THE BEAT GOES ON

THE GCAT GOES ON

DEPARTMENTS

Who's News?

LONDON—In order to take everyone's mind off the impending world war between Russia and China, the Who have sequestered themselves in this hallowed hamlet in preparation for a "majoir announcement." And while no one will confirm or deny rumors of another verbal battle between Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, they are assuring us all that said "announcement" will probably involve a limited U.S. tour early this summer, as well as the unveiling of a new band lineup.

Of course, it's common knowledge that former Small Face Kenny Jones has replaced Keith Moon. But the Who are also in the market for a fulhtime keyboardist and possibly another guitarist, the latter because Townshend wants to be free to noodle with the synthos a bit. In a Melody Maker interview, Pete said he'd love to have Ian MacLagen in thy liniyup as Mac's brilliant oh both keyboards and guitar. But that setup is impossible as Ian's been working exclusively with the Rolling Stones, not to mention the fact that he's married to Keith Moon's ex, who is responsible now for Keith's estate;! a sticky situation to be avoided at all costs.

The umpteenth production of Tommy is currently being staged at London's West End Theatre, with one special twist: Pete Townshend has been working with orchestral arranger Bill Conjnors, attempting to update the show, to the extent of putting some of the tunes to a reggae beat. Specific staging notes are also being compiled by Townshend, which he hopes to have published next year. No more groping for the proper balance of tragedy and comedy—Pistol Pete wants ,it down in black and white for all the world to see.

As for the silver screen, The Kids Are Alright movie and soundtrack LP should be Out this spring (although the band is still shopping for a U.S. distribution deal). The film was basically complete before Moon's death and has not been altered; in fact, Keith saw the final cuts and was very pleased with them. One segment in particular promises to be a real tearjerker—a sequence entitled "LongLive Rock" features Moon almost exclusively. The other Who film project/ Quadrophenia, is just about in the can and should be released (again, with an accompanying soundtrack album) in August or September so as not to conflict with TKAA. Since Moon's death, a few more sPngs have been added to the soundtrack; "Joker James," which was written for the original LP but dropped during final mixes, and "Get Out, Stay Out", which is a brand new tune. Some of the other songs have been recut with Kenny Jones on drums and Crawler's Rabbit Brundrick on keyboards.

KIDS DO THE DARNDEST THINGS

The rock world wai shocked and stunnod recently by the senseless bloodshed which marred a benefit concert for Malnourished Hyper*, Thyroidic Children. A group of giant Amazon school kids, who had been specially flown in for the event, became agitated at the sight of Rod Stewart's hair and went berserk. After devouring Stewart, the hungry curtain climbers pigged out on Andy Gibb, Kris Kristofferson, 14 roadies, $450,000 wdrth of musical equipment and the entire U.N. delegation from Bulgaria. Father Friday O'Halloran, who was chaperoning the children at the time, claims the violence erupted when Andy Gibb sang "Shadow Dancing" which, in Nigeria's native tongue, means "Singers with orange hair taste likeStarburst Fruit Chews." (Next Month: The end of civilization as we know it.)

Roger Daltrey1 has a solo album on MCA due out this summer, which will include a number of Steve' Gibbons songs. He's also working on a film about the life of criminal John McVicar, which should be ready early next year. Townshend is composing the music for said film and has also landed a three-album solo contract with Atco records, though Allah only knows when he finds time to visit the men's room with his schedule . . .

So, until the bombs fall (Russia's or China's or the Who's), keep your ,eyes on the sky and your ear tuned to this station. Much more to come . . . if we live . . .

Cathy Gisi

It Could've Been The Faucet

SAN JOSE— This month'^ award for tightest situation gotten into goes to) an un7 identified local man who accidentally clamped a heavy-duty padlock around his genitals.

"He was quite uncomfortably," understated Fire Captain Ron Sessions, whose men were called qpon to unlock the gentleman's dirty secret. The courageous fire-' men tried everything except butter to remove the jammed lock and finally ) had to resort to bolt cutters to hack through the metal.

