ELEGANZA

ELEGANZA

THE NAME GAME

John Mendelssohn

Years ago, Robert Christgau wrote, “Never trust a group with a logo,” but that was only typical Chrisgauvian hyperbole.

What you should never trust is a group with a logo that tries so hard to be clever that it can’t be read. Take Ratt’s, for example.

Please take Ratt’s. I don’t care what anyone says—those aren’t T’s over there on the right. Would you think me immoderate if I suggested that whoever’s responsible for it ought to have his or her fingers crushed—no, better yet, ought to be made up and costumed by whoever costumed and made Stephen, Robbin, Tubby, and the others up for their “Lay It Down” video, and then forced to attend an NFL game?

Speaking of Ratt’s costumes and makeup, can someone please explain how it is that the teen idols who put the most energy into being perceived as insatiable groupie-despoilers, voracious studs, ultra-he-men with cocks that point ever heavenward, are those least distinguishable from the groupies they mean to despoil, are those who’d look least out of place in a drag bar?

The record shows not only that I’ve been an avid supporter of precisely such shenanigans in the past, but, indeed, that I’ve perpetrated ’em myself, as in April, 1971, when, to the mortification of friends and family, I wore pink hot pants and lots of makeup to perform on a local Los Angeles Saturday afternoon television program called Boss City. You could look it up.

So what turned Eleganza against the decadent-rock-staras-parody-of-woman riff? Easy —its having become so much an institution as to have ceased to be outrageous at all.

I’m all for the idea of rock ’n’ roll as subversion, as something that frightens, excites, or otherwise jolts people out of their complacency and bovine compliance to notions of proper conduct perpetrated by the evil ruling class. But how could Ratt’s and Motley Crue’s affectation of sluttishness be any less subversive, given its familiarity and their implicit sexism?

Looking as little like most people’s conception of A Rock Star as it’s possible to look, someone like David Byrne is more subversive all on his own than Ratt, Motley Crue, and a stadiumful of their imitators.

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can often judge a rock ’n’ roll group by its name. Always opt for one with a pluralized name— Scorpions, say—over one with a singular—Night Ranger, say, or Survivor, or Foreigner—for the singular sort suggests that the group either believes that it is, or wishes that still were the early ’70s, when such names were thought indicative of a dizzyingly bold artistic vision.

This column, incidentally, recently decided that it goes for Scorpions in a big way, their lack of a The notwithstanding. They’re so irresistibly goofy, so delightfully aware of—and delighted with—their own absurdity. Now that’s rock ’n’ roll, four balding Germans in spandex mugging like gangbusters. They’re not quite as tuneful as Cheap Trick, but they’re funnier.

Avoid groups named after one member, unless the group name includes the words “the” and “band,” “group,” “sextet,” or “combo.” That is, opt for the Spencer Davis Group, say, over the likes of Van Halen and Giuffria.

Speaking of Van Halen, do you have to hand it to them for having a terrific sense of humor, or what? The most obnoxious frontman/ singer in American rock ’n’ roll leaves the group, but do they replace him with somebody with even the most negligible charisma? Nope, they replace him with Sammy Hagar, the second most obnoxious frontman/singer in American rock ’n’ roll. The only funnier thing they could have done would have been to find Jim (Dandy) Mangrum, late of Black Oak Arkansas.

Which reminds me—avoid groups named after geographical areas unless the place names are adjectival. That is, the New York Dolls is cool, but New England, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, London, and Terre Haute ain’t.

Has any reader ever witnessed a more blatant case of narcissism, incidentally, than Eddie Van Halen’s being married to Valerie Bertinelli? Could they look any more like one another on a bet? By the same token (oh, all right, an entirely different token), has anyone seen the “Raspberry Beret’’-era Prince in the same room with Liza Minelli? And if so, and they’re still there, is there any chance of your locking them in and throwing away the key?

Speaking of that mob of ludicrous old hacks without the faintest notion of their absurdity, Giuffria, I’ve decided that, in their animal skin print clothing and shag hairdos and pouts and disdain for groups without Heavy Chops, they’re to the 70s what Sha Na Na used to be to the ’50s, although the music isn’t quite as funny. “I just don’t look good in short hair,” lead singer David Eisley explained to J. Kordosh when the ass ed wondered why the Giuffs look as though they just awoke from a nap they began in late 1971. How, one wonders, does the Eisley brother imagine he looks in his long hair?

Never, under any circumstances, trust a group with diacritical marks over its name, unless it’s Blue Oyster Cult, who originated the practice, or The Dreadful Umlauts, who have the great panache to suspend that after which they’re named over them, an admitted consonant.

Steer clear, too, of groups with long names that include verbs, like Gramps Wears Fuchsia Pajamas, as they’re almost invariably effete little twerps who’ve been very profoundly influenced by Depeche Mode. Save your money instead for groups with names of wondrous ambiguity, like Swimming Popl Q’s, the group name equivalent of that famous picture which is as easily perceived as a chalice as of two facing profiles.

Finally, I’ll never be able to understand why people like Pat Benatar and Bryan Adams, who employ the same bands year after year, don’t have the common decency to name them, a la Prince & The Revolution or Elvis Costello & The Attractions. How about Bryan Adams & Vancouver, or Pat Benatar & The Chained Nude Playthings In A Prison Of Lust?

Speaking of Benatar, Eleganza stands on its seat to applaud drummer Myron Grombacher’s performance in the “Invincible” video. The spirit of Keith Moon lives on, even without Clem Burke’s help!

Isn’t it terrific to have Aretha Franklin back on the radio? It is indeed, but I’ll tell you what would be even better—to have Lorraine Ellison, whom I personally regard as as good as Aretha and Patti Labelle put together. Don’t believe me, though—believe her “Stay With Me,” without question the most astonishing recorded vocal performance you’ll ever hear.

I first heard it 16 years ago while putting together the music for a convention of Ellison’s record company’s sales and promotion staves. In rehearsals for the program during which it was to be played, I must have heard it 35 times. Not once did it fail to give me chills. Nor, perhaps even more improbably, did it fail to make the mouths of the white-patent-loafered, white-belted sales and promotion guys drop open in astonishment. Its power is twice that of Tina Turner’s “River Deep Mountain High,” which the greatest of all rock critics, Nik Cohn, described as sounding like nothing less than the end of the world.

What makes it all the more remarkable is that Ellison repeatedly has to fight it out with one of the shrillest, most out-of-tune horn sections you’ve ever heard. But her anguish, as she pleads with the lover to whom the song is addressed, is so intense, so palpable, that you completely forget everything else. She moans. She whimpers. She howls. And for as long as the record lasts, there seems to be nothing in the world but Lorraine Ellison and her pain.

If you never track down another out-ofprint record, track down Lorraine Ellison’s “Stay With Me.” It may be equaled some day, but it will never be surpassed.