Briefs

Rip It Up, Issue 70, 1 May 1983, Page 18

Briefs

Robert Eyres

Mental As Anything • Creatures of Leisure (Regular) Album number four and the cracks are beginning to show, just a little. Not that this is a bad record. It's just that it gets the slightest bit dull and workmanlike, especially on Side Two. Side One still has that old joie de vivre that made songs like 'Egypt', and most of the last album so essential. But for much of this album, I'm afraid the title of the first track sums it up: 'Spirit Got Lost'. SG Eddy Grant Killer on the Rampage (Ice) After a lull in the seventies following his Equals'phase, Eddy Grant has recently built up a lasting credibility. Recorded at his own studio in Barbados, Killer on : The . Rampage is an excellent combination of Grant's reggae/pop background and his aptitude for commenting on social ills. 'Electric Avenue', 'War Party', 'lt's All In You' and the title track , are the highlights from an album with few blemishes. GK Climax Blues Band Sample and Hold (Virgin) Veteran English rock band with their first album on' the Virgin label.. Of the original band only the nucleus of Cooper and Haycock remain but nothing is lost with the personnel changes in this, their strongest album in years. 'Sign of the Times', 'l'm Ready' and Movie Queen' are the standouts on this polished rock album. Highly recommended. DP Patrick Simmons, Arcade (Electra) These days Patrick Simmons' status as longest-serving Doobie seems more musical millstone than milestone. But, considering the obvious point of comparison, this solo set is a moderately pleasant surprise. FM fodder it may be, yet Simmons with expatriate Kiwi Chris Thompson as co-writer has penned some catchy ditties, added suitably. tasteful. arrangements and employed the usual ultra-expensive sessionmen. Even a high-gloss rendition of an old Chi-lites classic doesn't completely , swamp the originals. . PT . Def Leppard, Pyromania (Vertigo) With a slightly more refined sound (thanks to 'Mutt' Lange) DL continue their arson-orientated trail on this third outing, still featuring the stunning twin guitars ' and! thunderous rhythm section from the previous excellent On Thru the Night and High and Dry LPs (two of NZ's best, kept HM secrets). If your tastes include Iron Maiden, Saxon, etc, you'll love this little gem. You may even hear it on Stereo FM with a bit of luck that's how they broke in the States. I'm waiting in anticipation. .GC Michael Schenker Group Assault Attack (Chrysalis) - : . As the musical chairs approach to membership in British metal . bands continues we find the lineup for this MSG album consisting of Graham Bonnett, Ted McKenna and Chris Glen. Since then, however, the band has changed personnel yet again and this lack of'stability shows through on this mediocre album. There is no doubt Schenker is one of the most talented and melodic guitarists on the hard rock scene but the lacklustre material he's come up with here dulls the impact of his playing. Good but not great. CC

UFO, Making Contact (Chrysalis) Tank, Power of the Hunger (Kamaflage) On their twelfth album UFO continue their flirtation with an American FM-orientated style that commenced with Mechanix and apparently caused the departure of long-serving bassist Pete Way. Now a four piece, UFO still have a full hard rock sound (keyboards more to the fore on this one) thats always slick and reliable, but rarely exhilarating. Old school product: all technique and little inspiration. Tank have the "let's get pissed and rock out" approach. Their second album is less of a Motorhead clone than the first. Rough and ready, fast and drunken, but hardly compelling. New school product: all enthusiasm and no finesse. CC Ric Ocasek, Beatitude (Geffen) Because the band was always so decidedly his vehicle this album seems less a case of driving solo than simply varying the team. Although, considering his impressive work with Romeo Void (among others), one might have expected a somewhat tougher sound in the shift up to selfproduction. Instead it remains distinctly Cars: more dense perhaps, certainly darker overall, but that just makes those minimalist melodies all the more hypnotic when they hook. A pity it breaks down early into Side Two. PT Peter Tosh, Mama Africa (EMI) Tosh's ego apparently lets him think he can release any kind of porridge and someone will buy it. While remaining ideologically sound, he kills every track with piles of unnecessary overdubs, obviously aimed at the soft underbelly of America. Only a couple of the songs survive this heavyhanded approach. His remake of 'Johnny B. Goode' is either a sick joke or a shot at a hit single'.DC T-Bone Burnett Trap Door (Warner Bros) Despite the name, T-Bone Burnett is far from blues. Maybe the name's a gag. The six songs on the 12-inch EP represent him as a less impassioned shadow of Mink DeVille. He delivers his material in a tone of hurt romanticism. The sound is crisp, pared down, but perhaps a little polite. Promising all the same. KW Elvis Presley All the Best From Elvis (Starcall) The title's a misnomer, of course. Any Elvis compilation that includes nothing from the early Sun sessions nor such later gems as 'My Baby Left Me' and 'lf I Can Dream' is no best of in my book. Still, this collection touches most of the bases. It's a good overview of Elvis' career that means it's got both the junk and the genius of the man: both 'American Trilogy' and 'Such A Night'. The definitive Elvis collection has yet to be devised but All The Best treads a fair line between Elvis' best-loved songs and his real best. The schlock and the essentials (or enough of them, anyway) are .both here. AD Missing Persons Spring Session M (Capitol) Terry Bozzio drummed for Zappa. His sister bunnied for Playboy and wanted a shot at singing. Together, in Hollywood, they formed Missing Persons. His playing is robust and vigorous. Her image is post-punk Barbarella. It's all so calculated. For about half the album it also works. A few tracks come on like 80s style early Blondie pop trash with precision. A couple of others even recall the energy of late 70s English bands. The rest is awful. PT

From time to time you hear people whinging about the record sales charts (for those of you over thirty, the 'hit parade') being a big swindle, ie subject to manipulation, chart hypes, etc. You actually hear less of this sort of thing than you used to, as a result of increasing hipness to the fact that these days most of the monkey business is carried out by our dearly beloved kiwi independents and after all who wants to cast nasturtiums at the very people whose parties they hope to be invited to. Which is all a bit beside the point since the subject of this month's exciting, and subliminally sensuous column is TV ratings. Now here we have one of the most transparently fiddleable, pseudo measures of public taste ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting and therefore probably deserving, public. And yet no-one whinges. But consider for a moment the fact that you probably spend as many hours each week watching garbage on the tube as you do listening to garbage on commercial radio. And the prime time programming of so much garbage is justified by reference to the ratings. But looking from the other end of the equation. Prime time is called prime time because that is when most people will be watching and therefore whatever is on in prime time is going to rate pretty well. Regardless of what TVNZ chooses to screen at prime time the ratings will prove that it is what the public wants to see. When last checked upon an especially witless Ocker soap called Young Doctors rated first, second, third, fourth and seventh most popular show for the week. This is a show we all watch because it is on at 6pm but wouldn't be bothered with at all if it was on at 10pm (and most of us would rather see something else at 6 anyway). But so long as it keeps topping the ratings were stuck with it. So what can you do about it? Not a lot, unless you happen to be one of the chosen few who happen to be interviewed in the ratings survey. If you are then you can tell lies and pretend not to have watched things that you did watch but really know, deep down in the inner most recesses of your soul (whoops buzz-word), are a pile of shit. Even that may not have much effect but at least it should.be fun, which is more than can be said for watching most of the prime time programmes. TVNZ is rumoured to be starting a new local show. The concept (man!) is that people with unusual talents/experiences will perform or tell their tale (as appropriate) before a studio audience. The show is to be called That's Quite Interesting Really.