BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Born In The U.S.A.

(Columbia)

by Jeff Nesin

The first thing you notice, after Annie Leibovitz’s wonderful photographs, is the Steve Lillywhite-like echoed garbage cans drum sound. With a mixmaster (Bob Clearmountain) and a production committee of four (Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Steve Van Zandt), it’s hard to say just how Max Weinberg’s tubs got to sounding the way they do, but it’s definitely a good thing, because a sense of pop currency is important, no, essential to the success of Born In The U.S.A.

Essential because the next thing you notice is how down, as in “down, down, down” the songs are. Not quite Nebraska s acoustic meditations on mass murder, but it is all “Dead End Street” with no “Waterloo Sunset.” The unrelieved dourness got me down, down, down too, so I raised the question with several orthodox Bruceites of my acquaintance, most of whom are women. While they did indeed know what I was talking about, they also seemed tuned in to the Boss on a level unknown to literal minded chumps like me, a level at which they could hear the very same songs as ultimately affirmative. Hmmm...

The title track is a bitterly ironic cry of a Vietnam vet whose life has been inexplicably gutted by something that happened more than a decade ago; “Cover Me,” a simple plea for shelter from the storm, starts “Times are tough now/Just getting tougher...”; the narrators of “Darlington County” and “Working On The Highway” both end up on the wrong side of the law for no special reason, while the narrator of the haunting “Downbound Train,” as far from upward mobility as a man can get, is seen on his knees mourning for lost love, lost work, lost life. Lost; and “I’m On Fire” sounds like nothing so much as taxi driver DeNiro’s love song to his perfect blonde obsession. (There’s even a thanks to Paul Schrader, Hollywood’s avatar of working class apocalypse, on the inner sleeve.)

Still, the next thing you notice, maybe the last thing, is how indelibly hummable most of these songs are. When, after two days, 1 caught myself singing the coruscating chorus of “Born In The U.S.A.,” I realized that, as usual, the men don’t know what the little girls understand: most every track here could thrive on the radio, regardless of subject matter. Hits, after all are heavier than somber thoughts. Springsteen is writing and singing closer to John Fogerty than anyone since John moved up to the ranch and, for me, this is the highest praise I can lavish on a record. Any Fogerty comparison requires radio-readiness, and there are several worthy successors to the estimable “Dancing In The Dark” jockeying for position in my brain. Prime candidates include Bruce’s warm farewell to Miami (Little) Steve(n), “Bobby Jean” on which Clarence Clemons, almost an endangered species on this record, blows mightily (fine glockenspiel, too!) and the improbably jaunty “I’m Goin’ Down” in which a playful rock ’n’ roll vocal overcomes a most unplayful, depressing lyric.

Finally, the most meaningful question for an LP like Born In The U.S.A. is, is it worth its wait, is it worth its popularity? My answer is absolutely yes. If I don’t, in my secret heart, agree with Bruce Springsteen that extraordinary individual will and passion can somehow overcome bleak-to-no prospects these songs will still be good to hear in the months to come. And if Springsteen, in his secret heart, knows he has to find a better metaphor for aging than “hearts of fire grow cold” (or worse, like father, like...), I’m sure that his upcoming live-till-’85 touring will help both him and the multitudes flocking to see him feel younger and better able to cope. So, however dark its core, I’m glad to have Born In The U.S.A. You don’t have to be Bruceish to love it.

THE HUMAN LEAGUE Hysteria (A&M)

Well, I guess the Human League simply had to put out a full album this time. After all, they shot their wad in the LP department last year and to try that configuration again would be tantamount to a signed confession that all this crew has to offer the world is bits and pieces of nirvana. As a result the band’s new, regulation-length LP (like their 1982 U.S debut) is a collaboration of several clear glimpses of hookheaven, surrounded by a vast expanse of total swill. So OK, the Human League is a swinging singles band. But, luckily, even if much of the group’s music misses, at least when it hits it’s a total k.o.

