45 REVELATIONS

45 REVELATIONS

DEPARTMENTS

by Ken Barnes

Because I’ve concentrated on singles for the last seven years, it’s harder all the time for me to find common ground with most of my album-oriented reviewing colleagues. We’re looking for different things in records.

Let’s oversimplify a while. The LP brigades scour their album stacks for things like unity of conception, lyrical manifestos, and tormented, passionate works of anguished art into which the artist has obviously poured his or her entire soul, so that each note trembles with life-or-death intensity. Serious.

I look through my single piles or punch my car radio buttons for instant impact, the momentary flash of brilliance, the never-ending satori, breakfast at ephiphanies, the compressed dwarf star radiance of the great pop record.

Strangely enough, these cometary commentaries aren’t always the same records that palpitate the pens of the Henry Wadsworth Longplayer set. They’re more likely to be a frothy confection like Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” or a two-chord toss-off like “Lucky Star” by Madonna, with lyrics she must have jotted down on a napkin while waiting for a Perrier one evening (if the words required any more thought, she’s in trouble). “Lucky Star” is a colossally good radio record—the arrangement transfixes you, the vocal performance is masterful, the drumshots in the bridge could trigger tremors along the fault line, and it’s all vastly more uplifting and invigorating than any number of records that exceed it in passion and angst and intellectuality.

Another 45/LP difference I’ve noticed is that because of deadline pressures and publications’ push for immediacy, album reviewers are rarely permitted to live with a record the way a radio listener (or ordinary record buyer) does. (I certainly fush-reviewed my share of LPs on one hurried listening, making some miserable misjudgements in the process.) You lose a crucial element of evaluation—the effect of repetition. Why do some immediate favorites become instant button-punch candidates after three weeks on the radio, while other records that sound thoroughly dispensable on first listening, like ZZ Top’s “Legs” or Billy Squier’s “Rock Me Tonite,” remain enjoyable through months of concentrated airplay? I’m still trying to figure out the rules (if any) of this phenomenon.

“When Doves Cry” was one of those initial apathy/subsequent succumbing cases for me, and so is John Waite’s “Missing You,” which I thought was an inoffensive Police derivative on the home turntable but turns out to be a terrifically brooding, well-sung radio hit.

More theoretizing another time, but there’s another stack of singles to review. What would one of these columns be, after all, without a new Smiths single? “William It Was Really Nothing” has the usual murky lyrics (some business about a matrimonially-minded “fat girl”) and that mannered Morrissey crooning that some find unlistenable, but the sheer warmth of Johnny Marr’s guitars keep me coming back for more. And as usual, the real gold is buried on the flip of the 12-inch, with a pretty mini-ballad whose title, “Please Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want,” is longer than the song itself; and an edgy, fascinating seven-minute Bo Diddley-in-outerspace reverb drone called “How Soon Is Now” that ranks among their most novel (and best) devices.

The Armoury Show, led by Richard Jobson, Big Country guitarist Stuart Adamson’s former Skids partner, sounds more like Echo & The Bunnymen on their debut, “Castles In Spain.” In fact, this disk is better than any Echo record since “Rescue” and represents a great kickoff. Captain Sensible started his solo career rendering a song from South Pacific, but has evolved from that psychetropic beginning to an amiable psychedelic ambiance, with “There Are More Snakes Than Ladders,” brief acid guitar solo and all, an enjoyable example (the flip is a more bizarre exercise which resembles Hendrix’s “Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice” in spots).

I haven’t been enamored of Romeo Void records before, but “A Girl In Trouble (Is A Temporary Thing)” is a permanent pleasure, thanks to a standout sax line and touching minor-key melody. David Kahne is becoming an American producer to watch. Rubber Rodeo’s “Anywhere With You,” like the previous “The Hardest Thing,” is solid female-vocal pop-rock in an early Martha & The Muffins vein.

An assortment of pop-dance crowdpleasers includes Pamala Stanley’s second straight discorock notable, “Coming Out Of Hiding” (the first, “I Don’t Want To Talk About It,” is also the flip of this one and makes it a good-value purchase). Laura Branigan’s “The Lucky One” is typically melodramatic but -distinguished by a stirring chorus, while Donna Summer’s radical rewrite of the Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby” also strays into melodrama but connects effectively.

