NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

VOODOO CHILES

Surely you remember Wall Of Voodoo. You don’t? Back in ’82 they blew across the sugary wasteland of the Top 40 like a spastic tumbleweed with the odd and jolly “Mexican Radio.” That song and the big-selling Call Of The West (“It went tin,” says drummer Ned Leukhardt) kept these Los Angelanos in gambling money for a couple of years. Before they became semifamous, Wall Of Voodoo churned out soundtracks for porn flicks, student films, American Cancer Society TV commercials and whatever they could get their hands on. In 1983, WOV played the US Festival and then lost two original members, Stanard Ridgway (vocals) and Joe Nanini (percussion). Since then they have disappeared from the periphery of our collective consciousnesses.

As 1985 was about to call it quits, Wall Of Voodoo resurfaced with Seven Days In Sammystown, produced by Ian Broudie, a.k.a. Kingbird (credits include Echo & The Bunnymen’s Crocodiles and Porcupine). Recorded in Liverpool and the Kinks’ London studio during the summer of ’84, the new LP heralds an enlarged Voodoo wall of sound. Where 1980’s Wall Of Voodoo EP, Dark Continent (’81) and Call Of The West had the sound of primitive technology gone bonkers, Sammystown envelops the listener in vast swaths of synth chords and new singer Andy Prieboy’s Ian Andersonian inflections. All in all, this is a less zany WOV. I daresay they could shove their way into the charts again with the “Far Side Of Crazy.”

Broudie’s presence definitely influenced WOV’s new direction. “Ian has a real classical sense of song structure,” said Prieboy, who challenges Stiv Bators for the skinniest man in rock award. “On Sammystown, he made us do it with a lot of priority to the arrangements.”

“He had a real primitive attitude toward production in that

he goes strictly for performance more than anything,” says Bruce Moreland (bass, keyboards). “Ian got a large sound out of us. We’d always been looking for that on every record. Especially on our first two records, we always sounded so much thicker live. It was really hard to get that sound in the studio, and a lot of it had to do with the fact we were using dinosaur electronics, old rhythm machines from the 1950s that were actually used on HannaBarbera cartoons. We didn’t have modern technology.”

The wild, wacky percussion of the previous disks apparently departed with Nanini and his “pots and pans.” A shame. Gone, too, is Ridgway’s distinctive, cornball voice. (Good riddance, some say.) “Stan didn’t want to put up with other people’s ideas,” says Chas Gray, gold that scious alike. keyboardist But record. Sammystown the attempt and Voodudes for Dick is that York insist no elusive lookcon-

“If we wanted to be more commercial,” says Gray, who is wearing some kind of cowboy hat, “we would’ve gone strictly to boom-style rhythm machines, goofy synthesizers and just dance music.”

Have WOV turned more serious on us? “We’re more depressed now,” chuckles guitarist Marc Moreland.

“The new record has a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor but it’s not as obvious,” offers Gray. “It’s kind of a backlash against ‘Mexican Radio.’ People took us as a joke, a novelty band. We didn’t want to write any more novelty songs so we took our tongue-in-cheek deeper into the songs. We’d probably all kill ourselves if we repeated the formula of ‘Mexican Radio.’”

Prieboy sees Sammystown as a pivotal LP. He and new drummer Leukhardt (ex-Nervous Gender, Flesheaters) were relatively unknown commodities to the other three members. Now that they all know one another better, Prieboy predicts the next album will be “more vicious— harder, rawer and with more guitars and cheap synths. We can do anything we want on the next LP.”

The future looks, uh, rather sunshiny for Wall Of Voodoo. Sammystown promises better things (at least commercially) from this idiosyncratic bunch, for whom the mellow L.A. corporate rock ethic is an emetic.

By the way, WOV think it’s important you know that their favorite Stooge is Larry Fine.

