PLEASE FINISH DRIVING US CRAZY BEFORE YOU START BRANCHING OUT

PLEASE FINISH DRIVING US CRAZY BEFORE YOU START BRANCHING OUT

RICK JOHNSON

Let's see now, is heavy metal dead or not this month? (Refers to CREEM's handy Deod/Not Dead Editorial Calendar) Hmmm...psychedelic hula is dead this month...so is speech-afterremoval-of-larynx country blues.

Uh...knock-knock accordion power trios are alive this month, so is heavy clambake watusi, heavy Finnish breakdown film noir background dubbing noises, and...OK, yeah, here it is—heavy metal is alive and well!

Until the 31st, anyway.

We knew it all along, right? What we're not too clear on is what species of heavy metal. There's been a raging debate the last couple years over just this very topic, and I'm talking raging—at least up there with boyhood arguments like whether the //.// is silent in the word Funt.

You want the facts and figures? Tuff bee-screen, fedayeen! The whole silly concept exists only in the intyllectual Mexican hat tricks of various critic types. And you know about them—I mean, like last month's record reviews in CREEM. One guy sends in a stupid civil defense quiz, one gets attacked by the ghost of Karen Carpenter, and another one guns down his own mother in cold blood!

One of the few crydicks you can "trust" is our own contributing eddytor J. Kordosh. I don't mean you can trust him alone in the same room with your screaming infant and a blunt object, but his thoughts ("") on metal are, well, see for yourself: "Is heavy metal old? Or is it new? Is new heavy metal just old heavy metal in drag? Or was old heavy metal before Jimmy Page met a nice zygote? Is old heavy metal good, and does that make new heavy metal unnecessary? Or is new heavy metal just different? Does different mean good? Is there any reason at all you're still reading this?"

Not me, bub! But as Kordo goes on to reveal: "Linear logic won't unlock the HM puzzle. Metal and logic aren't on speaking terms, by definition." Is that spittin' the biggies out or what? Kordosh, in fact, reminds me of the Roman historian Labienus, a cool guy who Wrote The Book. When imperial authorities destroyed all copies of said book, he killed himself so that his volume wouldn't survive at all! What a guy!

SNAIL DOODY & YOU

The only thing we know for sure is that people need this gearhead reductivism called heavy metal. Dr. Kordo himself has scientifically proven there exists an innate lust for shows and stomp within the human psyche. Yep, we require a certain degree of aggression by semi-intelligent industrial wastes to help us get in touch with our own inner emotional snail doody.

Admittedly, there are times when you wanna just slump in your beanbag life and moo out to soft stuff treacly enough to bring on moping in minnows. But el sulko is only good for awhile before those primeval blot instincts take over and the human animal must face the ooze and GET DOWN! As deeply as possible, possibly devolving into coal, petroleum, or Bill Blass.

"There was a time," wrote the otherwise vocationally disabled John Neilson, "when heavy metal seemed to make sense. At its roots, it was an evolutionary amplification of a few select aspects of rock into a knowing caricature. Both the violence of its sound and the malignance of its vision were perfectly suited to its time. Its endless riffs were the rhythms of dance slowed down and stripped to a series of violent thrusts." Not as violent as the thrust with which I threw out the rest of your article, John!

Yes indeedy-do, the stage was set for the stage to be set. So what did we end up with? A pretty goshdarn doctrinaire genre, that's what. In fact, you can pretty much boil it, like everything, down to the Big Three: It's as LOUD as having an eviction notice nailed to your forehead, as SCREECHY as a rusty craniotomy saw in the hands of Moe, and so HEAVY that it can sometimes only be listened to in conditions of weightlessness. Add some lyrics that are as memorable as your most unforgettable blackout and you achieve a certain transcendental cruddiness that can make grown men and women jump up on aluminum folding chairs and holler IN-A-GADDADA-VIDA!

Once the official archetype was established as strongly as a cee-ment frond, HM was only too happy to chase its own tail. Newer bands imitated the old shit deedle-for-deedle and pose-for-pose, until what was once a cinderblock hurricane of doomthrottle was reduced to the level of funeral etiquette. And remember, the first three letters in funeral are F-U-N!

