January 1980
CREEM
I EXIST—DON’T I? Re: “Todd Rundgren: Video-Tripping With the Perfect Master,” October ’79. Normally I would not stoop to reading a Todd Rundgren interview, but it was recently brought to my attention that in Toby Goldstein’s article, Mr. Rundgren utters the following (rather naive) remark—“but so many magazines got all these names you never heard of, y’know, Robot A. Hull and all these other weird fictitious rock critics—”.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
“THE BEAT": (Columbia) :: In which the Ramones clean up their act and/or the Knack stop smirking. Very nice boys, very intense, 12 songs in half an hour, never stop, drive all over the place, aren’t coming home tonight, wanna find a rock and roll girl, don’t fit in (but will).
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
What hath the Knack wrought? Bad enough that every new record released these days is by a band with a one-syllable name (see the Beat, the Pop, the Shoes, the Sports, the Now, etc., for further reference) —but Warner Bros.' advertising campaign for Nicolette Larson reads as follows in the trades: GET THE NICK.
Creem Profiles
THE POLICE
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
THE BEAT GOES ON
Dr. Mark Norton
What DOES make Iggy POP? What caused Master Stiv Bators to hole up in Maine with Bebe Buell and child (children?), change diapers and go to town to buy fresh veggies and fruit after his rather rambunctious stint with the now defunct Dead Boys?
The A'S Stuck Inside Of Philly With the Show-Biz Blues Again
Toby Goldstein “You know, you’re in a really bastardized profession, don’t you think?” Rocco Notte, the A’s keyboard player and master of dry wit, slapped his challenge across the Arista publicity office. As I weighed the health risks implicit in arguing with a very tall Italian who’s dressed in black from impenetrable narrow shades to authentic 60’s-vintage pointy boots, Notte added, “Well, I think I’m doing a really silly thing for a grown man, jumping around like a jerkoff, playing these dinky instruments.”
BRAM TCHAIKOVSKY’S 1980 OVERTURE
Billy Altman
When you go to a concert and both bands on the bill are as hot as is humanly possible and the most exciting thing that happens all night is a re-creation of Earth Versus the Flying Saucers staged during intermission by the audience with the aid of a bunch of frisbees, and the best feeling you get personally about the whole affair occurs when the Nassau Colisseum scoreboard flashes the news that the first game of the World Series has been rained out (dedication to one’s work often pays off in the strangest ways)...well, it’s beginning to become apparent that the days of “stadium rock” are indeed numbered, that what is keeping this form of entertainment (and I use the word loosely) still breathing is an almost nostalgic longing by the young audience that still populates these shows for the big event.
PACKS FEW FACTS, JACK
Richard Riegel
The Knack aren't talking to the press on their inaugural tour of the American heartland, and while I suppose that they have their own (good) reasons, I had been looking forward to telling Doug Fieger face-to-his-smirking-face that it's okay by me if the Knack really are as calculating as everyone claims.
Life After Glitter with IAN HUNTER and MICK RONSON
Jeffrey Morgan
The instant he came to, The Writer knew he would never make it out of bed, let alone to the interview itself. He swallowed, felt a raw contraction of withered flesh and winced. Goddamn the common cold anyway. His skull pounded as if the Blue Cheer were using it for a rehearsal hall.
GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS!
Penny Valentine
Just received the Roches, complete with Time magazine coverage and a batch of press clippings that said they were the greatest thing since strawberry sandwiches. (Never tried strawberry sandwiches? You don’t know what you’re missing!)
Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
CECIL GANT: Owl Stew, and All That
Nick Tosches
Cecil Gant was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1915. His early years are a faded stain, of which nothing is known, nor probably ever will be known.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
Rewire Yourself
ONE PICTURE IS WORTH 50 CENTS
Richard Robinson
Now that one million plus homes have video recorders and MCA is selling video disk players in at least one test market.
WHAT THE 80’S WILL REALLY BE LIKE
RicK Johnson
Lumping events together in decades is an implausible, if basically meaningless method employed by hacks in all fields for the categorization of hindsight.
LORD OF THE BIG MAC MANOR
Patrick Goldstein
“Will you look at this,” Mick Fleetwood groaned, pointing in the general direction of his new mushroom brown boots.
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
Linda Barber
When the hotel room door opened, a figure towered overhead.
CREEMEDIA
Dave DiMartino
Lucky for Dave Marsh that Bruce Springsteen’s career reads like something out of West Side Story. Most unauthorized rock bios are about as interesting as their subject matter, which usually means they’re boring as hell. These kind of things are cranked out regularly by rock writers who need the bucks, and the worst of them—the Fleetwood Mac bios, the Peter Frampton bios, the Wings bios—all read like 100-page press releases, snooze-a-minute, read-it-and-sleep money grabbers.
Prime Time
The evening before the night my tube got boosted, I discovered the scrambled movie. It wasn’t a moment too soon. I really crave, have really developed a need for the seductive low blue hum of ignorant television. I use it to modulate my days around a continual neutral note, not blissful, but troublesomeless.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
If you happen to visit the charming abode of Olivia Newton-John, beware of where you walk... Seems the little Aussie has so many canines roaming ’round the homestead that the neighbors got a court order demanding that she dump eight of her 11 woofers.
CREEM DREEM
NICK LOWE
Stars Cars
THE ROCKETS
TOOLS OF THE TUNESMITH’S TRADE
Allen Hester
Musical, ideas come at the strangest times. Every songwriter has at least one story to tell about how a song idea popped up while the writer was driving down the freeway. Or, watching Bonanza reruns at the Seaside Motel at four in the morning.
Records
TOUCHED BY YOUR PRESENTS, DEARS
Richard Riegel
Blondie has arrived this year, as surely as I keep feeling Deborah Harry’s cover-girl visage staring me up from the People and Us magazines stacked by the sugarless gum at my supermarket checkout.
ROCK • A • RAMA
TEARS (Backstreet/MCA):: Anybody out there recall Charlie and the Pep Boys’ bicentennial-year debut LP, Daddy’s Girl, that Nils Lofgrenproduced A&M set with Charles Woods Pearson’s neo-Jagger lip moves, and one of the most bizarre cover photos ever?
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down