IGGY POP

Blah-Blah-Blah

(A&M)

Whether or not you like the new Iggy Pop album is inevitably going to depend upon your response to finding the Ig back in David Bowie’s clutches. Ah yes, the cultured Englishman is once again helping the inchoate Michigander attempt to realize that next-big-icon potential everybody’s anticipated from Iggy since the days of the Stooges.

A strange relationship, this one, in which Mr. Bowie talks a great Iggy Pop, seems to regard Pop as ultimately his artistic and shamanistic better (Ig is, for my $$), and yet when Bowie finally gets a chance to record and produce Pop, he always seems to end up patronizing his theoretical idol, treating him with all the superstar charity due such a psychic orphan (well, Ig’s probably that too). Iggy & The Stooges’ ancient Raw Power contains some of the most apocalyptic songs and performances in the whole history of rock ’n* roll, and yet Bowie mixed the platter down so lowww I always have to double the volume on my stereo just to hear the thing. I’m almost certain that the Agent Orange in Bowie’s hair color got to his brain that year.

Even so, I hate to bite the hand that’s fed the starving ig again ahd again: I’m well aware that Iggy Pop could’ve become the world’s most forgotten boy in more ways than one as early as 1975 if Bowie hadn’t stepped in with his star-spangled sponsorship. And I’m also hip to the reality that even if I prefer Iggy’s Zombie Birdhouse to the Bowiedominated The Idiot, that Pop was probably just as dependent on producer Chris Stein and guitarist Rob duPrey in the making of the former album as he’s been on Bowie in his Ig projects.

The kindnesses of others and all that. Sometimes I even get perverse enough to feel “grateful” to David Bowie for using Iggy Pop songs for half the cuts on his own Tonight album, and thus keeping some composer coin in Iggy’s linty pockets while he was between labels.

In fact, the new Blah-Blah-Blah seems to take right off from yet another example of Bowie’s largesse toward his little Yank brother that being the big hit David made of their cocomposition “China Girl” in 1983 with his version. Pop’s original reading of the song on the 1977’s The Idiot is so muted (sounds like he’s singing from the bottom of a bottle—of soy sauce) that nobody but Bowie would’ve suspected the hit potential built into the tune. Of course, Bowie’s remake of “China Girl” has a vocal track much more forceful than the original (David sounds like both Anthony Newley and Tony DeFries are holding loaded popguns to his back), so that could explain its chart success.

Somebody took that message -to heart, as the whole of BlahBlah-Blah is constructed according to the “China Girl” formula: take basic raw Ig and pump it up to the more bombastic tone that’s always served Bowie so well in his own recordings. So Blah-Blah-Blah comes across as something of an Iggy-flavored Bowie album: Ig’s vocals are as lean and mean as his bod in the cover photo, and his lyrics do their usual provocative-andremote-as-a-trailer-park job. But what the public will take to heart from Blah-Blah-Blah are the swelling, booming, orchestral, fatally Bowiesque choruses which distinguish each song. Can Iggy Pop give the good vid that’d finally put him over the top? With these booming-ballad soundtracks, it’s worth a try.

The record company is banking on hits from “Real Wild Child” (an oldie cover), and from the similarly anthemic “Cry For Love” and “Isolation,” and I wouldn’t mind catching any of them on my radio or TV. But I’m also perverse enough to prefer Blah-Blah-Blah’s title cut (with its flyswatter guitar and condemneddisco thump) or “Fire Girl” (with its tantalizing, oh-so-lg raincoat fetishism) over the aesthetic long haul. And I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll forgive the parties responsible for that totallygratuitous Huey Lewis intro to “Baby, It Can’t Fall.”

OK, OK, so I still prefer the uncouth but global-punk Iggy Pop of Zombie Birdhouse (THAT Ig was on the verge of discovering the semantic bridge between Rimbaud and Rambo), but I think I can live with this glossy, hightech, Bowie-Moderne Iggy Pop of Blah-Blah-Blah for the moment. Stay tuned as we battle for a Stooge’s soul.

ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS

Blood And Chocolate

(Columbia)

Here s a quiz for you Costello fans: if the hook goes “And I hope you’re happy now,” what’s the line immediately before it? Why, “I never loved you anyhow,” of course. Just another wizard jape from ol’ little-handsof-concrete’s speedy follow-up to the fabulous King Of America.

