ROCK • A • RAMA

ROCK • A • RAMA

This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Michael Davis, Richard C. Walls, Dave Segal, Thomas Anderson and Chuck Eddy

THE ORDINAIRES

(Dossier)

Here’s a fun New York band (actually a nonet: two guitarists, two violinists, one cellist/flutist, one tenor saxist/accordionist, one alto saxist, one bassist, and one drummer) who are dedicated to playing instrumental music which doesn’t hold still long enough to be pinned down. Just when you think you’ve got these guys and gals pegged, they try something different, e.g., “Passion Flower” sounds like modern chamber music with a strong backbeat (this band ain’t afraid of contradictory combinations) with horror movie soundtrack overtones (or undertones), while “Industry” has a plangent No New York edge to it...“Hope” is funky, “Ramayana” is trad Indian stuff, “Gridlock” has a crypto-latin feel, etc. None of this really conveys what the album is like since its most compelling feature is its arrangements—the way the strings, horns and rhythm stake out their separate spaces and then intermingle, not always in a friendly way. Maybe it’d be better if you just bought the album. R.C.W.

MEAT PUPPETS Out My Way (SST)

This six-song mini-LP’s a trifle disappointing only because the PupjDets’ last two albums were such stunning smorgasbords of rock. Still, any record with Curt Kirkwood’s guitar picking is essential (he’s probably the most electrifying guitarist on the planet, especially live). Like sonic brethren the Minutemen (R.I.P.) and Husker Du, Meat Puppets’ music has gotten more accessible with successive releases. Out My Way has some more anthems for the sun as the Puppets continue to hone their expansive country-psyche of Up On The Sun. The playing has the crispness of rarefied mountain air and the Kirkwood bros sing in their desolate, desert-dry voices that gave Up On The Sun its mysterious quality. This sounds like a transitional work that I hope will lead to bolder visions. If the Puppets could ever transfer the cataclysmic firepower of their live shows to vinyl, there’d be Paradise on earth. D.S.

SCRATCH ACID

Just Keep Eating (Rabid Cat)

This swings like a wrecking ball smackdab over your head, and its chain starts to crack and you ain’t got no hardhat, mister. Sorta like the great British punk-rock band Led Zeppelin (circa “Communication Breakdown” or “Immigrant Song”) with a warped early-PiL twist, as done by four weightliftin’ redneck-types who show a healthy disrespect (to say the least) for the nu-wave leather slamdance weirdies in their audience when they play live. David Yow takes you back into the woods, to the place where Crazy Dan burns his wife at the stake and rum makes Twitch’s teeth fall out and they gun you down at Big Bone Lick and “ya lay there like a bed of snow and headless hunchbacks step over you.” These Austin uglies even four-wheel-drive “Damned For All Time,” Judas’s big number from Jesus Christ Superstar, into the cover-version-of-’86. (P.O. Box 49263, Austin, TX 78765).C.E.

PAUL BRADY True for You (21/Atlantic)

Although Brady’s U.K. folk roots stretch back to the Johnstons and Planxty, rock fans know him for his songwriting—Tina Turner, Dave Edmunds and Santana have recorded his songs recently—and his voice, a near dead ringer for Van Morrison’s. This stylistic similarity has worked against him establishing his own identity, however, so his solo career has had trouble taking off in this country. True For You’s tasteful, direct delivery may not change things but since the quality of the material all but guarantees that someone will be covering some of these tunes soon, why get your Brady secondhand. y’know? M.D.

RUBBER RODEO Heartbreak Highway (PolyGram)

The thing that intrigues me about Rubber Rodeo is that they deal with a contrived American landscape. Though their songs and images aren’t as wacky as in their pre PolyGram days, there’s always something slightly askew; not unlike that America of empty deserts and rumbling freight trains that nearly upstaged Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas. Against a similar backdrop Bob Holmes and the gang have woven a tale of a deteriorating relationship (there’s undoubtedly a big video production to go along with this) articulated via some great vocal duets by Holmes and Trish Milliken, and supported by the band’s unlikely marriage of electronics and c&w instruments. Especially clever is a cover of the Nilsson classic “Everybody’s Talkin’ ”—thematically appropriate and a great song, to boot.T.A.