Looney Toons

Looney Toons

Dave Marsh

What if somebody asked you what CREEM was, I thought...that would make just as good a column as anything else. And I always leave this for the last possible moment so it can be as irrelevant and otherworldly as possible. What I’d like it to be not what it really is, sort of like CREEM itself.

I could start with an admissionI never had a baby and that would tell you lots about what this will be like when it’s not just coming out on this paper but thousands of them-all identical-like my thoughts. Sometimes I type on a typewriter (this one) that refuses to backsspace (I have to backspace a lot? so does CREEM). And sometimes we backspace a lot, too.

When I had to go to the drafting place this morning to be inducted (but I wasn’t, otherwise how would I write this on a real typewriter?) Ric said that I should be terrified (scared? amazed?) and I said that no, you can’t take those people seriously. That’s a big thing around here, not taking things seriously. Who laughs most laughs best. Usually. Sometimes. And does CREEM poke fun at itself. They (we) do better than the Jefferson Airplane did on Baxter’s but not so well as the Flamin’ Groovies do every day. But look at the Airplane economically and look at the Groovies. Ah, ya can’t get rich laughing.

On the other hand, if you don’t take yourself too seriously you can look at the Army psychairtrist and tell him that if he drafts you, you’ll be dead in six weeks and walk out the door. CREEM never had an editor, or a publisher, and that was the beauty of it. Now we still don’t and it still is...I don’t think Barry and Paul Williams would get along, I know Ralph Gleason and I couldn’t work with each other (or vice versa) and if you knew Ric and Charley you wouldn’t really see them as Robert Somma’s Richard Goldstein’s or Jann Wenner’s playmates. No, we are misfits, CREEM is the magazine of misfitdom and I’m (essentially) having a good time. And don’t really want to have a bad time. Which can be bad sometimes but can also be good if you don’t overdo it. ..what if you had a good time all the time and no problems? You asshole.

It’s not easy to work for a newspaper/magazine (which is which and who are we?) that takes as its premise that the whole thing is a lark and if we survive, we survive and we do, ’cause we really have to. Beyond the door there is only outside and outside and outside can get hostile and though hostility is inside also it is warm hostility and the second premise is that hot beats cold, which may be a McLuhanist regression and show how beatnik-y we would rather be.

I didn’t like the Cactus album but I bet Lester really does listen to it. But then we love Lester (really do) and even I do and I really know he can write better’n’me-but he never saw the real MC5. I did and I’m the better for it, not better than anyone else in particular but I was there and I saw.

I wonder what it might be like these days to grow up and not look forward to finding obscure records in record stores and buying them ’cause the song titles are neat and not having any great aesthetic myth to follow. Because blues are great and so is jazz and rock is rock and roll and good enough when it does both and pretty bad when it’s only one of the two. (Crawdaddy! was the magazine of roll but they called it rock; I must’ve missed an issue somewhere.)

CREEM is the magazine of rock as high comedy and low art, of bizarre as normalcy. I’m not sure if today is after the revolution or before it but I think it’s during. You may think this shit is easy to write and it is but did you ever try to live it?

I said last weekend I didn’t want to go in the Army because the Kinks would be here soon and that is as good a reason as any. Do you realize that most Amerikan adolescent (draftable) males still wear underwear and it is usually white jockey shorts (I didn’t get a chance to check out it could be Hanes. Janie told me that boxer shorts were more sexy but when I asked her if I should start wearing underwear again she just looked funny. I didn’t bother.).

I like Paul Kantner’s spaceship Idea, but not his album but his Idea. I think when I leave this paper it may be the same time I leave the planet. It never quite seemed the right one and I’ll be twenty one soon. I didn’t even tell my parents I got out of the army;dr^ft thing I’m so liberated.

What IS there left to do? Get better at it, I suppose, and I know we will. Anyway, for sure this is the last Loony Toons column, this year anyway. It may not make much sense unless you grew up in Motown too but what would you expect to read in a column called Loony Toons? I always wanted to be my own rationale. You answer all the questions, find some new ones and when the snow leaves your windowsill I’ll bet you’ll be glad you didn’t move to the Bahamas anyway. THE END