THE BEAT GOGS ON

THE BEAT GOGS ON

DEPARTMENTS

Van Halen: In Search Off The Baaad Chord

NEW YORK—"7 sure feel sorry for Mr. and Mrs. Van Halen, having to listen to that being rehearsed in the basement... "—random reaction to Van Halen's New York debut at The Palladium, 3/25/78.

Face the facts, kiddos, when it comes to heavy rock and roll—y'know, the kind of stuff that sounds like a herd of dinosaurs engaging in some prehistoric S&M—a little bit of calculated outrageousness goes a long way.

So along come Van Halen, led by two Dutch siblings on guitar and drums who grew up, in Pasadena, and fronted by one David Roth, whose struts and screeches emit a crotch-splitting intensity the likes of which haven't been seen since Jim Dandy Magrum invented his now passe cock-walk. They look just like a bunch of kids from California offstage, but under the spotlight, become 50,000 watt denizens riffing their way out of a suburban hell. Got some good songs and an admirable version of "You Really Got Me," surely one of the ten most covered songs of all time, the requisite bone cruncher chords, thunv dering rhythm and cat o' nine tails leads. Y'know—the basics.

"People always say 'y°u go beyond rock—you start with rock and then grow'," said Roth in his gravelly singsong. "We don't see it that way. That's why the album is just guitars, drums and singing. Each song sounds different, with the same exact set-up all around."

That also means keeping the songs short and on target. "We've got a short attention span," said Roth. "It's like too many people try and do a 20-minute tune.

You gotta really know your music, ya know.. .you gotta be really good!"

For example, the now almost interminable Led Zep shows?

"Ah yes!" responds Roth. "A week with Led Zeppelin... tonight!"

Including, I might add, a day with John Bonham.

"When we talk about other rock and rollers, they been on the road and had too many hotel meals, and start to think old. And it comes out in the music. Or maybe they think since they're older they gotta sibw down and mature now, and it becomes something other than rock and roll. It may be cool, it may be great, but it's not rock and roll."

That does not preclude musical finesse. "We all know enough about music to communicate when we write songs. If you know a little something about music, it's a lot easier to say: Try a seventh chord, it might sound baaad.' It sure beats Try da next fret up.. .no, dat ain't it...try da next one.' And after all, the whole purpose is to sound baad. " Yet these young rockers (average age—22) are more smart than bad. After gaining their chops on the backyard barbecue circuit, the band 'Started renting halls and putting on their own shows. Their planning included lo,gistics (ap'ush-pin map in the basement of places played and to be played) and advertising (their last production was announced by flyers at 41 high schools, and drew 3,100 rockers at five bucks a head. That, my friends, ain't chicken feed), all without a manager. "At the point where most bands are cryin' 'cause they haven't got a manager, or the agent isn't paying enough attention to them, we were out hoofin' it."

Persistence paid off, and it took only one Van Halen set at the Whiskey to get Warners' pres Mo 0$tin to come backstage offering to sign the band. With the.Bugs Bunny boys now handling their first true heavy* act since Black Sabbath, the push is on.

But for Van Halen, it all boiled down to the question Roth asked me at the opening of the interview:

"So Rob..." he asked with friendly sneer, "do you like heavy rock and roll?"

Rob Patterson

In Search Off The Ultimate Chicka-Chicka

DISCO, IL—YOU ARE THERE! Rolling into Disco on Rt. 136, we pulled up at the Shell station for a slice of life. Longhaired attendant saunters up to the car. Intrepid reporter smells blood and asks:

"What do you think of disco music, bro'?"

"You 1 must want Earl's Tap. Keep on going the way ypu was and turn left at the 'Vator. You want some gas?"

"Gas!" we cry merrily, spewing gravel in his sweaty face as we zoom out.

Earl's Tap. Six tables,, six stools, one Earl.

"Hey Earl, you got any disco sides?"

He looks up warily from the Z page in his maltstained redbook.

"Yer gonna talk like that, yer gonna go elsewhere, mister."

