THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Chris Stamey’s Wonderful Life

NEW YORK—“Don’t make me out too solemn,” warns Chris Stamey in his twangy southern accent. And to prove his point, he suggests a couple of jokes for the photograph that’ll illustrate the article. “On the other hand...” he cracks, “or: And behind door number three...” But a person might be excused for taking Chris seriously; as coleader of quite possibly the best pop group working today, the dB’s, he’s done more to push the limits of the song then 15 Culture Clubs. Songs like “Cycles Per Second,” “I Feel Good (Today),” and “Ask For Jill” are as explicitly about music’s capacity to absorb change and remain constant as was the Beatles’ Revolver. Commercial differences notwithstanding.

And now on his first solo album, It’s A Wonderful Life, he has made an artistic statement miles away from the dB’s’ uneasy listening—yet still provocative enough to pay repeated plays with deep pleasure. A chance encounter with fellow dB Peter Holsapple lead Pete to inform me: “Now I understand how our fans feel when they buy our albums.”

At bar/club RT Firefly, Chris explains his currerit preoccupations in a straight-forward manner very different to his usual wise-ass attitude. “I have a different line on making records now then I did a few years ago.

I think of records now in terms of sculpture — they’re actual grooves cut out on vinyl which the needle follows. That’s always in the back of my mind, the thing you buy and put the stylus down on not as rhythmic drum beats, but etchings or indentions in the groove. The snare drum is, at its initiation, an.acoustic event, but its final product will be along those lines. I really do think of it like that, that I’m making sculpture now.

“The words have begun to matter much much more. On the title track, those words took on such weight they seemed to crowd out any others. I was trying to make a sculpture about the wonder in things. I grew up in a house in North Carolina that had a kennel in it, raising various types of dogs. Mainly show dogs, and they always do this thing: hearing something they didn’t understand, they tilt their head.” Chris bends his head down to his arm so his ear in in the air. “That was incredible. It seemed that music had a real power, sound had a controlling power; a quick cause-andeffect—sound, and the mind reacting to it. The dogs didn’t plan on tilting their heads. People are the same way, and I really like that idea. When I’m listening, I really like a quick response to something that seems wonderful in it. Full of wonder in it...

“I think this is not going to be right for CREEM.”

And it probably won’t be right for the vast majority of music buyers. Chris realizes this: “If I wanted to make lots of money I wouldn’t play rock. I’d play movie soundtracks.” However, I still contend the dB’s stand a chance for commercially lucrative music, especially now that they’ve finally signed to an American record label, Bearsville (the other two albums were on the British Albion label).

“I think a group like Men At Work’s success lies in the fact that they don’t put any demands on their listener, they’re shallow. I do mean physically, the way a valley or a lake will be shallow. That shallowness is an asset for what they’re trying to do, and it works really well. Not many people have the time to put much time into music. I mean, there are important things that people have to do—their work, their loved ones. Maybe there’s a wife that’s pregnant. With Men At Work, they can skim the surface and get everything that’s there. That’s the reason I like Men At Work, though I don’t like to listen to them.

“Take a song like (Smokey Robinson’s) ‘Tracks Of My Tears,’ that would have trouble getting on the radio today. In the midst of daily activities, when it comes on, it makes emotional demands and gets in the way of people’s lives.” The fact is that the easy way out isn’t always the best; pop music might be transient, but I can’t see how anybody can listen to “Who Can It Be Now” more than three times without getting bored senseless.

However, you lucky sods, the dB’s will be back in the studio by the time you read this, and an album is expected by September. And Chris expects to return to the studio for another solo outing. So if the mindlessness of pop is getting you down, try either band or man. Hard work can be its own reward.

Iman Lababedi

My Teeth Dream Of Wires

PHILADELPHIA, PA-Hey kids! No more ugly metal braces that wreck your social life and make your mouth look like an Army Corp of Engineers dredging project!

Researchers here at the University of Pennsylvania have developed electric braces that do the job in half the time of regular ones. Since electricity speeds up the entire process, tiny wires are attached directly to the gums. The batteries are contained in an acrylic case that generates twenty-millionths of an ampere and fits in the back of the gums.