DEATH TO WIENIE-W AGGERS!

Then, blooey! In a spiritual awakening on a level with John Landis's stunning realization that explosives and choppers don't mix, people/fans decided they were getting sick of the same old craparino, technically speaking.

Ace metal mousekateer Sylvie Simmons pointed out a handful of theories as to what launched the new wave of HM: a new generation of metal maniacs sick of digging Led Zep albums out of their mom's collection; a new generation of metal maniacs (female) sick of ogling middle-agespread squeezed into tight leather,would-be musicians sick of air-soloing on the floor of some stadium and hankering for the spotlight; and the total worldwide OD on generic umlaut bands.

"Whatever," Sylvie spake courageously, "something happened. Metal ceased to be a game for selfindulgent pensioners. It started getting rootsy, dynamic, energetic, youthful, stupid, and over-the-top—all the things HM should be after all."

Soon, new improved HM groups started turning up like so many forgotten Stone Age tribes suddenly caught sucking shrimp over at Arthur Treacher's. Starving iron slurpists everywhere clutched these new bands to their heaving chests like they were a CARE package full of new squeeze toys and a couple dozen clean bibs.

As a spokesman for Jimmy Carter once so eloquently put it, "You don't put raw meat in front of these people and expect them not to eat it."

LET'S ASK MARLIN PERKINS

Today's groovee metal fans—smart tots who don't believe anything that doesn't count in horseshoes—won't swallow just anything. This new wave of HM is another generation or two removed from the old blues framework and far more condensed than the earlier strains. The songs are more compact and energy-efficient, with little of the eelfinger wienie-wagging that was once so popular. I mean, sheer endurance certainly has its merits, but these days, regular everyday life (i.e. breathing, pushing buttons, changing channels) is endurance enough. I think my close personal friend Marlin Perkins summed it up best of all when he so sagely pointed out, "The armadillo has natural protection, but you do not."

'Course, there are some peeps'll argue there's no such thing as a new wave of heavy metal. Hey—they'll tell you Tampax products are "great for concentration" too, on TV at least. "Granted," grants the genial Kordosh, "something's happening. To term it a 'new wave' would be precipitous; to note that a second generation of heavy metal players are on the loose is, on the other hand, obvious."

Oooooooo—precipitous! That J. is one cool daddeo!

What does an actual musician think about it? Sez Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden, "It's not a movement. There have always been heavy metal bands and there always will be. There are still as many up and coming metal bands in England as there ever were when Maiden and Samson and Saxon and all these other bands came up." Oh, shut up, Bruce!

Van Halen meat vendor David Lee Roth says much the same, albeit in a more circuitous fashion: "They had a scientific experiment here in L.A.—you know how often people resemble their dogs and vice versa? So they had a controlled study where they took three dogs: one belonging to a scientist, one from the architectural strata and someone from the musical way of thinking. They took the scientific dog into a controlled environment and there was a pile of sticks there, and he sniffed around the sticks and made them into the design of a molecule. They said, hmmmm, scientist's dog makes a molecule, and wrote it down. Then they brought the architect's dog in and it nuzzled around the sticks and made them into the shape of the Empire State Building. Hmmm, architect's dog makes building, and they wrote that down. And then they had the musician's dog. The musician's dog gets there half an hour late, was stoned when it got there, started screwing around with the other dogs and left a half hour early."

"There was a time when heavy metal seemed to make sense." —John Neilson

Uh...not too clear about the precise interpretation of this tale, but who listens to musicians anyway? They're not to be trusted! These rivetheads' brains wouldn't even make good salads! Their hands must be registered with authorities as deadly yawn concealers! They get what they axe for!

BYE BYE JOHNNY!

