Rock And Roll Shorts

ROCK and ROLL SHORTS

The number one rock and roll disc jockey in America, as rated by the members of the impartial staff of the Ann Arbor Sun, is sister Barbara Holliday. Barbara's first few shows last week on WRIF had us up all night, falling out of our chairs and dancing to some of the best jams we've ever heard together in one place. Holliday time now happens every weekday from 3 to 7 in the morning...

Sharing the cover of Changes magazine with Mick Jagger this month is Rainbow People's Party Chairman/political prisoner John Sinclair. Dennis M. Piana's (formerly with Zygote magazine) great 5 page story called "Mother Country 's Conspiracy Against John Sinclair" follows, with lots of nice pics of John, daughter Sunny, and the old White Panther headquarters. Copies can be copped for half a buck from your local bookstore or through Changes, P. O. Box 631 Cooper Station, N. Y„ , N.Y. 10003...

Johnny Winter is currently laying up in a hospital somewhere undergoing psychiatric treatment, presumably for overexposure to the pop star scene. We still haven't been able to get together with D. M. - A, the Detroit booking agency that handles Alice Cooper, the Dukes, the MC5, SRC, Stooges, et al over their accepting phone calls from the SUN so we can give you their band's calendars in WHERE IT'S AT. But we did finally get through to talk to Rick Kay, one of the agents at D. M. A. , about the bogus shit they had been accused of in connection with the Jackson free concert series by Jackson park program worker Charlie McCain in issue #7 of the SUN. As near as we can tell, both Charlie and D. M. A. are guilty of a few under-the-table maneuvers - the result of which will probably be almost no "big" bands playing for free in Jackson this summer...

Mitch Ryder and his band Detroit start work on their new Paramount album in Vancouver, British Columbia, in just a few weeks. The reason for the Canadian sessions is that Detroit's producer lives up there. He's also produced Alice Cooper's latest album and all of the hits by Canada's Guess Who...

The good old Canterbury House is back in action, with a new name and entirely new format that promises to bring more solid music to A2 than ever before. Now called The Alley, the building is being leased by a number of local people principally including Blue Sceptre's Pete Andrews and will be managed by former Tate Blues Band stomper Hog Tate. This weekend Buddies in the Saddle and Hog's brother Terry Tate open The Alley, which now has got pinball machines and pool tables in the basement for sportsminded folks. The Episcopal Church People who run the Cant-

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ROCK AND ROLL SHORTS

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erbury House as a community center that was the sight of many a high energy freek outs f or over three years moved out last month when the rent was raised from $400 to $800 per month. . . The Stooges are getting back on their feet - they leave for a bunch of gigs and some recording in California this week, and they'll be back to do a big FREE JOHN NOW! benefit in Ann Arbor or Detroit at the beginning of August...

Next week's SUN will feature a big spread on the new/black music which has inspired countless rock and rollers the last few years but not reached nearly enough of the general public; it'll include an interview with the thoroughly dangerous Archie Shepp...

We rapped with Fred Smith of the MC5 last week about the review of their new album, "High Time" in the last ish of the SUN, which they didn't like very much. Smith insists that the words to "Sister Anne" are not "some kind of weird joke" (as Frank Bach said in the review), but a satire on "all those God songs," Smith said, "and we just had to do something about it."...

John Lennon has reportedly been hanging around lately with Jerry Rubin???...

Amerika's honkoid business daily, The Wall Street Journal did a story last week on Terry Knight, the disc jockey from Flint that went on to manage the world's most popular rock and roll band, Grand Funk Railroad. The Journal says that Funk owes its success to Knight's marketing "approach, which includes 'test market cities' and saturation advertising, and can be used to sell any product from soap to toothpaste." The Journal also manages to quote a Funk fan who points out that "It's like, you know what the people want to hear." Meanwhile, Funk guitarist Mark Farner is writing for and helping to finance a people's paper in Flint called the Freedom Reader...

Up's hectic schedule will have Frank Bach writing his ROCK AND ROLL DOPE column for the SUN only once every other week from now on, which makes it all the more important for rock and rollers everywhere to shoot whatever news you have to us so we can continue to cover the people's music scene as thoroughly as possible...KEEP ON ROCKIN'!!!!