January 1982
CREEM
I was born same as the rest of the people on this earth, then I got fat and fat and I kept on eating till I got so fat and obnoxious that I told people what to do and how to do it and then I just exploded. Call it fate, call it what you will. Superstardom arrived early at the Welles household and I got parts in movies and commercials.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
KING SUNNY ADE: The Message” (Sunny Alade import):: All I know about Ade is that he’s the (or a) king of Nigerian juju. His voice is gentle, his rhythm insinuating and very poly, his guitar graceful and faintly Hawaiian. Also, he writes good hooks—“Ma J’Aiye Oni” was on my interior jukebox for weeks.
Creem Profiles
JAMES BROWN
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS
Despite the deluge of solo LPs from the individual Macs, it’s full steam ahead for Fleetwood Mac, with a new LP due out early in ’82, and a tour scheduled—by summer, anyway. “A lot of people seem to want to hear that we’re breaking up,” commented Mick Fleetwood.
THE BEAT GOES ON
John Mendelssohn
LOS ANGELES—The 50’s are back, thanks to a rockabilly threesome from Queens, New York, who lived through barely six months of that decade between them. If, after seeing and hearing the Stray Cats, you don’t agree with their manager that singer/guitarist Brian Setzer has what it takes to make you forget Eddie Cochran, it can only be because you haven’t a clue who Eddie Cochran was in the first place.
FEELS LIKE THE FURS TIME
John Mendelssohn
In 1977, during the so-called Summer of hate, yet another refugee from a London art college got fed up with silk-screening “advertising crap” and resolved at last to do something about his long-suppressed compulsion to sing his own words in front of his own group.
GENESIS OF A SOLO CAREER: PHIL COLLINS HAS IT HIS WAY
Chris Salewicz
Set in the stockbroker belt 30 miles to the southwest of London, the Genesis studio complex is exactly what you might expect: several thatched, suitably idyllic, wood-beamed 17th century buildings that until recently comprised a farm, with the studio itself housed in a modern, factory-assembled former cow-shed hidden by the high barn.
Features
MICK JAGGER STARTS IT UP!
Ray Bonici
Hanging fire where all the boys go.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
CALENDAR
IAN HUNTER LIKES ROCK 'N' ROLL
Bill Holdship
“Compassion touches me in the head, and then it begins to bleed/Oh, there ain’t no rock ’n’ roll no more, just the sickly sound of greed. ” Ian Hunter wrote those words in 1976, shortly before the punk/new wave explosion gave rock ’n’ roll a brief and perhaps final moment of glory.
EXTENSION CHORDS
Allen Hester
Ahh, Christmas! 'Tis the season to be jolly, to give and receive wonderful gifts, drink eggnog with Uncle Harry, build snowmen, and make a joyful noise. Musicians seem to have little difficulty making joyful noises, especially when the eggnog is made just right; however, the musicians’ problem often arises from not having the proper tools to make the noises with, and therein lies the rub.
DEVO’S NEW TRADITIONALISM IN ACTION
Toby Goldstein
The soul you save may be your own.
CREEM DREEM
JAMIE LEE CURTIS
CREEMEDIA
Rick Johnson
If summer means fun, then the Holiday Season means boredom with a capital Dumb and that spells desperation. You can’t venture outdoors without the aid of a driftopener. There’s nothing on TV except blizzard warnings, slushlevel updates and news stories about people driven to murder, rape and the incessant telling of knock-knock jokes by cabin fever.
Prime Time
Richard C. Walls
Apparently my veiled threat at the end of the last column was perceived as idle—nobody down at the prestigious CREEM offices offered to defer part of their yacht, payments in order to underwrite my desire for subscription TV (cable hasn’t arrived in Detroit yet and won’t for at least another year) though, of course, it would all have been for the good of the magazine.
Confessions of a FILM FOX
Well hello, darlings, it’s been just a month but so much has happened I just don’t know where to begin! How ’bout exploitation flicks? Get this: “When a spirit makes love to a lonely woman, her dreams turn into A NIGHTMARE OF TERROR!” It’s a promo blurb for Dark Eyes, sweetest, featuring Fox-faves Britt Ekland and Lana “related to who?”
Records
HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL: A POLICE STORY
Mitchell Cohen
Garry Ahrenberg couldn’t get into the Police, an esthetic predeliction that caused him no small amount of derisive peer pressure.
ATTACK OF THE KILLER PREPPY
THE MAD PECK
ROCK • A • RAMA
NOVO COMBO (Polydor):: Interesting idea here—star-crossed sidemen get together with aspiring rockers in a prototypical supergroup shot in the dark, but to play modern Europop rather than the usual overbearing ad hoc metal. Established names here include Stephen Dees from Hall & Oates, and Michael Shrieve from Santana (!?!), and they make a real brave run at an Original Mirrors/New Musik style on the opener, �Up Periscope,� but after that Novo Combo�s sound gets far too...shall we say L.A.?
Stars Cars
J. GEILS
Backstage
BACKSTAGE
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down