
Opener
Finding Your Way With FATHER TIME
Fred Pessaro

HIRED GUNS

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Stars Cars
JARED JAMES NICHOLS
and his 1973 Chevy Nova

CREEM DREEM
WALTER SCHREIFELS

Creem's Profiles
CHAPTERHOUSE

Pour One Out
LOU KOLLER
Fred Pessaro
R.I.P.

Questions & Jaanswers
ROCK STARS EXPOSED
Jaan Uhelszki
What happens backstage doesn’t stay off stage. More 'counseling, advice, and hard truths for bands from a CREEM OG

Dusty Fingers
INTO THE NOT REALLY WELL-KNOWN
Jerry A. Lang
Examining the long-lost Bad Religion prog LP

Youth of America
A THRASH COURSE WITH ZACH KRYS
CREEM Staff

Born to Booze
SURREAL SCIENCE
Jonathan Toubin
Having a whale of a time with Kim Salmon

Greetings from Detroit
THE CREEM INTERVIEW: JOE CASEY
Joe Casey
A candid conversation with the only singer of Protomartyr about their new album, his creative process, and the thrill of being interviewed by a real smart guy for a change

Last of the Big-Time Fuck Ups?
BOING!
Joel Gion
What is the sound of a flying tambourine?

Interviews
DEAD MOON (EVERY) NIGHT
Fred Pessaro
After the staggering loss of Fred Cole, Toody Cole returns

Features
DAVE MARSH MEANT IT
Jaan Uhelszki
To the legendary critic, music was politics. His longtime friend remembers the man behind the byline.

Interviews
THEIR JOURNEY IS COMPLETE. (OR IS IT?)
Matt Hoffman
Forty-five years of Anthrax

Features
COME OUT AND PLAY
Michael Coyle
Recess Records’ Todd Congelliere just wants to have fun

Nine Perfect Minutes
CREATURE COMFORTS
Jaan Uhelszki
"It's a really fine line between being a perfectionist and getting nothing done.” On her fourth album, Creature of Habit, Courtney Barnett set out to challenge one of her oldest habits: control. After years of arriving in the studio with songs largely mapped out, the Australian singer-songwriter decided to try something different: jump and believe the net would appear.

Interviews
BONSAI BOOGERS IN DOLBY ATMOS
Dave Hill
I wish I could start this whole thing off by telling you Tommy Lee and I go way back and have been hanging on the reg, usually on motorcycles while smoking, since Motley Crüe’s earliest days on the Sunset Strip. But I was in grade school then, and my parents would have been super pissed.

Interviews
DOWN ON THE UPSIDE
J. Bennett
In 2018, Kim Thayil had a shitty fullcircle moment. He was playing guitar in his favorite band, the MC5, as part of their 50th-anniversary tour. Every night, he’d kick out the motherfucking jams alongside one of his musical heroes, MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, not to mention Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, King’s X bassist Doug Pinnick, and former Zen Guerrilla vocalist Marcus Durant.

Features
GOD SAVE THE CLEAN
Brian Turner
When I agreed to do this piece, I resolved to keep personal distance from a band I knew and revered. My plan was to give a simple, detailed account of New Zealand’s great musical export the Clean and their canonization via the vast influence they had on their countrymen, their subterranean music scene, and indie rockers to follow their template on foreign shores.

Interviews
THE ROAD THAT GOES
Sam Calagione
In the play Fool for Love, playwright/ actor/ladies’ man Sam Shepard writes of a philandering character who done got busted, “It was the same love. Just got split in two, that’s all." It could also serve as the rallying cry for rocker/composer/everyman Craig Wedren.

Features
FRACTURING THE MATRIX
Anagricel Duran
A sheen of sweat clings to me while I speed-walk to NYC’s Rough Trade record store. It’s a big day for Philly shoegaze rockers Nothing, who are christening the release of their latest LP, A Short History of Decay, with an intimate in-store show—and I'm running late, anxiety building, and covered in a sheen of sweat.

Interviews
STRANGER LOVE WAS ALWAYS RIGHT
Jaan Uhelszki
Nick Murphy moved to Tucson because he had a good night’s sleep there. Not metaphorically—I mean literally. One night, passing through the desert city with his dad on a road trip, he woke up, felt rested, and decided that was enough to make a life decision.

Interviews
RE-VENGEANCE OF THE CRAMPS
Eric Davidson
Vengeance is a term of violent retribution. When the Cramps chose that word for the record label name on their first single in 1978, they might’ve had a mind to exact revenge against nearly all sounds going around that called themselves “rock.”

Features
ENDLESS SPINNER
Zachary Lipez
“And then I was like, 'Is this movie about dancing?'” Having introduced the film’s director, Mischa Richter, to the music of the Grateful Dead 36 years ago, Ms. Sevigny was essential to bringing Summer Tour to fruition in ways that go well beyond simply facilitating its production, and, as such, the actress is not actually confused about what the movie is about.

The Big Interview
STILL ROTTEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Jaan Uhelszki
Britain was wilting in its worst heat wave since 1976. John Lydon wasn’t. Meeting Lydon in his home—even by Zoom—is a singular experience. The room behind him looks less like a sitting room than a curio shop: Union Jack flags hung sideways, an Arsenal scarf, two enormous ornate mirrors, a red folding screen, and a mantel crowded with little stone pitchers, books, terra-cotta bowls, photographs, and primitive-looking portraits handed to him by fans at Public Image Ltd. shows.

Interviews
“YOU’D GET YOUR CAMERA SMASHED”
Sam McPheeters
For the past 35 years, actress Brooke Smith has appeared in Grey’s Anatomy, Bates Motel, Interstellar, Law & Order, and Weeds, yet is best known as Catherine Martin—“It rubs the lotion on its skin"—in 1991’s Silence of the Lambs. But before her Hollywood career, Smith spent time in the center of the 1980s New York hardcore scene.

Crème de la CREEM
Crème de la Creem
SMIRK "Hope you’ll understand/We’re back/By unpopular demand.” That’s Nick Vicario, customarily self-deprecating in the one-time, would-be chorus of “Greetings,” the opener from Smirk’s new album Speculative Fiction. Though the quip wryly nods to Vicario’s years slugging it out in various punk and indie scenes to only semi-notoriety, it ends up a feint—buried in lo-fi scuzz, belying the album to come in both sound and scope.

Rock-a-Rama
ROCK A RAMA
Bring Us the Head of Andrew Watt! Strokes vs. Charli XCX vs. Deep Purple vs. Cheekface vs. Vince Staples— whose rock is the hottest?? Whose diamonds are the hackiest??? Which G.O.A.T. is the head, and which ones are the soup????

Creemedia
CREEMEDIA
As vivid, rich, and good-looking of storytellers as we are (threw that last one in there just because), some tales just make more sense on video, in photos, or some other way. That’s why we have books, documentaries, and all of these other formats—to tell a tale the way it should be told.

CREEM Presents
THE BOY HOWDY! BEER LAUNCH
Ali Donohue
CREEM goes to the land of cheesesteaks

CREEM Comix
The Story of the Doors
Dan Melchior

Parting Shot
JAMES HETFIELD
Long live Megadeth!


