WATERS ON THE BRAIN

RECORDS

WATERS ON THE BRAIN

PINK FLOYD The Final Cut (Columbia)

by

Jim Farber

Welcome back my friends to the neuroses that never end. Once again Pink Floyd’s latest album finds lead “conceptualist” Roger Waters scrunched-up in fetal position, using vinyl as his psycharist’s couch. The problem that patient Waters intends to address this time around concerns, according to the official Columbia Records press release, the following: “the disillusionment of a generation that saw the hopes and dreams coming out of the second war go unfulfilled., the frustration and anger brought to mind by all conditions of economic upheaval, impending war, poverty or another holocaust...” blah, blah, blah.

If these sound more like world problems than personal neuroses, then perhaps Roger Waters’ most distinctive talent is his ability to make such universal issues seem like nothing more than individual hang-ups. Instead of personalizing legitimate world problems (obviously his intentions with this war-is-hell project, especially since his own father died in WW II), Waters winds up trivializing them so they seem merely lonely, paranoid delusions. His songs about war wind up having as much relevance as the band’s older songs about absolutely nothing—in the Ummugumma — Meddle period. Believe me, such a total inversion of intention is not easily achieved, and the way Waters comes by this complete artistic failure is, in fact, the only interesting aspect of Pink Floyd’s music.

Actually, due to the basic structure, style and persona of their music, the band’s view of the world is necessarily isolationist. At root, Floyd do not make music of the outside world. Instead they make selfconscious “headphone music”— sounds which are meant to be whispered directly from the studio to the space between your ears, to be listened to when you’re as detached from all human contact as possible. And don’t forget, Floyd are also the last psychedelic holdovers of the music-that’s-good-to-get-stoned-to school. (And with their relentlessly “serious” drawn-out musical themes, one assumes that downs—not the most social of drugs—is the narcotic of choice). To give a new twist to this “head music” aspect fo the LP, the band features a new wiz-bang effect known as “Holophonics”—consisting of 3-D “blow your mind” rumblings that also double as a prudent safeguard against home-taping off the radio. (The Columbia press release warns that an FM second source cannot adequately reproduce the desired “far out” effects.) Implied in this “musical trip” approach is an attempted intimacy between Waters and the listener that’s more direct than even the most confessional folksinger music. And, appropriately enough, Waters’ lyrics in recent years have been more enthusiastically “naked” than any wimp this side of Dan Fogelberg.

Of course, Pink Floyd has designed all this supposidly to represent the confusion of the outside world and our alienation from it, in terms of one solitary inner voice. But Waters is incapable of getting out of his own head to reach us. The first reason is the abject dullness of the music, which has the exact same melodramatic structure as the last four or five LPs—many slow, brooding ballads which occupy a selfevolved mood somewhere between “calm-after-the-storm” and “waitingfor-something-awful-to-happen.” Naturally, all that ever happens are a few bursts of louder, heavier music which come at predictably anticlimactic moments. For stuff that’s supposed to sink into your “inner mind”, it’s amazing how uninvolving this all is.

Equally circumscribed are Waters’ vocals, which too often sound like the assorted crazed mutterings of your favorite street lunatic, with just about the same amount of insight and social awareness. When he sings lyrics about real world people like Reagan, Thatcher and Begin, in such ditties as “Get Your Hands Off My Desert,” he seems in a sicko dream state, and as boringly indulgent as the lead creep in The Wall movie. Interestingly, on one level I’ll bet Waters would partially agree with my “narrator-as-neurotic” interpretation (especially given the wacked-out way he portrayed himself on LPs like Dark Side and The Wall). To him, the nervous, crazed edge to his “perceptions” established his credentials as a concerned citizen and humanist victim of the life’s harsher side (a kind of ’60s, “only-the-nutcases-are-truly-sane” approach). That may be a quaint romantic notion. Down here in reality, however The Final Cut only succeeds in making Roger Waters seem as thick as a brick in the wall.

R.E.M.

Murmurs

_(LR.S.)_

I keep hearing about the rise of the •new garage bands, who draw their inspiration from the original punks, those brash, anarchistic, one-hit bands so plentiful in the mid-sixties and now preserved on such anthologies as the pathbreaking Nuggets and the Pebbles series. By now, I’ve also heard a fair number of such bands, and pardon me for saying so, but my ears hurt. They remind me of nothing so much as the neorockabilly bands that have proliferated in the last couple years before emerging as a potent commercial force via the Stray Cats— which is to say they all turn out to be little more than a haircut and a period costume.

Besides, the best of the garage bands has been around for a couple years now. R.E.M. hails from Athens, GA, though it has little in common with other Athens bands beyond a firm dance beat featuring a dub-like heavy bass. Though they’ve already released an indie single and an l.R.S. EP, Murmur is their debut album. Like their previous work, it’s produced by Mitch Easter, the North Carolina pop alchemist who really does work out of a garage studio. Because there aren’t quite enough strong songs, Murmur doesn’t hold up all the way though. But it’s still a gallant, often galvanizing, effort; R.E.M. outshines the competition because they use that garage sound only as a launching pad, and not as something to be slavishly emulated.

