Creem, Recurdled

Well what do you know, Creem is back! Again. Good luck to them, but I’m not sure I’ll think they’re “doing it right” until they offer me a regular column. This week’s cover-story-lengthed Detroit Metro Times piece touches on the obsolete “rockn’roll magazine” objections I’m already hearing (Jann “Uhelszki adds that while it will feature…

A Bubblegum Top 40

Reprinted in the 2001 Kim Cooper and David Smay-edited anthology Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth; possibly excerpted and/or cannibalized in scores of things I’ve written since. But this is how the original version looked on the page. A year later or decades later — after Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, the Spice Girls, Radio Disney, Aqua,…

John Cougar Mellencamp live review, 1987

Maybe the third best thing I’ve written about the Cougmeister (check my third and fourth books for the first and second best), and still not horrible I don’t think. Surprised I didn’t point out in the corporate sponsorship hypocrisy paragraph that his greatest song is free advertising for Tastee-Freez. My opinion of The Lonesome Jubilee…

Singles reviews, 1988

A very short-lived (only one installment, if my memory serves me) Creem column. Good variety. Some parts wound up in a couple of my books, but most parts didn’t. The editors carelessly shuffled the order somewhat — I clearly mean to end with the Spagna blurb. Creem, 1988

Celibate Rifles profile, 1986

The mid ’80s saw me unreasonably fixated on post-punk hard rock coming out of Australia (see also: Died Pretty), but then so have other eras, I guess. When I was a little kid I was obsessed with marsupials and monotremes (still am to a certain extent), so no doubt that was one factor. This piece…

Died Pretty review, 1986

First paragraph, at least, is a textbook case of seasonal affective disorder. One of the more depressed reviews I’ve written — A side of myself I’ve mostly managed to hide, in 40 years of writing. Which is kind of amazing, given how much of my life that side has occupied. Compartmentalizing, it’s called. These days,…

Rosanne Cash review, 1987

I’d like to take credit for the caption, but I didn’t write it. Most likely, Bill Holdship, John Kordosh and/or Dave DiMartino did. As for Ms. Cash’s career, this was just before I disboarded — When her songs and sound turned inward on 1990’s Interiors, at #8 Pazz & Jop easily her most critically acclaimed…

Loud Rock EPs reviews, 1986

A regular column for Creem‘s monthly metal magazine — ostensibly “metal” “singles,” though these are all EPs, mostly by noisy post-hardcore indie art bands that might theoretically appeal to some extremely open-minded metal fan of my imagination. Kind of doubt any other metal mag on the racks was stretching the genre’s definition this far in…

Singles reviews, 1990

Written for the tabloid-sized glossy Creem-in-name-only after evil new owners revived it in Los Angeles. Subsequent installments of the column were worse, not that this one is a work of genius or anything. I mean, that Tommy Conwell song is pretty good, but no way is it better than everything on The Lonesome Jubilee. And…

Panel: Creem and the Origins of Rock Writing

So, here’s a link to a panel I was on this weekend, with Brad Tolinski, Jaan Uhelszki and Susan Whitall. Not-so-good lighting. And I forgot to stand up so everybody could see my Toledo Mud Hens T-shirt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_3W6f6QuSM