I couldn’t believe it when they shook me down at the door of the Grande. A cop insensitively feeling my pants. It didn’t exactly make me feel welcome. They said they were looking for booze and weapons. What! It seems our psychedelic love-hall has turned into a greasy high school drink arena.
The MC 5 came on, though, and I got under the strobe light and just grooooved. They turned on waves of love-energy onto the people, who I hope were listening to the music. It’s too bad the hippy population here can’t support a showcase for good sounds where people could feel safe to go and get out of their minds. It can’t happen soon enough.
John Hammond at the Living End had a pick up bass player and drummer with him… He’s got a lot of blues, only he never fools you with that something extra that makes it better than the expected. He didn’t change those three chords around enough for my mind, and one tune began fading into being the next one and I only vaguely remember him ever stopping and starting new songs.
I passed off Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground record the first time I listened to it as being “campy” garbage. Since then I’ve ‘heard’ it for the first time and I think its beautiful. The sounds they’re scratching out aren’t just noise, and stuff like “Femme Fatale” and “I’ll be Your Mirror” are just not like anything else I’ve heard before. Even if they are all junkies, and “lesbian-dwarfs” and everything “evil?” in the world, their music just shows that beauty isn’t limited to only one kind of head. I’M hooked on it.
Bert Jansch, who up to now has been known only thru his influence on Donovan, has an album of his own out called LUCKY THIRTEEN. His acoustical guitar is a pleasant change from the electronic sizzle. The instrumentals are a new mixture of different types of music.
Another quiet, and hip album is Tim Hardin’s. He sounds a lot like Sebastian (who also plays harp on the record) and I Know that a lot of his material is just waiting to be transformed with a few gimmicks into hit records. Schmuck Darin did it with “Carpenter.”
I went to the Lovin’ Spoonful concert in Ann Arbor and didn’t let the bust story (see last issue) keep me from enjoying some of the smoothest, and best rock sounds I’ve ever heard. They really got into some songs improvising. and listening to each other push the vibrations further and more intensely into my head.
I guess I was surprised to find that the group was more than just John Sebastian. The drummer is the energy force that projects instruments and took turns singing.
During intermission I went back stage to talk to them and got caught in the rush of people all converging upon each other nervously. I knew right then that I wasn’t going to get the chance to just relax, and with no pressure ask them about the story in last week’s FIFTH ESTATE. I keep saying that it might not be true.
Inside the dressing room, they looked like animals in a zoo, every one gawking and reaching out to touch them. I could see they weren’t paying attention to any of the bull shit thrown at them. After awhile, though, the scene got less dense, and the drummer who I dug most on stage, was standing by himself and I asked him about the “dope” of the bust story. He nodded in confirmation of my words but would only say that he couldn’t say anything about it, that their lawyer would be making a statement to the press very shortly.
He wouldn’t say any more about it except to have me ask Steve and Zal, who answered too quickly that it was a vicious lie perpetrated by the narcotics people. I felt kinda stupid being caught up in such a forward kind of change. So I went back out and listened to the last half of the concert, and relaxed and dug their music. If they did do IT, its on their consciences not mine. I couldn’t see the point of not enjoying the sounds because two of them may be hippie “cop” outs.