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LATOYA JACKSON Heart Don't Lie

(Private I/CBS)

JERMAINE JACKSON

(Arista)

THE JACKSONS Victory

_(Epic)_

Laura Fissinger

by

Through a series of circumstances too bizarre to recount (even here!), CREEM has become the first national publication to locate and interview the lost Jackson brother, Buck. We found him in an Idaho record-storeand-leather-chaps emporium, dressed like an extra from Blazing Saddles and muttering at a cardboard standup of Michael (something about how cute noses don't matter to cows). Because he thought CREEM was a magazine devoted to ladies' cosmetics, he agreed to talk to us— about his family and about their three newest LPs, LaToya's Heart Don Lie, Jermaine's Jermaine Jackson, and Victory.

CREEM: So, Buck, how come nobody's ever heard of you?

BUCK: Well, when I used to sing as a kid, people would start to bark, and animals would follow me like I was covered in steak drippings. When I tried to dance with my brothers I'd break half the living room furniture. In fact, that's where the money from 'I Want You Back' went—new living room furniture. After high school, I just moved out here and started working on ranches, shovelling sh...as a groundskeeper. Michael sends me some of his shiny socks now and then, but I can't wear 'em. Makes the sheep see spots in front of their eyes.

CREEM: Does he send the family's music for you to listen to?

BUCK: Yup. Listen to all of it; like some of it. They send me all them magazine articles too. Read 'em in the bathroom. I gotta say, 1 don't know what all the fuss is about. Anyway, my favorite is still Off The Wall. My dog likes that one, too.

CREEM: Are you one of the five people in the world who don't think Thriller was a great album?

BUCK: 'Fraid so. It just wasn't a 10-ton fence buster like Off The Wall. CREEM: Which one of the three new ones do you like best?

BUCK: I know this ain't gonna make me the favorite guest at Sunday dinner, but me and the dog think that Heart Don't Lie wakes you up better in the morning than coffee thick enough to tar the backroads. LaToya is never gonna break any glasses in a Memorex commercial, if you get my meaning, but it's a pretty little voice, and the way she looks can burn a barn in under 10 minutes. The whole record makes you wanna rub some holes in your favorite levis. Pretty good melodies for whistlin' while you work, 'cept for a couple on side two. We ranchers have a saying—'ordinary is OK if it's the best that ordinary gets.' That's what's what for LaToya.

CREEM: So what's wrong with Jermaine's album? It's selling great. BUCK: Well, we ranchers have another saying—'If you want the prize cow in a so-so herd, and they won't sell you the prize cow without the herd, buy the herd.' 'Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming' is the prize cow, but they didn't put it out as a single. 1 like 'Come To Me,' but there's this other song, about ants—why is he doin' somethin' with Adam Ant? That's even weirder than Pia Zadora! And the song to our mom is pretty, but you ain't gonna catch no cowboy singin' about 'thanks for letting me come out of you.' I think about my mares that way, not my mother.

CREEM:'And Victory?

BUCK: My cattle don't rustle to it, and my dog takes naps, when it's on the ole Victrola. It's like my family is this great big bronco buster, see, and the music on Victory is this little bitty country fair kiddie pony. Damn little horse just falls right over under the weight. No whistlin' songs, no levirubbers. And what in the hell are they doin', working with that bunch of Hollywood sissies Toto? Some of the stuff in tunes like 'Torture' and 'The Hurt' and 'Body' sounds like junk you'd hear in some big city singles bar with fern plants and goddamn Perrier instead of beer. 'State Of Shock' sounds like some yupheaded hard-rock band in a 3.2 club. 1 love my brothers even more than I love my cattle, but if this is the best they can do maybe I oughta teach 'em some bronco busting.

CREEM: But Michael was on it. Don't you think he's special?

BUCK: Michael is a genius, sure enough, but even God couldn't help takin' his rest on the seventh day.

CREEM: Well, Buck, one last question—do you drink Pepsi-Cola?

BUCK: Hell no. My cows do, though.

PRINCE Purple Rain (Warner Bros.)

