Roadrunner 4(2) March 1981 by UOW Library

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M A R C H ---------------------------------------------------------- --— — TUES 17 SHEPPARTON C IVIC CENTRE WED 18 HORSHAM THEATRE THURS 19 BA LLAR AT M EM O RIAL THEATRE SAT 21 A D ELA ID E THEBARTON TOWN H A LL SUN 22 ROCK AWARDS, COUNTDOWN MON 23 MELBOURNE PALAIS THEATRE THURS 26 ALBU RY CINEMA CENTRE FRI 27 CANBERRA THEATRE SAT 28 WOOLLONGONG LEAGUES CLUB

SINGLE OUT NOW

SUN A P R IL THURS FRI SAT MON TUES WED THURS

SYDN EY REGENT THEATRE

PLAYROOM GOLD COAST BRISBANE, CLOUDLANDS BALLROOM TOOWOOMBA SHOW CAIRNS, HOUSE ON THE H IL L CAIRNS, HOUSE ON THE H IL L TOW NSVILLE, DEAN PARK SOUND SHELL ROCKHAMPTON, M UN IC IPA L TH EA TR E

HISTORY NEVER REPEATS k82so

CORROBOREE NEW ALBUM OUT 1-4-1981

53001

ON MUSHROOM RECORDS & TAPES

OUTBACK TOUR ROADRUNNER 2 f;.

THE

D R U

The ‘Shake Some Action’ Song Competition

Before going off the airwaves for its summer recess, Radio 6NR’s new music programme ‘Shake Some Action’ threw its mailbox wide-open, inviting any in terested musical parties to submit demo tapes for a song competition with the winner receiving studio time at Andy Priest’s Shelter Studio. In the process, winners could be virtually assured of a single in the stores and backing to the hilt by Perth underground radio heavies Messrs. Purvis and Gee. With fourteen submissions received, the first show for the semester, to air in early February promfsed to'be interesting, and the high standard of entries received ensured keen competition.

YEAH HUP! News swept through Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide branches of the Radio Birdman Fan Clubs (hastily reconvened when the news of the imminent release of the legendary Rockfield Tapes recorded by the band in mid 1978 at Dave Edmunds’ fainous Rockfield studios in Monmouth, Wales, broke last month) early this month of an up and coming one-off tour by three of Birdman, Deniz Tek, Warwick Gilbert and Rob Younger with two members ot the legendary Stooges, Ron and Scott Asheton, guitarist and drummer respec tively on the three early Seventies Iggy Pop and the Stooges albums, ‘Stooges’, ‘Fun House’ and

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The revamped Saints’ debut album, ‘Monkey Puzzle Tree’ just released on their own Lost Record label, through E.M.I., sold 12,000 copies in France in its first two weeks of release. The band are at present residing and working in Paris and will be undertaking a British tour shortly. Another band who record for their own label. Midnight Oil, absolutely slayed an estimated audience of 5,000 at the open-air Adelaide University Orientation Ball. It was part of a brief series of dates which included the re-opening of Selina’s in Sydney, where the band handed out shirts to enable fans in T-shirts to beat the idiotic dress restrictions and gain entry. Although he couldn’t be specific while in Adelaide lead singer Peter Garrett hinted at the possibility of major developments for the band in the next couple of months, including recording their next album overseas. Next Split Enz tour is not being promoted by Michael Gudinskfs Premier Artists, but rather by Premier’s main Sydney and Melbourne rival. Nucleus. Interesting, as without prior exception, all bands signed to Gudinski’s Mushroom Records have gone through the Premier agency. The Enz tour, the first without drummer Malcolm Green, leads up to the release of their follow up to the wildly (‘beyond anyone’s dreams’) successful ‘True Colours’ and is to be called ‘Corroboree’ in this country, ‘Waiata’ in . New Zealand and the U.S.A., and ‘Jamboree’ in the U.K. and Europe. Initially the band wanted to have a different name for the album in each country, but eventually settled on the three. Cold Chisel double live ‘Swingshift’ released March 23rd. The now four times platinum, (over 200,000 copies sold) ‘East’ is released in the U.S.A. this month and it now looks as if the band will start their first U.S. tour sometime in June. And Dirty Pool stablemates, the Angels are drummerless after the amicable and long antici pated resignation of Graham ‘Buzz’ Bidstrup. Buzz

‘Raw Power’. The band will hit the road under the banner of ‘New Race’, the title of Birdman’s most anthematic song, and at present the tour is scheduled for mid April through 1o mid May, and covering Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. There are no real details about which material the band will be playing but since the Stooges had a seminal influence on the Birdman sound it shouldn’t be hard for the band to put together a top quality repertoire. At this stage the proposed tour looks like being handled by the band themselves in association with Trafalgar Studios where Birdman recorded both their albums (‘Radio’s Appear’, Mkl and II) and on whose label both albums appear. Dirty Pool were interested in promoting the tour at one stage but have since dropped out of the bidding.

The judging panel was a mixture of people from record stores, recording engineers, the ‘Shake Some Action’ crew, and the occasional rock journalist. The six judges awarded each act a score out of ten, based on their own personal criterion of ‘quality’ which, considering the panel’s constituents, allowed all musical participants a fair analysis. Musical content ranged from ’76 punk to arty synthesiser meanderings to some sort of pop to pure pop to successful attempts at creativity. The event provided a few surprises with virtually unheard of popsters, Eddie Kapelis, Harlequin Tears, and Stray Tapes all polling well. However, the more established, slightly more polished, inventive Perth bands such as The Plants, The Triffids and The Scientists fared best. The one exception to this though was a new band. Confessions, who, despite being together for a mere three weeks, performed taut, sparse, inspired original material, and were clearly the band with the most promise.

The bands which fared worst with the judges were the synthesiser and ‘dirge’ bands. ‘No Actresses’ and ‘SX 1’ polled lowly and while The Plants could be said to fit into the synth category, the latter band appeared more inspired and let sufficient humanity through to make the judges think that the musicians were, in fact, playing the machines, not vice versa. In a nail-biting finish. The Triffids were victorious by a half note from dark horse outsiders Confes sions who were half a point again in front of the magnificent Scientists. Here are the final scores: Triffids 54 Confessions 5316 Scientists 53 Plants 45 Stray Tapes 4316 Harlequin Tears 43 Helicopters 43 Eddie Kapelis 42 Audio Damage '40 Nobodies 3716 Accident 3616 Ground Zero 3116 SX-1 24 No Actresses 22 Apart from allowing fresh talent to surface, ‘Shake Some Action’s’ competition demonstrated that there is still vitality in a Perth scene which has been under the dupe of another radio station’s competition for commercial, slick, safe bands who get off on Beatles and Joe Jackson cover versions. Justice was done and The Triffids were victori ous, however the evening was tinged with melancholy because it was announced that The Scientists are calling it quits. Yet The Triffids won’t be the only band committed to vinyl in the near future for The Scientists will be releasing an L.P. consisting of 12 to 15 songs. Backing tracks have b6en completed and as you read this, the band should be involved with finishing touches. The L.P. should be avail able in April or May.

KIM WILLIAMS

-V.;

had apparently informed the band of his decision before they started their U.S./Europe tour, but waited until the completion of the AC/DC tour before making the news public. When asked about a possible replacement a spokesman for Dirty Pool said, “ I never knew there were so many drummers in Sydney. They haven’t stopped coming in the door all week. But we haven’t even started rehearsing with anyone yet.” Official reason given for Buzz’s departure was ‘tour fatigue’ and it is expected that he will concentrate on songwriting, which is in a totally different vein to that of the Angels, and production. An exodus of Adelaide bands in an easterly direction starts this month with the Units heading for Sydney, with a two week stopover in Mel bourne, and both the Bad Poets and Beat Detectives going to Melbourne. Soon to follow perhaps are the new three piece (two synth’s and guitar) Nuvo Bloc, who debuted at Adelaide’s Warehouse on the 1st March. The single recorded by the old six piece Bloc’s is currently receiving strong airplay on 3RRR-FM.

RR reviewer Dirk Warhol gets into the act with Slim

(pic Steve Keough)

THE ROADRUNNER CASSETTE! FAME AND FORTUNE COULD BE YOURS! Having been heavily influenced by Adam Ant recently, and particularly by his attitude that if an idea is good then it’s worth nicking and making some use of it, we brazenly bring you, the young (and not so young) unrecorded bands of Australia, the chance of a lifetime. Well, probably this week anyway, if you’re not doing much else. Y’see, top selling U.K. weekly music bible, N.M.E. in association with the ultimately street credible Rough Trade label, recently offered for sale through the magazine a cassette featuring 81 minutes of music from 20 British groups at the iolly

decent price of A$3.10. The cassette featured previously unavailable cuts from the likes of Ian Dury, the Buzzcocks, the Specials, the Beat, Pere Ubu plus offerings from the less well known Josef K, Orange Juice, Wahl, Heat, Cabaret Voltaire etc etc. This cassette will be available in this country' through Rolling Stone’s Gap Records later in the year. Now it seemed rather a good idea to do an Australian version of this cassette. Many bands have ‘demo tap es’ played on local non commercial FM radio stations, and many more make recordings but can’t really find any outlet for them. What we intend to do is audition tapes from any band interested enough to participate, choose a certain number and offer a cassette compilation

to our readers (that’s you) at a ridiculously low price. Any profit made frorh the exercise will be distributed among the participating bands. If you have a demo tape and do find the idea interesting just send your tape to ROADRUNNER, Box 90, Eastwood, S.A. 5063. If you wish the tape (preferably reel to reel) to be returned please include return postage. Line-up and brief history of band or artist would also be appreciated. Well? What are you waiting for? P.S. Due recognition should also go to Mel bourne’s ‘Fast Forward’ cassette magazine, edited by Bruce Milne and Andrew Maine, for pioneering work in this area. The third issue of ‘F.F.’ is now available in the more discerning record outlets.

ROADRUNNER 3

JOHN ROnEN AT LARGE '4^

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?■#; It seems poetically appropriate that John Lydon has chosen Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ as the film to insert Into the video cassette deck at Virgin’s Town House studios in Shepherds Bush. John is hunched over a 32-track mixing desk that dwarfs his slight, unexpectejdly studious figure. He is mixing PIL tracks recorded the previous day for a new studio album. Between takes, from time to time, he peers up at the television that is set in the wall above his head.

GOT A BIT TO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH, DIDN’T IT ? jy The cassette we’re watching is a bootleg that John. has recently bought. “ Kubrick withdrew the film in England a few years ago. Got a bit too close for comfort to the truth of what’s going on, didn’t it?” he announces in the condescending sing-song whine he reserves for the near-truisms he tosses like stick grenades into conversations or silences. These vocal irritations now provide the only memories of a once more mannered speaking voice that, two or three years ago, used to rise and dip like the verse-reading efforts of a petulant school child: a voice possessed of a grating quality guaranteed to " under even the most insensitive of skins. R Q A p p U M l^ R ,4

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John Lydon ‘does’ have a super-ego: even though much of it was doubtless erected as a defence mechanism against all the nonsense to which he was subjected as a Sex Pistol, there were certainly some pretty solid foundations already existing upon which to build. His wit and natural style (the latter being the reason he got into the Pistols in the first place) must for long have induced in John some measure of self-admiration - though whether, pre-Pistols, he consciously thought in those terms is another matter. He is probably more intolerant than he believes himself to be: John doesn’t seem very readily able to accept the humanity in his fellow man’s folly, and there is a suspicion that he doesn’t always see his own fallibilities either. Certainly, he’s a little too convinced of his own innate wisdom. “ I was born 2,000 years old” , he sighs with histrionic all-knowingness at one point, leaving the listener with the lingering memory of just how much John Lydon can sometimes appear like a wizened, dirty old man. Considering, though, all the nonsense to which he’s been subjected, John Lydon is a remarkably well-balanced human being. He is also very funny, with a deep-rooted, natural humour. Though this has not always been the case, his preceptions th ise days overrule his paranoia. As well as separating him from the Kafka-esque period of the late Pistols and its immediate spiritual and legal consequences, the passage of time is justifying John’s ambitions for Public Image Ltd. Also, he has presumably in some way come to terms with the tragic death from cancer two years ago of his much loved mother - he lovingly refers to her as “ my old dear” . As was shown by his Dublin arrest John Lydon is still under constant scrutiny from the forces of officialdom. One can only hazard a guess at how wearing he must find this: until the early hours of the morning one day last February when John was wakened by the sound t>f his front door being broken down by police officers, (who subsequently charged him under the Fire Arms Act for possession of a pocket-pensized teargas spray) he and the occupants of his Chelsea home were aware that for some months they’d been under sporadic police surveillance. Since that bust, though, for an item that is legal in the United

States, and for which he was given a six months conditional discharge, he feels that the upholders of law ’n’ order have lost interest in him: “They seemed very disappointed they didn’t find anything more. I really got the impression they thought they were going to discover an arms cache. God, I’ve never seen so many police” . People ostensibly on his side have caused John equally as many problems at his home. Mutant punks have been the major difficulty: “ It’s much, much worse than it was ih the days of the Sex Pistols. I’ve even had them pitching their tents on my front door-step. Victor Vomit from Hull, I remember, was a big problem.” There was also a time when the Lydon front room would be regularly peopled with ultra-cool sycophants, like fawning toadies at a Regency court. “ I just don’t let any of them in any more. I just don’t answer the door,” he shrugs, with the faint irritability of one who realises he’s bfeen used. John Lydon seems a bit of a lonely fellow sometimes, though he claims his real friends are rarely seen, and are nothing whatsoever to do with the music world. With his jacket, trousers, waist-coat and shirt all made oirt of different patterned check materials, John Lydon looks like a race-course bookie who got dressed whilst under the influence of a bad hangover. His sartorial ensemble is set off by a black tie: “ I thought I should go for a more sombre effect” . Around one o’clock in the morning, as .‘A Clockwork Orange’ flickers to a close, the Public Image singer cah be sighted sniffing surreptitiously into his arm-pits. “Corrrr, I do ‘smell’ don’t I?” he announces, having traced the source of a stench like dead cats that is polluting the studio. “ Can we get some Air Freshener in here?” In an expedient move to eradicate his own unpleasant odour he removes his shirt and tie, and replaces his jacket and waistcoat. No wonder the Chelsea police has stopped hassling him: they probably had to get in Rentokil after they took him down the station last time. Back at his mixing desk seat John continues pouring Guinness down his throat from an unending series of pint cans. This Arsenal fan’s love of his Irish roots is far removed from the self-conscious showbiz nonsense that Rod Stewart, another Celtic North

r Londoner, utilises to demonstrate his Scottishness. A couple of hours later John makes his way along the long corridor from the studio PIL are using to enter the Town House’s lounge and television room. As he passes the main studio, he jerks a thumb in its direction. “The Jam are in there” , he laughs over his shoulder, “ if you want to nip in fdr a quick interview. . . heh heh heh . . . ” he cackles contemptuously. There is not exactly a lot of other musicians' work enjoyed by JR - the Lydon bit was introduced into general usage after Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren claimed he had sole ownership of the John Rotten moniker: even so, privately, John has and still does refer to himself by the initial letters to which he had a claim long before the existence of a certain TV series. Currently PIL consists of John, Keith Levine, film-maker Jeanette Lee and corporate over-seer Dave Crowe. Much insistence is made that Public Image Ltd is a business company and not a group. And it is not restricted to musical business, either. Drumming with Levine and Lydon is Martin Atkins, who worked with them on “Metal Box” and is shortly due to tour the States with his Brian Brain group. Though PIL are working at the Town House on their studio album, released in Australia this month is “Paris Au Printemps", a live LP recorded at a concert in the French capital that preceded the outfit’s string of US dates last May. John settles down on one of two plush Chesterfields in front of the large colour TV. I ask him who played bass on the heavily percussive number on which he’s just tried out some vocals. Original PIL bassist Jah Wobble, of course, was asked to depart from PIL following the American shows. All the bass I’ve heard, he replies, is down to the bass drum! He is dismissive of the need for a bass player, explaining that when necessary Keith Levine plays the instrument. He goes on, reluctantly at first, to explain the departure of Wobble, for long a close friend of the singer. “There was a divergence of opinion, that’s all” , he says, an obscure trace of bitterness in his voice. “ It’s all down to the records, really. I’d like to keep it down to that. “ Keith won’t work with him. I won’t work with him. No-one in this entire company will work with him.” he adds. “ Listen,” he continues, “ while being a member of PIL and being given all rights and freedoms blah-blah-blah more than he’d get with any other organisation anywhere - he did a few nasty things behind our backs, and that had to be stopped. But there’s no big deal about it. It’s just a fact of life” . One of the Wobble sin’s apparently, was that he utilised, without the other members’ knowledge, rejected PIL backing tracks for his solo work. It does appear additionally that in the same way that the Sex Pistols fell apart underthe pressure of an American tourso PIL felt the strain of working in the USA. Why had they decided to tour there in the first place? “ I don’t honestly know w hy we fuckin’ went to America .. .” It seemed out of character. . . “ W hich is a good reason to go . . . because we wanted to: we needed a holiday. We did gigs in between huge amounts of time off when we roamed around the countryside. After we’d finished in Los Angeles I went to Mexico in a camper bus I hired with some friends. A very heavy place . . . It was all,” he mimics a New York media intellectual accent, “ a very, very valid experience” . Then,, “You see, I’d gigged a lot before. Keith never liked gigging. I don’t like gigging now. Wobble had never gigged before really in any way at all. “And you need to know how awful life can possibly get before you appreciate the value of your instruments” . He laughs sardonically.

