NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

LOS CRUZADOS GO FOR BROKE

Back in October of 77, budding Los Angeles punks looked to Slash magazine for news of essential listening. There they read of a young quartet called the Plugz. Through personnel changes and one stint as a �punk power trio,� this band�s members were to become pivotal hardcore pioneers.

They played historic occasions: the two-day Club Masque benefit in 78 and the �St. Patrick�s Day Massacre� of 79 when tension between punkers and the L.A.P.D. flared at a gig shared with the Alleycats and Go-Go�s. Their triple-speed cover of �La Bamba� pre-dated the postpunk roots revival by five years. And, with Electrify Me and Better LuCk—LPs from the Fatima label founded by leader Tito Larriva—the group became one of the first new L.A. bands to record and release their own vinyl.

The nucleus of the Plugz remained Texan Larriva and Charlie (�Chalo�) Quintana—a pal charmed out of high school in El Paso at the age of 16 to join the band in California. Bassist Tony Masico has been with Larriva and Quintana four years now. He was part of the Plugz� lineup when Tito�s next-door neighbor, an Englishman named Alex Cox, approached the band about scoring his independent film Repo Man.

By the time the band had conI tributed �El Clavo Y La Cruz,� I �Hombre Secreto� (their cover I of �Secret Agent Man�) and all I the incidental music to Cox�s I movie, they had also scored a ' major label deal. And they had changed their name. �We never got much money for the soundtrack stuff,� says Tony, �but it was so much fun and Alex was so cool, that was just fine. Still, it was right after that we changed to Cruzados, went to New York and took a loft for the summer. We had to get our shit together.�

�I like to say we put it to death with dignity,� says Tito. �The whole scene had changed. Most of the groups had broken up and we�d taken what we had about

as far as it could go. That second LP—Better Luck—pretty much summed up that whole period.�

The about-face was more than just musical: the new band presents a unique personnel phenomenon. Charlie, Tony and

Tito remain the group�s core, but hotshot Arizona-born lead guitarist Steven Hufsteter (tenure with the band: two-and' a-half years after pre-punk stints in the Quick and the Falcons) is now a vinyl-only member. It�s his pic on the sleeve and his licks on wax, but anyone who turns out to see Cruzados live will be looking at a 21-year-old blond named Marshall Rohner.

Hufsteter, apparently, has �some personal and other problems� which preclude touring with his band.

Rohner, a mere 21, came from Jimmy & The Mustangs; Tito and Tony describe him as �just a rock �n� roll street kid, living to play in L.A.� Before Cruzados� first tour in support of their debut

LP for Artista, Rohner dug in for two weeks of heavy rehearsal in Dallas. Like most other musicians in the North Texas area— T-Bone Burnett, Brave Combo, Johnny Reno, Randy Erwin— Tito took time off to film a stint

in head Head David Byrne�s movie directing debut, True Stories.

The Cruzados sound may represent Chicano taste—their music is driven by heavy metal dynamics and their florid lyrics sound like translations from the Spanish. But they�re not a �Chicano-oriented� act: �It�s just that we don�t approach our songs like a regular rock band,� says Tony. �We all know each other so well, everybody gets respect. But the passion in the work essentially belongs to Tito. For years he used to do this solo acoustic act with just his guitar and Spanish love songs,� he laughs. �Really made the girls cry, you know?�

Truly, though, it would take a

Road And Track writer�s vocabulary to justly describe Cruzados on stage or vinyl—and their sentiments really do adhere to blood and roses. Does the band find themselves—as do outfits like the True Believers—

lumped into some Latino-rock stereotype? �Yeah,� says Tony, �we get that all the time. Every review mentions refried beans. It�s like, we did a million gigs with Los Lobos. And we love what they do—I mean, they�re real, a real traditional East L.A. sound. But we live in Hollywood, Los Angeles, you know? People don�t quite know how to take us.�

Tailored for torque, ready for a road rumble, soaring along on streamlined sentimetalism Cruzados now hit the trail with ZZ Top. Full brakes, full throttle, full slide. �Once you hit the fast track,� notes Low Rider in the Sky Larriva, �your driver does everything at a maximum.�

Cynthia Rose

LOWDOWN HOEDOWN

�Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,� the Kane Gang�s singer/lyricist Martin Brammer warns me. Uh-oh! Howza wiseguy CREEM hack supposed to comport hisself when faced with the prospect of three socialist/vegetarian (there, I said it) British soulboys then? Take a cue from the Gang, who followed the sage advice of the Staples Singers, by recording the classic �Respect Yourself,� the current single from their Lowdown elpee. And respect themselves they do. �I find it a wee bit sad that soul music now is the best-produced, bw| that seems to take precedence over actual content. I�d like to think we were a band that quite sincerely would like to have something beneath the thin veneer of technology. I can�t explain it in anything other than what we sing about. We don�t invent a storyline to write a new twist about a love song. I just don�t feel comfortable doing it. But I�m not sure that George Michael knows anything about love that I don�t.� *

