Roadrunner 3(10) November 1980

Jello Biafra

EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Donald Robertson ADVERTISING MANAGER: Lyn Saunders (08) 42 3040 SYDNEY EDITOR: Stuart Coupe (02) 569 8964 MELBOURNE EDITOR: Adrian Ryan (03) 347 3991 BRISBANE: Eff Sharp PERTH: Kim W illiams LONDON: Keith Shadwick, Chris W illis, Chris Salewicz NEW ZEALAND: Jenny Rankine USA: Larry Buttrose CONTRIBUTORS: Stan Coulter, Toby Creswell, Goose, Tyrone Flex, Span Hanna, David Langsam, Elly McDonald, Richard McGregor, Adrian M iller, Peter Nelson, Peter Page, Suzie W alton, Sue W ylie.

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TYPESETTING: East End Typographies

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ROADRUNNER Page 2

Malicious Gossip Malicious Gossip Malicious Gossip

Welcome back to the post election world, folks.

A world run by millionaire graziers, geriatric cow­ boys, iron ladies and what! Ohmygod, Michael Manley lost the Jamaican election too! There goes Bob Marley's chance of a knighthood . ..

Keeping things on a political note The Birthday Party (they'll get my vote anyday) are due back in the country at the end of November (their first show is at the Crystal Ballroom, Melbourne on Nov. 22) and leave the U.K. with their first release on the 4AD label over there sitting quite prettily at No. 3 on the U.K. independent chart. It's called The Friend Catcher and was recorded, as was the up and soon coming album, in Melbourne before they went 0/S. Writing in Sounds (the U.K. paper), Dave McCullough described the song as 'a snarl­ ing, absurdly dark and dramatic song with a grossly overstated horror fascination. It sounds like a very drunk Joy Division'. Drunk, eh? That wouldn't sur­ prise me.

Also over in the U.K. at the moment are Angel City (a.k.a. the Angels) fresh from getting the boot from the Kinks U.S.A. tour for upstaging the Muswell hillbillies. It was along the West Coast leg of the tour that the audiences started going 'over the top' as they say in the biz, with the San Diego concert being the straw that broke the Kinks' back.

After their Eurojaunt with Cheap Trick the Angels will be returning to the States for a headlining tour of small (2,000-5,000 seaters) venues (no-one else in the country will have 'em as support any more, boo, hoo) which will take them up to Christmas.

And it looks as if stablemates Cold Chisel will be following in the Angels' footsteps by heading to the States in April, to co-incide with the release of the East album over there. There's to be a double live album in this country early next year too. And on Chisel's up and coming national tour which kicks off on 30th November at the University of N.S.W. Roundhouse, they have chosen as support, on four of the dates, Adelaide aboriginal band No Fixed Ad­ dress. The dates are. Uni. of.N^S.W., Family Inn Rydalmere on Dec. 16th, Melbourne Showground on Dec. 18th and Adelaide Uni. on Dec. 20th.

No Fixed Address and fellow aboriginal band. Us Mob, have meanwhiles almost completed shooting a road movie, as yet untitled, based on the lives and adventures of the members of the two bands. The film is expected to go on general release early next year.

The Dead Kennedys, whose debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables has just been releas­ ed in this country by Missing Link, could be touring here early next year. Whooppee! FioHday in Cam­ bodia is my contender for Single of the Year (so far) — it's the best punk single since God Save The Queen. In a recent interview with L.A.'s Slush magazine, singer Jello Biafra had this to say about Holiday. " . . . it's about my solution to the problem of ob­ noxious American college students. After I got out of high school, I delivered pizzas for a while at the University of Colorado. There is nothing but stupid, rich kids. I figure what better fate for them than to go to the middle of Cambodia with none of their defense — no skateboards, no cosmetics, no fancy stereo, nothing. . . " No fancy stereos, Jello?

How're they gonna play your record?

They're-Dropping-Like-Flies Dept: Hot on the heels of John Bonham's premature demise comes the news from England that Steve Took, one half of Tyrannosaurus Rex with the late electric elf himself Marc Bolan, has shuffled off this mortal coil. Took was found dead in his bed in West London. No official reason has yet been given as to the cause of death. Not much has been heard from Took after Bolan replaced him with Mickey Finn in the late six­ ties. He was apparently content to live off royalties from old Tyrannosaurus Rex reissues, and never released anything on his own.

Brisbanites the Go Betweens have had a single released in the U.K. by small Glasgow label. Post­ card. The single / Need Two Heads/Stop Before You Say It was produced by Alex Fergusson, who those of you who are into that sort of thing may remember as Mark Perry's sidekick in Alternative TV. No word on whether the single is to be made available locally.

Visage, the part-time new wave 'supergroup' comprising ex-Magazine, now Banshee guitarist John McGeoch, Magazine bassist Dave Formula, Rich Kids drummer Rusty Egan, Ultravoxers Midge Ure and Billy Currie and the brains behind it all, Steve Strange, have signed to Polydor in the U.K. and are currently recording an album for release later this year.

The Radiators, whose debut album for WEA Australia didn't really recover the massive amount of money the company spent on it (it was mixed and mastered in New York) have left the company and are currently, as they say, 'between record con­ tracts'. It's believed a number of other companies have expressed an interest in the band.

No such trouble with Flowers' Icehouse however. The album is currently No. 1 on Melbourne station 3DB, No. 2 on 3XY and in the top three in all Sydney rpdio station charts. And it passed the gold mark (20,000) after only two weeks of release. Ah, well, I guess we don't get to throw cream pies at Molly after all.

And talking of the bumbling one, Norman Gunston has done a brilliant pisstake of Humdrum (called Normdrum) on the flipside of his latest fab waxing The Kiss Army. So there you go, do your­

Dear Roadrunner,

Dear Roadrunner,

I think Kiss have got no class anymore. Their fans are so devoted that they'll buy any of their albums no matter how much rubbish comes out of the speakers. They already earned enough money to put Elvis to shame and yet they want to make more and more and ...!!? !!

I think this whole Kiss business is getting out of hand. I think they paint all that shit on their faces because they have no real identity of their own. No image that us more choosey punters can relate to.

They're scared to face the actual rock world so they hide behind all that muck. What do they have to of­ fer us in return for our loyalty? Nothing, not much anyway. A fucked up album that doesn't have any style just endlessly boring rock'n'roll. A concert at a place that's so huge that you'd see Kiss like ants and you pay almost double price for a ticket.

They can record an album in a week because they don't have to worry about people liking it or not. Kiss relate to an age group of about 2-16. Very few above that age. God damn it, you're looking at our future punters. How can new groups get a fair chance when Kiss takes away a hell of a lot of the market. And yet they want more. Kiss makes me spew! They even put me off my weeties. There are new bands on the market that produce better sounding tracks, without the fuss of being camera shy.l think they put all that slosh on to keep people like me guessing what sort of creeps are behind it.

World, hear me. I'm concerned for our future generation, what are Kiss doing to this earth? Get them out of here!!

Your concerned Bugs Bunny & Friends

I must be honest and tell you I had never before read Roadrunner, that is before tonight. I am currently "boarding" at one of Her Majesty's less reputable establishments, and here in the last hours of October, I have acquired a copy of your August Roadrunner (better late than never!). Really great straight forward mag, which I find refreshing and reassuring.

I really enjoyed "Heavy Metal & the Garden of Celestial Delights" by Andrew Quaver; it made me quiver with his closing revelation — "It is! It is!

Genesis! The Lamb Lies Down on Broad way!'

What else!

The letter from Damian Young stating of Peter Gabriel — 'T h is man goes from great to greatness with every album" — says it all, but I have one thing to add. If, as the third song on his latest album says, this is only the "start", then I must be there for the "finish". And I'm all strapped in for the journey.

Keep on ragin on, P.C.

Dear Editor, Although I agree with Donald Robert­ son that XTC's Black Sea is a very good album, I think his dismissal of Travels In Nihrion as 'in­ dulgently weird and heavy, nay, turgid' was pom­ pous and patronising. Who the bloody hell uses 'nay' these days? What really gets me is that D.R. claims he likes 'a bit to chew on in an album', and then gives Travels In Nihrion the big A. O.K., the music is monotonous, although I like it because the song shows XTC at their rhythmic best. But even if D.R. can only chew on ideas backed by more con-

self a favour cos it's absolutely racing up the charts. . .

Wonder if the Tourists are going to be staying at the Motels' place while they're both in Australia?

Couldn't resist that one.

Those geriatric folk rockers (well, it's better than cowboys) Steeleye Span have reformed for an album and a U.K. tour. The album is called Saris o f Silver and features the lineup that recorded their most successful album Now We Are Six, which the historically minded may recall featured a guest appearance by the Elephant Man himself, David Bowie, on sax. When asked if he might be lending a hand this time around, Bowie was heard to say, 'I dunno, I have been feeling myself lately'. No wonder, we say, no wonder.

The organisers of New Zealand's Sweetwaters Festival earlier this year (the one that featured Elvis Costello, Split Enz and Mi-Sex) are at it again. The second festival, scheduled for January next year will feature Roxy Music, Mi-Sex and possibly Cold Chisel. And the same bunch are going ahead with plans for a festival just outside Wollongong on the Australia Day weekend too. Should be a blast, cast.

Seems like everyone in Sydney these days is for­ ming an independent label. Latest into the act is Stuart Coupe, whose label Green Records hopes to release a Tactics album before Xmas. Coupe's part­ ner iri the venture is ex-Thought Criminal and Doublethink mainman, Roger Grierson. Coupe has also got a book out. Written with fellow pop music historian Glenn A. Baker, The New Music is a large format, full colour glossy effort, with great pics and I haven't read it yet so I can't comment on the text.

But with two such great minds collaborating, how can it be less than excellent? There's talk of Festival releasing a 20-track compilation album to go with it too. Just the thing for Xmas Mums and Dads!

The Sydney live scene not looking too heatihy at present. The inner city is down to two main venues, the Rockgarden which holds 400 comfortably, but squeezed almost 700 in to see the return of the Saints from overseas, and the Civic, which has always been a sardine tin. The booking agencies are hanging out for the return of the revamped Selina's at Coogee which apparently is going to be able to hold 3,000 people comfortably. One Sydney band creating a bit of a stir around the traps is Mov­ ing Pictures, who don't sound a million miles removed from the Spruce Bruce and the E. Streeters. They actually do a couple of the boss' songs as well as a couple by Van the Man, but the bulk are original and they really rock 'em out.

American fanzine Trouser Press, in particular one Jon Young, caught Jo Jo Zep at the Bottom Line, New York, when the band were over there (As it happens, one of the versions of / Will Return on the Falcons' double single was recorded there). The review started, "W hat can you do for a new band with a dud L.P.? Promote, of course. Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons' Screaming Targets takes Graham Parker and strips away the intelligence, leaving noisy and undistinguished music." Hmmm, torrid stuff. However, he is more kind about the concert, a midday affair in front of competition winners and press. 'T h e boys turned the occasion into a minor triumph. Diminutive Joe CamilJeri fronted the group in dynamic showbiz style, continually playing the audience and bounding about with irresistable exhuberance. The band proved crude but effective as it ripped through ordinary material with the energy and finesse of a chain saw." His final com­ ments are interesting: "Long after the record com­ pany has ceased trying to 'break' them in the States, Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons will be back home dazzling appreciative drunks nightly." Is that what is known as a barbed compliment?

5MMM-FM are about to end the Adelaide vinyl drought with the release of a compilation album, called, tentatively Australia — 22 cents. It features 13 of Adelaide's finest, is definitely worth a listen, and will bfe on general sale in December (hopefully).

ventional music, the lyrics alone are excellent. For example, Andy Partridge's lyrics on fashion and our stupid acceptance of it: Fashion, their vampire/drapes itself across your back/as you fall from style/it waits rebirth on its rack.

As far as 'message' songs go, this one and Complicated Game on Drums A nd Wires stand well above the rest. Both are excellent songs, though for different reasons. The lyrics and music of Com­ plicated Game may seem boring in themselves, but when performed by the band the frightening despair of the song is really unnerving. Conversely, the performance of Travels In Nihrion might not ap­ peal to everyone, but its lyrics make up for that.

What is most annoying about the September issue fs that D.R., after criticising XTC for indul­ gence, then spends two vital pages on Iva Davies (middle name 'pretentious'). How's this for crap: I.D.: There are very few common denominators as far as people's behavior is concerned. Being in love, being born and dying, / guess.

And what is D.R.'s reply? Instead of saying 'Oh wow, Iva, you're so boring', D.R. just agrees and says: "The three big ones".

It's not that I don't like long interviews with per­ formers, since that is one of the signs of an in­ telligent alternative music magazine. But there seems to be an inconsistency in Donald Robert­ son's attitude towards the two bands. Of course, he is very favourable towards XTC, but why bend over backwards to please Flowers. For a bit extra, you can subscribe to Roadrunner, and get Flowers' new album. Maybe that's why D.R. concluded the Iva interview by saying he'd buy the album without even having heard it. What price credibility?

Yours, Ian McKenzie _____________ Royston Park, S.A.

U.S. Singles 1. W O M AN IN LOVE 2. ANOTHCT ONE BITES THE DUST

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ROADRUNNER Page 3

THE NUMBERS ARE UP

Bathroom antics with Ann Et Chris Morrow.

"Hi there. Wanna cuppa tea wth some chocolate cake in the toilet and shower?"

Ann Morrow takes in the slightly bizarre sight with barely a blink. Her brother Chris is sitting on a chair in the shower. I am sitting on the toilet (with the lid down, I hasten to add). Between us and block­ ing the door of the extremely small bathroom is a small table with a tape recorder.

"Great," I say. "W hite, no sugar."

"W hen does the Truth reporter arrive?" cracks Chris.

I don't usually interview people in bathrooms. In fact I can safely say that this interview with Chris and Ann, blonde siblings and two thirds of Sydney beat band, the Numbers, is the very first interview I have ever conducted in such an environment.

Your're probably wondering why. After all, inter­ views are conducted in other rooms (mainly hotel ones, admittedly) in cars, bars, restaurants, even in the street. What's everyone got against bath­ rooms?

If the Numbers' debut LP was called Get Wet, or The Fine A rt Of Surfacing or, even better. The Cor­ rect Use o f Soap instead of merely The Numbers, then you might have thought, ah ha, he's looking for an ANGLE. You know, like Molly Meldrum tack­ ling Jimmy and Don from Chisel in a Japanese nosherie. But no, there is no SYMBOLISM in this environment. No 'clean living kids' line that I'm try­ ing to pursue. No contrivance. No, the reason we're talking in the bathroom is purely dictated by circumstances.

With the release of their debut LP, The Numbers have come to the end of stage one of any band's rise to fame and fortune. The long hard slog of con­ stant gigging to establish an audience, the signing up with a record company, the recording of an album, have all been achieved.

"It feels as if we've just passed through a big bar­ rier," says Chris. "But it's still hard work. Like we've just done a few supports with the Romantics, and they were amazed that we'd do a gig supporting them and then go off and do one of our own. They mustn't work too hard over there!"

It really seems as if Australia is a great training ground for bands, I remark.

