John Sinclair

INFORMED SOURCES, a novel by Willard Bain: Doubleday, 1969, 144 pp., $2.95.

“Power is the ability to define phenomena and make them act in a desired manner.”

—Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party

Willard Bain’s book was originally printed by the Communications Company in San Francisco the summer of 1967 and given away free in the streets. Informed Sources is the first post-Burroughsian novel I’d say, post-McLuhan also, and in its intentions and design strictly contemporary. Bain (who has the same initials as Burroughs—WSB—strangely enough) has gotten down to the simple major questions of control and power and what language has to do with it.

...

a review of

Pot: A Handbook Of Marijuana, by John Rosevear (University) Books, $4.95).

I first met John Rosevear when I was dealing grass in 1964. He came to my apartment with two notorious Ann Arbor dealers who had a bag of imported Panama Red, the finest grass to hit Detroit since I’ve been here. It seems they were in the habit of flying to Panama to pick up the grass themselves, to make sure nothing went wrong in the shipping. At that time Rosevear had just recently been turned on to the joys of marijuana smoking and he told me of the plot of pot he was growing in a vacant lot across from his house in Ann Arbor. He was already working on his book of grass, which he claimed ecstatically would turn on a lot of straight people to marijuana.

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“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” but the men who are now dying have no such simple entrance into their own lives—the swords they bear (whatever “side”) are not what they live by, not the terms of their living, but alien & unnecessary tools forced into their hands by men who have taken themselves so far from such actual simple tools.

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Pun Plamondon is still in jail in Traverse City in lieu of $20,000 bond. We haven’t been able to get an attorney to work for him for free, and we can’t possibly get the bond up. If there are any attorneys out there who are interested in working on this or similar cases out of the goodness of their stoned little hearts, please contact us at Trans-Love, 769–2017 in Ann Arbor or through the Fifth Estate office in Detroit. Also, any donations to the Trans-Love Defense Fund can be sent to 1510 Hill Street, Ann Arbor 48104.

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John Sinclair

Southern Michigan State

Prison Jackson, Michigan

Dear Leni & Everybody:

My letter yesterday from the Wayne County jail should be disregarded in large part since I was transferred up here this morning. It’s really good to get here at last—just like when you’ve been threatened with something for years and find out it ain’t so bad after all.

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The Trans-Love commune of Ann Arbor (late of Detroit) was plundered by police June 18 when Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Deputies took into custody Lawrence “Pun” Plamondon on a warrant charging him with “sale and dispension of marijuana” in Traverse City, Michigan, on the 17^th of March, 1968.

Also charged on the same warrant is artist Gary Grimshaw and editor of the Sun newspaper. Grimshaw has not yet been apprehended.

...

Poet John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police and the Oakland County (Michigan) Sheriffs Dept. while performing at a Michigan teen-club on July 23^rd.

The scene took place at the Loft, located on Army Road in Leonard, Michigan (between Pontiac and Lapeer), where the MC5 had been contracted to play a dance job.

...

Detective Lieutenant,

Detroit Narcotics Squad,

who has been single-handedly responsible

for busting me on two separate occasions

for possessing and selling marijuana

.

and who stumbled into my new apartment last night by accident

over a year since the last time he saw me

& two years to the day after he first busted me —

...

Sept. 30, 1969

Dear People,

Sorry I haven’t written in so long but I wanted to get settled up here before writing you again. There seems to be a lot more going on out there in the streets than happens here in prison, but then that seems to be the idea of locking people up, so they won’t be able to participate in the activities they enjoy.

...

Out of a crop of albums these stand out for one reason or another:

PINK FLOYD: “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Tower 5093). The Pink Floyd has enjoyed in London roughly the same position as the MC5 holds here: the Floyd made itself known through working at the weekly UFO dance/ concerts at the Roundhouse, under the sponsorship of the London UPS paper, the International Times.

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Editors’ Note: Rock and Roll Dope takes the form of a facsimile of the MC5’s Elektra album liner notes for two reasons. First, because Brother Sinclair was stranded in Buffalo after attending a national Lemar (Legalize Marijuana) conference in that city and was unable to get a column to us.

