Jammerzine has an exclusive interview with CREEM CEO John Martin. To say that this is something I am proud of would be an understatement. My family grew up with CREEM. All the way out in Indiana we got CREEM. To say it was the Bible for music would be a misnomer, though. It was that whose who of people we may not have heard of but need to listen to. It was that directory of cool and suave and companion that let us know there was true music out there. While I was a little boy at the time and was relegated to Boy’s Life and could only read my cousin’s issues, I learned through CREEM that there were whole other lives out there in music and that, in more ways than one, that CREEM truly was ‘America’s only Rock N’ Roll magazine’.
In today’s interview, we talk with one of the minds behind the resurrection and continuation of an iconic story for music’s sake, John Martin. As CREEM’s CEO, John gives us a first hand account at how CREEM has come back to us as well as where CREEM is headed, and much, much more.
About CREEM Magazine
One of the most unlikely and successful media launches of the year, CREEM debuted its first magazine issue since 1989 in September, along with the CREEM Archive featuring every issue from the magazine’s original 20 year run. Vanity Fair revealed the first print cover for the new oversized subscription-only premium quarterly, featuring original art by the legendary Raymond Pettibon (responsible for Sonic Youth’s Goo album cover & others), along with stories on The Who, Terry Allen, Special Interest &KeiyaA, a reassessment of The Osmonds’ metal album and revival of their Stars Cars column with Slash. Also in September, CREEM produced a limited run of David Bowie special edition magazines to celebrate the release of Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream in partnership with NEON.
Founded in 1969 Detroit, CREEM grew from underground paper to national powerhouse – an essential source of music journalism for twenty years. It reflected and shaped the culture, cultivating some of the most legendary writing talent of the era: Lester Bangs, Cameron Crowe, Patti Smith, Robert Christgau and Jaan Uhelszki, who now returns as editor. The magazine’s original rise and fall is chronicled in the critically-acclaimed 2020 documentary CREEM: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine, which earned praise everywhere from The New York Times to CBS This Morning.
Today, CREEM Entertainment is led by former VICE publisher John Martin as CEO, alongside Chairman JJ Kramer (son of original CREEM co-founder & publisher Barry Kramer). In addition to Uhelszki, the new CREEM editorial staff includes VP of Content Fred Pessaro formerly of VICE’s Noisey, Executive Editor Dan Morrissey from Entertainment Weekly, and Senior Editor Maria Sherman, following her work at NPR, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Jezebel, Netflix, ELLE and her critically acclaimed book, LARGER THAN LIFE: A History of Boy Bands. Editorial Director Dave Carnie has worked with Jackass, ESPN, Big Brother, and Penthouse. Grace Scott joins as Associate Editor after her work with VICE & The Toronto Star, and Zachary Lipez as Editor at Large, following his work with Pitchfork, The Washington Post and others. This fall, CREEM welcomed Stephanie Augello as Photo Editor. Augello is an entertainment photographer and editor who has worked with Live Nation, Shutterstock Editorial, and ABC.
CREEM Entertainment is the modern-day reincarnation of Detroit’s legendaryCREEM Magazine. During its initial twenty-year run, CREEM launched the careers of countless iconic music journalists and bands, while never hesitating to lampoon those who took themselves too seriously. Today’s CREEM, powered by the next generation of cage-rattling truth tellers and provocateurs, delivers the best content, merchandise, and experiences to rock ‘n’ roll fans of all ages. Boy Howdy!
Featured image by Margarida Malarkey.
LINKS:
https://creemmag.com
https://www.twitter.com/creemmag
https://www.facebook.com/creemmag
https://www.instagram.com/creemmag
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Jammerzine’s The Week in #Indie for 6/22/2016
This week’s episode includes the latest from Electro London, Roger Shah, Moya Brennan, Ren Stedman, STFU, Naomi Scott, and the Blue Soap Music Blue Soap Box Top 10 in independent tracks.
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Follow The Lion Premieres New Single Titled H.O.P.E. (The Week in #Indie Segment)
Follow The Lion officially drop their new single titled ‘H.O.P.E. (Hold On Pain Ends)’. A lear progression from their previous work, Follow The Lion gives a solid mix and master with a stunning lead vocal and lush set of guitars pinning beautiful harmonies. This song is thought out but done in such a way as to capture the moment that was being conveyed during the writing process.
Epic in scope and vivid in execution, ‘H.O.P.E.’ counted on faith and delivered originality. This is brilliant.
