Creem Magazine, the premier source for all things rock and roll in its real guttural sense, and which became a sort of underground bible for the true outcasts (fans and musicians alike) in the 1970s, is the focus of an upcoming documentary, Boy Howdy! The Story of CREEM Magazine, which is currently making the rounds on Kickstarter for fundraising.
You can read more about Creem and watch the Kickstarter pitch video below.
Today would have been the 65th birthday of Lester Bangs, the out-of-control, original gonzo journalist, who wrote about rock and roll as if it flowed with a sense of literature and narcotic-fueled energy and who wound up influencing scores of would-be critics, not just in the music genre but spanning it. In his short life, Bangs pushed envelopes and milked and squeezed every drop out of decadent life that could be attained before dying in 1982 by overdosing on a prescription drug called Darvon.
For every writer who writes with fervent soul, an attitude in the words they put to paper or monitor or screen or what have you, there has to be the acknowledgement of Lester Bangs consciously or unconsciously. Bangs almost completely on his own staked a Magellan-like claim in the journalistic market, the rock and roll arena most particularly, which was during the crucial time of the late 1960s to the late 1970s, when the eclectics of the musical art of that serendipitous yet rough around the edges and then some decade sported some of the greatest music and styles, whether it be imitative sincere flattery, the physical fashions it manifested, or the sub genres of sound and vision that it had gestated. And right in the middle of its hurricane axis was Lester Bangs.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press