February 1986

Letters

Please send your letters to: Mail Dept., CREEM Magazine P.O. Box P-1064 Birmingham, Ml 48012. (Whoops. Ed. was busy enjoying a few of the changes in his favorite magazine when he realized he’d only left himself two-thirds of a page for letters—his favorite section!

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

The new Billy Idol album, Whiplash Smile, is slated for a January release—and Idol is describing it as a very personal album, coming on the heels of his break-up with his girlfriend of seven years, Perri Lister. Some of the titles reflect that mood:

Features

WE’LL MEAT AGAIN

Dave DiMartino

Doin’ it Smiths-style.

John Cougar Mellencamp

Bill Holdship

Belmont Mall, John Cougar Mellencamp's beautiful new recording studio, is located in a pastoral farm area not far from John’s home in Bloomington, Indiana. It’s just down the road from the country church John recently used in his “Rain On The Scarecrow” video, and on ly minutes from the porch where he sat and played guitar for his “Lonely Of Night” video if you drive towards town, you’ll see the old rural stores, steakhouses and other images of pure Midwest Americana that some believe went out with the 1950s.

STRAIT TALK WITH MARK KNOPFLER

Liz Derringer

At presstime, Dire Straits’ Brother In Arms has reached the coveted number one spot on nationwide charts and doesn’t seem to want to leave. With the help of Sting’s now-famous “I want my MTV” line, “Money For Nothing" is breaking all-time record sales for the group.

Records

IF A DOG ANSWERS

Edouard Dauphin

Ever since he first slouched onto the pop music scene, back in the early ’70s, Tom Waits has evoked memories of beat generation heroes.

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

ROBERT CHRISTGAU

Truly repulsive music imposes the most stringent of aesthetic standards—who wants to listen if it’s just good? So while I’m sort of impressed by the (relative) accessibility of their first full-length LP—guitar that might actually win over some wayward metal freak seeking bizarre O-rated thrills—I must report that only “Lady Sniff,” punctuated by perfectly timed gobs, pukes, farts, belches, and Mexican radio, lives up to “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave.” Address: Box 433, Dearborn, Ml 481221.

45 REVELATIONS

KEN BARNES'

The vacation was swell, but I spent most of it plowing through about a thousand singles. The vinyl this autumn was a bumper crop; maybe the government should pay record companies not to release so many records—I can think of a few artists who could be rotated...or stand fallow for a few seasons.

ROCK • A • RAMA

This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Richard Riegel, Craig Zeller, Dave Segal, Jon Young, Richard C. Walls, Michael Davis, and John Mendelssohn. THE COLOUR FIELD Virgins And Philistines (Chrysalis) Like his old colleague Jerry Dammers of Special AKA, Terry Hall refines their shared ska origins a bit more each time out.

Eleganza

ON ROCK CRITICISM

John Mendelssohn

Betraying a shocking misperception of Eleganza as rock, rather than social, criticism.

1985 CREEM ROCK N ROLL READERS POLL BALLOT

By the blood o’ Jim Nabors! We’re back-in-action, asking you, dear reader, to tell us exactly why you feel this has been the hippest year since ’53! You’re now entitled to fill out this wonderfully abbreviated readers poll ballot and tell us how we’ve managed to touch your innermost soul with this incredible mag-o’-mags!

The Agony & THE ABC

Jim Farber

Can this be the look of love? ABC in 1985 look more like escapees from a Hanna-Barbera convention. Quite a change from the glamorous gold lame get-up they adopted for the debut elpee, which netted them two Top 20 singles and (wow!) a gold album.

Heart’s In The Right, Place

L.E Agnelli

Or if anybody had a Heart.

Jim Kerr Of Simple Minds

THOMPSON TWINS

Edouard Dauphin

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, with the sun shining through the burnt sienna gauze of air on Manhattan's 57th Street.

ROCK CHRONICLES 1985

J. Kordosh

Yes, 1985 was quite a year, as any three editors of CREEM will certainly verify—in fact, they’ll actually do so in this splendidly insightful recap of the year gone by. They’ll speak of the shows, the records, the books, the movies—everything that made 1985 one of the greatest years ever to not hurl yourself into the Mississippi from a thundering train packed with confused, bellowing cattle as the sluggish brutes headed for the slaughterhouse.

CREEMEDIA

J. Kordosh

If you’re looking for an expose on the Who—or merely another look at the big rock/big bucks gutter—you won’t find it in Horse’s Neck. Or perhaps you will, but only from a skewed angle, and only in an emotional—not a literal— sense. Undoubtedly this collection of 13 short stories, held together by Townshend’s horse-as-beauty (or truth) metaphor, smacks of the autobiographical.

PRIME TIME

Richard C. Walls

As I write, the move to rate rock records and the attendant hysteria are in remission—though, if the various parties involved (on both sides) are to be believed the malignancy should flare again, fairly soon. The first wave crested with a Senate hearing this past September.

MEDIA COOL

This Month’s Media Cool was written by Bill Holdship, J. Kordosh, and Dave Segal. PEPSI’S WALK THRU ROCK (Walk Thru Entertainment, Inc.) Walk Thru Entertainment, Inc. received a million-dollar corporate sponsorship from Pepsi to back its first undertaking which, supposedly, “captures the 30-year evolution of rock ’n’ roll.”

CREEM SHOWCASE

Generally, we at SHOWCASE like to present a variety of the newest—and therefore, the snazziest—rock equipment for the edification of you, the reader. This month we’ve taken a different approach. Scott K. Fish and Billy Cioffi look back on rock’s most influential drummers and guitarists, respectively—those players whose styles were so unique that they kept vitality and innovation alive.

Video Video

THE WASTELAND COMETH

Billy Altman

Video, like time, marches on.

CLIPS

WILLIE AND THE POOR BOYS (Passport Music Video) A surprisingly top-notch halfhour starring Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Andy Fairweather Low, Geraint Watkins, Micky Gee and a host of other good ol’ limeys. Despite Wyman’s blundering solo career—from the greatness of “In Another Land” to two stiff solo LPs to movie soundtracks to Stones historian to revivalist rocker—there is no denying this set’s lack of pretensions shows the aging bassist to be a fairly charismatic rocker.

NEWS BEATS

Sylvie Simmons

Paddy McAloon likes words like a dog likes lampposts, darting from one to the next, meandering back again, cocking his conversational leg to spray another shower of the things wherever they land. If McAloon’s conversation set out in a boat from Newcastle to Ireland it’d go via Africa with a few days off in Hawaii.

Backstage

Backstage

Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down