April 1987

CONTENTS

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

Guitarist Bob Stinson is no longer with the Replacements, who will evidently continue as a three-piece. As we go to press, the ’Mats are at work on their next album for Sire—they’ve returned to Minneapolis’s Blackberry Way Studios, the site of their earlier recordings for Twin/Tone, including the masterful Let It Be.

CHRISSIE HYNDE, WITHOUT CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

deborah frost

There was the time, in 1975, Blue Oyster Cult was trying to have a peaceful dinner in Paris and this chick walked across the tables and their dinners...

Creem Profiles

OMD

(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)

LETTERS

On the surface your letter (CREEM, November 1986) justifying your campaign to censor rock was surprisingly convincing. I’d almost be ready to fall for your concerned mommy act if it weren’t for what your group says they really have in mind.

RECORDS

Jon Young

Amidst all the jabber about a resurgence in American music, have you noticed how timid a lot of the bands seem? Without mentioning names, it’s obvious our home-grown rising stars often have too strong a sense of history, think too much, and, above all, don’t know how to get down.

PRIME CUT

Billy Altman

With a client list that has included, over the last few years, the likes of Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Marshall Crenshaw, the BoDeans and Peter Case, TBone Burnett has rather emphatically established himself as one of the most important producers fighting the good fight for rock ’n’ roll in the 1980s.

HOW MANY LABELS MAKE FOUR?

Michael Davis

Traditionally—and what band is more tradition-minded than these guys?—the Kinks have always done good work when they’ve changed record labels. Muswell Hillbillies was probably their strongest album for RCA, while Sleepwalker, their Arista debut, sounded better than any of its immediate predecessors.

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

ROBERT CHRISTGAU

The wisecracking arrogance of this record is the only rock ’n’ roll attitude that means diddley right now. With the mainstream claimed by sincere Craftspersons and the great tradition of Elvis Presley, Esquerita, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Madonna sucked into a cultural vacuum by nitwit anarchists and bohemian sourpusses, three white jerkoffs and their crazed producer are set to go platinum-plus with “black” music that’s radically original, childishly simple, hard to play, and accessible to anybody with two ears and an ass.

45 REVELATIONS

Swift kicks in the year-end (1986 in review): 1986 may have been the year I finally, after 26 years of devoted listening, started to sour on Top 40 radio. I’m sure it’s temporary—I still had plenty of CHR faves last year, and ’86s’ roster of hits is far superior to the entire decade of the 70s.

ROCK • A • RAMA

Stop the presses, Bob, this one’s THE best rock ’n’ roll album of 1986—it’s got Springsteen and Thelonious Monster beat seven ways from Sunday! Soon after this album was recorded, (in NYC, April 1979) Bangs and Birdland parted company, with the band mutating into the Rattlers, even as the brutally wordy Bangs clutched his beloved fantasies of betrayal (takes two) to his breast and trudged off to Texas.

ELEGANZA

John Mendelssohn

We’re reading a recent Southern California edition of BAM, the free West Coast pop periodical to which so many of your fave CREEM contributors contribute so much. Rather than this particular issue’s wry look back at the ’70s, though, we’re looking at local clubs’ advertisements.

BRAGGING WITH BILLY

Ira Robbins

For a homely socialist who—literally— couldn’t get arrested in New York a few years ago, self-described spokesperson-for-a-generation Billy Bragg has done alright for himself. “My mum’ll be getting the third gold record by Christmas, I should imagine.”

BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE OPTS OUT

NDY HUGHES

As I walk through the doors of the cavernous nightclub that will be home to Big Audio Dynamite and friends for the next eight hours, I’m greeted by the usual visuals that accompany a touring band. There’s the dance floor littered with flight cases and spare guitars, clusters of fans chatting quietly together, waiting for the soundcheck to end so they can get their albums autographed, roadies walking purposefully towards the stage carrying rolls of cable, and a leather jacketed Mick Jones walking towards me carrying a bunch of roses.

GEORGIA SATELLITES

Jeff Tamarkin

But so much for nostalgia. Rick Richards and his band, the Georgia Satellites, don’t have much time for that right now. No looking backwards when your own gold record might be just around the next backstage corner. But that’ll have to wait until Dan Baird, the other guitarist and founder of the Georgia Satellites, finishes a little reminiscing of his own.

CYNDI LAUPER: DOING THAT PRIMITIVE THING

Sylvie Simmons

She would have been born in the back of a New York taxi if they hadn’t crossed her mother’s legs and stuffed her back in ’til the hospital.

