February 1987
CONTENTS
ROCK 'N' ROLL
This issue of CREEM marks Dave DiMartino’s last as our Editor-In-Chief. As longtime readers know, DiMartino has brought a new era of splendidness to this magazine and, in fact, the entire world o’ wood by-products—during his decades-long tenure here.
WINNERS, LOSERS & IGGY POP
Kris Needs
Day to day. Iggy Pop stares from a larger-than-life poster on my kitchen door.
LETTERS
SACRE ROUGE! We recently noted that the October 1986 issue of CREEM magazine included a Red Border Design on its cover. Time Incorporated is the owner of a federal trademark registration for the Red Border Design [Reg. No. 1,106,087 (copy enclosed)] and has used this distinctive Design on the cover of Time magazine for almost 60 years.
Records
AND FURTHERMORE...
Richard Riegel
Whether or not you like the new Iggy Pop album is inevitably going to depend upon your response to finding the Ig back in David Bowie’s clutches. Ah yes, the cultured Englishman is once again helping the inchoate Michigander attempt to realize that next-big-icon potential everybody’s anticipated from Iggy since the days of the Stooges.
TRUE STORIES
Gregg Turner
Samantha, a 32 yr-old paralegal from Wisconsin, cannot achieve orgasm.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
The proximate reason I cracked the jazz albums waiting patiently on my A shelf was context: confronting political exile Abdullah Ibrahim, pondering media here Wynton Marsalis, knocked for a loop by boho posers the Lounge Lizards, I needed a sense of their musical competition.
45 REVELATIONS
KEN BARNES
Sometimes there’s just no pleasing me. Usually I’m pretty easygoing, I like practically everything that comes out, listen to pop radio and enjoy it, and have to forego writing about dozens of records I’m fond of every month because there are just too many.
ROCK•A•RAMA
You could say that Nick Cave plays David Lee Roth to Crime and City Solution’s lame-o Van Hagar, except that Van-Halen-with-Roth were never as boring as BirthdayParty-with-Cave, and except that Nick’s latest solo excursion (his third, and like Roth’s first, all covers) actually beats David Lee’s.
GETTIN' INTO METAL
Rollo Dexter
[I’m sorry, all right? It’s been a very busy month. What with Brigitte’s second birthday party and making arrangements to interview Jetboy and The Wigmaker To The Stars for forthcoming columns and wondering why I never hear from Gail Warnings anymore, I haven’t had all the time in the world.
DAVID BYRNE GETS FIDGETY
Mark Muro
David Byrne is always at work on something, sometimes rock ’n’ roll.
Features
Tina Turner Chants!
Daniel Brogan
Forget the fright wig and fishnet stockings. Tina Turner is one of us.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
BIG COUNTRY'S BAGPIPE CURSE!
Karen Schlosberg
Things were swimming along in a British synthetic haze in the fall of ’82 when there issued this sound over the radio waves. It sounded familiar, warm, twangy and electric...oh, right—a guitar! With the demanding opening thunder of “Fields Of Fire,” Big Country staked another powerful claim for the vitality of rock ’n’ roll, and were entered in the Sincerity Sweepstakes (you know—the holy trinity of U2, Big Country and the Alarm, etc., etc., etc.).
RATT
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Motorhead, Treated "Whimsically"!
Sylvie Simmons
It’s old, it’s dark, it hides a thousand evils behind a facade of normality and drapes drawn against the sun. On a dull West London street it could be any old house, but it isn’t—it’s Motorhouse! Home of Lemmy, legendary Lemmy, the Lone Ranger of Metal and his tonto, Wurzel! A nasty little boy watches me walk up the front path, picking his nose.
Quicksilver: Q, Various Artists
Dave DiMartino
A month ago or so, I walked into a mall record store and looked under “Q.” I was looking for albums by Quicksilver Messenger Service. There weren’t any. Queen, sure. Quiet Riot, sure. But not even Anthology, Quicksilver’s double “greatest hits” set, was anywhere to be found. Later, in the new releases bin, I found one copy of Peace By Piece.
ROBERT CRAY: STRONG PERSUADER, STRONGER GUITARIST
Moira McCormick
Robert Cray, the acclaimed young bluesman who critics say is just about singlehandedly going to save that genre from certain extinction, is a little sick of being called the messiah. For one thing, he says, “I’m not worried about _ being the savior of this kind of music, because this music’s always going to be around.” More to the point, the Robert Cray Band isn’t just about.
More Greatest Albums Ever At Press Time!
Well, the readers spoke—and the editors fetched! Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into when we asked you to send us lists of your 10 “best” and/or favorite LPs of all time, along with a 100-words-or-less description of why you chose your number one pick.
CENTERSTAGE
Jeff Nesin
As night fell over this outdoor amphitheater only a few miles from the leafy glade of Prince Bruce, himself one of the legion of loyal keepers of the flame through the long years of legal banishment, the crowd buzzed with their individual and collective expectations of John Fogerty.
CREEMEDIA
Edouard Dauphin
The Dauph generally does his supermarket shopping in the dead of night. Sure, there’s only one checkout counter open, the clerk has a bone through his nose and the line of stupefied customers stretches all the way to the dumpster out back, but it’s the perfect time to peruse the tabloids and find out what the real world is up to.
PRIME TIME
Richard C. Walls
The other day a letter poured in from one of my many admirers. Though a little cryptic, it was, I assume, a response to something I’ve written lately. It said, in toto: “Mr. Richard Walls: John 3:16. Thank You, A Friend.” Well, it beats a death threat but still I found it a little irritating, particularly that “a friend” took it for granted, simply because I recently had the pleasure to write unkind things about Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Stryper, that I must be a biblical illiterate.
MEDIA COOL
Pornography is one of those things that many people have trouble talking about rationally— attitudes toward sex and sexual display are so emotionally fraught, so intermingled with fear and loathing that both pro and conners tend to talk in the absolutist terms of salvation and degradation.
Video Video
MEET ME ON SOUTH STREET
Billy Altman
One thing that I’ve noticed lately in regard to the quickly-becoming-not-so-revolutionary-anymore world of rock videos is that a major factor contributing to the medium’s recent tedium.
CLIPS
In the great Midwest, while bands like Pere Ubu, the Dead Boys and the Suicide Commandos were getting all the nationwide press, the late-’70s punk explosion was probably best typified by Lansing, Michigan’s outstanding Your Mother—who did all the dirty work and got none of the glory.
NEWBEATS
Karen Schlosberg
The great thing about rock ’n’ roll is that just when you think you’ve run out of great adjectives with which to describe a band— and great bands about which to use those adjectives—another group comes along that inspires you to try again. One annoying bit that comes from being on this end of the typewriter, however, is the habit writers have of using other bands to describe the sound of a new one.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down