October 1979
Creem CONTENTS
Yer blues, C.B. and I’ve been reading quite a while, mainly to find pictures of the Runaways and besides reading weird shit always makes me happy. I was gonna write a letter to Dyan Diamond to see if she wants to be in Rippy & the Gumshoes with me and C.B. but I was looking through the July ’79 CREEM I just got and read Penny Valentine’s column.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
ARTHUR BLYTHE: “Lenox Avenue Breakdown” (Columbia)::I prefer this to, say, Blythe’s more conventionally “free” Bush Baby (on Adelphi) because—thanks to Jack DeJohnette, Guillermo Franco, and the lilt of Blythe’s theme vamps—its passion for popular rhythms enables it to say something about them.
ROCK ‘n’ ROLL NEWS
Don’t say where you heard it, but Nick Lowe and his favorite Dixie songbird Carlene Carter have become Basher and wife... Carlene has been in constant attendance on the Rockpile tour, where she can be seen in furtive corners playing kissy-face with her suave bass-playing hubby.
THE BEAT GOES ON
Rick Johnson
Here is your usually intrepid reporter sucking up to a bottle of stout, summoning up enough whiskey courage to try to confront the eminent musician with a couple of questions, knowing full well it will be like Cub Coda trying to interview Mozart.
Lowe Wit, Rude Boys
Penny Valentine
Exhausting times. Keeping up with music changes here is like constantly running for a bus, getting one foot on the platform, then realizing it’s the wrong number. Exciting times. Not in the dramatic sense of a separate movement outside the current mainstream (like punk and reggae were/are) but the way the edges are diffusing, things keep moving and expanding.
Todd Rundgren: Video-Tripping With The Perfect Master
Toby Goldstein
The Trail ways bus to Woodstock takes about 2½ hours from New York City, gradually trading the clatter of urban motorways for the static peace of outer suburbia and beyond, into farmland. What it also trades is the frantic pursuits of megalopolis for the good-old-days of craftism and bucolic chitchat.
(SONG) BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Susan Whitall
We didn’t know what to expect when Lene Lovich’s mom opened her door to us in a leafy suburban Detroit neighborhood.
YUMMY YUMMY, CHEWY CHEWY: A Bubblegum Yarn
Bobot A. Hull
In the early 1900’s, Frank H. Fleer concocted a sticky substance, a strange type of chewing gum, which he called “Blibber Blubber.” But chewing on this gum was like chomping on Silly Putty; furthermore, it had a wet bubble that usually burst, sticking stubbornly to junior’s countenance.
BELIEVE AT OR SPUD!
PROFESSOR ROBOT A. HULL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MUSICAL PERVERSITY HAS UNEARTHED AN LP, SKIP ROPE, THIRTYTHREE SKIP ROPE GAMES, RELEASED BY THE FOLKWAYS RECORD COMPANY IN 1955 ON ITS SUBSIDIARY SCHOLASTIC LABEL (SC 7649). AUTHENTICALLY RECORDED ON THE STREETS OF CHICAGO BY PETE SEEGER, THIS CULTURAL DOCUMENTARY INCLUDES A SONG ENTITLED “BUBBLE GUM” !
CHEAP TRICK
Features
TALKING HEADS: More Songs About Typing and Vacuuming
Barbara Charone
Blame the Australians for putting them at the top of the charts.
Rewire Yourself
A Message From The Medium
Richard Robinson
If there’s one thing I like less than other people’s telephone answering machines it’s getting muzak when I’m put on-hold.
Extension Chords
Battle Of The Amps
Allen Hester
A decade ago musicians were often measured by the size of their stacks.
Unsung Heroes Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
LOUIS JORDAN: Hep And The Art Off Alto-Sax Repair
Nick Tosches
In the 1940’s, there were two black singers who crossed over from Race Records (as Billboard called its bluegum charts until 1949, when the phrase Rhythm & Blues was adopted) to the white Pop charts.
Features
IS HEAVY METAL DEAD?
Rick Johnson
Last drum solo at the power chord corral.
The Eyebrows Have It
Rick Johnson
“You might get mad. You might be curious. You might stop and think. You might even want to tear up your beautician’s license and go set fire to a Shriner Burn Treatment Center,” says Tom Synder in the latest blurb for his new show, “but you won’t be bored.”
Creem Profiles
DEVO
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Stars Cars
FOGHAT
Confessions of a FILM FOX
The trials of Bebe, continued: Seems our lass, last seen drapipg herself on Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof’s manly shoulder, has been scrawling letters to the press lately, Joe Jackson claimed in a Soho News interview that Ms. Buell had telephoned him at his Gotham hotel suite and offered to come over & chew the fat, or “something like that.”
Records
HEP CATS WIG OUT
Billy Altman
Even before Fred Schneider has begun to chortle the impressionistically silly lyrics to “Planet Claire,” the lead-off track of the much anticipated debut album by the B52’s, the three-guy/two-gal band has joyously finger painted the musical landscape against which one is welcomed to frug, shoop shoop and mash potato the night away.
ROCK.A.RAMA
Billy Altman
JAMES BROWN—The Original Disco Man (Polydor):: Wherein the inscrutable Soul Brother Numero Uno finally comes to grips with a genre he just about invented singlehandedly, parts the sea of strobe lights, and proceeds to do the Camel Walk all over most of the undeserving, competition that had pushed him off the charts for far too long.
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down