NEW BEATS

NEW BEATS

ELY FOR YOU TO SAY

You gotta hand it to Joe Ely. Here’s a guy who’s been kicking around the club circuit for the past, what, 20 years or more, consistently puts on one of the most murderous rock ’n’ roll shows you’ll ever see, yet has been laboring under the double-edged sword of that status called “cult” for lo these many moons—and isn’t even bitter about it.

On the contrary, West Texas firebrand Ely (who, incidentally, is a gentle, unassuming interview subject) is almost content to be where he’s at. “It’s kind of a nice position to be in,” says Ely, in this tangy Lubbock-bred drawl, “because I feel like we’re really kind of in gear, but I’m not constantly on the road and all, so I still have time to write. It’s not really frustrating.”

Ely, 40, began playing professionally in his pre-adolescent days. He—along with fellow Lubbockites Jimmie Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Tommy Hancock, Al Strehli, and a few others—has since gained semi-legendary status.

Joe and these pals recorded together in 1971 as the Flatlanders and, when the group split up a few years later, Ely struck off on his own. “The first band was definitely more country,” Joe recalls, “with steel guitars, accordion, acoustic piano and stuff. Ironically, country radio wouldn’t play us, because—even though it was country instruments—everybody played a little too hard and a little too rockin’ for them.”

And wouldn’t you just know it that, even as Ely’s sound electrified and toughened up furthermto the lean howling roadhouse-rocking thing it is today, album Blclio wouldn’t play his stuff either, be^ cause it was “too country.” Even after touring with the only band that mattered at the time, the Clash (as Ely did in 1979/80 after Strummer and company “discovered” him in England), he couldn’t seem to get rid of the hayseed association.

Joe recorded half a dozen albums for MCA between 1977 and 1984, including the superb concert LP, Live Shots, and his acknowledged classic, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta. “I considered ’em really rock ’n’ roll albums, but MCA always kind of stuck ’em in the country bins, y’know?” he shrugs. It kind of made me mad. A lot of people told me, ‘I looked for your record but couldn’t find it.’ ”

MCA’s out of the picture now, having fulfilled their contractual obligation, and he’s looking for a new label.

He’s already got several dozen new tunes recorded and ready for pressing, including an album’s worth of stuff that was supposed to be his final MCA album. “It got tied up in some strange politics somewhere” is all the gentlemanly Ely will say on the subject of the limbo’d disc, which, with a little luck, might be picked up by some enterprising company that still has a fresh set of ears on staff.

In the meantime, Joe and band continue to cut tracks back in their home base of Austin, Texas, and tour the U.S. and Europe, playing some 150 dates a year. A Joe Ely set tops the list of prerequisites for rock ’n’ roll appreciation—it’s sweaty, relentless and loud.

The band has chops, and knows how to use ’em, creating an effect as impossible to ignore as an uppercut to the jaw. There’s guitarist David Grissom, with his rock-idol looks and snapped-power-line lead work, whom Ely hired in 1984 “because he was the first lead guitar player I’d ever seen that played a really ferocious rhythm guitar.” Then we have venerable saxist Bobby Keys, Rolling Stones sideman and session guy extraordinaire, iwho (unknown to Ely) grew up in Slaton, ilexas, not far from Lubbock. “I’d always thought he was from England before I met Hv Joe grins. On bass and drums are another couple of West Texas boys, Jimmyfeettit and Davis McLarty. Put ’em ail together and you’ve got a sound that peels paintjoff the cars in the parking lot.

Ely’s current set is about three-quarters unreleased material, and it’s criminal that rock ’n’ roll this good isn’t available on record. There’s ‘‘Poorhouse,” otherwise known as “Drivin’|[o The Poorhouse In A Limousine,” an aggressive Berry-esque composition with a rm that sticks to your head for life. Pore’s a great little R&B shuffle called “My Eyes Got Lucky,” a whooping raveup entitled “I’m Gonna Tell” and a personal fave of Ely’s is the whimsical tale “Me And Billy The Kid.”

