There’s only a couple weeks to go to fund Boy Howdy! The Story of CREEM Magazine, a new documentary by filmmaker Scott Crawford about the world’s only rock and roll magazine.
This looks like a pretty cool project. It’s being produced by Creem founder Barry Kramer’s son, J.J. Kramer, whose dad died when he was four.
Creem Media, Inc. has been defunct since 2011. Its former web site is a sad content farm and there’s something new calling itself Creem Magazine that just makes me want to punch myself in the face. So good job, everybody.
This documentary is apparently the only hope we have in keeping the real CREEM memory alive. Go fund it!
Those are all great, of course, but Bangs really kicked his prose into high gear after Jann Wenner fired him from the Stone for being “disrespectful to musicians.” He moved to Detroit Rock City and took over Creem. Since today marks the 26th anniversary of his death, we’re honoring his memory by providing links to a bunch of his classic pieces for Creem…
Detroit’s Metro Times has a great two-part feature by Bill Holdship on the life, death and strange resurrection of America’s only rock and roll magazine, Creem. The first part, Sour CREEM, traces its origins from the Cass Corridor through its heyday at the 120-acre Walled Lake compound, “where all the staff lived communally on the farm in one big house,” and beyond…
[Lester] Bangs and [Dave] Marsh got into a fistfight so bad one day that Marsh ended up with a gash in his head. Seems the tidier Marsh, tired of Lester’s dog pooping everywhere, placed the dung on Bangs’ typewriter. Strangely, their relationship was much better from that day forward.
Part Two is up now: CREEMed, wherein a new CREEM anthology results in a battle over the magazine’s legacy between its original ’70s staffers and the crew that ran the magazine in the ’80s through its 1988 demise.
CREEM: Does it matter to you personally? Do you really care what the critics think?
PW: I’ll be honest. It does. I’d like to lie and say it means nothing. Not that we think we’re great or anything. We know exactly what we are. We get a giggle out of it, but it makes you feel good.
TS: When it’s someone big and they say we’re good, it makes you feel good—but I never really read any of that stuff about us. Unless someone’s got something bad to say and it’s funny or clever. I get a kick out of someone saying we suck because we’re arrogant little pricks.
PW: You do until they single it out and say you look like a fucking fake rock star. You can take the general bullshit but…
TS: I can take it all.
PW: Yeah, until they say something… you know what I’m saying.
TS: I know what you’re saying.
Tommy Stinson was 19 at the time of this interview. Paul Westerberg was 26.
