The Beat Goes On

The Beat Goes On

LOS LOBOS HOWL

CHICAGO—If you dug Sir Doug, you’ll love this: Los Lobos, four guys from East Los Angeles, are really onto something. Having first hooked up in 1974 to play folk music, they went electric two-and-a-half years ago and began playing a mixture of rock ’n’ roll, Tex-Mex, old R&B, and norteno music, which is an accordion-powered dance beat also known among Anglos as “Mexican polka.”

Los Lobos are a pretty potent argument against anybody’s idea of purism. On their EP, ...And A Time To Dance, they jump around among various styles we’ve all heard before, but it’s in two original tunes that they come closest to a true hybrid of their various influences. “Let’s Say Goodnight” pits an insistent riff from guitarist/accordianist/singer David Hidalgo’s squeezebox against a cool shuffle rhythm, and “How Much Can I Do?” fuses norteno with New Orleans R&B and zydeco, anchored by bassman Conrad Lozano’s terrific sense of swing.

Even these fusions are a bit tentative, though, and it’s evident from their live show that Los Lobos are still groping around for some way to really put it all together. Their set includes Chicago-style blues sung en Espanol with accordion riffs grafted onto it, norteno polkas sung in English, slow “grinders,” and plenty of Ritchie Valens covers (including the inevitable “La Bamba”). It’s the sight of Cesar Rosas prowling around the stage in vicious rock ’n’ roll shades and banging on an electrified bajo sexto (a Mexican variant of the 12-string guitar, its body covered with Aztec ornateness) that really suggests the pan-cultural implications of what’s going on here.

These guys got their contract with Slash via some help from the Blasters, who d been impressed by their demo tape and invited Los Lobos to open some shows for them in L.A. “They were really excited from the first time we told ’em we were playing norteno music,” Rosas recalls. “They went crazy.”

Los Lobos seem like pretty happy guys too, but they do have their complaints. “For some reason, the record company isn’t really moving on doing a video,” says drummer Louie Perez. “Our record came out at the same time as Green On Red, and they had video within a couple weeks of release.”

Rosas speaks up: “The whole family at Slash has 150% faith in us, except the main cheeses. They’re just basically panicked about it, because we’re so different from anything else. They’re giving us a chance and just throwing us out...it’s like a sink-or-swim situation. If we do good, it’s wonderful. But if we don’t, then...” His voice trails off.

Adds Perez: “I don’t really think they ever thought we’d do this well.”

Renaldo Migaldi

CAN'T BEAT THE NEATS!

NEW YORK-The Neats are neat because of their incisive, sharp brand of pop music. The Neats are a kind of neo-garage band, but they have little in common with L.A.’s current crop of ’60s psychedelia revivalists. There’s nothing retro or sentimental about them.

The Neats are also neat because of the way they approach playing gigs: honestly. They are one of the few bands who can be very different each time out, depending on their mood and the circumstances, without being sloppy or inconsistent. I’ve seen them be polished and professional, on a weekend night at New York’s Peppermint Lounge. I’ve seen them be casual and personable, on a Wednesday night at Folk City.

The Neats have made two really neat records, both for Boston-based indie label Ace Of Hearts. The Monkey’s Head In The Corner Of The Room, released in 1982, emphasized the poppy, melodic side of the band; the album, Neats, has a harder, more cutting sound: classic garage rock, full of barbed stabs of individuality.

“All of us were basically into new music and punk at the beginning,” say the Neats. I won’t identify the individual speakers because the voices are all jumbled up on my tape, and, besides, the Neats seem to speak with one voice. “We sort of just came upon Vox equipment that has that old ’60s sound. We hate to emphasize it, because everyone is always calling us a garage band or a ’60s influenced band. And we love that stuff—blit we hope to have a progressive edge to it.”

Do you worry that a ’60s sound can be an anachronism in 1984?

“We hope that it isn’t, because our music continues to grow. Maybe it can be defined as a perfect merger of what’s just out of grasp and what’s already known.”

