October 1981
October 1980: CREEM cover featuring Rob Halford of Judas Priest. December 1980: Printed two letters expressing agony over the October cover. March 1981: Printed quote in Reader’s Poll: “Don’t ever put Judas Priest on the cover again or you will perish.”
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
BLACK UHURU: “Red” (Mango):: Forget Sinsemilla—this one’ll getcha. Believe me, Michael Rose isn’t trying to fill anybody’s shoes— he’d probably rather not wear shoes. The ululation and ragged sense of line are pure country, like Jamaican field hollers; lots of times the songs don’t even rhyme.
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Living rock legend Jerry Lee Lewis, 45, was operated on for a stomach perforation at Memphis Methodist Hospital on June 30. Lewis was rushed to the hospital by ambulance from his Nesbit, Mississippi ranch I where he’d been vomiting blood and complaining of severe stomach pains.
Dead Boys Don't Take Things Off The Shelf
Richard Riegel
INDIANAPOLIS—Back in 78, when I went up to New York to do my watershed feature on the Dead Boys (see Feb. '79 CREEM; group broke up soon after the story was published), their lead guitarist, the indefatigable Cheetah Chrome, accidentally revealed his “real” name to me, somewhere amid a monologue as nighttime-frantic as the hurtling Manhattan cab ride we were aboard at the time.
CHRISSIE HYNDE A “PUNK ROCKER”!!
"Hey, I’m sick of all these dinosaur bands,” complains Chrissie Hynde, a former American who now makes her home in Jolly Ole England. "Who cares about Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? It's time for a change; we've gotta tear down the walls and build some new ones!"
5 Years Ago
Lou Reed joined his old Velvet Underground buddy John Cale onstage at Mickey Ruskin’s Lower Manhattan Ocean Club for a few nights in July. Cale was opening the club, and he was helped more than little by some of his illustrious friends. Besides the ever-sociable Lou, David Byrne of Talking Heads, Mick Ronson, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye and Blue Oyster Cult’s Allen Lanier all showed up to lend John a hand, vocal chord, guitar or whatever.
They Are The Plastics: Haiku Goo Joob
J. “Banzai” Kordosh
DETROIT—Wait, I don’t know if they’re The Plastics or just Plastics. And small wonder, since I don’t really care. I think they’re just Plastics, though, so that’s what I’ll call ’em. As for the inscrutable facts, then: Plastics are the hottest group west of the once-decimated U.S. Naval Station at Pearl Harbor and are the only group from Shogunia with an American record deal (Island Records —get it?).
TOTAL SISTERHOOD !
Perky blonde actress sisters Audrey "Dallas" Landers and Judy "B.J. & The Bear" Landers owe it all to their mom ! Seems that besides giving the lithe, tanned and over-21 sisters life, Mama Landers whipped them into shape from birth, with her patented hair and makeup clinics, special diets, canasta lessons, and most important of all, her Desiree Cousteau nether regions whoopee lessons.
No School Is Good School
Rick Johnson
MILFORD, IA—Are you looking for a college that has “everything you want in a school except work”? Then come on down to Okoboji University, the school with no profs, no tests, no dorms, no campus and just one class: Fun 101. Not just anybody can enroll here.
Musicians Will Take Anything
Rick Johnson
DENVER—Musicians suffering from stage fright can now cool it down by simply popping a little pill. Thorazine? Cyanide? Dexatrim? No, it’s propranolol, a drug commonly used for heart ailments. Dr. Charles Brantigan here at Presbyterian Hospital has found it to have a calming effect on tense rockers whose sneaks are overflowing with the brew of panic.
EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY TO HATE
Gene Sculatti
But of course! Alice Bag doesn’t need the Brits. Nor does she or any of the tens of thousands of punkin’ Angelenos need the French, the Dutch, the plot-hatching Corsicans or teenage millionaires from New York like Mr. Blondie to tell them how to behave.
MONDO PROFUNDO: DAVID JOHANSEN SINGS BASSO
Bill Holdship
David Johansen should have been a superstar. Imagine... It’s 1981, and New York’s Mercer Arts Center is a hallowed rock landmark in the tradition of the Cavern, the Marquee and Sun studios. The New York Dolls are not only one of the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll bands.
STROKING THE ROCK MONOLITH: BILLY SQUIER PAYS THE PIPER
John Neilson
“I used to have like a simulated American Bandstand in my garage when I was nine years old. I would set up this cardboard box with a friend of mine, and one of us would be Dick Clark and would take one of those one-piece Victrolas that you have when you’re a kid and play the records, and the other one of us would mime and dance.”
ONE HUMP OR TWO?
Toby Goldstein
Steve Strange—fashion plate, leader of alternative dance band Visage and all-around creative British person — debarked from his rented camel in front of Chase Park, yet another new club in the bowels of Manhattan. A million flash-bulbs popped at the sight of this somewhat unique boogaloo down lower Broadway.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Penny Valentine
By Friday morning, July 3rd, UB40’s second album Present Arms was number one; by Friday night Southall was on fire. “We’re closer to the West Indians than ever. The fascists are attacking black people. In Brixton they are West Indians, in Southall they’re Asians, but there is no difference anymore.”
