THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

HUSH HUSH, SWEET RACHEL!

Supersnoops CREEM have uncovered this top secret shot of singers Rex Smith and Rachel Sweet exchanging actual wedding vows as part of a wacky new promotion! "It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it," groaned a none-too-pleased Rachel, snidely adding that her new hubby "certainly” had the right first name. "Way f figure it,” grinned a CBS. lawyer, "we'll have Rachel do 'D.I.V.O.R.C.E.' on her next album! We plan to completely control her life! It’s great!" Anything else? "Yeah," winked the lawyer. "Wait'll you see the 'Having My Baby' videotape I “

Scientists Prove They Can't Prove Anything!

ATLANTA—After conducting a study on Bendectin, an antinausea drug, the Center for Disease Control has concluded that it’s safe for pregnant women to listen to John Denver during their first three months.

While giving the hold-itdowner the all-clear, the CDC admitted that “it is impossible to prove any agent safe,” which is comforting as hell. These guys are even talking about stuff like milk, air, and rolling over in your sleep!

Meanwhile, rock critics continue to tackle the parallel problem: is it possible to accurately separate photographs of Journey in live concert from highspeed snapshots of a poached eggr

J. Kordosh

Three Imaginary Cures

NEW YORK-In C.S. Lewis’s children’s book The Last Battle, he describes heaven as a place where all the good things last forever, and all the nasties are banished. The exact antithesis of the world the Cure live in. The Cure come from Sussex in South England, a county where the brilliant countryside has been ravaged by industry and every change has been for the worst, at least since the end of the last world war. This environment has had a certain effect on the Cure: it’s evident in the emotional content of their music, it’s evident in the group’s steadily increasing moodiness, and it’s the backdrop to the Cure’s three albums. They still live there, but I meet them— where else—in Manhattan. The Cure stopped over for a concert at the Ritz and some interviews to publicize their latest longplayer Faith. Just signed to A&M Records (or about to be— depending whose side of the story you believe), it’s at the label’s office that I finally meet them

I say finally because they kept me waiting for two hours. Some bloke from Trouser Press has given up, as has a writer from College Media Journal, even A&M tour coordinator Annette Monaco (who’s been keeping me company) has gone to lunch. But wait... what the hell, I figure; the beer is free, I’ve got nothing much better to so' and anyway I really want to meet the Cure. I’ve.loved; them since the release of their first single “Killing An Arab,” followed them through the surprise flop of the pop-naive’“Boys D6n’t Cry,” and the more surprising success of “A Forest.” The Cure have spent a career being in the right place at the wrong time. Pojp sensitive when they should have been rabble rousers, artrockers when they’d have made it as George Clinton surrogates, they function-at the edge of rock’s spectrum. A gang of three that—if never fashionable— have remained uncompromised in a business that calls for more than a passing amount of toe touching.

The three imaginary boys arrive in a mass of apologies and leather, smudged eyeliner, and Just William aesthetic. Robert Smith, the Cure’s vocalist and guitarist, explains the lateness: “We just got in from London last night, and decided to check out the Ritz.” What followed after that is still being pieced together, suffice to say they’re jetlagged and hungover. All three are on Perrier water today. Drummer Lawrence Tolhurst offers me a chiclet: “The only reason we came back to New York was to buy Super Cherry Chewing gum.” Gosh, you aren’t as serious as your music made me expect. Is there any fun there?

Robert replies: “It’s fun to play. It’s not really through choice, it’s through a natural process: It just happens that those are the songs we write. Lots and lots of groups play happy songs, and we listen to them, but there’s nothing there for us. It’s not the emotions we feel when we write songs. Our strong emotions are despair and like that.” Robert pauses and bassist Simon Gallup takes up the slack: “It’s not that we’re always depressed and suicidal or anything like that.”

A passing comment of mine that the recent acquisition of a huge sound system, and the rather arty (in an early Pink Floyd manner) sound on Faith might bring people to question their self-indulgence, gets an immediate response: “There’s ho such thing as self-indulgence.”

“It’s not self-indulgent.”

“How do you define selfindulgence:?” Sheers Robert. “That’s being reactionary, I think. What I imagine people mean when they say that is like, gratuitous guitar solos. Ted Nugent—he’s self-indulgent because it’s been done so many times before. It’s repetition. ”

“The thing about the sound system is that there’s no point in us spending the time and effort to tour, if the PA is going to fuck it up. We Want people to hear us the way we want to be heard, so we decided to get the best equipment.”

