MISSING PERSONS: MISSING IN ACTION?

MISSING PERSONS: MISSING IN ACTION?

FEATURES

Laura Fissinger

by

You can almost hear Casey Kasem's voice running down the great American pop mysteries of 1984: Where's Doug Fieger? Will the Jacksons tour in our lifetime? Who will Kenny Rogers do his next duet with? And what's missing from Missing Persons?

They-were, after all, one of the greatest pieces of pop culture we'd seen since the Ramones, albeit a different kind of culchah. Ex-Frank Zappa players say phooey to eSoterica, write pluperfect '80s radio techno-pop, hiccuped and hiyoooed by the pluperfect platinum blonde. No platinum records right off, but the best-selling debut EP to date and a gold debut LP called Spring Session M. Usually it takes a band a few more discs before they become a symbol of Rock's Current Decline, but Missing Persons walked out of El Lay and into disrepute without any detours. The fact that they made some pretty good music in songs like "Words" and "Destination Unknown" was almost beside the point—-they had exactly the right look (MTV loved them) and sound to symbolize New Music, to the delight of some and the dismay of many.

But Rhyme And Reason changes that. I mean, the blonde is still blonde under the pink streaks; the music is Still high tech and high sales. Still, there's some stuff missing—combine that with how good Rhyme And Reason is, and maybe we just don't have Missing Persons to kick around anymore. Missing in action listed below.

1) The hiccups.

If nothing else, Rhyme And Reason will shut up all those people who kept saying that Dale Bozzio was only capable of imitating Lene Lovich and not real well, either. "Then again," says Dale, "one writer said I sounded like a jazz singer scatting in Japanese." Both Dale and the band liked the Japanese jazz, so what changed? "I wanted to make sure I had some great melodies to sing—thanks to Terry for writing them. Other than that, I feel like, on this album, I finally had the chance to utilize some different qualities I have vocally." Maybe Josie Cotton explains better: "I think Dale Bozzio is underrated. She has to be one of the most rhythmical singers I've ever heard, (sigh) I guess that's what you get being married to a drummer."

What am I going to do, my coconuts are crackina!"

Dale Bozzio

2) The dumb blonde, with or without hiccups.

Actually, Bozzio was ashamed to be dumb, thanks to the color of her hair, the hiccups (hasn't she ever heard of a brown paper bag?) and the fractured syntax of her interview quotes. Not so dumb, this pinup, according to an admiring worker at her record company: "She's got her shit together.” And not according to the rest of Missing Persons, who elected Dale to manage the band. "Now we're all in direct communication with the variables, so it's no longer all those middlemen and jumbled communications," says drummer Terry Bozzio, whose orange hair clashes with his wife's pink. "Dale has basically been managing the band since last summer."

Says the manager herself: "We know what we want; we all make the decisions, so I'm the spokeswoman. We're together 24 hours a day, so it's not like you have to call someone to get a decision made. One thing we try to do is step above the ego stuff and being selfish or jealous of one another—we try to let each other be assertive where we do our best jobs, like you would in a marriage or relationship. And we have assistants—secretaries, booking agents, and lots of common sense."

So how nonsensical was it? "When we made Spring Session M, we were in the middle of touring as well, so we had to run out, play dates, come back, do a track, then go back to a gig. It got put together in dribs and drabs, maybe a little quicker than we really wanted to do it. But we had to get it out following the EP, fast, just to establish our name. Since that last LP it's been a year, and we paced ourselves to do this one right."

Are people going to give Dale credit for doing it right, though? "We've had trouble in the past with critics, and maybe even a lot of people who didn't buy our records," understates guitarist Warren Cuccurulo, who has regulation brown hair and looks very strange sitting between Dale and Terry. "They just looked at us superficially, Saying, 'aw, they have a pretty girl in the band, it's a girl band and they don't really care about what they're doing.' "

Dale extends a perfect set of red fingernails across the table and taps.

"People never asked me what I looked like! They derived that feeling from looking at a picture, which they took at its surface value, only. They didn't really delve into what my heart says or what I really feel. I've enjoyed it anyway, it's been very comedic to me. A lot of really interesting comments."

So who says you can't dress for success in plexiglass brassieres?

3) The eighth notes.

Terry explains: "I just think the approach on the first LP was a little narrower. We'd always had the synth bass lines with the eighth notes, and this time we've diversified and incorporated so much more of the things we grew up playing—lots more jazz, classical, funk."

Yes, funk. "This record is more funky than the last ones, and that's due to Patrick O'Hearne's bass playing. Besides, me and Patrick and Warren have all played jazz professionally—this band has people who used to be in Herbie Hancock's band, or with Eddie Henderson, Joe Henderson—Patrick played with Tony Williams, who's one of the greatest jazz drummers around. I 2 love to listen to Miles Davis and £John Coltrane—these people are really % some of our biggest influences, but -5 it's something we didn't make prevalent in the first album. We J wanted to this time." a 4) The so-so sound.