Better yet, the braces need only plug ’em in overnight, then disengage the batteries in the morning. Incidentally, twentymillionths of an ampere is the same amount required for Steve Miller to write a new song.

Rick Johnson

ELEPHANT PIE-IN -THE-SKY?

"Dammit, she's here again I” screams Tom as he ducks behind the safety of his monitor. Seems that lately, Petty's been plagued by the un-fairy-like fecal flingings of a certain ex-song partner. "I don't mind her," whines Tom, who has been suffering many a sleepless night because of this recent feuding. "It's that damned pink elephant with the Freddie Mercury collar that scares me I And talk about the smell—1" Uh, yeah Tom, we'd certainly rather talk about it...

Exploding The Myth Of The Chesterfield Kings

NEW YORK—Rick Cona, Doug Meech, Greg Prevost, Ori Guran, and Andy Pabiuk, the five souls who would one day inhabit the body of the entity known as the Chesterfield Kings were collectively born in a rabbit hutch four miles east of Kennybunkport, Maine. Which is not to suggest the boys were spawned from rabbitloins—we all know that such things are impossible.

School was hell... never enough #2.pencils to go around, the cruel laughter of their peers who found their pointy ankle boots, bowl haircuts, and Chocolate Watchbands unfathomable. A hutch is not a home, and as they grew, things got crowded. So one and all packed up and shuffled off to Rochester, a heretofore unknown unnotable in upstate New York.

Two months after moving to Rochester, Andy went to Iowa for a vacation. He did not return for a year-and-a-half. Here we enter the hazy period in the history of the Kings, sometimes known as the “Shadow Years,” obscuring the exact influence surrounding the emergence of these five young men as the Wharf “Moonrock” Taylor band of the ’80s.

During Andy’s absence, the remaining quartet lost track of each other for the first time in their lives. Rick rangered far and away searching for the perfect coonskin cap, which he still wears today. Doug entered a monastery for Buddhists in the Catskills. Greg realized his vocal prowess and spent all his time practicing in a comfortable dumbwaiter. Ori wandered westward looking for Andy and found a firmly-lodged elevator instead.

The missing link eventually wandered home from Porkland USA with many Jimmy Dean souvenirs and no dinero. Andy covered his 18 month vacation with an awesome quote from the book, The Velvet Underground:

“As I am at present 700 miles from a city, you can imagine how much sex I wish to discuss.”

It was manna from New Haven. They started practicing two days later.

International Fame is not an easy boat to board, but a man with a muse on his back is bulllike with determination. For years, the Chesterfield Kings lived on nothing but herring, trolley burgers (something that leaked into Rochester from Canada), and lime Kool-Aid, and this is all the most preposterous of lies. Forgive me, forgive me, but I’m writing this at a wedding reception with nothing to go on but a slim press kit and a 15 minute interview in a crowded dressing room that sounded like a Spanish person yelling transAtlantic thru a piece of tin connected to a string with another tin at the other end. Hell, as far as I know, some irksome imp could have switched the tapes and it is some Spanish person yelling, etc., etc...but you see I Created it all for one reason and that js not laziness. I only want to preserve the mystique of the Chesterfield Kings.

When you’re dealing with the likes of the Kings, it doesn’t really matter how old they are or where they get their material or where they buy their boots. Their loying reproductions of ’64-’68 American garage non-standards whoop for attention, their live shows peel the paint off your brain walls.

Here Are The Chesterfield Kings was allegedly recorded quite a while ago in a large studio, but the majority of the songs were scrapped and rerecorded on a four-track in someone’s wine cellar or dumbwaiter. The resulting sound is genuine, chaotic, and exactly what is called for. The songs are carefully picked from the 250 numbers in the Kings’ revolving repertoire, and chances are you haven’t heard all of them, even if you have every single volume of Pebbles.

The Kings worked hard to create their own sound, and they offer craft—minus boring duplication. No matter what they’re doing up there onstage, or on that little piece of plastic spinning endlessly on yer turntable, it’s still them five boys from Rochester having a hoot. You hoot too.

“Sit down, my son, and I’ll tell you the story of the Chesterfield Kings...not one story actually, but many.. .myth or reality...who gives a flying weenie? After all they’re a good batch of tales. It all started on a ranch in Arizona a long time ago...”

