The Beat Goes On

The Beat Goes On

HUSKER DU: ZEN TAPIOCA AT THE GATES OF URGH

MINNEAPOLIS—Husker Du, onetime local laughing stock turned global hardcore juggernaut turned metalworking, poppumping, damn-the-conventions artistes have assembled to elevate a pale biz cliche to sensory-certifiable truth: dig it, man, these guys can cook!

“It’s my own marinade recipe,” says drummer Grant Hart, who proudly sports an expert eater’s physique. “Some black cherry wine, a little Hershey’s sauce; it’s a little sweet, but I like what it does for the meat.”

The Huskers’ audacious, foursided, honest-to-Ian Anderson concept album, Zen Arcade, has just entered the Rockpool chart at number six—shining like a hot red sore between Difford & Tilbrook and Echo & The Bunnymen, a full three slots above the Jacksons—but at the moment the Du is more concerned about what’s hot to the barbeque.

“We just put the records out,” says Bob Mould, the band’s one man guitar army. “It’s not a race to enter the charts way up high five minutes after they come out, or a race to get out and tour right away. We just put ’em out and they do what they do and when we feel like touring we make a few calls, get in the van and go. I think the peppers taste just fine, Grant.”

Zen Arcade (“It’s just a name we came up with; it could have been Tapioca Arcade,” explains Hart.), the band’s sixth vinyl missive, their second for L.A.’s SST Records, keeps with the Huskers’ tradition of exploring everyday personal struggles rather than the head-knocking, half-baked political dogma that consumes so many of their HC peers. Only this time the band blends their signature speed obsession with just-surfacing pop and what-have-we-here, even classical sensibilities. And halfway through the project, Hart, Mould, and Errol Flynnlookalike bassist Greg Norton realized there was something like a story line running through the material, so they decided to flesh it out into a full-blown concept just for kicks.

“It spans enough time,” says Mould, picking through the remains of his shiskabob, “for a kid to leave home, join the krishnas, find out that’s not it, find out the military’s not it, find out singing in a band’s not it, have his girlfriend commit suicide, go to work for a computer firm, wake up, find out it’s all been a dream and go to school the next day. It’s just like real life.”

Real life at the barbeque, here in a suburban gazebo complete with hanging multi-colored yard lamps and the staccato deathcrackle of an electronic bugzapper, is several time zones and dozens of mind zones removed from the thrash palaces the band rule on the coasts, but if there’s a dichotomy between the band’s seemingly ordered private life and its cataclysmic public outbursts, they don’t see it.

“I think we’re living proof that you don’t have to live on the edge of doom to be creative,” says Mould.

“I think there’s too much cinnamon in the dip,” says Hart.

David Ayers

THE CREEM CHRONICLE: Where were you five years ago?

KISSED THEM OFF!

Members of Kiss got a bit of a shock when they hit Huntington, West Virginia recently. Seems a Holiday Inn manager demanded a $500 deposit before handing over the keys, claiming that the last time the band stayed there they were extremely rude to the employees and guests! Ah notoriety...

MEAT PUPPET LOVE BOAT

SAN PEDRO, CA-The M.V. Cormorant, a chartered twodeck sea vessel of modest proportion, sets sail at 9:30 p.m. Friday, June 15. There are 200+ people on board — scruffy, long-haired, shorthaired, teenagers and youngadults packed tight and sardinelike awaiting opening festivities of the event, entitled Joy At Sea.

The voyage—slated to terminate three hours on the dot back at the point of origin (Berth 84)—begins with a surf ’n’ turf appetizer: Lawndale, a

weathered Ventures-styled unit, twangs away on the lower deck as the ship sifts out of the offshore Long Beach. We pass the gargantuan S.S. Princess Louise, some industrial sewage treatment facilities and countless tinker-toys of metallic shape and structure towering high above the water’s edge. As Lawndale wipes out, a cacophony of white noise erupts topside and everyone scrambles to the upper deck to check it out. Hey—it’s the Meat Puppets, Phoenix native-suns noteworthy for latterday acid-visions-of-the-prairie, cranking this gruesomely overdriven gtr. distortion out into the night and heavens above. These pungent sounds of psych-out, channeled through a P.A. roped and fastened several times to the boat’s mainframe, rocket deafening anti-MTV pathos to sometimes-stunned dockworkers and miscellaneous shore-slaves not entirely sure of what’s going on as we cruise by.

Then an interlude downstairs in the dark finds projector and screen matching noise and related sonic vibes (taped) with colors flashed in sync to what sounds like some mutated Roger Waters experiment gone haywire. This inherits tenuous attention—just as suddenly it’s back on top with the Minutemen, South Bay’s brutal jazz-funk-pop-punk no-nonsense power-trio, as our ship navigates concentric circles sometime before midnight. The fatso singer/gtr-player’s a real dynamo of crazed stop/start motion, so much so that his beefy beach-ball torso gyrating up and down sideways and forward almost collapses an entire side of a speaker column and P.A. cabinet.

