ROCK • A • RAMA
FISHBONE (Columbia) I’ve been waiting for years for some hep young blacks to take up that leering torch passed by our greatest rock ’n’ roller ever—Mr. Chuck Berry, of course, who’d you think I meant?—and the hour may have come to this Fishbone disc.
The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.
ROCK • A • RAMA
This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Dave DiMartino, Michael Davis and Richard Riegel
FISHBONE
(Columbia)
I’ve been waiting for years for some hep young blacks to take up that leering torch passed by our greatest rock ’n’ roller ever—Mr. Chuck Berry, of course, who’d you think I meant?—and the hour may have come to this Fishbone disc. Not that these L.A.-fried teens sound that much like Berry, nope, the resemblance is more in their existential-jollies attitude. Aurally, these guys suggest the Bus Boys, Wall Of Voodoo, Run-D.M.C., the Good Rats, Madness all mixed together into something even newer than Lionel Richie’s latest Mercedes. Fishbone themselves call their sound “a brand of ethnic rock ’n’ roll” and we couldn’t need that more right about now. This may be the LIVELIEST record I’ve heard all year because these guys are so young they’ll still bust their butts for PASSION alone. R.R.
ROBYN HITCHCOCK & THE EGYPTIANS Fegmania
(Midnight U.K. import)
After two great solo LPs and his last—the slightly-too-sparse / Often Dream Of Trains— ex-Soft Boy Hitchcock has decided to make a band of it again. Fegmania sounds very much like a Soft Boys record, which means it’s filled with great songs, great playing, and a “unique” perspective very much akin to Syd Barrett’s. Though he sometimes tries a little too hard—“The Man With The Light Bulb Head” sounds funnier than it is (it’s an old Wolfgang Dauner album cover anyway)—Hitch has put together his best record since the SB’s Underwater Moonlight. Undeniably nifty. D.D.
THE VELS Velocity (Mercury)
It’s about time somebody came up with a factory-outlet, American-speaking version of England’s pop-righteous Thompson Twins, and these may be them. Forget Alannah Currie’s perverse desire to look just like Peanuts’s Charlie Brown with her shaved temples and oversized ballcap, the Philly-bred Vels have known & lived with American icons FIRST HAND, and thus they dress like hipsy teens who would’ve plastered Blondie posters all over their bedroom walls in ’78. Music and appearances go hand in lacquered nails here, cf. the B-52’s, softer Blondie, etc., but all of ’em way down the revolution-into-evolution, foodfor-thought chain. The jacket, the music, everything here’s so bright-colored it oozes Videoland; don’t dare touch that dial even if you do see pastel spots before your eyes.R.R.
THE MUSIC MACHINE Best Of The Music Machine (Rhino)
Great to see these sounds of these mid-’60s farfisa ’n’ fuzz grungers available once again. Briefly influential, the Music Machine served as a link between the punk garage snottiness of bands like the Standells and the suburban psychedelic freakouts of the Iron Butterfly. “Talk Talk,” their lone national hit, is included here, but even the never-before-released stuff sounds tough, if time-warped, today.M.D.
A DROP IN THE GRAY Certain Sculptures (Geffen)
This group’s hook for the press is that the members come from various countries, but then so do the random strangers in any given airport waiting room, and you know what kinda muzak gets by in those places. A few seconds after the needle drops into the first groove of Certain Sculptures, you find yourself up against one more quartet of young simp poppers who wear their hair in erectile-tissue fashion and who actually believe that Depeche Mode have something to do with real life. You got it, there may be some nice rhythm thigamajigs embedded in these tracks, but they’re so well-protected by caution and good taste that you’ll inevitably find yourself reaching for METAL instead. R.R.