"I think Australian audiences are really hard to

Numbers: Chris, ROAW UNNER;Pam4

L

play to. Like you've gotta be playing for three years before they'll even dance," comments Ann, who has joined Chris in the shower.

"You've gotta cut your head off onstage every night or something," says Chris. "Sometimes I think it extinguishes a lot of lights before . .. really gentle people just get stomped out of existence by it. But at the same time it breeds this plant that can exist in Mexican deserts or in the drizzle of Lanca-. shire . . . " One of them is playing downstairs right now, I say as the strains of You Shook Me AH Night Long waft into the bathroom.

"Yeah .. .yeah," nods Chris. "It's amazing — the process of elimination that takes place. When we ground to a halt for a month it nearly happened to us. We nearly broke up. The band."

From the time that Simon Vidale, the present drummer and third member of the band, joined two years ago. The Numbers have been on the road full time. The only time off they've had is when they've been sick. The reason the band had a month off, according to Chris was, " . . . we were just really fucked. I didn't know how sick I was until I stop­ ped."

Ann agrees. "I mean you know you're tired, but you just think that's normal, you know. When you do stop . . . " Chris: "You realise how much you're drink­ ing . . . " Ann: "Yeah, yeah! You can just feel yourself coming down because you've been on such a . .. high all the time. You can feel yourself coming down and you think. Oh my god . . . " What does keep a band going then? Why do these young people push themselves to the limit of physical and nervous collapse and subject them­ selves to absurd situations, like sitting on half a chair in a shower and trying to form intelligent answers to some shabby hangover merchant's trite questions? Why? Ann has the answer. It's the great rock dream.

"Playing in a band and being a musician is sort of deep-rooted inside you, and I don't think you can ever really give it up. Once it's there it's very hard to go back and do a 9 to 5 job . . . I think that's what makes you keep on going. Once you've been in it and had some kind of small success from it, you just don't want to give it up. You just keep striving and altho' you break down every two years or so, you get up and you do it all again." Her voice drops.

"In one way it's worthwhile, and in another. . . it

(pic: EricAlgra)

,

Ann

can really screw you up."

However she brightens up. "That's the way it is. I don't think the Numbers will break up for a long time. I think we'll just talk about it for a few years."

And she laughs.

A bottle of shampoo falls on Chris' head. We all laugh uproariously. "On shit," he says. "I.was go­ ing to say something important too."

Chris and Ann Morrow come from Thornleigh, a suburb in north west metropolitan Sydney. Chris tells me that people in the western suburbs con­ sider it part of the fashionable North Shore, while North Shoreites see it as part of the definitely unfashionable West. However it is regarded, Chris is quite definite on one point. It's a cultural waste­ land.

"All the kids go to shitty government schools, turn up at the Comb and Cutter pub in Blacktown, get pissed on Friday nights. Like Thornleigh is the sort of place where fuck all happens . . . any time.

And that really obsesses me 'cos I went to a Government boys' school. One of those schools that looks like the inside of Macquarie St. toilet, you know? Everything that could be smashed has been, and stolen. And like all these kids down at the Comb and Cutter watching the guys in the tow trucks dragging round the car park."

Chris' musical career started out with him playing drums with his father, a pianist. From there he grad­ uated to acoustic guitar and then to electric, which he says he taught himself to play by listening to Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, the Stones' live album. He bought himself a bass, which he didn't play, so younger sister Ann picked it up and they started playing together. Around 1975, they and a loose collection of friends were jamming together on "Ry Cooder songs. Bad Company songs, anything".

Midway through 1978 the 'loose collection' had come down to three who felt like going into it a bit more seriously, Ann, Chris, and the Numbers' previous drummer Marty Newcombe. One of the early breaks the band got was when the Kamikaze Kidz broke up and the Numbers got a call from their agency with the promise of regular work. Marty couldn't afford to give up his day job and so Simon was recruited and the long slog began.

The first opportunity that most people had to hear the band was on a three track 45 put out by

Pic: EricAlgra Arch Browne's Local label (Arch, by the way, is now the band's road manager). Although lacking the finesse of what was to come later, it was a fast and furious facsimile of the sound that was wowing them at the Civic and other inner-city Sydney venues at the time, and one of the songs on it.

Government Boy has become the lynchpin of a col­ lection of songs that Chris has written with Arch Brown, all basically revolving around this kid from the Western Suburbs and dealing with really simple issues." Chris is treating the songs as a selfcontained project, separate from the Numbers.

"It was all because of Arch really, these Govern­ ment Boy songs. We were sitting round at my girl­ friend's place one night and he was getting on at me, about how when I write songs, sometimes I tend to disappear up my own arsehole. Arch was saying, 'Why don't you write simple songs?' and I was saying, 'I don't w ant to write simple songs'.

He was hassling me, so eventually I said, 'O.K., I'll write an Arch Browne song for you'. And so I immediately wrote this really simple song called Can ! Have The Car?, which is about a kid asking his parents for the car, you know, he's been good all week and all that. And we wrote two others that night and they all seemed to fit in really well with Goverriment Boy.” And what is the fate of these songs going to be?

Are you going to make a film, or a concept album?

"What, like a rock opera, Quadrophenia or some­ thing?" Chris is struck with the possibility. "I could never understand rock opera. Always seemed like somebody created a brontosaurus. But I can under­ stand it now. Like when you've got all these short simple songs they've got a lot of punch and there's a theme there. And it did emerge as a theme — I never realised there was one there, but it's about those kids in the Western Suburbs."

Although there are the regulation eleven songs on the Numbers album, it clocks in at only 29 minutes of music. The basic reason for this is that was the number of songs that the band were com­ pletely happy with in the studio. Both the singles.

Modern Song and Five Letter Word are there, and as with those two, Ann does most of the singing.

Yet Chris, I say, you write all the songs and some of the ones you sing on stage, Ann sings on the record, like Modern Song and President.

"W e ll. . . you see I get nervous in the studio and for some reason I sing consistently a quarter tone flat. Ann's got a better range than I have too. She's got a stunning voice I think. It doesn't often come over when we play live, because she's not really hardy. She usually gets a sore throat or comes down with a cold. But in the studio — just great."

Ah yes, the studio. What was it like working with whizz kid producer, Cameron Allen? I ask.

"It was good. We have different tastes in music, like I think my taste in music is . .. more passionate than his. I like things like the Faces albums, Ron Wood's guitar and Pete Townsend's solo albums, while he likes Nick Lowe, fantastic bass sounds, soul singers and Diana Ross. But I think we got a good mix."

One of the things about the records is that they seem to have a lot more space in them. Onstage sometimes in the past you've sounded like you've been trying to create a wall of sound, to maybe compensate for the fact of being a three piece. The singles especially have had room to move around in. Are your songs going to have more space?

"Yeah, more spacey man," smiles Ann. "We've got these eight keyboards players stan­ ding behind a curtain," says Chris.

Suddenly the toilet lid underneath me cracks. We all break up laughing.

"Can we have a flush please," asks Ann. I oblige.

"It didn't seem like that question, Donald," reprimandsChris.

We settle down and Chris continues.

"Yeah, when we came back to rehearse for the album, we went through everything. We listened to tapes of the live shows and it was just too fast. And so we've slowed down a lot."

"Especially after the rest," chips in Ann. 'The new songs we're doing have really helped because they're really nicely paced."

I imagine three piece line-up lends itself to simplicity.

"Yeah, musically," says Ann, "but although there are only three of us there are still a lot of complications."

'This band actually works on nerves and a lot of conflicts," adds Chris. It's a knife edge thing — a balance of tensions. 'Like we're all pretty strong people and when we're not playing we're all totally different people. A lot of people say, 'Ah, it's Ann'n'Chris, with Simon somewhere over there', when in fact there's probably a greater distance between Ann and I than there is between Ann and Simon and Simon and me.

"But it's definitely got that tottering danger­ ousness — at any moment it can fall apart and —" "Which it does some nights," comments Ann, wryly.

"Explodes into a million pieces," finishes Chris.

"But that's how it works."

Deluxe. Chris and Ann consider him "the best rock'n'roll manager in Australia". As Ann points out he's done it all before, having taken AC/DC from scratch to overseas fame and success.

"His horizons aren't, 'I'm gonna make you the biggest things in Australia, kids'. It's always overseas. He has a totally world perspective. That's the way he thinks," expands Chris.

According to Ann there has been some interest expressed in the band from overseas, but they feel it's perhaps a little soon and would like to get things a little more established here first.

At this point the bathroom door opens and stan­ ding in the doorway is the third Number, Simon Vidale, wearing only a towel. He regards the scene with frank amazement.

Chris explains, "It's QUIET in here. There's a disco downstairs."

Yes, that's the reason we're all in the bathroom, kids. While in Adelaide the Numbers stayed at the Findon Hotel, and on Sunday afternoons the Findon has a disco and a band, the Numbers' rooms were RIGHT above the disco, the bathroom was the quietest place to record an interview.

"Struth," says Simon.

We close the door.

"There's always room for one more," calls Chris.

"When can I go to the toilet?" queries Arch in the room beyond.

"Maybe the band will go overseas next year," continues Chris. "W e don't wanna hang around and conquer Australia first. It'd be good to go over­ seas and get the big shock, gee whiz, look at all this, then come back with a real overseas per­ spective. I'm sure if we sat in Europe for three months we'd come back a different band."

You'd probably be thinner, I offer.

"Yeah (laughs). But like bands get their game sussed out in Australia and learn how to be great here. Then when they go overseas, they find they've gotta change their name, change what they do, they can't sing this and they can't sing that, they've gotta be better at this . . . it'd be good to do that while we're still evolving as a band."

and Simon

After we finish the interview and clamber out of the bathroom, Chris and I are staring out at the flat expanse of suburbia that covers western Adelaide.

"This must remind you a bit of home," I say.

"It's more flat here," he replies. Then after a while he says, "It makes you realise just how few people you actually reach, looking at all these houses. It's your whole world, music, rock whatever, and yet you could get knocked down by a car and most of these people wouldn't even care." A pause, while we contemplate the immensi­ ty of suburbia.

Then, "Hey this band downstairs are doing really good clever cover versions. The guitarist's really hot."

There's just time to have a quick look, and then it's off to soundcheck.

- DONALD ROBERTSON

The Numbers are managed by Michael Browning, who also runs the record label they record for.

THEELKS A considerable amount of talent has come from Perth in recent years. First there was Dave Warner, now back home after a few months in America, and the legendary king of blues. Matt Taylor.

Then came a handful of new bands, including Loaded Dice, Boys and The Dugites, who have just released an album and completed a successful tour of the Eastern states. Now there's The Elks, a young five piece whose style is very similar to the Motown style o f the sixties.

The Elks arrived in Sydney eight months ago’ after doing all they could in the west. "W e released an album and a live tape last year — both selling over 1000 copies — but we felt we had done all we could in Perth. The time had come for us to move away and break into new territory," said lead singer and guitarist Terry Serio. "W e came to Sydney with the aim of doing more recording and to make a name for ourselves. At the moment we are in and out of recording studios laying down tracks for an LP, but the producer we had lined up had second thoughts, so now we are using the studio to experi­ ment until another producer can be found. A friend of ours in Melbourne is looking around for us."

Terry believes that the album released last year was not indicative of the band today. "Since that album, we have improved considerably. Our play­ ing is much tighter, our songs are better and we have matured with experience. Perth was a great starting place. But after reaching the highest echelon, there is bugger all to do. For a band to reach the top it has to meet new challenges and to us, Sydney is a new challenge. Sydney is the toughest market to crack in Australia, and the only hurdle for a group's overseas prospects."

As well as Terry, the rest of the Elks are Dave Brewer (guitar), Howard Shawcross (bass-vocals), Vince Crea (drums) and Michael Fagan (harmonicaorgan-vocals). Vince is the newest member, having joined the band a couple of weeks before leaving Perth. Howard's last band was the infamous Last Chance Cafe, whose music was also influenced by the sixties.

I asked Terry about that sixties Motown sound.

"W ell we are influenced by it only as far as soul and rhythm and bjues go. Naturally we were brought up listening to that style, but that's how far it goes.

What we are basically is an eighties band playing with a sixties feel. All the material we play is ours — no covers. Whatever shine that comes through is our own style. People have come up to me and said we are very much like James Brown, and I find that very interesting. Those people were also, like us, brought up with that sound and upon hearing us have labelled us in the same category."

Terry is happy with The Elks' progress in Sydney.

"When we first arrived, we were, naturally, unknown but in the space of three months we have built up a strong following, which numbers about 30 I think. I feel our following should be bigger, but it is one of those things that wilt take time. A lot of people have heard about us through friends and after seeing us one night have returned the follow­ ing night. I suppose a lot of our following comes from university students, as we are constantly play­ ing lunchtime campus gigs. But a lot of others are now beginning to see us on a regular basis. I'm confident our popularity will continue to increase but, as I said before, it takes time."

The Elks do not just limit themselves to inner-city gigs. They have played at many suburban pubs and clubs — most of the time supporting big name acts — in a bid to spread their popularity. "W e do five or six gigs a week and at least two of them are in the suburbs. For a band to be successful, it has to play to a wide range of audiences and that is vyhat we are attempting to do. But playing in the suburbs also has its drawbacks. If a band continues to play in the same suburb week after week, it gets a reputation for being that suburb's band. What we are attempting is to crack into as many suburbs as possible. I feel the suburbs are the hardest areas to break into."

But Terry is also critical of those suburbs.

"Unless a band has a product in the top forty, nobody in the suburbs wants to know you. They would rather see a band that they listen to on the radio or see on television. A small, unknown band has got no chance of succeeding in the suburbs. It takes a band three or four visits before it gets ac­ cepted, and then it's only a small number of people that take to you. We play the suburbs just to gain experience and exposure, nothing else. As long as people know that The Elks are around we are happy. But who knows, in a year's time, we could have a single in the charts and be playing before an enthusiastic suburban audience, who used to sit around and talk while we played our set."

You felt good once, now FEELGOOD s^ ^ in w ith THE DOCTOR SHAKEV ACROSS AUSTRALIA PERTH (NOVEMBER 13-16 ADEUIDE NOVEMBER 18-23 MELBOCRNE..................NOVEMBER 24-30 HOBART..........................DECEMBER 1 CANBERRA DECEMBER 2

SYDNEY DECEMBER3-8 N.S.W. (NORTH COAST) DECEMBER 9-14 GOLD COAST............................... DECEMBER9-14 BRISBANE DECEMBER9-14

ROADRUNNER Page 5

the summer line-up from Missing Link L A U G H IN G C L O W N S

Laughing Clowns The Birthday Party The Residents (ING 001) aka Boys Next Door Commercial Album (Link 7) (Link 9)

Dead Kennedy’s (Link 8)

PLUS: ‘Move On Up’ the new single from the Flying Lizards and ‘Let’s Be Sophisticated’ by International Exiles.

ROADRUNNER Page 6

It was a very strange show, that first feelies gig in England. They tentatively trod their way onto the stage of London's electric Ballroom just after nine thirty, played for fifty minutes, the whole time herky-jerkying their way around the stage like marionettes on speed, while grappl­ ing with the horrors of a sound system that malfunctioned 75 per cent of the time, and finally fled the stage almost stumbling over one another in their eagerness to get off. Boys with Perpetual Nervousness indeed.

