinkies.

Tommy and Bobby said they're not in it so much for

the bucks as for the fun and 13-yr-old-face-si't while they casually sipped Cokes after the show and pondered the local statutory rape ordinances. Their songwriting secrets were forthcoming: "It isn't necessary to be tonedeaf to write popular songs but it helps." "Valeri," says Bobby, was knocked off in twenty minutes while waiting at a car wash, and "She" was penned in a library with a red-assed librarian giving them Teflon stares all the while. How ,.many songs have they written together? "312 — and that was just last night."

At this point, Keith wandered up and, with lethal bar-rag breath, mumbled something about his summer replacement show for Cher Nand that the Winnebago had reached capacity and was ready to roll. But not before Bobby revealed the story behind "Last Train To Clarksville." "When I was a kid, I got run over by this train. I crawled out from under the tracks and asked this guy where it was going. 'Clarksville,' the man replied. 'Goddamn it,' I said, 'I should've been on that one.' 'Too bad kid,' the man sneered, it was the last one.' "

Who needs the Hudson Brothers?

Rick Johnson

Sneaker City

EVERYWHERE, U.S.A. -In this year of the Bicentennial hype, we have Britain to thank for a little divertissement — something to take our minds off red white and blue, you know. The Bay City Rollers! You're probably beginning to notice the Bay City Rollers magazines, scarves, paper dolls, ant farms and so on. Well it's going to get worse before it gets better, and since we are your full-service rock magazine we felt that we should look into the matter. And we didn't have to look far! Here you see one of the more lucrative BCR ventures; Topp's bubble gum cards! The gum itself is small, yello\v and hard (remember the dusty pink stuff you got with your Whitey Fords?) but there are keen pix of the boys, with captions that are well worth the drive to Owosso: "Secret Wish" (Eric Faulkner always woonted to be a violinist), "Singin' Pals" (Derek and Alan Longmuir like to ride horseback together — Hey Topp's, "the guys in the pic are Woody and Eric!) "Sneaker City," "Popi Idol," etc.

We were fortunate enough to exchange words with the boys recently while they were making a cross-country publicity blitz, and in true Boy Howdy style, got right to the point: Don't the Rollers have any sex life? Are they really that wholesome?

"Whoolesome!" manager Tam Paton squealed. "You keep saying whoolesome. They're just particular about who they sleep with."

Indeed. What about all the attacks on'the BCR's music?

"Everybody always said that you've got to have a sound," said Paton. "Ha! I had a 'sound' in my own band." When Paton caught a glimpse of the Rollers' cute mugs in a Scottish teen club, he had a hunch that dimples and teeth spelled success.

"There are thousands of songwriters who aren't as good-looking as Paul McCartney, right? But who can write songs as well."

Well I dunno. Guys who could write Venus and Mars maybe...

"Come on, are you telling me Mick Jagger wasn't sexy? I Used to have to wipe up the piss in the concert halls afterward. The little girls'd wet their knickers! Don't talk to me about sound. "

Apparently the Rollers did not exactly enjoy instant success.

"We tried everything; for one gig in Luxembourg they even painted themselves red and yellow. Nothing. And see-through trousers, we tried see-through trousers."

Really see-through?

"Really see-through."

I sensed a definite rebel consciousness bubbling under the Surface of their milk-fed personas: Les McKeowan occasionally would erupt into positive punkness. At a record store autograph party in Detroit he had to be prodded to smile more often as the girlies (and boyies) buttonholed him, and could be overheard muttering "Foock" in dark Gaelic tones. Later at a press party I discovered that he too was badly in need of a cigarette (heady stuff), so we hunted down some Kools and got to rapping.

"Iss a bad habit, smoking. I don't want other people to start on.bad habits because of me." So he doesn't have any pictures taken of himself toking on the dirty weed? Right. I signalled my photographer from behind my back. (The pictures didn't turn out; there was only a black space where Les had been). Later, Danny Fields of 16 Magazine was taking a centerfold-type picture of the group holding little stuffed animals. S'posed to be cute, right? As soon as the boys were tossed the little furry things, they set to bashing them with their fists, stomping on them, biting them, etc. The way they really are! — "Stop that!" said manager Tam. "Get that shot!" I hissed to the photog. He refused solemnly, citing the photographer's unwritten code. "You don't horn in on another guy's shot,'' he murmured. Gone, gone, gone.

Apart from the expected bopper queens, the Rollers also attract a gay following. They were met at JFK Airport by a contingent of gays, and I noticed several lining up with the girls for autographs and kisses. The boys offered their cheeks to all comers gamely. "They don't want to catch anything," Tam reflected.

I asked Eric Faulkner what he thought about their gay fans.^

"Wul, it's a part of life, innit?"

About the language barrier, Tam explained — and I found it to be true — that if they talk to you and want to be understood, there's no problem. But they can and do descend into absolutely unintelligible Scottish slang when they don't want to be understood.

"Say 'Dini gees yur pa'ar' to Les," Tam urged. We did, and Les snapped, "Oh yeah?"

"You said'Don't mess with me'", Tam laughed.

Right.

Susan Whitall

Conventioneers Get Boffo Show

This year the Preparation H annual convention site was San Diego. Shirley Fleeb from Accounting brought her muppets again (Bravo. Shirll), Ralph Lando from Research Building #3 brought the cancerous white mice, who looked about as well as could be expected (Icky-poo, Ralph!), but by far the most spirited and inspiring show of commencement evening at the convention was A. Harvey's demonstration of the hew, improved menthol preparation line. (A. is shown above with the three models who assisted him in his presentation. Everything looks just fine to us. A.I)