THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Don’t Trust Anyone Over 60: Lou’s ’Last Shot'

NEW YORK—He wore his trademark black leather jacket, and he opened with a fiery “Sweet Jane,” but it was a different Lou Reed who performed eight sold-out shows at the Bottom Line in late February, his first live appearances in over two years and his only planned gigs for 1983. (Reed has stressed that he will never tour again-, so his February 28th shows were taped for an RCA videodisc to be released this spring.) There was none of the frenetic dancing that made his early 70s tours such a joy. And with the exception of a “Hi, good to see you, here we go” intro, $ few “thank you”s and a mention that “Martial Law” is a new song, he didn’t speak at all, so there was none of the humorous repartee that has been a part of his act since the Velvet Underground.

Lou, who’s dropped a few pounds and appears to be in great health, seemed a bit tense during the Saturday night (Feb. 26th) performance I saw. The nervousness might be attributed to his long absence from the stage (although Billy Altman informs mg that Lou always looks nervous when he’s playing lead guitar) or perhaps the presence of his parents in the audience at a table with his wife, Sylvia (which made for interesting viewing when he performed a frightening, heavy metalish “Kill Your Sons”—a song that deals with the traumatizing electro-shock therapy his parents had him undergo during a deep adolescent depression) . But perhaps it had more to do with Lou’s new “Average Guy” stance which he took to a gallant extreme on last year’s The Blue Mask, finally dropping the “Rock ’N’ Roll Animal/ fuckin’ faggot junkie” persona once and for all. Lou Reed wants to be taken seriously, and it was interesting that he ended his show with the new “The Last Shot,” an “Underneath The Bottle” type tune that appears to be anti-drug/anti-alcohol, although its title can also be read metaphorically in relation to his new career direction. What made it especially profound was that the song followed a killer “White Light/White Heat,” which the crowd had been screaming for '(along with “Heroin”) all night long.

Lou Reed is producing adult rock ’n’ roll, something I always thought was a contradiction in terms until now. Despite (or perhaps in light of) the changes, Lou and his band created some of the most intense rock I’ve heard in years, giving me the same type of head rushes I used to get at rock shows in high school before I grew up and became a jaded jerk. This is the band Reed was born to play with—Fernando Saunders’ fretless bass, former Richard Hell/ Material drummer Fred Maher’s “energythroughrepetition” backbeat, and the legendary-inhis-own-time Robert Quine, who is unquestionably one of our. greatest guitarists. Quine, who looks like someone’s hip dad in shades, was incredible, bringing even greater magic to some of the old Velvet gems, and when he and Reed joined together for some frenzied dual feedback solos, it was a breathtaking marriage of rock ’n’ roll heaven and hell.

In addition to “Kill Your Sons” and “Sweet Jane,” Lou performed songs from nearly every phase of his career (excluding the Arista years), including “I’m Waiting For The Man,” “Vicious Circle,” “Sally Can’t Dance,” “Women,” “Waves Of Fear,” “Walk On The Wild Side,” “Underneath The Bottle,” “New Age,” “Average Guy,” “Charley’s Girl,” and “Satellite Of Love.” Other new songs, from his just released Legendary Hearts LP (which doesn’t quite capture the intensity of his live show), included “Betrayed,” “Turn Out The Light,” “Don’t Talk To Me About Work” and “Pow Wow.” He wrapped it all up with encore renditions of “Sunday Morning” and a terrific “Rock ’N’ Roll” which segued into “Sister Ray,” a trio of songs that alone made the trip fo N.Y.C. worthwhile. The choice of material seemed to fit together to make a cohesive statement, and although Lou’s evidently found a degree of happiness and a lot of love in his new life, he hasn’t repudiated his memory of the demons that were once a primary Source of his muse. And in his current state of transcendence, the long-lasting hope is stronger than ever (“If someone like Lou can rise above the horror...”) making the stance much more than mere solipsism, as some people have claimed.

I only wish that Lou would occasionally appear in several major cities so everyone could have a chance to see this band (he did follow the Bottom Line gigs with one night at Studio 54, so who knows what may be in store?), and I wish he’d grant a few more interviews. At a time when most of rock’s “elder statesmen” have become boring old farts with nothing more relevant to discuss than the ethics of Schlitz or Jovan giving them jets to tour in, 41-year-old Lou Reed is still creating some of today’s most relevant and profound rock music. He remains one of the genre’s greatest artists.

Bill Holdship

PRIEST FANS BEWARE!

