TAPESTRY

Dear CREEM:

I just figured it out! Budgie is Black Sabbath imitating the Stooges. Same producer in Roger Bain. And the vocalist is Carole King singing through a megaphone choking on Iggy’s oil rag jock strap. They’re just what we needed — an English group that could do the Iggy Pop Bop!

Scott Fischer Florissant, Mo.

(Yeah, but just wait til the real Original himself comes roaring back from Merrie Olde.. '. - Ed.)

NO WAY OUT

Dear CREEM:

Well, it’s finally happened: Mike Saunders scored a copy of “No Way Out.”

Whooooee!

The singer is Joyce Harris, who also wrote the song, and the record is Infinity INX-005A. The flip side is a “Love Is Strange” rip off called “Dreamer,” also written by Ms. Harris.

Greg Shaw (who was instrumental, along with Mik£, in getting the record to me) thinks that it’s a Texas recording from around ’60 or ’61. It certainly has that raw, flat-out Texas sound.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally have the record. It’s been a ten-year mystery — one that I despaired of -eVer solving — but the rock brotherhood has come through again. My deepest thanks to Mike and Greg, and also to CREEM for keeping the matter in public view. It couldn’t have happened without you guys.

Mike Goodwin J

San Francisco Ca.

(The single Mike's talking about is a legendary disc which has been oft-discussed in these pages and elsewhere in the last couple years. Mike fouyid “No Way Out” while in college over a decade ago, and no one since then has been able to identify it. We’re exultant, too. -Ed.)

WE'RE THE CREEM IN HER COFFEE

Dear CREEM:

I am writing you a letter rather than sending in the form for past issues. You didn’t really think I could cut out four paragraphs of Dave Marsh’s immortal Looney Toons?

Rock-a-Rama is great; I don’t always agree, but at least the writer isn’t afraid to stomp on things he doesn’t like. Christgau is even better; his review of Bare Trees is the most succinct review I have read in a while. But nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt if you reviewed even more records than you do.

CREEM is like sunshine. It ought to come out everyday.

Wylie Smith

Northampton, Mass.

P.S. It’s about time Ishamel Reed got reviewed. Which proves what I’ve always thought: Ed Ward has great taste. Now you need to mention another black black-humor writer, Charles (not Richard) Wright {The Wig). From there you can go on to Barth, Celine, Pynchon, Friedman... and let’s not forget sci-fi.

WHAT KIND OF MAGAZINE GETS LETTERS LIKE THIS, ANYWAY?

Dear CREEM:

If by somebody’s pitiable mistake Dave Marsh ends up reviewing the Kinks’ new LP, Everybody’s In Show Biz (an overly sentimental title in Mr. Marsh’s opinion, I’m sure), I’ll be forced to the conclusion that CREEM is a really hip, outasite magazine. Far out, too.

Yours,

Laurie Eivet

No Return Address

SOPOR ADDICTION CONFIRMED

Dear CREEM:

Your article on sopors (Quaaludes) in the Oct. ’72 issue was rather frightening because of some of the misinformation presented.

First of all sopors are addicting. As a physician and a worker at the local Drug Help I can assure of this from first hand observation. One of the reasons the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) advises discontinuing the use of sopors at the end of three months is because of its clear potential for addiction.

Secondly, what makes sopors even more dangerous than say, barbituates is precisely the misinformation that is so often printed that states that sopors are non-addicting. Since many street people who are into drugs are looking for a non-addicting buzz, they will often get into sopors in the mistaken belief that they won’t become addicted. Unfortunately, they can not only become addicted, but also not realizing that they are addicted, will try to quit sopors “cold turkey” and occasionally go into fatal convulsions. Thus the failure to have knowledge of sopor’s addicting qualities makes it more dangerous than smack or barbituates.

For the person who only occasionally drops a few sopors, there seems little danger, in fact considerably less danger than with alcohol. But for the person who is taking 5,6,7,8, etc. every day, that person should seek professional attention in order to secure a carefully supervised medical withdrawal, which paradoxically is done with barbituates.

