As the dying screams of The Butter melt away, a fat boy in a blue pull-over sweater strolls on stage with a hand-mike. His introduction is an endless chain of bad jokes that is finally interrupted when Chuck Berry steps awkwardly on stage. This time the applause is polite, if only a burst of relief.

Dressed in a white shirt, waist-hugging black jacket and black tie, Berry seems grotesquely out of place. Behind him stands The Butter, squirming self-consciously in non-conformist natty tweed, marred corduroy and blue denim.

"Are you ready on the right?" Berry

There was once a time when songs sold in single 45's...when teenage idols sang of schoolroomsandmalt shops... A time when... asks the audience almost disinterestedly. "Are you ready on the left?" He looks up and growls into an overhanging red spotlight, "Get ready for 45 minutes of sheer rrrrrock."

The blonde titters and edges forward indulgently. She is here to gawk at a historical figure, and hardly expects to be entertained. Despite her flower-print and beads, it is not difficult to imagine her someday attending concerts for her own self-improvement.

Chuck Berry drops clumsily to his knees to retune his guitar. An old man with pointed loafers and a ducktail--what is he doing holding an electric guitar and talking about rock 'n roll? He seems to belong on a park bench somewhere, drinking wine from a paper sack.

Suddenly he leaps to his feet and breaks into Nadine. The lights bathe him in gently pulsating psychedelic color. Behind him, The Butter hurry to catch up with some left-over noise from their last acid-rock number.

As The Butter establishes the big non-Berry beat, Berry closes his eyes and hangs his head. His fingers break idly into stray chords from Roll Over, Beethoven, and finally he half-heartedly picks up the lyrics:

Well, I'm gonna write a little letter, Gonna mail it to my local deejay; Yeah, there's a jumpin'est record That I want my jockey to play....

"Beatles," the blonde nods knowingly. No, Chuck Berry, I want to tell her--written and sung by Chuck Berry when the only Liverpool sound was the bellow of an ocean-going tanker.

My heart's beatin' rhythm and my soul keeps a-singin' the blues;Roll over, Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.

He lifts his head back now, chin sparkling, and sets the whites of his eyes writhing in the flashing light. Rising stiff-legged to his full height, he jams his guitar into his crotch and jerks back and forth--riding his wooden horse for all it is worth.

"He must be up on something,"the blonde gasps, momentarily losing her cool. "I wonder what he's up on." Music, I want to say, as the red and green lights flash faster and faster, battering the Rocking Horse Winner into Oh, Carol and a different time and place.

Oh, Carol, don't let him steal your heart away; I'm goin' to learn to dance if it takes me all night and day. Oh, Carol...Carol...Carol...

He glides abruptly to the microphone, blinking his eyes faster and faster to keep up with the lights. Jerking from side to side, he is a ragdoll puppet, a Chaplinesque hero from an old time movie, a haunting Zombie back from the dead.