A local, wearing & gray film of Ortho-7 insecticide and a CAT cap, enters and plunks down on a stool. He accepts a beer and shot silently. We tippy-toe to the bar.

Earl starts to reach under the bar for a Dark Object and we immediately teleport to the parking lot.

☆ ☆ ☆

Last chance—the Disco Teen Centre over by the Fifth Baptist Church. Before entering, we poke stalks of wheat in our lips in an effort to blend in.

Bad move. Both kids inside are chomping kitchen matches. They have AllState linebacker written all over their sledgehammer foreheads^' The Smooth Approach is definitely called for.

"Uh, hey man, You dudes got any Ohio Players?"

"Well, no," replies the Y>ne with the scar on his jaw, "but we do got this one guy from Missouri."

"No, no—the group "

Strike two. My partner is starting to shake uncontrollably.

"DISCO-MUSIC, coverall-face," tie screams, "DISCO, DISCO, we wanna hear some goddam disco! The whole fucking town is Disco and you mean to tell me—"

"Thanks for your time," I interject calmly, dragging the cub reporter out by his porcelain watch chain. Youths Bludgeon Slickers. Justifiably Homicide, Sheriff Says.

Rick Johnson

Flea Waybill? Quell Lude?

I> America ready for an all-flea punk-rock band? Will they call themselves the Itch Kidzf Fleawood Mac? Matching Legs & Antennae? Will they wear people-collars onstage? Is their drummer's name Itch Miller? But most importantly, do they know the chords to "1 Wanna Be Your Dog"?

Jan & Dean Spin Out In Dead Man's Curve

LOS ANGELES—For pimply faced teenagers with transistors glued to their ears like a pacemaker anchored to a boogie beat, 1964 was the year of the car. The Beach Boys rhapsodized over their J "Little Deuce Coupe."

But no song captured the lure of speed andthestraight-1 away better than Jan & Dean's trashy pop melodrama, "Dead Man's Curve," ' which killed off its hot rodder hero in a gory, ear-splitting crash. (What a perfect leadin for an acne commercial!) The record left nothing to our bubbly teen imaginations. The gruesome sound of screeching brakes and twisted metal even drowned out Jan & Dean's pseudoSpecfor chorus.

A little over a year later, Jan Berry drove right through the barrier between pop and pavement. Speeding down Sunset Blvd., his car spun out of control, killing three people in a bloody wreck that hospitalized him for years with extensive brain damage.

Throw in some bikini-clad lushettes and the pounding

beat of Malibu surf and the whole sordid affair sounds just ghoulish enough for a made-for-TV movie, doesn't it? Bet your baggies it does.

The result: Dead Man's Curve, a true Friday night TV cheesebomb, a thrillerchiller account of our two bleached LA. teens who rode the early 60's waves of surf and dragstrip crazes to the top of the charts.

The film lovingly dwelled on every witless pop cliche of the 60's. Makeout scenes abounded, beach blanket bingoettes displayed their wares and muscle beach parties popped up about as often as sutler knobs.

Dean grew up in the shadow of the old 20th Century Fox movie lot. On weekends he'd hop the fence and roam around the sets with his chums, playing in dilapidated western saloons and tudor mansions. When security guards patrolled the lot, they'd hide out in Ben Hur's chariot.

Like all great duos—Simon & Garfunkel, Louis Prima & Keeley Smith and Peaches & Herb—the crown princes of California rock met in junior high.

The duo first sang together after football practice—in the showers. "All that echo made us sound great," Dean said. Their first band featured neither Jan nor Dean as lead vocalist. That honor went to the only black kid at University High who had claimed to have been in the Del-Vikings (maybe while he was still in grade school). Long after they hit the charts, J&D were still in school.

"We had two gold recordsbefore we ever sang live," Dean said. "In those days you lip-synched everything. Using the local band at the hop was always a disaster."

Touring was enlivened by the duo's crazy-glue sense of humor. Jan was arduously prepping for med school, and while traveling to gigs, took great pleasure in dissecting rats on the plane.

