MAIL

MAIL

Please send letters to:

MAIL Dept., CREEM Magazine

P.O. Box 202, Walled Lake, Mich. 48088

DEAR CREEM

If I were the Moody Blues, I would call you up personally and tell you to climb in an elephant’s ass and hibernate forever.

Leigh Orders

Jacksonville, Fla.

(They’re not going to give away the plot of their next album like that. -Ed.)

NO WAY OUT

I’d just like to quote Lester Bangs from your March issue and the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival Program and ask him for a simple explanation. “As for Pharoah,most of his stuff has been kozmik muzak ever since Trane died and left him to scout around for ideas.” “In a time when musicians in both rock and jazz are breaking their necks trying to be more cosmic, Pharoah Sanders stands as one of the few artists of our day to vhom that beleaguered word applies in its most profound sense. Sanders possesses, as did Coltrane, the seemingly superhuman facility for taking raw feeling, rage, yearning cries and rushing energy, melding it with a religious reverence and awe in the face of the infinite and somehow transmuting the whole mixture of Spiritual purity and blues wails into one of the most transcendent, moving aural” (or audio, there is a blank spot on the page) “experiences you will have in a lifetime. If you think that’s hyperbole, it may be in part because words pale before the power of his music.”

Come on Lester, just a little explanation, it should be good for a laugh.

Brian

Boulder Creek, N.Y.

(Lester: "Where’s the inconsistency?”)

PATTI MASHERS

blessed is -patti smith, most reverent admiration for her. truth is, myself an emphatic form of i, my true natural-self have a crush on her.

not at ail,

otto matic

Jerome, ariz.

(You ain't alone, pal. By the way, you any relation to Machine Head? -Ed.)

Patti Smith (Lee) is the best (only?) thing you have going - and that’s better than ANYONE/ANYTHING anyone else has. Hang on/hang in (Patti).

Ta,';;

Kathleen Pisces Dunkle

Pasadena, Calif,

JACK IN THE BOX RULES

I used to read Rolling Stone and think it was neat and right on until I found CREEM. Your mag is twice as good. Where else can I get color glossy photos, good record reviews and tons of neat articles? Mayor McCheese and I are in total agreement that your reviews are tops. 1 laughed my guts out over that Moodies review, and the ones on David Bromberg. Even those reviews I disagree with are fun to viddy! After all when your living with talking Cheeseburgers you’ve got to find something to humor yourself With! Even your mail is neat, so everything your magazine does is okay by me - a vote for CREEM is a vote for MCDONALDS.

Bye Bye,

Ronald McDonald

McDonalds Land

N.Y., N.Y.

BELOW THE BELT

If you don’t print this letter I’ll tell Terry Knight you still like GFR and he’ll impound your presses.

Flash Cadillac

Cambridge, Mass, (ass)

JAMES T. ’S NO NUT

It seems to me that you bunch of bastards have nothing better to do than sit on your narrow asses and put down good people and their good music. I am referring of course to King James Taylor. I do enjoy your magazine, bui don’t hand me any shit about my man J.T. being a fuck-up! He’s a master at his profession and also an excellent! wife picker. When anyone on your staff can get as good at his trade as he is at his, plus whenever any of you can go out and score a#bitch like Carly Simon ... you be sure to let us all know!,

Airman Dennis Ruhe

U.S.A.F.

Keesler AFB, Mississippi

P.S, It would also be wise of you to keep your mouth shut about a man being in the “nuthouse” (Feb. issue). I can’t recall James Taylor ever bragging about being to a mental institution.

(Are you so vain you think"Knockin’Round the Zoo” was written about you? -Ed.)

§||i * ,-v. BEfitEOlQT ARNOLD1 LIVES

You’re my last resort before I ticket to England. Please, will somebody tell me where all the flash rock and roll boys and bands are? I’m a lead singer into Faces, Slade, Stones, T. Rex, etc. And it seems that everyone here and in New York (with the exception of Alice Cooper and the current New York Dolls) are all blinkin’ hippies! And these two cities are supposed to be the music capitols of America? Posh, Isn’t there anybody out there with a little class and flash? Let’s show the .British where glitter and camp is at!

Mark Edwards

j| Detroit, Mi.

(What’s the matter, haven’t you seen Dr. Hook? -Ed.)

j| ZOMBATIZED

So Lester Bangs thinks he’s hot shit now that he found some obscure movie that most people haven’t heard of and ran to his Thesaurus and wrote down the biggest words he could find and figures he’s god and can make some profound statement on rock and roll movies.

