THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Masters Of The Screaming Meemies

WESTMINSTER, MD-They walk at night! They’re not of this earth! They’ll suck your blood! They’ll scan your pate until it peels!

No, it’s not another indomitable modernist monster, squeezing juice from the loins of its victims, but a rock band, ½ Japanese, shaping noise music so strident and so unmerciful that it would disrupt a college fraternity bash.

From around Baltimore (land of the paladin of bestial pulchritude, John Waters), V2 Japanese emerged from their scummy surroundings in August, 1977 with the release of a 9-song EP on their own 50,000,000,000,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 Watts label. With songs like “Calling All Girls” and “Her Parents Came Home,” the implication of the initial creation of V2 Jap (in private reality, brothers Jad and David Fair) was quite apparent—hot and horny beyond belief, the recording was a succinct statement of thwarted male desires. P.S. It was also very funny.

Connoisseurs of crud no less than Richard Meltzer and Lester Bangs have since grappled with this tempestuous work and heard in it the terrors of many unwakened moments. But what of V2 Japanese? Implacable and restless, do the Fair brothers still stalk the night?

Vi Jap Projects Completed Since ’77

David Fair’s “I Can’t. Stand Cats” and “Worms In It” (kooky pamphlets for silly kids and adults)

visual art projects (inspired drawings and assorted junk)

Jad Fair’s “Zombies of MoraTau” EP (seven brief encounters with the Z-cinema of Edward L. Cahn)

V2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts (a 3record box set that includes all of the band’s “hits,” a live album, a poster, and a booklet of photos torn from the heart of National Geographic. This box is currently out of print but will be reissued every Halloween for the next four years)

Loud (latest album released in March)

The last item introduces V2 Japanese’s new “big-bandsound.” David and Jad are still stroking guitars, attacking drums, and singing like cats in heat but with the additional support of John Dreyfuss (sax), Rucky Dreyfuss (drums), Lana Zabko (sax), and Mark Jickling (guitar). Needless to say, the original cacophony is now only amplified but also dualized, the results being like the whoosh of Haley’s comet.

All V2 Jap’s songs are tantalizing tantrums, sharp outbursts of indignation. They are so dissonant (and brief—many are under a minute) that they demand repeated listenings. In short, what the band intimates is that thoughts and emotions are simply shorthand of the self.

You can hear the impulses of a nervous system gone awry on “Cool Millionaires/Bogue Millionaires,” “My Girlfriend Lives Like A Beatnik,” “No More Beatle Mania,” and “No Direct Line From My Brain To My Heart.” It is a jittery sensibility, one which permits the Fairs to summon forth their erotic fantasies (“Calling All Girls”—these, guys aren’t even ashamed to lust after Lisa Robinson) and sexual disenchantments (“School Of Love”—High School Make-Out Quiz in 3 E-Z Steps).

Not surprisingly, V2 Japanese have a few things in common with one of their own favorite manias, the Shaggs. Both bands have remained rather shy and reclusive, neither ever aquiesced to form, and consequently, they both can either be construed as an overblown joke or as a clandestine comment on society. The Shaggs were the Wiggins sisters; ¥2 Japanese are essentially the Fair brothers. And the familial tradition in rock (the Carpenters, the Cowsills) marches onward.

Unlike the Shaggs, though, ViJap are usually kidding around (but as Smokey says, even clowns shed tears). The band never bombards you with jeremiads; their message is always ingratiating, sincere, even subtle. Their world is almost adolescent, the vision of a teenager confined to his room for unxnown transgressions, his bloodcurdling cry frightening the neighbors as it challenges his parents, the voice of the vengeful progeny of their own doing.

Wrist Risk Slows Rollers

LOS ANGELES—There’s just no end to people’s inventiveness when it comes to damaging themselves.

This month, mommies everywhere are being asked to kiss “Rollerskater’s Wrist.” Medically speaking, it occurs when the skater—in mid-splat—sticks out his hands to break his fall.

“More than 95,000 rollerskaters were seen in American emergency rooms during the first nine months of the year,” says Dr. Karlis Ullis, popular wrist spokesman. Whether they were actually treated or were just “rolling through,” perhaps on their way to a roller-apendectomy, isn’t covered by the stats.

But Doc, what can the concerned skatoid do to avoid this devastating injury? In a word—

“Roll. You should try to divert some of the momentum away from the wrists and forearms.” For example, break the fall with your face for a change. Or, better yet, skate “doggie-style” on all fours!

The whole subject is pretty stupid if you ask me. Watch for next month’s investigation of a truly serious medical problem: Hack Writer’s Fingers.