A real floorshaker is Loleatta Holloway’s collaboration with Arthur Baker, “Crash Goes Love,” in which all the hiphop production gimmicks found in Shannon records duke it out with a towering vocal performance. Speaking of titanic vocals, Terri Jones has revived a 1967 soul hit called “Hypnotized” by the late Linda Jones, the Mauna Loa of R&B vocalists. Terri conjures up most of Linda’s mind-boggling syllable extensions, and makes this record (which fails to credit the song’s original writers, for some reason) a soul ballad buff’s delight.

Soul of a different sort emanates from Smokey Robinson, who has a knockout on the flip of his current “I Can’t Find” single. “Gimme What You Want” (from the earlier Touch The Sky LP) is as melodically lustrous as any nugget from his ’60s motherlode. In the wake of 1= Michael Jackson and Prince’s mass breaka throughs, a whole fleet of black artists mixing hard ® rock and dance/funk is plying the trade routes. £ One of the best is Xavion, with “Eat Your Heart ^ Out,” in more of a Prince mold: synths, vicious ! drums, hard-edged guitars. Metalfunk unleashed. 5 In the rock field, Bruce Springsteen’s “Cover Me” seems to rule, thanks to a ’60s-style riff (records like “99th Floor” by Billy Gibbons & the Moving Sidewalks and especially “You Ain’t Tuff” by Joe Stampley & the Uniques come to mind). It’s also great to hear the Everly Brothers again; Paul McCartney’s “On The Wings Of A Nightingale” is a good melodic rock showcase for their incomparable harmonies, and sympathetic production from Dave Edmunds places them squarely in the contemporary arena.

Finally, a few more obscure entries: Grand Junction, Colorado’s Bruce Gordon displays exceptional pop-rock abilities on “Alienate Yourself” and the rockier “You Make Me Feel So Young.” From REM’s original label comes Design, with oddly intriguing dance-pop songs like “Nights In Cairo” and “Dancing In A Trance.” And New Zealand’s Chills provide what their names promise on the devastating, deadpan “Pink Frost”—a genuinely moving record. (Addresses for two of these three: Design, Hib-Tone Records, P.O. Box 8436, Athens, GA 30306; Chills, Flying Nun Records, P.O. Box 3000, Christchurch, New Zealand.) wr

FRANKIE RUNS OVER HOLLYWOOD

FRANK SINATRA

WITH QUINCY JONES

AND ORCHESTRA

L.A. Is My Lady

(Quest)

by Mitchell Cohen

“When I tell you ’bout Mack The Knife, babe,” the baritone growls, “It’s an offer you can’t refuse.” The new record by Joe Piscopo, doing his Chairman of the Board impression? Nah, but hearing such lyrics as “I’ve played love scenes in a flick or two/And I’ve even known a chick or two” might lead you to suspect that this is a parody of a parody. How else to explain rushing through Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me”— one of the saddest pick-up songs ever committed to a lead sheet—at a clip that takes all the resigned despair out of it? Was the pizza getting cold? On some of the tracks on L.A. Is My Lady, the vocalist appears to be trying to get by mostly on his patented swaggering arrogance.

The problem seems to be that while Quincy Jones is the album’s producer, Frank Sinatra decides what’s a take and what’s a do-over. Who’s going to say, “Uh, Francis, you stumbled a little bit there on that line in the first verse,” or “Say, why don’t you try singing the words the way Porter wrote them?” (Porter, after all, did not refer to lips as “chops.”) So if Sinatra thinks it’s cute to refer to Mr. T. in the ’30s standard “Until The Real Thing Comes Along,” then it’s cute.

