MEDIA COOL

MEDIA COOL

This Month’s Media Cool was written by Bill Holdship, Heather Joslyn, Bob Brown, Rick Johnson and Richard Riegel

COME TOGETHER: JOHN LENNON IN HIS TIME by Jon Wiener (Random House)

This is one of the best things ever written about Lennon. Wiener, a history professor and former ’60s activist, made headlines when he obtained 26 pounds of FBI and Immigration files on Lennon through the Freedom of Information Act (he and the ACLU are currently suing the Reagan administration for the remainder of Lennon’s “national security” FBI files), and the book mainly focuses on John’s political life (from the Fab Four through his death), how it related to rock ’n’ roll, and how it led to the harassment and persecution he and Yoko felt from Nixon’s blue meanies. Wiener’s research and analysis are pretty impeccable (though the book’s single flaw is too much self-righteous political editorializing, i.e., “good” politics vs. “bad”; calling early Jagger “a real [political] revolutionary” is laughable today), but his writing is always interesting and far from dry. There’s loads of information here I’d never heard before, including sceneby-scene accounts of recording sessions (he' listened to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ ” for vocal inspiration on “Mother”), the John Sinclair rally in Ann Arbor, the week he and Yoko co-hosted the Mike Douglas Show (when is someone gonna release that on video tape?), and other things too numerous to list here. The best aspect is that Wiener reveals many of Lennon’s negative traits as well as the positive, and our hero still comes out looking mighty fine despite the scrutiny. A fitting tribute to one of the most intelligent and courageous men to pick up an electric guitar. B.H.

WHEN THE MUSIC MATTERED Rock In The 1960s by Bruce Pollock (Holt, Rinehart and Winston)

According to the introduction, this collection of reminiscences by major and minor characters in the ’60s rock landscape is not meant as a critical history of the music, but rather as a “social document.” It fails on both counts. The book relies too heavily on folkies—Paul Simon, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Marty Balin—to make any claims as a complete history. Where’s Phil Spector? Where’s Motown? Where’s the beef? Pollock’s attempts to place his subjects in perspective are admirable, and he occasionally offers fresh insights, such as in the Paul Simon/Roger McGuinn chapter in which he views their folk-rock as a natural evolution of Brill Building pop. The chilling, decadent safari into the Monkee kingdom with Peter Tork is also noteworthy. But for the most part, Pollack’s naive, simplistic armchair sociology overwhelms his modest revelations. The Altamont stabbing, for example, is described as a mere matter of the crowd, “filled with loving vibes and smashed on weed,” being “kept in line too abrasively by the ushers.” After a few pages of similiar awkward narration, one wishes Pollock would shut up and let the musicians talk. A wasted opportunity. H.J.

SPLATTER MOVIES by John McCarty (St. Martin’s Press)

This one’s subtitled, “Breaking The Last Taboo Of The Screen.” Untrue! The. last taboo is transvestite dawg hula porn. Anyhoo, this updated edition covers splat flicks from their 1963 birth (Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast) through nowsville in an authoritative-yet-wacky manner. Chapters on Hammer Films, “Godfather Of Gore” Lewis, George Romero, David Cronenberg, makeup boss Tom Savini, the making of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and much more are informatively creepy. Plus a color photo section (take ’em away\), a handy listing of all splatter films ever, and great CREEMy captions like, “Hard place to keep clean, huh?” R.J.

PAC-MAN MACARONI (Chef Boy-ar-dee)

Phone. CREEM calling. Emergency assignment. Take the next flight to L.A. in search of Pac-Man Macaroni, nowhere to be found in the Great Plains or East. I get lucky. I find the last two cans on the continent. Fifteen ounces of fun. The green can has “cheese flavor.” The pink has “mini-meatballs” and costs 30 cents more. Brand new blue cans now available in “golden chicken flavored sauce.” Then I make a fatal mistake. I read the ingredients: Corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, hydrologized plant protein, caramel coloring, thiamine hydrochlorides...(full list available upon request from the Center For Disease Control in Atlanta) . Not to mention that Pacaroni (to its friends) has a half-life of 35,000 years. Green, blue and pink. Remember. Available at your favorite grocery store! B.B.

CASEY KASEM’S AMERICAN TOP 40 (Syndicated Radio Show)

Yeah, this has been with us for awhile, and I used to (almost) enjoy the saturated-fats spectacle of a grown man getting off in his polyester slacks weekly over the most pointless pop chart statistics he could dig up. His apparently fanatical interest in the snail mathematics of chart motions made me almost ready to forgive Mr. Kasem the absolute mawkisness of his “Long-Distance Dedication” segments. And then 1 read a newspaper interview with the mighty Casey, in which he admitted (bragged, even) that he rehearses every line of his show, that he records and rerecords every “moving up a notch” until he captures just the right inflection of warmth and conviction. Keerist! If you can’t be spontaneous even when you’re talking trash, Casey, you ain’t nothing to the “rock era,” man! R.R.