They’re most often compared to the Byrds, and thanks to Peter Buck’s ringing guitar on songs like “Talk About The Passion,” “Catapult,” or “Sitting Still,” along over soaring harmonies, it’s easy to see why. But that’s merely one influence, and a misleading one at that, because with no one source dominating, R.E.M. faintly recalls a host of mid-’60s L.A. bands from one-hit wonders like the Leaves to “underground” (i.e., album-only) faves like Kaleidiscope, David Lindley’s first band. R.E.M. has so thoroughly transformed their influences that it sometimes leaves them on shaky ground, but the result sounds both familiar and wholly original.

The key work up there is “faintly,” as faint as the radio signal they long for on their new version of “Radio Free Europe,” and Murmurs is an apt album title for a band that makes music (onstage as well as on record, so don’t give Easter all the credit) this murky, and this druggy. I still have no idea what these songs are about, because neither me nor anyone else I know has ever been able to discern R.E.M’s lyrics. But the fleeting images of “Talk About The Passion” or “Perfect Circle” are intriguing enough, and the music picks up the slack. Phrases jump out of “Pilgrimage, too, but none suggest the song’s title so faithfully as do the shifting tempos. “Moral Kiosk” may or may not be about the difficulty of making tough decisions in such stultifying times (“It’s so much more attractive inside the moral kiosk”), but the splayed rhythm guitar seconds that emotion. And when Stipes does attempt to make his words clear on “We Walk,” I’m so tranced out by Buck’s rolling, repeating guitar fillups that I’m not paying attention to the lyrics anyhow. Buck’s guitar solos are capable of breaking through the mix and soaring just like the ghostly background voices, and any band -that can come up with melodies this rich knows a thing or two about pop music.

The EP may yet prove to be R.E.M.’s best medium. But when I listen to the other groups rooted in the mid-’60s, I hear none of the bursting-out that their models represented. Instead, I hear those unpredictable shrieks and yowls of freedom being reduced to conventions, to a set of rules that are to be followed and mastered. R.E.M. uses those same conventions to destroy the rules, or at least to get out past them, and that counts for plenty. Often enough, they succeed, and that counts for even more.

John Morthland

BOW WOW WOW When the Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Going (RCA)

Personally, I never lost a minute’s sleep over 15V2-years-old-and-seminude Annabella’s supposed exploitation at the hot little hands of Malcolm McLaren when he was pushing Bow Wow Wow. I’ve watched the pop scene long enough to know that almost all of its shock-value hypes quickly dissolve into just that—hype and more hype. Bowie wasn’t really a transvestite, Devo weren’t really robots, and Wendy O. Williams puts on her pants one leg at a time just like you and me. Ultimitely An[nabella was no more exploited than say Marie Osmond, the first time she had to submit to eye makeup for one of her album covers.

Nonetheless, those cynics who persist in embracing evil-producermolds-tender-pop-'flesh fantasies might wish to remark that although McLaren and Bow Wow Wow are divorced now, the band’ve placed their manifest destinies right in the hot little hands of the redoubtable Mike Chapman. Go ahead and yap about changing svengalis in midstream, but I happen to think that Chapman and Bow Wow Wow were made for each other. I’m just surprised that they didn’t get together before now, as The Commander was doing “tribal” music (big beat, chant vocals, empty lyrics) with Sweet, Mud, Suzi Quatro, etc., almost a whole decade before anybody’d thought to call it that.

I presume that you’re already familiar with Chapman’s chartscorching production jobs of recent years, on everybody from Blondie to the Knack to Par Benatar. A diverse lot, who brought all sorts of raw material and pop intentions to Commander C., and yet they all emerged from his military studios as trademark Chapman product, toting BigBeat 45’s ripe for consumption by the Radio Radio tribes.

Which is where Bow Wow Wow come in, with a bullet. When The Going... is such a seamless, glossy slab of manufactured pop that I can’t envision the slightest shred of “artistic differences” between band and producer during its recording. Bow Wow Wow were all set to chum out Burundi-beatoff chants for the ’waves, even while McLaren was dragging them through his goofy promo schemes, and with the sympathetic Chapman more than happy to inflict precisely that style on any group he produces, this is a top forty marriage made in heavensville.

As with other Chapman masterworks, Bow Wow Wow’s new album is an unflinching triumph of style over content. There’s nothing on When The Going... even as remotely seditious as the anti-recordbuying “C30 C60 C90.” Per Bow Wow Wow even “Love, Peace and Harmony” are more syllables to chant, at best, as they don’t bother to publish that song’s lyrics on the otherwise print-mad liner.

More characteristic of the rescuedfrom-McLaren (essential?) Bow Wow Wow are the leadoff “Aphrodisiac,” a knowing-swing glide rhythm complete with Annabells Lwin’s breathless stutter, or “Quiver (Arrows In My),” and near-Tin Pan Alley approach to tribalism which casts Arinabella as a horny Indian squaw: “Sitting alone in my teepee/Finding a way to make him happy.” Cartoon sex? You bet! And just like Woody Woodpecker never went All The Way on your TV screen, even when Annabella gets more potentially intimate on “Do You Wanna Hold Me?” or “Love Me,” all it adds up to is a lot of heavy breathing and lightfingered cassette-petting.

