"Can't forget the motor city" 1: Creem magazine, rock music, detroit identity, mass consumerism, and the counterculture

Michigan Historical Review

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 43-77

  Kramer, Michael J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950017571     PISSN: 03601846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Marvin Gaye, Ivy Jo Hunter, and Mickey Stevenson, "Dancing in the Street," Martha and the Vandellas, on Dance Party, Motown Records, 1965.
2. Dave Marsh, "Will Success Spoil the Frut?" Creem 3 (May 1971): 33.
3. Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
4. William Leuchtenburg, A Troubled Feast: American Society since 1945, rev. ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983);
5. "Malaise Speech," Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1979, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), 1235-41.
6. On Altamont, see David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, Gimme Shelter (1970; rerelease, New York: Maysles Films/Cinema 5 Distributing, 2000);
7. Greil Marcus, "Myth and Misquotation," in his The Dustbin of History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 36-48.
8. On Manson, see Ed Sanders, The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion (New York: Dutton, 1971);
9. and Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Shelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (1974; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).
10. Any historiography of the counterculture should begin with the positive interpretations offered by Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (1969; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);
11. and Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (1970; reprint, New York: Crown, 1995).
12. Excellent recent surveys of the 1960s, such as David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York Hill and Wang, 1994);
13. Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000);
14. and Howard Brick, Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s (1998; reprint, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), have begun to deepen interpretations of the counterculture, but they tend to gloss over its complexities in the quest for broader political and cultural narratives.
15. Negative interpretations of the counterculture have abounded, especially by radicals turned conservative, but the most intriguing for the history of 1960s consumerism is Thomas C. Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
16. Frank argues that the counterculture emerged, in large part, not against but from new trends in business and marketing culture itself; however, he examines only sources from the business world and not from the broader countercultural movement. A recent essay collection adds much to the history of the counterculture: Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, eds., Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960's and 70's (New York: Routledge, 2001).
17. Simon Frith coined the expression "struggle for fun" in Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock 'n' Roll (New York: Pantheon, 1981), 272. Frith wrote a column for Creem in the 1970s while he worked on a degree in sociology.
18. See also Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992);
19. and idem, Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays on Popular Culture (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997).
20. As with many counterculture publications, Creem's precise circulation figures are not available; this estimate comes from Chester (Chet) Flippo, "Rock Journalism and Rolling Stone" (master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1974).
21. Bangs, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, figured prominently as a mentor in Cameron Crowe's semiautobiographical film of his own teenage years as a rock critic, Almost Famous (Los Angeles: Dreamworks, 2000).
22. Before he started contributing to Creem, Bangs published in Rolling Stone, but he was eventually banished from its pages, primarily for his overly critical reviews. See Jim DeRogatis, Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic (New York: Broadway Books, 2000), 47-62.
23. Lester Bangs, "James Taylor Marked for Death," republished in his Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Works of a Legendary Critic - Rock 'n' Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'n' Roll, edited by Greil Marcus (New York: Random House, 1987), 53-81.
24. Quotation in Psychotic Reactions, 69.
25. Like Bangs, Reay was not native to Detroit; he came from Britain. Ice Alexander (Tony Reay), "The Stooges' No Fun," Creem 2 (July 15, 1969): 8.
26. Marsh, "Will Success Spoil the Frut?" 33.
27. DeRogatis, Let It Blurt, 63-83.
28. For more on John Sinclair and the Artist's Workshop, see Michael Dewitt Cary, "The Rise and Fall of the MC5: Rock Music and Counterculture Politics in the Sixties" (Ph.D. diss., Lehigh University, 1985), 49-51;