This type of dopeyness is nothing new for this singer (who, it must be mentioned, has probably put on vinyl more superb vocal interpretations of American popular songs than any other person strolling on the planet). Who can forget his unique rendition of “Mrs. Robinson,” his “Winchester Cathedral”? And yet there have been very few Sinatra albums of no value whatsoever, and this one does have its pleasures: the crisp, socking big band arrangements (recorded the old-fashioned way, live in the studio); Stan Cornyn’s notes (so much for anyone else coveting a liners Grammy in ’85); and a few Sinatra performances, played straight, that add to his definitive readings of songs from the golden age of Tin Pan Alley. “If I Should Lose You” and “A Hundred Years From Today” are trifles, dating back to the depression, but these versions have a confident swing. ful “The Boiler,” an everyday story about a pickup and a misunderstanding in which the misunderstanding leads all too believably—and graphically—to a rape. For its unflinching honesty in depicting humans at their weakest and most destructive, the song was banned by the BBC, even though it’s a record that nearly everyone should hear once (although I can’t think of very many people who would want to hear it often). “The Boiler” is not included on In The Studio.

And, much as I hate to admit it, the Bergman-Bergman-Legrand song “How Do You Keep The Music Playing?” is one of the LP’s successes. It’s pure tripe, but Sinatra’s been doing it live for some time, feels intimate with its rhymed cliches and slushy changes, and actually makes something out of it. The Bergmans are also the lyrical perpetrators of the foolish title song, written with Quincy and his missus, Peggy LiptonJones. (Now that Peg’s back, and Clarence Williams III is playing Prince’s dad in Purple Rain, it’s time to find Michael “Pete Cochran, Beverly Hills” Cole and hook him up with a WB artist. How about Van Halen?)

Sinatra’s “Mack The Knife” has the LP’s best laughs, both on the credit sleeve (“original German lyric by Bert Brecht”—get that: “Bert”) and on the disk (did you ever think you’d hear Frank sing the immortal words “We got the Brecker Brothers,” or “My man Louie Miller/He split the scene babe”?). But “Teach Me Tonight” is close behind: the guy is asking for a refresher course in sex (a duet opportunity for Dr. Ruth Westheimer), and getting awfully specific. “Off the wall, the bed, the floor of it.” Speaking of off the wall, there’s a snapshot of FS with MJ on the jacket, but the two don’t sing together, which is too bad. “The chick is mine/That ringa-ding broad is mine.”

Too often, Sinatra sounds as though he can’t wait to split for Atlantic City and harass a blackjack dealer,' but Quincy and the band are having a swell time. There are a bunch of Basie veterans in the crew (as well as young players who seem thrilled to be in the distinguished company), and they give the album’s oldies— the six songs on side two date from 1918 to 1936—an authoritative, precise drive and sense of fun that conveys, at its best, the feeling of a tribute to the Count. Which is possibly what L.A. Is My Lady should have been all along.

And because I hate to kick a guy when he’s down, I’m more than pleased that B.S. is doing real good these days ’cause if ever a record deserved to have the boots put to it, it’s Signs Of Life.

It’s got the ugliest cover in the world; the most infantile lyrics in the galaxy (don’t expect me to quote any of them here because I don’t want to insult your intelligence, even if B.S. does); and the most lame ’n’ plodding music in the whole entire universe (it doesn’t even qualify as heavy metal, let alone “ROCK AND ROLL”).

Here’s the beef: instead of originality, what we’ve got here is a swipe file mentality. Which is to say, you’ll think you’ve heard it all before because you probably have in one form or another.

What do Van Halen and Billy Squier have in common? Well, for one thing, both of their latest albums begin with the words “I get up,” and both include a song titled “1984.” But only Van Halen would be cool enough to release theirs in 1983, and only B.S. would be uncool enough to release his, period.

And if writing a song called “1984” isn’t enough to make you wonder if B.S. has lost his creative marbles, you will when I tell you that he sings the chorus line (“1984,” what else?) in the exact same note for note style as David Bowie does on his version of “1984” (who was cooler than Van Halen for releasing his version in 1974; and then there’s Spirit, who were cooler than...but I disgress).

Likewise, Freddy Mercury fans (both of you) will appreciate the precise intonation when B.S. replicates “keep yourself alive” elsewhere on the same song; and Guess Who fans will rejoice in the updating of the classic line “don’t give me no hand-me-down world” as “Don’t want your hand-me-downs” on a song titled (wait for it) “HandMe-Downs.” (Led Zeppelin fans will have to be content with the reminder of the album’s ersatz Robert Plantwith-a-head-cold raspings which permeate throughout.)

