RECORDS

RECORDS

BR’ER REAPER GRATEFUL DEAD In The Dark (Arista)

ECHO & THE BUHHYMEH (Sire)

The longer the word “psychedelic” is used to describe music, the less meaning it has. Both of these bands have had the term pasted on their respective reputations and they’ve got about as much in common as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and yo’ mama. They play guitars, they make records, they breathe oxygen, yada yada.

The Dead probably deserve the description more than anyone else, since they were the house band for Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, jamming blues, bluegrass and folk roots into new rock recipes with the help of chemical inducements. This stage climaxed, on vinyl, with Live Dead in ’69; on the following Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty they achieved a muted, more mainstream approach— sorta in between what the Band and Crosby, Stills & Nash were doing at the time (though still tweaked with the occasional microdot)—that remains the basis of their sound today.

Now a lot’s being made about this being “the Dead’s first studio album in seven years”; at seven tunes— eight on the cassette, OK—that comes out to one a year. Sure makes you wonder what they were doing during a couple of those years, let me tell ya.

But let’s accentuate the positive. Jerry Garcia starts things off with “Touch Of Grey,” a gentle, melodius, life-affirming little chugger; in a word, it's mellow. How you relate to “mellow” will determine how well you’ll probably like the album as a whole, though I don’t mean to imply that Garcia’s health problems have stolen his energy. His lead playing still has a sly edge to it and it’s encouraging to hear him shifting gears from the Jerry-atric shuffle of “When Push Comes To Shove” to the leaner, meaner “West L.A. Fadeaway.”

But my fave tracks here are Bob Weir’s contributions, "Hell In A Bucket” and “Throwing Stones.” It’s not that Weir is such an amazing singer, but the polyrhythmic strut powering these tunes along brings out the best in the band, particularly on Diddleyesque extensions of “Stones.” There is some life left in the old bones after all.

Echo & The Bunnymen have considerably newer bones, of course; their psychedelic reference point is the Doors, and since they’ve been recording with Ray Manzarek lately—notably the Doors’ “People Are Strange” on The Lost Boys soundtrack, but occasionally here also—they’re not exactly playing it down.

Then again, most of the time they don’t play it up either, except on “Bedbugs & Ballyhoo,” which sounds like Shriekback re-doing “Touch Me” as a giggle, and the following “All In Your Mind,” which breaks on through the band’s usual strum/pulse propulsion to actually rock out. Will Sergeant turns up the distortion while Ian McCulloch spits his spite in the direction of the “thieving wheeler dealers/ln the healing zone/Giving me fever fever

fever fever/Down to my bones.”

Much of the rest of the LP finds the band skillfully sculpting out minor variations on proven approaches. Although the production overkill of Ocean Rain, which made it sorta Echo’s equivalent of The Soggy Parade, is cut back here, ballads like “All My Life” and “Blue Blue Ocean” continue in its wake. “Over You,” “New Direction,” and “Satellite” spin off from earlier, more energetic models. And if “Lips Like Sugar” doesn’t become the hit it aches to be, the Bunnymen can maybe sell it to C & H to use as a commercial.

So basically, both bands are making better-than-average music within their accepted styles. But if you start hallucinating while playing either one of these albums, chances are your local water supply is as much to blame as the music.

Michael Davis

NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Life

(Geffen)

The thing about Neil Young, of course, is that you never know what you’re going to get—honorary good old boy, counterculture survivor, Johnny Rotten’s older brother, postKraftwerk avant-gardist, eerie-voiced folkie with a quiver full of native American metaphors, rockabilly clown, or a little of all of the above. The “& Crazy Horse” designation here is a good sign for those who favor numbers two and three on the above list, though you should know that the evermoving Neil wouldn’t present us with the old Crazy Horse, the band that tore up the cement on Rust Never Sleeps and outstayed its welcome on the generally underrated but admittedly out of control Rewtor. No, Neil’s an up-to-date guy (when he’s not an out-to-lunch guy) and this Crazy Horse has that new and improved hi-tech edge—you can hear it in the enhanced drum sound, the more prominent uses of synth, the exquisitely wellwrought balance. Even the occasionally nasty-insane-gritty guitar spot sounds tastefully inserted into this carefully controlled contest. Crazy Horse for the '80s. Wow-wee.

