SEPTEMBER 1987

CONTENTS

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

They’re Just Trying Dept.: Now that the Monkees Live 1967 and Missing Links albums are out, you can anticipate a new studio album in August, then two more LPs of unreleased stuff later this year. The Billy Desk is back! A dedicated bunch, it seems they’ve been following their favorite Billy—Idol, that is— on his rootin’, tootin’ tour of these States.

The Pleasure Is All Yours: The REPLACEMENTS

Bill Holdship

For the most part, I hate rock ’n’ roll.

LETTERS

Just a note of thanks to you guys, and especially Rick Johnson, for your inciteful (sic—Ed.) article on mags in the June issue of CREEM. What puzzles us here at Hit Parader, however, is that we are quite proud of the boredom-threshold test induced by our layouts.

BIG MAC ATTACK

Laura Fissinger

Yowling lackadaisically, scowlingly, unexpressively and prismatically— even adverbally—into the soft metal breeze that’s been shakin' hands with the night, 2 + 2 is firmly on my mind along with a wild and complex plan to bump off the Beastie Boys and any of their collegiate clones that might get in my way, I rise from my sweathardened white Corinthian leather hammock, caress Misrilou, my fave nymphette, who’s seated adoringly at my Puma-encased feet, watch as the red dingle balls nestled in her voidblack cornrows sway gently, and ponderously (well, hell, if you’d just drank yourself into a manic stupor so weird that you think of yourself as a 350 lb. iguana stoned on liquid paper, trying—desperately I might add—to get MTV on your stove, then you too might feel a bit prodigious) try to focus what’s left of my...m...y... my attention span onto these latest wispy intoxications of sound from the Mac...Fleetwood Mac, that is!

BUY ME!

Craig Zeller

Can you beat it? Marshall Crenshaw makes impassioned rock ’n’ roll, is a wizard with pop dynamics, and remains well aware of the fact that the magic’s in the music. Yet he’s a virtual stranger to the airwaves and at this writing, Critical Acclaim is on its fifth lap while Commercial Success hangs back at the starting gate.

SONGS OF THE COWFOLK

Jon Young

Howdy, neighbors. The following is addressed to those who’ve wanted like the dickens to become country music fans, but haven’t had much encouragement. Perhaps you’ve been afraid friends would laugh and call you a cracker. Maybe you checked out the outlaw movement a decade ago, only to discover middle-aged men bragging about their bad habits.

45 REVELATIONS

Ken Barnes

If it weren’t for Suzanne Vega, the Bangles’ “Following” (import only) would be Single of the Month. A dramatic change of pace by bassist Michael Steele, it’s a sparse, moody, enchanting acoustic plaint and the best track on Different Light.

ROCK•A•RAMA

Twenty-one cuts spanning 20 years from way down yonder and the party never stops. A treasure trove of one-hit wonders, gumbo obscurities and madman rockin’ is yours for the buying. Volume two is the one that I keep coming back to the most. It features Ernie K-Doe refusing to name names (“A Certain Girl”), Benny Spellman getting his loveline traced (“Fortune Teller”), Frankie Ford capsizing like crazy (“Sea Cruise”) and the Showmen’s incomparable statement of purpose, “It Will Stand.”

ELEGANZA

John Mendelssohn

“We make music the old-fashioned way,” the famous singer Huey Lewis has often been heard to observe very pointedly in concert. “We play it.” In this age of MIDI (musical instrument digital interface, I think—phone your dealer for corroboration) more rock than most people imagine is “performed” by preprogrammed computers.

the Bryan Adams Barbeque

Liz Derringer

“The afterglow of Reckless lasted throughout that year,” Bryan Adams says. “We had a great tour and the rest of the year I spent writing and recording. I was a busy boy!” Boy or not, he certainly was busy: Adams participated in the “Tears Are Not Enough” sessions (he also co-wrote the lyrics to that northern “We Are The World”), played at Live Aid and joined U2, Peter Gabriel and Sting for the six-city “Conspiracy Of Hope” shows for Amnesty International.

Wire Of The Tastiest Kind

Richard Grabel

Colin Newman and Graham Lewis, of the nearly living legendary beat combo Wire, are amiable, approachable guys who nonetheless make no attempt to hide their art-school backgrounds, throwing around aesthetic theories and references to Duchamp and who-knows-who-else with abandon.

Fleetwood Mac Return Without Leaving

J. Kordosh

Up in the hills of Bel Air is Lindsey Buckingham’s house, Lindsey Buckingham’s croquet-perfect lawn, Lindsey Buckingham’s pool, Lindsey Buckingham’s radio-controlled toy submarine that’s busted, but could be fun in the pool, Lindsey Buckingham’s home studio, The Slope—where the final work on Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night was done—and, indeed, Lindsey Buckingham himself.

September CREEM 1987

Heart Speaking Pelican? Like Hell They Can!

Sylvie Simmons

On the sofa from the right: Ann Wilson, Denny Carmassi, Howard Leese. All in black. Easy on the eyes on a filthy British day. Don’t mind God going out on the town, but does he always have to piss on London the next morning? Ann: courtesan eyes, mortuary-curtain hair and raffish black beret with the words “Bad Animals" on it.

SQUEEZE ACCESS ALL AREAS DON'T PULL THAT TRIGGER

Iman Lababedi

"Now 64 jumps!” shouts Glenn Tilbrook onstage at New York’s The Ritz. The dancefloor reverberates as the audience musters what little energy it has left. It’s nearly midnight on a Monday and many of us have been standing since 7:30 p.m. for our first glimpse of Squeeze in two years.