And yet it oozes out your speakers like super peanut butter, creamy smooth and nutty chunky all at once. The four Bow Wow Wows wrote all of When The Going’s 12 songs on their own/no sweat on Chapman’s part in that dept., so I assume that they got to Say Their Piece. Most of which continues to emanate from that Burundiwear beat, gotta keep it uppermost in your d,ancefloored consciousness as the lyrics get pounded into odd-shaped sensory fragments.

Forget goldbricking the W.O.R.K. ethic with this energy quartet, but if you still insist on a Message, send a telegram, preferably to Malcolm McLaren, and tell him to let Mike Chapman produce him & his Buffalo Gals next time out.

Richard Riegel

VAN MORRISON Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart

(Warner Bros.)

Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart is a fitting title for Van Morrison’s most ambient album to date. He is not a particularly adept lyricist, but that’s okay, since his somewhat mystical, spiritual belief in a trinity of women, God, and ancestry is unusually best expressed in allusive, suggestive terms. Besides which, Morrison’s utter conviction isn’t a matter for detached consideration: his lovely, undulating melodies, passion-choked vocals, and ecumehical blend of musical influences combine serenely; the unity of his personal vision is his undeniable strength.

Except for “Rave On, John Donne,” a dithryambic follow-up to Common One’s “Summertime n England,” the songs on Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart recapitulate the essential simplicity of last year’s Beautiful Vision (none is longer than five minutes-and-some). Nine of them—four are instrumentals—have similar, very pretty melodies that are little more than frameworks on which Morrison imposses his haunting, allimportant ambient arrangements. Celtic strains intermingle with folk tunes, soul inflections, and gospel phrases; before delicate synthesized backdrops, guitars, bass, drums, piano, sax, flute, Uileann Pipes, Low flutes, and backup singers sparkle and recede in shifting patterns to vary the landscape from song to song. Morrison’s vocals are intimate and chant-like, as though we are catching him in moments of personal reverie, while the lyrics he intones are vague, mystically incomplete: “I’m higher than the world/And I’m living in my dreams/I’ll make it better than it seems today” and “Heart and soul/By and by/Meet me on the river of time” are typical examples. The lyrics don’t really develop; their resonance subtly builds through repetition and variation. Only “The Street Only Knows Your Name,” which melodically recalls “Tupelo Honey,” has a fully fleshed-out lyric and a pop-rock instrumental punch, but Morrison here still avoids a hardsell, and it is his brief, wordless vocal that ultimately gets the message across.

Morrison’s (seeming) ingenuousness renders criticism rather pointless, except or the fact that in “Rave On, John Donne,” he pushes the ingenuous stance much too far. When, in “Summertime In England,” he invoked the names of such iconic figures as Wordsworth, Blake, and Eliot, he avoided a charge of deliberate naivete by connecting them to his surroundings—hell, even Mahalia Jackson came to mind. But in “Rave On, John Donne,” he rather indiscriminately lumps together Omar Kayyam and Kahlil Gibran with Donne, Walt Whitman, and Mr. (Mr.?) Yeats. Indeed, the whole song, mostly a spoken chant, is fraught with sophomoric verbiage—“Rave on down through theosophy” is the least of it. But then, this song is the last cut on side one, so skip it. And don’t look at the album cover, either. Van Morrison certainly should be forgiven a couple of lapses. The good far outweighs the bad.

Jim Feldman

FUNKYTOWN GOES ON THE MAP

NILE RODGERS Adventures In The Land Of The Groove (Mirage)

by

Mitchell Cohen

Since Nile Rodgers (A) is democratic enough to include Wall Street within the borders of goodgroove land (see the map on the album cover) , and (B) builds some of his songs on a metrically insistent call-and-response motif that makes him sound like a hip drill instructor, it’s easy to imagine (C) a platoon of securities-analysts, carring boomboxes and briefcases, striding to their office buildings to the cadences of this LP’s title song: ‘‘I wanna go to!,” calls out Rodgers (“Wanna go to!,” responds the brigade) “The land of!” (“The land of!”) “The good groove!” (“The good groove!!”)

Let’s assume you’ve never cared for Chic, of which Rodgers is onehalf of the creative mainspring. Couldn’t stand “Le Freak,” only grudgingly admired “Good Times” and Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” (although any songs that could inspire Grandmaster Flash and Kent Tekulve are not musical totems to be dismissed out of hand), didn’t see Soup For One, and blame Rodgers and Bernard Edwards for KooKoo. So how is any reviewer going to convince you that Nile Rodgers is one superlative rock guitarist—a bit of Steve Cropper, some Hendrix, with a crisp, original tone, and control over subtleties and flamboyancies— and that Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove is one frisky LP? Would you be impressed by the fact that he produced Bowie’s new album? Probably not.