Annene Kaye

BERTINELLI/VAN HALEN HOAX REVEALED!

Sorry to break your hearts, little girls and boys, but it seems that we've all been the victims of a terrible misunderstanding. Seems that eight years ago, a young Eddie Van Halen wanted to break into sho-biz, but was told that he wasn't photogenic on* ough, which broke his guitartwangin' and he decided heart. to So, pull brother the biggest Al practical joke of alii And now it can be revealed 1 EDDIE VAN HALEN IS VALERIE BERTINELLI! For years now, he's been pulling double duty as both the sexy ingenue of One Day At At Time fame, and as the lead guitarist for a very popular HM band. When CREEM reporters caught him—uh, her outside of an exclusive Swiss hospital, Mr. Bertinelli—Ms. Van Halen (?) declined to comment, Next month I Jerry Hall/DL Roth hoax revealed!

Bosch's Garden Of Earthly Dues

COLUMBUS, OH-Born Easterners Rik Lawrence and Fran Rosen had originally come to Ohio for college, but found themselves living in Cleveland when the D.I.Y. fever swept the region in 1977, so they got together with some studio musicians, billed themselves as “Hieronymus Bosch,” and cut a one-off single, “Rollin’ In Firs,” on their own Enigma label. The record attracted enough favorable local response that the D.I.Y.-juices started 'flowing through Fran’s and Rik’s veins, they got together a regular band, now just “Bosch,” and set out to climb the Clubland circuit to a record deal.

Nearly six years later, the celebrated D.I.Y. rock life is still just that for Bosch, as the recession has dried up the club scene’s patrons, who have far too little “discretionary income” to spread around on anybody’s concerts. There’s not much going on these days in Cleveland’s clubs (it’s only the biggest city in Ohio—whaddya want!?), so Bosch have been rushing off on a moment’s notice, like unemployed autoworkers with a hot tip of a rehire in another town, to Detroit, to Pittsburgh, to N.Y.C., to wherever there’s a club who’ll give ’em a shot.

Thus far in their found career, Bosch have managed to open for such luminaries as Edie Massey, Pittsburgh’s Silencer’s, and, in what was perhaps Bosch’s biggest show ever, for Joan Jett, when she played Cincinnati’s Bogart’s, in July, 1981, just as her first album was starting to zoom off nationally, and the club was packed with Jett’s fans that night. As impatient as they were to see their raucous heroine, the Jett crowd didn’t miss Bosch’s hip energy.

Since that promisingly sweaty evening, things have been rather quiet for Bosch, except for the weekly hiss of their van tires thumping over yet another broken-pavement Interstate, on the way to yet another bleakly hopeful gig. Are you getting tired of all these corny duespaying anecdotes already? Well, so are Bosch, but unfortunately all these stories are true, and that’s where the fatal corniness comes in.

Ready for some more dues? Okay, it’s Saturday night in Columbus, there are lots of people out along North High Street by the Ohio State U. campus, but the crowd is sparse inside the small bar Bosch was (lucky enough to get) asked to play. Do the gloomy Hell’s Angels types at the bar have any idea Fran Rosen was once a latter-day (but still big-bikes & black-boots) Shangri-La, after the original La’s had checked into a preventive-detention rest home? Really? Well, yeah, and that and a buck-twentyfive’ll get you a cold brew tonight.

Big deal, Bosch have faced up to enough of these halfempty scenes before, they hop right into their showcase set with as much crisp energy as though David Geffen and Clive Davis had beamed down to this raggedy Columbus club from their starships, just to catch this promising band’s show. Rik Lawrence plays jumpy, abrupt bass for Bosch, and Fran Rosen’s the lead singer. Somewhere along the line, Rosen was shanghaied from her Shangri-Lasville long enough to obtain what’s popularly known as a “trained voice,” and her vocals zoom between cocky new wave biteoffs, and swoopy operatic slides, potentially as wild-tongued as Nina Hagen’s, but Fran always resolves her swoops back into the popsong chorus just in time, under-3minutesandacloudof-dust, just like they taught her about pop kultur across the street at Ohio State.