These Neats just look like nice American boys. Nice suburban clothes, simple subdued haircuts. No image at all. I ask them if the Neats have a public face.

“Nah. We’ve avoided anything like that. And therefore we’ve kind of created our own image, but, you know...”

“It’s just trying to be kind of straightforward.”

“We’re all really shy on stage, still. But we’re not threatening. More like, kind of inviting.”

That’s the Neats, and their music. Inviting, and straightforward. Thanks, boys, for striking a blow for honesty.

Richard Grabel

NEU'S IN THE DESERT

MECCA, CA—High noon. We assemble in an amorphous, distended conglomerate of 200, just a few minutes east of L.A.’s downtown. There are six (maybe five) black and orange buses (school buses) ostensibly chartered for transport and the kids—punky, trendy, and sometimes mean-looking teenagers—file into each, unceremoniously passive and indispossessed. Me, I opt for the x-hour pilgrimage alone in my ’81 Lynx; the trek to some faraway hell-hole in the Colorado Desert to see machine noise-monger maniacs Einsturzende Neubauten (“Collapsing New Buildings”) perform in more “agreeable surroundings” does not validate a communal sense of adventure. Nevertheless 1 accomodate two others as -passengers, and it’s the three of us somewhere near the Salton Sea two or four hours deep in the afternoon. But we’re not on the precipice of the water’s edge; instead, we’re making our way up and into the desert’s canyons above Mecca—a burgeoning metropolis of 300 + at sea level (an hour or so past Palm Springs), where the inhabitants inhabitate gnarled-out benches and tables in the sand and weeds alongside the Chevron station.

We find our way past steep cliffs and ledges of shale to the region known locally as Box Canyon. Others have arrived, and in fact the unpeeled mass of six-strong school-bus sublife files out and onto the windswept surface of the canyon floor, lost in the mosaic of parked cars and people adorning both sides of a narrow, washed-out dirt road.

The festival of sound and noise heralded by the surreptitious presence of staticsound progenitors Neubauten begins with a bang. Literally: the topside of the canyon wall addjoining the area designed for performance (more than a halfdozen power-generators are to be the night’s unflappable source of energy) explodes behind a deafening blast. Another charge of dynamite erupts congruent to the same area; this ritual becomes a recurring theme up and until the real big one which demands the ceremony of public address: “everyone move back—everybody CLEAR AWAY! We’re gonna try to blow the side of the mountain...!” But the blast fails to deliver the goods, and the side of the hill, scarred and somewhat singed, remains intact and unvanquished.

There’s a trailer with a mixing board and various elements of sound equipment and technology where Neubauten congregates once-in-a-while, secluded from the activities. Opening “event” DJEMMA EL FNA (Bruce Licher of Savage Republic) seizes the spontaneity of the moment—somewhere up one of the multitude of dry creek paths and draws snaking out from the canyon’s main area (and up into the hills), he and they are perched. More or less mounted on a limestone outcropping high above everyone else, they Gregorian-chant: “aaahhhhaammmm.. .ooohhmmaaaahoomm...” or some such voweled resonance back and forth, and this lasts for about 20 minutes.

Dusk turns to the black of night and Neubauten finally breaks loose with a no-holdsbarred full-charged cacophony of merchandized audio assault. Power drills, jackhammers and chainsaws scream out agonizingly loud. Lots of agony. The tension of sonic upheaval enjoys a symbiosis of anxious anticipation with those tightly assembled around singer Blixa Bargeld and his “New Machinist” ensemble. The big dipper radiates brightly from the starkly dark and nocturnal mask of the sky way above, the cold and glaring intensity of which Neubauten soaks up and feeds back to thirsty spectators. You close your eyes and imagine Crocus and Pere Ubu evolving to such an endpoint, wondering aloud how tangible this would’ve been as a terminal result; but somehow it’s impossible to visualize. Anarchy of sound this simplistic and selfmotivated could only be a German import|rtime bears this out again and again.

Gregg Turner

THE CREEM CHRONICLE: Where were you five years ago?

