MAIL

MAIL

Dear Creem:

I enjoyed Joshua Schreir’s review in the April Creem of that notable album, War Between the Fats and Thins, really enjoyed it.

“Clootch Hunt”, you see, happens to be one of my old favorites. Rendered by the band’s 78-year-old harpist, Claude Linott, it becomes well nigh irresistable. Well, you’ve heard it; you know.

Mr. Schreir also captured the piquant and ensorcelling sound of the jew’s harp like no one I have ever read before. “Sproing-sproing” — black magic in prose.

More seriously, I honestly did get a great kick from that Creem review. That kind of a sense of humor is rare anywhere. If Joshua Schreir stops badgering you for more money, will you let him write more?

Incidentally, there’s a bargain bin at the Discount Records store in Ann Arbor that’s not half bad. I found Bill Evans and Mabel Mercer there; Schreir finds Harvey Matusow’s Jew’s Harp Band. Where is the justice in this world?

Cordially,

Lawrence DeVine Drama Critic Detroit Free Press

Dear Creem;

I noticed somewhere in your anniversary issue that you heard rumors that Mike Bloomfield might reorganize the Electric Flag and that they had been jamming in Mill Valley recently. I thought I should write in with some confirmation.

This is true. I saw Mike, with most of the old Flag members at a free concert in Mill Valley on Easter. He said that he was starting the Flag again.

Also, in the same issue, there was a section on Spoken Word lps and nobody mentioned Melvin Van Peebles (“Brer Soul”). These are probably the most forceful spoken word albums around and I would be very interested to hear what Richard Walls, who seems to enjoy reviewing things of that nature, thinks of them

Kevin Lambert San Francisco, Calif.

Dear Creem:

“THE FIRST ASHETON COSMIC BOOM OF THE NIGHT” ...

all over my body!

Josephine Mori Eiektra Records New York, N.Y.

Dear Creem;

Read Volume 2, Number 10 and I was ‘Creemed’ (to borrow someone else’s line). It is nice of you to have come into my life today. I was down on our town’s mainstreet, 6 o’clock and it was cloudy and shitty and about half-dozen stores were open including a little porno-shop, which is where I got Creem. It’s a drag when twilight on a clouded gray day strikes and I swear that one quarter of the people in the streets were soldiers or cadets or something, out on leave or whatever. With all those greens around I was tempted to move my anti-draft and 1948/FBI buttons. But I didn’t. Creem saved the day. How, I don’t care.

Outside of Rolling Stone and the gool ole underground newspapers, you have the best ads around. No shit.

Why I bought Creem—

1) MC5 (You dig ’em and I dig ’em) (Well some of us B«L)

2) By God! John Sinclair, hero of Amerika, subversive of subversives, on the very pages of Creem! (John Sinclair Defense Fund, Trans-Love Energies, 1520 Hill, Ann Arbor, Mich.)

3) Ray Davies

4) Night at Santa Rita Commentary

5) Spelling Amerika correctly — AmeriKa

6) I needed exact change for the bus.

Expand your mag to more pages to

do up some political-musical groups like the Airplane, MC5 and the now defunct and lamented Mothers.

1 am waiting for a pirate radio station off-coast or in a big moving van (for pig evading) in Amerika.

Paul Major Louisville, Ky.

Dear Creem:

How can you have a bum like Leslie Schwartz write in your paper?

Tell him he can use my amp if he needs it.

JoJo

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Dear Creem;

Two popular Michigan groups, Third Power and Savage Grace, have just released their first albums. Both are receiving considerable airplay cm WKNR-FM and WABX. This is understandable since both stations promise to promote “Michigan” Rock. But must they overplay junk?

It’s sad to imagine that this is “Michigan Rock” after hearing the products of Bob Seger, MC5’s Kick Out the Jams album, the Stooges’ lp and the Rationals lp. It’s sad to see them followed by the likes of Savage Grace and the Third Power and the Back in the USA album by the Five. The earlier albums were fine products of the Motor City simply because they were only what the groups were capable of playing at the time. The latter group is now a bunch of over-produced bullshit hype. And it’s too bad because the MC5, the Power, and the Grace could have all put out better albums but were too concerned with coming out with “professional” albums, instead of playing to their own capabilities.

The Five toned down and lost their humanity, the Third Power were hung up in emulating Cream and the Savage Grace appeared to have tried in vain to have lived up to their name. They are neither savage nor graceful. Only hyped.

One of the phenomenons out of Detroit have to be the Frijid Pink. They made it, not just bn London Records great work; they may be shitty but they didn’t try to be what they were not. Hence, the people dug them all over the [dace.

Savage Grace and Third Power will not make it nationally unless they come up with hypeless albums. The rectad buying public have too much fantastic music offered them to waste their hard-earned cash on albums like Back in the USA, the Power’s and the Savage Grace’s albums. The people, all of ’em, want as Jesse Crawford says, REALITY JAMS.

Get down,

Ken Dabish

Chelsea, Michigan

Dear CREEM:

. There is very little I can write about because I’ve led a life consisting of musk and a tight-knit list of limited absurdities. I owned two kinds of tools as a boy, preparing for my blast into puberty; my bows and arrows and guns and slingshots, and second, some far-out, old funky guitar with palm trees on it. Both produced the only orgasm 1 was hip to and it was a surge of

emotions that could blind you or drive you into never-never land. I’d either jump back into a crazed imitation of Elvis Presley or head down to the woods to snuff the life of a poor, defenseless little creature of the forest like a squirrel or a robin (the state bird) or anything that crossed my path. Both adventures would knock me for a loop and I learned to love the world of extremes. Life went on and the day came where I would have to choose between Mort Neff and the Beatles.

