THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Equal Shares For The Au Pairs

“He works the car, she the sink

She’s not here to think

Sits with the paper, discuss the news

She doesn’t have political views”

“Diet"—the Au Pairs NEW YORK—Unlike the women she tends to write about, Lesley Woods has views on absolutely everything including politics. As lead singer-lyricistguitarist with English rock group Au Pairs these ideas are filtered through her obsessive awareness of the injustices perpetrated against women by men, and the group’s hard sound of jangly early Led Zep guitars plus a Gang Of Four-ish funk rhythm section. It’s a neat trick: a sexual approach to an antisexist subject working from a solidly commercial framework that neither devalues the questions of feminism but seldom hits you over the head with it.

“I write from personal experience,” Ms. Wood explained in the dressing room of Manhattan rock club Ritz. “I don’t mean that these things have (necessarily) happened to me—and it has nothing to do with feminism as a movement, but I write about what I know and if that’s the "way it turns out.

Block That Kick!

WASHINGTON, D.C.-America’s greatest natural resource— cheerleaders—are facing constant peril, according to a recent study.

Each year, more than 5,000 cheerleaders suffer injuries ranging from sprains and scrapes to broken bones. Not to mention chapped thighs and stuck-up attitudes.

Doctors from the American Academy of Pediatrics blame complex routines, bad weather and distracting crowds for the heavy toll on legs.

Asked to comment on these findings, a cheerleaders’ spokesperson had this to say: “Push ’em back. Push ’em back. Waaaaaay back.”

Rick Johnson

“The Au Pairs don’t sloganeer, we have no banners to stand under. Calling us feminists gives the impression that we write for a particular cause. I don’t write songs that are feminist, they may very well be about that, but they are just as much about anything else. We are not that narrow in our scope —see what I mean?

“Anyway, there are two guys in the band, and although men may sympathize with us, they can’t be feminist themselves.”

The Au Pairs were formed three years ago when Lesley dropped out of Birmingham University, went on the dole, and became friends with guitarist Paul Foad (ah ex-member of a punk band called the most repulsive in the land by English tabloid News Of The World) and drummer Peter Hammond. When long time friend Jane Munroe added her bass the band was complete. They spent the first year touring Britain non-stop and garnering a monster cult following, although their punky first single “You” on 021 Records was a minor disappointment. It took another year to get back in the studio, but the result was worth the wait: a double “a” sided 45 and still their finest vinyl moment. “Diet” is an atmospheric examination of a housewife becoming brainwashed by the mindlessness of her existence; “It’s Obvious” is possibly the best song Lesley’s written to date. It builds from cool-butslowly-heating guitars to a traded vocal/harmony denouncment that throttles an old cliche till it’s spitting blood (the cliche? “You’re equal but different”). They kicked off ’81 with a New Years Eve/Day American debut playing support to the Gang of Four at Hurrah that was absolutely magnificent and ranks as one of the premiere performances I’ve ever seen (Lester Bangs would write in the Village Voice “I saw God in the form of the Au Pairs”). They spent the rest of the year touringEurope, being gushed over by rock critics on both sides of the Atlantic, and recording their debut album Playing With A Different Sex which shot to numero uno in the Brit Independent Charts.

Although there’s nothing strikingly new in what Lesley has to say, still not many bands would bother to say it, and unlike other quasi-feminist bands (Raincoats, Slits, Jam Today) she realizes that condemning sexism doesn’t mean condemning or ignoring her own sexuality. Onstage (like any great rock band) both Lesley and Paul ooze sexiness, more, she’s one of the few rockers to tap the ironic possibilities inherent in using this idiom to such an end. Beyond this, Lesley’s got a remarkably powerful voice—she’s one of a few who can get away with covering “Piece Of My Heart,” a voice that has the caustic edge of a Rotten one minute, a thorough sensual purr that makes the hairs on my neck stand up the next.

My interview is hardly a stunning success, the band seems tired, I hate interviewing people in dressing rooms at the best of times, and over the past year they’ve become far more nervous with members of the press (1 spoke with them eight months before for New York alternative East Village Eye) *4 However Ms. Woods did see fit to state her (unconditional practically) support for the Irish Republic Army, and her (cautious) support of the Palestine Liberation Army.

Finally, I strongly suggest you catch them the next time they’re in the States. You don’t have to have political convictions or be a feminist to love the group; if you can get off on rock you can get off on the Au Pairs. *

“A woman’s own diet keeps her figure trim

Has a headache takes anadin

There’s a constant pain behind her eyes

She needs to be tranquillized’’

“Diet”—the Au Pairs Iman Lababedi

SEX MUSIC FOR BUNNY PEOPLE I

Pictured above is Peter Rabbit, the latest new romantic singing sensation front Britain. A distant relative of Fluffo, the wonder dog, Peter has been a smash in Europe and is now set to embark on his first American tour. "I'll squash Adam Ant with one step!" says the highly confident Peter. "Rabbits are better known for sex than puny little ants anyway. You've heard of Echo & the Bunnymen? Well, I'm the real thing/"Hugh Hefner is reportedly interested in the movie rights.

