The Beat Goes On

The Beat Goes On

DEPARTMENTS

About Face? About Time

DETROIT—And here’s the way our modern tragedy went: the band from Springfield, Missouri—the band that’s put the show in the Show Me State— were playing Detroit for the first time. People turned out by the twos until the crowd swelled to 30, or maybe even more. No kidding, there was enough personal space for the whole NBA in the joint. Naturally, the band went ahead and played two very good sets, just for the hell of it.

The band was Fools Face. They’ve been at it for nine years now, and—despite critical acclaim all the way up to Billboard—they’re still waiting for the so-so success of, say, Men At Work. Why they haven’t got it yet would probably make a good book—they’ve certainly made all the right moves (three indie LPs on Talk Records, opening for the usual bunch of Costellos and Stray Cats, tremendous regional appeal) so far. But there’s no time for a book, so we’ll just have to read between the octaves.

Critics being what they are, Fools Face have been compared to everyone, and I mean everyone. The Beatles, Badfinger, Led Zep, you name it. Bowling teams. The ’60 Cubs. Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton, Slim Whitman and Fats Domino. This is mainly because Fools Face are so eclectic that Leonardo Da Vinci might as well be a Renaissance Used Car Dealer by comparison. These guys write songs faster than most people make right turns. Not only that, they write...uh...how do you say this, any way?... oh, yeah: very good material. In fact, they’re great.

Well, what’s it all mean? Off the top, it means there’s one helluva fine band running around that a lot of people don’t know about. Their second album was called Tell America, which can hardly be a coincidence. (The title was lifted from keyboardist Dale McCoy’s “American Guilt.” Here’s lyrics any American can be proud of, by jingo, ranging from the charming. .. “Tell America her heart’s in the right place...to move at her own pace” to the rather blunt... “Why not drop the fucking bomb on your American head?” If that’s not first-class writing I’ll stand in line to see Journey.)

McCoy isn’t the only quick pen in FF; bassist Jim Wirt and guitarist Jimmy Frink are also substantial talents. (Frink, in fact, has pulled off what has hitherto been regarded as intrinsically improbable—he’s written a mature outer-space song, “L5,” that proves Bowie is a pretty good-looking guy as far as his credentials as Cosmic Observer go.) Between the three of them (plus an occasional ditty by picker Brian Coffman) they write about everything, in the sense that the Beatles or even the Who (round about Sell Out) used to write about everything. That is to say, there’s a distance between the band and the songs, which is always a pleasure, but nowadays artistic bad form. Which says a lot about nowadays.

The above-mentioned quartet are k slew of singers, just in case you were foreseeing a miserable twist or something. Their harmonies are crisp—what the heck, they’re Beatleish or Badfingerish or whatever—and even funny. Or (consulting my notes from the sit-where-you-want show): “These guys can sing.”

And they can play. Occasionally, they stray towards the Metal, guitar-wise, but that’s almost surely for the helluva it. Tommy Dwyer, who I haven’t mentioned till now, not only keeps the drums a-poppin’ but—listen up, you pedal pushers out there—plays rhythm guitar as well. McCoy, the boy with one of the strongest singing voices I’ve heard, can flip from the 88’s to the sax as easy as running a light. Coffman plays guitar; he also plays keyboards. And so on. Show-wise, they look exactly like five people being absolutely normal and having a great time. Well, maybe McCoy is a bit 23 skidoo and an inch much make-up, but what the hell. The guy wrote “Are You Happy Where You Are?” (“You could be in LA watchin’ all the girls go by”), so it’s amnesty all around.

BUT DO THEY PLUMP WHEN YOU COOK 'EM?

Those generous gents in Mono war have decided to take the initiative in the ongoing battle against world hunger. That's right—they're sending slices of their actual salves directly to starving hordes in northwest Africa. "Hey, if nothing else, we're all 100% American beef!" asserts guitarist Ross The Boss. "Maybe we don't taste that good, but I'd rather chow down one of my fingers than that beef jerky crap!" So would we, Ross, so would we.

I asked McCoy how they came up with “Fools Face” and he had the nerve—not to mention the good sense—to say: “It’s really a long story.” Maybe everything about these guys is a long story, I dunno. They’re plenty wise to The Way Things Work, so however far they go is up to them, I figure. You can be of tangible help by ordering FF discs from Talk Records (P.O.