In a star-studded field dominated by the gargantuan tour of Michael J. and his siblings (2 million copies of Victory shipped) and Cousin Brucie (#1 with a bullet and touring 'till the snow flies), a short, dark and handsome Minnesotan who has yet to grace the cover of a national news magazine (though he looked great on CREEM's last month), has flown out of the blocks in his outside lane, making an unexpectedly brilliant start against perhaps the toughest competition ever. According to the New York Times, the Brothers Warner are claiming 1.3 million copies of Purple Rain sold on its first day in the stores! Record retail nabobs were quoted to the effect that Prince's purple platter (No kidding! It's pressed on purple plastic.) was outselling the Jacksons 2 to 1. If this shy but not particularly modest 26-year-old has legs and knows how to use them—which he does and he does—it will have been, by this issue's appearance on the stands, one very hot summer.

Even more interesting, Purple Rain is also the title of what an album sticker calls 'Prince's dramatic feature film debut.' By the time you read this, the movie could be sucking folks into air-conditioned darkness all around the land, further promoting His Highness's slinky eroticism and, no doubt, His record sales as well. And if Rev. Jerry Falwell is upset by the giddy sweetness of Michael Jackson and Boy George, this heady hetero from the land o' lakes will make Falwell's knees weak, perhaps driving yet more copies of PR through checkout lines across America. Whew!

So, what can I tell you about an LP whose precious metal status is a foregone conclusion? That I find it somewhat uneven since Prince has only one real subject to pump repeatedly: male sensitivity/ vulnerability (with a hardon). The low points, like 'Darling Nikki,' a softcore letter to Penthouse, are OKto-silly, but the high points are spectacular. The superb #1 single, 'When Doves Cry,' made a rough June and July bearable with its fine writing and unique vocal and instrumental textures. 'The Beautiful Ones,' a gorgeous, affecting falsetto soul ballad, is a bit reminiscent of Todd Rundgren attempting Curtis Mayfield except that Prince really has the chops to pull it off. Definitely a wizard, a true star for the '80s. 'Take Me With U,' an acoustic guitar driven pop duet with lingerie-horse Apollonia and the techno-symphonic '1 Would Die 4 U' show off the dazzling range of Prince's homegrown band, this week called the Revolution.

Most wonderful of all is the eightminute title track, a Hendrix/ Winwood-styly rock ballad with a touch of cello and a hypnotic coda that's a minute too long. This song may not be the kind of movie music U R used 2, but it's bound to be a 'Stairway to Heaven'-ish radio staple for years to come. U heard it here 1st. Hooray for Holly wood... and Minneapolis, too.

Jeff Nesin

DIFFORD & TILBROOK (A&M)

Groups break up and their members start solo careers, right?

Everybody knows that's how it goes. Everybody, evidently except Squeeze guys. They don't go solo; they go duo.

So OK, Squeeze didn't always play by the book anyway. Like, Glenn Tilbrook sang most of the band's leads but wrote the music, not the lyrics, which rhythm guitarist Chris Difford provided. Like, the band's truckload of critical kissypoos didn't keep 'em from getting the occasional public pat on the pocketbook. Like, their good-time, postpub image didn't exactly jive with the increasing sophistication of their song-writing. And the fact that they had personnel changes between all but their first two albums certainly indicated some sort of built-in instability factor.

Anyway, Difford & Tilbrook are banking on their own non-negotiable names and dealing with their singing and songwriting more nakedly now. Though there are stable backing musicians on this LP, there's no band personality or drive to give the music energy and direction. There are just the individual songs, the performances, and Tony Visconti's production, which is enough, most of the time...

To start things off on the wrong foot, they've thrown the weakest tunes in our faces first, thus destroying in a hurry any unrealistically high expectations. It's eas;/ to hear why 'Action Speaks Faster' has been selected as the leadoff track: it's got more funk cliches per square beat than anything else here. The following 'Love's Crashing Waves' contains so many clumsy/clever lines like, 'Concocted rumours by out of tuners/Are the must in lovers' concerto,' that it signifies either a shocking collapse of quality or a joke. I prefer to think of it as a joke. Ha. Ha. Ha. Next.