The question our viewing audience most wants answered now is why did the dummy put the lock there in the first place? "Didn't ask," said the useless captain.

Maybe the guy thought all nuts should be locked up.

Rick Johnson

Smokin' Chokin' Heavy On The Croakin'

NORTH CAROLINA -Greetings from the tobacco belt where the Surgeon General's . latest report has whipped everyone into a frenzy comparable to the Wall Street Crash of '29. The word from the top is officially Bad News: SMOKING CIGARETTES IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU SO YOU GOT TO QUIT OR YOU GONNA DIE. Not that I've seen any tobacco crops being plowed under but paranoia definitely reigns among nicotine addicts huddled on street corners in fear for their lives as self-styled Anti-Smoking Vigilantes cruise the alleys in* Jeep Halftracks ready to crush their butt$ into cancerous oblivion ..

I'm sitting in a smoke-filled room at the. Sir Walter Raleigh Medical Center where a laboratory rat (nicknamed "Rat") has been smoking two packs1 a dqy for the last five years—'■according to specialists the rat doesn't have much longer to go and in fact at this very moment he's rolled over on his back and started twitching. Although the rodent has always answered interviewers with an official "No comment," I got one question in before he kicked off: "Why did you start?"

"Because it made me look cool," he gasped, "and because all my friends were doing it . . . well really because I wanted to look like Humphrey Bogart. GAAAHHKKK." (Bogie as you know was the spiritual leader of a group known as the Hollywood Rat Pack— he also died of cancer.)

According to the Generalissimo, the worst problem group everyone is worrying about is the national supply of teenage girls who are currently smoking like a California brush fire. Although they're easy to find (traveling in packs, natch, and leaving trails of crumpled Menthol Longs), they're hard to catch, and some sources claim they are brainwashed by their own philosophy called Solipsism which means they can't listen to a word anybody else says. So they go right on char-coaling their lungs, safe in the knowledge that they're protected by the Mann Act and can't be kidnapped and reprogrammed back to their lost state of innocence. Another natural resource threatened with extinction by pollution.

BUT HE WAS COOL ...

What can be done?!? Although no less a celebrity than James Earl Carter made it clear (at a local rally) that the aim is to "make cigarette smoking even safer than it is today," this is not enough. More people than ever are hooked on the evil, evil weed and would sell their grannies to the Arabs for a pack of Luckies. I know I would. The only solution is to kick the habit.

There are any number of ways to quit. The best is to do it cold turkey, also known as the Triumph of the Will Method. You lock yourself in an empty room (away from matches and sharp objects so you don't cut your toes off and light 'em up) and when you come down off the walls you know you're cured. Takes about;three weeks. A less drastic effort can be made by shelling out a few bucks for some of those little filter* tips tl^at gradually cut down on the tar and nicotine. Only problem is that they make you look like a real twit unless you're over forty, in which case you look like a total creep. Let's face it, you don't quit junk by shaving your intake—that's why low tar smokes don't do any good either, like cutting your stash with drain cleaner. IT'S GOT TO BE THE BIG FIX OR NOTHING.

ROLLING WITH THE CHANGES

Sine* Steve Jones' tearful tale of the Amanda Lear tryst in last month's Backstope section, he has undergone extensive Jorge and Yortuk Festrunk social rehabilitation and is proud to announce he's BACK IN ACTION! "Hey, so what if life dealt me a bad hand?" ohilosophized Steverino on his first post*therapy date. "At least I'm still playing with a full deck I And with these birds, 'looks like I got me four queen? and a

Ioker I It's no skin off my cheek i" (Next month: Steve takes dutch cap off its head.)

