OF IDEALS AND GESTURES

OF IDEALS AND GESTURES

RECORDS

YOKO ONO It's Alright (Polvdor)

Richard C. Walls

Frankly, I didn’t give a damn if that guy blew up the Washington Monument or not. After they got all the people out, of course. I mean, they could always build another one without too much trouble, right? It’s not just that some sadistic gym teacher forced our senior class to jog to the top back in ’66—as a symbol it’s always been a little tacky, and later for symbols anyway. So I wouldn’t cry to see it go. However, my indifference to the monument doesn’t blind me to the arrogance and futility of such a gesture as blowing it up, arrogant in its childish demanding of attention through destruction, futile because it convinces nobody of anything except that somebody became desperate when they couldn’t effect a change through the sheer force of their good intentions.

Yoko Ono isn’t quite that obsessive about her good intentions, but her faith in their healing force does lead her to make some maddeningly futile gestures. On “I See Rainbows,” the final of the 10 tight and fairly sophisticated pop melodies and arrangements that make up this, her most musically assured effort yet, she sings “I don’t wanna be mugged by some mother/I don’t wanna be shot for ten dollar” and you think, right! I don’t even wanna be shot for hundred dollar. But then, after reminding us that things are far from perfect around here she offers her response (solution?): “I see us sending rainbow love see us sending rainbow thoughts,” and you have to groan and wonder how anybody could be So naive in this day and age, how anyone could paraphrase Rona Barrett’s tagline— “think good thoughts”—with anything less than blistering cynicism. Simply put, good intentions aren’t enough, you’ve gotta have a plan, at the very least, a way of communicating precisely the worth of your beliefs once you’ve got the platform...

Sorry, didn’t mean to get so ranty. Anyway, that’s the worst of it, and I wanted to get the worst of it out of the way first, ’cause after all she’s been through one doesn’t like to say anything too harsh about Yoko Ono—it just doesn’t seem civilized^ The fact that she appears intent on carrying on some of the more inane aspects of John Lennon’s idealism perhaps should be overlooked for now. Nor does one feel any joy in mentioning the totally confusing cosmology of the song “Spec of Dust” (or its preening sci-fi synthesizers) or the sappy lyrics of “Wake Up”—“today is the first day of the rest of your life,” no less. No, one would rather hurry to mention the amiable pop song “My Man” (and shouldn’t Ricky Ricardo be getting royalties from that chorus?) and a few good strong songs about loneliness and trying to come back to life after a period of grief. Here the optimism is more acceptable because it’s on a more personal and effective level. The little lies like “it’s alright,” we tell ourselves to get through a difficult time are necessary deceptions—but as an overall philosophy of life, optimism seems to miss the point and the inevitable disillusionment (sooner or later) could even possibly lead to the attempted blowing up of symbols (why not?). Which helps no one...

Oops, didn’t mean to get back into that. Did I say how good the music was? I did? Alright, then.

GRACE JONES Living My Life (Island)

Clearly, we are dealing here with a case of Persona, in this case as outsized as War And Peace. And static too—who, recently, has really worried about warming up to Grace Jones? She has been written off (mostly by white male heteros as a great ex-fashion-model-cum-dominatrix who does bad disco with good musicians. Big bad black Grace, with more physical majesty than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Given that kind of image, the actual music has to work overtime to matter—hell, to even get noticed at all.

As disco and new wave began secret breeding in the sweaty dark, dear Grace finally found her true musical self amongst their sire. Warm Leatherette had surprises like “Love Is The Drug”—well, maybe Grace doesn’t just want to sit on our heads and crush our skulls! Chris Blackwell (producer) and a gang of good musicians still made it too sleek, though; gorgeous, but too posed. Here was this woman who had the suss to do androgyny while the world was still being shocked by simple asexuality. Big diff, eh, Grace? On Merv Griffin they’d call you a Personality. C’mon! Make a record to justify your existence!

Ta-da. And now, for your auditory and aesthetic pleasures (among others) Living My Life. It doesn’t quite duplicate the voracious presense of the diva herself, but dig the litany of what she does right. Rightest of all: Ms. Jones is now, unarguably, presenting more than a character caricature to the submissive masses. Mostly it’s her lyrics. From “Everybody Hold Still,” regarding fate and timing: “I should’ve known when my car would not get started/it should’ve clicked when indecision read its question mark/if I’d ran back for the phone/ but instead Met it ring/I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in right now.” There’s more, of course, (Kudos to all sjx cuts of hers, actually) great little moments of pop literature nestled in nicely scruffy reggaefunk. Well, scruffy for Grace anyway, whose earlier LPs mostly had the texture of glare ice. The dollops of instrumental discontent (via Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, cowriter Barry Reynolds, etc.) are how we sense the full stretch of the story line (shades of Joni Mitchell)—“How to see but not get stomped by life’s endless supply of bad. intra-personal transactions.” Interesting that the woman who was a disco glam-sadist gets interesting when she backs down and warms up. Don’t worry, she’s still aieeeeeee enough to make brave men nervous in the back of a taxi.

