Off the record

Rip It Up, Issue 43, 1 February 1981, Page 14

Off the record

New Hat" ■" The,New’Music; is a slick and rather hollow celebration of what v its Australian ■publishers call a movement which ‘‘lives and breathes and vibrates with ideas, imagination and excitement”. It's a shame that the same couldn’t be said for their product. The magazine? jammed with colour: pics, looks great, provided you don't quibble too much about how out of date some of the' illustrations;; are, or about 'the number printed back-to-front. It’s the text which is the real let-down. Better to have stuck to photo captions than to have produced this uncritical mush. Don’t these, guys dislike anybody? . .. style and aims is Fast J Forward, a ‘cassette magazine’. A blindingly obvious, but (as far as I know) original idea, the cassette format seems near ideal for a fanzine. What better way to ’convince. sceptics that your favourite band is crash hot than to. present them with first-hand evidence? It’s a little hard to get used to a style of presentation that makes Barry Jenkin sound racey, but . after a while . the plain honesty of Fast Forward’s producers wins through. The content is largely, but not exclusively, concerned with the ins and outs of the. less commercial end of the Australian music world, and includes songs by the bands interviewed and discussed, as well as-interviews with managers and fans. Definitely voted Idea Most Worthy of Theft this year .Fast Forward (PO Box 5159 AA, GPO Melbourne, Australia 3000) welcome tapes and info from bands. Cost per issue airmailed to NZ is Aust $4.00. Divine Forgiveness After an auspicious movie debut in The Pearl, Bette Midler takes a giant step backwards with Divine Madness. Amid a raft of terrible jokes and a series of vocal performances that have all the sincerity of a latterday Judy Garland, and as much restraint, the Divine Ms M reveals feet of clay. This is a runthrough of her years of stage hits before they are consigned to the dumper and she becomes a fully-fledged movie star. I just hope this little effort doesn’t do badly enough to force her back onto the stage, or well enough to encourage her into keeping it up. Great Timing Forget 'Bright Eyes’. Art Garfunkle can

cancel out hrs responsibilities for the horrors of Watership Down with a part in one of the great heavy movies, Bad Timing.. Nicholas Roeg has never made a bad film even though he seemed to be trying with Man Who Fell To Earth and Bad ; Timing , ranks with Performance and Don't Look Now. Please go and see ' it, huh? Francis Stark Do Wanderers Wop In 1974 New Yorker Richard Price wrote The Wanderers a rock-hard ephisodic novel of early sixties gang life.' In 1979 Philip Kaufman adapted large chunks into a movie that is only now getting local release. And while the film is more romanticized, softer-centred than its source, it’s still very good value.'So what that it "recalls- every gang, movie you’ve ever seen, (from Blackboard Jungle to Mean Streets, from West Side Story to The Warriors) there’s piles of action, lotsa laughs and a great soundtrack (Dion, Ben E. King, doo wop etc.) Peter Thomson Flowers Competition Winners ■ In the Festival Records Flowers’ competition first prize ( Icehouse album, T-shirt and 10 inch pressing of ‘Can’t Help Myself’) goes to A. J. Y. Taylor of Birkenhead with: "People who live in Icehouses are called Eskimos." Winning a T-Shirt and an album are Cathy Brown of Paparangi ( can effectively quell passion without taking a cold shower) and Johnny Vann of Epsom ( are proof that life in the fridge exists). Winners of icehouse are John Gadd (are not necessarily frigid), Keith martin-Buss (make love by the light of the fridge) and G. Doolin (come from Chile). Addresses Wanted ' G. S. Ludbrook and Matthew Walsh who ordered EXTRA did not supply addresses. The address of K. R. Notman who ordered several records from Propeller Records has been mislaid. Please write again.