THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

How To Pick Up Girls At Bookie's Club 870

DETROIT—Womanizing, the oldest sport known to man, has been researched and discussed to disgust by everyone from Masters and Jonnson to Ann Landers. The only real conclusion they have come to is that no matter which way you look at it, once you're past the hair and the smell, you've got it licked.

Here in Detroit the theory is the same; only the mode is different. In other parts of the country, it's dinner and a movie. In Detroit, it's simply Search and Destroy. Our Fair Ladies of Bookie's Club 870 play by their own rules, those being none. So here's CREEM's guide to picking up girls at Bookie's Club 870. Just remember—at Bookie's, no one can hear you scream.

Alright troops! Listen up! Each one of you, go to the store and pick up two quarts of your favorite brew, and if you are a real man, a bottle of MD 20/20. Qet your cohorts situated in one spot and turn on the stereo, the television and the vacuum cleaner (preferably a Hoover). Everyone ririust be cruising from the boozing before you get there.

Once you're there, and are inside, go directly downstairs to the men's room. In most cases, you'll have to anyway because of your engorged bladder.

After you water your horse, take your crew into the adjoining room, the Girl's John. (Yes, Bookie's dump rooms are bisexual) . Check out the tuna, but only for a moment, then proceed upstairs to "Buy yourself a drink."

At this crucial point, find the best-looking female you can. If a group from England is playing that no one has ever heard of and the cover is $7.00, it won't be hard. Exchange names, then drop your cigarettes, and crouch down to pick them (never bend over in Bookie's—there might be a bunsplitter lurking). When you go to pick them up, check her genital area for bulges, because sometimes you can find yourself talking to a very pretty boy.

Once you're sure you're talking to a real girl, ask to buy her a drink. When you go to open your wallet, make sure your money is elsewhere. Then exclaim loudly, "You'll have to buy this one." If they are as dumb as they look, they will. If they don't, walk away quickly without explanation, as none is necessary. Remember—the less money you spend on them, the more you can piss away on yourself.

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Always keep moving. The more you circulate, the wider the choice. Drink heavily to avoid suspicion. When drunk, you can elbow their melons and make suggestive statements like "Let's play hide the salami" without feeling uncomfortable. If they are repulsed by such common fare as this, go buy yourself another drink.

About 15 minutes before last call, the hunt starts in earnest. You should be so shitfaced by this point, you won't mind if the girl's breath smells like cat squat and she has the shape of a pregnant hippo. Merely ask if she'll drive you home as your car just happened to have a leaking canooten valve. Voila!

Sometimes it's not this easy. If you've struck out repeatedly, try these sure-fire tricks:

1. Tell her you are in a group. Make up a name for it, describe the music and tell her how everyone says you're "going to be the next Romantics...or the Blind."

2. Tell her you are dying of cancer. This will usually bring out the maternal instinct, or at least she'll laugh.

3. Tell her you have no food at home. See "2."

4. Tell her you write for the local fanzine, White Noise. The mere mention of this should have her dripping with excitement, unless she's already spent a night with the editor, Paul.

5. Ask her if she wants to go back to your place and "do some blow." Haha.

6. Promise her a night at Lili's in Hamtramck where all the Detroit Stars congregate. (Use this only in extreme cases, as you wouldn't want to embarrass yourself in front of your peers.)

You've scored now, you're done. You've bungled in the jungle 'til daylight and you wish she'd just roll over and turn into a roast beef sandwich and a sixpack of Stroh's. What are you going to do?

Here's some suggestions:

1. Say to her "I'm sure glad I had my first and only hetero experience with you..."

2. "My maid will be here at seven o'clock..."

3. "Boy, we better get you home. Your parents must be worried sick."

4. "Oh damn it! I told my mother I would pick up milk for breakfast..."

5. "I left my Laetrile at home..."

