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Show Page Twenty-Si- The Daily x a head and full of heroin, animal tranquilizers, marijuana, whiskey, knovvs what God else, he staggered through the gyrating sea of humanity packed tightly around the stage. Through eyelids cracked barely the width of dimes, he gazed blankly into the annoyed faces of those he heavily leaned upon as they quickly shoved him into their neighbors who in turn systematically pushed him on into theirs. His ears, uselessly dulled, were incapable of distinguishing their angry curses from the pounding music which blasted . from speaker banks less than 15 yards away. His rubbery legs, which for too long had gamely supported him in spite of the worthlessly garbled instructions running rampant throughout his central nervous system, finally gave up. On the v.av down to a face-firmeeting with the Boulder football stadium's playing surface, he weakly clawed at the shoulder of my good friend, the Duke of Diagonal. "Looks like that gentleman has a substantial buzz on," the Duke grinningly yelled in the general direction of my ear while motioning towards the motionless body now laying at our feet. "Yeah, why don't you ask him how he likes the music so far?" I shot back with a laugh as the Duke kicked the new arrival over onto his back. The kid's head rolled listlessly to one side as a thin stream of vomit oozed from the corner of his gaping mouth. "Jeez, Duke, " I shouted, "That's that kid that was try ing to sell us the 'Angel Dust' this morning while we were waiting in line." "Damn, you're right," the Duke yelled as he peered down over the top of his reflector-lenseaviator sunglasses for a clearer view of the kid. "His name was Doug, wasn't it?" The Duke bent down and lightly slapped the kid's face. No response. "He's barely breathing," said the Duke as I knelt next to him. "This kid's in bad shape." The Duke pushed open one of the kid's eyelids his eyes had rolled far back into his head. A few yards away, Mick Jagger unknowingly added a chilling ironical twist to the whole situation by curling his pouty lips around a wireless microphone and singing a down-and-ocalled "Far Away Eyes." country The Duke's tone of voice snapped my thoughts back to the crisis at hand. "We better get this kid some help or he might die or something," he summarized. ' But wait a minute, I'm getting ahead of myself. This story deserves to be told from the beginning . . . Dim H5iujl(oteo" st :kr d ut tear-jerk- P er se At Oh A m W TVs n in the Sunday twilight reading of Colorado's Daily. University "Hey Duke, it says here in the paper that some lady attacked her 91 year-old spinster roommate in Boulder yesterday. "The young one told the old one to fix dinner by the time she got home from shopping and the old one apparently spaced the whole thing out. So when the old one got back to the apartment dinner wasn't ready and she got really pissed off and went over to the refrigerator and chucked a big hunk of frozen cauliflower at her from across the room. It smacked her right upside the head and put a two-inc- h gash in her forehead. Ain't that something?" "Pretty strange, allright," muttered the Duke as he sat half asleep on the ground next to me. We were packed tightly in the midst of several thousand hardy Rolling Stones fanatics who had weathered a chilly night's wait outside Gate 13 of the Boulder stadium in hopes of being as close as possible when the "World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" hit the stage Sunday afternoon. "Y'know," added the Duke, "I bet that old lady chucked farmhomes. (The Duke, incidentally, picked up his nickname as a result of his teenage tough-gu- y preeminence in his hometown stomping grounds of Diagonal, Iowa.) With the car windows wide open and the fifth or sixth cold Pabst Blue Ribbon of the evening gripped tightly in one hand, a guy could lean back, close his ey es, let the wind rush over him, and forget for a moment about the oppressively humid heat of the midwestern night or the sweltering beanfields which had to be walked tomorrow. Above all, however, the thing that made forgetting the easiest was THE MUSIC. The music that boomed out of the car radios that came from magical stations in magical places, like WLS in Chicago, KXOK in St. Louis, and KAY in Little Rock. It was rock 'n' roll at its purest those nightly high speed runs were orchestrated with music so exciting it even made deserted Iowa cornfields seem electric. Amazingly hip and funny DJs like WLS' Larry Lujack and KXOK's Johnny Rabbilt would scream hilarious intros and dedications between strings of songs like the Rascal's "Good Lovin'." the Troggs "Wild Thing," the Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown," the Who's "I Can See For Miles." Donovan's "Sunshine Superman." Dy lan's "Like a Rolling Stone," the Kinks' "All the day and all of the Night. " Sam the Sham's " Wooly Bully," the Spencer Dav is Group's "Gimme, Gimme Some Lovin'," the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City," and on and on and on and on . . . Because the music was such an integral part of some of the best moments in the Duke's adolescence, it became one of the driving forces in his life. Perhaps one anecdote from that era will suffice as illustration. One day the Duke heard a new single by the Who "Magic Bus" on the radio. He immediately went and bought the 45. For the next week he played it relentlessly at maximum volume until finally his exasperated mother whom the Duke claims is a very patient, reserved lady burst into his bedroom, ripped the record from the turntable and broke it with her bare hands. Any way, the Duke's fanatical fascination with rock has remained intact to the present. So there was no doubt, I decided as I concluded my reverie, rock 'n' roll expert like the Duke opines that when an old-lin- e that the Stones have a strange power over people, he knows of what he speaketh. knew one thing for sure the Stones had Regardless, over the Duke and I to make us leave Salt Lake enough power e on a venture to Colorado on only two days' City 500-mil- r -- rV . hate to think that some of the truth may have been lost . . ." In typically pompous, bombastic fashion, thus began the hand-writtenote that arrived Thursday afternoon from our good friend Jackson Jones. Jones is what can only be described as a bonafide Character with a capital C. Purely bizarre in lifestyle, Jones is a nomadic JEFF HOWREY n photos by LYNN SUGARMAN jack-of-all-trad- es a that sucker because she was subconciously affected bv the Stones being in town. "When the Stones are around," the Duke continued, "they have a strange effect on people folks do weird things. It's an unnatural sort of evil power or something that those boys have. "Yeah, the Stones have considerable power over mere mortals," the Duke concluded. As I contemplated his drowsy statements, I realized that the Duke's comments carried considerable authority his rock 'n' roll credentials were impeccable. To briefly summarize, the Duke's love affair with rock began in the mid-'60His teenage summer nights were a blur of racing with buddies in juiced-u- p Chevy Impalas through the familiar, desolate Iowa backroads which connected their isolated w T;i r-- . I P "V--- M' . HS o The majority of his income, however, is the $1,000 a month his father pays him to stay west of the Mississippi River. To fully grasp the significance of that monthly stipend, one must realize that Jones' father lives on the East Coast. In other words, Jones' father pays him to stay away. Which gives a fairly accurate insight into Jones' personality he is undeniably rather obnoxious, arrogant individual. Nevertheless, Jones does have some redeeming qualities. He possesses, for example, an unflagging allegiance to partying Jones spends a good portion of each year traveling continued on page 27 rml? 7 combination hustlerhuckstersemi-pr- gamblerwritermusician. s. Ov . you have kept a file of letters that I have written you in the post, for in them lie the inalienable truths of existence. story by -- T f7g ((J hope pre-daw- in Chronicle Openings notice. It all began with the letter that arrived on Thursday TVfake no mistake about it, a frozen hunk of i A cauliflower is a potentially lethal weapon, I reflected as I sat LTtah 4., $7k S |
