THE COUNTRY ISSUE IS OUT NOW!

February 1981

Creem Profiles

RAY DAVIES

(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)

CREEM CONTENTS

MAIL

DOG FOOD A LA BAUDELAIRE! In response to Wanda Cross’s question in your November ish...“if Journey is so bad, why are they one of the most popular groups of all time?...” I’d like to quote Baudelaire: The Dog and the Flask “My beautiful dog, my dear dog, my good bow-wow, come and sniff an excellent perfume I have just bought from the best perfumer in the City.”

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

Robert Christgau

Black music is subject to economic oppression just like all other aspects of black life in America. Until the advent of disco it was a singles music— the low median income of its consumers assured that. Radio outlets responded in kind, rarely programming album cuts, which meant in turn that producers concentrated on 45s to bait otherwise undistinguished albums.

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

Here's Lou 'Heart Of Gold' Read's comment on the 'Give The Gift Of Music' promotional. campaign: 'Music is like the gift of life... something that has always been there and makes life really great. To me, life without music wouldn't be life.

THE BEAT GOES ON

Frank Fox

SAN FRANCISCO—It's another Saturday night at the Mabuhay Gardens for SVT. Outside on Broadway things are fairly sedate—just the usual live sex acts, bellydance clubs, and tourists lining up for the drag show as barkers and street evangelists shriek into the neon night.

CREEM DREEM

WENDY O. WILLIAMS

AT LAST! KISS WITHOUT THEIR MAKEUP ON!

Or, if we don’t care, why should you?

RUBBER CITY REBELS MOTOR THRU MIDWEST WITHOUT A SPARE

Richard Riegel

Halloween's just not what it used to be, not like it was my day' nohow.

Features

ROCKPILE WAKES UP EARLY

Dave DiMartino

Seconds of pleasure, years of drinking.

CONFESSIONS OF A HIGH FLYING JETT

Billy Altman

“I knew Kim Fowley and lived.”

CRY ME A RIVER

Penny Valentine

Baby it's an arms race... (The Attractions) Let's drop the big one and see what happens... (Randy Newman) Woke up this morning, Ronald Reagan on my mind. By and large it hadn't been a good night. Before the States turned blue before our eyes, and Ronnie and the Bible bashers had their way landsliding Jimmy the Jogger out of the race, The Bomb hit our TV screens.

CRUEL FOR RATS: THE STRANGLERS’ SOCIOPATHIC SOUND SERVICE

Toby Goldstein

Hugh Cornwell is looking at me with a somewhat proprietary gleam in his eye.

VAN HALEN POSTER & CALENDAR

TOO YOUNG TO RUST TOO OLD TO DIE

Robert A. Hull

In Oklahoma, Bonnie and Josie, Dressed in calico, Danced around a stump. They cried, 'Ohoyaho, Ohoo"... Celebrating the marriage Of flesh and air. —Wallace Stevens, 'Life Is Motion' He came dancing across the water With his galleons and guns...

NINE OR TEN UNBELIEVABLY INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT DIRE STRAITS

J. Kordosh

Plus The Usual Unsubstantiated Opinions, Speculations, And Outright Inventions

CREEMEDIA

Mark J. Norton

The all time king of cinematic grossness, John Waters, is back at it again. Waters, who wrote, produced and directed cult favorites Female Trouble, Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and Desperate Living has just begun post-production work on his newest shocker Polyester.

DRIVEN-IN SATURDAY

Edouard Dauphin

When you live in Manhattan and ride the New York City subway system daily, if s not easy to get worked up about Terror Train, a Canadian-made horror flick that isn't as scary as a routine trip on the IRT 7th Avenue Express. Leave it to those north of the border numbnuts.

Confessions of a FILM FOX

MAD AS HELL DEPT.: After suffering through several months of Brooke “Panty” Shields on the cover of Vogue, prancing around in layouts in the magazine wearing grown-ups’ clothes; after enduring many TV hours of her idiotic-to-the-point of dada Calvin Klein jeans ads; having to look at her bland loins and beetle-browed puss in countless goony Blue Lagoon posters and ads; this Fox had the misfortune to learn that Ms.

ELEGANZA

Rick Johnson

MACOMB, IL—The Twentieth Century ground to a thoroughly embarrassed halt as I entered the home of my neighborhood hepsters, Hoot and Annie. They reside in a déshabillé hovel furnished in a hit and miss style that decorators sometimes refer to as “of uncertain parentage.”

SUBTERRANEAN URBANESQUE BLUES

Richard Riegel

Jim Carroll’s the latest word pusher.

THE SINGER, IN THE ALLEY, WITH A GOOD SET OF PIPES

Terri A. Huggins

Robert Palmer is starting to live up to the potential of his first album.

MOON OVER MACOMB (Rick Johnson Finally likes Something!)

Rick Johnson

Moon Martin is one of our finest rock ’n’ rollers. It’s not his fault his looks fall somewhere between Hawkbait and Bud-Tease on the tuff-guy scale. Besides, like good old Cub “Four-Eyes” Koda, it doesn’t stop him from transporting illegal rhythms across state lines.

Biology for Bonzo

THE MAD PECK

ROCK • A • RAMA

Richard Riegel

VIVABEAT—Party in the War Zone (Charisma):: These milkshakes listened to Roxy Music somewhere along the L.A. fault line, and they’re primed to siphon ol’ Papa Doc Ferry back to us now, in 10 real synthesizer pump & dunk increments, about as elegant as the stuff comes.

Backstage

BACKSTAGE

Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down

Stars Cars

THE KNACK