June 1982
CREEM
Did you know Steve Martin used to write and act in the old Sonny & Cher Show? I was just watching it and I noticed one of the bit players hamming it up in the background. I looked at him real close and I noticed he looked just like Steve does in those ads with the long hair and beard.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
LOU ANN BARTON: "Old Enough” (Asylum):: She’s got a fine little instrument, like a nubile Bonnie Bramlett—the drawl pure cracker, the pitch and rhythm deep blue. But what she’s selling it with is tractability. For Glenn Frey she poses as a flapper in the age of Deep Throat, for Jerry Wexler she sings good old songs in good old Muscle Shoals. Sincerely in both cases I’m sure, which makes things worse.
Creem Profiles
MUDDY WATERS
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
"DR. DRAKE, WHAT HAVE YOU WROUGHT?" DEPT. Following the example of Rick Springfield and General Hospital, other rock stars have decided to trade in their microphones for a sleazy love affair on the afternoon soaps. Bee Gee Maurice Gibb has signed to appear on two upcoming episodes of The Guiding Light.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Toby Goldstein
NEW YORK—Think a minute, and recall the members of the Electronics Club at your school. If stereotypes haven’t been swept under the carpet in this supposedly liberated land, the composite you’ve created is probably male, unathletic, either scrawny or chunky, awkwardly dressed, complete with bulging toolbox, and cursed with vision correctable only with Coke bottle lenses.
HUEY LEWIS MAKES THE NEWS
Michael Goldberg
So this is Marin: there’s not even a sign to mark the short, dead-end street where Huey Lewis lives. Things like street signs and pavement don’t seem to be a top priority in the land of hot tubs, freebasing and the Grateful Dead. So it’s up a muddy dirt road and then up a bunch of wooden stairs (past Huey’s white BMW) to reach a rustic house set into the hillside among pine trees and other natural-type stuff that I thought they only had in parks these days.
One Quarterflash, Three Parts Foolish
Sylvie Simmons
A Seafood Mama Hardens Her Hearts!
DEL SHANNON’S Fugitive Kind of Love
Mitch Cohen
“There was a girl I thought was really in love with me. I mean, my heart would pound when she came around. She gave me her bracelet to wear. Most likely I begged to wear it. I probably pestered her so much she let me wear it...The next day, she was out with this other guy.
Features
JOAN JETT IS A VERY NICE GIRL
Iman Lababedi
The Public's Vindication Of An Ex-Runaway
JAMMED UP, JELLY TIGHT
Penny Valentine
The keen political eye that punk brought to pop, even when it sounded its most nihilistic or anarchistic, has not been the main ingredient on the agenda for a while now. Dance and nostalgia; arch technostrut and pop ballads, individualism and lyrics to effect a pose, not affect a generation...this was beginning to sound de rigueur for the 80’s.
EXTENSION CHORDS
Allen Hester
As the saying goes, big things come in little packages. In this case it is the new Producer Series from Yamaha: a group of four components that enable one or several musicians, be they singers, guitarists, keyboardists or horn players, to play together, practice or write songs, or play along with pre-recorded music.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
HALL & OATES LAUGH All THE WAY TO THE SYNTH BANK
Susan Whitall
Five years have passed, and Hall & Oates have scored more gold and platinum hits in 1981 than any other duo/group.
REWIRE YOURSELF
Richard Robinson
In electronic parlance noise is any sound produced by machinery which is not part of the signal passing through that machinery. Noise occurs in both audio and video electronics, and equipment manufacturers go to great lengths to eliminate or at least limit the amount of noise present to the eye and ear of the equipment user.
Features
X’s WILD LOS ANGELES GIFT
Richard Grabel
X are finally getting some respect.
CREEMEDIA
Toby Goldstein
Are you ready for a graduate course at the college of musical knowledge? Does the academic language of sociology coupled to a fan’s love of the big beat sound like a tantalizing framework for yet another history of rock ’n’ roll? Does the appearance of footnotes make you want to throw a hefty tome out the window and brain an unsuspecting passer-by?
Confessions of a FILM FOX
Our first and most pressing demand: c’mon, Victoria Principal and Andy Gibb— don’t keep each other hangin’ on, as poets Vanilla Fudge (by way of Holland/Dozier/Holland) would say. Get out of each other’s life, and make a new start! One week we read you’re on, the next week you’re off...sheesh!
DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Edouard Dauphin
Take a best selling horror novel that even scared The Dauphin who can barely read. Hire a film director who made one of the best of the PBS mini-series. Cast four of Hollywood’s greatest stars, whose combined acting experience totals nearly 200 years.
CREEM & YAMAHA CELEBRITY GRAND PRIX MOTORCYCLE GIVEAWAY!
Here's your opportunity to win and win big! The official pace motorcycle seen with Sally Struthers at the CREEM CELEBRITY GRAND PRIX held in February at Anaheim, CA could be yours. This lightweight and lean Exciter 250 from Yamaha in Cardinal Red (pictured below) features a 250, 4-stroke engine, electric start, special gear-driven balancer and many other extras that make this Yamaha a winner!
RECORDS
Richard Riegel
As I sit down to write this review, it’s the morning of March 10, 1982. Even casual followers of the news must be aware by now that the End Of The World is hard upon us, due at 3:38 this afternoon, when the dread “Jupiter Effect" planetary alignment begins its assault on Earth’s gravity.
FRANTIC! EXCITING! NON-THERAPEUTIC!
Gregg Turner
This L.A. band runs circles around all the rest of the pussucking, starstruck Surf City swill breeds, and I�m not talking airheaded null-sets the likes of GoGo�s or Blasters or semi-related powerpop/rockaboogie yuk. Black Flag, X, Angry Samoans—forget it, they all stink. Fear�s got the message and it sticks out like a sore thumb caught in the chainsaw of life.
Combine One Part Pop, One Part Quirk, Stir Well
Jim Farber
For those brave souls who gritted their teeth through the hellish nightmare of mid-70�s art-rock, the term art-pop may seem like just another thinly veiled dip into the abyss. But XTC blissfully balances the art-pop—the �art� part means that their hooks just happen to be consistently weird, and the �pop� part of it is that the weirdness is so catchy, it hardly ever seems selfconscious.
ROCK • A • RAMA
Richard C. Walls
TOM GRUNING—Midnight Lullabye (Inner City):: The first impression of this debut is of a poor man�s Tom Waits (is that redundant or what?) but the resemblance is superficial— Gruning is more of a straight ahead jazz singer than Waits, but a less compelling personality.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down