THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Who Is This Man And Why Is He Watching Us?

BERKLEY, CA-"Nils Lofgren wants to expose himself to 50,000 people." Banner headline in the National Enquirer? An ad for the tool section of Popular Mechanics? Wrong, badger breath. It cometh straight from the yap of Bill Graham. 'Course, if he'd said that about Jim Morrison before his Miami display with the Doors he would have been on-target, but here he was explaining why Lofgren lunged at the chance to play at 21 a.m. at the Oakland Stadium June 5.

You see, Graham was addressing a crowd on the Berkeley campus May 10 and proving that when E.F. Hutton, uh, that is, Bill Graham speaks, people listen. In fact, you could hear turn-turns gurgling in the hush that descended from overhead. Graham is full of (ha! you figured I was gonna say "ca ca" didn't ya?) anecdotes about the biz. Like the time he phoned Mick and asked, "If the Stones want pheasant-under-glass on silver service, do I have to provide it?" Mick said yes. When they arrived there were over a hundred fast food burgers waiting. "And then there was a Who concert years ago that was in its last minutes when a fire across the street caused firemen to rush in and attempt to evacuate the hall. The fans thought it was part of the show and cheered; Pete Townshend thought it was a fake and bashed his guitar into the head of a detective who was grabbing a mike. The Who proved the guy hadn't shown his credentials before jumping onstage when they got fans to bring in pictures of the event. The pictures bore the Who out and saved them from the slammer.

Graham is the kind of guy who would tell the Clorox man to shove his $75 and go rip someone else's pillow case in ,half, but admits that he kowtows to rock stars. Pink Floyd once stuck him with a $3,100 bill for limos from San Francisco to Mendocino and back (about 300 miles round trip). All he could do was whimper and give in. Multi-millionaires can do that.

And hey, did you know Bill has been eyeing you over the years? That's right. Back in the Hashbury daze you danced and freaked out at concerts. Now you just stare at the band with your teeth clenched in a Budweiser vise and think, "Hmm, Plant's balls are on the right side tonight."

Clark Peterson

Criswell Passess Guess

HOLLYWOOD , - The future of rock & roll is not Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Troy Donahue or even Tom Poston according to the great Criswell, that old nerk with the fiberglass hair who used to predict the future on Johnny Carson every New Year's Eve.

Passing over lesser items like the re-emergence and ultimate suicide of Richard Nixon, the Death Of Porn, and the Earth losing its gravity and blowing up in 1999, Criswell's major prediction is that two new bands from England will "capture your fancy" and dominate the pop world: The Skinny Fats and The Fat Skinnies. Don't try to fight it, 'cause they're going to knock us all over with "the,New Tempo Beat."

Criswell declined to provide any more details, but did go on to say that gypsies have invisible babies because they've got crystal balls.

Rick Johnson

THE BROTHERS KRAMZOFF

Davidski: "I say, Comrade Popskl, don't you know cameras are illegal in the Worker's Paradise?"

Popskl: "But Comrade Duke, I've only been photographing below my beltl"

Davidski: "But selling the snaps toCREEMof Soviet Youth and corrupting them with decadent swimepeck pixl Imperalist hyena, no more G UM trips for you) Borisl Natashal Come drag the dog away. (They do so.) Hah. Is not for nothing they call me Fearless Leaderl And now, on to Vladivostock, and get David JoHansen on the phone!"

THE END

Patti Smith Discovered (Twice)

NEW YORK-1. At 7:50 a.m. on March 22, 1976, were , one to have been gliding along 5th Avenue in the vicinity of 19th Street, one would have been confrohted with the sight of Patti Smith, nascent rock orphan, disembarking from a Number3bus. Smith was attired in what has become her stage costume: a ratty black jacket surmounting a ratty white T-shirt, pegged black pants tucked into multicolored knee socks, tipped by black ballet shoes. Smith looked to be, in a phrase, out of it. Really out of it. Halflidded, clutching a squirming mass of clothes and heaven knows what else, she stood for a moment looking around her, as if 5th Avenue in New York were a very odd place to be indeed. She then, with no great display of self-confidence, headed west, in the general direction of 6th Avenue.