6. "Where's my shoes?" (recommended)

Now wasn't that easy? You bet. Rule of thumb: never let them stay past noon, and if they do, be a little firmer. E.g.; "I have better things to do with my time than..." or, "Don't you have a home?", or "Shit, you didn't look like a pock-marked spaniel last night. Yeeech." All these are recommended for problem cases.

One final note: If they ask you for the proverbial "Kiss me where it stinks," tell them you are conserving gas and can't drive them to Toledo.

Mark J. Norton

THE BEAT GOES ON

Punks Just Keep Getting Harder To Find

MIDDLETOWN, OHIO-As the car clanks over the first peak of the Screaming Eagle rollercoaster, poised to begin its exhilarating hurtle downward, I have just one thought: "Hang on to your glasses, boy! It'd never do to meet Paul Revere half-blind! He probably gets enough cripples to bless as it is, scouring the Mid-American outback on these amusement park tours!"

The strange twists and shouts of r6ck 'n' roll fate have brought me and Paul Revere together here at Americana, an immaculate family park just above Cincinnati. As a journalist of sorts, I'm ostensibly hounding Revere for the standard "After the New Wears Off: 20 Million M,iles on a 1958 Punk Rocker" consumer report, but in league with my spouse, who used to cut her college classes to watch Where The Action Is, we also hope to convey to Revere our gratitude for past and present rock 'n' roll favors.

Lost in a reverie over the ponderousness of my rockcritical mission, I'm jolted awake when we suddenly encounter Paul Revere himself, blond beach-boy hairdo and black tights and boots intact after so many epochs, wandering among the picnic tables outside his dressing room. It's the Man Who Sold 50 Million Records, the Man Who Made 720 Network Television Appearances, and nobody but us seems to have noticed him.

Revere is friendly and open to our attention at once, if somewhat mystified by these strangers' gushing praise of "Just Like Me" as a classic rock 'n' roll song. Paul retrieves his Merit filters from the trunk of his rented Pontiac Bonneville sedan (the kind of American iron Dick Clark would still be proud to see his protege drive), and we sit down at a picnic table to discuss the eternal Biz.

Paul explains how he retired from music in 1976, as he was already making a living from real-estate investments, and felt that it was time to start acting like a "grown man-." Maturity and its condominiums proved to possess somewhat less panache than playing rock 'n' roll, however, and Revere returned to the road after a couple years' layoff.

The reconstituted Raiders spend much of the year in residence in the various Harrah's clubs in Nevada ("Harrah's knows how to treat a performer," claims Paul), but like to tour the U.S.A. by amusement parks during the summers. At venues like Six Flags or Americana, the Raiders capitalize on rock 'n' roll nostalgia's steady incursion into the music and the fans of the 1960's (people 25-35, tied down with kids, nights out rare, reads the depressingly real demographic). Paul Revere, it happens, is the only surviving Raider from the band's 60's glory days, heartthrob Mark Lindsay having departed around 1973 to do A&R for United Artists Records (though Lindsay recently got bounced, when Capitol absorbed U. A.).

As we get by these biographical staples, and I start expounding on the virtues of "punk," I begin to notice that Revere and I have radically different philosophies of rock 'n' roll, even though we're only about five years apart in age, as we got aboard the r'n'r rollercoaster on opposite sides of the Beatles' helix. Revere appears, this evening, to have little concept of rock 'n' roll music as an art form in itself; having started out in music in the 1950's, Revere seems to have retained his original ideal of rock 'n' roll music as entertainment, show business, fun, period, a limitation that says a lot about both the strengths and weaknesses of the Raiders' music over the years.

FRIPP TAKES K-MART DAY JOB

"All right, lot's got this straight now," now floor managor Robort Fripp barkod at anxious K-Mart shoppors. "Whan tho blue light goos on In Aislo Fivo, towols and woman's unddrwoar can bo nabbod at half-prlco. Whon tho rod light blinks, all.copids of my nawost IP Exposure must bo brought to tho chock-out countor and Immediately purchasod." Fripp, who pldns to contlnuo moonlighting until 1981, says combination putt-putt golf/aas stations and Sorbian fast-food chains aro noxt on his list. "It's best this way," ho confldod.

