NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

OVER THE WOODENTOPS

The great thing about rock ’n’ roll is that just when you think you’ve run out of great adjectives with which to describe a band— and great bands about which to use those adjectives—another group comes along that inspires you to try again. One annoying bit that comes from being on this end of the typewriter, however, is the habit writers have of using other bands to describe the sound of a new one.

Having said that, on to the band that has inspired such words as glowing, exuberant, joyous and fresh'; a mixture of the Velvet Underground, XTC, Suicide and the Smithswith-a-sense-of-humor. The band is the Woodentops, a London quintet with an intense, delightfully itchy pop sound; The more you scratch, the more you want to hear. Manically-possessed drumbeats, driving acoustic guitars, cheesy organs and melodic basslines surrounding lyrics dealing with varying shades of social interaction from rejection and love to friendship and despair.

Singer/guitarist/songwriter Rolo McGinty is bleary-eyed and giggly after a particularly late gig in New York. He’s experiencing Chips Ahoy for the first time and is perhaps hitting a sugar rush, although his free-form flow of conversation is apparently natural; he’s charming, funny, self-deprecating, honestly proud, overly modest and also insecure. Onstage he’s a driven presence, thrashing rhythmically on his defenseless acoustic guitar, supported by pumped energy from drummer Benny Staoles’s “hypnobeat” (as they call it, and it’s easy to understand why); Alice Thompson’s keyboards; Frank DeFreitas’s bass and Simon Mawby’s guitar. The Woodentops have an indie collection of British singles, Well Well Well... The Woodentops, and a new major-label LP, Giant (produced by Bob Sargeant of [English] Beat and Haircut 100 clarity and texture).

The three-year-old band, Rolo says, “started off aimlessly with the intention of making whatever we were doing in the rehearsal room sound a little better than amateurish.” That worked, as psychedelicpop hermit Julian Cope offered them an opening slot on a tour soon after their first major gig at the London club Dingwall’s. They’ve been the Next Big Thing ever since.

The group was able to crystallize its sound while in the studio recording Giant, Rolo says, after the loss of the original bass player and drummer had them in a bit of a directional quandary. Intense studio work enabled them to hone their distinctive iblend of hardness and softness.

“I like the idea of using white noise to create a sort of image, an atmosphere, that if you sing with a nice soft voice—in the middle of it is just something kind of human, and all around it is just high-tech, modern-day craziness. It’s just like walking down the streets of New York, in a way, isn’t it?” Rolo says, laughing.

Though Rolo’s songs are fairly simple pop tunes, they’re delivered with a breathless urgency that is part of the message: a need to be understood, to feel. “Somebody described my songs as being a desire to have desire,” Rolo says (it was the British mag Melody Maker). “I thought, that’s right—that’s exactly what a lot of the songs are. Some of my songs are really personal, then I think to myself after I’ve done it—why did I do that? Why didn’t I just write a little story, tell a story?” He laughs. “Why do I have to get so fucking personal?! But I feel more soulful if I’m singing about something I really feel and have experienced. These are my blues, in a way.”

Meanwhile, the Woodentops (British slang for thickheaded, also for the police, among other reasons for the monicker) will be back in the States soon for another tour, giving the press yet another chance to pigeonhole this band that defies description.

“Mmmm,” Rolo agrees heartily, “and we try very hard to, as well. It means that in a few years’ time we can look back on what we’ve done and know that it had some meaning more than simply being a formula to help people make money out of what we do.”

Karen Schlosberg

SCREAMING BLUE MESSIAHS: THE BALD TRUTH

The Screaming Blue Messiahs are not just another band of pretty faces. Not these guys. They look more like the kind of people you cross the street to avoid so they won’t beat you up, but looks can be deceiving. Though the Messiahs are not the most loquacious of bands, singer/guitarist Bill Carter, bassist Chris Thompson and drummer Kenny Harris are charming, in their way. So they don’t look like Wham!; don’t sound like Wham!, either.