Rick Johnson

MOTELS, SEX-EDUCATION EXTRAVAGANZA I

Poor Martha Davis! Whilo tho world waits for tho now Motols album, sho's forcod to "livan up tho show" by demonstrating awful things that kids don't want to know about anyway! "This is terrible," commented Freddie Pelzman, 14, from his seat in the audience. "What if my mom walks in?" Too late, Freddie—and too late for the millions of soon-tobe-born children who'll result from Davis's careless act I And Martha? "Hey," says she, "If f gotta be a mom, why not everybody else, too?" Tell it to all those embarrassed kids, sweetie I

Yet there’s no defiant doom in the voices of the Fair brothers—only claustrophobia. They want to get out of that room! They want to see real life and all its misfqrtunes!!

Excerpts from “(I Don’t Want To Have) Mono (No More)”: “I don’t want to be bored/Like some punk rockers./I want to live wild in the xh Japanese band./I want to play loud/And be in love with a girlfriend./And slow dance with Sissy Spacek./ And fast dance with Jodie Foster./And write my autobiography./And get a big stack of Marshall amps,/And just blow them up.”

V2 Japanese have discovered the best routes of escape from their claustrophobic middleclassconsciousness: reverie and perversion. It is a delight to hear them pervert the classics (Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” or Holly’s “Rave Oh”). Further, their daydreams are often fragile and never affected. “I don’t want a dumb date,” Jad or David caterwauls, “I just want a dream date./Maybe I’m fussy, I don’t knq,w./But I don’t want some girl/Who smokes all the time,/And when I kiss her,/It tastes like I’m licking an ashtray./I want a dream date.”

The Fairs’ music is basically a search (as well as a mating call) for this fugitive dream date. They will, of course, never find it, but the prerequisite for understanding their music is to believe that they will. Such blind faith will get you songs about Frankenstein, venereal disease, Patti Smith falling off the stage and breaking her neck, and anything else that happens to hit the direct line to V2 Japanese’s constantly twitching brain.

Jad Fair’s haunting “The Zombies Of Mora-Tau” and the all-new expanded V2 Jap’sheartstopping Loud are readily available from Armageddon Records Ltd., 2771 E. Bankers Ind. Dr., Atlanta, GA, 30360. (Once again, V2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts will be issued on Halloween, 1981.) So make a vinyl date...soon..the room is closing in fast.

Robert A. Hull

The Nitecaps* Sweet Soul Music

NEW YORK-1 heard it through the grapevine. Friends and acquaintances, editors and fellow pundits, musicians and managers. “The Nitecaps” they say, “You’ve gotta see the Nitecaps!” On a Thursday evening I bundle up against the fierce cold and grab the E Train to 42nd Street. I’ve got the flu and am in no mood for any festivities. The Nitecaps are doing the Peppermint Lounge, and it’s about time I checked out this week’s models. Twepty minutes into their set and I’m still unconvinced. Yeh, they’re a pretty good pop group. Keep your attention but nothing spec. What’s all the fuss about? Then they bring on the Uptown Horns and the club ignites into a complex mural of dancing bodies, soul echoes and musical deliriurrl. Their roots lie with Curtis Mayfield, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and a thousand dances, long forgotten. The fusion is a garage-rock, mid-60’s and percussion-based. The structure is three-minute pop sculpture 80’s style. The lyrics are teen romance, sexy serious, find girl/lose girl/find girl again. The essence is pure passion, pulled tight to reach and touch. Their progression is anyone’s guess, but this is accessible, exhilarating Top 40 America, as we haven’t heard it in far too long. By the tirpe they encored my flu has flown and I’m dancing as much as anybody!

X-Sessive is pretty much the Nitecaps’ leader. He plays guitar, takes lead vocals and writes most of the material. At 18, he’s a (semi)legend in his own time. A fixture in the CBGB’s-Max's scene since ’77, he’s played with the Blessed, the Ghosts and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Onstage he’s personable and friendly, with that rare ability to make everybody feel he’s playing just for them. A marvelous guitarist, he keeps track of the shifting melodies effortlessly and his voice is a melodic baritone that can whoop and careen.

Drummer Sammy Davis has a rather strange claim to fame— he was taught by Dennis (David Bowie Band) Davis, who he used to babysit for. It’s the push-me, pull-you he forges and the rock in rock ’n’ soul.

A1 Maddy, bored with his hometown, left his group “Banned From Chicago,” headed for the lower east side of Manhattan, where he met up with long-time drinking partner XSessive, and the band’s guitarist. If his songs aren’t quite up to X’s standard, the occasional reggae tinges add still more relief to their map. A1 is a bundle of nervous energy, his constant motion accentuating his fluid guitar picking, capturing a sound somewhere between garage howl and soul’s soft rhythms.