Meanwhile, the strong and silent Jack Cosper is gliding between his keyboards and guitar, deftly filling every groove of the quick and choppy Bosch songs with big chunks of electronic sound, Bosch’s sound is loud, precise, and jumpy, all at once, and it’s simultaneously “hip” and “showbiz,” in just about the same magic proportions the best Top 40 records of the ’60s really were. Bosch’s set alternates between their catchy, wordy originals (quick bursts of Rosen emotional dynamics, with the endings always abrupt) . And a few covers of non-hit songs from groups like the Motels. Fran’s got the dance steps she needs on stage; videos could well be this group’s ticket inside, if they only had the bucks.

Bosch sound great tonight, but the club owner hasp’t caught enough riddims from his cash-register keys, the drinks are moving slow, and as Bosch sign off with one of their trademark abrupt endings, the new silence is filled less with applause, than with a steady, liquid “Bing! Bing!” from the back of the club. The owner’s sulking away his instant-millionaire frustrations by yanking and flippering away at some magenta and chartreuse-lighted space-amazon pinball machine. “Bing! Dirtg!” Both Bosch and their fans turn expectantly toward the flipper-obsessed club owner.

Does he like Bosch well enough for a return engagement (or even a second set?) Where’re we gonna play next week? Toledo? Erie, PA? Back to Cleveland? When are the record companies gonna wake up to the potential of Bosch? Is there life beyond dues-p(baying?

Stay tuned. .

Richard Riegel

Special D Hatred At Last

NEW JERSEY-Outside of a home and a family, Americans have always dreamed of a firstclass insult service. That dream has finally matured here with “Insult-A-Gram,” the best idea since pureed worms in the mailbox.

The brainchild of obvious genius/housewife Joan Miller, Insulf-A-Gram charges a mere $3 to dash off succinct slander to hatred-earners like bosses, neighbors with small children, and Judas Priest fans. Best of all, the sender remains anonymous, i.e., alive.

Although the full contents of Mrs. Miller’s abuse-bank (over 6,000 slurs on tap) cannot be printed, imaginative readers might guess it includes items like “You could rent out your breath as a petri dish,” “Because of you, doctors now state that 70% of the human body Js water or cellulite,” and the classic “Your subscription to CREEM is nearly expired.”

J. Kordosh

Roche Infestation Found In Local Beanery

SOMEWHERE IN A MYTHICAL NYC—Sharp-eyed viewers of the Christmas Eve episode of the popular TV soap Ryan s Hope may have noticed that the trio of holiday carolers who brightened the afternoon at Ryan’s Bar were none other than punkfolk’s own celebrated Roches, Maggie, Ter-RE, and SUZ-ZY! Saloonkeeper Johnny Ryan, himself a bit glum after a recent bout with impotence (caused by his wife Maeve’s bedtime custom of devouring a chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses before she permits any loveydovey), was considerably cheered by the shrill performance of the harmony-happy sisters. Dressed in their usual potato-famine-refugee duds, the Irish-ancestried Roche siblings blended right into the wall-towall-potted-Micks ambience ot Johnny’s joint, and should perhaps be considered for permanent roles in daytime TV’s longest-running ethnic joke. However, there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that Roches’ producer Robert Fripp also appeared in the Ryan’s Hope holiday episode, in a cameo as a reveler tapelooped on too many Irish coffees.

Richard Riegel

Kirke Beams Down

NEW YORK—With spring in the air and in my step, I visited Swan Song Records, high atop the Newsweek building, for a chat with Simon Kirke. Now I’m not the “bad company” sort, hardly given to running with the fisthurling, thumpa-thumpa pack, but I’d always got a kick—and that’s the word—from his in-thepocket, whip-the-note’s-ass drumming; as for Bad Company, well...from a bolting leap at their start they seemed to crucify an enticing formula with superstar indolence. If they didn’t seem to care, neither did I, really.

