RECORDS

RECORDS

TURN ME ON, SPUD MEN

DEVO Totally Devo (Enigma)

It’s like...

It’s as if...

I’ve just been jumped by a crazed horde of nerdedelic hodads, stoned out on Jolt cola and chemically-treated Fruit Roll-Ups, all waving day-glo hardbound copies of Tammy Faye Bakker’s latest book, Secrets Of Make-Up And Shopping for God.

Damaged, sure. Deranged, many claim so. I find myself launched into a violent series of hallucinations (you remember them! they were popular back in the ’60s) in which I’m Zamfir playing a sonic-wipeout version of “The End” on a set of monolithic Pan Pipes in the middle of the L.A. Coliseum while being summarily flagellated by a herd of Phoebe Cates lookalikes cooing out less-than-syncopated versions of “The Horst Wessel Song,” and “Whip It” alj under the wraith-like eyes of Divine, Edie the Egg Lady and Booji Boy—the Luke, Darth and Yoda of the Ummagumma set—a scene of sonic Grand Guignol to be savored, to be sure!

What is?

Y’see along time ago a ? was put to me. You know the ?, we ail do. My answer was, naturally, “We are Devo.. .” and ever since I’ve been an ardent devolutionary. Soundtracking every one of my insipid devolutionary acts—like the time I filled a fire extinguisher with insecticide and tried to creepy crawl a Stryper concert (you figure it out) or the night I got mind-sushi’d and hatched a plot to steal the liver-splotch on Gorbachev’s forehead thinking it was a miniaturized Latvian country full of repressed rockers desiNng my extensive collection of Ultimate Spinach bootlegs or the. .. never mind—were the original posers of that aforementioned question, Devo.

Long time faves, Devo were the first to explore the acid-burned psyches of a quickly emerging class of technocrats who’ve long since devolved into what we now call either Yuppies or Dinks: A bqnd ahead of time itself, let alone the proverbial “it’s time.” A band delightfully munching on the exposed nerves of Jocko Homo In Decline. A band that since the advent of the age of Entertainment Tonight, MTV, the Home Shopping Network and Wine Coolers has been seemingly lost in the shuffle of the psychocontinental shelves.

Anyway, the spuds’ latest Devodisc is like, totally Devo. At first when Devotoons like “Baby Doll” and “Disco Dancer” and “Happy Guy” came on I lifted my leg and reduced myself to piss all over ’em, but after further ear scans the subtlety delightfulness carrie through. Why? Because they speak to the haunted spectres that’ve been lurking around America’s danker corners since the ’70s became the ’80s... ex-punkers now waxing nostalgic over bands like the Adverts, Sex Pistols and Gen X; ex-disco zombies waxing nostalgic about pattern dancing, easy sex, paint cans and the eventual comeback of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever II] ex-junkies now primetime crack princes waxing nostalgic about the previous three minutes, and the ex-offenders of the great rock ’n’ roll dream planting thermal charges up the dark anal passages of Kevin Seals and Carol Held-aman-lately-no-guess-not ONLY in their funked-up jellied-to-the-max brains...

All of this superbly revs up on side two of Totally Devo, which puts you in an aural microwave and sets the timer for infinity. Beginning with “The Shadow,” with wiaps of the Strangeloves on ’ludes and spectres of generationdl-emotional-national GUILT cum frustration on through the romantically bittersweet croon of “I’d Cry If You Died,” which could easily be an anthem for celebrity breakups and on into “Agitated,” which speaks to the frustration of the here and now with surgical precision. It’s a dangerous devolutionary anthem growing like a weed in a neatly ordered garden, completely unchecked. Y’know order as chaos, chaos as order. Neet idea. Gits me hard!

Rounding out this pop album for the Cafe Flesh set is “Man Turned Inside Out,” an ode to that big sell-out ID monster waiting to pounce on us all. And “SexiLuv,” an absolutely stun-wild peep into the reasons for the multi-million dollar erotic film industry (the last truly underground cultural art form left in the USA today and it’s simply people fucking—does THAT tell you something?) and the new plagues. God, they sing about the nostalgia of love and it makes frightening sense. That ’un segues hotly into “Blow-Up,” a Devotoon about.. .tada... frustration. There’s that word again folks—denial, paranoia and the serious lack of good luvin’ in the real world these days.

