Most Recent Additions

The letter from “Kirk Johnson” (FE #290, March 2, 1978), which equated Fifth Estate’s practice of running a profit-making book service (to support itself) with Search & Destroy’s record company ads (for the same end), makes public a discussion that has been private too long.

That the opening of this critique—which really began with FE’s important remarks on Black Rose Books’ capitalist procedures—finally arrives via a spokesman for Search & Destroy is a sad irony. S & D is a completely uncritical promo rag which hopes to be accepted by what it sees as the latest cultural fad, punk rock. Done anonymously, it (characteristically) helped organize a recent two-day benefit for the UMW strike, this piece of liberal/ leftist reformism easily coexisting next to censored interviews and ads for rip-off night clubs.

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NO MEN HERE! Usually the scene of anger and tears, an eviction is carried out smoothly, with no hard feelings, at a Detroit apartment building. Wayne County Circuit Court bailiffs, Ruth Rath and Beatrice Armour (with chair) carry out the furniture of Wanda Waif (left) from property owned by a group of women bankers. Asked about the incident, Wanda said, beaming, “I’d really be pissed off if men were doing this to me.” Photo by Tom Giacoma

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Last month the Detroit City Water Board was boasting to the news media that Detroit’s water was some of the cleanest in the country. By clean, City officials mean that the chances of there being any harmful (or non-harmful for that matter) bacteria in our drinking water is almost zero. But considering all of the chemicals added to the already polluted waters that surround Detroit, it’s not surprising. What is surprising though, is that we’re still alive! An example of the amount of chemicals the water board uses to clean up our drinking water can be found in the fact that people at the Detroit Print Co-op have found that the needed content p h for the fountain solution in their presses (the fountain solution is a mixture of water and chemicals that keeps ink off of the non-print areas of a printing plate), can be found in plain old Detroit tap water. Drink up...

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Dear FE & Readers:

Some clarification of myself is needed here before too many people waste time making statements about me that are completely out of whack with who I am. (See Letters, FE #290, March 2, 1978).

First off, I’m not afraid of bruises, nor am I afraid of putting my life on the line. I’ve put my life on the line many times in the 25 years of it. I’ll do so again right here:

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The following series of letters have joined the debate regarding the connection between pornography and violence against women that began in our January 24, 1978 issue [#289] with an article by Michael Betzold and was answered the following issue [#290, March 2, 1978] by Sonny Tufts. The two authors respond again to one another and several readers also offer their opinions. We invite further comment from readers.

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Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E.B. Maple

Paul Mavrides

Tina Nachalo

Brenda Sabbagh

Jim Stodder

Norm Thomas

Sonny Tufts

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid advertising accepted.

Ammunition Books shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and can be found at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201 (telephone-313-831-6800). Our hours vary, but we are generally open on Monday and Thursday afternoons (from 1pm to 5pm) and at scattered hours other times. It’s always a good idea to telephone us before you start the trek down, just to be safe.

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CAUTION! There are terrorists among us.

THEY infest this planet from Washington to New York, from Nuremburg to Moscow, from Peking to Santiago.

THEY detain millions of hostages every day and give them the ultimatum—become a slave to the state or an enemy.

THEY maintain large armies that are trained to kill in support of the ideology of the state.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201.

DONNA & CARL—We all received your letters. Glad to hear that you’re both having a great time. Miss you both, Love “the gang.”

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The article below is part of a series of discussions that took place in Hong Kong in the early part of 1977, in which the participants (all ex-Red Guard members) attempt to make clear their reaction to Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution.

During the three years that mark the most active period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69), Mao Tse-Tung executed perhaps one of the most alarming examples of George Orwell’s “doublethink.” In an attempt to regain control of the Party and purge the bureaucracy, Mao called upon the students to build a society along the lines of the Paris Commune (1871), but quickly labeled such actions “counterrevolutionary” when it became apparent that he and the Party were losing control over the situation. The Peoples Liberation Army was then used to crush the general uprisings in blood.

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It doesn’t take an astute observer to point out that an increasingly important product of our society is death and disease. Neutron bombs, cruise missiles, satellite warfare, radioactive wastes, carcinogenic drinking water, mercury poisoning, chemical plagues, industrially-induced cancers, all are prominent parts of our daily lives.