Blood And Chocolate is full of wizard japes. “When you’re over me, there’s no one above you,” Costello deadpans. Elsewhere, he sings: “All the words of love seem cold and crass, when you’re tough and transparent as armored glass." It’s just more sharp irreverence from the man who coined: “You lack lust, you’re so lackluster.”

But this is Costello so, natch,: sometimes he’s got more on his mind than “love,” and, natch, sometimes it only seems as though he’s got more on his mind. On “Tokyo Storm Warning,” he sings: "Japanese godJesus robots telling teenage fortunes, for all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians.” Nice thought, and I appreciate the hands across the Orient sentiment, but it’s a bit obscure. And on one of the LP’s highlights, “Battered Old Bird,” the lyric congeals into the last words I ever wanna hear about drug abuse: “There’s a place where time stands still, if you keep taking these little pink pills.”

If you prefer, this is business as usual. And l usually enjoy Costello’s business. So why is Blood And Chocolate a trifle disappointing?

Well, you’ve got to view the LP within the context of his career. Infinitely superior to Punch The Clock and the dreadful Goodbye Cruel World, I’d be calling B&C a return to grace if King Of America hadn’t fallen in the middle. With its Grievious Angel inspired narrative, King was Costello’s risky modern-folk/ rock/pop masterpiece—and it woke him out of a slumber. Blood And Chocolate feels like a holding action.

The differences between the two albums lead to a direct comparison between their two respective centerpieces, “Sleep Of The Just” and “I Wanf You.” Both deal with terror and sexual disharmony, but the former is quietly chilling—a stunning artistic statement—while the latter is so smarty-pants with its “T.B. Sheets” nod and gutsy Dylanderived title (Dylan’s song cuts it to ribbons), Costello barely manages not to fall flat on his face. And he would if the song didn’t tap so suddenly and so well into our fears.

Soundwise, B&C is an underproduced Imperial Bedroom, mixed with the sort of brawny rock ’n’ roll the Attractions haven’t managed to pull off since This Year's Model. I’ve always found the Attractions a thoroughly competent back-up band, and while “Blue Chair” could’ve used the Confederates (Cos’s hired hands on King Of America), nobody could’ve improved on their “Tokyo Storm Warning.” Costello himself will never have a great voiqp, but he’s become a great singer, and every song here rings with conviction. And his guitar break on “Tokyo Storm Warning,” with its zingy Revolver-era Harrison steals, is solid as, ahem, concrete.

Down to specifics: I’ll give Blood And Chocolate the entire first side and half of the second. Also, “I Hope You’re Happy Now” is my very fave song in the world today, and I want to listen to it forever.

All of which, I hope, saves me from telling you what Blood And Chocolate means. I have ideas, but they’re personal, probably aren’t in sych with yours or Costello’s, and are therefore entirely irrelevant. He isn’t godhead and I’m not waiting for the Word. In passing, I will note that if you ve just broken up with your girlfriend buy this LP and steal his best put-down lines in ages. I’ll also note that he’s as relentlessly pessimistic as ever—one of his most endearing treats—which is a relief after a year of teeth-rotting optimism.

So I like Blood And Chocolate a lot. Even love it. A coupla years ago, I thought Costello was not pining but passed on. His twelfth LP finds him the only member of the class of ’77 (don’t give me David Byrne, I’ve heard True Stories) with any brain cells left.

Iman Lababedi

JOHN FOGERTY

Eye Of The Zombie

(Warner Bros.)

In the press kit interview that accompanied my copy of this record, John Fogerty speaks of a desire to move on. “Some of the sounds and sentiment on my first record (Centerfield) were a way qf putting my history behind me...Now I want to be in the ’80s, it’s as simple as that. For the same reason I wouldn’t want to do ‘Proud Mary’ again, I don’t want to do Centerfield over and over.”

And there you have it. John Fogerty has no wish to be regarded as “the keeper of the roots rock flame.” He wants to be regarded as a forwardlooking, contemporary record maker. (As if “Fortunate Son” and “Bad Moon Rising,” among many others, weren’t everlastingly up to the minute!) Well, for Fogerty, it looks like being in the ’80s means getting comfortable with microchips, computers, synthesizers, and digital samplers in the studio. It also means filtering out plenty of passion, forgetting that brevity is the soul of wit, and letting perspiration take the place of inspiration.