Writing about other �universal things� like bitterness, resentment and �people who you went to school with not being able to get a job� hasn�t kept the Kanes out of the Brit Hit Parade. But aside from a dizzyingly hypnotic paisley shirt, Mr. Brammer is most unlike a pop star. �The hardest thing I�ve had to do is speak into a camera and be real jolly and tell everybody how brilliant you are,� Martin confesses. �It�s hard to be honest and tell them a pack of lies. And watching Duran Duran with scantily clad girls in their videos, sort of we-are-the-internationalplayboys, is enough to turn men of peace into men of violence.�

Ah yes, but t�was John Taylor of the aforesaid D�rans that plugged your biggest hit, �The Closest Thing to Heaven,� in the pop papers! ��Indeed, the supreme irony,� Martin replies, almost sarcastically. �Good old John. I always thought that he had the most taste. But I do think the press think we�re dour, gray people, without being able to see

irony or humor in what we do.�

A brief glance at the Kane resume dispels such an awkward, unfair notion. �Dave (Brewis, guitars and keyboards) and I had tried our hand at writing comedy scripts. We did something when we were 20, which was exactly the same jokes and things as Airplane, but sort of a Romans-in-Britain thing. It was all wacky things like donkeys smoking on airplanes and kung fu people running around.�

This cunning cut-up couple first crossed paths when Marty was a mere 11 in a public school in the small mining village of Seaham on the northeast coast of Blighty. Dave was in a school band called Orphan (�a bad name then and even worse now�) and drafted in Martin because �I was the only person he knew with a bass guitar.�

Singer Paul Woods, a music reporter for the nearby Sunderland Echo, was conscripted and the nascent Gang spent a few frustrating years, �writing songs in the style of whatever was being written about that month in the trendy music papers.� The turning point was a song called �Brother Brother� which became their first release on Kitchenware Records, the home of Prefab Sprout. �I sang a bit and Paul did a bit and by the end of the song we were both screaming our heads off and it seemed to be very natural.� They soon became the �gothic gospel� Kings Of Cotton with songs like �Pray To God For Candy,� and ��Bible Belt.� �Everybody thought we were Mormons!� Martin recalls fondly.

Nowadays, their religious training consists of learning to

�bow down to the great gods of the marketplace� without compromising their political beliefs or boring audiences stiff. And they�re managing rather well. �I think it�s rather presumptuous and pompous for someone to say that everyone should be interested in politics,� Martin declares. �But if everybody followed a basic code, nothing to do with religion or the Bible, but the simple difference between good and bad, then 99 percent of all known problems would disappear overnight.�

And so, the burning question: Do socialists dance differently from you �n� me? �No,� Martin chuckles. �It�s not like the freemasons, you don�t have to learn any special handshakes. I�m sure that when you dance, everybody knows you�re doing it for the good of mankind.�

David Keeps

MASON RUFFNER�S IT

May the good Lord help Mason Ruffner. It was only a month or so after the recent release of his superb debut LP that People Magazine made the official pronouncement: �...this is the leading contender for the title of Bruce Springsteen South.� In the 1980s, being tagged as the next Bruce Springsteen is like being tagged the next Bob Dylan was in the �60s and �70s. Some folks, like Bossman himself, survive such proclamations. Many others do not.

Ruffner, a 33-year-old southern guitarist/writer/singer, figures that Springsteen may actually help him to survive.

�It was December of 1984, a Tuesday night, real late. Lots of rain and cold, so there were only about 10 people in the club— 4 this is Bourbon Street, in NfegJ Orleans. But I was packin it down pretty good—I play hard no matter what. I saw Sprih^t^ steen come in—or at least I thought it was him. Afterwards we sat down and talked for about a half hour. At the end, J went to start loadin� my gear and suddenly I noticed that Bruce was takin� some stuff out to the van. So we finished and I took Bruce and Patty Scalfia back to their hotel. Hey, most of my friends don�t even help me move equipment"Ruffner�s craggy face creases with amusement. "He

changed my life a little bit, the way he acts—he showed me how to act if I ever get up there, that you can do it without ego.�

Actually, Ruffner would probably survive just fine at Springsteen�s level of semi-divinity, because he�s already been dragged through a couple of rock �n� roll�s semi-hells.

The first hot spot: Top 40 cover songs, blow-dried hair and Big Dreams of Making It, �Oh, yeah, sure I did all that,� laughs Ruffner, who knows how this news will shock those who revere him for his blues-roots purity. Even though Ruffner�s first inspiration was a bluesband-player uncle, �my first bands were rock bands, and my

hair was just right. I was 18, 19 years old, and we were trashin� out every radio song in sight."