Sopors aren’t called chickenshit’s heroin for nothing. Heroin, at a proper dose and purity, is definitely safer than Quaaludes.

And as for conspiratorial theories about smack and sopors: As Alfred McCoy pointed out in his recent Congressional testimony, if the CIA can transport smack from Southeast Asia, they sure as shit can move sopors from southern Ohio where they are manufactured.

Stay High!

Rihard Kunnes, M.D.

Ann Arbor, Mi.

NAME THE ROCK CRITIC . . .

Dear CREEM:

Here’s telling you of an exciting new game I developed. It’s called “Guess the Rock Critic” but you can really call it anything you want. First of all, obtain an issue of either CREEM or Rolling Stone. Now turn to the record review section. To begin with, the effect of the game is to guess the critic’s name without looking at the end of each review. After obtaining a sheet of paper, you lopk at the name of the album and make your guess there or any time during your reading of the review. If at the end your first choice is correct, you get 15 pts.; if your second was right you get 10; if third, 5.

I average 95 points in each issue of Rolling Stone.

Lawrence Keenan

Markham, Ill.

DOWN IN NASSAU COUNTY Dear CREEM:

I saw my name in the August issue, in the mail section. The letter concerned the “Long Island rock scene” (is there one really?) and referred to me as the “rock and roll freak,” which I accept with all due gratitude. It was supposed to be a compliment?

Anyway, there are no more LI underground newspapers. Both the LI Duck and the LI Free Press (I was resident rock critic in both journals) have bitten the dust because they were too political. As for the Metro. Review it comes off as a third class Village Voice, in all respects. As for Action World, if it still exists, it’s kept well out of sight.

I now have a syndicated college column, operating out of the Suffolk Community College Compass, and I contribute reviews to Words & Music.

So Mark, perhaps CREEM ignores the LI rock scene because there isn’t one to speak of yet (although the two day Festival of Hope brought out a new LI crowd I never knew existed. More on that some other time.)

Jim La Lunia

Ronkonkoma, N.Y.

AGING FOPS?

Dear CREEM:

In sort of reply to Greil Marcus and Simon Frith on the Stones, their dark angels and sugar.

I love “Brown Sugar” if for no other reason than that for three months of my life it was the only thing that could get me out of bed in the morning. The lyrics never bothered me because I (rightly or wrongly) figured that just because a song expresses certain attitudes, that doesn’t mean they’re shared by the writer. As Randy Newman, among others, has shown, you can sing a song with other voices than your own. “Brown Sugar” seems to be in the same category as “Sail Away” only on a higher level, ’cause it rocks. Sort of a bedroom view of colonialism and white imperial decadence.

On the other hand, “Sweet Black Angel” is just dumb. As well as a musically sloppy rip-off of reggae, as Frith says, it denies Angela’s radicalism, intellecuality and seriousness and shuts her back into the bedroom, bareassed and submissive. The worst part of all is that the Stones are putting no distance between these sentiments and their own, the worst sort of condescension and pretension.

Besides being a beautiful backhanded example of the attitude of freaks towards blacks and revolutionaries. (How many whites would be that interested in Angela’s struggle if she hadn’t projected a glamorous, sexy image? About as many as cared about Lee Otis Johnson, Martin Sostre and the Orangeburg and Jackson Massacres.) the song provides the key as to what’s wrong with Exile on Main Street. Like Mick was quoted in Rolling Stone: “Main Street’s where you see funky whores, flashing knives. Real inner city scene.” Then he goes back to his mansion in Bel Air and writes songs about it. It isn’t really, as Lester Bangs suggested, that the Stones aren’t outrageous anymore. It’s that being outrageous, at this point, is no longer anything to strive for. The whole rifFs been done to death, and assimilated into the showbiz mainstream. Something new is called for.

People like Lou Reed are making the transition. The Stones can’t seem to, and are left with such lame thrusts as Clockwork Orange makeup, gratuitously loud sound systems and jet-set birthday parties. To get over their impasse, it looks like they’ll have to stop being parodies of their good old days and find a way to grow up a little. Otherwise, they might easily become the thing that we would have thought inconceivable of them five years ago: aging fops, boring everyone more with each new bit of business.

