Records

Rip It Up, Issue 110, 1 September 1986, Page 28

Records

Neil Young Landing on Water rGeffen Neil Young’s output in the 1980 s has been a perplexing mixture covering a vast spectrum of popular music. Trans combined synthesised electronics with scorching rock, Everybody's Rockin’ rejoiced in old rockabilly favourites, and Old Ways found Young on safe ground with country originals and old classics, a course charted in the 70s- by albums such as Comes a Time:

Landing on Water continues Young’s eclecticism which has largely contributed to the waning of his popularity. Combining some of his vintage guitar solos with Danny Kortchmar on synthesisers to layer the sound, Young delivers an uncompromising album which firmly cements for him a relevance in the 1980 s. Many of the songs are brutal salvos given added impetus by the garage type production and the overlays of wild phasing, as if some madman had taken control of the monitors. Side one contains most of the album’s highlights. ‘Weight of the

World’ lurches from speaker to speaker in an audio celebration; ‘Violent Side’, featuring the San Francisco Boys Chorus, evokes memories of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, ‘Hippie Dream’ savages old myths and will surprise, ‘Bad News Beat’ and ‘Touch the Night’ capture much of the blackness of the electric side of Rust Never Sleeps. Side two has less appeal but contains the excellent ‘Hard Luck Stories’.

Whether Landing on Water enables Young to recapture a signifi-

cant following remains to be seen, as there is little here that will get the thumbs up from commercial radio. Diehards will revel in this counterpunching return, and it is to be hoped that a wider audience will investigate the very considerable merits of an artist who has found a new relevance in the 1980 s. You too will be singing along with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. Dave Perkins Sigue Sigue Sputnik Flaunt It Parlophone "Music” reviewers of the world have united in universal horror at this, the NME hacks went into overdrive. This is meaningless, this is stupid, this is so teenage, this is offensive, ad infinitum. A hunk of vinyl devoid of the big A, dangling its artlessness with gusto. So beautifully offensive. Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage wrote, "The young today live mythically and in depth," and SSS wallow in . the mire of myth. Images from the past collide with those of the present, a collection from the trash heap of popular culture. The rock and roll of Cochran, T Rex and Gary Glitter, merge with Moroder’s Euro mix ups of sound.

Myth piles upon myth —make my day — ultra vixen, sex and rockets, shot it up” — as the global village starts to crumble down.

An album about technology made by technocrats (“the fifth generation of rock and roll”) trying to be sex stars or thrill killers. Perhaps one of the funniest albums ever made, such artifice becomes farcical, and comic cut-ups abound in the ultra dumb lyrics of stuff like ‘She’s My Man’ — ‘‘Desperate loving made me blind. She’s my oriental love, now she’s two of a kind ..." With pop music entering a new era of fervent respectability (“Dire Straights” as the new gods, and U2 treated like the sermon from the mount), it sure is good to have SSS reminding us that pop music is just the acceptable face of capitalism. Kerry Buchanan Chaka Khan Destiny Warner Bros With 1984’s I Feel For You, Chaka Khan and producer Arif Mardin hit on a style that was as eclectic as it was accessible. With Melle Mai man Reggie Griffith, they laced the R&B formula with chugging rap, sampled crescendoes and music concrete. Cha-

ka’s mature delivery and Mardin’s self-confessed fascination with crossover styles ensured that / Feel For You still sounds as fresh as a daisy. Destiny sounds less exciting. It lacks the strong songs for Chaka to hang her hat on and it feels more predictable, more weighty. Everyone else, from the Art of Noise to Janet Jackson, has been swotting up I Feel For You since it came out and the “innovators” have caught up. Having said that, Chaka falls back on the one thing she has over everyone — experience. Only an old pro can wrap herself convincingly around songs like ‘I Can’t Be Loved’ and ‘Earth to Mickey’, and no one, but no one can pull the stops out like Chaka does on ‘Watching the World’. From the credits, it’s apparent that she has done nothing but sing the songs which other people have written for her, but with the glowing heart of herself and no one else. There is none of the production-line feel that plagues her vocals-only rivals. Along with ‘Watching the World’, there is one other gem (wait for it...), ‘Love of a Lifetime’, starring none other than Messrs. Gartside, Gamson. and Maher of Scritti Politti. Five years ago,

