Features

Dear CREEM:

Leni sent me the new CREEM Thursday and I’ve just finished the last review in it — so I’m writing at last.

I really dug the magazine. The format works very nicely and the material was good too. It’s really a together paper and I like that about it above and beyond the specific content, which doesn’t always kill me. I’m also deep into Zygote, which is quite a few cuts above the other papers, you know? I mean they’re into the music and even when they write about bands and performers I don’t care about, I really dig their musical approach.

This new paper/magazine is better than I thought it would be, and that makes me feel real good, which is what it’s about anyway. I got a fine strong sense of a real Detroit base, as a pervasive feeling, throughout the whole issue. I mean, I really didn’t want you to lose that, because that’s the strongest thing about the paper and it would be an MC5 move (there’s that awful R. Meltzer term, but it’s the one thing I’ve found useful in his writing f-5 although his boxing column this time is the most coherent thing of his I’ve read since what, 1966?) to throw that away for •something as useless as membership in the popsucker set.

The Alice Coltrane piece got pretty stiff toward the end, out of awe, it seemed, which was all right too. Although I can’t agtee with your estimation as the -female pianist or (even less) the premiere pianist now active. I mean, you better listen to Cecil Taylor because Alice don’t come near him. And Carla Bley (for me) plays a lot more paino than Alice — which is not at all to put A.C. down, she’s just doing something different from them which for me is even done “better” by RA (Sun Ra-Ed.) — you dig? Those are musical judgements but I don’t get to hear much of this music (any music except WCHD and WGPR, where I do hear Alice Coltrane from time to time, or else I wouldn’t presume to speak of her music at all).

If you want to get smoothed right over by some pure honey music you should check out a song called ‘‘Close to You” by (of all' people) Houston Person - I think it’s on an album called Person to Person — it really blows me over, but maybe that’s because the rest of the shit the “soul jazz” people play is so awful. But check it out — it goes straight to my own roots. Are you hip to “Canadian Sunset” by Gene Ammons (c.1961)? It’s as pure as that.

One piece that really knocked me out was the Standard Oil slick expose — it was a lot better than the shit the “underground”/ “radical” papers ran because it went into the economics im detail —'more like a Ramparts study than a rant — people need that kind of expose writing and especially on the “ecology” ruse, because as we know there are very definite reasons why things are so fucked and they all have to do with capitalism and its rotten culture. The Winter Soldier piece by Nick Medvecky was good to see too, and the abridged version of Craig Karpel’s great piece which I read in ifs original version. Yeah! That kind of stuff really backs up your proud assertion in the letters column about the nature of CREEM as more than a “rock” magazine (incidentally, I just saw my first copy of Rock magazine and it sucks shit like the proverbial dog. Ugh!!)

Meanwhile it’s 20 months next week. . . and now I’m supposed to have plotted to KIDNAP! Milliken, Spiro P. Agnew, Griffin, et al. Sure.

I can’t say anything more now — one thing though, if I ever get out and we do get our record company working the second thing I’ll do is put out an MC5 album with “Comm” and all the old stuff on it — won’t that be far out? It’ll be called I Believed It To My Soul or Motor City Madness, you dig? It’ll be killer!

Hope to see you soon too, but you know

how that is .. .

ALLTOWER TO THE PEOPLE!

RAINBOW POWER TO RAINBOW

PEOPLE!

LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL!

Love,

John Sinclair,

Wayne County Jail

Detroit Michigan

(John is presently awaiting his Conspiracy Trial in the Wayne County Jail in Detroit. The above are excerpts from a recent letter to us that we thought pertinent to our readers. Hopefully, we’ll be publishing some of John’s work in the near future. The July issue of Esquire will probably have the killer Karpel in the first extensive interview with John since he was incarcerated.

By the way, the address of the Sinclair Defense Fund is 1520 Hill St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48201. It’s going to cost upwards of $40,000 to defend him, Jack Forrest and Pun Plamondon in their CIA case and even more to appeal John’s marijuana conviction so anything would help. Rock on! — Ed.)

Dear CREEM:

By now, you have seen the Newsweek story on A. J. Weberman, paraphrased from Rolling Stone, and a little extra material. In your March issue you announce that you’re going to publish the “first serious interview” with Weberman. Weberman has both dismayed and angered Dylan collectors with his nonsensical, ^seudo-“revolutionary” double-speak. And as a Dylan collector ^ince September 1960, I find Weberman to be: a liar (notice how many times he has changed, embellished and invented “facts” to support his already egomaniacal insecurity). There are also other facts to consider: why is it that, for the past two years, Weberman has taken almost 50 “nerve energizers” a day (the phonetic spelling is “ridlin”)? I gained, this information from a person who knew Weberman quite well in New York, currently living in San Francisco (he’ll call you, if you are in doubt). And, more importantly, Weberman is a rip-off artist — fast-talking, able to obscure his own lack of knowledge about Dylan’s Pyramidal symbolism. Weberman has sufficiently blown his own mind to live out a pathetic fantasy, but he has now blown anyone else’s. He has written to collectors (myself among them), inventing tapes that he doesn’t have in order to obtain material for his “complete” collection. One individual —. a longtime personal, intimate friend of Dylan’s now living in Carmel — sums up his own feelings about Weberman’s articles and written -requests for material: “horseshit”. And there are innumerable other examples I can cite and substantiate concerning Weberman’s innocuous “interpretations”. The question, however is when CREEM, as it did with Weberman’s bullshit concerning Self Portrait, will once again make a serious stand against this kind of insanity. Many people, including myself, are angered by the stupidity Dylan has been subjected to by Weberman and his group of ego-tripping “Dylan Liberation Front”, (sic) His collection is “impressive” only because Weberman has gathered together those items (including tapes) that are most readily available, to a collector. If Weberman is so knowledgable, why isn’t he aware of the 30 tapes that Dylan recorded in a friend’s home in 1962, that the original title of Tarantula was Tarantula Meets Rex Pasle (I have one of Dylan’s personal copies of the first draft of the book), is not a “slimey junkie”, that he has transcended ideology in New Morning and, by doing this, has created something greater? There are a lot of things Weberman doesn’t know, doesn’t have (and wonr’t get), because he has shown himself to be nothing more than a publicity-hungry little leader of a wrestling fan club from Michigan. Please print this and be aware that there are serious scholars of Bob Dylan’s poetry who think Weberman .is bigoted, shallow intellectual neanderthal.

Stephen Pickering

Santa Cruz, Calif.

(What our article intends to prove, if we ever get it finished, is that A.J. is a symptom. Perhaps Mr. Pickering’s letter does it better than we ever could, though: it’s pretty hard to accept, as hard fact not opinion, that “Dylan has transcended ideology .. . and created something greater. ” A lot of people don’t think so, and it is precisely the kind of short-sighted commentary that Mr. Pickering makes that A.J. Weberman is the archetype fbr; Bob Dylan isn’t god, though he may have found god. But a transcendent ideology is not a transcending ideology, it’s still ideology. Whether Dylan is a “pyramidal symbolist”'(?!) is as moot a point as whether or not Weberman is anything more than “a publicity hungry little leader of a wrestling fan club from Michigan. ” But the real point is, petty is as petty does. The whole thing is out of proportion and maybe A.J. is a man of the times. But let’s at least save that for the article, huh? — Ed.)

Dear CREEM:

I don’t know what asshole you hired to review Zappa’s two singles (March issue, page 72) but your readers deserve something better than this bad-tempered crap. My guess is that “Frank’s” philosophy “at this point” or any other is a fucking sight “more interesting” than your reviewer’s (could his possibly be old line Marxism?)

The fact that this dude (maybe) didn’t like the two cuts doesn’t explain'the bitterness of his amateurish hatchet job. What was the trouble? No free tickets for the old lady?

Love and good wishes,

Carlos Fisher

Ottawa Canada

(To save Greg Shaw the trouble: No it wasn’t old line Marxism. Or anys other line of Marxism. As far as WE know. Ed.)

Dear CREEM:

Thank you for sending me my copy of CREEM but the letter you sent with it gets me mad, because my parents say that because I sent $5.50 in. cash instead of a check you will not send me my album, or iany more papers. Since I did send cash, I don’t have any record of profcf but myself.

I’m only 15 years old so I’m not able to have my own checks. My parents hate freeks and Panthers, you know the type. They didn’t want me subscribing to your paper and they, said they weren’t going to write me a check, so I sent cash.

If you do find out I’m not lying, please send me-the J. Geils Band album, because I hear they’re pretty far out

Thank you,

Doug Cryer ,

Dearborn, Mich. '

Dear CREEM:

About a year ago a friend introduced me r to CREEM. The mag filled in a gap that Rolling Stone didn’t quite close. Y’know it seemed closer to us, not so aloof and presumptious as the Rotting Stump.

CREEM Vol. 3, No. 2 came as a bit of a shock to me. Two names that I never expected to see in CREEM were those two ol’ bullshitters, Lester Bangs and John Mendelsohn. After reading the issue, I realized that the whole rag was tilting toward the RS type of crap.

I believe that I had spoken of presumptiousness before. On page 19, CREEM, the people’s rock rag, starts hyping its role with the phrase, “Because CREEM is less concerned with ‘definitiveness’ than Rolling Stone, because it likes to help deserving bands” (if you like to help so much, get the fuck over to Madison, ’cause we got two killer bands name of Tayles and Merrill Springs who need all the help they can get) and so on. WE KNOW ALL THAT, YOU EGOMANIACS, you don’t have to tell us that you are pure and clean and have philanthropic tendencies. We only want to know about our culture, we don’t want to know what you think of yourselves.