If a happy ending for Ely and band—a new record deal—isn’t immediately in the cards, don’t think for a minute Joe Ely’s gonna fret about it. “I gave up a long time ago being frustrated with the record companies,” he smiles. “I know too many bands that have ripped themselves apart—just by starting to think of record stuff instead of music stuff.”

Moira McCormick

DEATH RATTLE ’N’ ROLL

Poet John Giomo’s had what you might call a colorful life. The accomplishments listed in his press kit include starring in Andy Warhol’s film, Sleep (1963), originating Dial-a-Poem (1986) (which eventually received tens of millions of phone calls and paved the way for the myriad dial-it services we know and love), writing eleven books (including such volumes as Balling Buddha [1970], Cancer In My Left Ball [1973], and Sucking Mud [1986]), recording radio programs with Abbie Hoffman which were broadcast over Radio Hanoi in 1971, and founding Giorno Poetry Systems—a record company that has produced 20 albums featuring over 200 poets, artists, and musicians. Pew formers on past albums include FmH Smith, William S. Burroughs, l^aurie Anderson, Diamanda Galas, Husfcer Du, Amiri Baraka, and David Johansen, among others. And just tQjfprove 'that they’re an ’80s kind of label, they’re now putting out CDs and videos as well.

Giorno explains pe genesis of his label: “I did the fir^record, Pornographic Poem And Raspberry, which was my solo album back j| 1967. Then I wanted to make a record of the Dial-a-Poem poets, which were on the telephones and getting melons of phone calls at the time. I got a telephone call out of the blue from thflguy who was the vice president of the Record Club of America, which is like the Book-of-the-Month Club, and they wanted todo a Dial-a-Poem record as one of their selections for the month. So they put up this money and we did a double album, which walPthe first in the series.”

I ask what he’s hoped to accomplish with the records over the years. “I never really have any concept like that. I just put together these things that I think are totally great. On the new albcmwe have Tom Waits, Butthole Surfers, Einsturzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galssf| Swans, Nick Cave, and William (Burrougsls), 10 or 12 people.”

So—I ask again—is Giorno Poelll Systems moving more towards rock ’rrl roll and away from poetry? “No, because all these people are poets,” sez John.

“Tom is a poet, and Nick Qave is a poet; they’re all poets. Every record is sort of different from the one before it; and what I’ve been putting on the records in recent years is poets working with music.

John would also tike to tell you about Video-Pak 3, the latest audio-visual treat from GPS. “It’s the same concept as the IPs, getting finished videos that people have done. The way we can do these records is that the individual artists produce the pieces themselves, and then we pay them royalties. This is gonna be an hour-long video compilation, with about

10 people on it, and they’re essentially artists from the last three albums—and not necessarily the songs that were on the albums, tike, Cabaret Voltaire did a special song and a special video for it. And there’s a Charles Bukowski short story that aTrielndndf mine, Starr Sutherland, made into an 11-minute movie which is like a feature-length Hollywood movie with movie stars and whatever. In

11 minutes you go through a whole Charles Bukowski trip.” Among the other participants are Burroughs, Husker Du, Diamanda Galas, Sonic Youth, and John Waters.

Now if bands with incredibly morbid lyrics, droning music, and lots of black clothing set off your bullshit alarm as fast as they do mine, you’d probably be welladvised to approach Giorno Poetry ISystems with caution. But there’s a lot of good stuff here—Burroughs is always funny and memorable, David Johansen and Laurje Anderson have done some great tracks, and simply put, that Diamanda Galas is one heckuva babe. In general the records are lijte a trip to a really good midway. There are some artists, some geeks and a whole lot of weirdness along the way. I ask John about the weirdness. “You mean ‘sleaze.’ It’s in a lot of it and there’s no particular reason, (only put on things that sort of strike me, like a little lightbulb lights up. It seems to be sleaze, but then we are sleaze, or we live around sleaze, or we’re livin’ in sleaze, y’know?”

(To get your copy of Giorno Poetry Systems’ latest catalog, write to the label at 222 Bowery, New York, NY, 10012.)

