NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

THE LAST BIG THING

When you meet with Hunters & Collectors’ Mark Seymour for lunch there’s a lot of pressing matters to discuss besides whether the fish is fresh. Like: What has the band been doing since their last record came out in 1984? Where have they been? Have they disbanded? And, most importantly, why has no one in America except Aussiophiles ever heard of the group once heralded in England as the leader of post-nuclear pop movement (whatever that might mean)? America needs to know! So there is a lot important junk to get out of the way.

The multi-piece, innovative band’s demise in 1985, after three or four records (depending on where you live) was greatly exaggerated, for starters. It could have been the result of growing up with great acclaim and in the glare of the public eye. Or something.

“I never really liked the idea of what we were,” Mark says. “What we were really doing was experimenting, yet we were lauded as somehow conveying the postnuclear future.” He shakes his head in dismay. “Gradually we were just pushed into a corner that we couldn’t get out of. We had to go through and survive quite a significant catharsis as a band. So this time we decided to take a completely different approach—this time I wanted something quite simple.”

It also involved a fair bit of personnel change. The original band occasionally boasted as many members as could fit on stage (percussion was their thing, with members of the audience banging away on hubcaps).

“We were at cross-purposes,” says Seymour. “We wanted to lay the groundwork first. The label wanted us to go into the studio and write a hit—which would have been nice,” he grins quickly. “But it didn’t happen. By the time Talking With A Stranger’ came out in America, and the video with it, we were on the verge of breaking up anyway, but we did an American tour. It was ridiculous. Greg Perano, the percussion player, and I weren’t speaking, but the band had to stay together through the tour to earn the money to go home.”

Sounds like a lotta fun. It wasn’t. Almost immediately upon returning to Melbourne, the band went on hiatus. By the time they returned to the public in 1986 things were very different. They had a new label, some different players and a new record, Human Frailty, that emphasized melodic, danceable songs.

“There were certain original ideas about our music that applied to us from the start, but we were never given a chance to thoroughly explain. The name Hunters & Collectors is one of them,” says Seymour. “It describes a community of people. When you hear the name, you don’t automatically think of a band, but of a society. That’s what our band’s about. It’s about us, our girlfriends and wives and the town we live in. We aren’t trying to sell something, or write songs that people don’t know already. We’re just trying to draw people’s attention to the more obvious aspects of their, own lives. I like making albums that you can read: that have some sort of statement about them. The songs represent a point in somebody’s life, and they leave you with a memory of that time, so whenever the person who buys the record plays it, it represents a certain time in their life.

“It hasn’t been that hard,” he explains. “In Australia, after we released Jaws Of Life, people thought we had broken up. So it was starting from scratch. We pulled a couple of hundred people a night, but gradually the whole thing started building up again. Right now in Australia it’s mega,” he laughs.

Sharon Liveten

NICK CAVE (WHAT A HAPPY GUY)

It’s been a busy and productive year for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Among other things, not one but two new albums: a collection of cover versions quaintly entitled Kicking Against The Pricks (in which Nick plods menacingly through the verbal backwash of such songwriters as Johnny Cash and Lou Reed—not to mention a desperate, brooding rendition of “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” the coolest recording of that song since Isaac Hayes crooned it to love-rap nirvana back in 1969), and a collection of new originals, Your Murder, My Trial.

If you’ve managed to avoid hearing him up till now, it’s useful to know that, while often inspiring, brilliant, and even funny in its own darkly sarcastic way, Nick’s music could hardly be pegged with the adjective “happy.” Question: how does Nick feel about music and life these days?

“I feel constantly frustrated,” he says. “I sometimes get a bit excited about certain things, but generally with pursuing the matter to any length or to any depth, the whole idea of what seemed to be so exciting seems to crumble away pretty quickly.”

But enough about music. Other creative sallies loom on the horizon for Nick Cave. He’s writing a novel.