What do they sound like? Sort of postpunk, melodic-psychedelic, neo-thrash rockers. You know. Lots of screaming, hooky guitars (through there is really only one), on top of booming basses (again, one) 4 and a non-stop drum beat (one, count 'ernJ one). For three guys, the Messiahs sm/M make a lot of music. Which is exactly the point.

The Screaming Blue have just arrived in Los Angeles, and between th§ir interviews and the evening’s gig, they’ve been coerced into shooting a live performance video for the Rock And Roll Evening News, in what was supposed to be their time off. Oh well. By the time shooting is over (and if he had his way, it would have been with bullets, instead of film). Carter is not a happy man. Cranky is a more apt description.

“The reason this band is a trio is because I think that’s enough for me and the way I play,” he explains. “I’ve never been able to play with another guitarist. I don’t like most of ’em anyway I guess it's just selfish.” He cracks a rare grin. “Hey, it’s my band and I’ll do what I want."

Carter pretty much always does what he wants. His last outfit, Motor Boys Mot|||| (Chris Thompson was also a member) was an R&B quartet. In 1980, this was^^^^^H ner of an idea. But it limped along fof'ftMliii years before collapsing. Then, about two years ago, the Screaming Blue Messiahs were born. They drew a great deal of notice around London. When other people were getting mellow, the SBM were going directly for the throat. It worked. Together with producer Vic Maile, SBM came up with a nifty six-song record, Good And Gone, on the independent Big Beat label.

“Independents are more like an A&R situation in England,” Bill explains.” You don’t lose anything, you sort of get one-off deals with a little indie, and hope it surfaces a bit. Major labels use indies for their A&R. America is a long way away,” he muses. “It always surprises me when someone over here has heard the record. It was never released over here, so a lot of people have never heard of us. But that’s all right. I’ve never heard of them, either.”

They still have a lot of turf to cover, ’cause 1 these guys want it all: the money, the fame, the success, and the money. Watch out Madonna—they want the top of the charts,

"The main thing I want out of all this,” laughs Carter, “is money. I’d like for us to go Top 40, ’cause if it were us, it wouldn’t be crap. What we’re doing isn’t crap, and the only way you’re going to change the Top 40 is by getting good bands on the list. A lot of bands get accused of selling-out to do that, and some do change. But you’ve got to change. It depends, though, how you change—and anyway,” he glares, “if they sell-out, that’s up to them, isn’t it? They can do what they like. The people who accuse ’em of that, they’ve sold-out a long time ago, with their nine-to-five jobs. They shouldn’t accuse anybody of anything. But really, the thing is, you want to keep your self-respect. And get money. Just to be yourself, and see if anybody pays you for it. If it doesn’t work, then maybe you do something else.”

Though he has mused about alternative occupations (a doctor, a rich San Francisco hippie), he’s relatively content in music. The momentary thoughts of a major career change in the middle of recording Gun-Shy were completely understandable.

“We had a lot of producers,” Carter admits. “We had to get rid of a lot of them. And in the end we went back to the guy who did the first album. ’Cause producers, they’re useless, most of them. They putz around with synthesizers most of their lives, and then they decide that what they really want to do is record a live-sounding band. They think it’s easy, and they haven’t a clue. But,” he sighs, “you do need an objective person there with you. And there are people who can add things. There is talent around, if you’re in a position to use it. It all depends on how it works out. With this one, we had to do the whole thing over again. The first two producers hung on to 24 reels of tape.”

At this stage in the game, it’s unlikely that those tapes will ever come out as the Screaming Blue Messiahs, the London Sessions bootleg. But stranger things have happened.

Sharon Liveten

SPECIAL K: THE RETURN OF TONIO THE TIGER

Yes I wish I was as mellow As for instance Jackson Browne But “Fountain of Sorrow’’ my ass motherfucker I hope you wind up in the ground.

Suppose you’d written those words eight or so years ago as a key line to the ultimate angry young man break-up song. OK? Now suppose that in the intervening time you’d not only become a little less angry and vitriolic by nature, but also a BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN!

How would you feel about that old verse? Would you claim that you’d written those •words while possessed by Satan? Would you change your name and disavow aU knowledge of the song’s composer? Would you confess your sins on the 700 Club and pledge all the proceeds from your life in rock ‘n’ roll to Pat Robertson’a^flapdential campaign?

