CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

DEPARTMENTS

Crayons In The Dark

PUNK

by Julie Davis

(Millington)

1988: THE NEW WAVE PUNK ROCK EXPLOSION

by Caroline Coon

(Harvest Books)_

June: Honey, I'm worried. Beaver just hasn't been himself since he bought those craz# rock-punk books and started tearing up his shirts and sticking pins in his nose.

Ward: Now dear, don % get yourself in a dither. It's just a phase the lad's going through.

June: A phase!Now Ward, listen — tomorrow he says he's going to poke holes in your golf bag and wear it to school over my wedding dress! You're his father, tell me what to do!

Ward: Honey, I'd say let that boy rock 'n'roll.

June: Yeah, well, Isay waste the fucker.

If you're as mixed up about all this new wave donkey thought as poor Ward and June seem to be, then these handy new volumes are just the starter set you've been looking for. Packed with memorable shots of Johnny Rotten trying to see his face without looking in a mirror, and Siouxsie Banshee squatting on upturned funnels, as well as informative punk grooming and etiquette hints, Punk and 1988 will tell you all you need to know about this new hook in the world fish population.

The major question Julie Davis's collection of news and interviews tries to answer is: If you put an infinite number of punks behind an infinite number of typewriters, will one of them eventually write Mandingo? Not this crew. Most of these clowned-out contributors (including such big names as Jane Suck, Septic Ears and Humanade) don't know which end of the crayon you write with and which end you smoke. It's wise to skip the Coma reviews and swastika editorials arid go directly to the pics which were taken with sweat smeared on the lens for that Punk Effect. They also obligingly left off all the captioris, so you can write your own, like "Mick Jones of the Clash busily ironing his shadow," or "Sue Catwoman denies any involvement in the recent wave of infant crib deaths."

Caroline Coon's book takes a more historical approach, complete with Parade magazine writing that goes down like a lead dish rag. Ms. Coon, longtime pop journalist and founder of Release, a London organization that gives young runaways a roof over their heads and some TB sheep, is so caught up in convincing everyone that she was there from the very first iripped-out arm pit that you could almost miss her otherwise fascinating eyewitness account of the British punk scene back when ft was just a bit of scar tissue on Sid Vicious' liver. Again, the photos Steal the show, particularly an early snap of Rotten looking positively wistful, probably dreaming about his last bowel movement.

If you stick to the pictures and avoid the condescension and frustrated politics of a bunch of ugly creeps who blinked and missed the unfortunately early peak of their adolescence, these two books are acceptably neat and cool. Let's all just count our blessings that these manic rejects don't grow up to be rock critics, or we'd never hear the end of it.

Rick Johnson

ReadyForThe Biz Bag?

HANGING ON A STAR

(Macfarland Productions)_

In which the movies once more validate rock as the universal solvent and glamour-myth, maybe this time for good. Singer-songwriter Lane Caudel stars as the leader of the "Jeff Martin Band" (a name hinting at infinite crossover potential with the legions of All My Children fans), a quartet of struggling softrockers who eventually get their big break ("headlining the Greek"), thanks to the gentle machinations of their lovely manager (Deborah Raffin).

Along the way, the JMB give us a tour de force of all the beloved, hoary cliches of The Biz, from a guru-divined keyboardist, to a malignant bar mitzvah gig, to Wolfman Jack as promotional magnate "Gordon Shep," a super-scrubbing agent who finally clears the band's financial complexion. Scads of soft/dull pomoflick humor ("Hey, we'd like to get in your pants!" gurgle the the crusing JMB at a leggy lass. "No thanks," she retorts, "one asshole in here is enough") without ever getting down to the actual porno.

Sd it's not your everyday-reality-ofthe-scene Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls watershed, but maybe this idealistic version of rock still exists unsullied in the minds of the Dick Clarks of today. As such, Hanging On A Star has its own instructive truths for ya, kidz.

Richard Riegel

Cell Restitution For Acid-Damaged Beatlemaniacs

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

(Universal Pictures)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis_

We must've been the oldest people in the theater, out in a typical neon highway strip of Syosset, Long Island. For God's sake, these kids who ran giggling into the ladies' room singing "yeah yeah yeah" at the top of their lungs were but a gleam in their parents' eyes when the Fab Four first strutted their stuff on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night zoo.

For once, a rock film that didn't smirkily induce feelings of "you had to be there. " It set the scene as looney and loving as Beatlemania really was, and plopped the audience right into its midst.

The quartet of New Jersey girls who con a ride to New York City from an unpopular boy in their school are perfect representatives of every fanatic Beatles fan. There's the high school photog, who sees snapping the Beatles as her stepping stone to a Life magazine byline; the rotund crazy, dedicating her life to the pursuit of Paul McCartney; the anti-rock folkie who gets concerted by the Beatles' pure magnetism and the class beauty queen who tosses over a straight-arrow waiting to marry her once she's had some intimate moments alone with Paul's bass. In other words, me and my friends some 15 years ago, maybe you and yours right now.

For a film shot in late 1970's California, I Wanna Hold Your Hand does a neat job of recreating 1964 New York. Only a few anachronisms, like the wrong color street signs and almost-empty expressways, give away the Los Angeles locale. But the faces of the kids, their hair flips, stretch pants and pea coats are as true to memory as the mobs who gate-crashed the Plaza Hotel;

How I Wanna Hold Your Hand gets around the fact that it had no real Beatles to play with is sheer wizardry. Four accurately dressed figures mumble indistinguishable conversation in almost believable accents. Their boots become the focal point for their visit to a hotel room. Authentic 1964 film footage is intercut with present day replication of their stage set, done most skillfully for the Sullivan performance sequences. Its total effect creates the image of the time and many places, when the Beatles were God-like figures and subjects of a million fantasies, not ordinary people one would see in the streets or whose singular aura could be copied by any schlock imitation.

Toby Goldstein