THE COUNTRY ISSUE IS OUT NOW!

May 1976

Contents

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SALUTATIONS FROM SPACE Your magazine is even better than buxom belly-dancers with taco shell tu-tu's. M.G. Tangiers SIX PACK TO GO I would like to know if there is any way I could get some Boy Howdy! Beer? My husband and son are beer nuts. If there is no way for us to purchase a case of this Boy Howdy!

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE: "Head On" (Mercury):: The badmouthing finally reached even a bemused admirer like myself, so that I was all ready with an alternate title "Flat Tired"; pretty funny, eh? — until I listened one last time. Which is when I noticed that "Average Man" is a well-above-average cut, a typical paradox for this obstreperously ordinary group and album.

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

In case you're wondering why you didn't see the Beatles on your tube last week, the word is that they turned down that $30 million dollar reunion deal mentioned here last month. Not that that should stop fledgling impressario Mike Matthews, president of the sound equipment company that brought you the Mike Matthews Freedom Amp, who's dangling $6 million in front of the Fab Four in an attempt to get them to do a one-time-only hour-long telecast.

The Beat Goes On

Rick Johnson

CHICAGO—New religions come and go. There was Tim Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery, artist Ralph Benedict's Christs In Cardboard and more than one variety of Fundamentalist Curtain Sects, as well as the Roman Catholic Church. But one listless young nul-node named Gene Townsend may have finally come up with the true 70's religion.

Creem Profiles

PETER FRAMPTON

(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)

PLANTATIONS

CHRIS CHARLESWORTH

The ever-elusive Led Zeppelin surfaced in New York in January at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South. Jimmy Page was accounted for, his mission being to finish mixing the soundtrack of the long-awaited Led Zep movie. The rest of the boys were just in town for "social reasons", according to Swan Song. Who should know.

BUGS BUNNY SUPERSTAR

Robert Duncan

Queen Take On The Eskimoes

Features

SPACE FACE CHANGES THE STATION

Cameron Crowe

David Bowie Pulls A Lazarus

WHAT MAKES BILLY SWIM?

Kevin Doyle

'Scuse me, all you Messrs. Next-Big-Thing out there.

Stars Cars

TED NUGENT

Eleganza

Clockwork Orange In Black & White

Lisa Robinson

White light, white heat, white duke indeed.

TV's Second Season: Did It Fall, or Were You Pushed?

Rick Johnson

TV is like everything else in the world, from Nigel Olsson records to those malformed, ground-rice French fries guaranteed to cause early oven death.

Confessions of a FILM FOX

Hello, again, surf fans! And who should be riding in on the crest of the Manson muck he helped stir up — and under, it might be added — is that genial ol' prosecuting barrister from Elay, none other than Vincent Bugliosi, whose boffo bestseller Helter Skelter is being shaped-up at this very moment as a made-for-TVer.

CREEM DREEM

ELTON JOHN

SWEET DREAMS

Rick Johnson

Brian Connolly isn't exactly the kind of guy you picture comfying about the living room, patting kiddies on the head and making pleasant pigeon mouth.

Records

HEAVY METAL: Brontosaurus M.O.R

Lester Bangs

Ahh, god bless the Seventies — the age when all pop pretensions were punctured by the simple revelation that every last god-loving idiom, from baroque art-rock fusions to funky shonuff Afro-sheenanigans, par-boiled down to a pure and simple Formula.

I REMEMBER MONO

Richard Robinson

Someday I'd like to figure out the electronics business. I started out listening to records, then got interested in the machines I needed to play them, that led to the realization that the plastic metal mass media hardware was as important as Hendrix's guitar licks and Joplin's vocals.

COLOR ME SOLID STATE

Color tv sets are the most expensive pieces of entertainment technology that most of us will ever buy.

Rock · a · Rama

BARRY MANILOW II (Arista):: If Barry could talk his beagle companion into being his side-kick he could pick up where Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme left off. "Mandy" — for that matter, most of the album — is nothing more than the typical monotonous wonderbread that passes for music on AM these days. N.M.

Motor Mouth

NO PANIC IN DETROIT

David Bowie kicked out a tight, impeccably-orchestrated show at the Olympia late in February, pleasing practically all of his fans with a hitpacked show.

GRANDMA WALTON IN THE TUNNEL

BILL CLAYTON

The combined populace of Windsor and Detroit must be enlightened about the Border.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Saturday night! Time to have a good time, and tonight we're going to do it with a vengeance.