Well, I agree with him about rock and roll movies don’t have to have music in them but that’s where my agreement with him ends. I’ve never seen such a person as Bangs who can write a couple of thousand words and actually say nothing (except for Nixon).

Lester, if you know so much about Everything including trashy classic movies why didn’t you devote your worthlessness on the film Wild Guitar made at the same time with the same cast, etc. as the film you reported on (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies, March - Ed.). It was about Cash Flagg wanting to be a rock and roll star. You don’t know shit. i

Bill Metz

St. Louis, Mo.

(L.B. replies: “Hey Bill, wanna buy a used car?") '

If Lester Bangs is going to write about movies he should know that Old Mother Riley (who met the vampire) was played by Arthur Lucan, who did look like Samuel Beckett in drag, and Kitty McShane played the daughter. They were a couple. Get your facts straight.

An Un-Strange Creature From

v Chicago, Ill.

ELEGY

... so in the years to come it will be this lunar purity which largely imparts to this journalist’s classic stature. Lester Bangs alone will remain as an artifact to which scholars and searchers for truth can turn and say, “That was trash.”

Beaver Cleaver

Indianapolis, Indiana

SCHOOL'S IN

As a rock critic, Robert Christgau is terrible. As an English major (he had to have been an English major) he must have been sterling.

Sarah Correnti

Boston, Mass.

All Right! Got March yesterday and I just wanted to write and express my surprise that you people who are so an Uncommercial” (but who devote a whole shit-issue on the Stones, including ads for Rolling Stones watches, patches and other capitalist schemes, and what’s wrong with money anyway?) actually printed an article on Chicago that’s longer than a paragraph and isn’t sarcastic and screwed-up all the way through. Look, I know you did a huge review on Chicago Live, but the only good thing about that album was that their cardboard was stiff (or so says you). I’m glad Robert Lamm soloed on the axe, who wants to play something that doesn’t work?

Donna Sparks

Spartanburg, S.C.

P.S. At a recent concert in Clemson S.C. the Allman Bros, really screwed. Wet Willie, as a backup did more to/for me. Allman Bros, have the talent - but where’s their energy?

(1. CREEM’s not anti-commercial at all, cuz greed’s too much fun; 2. We don’t care if Chicago’s cardboard is stiff ’cause they ain’t hung that good; 3. Lots of people like to play things that don’t work - you oughta see Lester Bangs' stereo system; 4. As for the Allmans, you’d be tired too if you were dropping like flies. Give ’em a break! -Ed.)

THE TRUTH ABOUT NEIL YOUNG

Re: Gerrit Graham’s Neil Young review (Feb.).

Those Springfield numbers aren’t live by any means. They are the original recorded instrumentals with the vocal done live (on Hollywood Palace). This is/was a common practice when presenting rock groups on TV. What a rip-off that album is! The lead on “Mr. Soul” is different than on the album because it, too, was done live on the show. You see, the backings for “Mr. Soul” and “Bluebird” were done by L.A. studio men, with the vocals and lead guitars added later by the Springfield. The whole album is a hodgepodge of bullshit.

Kevin Brewer

Cold Spring, NY

Neil Young is God. What does that make Stills?? Huh?

Steve O’Leary

Oak Park, Mi.

(A good guitar player, maybe? - Ed.)

FOX FUX UP

My sainted mother would have grabbed her straight razor and cut you long, crossways and in between the toes if she were around to read what you said in the April 1973 CREEM. Howlin’ Wolf is the guy that sang “Wang Dang Doddle,” not Muddy Waters.

Dirty Dan

Providence, R.I.

(Whatsa matter, didn’t you hear Electric Mud Live at the Regal? -Ed.)

Mike Baron’s version of how DC got Tarzan is a bit screwed up. ERB, Inc. owns all rights to the Burroughs characters and didn’t care for the job that Western/Gold Key was jdoing for them. They selected National to do all of the series and ERB, Inc. personally selected Joe Kubert to do the artwork on Tarzan.

Anyone who enjoys comics will also want to get a copy of The Vault of Mindless Fellowship No. 1, which has a long talk with Neal Adams and others, and an article on Conan with unpublished Barry Smith artwork; and No. 2 with an interview with Denis Kitchen and a long article on The Spirit, with lovely Will Eisner art, among other things. They’re 75 cents each from: 431 Hawthorne Ct., Apt. E, Madison, Wise., 53703.

Steven D. Grant

Madison, Wise.

TOTALLY COWED

I heard a rumor that Boy Howdy was U.S.D.A. rejected.

Cary Baker

Chicago, Ill.