NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

DEAR DIARY

Mention Southern rock these days, and most people will think instantly of R.E.M. But when Guadalcanal Diary, who hail from Marietta, Georgia, called their debut LP Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man, I’m sure they weren’t talking about Michael Stipe.

No, they mean THE BIG MAN, whose presence is still felt in every gospel tent and revival carnival in the Bible Belt. That shadow also looms across the grooves of the band’s new album Jamboree (their first for a major label). “Pray For Rain” and “Fear Of God” echo older songs like “Sleepers Awake” and “Kumbayah,” and suggest that Guadalcanal Diary have a few questions for the man upstairs. So when the chance arose to talk to singer Murray Attaway and drummer John Poe, this curious obsession was one of the first topics of discussion.

“It’s just due to a fascination with the mystery of it,” Attaway confessed. “With the trappings of it moreso than an actual strong feeling for it. I’m fascinated with the fact that people still handle snakes to worship God in the South.”

From the old-time hellfire-and-brimstoners to the new breed of TV Salvationists, the South has always been a breeding ground for a brand of religion often one step away from pure showbiz. It’s a topic Guadalcanal Diary address in “Why Do The Heathen Rage?,” whose title was taken from one of those apocalyptic cassettes you can order from magazine ads.

“You know,” Attaway said, “I wrote the lyrics to that song, but I’m not real sure what they mean. I guess it’s about false prophets, but that’s a little too simple, too. I was more or less trying to neither glorify nor ridicule the whole bit, the Bible-thumpers and all that. It’s just like ‘here it is.’”

“The greateat asset to evil doings is secrecy,” Poe confides. “You get it out in the open and it’s a little harder to take hold.

In case you’ve gotten the impression that Guadalcanal Diary are a bunch of overly sensitive types, don’t forget that the band has a goofy side as well. Their first hit, “Watusi Rodeo,” was a bucket o’ yucks, and newer songs like “I See Moe” help to leaven the brooding atmosphere of Jamboree. And while their material often draws from a line of Southern Gothic exemplified by Johnny Horton, the Gun Club and any number of B-movies, there is usually a twist to it if you look hard enough. Just listen to “Cattle Prod,” an ode to erotic cowpunching, which rubs a particularly vicious Southern stereotypes in your face with maniacal glee.

“Non-Southerners expect Southerners to be stupid, the singer drawls in disgust when the question of stereotypes comes up.

“And we all vote Democratic no matter who’s running...” Poe adds.

“...and we all secretly have Klan outfits in the closet or something—who knows what they think. I mean, I don’t know if New Yorkers know we have running water and paved roads or not.”

They might secretly suspect you all inbreed...

“Yeah? Look around—-New York could be the inbreeding capital of the world and we couldn’t be sure, cause it seems to drive people nuts living here, anyway.

“We have a new song that’s about inbreeding, as a matter of fact...”

And if their table talk is any indication, there could eventually be songs about pizzlers (petrified bull, err, “prods,” sold as walking sticks in Texas), spontaneous human combustion, and Marietta’s giant aluminum chicken.

Sure are some strange things lurking in those shadows...

John Neilson

DECEMBER’S CHILDREN

Howard Klein, pres 415 Records: “I was really interested in these guys because I thought they had something valid to say and a really unique way to say it. Normally I would tend to readily dismiss something that was packaged as, say, disco—or dance music. But once I became involved with their songs I realized that that was just a fuckedup prejudice. ”

Adam Sherburne, Ld sngr, gtr-player, Until December: “I told him (Klein/415) that all of his bands sucked and if he wanted to make money he should sign us. ”

415, past-tense home of Romeo Void and the not-so-terrific Translator, has signed its first freak-show: Until December, a threepiece disco-cum-hard-rock mutant calculated to offend the sensibilities of anyone offendable. A deranged hybrid of the Village People and, say, the Handsome Dick’d Dictators.

Where the sounds’re slanted towards the rougher, punkier periphery of dance-muzik (far away from Bee Gees turf, but not isolated from pop textures similar to maybe Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass” or the Kinks “Superman” plus or minus a more guitarmetallic bark and growl), the visual arena converges quickly on the baddest of bad acid trips. Mind-fry city: singer’s decked out in women’s lingerie, wig, biker hat, short black miniskirt and stockings. Leopard-skin clad bassist Bryan Weisberg checks out the disturbed junior of (uhm) Gene Simmons; the drummer’s name is Greg Senzer.

OK, OK—what’s so hot ’bout a bunch of could-be fruitcakes playing fairy godmother behind shitloads of make-up and drag? Not entirely a novel concept (Twisted Sifter’s hapless Alice Cooper imitation is, by comparison, six times as hapless in the UD scheme of things), right??

Novel concepts notwithstanding, ’s cute to note that lead sngr/songwriter, son-of-anarmy-general (and wearer of nipple rings) Adam has logged time on the U.S. Jr. Davis Cup team and, in fact, took first place honors in the men’s singles division of the Southwest Conference during collegiate years in New Mexico (also placed first in the men’s triathlon). Yet somewhere sometime after alia this, a move to Texas finds Sherburne (buddy of Moses Malone and Akeem Olajuwon) heavily entrenched in the “highenergy” Houston disco scene—paths are crossed with bass-player Weisberg and eventually a relocation to San Frisco prompts the incipient seeds of the band.