Laura Fissinger

DEVO

Oh, No! It's DEVO

(Warner Bros.)

“We are Devo.” Well, yeah, it was hard to argue with ’em at the time. They were, after all; the group Devo. But that multifaceted little phrase also meant that the band is subject to the same devolutionary precesses that the rest of us supposedly are.

What brings that up? Well, actually, this album. It’s...definitely Devo. Unmistakably Devo. Mainly the Devo of Freedom of Choice and New Traditionalists. The hit record Devo. Essentially, this record fits comfortably within the confines of the band’s established style and contains several “good” songs done in that style, as well as a few clunkers. But the same thing could be said about the last Jethro, Tull album, for spudboy’s sake. Is devolution, then, as applied to Devo itself, nothing more than a fancy word for the kind of profitable rutmanship that most successful bands who last any length of time get iqto?

I don’t know, but the key components of Devodom aren’t disguised here at all. Instead of pounding and crashing, the drums (and drum computers) thunk ’n thwack in clockwork time while the guitars are usually squashed over on one speaker doing low volume Chuck Berry licks or something equally tried and true and innocuous. Microchip mayhem takes up the slack in the form of synthesized riffs and hooks; synched up sawhoms and squiggledybleeps complete the picture. And lyrically, the themes of acceptance and denial of desire are not exactly new to these guys, either.

Who is new is producer Roy Thomas Baker behind the board. That might strike you as being a little weird at first but consider the Cars; a few things here, like “Deep Sleep,” wouldn’t sound too out of place on Shake It Up. Besides, Mark Mothersbaugh says Baker gives good envelope and who am I to argue with him?

The music, then, isn’t exactly innovative at this point but this isn’t just another stasis story; there’s

more going on here than that. Devo have always been as' much into video as music and if seems that the songs on Oh, No! were written specifically to synch up with the video/stage presentation that they used on the US tour they just finished. Now if these guys have really come up with a revolutionary multi-media show, it might be too much to expect ’em to break new ground musically at the same time, since they are, I guess, human and

all that. So were their concerts revolutionary breakthroughs? Well, er, must confess that I didn’4 see ’em-; would have made things too simple, I guess.

So in summation, as a record album, Oh, No! It’s DEVO is...another Devo album. As an integral part of their multi-media extravaganza, how should I know? As a promotional tool for a future videocassette—you never know with' these guys, right?—I know even

less. What more can I tell you? As an ashtray, the album functions well if warped into the right shape. As a protective suit, it’s much too small. As, a waffle iron, its heating apparatus is questionable, although it does show promise as a toasteroven. As a record reviewer, I am devolving faster than I care to think about, so I’ll stop now. Thanks Mark, I, uh, really needed that (?!?).

Michael Davis

TOQUE OFF, EH?

RUSH

Signals

(Mercury)

by Joe (C17H21N04) Fernbacher

Curled up in a dull-angled comer dreaming he’s a crazed penguin nightmaring he’s a seagull fantasizing he’s actually Barbara (the Baby Maker) Hershey’s undergarments; he spies through soft-lidded, occasionally transparent eyes, a large pale brown carton slipping erotically through the snow-dampened slot in the door. As the package hits the floor with a dull thud, the first revolting tremors of reviewophobia begin to shimy-shammy throughout his body. He feels the beginnings of that regular throbbing in his head. Looking down at the suddenly— mysteriously—freed contents of the pale brown envelope, he sighs, shrugs his shoulders, stifles a yawn and sits down at his typewriter.

