RECORDS

Rip It Up, Issue 48, 1 July 1981, Page 12

RECORDS

The Beat Wha'ppen Go-Feet Just Can't Stop It was among the finest albums to be released last year. Classics like 'Hands Off, She's Mine' and 'Mirror in the Bathroom' show-cased the Beat's mastery of tricky words and danceable rhythms. Further proof of their skill came with the intermediate single, 'Too Nice To Talk To', sadly passed over by New Zealand radio. After a successful debut, it must be tempting to follow the formula. The Beat have avoided this with Wha'ppen. Though they retain their original sound, they have kept the songs diverse in style, and distinctly fresh. 'Doors Of Your . Heart', the second single from the album, kicks into gear with a blast from Saxa's horn. Dub effects on Ranking Roger's toasting make it a tasty opener. The full pace rocker, 'All Out To Get You', leads nicely into the latin Monkey Murders'. On 'I Am Your Flag', added brass gives a soulful feel, while the lyrics prove the Beat's politics don't begin and end . with 'Stand Down Margaret’. 'French Toast' adds some Carribean light relief before 'Drowning' wanders into a rich production job by Bob Sargeant. 'A Dream Home In New Zealand' deals with nuclear war. New Zealand being , the last retreat. Of the remaining five songs, only two impress, 'Get A Job' and 'Cheated', but both are potential hit singles. Although Wha'ppen is not as immediately forceful as Just Can't Stop It, it is a confident work. Regardless of changing musical fashion, I have no doubt that the Beat can only get stronger. Mark Phillips Magazine Magic, Murder and the Weather Virgin Magazine have always been an acquired taste, a band who've blended musical sophistication (when that wasn't the thing to do) with Devoto's own very personalised and figurative

world-view. Their three previous studio albums have veered from the ambitious if flawed Real Life through the gothic weightiness of Secondhand Daylight to the brisk and accessible moods of Correct Use of Soap. And now Magic, Murder and the Weather, again an album of distinct qualities. Soap dropped all pretensions, yet it retained the band's inherent drama and imagination. Magic continues this anti-melodrama drift into a funkiness and rhythmic buoyancy that they've seldom achieved in the past. McGeoch's departure after Soap was temporarily filled by sound-alike Robin Simon who merely duplicated McGeoch's presence on the live Play and when he left, Ben Mandelson, an old associate, was employed. On Magic his touches are deft and sparing in contrast to the aggressive chord pressures of McGeoch and his subtleties have left more room for Adamson's ingenuity (he must rank as one of the best bassists anywhere) and Doyle's precision drumming. This difference has given the album more flexibility.

'About the Weather', 'The Honeymoon Killers' and 'The Great Man's Secrets' are all gems, combining the best features of the band Formula's knack for producing keyboard lines that provide the initial melodic basis for Magazine's

landscapes. 'This Poison', the single, stands out. Devoto beguiling, the band funky. 'Suburban Rhonda' and 'The Garden' insinuate rather than state. And on 'So Lucky' and the 'Naked Eye' Adamson and Doyle run into overtime with style.

So Magic is an album 'of human textures and wisps of Magazine , atmosphere. Its propulsion is less intense than its predecessors but its inventiveness remains at the highest of quotients. But since. its release. Devoto has' left the band which means that Magazine have had their chips. I'll miss them, a dot, especially when they were capable of conjuring up albums the likes of Magic. A minute's silence, perhaps? George Kay Ray Columbus and the Invaders Anthology Epic For the collector this is pretty much the perfect set. The packaging is excellent, from the beautifully-dated look -of the cover 'photos to the informative, detailed liner notes inside the gatefold. Add in the inclusion of a live version from Perth of 'She's A Mod' circa 1964, and the first single by Columbus and ; the Invaders, 'Money Lover',, and it's the sort of record - oldies'

freaks in Australia will go weak at the knees over.