It finally happened I Judas Priest's lead screamer, Rob Halford, has totally "cracked!" He's only got one oar in the lagoon ! His porch light Is out! He's a log short a cord I He's cuckoo! Loco I “Techedf" Off his onion! A chopstick short a meal!,Non compos mentis I But we have to admit, the man’s got a point, as men do. "All those bloody teenagers who dig me chains and leather," he howled, momentarily stopping to wipe the foam from his lips, "Now they’re gonna get what they've been askin’ fori” Hint: he is not talking about retirement.

Man Without A Purpose!

CHITRA, INDIA—Preee-senting.. .the world’s most useless man!

What? More useless than Ted Knight? Check it out—this guy has remained in the same spot on the road for 22 years! Just lays there! Doesn’t stand! Doesn’t talk! Rarely eats or “relieves” himself!

The locals call him Mastram Bapu, which he deserves. He’s been there so long, he’s becpme a tourist attraction. As they say in Chitra, if it doesn’t move, worship it!

Hundreds of people from all over India come daily to sit with him. Every once in a great while, he’ll accept a little sip of water or take a tiny bite from a Twix bar. Hey, it’s a mix!

To answer what I . know you’re all thinking, the loveable Bapu occasionally “urinates and passes a slight discharge” on his residence. Better than a dishonorable discharge!

The question must be asked: Why? The answer must be spoken: Why not? Maybe he thinks he’s a bus stop for the dead!

Rick Johnson

Trio: Reasons To Be Cheerful

NEW YORK—“Honestly, I had no idea that people take this so funny,” deadpans Trio’s tall, lanky, mournful-looking vocalist, Stefan Remmler. Remmler,! whose fuzz-cropped hairstyle on a thin, oval face makes him resemble a kindly hound, is referring to Trio’s million-selling international hit, “Da Da Da (I Don’t Love You, You Don’t Love Me).” The lyrics say exactly that, with variations, sung in a monotone and embellished primarily by the beeps and squeaks of a Casio rhythm machine. The total effect mimics the lunacy of typical up-anddown, utterly frustrating relationships, and is probably why the song has had such a universal appeal.

Trio are the latest of Germany’s few artists who can transcend Teutonic taste. But far from antecedents such as Kraftwerk, Trio’s method of delivery is closer to “the little engine that could” than the Trans-Europe Express. “We’re not an electronic-based band,” Stefan points out, as he tucks into lunch and a Heineken. “It’s more that I play with a keyboard sometime. I wouldn’t call myself a keyboarder or electronicer (sic).” What does ring Stefan’s chimes far more than technical overload are songs like “Louie Louie” and “Hang On Sloopy”—tunes that have no words over two syllables. “I love lyrics like Tea for two and two for tea; me for you and you for me.’ What else better can you add to this? It’s beautiful,” Stefan smiles broadly.

Yet uncomplicated words are not necessarily stupid ones, a fact that Trio consistently keeps uppermost in their minds. Stefan and his cohorts, drummer Peter Behrens and guitarist “Kralle” Krawinkle wouldn’t have been able to create the pure prose of “Ja Ja Ja” (Yes Yes Yes) or “Anna (Let Me In, Let Me Out)” if they hadn’t first understood the real meaning of clutter. (You know clutter— those pain-inducing 20 minute guitar solos by amphetamined jerks who should have the strings wrapped around their necks.)

Growing up in the small coastal city of Bremerhaven, Remmler got his musical awak-» ening from, of all places, the American Forces Network. “When I was a little boy, I put my alarm clock on one hour earlier, so before school time, I could listen to the country and western hit parade, or Tommy Roe, or whatever was on. It was a great influence.” Considering that, as Stefan puts it, “after the war, the whole culture started at zero,” young Germans found that they wanted to emulate the Englishspeaking rock of America and the U.K. In fact, he believes, “it makes sense that it took so long until you had German rock ’n’ roll, and not just the same thing that Chuck Berry does with German lyrics.” But while Kraftwerk, in Dusseldorf, and the media centers of Hamburg and Berlin introduced new trends, Remmler and his chums were learning as much from the Marx Brothers or' W.C. Fields as from Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

“The guitarist and I knew each other from school days, where we had a band together, copying the Rolling Stones. The drummer got together with us three years ago. In those days, we were still trying to get a band together, with a second guitarist or a keyboarder, and a bassman, of course. And it was only during the process of rehearsing, we always found that the demos of the three of us were much more exciting than when the bassman was on it! So it took some time for us to make that step in the head:why do we keep on searching for others? Let’s keep it the three of us and call ourselves Trio.”

