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#459303 - 11/30/07 10:22 AM
America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
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legerdemain
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SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK - COUNTY OF NEW YORK
-----------------------------------------------------------
JACOB J. KRAMER and CHRISTOPHER CARTER, Plaintiffs
against
ROBERT MATHEU, KEN KULPA, JASON TURNER, SHERYL STEVOFF, CREEM MEDIA, INC., "JOHN DOE", "JANE DOE", the complete names of whom are fictitious since the true names of these individuals are presently unknown to Plaintiff, Defendants
INDEX NO. 604154/06
Anyone still wondering what happened to the much-ballyhooed Creem magazine rebirth? Was all that hoopla just a ruse to sell t-shirts?
New York Observer "No Rock Love Gents Try To Creem Each Other"
According to the above just-published article concerning a recent physical dustup and the ongoing Creem magazine lawsuit, "Little Bobby" Matheu has higher aspirations than being widely known as a petty low-rent grifter and has moved onto "Major Fraud" and "Unjust Enrichment".
(Note: The reader comments which follow the Observer article, many seemingly from actual Creem staffers, are most-definitely worth the price of admission.)
If the facts are as presented, and I would imagine there's evidence to document the extensive claims, this seems a rather cut and dried case with Matheu and company looking down the barrel of a judgment exceeding $1,000,000 plus.
Boy Howdy, indeed.
Verified complaint with all the gory details: Creem Lawsuit at Scribd
_________________________
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
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#459348 - 11/30/07 11:44 AM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: legerdemain]
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jammybastard
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I looked through a copy on a Borders bookshelf yesterday and after reading that I'm glad I didn't buy it.
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'You may very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment'
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#459350 - 11/30/07 11:48 AM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: jammybastard]
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dannya
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It's a good book -- lots of classic reprints from the magazine's glory days. However, the original writers and photogs of those pieces saw nothing out of it.
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"If God had wanted us to think for ourselves he wouldn't have invented Television" -- bigdumbhick
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#459361 - 11/30/07 12:10 PM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: dannya]
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legerdemain
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There's now an update and more comments... a "bizarro David Gest"??? Ouch.
New Creem Retrospective Outrages Magazine's Alums
"I think I'm mentioned in passing. Their entire description of what happened at the magazine is cockeyed," said the rock critic Dave Marsh last week.
Mr. Marsh was speaking to The Observer about a new book, Creem: America's Only Rock n Roll Magazine, a retrospective of the legendary music journal, that was published last month by HarperCollins...
Mr. Marshwho started working at Creem in 1969, the year it was founded, and later served as its editorsaid Mr. Matheu's book misrepresents the Creem legacy, presenting Mr. Matheu himself as more of a player than he was while all but ignoring many of the people who in fact were most central to the story of the magazine.
"It sounds like my involvement in the magazine was a drive-by, and this guy Matheu who was a freelance photographer, who was never on staff, he's all of a sudden one of the important photographers," Mr. Marsh continued. "I feel like Trotsky being rubbed out of the photograph."
In this week's paper, we reported on the bitter ongoing battle over control of Creem between Mr. Matheu and J.J. Kramer, whose father, the late Barry Kramer, founded the magazine. But another aspect of the saga concerns the intensely negative response to Mr. Matheu's book on the part of some of the early Creem staffers who helped establish the magazine's reputation.
In interviews conducted last weekand in the comments section of Wednesday's storyMr. Marsh and several other former Creem editors, as well as Barry Kramer's widow Connie, complained that the book substantially underplays the magazine's early years, when many believe it was at its best, in favor of material from the 1980sa less ground-breaking period when you were more likely to see John Cougar Mellencamp or David Lee Roth on the cover than Iggy Pop.
Some backstory: During the early 1970s, Creem established itself as one of the sharpest and funniest voices in the nascent genre of American rock criticism. A host of adventurous, influential rock writersincluding Mr. Marsh, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Richard Meltzer, and Robert Christgaueither got their start at the magazine or were published in its pages during its early years.
When Barry Kramer died in 1981, Connie Kramer tried to maintain Creem, but in 1985 she was forced to sell it to a businessman named Arnold Levitt. Mr. Levitt moved Creem out of its home in Detroit to Los Angeles, but the magazine folded soon after. Eventually, in 2001, Mr. Levitt handed the rights to Creem over to Mr. Matheu, who then incorporated a company called Creem Media Inc. In the six years since then, Mr. Matheu has started a Creem website, sold merchandise, and put together the book.
As we reported on Wednesday, Mr. Matheu and the rest of the board members of Creem Media are now facing an ongoing lawsuit from J.J. Kramer, who alleges that Mr. Matheu is failing to honor a deal to make the younger Mr. Kramer a partner in Creem Media.
As for Mr. Matheu's book, Mr. Marsh isn't the only former Creem stalwart to be outraged by it.
"It's not Creem as it really was," Susan Whitall, a writer at the Detroit News who edited the magazine from 1977 until 1983, told The Observer. "I look at it and it's like looking in a funhouse mirror, because I'm looking at something I was involved in, but it's not quite right, it's not quite in focus"...
