Year-End Wrap-Up

Year-End Wrap-Up

ELEGANZA

Robert Duncan

Having just spent 97 hours culling old issues of this magazine for material for the Best Of CREEM II [on sale at your faithful newsstand soon!], I can say with some authority that Lisa Robinson, in case you hadn’t noticed, wrote some very perceptive and very funny pieces in her tenure as Eleganza’s founding columnist. Her treatment of rock ’n’ roll is virtually unique to the scene.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that she has gone on, at least temporarily, to pursue other of her far-flung interests and she’s a hard act to follow. Especially when it comes to the Year-End Wrap-Up. But what the hell. Lisa saw 1977 her way, I’m sure, and I saw it mine.

JANUARY

What do you say about the month the heat went out? The month that the worst blizzards and iciest temperatures in the history Since they started recording such things? I guess: If you dress, dress warmly; then huddle around the Barry Manilow record and watch the cabin start to creak.

FEBRUARY

You’re beginning to hear the Eagles say: If all that were only coke... But before you can rip your ears out, word comes through that the “greatest” Rock i ’n’ Roll Band in the world are back in town. I’m talking about Kiss Play Madison Square Garden! Triumphant Homecoming! And what’s really a laugh is that the party at the swim club afterwards with real, taped disco is the hottest ticket in town. Disco sucks—but they’re all dancing. Funnier still: Kiss Krashers, believe it or not, after two long years of solid neglect on the part of the scenemakers and critics everywhere. Highlight: Gene’s adorable little mother saying “Hello, Stan” to Paul. Sidelight: So they’ve played the Garden, had a big New York party; what’s next? (See June.)

MARCH

Wedding of the century on the first day of Spring when the flowers are all a-bloomin’ and love is in the air—and of course, it snows one more time. The bride wore antique lace, and I, my ^ estimable Brooks Brothers pin-striped.. 1 We invited Mary Tyler Moore, Jimmy | Carter, Walter Cronkite, Gene Sim| mons, Bruce Springsteen, and Frank s Sinatra, but I guess the weather socked them in. Then again, the night before had been Mary’s last show...

APRIL

What to do on Saturday, without M.T.M.? Two weeks without her, and I, for one, am in the hospital with a scabrous appendix rupture. St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village: The same place where the Woody Allen character in Sheper originally died (before he was frozen and locked in the time vault) during a routine gall bladder surgery. The exact same place and I swear they told me before my routine surgery that I only had a 50-50 chance.

. MAY

Stop and smell the roses—it’s about all I can do after those butchers got through with me. However, I’m sure that somewhere out there in the heart pf the nation Rush is slayin’.

JUNE

Back in action, I pulled down my pants in the Bells Of Hell to unveil my new scar—macho quotient zooms off the board. Speaking of macho quotient, Love Gun is released, and we’re talking bombs away. Their worst. Faze III for Kiss: Down the tube. Not to be deterred by such catastrophies, Halston throws a party for Liza Minnelli after her New York, New York opening at the— where else—Studio 54. Unfortunately, it’s not the last we’ll see of her or that hellish Arthur 1999 joint. So who cares anyway?

JULY

Willy DeViile and Mary Hartman kicked off this notable month. Willy debuted for the critics at the Bottom Line and proved to at least one love-struck girl, my newlywed, that a fellow can overcome the Happy Days reject look with great singing and great moves. The man is sexy, I’ll admit. (So whyhasn’t Capitol pushed him more?) Mary Hartman/Louise Lasser did the world a favor and offed herself from the tube. Rupert Murdoch’s new New York Post reached its stride this month and announced that hairstyle plays a major role in Son of Sam’s victim selection process. Long, straight-haired brunettes are advised to chop and color it light. They d6, making the demon more influential fashion-wise than all the Seventh Avenue flacks put together. And now they have to have clothes to go with the hair. Still, Sam strikes again: a short-haired blonde. What a card! Of course, July also brought the blackout in N.Y. and the full reflowering of the right wing in American politics:

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AUGUST

She’s right, I’m left, He’s gone was one bar wag’s memorial to the King., But what else could you say? He. started the whole damn thing. With no Elvis, this might be “America’s Only Symphonic Magazine” with hot stories like: Zubin Mehta Is A Trisexual Artichoke.” Perhaps more indicative of the trendy current state of rock ’n’ roll, the New York Cosmos soccer teagi won the championship before and assemblage which included Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and Atlantic Records’ (and Cosmos exec) Ahmet Ertegun and a cast of thousands hand-picked by Bloomingdale’s. I mean, can’t they be satisfied that they’re ruining rock ’n’ roll? Do they have to do soccer, one the the planet’s great sports, too? Several weeks later, Jagger buys a team. What should a poor boy do?

SEPTEMBER

The Bells, as I mentioned, is throbbing with the sunburns and gym shorts of newly-retumed Hamptonites. But the big event is that Jagger and Keith slipped into this local watering hole one night. No, rea//y the big event is that out friend, the resident lunatic piano player and professional Village character, A1 Fields, drove them out (or so word has it) by insisting on their audience for his wacko late night performance in the back. A1 sometimes drinks something he calls kerosene. A1 also plays such local favorites as “Tchaikowsky The Pimp,” his own composition, after drinking this kerosene. Some of us think that this middle-aged black cat is the only real Nrock ’n’ roll star left in the world: Also, in September: Mark Rudd returns—but it looks more like he’s been away at prep school than underground. And the guy who poses as Richard Avedon_ to rape women is apprehended after several years on the jot}: Oh, the power of the shutter.

OCTOBER

Abercrombie & Fitch, where Teddy Roosevelt and all chic sportsters since bought their togs, /olds after eight million years. Pele plays his last game for the Cosrqos while the Jet Set weeps. And the Yankees prove that there is justice, that bad can triumph over good, and finally, that New York is better than L.A., by beating Father Tommy Lasorda and his nauseatingly lovie-dovie Dodgers.

NOVEMBER

The Blue Oyster Cult plays Las Vegas. And if that isn’t enough to* set you thinking, you should see the snapshot we took of the Strip there with the BOC marquee in the foreground and the Sinatra marquee just down the block. Contrary to appearances, however, there are rock kids in Vegas and the Cult prove to them they are the best heavy metal act extant. While over at Sinatra the night before, the tourists in their frosted beehives and plaid thingamajigs didn’t really seem to notice that Frankie is as great an artist—and I mean Artist, A— as any American genius ever. Back in the Apple, the Concorde finally lands and everybody who is anybody is off to Paris at Mach 2.2. Stay there.

DECEMBER

December is Elvis Costello month. I’d like to see the bills for two nights of entertaining critics, buyers and rack jobbers at the Bottom Line. Which is not to mention the party the third night for 450 at the Ukrainian Catering Hall on the Lower East Side. A party that seemed more hippie than punk, what with the yellow lights and falling-down atmosphere of the building which is just a pogo jump from the old Fillmore. E.C. is 1977’s hype of the year, no doubt. He’s good, but not that good. Onstage he does look like Woody Allen. But what I resent is the fact that several people asked me if my classic baggie-cut Brooks Brothers pin-striped suit, which I’m so proud of (the same I got married in), was my Elvis Costello costume. Lotta balls and no fucking taste.