Jan's accident, coming when the pair's career had begun to flounder, was both a tragedy and a godsend. "It saved most of my sanity," Dean said. "We saw too many friends go through their artistic decline, just trying to hang around for one last hit. We were lucky— we went out as undefeated champs."

And like most aging champs, the twosome couldn't stay out of the ring. Several years ago they played a pair of comeback concerts. One went well, the other did not. In an attempt to satirize their old sock-hop appearances, they lipsynched a medley of old hits. Dean doctored the tape, making it slow down, skip and cut off completely, as it often did at live appearances a decade before.

Their predominately teenage audience didn't get the joke, booing the team off the stage. "It was all my fault," Dean said. "I felt like a guy going the wrong way in rush hour traffic. I thought a surf revival would be cool—zinc oxide on our noses, baggies and a busted up old surfboard. But the crowd felt cheated. It was a real disaster."

Still, Torrance would love to praise the glories of surf and souped-up cars to a new generation. "There's nothing better than looking out from a stage and seeing some 15year-old kids dancing to your music. That's who it was meant for in the first place."

Patrick Goldstein

5 Years Ago

All About Eve?

At a recent concert, David Bowie was overheard to say that he would not be producing Lou Reed in the future because Reed was borrowing too much of his identity.

HEY KIDS 11 From tho same madcap merchandisers that brought you Kiss and the Funky Meadows Up Farm, it's the Billy Big-One Doll I Made exclusively from recalled Godz albums by cheerful disco laborers, Billy comes In six different Instant Lifestyles (from left to right): Z.Z. BILLY, who knows the location of every cathouse near the Tex-Mex border as well as all the words to "LaGranga"; WICHITA BILLY, a lineman for the county who should be kept separate from your Mrs. Mac Davis doll; BILLY BAD NEGRO, complete with Billy Extender Assembly for those sticky shower-room episodes; CHIEF BILLY REDBONE, who also converts into an ironworker or ballerina; MOTO-BILL, guaranteed to stompass with his Minnesota Altamont pool cue upon hearing any Hawkwind album; and BILLY GOOD NEGRO, who is anxiously awaiting a court decision that could make him Wichita Billy's foreman. Only $13.98 per Billy, and if you act now, you will receive, free-.of-charge, an autographed pnoto of Neil Bogart without his makeup I

Detroit Hot Wax (Take 'Em Out For A Spin)

DETROIT-df you're serious about your Detroit rock (and caught our Detroit Guide last month), have we got a record for you. It's called Michigan Rocks, and was produced by Mitch Ryder's manager, Tom Conner. The cuts: the original, recorded live-,at-the-Grande-Ballroom "Kick Out The Jams" by the MC-5, "1969" by the

Stooges, "Ramblin'Gamblin' Man" by Bob Seger, "Rock 'n' Roll" and ''Long Hard Ride" by Mitch Ryder, "Journey To The Center Of Your Mind" by Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes, "Respect" by the Rationals, "I'm So Glad" by the Scot Richard Case, etc.

A distribution deal was firmed up at presstime with the Peaches chain of record stores, but if you can't find it there, Write Seeds & Stems Records, P.O. Box 257, Clarkston, MI 48016. The record also lists each musician on each cut, the original record company, etc.—a boon to collectors.

If you're interested in some of the newer sounds coming out of these parts, you might want to write to Jim Cassily at A-Square Studios, 3691 Morgan Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Jim is frantically preparing both singles and albums by The Romantics, Sonic's Rendezvous Band and The Mutants. Destroy All Monsters' 45, "Bored" b/w"Your're Gonna Die," is available from IDBI Records, P.O. Box 7241, Ann Arbor, MI 48107. The highly recommended Seat Belts also have a single in the works; for more information write to Blatant Sound, 7467 Nightengale, Dearborn Heights, MI 48127. Last but 'not yeast, Jack Tarin—the man with the plan—is producing singles by his Motor City Revue (The Pigs, The Niggers and The Traitors). For the latest news, write him in care of Sound Suite Studios, 14750 Puritan Ave., Detroit, 'MI 48227.

Susan Whitall & Cathy Gisi