THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Mickey Hart’s Rhythmic Apocalypse

“I watched a snail crawl across the edge of a straight razor... that is my dream; that is my nightmare. To crawl across the edge of a straight razor...and survive.”

—Marlon “Two-Tub Man” Brando as Col. Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

CLARKSTON, MI-“Hey, look —I lived with that movie,” said Mickey Hart, percussionist of the Grateful Dead and the Rhythm Devils, the group that supplied Francis Ford Coppola with the necessary abstract soundtrack for the controversial film Apocalypse Now.

“It got me. It got Francis; it ‘Kurtzed’ him, and it ‘Kurtzed’ me too. All of a sudden I woke up in the morning crying and I didn’t know why. There is something really immoral about Apocalypse Now...something really .wrong. Francis wasn’t trying to be pretty, he was trying to answer a moral question. He wasn’t trying to entertain. It’s a monumental work, it stands absolutely above everything else. And it’s not because I worked on it; it’s nothing but history to me. Francis didn’t even need a soundtrack, it was so vivid... and offensive. It was a totally offensive movie. Visually and aurally it was a delicacy...”

Wondering how Coppola came about choosing the Rhythm Devils for the Apocalypse Now soundtrack? There are a few things one must consider— Coppola’s production company, Omni Zoetrope, is based in San “Wear some flowers in-a your hair” Francisco, as are the J Grateful Dead. Two: Coppola¶ could pass, off as a Deadhead anywhere in the U.S., just because of the way he looks. OK, there are many dopes-withbeards who don’t like the Dead, but it’s just too obvious to ignore. Well, Mickey, just how did you manage to get involved with such an inspired eccentric as Francis Ford Coppola?

“I first got involved with Francis when he came down to see the Rhythm Devils at the Winterland way back when. We were playing...just sort of drifting like we always do. He was sitting on the riser by the side of the stage, and I thought to myself, ‘That guy looks familiar.’ I didn’t quite recognize him. He was bopping to the music, jumping up and down. I looked over again and said, ‘That’s Francis Ford Coppola!’ So I said, ‘Hey Francis, you do gre it work.’ And he said ‘So do you!’ Great! Wonderful! Outtasight! I threw him a tambourine and he starts jingling it, and his whole family’s there. Francis got off on it, and we said hello to each other afterwards, then he went home. Time passed, and he calls and says he wants me to see a movie. I go down to his place and he puts me in a little ■ screening room and I saw a movie.”

Principal shooting for the movie began in March 1976. Many problems plagued Coppola; typhoons, heart attacks (Martin Sheen only), tropical diseases, Marlon Brando, and no cooperation from the American government in securing much-needed military equips ment caused the film’s release to | be delayed until August 1979. I That’s a long time between | production and release by anyc one’s standards. What year did | the Rhythm Devils begin to work on the soundtrack?

“Oh maaan, don’t talk to me about years. I can’t remember.”

Gee, I’m sorry. Was the print you saw the commercial release?

“Nooo, it wasn’t edited yet, at least it wasn’t the commercial release. The version I saw started with the Robert Duvall/ air cavalry sequence. It was like the middle of the movie, then it went back to the beginning of the movie; it jumped arouhcL I had some popcorn, and me and my dog watched the movie. After the last reel was finished, Francis asked me to make the movie sound like the Rhythm Detfils. I said, ‘OK, I’ll talk to you in a week.’

“I started thinking about it. I went to into the movie with, a pad and pencil. About 10 minutes into the film I realized I didn’t need notes, I could remember the movie forever. I’d know exactly what to do where. The movie scared me in a personal way. It scared me— whether I was up to doing it of not. My three conditions for doing the soundtrack were 1) Francis had to tell me what exactly the movie was, sceneby-scene. 2) I wouldn’t answer to his lieutenants, only Francis. 3) He had to mess around with us to get the proper feel for the film. He agreed to all three, and I said ‘Let’s get on with it.’ ” Did Coppola describe exactly the sound he Wanted? -

“What he said is that he wanted the movie not to be done scene-by-scene; he wanted a performance of the movie. He wanted me to actually perform tjie movie from beginning to end. He wanted the reels to keep rolling and me to keep performing because he wanted a flow of consciousness. He wanted the music to re-represent the movie, so to speak.

“Then I had to deal with, first of all, the fact that I didn’t have the sounds I thought I needed for the movie. We had to research some of the old primitive instruments which were used in Africa and Brazil and other places which were either decomposed or lost. We couldn’t do the soundtrack with a regular drum set, obviously. You can’t step off the streets and go into the middle of a jungle.”

ROCK GOING TO THE DOGS?