The Waitresses Get Upped

NEW YORK—There was this single hanging around most of last year, playing in clubs and on the radio, becoming part of the background, almost unforgettable. It was sung by a girl who said she liked to tease boys, and it taunted with a hook that was itself a perfect tease. “Nya nya nya nya” it went. It was “I Know What Boys Like” by the Waitresses, and it seemed like one of these exquisite novelty songs that become happy footnotes in pop history.

But then, at the end of the year, came an import album from Ze Records, a collection of Christmas songs called A Christmas Album, and one of its brightest moments was an up-beat, hip-hoppity and brilliantly vivid combination of interior monologue and romantic, boy-meets-girl story by the same Waitresses called “Christmas Wrapping.” It too began to gather serious airplay, even without a domestic release, and suddenly it looked like the Waitresses might not go away so quickly.

Meanwhile the Waitresses had been touring America, hitting the Midwest twice, California twice, and runs up and down the East Coast, building as audience for their pop-funkcabaret-Broadway showtunesociological essays. A smart move, it turns out, as their debut album, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?, looks like it may quickly find a waiting audience.

The Waitresses’ songs are written by guitarist Chris Butler and sung by vocalist Patty Donahue in a style that ranges from sultry and insinuating to pouty and bitchy to proud and defiant, as befits the mood and meaning of each song.

One of the most clever aspects of the Waitresses is the way Butler seems to have probed the female.mind, coming up with believable portrayals of what a woman might think and feel in various situations.

There is, for example, the young woman in “No Guilt” who has just broken up with her boyfriend, and is proud to tell him she’s unlearning her hopelessness and getting along fine without him. “J got the cab calls out of the hi-fi” she tells him. “I’ve learned a lot since you’ve been gone. ’’

But Butler and Donahue don’t agree that this or the other characters in the songs are necessarily female.

“You know how many guys I broke up with that were just ready to drive both of us off a bridge,” Donahue says. “Guys don’t always handle things well, either.”

“The common myth” Butler adds, “is that a helpless person must be a woman. Not necessarily. I’ve known men in that position, I’ve gone through it myself. You fall in love so deeply with someone and then they’re gone and you realize that person took most of yourself with them. Block by block, you’ve got to rebuild it, which is what she’s doing in that song. Little baby steps, everyday things that take great courage.”

In the working relationship of the Waitresses, Butler seems a combination scriptwriter and director, while Donahue is like an actress, approaching the songs like an actress learning a role.

“I actually believe in the character in the songs, and I try to portray that character,” Donahue says. “The roles in the songs are. interchangable, but I’m singing it, so it relates directly to girls. But we don’t mean to exclude men or say men don’t feel like that. We portray all kinds of emotions, happiness, uncertainty, independence.”

Butler: “There’s tons of mental work that goes on behind these things. I have pages of explanations of the songs, giving the backgrounds, the nuance, and we sit down and talk it over. I do research, I sit down and ask my lady friends and men friends, ‘If you were in this situation, would you react this way? What about this reaction?”’

The Waitresses’ music is a pastiche of forms and influences, with a modified funk beat holding it all together and some extravagant guitar and sax solos adding the spice. The music is fun and functional through not ground-breaking. But Butler’s songwriting is something new, an attempt to delve deeply into the psychology of real-life experiences using the pop song format. The songs are about relationships and break-ups, job hunts and life crises, girl-watching and growing up.

“This is a cold and cruel business” Butler says. “And yet my phone keeps ringing and the comments I’m getting are so warm, so human, that it’s almost bizarre. It’s not, ‘Boy, you guys really kick ass, that chick, what a sex-pot.’ It’s more, ‘Boy, you really put a finger on the way I feel.’ People always ask what you call your music, and one of the slogans I jokingly came up with was ‘important music for people who used to think music was important.’ Because there was an idea at one time that popular music was supposed to say something, supposed to articulate people’s feelings. In other cultures it’s used that way. But today most music is ear candy, wallpaper, all those great critic’s phrases. So if people are telling me I really touched something, that’s great. You can bop to it, you can iron to it, but you can also think about it.

Punked-Out Parents Turn ToPOP

NORWALK, CA-You say Mom and Dad think the Germs are something that multiply in toilet bowls? They don’t understand why you stick pins in all seven nasal passages? Don’t think it’s fashionable to wear telephone microwave towers as lapel buttons?

If the answer is yes, send those parentals to Serena Dank. That’s the very punk handle for a very unpunk youth counselor who’s organize^ Parents of Punkers (POP). A “mini-network” of disgusted families in SoCal, POP runs a hotline to cool out mommies and daddies who are about to commit Germ warfare in the first degree.