•What's a surprise is how well most .of the songs hold up. 'Till We Kissed' is a pop classic that will probably astonish newcomers who only know Columbus as a middle of the road television personality, v The Righteous Brothers' feel of 'Till We Kissed' is not retained on the other 15 tracks, which instead have the raw jumpy sound of mid-60s British beat music.^Hgp| Generally the local boys hold up better here than, for example, the Kinks 15 years on. Nostalgia may draw some to this album. The music should hold a lot more. Phil Gifford David Lindley El Rayo-X Asylum The Main Point: This album's given me more sheer fun than almost anything I've heard this year. Whenever it's playing which is a helluva lot seized by paroxysms of that good old foot-stompin', back-bone-slippin' funky chicken. Go forth, buy it and get afflicted. Feels sooo good. The Background Stuff: David Lindley's been around for years. He's played on the better work of such as Linda Ronstadt (in '74) and Rod Stewart (in '75). More significantly, he's been Jackson Browne's guitarist

cum fiddler for the past decade and was an important presence on a couple of Ry Cooder's recent . LPs, especially the magnificent Bop Till You Drop. - In fact, Cooder's work is the nearest comparison one can find to Lindley's debut. -.Both musicians share a near-faultless ability to refurbish great songs through a melding of various ethnic and popular styles. Here, for example, old Motown and Everly Brothers' standards are transformed into magnificent reggae; 'Mercury Blues' becomes raging rock'n'roll. .:. and so on. Which only accounts for half the album. There's also a superb bunch of new numbers: two cowritten by Lindley and three from the bizarre wit of someone named 'Frizz' Fuller. Despite ; the considerable diversity here,' the overall sound •. is primarily tex-mex. The band is everything one could wish for and, although handling all guitars and vocals, Lindley never obtrudes as 'star' performer. One superficial reaction to this album dismissed Lindley as 'doing a Cooder', but the fact is that both men have been steeped in. this music for decades. El Rayo-X is no gimmicky patiche, .. but the result of an abiding and irreverent love. It's also an unalloyed delight. Peter Thomson

Grace Jones Nightclubbing Island ' Grace Jones is an unshamedly sexual animal. She flaunts her sexuality to her own advantage, and some say she lays it on a bit thick, but that's their problem, not hers. Grace is owned by nobody, and in today's hypocritical permissive society, her attitudes are positively healthy. Nightclubbing takes up where Warm Leatherette left off. Sleazy, greasy, dirty funk, with an earthy sophistication that is endearing and very human. The title track is, of course, the David Bowie/Iggy Pop composition, which Grace deadpans beautifully.'- If Iggy intended the song to be tongue-in-cheek, then Grace has certainly got the message. She turns Bill Withers' 'Use Me' into a sexual tour de force that its writer never realised, and her own 'Feel Up' is an aural orgasm, full of suggestive vocal backchat and percussive heavy breathing. Barry Reynolds again helps with- a couple of songs, along with Marianne Faithfull, and

plays guitar. Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar are also present, using the same distinctive -rhythmic touches they gave to. Black Uhuru's Sinsemilla. They lift funk out of the same identikit mire that was threatening reggae. Grace Jones just slays me. An unforgettable face, a voice like crude oil, and not a hangup sight. Duncan Campbell The Jim Carroll Band Catholic Boy Epic . ' Jim Carroll has enjoyed more American rock magazine attention than any new act of the • last 12 months. Catholic Boy is ostensibly the reason but, in actuality, the focus is more often his background it's such damn good copy. Carroll is a 31-year-old poet and ex-junkie, New York street-kid. So what else is new? So Carroll wrote about it as he lived it. His Basketball Diaries, from ages 12 to 15, is a fast, absorbingly trashy record of the 'decline of a wiseass kid with a love of words, sex, and a future as an athlete, into just another hustling doper. Its republishing last year laid the basis for a cult. Even Keef Richard lurched in for a gig. Carroll, it seems, has known everyone who's hip. It was good friend Patti Smith who first interested him in fusing his poetry with rock. The track 'Crow' is a tribute to her. Setting aside all notions of street credentials and media hype, is Catholic Boy worth the attention? Very definitely. Its precedents lie in the work of Jim Morrison, Iggy, Lou Reed and David Johansen.. The band's no-frills approach seems designed to force the words up front, but Carroll's bleak, surreal imagery has an intense instinctual power too. This is rock/poetry for the guts first. Reviewers of Catholic Boy have tended to concentrate on the title track, the American single 'People Who Died' and the eerie .'City Drops Into The Night'. . These tracks are certainly. powerful but by no means overshadow the rest of the album. - Live, the Carroll Band can be devastating. After a gig in San Francisco, I was exhausted by the amphetamine-paced onslaught of block-chord guitars combined with Carroll’s personal mystique. Whether you regard Carroll as v hipster-angel or merely another druggie delinquent, you can't ignore the fact that Catholic Boy is dynamite rock'n'roll. It will stand. Footnote: Basketball Diaries is still unavailable in New Zealand. If you're interested then - harass your local bookdistributer. Carroll's 1974 Pulitzer-nominated volume =. of poetry, Living at the Movies is currently out of print.