CHOKIN'-RAT BLUES

Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof, while discussing the worldly virtues of Rathood, had a turkeybone lodge in his throat. After several shades of unbecoming blues, gag-a-minute Geldof coughed up the culprit. Seems that someone up there likes him...

SPECIMEN I HAVE KNOWN

Alright, everybody—this here’s a pop quiz!

1. Specimen is:

A.) Ollie (vocals), Jon (guitar), Kev (bass), Jonny (keyboards), and Jonathan (drums)—An outrageous new English group.

B.) Rehashing Bowie and T. Rex for a generation of music fans too young to tell the difference. (Today’s 14-year-old was two when Ziggy Stardust came out—chew on that for a while).

C.) That stuff that Mom keeps in Tupperware in the fridge until it’s time for Fido’s next appointment at the vet’s.

2. The Batcave is:

A.) A London club started by Specimen to give themselves and other like-minded bands a place to play.

B.) Carved into the mountain below millionaire Bruce Wayne’s mansion just outside of Gotham City.

C.) Beats me, can I guano the next question?

3. Specimen’s dress style makes them look_:

A.) Tacky. Gorgeous. Classy. Outrageous.

B.) Post-apocalyptic. Postpunk. Like the Munsters.

C.) Like a buncha fuggin’ fruitcakes, if ya ask me!

Now, if you answered “A” to all the above, you’re probably in the band, so you’ll have to be disqualified.

If you answered “B”, you’re obviously a critic. You, too, are disqualified.

Straight “C’s” mean you haven’t been keeping up. Please read the following excerpt from an interview with the band:

How would you describe yourselves to an American audience that might have no idea of what to make of you?

Ollie: “It’s very lively, it’s a lot of fun, it’s all built on this sort of sexual vampirish thing—it’s taken us two and a half years to bring it up to now—it’s very difficult to explain it in two and a half minutes.”

Would you say it’s the real you onstage, or is that some normally hidden aspect of yourself that comes out?

“I don’t think that’s feasible, really—if you just do it on a parttime basis then it’s not real, and I think then you come across as ‘not real’—it can only ever come across as being a laugh.”

I take it you see all this as being MORE than a laugh?

“Yeah, I do. It’s a way of life. We HAVE changed our world we live in—(laughs) we’re not on the dole in England, for a start—we’re actually doing exactly what we want to do.”

What about the people who come to see you — does it change their lives?

“Well, it would seem so. People would come down to the Batcave one week—and there’s nodress restrictions there, it doesn’t matter what people look like—and the next week they’d come back, and suddenly they’ve got make-up all over their face, or shaved the sides of their hair, or whatever. They’ve totally let themselves go, gotten totally excited by something.”

But how much of that is “letting go and being yourself” and how much is becoming more like everyone else?

“It’s all part of growing up, part of discovering themselves. Right now they’re getting a real kick off it and going home to do something about it. \ think that’s really good. I mean, if they look that different, there’s no way they can live a straight and normal life...”

They could always sell popcorn at weekend showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Do the “Time Warp,” anyone?

John Neilson

AUSSIES GO GEEK!

NEW YORK—Hunters and who, you dare ask? This nineman shaman combo are the Mad Maxes of the Aussie rock scene. Formed in 1981 in Melbourne, the birthplace of the infamous Birthday Party, they copped their name from a song by the equally infamous Can, who, they are quick to point out, “is not an influence.” Sure, guys, and I’m Ernest Hemingway.

The Hunters And Collectors sound is a roaring amalgam of psychedelia, “primitive funk,” brutally beefy rhythms and banshee howling, all captured on an American debut LP comprised of tracks from their first, self-titled alb and a follow-up EP called Payload (check those import bins). There’s also a three man horn section—trumpet, trombone and French horn—to jazz it up a bit, although when I tell them they remind me of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk I am greeted with horrified silence.

However embarrassing that might’ve been, brassmen Jeremy Smith, 20, and Michael Walters, 23, take it all in stride. They relate the usual tales of USA roadkfe: endless driving, endless scenery and one endless search for music shops in Detroit, cheerfully described as the “arse-end of the world.”

