NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

Duane Eddy . Lima Spiders .Faith No More . Angry Samons . Mantronix . Fire Town

FEATURES

THE TWANG SHALL MEET

Duane Eddy was a guitar hero before the term was even invented, and one of the coolest white guys of his era. Between 1958 and 1962, he and his former band, the Rebels, placed 15 singles in the Top 40, making Eddy the best-selling instrumentalist in the history of rock ’n’ roll. In his hitmaking heyday, he even got to act in a few movies (“Mainly Westerns,” he recalls. “I mostly held horses.”).

On such raucous hits as “Rebel Rouser,” “Ramrod,” “Cannonball” and “Forty Miles Of Bad Road,” Eddy’s distinctive guitar twang (which he achieved by tuning down an octave and playing melody lines on his bass strings) influenced a generation of future players—guys like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, who paid their respects to Eddy the evening before this interview took place.

“That’s the most flattering thing I could hear,” says Eddy, “and it’s what kept me going through a few dark, lean years. It’s the proudest thing that I have to hang onto from those days.”

These days, the soft-spoken 49-year-old musician has quite a bit to be proud of, chiefly his star-studded comeback LP, Duane Eddy. It’s his first new disc since 1975; he’d kept a low profile in the decade following that previous disc. “I did the odd tour now and then, and produced some things for other people, but there wasn’t much happening. I was mainly living off of royalties and trying to find some way of getting back into the business. It was a rough time in my life; I felt gone and forgotten, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be back.”

Eddy’s interest in performing was revived in 1983 when an old friend, musician/club owner Don Randi, invited him to play some West Coast gigs with a pickup band that included Ry Cooder and original Rebels saxist Steve Douglas. Those shows attracted an audience heavy with notable musos, and convinced Eddy that he wasn’t as forgotten as he’d feared. He moved from California to Nashville a couple of years back, with the intention of getting more involved in production work. The Art Of Noise called soon afterward, leading to Eddy guest-starring on the English combo’s high-tech remake of his own 1959 “Peter Gunn Theme.”

“It was a strange combination, but from the beginning I had a feeling that it might work,” Eddy says. “They were kind of doing what I’d been doing in the ’50s, making instrumental records with a unique sound, and I thought that we might have something interesting if we combined their sound with mine. Before we did that record, I didn’t really know whether people would still accept

my sound, and ‘Peter Gunn’ kind of proved that they would.”

The success of “Peter Gunn,” and some subsequent live dates with The Art Of Noise, raised Eddy’s public profile considerably. When Eddy did an arena tour opening for Huey Lewis, record companies started showing interest again, and the artist eventually signed with Capitol.

For the new disc, Eddy drew on the writing, playing and production talents of an array of well-known fans and friends. The Art Of Noise produced and wrote two tracks; Ry Cooder produced, wrote and played second guitar on two; Paul McCartney produced and sang on a version of his “Rockestra Theme.” ELO’s Jeff Lynne interrupted work on George Harrison’s new album to work on three Eddy tracks, two of which feature slide guitar by Harrison, who introduced Eddy to the Ravi Shankar melody Eddy rewrote into “The Trembler.” Eddy himself produced the album’s opening and closing

cuts, which feature guest axemen James Burton, Steve Cropper and John Fogerty, as well as former Rebels Jim Horn (sax) and Larry Knechtel (keyboards).

The resulting album appealingly places Eddy’s trademark instrumental style in an updated sonic framework. “I wanted to keep my old guitar sound and keep the energy of my old records, and combine that with today’s technology,” he explains. “We still recorded nearly everything live, though.”