Now some of you may think that I’m wailing the tar out of this one a mite much but, hey, let’s not forget for a moment that this is the same guy who gave us (for better or for worse) such meisterwacks of crunge as “The Stroke” and “Two Daze Gone,” so I wanna know where in the rule book it says that middle-ofthe-lineup rock ’n’ rollers are allowed to bench themselves after a couple of two base hits?

B.S. should be hitting them well out of the park by now, but he isn’t—and had I been producer Jim Steinman, I woulda thrown the bum outta the game until he came back with some decent material to snap him out of his slump (but then again, these guys are playing on Team Xerox, so what else would you expect but a carbon copy rehash of recycled licks?).

Take it from me, you can safely file Signs Of Life under “Life Functions Terminated.”

And, oh yeah, should anyone ever ask you “IF ROCK AND ROLL HAS A NAME,” tell ’em it’s Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

You could do worse.

Jeffrey Morgan

THE SPECIAL AKA

In The Studio

(Chrysalis)

All right! The followup LP to “Ghost Town” is finally out. Urn,-you do remember “Ghost Town,” don’t you? 1981. The Specials’ finest recorded achievement. An unusual blending of spooky showtune and snappy skank. Also, the Specials’ last recorded achievement. Remember the Fun Boy Three? Well, they left the Specials after “Ghost Town,” recorded two albums and broke up. Singer Terry Hall’s new band, Colour Field, even has a couple of import 45s out already. And all the while, Jerry Dammers and what’s left of what’s now called The Special AKA have been toiling in the studio.

Occasional singles have leaked out. Vocalist Rhoda Dakar fronted the band on the ferociously power-

Fortunately, Special AKA’s recent British hit, “Free Nelson Mandela,”

is. The music is all African celebration while the lyrics plead for the release of the long-imprisoned South African leader. Gotta give Dammers credit here—not only did he pen a catchy political tune but he also put his own neck on the line, in an anti-1 apartheid march aimed, in part, at the visiting Premier Botha of South Africa. South Africa, our “ally”— where possession of this record is reportedly a prisonable offense. The 12-inch of “Free Nelson Mandela” is available here in the States.

Other British 45s are included on the LP also. “Bright Lights” is one of the finest “Going-down-to-London” songs I’ve ever heard and Dammers maintains full control over the rich production, as he does on the following “The Lonely Crowd.” “(What I Like Most About You Is Your) Girlfriend,” a delightful trifle, sounds sorta like Sparks meeting Dan Hicks, if you can imagine that.

But then, there are problems. Let’s start with “War Crimes.” The idea of putting political questions to a lowkey Nina Rota-like backing track is intriguing and it works.. .for the first couple of minutes. Then the voices fade out while the organ and violin meander around aimlessly; see if you can last the full 6:14 without screaming, “Out!”

A similar weakness occurs on the reggaed “Racist Friend.” It makes its point right at the song’s start, then throbs along repeating itself until I reach for my Steel Pulse records. “Housebound” is based around such a mixed-up mess of South American and funk rhythms—bossa muerte, anyone?—that it makes you hope its clumsiness is on purpose. Even the promising “Alcohol,” which begins kinda Muswell Hi//-Kinksy, eventually degenerates as the voices and piano fade in and out and the horns blare over everything. The lunatics have taken over the mixing board!

Look, three and a half years making an album is just too long a time. You know that. I know that. The President of Chrysalis Records knows

it. Even Jerry Dammers knows it. So let’s get these guys ’n’ gals out of the studio and on the road and maybe they’ll loosen up a little. What’s that? Stan Campbell, the male lead vocalist, just left? Oh well, back to the drawing board. No, not the mixing board. Somebody get Jerry away from the mixing board! Everybody get away from the mixing board! Jerry! It’s all right, Jerry, it’s all right.

Michael Davis

KROKUS

The Blitz

(Arista)

Lemme say right off that I’m not one of these antique critics who regard the “comeback” of heavy metal as some sort of revenge-of-theturds plot against intelligence in rock music. The resurgence of Slade this year has served as a reminder of how much metal meant to me in the early ’70s, when it seemed like the only pop style around that could prevent the total takeover of rock by neofolkie singer-songwriters.