Dave Segal

DEMENTED TO MEET YOU

Barry Hansen looks pretty much like all of his neighbors in the suburban section of L.A. known as Sherman Oaks. He’s bearded, 40-ish, soft-spoken and drives the requisite yup-mobile. Even his home looks like the others on the street—from the outside. The casual passerby can’t spot the records that fill the rooms, all carefully organized and labeled, and resting up on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Nor can they see the sound room that has more equipment than the first Record Plant recording studio.

But then the uninformed would have no way of knowing that the quiet Mr. Hansen has an alter ego. When Barry slips on his silk top hat and enters the Westwood One studio, he becomes Dr. Demento. The good Doctor has been on the air for 11 years, and is now in syndication to 160 stations around the country. What makes the doctor special are the tunes he plays—he has a top five list, but none would ever be seen in Billboard. The songs Demento plays—and his listeners call in to hear—have names like “Flying Saucer” and “I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones.” See, Dr. Demento practically means novelty records. Since the first disc he ever spun (when he was four years old), was by the late Spike Jones, it should have been obvious his future was in comedy. But things aren’t always that simple.

Hansen did have air time on both his high school and college radio stations, but just didn’t think of it as a career. “At the time, radio and myself were not quite ready for each other yet,” he smiles. “They wanted big, deep voices.”

So he went off to seek his fortune (snicker, snicker) at graduate school.

“I came to UCLA to study folk music. They offered a master’s degree in folk music—it was kind of experimental,” he adds in mock seriousness. “It sounded like something real practical that would get me a good job.”

In a twisted sort of way, it did. After graduation, with only a thesis on the early years of rock—and some experience as a roadie for Canned Heat and Spirit on his resume—he lucked out. A fellow UCLA grad had heard about him (with a dissertation like that, word spreads fast) and wanted Hansen to compile data and liner notes for his record label—Specialty Records. (Specialty’s genre was old rock and blues—Little Richard, John Lee Hooker, etc.) He also started writing some rock history stories for consumer mags. Soon, he was being touted as an rock expert and recruited to do an oldies show on loosely programmed rock stations.

“It was one of those free form, underground progressive hippie stations that flourished at the time. At those stations the deejays could and did play anything they darn pleased—rock, folk, jazz, blues, a little country and classical. They brought me in to be their weekly oldies expert. After doing a few programs of more or less straight oldies, I started to sneak in some novelty records, I quickly discovered that novelty was what lit up the phone lines. So along with rock ’n’ roll novelties, I’d play some of the older stuff. Anything that sounded trippy. This being 1970, that was important,” he laughs.

Soon, Barry Hansen became Dr. Demento. As his success grew, he switched to a higherpowered station, and was picked up for syndication.

But as the nostalgia boom hit, his old source of records—thrift and junk shops—dried up. Other collectors had caught on. Not to worry though—many listeners began submitting their own novelty songs. Hansen listened to them all. Some were awful, but, others...well, we have Hansen to thank (or curse) for “Weird” Al Yankovic. The weird one first recorded “Another One Rides The Bus” on Demento’s airtime.

So it had to happen, and finally has. Hansen/Demento has released a six-record set of novelty “hits.” Called Dr. Demento Presents The Greatest Novelty Records Of All Time, the discs cover every decade since the ’40s, plus a Christmas LP. (What would Yule be without “Granny Got Run Over By A Reindeer,” anyway?) Included in the set is a detailed booklet giving the song and artist history (he knew that master’s degree would eventually come in handy).

So what’s next? Maybe TV, where he could show the videos of his Top Five. Don’t laugh— he’s already done two pilots, and is mulling , over several offers. And exactly what are his Top Five novelty records? “Dead Puppies Aren’t Much Fun,” “They’re Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Ha,” “Fish Heads,” “Pencil Neck Geek” and “The Ballad Of Irving.” What did you expect, “Stairway To Heaven?”