Robert is the only remaining Cure from the ’78 band. He’s amazingly forthright in his opinion of the group’s past music, discounting the early haunting Three Imaginary Boys debut album as “awful, trite, and derivative.” Even current material is less then perfect, he claims.

“Sometimes we don’t give ourselves enough time to work out the songs. That was the trouble with Seventeen Seconds. We recorded it in thirteen days and it got so condensed. Some of it shows. It’s very claustrophobic.”

Last year the Cure used backup bands specially chosen from a list of some 160 names, on a tour of Europe. Bands they figured deserved exposure. This year they spent ten nights in Holland playing in a circus tent. At those concerts they used a black and white film to open:

. “Sounds and shapes which is all a band is anyway.” They wrote the original soundtrack to it as well, showing their intense admiration for Eno’s ambience parlay.

“It makes us think about sound. It creates an atmosphere by which we can gauge the audience, taken them from a low point and building form there. Sometimes it’s dreadful, sometimes it’s great, but it’s always interesting.”

I thought Faith was pretty dreadful the first time I heard but it’s beginning to really grow on me. Simon: “Doing interviews like this—New York, new album to promote. It’s so small and silly. Faith is just another record, listening to it is a choice. It’s a very specific atmosphere. It’s not a crossover album, that’s it’s own justification. If you think it’s boring, there’s no use in me saying it isn’t. The music papers try to make it into a competition, and either-or situation. We don’t see it like that, variety is the whole point. We give entertainment that needs a reaction, we want to stimulate you.”

The interview is over and the Cure have to dash to Cash Box for a photo session. I stagger home, unsure of the Cure but still trusting them. Maybe I imagined it all.

Iman Lababedi

Fashion/ PottyTraining Clash Continues

DEARBORN, MI—Suzanne Rea, a mother of four children, has finally put the world of high fashion in its proper perspective. Her three-year-old daughter is “a clotheshorse,” according to an exclusive (it had to be) story in the Detroit Free Press.

The littlest jet-setter of all, young Caroline dresses in European burlap provided by Petit Bateau and Pat et Chou, among others. Meanwhile, her conscientious ma keeps track of “what’s showing in the European market in children’s clothes and what’s showing in New York.” Thank God that a few parents still care!

Not one to be overbearing, it was reported that Mrs. Rae lets Carie’s older brothers “select their own Polo shirts and Jordache and Sasson jeans.” An awesome responsibility for a couple of teenagers, to be sure.

The model mother did express some concern over her daughter’s declining years. “I hope the fact that everyone notices what she is wearing and comments about it doesn’t affect her personality,” she sagely noted. Don’t sweat it, moms, she’s your kid, after all. Maybe she doesn’t have one.

J. Kordosh

5 Years Ago

Shape Of Things To Come!

Rock TV’ Roll News items, Dec.. 1976: During the hostilities last summer over the Aerosmith Rolling Stone cover, it’s said that Joe Perry threatened to walk out if the whole group wasn’t on the cover, instead of just Steve Tyler. Apparently Joe reconsidered... Who is Johnny Cougar, and why is he leaving messages for Lester Bangs?

Life & Death And Killing Joke

DETROIT—“/ think Killing Joke is definitely a sign of the times— it bothers me sometimes.”

Keyboardist Jaz isn’t the only one who’s worried about Killing Joke. At at time when the English music scene embraces a bewildering array of white would-be funksters, disclosed reggae bands, Heavy Metal breast-beaters and pretty-boy synth players with lopsided haircuts, Killing Joke have been received with reactions ranging from guarded interest to outright hostility by the press. They have'been accused of being unfashionably nihilistic, musically brutal, and morally bankrupt. In fact, Sounds—which championed the post-punk “Oil” skinhead movement despite its undercurrents of racism and fascism—reviewed KJ’s “Follow The Leaders” and gave it two ratings: ***** for the music and * for its moral stance! Furthermore, the band’s interest in the mysteries of the occult has led some of their critics to insinuate that Killing Joke may in fact be the Living Incarnation Of Evil In Rock Music!! Heavy stuff, huh?

Not surprisingly, Jaz doesn’t see it quite that way.