You wristband metallic pups may not believe this nowadays, but there was a time Cat Stevens was widely considered to be a Major Artist (cover of Rolling Stone and all that), and with such ignorance afoot in the land, gloriously clanging metal was often the only refuge. Slade, Deep Purple, MC5, Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult, the Stooges, Lucifer’s Friend, even Kiss: they were all metal, and I loved ’em all to death in those dry pop seasons.

Each of those groups presented a highly individualized version of the basic metal, and it would have been impossible then for Noddy Holder, for instance, to suddenly jump into the lead vocal slot in the Cult, not in the zipless way “modern” metal’s Ronnie James Dio has carried the interchangeable-oarts concept to new heights of absurdity. Too many of the current metal mongers copy each other’s every move too relentlessly, with the depressing result that groups like Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, and Twisted Sister are already deep into self-parody when you first hear about them.

As relative foreigners to the AngloAmerican metal traditions, the Swiss cheeses in Krokus have worked even harder to become regular-guy HM screechers, much like those recent immigrants to the U.S. who get more hyper-American than the natives. The would-be behemoths in Krokus apparently picked up their English second hand (or worse) from the dubious phrasebooks of the metal stars’ lyric sheets, with the consequence that their own songs pile cliches upon cliches, like this bit of fondue from “Out To Lunch”: “Crazy mama takin’ pills/Street legal' dirty cheap thrills/Good for nothin’ old man/Livin’ life in a TV land.”

Now where have I heard that before? Well, maybe somewhere in AC/DC’s extensive catalogue, in so many words, as despite Krokus’s many denials of this point, their vocalist, Marc Storace, does sound remarkably like the late Bon Scott. Except (and this “except” looms pretty huge) Storace rarely sounds as frenzied as the Yosemite-Sam-oncrank Scott. Krokus’s instrumental work on The Blitz is equally competent but undistinguished, riffs emerge, aim for a groove, and then fizzle away, maybe because whoever wrote them has left Krokus in the meantime. Founder/guitarist Fernando Von Arb is still aboard, but bassist Chris Von Rohr is gone, and the rhythm section’s becoming almost as much of a revolving door as Black Sabbath’s. Krokus is even hiring Americans now, which shows how badly these Switzers want to be accepted in the Old Metal Hacks club.

But despite Krokus’s fatally generic essence, I do have to give them credit for consciously attempting to outgrow metal’s all-too-typical glorification of sexism and violence in their lyrics for The Blitz. Except for the opener, “Midnite Maniac,” the new album is relatively free of antisocial material (I’m not kidding), and “Out Of Control” may even become a softcore Krokus “protest” song equivalent to the last set’s “Eat The Rich.” Now, if Krokus could just develop a more distinctive identity...that is, if the guys on The Blitz are still around same time next thud.

Richard Riegel

ROMEO VOID

Instincts

(415/Columbia)

Hello there music fans! This is Jerry-Huey Lewis, inviting you to tune in tomorrow night for the firstever direct from Las Vegas “Save This Band” Telethon! And the band we’ll be asking you to save tomorrow night is Romeo Void, a San Francisco foursome featuring singer/ lyricist Deborah Iyall and enough talent to break your heart. Although lots of critics have praised them throughout their three-record career, you fine folks out there in consumerland haven’t caught on yet. And if we don’t connect their guitar strings to your heart strings, ladies and gentlemen, the record company may take away their purse strings, if you know what 1 mean. That’s right, friends, we’re going to stay on the air all through the night, taking your pledges to buy Romeo Void’s fourth record, Instincts. We’ll have interviews with the band, as well as performances from some real troupers who care, like Sammy Davis and Sammy Hagar! Ed McMahon and Eddie Van Halen! Stiv Bators and Steve Lawrence! You’ll even meet our 1984 poster child, Patti Smith!

And, of course, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll play all the cuts on Instincts for you—so you’ll see why you should care, why you should call in a pledge! The record has almost everything you could ever want in modern-day, folks. Everything! The best assault-and-battery new wave since Television on “Out On My Own,” and “Six Days And One,” and “Your Life Is A Lie”! Jazz tasty enough for Julia Child on “Going To Neon”! Heartbuster ballading on “Instincts”! Top 40 that’s too good to be top 40 on “Girl In Trouble” and “Say No”! You get neat saxophone, you get great melody, you get brainy lyrics, you get fascinatin’ rhythms— not to mention singing so hot it’ll melt your martini! You like to dance? Even Sammy can’t help but dance to this record!