Sharon Liveten

PLAYING THE FIELD

Three days into an extensive U.S. promotional tour, noted English pop sourpuss Terry Hall, currently of the Colour Field, is still looking remarkably chipper and content. “We really like doing interviews,” he says, catching Your Reporter off guard with an uncharacteristically friendly grin. “It’s the only time when we can get away with lying. We haven’t started lying yet, but we’ll be telling whoppers by the time we get to Los Angeles.”

Former Specials/Fun Boy Three frontman Hall and his new bandmate Toby Lyons are in the States in an attempt to expand on the alternative-radio success of the Colour Field’s debut LP, Virgins And Philistines. In addition to 10 spiffing Hall/Lyons originals, the disc includes nifty, unexpected covers of the Roches and Question Mark & The Mysterians.

During their three years in the | spotlight, the racially integrated Specials achieved massive U.K. success with an eclectic, socially-conscious pop/rock/ska/ reggae/jazz mix. Longstanding internal tensions splintered the band in 1981, with Hall, Neville Staples and Lynval Golding seceding to form the Fun Boy I Three. The latter combo was I similarly prosperous in its twoI year lifespan, until Hall abruptly I terminated the project at the end l of the trio’s one and only U.S. B tour.

Hall: “After leaving the Specials, we wanted to base everything we did in a different way, but that started to fall apart when we became successful. There were too many contradictions, too many disagreements.

I felt like unimportant things had taken over the ideas that we had started with. I think there was quite a good future for us in America, but I wasn’t prepared to get involved with that, because I realized the pitfalls of having success when the people I in the group all believe different I things.”

Hall threw in with Lyons during the Fun Boys’ waning days, when the latter was playing keyboards in the group’s touring band. The pair started writing together, bassist Karl Shale joined a few months later, and the band began releasing sporadic singles in Britain early in 1984. It took them another year and a half, however, to find a suitable fulltime drummer—former Teardrop Explodes stickboy Gary Dwyer.

“We’re still sorting it out,” says Hall. “I think a lot of what we’ve done so far has just been experiments of what direction to choose, and how to look, and how to have our photographs taken. Now that we’ve got a permanent drummer, and we’re a proper group, it’s gonna be a lot easier to discover what we’re gonna do. We’ve always taken a long time to think about what our next step was gonna be, because the shock of actually doing something would set us back a few months.”

“It’s the British work ethic— lots of tea breaks,” adds Lyons.

One thing the Colour Field shares with Hall’s previous bands is a general distaste for the machinery of the pop industry. Lyons comments, “We like to think that none of us are under any illusions about the glamour side of the business. We try to see ourselves as just doing a job, but that’s quite difficult because of the way publicity works.”

According to Hall, “If you shy away from it too much, it does you no good at all. You must face up to those things, and explain to people that it isn’t what it seems. People don’t always want to hear that, butj think that the people who come to our gigs understand how we feel.”

They admit to being curious about the alien, exotic U.S. marketplace. “People in England are always trampling one another down,” says Lyons, “for no other reason than the fact that there’s nothing else to do, because the country’s so depressed. It seems that people here are less likely to shoot you down, and more prepared to see what you’ve got to offer. We’re not saying, ‘Hurrah, we’ve arrived in America, let’s move in.’ It’s just a nice change to see people enjoying themselves without breaking their guts worrying about it.”

By the time you read this, the entire four-piece Colour Field should be back home, working on new material. “It’s a very exciting time for us at the moment,” says Lyons, “because everyone’s got a great anticipation about a whole block of work that’s about to be done. We’re a complete unit now, so we can just get on with it.”

“I think our future’s very rosy,” adds Hall, “because of the amount of confidence we’ve got now. We’ve spent two years assembling something that’s very strong. Now, whatever happens, it doesn’t matter. There’s personal success and there’s dollar success, and after the Specials and the Fun Boy Three, I didn’t have either. With this band, I’ve had personal success, and that’s enough. I don’t know what a failure is, because I’m not one and I never will be one.”