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The Chinese people have a new hero, according to the Peking Peoples Daily. He is Teng Hsiang-erh, a Shantung province coal miner who is being hailed as a model worker. To earn the distinction, Teng did the following: refused to take time off for his honeymoon, never took a vacation in 28 years, worked on his days off, and stayed at work rather than care for his terminally-ill mother. However the acclaim is not unanimous. According to Japanese reporters in Peking, many of Teng’s fellow coal miners think he’s a fruitcake. (IWW)

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The response to last issue’s “Contest of Contests” [FE #289, January 24, 1978] was underwhelming to say the least, but we did receive enough entries to fill the first three winning spots (in fact, exactly that number). The contest was to describe what you could imagine doing at the gathering of ghouls assembled for Hubert Humphrey’s funeral at the Capitol in Washington D.C. Here are the winners:

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Several people have asked us if the back page of last issue’s FE [#289, January 24, 1978] depicting the “thoughts” of Kim Il Sung was real or just another put-on. Well, we wish that it was something we had thought up, but unfortunately those tragic State comedians in North Korea beat us to the punch. Everything on the back page was taken from official North Korean propaganda publications—everything except, of course, the segment by the Italian fascist Mario Palmieri—or was it the other way around; it’s hard to tell. Also, we’d like to thank the members of the IWW group in Hawaii for sending us the info for the North Korean movie “The Engineers” which also appeared on the back page...

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When I first saw the headline of the article on pornography in the last issue of the Fifth Estate (“Fashionable Fascism—The Slick Misogyny of Porn,” #289, January 24, 1978) I was pleased that the question was finally being taken up. It is a complex issue, and its treatment would certainly contribute to the ongoing discussion in these pages of human sexuality and its distortion within modern society.

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Angela DeSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Bill Griffith

Pat Halley

Jay Kinney

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Rudy Perkins

Duke Skywatcher

Sonny Tufts

Bratach Dubh

Peter Werbe

Marilyn Werbe

Brenda Sabbagh

Norm Thomas

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No -copyright, No paid advertising accepted.

Related: see “Technology and the State: An Introduction” in this issue.

While the attention of the world remains, as it has now for over thirty years, on the proliferation of conventional land, air, and sea-launched nuclear-warheads and delivery systems, recent breakthroughs in the areas of theoretical and applied physics are bringing us radically new and even more frightening weapons of global catastrophe. Most people, unaware of these developments, have assumed that the technology of space warfare is still decades, or perhaps centuries, in the future. A series of seemingly unrelated anomalies, however, suggest that space warfare between the U.S. and the USSR is not only being developed for the immediate future, but that the opening battles may have already occurred.

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Perhaps the most insidious aspect of modern, centralized technology, even more than its pervasiveness, is its complete acceptance in almost all quarters as an integral part of the human experience (and among so-called “revolutionaries” as a prerequisite for a change to a humane society).

Humanoids and humans have spent the vast portion of our time on the planet with little or no technology and only in the last 10,000 years or so (an infinitesimal portion of our existence) has the rise of mechanical and technological improvements begun to affect us and the other species with which we share the planet. The capacity for innovation and invention seemed almost innate in humans once the first rudimentary developments of prehistoric times became wide-spread. The first inventions were employed as a means to improve what was often a harsh and dangerous existence, but they immediately put us on the road on which we currently find ourselves.

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Bad news! Two of the numeral codes given in the last issue of the FE [#289, January 24, 1978] for the 1978 Long Distance Credit Card Code were incorrectly reported to us by the Yippies and will not get your call through. The corrected numbers and corresponding letters are: 2-Z and 9-L. Send us a quarter for last month’s paper if you want the entire code. Below are several Revenue Accounting Office codes which allow you to construct your own codes. Remember: never believe anything you read.

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Related: see “Technology and the State: An Introduction” in this issue.

For the anti-nuclear movement the question “What forces have pushed the development of nuclear power in the U.S.?” should be an important one. For in the cause one usually finds the cure. The fact that this question is so infrequently raised, and where raised, so narrowly answered, says something about the nature of American opposition to nuclear power at this time.

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Dear FE,

Puritanism is pernicious & petty. It goes against the grain of libertarianism. In the sexual sphere are two Puritan-isms, of the right and of the left.

The Puritanism of the right we’re quite familiar with—the old Victorianism, sex as dirty, sex for procreation only, no sex before marriage, etc. The Puritanism of the left, however, is more subtle, less easy to explain. This is because it often wears libertarian clothes.

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Original poster by: SOCIAL WARFARE / WILDCAT, Room 37, 200 West 72^nd Street, New York, New York 10025 / USA

Panel 1: Drawing of an angry man.

Angry man: Work stinks!

Response, off: Well, you’re not the only one.

Panel 2: Two men in conversation

Man 1: When we fuck up on the job and steal from our boss, we begin to realize our own power.