Second, and more important, that this revolutionary rap by John has caused a significant furor in the retail record business. Fully 70% of Detroit area record shops refuse to stock the album because of its use of “fuck” in the liner notes and on one song. One Northland record shop went through each album and crossed out the offending words. Both J.L. Hudson’s and E.J. Korvette stores refuse to handle it as well as many smaller shops.

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For two weeks now I’ve been trying to write a letter to William Leach, the Black Panther who attacked what he calls the “white left” in the Fifth Estate last time as being jive and untogether. [See “The White Left—Serious or Not?” FE #70, January 9–22, 1969.] Brother Leach displayed his unfortunate ignorance when he attacked the White Panther Party as “silly” and “the movement’s biggest headache.” I don’t know that much about the YSA or SDS, since I’m not a Young Socialist or a Student for a Democratic Society, but I do know about the Yippies and I do know about the White’ Panthers, and I do know about the Black Panthers too.

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The Legal Self Defense (LSD) benefit February 4^th was the greatest success in my memory: over 1200 people attended and offered their bread for support, and the LSD Fund netted over $2200.00 for the community.

A Board of Directors for LSD was set up to handle the disbursement of the money when people need it, and a bank account was opened in the name of Legal Self Defense. The Board comprises Brother Jack Forest, Detroit Captain White Panthers; Brother John Watson, editor of the South End newspaper; Brother Pun Plamondon, editor of the Sun (Ann Arbor) and Minister of Defense, White Panthers National Office; Brother Alan Gotkin, of the Fifth Estate Editorial Group and Minister of Propaganda, Detroit White Panthers; and Revs. James Markunas and Robert Morrison from St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church.

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I remember two and three years ago and longer writing columns for the Fifth Estate and trying to hip people to a new music and never getting anywhere—people just didn’t seem to be ready for the high-energy jams for one reason or another. Maybe they weren’t eating enough acid like people do now. But I feel very strongly right now that people are ready for a lot more high-energy music than they’re getting from the pop stars, and the music is certainly out there waiting for them—waiting for you right now.

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We arrived in New York City on Dec. 15 and made it to Steve Paul’s Scene to dig the Rationals and Slim Harpo. The Rats were cooking as ever and even managed to get a few people dancing. Slim Harpo had Lightnin’ Slim, one of my childhood heroes, on guitar and vocals and the joint was jumpin’! We stuck around until closing and went in. The next day we hung around the Elektra offices listening to tapes and checking out the artwork for our album, which should be released by the end of this month. On Tuesday the issue of Rolling Stone hit the stands with Rob’s picture on the cover and 5 pages of the MC5 inside. We were overjoyed even though the story was complete bullshit.

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People need music to live. We know that and act on it, all ways. Only straight people—honkies—think music is superfluous, that it doesn’t make any difference what you listen to, and their lives demonstrate their ignorance. Music shapes us and makes us whole, as we would never be without it. We have to have it. There’s no way you can get around it. For our generation music is the most vital force in most of our lives.

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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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“If we want to do much more fucking, we’re going to have to start fighting. If we want to be able to live we have to start fighting and not let ourselves be fucked around any longer by this shitpile society. We are the only hope in a crumbling world of lies and deception. Young people look to us—the dropouts, the radicals, the freeks—for information only we can provide. The Black Panthers are our brothers and sisters and point the way for action. We see their situation and realize it is ours too. Our music and our lives are the same. One is not possible without the other. The Music must go on.”

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This is my first column for the Fifth Estate in a long time and I’ll probably be a little rusty, so please bear with me, OK? and I’ll try to do something useful here.

I stopped writing for the Fifth Estate in January mainly for two reasons: I was tired of hassling the editors to get my columns printed intact, and I was even more tired of coming on like some kind of public personality and/or race-track tout in this space, and that was the context that’d been developed over a two-year period of writing a column almost every issue. I’d like to start over again now, if that’s possible, and do something different if I can get away with it.

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Hi kids, sorry I wasn’t here last time but I got a little depressed by Cella Alderson’s letter and just couldn’t get it together in time for the deadline. The only reason I write this shit is because people seem to dig reading it and if you don’t dig it I’d rather not write it. It takes some effort and a lot of dope to get my head into this linear trip anyway, but it’s worth it if it’s appreciated.