5 Years Ago

Shame On That Loon

When Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band played France a few months back, they jammed with the Rolling Stones. Guitarist Drew Abbott said they had a good session with the boys, but “I had a time keeping Jagger away from my girlfriend.”

Complementing the band’s audacious name was an equally bold way of creating music, which—depending on how far one’s definition of a song stretches—is either a very bad joke or a deliciously entertaining removal of pretensions. “It was only just before Trio was founded,” admits Stefan, “when we realized that loving Jirfii Hendrix and Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones did not mean that we want to sound like them. So we kicked out the cliches, which are not cliches if Jimi Hendrix does it, but are cliches if we would do it. And that left a stripped down to the bone essence of rock ’n’ roll being freed of clothes that belong to other persons.”

One very special person who doesn’t object to Trio’s lack of a bassist is a man with quite a reputation on that instrument— session man/Visual artist/producer Klaus Voorman. A gentle-voiced, silver-bearded man who spent most of the past 10 years as part of an inner circle comprised of folks like Lennon, Harrison, Starr, Carly Simon and Harry Nilsson, Voorman heard a Trio demo tape and responded to it immediately. At the time ready to get out of Los Angeles anyway, Klaus relocated back to Germany and produced Trio’s EP, becoming their chief guidance counselor and troubleshooter. *

“Klaus doesn’t say much” says Stefan, looking Voorman straight in the eye, “but if he says something, it’s very well accepted by us.” “I do think,” muses Voorman, “they actually respect when I say, ‘Look, that’s bullshit. Forget about that part.’ ” “You wouldn’t dare say to me, ‘This is bullshit/ would you?” responds Stefan defiantly. Klaus is silent for a very long moment, and we all get nervous. “See, I don’t have to answer,” Voorman finally jests. Oh, as in “speak softly and carry a big stick,” I blurt, not realizing they are totally unfamiliar with the motto. Hysteria ensures. Obviously, Trio has connected with one more Americanism in a chuckle of understanding.

Toby Goldstein

Shriekback (In The Night)

NEW YORK—Shriekback is a band of Brits with some interesting pedigrees. Bassist Dave Allen was in the Gang Of Four, until the day he decided, in the middle of a big American tour, that he couldn’t take it anymore and got on a plane for home.

“I just got really fed up with touring,” Allen now explains about that episode, “and I had said before that I would leave, and I was sort of persuaded to do another tour. It was a really bad move to leave them halfway through a tour, I realize that now, but at the time it $eemed like the only thing to do. It was like, I had to leave that band, and here’s a good way of getting out of it, go with a bang and then it’s done and finished.”

Keyboardist/vocalist Barry Andrews had slipped much more quietly out of the very interesting XTC, and had then played with Fripp in the League of Gentlemen. Guitarist/vocalist Carl Marsh crashed down from an obscure London band called Out On Blue Six.

They found each other. They made some.records. “Sexthinkone” and “My Spine Is The Bass Line” were intriguing tasters.

A new album, Care, of which I’ve heard only rough mixes, shows a group busily defining a sound and pushing against the edges, of that definition. And their current tour, with help from percussionist Pedro Ortiz and drummer Martyn Barker, shows a group backing up its previous fancy talk about developing “new attitudes” towards live playing with a really engaging openness.

Too much of what Shriekback record is arty throwaways, “experimental” tracks that end up sounding odd for odd’s sake. But their better songs reveal a twisted, dreamy kind of sound, simultaneously relaxed and full of strain, not funk but heavily steeped in its influence —actually a modern kind of “head music.” A lot of people dismiss them on first hearing as another band of white boys trying to be funky and moody and deep.

I almost would, have gone along with that easy assessment if I hadn’t witnessed the band play, as their New York debut, an extraordinary gig. On record, Shriekback have a tendency to sound introspective and mannered. But live, at least this night, they were unusually invigorating and communicai five.

The next day we talk about what happened, try to take it apart.

Andrews: “Last night was a total vindication of the approach we’ve taken. There are times when you lose it and just get back into your shell, doing the rock-musician-on-stage kind of thing. And there are times, like last night, when I felt like the audience was reacting to everything I did. Beyond the evaluative thing, it really seemed like there was some kind of to and fro.”

“I’d say if it’s going to be, to really let go of the ‘keep away from me while I’m doing my thing’ kind of attitude.”

Shriekback’s best music takes a funk influence, but applies it to a more circular, almost convoluted structure. It’s certainly got a personality of its own.