“We encourage as much unrest in our music as possible,” he admits, “but some people— like NME journalists!—see our music as being really pessimistic. That really confuses me insofar as I think that our music , is highly optimistic in comparison to all the other shit that’s going down. I think it inspires more lust, more vigor, more spirit than most of the escapist nonsense you can buy on the market these days. I like the idea of encouraging lust and raucousness in people as opposed to complacency and apathy, like with the kind of music you drift-off to and all that—I used to be into that once, all that kind of nonsense, but things change...”

Let no one accuse Killing Joke of making music for people to drift off to. More likely, it’s music for putting on in place of punching out walls or hitting yourself repeatedly over the head with a two-byfour. It’s the sound of teeth gritting, blood pounding in the temples and nerves stretched to the snapping point—the sound of someone facing up to whatever “killing joke” lurks in their life. Jaz gets very defensive when pressed on the question of what exactly constitutes a “killing joke,” however.

“Killing Joke is Killing Joke! Everyone has their own interpretation—some say it’s the ultimate irony, some say it’s having no control over one’s destiny. We don’t ever want to restrict people’s ideas of Killing Joke. We don’t want any manifestos, either—that’s not what Killing Joke’s all about. People know what Killing Joke’s all about—they know as soon as they see the name.”

Brian-the-manager (these guys aren’t real big on last names) sums it up by hinting darkly that “We’ve all got one in our lives somewhere—if it hasn’t happened to you, it will.”

It was at JBrian’s house in the summer of 1979 that Jaz met drummer Paul and came up with the musical and conceptual foundation of the band. Bassist “Pig Youth” (or Youth for short) and guitarist Geordie were added soon thereafter, and within months the band released their first record—a 10 EP with “Nervous System”/ “Turn To Red”/“Are You Receiving?”—on their own Malicious Damage label. Their debut album was released in this country this spring (after several singles from the LP made their way onto Billboard’s Disco Chart as imports), and the second LP, Follow The Leaders came out this summer. Both albums, by the way, were released here on E.G. Records, home of such non-threatening musical entities as Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, and the Ambient Music gang.

While Jaz is loath to talk about the band’s music and annoyed at my desire to do so, he eagerly falls into a discussion of America’s reaction to the band.

“It’s another world from Europe,” he marvels, “it’s just so different. In Europe and England, I’d even go so far as to say we’re big in a funny sort of way. In England and Europe they don’t seem to view us so much as a band, they seem to use us as just something to get their energies out of. There’s just so little now that people who have that intense level of emotion can channel it into. I think Killing Joke is one of the few gigs that people can channel themselves into and release energy. We do have an exciting time on stage, and that’s because people are there for one reason: Killing Joke—the idea as well as the music. It’s different over here—people seem to be under a lot more stress over in England.”

Following the band’s loud, energetic set, I’m left pondering the reputation that—deservedly or not—has preceded Killing Joke to this country. Were they immoral? In talking with them I found that Jaz, in particular, has very strong beliefs about the environment, and that they are all concerned about the racist and fascist elements in their home country. Were they brutal? They understand volume as power, but then so does AC/DC. Were they evil? Jaz laughs when I ask him about this, telling me a story about someone who came up after a gig and gave them a piece of paper which read: “You are going to rot in Hell for your music!!” Did that bother him?

“Nah, the nutters?” he laughs. “You never let them worry you. We always attract nutters—Youth attracts most of them!”

So what are Killing Joke’s goals, plans, directions?

“Ulitmately, I’d like to get the means to be in control of our environment—take that as you will. Until you have control over your own environment—I mean total control—you can forget it, because otherwise you’re at the mercy of the Mass Mentality—you are in your country and we are in ours.”

And that, as they say, is just one of life’s killing jokes.

John Neilson

FEMALES REACH PINNACLE OF BEAUTY, CHARM

Now that the Divine Look-A-Like contest is over, it's all downhill for the female "sex." A sobbing Hugh Hefner announced that he was packing in Playboy; Warren Beatty is reportedly "plunging himself into his work," namely The Boys In The Band Meet Gomer Pyle; top Hollywood producers have all agreed that they "won't even bother" to portray females on the screen anymore. "We'll just flash a picture of Divine or one of her clones if a female is absolutely intrinsic to the plot," sighed big Hollywood cheese "Black" Elmo Howard. "It's too bad...I'll miss the old gals. They could really turn me on but—guess all that sex stuff is pointless now that Divine and her gang have taken over. Who could top ner?" Shown here with her flunkeys, a heartless Divine auipped: "I'm enough female for any man. Let's ship the rest of these broads outta here and get down to business I"