The party grinds to a halt as the ship glides back through the docks to the starting point and the band cranks out a few more—egging on peak-less frenzy of $15 per ticket patrons. Loud sounds in the otherwise complacent night air—if it all smells a bit, uhm, conceptual, credit Stuart Swezey and Carmel Moran for the second in a series of continuing hallucinations (Neubauten in the desert, as chronicled in this column recently, was the first) attempting to glue atypical environments with the appropriate sounds of silence. Possible follow-ups: a ’60s Love-In at Times Beach, Mo.; local HM Bitch and Slayer to perform in a septic tank kneedeep in shit; maybe a poetry recital with Circle Jerk Keith Morris at the Stringfellow Acid Pits? All viable candidates, one ventures to guess, and somehow it reminds me of something Roky Erickson once sputtered over a stack of strawberry pancakes (at the Int’l House Of): “You might be alive and I might be dead but if the world’s still around and Dracula’s there too only one of us will be able to tell.”

Gregg Turner

DAVID KNOPFLER RELEASED

NEW YORK-David Knopfler is frustrated. Although he’s just put out a perfectly respectable debut LP, Release, the past keeps overshadowing the present. “I should have changed my name and put out the record as Barry Smith,” smiles the 31-year-old limey. “At least then 1 wouldn’t have to answer 10,000 questions about why I left the Straits four years ago.”

That’s right, folks, David is the “little” brother of Mark Knopfler, head honcho of England’s Dire Straits. The less indulgent among you might find it hard to sympathize with the younger Knopfler’s plight—after all, if his name were Barry Smith, there’s a good chance nobody would want to talk to him about anything. Let’s do the guy a favor and get the subject out of the way.

David, why did you quit playing rhythm guitar for Dire Straits?

Almost mechanically, he responds, “A few weeks into the recording of Making Movies, I left because I felt that Mark was giving me an unreasonably hard time. I was being oppressed. It was just the pressure of the band. There was no problem with the musical direction.

“I thought I’d left because I wanted to,” Knopfler laughs. “Then I read an interview where Mark said that I’d quit because he wanted me to!” Such are the pleasures of sibling rivalry.

Much clearer was his reaction to getting out from under big bro’s thumb. “It felt fantastic to be my own man again and not have to swallow shit.”

Thus did Knopfler embark on an extended period of what he calls “buggering about.” Having been a prolific songwriter in the days before he became a silent member of Dire Straits, Knopfler was eager to strike out on his own.

“It was a bit like Hamlet. I knew I wanted to do something, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. At first, I was still yearning after some sort of cozy collective where we’d all chip in together and be pals—something that had not happened with Dire Straits.”

Knopfler’s quest for fulfillment led to various minor projects. He recorded demos in the States with Robin Lane’s folk-rockin’ Chartbusters (minus Lane), produced sessions for Debbie Bishop (heard on the Difford & Tilbrook LP), and so forth.

Finally, after three years of puttering, he got to work and cut Release in mid-’83. This carefully-crafted effort suggests that David probably would have been pegged as a kin of Mark’s even if he had used a fake name. The younger Knopfler displays the same throaty growl as his brother, though the music exhibits more folk and less rock than the Straits.

He readily acknowledges Release’s mellower tendencies, adding, “If I really did what I wanted, I’d make an entire album of ballads. I’d get a double bass player, a drummer with brushes, a great piano, and cut 10 ballads in an afternoon—with no overdubs.”

Some other time. For now, David Knopfler must concern himself with the practical aspects of a blossoming solo career. “I’m about to start doing live gigs, and I have serious misgivings. It means I’m going to start walking a line again where somebody else can take 20 percent of the gross from my nervous breakdowns.

“I might just say ‘screw it’ and become a taxi driver.”

Jon Young

DOCTOR, PLEEZE: IT’S OLUE CHEER

NEW YORK—In May 1968, a curious trio of trios occupied the numbers nine, ten, and eleven spots on Billboard’s top LP’s chart. Locked in at nine was Cream’s Disraeli Gears, followed by Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And at number 11 — Vincebus Eruptum by Blue Cheer. Hailed at the time by Jim Morrison as “the single most powerful band I’ve ever seen,” Blue Cheer’s classic first album was a flash-inthe-pan if there ever was one. After such an astonishing debut, the band couldn’t muster anything even close and after a couple of years of relentless touring and squabbling, called it quits.

So what makes Blue Cheer relevant 16 years later? The answer can be summed up in two loaded words — Heavy Metal. “We were certainly the first American heavy metal band.. .we don’t just say that, we claim that.” The trio—two-thirds intact, with Peterson and Paul Whaley on drums but Tony Rainer replacing Leigh Stephens on guitar—is actively seeking to reclaim their place in rock ’n’ roll history. Although some might write them off as a mere footnote, Blue Cheer probably had as much to do with today’s HM—for better or for worse— as Cream, Zep or Hendrix.

