August 1984
Send all your hot 'n' heavy love letters, vicious hate mail, warped comments, and tamper-proof food products to: MAIL Dept., CREEM Magazine P.O. Box P-1064 Birmingham, MI 48012 GOT TO GIVE IT UP It is 9:00 p.m. April 1, 1984. A newscaster has just flashed on television and said, “Singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father today during a family argument.” That was it, nothing more, a newsbrief.
Creem Profiles
DWIGHT TWILLEY
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Christgau Consumer Guide
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
STEVE ARRINGTON'S HALL OF FAME "Positive Power" (Atlantic) Arrington’s bass does pop now, but whether you really get his funk depends on whether you connect with the way he turns the style’s loony-toon vocals into pear-shaped tones. Me, I jump only for the synthesized-kalimba hook of “Young And Ready,” and he chants that one.
Rock 'n' Roll News
If and when the current Jackson tour ends, Marlon Jackson has offers to play the lead in two different films. Universal Pictures’ The Cat is pretty much set, and a second project is currently in potential-director Richard Pryor’s lap, so to speak.
The Beat Goes On
Laura Fissinger
NEW YORK—German singer Nina Hagen may just be the strangest human being CREEM has yet accosted in its long and strange history. Certainly she gives the phrase “space cadet” a whole new turn: Hagen really does believe that some of her ancestry is extra-terrestrial, and that she will be scooped up by a shipful of them when she’s in her 40s.
SCORPIONS: STINGING SCORCHERS OR VIRGIN KILLERS?
Sylvie Simmons
If, as Jah Roth says, there's a little bit of Van Halen in everyone on a Saturday night, there's likely a whole lot of Scorpions the morning after.
OLD TURN BLUE, WISE PLAY NEW
Cynthia Rose
Wow—is it getting weird here! I just turned on the telly to catch new-model Phil Oakey’s U.K. preem of the Human League’s “The Lebanon.” Two colleagues present at the Drury Lane Theatre during yesterday’s video-making of same reported things were being played super-straight (aka dull) “because they seem to think it’s controversial.” Something should be controversial when a lurvely young blonde obviously trying to shed a skin-tight, slit-to-the navel fake leather sheath dress stamps in her stilettoes and moans, “She dreams of 1969, before the soldiers came,” on MY TV screen.
MISSING PERSONS: MISSING IN ACTION?
Laura Fissinger
You can almost hear Casey Kasem's voice running down the great American pop mysteries of 1984: Where's Doug Fieger? Will the Jacksons tour in our lifetime? Who will Kenny Rogers do his next duet with? And what's missing from Missing Persons? They-were, after all, one of the greatest pieces of pop culture we'd seen since the Ramones, albeit a different kind of culchah.
Features
A PRETENDER BENDER?
Gary Graff
Here comes the brood.
Extension Chords
New Products '84
This month CREEM presents a special report on New Products, introducing some of the latest developments in musical instruments and technology as an aid to all the aspiring musicians and producers out there in Boy Howdy land.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
Calendar
WHY DON’T WE EAT IT ON THE RUN?
Rick Johnson
A CREEM Guide To Androgyny In The '80s
Eleganza
INSIDE ELVIRA!
John Mendelssohn
In real life, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Eleganza’s and every heterosexual American boy’s favorite television personality, is actually Cassandra Peterson.
Features
RAPPING TO THE GO-GO’S
John Mendelssohn
On the occasion of the release of their latest album, America's only rock 'n' roll magazine that bills itself as such asked for the two most articulate Go-Go's to interview.
Creemedia
COLLECTING YOUR THOUGHTS FOR FUN & PROFIT
J. Kordosh
Please trade!
DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Edouard Dauphin
According to the ads, three times before we�ve experienced the horror, and now we are ready for the fourth installment—the one we�ve been screaming for. Sounds like it could be the new Adam Ant record, right? Wrong, potato-stix-for-brains. It�s only Friday The 13th —The Final Chapter, reputedly the last episode in a cinema saga that goes back to, let�s see now, was it 1954?
MEDIA COOL
Frank Fox
Goldie Hawn is doing her sejf-growth bit again. This time she�s the sweetly ditzy housewife who becomes a beer-swillin� foreman at the McBride aircraft factory while hubby�s off fighting the Japs. But the real war in this film was waged offscreen and it�s something of a miracle that despite all the rewrites and reshoots the film still swings. Kudos to director Jonathan Demme for a nearly obsessive eye and ear for period detail and brilliantly panoramic crowd scenes.
Video Video
ROACH MOTEL MATCHES
Richard Riegel
MTV's been the new kid on the block for such a long run now that it's lost whatever diplomatic immunity it once possessed.
Records
HIT EM WHERE THEY AIN’T
Rick Johnson
The 1959 American League pennant-winning Chicago White Sox were called the Go-Go Sox because they ran a lot.
ROCK • A • RAMA
PLATINUM BLONDE Standing In The Dark (Epic) Roll over Herb Alpert and tell your lad Sting the news: This new Anglo-Canadian group puts out the kind of semi-decent powerpop we�ve semi-heard dozens of times before, but it�s the band�s look that�s truly noteworthy.
45 REVELATIONS
Ken Barnes
You might have run across this column, formerly titled �Stranger In Town,� in New York Rocker, where it appeared for six years, took a year off when the magazine did, and returned for two ephemeral issues early this year. If you�re in the large majority which hasn�t seen it, a brief explanation is in order.
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
Trouble In Paradise: You wouldn�t think anything would furrow any of Duran Duran�s unlined brows, would you? I mean, the fab five have swelling bank accounts, thousand-dollar suits from South Molton Street, and are the darlings of the Royal set.
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down
Contents