The Human League’s first big smasheroo, “Don’t You Want Me,” was great for a whole slew of reasons: 1) it was unbelievably catchy; 2) it had “historical value,” proving that synth-drenched “new music” could mean big bucks; 3) it scored populist points by way of the Jane Q. Public female singer; and 4) it was uncommonly heavy on lyrical plot, giving each lover’s point of view, and creating on the whole, one of the fullest modern pop story lines outside of the last batch of Squeeze songs. The song’s lyrical depth hinted that Human League might indeed be able to escape from the planet of the 45s. But, taking that LP all together, it was clear that what defined Human League as a beleaguered singles band wasn’t just the spotty material but also the fact that even in their hot numbers, the hooks made a much deeper dent than the I.D. of shallow, hammy Phil Oakey or the band. This immediately set Human League apart from some other problematic synth-pop bands, like Eurythmics, who have “album-artist” depth-ofcharacter but “singles-artist” hookconsistency, or the Thompson Twins, who, as far as I’m concerned, have nothing at all.

Still, for Human League, the “song-not-the-singer” approach has served them well. “Fascination” and “Mirror Man” from last year’s EP featured some undeniably irresistible hooks, and now the new Hysteria gives us “I’m Coming Back,” with the crisp female backups and snappy rhythm, “Life On Your Own,” which has a chorus I might even describe as elegant, and the strong melodic “Louise,” featuring as detailed a plot line as “Don’t You Want Me.” (Even Phil Oakey’s vocal reading here, while schmaltzy, still winds up kinda tear-jerky.)

Of course, a band that’s been as successful singles-wise as Human League wants to do all they can on each album to prove they have real SUBSTANCE, and this, unfortunately, leads to “The Lebanon.” Not only does it sport guaranteed “relevant” lyrics, it also tries to shake up the band’s synth rep with some Big Country-style slash ’n’ hash guitar lines. While the guitars do have a certain appeal, the vocal line is complete bland-out and the overall effect is none too credible. Most of the rest of the record isn’t even that distinctively bad, just predictable, like “Rock Me Again And Again And Again And Again And Again And Again,” a song whose sole redeeming value is that its title allows me to waste almost as much space in this review as Human League did on this LP.

Still, I find it hard to get really angry at the Human League. Yes, the Consumer Reports angle should warn you that an entire long-player by these folks hardly offers value-formoney. But these humans continue to offer something-akin-to-soul, in spots. And even if the band isn’t in the same league as full 33 and a third artists, their small pleasures can still shake some action of their own

Jim Farber

LOU REED New Sensations (RCA)

Unlike Rodney Dangerfield, Lou Reed gets quite a bit of respect. Heck, he gets respect from people who don’t normally respect anyone. What he doesn’t get are sales and, these days, much slack. I mean, no sooner does this LP show its face than its finds it heels being yapped at by vital new vinyl from Dream Syndictate and the Violent Femmes, the abrasive new breed of Reed on the block.

Whether Lou himself is aware of this or if he even cares, I’d have to guess; I just don’t know. Since around the time of The Bells and Crowing Up In Public, he’s concentrated on getting his own life— including his guitar playing—together and writing about that instead of detailing the ups and downs of down-and-outs and gutter glams.

Now I’d be the last person to try to limit Lou to scrounging around the bottom of the NYC barrel for inspiration, but when you’re looking at your own life, there are potential problems you must be wary of. One is that if you’re living the kind of hum-drum, day-to-day existence that most of us do, your songs are likely to reflect that, and too many of the songs here do just that. “Down At The Arcade,” “High In The City,” “Doin’ The Things That We Want To Do,” and “My Friend George” are agreeably lightweight but are neither slick nor catchy enough to capture the ears of the uncommitted.

Then there are those times when your life is exploding all around you and your inspiration’s boiling hot but your perspective is not. Perspective has always been one of Lou’s strong points—how else could he chronicle the sordid scenes around him without falling victim himself?—but it’s extremely hard to keep the same artistic distance from your own life as it is from the lives of those around you. So on last year’s Legendary Hearts, some strong writing was undermined by questionable production—lead bass when you’ve got Robert Quine in the band??— and Reed’s all-too-real vocal limitations. The main exception, for me, was “Bottoming Out,” one of the best bike songs ever, ’cause it dealt with real stuff like consequences instead of just dealing out another image/ego fix.

