NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

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Dumptruck • The Reivers • Dead Milkmen • Opal • The Silencers

TRUCKIN’!

“I have no sensibility for what makes a radio hit,” says Seth Tiven, leader of Boston-based Dumptruck. “Whatever I think is probably the worst song on the record ends up as the big push track on radio. It’s just a really warped sense of taste that I have.”

Warped or not, Tiven does have an undeniable knack for crafting catchy yet enigmatic guitar pop tunes—like “Going Nowhere” from Dumptruck’s latest album, For The Country, which is popping up all over college radio and alternative AOR playlists. Yet that’s what amazes him: “I really like it, but I think it’s one of the weaker songs on the record,” Tiven says, bemused.

"It was the same situation with ‘Back Where I Belong’ (the alluringly ominous single from Country’s predecessor, Positively Dumptruck)—I thought it was a weird song, really obtuse for radio. I was totally wrong.” “Back” made quite a hearty showing on the airwaves, in fact, and MTV was all over the video. In any case, says Seth, “My job is not to pick hits—my job is to write songs and play them.”

Tiven, whose brother is rock scribe Jon Tiven and who admits to having done time as a rockcrit himself some years ago (which could explain his inability to recognize a hit single), put together Dumptruck with fellow New Haven native Kirk Swan in 1983. The two singer/songwriter/guitarists found a rhythm section and gigged around Boston, releasing an independent LP, D Is For Dumptruck, in May of 1984. Then along came brand new indie Big Time Records, which signed Dumptruck and issued Positively Dumptruck in April of 1986.

Positively, produced by guitar-pop guru Don Dixon and recorded at guitar-pop ashram the Drive-In Studio in WinstonSalem, created a positive din on the college charts (especially “Back Where I Belong,” sparked by Tiven’s ethereal vocals and startling ray-gun guitar). It also got Dumptruck pegged as the latest in an interminable line of American guitar/pop bands, a label which, of course, they hate. Really, is there an American guitar/pop band that doesn’t hate being called one?

Rather than grind their gears, Dumptruck proceeded to rectify their perceived mislabeling. Following the November, 1986 departure of Swan and bassist Michael Priggen, Tiven and drummer Shawn Devlin hired guitarist Kevin Salem and bassist Tom Shad (who at press time was leaving the band himself). Then they hied themselves off to Wales to record For The Country with British producer Hugh Jones (Echo & The Bunnymen, That Petrol Emotion).

“We really wanted a change,” says Tiven. “We wanted a really sparse production, and Hugh Jones is good at that.” And recording in the tranquil Welsh countryside was truly a tonic for the ’Truck troop,” he adds.

Tiven finds Country a more diverse disc than Positively, at once tougher and more contemplative. The seductive uptempo melodicism of “Going Nowhere,” buoyant country air of “Wire,” and spirited guitar frills of ‘’Carefree” are balanced by the deliberately-paced, nigh-mournful strains of “Dead Weight,” “Brush Me Back,” and “Hung Out On A Line” (which have their own charms once you get to know ’em).

Tiven, of course, favors the slow stuff, “the soncjs that’ll never get played on the radio”—except, of course, on college radio, which has been Dumptruck’s biggest champion to date. “College radio,” pronounces Tiven, “will probably always be somewhat cool.” Spoken like a true former rock critic.

Moira McCormick

DOWN BY THE REIVERS

Just before Zeitgeist’s second LP (and first major-label release), Saturday, was to go to press last summer, the Austin, Texas quartet’s new label, Capitol, discovered that some new-age combo in Minneapolis had already registered the name Zeitgeist and weren’t about to give it up. Which is why the Austin Zeitgeist is now known professionally as the Reivers, after the William Faulkner novel (and Steve McQueen movie) of the same name.

Not only are the Reivers some of the nicest, most unassuming folks you’re ever likely to meet in this rockin’ biz, they’re also unintimidated by typos. “So far on this tour, we’ve been the Reveres and the Rivieras,” says bassist Cindy Toth.

“That’s nothing compared to what we used to get as Zeitgeist,” points out drummer Garrett Williams. “Zeetergeist, the Zygotes.