Bassist Peter Jordan might have been brought in just the power of his credits, though he wasn’t. An ex-New York Doll (he played on about half of everything they recorded). ExRobert Gordon Band, exWayne County and the Electric; Chairs as well as the Ghosts and Stumblebunny, Peter’s bass holds the band on a tight, rhythmic beat. The beat to which everyone dances to, and as such, more than does the job.

NUGENT LEAVING COUNTRY, FAST!

"Yow, I'm laavingl" huffs a frantic Tad Nugent, who finally actually listened to all his records and is now getting scared 11 "Africa, hare I come." screams Nuge, apparently hoping he'll cross the American borders before his new album comes out I Nugent—who's made a habit of wearing earplugs while recording and performing—admits that playing in key "has always been sorta foreign" to him and that he's "never really understood" what a drummer's function was in a band. "All I Know is," screams Ted, "you can't get my albums in Uganda. Maybe there I'll be safe I"

No natives were available for comment, however.

In conversation the guys are as amiable as their onstage demeanor suggests. Together little over a year, their success has been great, if 'not earthshattering. They play the major clubs in Manhattan almost continually, though they are known outside New York mainly because they played support for Steve Forbert, in the fall of ’80. The first date was a bit of a traumatic experience, as X tells it. “The lights went out and everyone starts cheering like crazy. I turn to A1 and go, wow—great audience, everything’s going to be fine. We walk out on stage, ‘Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re the Nightcaps ...’ BOOOO. Have you ever had 3500 people booing you? It’s pretty depressing. We said ‘Look, you’ve got to give us a chance. You haven’t even heard the first number!” Anyway, they were cheering when we left, which is better than the other way round.”

The ’Caps do about three covers per show, including “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Let’s Get It On,” and “Feel The Need In Me.”

X again: “I always thought covers were important to a group. Adding something the writer himself didn’t think of is just as honorable as a good original.” He is very much aware of the band’s limitations. He doesn’t believe they’ve come close to reaching their peak yet, and refuses to go into a recording studio. “We’ve all been there before. We want to be seen by people right across the States. What’s the use of bringing out a record if hardly anyone’s heard of you? Anyway, we’re advancing so rapidly, it would be dated before it’s released.”

The Nitecaps remind me of the early Who. Really. There’s the same soul covers (The Who use to play “Louie, Louie,”) different in their time span, but similar in that one is as much a development as the other. The same amphetamine rush to the overall sound. Yeh! America’s first mod band! Down to the sharp suits they sometimes wear, and the dilation of the pupils. As I’m about to leave their dressing room, I turn to X and say “Hope the next time I meet you I’ve got a six-pack of Boy Howdy with me.” X laughs but I’m not really joking.

Iman Lababedi

A Songwriter Born Every Minute!

GARDEN CITY, Mi-Contrary to popular belief, the most dreaded date in April is not the 15th—when Americans cough up Uncle Sam’s dues—but the 30th, which signals the deadline for the much-feared American Song Festival’s “lyric competition.”

The Dippity-Do contest represents itself as “the single most important opportunity for songwriters and lyricists such as yourself to have your material exposed to the professional music community.” Songwriters and lyricists such as yourself?! Hey, they must mean me and Elvis Costello!

All you gotta do to get in on the Horse-With-No-Name-AThon is send the Hollywoodbased bunko artists a cassette tape with your song on it. “Important tips from the judges” include crafty tricks known to few outside the “community” like: “BE SURE that all the lyrics are ‘up front’ and understandable.” Hmm, must be the Exile On Main Street syndrome continuing to dominate the industry. Other shrewd advice: “Verbal explanations and instructions are not necessary (I’ll say they’re not!)” and “BE SURE to start your song at the beginning of the tapeF’ You sure you can remember all that?

“Our judges are pros” the con-testeers claim, but what they don’t explain is that they’re professional bores. They include such major recording stars as Barry Manilow, Fhul Anka, Glen Campbell, and—the judge most likely to be judged—George Harrison. Quick, somebody send in “He’s So Fine.” The way I figure it, these jerks deserve to listen to every teen-aged Patti Smith in America whine the Oscar-Meyer theme, and the louder the better.

The most embarrassing aspect to the whole sordid affair is that the writer of the Grand Prix Winning Lyric “will be offered a much-sought-after contract from the Cream publishing Company,” whose catalogue of hits includes the unforgettable “Theme From Shaft.” Hey, no one understands irony but his woman! Thankfully, there is no connection between the Cream (Music) Publishing Company and the rollicking All-American rag that bears a strikingly similar name. *

Three encouraging words are available, though. It only costs nine bucks (plus postage) to force the judges to listen to you sing “Hey Joe” cleverly disguised as “Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign.” Better yet, no entered material will be returned, sparing contestants everywhere the ridicule of their neighbors. And finally, careful scrutiny of the list of judges fail to reveal the name of lyricist enemy #1, Rick Johnson.