Ruffner got himself out of that one, partly by a growing obses| sion with records by blues greats and books about non-blues greats like Beethoven and van Gogh. �The more I got into real art. the more I didn�t like what I was doing. Nothin� was happening anyway. Around age 23, I quit music altogether and left my guitar at my sister�s house. Then I worked jobs like waitin� tablesp drivin� a caterpillar. I was gonna write novels and poetry and I sat at the Fort Worth library all the time, reading.�

And shortly thereafter, Ruffner entered the second semi-hell, that of the roadhouse bar grind

of the blues-rock musician. He did all the components of the cliche—lots of travel (which he liked), low pay in scuzzy dives (which he didn�t), and a drug problem. �What I did woulda killed some people,� says Ruffner hesistantly, obviously uncertain about how to speak of the problem without sounding like a soldier bragging of war wounds. �Thank God I recovered. It made me a better person.�

* He also became a better musician from the thousands of hours he played—so better, in fact, that he also became The Guitarist To See. Besides Bruce, Mason was visited by Jimmy Page, Robbie Robertson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Billy Gibbons, and so on. The word on Ruffner

got to CBS Records execs. One of them helped him get a deal with the label relatively quickly. Ruffner knows full well that record deals for blues-based guitar guys (without groovy hair) are about as common as lottery wins. Apparently, God really is helping Mason Ruffner. �It�s weird—I didn�t ask to make a record, they asked me. I get asked a lot on the street in New Orleans, by musicians— especially by guys in pop bands with their hair combed just right. They�ve been sending tapes out for years and they say �how�d you get your deal?� And I say �I don�t know— you tell me!��

Good music and God�s help figure in there somewhere.

Laura Fissinger

TWIN SONS OF SIMILAR MOTHERS

Most of the British postpunk bands that are currently making a Stateside splash hail from dozy London suburbs or gritty Northern industrial towns. You would not have guessed, on first impressions, that a colorful angstrock outfit called Gene Loves Jezebel come from the sleepy South Wales hamlet of Porthcawl.

It was in order to escape the �very small-minded� way of life at home that Michael and J. Aston moved up to London in 1981. Assuming the alter-egos of Gene (a school nickname) and Jezebel (the ill-fated Biblical queen of lust), the identical twins became the vocal nucleus of a group as concerned with performance art as with rock �n� roll.

�When we first started,** says Michael in his soft, lilting accent, �the real desire was to get onstage to present something which people would regard as— if not terribly palatable, at least quite interesting. It was very loose, very spontaneous. It was more performance we were interested in, than making records.�

Even so, their first gig, at London�s Institute for Contemporary Art, led to a deal with an independent label. It was their second single, �Bruises�/�Punch Drunk� (which is included on the American release, on Relativity Records, of the Immigrant LP), that brought them serious attention. Its searing guitar melody and plaintive vocal beseechment attracted many who were bored with trite pop and bombastic rock, but disappointed by punk�s degeneration into cliched thrash.

Their sharp, aggressive image, however, had them associated with the Gothic punk scene—with which they had little in common.

Jumping on a fashion bandwagon brings short-lived success and subsequent obsolescene. �I�ll tell you what scares me about England,� begins Michael. �Every couple of months, they decide this is gonna be a flavor. If you�re part of that flavor, you�re dead.�

Yet neither are Gene Loves Jezebel content with obscure cult status. �I think we�re very much part of the mainstream,�

says Michael. �We�re marginal in our attitudes to music. If a big company comes in to sign us, fine. But they�d have to deal with a band that has very clear ideas of how to make its music. We�re building up a collection of material, all of which has some credibility.�

Contractual pressure and the need to maintain a high media profile sometimes place such �marginal attitudes� in jeopardy. I cite Paul King�s complaints

about the matter—but Michael throws up his hands in horror at the comparison.

�King were on the fringe

mainly because of their mediocrity. They had no commitment to anything; they were just an OK pop group. We�re not that sort of group; we�ve worked on our material and we�ll be successful with it or we won�t— that�ll be the end of it.

�We�re not a typical British band.�

GLJ are not a typical anything. The current five-piece—J. and Michael plus guitar, bass and drums—make lyrical forays into

gum, Tear, love ana wonaer, sonically structured with shuddering lyrical pleas and hesitant, chilling riffs and melodies. The

evocation of Welsh Druid folklore and pagan ritual has not been the strangest accusation levelled at them over their fivesingle, two-album career.

�There is that spiritual Welsh thing in it. What they call angst, but if we were black, they�d call it soul. We regard ourselves as a sort of Welsh rock-soul band with vaguely psychedelic influences.�

A powerful concoction.

Dave Kendall