This is the kind of album you have to take on a cut-by-cut basis—there’s no coherent mood or consistent level of inspiration. The songs range from mushily maudlin to sharp and funny. As with the recent Bowie grab-bag, there’s the feeling of an artist trying on stances from his long career without any particular conviction that this or that one speaks the moment. At times the whole enterprise seems illconceived, There’s one anthemic political song, “Long Walk Home,” where the singer mistakes his own lost innocence for the country’s—and then wallows in nostalgia for something that never existed. There’s a pretty but filler-type song called “Inca Princess,” a hopelessly banal ballad called “We Never Danced” (the album’s closer—leaving the taste of Nutrasweet in my mouth), and the aforementioned glossy production which neutralizes the odd angry guitar outburst.

On the other hand, when you perhaps least expect it, the album comes alive. The 1-2-3 punch of side twcfs first three songs—short unflabby rockers, the best being “Prisoners of Rock & Roll” ’s garage band tribute/parody— is irresistable. Here the tough rocking impulses burst through the album’s cautious clean sheen. Also good is “Mideast Vacation,” a balance to the self-pity of “Long Walk Home.” Young seems a more attractive political know-nothing when he’s expressing confusion, dissatisfaction, and disgust.

That adds up to about half a good album. Don’t you just hate these reviews where they can’t just say unequivocally that a record's great or it stinks? Life is so complicated. Still, half a good Neil Young album in the late '80s isn’t too bad, is it? Given his recent releases, it’s even a small, pleasant surprise.

Richard C. Walls

ITHE dB’s The Sound Of Music (IRS.)

Some folks will consider this heresy, but I never much liked the first two dBs albums. Sure, Repercussion and Stands For Decibels were clever, wellcrafted explorations of the pop song form that stretched the genre’s boundaries, blah, blah, blah, and all that other rock critic crap. That was the problem. The guys sounded embarrassed to be playing something so unintellectual as pop music, so they took perfectly good tunes and twisted them around until the pleasure was gone. Ambivalence is great in its place, which is not on my turntable.

Of course, that was some time ago, before Chris Stamey left the dB’s, giving creative control to cool Peter Holsapple, and before the band released Like This on Bearsville, only to see the company fold soon after. Never fear. Now they’re back, on a label that’s financially sound (I think), with a swell album that’s more accessible than ice cream. Hooray!

No, The Sound Of Music is not a cynical grab for a spot in the marketplace, although it deserves to sell boatloads. Nor is it evidence of a band gone stupid, although people who appreciate such dullards as Bryan Adams and the Eagles (more about them later) may wish to partake. Instead, it’s Pete ’n’ the gang realizing they can get down and keep their brains ticking at the same time. A prime example is “Any Old Thing,” the whiplash boogie that brings side one to a sizzling finish. Kicking and snorting like Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” it finds Holsapple shouting about life’s essentials, namely, “I don’t care about love and death/I just want to catch my breath.” Meanwhile, tension builds and manic guitar licks rain down like shards of broken glass. ZZ Top, take note.

Other tracks display similar toughness, dispelling suspicions the dB’s once spent too much time studying their navels. “Never Say When” uses sharp, gleaming axes and Will Rigby’s chopping drums to prod Peter into taking a stand. Just dig that manly determination when he exclaims “say it again.” Posturing isn’t the full story, of course. Holsapple can still create dramatic situations like a master playwright, notably “Molly Says,” the finger-snappin' account of a troublesome woman who “could stand in a deep dark hole/And still look down on me.” Or “Never Before And Never Again," where Pete and guest vocalist Syd Straw lament a romance doomed to failure.

Thanks to an easy, loping tempo and Holsapple’s husky, heartfelt singing, “Never Before And Never Again” could be mistaken for a lost track from the Eagles’ Hotel California. Is this bad? Only if your elitist tendencies interfere. Personally, I’d be tickled pink to see the dB’s make a favorable impression on ordinary people. Enough with paying dues already. Know what I mean?

