CREEMEDIA
Reading stuff you can't understand is always fun. Though some six-legged minds do it to look smart, the real kicks come in making mistaken connections and accidentally forcing your usual system-of-blunders onto something totally foreign.
The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.
CREEMEDIA
Italian CREEM Leaves Funny Taste
Rick Johnson
by
Reading stuff you can't understand is always fun. Though some six-legged minds do it to look smart, the real kicks come in making mistaken connections and accidentally forcing your usual system-of-blunders onto something totally foreign. The French edition of Playboy is a laff riot from beginning to enclunless you know French, and Swedish comic books (FUHN! BORG!) are funnier than a trail of meatballs leading up to a cliff.
But the real yuk-jerker of them all is Re Nudo, Italy's answer to CREEM. Like most Italian answers, Re Nudo is totally incomprehensible and vaguely obscene. While it's doubtful that even actual wop commies can understand much of it, Nudo's finely-honed scribble holds a special sick fascination for Yankee peepers weaned on junk-write. Imagine reading an extra high-density Fernbacher review in opaque pidgin Italian and having the words FOOT LONG HOT DOG jump out at you. That's Re Nudo.
From its beginnings as a rock w/political babble rag not at all unlike the early CREEM (which could just as well have been written in a foreign language then as now) to its current state of semi-conscious alternatives to kneecap-bazooka, the smellwads at Nudo have refused to give up their trashy face. The art director's main job is to see that the pictures his little artlings cut out of old R. Crumb comics and back issues of Scientific Cod Management have lots of dicks in them. The rare original graphics inevitably portray everybody as a robot lost in a shower stall or else a heroic practitioner of monkey warfare.
Robots, puds and bombs, just like real life!
The articles and reviews are where the fettucini really hits the fan. "Pronto Ringo?", asks the title of a scathing interview with old snare-beak himself, in which he not only indicts John Lennon's writings as so much "slogano dei Cornflakes," but also reveals the true identity of The Walrus. Who'd have ever thought it wasTopo Gigio, the Italian mouse!? Other recent universe-shattering features have
explored the political beliefs of Kraftwerk, a brief survey of the budding Pompeii punk-rock scene and Frank Zappa's insights into the Italian concert scene, where rent-a-goons have been replaced by low-cost barbed wire.
After the regular Unrest In Bologna column, political pamphlet reviews and ads for wallet bombs and "kick me" signs, comes the records section, with a little-monster-biting-vinyl logo straight out of Rock-A-Rama. Talk about eclectic, these kooks cover everything from Pete Seeger's American Industrial Ballads Vol. IV to Meatloaf and Pat Travers ("E questo, a volte, PUO NON ESSERE POCO!"). Not to mention their ever-popular historical overviews, such as the long-dreaded update on the Fugs. Included is a handy translation of that band's "CIA Man." Ah ..
"metterci dentro LSD e rispedirlo indietro ..." Who can forget those touching words?
Re Nudo may not be everybody's cup of garlic, but if nothing else, it defines the true difference between
Italian and American society: In America, we have bologna in our hot dogs, but in Italy, all the hot dogs are in Bologna!
D-Day & Other Stories
ANIMAL HOUSE (Universal)
Directed by John Landis
Louie Louie, whoa no Baby we gotta go (Bomp Bomp) Yayayayaya. . .
Do you know why the wimp was dubbed Pinto? We do . . .
If she's got the rag on I'll work above It won't Be long 'Til she's slippin it off
Then I'll take her in my arms again
Tell her I'll never lay her again . . .
Can you figure out how Professor Jenning dug up a peace symbol poster in 1962? We can't.. .
Louie Louie, whoa baby Get her way down low (Bomp Bomp)
Ya ya ya yayaya . . .
Have you ever wondered, if all the Deltas were booted out of school, how Otter went on to become a gynecologist?
No matter. You've probably seen the movie, so go buy the book. Better yet, rip it off.
Every night at ten, Ilay her again Such a girl, I've never seen My arms fernbachered her luscious pear I felt my bone against her hair. .. ©
And who do we have to thank for the war cry of a generation, this song sung by a marble-mouthed idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
Our upstart anthropologist tells us Richard Berry is credited (1958) with the song, but actually it was an ancient work song sung by Dravidian pimps, who added personal touches as they passed their wisdom on to their apprentices, and then down through the ages to us.
Although the Kingsmen were neither Dravidian nor pimps, the song somehow found itself enmeshed in their repertoire. But the definitive version belongs to the Dravidian Clark Five, a modest power pop outfit out of Parma, Ohio who unhappily have De-Evolved into particulate sub-bits, as has this review. Ta!
© 1958 Umax Music LoV€ Doll