As a means of leading into an apology for "hip" rockfans' neglect of the Raiders during Woodstock Nation's birth traumas, I comment, " 'Kicks' really hurt you back in '66—everybody thought you were against drugs..."

"I was, and I still am," declares Paul Revere, emphatically. "People who were for drugs then can thank themselves that a lot of their favorite performers are dead now. Yeah, the record companies had to cater to a lot of idiots back then /' muses Paul Revere, Survivor.

Fair enough, my own sentiments, as a matter of fact, but I'm still perversely tempted to probe beneath the All-American facade Dick Clark mandated for Paul Revere back in 1964.1 ask about former Raiders' publicist (Derek Taylor's comment, in his book As Time Goes By, that Revere had to "peel potatoes-in an asylum for two years of his youth when his religion kept him out of the lousy Marines." As I reel off the quote, Paul's bright blue eyes go as icy azure as the. endless sky floating over his land holdings back in Idaho. "Ah, Derek," Paul recalls fondly, "he always used to babble a lot. He was really funny, with that sick British wit."

Our possible mutual experience of conscientious objection thus gone unacknowledged, Paul and I conclude the interview discussing recording prospects, as the Raiders are going into the studio this fall to do some demos. Again my wife and I are effusive in our assurances of unlimited commercial potential; Revere just wonders how come I "know so much" about the Sonics and Waiters of his Northwest origins.

☆ ☆ ☆

The new, seven-piece Raiders, decked out in the traditional revolutionary-soldier "fruit suits" (Revere's fond term), take the stage precisely at 9:30. Revere presides from his organ keyboard; the case has been customized into the front of a 1958 Edsel, complete with working headlights and turn signals. As the light-spirals of the park rides wheel crazily around them, the Raiders launch into their trademark "Louie, Louie," blessed with that riff-defining honking sax.

The Raiders' 90-minute set turns out to be lively, clever, fast-paced, raunchy and familyoriented at the same time, not to mention unfailingly show business and fun. Where the action is, indeed. The young Raiders are poised, disciplined, very tight musicians, almost ljkesome bizarre honky-tricorn edition of James Brown's old band. New vocalist Louie Fontaine is a tough-voiced chameleon, ready with the whole sound-effects catalogue of vocal styles this type of oldies show demands.

Thankfully, and maybe inevitably, the goofball stage humor that marked Raiders' shows in the 60's has survived; Revere gleefully breaks up any enshrined oldie—even Fontaine's hulking "Burning Love" Kingtribute, a concession to the crowd—with a sight gag razz at the end. The Raiders' own "Indian Reservation," a pompous, late-blooming "protest" anthem, which was also ironically enough their biggest seller ever, winds down at Americana with Paul's windup Indian brave clicking out the dirge on his tinny tomtoms, high atop Revere's keyboard.

The big '65-'67 singles, "Kicks" and "Hungry" and "Good Thing" and "Steppin' Out" (how 'bout them Uncle Sam blues, Paul?) sound tougher than ever in the immediacy of the Americana arena. I'm all set for several more eons of rock 'n' roll; I can't wait until the oldies shows of the 1990's, when I can bring my grandkids back to this park, to see the arthritic Fleetwood Mac hustle the Disneyland crowd.

"Don't you think Louie worked his buns off on that last number?" demands Paul Revere, tossing huge rubber buttocks off the stage. Right, Paul, like you said before, it was straight out of the "anals of rock 'n' roll."

Richard Riegel

DURY SINGS THROUGH HIS EYEBALL

"I'll do anything to crack tho U.S. markat," claims Ian Dury, whosa recent attempt at "oyeballing It" was ballad far and wide as an act of genius.' "I've plenty of ether places to stick my microphone/' Dury grins, "if you know wot I mean/'

(Get) Down With The Ayatollah!