“It’s in four parts, and I’ve finished the third part. I have one more part to write. Once I start writing it, it should take another two months or so to finish the fourth part, and then I’d say another three months or so to rewrite the first, second, and third parts. It’s taking a long time, this book, but it’s quite lengthy. I’ve got a lot to say. It’s not some sort of pipe dream.

I work on it every day and every night. It’s very long, and plotwise, it’s really complicated. I mean, it’s a novel, it’s not some sort of autobiography. It’s a story”

What does Nick get from writing prose that he doesn’t get from writing music?

“I can be as verbose as I want to,” he explains. “That’s something I find a bit awkward in a lot of my songs. In retrospect, I find them too wordy. I would like to write simpler songs. But at the same time, there’s a lot of things that I’d like to write about that are not so easy to write about in such simple terms. So I’m able to belabor those points a lot more when I’m writing a novel. It’s just such a totally solitary occupation, to write a book. You can’t really bring anyone else into it at all. It requires a fair amount of confidence.”

Does writing prose make Nick feel happy? “When it’s coming out, it’s great. It’s really one of the most uplifting things I find I’ve been doing. The book has quite a lot of humor in it—of how perpetually black the picture is painted. I don’t consider it to be self-parody but it could be called that. You know, exaggerating what’s already been put onto me.”

Renaldo Migaldi

SAMANTHA THE FOX

Felix: “Nobody listens to a girl with her clothes off.”

Oscar: “I always have.”

—From The Odd Couple TV series

“You’re really heavy. I come to America and get my songs pulled apart, and I didn’t even write them.” Samantha Fox is bemused by my vivisection of her debut LP, Touch Me, which propogates an oppressive, conservative sexuality detailing the pleasures of monogamy, as opposed to the aggressive, (fake) orgasm addict implied on her international hit disco single, “Touch Me (I Want Your Body).”

Ms. Fox first came to Britain’s attention by posing for English tabloid The Sun’s famous “Page Three.” Says she: “The Page Three Girl is the working class girl next door with a nice smile and a nice pair of boobs.” And no shirt. The then 16-yearold Ms. Fox became instantly notorious. “I was very mature for my age. My friends at school were already married with kids or pregnant. I thought ‘Wow, aren’t I lucky.’ Since I was 11,1 always knew what I wanted. I wanted my own house and lots of money and everything I ever dreamed of.”

And she got it. The years following her Sun appearance featured an unsuccessful stab with a band called SFX (one single, a couple concerts), increasing public response as a glamor model, even a stint as the host of a current affairs TV program. Today at the ripe old age of 20, she’s a major British celebrity.

However, with the exception of her topheavy physique, what she’s celebrated for is open to conjecture. Certainly the hipper elements of the press have found her wanting. “I don’t get bad press,” she says. I mention some of her more exacting detractors. “You think being called some of the biggest tits in England is bad press? Look at poor Boy George. Now they’re saying he has AIDS. And even if he doesn’t, he has to live with it. I’ve never had press like that. There’s no skeletons in my closet.”

Samantha Fox is, emphatically, a smart cookie. She won’t discuss feminism or nuclear disarmament. She won’t dismantle her career, and let it see the light of day. She will say things like “I’ve been offered three movies since I arrived, but I want to concentrate on my music now. There’s no hurry.”

Is it worth mentioning that her LP is a load of wank? Probably not, although it should be mentioned that there are two not-dreadful synth bubblegum tracks, and that the cover is great, with our Sam in strategically ripped jeans.

Is it worth mentioning Ms. Fox takes my fairly obnoxious questions in astoundingly good grace? “Some people want to be like me,” she says. “Some people don’t. Some people want a body like mine ...”

“... I can’t think of many people who don’t,” I say, finishing her sentence. The quip rolls right past her. It doesn’t make the slightest impression. There is an undercurrent of tight control about Ms.