Harold DeMuir

JAGGED TUNES RISING

Sonic Youth have ransacked the Stooges’ funhouse. They’ve basked in the Velvets’ white light/white heat. They’ve slaughtered Patti Smith’s horses. Soon they will paint the Beatles’ white album black—if they can ever learn the songs.

The four Youths—Thurston Moore (guitar/vox/words), Kim Gordon (bass/vox/words), Lee Ranaldo (guitar/vox) and Steve Shelley (drums)—gladly admit the influence rock’s primal artists have had on their sound. Yet Sonic Youth’s music is anything but derivative. Amazing.

“We don’t do what anyone else does,” says Ranaldo, the most articulate Youth. “We can’t even get it together to learn a cover, let alone try to sound like any other band. Different tunings and stuff help keep us that way.”

Ah, the different tunings and stuff. Sonic Youth treat rock’s sacred icon—the guitar—with distinctly anti-social behavior. Drumsticks and screwdrivers are lodged behind the bridge and under the strings which are then beaten with other drumsticks. Feedback is used as a strategic weapon. “The guitar is an unlimited instrument,” Ranaldo has said. “For the most part people haven’t taken it to full advantage.”

The group formed in New York'City in 1981. Three EPs (Sonic Youth, Confusion Is Sex and Kill Yr Idols) have established Sonic Youth as giants in the U.S. and European indie scenes. But their first LP, 1985’s Bad Moon Rising, is Sonic Youth’s magnum opus. It’s a chaotic, surrealistic horror show that disembowls many American myths. Nearly every cut offers stunning lyrical images streaming by the consciousness like something out of a William Burroughs or Kathy Acker novel. Strange guitar sounds abound.

The LP begins tranquilly, builds in intensity and finally explodes on the horrifying “Death Valley ’69,” where wave after I wave of klaxonized guitars I simulate what could be the menI tal state of Charles Manson.

It seems to me that Bad Moon I Rising is an angry record. I Ranaldo disagrees. “We’re not I angry people. Sometimes it’s very beautiful, too—I hope. We’re trying to evoke different moods...different textural things. We never look at it like this is frightening music. We’re trying to make sounds we’ve never heard before.”

“Dream interpretations,” Moore says cryptically from behind his Sky Saxonesque hair (ca. ’67). L-O-V-E is written on four of his knuckles.

What inspires you to write songs? “Everyday life,” says Moore, who is married to Gordon. “Whatever interests us at the moment,” Ranaldo interjects. “We were really into this I late-’60s thing.”

“I’m Insane” (from BMR) I seems very disjointed. “It’s I made up of different lines from I different pulp novels,” says GorI don, the scariest Youth. Her I singing has a Germanic, forbidI ding quality, devoid of any I femininity. “It was like I Thurston’s 100 favorite lines.” I Sonic Youth want to reinterI pret the diverse White Album I because “it’s such an epitome I of the ’60s era we were inI terested in and it was this one I album that summed up that I decade—togetherness and I breaking up...’’according to I Ranaldo. Thus far they’ve I mastered “Revolution 9,” “Back I In The USSR” and “Blackbird.” I Does living in NYC (“this I twisted melting pot”—Moore) afI feet their music? “Our music I takes on a pretty severe quality from living there, but we’re hardly industrial,” asserts Moore. “We don’t have any working class comment. Our music is tense. There’s a lot of tension in NYC. But we really love the Byrds and we try to bring out that kind of sensibility.”

Can Sonic Youth imagine someday exchanging grins with Dick Clark on American Bandstand? “Yeah!” Moore enthuses.

“We’re just begging to be mass-marketed,” Gordon adds sarcastically.

In any case, one fact remains: Bands like Sonic Youth must continue to exist, if only to irritate the hell out of those complacent folks who think Billy Idol and his ilk represent the radical extreme of rock in 1986.

Dave Segal