December 1986
CONTENTS
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
The Queen Fan Is Dead Dept.: Thomas McGuigan, 21, was stabbed to death during a Queen performance at the Knebworth Festival in England. The incident occured during a fight near the front of the stage; four people were arrested. According to an ambulance crew member, help was delayed by the sheer mass of humanity near the stage (over 120,000 in attendance) and the festival was “badly organized” and “too crowded.”
Features
THE HEAD ON THE CURE
DAVE DIMARTINO
Imagine being sent back through time!
LETTERS
I thought that someone had put Time magazine in my mailbox by mistake when I saw your “new border” around the cover. I hate the border. The border must go. The border is a dirty place down here. Send the border back to the border. Love the magazine—HATE the border.
RECORDS
Jon Young
Cool name for a band, isn't it? Well, the record’s even better! The latest entry in the Music That Matters sweepstakes, England’s Screaming Blue Messiahs occasionally recall the combat theatrics of the Clash or the wordy tirades of Midnight Oil, but they’re not really like either.
THE CHRIST CONSUMER GUIDE
He loves a good lyric, and if he cant write them or order them up, he has only to ransack his record collection for oldies that are just strange enough. Mixing country blues with Cab Callow, Peetie Wheatstraw’s murderous “Gangster’s Blues” with a supremely mournful country song called “Collins Cave,” he goes for narrative and gets it.
45 REVELATIONS
KEN BARNES
Nothing emerged from the pack dramatically enough to run away with Single of the Month honors, but there’s a pleasantly varied pile of songs from many styles and locales. Australia, for instance, contributed two double-sided juggernauts.
ROCK•A•RAMA
No, it’s not a full reunion; it’s basically a project co-led by original Quicksilver guitarist-vocalist Gary Duncan and ex-Hot Tuna drummer Sammy Piazza, which means (1.) you don’t get to enjoy John Cipollina’s slinky leads, but (2.) you don’t have to put up with Dino Valenti either.
ELEGANAZA
John Mendelssohn
When I was nine and twenty, the four members of the rock group I’d led as a younger sod decided we’d far from gotten our money’s worth out of the extremely foolish-looking sequined overalls we’d had made for us in the last days of our inglorious career, and reunited for a two-night stand at Hollywood’s extremely inglorious Starwood club.
1986 CREEM READERS POLL BALLOT
Yoo-hoo! Time to vote! Yessiree, oh readers ours, it’s once again the most dramatic moment of the year, as you get to cast your vote for the year in music! Ooooh!! Yes, we here at CREEM headquarters will be a-tallyin’ your votes, scoffing at your opinions and, in general, making fun of you, laughing merrily at how little of our all-encompassing wisdom you’ve absorbed! What must you do to join the funfest? Shave your head!! Then, of course, scan the mighty “ballot,” fill it in and mail it to:
CREEM QUESTIONNAIRE
1. How old are you? 2. Are you male or female? M F 3. How long have you been reading CREEM? 4. What other music magazines do you read? 5. How often do you buy CREEM? 6. What attracts you most to CREEM? Rate on a scale of one to three (one - least, 3 = most).
Creem Profiles
THE BANGLES
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Features
ON THE (HARD) BEAT WITH RUN-DMC
Toby Goldstein
Run, DMC and Jam Master Jay are mad as hell, not about to take it anymore, and quite ready to let you know about the bad rap their rap is suffering.
HATS OFF TO DONNIE 38 SPECIAL
Billy Altman
“All right, guys, let’s have the truth,” your intrepid reporter says to Don Barnes and Jeff Carlisi, co-lead guitarists and chief songwriters of 38 Special, as the dishes are cleared from our table at the fashionable midtown Manhattan restaurant where ace A&M publicist Audrey Strahl has brought us for an evening of good Indian food and equally good rock ’n’ roll conversation.
FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS
I LIKE THE
Bill Holdship
One of the worst aspects of rock ’n’ roll is that it’s often centered on this debate as to whether something is “cool” or not. Taste, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder—but it sure makes for humorous observations today when someone uses musical phlegm like Depeche Mode as a “cool” status symbol. Besides, if rock ’n’ roll really is (was?) the populist artform and anyone can do it, then “cool,” like pretentiousness, shouldn’t even enter the picture.
Bananarama These Charming Girls
Iman Lababedi
I was truly disgusted to read of an Arizona retail company with 800 outlets, which banned all rock magazines, including CREEM, after pressure from the New Christian Right. Some TV minister deemed it fit to use the pulpit for personal politics.
The Moody Blues Are Older Than You
Sylvie Simmons
“Sometimes we’re a little misunderstood and people think that maybe we have a lot of answers which we don’t have. Really,” Justin Hayward leans forward in the office chair; he’s neat and tidy, airbrushed almost, “we’re just singers in a rock ’n’ roll band, and people credit us with a lot of answers to, you know, the Secret Of The Universe.
CENTERSTAGE
Bill Holdship
It all boils down to the collapse and decay of the British Empire. You could blame it on Margaret Thatcher. Or on Joy Division. Or on dreary Manchester and Northern England. Whatever the symbol, it has everything to do with the sorry state of Great Britain.
Boy Howdy's Guide To Drums '86: Part Two
Dan Hedges
This is part two of Boy Howdy’s annual drum guide. Not only does it feature the latest & greatest in drum gear—but an interview with fab drummer Mark Brzezicki from Big Country! Nothing on shrimp creole, though. Enjoy! AQUARIAN The Anaheim-based firm, Aquarian Accessories has come up with a line of drumsticks that should open a road-bleary eye or two.
CREEMEDIA
In case you hadn’t noticed, there's a Plasmatics revival of sorts going on. Part of it can be attributed to the MOR (!) success of former Plasma Jean Beauvoir's Drums Along The Mohawk album, whose "feel the heat" was used as the hate theme in Cobra—but most of the movement has been spearheaded by no less a personage than that dumbsel of distress.
PRIME TIME
Richard C. Walls
THE DEVIL AND DAVE DiMARTINO: Anyone fortunate enough to be watching CBS Morning News, at 8:40 a.m. last July 18th was treated to the spectacle of our beloved CREEM editor Dave “checks-go-out-next-week” DiMartino engaging in civilized discourse with the Hulk Hogan of Evangelical cathodeChristians, Jimmy Swaggart.
MEDIA COOL
Have you checked out the ultimate statement on 20th Century situation comedies yet? This tale of a typical TV family with a little girl (Vicki) who, unbeknownst to the neighborhood, is actually a robot (“she’s fantastic/made of plastic/microchip here ’n’ there” goes the song) is not a parody or even a parody of a 芤parody.
Video Video
GHOST STORY
Billy Altman
I guess it was around the middle of June on a David Letterman Show when it really hit me.
CLIPS
Like a John Coltrane solo in the middle of a Brahms concerto, Test Dept. rip through conventional notions of music and video with the subtlety of an elephant in heat. Turning the notion of concrete soundtrack music inside out, these adventurous British industrialists pound, hammer, drill and yell their way into audio transcendence, accompanied here by as ugly, violent and unsettling a collection of visual images as you’d hope to find this side of a splatter-film.
NEW BEATS
Jeff Tamarkin
Backstage, after a show, Peter Case is talking baseball. The game is one of Case’s passions: he tells of his recent visit to Cooperstown and zealously endorses a book he’s been reading on the road, Philip Roth’s excellent “history” of the Patriot Baseball League, The Great American Novel.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down