Records

Rip It Up, Issue 80, 1 March 1984, Page 24

Records

The Blam Blam Blam Story With Guests the Netherworld Dancing Toys CBS Records are funny things. On the nights concerned here NDT in some ways equalled and even bettered the reunited Blams with happy, horny rock-soul but on cold- vinyl they're left some distance behind. The feel of NDT hasn't been adequately projected on to record and while there is plenty of inspiration present (Bored to Death', 'The Moment is Magic') it still sounds, a little half-baked. That said, this is actually a pretty good live recording - it just suffers from lying back-to-back with one as fine as the Blams'.

The old songs ('Luxury Length', Marsha', 'No Depression') come across well, particularly a militant version of the last, featuring a jaunty horn line that recalls how well Calhoun and Clouston were used in the enlarged lineup. But it's the two new songs that really make an impression. 'Agency' was the Blams' last new song before The Crash - it's a beautifully paced song, immersed on all fronts with a deadpan humour that's deadly serious. It would have made a great single. The Beach on 42nd St' is another

story altogether. It's melancholic and slow, with an atmosphere that can only be described as desolate. Don McGlashan goes below his usual pitch to make a magnificent vocal performance, cut through by slashes of guitar from Mark Bell. And this was live. A compelling song.

If it's sad that the Blams officially called a halt with these new horizons beckoning then it's also heartening to be shown that they were good enough to carry on and develop had circumstances allowed it. This was not a death of entropy. Russell Brown The Undertones All Wrapped Up EMI It's musical appreciation time as we trace the recording pedigree of the Undertones a path that achingly, serenely wanders through those halcyon days of 1978 to 1983. Fearless Feargal and his inimitable warble, along with the skills of his band, entertain with 13 songs lacking any form of pretention. Unique! You get the early numbers like Teenage Kicks,' and Get over You', not to mention the spartan thrust of the masterful You Got My Number'. Woe is the Undertone heart that has not loved In

youth! The collection of multi-coloured chapters of Side One, half-funny, half-sad, ideal and simple, is replaced by a greater sophistication and thoughtfulness on Side Two. This is no more apparent

than in It's Going to Happen’ and the swelling 'Julie Ocean'. The Undertones began to extend their punctilious pop approach to reach out for a greater depth and intricacy. Although they were never a raving commercial success they triumphed because they made no excuse for muddle and laxity, what they wrote was incisive and organised. In an age where f l- ' d conformity was as logical defecation the Undertones obeyed no norms but their own. All Wrapped Up is a fitting tribute, a compilation sublime. S.J. Townshend. Violent Femmes Big Time A fucking good slice of the best rock'n'roll songs we have concern themselves with late adolescence/ early adulthood gems like Summertime Blues', 'Teenage Kicks', 'Real Cool Time', 'Sixteen', Seventeen', 'Astral Plane' ...

It's a wonderful vein to tap into but also one you can make an awful prat of yourself at. The pain's gotta be genuine. Milwaukee's Violent Femmes are the real thing. Twenty-year-old Gordon Gano has a voice that squeezes into the narrow gap between his soulbuddy Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed. He can sound both petulant and tender. Petulant on Add It Up', a coarse, nay visceral, tale of unwitting virginity and perfectly tender on the disarmingly beautiful Good Feeling' ("Slippin’ and slidin'/What a good time/But now

1 have to find a bed/That can take this weight As well as guitar he plays an aching violin that almost seems like an extension of his singing. ’ ~ But if the Femmes are soft here they're mostly boisterous. Brian Ritchie plays a thumping, acoustic, rockabilly-style bass guitar and Victor de Lorenzo beats classic white-boy drums on most tracks. The single Gone Daddy Gone' rocks in a fashion that makes the Stray Cats look .very, very silly.

