TRAMPING THE CELT BELT WITH THIN LIZZY

LONDON, ENGLAND-So I've journeyed 4000 miles across the sea, made my pilgrimage to the cradle of the modern rock 'n' roll era, just to come home to . . . America? As I sit here, deep within the shadowy valley of the packed Wembley Empire Pool arena, blood-sibling to the other 7000 souls on hand in our communal lust for the appearance of the headlining Thin Lizzy, I might well be back in Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum. The parttime official-Thin-Lizzy-logo (cf. the covers of Nightlife and Fighting) is outlined in rhinestone-bulbs and in green laser holograms high above the stage, and I have to keep rereading the characters to make certain that it's not the all-American antics of Kiss I'm waiting for. Only the green "Way Out" signs, placed to identify exits rather than to invoke the customary psychedelic exhortation, betray the essential foreign-ness of this place.

Like all good captives of the Untried States of America, I've devoured every morsel of the U.K.'s fabled New Wave redemption our domestic mags have tossed us, and I expected to find this London (!) venue a sweaty cellar club, packed to the fire doors with pogoing punks and punkettes in their latest atom-age garo. But after journeying to Wembley from central London, through pleasant suburban neighborhoods thoughtfully laid out to Ray Davies' specifications in old Kinks songs, I've come home to my own bourgeois mates, to a massrock breakout not unlike the ones I thought I had left in the States.