He write. He writes. He wrote. Lately he’s found it increasingly difficult to figure out just exactly what tense he should be in and this here review of the new Rush album. Signals, wasn’t gonna help any, he knew it. What would help was a large slug of that grain alcohol. Then, he figured, his mind, his liver and his strangly comforting hallucinations (either too much mauve Sunshine or carnelian mescaline in those great old ’60s day—or maybe just that last quart of Wild Turkey) could meet on a street corner near his pulsing (mental) G-spot. Soon

his fingers began wiggling wildly. In a drifting mist of amber, they gathered high-fived and began planning a few “weekend kicks” murders. Ever so slowly, he began separating himself from the shimmering pool of this digital consciousness. As he did so, he reflected:

There’s this line by poet Micheal McClure,, y’know,, Morrison’s buddy, that beautifully describes the true psyche of metalese and the metalunatic. It’s all about “clotting the rage of nothingness,” which is exactly what great metal does afid we all know that the truly great metal band has yet to be formed. (The Priest are close—very close— but all they really are is the “quickerpickeruppers” of metal.) Nowadays, there are many misguided who consider Rush to be the great metal band of our times. Without history, one perhaps might make a case for this chest-thumping boast. But history, like herpes, is something hard to ignore and within the historical prespective, Rush sounds like nothing more than a slicked-up version of such primary heavy metal groups as Sir Lord Baltimore, Dust, Budgie, and Atomic Rooster (“Robutussinoids,” or just plain “tussinoids,” we used to call ’em). Those bands had the same formulistic sound—heavy organ wheeze; the accentuated, broken chorded, often to the point of rupture, guitar break; and the distant, yet always exquisitely-produced drums.Sound that was coupled with lyrics that nudged the listener towards the darker, more chaotic realms of future shock, doom, despair and agony (along with, of course, the usual heavy dose of fashionably unhealthy misogyny). Which really does pigeonhole this three-piecer from the great white north of Vonge and Bloor, if y’know what I mean.

Signals is the first album I’ve ever, heard that was actually born to video—all the songs dome across like some hip scriptwriter’s dissolves and fades. I suppose MTV will thrive on this record, since I’m sure all the songs will eventually be videotaped. Which might be fun and dandy for all those aural illiterates out there whose numbers are growing due to the ever-increasing’ videotaping of rock (the most i insidious corporate move since disco) but that’s a whole other story indeed—for this here stareatthewallophile it’s just another annoyance. Why? Because my fantasies can never be filmed or videoed, so they’re mine; nobody’s else’s, and rock ’n’ roll should always be up to the individual, not the domain publique so many need it to be in order to justify its multimillion dollarhood existence.

Enodgh already. I’ll get off my high horse and tell ya simply: as far as metal goes, Signals is like the Titanic trying to signal the Andrea Doria and Rush is NOT the fave band of the honestly insane metalunatic. True, a few songs ain’t bad— “New World Man” being a kinda metal muzak toon that could easily be .heard in the elevators of Toronto’s city hall, and “The Weapon,” being something Soldier of Fortune might press between the pages of their magazine on a cardboard record like the ’60s teeny bopper magazines used to do with such bands as Paul Revere and the Raiders. But when all the markers are down, Rushs’ Signals are crossed, dulled and amazingly crispless.

CULTURE CLUB Kissing To Be Clever (Virgin)

“What some people don’t realize is that a lot of normal people are buying our record, like housewives. ”

-George Alan O’Dowd

Sc who wants to own an album that a housewife would buy, you ask? Judging from those wacky folks across the sea, a lot of people.

Probably close to a million of them, as a matter of fact. Not only did they make both Kissing To Be Clever and “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” gold with combined sales of well over 600,000, they’ve plastered O’Dowd’s face over every pop paper and magazine in the U.K. (and remember that, next to Japan, the U.K. has more pop papers per capita than any other civilized country). Many rock critics have gone ga-ga as well.

Let’s not forget, though, that when it comes to musical tastes, the British are (how shall I put it) an eclectic sort: the Top Of The Pops top 40 album chart for the end of 1982 boasted such diverse items as The Kids From Fame (13 weeks at Number One with over 2,000,000 copies sold); The Kids From Fame Again,; K-Tel’s Chart Hits ’82 and The Best Of Classic Rock and the equally classic rock of Nat King Cole’s 20 Greatest Love Songs.

All of which tells you that (a) Anglos buy the darndest things, and (b) getting into the U.K. charts is no big deal. Stateside, however, we here at CREEM take pride in calling a spade a spade—and speaking of spades, aboqt the only thing some people might find offensive about Kissing To Be Clever will probably be the picture of the black kid on the back cover, inner sleeve, and label of the record (assuming they make it past the front cover shot of O’Dowd in his make-up and braids, that is).

Vocally, you’ve heard it all before—or, at least you’ll think you have. “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” is competent enough reggae, but why bother listening to this white boy sing the dread when “No Woman, No Cry” gives you a highly superior and more heart-felt experience?

