God did not create music only for yuppy Jaycees. : Rockin’ on Down to Burbank

Not since the old television show Laugh-In has Burbank enjoyed such national attention. The reference to “beautiful downtown Burbank” became, like “Where’s the beef?” and “I am not a crook,” a pop catch phrase of American culture in the late 20th Century.

We all had a good laugh sockin’ it to the city with no downtown at all. And now we can have another good laugh sockin’ it to a city that doesn’t--excuse me, don’t --boogie.

To get on down, as I believe they say, Burbank has been involved in a long fight to prevent rock concerts at its municipal Starlight Bowl, contending that such concerts would attract dopers, homosexuals and anti-nuclear demonstrators, which is just about everyone except you and me.

The City Council in 1979, reviewing a proposed slate of concerts, turned down such, well, artists as Blue Oyster Cult and Roxy Music while accepting Robert Palmer and Poco, whom a young friend regards as the Donnie and Marie of rock ‘n’ roll.

Cinevision, the concert promoters, argued more or less that the council decision infringed on the First Amendment rights of Blue Oyster Cult and sued. A jury subsequently decided in favor of the promoters and the decision was upheld by a federal appeals court.

Dopers, homosexuals and anti-nuclear demonstrators had a right to rock on down to Burbank if they wanted to.

A few weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and now Cinevision is suing the city for $10 million. And all because Blue Oyster Cult was denied its right of free expression.

I find myself somewhere in the middle on the issue. I believe, for instance, that even those with nothing to say have a right to say it, else we might never have a president of the United States and only half a Congress.

However, I also believe we have a right to understand just what the hell it is they’re trying to say beyond baby, baby, baby I wanna make it with you.

They might be advocating overthrow of the government in a screaming vibrato that only teen-agers can understand. Fortunately, most teen-agers don’t know where the government is, so we’re reasonably safe.

Not that I’m one of those who listens only to hymns and madrigals. There are some kinds of rock I can abide even though I am not a homosexual or an anti-nuclear demonstrator, and even though I do not smoke dope and will never put a foreign substance up my nose until someone invents a nasal martini, which I do not consider foreign. Hold the olive.

Generally, however, my preference for music falls somewhere between Debbie Boone and Twisted Sister.

Still, a city council has no right to determine what kind of music its citizens ought to hear and who ought to hear it. God did not create music only for yuppy Jaycees who still believe “You Light Up My Life” is in the top 40.

The man who initiated the furor in Burbank is Jim Richman, a 52-year-old conservative who describes himself as an investor in investments. Jim told me the other day that he loves rock ‘n’ roll, is one of the best swing dancers in California and believes in a hand up, not a handout.

Richman was a member of the council when he talked his colleagues into banning rock concerts at the Starlight Bowl. He says he did so because he attended some of the concerts beforehand and more than half the audience was smoking dope. “The air was yellow with marijuana smoke,” is the way he put it.

I think it’s more tan than yellow, but I’m not going to argue faint hues.

Jim says he doesn’t give a rat’s rear end (I’m paraphrasing here) whether homosexuals or anti-nukers attend, he just hates dope and the cops were doing nothing to abate the amberfog.

However, fellow ex-Councilman Leland Ayers, a 50-year-old Democrat who owns an electronics company and prefers Willie Nelson to Wham!, argues that they smoke dope at sports events, too, but no one is going to outlaw baseball.

Ayers doesn’t think doping is right, but he also doesn’t believe it’s up to Burbank to monitor society.

Both points of view are valid. The use of dope has become a national disaster. God knows how many starting pitchers are stoned out of their heads by the time they find the mound and what Supreme Court justices do when they are locked up together considering writs of certiorari and habeas corpus ad prosequendum.

However, to disallow an event because it might attract people who smoke, snort or otherwise dull their instincts would be, as Ayers correctly implied, to ban everything from lawn bowling to mud wrestling.

We’re a society that celebrates Instant Relief, and until we float down from our own Valium vistas and codeine clouds we’re going to have one hell of a rough time persuading kids not to smoke marijuana.

If we ever stop and they ever stop, there won’t be a problem with hard rock music anymore. No one completely sober is going to sit there and listen to a bedlam of sound that causes terminal taste damage and to lyrics whose contribution to culture are limited to making out and staying cool.

Not even in beautiful downtown Burbank.