David Clearfield

Berkeley, Calif.

NOT TO MENTION WHAT ROCK CRITICISM IS ALL ABOUT Dear CREEM:

I live in Oakdale, Louisiana, a small red-necked community of about 7500 people. Luckily, I have not lived here all my life. I have traveled around the U.S. in a van like so many other “On the Roader’s” and I have experienced Rock and Roll from my birth up til now. I have played in Rock and Roll bands, too. My whole life has been wrapped up in Rock and Roll wrapping paper. Today I have been unwrapped.

Today I read an article (record review) in your Sept. 1972 issue. I have read Rolling Stone, Fusion, Circus, Ramparts and all the others, but today I bought The London Chuck Berry Sessions (here in Oakdale) and also, by coincidence, bought your mag. I happened to read the review by Greil Marcus of the very same record I was listening to. Brothers, he said what I felt, and WOW! I know now, or I should say feel what Rock and Roll is all about. It’s just a feeling, but so is everything. Damn, I think I’m gonna cry.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 87

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12.

Amazed and happy,

Steve Staples

Oakdale, La.

ROYAL RACK JOBBER OF THE WESTERN WORLD

Dear CREEM:

To Lester Bangs, Royal Rack Jobber of the Rock’n’Roll World:

•I’ve suffered through John Mendelsohn, Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, the egos of Jeff Beck and John Lennon, that asshole Mick Jagger,-Ciircus magazine, Dick Clark, Chicago, Pat Boone, Terry Knight, Bob Dylan, Mr. Considerate (Miles Davis), Michael Jackson and yes, even Jann Wenner.

But nobody, but nobody, pisses me off as badly as you do. I don’t know how you do it. I realize that you’re one of the most intelligent writers in the business.,So I find it horribly offensive that you say the things you do.

Dave Marsh said that you single-handedly invented the term “heavy metal.” Fine! So now you’re the undisputed King of the Heavy Metal Punk Rock Review. Your Prince and Duke being Mike Saunders and Jon Tiven, respectively.

Which would all be fine and dandy except I’ve read outstanding reviews of yours of some of the finest classical and jazz on the market today. You do know fine music when you see it... But please don’t bastardize the term “rock’n’roll” by associating it with this punk rock shit

Rock’n’roll is also getting drunk on Lone Star beer and going to see Freida and the Firedogs at the Armadillo World Headquarters. Rock’n’roll is also doing some Orange Sunshine and listening to Ummagumma or Sun Ra. Rock’n’roll is also hitting crank and listening to Larry Coryell make those incredible speed-freak runs. Or drinking Bordeaux and listening to Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

It’s all rock’n’roll. I just feel you’re getting too swept up in heavy metal. I love CREEM but hate Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, MC5, Stooges, Frut and Alice Cooper. Is CREEM trying to say that those bands make larger contributions to rock’n’roll than bands I do like?

Bob Chatham

Elgin, Texas

(Lester: “/ never invented the term ‘heavy metal.’ William Burroughs did and the Fugs’ publisher was once Heavy Metal Music, and that’s where it came from, just like Alice Cooper, not me or Dave Marsh or Leonard Feather, was the first to use the term Third Generation. I appreciate your gripe, and agree: it is all rock’n’roll. Hell, I even think Carole King is rock’n’roll. Our main criterion is excitement. Atomic Rooster are certainly punk-rock from their name to their freakouts.

IN MEMORY OF JOEY REYNOLDS Dear CREEM:

I am one of the million rock fans who hate AM disk-jockeys and their top 40 hits. I finally got an FM radio and now that’s all I ever listen to.

But there is one D.J. who I shall never forget. He is Joey Reynolds, who was on AM station WIBG in Philadelphia in 1970. He would come on with his theme song sung by the Four Seasons to the tune of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and tell sick jokes half the way through. One day he started breaking records he was sick of. He played Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds” at 33-1/3 and on 16 and played war sounds along with it. Then he scratched the record and you could hear him break it.