Jaan Uhelszki, who started at Creem in 1970 as a "subscription kid" and left in 1976 as a senior editor, said the book's focus on the later years doesn't capture the true Creem spirit.
"Creem was a cultural force," she said. "We were so part of the fabric of that early 70s scenewe didn't suffer fools gladly, we were harsh, we were funny, and we were crazy. And there were no holds barred. That sense of abandonment isn't there in the selection.I just dont think the later Creem had that genius, that spark, that ire, that the first Creem had."
She added: "It's like two separate magazines. The later one is like proto-Spin."
Connie Kramer called the book "shallow and superficial."
_________________________
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
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#459393 - 11/30/07 01:06 PM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: dannya]
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goldears
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Registered: 07/14/04
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Things were so haphazard when I wrote for them that I never signed over my rights. It was one of those plus/minus things when I first heard about the book. Have to go along with the gripe about a lack of focus on the early days. I'll bet most of the other contributors didn't sign over rights either, hence, lack of old days. Even if you don't agree with this photog, the Creem Dreem shot of Mama is worth the price of admission. On the writing side, would like to see more Robot A. Hull and Rick Johnson.
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#459398 - 11/30/07 01:20 PM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: goldears]
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teverett
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The one piece of mine they ran (a review of Zappa at Santa Monica Civic), I never did get paid for.*
Maybe I should check with this Matheu guy.
(Wasn't Bill Matheu editor, or publisher, of Down Beat, years ago? Wonder if they're related...)
* not that I carry a grudge or anything
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#459412 - 11/30/07 01:43 PM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: goldears]
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legerdemain
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Registered: 03/04/05
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Loc: Detroit's Woodward Corridor
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If I were trying to gauge who's correct with the details, I'd look at the original mastheads; Dave Marsh, Susan Whitall and Jaan Uhelszki are all voices with authority. (Paging Bill Holdship.) While one of the three 'gets it', the other two should now realize why so many people had a serious problem with the ill-advised "MC5 reunion" debacle that destroyed the True Testimonial documentary.
Bobby Matheu's no personification of Lester Bangs, just as a revolving collection of hacks can't replace Rob Tyner and Fred Smith. Now do you get it?
Marsh addresses the rights and content ownership issue, among other things...
It isn't just an ownership issue.
The Creem book falsifies the magazine's history; most of the key figures, including me, appear as incidental while a bizarre rewriting favors marginal figures. Jeffrey Morgan, presented as an editor writing a memoir, in fact was a freelancer, who never lived in Michigan or worked in the Creem office.
Matheu skulked around trying to get "Friendly" with me last spring, claiming no ulterior purpose. He never mentioned a book. In the end, never even consulted the people who made the magazine (I suppose, IF he owns the rights, he has the right to do that with work for hire, though it's obviously a dumb move considering who he's dealing with--we're not people who are reluctant to wage a fight to its finish), he didn't clear permissions with freelancers and others whose work Creem owned only on a print and first re-use basis (the first re-use mostly used up long, long ago), the articles are poorly selected...the book is a catastrophe unless you're interested in obliterating the truth.
And not only is Matheu remiss, but Harper Collins utter failure to do anything like due diligence is also infuriating. Had they done the least bit of work, all this including the ownership issue would have come clear and what should have happened would have happened: No book by these clowns.
Anyone who has read the briefs of both side would reasonably expect that this is a summary judgment case, not in the current proprietor's favor.
Please do not buy this book. Getting it out of print is the only way to get a good book published. It'll still take years, probably.
Dave Marsh
To which Susan Whitall adds:
Having worked at Creem from 1975 until '83, the last five and a half as editor, I thought I knew the staff pretty well. Who knew we had a Canadian editor! Wow...guess we forgot to put him on the payroll. And an editorial assistant who was promoted by the book to "editor," hanging up the phone on Lester Bangs. Oh yeah, that really happened.
Creem was so much more colorful, interesting and literate than this paste-up job would have you think. As Dave has said, you'd never know that he spent four years of his life there. Our founder, Barry Kramer, who launched Creem from the trunk of his car, as a college student -- he's barely in the book. All the color and drama was drained out of Creem's story in order to fluff the resume of some folks who were barely there, if at all.
No social context, just a parallel world Creem, so that some folks with no history of their own could hijack ours.
Edited by legerdemain (11/30/07 01:44 PM)
Edit Reason: pluralized 'masthead'
_________________________
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
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#459413 - 11/30/07 01:45 PM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: teverett]
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goldears
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Registered: 07/14/04
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downbeat was bill mahar
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#459419 - 11/30/07 01:50 PM
Re: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine???
[Re: legerdemain]
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goldears
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woof, no wonder i found the book kind of, uh, lacking. i don't have nearly the investment cats like marsh do. i thought it was cool this was being brought back to life at all, but with such a storm brewing, i side with the old days. get this foul thing out of print and i'll sign reprint rights with the good guys.
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