Dear CREEM:

I got some back issues of your magazine from my friend. I find it very interesting to read. It has many articles to suit the taste of its readers. I appreciate the tremendous efforts contributed to the world of music. I want to correspond with readers who are interested in Indian sitar music. Those who are in need of help in the field of Yoga, Rama Sutra (sex), drugs, may write to me for details. I will answer all letters.

I shall be thankful if you could publish this in your magazine.

With best wishes from India,

S. Palkirisamy

247 Pidari Koil Street

Tirijvarur

Thanjavur Dist.

India

Dear Creem;

I have just finished reading John Sinclair’s article “Liberation Music” and as a woman and musician feel compelled to comment on it.

It is hard to believe that anyone as “revolutionary” as John Sinclair could fail to see the fact that, although much of the impetus of rock is in the energy of the music, this does not make the music a revolutionary force in our society, although, indeed, the matter is complex. For while the energy may radicalize (and did radicalize me as far back as 1960, listening to Brownee McGee and Sonny Terry for the first time — which led me to think about whole new ways of living) the words and aspects of the musie are forever “putting women in thier place”, and that very energy is the power behind the message, sucking us ip as it oppresses us, much more completely than, say a Chanel perfume ad in Vogue magazine would. How many times have I happily snapped my fingers and danced along with hundreds of other women and men to “Look At That Stupid Girl” or “You Better Shop Around”? Not that the Stones and the Miracles don’t created beautiful music (they are two of my favorite groups, which is a flip-out in a way) but who can deny how the put-downs to women have affected us all? Who but the blindeds of men who are so into relating through John Wayne images of themselves that they can’t see it in the Mick Jaggers and Alvin Lees, could fail to miss this point — that even as the music brings us in touch with our own vitality and life energy, at the same time it oppresses us by keeping those macho -madonna/whore images alive. Images which in our successful or unsuccessful attempts to conform to them, have destroyed many lives in the process.

This brings me to some thoughts on the movie Groupies (also reviewed in the Nov. issue of your magazine). These women are not a freak aberration in our society and none of us can so easily separate ourselves from them (which is obvious considering the fact that most of us are fascinated, not merely intellectually interested in them.) Their perceptions aren’t fucked up — Alvin Lee is not a sensitive, misunderstood musician —what is tremendously fucked up is his need to lay his sexist, sadistic power trip on women through his music, and the “groupies” and our (men and women) tremendous attraction to him. Again, not that he doesn’t play good guitar (at least technically) but there is obviously much more going on here. And the “much more” is a disease so deeply imbedded in our society that rock music is going to have to go through many changes before it can act as a truly revolutionary force to help change rather than perpetuate this system.

Sincerely

Laura Liben

New York City

Dear CREEM,

Your October & November issues showed up here in LA awhile ago and I found them a gassy contrast to some of the stuff which has been going down in That Other magazine of late.

You guys seem to be mildly hung up on the r&r critic as artiste trip too, but at least you’ve got a sense of humor about it.

I’m beginning to get bummed out by the entire r&r press lately because of the new trip which is beginning to dominate. (Listen to me you shithead and put away your bubblegum music because I’m gonna tell you what’s good) Rock critics are a breed apart . . . sensitive, perceptive, intelligent... yes. Petty, frustrated, egotistical and thickskulled ... also yes. And above all cursed with the need to rationalize their personal tastes and objectify them into patterns like first year history grads.

For instance your Lester Bangs thing on the Stooges. It’s fascinating, well-written & full of shit from where I sit. No amount of trip-building and metaphor to establish the fact that the Stooges are the r&r heirs to Coltrane and the 1965 Avante-garde jazz movement are going to change the fact that their music turns me on not at all and seems (to me) to be quite lousy. And trying to pull one-upmanship games with snappy condemnations of popular rock groups isn’t going to strengthen the argument.

Right. We all try to make what we experience fit some pattern ... we all like to weave little stories about music that we like to make it seem to be part of some continual progression. And we all want to feel that the music that turns us on has some Cosmic Significance.