I guess this is about the most frustrating album I’ve ever heard and somehow, having all of that frustration slapped across your face like a live, wet carp is either therapy leading to entropy or therapy leading to more incendiary acts of devolution like; enjoying (without cynicism) rock ’n’ roll! The time IS ripe to go Totally Devo because, as Lord Buckley might say, were he alive today and many wish he were, “The kicks warehouse is getting mighty thin up front, ya dig...! Nineteen hundred and leapin’ eightyeight!”

Joe (out of the meringue and into the junta) Fernbacher

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (Virgin)

Musta been, oh, four-plus years ago that I was in one of those states. Broke, generally pretty depressed and listening to/writing about music several hours a day as an excuse to skip most of my junior year college classes. Got a lot of records in the mail back then, not to mention piles of hastily recorded demo tapes, the latter usually accompanied by a letter explaining why the music therein would soon change the world. Those were good to record over. But one came with a letter from one David Lowery, who seemed intent on letting me in on how much everybody in his hometown hated his band. Hated ’em so much that they’d probably be broken up by the time I got around to listening to the tape, which would, by the way, soon be released on Independent Projects Records (who hated ’em too). That tape never got taped over. The band was Camper Van Beethoven.

Soon after, I stopped paying so much attention to music and fell in love. It’d be hard to directly link Camper Van Beethoven to my improved fortunes, but considering the fact that I’m depressed, broke and outta love again for the first time since receiving that missive from Lowery, it was really heartening to learn that the pride of Santa Cruz was ready to debut on a major label with Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart.

Anybody already familiar with the Eastern European meets Appalachian folk meets (to use a CVB-coined term) Border Ska these guys’ve rolled out on their handful of indie releases shouldn’t be too surprised by this LP. Admittedly, there’s precious little of the wacky college-boy mentality that marked/marred (depending on your point of view) those initial releases. Impressions ’round these parts range from relief that they’d dropped the schtick to smug “I told you so” at the co-incidental lack of a ‘‘Take The Skinheads Bowling” on the band’s major label debut. Accusations re: sell-out’re pretty baseless, ’specially once you cock an ear toward ‘‘Turquoise Jewelry” pr ‘‘Eye Of Fatima,” both of which belie a newly, as much as I try to refrain from usin’ the word, sophisticated sense of funnybone.

For initiates, Sweetheart is actually pretty accessible. When they take a breather from the pan-ethnic ducks and drakes game they seem so fond of playing, Camper Van Beethoven’II remind you of nothin’ so much as the head-in-clouds good-tyme hippiedom of, I dunno, the Lovin’ Spoonful or Country Joe & The Fish. Such roots aren’t exactly buried, considering they’ve covered Country Joe’s ode de dope (def. 1) “Porpoise Mouth” and Black Flag’s ode de dope (def. 2) “Wasted.” On this go-round, the closest they come to such blatant lysergia (beyond the odd reference to hallucinogens qua hallucinogens, c.f. “Eye Of Fatima” ’s “cowboys on acid” scenario), is a dirgy version of O Death, a doommonging trad folktune once covered by ’69 heavies Kaleidoscope—another likely Camper antecedent.

That’s a highlight, as is the moonshine waltz of “She Divines Water,” fired by violinist/mandolinist/citernist (or izzat citerner? Citronella??) Jonathan Segal’s sawings and a choral titular chant that’ll send spinal shivers yer way. And instrumentals, while not as plentiful as on Telephone Free Landslide Victory or II and III, are still amply showcased. “Waka” is pretty typical of the Camper sound collage technically, moving from a weirdly cross-pollinated chamber fiddle intro into overkill power-riffing midway through ’n’ down into a Days Of Future Passed ditch before extricating itself in reverse order via Greg Lisher’s guitar work. Confusing as hell, but it slays ’em live, so what do I know?

Well, for starters, I know this is a damn addictive record. Not just snatches, either—slappin’ it on requires a 40-odd minute commitment that’s one of the more enjoyable pacts you’ll enter into this year. Guess I’m also pretty sure my luck’ll have to change right soon, too. Then I’ll be able to credit Camper Van Beethoven with another miracle and devote my life to ’em. Anybody wanna join me? I’ll bring the beer.