She seemed in danger of dropping a goodly portion of the objects she carried.

I stepped up and asked if I might be of assistance.

"No, man, it's cool," Smith replied, and with a quick wave of one attractively emaciated hand (whose removal caused a few pieces of her burden to flutter to the sidewalk), she moved off into the morning.

2. A week later, Patti Smith was to be found being interviewed by New York disc jockey Scott Muni on WNEW-FM, a radio station whose salient grace is its devotion to groups like Renaissance and Genesis and.gatherings of that ilk. Mr. Muni's speech is composed entirely of non sequitors and Tiger Beat locutions, and is blessed with a voice like Grand Central Station. Ms. Smith was in a good humor and apparently enjoyingtheir exchange.

The appropriate passages of this grilling are reproduced below:

Muni: When did you first think you were hitting it big?

Smith: Oh, when CREEM Magazine gave me thre^ pages for my poems. I mean, three page?, and I was just a poet — that's big.

Kenneth Tucker

W90, Bombs

WASHINGTON, D.C.-As if nerve gas and H-bomlps aren't enough, the Army is spending $38 million to produce artificial bat guano for use as a propellant* for field arpKHHflHHpBbexpendjture. Army spokeSrllen claim that it's just too costly to \ogme andWefnWJIhe real thing. '

Thom Rae

EAT IT-RAW

CHICAGO—The next time someone says to you, "Eat my shorts," you might consider complying.

More and more people are responding a lascivious "yes" to the once-disparaging order, thanks to a new garment of clothing called "Candypants," marketed by Cosmorotics, Inc.

Candypants were conceived five years ago by David Samuelson in hopes that proponents of the Holden Caulfield-era cliche might put their money where their mouths were. But it wasn't until 1974 that he turned to Derek McManus, an English food chemist, to explore the feasibility of manufacturing edible undies. By December of '75, Samuelson had created Cosmorotics in Chicago and were shipping Candypants in three delectable flavors— wild cherry red, banana split yellow and hot chocolate brown, retailing at $4.95 a taste.

Additionally, they've begun shipment on "Teacups," an edible bra.

"They're perfectly edible," says Jan Kitt, head of customer service for the firm. "They contain the traditional candy ingredients; sugar, corn syrup, coloring and flavoring; with a matte, translucent finish and a licorice drawstring."

She added that the product has a shelf-life of one year and is designed to hold up even in particularly torrid temperatures.

Are we to expect further articles of clothing good enough to eat? A three-piece suit, perhaps, or for those of us of the earthy persuasion, bib overalls?

"Our market studies, along with pure commonsense show that the public is not ready to sit down and eat an entire pair of pants," she said.

She also assures potential undie mongers that Candypants are guaranteed to melt in your mouth, not in your hands.

Cary Baker

DO THE CAMEL HUMP

This is a picture of the very famous all women rock and roll band called Fanny and a few of their friends. Just to make it perfectly clear to all parties concerned that they have no reason whatsoever to be offended at this picture and caption: 1) these people are definitely not doing or have never done or will certainly never do anything obscene to or with this stuffed camel. 2) Nobody whomsoever, either the people and camel in this picture or this magazine have any intent to imply any sort of slur against Arabs or Jews or blacks or Latin-Americans or Indians or whites or dogs or cats.

GOD IS BLACK, TOO!

ASBURY PARK, N.J.—It was a bona fide, genuine, heavy-duty rock 'n' roll event. One wishes one could remember it. That is to say, one wishes one had not drank 97 Heinekens. Lee "Ya, Ya" Dorsey was there. Ronnie Spector was there. Clarence Clemmons $nd Miami Steve were there, and so was boss Bruce Springsteen and the rest of the E Street Band (which, for your recollection, includes Mighty Max Weinberg, the Greatest Drummer in AH of Rock 'n' Roll). And they all played. Better than that, though: it all happened in Asbury Park, New Jersey!

