Richard C. Walls
Richard C. Walls wrote regularly for Creem and many other publications until his death in May 2017.
Bill Holdship remembers Richard
60 articles
List of articles in the library
Sonny Sharrock: Black Woman (Vortex 2014)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, May 1970
Sonny Sharrock, guitar; Gary Sharrock, bells; Teddy Daniel, trumpet; Dave Burrell, piano; Norris Jones, Richard Pierce, basses; Milford Graves, drums; Linda Sharrock, voice. ...
The Who: Tommy (Decca DXSW 7205)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, July 1969
Opera, composed mostly by Pete Townshend with Roger Daltrey, vocals; John Entwistle, bass and vocals; Keith Moon, drums and vocals. ...
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica (Straight STS 1053)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, September 1969
THERE ARE twenty-eight selections on this 2-set record for your redoubtable delectation, all of them with equally crazed titles. ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, July 1987
The Unforgettable Something Or Other ...
The Police: Synchronicity (A&M)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, October 1983
ALAS, POOR SALMON, STING KNEW HIM WELL ...
MC5: Kick Out The Jams (Elektra EKS-74042)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, May 1969
'Ramblin' Rose'; 'Kick Out The Jams'; 'Come Together'; 'Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)'; 'Borderline'; 'Motor City Is Burning'; 'I Want You ...
Run-DMC: Run-D.M.C.: Raising Hell (Profile)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, November 1986
IF YOU think that rap is just some metrical motor-mouth rhymin' about how great he is in every way, with minimal but apocalyptically loud, reverb ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, July 1970
HERE ARE two new albums by two of the most prominent innovators in music — one album a boring mystery, the other a satisfying continuation ...
Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (Columbia GP 26)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, August 1970
THIS MUSIC seems to inspire a reluctance to talk about it. To talk about it in any specific terms — all the reviews I've read ...
The Mothers of Invention: Uncle Meat (Bizarre)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, June 1969
(Most of the music is from the Mothers' movie of the same name which they haven't got enough money to finish yet.) ...
The Mothers Of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh (Bizarre)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, October 1970
IT SHOULD BE widely known by now that Frank Zappa is more than just a master of bizarre but also a brilliant composer and arranger ...
Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh: Dinosaur Jr.: Without a Sound (Sire/Reprise); Sebadoh: Bakesale (Sub Pop)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, September 1994
DINOSAUR JR.'S evolution into the J. Mascis show is now pretty much complete, with the drawling troubadour doing all the singing and playing on this ...
Paul Simon: Graceland (Warner Bros.)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, January 1987
OUT OF AFRICA ...
Miles Davis: You're Under Arrest (Columbia FC 40023)
Review by Richard C. Walls, High Fidelity, July 1985
MILES'S LATEST is a very mixed bag, sounding, in fact, like excerpts from three different albums. On four cuts, the trumpeter is presented in a ...
The Jesus & Mary Chain: Honey's Dead (Def American)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, May 1992
EVER SINCE the J & M brothers — Jim Reid, vocals; William Reid, guitar — shaded down the obliterating blasts of white noise which made ...
Carla Bley, Michael Mantler: Michael Mantler: No Answer; Carla Bley: Tropic Appetites (Watt)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1975
THE TAYLOR-Burton of the avant-garde music set have formed their own record label and on their first two offerings we find Mike taking on that ...
Cowboy Junkies: Black Eyed Man (RCA)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, March 1992
THE NAME Cowboy Junkies suggests an addiction to an attitude, and the nodded-out, muted quality of their music — everything, including the drums, Margo Timmins' ...
Joe Jackson: Body And Soul (A&M)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, July 1984
ANYONE WHO'S familiar with the Blue Note albums of the '50s and '60s will appreciate the homage paid by the cover of Joe Jackson's latest. ...
John Cale: Music For A New Society (Ze/Passport)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, May 1983
MY STEREO has a slight leak. If you turn the power on and leave the radio and record player off you can hear, very faintly, ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, January 1984
WELL, YOU'RE in luck. Two of the most acclaimed musicians of the neofusion "harmolodic" school (quotes around harmolodic because, word-wise, it's become the "auteur" of ...
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band: The New Orleans Album (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, June 1990
I KNOW this is supposed to be jolly listening — and much of it is — but there's something about records like this that taps ...
The Bee Gees: Spirits Having Flown (RSO)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, May 1979
Good For Everything But Listening ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, April 1981
I HATE COMEDY albums and I hate the kind of people who like them. I hate it when they play their latest comedy acquisition for ...
Arthur Blythe: In The Tradition (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, April 1980
WITH HIS Columbia debut last year (Lenox Avenue Breakdown), alto saxist Arthur Blythe achieved, after a protracted apprenticeship on the L.A. and N.Y. scenes, a ...
Chet Baker: You Can't Go Home Again (Horizon)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, April 1978
IN 1953 CHET Baker was jazz's fair haired boy, young white West Coast lyrical soft trumpet player and, with Gerry Mulligan's pianoless quartet, as famous ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, March 1981
THE CONTROVERSY thus far: Pretty is the word you want to use when you talk about Pat Metheny — from his guitar styling to his ...
George Clinton: Hey Man, Smell My Finger (Paisley Park)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, November 1993
BEING THE mad Messiah of Funk and all, George Clinton could easily coast on his rep. Instead he's come up with the best album of ...