With the new album standing a decent chance of re-establishing him with contemporary audiences, Eddy expresses renewed enthusiasm about his career. He’s already thinking about his next recording project, on which he may again explore the raw rebelyell feel of his early singles. And, if finances permit, he’d like to put together a band of all-star session veterans to tour behind the current LP. “I’m really into it now,” says Eddy, “and I’d like to stick around for a while.” “People don’t know how to describe us,” says Mick Blood, singer for Australia’s Lime Spiders. “We’ve been described as all sorts of things, from ‘bright pop’ to ‘Detroit heavy metal.’ ” While it’s tempting to throw the Spiders into the same musical pigeon-hole as, say, the Hoodoo Gurus, unlike the Gurus they have no elements of pop in their music. It’s all hard-driving, head-banging, mindblistering rock ’n’ roll. Their music’s been called “psychedelia-tinged garage thrash” and “psychedelic post-punk,” but about the only thing the rock crits can agree on is the psychedelic element. It is there, but it’s no harking-back-to-the-’60s psychedelia. This is psychedelia mixed with some of the grungiest, guitar-driven rock this side of the Replacements and Husker Du (the only two American bands Mick feels the Spiders can be compared to).

Harold DeMuir

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WITH A TWIST OF SPIDER

A bit of history: the Spiders first came together in a suburb of Sydney in 1979. Never the most stable of bands, it was two years before they were to play their next gig and from 1981 to 1986 the band was besieged by break-ups. But they did manage to stay together long enough to put out a handful of vinyl-scorching singles. Around 1985, Hybrid Records (an English independent label) put out a compilation EP of those previously released singles and called it Slave Girl. You may have seen it in the record stores, with its flashy and rather tacky chartreuse cover depicting a woman in submission (“We had nothing to do with that,” Mick groans). The title song quickly became a cult classic, and holds the distinction of being the top-selling Aussie single ever. It also offended some Down Under feminists and, as a result, was banned from certain Aussie radio stations. “Some people have no sense

of humor,” Mick utters. “That song was not meant to be taken seriously.”

After a follow-up single—“Weirdo Libido” (which Mick calls “Son Of Slave Girl”)—the singer split from the band for an extensive European sojourn. At that point, it looked like the Lime Spiders were history and his bandmates formed a three-piece called the Warm Jets. But in Greece, Mick re-discovered some of his enthusiasm. He came across some real live Lime Spiders fans (“The last place I would have expected to find Lime Spiders fans!” he says in amazement) and even jammed with a local band. The creative juices began to flow, and he returned to Australia with a “whole bag of new songs.” The Spiders were on Track once again, and also on Virgin Records.

With major label backing and their act together, so to speak, the Lime Spiders stayed in the studio long enough to record a full-

length album. The Cave Comes Alive finds the Spiders a bit more accessible than their indie work. Blood has toned down his vocals a notch, and actually sings rather than screams most of the songs. “I’m thinking more about what I’m singing rather than just screaming the words,” he says. “Our music is more mature now, and there’s a lot more fnelody creeping into the songs. But we still do all the early songs. Our fans wouldn’t forgive us if we didn’t do those. They would ' think we had totally sold out.”

Judge for yourself. There’s a chance that the chartreuse ones will be making their way to our shores sometime this fall for their firstever American tour. “We’re foaming at the mouth to get over there,” Mick says. “Australia becomes very limiting after a while.”

And, as Blood dryly notes of the on-again/ off-again Spiders: “We have a lot more incentive to stay together these days.”

Diane Perry

LOSIN’ THE FAITH

It’s actually easy to get confused, dear listener, about “We Care A Lot,” Faith No More’s bid at addressing the evils of ’80s society in one big blasting anthem. It’s the big (12 whole inches) single from their debut Slash LP, Introduce Yourself, and it features singer Chuck Mosely spitting and sputtering how much he “cares” about killer bees, AIDS, crack, smack, Garbage Pail Kids and so on. If Faith No More have a message for the world, this must be it. But then again, given the edgy sneer forever present in Mosely’s voice (even when he’s just talking—which may mean he can’t help it), one could be forgiven for thinking that Faith No More is just being sarcastic.

Mosely, however, is more than willing to lay any such misunderstandings to rest. “My lyrics, those lyrics that I wrote, were important,” he asserts. “I wanted to push the message, ‘We Care A Lot,’ pretty much verbatim. The words are there.”