“It’s a pity that we’ve come along on this Aussie bandwagon,” Waters admits, “but if it hadn’t happened we’d never have gotten here at all.”

Even though their records hit the charts, Hunters And Collectors, like most Australian bands, earn their living from live gigs. And they obviously live for that hour on the stage, to the point where they practically disown their fine studio recordings. “A lot of time in the studio is unproductive,” Waters admits. “I think we’ll finish the next album (with German producer extraordinaire, Conny Plank) in two weeks.”

The Hunters live experience is something like a sonic bloodletting, a ritual rockercism. John Archer (bass) and Doug Falconer (drums) provide demolition rhythms while Greg Perano bashes away on hubcaps and hot water cylinders. Eighteen-yearold Martin Lubrin rips off fierce metallic guitarings that mesh with Geoff Crosby’s icy keyboards. The horns punch in and out with a slightly African lilt and in the center of it all lead vocalist Mark Seymour, resplendent in a modified Mohican and drenched with sweat, growls lyrics about his “yellow tow truck.”

The net effect is other-worldly, almost a post-punk version of the Stooges’ Funhouse. Hunters And Collectors wisely rejects the too-easy categorization of bushmen-funksters, but admit to a slight “Australian element” in some of their lyrics. “There’s this new song we wrote,” Waters explains, “about an incident at the Inland Hotel in Ellis Springs. No one would drink with this poor truck driver at the hotel pub, so he got in his 22 wheeler and drove it through the hotel, killing a couple of people in the process.

“But, I suppose that’s a bit unusual. Even for Australia.”

David Keeps

JULUKA: ROCKING SOUTH AFRICA

NEW YORK—Juluka is a band from South Africa and is comprised of black and white musicians, which is a bit like opening a Jewish deli in Tehran: it might work out, but you’re probably in for a fight. In obvious violation of apartheid principles and much to the disapproval of their government, Juluka has developed a broad multiracial following and has become one of the hottest groups in South Africa. Last fall, Juluka toured the USA in support of Scatterlings, their fourth LP but their first to be released in the States.

Juluka was born of the creative aspirations of guitarist/songwriters Sipho Mchunu, a Zulu, and Johnny Clegg, a white South African of British descent. As teens, the pair became friends despite that country’s apartheid system—in which, Johnny relates, “the whole of your life is run on whether you’re colored or black or white or Indian.” Johnny and Sipho’s friendship was actually against the law.

“I’ve seen a lot of trouble with police,” said Johnny, “coming to take me home to my mother and saying, ‘See, we found your kid. Your kid was with the blacks today.’” Likewise, Sipho has had run-ins with local black authorities for associating with Johnny. Nevertheless, the duo gigged from 1971 as “Johnny and Sipho,” but were forbidden to play in public.

In 1979, Johnny and Sipho recorded their first album, for which they hired a backing band. The songs were more cosmopolitan than those the duo was originally known for, and it seemed the right time for Johnny and Sipho to rename themselves Juluka. They were allowed to perform in public at this point, with the slight relaxation of race laws that followed the 1976 Soweto riots. One post-1976 reform allowed mixed audiences to attend the same concert, but such permission is still hard to receive. Juluka has steadfastly refused to play segregated venues and has turned down thousands of dollars as a result. Johnny comments with pride: “We do not perform for segregated audiences. If you’re a racist promoter you will not get us.” The current South African government tolerates Juluka— as it must back up its claims of “liberalization”—but Johnny is convinced that if a more conservative party comes to power, the band will be doomed.

Still, the lyrics of Juluka songs are a far cry from political diatribes. “We didn’t start off to be a political protest movement,” declares Johnny. “We still aren’t a ‘protest movement’...We are trying to make universal experience in a country which is fragmented. People would like us to be more radical. People want us to engage issues and sing about them. We don’t do that...

“We’ve maintained an independent line.”

Drew Wheeler