We knew the recession was making things tough for the music biz, but how cbuld we have predicted .thisT As record sales and concert attendance plummet, smartrockers Ian Hunter. Ted Nugent and the Wilson sisters , cultivate a brand new .audience guaranteed to howl with delight I ^Comments Ian "Dog-head" Hun=2 ter: "Next time sbmeone writes ^that my career is ‘going to the dogs/ I'll b* laughing all the way to the bank I" But is he just trying to be funny? "No wav I" barks Ted Nugent, whose well-known forays into feedback-land have been interesting dogs for over 15 years now. “Who else is gonna buy my records? Hey, look, I've been boning up on this! I" Such sentiments echo those of Heart's Ann Wilson, famed throughout the animal kingdom for her tremendous flute-playing prowess I Pointing to a bulging file , of positive reviews from publications as diverse as Cat Fancy, Dog World and Ducks Unlimited, Ann chirped: “Can the Fabulous Poodt les top this?”

How did you go about building these instruments?

“First of all, I’ve been a drummer for over 20 years. I read books, I’m an ethnomusicologist, if you would. I’m aware of what instruments do in a medicine sense of the word. You gotta remember, to conjure the image, to conjure the spirit, the drum was used.

“When the Tibetan holy-man brought a confused man, an insane man, into a cave and sounded the drum, that was the sound to call on the spirits. They were called, he was faced with it, then the spirit was driven away. That’s what happened all through history. Apocalypse Now was no different. We had to call on the spirit.

“The instruments used in the Rhythm Devils Play River Music came from the past, some of them were in museums in Copenhagen, and for Christ’s sake, you can’t just go and take them. We researched what the instruments were, and went to find the materials and built them* We built instruments of the future. We rolled our own steel for our big membrane drums like the Beast, which was used for the air strike sequence at the end of the movie. All the sound for the explosions on the film were done with percussion instruments, including the na-, palm sequences.

“What you hear on the Rhythm Devils Play River Music is not the soundtrack to the movie, it’s a performance which was gleaned into the movie. It was a total performance which I. cut up to make it more digestible. One performance in one day was all it took to lay the basic tracks.”

The soundtrack to Apocalypse Now is sheer delight for the ears, as is the Rhythm Devils Play River Music. Each LP is a classic in its own right. Considering the line-up of the Rhythm Devils, which includes heavies suth as Deadmen Billy Kreutzmann and Phil Lesh; Brazilian percussionist Airto Moriera, Juilliard graduate Mike Hinton, and other luminaries, it’s not hard to comprehend.

As a parting shot, Mickey Hart had this to say: “The thing that most interested me in retrospect was how far into something you can get without knowing. The most important thing that caijne out of the whole bag, aside from the music, was the recognition of the force. How big what Francis created was, and how it could affect you. It was effectual beyond your dreams. That’s why the fnovie’s so strong.”

Mark J. Norton

PLASTIC SURGEON RUNS AMOK II

Doesn't this group of womon look...well, slightly odd? Everybody knows you can't got Debbie Harry, a Slit, Slouxio Sioux, Paulino Black, Poly Styrono and Chrissio Hyndo in the samo room togothor without something happening 1 Rlght-O, pal, which Is one reason famed mist Berlin plastic surgeon Eeao Montmartre is a certified millionaire these days I "My plan," the German surgeon confided, “Is simple: first we find ze ugliest rock V rollers we can. Helps Jf zey are successful—zen zey can pay ze bills. Zen I change zem into ze good people, ze 'interesting looking' rockers who get all ze press coverage. Zen zey become even more rich and successful I" Shown above, therefore, is the "new look" of American rockers Kansas I "Of course ve sometimes have to change other things too, you know,” the doctor beamed, "but as I told zem before zey went under ze knife: Zey cannot go through life playing 'Carry On My Wayward Son' wlzzout, um, dealin mlt do consequences I "Next Issue: The New Meat Loaf I.

No Plum With Phonolog

MACOMB, IL—Working in a record store can be remarkably boring. Writing down catalog numbers and pressing buttons on the cash register is all right-, but stuff like making change, pointing at the Joel Billy section and brushing cancer dust off your shoes can really get to a person, not to mention the multiple shrink wrap lacerations.

When business is slow and this record clerk finds his thoughts drifting to the lack of j disposable income available during a recession, I like to browse through our Phonolog. The “Big Ph,” as we say in The Biz, is a monstrous loose-leaf catalog containing listings of the artist, label, title and individual tracks on every record in print. That’s right, they’re all there— singles, LPs, EPs, teepees, you name it—in a huge binder about a yard wide and two drinks short (drum roll).,

Other than your everyday Aerosmith, there are some rather interesting records available to the enlightened consumer. Charles O. Mather’s popular Dental Materials (Keith), for example, or Murut Music From Borneo (Folkways), featuring that zany “Murut Sound.”