OY SOLO DIO

DIO

The Last In Line

(Warner Bros.)

by Roy Trakin

Leather-lunged Ronnie James Dio has shrieked for such murky Anglometallers as Rainbow and Black Sabbath that it’s a bit of a surprise to find out he comes from the upstate New York town of Cortland, home of a state college that produces both soccer champs and gym teachers. Truth is, the region has long been a stomping grounds for Dead Heads and hard rockers, which might seem a contradiction given its reputation for right-wing conservatism. But there are almost as many students in the area as farmers; anachronistic hippies living side-by-side with Rockefeller Republicans. And Dio...

If all those knee-jerk fundamentalists would just listen to The Last In Line without worrying about backwards-masking, satanism, and helium-filled, high-pitched harangues, they’d find some sentiments not unlike their own. In fact, these preachers wouldn’t be burning records, they’d be playing them to their congregations. Ronnie James Dio’s apocalyptic prophecies are Dante’s Inferno and Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights rolled into one, a heil-fire-andbrimstone message of final reckoning that could just as well be coming from a Bible Belt pulpit in the form of a particularly feverish Sunday sermon.

“We Rock” gathers a flock of true believers and affirms the faith while the title track details the End in no uncertain terms: “We’ll know for the first time/if we’re evil or divine/We’re the last in line.” Of course, He’ll know if you’ve been naughty or nice. DIOS MIOH Why hast thou forsaken me? “Breathless” and “I Speed At Night” both stray from heavy metal’s plodding 4/4 to pick up on some adrenaline punk overdrive, while “One Night In The City” returns to an ancient vision of Sodom and Gomorrah, describing a decadent urban hell that would surely comfort the Middle American doyens by playing up to their fears.

Elsewhere, the LP supports the Old Testament’s misogynistic equation of Eve and Evil, as in “Eat Your Heart Out,” while the biblical tale of slavery and Exodus folds neatly into Metal’s Mondo Bondage fascination on the finale, “Egypt (The Chains Are On),” which charts a “Stairway To Heaven,” or is it the other way around, with arty acoustic interludes and muezzin-like chanting.

To the uninitiated, this brand of hard rock sounds like an amalgam of the same old hoary cliches. Of course, there is Good Metal (Motorhead, Husker Du, old Alice Cooper) and Bad Metal (Everybody Else). And Dio is, well, Mediocre Metal. There are some AOR harmonies here which bode well for commerical appeal, but there’s also Carmine’s younger brother Vinnie “Mister Overkill” Appice on drums, splattering what few melodies sneak through against a wailing wall of noise. Stereotypical, yes. But as Met broadcaster Tim McCarver says, it’s not a particular pitch which makes a hurler effective, it’s how he got to that pitch, the sequence which lead him to that precise point. Ronnie James Dio has the correct pedigree and the right sound. Metal maniacs know their own, and this short, balding, frizzy-haired frontman from Cortland, who followed Ozzy as Black Sabbath’s lead singer, is one of the most unlikely sex symbols this side of Quiet Riot’s similar-looking vocalist Kevin DuBrow. In the Church of the Heavy Metal, there’s just no accounting for taste. Especially critics’.

Ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow night is an important one. Instincts is part of an endangered species, and that’s rock music and new wave art and old wave heart. Can you let your children face a future of rock “stars” who get major face cramps when they smile? Romeo Void is a band that could make a difference, folks, and we can’t let these kids end up in cut-out bins! Remember, ladies and gentlemen—tune in tomorrow night and pledge! The rock you save may be your own.

Laura Fissinger

SAMMY HAGAR V.O.A.

(Geffen)

Sammy Hagar may come off like a no-talent jerk on his new album, but you can’t say the guy ain’t timely. The title track from V.O.A. (“Voice Of America,” in case you were wondering) is nothing less than the rock ’n’ roll equivalent of Red Dawn —either that, or the theme song from the Republican National Convention. Take these tender lines for a kick-off: “Raise the flag/Let it wave/Shoot them down/To their grave.” Later on Sammy gets more specific: “You in the Middle East/Be on your toes/We’re about to strike/Everybody knows/Just tell your friends/The U.S.S.R./We’re gonna push that button/Cuz you’ve gone too far.” But, just when you think that Hagar’s about to Dr. Strangelove us all to kingdom come, he falls back into Reagan’s “peacethrough-strength” shtick: “We’ve got the power/They know the score/We’ll get so strong/They’11 be no war.”