Okay, so you can go to Respiratory Therapy where they hang you up by the feet and beat on your chest with rubber hoses until you hack but all the crap that's festering in your lungs and you never want to see another cigarette, or you can try Behavior Modification. Here's how it works: First you get a big jar and fill it With all your ground-out butts. When v you're ready to kick cold, you fill the jar with water. Then whenever' you feel a nicotine fit coming on, you open the jar and take a big long sniff. Suddenly you're great fun at parties, because every time you smell cigarette smoke your greatest and only desire in life is to puke all over the place.y

Finally there's the Jamaican method, which is simple, pleasant, ©f questionable le^ gality (thus exciting) ' and sombwhatexpensive if you're a heavy smoker . Just light up a spliff instead of a cancer stick. Not recommended by the AMA, however—depends on your concept of "the lesser of two evils". Also on how you like being constantly spaced.

What, me quit? Naaaah. I'm a Rock 'n' Roll Suicide.

Scott ("Blow Some My Way") Savage

5 YEARS AGO

McCartney's Fear Off Frying *

Paul McCartney and Wings didn't win any popularity contests during their recent performances and recording session in Lagos, Nigeria. Not only did the public have no idea who they were, but Paul lost all the African musicians at his recording session when he sat down and banged on their conga drums spewing wisecracks about jungle life (Q. Why did the spearchucker cross the road? A. That was no spearchucker that was Sammy Davis, Jr.) .u The musicians felt this was a slur on their cultural heritage. Meanwhile, a local sanitation worker named Idi Amin . . .

Metallic J.C.'s Consciousness-Raising Wrap Session

TURIN, ITAL'Y-In a surprise announcement this week, it was revealed that the so-called "Shroud of Turin", long believed to be the cloth in which JeSus was wrapped after his Crucifixion, is actually a relic of America's own Iggy Pop, a rock 'n' roll performer originally from Michigan-.

Under intensive study the past six months by an international community of scientists and scholars especially assembled in Turin for the purpose, the Shroud has now proved to date only from ^974 A.D., rather than 33 A.D., as previously believed. It is now thought that IggyPop was wrapped in the doth by his roadies, following the last public performances of his "Stooges" rock group, at the Michigan Palace in Detroit, in June 1974.

Pop, apparently something of a masochist, was liberally pelted with ice cubes and broken glass by his farts during that performance, and these missiles apparently accounted for the many bruises, bloodstains, and scourge marks left on the cloth^ Pop's more rabid partisans claim that the unearthly photographic image of a young man fused into the cloth was imprinted there by „Pop's well-known magnetic fstage presence.

§ In another surprise anIJnouncement, from London, s actor-musician David Bowie I explained the lack of a navel on the Shroud image, a problem which has long baffled scientists, and which has been embraced by faithful Christians as proof of Jesus' divine birth. In a copyrighted interview with New Musical Express, Bowie admitted that he had had Pop's navel airbrushed away, in Berlin in 1973, in armove to make the unabashedly punk Pop more accessible to a wider audience of music fans.

Credit for . the breakthrough in the discovery of the true origin of the Shroud has been ascribed to one Bub Soda, another Michigan rock musician, who was visiting I Turin's record shops in a search for obscure Domenico Mudugno B-sides, and became interested in the | Shroud investigation. Soda noted'that the corner of the Shroud bore a familiar inscription —"Silco Linen Rental, Royal Oak, Michigan" —long dismissed by the scientific community as an undecipherable Hebrew anagram. "Holy moly flying saucers rock 'n' roll!" commented Soda, interviewed yesterday . "Us cool dories in Brown stone Fellatio^Pways used Silco towels after our Dee-troit shows. Really soaked up the ol' rockabilly secretions! Once I saw that Silco logo, and the X-ray impression of that famous nekkid body, I knew the cloth had to be the Ig's!"

Iggy Pop himself, contacted about the discovery while skateboarding on the Santa Monifca Freeway in Los Angeles\ reportedly remarked, "Jesus?!? Who the hell's that? Tell David I ain't workin' with no more nonMichigan musicians!"

Richard Riegel