If you’re Tonio K., thp man who did write the song, you’d just shrug your shoulders, smile and say, ‘It’s a funny line. It’ll always be a funny line.”

And a l^ige sign of relief goes up from long-time fans of Mr. K.’s at hearing that, though those rumors of a new-found spiritual orientation are true, the man who once created a fictional alter ego named Vlad Theimpaler (sic)—he owns a credit card in that name and his wife has been known to answer to “Vladette”—has emphatically not gone as mellow as Jackson Browne, against whom—incidentally— Tonio holds no ill will and who reportedly thinks it’s a funny line, too. (Whew!!!)

Which isn’t to say he hasn’t mellowed some. Sitting in a dim hole that A&M records publicity office uses for storage, Tonio K. (nee Steve Krikorian) is at ease with himself and the world. He’s happily married, counts the likes of T-Bone Burnett and Charlie Sexton (who had a hit with K.’s “Impressed”) among his friends and has made—with help from them and others—an album that is getting reviews that would make R.E.M. jealous.

Fact is, though, some of his old fans may be a tad disheartened to hear that Romeo Unchained, K.’s first release since the 1982 mini-LP La Bomba, contains nothing quite as ferocious as his 1979 debut Life In The Foodchain’s afore-quoted “H-A-T-R-E-D” or “Funky Western Civilization” or its 1980 follow-up Amerika's “Trouble. -’ Compared to those, the new album is fairly mainstream sounding—hook-filled tunes given glossy, though gripping, modern production.

“It’s full of attitude and it’s just as intense lyrically,” Tonio says comparing his new work to the old. “It’s just not as rude musically:” And what’s more, where Tonio’s field of play used to be primarily sociopolitical, now it’s socio-romantical.

“I realized that I’d spent my youth, the entire decade of the ’70s, avoiding relationships,” Tonio says of his change of perspective. “I finally began to realize I had a problem. ‘H-A-T-R-E-D’ was about the feeling that something’s wrong with love these days. ‘You Belong With Me’ (a ballad apparently featuring vocals from an uncredited Maria McKee) is about it, too, but how we can get through.” Quoting the song (with an added expletive), K. sums up the theme of the new album: ‘-What passes for love on the streets is a fucking joke!”

As is by now obvious, K. is'not your stereotypical born again Jesus freak. Yet here he is with the first record released on the What? label, a distributee of Texasbased Christian stronghold Word. And though it’s the lame path through which Amy Grant, that paragon of Christian pop, reaches the world (via an arrangement with A&M)|Fronio’s hardly catering to that marfet.

P^‘1 wondered if a guy like me had any business being distributed in Christendom at large,” he recalls of his thoughts before signing with What?. “I had no desire to be burned at the stake. It is a particular world that tends to be dogmatic.”

On the other hand, K. isn’t exactly playing to the people who may have been attracted to his earlier work purely for its shock value, either. “In retrospect, using the ‘Fword’ is a cheap way to get a reaction,” he says. “It would be nice to get that reaction twith a clever phrase or something. The ones who interpreted ‘H-A-T-R-E-D’ as a literal statement I don’t need to deal with. They’re just a beer-sodden bunch of...”

But K. hopes that enough people saw through the bluster of his past work and are just as open to his new opus. “’You Will Be Free’ (the most overtly Christian song on the new album) is one of the best things I’ve liver written, so I hope the people who ‘got it’ with ‘H-A-T-R-E-D’ will get it with this.”

Just in case, however, on his next album K. plans to have the shock thing covered— literally. After closing the discussion, he walks the interviewer across the A&M lot to the office then occupied by producer/exec John Carter (who has since moved to Chrysalis). K. points to a painting on the wall that he intends to use for the art of his next release.

The painting by Neo Park (the mad genius behind all those great Little Feat covers and Zappa’s Weasles Ripped My Flesh) shows a classically-rendered Jesus knocking on the brick-house door of three very surprised, Disneyish little pigs. If you look closely, you can see blood on the walkway left by the holes in J.C.’s feet.