Fortunately, the rest of the songs run the gamut from listenable to great, although a quick run-through confirms that D&T's pub-rock of the past has been left behind at their last local—not a surprising turn of events, considering that pop, funk, and soul are all hipper in Great Britain these days than good ole rock 'n' roll. Still, while I can appreciate that 'On My Mind Tonight' is a well-written piece of updated MOR, I just ain't ready for Sinatraville yet, y' know?

One aspect of their writing, though, which does remain is the team's great sense of detail. 'Wagon Train' is a Western of all things— are these guys bucking for an oat opera soundtrack or something?— while 'The Apple Tree'' sets a scene of gradual decay combining aspects of late '60s Kinks and Procol Harum with an effectively atmospheric aratmospheric arrangement/production. Nice going, Tony. Usually, though, D&T apply their insights to those wacky, wonderful necessitities of life, 'relationships.' Economic sex roles get reversed for 'Man For All Seasons' while 'Tears For Attention' and 'You Can't Hurt The Girl' show how pain, pride and passion often get messily interwined.

Stronger still are the neo-Motown numbers, 'Picking Up The Pieces' (the album's first single), and 'Hope Fell Down.' Tilbrook's voice really cuts through 'Hope''s creamy background vocal Four Topping— it's definitely developed more sustain during the last couple of years and is now a more expressive instrument than most of the voices of his British soulboy competition—although I must confess that every time 1 hear the song, I wonder what somebody like Levi Stubbs could do with it.

No matter. Until some singer with an outrageous set of pipes discovers the Difford & Tilbrook songbook, this'll do pretty nicely. Not that I'd trade my favorite Squeeze records for it, y' understand, but, as a duo, D&T go soulo OK.

Michael Davis

BANGLES All Over The Place (Columbia)

Call me a female chauvinist if you must but most of the year's most stimulating records have come from women. My current turntable dream set includes the Pretenders' wondrous 'Show Me,' the Go-Go's piano-pounding 'Head Over Heels,' Bananarama's delirious 'Robert DeNiro's Waiting,' Jocelyn Brown's Arethaesque 'Somebody Else's Guy,' Tracey Ullman's exhilarating 'Breakaway' and the Sheila E.'s splendorous 'The Glamorous Life.'

Recently I made a new addition to this pleasure-drenched playlist. It's the Bangles' 'Going Down To Liverpool' and it's located in the middle of side two on All Over The Place. I have not heard the original by Katrina & the Waves but I seriously doubt that anyone (except maybe Chrissie Hynde) could improve on the Bangles' version. Everything about it—the propulsive strum of folk-rock guitars, the beautifully wistful harmony vocals, the jingle jangle production, the achingly evocative way drummer/vocalist Debbie Peterson sings the phrase 'all the days of my life'—can be characterized in just one word: irresistible.

While it's true that nothing else on All Over The Place can quite come up to 'Going Down To Liverpool,' this album does have a hell of a lot more substantial material than something like the incredibly overrated Talk Show. And while we're on the subject of all-female bands, it should be noted that the Bangles seem influenced very little—if at all—by the girl groups of the early '60s. Their favorite year on the jukebox is apparently 1966 and they clearly revere AM West Coast groups from that period. I hear whispers and echoes (though never blatant steals) from the Turtles, the Association, the Beau Brummels, the Grass Roots and the Mamas & The Papas.

Occasionally the Bangles trip, stumble and fall (that seemed to be s.o.p. on their debut EP), like when they close the LP with a weak ballad ('More Than Meets The Eye') or try too damn hard ('Dover Beach'). But most of the time they connect and when they do it's sit-up-andtake-notice time. And, make no mistake—the Bangles are no girlish wimps; they like to rock it up, and good. Guitarists Susanna Hoffs and Viki Peterson and drummer Debbi split the lead vocals while bassist Michael Steele chips in on the harmonies, and they all sing well. On revved-up energizers like 'All About You,' 'He's Got A Secret' and 'Silent Treatment,' this band sounds like a mutual admiration society, and their one-for-all enthusiasm is quite rewarding to hear.

