April 1975
creem
PENSEE FOR THE DAY If it wasn’t for us groupies, all bands would be queer. Twink, Coral, Layla, and the best super-groupie in N.Y. City, “Viria” Bronx, N.Y. (You may be right. - Ed.) NOTATITMAN Dontcha think you’re overdoing it a little bit? I mean five whole breasts in the Jan.
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
As always, this month’s Consumer Guide cleans up pre-Christmas business. All those year-end lists I compiled for the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics’Poll reminded me of a few putatively hi-quality elpees I’d done my best to ignore, and this is where I attempt to confront them.
ROCK 'N' ROLL news
Steve Marriott is the first of Humble Pie doing a solo album. Greg Ridley helps out on it and it includes a Dylan song and a Lulu song (yes, Lulu). Steve is just finishing up cutting the thing down from a double to a single record, but it looks like the Lulu tune (yes. Lulu) will survive.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Robert Duncan
PALM BEACH - It’s a long way from Liverpool. But there he was, Mr. Funny Hat of 1974, very deep in the lap of luxury (and perhaps face down, more on that later). Yes, John Lennon vacationing in Palm Beach, winter home to many of America’s wealthiest and most powerful dinosaurs.
NOT INSANE. AND NOT FUNNY EITHER.
Lester Bangs
The Firesign Theatre’s Catalog Of Misconceptions
Great Guitarists Of The Western World No. 1: LEO KOTTKE
Ed Ward
Leo Kottke is playing the guitar. He’s been playing the guitar, sitting on the bed in this airport motel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for some forty-five minutes, stopping here and there to check what he is trying to do. An idea appears, is played with, and then seems to be locked into place in an overall structure.
Utopia Dreamin With Todd Rundgren
Bruno Stein
Turnback Inn, Mellier is an address located somewhere in the author's anterior lobe. Todd Rundgren entered Mr. Stein’s mind via interview in Chicago recently and somehow ended up in those darker recesses where stands the aforementioned extremely gothic roadhouse.
OX ON THE RUN
DONALD WILLSON
Were the members of the Who half so fertile and productive collectively as they are individually, they would undoubtedly be the most prolific, as well as one of the best, rock bands in the world.
Kiss KOMIX
JAAN UHELSZKI
Once upon a time, Darcy Q. Docile, a nice boy from a nice quaint Amish community near Intercourse, Pennsylvania, used to tell his mother, "I want to be a peanut when / grow up, Mama, because they’re reeee-al oily!" One day Mama and and Darcy went into Intercourse and somehow Darcy wandered away down a back alley, where he thought he detected his beloved oily fragrance.
Features
Gregg Allman: LAID BACK TATTOO INTACT
Bill Douglas
Greg Allman and Richard Betts, the two “front men ” of the Allman Brothers Band, came off separate solo tours recently.
BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
JONH INGHAM
Even as Mott the Hoople were announcing Mick Ronson as their new guitarist at a fancy New York press conference, plans were underway for the group to break up again with Ian Hunter pursuing a solo career backed by Ronson.
Stars Cars
BILLY PRESTON
THE CREEM READERS GUIDE TO 1974
So, that was 1974, huh?
Letter From Britain
All Eyes Turn To America
Ian MacDonald
Emergency distress signal: Help. We are running out of off-the-wall geniuses and-or who-what-where- killer bands. Over. Yeah, sure — so are you. With your George Harrison tours and your John Lennons in residence, not to mention all that dough.
HEAVY METAL
Charles Manson
How To Build Your Own Dune Buggy
LOONEY TOONS
The Teenage Dwarf
In lurching desperation, with nothing else to key itself upon, 1974 seized the Beatles, made their potential - as opposed to reality - its standard, forced icons out of the unwilling sphincter of the past like so much non-metaphoric shit.
Eleganza
Next Up: The Tie-Dye Revival
Lisa Robinson
You wouldn’t get an argument from me if you said the creepiest fashion decade of the 20th century was the 1960s.
Souther, Hillman, Furay Further On Down The Road
Larry Sloman
It’s a wonderfully bleak day in Asbury Park, N.J. The wind is blowing in off the shore, the sun is mercifully hidden and those negative ions floating in from the salt water are working their magic. At the Empress Motel, Mr. Hillman and Mr. Souther are already sprawled out in their respective rooms, catching some catch-up winks.
Creemedia
GOING DOWN ON KRIS
Georgia Christgau
When Kris Kristofferson refused the lead in Two Lane Blacktop, he did a smart thing: he stayed out of a bad movie. Of course that movie was popular and would have given Kristofferson exposure; then again it didn’t do much for James Taylor’s cinematic career, or Dennis Wilson’s, either. How come Kris knew better than to take part? “I didn’t know shit about cars,” he said.
SHORT TAKES
Jaan Uhelszki
THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED (Hallmark):: No, The Last House on the Left, Don’t Look In the Basement, The Horrible Old House on the Hill, and The House That Vanished aren’t all on the same block, but they do belong in the same neighborhood. All are thin excuses to bring you the maximum of suspense and slaughter with the least amount of plot.
Rewire Yourself
The Lost Charge Of The Electric Toy Brigade
Richard Robinson
The technological surge inspired by NASA and the Japanese has ended.
Primitive Wisdom For Sale
Ed Word
Bob owns a bookstore on San Francisco’s Union Street, a drag containing more guru-human-potential shucks per square foot than any other street in the country. (One of Bob’s biggest sellers is - get this - Das Energi, Paul William’s classic collection of psychedelic fascist epigrams.)
Extension Chords
Guild-O-Mania
Michael Brooks
Apparently there was a time when Epiphone and Gibson were one, but it was a time of trouble. During the 30’s, before Epiphone moved across the sea to Japan, their people — actually hired by Gibson — decided to go out on strike for better bread.
Records
Dreck In The Grooves
Charles Nicholaus
Bob Dylan is pussy-whipped.
ROCK& ● A ● RAMA
L.B
JACK BRUCE - Out of the Storm (RSO) ●● Purely prejudicial on my part I admit, but a) I didn’t think Jack Bruce was worth much of a shit even in Cream either compositionally or especially as a singer - in fact about all he did in the latter department was make it possible for Ozzy Osbourne to cut him at his own strident ineptitude; and, b) I think Steve Hunter is one of the finest guitarists alive today, got my vote in CREEM’s latest Readers’ Poll, and did more than many people realize to help break Lou Reed, via his work on Rock ‘n Roll Animal, through to the American heartland Thus it's only obvious' why I’m so disheartened by this album that I refuse to ever listen to it again;