like Mick Jagger! Get off the stage! Back to the hardware store! Those clothes don’t match! What, no American Express! You’re dead buster! Stay with the tour group! Don’t wander off alone, you might get lost! That's not the right unreadable magazine to be carrying, sorry! Get a nose job! That’ll do it! Your career will zoom! Why are you talking to them, they’re not important! Brownnose this one! He can HELP you! You’ll thank me for this some day! By the way, you could still stand to lose about three and a half pounds! Then you’d look just like the new girl everyone's talking about! Stop laying around daydreaming! Up an’ at ‘em! Nice guys finish last! Get the Racer's Edge! Our bank's got Clout! Fly this airline you can board two minutes ahead of the next wretch! You’ll be better! Buy this shit too! People will be jealous! They’ll envy you and think you’re cool! They’ll hate you ‘cause they didn’t buy it first! Do it for the good of the team! We gotta pull together or we lose the damn race! Yeah I know who you are, you’re 261! Now move that ass! We got a pyramid to build here and when it's done you’ll get to live inside! No, don’t thank us now! You didn’t wash your hands after you pissed before you brushed your teeth this morning! That's dangerous! I read it in a magazine! They don’t lie! If you don’t go to school you’ll never learn anything! Bookworm, why doncha get out and learn about REAL LIFE? That's not music! It says so right here! This guy's an expert, he's met lots of rock stars! A Bob Ezrin production would fit you just fine! Put you in the Top Ten! Otherwise you’re dead! You’ll never work again! But a word to the right people and you’re in! Make up your mind! It's not selling out, it's for the good of the band as a whole! Okay, just watch us get famous faster than you! You’ll never be anything! Everybody knows it! They’re all laughing! Think you’re bigshit! This is the only crowd in town, run with us or you don’t exist! See that one? Yeah, that's right that one over there! That's the ass you gotta kiss! But don’t worry you’ll only ever kiss just this one! From then it's roses! But kiss it good! Like you mean it! They can tell!
Contempo Culture, December 1980
Permissions
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
“MC5: Kick Out the Jams,” © 1970 Rolling Stone LLC; Charlie Haden: “Liberation Music Orchestra,” © 1970 Rolling Stone LLC; “Canned Heat: The New Age,” © 1973 Rolling Stone LLC. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Dandelions in Still Air: The Withering Away of the Beatles,” copyright the Phoenix/Media Communications Group.
“Kind of Grim: Unraveling the Miles Perplex,” copyright Greg Shaw, originally published in Phonograph Record Magazine. Reprinted by permission.
“Everybody's Search for Roots (The Roots of Punk, Part 1),” copyright New Wave Magazine and Howard Klein. Reprinted by permission.
“Back Door Men and Women in Bondage” appears through the courtesy of The Back Door Man Collective: DD Faye, Tom Gardner, Freddie Patterson, and Don Waller.
“Anne Murray: Danny's Song,” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (September 1973) © 1973 Creem Media Inc.; “Blood Feast of Reddy Kilowatt! Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Without Insulation!” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (March 1974) © 1974 Creem Media Inc.; “Helen Reddy: Long Hard Climb,” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (August 1974) © 1974 Creem Media Inc.; “Death May Be Your Santa Claus: An Exclusive, Up-to-Date Interview with Jimi Hendrix,” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (April 1976) © 1976 Creem Media Inc.; “Killer Frogs in Transatlantic Blitz: A Franco-American Chrono-logue Starring Les Variations,” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (February © 1975 Cream Media Inc.; “Deaf-Mute in a Telephone Booth: A Perfect Day with Lou Reed,” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (July 1973) © 1973 Creem Media Inc.; “Monolith or Monotone? Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music,” by Lester Bangs from Creem Magazine (September 1975) © 1975 Creem Media Inc.; “Patti Smith: Horses,” by Lester