The Detroit Love-In, to be held on Belle Isle April 30th, will be the first large-scale manifestation of the New Spirit of Detroit, and everyone who feels that spirit and believes in it, and everyone who doubts it or would deny it, should be there to make it public once and for all.
Other events scheduled for the Trans-Love weekend include a tree dance/concert Friday night in the Mart Room at WSU (on the second floor of Mackenzie Hall, Cass and Putnam), with the great Seventh Seal donating their music and energy for their people. Everyone is welcome. On Saturday night, the 29th, Trans-Love will sponsor a huge music explosion in the Community Arts Auditorium, Cass and Kirby, on the Wayne campus.
Cornetist Charles Moore will organize and direct a mammoth “jazz” band, the Detroit – Chicago Energy Ensemble, which will include all the forward musicians in Detroit and a delegation from Chicago including the Joseph Jarman Quartet and hopefully the Roscoe Mitchell Unit. There will be over 20 musicians performing as one band to burn the message of love into your cells. The two sets of music will be bridged by a contextual poetry reading from your correspondent. The auditorium holds 600 people, and all the seats should be filled. The Magic Veil Light Company, with Jerry Younkins and Ron Anarchy in charge, will cover the walls with color and light for your eyes only, and the music will fill the room.
Also scheduled for the 28th of April is a “Jazz Psychedelic” happening at Cranbrook School, 550 Lone Pine Road, in Cranbrook. Featured will be the Charles Moore group, the Joseph Jarman Quartet, and the dangerous MC-5, with lights by the Magic Veil. Titled “Blow Your Mind—a Nite for all your senses,” the concert / dance was arranged by the Cranbrook Jazz Society under the direction of faculty member Dave Lundin, who brought the new music to Ann Arbor while a student at the University of Michigan and has continued to spread the gospel since he’s been teaching at the Cranbrook School. You can get there by taking Woodward Avenue out through Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills to Lone Pine Road—turn left and travel down to the Cranbrook Auditorium. Tickets will be available there at $3.25—$2.50 for students.
If you want to go and need a ride, call Trans-Love Airways, 831-6840, who will try to coordinate transportation to Cranbrook.
Uncle Russ will present a benefit dance / concert for TLE at the Grande Ballroom on Sunday, April 23, from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m. Music by the MC-5, Billie C. and the Sunshine, and the Back & Back Boo Funny Music Band, the most exciting young non-plastic rock band this music-freak has heard in Detroit yet. Lights by the High Society, and a poetry reading by Jerry Younkins and myself. Tickets are going out at $2.00 a single, $3.00 for couples, and the money goes to help Trans-Love help you.
Past events: The Fugs tore up the Community Arts Auditorium last Thursday with an exciting funny concert and a spirit of freedom and love that turned everyone on. Their new record, THE FUGS EAT IT, will be out soon on Atlantic Records—scare it up! They’re doing a lot of new material and have a new musical attack that gives their fearless songs new meat and energy. Thanks to Joe Fineman and Mike Kerman of the WSU Friday Night Coordinating Committee for bringing them in—it was a real pleasure.
The Fugs also performed in Ann Arbor the 7th and returned to Detroit to spend the day on Saturday, ending up with a really freaky sit-in performance at the Grande, where Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver and Jeff Outlaw, the Fugs who had stayed over, joined the Rationals for a long “Horny Blues,” improvised by Sanders on the spot.
The Detroit Jazz Conference was pretty weird -word came at the last minute from Cecil Taylor, the featured guest musician, that he had sprained his arm and couldn’t make it, so the Joseph Jarman Quartet was brought over from Chicago to fill in for the missing genius. The Jarman group announced that they had been scheduled to perform at an anti-napalm rally in Chicago and were sorry to have to miss it, and performed one of Jarman’s anti-imperialist guerrilla lovefare pieces for the “jazz fans” at the WSU-sponsored Conference. Sunday afternoon the band did Jarman’s “Requiem for the Steppenwolf” and turned everyone around.
Sunday night the Charles Moore Ensemble followed the Detroit beef-stew contingents and dumbfounded Conference participants by incorporating the American flag, flown proudly in front of the stage, into their piece. Charles Moore, emerging from backstage with a pair of mallets, tripped over the flagstand and ended up kicking it around, throwing it to the ground, and stamping on it. Applause from the audience, led by FIFTH ESTATE columnist Frank Kofsky, stirred some of the more patriotic “jazz fans” to action, and a portly middle-aged gentleman was seen to have ascended to the stage area to pick the flag up and restore it to its former upright position, frowning deeply.
Late flash: The SUN is out. Pick up your copy today. See you at the Love-In. I’ll bring you a flower, so you won’t be afraid.