How will that go down in Christendom at large? Tonio just grins.

Steve Hochman

HASIL ADKINS: NOT PURPLE

His tunes have been covered by The Cramps and Cub Koda. The Vibes, an Australian band, recorded a song called, Hasil Adkins In My Head,” and ZZ Top is preparing to do at least onp of his songs on their upcoming album. His latest LP, Out To Hunch, on Nortony Records, is topping playlists on alternative radio stations from California to New Jersey and Miami to Honolulu. And Jhere’s a biography in the works in France.

In a state that has few claims to fame other than being the birthplace of Charles Manson, Soupy Sales, and the foodstamp program, West Virginia also lays claim to “the Haze” himself--Hasil Adkins.

Back in the mid-'50s Hasil released two singles—-“She Said” and “The Chicken Walk.” He likes to talk about them. “When I wrote ‘She Said,’ that’s what started it all I used to sing in joints better than 25 years ago, and people would really pay me to quit singin’ it. I’ve made as much as $50 not to play that song. Now they pay me to play it, so you see, every which way I went—if I sung it I got paid, and if I didn’t sing it I still got paid. Then some people from across the water’’-^-Sweden, in fact—“came over and got a record of it.”

Since then there has been several 45s, LPs, EPs and spots on “roots of rock” and rockabilly compilations in Germany, Sweden and Ehgland. Only the latest releases on Norton have been available in the U.S.—except for the original 45s Hasil himself released in the^|60s.

Hasil’s “unorthodox” rhythm makes it virtually impossible for others to play with him. Going into a professional stuaid for the fir^t time last summer, all the accompanying parts were dubbed in after the muslfians sat down and figured out the wildman’s arrangements.

Curtis Persinger, a local musician who played with Hasil off and on for almost seven years, finally gave up. Said he: “Hasil, we’ve played together for almost seven years, and all we’ve done is get worser with each other. You’ll never get anyone to play with you.”

So it was up to Hasil to be his own band. Besides singing, he plays bass and snare drums, hi-hat, cymbal and guitar with his various limbs and attachments. Story has it that this all started when a young Hasil would listen to the radio. “That was Hank Williams,” or “that was Bill Monroe,” the DJ would say. “So I just figured they were doing everything themselves,” remembers Hasil.

“I play guitar like Jerry Lee Lewis plays piano. If you seen me, it looks like the guitar couldn’t take it.”

Although the Haze states adamantly that he doesn’t practice, he also relates a time when he sat up working on his music for a period of six months getting only 10 hours sleep. The stuff that legends are made of.

But Hasil’s music just isn’t that weird. His lyrics may be a bit odd—funny if you’re into it, sick if you’re not (as in “She Said,” when Hasil describes his bed partner as “looking like a dyin’ can of dat commodity meat”). The time and beat are frenetic, but the chords and tunes are basically traditional rockabilly. Drastic exceptions to all of this, though are “No More Hot Dogs” and “We Got A Date,” where, while strumming open strings on his guitar, Hasil relates in a twisted growl how he’s going to cut off his girlfriend’s head and hang it on his wall.

Adkins has been waiting for the opportunity to re-emerge for almost 30 years.

“Sooner or later somebody will hear one of those records and somebody will pick it up. It ain’t no shock...it is a shock. I’m just happy. I want to play in front of them.”

Adkins is now under contract with Billy Miller, owner of Kicks magazine and Norton Records. Miller is singlehandedly responsible for Adkins’s recent surge of popularity—and according to Hasil, Billy has some big plans. They’ve already “left out for New York” (“New York city is the only city I like—those people make their money today and spend it tonight”), played dates there and in Canada, and returned home in late summer.

In the end, what will determine if Hasil really is a talent, or merely attempting (with the help of others) to cash in on his quirky past, will be his new songs. Recorded in a studio, they might lose all their attraction; for that matter, the composing well may have run dry for the 48-year-old Hasil.

But in the words of the Haze himself: “The Chicken Walk’s a climbin’ high. This thing is gonna move on outta here. It’s getnin’ ready to bust loose—and if you’re waitin’ on me, you’re already behind.”

Michael Lipton