August 1973
CONTENTS
Hello sugars! We saw the review of our album and Shel’s album in your newspaper and really dug it... We didn’t even know you guys were into parodies. Finally, a rock magazine that doesn’t take itself seriously. Unbelievable!!! Now we’re sorry that we didn’t sing “Cover of CREEM,” but it just didn’t make it rhythmically...
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
David Blue: “Nice Baby and the Angel” (Asylum). Long ago, before he sought institution in David Geffen’s tastefully maintained diaspora, David was a nice baby who had grown up. His songs were tortuous and somewhat arty, but they had their strengths.
ROCK 'N' ROLL news
Newsweek finally spilled the beans, so we guess it’s finally ok to say it out loud: Alice Cooper’s real name is Vincent Furnier. As if producing the ex-biggest band in the world (Grand Funk Railroad) isn’t enough, Todd Rundgren will now produce the band many people are hoping can duplicate Funkian popularity: the New York Dolls.
THE BEAT GOES ON
David Rensin
The year is 1969, and somewhere in the heart of America the Archies and Zombies — two groups known to everyone — are triumphantly touring and making loads of money. The Archies? Well, we know they never existed, but for a time we were caught with our pants down by the Zombies, who had supposedly broken up back in 1968.
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins & The Monster
Nick Tosches
A year, two years ago, he stayed perpetually oiled. Black & White Scotch.
ANDROGYNY IN ROCK
A short introduction.
THE ANDROGYNY HALL OF FAME
Features
Words Of Wisdom from JEFF BECK
On the early days: “When I first started playing guitar, you didn’t play gigs so much as just went out and tested your gear. I used to play with broken-down amps held together with sticking plaster. Just for the kicks of it; just to see who could get the weirdest noises out of the guitar.”
NOTES FROM A DOUG SAHM JOURNAL
Chet Flippo
Doug Sahm, 31-year-old musical soldier of fortune, sank back into a patch of crimson clover in a sun-dappled field in the secluded hills outside Austin, cradled a four-inch Texas Tamale in one hand and exhaled at length. “Brother, this it,” he half-choked on the smoke and waved a spidery arm at the woods around him.
Best Dressed Mainman At The Twilight Zone Ball
Nick Kent
Some say that the only reason Mick Rock got that job as Mainman’s official photographer/sometime designer was because Angie Bowie fancied his wife.
BEIRUT
John Cale
Somehow or other the word got out that sadness came with spellbound excavations of the tomb of Tutanhkammen. The students letting the occasion be its own articulate illusion for the event as the strongly flavoured garlic props of outstanding pretentiousness and hilarious hollywood hoodlums sucked their toes with apparent intent.
Letter From Britain
Rock a doodle doo Or Time takes a cigarette
Simon Firth
The prostitutes in Naples flash by like lamposts.
Which Superstar Looks Like You?
Lisa Robinson
Do today’s musicians create fashion or merely reflect it? Someone once said to me that people go to the concerts of the artists they think they resemble the most. In terms of clothing, three separate evenings in New York recently drove this point shatteringly home.
PLAY IT LOUD
Guitar Arnie
Hi there all you pluckers. This issue we’re going to go into the recording studio and take a look around. As you’re no doubt aware, rock recording begins when a microphone is placed in front of the speakers of an amplifier. The musician plays through the amp, the mike is connected to the mixing console and tape recorder and thus the sound from the amp goes into the mike and then on to the recording deck.
Rewire Yourself
Power to the People at the Pioneer Press Party
Richard Robinson
As a journalist who is a veteran of combat in the rock and roll wars, I get a perverse pleasure from writing about electronics.
Creemedia
Was Bill Haley Your Dream Lover?
Mitchell S. Cohen
That'll Be The Day, Pat Garret & Bill the Kid, more
CONFESSIONS OF A FILM FOX
Hi! Hi! Hi! as Paul McCartney says. While everyone’s absorbed in the Cannes Film Festival I tore away to announce the current juicy items circulating filmville. With no further ado... Stanley Kubrick’s next adventure is Barry Lyndon, the Thackery novel.
SHORT TAKES
Brian Zabawski
Creemedia
The Tragedy and Triumph of Charlie Parker
Richard C. Walls
Ross Russell has written the definitive biography of Charles Parker. It is a well-researched, inspired and ultimately unpleasant book. It is a modern tragedy, the story of the destruction of an innovative artist, and implicitly, the destruction of those artists who emulated his life style as well as his art.
Records
A Strong Breeze Could Blow It Away
Tim Jurgens
Aladdin Sane is okay in spite of some other mistakes which indicate Bowie has become a knowing victim of his own hype.
Juke Box Jury
GREG SHAW
Here in the back of the magazine, past all of Lester and Robot�s punkoid ravings, the original spirit of CREEM lives on. We�re into burgers too, in fact we just consumed a passel of �em and some pizza too. Now it�s time for some great music, god knows there�s enough of it around, and I don�t mean no Loggins & Messina either.
ROCK-A-RAMA
LOU REED & THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Pride):: The packaging is ludicrous, transcendental cheapo in the Mike Curb tradition, and the song selection leaves a lot to be desired (no �Waitin� For the Man�??????). But if you�ve just begun to get into Lou Reed, and you can�t find all the original Velvet Underground albums, you�ve got to have this.
SPECIALS
Ken Emerson
Their moniker came from an Elektra anthology album (A Compendium of the Very Best on the Urban Blues Scene) on which Danny Kalb had exhibited some quite proficient acoustic picking. John Sebastian, then utterly unknown, had played harp on one cut.