January 1981
Creem Profiles
WILLIE NELSON
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
CREEM
Whoever the hell “Terri A. Huggins” might be...She states that she had her fantasies about Ronnie Spector’s LP. Obviously she should tell her fantasies to her shrink. I fear that Terri has a wall of sound stuck between her ears. If Miss Huggins is so crazy about 60’s lyrics, she has no right to be a part of the 80’s music industry.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
Fusion music—jazzz, as one tipsheet has taken to spelling it—combines the worst of both styles. From rock, we get sound-effect solos and neat-to-cute commercial structures; from jazz, instrumental technique so obsessive that trick meters are expected to do the work of a good beat and content is excluded altogether.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Good news for all you Mothers Of Invention buffs—Flo & Eddie keyboardist Andy Cahan has produced a new record on Rhino, Grandmothers, which features all the old gang of misfits (sans Zappa): Motorhead Sherwood, Jimmy Carl Black, Elliott Ingber, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner and Buzz Gardner, on a compilation of Mothers tapes spanning a decade.
THE BEAT GOES ON
J. Kordosh
GARDEN CITY, MI—The recent successful fusion of human and tobacco cells has led to all sorts of bizarre speculation, not least of which is that scientists may soon be creating a race of “plant people.” According to some published reports, these plant people could work on farms, where they would pick their own fruit, serve as soldiers (risking life and limb, no doubt) and—get this—even work as philosophers, with giant trees spending centuries pondering the cosmos.
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS SHED
Mark J. Norton
Despite what you may think, the Psychedelic Furs aren't really that psychedelic. Their roots are noble enough, early influences being such greats as the Seeds, the Doors, the Stooges, the Velvet Underground and the 13th Floor Elevators.
Features
Ronnie Redux
Terri A. Huggins
“Nowadays, I feel more sure of myself than I did five or six years ago.”
MATCH WITS WITH GARY NUMAN!
Jeffrey Morgan
The way I see it, when you’re dealing with these pasty-faced squirts who wanna be synthetic suppositories, y’gotta fight fire with fire—or ice with ice, as the case might be. I mean, it’s no big deal if y’wanna be a machine: be my guest. Just make sure you don’t blow your cover by looking back over your shoulder for an audience reaction once you’ve claimed to’ve gone and pulled the plug on humanity.
Features
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN TAKES IT TO THE RIVER
Dave DiMartino
So don’t call him "Boss," OK?
SITTING ON A BUS WITH THE ENGLISH BEAT AND LIKING IT
J. Kordosh
It was a cold Sunday evening in midOctober and the sun was working its way down as I pulled the LeMans into the parking lot of Detroit’s Bookie’s Club 870. The heater in the LeMans stopped working some indeterminate time ago, but it was too much summer for me to notice.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Penny Valentine
"Enjoy yourself" the Specials sing, part ironic, part mourning on their second album of 1980. It's later than you think”... The year came to an end with the music of the white boys showing strange signs of lyrical impotence. 1980 in British music was the year of tribes and tendencies.
CREEM DREEM
SIOUXSIE SIOUX
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
Journey to the Center of the MIND
Robot A. Hull
At the mere mention of the term “psychedelic rock," most folks turn livid— their eyes cross, purple dots splotch their rosy cheeks, and steam begins puffing in short snorts from their nostrils. Punk has become acceptable, and bubble-gum can be considered a cute trend but acid rock...oh no, never! It is perhaps the only genre that can transform a solemn saint into a vituperative viper, hissing and lashing at art imaginary zonked-out world populated by Zen zombies.
REWIRE YOURSELF
Richard Robinson
The compact audio cassette is the most popular and universal tape format in current use. Its acceptance by consumers has eliminated the eight-track cartridge and banished the reel-to-reel tape, creating a situation where consumer endorsement has forced cassette manufacturers to slave at making the cassette do things it wasn’t originally designed to do.
Stars Cars
WRECKLESS ERIC
Features
PAT BENATAR’S SWEET RIDE
Rob Patterson
Nice Girl From Baltimore Wears Leopard Dresses And Makes BiG Bucks
CREEMEDIA
J. Kordosh
I guess that Robert Stigwood really got the message from Urban Cowboy’s sputtering failure as a megahit movie (at the same time its soundtrack was shooting on up the record charts); his latest film production, Times Square, is such a wrongheaded jumble of painfully-innocuous non sequiturs that I wonder why RSO bothered making it at all.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
Question: Why does Ronald Reagan walk around with a turkey under his arm? Answer: Spare parts... Roman Polanski recently visited Israel, scouting locations for his new film Pirates. Oye, oye, matey... For the first time in a decade, Roger Corman will direct a movie, The Last World War, and since there will be so many different locations for the epic, Roger will direct the Western world segment and Akira Kurosawa will direct the East...
Records
BORN TO STALL
Billy Altman
I really can’t think of any other major star in the whole history of pop music whose range of thought and whose expression of those thoughts has been as limited as Bruce Springsteen’s.
ROCK•A•RAMA
SHAUN CASSIDY—Wasp (Warner Bros.):: As Shaun lurches into musical manhood via the rather bold move of Wasp, maybe it’s time some kindly father figure sat him down and explained the facts of life, namely the Mickey Rooney Syndrome: no matter how grown-up you appear, most people have you pegged as a Hardy Boy for life.
EXTENSION CHORDS
Allen Hester
Well, as it turns out, Mt. Saint Helens is not the only thing cookin’ in the state of Washington. Seems like there is a factory up there in Redmond by the name of Tapco, and they make some mighty fine audio equipment, in spite of the volcanic ash.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down