As for the other tracks, on numbers such as “White Boy,” “Take Control,” “White Boys Can’t Control It,” and (especially) “I’m Afraid Of Me,” the similarity between O’Dowd’s voice and David Sylvian’s (during the latter’s Obscure "Alternatives phase) is so close, it’s an insult to Japan fans everywhere.

Tack on an inane: rap track (“Love Twist”) and you’ve got a professional-enough sounding piece of plastic which unfortunately emits an all-enveloping aura of sameness that doesn’t challenge you, prod you, or do anything for you except sound OK when you’re dancing or washing the dishes (which explains the housewife connection) .

The bottom line, of course, is that you can’t kiss and be clever at the same time: it’s either one or the other, and this album succeeds at peither.

Jeffrey Morgan

“Yaz,” are really “Yazoo,” and still go by that name in the U.K. and Europe, but for North American consumption they had to drop the “oo,” as an import-duty conces--

YAZ

Upstairs At Eric’s (Mute/Sire)

sion to some indignant locals with simultaneous claim to the moniker. No sweat, us Yanks picked up on the likewise-rechristened “English” Beat, and forgot whoever it was who made them change, so what’s in a name if it ain’t got that beat etc.?

* And Yaz have definitely got that beat that beat got that beat, as we already noticed last year, when Yaz’s Vince Clarke and his synth boards and rhythm machines were still in Depeclje Mode. Problem with Depeche Mode was that although they had some nice noodle-pulsar tunes, there was nothing special in their vocal delivery, nothing to distinguish them from the dozens of other British synthpop aspirants.

So Clarke jumped ship and Yazooed a new alliance with Genevieve Alison “Alf' Moyet, a blues (mind you)belter from the likes of The Vicars and The Screaming Abdabs. Electronix meet belted-out : a combination so obvious

and inevitable of course no one else had thought of it yet. A combinaT tion potentially as fateful as Phil Oakey’s and Adrian Wright’s decision to humanize (so to speak) Human League by adding the female voices, as the charts still lie fertile for the cleverest reprocessors. Alloyed pop for now & then people.

Alf Moyet’s vocals on Upstairs At Eric’s tend to have a lot of late-late’60s, let’s-us-white-stuff-get-downand-be-big-ballsy-black-chicks feel (cf. Joplin, Genya Ravan), but as Moyet is part French, her vocals also pick up an Arrierican-as-athird-language tone, a la Shocking Blue’s Mariska Veres or Atlantis’s Inga Rumpf (real Kraut name.) So Moyet’s vocals aren’t so much classically soulful as they are plain husky, buxom, emotionally strong, but that slight Euro accent does the trick, makes them slide directly off Clarke’s chunky, tuneful rhythm squonks.

“Don’t Go” and “Only You” (you can probably figure the rest of the lyrics, here in this season of hyper1 pop) would sound fine on the dancefloor or over the airwaves, and have already been heard there, as a matter of fact, if you live in the right neighborhood. Ditto for “Bring Your Love Down” and “Situation” (Moyet as modern no-funny-stuff blueswoman), but the signature cut of the whole album just may be “Goodbye Seventies,” where Alf really booms it out: “I’m tired of fighting in your fashion war.” Moyet wrote those lyrics, aryd she was probably thinking of the postpunk popart conflicts that raged in the English music weeklies in the ’70s; implication here is to cut the chatter and to get on with the beat and the pop.

Not a bad sentiment, if it can bring you out of the bedsitter apocalypses of your mind; tell Yaz to keep on flexing their electron blooze. Their name will take care of itself.

Richard Riegel

FROM RED SQUARE TO RED RIVER

RANK & FILE Sundown (Slash Records)

Roy Trakin

But a strange thing happened to Chip and Tony on the way to recording this debut LP (the Dils released a number of singles before their demise three years ago). Like Jimmy Carter, Cassius Clay, and Larry Flynt, Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan before them, they were converted. The brothers saw the Light, which shifted not only their political convictions, but their mu&c as well. In place of the Dils’ three-chord

Time was brothers Chip and Tony Kinman were just another coupla SoCal surfpunks, bitchin’ ’bout class wars and hating the rich. The Dils, which was the name of their band back then, were Amerika’s answer to the Clash, only more so. Seems the Kinmans were doctrinaire Communists, rabid on turning punk proles into kard-karrying komrades, bent on overthrowing the System. Precisely those people your parents warned you about. sturm und drone came... three chord Country & Western. With all it implies. The Reds turned into Rednecks. Thrash turned into rtwang. The Commies became Cowboys.

