Billing itself as "America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine", the Detroit-spawned CREEM wrested the standard of critical hipness away from Rolling Stone for a while in the early 1970s. Among the luminaries who wrote for the mag were Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus. Their mascot was a cheerful milk bottle (or cream bottle, I suppose) saying "Boy Howdy!" which appeared to have been drawn by R. Crumb.

CREEM has been resurrected a couple of times over the years, but its golden age is generally considered to be the early years.