“ TOURING IS VILE, IT TURNS PEOPLE INTO CABBAGES OR ALCOHOLICS” “ Look, touring is vile. The whole thing has either to be reorganized or stopped. Totally. It turns people into cabbages or alcoholics. “ Us, as PIL, we can organize gigs just about anywhere in this ! universe, make it highly successful, and at the end come out with money: actually earn a wage out of it. Yet if you leave it up to, say, Warner Bros who release us in America, before they even begin to book the dates, they’re talking about losing twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars. “And it’s not on. That’s crap. Mismanagement - totally. All the way down the line. It’s all, like, a tax loss for record companies. They like to cover those costs, because when it comes to reviewing your album contract and you’re running at a loss then they can keep you, but keep you under hand because you’re so in debt you have to do as you’re told. “ But it’s only if you’re a mug that you get into that situation: if you have management and middle-men” . At the time of this interview PIL are so short of money that John is expecting to bounce the cheque that’s just been written for his domestic electricity bill. This though, he says, is a purely temporary situation: like any business in its initial stages they must expect their finances to fluctuate. “ Besides” , he chuckles, swallowing another mouthful of Guinness, “we do seem to spend rather a lot on entertainment. None of us has any money in our bank accounts, yet we all have colour TVs and video sets, and rather expensive stereo systems. We don’t seem to buy much food, though. “ We’re doing alright. It’s just ups and downs. “ It’s well bizarre,” he adds, “the whole tax situation, if you credit yourself with ^ f f you need, and show the tax people you’re running at a loss, then, in fact, you’re gaining. “ Just as long as we can do what we want, then we’re happy. . . It’s just unfortunate that what we’d like to do involves very, very high finances. I’d ideally like somone with a lot of money to talk to us. “ We want to do films, but not like The Who’s scheme of things, which I think is well shitty. That’s just following the normal pattern and getting them nowhere. “ Look at the film industry all over the world. It’s collapsing, right? What it needs is whole new ideas and a totally different approach. Without those two things you might as well forget it. There’s no point in trying to condescend to old attitudes and old ways you’ve failed before you’ve begun: I’ve always been someone who wants to change the way things are. The possibilities are endless “ It’s simple: everything is run by a bunch of old fuckers who are too scared of change, but know at the same time that what they’re doing is crumbling. It’s not working anymore. “ It’s the same thing with the dinosaur bands. You know the huge amounts of money they make, and yet they’re moaning all the time about things getting iacklustre. But what are they doing with ttieir huge amounts of cash? They should be putting it back into other

bands, or helping out in some way like building studios for bands that don’t have the chance or money to get a record contract. The kind of stuff that we’re trying to do.” In fact, though, because they’re playing within this vast corporate rock structure, a lot of these huge bands don’t have half as much money as you’d expect. I understand this is particularly the case with the Pink Floyd . . . “ More fool them. They could very, very easily have got away with doing it their own way, the lot of them. Cowardice, I suppose. Or just basic laziness - that’s more like it.” When he uses the word “ laziness” there is a certain droll roll to John’s voice that suggests perhaps he is not totally free of that particular deady sin . . .

“VM JU ST PISSING AGAINST THE WIND” But, anyway: “ Rock ’n’ roll is a dinosaur. It’s dead, and (laughs) I thought I buried it with the last band. I don’t like to see silly fuckers resurrecting it. The whole system should be changed - totally. Right from the grass-roots upwards. And that’s what we are trying - and succeeding - in doing. “And if we don’t get the credit, or some journalists or whoever, don’t appreciate it . . . then that’s too bad. I do feel that what P.I.L.” - he recites the individual letters, as opposed to Keith who pronounces it “ Pill” - “ is doing is damn important. “ Plus,” he laughs, “we make jolly good fuckin’ records! But, anyway, this is boring for me, really . . . if people don’t see it by now, I’m just pissing up against the wind .. . though I seriously have no ideal who or what our audience is.” If it seemed poetically apt that A Clockwork Orange should’ve been screened in the studio, it has to be an irony of near-epic proportions that as JR enters into the customary rock ’n’ roll-is-completely-redundant rap that one feels is part of his very life-force, the opening credits are rolled on the TV in front of him of the quintessential mid-50s rock ’n’ roll film. The Girl Can’t Help It. He watches the screen out of the corner of an eye. After it has been running for half a reel or so, we are joined by Keith Levine, who appears to divide his time in the studio between ascetic electronic work and playing Space Invaders. Via the articulate erudition with which he expresses himself tonight, Levine belies a reputation for being morose and dourly awkward. These supposed character traits seem to be the result of simple introversion. He “ hates going to gigs just for the sake of needing somewhere to go out to.” Like John, he has no time for the revivalism that plagues modern music. “You might as well go right back.” he grins, semi-serious, “ and become a fucking Viking or something like that. I’d much rather be a Viking than a skinhead.” Though he never completed any of the courses he commences, early Clash member Keith has an art background that included much video work. It seems likely that plenty of the current desire within PIL to pursue a video direction is rooted in his practical knowledge. As he sits down, JR is commencing a diatribe against the infatuation with back garden independent labels that grew out of Punk: “ I seriously don’t give a tuppenny shit about any other outfit at the moment, because they’re all wankers and wallies. We know what we want, we know what we think is right, and usually we’re very fucking correct. It’s as simple as that: we’ll just carry on doing what we want, not what we think people want. “ We will not support big labels, small labels, or any other fucking label. It’s just a matter of commonsense. You obviously want the largest possible distribution for your record that you can get. Not the most minimalist. That’s crud. That gets you nowhere. So a few trendyjournalists appreciate what you’re doing .. .well, great. Wonderful . . . “ But isn’t that just a loser’s way out? ‘I’ve made my statement for art!’ “ Yeah, well, operating like that you can end up disappearing up your own arse. But what will you do when your contract ends with Virgin? With this next studio album out you’ll be halfway there. Or perhaps you haven’t really got round to thinking about that y e t . . . ” JR (laughs): ‘“Yeah . . . Quite frankly! . . . Look, large record companies are manouvreable. Not everyone who works for them is cloned beyond reason. You can manipulate circumstances in your favour - it’s just down to commonsense.” Keith: “ When you do a deal with a record company what people seem to forget is that the record company is working for you. That’s where record companies and managers and groups get' it wrong. The manager tends to make the group believe that the group is working for him and for the record company. Yet it's the exact opposite: the record company is there to help the group . . . and themselves. “ If you go and talk to the record company yourself it’s much easier than if you have some manager who just tells you what he wants to tell you and undermines you. If you deal with it yourself you’re more likely to get what you want done.” In the past the relationship between PIL and Virgin is known to have been volatile, to say the least. For long stretches of time, particularly around the release dates of each of the two PIL albums, communication between label and signing has been close to non-existent. “A few wankers have been eliminated” . , . is John’s way of describing how this impasse has been overcome and an apparently close working relationship arrived at. No longer does PIL have to deal with a vast Virgin bureaucracy who in the past, John and Kpith allege, would distort their intentions and re-direct the original Pli_ desires. Now they deal directly with Virgin boss Richard Branson. . ' “ Virgin,” Keith explains, “gave us very decent advances for our records. For example, we’re getting an advance for this live record, which is almost unherd of. But then they’d blow it by not promoting what we gave them. It got to the point about a year ago when I just said to Simon Draper, the managing director of the label, ‘Go on, sling us off the label if you don’t want us’.” Keith then in i^ires what I think of PIL’s music. Generally it’s great,' I reply, although in comparison with the first album I find “Metal Box” somwhat devoid of humour. JR: “That’s funny. . . That’s the one we were giggling all the way through . . . ” Keith: “ ‘Metal Box’ can be a hard album to get in to . . . But I think that album’s got so much depth . . . ” The GirHCan’t Help It is still showing on the television in front of us. John interrupts Keith’s words with a sudden yelp of delight: “0-o-o-oooohhh . . . 'Cry Me A River’ll! Turn it up! “Keith, this is Juiie London - the woman i iove! I never know she was in this! I really like her. ‘Cry Me A River’ is one of my vall-time fuckin’ favourites” . Keith resolves to remain unmoved by this display of devotion: “ . . . If you restrict yourself to labels like rock’n’roll you’re never going to get anywhere with PIL. We’re not even a group: we’re a company. I don’t think we connect with any of that stuff that groups^ are doing. . “That’s my dilemma in the studio right now. Right this minute'.

The last album, ‘Metal Box’, if you want to call it rock’n’roll, it’s thei furthest you can go in rock’n’roll . . . Now there’s got to be a complete change. At the moment I’m designing a drum synthesizer that I’d like to be able to put out on the market. %‘l want PIL to do loads of things. We’ll be doing videos soon. Well, we’re doing them now, but we’ll be releasing them soon. But that doesn’t just restrict us to playing the numbers that are on the tape, for example.” JR: “ Listen, you do a song, but why does it have to be pictures of a band strumming guitars to go with it? Why should that be your visual?” Keith: “ Why should the soundtrack even have any music in it at all?” JR: “Taking it the other way round . . . Yes!!! . . . ” Keith: “ It might just be a dialogue soundtrack to go with the visuals. That’s what a video-disc means to me. It’s access to the film industry and . . . ” JR (with the peevishness of one whose beloved has disap peared from the TV screen): “Why, why,«why! You either like what you see or you don’t! That’s it,'isa’t it?” Keith: “I’m trying to show the difference between the restrictive attitude and the open mind.” Me: “ But the way most record companies are approaching video, they’re obviously just going to turn out the predictable hackneyed rubbish . . . ” Keith: “ Well, that’s why I’d like to get money out of ITT or someone like that. Because I don’t feel PIL is restricted to record companies. We’re signed up to Virgin for the music side of it, but why should we be restricted to them for films? “ I think that by using video and Super-8 together we can blow all the unions out, which is the whole problem that fucks up film-making. And that’s what PIL’s all about - accessibility and non-restriction: opening things out. Facility and creativity ^ not money. Just get it together yourself. That’s the example we want to set. “ Not changing rock’n’roll because I really don’t think we have anything to do with it. I’d rather send out a video of us than do a 30 date tour. Because videos don’t have arguments with themselves, and don’t split up, and don’t ever tire” . JR: “ How can you be honest if you have to play the same set every night?” Me: “ Have you stopped doing live gigs for good?” JR: “Yes! It’s just not on. You might as well go to a museum. I’m afraid it’s not on.” Me: “ But are there no groups whom you would enjoy to see onstage?” JR: “At the moment no.” Keith feels the same. Though he loves the new Bbwie album, he wouldn’t like to see him play a live show - though he would like to see him in The Elephant Man. This, though, provides John with the opportunity to express his sentiments on the subject of Bowie: “ People like Bowie, they should do very small night-club gigs . .. Totally different, totally separate. The geezer reckons he’s an actor; he reckons he’s into mime (dramatic groan) . . . God! I’ve yet to see it! “Uuuurrrgggghhh! I hate him so much! I’ve never liked him . . . We have quite a few differences about things like that, don’t we, Keith?” Keith (his thoughts leaping): “ We’re in here doing an album, right? We have to concentrate on doing music, that being our main money-puller and our main reason for being about at the moment even though we want to do lots of other things. But we obviously have to concentrate on the musical side of things because that gives us the facility to expand. “ But, as I said, that’s my present dilemma: I refuse to take part in any of it anymore . . . “ . . . I don’t understand why we haven’t sold a load of records, but we haven’t. ‘Meta! Box’ sold out, and the 'Second Edition’ sold loads . . . But they should all have sold millions more, and I don’t know why they didn’t. In the end, maybe our fourth album will do really well, and people will just buy up the qthers. But by then, we’ll be doing so many other things that the musical side of it will be least im portant. . . ” Me: “ I think you’re seen as a cult band . . . ” JR: “ Unnecessary rubbish. Because there’s no intellectual in this outfit - that’s for sure !. . . I will not give up. There is a future. I will not accept the nuclear threat as being the be-all and end-all. I will not crawl back into escapism. The nuclear threat is just another form of escapism for the manic depressives. Or alcoholics. Or drug fiends.” As John is speaking, Keith stands up and returns to the studio. With Keith gone, John bemoans how disillusioned he’s become with reggae, laying much of the blame for the devitalization of the music on the reggae snobs who swarm homicidally about it: “ Do they actually like the mus'ic? I don’t like what reggae clubs have become: there’s very few blacks in them anymore. It’s all social workers and trendies. That’s why I don’t like reggae anymore. It’s all, ‘Oh, you don’t like that record? You racialist bastard'’ “ But why don’t I like it? Could it be that I’ve heard 20 better versions of it two years ago? Over the last two years there’s been very little but re-releases. The only band I can think of who’re doing anything at all is Black Uhuru. That’s it.” Understandably Malcolm McLaren, due to whose actions all the Pistols’ money is still in the hands of an Official Receiver, remains a bete noire. Former Clash manager Bernie Rhodes, McLaren’s supposed lackey, is seen, though, in a very different light. “ You have to appreciate about Bernie,” explains John, “that he does talk. And so do 1:1talk myself into death traps sometimes. Arid that’s what Bernie does. And it hurts him. “ I know how much he influenced Malcolm. He definitely influenced the start of the Pistols. He made all Malcolm’s shirts. He did all the t-shirt designs. He got me in the band. Malcolm hated my guts, because of the way me ’n’ Sid used to take the piss out of him. Wanker! It’s not that Bernie was Malcolm’s stooge at a!l. It was the other way around.” I take exception with John over his continual sniping about The Clash whom, whatever he may feel are their misgivings, I certainly see as most sincere blokes. “ Oh, I’m not saying they’re not. There was a time when Joe got very upset about something I said about them. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t like their direction. I don’t see what they’re aiming at as being in any way constructive . . . ” But perhaps things have to operate on . . . . Many levels? Different attitudes? Fine. Perfect. But you can’t expect me - as a normal person just like everyone else - to like everything. I have my likes and dislikes and I don’t like what they’re doing. It’s not good enough for me. Personally.” Considering the official absurdities with which he’s had to contend, it’s hardly surprising that John Lydon is appalled by the political nonsense currently being propagated in this country. Like many others he is increasingly disillusioned at how little difference there is between Left and Right: “ Basically, it’s all the same - it always will be. They just go round in circles. In actual fact, you do need dull boring people in those positions of power to keep things together. Because as soon as you vote for opinionated leaders the extremities are going to provide a backlash to match it. “ So you just need a dullard, that’s all - as a stabilizing factor. But I think (laughs) Margaret’s gone a bit too fa r . . . I think it’s bloody obvious she’s mad. The woman’s dangerous. “The Tories will be in to 1984. And I can’t see any way of stopping them.”

