When it’s “Creem vs. The ’90s” we all win

In June of last year, legendary rock magazine Creem began publishing once again, and over the past year has proven that “a revived rock ‘n’ roll print magazine can still be successful in a digital age, with an uncertain media landscape every day.” The quarterly print edition does deep dives into lost or forgotten classics, the new hotness, and everything in between with wit and verve.

The fall 2023 edition drops Thurday, August 31, and its theme of “Creem Vs. The ’90s” sees the magazine looking into everything that happened in the decade just after it originally shuttered in October of 1989.

To discuss all things Creem and what the ’90s mean to such a venerable rock rag, we hopped on Zoom with the magazine’s Editor at Large, Zachary Lipez.

Zachary Lipez. // photo courtesy Creem

The Pitch: You followed up your one-year anniversary with an issue whose attitude is like, “Hey, we’re gonna tackle an entire decade we weren’t around for.” What was the impetus for that?

Zachary Lipez: I think it started broadly with a “What did we miss?” kind of thing that could have encompassed the ’00s and ’10s–which we still may do–but it’s such a ripe decade in particular to tackle. We have such a complicated relationship with canon. The magazine always has. There’s a view of, “We love rock and roll” and “We love culture,” but consensus is a killer, you know? It stuck in our craw that we couldn’t et our goddamn opinions in.

That piece in the magazine starts out with the idea that it’s literally that the ’90s started right after Creem‘s first run ended. It seems like a really natural idea to just go back to where you left off.

There were definitely some high concept stuff flying around at the very beginning, where–even before we were going to do a theme–where it was almost like we were just gonna start off no time had passed and then it, as with a lot of high concepts, logic made it too irritating so we decided to tell the truth, as it were.

What were the challenges in terms of what you were going to include, while also not wanting to leave stuff out, but also wanting to like stay true to the Creem ethos?

People have written entire books that I haven’t read about the ’90s. The main challenge, of course, is what not to include. You’ve got 10 or 15 pages to try to sum up this very–as all decades–very complex decade, while not lending too much credence to this entirely false idea that time works as “Here’s a 10 year slot where there was so much fucking meaning and then the meaning changed as soon as New Year’s Eve, then it became something else and we all became something else,” which is ludicrous. I can’t speak for everyone at Creem, but I like ludicrous and so the challenge was also the fun of it.

But, to answer your question, on the most practical level the biggest challenge was you write so much and we all consult and we make these lists and we do all this stuff and then you’re like, “Oh, man, are we really gonna take out this amazing album or this amazing moment, or this, you know?” and, as I touch on in the introduction, “How do you talk about this decade without almost entirely talking about hip hop or entirely talking about any other genre that was so huge?” and you, as in life, you invent rationalizations and then try to live with it.

As you put in your introduction, it broke your heart to emit Pegboy, but that’s what’s really wonderful about what Cream does and what this ’90s special really nails it: there’s a lot of stuff that everyone knows about and then there’s some really great jokes that are for very specific people about things like Punk Planet and Jets to Brazil albums. You are really committing to the idea that this is not just another ’90s thing, this is Creem looking at the ’90s.

And that’s the thing. You wanna have a balance too, because you have to keep in mind the pleasures of print and remember, “What did I get out of reading about music when I was younger?” Certainly, you learn all these things and it’s very exciting and, of course, you have inside jokes and stuff like that, but since people can’t click on a link to see what things are, we expect the reader to be curious and to like rock and roll and to like all these things and to be able to pick up their phone, should they be curious.

It’s not quite as easy as just hitting the link, but Jets to Brazil is three words. I’ll happily go to anyone. That’s a standing offer. Should anyone be unwilling to Google “Jets to Brazil,” I will fly to anywhere in the continental United States. I’m sure JJ [Kramer, son of founder Barry Kramer] will pay for it. I will take their phone or Android or you know, whatever, and I’ll type in those three words and then I’ll leave. They don’t even have to talk to me.

We do wanna have a balance between the obscure but it has to be readable. It has to be accessible to a point, it has to be relevant–whatever that could possibly mean in 2023–and if your follow-up question is, “What is relevant?”, I don’t know.

What is the process of putting together like an issue of Creem? This mix of new but kind of popular, but for very specific people, but also obscure, but also here’s some stuff from the past that you really need to pay attention to seems a delicate balance. Putting a picture of Jemima Pearl standing next to a beat up van works because Be Your Own Pet was a band over 10 years ago, but they have a new album and she’s married to the co-head of Third Man. All of these things come together to be like, “Why is this woman in skin-tight vinyl pants holding duct tape and why is this at the beginning of the magazine?”

I mean, you basically just read aloud the minutes of a staff meeting, you know? We all have our various interests. We all have things that feel absolutely new to each of us, and then we fight about it. I think that, since the dawn of time, that’s been the meetings of rock magazines. We’re not gonna put anything in there that doesn’t feel relevant and if other people wanna argue that point, they can A) Get fucked or B) Get on board, but the invitation is to get on board.

‘Cause I mean, the thing is, Be Your Own Pet–the nice thing about rock and roll now is the idea of one hit wonders or putting things into like the tiniest, most market-driven categories don’t exist anymore because rock and roll has shrunk to such an extent. Be Your Own Pet put out great music 10 years ago and it was popular and people are excited about their new album. Maybe not to the extent that someone is excited about video games or a new war, but they’re excited and we either share or lead that excitement.

“Creem Vs. The ’90s” is out this Thursday, August 31. You can order a copy here.