October 1975
CONTENTS
Please send letters to: MAIL Dept., CREEM Magazine P.O. Box P-1064, Birmingham, MI 48012 CHOW MEIN KAMPH I seen Bunny Sigler at the Peppermint Tree but not probably the same night your guys went there and he went out in the alley and done some stuff you know, and he was real good.
THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
Bachman-Turner Overdrive: "Four Wheel Drive" (Mercury). Not only is this album their worst—only natural when you've already milked a formula for three pretty good records— but people seem to know it: The sure-fire single didn't make top 10.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Strange excess dept. Randy Bachman has bought himself a collection of Bowie (not David) knives—that is 14 knives and one tomahawk—valued at more than $10,000. R.I.P. Epic records has dropped heavy metal sensation, the Dictators, while at the same time Dictators" producers Pearlman/ Krugman, who also brought you the Blue Oyster Cult and Pavlov's Dog reportedly have a new find.
THE BEAT GOES ON
A.J. Morgan
Carly: Fear Of Flying On her most recent album cover, she's posed like a salacious tigress baiting her prey. A leggy feline hedonistically inspired with blissful erotic fantasies. Well, at least that's what the big boys at Columbia Pictures thought when they chose Carly Simon for the much sought after lead in their upcoming "Fear of Flying", the celluloid interpretation of Erica Jong's best seller.
Letter From Britain
Blood On The Aristocrats
Jonh Ingham
Blood On The Aristocrats You may remember reading about Lord Lucan in the papers late last year.
LITTLE EGYPT FROM ASBURY PARK
DAVID MARSH
And Bruce Springsteen don’t crawl on his belly, neither.
ALCOHOL!
RICK JOHNSON
The Sin City Social was billed by word of mouth as something of a Budweiser Woodstock, with more kegs of the stuff than five Evil Kneivels could shake a cast at. An annual brown-out staged near the unlikely town of Virginia, Illinois, it brings all the area basket brains tumbling out of the woodwork to out-drink, out-puke and out-boogie-down one another while local bands grind out some of the most hope-deadening power drool ever to fall off a stage.
IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE
Jim Esposito
We combed the countryside, the concert drcuil ne claptraps, jukejoints and ginmills, and came up Ith a leading panel of the most celebrated lushes in dom.
The CREEM of Current Hootch
Willie Nelson: Rednecks, Thai Sticks and Lone Star Been
Ed Ward
Country Willie's done it again.
JAGGERNAUT Wild Horse On A Plastic Phallus
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski, now in his fifties, may be one of the foremost American literary figures.
TODD RUNDGREN: Veg-O-Matic Into The Void
Robert Duncan
I would much prefer Todd Rundgren had a squirrely girlfriend—you know, one of those emaciated things that is always curled up cross-legged with her bespectacled nose in a book—than this show biz creation Entering and Exiting grandly with the bazoombas ever so thinly veiled beneath white crepe pajamas.
REFLECTIONS IN A CYCLOPS EYE, OR ALICE OFF THE ROAD
Bruno Stein
"I'm watching Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? right now," says Alice Cooper's voice on the telephone.
Features
THE PUNK AS GODFATHER, PART II
Roy Carr
If the glove fits...
Rewire Yourself
Switch Hitting With Bi-Amplification
Richard Robinson
Bi-amplification isn't much of a word to begin a column.
Extension Chords
The CREEM Synthesizer Lesson
Robert Duncan
Now, before we begin with today's lesson, I would like to relate a few facts about the synthesizer's history and the men who so valiantly labored to explain the instrument to me.
Stars Cars
JON LORD
Eleganza
Mao, He's Makin’ Eyes At Me
Lisa Robinson
I wondered, as I watched Mick Jagger appear on tour in a variety of Oriental-inspired fashions this summer, whether or not his audience would start to copy his wardrobe.
CREEMEDIA
Tom McCarthy
If Norman Mailer is the heavyweight champion of American writing, an image he is fond of, then Dotson Rader must be rated as one of the top contenders for the title. Both stalk the same turf—the meaning of manhood, the link between sex and violence, an opposition to totalitarianism.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
Hollywood is infatuated with darling David's...unique talents, in fact he's becoming a regular Pal Bowie to tinsel town. Although the fling with D.B. hasn't fanned into a full blown affair yet, he is being offered a motley assortment of scripts, since completing his sci-fi flick, The Man Who Fell To Earth (in which he also wrote the score and sings the title song).
Creemedia
Here Come Da Sharks
Gregg Sutter
1975 has been the year of the shark-sploitation epic.
SHORT TAKES
Georgia Christgau
COOLEY HIGH (AIP) :: Billed as a black American Graffiti, which it's not, Cooley High is the best black movie since Claudine, but it's convincing for different reasons. Where James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll made you believe they were sickeningly sweet, the characters in this flick ride high (with laughs and a great Motown oldies soundtrack) on the contradictions between being sweet and nasty, without once convincing you they are either.
Records
THE ULTIMATE UNDERGROUND RECORD SEES THE LIGHT OF DAY
Tony Glover
Okay, here's where it comes from: Dylan had just finished a long tour of the U.S. and Europe with the Hawks.
Records
PETE FILLS A SCRIPTURE
Jeffrey Morgan
Just when you think that Pete Townshend's run out of ideas, he comes back with a new project so huge, so immense, that you automatically feel ashamed for ever doubting him in the first place.
ROCK • A • RAMA
ALBERT AYLER - Vibrations (Arista Freedom) :: You may think that if you've heard one Ayler album you've heard them all (and you may be right) but this Sept. "64 session, previously unreleased in the States and featuring Sonny Murray on drums, Gary Peacock on bass, and Don Cherry on trumpet (adding dimensions to the music, that Albert's brother Donald never reached), has some Ayler improvs which are, by his standards, almost languid. Also the album features Ayler's most apocalyptic composition "Holy Spirit" as well as a piece called "Mothers" being played on a Theramin.