Tales of the Feelies' strangeness had preceded them to London. Ever since they burst onto the British consciousness in March with their Crazy Rhythms LP, which was hailed by the rock press getting the impression that the Feelies were . . . wel l . . . a little odd. Their music for a start showed no deference to fashion. Precise, and contem­ porary, but without a trace of synthesiser, the album was all rhythm guitars and percussion, not at all "the music for the 80s" for which the musical press had been preparing us. Then their image: dressed as one reviewer put it as "out-takes from the casting call of My Three Sons" in 50s Americana. This last fact dovetailing nicely irito their protestation that they were ordinary, mun­ dane, middle class boys from New Jersey. In short in a London reverberating to the sounds of Stax remakes , Ska and Heavy Metal revivals, they were as unexpected as the proverbial bolt out of the blue. This, and the oddly enticing gig during which flashes of musical brilliance became evident when the equipment worked, only served to whet my appetite for the meeting with the Feelies which had been set up for the day after the Ballroom debut.

They had been rushed from New Jersey to Lon­ don by Stiff, their label, to capitalise on their unex­ pectedly enthusiastic reception from the rock press. There were two hastily arranged gigs, and of course the obligatory press interviews, at Stiff's West London HQ. By the time I arrived they had already been through about half a dozen inter­ views, and would have been excused for showing evidence of extreme "pissed offedness" at having to go through the rigmarole yet again. But instead they politely stood,and shook my hand as we were introduced. Just like nice middle class boys should.

Then they settled back into their chairs, arranged in a semi circle, with me facing them, in the middle of the circle. There was Keith Clayton, the bass player, tall and powerfully built and softly spoken; Bill Million, co-songwriter, vocalist and guitarist, eyes wide with what seemed to be a bemused curiosity behind his thick spectacles, beneath a head of thick black curly hair; and finally Qlen Mercer, second guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and lyricist, finely built, and slightly disconcerting with his steady stare and even careful voice giving nothing away.

(The drummer Anton Fier had absented himself from the media interrogation). All were dressed in second hand clothes ("thrift shop" clothes as they later explained) of baggy trousers, 1950s shirts, sneakers, and sometimes a sleeveless vest. They all looked serious and very polite. As we sat silently sizing each other up, the cliches coined by the rock press to describe the Feelies ("an essay in studied wimpery . . . militant wimpism . . . the acceptable

face of dorkness") ran through my mind and sud­ denly seemed very apt. Also running through my mind was the thought that this whole image of middle class ordinariness, which the Feelies certain­ ly evoked, must have been deliberately construct­ ed. It seems to fit the mood of the times so well, that it can't be coincidental. After all, in this country at least, the cities are ceding to the suburbs the role of creative centres. Although London is still Bri­ tain's melting pot, where things are refined and polished, the new things now appear to be coming from the provinces and the suburbs, not the city centres. Perhaps the destructive urban angst has almost burnt itself out? I was jolted out of my reveries by the continuing silence. The Feelies were politely waiting for me to start firing questions. To break the ice I began by commenting on the appall­ ing sound of the previous night's show. They agreed, and said it was because they had to borrow equipment they'd never used before because theirs had not arrived from New York. They had not had time for a sound check, and as we "aren't troupers" as Mercer explained, things had gone less than well. That said, we lapsed back into silence, the awkward kind that often follows first meetings. To allow the ice afurther chance to melt, I opted for the standard technique of asking about something familiar and easy: their background.

The Feelies have been together in their present form for two years. There were previous incarna­ tions that stretched back a year or so before then.

With the exception of Fier, who lives in a loft in Greenwich Village, New York, they all hail from New Jersey, an area, Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny notwithstanding, they describe as a quiet middle and working class suburb of New York City. Mercer and Million met in the late sixties while at high school, and formed a friendship, bas­ ed among other things on a common taste in music. They liked bands not terribly popular with high school kids then, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, the Who. They formed a band and cut their teeth playing high school dances and suchlike, but they spurned the standards of the time — groups like Kiss, Led Zeppelin etc. — and instead played their favourite Velvets and Eno songs. Their first important gig was in New York in 1977 at yes, you guessed it, CBGB's. When they first started, by their own admission, they simply played very loud and very fast. "W e were also very nervous and stood absolutely still on stage", says Mercer. "In fact we found we had to have a few drinks to get up the courage to go on!" But in the way these things do, the music progressed, losing both in speed and volume, and gaining in subtlety, until finally arriving at the present state of the art, as shown on Crazy Rhythms.

It's an obviously painstakingly arranged and recorded music that owes a lot to one of their ad­ mitted influences, the Velvet Underground. It has the same rhythm drone as the best of the Velvets, but it's been taken far beyond Lou and company.

Rather than simply using the drone as repetitive, hypnotic device, it's a base for some wonderful, subtle polyrhythmic textures, achieved with a superb use of percussion. According to Mercer, who co-produced the album with Million, "We were looking for a real active mix, with a lot of separation between the instruments. We wanted something that required a kind of active listening.

Not assaultive or aggressive, but something you have to concentrate to listen to. You can't play our

that context I mention a quote attributed to them record in the background or at a party or that the Feelies never sing songs praising drugs, something. You shouldn't listen to it unless you never swear and don't insult women. They all look really want to". a little nonplussed, almost annoyed that there's Says Million: "We didn't want to make a record even any need to mention the subject. "Why that by listening to once or twice you could hear the should we?" says Mercer. "I mean, insulting whole thing. One of the good things about, say, the women for instance is a pretty obnoxious thing to Velvet Underground music is that you can still do". With a look of approaching disgust, he con­ listen to their records today and hear something tinues, "Bands like the Rolling Stones degrade new. Maybe in some months from now you'll listen people. Their albums should be boycotted". to our records and hear something you haven't Militantwimpism, or just another example of good heard before". When I enquire about the extensive solid middle class values? and inventive use of percussion on the album, This whole question of middle class values is Mercer says it was a logical development. "When rather intriguing. After all, over the past ten years we started we had a real high, trebly guitar sound "middle class" has become more a term of derision and using cymbals meant they meshed with the than an adjective inseparably linked with boring, sound and the whole thing became diluted. So we narrow-minded attitudes. So why should anyone took the cymbals away, but still wanted the accent want to identify with it, unless as a new marketing they gave, so we started adding different percuss­ hype? After all the earnestness of the radical work­ ive effects." ing class attitudes espoused by so many middle They've been surprised with the reception given class rock stars and critics has become a little tiring, the album in Britain. Mercer claims at first Stiff and a dose of middle class inoffensiveness could be didn't even like it. "But they changed their minds an ideal antidote. So the big question: Have the once they started getting the reviews and influen­ Feelies manufactured the whole image? "N o", says tial people like musicians started commenting on it.

Mercer, fixing me with an even, calm stare. "The I think it just took them a while to believe we image has evolved from our backgrounds. We are wanted it to sound like that, and the whole thing boring people. We don't lead exciting lives. We're wasn't a mistake!" Apparently Stiff weren't the on­ very ordinary. I get up in the morning, make the ly ones they had to convince. They also had battles bed, wash the dishes, feed the dogs". Nods of in the studio. According to Mercer, "If we had done agreement from the other two indicate their lives what they originally told us in the studio, it wouldn't have sounded anything like it does. And - are as unspectacular. Mercer continues, "W e all like to cook a lot, and we're very health conscious, yet the sound we achieved is what everyone says get lots of exercise. People who've interviewed us they like about the record. We had a lot of before have said, 'What can we write about you, arguments with the engineer. He said what was you're so boring' ". Million says the clothing (which commonly done was the guitars would play the same thing three times, we'd put it all together on • is now fashionable in London, hence the suspicion that it may be part of a manufactured look) also one track, cue each one differently and make one evolved from their background. "We live in a " big fat sound. And we wanted to put the guitars on­ middle class area. There are a lot of old people that to tape in one take. No overdubs, just me on one live around there, it's very slow paced. The old men side and Bill on the other". After two weeks of walk down the street in their baggy clothes and arguing, which Million describes as "disconcerting cotton shirts!" "Anyway", says Clayton, "I've and time consuming", the Feelies "got the broom always bought my clothes in thrift stores. They're out and gave ourselves some space in the studio". cheaper and bettqr quality than the synthetic type Another thing intriguing a lot of people about the of thing you buy new". The acceptable face of Feelies are their lyrics, or lack of them. No-one dorkness, perhaps? seems to know whether they are minimalist, irrele­ Whatever the Feelies' plans (they say in the vant, or just plain dumb. Mercer says lyrically they immediate future there'll be another album and aren't trying to make any big statements, and cer­ some more touring), I think if we go back to New tainly the music would be no less effective without Jersey in thirty years' time, we'll find them living in them. But no matter how you categorise the lyrics, roughly the same manner, trimming hedgqs, having they're interesting for what they don't, rather than their kids to dinner on Sundays. Ordinary, Middle do, say. They're not concerned with the common Class citizens. pop song fodder — "lerv" — and its concommitant - CHRIS WILLIS problems and complications, nothing about street life, no predictions of doom or the coming of the micro chip age, and nothing about that final stand­ by, drugs. No, the Feelies' concerns are more in­ sular and inaccessible: about Boys with Perpetual Nervousness, Forces at Work, or Crazy Rhythms.

Says Million, "We've never been into lyrics like a lot of other bands, particularly like the Velvet Underground. In fact, a lot of people can't see any parallel between us and the Velvet Underground because of our different attitude to lyrics. They always sang about the seedier side of life and drugs and sex. That's the last thing that really interests us!" But, I venture, it can make interesting subjects if properly handled. "W ell", says the ever cautious but sure-footed Mercer, "it might have been in­ teresting in the sixties, but not the eighties. Who wants to listen to someone raving about his woman or whatever". "It's just boring", says Clayton. In

ROADRUNNER Page 7

VIC Friday Saturday Sunday SA Thursday Friday N SW Thursday Friday Saturday

7th November Prospect Hill Hotel, Melbourne 8th November Ned Kelly Festival, Wilton (near Melbourne) 9th November Lygon Street Fiesta, Melbourne (afternoon) M acey’s Hotel, Melbourne (evening) 13th November Adelaide Town Hall 14th November Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, Adelaide 20th November Sydney, venue to be confirmed 21st November Stardust Hotel, Cabramatta 22nd November San Miguel Hotel, Cammeray

ACT Sunday 23rd QLD— Brisbane Friday 28th Saturday 29th Sunday 30th ROADRUNNER Page 8

November Ainsley Hotel, Canberra November National Hotel November 1pm La Boite Theatre Night National Hotel November Ipm La Boite Theatre —

The Australian Alternative

Bringing their wry humour, evocative lyrics and perception from Adelaide to the world

THE NEW ALBUM-OUT NOW! LP ELPS4137 Cassette EPC 4137

BURSTING O UT OF BRISBANE Riptides on the crest o f a wave.

The first thing that strikes you about a Riptides performance, particularly if you happen to walk in after the band have been playing for a little while, is the number of people dancing. The Riptides' music seems specifically designed to in­ spire movement in even the most coma­ tose pair of feet. Never mind that you've juist been subjected to another crushingly boring day ekeing out your meagre ex­ istence. Here is joy, movement, the twang of guitar, the crash of drum, the atmosphere of happiness, bar none.

The Riptides are now Sydney-based, having left their native Brisbane about four months ago. I guess it would be fair to say that they have landed on their feet, with the ink still drying on a six-album recording deal with happening record label Regular (Mental As Anything and Flowers), plenty of work in Sydney and the occasional trip to Melbourne.

When they returned to Brisbane recently to open 4ZZZ's new venue the Heritage Hotel they attracted 800 people and were hailed as conquering heroes.

But, as is usually the case with all 'overnight suc­ cess' stories, there's a lot more to it than that.

The Riptides started out as the Grudge in early 1977. The members of the Grudge were all study­ ing A rchitecture at Queensland University, although as guitarist Scott Matheson points out, "It was more a faculty of Amateur Theatrics than Architecture". The initial inspiration behind forming a band was provided by hearing the Saints' I'm Stranded, which Matheson confesses to having mercilessly hassled 4 7 7 7 to play at every opport­ unity possible. As the 4ZZZ staff were still playing whole sides of Pink Floyd albums at the time he had to resort to standover tactics like scratching at the studio windows, located on the same campus, to hear his heroes.

Through various line-up and name changes the band finally became the Numbers, comprising Matheson, singer Mark Callaghan, drummer Dennis Cantwell and bass player Rob Vickers, a line-up that has stuck together, apart from the replacement of Vickers with new guitarist Andrew Leitch, ever since (Callaghan now plays bass). As the Numbers, the band recorded one independent single. Sunset Strip (which was reissued under the name the Rip­ tides when the band changed names, due to 'con­ fusion' with the Sydney band — both versions sell­ ing a healthy 15(W copies) and with fellow musi­ cians the Go Betweens formed the Able Label. In these times when every man and his dog seerris to be forming independent labels for fun and profit (particularly the latter) Matheson's comments about Able seem almost from another age.

"U p in Brisbane there are no A&R people, so there's no way you can ever pick up a record con­ tract out of Brisbane. So at that stage (mid '78) everyone was saying, 'Record an independent single'. Stranded was still fresh in everybody's mind — fresh enough for people to think you could record a single, send it away and get a record con­ tract. I remember when we listened back to Sunset Strip in the studio. . . we said, 'Oh, it's great, it's goihg to be No. I I' About a month later we thought, 'Oh dear (laughs) that's dreadful!'

We were recording about the same time as the Go-Betweens. They actually came up to us at a gig one night and asked if they could play a few songs and use our equipment. We said, fine, and we really liked them and became friends with them. They were planning to do a record, as we were, so rather than having two small labels we thought we'd do it on the same one. And that was how the Able label came about. Then the Go-Betweens did another record and the Apartments did one.

"It achieved some sort of a reputation. We used to print up Able Label paper and package it just to make it look more official. There was no record company structure as such — it was just to make it look more impressive (laughs). I guess it worked in a way. People still think the Able label was some big deal."

Scott Matheson, as some of you may recall, used to send a regular Brisbane report to ROADRUNNER, a fact that has attracted consid­ erable flak and accusations of impropriety from other figures in the Brisbane 'scene'. Such criticism I would deem totally unjustified as, if anything, Mr. Matheson bent over backwards to give every other band a mention to the exclusion of his own. But it raises a couple of interesting points — like the general small-mindedness and bitchiness of the Brisbane scene and also, of the bands he used to write about only the Riptides have managed to get out in one piece (actually that's not quite accurate as the Go-Betweens did make it to the U.K. where they have a single out on Glasgow's Postcard label). Why the high accident rate?

"It's strange . . . it's the wh,ole atmosphere up there . . . it's hard to describe. Like when you live

there you take the police harrassment of dances for granted. We used to hire a hall in the suburbs with two or three other bands, cos that was the only way you could get to play. And about 1(X) or so people would turn up and like 50 of them would be in other bands. But we gave up doing that because the police would always arrive by nine o'clock and half the audience would spend the rest of the night in jail."

On what charges? I innocently ask.

