March 1981
JOHN LENNON 1940-1980
J. Kordosh
"...Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise 'cause all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot..." —John Lennon to interviewer David Wigg, June, 1969 (The Beatle Tapes.) Ten years after the Beatles broke up, John Lennon's guise disintegrated under the blast of Mark David Chapman's .38.
Contents
Hey Billy fuckin' Altman, Bruce Springsteen didn't write The River for you smart-ass semi-big time rock critics. He wrote it to let us boring manual laborers know that we're not alone out here. Springsteen is the man who articulates the feelings of frustration we face, the need for something better than a time clock and a lunch bucket.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
I guess this one ought to be called English Art Rock Visited. Not Revisited, because I did my best to ignore these groups altogether when they were around. But I must admit that their memory persisted, which is why I feel impelled to explain my distaste now.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Bruce Springsteen asking for a total accounting of ticket distribution after his two recent performances at Madison Square Garden upon discovering some ticket agencies were actually charging a hundred extra clams for the "good" seats. Smart move, Bruce...
THE BEAT GOES ON
CINCINNATI-"New England" is one of those positively-inevitable rockband names that just as inevitably comes along 10 years too late to give the karmic wheel more than a slight nudge. Just suppose, the Beau Brummels had been wholly upfront about their homegrown-British Invasion ambitions back in '65, and had sprung themselves on us eager teens as "The New Englands!" (Surely they would've used the plural form in those blessedly pluralistic days.)
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART’S GROWN THE BEST BATCH YET
Dave DiMartino
Don’t Sit On That Porcupine Fence
THE BUS BOYS EQUAL OPPORTUNITY INTERVIEW
J. Kordosh
The Bus Boys shuffled into the nation's consciousness late in 1980 on their debut album, Minimum Wage Rock 'n' Roll. Five black guys and a chicano drummer, they came up with a cool idea—Aunt Jemima rock—and proceeded to make it work. The LP is genuinely funny and, jeepers creepers, they're from Los Angeles.
THE JAM’S JAM
Chris Salewicz
Or, How To Not Break In America (Because You Don’t Want To)
IGGY POP: World’s Most Forgotten Boy Discovered Performing Alternative Service for the Bourgeoisie
Richard Riegel
Do you remember those times? I don't, either.
FEAR OF NORMALCY: TALKING HEADS GET FUNKED (AND LIKE IT)
I first met David Byrne and his very serious band of Talking Heads in 1976.
Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
SKEETS MCDONALD: Whom In The End The Tattooed Lady Slew
Nick Tosches
Enos William McDonald was born on October 1, 1915, on a small farm near* Greenway, Arkansas.
FASHION FOR DOGS
Penny Valentine
Looking at you kid/Looking at you/ Looking at you, but what can you do" (Sector 27) Busy looking at each other without the paranoia Tom Robinson has on the street with his first Sector 27 outing, the stylists and the dandies are into chic. The new chic is cheap chic, roped together on a tight budget, outdoing last week s by the addition of a new line: a kilt, ballet shoes, Edwardian frills at the throat, diamante hats perched sideways, high padded shoulders, tiny winged collar shirts.
JIM CARROLL’S ROCK N ROLL HEART-ON
Mark J. Norton
"I don't wanna have any subjective interpretations of my lyrics."
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
CREEM DREEM
JUDIE TZUKE
CREEMEDIA
Edouard Dauphin
Hello again, movie fans. Or should I say movie masochists? It's end of the year lists time and, in keeping with Boy Howdy tradition, the spotlight is focused not on the 10 best films of the past 12 months but on the Other end of the spectrum — the pictures that represented the nadir of 1980, the empty, inane, feeble, witless, impotent flicks that have helped bring the movie industry to a new low, almost down to the level of...yes, the music business.
Confession of a FILM FOX
"The greater the love, the more false to its object," as W.H. Auden put it, and this Fox can't top old Wystan's way with syllables in describing the latest ungentlemanly woos from the lips of Rod "Bad Dye Job" Stewart. Old artichoke head bragged recently that he'd swiped a copy of ex-playmate Britt Ekland's steamy memoirs, True Britt, from a corner bookstore at London's Heathrow Airport—tucking it under his fur coat (note femme attire).
Confession of a FILM FOX
“The greater the love, the more false to its object,” as W.H. Auden put it, and this Fox can’t top old Wystan’s way with syllables in describing the latest ungentlemanly woos from the lips of Rod “Bad Dye Job” Stewart. Old artichoke head bragged recently that he’d swiped a copy of ex-playmate Britt Ekland’s steamy memoirs, True Britt, from a corner bookstore at London’s Heathrow Airport—tucking it under his fur coat (note femme attire).
NINA HAGEN’S GUIDE TO FASCINATING WOMANHOOD
Toby Goldstein
room at the Ritz, wrapped in a floor-length black cloak, unsmiling as her silver-green hair was coaxed into Medusa-like coils of dreadlocks. Various bright bits of tatty clothes and toys were scattered around the room, and Nina held a raygun in her hand, pointing it at the intruders and dispassionately firing.
THE PEOPLE SPEAK...THE EDITORS SLEEP
Wintertime, and the ballots are stacking... Norton’s jumping and DiMartino is high...But despite the odds, the ballots in this, the CREEM 1980 Readers’ Poll, are counted and the results printed here for your instruction. We’d like to thank our Art Dept. (Robots Grimshaw, Cartmell, etc.) for ruining their eyes and chances for future employment along with us, the ever faithful Eds., in counting these thousands of documents.. The ballots are stashed in the back of a 1972 Dodge Swinger in CREEM’s back lot, in case any concerned reader wishes to audit them.
CREEM '80 ROCK N ROLL READERS’ POLL RESULTS
Stars Cars
IAN HUNTER
CRY FOR A SHADOW
John Swenson
I was all set to write about Double Fantasy; about what a beautiful sounding record it is, as smooth and accessible as the Beatles at their whipped cream production best; about how great it was that Lennon was able to write this easily about his life, bringing the same emotional intensity to the feelings of his approaching middle age as he brought to the renderings of teenage passion (he compared it to Rubber Soul); about how good Yoko sounds next to John on this set, how their songs blend together better than they ever have in the past.
DoyGlo Revisited
Michael Davis
The months move by and the next generation of British rock emerges with a sound and mood of its own. Many groups use the simplicity and musical directness of their punk predecessors as a starting point, but restraint and subtlety have replaced all-out assault, and the anger is muted or has mutated into unease.
GOBS GO GA-GA FOR TEX WRECK!
THE MAD PECK
ROCK • A • RAMA
Michael Davis
ROY BUCHANAN—My Babe (Waterhouse): :Buchapan’s career ain’t exactly been booming lately; he’s no longer on a major label and he’s not recording with big name session men, either. All he’s done here is to put together a fine, funky band that excels at the barroom blues ’n’ roll that is his specialty and lay down one of his best albums ever.
REWIRE YOURSELF
Richard Robinson
I've noticed that most people who use cassette machines treat the opening into which they pop the cassette as the portal to another dimension. They slap the cassette into the machine, slam down the cover, push play, and don’t give a second thought to the electro-mechanics that run the tape past the heads to produce the sound—or in the case of video recorders, the sound and picture.
EXTENSION CHORDS
Allen Hester
Guitar players from Chuck Berry to Larry Carlton have long favored the semi-acoustic electric guitar for its tone, sustain and versatility. The classic model that comes immediately to mind is the cherry-red Gibson ES-335 with vibrola tailpiece.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down
Creem Profiles
MARTHA DAVIS
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)