Creem was about dreams. Projecting myself into the hip and cool culture of Rock n Roll while trapped in a 12x12 bedroom in the Velveeta suburbs of Sandusky, Ohio. Channeling my rocklife fantasies as I played Bowie and Floyd on a Radio Shack component stereo. Parents didn't buy you things back then. But between the pages of Creem Magazine was everything I needed. If I could time travel into the future, it would be to that crummy little office over the head shop in the Cass Corridor of Detroit. But I didn't even realize my opportunity was that close!!! I, unlike Chad Smith, who was also living a suburban existence in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, never noticed that Creem Magazine was an hour away from San-dullsville, right up I75 in Detroit. In my head, it was somewhere cosmopolitan like NY or LA. I was just a girl in a boring town, with a crummy stereo, reading Creem wiith no bleepin idea what I was gonna do with my life.
But as the rest of the world will discover when Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem is released nationwide August 7th, Creem was cool because it WAS in Detroit. Forged in the mindset of auto workers. One of those small but very loud voices that shouted down pretense and pomp. Scrappy and devoted to cynicism, no one and nothing was sacred. And it was funny!! As one of my first exposures to counter cultural revolutionary writing and Rock n Roll, it shaped me for a career in rock radio. Watching the documentary validated so many of my career choices. I never realized that women on the staff were equal to the men on the staff in their non-conformity to female norms of the late 60's early 70's. They were just like me!!! Rather I would follow them.
And of course, as a Chili Peppers fan, it was delightful to see Chad Smith tell the story of furtively reading Creem Magazine as a teenage boy, then discovering it was within a bike's ride to their headquarters eventually on Woodward , only to arrive on the doorstep just as Alice Cooper was leaving.
Creem was dreams. And in the wake of the social revolution we're experiencing now, it's the perfect time to tell it's story about how a handful of attitudinal writers grabbed on to what was real about Rock n Roll and planted the seeds of the future in so many young readers. Some of course who would go on to become the new material of the present day Creem, if there ever will be such a thing. Great Doc!! In select theatres and virtual cinema August 7th. To buy tickets visit www.Creemmag.com.