'Trumped up charges," Matheson replies. "I mean this was still going on late last year. . . There was this dance at a hall in Caxton St., which is like inner city, the Brisbane equivalent of DarlinghurSt. Twenty five police cars rolled up at that. There were paddy wagons, dogs. . . they have this special task force up there that get round in overalls, they were there. There were massive ar­ rests. Martin, our lighting guy, was charged with assaulting three policemen. Now Martin . .. Mar­ tin's a wimp! (laughs) Martin would no more hit a policeman than fly to the moon! He was supposed to have assaulted two policemen — and you know how tall they are; 6 foot, 18 stone — then raced 100 yards up the street, up a hill, and hindered another policeman who was making an arrest, and then rushed back down to get arrested by the first two.

And he was foolish enough, well, courageous enough to fight the charges, and ended up with a $250 fine.

"Another bloke at the same dance got six months in jail for damaging police property. What they actually did was ram him into the side of a paddy wagon. Head first! So he made a dent in the side and got six months in jail.

"And down here Queensland is just a cartoon on page three of the newspaper. It's a joke. But it's deadly serious up there."

Paul, the Riptides' manager, chips in: "Flo BjelkePeterson gets the highest Senate vote in the elec­ tion. It's fucked."

'That's the sort of thing you're fighting against.

Bands get destroyed just because the atmosphere is so oppressive. Work is impossible to get because of police harrassment."

Is it just police pressure that keeps rock down?

What about public opinion?

Matheson laughs ironically. 'The general public opinion is pretty fascist anyway. A pub owner is as much a (nervous laugh, perhaps he's thinking about when the band go back there. ..) fascist (whoops, no more pub gigs in Brisbane) as a police­ man. Pubs down here are so much more receptive to live bands (ah well, you're O.K. in NSW, lads).

Disco is extremely big up in Queensland. I can't ever see rock'n'roll taking over in Brisbane the same way it's done in Sydney or Melbourne. We can maybe pull 800 people when we go up there, but it's the faithful, you know."

Although for a long time 4777 kept Brisbane rock alive with its Joint Efforts, featuring the best of overseas and 'southern' bands, there is still a real inferiority complex towards and within Brisbane bands as a result. Sound familiar, Adelaide readers?

"It's sad," says Matheson. "So many bands fall by the wayside. And there have been some great Brisbane bands, i think one thing though — if you do manage to get out of it you have to be pretty tough. It made us even more determined I sup­ pose."

Against such a 1984 background it might strike listeners as strange that the Riptides' music is so poppy and danceable. The two singles that the band have released to date, the aforementioned Sunset Strip and Tomorrow's Tears, which landed the band a spot on Countdown earlier this year, were both rather lightweight in the old lyric depart­ ment. Matheson agrees, but points out that when you've only got one day in the studio you tend to opt for your catchiest, poppiest tune, "in the hope that it might land you some work in Sydney or something . . . " He says the band are eagerly looking forward to recording their first album, where they'll have the opportunity to display a bit more of their songwrit­ ing depth.

"When we first started out we were doing overt­ ly political songs. At that time we were all marching in the anti-uranium marches and getting beaten up in King George Square. We had songs Vke Advance Australia Fair which was about the police raid on the hippie commune at Cedar Bay, where the police thought they were going to bust this multi-national drug smuggling ring and ended up busting three people for vagrancy or something equally trivial. It's odd that all the songs that have got on the singles have been so lyrically . . . shallow. We've got a lot of songs with more substance than those . . . A lot of songs about Brisbane. There's one called Lonely Old Sunday which is about how deserted Brisbane is on a Sunday or Growing Up In Brisbane which is about all the pressures you face up there. The Eter­ nal Flame, one of Mark's songs, is an anti-RSL song."

What about the suggestion, made in the press

The Riptides d. to r.): Dennis Cantwell, Scott Matheson, Andrew Leitch, Mark Callaghan. just after Tomorrow's Tears came out, that the Rip­ tides were perhaps Australia's newest 'mod' band?

Matheson laughs (he actually laughs quite a lot. It's quite refreshing realty).

"I've always fancied mod. We've always fancied button down collars and suits and ties. We were ac­ tually wearing clothes like that before we ever formed a band. We used to spend all our time at the opportunity shops and at that stage op shop clothing wasn't as trendy as it's become and you'd get magnificent stuff. We'd always be wearing suits in the middle of summer while people at Queensland Uni. would be getting around in stub­ bies and T-shirts (laughs)."

His wild pair of wicklepickers are proof enough that the mod overtones have not gone out the win­ dow.

The future looks pretty rosy for the Riptides.

They go into the studio next month to record, although nothing will be released till next year. As Matheson points out the band is still fairly new to Sydney and they'll be working on building a live following before venturing onto the vinyl market

again. They are justifiably excited about how every­ thing has fallen into place so quickly after they've had to struggle for so long. They're still paying off debts accumulated in Brisbane bu^ it shouldn't be too long before they are going to be earning a wage. And for Matheson at least, Sydney is the next best thing to heaven after the Deep North.

"It's was a public holiday one day last month, so me and my girlfriend decided to go down to Cir­ cular Quay and walk around the Opera House.

We'd seen it before but it just seemed like some­ thing to do. And there were thousands of people just walking around, watching the Navy putting on displays on the Harbour. It was incredible. In Brisbane on a public holiday the place is just deserted. Everyone just stays inside and turns, on the TV. Even if you might not be eating too well it's just really nice to be able to go into town and enjoy yourself."

The simple things rpost of us take for granted.

Perhaps we don't know how lucky we are. Holiday in Cambodia anyone?

- DONALD ROBERTSON

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Australia didn't really know how to res­ pond to The Saints when they first ap­ peared in Brisbane back in 1976, and The Saints didn't wait around for acceptability to gracefully descend from the ABC. As lead singer/songwriter Chris Bailey ex­ plains, The Saints "were quite abraisive in the early day$ — very loose live, and not very good at being punkarama." In xenophobic England, however, they were, in large measure, ignored by every­ one except the critics. Their first album I'm Stranded received some acclaim here and there, but the second and third albums went unnoticed.

These days, Chris Bailey is twenty three years old (but looks older), sljghtly overweight and, at least outwardly, possessed with a kind of cynical-edged optimism that comes of trying hard for a long time,; and not calling it quits. With their second Australian tour this year beginning in Sydney on October 27th, Bailey looks forward with some en­ thusiasm; "That last tour of Australia was just about the most amazing time I've ever had in a rock'n'roll band. The audiences are great. I could quite happily grow old and senile on the Australian pub scene.

It's much better than in England.

In conjunction with the forthcoming tour (obli­ quely titled The Revenge o f the Pygmy), The Saints have released a five-track EP called Paralytic Tonight, Dublin Tomorrow to much acclaim and moderate sales, and a double A-sided single, in The Mirror/Always, that advances most convincingly the Saints as anything but Bailey's self-deprecating description of a "drunken debacle". Recorded on an 8-track machine with a suitable modicum of un­ concern for sound quality. Paralytic is a remarkable reaffirmation of Bailey's songwriting capabilities, and a significant development in musical preoccup­ ations of this much-blighted, and occasionally mal­ igned rock band. The strongest track is Simple Love, a song with a persuasive melody and an earnest, yet well-controlled vocal. The lyrics are lovesong-simplistic ("Your simple love will always save me/while the world around me is going crazy") and entirely effective. 'That song was in­ spired by my dog," says Bailey without a smile. The music, in contrast, is involved, eclectic in source (though completely tuneful and poppy) and rather Bolanesque — especially in its use of hand­ clapping. On the other tracks, Bailey reveals his capacity for stylistic singing — superb Jagger-like R&B phrasing on Call It Mine) a cross between W il­ ly Deville and Graham Parker for On The Water­ front) and maybe some Lou Reed for Miss Wonder­ ful. Although his voice is nowhere near as robust and tuneful as any of these singers, Bailey displays, in the short space of five songs, a quite stunning control of tone colour and phrasing. Of this capaci­ ty, he is most mindful, given as he is to statements like "Heavy Metal ruined good rock'n'roll singing" and to an unqualified admiration for the vocal gym­ nastics of Little Richard.

Musically, Paralytic admits to a touch of the psychedelic, especially (Don't Send Me) Roses with its twisted sitar-like backing which Bailey claims was inspired by a tandoori meal, and with a general sense of sixties melody (a la early Stones) but without the concomitant polish of that decade's recordings.

As to what we can expect from The Saints live on stage, I can only offer my observations of a onenight show they gave at the upmarket Gibus Club in Paris on September 15th last. The French, to their credit, aren't as musically xenophobic as the rest of us — the show was sold out well before much of The Saints' Parisian following had arrived.

This, in fact, was the start to a fairly disorganised tour of France (no doubt in preparation for the dis­ organised tour of Australia), and an occasion to record an hour-long live set for the appropriatelytitled French national radio show. Feedback.

Indeed, the threat of feedback, as became ap­ parent during the soundcheck, left the band with no other alternative than to play with little or no monitor volume, particularly on the vocals.

The show kicked off at nine o'clock (no in­ digenous support act singing Anarchy In The EEC, I'm happy to report) with Miss Wonderful, the hea\>y chugging late inclusion on the EP; a great version of Security, and In The Mirror whxch among other things, admits to a certain G&W sensibility allied with a kind of Jethro Tull vocal. By this time, however, it had become painfully obvious that the hired PA system had failed to rise to the occasion.

In fact, the only thing that rose undeniably was the temperature, and to an insufferable degree. On two occasions during the show, drummer Mark Birm­ ingham — a very active and exciting drummer — all but collapsed while Bailey did just that, but only after consuming most of a bottle of rum (the fans drank the rest), taking his shoes off and losing his watch.

And yet somehow the music survived, principally because NZ-born bassist Janine Hall and guitarist Barrington were fully conscious throughout the performance, and because of the irrepressible melodic strength of Bailey's compositions. In par­ ticular, with'the ironically-named Paradise and the concluding number Simple Love, The Saints prov­ ed themselves paragons of professionalism. Under circumstances that could have easily ruined a show by some of our more-vaunted rock groups. The Saints combined a lot of competence with a lot of creativity; and deservedly won the approval of the notoriously unresponsive French youth.

Yet afterwards, I found Bailey alone in one unlit dressing room, tearful with disappointment and physically exhausted, but still optimistic. He said, "It'll be better tomorrow night."

- BRETT WRIGHT

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This overclouded afternoon is one of those when Sean Kelly is definitely not looking the part of the pop star; face pallid and bearing the signs of what looks like near-terminal road weariness, he's fidgeting in an arm chair at his road manager's house, describing how he's realised just how far his band Models have to go before they become household names.

Definitely

"When we were playing in Adelaide the last time, we played really well, we enjoyed our­ selves, but there were usually only forty or fifty people in the audience . . .

"It really brought us back to earth," interjects bassist Mark Ferrie. "W e don't mean anything much outside Melbourne as yet."

In Melbourne, Models certainly do mean something; to see the band greeted by a mass of colliding bodies or to see ^hundreds of youthful fanatics yelling for an encore when the band venture into the suburbs is to realise that Models are on the verge of what has been a fairly rare phenomenon in recent Oz rock history — pop stars in the shape of a band that answers that primitive tribal longing for style, colour and inventiveness and not mere head­ banging release.

It's a position they've arrived at in the most circuitous possible manner. Models have never had a hit single and have no intentions of releasing a forty-five for months to come. They don't play covers or even originals with safely archaic structures, and have done very little to pander to the creaking power structures of the local rock industry. They've merely kept playing solidly for two and a half years, picking up au­ diences without apparent effort or comprom­ ising individuality. And .with the release of a debut album that ignores all commercial ground rules they seem about to expand their appeal nationally; no obvious moves have been made by this band, but all of them seem to have succeeded.

"If we've proved anything with the album," says Kelly, "it's that persistence pays off. I've been with the Models two and a half years now, and in that time I've seen so many bands

who were going to be the next thing. And the^;^,^.; were, for six or eight months, but they just % didn't sustain." ' • In that time Models have negotiated plenty of ; ^ shifting currents both within the band a n d 'in rj the fickle and competitive ^ Melbourne r o c k ^ scene. Their roots lie firmly in the inner-city rock scene where Sean Kelly arrived in late' S 1977 after growing up in the eastern suburbs' and picking up a guitar as an adolescent:^ release. He practised for hours every day ("I'M became quite a reasonable jazz player") and^ formed a band with a schoolmate named Colint^ later to be better known as James Freud. W h ile i^ Kelly set about unlearning his technique in the ^face of the example of the Ramones and the Pistols, the band, originally calling themselves'^ Spread, played gigs around the nascent punk^circuit and were siezed upon as ideal fodder fori.^the disastrous Suicide new wave label/agency > ’ venture.

Teenage Radio Stars, as they were by now'j*,,. known, were ironically enough the only o u tfit.^ involved with the whole fiasco to have accep-„<>; table qualifications as malleable pop-punk fod- >1 der; the others involved all had art-rock pasts or -j burgeoning ambitions in that directions. And - ' when Kelly split from the Radio Stars, it was with the remains of one of them, JAB, that h e ." joined forces. ; The prime musical forces behind JAB were drummer Johnny Crash (who these days prefers-7^' to be known by his real name of Janis Freiden- "'f feld) and synthesiser enthusiast Ash WednesIn their hometown of Adelaide, JAB were a 'I; band with ideas that were little less than startiing given their provincial environment, and even';* though their electronic attack was somewhat muted by a move to Melbourne, Freidenfeld and Wednesday had sufficient innovatory ideas ^ to ensure that their partnership with Kelly in'?;, Models would either alienate diehard punks or^3) else succeed in no mean fashion.

As things turned out, it wasn't long before";^ the band began making a considerable impact. :y Kelly flourished as a singer/guitarist in his new "T environment, rapidly developing that scrawny T"; vocal style that relies as much on wordless screams and sighs as it does on clear enuncia-

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tg)n of his skeletal lyrics and which has since :ome a major Models trademark, while Ash's leered keyboard playing added the other |cessary distinction to the band's jagged att, gThe final piece of the Models jigsaw came wrth the arrival of the band's most unlikely tifember, bassist Ferrie, who had migrated to Charlton and found a niche in that suburb's volatile , clique of country and ockerbilly bands, if^luding one which included Sport-to-be An­ drew Pendlebury and which was followed by slants with inner-city, musical satirists and cult le^nds, Paul Madigan and Peter Lillie. ^',^'When I started playing with Madigan it was : a-'real rush — I mean he had all these super-, stars like Freddie Strauks and Ross Hannaford iffshis band.

But I realised they were just journeyman musos. Lillie and I were always say­ ing, we've got to get a band of young en­ thusiastic guys together, but-i t never happen­ ed. . ."

-S^'lnstead he came to the Models' party," irvterjects Kelly. "And this was a band that just seemed so alive, so I joined."

