Bony Prince Charlie said on TV: *The thing that makes me suspicious about the anarchists is that when they appear, the Press are always there." Same thing happens when the Royals appear, but it makes the Dwarf suspicious of the Press.
GEEWHIZ facts from The Royal Commercial: Prince "Siddown and shuddup" Phil i associated with 16 different flying associations, 30,000 people will see Queen Corky at garden parties this year and the two of them put together shook hands 5,000 times in Chile in 14 days (not with each other). In the course of making the film the BBC/ITV computer lost count of the number of arses kissed.
Cecil Day 'Why do we all/Seeing a Red feel small" Lewis and his Investiture ode published in the Guardian. The Daily Teleeraph Magazine wrote to Dwarf Adrian Mitchell for a bit of his verse thus: let as have some verse on how you see the relationship that exists between the Prince of Wales and the Welsh people? Obviously, it is quite impossible for us to let you have a clear brief, but what we hope to achieve is omething that will in some way reflect the Welsh mood as we see it, or rem an they see it." Mitchell loyally mailed the following dwarf sonnet So The Mag TO CHARLES WINDSOR MOUNTBATTEN Royalty is а пешеонік.
Get well soon.
hell'» manderpiece was rapidly, but politely, declined.
monie was full of surrealist and sinister images. ky's desk. She presses it. There is no explosion. ng to Princess Anne. barking at nothing anyone else." ESPECIALLY THE PEOPLE. the Izvestia version: "Could you, for instance, perform. Is not her motto, I Serve!
BILL: No Fred, I think it is God Save the Queen for race, colour, creed or money.
for her efforts!
bullseyes!!
BILL: Well. well. that is sunrisino! All this led up to the Hard Sell: "The strength of the monarchy does not lie in the power it gives the sovereign, but in the power it denies to Charlie has a large tongue, large hands, a large nose and large feet. Will he have to marry a large Princess? And if he really objects to being called "a political tool" why does the newly-designed fleur-de-lys (tickling stick) resemble nothing so much as three rampant circumcised cocks?
Back to that Royal Commercial again. All over Britain ordinary Britons are still asking, what did it all mean? Why does the BBC keep putting on these plays without a proper ending, like a death or something? Here is a conversation between two ordinary Britons. I will call them Fred and Bill to shield their identities. Their dialogue has been translated back from BILL: I say Fred, what do you think about Her Majesty after watching that play? FRED: Well, Bill, I am bound to say that I do not envy her her job! BILL: What? But surely her life must be both enjoyable and rewarding. With those dogs and pearls and soldiers and things.
FRED: Would you say so, Bill? But Her Majestical has many onerous duties to FRED: Be that as it may, Bill, she is expected to lend her name to charities of every sort, to attend with the horse racing and to shake hands among other things with members of the Family of Commonwealth without regard BILL: Well, Fred, when you put it like that old comrade, I suppose her average day must be a full and demanding one! But surely she is well-paid FRED: Bill, you have fallen into a common fallacy. Her Magenta the Queen is by no means well-paid considering! The income from her own estates provides the wherewithal for her everyday expenses like ice creams, er and
golden genre. The with other hits, starred in red on the Ed Sullivan Show. with Bill Haley and the Sid a tour of Europe. Frankie, a m Harlem, was then thirteen years pear, at twenty-six, he died of an overSite the massive publicity accorded to the past several years, Frankie's deatl ittle attention Willie John, ther classic, but nothing compared to that ished on the breakup of the Cream or on anus Joplin's split with Big Brother and the olding Company or indeed with the death o rian Jones. Nor did many connect it with the amplete musical stagnation of the Doors, a which in 1967 seemed brilliantly promising, or to the dissolution of dozens of other groups who a year or two ago were not only making beautiful music but seemed to be the vanguard of a promising "youth cultural revolution."