There’s all that blather about “Yum-Yum” to consider: radio programmers (black radio programmers, at that) saying that the tune is too purient, and denying it airplay. Now, if someone told you that the squawking was justified, that this is some ’83 equivalent of “Peppermint Stick” by (if memory serves) The Elchords (ask your parents about it; we played it over and over to try and confirm the salacious line), your interest’d be piqued. Cheerful smuttiness, is an honorable tradition, but this ropeskipping, cheerleading “poontang”incantation is nothing to get in a froth over, lyrics like “slept all night with my hands on it” not withstanding. It’s just goofy: “It’s on the floor!/I want some more!/It’s everywhere!” (Rodgers’ songs beg for exclamation points; they’re mostly chest-puffing declarations: We are family! I’m coming out! Le freak, c’est chic! Get her crazy!)

Adventures,. .is often a wait for Rodgers to uncork a solo; often a “good groove” is just about all you get. On the funkier stretch-outs, “Beet,” “Rock Bottom” and “Get Her Crazy”—it’s enough: they fixate on a lick, dig in their heels and stick with it until they’ve either grabbed you or set you scurrying for the exit, and then if you’ve been good, around the fourth minute, Rodgers lets go wih the guitar capper and by the time the track has faded you’re going’ “awww, so soon?” It helps that the songs have some cool jokes; “Get Her Crazy” is basically a Rick Jamesian boast about a familiarity with a certain female’s erogenous susceptibility, but the chorus (first men, then women) snaps out the song’s title like Jane Fonda’s demanding another series of leg-lifts. And on “Beet,” when Rodgers claims that the beat is so infectious it can make fathers, cops, even little towns dance, his back-up singers chant “Go Westport, go Westport, go!” (more“!”).

You hear adaptations of the Rodgers-Edwards Chic sound everywhere in the city: television commercials for sneakers, themes for local newscasts, sporting arena P.A. systems. It’s choppy and lively and clever. Slickfunk. The only trouble with Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove is that Rodgers hasn’t found a singing style as much his own as both his guitar playing and production techniques already are. As a solo artist, he’s playing catchup with himself, and some of his songs could benefit from a stronger vocal personality. “It’s All In Your Hands” (no, it isn’t a sequel to “YumYum”) is too self-effacing; and come after “Rock Bottom,” “My Love Song For You” is the mushy part when you get up for popcorn. It’s not bad for what it is—cooing Peaches & Herbs stuff sung by Rodgers and Sarah Dash—and it’s nice to hear a real piano in the midst of all the synthesized keyboards, but it breaks up the pace without showing that Rodgers has any real flair for the ballad. If he did, he wouldn’t have called one “My Love Song For You,” would he?

Rodgers redeems himself at album’s end by telling us to “break until you feel zonked/Like they do in the Bronx.” So it turns out that, contrary to cover cartography, the land of the good groove takes in Pelham Parkway as well as just points south or Gramercy Park. Groovy.

MINUTEMEN

What Makes A Man Start Fires (SST)

On their first record, The Punch Line, the Mintutemen shook up the must of hardcore velocity with a quirky philosophy of “well-defined ambiguity” which manifested itself through a thoroughly disarming collection of punk haikus that dazedly re-defined the concept of musical time. In an admittedly surprising mixture of bottom line speed and Beefheartian glaze they gave us some soon to be classic smirks like “History Lesson,” which straighforwardly tells us that “hundred thousand years ago homosapiens stood erect mind empty mind fresh created love and hate created god and antigod human slaughtered human for power,” and “The Punch Line,” a simple passion play about the realities of heroism wherein Custer at his famous last stand, not only goes out in a blaze of glory but with a load of crap in his pants. The thing that put the dis in the disarming on this record was the astonishing fact that none of the songs exceeded a minute in length, thus taking what began with the Ramones to its absurdly logical conclusion. So it was with somewhat bated breath that I slid their latest, What Makes A Man Start Fires, onto my two hundred dollar Silvertone Stereo.

Alas, it seemed at first listen that they’ve forsaken the experiments into the blinky lands of absurd velocity which made their first album so noticeable—I mean, some of these tracks actually exceeded the two minute mark. But soon I realized that what the Minutemen might have lost in speediness they’ve made up for in lyrical profundity and absurdity; the music may have slowed down some but the visions’ gotten totally frantic. Which is not to say that all the spalls of speed are gone. Actually some of the strongest material on the record, like “Polarity” is indeed brief and here, making one believe that by the time they evolve into album side length ’cept LP’s, this reviewer will be nothing more than worm fodder. “Sell Or Sold” is the anithesis of the mini-series, “Life As A Rehearsal” is back porch philosophy at its crankiest, and “Mutiny In Jonestown” is a chilling look into what Jim Jones just might have been thinking to himself as he sipped his kool-aid la muerte. My faves also included “The Anchor” and “Beacon Sighted Through Fog,” the latter with lyrics that’d make Capt. Beefheait beam. “And who the hell made the safe man pivots on peripheral vision corkscrew into thought lanterns mufflers flatten thick and planer fit into rolls paced and sad syrup lacking totaled pack a chunk of the sun glue it to your heart hold on.”

The only thing that’s a bit annoying is that, after finally coming to grips with the philosophy of “well-defined ambiguity,” The Minutemen now want me to get behind “chasing the reasons refusing to reason by listing the reasons” and, to tell you the truth, I think that is the kind of philosophical cat and mouse gaming that really does make men start fires, so, if you’ll excuse me, there’s this can of Zippo on the sink and I’m gonna go over there in a minute and figure out whether or not I should drink it or take it downtown and set the welfare offices all ablaze.

