Since we’re all writers here, by definition, I’d like to discuss an incident involving the use of a proper (aka “politically correct” by those on The Right) term for a certain human manifestation. Back around 1969, when I was fresh out of college, and … Continue reading
I was intrigued when I saw the title of John Robb’s September 18th posting on this blog, “Top 10 misheard lyrics in rock,” as lyrical alteration (whether accidental or not) has always been of great interest to a rockwriter such as I. … Continue reading
The Cleveland Confidential Book Tour came through Cincinnati on April 3rd, and I was in attendance at The Comet to see Cheetah Chrome, Bob Pfeifer, and Mike Hudson. I’d originally met the first two guys when I covered their respective … Continue reading
Roger Anderson’s sister, Vanessa Kibbe, has just unveiled the website she’s created to memorialize Roger and his writings: http://www.rogerdanderson.com/index.html Roger Anderson, one year and five days Lester Bangs’s junior, was Lester’s best friend during their high school and college years … Continue reading
Today, December 21st, marks not only the Winter Solstice, but what would have been the 60th birthday of my Creem colleague and dear friend Richard Eric “Rick”/”Reek” Johnson, who died in 2006. Leave it to Rick to be born on the … Continue reading
This Thursday, November 18, would have marked the 100th birthday of my late mother, Doris Marie Dixon Riegel. Her importance to the encyclopedia of my life is obvious, but I’d like to make a specific entry about her primordial musical … Continue reading
In my early thirties (that dynamic tail end of the 1970s when Creem Magazine and my writing therein were really thriving), I developed a consuming interest in the books and life of novelist Henry Miller. I noted Miller’s comment that … Continue reading
He was beginning to wonder whether it had been a good idea to get involved with this real estate “reality” show. He’d lived in his starter home nineteen years already, and had everything in it arranged to his liking, but … Continue reading
Actual playlist sequence heard on “The Real Mary Peale Show” on WNKU (Northern Kentucky University NPR station) this afternoon, while I was tooling around Cincy on the first day of spring: “I’m Waiting for the Man” — Velvet Underground “Here … Continue reading
Back in December, I kidded Simon Warner on here about his entry celebrating (in a measured way) the continual rebirth of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” as a populist anthem of sorts, and I cited Graham Parker’s “Passion Is No Ordinary Word” as … Continue reading
I’m only about thirty years late in doing so, but I’d like to express my great appreciation for Julian Barnes’s 1980 novel Metroland. It’s likely already familiar to our English friends on this blog, but I’ve just read it for … Continue reading
Call me “other-directed” if you like, but my first thought when I read the news that Swiss voters had outlawed the construction of further minarets in their country, wasn’t concern for the apparent bias against Muslims, but rather Jim Morrison’s incisive … Continue reading
Many thanks to Peter Silverton for furnishing the link to Chuck Klosterman’s alternate-universe review of the latest Beatles reissues, which actually conveys several truths about the “real” recordings within its tongue-in-cheekiness. However, in respect to full karmic disclosure, your reporter must point … Continue reading
I’m sure you’ve all seen the story by now about Bob Dylan getting arrested in Long Branch, New Jersey, the other day, when he was wandering around in a neighborhood there before his concert, and was suspected of vagrancy by … Continue reading
Back when MTV was first going great guns around 1982, some of the more uh . . . mature scribes complained that having a particular song identified with the official video would cause rigid interpretations of the song’s scenario. Supposedly … Continue reading
Note: I wrote this mini-memoir for one of the neo-Creem projects of recent years, but it wasn’t used. By the spring of 1974, I’d been corresponding with Lester Bangs for a year or so, and he’d given me my first-ever … Continue reading
Creem suffered its first bankruptcy in August 1985, a little over ten years after I’d begun writing regularly for the magazine. Strangely enough, I first heard the news from my 12-year-old daughter, who’d caught the bulletin on MTV. Editor Dave … Continue reading
