Fifth Estate 69, December 26, 1968-January 8, 1969 Add to the Bookbuilder

Big changes at the Fifth Estate. As you can see by the staff box above our paper’s decisions will be made by an Editorial Group rather than by the two former co-editors. This represents an attitude on the part of the people working full-time on the paper that decisions should be made collectively by those most closely involved in its production.

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Fifth Estate

A newspaper of Detroit

EDITORIAL GROUP

Alan Gotkin

Harvey Ovshinsky

Tommye Wiese

Peter Werbe

Cathy West

MUSIC EDITOR

John Sinclair

PHOTO EDITOR

Mike Tyre

CALENDAR

Resa Jannet

STAFF

Laura Straight

Marlene Tyre

Marilyn Werbe

The FIFTH ESTATE is published every other Thursday of each month by the Fifth Estate Newspaper, Inc., 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Subscription rate by third class mail is $3 for one year; $5 for two years. Canadian is $3.50; all other foreign are $5 per year. Ph: 831–6800.

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Power authority creeps have reared their puffy bourgeois heads once again in the Detroit area, this time at Clarenceville High School in Livonia.

Any Clarenceville student caught displaying the Fifth Estate inside the school will have his copy of the paper confiscated and his parents will be informed.

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Florida state police arrested Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver yesterday as he sat smoking a cigarillo and reading the Works of Chairman Mao in the lobby of the Hotel Fontainbleu in Miami Beach. He is being held for extradition to California and has been charged with violating a statute which makes crossing state lines to save your life a federal offense.

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NEW YORK—The Jefferson Airplane’s filming of a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s “One American Movie,” on location here, resulted in a minor riot, a skin show, a visit from New York’s finest, and an impromptu performance for midtown Manhattan office workers.

Out of the welter of confusion come these facts, according to eye witnesses. The group along with the cast and crew of the film were filming on the rooftop of the Schuyler Hotel, directly across from the filming headquarters. The filming started with lead singer Marty Balin delivering an impromptu and richly amplified “Wake Up New York, Wake Up. Free Music. Free Love.”

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By the time you read this I will have gotten through Christmas, but as I write I haven’t yet.

I sort of have a tradition which I sometimes wish I could stop. Anyway, I have this tree trimming party every year where everyone who comes for the first time must bring an ornament which somehow expresses the “real” them.

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“The duty of the revolutionary is to make revolution.”

The duty of a musician is to make music. But there is an equation that can’t be missed: MUSIC IS REVOLUTION. Rock and roll music is the most vital revolutionary force on earth—it blows people all the way back to their senses and makes them feel good. That’s what the revolution is all about—we have to establish a situation on this planet where all people can feel good all the time. And we will not rest until that situation exists.

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PARIS (LNS)—At first glance the only visible change resulting from the May revolution in France are some repaved streets and felled trees.

DeGaulle’s use of the two-sided club of repression and reform seems to have succeeded in placating the dissatisfied majority and in silencing militants. But the lull in political activity is deceiving; the movement is now perhaps at its most crucial stage, preparing the educational and organizational groundwork for a successful revolution.

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Remember “Mademoiselle,” the Tony Richardson-Jean Genet collaboration in which lovely Jeanne Moreau raced around the French countryside in stiletto heels heaping destruction on a poor little town, and all because of sexual repression? Then there was Jules Dassin’s 10:30 p.m. “Summer,” the agonized tale of a traveling menage a trois.

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John Cassavetes’ “Faces,” currently at the Studio North, is the best American American movie since “Bonnie & Clyde” or “The Graduate.” By that I mean that this movie could not have been made outside of the United States and still strike us with all the honesty and impact and pain that is possesses. For the problems that Cassavetes has chosen to explore in “Faces” are, I believe, peculiarly American, deep rooted in our contemporary society: in particular, this country’s almost fanatical preoccupation with sex.

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On A-29, the legendary anarchist collective The Living Theater performs the “Code Orange Contata” in the streets (photo by Sunfrog)

On December 12, 13, and 14, The Living Theatre, an amazing theatrical community numbering over 35, performed three of the four productions of their repertoire: “Mysteries and Smaller Pieces,” “Antigone,” and “Frankenstein” (“Paradise Now” is the fourth) at the Detroit Institute of Arts. These productions were, to use Julian Beck’s phrase, a revolution disguised as theatre.

