Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine

I remember as a kid reading Circus, Hit Parader & Creem. I loved the photos in Creem, I think they were more candid. I think at ten & eleven I didn't really get their humor & sarcasm, but loved the magazine anyway. It was such a raw view of the music scene. No B.S. like what Rolling Stone was printing. There is just enough of Kiss, Alice Cooper and the Stones to make the book worthwhile. There were so many gr8 issues of Creem that I imagine it was hard to compile the best into one book. I do wish they would have had a little less of Iggy or MC5 and maybe put one article of Peter Frampton or Deep Purple in. All in all, gr8 book- Boy Howdy!!

Certainly a different flavor of magazine for those whose knowledge of R n' R begins and ends with Rolling Stone. A "Can't go wrong" book for a R n' R fan.

For years I had been looking for cheap back issues of Creem, the ones I read back in the late '70s and early '80s as a preteen and teen. You see, I totally blame Creem for my love of the Clash, the Pretenders, Cheap Trick, Blondie, Tom Petty, and Springsteen. They were soundtrack of my high school years. I used Creem's reviews to decide whether to use my hard earned $5 to buy the GenX album or the Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's second one. (I bought Tom Petty, which I still think was a good choice.) So I was excited to see a picture of the book last weekend in the Rocky Mountain News and quickly rushed out to a local bookstore with a holiday discount coupon to get it. I wasn't disappointed. There were so many interviews, pictures and "Star's Cars" ads that I remembered. And some I had no idea they did, like Adam Ant and Duran Duran. (I must have missed those issues because I loved those bands.) It was wonderful to see the early interviews with Iggy Pop, more on the history of Detroit bands like MC5, and Androgyny in Rock - all articles that were written before I became a Creem devotee. But I do remember that Pretenders interview - Boy Howdy! And the Clash one too. (It would have been interesting to see later Clash interviews when they acted nice about being in the U.S. and interviewed by Creem.) But there was so much that they had to leave out - oodles of BackStage pages (which totally went over my head as a teen), an interview with a slightly drunk (off two beers) Springsteen, interviews with Cheap Trick, the Ramones, Tom Petty, et al. GIMMEE MORE! I just hope that Creem is successful enough with this book to release another volume or two. I guess I'll have to read 'em online. An all Bruce Springsteen issue or a New Wave/Punk issue would be great, too. And yes, if you have old issues of Creem in the garage, give me a call.

Forget Rolling Stone. That rag hasn't been relevant since long before Creem ceased publication. Here is America's Only Rock and Roll Magazine in it's glory. Creem embodied rock and roll a helluva lot more than some of the corporate rock that they covered back when I read it in the late 1970s. The great thing about the magazine was, even if you sometimes didn't care for the bands they did stories on, the writing was fun and stood on it's own merit. Complaints about the band's represented here are misguided. The magazine itself was the star! Youth culture will never again be as innocent, or as powerful as it was during Creem's glory years. If you weren't there to experience it firsthand, this anthology will give you a pretty good indication of what you missed out on.

This book captures the attitude and motor oil drenched swagger of the magazine beautifully! The photographs, the "Boy Howdy" beer ads,the articles that make you feel like you're at the show,and then backstage,it's all there! It's a great book that I will keep next to my toilet for many years to come. A "Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa" to the authors for allowing me to be who I am, and let me kick out the jams!