May 1980
Contents
I’m curious; how in the hell can you guys afford to continue publishing your poor excuse for a Rock ’n’ Roll magazine? Surely not out of the pennies you manage to scrape up out of the few subscribers you do get a hold of by printing their ridiculous letters praising faggots like Iggy Pop, Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and so on.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
BOBBY BLAND: “I Feel Good, I Feel Fine” (MCA 79):: Then you must be on something—you don’t even get to sing on that track. C-JOHN CALE: “Sabotage / Live” (Spy/ I.R.S. 79) :: “Military intelligence isn’t what it Used to be,” Cale intones on a title cut replete with slash and yowl.
Rock 'n' Roll News
Famed solo artist Bill Wyman announced to the New York Post that he plans to quit the Rolling Stones come 1982, though he hasn’t quite told his fellow Stones yet. Seems it will mark 20 years in his career as a Stone, and, sez he: “I have no intentions of being a middle-aged rock star.”
THE CLASH
(Pronounced ‘‘Boy Howdy!”)
THE BEAT GOES ON
I.C. Lemon
TORONTO—The train screamed to a slow stop inside the Main Street station. Stepping out onto the subway platform, I cast a nervous glance at my digital: 11:58. Almost midnight I instinctively thought as I walked down the narrow ledge towards the end wall.
IT'S ALIVE! THE INMATES EXHUME THE CORPSE OF R&B
Rob Patterson
“Whether we’re a faction or not, I just don’t know,” says Inmates bassist Ben Donnelly. The Inmates are proof that in today’s world (and especially today’s London), one can be different by being, well...relatively normal. “At the time we got the band going, it (rhythm and blues) was one of the most unfashionable things that you could do,” explains Donnelly.
PINK FLOYD Before The Wall: COME IN ROGER WATERS, YOUR TIME IS UP
Dave DiMartino
It’s Miami sometime in the mid-60’s, I don’t remember exactly when. Been pumping my little red bicycle home from St. Lawrence Catholic School, a plain-looking concrete mixture of Jesus and scrawny nuns, little white penguins who still pop up swinging metal rulers in my Binky-Brownest dreams.
Features
WOMEN IN REVOLT!
Susan Whitall
We’re only three months into 1980, but the fad of the year is already here—women!
HEAVY METAL QUEEN RULES THE AIRWAVES
Dave DiMartino
Pat Benatar’s unexpected popularity at the beginning of 1980 was viewed by some as the beginning of a trend.
NOT JUST ANOTHER FUNNY FACE
Dave DiMartino
A part of Stiffs post-Costello, “second wave” of talent, Lene Lovich first visited these shores in December 1978, as part of the Be Stiff Tour at New York’s Bottom Line. In June, 1979, her first album, Stateless, was released to much critical acclaim, figuring prominently at year’s end in several critics’ polls.
DIZZY MISS LIZZY
Mark J. Norton
Lizzy Mercier Descloux is from France. She has an album out on ZE Records called Press Color, which contains songs with titles like “Torso Corso,” a song called “Tumour,” sung to the tune of “Fever,” the theme from “Mission Impossible,” the sub-theme “Jim On The Move,” and “Fire.”
PEARL SPURNS SPANDEX
Dave DiMartino
Pearl Harbor and the Explosions are fronted by lead vocalist Pearl E. Gates, a San Franciscan whose prior experience includes a stint in Leila and the Snakes, a West Coast off-shoot of the Tubes. Pearl grew up in Germany, has a Filipino mother and likes country music; naturally, she’s chosen a career in rock ’n’ roll.
SWEET, BUT NO PATOOTIE, BUB
Mark J. Norton
Rachel Sweet is a 17-year-old Akronite. Her new album Protect The Innocent includes the songs “New Age,” by Lou Reed, and “New Rose,” by the Damned, among others. You may read the following, and say to yourself, “She’s only 17! She has an album!” Sorry, guy, she’s got two. Rachel Sweet started in showbiz when she was six-years-old.
MEAT LOAF IS FOR 15-YEAR-OLD BOYS
Mark J. Norton
Ellen Foley is 12 years old (this is what she told me—why anyone has to lie about their age for no good reason is beyond my comprehension).
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
Features
Rave Girl To Brave Girl: TRUE CONFESSION OF MARIANNE FAITHFUL
If I had the same voice as at 17, I'd sound like an idiot.
Letter From Britain
FEAR OF REPTILES
Penny Valentine
It looks like the Flying Lizards are going to have the third hit in a row with “TV.”
Rewire Yourself
SOUND ADVICE
Richard Robinson
Out of all the amplifiers, speakers, tuners, and other electronic paraphernalia I’ve collected up over the years, there’s only one that’s really served its purpose beyond what I expected it to when I bought it. That’s my portable radio cassette deck.
BETWEEN THE BUTTONS
You are what you wear.
CREEMEDIA
Mark J. Norton
It crawled into my post office box, honest. Lurking there amidst the usual ransom notes, subscription revocation notices, libel suits, 8x10 glossies of stereo components, back issues of the Cuban Communist Party newspaper and oversize postcards featuring Bugs Bunny imploring me to watch Tin Huey’s upcoming appearance on Celebrity Whew!, it looked like yet another useless catalog of spare parts for technological advances that have yet to occur.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
Hello, hello, back again hot to trot and ready to drop... Dick Clark has purchased the film rights to Margaret Truman’s first literary effort, titled, Murder In The White House. Will Richard Nixon star? Call dial-a-prayer... Also on the Big Book beat, dean Stein’s biography of the late Edie Sedgwick, a Warhol person from the 60’s, was finished recently with the help of George Plimpton. Can there be a celluloid project much far behind?
Eleganza
How To Stuff A Wild Spandex
Claire Hussy
Right you are, Mrs. ex-Jagger.
Stars Cars
JOHN WAITE
Records
THE KNACK & HOW TO LOSE IT
Michael Davis
The questions that hang on the wine-stained lips of both critics and consumers alike are simply these.
TOP CATS STRIKE IT RICH!
ROCK • A • RAMA
Richard Riegel
FRANKIE ELDORADO (Epic):: Are we fated to suffer a whole glut of these bastard-wave third-stringers during the next few years of chart upheaval? Is this “Frankie Eldorado” character really Eddie Money (same record corp., y’know) refitted by his haberdasher for the 80’s?
Extension Chords
PIANOS: LET’S GET SMALL!
Allen Hester
No, Virginia, it’s Stage 54, not Studio 54, and it’s a new electric piano, not a disco.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down