September 1983
CREEM CONTENTS
Please send letters to: MAIL Dept., CREEM Magazine P.O. Box P-1064 Birmingham, MI 48012 IS THERE SOMETHING WE SHOULD KNOW? We are Duran Durans greatest fans. We have six posters of them, four Duran Duran shirts, and a scrapebook! Duran Durans #1 Fans Where MTV Is,
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
JOAN ARMATRADING: "The Key" (A&M):: Folkies manque to the contrary, its not hard rock shes unsuited for, a point she drives home on the side-openers, which are as nasty as this album gets both musically and emotionally, and also as rousing.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Keith Richards has postponed his marriage to Patti Hansen (again!?! Were beginning to think this guy has cold feet!) until the Stones new LP is completed. The big news is that it might be a double Stones wedding with Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall sharing the bill...In other Stones news, the rubber-lipped wonder has completed a film script entitled Tin Soldier, which deals with an aging rock star whose 13-year-old illegitimate son shows up on his doorstep.
Take This Group And R.E.M. It!
Heather Joslyn
NEW YORK—In just a couple of years, R.E.M. has gathered a coast-to-coast constituency not through hype or promotion but through originality, smarts and solid songwriting. On the trail of their popular EP, these tunesmiths from Athens, Georgia are making quite a splash with their first I.R.S. LP, Murmur.
Creem Profiles
LITTLE STEVEN
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
DIVINYLS: HOW YA GONNA KEEP ’EM DOWN ON THE LIP FARM?
Laura Fissinger
Theres a new entry in the Battle of the Australian bands.
NAKED & UGLY, BUT CERTAINLY NOT SLEEPING
J. Kordosh
Last year, John Cougar was being interviewed on a Detroit radio station. After the chat, he noticed a Mitch Ryder concert poster on the wall and started raving about it. At which point deejay Jerry Lubin— Ryders ex-road manager—asked Cougar how Mitch could get a hold of him.
ELECTIVE POP-TICIANS
Cynthia Rose
Next Thursday is our General Election, though youd never know it from the press—currently theyre decoying us over the question of whether or not that extra half-inch" on the Princess of Wales waistline means shes preggers again. Rather tactless choice of decoy matter, actually, since last week la Di had a less than successful meeting with some school-levers up in the chronically depressed North.
ATTACK OF THE TECHNO-TRIBES
Toby Goldstein
Day 1: Welcome to Woz Land." Its 9 a.m., the temperature is 75 degrees and climbing as the Unuson shuttle bus winds its way into the dust-clogged, smog-ridden expanse of Glen Helen Regional Park, just outside the town of Devore, California.
Baseball, By The Numbers
Billy Altman
OK, all you so-called baseball experts out there! Did you know that, when the New York Mets Dave Kingman led the National League in home runs last season with 37 while (you should pardon the the expression) compiling a batting average of 204, it represented the lowest BA of any HR king in history,
AFTER-SCHOOL SESSIONS 15 YEARS AFTER SCHOOL
Cynthia Rose
LONDON—The brothers Ramone—four schlepps whose schleppiness transmogrified the traumas of career adolescence into an entire art form—constitute Americas greatest white gift to rock history during the past 10 years. And if you think thats an overstatement, you should be situated in the U.K.: stranded midway between California dreamers/L.A. hard-heads and Krauts who alternate three-chord steel-bashing with strolls down lonely street to Hotel zur Einsamkeit.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
POP Morality vs. The Irish Way
Kevin Knapp
U2 In America.
MICROPHONES DON'T GET NO RESPECT!
Chip Stern
Whether your vantage point is onstage or in the audience (and not on a guest-list pass, either), its invariably the same dreary dance. Thousands of crazed fans frothing before the opening bell, the stage all aglitter in lights and equipment...and equipment...and more equipment.
WHOPPING & BOPPING WITH ZZ TOP
Jeff Nesin
In the middle of the table, where sales charts and quarterly reports ought to be, rises a mountain range of Burger Kings best.
Eleganza
THE BEST DRESSED LIST
John Mendelssohn
There are absolutes in fashion.
Separating The Dirt From The Trash
Jim Feldman
Bless my cousin Judy. She worked at WABC Radio in New York in 1966, when the station was giving away some tickets TO SEE THE BEATLES at Shea Stadium in August. She got me a pair. I was 14. August 24th was the most exciting night of my life. My best friend Janie and I screamed and hollered along with everyone else; we didnt hear much music, maybe none.
Another Pinko Fantasy
Richard C. Walls
The mood this month is alienated—one goes to all the trouble to move to a near-suburb and finds that theres still no cable in sight. Meanwhile, the fact that commercial TV is so bad its funny isnt a particularly engaging joke anymore. Still, one is committed to writing an ostensibly humorous column about television so one tries, all the time wishing that one were outside playing in the mud, to temper ones crankiness with a hopefully not too heavy-handed irony.
CREEM DREEM
BILLY IDOL
Records
MASH NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND
Mitchell Cohen
Marshall Crenshaws first album was like a tuneful adaptation of an ad from the Voices personal/classified columns.
ROCK A RAMA
JULIO IGLESIAS — Julio (Columbia):: Menudo por las madres. In the romance languages, Iglesias projects a sleek sincerity and calculated intimacy (the female breathing that punctuates De Nina A Mujer" makes you wonder just what aspects of the child-to-woman transformation Julio is investigating), and this compilation of multi-lingual intl hits has such choice numbers as Amor," Nostalgie" and Ou Est Passee Ma Boheme?" (Ou indeed?).
Stars Cars
DAVE EDMUNDS
Has Dave been listening to Prince or what? You might imagine so from the sounds of his latest LP, what with the synthesizers and all. And now we see our hero with his own little red Corvettel Is he hoping to pick up girls or what? Heck, ol' Dave's known that rock 'n' roll is all about girls and cars all along!
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
How Low Can You Go? Rodney Bingenheimer, that serious and enduring scenemaker, received an engraved invitation to no-longer-baby Brooke Shields 18th birthday bash. So naturally Rodney booked an LT-11, handed the reins of his KROQ radio show over to the Bangles, and flew the friendly skies to the Apple to join the revelry.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down