No doubt. Jane Fonda will be thrilled to hear about it. Of course, if nothing else, this saber-rattling rock has given Sammy Hagar some true distinctiveness for, perhaps, the first time in his career. Certainly his new album cover must be a first. What other LP sleeve has ever featured a “rock star” in front of the White House with absolutely no irony?

While Sammy’s creation of Reagan-rock may have given him some dubious distinction, he’s really always been a musical politician at heart. In fact, his product tries to launch the same “you-can-please-allof-the-people” tri-lateral attack plan as Def Leppard. There’s enough club-footed stomp for non-core heavy metal fans, enough corporate slickness for the mainstream

“anonymous-oriented-radio” market, and, as witnessed by the sensitive close-up in the inner sleeve, enough management company belief that Sammy has enough cutie-pie qualities for the teen-beat set. His Frampton-Comes-Alive strawberry blonde locks may be a step in the right direction, but if Sammy really wants to capture the cute quotient, he’d better lay off the Mars Bars for a while.

The music on the LP isn’t too pretty either. “V.O.A.” is a riff even Motley Crue would consider too obvious. “Rock Is In My Blood” needs a transfusion fast, and “Two Sides Of Love” is the super-pro number that’s probably supposed to make back the big bucks Geffen had to shell out to get a hotshot like Ted Templeman to produce the thing. Other notables include “Dick In The Dirt” (which is no “My Ding-a-Ling”), ant} “I C&n’t Drive 55,” whose video encourages a driving style which, if emulated, would wipe out a significant portion of Sammy’s fans pronto. Last (and battling it out for least) is the truly novel “Burning Down The City,” which, I swear, is a heavy metal ode to hip-hop culture.

Altogether, it’s quite a package. You couldn’t call it bland, that’s for sure. Kinda makes you yearn for the days of Foreigner, don’t it?

Jim Farber

THE TIME

Ice Cream Castles

(Warner Bros.)

On their third (and final) album, the Time continues to sound like Prince’s opening act, the band’s lyrical thrust dealing with things that its mentor and fellow Minneapolisian does better—sexual explicitness, a pre-political social consciousness, and heightened awareness of functioning in a pre-apocalypse milieu. These last two items come together most obviously in the album’s title cut. Ostensibly about black/white love, its anti-boundaries stance seems as much resignation as rebellion—we’re all “ice cream castles in the summer time” after all, about to melt, and living in the nuclear shadow can make outmoded societal restraints seem especially irrelevant. The song chugs along with psychedelic funk aplomb, lead singer Morris Day even throwing in a little James Brown impression lest we think the ice cream truck bells that decorate the arrangement are a tad wimpy. Toward the song’s end we’re offered the unsatisfying chant: “Let’s do something! Let’s do something soon!”

Well, OK. Not that I expect them to give us Helen Caldicott’s home phone number (besides, it’s not really that clear that the A-bomb informs the doom at the song’s edges—it could just as easily be the unemployment line), but it’s depressingly predictable that, when it comes to their dicks’ secret lives, these guys will tell you everything you need to know and then some, but when it comes to the larger forces that move them they get real vague. That’s the way it goes, though, the powers that be depending on not too many people being able to formulate specific responses. At least these guys are (were) grappling.

The rest of the album is filler— some of it decent, some of it less so. “Jungle Love” and “The Bird” are solid dance cuts, the former recapturing some of the loose jam feel of the group’s first album, the later marred somewhat by a slightly fuzzy “live” sound. “My Drawers” is as dumb as its title while “Chili Sauce” is an off-the-wall seduction rap that’s funny the first couple of times you hear it. Here Morris gets his persona together—the dude who’s so infatuated with his own hip pattter that he’s never aware of how much it undermines his attempts at suavity. Whether trying to make small talk with the queasy observation that “They say that saliva’s an aphrodisiac,” or promoting the decor of his crib with “I have a brass waterbed just surrounded with plants and lights and shit,” the guy’s underlying belief in his essential coolness remains unruffled. And since this is a rock, pop, r’n’b (hey, what do you call this music?) star’s diary, it’s only the listener who is not seduced— Morris gets his nooky, graphically, on “If The Kid Can’t Make You Come.” Swell. But for all their professional instrumental backing these are novelty songs, joke tunes, and who would want to listen more than, say, twice?