CREEM APRIL 1987 BERLIN

THE 1986 READERS POLL

Well, another year—make that another wonderful year—has gone by and, as always, it’s time for the results of another wonderful CREEM Readers Poll! It’s our 11th annual survey, for those of you who keep track of such things, and we can honestly say that this year’s results are possibly the best we’ve ever had, maybe.

Into The Groove with Debbie Harry

Kris Needs

Between 1977 and '82, hers was the face that melted a million hearts and the voice that creamed a string of hits for Blondie.

CREEM SHOWCASE

Dan Hedges

He’s the Baryshnikov of the bass. The da Vinci of da bottom end. As the nuclear-strength lower register of David Lee Roth’s thrills-n-spilis kamikazi, bassist Billy Sheehan cops equally from Bach, Boeing, Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton. The proverbial pickless wonder, he’s got the fastest fingers in the neighborhood.

NEW GEAR

SEYMOUR DUNCAN 60 WATT CONVERTIBLE AMP Already well-known for their pickups, Seymour Duncan is expanding their amplifier line. Their new 60 watt convertible amp incorporates a two channel design allowing the use of any of 13 Seymour Duncan modules for customizing each channel�s sound.

TAKE A WALK ON THE SYNTH SIDE

There was a time when state-of-the-art rock keyboards began with Fafisa and ended with Vox. These days, manufacturers like Yamaha, Roland, and Korg are unveiling microchip-based instruments on an almost hourly basis, with on-board capabilities stopping just short of being able to perform brain surgery and chew gum at the same time.

CENTERSTAGE

Dave Segal

It�s amazing that Iggy�s simply living, isn�t it? That he has an LP in Billboard�s Top 50 or 100, is touring and getting heavy MTV play boggles the minds of historians everywhere, I�m sure. As happy as I am for Iggy�s comeback, I can�t help feeling that the whole Blah Blah Blah package irritates Ig something awful.

CREEMEDIA

Daniel Brogan

Don�t worry if you missed Chuck Berry�s 60th birthday concert in St. Louis last fall. The film version—coming soon to a theater near you— will be a lot better. Things went so badly during the first of two shows that Keith Richards had but one thought as he left the stage: "I wanted to kill him.�

THEY WED, THEREFORE THEY AM

Rick Johnson

Ever since TV Guide awarded The New Newlywed Game the double honor of naming it �The Worst� and �The Dregs," enflamed world opinion has demanded a re-evaluation of the most important game show of the century, i mean, people were just getting used to Mariel Hemingway�s televised assertion that "there�s more to life than cheeseburgers� when the Clydes at Guide went and pulled our collective chain.

PRIME TIME

Richard C. Walls

�ANOTHER WORLD� PRE-EMPTED!: As I write this in early December, the Reagan administration is slowly unraveling, a spectacle which leaves me tickled pink. Part of that tickled feeling may just be nostalgia—this is my second unraveling— but part of it is a realization that U.S. government funds to the Contra terrorists will likely be finally terminated.

MEDIA COOL

Geraldo Rivera is such a jerk. I used to think he was a cool guy, but the man has proven to be so self-righteous and full of himself that he makes you want to puke. This was the TV special that featured �real live� drug busts as they actually happened, giving Geraldo a chance to act out his junior G-man and Miami Vice fantasies for the camera.

This Month In TV History

Video Video

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Billy Altman

The last time I broached the topic of politics in this space was back in CREEM's April 86 issue, when I put in my two cents worth of dissenting opinion on the subject of Sun City.

THAT WAS NOW, THIS IS THEN

John Kordosh

Eighteen year after its theater release, the enigmatic Head—the Monkees� only feature film—is available on video. That demand for the film was fueled by the Monkees� bizarre 1986 success is unquestionable. What�s open for question (again) is the film�s worth and, in a way, the ultimate worth of the Monkees themselves.

CLIPS

I was prepared to be ambivalent about this video and, by gumbo, I am. It features 13 bands from a number of slots on the Great Hardcore Mandala: groups like Broken Bones, U.K. Subs, D.O.A., the Crumb-suckers, G.B.H. and more, including five I�ve never heard of.

NEWBEATS

Harold DeMuir

Andy and Ivor Perry, the politically-precocious Mancunian brothers who lead Easterhouse, relish a good argument. I know this because, A) Andy likens the band�s appeal to that of a heated adversarial exchange, and B) Andy and Ivor spend much of our allotted interview time (and then some) squabbling over philosophical technicalities, with the sort of unrestrained, superficially-venomous fervor that only siblings seem capable of.

Backstage

Backstage

Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down