But that was last year. On New Sensations, there are three tunes that keep me coming back for more. “Endlessly Jealous,” which explores the problems brought on by cycles of obsession, is one of Lou’s best marital hassle tunes and should be covered immediately by someone mature enought to handle it. After that, he lightens up; “My Red Joystick” is a funny piece of funk, and “Turn To Me” sends up the whole lean-on-me tradition with lines like, “If your father is freebasing/And your mother’s turning tricks...” Cracks me up every time.

One tune that doesn’t crack me up is the one called “What Becomes A Legend The Most,” which seems obliquely to be about how ridiculous the life of a touring “star” is. Probably true, but from my perspective, what would become this particular legend most would be finding a producer/collaborator whom he could trust to tell him what really works and what doesn’t. Sometimes that’s as hard as finding a good woman who’ll put up with you for life, but, unless it happens, I’ve got a feeling we’ll be getting more and more uneven albums from this artist in the future. Happens to the best of ’em—even Lou Reed.

Michael Davis

RUN-D.M.C.

(Profile)

A trio of street teens from the shadows of Shea Stadium who bear out ex-Met manager Casey Stengel’s enthusiasm about the Youth of America? No, it’s not pheenoms Darryl Strawberry or Dwight Gooden we’re talking ’bout here, folks, but a pair of 19-year-old rappers who go by the aliases D. J. Run and D. J. D.M.C., backed by turntable scratcher Jam Master Jay. What sets these three Hollis, Queens kids apart from the competition is their triedand-true middle class val-eios; unlike most rappers, Run-D.M.C. don’t boast about their baad selves or their sexual prowess, but rather about getting credit cards and attending St. John’s Un-i-ver-si-tee/

The rap against rap has been similar to the knocks endured by reggae, disco and even heavy metal: it all begins to sound the same after awhile. In addition, the stark rhythm machine DMX thump-and-drive of rapping is best suited to the 12" extended dance single formula; over the course of an entire LP, the approach wears awfully thin. Until this self-titled debut, that is, a conceptual rap album, which combines three smash singles—“Hard Times,” “Rock Box” and “It’s Like That”—into one seamless party-hearty disc that doesn’t lose it in translation from the dance floor to your living room.

Run-D.M.C. gets off to a running start with the state-of-the-union anthem, “Hard Times,” less despairing and bitter than “The Message,” though every bit as neo-realistic in its depiction of Reagan’s Amerika. But it is “Rock Box,” the second cut, which vaults the barrier, a searing rap rocker with a rumbling metallic guitar solo from ex-Blondie sideman Eddie Martinez that does for hip-hop what Eddie Van Halen’s run did for Michael Jackson—bringing it to a whole new audience. Run (Joseph Simmons) and D.M.C. (Daryll McDaniels) toss verses back and forth, while waves of Hendrix power chords bounce off a pulsating boombox beat from scratcher extraordinaire Jay (Jason Mysel)."

Things simmer down a little after that, though the rhythmic momentum and lyrical savvy is maintained through the self-referential toasting of “Jam Master Jay,” “Hollis Crew” and “Sucker M.C.’s,” the rap equivalent to “Hey, Hey We’re The Monkees” and every bit as charming. Side two is enlivened by the inclusion of “It’s Like That,” a noble paean to the streets which cuts through depressing to take a positive stand.

Rap has been, up until recently, mainly an urban phenomenon, but its influence is beginning to be felt in the heartlands, thanks to breakdancers in Burger King and Puma commercials and motion pictures like Breakin’ and Beat Street. The exploitation has already begun and it will become increasingly difficult to tell the Real Thing from its inevitable Capitalist Co-option. That said, Run-D.M.C. ain’t no rip-off. Seek this mutha out, because, well, it’s like that. That’s the way it is.

