August 1975
CREEM
NO ZIGGY, NO JIGGY I am quite displeased with you. In your May issue of CREEM, a girl wrote in asking where she could write to David Bowie. I was also wondering where I could write. Well. I wrote to H. Rap Brown (it's where you said to write to) arid the letter came back marked "Return To Sender."
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
David Bowie visited San Diego's Sea World and was so impressed that he bought a life size stuffed replica of Sea World's own superstar Chamu the Killer Whale for $1700. As the release date for the Allmans' next got ever closer, Dicky Betts decided that the only way things were gonna get finished up was if he just called up Gregg at Cher's L. A. digs and rousted the ol' boy home to Macon.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Ellen Mandell
If you're lucky enough to score a seat when the Allman Brothers Band comes to town, you can be pretty damn sure that Gregg Allman's organ will be in tune, Dicky Betts" amp won't hum, and the sound will be crisp and clear as Georgia dew—no small feat in their usual venues of cavernous coliseums and filled-to-capacity football stadiums.
KINKS ORDINAIRE
Tom Smucker
Back around the time of Waterloo Sunset and Sunny Afternoon when the Kinks were one of my favorite cult groups, one of my favorite cult things about them was the literary/theatrical quality of their songs.
LYNYRD SKYNYRD: Not Even A Boogie Band Is As Simple As It Seems
Robert Christgau
Early this spring, before 11,000 fans in Tuscaloosa, the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were declared Honorary Lieutenant Colonels in the Alabama State Militia by the governor of that state, George Wallace.
Features
IAN HUNTER: Through The Glasses Darkly
Jonh Ingham
Those shades!
MICK RONSON: From Rats To Riches
Jonh Ingham
"I first started playing guitar by holding my violin like a guitar and plucking it."
JERRY GARCIA: UP FROM THE DEAD
ARTHUR LEVY
David Gahr is already a half-block ahead of me up the street, bounding past the Navarro's sharpy redcap, shlepping all his cameras, and lights, and wires, brown chewed-up pipe sticking out from his pocket—Gahr looks like a Hal Roach version of what a harried photographer is supposed to look like who's on his way to take a picture or two of an old friend.
STONES '75
They're back! They're shaking all over, and in the right way! They're the Rolling Stones, alive in 1975, looking and sounding ten years younger. Isn't it nice, being a Believer?
MICK JAGGER: “I Can Get It Up, But I Can’t Get It Down”
David Marsh
Of course, Mick Jagger was talking about flying the twin-engine Cessna which had brought him into the Marine Air Terminal in New York's LaGuardia Airport from Montauk, 120 miles away at the eastern tip of Long Island and which, he said, he had piloted himself.
Extension Chords
Pick Up Your Piano
Larry Jaffe
There are better ways to pick up your piano than to call a piano mover.
Features
I Dreamed I Was Onstage With KISS In My Maidenform Bra
Jaan Uhelszki
Well, not exactly my idea of the perfect fantasy, but I was curious about life on the other side of the foot-lights.
BAD CO ADJUST
Bruno Stein
To Wealth, Fame, Willing Wantons, And The Knowlege That Georg Solti Doesn't Know Who They Are
JEFF BECK: Convalescence (Or Growing Up?)
Gordon Fletcher
Even Beck's cat thinks the house is a pig-sty.
Eleganza
Velvet Gentleman Runs Rabid
Lisa Robinson
It's hard to know where to begin and just how to control myself about John Cale.
Did Sadistic Mika Plan Pearl Harbor?
Jonh Ingham
The latest sensation to "stun and amaze" the rock world (just paraphrasing Melody Maker's Chris Welch here) is Japan's first and so far most original rock band, Sadistic Mika Band. The first we cocky Caucasians heard of it was two years ago, when Kazuhiko and Mika Katoh, husband and wife leaders of the combo, showed up at a Roxy Music gig.
Stars Cars
Andy Powell
Hollywood Swinging or Alice Cooper Hits The Can
Rewire Yourself
Stalking The Perfect Sound
Richard Robinson
"Is it live, or is it Memorex?"
MAX OUTPUT..MAN OF 1,000 NOISES!
SCOTT SHAW
Creemedia
Know Your Culture: Leonard Nimoy and the Invincible Star Trek
Robot Hull
As local MC this year for the Cerebral Palsy Telethon, Leonard Nimoy was a Vulcan no longer.
MOVIES
Gregg Sutter
Hollywood has always managed to remain beyond scrutiny. Movies may come and go in a fever of unconverted nitrate; actors and actresses can succeed in wiping themselves out at a tender age, but there will always remain HOLLYWOOD—an unsympathetic, unmoving monolith which attracts people like moths to light, people without identity and purpose who are then promised a lot of things they're never going to get.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
We always knew Hollywood was a joke but a comic strip? Steve Krantz has acquired film rights to the Marvel Comics Spider Man cartoon strip, and assigned the English script writer Brian Clemens (The Avengers) to come up with a live action feature treatment, Another strip, straight off the presses is Brenda Starr that is slated for TV next season; starring as LaStarr is Jill St. John... Bette Midler ain't the only warbler who can (?) act.
BOOKS
The worst thing about this basically decent book is that it could easily have been a whole lot better. Biographies of jazz musicians are almost nonexistent (well, there are a couple on Satchmo) and the few that have appeared so far suffer from either over-intellectualization (the recent Miles Davis book, which eschewed biographical detail completely for turgid musicology) or superficiality.
Records
ELTAUPIN AT THE PINNACLE
Wayne Robins
It wasn't until I watched a black restaurant worker make it through his shift singing "Bennie and the Jets" to himself that I began to understand Elton John's potential power.
TODD GODS OUT
Robert Duncan
The answer is: No, Todd has not surfaced from his headlong (and I mean head; more on that later) dive into neo-Eastern mysticism. The man who gave us such incredible tunes as "We Gotta Get You A Woman," "I Saw The Light," "Hello," It's Me," "Just One Victory," even the slightly Utopia-befogged "International Feel," and the less lyrical "Piss Aaron" and "Slut" continues
Records
BARRY WHITE’S MAKEOUT TIPS
Lester Bangs
Right. This molasses-voiced monument to unashamed bulbosity and the death of Isaac Hayes knows so goddam many ways to say those three little words that you don't even think he's beating them to death unless you're rational.
Rock a Rama
PHIL MANZANERA - Diamond Head (ATCO) ::Okay, straight out, who's the premiere British guitarist of the 70's? Eric Clapton? (A great cure for insomnia.) Jimmy Page? (By the sounds of Physical Graffiti he's running out of riffs.) Jeff Beck? (Blow by Blow merely pays tribute to Roy Buchanan and Jeff s favorite songwriters.)
A legend In It's Own Time
July Alice On (Bangs); Grand Funk (Uhelszki); Nilsson with Beatles & Dylan; Sparks; Wakeman; Queen; Phony Record Labels; Bette Midler; Jungle Music; Eno. Reviewed: Bad Co., Steely Dan, Kiss, more.