Actually, a real choice never entered because as I leaped past the age of ten into the world of the older kids, my weapons were slowly losing ground. All my weapons, that is, except my guitar. 1 took lessons for about a year and found what to me appeared to be the finest form of understanding and communication that 1 could imagine. I always had a big mouth, and am sure I still do. But everybody interprets a vocal blast their own personal way and seldom do they catch the meat in the mouth. This horror of misinterpretation can snuff the finest and hardest of pleas from one human to another and abort them beyond recognition. Even in music, you can get deep into a passage and find the eternal hard-oft when the person next to you can be set a-flounderin’.

But, in the case of music, the meat is often shared by the thousands and rejected but by a few. Ideally speaking, if a cat kicks down his amps or bites his ■ drummer in the neck it’s for real. I believe that if someone does something, you can’t shake it. It’s'been done and they did it and believe in it. All I’ve ever wanted to do is play as much music to as many people as often as 1 possibly can and hope that it is expelled out of me into somebody with devastating force. Only an extreme. And only do extremes carry any weight. Rock and Roll is the life-line of at) sermons on all mounts and the biggest mountain around is Detroit in my world.

I’ve watched Detroit change and grow and for sure Detroit has watched the Amboy Dukes change and grow. Divorce all thoughts that activate a negative move. Surely that’s the rule of all. No one lives with hate or with a bleeding organ. You either live off the flowing blood or you mud up the hole. Amputate.

I’ve searched for five or six years for my musical family, my fellow messengers and a house to stand—, together with. I’ve definitely been most fortunate to have five lps under my belt' and a top ten single in the nation and especially to have gotten out to as many people as I have. I’m very proud of all my music and am driven by the force of tomorrow and who and what it all brings. I love all the people I’ve ever worked with because I.can’t help it.

When you have a rock and roll family, you are all one for aslong as you jam. But a pretentious phlegm causes such a reign of bullshit in the minds of some weak punks that it never really was music in the first place, even though it will always be music in the last-place.

1 only live for a musical force and that is all I want out of my family. But Satan has me by the balls and as long as they give me their shit I merely stuff it back down the douses’ throats and try again. The most recent change being that of my drummer boys and the first of a special.

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Dave Palmer and I played together since the “Baby Please Don’.t Go” interchange and like that, was very dear to my heart. He presented the dilemma to me in the words, “the thrill is gone!” Astonishing, for this thrill warrants the birth and growth of all others. But Dave is now engineering behind the records in New Yo^k with a main martin Eddie Kramer. The best-t-o b_oth of them. /

Enter K.J. Knight and take over .aS fate Will have. We get along incredibly for no other reason than the mad bond • of'music. He’s the best drummer yet and we both: realize that personal whims have no place whatsoever in the life of a man who dedicates his life and all for a single so dangerous cause instantly and Would never ask anyone to do something that I wouldn’t do, or even less.

So I don’t do drugs, etc. Big fucking deal. I would never ask anyone else noj to, just because I don’t. To each his own. It’s only when they have an uncanny record of mindfucks in my musical dream that 1 call it quits for them. I want to rehearse and be to gigs on time and have the proper equipment and have a good balance and play to the best of my ability and communicate with each member and with each person around. That’s all. And by and by, if that’s not easy as sin, I don’t know what is. I pray to my giiitars that soon the family will reach the eternal orgasm, the marathon party and the mass' communication secret of all time. It’s just a matter of slidin’ on. When I rap at concerts or to the people on the radio or on record, it’s mighty simple shit. I love everybody and when I invite people, all the people, to my rooms, I’m not putting anybody on.

I want to touch as many people as I possibly can. I want to learn. Maybe I can help. It’s all trading material. I want to jam til my sex changes in mid-air-. Everybody should be sure to go to where there is music. This could be it in our lifetime. I can see it when we all flame together after the years of preparation and • head on out to a festival of music and love and peace and life and companionship and find it in a natural human fortress with an acre of land and trees per person, a big natural mountain lake and ten million of-uk to find that nobody goes home, we just start all over again and sin on!

We are all brothers so let’s sock an eye for old glory or even kiss a wound. Think of our fucking coat of arms, think of the family of Detroit, free concerns, Grande Ballroom, Grande -' Riviera, Eastowne, WABX, WIfNR, Olympia, Cobo Hall, Ford and Masonic Temple, Open City, Creem Magazjne, Dave Miller, White Panthers, Dan Carlisle, Jesse Crawford, Logos Publishing Company, Dave Dixon, Jerry Lubin, Larry Miller, John Small, John Detz, Mike Turner, Dennis Frawley, Larry Benjamin, John Sinclair, Artist Royalty Prints, Gabe Glantz, Jeep Holland, Lee the cop, Amboy Dukes, SRC, MC5, Rationals, Savage Grace, Bob Seger, Frost, 3rd Power, i Frijid Pink, Grand Funk, Stooges! Mitch Ryder, All the Lonely' People, Up, Mighty Quick, Steve Booker, Brownsville Station, Sunday Funnies, Sky, John Drake’s Shakedown, Legs Diamond and a cast of millions, etc.... non-stop.

Ted "Nugent

Amboy Dukes

Detroit, Michigan