Joe (Time to Get Unconscious Again) Fembacher

CARLOS SANTANA Havana Moon (Columbia)

Unlike so many burnt-out combat veterans of flower power days past, Carlos Santana deftly juggles careerist notions with genuine artistic growth—but the pickings of late have grown a tad lean. Carlos’s group and solo albums seen to juxtapose the two sides of this personality, the former are for work (business), the latter for play (paeans to spiritualism and jazz explorations). Group efforts of late have bulged with tasty, calculated filler designed to slip gracefully info the cracks of Journey/Toto dominated FM (and get you out to the concerts where the real deal goes down), redeemed by two or three scorchers, while uneven but adventurous solo dates allow our hero to indulge in post-Caravanseri commercial suicide with non-pop instrumental abandon.

With" Havana Moon, however, Carlos Santana’s solo career makes a hard left towards platinum; not only is this record more personal, cohesive and committed than recent band records, it’s a lot slicker commercially. Havana Moon is unity music, a perfect summation of this great guitarist’s blues, rock, jazz and latin roots—and, incidentally, it sounds more like a goddamn SANTANA album than anything he’s done since Abraxas. Even Carlos’ physical appearance is reassuring. Gone is the close-shorn, dofibledipped acolyte, superceded by the good old fuzzy, freebird space gringo of yore (but no doped-out doorknob he).

Among the acts of musical redemption on display here are:the rescue of Booker T. Jones from cryogenic soul storage (he cooks throughout, and even turns in a pair of ace make-out performances on “One With You” and Mr. Berry’s “Havana Moon”); the return of Santana’s best-ever vocalist Greg Walker (on rocking “Watch Your Step” and ‘‘Daughter Of The Night”); and the finger-lickin’ production smarts of Barry Beckett (doubling on keyboards) and Jerry Wexler (who don’t always bring home the bacon, do they.. .anyone remember the last Mavis Staples record, or Dire Straits’ Communique).

Side two explores re-vamped perspectives on the touring Santana band, with the Milesian instrumental “Tales Of Kilimanjaro” a standout. Even more telling is the Tex-Mexcountry brotherhood of “They All Went To Mexico,” featuring vocal grits by Willie Nelson, and south-ofthe-border cum Nelson Riddle romanticism of “Verdea Tropical,” with Carlos’ father taking vo6al honors. But the heart and soul of this album is the collaboration between Santana, Booker T., the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Carlos’ Cuban wall of percussion—Armando Peraza, Raul Rekow and Oreses Vilato. From the Allmanish shuffle of “Lightnin’ ” to the subterannean Texas swing of “Mudbone,” this Afro-Cuban/Blues melange sounds more like a band than anything on Carlos’ last several outlings, especially workout on “Who Do You Love” which emphasizes the Latin element that was always present in Bo Diddley’s music.

Throughout Havana Moon, Santana’s soloing literally screams, revealing deep seeded roots in Jimmy Reed, B.B. King, even Wes Montgomery, and the interplay between him, Jimmy Vaughn and Booker T. is hand-in-glove. Always one of the most lyrical of rock guitarists, it’s good to report that, with Havana Moon, Carlos Santana is hard again.

Chip Stein

PHILIP GLASS The Photographer (Columbia)

Let’s assume that you’re as unfamiliar with this music as I am, an admission on my part which, at first, might appear to disqualify me from making any critical comments. But consider that a large part of the reason that this bit of avant-garde contemporary concert music is being reviewed in CREEM in the first place is because the composer has, for a long while, been attempting to reach a wider audience, which means you, posibly, mainly interested as you are in rock and me, definitely, whose idea of classical music is Bernard Herrman...and now, finally, we’ve been reached. And what is our reaction?

Mixed. But first a little background...starting with Eadweard Muybridge (1880-1904) a pioneer photographer whose studies of animals and humans in motion through photographs taken in rapid succession led to his development of the Zoopraxiscope in 1880, a primative * movie projector that predated Edison’s Kinetoscope by 12 , years. Muybridge’s most famous series of photos is of a galloping horse, which proved conclusively that, a certain points during a horse’s gallop, all four hooves are indeed off the ground. Aside from his historical contribution, Muybridge has an eventful personal life, killing his wife’s lover and, after being acquitted of the crime, raising the child that resulted from the wife’s indiscretion as tho’ it were his own—sounds like it’d make a good movie sometime, no? Almost. Muybridge’s life, personal and historical, is the source of inspiration for a music/theater piece with dancing and original Muybridge photographs projected onto a large screen called The Phtographer, the music part being by Phillip Glass and contained on this record. Glass, you may have heard, is the famous minimalist composer involved, like Muybridge, in examining the components of motion—tho not quite, judging from this piece, with the same tedious persistence as that other famous minimalist Steve Reich (listening to Reich is not so much like watching paint dry as it is like watching a clock—your attention wanders and when you look back, somehow the hand has moved). How profound.

