'Waiter, there's a cockroach in my fortune cookie'...

'Waiter, there's a cockroach in my fortune cookie'...

MOTOR MOUTH

This ain't the summer of love, but it looks like the kids on shakin' street are going to have some fun anyway. Here's what's already happened:

Don't blame the promoters (Steve Glantz, Rob Clark) because you couldn't hear Aerosmith at their Pontiac gig; the P.A. system was the responsibility of the group, and should stand as a lesson in how not to sound at Ponmet. Thanks for the press party, though guys. Four stacks of amps were used at Bob Seger's June show at the stadium; need we say that the sound was guaranteed... .yowee zowee. Glad we were up in the pressbox. Were you sharp enough at the show to notice that the Foghat set featured three drummers?! One on stage, and two others accompanying him behind the amps, pounding out that boogie beat. And—did you notice at the Paul McCartney concert at Olympia that his equipment was raised twenty feet in the air, permitting 360degree seating and also a fairly good sound? The sound was much better at the second Detroit show and other stops on the Wings tour, buteven the first show was better than the Aerosmith Ponmet disaster. Aerosmith had tried to do' the same until they discovered that the roof over the new stadium was 'air-supported', and wouldn't hold up under the weight. Danny Goldberg, former vicepresident of Swan Song Records (Led Zep, Bad Company, the Pretty Things, etc.) and now heading his own PR firm, turned up at Masonic Auditorium for the UFO /Nazareth show (he does PR for UFO). Danny also spotted lunching at the St. Regis with new CREEM managing editor Bill Gubbins, who comes to us from Exit Magazine in Cleveland. Danny regaled Bill with wild tales of Zep on the road, etc. Ah, the life.

Bob 'Catfish' Hodge and brother Dallas are forming a new group with bass player Billy Landless—should be heavy.

The Game of the Week in Detroit music circles was not on the tube, but at Edsel Ford High School on June 3, when the mighty W4 took on the brave WABX—on the baseball field. Competition was quite electric. Final score: W4-12, WABX-6.

Craig (The Lover) Lambert replaces Ken Benson as local Capitol rep, while Ken has been promoted to regional production on the West Coast, and will be leaving peaceful Birmingham soon.. .Also leaving belle Birmingham (for a while anyway) are Deirdre (former ABX jock) and Kevin Tolman, (CRE!EM artist), who are off to Paris for the summer.

What local production man and parttime D J on Detroit's top progressive rock station who was brought here from Pennsylvania along with his Washington D.C. wife, is importing himself an authentic Pennsylvania barn complete with hex sign so he won't get homesick? Don't ask us...

Sad to hear about the sudden death of Tom Pomanski, one of the founders of the Sun and partly responsible for bringing it up from just another sleazy student paper to the underground giant we all know and love. Tom died in a car crash last month in Ann Arbor. Congrats to Altantic Records rep Ron Counts and wife Lexi who are expecting their first this fall... j You might have noticed Dan Carlisle's absence from W4 for while.

Well, Danny discovered that the problems with his stomach were not caused by the great food at Piper's, but an ulcer. Piper's owner Bill Demorest says that he'll stock skimmed milk for Danny from now on.

Didja notice Bob Seger's billboard ad on Woodward near 8 Mile Road? Look for Detroit to 'go Hollywood', as more and mpre billboards are pressed into rock 'n' roll service.

Remember George Goulson, the Birmingham 'eccentric' who promoted the old Palladium? He's now into the art of promoting customized vans, a far cry from promoting Seger. Or is it?

So Motown Studios is closed, huh?

Well all we know is thatDavid Ruffin just recorded a monster there called 'Everything's Coming Up Love.' And we saw it, babyloves. (Which puts an end to that Frampton Can't Record There rumor.) _. , . „ / , ' ,

Boxer, former members of Spooky Tooth and cohorts of musician Gary Wright, were brought into town on a pretour promo blitz, in true Motown style, ace promo rep Ron Douglas selected the Rosewood bar (el sleezo) to present these proper Englishmen. The boys in the band had lunch around the pool at the Sheraton Southfield with W4 jock Karen Savelli, then showed up for the WABX party at the Northfield Hilton. Former Detroit boy Jack Ashton (now a big cheese in ABC's West Coast operations) was in attendance, as well as t-shirt entrepreneur Michael Morgan.

