45 REVELATIONS
I can’t rightly say “Candy” is a step up from “Word Up,” but Cameo’s come up with an equally amazing follow-up, and a second Single of the Month. For fully two verses, with a sprawling bassline the only hint that something strange might happen, it appears as if Larry Blackmon & Co.
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45 REVELATIONS
KEN BARNES
I can’t rightly say “Candy” is a step up from “Word Up,” but Cameo’s come up with an equally amazing follow-up, and a second Single of the Month.
For fully two verses, with a sprawling bassline the only hint that something
strange might happen, it appears as if Larry Blackmon & Co. have pulled a one-eighty and delivered a delicately pretty number as sweet as its title.
Well, they have, except there’s more, as you realize the first time a fuzz bass from outer space attack disturbs the pastoral calm. Suddenly, intruding, competing, or even raggedly harmonizing with the semisweet falsetto lead vocal, Blackmon essays a drawling commentary in a voice somewhere between W.C. Fields and Rudy Vallee. Later a third vocal provides additional falsetto or mutters gluttonous asides.
Clumsily handled, a melange of this sort could become a jumble, like scrawling a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Instead, Cameo produce a real curio, a track in which the disparate elements (which also include a fierce acid guitar solo, with the rare and commendable quality of being over before you’ve had a chance to adjust to it, much less get annoyed at it; and some relatively adventurous sax) enhance the conventional prettiness of the song. It’s like Parliament/ Funkadelic’s wiggier experiments married to a great tune (something George Clinton hasn’t really had since 1966’s “Heart Trouble”). A dandy record.
I don’t want to overdo it on Madonna (I think I’ve overdone it on the last 10 singles), so even though I could rhapsodize for a page on “Open Your Heart,” I’ll just say I find it hard to comprehend there are still holdouts after a vintage, top-rank Madonna disc like this. It has no match irf rhythmic exuberance, gorgeous melody, or its unmistakable air of sheer pop mastery.
“Holy Word” by I’m Talking was an Australian hit last summer, but it’s only just crossed the Pacific into my awareness (located just north of the San Pedro docks). Frankly, my awareness is pretty perplexed
about the whole thing. Imagine a jumpy
Madonna/Chic-style dance track, with a chorus singing “My name is a holy word” and a female vocalist wailing, “Hold me like I’m dying/Hold me as the blood runs from my hands” and “Hold me like a baby/Crying like the slaughtered lamb of God/Innocent but maybe....”
On face value (and at least three other tracks on their Bear Witness LP are blatantly apocalyptic-religioso), this is best Contemporary Christian dance number ever... but it leaves me unsettled.
More international dance sensations from Canada’s Doubledare, who sound like Stevie Nicks gone hiphop on “Date With The Past” (I realize Stevie Nicks sounded like Stevie Nicks gone hiphop on "I Can’t Wait”—not the Nu Shooz number but her own song—but this sounds even more like it). On the follow-up, “Can’t Hold On,” missing-in-action producers Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa (responsible for the classic Shannon hit “Let The Music Play”) even more remarkably approximate the sound of Stevie Nicks backed by the SOS Band as produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.
Another fine Canadian record, “Soul City” by the Partland Bros., recalls the better recent Hall & Oates efforts (“Out Of Touch,” say), being a highly attractive rock/pop/dance concoction.
Sweden’s Green Gallery reminds me of Green On Red for more than band name similarity; their “Sweet Memories” is a loose, vaguely Dylanesque reminiscence worth investigating (Pet Sounds Records, Jakobsbergsgatan 6,111 44, Stockholm, Sweden). Australia’s consistently classy Waterfront label has a pair of two-sided triumphs: Naked Lunch’s restrained guitar-popper “Teenage Blues,” back with the storming “Little Too Late”; and a double dose of exceptional garage rock from the Headstones, “All The Things You Do” (slight Easybeats flavor) and the crunching “When You’re Down.”
Moving to England, One Thousand Violins get close to a classic 1980 flowering of UK pop-rock, when records like “Treason” by the Teardrop Explodes and “Rescue” by Echo & the Bunnymen emerged. “Please Don’t Sandblast My House” doesn’t quite rival these British monuments, but it’s close enough for this column. Add a vaguely Smiths-like flip, “I Think It’s Time That I Broke Down” (is this a parody or what?) and you’ve got a winner.
Speaking of Echo, their apparent heirs, the Mighty Lemon Drops, are carrying on the tradition, as “My Biggest Thrill” nearly lives up to its title (excellent guitar), “Open Mind” has a great grungy “Gloria”sty!e riff, and there are a couple of good bonus tracks on the double-pack UK single.