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Ammunition Books shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and can be found at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201 (telephone-313-831-6800). Our hours vary, but we are generally open on Monday and Thursday afternoons (from 1pm to 5pm) and at scattered hours other times. It’s always a good idea to telephone us before you start the trek down, just to be safe.

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Tough times had befallen the Easy Space Theater, and to help them pull out of their financial woes, the Somebody Else Players called in the help of that perennial moneymaker, Jerry Loose, for a grand Begathon.

It opened with Loose dancing out on stage, cigarettes stuffed up his nose and dressed in a sleazy Las Vegas suit. This guy was disgusting.

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Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit 48201.

RICK—No! You haven’t lost your boyish charm. Still love you. Happy Birthday til we meet again. Love, M & P

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MUSSOLINI’S ITALY

“A hero is he who can pierce with the mystic light of an inner vision to the very heart of things; he who can re-discover the greatest and most profound of all truths: viz., that beyond his realm of fugitive appearances there lies, immutable and eternal, what Fichte called the ‘Divine Idea of the World;’ finally, he who, living already in spirit in this realm of timeless and absolute Reality, is able to translate his vision into deeds and to act according to the dictates of an inner voice telling him that ‘...they wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.’

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(Left photo) From left to right: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Tricky Dicky

(Right photo) From left to right: Nelson Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, Happy Rockefeller, Muriel Humphrey, Nancy Kissinger, Walter Mondale and Henry Kissinger

Never is such joy brought into the homes of so many people as when a high-ranking state official decides to pack his bags and catch a one-way train to the never-never land.

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2 Felix the Cat (Cartoon)

Thinking that they will save the world, Felix & the professor make and sell enough acid to finance a communal farm, but Rock Bottom turns it into a gambling casino.

4 George Pierrot (Travelogue)

George’s guest today is distinguished Korean traveler, Tungsen Park, who shows films of mating customs in a small town in the District of Columbia.

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The Yippies have done it again—snatched the new long distance credit card codes almost as soon as Ma Bell put them out.

The publication of the secret codes has been an annual event in the Fifth Estate as a small way the captive customers of profit-swollen Bell can even the score a bit. Since 1976 the Michigan Public Service Commission has caved into several Bell requests for multi-million dollar rate hikes and the upping of pay-phone calls to 20 cents—both unnecessary other than to fatten the company’s profit margins.

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a review of

Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach, Bantam Books, $1.95

Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, an underground novel for two years, recently released as a Bantam paperback, regrettably could become the fable of the age. And if it does it will duplicate Looking Backwards’ performance of 80 years ago, ironically for the opposite reasons. Bellamy’s story provided an outlet for a wave of discontent and despair following a series of working-class defeats and economic crises. It literally propelled thousands into the countryside to form communes with little more than a new shovel and an old hope.

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I read the news today, oh boy. A million holes in American Apple Pie. Thirty-eight million to be exact; thirty-eight million battered wives in the good ole U.S.A! Thirty-eight million wife-beaters! That means that 26% of the population of the U.S. are playing this grotesque game of tackle. And those are only the reported cases. The only participatory sport in Modern America! Egg-beaters like steamirons. Strong right arms. Weak Knees. Never needed to Bring the War Home. It never left! These statistics were reported on a T.V. network program; local T.V. news, and in a speech by an LA city councilman. Can you believe it? Twenty-five percent of all murder victims are killed by their husbands! Can you believe it?

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The recent opening of a small Nazi “bookstore” on West Vernor has touched off dozens of demonstrations by liberal and leftist pickets. Community, Jewish, civil rights and Marxist organizations have denounced the promulgation of neo-Fascism and the threat to civilization represented by the “white hate” literature sold in the storefront.

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As the letter on the preceding page indicates [“Who Are the Real Terrorists?,” FE #289, January 24, 1978], though the more spectacular aspects of the repression in West Germany are now fading from the popular imagination, the “policification” of the Federal Republic proceeds apace.

In recent weeks the criminalization of all who express even the slightest sympathy for the “terrorists” has intensified markedly; though it becomes increasingly difficult to say which is the most astounding of the actions taken by the state to achieve this, a sure candidate can be found in the charges recently brought against the father of murdered RAF member Gudrun Ensslin. For having the temerity to suggest that his daughter had no reason to kill herself but was in fact killed by the state, Ensslin (a minister) is now accused of “defaming the state” and faces three years in prison if convicted.

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LNS/Peoples News Service, London — As part of its ongoing hysteria campaign against both “terrorists” and their “sympathizers” (that is, literally, anybody who refuses to condemn the “terrorists”), West Germany’s notorious Bild Zeitung (a Springer newspaper) has now offered its readers a chance to predict whether their children will wind up on the most wanted list some day.