Peter Thomson

Devo Live Warner Bros Pretenders Extended Play Real Two half-album pot-boilers from WEA, the live Devo set originally being a four-track promotional item in America (the two added tracks are Planet Earthj and 'Girl U Want') and the Pretenders" five-track EP intended no doubt to remind the fickle ever-changing rock punter that the band is still in fact around, absence of followup album notwithstanding. Devo don't spring. any surprises live. ‘Be Stiff' is the only track not off the most successful Freedom Of Choice album, though that record's title track appears here instrumentally as a concert-opener. A propulsive drum beat allows you to partially ignore the one-finger dynamics on Side One, and happily the guitar player is let loose more on the other side 'Gates Of Steel heading off the much loved 'Whip It' as the EP's peak. Recorded in San Francisco a year ago Live is a satisfactory if hardly revelatory reaffirmation of the band's current strength’?«Hp^^H The Prentenders' most appetising recent vinyl 'Message Of Love' and 'Talk Of The Town' heads their mini-album. Message' somehow marries foxy two-chord raunch with much softer turnaround bridge

good in much the same way Police singles are good. 'Porcelain' broods for a while before Chryssie Hynde again delivers a I strong vocal, and over on Side Two we get 'Cuban Slide', where the band manfully (womanfully) tries to over-ride rock cliches in the Diddley-borrowed beat, and a live version of.'Precious', one of a number-of strong tracks from that first album. Roy Colbert Cimarons Freedom Street Virgin British reggae, has come into its own since the 19705. The start of its maturity can probably be traced back to 1972, when the Wailers arrived in Britain, and Catch A Fire was recorded. Among those called in to help out were the Cimarons. This West London band!has struggled ever since signed briefly with Polydor, later dropped because of poor sales. All are fine musicians, but having largely recorded other people's material in the past, they are now’ having difficulty writing their own. They can't hope to assimilate the 'roots' feel of the Jamaicans, so they aim more for the sweeter 'lovers rock' style which is more popular with the British blacks. Best example here is Ready For Love', which lays down a very easy groove, innocent and catchy. Where they get out of their depth is trying to use Biblical prophecies. Lacking the hardcore gospel grounding of the Jamaicans, they quickly descend into cliche. Songs like 'Ball Head' and 'Distraction' work better through concentrating on more neutral subjects. Culturally, the Cimarons are far removed from Africa. If they accept this, they might write more satisfying songs. Dun Can Campbell

Bruce Springsteen Boxed Set: Greetings From . Asbury Park The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street fj Shuffle Born To Run CBS In the middle to late 19605, most record companies seemed to have at least five Instant Dylans on their books a David Blue here, an Eric Andersen there, a Tim something everywhere. The early 1970 s saw the search change to New Dylans, and Bruce Springsteen was one of these on his debut 1 Greetings : From- Asbury Park.

