New Look for New Creem

Creem magazine, the counter-culture rock ‘n’ roll tabloid, is going upscale next year with an LA Style look.

Marvin Jarrett and Shea Ralph, owners of Alternative Media Inc., bought the trademark logo (remember “Boy Howdy!”?) and plan to launch the new magazine, with editorial offices based in Los Angeles, next June.

“It was always a very cutting-edge magazine,” Jarrett says, “and the new Creem will be cutting edge but in a different sort of way.” Jarrett, who was Creem’s advertising manager, will be publisher and executive editor.

The new Creem will be aimed at the 21 to 45 age group and graphically similar to LA Style, including an oversize format.

Jarrett doesn’t see much competition to Rolling Stone magazine. “Rolling Stone has gotten to be more of a popular culture magazine than strictly music,” he says. Creem will devote itself to music.

While the Boy Howdy! logo will be incorporated into the new format, Jarrett says the new Creem will drop old Creem’s other descriptive: “America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine.”

Drink Scotch, See Angels

Angelenos familiar with angel’s hair, the micro-pasta, can now sample Angel’s Share, a very limited edition of 25 bottles of “divine” single-malt, single-cask 1966 Scotch whiskey packaged in an etched Baccarat crystal decanter and priced at--well, if you have to ask you probably can’t afford it.

For the record, however, Jurgensen’s has bought 10 bottles, which it plans to retail at $8,650 each.

The fanciful name derives from the distiller’s term for whiskey that evaporates during aging. The angelic theme, etched into the crystal by artists David Sugar and Carol Iselin of New York’s Innerlight Crystal, depicts an angel rising through whiskey vapors with what one viewer, chef-owner Barry Wine of Manhattan’s Quilted Giraffe, described as “an indescribably ephemeral quality.” Wine added that “the images seem to move and shimmer as you view them from different perspectives.”

That illusion probably grows as the costly bottle empties--the Inchmurrin Highland whiskey being bottled at unwatered cask strength of 63.4% alcohol or 126.8 proof.

Will Logo Lure Tourists?

The Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau, as previously reported, had changed its name from the Greater Los Angeles Visitors & Convention Bureau but was forced to operate without new stationery and business cards because a new logo was still being designed.

Well, the wait is over. The new logo, created by 30Sixty Advertising & Design in Los Angeles, has an overlapping L and A layered with stylized representations of sun, mountains and water.

“We think this new design says a lot about our marketing approach to Los Angeles,” said John F. Llewellyn, the bureau’s chairman and president of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries. “It reflects a diversity that you won’t find in other cities, and we believe it will convey the message that L.A. is a unique travel destination.”