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They’d put down 17 songs there with Lobby Loyde producing. “That’s just about all the original songs’’ Jeremy said. Lobby Loyde also produced The Sunny Boy’s first vinyl outing, an EP for Phantom with four of Jeremy’s songs — Love To Rule, Alone With You, What You Need, and The Seeker. Apparently Lobby was just hanging around Day Street studios and “ he organised some time at Trafalgar” said Peter. “ He’s great” . Initially the four tracks had been recorded with Todd Hunter but they decided to re-do them.

On The Sunny Side of the Street. . .

STUART COUPE SEES YET ANOTHER FUTURE OF ROCK N’ ROLL. THIS WEEK IT’S THE SUNNY BOYS . . . AND FOR ONCE HE MIGHT BE RIGHT. MAYBE GOOD ROCK ’N’ ROLL AND MASS POPULARITY AREN’T ALWAYS MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE CATEGORIES. No matter what time of the year it is Sydney always has one or two, or even three, great bands playing around the city. They stand out am ongst the average and appalling bands like punks at a Mormon picnic. Laughing Clowns, The Riptides, Tactics, The Dead Travel Fast, and The Sunny Boys are some of the wonderful bands who’ve played over the past twelve months . . . and it looks like there’s another one on the way. By the time you read this a band containing Deniz Tek, Angie Pepper, Ivor Hay and Steve Harris will have played their debut show at The Civic. But that’s another story. The Sunny Boys are currently the most spirited dance band in Sydney. They’re young, energetic, dynamic, powerful and all those other journalistic cliches used to describe great bands. They’re impossible not to dance to and have an enormous stack of catchy rock ‘n’ roll songs that make you realise that if you’ve got what it takes a couple of cover versions are all you need. OK, take a touch of Iggy, some Remains, a bit of Kinks, some Detroit power, a wonderful sense of melody, a tinge of Beatles, a bit of The Hitmen before they returned to being a heavy metal band, some Flamin Groovies, put ’em all together and you’ve got some inkling of what to expect at a Sunny Boys gig. Ooooops, and add lots and lots of sweat ’cause this band is POPULAR. I repeat POPULAR. Going to see them play anywhere you’re assured of being very familar with the 20 people cramped around you. Yoli’II have trouble moving more than a foot in any direction and so will they. The Sunny Boys line-up is Jeremy Oxley (guitar and lead vocals), Peter Oxley (bass). Bill Bilson (drummer), and Richard Burgman (guitar). As Sydney rockofiles will already know Peter and R ichard were m em bers of the vastly under-rated Shy Imposters who’ve just released a posthumous EP on Phantom Records. And damn good it is too. Bill played awhile with The Playboy Lords. But it all began a few years ago when Jeremy and Peter used to play together in highschool bands. Bill also went to the same highschool and they estimate that they had four or five different bands during those years. Three quarters of The Sunny Boys reside in Newton, an inner city Sydney Suburb. The interview, which will pad out the rest of this story, took place one afternoon at Jere m y’s Mediterranean style house. Sunny Boys posters on the walls. Jeremy’s just bought a new guitar and he and Peter are listening back to the tapes of the concert at the Governor’s Pleasure that 2JJJ had recorded a few days earlier as part of their Radio On The Rocks series of live concerts. Both were excited, and apprehensive, about their impending tour of Melbourne. Two weeks, nine shows — some of them as headliners but the majority with Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons, Russell Morris and The Jubes, and Sports. All Mushroom bands!!! Seems this Gudinski fellow has offered them a contract, making them the ffrst Sydney based Mushroom act. They’ve even got an office up here now. Whether The Sunny Boys actually autographed the contract I’m not sure but there certainly was/is interest, (they have-ED) And Mushroom were paying for the band to record demos at EMI’s 301 Studio.

Lobby will be producing whatever The Sunny Boys do in the future. “ We really haven’t seen what he can do but when we record the next single we’ll realty be able to take our time and get the best from him” Peter said. The Sunny Boys are pretty determined that when a recording contract is signed it’ll be what THEY want. “ We just don’t want to be exploited” Jeremy said. “ We don’t want someone to make more than we do” . Peter elaborates. “ We’re obviously looking for a contract and we’ll go with whoever we think can give us the goods and the most help” . Let’s face it, th irty have happened VERY fast for the Sunny Boys. The day of the interview they’d only just played their 50th show. And they’re not rock ’n’ roll veterans. Jeremy, who I consider one of the finest rock ’n’ roll songwriters in the country, is only 18 . . . yep, 18. t “ Our first gig was August 15th” Jeremy said. “ It was at Chequers and we played with Trans tove Energy, ME 262 and The Lipstick Killers” . A few weeks later they played for nothing at mine and Greg Mazuaks birthday party. Nice chaps. “ Our roadies still don’t have a set list” Jeremy said. “ We always throw them out after every show. Every show has been different” . The Sunny Boys have 23 songs that they can call on. On an average night they play 17 or 18 of those. They’re all originals written by Jeremy, although two. Let You Go, and Thrills he co-wrote with Peter. Cover wise they regularly do The Remains classic Why Do I Cry and sometimes The Kinks’ All The Day And All The Night. “ We thought Why Do I Cry was one of the few great songs that someone in Sydney wasn’t already covering” Peter said. “Then we found out The Proteens do it but we kept going because ours is a lot closer to the record than theirs” he said. Not surprising when there’s two girl lead singers in The Proteens and none in the Remains!!! They’ve also been know to do The Fab Four’s Birthday. Talk turned to the early days. One of their pre-Sunny Boys bands was called Foreplay. “ Someone must remember us” Jeremy said. “There’s some graffiti near The Paddington Green Hotel which says Sunny Boys, and next to it someone has painted ‘Foreplay Were Better’. That means they remember back two years ago when we had a residency at The Byron Bay Hotel” he laughed. In those days they used to cover songs by the likes of Elvis Costello, Tom Petty and Chris Spedding. “They were all obscure bands in those days” Jeremy said. All of Jeremy’s songs have been written since The Sunny Boys. The one exception is / Can’t Talk To You which was written “ before I had a girlfriend” . Boy/girl love songs are very common in The Sunny Boys set, but don’t worry. It’s only on a few occasions that they border on the mushy side of true love and romance. The Sunny Boys only manage to get one new song down per practise. “ I like to get the songs down whilst the confidence is there” Jeremy said. He writes all the music as well as the words, and Peter helps with the arrangements. It didn’t take The Sunny Boys long to obtain the nod of approval from the fickle inner city cliques but now they’re attempting to win audiences in the suburbs. “ We’ve played all sorts of places but we’ve hardly done the rounds of all the places” Peter said. “ Most of the places we’ve played we’re been the support! band and most of the kids are hot to see the headliners and don’t give the support much of a go but we’ve given them something to watch. “ A lot of our fans don’t come to the inner city shows because it’s so crowded. They wait and come to the suburban shows. “ A lot of kids in the suburbs know us from the EP. Wq see them get up and dance when we play those songs” . The EP sold 1,000 copies in 2V2 weeks which ain’ttoo bad. In fact it’s better than any single or EP that a major company would sell. Some copies went to Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. And they also went to the Gold Coast in an amusing way. “The Saints took them up there without realising” Jeremy said. “ Someone at the warehouse had put Sunny Boys EP’s inside Saints covers arid they didn’t realise till they got to the Gold Coast for their tour. Shops threw the cover away and sold the record” he laughed. “ Gudinski also took some overseas and there’s interest in us doing a single as long as Alone With You is the A side. They seem to like that one Especially.” I was interested in how The Sunny Boys felt about attracting many of the fans that Radio Birdman once had. I remarked to myself one night that The Sunny Boys were ever^hing the old Birdman hordes had been waiting for. “ Well, we know certain tricks” Jeremy grinned, “ we can play hard and heavy, or soft. “The Birdman cult are only after energetic bands. There’s very few around. ME 262 are energetic but all they do is copy the Birdman style” . And The Sunny Boys don’t copy no-one. Hearing them blaze through the EP songs and other originals like Tm Shakin’, Tunnel Of My Love, and My Only Friend (“ a slow song where people hold hands and kiss and cuddle” ) is to experience the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll. Their attitude was perfectly summed up when I asked what they felt about tackling Melbourne audiences. “ We’re just going to play our guts out” Jeremy said. “ Basically it’s just dance music. We don’t dress up or anything like that. “We’re an energetic pop band” . And a damn fine one too. If you want rock ’n’ roll spirit they’ve got it.

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“ In the Bible,” he adds dramatically, “they blew the horns and the walls of the city crumbled .. . Well, punk rock was like that.” ‘The Sound of Sinners’ obviously being a strong reference to what Joe has spoken of elsewhere as the religious feelings he|s been discovering within himself. I ask Joe his opinion on the view that hard-line left or right-wing viewpoints are just as bigoted as each other. “ Well,” nods Joe, “ in western society I see that the way its set out is that it’s every man for himself. If you haven’t got a job, you can’t have any money. “ So how are people going to feel socialistic, if that’s what they have to deal with. It’s just dog eat dog, isn’t it? People feel optimistic about that? It’s made out that it’s smart if you can get one over on your fellow mate. If you can do that, then people are supposed to look up to you.”

Exactly a week later I’m just down the road in Ladbroke Grove, sitting opposite Joe - who is much slighter in stature than his gruff bark makes him sound - at a table in the small, overpriced flat he shares with Gabbie, his girl-friend. Staring down on us in the dimly lit room is a giant-sized poster of Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock. Sipping from a glass of beer, and playing compulsively with a switch-blade knife that almost belies a true nature that is gentle and unassuming, the romantic realist that is Joe Strummer further considers ‘Sandinista’. “ Some of it is very American sounding,” he admits, “ but if you go somewhere then obviously it’s going to leave its mark on you - and we did that American tour and stayed there for quite a while. If we went to Spain and spent six months there, we’d be talking pidgin Spanish by the time we came back - well, I would be, anyway. I tend to absorb more - absorb what’s going on where I am. “ Most of the album was actually written in Electric Ladyland in New York. We might have had an idea for a number but with virtually every one we waited until we were actually in the studio before working it up into a song or into a backing track. We would make it up just before we recorded it. Before, we’d usually practised all the songs really thoroughly until we could play them all and then march in to the studio and record them straight off. “That’s what we did for ‘London Calling’ and all our other records. This is not so much like a record, it’s more like an experiment. . . These songs are more like demos, I suppose.” It has been suggested that one reason for the multiplicity of styles on the album was because The Clash were unclear in their own heads as to what they were doing. It was known, after all, that there had been occasional on-the-road rows between Joe and guitarist Mick Jones. Joe, though, dismisses any suggestion that the arguments might have had any long-term basis to them: “ It’s just that Mick doesn’t like being on the road at all. He really hates it, y’know. He has to get a bit pissed to go onstage. “ So there was a conflict there in that the rest of us still really enjoy touring, and Mick thinks it’s a trial and tribulation. So something or somebody has to suffer. The rest of us just think of it as a good laugh. “ Mind you, there are lots of things that aren’t right about touring. The way they’re set up at the moment, you’re just supposed to go out and sell records and the record company gets much more out of it than you do. Yet they are only willing to come up with say, 10,000 dollars to support a tour when, in fact, you are going to lose something like 30,000 to 40,000 dollars. “ But, anyway, even that tour support’s a con, like as far as I’m concerned everything is that they give you upfront. Like when they give you money for studio time or for tour support then every penny that they pay seems to be one that we owe to them. “ So for a band at the sort of level that we’re at, the debts just seem to go on and on and get worse instead of better: royalties take a really long time to come through, and if you do a few tours that wipes them out anyway. “ So it’s a question of us having decided that we have to stop all this. You can’t go on just digging yourself deeper and deeper into debt. It’s just ridiculous! “ I reckon it should go back to the local scene. You know, really low key. All the really big groups make money on tour in America when they play these huge stadiums every night. Their ticket income is multiplied by twenty every night, yet the costs for crew and equipment are about the same as ours.” Also, I say to Joe, the human expense, the wear and tear on human beings in rock ’n’ roll, seems to be most uneconomical. “ But that’s the cost you don’t count until the band splits up.” Well, that’s what usually does happen. It seems inevitable that people get worn out and fight with each other, that you and Mick should have been rowing . . . “ We’re not rowing at ail . . . it happens that we have rows sometimes but then you have rows with your girl-friend, too. You forget about it the next day - it’s not the end of the world. It’s not just one row that causes groups to split up . . . ” The ‘Sandinista’ title has ensured that yet again The Clash are being accused of naive political sloganeering. Really, though, ‘Washington Builets’, the song that is partially concerned with the

Nicaraguan people’s overthrow of the dictator Somoza, is a simple, sad anthem to freedom, pointing out along its path a few of the crimes against other peoples committed not just by the United States, but also by Russia and by other imperialistic viewpoints. Strummer isn’t too concerned about any accusations of being radical chic: “ Bob Dylan said if you can’t bring good news then don’t bring any. And I feel what we’re bringing is good news: Nicaraguan people taking their country over for a change instead of the US-supported dictator running it. Maybe everyone is just secretly guilty because all over the western world they’ve been electing right-wing leaders. “ In France they’ve had one for years, and we’ve got Thatcher and now there’s Reagan. But I think a lot of people just want to listen to real fun musicians and just forget about it. They just don’t want to know - everything is not real for some reason: that struggle went on and all those people died and everyone in the west is really cushioned from it. “ People just want to hear about clothes or fashion or sex and gossip. They don’t want to talk about the main thing that’s real. “ We saw” he continues, “the same sort of thing going on in Jamaica when we were down there. It was before the election and people were getting shot every day. We were travelling down to Channel One studio and a youth of fourteen was shot dead on Hope Road just ten minutes after we’d gone past it. “ I’d seen Kingston two years before and I could really tell the difference. Even the street corner guy selling the herb was heavy about it - it wasn’t a question of do you want it or you don’t: you want it! I went into this supermarket there - there was nothing in it whatsoever except for 140 tins of syrup! Rows and rows of empty shelves! A great big long supermarket up in New Kingston near where we were staying. Somebody was starving Manley out.” The IMF, Wall Street, the whole bunch did a number on the Jamaican Prime M inister. . . “Yeah, they’re like the western gang. They did that because they thought he was a Marxist, although he wasn’t even really that. He was just friends with Cuba, which seems pretty logical if it’s your nearest neighbour and you’re a Third World country too. “ Not that we didn’t have our own problems in Jamaica. We could only do one song when we went down to Channel One - that was ‘Junko Partner’. Then we had to leave town in a hurry. “ It was because all the people down there that hang about outside the studios - the session musicians and song writers they believe that if you’re a white group then you must have loads of money, and, therefore, ‘Where’s our share?’ “ But we were stuck there on Paul’s girlfriends credit card desperately trying to wire some money through from CBS for the whole week we were down there. “ But when we went down to Channel One they were starting to threaten Mikey Dread and the Natty Kongoes who were working with us. They said they were going to beat them up and do their house over. Then they said they were going to wait until after dark and do everybody as they left the session in the midnight hour. And Mikey Dread was convinced that we should just pack our guitars and move out there and then. So we just left the studio, quick-style.” The final track on side three of ‘Sandinista’ is ‘The Sound of Sinners’, an elaborate gospel pastiche that, along with references to Biblical mythology, contains the lines, “After all this time/To believe in Jesus” . Words which have been causing certain people a measure of discomfort, though they should be hardly unex pected, considering Joel’s affinity with the devotional-based reggae music. Incidentally, Joe insists that his beliefs - which he never absolutely defines - are not of a ‘Born Again’ nature. Those words about believing in Jesus are followed by two more lines: “After all those drugs/l thought I was him” . Joe subtley sidesteps, though, when I inquire whether that was part of his own experience!: “You know, people tripping freak out and think they are Jesus. It’s the most common one apart from jumping out of windows thinking you can fly. Thinking you are Jesus is the second cliche of tripping, isn’t it? “ But I wanted to see words like drugs in a gospel song. Because I like all the imagery in gospel like ‘Going down to the Riverside’, and all that stuff. You know, you can have ‘hurricanes’ and ‘winds of fury’ and all that.