David Sprague

GRAHAM PARKER The Mona Lisa’s Sister (RCA)

In a sense, the career of Graham Parker has been one big rip-off. Not for his listeners, of course. They’ve actually gotten off rather well over the years. Ever since the Englishman burst upon the music scene in 1976 with the doublebarreled attack of Howlin’ Wind and Heat Treatment, fans have been fortunate enough to witness his considerable talents in the cozy, personal atmosphere of small clubs, rather than the echoing arenas frequented by his artistic peers. Not only that, but his best albums, including those first two, Stick To Me and various compilations and mutations, can usually be found in record store budget bins.

No, if anyone’s been ripped off on this trip it’s been Parker himself. Given the quality of his material, by all rights the moody man behind the Ian Hunter shades deserves to be on a level akin to where Bruce Springsteen was a few years before he really hit it big. But something went terribly wrong around the turn of the decade. Parker was never fully accepted as an ’80s man, and his records these past ten years have left critics unsatisfied. And after the dissolution of the Rumour, even his most devoted fans stopped rushing to snap up the latest Parker releases.

Whatever the reason, Parker’s oncepromising career was stalled. But as he passionately warned himself on that record, “Nobody Hurts You Harder Than Yourself.” On The Mona Lisa’s Sister, Parker has regained his creative health and unique musical vision. Co-produced by Parker and former Rumour guitarist Brinsley Schwarz, it’s one of the strongest, if most self-searching, works of his career. Employing the smooth rhythm & blues-based rhythms of his early records, Parker’s new record is a largely acoustic affair, with Schwarz’s electric slash permeating rockers like “Oh Hieronymus.” But it has long been Parker’s lyrical content that has energized his music. On the opening track, “Don’t Let It Break You Down,” his unmistakable yearning voice reveals his current state-of-mind with dynamic imagery, pleading, “Now don’t get bent out of shape/Don’t start tearing out your hair. . . When the bombs go off on Oxford Street/And the kids beat up old people/lt’s just a soundtrack/For your life.”

And Parker’s frustrations with the fickle music press over his work since Squeezing Out Sparks slips out with: “Some people are in charge of pens/That shouldn’t be in charge of brooms/They have the nerve to rip up a man’s life/ln a paragraph or two.”

Simply speaking his mind, Parker has apparently accepted the reality that Commercial success may remain out of his reach and is again concerned with the simple truth of his artistic vision. Indeed, when the big shots at another record company strongly suggested that a larger production with horns and such would improve the album’s commercial possibilities, Parker jumped and found a hew deal that would protect his music.

Parker has only cracked the Top-40 once, when the nonessentiai “Wake Up (Next To You)” from 1985’s Steady Nerves hit a lofty #39 on the charts. Nothing different should be expected this time around, but if by some miracle of radio programming and inexplicable public fascination, events proved otherwise, the dividends for Parker may finally reach a level comparable to what his listeners have been enjoying since he began howlin’ more than 10 years ago.

Steve Appleford

GUITARS, CHIU DOGS, ETC* ETC, ; ^ \

RONNIE MONTROSE The Speed of Sound (Enigma)

LESLIE WEST Theme {PasspotlJiK

^geerns that more and more these days the line blurs between the ideology of big indie and major; you're just as likely to find generic commercial bullshit on Enigma or Passport as at Polygram or RCA. So it really isn’t too startling to see old ’70s guitarlftoroes Ronnie Slontrose and Leslie West now . residing in this territory—taking 1$ space that might best be reserved for some young Turk who sports the same ability they did at the beginning of their careers and mebbe twice as much,piss & vinegar. But we’re not talking about justice and art—we’re talkin’ BUSINESS, and the bottom line here is: Are the records worth listening 'to? Maybbtp

I’ve always dug Ronnie Montrose. You gotta respect'd man capable of squeezing the best performance of Sammy Hagar’s career put bf ’im qn h|s first record. For stud-balls guitar seraW and vocal screech, that first Montrose album just couldn’t be topped. However, that has little to do with The Speed Of Sound; an all instro plat ptore reminiscent of themes begun oh 1 §78’s Open Fire (’member that screwy version Of Pitney’s “Town Without Pity”?) and latter day Froom-ic Gamma.

