June 1973
CREEM
If I were the Moody Blues, I would call you up personally and tell you to climb in an elephant’s ass and hibernate forever. Leigh Orders Jacksonville, Fla. (They’re not going to give away the plot of their next album like that. -Ed.) NO WAY OUT I’d just like to quote Lester Bangs from your March issue and the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival Program and ask him for a simple explanation.
BARNEY $ MIKE
Bob Wilson
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
The Beach Boys: “Holland” (Brother). Meandering towards oblivion to be reborn — it’s their, er, dharma, right? — only don’t bet on it. The question this time: Why did they transport a whole sound system to the Netherlands just to make this album when they could have flown some redwood mountain streams to the starving in India instead?
ROCK 'N’ ROLL NEWS
Hey kids the Beatles are back! At least, that’s what a couple of LA radio stations would have you believe. KMET and KROQ are fighting it out to see can be the first to conclusively substantiate claims that the Fab Four are tucked away in some LA studio, making music that the world will soon be privileged to hear.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Ed Ward
“By the way,” John said, as I was picking my records up off the counter, “Porter and Dolly are coming to Berkeley Community Theatre on the ninth.” Good Lord! Is that a fact? Country music shows come to the San Francisco area about as often as they come to Harlem.
Features
Roger McGuinn On Past, Present And Future BYRDS
A reunion of the original Byrds is a subject that a lot of people have talked about for an awfully long time.
Letter From Britain
Get On Whille You Can At Twelve Or Never
Simon Frith
It’s teeny bop time again.
Features
Slade Don’t Do No Rock Operas
Lester Bangs
Right now Slade are the biggest thing in England.
Features
ALICE COOPER’S ALCOHOL COOKBOOK
Alice Cooper Blows His Wad Scenes From An Impending Conquest
Ben Edmonds
Scene: February, 1965. An upper middle-class dwelling in suburban Phoenix, Arizona.
Alice’s New Show Lust, Greed & Dental Hygiene
Robert Christgau
Alice Cooper’s latest and most appropriate symbol is a dollar-sign, “S” transformed into a two-headed snake
1972 creem Rock ’n’ Roll Poll
What’s this, yet another glance over the collective shoulders of a bunch of stuffed-shirt rock critics? Not this time, friends and neighbors. It’s just the final word (we hope) on a year already so far away as to be a chapter of ancient history.
Eleganza
Dressing To Kill
Lisa Robinson
There once was a short-lived fashion magazine called Rags.
PLAY IT LOUD
Guitar Arnie
Ever since the guitar became an electronic instrument and ceased, for all practical purposes, to be a guitar in the classic sense, there has been an unending stream of little black boxes which can be connected between the guitar and the amplification system.
Rewire Yourself
Beating The Price Hierarchy
Richard Robinson
There is only one question that is important when it comes to buying electronic equipment: how much have you got to spend?
C’mon Baby...
Robbie Cruger
“I like music my parents hate,” exclaimed a friend of mine. “That’s why rock’n’roll is great!” This kid prides himself on being a punk king, a true rock’n’roll chauvinist. The peak of punk occured, of course, in the later fifties. Since then, MOR standards have been playing the chart-busters of yester-year — Beatles, Elvis, Neil Diamond — as standards, not golden oldies.
CONFESSIONS OF A FILM FOX
More news and spews from the Fox after a harrowing month sneaking around to catch the latest. Loads of film folks were on hand to tell what’s happening. Have you heard? . . . Curtis Mayfield filed a letter of complaint with the Motion Picture Academy stating his “Freddie’s Dead” song from Superfly was bounced from Oscar nomination because they didn’t want a black to win twice in a row.
SHORT TAKES
LOLLY MADONNA XXX (MGM) This is sort of second-rate Peckinpah, but even third-rate Peckinpah would still have a vitality which is absent from most of Hollywood. The theme is a little awry from what Sam might have made it — it is closer to Deliverance, in fact — but the action and the actors (especially Robert Ryan, who looks even more haunted here than he did in The Wild Bunch) are the sort he might have chosen, even Jeff Bridges as another kind of hero.
Rock’s Secret History Revealed
Dave Marsh
Ian Whitcomb had a hit record called “You Turn Me On” and in an interesting reversal of what is supposed to be the usual run of things, proceeded to become a music writer. After the Ball is his first book, and it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with rock, except to clear up a few historical mysteries.
OFF THE WALL
OH, GOD! by Avery Corman (Bantam): Short, slick, funny death-of-god satire, a few years too late. There are plenty of good lines, as Corman is hired by ... God? to be his press agent? Our favorite line: “Avocados . . .on that I made the pit too big.”
Records
Led Zep: Getting By On Blood & Iron
Lester Bangs
This is the first Zep set where they made the mistake of printing the lyrics.
Juke Box Jury
GREG SHAW
It’s been so long since an R&B record of any kind really knocked me out that I’d almost forgotten the feeling. I don’t know if purists would class reggae with soul music, but when I hear Jimmy Cliff all I can think of is early Curtis Mayfield, Smokey Robinson and Sam Cooke; and that’s good enough for me.
ROCK • A • RAMA
CURTIS MAYFIELD - His Early Years With the Impressions (ABC)::The anonymous liner notes for this disc contain the disclaimer: “This isn’t just a “Best of . . .” or a “Greatest Hits” album - it is a collection of the early work of a contemporary musical genius.”