July 1983
Contents
Though I knew your magazine, it had never been real until last month. You can’t imagine how good it felt after the reading of CREEM (Feb. issue). It was as if I had found a refuge, in fact, it has been a refuge to me! Rafael J. Marina Havana, Cuba (Of course, now that we’ve printed the guy’s name, his whole family will be shot!—Ed.)
Creem Profiles
BOY GEORGE
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
BERLIN: "Pleasure Victim" (Geffen):: Although my tastes in porn don’t run to designer whips, Terri Nunn’s sex-object impersonation on the cunningly entitled “Sex (I’m a...)” generates a mild buzz. But that’s the only good part—the rest is flimsy synthpop sans even a flash of pink, unless songs about the Metro make you wet your pants.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Ozzy Osbourne recently spent several days undergoing tests in a Rockford, Illinois hospital. Seems that the sensitive one feared he was having a heart attack after experiencing severe chest pains onstage. No need to worry, though, as physicians blamed the discomfort on a respiratory virus and fatigue.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Iman Lababedi
NEW YORK—“Don’t make me out too solemn,” warns Chris Stamey in his twangy southern accent. And to prove his point, he suggests a couple of jokes for the photograph that’ll illustrate the article. “On the other hand...” he cracks, “or: And behind door number three...”
ROCKIN’ TO NEW ORLEANS
Richard Grabel
With all of the rich R&B-jazz soil to till, it’s strange to imagine the youth of New Orleans going out and forming punk rock bands, but that’s exactly what they were doing back in ’79.
THE DREAM SYNDICATE’S HEAVENLY FEEDBACK FROM HELL!
Bill Holdship
Just another band from L.A.?
THE HALF-DOZEN OR SO MOODS OF ULTRAVOX
J. Kordosh
Onstage, the amazing Ultravox. Right in front, on the edge of the area called the pit—not, unfortunately, in my honor— myself and the affable photog Bob Alford. Affable Bob’s busy at his trade; I can afford to sit and blow smoke. Ultravox are blowing smoke, too. Literally.
Features
JOAN JETT Gets Some Respect (FINALLY!)
Being in a rock band is like a religion, in a certain sense. You can't take it too seriously, or it'll drive you nuts.
REWIRE YOURSELF
Richard Robinson
The moment I first held a Compact Disc in my hand, I thought, “My God, if we could do this, we could cure cancer. We could eradicate hate and hunger.” Then I remembered where I was. Downtown 20th Century. And the Compact Disc is about as close as we’re likely to get to any real answers to real questions.
The FABULOUS Thunderbirds
Iman Lababedi
This is what we call the irresponsible rock crit at his worst, enjoying the company of the band he’s talking to so much he doesn’t bother with the deep, meaningless questions. The Fabulous Thunderbirds are as much fun on stage and on vinyl as they are in conversation.
CREEM DREEM
LITA FORD
BOB SEGER
Features
GEORGE CLINTON CRIES WOOF
John Morthland
Putting on the atomic dog.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
Soaked to the skin, I was shivering on a grandiose Mayfair doorstep in deepening gloom, about to ring the bell leading to David Bowie’s press showing of his horror film The Hunger—when a gigantic thunderclap ripped through the unseasonably slate-colored skies.
THE MAN FROM D.U.R.A.N. D.U.R.A.N.
Annene Kaye
We're only halfway through it folks, but what an absolutely obtrusive year it's been already, what with New Prell putting the OOOO in shampoo and Adam Ant having microsurgery on his tiny little knee and that silly drummer from Toto endorsing kits and counting his Grammies.
Eleganza
DRESS FOR EXCESS
John Mendelssohn
Eleganza’s Worst-Dressed Acts in Rock ’n’ Roll
CREEMEDIA
Toby Goldstein
Back in the days when casting directors automatically hired Italians and Greeks to play the roles of Latins, Hollywood brought us a stylized filmic version of what had been a stylized Broadway play—West Side Story. Choreographed as precisely as a revue by the June Taylor Dancers, in this movie two rival New York teenage street gangs called the Jets (the white guys) and the Sharks (the pseudoPuerto Ricans) inflicted instantly regretted mayhem upon one another.
WATERS ON THE BRAIN
Richard Riegel
Welcome back my friends to the neuroses that never end. Once again Pink Floyd’s latest album finds lead “conceptualist” Roger Waters scrunched-up in fetal position, using vinyl as his psycharist’s couch. The problem that patient Waters intends to address this time around concerns, according to the official Columbia Records press release, the following: “the disillusionment of a generation that saw the hopes and dreams coming out of the second war go unfulfilled., the frustration and anger brought to mind by all conditions of economic upheaval, impending war, poverty or another holocaust...” blah, blah, blah.
ROCK • A • RAMA
DIVINYLS—Desperate (Chrysalis):: The Australian pop hegemony apparently continues unabated, to judge by the energy of the Divinyls, a woman and' four men at work enlarging our scope of the varieties of Antipodean rock. Emphasis here is on a hardrocking, somewhat adolescent fascination with sleaze for its own sake (best way to move into the real thing), reportedly a big fact of life in the Divinyls’ “Sin Capital” Kings Cross area of Sydney.
Stars Cars
ZZ TOP
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down