Just had my Amazon order of the new Creem anthology delivered to me at work. Don’t want to say too much about it yet (as I’ve owned it for all of 120 seconds–literally–and also because we have more full-fledged Creem content on the way in the weeks ahead), but… Holy Crap! This is NOT what I expected at all.

What I Expected: A pocket-size collection of various Creem reprints from the seventies.

What It Is: A mammoth, hardcover coffee table-size collection, incredibly and gorgeously designed, with reprints from across the entire history of the ‘zine, many (or maybe all) in their original format. All sorts of feature length stuff, all sorts of the random screwing-around that made Creem the greatest ‘zine ever. So many of my favourite writers are in it, too, of course.

Publishing event of the year–no question about it. Based on weight and design, at least. I’m in heaven right now.

Meant to mention this last week: On the website/blog Cover Stories, Mike Goldstein takes an album cover, and writes about it at length–extraordinary length–including (in some cases) Q&As with the photographers behind those covers. Not all the LPs covered thus far have been to my taste, but it’s a pretty cool idea for a site.

The link comes courtesty of the always invaluable Music Press Report, which also features an interview with Goldstein about this particular venture.

I’ve been ordering some new music books lately, incl. the new Creem anthology (about which, more later), but the one I’m really anxious to read right now is this:

Re-make/Re-model: Art, Pop, Fashion and the Making of Roxy Music, 1953-1972 (Michael Bracewell)

Reviewed recently in:

• The Independent
• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• The Observer

I’ve had real difficulties getting into the other book I own by Bracewell (England is Mine), so I may be setting myself up for disappointment here. Still, I’m intrigued by the fact that his Roxy book ends, rather than begins, in 1972. (And it surely can’t be worse than any of the other Roxy books I’ve attempted to read.)