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It’s really good to see that Brother Ear is hearing the Detroit bands and digging them, especially since people around here have to be told how heavy the bands are. The Frost and the Thyme aren’t the only together groups working in this area, either—there are a number of bands whose music is consistently interesting and moving, and these bands are improving every day.

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I want to take up where I left off last time and get into some of the alternatives to the present scene in the local rock and roll industry. There has been some fantastic response to my last column—even Russ Gibb gave me a call on a Saturday afternoon, and I hadn’t heard from him for some time—and I want to detail some of the things that are starting to happen.

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Now that things have cooled down a little for the MC5 and myself after all the excitement of recent weeks maybe I can get into some of the things I promised when I started this column—although the stuff you’ve been reading about the MC5 saga serves as an illustration of the original point: that there’s a lot more to the rock and roll industry than just paying your $3.50 and digging the show stoned on your ass. All those things you read about in the last three or four issues really happened.

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In the past two weeks since the last issue of this paper a bunch of new developments have taken place: Almost every job for the MC5 brings a new and different creep scene into being.

At a Wednesday night job in Tecumseh, Michigan, at the local teen center, guitarist Wayne Kramer ripped a pair of pants early in the second set and went off to change them. Later in the same set he ripped the second pair of pants, this time accidentally exposing his genitals to the tender crowd.

...

The following is a press release I wrote for the MC5 this week; we’re running it here because we promised to take you behind the scenes in the rock and roll industry, and these events illustrate what bands have to go thru just to do their thing. If you just paid your money and sat and waited for MC5 at the ballroom last Sunday, you deserve to know that it wasn’t the band that kept you waiting in the heat—it was the people who took your money. Be advised.

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The ageless Sun Ra and his thirteen-piece Astro-Infinity Arkestra will unite with the MC5 and the people of Detroit at the Grande Ballroom May 16 and 17 for a mass manifestation of revolutionary culture and energy that’s sure to bathe the city in its vibrations for weeks to come.

The Arkestra will also appear at the 1^st Annual Rock and Roll Revival, May 30 and 31 at the State Fair Grounds.

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The filthy streets of Detroit’s Warren-Forest Area, center of the city’s hippie community, will be the scene of a giant Sweep-In Sunday, August 20.

The Sweep-In, planned by Trans-Love Energies as a last-ditch effort to rid the Warren-Forest Area of such foul elements as discarded beer bottles, garbage and old copies of The News, was decided upon after Trans-Love tried unsuccessfully to convince the DPW that it should exercise its craft in the stricken area.

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A new year coming up, the end of one era and the move into a new one. 1967. The year that will make history begin again, with some relevance to our lives. What we are. I mean I can feel it in the air, the vibrations are so strong now and when they are united it will be truly beautiful. Believe me. Believe yourselves. Believe in what you feel.

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I keep stressing the LOCAL in this column because it is precisely what we all have to work with—what is in front of us. Our lives are here, at this instant, and we should make the most of our local possibilities. People spend too much time waiting to go somewhere else, getting there, and then more time feeling out the new terrain, so that half their time is spent dreaming and scheming instead of DOING.

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The Gran-de Ballroom gets better and better every week, and it’s my own opinion that anyone who doesn’t go out there at least one night a week is just crazy. Frank Fox says so too. Likewise the MC5 keeps taking off for further spaces—this is the best thing that could have happened to them. Any band that is based on human principles rather than strictly musical ones, i.e. any group of musicians who are concerned with exploiting their own possibilities for expression as human beings with instruments and not just as guys playing “tunes,” have to have the opportunity to work together over an extended period of time, and in front of a sympathetic audience too.

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Progress Report: The first reorganizational meeting of the Artists’ Workshop Society took place as scheduled on November 22, with encouraging results. That is to say, enough people expressed working interest in continuing the work of the Society that the Artists’ Workshop will endure—and, hopefully, keep growing.