Roy Trakin

ULTRAVOX Lament (Chrysalis)

This is absolutely the most boring album I’ve dealt with on a full review basis since Elton John’s Blue Moves, and since that one features four whole sides of dozers, you can well imagine the narcoleptic achievement of Ultravox’s single disc. I’ll admit that I draw a blank, not only from this group’s own emotional blankness, but also from the way the band’s appeal has spread the last few years. In the beginning (1977), Ultravox was one of the more interesting sidelights of that frantic British Invasion season; while the group obviously had little to do with the punk raging all around, the sight of grown boys dressing up in ladies’ vinyl macs to play synthesizers suggested classic garage-band goofiness. Frontman John Foxx’s Howdy-Doody-inbondage poses were always good for a laff, too; it looked like he wanted to puncture the British pop Establishment with self-parody rather than a common safety pin.

Foxx, unfortunately, meant every world-weary grimace, though, as it became clear when he deserted his sidemen-at-best mates several years later. Even more unfortunately, the decapitated Ultravox chose to soldier on in that awful Genesis-featuringPhil Collins showbiz tradition. Enter vocalist Midge Ure, more of a comrade-in-limitations with Messrs. Currie, Cross, and Cann, and it wasn’t long until the work-ethic success of “Vienna.” Suddenly Ultravox was being toasted as accessible exponents of the doomy, elegant Europop Bryan Ferry never really could sell to the lumpen Yanks.

If, however, you’re one of those to whom “Vienna” wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced life, then Lament is even less of that same new Ultravox formula: sober chords, parmesan-cheese-shaker percussion, randomly distanced vocals, and finally that synth-goosed, semi-soaring, mock-heroic chorus such as the printout on “White China” and likewise for “One Small Day,” the other single-bait on this set. Same for “Man Of Two Worlds,” as big a Statement (most of the lyrics content’s in the title itself) as we may ever get from these guys.

And the crowning irony about these bland pokerfaces is that at their most coherent, they tend to echo precisely those U.S. poppers they d probably despise out of hand. Ever notice how Quartet’s “Serenade” sounds exactly like Neil Diamond? Well, Lament’s “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” is a dead ringer for Styx. Since these suave Englishmen undoubtedly spend their free time engaged in such ennobling activities as being fitted for jodhpurs, I doubt that they’ve had the opportunity to even find out who Neil Diamond is, much less to try and “imitate” him or Styx. Guess it’s just one more miraculous case of Great Minds working independently and arriving at parallel conclusions!

Richard Riegel

GARY GLITTER The Leader (Epic)

A decade or so ago England was besieged by a bunch of upstart bands who had a field day whipping up boisterous metallic concoctions of hard rock and bubblegum. Among the perpetrators of this feverish movement were the Sweet, Mud, Suzie Quatro, Gary Glitter, the Rubettes, T-Rex and Slade. Across the seas, they took turns being the toast of Limeyland and racked up big hits; over here they flopped miserably save for the very occasional AM breakthrough.

Gary Glitter was one of the lucky few to make it onto U.S. airwaves, earning himself instant one-hit wonder status in ’72 with the relentlessly mindless “Rock And Roll—Part Two.” Back then it was one of my pet radio peeves. It wasn’t until I heard it precede a Dictators concert that I became smitten by it and found myself happily bellowing “Hey!” along with a multitude of Handsome Dick Manitoba aficionados.

And, lest you think Mr. Glitter only struck gold with that sublime exercise in cacophony, The Leader should damn well set you straight. It’s a superior greatest-hits-plus overview of one of rock’s most neglected rabble rousers. On the basis of this unrepentantly raucous compilation, it’s quite clear that G.G. was (and probably still is; he’s plotting a comeback these days) a true master of over-the-top noisemaking.

His hottest sides were usually the originals he co-wrote with producer Mike Leander—who loved to raunch up the sound every chance he got— and on his best stuff, Glitter sounds like a gleeful madman spearheading neanderthal pep rallies. You better believe it sounds wild. “Rock And Roll—Part One” (with a few token lyrics thrown in) is instant soundtrack music for hot parties. On the wonderfully titled “I Didn’t Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock And Roll),” Glitter takes the band on the warpath in between lunging declarations of affection, while “I’m The Leader Of The Band (I Am)” is like some twisted combination of an accelerating locomotive and a youthon-the-march beer blast. Speaking of on-the-march, those only familiar with Joan Jett’s version of “Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)” may well be trampled by the steamy lust of the original. And if you’re looking for slow grind splendor, then “I Love You Love Me Love” should be the heavy breathing haven of your dreams.