Box 4406, Springfield, Missouri 65808).

All I can say is: if you have a chance to see ’em, see ’em. I took my degree in Foology long

enough ago to know that everybody plays that role, sometime. Listen, people.

J. Kordosh

Peter Be

Good Tonight!

NEW YORK—Peter Tosh s new album Mama Africa is the strongest he’s made in years. Aside from its clever reggae reworking of “Johnny B. Goode,” which has garnered Tosh airplay on some FM rock stations and MTV, it has a general level of sophisticated rootsiness and lyrical toughness that Tosh’s last few LPs missed.

Tosh seems to know he’s got something good here. In the past, he’s been argumentive and generally hard-to-deal-with during interviews. But the man I find playing with a Casio portable synthesizer in an EMI office is surprisingly mellow, and there’s not a hint of confrontation in the conversation. Not only does Tosh answer my questions carefully and reasonably, he also serenades me with several improvised melodies he programs on the Casio.

The first question naturally has to be about the “Johnny B. Goode single, which Tosh readily admits is what it seems— a calculated commercial move.

’’Yeah, mon. For commercial reasons. ‘Johnny B. Goode’ was a great song. It was highly appreciated and loved. And it did well commercially. I would love for it to do twice or three times better.”

Covering old rock songs is a clever way of sneaking reggae into the rock marketplace.

“True. And I know that. I’m an intelligent diplomat.”

Do you worry about losing contact with the roots of the music when you do things like that?

“Hmm? No, me no have nothing to worry about. The only thing I worry about is the many evil forces that you have to encounter. But they are always there for a period of time. And they have but a limited amount of power. Yeah mon.”

Do you feel the American audience for reggae is growing?

“See, the music that America has been listening to for the past 10 or 15 years has been the same music, see? And music is a happy element, music is not something for sadness or weakness or tiredness. Music is to celebrate happiness, to bring happy feelings. And the music they play in these places every day is the same brokenhearted love melody and you sing and you cry to your woman. People want to dance. And reggae music is a music that makes you dance.”

Do you get weary of the music biz routine of album-tourpromotion?

“Yeah mon. I got so weary that I even decided not to tour anymore. But realizing the potential of reggae music, and knowing that reggae music is like my right hand, or my head, that’s how important reggae music is to me, and realizing that reggae music has not reached the mark of respect and recognition that it must, I could not sit around and have the character of reggae music defamed.

Is the title song Mama Africa meant to be addressed to a woman, or is it a spiritual ideal?

“Spiritual. Mama Africa means my mother Africa. Africa is the mother country. And it is she 1 appeal to.”

For what?

“Appealing to my mother that I am the prodigal son. I have been taken away from her before birth. And it has been a long time I search for her. I don’t even know her name. Because of Western brainwashing and colonialism. Because it was their duties and intentions for me not to know where I came from, so I will not know where I’m going. I searched and I found. It is written seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened. And I did. So here I am appealing to our mother to welcome me back home.”

Is it frustrating to think about Africa, where a newlyindependent country like Zimbabwe is racked by civil war?

“Yeah. What’s happening in Zimbabwe is not different from what’s happening in America, not different from what’s happening in Guatamala or Iran or Iraq.”

MARK GETS INTO A FIX

"Here, let me hammer it for you!" offers friendly Mark Devo, smoking tool in hand. Yup, Mark finally received his Time/Life Handyman's Encyclopedia in the mail and boy, is he hot to fix! Here, the implementwielding wag is barely restrained from handymanhandling an entire supermarket by Laraine Newman. First, Mark "The Tool" remodeled all the produce so it wouldn't roll off the dinner table. Next, he actually reconstructed several pineapples from chunks. The wacky whippist was busily nailing cans of tuna to the walls when Laraine, who happened to be in the same store pricing bagboys, grabbed him. Mark's next project? "Fixing" Akron, Ohio!

5 Years Ago

The Catfish Hunter Returns!

Elvis Costello announces a San Francisco radio interview that he was implementing the Dead Fish Awards, and its first recipient was to be Patti Smith. Why? “It goes to the rock star most deserving to be hit in the face with a dead fish.”

There’s war everywhere.