The result is Eye Of The Zombie, a record that’s overloaded with excess baggage, belabored social commentary, and a batch of unimaginative songs sadly lacking in spirit.

The opener, “Goin’ Back Home,” is ridiculous celestial noodling, “serious stuff,” bad soundtrack music. It’s followed by the title cut, perhaps the most unexceptional Fogerty composition ever to achieve single status. This ho-hum voodoo tale of Bmovie terror is perfunctory to the max. The chorus has a nagging familiarity that breeds eventual contempt due to Fogerty’s overkill belting. So too with “Headlines,” a cliched boogie bop that has the singer overplaying his hand everytime he hits the chorus and exerts himself silly.

He fares far better with “Knockin’ On Your Door,” one of two forays into soul country via the Memphis-Stax express. (Coincidentally, both cuts are about good lovin’, always Fogerty’s least-explored subject.) With a,tip of the hat to the Wicked Pickett, Sam & Dave, Otis, et. al., he hits us with a one-two punch of unencumbered urgency. This one swings', it’s buoyant. And that idiosyncratic enunciation is still there to delight: “Just tryin’ to get my noive up.” Unfortunately, he loses the momentum later on “Wasn’t That A Woman,” which strains too hard and has the back-up singers more convinced of her charms than John. Strange.

“Change In The Weather,” is a dark storm warning that’s just a moody rehash of “Run Through The Jungle” with a brief sideswipe at “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (so much for leaving history behind).

“Violence Is Golden” (antimilitary macho) and “Soda Pop” (commercial sponsors + rock stars = greedy fools) have admirable sentiments and banal observations. Plus the former’s full of huffy bluster while the latter cops from “Vanz Kant Danz” and goes on forever. We get your points; I just wish they were a little sharper. “Sail Away” starts as a warm farewell, but suffers from an insipid ending as the narrator leaves his cares behind and finds happiness in outer space.

Nice to know John’s still young at heart, but the sad truth is that Eye Of The Zombie is a real disappointment. I’m all for Fogerty’s looking to the future, but the fact is he’s got an incredible past. The day he can honestly come to terms with that and forget all this other garbage, he’ll have a hell of a present.

Craig Zeller

MARTI JONES

Match Game (A&M)

Does your listening diet lack a certain zing lately? The problem may be a lack of Big Pop. Yes Big Pop, the catch miracle music that tickled your fancy way back when ye was a wee tad. Phil Spector and Abba make Big Pop. Nick Lowe fondly mocked it. Elton John presided over its slide into disrepute. Marshall Crenshaw and others treated it withtoo much respect and prayed for mass appeal.

Should classic pop ever resume its rightful position of cultural dominance, singer extraordinaire Marti Jones and producer supreme Don Dixon may be responsible. On their second album together, these fine folks capture the essence of Big Pop with concise, gemlike tracks you’d call great art if they weren’t so much fun. In other words, Match Game is real easy to listen to, without being stupid. What could be better?

Formerly with the poorlynamed Color Me Gone, Jones sometimes reached the pinnacle of Big Pop on her ’85 solo debut, Unsophisticated Time. Match Game’s focus is sharper, thanks to superior songs and better playing. Lasf time, Dixon provided most of the backing tracks himself; here, Jones gets to bounce her gorgeous tones off actual, bands featuring the likes of Crenshaw, the Bongos’ Richard Barone, Let’s Active’s Mitch Easter, and T-Bone Burnett.

Note also that Dixon’s other production credits include R.E.M. and Guadalcanal Diary, and you may conclude our heroine is another candidate for power pop (a subspecies of Big Pop) cult worship. Not true. Jones dominates the proceedings with a quietly commanding style full of commercial potential. She can recall such mainstream faves as Linda Ronstadt (“We’re Doing Alright”) and Chrissie Hynde/f’ Inside These Arms”), or conjure up fond memories of Sandy Denny (“It’s Too Late”) and the missing-in-action Robin Lane (“Crusher”). Forget the talk about great art: Jone’s warm poise—or cool passion?—is just great, period.