Thomas Anderson

SYLVESTER: THE WHOLE TODODADODADO

“The sheer fact that I am black, I am gay, I have not compromised my lifestyle or the things I believe in, and I’ve still been successful is a statement in itself/’

—Sylvester

• ••

Fifteen years into his recording career, Sylvester has his first major label association. His current Warner Bros, single/the exultant “Someone Like You,” puts him back on his familiar perch atop the dance charts, a position he first attained more than eight years ago with “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat).” And his new album, MutalAttraction, offers a first-rate overview of his versatility. Whether Sylvester will at last get over as he should remains to be seen, but in any case, it’s time you met a true original.

What Sylvester’s been doing all these years is a whole lot of often outrageous, wildly eclectic things—on the money and to the max. Mind you, he hadn’t planned it quite this way. He studied archaeology at college in Los Angeles (his hometown) and worked for the Museum of Ancient History at the La Brea Tar Pits: “I was cataloguing bones and going on digs and having a great time. I was going to discover the next tomb in Egypt and all that kind of stuff.” Nonetheless, when he did start singing, “sort of as a joke,” he was on solid ground, having sung in church for eight years and having written a thesis on the transition from field hollers and field calls to gospel and jazz. So, naturally (in this story, anyway), his first real gig was with the Cockettes, the fabled drag troupe, singing jazz and eventually putting together a one-man show, “Women Of The Blues,” in which he did songs associated with Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, and Lena Horne and offered up choice bits of history, such as the fact that W.C. Handy wrote “St. Louis Blues” for a drag queen in vaudeville.

After doing some poor-selling records for the Blue Thumb and Fantasy labels, his big break carhe in 78—boy, did it ever. With the one-two punch of the instant disco classics “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat),” from Step II, Sylvester busted out all over the place; he topped the dance chart, scored black hits, and even took the singles to numbers 36 and 19, respectively on the pop chart; international success followed apace. Sylvester was stunned. After all, he had written “Mighty Real” as a ballad—he didn’t like disco. But Tip Wirrick, his guitarist (and sometimes writerproducer), coaxed him into demo-ing up a disco version and—“The next thing I knew this record is like the record of the world. I’m selling out Madison Square Garden, and all this stuff is goingon ...

It had its moments, but I was overwhelmed.. i.” ~ :

Like Patti LaBelle (and Bruce Springsteen, for that matter), Sylvester cuts ail the way loose in concert, emotionally drawing in the audience ascloseasthis.

(Hell, he even rocks the house singing to tracks.) And in March, 79, he gave a legendary, peak performance. He became the first pop artist to play the San _ Francisco Opera House, with the symphony orchestra string section and given the key to the city, which officially celebrating Sylvester Day—“the whoje tododadodado.” The live album (three sides of) Living Proof, captures the spirit, but it sounds even better when Sylvester takes you there: “One of the only times I’ve ever done drugs onstage was this night. I decided, honey, I’m in the opera house, my dressing room is the Maria Callas dressing room, and I have a grand jj piano, and so I took a hit of acid and drank a bottle of champagne ... And I had a real good time. Oh, I had a fabulous time. You can tell on the record. I’nfjust dancing and singing and chit-chatting and throwing glitter and carrying In.”

The highest highs werdfUs reworking of the grand Patti LaBelle ballad, “You Are My Friend," which has since turned into a kind of anthlln among his gay fans, and “Lover Man,” pure and simple.

Moving right along, Sylvester has kept on spinning out dance smashes and solid albums over the last several years. (And, with increasing urgency, he has been working to raise money—and public awareness—for the fight against AIDS.)

If he hasn’t had the crossover success that is his due, especially given that he is the source for so much of the discobased dance rock that many of you—yes, you—are buying, it’s your loss. Maybe now that he’s got a major label supporting him, you’ll listen up.

But if you don’t, Sylvester won’t exactly be put out: “If you have a problem with me, it’s your problem ... It doesn’t bother me ... I’m doing everything that I want to, and having a wonderful time.”