After a brief stay in N.Y., singer/songwriter/guitarist Chip and singer/songwriter/bassist Tony settled in Austin, recruiting long-time S.F. new wave seen ester and erstwhile Nun Alejandro Escovedo for rhythm guitar arid local Texas drummer Slim Evans to round out the line-up. Rank & File soon cut its teeth at area honky-tonks with semi-acoustic sets featuring brandnew, self-penned material as the boys shed their leathers for chaps, string ties and bandanas. The change was complete.

Sundown spotlights this transformation and if those Texas broncobusters accepted Rank & File as good ole boys, well, I’ve got some snake oil they might be interested in, too. Despite the,drawling vocals, the pitched harmonies, the plucked guitar, the lonesome harp and the downhome concerns expressed in the lyrics, Rank & File sound like just what they are—punks trying to play shitkicking music. And it works!!

Like a friend of mine put it, this is country music for people who don’t like country music, who wouldn’t go see Ernest Tubb even if he was at the Mudd Club (which he was). Sundown’s no maudlin formalism like Costello’s Almost Blue; it’s every bit as loving, but a lot more irreverent. “(Glad I’m) Not In Love” starts out like Buddy Holly at his most winsome, but the guitar breaks alternate between Gram Parsons, NRPS and the Beatles, with some savage anti-romanticism to boot. Anglophilia rears its head in the “Baba O’Riley” harmonic "plaint of “Coyote” while “Lucky Day” clearly evokes the Velvets’ “I Found A Reason” in sound and theme.

Since Rank & File are synthesizing a multitude of influences on Sundown, both punk and country purists are bound to be offended. The songs draw on conventional c & w elements, but the result is purely pop. As for the larger issues, the Brothers K. seem to have flipflopped here, too. Their sociopolitical concerns have turned into mean-spirited jibes like “No she can’t cook but she’s got something to eat” in the strains of “Amanda Ruth” or surprisingly acidic trendbaiting of “I Went Walking” and “I Don’t Go Out Much Anymore.” But it’s not just that Rank & File have abandoned, the left-wing politics of punk for the right-wing individualism of the range. The Dils’ former populist tendencies have merely been re-directed. The Kinmans are still communicating some bitter truths, but they’ve sugarcoated the pill with country comforts. “The Conductor Wore Black” is as savage an indictment of modem society as “I Hate The Rich,” but neither the moral nor the music is self-serving this time. Instead of the Sex Pistols mewling, we get Johnny Cash crooning. The common enemy is not just the upper class anymore; the pseudohip are raked over the coals, too. Rank & File realize everyone meets the same end in the End anyway.

Now, when the masses are invited to join the “rank and file” in the band’s anthemic call to arms, they can do more than gob in return. At the very least, the lumpen can sing along with the catchy chorus, whether or not they understand all the implications. And you really can’t ask for much more, no matter what style of music you’re playing.

Bedrock Rap / Meet The Flintstones (Clean Cuts)

Eddie Murphy is easily the best reason for watching the new, unimproved Saturday Night Live these days. He is indisputably the provider of the show’s funniest freewheeling moments with his Just-watch.me-now demeanor and that Steplively-I’m-gonna-crack-you-right-up attitude. (In fact he’s so on the ball he should split and take a hike over to SOTVs greener pastures ) Murphy’s currently riding a red-hot streak; besides his televised triumphs, he’s the first cast member in SNL history to debut in a movie that did him (or her) any kind of justice. And— he’s got an album out.

Which is where his first career snag comes in because Eddie Murphy has one weak spot too

EDDIE MURPHY (Columbia)

JOE PISCOPO I Love Rock n’ Rill (Medley) (Columbia)

BRUCE SPRINGSTONE

many. True, “Black Movie Theater ers” and the second half of “Hit By A Car” did bring me near the doubling-over stage, but the rest, x unfortunately, is fairly hit and miss. The childhood recollections are like warmed-over Bill Cosby gone scatological (“Do-Do/Christmas Gifts,” “Drinking Fathers”), the minority group material is less than enlightening (“Faggots,” “Myths/A Little Chinese”), and Eddie’s Fryoresque use of undeleted expletives doesn’t have the same swift kick that Richard’s does. As for “Boogie In Your Butt” (bad rap on you) and “Enough Is Enough” (Richard Simmons duets with Buckwheat)... well, let’s just say that as a student of musical .parody he’s still in his freshman phase. And, lastly, like all comedy albums (yes, even Bat Out Of Hell), even the best routines tend to elicit little more than

subdued chuckles after a handful of plays. (Visuals, visuals, who’s got the visuals?)

