Back around the time of the Gutenberg Bible, 1454-55, mass production of printed works coincided with equally primitive music. Nearly four decades before Columbus raped America, ritualism known as “pəngk” emerged out-of-Africa style from what is today Detroit. As its tribal virulence grew out of the region’s igneous pop, early settlers named Marsh, Uhelszki, Kramer, and Bangs utilized movable metal type, ink, and paper to create sharp images in print.
Rolling Stonehenge preceded them, 1467 vs. 1469 (some ethnomusicologists transpose these dates into the 20th century), but Creem magazine – named for druids Clapton, Baker & Bruce – managed to roam the (suburb)urban jungle for the next 20 years, initially subsisting on herds of Seger, Nugent, Cooper. Had the founding of firm Tyner, Thompson, Kramer, Davis & Smith not occurred directly beforehand, Creem might not have come to pass judgement on and ultimately fall victim to the barbarousness of North American “music” traditionalism. Rolling Stonehenge rose up from the “leisure class,” but Creem “descended from auto workers” and thus suffered their same post-industrialist fate.
Produced by JJ Kramer, son of owners Barry and Connie Kramer, and premiering (as Boy Howdy: The Story of Creem Magazine) at SXSW 2019, Creem: America’s Only Rock & Roll Magazine maintains a chip on its slim, 75-minute shoulders with what actor Jeff Daniel describes as the Midwestern one-or-two-strikes-down mentality. As such, the documentary sets chairs out for la creem de la creem of first and second generation music typesetters and/or unionists: Cameron Crowe, Robert Christgau, Dave DiMartino, Chuck Eddy, Greil Marcus, and Austin’s Ed Ward, among them. Native elders such as Mitch Ryder, Suzi Quatro, and Chad Smith throw down opposite universal sovereigns including Joan Jett, Kirk Hammett, Thurston Moore, Keith Morris, Greg Turner, and James Williamson.
Fake beer brands, star cars, crotch shots – a boy’s life unfolded, according to co-writer Uhelszki. Red Hot Chili Smith opines Mad magazine meets Esquire, and Uhelszki echoes equally extinct forces: “Everybody was politically incorrect. No one watched their words. That’s what made Creem so good … If you put it through that politically incorrect filter, you would have lost 60% of what made Creem great.”
The other 40% broiled inside the crucible carved out by (Lester) Bangs vs. (Dave) Marsh, which Marcus pinpoints as a case of two “great moralists,” pitting the personal against the political, wit against scholarship, pettiness and passion in equal measure. Black Keys edge Patrick Carney: “It was a weird balance of playing up the rock star image – playing into it and the hedonistic, [the] fucked up – and tearing it down.”
In 1981, Barry Kramer killed himself at 37. The next year, Bangs OD’d. 1986 it sold. Publication ceased in 1989, only for the brand to resurface early next decade. I wrote for it in 1991. Death occurred soon after. Mea culpa.
This article appears in August 7 • 2020.