John Mendelsohn: Get this. I really freak on the Bonzo Dog Dodah Band. The GTOs are great The Kinks are superb. Alice Cooper and1 the Stooges drive me right up a fucking' wall. I enjoy absurdity, but ridiculousness is a waste of time. Almost all my friends agree with me. For Christ’s sake, stop trying to tell us that we are all fuCked up because we can’t seem to see things exactly the way you do. By the way, you have some potential as far as fiction goes. And for everyone’s sake, I hope Christopher Milk is worth all the hype you’re giving it.

Why didn’t you mention Alias Smith and Jones in your TV column this issue? ItY the only show that is almost pure entertainment withou t getting slapsticky on TV.

Get on the ball. I want a culture paper. Not another Rolling Stone.

Steven D. Grant

Madison, Wisconsin

Dear CREEM:

Having discovered CREEM at a communal - farm in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, I was happy to find the issue contained numerous articles and bits of information that were readable, desirable and even WORTHWHILE, far-out communicating other publications.

Then with the impact of a ton of bricks, I caftie upon an article about the doings of exmembers of Bonzo Dog Band. How very stimulating! >

The article conveyed such chatty information and newsy , trivia that I was inspired to compose this wee epigraph (sic?). I need help. I must find a copy of Stanshall’s “LabioDental Fricative” and any albums by Neil Innes’ World, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and Christopher Milk. If anyone can send rhe direct and conclusive information (I want NEW copies, so no folderol) I will subscribe to this lovely rag.

Acid makes FRUITS AND VEGETABLES!

Loye,

Jeff Roberts

Box 43

Hadley, Pa. 16130

(C. Milk, and C: Cody are as yet unrecorded; both Innes and World, and Stanshall, have had releasep in Britain but not over here. Anyone know where to get polished copies of the two. and thereby CREEM the $5.00 we want so badly? — Ed.)

Dear CREEM:

I happened upon a copy of your Creem Magazine the other day and was extremely impressed.

I was most impressed by the two articles by the Robinsons. The only thing which left me cold was why you put Yale ’67 behind one of your writer’s names. It seems that Yale or other exclusive schools should be given no credit for the positions of the minds of those of us involved in the changing of America. There is no way in which a University’s facilities can be limited and still truly service the community.

Jay O’Brien Amarillo, Tx.

Dear Sir/Madam/Friend,

Am sitting here listening to Captain Beefheart’s ’lick my decals off, baby’ and feeling very-much like contacting somebody on your side ... SO

i was in the states in the summer and saw lots of underground papers which i bought and liked etc., but the one that really struck me as being above the others in content and Treatment of material was your very own newspaper/magazine/voice

THEREFORE i am now (after our postal strike prevented me froth doing it earlier since i only got hold of your address in january) making tentative enquiries as to the possibility of taking out a year’s subscription to your excellent, ‘puts anything we have to shame’, publication — that is assuming there is nowhere in this country that i can buy it, i mean you don’t send any to london or anything, do you?

you see we can get our very own british edition of rolling stone whenever it comes out even in glasgow would you believe, and there are some excellent british rock music papers to choose from, but somehow i prefer the presentation of* news and the intelligence of the people writing in your paper, because the whole of rock music journalism in this country is still only slowly evolving away from the mundanities of ‘POP’ music journalism, a frustrating and saddening insult to the intelligence of the entire thinking youth in this island — a situation little better than the painful attempts the BBC make to present an interesting rock music radio station — or, more correctly, do NOT make: what can you do when radio is ^monopoly, and we have to listen to TONY BLACKBURN (if you haven’t heard of him you don’t want to) spying “I like professionalism in POP, and I think "all those horrible progressive groups should be made to wear suits when they appear in front of young people” or something like that, it doesn’t matter exactly what he said, you get the idea.

Anyway I am sure that you understand^ that not only do I want to take out a subscription to your newspaper (5 dollars for 24 issues?) but i fucking well need to if I want to retain my sanity in this absurd country — lets face it all the important things for my generation in the capitalist world are happening in Amerika right now anyway, and i desperately need to keep in touch, so I am taking at least one step further by managing to get up ‘off my ass’ and write to you (or alternatively — y’all)

Please rejSly soon to the address above, and give me the pleasing illusion that somebody out there is thinking of me, and maybe even likes me a little bit.

’keep taking the tablets!

Alexander Jamieson

Glasgow, Scotland

P.S. i never did make it to the Smithsonian institute. Charles reich lives!

what this world needs ... is a

good two dollar room

and a good

two dollar

Broom...