VAN HALEN GETS EVEN WITH EVERYONE
J. Kordosh
David Lee Roth: It becomes more fun with each season. Each tour that we make, each record that we make—we know how to do it. You know? There’s always little fears in the back of your head about. "Oh what are they gonna think about this," or "What’s somebody gonna think about that?"
Finally, A Use For Cake Fear
Rick Johnson
There’s something about the Richard Simmons Show that makes repeated exposure to it about as attractive as cheating death or selling combs to minors. Is it the host, who possesses a personal magnetism ranking just slightly below that of a relocated witness?
Meanwhile, At The Diner...
Robert A. Hull
“The details were only as Hawk or a dozen other oral informants remembered them, innumerable facts, innumerable stories, all burgeoning, living bubbling beneath the surface, lost to history. That was the trouble with the book. That was the reason there wasn’t going to be any book.
Resurrection Hooterville
Rick Johnson
A year or so ago in these pages, John “Fitzgerald” Kordosh gamely confronted the enigma of Green Acres, correctly pointing out its superior contribution to the nothing world of television. But little did he know that his trailblazing illumination of seedlife and pigsqueal zooting would lead to an examination of the other two sides of the hickster triumvirate, The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. Well, maybe he knew.
DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Edouard Dauphin
“1997. New York City is a walled maximum security prison. Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane. ” The ad for John Carpenter’s Escape From New York sets up the film’s premise perfectly and, on the way into the screening room, The Dauphin’s “I Love New York” button is met with knowing, ironic smiles.
Confessions of a FILMFOX
Now that Prince Charles and Lady Diana have gone and done the good thing, we can get on with other things...like trashing Brooke Shields some more. Can anybody sit through endless, Endless Love without laughing, having seen Catherine O’Hara’s devastating Brooke send-up on NBC’s SCTV Network 90?
BILLY GIBBONS OF ZZ TOP
Well, hey there, sweetie pie. This here’s the niftiest vehicle anyone this side of Texarkana's ever done seen. Why this is a car of all trades, so to speak—good for taxi service, trips to the moon...Whaddaya mean, a space cadet? This is one fine machine, honey cakes.
PAT BENATER
THE 61 TERRIBLE SECRETS OF THE BLUE OYSTER CULT
Rick Johnson
The Blue Oyster Cult is what’s sometimes spuriously referred to as a “critic’s band” (see #43). As befitting such a characterization, critics—and ever writers—like to embroider their BOC copy with the scrimshaw and folderol of their own unfortunate, miserable existences.
REWIRE YOURSELF
Richard Robinson
“We’ve created this machine for musicians so they can make eight-track recordings at home,” explains Arne Berg, one of the engineers at Fostex Corporation, as he gives me the run-down on the Fostex A-B, a $2500 tape recorder that has been proclaimed a revolutionary step forward in the recording business.
CREEM SKIN TIGHT '81
Dave Patrick
Drums, man’s oldest musical instruments, have a universal appeal that makes them essential to most popular forms of music today. Drums and percussion are currently enjoying the popularity, interest and recognition long due them. There are more opportunities for an interested drummer/percussionist to have some fun—and who knows, maybe even pick up a few bucks—than ever before.
ROCKIN’ PALADINS TO THE PUNK VESPIARY
Gene Sculatti
Like no other band from those halcyon days of nouveau punkdom, the Ramones were essential, much I needed spirits. Phantasms who took the stage with a smirk, a shrug of the shoulders, and a perfect mastery of the rhythms of the moment, their rockin’ wraiths somehow always managed to reflect back to appreciative audiences all the growing pangs of changing tastes and attitudes.
TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT
Pat preened in the mirror one last time. The outfit was perfect, she thought: stiletto heels, black-is-black tights, a chain-mail tunic cinched with a no-fingerprints vinylite belt. Vampire-mauve nails, mascara-rimmed eyes. For a comehither touch, she’d drawn on sculpted Cupid’s-bow lips and splashed some rouge across her cheeks.
Baby Sittin’ Boogie
ROCK-A-RAMA
THE RODS (Arista):: Are like an American version of Motorhead, fast & loud & greasy & ugly & etc. And, for all you connoisseurs of metallic incest, this fellow David “Rock” Feinstein, the one on guitar and vocals, used to be in Elf with Ronnie James Dio way back when we hadn’t even decided to call heavy metal “heavy metal” yet.
BACKSTAGE
IVY RORSCHACH OF THE CRAMPS
Wait! Don't look behind the green door! Oh, no! Too late! The natives are getting restless and now you'll have to face "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, voodoo idol of the psychedelic jungle! When the sun goes down and the moon comes up, Ivy turns into a teenage goo goo muck, her rockin bones shakin to a dark jungle hop.
CREEM CONTENTS