RECORDS

Rip It Up, Issue 49, 1 August 1981, Page 20

RECORDS

Dave Perkins

Various Artists Rockers Island Black Slate Sirens In The City Ensign Congos Heart Of The Congos Go Feet Peter Tosh Wanted And Alive Rolling Stones Records Rockers is the soundtrack to what looks like one helluva movie, a sort-of updated version of The Harder They Come, starring ’ i Leroy .'Horsemouth' Wallace, one of JA's top session drummers. Horsey is one bad man, on or off-screen, and on this album you'll find Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Jacob Miller, and the Heptones, to name but a few. Great value, and when is the movie to be shown here? Black Slate have crossed over after many years playing the black clubs around Britain, and have gained a couple of international hits along the way. It's hard to begrudge them that success. Rockers gotta eat too. Anyway, their new album, Sirens In The City has its . moments. It's a lightweight, but beautifully played and produced, and should be put on layby for summer. Best news is the release of the Congos' Heart Of The Congos, on the Beat's Go Feet label. Cedric My ton and Roy Johnson have sadly split since this was recorded, four years ago, so grab it as a collector's item. Scratch Perry produces, and Sly /Dunbar and Winston Wright are in there somewhere too. Need I say more? Peter Tosh seems to be trying to salvage some of his reputation lost after those last two appalling albums.. But Wanted Dread And Alive (Rolling Stones Records) doesn't quite do it. He's still got a long way to go to recapture the guts of Legalise It or Equal Rights.' Duncan Campbell Landscape From the Tea-rooms of Mars to the Hell Holes of Uranus RCA Time to sit up and take note of what our brothers are doing

in UK, in particular Richard Burgess, who old'timers might remember as the drummer in Quincy Conserve. Burgess has been making a name for himself over there, producing Spandau Ballet, programming effects on Kate Bush's 'Never Forever', and doing music for dance groups Shock, and Hot Gossip. But mostly, Burgess is drummer for 8-year-old band Landscape, which is now associated with the Blitz kids' scene, where you dress up and go down in style,. Landscape consist of Burgess on drums, Christopher Heaton on electric piano, Andrew Pask on bass, Peter Thoms on trombone, and John Walters on soprano sax and flute. Side One is stacked with pacy : rhythms, and instrumentals aptly named for the atmosphere they invoke. Side Two tells a few stories. The hit 'Einstein A Go-Go' finds someone using the phone to call (ex) President Carter. 'Norman Bates' fits in with Landscape's Alfred Hitchcock obsession. Later on, there's a trombone piece complete with- soft applause. ■ A wry touch to an album full of surprises. Ann Louise Martin Stiff Little Fingers Go For It Chrysalis Shorn of their dubious and partly discredited role as spokesmen for wot-it's-like-in-Belfast, Stiff Little Fingers are seated comfortably in a lyrical mainstream on their new album. Their most potent lyric in fact concerns playing records loud in the bedroom while Mum shouts unavailingly . up the stairs. Not a single rubber bullet is fired. "But the music is still the same" explains Jake Burns, '-'it's fast and loud, because that's the sort of music we like". Fast and loud much of Go For It may well be, but there is also some rather deseperate dabbling as SLF try to cover as many bets as possible.' Reggae rhythms kick along two tracks, brass is tried on another, and there's even an atypical slice of Ricky Nelson rock'n'roll in the middle of Side Two. 'Just Fade Away', 'Hits And Misses' and 'Safe As Houses' emerge as the most complete and likeable songs, and the title track sounds like one of the year's better song intros until you realise that's all you're getting. Roy Colbert Yardbirds Five Live Yardbirds. ... featuring Eric Clapton. ... featuring Jeff Beck. Charly Five Live Yardbirds (1964) has been called the British R&B album and justly so. Recorded at London's Marquee Club, it generates tremendous excite-

ment. The momentum is headlong and the music (covers of Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Slim Harpo) is of a high order. While a rather pallid singer, Keith Relf was a superb harp player. A youthful Eric Clapton contributes some raging guitar. While never a "hit" album, Five Live had an enormous influence on aspiring musicians. Five tracks from Five Live crop up on the Clapton album, along with studio cuts recorded before Slowhand jacked in the Yardbirds in ; search of "de blooze" with the heavier John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. He was replaced by. the more experimental Jeff Beck, and the Beck album features two of Beck's most innovative solos

