January 1984
Contents
LOU REED SINGS GILBERT O’SULLIVAN? As I write this, ’83 is yawning to a close and it occurs to me that I should write to commemorate 10 years of my reading CREEM. That’s right: first issue I read was September ’73. Most of the current staff was not writing for CREEM back then (some would surmise that most of your staff was not yet born).
Christgau Consumer Guide
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
JAMES BROWN: “Bring It On” (Augusta Sound):: The fast side is honorable and dispensable—great title riff plus filler, nothing anyone who owns some early-’70s JB is likely to need or even want, though neophytes will dance to it now. The slow side comprises the three strongest covers Brown’s released since he stuck a classic “Kansas City” onto Everybody's Doin’ The Hustle in 1975.
Rock 'n' Roll News
After years of onstage differences and occasionally bitter sibling rivalry, Dave Davies has finally, at presstime, left the Kinks and his brother Ray. DD’s immediate plans are to plug his recent Warner Bros. album and concentrate on building his solo career.
The Beat Goes on
Rick Johnson
DETROIT—This could be a feature story. Perhaps it even should be a feature story, but I’m not paid to make that judgment. It seems that the band of the future deserves a feature story. Of course, I’m not a future writer—I’m a present writer. And as a present writer I’m no gift, either.
TALES OF AMERICA'S VIDEO FIXXATION
Kevin Knapp
I'd arrived late for interview with the Fixx, prior to their Detroit show opening for A Flock Of Seagulls. I was shown into a dressing room where lead Fixxer Cy Currin was busily shaving the blond stubble from his chin. He hardly seemed the anemic-looking weasel that peers from the back cover of Shuttered Room, their first album.
Carly Simon: Free, White, & Pushing 40
Nick Tosches
On the Monday morning on which I was to visit Carly Simon, I picked up the New York Post to see what number had come out. It was 071, which meant nothing to me. Browsing backward from the Belmont charts through the rest of the paper, I saw Carly’s face beaming forth from the Post's gossipy "Page Six.”
DOES IT CALIFORNIA STYLE
RJ Smith
I just got my current issue of Processed World (“The magazine with the bad attitude”), and it’s a winner. Written by and for the shitheels who get stuck behind the fast food counters and word processors of the world, people who might once have been called working stiffs except that’s a condescending anachronism— Processed World is for Dead End Kids, and unless I miss my mark this means MOST OF YOU.
Creem Profiles
DAVID BYRNE
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
JOHN COUGAR, ROCK 'STAR'?
Bill Holdship
My stomach was in my throat again, and I was seriously contemplating murder. The victim would be editor-in-chief of the rag you presently hold in your hands. “How about a free trip to interview John Cougar?” he’d asked. “Great!” was my initial reply.
Q&A WITH Y&T: It Only Figures
Sylvie Simmons
If happiness is a warm gun, Y&T must be on the point of gleeful delirium, straddled across a cannon in the hot California sun. It’s what we in the business call a photo session; it’s what a bunch of bums suckling on generic liquor on the grass call “hey waddafuck you doin’ up there man”; it’s what Y&T call meeting the press an hour before their show down the road at the Santa Monica Civic.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
Calendar
HIGH TECH, LOW TECH, NO TECH!
Cynthia Rose
Technically speaking, it’s autumn here— and that’s the time when promoters, publishers and pluggers bestir themselves. It’s already served as the signal for Capital Radio and the Institute For Contemporary Arts to inflict another ICA Rock Week upon the public. This one (entitled “Art Rock Of The ’80s: Pop Goes the Easel”) features few entirely new bands—Flesh For Lulu, Beach Authority and Quando Quango have dented the consciousness either at Leeds Futurama or down here in town—and no one extraordinary.
HAIRY MONSTERS
John Mendelssohn
A couple of issues back, Eleganza admitted that it was at a loss for what to tell you to do with your hair. Wear it long, Eleganza said, and you’re apt to be perceived, depending upon the frequency with which you have it, uh, styled—if you have it styled—as either some pathetic old flower child, a heavy metal cretin, or, if you still have it styled quite frequently and show your stylist a snapshot of Rod Stewart for inspiration when you do, as a shag Tory.
ANIMALS' THIRD INVASION: ERIC BURDON, CHARMER?
Richard Riegel
As we roll into uptown Cincinnati on our way to the Animals show at Music Hall, it hits me up side of the head that this 1983 reunion of the original group, both to record and to tour, is much more of a second-chance gift from the karmic types above than I ever expected (or maybe even deserved).
Growing up "Normal" With Altered Images
Richard Grabel
At the end of my interview with Altered Images, singer Clare Grogan lets me in on a secret. She’s extremely nearsighted. In fact, so is the whole band. But she doesn’t wear contact lenses. So onstage, I say to her, you can’t see the faces in the crowd.
Stars Cars
VINCE NEIL
STILL NOT OVER FOR THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Jeff Nesin
What was that he said? “No time to wallow in the mire.”
ROCK • A • RAMA
DAVID THOMAS & THE PEDESTRIANS—Variations On A Theme (Sixth International/Rough Trade):: When David Thomas, Anton Fier and Richard Thompson get together, things get, uh, different. Thomas works in more easily-digestible forms than he did in Pere Ubu while Thompson gets to work with one of rock’s most creative percussionists, well outside the boundaries of his own British folk-rock forms.
Creemedia
MTV Or Not MTV
Richard Riegel
Have you ever wondered why MTV veejay Martha Quinn got her hair cut short?
Media COOL
Bill Holdship
LOVING JOHN by May Pang & Henry Edwards (Warner Books):: The writing here is dreadful, and it’s awfully dull for a book being hyped as an expose. Lennon never really lied to the public, so it’s kind of hard to dig up any real dirt where he’s concerned.
A MUSICIAN'S CHRISTMAS SHOPPING GUIDE
P.J. Gillberger
Keeping musicians happy is relatively easy. Give them something that makes noise—the stranger the better—and they’re off happily into a comer for days. So, as yuletide rolls around, consider treating your musical friends and/or loved ones to a nifty noisemaker.
THE E-V SUPERSTAR CONTEST
Here's your opportunity to win and win big in CREEM Magazine and Electro-Voice's Superstar contest! The lucky winner will receive one ElectroVoice PL-80 microphone and one custom Electro-Voice satin tour jacket! The super-cardioid PL-80, designed with computer-assisted FF-T technology, has better gain-before feedback than virtually every other dynamic microphone currently on the market.
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
Should I Stay Or Should I Go? They say that breaking up is hard to do, and if you ask the Clash, it gets harder all the time. Why don’t I let you, gentle readers, decide: Depending on who you talk to, the Clash party line reads that Mick Jones was given the heave-ho because he wasn’t living up to the original ideals of the band.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down