29. Jeff Hale, "The White Panthers' 'Total Assault on the Culture,'" in Imagine Nation, 125-58. Detroit was also home to a vibrant African-American counterculture. John Sinclair's imitations of and interactions with African-American arts, culture, and leftist politics in Detroit are worthy of separate investigation, as is the striking work of young African-American writers such as Sheldon Annis, Geoffrey Jacques, and Richard Allen (R. A. Pinkston IV), which appeared in Creem during the magazine's first years. Later in the 1970s, however, work by African Americans gradually disappeared from Creem, as did African-American involvement in the larger Detroit youth counterculture.
30. For a more detailed account of the issue of race at Creem, see Michael J. Kramer, "That Ungovernable Beat: Rock Music Writing at Crawdaddy! and Creem Magazines and the Civics of the Counterculture in Postwar Mass Consumer America" (master's thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2001).
31. See also Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1998);
32. Julius Eric Thompson, Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999);
33. and Suzanne Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), for more on Detroit's African-American counterculture.
34. For more on the white Detroit counterculture, see John Sinclair, Guitar Army; Street Writings/Prison Writings (New York: Douglas Books, 1972);
35. Cary, "The Rise and Fall of the MC5," 49-51;
36. Steve Waksman, Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 207-36;
37. and Fred Goodman, The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce (New York: Times Books, 1997), 152-82.
38. John Sinclair, "Fire Music," Oracle 6 (1966): 6, 24.
39. See Charles Kaiser, 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture and the Shaping of a Generation (1988; reprint, New York: Grove Press, 1997).
40. N.a., n.t., Creem 1 (March 1-14, 1969): 2.
41. Pat Shellenbarger, "Irreverence Fuels National Music Magazine," Detroit News, January 26, 1975.
42. For the story of how Creem got its name, see Richard C. Walls, "Twenty-Five Years of Creem, Part Two," Creem, March/April 1994, 40.
43. Barry Kramer, "Creem Is," Creem 1 (March 1-14, 1969): 26.
44. Richard C. Walls, "The Creative Listener," Creem 1 (March 1-14, 1969): 6.
45. R. Crumb, "Mr. Dream Whip," Creem 1 (March 15-31, 1969): cover. Crumb had been visiting Detroit in March of 1969.
46. Kramer, Marsh, LaRene, "Michigan Scene Today," 10.
47. Dave Marsh, Fortunate Son: Criticism and Journalism by Americas Best-Known Rock Writer (New York: Random House, 1985), 204-5.
48. David Felton, Mindfuckers: A Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972), 9-11.
49. Dave Marsh, "Looney Toons: Every Picture Tells a Story . . . Don't It," Creem 3 (March 1972): 26.
50. Marsh, "Will Success Spoil the Frut?" 32.
51. Dave Marsh, "Looney Toons," Creem 2 (December 1970): 22.
52. Marsh, "Will Success Spoil the Frut?" 31, 33.
53. The first glossy magazine version was Creem 3 (March 1971).
54. Kramer, "Creem Is," 26;
55. "Michigan's Music Paper," Creem 2 (September/October 1969): 26;
56. "The Midwest's Music Magazine," Creem 2 (March 1970): 19;
57. "America's Only Rock and Roll Magazine," Creem 4 (August 1972).
58. Bangs, "James Taylor Marked for Death," 69.
59. Lester Bangs, review, The Rowan Brothers, Creem 4 (January 1973): 74-75.
60. Lester Bangs, "Of Pop and Pies and Fun, a Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review, or, Who's the Fool?" part one, Creem 2 (November 1970);
61. republished in Bangs, Psychotic Reactions, 31-52.
62. Quotation in Psychotic Reactions, 33.
63. Bangs, Psychotic Reactions, 32.
64. Lester Bangs, review, REO Speedwagon and Bullangus, Creem 3 (May 1972): 68.
65. Bangs, "James Taylor Marked for Death," 74.
66. The idea of the "public sphere" is taken from Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), although he would probably disagree with placing the concept in a mass-consumer context.
67. For an introduction to the debate about Habermas's notion of the "public sphere," see Craig J. Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Pubic Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992).
68. William Bridges, "Found Art," letter, Creem 5 (November 1973): 8.
69. Mike Corbett, letter, Creem 5 (September 1973): 10.
70. Battiste Everett-Wells, letter, Creem 4 (February 1973): 8.
71. Laura Libcn, letter, Creem 3 (May 1971): 4.
72. Len Bailes, letter, Creem 3 (May 1971): 2, 6.
73. David M. Lewark, letter, Creem 3 (May 1972): 82.
74. Marty Fischkoff, "Let's Go to Detroit," Extra Creem, February 1976, 9-12.
75. Marco Trbovich, "Where Creem Is at: Who Woulda Believed America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine Is Out There in Walled Lake?" Detroit Free Press, February 18, 1973, 7-9.
76. Ellen Willis, "My Grand Funk Problem - and Ours," New Yorker 48 (February 26, 1972): 79.
77. For an exploration of rock's ambiguous position among definitions of art, folk, and pop, see Simon Frith, Sound Effects, 3-57;
78. and idem, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 75-95.
79. The cartoon is signed Hereth, Creem 5 (November 1973): 73.
80. Lester Bangs, "Notes for Review of Peter Garulnick's Lost Highway, 1980," Psychotic Reactions, 327.
81. Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
82. Michael J. Kramer is a doctoral student in history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.