“It Makes You Scared” by Biff Bang Pow and J.C. Brouchard, besides winning me over with a warm dedication to Madonna (whom they in no way resemble), earns legitimate column space with a speedy strumattack ending in banshee feedback. The Aside, “Somebody Stole My Wheels,” is pretty good guitar/organ pop as well.
Billy Bragg has good taste in support musicians, with the Smiths’ guitar wizard Johnny Marr and long-time 45 Revs fave Kirsty MacColl assisting on "Greetings To The New Brunette,” a snugly guitar-textured song. Fine solo version of Ry Cooder’s “Tatler” on the flip.
The Bible’s “Mahalia,” a rather downbeat tribute to Mahalia Jackson and Robert Johnson, isn’t up to their transcendent “Graceland,” but the soprano sax makes a superb hookline. (Backs Records, St. Mary’s Works, St. Mary’s Plain, Norwich NR3 3AF, England).
Four for four for Eurythmics on topnotch singles (U.K. and U.S.) from the Revenge LP, as the sumptuous production ballad “The Miracle Of Love” completes the hat-trick-plus-one.
Back in the USA, ’til tuesday add a little country to the usual melodic melancholy on “Coming Up Close” (actually a rather cozy reminiscence, but Aimee Mann probably sounds sad unwrapping her Christmas presents). Lovely song, lovely album.
Suzanne Vega is making a believer of me: first “Small Blue Thing,” then “Left Of Center,” and now the simple, eloquent, and tastefully electric “Gypsy.”
After months of album airplay, the Smithereens finally get around to releasing two of their best tracks on a single, the ’60s fetish homage “Behind The Wall Of Sleep” and the understated, powerful “Blood And Roses” (check that guitar solo). They’ve matured magnificently from a lightweight (though appealing) pop band to one of America’s top rock hopes.
Not many seemed to agree with me, but I liked the two Billy Squier singles from Enough Is Enough, especially “Shot O’ Love,” which is simple American crunchrock at its best.
Huey Lewis’s heart is in the right place, as evidenced by his version of the Bruce Hornsby (whose “The Way It Is” never got plugged here, but should have if only for the magnificent piano) anti-religious hucksterism song “Jacob’s Ladder—solid, subtle rocking treatment.
Hector In Paris sound artsy but intriguing on the oblique fashion fad commentary CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23
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“Highlife—nice sax, reminds me of early Martha & The Muffins. (Mom’s Records, PO Box 2676, Pittsburgh, PA 15230.)
The title of John Hiatt’s “She Loves The Jerk” says it all—a great unrequited love song, now receiving an all-stops-Out pop treatment from Rodney Crowell. A must.
Sweethearts Of the Rodeo are another key element in the freshening of country, and this sister duo’s best single yet is the rock ’n’ roll-up-the-sidewalks lament “Midnight Girl/Sunset Tdwn.”
I rushed Lacy J. Dalton’s “Up With The Wind” (flip of ‘This Ol’ Town”) into my Best of ’86 column last month because I was so knocked out by it—it’s a tragic epic in five and half minutes of regret, passion, and freedom lost, economical storytelling with a sweep you find ih rock orily rarely.
“Falling” by Melba Moore is a pretty but unremarkable ballad distinguished at the end by an impressive feat of high-note sustaining. “How Do You Stop” is a ballad distinguished by Jarhea Brown being the vocalist—it’s novel to hear him in a restrained setting, and the performance and song are strong.
Bobby Womack’s "Make Love To You” has a punchy, bluesy Memphis soul structure that makes for a refreshing throwback, and Womack handies the vocals with his
usual tuff and consummate flair.
It’s always a pleasure to finish with something really dumb, and Joi’s “I Need A Prince” fills the bill admirably. It’s actually a pretty good bouncy dance number until you realize the song is almost entirely constructed from Prince song titles; e.g., “I like the controversy/I love his dirty mind/We’re gonna build an erotic city/in 1999.”
Jpi manages without difficulty to rhyme “soft and wet” with “little red Corvette,” but by the end of the song she’s forced to recite, rather frantically, increasingly incoherent references to Paisley Park, purple rain, and raspberry berets, until she finally gives up and fades into a “la la la” chorus without managing to work in “Ronnie Talk To Russia” or “17 Days (the rain will come down, then u will have 2 choose if u believe, look 2 the dawn and u shall never lose).”