When you wiggle right down to it, and I mean down, like taking the active ingredient out of sleeping on a garage floor and ingesting it, what's the big deal? Peeked at close-up like, there really isn't that big a diff between the old and new flavors of metal. "Innovation in heavy metal," our Limey pal Sylvie sez, "is about as rare as a Girl Scout cookie in a gay bathhouse. And if you found such a thing, you probably wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole anyway." Or as Neilson whispered, "Devil worship? Don't make me laugh! If Iron Maiden worship anything, it's the music of their role models." Right fucking on, I meant to tell him, before he mysteriously vanished that one night and was never seen or heard of again.

"We just carry on the same tradition," admitted Maiden's Steve Harris, "in our own way. But we do change. You gotta think, like, we are playing within an idiom. If we came out and did like Glenn Miller tunes or something, then justifiably, people'd be a bit freaked out. Like if Glenn Miller came out and did 'Smoke On The Water,' his audience would probably go HUH? [Especially since he's been dead over 30 years—Ed.] They'd throw a wobbler!"

Throw a wobbler—now, why couldn't / think of such a colorful expression? Instead, here I sit, with the same wistful expression on my face as June Cleaver's when The Beav said he'd buy her anything! Theodore, you little scamp you!

So if the musician's musician's munitions team can't even tell the difference, who can? Face it: one Rug Caddy Beaterweight (for "more bass drum punch!") thuds about the same as another Rug Caddy Beaterweight. This or that enunciation of chimney hygiene differs little from any other upper atmospheric injury or chemical fish kill. One megadiddley-do sounds a lot like any other phylum of nervous elongated marine worms. And any genotypecointoss gang of geeks in pre-scuzzed jeans and Salvation Air Force flak leotards that look like something a Hell's Angel would throw out looks a whole bunch like any other gaggle of mudpies.

FORGE OF POPEIL

So what'd'we got here? Seemed this was all leading up to something, didn't it? (string-drenched version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" is piped in overhead) C'mon, listen to what the experts have to say: "Anything is possible in this jet-propelled age!"— Docs in Attack Of The 50 Ft. Woman. "Mayor, from what I've seen here tonight, I'd say the whole world is ripe for accident!"—More docs in Dimension X. "Why should you go through life with your head in the same shape all the time?"—Supreme Metal Gonzo #1, Bob Hope. Not to mention that, statistically speaking, one American goes deaf every 1 3 minutes. Do you know what time it is?

Heavy metal is alive and well, at least 'til the 31st!

The way it looks from way up here, Van Helen's concoction of squaredancing electrons, telepathic doorbells, reversed soundtracks of tapdance flicks and clattering charm bracelets from the

Forge of Popeil maybe ain't the bro—or even cuz—of Led Zep's mungheap of coyote sweet talk, swandive rhythm throbola and mangled ski-lift chains of guitar whoopee, but they sure are close relatives of some, possibly unspeakable, sort. Mainly, the new stuff is shorter and faster. Snore.

Nope city, fans of animate luggage! Heavy metal's the most wide open mode of expression since crying, so it's no wonder humbucking herds of likeminded moronic extroverts are drawn to it like a pissant to a blowtorch. After all, we need good drowning music sometimes and none of these bands contain a lifeguard.

It's the difference between a "working outline" and "working." It's the dishsoap that goes "beyond clean, all the way into shine." It's the thundering metal Wheaties commercial that dares headbanging prats to "go tell yo' mama what the big boys eat!" It's the latest Detroit baby recovered in an alley dumpster two minutes ahead of the garbage truck, only to be dubbea Baby Doe by the press (what next, Doggie Doe?). It's the sordid thrill of eating donuts to pad your placque score.

Let's just leave these words to this "new" generation of fans, critics, musicians, promoters, groupies, roadies, p.r. hacks, cable cops, portable stop sign maintenance personnel, DJs, VJs, OJs, J.J.s, eddytors, photogs, art-types, unemployed sammy shop drudges and moms and dads everywhere: QUIT TALKIN' AND START WALKIN'!

Thanks to J. Kordosh, Sylvie Simmons, and John Neilson for not implicating the author in theft of service charges, and to Rhoda Morganstern for the title.

CREEM CLOSE-UP METAL