David Gaynes

When I was six, my old man picked up a ’54 Buick, which escalated our family into the burgeoning ranks of two-car amerika and made the local pump-jockeys clean the windshield with those snappy strokes shoe-shine boys used to reserve for gen-u-wine alligators.

We already had a Chevy six cylinder stickshift two-door, but it was just a car. The Buick, on the other hand, was a real creampuff: two toned paint job, elephantine white-wall tires, the whole ball of wax. From its chromed phallic hood ornament to its mellow-toned exhaust pipe, it was a boss short.

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Ya know, the Army’s pretty neat. They even write special books that the Army guys can read if they get bored.

Of course, with all the salutin’ and peelin’ potatoes and killin’ the enemy they gotta do, the soldiers are probably pretty busy, but I bet they enjoy reading the Army books and comic books when they get the time.

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As any kid who plays sandlot baseball will tell you, the kid who owns the ball owns the game. It’s true.

J.J. Scott, of radio station WTAK (“1090 on your AM dial”), is still back there somewhere on that sandlot, and lets no one forget just whose game it really is.

I ran into him a week or two ago rather unexpectedly. I was downtown near Hudson’s selling Fifth Estates when I passed the WTAK trailer in the middle of the Kern block. Just for a goof, I tapped on the soundproof plexiglass front window, smiled my most fetching stoned-hippie type smile, and pointed to the stack of papers I was carrying.

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GHETTO...the white suburban mind conjures up visions of....

GHETTO is now a game, a “simu-life” game made by Western Publishing Company. For the outrageous price of $23.00, those affluent liberals that wish to “understand” ghetto life can do so in the comfort, privacy, and safety of their own home or school.

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Editors’ Note: this interview with poet Allen Ginsberg took place at 10 a.m. on October 15 while driving from Detroit’s inner city to Macomb College, where he was reading. Ginsberg was in the area doing a series of readings for the John Sinclair Defense Fund and a benefit for the Ann Arbor Argus.

Fifth Estate: What place does poetry have in the United States, at the present time, in connection with the movement?

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At first he just wanted us to pull our car over to the curb.

Deciding to milk the scene for all it was worth, he changed his mind—“Just get out of the car right here—hands up! Put your mother-fuckin’ hands on the roof and don’t MOVE!!”

His partner jumped out of the wagon and walked down the road a few feet to talk to one of the undercover state troopers that had been harassing the entire neighborhood for a month and who had undoubtedly set us up for the bust that morning.

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On Monday evening, February 20^th, Alvin’s Delicatessen hosted the second “official” meeting of the OPEN CITY project.

After smoldering in the cauldrons of the finest minds in Detroit’s underground, OPEN CITY is being realized at a killer pace.

The primary objective of this meeting was to create committees around which people can be organized. This was accomplished in such an organized and (lo and behold) enjoyable manner as to make one wonder whether organizational meetings are worthy of the profound aversion which most people have for them.

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Men seek the truth, Fascists deal in words.

This becomes evident early in our lives if we care to see it for what it is.

Remember the teacher that would ask for apologies in front of the class (and hovering principal)? Remember the parents who would politely beseech our repentant words in front of important guests at the dinner table? They didn’t give a damn whether we meant what we said, they just wanted to hear it.

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October 8^th, Jack Forrest was awakened by the noisy spectacle of nine Federal agents bouncing off the vestibule wall of his mother’s apartment on Pingree.

Streaming through the kicked-in door in wild disarray, they gathered their forces around Jack’s bed and, guns drawn, proceeded to shout some dialogue that they had heard on television.

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TO SERVE THE PEOPLE. Brothers and sisters all over pigamerika are waging war, making revolution. To so serve the people, the STP coalition has been formed.

As brother Fred Hampton said: “...theory’s cool, but theory without practice ain’t shit. You got to have both of them—the two go together.” He was talking the truth.

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Here are four records you might want to have:

1. Otis Spann: Sweet Giant of the Blues, Bluestime BTS-9006.

2. Harmonica Slim: The Return of Harmonica Slim, Bluestime BTS9005.

3. T-Bone Walker/Joe Turner/Otis Spann: Super Black Blues, Bluestime BTS-9003.

4. Earl Hooker: Don’t Have to Worry, Bluesway BLS 6032.

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a review of

The Rolling Stones, “Let It Bleed,” XZAL 9363, London Records

You must somehow listen to this album—whether you steal it, buy it, or play it with your nose is irrelevant, or rather, up to you.

As is everything.

If you do listen to “Let It Bleed,” and hear it, there’s not much I can say to you. If you don’t—nothing.

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I ride a bike. Not the kind you pedal—I used to do that. I mean a motorcycle. There’s nothing like it.

Motorcycles mean a special thing to the people who ride them.

Some people (I suspect fewer than one might expect) use their scooters primarily for transportation. Undoubtedly they are economical, easy to park, and maneuverable: Nonetheless, in a nation used to traveling in commodious comfort, rolling houses with stereo entertainment centers and sexadelic pin-striping are far more the norm.

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Brother Warner Mach, currently living out in the hinterlands of Rochester, sent us a box of “Uncle Sam Cereal” he came across while shopping in the local A&P out there.

Although the advertising puffery on the box claims that good ol’ “Uncle Sam’s” (“a natural laxative”) has been “keeping Americans regular since 1908,” none of us had ever heard of the stuff. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to explore this phenomenon that might be branded “toilet paper patriotism.”

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The “Man” is a veritable packaging genius. He has just about mastered the art of packaging the same old shit so that it looks like different new shit.

This is all very nice, until the packages are unwrapped. The same old funky odor wafts up to our poor, exploited nostrils every time.

“The Other Section,” a Detroit News supplement, is an example of the way “special groups” are handled in Amerika.

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147,000 workers at the General Electric Corporation went on strike October 27, 1969. Today, they’re still out of work with little hope of any rapid change in their bleak situation. General Electric’s (non-) negotiators have refused to budge a comma or penny from their pitiful initial offer of a settlement far below the union’s demands.

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