God knows ... Why? You ask yourself. Why, indeed! (Why the hell did they invent New Jersey in the first place? Was it really only so there was some place worse than Michigan?) I'll tell you why, you nagging, whiny bastard. Everybody was there to honor the greatest white R&B band and the greatest white R&B anger since the invention of the wheel, The name: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. And don't call 'em anything else. Especially don't call 'em anything els when you're talking to the guy who guards the side door at the Stone Pony, the club where they've been the house band for the last year and where we barely remember leaving just last night. "Dis is moy doah un oy ain't lettin' ennahbodeh in who ain't on da list!" said the guy at the side door, who wasn't kidding and who is at least ten percent of the reason Johnny and the Jukes are so great. No heavy handed rent-a-cops here to whom one bloody skull is the same as the next. Just like the band this door guy takes pride in his work. And if you try to get past him, you're not just a gate crasher, you're a personal enemy and he wants your ass. No one else's. And now he's holding off half of the Rock Crit Establishment of the planet earth, forcing them to freeze outside his Side Door, because no one, not even these sissies, gets in until they bring him The List. Now I'm not one to wallow in my own humiliation (except perhaps after 97 Heinekens) but I do appredate a good hurailiator every once in a while just like any other normal guy, especially when he's as invincible as this bearded Jersey swamp rat whose manner, in spite of a noticeable lack in size, indicated that he's packing balls as big as watermelons.

The other ninety percent of Johnny's greatness can be broken down thusly: 10 percent—the Heinekens one was drinking. 80 percent— Johnny and the band, both what they play and how they play it. Johnny's little, too. But the way he sings indicates that perhaps those watermelon size balls are a genetic characteristic of South Jersey. I mean, here's this guy who, especially without his rose-tinted shades, looks like he spent most of his life playing with his chemistry set and had the answers to all the hard questions on the biology exam extorted from him by the class bullies. And he's all dressed up in Jersey's version of a pimp suit and he's singing like an honest-to-goodness black person. A black person! I mean, you could maybe imagine him sounding like a Chinese person or even a Jewish person, but not a black person. Nevertheless, there he is, and it's even a black person who sings good R&B. And if you don't believe me, go read it in Rolling Stone. Johnny wails. Speaking of which, so does the band. Even though the horn section wears dumb clothes, can't comb its hair, and looks like it's used to working bar mitzvahs. Which it probably isn't cause Asbury Park appears to be heavily Italian.

Whatever, the'Jukes are definitely used to working bars. And therein lies the core of their greatness. Cause they aren't pioneering new musical territory (like Kraftwerk or Robin Trower) and they aren't redefining old forms (like Jethro Tull does with elf music or Starcastle does with slugger Carl Yazstremski) or even playing disco (like Claudine Longet). What they're doing is exactly what others have done before—namely, real black people like Otis Redding or Wilson Chiclet—and some did better. Basically. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are a great Top 40 club band. But here's the hitch: they're the only real Top 40 club band left. In other words, they play the Top 40 of fifteen or twenty years ago when music was music and vive la difference! And it's the soul Top 40 to boot! In other words again, the Jukes are unique in 1976 and you should pray your ass off that they don't move to Russia where this sort of thing would not be allowed. Only in America! Remember that. Also, when I got off the bus that brought us home that night, I got in a cab with the people who were going uptown and I haven't lived uptown in six years.

Robert Duncan

5 YEARS AGO

Patti Smith Published in CREEM

Three pages of poetry from a skinny ugly duckling of a girl appeared in the September 1971 issue of CREEM. Patti, who looked even more like Keith Richard then, now reports (see "Patti Smith Discovered Twice," pg. 24) that her publication in CREEM made her feel sure she would make it big someday as a rock 'n' roll star. Even if you're not familiar with her poetry, you'll recognize the now classic opening line of her poem "Oath":

Christ died for somebodies sins but not mine...