So whatta we got? No dancing, of course, tho’ some of Muybridge’s equine studies are reproduced on the album cover. Even to those who have never heard Glass’s work the music here shouldn’t be completely strange, it—minimalism (post?), trance (possibly)—having already influenced such groups as Talking Heads and King Crimson, (or is the other way around?). Side one starts with Act 1, a short ditty with words from Muybridge’s letters and the transcript of his trial and, in its fragmented way, it’s rather poignant—and cute. Act II, a little over 16 minutes (no words) allows one to better observe Glass’s approach as two lines—one unadorned triplets, the other adorned— alternate, then a violin line alternates with an orchestral line (with trombones) , then a high line with piping voices alternates with a lower line (with trombines), then the violin comes back to alternate with...but wait, one of the alternating lines gets a little longer each time it’s repeated, the delayed climax creating a certain tension.. .hmmm.. .whoops, easy to lose track here...oh well, one can’t always listen very closely...besides, I have little patience with music whose main point of interest is its juggling of geometric configurations...still, this is mildly compelling stuff as it builds towards some inevitable and, after awhile, much longed for resolution...and it comes, the mood as methodically unraveled as it was wound up. The rhythm and chords progress inexorably, with a line extended here for tension, a legato passage there for relief...overall, this Act II is rather pleasant, in its faceless way...

Act III, which takes up all of side " two, is the tour-de-force, still with conventional, even pleasant chord progressions and with no one texture being explored for too long (the music doesn’t seem adversarial), some of the textures more charming than others (or less irritating, depending on the mood you bring to this), until the last five minutes or so, which is one long splashy draining climatic sequence that stops on a dime (a great device, he said cynically, for getting the old standing ovation going). It’s exhilarating, in a comball way—one is swept up in the manic grandiosity, but still manages to admire the huge amount of plain work involved here. Kinda like the Rockettes.

So, those are some first impresssions from a member of the wider audience. I think the more inquisitive among you should check this out for yourselves, others might want to wait until the advancing tide reaches Solid Gold...for myself, I wouldn’t mind hearing it again, especially in performance with the dancing and the Muybridge photographs and all. Always willing to learn, you know...

Richard C. Walls

THE JOHN BUTCHER AXIS

(Polygram)

Word has it Peter Wolf discovered John Butcher and his band and took them along as opening act on J. Geils’ last major tour. Surprisingly, no one in the Geils crowd made a big stink about playing Svengali with this group even though, having made their Beggar’s Banquet with Freeze Frame, they are certainly in a position to “show ’em howta do it.” Not to worry though, there’s some meat on this record.

The popular comparison of John Butcher to Hendrix is rather superficial. Butcher is an excellent guitar player and reportedly a real ripsnorter live, but other than sharing a good feel for fuzz tone and the fact that Butcher is a black person who plays rock ’n’ roll, the similarities seem more of attitude than style. Other influences—Nils Lofgren, Roger McGuinn, Arthur Lee, and good English pub-rock, are more apparent. In fact, this album sounds a little like the record Lee and Hendrix might make were Arthur a little younger and more together and Jimi a little less dead. The flowing ever-present guitar that snakes through Hendrix’ work is not here, either. These are lean, direct, well charged songs, very much of the decade and still very much rock ’n’ roll.

Waiting for Butcher to lean back and wail may leave you wondering what all that guitar hero stuff is all about. He doesn’t take full advantage of the chance to enhance his rep on the instrumental, “Sentinel,” which closes the first side. The only track with a multiple writing credit, it sounds like an in-studio jam and its inclusion seems gratuitous, a gesture to his talented band that does a tasty job both instrumental^ and with understated, effective backing vocals. But Butcher (discounting his live performances) has obviously garnered that rep not so much for what he does as for the way it’s done. Tight riffs provide the latticework for the modern funk of “Ocean in Motion” and color the well-picked chordings of the record’s highlights—“Send One Care Of,” “Fairlight,” and “New Man,” illustrating the considerable capabilities of a promising new artist who, in one of life’s nicer recent coincidences, satisfies greatly the first time out.

Considering John Butcher’s future, it’s a cinch he doesn’t need to get saddled with surplus crosses. Hendrix has done for the guitar god spot what Ali did for the heavyweight championship and Nixon for the presidency. As Leon Spinks put it—“He’s still the Greatest—I’m just the latest.” The ugly and only recently illuminated tendency of AOR programmers to shy away from black artists won’t help, either. But, oddly enough, I first heard of this record not from the usual network of informed cronies but actually caught the single, “It’s Only Words,” (almost a hit as this is being written) on God s own radio airwaves. AOR radio is nowhere to look for daring occurrences, but stranger things have happened, and the appearance of the John Butcher Axis’ outstanding debut album is both well-timed and very welcome.

R.A. Pinkston IV

INXS

Shabooh Shoobah

(Atco)

A little distance can often give you a different perspective on things. Australian rock bands are pretty far away from the centers of musical exploration in the States and England, so their music often seems a bit bland in comparison. But on the positive side, they don’t get as involved in stupid style wars, preferring instead to ignore barriers of hipness by just combining whatever sounds sound good to ’em.

