NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

DEPARTMENTS

THE RAUNCH HANDS MAY BE COMING TO YOUR TOWN

It’s hard to figure what to expect from a band named the Raunch Hands. So when they take the stage at New York’s Irving Plaza and launch into a mournful countryrock ditty called “Spit It On The Floor” (“Well, she kissed me all over/And she kissed me up and down/Well how was I to know that what she kissed/Would soon be on the ground?/...Well I used to love fine women/But I can’t love them no more/Since she bit it off/And she spit it on the floor”), it’s safe to say that more than a few jaws likewise hit the tiles.

Not to mention their cheerful anthem “Man Needs A Woman” (“...to cook his food when he comes home drunk at night/ ...to raise his brood, she don’t need to be very bright/...(who) can take a punch and don’t mind you usin’ a little force/’Cause if that bitch gets out of line/You can get yourself a divorce”), which could raise the hackles of the Washington Wives in more ways than one. Still, you gotta admire a band that rocks like a grungy bunch of East LA. garage punksters after a three-day mescal binge, especially when they’re all born ’n’ bred Right Coasters. So it was with minor misgivings that your intrepid correspondent met with Mikes Chandler and Mariconda (vocals and guitar/co-producer respectively) in the manager’s Manhattan apartment. Also present were said manager (female, but can she cook?) and their label publicist (El Rauncho Grande, their perverse EP, is available on Relativity. Buy it now and the label springs for the nachos).

Over the blare of Bugs Bunny (a seminal influence) cavorting on the tube, Chandler owned up that show biz was indeed his life: “Ever since I was a little kid, I knew this is what I would do...not being in a band, necessarily.” He developed the “boorish, misogynistic kind of guy” that narrates “Man Needs A Woman” as half of Tchang and Chandler, a short-lived comedy duo that spent the Wonder Years of 1982-83 playing New York clubs. Tchang is one more Mike, and he plays guitar and sax. Along with HiFi Junior on bass and Vince Brnicevic on drums, that’s the line-up. It was a natural progression from comedy to rock for these guys, while it’s vice versa for so many others.

Mariconda’s eight straight daily in a Village record store has had benefits beyond keeping to the time-honored don’tgive-up-your-day-job tradition. “If you listen to that much music, you can’t limit yourself to any one style,” Chandler concurs, preferring to refer to their eclectic sound as simply “American.” Fair enough, since they’ve covered Ray Charles’s “I Got A Woman” (which differs from “Man Needs A Woman” in that it’s considerably easier to duck a punch from Ray) and plan to incorporate the Warner Brothers cartoon theme in upcoming shows. Yo—Bugs Bunny meets Bo Diddley at the O.K. Corral!

In the immediate future is a Mardi Gras gig for the IRS Records-produced MTV show The Cutting Edge, appearing with the Full-Time Men (the Fleshtones swapping Peter Zaremba for Peter Buck of R.E.M. and getting the better of the deal). Then it’s on the road to support the new LP (Learn To Whap-A-Dang With The Raunch Hands), slated for imminent release. It was coproduced by Mariconda and Jim Klein, who remixed the EP. Refreshingly, “room service” has yet to enter their touring vocabulary. These characters think “hotels are copping out,” as Chandler asserts. “I’d rather go to a party and crash on someone’s floor and wake up where there’s beer in the fridge the next morning.” Hell, they’re easy.

Suds do loom large in their legend: “When we used to play the Peppermint Lounge in New York, the audience threw beer cans at us a lot. Not all of them were empty,” a grinning Mariconda recalls. “One guy even threw a six-pack onstage.” Let the Motley Crues of this world collect ladies’ unmentionables on the road; these are real men, the kind who understand what actually sustains life as it’s lived out on that cutting edge. Hard-punching tunes, cartoons, blues and brews: it’s a dirty job, but the Raunch Hands stand ready to do it.

Rhonda Markowitz

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEAT BOX

LL Cool J comes on like a rap version of Muhammad Ali, taking delight in clever wordplay with a showman’s sense of timing and a throbbing boombox beat. His name may be a typical homeboy’s boast (Ladies Love Cool James), but this 18-yearold from Hollis, Queens, talks it like he walks it and then some.

James Todd Smith is the most promising of rap’s second generation, those city kids who grew up listening to hip-hop’s first wave and dj’s like Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow or Run-D.M.C. James recorded a demo of “I Need A Beat,” using a $300 rhythm machine bought for him by his mom, and it earned him a deal with Rick Rubin’s thenfledgling Def Jam label. Featured appearances in the movies Krush Groove and Goldie Hawn’s Wildcats, along with a debut album which has sold a remarkable halfmillion copies, has catapulted the talented toaster to the top of his class.

“I try to be innovative,” says a confident LL. ‘‘Rap used to be just, ‘Hip hop hippityippity hip hop don’t stop.’ I’m trying to expand and broaden its range.”

Not only has he increased rap’s vocabulary, but Cool J has managed to break through with the most radical minimalism, powered by the economic scratching of one-man band Cut Creator and the tribal metallica of “reducer” Rick Rubin.

“I know how many words will fit into a paragraph just by looking at ’em,” he boasts. “I break rap down and extract its essence. Everything is small, but the beat’s big.”