“It’s good to be back” Gary Glitter shouts ecstatically (and repeatedly) on “Hello Hello I’m Back Again.” I for one couldn’t agree more. Crank it.

Craig Zeller

GREG KIHN BAND Kinhtagious (Beserkely)

It’s a day before deadline and I don’t have the heart to write this review. Seeing as how you guys are always sending in letters telling us how you could do what we do with your brain on the spin cycle—well, here’s your chance, sports fans. The record is Kihntagious, and the man of the hour is Greg Kihn. Remember, I’m counting on you.

You might know Kihn first only from “The Break-Up Song” (the one with the cool “uh-uh”s and “they don’t write ’em like that anymore”). For sure you know him at least from last year’s “Jeopardy”—such a big hit that Weird A1 Yankovic’s new single is “I Lost On Jeopardy.” Hit records are nothing to get sentimental about, I know—it’s the eight years plus of the all-American rock life that Kihn lived before the big time that gets to me. He did the bar circuit in the Bay area for most of that time, and you know how preposterously rough and low-dough that is. And, before that, it was quarters tossed in the guitar case on the Berkeley campus. Before the LP with “Jeopardy” (Kihnspiracy) on it, there were plenty Kihn album releases, albums which helped build up a rabid but small cult following via good cuts like “Sorry,” “Happy Man,” “Madison Avenue,” “Testify,” and “Every Love Song.” The first real blast of notoriety came from a version of Bruce Springsteen’s “For You,” with the Boss himself liking it enough to jam with Kihn at clubs. When there were finally some real sales with “The Break-Up Song,” it seemed like one of the most justified payoffs in rock ’n’ roll history: Here was the California bar rocker with the Dennis the Menace smile who kept doing five-piece rock ’n’ roll four sets a night through disco, heavy metal, punk, and every other music biz Eve flashing her apple. And he finally made it. Kihntagious is the first post-success album, and on the basis of the above fairy tale and happy ending it deserves a good review. Which I can’t really give it, spin cycle and happy endings aside.

First of all, tell me what you think about Kihn’s voice on this record, because I can’t hear it. And I think Kihn has a perfect voice for poprock, ballads or floorboard breakers. Here, for undetermined reasons, it’s buried in the mix. So the lyrics aren’t too clear either, of course, even the ones that sound interesting (“Make Up,” “Trouble With The Girl,” “Worst That Could Happen”). There’s more of the style-borrowing he’s done so well with on the last few records (Stones stuff on “Hard Times,” reggae in “Confrontation Music,” funk on “One Thing About Love” and “Rock,” Tex-barrel boogie on “Work Work Work,” ’50s strolling in “Cheri Baby”). But, for me anyway, there’s something missing—some kind of ass-kicking, or at the very least some pinching. If you’ve seen Kihn live you know he does plenty of that on a stage, but Kihntagious is not a stage and I am not tough enough to play critic with it. More than a few of the tough ones have said that Kihn is just a real nice guy who plays fun shows and does one or two good songs per LP. 1 happen to agree with them, but ruining fairy tales is not one of my strong suits.

Laura Fissinger

ELVIS'S STICKY WICKETS

ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE ATTRACTIONS Goodbye Cruel World (Columbia)

by Mitchell Cohen

It’s almost Elvis Costello and the distractions this time out. Goodbye Cruel World, LP #10 (here in America, at least), has such a desperate busyness to it that it’s tough to get a fix on its strengths. The arrangements are so errant from the thrust of the material, it’s as though—to go to the West End of the moment—The Real Thing were directed in the manner of Noises Off. The comparison isn’t as random as all that, actually; like Tom Stoppard, Costello gets simply dizzy over the possibilities of language. There’s a silent chuckle when he tosses off a particularly satisfying rhyme or lobs a potent little word grenade over the fence. In The Real Thing, Stoppard has his playwright/hero say, “What we’re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock it might...travel.”

