THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

New Wave Stronghold Runs Riot: Mighty Tior Triumphant!

NEW YORK—The punkish gatekeepers at New York's Peppermint Lounge have been biting back nausea as the long-haired faithful swarm in. For an invasion of unbending hard rock fans the skinny tie employees had to cut short their Fourth of July weekend—and this is only the first of the New Pep's heavy metal insights? Oh, well, better get used to it, sourpusses, because judging from the eager throngs awaiting Riot —a New York band who had to leave home to grow—the denimed minions are willing to keep late club hours for the chance of seeing their faces as more than a group of anonymous blobs in an arena.

Atlanta-born vocalist Rhett Forrester and New Jersey-bred drummer Sandy Slavin gear up for the long-anticipated Manhattan date in a down-at-heels midtown hotel room. Forrester sports his trademark spurs, "good for cutting pizza." Slavin wears a talisman of a hat pierced madly with duck feathers and a glowing LED pin of the peculiar creature that is Riot's own emblem. The gentle, furred animal seems disconcertingly familiar—reminiscent of the baby harp seals that get whacked into oblivion. Says Rhett, a bit unnerved by the analogy, "The Mighty Tior is really a piece of mythology—a seal's head on a sumo wrestler's body. It's the contrast between strength and innocence." "And if you buy that," roars Slavin, "I've got this bridge I can sell you, ho ho ho..."

I have grave doubts that innocence figures here, but in terms of strength and resilience, Riot presents a convincing argument. While New York has provided the rock scene with some of its most ferocious practitioners—Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult being the most successful of the bunch—it has lately not been too kind to newcomers in the field, possibly because the Apple has given all its energy to punk and the resulting new music. An outrageous band like local heroes Twisted Sister have been flapping their gums in an unreceptive climate for years, and when Riot was first formed in 1975 by Brooklynites Mark Reale (guitar) and Guy Speranza (singer), they were forced to release their 1977 LP, Rock City, independently.

Says Slavin, who joined Riot in 1980, "We went to Texas originally, and grew to the point where we have no record deal, would play a club in New York if we could get one, but had Molly Hatchet—who had a Top 10 record at the time—opening for us at the San Antonio Civic Center." Riot's second album, a Canadian-only release called Narita, followed Rock City as an import favorite in the U.K. and America, and was ultimately issued by Capitol, who put the band on a British Sammy Hagar tour. With a crisper and less ostentatious style than many of the British HM bands, Riot was invited to play the Castle Donnington festival with such major touring names as Rainbow and the Scorpions.

Slavin gleefully describes the loyalty of Riot's fans when Capitol declined what eventually became the band's Elektra debut, Fire Down Under. "Kids in London collected 5,000 signatures on petitions by standing outside the Hammersmith Odeon. Kids in America

Eye Contact, New Contract?

BUTTERFIELD, MN-It's that time of year again: the cows are at the sap, the corn is in the trees and residents of this nondescript Midwestern village are all staring at each other.

It's the World Championship Staring Contest, of course, held each year in this town of 619 pairs of eyes. The contestants sit and face their opponent across a wobbly card table and ...well, they just stare at each other until one of them looks away.

The referee hollers "ready, set, stare!," blows his whistle and the fun begins. Each entrant is allowed two "distractors, " people who stand in back of their teammate making faces and jumping around a lot, trying to psych opt the competition.

The current world's record holder is Jim Geiger, a local boy who racked up seveh minutes and ten seconds at one sitting. Geiger is now being groomed as a possible replacement for Talking Heads singer David Byrne.

Rick Johnson

"WANG DANG, SWEET..."

"Terrible" Ted Nugent recently took an opportunity to display his latest casino "winnings" on the streets of famous Las Vegas, Nevada. Ted said that the four lovely misses pictured here are only part of a harem he has started back at his farm in Michigan. "It's fantastic," says Ted, who sometimes wears his loincloth while hitting his "finds" over the head with a club and dragging them home by their hair. "Here I am, a guy who writes incredibly sexist songs for brain-damaged morons, and yet I always get my picture taken with beautiful women. Setting a good example? You bet I Ain't life grand?"

made bomb threats to Capitol and wrote on their walls."

' After an uphill battle for recognition of over half a decade, Riot was totally brought into its own with the acquisition early this year of blonde charmer Forrester. "I came to New York with literally everything I owned in the back of my car and decided I was tired of beating my head against the wall. The first band I was in, I didn't even do vocals—just played harmonica. Sam the Sham stole me away from the band that was backing him up. I'd just gotten out of the Naval Academy—my hair was short, I had a harmonica belt with all these harps. I was fancying myself as the new Sonny Boy Williamson, a blond-haired green-eyed soul boy."