Faith No More have recently risen from playing obscure gigs in the San Francisco

bay area (several members can be heard on those legendary Pop O’ Pies LPs from several years ago) to touring the continent as Slash recording artists. They’re having a good time, it’s obvious, though they do have a few gripes.

“We played with Ministry last year at New Jersey State Gardens,” Mosley explains, “and we got thrown off the stage in the middle of a song. They didn’t like me. And they didn’t pay us ’cause we mighta knocked down a couple mike stands, ’cause all their stuff was set up—they wouldn’t move any of it. Onstage, we hadda like tiptoe through everything.”

Life can be rough if you’re in Faith No More, or in any band that has a record out, plays for frequently enthusiastic crowds, but still gets treated real bad. Still, the guys have no complaints about Slash, the label that signed them and put them on the road to.. .well, something or other. And speaking of the road, the road has killed many musicians, and has put many more on the needle or the bottle. What of it, guys?

“I hate alcohol now,” states Mosely, who will have no part of the Road Myth. “Ever since I stopped, every time I have more than three beers, I feel rotten the whole next day. Last night, I had one kamikaze, then I had another one and I couldn’t finish it. I went back to water.” “The purpose of music as a reflection of the ever-changing nature of the world is to make everything you like seem silly five years later, and then another five years hence you change your mind and cover ‘Deuce.’ ” So read a letter sent to me a couple years ago by “Metal” Mike “Nuge” Saunders, who used to review Uriah Heep and Yoko Ono LPs and write Fanny profiles for CREEM and Phonograph Record Magazine, and who sings, writes songs, plays guitar and devises set lists for the Angry Samoans. (And who spends his days as a three-piece suited CPA in a hospital run by nuns.) I bring Mike’s observation up because it explains why I feel silly writing about his band in 1987. Back in ’81/’82—around the time of all those tar-like Sabbath riffs, (smelly)-sock-hop Sonics hooks and righteous goofus fear-and-loathing on the Samoans’ fantastic skunk-rock Inside My Brain and Back From Samoa EPs—I thought this stuff mattered. Now all I care about is free jazz and John Cougar Mellencamp, and, as for California hardcore jokes, I can pretend to care otherwise, but I really couldn’t care less.

Renaldo Migaldi

SAMOA, HO!

The thing is, you talk to the Samoans and it turns out they feel pretty much the same way. The fivesome had just returned from an East Coast tour when I talked to Gregg Turner, who plays stun guitar, makes jug noises, teaches college calculus, sometimes writes for CREEM and digs wolves and brown-haired chicks. He said touring felt like being on the oldies circuit, like the Monkees (Mike’s current faves) or somebody: “The hardcore audience did seem a little bit more humanoid this summer, but we tried to avoid ’em. The only stipulation we made is that we made a point of not getting Corrosion Of Conformity or somebody like that to play with us. But anyway, that Back From Samoa record, the so-called punk-rock record, was an accident. And going to clubs and playing 80 percent old stuff all the time was boring as all hell.” The Samoans have been together 10 years, so of course it’s not very exciting anymore, and Gregg sometimes wonders how come they haven’t yet called it quits. Punk rock was a long time ago.

Oddly enough, 1987 has easily been the Sams’ most prolific year in quite some time—just a real flurry of activity. There was the tour, their first in a while; there’s the Yesterday Started Tomorrow EP, lots quieter than the Samoans’ of old, more like a manicdepressive Zombies (and originally released in a limited edition as the Angry Samoans EP in ’86, but out on big-indie PVC/Jem this year); there’s a new Inside My Brain album, with the original out-of-print EP on one side and some old outtakes on the other. “And we’ve got enough material (written) for about six albums,” Gregg says; after Mike’s wife left him a couple of years ago (around the same time Gregg’s wife left him), Mike composed about 1500 songs, not too many of ’em happy ones, in six months.

Plus, there’s been all these side projects.

