Peter Bell

tonight at the Western Front, on the corner of Western Ave. and Putnam Ave.

WHY DON'T you all grab some of that good Schlitz draught there, off of that shelf there, and kiss your favorite girlfriend goodbye and hustle on over to Rupert's house where you can tear off a couple of roll-on sticks of 6:12 insect repellent and cram them into a big open bottle of Windex, put the cap on, jam it up your nose, and let loose.

Now, just about time's you a comin' down, you let out for the Western Front down on good old Putnam Avenue, and keep going right upstairs to where Peter Bell is playing, and sit down for a while so you can hear that old Peter Bell sit there a while himself. And play that music like we like to hear it. Right there, himself, live on the guitar.

Now, imagine first that you're sitting back in your apartment high over Cambridge, Massachusetts, when you flip out the Who from their jacket cover, put them on the turntable, and set the needle for "The Amazing Journey." It's usually when you just get to the part where the kettle drums come in (bum-bum, ba-dum ba-dum) that you realize that it's almost like you were right there watching them play that music. Maybe, you think, you should be.

And then as you're standing there shaking the snow off your second step into the all-new Western Front, you begin to marvel at the fantastic new decor they've got going at this place, and you decide that the Western Front is just something else.

If the architect who designed it all is there, he'll tell you about how hard it was getting loans out of the local banks for a place that was supposed to be as "far-out" as the Western Front was planned to be. All of which goes to show how straight bankers can be at times.

And just about now Peter Bell will come drifting across the room and say, "Hey-ya-there, man, how are you doing? Why don't you get yourself a beer?"

PETER BELL is a good man to see drifting across the room in your direction because Peter Bell is a singer and a guitar player. When he comes floating right into sight, dissolving into nothingness, and then reappearing-poof!-like magic, you know that music is going to be created right before your very eyes. You'll be able to see the golden, velvet (rippling soft like... fur) colors pouring out of his guitar and blending into the room like they belong there.

Peter Bell is just a guitar player in a brand-new bar. He sings there on weekday nights, which is a difficult time to be playing. It is a difficult time because right now is exam period; and most of us have been hiding inside for the past month underneath a pile of books.

He is a good singer and a real fine guitar player. He plays really good material-a little "I Shall Be Released." a little Mississippi John Hurt, and a little of his own stuff. You should go down to the Western Front and hear him.

You should do it because there is a real gap in this kind of entertainment. It used to be that you could go down to the Club 47 on weekday nights and listen to someone play out his music while you just sat around a table listening to it and thinking your own thoughts peacefully. But that isn't so any more. All you can do is to pay your five million dollars to stand screaming in the third row at some ultra-name group doing it up truly loud. Too loud, you know; and then (zap!) they're out of town.

CAMBRIDGE used to be known as being really big on coffeehouses and their singers and poets and beatniks. Whether or not any of those things ever existed is a question we can leave for the foggy historians of lost ages. But here and now the simple pleasure-seekers are having a hard time not being exploited and brought up short by a lot of rich hippies. So we go back to the bars.

First there was the Charity Ward, and then the Plough and Stars. But both of these got crowded and confused real fast; and neither one of them ever got something of their own going. The Western Front has got Peter Bell going.

But everything else is up in the air. The Western Front is trying to bring in both kids and the Western Avenue people, who are older and poorer. You can never be sure how a cross-cultural thing like that is going to work itself out. But it's got, like we say, real potential. And a quiet guitar.