Forrester's harmonica and vocal styles on Restless Breed owe a lot more to Keith Relf's Yardbirds and Paul Rodgers' Free/Bad Company influences than to such regional icons as the Allman Brothers and Wet Willie. "It was not cool for an Atlanta boy to choose the Stones over that music." Foghat's Rod Price and a former Kiss soundman helped connect Forrester with Riot, and the attraction was immediate. "I showed 'em my pictures and a video, Rick Ventura and I put 'Over To You' together, and on the third day we popped the cork and signed the papers."

Forrester prefers to move his audiences with energy and warmth rather than the convenience of automatic screams. "Mister Mellow," jokes Sandy, but Rhett leaves the riff-rock to others. There's room in Riot's repertoire for a manic cover of the Animals' mid-'60s classic, "When I Was Young," as well as the new album's anthemic title track. It's only a matter of months before the Pep doorpeople can fret about some other black-leathered ensemble. Riot seems destined to cauSe much larger upheavals before Rhett Forrester permanently donates his spurs to some Italian kitchen.

Toby Goldstein

The Worm You Save

FLAGSTAFF, AZ-Things are crawling here as Northern Arizona University and students intend to keep it that way.

A 30-member Worm Relocation Commission has been formed to rescue the sincerebut-slimy creatures from campus sidewalks after heavy rains. Founder Sue Bonneville first developed a "Save the Worm" kit—a tin can containing dirt, a baby shovel, tweezers and a tiny stretcher. Honest! Soon there were "Save the Worms" t-shirts and even "I Brake For Worms'' bumper stickers.

In the latest development, worried college officials are planning a Worm Detainment Camp. They already have a name for it: Nevada.

Rick Johnson

The Importance Of Being Individuals

NEW YORK-The Individuals surround me in a bar on the sleazy side of town. De Facto leader Glenn Morrow is sullenly pouting and wishing he was anywhere else, bass player Janet Wygal (my idea of a CREEM DREEM) is keeping the conversation from coming to a dead stop, her brother, drummer Doug, is unobtrusively doing in his beer, and the final Individual, lead guitarist Jon Klages, trades small talk with me. I don't mind the difficulties of getting the insights shining (my questions lack their usual sharpness), but it is a shame my preconceptions and challenges are neither denied or allowed. The Individuals are a pop ensemble pulling away from cheap shots and pretend revolutions, turning rock corruption inside out as they reconstruct the rhythms of love around the weirdness of growing-up in the midst of American culture: as if everything they ever cared about might be valuable if they could re-charge it with their love battery; as if the simplicity of lust, youth, prettiness, twopart harmonies and (in) tense guitars, good luck, tap dancing, raunch, hope, as if it could make a fresh equation from the mold of the old. But the Individuals don't want to play ball. They're recovering from the flooding of a basement in which they rehearse, and the ruin of most of their instruments, a devastating setback at this stage of the poverty line existence for a struggling band. For the sake of this talk, it's Janet who is playing catch with my questions. I use my usual opening: why do you want to be a pop band?

"I honestly feel like I'm not really good for anything else," Janet self-effacingly retorts. "I really do. I've tried a lot of other things, I've done a lot of other things. There are things that I do that I like to do...but not as much. I'm best at what makes me happy, whenever I give an interview the word happy comes into it. I try not to, I know it's not very cool."

Does it make you happy being in a band?

Doug: "I don't think we'd be in a band if it didn't make us happy. It's like being in a relationship—it is a relationship..."

"Oh God," moans Janet.

"...it is a relationship. You have your ups and your downs."

Jon: "Practicing makes us sad."

The Individuals have been enjoying their relationship for about two years, pretty much ever since Glenn Morrow dropped out of his previous band "a" with Richard Barone (now of the Bongos) and, while working as the managing editor of New York Rocker under the moniker Greg McClean, put this group together. As a small live band, doing the club circuit (the first time I saw them was at Club 57—a small hang-out for gay punks) with more than a trip or two of Maxwell's. In a sense they are another reflection on the dB's school of advanced pop (Gene Holder produced both their debut EP Aquamarine and album Fields), but with a stronger rhythmic edge than stops short of rock mainly because of a fine sense of melody (mainly Glenn Morrow's, although I'm informed that it is far more of a group cohesion than is at first apparent), and a quasi-esoteric, almost arty lyricism. They deny the "open-ended New York" nameplate, though.