“Zeig Heil, Nig Heist,” adds Cindy. ‘‘We were Nig Heist in Atlanta once.”

The name change was merely the last in a frustrating series of delays in the slow, painful birth of Saturday. The original version of the album, produced by band member John Croslin, had been in the can for a year before the foursome re-entered the studio with producer Don Dixon.

Zeitgeist’s first album, Translate Slowly, was, justifiably, one of 1985’s underground sensations. Critics were won over by Croslin’s mesmerizing, literate songwriting, by the band’s country-folk-rock kick, and by the breathtaking interplay between Croslin’s twangy drawl and fellow singer/guitarist Kim Longacre’s ethereal vocal flights. Saturday belies its drawn-out origins, bringing Translate Slowly’s charms into better focus, thanks to a stronger rhythmic base and more assured performances.

The Reivers’ sexually-integrated personnel structure had inspired plenty of curiosity from dirty-minded fans. Says Cindy, “People always think we’re married to each other—Garrett and me, or Kim and John, or the other way around. Or that Kim and I are lovers, and John and Garrett are lovers.”

“I just fake it with John, to keep the drums up in the mix,” confesses Garrett.

Seriously, though, there’s no hankypanky amongst these upstanding bandmates. John and Kim have families back home in Austin, Garrett’s wife is currently expecting their first child, and bachelorette Cindy is still mourning the loss of her pet newts.

“We get asked about it a lot,” says John of the gender issue. “I think one of the reasons we’ve stayed together is that I don’t have to look at two more Garretts every morning. I don t think about it much, but it’s real fun sometimes, if I’ve written a love song to a woman, to let Kim sing it and see what happens. What’s unusual about our band, I think, is that the women in our band are not out front-and-center wearing miniskirts.”

“You’d understand if you saw their legs,” explains Garrett.

Longacre’s status with the band had been thrown into question for a while, when she became pregnant with her now-two-year-old son Max. After a few months on maternity leave (during which time Austin denizen Becky Escamilla filled in), Kim rejoined in early 1986. “I needed to take a break to see how I felt about things,” she says. “I didn’t want to commit to being in a band and going on the road until I decided how I felt about being away from Max, and if I could really be that kind of a mother. And it was a big thing to finally decide to commit to the band.”

“Just about everything bad that’s happened to us in the last couple of years has ended up serving a purpose,” reasons John. “If the name change hadn’t happened when it did, it would have happened later, when it would have been an even bigger mess. And Kim being pregnant made us all face a lot of questions we had about what the band meant to us. So many bands break up for reasons smaller than a lot of the things that have happened to us, but we stuck with it, and now we know that this is what we want to do.

“It’s still a problem getting enough money to pay the rent,” he continues, “and that’s a big thing to think about when you’ve got a family. But we’re having a pretty damn good time, and we’re living in more luxury than we’ve ever known. Our van even has a heater now.”

Harold DeMuir

HOW YOU GONNA KEEP ’EM DOWN ON THE FARM?

There is a little-known physics equation called Blood’s Theory of Salad Dynamics (named for its discoverer, Dave Blood). According to Philadelphia punk/laff-riot outfit the Dead Milkmen, this particular theorem explains a lot about behavior. At least theirs. And considering this is a band whose third and latest album, Bucky Fellini, contains tunes about animal lust (“The Badger Song”), brain-dead dance maniacs (“Instant Club Hit [You’ll Dance To Anything]”) and the joys of Mexican take-out (“Tacoland”), any help in that direction is useful.

“It’s easy to explain,” says the self-same Blood, coincidentally the bass player for the Dead Milkmen. The band is seated around a tiny table at a BBQ joint on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. He points at the band members and continues, “Just look at us: Rodney (Anonymous) has no salad. I have a plain salad. Dean (Clean) has Italian dressing and Joe Jack (Talcum) has Thousand Island. Now do you get it?”

Uh, yeah, sure. It is possible that Dave has a better grasp on such complex issues; in his pre-Milkmen days Blood taught economics at Purdue. (Frightening though that might be, it does provide a tidy reason for the recent stock market crash.)