It’s not all phun ’n’ games, though. The more serious' listener will undoubtedly want to seek out spoken word classics like Salesmanship Through Hypnosis (Dr. Ahlehim/ Knight), Herbert Philbuck’s Cybernetic Warfare (with the beloved “Lecture On Soviet Propaganda”) or one of my own personal favorites, Speech After RemobalQf Larynx, by good oP Harim Drosti. Sorry! Lyrics not included!

Want to lighten things up at your next civil disturbance? Alshire’s Tap Dance Practice

Record should get things hopping! You might even want to stack it with the Caribbean sounds of Don’t Touch Me Tomato (Requisite), some Slavic Gusle Music Of The Seventh Century (Olympic), the everpopular Weiner Studenten Choir (includes the hit, “Dorfmusik”) and the crowd-pleasing Do The Hula (Waikino) , which includes over 400 color illustrations!

Then , of course, there are the standards. The late lame Walter Brennan’s Meet The Mess is still available on Key, as well as Your Passwofd Is Entertainment by Allen Ludden (recently featured on The David Letterman Show) and Lumbering Songs Of Ontario (Folkways). No, they’re not about trees. It’s the songs themselves that lumber.

But the single album I would most want to have with me on my desert island has got to be one of Steno-Disc’s epochal Dictation Practice Record series. Picking out which one is a tuffy, but the 210-220-230-240 WPM (Words Per Minute) collection of readings from Congressional Record is probably my very favorite.

Well, either that or The Three Young Men From Montana (Columbia). Not Idaho, not Utah, not Manitoba, mind you but Montana! Wait’ll you hear their sparkling rendition of “What Did Delaware?”

Rick Johnson

5 YEARS AGO

Let It Bleed

And in Oakland, California, a superior court ruled that a $690,000 damage suit against Mick (PaSS®* stemming from property damage at 1969’s ihfamous Altamont concert should be dropped. Immediately after his court appearance, a noticeably relieved dagger reportedly jetted back to Los Angeles where sources say the Stones are cutting two more songs and finishing up the editing and dubbing on -the album’s worth of material they recorded in Munich and Amsterdam earlier in the year. The new Stones LP might even see release by the end of this month.

What The World Needs Now Is ...Chu-Bops?

CHICAGO—Sitting there on the counter of your local record .store or candy outlet, they look like a display of teeny-tiny record albums. Upon spotting the perfect, two-inch-by-twoinch reproductions of hit LPs such as Get The Knack and Permanent Wave, the bemuseed/disgusted customer inevita-' bly must inquire: Are there real records inside?

Of course not, candyass! Inside the miniature reverseUnipak coyer is a bubble gum disc with actual grooves stamped on the front and a genuine hole in the middle. Plus the lyrics to whatever hit tune is on the album and a little coupon you can send in (with two bucks) and receive a Chu-Bops Collectors’ Display Album for your Barbie welfare hovel.

Marketed by a division of the Wrigley Co.»=— the folks that bring you Juicy Fruit and'the crummiest baseball team in the National League—the compact chewables carry a list price of 35£. Not only are they frankly adorable, but the gum is real good too. Not unlike baseball card gum, in fact, except when you pop a bubble, you get a couple of chords of “Does Your Mother Know” or the first four bars of the guitar solo from “My Sharona.”

The technological geniuses over ar Wrigley’s (“Ah hell, we’ll cure cancer next week”) are planning an entire series of the petite but lively platters, with upcoming releases to include Blondie, Kiss, Judas Priest and Southside Johnny, among others. And should they really catch on—and why not, they’re easily the most important invention since the rubber brain— who knoy/s where it will end? Double sets? Free enclosed EPs? The complete works of Bach?

Of course, you’re probably asking yourself right now— what about defects? We’ll let you know as soon as you can find a little chocolate turntable to play’em on. -

Rick Johnson

A Hard Act To Swallow

NANCY, FRANCE—All of you snails among our readership can now rest easily: Marc Quinquandon is dead.

Quinquandon, the world’s snail-eating champion, died in a local hospital after downing 72 snails in three minutes at ap exhibition performance. Old mussel-mouth was in training to beat his own record of 144 snails in 11 minutes, set last July.

Hospital officials listed “traumatic indigestion” as the cause of death, although kamakaze snails bearing poison tipped antennae have not been ruled out.

Rick Johnson