ANDY'S POWER RUN AMUCK!!

"Now that Victoria's ditchod mo, I simply don't care!" screams rock idol Andy Gibb, seen here in varying states of bliss at a New York party! Few could suspect that the real reason of the split lay in Gibb's mysterious power of Age-o-matia! "It's tragic," commented a nearby doctor, watching Andy suck the life forces from Suzi Quatro and Pat Benafar, "they're getting older by the second! And look—only Dinah Shore is immune! She's actually getting younger 11" Gibb attributes his terrifying affliction to his "penchant for tunny hats, not to mention life itself! I " Some things are just too abstrtract to deal with, Andy 11

Janet: "I think we used to be. But things really pass you by quickly."

Jon: "I think we're an American band."

Janet: "But why? I don't think any of us are into humiliation or degradation."

Doug: "I think when we play the Midwest they know we're from New York. We look as though we're from around here."

Janet: "I'm going to get some motorcycle boots, though."

The Individuals are actually one of the best-looking bands around. On stage they come across as sharp, middle class kids with more than a passing amount of suss; depending on his mood Glenn can punish his audience with masses of energy while the rest of the band make stealthily constructed pop songs seem like free-form excerpts from a still-in-progress pop/ rock concerto, or give you the come-on of a tempermental star as he dazzles you with the sheer virtuosity of his guitar playing.

When I spoke to the Individuals, they were just back from recording Fields in North Carolina; a dazzling record with a hard center missing from the sweeter tasting Aquamarine, Fields includes many stage faves: "The Leap Of Faith," "My Three Sons (Revolve Around The Earth)," "Swimming In The Streets," and "Walk By Your House," which has the stunning couplet "Asleep in your bed/I'm drunk in the fields." It confirms what I've long suspected: The Individuals make a new pop that's an exact American counterpoint to the great Scottish groups that were turning me on a year ago: Scars, Orange Juice, Josef K, Aztec Cameras, Altered Images. It's new because it isn't about the past, this is expansive, saturated real life turned romantic, a subtle psychedelia about the pain and pleasure of the way things are for the Individuals (and the cover painting by Janet is lovely).

The Individuals' simplicity is a sleight-of-hand, their politics are hidden in the youthfulness they represent. In the fact that the more you listen the more prophetic the masks become, this is the truth of life's hazards.

"I just wish I could quit my day job," smiles Janet. The Individuals are one of the best pop bands anywhere today.

Iman Lababedi

'Roos Draw Boos Down Under

CURBAR, AUSTRALIA—A massive invasion by thousands of kangaroos has left the citizens of this small mining town "hopping mad."

The thousands of invading 'roos have brought the community to a virtual standstill. Trains have been derailed, airplanes must dodge them on the runway and golf enthusiasts have to play around the hungry hoppers as they devour the course. Motorists trying to dodge these Ian Durys of the animal world end up in ditches and at least one overactive bunny held a family hostage at pouch-point in their own home while it hummed excerpts from Back In Black,

In the most recent development, a monstrous 'roo herd stopped a football game to munch down the grass, the ball arid two officials. Will they become mascots for the Lions?

Worse yet, nobody can shoot the critters because they're Australia's national animal, not to mention their important role in the nation's judicial system.

Why, Sherman! Surely you've heard of a kangaroo court.

Rick Johnson

5 YEARS AGO

'Going To See The Rollers..."

Bay City, Michigan, recently gave the key to the city (and most of its riot police force) to those teenyrockin' Bay City Rollers in honor of Bay City Roller Day. As one might expect, panic and mayhem ruled, causing several little chickies to be carted off after suffering from Rolleritis.

Not To Mention (Jnderalls

INDONESIA—Television has finally reached the backroads of this intermittently backward nation, and the government is in a panic.

The Minister of Culture has announced a ban on all advertising on the Gambarhidup (Indonesian for television) network. He saw one of those Dial C-A-R-P-E-T-s blurbs, right? No, it's simply his well-founded fear that the ads will "arouse the material desires of the rural audience." They'll all want Booberry and K-cars, no doubt.

The natives, however, are restless because they love commercials. If there was an Indonesian Neilsen Survey, the top ten programs would include ads for "Raid, Lux soap, Coke and Pepsodent."

Not to mention what kind of ideas are conjured up by the new Three Musketeers slogan: "The more it's whipped, the bigger it gets!"

Rick Johnson