That could be Costello’s credo, and on Goodbye Cruel World there are some exemplary demonstrations of his passionate dedication to craft (or crafty dedication to passion; either will do). “The Only Flame In Town” uses flammatory imagery the way “Everyday I Write The Book” took a literary metaphor and ran with it—it’s equally clever, and honestly felt—but it bounces all over the place, almost dribbles away. It’s too good a song to get loose, but Costello and his producers (Langer & Winstanley again) don’t trust it enough. How can an album with so many first-rate songs—-“Inch By Inch,” “Worthless Thing,” “Home Truth” and “Peace In Our Time” are very worthy additions, by any yardstick, to the increasingly impressive Costello canon—go so far astray? The Attractions click into place from time to time, on the whirling gothic mockcocktail jazz of “Inch By Inch,” for example, but the Langer/Winstanley team, more often, can’t find the handle.

The runamuck tone of the LP is particularly surprising because it follows Costello’s spring tour, a series of solo recitals. The show was a riveting recap, and introduced a bunch of the songs that’ve turned up on Goodbye Cruel World. (After the tour came another brilliant “Imposter” import single, “Peace In Our Time,” in the tradition of “Pills And Soap” and “Shipbuilding,” b/w a solo version of Richard Thompson’s “Withered And Died.”) Why, then, does the elaborateness of the subsequent record remind one of Revolver? (The Beatles song he did in concert was “Yes It Is,” and his Dylan selection was “I Threw It All Away.” Don’t you wish you were there? Pester Columbia for a live album; you won’t be sorry.)

All right, enough about what Goodbye Cruel World isn’t? Well, except for “Peace In Our Time,” it has the most side-twoish side two of any EC LP yet; songs such as “Joe Porterhouse” and “Sour Milk-Cow Blues” are the kinds of things that were floating around on EPs and flips of singles until collated on Taking Liberties.The album also continues

Costello’s explorations into waltz time (no contemporary pop composer save Sondheim has taken us for so many waltzes), and the elegant romanticism it implies contrasts nicely with his unsparing observations of domestic strife. As far as I can recall, this is the first time Elvis II has gone on record re Elvis I, and he also mentions Frank Sinatra, who, by the way, should be diving head first into the Elvis II songbook (“Kid About It,” “Almost Blue” and “The Only Flame In Town,” just for starters) instead of bothering with Alan & Marilyn Bergman.

“I hung up the phone tonight/ Just as you said ‘I love you’/Once this would have been coincidence/Now these things start to bother me.” Lovely. The melodies glide like Hans Brinker, while the ice is about to crack. He’s loquacious and audacious (see, it’s contagious), and his antennae are always out to catch bullying intimidations, political or emotional (or cultural: some people have already called “Worthless Thing” his anti-MTV diatribe; I’m not so sure, but I wouldn’t dismiss the interpretation). Like Punch The Clock, Goodbye Cruel World is a jumble, lacking the focus of his best works (albums 1 through 4 and 8 on my scorecard), and much of it goes kablooey. My advice is to disregard the sideshow and concentrate on what’s going on in the center ring.

THE SYSTEM X-Periment (Atlantic)

Credit Mic Murphy and David Frank for coming up with something uh, a little different down in their basement science lab. I mean, Thomas Dolby can work the current and fiddle with the gadgets all afternoon and get blinded only by the light of his own flash-in-the-pan. But even Mr. Wizard never dreamed of the kind of better-living-throughscience singer/guitarist Murphy and synth-man Frank engineer on their two-man unit the System’s new album, X-Periment. This is a replicant pop-funk record, the second from a group whose radical beatmongering was kept under wraps during years of sidemanship until the duo figured out how to get it to jamdown on command.

It all started with the single from last year’s Sweat LP, “You Are In My System,” a surprising bit of funk from the digital frontier which perked up a lot of ears. The new X-Periment isn’t just another journey into the silicon valley night, though; far more than its predecessor, X-Periment shows how varied the System’s talents are. Where the first album grooved on fizzy repetitions, XPeriment focuses on songmanship.

Nowhere is this more convincingly demonstrated than on “Promises Can Break,” a song both miles-away from the butt-bursting “You Are In My System” and the sweetest thing to come out in months. “Promises” has no shortage of thump, but the beat’s nested in the heartbreak of Murphy’s singing and a lushly textured arrangement. Other, more upbeat songs like “I Wanna Make You Feel Good” and “Bad Girl” similarly reel out a groove while hemming it in with songwriting that never makes the beat so pop that it fails to put wheels under your feet. By the time it ends, it’s clear that Murphy and Frank are in a league with such funk arrangers as Chic’s Rodgers and Edwards and the Material crew.