His debut LP, Radio, distributed by CBS, which now handles the Def Jam stable, shows the different variations possible in rap’s mutable rhythm.

“How can all rap sound alike?,” he moans about the public’s frequent complaint. "All singing sounds alike for that matter, if you only hear it a few times. Whodini’s mainstream R & B, Kurtis Blow’s soul/funk, the Fat Boys make bubble gum music for little kids, Run-D.M.C. make heavy metal rap records and I make broken-down records. You can rap on anything.”

The talented teen proved that when he managed to squeeze the names of such alltime football greats as Bronco Nagurski and Y. A. Tittle into his title track for Wildcats, “Football Rap (Sport of Kings).”

“I used to play football, so I knew a lot of ’em,” he admits. “It’s not the usual vein I work in. When I did that, it was before I became set in my ways. I haven’t even seen the movie. How was I?”

The LA. Times said he was the best thing in it, just as he was in Krush Groove, where his cut, “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” turned out to be the first hit from the movie soundtrack. The song, also on his new LP, is an anthem to his ghetto blaster, an irresistible tribute to the beat of the street.

“I definitely have humor in my records,” agrees LL. “But certain records are real serious. ‘Radio’ was no joke. I was sayin’ that for the world to hear, not just a few people in my neighborhood.

“I’m still hungry. I haven’t forgotten where I wanna be, to sit next to the Boss and be just as respected for doing what I’m doing. And don’t say it’s impossible, because a few years ago, they said we wouldn’t be where we are right now, talking to you. I want a Porsche, a Benz and a Bob Hope house and this can get it for me.”

Spiffy in his B-Boy hat, hooded sweats, gold medallions and laceless Adidas, LL Cool J insists rap has not been co-opted by the establishment.

“This is something real to me, it’s just something I grew up doing,” says LL, who’s been rapping since he was nine years old. “This is me. As for what I’m wearing, the major corporations evidently want us to dress like this because you find these clothes and sneakers in every black neighborhood in America.”

With his multi-syllabic raps and middleclass roots, LL has taken the beat off the street, while maintaining its authenticity. In short, the thinking man’s rapper. While refusing to compromise his vision, Cool J has emerged as the new Leader of the Rap, a charismatic street poet who just may be the one to cross over to pop success.

“Grandmaster Flash was the Concorde, on the edge of space—they paved the way,” explains Cool J. “Then, Run-D.M.C. played shuttle and broke the barrier. Now, we outta space and I’m floatin’ around playin’ meteorite in the atmosphere. I’m in the Milky Way, chillin’, d’ya know what I mean?”

Roy Trakin

FALLING INTO PLACE

Let’s check in with Mark and Brix Smith of the Fall, an incredible British band renowned for its loud, exciting, unpredictable and oft-exquisite sense of multilayered noisemaking. The Fall have been around since 1977, but only in the last couple of years have they achieved their fullest creative flowering—especially on their two most recent LPs, The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall and This Nation’s Saving Grace, and on their new 5-track EP which includes “Rollin’ Dany,’’ an uncharacteristically straightforward (for the Fall) piece of rollicking three-chord jive. It’s intelligent music, and Mark and Brix are intelligent too.

Mark is the singer, but he says he can’t sing. “I still remember in the early days, when we made our first records, the shock I’d get at hearing myself. Our first record, I could never listen to it, I was so embarrassed. When we used to play with punk groups, the groups would say, ‘Ah, the Fall are a great band, pity he can’t sing anything.’ I’ve never considered myself a singer. A long time ago I stopped listening to other singers. I don’t try to affect a particular style. I’m not uninfluenced—I’m just not a plagiarist. There’s a very fine line between the two.

“I always like the use of the voice as an instrument,” Mark explains. “More as an atonal noise. I like groups that mutter and things—German groups like Can.”

Mark is also the main lyricist in the Fall, responsible for some of the most fascinating dreamlike ellipticisms you’ll ever hear in rock ’n’ roll. However, his words are often unintelligible, not only live but also on record. Throughout his career, Mark has resisted suggestions that he print his lyrics on the Fall’s album sleeves.

“All through the years, people have gone, ‘Well, show people how good your lyrics are,’ ” he says. “But that’s when ego comes into it, rather than what you wanna sound like. I mean, I think the whole point of being in a group is to make stuff that you wanna hear. I think it’s more important that the track comes across than my words. If my words were the important part, I think I would be better off being a writer or a poet.”

Brix is Mark’s wife and songwriter partner, and she plays guitar in the Fall. She’s American, and she joined the band after marrying Mark in 1983, but don’t worry: she’s good. “I wanted to embrace the rest of the styles in the band, you know, with my style,” she says of her early work in the Fall. “So I did some careful working out of that. It took a while. I always describe it like this: the Fall is an already painted canvas that I added light and shadow to.”

Listen carefully to the Fall’s records both pre-Brix and with Brix, and the conclusion is obvious: her contribution is integral to how the band sounds now. Namely, better. “Usually I just write the skeleton of a song, the basic rhythm and melody, on a guitar or a bass,” she says. “Then I take it to Mark and I say ‘what do you think of this?’ And he knows if it’s good for the Fall or not. If it’s good then I’ll take it to the rest of the band and I’ll say, ‘OK, here it is—fill it in.’ ”

And it works, oh yes is does.

Renaldo Migaldi