Fox, in sharp contrast to her Everygirl persona. Of course, she has a bodyguard, but only for “Personal Appearances.” She hates the big stars she meets, claiming “they’re such bigheads.” She could walk out the door right now, sing for 10,000 people and it wouldn’t bother her at all, yet she doesn’t think she has “a strong ego. I don’t believe all the stuff I read about myself.” She enjoys the trappings of success, but still goes down to the pub with her dad. “There’s many prices for being famous, but not being able to meet normal people is too high.” Believe her, if you will.

Not as if it makes any difference. If the American teenage male can’t get it up over Ms. Fox, there’s something drastically wrong with the American teenage male. It’s as simple as that.

Iman Lababedi

HERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Before Husker Du, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, Prince, his disciples and others I don’t even know about, the most worthwhile group in Minneapolis was the Suburbs. That’s what a lot of rockcrits say, and I believe them.

The ’Burbs were founded in 1978 when a skinny tie, red pants and a silly haircut could draw remarks like “new wave,” “punk” or simply “weird shit” from ultrareactionaries. Because they didn’t play hardened-arteries rock, MOR or disco, the ’Burbs were something of an anomaly in their home state.

In 1986, however, the Suburbs are no longer an anomaly. The original five ’Burbs—Beej Chaney (vox, gtr), Chan Poling (kbds, vox), Bruce Allen (gtr), Hugo Klaers (drms), Michael Halliday (bs)—are still plugging for charthood and they’ve added a sax and trumpet to aid them on their mission.

Evidence of this resides on Suburbs, their debut for A&M. Suburbs is slick product, wallowing in the mid-’80s mainstream, an album you might hear at a Mark Goodman party. Where they once wrote about pipsqueak millionaires and idiot voodoo, the Suburbs now sing “I Want That Girl” and “Heart Of Gold”; let us talk about diminishing ambition and imagination.

The clipped, jittery guitars that made Credit In Heaven (’81) a Midwestern cousin of Talking Heads '77 have been shunned for some reason. The guitars have been blanded & bloated out to MORonic specifications, neutered for max radio exposure. A once lean, idiosyncratic funk-rock machine has been renovated into an anonymous, air-brushed unit. What gives?

Chaney says his band’s not consciously trying to please the jelly-brained masses. Suburbs “was an effort to create music we really enjoy,” claims Chaney, who wears red leather pants onstage and possesses the muscled, gleaming torso of Jim Stoogepop. “And because we’ve already been through our phase of obscurity, we’re more conscious of developing the songs further than we used to. We’ve gotten better at the craft of songwriting.”

Chaney’s not worried about disappointing his old fans. “They might think the new record’s better produced and better written. I think it’s more thought-out. It’s superior. If they see us live, they’ll understand that (Suburbs) is far from being a commercial, laid-back, contrived joke. There’s more power in our band live and the material is powerful so I’m not concerned about it. In fact, I think this album is more back to our roots with development than anything we’ve ever done.”

Chaney speaks the truth about the Suburbs’ live power. He’s a kinetic presence and like any good Iggyist, he’s a wiseguy crooner who often lapses into Bowiesque locutions. In the show I saw in Detroit, he booted a cup of water into the feeble crowd and doused a couple who were politely seated at a table.

But the Suburbs seem to be suffering those old fourth album blues. Y’ever notice how after most bands’ third LP, they get progressively duller, more banal, self-parodistic and redundant as their creativity files for bankruptcy?

Suburbs may be the platter that will shoot these Minneapolitans into Madonnaland and Phil Collinsville. Any of the LP’s eight cuts could be singles. And thanks to Robert Brent’s (Bobby Z, drummer of Prince’s Revolution) clean, full production job and his emphasis on huge, echoey percussion, you may be aerobicizing to “Superlove” or “America Sings The Blues” any day now.

Allen adds a final thought: “Who wants someone to stay the same as the last record? Might as well keep listening to the first one.”

Not a bad idea.