Dixon shows his stuff on Match Game's best tracks, carefully layering on sounds that build to choruses packed with emotional energy. “Be Myself Again” and “Inside These Arms,” both tales of romantic distress, practically explode from nervous tension when Jones rips into the chorus, riding the crest of Dixon’s wave of noise. On a more modest note, Dwight Twilley’s “Chance Of A Lifetime” appears to be just a tasty sweet, until Easter slices off a torrid Tom Verlaine-soundalike guitar solo to right the balance. The shuffling “Soul Love” doesn’t attempt such cleverness, although objective ears will concede Jones’ graceful reading makes Bowie’s original seem squawky.

Other well-executed covers reflect badly on their celebrated composers because the singer outclasses the songs. Jones’ typically no-nonsense approach to “Just A Memory” underscores Elvis Costello’s inability to come out and say something in plain English, instead of resorting to torrents of self-conscious verbiage. And while she dispatches “Whenever You’re On My Mind” with admirable finess, this sappy dirty remains one of Crenshaw’s corniest efforts.

Forget the bewildering inclusion of Free’s dirgelike “Soon I Will Be Gone” and forgive the second crummy album cover in a row. Match Game has Big Pop to burn. You need it now!

Jon Young

JOHNSON ON JOHNSON

DON JOHNSON

Heartbeat

(Epic)

Rick Johnson

by

When I learned Don Johnson was making a record album, it was the best news I’d heard since insect transmission of AIDS. I mean, why is it that actors always want to. he singers and singers want to be actors? Why can’t they be satisfied with superstardom in their own game? Oh well, I guess it’s jUst one of life’s eternal mysteries, like where do the cards go when the couples shove them out of sight on the Newlywed Game?

Maybe I’m just prejudiced against the guy because of his TV show, Beefalo On A Hot Tin Roof. I’d rather watch The Penguin—Clown Prince Of The Antarctic or even Off The Air On Most Systems than waste my, time on the program that made the world safe for the new Jeopardy! to use the word “armpit” as an answer.

None of that matters, though. Let’s check out some music : here. Right off, the title cut is unexpectedly hot, a compact little (ocker with sharp playing and a convincing vocal, where Don punches the lyrics the same way a fitness instructor spits out the phrase “buttock area. ” If this is the single, look out radio!

In fact, Mr. J. fares pretty well on the unbeat tunes. “Gotta Get Away,” penned by producer Chas Sandford and backed by the house band, is solid and unpretentious. Same goes for “The Last Sound Love Makes,” where they add Dweezil Zappa on lead guitar. Uh oh, Ferret Advisory!

It’s when the tempo is slowed down and you have time to listen closely to Don’s voice that uncertainty sets in. He takes on Tom Petty’s ballad “Lost In Your Eyes” with all the conviction of an injured football player being ungraded to “doubtful,” and follows it up with the smell-bound “Coco Don’t,” where he slips into a laughable falsetto that’s as unimaginably ludicrous as John Wayne playing Genghis Khan.

More trouble on the flip side, where Don writes. You know that Pepsi commercial where he doesn’t have to do anything but smile at the camera? He brings the same approach to his songwriting. “Love Roulette,” which he cleffed with his bass player Mark Leonard, features the worst vocal by far on the LP, made doubly irritating by Ron Wood’s harmony. As a singing duet, they make a great husband and wife cowchip tossing team.

But the real blowhole is his big, sensitive ballad, “Can’t Take Your Memory.” Backed only by keyboard and bass, Don croons raggedly through all that empty space like a tipsy motorist about to be stopped for D.W.P. (Driving While Protoplasm). You just can’t beg the listener to zero in on your voice by sheer lack of accompaniment when you sing like that. Remember, Don—a vacant mind is the devil’s foosball table.

Keeping in the TV spirit, consider this. Like those stupid home repair encyclopedias they advertise every 10 minutes or so, if you buy this record, others will follow.

RICHARD THOMPSON

Daring Adventures

(PolyGram)

For years, enterprising if illinformed publicists palmed off British eccentric Richard Thompson as “rock ’n’ roll’s best-kept secret” when, in actuality, he was merely an artist who didn’t sell a lot of records. Going back to his days as co-founder of the oddly urt-folky folk band, Fairport Convention, and his later career as Henry The Human Fly and various aberrations thereof, followed by his love-threshed relationship with wife Linda, Thompson was less a secret than an idiosyncratic presence who refused to disappear into cult obscurity even as he resisted the impulse to go for superstar status.