It wasn't roses all the way. Accusations of contrivance and of the band being more int ^ s t e d in visual style than music weren't long ip arriving, and Kelly admits the obvious conflict cf|; aims in th e . early version of Models. "It sn't a happy time. We had this manager |ho happened to be Ash's girlfriend, and she insisted that money be spent on things like try in g clothes and looking the part. I just couldn't see it as being relevant. There were plenty of times when I felt like leaving, but the qi|ernative of not playing was josi too depressL'Ash left the band in early '79 but his infljtence lingered on. Replacement Andrew Duffitld, who came from the fringes of the Nifelbourne electronic avante garde (where he'd played with Whirlywirld) had only minimal experience of playing live, and took some time tornake his presence felt. ^"The sound of the band is definitely the prod ^ t o f what all four of us contribute, so natur­ ally Ash had a major influence," says Kelly.

Dbffield's more delicate approach to the key­ boards which have always been the dominant sound took some time to come

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through, and further internal strains were impos­ ed by the release of a giveaway single. Early Morning Brain, a scrappily produced artifact that some band members felt was more damaging than representative of the Models'sound.

The band broke up, but weren't long in re­ forming. The impetus to continue was an offer from Vanda and Young to record some demos (one result of which was Progressive Office Pools, a, giveaway forty five released earlier this year) and this time around the band were determined to do things .properly. 1980. has seen the Models become virtually unstoppable on their home turf. The culmination : o f ' their progress has been their debut album, recorded painstakingly, and at the band's expense, at Melbourne's Richmond Recorders AlphaBetaCharlieDeltaFoxtrotGolf is definitely not the kind of no-risk debut expected of Australian bands, and there's a detectable ele­ ment of nervousness in Mushroom's intense promotion of their expensive new acquisitions.

The band have used available technology not to fashion safe product, but to synthesise sounds, influences and rhythm into a set that's both cohesive and nebulous. "One of the things we tried to do with it is to show where everyone's coming from," says Ferrie, and in that aim at least it succeeds. Ferrie's own acidic bit of ockerbilly Pulled The Pin (a song that dates from his Madigan-Lillie days) is a jaunty high­ light of the record; elsewhere you'll find plenty of evanescent Kelly pop rhythms and edgy guitar as well as exploratory percussion and synthesiser quirkiness from Freidenfeld and Duffield.

Accusations of Models self-indulgence won't be laid to rest by the album, especially as the band have chosen to avoid including their more obvious on-stage pop favourites. "W e did all those songs like Keep it A Secret and Whisper Through The Wall," says Ferrie, "but we just found that the newer stuff had more sparkle, including the tracks we improvised in the studio. And even though we use all the tech­ nical bullshit imaginable, I think it still has a warm feel." Kelly is not precluding the poss­ ibility that such potential hit singles will not ap­ pear on their second album, which the band in­ tend to start work on in February, probably with a "name" producer. "This one is more like

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a third or fourth album, but the fact that it doesn't have a potential hit on it doesn't worry us; we don't feel like being typecast at this stage." \y Aiphabeta demonstrates anything, it's Models' ability to work successfully by commit­ tee, despite the various delicate sensibilities in the band. "One of the reasons I think we've stayed together apart from the fact that we want to be rich and famous," says Kelly, "is that we do work so well together. And Models aren't one of those bands with an all-dominat­ ing frontman. We make decisions collectively, which slows things up very badly sometimes, but it works."

It's an attitude that leads to an extreme volatility onstage: without a real focus to the music that can be provided by a dominating member. Models gigs tend to fluctuate between the sublime and the mediocre with extreme fre­ quency, but it's a price they're prepared to pay.

"Sometimes when we're playing I can feel that the band is going to drop right off the edge, but even when we're really awful I reassure myself that there's someone out there enjoying it."

"Actually, I think the band we're most like, even though we're nothing like them, is Cold Chisel. . . " says Ferrie.

"I think it's great that they and Split Enz are doing so well," says Kelly. "One thing that amazes me is the number of formula bands in this country who think that audiences are com­ plete, unperceptive idiots. And I don't think we're like that. It's 1980 after all and audiences are prepared to accept something different to formula good tim e ro ck'n'roll, or guitar solos..

Models are a band who look at their pros­ pects with equanimity; they're under no illusions of overnight stardom. "The album cover has this map of the world on it and maybe you could see Melbourne as a starting point. But we're not rich and jaded pop stars yet — our equipment keeps breaking down. I think we'll have whatever edge we do possess for a while.

All I want to do is just live comfortably off be­ ing a musician, which I suppose is the ultimate rock'n'roll ambition in Australia. Just to get the holes out of my sock . .."

- ADRIAN RYAN

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STEVE“UTOE FORBERT STEVIE ORBIT” Steve Forbert lives inside music. He has grown up absorbing country music, rock, pop and blues. They are now indivisible parts of him, and he gives them back to us with no thought of classification. You can hear his range on this album. Like all great artists, Forbert w ill not be typecast He w ill treat a song in the mode he feels fits it best. The result for us is a musical program as diversified and demanding as it is satisfying.

- Paul Gambaccini, 14 July, 1980, Paris

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Goodbye Roadrunners. I'm finally off to travel the world — Asia, Africa, Europe, Carlton, the U.S. of A., so I thought this would be an ideal op­ portunity to honestly review the Oz rock scene and not have to worry about reper­ cussions, like not being allowed into venues and losing friends.

Firstly, the venues in Melbourne and Sydney leave a lot to be desired. They are generally run by businessmen that know nothing about rock'n'roll, good taste, decore or poverty.

The few exceptions include-Laurie Richards' gutlevel promotion and, believe it or not, Bombay Rock. Joe Gualtieri, who runs the place, actually enjoys the bands that he promotes — and the Gudinski/Premier network, for all its shortcomings, defiantly loves Australian live music. The only venue that pleased me in Sydney was the Bondi Lifesaver, but the Civic wasn't too bad either.

Melbourne venues are a lot cleaner and are more expensive than Sydney's.

One other exception to the rule of boredom, high prices, overcongestion and aggravation is the Sentimental Bloke, in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen. A suburban bam, to be sure, but for some reason I find the place comfortable. The bar is easi­ ly accessible, the door price is reasonable and the patrons aren't too mindless.

The Carlton pubs are a mixed bag. Martinis isn't too bad — but the drinks cost a lot. They have a lot of free nights and Graham Critchley, who owns the hotel and hires the acts, has boasted to me about the low fees he pays the bands. He offered me 25% of the bar gross for CHEKS to play on a Monday night. That kind of deal is fine for a big name band doing their only city gig, but for an up-and-coming, it means paying to play. Yeah, I know, man — it's fantastic exposure and a prestige gig — it still means the band is put of pocket.

The other Carlton pub is Hearts. It could be a good venue — but no matter how many times the management has been told, they refuse to provide good liquor. The house wines are disgusting and the beer tastes like the lines have never been wash­ ed. What really pisses me off is that the spirits are all third-rate, unknown, cheap-and-nasties. There's no Jim Beam, Southern Comfort, Johnny Walker etcetera, just the obscure imitations. And there is nothing worse than being in a pub that only has Penfold's Club Port as a safe drink.

I simply will not go to Kingston Rock in St. Kilda.

1don't care who they have onstage nor how Cheap the door charge. The place is the worst hole I've ever been in. A friend of mine (female, five foot nothing) was beaten up by a bouncer — had her jaw dislocated after being thrown down the stairs. I don't care how rude she was to the guy — if she was — no six metre ape has the right to beat up someone quarter their size. Apart from that, the place stinks of too much vomit, too deeply ingrain­ ed into the never-washed carpet. The only thing good about Kingston Rock is that I don't have to go there.

THE BANDS

langsam sings off

THE DUGITES are one of the disappointing bands. When I reviewed them in January of this year, I though that they were going to be the next giant leap. Instead, their Countdown clips have been tailored for the audience and show no advent­ urous risk.

THE SPORTS are also somewhat disappointing.

The band is loaded with talent — Cummings, Pendlebury, Glover, Armiger and Strauks are five of the best in the business, but they, too, seem to be caught up in the slick marketing approach. Very mild-mannered and polite — The Sports are capable of knock-out rock, but keep it well under the surface. Go should have been used as a single — it's a rock classic. Likewise, Can't Ever Decide is a much stronger number than Strangers On A Train, but the band seems reluctant to take the risks. In the meantime, they muddle along hoping to win the middle ground. 1 like the riff in the new single Stop The Baby Talking, but there is still something very conservative about it.

JO JO ZEP have got something right. They are also an extremely safe band, but they play good times 'let's get pissed, dance and fall over' music.

They are certainly not pioneering any new style of music. Like Sports, Jo Jo Zep are competent, worth seeing, can be fun, but aren't going any­ where musically.

THE ANGELS, MIDNIGHT OIL, COLD CHISEL and FLOWERS all have the same problem. No, I retract COLD CHISEL. They are not quite like the others. I think that they will be soon, though.

My criterion for these gross generalisations is the impact that GRAHAM PARKER, IAN DURY, SPRINGSTEEN and THE CLASH have had on music. I simply don't believe that Australian bands can't be as innovative. I know they can.

I've seen the Sports and Jo Jo Zep knock out crowds with super-powered sets, in their earlier days. THE HIGH-RISE BOMBERS in the summer of '77-'78 were one of the best bands I've ever seen.

Anyone who has followed Oz rock has heard tales of the legendary BLEEDING HEARTS and those tales were fleetingly revived by ERIC GRADMAN MAN & MACHINE. Australia has the capability, but it never seems to emerge.

What happened to THE SAINTS? They came home for a few months, did one tour of the con­ tinent and went straight back to London. The only other bands that have left any sort of an impression on me are NO FIXED ADDRESS (who I've heard on radio, but not seen yet) WRECKED JETS, THE MODELS and CHEKS and even these bands I compliment with severe reservations.

Certainly, there are no Sydney bands that have brought a braath of fresh air to Melbourne lately — and the air around Melbourne has been so stale that I tend to spend more time at movies and theatre than at rock venues. What happened to bands that are so good that they compel the oldest, most conservative paraplegics to rise from their wheelchairs and dance 'till they drop?

I know that there are a lot of bands around that haven't been included in this list. SPLIT ENZ always made me sick and MATT FINISH, VIXEN, THE IN­ STIGATORS, JETSONNES, JAMES FREUD, KEVIN BORICH, BROD SMITH, DARRELL COT­ TON, JON ENGLISH, RENEE GEYER, JOHN(NY) FARNHAM, THE STOCKINGS, ATLANTIS, ZORROS, Z-CARS, LA FEMME, LITTLE HEROES, BWANA, GOANNA, MOTHER GOOSE, STREET ANGEL and all those others should be happy that I haven't spent any time criticising them. Have I missed anyone?

THE RECORD COM PANIES LOU REED once told me that he would rather sign a contract with a coffee table than the New York branch of RCA. They spent three months scouring the big city for him and couldn't find him.

He was at home the whole time — they didn't check. So says Lou. The big companies — W.E.A., C.B.S., R.C.A., Festival and E.M.I. — are so big that they're unapproachable by up and coming bands. There is a policy of not spending big on anything other than a proven commodity, consequently a trend towards oltra-conservatism. Mushroom, Deluxe, Missing Unk and Regular are somewhat more progressive, but I wouldn't go overboard and say that they're adventurous — they're not. They also like safe and profitable proven commodities. Who doesn't? But why not plough some profits back into experi­ mentation?

THE M ED IA Rnally, I turn on myself. We, the media, are full of shit. We are restricted by advertising, so publishers are forced to delete good copy to keep the debt collectors away (By the way. I've never been paid for any copy published in this magazine).

JUKE is a trade journal with a percentage of teenyboppers helping its sales. JUKE's editor, Graham Simpson loves John(ny) Farnham's rendi tion of Help. Simpson has his bias, but he's as fair as most. He works under pressure, is backed by a large company, is not kept informed of the business side of the paper and is not a long time rock'n'roll fan. He enjoys a wide variety of music and is a serious newspaperman.

Donald Robertson is the opposite (I wonder if this will be printed?). Donald is passionate about Australian rock. He lives it, breathes it, loves it and is learning how to run a newspaper. "Roadrunner's never early/lt's always late/Rrst thing you learnA'ou always gotta wait/l'm waiting for my mag" (With apologies to Lou Reed).

R.A.M. is okay. I don't know too much about it but they put out a mag that is gutsier than JUKE better organised than this one, but personally, don't buy it. I doh^t know why — it just doesn't ap­ peal to me.

All these magazines have severe shortcomings, Apart from advertisers applying pressure, freelance journalists are paid peanuts, so anyone with any talent doesn't hang around. Roadrunner is still get ting away with good faith. I know that I don't mind not being paid, because it's sort of 'alternative', but even JUKE's 2c per word doesn't cover the cost of watching a band.

So, the writers rely on freebies to make it worth while. If you slag anyone you might lose your freebie. Michael Gudinski wanted to kill me after shat on U.K. Squeeze. He could have made life difficult — but he didn't. Others are not so kind.

When I co-edited Afterwork magazine, one of our writers put down a show at one of Melbourne's popular theatre restaurants. I went there a few months later to see an old friend of mine perform her cabaret-style show, and was told that I was on the permanently barred list. My own articles on the venue had always been positive, but that didn' count.

There is a concern among most writers to be respected, if not liked, by the bands. We can put up with promoters, managers and record companies to some extent, but all the writers that I know like to hang out with the artists (The journalist-as respectable-groupie theory. What that means is do ing favours for friends that may or may not deserve it and being very careful about what you write).

Because of this, I developed a policy of only reviewing bands that played music that I liked. In fact. I've only written three negative reviews out of more than a hundred, over the past two years.

Some people argue that a yvriter should be totally honest and review everything fairly, but that means writing things that one does not like writing — and for 2c a word, it's simply not worth the bother of being bored.

So now I have insulted my friends, as well as my business associates, and have napalmed my bridges. But that's okay — I'm off to Asia in any case. I've changed to writing non-rock feature ar tides and short stories.

In conclusion, demand a higher standard and you'll get it. The industry only pumps out the gar­ bage that we accept, so it's down to the audiences to select what they like. Boycott boring bands and third rate venues and drag your friends along to support the better acts at the more reasonable gigs Also, hassle Members of Parliament to support the arty, non-commercial bands, like the govern ment supports Opera, Ballet and Theatre. The great innovations in Australian rock should be compared with the Fine Arts, not product merchandising.

All my love to the thousands that keep Australian rock music alive, and the hundreds that perform it.

- DAVID LANGSAM

, ROADRUNNER Page 15

r

1

YOU WILL REALLY HATE

REMAIN IN UGHT

RECORD-SRK 6 0 9 5

CASSETTE-M5K 6 0 9 5

THE LATEST TO LOATHE ALSO TO BE AVOIDED ON DISC AND TAPE

Givethegift (rftnusk.

D istrib u te d by WEA Records Pty. Lim ited O

A Warner C om m unications Com pany

TALKING HEADS '77 RECORD SR 6036 CASSETTE M5K 6036

ROADRUNNER Page 16

MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOOD RECORD SKK 6058 CASSETTE M5K 6058

ur

MUOiL.

RECORD SRK 6076 CASSETTE M5K 6076

Yes, here it is — our second readers’ poll, expanded from last year’s which was such a great success, particularly the presentation night at Melbourne’s Crystal Ballroom with the Sports, Boys N ext Door, Lemmy Caution, M E O 245, The Kevins and Bush Turkey and comperes (didn’t they give ’em heapsl) Red Symons & W ilbur W ilde (I see they’ve graduated to Countdown these days — ah well, everyone’s gotta start somewhere).