Dave Segal

REGINA CLEANS UPI

It goes like this. You tie your hair into a whole bunch of ponytails (make it a half dozen, don’t be cheap with the rubber bands). Then you borrow or steal some scraps of material, different colors and patterns (but no plaids or polyester please). You wrap the ponytails tight, use some yarn to tie them up into Medusa swirls and dive bomber loop-de-loops and, voila, you’re happening. All set for that important job interview. That first meeting with your new boyfriend’s parents. The acceptance speech in Stockholm next year, when you’re casually scoring that Nobel Prize.

“I call this my ‘Exaggerated Sophisticated Buckwheat Look’,’’ Regina Richards says in Manhattan, pointing to the head that spawned ‘Baby Love’ and its follow-up album (Curiosity); the head currently housing what must be the World’s Most Awe-struck Eyes. “With my old band, the Red Hots, I’d show up with my straight hair, my innocent face. People told me I looked like a madonna from a Botticelli painting. Mona Lisa. I was this classical, angelic-looking thing.’’ She laughs. "That sure didn’t get me no big record company advance.”

No problem with that now. But blame her five older sisters for getting her hooked on Presley, Ronettes, the Beatles, and Motown almost before she learned to walk without falling down. Blame her parents for acting like parents. “I’d come home from school, turn on the radio, and prop myself up with a blanket until dinner. They thought I was a little wacked. ‘Maybe she’s anti-social. Maybe she’s autistic.’ ”

Regina’s been writing and singing on the New York .scene since the late ’70s night when she hiked down to CBGB, “just me and my acoustic guitar,” to perform her earliest songs for the club’s owner. Fronting Regina & The Red Hots, she gigged the CBGB/Max’s Kansas City circuit and scored rave reviews for nearly five years, yet the band’s sole album (released by A&M in England) never saw daylight here.

So much fpr historical perspective. Her music now, she says, “is an outgrowth what I was doing then. I got my own equipment—sequencers, drum machine, keyboards, the whole bit. I taught myself how to use everything, and did the songs exactly how I heard them in my head. This is closer to home than my old stuff, which was a live band with me playing guitar on every song, almost a folk rock sound rather than a danceable rock thing. I just put a little bit more soul into it.”

“Baby Love” was penned in hope of getting somebody famous to do it. “I was just into writing,” she says. “People asked, ‘Why aren’t you doing these yourself?’ I’d say, ‘Listen, I’ve been through that. I’d just be honored if people covered my songs. I’d be thrilled.’ They couldn’t understand. When a publisher I was working with said, ‘I’ll get you a record deal,’ I told him I didn’t want one, thank you.”

She got one anyway after releasing “Baby Love” independently. It clicked in Europe, was picked up here by Atlantic. Fame at last. On the other hand, there’s this business about Regina and Sean Penn’s wife. While most of Curiosity leans toward R&B-inflected pop, "Baby Love” admittedly had a Madonna-esque feel. That, plus the fact the single was cowritten and produced by the Material Girl’s long-time collaborator, Steve Bray, has led to comparisons. However, many denizens of the Manhattan studio scene insist it’s Madonna who “borrowed” certain sonic and stylistic colors from Regina, not the other way around.

All Regina will say is that “Steve came to New York around the same time Madonna did and was working with her. He was my drummer with the Red Hots for three-and-a-half years, so I know her, of course. He said, ‘Would you like to write with me?’ And we did. But I’ve always had my own thing. Some of the comments are crazy, like ‘They have the same hairstyle.’ Madonna would crack up. I think when people find I have a history, the whole picture turns around, and I’m no longer—to those who didn’t know before—a clone.”

But the hair’s only a hobby anyway, thanks. Most of the time, you’ll find Regina stashed in her closet-sized apartment/mini-studio, tinkering with new tunes and driving the neighbors crazy. “When I’m doing drum tracks? Forget about it. I’m a perfectionist, so I’m up there with the drum machine for, like, four hours. People are banging on the ceiling with broomsticks and writing me notes: If you must insist on playing that horrible beat... They scotch tape them outside, slide them under the door, and just ... bang. Then I got this letter from the landlord....”

Dan Hedges