Everyone, at some time or another, has probably experienced bad service at a restaurant. Overflowing ashtrays?... dump them on the floor! No coffee refill? No tip for the hussy. But what about the other side of the story? What if restaurant/bar owners took the law into their own hands when they felt that they were being ripped off? CREEM staffers thought of that when they held a 'Rock 'n' Roll All Nite' party at the otherwise-elegant Midtown Cafe in beautiful Birmingham. Tommy Lee -of the Bow Wah restaurant not only thought about it, he acted. Three 'diners' walked into his restaurant in Detroit one bight and ordered a fullcourse meal for three. After the meal had been wolfed down, they called for the manager (Tommy), produced a cockroach/and insisted that they'd found it in the soup. Lee fell all over himself apologizing', and gave them a free meal. A few days later the same three squacks showed up, this time with a friend. Lee watched them this time and spotted one of them slipping a dead cockroach out of his pocket and into one of the dishes. Lee demanded that they leave. When they refused, he grabbed a pistol and fired one shot into the ceiling. All four fled without waiting for the fortune cookies.

Mike Stone , Warner Brothers promo person and 'Teddy Bear" Richards of CKLW helped out the Jaycees with their recent walkathon. Teddy, (who only crawled nine miles) and Mike gave the first 100 people to finish the 18-mile course a copy of the Doobie Brothers' latest, Taking It To the Streets. Only problem was that it rained all day long; the prize should have been Wet Willie's The Wetter The Better, guys.

Gabe Glantz is in court again, but this time he's got a point. He's trying to protect the right of any promoters booking the huge Ponmet Stadium—right now they have to do all the work, only to split 50-50 with Cleveland promoter Belkin, who currently holds exclusive rights there.

W4 air personalities just spent $20 each to undergo hypnosis. To brainwash them into doing better in the ratings than the 'X'? No sir, to help them quit their habits—nicotine that is. At press time, most had returned to their nasty oral fixations.

Hall & Oates (Daryl and John respectively) brought their own unique brand of blue-eyed Philly soul to the Royal Oak Theatre, and played two shows to very enthusiastic audiences. WABX presented another one of their great budget shows at Ford, this time featuring Pavlov's Dog, Thin 'We'll never get off the stage' Lizzy and StuDaye. They simulcasted the show live and the sound was quite impressive.

Crazy Jemy Cheers, promo man for United Artists, paraded around the streets of the Motor City dressed in a groundhog suit to promote—what else?—the new LP Groundhogs. Wh&t's even funnier is that he got some other people into similar monkey suits. I mean, we would have thought that Such distinguished air personalities as Jerry Lubin of W4 and Ken Calvert of WABX would not stoop so low for a laugh. You can visit Jemy at the zoo from 10 to 5 daily. He's the one with glasses in cage 27. More Monkey News—the creature you saw roaming around at the W4-WABX ballgame was none other than Godzilla, who was usually masquerading as Jerry Lubin, at least when he came up to bat. Funny farm, anyone?

Quite a turnout for the Bob Marley concert at Masonic; John, Lent and Sunny Sinclair spotted in the crowd. Strange but true: Bob cooked all of his food in his downtown Howard Johnson's suite. In an open fire. On the floor. Our guess is that the HoJo manager-was probably pretty nostalgic for the good old days. . .TV cords pulled out of the walls.. Johns overflowing with God knows what.. .lamps flying out of windows. After all, what can you say to a guy who just giggles: 'Jah will provide'?

Former Mutant Bob Zachary is living it up in New York, and from all reports doing well. He's now managing one of those neo New York bands, Milk 'n' Cookies, which he describes thusly: 'Great songs, great show, great popstar looks—and yet they're punks. Sort of like the early Stones but much cuter, and more glamorous.'

Detroit scenemaker Sterling Silver is firmly ensconced in his summer lair in Mackinac Island and reports that he's totally removed from cars and electric guitars. There are 20 hippies on the island who spend their idle hours strumming their acoustic guitars, singing the same six or seven folkie songs. Frankly, we can't think of a better change of pace for old Sterling... who should come back to the big evil city ready for more degeneration...

Which reminds us, we're programmed to degenerate into the aery fields of oblivious yon right about.. .now...