May 1972
CONTENTS_
Dear CREEM: Being of as great importance as I stand and not wishing to jeopardize my office, I would like to go on record as saying (you may quote): 1. Grand Funk is the best mutha-fuckin’ group around with one bad-ass guitarist. 2. Alice Cooper smells, eats and sounds like shit.
ROCK ‘N' ROLL NEWS
Now that Grand Funk are in retirement or whatever, Terry Knight has a new scam: Twiggy! That’s right, the very same, shapeless model of yesteryore. Twiggy and her co-host, Justin de Villeneuve, are partners with Terry in a new motion picture production company, TwiggyGood Knight Productions.
THE BEAT GOES ON
The shadow trailing Allen Klein seems to lengthen every time we turn around. As if altercations with Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and the United States Government weren’t enough, it appears that he’s now at odds with the Douglas Communications Corporation over the handling of Alexandro Jodorowsky’s film El Topo.
Gettin’ Next To Al Green
Sue C. Clark
They Call Him Super-star
TIGHTEN UP
Vince Aletti
A piano/strings/chorale version of “The Impossible Dream” is overflowing someone else’s apartment and coming into mine, competing with my hissing radiators. Yesterday the woman in back of me at the check-out counter at Finast was singing along with the muzak. Sleazo inputs.
Joy of Cookin’ Berkeley Barefootin’
Robbie Cruger
Where Joy of Cooking come from individually has a lot of bearing on where they are as a group. The significance is not only in their well-integrated differences but in the basic similarities perhaps most people drawn to music have in common.
LOONEY TOONS
DAVE MARSH
The current obsession is anthology albums — more precisely, Golden Hits packages, samplers and bargain collections. I think I know why, too. For a long long time, everyone has known that the absolute A-number-one fuckin’ killer best of all anthologies were the Motown ones: Chartbusters, the latest series is into its fourth edition by now, I think, but before that there were the fabulous 16 Original Big Hits, which ran into a dozen or more volumes before it was deleted, or just stopped coming out.
Features
Marc Bolan and T.Rex: Can The Electric Warriors Conquer America?
Dave Marsh
The Further Adventures of the Dwarf Prince of Bop
The Adventures of Anderson Modrion & THE ORIGINAL HIP
William Kowinski
Lying perfectly furniture blossomed over the expanse of wounded carpet as the door opened and any visitor could see. The room, the first room, was never used. The middle room, the next room, with nothing but two orange crates and a Boston bean brown upright piano and matching stool was where it all happened on weekdays, and nights.
Features
Doncha Ever Listen To The Radio...
Dave Marsh
How To Remain Obscure Through Better Rock 'n' Roll Bob Seger Best In The Midwest
FILM
David Black
The week that the Mylai massacres were first reported in the press, I was stopped in front of the Con Ed power plant on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 110th Street by a man who looked drunk. His eyes were red, his hair was tousled, his speech was slurred, — I was there, he kept repeating, I was there, and it wasn’t like that.
BOOKS
Charlie Gillett
Lynn McCuthcheon is shocked and horrified by the musical ignorance of the people who play records for a living in the United States. He’s sure that if they hadn’t been so stupid, to say nothing of being prejudiced and deaf, an almost entirely different set of records would have been hits, and you would all nostalgically remember records that only sold a few hundred copies and were never heard of again until Lynn sat down to write about them here.
Records
Aretha and the Ladies’ Soul
Vince Aletti
If all failures were this exciting, who would need successes?
Like a Bulldozer that learned to dance
Dave Marsh
I don’t know if there is even anything to add to Jimi’s legend. You can build it up or tear it down but it remains almost intact, weathering heavy storms even so recently after his death. Some of the reason it’s not much fun to write about Jimi lies in the fact that so much has already been said, but that’s not the only problem.
JUKE BOX JURY
GREG SHAW
That’s what we’ve got this month. Biggest pile of worthy discs I’ve had yet, but no real killers — unless you count Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” (Reprise 1065) which is beginning to wear thru overexposure. It still stands head & shoulders above the rest of Harvest though, and it’s the finest evocation of the folkrock sound since “Oh Yoko”.
MOUND CITY
Bill Bergeron