The ‘Looking-after-number-one’ maxim of the Me Genera tion . . . “ People find that admirable. Though, “ he shrugs his shoulders in mock weariness, as though advising care, “ I read somewhere that people hate reading the words of do-gooders . . . ” Timon Dogg, whose fiery ‘Lose This Skin' opens Side Five as one of the finest tracks on the LP, is an old song-writer pal of Strummer’s who once briefly had a deal with Apple. They re-met in New York, where the songwriter immediately hit it off with Mick Jones. Timon is shortly to release as a 45 his own version of ‘Lose This Skin’. “ He’s the guy I met,” explains Joe, “ before I was in the 101’ers when I was busking in London - mainly down in the tubes. He sort of taught me how to play, we did a European trip as well - Holland and France and all that sort of thing. “ He was a songwriter who tried to make a few records in the ’60s, but he never really came to fruition - he hasn’t got a deal or anything, though. He’s going to put ‘Lose This Skin’ out himself. He’s going to do an LP as well. He did one himself a few years ago. It’s really hard to find, because he only put out about 2,000. Time Out magazine reviewed it in London, and they said, ‘One man music for a one man audience’. That was the beginning and end of the review. By Giovanni Dadoma, I think . . . ” . . . the same writer whose main criticism of ‘Sandinista’ appeared to be based on the assumed inappropriateness of Blockheads/Clash keyboardsman Mickey Gallagher’s child’s vocals on the flippant, brief re-hash of Paul Simon’s ‘Guns of Brixton’ that finishes side fo u r. . . “They feel threatened by kids singing now,” grunts Joe scornfully. “ But the truth is that any kid can sing. It’s only when you get older and become fucked up and self-conscious that you can’t do it right. I didn’t think I could sing and that my voice was blown apart, but I still do it anyway.” Many rock singers thought they couldn’t sing. Ian Dury said the only reason he started so late in his life was because of that fe a r. . . “ Even Jimi Hendrix! There was a story we heard whilst we were at Electric Ladyland. Really late on, Jimi Hendrix went into the studio and afterwards came out to hear what he’d done: ‘I can sing, I can really sing!’ “ I would be very careful ab o u t^h o I actually called a singer. I ■wouldn’t call myself a singer. I certainly wouldn’t call Ian Dury a singer. Gregory Isaacs and Alton Ellis are singers. Sam Cooke’s a singer.”

“i r S TRUE, THE CLASH DO GET UP SOME PEOPLES’ NOSES” Joe walks through into his small kitchen to fetch us each another beer from the sink where he is running the cold water tap over them in an effort to lower their temperature. “ It’s true, he reflects,” “The Clash do get up people’s noses. But it’s better than getting arse-licked all the tim e . . . Like The Jam do: every review I read is ‘Wonderful, fresh, energetic young tro’ . . . I finally got the Information 1was looking for in of all things the Daily Express (a right-wing, excessively mindless British paper). They said that they thought The Jam were becoming really lacklustre.” I tell Joe that I really love a lot of The Jam’s singles, and cite ‘Start’ as an example of the excellence I find within the group. “‘Start’? Awful! Just another one. “ See, you’re not a musician, so you have a different viewpoint. If you’re a musician then you listen to The Jam, and all you hear is lock, stock and barrel lifts. And I’m not saying that nobody lifts stuff, but at least most people have the decency to try and think of some original way of letting the steal be of some use. I keep hearing Beatles’ guitars and drums and bass all repeated into one glob. “ Being a musician, you don’t judge it objectively. You ask yourself whether it’s a good record or it isn’t a good record. You judge it thinking about the creative processes that produce the record, rather than the record itself as direct competition, or whatever. You start seeing it from the creative process. Whether they make good records or not I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I only ever listen to them from that viewpoint.” As we’ve been talking, Joe has been inking in the titles on a cassette box, which he announces is the entire recorded repertoire of Clash dub, taken largely from ‘Sandinista’ and the American ten inch ‘Biack Market’ release. At my request he sticks it on his cassette machine. “You know,” he says as it begins, “ everyone’s always saying there isn’t much good reggae happening anymore. But I don’t think that’s true: there’s loads, but you’ve got to really look for it. “ When I was in Jamaica, which was in July, I heard ten all time stunning classic records. I just heard them on JBC, on the radio. I remember there was one fantastic one called ‘Rainy Night in Portiand’. But I keep waiting for them to turn up here, and they don’t. “ I just heard some incredible rhythms, too. Stunningly inventive. No white group would ever play the drums like some of the ones I heard being played. Almost shuffling it. Pure invention. I heard numbers that would’ve cleared the floor for days, weeks, months, years. ' “ I started a couple of years ago to think that reggae had had it, but I’ve since found I was a bit hasty, because that music is growing all the time. I like listening to dub a lot - not a lot of people do. I’d like to hear it on the radio all night long. Instead of the soothing dribble of the big band sounds.” Suddenly Joe’s attention is grabbed by a Newsflash card that appears on the volumeless TV screen. He jumps up and turns on the sound. At a post office a letter bomb has been found, addressed to the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. As the bulletin ends, Joe turns down the volume again. “ Letter bomb, ehh?” he smirks, in great amusement. “That’s a bit amateur, isn’t it? I can’t see that doing the job. We’ve all got to try a bit harder than that.”

Chris Salewicz.

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RISING SUN ROCK I’m here in Tokyo, the Winter is just over, the cherry blossoms season is coming now. Today I’d like to talk about original Japanese rock, you may call it “ Nippy rock” (?). In 1980 we have faced the very big TECHNO movement by Yellow Magic Orchestra. Not only in music scene but also in fashion scene. A lot of new words were born, for example, “TECHNO POP” “TECHNOCUT” “TECHNOKO ZOKU” etc . . . Y.M.O. is the No. I record selling band here. They have sold 1,510,000 LP’s in the last year and their sales for one year were 5,140,000,000 yen, including tapes. Surprising! Y.M.O. scored a great success with their world tour II — England, Europe and the U.S.A., from Oxford (11.10.) to New York (14.11.) Y.M.O’s premium concert in L.A. was instantly broadcasted over the Pacific Ocean to Japan, of course to New York, too. From 24 to 27 December the biggest hall in Tokyo, BUDOKAN (it6 accommodation is 12,000) drew a full house each day. Just now Y.M.O. is recording their new album entitled “ BGM” . After this recording each of them will record a solo album or single. Yuki will fly to London for recording and Ryuichi will join in Ako’s tour. British rockband JAPAN has asked Ryuichi to produce their next album, it will come true in this year. Y.M.O. won’t have any concerts, probably, this year. •

Y.M.O.’s equipment. Harry: GR Bass Synthesizer, Arp odyssey, Prophet-5 Yuki: TAMA Drum Kit, Roland Syn-Drs, ULT/ SUND DS-4 Custom Ryuichi: Mixer, Arp Odyssey, Roland Jupitar-4, Poly-Moog, Poly Pedal, Controler, Roland Voc oder Plus Ako: Prophet-5, Oberheim-8 voice Kenji: Fender Stratcaster, MXR Phase 100, MXR Dyna Comp, MXR distortion Plus Hideki: Roland mc-8, E-M Synth, Moog 111-C Effects: YAMAHA E 1010, Moog SP VP-1, Roland GE-810, Roland SBF-325 etc . . . Let me introduce the most exciting band “ RC

- some other groups - ^ * Plastics * They have toured the U.S.A. last April. In New York Plastics were on the stages of Mudd Club and Hurrah’s. Before going to there, Hazime Tachibana & Toshio Nakanishi flew to Bahama to design B-52’^ ’ second album jacket. Four of the members had another occupation before this sudden success, Chika is a stylist, others are designer, poet and illustrator. Plastics’ third album requested by Island Label will be re leased in March. (Only in England it was released on 23. 2.) Its title is “ Welcome Back” . They recorded this album at Compartment studio in Bahama, they’ve met Eric Clapton there in Nassau. Plastics are now playing with the Talking Heads on Heads’ Japan tour. They are all good friends.

* Lizard * They played as the supporting band for Stranglers in Kyoto in ’79. J: J. Burnell prpduced their first album in London: In. 80 Lizard released a single calfed “ SA KA NA” (FISH) by a small independent label Junk Connection, parting from a company. For in this song Lizard sings about “ minamatabyo ” (it’s a environ mental pollution illness), if they released it by a company, they could earn money through such people in pain. Lizard couldn’t do that. In Japan such indepen dent labels are in the increase, too. * Sheena & Roket * Their sound is Pop ’n’ Roll, having sopisticated pop sense a la Blondie. Their hit album was produced by Harry of Y.M.O. Sheena’s husband Makoto Ayukawa is the nicest guitarist here. We have more and more groups in Japan, however. I’ll tell you next time.

SUCCESSION” to you. RC plays more thrillingly than any other bands in Japan. In ten years since their debut in ’66 they couldn’t score a big success, except for the only hit song “ Bokuno daisuki na sensei” (means “ My, favourite teacher” ). In ’76 they Stopped playing, however, in the Summer of ’79 began to sing again, settling new members, riding on the whirlwind of New Wave. The tide has turned to them suddenly. Even rigid magazines or newspapers could not but insert RC. A famous theatre director Mr. Ninagawa praises Kiyoshiro’s performance. RC Succession comprises: Kiyoshiro Imawano: Vocals, Reichi. “ Chabo” Nalaido: Guitars, Yawao Kobayashi: Bass, Kpzo Niida: Drums, Gonta No. 2: Keyboards, Seikatsu Kojo linkai (in short, Seikooi): Horn Section. - For Japanese artists it is a serious problem to fit Japanese words into occidental mejody. Japanese bands sing in English very often. When XTC came here in ’79 they asked in a interview, “ Why do you sing iaEnglish? It doesn’t seem to me that you have suitable tongue for English.” Kiyoshiro has solved this problem, his words just match their rock beat. Well at 2JJJ FM Station RC’s “ Boss Shiketeruze” has been on the air. I’ve heard. Is it right? RC’s witchery is revealed on their stage. Every body feels like going crazy. To stand up is prohibited in any concerts here, unfortunately . . . However before RC appears on the stage, boys and girls stand up to call them. Kiyoshiro puts on a green shirt, flower patterned pants, dog’s collar and handcuffs in his left hand, making up with powder, red lipstick and dark blue eyeshadow. His style is really curious but expresses himself. Always on their stage, RC’s 5 men -h Seikooi’s 5 men = 10 men. Sometimes too much excitement interrupts the concert. In the last number “ Step” , Kiyoshiro, Chabo and Sax of Seikooi, their twine is surpassing! RC’s record company “ Kitty” said to me, “We’d like to send RC’s video tape (30 minutes) to Australia, if they have interest in RC Succession.” Their live is more better than records, I believe.

*\Ne can see Rock artists on TV commercial film. The most sensational film was David Bowie’s, of course. It was for Japanese, spirit “ Jun” (means “ pure” ). Bowie composed for that film a tune “ Chrystal Japan” , This single’s B side is “ Alabama Song” . A big depart ment store PARCO used Devo, the B-52’s and Gary Numan. Now Rod Stewart is propaganding Nikka Whisky on TV, he says, “ Something mysterious Black 50!” holding a blond lovely girl. *Journey recorded the sound track of a film “ REVE apres REVE” in Japan. This film was directed by a fashion designer Kenzo Takada. He took charge of planning, the original, art and costume, too Journey was really impressed with this film so that they cancelled 20 concerts in Europe for this recording in the last Autumn. “ REVE apres REVE” was filmed in Morocco. It raises exoti cism and fantasy.

‘ Police released the single “ DO DO DO DE DA DA DA” , in Japanese. They recorded in a studio in Hawaii. Would you belive Sting sings it In Japanese? Many reviewers speak ill of this single. There is no reason or inevitability to sing in Japanese they say. For me, to listen to this song only one time is interesting, but I don’t feel like listening to it two or three times. ’'In February at first Police came to Japan and then AC/DC, Japan, queen and Talking Heads. I will go see Heads’ on the 28th, I’m looking forward to . . . In March, L. Kenedy, Seawind. In April Nolands, Boomtown Rats, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart. I’ve read that Boomtown Rats had played “ Fun Fun Fun” on the stage in Australia. Queen played at Budokan for 5 days, Billy Joel for 3 days and Rod for 5 days. HANAE KOMACHI

ROADRUNNER 13 .. 1 S' f t

r— T

UFE AFTER XC A H e N E H G

St TS

London in February ’81 is basically a town getting to grips with the murder of John Lennon, on the music scene at least. Of course, “ Imagine” has been top Of the singles charts for over a month, as the shock waves settle, and the sadly predictable plethora of cash-in biog raphies, T-shirts and other respectful trash has flooded retail outlets, dislodg ing all the equally parasitic Elvis tributes and curios. It’ll probably keep pouring out for some time to come. Meanwhile, it’s been hard to be particularly; enthusiastic about what really is a pretty moribund domestic music scene; it seems a little pathetic to me that, in the absence of better offerings, Adam and The Ants can create a sensation with two singles which seem to rely more on nostalgia for bygone anarchy rather than anything else. The same is almost the case for the other overnight sensations of the moment. The Stray Cats, a trio specialising in Rockabilly and fake aggro. They’re good, but then who cares? While the UK music press waxes enthusiastic about such passable units as Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes, one already senses a nostalgia for the days, not that long past, when Joy Division could tear you apart on the radio, or Two-Tone still meant rtappy Radio. To reinforce this awful sense of decline. The Clash have released a triple set which proves conclusively that they need a direction more desperately than ever, and the Pop rules the waves more securely than ever. Happily, The Beat remain an exception to this, as do Madness, both bands turning out an unbroken stream of truly memorable singles which are great fun. It all tends to make you feel “ there IS great music going on out there: why can’t we hear it?” Well, you can - but that comes later in this article. There’s a bit more trivia to wade through first. One of the more interesting developments of late was revealed in what at first would seem an unlikely place, though on reflection, the fact that Private Eye got hold of the dirt should surprise no-one. What the Eye has been digging into are the age-old stories of payola and chart-rigging. At the risk of a law-suit, I’li quote verbatim from their little piece, so as not to detract from the inimitable flavour of P.E. reporting: “The so-called Code of Conduct issued by the BPI appears to have had little effect on certain record companies. For example, chart watchers have been surprised to see the success of the album “ Kings of The Wild Frontier” by Adam & The A nts. . . The BRMB chart * used by the BBC . . . and published by Music Week magazine - is like the singles chart compiled from returns from selected shops. “And at least one record dealer has complained to the BPI that chart return shops are being offered the Ants album on a three-for-the-price-of-one basis while he, like other non-chart shops, is not. “Adam & The Ants record on CBS Records” . All I can add to that juicy little scam is that it’s no wonder we’re suffering from terminal musical wallpaper at the moment, if certain record com panies are so clueless about how to break acts, or even what sort of acts they should break, that they entertain the use of such shabby practices. Enough moaning: it’s time for the pep-up story of the month, showing that major-companies can get things right - well, almost - some of the time. And the story concerns a band I originally wrote about

