LIVE

Rip It Up, Issue 192, 1 July 1993, Page 33

LIVE

LUCINDA WILLIAMS JIMMY LAFAVE Gluepot July 5 With the sold out signs out weeks before showtime and the addition of Austin legend Jimmy Lafave, this was always promising to be a great evening. Unfortunately I missed local (and extremely early) openers the Lorina Harding Band, though word was it was a fine debut for this talented singer/ songwriters' full eight piece lineup. Lafave—accompanied only by a bassist/ harmonica player wove a dark and awesome magic from his very first song (one of his best) 'Desperate Men'. Ballads especially are Lafave's srong suit and on 'Don't Walk Away Renee', 'One Angel', and 'The Darkest Side of Midnight' Lafave proved what a lot of us had suspected all along — here is one of the finest white soul voices to come along in quite some time. His stage manner, like much of his material, was intense and the comparisons to Van Morrison were for once not wide of the mark. Lucinda had quite a task ahead of her to top Lafave's performance and she played a long and often brilliant show. You could do little wrong with songs as good as 'Passionate Kisses', 'I Just Wanted To See You So Bad' and 'Never Got Enough Love' on the set list and despite being almost upstaged at times by the tasteful playing of guitarist Gurf Morlix, Lucinda impressed throughout. A new song 'All I Want' augured well for the next album. Looking rather more frail than her last visit here one wondered at times (to steal a line from Paul Kelly) if her big heart was going to break her little body; a heart she literally played out. Lafave was called back on stage for an encore of Dylan's 'Posivitely Fourth Street' (whose influence seemed to be be everywhere tonight) — the encores by this stage seeming to last as long as the set proper but no-one was complaining about that. Lucinda's version of Nick Drake's 'Which Will' was a real highlight tonight — sung with a palpable sense of loss and suggested Lucinda's world was perhaps not as sweet offstage as it seemed on. A show of this quality only whets the appetite for Real Groovy Promotions next tour which brings Bo Ramsey and Greg Brown downunder. GREG FLEMING MELON FARMER BALL Sammys, Dunedin, June 26 With the age limit now reduced to 16, Sammy's was flooded with impressionable youngsters — most of them had that starryeyed glow of excitement you get when you first start seeing bands with your own eyes and any live act is alright. To this lot, for all they care, the Chills are what you get before pneumonia and the Dead C is sorta near Isreal. As for the five bands that did their thing, whether any of them are the true heirs or merely young pretenders to the local F. Nun/ X-Way kingpins remains to be seen. My Deviant Daughter got the ball rolling, or tried to, but their screeching post-punk miasma was hampered by numerous technical problems before finishing with a staid, perfunctory version of 'Sister Ray'. What the Webbsters lack in excitement they more than make up for in tedium. The last

third of their set was where the sparks began to fly and their sound finally showed some verve, vividness and vitality. Obviously the Webbsters can write pop songs no sweat, they just need to use their imagination more freely. From the Webbsters we go to Kid Eternity. The Kids are alright and feature three urchins our front plus a weirdo called Prong on drums. Their first song lyrically plagiarizes the Ramones 'Now I Wanna Go Down the Basement' while the fuzzed-out blur that follows has a more recent American influence in its blitzkrieg bop. As a result they're going in the right direction with their infectious, buzzing noise pop. Also, any band that writes tribute songs to Krunchie the Clown and Naked Gun has their heads screwed on properly. Age of Dog may have the worst moniker, but they had the strangest songs. A year ago they were playing dubious, banal, hardcore by numbers. Since then it's gradually transcended into something astonishingly beyond that. Their songs are sensuous, unpretentious and vibrant. Each one rides a swaying wave of heavy impact distortion that gives way to a trickling melody, deceptively soothing before heading back into the fray. Age of Dog are cool cats — theirs is an evocative and alluring approach. People were literally running on to the dancefloor five seconds into Munky Kramp's set. The attraction is obvious: classy, surging funk-pop rhythms setting a relentless basic groove combined with the fervent wail of front person Demarnia who dances as if she's on an invisible pogo stick. The guitar pyrotechnics were too flashy and excessive in some songs and the guitarist should learn not to fire all his bullets in one round. Apart from this Munky Kramp have dancey, catchy, inventive songs. GRANT MCDOUGALL SUZANNE VEGA Auckland Town Hall, June 29 Suzanne Vega's first visit here back in 1987 was something of a disappointment. The rockiest band nigh on swamped her soft voice and introspective songs. This time she had a different outfit and it made all the difference. Bass, drums, guitar and keyboards could go storming well beyond the semi-industrial clatter of, say, 'Blood Makes Noise' if required. Yet they could also enhance the delicacies of 'Small Blue Thing' with subtle harmonic shadings and discreet punctuation. It was a tightly unified group that restricted individual virtuosity to designated instrumental breaks, never once overwhelming the woman at stage centre. Led by wunderkind Mitchell Froom on keyboards it inspired both the singer and her audience. On the faster numbers Vega’s sharply strummed acoustic guitar set up tensions that were perfectly complemented by the surging grooves behind her. Song after song was rendered more exciting than the original recording and Vega, generally considered a colourless vocalist, sang with a commitment that bordered on passion. Her cheerful confidence was obvious throughout the evening — and not just when fronting the band. There were a couple of charming a capella spots (with the audience sing-