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Detroit is full of openings! Last weekend: Uncle Russ’s Gran-de Ballroom broke into the open with the MC5 and the High Society’s light show, both of which were just as they have to be—TOO MUCH. (William Blake: “Enough! or Too Much.” Charles Olson: “We must have / what we want.”) We are getting it. The Gran-de will be the place again this weekend, and hopefully for a lot more weekends, with the pounding MC5 and the great new band from Lansing, the Woolies, who just recorded their first sides on the West Coast last month with one of the heaviest guitar players anywhere, Ron English, featured. The High Society will be there too.

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The WSU Artists’ Society’s fall concert/reading series is now set and will continue with a concert by the Contemporary 4 at the Community Arts Auditorium Thursday, November 3, at 8:30 p.m. Charles Moore will introduce his new band, featuring Kirk Lightsey, piano, and Ron Johnson & John Dana, the regulars. Former pianist Stanley Cowell left Michigan for New York City in August and has been working with Marion Brown (including a recent recording session for Pixie) among others. The concert will be introduced by yours truly. There is no admission charge per se, but a donation of $1.00 will be appreciated.

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News of a new independent artists’ group in Detroit: The Instage, a gathering of musicians, dancers, painters, and others to present their own work in their own context, has been drawn together by pianist Kirk Lightsey, bassists Ernie Farrow and Dedrick Gover, trombonist George Bohanon and others. Now in search of their own performing facilities, Instage will present a program of its members’ work at the Community Arts Auditorium, Wayne State University, on Sunday, October 2, at 8:00 p.m. Featured will be paintings by Gloria Bohanon and seven others; a dance event featuring Barbara Willis, Don Hellimus, and Jackie Hillman, backed by Lightsey’s band; and a concert of music by the groups of Ernie Farrow, George Bohanon, and Harold McKinney. Tickets are on sale for $1.50 per person, $2.50 for couples, from Instage members and at the WSU box office.

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THE MFS MESS: Emil Bacilla’s article on the Midwest Film Society last issue touched off a lot of under-the-table shit, which was, even weirder since Emil was in SF when the paper came out and couldn’t see what was happening. Briefly: Noel Cooper of the MFS contacted me through Peter Werbe about screening the MFS films at the Artists’ Workshop, which was for me a happy occurrence and was immediately implemented. JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was shown at the Workshop Saturday, September 17, to a good-sized crowd, and flyers were passed out advertising the MFS fall lineup at the Workshop. Everything was groovy.

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I want to take this space this week to tell you of some of the work the Detroit Artists’ Workshop is doing, because I think you should know about it in as much detail as I can give you here. I have been home two weeks now, and there has been such a beautiful mass of forward action going on here that I have been kept alive by it and kept happy to be a part of it again.

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It’s good to be back with you again. The Festival Sunday was one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced, and I think a lot of the people there had the same experience as myself. There were SO many people there, all day long, And everyone was really grooving. Joseph Jarman started the Festival off just after one o’clock with a spoken introduction and music trumpeter Peter Bishop (also of Chicago) and bassist Doug Riggs. The readings began with Dave Sinclair, J.D. Whitney, and Mike Litle, all of whom opened the people up for the biggest human sound ever to come out of Detroit—the Lyman Woodard Ensemble of the day, a totally integrated musical blast made up of Lymie at the organ, Jim Semark, piano and trombone; Ron English (Lansing), guitar; Doug Riggs and John Dana, basses; Byron Lyles (Lansing), drums; Charles Moore, cornet; Pete Bishop (Chicago), trumpet; Joseph Jarman (Chicago), alto saxophone and clarinet; David Squires, tenor saxophone; Jerry Younkins, tambourine; Bud Spangler (Lansing), tambourine; and, after the music started getting GOOD to me, I had to run home and get my own alto saxophone so I could get in there too.

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“any image around which any people concentrate & omit themselves is a usable one just because it is theirs.”