IRAN—Chief Towel Head and self-appointed leader of Islam Incorporated "Be Bop And Ruhollah" Khomeini has come up with another straw to add to the smoldering heap of atrocities piled on his camel's back— namely, he has banned music from the Iranian wavelength. All music. From classical to rock V roll.

Q. Even Devo?

A. Although earlier this year "Jocko Homo" was considered appropriate for the new Iranian National Anthem, (outlining as it does the objective of the Revolutionary Government to "revert to the stone age, or before if that's, possible") yes, even Devo has been banned.

While the senile "holy man" claims that music is "the opium of the people" and that it "stupefies persons listening to it and makes their brain inactive and frivolous," taking them "out of reality to a futile and lowly livelihood," (ask Rod Stewart) sources close to the dog-breathed demigod stated prior to their executions that "too much competition" was the real reason behind the ban. "After all," reasoned one official, while dodging a chunk of concrete, "which would you rather listen to, the yammering of a deranged, slobbering dictator or the new Ted Nugent album?"

Deposed Ugandan Head of State Idi (Slap Yo' Mammy) Amin was unavailable for comment.

Scott Savage

The Snazz That Ate Chocolate City

WASHINGTON, D.C.-On a recent episode of Dinah, worldrenowned futurologist Sonny Kreskin made this seemingly outlandish prediction: "Before the President's term has expired, kids will be bopping to the beat of a rock band called Razz. " His augury drowned in a shower of giggles, Sonny left Shore's studio in a rage, whereupon he was immediately assassinated by an ex-roadie for Chic.

A few months later, the Dean of Soviet rock pundits, Ivan the Terrible, picked Razz's "You Can Run (But You Can't Hide)" as a single to click, ignoring the runaway success of the ironcurtain duo of Steve and Eydie Amin with "Shake Your Groove Wrench." At present, the Siberian winds are rattling poor Ivan's bones.

What else could foster such blind devotion except a band from the nation's capital that playfully exploits what their name abbreviates—the razzledazzle of that almost obsolete razzmatazz, the charm of a viper hustling for keeps.

Razz's sound captures the flammability of that last scene in

White Heat in which mad dog James Cagney goes out in a blast of pyrohysteria. In fact, lead singer Michael Reidy's every move seems patterned after Screenland's toughest runt, like a pint-sized boxer jabbing at chiggers. "I'm like Hawkeye on M*A*S'H," Reidy has said, "always the wiseass."

Like most up-and-coming bands, Razz has a habit of mixing the ridiculous with the macabre (their first record, "C. Redux," was an ode to Charlie Starkweather), but they can be outright funny (as in goony: their record label is O'Rourke, a tribute to Forrest Tucker who played Sgt. Morgan O'Rourke on F Troop). Their ad campaign lampoons a society hanging like a cocked trigger in a hammock of violence: a woman being slashed to ribbons in a shower, a child standing with a smoking revolver in front of a crashed school bus, Elvis Presley being shot from behind.

An AOR rock band was at one time just another hardworking local outfit (Boston's Cars, Chicago's Cheap Trick, L.A.'s Knack, et. al). With the release of a live EP, "Airtime," and a hit single, "You Can Run" ($3.00 Pstpd. from Limp Records, 1327-J Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852), Razz has suddenly become Baltimore/ Washington's equivalent to the Rolling Stones, outselling locally even the current disco Johnny-

jump-ups. Consequently, Razz stands a good chance of becoming fhe next big flash nationwide.

Meanwhile, the rumors are flying that Robbie Eggplant, lead larynx for the Cardboard Blimp, has ordered a fifth column of lice to infiltrate (and bug) Razz's sweat socks during their next recording session. When the competition gets edgy, you know you're on the brink of a grand slam.

Robot A. Hull

5

YEARSAGO

Show & Tell No Go

Decisions, decisions: Viva Magazine asked Rick Spring* field to let it all hang out for a nudie photo spread, but the Aussie had a hard time making up his mind. He eventually nixed the idea, insisting it was not out of shyness, but fear that his stock with the teenage girls would hit an all-time low. (Oh, yeah?!)