Techno-instrumental plats from the likes of Montrose and ilk usually don't make it; boggin’ down in “taste” which is appealing only to other liRe-minded musicians. All 20 of 'em. that's not altogether true in this case since much of. the record is bald together by moxie drumming courtesy of DETROIT’S own JohhhY^-,<Bee’»iBadanjek; take f’rinstance “Mach I” ai)d “Black Box” on the kickoff side: “Mach'* is straightforward metaj and “Box”delivers nifly harmony tiffing over a Kashmiric backdrop not too derivative of Zep but just enough to be cctol fattn. Kingdom Kum). But then the inevitable electronic rhythms, jazzbo noodling, arid synths come marching in and banish the remainder of toe material to snore-iand—“Zero G” reminded me of Kansas and had me lungin’ for the reject button in 20 seconds flat!

, The second side is way better with the genius move of rddbing “Telstar.” t bet no on§ can look you in the eye and say theJf*dQjYt like” this song. It’s just plain great and every guitarist should have to play it 0t/0nO%tob>pjr anotherfc “ Sidewinder” is even pooler With its snaking riff and reiefttless power-wah soloing—that and “Windshear” are pretty mighty and teil ya straight, that Ronnie can still be a mean guy when he wants to be.

Forget the rest. Ronnie sends Johnny “Bee” to the showers and invokes electronic gadgetry and synthesized hand clap$ which you don? wanna hear. So.., is Speed a good album? My scorecard says Ronnie shores on 5 of 10, which is a Splid .500, and that’s OK. ^.i guess.

Leslie West’s Theme (a damn good one—dirty sex) is a more he-man affair. There’s'ho mistakin’ it when Leslie yowls for his gal to tie*him up (better bring plenty o’ rope) and talk dirty to him right off the bat, “M0therlqde”Tf§ less effective but it's about screwing lob. ; }

Then the band gives you a break as they reprise “Theme For An Imaginary Western” fromdLeslie’s Mountain days. That’s fair enough but you and l^how that 'trip versjon w®Fellk >Pappalardi at the helm (Jdck Bruoe returns to sing his own sdng) Will always be best. After all; its got history gojn* for it. .

‘Trri Gryin'” has Leslie strutting his Spto prowess for about a minute too tong; and the .transmogrification of the Close Encounters theme is unnecessary and overly cutOsy. I hate cutesy. "Red House” is turned into a power-chord stomp but along with “Spoonful” goes way too far into West, Bruce & Laing territory and the faults that made their Live & Kickin’LP toe most self-indulgent record loan tolhR df (even more so than the

live”?|ide of Wheats Of Fire). Come to think of it, Bruce was on both of those records «too. Please put these interminable early ’70s trudge jams to bed for good! Kapisch? 1

. Needless to say, Leslie’s guitarwork is peerless on all of It. The best shows him interpreting ”Love Me Tender” in such a manner that I fiOpe Miles Copeland is reading this Sd he can FedEx Leslie a NoSpeak contract, fhemoisa better redi ord thdh Speed because #1) it rocks, and #2) it is totally lacking in “taste.” if ah old geezer like West ban still sing about muff divin’ (“I Ate it”) you know he's stilt §ot a few good years left in ’im.

George “Metal” Smith

EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL

Idlewild (Sire)

In pop music, when you put your heart on your sleeve, you risk showing people if your head is up your ass as well. There’s no rock ’n’ roll attitude to get you through and no virtuosity to sidetrack listeners. There’S just the singer, the song and the arrahgement, and unless you’re selling pure corn, balancing the novel and the familiar can be a tricky task.

Tracey Thorn waxes emotional each time she opens her mouth to sing. There’s a melancholic ache that colors her every note, but she’s not one to turn off her mind when her heart’s busy. She appears to be one of the few who view everyday existence from a unique perspective, like, say, the Kinks and Squeeze.

Of course, they are rock ’n’ roll bands (most of the time, anyway) which Everything But The Girl is most certainly not. EBTG is an open-ended duo of sorts, consisting of vocalist Thorn and her writing partner/singer/guitarist/arranger Ben Watt, who also produces here for the first time. Both Thorn and Watt came up in England during the post-punk early ’80s, when anything un-rock was in, and they’ve been developing their torchy folk-pop approch for several albums now.

