March 1974
CREEM
DEAR CREEM It has come to our attention that you are a magazine. Of just what sort we have not at present determined. However, the question at hand is not where you get your jollies, but rather, whether or not you have got wall-to-wall carpeting in your office.
BARNEY & MIKE
Bor Wilson
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
I’m writing this at Christmastime, and as always the backlog has me down. Eleven out of the 20 records below are deemed Buyable (B plus or above) by your relatively trusty rater. Seven of them are B plusses. Hence, as is my occasional wont, I will offer one of my prized within-B plus guides.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Rumors from a usually reliable source indicate that the next Who album will be called High Numbers, and will consist of songs the band performed before they were the Who. They were, as you might remember, called the High Numbers, and their repertoire was a wonderfully strange mish-mash of R&B and surf music.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Colman Andrews
Argentinian-born tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, wearing his friend, the black hat, sits back on the bed. His wife, Michelle — strong-boned, intensely beautiful — sits in a chair nearby. Gato’s English is uncertain. Michelle’s is perfect; she translates for him when necessary.
DUST MY PUMICE
R. Meltzer
When eye was in the 8th or 9th grade or somethin there was this kid Warren Berlinger (not the actor) who got conned into "joining the club" by Stanley Pearlberg, Stuart Landau (no relation to Jon or the roof) and maybe Steven Shaloff too. All a buncha hebes (worse than a-rabs).
Features
Cruisin’ With The Guru
David Rensin
The backseat revelations of Carlos Santana & Mahavishnu John McLaughlin.
TIGHTEN UP
Vine Aletti
A list again; another year-end clearance. Not really a Ten Best List because that sounds more authoritative and hard-nosed definitive than I care to be. These are, in junior high terms, just records I liked a lot in 1973, listed in no particular order because that didn't seem important this year.
Features
THE WHO: Quadrophenia Reconsidered
David Marsh
Philadelphia on Tuesday night is nobody's good time.
Godhead Hi-Jinx
Richard Elman
"Blissed out." In the corners of the eyes a squinch. The placid glossy smiling faces I saw at the Astrodome in Houston for Millenium 73 were the lovers of God, or premies of the soi disant 15 year old Perfect Master, Guru Maharaj Ji. "A thousand years of peace for people who want peace."
GURU DATA: I Am Curious (Maalox)
The Satguru (Perfect Master) Maharaj Ji is a plump little porkchop of self-proclaimed divinity. When the little one took human form some fifteen years ago, his dad (himself a Perfect Master and the original perpetrator of the Divine Light Mission scam) had the blueprint already laid out.
"They smile in your face..."
Pat Haley, a reporter from Detroit's Fifth Estate, gathered national headlines last August by welcoming the Maharaj Ji's smiling face to Detroit with a whipped cream pie (see photo sequence). A week later Haley was hospitalized in serious condition, and the Guru was still smiling.
Features
BLOOD FEAST OF REDDY KILOWATT!
LESTER BANGS
EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER WITHOUT INSULATION!
Features
JERRY LEE LEWIS: The Killer Staggers On
John Mortland
The man from Mercury is nervous, very nervous.
Extension Chords
Strung Out On Strings
Michael Brooks
In the course of a guitar's life, few things play as crucial a part in its happiness as the strings that axe wears.
Eleganza
Human Dignity Is Where It's At
Lisa Robinson
Can a girl from South Jersey who once sported a Rod Stewart haircut, ripped t-shirt, blackleather skintight pants and spit out angry rock and roll poems find happiness as a torch singer crooning "I Get A Kick Out Of You"?
PLAY IT LOUD
Guitar Arnie
Like any other part of the electronics — entertainment business, musical equipment manufacturers are constantly introducing products. This month I'd like to run through a few of the new products presently on the market, not so much to make recommendations as to what's new and fabulous, but to keep all you pluckers up to date on the various ways you can spend your money.
Rewire Yourself
Torrid Affair With A Tube That'll Love You Back
Richard Robinson
I've had a video tape machine in my house for three years now.
Creemedia
Getting Behind "Invasion of the Blood Farmers"
Wayne Robins
"They planted the living and harvested the dead!" What did you expect, soybeans?
SHORT TAKES: ADMIT ONE
Garth
DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (AIPHallmark):: A kindly psychiatrist has strange ideas about curing crazy folk. He lets them dwell in fantasies each day until they reach a phantasmagoric breaking point and plunge back into reality...totally cured.
CONFESSIONS OF A FILM FOX
Would you call Sue "Lolita" Lyon a prisoner of love? She recently married a Colorado con... More Jailhouse jive: Burt Reynolds has lined up a con chorus for his next picture, The Longest Yard. Georgia State Prison has approved the temporary employment of nine homosexual inmates as "cheerleaders" in the film.
Creemedia
Doin’ That Hand Jive With a Bic
John Lombardi
OFF THE WALL
Dave Marsh
IN THE COUNTRY OF OURSELVES by Nat Hentoff (Dell):: Jazz critic Hentoff also writes high-school age children's books. This one is about the attempted takeover, by a variegated group of revolutionaries, of a Manhattan high school. It's fast, and a pretty good story, even if the politics are a little Great White Liberal for the 70s.
Records
J. Geils: A Six Pack That'll Make Any Party
Jaan Uhelzski
What’s a french-fried Fidel doing in a place like Boston?
ROCK-A-RAMA
ETTA JAMES — All The Way Down (Chess):: Etta James, unheralded Queen of Soul, singing Randy Newman and produced by Gabriel (Steppenwolf) Mekler might sound like a bad idea to you, and it is. On the bright side, she has finally detoxified from her terrible heroin habit, so she'll probably be more active now.
Juke Box Jury
GREG SHAW
The year's about over, and I've been thumbing through my back file of CREEMS trying to recapture some of its feel. There's no doubt it was an important year for rock & roll, and for singles in particular. Basically, I think the most significant thing that happened to rock in "73 was the solidification of the new Seventies pop sensibility that began its emergence in 1972.