Meanwhile, buddy Joe Piscopo (whose TV team-ups with Murphy are always worth catching) is ready to graduate with honors thanks to that teirific “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll (Medley).” It’s a wickedly accurate impression of what would happen if Francis Albert Sinatra (circa “That’s Life”) applied his patented swingin’ hepcat treatment to a bunch of “with-it” rock toons. Piscopo’s Chairman of the Board is all fingerjabbing enunciation, placing contractions at a premium and letting lead weights sit on top of every syllable. The topper is the expert insertion of those artistic license ad libs Frank is so fond of, like “You are chilly, baby!” (“Cold As Ice”), and “Wanna jump your bones" (“I Know What Boys Like”), not to

mention the nifty pregnant pause in “Under My Thumb” (“Change has come...thumb!”). I swear, when he yells out, “Let’s jog, baby!” at the end of “Born To Run,” it’s ring-ading-ding infamy all the way.

And while we’re on the subject of strapping hands across engines, I should alert you all to “Bedrock Rap/Meet The Flintstones,” an equally hilarious (and just as musically incisive) take-off in which Springsteen gets his,-. It’s “Backstreets” with a yabba dabba doo motif which touches on every Brooce fetish imaginable from distraught bellowing to Big Man sax break to the cry for companionship (“Hey Wilma!—I’m home, honey.”). I don’t want to spoil it for you, though, so I’ll stop here. Let’s just say that it sure beats flipping dino burgers—or sifting through Nebraska, I tell you, that Springstein used to be one groovy cat way back when. (Available from Clean Cuts, F.O. Box 16264, Baltimore, MD 21210.)

Craig Zeller

PLASMATICS Coup d’Etat (Capitol)

For almost five years now, the Plasmatics have been taking it on the chin from those' who can’t handle the band’s very approach to rock ’n’ roll and/or resent the very idea of a woman like Wendy Williams singing rock ’n’ roll with passion and ferocity—which is to say the same qualities those people would applaud if it were coming from a man, provided there was a male singer around today with the balls to do that. Follow?

Since they started as a Lower Manhattan art/outrage band, the Plasmatics have grown up in the eyes of their public, sans benefit of any real radio airplay, developing and evolving politically (the Milwaukee cop riot), visually (they were one of the first groups to employ -video and do it well) and musically, moving from minimalist punk to what is now a remarkably strong heavy metal sound. And at the core has always been Wendy herself.

In person, whether on TV or the concert stage, she has long been mercurial, unpredictable, indefatigable but, to some, her vocal chops were suspect. With Coup dEtat, the band’s third album (not counting several EPs), her singing has jelled, emerging almost to the level of the rest of her persona. Now her physicality—always a potent weapon—is coming out of her voice and this is what makes Coup dEtat something of a breakthrough. You can listen to this record and hear the sound of an aggressive female rock singer kicking down traditional barriers. She isn’t Nicolette Larson. Or Pat Benatar. Or even Joan Jett. She’s something more and it’s time she got a little credit.

Take a song like “Country Fairs,” which juxtaposes a gentle, almost lullaby-like vocal with a thumping face-breaker vocal to produce a surreal triphammer effect Wendy brings off with style. Or take “The Damned,” long familiar to MTV watchers as outre video, in which Wendy tears into something linear, practically orchestral, and you can almost picture that yellow school bus meeting its fiery doom, even on the vinyl. Then there’s hercover version of Motorhead’s “No Class,” memorable for the way she wastes Lemmy. And the list goes on.

Okay, you may be wondering, we know The Plasmatics can play punch-out rudimentary rock, but heavy metal? Well, German producer Dieter Dierks, who glided the Scorpions, has done an excellent job here in bringing out what, to many has always been the Plasmatics’ true propensity. And he’s done it with an incredibly wide dynamic range, giving the album an almost live immediacy. This is really a record to be played loud—even to be immersed in, like liquid mercury.

There’s variety on Coup. dEtat and—surprising for some—content. The lyrics are raunchy, sometimes nightmarish; when is the last time you heard a violent ecology song? By the way, the cover shot,

with the band poised atop a tank in the South Bronx, is classic excess and that’s what the Plasmatics have always been about. Except with Coup d’Etat, they’re about a whole lot more. Cyril Blight

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (Full Moon/ Asylum)

The Last American Virgin (Columbia)

One From The Heart (Columbia)

A canny little movie, Fast Times At Ridgemont High gets some of its best laughs by acknowledging and commenting on the fleeting nature of rock popularity: the school scalper going through a desperate spiel to unload some Cheap Trick tickets, or explaining why he won’t invest in the Oyster Cult any more; the would-be Benatar parading in the cafeteria. Director Amy Heckerling and screenwriter Cameron Crowe have done a compassionate job of anthropology, but neither the marketers of the film nor the assemblers of the soundtrack care to notice what’s on the screen.

