ROCK • A • RAMA

ROCK A RAMA

This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Chuck Eddy, Michael Davis, Thomas Anderson, Richard C. Walls, Bob Nevin, John Mendelssohn, Jon Young, and Richard Riegel

ADRIAN BELEW Desire Caught By The Tail (Island)

This is the Adrian Belew record for those who’ve loved his guitar playing but might’ve had doubts about his singing and/or pop songwriting. Desire ... is all instrumental, ali Adrian, and he used his expansive sonic palette to come up with some of his neatest noises yet. At times, he recalls the midEastern modalities of Kaleidoscope; but others, the polyrhythmic pan-tonalities of Can, but even his most outrageous sounds are unmistakably his own. M.D.

THE DAVE EDMUNDS BAND I Hear You Rockin’

(Columbia) ■

The best thatan be said for / Hear You Rockin’, Dave Edmunds’s new live LP, is that it features much of the music we’ve always loved by pop master Dave. The worst is that the album probably wasn’t necessary. Old faves like “Girls Talk,” '‘Crawling From The Wreckage,” “Slipping Away,” and, of course, “I Hear You Knocking” show the former Rockpile driver to be in fine singing voice and playing as competently as ever. However, the songs are faithful to the studio versions to a fault, and that’s too bad, since it diminishes the reasons for doing a live disc in th% first place. Still, it’s a good “fan’s album,” and there’s nothing wrong with that. B.N.

CONCRETE BLONDE (IRS.)

Nostalgia for the 1970s is scheduled to be a big-ticket item this year, but these Angelenos have taken that strange fruit a further poke over the line, in a debut album which seems overripe with yearning for the synthetic “newwaye” groups (cf. Cretones, Sue Saad & The Next) from the 1979-’80 turn of the decade. Well, nobody said that postmodernism would be easy. Besides, Concrete Blonde’s fetish for readymades is just perverse enough that there must be something going on here. Or maybe not, but if you think you could really go for Berlin if they got down & got twangy and breathy, then Concrete Blonde belong in your mixer. Personally, I’d suspect Toni Tenille of involvement in this project, if I didn’t already know that she’s down at the corner prosthesis shoppe buying new nonskid tips for The Captain’s white cane. R.R.

JAMES BLOOD ULMER & GEORGE ADAMS Phalanx

(Moers Music, import)

Two large men with funny hats get free over the sprung bassplay of Amin Ali, and

when his fatback nails this sucker to the floor (in “Upside Down” and “Rough Traders” especially), it bangs like a hydraulic pump, and when he cools out (most notably in “A Night Out,” tenor saxman Adam’s stepin-fetchity flying saucer routine), it doesn’t. Adams shines on “Love And Two Faces,” reprised and retitled from Ulmer’s ’82 Black Rock-, Blood is blood-curdling as usual, pitting hjs sex-string against his partner’s horn in mucho blare-battles, and seeping in like some gravelly blues-centenarian down at the crossroads (and not at all like Jimi Hendrix) in his mournful vocal turn “Funky Lover.” If you had soul, you’d sound like this record. C.E.

NEW MODEL ARMY The Ghost Of Cain (Capitol)

New Model Army have indeed found their own voice but I’m not sure T/H how much good it’ll do ’em. Imagine the Jam, led not by Paul Weller but by Roger Waters, and you’ll have some idea of what they’re doingprominent bass lines pushing along snarls of wordy anger. Many of the songs are quite good, especially if you like to brood and pogo at the same time, but these guys are so serious—and really, how seriously can you take someone who renames himself Slade The Leveller?M.D.

MATTHEW SWEET Inside (Columbia)

Stuffed with succulent, overripe melodies, Matthew Sweet’s major-label debut might well have been titled Pure Pop: The Next Generation. But while his yummy confections reflect careful study of the dB’s, early Todd Rundgren, et al., Inside is more a monument to decadent excess than a good time. Sad songs like “Save Time for Me” are too wimpy, bouncy tunes like “Brotherhood” are too light, and even adept rockers like “Quiet Her” can’t add substance to his breathy vocals. There’s no denying Sweet’s knack for catchy tunes—“Blue Fools” or “Half Asleep” would be smasheroos in other hands. And the supporting cast, which includes everyone from Aimee Mann of ’til tuesday to the Bangles to Anton Fier, is thoroughly impressive. If only Matt would loosen up and stop laying it on so thick. Too much sweet stuff rots the brain, y’know. J.Y.

VARIANT CAUSE (KDT Records)

Considering that I’d thought these Seattlites’ “To Kill the Pain” one of the most gorgeous tracks of 1986, I was pretty disappointed by this its first few times through the Walkman —it struck me as Sparksishly precious, overranged, and insufferably manic. But then I succumbed to the monster hooks of “I Live By The Freeway” and “Out On The Street For Love Again.” I soon came to enjoy the hell out of the enigmatic love song “Lanking Leaning Colleen” too, and, recognizing the Blonde on Blondeishness of “A thermometer is burning in the mouth of what is gone,” decided that if only these guys would rename themselves something much snappier, like The Washingtones, and stop bludgeoning us with how clever and inventive they are, they could be the biggest thing out of the Northwest since Paul Revere & The Raiders. (PO Box 85781, Seattle, WA 98145) J.M.

