June 1988

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

Did you know that China has the world’s largest armed forces? With troop strength numbering six million? In other words, don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning in the middle of a rice paddy surrounded by old women wearing straw hats. And then they’ll make you eat raw fish!

Creem Profiles

FLESH FOR LULU

(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)

LETTERS

We both, like, really wanted to write and say that that was a bitchin’ review that you, like, printed on Allan Bloom’s The Closing Of The American Mind. Both me and Spudde think that it’s like a, like, rad book, you know, and if you get, like, two of ’em from the library, man, you can use ’em like paperweights to flatten out the edges of your new Motley Crue poster before you, like, hang it on your bedroom wall.

ELEGANNZA

Richard Riegel

“Hey there, ho there, ladies and gentlemen, grandchicks and grandcats of all ages, this is Tommy Teflon of Entertainment 24 Hours, running down the Top 10 pop albums of 1998 for you. Get those keyboards ready, as I’m sure you’ll want to file this list on a floppy so you'll know all the preferred CDs to program into your headplayers when you’re out mallwalking!

ROBYN HITCHCOCK GETS RATIONAL

Steve Hochman

Groucho Marx was once asked why he made a habit of insulting fans when they approached him in public. The caustic comedian replied that if he didn’t, the well-wishers would be disappointed; People expected him to be nasty, he reasoned. Robyn Hitchcock chuckles knowingly when told this anecdote.

ANTHRAX: Better Than Death

David Sprague

It seems like everybody’s got a bone to pick with Anthrax. Depending who you ask, the kings of New York speedmetal are either a bunch of clowns or too serious for their own good. They’re so strident about maintaining their thrash “credibility” that they’ll never get anywhere.

RECORDS

Billy Altman

On this, their first new album since 1985’s terrific Rum, Sodomy And The Lash, the Pogues prove rather convincingly that growing up doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of spirit, or nerve, or ideals. Not that they’re not still the same gang of rabble-rousing, whiskey-stained bums whose when-worlds-collide sour mash of traditional Irish folk music and nihilistic English punk thrashings made them the talk of the barstools on both sides of the Atlantic just a few years ago.

ROCK • A • RAMA

Watusis? Actually, they’re from the Midwest. Slammin’? You betcha! While the hot ’n’ nasty attack sometimes verges on hardcore cruelty, these window-rattling raveups unleash the joyous, liberating power of good old rock ’n’ roll (They thank the Damned, appropriately.)

The Smithereens, five years after.

Harold DeMuir

Smithereens frontman Pat DiNizio is enough of a fan to have spent the night before his big CREEM interview out at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, but enough of a cranky skeptic to have made his exit well before that event’s idol-studded jam climax.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar

CALENDAR

The Steve Winwood Chronicles

Sylvie Simmons

He seems quite monklike—steady stare, fishpale complexion and a faraway look that, if I’d brought a compass, I could guarantee went in the direction of Gloucestershire, where he’s got a farm, a wife, a baby girl and a recording studio. This, after all, is the man credited by the NME Book Of Rock as having invented “getting it together in the country” as a concept for adult musicians.

CREEMEDIA

Jeffrey Morgan

Just in case you didn’t know—and given the media’s continuing saturation of the topic, you’ve only yourself to blame if you don’t—comic books are back. They never completely went away, of course, but by the time Spider-Man teamed up with Boy Howdy! for an all-night jam session on the cover of CREEM’s April 1973 issue, the genre was not only a spent force on the brink of aesthetic bankruptcy, but in dire need of a miracle to pull its comatose body out of the fresh grave it had steadfastly been digging for several years.

SCREEN BEAT

On the night of February 7, at 9:00 p.m., just as some 40 to 50 million people were tuning their TV sets to the local ABC affiliate to watch the network’s video production of Priscilla Presley’s autobiography, Elvis And Me, I was tuning my set away from New York’s channel 7.

MEDIA COOL

The first few times I watched this show I noticed two things: 1) it’s more reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica (a patriarchial captain plus his underlings who have all sorts of “interrelationsips” going on) than the old Star Trek; and, 2) the plots didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

ICEHOUSE

Vicki Arkoff

Does music soothe the savage beast?

FRANK ZAPPA: The Blunt Way

Michael Davis

"Michael, what’s up?" It’s Frank Zappa.

The Talking T-Bone

Sharon Liveten

It’s another sickeningly beautiful day in Los Angeles: the sun is shining, the smog level is down and there hasn’t been an earthquake in at least a week. Even rarer, T-Bone Burnett, popular music’s best-kept secret, is folding all six-foot-God-knows-what of himself into a coffeeshop banquette to talk to CREEM.

FIREHOSE

Steve Peters

To an out-of-towner, San Pedro would probably seem like one of the least likely places in California to spawn a seminal punk rock band. Situated 10 miles south of Los Angeles proper, this quiet region was known locally for years as the site of L.A.

TECH TALK

“Dangerously ahead of its time and grossly uncommercial!" That’s the phrase Tonio K. used to describe one of his earlier albums. His first solo album, 1979’s Life In The Food Chain, set the trend for subsequent releases. Specifically, critical adulation and tiny yet fervent (read: cult) commercial response.

NEW BEATS

Sharon Liveten

Clannad, (the name, for reasons that will soon become clear, is Gaelic for family) may finally be a commercial winner. This even though the group, consisting of three siblings (vocalist Maire Brennan and her brothers Pol and Ciaran) and their twin uncles (Padrig and Noel Duggan) aren’t known for listening to popular wisdom—or logic, either.

Backstage

Backstage

Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down