NEWS BEATS

PREFAB SPROUTING ALL OVER

NEWS BEATS

Paddy McAloon likes words like a dog likes lampposts, darting from one to the next, meandering back again, cocking his conversational leg to spray another shower of the things wherever they land. If McAloon’s conversation set out in a boat from Newcastle to Ireland it’d go via Africa with a few days off in Hawaii. The man knows how to ramble in interviews. He also knows how to be acutely succinct in songs.

Elvis Costello likes Paddy McAloon. Critics with English degrees like his like him, and people who like gorgeous songs, reminiscent of late-night jazz stations, passionate and cool— quirky-cool not hip-cool—like him. Paddy’s in Prefab Sprout; he’s their songwriter, guitar player, lead singer and founding member (he put the group together with little brother Martin 15-odd years ago, at age 13; Martin’s still there, alongside Neil Conti and the ethereally fragile-looking Wendy Smith), a sort of Marc Bolan spirit in Steely Dan’s body listening to Dylan and the Beach Boys while fasting for Lent.

He’s been called a clever bastard, an eccentric, a genius, a wimp and “probably the best writer on the planet” (the latter by himself). Hard to find the real P.McA in his long and interesting and almost uncondensable ramble. If Paddy were a rock writer, he says, “I suspect I probably wouldn’t like us.

“I’m not a wimp. I’m physically frail. I’m also guilty of being poor, so the songs I’ve recorded in the past haven’t had a brilliant sound because I couldn’t afford the right guitar. But that’s not wimpy. I’m not eccentric,” the voice is alternately confiding and confident, “in fact I’m probably cold-bloodedly straight-ahead in what I do. I’m not a clever bastard. Genius—” pause and a laugh. “I wasn’t going to exclude all those until all you were left with was that one! I hate that word in music because it gets so overused. Have there been any geniuses in pop music? Lennon and McCartney, Brian Wilson probably was—he was probably more eccentric and the genius tag was probably the worst thing to put poverty-stricken English language I and it doesn’t mean a damn, I nobody’s ever bothered that they I don’t use rich expressions—just I workaday language. But I’m a I white boy and I can’t go for that, I as Daryl Hall would say....You’ve I got to use different tools. I don’t I think people my age anyway can I use that. We don’t have the I strength of that kind of voice. So I my emphasis has to be lyrical, and I the structure of the music,” he mused... “I always sound so bloody academic!”

upon him because it made him I self-conscious. The problem with I Brian was—I speak as if I know I him on first-name terms!—that I clever bastard thing,” more musI ing. “There’s been some funny I things written about us. How can I you counteract this? It’s just that I I try to be honest and write from I a point of view that’s true to the I things I’ve done, and I have been 1 educated, so I can’t write as if I I was educated on the streets, I because I wasn’t...That’s one of I the complications. Black love I music is very good at using I

So let’s get it over with. Is he, has he ever been, or is he related to a college professor?

“My dad was a teacher. But no, the only job I ever had was a petrol-pump attendant.” He beams. “A classic rock ’n’ roll thing!” Like Springsteen before him.

“I don’t know whether Brucie Baby’s really done that, but I’ve done it and it’s a load of crap!”

So what else can I tell you in this tiny plot of print-space? That he once wrote Stockhausen and Stockhausen wrote back? That he likes sitting at home listening to Prince and Thriller and Pet Sounds and Nile Rodgers and Jimmy Webb and Dylan and Neil Young? That he once trained—if that’s the word—to be a Catholic priest, and that he credits one Jim O’Keefe, now Director of Pastoral Studies, for teaching him “more about pop music” than just about anything else in the known universe? (Would he have made a good priest? “I don’t think so; I’m too fond of things of the flesh, I’m afraid.”) That his second album’s produced by Thomas Dolby and is titled Steve McQueen in England (and Two Wheels Good in the States)? That it’s one of the best albums released in ’85, more emotionally direct than Swoon, Prefab’s debut, and that it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with Steve McQueen? “I just like the sound of his name. I do things quite randomly, really. You can say McQueen in his films is honest and simple and unintellectual and you can hope that the music can be regarded like that, but I can’t pretend that’s why I chose it...” And as for other American references in his songs, “I’ve absolutely no fascination with the place at all—I know this is going in an American magazine,” he laughs, “so I should go, ‘Oh, I love the United States...’ One of the sad things about pop music is when you see these guys like Bowie who are so jaundiced that they’ve got to fly around the universe to find new cities to write in. I’ve absolutely no longing to travel, whatsoever. I just think, you’ve got an imagination, for chrissakes.!”

Sylvie Simmons

COME TO ZE CABARET!

“We’re probably more accessible now than ever before,” notes genial Richard Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire, but don’t get the wrong idea. Although the Cabs have tempered their white-noise electronics just enough to make a mark on the dance-music charts, “Sensoria” is hardly an invitation to boogie ’til dawn. Mad-scientist style, Kirk and partner Stephen Mallinder have created a ghastly concoction of jagged rhythms and macabre vocals that’ll send a chill up the spine before it moves the feet.

Still, Cabaret Voltaire are now, in Kirk’s words, “an experimental dance band—this week, anyway.” Why? “We draw ideas from all

types of music, and at the moment, our main influence is the American hip-hop scene, people like Arthur Baker and Afrika Bambaataa. It isn’t a conscious attempt to be commercial, just a logical progression. We’ll probably change again for the next record.”