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[Web Archive note: This centerfold insert is a two-sided 15 x 22 inch poster, of which this page can be considered the back side. The other side of the poster is rendered at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/69-december-26-1968-january-8-1969/poetry-2/ .]

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from Guerrilla, free newspaper of the streets, Volume 2, Number 2 (Surrealists, 1925 — Artists & Writers Militia, 1968)

Guerrilla is edited by Allen Van Newkirk and Susan Hodges and published occasionally as a broadside of poetry and revolution. It is reprinted here as a special supplement. The newspaper is distributed free in the immediate community. Mail subscriptions by donation. All corporations, federal and state agencies by minimum $10.00 donation. Free to any human being held against his will in any army or prison. Guerrilla, 1107 W. Warren, Detroit, Michigan 48201.

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Which local all night disc jockey wards off the most obscene phone calls, brings down the most listeners who get sick on STP, and plays stud to all the lonely night people who listen to his show with one hand on their Buddhist prayer candles and the other in their pants?

Dave Dixon does it all.

He is ABX’s “Night Tripper” and his thing is done every day (except Tuesday) from 2:00 to 7:00 in the morning.

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Due to a surprising thing to come, I wish to cancel my subscription.

I’m on a heavy cruiser off the DMZ (Vietnam) coast. On 18 Jan. 1969 the ship returns to the United States and I am to be released from active duty.

Upon my return home to Detroit I will again be in the groove. This will enable me to buy the Fifth Estate at my local hangouts. Thus, I won’t need your subscription at my current address.

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White middle-class America now has a President it can call its own. This is the middle-class America of people who have “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.” It is the middle-class America of the Puritan virtues of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but so what? It is the middle-class America of housing subdivisions midway between the cities and the suburbs, the middle-class America of rectangular lawns that are mowed on Saturday morning and car washing in the driveway on Saturday afternoon and a drive out in the country on Saturday evening. It is a respectable world which believes in the system because the system worked for them.

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Dear Julius,

Although our actual contact has been infrequent, I have felt very close to you since we first met, and our shared experiences, including writing for the same papers, added to this. But in recent months your columns have puzzled and confused me. I don’t know you any more; I don’t know where you’re at; I can’t imagine why you are saying (writing) the things you are.

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LONDON (PWS)—Traffic, one of Britain’s most highly rated groups, officially disbanded last week. The announcement was made here last week just as the group’s new single, “Medicated Goo,” was released and as their current album, “Traffic,” continued up the charts.

Originally formed in early 1967 when singer Stevie Winwood parted company with the Spencer Davis Group, to join forces with Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason, the group scored heavily through live performances and several hit singles.

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Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld speaking at Community Arts Auditorium, May 28, 1969 at a benefit for Open City. Photo: Alan Gotkin.

A reader recently asked if I knew of any slang terms for “clitoris,” which she found too technical for bedroom talk. I didn’t know of any so I asked readers for their suggestions. Here are some of them:

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It was brought to my attention last week, that each of the various astrological signs [vague as any such sun-sign delineation can be] has its own particular sexual proclivities and positions. Indeed, it would be quite possible [if not desirable] to create an astrological Kama Sutra, designed to insure sexual fulfillment and certainty for all possible combinations of signs. Here follows a brief capsule description of astrological intercourse [blow by blow, as it were].

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compiled by Naomi Epel

THURS. DEC. 26

MC5 at the Fillmore East, New York, free tickets obtainable if you happen to be heading in that direction. Call Trans-Love 1/769-2017.

GUERRILLA THEATER: a pacifist play by Sam Cohen performed at the Red Roach at 9:30 pm. Followed at 11 pm by Father John’s Purple Cone, a light-sound-motion poem performed by Tamara and Peter. And at Midnight Body Decorating for Xmas. All at the Red Roach. Don’t be put off by its location at Plum and Fifth. It’s what’s inside that counts. Free!

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UNCLASSIFIEDS cost 50 cents per line per issue. Figure four words per line. (A word is a word including one and two letter words. A phone number is a word. Street numbers are words. Abbreviations should be sensible. DISCOUNT RATES: Five runs cost 35 cents per line.

Overground paper: Independent Eye, a newspaper of southwest Ohio. P.O. Box 20017, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220. 6 issues for $1. Remember, the Queen City.

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