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The western Massachusetts area was rocked on Monday, October 10, with the news that a 31 year-old drill press operator at the Springfield American Bosch airplane and truck parts plant had returned from lunch with a .22 caliber rifle and killed a general foreman and critically wounded his immediate foreman.

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Rather than try to reconcile the obvious disparity between a newspaper that indicts the entire edifice of civilization and the technology it has developed with the fact that the FE mail subscriptions have just been converted to a computer list, we’ll just take another sip of beer. We think the transition (required of us by our mailing house) went fairly smoothly, but if there are any serious errors, please bring them to our attention....

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To The Fifth Estate:

The latest issue of Invariance (in French) is at the printers in Milan, but to pay for the printing we need one million Italian lire (FE note: about $1,350). So we’re wondering if among people interested in Invariance in the U.S. there might be some who could help us financially. Please excuse this request, but we are really at an impasse.

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Richard Ades

Michael Betzold

Angela DeSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Govinda Habersplatt

Amelia Jones

Jay Kinney

Don Kirkland

Jerry Lemenu

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Peter Rachleff

Richard Rollins

Clayton Sheridan

Peter Werbe

Marilyn Werbe

Hughthir White

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid advertising accepted.

The following is a letter forwarded to us (after translation) by friends in Seattle. Though some of the factual information has already been published previously in the FE (see Oct./Nov. and Dec. ’77 issues) we found its first-hand nature and compelling sense of urgency more than sufficient reason to reprint it intact. Thanks to Wayne Parker and Helene Ellenbogen.

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A CONTEST! Did you think gas stations were the only ones who held contests? The FIFTH ESTATE is having the Calendar Name Game. Try and create a new and exciting name for the calendar. Then send it along, with your name and address to the FIFTH ESTATE. A free one-year subscription will be given for the winning name. So, what have ya got to lose? Give it a try.

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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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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.

Wanted: Singer for Experienced Radical-Rock-Jazz Ensemble. Must be good, versatile, and over 18. Contact Wilson, 14 W. Elmhurst, Highland Park, Michigan.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 20) LNS — Possession charges against LNS editor Ray Mungo and WIN [magazine] editor Marty Jezer were dropped June 20 in Washington. The defendants suspect the police smoked the evidence,

After the case was placed on the court calendar, the arresting Narc approached Mungo’s and Jezer’s lawyer, John Karr, and asked if he was going to contest: the evidence. Karr advised the Narc to have the evidence as well as a lab technician in court to give testimony. The Narc disappeared and when the case was called for trial, charges were dismissed, Mungo and Jezer were not surprised at the outcome. “After. all,” they chorused, “it was good shit.”

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Liberation News Service — You don’t have to be (or even read Marshall McLuhan to realize that without an iron grip on the media—and most importantly on television—the rulers of this country could hold power approximately one month. The average person here is not so happy that given an easy and acceptable access to honest explanations of what goes on here he would not take action as we have.

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Editors’ Note: The following events, now described as the Berkeley Rebellion, occurred between June 28 and July 2. Subsequently, the citizens of Berkeley won a complete victory when the city council lifted the curfew and allowed Telegraph Avenue to be closed off and a rally held. This article originally appeared in a slightly longer form in the San Francisco Express Times.

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

QUESTION: In a recent column you referred to a medical underground weekly called the A.M.A. News. I would like to place a subscription for my doctor to this paper. He is a real good doc and all but seems to have blinders on. Could you give me the address?

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a review of

The Cream, “Wheels of Fire” (ATCO)

and

Donovan, “In Concert” (Epic)

I can remember when I was young, thinking how nothing in the music world ever stayed constant. Later in my life I was to be proven wrong. Cream had nothing to do with it, unfortunately, as nothing in the world would give me greater pleasure than to admit that they were the group!

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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.

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The Trans-Love Energies commune is now offering three new services in which you may be interested:

Dave Sinclair, manager of the UP and now resident at 1520 Hill Street in Ann Arbor, next door to the MC5-Trans-Love house, is now taking orders for custom-built speaker cabinets for guitar and p.a. amplifiers and for hi-fi and stereo sets. He will build what you need at a wholly reasonable rate. For example, a new SUNN speaker cabinet for a 200S bass amp would cost you $330 list (without speakers); Dave can do it for under $100. His cabinets are endorsed by the MC5 and the UP—these bands play and praise them.

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“Elvira Madigan,” as advertised, may well be the most beautiful movie ever made. In any event, it is one of the most popular foreign films to come to Detroit in quite a while. However, I have a feeling that the capacity crowds that fill the Studio-North each night are not completely satisfied with what they see.

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