Songwise, they’re as strong as ever on Idlewild. Thorn and Watt remain experts at bringing out a relationship’s important little details, the things that determine whether it’ll work or not. Thankfully, they never settle for simplistic blame games. “Shadow On A Harvest Moon,” “Tears All Over Town” and “I Always Was Your Girl” all explore the cracks between the “I” and the “we.M Even nostalgia, which I Usually approach with caution, is dealt with intelligently, as well as emotionally, on “Goodbye Sunday” and “Lonesome For A Place I Know.”

Wish I could say as much about the production. Watt has thankfully hacked back at the instrumental overkill that weakened Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. Unfortunately, he’s cut out the drums entirely and the drum machine tracks are flat and uninspired, which means the arrangements have zilch in the way of dynamics. Not a fatal flaw in music of this sort, which relies mostly on the singing and the melody, but if they want this stuff to swing instead of rock, they better have a human behind the skins instead of just opening up a drummer-in-thecan.

Michael Davis

MEET THE NEW BOSS

GREG OSBY AND SOUND THEATER (JMT)

STEVE COLEMAN AND FIVE ELEMENTS Sine pie (Pangaea)

TIM BERNE Sanctified Omamsm (Columbia);!

1 'Our premise todgy is that these |hree .‘young Brooklyn-based alto saxophonists represent, each in their own way, something fresh about jazz. It’s not a bad premise and |mplad I was able to come up with it—these days it’s not so obvious what the new waves are. Usedjpbb? aay |back in the ’60S, jazz had a distinct avantgarde/fnainstream, and rearguard-everything was heading, inching, exploding toward, or resisting greater freedom (looser structures, more options, greater expressiveness). Eventually, max freedom was achieved/became just another option, and everyone marched on, postmodernly. So now things aren’t so schematic and even fans would be hard pressed to identify the centrists. Heck, for some people the cutting edge is Wynton Marsalis’s group playing a superior version ; of Miles Davis’s 1966 quintet. It’s like some [weird time warp—many of the players whose music is heading most obviously into the future are sniffing around the past.

So it’s no small deal to come up with three musicians and say unambiguously ’These guys represent the wave Of the future” as though it were 1962 and we all pretty much agreed on what that might mean. But they do, partly because they’re young and partly—well, we start with Greg Osby. Osby would never have been mistaken for a cutting edge kinda guy back in the ’60s—for one thing, he isn’t given to screeching uncontrollably. In fact; Histone is exceedingly normal, even, on ballads {“Diagora”), warm and romantic. For another, he means to cook: for aii [his tricky heads (that’s the part they play at the beginning before the improvisations start) and breaking up of the time, the point that is periodically returned to a great whoosh of resolution is a fast swinging 4/4 (eg, “Return To!#»C “Calculated Risk”). Anyway, you’ll like upand-coming®sby, his openness, his personal voiiee, his nibbling at freedom, and his equally up-and-coming j^intet. phey’re young, serious, playful, responsive to possibility^]

At one point, Osby gets funky (“Gyrhythmitoid”) which for a young serious playful jazz guy means coming up with a grisly bass line gver which is laid a decidedly non-funky abstract-sounding melody-—the sonic equivalent;^ ice cream anc^ sauerkraut. Steve Coleman gets rpr^.too, op his new album, but he jjoesn’t hedge like Osby—in fact, I think he overdoes it Blame Sting—supposedly behind the new JPangaea1 label, so you know alt eyes were on the bottom line, these pop guys can’t help it (etc.), This is Coleman’s third “Five Eiemenrflecord and the least of the three. To get to the point', despite Coleman calling his music M-Base (to distinguish it | from mere jazz), despite his rhythmically happening improvisations, this is fusion music on the funk side, and we all know fusion is, unambiguously, the rearguard; pei. fist's move on (though I would recomm&mbhfei' albums on JMT).