The balance between hi-Q and lowQ isn’t always perfect, proven by the corny “I Lie” and ‘‘Looked At The Sun Too Long,” convoluted lethargy reminiscent of olden days. But mostly this is just the dB’s having fun, swinging from rock (“Change With The Changing Times”) to soul (“Working For Somebody Else”) to bluegrassy country (“Today Could Be The Day”) with contagious enthusiasm. Hence The Sound Of Music. How sweet it is!

Jon Young

I HOOTERS One Way Home (CBS)

The Hooters sure do have a different kinda sound. None of the usual synth sap designed for listening to in elegant Broyhill “living” rooms or fuzz-faced leather brats howling about their significant quadraped that one generally associates with platinum outfits.

Nope, the Hooters sound more like something you might catch in a county fair beer and wine tent on a warm July night. While I suspect their plat popularity has a lot to do with the public’s desperation for any new approach (e.g., Timbuk3, Fab T-Birds), there’s no doubt the guys are bustin’ their bikini areas delivering hootus maximus.

Getting back to that county fair, One Way Home practically hollers summertime, livin’ is easy, cotton’s jumpin’ ’n’ the fish’re high. The Hoots’ somewhat off-the-wall instrumentation is partly responsible, a sort of Chinese dictaphone game where a mandolin can meet a nice squeezebox, settle down and raise frolicsome autoharps all de livelong day.

Their material has a lot to do with it as well. The mere title “Hard Rockin’ Summer” sounds like something that should be playing your local drivein. Jason Bateman stars as a not-terribly-bright small town kid whose favorite color is meat. He just got outta high school and spends the whole summer trying to make it with Ari Meyers before he starts his new job as a nuke weld inspector. The actual tune, featuring catchy Farfisa-styled keys and a killer fuzz guitar riff, delivers the mood so perfectly it could al-' most be considered a part of the playing field, like a batboy.

Ditto “Satellite,” another rocker built on a lick that could almost be bluegrass with its lugs tightened. Timely subject matter too, the title referring to that heavenly device which allows us couch animals to catch all the media evangelist hokum we can swallow, even during the “cheating hours." Me, I’d rather watch the Dizzy Channel.

Since the Supreme Court just ruled that jurors may have to squirm in public occasionally, let’s look at a couple ballads. “Graveyard Waltz" positively haunts an otherwise peppy first side with its drawn-out tale of tombstone rattle and “teenage ghosts.” You almost expect to hear a Marlin Perkins voiceover explaining, “that mournful noise is actually their mating call.” The title cut is another slowpoke, this time burdened with heavy thinking concerning crossroads, journeys and changings of the guard. Listen guys, you don’t have to tell me the world’s going to hell. I mean, I see aliens participate every single night on the New Newlywed Game. Worse yet, they win! With impunity!

The remaining tracks are a serendipital mix of antic snappers and slaphappy shanties. “Karla With A K” compares women favorably to hurricanes over a goofy march beat and winds up resembling Springsteen doing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” More silly rhythms enhance “Fightin’ On The Same Side,” a sort of Long Ryders reggae if you will. Pick to click though is “Engine 999,” a straightahead jackboot slammer where “she was the fire and I was the engine.” Hmm, then who’s the hose?

One Way Home is one of those deals where I can safely say, if you liked the Hooters’ last album, you’ll love this ’un. In fact, you might like it even if you hated their last album. For those of you who are indifferent, let’s move on to something really important, like the AMA’s War On Hamburgers. I wonder, does that include cheeseburgers too?

Rick Johnson

I ROGER WATERS Radio KAOS (Columbia)

The most painful thing about reviewing a record is the fact that you are obliged to actually read the lyric sheet. No longer can you be content to hear what the artist is singing about—now you have to read what the artist tells you he’s singing about, and that can be a very different thing altogether.

Take this new Roger Waters LP. Please.

Y’see, I listened to this thing a few times, had it playing while I vacuumed the rug, had it playing while I did the dishes—you know, simulating the way people listen to things in real life. OK, I said, it’s a Roger Waters LP, the kind you can’t avoid hearing on the radio unless you’ve stopped listening to the radio stations that will play this thing to death, which I have.