From the beginning, Thompson’s reputation rested more on his legendary live performances —sometimes, as when Ian Matthews went solo, merely as a back-up guitarist—-than on his sporadic album releases. Just about anyone who has ever seen him on a club or concert stage can testify that, as a musician, Thompson is right up there in the ranks of Clapton or Jeff Beck. Yet, except for the occasional blistering cut, his records have rarely captured the true excellence of the man.

Nothing changes on that score with release of Daring Adventures, Thompson’s first album in more than a year. Though the LP marks his debut effort with an American band and producer (Mitchell Froom of Del Fuegos fame), it has unmistakable echoes of 1985’s Across A Crowded Room, a consistently better album. “Working with them was not an attempt to revamp my style,” Thompson has been quoted as saying and he’s right! Some of Daring Adventures could easily be a re-mix of outtakes from Crowded Room.

Strangely enough, the unexceptional songs are all on side one. The good news is that the flip side contains four of the best things Thompson has ever done. “Nearly In Love” shows him off at his peak of romantic irony. “Jennie,” a slow dance, countrystyle, features Thompson’s patented guitar picking. “Cash Down Never Nevpr” welds the grim reality of Thatcherland to “Secret Agent Man” instrumentations. And the broad-canvas of “Al Bowlly’s In Heaven” finds the artist sounding like a beery Jim Morrison against a cafe jazz backdrop. Memorable performances all and, depending on the state of your finances, probably well worth the price of the 1 album. Meanwhile, keep your I eyes peeled for Thompson in I your hometown. He’ll give you a show you won’t soon forget and you may hear a few guitar riffs Eddie Van Halen hasn’t even dreamed about.

Joe Gillis

DARYL HALL

Three Hearts In The

Happy Ending Machine

(RCA)

Daryl Hall. Just Daryl Hall. 8 Well, not just Daryl Hall, but there I are no Oaters within earshot, I although there is a healthyI looking bovine hoofer on the inI ner sleeve. Not that any of this I bothers me in the least. Hall’s 1 last solo outing, Sacred Songs, 1 was at least as good as H&O’s 1 records together, and, to be 1 honest, I never liked the Hall & 1 Oates moniker any better than j they did. Always thought that 8 Haulin’ Oats should be reserved | for a speed metal-bluegrass I band anyway.

So this time around, Hall is 1 hanging out mostly with new col1 laborators (aside from H&O 1 bassist Tom “T-Bone” Wolk, 8 who’s one of the co-producers), * and though the production style is kind of different, it doesn’t really draw attention to itself. And ■ although Daryl isn’t hiding who 1 he’s working with, it isn’t obvious | from the music.

Let’s fake a blindfold test on I the first hit. “Dreamtime” I features a fine pop melody, | borderline Beatlesque har1 monies and real strings. If I told | you our mystery man is an 1 England-based guy with a fair I amount of hair around his mouth, 1 who would you say? ELO’s Jeff I Lynne, perhaps? That would be 1 acute, perceptive and reasonI able. Not to mention wrong.

OK, let’s try another one. 1 “Right As Rain” includes vocal ■ harmonies thatare unmistakeably Joni Mitchell’s, but the arrangement is built around one of ■ those gently blooping drum I machines, until (presumably) 1 real drums come crashing in at 1 the end to upset the applecart. I “Gee, I didn’t know Joni knew I Phil Collins,” I mused. I still I don’t. Collins has nothing direct1 ly to do with this track, even if the 1 arrangement idea has been float1 ing in the air for about five | years.

No, our mystery man is EurI ythmic David A. Stewart, who co1 wrote four of these tunes and I played on a lot of ’em as well as 1 co-producing. He’s an effective, 1 collaborator because he doesn’t ■ impose his personality on everything, as well as preferring simple pop structures to subtly mutate. Score one point for Jimmy lovine who bought Hall and Stewart together.

My fave here is co-written by Hi\\, Stewart and Sara Allen. “I Wasn’t Born Yesterday" has everything I like about Hall in it: a very catchy tune, a convincing performance, and a lyric that tries to balance experience and openness. But since I’m about as good at picking hits as Tommy Lasorda is in figuring out the Dodger bullpen, it’ll probably never show up on the radio. As for the radio...well, that’s another 'review.

Michael Davis