DR. FREUD, I PRESUME

Bill Holdship

It’s often been said that Billy Idol is a dick. I was sure that the people who said it (and I’ve often thought it, based on some of his interviews and antics) were speaking figuratively. It seems now, however, that Idol may be taking the claim literally, as he began this second of three sold-out shows in the L.A. area by entering the stage through the in-between of what resembled two shapely female legs.

WHERE’S GARFUNKEL?

Jim Feldman

There’s one in every crowd, and in the instance of the five-night New York run of Paul Simon’s Graceland show, it was the reviewer for the New York Post (a daily rag). He liked the concert well enough, but thought that devoting only about half of the two-and-a-half hour program to Simon’s music was wrong since, to paraphrase, the crowd was paying to see Paul Simon.

TECH TALK

Billy Cioffi

To those who don't read credits on the backs of LPs, CDs or cassettes, bassist Randy Jackson might seem an overnight success. The first time MTV and other video audiences set eyes on him was in Aretha Franklin’s “Jumping Jack Flash” clip, produced by Keith Richards.

NEW GEAR

While many players might not be familiar with the E-Bow, they certainly have heard it many times on record—and in the hands of some major guitarists. (Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers is one.) The E-Bow is an electromagnetic string driver for the guitar, operating directly on the guitar string and not on the signal of the pickups. This not only makes it unique among most effects, it allows the player to achieve infinite sustain as well as total dynamic control of fade-ins and fade-outs.

BLAME IT ON CAIN

Gregg K. Turner

WOW!!! It’s back. Heavy with a capital H the first time around, and even heavier NOW! (rhymes with WOW). The “first time” was in 1970, and Aesthetics, out of print for a long time after that, is now back in the book stores by way of this Da Capo Press reprinting.

WHITE PUNKS ON DOPE

Bill Holdship

River’s Edge is one of the most powerful movies of this or any year. Loosely based on a true incident, the plot revolves around a 16-year-old high school psycho (Daniel Roebuck) who strangles his girfriend for no other reason than a cheap thrill, leaves her body in the woods, brags about it, and then takes his clique of stoned heavy metal friends to see the corpse when they don’t believe him.

MEDIA COOL

When I was young, we had a teenaged aunt who lived with us. She listened to rock ’n’ roll, and she used to take my brother and I to the drive-in. No pretentions of high art here. Aunt Shari took us mostly to what Alan Betrock calls “the teen exploitation film” in this book: the Beach Party movies, the motorcycle gang flicks and the hippie/psychedelic drug/protest/rock ’n’ roll films.

SCREEN BEAT

Billy Altman

Well, friends, here we are, with a change of scenery (sayonara, Video Video; aloha, Creemedia) and a spanking new title to boot. To tell you the truth, Screen Beat is really the title we always envisioned for this column devoted to music-on-TV, but somehow we never got around to telling anyone who could do anything about it before now.

Joe Orton's "Up Against It" The Movie The Beatles Never Made

Mark Jenkins

Two men are lounging on a bed they have shared for six years in a dingy London rooming house. The telephone rings. Kenneth Halliwell, a large bald fellow with the frazzled nerves of a jealous Cockney housewife, leaps up to answer the phone before his roommate and lover Joe Orton can move.

KICKIN’ OUT THE JAMS WITH THE CELIBATE RIFLES

Chuck Eddy

When Australia’s Celibate Rifles played Ann Arbor, Michigan last year, they met Scott Asheton, a major thrill indeed, and Scott told ’em that their live renditions of the Stooges’ “No Fun” and the Sonic Rendezvous Band’s "City Slang” kicked up more dust than any versions the Stooges or S.R.B. ever executed; quite a compliment seeing as how he used to pound cans (like a raving maniac) for both outfits.

THE CUTTING EDGE

Jim Feldman

Standard-brand pop-rock was/is/will be the norm, so why not cast a journalistic eye on its practitioners from time to time? Besides, Cutting Crew are much better at this sort of stuff—melodic, guitar-driven poprock and aching ballads—than the similarly styled Glass Tiger, and they didn’t even need Bryan Adams on backup vocals to fly up the charts.

THE LITTER OF THE PACK

Moira McCormick

Scruffy The Cat (which includes singer/guitarist Charlie Chesterman, lead guitarist Stephen Fredette, bassist MacPaul Stanfield and drummer Randall Gibson IV) falls under that loose catchall term “American roots music,” only they’re significantly smarter and more eclectic than many of their colleagues.

HOODOO YOU LOVE?

Vicki Arkoff

There’s a Get Smart episode in which Larry “F Troop” Storch plays “the Groovy Guru.” First, he locks Max and Agent 99 in a studio and feeds them back their own heartbeats at a Blue Cheer decibel-level. The ghoulishly groovy one then forms and leads the “Sacred Cows,” a band that plays "hip-hip-hip-no-tiz-ing" rock ’n’ roll to twist teenage minds, making them violent automatons that will overthrow the state.

BLOOD DRIVE SOUP

Steve Appleford

Redd Kross has got to have one of the most spectacular stage shows in the history of rock ’n’ roll. It’s not the dizzying glitter and paisley outfits these four guys wrap themselves in as they rumble across small L.A. stages. And they certainly haven’t resorted to such tired gimmicks as light shows and flash pots.

OUT OF THE RUBBLE

Sharon Liveten

Nobody ever said it was easy being a politically correct band. You have to dress in black, like fans of Depeche Mode, or kill yourself, like the late Joy Division. And your music is usually reminiscent of a Gregorian chant. No fun, no bounce and certainly no pop tunes.

Backstage

Backstage

Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down