INXS are one of the first Aussie bands to get a big Stateside push since Men At Work’s megabuck rakeroo. Their name is supposed to be read, “in excess,” but there’s nothing excessive about ’em though they are kinda ear-catching. My first impression of the opening track, “The One Thing”—“What is this, a combination of the Stones and Simple Minds?”—may not have been totally accurate but there were reasons for it. The drums are played precisely and are placed prominently in the mix, staying just on the rock side of the dance music-disco thump, and vocalistt Michael Hutchence cuts through ’em easily rather than compete one-on-one with the bass drum. Add rhythm guitars and a sharp, snappy sax break (one of several on the album) and you’ve got a winning tune.

Not the only one, either. Hutchence’s singing remains strong throughout but the instrumentation varies, sometimes moving in a U2 direction, sometimes veering toward Numan territory, with several Police cops cropping up on side two. This is actually INXS’s third album, though, so most of these styles are pretty well integrated into the songs. But if you’re looking for something really new; you’ll come up pretty empty; the closest these guys come

HIGHER AND HIGHER

JACKIE WILSON

The Jackie Wilson Story (Epic/Brunswick)

by

Jeff Nesin

The proto-soul era was a difficult one for certain black artists. Singers who were considered irredeemably black—James Brown, for example—could make fiercely funky records for their own constituents, records that were generally ignored by and impenetrable to the, uh, American mainstream. Those fortunate sons who had crossover potential, however, were forced to swim upstream against a tide of gurgling choruses and stringed horders. For every Leiber-Stoller recording of genius for the Drifters, there were seven Herculean labors set for the great Sam Cooke by those masters of white trash, Hugo & Luigi. (Their names tell the story— strictly continental cuisine.)

Jackie Wilson struggled manfully (possibly happily) against similar odds for his entire recording career. An incandescent early soul man who forged a personal vocal style from the crying blues of Roy Brown, the echoed melismatic swoops of Dixie Humingbird Ira Tucker and the falsetto flash of Clyde McPhatter (whose sharkskin suit he filled with the Dominoes when Clyde was wooed away to found the Drifters in ’53,) Wilson rode a string of Berry Gordy penned hits to the top in the late ’50s. (Berry, of course, rode them further, using the bucks and credibility he garnered from Wilson’s sales to found Motown.)

But Wilson was not just a singularly gymnastic voice zigzagging through the orchestral miasma for a few tumbles in the top ten. At the peak of his popularity Jackie Wilson was the only performer I’ve ever seen who would regularly roll the rules of stagecraft, pacing, etc. and smoke them. In the glory days he hit the stage with such overwound acrobatic tension that it seemed as if he actually loosened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket before he left the dressing room. By getting a jump on the audience he was able to make his three or four song set (Alan Freed had a lot of acts on his bills, so his best shows were a dazzling series of living EPs. Not a bad idea for the ’80s, actually.) literally cataclysmic. As he flew through “Reet Petite”—Louis Jordan meets Elvis Presley—and the stunning “Lonely Teardrops”— gorgeous, aching pleas over Billie & Lillie percolation—the tie, the jacket, the cufflinks, sometimes the shirt would fly by as well, all punctuated by athletic spins and splits.

All of which gives me something marvelous to conjure with as I listen to The Jackie Wilson Story, a two record set culled from the tape library of the now bankrupt Brunswick label, which documents the triumphs and the compromises of a career ended by a terrible stroke that has left Wilson generally helpless and impoverished. Carefully and earnestly compiled by Eric vaultmeisters Gregg Geller and Joe McEwen, with McEwen’s excellent Jackie Wilson essay from the Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock & Roll reprinted not quite in its entirety within, the release puts Jackie’s important hits back in the bins where they belong. A lot of the less important hits, though, are problematic examples of the miscegenated mismatching Wilson wrestled with for nearly 20 years, and the net effect of 24 tracks—thermonuclear dynamics included—doesn’t justify the optimistic revisionism that deleted McEwen’s original clear-eyed judgement, “Despite his popularity in the late ’50s and early ’60s, his recordings rarely reflected his talent,” from the reprinted text.

Still,the remarkable moments really are, whether you’re watching my memory movie or not. The fiery “Baby Workout” and ‘i’ll Be Satisfied” and the overdue exorcism of Rita Coolidge’s narcoleptic version of “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher And Higher)” with Wilson’s inspirational 1967 original, his last top ten hit, all lighten the burden of history. Young men will once again dream of tender ministrations (“The way you rub my back when I’m in pain/The way you soothe me so I won’t complain...”) while listening to Jackie “turn back-over flips” on “That’s Why (I Love You So.)” Or maybe it’ll just be older men dreaming of young men dreaming. What the hell. Whomever’s dreaming of whatever, royalty checks will arrive once more at Wilson’s bedside, which makes this as worthy a project as the record biz has managed in many a moon.

to innovation is in Andrew Farriss’ keyboard sounds which are usually found sneaking around behind the tom-toms.

But whaddya expect out of a bunch of guys from down under? To paraphrase a once famous group: “They’re an Australian band/They’ll take your favorite sounds/Then they will water ’em dOwn/They’re an Australian band.”

