BIG CLAY PIGEONS WITH A MIND OF THEIR OWN!

BIG CLAY PIGEONS WITH A MIND OF THEIR OWN!

MATCH THE FAN WITH THE BAND

The CREEM Guide To Rock Fans

by Rick Johnson

Like the laughing hyena, rock �n� roll fans are a curious, incredible and sometimes pitiful breed. They bring a buzzard�s passions and fanatical brand name loyalty to a style of music that practically begs not to be taken seriously. With a sixth sense for missing the point, fans wear their heroes like neon dashikis, allowing musicians (of all people) to speak for their innermost dialtones. Hey, listen—if it�s attention you want, dress up like a pickle and go sing Trini Lopez songs in front of a dry cleaning establishment!

How can you tell fans from normal people? Do they smell funny? Is their stupidity audible? Do they leave a yellow streak behind them in the swimming pool? You better believe it! But the one thing they all have in common is a primitive belief that an individual�s taste in music means something. What an adorable idea! Every bit as moving as Virginia Graham�s final appearance on Love, American Style. GNU POO AND YOU!

Taste is almost as curious a creature as the fan. People like to think it springs from within, like the savage set of unbreakable stainless steel dinnerware that tears up everbody in Alien. In space, no one can hear you squeem.

Preference in music comes about the same way as one�s choice of deodorant, dishwashing liquid or sex partner. It�s decided according to tiny time-release capsules of random reinforcement, i.e., M&Ms from outer space.

This is what we in the mind-control biz refer to as �superstitious� behavior. Say one day you�re walking down the street and you inadvertantly step in some gnu poop. Before you can make another move, a marble dishrag falls on your head from above. Konk! Thereafter, anytime you step on gnu poop, you look up instead of down.

It�s the same deal with music, only not as olfactory. Now, I know why I get homy every time I hear �Eve Of Destruction.� Why �The Yellow Rose Of Texas� produces the same effect, I can�t imagine and don�t really want to remember.

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

The other major determinant is the fan�s perception of what kinda people listen to what kinda music, or what we in The Trade refer to as the Ritchie Blackmore Equation. Now, it�s obvious to me that only the lesser by-products of cow digestion listen to country-rock, but it�s just as obvious (if erroneous) to them that wobbling steel guitars and the flagrant abuse of all eight nasal passages appeals mainly to laid-back, mellowed-out, totally cool daddies, man. Similarly, I�ve never denied that heavy metal fans are as repulso as heavy metal roadies. Of course, they have their own image of me, an opinion somewhere along the lines of �does he wipe after he writes or before?� Forget it, I�m not gonna kiss and tell!

Musicians (The Enemy) have the most disturbingly banal taste of all. The just don�t listen to music the way we responsible citizens do. You ask most gitfiddle plunkers who their favorite artist is and nine out of ten will say Muddy Waters. Who else do you know whose CREEM DREEM is Muddy Waters? Mrs. Muddy Waters? In the unlikely event that you do know someone like that, it�s high time you made a thorough review of your acquaintances.

The real giveaway can be easily observed by studying note-blowers in their natural habitat. Slime? Close, but no Lysol. The ideal time for this unnatural nature study is when they�re listening to their fellow noisemakers at play. Little by little they drift towards the stage, drawn by an overpowering urge to go up and sit on the speakers. You don�t have to be the Shell Answer Man to add that one up.

TALKING MONKEYS

This unfunded attempt to communicate with eels happens in reverse as well. Today�s artistes always insist that they never read reviews, aren�t swayed by public uggabugga or a change in their feed and are forever true to the sacred Muse, boo hoo hoo etc. In �reality,� they�ll run off and blow their brains out with a double-barrelled tuning fork if you so much as hint that they�re not the second coming of the McGuire Sisters. This is an attitude as useful as the phonebook tampon.