Jim Feldman

MOD! FAB! GEAR!

When it comes to bad music, old bad is almost always better than new. And according to Tony Conway of Mood Six, compared to today’s musical wasteland even the mid-’70s weren’t so bad. Tony, in fact, is something of an expert—the problem bothered him enough to name the kick-off track of his band’s new LP (A Matter Of!) “The Contemporary Scene (Is At An All-Time Low).” Yipes!

“I think things are worse now than they Itere 10 years ago,” he asserts, “because of the advent of drum machines and synthesizers. Not only is chart music uniformly bad, but it’s all the same. Even though popi inusic was at a low in the early ’70s, at least it was bad in lots of different ways! Those people were having a go—they might have been completely naff, but it was people writing ^pigs, and it was people playing instruments, and it wasn’t computerized ... ”

“There aren’t many songs around now,” his partner Phil Ward interjects. “Just beats.”

Jeepers, Mr. Peabody!

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the year 1966!

... Which is exactly what Mood Six did when they formed a few short years ago.

“We started off as basically a swinging ’60s band,” Conway admits, even narrowing it down to “1966—pre-psychedelia, the Swinging London of Blow-Up, the Yardbirds, and David Bowie, Mary Quant, and the whole Op-Art thing, rather than what happened a year later, in 1967. That was a starting point for the band in terms of image and sound, when we had to have somewhere to start, otherwise we’d be jut another band doing the pub circuit.”

The band got their start in a club they founded called the Groovy Cellar, which catered to the nouveau-’60s scene and attracted its share of future pop-stars, as well.

“Boy George used to be down there every week. Eurythmics. Paul Weller. Siouxsie & The Banshees. All those people I mentioned have some sort of interest in that era. I feel we have a lot in common in terms of taste.”

Better the same tastes than the same haircuts...

The band recorded the Shocking Blue hit “Venus” for their first single, but their label at the time (EMI) nixed the idea, although the song had been a big live favorite (for audiences which often included the members of Bananarama— draw your own conclusions). EMI opted instead for “Hanging Around,” which was later covered by Toni “Mickey” Basil.

The band soon split with EMI and broke up temporarily, after contributing one track to the neo-psych A Splash Of Color compilation (a project the band is quick1 to disown). They were soon back, however, with a new LP, The Difference Is, and a new single, “Plastic Flowers.” (Robyn “Please Quit Calling Me God” Hitchcock fans may want to search this one out, as it features a cover of the Soft Boys’ “I Want To Destroy You” on the flip.) More recently, Mood Six have released A Matter Of!, the latest in their series of incompletely named LPs, and their first U.S. release.

The band’s sound has matured and diversified with time, and their new material shows them to have more in common with the Smiths and Aztec Camera than they do with London circa 1966 (no, they didn’t specify which month...). In fact, their sound owes the greatest debt to some of their American peers—Let’s Active, Todd Rungren, and especially the Three O’Clock. All of them are “ ’60s-pop” addicts with enough sense and musical know-how to bring that sound up-to-date.

As it turns out, Conway’s ’60s fascination has another—quite unique—facet to it as well. Seems that he was recently responsible for the first-ever staging in London of the unmade third Beatles film, Up Against It (which Joseph Papp and Todd Rundown are currently preparing for the New York stage).

“Up Against It was a screenplay that Joe Orton wrote as a followup to Help!,’’ Conway points out. “He was really The Boy in London theater at the time. It had them dressing up in women’s clothing art| shooting the women Prime Minister, ancFSvarious homosexual innuendoes, whicHi think was a bit strong for the Fab Four-Jthey were still pretty Fab at the time. It was shelved when Orton died in ’67.”

Conway got a shot at directing the play of his choice as a prize in a directorial competition, and it wasn’t until he was researching the rights to Up Against It that he realized that the play had never been publicly performed before.

“I couldn’t believe we could just stumble on something like this. So we put it on, and we calledif a “World Premiere.”

At least they didn’t call it Up Againsti...

John Neilson