Green was a skinny Manchester prat who dreamed of Chaka Khan — now he writes her songs. A lot of stodge, but a lot of Chaka as well — and it’s the latter that counts. Maybe she should call it Density. What the hell, I’m still in love. Chad Taylor Screaming Blue Messiahs Gun-Shy WEA Mention British R&B and odds on some old head will dredge up memories of old lags like Alexis Korner, John Mayall, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, early great Fleetwood Mac, permanent bores Status Quo and Dr Feelgood, and the occasionally tasty Count Bishops. All in all a fairly dull lineage, until the Screaming Blue Messiahs. Driven by a resentment that owes more to punk than to any old blues traditions and led out front by Bill Carter’s songs, guitar and Joe Strummer snarl, the Screaming Blue Messiahs career along on a well-oiled dance-floor groove courtesy of Thompson (bass) and Harris (drums). As a guitarist Carter doesn’t fall into the cliched have-riff-will-beat-it-to-death mentality — the almighty opener, ‘Wild Blue

Yonder’ is the nearest he comes to that. Instead he varies the angle of attack from the undercurrent menace in ‘Twin Cadillac Valentine’s’ rolling thunder to the delicate introductory flicks of ‘Talking Doll’ and the more orthodox bump ’n’ grind of 'Holiday Head’ and ‘Smash the Market Place’.

Last year’s mini-LP Good and Gone suggested that the band had the required grit to go places. The cover of Gun-Shy may be offtarget, but don’t you believe it, the Screaming Blue Messiahs have it fixed so’s they can’t miss. George Kay Joe Jackson Big World A&M Joe Jackson’s work nearly always shows intelligence. It sometimes also shows considerable talent. Consider Big World. For a start it’s got a smart concept: a collection of songs set in (and once or twice influenced by) various areas of the globe. There’s an overall theme of internationalism, rather than simply travel, which is carried through to a lyric booklet in five languages. Another simple and sensible approach involves the album’s length at three sides. After all, why not release more than two sides if you’ve got the material and why go to a double album if that would mean padding? But most intelligent of all is the recording technique. Jackson has long been critical of the artificiality of much modern record production — check the last album’s sleeve notes for example — while at the same time respecting the greater accuracy of current technology. Hence Big World was recorded live in (silent) concert, direct to two-track digital master without subsequent mixing or overdubs. So what we hear stands exposed in both unadorned fidelity and optimum clarity. If only some other big recording names were willing to risk themselves in the same way. Okay, so much for the intelligence, how about the talent? Well, the four-piece band acquits itself with exemplary skill. Also, while not forsaking the piano, Jackson has generally returned to a guitarcentred sound. Unfortunately however, his voice is laid bare in all its potential nasal yowling. A vocal

technique which was once appropriate to the post-punk aggression of his early work is often now wincingly inadequate for much of his more ambitious recent writing. There are a few tracks here I’d like re-recorded with another singer. Of greater concern is the paucity of really memorable songs. Jackson used to write superbly catchy tunes with words that made serious points via wittily described scenarios. Here we’re mostly given strained or mundane melodies with lyrics that are merely earnest. Not always though. There’s a handful of successful tracks — but only enough for one side, not three. All of which, on balancing the evidence of Joe Jackson’s intelligence with his talent, means Big World is an album I generally admire but only occasionally enjoy. Peter Thomson Lynyrd Skynyrd Gold and Platinum MCA Until their tragic demise in 1977, Skynyrd were probably the hottest band in the States at that time. After a string of gold and platinum albums, the band were embarking on their in-aptly titled Street Survivors tour until a few trees got in the way of their low flying plane, paying the ultimate price for their wreckless rock’n’roll lifestyle. Believe me, the stories are true — I met a survivor.

Who knows where they’d be today. With all their internal feudin’ and a fightin’, it’s doubtful if they’d still be the force to be reckoned with, if they were still intact that is. The splinter groups that evolved later weren’t a patch on the original, and although Ronnie Van Zandt’s brothers tried to keep up the cause with 38 Special and the Donnie Van Zandt Band, they weren’t a patch on their brother. What we’ve got left is a legacy in the form of this album, probably passe to a true Skynyrd fan, but essential to anyone who might’ve missed them at the time, and for me a lot of good memories, especially the night I saw them blow Golden Earring off the stage in London on their first European tour. I’ll never forget that. Skynyrd, RIP. Greg Cobb