in this column ages ago after hearing a single of Peel’s show last summer. Since that time, they’ve released an L.P., and since then, it’s become known as easily one of the best two sides of music for a long time. The band is The Com Sat Angels (Com Sat, by the way of explanation for a rather strange name, is short for Communication Satel lite), and they’re the only band I’ve heard to emerge last year who could hold a candle to the other great emergence of last year, Joy Division, of whom of course every body has now heard. One reason for that, perhaps, is the little question of the name itself: after all, Joy Division is one of the names of the seventies, and it complements the music the band produced so well. Com Sat Angels is a mediocre name at best, and suggests next to nothing. However, the way of the world has prevailed once again, and in the wake of Ian Curtis’s death, the remaining members have adopted New Order as their new name - one which, as John Peel rightly pointed out, would be plain boring if it didn’t have unfortunate overtones of right-wing militancy. My bet is that, as New Order the band will never really be heard of again. If they revert to the old name, they might suffer from invidious comparisons at first, but they’ll stand a fighting chance in the long run. After all, the ■ demos I heard from them were excellent. But I’m getting away from what my main drift is and that’s The Com Sat Angels. The L.P. is called “ Waiting For A Miracle” (damn; I was just putting the finishing touches to a song with that as a title and chorus when the L.P. came out, and of course it had a song with the same title and chorus. Beaten to the punch once again . .. ) , and it’s released here on Roxy Music’s label, Polydor. For once, the promise of the two singles, Total War and Independence Day (both included here, by the way) wasn’t let down. The L.P. is a heavyw'eight job. It’s also highly deceptive at first listening, as the album criss-crosses many styles and areas on a superficial hearing, and it would be very easy to label them as just another 1980’s potpourri of old styles. But that would be wrong. There is an underlying unity of style, purpose and vision behind these sides, and it’s useful to identify it. The first thing to stress is the great amount of space in the music: nothing is ever over-busy, you never

find an instrument battling with the vocals for supremacy, but at the same time, the music isn’t just bland rhythm-work. There is a new emphasis here which works very well indeed, and that’s an emphasis on bass and drums as the instruments to carry the music forward, while the guitar and synths are used mostly to add dynamics and feel. That’s not to say they just coast over the top and solo: the music is fierce in its tightness of arrangement. The guitar, for example, may just play a whole circular series of harmonics, like it does at the beginning of “ Independence Day” , then drop out completely till the second verse, where it reappears only as an extra colour to the staccato bass line. All this focuses attention superbly on the lyrics, which in general are of a very high standard. In fact. I’d stick my neck out to say that the lyrics over the bridge of the same song could easily be the anthem for England’s sad mood in the midst of the worst depression since the 30’s: “ I can’t stand up/and I can’t sit down/there’s a great big problem stops me in my tracks/l can’t relax ’cause I haven’t done a thing/and I can’t do a thing ’cause I can’t relax/Independence Day . . . independence day . . . ” This same song is an object lesson in how to build a single piece to a great climax without resorting to histrionics: the relentless power of the bass and drums just grows and grows till the opening harmonics are repeated at several levels of intensity up the Richter scale. Another sort of approach is shown in the title track, “ Waiting For A Miracle” , where there is virtually nothing apart from bass, playing a shifting, pulsing line, and drums, as well as vopal. The other two instruments, synth and guitar, are used just fleetingly, to add vital colour to sections of the lyrics. For example, a bit of old-time organ comes in at the lines: “ It’s party time at the top of the hill/the air fe freezing and the grass is like wire in between the trees/the room is shaking and I wish that I had more faith than this/l see her dancing and if I could dance when she danced with me/and then sher might say/what kind of dance is this/it’s in suspension/what kind of dance is this/nothing happens/Waiting for a miracle/But then nothing ever happens . . . ”

It seems a little superfluous to point out what a i great collection of images is contained in those lines, so I’ll let you think on that for yourselves. But the placing of the organ there playing a silly set of chords only heightens the mood in contrast. Of course, to play this sort of music, you need a strong, imaginative drummer in particular, and the Angels have one in Mic Glaisher. He’s taken the time to sort out an appropriate beat and pattern to every part of every song, and shows great flexibility in doing so. He hasn’t filled it all in with the sort of drums that have “ look at me. I’m a star” written all over them, but with rhythms that at every stage complement the music and lyrics. On this album, that has meant a combination of simplicity, restraint, real fire, and drive. It all depends which song you happen to be listening to. The same could really be said of all the players: each song has been meticulously thought out, from the production side as well. It really is a hell of an impressive L.P. I’m not saying that every song is marvellous, or that the album is an instant classic. There are tracks which don’t quite come off, and parts of others which come close to being pretentious in the lyrics. But by that I don’t mean either to imply failure on the band’s part, or on the producer’s part - Pete Wilson, in conjunction with the group, has done an artiazing production job. I just feel that when you have tracks that are undoubted classics, some of the other material is bound to suffer by comparison. It will remain a flawed L.P., like Joy Division’s “ Closer” is, but still an L.P. which stands head and shoulders above most other stuff oozing out of the record presses lately. For a start, it’s got substance and commitment. These boys are actually talented: a close listen to the song “ Real Story” will instantly show that. I just hope they can keep it up. There’s a reason for that hope: this L.P. has been around for a few months now, so it’s not at all surprising to have heard that the band will be releasing a new single in late March, and a new album shortly after that. By then we’ll see whether they’ve got depth in strength, or whether it’ll be just another one-album wonder, like Television (not that “ Adventure” was all that bad - it was just very patchy and nowhere near as gripping as their first L.P., which was, when you think back, revolution ary at the time, although the influence was short-lived). The lecture is over. I just hope that if you get the chance, you’ll give Com Sat Angels a listen - no more than that. One final snippet of news: the Two-Tone feature film, “ Dance Craze” , has had its press premiere here in London, and has come out with flying colours. The film features The Specials, The Beat, The Selecter, Madness among others, and is almost all music - it’s like a hip remake of those old early-sixties “dance party” films and TV shows. I haven’t seen it,.but I’ve heard some of the music, and it’s great. Keep a look-out for it - it should be worth the wait. I nearly forgot - there is something else worth mentioning. I was re-reading Lady Windemere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde the other day, and came across a particularly memorable line, as one often does in his work: “We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” . You may think this is somewhat inappropriate in a music column. Normally I would too. But the link is this: just listen closely to the new Pretenders single, “ Message of Love” . You will find the line there, intact, wordfor-word. I know it happens all the time, but C hrissie Hynde is undoubtedly a talented songwriter. That makes it all the sadder.

KEITH SHADWICK

radio birdman living eyes

THE N E W RA CE ‘I W A N N A HEAR YA SAY YEAH-HUP!”

D is trib u te d by W EA R ecords Pty. L im ited ■

ROADRUNNER 14

A Wa*ner

GGro.pftTry.

EXILES IN A FAMILIAR LAND

The International Exiles are a Melbourne band nosing about on the delicate verge of Au stralian ‘success’. For this band the next few months could be a telling and either exhilarating or depressing time. Within their grasp are the elu sive but magnetic prizes. Com prising Robert W el lington (guitar), Laine (vocals), Shane Middleton (drums), An drew Callander (keyboards and guitar) and Adam Leraner (bass). The International Exiles released their first single on Missing Link late last year. Entitled ‘Let’s Be S op histi cated’ (b/w Note to Roger)’, and produced by Keith Glass, it really depends on the Media whether the thing ends up on peoples turnta ble s or not. When I spoke to I.E. early in February, they were expecting to appear on Molly’s T.V. show pretty soon. This has yet to come to pass. The I.E.’s are a powerful and energetic, pop-dance band, boasting a varied and intelli gent original repertoire. Live, they’re more of a fun, dance band than an intellectual ex perience, although they them selves consider lyrics to be an important part of the songs. Rob W ellington expresses some frustration at the difficultues getting lyrics across in many live circumstances. Whilst being at a recording stage, with another single due in a couple of months, and an album dependent on sales of singles, they re also in the midst of revitalising; a new material writing phase. Having just gained new drum m er, Shane Middleton from the defunct(ish) Bleu Scooters, the I.E.’s are working with this new sound to write new and re arrange and im prove old songs. Shane.. . “ I’m lucky that I’ve joined at a time when everyone is at a point where they want to ditch a lot of old stuff, and create a sort of new sound. Take a slightly new direction. Everyone’s got more or less a fresh approach.” A dam . . . “You’ve got to that really, because you lose in terest. Like me and Rob and Laine have been together for two years now, and if you don’t keep on creating you get bored

and that’s it, y’know. So you ve gotta every now and then take a break, and re-write or recon struct or go in a different direction.” Shane .. . “We’re in the rough, the developing stages, ■ which is good, 1hope we never get out of the developing stages .. Rob cites soul music as a possible future influence. Claiming integrity as a code, the I.E.’s remain staunchly in dependent and strongly united as a band, expressing the w ish, to keep the music relevant to themselves, and distinctly their own. R ob. . . “ It’s all a reflection of our attitude towards music in general, and why we play the sort of music we are. We do things the way we do it, ’cause we’re playing what we are.” Adam .. .“ We have a diffe rent attitude to some bands in a context of like, the music we play. The whole band itself works together in say writing the material or arranging a song, so we all put down what we want to play, like some bands, one guy will say ‘Right, I want you to play this!’ I don’t thing that’s right. A group is, say five members, and they all contribute.” Rob . . . “ Otherwise it’d be y’know, Rob Wellington and the . . . ” Adam . . . “Yeah, none of us could play in that situation.” Shane . . . “ If you’re in a group or band, for one thing you’re in it because you like what they are doing, and you like their ideas. Hopefully they like what you’re doing, and have some appreciation for what you might be able to contribute.” The band itself was started with three members in October, 1979, and has been moved through several line up changes along the way. They seem content and enthusiastic about the way that pe r sonalities and musical tastes are meshing. R o b ... “ It’s not so much that we all want to play one type of music - I didn’t want to have a band where we’d be ‘bang - ’ such and such. We’ve got pop songs, and songs you could almost say were ‘punk’, just because they’re aggressive and fast. We’ve got songs that are almost like the Birthday party. All the songs sound like the I.E.’s but they’re all diffe rent.” I suggest that they are all

dance music. ' Laine.. . “We like it if people dance, because it means they’re enjoying themselves, . and it helps us to enjoy ourse lves. too. The lyrics we’re using aren’t just dumb love songs, but they fit into a thing where they’re enjoyable to listen to and dance to.” : The I.E.’s are determined to remain independent, in a per forming sense, from outside factors such as agencies, road crews, P.A.’s etc. Not wishing to become part of a ‘stable’, they express the desire to be in control of “what we do, and when we do it, and where we do it.” They consider it of utmost importance to keep their crea tive spirit intact, and take some considerable care to keep un controllable influences from buggerising around with it. A dam . . . “ I think in this band it’s a situation where once it becomes work, and not fun, then it’s time to really give it away, because, like, you’ve got to have fun. Too many bands, they hate it. They have to play five hights a week, they HAVE to.” Rob . . . “That’s because they’ve got a manager, and a road crew to support, and they’re all saying ‘Work, work, work, we need the money’.” Adam . . . “ It’s just work for them, they say ‘I’m going to work tonight.’ Y’know it’s not fun anymore. And you lose that energy you become a machine, you just churn it out for the public. When it gets to that stage, I think you should say ‘O.K., that’s it fellas’.” The I.E.’s seem to have held onto the original attitude con cerning the formation and ide als of a band - aiming to be interesting, enjoyable, dedi cated and unafraid of the odd dollar (without compromise). Rob . . . “The idea was to have a band that was doing something new, that had lyrics that said something . . . and music designed to give the impression of the lyrics, either by being a total contrast or by combining mental confusion with musical confusion. Ideally, we want to be able to live comfortably off doing exactly what we want to do. Playing only the type of music we want to play.” Or as Shane Middleton sub tly puts it “ If the whales ever got hold of the bomb we’d all be ratshit.”

JOHN DOE

Or, How:To Be Internationally Sophistioated

JOHN DOE'S RUINED SCENE Lady D iana’s REVENGE (Episode ONE) Alright, so I got me a column all to myself. A real star attraction. The Inno cents think I’m a frustrated rockstar. They’re quite wrong of course. I’m not at all frustrated, I like being a rockstar. An’ a newspaper star too. So there. So, here are my rates: Thirty bucks for the all purpose, utility model, non-commital review. Forty-five plus two cents a word for the standard good write-up, and sixty bucks plus five cents a word for the deluxe model ‘X’ FULL page splurge. Everything you own to avoid a bad write-up. Lady Diana gets it for free. But Charlie pays. I really don’t know why the fuck people treat the papers the way they do. The only power they have is what people give them. Many bands are shit scared, and only because someone’s conditioned so many of the readers to treat what they read as gospel. It’s all right crazy as far as I’m concerned. So I agree with Stuart Coupe’s friend who says that a writer should get on with the job, and not question his own morals in print. It’s up to the reader’s intelligence to objectively attach the correct importance to what’s written. Now, we’ve all heard them say. “ Oh, we don’t want to leave Adelaide for the east, and then split a couple of months later. So many bands go looking for fame and fortune, and get dead instead.” Haven’t we? Note that the Angels and Cold Chisel never get mentioned in these conversations. I try not to mention these two anywhere (oops there goes this week’s rent), but the fact remains that maybe these guys are the only ones who’ve been prepared to really work for what they’ve got. People draw your attention to the number of casualties on the roads east of Adelaide, and they don’t want to be one of them. B u t. . . east of what? And what about the casualties due to mental starvation here? Some bands are content to stay right here, and entertain no ambitions for material success. Fine. Others aren’t. The solution for them: GET LOST. If Sydney or Melbourne destroy you, fine, they would have done it anyway. Get it over and done with. The reason for this spiel is that I want to say, once, for the record, and once only, that Adelaide sucks. It’s no fit place for human beings. It’s a great place for semi-apathetic manic depressives. Some of the venues don’t swill funny beer, and that’s the only good thing about thetplace.

. All but a few of the bands are a complete waste of space. They all run around like headless chooks chasing the latest foreign fad. Joy Division is the current one for some (J.D. are fine, but in these guys’ hands it is a fad.) These bands have just picked up the musical notes, with no clue as to the attitudes that caused people like Joy Division to do what they did/do with/to music. — These bands make narcissistic, destructive attempts at progression, which results, due to their lack of genuine evolution of attitudes and music relative to their environment, in them unwittingly becoming nothing but conservative elements within the general musical environment. It is very easy to spot a band that is sincere and real about what they are doing. Their verve, passion and obvious totally united belief in themselves and what they are doing, and their belief in, and relationship with, the audience is unmistakable. Most Adelaide band members rarely see other bands play, and when they do, they learn absolutely nothing, feel absolutely nothing, and admit nothing. Live musicians who just listen to records . . . Saps. Bands cover costs on a good night here, but there aren’t many gigs. They hardly deserve them, and the audience should not have to fork out for bands who are totally unaware that live perfor mance involves a little more than just playing an instrument. These people charge money and give so little of themselves in return. I’ve hardly left room for the crowds. They’re so easily told what to do, and think, that it’s disgusting,. Totally unable to look around for themselves, they wait to be told that a band’s good. They wet their pants uncontrollably when an interstate band turns up (unless they haven’t been ‘told’, and then the place will be empty - don’t risk being uncool). I know that this happens everywhere, but in a bigger city it’s on a bigger scale, and the writing on the wall is bigger. Be your individual self or be on the slag heap with the other trendies. There has to be more diversity and interest in a bigger place surely it must be a law of nature. So that’s the other side of the story. I want out, and I’ll do it of my own accord (if I get out alive after writing this). And that’s what happens if the payola does’nt turn up on time. No correspondence will result in a response. So there.

JOHN DOE Postscript: Ah yes, speaking of writing on the wall, looks like The Units, The Bad Poets, Nuvo Bloc, Beat Detectives, and The Lounge have learnt to read.