—Charles Olson, Apollonius of Tyrana

I am talking to you people who read this paper. Are you there? What then do you want? You have it in your power now to create a vital living situation here in Detroit and make it in your own image—-if you have the will & commitment to such a situation. If you don’t care if Detroit ever gets to be such a place, it won’t. It will stay just as it is now—a burgeoning police state, with isolated groups of people fighting each other and ignoring each other but never working together to make a decent place of this place. And this newspaper, which could be so great and such an important community newspaper, will continue to flounder because its editor gets so little help, and there is so little response to calls for help, aid, participation, etc., that are issued in it. I am thinking particularly of the Artists’ Workshop Society, which is part of my own life, and which is about to die out because my wife and her few helpers have received so little support from you while I’ve been gone these last four and a half months—just when they’ve needed help most. If you want to have Detroit as a real, alive, worthwhile place to live and work in, you’ll have to make it that way yourselves, since the city rulers aren’t going to help, they’ve proved that, and the commercial interests never want to make a place for something new and vital but will capitalize on it when it appears and grows. You dig? What I mean is that we are all going to have to start working with each other on all fronts, help each other out, and take advantage of what are our local possibilities—like this newspaper, like the Artists’ Workshop and the West Central Organization, the Concept East Theatre, the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the SDS Free University, Kenneth V. Cockrel for state representative, etc., etc. —all of these are manifestations of the same essential concerns, that Detroit be a vital human place for all of us.

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The most important event of the last few weeks was a concert by the Joseph Jarman quartet from Chicago. This was Joseph’s second concert in Detroit. The first one, on March 18 in the Lower DeRoy Auditorium at WSU, was such a success (not financially, certainly, but meaning that the music was so beautiful that the people who came to hear it wanted to hear more of it) that the WSU Artist’s Society decided to sponsor these Chicago musicians again. With Joseph Jarman, who plays alto saxophone, bells, whistles, & other musical instruments, will be Christopher Gaddy on piano; Charles Clark, bass; & Thurman Barker, drums. A ‘delegation” from the Artists’ Workshop fortunate enough to be in Chicago on May 13 to hear Joseph Jarman’s concert entitled “TRIBUTE to the HARD CORE” at the University of Chicago & will not soon forget that historic performance.

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On the 24^th of February, John Sinclair was sentenced by Judge Groat of the Recorders Court to six months in the Detroit House of Correction and three years probation for possession of marijuana. He’ll have to go before Judge Krause on Thursday, March 3, to be sentenced for violation of probation. This is why he is not writing the column today. Hopefully he will be able to continue writing for the Fifth Estate when (if) he goes to the “House” as they call it. I will help him out as well as I can with the local news items that he should tell you about.

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There’s a lot of very interesting “cultural activity” coming up in the next couple months in Detroit, but nothing definite is set as far as dates and times, so I’ll try to give a few teasers and come back with more specific information next time.

The success of Andrew Hill’s and Marion Brown’s concerts for the WSU Artists’ Society has spread around New York and, as a consequence, a number of forward New York musicians are writing about arranging concerts for themselves here in the immediate future. Pianist Paul Bley, one of the original members of the Jazz Composers Guild and the possessor of a number of fine recordings (among them FOOT LOOSE, on Savoy; BARRAGE, on ESP-Disk 1009; and appearances with Jimmy Guiffrie on Columbia and Verve labels) may be coming toward the end of this month. Then another exciting pianist, Burton Greene, another of the Jazz Composers Guild, whose ESP album will be out next month, will be here in early March, featured with the Detroit Contemporary 4. So those are things to look forward to, music lovers.

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The Jefferson Airplane concert will be in Ford Auditorium Friday, June 30, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets run from $3.00 to $4.50 and can be got at Grinnells, Discount Records, the Ford Auditorium box office, and other places, including probably the Grande Ballroom. Featured with the Airplane will be the MC-5, the Rationals, the Apostles, and Ourselves though I’m not sure why all of those bands are Necessary.

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A lot has happened since the last time I wrote this column, and I still don’t know what’ll come of it, but all we can do is ride it out and see what we can do with it. My own situation has changed a great deal even though I certainly don’t feel any different as a human being, but it sure is weird to walk or drive down the street and have strangers smile and wave because they saw me on TV and were given to believe that “John Sinclair is the high priest of the hippies in Detroit” or whatever.