Gregg’s got a folk-rock trio called the Mistaken who’ve issued a surprisingly swell EP on Bad Trip Records (the Samoans house label). “Mixing the Velvet Underground and the Turtles, that’s a hybrid that’s really desirable,” Gregg notes. “The drummer (Elizabeth Burtis) is straight from Moe Tucker country. This is easily the most fun I’ve had playing in a band since (seminal LA. preSams rock-critic-crew) Vom, or the first year of the Samoans.” Gregg and Mike have a mostly-covers electric/acoustic duo, the Sons Of Mellencamp, and a potential Dr. Demento smash in “Dope On The Scarecrow.” (Gregg: “I wasn’t much of a Cougie fan until Scarecrow, but that one pushed me over the edge. Mike’s always sending him baseball cards and stuff, trying to be his buddy.”)

The main thing about the Angry Samoans, though, is that they hate each others’ guts. “The level of antipathy within the group is astounding—no two of us get along,” Gregg explains. “For the tour, we were talking about getting a mobile home, but then we’d have to be with each other.” They rented cars instead. “The punk-rock of the ’60s—which we’ve always had more

to do with than with the punk-rock of the ’70s—was always the province of real legitimate crazies. And we’ve always treated psychosis kind of like it’s funny,” the guitarist says. “The scary thing is that it’s not too unreal to say that Mike and (Sams’ bassist) Todd (Homer) are real legitimate crazies now, and I’m getting that way. We’re really a bunch of miserable human beings: we all need a lot of help. What’s frightening is when you start getting weirder and you don’t realize you’re getting weirder.”

To avoid ending this on such a sour note, I went back to Mike’s old letters for some definitive philosophy behind the band. Here’s what I found: “Smart/stupid is maybe the most deceptively tough genre to pull off, being all natural intuition. There’s never been a blueprint, save the first Dictators LP. The really impossible thing to pull off is the clever lyrics/simple music axis, with some emotional depth on the former and musical cleverness of the pop stripe on the latter. All kinds of disparate elements, y’know. . . ’Course, all it comes down to in the end is thinking how the 13th Floor Elevators would have done it.” That about sums it up.

Chuck Eddy

MAN & MACHINE

“I can take all of any band’s musical parts and put them into 9 machine,” Curtis Kahleel states matter-of-factly. “One machine, and the singer could be the only person onstage, and he could get all the money. It’s the art of digital recording sampling: you don’t need a six-piece band anymore. Anyway, what are the musicians doing onstage that’s so special anyway? A Fairlight or something could do the job as well or better than a musician, and it will in time,” says Curtis, a/k/a Mantronix. He should know; he does just that for the hip-hop/rock/rap duo Mantronix.

On their records, rapper MC Tee (a/k/a Toure Embden) takes care of the words, and

Curtis handles the musical end, with a lot of help from his electronic toy box. The result is finely tuned, extremely melodic rap music. In a genre that in its pure state is completely underground, and in commercial life is pure white (a la the Beastie Boys), Mantronix’s music has actual hit potential. So if Curtis sounds less than modest, maybe it’s understandable. After all, the 23-yearold electro-whiz has come a long way fast and from nowhere. As Mantronix, Curtis currently has two albums on the indie Sleeping Bag label, has produced remixes for Duran Duran as well as numerous rap stars, and has signed with Virgin Records.

When he started messing with electronic goodies, it wasn’t with an eye to a career in music. It began as a way to keep the New Yorker (via Canada) from getting underfoot as a kid. “When I was a kid, I used to take apart my uncle’s stereo,” explains Curtis. “That frustrated him, so he went to Radio Shack and bought me an electronics kit. From that, I got an idea of how electronics worked, and how it operates to get sound. I was just fooling around, getting weird sounds. I learned everything by experience. My music,” he adds with uncharacteristic modesty, “is just the result of my inability to understand and write music on a commercial or formula level. I can’t do it, so I take my mistakes and refine them, and get music. That’s Mantronix music.”