ROADRUNNER 15

-li,

Antmusic-ic-ic-ic-lc-ic lAntmus-ic-ic-ic-ic-lc. It’s Friday the 20th of February. I’ve been out to dinner with the Numbers (we had fish) and then back to the Arkaba to talk. A phone interview with Adam Ant has been arranged for 1 a.m. I keep one eye on my watch. Russell Handley, the band’s new keyboard player, and drummer Simon Vidale come back to my house to hear some Adelaide indepen dent singles. They’re also curious about Adam Ant. I get the tape set up, make sure the phone bug is working, scribble down some questions. I feel a certain amount of trepidation. I mean this guy is a STAR. I love the film clip, so much STYLE. The single’s great too. The album’s No. 1 in the U.K., the singles are up there too. All the back catalogue is selling like crazy. Crest of a wave country. ‘I bet something fucks up’ I say. It does. I get a really clear recording of someone at C.B.S. London saying that Adam and guitarist Marco Pirroni have gone home hours ago. There has been a miscalculation of the time difference. I’m told it’ll all happen on the following Monday. Russell plays me Tael of a Seahorse’ by the Makers of the Dead Travel Fast. It’s great. ANTMUS-IC-IC-IC-IC-IC ANTMUS-IC-IC-ie-IC-IC Monday, 23rd Feb. 11.30 p.m. I get through. Adam is on another call and Marco has gone to the toilet. Sally Shackleton, C.B.S. London press officer tells me that Marco is ‘zooming down the passage’ towards the phone. “ ’Ullo. What’s ROADRUNNER?” he says. It’s a monthly rock magazine, I reply. This seems satisfactory. I ask what Marco was doing before he became an Ant. ‘‘About three or four months before Adam asked me to join with him, I was in a band called Rema Rema, before that, a band called the Models and my first ever group, when I was about 17, was Siouxsie and the Banshees.” Oh really! I exclaim. The original line-up? ‘‘The original line-up with Sid Vicious on drums. We played the ’Undred Club with the Sex Pistols.” Right in at the beginning eh? That was quite an amazing period, late 1976. “ Yeah.” says Marco. Does all that seem a long time ago, I ask. “Yeah. I remember it with fond, urn, good memories. It was a lotta fun. I can’t say I’m nostalgic for it.” I confess my ignorance of the original Adam and the Ants, who cut an album called 'Dirk Wears White Sox’ on Do It Records and who now back a 14 year old Burmese schoolgirl called Annabelle Lu Win in a band called Bow Wow Wow. Bow Wow Wow are managed by Malcolm McLaren. Did you ever play in that line up? “ No,” says Marco. “The first thing I played on was a single called Car Trouble’. What happened was, the old band split and Adam approached me and we started writing together. Just after that we found we had to fulfill Adam’s old contract for one single, so we did Car Trouble’ which is a track from ‘Dirk Wears White Sox'. We totally rerecorded it. Rearranged it completely. It’s a different song.” So how is the new Adam and the Ants different to the old? Did the old band have the same kind of image? “ Naw, totally different,” breaks in Marco. “ It’s a completely new ' thing. The old Adam and the Ants were never a punk band as far as I could see, in the true tradition. They had ah air of like, danger about therri. And decadence. I don’t think it was entirely deliberate.

knowing the people involved, it was just the way it came across. The three guys behind Adam were very much in the shadows - not because Adam wanted it, but just because that was the way the three guys were. They weren’t really frontmen or sidemen or anything. They just stood in the shadows and played their guitars. With this band all five of us contribute something - we’re always trying to outdo each other on stage, we’re always trying to say, ‘Look at me, look at me, don’t look at him, look at me.’ In a friendly way. It’s like friendly competition. A bit of fun. Everyone gives it stick.” You and Adam write the songs together, yeah? What sort of input do you have into that? What specific areas of the writing? “ Adam does all the lyrics, cos I don’t do lyrics. I’m not very interested in them. We collaborate on the music andx>nce we get into the studio what usually happens is that Adam or someone plays the bass, then we send him away to do whatever he wants to do, and I do all the guitars. Then he comes back and sings, then we send him away again, then we mix it, then we get him back in to listen to it. I’m very much a studio person, whereas he’s not. I take over in the studio really.” It all sounds quite nicely structured. “ It is. It works out well.” One of the things I’ve read is that Adam listens to Jots of records, records of tribal music from different tribes around the world. WaS that your or Adam’s idea? “That was an idea Adam had before I met him. He . . . what we used tb do . . . we usually have like . . . (takes deep breath) . . . When we’re not actually writing, we go away, and I listen to a lot of film music and I go out and buy a lot of silly film albums. I tape the bits that might be interesting, that we could use as an idea. And he tapes his bits of tribal stuff. Then we come together with these tapes and I’ll say, ‘Listen to this bit, we could do something a bit like this’ and the same thing happens with his tribal tapes. Our influences come from everywhere really, things on T.V. ! . .” Does your interest in films extend beyond soundtracks? The film clips I’ve seen are really strong . . . “A lot of our imagery comes from films, urn, especially the Red Indian and pirate thing. The pirate thing is a very swashbuckling, Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks sort of thing - that sort of imagery comes directly from films. I’ve got no desire to be an actor though. If that’s what you mean.” • The clothes you wear on stage show a lot of different influences too. It’s almost like a patchwork of styles, in much the same way as the music. How integrated is that image - is it based on using influences from wherever they crop up? “Very much so. There’s a lot of . . . (pause) . . . There’s everything in that image; Red Indians, Apaches, pirates, cowboys, God knows what thrown in and mashed up . . . (sighs). I hope we can come up with something that just looks like us. You can certainly see where the influences come from - very much like the music.” You wear them on your sleeve, rather than hiding them away . . . “ I don’t think we could really conceal them (laughs). A lot of people come into the studio when we're recording and hang about, trying to find out how we get our sound - and there’s nothing to listen to. All you’ve got to do is put a record on and if you’re a musician with half a brain you can work out how it’s done, where it all comes from. But as always in the best music it’s not what you do, it’s the ideas that are the thing. You don't have to be a brilliant musician, you just have to have great ideas and good songs.”

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^ u lt Jbeei flhe! 2-Tc with 1 “I Tieal Jooki -(Way, ,4iop€ ever arou -T 3 iu s i %om( ?vhic tribe .seen ■‘6f de i&bov $ “T fe t r tpdiv ©f pe |ia t ’< .fia t 'fteroi A nice spot to close. Adam is finshed his other call. Thank you pion( Marco. fiin k A peaches and cream female English cheery voice says, ^ u l< “ Hello?” haw, I Yes? that !■ “Ah, right. I’ll just put you through to Adam. ’ rne b Pause. »:.lre “Hello?” It’s Adam. rnusi A receptionist breaks in. “ Have you finished on this call?” ‘l/lis£ “ No” says Adam, “ It’s just been transferred to me.” “ Y( “ Okay” says the receptionist. -.m “ Hello?”

Hloi-Adam?” I say. !ahi;.4s that Don Robertson?” ih ,^ a t’s right. H lc^bw are you?” e. l^ e just been talking to Marco. 1g tia t.” 'oi#,bareer has really taken off in the last six months - it ims^imost like the old overnight success story, except of irsi^you’vebeen working for four years towards it. What’s ir r^ ^ tio n been? I th||k there’s a certain amount of disbelief when it actually p e r^,” says Adam in his sharp London Twang, which loses lingspver the 12,000 miles separating us. “ When you’ve been kinglet it for four years and you’ve had ups and downs - you’ve j with a lot of downs so when you get an up, it’s great! I mean just-enjoy it. I’m just enjoying it, but I want to make it last. I don’t It it to be something that just comes and I lose it. Then again, ’s up to me - if I don’t produce the quality that the audience are d to and if I don’t maintain the interest in my work, then I don’t ect any audience to stay with us at all. If we let them down itically then they should go somewhere else. And they do, 'itabiy they do. I’m just happy that I’m young enough to enjoy it ly (laughs).” hey Showed a TV interview that you did with Ian Meldrum n Cpuntdown here last week. Do you remember that one, the roof? ('eah, yeah.” nd fle y popped the champagne at the end, and the album just gone to No. 1 . . . you seemed to be quite revelling In

Ve didn’t know, it’d just gone No. 1 and they told us then and vere;just doing that show. It was quite zany anyway, enjoyable. wari'|a make a few people smile around the world too. It’d be , ’cQp I think there have been enough problems recently for ■yboiy, worldwide.” ill about the tribal aspect of your work . . . I found it e in v e s tin g because a couple of Australian bands who’d n o \^ r to London in the last 12 months commented that scene over there seemed very tribal - you’d have tribes of »ne followers, heavy metal fans etc., who didn’t really mix eadi o th e r. . . think’it’s just different views of fashion. I see fashion as quite a thy :toing really, cos otherwise you’re just gonna have kids ing # a c tly the same, uniforms, which is bad. Fashion, in a stands up for a kind of individualism. It offers kids a bit of J. If ; # id ’s got something to get out of bed for in the morning, i if iL$ only to achieve a certain kind of look, he's not going to go nd feeling worthless. he degree of influence tribally on my music is basically ical - but it is fashion wise too. It’s a great release to find 9thipg as unpretentious and purist and exciting as tribal music, h is from the heart and the soul and from the actual heart of the . And it’s also basically . . . tribal society is so fair and it just IS &dpure and un -. . . u n -, . . u n -. . . they’ve got a certain way alin§ with things and I admire the way the warrior aspect of it is e violence. he warrior is someone who’s very protective of the tribe, and lev#; becomes a mob or a gang of heavies. They’re very iduatand they have a distinctive make up and they’re all kind sacock like - very vain. And I really like that because I think 3very honourable and therefore. . . being interested in topics pro\#le me with very honourable, exciting, very romantic, ic, swashbuckling ideas. I’ve drawn upon pirates, piracy, 5ers;;everything from Robin Hood. . . loads of themes you can of. Ctint Eastwood movies. There’s a kind of good guy there, movmhat I mean, he’s kind of rough and he’s tough and he’s but ‘Rancheros’ is a dedication to Clint Eastwood for giving off und i f . • • imagery to me and making me happy and making elie^e there are good guys in the world.” iadilDmewhere that you first became interested in tribal ic, of it realiy struck a chord in you, when you heard >a L # )a ’ in the film, ‘If. sahl’^v IS tl# re anything else that made that impact?

“Well, there was that and there was the film, ‘Zulu’. All the • warriors running along .. . that was just the most amazing thing (laughs, emits tribal whoop). Banging their shields and that kind of sound. Marco and me were so moved by it we decided to incorporate the idea on our record. Cos i don’t think, and I’ve made it quite plain in all the interviews I’ve done, not just with Australian radio and stuff, but with everybody, th a t. .. like I’m very influenced by Lenny Bruce, a lot of Lenny Bruce’s attitudes, and Lenny Bruce maintained ‘Nobody’s got an original thought’, every thought he had was a result of something that had been laid on him. I don’t have an original thought so therefore it’s best to own up to the fact of where you got your ideas from. “And rfind that the degree of originality is in the way you mould . . . the way those other influences and ideas manifest themselves in your work. Despite the fact that we’ve gone to tribal influences, we’re not trying to just be white guys dressing up like tribal people! We’re trying very much to be influenced and educated by, but at the same time use the limitations we have as white people in a music industry where we have to go into the studio, you know. No - we’ll go into a studio and instead of using a synthesizer to get a percussive sound, we’ll be influence to the extent of bashing bits of wood. And we’ll yodel and clap and chant and stuff - which is all from tribal influences. It’s not trying to profess we’re tribal, we’re not. (laughs) We’re brought up in London, y’know, but we love that kind of music and any artist just mirrors the sort of thing he likes and wants to further and develop. We’re not trying to abuse or exploit tribal society. That would be a bit of an abuse of something very sincere and very honourable and I know that people will misinterpret it - especially the North American Indian thing.” What has the reaction been in America so far? “ Pretty good. We’ve had one guy from the American Indian Society, who isn't in fact an Indian saying. . . he accused it of being a rip off and stuff before even seeing or hearing the album” . Oh dear. “ So when you’re dealing with ignorance on that level . . . The only way to do that is to meet the guy face to face and have a discussion with him and if he still doesn’t think it’s relevant, take it to the Indians themselves. If they don’t think my reminding the world in general that they existed or that they exist is a bad thing . . . and I don’t think they will. There's a gesture there. I think there’s lots of people going round saying how bad it is that the Indian has been more or less wiped out, but they’re still being reduced to alcoholism on settlements aren’t they? They’re not being acknowledged as being the proud race they are.” Much the same thing can be said about the Aborigines in this country . . . “But then again,” Adam interrupts, “ I don’t think there’s any point in ramming that down a nation’s throat, cos that’s gonna encourage racism and you’re gonna get right wing people coming in who don’t like the tribes any way and . . .” would have queried this line of thought at this point, but it was extremely difficult to interrupt Adam once he’d got into full flight. In fact the whole interview was conducted at a somewhat breakneck pace. So anyway . . . “ I’m not into politics ” continued Adam, Tm not interested in racism. I’m interested in combating ignorance and making people aware of certain taboo subjects. Making people aware that these things happen and we should face up to them and try and live with them, with a certain degree of respect for the people who have suffered from them. I feel in a way, hopefully my songs, ‘The Human Beings’ and ‘Kings of the Wiid Frontier' will make people aware that there is one person living in London with white skin who feels more strongly towards a Red Indian culture because it does more for him and makes him feel he can handle life better, urn, and wants to go around and try to deucate people and say. Look, on whatever level you’re on, Reaiise there is another skin apart from black and white. And there are people who have suffered just as badly as any other minority group in the world who we look upon as savages, in cowboy and Indian films. And we’re still looking at them that way. And I just wrote songs on the album, ‘Making History’, ‘Kiiler In The Home’, ‘Kings Of The Wild Frontier’ and Human Beings’ . . . especially ‘Human Beings’, because that’s a tribute to the fact that the Red man felt that the title Human Being was one to be earned not one to be expected.”

ADAM AND THE ANTS

Continued

How much have you read about Red Indian society and the way that it was made up? “ I’ve read . .. You see, I don’t like getting too esoteric - I’m not a scholar. If I want to be involved in American Indianism I’ll go to a university. I’m a singer. I’m involved in writing songs. It would be hypocritical of me to say I’m an expert on American culture. “ I’ve read several thick heavy books on North American Indian culture. I’ve drawn my look from quite detailed drawings and writings and research. I have enjoyed that. When it gets too heavy - and believe me reading stuff like ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’ is not very easy reading. It’s heavy. “ I’ve read books like ‘Gospel Of The Redman’, which is a record of Red Indian ways and codes and religion if you like: And that did more for me than loads of plain historical books. ’Cos I wanted to find out more about their society. “ But again there’s no point in ramming that down the American people’s throat, cos they can turn round and say, ‘Well your Grandfathers didn’t do too well in India, did they?’. The English exploited the whole world! ^ “The thing is, there are lessons to be learnt from those people, great commonsense, great ideology,, very beautiful way of life which I .. . like v,?hen I’m reading it, there are all these things being said very simply that I’ve been thinking about for all my life. And thinking, ‘Why doesn’t somebody say that?’ and then there it is in black and white. And it also moved me that this ‘Gospel of the Redman’ book has been claimed by every church Trom Greek Orthodox to Catholicism to Judaism' . . . and all it is is common sense.” . i read an article in N.M.E. recently where you were talking about Malcoim McLaren and Bow Wow Wow. You said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s dog eat dog with them.’ is that still the way you feel about Malcolm and the old Ants? “ No - the premise for that is that there had been several interviews with McLaren in the press when both groups (Ants and BWW) were starting with a similar kind of beat. And he put the gauntlet down and started mouthing off about how I was this, that and the other and ail this kind of stuff and how . . . And I just said.