Now, anybody out there got a ten-spot they could front Blue Oyster Cult?

J. Kordosh

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING GNAT 11

"Won't you pleas* help me," begs Journey's unfortunate Steve Perry, victim of a glandular ailment that is slowly shrinking him to nothingness I Perry—seen here reading his last will and testament into a cassette machine microphone—says he's "sorry" for what he's done in the past and hopes "this will atone for it." "I can only hope my troubles will serve as an example to others more fortunate than me," elaborates the dwindling lead singer—but no such luck, Steve I People won't ever remember you! Bye I

5 YEARS AGO

Ramones 1, World 0

Of course, apocrypha is cheap. But.. .believe it or not, this is the tale that Sire Records is telling about their new act, New York punk rockers the Ramones. Their LP was supposedly mixed so “hot” that the producer blew out both the speakers on his office system by playing a test pressing of it and then proceeded to destroy $2,000 worth of speakers at a Manhattan studio during a further audition of the record.

No Black Flag In The Cockpit, Please

GRANTBURY, TX-Can you picture aphids flying reconnaissance missions over Saskatoon? Ladybugs shuttling about in comuter helicopters? Ants bringing down jumbo jets at O’Hare?

Well, you’d better get ready, because the age of the insect-piloted airplane is at hand. Although restricted to model planes right now, the little crawlies’ trainer/inventor thinks they’re the next big thing.

Aviation expert Dom Emick has been working on this project too long, but it’s more fun than just stomping on the tiny critters, he told a cub TV reporter. First, Emick knocks out a horsefly with ether, enabling him to attach his “feisty little pilot” to the aircraft.

“How long do they stay out?” inquired the reporter breathlessly, asking the one question that’s on the mind of virtually every right-thinking American.

“Thirty seconds,” replied Don Bob. Thank God we now know!

Once he gets the small but lively aviator strapped in, he feeds it a drop of honey, gives it a snap of his horsefly whip and off she goes into the wild blue yonder of Emick’s garage. Buzz buzz, kaboom! He hasn’t perfected the landing gear yet.

The potential is endless. Airlines can expand their first class sections because they’re only gonna need real tiny cockpits! Kamikaze beetle larvae

will be bred to protect lawns! And is this not the obvious solution to all the problems with the space shuttle?

Why stop there? How about cockroach building superintentants? An endless Supply of fresh game show hosts! Or a cooperative inexpensive new cast for Eight Is Enough!

And if one of these insect flyers crashes? Who cares? It’s just a fly!

Rick Johnson

Why They Call It Down Under!

EAGLEHAWK, AUSTRALIA —As the malodorous heaps of rotting lobster meat, squishy overripe produce, fresh kangaroo poo and all of last year’s leftover koala bait attracted swarms of hungry flies in the afternoon heat, the competition was ready to begin.

The Aussies’ idea of a beer brewing contest? Close, but not quite. Actually, it’s the World Fly Swatting championship, held annually in Eaglehawk (near Grackledove). Contestants must bring their own swatter, but all the rest is free!

This year’s winner—from a record field of eight swatters— was Blowfly Mick Byrne, a sheep-shearer from Long Gully (near Hully Gully). Guzzling from a can of Boomerang Lite in one hand, Mick racked up 148 of the playful buzzers in five minutes, topping the world’s record by a full twenty-two swattees. First prize: all you can eat!

It’s not for us to ask why, fellow citizens. Let us just observe the lesson of Canada and nuke Australia before it’s too late.

Rick Johnson

Sorry! No Special Delivery!

MOSCOW—What’s, the one subscription that Russkies never cancel? CREEM? Easyriders? The National Enquirer? Ranger Rick’s Nature Magazine? Commie Digest?

No, it’s toilet paper. That’s right—the perennially short-ofeverything Reds were forced to adopt this system when distribution of the always-scarce product broke down completely and hoarding got out of hand.

The nogoodniks method is working so far, with the occasional exception of someone accidentally subscribing to jeeps or thumbtacks. Then there was the address stenciling machine that went insane and sent 17,000 rolls to some poor comrade in Gorky. Worse yet, you don’t get a free record or Best OF CREEM or anything when you renew.

Let’s show the commies that we’re pals and send ’em a boatload of sandpaper today!

Rick Johnson