I don’t think, somehow, that the Stooges are the answer to the a p athy-Exploitation-bullshit syndrome which clever Admen are using to sell records. (My own tastes would indicate that an evening with the Grateful Dead restores healthy vibes and faith in r&r better than anything else, but that’s my head)

And dig it... Ascension, Karma, Bitches Brew etc. are all parts of my record collection standing side by side with The Live Kinks, Blonde on Blonde, The Very Best of Eddie Cochran and Reflections in a Crystal Wind ... so lets have none of the “you don’t even comprehend what Real Music is about” crap.

The rock press is obsessed with weaving counter-myths to the bullshit hype put out by the record companies ... it isn’t necessary to come on like these mind-trips represent the last word in sociological commentary, because they don’t. They’re just fantasies, the same as Paul Williams’ essays in Outlaw Blues. They are expressions of personal reactions, not objective analyses of the “The State of the Counter-Culture”.

So you want to play historian and write about the seven ages of rock ... groovy. (My theory of the Secret Nature of the universe hinges around the fact that the deaths of Hendrix & Joplin combined with the advent of New Morning & American Beauty signal the end of the era which began with Monterey in 1967 and that we’re in a new thing now where people like Led Zeppelin, Delaney & Bonnie, etc. will have less influence than they did in the interregnum period following Altamont... the true death of the “festival period.)

And so it goes ... everyone has favorite groups & performers which he tries to work around into the center of his r&r cosmos... but these trips should be laid out for what they are ... interesting speculative bullshit ... ultimately good music is good and bad music is bad and the noises produced by the performers are what stands or falls. Does Miles Davis have a stage act? Would Pete Townsend destroying his guitar have been any good if the Who hadn’t produced fantastic music to accompany him?

I guess if you believe he would have, then you wind up exactly where Lester Bangs is now.... an intellectualized Nik Cohn.

Len Bailes

Los Angeles, Calif,

Dear CREEM:

I suppose you fuckers are proud of yourselves. Well, let’s set some things straight. You’ve gotten so cool, you think you’re so fuckin’ hip, that you probably don’t listen no more but at least maybe you’ll print this (seems you’ll print anything, these days) and some of your readers who should know better but don’t will understand.

Specifically what the hell makes you think that anyone is interested in reading page after page of Stooges/WhitePanther drivel? The finest thing about CREEM used to be its very lack of pretension; but lately you’ve become as in-groupish and star struck as the rest.

Yeah, look at Lester Bangs ... drone on, Les’ 4rone on. And whatever happened to Dave Marsh? His writing is degenerating into a sort of everyman’s rock and roll pap that I find disgusting, abhorrent and a waster of space and ink and paper. ,

Maybe it’s time for a vacation, maybe it’s time for you to lay back and analyze where the hell you’re going and what the tuck you’re supposed to be about. Somewhere along the line, young CREEMers, you’ve simply lost track of that essential purpose. And I sure wouldn’t want to see what was once my favorite rockzine become CREEMated (for lack of a better phrase).

Frank Novowitz

Milwaukee, Wis.

Dear CREEM:

A few months ago my little brother turned me on to a copy of CREEM; because I have great faith in my brother I had faith in your magazine. I found it , to be a great combination of rock and revolution, thus thoroughly enjoyable and interesting.

Lately, CREEM has been turning up in all sorts of odd places around L.A. These include the Free Press Bookstore and the U.C.L.A. Book Store and other assorted strange arenas where people might come together.

This is great for there are a lot of things that you write about the people out here should be on to, but aren’t. However, I find that for the most part yOur musical articles are not exactly relevant to the L.A. scene. Who wants to read about Iggy and the Stooges, no matter how well an article is written --1 mean it’s like describing a Jim Morrison wet dream and that’s a drag. The Byrds are Los Angeles based, but I think most of us would like to forget that.

So until then, I will observe the birds and beasts of the realm and await your next issue.

Nan Dee Sugerman

Beverly Hills, California