“The way I play, I’ve always come from that area,” says Dave Allen. “That heavy sharp sound, which* oddly enough seemed to come out right about the time I was playing. The Gang Of Four was very heavy, but toppy and edgy, with big gaps. Which is how the black players have come out. They were doing it all the time, but people have just discovered it. I can’t do it like they do it. It’s my style of bass playing. We’re not trying to take a Stanley Clarke type of jazz-funk and put it behind Shriekback. It’s just our interpretation of that.”

DUET FEVER STRIKES AGAIN!

OK, this duet singing has -gotten completely out of hand I As if Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes wasn't embarrassing enough ! Or how about Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton?! Patti Austin and James Ingram! Russy Mael and Jane Wiedlin i Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson! Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson! The Thompson Twins! But as we all know, nothing is ever enough for Stiv Bator! Thus, the new version of "My Way," by Frank Sinatra and Mr. Bator himself! Funny though we'd almost swear that Stiv's part was surreptitiously added to the original! At least, we don't remember the part about flea collars and Richard Riegel!

Robert Matheu

Andrews: “Funk’s a real mask for us. Like ‘Spine,’ the whole production of it, it’s a real plastic-like thing. And underneath it is what you’d call ‘weird shit,’ rather than ’yeah, what we’re about is swinging out on funk.’ That’s not what we do. It’s very slow and awkward and quiet. Moody, doomy.”

Ah, those two words which are the bane of post-punk English rock. But Shriekback, I’ll say in their defense, are never really “doomy.” They lack that awful chip-on-the-shoulder feeling.

Andrews: “It’s difficult to say. Whatever we put out has the focussed-ness of something like ‘Spine,’ it has an atmosphere, it has a certain smell to it.

“I’d feel more comfortable if there was an overall thing that we could say, that Shriekback is this. So that part of my life would be Shriekback and I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. But it’s actually become this thing through which we express our lives. It seems that every record is another little bit of it. Oh, here’s the dark heavy one, and here’s the shiny chrome one.

“It’s also harder because the whole marketing thing usually has to come around an image. When we last had a spate of press, what seemed to be emerging was some kind of healthand-efficiency, vaguely hippy kind of independent-labelworthy, ‘we’ve suffered and been through it all and now we’re not going to make the same mistakes’ kind of thing. And it’s like, damn, I don’t want to be that.”

That’s much heavier and duller than you are.

“And yet if it were possible to encapsulate it in something like psychedelic flamingo bright colors, it would be great. Thinking man’s funk, all that.”

At the start, did you know what you wanted to do?

“There was nothing, really, except a vague area of agreement that, ‘yeah, we like records like that.’ And not even all of those. And having a situation that needed a record to fill it up, there emerged this group style and group way of working, and all the rest of it came from actually doing it, rather than from sitting down and getting out the game plan.

“I remember feeling quite insecure that we had no master plan to start, that we should be able to burst into interviews and say, 'right, this is what we’re going to do.’ But really, what happened is what usually happens anyway. Anyone who gives you a manifesto is...”

Making it up.

“Yeah. Or, as in Fripp’s case, using it to explain something that you’ve already done.”

There is room in rock’s rich rug for more sounds skewed enough to make a difference. Shriekback could weave in a place for themselves. Regard that as less than a promise but more than a possibility.

Richard Grabel

Courtesy Of Ft. Lauderdale Chamber Of Commerce

FT. LAUDERDALE—Officials in this charming resort town have come up with a most efficient way to handle Florida’s most pressing crime problem. Are we talking about dope smuggling? Illegal aliens? Videotapes of old Doors shows?

No! Seems the crime wave in these parts consists of bums grubbing chow from local garbage cans. Anxious to forestall a possible St. Valentine’s Day Pig-Out, residential deep-thinkers have proposed spraying the town’s Heftys with “toxic chemicals.” How in the world the bums could tell the difference when they’re scarfing a threeday-old Whopper wasn’t made clear.

Nevertheless, the really serious adults who govern this beach Bowery are determined to carry out their plan. “The only way to get rid of roaches or other vermin in the house is to get rid of their food supply,” said one two-fisted Commissioner. To which the mayor added: “If I found anybody crawling in my garbage cans, I would spray them.” Kinda makes you wonder what the pissed-off exec would spray them with if he was out of Bum-B-Gone.

Although no response from local bums was immediate, they’re probably just as glad to be getting some help in kicking the junk food habit.

J. Kordosh