Stevie Wonder: Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants (Motown)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1980
LET'S ASSUME that you didn't think that Songs in the Key of Life was a total bust. It was over hyped for sure, overblown in ...
The Replacements: All Shook Down (Reprise/Sire)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, November 1990
THE REPLACEMENTS' first two major-label albums after establishing themselves as an indie/cult/critics success — Tim ('85) and Pleased to Meet Me ('87) — contained no ...
Eurythmics: 1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother) (RCA)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, April 1985
IRONY BUFFS might have felt a twinge of interest recently when the Eurythmics' 'Sexcrime' was being banned in various quarters. In Orwell's 1984 the word ...
Dwight Yoakam: This Time (Reprise)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, June 1993
DWIGHT YOAKAM made his mark as a new traditionalist country singer — vocally a natural, with the stoic throb and nasal soulfulness to give life ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1988
HERE'S THE scam, or rather the situation. D'Arby, a black American gone to England, has had an enormous success among the Brits — number one ...
R.E.M.: Fables Of The Reconstruction (I.R.S.)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, September 1985
ATHENS REVISITED ...
The Time: Ice Cream Castles (Warner Bros.)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, December 1984
ON THEIR third (and final) album, the Time continues to sound like Prince's opening act, the band's lyrical thrust dealing with things that its mentor ...
Tom Waits: Blue Valentine (Asylum)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1979
ONCE I WAS really drunk in this very fancy bar where they had this woman playing piano, looked like somebody's grandmother, and I kept asking ...
Weather Report: Mr. Gone (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1979
I'VE ALWAYS been for labelling music, an unpopular attitude among some critics, some musicians and practically all record companies. The irritating thing about the anti-label ...
John Cale, Lou Reed: Lou Reed and John Cale: Songs for Drella (Warner Bros.)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, May 1990
Forty-five Minutes of Fame — Reed and Cale Build Warhol a Velvet Coffin ...
Magazine: Secondhand Daylight (Virgin)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, March 1980
ONCE UPON a time — No, I'm not going to do that. It's tempting, but I really dislike record reviews that masquerade as short stories. ...
Aaron Neville: Warm Your Heart (A&M)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, August 1991
WITH HIS brothers and on his own, Aaron Neville has been involved with some truly fine records. But it's also true that he recently reached ...
Stanley Clarke: School Days (Nemperor)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, December 1976
IF YOU'VE heard either of Clarke's two previous Nemperor albums then you're already familiar with the music here. The basic conception remains the same — ...
Vanessa Williams: The Sweetest Days (Wing/Mercury)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, March 1995
VANESSA WILLIAMS' career has been marked by a series of noteworthy precedents — as the first black woman to be named Miss America, as the ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Rolling Stone, 2 February 1998
AT THE BEGINNING of Elvis Costello's covers album, there's a little sleight of hand, a misdirecting cue to the listener — a false start, a ...
Tom Waits: Bone Machine (Island)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, October 1992
VULTURES AT THE DINER ...
Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam/Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, July 1990
Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution — Public Enemy Gets Tough ...
Talking Heads: Talking Heads: 77 (Sire)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, December 1977
AFTER WRITING reviews for eight years, one learns to ignore the press releases that accompany promo copies or at least to read them with a ...
Essay by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1988
Just Between You And Me ...
Donald Fagen: The Nightfly (Warner Bros.)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1983
DESPITE WHATEVER initial impressions you might get from hearing it on the radio, this is not the new Steely Dan album minus an apparently expendable ...
Bernard Herrmann: Blue Light Special: Bernard Herrmann
Retrospective by Richard C. Walls, Spin, September 1990
YOU MAY not know the name but you know Bernard Herrmann's work, or at least some of it. Everybody knows some of it. What most ...
Miles Davis: The Man With The Horn (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, November 1981
MILES FINALLY RELEASES THE PAUSE BUTTON ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, April 1979
WELCOME TO the unwave. I haven't heard so much ferociously avant-garde and aggressively ugly music since Albert Ayler puked all over my brain back in ...
Joni Mitchell: Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (Asylum)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1978
DON JUAN SAYS HE DOESN'T KNOW YOU ...
Hüsker Dü: Candy Apple Grey (Warner Bros.)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, August 1986
ALAS, ANOTHER cult band, after years of honest toil on a small but brave label, has debuted on one of those big, unsavory, decadent major ...
John Martyn, Sade: Sade: Diamond Life (Portrait); John Martyn: Sapphire (Island)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, May 1985
JEWELS 'N' JAZZ ...
James Blood Ulmer: Free Lancing (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1982
ULMER IS A 39-year-old guitarist who's come up thru' blues bands and organ/guitar trios, thru the Del Vikings and Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars, thru ...
Elvis Costello & the Attractions: Imperial Bedroom (Columbia)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, November 1982
E.C.'s EMOTIONAL RESCUE ...
David Byrne, Brian Eno: Brian Eno, David Byrne: My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (Sire)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, June 1981
"You see, the problem is that people, particularly people who write, assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Rolling Stone, 24 February 1994
THIS CURRENT EDITION of the Band consists of three of its original five members — drummer-vocalist Levon Helm, bassist-vocalist Rick Danko and keyboardist Garth Hudson ...
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, January 1978
STEELY DAN, in case you don't already know, isn't a group in the conventional sense (tho' it began that way) but rather the umbrella name ...
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