THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Small Wasteland

PARIS—When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre a few years back, officials left the wall empty where the famous painting had been displayed.

During the two years the picture was missing, more people went to see the blank space on the wall than had come to view the painting itself in the previous twelve years.

Now if someone would just steal Laverne & Shirley . . .

Rick Johnson

Next It'll Be AppleProduct Pie

WEINERLAND, U. S. A.The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council has ruled that any frankfurter exceeding eight inches may be termed a "foot-longhotdog. "

Rick Johnson

Panic, Saw Incite Cannck Law

TORONTO—A Canadian man who fan through a theater with a buzzing chain saw during a showing of "The Texas Cfiainsaw Massacre" has been jailed as a "public nuisance."

The suspect, who had reportedly been drinking with friends, timed his toothsome debut to coincide with the film's gory climax. While some of the cooler patrons dismissed it all as a publicity stunt, others ran screaming from the theater and have not been heard from since.

At press time, the unidentified man had filed a counter-suit charging that Canada itself is a "public nuisance."

Rick Johnson

Kenny And The Kasuals At Casa Chaos

DALLAS, TX—Early November. Medium cool. Expressway wave-catching in the nighttide's whirring wash of traffic. The hum and swarm of chrome velocity trans-am-phetamining concrete prairie. Richie the Shooter's thump-a-bump-a lug Volks sputtering, varmint crawling around the edge of the debutante city's silk soft honey vault. Note pad and tape recorder jouncing uncomfortably in my lap. Eyes squeezed to a squint, T.V. memory rolling a golden oldie: kid plugging pawn shop bass into another football team uniform benefit, thinking as he turns to G-L-O-R-I-A his guts out that maybe this will be the time the backroad school auditorium will be transformed, The Studio Club, Delpha or Joannie or Cathy from SUMPN ELSE (maybe every sleek Highland Park bitch who ever danced before that teen show's camera) rushing the stage, begging for his body, then, right there, before God and mortal eyes feasting vicariously, slidin' home . .. SHE MAKE ME FEEL ALL RIGGHHH-

"Exit," the Shooter says. Attention retrieved to the present. This right or the next. The practice hall of Kenny and the Kasuals. Legendary amongst the area's rock 'n' roll hearts; noses with the knack for the know and collectors of sterling vinyl everywhere. Mint copies of the original demanding $160 recently, going in Europe for a sealed bid of a thousand bucks. Re-issue made available last year. No mere nostalgic wax. Riotous fun or else revelation, covering the best bets of mid-60's Anglo-American with scalding efficiency. Its vitality timeless. Now, after nearly a decade, prompted by the acclaim afforded the reissue, Kenny Daniels and manager Mark Lee have reformed the band. A new line-up, not constructed, as Kenny will affirm, to rehash the past (emphasizing that neither will the new Kasuals deny it), but to get the excessively postured and sophisticated present off its ass.

The combination rehearsal/club room is one of a series of mini-warehouses sitting in the dark armpit of the city brights. Inside, however, the atmosphere is of a high-spirited luminosity, the camaraderie the band enjoys bouyant and obvious. After seats are taken, smokes lit and tops popped, the effervescent Kenny, his red and white oxfords for a rare moment motionless, vision clearly set on transcending the tag of prototype 60's punk, enthuses concerning the current Kasuals. "I handpicked these guys after auditioning maybe forty or fifty musicians. I've been in maybe five-six bands since the original Kasuals broke up but none of 'em had the energy. This bunch goes full tilt all the time. On stage it's incredible. This band projects charisma." Which in the realm of understatement is similar to referring to King Kong as an ape with big nuts.

There's Rosebud ("one of the best drummers I've ever heapd"), who was playing in a group called Generation X at a time when Billy Idol was able to scratch his naked crotch without getting any hairs under his fingernails. Adamant Moby Grape admirer Dan Green on guitar. Californian Greg Daniels, who believes the perfect bassist would be a cross of Larry Taylor and Willie Weeks. And Carl Tamara, influenced by fellow jayhawk Mike Finnegan, Groove Holmes, and Jimmy Smith when he sits to wrap his1 fingers around his organ, a fan of Randy Newman and deadpan humorist in his own right.