RICHARD THOMPSON

The Guitar of Richard Thompson (Homespun Tales)

These three instructional tapes (plus tablature booklet) are a treasure trove to anyone who’s ever been awed by Thompson’s brilliant guitarwork. Combined, they feature three and a half hours of Thompson explaining the various tunings, scales, picking techniques and what-not he employs. The bonus is he demonstrates with some of his most dexterous acoustic playing this side of Small Town Romance. Tapes one and two feature some hep Irish, English and Scottish dance tunes, while tape three has Thompson playing snatches of his own songs and would be worth owning alone just to hear his improvisations on “When The Spell Is Broken.” Of great use to any fairly advanced guitarist wishing to learn a few new tricks on his axe, the tapes are also of value to the diehard fan looking for insights into the mind of one of the more substantial talents around today. (Homespun Tapes, P.O. Box 694, Woodstock, NY 12498.) T.A.

THE SCENE IS NOW Total Jive (Twin-Tone/Lost)

Side one starts with a wigged-out polka called “Bank,” and ends with a fractured guitar-snarl called “Sartre’s Acid Trip”; Side two starts with an amelodic funk twitch called “Bunk,” and ends with an Egyptian bebop dirge called “Kid Ory’s Nightmare.” In between, these Lower East Side Manhattan dadaists spoon out an abrasive and willfully eccentric kind of boho-aesthete poindexter-pop—addressing deafness and breathing and bad grammar and salsa, the tunes are informal but verbose, delicate but gawky, happy but haunting. There are trombones and harmonicas in the music* and owls on the album jacket, and the cover version is by William Blake (2541 Nicolett Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55404). C.E.

JOE SATRIANI Not Of This Earth (Relativity)

Another musicianly guitar hero type here. Satriani’s main daim-to-fame-by-association is that he used to teach Steve Vai, which doesn’t necessarily mean diddley, but this album does present him as an ingenious post-Holdsworth stylist. His tunes ably explore the cusp of metal and fusion and he can feature both flashy licks and more melodically-involved passages seemingly at will. Guitarists, take note. M.D.

HARRISON—BLANCHARD Nascence (Columbia)

MULGREW MILLER Work!

(Landmark)

The thing that’s great about the new generation of jazz players is not that they know traditional styles so well but that they combine ’em in ways that didn’t happen the first time around. Donald Harrison and Terence Blanchard are the latest trumpet-sax tandem outta New Orleans and the Art Blukey Band and if that sounds too Marsalis-like for you, these guys all assert their own personalities within the music. Harrison, in particular, is fast becoming a fluid, first-rate improvisor and their piano player, Mulgrew Miller, is already being heralded as a leader of the new mainstream. Miller’s strong, sure touch is explored in depth on his own trio’s LPs, his full, rich sound indicates that there are still upcoming musicians who are finding expressive possibilities in the good ole acoustic piano that aren’t in any sampler. M.D.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Sounds Of Now (Dionysus)

This album was compiled by Yard Trauma

member Lee Joseph, but longtime fanzine/indy-label impresario Greg Shaw did the graphics, and as a total package, Sounds Of Now! is vintage (terminal?) Shaw. For almost 20 years, Greg Shaw has employed every possible angle of attack to recapture that precise moment of rock aesthetics (approx. 2:33 RM. EDT, Friday, Sept. 1,1967) when the Doors and Love had already opened our third eyes wide, but Sgt. Pepper hadn’t yet destroyed pop music’s blessed innocence forever. Almost all the bands represented on Sounds Of Now! are 1987-contemporary outfits, hailing from several countries and diverse styles. But most also possess something of that sweet-tart, squealy-sex aroma of 1967’s Strawberry Alarm Clock, and if you groove on that scene (I find this punkedelic stuff second only to the blues as MOOD music of the spheres), your inner eyelids will be glazed paisley by morning. P.S. Shaw’s “super-marketcompilation” package for this album is “boss” down to the last italis. R.R.

FADE TO GRAY Bless This Mess (ID)

Cool & dry hipsters turned moral watchdoggies, Fade To Gray are as worried about nuclear-winter sports as the next thinkerwith-a-guitar (or sax) (or bass) (clarinet, even). This album well could be called "progressive rock” if certain British synthesizer lords hadn’t already dishonored that term for keeps. Early auditors of this disc have cited Zappa atavism, but “Camera Rolls” makes me think of old Stan Ridgway in that Nash Metropolitan taxi we never found. Fade To Gray invoke enough dry & loopy rhythms to trigger all your triggers, they’ll make you want to stop bombing in five minutes (& forever). Recommended. R.R.