Part of the problem here may be due to personnel changes and a new burden on Morris Day to come up with most of the material. Whatever it is, given the evidence of the first two albums and this one’s title cut, this is a better than average group, coasting thru the third album doldrums. And then breaking up, just in time.

Richard C. Walls

HUSKER DU

Zen Arcade

(SST Records)

SAINT VITUS

(SST Records)

His stertorous zzz’s wafted lazily about the room as his chest rose ’n’ fell in the deep idiocy of sleep. In this sleep, he dreamt he was lying stark .naked in the midway of a vast, empty video arcade, watching as a pair of gigantic metallic lips floated down ever gently from yellowish-grey skies, getting nearer and nearer until they planted a moist, oily, maddeningly unnerving kiss upon his rimpled brow. An r.e.m. blink and yet another dreamscape unfolded: this time he found himself seated at his typewriter, which kept taking on the appearance of some great, slow moving crustacean, annoyingly grinning at him like Alice’s Cheshire Cat. A myriad of thought-blebs pranced about his head, and, looking up from his typewriter now and then, he’d flick out a long, silver-gloved tongue and gobble down a few of them. Miraculously, paragraphs began to form where once there was nothing more than blank white space...

(You see, even rock writers have dreams. I mean trying to say something either interestingly humorous or substantially nasty month after month about albums that can generally be nutshelled as either good or worth buying or bad and not worth buying ain’t as easy as it sounds. Sometimes, it weighs quite heavily on the mind. But enough of this...)

I actually did have that dream the other day, and anytime I dream about a band, something’s gotta be making all the circuits click. Most of the time, in my metallectual snobbery, I dismiss the “hardcore” sound as nothing more than a begrudgingly necessary mishmash of archeosonics laced with too-cool polemics and arriviste hodads who are constantly screaming at the tops of their lungs, about how they find mere existance a hammer and tongs bore. So what else is new? But that’s metallectually speaking; most other times I find hardcore rather comforting. And my comfort increases when I come across bands like Husker Du and Saint Vitus, both primordially metallic, and both playing a kind of soft, refined hardcore easily accessible to Joe Average listener—believe it or not!

Husker Du’s double LF—my god, a hardcore double album! Will wonders never cease?—Zen Arcade, is a wide-ranging collection of noisescapes which bracingly encompass not only the broody aspects of hardcore but also its lighter, (and this is important) more experimental aspects. On the broody, let’s-staredown-the-cleavage-of-doom-anddespair side are songs like “Newest Industry,” “Whatever,” and “Masochism World,” and on the lighter, more experimental (aka psychodelic) side there’s “Dreams Reoccuring” and the almost side-long “Reoccuring Dreams,” the latter a track that takes overt rudeness into truly new realms closely akin to such long-ago rude epics as “Baby Please Don’t Go” by the Amboy Dukes and the Electric Prunes’ “You’ve Never Had It Better,” as well as those never to be forgotten, endless drum solos of the ’70’s.

Saint Vitus, on the other hand, is decidedly metal in its sound. This is the only band I’ve ever heard that’s comes even close to capturing the sound of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, which makes Saint Vitus a definite eyebrow raiser in my book. These guys have the required long hair and hippyized looks and play music that makes even Motorhead sound slick. Noteworthy doomtoons here include “The Psychopath,” “Burial at Sea,” and my personal fave rave, “Zombie Hunger,” a metal munching smooch so utterly dripping with leering evil intent that should they ever traipse into video land George Romero should definitely be consulted. This song makes Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” sound like “ZipA-Dee-Doo-Dah.” I really like this record; it makes me wanna eat baby heads and shoot pool with the collective testicles of Yes. Arrrgggghh! Later, fellow skull-mulchers—much later.

Joe (Fun Boy Infinity) Fernbacher