In fact these events are all connected, and their common denominator is hard cash. Since that wildly exciting spring of 1967, the spring of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, of pe-ins and love-ins and flower-power, of the discovery of psychedelia, hippies and "doing your thing - to all of which "New Rock," it then began to be called, was inextricably bound one basic fact has been consistently gnored: rock is a product created, distributed and controlled for the profit of American (and international business. The record companies sell rock and roll records like they sell refrigerasays Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Air"They don't care about the people who make rock or what they're all about as human people who make refrigerators, care about the beings any more than they It doesn't make money just for the enterradio stations, TV networks, stereo and musical tainment industry the Iccore companies aruma manuracturers, etc. but for law clothing manufacturers, the mass media, soft drink companies and car dealers (the new Opel will "light your fire!"). Rock is the surest way to the hearts and wallets of millions of Americans between eight and thirty-five - the richest, most extravagant children in the history of the world.
From the start, rock has been commercial in its very essence. An American creation on make money, nor a commercial undertaking that sometimes became art. Its art synonymous Business The movies perhaps closest to rock in their aesthetic involvement with the demands of profitability, but even they once had an arty tradition which scorned the pleasing of the masses.
Yet paradoxically it was the unabashed wide distribution, the hope Fi. As music, rock had an undeniably effect; driving and sensual, alternative to bourgeois insipidity. The freedom umplicitly and presented granted to rock by society seemed sufficient to allow its adherents to express their energies without inhibition. Rock pleasure had no pair attached; the outrageousness of Elvis' gold lame suits and John Lennon's wildly painted Rolls Royce was a gas, a big joke on adult society Rock was a way to beat the system, to gull grown-ups into paying you while you made faces behind their backs.
Sad but true, however, the grown-ups are having the last laugh. Rock and roll is a lovely playground, and within it kids have more power than they have anywhere else in society, but the playground's walls are carefully maintained and guarded by the corporate elite that set it up in the first place. While the White Panthers talk fucking in the streets," Billboard, the music JUJC all trade paper, announced with pride that in 1968 the record industry became a billion-dollar business.
Bob Dylan has described with a fiendish accuracy the pain of growing up in America.
and millions have responded passionately to his vision. His song, "Maggie's Farm," contains the lines, "He gives me a nickel, he gives me a dime. he asks me with a grin if I'm having a good time, and he fines me every time I slam the door, oh I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more." But along with Walter Cronkite and the New York Yankees, Dylan works for one of Maggie's biggest farms, the Columbia Broadcasting System.
Mick Jagger, another adept and vitriolic social critic, used rock to sneer at "the under assistant west coast promotion man" in his seersucker suit; but London Records used this "necessary talent for every rock and roll band" to sell that particular Rolling Stones record and all their other products. For all its liberating potential, rock is doomed to a bitter impotence by its ultimate subservience to those whom it attacks.
In fact, rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be achieved within the capitalist structure, is an example of how can, almost without a conscious effort, deceive those whom it oppresses. Rather than being liberated heroes, rock and roll stars are captives on a leash, and their plight is but a metaphor for that of all young mac people i america. A l the tapeople rock revolution, talk that is assiduously cultivated by the rock industry, is an attempt to disguise that plight. always surrounded the rock and roll star, and Despite the duld of wealth that has which for fans justified the high prices of records and concerts, very few stars really make such money - - and for all but the stars and theil backup musicians, rock is just another low-paying, insecure and very hard job. Legend says following among the young teens and pre-teens 'It a vitualy impomble, be sate at the mercy of the inknown artist to get an ontract, but even an "honest" contract is onh an inexpensive way for a company to own an artist body and soul.
A star's wealth may be not only nonexistent, but actually fraud, carefully perpetuated by the record company. Blues singer Bobby Bland's "clothes, limousine, valet, and plentiful pocket money," says Keil, "are image bolsterers from Duke Records (or perhaps a continual advance on royalties' that Keeps him tied to the company rather than real earnings. And even cash exploitation is not enough; Chess Records last year forced Muddy "psychedeli play his classic blues with Waters band and called the humiliating record Electric Mud.
Until recently, only a very few stars made any real money from rock; their secret was managers shrewd to the point of unscrupulous ness, who kept them under tight control.
Colonel Parker molded the sexual country boy Elvis into a smooth ballad singer; Brian Epstein took four scruffy Liverpool rockers and transformed them into neatly door. "We were worried that friends might think we had sold out," John Lennon said recently, "which in a way we had."
