MAY 1985
Contents
AW, MOM...NOT IN FRONT OF THE GUYS! Each month, a usual procedure of mine is to pick up at the local supermarket an issue of CREEM, along with Circus, Parade, etc. (If Ratt is in that month’s issue.) I am a 46-year-old woman in the marvelous field of medicine, fairly intellectual, raised four God-fearing children who were never in jail, into drugs or created the types of problems many unfortunate parents must confront.
Christgau Consumer Guide
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
“Les Ambassadeurs” (Rounder) Though it’s billed as “dance music from West Africa” (these folkie labels, anything for a buck), what you notice is more for the ears than the feet—the emotional range of Mali tenor Salif Keita, a far more stirring singer than the renowned Rochereau, and the way Kante Manfila’s guitar anchors synth here and horns there.
Rock 'n' Roll News
Our nominee for all-time patron of the rock arts has to be Saul Zaentz, the main force behind Fantasy Records, the former label of Creedence Clearwater Revival. After being in litigation for some nine years with John Fogerty, Fantasy emerged with a substantial chunk of Fogerty’s songwriting royalties for the 5,000 or so hit songs he penned while with CCR.
Creem Profiles
W.A.S.P
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
CHASING OUT SOME HOODOO THERE!
John Neilson
NEW YORK—First the bad news: Rock ‘n’ Roll is dead. (Anyone who has ever read the NME or seen Van Halen in concert already knows this.) Now the good news: A bunch of mad ghouls from Kangaroo-land called the Hoodoo Gurus have arrived, and they’re having none of that.
GREAT SCOTT?
Harold DeMuir
NEW YORK—Mike Scott, the 25-year-old Scottish singer/ songwriter/guitarist/producer who leads the Waterboys, balks at the suggestion that his band has anything in common with such Celtic bootstompers as Big Country and the Alarm. “We’re definitely not another Big-Guitar band,” he disclaims.
LONG RYDERS ADOPT THE MISSIONARY POSITION
Kevin Knapp
DETROIT—“We definitely feel like we’re on a mission,” declares Long Ryders drummer Greg Sowders. “We feel that it’s something so important that people don’t forget that they have a real good heritage of music and that you can play it and you don’t have to sound old—you can make it sound fresh and new.
BRILEY’S DANGEROUS!
Laura Fissinger
NEW YORK—CREEM’S PROFILES OF DANGEROUS PEOPLE, #9: MARTIN BRILEY PROFESSION: Songwriter, singer, guitarist, bassist, arranger, rock (sort of) star, wearer of berets. AGE: Old enough to have known better, but he did it anyway. NATIONALITY:
JOIN THE MINISTRY
Moira McCormick
CHICAGO—It was in January of 1984, a scant two weeks after his local-phenomenon technofunk duo Ministry had signed to Arista Records, that Al Jourgensen found out the rainbow’s-end Big Recording Contract he’d coveted so long more resembles the business end of a barnyard animal.
POWER STATION SOARS
Laura Fissinger
We talk to lostof rock stahhha here at CREEM, right?
THE WORST NEW ACTS OF THE '80s
Anastasia Finn
THE JIMMY PAGE INTERVIEW PART 2
Chris Welch
Page onstage 1985.
Calender
ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME
Cynthia Rose
It’s easy to forget that the way media silently, relentlessly re-write actual history is a central fact of life today. Whether you work within or without the worlds of TV, radio and print, their continuous colorful technobabble insidiously suckers you in further than you can realize.
Creemedia
Boy Howdy’s Ten Worst Films Of 1984
Edouard Dauphin
Did they hand out the Oscars yet?
KABOOM!
Richard C. Walls
DOOMSDAY UPDATE: I hadn’t planned on watching Threads, the British The Day After which had its American TV premiere on WTBS, Atlanta’s cable “superstation” (they ran it a few times, adhering to the cable law “never show anything only once”—it’ll probably show up on non-cable TV before the year is out) for a number of reasons, not the least being that it was the British The Day After, i.e., we’ve seen all this already, right?
A LITTLE STRAIGHT TALK
Billy Altman
You’ll have to forgive us here at Video Video if we start this month’s report from the cathode trenches on a somewhat serious note. But please believe us when we say that we are just as astounded as you probably are to see us announce that we have seen a music video recently which appears to have been created with the idea of making those who come into contact with it not only watch, but perhaps think and feel as well.
FRONT ROW CENTER
Bill Holdship
Haven’t seen Stop Making Sense yet, but with few exceptions, rock concerts generally don’t translate very well to the big or small screen. A concert is invariably the event in itself, and films often suffer from the “you hadda be there” problem.
HE’S ALL CRAZEE NOW!
Edouard Dauphin
One night about a year ago, The Dauph spent five-and-a-half hours closeted in a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio, with David Lee Roth, who remarked at the time—we were discussing musical inspiration— that “I can’t do it without a frame of reference.
LED COMPANY!
Jon Young
Seeing as how the debut of the Firm is a simple, straightforward piece of work, we might as well get right to the point: This record stinks! Considering who’s involved, it’s a total outrage! Whether or not you’re a fan of Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers, you’ve gotta respect their track records.
JEWELS 'N' JAZZ
Richard C. Walls
SADE Diamond Life (Portrait) JOHN MARTYN Sapphire (Island) Sade (pronounced Shar-DAY) is the stage name of 25-year-old Nigerian-born London-bred Helen Folasade Adu and right now she’s very hot in the U.K., which is sometimes a prologue to U.S. success and sometimes not.
ROCK A RAMA
PREFAB SPROUT Swoon (Epic) And this is even stranger: vaguely Donald Fagenish bedsitter cooljazz folk, but from Celtic types who’ve never been to Levittown (never even driven by it in their dog carts). Haute-sophomoric lyrical brainteasers from one “Paddy McAloon,” tarted up with swoopy swoopy Roche-hives vocals courtesy of Wendy Smith.
45 PEVELATIONS
Ken Barnes
I always eagerly anticipate a new music year (it’s still January as I write this), and there always seems to be a record released right off the bat that throws the year into gear. Last year it was Van Halen’s “Jump,” and this year it seems to be John Fogerty’s “The Old Man Down The Road.”
ACOUSTIC OR ELECTRONIC?
Scott K. Fish
OK. You’re a teenaged kid. Either you don’t own a drum set, or the settle-for drum set you own (a settle-for set is when you don’t have the bread to buy what you really want, so you settle-for something else) is beaten to death. It’s 1985 and you’re ready to shell out perhaps thousands of dollars to upgrade your present gear, or to buy your new dream drum set.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down