ROADRUNNER

1980

READERS' POLL

So get your pens out & get your forms into: P.O. Box g o ^ A S T W O O a S.A. 5063 ,

ADELAIDE

MELBOURNE

BRISBANE

Group Live Group Radio Station D J. ______

G ro u p ______ Live Group Radio Station D J. _ _ _ _

G ro u p ____ Live Group Radio Station D J.

SYDNEY

PERTH

HOBART

Group Live Group Radio Station D J.

Group Live Group Radio Station D J . ___ __

G ro u p __ Live Group _ Radio Station D J . ___

AUSTRALIAN SECTION Male V o c a lis t_________ Female Vocalist G ro u p _______ Album _ _ _ _ _ Single _______ L ive _________ Songwriter Tip for 1981 TV Show_

WORLD SECTION Male Vocalist Female Vocalist G ro u p _______ Album _ _ _ _ _ S in g le _______ Songwriter Tip for 1981

BRITISH SECTION

U.S. SECTION

Male V o c a lis t___ Female Vocalist G ro u p _______ A lb u m _______ S in g le _______ Tour_________ Songwriter Tip for 1981

Male Vocalist Female Vocalist G ro u p _______ Album _______ S in g le ______ _ Tour_________ Songwriter Tip for 1981 ROADRUNNER Page 17

1

THIRTY THREES THIRTY THREES THIRTY be my Juliet These days you don't wait on Romeos you wait on that welfare check."

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN The River (CBS)

Through this song, and a number of others, there is a strong feeling evoked that you are living in a small town, cut off, downtrodden, locked into something terrible, and unable to break out, despite the fact that you have such tremendous needs . . . unsatis­ fied . ..

REDGUNI Virgin Ground (Epic)

"Everybody's got a hungry heart Everybody's got a hungry heart Lay down your money and you play your part Everybody's got a hungry heart."

(Hungry Heart)

There are two ways in which art can be political. Either it can be implicitly political; or explicitly. Bruce Spring­ steen's latest recording. The River, is an example of the former, and Redgum's Virgin Ground the latter. W ith the Clash's London Calling, these albums are the cream of contemporary, popular music from three countries this year. All are CBS artists (C.B.S. — see Rockerfeller), and one is left asking the inevitable ques­ tion of why a multinational like that is pro­ ducing the only mass-market good quali­ ty political music. The answer, obviously, is that the key to working your economic system does, after all, lie in contradiction — as does the key to understanding.

I saw Julie Burchill's hatchet job on The River in New Music Express. From my hearing and under­ standing of this record, it's obvious that she doesn't regard something as political unless it's got red or black flags all over it, or lots of expensive leather and hip crewcuts on the cover. She obviously has no analysis.

The River is about mid, and middle, America. It is about a person trapped in that emotional and inter­ actional cell. It's about not being able to make more sense of the world than its concrete attributes, not seeing to its base, but simply living, being hurt, be­ ing exploited, occasionally loving, laughing but then weeping. It's about feeling insecure. It's about being inside a system too big to see out of it. It is implicitly political.

With Greetings from Asbury Park, Springsteen ventured into the recording world with little more than folk rock, and a few fine, bitter-sweet songs . . .-I'm thinking especially of Does This Bus Stop A t 82nd Street?, / Came For You, Spirit in The Night and The Angel. Already he was more than just a red-blooded kid with a lot of life to live; he was a fine observer, with a unique talent to render those observations into pop music. He was ac­ claimed 'the future of rock and roll', and we scoff­ ed. He has become the rock and roll of the future.

The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle came next. This was an exuberant adventure into the world of pimps, thugs, streetlife, jive talking. It was jazz influenced, almost funky in spots. It was sentimental as well, in songs like Sandy, and Wild Billy's Circus Story. But more than any of this, it burst with an infectious romanticism, an over­ powering desire to drag your whole out into the street, his street, to meet Spanish Johnny, Rosalita; and all to the New York Serenade of passing cars.

Of course, life is not like that. Spanish Johnny pro­ bably has bad breath and never changes his socks, and would be unbearable to live with. But Spring­ steen conveyed the whole thing, the whole world so compellingly in The f. Street Shuffle, RoSalita and so beautifully in New York Serenade, that it didn't matter. Reality, after all, is thankfully over­ looked by Romantics. Springsteen begged us all to overlook it with him, and we gladly did.

Born To Run — th e album of the 70s — came out in '75, and the sheer power of Springsteen and Clarence Clemons with their gloves-off rock ripped stereos to shreds across the world. It was stunning.

It was essential rock. But the beauty was still there, as well as the finely observed characters of street life, in songs like Jungleland with its Rat. Night and Backstreets and Born To Run had pure desperation, something lacking in all other music of the time (The Sex Pistols were still a year away from any widespread recognition). The album shone like black leather in a rainstorm. But it showed some­ thing else as well. Songs like Meeting Across The River were beginning to look at the other side of the streetlife coin — the side where you just had to make a buck to live . . . bread and butter, and status. Some realism was beginning to creep into the portraits.

The Darkness on the Edge o f Town was late seventies music. Times had changed, for everyone.

Bruce Springsteen grew up in one album. And he left the city, the apartment blocks and the shootouts. Hetvent to the edge of town, and looked over the city. Choosing the bitter-sweet of country rock for this album, he surveyed a scene of people trapped in jobs, in hopeless marriages, in little wooden houses stacked in rows. This isn't to say that he didn't believe in the Promised Land anymore. He did. But he also saw much more of the pain, and beyond this the futility, the chains. He saw the only way to get outside it was through pro­ ving it all n ig h t. . . excess.. . outside the town. But how often does this happen? The song of this album is Factory, a man chained to an alienated job.

The Romantic portraits of Rosalita, Wendy and all the rest are replaced by the manic sex of Candy, call girl. The clouds below his feet have been blown away. It's a beautiful recognition, and a great record . .. my favourite of his.

Wreck on the. Highway extends on this theme, simply through its exploitation of insecurity. You dream of a car smash, and wake up fearing for those close to you. So simple, but for the characters in these songs who might only have love, if that much, the song evokes an incredible feeling of vulnerability.

Stolen Car and The Price You Pay are similar, but there are two songs which hearken back to the old Bruce. These are Out In The Street, which is what the title suggests (although still using a theme of work) and Drive AH Night, which contains the most amazingly Romantic line — "/ swear I'll drive all night just to buy you some shoes."

That should send a collective shiver down the spine of all foot and shoe fettishists . ..

The other track I want to mention is In­ dependence Day, another slow country-rock style ballad . . . this time about a son breaking away from his father, the two of them caught in separate streams, parting in the rush . . .

"Well, Papa, go to bed now, it's getting late 'Nothing we can say can change anything now Because there's just different people coming down here now and then see things in different ways And soon everything we've known willju st be swept away."

With The River, Bruce Springsteen has attempt­ ed to capture the spirit of soulsick America, and its rock music, in one double album. Some people have said The River is too long, and should be a single album. I believe it's a triumph of this man's art that he could say all he wanted in just twenty tracks. The River is sanctuary, sewer, salvation.

Springsteen — implicitly political.

Now we have the double album. The River, and Springsteen has gone even further from the city, past the limits, out into the aching emo­ tional desert at the centre of America. He arrives on the disused set of The Last Picture Show, and he tries to put together all he knowis about white America, and its white rock.

The listener is assaulted with song after song about the hard, simple facts of life for the unweaithy. Springsteen barrages with a live sound­ ing set of songs about cars, women, unemploy­ ment, Saturday nights. The first listening is alien Springsteen, with cockrock numbers like Ramrod, Cadillac Ranch, weird ones like / Wanna Marry You and Crush On You. The music is driving rock, and the voice of the previous Springsteen is gone. He belts out this vintage kind of American rock that is as much the dinosaur as the Cadillac, and places it on his movie set. Then he intersperses these songs with his soulful, country rock-influenced tracks that haunt. The cock of Ramrod who gets his little bluejeaned girl on a Saturday night is, also, the man who gets strangled in The River.

'Then / got Mary pregnant A nd man, that was all she wrote.

A nd for my 19th birthday / got a union card and a wedding coat."

In this song there's also the theme of unemploy­ ment, never explicitly analysed, but always exper­

ienced and described. Nearly every song is a narr­ ative, which adds to a story of unemployment, heartbreak, chains, trial, escapism.

'7 got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company But lately there ain't been much work on account o f the economy".

And through his simple descriptions, Springsteen evokes a political response, rather than delivering a lecture on Marx or Bakunin.

"Now all them things that seemed so important Well, mister, they just vanished right into the air N o w ! just act like / don't remember Mary acts like she don't care."

The title track is the heart and soul of this album. It says it all.

One criticism that's been made in the past of Springsteen is that he is sexist. . . that he only sees women in relationship to men. He does do this, but increasingly it has been part of his social critique . . . to present a natufaristic picture, to show clearly the way he sees alienated, sexist society^.. and he does put the blame on capitalism and its exploit­ ative relations, only he doesn't use the jargon. On this album, however, there is one beautiful song about life which takes greater account of the woman's perspective . . . Point Blank: "I was gonna be your Romeo, you were gonna

Redgum, as just about everyone must know by now, are a band which formed at Flinders University in the mid-late seventies, and produced the political folk album I f You D on't Fight You Lose on Warren Fahey's Larrikin label last year.

The album sold well, and CBS became interested and signed them this year.

Virgin Ground is the first album they've produced for their new label. It's by far the most interesting record produced in Australia this year — and the most impor­ tant, for a number of reasons.

Redgum are explicitly political. They write about issues — migrants, uranium, exploitation. They are unashamedly Australian, and they attack their work directly. This album shows great development in nearly all the fields of endeavor from last year's If You Don't Fight You Lose. They're still direct, but now their music is just so much more polished, and their message more accessible. The album also fulfills the promise of their first in one area in partic­ ular — songwriting. Michael Atkinson wrote the title track from the last album, and this time has several songs. Virgin Ground, Maria and Ted must establish him as Australia's best contemporary songwriter. The only one I can think of that would be near him is Eric Bogle — but I prefer Atkinson's writing.

Virgin Ground, the title track, is about one of the most peculiar chapters of Australian history — the attempt in the I^ O s by a group of political radicals disenchanted with contemporary politics to set up a "New Australia" in Paraguay in South America.

Like most attempts at "alternative living", it failed.

The parallel with current Australia is obvious. But I think Atkinson might also be making the point that what is required is a "New Australia" herb — the virgin ground of a new nation; bur own.

Maria is about the difficulties for migrants in this country; Stewie is a portrait of someone doomed from the cradle to end up behind bars, because of class; Domination Quickstep is a delightfully whim­ sical song about foreign control of Australia, similar in tone to Servin' USA from the last album, but much classier. , Side One ends with one of my favourites. The Money's No Good. This is about living on the dole, something many more Australians will have to get used to in coming years. For anyone who's been unemployed, the lyrics would be fam iliar. ..

"Debts pile up and your confidence goes A nd everybody in the family knows.

They sympathise because they feel they should.

Seven days a week and the money's no go o d . . . " .

Redgum — "their music i s . . . more polished, and their message more accessi­ b le ."

It's also yery interesting musically, with fine use of Chris Tirhms' fiddle, and an almost 'surf-sound' effect used in the guitar sequences.

ROADRUNNER Page 19

r THIRTY THREES THIRTY THREES THIRTY Side Two starts with Nuclear Cop, which is a humorous look at the effects of uranium mining on Australia of 1990. Then comes Women in Change, sung by Verity Truman. Verity normally doesn't get much of a look in as a lead vocalist, featuring on tin whistle and flute, but here she displays a fine voice.

However I think the song is ruined by the kitsch Digby Wolfe nightclub arrangement.

Ted is a gutsy song about an old man who was born north of Adelaide, lived through two world wars, and had no illusions about our society. It's a fine piece of poetry, and an even finer song. John Schumann's braying voice softens when necess­ ary, hardens when necessary. And for once, Atkin­ son flirts with mysticism in a very nice passage . . .

"Pick the wheat from the charf And the steel from the scurf And the honest man from a iiar — if wisdom came by other names, Ted was earth and fire."

The song, with a kind of near-Elizabethan sound (perhaps because it's aboyt someone from Salis­ bury), ends with a fitting requiem for the great, common person . ..

"On the day that old Ted died No-one would have known.

Buried in a pauper's grave He lived and died alone — And the 727s roared overhead With the drone o f the angry road.

They seemed to pause for just a while And the silence was heard for miles around.

And the silence was heard for m iles. .

This almost sombre song is followed by It Doesn't Matter To Me, which portrays the obverse side of the coin — the idiot who doesn't care less about anything other than his Commodore, TV and beer.

He's in the Lions Club, the R.S.L., he bashes his wife, and his daughter's in the Festival of Light. . .

"I prune in June and / plant in October And / write to the Council when a sign gets knocked over, / always say the Channel 10 news is best Especially when the weather girl wears a low cut dress. .

The album ends with The Long Run, which ex­ amines the Aussie Aphorism that "It'll be alright in the long run" from both sides.

This well-produced album means that Redgum are now fully-fledged as recording artists. The music is good, varied, uncharacteristic beyond something like "folk rock" . . . but a definite improvement from the first album. Above all, Redgum are humorous as well as political, sweet­ ening their bitter pill of Australia's social evils with our national wit.

- LARRY BUTTROSE

THremember your name.

The song is on this album as is their first single Dance Stance, revamped and retitled Burn It Down.

Just for interest sake, I believe the Dance Stance single is still available from E.M.I. and well worth investigating. Again we find Rowland demanding attention and hitting out lyrically on a topic he ob­ viously feels strongly about. To quote a few lines from that distinguished and often cynical British music paper, NME: " . . . it simply sets Ireland's solid literary heritage against the devious and supercillious practice of telling Irish jokes." Everytime I hear the song. Shamrock starts growing out of my ears, I clench my right fist and mentally scream "Up the I.R. . . . " . . . Oh yes, where were we? Admittedly the tuning radio intro sounds a wee bit contrived but it's not long before the Dexys brass section are serving up some of the brightest and cleanest sounds around, tight inspiring but never mechanical.

Second track Tell Me When My Light Turns Green again bursts from the speakers with the boys on brass leading the assault — you see, there's no lacklustre retread guitar intros on this soul train.

The song has instant appeal, catchy chorus and a simple obvious theme. Vocalist Rowland has time to relax on The Teams That Meet in Cafes, an instrumental track cleverly structured to initially tease the listener with its restrained opening and then to knock him/her senseless with its closing climactic lines.

By this stage, you need something to calm the savage beast within you and of course, Dexys pro­ vide the remedy in Tm Just Looking — ah, if only Otis was still alive! What he could do with this moody piece, which simply drips with soul.

Rowland means every word he spits out and you know it — the passion evoked seeps out of your system and into the marrow in the bones — ah yes, true soul.

Side 1 of this masterpiece ends off with Dexys password Geno — what more can you say?