Tim Berne is more in the avant-garde, tradition, for those nostalgic for the old future. Again, his tone, despite occasional growling and mewling, is rather conventional—it’s Ms conception that’s out there. Berne has said that he doesn’t like records that yield all their secrets in a few listenings and so he’s determined to keep things interesting. He uses a traditional raqintet configuration, only with cello replacing piano, and pmposiws tend to be ioing, with the line petween4mp§ov and comp deliberately ;Oiurrejl| The varillj^di'varied sections seem id be arrived at through free association (whether premeditated or not), e.g., at one point on “Elastic Lad” trumpeter Herb Robertson and Cellist Hank Refers tweedfe tdgether at the upper end of the reg&ter while bass and drums bump out a hot Macumba rhythm and though you’re not sure how you got there, it felt like a logical trip. Throughout the album Roberts spacy underpinningsgWroupks speial spice as he saws, moans, sings (at time J actually, with his voice) and in general keepjjjjhe textures fresh (that word again). Berne’s last album, Fulton Street Maul, which was just as vigorously variegated and featured guitarist Bill Frisell, is also available on Columbia and one canmpgfaake one’s head enough in worker at .thawact.

Richard C. Walts

RAVE-UPS The Book Of Your Regrets (Epic)

There are times when I hate music. Like when yer walking down the street feeling like the sky’s gonna fall on yer head and you’ve lost your lover and yer dog died and a car just went by and splashed some kinda smelly puddle slime on yer best pair of pants. Despite this you’re maintaining. Your emotional defenses are up, and your heart is cold as a dead polar bear’s bunghole, and you think that even if your lover walked by arm in arm with someone new it wouldn’t even make you blink. And just as this thought completes itself, a car rolls by, and the window is down and the radio’s blasting and even though you’ve never hearcj the tune before it cuts you to the bone, stabs you in the heart, kicks you in the head qnd rips the wiring out of the defensive machinery that it took you so long to construct.

I had such a moment back in ’85 when I first heard “Positively Lost Me” off the Rave-Ups’ indie label debut Town + Country. I don’t know if it was the tough slide guitar, the familiar chord structure (the tune’s based on “Hush; Little Baby”), or the desperation that leaked out of Jimmer Podrasky’s vocals as he tried to convince himself that the object of his affection was miserable without him. Whatever it was, it hit me so hard that my hair stood on end. For the first few weeks I had the record I never got to the second cut. I just played “Positively Lost Me” over and over again. When I finally listened to the rest of the LP I discovered that “Positively Lost Me” wasn’t a fluke. Podrasky writes and sings like his life depends on it, and his band fills in the blanks with a big bad guitar sound that is part blUesy sting, part country twang, a perfect compliment to his big emotional statements.

Last week I got a copy of The Book Of Your Regrets, the Rave-Ups’ major label debut, and I’m glad to report that success hasn’t spoiled Podrasky. The album kjcks off with “Freedom Bound,” a wailing rocker that uses the S-word and a screaming slide guitar avalanche to bemoan the lack of freedom the singer feels. It’s easy to see that Podrasky’s pessimistic streak hasn’t been weakened by success; in fact, you might even say it’s ripened into a poetic fatalism that gives these new songs a dark, brooding noir quality that the morbid among you (and I include myself in this category) will find endlessly fascinating. The lyrics are an endless parade of the boring little tragedies that make up most lives. In “This House,” an old woman still makes breakfast each morning for her dead husband, a man who was as “gentle as an atom bomb;” “Sue & Sonny” find dead end jobs and after the honeymoon they watch their passion flicker and die by the light of a TV set; “Mickey Of Alphabet City” thinks he’s the junkie Jesus and spends the time betwen suicide attempts talking about all the things he’s gonna do after he makes it big in show biz, and in “Blue Carrot,” tells us, “I guess I should sing a happy song, but when I look around me I see...nothing...”

Podrasky’s tearstained, tormented vocals inject these tales with plenty of compassion, so despite the grim subject matter, the tunes manage to uplift and instruct. Musically, the album’s a killer. Buzzsaw guitars rip into the heart of the darkness that beats at the center of these ditties to splatter the turntables with steaming viscera, and the rhythm section stomps like Godzilla doing the Tokyo Tango. The overall sound is out there on the border line between country rock, acid thrash, psycho-pop and down home white boy blues, a comfortable place to be if you’re one of the borderline personalities that Podrasky aims his serenades at. If you’ve been waiting for the perfect soundtrack tp have a psychotic break by, search no more. Pick up The Book Of Your Regrets and meet me in the rubber room.

j. poet