shock rock, cock rock

[Mullins, Bill]

More from _Creem_ online archives

"American Pie"
cover blurb from 2/72:
"Bob Dylan:  A Slice of American Pie"

"downer rock", 6/72
" That's the public myth. But it's not exactly Black Sabbath's myth, not
really, and a consideration of the true vision inherent in their "downer
rock" reveals that phrase for exactly what it is."

"crank" slang for drugs/speed, not in OED?? 6/72
"I mean, what's the difference between a vegetable babbling about how much
crank he can hold and stay alive, and one locked into repeating a zealot
litany with mindless persistence to every stranger coming down this side of
the street?"

"hole" syn for grave, not in OED?? 7/72
"We went to one concert in America, I don't remember where it was... after
the show, on the floor, there was about a thousand fucking syringes; I was
amazed, I felt sick, I really felt ill to think I had just performed to
people that were that one step nearer to the hole."

"get off", sexual (?) sense, not in OED?? (it may be this sense that exists
in the quotations for "gladeye") 7/72
" Ozzy remembers, "We did a gig once, and they were all sitting down at the
front shaking their fists and scowling at us... gettin' off on our downer
music.""

"centigrade", syn for figruative sense of temperature, 7/72
"Wandering among them, you just noticed faces and bodies and clothes in the
most normal way that you sometimes all but forget, this being one time you
couldn't routinely read somebody's psychic centigrade on their face like
some strange barometer."

"art-rock" not defined or cited in OED, but it shows up in a 1976 cite under
"neoprimitive", 7/72
" Almost as good as the one that Yes put up, playing a slick, flashy set of
formica art-rock that wowed 'em to the rafters. "

"pleasure palace" syn for civic arena or concert hall, not in OED, 7/72
"Cobo Arena, where I saw Sabbath in Detroit, pretty well fits Ozzy's
specifications of the non-ideal theatre. (It's the biggest pleasure palace
in these parts, where they have hockey games and Big Time Wrestling on off
weeknights and only the very biggest draws in rock 'n' roll can fill it.) "

"rentacop" not in OED, 7/72
" And when the human sea surged down the center aisle in a massive jam just
as your set was beginning, I began to get my hopes up, especially when a
dozen or so harried ushers and rentacops came scurrying from the open spaces
at the sides of the stage and began to make a series of futile attempts to
break up the bobbing Black Sabbath congregation by hand and accusing
flashlight."

"skeezix", 9/75
"Some skeezix from one of the local dailies was up here the other day to do
a "human interest" story on the phenomenon you're holding in your hands, and
naturally our beneficent publisher hauled me into his office to answer this
fish's edition of the perennial: "Where is rock going?""

"kraut-rock", 9/75
"Everybody has been hearing about kraut-rock, and the stupnagling success of
Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" is more than just the latest evidence in support of
the case for Teutonic raillery, more than just a record, it is an
indictment."

"amped"  OED:"trans. To make (a person) very excited, agitated, or energetic
through (or as if through) the consumption of amphetamines or another
stimulant. Freq. with up. " 9/75
"Perhaps you are wondering how I can connect the amped-up hysteria of
compulsive pathogens such as Bruce, Dylan and Reed with the clean, cool
lines of Kraftwerk."

"bullet" as in a mark denoting an item of a list ("number one with a
bullet"), this sense not in OED, 2/76
"Last Accomplishment: Exchanging rubber bullets for bullets in the trades,
keeping precise track of their overdubs."

"K-Y canyon" 6/76
" In fact, he almost lost his hilt in a K-Y canyon last week, but that's
another story."