Side 2 maintains the same standard of urgency and dynamics achieved on the first side, except for the brief cutting spoken words of Love Part 1, which has a deep and passionate style all of its own. J.B.'s tenor sax weaves its way around Rowland's voice, setting the mood and projecting yet another side of Dexys' versatility.

Quite frankly, I could go on forever bestowing praise on each and every track but I won't — I've done my bit so now it's your turn. Hopefully your 'yeah' will be 'yeah'!

- MICHAEL "Irish" O'REILLY

TOY LOVE Toy Love Deluxe Records (RCA).

Pardon the parochialism, but it's un­ canny the way this bunch of Sydneyflavoured New Zealanders remind me of a now-defunct Adelaide phenomenon known as Irving and the U-Bombs — paralellism I guess. This doesn't detract from either band, in fact quite the op­ posite. Disarmingly raw with lyrics teet­ ering between simplistic and gut-urgent.

Toy Love have managed to propel themselves out of Sydney's post-punk gloom w ith emu grinning wicked humour, and a good sense of humour saves anyone.

DEXY'S M ID N IG H T RUNNERS Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (Parlophone).

Kevin Rowland, lead singer, front man and architect of this seven-piece band's destiny, began forming Dexy's way back in Jan '78, disillusioned by the short­ comings of new wave which was slowly but surely dribbling into the archives. Tur­ ning to the sweet soul sounds of James Brown, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding and of course Geno Washington he saw his vi­ sion — the new soul vision. By July of the same year the nucleus of D.M.R. was complete and apart from the odd person­ nel change has remained intact up until the present.

Then, mid way through 1980, in amongst an avalanche of disco drivel, commercial pop power, a resurgence of Heavy Metal (god for­ give their poor long-haired souls), and bland U.S. of A. schmaltz, came Geno, like a breath of fresh air on a souping music scene. Obviously it was a tribute to (3eno Washington and his Ram Jam Band who used to cram his audiences into sweaty venues like the Marquee in England and belt out some of the most raucous energetic soul music around. But that was '67 and '68. This is 1980 and on close listening to the lyrics, Rowland places Dexy's stance in true perspective . . .

Me and you were the same Now you're all over, your song is so tame You fed me, you led me

ROADRUNNER Page 20

Forgetting the production and other dubious aspects, this is an affectionately seedy set. Fract­ ured sixties influence with pushy guitar, songs for junkies. Penthouse perverts and hunks of cold meat. Definitely city-as-the-glorious-craphole stuff and I like it — always did have a soft spot for L. Reed and Co. I wouldn't expect ol' Molly to drool and dribble much but it's more Aussie product building up bricks for our tower of Babel.

The only major gripe concerns the mix — too much guitar, not enough keyboard and low class tones all round. Jane Walker (keyboards) plays on most tracks but you'd be going to pick it. Rough­ ness is a facet of the band's raison d'etre but that's no excuse when the album's best moments coin­ cide with a better balance and a tighter overall sound. Bedroom and Photographs o f Naked Ladies being prime examples. A little more effort could have lifted Toy Love from the inevitable low cult status to the level of a promising debut.

Negatives aside, there's a wide range of moods stretched across this bit of black stuff. From the dirge of Death Rehearsal straight into a raucous hoedown Bride o f Frankenstein (a silly single), back a bit and down for Who's A t The Bottom Of Your Swimming Poo! (the R'n'R heaven schtick) and thru to the end of side two for a fragmented wonderland called Frogs. I'm not sure where Toy Love orig­ inated, but there is mention of a plastic person betraying her human lover "enwrapt in other arms, they're plastic just like you" — a neat twist to an old heartache. And then there's Toy Love Song in which one lover beats the other to suicide amid comments like "was our loving just a toy?".

The inside cover's decidedly cute if a little self consoling, but it holds your interest for a while.

Overall, it's one of those albums that makes me glad such ventures are within the grasp of bands lacking large financial support, and hopeful that this album will do well enough to give the band another chance to etch their cynical humour onto vinyl.

- TYRONE FLEX

ROBERT PALMER Clues Festival It's been said of Robert Palmer that he's almost too good to be true, meaning that virtually flawless vocal styles and drum tight arrangements don't always leave room for real emotion.

This may sometimes be true, but does not detract from the fact that Palmer has a beautiful voice, smooth and gliding, able to melt right through a song without really seeming to try. On Clues, that voice is in full flight. From the melan­ cholic Johnnie and Mary right through to the full bodied rave ups on Looking For Clues, Palmer ac­ tually sings his songs, weaving in and out, never forced, never stilted, always in command of his material.

On the first listen. Palmer's choice of songs and styles is confusing, as he jumps abruptly from the disembodied electronics of / Dream Of Wires, into the Caribbean flavoured Woke Up Laughing, and then, without pausing for breath, fuzzes up the guitars for a dose of rock'n'roll on The Beatles' Not A Second Time. It soon becomes clear, however, that most of the tracks have one thing in common - an underlying beat that is eminently danceable.

Make no mistake, this is a GREAT record to dance to!

The music is tight, layer upon layer of instru­ ments working towards infectious rhythms and melodies, The most notable aspect is the use of electronics — a lot has been said about Gary Numan's involvement in this record, and for my money / Dream Of Wires is the best thing he's done for a long while. Palmer's voice ghosts over a hyp­ notic wall of electronic sound, resulting in one of the standout tracks of the album.

The lyrics cover a range of subjects, from enigmatic, futuristic ponderings, to the dry wit that permeates Palmer's views on love and relation­ ships. I don't think he'll win any awards for stunn­ ing originality, but then, I don't think he's really looking for any. This guy know he's got talent and he puts it to very effective use.

This is not to say the album is flawless, it's not. A couple of the songs. Sulky Girl and What Do You Care?, don't quite succeed, due to the dischordant cluttering of the arrangements, resulting in songs that don't quite click. Again, it could be said that Palmer's attempts at perfection don't always quite touch the heart as much as they might. Perhaps the guy is too good to be true — all I know is that at some indeterminate stage I found myself hooked on this record, becoming overjoyed at the fluid honey of the vocals and the addictive dancing beat.

Go out and buy this record and get carried away.

You'll love it.

- TOP YOUTH

the same time. The sound they pursue is minimal, slightly variant synthesiser drones, or original chordriffs, a bit of thudding bass or percussion, a few extyraneous noises now and then.

The musical landscape is always sparse, rarely has all of these things going on at once. I told a lie when I said they sang. Actually they recite or in­ tone. The two effects (words and music) almost never have anything to do with each other. They are like two strangers edging past each other in a narrow passage, barely a nod or a wink. You can listen to one or the other, but it's a strain to hear both.

I recommend you listen to the music. The words are stupid. A song like Vanessa Teratology (tera­ tology is the study of mutations) is about three grades below the intellectual standard of Devo's - Mongoloid and nowhere near as original. Then there's 2,4,5 T (that's the mutagen for me) . . .Haven't we heard all this before?

Sometimes a phrase like "Mother says I'm look­ ing well as she passes food under the door", takes you by surprise, but without any conviction or humour it has little other effect. The only lyric I like is that for MMMM\ "Your face inflicts some sort of violence on my chest", but then they overdo it.

I get the feeling they made this record for the fun of it. A pity they didn't project it into the music. I certainly hope they're not serious.

Growing Pains, the sampler, is another kettle of mercuric mariners. Everyone has one good song in them, and here they all are.

Somebody calling himself the Pleasant Peasants starts it off with Pussman Polka, and then goes away. Good. The Barons do a version of the Stones' Paint It Black in a style reminiscent of the Residents' 3rd Reich'n'roll excursions. The vocalist has his head in a plastic bucket, the guitarist almost keeps time, and by way of percussion they have somebody chewing his way through a door.

The Sytematics (remember them?) follow with Midnight on Balancing Day, a slightly more interesting song than any on their Rural album. And to close the side, EST do Yvonne is Out Again, which is actually a good and promising song. You can get wrapped up in this one easily. They have a sense of rhythm!!! The guitarist comes in right out front like a tide! THE VOCALIST CAN USE ITS VOICE!!! I'll listen to this one more often.

Height/dismay begin side two with a rerun of Girl From Ipanema. I can't imagine how they sat through it. It's more work making a record than listening to one, surely.

Scattered Order's main claim to fame is the engineering of Rural. His/their track Bent Up reminds me of early MX 80 Sound (how's that for elitism?). Well, to put it plainly, it's on the verge of a brilliant song. An edge is introduced early and sharpened as the song progresses. I like this one too.

Finally, a song (without vocals) called The Dead Travel Fast. This is the best thought-out track on the entire album. It's also the longest, so you can really get into it and end up wanting more. A masterpiece of environmental engineering. We're not told who's responsible for it, but a flyer in both albums declares that soon to be released is a single (Tae! o f a Saeghors) by the Makers of The Dead Travel Fast. Is this to be the anonymous Residentoid coup? I hope not. They have enough musical credibility not to need such an overworked ploy.

I suspect that behind these chequered offerings is a record company (M Squared) with genuine am­ bitions of being taken seriously. One can only hope their artists shape up a bit more. Experimental music is fine by me, but once you go into the studio and start cutting the marketable product, surely you need to have your musical strategies organised and understood.

-S P A N

THE SYSTEMATICS Rural (M Squared - Independent)

Various artists Growing Pains (M Squared - Independent) Somewhere between the heights of heartfelt creative expression and the bad­ lands of good hard rock'n'roll is the awesome unplum bed abyss w hich cautious cartographers call Art Rock (I can hear the sound of people turning the page). Despite the relative merits of these two records, there are factors in them which may lead to their dismissal as deni­ zens of the aforementioned chasm, creatures to ignore or throw large boulders down upon.

M Squared is an independent Australian label which I suspect has ideas of becoming the Ralph Records of Darlinghurst (This totally unfounded ob­ servation will be supported later on). The two album reviewed here are available from them at P.O. Box 338, Darlinghurst 2010, for $5 a piece.

Both, by the way, are 12" 45s. Now read on.

As near as I can deduce, the Systematics are two blokes called De W itt and Johnson. They play everything they can lay their hands on and sing at

LYNTON KWESI JOHNSON Bass Culture (Island) Don't be put off by this man's creden­ tials: Britain's foremost black writer and poet, holds an honors degree in sociology, a Cecil Day Lewis Fellowship (1977), w riter-in-residence Lambeth Borough, has written for New Society, N.M.E., Times Literary Supplement, Melody Maker, Race Today and others, has conducted live readings of his work and contributed to the BBC overseas ser­ vice. Surely a bad beginning in popular music?

THIRTY THREES THIRTY THREES THIRTY L.K. Johnson arrived in Brixton as a youth and gew up in a largely hostile environment. The British Black Panthers introduced Johnson to the disci­ pline of political thought and action; he also flexed his literary muscles — becoming known as 'poet'.

Bass Culture is his third album. Poet Et The Roots — 1978 and Forces o f Victory haven't been releas­ ed locally. As with his earlier albums fiass Culture is about racism, exploitation and police oppression; the lyrics are street-level black-British urgings towards standing together to combat racist att­ itudes and exploitation. To Oz ears some of the words may be familiar; the style and language used is Carribean Patois/Creole — the living language of millions of British black people, an underground, sectarian tongue. In spite of the serious socio-pol­ itical concerns expressed in most of the lyrics, the music is pure reggae ("Whenever I write I have a reggae bassline in my head") incorporating innov­ ative, sparkling dub effects. If you enjoy early Steel Pulse (1978), if you like reggae with a sharp socio­ political cutting edge you'll get to and hear this record.

Dennis Borell plays keyboards, mixes and shares engineering credits; steady bass from Floyd Lawson and Vivian Weathers, great drums Jan Bunny. Not just a reggae record.

- J O H N SPADE

I would have really liked to see this band live, as the recorded product leads me to believe they would have been an excellent rock powerhouse.

There's a very raw and vibrant feel to these songs.

They all push along without letting up for a mo­ ment, and would be music to work up a sweat by.

The production is very honest and clean, with over­ dubs kept to a minimum, except for some primitive "African natives at work and chanting" backing vocals. It's straightforward rock, with few frills and no evidence of slickness. Keyboards are dominant, mainly in the shape of a very staccato piano sound, playing lots of sharp, chopped chords. Deniz Tek's guitar sound is high on power and distortion and features long sustained notes and liberal use of mid-level feedback which contributes to the con­ trolled wildness the band projects.

The overall sound is very reminiscent of The Doors, with the vocals being perhaps the closest point. Mark Sisto's style is very much like Jim Mor­ rison's, particularly if you note the way his voice drops a couple of tones at the end of lines and phrases. His voice does, however, tend to become a little monotonous and repetitive, especially as these songs have precious few vocal hooks. If some more hooks were written into the vocal lines, Sisto's limited range and style would not be so ap­ parent.

Although I can't see this effort selling very well outside Sydney, it is a creditable one, and one that benefits from constant playing. It takes a while to sink in, but it does have a great deal of unique ap­ peal. Definitely one to listen to a few times.

- CYCLOPS

some areas, but not so in Adelaide. It's the same old story, go to Sydney, sign a recording contract, have a hit, then if you're lucky you may just make it in your own hometown. But enough of that.

Before / Forget is good, better than good in fact.

Very laid back, but Andy and the band have got their shit together.

The list of players on the album reads like a who's who of Adelaide studio musicians. They are some of our most respected musos and prove once again they are world class. It's worth buying the album just to hear these guys play; they make it all sound so easy. John McDonald is no slouch behind the mix desk either.

I could find no definite direction on the album, just Andy doing his own thing; no self indulgence though, each track stands alone, and all are eminently listenable and any track could be a hit, given the usual hype and bullshit accorded the socalled superstars.

If I had to compare Andy Armstrong to anyone or any style, Don McLean springs to mind. I prefer Andy and that's honest, not bias. Some of the tracks actually send shivers through me, and that doesn't happen often, not often enough anyway.

So like I said, ring (08) 356 6011 and buy an album, not because you'd be supporting local talent, but because you'd be buying a world class product which deserves more than being relegated to ashtray status.

F.J.W.

CROSSFIRE East o f Where (WEA) As I understand it, the purist would not call their music jazz. It's not exactly rock and roll, and fusion seems to be becom­ ing a term loaded with all manner of in­ dulgent connotations.

JO N I MITCHELL Shadows and Light (Asylum) This double live set has Joni looking and sounding great. I must be honest and say it is years since I have actually sat and listened to a Joni Mitchell album, and back then I wasn't a fan. The woman's eerie style didn't do a lot for me then.

Perhaps she was too far ahead of her time for me, but with some of the shit be­ ing turned out by so many these days I was pleasantly surprised with her latest effort.

She has surrounded herself with some of the cream of the crop as far as musos go on this album (Jaco Pastorius, on bass stands out) and their tight­ ness and feel only enhance Joni's style. Not for me to try and categorise the style, from jazz all the way through to laid back rock with lots of subtle blue things happening. On side one Pork Pie Hat is magic and Joni and the band follow up on side two with The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines and you can feel the warmness starting to happen, naturally.

Some of the solos by band members stand out as the concert moves along, and I can only say it is so good to hear musos who can play with such taste and finesse. As I said earlier, with so much crap around these days it is so refreshing to listen to these people.

Joni herself makes it all sound so easy, and I'm sure it is no illusion; she has mastered her craft well.