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An Open Letter to George Romney

Dear Sir:

As a free man and a revolutionary, and as a citizen of the state of Michigan with strong roots in my own Michigan community of Detroit, I’ve been interested to follow your recent career as a “national” politician. I haven’t really been too interested in your work as governor of the state of Michigan since that office has little or no relevance to my life nor have I ever been very interested in the office of president of the United States, since that office has even less relevance to my life. But the combination of events that has marked your entry into the national presidential race scene has captured my attention and my imagination, and I wanted after yesterday to say something about the whole thing.

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The news this time seems to be that many people are getting busted for grass in a lot of funny ways and don’t know what to do about it when it happens. I have gone through three marijuana arrests and two “trial” scenes so far (including probation since December 1964 and 6 months in the Detroit House of Correction in 1966) and have come to learn some things about (1) police methods, aims and goals; (2) court procedures, including attitudes of judge, prosecutor and jury); (3) lawyers and how they operate; (4) the bail bond system; and (5) what you can do to get through all these dangerous traps relatively unharmed. It is to the last point that I want to speak here, in hopes that it might help some young people who are “in trouble with the law” over their marijuana smoking.

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First, thanks to all of you who responded to our plea for help last issue—the Defense Fund is growing slowly, and hopefully, I’ll be able to turn it all over to our long — suffering attorneys when things get rough. Again, if everyone who reads this and is at all sympathetic to marijuana smokers who are presently heavily penalized by Michigan’s, cruel and unusual presently statutes, would sit down and send off a dollar or whatever you can spare to the John Sinclair Defense Fund, we could easily raise enough money to cover expenses in the trial.

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Editor’s note: Brother Sinclair’s Coatpuller column is re-printed here exactly as it appeared in this paper one year ago. It was written at the height of the July Rebellion and contains one of the best impressionistic sketches of that week.

You know that it would be untrue

You know that I would be a liar

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I was speaking of the change taking place in this nation, and would say that in America the change is most evident in two sectors or subcultures of the civilization. In the black stinking ghettoes of the poor and exploited, and in those sections of cities and land where the enlightened young have gathered for all intents and purposes outside the rigid general social framework of this America. These two sectors illustrate the two “major steps” outlined in this column last time.

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It looks like straight people will do just about anything in their power to keep the love organism from growing and spreading, just because they can’t “understand’ it and don’t know what’s happening in the world around them. If you haven’t noticed, straight people are always putting love people down, sending their kids to psychiatrists to get “straightened out, calling the police on their kids, beating hippies who try to start honest and loving business operations, stealing from hippies and terrorizing their homes and gathering places, hitting and kicking people who have no eyes to fight back, and things like that. I’m tired of it, for one, and I just wish these people would wake up and start seeing what their stupid lives are all about and how vile they are being in their relationships with each other and with us.

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Live (i.e. alive) musical activity continues to grow here in Detroit, and on its own terms, which makes it all the more valuable. Pianist Andrew Hill made his first concert appearance in this part of the country here last month, under the sponsorship of the WSU Artists’ Society and his Detroit-based agent, Lutz Bacher. In doing so Andrew also became the first major artist of international stature to be sponsored by the young student organization (only six months old), and the first such musician to undertake a totally cooperative musical venture outside the New York Area. The most significant extra-musical fact about Andrew’s concert is that he (& Bacher) worked directly with the society, on a person-to-person (rather than businessman-to businessman) basis, with music rather than money as the determining factor in the arrangement. This is the only way the rotten music-as-business situation is going to be overturned, and it must be revolutionized—and fast—if the music is going to be as an art form otherwise all anyone but the most privileged listeners will be able to hear in public performance will be the tired “entertainment” music that clutters the “jazz clubs” now.

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“Do you love it, do you hate it

There it is, just like you made it”

—The Mothers of Invention

You have to live in the middle of the city to know what is really happening there—otherwise all you have to go on is what the “newspapers” and people tell you, and they very definitely have a vested interest in keeping the real news from you. The official responses to the Detroit insurrection have very little to do with what was actually happening, and people will soon find that out, although it may prove to be too late to do them any good.