What I Heard: It’s got the crass commercial sell-out song “Radio Waves” up first, which is sorta funky in an FM white-man kinda way. “Who Needs Information” sounds like Mark Knopfler, while “The Powers That Be” sneaks in some Peter Gabriel-like warbling. “Home” seems to be a nod to Red Dawn, with an ending like “Eclipse” from Dark Side—a list of things ending in rhymes like motherbrother, sinner-winner, etc. “The Tide Is Turning”—now there’s one that U2 would love—is an unusually hopeful song from Mr. Angst. Oh yeah, there’s also a lot of FM DJ-speak between the songs, which doesn’t exactly grow on you with repetition, if you catch my drift.

Initial Reaction: Sounds like Roger Waters trying to sound like something other than Pink Floyd, and blanding out in the process. Some nice lines, though, including a wonderful passage where Waters gets into the mind of some kid who’s scared drunk behind the wheel and the chorus girls chime in singing “.. .Sometimes, I feel like THROWING UP!” There’s a nice dig at Ronald Reagan. And there's one sorta pretty anthem that actually sounds like a song instead of a lot of talking over the glossy throb that covers the rest of the LP. But at least the rug is clean and the dishes are done.

Would that I was, too. But no, I have to play the record again, this time with the inner sleeve in hand.

The first bad news I find is that the supposed line about throwing up actually isn’t what I thought it was—although I’ve learned to ignore lyric sheets in questions of this sort. Then I notice that Radio KAOS not only has important and meaningful lyrics, it also has a story. And not just a story, but a concept—one that is sketched out for you in print, to be supported, I’m sure, by a conceptual video and a tour featuring an elaborate stage setup, films, lasers, and a stadium flyover by a crack team of Top Gun pilots Who will drop a mocked-up small-yield nuclear device set to airburst 50 feet above the Astroturf at the climax of the show.

All of which will add symbolic depth and meaning to a flimsy and hairbrained narrative from the The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway school, with the lead going to a vegetable (it says here) who lives vicariously through the radio (musician, know thy audience!), and who orchestrates an elaborate War Games bring-the-world-quiveringto-the-edge-of-the-hoiocaust hoax using a simple cordless phone. In the meantime, a lone DJ in L.A. chatters inanely about flounders with J. J. Jackson as “The Powers That Be” unleash terrible “Market Forces” to turn his station into “Format Radio,” while Billy (our Hero) meets up with his uncle who is an ex-Manhattan Project engineer whose life was changed by Live Aid. And that’s just a few of the main points.

Revised Reaction: Hooey!

Why? Because without the documentation and padding you’d never in a million years piece together all this important stuff that Waters is unable to get across tn the music itself.

And because Waters denounces the trivialization of important issues, and then proceeds to do just that.

And because Waters denounces Market Forces and Format Radio, when anyone whose name is on over 55 million LPs is certainly a Market Force, and could probably paraphrase Chico Esquella by saying “Format Radio been beddy beddy good to me!”

And because when video kills the radio star, they’ll probably play Radio KAOS at the funeral.

John Neilson

DUDEHONKIN’: THE SEQUEL

ROSANNE CASH King’s Record Shop (Columbia)

I guess the reason I respect Rosanne Cash, and consider her probably the only great “soft-rock” stylist of this studio-mush decade, is that she almost always genuinely sounds like there’s something she wants that she doesn’t, or can’t, have. She’s got this husky, frosty, pliable, sneering, numbing, hormone-activating, but most of all natural vocal style, and when her husband/producer Rodney Crowell surrounds her with Tupperware percussion and jangly step 'n' stoop acoustic guitar hooks, she somehow puts across an assertiveness and determination fliat transforms her plaints of alienated romance into something infinitely tougher than middlebrow countrypoiitan smarm. What she’s about is the power of the individual to overcome the ties that other individuals bind us with; maybe this is all explainable irf “feminist” terms, although I believe women aren’t the only ones who shouldn’t be submissive. Not sure how much of Rosanne’s courage comes from enduring life with a famous dad (and famous husband and step-mother and stepsister and step-brother-in-law and so on); maybe some, though I sure get no similar feeling from Julian or Hank Jr. All I know is “Seven Year Ache” and “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me” are heartbreaters, and unlike most any other crit-fave popstar you could name, this one hasn’t grown lamer over time. Even if she can't decide on a hairstyle.