If you want some yardstick of this outfit's live power, they had 'em gatorin' in the aisles during their Halloween World Premiere at the Palladium Club, achieving what' Daniels assessed as the ultimate goal of sweating-in-theflesh rock 'n' roll, "complete chaos." A fact further borne out by the tapes of the band's new material, authored by Daniels, and in the can just two months after the new line-up was finalized. Red hot roller coaster rock spurred on by the amazing supersonic acrobatics of Kenny's singing (all voices on the tape are his, including some astounding harmonizing) and Dan's mastery of pinching off just the right notes to create the succinct delirium that is rock 'n' roll guitar at its best. Titles include "Why Did We Ever Call It Love?" (featuring some mighty fine saxophone grittiness from the "Pride of Lubbock," Max Ray), "Everybody's Makin' It" ("Sorta punk," Kenny describes wryly), the tongue-in-cheek medley "Live at the Temple," "Early Warnin' ", "Out Of Control," and "I Love To Go Flyin' The lyrical highlight occurring when, taking a poke at those he defines as being "just too cool" to let rock 'n' roll happen to 'em, Kenny exclaims, "I'm too cool to be hangin' put!"

THE WIN-A-DATE WITH BLONDIE CONTEST WINNERS!

BLONDIE HAS THE MOST FUN!

Here, the Kasuals have a situation where the right players have fallen into the right place at what seems to be the right time. Mark concurs. "It's been the best experience of my life. Even people who aren't familiar with the band's music know its name." (It is mentioned during the session that in Africa, Kenny And The Kasuals bumper stickers are seen on elephant asses.) After a trip to Europe and England to explore the possibilities there (perhaps a billing with Elvis Costello, one of the band's most ardent supporters), Mark and Kenny will return to the States to continue label negotiations and arrange club dates in Los Angeles and New York. If exuberant vitality weighs for anything at all, Dallas is finally going to have a rock 'n' roll band that it can be proud of, not for yesterday, but for today.

j. m. bridge water

The Heartbreak of Jimmy Page

BETHESDA.MD—Now that we're all familiar with cute nerve injuries like tennis elbow, jogger's knee, accountant's back and skateboard nose, get ready for a new one: guitar, palsy.

Doctors at the Naval Medical Center here diagnosed the ailment in the case of a 19-yr-old recruit who complained of a stiff right elbow and partial numbness of his hand. It seems that the singing swab-head is a guitar fanatic who practices four or five hours a day. Resting his arm on the guitar while he moaned pirate songs was causing "dents" in the nerves of his playing elbow.

The docs also note that guitar palsy can be brought on by a "sudden or peculiar motion," like the Townshend-slash that felled Grassroot's guitarist Warren Entner onstage some years back.

The cure? Well, piano is nice

Rick Johnson

Zwol In A Day's Work

DETROIT, Mi-Hello, fellow crime-haters. My first contact with Walter Zwol occurred indirectly one snivelling afternoon last October. Bits and pieces of his persona had crawled, wormlike, into the office under the premise of promotional purposes. And lemme just tell ya that square, white vinyl records were the last thing I needed. So everybody's got problems, right?

But even more insidious than the records was the adjoining literature. My initial suspicious glance revealed a harmless "Everyday Biography"; only a first-class clown would have believed that to be important. For you see, there was a second biography stashed noiselessly beneath the first, a Psychobiograph. Right there in the title, plain enough to poke my red-racked private eyes out, were phrases like, "A pixie with balls", "A blistering orgams of being", "Sex giver and receiver" ... I mean, where was this Walter cat coming from? Or more importantly . . . where was he headed?

We were to meet at the Salamander Lounge—just the kind of slippery, underrock place you'd expect to find this amphibian mucking around in. One two-eyed look around told me that I'd gotten there before he had, so I took a leathered seat and bided time with an imported beer . Suddenly I spotted his Mr. Clean chromedome blare its way into the room like something out of a mug shot nightmare. We repaired to a booth, where my adversary proceeded to taunt me with his tiny little crimes against society such as walking on chair seats, turning accent lights around backwards—piquant non-raps that any cool-hand court would blow off its collective desk like so much dust. Still, a disorderly conduct charge could keep him off the streets for at least a short while.

I made a break for the phone under the guise of a "bladder sabbatical," which had worked on three cases last week. But when I came nonchalantly back to the booth to await the arresting officers, all that remained was a drip-dry glass where once had been his Marguerita and some "ice cream colors melting on life's canvas." ~

So, a funny guy, huh? But I'll keep after him ... I must. It's Zwol one man can do.

Alan Madeleine

5 Years Ago

What Would The Colonel Say?

Chattanooga radio station WFLI recently held an "Elvis Presley Escape" contest and the prize, according to the ad placed in the Chattanooga Times, was this: "Some lucky couple will spend the most amazing week ever, three days in Las Vegas . . . climaxing with Elvis onstage at the Sahara Hotel?' Anyone with pictures of said perversion should contact CREEM immediately.