June 1975

CONTENTS

MAIL

RAH I recently was a winner in the CREEM and Korvette’s Meet The Guess Who Contest and would like to thank you for having the contest and article about them. I have followed their music since their first album, I have read CREEM for the past two years and in my opinion the best is getting better and CREEM is America’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll Magazine.

BARNEY & MIKE

Bob Wilson

THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

Robert Christgau

Ace: “Five-a-Side” (Anchor). The catchiest debut album in years is even more banal than that term normally implies, sung and played with a mildness infuriating in musicians of such talent but totally appropriate to lyricists of such underweening triviality.

ROCK 'n' ROLL NEWS

John Denver “Alice Cooper has about a year left to go with the audience, but I’ll be around long after Alice is over with.” Alice Cooper “I’m spiteful enough to stay around long enough to piss on his flowers.” Act II - Denver sends Alice a dozen red roses.

THE BEAT GOES ON

Robert Duncan

Take One Rubber Soul As Needed PHILADELPHIA - Pyschologists at a Philadelphia psychiatric institute have virtually eliminated offensive behavior in six chronically disruptive children by playing them Beatles’ songs. The five-to-seven year old kids were told that the Beatle music piped into their classroom would continue as long as they did their work.

Creem Profiles

JOHN ENTWISTLE

(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)

THE AVERAGE WHITE BAND

Steve Clarke

First it goes for your ankles. Then it attacks your forehead.

ALVIN LEE: Speed Fingers With A New Grip

Cynthia Dagnal

I admit it. The first line of this article was written a week before the concert.

LONELY IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Jaan Uhelszki

The Heavy Metal Humility Of Joe Walsh

Alice Cooper’s Monster Mash

Jaan Uhelski

Alice Cooper hasn't forgone the music biz for the putting-green and daytime TV, he just took an extended station break.

Color Me Solid-State

Richard Robinson

Color tv sets are among the most expensive pieces of entertainment technology that most of us will ever buy. Their sophistication parallels their price tags and often the buyer has no idea of what he’s getting for his money. Our own ignorance about color tv technics is compounded by the star trek jargon favored by American and Japanese set manufacturers and the riffs about negative matrix and solid state that pour out of the store salesmen’s mouths.

CREEM DREEM

CHAKA KHAN

Features

RITCHIE BLACKMORE CONFESSIONAL

Cameron Crowe

You seem quite satisfied with your image. Yes, quite satisfied.

Dandelions In Still Air: The Withering Away Of The BEATLES

Lester Bangs

I was speaking with a friend via phone the other night on the comparative merits of current product (there is usually no other word for it) and personas of such waning superstars as Mick Jagger, Dylan, Lou Reed, Joe Cocker, George Harrison, and John Lennon.

Letter From Britain

God Save The Grateful Dead, Or Someone Like Them

Jonh Ingham

For Brinsley Schwarz, the feeling vanished about February. They had spent six years together, both as the Brinsleys and their predecessors Kippington Lodge, and were in a rut. They had plans to move to America and try to make it there, but were having difficulty finding a record company willing to finance the venture.

Stars Cars

Grand Funk

Features

Jukebox Cruci-Fix

PATTI SMITH

I was at this party but nothing was happening at all a lot of chicks were leaning over a pale neon wurlitzer jukebox, the way dead voice boxes rolled up it came on like a coffin, it was the kind of party to leave behind.

SNAPSHOTS OF A SHY COXCOMB

Richard Cromelin

In which Bryan Ferry reveals that genius may not be pain, but interviews are something else again...

Eleganza

Rock Slumming: Celebs In The Subway

Lisa Robinson

Ann-Margret did indeed wear the “pale pistachio silver backless beaded dress covered by an absolute waterfall of beaded fringe” just as Suzy Knickerbocker predicted.

HANDICAPPED CHILD ABUSED

Robbie Cruger

TOMMY Directed by Ken Russell (Columbia) I am a real Tommy nut. I know every word and every note of the original score. I was there, third row center, for the world premere of Tommy which took place in Detroit in 1969.I bought the record the first day of its release.

SHORT TAKES

Lester Bangs

Savages (Marquee International) :: Despite a big skin spread in Playboy three years ago (mass distribution rights have been snarled), despite the presence of vulvaceous vixen like Ultra Violet, Asha Puthli who appeared in Oui, and Susie Blakely, who is some kind of a landmark herself as the first high fashion model with an unmistakable sleaze quotient, Savages is neither the raw ribbon of primal porn promised by the skin mag layouts, nor is it a movie with anything particularly cogent to say about the parallels between primitive tribal totems and our present setup (although it pretends to be).

Records

DIAMOND WOG

Trixie A. Balm

Since that fateful night Bowie hit Radio City with a funkadelic thud last November, I’ve been dreading this album’s release.

Records

HEAVY METAL WILL STAND

Trixie A. Balm

Betcha thought I’d up and puke, eh guys? Get pissed and pan your debut like a snotty azzole, huh?

Records

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN AMNESIAC

Greil Marcus

I’m a sucker for favorite-oldies albums.

ROCK A RAMA

SKYBAND - (RCA) •• “Bang! Ooh! Ya Got Me!’’ Now ain’t that a stupid title for an opening song? You betcha and the rest of the ablum follows suit. The 1910 Fruit Gum Co. could do better with Gene Cornish on guitar and Sylvia writing lyrics. For Elf and Rare Bird fans only.

Cartoon