March 1988
CONTENTS
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
The Jesus & Mary Chain, who are featured in this very issue of CREEM, were recently honored by CBS-TV’s Program Practices Dept.—hmm, that must be like a high tech He’p Desk or something—when the group’s video was not allowed to air on the Top Of The Pops series.
Creem Profiles
INXS
(Pronounced ”Boy Howdy!”)
LETTERS
I started to notice your magazine (again) about a year ago when you put the Cure on the cover (following R.E.M.!) and now for the last six months it’s been consistently decent covers. So how come the only major U.S. ’zine to put the Cure, the Smiths, the Cult and the Cure on the cover kinda embarrasses me to buy, and if I should do so, it usually ends up in the trash a day after for fear someone might spot it in my possession?
ELEGANZA
Iman Lababedi
The Smiths broke up recently. No need for tears. The Smiths were a fine band, sure, but I doubt they made your life—and if they did you’re in the minority. About the time the Smiths first came to the States, back in late ’83, Paul Weller broke up the Jam.
CENTERSTAGE
Chuck Eddy
The last stadium rock concert I saw was the first Farm Aid benefit, back two years ago in Champaign, Illinois, just a week or so after John-Boy Mellencamp’s Scarecrow came out. It rained, and the Beach Boys were awful, but JCM won me over—he only sang four or five tunes, but he sang ’em bouncing off walls like a squash-ball wired on No-Doz.
Features
MEGADETH: when fusion comes to call
Don Kaye
If you haven’t bought a copy of Megadeth’s new album yet (So Far, So Good...So What?), then go and buy it immediately after reading this feature.
BUBBLEGUM NEVER DIED!
Chuck Eddy
All I remember is bein’ in a classroom ...hadda be about fourth grade...endof-the-year school’s-out cake ’n’ ice cream party...Magnavox switched on with “Simon Says” (by the 1910 Fruitgum Company) and “Yummy Yummy” (by the Ohio Express) coming out, and girls dancing fast.
RECORDS
Bill Holdship
In many ways, George Harrison’s kinda had it unfair. Just as Let It Be has probably always been underrated mainly because it was a Beatles LP, Harrison’s songwriting’s always been a little underrated mainly because he played in a band that included two of the greatest pop geniuses in the history of Western civilization.
ROCK • A • RAMA
Craig Zeller
No doubt about it: this super deluxe fourrecord boxed set is the everlovin’ past blast anthology of the year. The Seasons were one of the major—you hear me? MAJOR— groups of the ’60s and certainly one of the most overlooked in these troubled times.
Features
DAVID LEE ROTH CLIMBS BIG ROCK!
J. Kordosh
HOW TO GET A COVER STORY
CALENDAR
Sting HAS NO ANSWERS
Sylvie Simmons
Hell, at least he’s trying. Plenty have called him pretentious—quoting Shakespeare to drunks, diddling Jung, sporting philosophers and musicians like designer accessories—and I’ll happily accept that he may well be. But his music isn’t asinine, it’s sensuous and clever.
PERE UBU Ring In The New Year Zero
John Gatta
The song came midway through the set at Cleveland’s Agora Metropolitan Theatre, as the energy level was reaching the breaking point. The portly figure of David Thomas led a celebratory pact of music, band and audience: Don’t need a cure Don’t need a cure Don’t need a cure Need a final solution The crowd in front of the stage shouted the angst-ridden chorus of “Final Solution” with the kind of zeal brought out by waiting five years for the legendary Pere Ubu’s reunion.
SCREEN BEAT
Billy Altman
Far be it from me, one lone U.S. citizen, to try and personally intervene in our government’s foreign policy, but I feel it only my patriotic duty to point out to the leaders of Home Box Office that if there’s even the slightest chance that Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev staved in a house equipped with cable during his summit conference with Ronald Reagan, then the network had better have kept the Billy Joel From Leningrad, USSR special off that week’s schedule lest they wish to be held responsible for threatening the entire course of international diplomacy.
CREEMWDIA
Richard C. Walls
You’ve seen it a hundred times. Ted Koppel (let’s say) is on Donahue (let’s imagine). People are asking him why news shows aren’t more in-depth, more succinct, more probing...well, says Koppel, we’d like to do more in-depth shows but people don’t want to watch them, they’d rather watch junk (applause).
MEDIA COOL
Bill Holdship
OK, I’ve heard that this is simply silly “just say no”-ism. And I’ve heard it was supposedly one of those Hollywood disasters that was taken away from the director, etc. But I thought Bret Easton Ellis’s novel was one of the most overrated novels in the history of the printed word, how ever readable it might have been—and this at least managed to hold my interest.
WAKE UP! IT'S THE ALARM
Harold DeMuir
Mike Peters, the Alarm’s frontman and most-interviewed member, may well possess the sunniest disposition in all of pop music. Not only is he notoriously receptive to criticism of his band, he’s even been known to greet the Alarm’s harshest critics with the sort of genuine warmth that’s normally reserved for close friends.
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Darklands Visible
Iman Lababedi
1. I Fall To Pieces.
GEORGE MICHAEL
Judy Wieder
George Michael—music biz veteran at 24, writer, arranger and lead vocalist on over 40 million Top 10 records, one-half of Wham! (once the impish monarchs of England’s rub-a-dub teen rock central nervous system) and "sex symbol to a million virgins”—strokes the dark stubble of his perfect five o’clock shadow and frowns.
TECK TALK
Billy Cioffi
Ry Cooder hates the term archivist, although—when discussing his work—it’s hard not to use the term simply because Cooder has done so much in terms of preserving music that might otherwise have been lost. Certainly Cooder feels it’s his duty, if not one of his missions in life, to see to it that the precious, regional music of this century is not lost.
NEW GEAR
The APX acoustic series is special because it represents a leap forward in terms of electric/acoustic instruments. The system consists of one APX sensor located in the body of the instrument which captures the “woody,” natural sound of an acoustic.
NEWBEATS
Kath Hansen
Yep, they’re from Nashville...but don’t call ’em country. Don’t even bring it up in conversation around the Royal Court Of China; one of their foremost goals is to escape the marginally hickish image that’s been tacked to most of the major label bands that have emerged from Music City, U.S.A. Cowpunkers like Jason & The Scorchers and Walk The West, not to mention a ten-gallon hatful of local/unsigned country-rockers, aren’t exactly who these boys want to be lumped in with, and—bolo ties and spurs aside—the Royal Court Of China is refreshingly non-country.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down