In closing, I'd just like to add any of you guys out there who aren't smitten by Susanna's performance on 'James' or swept away by Debbi's yearning on 'Going Down To Liverpool' have my deepest sympathy.

Craig Zeller

THE DREAM SYNDICATE The Medicine Show (A&M)

Well, it was fun while it lasted. In •1982, the Dream Syndicate put out Days Of Wine And Roses, a silly-ass tribute to the feeling in the music of the Velvet Underground, a laugh on both bands and a red-hot rocket, too. In 1983 there were shows coast-tocoast, with new songs, a new bassist and the intertwining guitars of Steve Wynn and Karl Precoda—flowing blazing and slow into each other like lava from twin volcanos—and all signs pointed towards a great second album.

We're still waiting for it. Somewhere, mucking around at the bottom of The Medicine Show, this Los Angeles guitar band is making a stab at the singer-songwriter form. There's 'Burn,' which, while it doesn't quite hold together, still has something to say about how wide open spaces can make you go nuts. And there's 'Merittville' sounds false the way the band plays it but is at least theoretically nervewracking. And if you root around the LP long enough, you're bound to find some promising songwriting for the '80s. But it's all soundly wasted, garbaged up by pomposity and bad ideas.

Blame for this lame product rests on two heads—band leader Wynn and the nefarious Sandy Pearlman, producer-to-the-stars. Wynn here seems, er, pompous—like he's foolishly believed all the nice things that get said to bands backstage, after the encore. He used to win you over by sounding like he wanted so badly to be dangerous; now he gives us tunes like 'Daddy's Girl,' where he doesn't sound like a dangerous creep—he's just a creep. As for Mr. Pearlman, he's gotten a big, dumb sound for the band, and has thus managed to make the Dream Syndicate sound bombastic, a minor variant of AOR that doesn't really have any chance of cutting into mainstream FM. Most criminally, he's neutralized all the guitar hysteria. Live,Precoda's guitar playing is like sludge flowing down a long staircase—it is ugliness, and laziness, and it is The Thing That Can't Be Stopped. On The Medicine Show, Pearlman stops it.

Who knows, maybe the Dream Syndicate will shift gears into reverse next album, record the side-long jam they'd threatened for this one, and get down to the getting down, sounding once again like they gottagotta have it all right now. And maybe Wynn can put his head on ice for a while. But as regards The Medicine Show: who's to care? If a rock band falls flat in the middle of the AOR forest, does anybody hear it? Save it for the sages—or Sandy Pearlman.

RJ Smith

LITTLE STEVEN Voice Of America (EMI America)

Early summer, and Billy Altman—the metropolitan sportswriter—calls. How would you like to review Little Steven's new album, he says from faraway New York. I'd like that just fine, I say in Detroit. Then we talk about the Mets and the Tigers, division-leaders both. Tres American, that call. And so very rock 'n' roll.

Minutes later, metaphorically speaking, I'm purchasing Voice Of America at Dearborn Music, conveniently located in Dearborn, Mich. Yes, I'm using my own money...rock-crit interns, beware! Dearborn Music is a fine store, even though nobody chuckled at my request for the 'country classic' Why Are There No Deer Born In Dearborn? I suppose it's tough, this record business.

All of a sudden I'm back home. I'm reading the lyrics to all the songs before I listen to the album. Little Steven was thoughtful enough to put them on the back of his enclosed four-color poster, so I figure the least I can do is read them. What the most I can do is, .1 don't know.

The lyrics look pretty bad. Real ninth-grade stuff. 'Can you hear me, wake up, where's the voice of America?' Dunno, Steven—hiding in Bruce Springsteen's mouth, maybe? 'Somebody's country, somebody's war, nobody knows just what they're fighting for.' Perhaps not, but I'll wager it's nothing less than the Country Joe & The Fish Basement Tapes. '/ am a patriot and I love my country, because my country is all I know.' So what say we drop in on Canada, Little? America borders on the magnificent, I'm told. Plus, that way we'll only know two countries.