The fact that the band thrives despite its members’ radically different taste in greens may be attributed to luck or that the group is a true democracy. Occasionally that means a whole lot of shouting goes on, but that’s just the way it is.

“A lot of people ask us why we don’t write about politics,” says Rodney belligerently. ‘‘But we’re a real democracy. How many anarchist bands can say that they’ve got their original members? They screarrvabout unity, but when you ask them what happened to their bass player, they say, ‘Oh, he was an asshole so we had to kick him out.’ I

The Milkmen haven’t had to kick anybody out, but they did lose a keyboard player to attrition once. A guy named Bucky who left the band to go to film school and make documentaries. A dude they called Bucky Fellini. The real live BF doesn’t get the joke. It’s a good thing he left the group; from their mascot Bessie (a deceased version of the Borden cow) to Rodney’s mohawk, it’s obvious a sense of humor is required in Dead Milkmen. Particularly since it started as a giggle.

‘‘The name of the band has been around a lot longer than the band,” explains Mr. Blood, ‘‘but Rodney and Joe Jack were writing together for a long time before that. The name was just funny. It was a joke.”

Yeah, all the farm workers at Kraft agree. Still, as much as the band portrays an image—onstage and off—of out-of-control goofiness, these guys are all a lot more together than they might seem. And they know they could never survive a serious band. Rodney tried it once—he was the banjo player in a punk band. Probably the only one ever.

‘‘There are too many bands already doing really serious material without us doing it,” says drummer Dean Clean. ‘‘Besides, we enjoy what we’re doing. This is a lot of fun.”

It better be; it’s also a lot of work. The Milkmen tour almost incessantly, and occasionally there are less than sterling dates. Like the one the morning before our BBQrendezvous. The band was scheduled to do an outdoor lunchtime show at UCLA. Except that it started to rain.

‘‘It was awful,” laughs Rodney. ‘‘There weren’t a lot of people there. Dave went up before we started and shook the hands of everybody there to thank them for coming. It’s times like that I get self-conscious about being onstage. Every once in awhile it dawns on you, ‘Oh, my God! People are looking at me.’ Then I forget the words.”

So, given that, and the reality that the Milkmen will probably never outsell their hometown rivals, the Hooters, what do these guys want out of their band?

‘‘Someday, when I’m a lot older,” muses Rodney, “and my grandkid and I are watching TV together and a really popular band comes on the screen, and they ask ’em who their influences are, I want them to say the Dead Milkmen. That would do it for me.”

Which brings us to one final equation, the real theory behind this band: Democracy + humor + cynical smarts = the Dead Milkmen.

Sharon Liveten

SIXTEEN MILES HIGH

When the Jesus & Mary Chain needed a band to open for them on their fall ’87 U.S. tour, they chose Opal, a relatively new, obscure California quintet. A seemingly odd choice, but in picking Opal, the Reid brothers proved that their critical acumen was as sharp as their sonic brilliance.

One listen to Opal’s debut LP, Happy Nightmare Baby (SST), should convince anyone that an exotic comet has flashed across rock’s firmament. But on their first major U.S. tour, Opal have encountered a problem: their singer, Kendra Smith, decided that life on the road didn’t suit her temperament. And this probably accounts for guitarist/songwriter David Roback’s troubled, abstracted air during our interview.

Roback, a prime mover on Rain Parade’s superb Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, left that band near the end of 1984. He soon hooked up with Smith (ex-Dream Syndicate bassist) and released a 45 as Clay Allison; the two later collaborated with drummer Keith Mitchell on the Fell From The Sun EP. Looking to play a “more electric” brand of rock, Roback next formed Opal with Smith, Mitchell, Suki Ewers (keys) and William Cooper (bass). The aptly named Hope has since replaced Smith as vocalist.

For lack of a better term, Opal play a kind of psychedelia that’s simultaneously ethereal and heavy; a rapturous fusion of Barrett and Bolan, yet distinctive in its own right.

Have you always liked psychedelia, David?

“I like some of it. I like music that’s really loud, hypnotic. I like to get a primitive, groove thing, you know?”

The band that springs to mind when I hear the LP is Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd.

