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| The issue that launched hundreds of wasted hours. |
Circus
August 31, 1982
My friend Matt and I have known each other since first grade, meeting when we were bright-eyed, fresh-faced kids with bad haircuts and streaks of mischief. I’m not sure what the original attraction was–probably a mutual interest in football. Whatever it was, it took. We remained practically inseparable until I moved to Texas midway through sixth grade.
After an unintentional that’s-the-way-life-is estrangement, we reconnected through the interwebs, learning we’d been living three miles apart. That was over twenty years ago. We’ve been in regular contact since.
A few years ago, Matt began sending me a birthday gift each year. It started with a label maker. I’d requested it in response to his inquisition. I thought it was a joke and responded with the first thing that came to mind. I really wanted a label maker and I use it often. Since then, he’s freelanced, finding my tastes too practical and boring.
Of the two of us, he is the superior gift-giver. Again, I’m practical and boring. Matt, conversely, is a collector. He’s amassed an impressive cache of vintage toys. Adding the adjective vintage not only makes this hobby acceptable, it adds bona fide credibility. As such, he can enter the seedy world of the Internet and retrieve prizes of yore most of us figured were gone forever. I can’t compete. Hope you like the carbon monoxide detector, bud. We really need to catch up.
* * * *
REO Speedwagon entered my consciousness via my father’s eight-track copy of Hi Infidelity, thirty-five minutes of music that changed the band’s trajectory and my life as I knew it (yes, that was intentional).
As the songs became stamped into my memory, I became curious about the humans behind the sounds. Who were they? What did they look like? In the early 1980s, the notion of Googling a new interest was beyond imagination.
It was with the discovery of a vinyl copy of REO/TWO at Walmart that I was able to put names and faces to the music. The record was ten years old at that point, and the five guys pictured at the counter of Vriner’s Confectionery in Champaign, Illinois on the back cover had a different look and different sound than those responsible for Hi Infidelity. My first contemporary glimpse came with the acquisition of Good Trouble, the band’s self-maligned 1982 release.
To that point, my interest in periodicals had been confined to Sesame Street, Sports Illustrated, and The Weekly Reader. The thought of magazines dedicated to stories about rock bands never occurred to me, so imagine my delight when spotting Gary Richrath and Kevin Cronin on the cover of a magazine called Circus. I was with my mother, who was buying groceries. It was at the IGA on Wood Drive in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
I sat on the supermarket floor and read the REO cover feature. I then harangued my mother until she agreed to splurge and allowed me to add the magazine to her shopping cart. An intense, but fleeting, fondness of fanmags was born that day.
* * * *
For my most recent birthday, Matt sent me a time capsule housed in a square cardboard box. Among the numerous items, most time-stamped from the 1980s, I found a clear plastic sleeve protecting an issue of Circus magazine, dated August 31, 1982. Yes, the very issue that started it all.
Though I’d not seen the magazine in decades, many of its images were familiar. The full-page ad for Still Life, The Stones’s new live album was just as I remembered. There was a two-page ad for Maxell audio cassettes–my personal favorites, used only to dub the best albums. Neil Peart was featured in a full-page color ad for Zildjian cymbals, while Roger Taylor posed next to a gorgeous Ludwig drum kit.
There is a peculiar review of the Texxas Jam. The story mentions the heat, the bands’ punctuality, Carlos Santana being his usual super gracious self, Sammy Hagar smashing a stolen and recovered guitar, and Journey being anal about their catwalk. I don’t know who played what or if they were any good but I read that the promoter was pleased.
There was drama within Heart, (checks date of publication) touring with a revamped line-up. The Wilson Sisters were not fighting each other, but they had recently fired their rhythm section. Cheap Trick was looking ahead after a nasty legal battle with Epic Records and Tom Petersson’s temporary dismissal. There was a nice profile on the relatively unknown Huey Lewis. The Edward Van Halen poster had been horked. A pleasant surprise came in the form of a terrific, if taciturn review of the new blockbuster, ET.
The writing was a touch pedestrian but the photography was grand–and prolific. This was back before music critics were snarky, emotionally stunted hipsters who insist the only good music is being made by bands that have yet to form. In those days, rock writers were longhairs with sports jackets and IBM Selectric typewriters. They likely got into the business in search of free albums and comped concert tickets (see page 68. In the classifieds is an ad seeking record reviewers. Free albums. Small membership fee. Milwaukee, WI. On the opposite page is an advertisement for six-dollar fake IDs.
This pursuit would invariably lead to a feature assignment entailing drinking until 4am with the guys from Foghat in frigid Johnson City, Tennessee before driving a sketchy rental car to Louisville to catch the Quarterflash show the following night. At least there was no office drug policy. Grass and theoccasional bump were tools of the trade. There was that misunderstanding on the expense account when the telephone number for Twilight Entertainment led back to an escort service, but it was smoothed over with cocktails at Hickey's.
The main event of course is the cover story, and what a cover it is. Richrath sports both a mischievous smile and a Phillies home jersey. He appears to have stuffed a change of clothes in the crotch of 80s-cut indigo jeans. Cronin, wearing a blue sweatshirt one could find at a Hobby Lobby and later adorn with puffy Cooper font letters reading, ROCKERS DO IT LOUDER, appears none too far removed from the “big ol’ J he was tokin’ off of” as referenced on A Decade of Rock and Roll. His arms are extended as though he’s explaining the greatness of a grilled cheese sandwich he recently ate.
Entitled “No Transmission Trouble for REO Speedwagon,” (get it?) the cover story was written by Richard Hogan, senior editor. this had to be a choice assignment that couldn’t be trusted to a run-of-the-mill staff writer. It’s largely an introduction to a band that, despite being around for a decade, was largely obscure outside of flyover country. The aforementioned Hi Infidelity changed all that and the feature stories followed.
Aside from the biographical capsules of the five members, the article consisted of the standard fare. Formed by two University of Illinois engineering students in the late 1960s. Named for the 1911 fire engine developed by Ransom Eli Olds. The band went through singers and producers like automobiles went through gas in the 1970s before finally finding its footing with their 1977 live album. I’ve read a version of this story in Hit Parader, Us Weekly, and even Rolling Stone. Hogan does inject a bit of wry humor by namechecking Illinois Speed Press and Diamond REO.
As I turned the pages, I realized what a good time it was to be alive. Full-page ads for Good Trouble, Screaming for Vengeance, and Still Life were featured in the issue. Asia’s debut record and .38 Special’s Special Forces were the most popular records on AOR stations. In addition to ET and Rocky III, the inside cover was an ad for the recently released, and future classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
And it was only $1.50 back then. I'm not sure what Matt had to pay to recreate that piece of my adolescence.
Righteous bucks, no doubt.
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