T he best man’s gonna win here’, and I just put a challenge out to , him. So cos he professes to be very aware of the business and very out to beat the business and blah, blah, blah, so I just said to him, if it gets him that much he’s just gotta realise that you can’t just talk all the time - you’ve gotta get out, get the nitty gritty, the sound the kids want, work very hard and not just rely on past victories like the Sex Pistols.-’Cos that worked once .. . You’ve gotta give people a little more credit. And he doesn’t seem to have a lot of respect for people and I don’t work with people who don’t have respect for people.” How long were you actually involved with him? “About six weeks. I paid him a thousand pounds to work for me for four weeks. And that’s the whole story really.” says Adam disdainfully. One thing that came into my mind when I was iistening to the album, and I’d seen the Antmusic’ clip too - I got a fiash back to David Bowie’s album, Ziggy Stardust’. With that realiy . . . bright, strong image. Was Bowie ever much of an influence? “ Not on me so much, but definitely on Marco. Marep was involved more with that Ziggy Stardust sort of thing. I was far more influenced by Roxy Music and Brian Ferry, and I think my album sleeve .■.. I design a§jthe Anl-graphies, I supen/ise it ail. I wanted a very exciting, very bold; very cofesiurfui . . . mysterious cover something that was just BANGL y’,k,now V ^A P ! and read very well from 20 yards away. That’s why I used a video techniqlie, because that’s the quality you see on a TV s e t .. . “ t think Ziggy Stardust is the beat thing BowTe has ever done therefore it’s a great compliment when you cprhpare th e ;two. That’s very kind of you . . .” Perhaps not so much musically, but I guess. . . in the image that was projected . . . “ The same could be said of Roxy Music’s imagery really. Very powerful. Bang! an idea. Therearen’tthat many acts who come out with a positive simple idea: And I think the ‘K ings. . . ” idea is a very very simple idea. It wasn’t trying to be esoteric or anything deep. In fact the lyrics, I hope you’d agree, are very simple. A kid of ten could read them.” I think ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is a very sim|}le album too.^ ■“ I think all the good alburris are very sirhple. I think it’s very easy to make things overcomplex. It’s a bit of a challenge to make things . : . simpler. Like doing a drawing with less lines.” ; A friend of mine was listening to the album yesterday and he picked out three lines from the ‘Magnificent Five’ song, that he said were from Nietszche - ‘He who writes in biood / Doesn’t want to be read I He must be read by h e a rt’ “ Yeah, that’s from Joe Orton.” Oh, really? “ Joe Orton. That’s a quote from Joe Orton. Whether he got it from Nietszche . . . ” I think he must have - my friend was very specific. He said, ‘Ah! That’s from ‘Thus Spake Zarathrusta’.’ “ It probably is, but tell him I got mine from . . . I’m very influenced by Joe Orton’s work and that was in the biography of Joe Orton, ‘Prick up your ears’.’. ’ That’s interesting. What did you particularly admire about Joe Orton? “I enjoyed his boldness, I enjoyed his humour, I enjoyed his, urn . . . the way he enjoyed . . . his work, in a way. He just completely ..-. cleaned up. Fascinating character. With marvellous ideas about sexual freedom. Sexual anarchy really. Where one shouldn’t try to interfere with anyone’s sexual practices or sexual desires. And just keep your nose out of other people’s business. “I think he was very very very funny and deadly serious at the same time and that’s the thing that all the great comedians have - . Chaplin’s got it. Woody Allen’s got it, Lenny Bruce had it.

“ I think all music is a matter of influence, as I said before. We’re not trying to come across as something unique. That’s for the audience to decide - I don’t think the artist can say. I’m quite open about the influences side. I think if there’s something great, you should learn from it. Every artist goes through a period of imitation, whether they admit it or not. “ I mean how many actors think they’re James Dean or Marlon Brando: how many singers think they’re Elvis Presley or whatever? Eventually you come to a point where you’ve gone through all that and you are doing it and you’ve come out with something that is fresh.” . Another quote I read, I think it was in CASHBOX, was where you said, about the sound of the band, that you wanted to achieve a distinctiveness. I think you said, when you hear Abba on the radio, you know it’s Abba, and in the same way, when you hear Adam and the Ants on the radio, you know it’s Adam and the Ants. “Yeah, I would hope so, yeah. I think the ultimate for Marco and I, as writers, is to create a kind of music. And that’s why we called it Antmusic, cos we wanted to give it our own title. That it would be so fiiistinctive that there! would be no other word for it. It would be the perfect adjective, the perfect noun. That was it - it was Antmusic. “And people would sa y.- This Is Antmusic', rather than just another song by Adam and the Ants. To go for a sound . . . “There are .a lot of great, skilled songwriters about, who write brilliant songs, but that isn’t enough these days y’know. You’ve gotta have your own look, you’ve gotta have you’re own sound. So that when people aren’t looking at you and they put on the radio and know it’s you, without even being told - well, Marco and I wanted to strive for that.” What are the plans for the future? Any plans to come to Australia? “We’re hoping to co-incide Australia if we’re in L.A. We’d like to come and do some shows, but that’s up to the promoters.” One last question. I haven’t actually seen the film ‘Jubilee’, which you had a part in, but someone told me you had a great line in it - ‘I don’t care about the money, I just don’t want to be ripped off.’ ' “Yeah.” . ■ '; Was that a personal statement or just something in the script? “ No, that was just something I was given to read.” ’ How close would it be to how you feel about money, riches? “ Urn, well personally, there are a lot of people obviously trying to get a piece of the action, now. Releasing records that I’m not even going to acknowledge as my recoVds . . . ” Does that include your previous album, ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’? “Well at the moment I’ve got a few legal cases going with some people. I like to take care of both sides of my business. There is another side to the business that the audience don’t see and don’t wanna be concerned with, quite rightly. I’m sick of people who go round saying, ‘I’m a has-been, and I’m broke’ and all that sort of thing. I don’t want that to happen to me. So I will spend a bit more energy in making sure I don’t get ripped off (laughs).” Fair enough too. “ I’m not in it for the money though - cos if I was I don’t think I’d be very successful.” . OK. Well. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. “That’s m'y pleasure. Hope to see you soon.” I put the phone down. How much can you learn about a man in 40 minutes? If you’re on the crest of a wave, like Adam Ant, quite a lot. Antmusic won’t change the world, but it might make it a bit more “ interesting. I’m certainly enjoying it. Hope you do too.

DONALD ROBERTSON

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Seated cross-legged on a cushion in a set into the basement floor,of Zandra odes’ spacious, deliberately mod'e Netting Hill House, Divine, who with =folds of hanging flesh and cropped /er hair manages the unique effect of searing both androgynous and asex, looks disarmingly Buddha-like. his seems an odd thing to say about someone ) has established a whole career on eating a dful of dogshit at the end of one of the films in ch he stars; for a moment I find myself idering whether he’s the Anti-Buddha! he scene in discussion comes at the end of r Flamingos, regarded by many as a cult sh” classic, directed by Divine’s childhood ;imore neighbour John Waters. In the film ne plays the central role of Babs Johnson, The dd’s Filthiest Person, and this dining on the nate in junk food climaxes a succession of istrously gross acts committed byourhero/ine. Listen, " Divine explains in his husky, camp lilt, hn had asked me a year before we did the /ie in 1972 if I’d eat the shit. He said, ‘Look, I It to be famous. You want to be famous. The 5 has come to stop fooling around, I’ve thought /hat we should do! As a pure publicity stunt at end of the movie, I want you to bend down, op up this pile of dogshit and put it in your jth. And give me a shit-eating grin.’ Which is it I do in the movie, because I have shit all over teeth. '^ny, anyway, I said, 'Okay, I’ll do it!’ But as we e making Pink Flamingos, and as the time to do got closer and closer, I thought, ‘Well, he’s jotten about it’, but then two days before the i of shooting, John announced, ‘Oh-ho: Thurs' - that’s the big day!’ So we followed this dog around for two hours i everytime it'd squat down, I’d get ready. But thing wouldn’t go, because it wasn’t used to ting people and camera crews following it und. It got inhibited! So we had to give it an enema,” Divine giggles 1 a scent of satisfaction, ‘‘and when it came out as ail - unrrgghhh - run-neee! Ooo-oo-ooohh!" squeals. John said, Well, scoop it up!’ . . . And it was eous! But you don’t stop to think about it. You I’t, because if I’d stopped, it would never have ten in my mouth! And then John stopped the camera, and said, :)ld it for a second. We just want to get some s. ’ And that’s where \ had to draw the line, d . , . ” Divine mimes spitting the shit clear of his uth. suppose I should ask Divine if he didn’t isider this dubious short-cut to stardom as a ior prostituting of his art, but I don’t. I ask him ead if he wouldn’t rather play Hamlet. Divine, jgh, appears to lack an understanding of irony r maybe I’m just a blasted nuisance interrupting Rent-a-rap. He provides me with a briskly ious reply as to the greater abilities of the likes Richard Burton and Sir Laurence Olivier in such ssical roles. ^nd then it’s on with the shitty dog story: ‘Tm illy a quiet, shy person who would rather sit at Tie and be left alone. I guess these parts I play ? part of me, and they’re just fun to do. But the shit did make me sick. Because lough I didn’t actually swallow any of it, I ■ught, ‘It’s been mixing, with my saliva - some of nust have gone down my throat!’ And the sons division of the hospital advised, ‘Beware of 3 White Worm’. Now the way to test for that was to see if your mach was becoming very hard. So, of course, I

was testing my stomach every two seconds, and in the end I got a hysterical white worm. My stomach felt like a rock. It went away in about an hour, but it was interesting - I think people get cancer and die because they want to. ‘‘I did take a tooth-brush, though,” Divine adds naughtily, ‘‘from a friend of mine with whom I was having a fight, and I brushed my teeth, and put it back in the glass. I never did tell her. ‘‘But, as John said, ‘It’ll either make us famous, or destroy usj’ And luckily for me it went the right way - or I’d be a hair-dresser somewhere!” W aters organized a two week pam phlet blitzkrieg of New York. When Pink Flamingos opened at the Algernon Theatre at midnight on a rainy night, the 1500-seater sold out, ancf crowds of New Yorkers were turned away, a success that’s been repeated throughout the world. Not only did Pink Flamingos put Divine and Waters onto a secure financial footing, but it had its desired effect and springboarded their future careers. Also, in America the film’s late-night success led to the establishing of a midnight circuit for previously unshowable films - The Rocky Horror Show and Eraserhead are just two movies that have benefited. Divine, who is known to his mum as Glenn and insists that he is not a drag queen but an actor who has become typecast by playing women, has appeared in a number of other Waters’ films, including Eat Your Make-up ( “about a family that kidnaps model girls and kills tfiem by forcing them to eat all the cosmetics they’re carrying!” ), Mondo Trasho, Female Trouble and Multiple Maniacs. Most recently he has co-starred as Francine Fishpaw opposite Tab Hunter in the as yet unreleased Polyester: ‘‘My exact words to Tab after we’d finished shooting were, ‘I’m really glad you didn’t turn out to be aprick', because he really could’ve been. He looks real good still, and he’s unbelievable to work with. He just wanted to be one of the crew. Which might’ve been difficult, because we’ve all worked together since 1962, and we’re almost like a family. For this famous outsider to come in, it might’ve been really awkward, because we were all so nervous. “In fact, he actually asked me not to be nervous of him. He said, ‘I took this job because / wanted to work with you’ The purpose of Divine’s current visit to London is to publicize the unexpectedly charming film made around London artist Andrew Logan’s 1978 Alternative Miss World contest. A near-annual event held in a marquee on Clapham Common, and the delight of Beautiful People and dilettante artists, the filmed ’78 contest featured Divine as special guest. For the Alternative Miss World, the sex of the competitors is immaterial, the femininity of their appearance being the judging factor! ‘‘I didn’t know it was being filmed - that was the funny thing,” says Divine, “and then the following year, Zandra, who is a great friend of mine, said, ‘The movie '\s fabulous: wait until you see it.’ I said, ‘What movie?’ “ When they filmed it, in fact, there was no producer, nothing. They just wanted to make it and see if there was anything they could do with it. “And all of a sudden they brought me over to London again for the opening at the Odeon in Leicester Square earlier this year. Then they took me to Cannes. Plus, they gave me money for being in it. I said, ‘This is the greatest movie I’ve ever made’. I’ve got money in the bank from it. I’ve been to Europe four times! I’d never been to Cannes or St. Tropez or Monaco. I loved it. I’d made this movie and I didn’t know I was making it.” But Divine, surely you secretly would’ve loved to have won the competition yourself. . . “ Oh, I would’ve entered if I’d wanted to win though I’m sure I would have won if I had] I knew most of the judges, too. It probably would’ve cost me about a hundred pounds, though.”

CHRIS SALEWICZ

On this latest long-player, the sim plicity and directness of which is epitomised by the melodic minimalism of the ‘Start’ single that already has been lifted from it, guitarist Paul Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler have once again worked with producer Vic Coppersmith, who by now appears a major force in the establishing of the busy, bleak, sometimes violent sound of The Jam: for the next time the group record, though, says Foxton, they are searching for an 8-track studio, in which they may well produce them selves. Recorded at London’s Town House in between-tour brief bursts of studio activity, this fifth Jam LP took three months in all to make - ‘Setting Sons’, their last album, only took two. “ We never really go into the studio with twelve songs, all arranged, all rehearsed.” explains the group’s songwriter Paul Weller, the normally thick tones of his South London accent rendered even more rasping by a dose of flu, “ If we did that we could probably do an LP in two weeks. “As it is, of late we’ve been going into the studio with vague ideas and odd bits of song structures, and worked the song out in the studio. It’s mainly a lack of time, though, that makes us do it like that. The actual music is always created in the studio, though I may already have written some lyrics . .. It’s not the ideal way of recording or the way we’d really like to do it - it’s just down to present circumstances. “ Obviously the first album was just the stage act we were playing at that time, which we just put down on vinyl.” “ Because we knew all the material,” adds Buckler, “we did that one in about eleven days.” “ I thought ‘Setting Sons’ was a bit too slick, a bit too polished,” offers Weller. “ I don’t think it’s a really true sound. . . although it was certainly never intended to be a rock opera,” he grimaces, “ which is one impression I’ve heard bandied about of it.” Earlier this year. The Jam played their fourth brief foray of American dates. Unlike most British bands, though. The Jam express no great desire to conquer the States. “ I get very negative about America,” says Weller, “ In fact, I tend to go over the top about it and generalize much too much. The main thing, though, is that I just don’t see the same enthusiasm there. It’s so totally different from Europe, and it just becomes so frustrating, because it seems that we’ve just wasted a lot of time over there when we could have been playing to a much more positive response to audiences elsewhere. “ I just get the impression that the majority of Americans just want to be entertained, they seem to need to be coaxed in some way into liking us. They don’t seem to see much difference between rock ’n’ roll and TV entertainment. ” As are most of the post-’76 rockers towards their contemporaries, Weller is derisively dismissive of the Stateside triumphs, of such competitors as The Pretenders and The Clash. “Just play their records,” he barks gruffly of The Clash, “ and you’ll see why they did it in the States: ‘Train In Vain’ sounds like something by Nils Lofgren.” Perhaps 'he should take some comfort in the knowledge that The Clash consider the music of The Jam to-be equally contemptible, Bruce Foxton, possibly with some accuracy, dismisses The Police as “just like another Bee Gees” . “ I’m beginning to question the whole point of going to America, though,” continues Weller. “ Why, after you crack England, are you expected to immediately go and break America? It’s a bit of a joke: why not Russia or Red China? Pete Townshend said that the reason people go to play in America is that they’re the only ones who can speak English. But that’s rubbish: the reason bands go there is just for money. Nothing Else. “The Jam have got much more in common with Europe. I suppose it should really, because the environment our music’s coming out of is Euro pean.” The band shakes its collective head in amused, bemused denial at the suggestion that the group enjoy a sizable success in Europe. “ We’ve got a good following in Sweden.” Paul Foxton shrugs his often tense shoulders. “ But everywhere else we seem to be regarded as a bit of a cult group. Japan was good, too - we went there earlier in the year but there also we’re only on that sort of level.” In the UK, The Jam are certainly the most popular of all the credible New Wave Brit Rockers, consistently knocking up number one single hits. Considering the orgasmic reaction the group had received at the Rainbow Theatre the previous evening on the first of the four London dates they were playing to climax their British tour, it is surprising to have to realize the group’s large success is limited essentially to this island. The group seems almost abashed, though, when it is mentioned the degree of reverence with which they are regarded by their British fans - on the tube home from the Rainbow, the train had been crammed full of kids, many clad in the not always desirable late 70’s mod style the blame for which movement many lay about the neck of the 60’s-obsessive Weller, metaphorically rocking the carriages with their choir-like renditions of such appropriate dam near-anthems as ‘Down The Tube Station At Midnight’. “That English following’s taken four years to get that large.” offers Paul. “ We’ve been building it since 1977. Recently it has suddenly got a lot bigger and more fanatical - probably because of the number ones - but really it’s the result of a slow build-up over the years. Mind you, we’ve always had a really strong following: even when it was only 400 people those 400 were a really powerful force. “ We get,” he adds, “ loads of mods coming to our gigs, but there’s loads of other kids a ls o . . . Really, despite what’s been claimed, that New Mod thing