Michael Davis

BANARAMA Deep Sea Skiving (London)

Hearing my fickle cad of a friend freely admit that he was throwing the Go-Go’s over for Bananarama on the basis of one import single may have had something to do with the fact that my initial exposure to Siobhan Fahey, Sarah Dallin, and Keren Woodward left me on the impervious side. But mainly it was because “He Was Really Sayin’ Somethin’ ” didn’t rate more than a shoulder shrug, the performance being an overly placid run-through of a Motown obscurity (“Needle In A Haystack” would’ve been a better bet for a Velvelettes cover anyway) with gimmicky tribal rhythms tacked on.

As months went by, my friend persisted in trying to Bananaramicize me but I wouldn’t be swayed. When he excitedly announced that an album was imminent, I knew what I expected—a tawdry hodgepodge consisting of a few banal hits and loads of cheap filler. The ppor fool; he’d see.

Turns out I was the one that had my eyes pried open wide, becasue Deep Sea Skiving is a pop triumph that brightens my mood like you wouldn’t believe. Sure, it is a hodgepodge—album tracks interspersed with U.K. hits, remakes, originals, three different production heads, anonymous musicians, etc But play it once and you’ll swear it Was recorded with one band, one producer, and one person’s direction providing all the songs. That’s what I call cohesive and that’s the kind of masterful control Bananarama have over their vinyl. So what about songs?

Mostly they’re superb. “Shy Boy” simply radiates ebullience and we quickly learn from the outset that these women never submit when they can assert. Listen to the gleeful pride they take in turning this guy into an extrovert. And how about the sultry spin they put on those Betty Everett-inspired shoop-shoop’s? This song deserves a spot in girl group heaven. And “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” (let’s hear it for Steam) belongs in the remake hall of fame. They don’t even bother changing the gender which only shows their impeccable sense of AM aesthetics. And the addition of those morse code monosyllables is the perfect crowning touch. “Boy Trouble” sends out a very gentle rejection slip reminding me that even when they’re dealing in the negative this group always manages to operate from a base of tender warmth. And “What A Shambles” recalls the days before Abba let their arteries harden.

I’ll close with three predictions for future gol($; “Young At Heart,” which relentlessly flags you down with such joyful abandon that it throws me into a spring fever fit every time I hear it; “Cheers Then,” one of the sweetest farewells I’ve ever heard —when those gorgeous “ooo’s” are pursued by some wistful keyboard magic I start moving skyward; and the completely captivating love letter of the air ‘Wish You Were Here.” Every time I hear it, my bags are backed, I’m ready to go, and my girlfriend has to strap me down to keep me home. This old heart of mine is weak for Bananarama.

Craig Zellei

LAURA BRANIGAN Branigan 2 (Atlantic)

ELLEN FOLEY (Cleveland International)

Let’s not mince words, eh? Laura Branigan is a damn lousy excuse for a singing star and Ellen Foley is only a pretty good excuse for a singing star. I mean, what’s wrong with “female vocalists” these days? How come I got me two of the supposedto-be-hot ones here and still feel the urge to look for ways to squander 377 words because it only takes three to say “not good enough?”

Laura Branigan has been touted as an incredible natural voice and a riveting new song interpreter. She is neither. This is make-it-or-break-it time: “Gloria” was a King Kong hit, and people always watch for postKong failures with the morbid relish of accident witnesses.

The album from which “Gloria” came was dazzlingly bad. Branigan 2 cannot claim that distinction. Rather than plunder the worst of current treatment for hand-wringing ballads this time, Laura and producer Jack White focus instead on a demolition derby between Barbra Streisand and Giorgio Moroder. The songs are a little less cliched into a coma, but Branigan’s histrionics still wander in search of intent, vehicle and target. The one fun cut on the record, “Deep In The Dark,” is currently a dartce almost-hit for another band. Whoops.

Ellen Foley’s failure is puny compared to Branigan’s,' but it hurts more. This woman’s desire goes past becoming a diva; her voice sounds like Ronnie Spector’s and her artistic vocabulary is loaded with the credos, mandates and musical gestures of the bloodlines that link Spector, Springs-^ teen, Crenshaw and a whole mob from the great to the grotesque. God, she even has Ellie Greenwich writing some cuts, and she even covers “Come And Get These Memories.” The tunes here (at least half), are not bad; they just try to be classics so hard that its embarrassing to hear them screw up.

If only intent and effort were the subpoena serves of good fortune. Well, at least Foley’s still hanging in there, after her debut got lumped with a passel of so-called female Springsteen clones. Then came romantic and professional connections with the Clash’s Mick Jones. The Spirit Of St. Louis crashed in spite. What the hell, Ellen’s too promising to be famous by proxy.

Maybe that’s her problem; she doesn’t know what to be famous for she acts and writes songs in addition to just singing. But I do knqw this, after three albums. She needs to pick stronger songs and to make sure that nobody not Mick Jones or Vini Ponca, leads her around by the nose artistically. If she can co-write some good songs, great, but it’s only going to be good songs that save her. As a female vocalist, she will live or die one tune at a time. Another Breath is a better-than-before group of songs by a promising female singer. But it’s not good enough.

Laura Fissinger