June 1978
CREEM CONTENTS
S'done occurred to me that I haven't wrote you folk in a long time (grammer bad enough for you? I wanna become a rock writer). Anyway I've got some questions, to wit: 1) Can I have pictures of your Features Editor, Assistant Editor, and Editorial Assistant?
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
ARTFUL DODGER: "Babes On Broadway" (Columbia):: Okay, two nice albums of power pop go virtually unnoticed, so you up the power, especially since you're running out of the cute tunes 'n' tricks that provide the pop. But then it isn't power pop any more—sounds almost like Angel, or Queen.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Stars' lead singer Michael Lee Smith misjudged the length of the stage in Saginaw, Michigan, and started the show off by, tumbling into the orchestra pit, breaking three ribs. No one had a chance to hear what he planned to do for an encore, as the show was promptly cancelled.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Toby Goldstein
Robert Gordon is the figure Sha-Na-Na parodies as they stumble through klutzy versions of rock 'n' roll's past. Gordon might choose to cover the same tunes of that golden-oldies era, like Cochran's "Summertime Blues" or Frankie Ford's raucous "Sea Cruise," but while the imitations glitz themselves up for their weekly TV series, Gordon parades his slinky coiffure and Continental suits on the streets of New York for real.
Creem Profiles
MEAT LOAF
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Allman Joy or Raisinettes
Tom Dupree
Phil Walden looked robust, but a little bleary-eyed, when I saw him just before the Sea Level show at Atlanta's Capri Theatre. "Been up 'til five the past two nights," he said. "Been talking with Gregg and Dickey." In the same room? Around us in Sea Level's dressing room, the band was getting ready.
Confessions of a Bee Gees Fan
Simon Frith
The other day I read this shocking story in the Sun.
Features
WRAP YOUR UPS AROUND MY TAILPIPE: A GUIDE TO DETROIT ROCK
Susan Whitall
New wave, old wave, borrowed wave, blue wave.
IAN ANDERSON PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG SQUIRE
Simon Frith
Ian Anderson rules OK. For an hour I've been waiting in the foyer, talking to his manager, his wife, watching his employees bustle about. It's Maison Rouge, Anderson's property and one of the nicer recording studios in London—small, relaxed, without the desperate hip of most of the specialist rock places.
Making The Best Of A Bad Situation
Simon Frith
The only black music it's hip for a white boy or girl to like these days is reggae. Disco is for dead legs and anyway doesn't have a colour—just an aura of steely gray—and soul music has become confined to the slicker chains of supper clubs. All the great names of soul's and Motown's past still come here—the Supremes and Temptations, the Stylistics and Chi-Lites, Barry White and Tina Turner.
STILL FAITHFULL AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
PENNY VALENTINE
Real survivors are rare in rock 'n' roll. Those who live in the fast lane tend not to make it to 30, the rest are called survivors simply because they're alive, but few "went deep sea diving, touched the bottom" and came up again. Marianne Faithfull pulls at the sleeves of her thick sloppy sweater, studies the ladder in her tights and apologizes for being late (she isn't), but she's been cleaning her flat.
Features
TWO DAYS WITH THE RAMONES
Billy Altman
And I don’t want to make it home tonight.
Eleganza
Willy DeVille And The Gray Planet Next Door
Robert Duncan
Willy DeVille was too paranoid to tell me where his house was, so he suggested we meet at Bickford's, and thus were new dimensions of 14th Street revealed unto me.
konya the shepherd (for lenny kaye)
Patti Smith
The following is excerpted from Babel by Patti Smith, G.P. Putnam's Sons, N.Y.
CREEMEDIA
Rick Johnson
Rutlemania was an amazing phenomenon considering that it never happened. Wherever the pre-fab four appeared, they were pursued by crazed young girls wearing paddleshoes in order to navigate their own secretions. Until they broke up amidst a flurry of law suits and odd-lot Rutle wigs, they had the pop world eating out of one hand while they gripped its throat with the other.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
That movie venture featuring Rod Stewart and Elton John finally has a title: Jet Lag. The script is about two blokes who spend their time flying around the world, and will be produced by each of the boys' companies. David Bowie goosesteps his way across the screen this fall in the role of a Prussian officerturned-gigolo in Just A Gigolo, directed by David Hemmings of Blow-Up fame, for Leguan Pictures.
Rewire Yourself
THE V-15 TYPE IV ARRIVES (Finally!)
Bill Kanner
This is more of an industry story than a product review...of necessity.
Records
LOU REED FINALLY SCORES ON THE STREET
Joe Fernbacher
Mewing forth through the traipsing haze of the street corner comes Lou Reed.
CLONE FEVER SWEEPS NATION!
MAD PECK
A TRUE GEM... NOT A GEMETTE
Mitch Cohen
It was a false start. Too much, too soon, when the populace was unprepared to embrace an ambisextrous rock and roll band that had the potential to be magnificent. Even you, open-minded CREEM reader, couldn't decide: in 73 they were voted Best New Group and Worst Group; the next year, they held claim to the latter title.
ROCK · A · RAMA
Michael Davis
FOCUS—Focus Con Proby (Harvest):: Geez, even when you're not looking for irony, it comes up and clobbers you over the head. Thijs van Leer reforms the band with some new personnel and what's the biggest problem? Lack of focus, natch. They try everything from ersatz Procol Harum plodhoppers to fusion flashers, connecting about half the time.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down