Vocally she leaves no doubt about her greatness, real superstars are far and few between but she coasts into that category.

In retrospect perhaps I should go back and listen to some of her other albums that I haven't listened to for so many years. I'm that much older and maybe now I can appreciate what she was doing back then.

She has won me; so even if she hasn't grabbed you in the past, try this one on for size; I think it may fit.

- F.J.W.

THE VISITORS Extended Play 45 — 12" (Phantom Records) Phantom Records has a slogan:"The big beat in the heart of the vinyl jungle".

The Visitors (now no more) certainly pro­ vide a big beat. This E.P. showcases four examples of unrelenting, fast, moving rock. For those who share my ignorance of the band, it contained Deniz Tek on guitar and production, and the name of Rob Younger appears with credits for mix production. You might recall those people being associated with a band of no little fame and reputation, the late and much lamented Radio Birdman.

Australian jazz seems to have lurked so long in the older tradition that it's made the jump to this socalled fusion style with very little of the inter­ mediate shifts and tides of the American stuff.

What this means is that no-one in Oz has so far done anything truly revolutionary in the genre.

Many artists, including Crossfire, have refined it as a musical technique, but we have not yet produced a local Coltrane, Parker, Miles or anyone of the sort.

It's bound to happen, but Crossfire won't do it.

They're happy to keep their music at a level of colourful, richly textured entertainment. The six of them play competently, individually or collectively, and although the lineup's changed since their first record Crossfire still produce the same tight, empathic musical rapport which characterised that album. They are a band, not a group of soloists.

The eight tracks on East o f Where are all originals, split evenly between guitarists Jim Kelly and keyboard man Michael Kenny. With Ian Bloxsom on percussion, they are the only founding members still with the band. Supporting them are Steve Hopes on drums, Phil Scorgie on bass, Tony Buchanan on saxophones and flutes.

Individually and collectively, the tracks don't possess quite the same sense of motion and (particularly) storytelling which was a prominent feature of early Crossfire. The titles are labels, essentially. The music is pleasant, reasonably uptempo, and very safe. It deserves a listening.

ications are spending money on prom­ otion (see full page ad. this issue).

Irrespective of the harder sell, this record has everything. The bop, bounce and its general feel and danceability should ensure it is the biggest sell­ ing T-Heads album — which may encourage a new audience for their previous three releases.

The 'new' sound generated on this album may dismay T-Heads afficianados at first listening — it's much more percussive, driving, with more urgency than Fear o f Music, but Byrne's lyrics and delivery take care of any qualms. The much-herSided north west African inspired rhythms are there — but not to the same degree one expected; they compliment and enhance Byrne's compressed, jangling words at once crooning and with a noise akin to a possum having its head ripped off.

There are some guest artists on the record. The producer, of course, is Brian Eno. Immense, gigantic, do yourself a favor. . .

- RONNY REGAN

PHILIP LYNOTT Sob in Soho (Vertigo) Philip Lynott, solo artist, has proven a completely different kettle of fish to Phil Lynott, bass player/singe r/songw riter and leading light of the hard-rocking Thin Lizzy. In complete contrast to his work with Lizzy, Mr Lynott has produced an album that features keyboards rather than guitars and maintains a relaxed even sedate pace. It doesn't contain any earth shattering works of great musical or lyrical import, but it should appeal to a large slice of the record buying public.

I have always liked Phil Lynott's voice, as he has an admirable knack for providing pleasantly melodic vocal lines and good hooklines. The opening track Dear Miss Lonely Hearts sets the tone for the rest. It has a good solid beat that is relaxed "and yet ade quate for dancing. The lyrics are mundane and don't always make strict sense, but it's pleasant to listen to. The lilting hookline sticks in the brain Kings Ca//features Mark Knopfler on lead guitar, so it is no surprise that it has a feel very close to Dire Straits. Once again, a relaxed feel. A Child's Lullaby could have been written by that other singing bass PAT BENATAR player — the one who used to be in the Beatles Crimes o f Passion Cute vocals, good string arrangements and a good percussion track save it from being terminally wim (Chrysalis) py. Tattoo is good single material, with good bass, more well-arranged strings and brass and very I am told this particular lady has been strictly controlled guitar lines. The title track is an getting lots of exposure on the ABC's attempt at a reggae feel, complete with mini moog kids programme on Sunday evenings. I effects.

Yellow Pearl and Talk In 79 are quite horrible and guess that makes her good! I was ac­ better forgotten. Ode to a Black Man is the heaviest cordingly a little biased against this track on the album, and pulsates in the manner of album and I did find it fairly predictable.

Mungo Jerry. Here Phil tells us he is developing a In fairness it does have some good black consciousness, but I'm afraid he doesn't real , ly make things very clear. One thing that is most moments though. definitely clear is that he is not out to shock; in fact, I believe You Better Run is the single from the the whole album is pleasant and inoffensive. It is album and someone has made the right choice. Hit well produced, very slick and professional with Me With Your Best Shot, along with Little Paradise competent performances from the varied con and Out Of Touch have good feels happening, tributors. The album will appeal to Thin Lizzy fans raunchy and tight, and I enjoyed them. That's four who like that band's more laid back efforts, and out of 10 tracks, which is not bad I suppose. A should be able to garner a few more fans for Phil couple of others really fell in a hole and the rest I from the more mature listening audience who like found bordering on boredom. their music relaxed and "cruisy" instead of energ Benatar gives special thanks to the company etic, frenetic or meaningful. It provides no who supplies her leotards, in the cover notes, and challenges, no shocks, requires no effort to listen to rightly so I guess. She has legs that seem to go on and taxes the listener's intellect not one whit. So if forever and goes to great length to ensure we are you're having trouble deciding what to buy your 30 all well aware of it. year old Public Service boss for Christmas . . .

I prefer to look at the lady, rather than listen, - CYCLOPS most of the time. Could that be what she has in mind?

Unfortunately watching a black disc go around GARY M YRICK and THE doesnt turn me on, so I think she's going to have to come up with video cassettes as well, and I'm sure FIGURES she's working on it. I won't hold my breath though.

Gary M y rick and The Figures - F.J.W.

(Epic)

Never heard of them, eFi? I doubt that you'll ever hear of them again after reading this review, which is not meant to imply that this album is a disaster, unint eresting or boring. Far from it. I can't find it in me to dislike an effort that contains so many well-crafted pop songs and pumps along as well as this. It's just that it's only slightly above average, and falls down in places due to the occasional weak song, and a pre-occupation with well-worn themes.

ANDY ARMSTRONG Before / Forget (Independent Release) (08) 356 6011. Before you read any fur­ ther, grab your telephone and ring the above number to place an order for this album.

If Andy Armstrong lived in New York or London he wouldn't have to release an independent album.

Record companies would be fighting over him.

Even if he lived in Sydney he would be closer to the action, but living in Adelaide he is fighting a losing battle. What was it Christopher Hunt (former Festival of Arts director) said about a village?

How many other acts from Adelaide, good acts, have had to release their own product in the hope of gaining national recognition? The Wylie-West Band did; their limited edition album sold out and got airplay in most states, and is still being played in

r

M i

TALKING HEADS Remain In Light (Sire) MOLLY IS RIGHT. Talking Heads' Re­ main In Light will be big (do yourself a favor) Sire/WEA/Warner Bros. Commun­

The music has obvious sixties influences from the Easybeats to the Yardbirds. There are bits of Bowie and Lou Reed in there with the whole thing drawn together by power pop beats, straight rock and some reggae influences. Gary Myrick poss esses a good voice, but is something of a slouch when it comes to playing lead guitar. He tends to repeat himself and relies heavily on the old two string wail. Everyone does it once in a while, Gary, but not since the first Zeppelin album has that one been used on almost every song in a set. However the rhythm guitar is good, with a nice metallic somewhat overdriven sound.

- CYCLOPS

ROADRUNNER Page21'

FORTY FIVES FORTY FIVES FORTY FIVE oozes exhuberance with Nik Filips' sax chortling sweetly alongside Peter Tesla's clipped and delib­ erate vocals. Again the recording is commendably clear. Kidney X-Ray is busy, busy behind Vonnie's almost manic vocals and swirls to a no punches pulled climax. Absolutely TERRIFIC stuff (phew).

LIMITED EDITION

this package contains two singles from JO JO ZEP AND THE FALCONS. the first single presents two versions of I WILL RETURN, the A side a track from HATS OFF STEP LIVELY recorded at aav studio in m arch 1980, whilst the B side was recorded live at the b o ttom line n ew york in july 1980. DONT WANNA COME DOWN and I NEED YOUR LOVING were recorded at the 1980 m o n treaux jazz festival in m o n t reaux Switzerland and make up the two tracks from the second single, this unique double single, four track package is strictly a limited edition and will retail for a recommended price of one dollar and ninety nine cents ($1.99) to ensure yourself a copy of this special edition ...... b uy it.

BIRTHDAY P M K l'i/Friend Catcher{AfKD). ! The Birthday Party produce jagged slabs of noise that grate against each other like mountains strain­ ing up from the earth. Friend Catcher has its own internal logic — arresting, demanding, uncommon.

The sense of menace is there, and gone again.

They don't play their instruments in a conventional sense, rather they use them to create abstract aural patterns. I read in my NME that this is the third best selling independent single in the U.K. this week.

Hooray.

Waving My Arms is a little more conventional but is still possessed of a manic edge. Catman — jagged guitar and high whoops courtesy of Cave is almost danceable.

Great stuff.

NUVO BLOC/Atomic Fiction (Nuvo Bloc).

First indy single from Adelaide for awhile — and what a corker! Part of and debatably instigators of 1980 Adelaide New Musick, Nuvo Bloc have deliv­ ered a compelling and insistent aural treat. Over a steady rhythtji, vocalist Vonnie Rollan intones a post psychedelic narrative, weird high pitched syn­ thesiser darts in and around, there's a sax solo with an almost Egyptian flavour — the whole piece has a stunning arrangement (no mean feat with a six piece band) and the production is superb. Don't take my word for it — seek & listen. The flip has two songs recorded live at BMMM's Rock Off earlier this year, Ratsrak and Kidney X-Ray. Whereas Atomic Fiction has a solid groove, Ratsrak

JO JO ZEP & THE FALCONS// Will Return (Mushroom).

Although quite common in the U.K. this is the first Australian double single. You get two versions of the best song Joe has written in ages, / Will Return — the string'n'all — Peter Solley produced — adapted from the album version or a live ver­ sion (which gets my nod), recorded at the Bottom Line in New York. The other single is two songs from the Falcons' performance at the Montreux Festival, Switzerland earlier this year and captures the band in full flight. / Need Your Lovin’ is over eight minutes of rootsy Falcons, with Joe's tonsils straining to their limits, a liberal number of false en­ dings and good old fashioned 'musicianship' get­ ting a definite thumbs up. On their night there's noone around that can touch the Falcons for pure sweaty r'n'b excitement. To say this package is value for money is the understatement of the year.

As it says on the cover (isn't subtlety wonder­ ful?) . . . "buy it!"

M ON DO ROCK/5fafe Of The Heart (Avenue).

Ross the Boss is back with a ballad, smoochy without being soppy, and just the sort of thing to dance cheek to cheek to, a lone candle on the din-

ing table and a box of after dinner mints keeping cool in the fridge. Mind you, don't step on the champagne corks.

BWANA/Pame/a (Illicit) Sounds like a pretty dull, predictable Melbourne pub band to me, sahib.

A.E.I.O.U./5ra/>7was/7e(y (Au-Go-Go).

Above average powerpop, but only just, from the latest in Au-Go-Go's seemingly never-ending supp­ ly of bands who believe in Pop with a capital P.

their upcoming tour. They'll probably get eaten alive on the first date. Tremendously inane lyrics backed by chirpy chirpy keyboards. About as wild as a drizzly morning in Melbourne.

THE EYES/City Livin' (ATA).

These guys are supporting Kiss on their up & coming tour. Supposedly a bunch of Sydney squat­ ters (there is some doubt). I can't quite see how they scored the gig. Didn't anyone else want it? Not quite as tremendously inane as the previous mob b u t . . . it's close.

THE EARS/Leap For Lunch (Indep.).

After the Eyes, the Ears! Aha, I was beginning to forget what a guitar sounded like. This has quite jaunty guitar line, slightly humorous lyrics sung by a trembling voice. Nicely rounded sound, and shows promise.

y s t not t r u e / EST/Just Not T r u e Squared).

A modern song — synth'd music, sparse and uncluttered (is that a didgeridoo?) under a half sung/half spoken tale of a lover's woe. Unusual and worth a listen or three.

GLO-RATIO/Wf/eo (Vid Vid) Almost modern, but finds itself caught in the no­ man's land between conventionality and extremity.

Anyway, songs about videos are really beside the point, don't you think? The medium is the message — it doesn't have to be spelled out anymore.

PHIL LATTERLEY A N D HIS SINGING DOG, lAOLLY/How! On Australia (Axle).

A real bent one this. Would probably go down well with most fans of AH Creatures Great And Small. Me? I find it about as funny as a bowl of PAL. Then again. I've always considered dogs should be seen & not heard.

WILDE & RECKLESS//?dr//o (Polydor).

These guys are supporting Black Sabbath on

M O VIN G PARTS//./w>7Sf China DoH (Alternative).

More guitars! Actually I quite like this one (it's got keyboards tool). Bright and almost breezy, it reminds me of someone else (but then most things do). It sounds like Moving Parts have a pretty good grasp of what they want to achieve — a ring of con­ fidence. This could conceivably be a hit, although I wouldn't bet my watch on it.

BOYS/l/V/iez? You're Lonely (Paxo\e).

This one has already been a hit in Boys' home­ town Perth — in fact it hit No. 1 three weeks after release. And deservedly so — it's a great pop song, good hooks, great chorus, tight snappy arrange­ ment. Should be a hit EVERYWHERE. — D O N A L D R(

AUWABRJIVOCHARLUEMELTAECHOFOXTROmOLF

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CROSSFIRE 11.17 Final hour.

Jobson and Anderson making notes.

FLYINGDALE FLYER 11.22. Final hour.

Anderson glances at sky. No signs as yet.

WORKING JOHN, WORKING JOE 11.28.

Final hour. Barre hard at it.

BLACK SUNDAY 11.36. Final hour.

Craney and Pegg swapping rhythms.

I t ’s time to think about changing sides.

PROTECT AND SURVIVE 11.40. Final hour.

Red glow in sky. Warning lights flashing.

Anderson looks startled.

BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED 11.44. Final hour, jobson’s keyboards run o ff the mains.

Switching to auxiliary power.

UNIFORM 11.48. Final hour, jobson, Pegg, Craney, Barre & Anderson suited up.

4.W.D. (LOW RATIO) 11.52. Final hour. Motor running.

Steady rhythms. Barre monitors on headphones.

Signal clear.

THE PINE MARTEN’S JIG 11.56. Final hour. Somethmg other than birds in the sky. jobson marks reference.

AND FURTHER ON 12.00. Zero hour/Red alert PERSONNEL Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, Eddie jobson, Dave Pegg & Mark Craney; Collective noun: JETHRO T U LL

N e w A lb u m

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