You can’t blame Universal: considering the movie’s observations of sexual panic, masturbation, premature ejaculation, abortion, a fellatio seminar—subjects that get too close to the target audience’s insecurities — it was an understandable move to shift the advertising emphasis to cartoon-goofy Spicoli (“Hey bud, let’s party”). Real-life sex doesn’t enter his mind. The musical approach is another story; the soundtrack is on a completely different plane from the rest of the film, resulting in an album that is not only dull—it grinds on like a slow week on American Top 40, without Casey Kasem’s anecdotes—but misrepresentative. Since many of these songs don’t register in the film

all, the score smacks of padding to fill up two discs. The film, by contrast, was pruned—noticeably and damagingly — to eliminate some objectionable material. Would that the shears had been applied to the album instead.

With few exceptions, the artists on the records don’t seem to have seen the movie, or even read the script, before submitting their tunes. There was no need to: the way this is done (cf. Urban Cowboy, Heavy Metal), songs are commissioned, delivered, and plugged in. No wonder the characters on screen don’t act as though they’re hearing the music; no wonder, even though I have a pretty good movie memory and only saw Fast Times a few weeks ago, I have a hard time connecting the album’s tracks to the text, or the texture, of the film. Jackson Browne’s skillfully pandering pop song “Somebody’s Baby” has some relation to Jennifer Jason , Leigh, and Oingo Boingo’s irritating “Goodbye, Goodbye” closes out the proceedings, but beyond that, not much clings in the mind (at least not the way Phoebe Cates’ red bikini does). Compare Fast Times with the inspired way Peter Gothar uses Paul Anka’s “You Are My Destiny” (of all things) in Time Stands Still, or Barry Levinson integrates the records into Diner, and the lack of musical-emotional insight becomes even more apparent.

“Raised On The Radio” by the Rayvns may be an okay song about growing up on R&R, but what’s a lyric about getting The Message from songs in 1956 and 1964 doing in a movie in which the characters were born in 1965-1966? What right does a movie with some claim to rock contemporaneity (Bruce Springsteen’s sister has a cameo role) have in foisting a, Graham Nash ditty on us (he does mutter something about the “fast lane,” so maybe he’s acting as the fifth Eagle by proxy: four others make solo appearances, one doing The Tymes’ “So Much In Love”)? Poco? Why further confuse those of us who can barely distinguish Billy Squier from Sammy Hagar by having each of them write and perform a song that’s a variation of the film’s title? When did Quarterflash turn into a 1980’s Starland Vocal Band? And why are songs that serve a specific function in Fast

Times—The Go-Go’s’ “We Got The Beat” (heard during the opening credits) and Tom Petty’s “American Girl” —missing from the album?

One more thing: E/A, baffled by the less than blockbuster sales of the Fast Times soundtrack, has lowered the suggested retail price by three dollars. They’d have to lower it by ten more to make it a marginally reasonable investment.

At least the Fast Times people show some entrepreneurial chutzpah by coaxing new material, or unreleased rejects (Donna Summer’s cut is from the Georgio Moroder-produced session that Geffen rejected before fixing her up with Quincy Jones, and the GoGo’s’ track sounds like a Vacation outtake) from -established musicians to fabricate a soundtrack. The producers of The Last American Virgin go the K-Tel route, licensing off-chart hits and odds and ends: Some will be grateful to have “Whip It,” “I Know What Boys Like,” “I Will Follow,” “Since You’re Gone” and “De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” on one album, but it’s a lazy method of scoring a movie. Distressing elements of the record include yet another Oingo Boingo song—what power these smirky non-entities have over film types is unexplicable—and yet another Radio Sure Is Terrible song (“Airwaves” by The Fortune Band). The movie’s idea of creative musical commentary is using, in a story about a trio of overaged teens on the liiake, “Are You Ready For The Sex Girls?” by The Gleaming Spires. Surely subtlety such as this is worthy of recognition.

Faced with Fast Times At Ridge-

mont High and The Last American Virgin, it’s a relief to be reminded that not all song-scores are concocted by committee, .arbitrarily slapped together out of existing records and studio scraps. Months after Francis Coppola’s One From The Heart has been withdrawn from theatres, the soundtrack album has been released; in the movie, the songs came off as affected and redundant, but revived on record, their synthetic jazziness makes its own sense. In the hurry to dismiss the movie (even a keyed-up Radio City Music Hall preview audience, so eager to be charmed that they oohed over the presentation of the titles, sunk lower and lower in their seats as it ground on), Tom Waits’s score was one of the casualties.