After his family moved to the Bronx, Kahleel ran headfirst into rap music. (“Until I saw how they did it, I didn’t like it. But watching them manipulate the sounds was interesting,” he recalls.) Curtis met up with MC Tee while spinning records in a Manhattan music store, and the two scraped up some bucks and went into a real studio to see what would happen.

The result was their first album, Mantronix—The Record. Somewhat to their surprise, the single “Summertime, Summertime” became a cult hit in England, where they play to sell-out crowds and rave reviews, and they’re starting to attract their share of attention on this side of the Atlantic as well: witness the request from the former Fab Five (or Terrific Trio, or something).

Curtis laughs. “Duran Duran’s label asked me to remix a song. I picked the track I wanted to do. That was “Vertigo (Do The Demolition)” because it was the only track that had a solid groove to it. On the other songs the grooves start but don’t go

anywhere. I had fun—I re-produced the whole thing, keeping the vocals but changing the drum sound and putting my own on and changing the beat to make it funky. They wanted to bring Duran Duran back, because, basically,” he says openly, “they’re

corny. Now the song sounds really good.”

There are many ways to describe Curtis Kahleel (a/k/a Mantronix): young, talented, charming, attractive. Obviously, self-effacing is not on the list. Nope. Not even close.

Sharon Liveten

THERE IS A FIRE IN THE TOWN...

In recent years, Wisconsin has been exporting a hell of a lot more than its renowned cheeses. Groups like the Violent Femmes and the BoDeans have made the Badger State one of the prime locations for churning out a new crop of roots-oriented American rock bands. Fire Town is continuing that tradition.

The Madison-based quartet’s first album, In The Heart Of The Heart Country, is rock ’n’ roll as it was meant to be; guitars, bass and drums, forging together to create a straightforward sound with some timeless ringing axes and tight, soaring harmonies.

Though the band’s members have been playing together in various combinations for the last 10 years, their inception as Fire Town began in 1983 when guitarist Phil Davis and Doug Erikson first started writing songs together. They eventually hooked up with bassist Tom LaVarda and drummer Butch Vig, who had been occupying most of his time recording local bands at his Smart Studios. The group spent an entire year slowly piecing together Heart Country when their day jobs weren’t interfering.

The result of their efforts was an album full of folky, well-crafted pop songs that they released on their own Boat Records. When it dawned on them that maybe a bigger label might be interested, they sent the record to

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all the major companies and soon inked a deal with Atlantic Records, which released Heart Country virtually unchanged.

Things happened fast for Fire Town; so fast that when the band signed to Atlantic, they had yet to secure the services of a booking agency or even a manager. And while they had plenty of live experience with other groups under their belts, as Fire Town they had spent much more time playing in the studio than in the clubs. But the band’s individual members had managed to pick up some fans along the way.

“Doug and I played in a bar in Fon du Lac called the Gin Mill,” Vig recalls with a smile. “There were maybe 10 people in there, and all of a sudden about 40 bikers came in. We were right in the middle of a song, and this guy came up to Doug and asked him to play ‘Gloria’ and he wanted us to play it ‘right fucking now.’ “When the guys ripped through a raucous version of the three-chord classic, they had so impressed the bikers that they were asked to play it again. And again. “We didn’t want to die that night,” Vig says. “We played it about a dozen times.”

These days they play mostly Fire Town tunes, and with the album starting to get recognition across the country they are understandably eager to hit the road.

“We love to play,” Davis says. “We’re willing to put up with everything that goes with being on the road, but now we have a purpose to go.”

Since the band met with its initial success without ever leaving their hometown, they don’t plan on moving to one of the coasts to get closer to the action and live typical big city musician lives. After all, where they’re from, they make a pretty mean Cheddar.

“We just want to maintain what it is we do and not have people coming in from the outside trying to screw it up,” Erikson states simply. “What we do is what’s on the record, and we believe in what we’re doing. We’re trying to write good songs that move people.”

Steve Peters