Blue Cheer resurfaced in New York recently to “make a comeback,” says Peterson unashamedly. Although they were from the psychedelic summer of love in S.F., “we were never really part of that scene,” says Peterson. “We were tolerated because we were local boys, but we weren’t really accepted. Back then it was all peace and love, and we were playing a lot of Hell’s Angels dances and Hell’s Angels funerals as well as playing love-ins. Everybody was into kissing babies and eating flowers, while we were into eating babies and kissing flowers. So we were like some kind of stepchildren.”

Blue Cheer (named, of course, after a popular LSD of the time) fell victim to their own inexperience and record company exploitation. About drugs, he says, “I had a few enlightening experiences behind LSD. I’ve been told not to talk about drugs, but that’s something I can’t very well deny. It took place. It happened in my life. But some of the things that came about because of drugs—not LSD, but drugs in general—were ultimately part of the demise of the band. I don’t recommend that route for any young musician or listener, because it’s a rough one. We survived. A lot of people didn’t.” About the major record labels: “I don’t have as much trust in the conglomerates as I used to. I used to think, ‘Well, they’ll take care of me,’ Ha-Ha! They took care of me, all right.”

That’s why this time around, Blue Cheer is interested in doing a one-off with a small label. The first LP is projected to be a live one. Why? “Our approach to recording is that we don’t want to sound like our records, we want our records to sound like us. We’re back and we’re not a disappointment. We’re not Blue Cheer back playing Neil Young songs or 12-bar blues. And we’re not a bunch of old farts on Geritol and crutches. We do exactly what we say we’re gonna do—we get up and we kick ass.”

Richard Fantina

WHITE ANIMALS IN HEAT!

NEW YORK-Kevin Gray took every American mother’s dream and turned it inside out. Kevin was a resident physician at Nashville’s Vanderbilt Hospital who took an occasional guitar lesson. But in 1979, he hung up his stethoscope and founded White Animals, the Nashvillebased combo that presses on into the future of rock ’n’ roll while maintaining a deep, abiding respect for its past. “I probably would’ve drifted on back to medicine,” explains Kevin without a hint of irony, “except for meeting up with Steve Boyd, our Mozart/bass player.” All of the group’s original material is penned by either Kevin or Steve, who are joined by lead guitarist Rich Parks, drummer Ray Crabtree and “Dreadmaster” Tim Coats, who plays keyboard and soundboard. Kevin describes the earliest days of White Animals as “I-know-four-chords-and-that’sone-more-than-you kind of stuff.”

White Animals’ first release was the Nashville Babylon EP, which was followed by longplayers Lost Weekend and, most recently, Ecstasy. The sharpest and tightest of their discs is Ecstasy, the content of which ranges from the bouncing, twanging guitars of “Don’t Care” and the title cut to the acid blues of “For Lovers Only” and the emotive strains of “This Girl Of Mine.” (They even managed to write a heartbreakingly lovely tune for an African kalimba, but don’t ask me how.)

With Kevin and Steve turning out undeniably hitworthy material such as “Constant Attention” and “You Started Something,” it’s with no shame that White Animals express their love of rock ’n’ roll with a cornucopia of covers. At any given time, the band’s repertoire encompasses maybe 200 songs— from the disparate likes of Peter And Gordon, Gang Of Four, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Costello, the Beatles, Bob Marley, Johnny Rivers or the B52’s. “We try to turn the kids on to traditional stuff,” explained Dreadmaster Tim, whose tape-loops, synthesisms and dubbifications put a radical slant on even the most familiar tune. One White Animal’s version of “Electric Avenue” was so bassand reverb-heavy that Kevin recalls, “it would make your drink dance off the table.” Perhaps their most celebrated cover is of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” which, in truly excessive garage-band style, is performed in 15-to-20-minute versions (although the version on Ecstasy clocks in at a brief 9:14). “This is the oldest song ever written,” explained Kevin to a dumbstruck Peppermint Lounge audience. “The lyrics were found in a cave in France.” Incredibly, White Animals pump so much adrenalin into those old chords that after one extended “Gloria” rendition, even this jaded reporter found himself shouting, “One more time!”

As is usually the case, interesting music is made by interesting people. White Animals are a good-humored bunch indeed—fully conversant in such oddball bits of Americana as the Smothers Brothers, R. Crumb, Dairy Queen jukeboxes and the Four Freshman. In short, they seem like the kind of guys you’d want to drive around town with, fighting over the radio station at every stoplight. Still, seeing a White Animals show is the quickest route to fandom. Kevin Gray recounts a typical late-night gig in New York: “We had a whole table full of Puerto Ricans standing up, saying ‘WHITE! AN-I-MALS!’ ” Well, that doesn’t surprise me a bit.

Drew Wheeler