September 1978

Issues 1970s 1978

CREEM

MAIL

FEET IN THE MUD, HEAD IN THE CLOUDS Thank you Simon Frith (to you I will my first born), for that outrageously candid collaboration of society's wealthiest square artist—the Bee Gees! Without the beautiful, the backward and the bald (who, I might say, has more class and style than 25, I repeat 25, Ted Nugents & Patti Smiths), where would all the "astonishingly unhip" rock 'n' rollers be? Where would I be? I am willing to risk ridicule—unlike many closet-listeners.

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

AMAZING RYHTHM ACES: "Burning The Ballroom Down" (ABC):: Just figured out why I've always been attracted to Russell Smith's sly , sincere songs and lethargic though hardly shiftless phrasing—he's a kind of laid-back Ronnie Van Zant. Which must be why I don't like him as much as I liked Ronnie Van Zant.

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

Our favorite Albanian, John Belushi, to cut an album with fellow Sat. Night-er,D«a Ackroyd, as The Blues Bros. Yes they will tour... After a shoot-out at a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Rod Stewart was sipping a glass cognac, Warner Bros. prez Mo Ostin persuaded Rodders to leave the country (he was attending the World Cup soccer play-offs), and watch the games at a safe distance more conducive to conserving his rasp nodes...try TV.

THE BEAT GOES ON

Dave Laing

LONDON—Gerry Rafferty is clearly a man who knows how to wait. It's been four years since his last hit with Stealers Wheel, the group he formed with fellow Scot Joe Egan. Most of those four years have been taken up with legal wrangles after that band's management went bankrupt.

GENERATION X: LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

Kat Gisi

My eyes opened slowly that morning, slower than usual. I shut them, fear pulsing through every nerve ending in my alcohol-saturated torso. I had died.

Stuck Inside A Mobile

Simon Frith

With those Memphis blues again, even, because whatever else the times may be doing around here they certainly aren't a' changing. Consider: Dylan due, the Stones top of the pops, a new album from the Moody Blues and, worst of all, a rhythm 'n' blues revival! It seems (haven't actually seen them myself) that there are great hordes of 60's survivors who've never emerged from their sweaty memories of the days when men were men and sat in cellars keeping cool and counting the Elmore James riffs—the good days of British beat before it got popular and girls were allowed in.

Stars Cars

ACE FREHLEY

STONES TOUR

TOM ROBINSON BAND

Penny Valentine

A chance mid-week gig at a small London pub. The Tom Robinson Band have been together for six months, working infrequently, held together by Robinson's ambition and belief that it is possible to combine rock and political action in a totally unambiguous way— and to make that commercially viable.