June 1988
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Did you know that China has the world’s largest armed forces? With troop strength numbering six million? In other words, don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning in the middle of a rice paddy surrounded by old women wearing straw hats. And then they’ll make you eat raw fish!
Creem Profiles
FLESH FOR LULU
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
LETTERS
We both, like, really wanted to write and say that that was a bitchin’ review that you, like, printed on Allan Bloom’s The Closing Of The American Mind. Both me and Spudde think that it’s like a, like, rad book, you know, and if you get, like, two of ’em from the library, man, you can use ’em like paperweights to flatten out the edges of your new Motley Crue poster before you, like, hang it on your bedroom wall.
ELEGANNZA
Richard Riegel
“Hey there, ho there, ladies and gentlemen, grandchicks and grandcats of all ages, this is Tommy Teflon of Entertainment 24 Hours, running down the Top 10 pop albums of 1998 for you. Get those keyboards ready, as I’m sure you’ll want to file this list on a floppy so you'll know all the preferred CDs to program into your headplayers when you’re out mallwalking!
ROBYN HITCHCOCK GETS RATIONAL
Steve Hochman
Groucho Marx was once asked why he made a habit of insulting fans when they approached him in public. The caustic comedian replied that if he didn’t, the well-wishers would be disappointed; People expected him to be nasty, he reasoned. Robyn Hitchcock chuckles knowingly when told this anecdote.
ANTHRAX: Better Than Death
David Sprague
It seems like everybody’s got a bone to pick with Anthrax. Depending who you ask, the kings of New York speedmetal are either a bunch of clowns or too serious for their own good. They’re so strident about maintaining their thrash “credibility” that they’ll never get anywhere.
RECORDS
Billy Altman
On this, their first new album since 1985’s terrific Rum, Sodomy And The Lash, the Pogues prove rather convincingly that growing up doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of spirit, or nerve, or ideals. Not that they’re not still the same gang of rabble-rousing, whiskey-stained bums whose when-worlds-collide sour mash of traditional Irish folk music and nihilistic English punk thrashings made them the talk of the barstools on both sides of the Atlantic just a few years ago.
ROCK • A • RAMA
Watusis? Actually, they’re from the Midwest. Slammin’? You betcha! While the hot ’n’ nasty attack sometimes verges on hardcore cruelty, these window-rattling raveups unleash the joyous, liberating power of good old rock ’n’ roll (They thank the Damned, appropriately.)
The Smithereens, five years after.
Harold DeMuir
Smithereens frontman Pat DiNizio is enough of a fan to have spent the night before his big CREEM interview out at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, but enough of a cranky skeptic to have made his exit well before that event’s idol-studded jam climax.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
The Steve Winwood Chronicles
Sylvie Simmons
He seems quite monklike—steady stare, fishpale complexion and a faraway look that, if I’d brought a compass, I could guarantee went in the direction of Gloucestershire, where he’s got a farm, a wife, a baby girl and a recording studio. This, after all, is the man credited by the NME Book Of Rock as having invented “getting it together in the country” as a concept for adult musicians.
CREEMEDIA
Jeffrey Morgan
Just in case you didn’t know—and given the media’s continuing saturation of the topic, you’ve only yourself to blame if you don’t—comic books are back. They never completely went away, of course, but by the time Spider-Man teamed up with Boy Howdy! for an all-night jam session on the cover of CREEM’s April 1973 issue, the genre was not only a spent force on the brink of aesthetic bankruptcy, but in dire need of a miracle to pull its comatose body out of the fresh grave it had steadfastly been digging for several years.
SCREEN BEAT
On the night of February 7, at 9:00 p.m., just as some 40 to 50 million people were tuning their TV sets to the local ABC affiliate to watch the network’s video production of Priscilla Presley’s autobiography, Elvis And Me, I was tuning my set away from New York’s channel 7.
MEDIA COOL
The first few times I watched this show I noticed two things: 1) it’s more reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica (a patriarchial captain plus his underlings who have all sorts of “interrelationsips” going on) than the old Star Trek; and, 2) the plots didn’t make any sense whatsoever.
ICEHOUSE
Vicki Arkoff
Does music soothe the savage beast?
FRANK ZAPPA: The Blunt Way
Michael Davis
"Michael, what’s up?" It’s Frank Zappa.
The Talking T-Bone
Sharon Liveten
It’s another sickeningly beautiful day in Los Angeles: the sun is shining, the smog level is down and there hasn’t been an earthquake in at least a week. Even rarer, T-Bone Burnett, popular music’s best-kept secret, is folding all six-foot-God-knows-what of himself into a coffeeshop banquette to talk to CREEM.
FIREHOSE
Steve Peters
To an out-of-towner, San Pedro would probably seem like one of the least likely places in California to spawn a seminal punk rock band. Situated 10 miles south of Los Angeles proper, this quiet region was known locally for years as the site of L.A.
TECH TALK
“Dangerously ahead of its time and grossly uncommercial!" That’s the phrase Tonio K. used to describe one of his earlier albums. His first solo album, 1979’s Life In The Food Chain, set the trend for subsequent releases. Specifically, critical adulation and tiny yet fervent (read: cult) commercial response.
NEW BEATS
Sharon Liveten
Clannad, (the name, for reasons that will soon become clear, is Gaelic for family) may finally be a commercial winner. This even though the group, consisting of three siblings (vocalist Maire Brennan and her brothers Pol and Ciaran) and their twin uncles (Padrig and Noel Duggan) aren’t known for listening to popular wisdom—or logic, either.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down