A good bet, since Cabaret Voltaire have always done exactly as they pleased. Taking their name from a Dadaist nightclub that flourished in Zurich, Switzerland, circa 1915, Kirk, Mallinder, and Chris Watson began their weird experiments in Sheffield, England, a dozen years ago. “We started with tape recorders, using ‘found’ sounds, tape loops, that sort of thing,” Kirk recalls. “We were inspired by Brian Eno and German groups like Kraftwerk.’«Not to mention Lou Reed. “Yeah, he was a big influence. In many respects, we modeled what we were doing on the Velvet Underground, especially the repetition and violence in their music. ‘Sister Ray’ was one of the ultimate records for me.”

At the Cabs’ first live gig in 1975, fights broke out, and it was a year before they played in public again. However, the spread of punkas anything-goes attitude made it easier to find an audience and led to a contract with pioneering independent label Rough Trade in the U.K. Since debuting on vinyl in 1978, the Cabs have released a scad of LPs (11), not to mention singles with such appealing titles as “Nag Nag Nag” and “Sluggin’ Fer Jesus.” Observes Kirk, “We’ve spent a lot of time working on things that are difficult to the ear.”

The trio became a duo when Watson split in 1981, at which point Kirk and Mallinder plunged headlong into making videos. “A lot of our early work was I soundtrack-oriented music that I was looking for a visual counterI part,” he explains. Today, Cabaret I Voltaire’s live shows feature I nonstop visuals that assault the I senses with a chaotic barrage of I unsettling images, no less effecI tive for being low-budget. Next, l^they’d like to get into feature films. I “We’ve written a script,” says Kirk. “We’re just looking for fund| ing.” What kind of movie is it? “A surrealistic thriller. I’m a big fan of the Bunuel. Need I say more?”

In the meantime, the MicroPhonies LP, featuring “Sensoria” and the equally alarming “James I Brown” (a warped tribute), and the more recent Aim Of The Lord set offer a hearty helping of their abrasive art. As Kirk cheerfully explains, “We make the music we want to make, and say, ‘Fuck you,’ to everyone else. If people don’t | like it, they don’t buy it.”

Jon Young

NO CASH DOWN

Rosanna Cash, a very young and dishy 30-year-old, has just celebrated the start of her second year without drugs. “Being on drugs is like being separated from yourself,” she states flatly. Going through a 30-day drug treatment program was hard on her, but now she looks back and sees that the drug habit was a lot harder. “I started when I was 14,” Cash remembers. Didn’t her parents know? (Some CREEM reporters can be pretty naive.) She grimaces at the question. “No.” Using whatever was around was Cash’s modus operandi until, finally, cocaine became her steady date. It seemed to dim the pain of professional problems—bad stage fright, even worse sit-down-and-write-asong-fright. But it also worsened the pain of some marital problems. Big ones. “It got to the point where everything in the relationship was being affected. I quit when I was pregnant, but I’d drift back.”

Now that the drifting days are over, Rosanne’s been able to turn her attention back to her career, which slowed down after her third LP, 1982’s Somewhere In The Stars. It’s scary to go back, partly because Rosanne finds the whole career process sort of scary, and partly because she doesn’t belong completely to one musical world. Her sound and sensibilities really sit between country and rock.

Cash could easily pass for a new wave hipster—streaked, spiked hair, jumbo-shouldered jackets and Madonna-esque costume jewelry. On a recent David Letterman show (“God I was so nervous for that show—cramps, and then off to the bathroom!”) she came off sharp-witted enough to join Paul Shaffer’s band.

If for no other reason, it looked like Letterman wanted to make her a permanent member of the cast for that beautiful laugh alone.

Now before you go choking on what a beautiful, funny, smart and brave woman Cash is, let us reassure you that this is not some obnoxious saint who went and got saved and now walks around alienating all us normal people. Rosanne is the first to say that getting your life straightened out does not make you saint. But if you ever get a chance to sit in a room with her for a couple of hours, you’ll see what getting straight does to some people—to Rosanne, anyway. When you’ve been through the I proverbial dark night of the soul, being out in the light isn’t so embarrassing anymore.

Laura Fissinger

RETURN OF THE KING

It’s a pop album, but it digs deeply into the essence of soul, the poesy of confusion and desolation. It also contains “Into The Night”—a song from the film of the same name, and B.B. King’s first genuine mainstream hit since 1969’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” Six Silver Strings, King’s 50th LP, is slick enough to have slipped unobtrusively into radio playlists, sharp and agonized enough to avoid being horrid splotch across the soulconscious body of B.B.’s artistic reputation. For all its immediate 1980s commercial appeal, and for all the synthesizers that spill out around the corners of the arrangement, it retains the same basic gospel/blues feel that ignited “Rock Me Baby,” “You Know I Love You” and other wild shouts B.B. spit forth back in the ’50s.

But B.B. King with synths? Not so spacey, really—not if you understand how the man has long been dogged with criticism from blues purists. The charges of “sellout” were flying at him 16 years ago, prompted by his use of string sections and lush backing

voices even back then, and earlier.

Says B.B.: “The blues purists haven’t liked me since day one. I’m a blues singer, but I sing blues like B.B. King does. I can’t be anybody else other than myself. And I feel any time a person can’t try to learn or do better what they do, and people try to keep them doing the same thing they did from the beginning, I don’t think there’s any progress there.”

King’s contributions to the soundtrack of Into The Night have triggered a new wave of interest in the man and his music—not to mention a new phase in the man’s career. Like for instance, he’s made videos now, for “Into The Night” and its follow-up, “My Lucille.” “The video is the record of tomorrow,” declares B.B., who was born in Mississippi in 1925 and cut his first record in 1949. “Why just listen to something if you can see it and hear it?”

Here’s one Delta boogie man who refuses to be left behind as the music biz races toward the 21st century.

Renaldo Migaldi