Rosanne's fifth album, King’s Rec-

ord Shop, starts with a spat-out jump called “Rosie Strike Back”; It's about abused women, except way cleverer than Sue Vega In “Luka” (which I like—surprise, surprise), Rosanne suggests that Rosie punch the bastard out, or at least grab the baby and vamoose. Most of the rest of the record deals with more romantic alienationcheating, being cheated on, moving out, being in love with somebody unavailable, not knowing how to drop your defenses, hating the one you’re with, and feeling guilty about all of the above. Side one (which concludes with the LP’s only mediocre track) is where the hits will come from, but I’ll play side two more: it kicks off with an abstract whatchamacallit that incorporates deja vu and Ma Bell and the sign of the cross (“Runaway Train”), moves onto a cover of a Daddy Cash novelty about a disappearing musician (“Tennessee Flat Top Box”), into an ice-cold statement of independence produced like Madonna's “live To Tell” with AOR guitars (“I Don’t Have

To Crawl”), into a growling fugitive tale involving a pedestrian smashed dead on a windshield on Highway 16 (“Green, Yellow And Red”), into finally an incredibly wordy, sultrily mumbled, pea-soup murky, alone-at-thepiano sob about how watching love die a long, slow death makes you want to kick the walls in (“Why Don’t You Quit Leaving Me Alone”). Mark my words, you couldn’t do better.

Bottom line is I'm a notoriously choosy crank (Husker Du, Replacements, Mekons, Buttholes have each put out about a single’s worm of credible music this year; Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobes, the Cure nada), and Rosanne operates so far to the right of my usual listening habits that you oughta be flabbergasted that I didn’t shelve King's Record Shop the afternoon I got it. But I didn’t, and I’m here to tell you it's loaded, if you don’t trust me on this one, you’re even more cynical than I am. And for that I pity you.

Chuck Eddy

THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS Hot Number (CBS Associated)

The Thunderbirds are one of those bands that have been knocking around forever, packing the bars, picking up a fair share of critical kudos and making reverent roots-rock records that sold in the hundreds if they were, lucky. Then last year they struck paydirt with Tuff Enuff, had themselves a couple hits and took a stroll into the Big Time. The title cut was a killer with cool to spare. I’ll always have fond memories of my California vacation in the spring of ’86 when “Tuff Enuff” was just starting to break. Listening to that sizzling, unstoppable groove as we cruised the highways and byways of dear old L.A. gave me a lift I’ll never forget. That, along with Jermaine Stewart’s airborne “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off” made the radio worth playing and kept me in a state of perpetual overdrive.

Of course when I listened to the whole album back home, I was kind of let down, because a lot of it was the same old stuff the T-Birds are so fond of grinding out—bluesy rockers, bluesy ballads, a little bit o’ bluesy soul, a bluesy shuffle or two. They’re big on the blues, these boys. Problem is, they genuflect too much when they should be kicking up their heels. Their music is firmly entrenched in the traditional past, their original material is hopelessly derivative and imaginative aberrations like “Tuff Enuff” are few and far between.

Hot Number is practically a carbon copy of Tuff Enuff. The attitude is definitely, “don’t mess with success.” You say you dug the hell out of “Tuff Enuff” and “Wrap It Up”? Well, then have a go at “Stand Back,” which shamelessly cannibalizes both cuts. Not enough? Well then grab hold of that “Hot Number” and watch them run it into the ground. These two, along with the rest of lead singer Kim Wilson’s “original” material, are ridiculously deja vu. And when they latch on to one of those leaden heel-draggers like “Wasted Tears” or “It Takes A Big Man To Cry” you’re overcome with the urge to slap some sense into them. Wake up, fellas! This sorta blues grunge has been done to death a thousand times before and you ain’t adding nothing new by a long shot. Put it away and hang it out to dry.

Producer Dave “I Live For Yesterday” Edmunds deserves a large part of the blame for this record’s infatuation with tired leftovers and rehashes from the past. He shoulda been kicking these guys’ butts and spent less time being in awe of making an album of real American music in mythical Memphis. Golly, he even got the Memphis Horns to come down and play! Of course they just sit there in a daze, occasionally conjuring up vague memories of the Stax-Volt glory days.