IT'S ALL MY PARENTS FAULT

Dank, who has been “studying” the punk scene for over four years now, says all the kids want is to be different. “They’re just saying ‘see me, hear me.’ ” Touch me, kill me.

Her advice to Exened parents? The usual Donahue song and dance: (l)it’s all your fault, (2) Learn punk rock songs and discuss the lyrics with the kids, (3)Keep the lines of communication open so that zzzzzz. Wake me when she’s finished, will you?

“There is nothing positive about punk,” Dank bawls. “I was part of the hippie generation!?) . We were not violent like these kids.”

Oh, did you get the message, punkers? From now on, only stick pins in hippies.

Rick Johnson

“The trick for me is to find situations to write about that everybody at some time in their lives is going to confront. People may say ‘Oh the music’s too cerebral man.’ Yet on the Other hand some of the situations we deal with are ones that someone who is now 18 will hit by the time they’re 21. They’re going to have to deal with a job, they’re going to have to deal with relationships.”

The Waitresses have their roots in the music scene of Akron, Ohio, from where Donahue and Butler hail. Butler played in a band called 15 60 75, or “the Numbers Band,” whom he calls “the great undiscovered American band,” and later in Tin Huey. The Waitresses was a name made up for recording projects he did as a sideline, playing all the instruments himself while either he or Donahue did the vocals.

5 Years Ago

Thank You, Fats Domino!

When Nils Lofgren decided to cover Keith Richards’ “Happy” on his new I Came To Dance LP, he had to find out exactly what Keith was muttering-uhsinging, since he was going to print liner notes on the LP’s sleeve. Turns out there was an Anglo-American language gap; what Nils thought was “Never kept a daughter past sunset” was actually “Never kept a dollar past sunset.” “Always had a hard in my pants”— actually Keith is singing “It always burnt a hole in my pants.” Iss owl rawt, though— Nils has kept his version— wrong lyrics and all—intact. The Stones don’t mind.

Fellow Akronite Liam Sternberg, later known as songwriter and producer for Rachel Sweet, also had a make-believe band project called Jane Aire and the Belvederes. When Stiff Records, who were courting Devo, decided to do an Akron compilation in ’78, the two found their bluff called.

“Stiff were sending a photographer over and we’re going, ‘oh no, what are we going to do, there’s no bands.’ We just picked people up, stood them in front of the Goodyear tire, and said yeah, this is the Waitresses. So the big lie began to be told.”

Now the Waitresses have relocated to New York, and are a real, live, seven-person band, including ex-Television drummer Billy Ficca, and the project has gone from being a basement lark to a serious concern.

“At first it was a joke” Donahue recalls. “I mean, it was a serious outlet, with a serious intent. But it was fun for me. It wasn’t like being in a serious band that had to play every weekend. It was surprising when the single went so well. Who ever thought anything would come of it?”

Richard Grabel

Bette Pogo Eyes

LOS ANGELES—If it’s really true that in L.A. they still pogo, they better knock it off unless they want to go blind.

This unlikely advice comes from Dr. Willard Hunter of the General Clinic here. “It may be exhilirating,” Dr. Hunter points out, “but it can cause blood vessels in the dancer’s eyes to pop.” What a dance step!

The medical term for these liveral red cells is sub-conjunctiual hemorrhaging, although most refer to it as Red Eye. The inflammation can spread and threaten the optic nerves, resulting in permanent loss of sight. Considering what some of those L.A. bands look like, vision is no real advantage anyway.

Meanwhile, the doc is investigating the thesis that blindness causes masturbation.

Rick Johnson

WHAT IS IT?

R&B stars Rick James and Stephanie Mills recently received these strange-looking structures from several of their admiring fans. "What the hell is it?" asked Rick. "I don't know. What the hell is it?" replied Stephanie. "Oh, I think I know what it is I" exclaimed Rick. "Oh, yeah? Well, what the hell is it?" demanded Stephanie, but Rick had already taken his home by this time. The superstar later commented: "Me ana

Mexican Hat Dance Stand-Off

CINCINNATI—In a postscript to his Bob Dylan feature in the March CREEM, your reporter has more recently learned, from a well-known local gossip columnist, that Mr. D. thrice blessed the Queen City during his November concert stop. It seems that between his two sold-out appearances at Music Hall, the one-time Zimmerman was spotted at a certain 7th Street hat shop, frequented by persons of color, where he reportedly purchased 40 hats, totaling over $1000, and paid the tab in $100 bills. Your reporter feels that Dylan’s chapeau orgy was a cheap publicity shot, to try to bait the local media into employing that most foul and disgusting of all the current amateur-journalist cliche metaphors, “He wears many hats in his profession,” a pluralistic self-image the 1982 model Bob Dylan would undoubtedly love to portray. Your faithful CREEM reporter adamantly refuses to swallow the bait; “He wears many hats” will never issue from his typewriter, no matter how eminent the personage who invites it. Besides, even J.C. was content with just one crown-of-thorns for year-round wear.

Richard Riegel