“We’re just trying to make a statement that suggests protection for people that don’t wanna be skinheads or buck-toothed rednecks,” singer Adam explains. “It’s a stand for anybody that doesn’t want to be part of some cut and dry, dogmatic scene. We’re only an alternative in that we try to advocate not Jello Biafra’s freedom of choice, but like a legitimate form of that. Whether or not your choice is ultimately impacted by all those other Nazis is irrelevant—the point is, you shouldn’t~be persecuted for whatever decision you arrive at. If people can get over their homophobic hang-ups, they’ll realize that this band provides an outlet to be individuals and to be wrong and to be fucked up—and to forget about all this crap that this industry forces down everyone’s throats.”

“I see them completely as an extension of the Grateful Dead,” offers 415 mogul Klein, himself a onetime Bay area champeen of radical music alternatives back in the Sex Pistols ’70s. “As much as the Grateful Dead were a threat in 1966, Until December’s the same kind of threat in 1986. If there was Jerry Garcia in ’66 and Handsome Dick Manitoba in ’76, there’s Adam Sherburne in 1986.”

“Oh, that’s all a bunch of bullshit,” snaps the singer, his band’s new 415/CBS LP due out sometime in the Fall. “We’re nothing more than hardcore disco—we have headbangers and mohawks and gays getting together on the same wavelength...ours. The record company tries to sell it as this outrageous shit—and that’s only because they have no idea what it’s about, or what’s going on in general.”

A recent Guerneville, California performance was stopped by local law insisting Sherburne cover his “semi-exposed crotch and buttocks” w/a kerchief. This scenario appears to be chronic w/the band, however, 415 vice president Jim Heart insists that “girls go crazy. They scream and shriek— you wouldn’t believe it. It’s like the Beatles.”

Gregg Turner

SAM KINISON: THE MOUTH THAT ROARED

His father was a Pentecostal minister, but this son of a preacher man is no choir boy. Sam Kinison turned from the Lord to comedy, but his act is chock full of hellfire and brimstone. The Beast, as he’s affectionately known, confronts life’s little paradoxes the only way he knows how...with a bloodcurdling AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! from the very depths of his soul.

“Sure, I’ve been married. Twice in fact,” he says calmly. “AND IT’S A LIVING HELL!!!!”

The 32-year-old Kinison is a rock comic for the heavy metal crowd. In fact, during his. current stand at the Comedy Store, members of Ratt and Motley Crue show up to cheer and jeer the rotund Peoria, Illinois, native with the black beret and full-length tweed jacket. After a handful of TV spots on Saturday Night Live and David Letterman, as well as an unforgettable cameo as a maniacal history professor in his pal Rodney Dangerfield’s Back To School, Kinison’s career is about to take off. He’s got his first album, Louder Than Hell, and a crosscountry tour to support it ready to begin.

“I wanna fuckin’ show Middle America stand-up, man,” he boasts. “Instead of that monologue shit with a guy in a suit cracking jokes about Reagan and the economy. They’ve never seen stand-up like this before.”

Indeed, most people haven’t. You can’t appreciate Sam in those five-minute snips you get on TV; you’ve got to see him work an audience like a minister on STP...or Brother Theodore on acid. Like his character in Back To School, who starts out calmly discussing the origins of the Vietnam War, only to become an over-the-edge crazy, haranguing some poor student how he fought so that wimps like him could go to college.

“I don’t scream just to scream,” Sam insists. “As long as you justify what you’re doing, or have a point of view as to why that particular character is taking the situation so seriously. Every scream has to make sense. If you do it for no reason, it’ll get on anybody’s nerves.”

Sam’s scream is painful. It comes from the very depths of the soul.

“I don’t put as much pressure on my vocal chords as some people think,” he says. “I do tricks with the mike to make it sound louder. I was talkin’ to Ronnie James Dio and he was saying the same thing...it’s not as damaging as it sounds.”

Kinison sees the similarity between his act and rock ’n’ roll, as well as his former calling in the ministry.

“I’m a rocker,” he admits. “I’ve been playing guitar since I was 15. I’ve got a couple of Marshalls stacked in the house. Take that, add on the evangelist, take it into comedy and you get what happens.

“There was the same kind of energy level in preaching, the same kind of building up to an emotional pitch with each statement. Like comedy, it’s something you can’t be taught. You pick it up as you go along, like jazz or scat.”

Indeed, Kinison’s “sermons” attack hypocrisy in religion and, especially, heterosexual relationships. His venom towards females is poisonous, even though Sam tempers the hate with practical advice. In the area of oral sex he advises all men to trace the alphabet with their tongue, thereby maximizing a woman’s pleasure. Another of his suggestions is to “make ’em come twice before you even let ’em see your dick.” It’s comments like that which have earned Sam the wrath of feminists, but the comedian insists he’s just a romantic fool at heart.

“I still believe there’s hope,” he says contemplatively, if that seems possible. “I’ve bought it nine times, I’ll buy it a tenth. There’s no other choice. What else are you gonna do? I love women. I just try to shake people up who are already together. I try to make things seem so bleak and impossible, that couples will react and say, ‘Now, wait a minute. I don’t agree with that. I think we can save ourselves and make it work.’”

Other favorite Kinison targets are homosexuals and the starving. He can’t believe what’s going on in Africa these days.

“I want to tell them, ‘HEY, YOU’RE LIVING IN A FUCKING DESERT! YOU’RE EATING SAND!! MOVE!!!!!”’ shouts Sam.

Needless to say, Sam Kinison is not to everybody’s taste. The warning sticker on his album states that clearly, as did his record company decision not to mail out promo copies, but to send LPs only to those who really wanted to hear it.

“You’re better off having people hate you all the way than turn on your own point of view,” says Sam with uncharacteristic calm. “You have no protection then.”

Roy Trakin