Edmunds has always been fond of recycling, so it’s natural he'd hit it off with the T-Birds. If only they’d come up with a fresh angle on this white boys-barf-up-the-blues stuff. Oh well, we’ve still got “Tuff Enuff” and this one has a fair cover of NRBQ’s sexstarved “It Comes To Me Naturally.” Great band, NRBQ. They got fresh angles up the kazoo, along with a walloping good song called “12 Bar Blues” that runs rings around all this overworked purist stuff. But then, passion beats purism anytime at all. And you can wrap that up and take it.

Craig Zeller

THE BARRY ALLEN DIET

TOM VERLAINE Flash Ught (I.R.S.)

Tom Verlaine claims he’s been hanging up on European interviewers who want to discuss his old group, Television, but as 100 percent cathoderadiated American, I demand my manifest destiny to choose my channels as I please. Cool it, Verlaine, you’re the one who dubbed yourself with this “T.V." nomenclature early on, now you gotta live or die by the flickering light that never fails. If you’d stuck with your birthright “T.M.” (some would say those initials fit your music even better), nobody’d be talking picture-tube halflifes at this late date.

As it is, though, Television’s Marquee Moon debut is still the A+ piece of work Bob Christgau named it in 1977. But that doesn’t stop Tom Verlaine’s fifth solo album, Flash Light, from achieving its own distinction, even if it comes to us from an exile’s land where the phrase “As Seen On TV” is seldom heard. Don’t ask me for a letter grade, I’m no educator, all I know is that I’ve been living with an advance cassette of Flash Light for all of two days now, and already its cosmic-skritch guitars and chop rhythms have bored deep into my brain. So deep, in fact, that I feel their siren itch even when I'm out on the roof painting the gutters (true story) (all my stories are true), and I have to “get down” and slap that cassette on the old stereo (fergit TV) one more time.

If you’re acquainted with any of Veriaine’s previous work, you know how insidiously penetrating his guitar figures can get. His guitar semicoions in “Elevation,” from the aforementioned Marquee Moon, have been carving out my skull like a jack-olantern for a whole decade now. Relax, Tom, that’s the last time I’m going to allude to Television-the-group in this review,

It’s obvious that Verlaine’s aiming his Flash Light to illuminate a greater sense of pop “accessibility” in his work—the songs are shorter, more focused, the “Cry Mercy Judge” opener could pass as a radio blues in an ideal universe—but he doesn’t seem to have compromised his tradition of issuing thorny communiques from the paraverbal underworld in the process. Flash Light includes other nods to the bizarre concept of commerciality (Allen Schwartzberg’s everpunchier drums for instance), but it’s still an album you could serve to any bunker-mentalitied punk without eliciting cries of “Sellout!”

Don’t ask me what Flash Light’s “about,” I can’t explain it in daytime terms. Verlaine’s latest batch of lyrics isn’t so much “surreal” (the usual claim), but rather an authentic collection of recalled dream fragments, comatose-with-a-full-biadder R. E .M. cineramas that obey the higher logic of night sweats. Take “The Scientist Writes A Letter”: all of a sudden, over a sentimental-synth ’40s-movie wingfooted-time-is-passing mood blur, Verlaine cries, “I sit down to write, and suddenly it’s so cold!” Almost exactly, Tom. We’ve ail been there and it’s time somebody said so!

Should I mention Verlaine’s Flash Light vocals now? Yeah, I should, because he’s less the Little Tommy Mewl crooner he once was and much more of a clear ehunciator, even to the point of frequent spoken interludes, as though he wants to make sure we get the words right, even if we ultimately supply our own cosmicego meanings. Verlaine’s vocals get so talky at times (cf. “At 4 a.m.”) he could pass as the new Bob Pfeifer, except that Robert himself is already The New Pfeifer. Both Bob and Tom are honor graduates of Unca Lou Reed’s great chain of being & nothingness, after all.

Verlaine’s “A Town Called Walker” is a protest song Springsteen hasn’t heard yet (a town without pretty ain’t fooled by Chevrolets and baseball), and my neurons are starting to itch all over just thinking about it. Remember those names. Tom Verlaine. Flash Light. Emotional slaver & squeak, bright pop with a murk undertow. Life itself.

Richard Riegel