One From The Heart isn’t ntearly as Coppola intended it to be: only the sets, and Nastassia Kinski, are sparkling enough to set off the overly prosaic relationship between Frederick Forrest and Teri Garr. When they start to argue in their first scene, the movie goes flat, and the couple never manages to gain our affection. Waits and Crystal Gayle are meant to be their musical surrogates, explaining in song what’s going on, so the ForrestGarr situation is doubly forced on the viewer who’d rather just take in the manufactured glitz of Coppola’s Las Vegas.

On their own, the songs are easier to appreciate. They still trace the fall and rise of an affair: the man and woman air their grievances and voice their regrets on side one (Waits asks Gayle how long she’s been combing her hair with a wrench, she starts to think about loves that passed her by), separate and come back together on side two. But the combination ofWaits’ hipster growl and Gayle’s chanteuse sheen (with an occasional Nashville throb tossed in) works

better than you’d expect, and Waits, his Kerouac inclinations restrained by the demands of the plot, has written some of his best pop-jazz songs, aided by inventive arrangements.

By the middle of the second side—with Waits’ instrumental theme for Kinski (“Circus Girl”), and Gayle, after being absent since “Old Boyfriends” on side one, returning to join Waits on “This One’s From The Heart”—the LP started to trick me into thinking that I’d like to see the film again. Maybe Coppola should haye gone full-out for a genuine MGM-type musical, and hiredlead actors who could sing—Raul Julia, Kinski and Lainie Kazan could stay in that version, and so could Harry Dean Stanton (just picture him as Oscar Levant) — instead of having the songs performed off-camera. Then, perhaps, we’d have had a romantic fable to believe in. Mitchell Cohen

DREAM SYNDICATE The Days Of Wine And Roses (Ruby/Slash)

I hold in my hand promo material an inch thick containing innumerable denials from this hot band, L.A.’s Dream Syndicate, on how they do not want to be cast in the mold as pretenders to the throne of the Velvet Underground. In fact,

the group rebels against the comparison so vehemently and consistently that they almost seem to invite the comparison. Personally, I’d feel honored by such an analogy, but you know these young whippersnappers these days...

So, to be oblique: the sound of the Dream Syndicate comes directly from that classic old-fashioned garage-next-door ’60s American punk, while at the same time, their music is modern California hardcore rock ’n’ roll, intense (without ever brutally slam-dancing into the nearest concrete wall, though).

The group’s key figure is Steve Wynn (songwriter, lead guitarist, lead vocalist, spokesman), and on the LP’s very first cut (“Tell Me When It’s Over”), he gives you the ammo: distortion and tough-guy phrasing. Like Richard Hell, he knifes his lyrics and makes them bleed. Further, the way Wynn holds onto the word “mean” at the

end of “Definitely Clean” is definitely reminiscent of Lou Reed’s swaggering phraseology on “Sister Ray.”

To be frank, you don’t have to love the Velvets to become attached to this band, but it sure helps. Still, the Dream Syndicate’s debut LP is not as self-consciously brainy as, say, the 1981 debut by another post-Velvets soundalike, Human Switchboard’s Who’s Landing In My Hangar? (whether that’s good or bad is up to you). For one thing the group’s musicianship is remarkably unrestrained: on “Then She Remembers,” for example, the never-say-die frenzy of (trust me) Raw Power is evoked. In addition, with skull-piercing guitars and delirious feedback, “That’s What You Always Say” can stand as the most adamant revitalization of American garage music I’ve heard in years.

Other highlights here include the six-minute-plus “Halloween,” a perfect complement to the famous film trilogy of gore, which threatens I with every note; and the pleasant Uouch of “Too Little, Too Late,” on ■which chanteuse Kendra Smith’s [vocals are almost as alQof as Nic'o’s,

' providing some quiet relief to the LP’s general madness. Most importantly, on the title cut, the band actually sounds like Bob Dylan fronting Black Flag, a feat almost beyond imagination!

To construct their marvelous sound, then, the Dream Syndicate employs the defining characteristics of their influences—Dylan, the Velvets, garage music, acid-rock. If there is a complaint, it’s often the band can only be thought of in terms of these influences, or, to inflict a deeper wound, that it cannot be experienced outside of the context of ’60s rock ’n’ roll. But since The Days Of Wine And Roses is so entertainingly powerful, who would dare complain?

Robert A. Hull