MARCH 1978
CREEM CONTENTS
Please send letters to: MAIL Dept., CREEM Magazine P.O. Box P-1064 Birmingham, Ml 48012 SAYONARA Konnichiwa (Hello)! I am a new CREEM reader. What a great magazine is this! I’m from Japan one and half years ago. I just started to speak hot regular English because CREEM and you guys make me crazy!
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
THE ALPHA BAND: “Spark In The Dark" (Arista):: This unholy trio’s second album is “humbly offered in the light of the Triune God” but T-Bone Burnett still sounds like a hell of a monad to me. He doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does, but when he steps aside from the songwriting, the group usually falls flat—and when he pitches in, these guys can almost pass for a country rock Steely Dan without money. B+
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
It’s hard, but we’ll excuuuuuse that ramblin’ Steve Martin for sharing a table at L. A.’s Dr. Munchie’s with... aaagggrrrhhh... Karen Carpenter. This year's award for the fastest rock album goes to a British band known as the Warsaw Pakt, not because of the frenzied pace of the music (no one has yet successfully challenged Tad Nugent on those grounds), but because the LP was recorded directly onto a master disc without benefit of a preliminary taping session.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Clark Peterson
TOM WAITS: The Slime Who Came In From The Cold SAN FRANCISCO—A pointy, black shoe kicks the motel door open, and in lurches something even the cat would refuse to drag in. It’s Tom Waits, looking like a stubble-chinned stumble bum who just traded a pint of blood for a pint of muscatel down at the plasma center.
Winter Wasteland
Simon Frith
I hate winter, even in cosy old Britain, so I certainly don’t know what I’m doing here, sitting in a motel room in Birmingham, Michigan, watching U.S. football and piles of dirty, halfmelted snow. This city, the whole U.S.A., has the most tired collection of radio stations I’ve ever heard.
Shopping With Greg Lake
Allen Hester
At Stings ’N Things in Memphis, it’s not uncommon for a rock star or two to stop in before their concert appearance to say hello and browse around a bit for guitars. Since we built our first customdesigned Les Paul Personal in ’72 for Jeff Beck, many people have contacted us in search of their dream guitar.
THE STARSHIP’S MARTY BALIN
Patrick Goldstein
Hippies have roots, too!
CASE HISTORY NO. 099: BOB WELCH
HOWARD KLEIN
It ain’t cool to be into mystic stuff anymore.
YOU ASKED FOR IT, YOU GOT IT!
And despite what our Letter From Britain correspondent Simon Frith says, your returns weren’t enough to make us all drink Drano and cancel our subscriptions. Although every Kiss fan in America responded to our poll, they still didn’t make number one in anything but “Worst Group”.
Features
WHAT, HE WORRY?
Ed Ward
This Iggy’s no idiot.
LED ZEP’S PAGE & PLANT
FLYING TURTLES OF URANUS: A Capsule Dictators History & Manifesto
R. Meltzer
Back in the summer of 1970 I was at this Stooges show at Ungano’s in N.Y.C. when this kid comes up to me and asks me if I really think Bruce Gamble is a lousy goalie. Turns out the lad was reading Fusion mag where they happened to recently run a picture of me for some reason so he knew from my ears and nose I was the Mad Meltz and I’d just bad-rapped Bruce in a sports piece.
Year-End Wrap-Up
Robert Duncan
Having just spent 97 hours culling old issues of this magazine for material for the Best Of CREEM II [on sale at your faithful newsstand soon!], I can say with some authority that Lisa Robinson, in case you hadn’t noticed, wrote some very perceptive and very funny pieces in her tenure as Eleganza’s founding columnist.
From Heavy Metal To Heavy Machinery
The buckskinned hunter perched on his canoe in the middle of the dense pool of glass the Indians call Hyeah Hyeah Kowa Gum Ipso Gitcheegooma (translated: Lake Of The Stinking Heaps Of Coyote Dung Which Have The Aroma Of Buffalo Chips In The Sweltering Summer Sun).
NASHVILLE BABYLON: Loud Covenants: Jerry Lee Lewis, God's Garbage Man
Nick Tosches
It was three o’clock in the morning, and the master bedroom of Graceland was still.
CREEMEDIA
Georgia Christgan
I don’t think of movies in years anymore. I think in waves....How did we ever get through the summer, for example, on Welcome To L. A. and Audrey Rose? I barely did. But the past few weeks there’s been a whole bunch of movies I want to see; even took in six in five days last week.
CREEM DREEM
TED NUGENT
Stars Cars
RUSH
Confessions of a FILMFOX
A follow-up to the outrageously popular Monty Python And The Holy Grail, entitled simply Monty Python’s New Film, begins shooting in North Africa next month. The TV series runs in 25 countries, and “Python” books are being marketed all over the world.
PAINT BY NUMBERS FOR DEAF MUTES
Rick Johnson
Aerosmith have arrived for good, mates. Just check out the packaging of their new album: the front and back covers not only lack the emerging group-logo which graced their last two LPs, but also dispense with the title of the set. Instead, the denizens who haunt the record racks will be greeted with a black-and-white caricature of the group members (by Al Hirschfeld, no less), and a no-frills, listing of the song titles.
BOSTON'S #1 BIMBO BREAKS-OUT BIG!
THE MAD PECK
don’t touch me there
TUBES white punks on dope/ what do you want from lile 12” EP $3.98 other 12” EP'S $3.98: MOTORS dancing the night away/whiskey & wine RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS blank generation BLONDIE rip her to shreds LP'S $6.49: STREETS IGGY POP/JAMES WILLIAMSON kill city GEEF VOOR NEW WAVE DRONES further temptations
ROCK · A · RAMA
GARY LEWIS AND THE PLAYBOYS— Very Best Of (UA); Golden Greats (Liberty)::This is the band that Blandie & the Talking Heads are trying so desperately to emulate. These days everybody’s doing handstands over the rawness of the DC5/Troggs/Stooges, but it’s refreshing to hear this summer saccharine amidst the brawl.
Rewire Yourself
Artificial Head 3-D Sound
Richard Robinson
It’s four o’clock in the morning, the night is saturated with a drizzling rain, and I’m somewhere outside of Frankfurt in Germany, sitting in a mobile recording truck parked behind a concert hall.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down