Was there a real rock'n'roller in there? It sure was hard to tell, and a wafer-thin production hardly helped either. Blinded By The Light' and 'Spirit In The Night' eventually became the name tracks off this album, but 'Growing Up' and 'For You' stand equally strong beside them in the breathless image-tumbling stakes, and perhaps understandably, the two restrained ballads 'Mary Queen Of Arkansas' and 'Angel' have weathered the test of time best. Album Two, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle came within the year at the end of 1973, and it was a staggering improvement. Springsteen was a good deal more in control of his craft now, the production a vast improvement, and the songs, while often suggesting the man had seen West Side Story three too many times, were exceptional. There was a wider sweep of writing styles on The Wild, The Innocent than on subsequent albums, and the bit in the middle of 'Sandy' where Springsteen quietens everything right down and talks about the waitress is one of the genuinely magic moments in the man's recorded career so far. Darkness On The Edge Of Town may well be Springsteen's 'best' album by conventional

'best' standards, but E Street remains my favourite. Born To Run took much longer to get’ out, and • was finally served up with like-it-'orelse media assistance cover stories in Time and Newsweek and Jon. Landau's albatross quote on the future of rock'n'roll. To the album's credit, it was good enough to survive that ■ advance guard, but it still could have been a lot better. The fattened Spectorlike backdrops glued much of the material | to an elephantine standstill. It's | a record | Springsteen would probably like to record again, but, even at gunpoint, wouldn't. For all the delivery problems, Born To Run still dominated a million turntables for many months mine being dominated in particular by the first three tracks on Side Two and the' opening 45 seconds of Thunder Road' on Side One. ‘3 For 50 cents less than S2O, you can trace the early, career ot the man now up there for the critics' grabs (and still doing it far too well for them to pull him down), from the seminal to the almost-mature?HHpHQpP| fcYesjß he was still writing about cars on album one. Yes, these records are essential.' Roy Colbert The Digits Dog Wrestled to Ground By Underarm Combat Flea Sausage Records The ideabehind the Do It Yourself syndrome is admirable especially if it's worth doing. The question is, why have the \ Digits bothered? They are a makeshift, looselyorganised, occasional six piece combo from. Wellington and for starters they've released a very limited edition album on i Sausage Records. aThe! Digits have separated their schemes into two [parts? The first part, being Side One, is devoted to ten poorly-con-ceived and recorded songs creaking; under a variety of influences ranging from midwest American ('Friend Who Sits Beside You') to Cure atmospherics ('A Throw Away') and muted punk ('Perfect [Evolution'). Being derivative doesn't matter, but the Digits seem incapable of using their sources. The second half of the album, Side Two, is a series closelypacked jam sessions where repetition and aimlessness take control. The whole side has a time-wasting approach with vaguely amusing throwaway titles. If enthusiasm and amateurism were I all that was needed to make worthwhile rock'n'roll, then the Digits would be in with a shout. As it. is, they've made an album from the best of intentions but have forgotten that other people have to listen to it. George Kay The Tubes Backwards Principle Backwards Principle Capitol I first heard the Tubes;in;a room about as big as Meatloaf's dressing-gown, papered ■ wall-to-wall by giant JBLs, powered in turn by enough watts to drive three smelters. Yes, I> told my