In any case, I leap to the conclusion that this album is about America. After all, I didn't read and re-read 56 Sherlock Holmes stories for naught. Then I decide I'll listen to the thing when my kids get done watching You Can't Do That On Television. That's priorities for you.

And, of course, there's a miserable twist to the story. Here comes the miserable twist: Voice Of America is, to put it bluntly, a shitkicker of an album. In fact, to put it with extraordinary subtlety, it's a shitkicker of an album. This thing rocks berserk from cut one on, turning silly paper lyrics into Mellencampish insight. Little Steven (certainly a musical cousin to the Little Bastard) sounds like a modern Mr. Dylan on a roll, with all the appropriate voices of outrage, put-down and plea. This cat knows what he's singing about in spades, doubled and redoubled.

Well, well. I learn a lesson or two, anyway. American Angst appears to be making a comeback, which is a good sign. Trust me, it's a good sign. I'll await pennants for the Tigers and Mets and phone calls from big-city sportswriters. In the meantime, let's none of us dismiss this man's case.

J. Kordosh

SPLIT ENZ Confliciting Emotions

(A&M)

Generally speaking, growing up is boring. There's no way the exercising of common sense can be as much fun as letting it all hang out. On the other hand, unless you truly want to bum out fast, a little rational behavior does become a necessity sooner or later. All is not lost, though. You can get your kicks without selfdestructing. God did create rock 'n' roll to keep the spirit fresh, after all. And if the magic in the music produces a wise head to go with that young heart, you've got the best of both worlds.

That's where this really excellent album by Split Enz comes in. Conflicting Emotions contains a wealth of useful tips on a variety of subjects, including charting a career course ('Strait Old Line') and conducting a romance ('Message To My Girl'), and it cooks, too. Folks who previously encountered the Enz— either in their absurdist, Genesisiinfluenced incarnation of the late '70s, or the sweeter, pop-group guise of late—may have trouble imagining New Zealand's finest raising a ruckus. But the happy truth is that while they were collecting their thoughts, the Enz were also stripping away the arty affectations that once diminished the band's impact. For example, 'Working Up An Appetite' (for wisdom, that is) shivers and shakes like a victim of Saint Vitus's dance, thanks to some 'real gone' jungle drums. The equally contagious 'I Wake Up Every Night' imitates a funky locomotive, propelled by synthesized horns and percussive, clickety-clack guitars. In both cases, a call to transcend the everyday muck takes on a thrilling urgency through canny packaging.

You skeptics are probably wondering why these goody-goodies deserve anything besides the old bun's rush. A positive outlook must be the byproduct of a twisted religious cult, or a drug-fried brain, or both, right? Not this time. The Enz don't pretend to have any answers, don't toe any blissed-out party line. 'Our Day,' which begins gently, celebrating an impending birth, quickly degenerates into nail-biting uncertainty as dad wonders 'what . the future holds,' if, indeed, there is a future. Nor do the guys pursue notions of passive tolerance—the scathing 'Bullet Brain And Cactus Head' angrily sneers at the arms race, while 'No Mischief' practically calls for a lynch mob to punish a wrongdoer. John Lennon would have liked Conflicting Emotions: it grapples with real problems, big and small, and doesn't shrink from bluntness. If the Enz ever need a cover song, they should try 'Crippled Inside.'

I've mentioned no band members yet, since this is a real group effort, devoid of showboating. For the record, then, singer-songwriter brothers Tim and Neil Finn take turns in the lead spotlight; both have a winsome, wide-eyed vocal style that's never jaded. The quintet's ensemble work has reached the point where they can handle anything from an urbane, Kid Creole shuffle to an attack of the jitters. Maybe next time they'll even play the blues.

The Byrds' classic 'Goin' Back,' by Goffin-King, sums up Conflicting Emotions when it says, 'Thinking young and growing older is no sin.' So here's the new and improved Split Enz, all grown up and entertaining as ever. You can't beat that.

Jon Young