ing the refrain to 'Tom's Diner' and managing to clap on the backbeat!). Then there was her delightfully droll between-song chat, often joking with the dancers down front (After a quiet, acoustic piece she asked, "You guys alright? I invited you to dance but I didn't say it would be easy.")

Sometimes a concert will surprise by being quite different from expectations. Vega and her amazing band gave me an evening that far exceeded anything I'd hoped for. It was one of those concerts that if you weren't there you'll probably never credit just how good it was. All that and Neil Finn joined her for an encore too. PETER THOMSON LUNG, FATAL JELLY SPACE, RAKE Pelican, June 25 At about 10 o'clock the Pelican is basically empty and Rake, a Palmerston North three piece responsible for a few compilation tracks and a seven inch single full of the yellowest, most poisonous bile currently stinking in the whole horrible country, are almost due to go on stage. Great, this is the same place that's regularly packed out for ska covers bands; Aucklanders show off their legendary discretion once again. Eventually a semi-respectable number of people drift through the door and Rake start playing. Before I'd ever heard them I'd hoped they were named in honour of the 18th century libertine rather than the common garden implement, but now I have to admit that the latter’s more appropriate; their noise churns up your brain till it's soft and compliant and the Albini-hatted singer has the demeanour of a psychopath who's been allowed to tend the asylum garden as a special privilege. "We're from Palmerston North," he explains, several times. I don't know if any more metaphors exist for this kind of music: immense physical power sustained over forty minutes by structured and textural variation (although more slow bits would be good); there's a lot of it about and it's possible to be bored with it but Rake do it

exceptionally well and it's also possible to be addicted. Of course by the time Fatal Jelly Space appear the place is almost full: give an Auckland audience something familiar and they'll lap it up like dogs. Not that that's the band's fault, but if you don't already know what they sound like you've been living in a cave (or an outlying suburb, shortly to be floated out to sea) for the last four years. Yes that's right, drums and bass that ring in your skull for days, guitar and keyboards manoeuvering more quietly, suspiciously, an unsettling overlap between "funny" and "serious". I trust that those of you capable of forming an opinion have decided whether you're "for" or "against" them by now. ' * - Either I'd forgotten what Lung were like since they , last played here (in a half-empty, half-rapturous Boardwalk Bar last year) or since they set out to colonise the Northern Hemisphere .they've been transformed from a very good live band with a blood-curdling guitar sound into something really unusual, less a single organ than an entire writhing, oily body. Overseas reviews comparing them to early Swans etc always seemed a bit farfetched, they were still too much a guitar band, albeit a sleek, futuristic one, but now those comparisons make some kind of sense; the guitar still wreaks havoc in the upper frequencies but the samples are more ambitious than before and it's the cruel, unstinting polyrhythms that really dominate. They played some old stuff and some new stuff and generally stretched endurance to the limit then they played 'Sleep' and 'Compellor' and the weight and strangeness of the sound was like nothing coming from an Auckland stage since the last days of Skeptics. The two commerce/ rugby vermin who'd • been at the front shouting witty things like 'ziggy ziggy ziggy oi bi bi" through the whole set , surrendered unconditionally. A good night's, entertainment, you might say.

MATTHEW HYLAND