Hang on, little campers, Mom�ll be here any minute with the grape Slurpees and the key to the john. Where were we...okay—: Performers� �values� (can�t you take a joke?) are shaped by their fans� expectations as well as their moolah and sex organs. It�s like with the anthropologist on TV who taught a monkey how to talk. First thing, the monkey tells her she�s full of shit. So you can�t really blame th6 stars if they see their audience the same way as quarterback looks at a squirm of newly-hatched piglets—as vaguely animated, obnoxiously noisy but eventually useful source of pigskin.

Enough of this peak-time brain usage. What say we put away the intellectual wanking instruments and take and Actual gander at the fans themselves, the creatures without whom musicians and critics alike would have to get a real job. To paraphrase popular cartoon star Capt. Cupcake�s recent broadside to my idol, Fruitpie The Magician: �You�re the magician! Make it all disappear!�

AC / DC—These unskilled laborers of pummel think that any band whose drummer can�t afford a shirt is cooler than a vichyssoise snowplow. If the late Bon Scott is viewing the band�s continued success from Beyond, he�s probably pounding in desperate Morse Code on his coffin ceiling: I-W-A-S-O-N-L-Y-K-I-D-D-I-N-G! Actual recent conversation—

AC/DC Fan: �Hey man, pretty soon there�s gonna be an AC/DC comic book!�

Author: �Oh yeah? I thought it was already out.�

LITTLE RIVER BAND-Fans of these Aussie vermin exemplify the occupational hazards of drawing conclusions based on musical taste. You�d think LRB would attract mainly elementary school teachers, Brownie troops and victims of pyramid schemes, right? Try again—they�re all Green Beret vets, escaped convicts, mass murderers and members of motorcycle gangs. Don�t ask me why! Remember— people who go around asking �why� all the time don�t grow up to be vice-president of Ronco.

STEELY DAN—-These co-conspirators in obscurity look a lot like what you would imagine the faceless studio musicians that play on Dan albums do—totally anonymous. In fact, most of them could be replaced by studio humans and no one would notice. Their only deviation from invisibility is the clunky old car they drive with the peeling college decal on the rear window. In a sense, they too are peeling. JOURNEY—Like the highly disproportionate number of music boxes in horror films, these large germs claim among them an equally unrepresentative, potentially dangerous number of dowager-humped redheads spattered with bodily pock. With depressing regularity, they can uncover obscure record defects such as budworms, RPM-lag and faulty brake lights. Many are said to be good spellers.

EAGLES—AKA burrito pumice, AKA ears of the hog. Inevitably these fans live in a two-story swamp near the tracks with a minimum of two battered, slashed, totally humiliated sofas on the front porch. Old cars devolving intoplanters litter the backyard, advertising for goats. These Drano bartenders spend most .of their time Hanging Out, a holy activity which resembles the fake vignettes at the start of Family Feud. However, Richard Dawson could rtot be paid enough money to kiss their mule team lips.

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ELVIS COSTELLO-—Fossil evidence supports the conclusion that King Rat�s sewing circle descended from rodents with a peculiar taste for irony. Too bad nobody manufactures kingsize activity wheels anymore.

CARS—For their first couple of albums, census units predisposed to these underinflated minds were as happy as a rock critic who�s just found a whole new bag of paper plates in his driveway, unopened! Now that the vehicle is flaunting its obsolescence, thefickle gas jockeys have moved on to brainier pursuits like pushing pencils (too far!) and developing a scale to accurately measure dryer burn by.

PAT BENATAR—Platinum zillions of Pat cats appeared out of nowhere in the last few months and' with any luck they�ll all die tomorrow. An alarming number of teenage boys think this sexless punctuation mark is the hottest thing since the origami blowtorch. Up close, her totally-unaffected repellance is as heartbreaking as that one beer commercial where the stunt flyer�s engine dies in midair and he goes into the_ Dead Duck Dive. Meanwhile, they�ve cut to this beautiful woman looking all worried and drooling and everything. She�s got gorgeous red hair and green eyes and all this shit; but they cut back to aeroboy, who was just pretending to crash. Who cares? Where�s the girl? Then they cut back to her after the show and she�s traipsing along with the goddam pilot himself! What a whore!

