I actually knew this guy.From rockcritics.com:
FROM HARD ROCK TO ROCK OF AGES:You can read the rest of the interview here.
A Chat With Former Hit Parader Writer, Father Charley Crespo
By Steven Ward
Back in the '70s and '80s, Charley Crespo frequented the rock clubs of New York and New Jersey gathering info for his fan-obsessed dispatches for metal rag Hit Parader, as well as some other papers in the New York/New Jersey area.
Today, Crespo's "flock" is as far away from the world of hard rock and heavy metal as one could get. The man once known as "Everynight" Charley Crespo is now a Roman Catholic priest.
This recent e-mail interview tells the strange and wonderful story of how Charley Crespo stopped following Ted Nugent and Aerosmith and wound up hearing confession from his parishioners in the Virgin Islands...
Seriously, I don't think there was a record company show I attended between 1972 and 82 where Crespo wasn't also on the press line waiting to get in. "Is Charley here?" was almost a running gag, like "Hilda is here!" with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Crespo also wrote for The Aquarian, a freebie paper from New Jersey that was a sort of running gag as well. Although I just noticed, to my surprise, that it's still an ongoing concern.
In any case, I gotta say -- going from rock critic to Catholic priest is almost as big a deal as converting from VHS to Betamax.
3 comments:
I guess I'm showing my age. When did Hit Parader become a "metal rag"? I quit reading it about 1969, in 6th Grade (ironically, right before I was resentenced to Catholic School). Did Teen Beat finally drive it out of the teeny bopper field?
Yup. It was definitely a metal rag by the 70s....
Steve,
I am catching up on your blog a couple of years later, but your 2010 comments did give me a good hearty laugh today. Thanks for that.
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