CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

THE SUN AIN’T GONNA SHINE ANYMORE

SUN CITY: THE MAKING OF THE RECORD by Dave Marsh (Penguin)

SUN CITY: THE VIDEO (Karl/Lorimar)

Wayne King

Sun City has been viewed as the latest in a series of benefit records and events, but as Little Steven makes abundantly clear throughout the Sun City video, charity was not the motivation behind the project—raising consciousness was. Sun City marks a turning point in the ongoing struggle to keep rock relevant to itself and its audience. When Bono remarks during an interview for the videotape that Sun City represents a stance neither left nor right, but one that’s “just common sense,” he’s uncharacteristically off base. The political nature of the South African struggle made participation here a tougher choice than helping out the fight against famine (like, who is for world hunger?).

The lineup on Sun City is a more eclectic assemblage than even the U.S.A. For Africa line-up, where celebrity status outweighed any sense of musical crossover and cooperation. The number of rappers and black rockers, whose voices and faces would otherwise never reach the airwaves, reminds us of the record’s secondary goal: to rail against the continued negligence towards blacks and other minorities right here in the U.S.A. This point is driven firmly home in the video, when Daryl Hall sings “It ain’t that far away, Sun City,” and the screen cuts to film of dogs and water hoses turned on children in the effort to desegregate Birmingham in 1963. We should hardly need such reminding the first year Martin Luther King’s birthday was celebrated nationally. (It’s interesting to note that the video was co-produced by MTV—which may or may not be that network’s attempt to combat the bad publicity of their own musical apartheid.)

As the inevitable multimedia byproducts from such an undertaking, the book— with text by Dave Marsh— and the behind-the-scenes video succeed admirably by informing the uninitiated about the anti-apartheid battleground. The video works best when we get to hear the individuals behind the record. Some make points subtly when interviewed; some become visibly upset when discussing apartheid; many—like the incredible Darlene Love—are most expressive when lifting up their voices. The motivations may vary; the unity of purpose is unwavering.

The layout of the book is a bit difficult to follow, with quotes and facts about South Africa juxtaposed randomly with the text, candid photos from the recording sessions and posed shots. In that sense, the hurried nature of the project’s schedule works to the book’s advantage. Marsh’s deadline reporting, for example, is straightforward and relatively free of the polemical nature of his writing since the advent of his Rock & Roll Confidential newsletter. That’s appropriate, since the idea is not to reassure the hardliners, but to persuade newcomers to the righteousness of the cause.

Unlike the Live Aid book, the Sun City book understands that the reader’s interest will come from the celebrity orientation of the event, which lets it harp on the reason for the project as much as possible. Besides, dealing with apartheid is not an easy matter. Unlike the tollfree, credit card convenience of charity rock, finding out about it should not be made too easy: “Nobody rocks for free.”

The simple-minded Ken Kragen vision of charity (“Hands Across America,” anyone?) and the industry’s continued ostrich-like response to a right wing onslaught against rock, will make the very idea of a Sun City radical enough.

By following the credo of the 2-Tone bands—think globally, act locally—Little Steven has proven the correctness of his approach. Sun City has been felt. And the “local” community he called upon, musicians and audiences both, turned out to be international, in fact—a case of “We Are The World” in reality and not just sentiment.

GOIN’ UNDERGROUND

UNCOVERING THE SIXTIES: The Life & Times of the Underground Press by Abe Peck (Pantheon)

Richard C. Walls

One of the most ironic lies in this season of lies is the one that tells how the media (meaning the mainstream press and the three TV networks) helped achieve, if not single-handedly cause, the losing of the Vietnam war. In truth, while TV unavoidably conveyed some of the untidiness of the war, the majority of the mainstream media, during most of the ’60s, was either avidly pro-war or respectfully neutral, dutifully reporting government proclamations sans comment. Meanwhile, voices of dissent, when they did arise, were most often viewed with suspicion (here in Detroit the leading local news station routinely referred to “alleged” peace demonstrators) if viewed at all. In our current era, when the media is constantly criticized for being too “liberal,” it may be hard for some to believe—particularly those too young to remember (who at least have an excuse) —that the feeling of many during the late ’50s and early ’60s was that the mainstream media was hopelessly conservative and out of touch. Which is why, when social and political and cultural forces for change started to coalesce in the ’60s and the various shits started hitting the various fans, an outlet was needed for the news and views that weren’t appearing in the dinosaur dailies. Almost simultaneously across the country, newspapers appeared to serve as alternative voices...voices ranging from the fairy dust perspective of the Hippie San Francisco Oracle to the somewhat more practical polemics of the L.A. Free Press, from the psychedelic skepticism of the East Village Other to the urban guerrilla revo rhetoric of Detroit’s Fifth Estate (the deracinated sarcasm of the journal you are now reading, born as it was during the heated mid-period of the underground press era, is but the muted afterglow of the ’60s call to arms...).

It’s the rise and dissemination of these alternative voices that Abe Peck has written about in this exhaustive and well-researched chronicle. Peck finds the most immediate predecessors to the underground press in the deceptively calm ’50s—apparently, any

decade that could give birth to such rebellious prototypes as Mad magazine and The Realist wasn’t all Leave It To Beaver time. He then details the mass arrival of the alternative newspapers, a phenomenon that, in retrospect, seemed doomed from the start as a unified movement, what with the participating cultural avant-gardists and political radicals often being at odds, each viewing the other with disdain.

Abe Peck is a veteran of the underground press scene, having edited Chicago’s Seed during its peak years, but he tells his tale of raucous conflicts with restraint and fairness, interjecting personal bio only at strategic points. And though he makes no claim of objectivity, the balance is here; if the police riots at the Chicago Democratic convention of ’68 are graphically depicted, then so is the cynical manipulation of both the mainstream and underground press by the Yippies which helped bring the violence about; if the FBI’s attempts to squelch free speech are chillingly documented, so are the equally censoring techniques of hardline left-wing rads.

Obviously, this ain’t no nostalgia trip—the book can, in fact, serve as a handy antidote for anyone still mooning over the good old days. And yet, given the temper of the present times, it still manages to be heartening. The “liberal” media is partly a right-wing myth (their brand of nostalgia—it must bug the hell out of them to see things in People magazine, fer Chrissake, that would have been considered radical in the ’50s) and partly a legacy of the underground press— things have loosened up a little. Still, while the press continues to adhere to, by and large, the official version of what’s going on in Nicaragua, while the CIA’s continuing involvement with El Salvadoran death squads goes largely unreported, when, in fact, the age of Reagan feel-good vibes depends in large part on the downplaying or ignoring of dozens of similar stories, it helps to read Peck’s book. One can learn from the mistakes and excesses and still draw inspiration.