April 1984
CREEM
Hey dudes! What is going on at your company? Have you checked out or what? I have discovered something 1 knew everyone should be made aware of—Boy Howdy nixed for J.J. Kramer!? You see, I’ve been reading CREEM regularly for one year. The first issue I picked up was with Robert Plant on the cover (Oct. 82).
Creem Profiles
QUIET RIOT
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
ABC: “Beauty Stab” (Mercury):: I don’t get these complaints that Martin Fry has abandoned his shallow but ingratiating pop-craft for a brave/pretentious but/and ill-advised stab at social significance. Except for “The Look Of Love,” a supercatchy fluke that apparently confused people, instant hooks weren’t how the first album worked either, and his shallowness was always more apparent than real.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Eurythmics’ vocalist and tuff cookie Annie Lennox’s throat problems have become so severe, she’s off to Vienna, Austria, to see a voice specialist. English medics have disagreed as to whether she’s developing throat nodules—which sometimes require surgery—pr just been overdoing things.
THE BEAT GOES ON
J. Kordosh
BOSTON — You’re Michael Gregory Jackson from Northampton, Mass., and you want to be a pop star. What do you do? Well, first you drop the Jackson from your name so that you’re no longer confused with the pop institution of the same surname (and to whose voice yours bears some slight, sweet resemblance).
BLONDE WITH BOTTLE: DEBBIE HARRY
Cynthia Rose
Late fall, 1983: a borrowed flat in Manhattan’s West Village. Sprawled across from me on a sagging queensize bed is Deborah Harry.
WANTED: 1 NEW IMAGE (WHOLESOME POPSTARS NEED NOT APPLY)
Karen Schlosberg
Once upon a time there were three English lads who thought it would be a lark to form a pop band.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
Hi there, out there! You think you’re tired of bad George Orwell jokes? Well, you should be over here where Nineteen YouKnow-What first met the keys of a typewriter. Still, I can report that the rock Establishment’s first attempt to capitalize on the date—the Institute of Contemporary Art’s 1984 Week — managed to cause a very real riot.
Features
DURAN DURAN AM WHAT THEY YAM
Chris Salewicz
And that's the snakes...
BENCHPRESS
Billy Altman
As one not generally regarded as an easily impressible type, I would like to hereby confess to having been dutifully inspired to open-mouthed awe by the incredible sights emanating from my television set at approximately 12:15 a.m. on the evening of December 4, 1983.
THE BIG TEST ON BIG COUNTRY
Laura Fissinger
In our usual farsighted fashion, we figured out what you need before you did. After reading Big Country features in every magazine, newspaper, and periodical printed in the English language, the last thing you need is one more "impassioned young men" article.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
AC/DC AND NOTHING CAN HARM THEM!
they super?
Are they super? My God, they're immense.
REVOLUTION, AMERICAN STYLE: BILLY IDOL BATTLES THE BLAND
Toby Goldstein
Never mind the decline and fall of the Roman Empire...Billy Idol is about to introduce fear and trembling into one of the Bronx’s few remaining tranquil enclaves— Fordham University. While the neighborhood surrounding it gradually turned into an armed camp of Darwinian underdogs, the college’s gothic spires and acres of greenery remained unmarred by gang wars or spray paint, And the fresh-faced students are only just now superimposing the occasional “new wave” accessory over years of penny loafers.
UP IN ARMS
Tony Paris
Outside Dallas’s Reunion Hall, the green lights of the mammoth sports arena’s upcoming attractions signs flash: “British Invasion Tomorrow 8 PM.” Yet inside the brick and steel building the “Invasion,” a/k/a the Ronnie Lane Appeal for ARMS, is well underway in the form of rehearsals.
Creemedia
Boy Howdy's 10 Worst Movies Of 1983
Edouard Dauphin
It’s that time of year again.
CREEM DREEM
JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP
Records
CHEST HAIR AND SYNTHESIZERS FIRST
Michael Davis
The hometown view of any band is bound to be different from the image it projects to the rest of the world.
ROCK • A • RAMA
FIRETONES—Trouble (Warner Sisters EP):: Ever notice all those frayed hunks of truck tires laying in the freeway? Well, the Firetones happen to be the shredded tread of the old Rubber City Rebels, a biased-ply band from Akron who burnt the gummy stuff to little popular avail in at least two previous go-rounds of “punkrock.”
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
Lone Wolf: Peter Wolf seems to be feeling no pain after his astonishing but honorable discharge from the J. Geils band last fall. Although Wolf is said to harbor no malice towards most of the guys, I wouldn’t invite Peter and J. Geils to the same soiree— although partying is not what Wolf has on his mind (in fact he hasn’t been spotted with any of his leggy femmes for quite a while.
BACKSTAGE