ABOUT FOLLOW THE LION
Follow The Lion are a Leeds (UK) based neoteric Alternative Rock group founded in 2013. Following the release of their critically acclaimed début EP ‘The Candy and Gravity Motel’ and its single ‘Candy and Gravity’ the band took an enforced two-year hiatus due to the ill-health of frontman Daniel Francis.
Follow The Lion are back for 2020 with a fresh new line up featuring singer/ guitarist Daniel Francis, dynamic lead guitarist Dylan Price, gifted bass player Quinton Wharton Junior and Brazilian-born, twice-golden, once-platinum award-winning Rodrigo Duarte on drums.
In March of this year Follow The Lion re-entered The Chairworks Studio to record their new single H.O.P.E. (Hold On Pain Ends) together with producer Steve Whitfield (The Cure, Terrorvision, Wire). The track is mastered by Grammy award-winning, Jonathan Wyner.
H.O.P.E. is a song about an ill-fated love affair, about integrity and ultimately the acceptance that some things in life hurt and that pain is unavoidable in pursuit of joy.
In response to the coronavirus crisis and worldwide lockdown, the band has chosen to release H.O.P.E. on April 17th and will be donating half of all sales directly to the NHS. The band announced this via social media asking fans, friends, and family to take part by filming themselves at home doing something that made them happy. The announcement video has had over 44.6k views to date and the response has been so staggering that the band has to delay the video release date by a week (April 24th).
The band intends to follow-up on the release of H.O.P.E. with two further singles and their début full-length LP ‘The Crone, the Thorn, the Lizard, and the Lighthouse’ in early 2021.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/followthelionmusic
https://instagram.com/ftlionband -
Mile Me Deaf Releases ‘ECCO’ Album (The Week in #Indie Segment)
Mile Me Deaf has released their new album titled ‘Ecco’ via Siluh Records. Featuring a much more synthesized and refined sound, Wolfgang Möstl, the mind behind the music, give that signature sound a kick with a solid set of hooks within the electronic realm and sends out a solid set of tracks each with their own purpose with the love of an artist and the care of a producer.
ABOUT MILE ME DEAF
Following the release of Mile Me Deaf’s last full-length LP – Alien Age – the long-since fruitful project of Austrian visionary multi-instrumentalist Wolfgang Möstl seemed to have run its course, coming to a head with a vibrant vision of a colorful Pop dystopia. Having started out in the early-00s with his noise-rock outfit Killed By 9V Batteries, Möstl has become one of the keys – and most prolific – cogs in Vienna’s busy viral underground scene, brimming with DIY groups and exploratory solo projects. Transcending the confines of the scene too, Möstl has also toured the US twice with both Mile Me Deaf and anarchic fuzzy Pop group Sex Jams, a song by the former also featuring on US drama series This Is Us.
So – where to go from there? As Möstl puts it: “It’s hard to write songs about a world you basically destroyed.” The intervening years saw Möstl meet increasing demands for his production chops (Dives, Voodoo Jürgens), work with his Stoner Rock outfit Melt Downer, Vaporwave project Voyage Futur, plus singer-songwriter Clara Luzia – and most importantly of all, become a father.
Inescapably drawn back to Mile Me Deaf though, ‘Ecco’ manages to somehow find Möstl at the peak of his Pop prowess. The revived bionic project’s soundscapes are now popular synths, samplers, and a futurist pulse rather than guitars, underlining Ecco’s central theme of repetition and rebirth. Fuelled by an impulsive stream-of-consciousness writing process, Möstl finds himself guided down a dark – and basic – path towards a glittering album of potent post-psychedelic, post-vaporwave, post-human Pop about birth and death.
‘Ecco’ explores how everything, ultimately, repeats itself. Built from loops and pulsing electronics as much as human fingers on keys and some of Möstl’s most captivating melodies, songs like ‘Stop And Rewind’, ‘Phase’, or ‘Loop’ have a clear message: “All is echoing infinitely.” As Möstl himself is well aware, the next stage of Mile Me Deaf is impossible to resist. ‘Ecco’ finds bliss in repetition, and assembles utterly intoxicating Pop grooves out the other side of his project’s first death.
All songs are written & produced by Wolfgang Möstl.
LINKS:
http://www.milemedeaf.com
https://www.facebook.com/milemedeaf
https://twitter.com/milemedeaf
https://milemedeaf.bandcamp.com