May 1981
Creem Profiles
WILLY DEVILLE
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
CONTENTS
OUT OF THE BABES WITH MOUTHS! Ha-ha-ha—whatta joke, I just read a copy of CREEM Magazine for the first time and boy is it ever mental. It belongs to my brother (and he can keep it) he stole it anyway from the drug store. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to buy a copy.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
ADAM AND THE ANTS: “Kings Off The Wild Frontier” (Epic):: This isn’t rock ’n’ roll, sez here—it’s “sexmusic,” a/k/a “antmusic,” heralding Arapaho (Apache) (Kiowa) (pirate) warrior ideals as a futuristic reaction against Britpunk nihilism.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Despite reports to the contrary (wishful reports?), the Knack have no intention of breaking up; as of April 1 they went into the studio with Jack Douglas who’d been working on the Rockets album up ’til then. Waterhouse Records released Living In The Fast Lane, the late Michael Bloomfield’s last record, March 1 st. (The title was Bloomfield’s choice.)
THE BEAT GOES ON
Rick Johnson
WESTMINSTER, MD-They walk at night! They’re not of this earth! They’ll suck your blood! They’ll scan your pate until it peels! No, it’s not another indomitable modernist monster, squeezing juice from the loins of its victims, but a rock band, ½ Japanese, shaping noise music so strident and so unmerciful that it would disrupt a college fraternity bash.
Turning Transatlantic: BRITISH VOCABULARY BUILDING WITH SQUEEZE
Toby Goldstein
When the British Rail local pulls out of London’s Victoria Station, crosses over the Thames, and 15 minutes later arrives in Clapham Junction, you’ve changed worlds. Instead of the dignified, stately vision of London familiar from spy movies or Masterpiece Theatre, you’re faced with the graying towers of subsidized housing, long bare patches of barren ground, and whatever crumbling pre-war blocks survived the Blitz.
Features
CLOWN TIME IS OVER
Jeff Nesin
Costello once vowed that he didn’t intend to be around for his own decline, which is witty and eminently quotable, but frankly, difficult to arrange.
THE TEARDROP EXPLODES, BUT CAN JULIAN COPE?
Chris Salewicz
When I meet Exploding Teardrop Julian Cope he isn’t up in his adopted Liverpool. Instead, my rendezvous with the man behind the melancholy, melodic and intangibly mystical music of The Teardrop Explodes is arranged for a pub in North London.
ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN VS THE ATOMIC CARROTS FROM SPACE
Richard Grabel
I’m standing at the entrance to the Marble Arch Tube Station in the heart of London. I’d just stepped off the seven-hour flight from New York. I’m waiting to meet a publicist I don’t know, and then get on a bus to I-don’t-know-where. And meanwhile, hundreds of kids are pouring out of the tube station in a steady stream, all of them wearing at least one piece of khaki-colored camouflage clothing.
SECTOR 27 RECORD IN AMERICA: TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER, PARTS 1&2
Richard Riegel
So here I am parked on the Danish modern, in the lobby of the Cincinnati TraveLodge Motel, expectantly watching the cars zip by on the parkway out front. Plenty of Saturday-fevered vehicular action out there this afternoon, but not a gray Cortina in sight, so far.
BONGO FURY IN BOOMTOWN
Dave DiMartino
“I thought the last album, where we thought we did something musically in a different direction, stood up,” says Boomtown Rat Johnny Fingers. He’s talking about Mondo Bongo, his band’s newest album. “We were really kind of proud of it, you know?
EXTENSION CHORDS
Allen Hester
There can be no doubt that transistors have profoundly changed the face of the music industry in almost every area. Even now, as the new digital technology begins to permeate the recording industry, it would seem that microprocessing circuitry will soon dominate the instruments, tools and hardware that is used to make music.
REWIRE YOURSELF
Richard Robinson
I don’t get it, I admit it. Possibly I’m the wrong person to try to figure it out since I don’t even understand why people watch TV anymore. But I try. It started on the streets of New York, certain ethnic groups carrying huge portable cassette-radios blaring discoshit along the sidewalks.
SYMPTOMS OF ROMANCE
Penny Valentine
'I want a bit of New Romantic!” (Highly unstable 20-year-old boy falls on nearest person at a Blurt appearance—Moonlight Club, London 1981) The cry is not so much a demand as some belief that he’s getting it. Yet he’s wrong. Blurt are most definitely not part of the New Romantics.
Stars Cars
MARTHA DAVIS
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
HEART & MIND: THE PAUL SIMONON INTERVIEW
Iman Lababedi
Whatever you think of the Clash—and I haven’t much cared for them since “White Man In Hammersmith Palais”—a couple of things are indisputable.
ELEGANZA
J. Kordosh
For some reason—incredible stupidity is the only one that comes to mind offhand— many of America’s fashion attitudes are being forged by the new administration. You know, Ronald Reagan...with Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue; Billy Gray, and, of course, Lauren Chapin as Kitten.
A Consumer’s Guide To GUITAR HEROES
Rick Johnson
The guitar has always had its own special niche in the hierarchy of blammo.
CREEMEDIA
Richard C. Walls
Not many movie makers would dare attempt to present an 80-year socio-musical history of the United States in an hour and a half—and animated, yet. Then again, not many directorial types would have introduced themselves to feature audiences with an X-rated Fritz The Cat, or alienated the Hollywood establishment with Coonskin.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
Mick Jagger will not portray Rooster Hannigan in the film version of Annie. Mr. Lips was edged out by non-thesp Tim Curry, the ex-teenage transvestite from Transylvania. Not to worry, tho—Mick’s currently licking his wounds in the Amazon jungle, starring in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, co-starring in the flick are Jason Robards and Claudia Cardinals...
Prime Time
Richard C. Walls
It was a perfect Tomorrow Show, starting off with a disgruntled pastor babbling some fantasy about there being too much sex on television (imagine!), followed by a surly Rona Barrett review of William Holden’s new epic The Earthling (tho she’s still unabidable as a human being, many of Miss Rona’s reviews are surprisingly on the mark), and then an appearance by a seemingly softened E. Costello, which if you didn’t see you’ve probably heard about by now, then back to Barrett hyping some comic whose name I didn’t quite catch (something Winslow, who came across as Jonathan Winters on speed, i.e., another Robin Williams) and then the dessert to this meaty repast, an interview with Frank Capra.
METAMORPHOSTYZ
Richard Riegel
J was awake. He was also flat on his back. J was awake, flat on his back, and confused. He never knew he had a back before; as a matter of fact, he never knew he was a he before. He began to get uncomfortable. This WAS confusing. Frustrated, J slapped his hand to his forehead, whispered, “Oh, my go—” and then froze.
Beat Me Blockheads, Straight To The Bar
Rick Johnson
Ian Dury is to ugliness what Alan Alda is to blabbermouths. He has an ugly face (and how!). He has an ugly body (say it again!). And he has lots and lots of ugly ideas. Tale a look at this guy. That's enough. 01' Pegleg is constructed like a heap of mismatched donor organs held together conceptually by an oversized noggin bearing a vice cop's suspicious leer and the soulful eyes of a Skid Row bar dog.
RETURN TO WIMP ISLAND
ROBOT A. HULL
ROCK • A • RAMA
Michael Davis
YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS: (Rough Trade) :: A breath of fresh air, sure; a minimalist's dream band, definitely; but is it rock 'n' roll? Probably not, but who cares? Just rhythm box, bass, guitar or organ, and (female) voice; little in the way of diversity, dynamics or drama.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down
CREEM DREEM
DIVINE