The musicians of New Rock - most of spared much of what their black and lower-clas them white, educated and middle-class are counterparts have suffered. One of the much touted "revolutions" New Rock has brought, in fact, has been a drastic increase of the power of the artist vis-a-vis the record company. Contract for New Rock bands regularly include almost complete artistic control, royalties as high as ten per cent, huge cash advances, free studio time, guaranteed amounts of company-bought promotion, and in some instances control over advertising design and placement in the media.
But such bargaining is at best a futile reformism which never challenges the essential power relationship that has contaminated rock since its inception. Sales expansion still gives the companies ample profits, and they maintain all the control they really need (even the "revolutionary" remove the wordoup its place). New Rock musicians lost the battle for real freedom at the very moment they signed their contracts (whatever the clauses) and entered the big-time commercial sphere hundreds of New Rock musicians, Doors are intelligent people who in the early -and mid-'60s dropped out into the emerging drug and hip underground. In endless rehearsals and on stage in Sunset Strip rock clubs, they developed a distinctively eerie and stringent sound. The band laid down a dynamo drive behind dramatically handsome lead singer Jim Morrison, who, dressed in black leather and writhing with anguish, screamed demonic invitations to sensual madness. "Break on hrough," was the message, "yeah, break o through to the other side!
It was great rock and roll, and by June number-one hit, it had become very successful 1967, when their "Light My Fire" was a rock. More hits followed and the Doors became the first New Rock group to garner a huge Dooes died bums west pal trying desperately to pact of their earl days, they ¿Morrison lost all subtlety: at | Miam concert he had to display his penis to make his point.
But the Doors have made money, enou to be up-tight about it. "When I told the out this interview," said their manager, B iddons, sitting in the office of the full-ti accountant who manages the group's invest ments (mostly land and oil, "they said, "Don' tell him how much we make.' " But Siddons, a personable young man, did his best to defend them. The Doors, he said, could make a lo more money if they toured more often and took less care in preparing each hall they play n for the best possible lighting and sound; non of the Doors lives lavishly, and the group ha plans for a foundation to give money to artists and students ("It'll help our tax picture, too").
But, he said, "You get started in rock end you get locked into cycle of success.
funny the group out there on stage preaching tousled boys-next- to people, you gotta do it the establishment a revolutionary message, but to get the message way. And you know everybody acquires a taste for comfortable living Variations on the Doors' story are every where. The Cream started out in 1966 as brilliant and influential blues-rock trio and ended, after two solid years of touring, with ad guitarist Eric Clapton on the edge of ervous breakdown. After months of bitt fighting, Big Brother and the Holding Company split up, as did Country Joe and the Fish (who have since reorganized, with several replace ments from Big Brother). The Steve Miller Band and the Quicksilver Messenger Service were given a total of $100,000 by Capitol Records within a year neither one existed in its original form and the money had somehow disappeared The Jefferson Airplane have managed to take a middle route. A few early hits, a year of heavy touring (150 dates in 1967), a series of commercials for White Levis, and the hardnosed management of entrepreneur Bill Graham gave hem a solid money-making popular base. year ago they left Graham's management stopped touring almost entirely, bought a huge mansion in San Franciso and devoted their time to making records (all of them excellent), giving parties, and buying expensive toys like cars and reds of New Rock muscens, the tike and lay a hew opticly clots sa color TV's. amounts of money and are now $30,000 in They've gone through enormous They resolve the commercial question by attempting not to care about it "What I care about, says Paul Kantner, what I'm doing at the time - rolling a joing balling a chick, writing a song. Start worrying about the ultimate effect of all your actions, and in the end you just have to say fuck it. Everybody in the world is getting fucked one way or another. All you can do is see that you aren't fucking them directly."
But the Airplane also profess politic adicalism, and, says Kantner. "The revoltuio is already happening, man. All those kids out, turning on they Singer Grace Slick appeared in blackface on th Smothers Brothers show and gave the Blac Panter salute; in a front window of their mansion is a sign that read, "Eldridge Cleaver Welcome Here But Kantner said he hadn't
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the level of the hamburger or the billboard, it was never an art form that just happened to
so do body or din trag at yes, we are. the children of affluence: don't deny it, man, Iberating