JANUARY 1983
Creem Profiles
BO DIDDLEY
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
CONTENTS
Please send letters to: MAIL Dept., CREEM Magazine P.O. Box P-1064 Birmingham, Ml 48102 ARS LONGA VITA ELVIS Oh, oh. Solid Gold is on. Think I’m going to be sick. You’d think that getting rid of Andy Gimp would be a step in the right direction, but look who they replaced him with—Rex Smith!!
WHERE THE HELL IS PARTY TOWN?
Cartoon
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
SWEET PEA ATKINSON: “Don’t Walk Away” (Island):: Was (Not Was) repay Atkinson for his vocal chores by producing a solo debut, and spare us D. Was’s bug-eyed late-capitalist existential cynicism in the bargain. Trouper that he is, Atkinson will sing any nonsense they hand him, but he obviously finds his truth in Dionne Warwick, the Tymes, General Johnson, and Eddie Rabbitt, and I’ll go along with that.
ROCK 'n' ROLL NEWS
John Cougar was a bit naughty at a concert in London, Ontario, recently; he threw a drum set into the audience (reportedly injuring two women with cymbals), kicked in one of the headlining Beach Boys’ monitors, and stalked offstage. Seems that Cougar felt the promoter was “ripping off the kids” by making him play a shortened set.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Rick Johnson
La Vie En Mung: Men At Work Do Just That MINNEAPOLIS—One day in the (work) life of Colin Hay: 1) Garbed in pink trousers and burgundy beret, our Man At Work goes around to three distribution offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which houses the largest ones in the U.S. of A. Hay is bored but behaved.
DURAN DURAN: OH! You Pretty Things From Planet Earth
Toby Goldstein
We journalists like to believe our opinions are graven in stone. Let’s face it, in the global scheme of things, the relative power of a critic’s poison pen is rather limp. It ain’t gonna lower the price of a gallon of gas or revamp foreign policy.
CLARE CROGAN’S ALTERED IMAGES
Iman Lababedl
The fascinating Clare Grogan sits next to me in a noisy restaurant, sipping coffee and twirling the beads around her neck.
Features
AEROSMITH: WALKIN THE DOGMA
Annene Kaye
Can I borrow the karma?
Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
THE TRENIERS: Their God Wore Shades
Nick Tosches
The Trenier twins, Claude and Clifford, were born in Mobile, Alabama, on July 14, 1919, the third and fourth children brought into this vale of jive by Denny and Olivia Trenier, whose spawn eventually numbered ten.
Features
ROGER DALTREY: The Blond Behind Blue Eyes
Don McLeese
Lasso Rog hits the trail again!
I SPY ON IGGY POP
Edouard Dauphin
Sneaking & peeping in the zombie birdhouse.
POETIC EXTREMES AND EXOTIC EROTICA
Cynthia Rose
Just recently, London’s Riverside Studios one of the capital’s several community centers which also serves as concert venues/cinemas) played host to a “Twenty Years Of Vladimir Mayakovsky” exhibition.It offered Londoners a look at the definitive collection of papers, posters and pix relating to the tum-of-the-century Russian revolutionary poet and performer.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
WELCOME TO THE '80S
Allen Heater
Imagine thumbing through the pages of Time or Newsweek and finding an advertisement for a new Les Paul guitar. Pretty unlikely, huh? Not the sort of magazine format one would expect to see a musical instrument ad in, is it? But recently, these magazines, and others like People, have featured big, full-color ads from musical instrument manufacturers.
THE GREAT EIGHTY EIGHT GIVEAWAY!
CREEM and Rhodes Present: Here's your opportunity to win one of America's finest electric pianos, the Rhodes Eighty Eight. Hailed by musicians throughout the world, the Rhodes Eighty Eight can be yours just by filling out the attached coupon and mailing it in.
THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE STRAY CATS PART ONE
J. Kordosh
Rockabilly proper started and ended in Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio in Memphis. It was a short-lived and vaguely-defined phenomenon, revolving around dirt-poor Southern white musicians trying to bop up their yodelling with some steady beats and snazzy pickin’.
CREEM MEDIA
Richard Riegel
Lester Bangs, bless his no-bullshit soul, ranted on many a critical occasion about the rock ’n’ roll makers’ persistent vice of substituting the applied style of sartorial flair for musical content. Bangs railed loud enough when his beloved Lou Reed hid behind his too-cool mirror shades for a season or two, but he reserved the most severe hellfire condemnations for the eternally trendy English rockers, who seemed to change their total styles more often than most Americans did their underwear.
Barfcakes Of Justice
Richard C. Walls
SUE THY NEIGHBOR: The current rage in syndication land, where the offbeat and unrepressed are allowed to flourish (see Barris, Chuck), is The People’s Court. Recently in Detroit People's Court appearances were upped from the two to five nights a week, and when presiding Judge Joseph A. Wapner (retired) appeared on a local talk show, the warmhearted vibes that emanated from the studio audience were of a kind only bestowed on benign authority figures and middle class heroes (see Young, Robert).
Confessions of a FILM FOX
So what’s happened to she-wolf Morgan Fairchild since Flamingo Road was scuttled by a foolish NBC, you say? Good news and bad. Good news: lotsa roles for our favorite mound of teased blonde hair; bad news: she plays opposite Erik Estrada in one project, the TV movie Honey Boy.
TWO CASSETTES FOR THE PRICE OF ONE...
Richard Robinson
Cassettes are the handiest and cheapest way to listen to recorded music and watch recorded TV. Audio cassettes and audio cassette players are particularly inexpensive and functional. So while the people who make music for profit may bemoan the fact that “those damn kids aren’t buying records, they’re taping the songs they like on their own cassettes,” the people who make music for pleasure have discovered that the audio cassette is the best current technology for playing a song.
Records
DARKNESS IN THE HEART OF TOWN
Richard C. Walls
This, then, is the departure you’ve been hearing about.
REVENGE OF THE SUBURBS
Richard Riegel
Being that you’re not here in the room with me today, Billy, allow me to toss a scrappy Joelish rock through the window for you: ROCK CRITICISM SUCKS! It’s true, your melodies may come to you as spontaneously as erections, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to get it up to explain my rockfan preferences in the approved rational mode.
Records
Maybe Six IS Nine
Richard Meltzer
Obviously, this is the best Hendrix release in 11 years.
ROCK A RAMA
VANITY 6 (Warner Bros.) :: If the Ronettes had sung about sex and guys the way that Vanity 6 so, their mothers would have washed their mouths out with Lysol. But firmly planted in the Minnesota-based Prince The Time (who guest as the musicians) shcool of to-the-sexualpoint, funky/sassy dance music, Vanity, Brenda and Susan (no last names, perhaps to help avoid Morals Squad prosecution) have no use for coyness.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down