July 1981
C'THULU CULT GROWS! Sometimes you people don’t know when to stop. You forget those who put you in business, and you carry it too far. Rick Johnson’s evaluation of rock guitarists was the worst piece of biased, ignorant, and boorish literature that I have ever read.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
THE BRAINS: “Electric Eden” (Mercury):: Put in enough time with this one and despite its dull initial impact every track will give a hook—a dull hook, perhaps, but in these brite days there’s a kind of satisfaction in that. The problem is that.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Adam & the Ants caused a near riot during their recent sold-out appearance at the Ritz in New York when police were called to clear away the large crowd trying to score tickets outside. Pete Townshend and Ian Hunter were lucky enough to make it inside, but Ellen Foley and scores of Epic staffers were turned away at the door.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Iman Lababedi
NEW YORK—Memory without nostalgia. Love without idealism. Fun without escaping. The dB’s are pop with care. The dB’s come from. North Carolina, have been playing together for over a decade in various forms, formed the band in New York two and a half years ago, released their debut album Stands For deciBles on the English Albion Records this year, have just toured Europe, are having their follow-up platter produced by Roger Bechirian, are not a very good live band, sometimes sound like the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Hollies, smile a lot, understand politics and don’t like it, do covers of “Everlasting Love” and “Tomorrow Never Knows,” know how to write melodies, are just a pop group like any other.
Creem Profiles
RICK NELSON
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Features
THE ECSTATIC AESTHETICS OF XTC
John Mendelssohn
Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like XTC.
ALL GREASED UP, ONE TACO TO GO
Rob Patterson
Joe Ely shares a trait with another product of Texas, for like Dr. Pepper, he’s one of “America’s most misunderstood.” Similar to another fellow native of Lubbock, Buddy Holly, Ely writes songs from a country base but plays rock ’n’ roll. Yet he operates as if there’s not a hint of contradiction in anything he does.
Features
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: WHITE LIGHT/ DARK SHADOWS
Robert A. Hull
The history of the Velvet Underground is so incidental that it almost doesn’t matter.
EVERYBODY'S BORING BUT PEARL HARBOUR!
Iman Lababedi
At the end of a nine-week American tour, on Easter Sunday 1980 in San Francisco, Pearl Harbour and the Explosions, er, exploded. Due to musical differences, as they say in the trades. Though of no great loss to anyone, its immediate effect on Pearl was to convince her to move to England with then-boyfriend Kosmo Vinyl (then Clash publicist) to wipe away her tears.
THE AC/DC BOOK OF LISTS
Rick Johnson
FIVE MOST IMPORTANT DATES IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY 1. 1770: “Discovered” (for white people) by Capt. James Cook. “Looks like a high risk neighborhood,” he relays to Queen. 2. 1820: Gang-adopted by Britain. 3. 1821: U. K. begins using the country as dumping ground for killers, rapists, thieves, preemies, the chronically late and that sickening couple in the People commercials.
DAVE EDMUNDS TWANGS FOR ONE
Toby Goldstein
There were hundreds of non-profit organization-type people walking around the United Nations ballroom dressed in cocktail gowns and evening suits. They munched smoked salmon canapes, drank white wine and Perrier, and looked somewhat confused as two large projection screens broadcast videos of the benefit concert for Kampuchea relief.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
CREEM DREEM
TINA WEYMOUTH
This Is The Modern World?
Toby Goldstein
Is it really time for punk to be categorized as nostalgia? Surely there’s enough anger still churning among the unsettled masses of America and the U.K. to keep the frenzy on the street. Yet given the ability of U.S. record marketers to have forcibly smoothed punk rock into new wave and the tendency of some Brits to treat rebellious movements as steps towards artistic godhood, it was inevitable for 1977’s excesses to become frozen into 1981’s archives.
Mondo Librium
Richard C. Walls
It was a puzzle. Hill Street Blues was exactly the type of show I knew I should like—the advance reviews were uniformly ecstatic, the ads dripped sincerity—and it wasn’t just some effete gesture by a major network made to appease esoteric culture buffs.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
June is bustin’ out all over... and on the Loni Anderson front, her marriage with Russ Bickel has been tres fraught with tension, due to Loni’s burdensome fate. Loni’s been getting it off her chest in the press lately... And Jerry Mathers—yes! A Jerry Mathers item in Film Fox... our own Beav and wife Diana are divorcing after five years... whatever happened to June brides? Debbie Harry set to play Brenda Starr... maybe.
DO OR DIY
Penny Valentine
An article in HOTV (Hot On The Visuals) put out by the alternative Pink Flamingo Music Ltd. from a flat in W. 9, and one of the very few alternatives that actually boasts a “staff,” has a nicely out of focus picture just recognizable as Nick Logan moving sideways while sitting at his desk.
Stars Cars
REO SPEEDWAGON
THE TODD RUNDGREN & UTOPIA CONSPIRACY
Dave DiMartino
There’s a standard story about Todd Rundgren that you’ve probably already heard.
THE GUITAR SOLUTION
Allen Hester
Every guitarist has a story to tell—usually a horror story—about his or her first guitar. First guitars are almost always bad ones, with warped necks, excessively high string action, necks that are too wide for a young player's hands, and off the wall names that nobody ever heard of.
HOME IS WHERE THE COMPUTER IS
Richard Robinson
There are things you need and things you don’t. I mean, if you can read and write and have a job then you could probably settle for new shoes for the kids and an occasional night out and a reasonable Mastercharge balance. Right? Not in this nation of Joneses you can’t.
Records
FACE DANCES AIN’T NO SOCIAL CRISIS
Richard C. Walls
So the new Who album has finally arrived and it isn’t great.
YAPPER’S DELIGHT!
ROBOT A HULL
ROCK-A-RAMA
Richard Riegel
EVE MOON (Capitol):: Capitol may have signed her off the streets of New York but Moon�s years in the clubs probably had a bigger part in forming her heard-it-all-before rock style. She�s better at it than many, belting out healthy, hearty hard stuff like she means it (and she probably does), but there�s really nothing here to write home about...so I won�t.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down
CREEM CONTENTS