If records were lousy, he would say so. Once after a record was over he would say, “This recqrd is No. 1 this week. But really, I HATE the record. It makes me sick.” One time he called the information operator in Memphis and spoke the words of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis.” He asked her about Marie, his sweetheart, and how his uncle wrote the phone number on the wall. He was crying at the end and the operator kept saying, “I have to know Marie’s last name to call her for you.”

He made his own 45 with his theme song on one side and “Rats In My Room” (a stupid song done in 1950’s style) on the flip side.

Now everybody knows there’s at least one good AM DJ. By the way, yur magazine is great and Jim Morrison of the Doors died last summer. Please run an article about him and the other three remaining Doors. Thank you.

A music Freak

From New Jersey

JADED PERVERTS MAKE HIM SICK

Dear CREEM:

Re: Has Satan Injured Your Family Yet? (Sept.)

Don’t complain when you got it so good. The flash, exciting job as rock reporter for a great underground monthly. Free albums, even if 95% are trash. And now this: a treasured spot on deviant mailing lists. Christ.

Like my peers, I am constantly searching for decadence, the common denominator of the trendy. Gay pinups, beaver shots, nudist weeklies, oral-genital contacts with farm animals, witchcrafts. Just a whole fuckload of

perverts and I can’t even get on one mailing list And you have the audacity to complain about a religioso tract for right wing spirits. Man, how do you get on these lists, anyway?

America cries out for perversion, and you, Dave Marsh, sneer.

Craig Brandt

Harrisburg, Pa.

(Marsh replies: Well, Craig, I didn’t ask. I just sent a buck to Christian Crusade, Box 977, Tulsa, Ok. 74102 for a copy of The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex and Violence. [We published an article on CC in our November issue, which has the pertinent details.] You can do it too. It costs a buck, but it gets you on a couple other mailing lists, sporadically. And who says I didn’t LIKE that pamphlet? It brightened my day.)

ONE MAN'S GARBAGE DISPOSAL . .. Dear CREEM:

My friends and I who have read your August issue almost shit when we read Dave Marsh’s review of Thick As A Brick. Anyone who can tear apart this fine piece of music, in the manner he did, should have his balls stuck in a garbage disposal.

Anyone from this two horse town has enough brains to know that Ian Anderson has nothing but class. [Including talent? — Ed.] We suggest that Dave Marsh attend a Tull concert and then give us another article after seeing this. You can bet your scaly ass he would get his ears full of the finest tunes he ever heard.

In living color,

Zappa, M-Watt & Wild Bill

Corinth, NY

NOBODY LIKES ME EVERYBODY HATES ME . ..

Dear CREEM:

I was just reading a critique/expose of some Berkeley food conspiracy or other, and a question or two came to mind. 1) Isn’t it a long walk from Berkeley to Chicago?; 2)Are you guys that far behind (between the worded and the printed)?; 3) How much does Jon weigh?; 4)Can you recommend a good diet?

Love,

R.D.

Los Angeles, Ca.

( 1) Yes, more than 3,000 miles; 2) No, only one too many mornings.. .;3) Ask Sandye; 4) Like Martin Luther, we’ve always preferred the Diet of Worms. - Ed.)

EXCEPTION PROVES RULE Dear CREEM:

Re: Robbie Cruger’s Sha Na Na review. The Duke of Earl, was Gene Chandler, of course, and Mark Dinning did “Teen Angel.” It’s also on Real Live John Sebastian and Sha Na Na did it on “Good Vibrations From London.” I just turned fifteen and I’ve never bought an Andy Kim record. I do buy Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Little Richard, etc. And now lemme ask you something, Ms. Cruger. Who did “Betty Betty”/“Right Around the Comer”? Betcha don’t know.

Eddie Flowers

Jackson, Ala.

P.S. All you 14 year-olds out there who also knew these simple fax o’ rock let these ol’ coots know it. Think teenage!