'Creem' of the pop
Why write about music?
SO WHY SHOULD
you care what anyone has to say about music writing? The howls are
easy to imagine, almost audible, from where I'm sequestered: Play
music. Listen to music. Even write about music, goddamn it. But,
dear Lord, don't write about writing about music.
On a certain level, all
of us are a little wary of looking too closely at what we're doing.
After all, this is rock 'n' roll/hip-hop/punk/bebop/bluegrass/East
Tasmanian nose-flute imperial court music/insert-genre-here we're
writing about, and, who knows, maybe it won't stand up to the scrutiny.
Is it true what they say: those who can't play, teach, and those
who can't teach, write CD reviews? Why are we reluctant to call
ourselves critics when, as common wisdom goes, everyone's a critic?
Are we only useful when we produce consumers' guides or compile
desert-island, best-of, hot-not lists? Does anything warrant more
than two or three sentences in the post-literate, MTV/DVD-enhanced
world of ADD – who wants to read all those excess words anyway?
Are we writing or are we just typing?
My problem is I remember
a time when music writing meant something. Back then the newsstand
was a lot less crowded – there was Rolling Stone, Hit
Parade, Circus – but my main man was Creem,
which I "borrowed" from the library and pored over, looking
for smart-ass communiqués from Birmingham, Mich.
Even then it seemed like
I was a little too late for the magazine's heyday. By the early
'80s it was already far from "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll
Magazine," as it brazenly proclaimed itself to be above the
puffy neonlike logo type. The lurid live cover shots of sweaty cheese
logs and mainstream rockers like David Lee Roth, Duran Duran, John
Cougar Mellencamp, and Robert Plant already seemed a little dated,
and the bad attitude was probably wearing a little thin, but it
was still an oasis of ornery opinion, cockeyed story approaches,
contrarian musical choices, and the most gut-busting captions around.
Do look back
A recent quick flip through
a completely random issue of Creem, October 1984 (a recent
birthday gift from Bay Guardian associate arts editor Johnny
Ray Huston), confirms some of my best and worst suspicions.
Yeah, some of the jokes
haven't aged very well. The concept of magazine mascot Boy
Howdy is still a bit mystifying. The overuse of apostrophes instead
of perfectly good letters undermines Rick Johnson's cover feature,
"Duets from Hell! One Times One Equals Some Pair!" Misguided
literary experiments like the "Dear Diary" format of a
New Order-Joy Division-Birthday Party video review don't quite pan
out.
But you have to love
J. Kordosh's tell-like-it-is dig at Little Steven's Voice of
America ("The lyrics look pretty bad. Real ninth-grade
stuff. 'Can you hear me, wake up, where's the voice of America?'
Dunno, Steven – hiding in Bruce Springsteen's mouth maybe?"),
the monied Boss being upbraided for intentionally dressing like
a "grease monkey," and the then-deified Clash undergoing
an against-the-grain drubbing for "armchair activism."
But the best part had
to be the first 10 pages, the letters section, which included such
choice, overinvolved diatribes as this one from Shani Le Bon of
Woodbridge, Conn.: "This is an open letter to Sherrie, of Steve
Perry's "Oh, Sherrie" video: 1. First of all, Sherrie,
you have terrible posture. It seems like you keep one knee bent
and touched by the other foot at all times. The entire top half
of your body is slouched. You look like a slob. 2. C'mon, girl,
get a new bra!," etc. And you have to wallow in the editor's
notes in that same section. To a letter that begins, "Not that
you give a shit, but enclosed is a press release about the producer
of the new upcoming Triumph album. Triumph has no plans to record
a Bryan Adams song. Rik Emmett will not be doing a duet with Michael
Jackson...," trusty Ed. retorts, "You should've
stopped after the first sentence!"
Now that's critical dialogue.
That's a publication that engages its readers, even if it's in bouts
of low-level name-calling and trash talking like "I think Vince
Neil looks like a FRENCH WHORE!" Creem was smart, it
never talked down to its readers, and it always exuded a kind of
wiseacre populism and wide-ranging perversity. Yes, it covered Ratt
and Roth, but it also introduced artists like Half Japanese, James
Chance, and Mission of Burma to supermarket checkout stands at a
time when zines devoted to emerging music scenes were few, far between,
and hard to find.
Copycats
Every music mag worth
its salt should be striving to imitate Creem now – the
predominance of the cranky caption is proof enough. That's because
as the mag was ripping them down, it was also building something
stronger and stranger – an oddball community of like-minded
subversives. You not only learned about weird new music, handpicked
by editors of a certain bent sensibility, but you also discovered
new ways of thinking, new types of writing.
And that's why we continue
doing what we do, imparting information, sharing our finds, unveiling
our pet peeves, probing our petty obsessions, and taking apart the
latest trendoid. It's easy to denigrate music writers, but they
play a crucial part in any music scene – be it local or not
– documenting, discussing, dignifying, and dissing. Despite
attempts to revive the beast (the latest is an online incarnation,
www.creemmedia.com, and
publisher Robert Matheu told me they hope to have a magazine on
the stands soon, with familiar bylines in place), Creem as
we knew it and loved it is no more. So the best we can do is carve
out a place for ourselves to write about music as honestly, imaginatively,
and passionately as we can. We have our work cut out for ourselves.
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