'Shapes of Things' and 'Mister, You're a Better Man Than I'. In 'I Ain't Done Wrong (a reworking of an Elmore James' song) and 'New York City Blues' (a remake of 'Five Long Years' from Five Live) Beck shows his ability to turn the blues into mania, as he would later with Rod Stewart. These albums are from tapes held by Giorgio Gomelsky, the Yardbirds' former manager. They represent a major musical document the first British R&B wave and the move into psychedelia and Eastern sounds. Top stuff. 'After the praise, a few reservations: Firstly, Five Live isn't the original album. There has been some unexplained and inexplicable tampering. The reissue has been edited, eliminating audience noise and patter between tracks and losing much impetus. ; Also 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' is not from the Marquee session. The rough-and-ready version of Five Live has been replaced by the studio cut that was the Yardies' second single. The changes may have been well-intentioned but • they, are no improvement. The Clapton and Beck albums have been : available before, but these have the worthy addition of good Chris Welch liner notes. Ken Williams

Kraftwerk Computer World EMI Kraftwerk were the first commercially successful band within (he rock idiom to realise and record the fact ' that elec-, tronics and synthesisers could be used to paint pictures of contemporary t landscapes, ) be they abstract or concrete. ? v ~ r It's been nigh on three years ''since their last album, The-Man Machine - and in many ways their new- outing, Computer World, is a continuation of the observations -. of , the latter. Musically/' simplicity and consequently melodic accessibility 1 are still the main characteristics of their arrangements. Haunting : and melancholic synthesiser lines are used to touching effect on 'Computer Love', a song about computer dating. On the other hand, 'Pocket Calculator' is a flippant and firmly tongue-in-cheek dig at our regard for those machines, and the playful 'Home Computer’ follows the same pattern. - Kraftwerk » haven't covered any new ground on this album but that doesn't matter. Suffice to say that they use their machines to notch up a gem of an album.; George Kay The Ramones Pleasant Dreams Sire In New Zealand last year, both Joey and Johnny Ramone were emphatic the band had stayed on top of producer Phil Spector for End Of The Century■. But Spector still managed to leave his mark on the record. The same thing seems to have happened on the latest album with lOcc's Graham Gouldman. The Ramones take all the arranging credits, but the sort of influence we would expect Gouldman to exert is in fact here more concentration on vocals, occasional use of keyboards, and generally much more slipped into the background than usual. Song-wise it's never been easy to separate the great Ramones songs from the good ones, but this time the picture is a lot clearer. The opener 'We Want The Airwaves' is effective pinhead-anthemic like 'Rock 'n'roll Radio' was last time. 'K.K.K.' has a great chorus, plus the usual Joey melodic moves in the verse, and '7-11' is an updated (he mentions record swap meets and space invaders) 'Teen Angel' da goil id deaded at the end. Love it. But the' rest, brief attempts at moving out of the norm ('lt's Not My Place') notwithstand- . ing, is pretty average. Pleasant Dreams is one stage further removed from End Of The Century. It's their marketably least obnoxious album. It's their worst album. Roy Colbert Motorhead No Sleep 'Till Hammersmith Bronze - Motorhead, Britain's heavy _ metal kings, deliver an awe- % some blitz of sound on this live / recording from their 1981 UK £ tour. Lemmy's vodka-soaked £ larynx strains .to . rasp over a | cacophony put up. by a trio k bent on living for the moment. 9 Forget the future the message is hedonism. Now. a The album opens with the title track of their last recording, Ace of Spades, which sets the pace for the rest of the set. Frenetic guitar solos and a lurching, drunken rhythm section fight with the vocals for a say in a wall of activity. / You know I’m going to loose, And gambling is for fools, But that’s the way I like it . baby, :I don't want to live forever. / Lemmy's remark that rock and roll is an exhausting business is pure understatement. On only two numbers, 'Capri-

corn' and 'Metropolis, a lat sixties-styled hard rocker, d they take over a few seconds t> breathe. This is far superior t< studio Motorhead. Excuse me while T.removi my head from the Tannoy. Th( buzzing is bliss.' 1