TALKING HEADS-Here�s conclusive evidence that there really are humans who still think there�s such a thing as New Wave. Like the groups themselves, these Sister Goldenhairs look like the shill-shocked contestants on Wheel Of Fortune, the kind who say �I�m not much into music, Chuck, but I�ll say turntable. � Archie Bunker has the last word here: �They�re the kind of people that keep fruit in the house even if nobody�s sick.�

GRATEFUL DEAD—The recent spate of TV interviews with Deadheads reinforces the notion that, on the biological ladder, they rank about three rungs below the golf cart. A breed-and-a-half apart, every day is Garbage Day for these part-time caretakers of consciousness. Favorite pastime—scraping chocolate fingerprints off their drug paraphernalia.

JONI MITCHELL—Inspired by the Canadian Roulette of their heroine�s, love life, Joni fans love nothing more than digging a hole by their bed and then falling in it every night.

PLASMATICS—Punk rockers almost always come from homes where thfe annual income exceeds five figures. After exploding from the trenches with a force even more staggering than getting clobbered with a bag of hate mail, they now seem as outdated as astained glass tacklebox. Prominent L.A. punkers are at this time campaigning to have the giant letters that spell out HOLLYWOOD torn down and changed tq FUCK EVERYTHING! In fact, Alice Cooper has already anted up for the exclamation point.

ROLLING STONES—Despite mounting musical evidence that The World�s Greatest Rod �N� Reel Band were long ago replaced by animate juice glasses, their unflaggable death-moonies still react with kneejerk boogie to riffs mainly picked up from Dialing For Ideas. They remind us industrial spies of the famous, possibly fictional Decorticate Cat Experiment. That�s the one where they disconnected a real horny tomcat�s brain and then brought kitty to a singles bar, where �courtship activity continued with no observable alternation.� That means that, although pussy�s mind was unplugged, he retained the ability to smirk a lot and ask stupid questions about astrological signs.

VAN HALEN—This hardy breed of bacteria often consist of the younger siblings of AC/DC fans. Taken as a whole, these agents of blooey pose no problem that the ritual murder of all teenaqers wouldn�t correct.

SPECIALS—Easily identified by tendency to quack along with records.

ALLMAN BROS.—These spaghettipusses are all built like a mooseful of hockey pucks but don�t be fooled—they�re^not that smart. Many bear Jekyll and Hyde-styled PARTY!/Psycho-killer characteristics. Oh well, you know what they say: two personalities—no wanting!

BILLY JOEL—Critic Robert Palmer describes Joel Billy as �the sort of popular artist who makes elitism Seem hot just defensible, but necessary.� Ditto his admirers, who describe Robert Palmer as �the sort of writer who makes killing critics not just defensible, but fun!�

PINK FLOYD—Known within The Movement as Pinkies, these insecure believers in dim twiddle are about as interesting as icing the puck or creating ample counter space. As indistinguishable as a school of particularly unimaginative minnows, the band has hired a marine biologist well-versed in �getting to know fish as individuals.�

RUSH—Casual observance of this branch of evolutionary extra-baggage leads one to inquire, what if they gave a human race and nobody entered?

'B-52�s—These fashion plateniks are easily recognized by their inspired mix of wafflemaker gloves, Austrian men�s room attendants� uniforms, bargain basement scuba gear and brand new Time/Life Showed Me How To Do It toolbelt. The only true differentiation concerning their wardrobe is: can you wear it or do you eat it?

ERIC CLAPTON-The Blues Man is about as. low as you £an go and still ignore leash laws. He has the kind of face you want to stick a harmonica into, even if he plays it. Sometimes mistaken for one of the lumbering-dead extras from the filming of The Thing That Didn�t Care, they possess a personal magnetism right up there with Jorma Kaukonen, the rock personality I most do not want to meet.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN—Bruce ad diets demonstrate their allegiance by adopting the New Jersey Look. This is accomplished by a) looking as tough as cockroach skin, b) balancing a psychological time bomb on their shoulder and c) hiring a mean-looking black saxophone player to follow them around. What? No, / didn�t hire him! I thought you did! No? Then why is this guy following us?