& Terry explains again: "This time we produced ourselves, and we had an excellent co-producer and engineer Bruce Swedien, who won a Grammy for working on Michael Jackson's Thriller. He's worked with Quincy Jones a lot. We just went in with the songs, and he liked the music, so he joined up. We loved him—he felt such a good rapport. He's the kind of guy who can make all the little integral parts and intricacies come out. Because our music is put together from an arrangement standpoint, that was important."

"All the parts were worked out in preproduction," Warren footnotes. "So when we got in with Bruce, he had the technical ability to make all the parts stand out but not clutter the sound so that Dale's voice could still be the focal point. And we weren't hurrying the process, which helped too."

TURN TO PAGE 57

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25

5)The so-so songs.

Terry: “We’re probably overly aware of the problem of form overwhelming feeling, because of the exacting way we work. We know it can get heartless. It doesn’t matter how good the musicians are—if the substance isn’t there, it really doesn’t mean anything.”

And yes, more than a few of Rhyme And Reason’s songs have heart. Dale: .“Waiting For A Million Years” and “All Fall Down” are antiwar songs, without coming right out and saying let’s not blow up the world.”

“We’re not getting on a podium saying we have answers,” Terry continues, “All we’re doing is drawing attention to some problems and possibilities because we feel responsible for people who, whether we like it or not, are influenced by us. They go away and sing these little songs and they have these little licks going around in their heads, and we think there should be some phrases that have something. That’s what ‘All Fall Down’ is about—who knows what the hell is really going on in South America or any of those places—would you really believe Reagan or the junta or the death squads or the communists or any of them?”

6) Punky Meadows.

This section is fondly dedicated to everyone who really thought Dale Bozzio really thought plexiglass brassieres were sexy. Skin-tight leopard spandex is supposed to be sexy; plexiglass is not. As for what’s supposed to be Dale Bozzio’s gig, in or out of plexiglass, it doesn’t fill up Dale’s head nearly as much anymore. “When they tell me I’m like Gracie Allen, I don’t see it, but that’s fine. If they tell me I’m like Joan Rivers that’s fine, I think she’s terrific. She dyed her hair blue once, you know. I don’t know where they get all the comparisons, but they’re OK with me. More than anything else I appreciate the fact that they would bother to mention anything about me, especially if it’s in a comedic fashion. When they talk about tits and ass, well, I think that’s a little rude. As far as the costumes go, they let me express myself in an artistic fashion, and I don’t think that’s to be demeaned in any way. There are people who wear bathing suits scantier than my costumes. I’m not the flaunting type. I can’t be, because I live from the inside out, not the outside in. That’s a little different than some of their anagrams of what I’m about. Maybe some of those critics think that being show-biz is a sign of insecurity.”

Terry looks rueful. “I don’t think some of those people have taken the time to really look at the people involved and what we’re all about, and that’s something we’re all guilty of.”

This isn’t going to be the Missing Persons’ grey flannel tour, is it??? “No,” says Dale. “It’s going to be wilder costumes this time. The designs just happen as they happen, they’re not premeditated. The ideas come to me, then I just take out the yellow pages and go where I have to. One time I made a costume out of a poster we found on Melrose Avenue. I made one really great outfit out of coconuts when we played Magic Mountain, hooked together with burlap and leather and some other stuff. Then just before we were going on, the coconuts started cracking, because I’d enameled them all. I said ‘what am I gonna do, my coconuts are cracking!’ Someone said ‘go on, they’ll hold!’ And they did.” All three of them roll their eyes. “You know, I still have that Punky Meadows outfit that I made out of Angel 45s. If Punky wants to borrow it, he should call me. Punky, we’re looking for you. Tell him we ran out of White Rain hairspray.”

7) Hatchet jobs.

“We just started doing press again,” says Terry with an almost puzzled look on his face. “I must admit that the last few interviews we’ve done have really been great. There’s been such a different response—it’s not like we had to go out and sell ourselves and say ‘this is what we did to get to this point.’ In the first round of interviews, almost everyone made us defend ourselves. This time, people have been so intuitive about what we’re actually saying, and so taken aback that we could have the concern to say what we’re saying, to stand up for it and live for it.”

Warren looks confused, too. “The great thing is that they are actually paying attention to the record and listening to the music. Every one who’s interviewed us so far has said that this record is a really big step for us. They’re actually listening!”

And before they weren’t? Really? “Well, songs like ‘Mental Hopscotch’ and ‘I Like Boys’ and ‘Walking In L.A.’ were the ones that bubbled to the top last time, and people got the wrong impression,” Terry explains. “But songs like ‘Destination Unknown’ and ‘Bad Streets’ and ‘No Way Out’ and ‘U.S. Drag’—a lot of those said some interesting things, and they were just bypassed.

The interesting ones on Rhyme And Reason probably won’t get bypassed—there’s just too many of them. The Band Most Likely To Be An Easy Target is making itself a little clearer, robbing the naysayers of a verbal dartboard but giving everybody else the pleasure of a Top 40 band that has some chops and heart. Up close and personal, it’s the heart that gets you—shut your eyes for a minute and it’s a time warp, the sweetness of the three leaders rivaling any peace-and-love family band that good-vibed in the ’60s. Dale and Terry say in unison, “We take care of each other,” and you believe them. Maybe Funky Meadows is the only thing missing, right now. w5