“When I was growing up I listened to a lot of Syd Barrett, a lot of Jimi Hendrix. I like fantasy in music. I like music that transports you, gives you a sense of going to another world.”

Song titles like “Supernova,” “Rocket Machine,” “Magick Power” and “A Falling Star” suggest Roback’s worldview. Unashamedly mystical and escapist, his lyrics “may seem disconnected when you break them down, but there’s a connection. It’s hard to explain what our songs are about.. . each one is like a collection of images.”

Do drugs or dreams trigger your creativity?

“Dreams are the way people access their unconscious minds. So I’d say yes, my unconscious mind plays a big role. Some of it just comes out, like automatic writing. The way in dreams where connections are hard to understand without psychoanalyzing them. . .I’d say drug-like states play a role, not necessarily drugs. I haven’t been using a lot of drugs for a pretty long time.”

Besides making one of 1987’s best albums, Opal also recorded a version of “Jugband Blues” for a Syd Barrett tribute LP entitled Beyond The Wildwood (Imaginary import). And their beautiful “Happy Nightmare Baby” may appear in a 1988 film called The Blue Iguana.

Opal’s music inspires ecstatic stasis. Their celestial sound envelops you in a velvety mist that’s seductive and entrancing. They make music for dreamers and drifters. They melt time and space. They carry you out of yourself.

And you know that can’t be bad.

Dave Segal

QUIET EPISTLES

“There was one record company that really wanted to sign us. And the managing director told us that if we signed with his record company we would get to sleep with the secretaries!” Jimmie O’Neill, the happily married voice and lyricist for the Silencers, sounds incredulous. “Like we were going to sign a deal just so we could sleep with the secretaries.”

Now there are bands that would sign away their lives—and publishing rights— for a quick roll in the record storeroom, but the Silencers are smarter that that; they also knew their music was too worthwhile to toss away. The success of the Scottish band’s debut album, A Letter From St. Paul, and the first single, “Painted Moon,” has proved them correct.

But the Silencers, formed from the dregs of critical favorite Fingerprintz (both guitarists O’Neill and Cha Burns were digits—bassist Joe Donnelly and drummer Martin Hanlin were recruited from other groups) in 1984, weren’t in any hurry to sign with anyone. The group spent the first yearand-a-half of their existence just getting their material down. In the studio. No live shows. It was a gamble but it also worked; the band was signed completely on the basis of their demo tape.

“We didn’t do any gigs at all until we got a record deal,” says Jimmie. “The point, and we thought this through very carefully, was that it takes at least six months on the road before we could get to the point where we are playing even near to the potential of what this band can do live. Had we done a one-off gig somewhere, it could have been brilliant, but it could have been awful. As soon as you do a couple of bad gigs, you get a reputation. So we preferred to let the music do it. People had to really trust it. It takes time to do yourself justice. Sometimes you do get to that magical moment, particularly if your music is somewhat spiritual.

The Silencers’ music is. It’s also political. Though the percentage of people hearing “Painted Moon” on the radio and thinking the song is called “Paper Moon” probably equals the number of listeners who know the hook-filled blues tune is about the Falklands War, O’Neill doesn’t mind. While he is very concerned with his lyrics, and is well-versed in the work of a number of Celtic poets, he’s no fool. He’s aware that in music, it ultimately is the music that carries the day. If people actually take the time to listen to the words, and understand ’em, that’s gravy.

“The politics in the band,” he states, “are the same as the politics in pop music. You write about life and death, and bad things and good things, and it’s all bound to have an effect on you. Like a song about a mining disaster. The tune can be really plaintive and beautiful, but the lyrics are about walking down a mine. In the Silencers, the point is not simply hit singles. The music is made to be uplifting and alive, and the lyrics are made to make people think, and provoke argument or whatever. That’s been the idea from the start.”

They seem to have achieved their goal— from “Bullets And Blue Eyes” (not to be confused with the U2—to whom they’ve been favorably compared—song, “Bullet The Blue Sky”) about a man who gives his son a gun for his birthday, to the somewhat bitter “I Ought To Know,” Silencers music has soul. It also has enough hooks to satisfy radio programmers. Nice combo. Should last a while. And that is the point.

Sharon Liveten