wild-eyed and bulging-neck-veined host, I am impressed, it is indeed a big sound. |9H| Since then, I've craved similar assistance to appreciate the expansive grandeur of this San (■Franciscan band L and I've , noticed, too, how their most fervent followers are rarely people with $95 stereos • that pick up taxi talk every time the fridge is turned on. . Props. An integral part of the Tubes' master-plan, whether it be an overwhelming stage act or, merely, an absorbing album sleeve. The latest album includes one of the latter. The opener 'Talk To Ya Later' roars off with a stampeding beat, fine hook, and a guitar • sound straight off Rundgren. Thereafter, we strip away the covering and find the Tubes [ borrowing a~lfew tricks from the REO Speedwagon school [ ('Don't Wanna Wait Anymore', 'America' and 'A Matter. Of Pride'). But the sense of humour is still j there. They ■ sure write a neat company prospectus. Roy Colbert Phoebe Snow Rock Away Mirage The Best of Phoebe Snow CBS : A few years: ago, American writer Stephen Holden] seemed to have Phoebe Snow's career neatly summed up. 'Though the stylistic collisions in her singing sometimes result in confused mannerism, Snow is a true original. Unfortunately since the debut LP, the con- ■ fusions have dominated." Mind you, that first album certainly was a stunner. Not only did this young white girl sing with a mature black voice, she penned strong songs with shrewd lyrics. From semi-jazz to introspective folk, her writing could range as widely as her vocals. Yet, except very fitfully, Snow’s work never reached [ such a standard [again. As if in acknowledgement, she increasingly turned to interpreting the work of other writers, though still with only limited success. 'ln attempting a representative survey, this Best of' selection has drawn from all Snow's recordings through to '7B. Consequently, only, two tracks from the first LP are included which simply isn't enough. Furthermore, the clashes which arise from juxtaposing tracks from her various recording approaches render this album a very mixed bag. It doesn't really sound like a 'best of' at all. . That title , probably still belongs to her 1973 debut. Rock Away, her new set for a new label, does have the virtues of coherence and consistency.’ Recorded with the powerful band Billy Joel recently brought to New Zealand, this is the straight-forward, punchy album its title suggests. Snow is still primarily working as an interpreter and has chosen her covers well. If occasionally her voice may veer towards stridency in belting out the Allen Toussaint or Don Covay classics, the strengths of the song and the band carry everything through. Purists of course will always quibble over reworkings Rod Stewart's 'Gasoline Alley' seems the most

likely candidate here but by and large, ’ Snow's versions are a success. Perhaps the . best performances are the- slower ones, particularly her own wistful title track, and Dylan's lovely 'I Believe In You'. One hopes, as thjs album tentatively suggests, that with her change of label, Phoebe Snow's talent may become fully re-established. Peter Thomson Change Miracles j Sister Sledge BhWB All American Girls Atlantic . Change are yet another of the curious concepts thrown up by disco. No, it's not a gay cop this time, but a bunch of ,funky" Italians. All the rhythm tracks on Miracles, their second album and their first, Glow of Love, [were I recorded [in Bologna,land vocals overdubbed by session singers in New York. Unlikely, maybe, but their debut was an i? overblown delight^|Qpi|f^ The singers were sacrificed to the giant-sized production, but the , liveliness of ; the project erased all doubts about the lack [of i soul The second album, Miracles, marks a clear change of pace. Here, they steer closer to the Chic style of cool restraint. The drums no longer crack like whips, but shuffle politely. It's smaller scale and less dramatic, but the material is seamless enough to support the chamber rapproacl^JHß^mHHpm The new album by Sister Sledge All American Girls finds them out from under ft he [control of Chic masterminds Edwards and Rogers, and produced by one-time ; Mahavishnu; drummer, Michael Walden. He's clearly unsure what to do with them. .He convincingly recaptures the Chic sound on the title cut . and I manages one urgent piece of Euro-disco lon 'He's Just A Runaway'. But the rest of the album is an uninspired blur of j contemporary black music stylings. Disco at its dreariest. Alastair Dougal Santana f Zebop CBS The Devadip's devotees tend lto|rie(a|b reed j apart. They're i invariably guitar-solo freaks, and often regard other rock with distaste. Such an attitude is the source both of Santana's extraordinary longevity and of his increased rigidity. Carlos' mid-70s freedom for successful experimentation seems over. His recent sortie with some contemporary jazzmen encountered significant buyer resistance (not to mention critical flak). Zebop sees him return to orthodox formation and formula: the slow-tempo sustained guitar lines; uptempo pyrotechnics; el latino percussion and vocal chants; plus two or three pop-rock updates l with an eye on the singles charts. It's all here, as proficient and safe as ever. Unless you nurse a particular desire to hear a Cat Stevens or J.J. Cale number, sung by a Steve Winwood sound-alike over a latinized rhythm section, you can safely leave this for the fariclGbinaHii|BHM

Peter Thomson