All this might not be possible were it not for Mark van Hecke's sympathetic, non-interfering production. At a time when pop sometimes seems in danger of drowning in its own excrement this is a refreshing debut. If this

record can t draw a smile from

you, you haven got a face. Russell Brown David Bowie , Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture RCA Last year was open season on David Bowie, almost every critic got in on’ the turkey shoot of Let's Dance and on the populist flavour of his live.world tour. , Sure. 1983 was a step into the arena of the mediocre for Bowie but Lets Dance wasn't that bad, (after all it made 13 in NME s Top Albums of last year, wow) and this double live album gave us his last performance as Ziggy Stardust (July 3, 1973) providing the layman with the gear on The Way Things

Were... or, in my days, sonny, he sounded like this....' ' The album bears all the hallmarks of a record company milking the artist; the concert, after all, was over 10 years ago, the sound quality is dodgy (particularly Side A), there's no historical info on the sleeve and it's the soundtrack to a film, so the music comes second.

- But hang on, Sides B and D save it from being a tatty fanzine. You can talk of glam and flash these days arid people mumble 'hippie, nostalgia'. Sure it's nostalgia but listening again to the hollow, sleazy but captivating grandeur of 'Moonage Daydream', 'White Light';; 'Let's Spend the Night Together' and 'Rock'n'Roll Suicide' reminds you that these songs were once decadence epics. And Mick Ronson once played guitar. Ziggy Stardust is hardly compulsive 1984 fare.and there's no substitute for the studio albums of that period, but it does convey a glimpse of the man that was glam. George Kay The Glove Blue Sunshine Poly dor ; - ' , The Glove are Robert 'Smith (sometime Cure, and resident Banshees' guitarist) and Steve Severin (Banshees' bassist). Blue Sunshine is a project (ie, one-off) where Smith and Severin play around in a studio and come up with a set of thoroughly forge

table ditties. • Most of the songs are in the Sergeant Peppers psychedelic vein with the -Banshees' stamp firmly imprinted on them. 'Mr Alphabet Says' is a typical example. • Although Smith does sing, most of the singing is done by an uncredited Siouxsie soundalike. When Smith does "sing" it's that tortured voice of the late Cure style that whines out of the speakers. Early Cure never had such a whinging tone and 1 just find it unbearable. . The few tracks that rise above the general din are substandard Banshees' material (Punish Me With Kisses', ‘Like An Animal'). If they weren't good enough for a Banshees' album, they shouldn't have been recorded. Stephen Grace John Lennon and Yoko Ono Milk and . Honey A Heart Play Polydor Dear John, I'm still sorry you’re dead but look mate, I think it’s about time you stopped releasing records. Yeah, 1 know Hendrix's been doing it posthumously for 14 years, but rumour has it there's three or four albums worth of your stuff in "the vaults" and, really, y'know, if it's in there, surely theres a good reason and maybe somebody should burn it. 1 mean, there’s four songs 1 can live happily with on this companion to Doable Fantasy and most of Yoke’s stuff is real listenable, but it's getting a little creepy. Necrofiller. It’s great ,to hear your voice

loosening up again and your lyrics are mostly pretty good and the melodies, although increasingly simplistic, are still captivating, but the worms are licking yer bones. Maybe just a single every coupla years. The good songs on Milk and Honey would work better as singles - remember what you

said about Imagine collection of singles." Reach out with your earth-eaten intellect and tell your wife to quit it while you're ahead, Just. And tell her that another interview album like A Heart Play, important as some of the expressed ideas are, and you'll spin out of your grave, awful revenge in mind, stalk through Polydor's lucred halls and scare the faecal

matter out of their fatuous financial blowholes. But what do 1 know? Maybe you really crave immortality, but you're in less danger of losing it if you keep your mouth shut. Your long-time fan, »'

Chris Knox P.S. Yeah, right. I'm not gonna sell the fucking albums but that says more about my nostalgia than their quality.