What an agreeable afternoon it turned out to be—good, affable company Simon Kirke was, the sort you toast, and buy another for. With hair all flash for the ’80s, he seemed, pardon me, ready to rock. And he’s running with some pups of that pack, called Wildlife, a bunch of young second-gen ’70s rockers weaned on Plant and Rodgers, Page and Ralphs, Jones and Burrell, Bonham and our good Captain Kirke—that Swan Song sophistication of the punch-andcrunch that, as we talked, gave me my lovely skyline view. I plunked down my bucks for those first Zep and Bad Co. discs back when; now it’s easily forgotten and irritating get-sotted music to me—the soundtrack for too many collegiate pukers, perhaps—but it sure had that sheen. And damned if the tape Simon’s playing doesn’t sound like Bad Co. redux, metal so clean and clear it cuts through my filters for such normally irritating drivel. I like this stuff OK...singer belts like a stokedup Rodgers, wiry guitar bits.. .Simon, as always, jackhammering that footprint right behind the trotting monster.

So let the gUy talk already...

“I got introduced to them by a friend of mine,* ostensibly. . .well, he played me a tape and asked me what I thought about them, and I thought they were phenomenal,” he says with an almost reverent hush to the praise. The man’s clearly not hyping—these kids have something. “He said, ‘would you like to work with them?’ and I said ‘yes,’ because Bad Company wasn’t doing anything at the time, and they came down from Norfolk, which is way out in the sticks. So they came down by train, and we met at a rehearsal studio, and it took off from there...”

Almost providentially for Wildlife, “they had just gotten rid of their drummer.” They had some. 20 songs Simon helped whittle and polish as he stepped onto the drum stool, now skimmed for an album.

Were these kids, fed on Bad Co. for breakfast, impressed that he joined, superstar and all?

“I guess they were,” he muses. “I remember when we were looking for a bass player, I phoned up the guy we got, and said, i’ve seen your ad in Melody Maker. What are your favorite'bands? I’d like to get an idea of your influences...’ And he said, ‘Free, Bad Company...’ I said, ‘Well, I’m Simon Kirke...’”

He relates rolling his name out without a trace of glib, wealth or fame, almost as if, “Well, you’ve got him on the phone, what can I do for you?”

Simon continues: “They’re great blokes, and when it comes to playing, they just treat me like a musician. Who I am might add a little spice to it for them”

They are young. “In 1969, when I did my first U.S. tour with Free, they were 12!” But it fires him. “I see in them what I was, 10 or 15 years ago—that eye of the tiger, that hungry look. I’m slightly better off, but I really enjoy it.”

In case you were wondering: “Bad Company hasn’t really split up, by the way. They're just going through one of those lulls (and they’ve never been afraid of those lulls). Paul and Mick, they’re doing their own solo projects, Boz is involved with his band, so I don’t want to sit around with nothing to do,” he says with a modest consideration, “and these guys are really great to work with.”

Details dispensed with, we really talk, Simon asking me all about my career, a practice I abhor in interviews, but he’s so sincere it becomes a pleasure. “Tough living, isn’t it?” he asks—something few stars realize.

As for music? “Dragged kicking and screaming into the ’80s,” he notes, “heralded by that awful punk thing. Which did a lot of good, I want to admit. It gave a good kick in the ass to a lot of people in the music industry, especially people like me, who were getting a bit complacent.”

We pause again for the album, at Mach level (produced by Mick Ralphs, mind you). All the glistening gusto of Bad Company is there, with a twist of tantalizing Cars-like keys. I’m inclined to call it a winner, not just for the music.

It was just something about Kirke. “I don’t want to get delusions of grandeur. I just want to be a good drummer.” And a good interview—as rare as a 5* cigar.

Rob Patterson

"Well, my new wave fizzled and the heavy metal approach didn't do the trick, so make way for the Silly Voodoo approach" exclaimed singer Nona Hendryx. "It worked for the Cramps, so there's no reason it won’t work for me." Nona recently packed up, left Detroit and moved to New Orleans, where she's working on a project she describes as "a cross between ’Lady Marmelade' and Bananarama." And if it doesn't work out this time? "Hell, I could always marry one of the Romantics I" laughed "Oh" Nona.

RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE

5 Years Ago

The Truth About Linda!

According to Ram magazine, Paul McCartney admitted in a TV interview that, musically, Linda was “absolute rubbish” when she first started out with Wings, although he quickly made amends by adding, “She has improved as a keyboards player.” Luckily, the subject was changed before Paulie could comment on her voice...