And, ultimately, it’s as arrangers that the System succeeds. They know how to get your Adam’s Apple vibrating with a strategicallyplaced synth-drum pattern, but just as often they show they know how to melt down the synthesizer and syn-drum’s affinity for freak-out, and how to coax from the machinery gentler electronic sounds. When they’re talking about affairs of the heart, they can throb. And when it’s time to motivate, Dave and Mic hop into their own little red Corvette and floor it like the Knightrider. XPeriment has the synthetic and organic so completely wrapped around each other that the question isn’t is this plugged-in beast alive? The Question is rather; is it friendly? And, oh yes, it is.

RJ Smith

KILLER PUSSY Bikini Wax (Sho-Pink)

Was it Allen Ginsberg who once said: “I’ve got nothing to say and I’m saying it.”? Or was it a member of Killer Pussy, a severely limited fivesome from Arizona, the state that gave us Barry Goldwater and where they turned the London Bridge into a desert tourist attraction? Pretty savvy folk, those Sunset Staters. Or was it California where they stuck that British span? No matter. Killer Pussy got popular in California.

Well, not that popular, since the sky isn’t exactly the limit when you sing about herpes, whacking off, dildo desire and earwigs. And when your record company is called ShoPink. In fact, Killer Pussy even managed to have a mini-cult hit, “Teenage Enema Nurses In Bondage,” which, if one is to believe liner notes, was hailed as “wonderful” by no less an authority on snatch & sniff rock than Adam Ant himself. (Hope you’re reading this, Jamie Lee.)

“Enema Nurses” isn’t on this LP, though, and of the eight meager cuts included (two of which are hapless instrumental retreads), none is likely to become a classic, even at the Club “O” Fantasy Manor. It isn’t just that the music and arrangements are threadbare (what comes below minimalist anyway?) or that the wit is about as welcome as an unsightly discharge. It isn’t even that lead singer Lucy LaMode sounds like a cross between Dodie (“Pink Shoelaces”) Stevens and your average shoat in heat. Who knows what it is—but you could probably achieve the same results by playing a Tubes album backwards.

Oh, on first listen, you might muster up a few chuckles during “Pocket Pool” and the title track, though you’ll probably wonder why any band would bother to satirize the Beach Boys. And if you’ve ever had irksome mites crawling along your Eustachian tubes, you’ll no doubt appreciate “Rockabilly Earwig,” with its “Blue Suede Shoes” riffs and evocative lyrics: “They’re in my bed! They’re on my clothes! They’re in my fishnet pantyhose!” But one song or even one couplet doesn’t make an album and repeated exposures to Bikini Wax may cause blindness or the forming of hair follicles on a person’s palms.

Nice cover, though, and, judging from the photo inside, Lucy might be worth a wax job.

Edouard Dauphin

THE RESTLESS Restless (PolyGram)

I was up in my room, pacing back and forth, to and fro, ogling a bootleg poster of Nena and humming “99 Luft Balloons On The Wall.” I was down to three Luft Balloons, wondering what I was going to hum next. I started getting nervous as a massive constricting pain began balling up inside my head. Oh god, I realized, it was that time of the month again. My mental period was due, my ears were swelling, and here 1 was fresh outta aural tampons as a result of the scare because of that new disease the doctors just discovered, toxic sonic syndrome— that crippling affliction that makes you wanna wear ties, listen to old Wayne Newton albums, and root around in the mud for sacred truffles to place at the feet of Brooke Shields. As the pain began to get worse 1 began to get restless and as the restlessness grew into a thing of beauty, I decided to wrist shot a record onto my $200 Sears Combination Eight-Track Stereo Cassette Radio Low-Yield Nuclear Device and Cigarette Lighter. Now I could really enjoy the pain of restlessness by listening to the Restless and their debut album, Restless.