“Yes! It’s world war, rumors of war. I sing a song, so we talk about wars, talking about the coming of Jah, the time is not far. These things have to happen, because if these things don’t happen, then people won’t realize that it the time for the coming of the Creator, the Messiah.”

Finally, knowing it’s not but feeling I should ask anyway, I ask my Mystic Gentlemen Tosh whether he considers Mama Africa any kind of departure for him.

“No. Just going straight ahead. Just painting different flowers from the garden of reggae inspiration. Because the garden of inspiration is vast. So that is just another flower in the garden. There are so many flowers in the garden, take me millions of years to sing them.”

Richard Grabel

Man (Parrish) Made Synth Dances

NEW YORK—Hands clap, a dog barks, a tonal drum pattern clicks, a bass drum pattern takes center stage, four notes from a synth repeat themselves, a bass line synth falls underneath, a voice from a vocoder chants “Hey! Ho! Hey! Ho! Yama-tamama,” a third synth comes upfront, there’s a little-needed admonishment to dance, the song’s title—“Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop)”—is sang, the dog barks again, and that’s it. That’s all you’re getting from Man Parrish’s dance chart hit single. No melody line, no hook, frill-less modern disco. You mean they’re going to take us to another planet?

“Inside I’m a rock ’n’ roller, not a disco person at all,” admits Man Parrish to my barely concealed surprise. “It’s true, my roots are all rock ’n ’roll—dance music is from the last two years!” I’m sitting in the 39th Street Studio because Man Parrish released a tantilizing, wildly uneven debut LP earlier this year. Man and producer/partner Raul Rodriguez are here to lay down the tracks that’ll form numerous Man-made groups; they’ll have a song ready before bringing in a vocalist to add to the tape. “If it’s a rap song we’ll get a rap singer, a pretty song a pretty person, then, depending on where it falls, we’ll decide on a name for them.”

In army boots and corduroy slacks and a possibly mendacious semblance of candor, it isn’t hard to believe that Man is a middle class Brooklyn lad who quit high school at 15 and left home at 17. “I went to the High School Of The Performing Arts, the place they did the movie Fame about. I was driven out of there because I was the class. clown. I was studying theatre, not music, which I guess is also part of the live show. I got a job at the Metropolitan Opera House carrying a spear on stage, went to work at CBS in the mailroom, stealing records everyday, saved up my money and bought a synthesizer. Synths are like diseases, once you have one, every time a new piece comes out you have to buy it.” More akin to a Barbie Doll, perhaps?

The synthesizers grew to an 8-Track studio and Man worked with Cherry Vanilla and Klaus Nomi. He followed that with an association with original New York New Romantics, the atrocious Shox Lumania, whom I never saw live but whose ROIR Cassette was a fate worse than death. “It was dreadful, they’re going to kill me for that. I did five shows with them, Larry (Shox) would come over with lyrics, I’d have the music, we’d get wild cpstumes and jump on stage.”

Man went solo and was signed to Independent Label Import/12 where he became friends with Raul. Raul was working for Disconet, a company that services the Industry (discotheques—like that), reediting Abba, Human League, Grace Jones, and ABC songs into 12-minute extravaganzas. Although not for commercial sale, “Poison Arrow” appeared on a compilation album and “the songs go for around $900 at the vinyl junkie stores downtown.” The result was “Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop)” which sold 25,000 copies in England and reached No. 4 in the Dance Charts.

The album isn’t as good. Not quite surprisingly, from a Man who claims if he hasn’t written a song in five hours he goes crazy, the problem is, to paraphrase Martin Fry, he can’t tell the good from trash. “To be honest,” replies Man, “I have problems with some of it too. When I started in the studio with the album I was very new to the studio. It was kind of a learning experience.” I love the single, think “Together Again” ’s restrained calypso is delicious, am bored stiff by the twee “Man Made” and insulted by the filleronly “Techno Trax.”

Still, Man is literally at the beginning of a new age. Since the album he has added Boy Parrish—Adrian Panaro—who works on visuals (like the 7-foot dragon they used during Studio 54’s sixth Anniversary Party) and merrily admits it has nothing to do with rock and everything to do with entertainment, and Woman Parrish—Kim (didn’t catch her last name)—a very attractive back-up singer. They’ll both be on the next album

So does this all add up to a worthy spending of your money and emotion? Well, in my best Time Magazine journalese: one thing is certain, we’ll see.

Iman Lababedi