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You know that it would be untrue / You know that I would be a liar / If I was to say to you / “Girl, we can’t get much higher”—/ Come on baby light my fire / Come on baby light my fire / Gonna set the night on/FI-YUR

—“Light My Fire,” The Doors

“Light My Fire” rises through the radio ranks for weeks and, when it hits number one on the stations, the people respond and burn the city down. Or play Archie Shepp’s “Fire Music” album as background music for the Detroit purification: the scope and feeling of the people’s mood is there; an elegy for Malcolm X.

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It shouldn’t be news to anyone--but it probably is--that the local gestapo is responsible for ending the performance of LeRoi Jones’ “the toilet” and “the Slave” at the now shut-down Concept East Theatre. The plays, directed by Woody King (who is now back in New York) and performed brilliantly by such Detroit actors as Sam Blue (Toilet) and Harrison Avery (Slave), began their run in August, made it through a couple of weeks, and then were brutally closed by the guardians of law & order--and “morals”--in our fair city.

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There seem to have been a lot of very hip things going on in Detroit lately, though from my (disad-)vantage point I can only read about them or hear of them on the radio. I heard very beautiful things about the Archie Shepp et al. concert last month—anyone who missed the happenings in Ann Arbor should be locked up here in my place. Archie brought trombonist Roswell Rudd, the strongest man on his instrument today, from New York City; bassist Charlie ** Haden, now living in San Francisco after getting straight at Synanon; and drummer Beaver Harris, of NYC, with him for the big Ann Arbor affair, and all reports indicate that they all got into some very moving music. After the concert proper a mammoth session took place under Ron Brooks’ auspices—participating were some of the strongest voices in the country—Rudd & Harris of NY; Haden of SF; altoist Joseph Jarmon, tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, trumpeter Bill Brimfield, bassist Charles Clark, and drummer Steve McCall, all of Chicago (they had played, under Jarmon’s name, for the WSU Artists’ Society the night before); and cornetist Charles Moore and drummer Danny Spencer of Detroit. These men worked in a lot of combinations, including 2 bass-2 drums teams (Moore’s setting), and enough music was made (as I hear it) to fill the whole midwest.

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“Light My Fire” rises through the radio ranks for weeks and, when it hits number one on the stations, the people respond and burn the city down. Or play Archie Shepp’s “Fire Music” album as background music for the Detroit purification: the scope and feeling of the peoples’ mood is there--an elegy for Malcolm X.

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“Leaders” are created by the media image freaks and sold to the people to keep them happy. They have to have “leaders” or nothing could get done-why, they certainly couldn’t do it themselves. Or could they? The media exists to keep people from asking that question, and it has done a pretty good job of blinding them to their own absolute reality, that they are FREE and can do anything they want to, if they believe in it hard enough.

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Editors’ Note: The following is the introduction to a speech written by John Sinclair at Marquette prison and read by Jesse Crawford at the Free John Sinclair Day benefit at the Grande Ballroom, Jan 24. Contrary to reports on WABX’s Rock and Roll news the audience received the fifty minute reading with great interest and solemnity.

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In one of the largest steps in its history, the American Federation of Musicians has drafted plans for a huge apprentice program for teen-age rock musicians which could alter the present music industry considerably.

The program, to be implemented by Detroit’s Local 5 under the supervision of business agent Dennis Day, calls for concerted action by the union on two major fronts: to convince teen musicians to join the union under its new “affiliate membership” plan, and to convince club owners that they should sign “union shop” agreements with Local 5 which would provide for employment only for union bands at union scale.

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First I must say that this statement, like all statements is bullshit without an active program to back it up. We have a program which is on-going and total and which must not be confused with anything that is said or written about it.

Our program is cultural revolution through a total assault on the culture, which makes use of every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on. We take our program with us everywhere we go and use any means necessary to expose people to it.

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The poster announced a mass rally at Rev. Cleage’s Central United Church of Christ, where the “friends of Snick” present STOKELY C. CARMICHAEL, Chairman, Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee.

The spelling is different now though—“Snick” (picked up from TIME magazine’s bastardization & turned back on H. Luce) brings to the ear the sound of a knife clicking open, a guillotine swipe at a fat red neck & the head plopping softly into a basket full of identical heads, a nice fitting name indeed. In/deed.

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