BACKBEAT

Rip It Up, Issue 225, 1 May 1996, Page 28

BACKBEAT

I don’t know who the person in Paul Kelly’s songs is, but he sure spends a lot of time in the sack (‘Everybody Wants to Touch Me’, ‘Just Like Animals’, etc). Live at the Continental and the Esplanade (White) sees Kelly on his home turf of Melbourne, where there are four seasons in each day but the clock on the silo always reads 11 degrees. The band is virtually the same as he brought here recently — like a more sophisticated Messengers — driven by the melodic riffs of ex-Was Not Was guitarist Randy Jacobs. Kelly pushes them through a range of dynamics, with songs dating back" to Gossip : guitar rock (‘Pouring Water’), sensitive social comment (‘Maralinga’) and his trademark narrative ballads (‘To Her Door’). Satisfaction is guaranteed, if not surprises. Taj Mahal can also be relied on to deliver, in his role as the hip lecturer in R&B101. Phantom Blues (BMG) is like an improved version of his recent Dancing the Blues — a mix of originals and R&B standards — but here

his enthusiasm is palpable and contagious. Tributes are paid to Doc Pomus, Fats Domino, Freddie King, and Ray Charles, but three of the best are the most recent: a spirited gospel duet with Bonnie Raitt, a swampy Pat McLaughlin tune, and Taj’s own lyrical opener. Taj is like a black Ry Cooder (they worked together in the 60s) who turns enthnomusicology . into an education in song and dance. Blues little-leaguer Jimmy Witherspoon sits in with white fretfryer Robben Ford’s band for Live,at the Mint (On the Spot/BMG). The LA blues venue witnesses Witherspoon’s voice (like BB King in need of a gargle) on his own songs and well-worn standards such as ‘CC Rider’, ‘Stormy Monday’ and ‘Ain't Nobody’s Business’. Despite Ford’s lyrical guitar, the music is held back by its 'adherence to genre and its lethargic pace (at nine minutes, the opener ‘Goin’ Down Slow’ is too damn slow). They like to sweat in Cuba, to music that has stood still since the revolution in 1959, .It is played at frenetic pace, ahead of the beat, the opposite of the behind-the-beat languor of their neighbours in New Orleans. They also play slightly sharp, so on Jesus Alemany’s Cubanismo! (Hannibal/Rykodisc) his trumpet sounds shrill and the rhythms get. relentless. But this primer of Latin music shows salsa isn’t just something to have with crackers; the salsa, chacha, rumba, conga and bossa nova influenced ’sos R&B and is preserved to this day by cultural blockades. Here, leading expatriate musicians pay homage to the rhythmically complex music of their homeland. If all commie music was this lively, the wall may never have fallen. Frank Zappa mined endless musical veins; the beautifully packaged Lost Episodes (Rykodisc) features the results of his own archaeology dig. From his archives come snippets of high school jazz and orchestral scores, fart jokes, tributes to avant garde composers such as Webern, Varese and Xenakis, snot jokes, doowop parodies, TV themes, slacker dialogue and early Captain Beefheart throat clearing. Mostly recorded between 1957 and 1972, it’s like scanning the dial inside Zappa’s brain: fascinating for devotees, hard going for neophytes. .

JAMES BOOKER