June 1984
Contents
This time J. Kordosh has gone too far. The illustration on page 54 of your March issue borders on sacrilege, and I’m sure Kordosh is behind it (note the caption “Darn that Kordosh”). As Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, I feel it my duty to do something about this man.
Christgau Consumer Guide
ROBERT CHRISTGAU
Brutally honest right down to the name, the label promoted this entry from South African pop pros Thomas Mkhize and Glynn Storm as “more structured and somewhat less dense than Ade’s highlife [sic] style,” praising their “state-of-the-art production values, modern instrumentation, and pronounced rock, jazz, and pop influences.”
Creem Profiles
THOMPSON TWINS
(Pronounced “Boy Howdy!”)
Rock 'n' Roll News
Pink-eyed soulman Johnny Winter just finished up an LP for Chicago’s Alligator Records. Winter’s band for the project included such ace bluesbreakers as James Cotton and members of Albert Collins and Lonnie Brooks's bands Look for an early summer release.
The Beat Goes On
Toby Goldstein
NEW YORK—Andy Fairweather-Low is sitting across the desk in an Island Records office, examining the album just handed him with a blend of shock and tenderness. “It does bring back memories,” he finally sighs, in the lilting Welsh accent of his Cardiff home.
THE SMITHS: THROUGH BEING COOL
Merle Ginsberg
Annie Lennox, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson—if 1983’s music had any message at all, it was: “Be beautiful, be hip, be cool—be like me.” New music has inevitably led up to the same indulgences as old music. Well, that was last year. You can forget that now.
RE-FLEX: HIT 'EM WITH A HAMMER!
David Keeps
On first inspection, Re-Flex inspire a critical knee-jerk amounting to a giant “so what?”; but appearances, as we all know, are often quite deceiving. Sure, they’ve got a fistful of melodic, danceable synthesizer ditties that pay homage to the mechanics of Pop Music—like “Praying To The Beat” and “Hitline”—as well as taking a bow(ie) to the master himself by quoting “station to station” in their smasheroo “The Politics Of Dancing.”
PROOF THRU THE NIGHT: T-BONE BURNETT OFFERS 100%
Cynthia Rose
Rock music may know few true gentlemen. But those it does possess are liable to embody the best of that extraordinary flamboyance, imagination and hope rock can lend all our lives. Take J. Henry Burnett from Fort Worth, Texas. To rock cognoscenti (and Hollywood’s hipsters), J. Henry is better known as TBone Burnett: a musician’s musician and a sophisticate of both second innocence and music’s best blood truths.
ELECTRIC SUPERMAN
Toby Goldstein
His legendary stone guitar has been moved into a storage room, and you have to look pretty hard to find many rock 'n' roll artifacts, but Rick Derringer and his wife Liz are very much at home in their cozy Manhattan triplex hideaway. Welcoming a pair of guests (my guitar-playing husband was not going to be left out of this one!) with juice, beer and a slobbery greeting from his two dogs, Derringer lowers the sound on a nearby television (MTV, of course) and we settle onto a comfortable sofa.
I WAS A MONK FOR OZZY OSBOURNE!
J. KORDOSH
Backstage, in the dressing room, Joanie—who's in charge of wardrobe for the Ozzy Osbourne tour—found a suitable black, satanic-looking monk's robe for me. Somebody gave me a small, box-type thing that emitted a steady light. People were giving orders: "Keep the light right beneath your face"... "Remember to walk slowly and about three feet apart"... "Don't worry, you've got plenty of time."
UPLIFT & UPHEAVAL A-PRAISED
Cynthia Rose
It’s beginning to smell a bit like spring— yet what’s flowing fastest seems to be bile, and what’s flowering tallest, hype. This can be fun; I enjoy seeing ZTT record boss Paul Morley pop up on telly to detail the censorships his video endeavors have encountered...And to claim he’d really like to make vids for some “unkempt 15-year-old in the North who hates the world.”
CREEM DREEM
CYNDI LAUPER
Rock ‘n’ Roll Calendar
Calendar
Features
BOY GEORGE, BOHEMIAN!
Cynthia Rose
Were they rebels? Were they artists? Were they outcasts from society? They were all of these. They were the Bohemians.
BOY GEORGE Lookalike Contest!
This is it! At long last, it's your big chance to show the world what you've got, to let all those doubting ones know once and for all that you're star material! That you can out-Boy Mr. O'Dowd himself in the eyes of the world! All you have to do is decorate yourself as an imaginative version of everybody's favorite karma wiggly and sena it to us mucho pronto!
AGONY & ECSTASY OF ABC
All education begins with ABCs, This particular education is of the musical sort, concerning one Sheffield-based trio (formerly quartet) that took its alphabetical beliefs and translated them into a clever pop pastiche that won the hearts and dancing feet of music fans the world over "The Look Of Love"!
Creemedia
Laura Fissinger
Here we have two films dealing with pop sexuality as it seemingly is and might just possibly be in the not so distant future. Both are nervelessly idiosyncratic, maniacal, unerringly precise, desperate, passionless and occasionally sidesplittingly hilarious visions that hardly bode well for the combined futures of romance and sexual madness aka “serious” fucking.
DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Edouard Dauphin
So to whom was the Thin White Duchess referring, you might well ask, as you peruse this column, Boy Howdy flagon clutched in one paw, a slice of Weenie Pizza with extra cheese gripped in the other. Was Detroit’s favorite housewife jawing about Keef or Iggy or even her own spouse?
MEDIA COOL
David Keeps
Haven’t seen a good review of this film anywhere. Most of the complaints seem to be that Mariel Hemingway portrays Dorothy Stratten, the Playboy Playmate of the Year who was murdered by her estranged husband, as a docile woman totally dominated and manipulated by the men around her.
Video Video
SEEING AND NOTHINGNESS
Here was the first video I’d seen in which the song meant little, if anything, to the video.
THE GREAT KORG POLY-800 GIVEAWAY!
Here's your opportunity to win—and win big—in the Korg Poly-800 Giveaway! The lucky winner of this contest will receive a new Korg Poly-800 Synthesizer. The Poly-800 is a professional, digitally programmable, 8-voice, polyphonic synthesizer.
Records
ROYAL GUM-UP
To tell you the truth—a thing I’m not addicted to, by the way—I’ve been a professional liar when it comes to Queen.
ROCK • A • RAMA
Michael Davis
There’s much disagreement on exactly what constitutes a jazz vocal or exactly who is or ain’t a jazz singer (though everyone knows that Danny Thomas and Neil Diamond, who starred in the ’53 and ’80 versions of The Jazz Singer definitely ain’t), but the 23 singers collected on this tworecord set (spanning ’21-lb) offer a good definition by example.
KEYBOARDS IN THE INFORMATION AGE
Roger Clay
Musical Electronics did not start with Dr. Robert Moog, but we will. If you haven’t heard his name before as the father of synthesis— or just his last name as a kind of generic term for synthesizers, Bob Moog (and in a parallel universe on the West Coast, Don Buchla) originated the voltage-controlled synthesizer.
KISS & TELL
Jaan Uhelszki
Beck’s Bolero pas de deux: Rod Stewart may let Alana slip through his fingers, (and into Helmut “Dynasty” Berger’s) but the ever enchanting Scot has managed to lure Jeff Beck into his web. Jeff has been adding some blistering guitar work to Stewart’s next album, and admitted that he is especially pleased with a cut called “Saturation.”
Backstage
Backstage
Where the Stars Tank Up & Let Their Images Down