Various Artists Atlantic Records History of Rhythm and Blues Vocal Groups Cat Records Doo wop, or rhythm and blues vocal singing, as Tim Hauser, the compiler of this record prefers to call it, is basically a silly genre. I guess it has something to do with four adults making nonsense noises in the background while another declares his undying passion. There's something innately dumb in it. Some of the songs collected here are in fact transcendently silly, like the Bobbettes' Mr Lee', some are intentionally silly, like Leiber • and Stoller's comic material , for the

Robins and the Coasters and some (like the Drifters tracks) just totally transcend silliness by virtue of sheer skill and emotional bravado. The likes of Sha Na Na have plundered and debased a lot of this material by seizing only on the' silly aspects and ignoring the artistry involved. So this excellent compilation affords a rare opportunity to give the Drifters, the

Coasters, the Chords, the Cardinals, the Royal Jokers and the Robins the hearing they deserve. Alastair DougaL, Mink De Ville Where Angels Fear To Tread Atlantic There is some justice. Willy De Ville, once one of. the brightest hopes on the late 70s scene, appeared to be in danger of being consigned to the carwash. But, no, after a wilderness period in which he continued to make good music, he . has resurfaced on Atlantic Records. What better? Atlantic is the Spiritual home of the bleeding heart, street corner ballads which he handles so deftly. Melodrama is a staple of Willy De Ville's style (remember the "I'm bad like Jesse James" stance of 'Gunslinger'; remember Ben E. King's best moments?), but usually he manages to avoid excess. Songs such as River Of Tears' or the surgingly Latin 'Demaisiado Corazon (Too Much Heart)' are songs of (dare one say_it?) heart. Teardrop ballads are Willy's real bag, but he does fine on uptempo stuff, too. 'Lilly's Daddy's Cadillac' (Willy wrote this and nine of the album's 10 songs) is especially good, a sinewy funky groove underpinning corner-of-the-mouth mean-teen lyrics. Welcome back, Willy. Ken Williams Jah Wobble, Holger Czukay, The Edge Snakecharmer Island Ah, supergroups: From the stillsoarfng' Byrds comes "Wobble" Crosby to join Steve Czukay from Germany's late, lamented Buffalo Springfield and "The Hedges" from Ireland's, harmonising hicks, the Hollies. As advertised on Woodstock, the boys are up to the minute, trading instrumental licks to dazzle the listener and making

new fans from old. Gone are the old-fashioned virtues of their previous bands (after all, can you too swallow this.bitter pill?) to be replaced by wonderful new anonimity. Yea folks, the band is called by their names but you'd, never know they were present! Isn't that so modern. Just like everybody else. And you : just know : that when "Strummer" ' Young from fabled but flawed rhinocerous Clashpad joins up the sparks will really start to fly. C. Minus. This note was found in a bottle addressed to the Music Editor of Rolling Stone. We present it here as a public service and a reminder of how lucky we are not to be living . through the era of. the supergroup.) Chris Knox The Cure Japanese Whispers Fiction Have you listened to Robert Smith recently? He whines - truly! I learned this while listening to Japanese Whispers, a collection of-the Cure's recent singles. . In between Let's Go To Bed' the first song - and The Lovecats' the last song is mush, and these two are the only ones of any note. Bed' being the best thing the Cure, have done since Primary' and the latter being quite different jazz-blues has not been a Cure trademark. As for the rest well, there’s that whine again and Smith's "tormented artist stuck in an institution" (as portrayed .in The Walk ) is just silly. I ll bet he's no fun at parties, and this record ‘■definitely won t be.' Fiona Rae Van Halen 1984 Warner Bros

For a moment here I thought I'd been given the wrong album. Listening to the huge, orchestral-

type synthesiser intro my . mind immediately sprang to pompous twits like Asia or godforsakeit Yes. But no folks, this is just good ol' Van Halen havin' a bit of fun - and not only that, this is their best effort since. Women and Children First. 'Jump' is the single of the year so far and could take a lot of beating. 'Panama' is VH at their dirty best pounding bass and drums, dangerous guitar from Edward and el sleazo vocals courtesy David Lee Roth. Top Jimmy' and 'Drop Dead Legs' complete Side One, both OK tracks. Side Two kicks off with 'Hot For the Teacher', with suitably questionable lyrics. 'l'll Wait', 'Girl Gone Bad' and, wait for it, 'House of Tain' are three VH classics. - . No silly cover versions a la the forgettable Diver Down • either. This, album is great American Heavy Rock from a band I'd dearly love to see] live. Greg Cobb