THE COW YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN

THE COW YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN

VARIOUS ARTISTS No Nukes (Asylum Records)

by Rick Johnson, Enemy of Earth

The grand release of E/A’s thick brown No Nukes LP—that company’s single most courageous act since they signed (and then quickly dropped) the Dictators—represents many different things. An attempt to pump some life back into the careers of several dishwasher-safe folkies? Certainly. A stunning setback to the art of programming longplaying records? Definitely. A frightful new low in popstar fashions? Absolutely. An irresistibly attractive tax write-off for WEA? Well, Joe Smith, come on down!

The way this First Strike fan sees it, if these sleepyheads really mean it about pulling the plug on the nukes, they should all be required to line up outside my door next winter and take turns blowing my hair dry. I mean,'when “We Almost Lost Detroit,” did anyone write in and complain? Hell no—they almost gave ame4al tp the guy at the plant who got the colored rubber bands mixed up. And if the public demonstrated any measurable concern over the accident at Chalk River that nearly reduced Canada to a superficial stain, it’s only because radiation sickness is so gauche.

How best to sum up the roster on this dog of three heads? How about, everywhere an oink-oink!. We all know pretty much what to expect from this crew by now. James and Carly have the sense of humor typical of people who make their babies wear t-shirts that say “crawling.” John Hall could find a plot even if he was just reading the gas meter. And was it indeed David Crosby that Scotty was referring to in The Thing when he uttered the how-famous lines, “An intellectual carrot? The mind boggles!’?

The rest of the cast mainly stand around, shaking their heads with disgust like stock characters from Dragnet. Several wrote short essays for the program, which include such shining examples of fuzzthink as: “The oil and nuke idea sets up a junkie/pusher type relationship” (Gil Scott-Heron); “It sounds reai 1984-ish to me” (Rusty Young); and my own personal favorite, from Doctor Ry Cooder, "It’s genetic!” It’s thanks to technical minds such as these that we have such cultural advances as Hawaiian Coveralls and The Black Hole PopUp Book.

The supposed selling point behind this overblown teenage panel show is supposed to be the music. At least, that’s what I’ve been told, and I can’t really see anybody shelling out solely for the colorful chart enclosed which proves that, if you get some Plutonium-239 tossed on you, it’ll stay there for roughly 24,000 years. That’s right, Plutonium means never having to say you’re sorry!

Anyway, the tunes. All you Chaka Khan fans will be happy to find that her one and only cut .is trapped on the same side as three pigeon delights by James and Carly. Gil Scott-Heron’s wonderful impression of the sound Barry White would make on radar provides a natural lead-in for...why, of course, “Get Together” by Jesse Colin Young. You see, they both have three names! But Zippy the programmer really lets his imagination run on side 5—if anybody is still showing signs of brain function at that point—where Poco, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen all get their licks in. It’s just a crying shame that the Buzzcocks weren’t in town that night.

/While all this ranting, raving and angry plucking of mandolins has been going on, the one easy answer to the Nuclear Dilemma has been passed over. It says right here in the No Nukes program that dairy cows near the Three Mile Island reactor sensed the abnormal radioactivity long before the people did, and “farmers told reporters that,, if the cows began to bolt* they would too.” The solution is obvious— simply install cows around all operating nuclear plants to give us the Big Moo in case of disaster. Either that or, if the thing starts to melt down, stick a great big penny in it!