Now, restless as defined in the dictionary means, “without quiet, repose, or rest; incapable of or opposed to resting and relaxing; never still or motionless.” Add to this the word explosive and you’ve got yourself an encapsulated description of what these guys—who hail from Buffalo, N.Y. where rock’s holy ghost can still be seen tittupping down the streets of the night with a bottle of Molson’s Golden in one hand and a ghetto blaster in the other—sound like.

Sure, you could sit back and make all the damn comparisons you want as to who they sound like, but so what? At this point in rock ’n’ roll time you can do that with just about every new band that comes along. They’re all derivative; it’s just a matter of whether or not they’re derivative of bands like the early Stones, the N.Y. Dolls or Iggy Pop—which the

Restless are—or bands like Chicago, ELO, or (excuse me while 1 put a finger down my throat ala Joan Rivers) Yes.

From the first chunka-chunka rhythms of “She’s So Fine,” you know you’re hearing something special, something that goes beyond the usual nova-burst excitement of a band recording their first album, something possessing a confident edge, something called rock ’n’ roll.

“I Wanna Know” is the single off the album and it’s a fine showcase of their talent, not as exciting as “She’s So Fine,” which oughta be the chart chomper when it’s released, but certainly good enough to get bongoed to. The band’s most ambitious effort is “Wildcall,” hookathon of major proportions. It’s the kind of song that stays with you for days and days—I actually found myself humming it at the supermarket the other.

About the only thing I can honestly say in closing is that it is certainly nice to be enthusiastic about a band again. Look into the Restless and you too can be standing on the edge with rock’s holy ghost, passing the Molson’s and glomming onto the innocence of new blood.

Joe (Send in the Clowns) Fernbacher

LEROI BROTHERS Forget About The Danger, Think Of The Fun (Columbia)

To catch the drift of the LeRoi Brothers, think SSW. Think barbecue. Think roadhouse. Think Tony Lamas and beard stubble. The LeRois’ first LP, Check This Action, recorded for Amazing Records with roughly the current lineup (bassist Jackie Newhouse had yet to materialize, so they borrowed Keith Ferguson from the Fabulous Thunderbirds), lodged itself firmly in the Texas-Louisiana bar circuit tradition. Its 12 ill-produced, rashlyconceived cuts clung together like one long, loose, screechy, saturated beerhall stomp.

Then came the signing to CBS. If by now you’ve got your mind’s eye fixed on the big sky and lone prairie, start thinking NNE. Think mall. This “debut mini-LP” had the Brothers pitching a tent in the Stray Cats’ backyard or some other suburban outskirts of rockabilly revivalism. Their CBS bio acknowledges that critics were struck by the indie effort “even though (it was) a bit on the primitive side.” Well I’ll be. Even though. I thought “primitive” was what was happening about this band. All gone on Forget About The Danger, Think Of The Fun, all tidied up. Someone corrected the tempos. Someone tamed the guitars so everything comes in on cue, interlaces properly and dosen’t yak about.

And, most depressingly, someone went and subtracted all the loco from the tunes. Off this disc you can’t even catch the faint scent of the excitable voice of little LeRoi Joe Doerr, much less the crazylegs jitter with which it’s issued. The only real sleaze to survive here is the band’s cover of Ronnie Self’s “Ain’t I’m A Dog,” but it’s so high-tech you won’t be moved to hide your baby sister. The other cover (two out of six) is “Treat Her Right,” which, given its origins (Roy Head and Huey Meaux), should be the perfect place for the LeRois to make a stand, but is unfortunately rather unexceptional. “Pretty Little Lights Of Town” and “Eternally Blue” are spirited, though short of gritty. And where, where is the fine, the proud, the exemplary “Check This Action”?—MIA just when you want to drool in the face of the highway patrol.

The LeRois are a good band. Maybe all it means is that they’ll slip into the bins demurely and segue into “Karma Chameleon” without sounding like Crazy Eddie. Maybe all it means is that major labels are still afraid of rock ’n’ roll. Maybe someone told ’em it’s not polite to ram your stuff right down the consumer’s Eustachian tubes. Whatever. Remember the old advice—if you want good guitar, buy pre-CBS. And screw the fun—bring back danger.

Marjorie Spencer