that happened last year was nothing to do with us. It really came out of a few pubs down the East End of London.” “ When we were doing the album at the Town House,” laughs Rick, “ I was up there on my own one day and I heard a noise in the corridor outside the studio: when I looked out I found the place had been invaded by about fifty mods. They’d broken in through the door and were swarming ail over the place. When they found which studio we were in, though, they just seemed satisfied and said they were going down the pub. “They asked me to come with them for a drink but I figured I couldn’t really get through about fifty pints, so I just carried on mixing tracks.” “ I thought that mod thing was alright,” continues Paul, “ It gave a bit of new blood to the music. People said it was all very contrived, but I don’t think it was from the kids’ point of view - it’s not their fault all those poxy shops filled with crappy clothes started up. “ But, anyway, there’ll be something else in six months time. That’s the way it seems to go at the moment.” Although The Jam were spring-boarded to their current success by the rapid emergence of punk at the end of 1976, the group had already been in existence for nearly three years, although its live work was mainly restricted to dates in the group's home town of Woking, just to the south of London. In retrospect then, does it seem that the group genuinely was a part of The Punk Movement? “ I certainly felt part of it, yeah!” nods Paul,” We didn’t call ourselves A Punk Band, because there didn’t seem any point - there doesn’t seem much point in any of those labels. But I still felt part of it.” “And really,” butts in Rick, “it was really so much more than just a fashion thing. You could go and see a band that wasn’t thirty-five years old and playing music that’d been around for the past five years. It was definitely an alternative that people could very much relate to.” PaqI Weller has no doubts whatsoever of the place of Punk in the history of rock ’n’ roll; “ Punk was the most important musical development in our time - certainly! In fact, it’s a pity for really young kids today that things seem to have got away from that sense of unity that was around then - now it’s all this splintered tribalism. “ It’s a shame, really, that something like 2-Tone didn’t stay in the clubs for a bit longer, but it did rise very quickly to the big venues.” Although the more politic Buckler sees them as “ a good alternative, although I don’t personally like it” , Paul dismisses the electronic industrial chic purveyed by outfits like The Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark as “a load of fuckin’ shit” . “The whole ‘art’ thing that goes with it,” Weller expands, “ has got very little to do with the experience of the average kid. It’s like ail those Liverpool bands - there’s some little Scousers that follow us around, and I asked them, ‘What do you think to these new Liverpool bands like Echo And The Bunnymen?’ And they replied, ‘They’re a load of art school wankers!’ “ In fact, I think a lot of the music made by those bands is very good, but the feeling I get off of them is very elitist. “The bands I like are usually bands I can also trust - people like The Ruts and The Skids; they seem pretty trustworthy.” Although when initially revealed, the concept of The Jam being managed by Paul Weller’s father seemed both curious and constricting, the group have had the last laugh. As all around them bitter financial feuding continues apparently indefinitely between New Wave groups and their manage ment companies, Paul can contentedly comment: “ Well, at least we know we haven’t been ripped off.” Over the past year, indeed, Paul himself has launched his own financial, though artisticallybased,' venture: Riot Stories is the name of the small, near-underground publishing house he is attempting to establish - contrary to reports elsewhere he has not wound it up, but is investigating cheaper, more immediate forms poetry books in the form of fanzines seem for the moment to hold favour in the group’s songwriter’s head. Though he quotes Shelley on the sleeve of the new album, and expresses a desire to study the works of English mystical poet William Blake, Paul cites the often dauntingly precise, sometimes deadeningly pretentious, currently unfashionable Liverpool poets like Brian Patten, Roger McGough and Adrian Henry - 60’s British simulacrums of America’s 50’s Beat poets - as his favourite wordsmiths. Perhaps one should bear that in mind when considering the lyrics of the punningly titled ‘Sound Affects’. Paul Weller is a great lover of the writings of George Orwell, though he disputes the currently fashionable belief that in 1984 the writer was delivering a prophecy of how he believed the world would be by that year; “ I thought always that it was much more a consideration of all the flaws of an apparently Utopian society - because that’s what the state of things Orwell’s writing about has developed to. It’s just a very hard-edged look at what such a society would really be like - unlike the romantic way that people like Aldous Huxley saw it.” Equally, adds Paul, he sees no hope for the future of the world in the outmoded political dogma to which both the Left and Right adhere. The sorting out of political problems, he believes, can only be arrived at by people sorting out them selves. “ Until quite recently,” he explaines, “ I was a convinced atheist. I completely abhorred the concept of God and the Church. Now, though. I’m quite convinced that a lot of the problems in the world are down to people not believing in God whether it be a Christian or a Buddhist Or a Muslim G o d . . . although I’m sure that He’s sitting up there and laughing at all those ridiculous Re-bom Christians and those Californian religious sects. “That’s the trouble; organized religion always seems to get corrupted - though it should be up to the people themselves not to let it get like that!”

Chris Salewicz ROADRUNNER 21

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EQUAL LOCAL TRIUMPHANT The Birthday Party International Exiles Equal Local The Ballroom, Melbourne A slow miserable Saturday Night Fever existence is what most Ballroomites (more mature, sedate arid dull than Crystal Ballroomites) live in. The morbid, endless grind of scoring speed for the gig, clothes for the opinions and stances for the cool is great to indulge in, but most are rigid adherents. At odd times their fake Berlinesque existence splays some real colour but, more often than not, the imagination there is so often repeated and recyled it becomes a sloppy blur of emptiness. Both sides of the Ballroom were displayed on this night. Decrepit young men relying on their reputation to produce crowd frenzy only displayed what Led Zeppelin were clouted around the ears for a couple of years ago by Johnny Rotten. That was the torn, dulled clothing of the night. A strong, sinuous body was vamping around the place, successfully though - Equal Local had arrived and they were here to stay. Ring out the old, ring in the new. Equal Local are the fashionable ones now. They are the trendsetters, the ones to be seen seeing. Birthday Party are leaving just in time. And they know it. Fools they are not. To paraphrase Nick Cave - I’ll be seeing you in a couple of years. After intentionally forfeiting the chance to see Andy O and The Sheep (the downtown bar seemed a more rewarding proposition and it was too early to be cool anyway) the brave new symbols of Ballroomite hope, Equal Local, took the stage. They presented anonymously with casual sincerity. In other words their appearance and behaviour were boring though not in the least offputting. The beat is a different matter. Some suave rhumbas gone haywire and a few electronic mind turns combined to give a sound and dance throb that pulsed into the mind and stayed there, gesticulating madly, yet making complete, calm sense. ‘Twelve Ways To Go’ opened the set with a notewise drift that halted just before the inner reaches of ambience. It was soft and clear as well as being obvious in its aspirations. The influences are non existent, yet the band still has to find the power to make every song an entity and not let some songs slip easily into a waste basket of useless categories. ‘Cowboy Mouse’ has a classically orientated be bop funk infiltrated sense of fuzz tongue lolling. Needless to say their inputs are diverse. It is in the conclusion of this song that Equal Local display their common fault - climaxes which reach great heights in textureless blurs. There is no sense of timing - the computer rhythm maker collides

severely with all the other lines in the song and has a definite negating effect. ‘Lamp That’ is laziness and exists merely for the drum machine cum rhythm maker. ‘Hard as Count’ continues in the tradition of predictable pre-set flourishes. They continue the newness with a distinct lack of variation - toneless and meandering. ‘Punjab’ halts the rot with some real cool guitar funk workovers that are subtly cooled down by a neatly deployed mechanical beat which is then, God save us, torn to shreds as Mick Hause’s saxophone grows roots in the dance floor to bloom in dripping, organic horn lines. Some times so predictable it inanely scares. In the remaining songs the guitar goes from fresh disco funk to hippy wholesomeness, the keyboards move to and fro from obvious portentous struttings to clever iconoclastic motifs and the sax is serene while Bryce Perrin’s double bass consistently shifts the show from right to left and back again. At times it’s obvious and at other times it’s not yet the whole sense of shuffling rhythm the band depends upon is supplied by the bass and to a lesser extent Phillip Jackson on Synth/computer. Melissa Webb’s Korg/synthesiser could be forgotten but because of the texture and depth it adds to the picture it is impossible. All in all Equal Local are a vital, new force. At present they seem to be hampered by their own innovations but with time and the perception maturity should grant them they would seem to be a band not to be ignored in both circles cool and circles not so cool. It was obvious when walking into The Birthday Party’s performance that things were not well. The vibe was subdued and the funk flat. What committed sounds there were ended up being wasted within a tired set of stale constructions. Normally ‘Friend Catcher’ opens with a thunder clapping bass line. Not this time - maybe all the alcohol in Pew had softened his fingers. From then on the proceedings got more dire and flaccid. Only ‘King Ink’ and ‘Figure of Fun’ displayed true conviction. These stalking instrumentations were honest in their intent and both climaxed in a frenzy of purpose. It was a performance which should only be remembered as an odd slur on an otherwise nerve juggling set of Australian perfor mances. The night ended with International Exiles - it’s a wonder the nights haven’t ended them yet. In all the months they’ve existed I can’t see how I failed to perceive them as the single minded, keyboard infatuated clowns their toneless thrashings set them up as. Frequently they fool people (more often than not Mods) into thinking they are fresh pop. Beware of junk food, imitation leather and vapid pop. There you have it. Macdonalds, vinyl and Intenational Exiles. Here is the picture - the bands end (cool people like myself have left before this), party addresses are researched and compared and then the lifts are subtly haggled over. A quick fall back to the emptiness of a blank Sunday morning in Mel bourne with only a brief moment of Equal Local magic in mind. Unfortunately the bad always slurs the good. So tonight we were washed out.

7he Birthday Party - got out just in time . . .

RO-ADfR:INhhER-Z4"''

CRAIG N. PEARCE

Tactics ‘Vox Pop’ Macys, Melbourne A show featuring both Vox Pop and Tactics is a provoking example of the way two sorts of music combine with the creative philosophy behind the bands’ music. With Vox Pop the tenuous connections between image, music and style are so tightly strung that it would take very little to snap the line between their three creative foci. Tactics, on the other hand, are merely pawns of their style and sound. They give no room for criticisms of a lack of awareness or that they may be the property of a pre-set image - for they have none. After seeing Vox Pop again (I, unfortunately, keep happening upon them in support spots for more worthy interests) it is clear that their graphic, and most vivid, displays of penile stroking could well become the vehicle on which they fool the public and force themselves in to the minds and wallets of the consumers. They are a subversive band of entertainers of the most sinister kind. They have analysed the components which commercial new wave consists of. With this knowledge in hand they have built up a collection of songs which move nowhere except into the back of the mind to nag annoyingly at the live brain cells and rot quickly in the dead ones. These songs are adeptly coupled with an image and style of playing/presentation that appeals directly to the progressive office worker type of person - amply illustrated by the lady keyboard player’s sordid tale of image development. I say lady not woman because her onstage behaviour, playing and dress fall easily into the stereotypes which so many women have been fighting to break out of for a number of years. A few months ago this lady dressed in an office girl type skirt, blouse and shoes topped off by softly made-up face and a neatly blow-waved hairstyle. Now she wears “the” uniform - black pumps and leotards with a horizontally striped T-shirt coupled with angular, anaemic make-up and a greasy, straggly hairstyle. The perfect groupie/woman band member - safe and acceptable and predictable and non-offensive look for a woman to have. This is an ample public face for Vox Pop’s skinny, bloodless body. Their endless, inoffensive blandness has some odd colourful spots - but I can’t see the point of a brightly painted house when the superstructure of the thing is ready to wilt under the weight of its pretensions. The audience was then, thankfully, treated to a display of innovative brilliance by “Tactics” who are a band emitting both fresh and out and out

danceable noises. I can’t guess at their lyrics, though they are rumoured to be more than fascist gestures, as the voice was tightly wrapped around the rhythms. It was of a high tone, low brow orientation which, when coupled with the guitars, consistently broke out of any preconceived struc tures that may have happened along. This voice/guitar joint venture proved to be a distinct and happily fluctuating partnership on which to form a sound. Strange, stuttering rhythms created some clas sic touch vehicles on which a shaking dance floor could ride forever. “Long Story,’’ to make a guess, lays its money on a brazen Aboriginal (certainly tribal) beat that casually reminds one of Scotland’s “ Orange Juice” . Here the form is more solid though - bass runs that ripple over with subtlety and work comfortably with some rollicking drum rolls to create a new, absurdist dance craze. “Robbe-Grillet" showcases Dave Studdert’s aching voice which reaches further than the vocal chords might seem to. It then has the task of starring in a sonnet like song to work around a rigid structure giving air to a total and new form. Pious though it may be the scene set in “ Centrepoint” is dazzling in its earthiness. The use of space, of stillness, grabs the starring role. At odd times Tactics assume the air of a more mature, more forceful Postcard act. Occasional moments of acidic funk railword “ Open City” to the point of exhaustion leaving little doubt to the assurity they have of their own senses. “ China Watcher’’ is an emotion heaping of screaming, lurid images. A slow confusion is built up and amply followed by the bright montages and clouting guitar kickbacks of “2nd Language” . An undiluted and awesomely gutteral bass line leaps into the fray and slowly leads the song into a furious climax of hot, white gas. Two of the final songs are worthy testaments to a fine set of heads and musical flashpoints. “ Trains” is a clever synthesis of arrangements plus a tune which is sufficient enough to classify the song as a gem. It reaches a typical Tactics climax. Fluid, torrid and fragile as china. The final song, “Nationai Health”, though not bearing the consis tent tender heat most of the songs have, excites because of the amusing positions the song takes. The gasping funk of the song often falls within echo range of some tired rock riffs then pulls itself out of the mire in a continual spluttering rage. Its totalness is amusing and it still reaches a certain wilted peak. There are failures mind; “ Running Down Hili” (empty R ’n’ R), “No More Taiking” (lackadaisical) and “ My Line”. Then of course there are the ones which don’t rate a mention either way, which is the worst position to be in. So Tactics must beware that they continue to change in content - for what is once fresh and imaginative soon (often too soon) becomes tired fake and ultimately regressive.

CRAIG N. PEARCE

ALBUMS T ru s s e d

ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE ATTRACTIONS Trust (F-Beat) I saw a movie on TV the other night called ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. It was the life story of George M. Cohan, an American songwriter/show promoter/ singer/dancer who lived and worked from the turn of the century to the Second World War. It had a fairly typical plotline kid starts off in vaudeville with his family, does the traps, gets to New York, hawks his songs around to publishers/prom oters, gets knocked back, but perseveres and eventually cracks it and goes on to become rich, famous and happy with the girl he loves by his side. Nothing all too remarkable, you’d be right in thinking. Except that Cohan was played by one James Cagney who brought to the role his inimitable pushy presence - rough tenderness personified. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t really sing - the guy was such an on screen professional that even my clapped out TV was positively sparkling by the movie’s conclusion. If they made that movie today, I can think of no-one better to play the lead than Elvis Costello. Costello is the Cagney of modern pop. He’s pushy, temperamental, brash, but he has the aura of true artistic greatness flowing from every pore. When I reviewed ‘Get Happy’ last year about the only coherent thing I could say was, there are 20 tracks on this record, I think it’s pretty good but I’m not really sure. It was like being on a train which stopped at twenty different towns and trying to give a discription of each of them. Costello is such a master of dense, twisting imagery that one could spend months unravelling and pondering his meanings. That’s more than entertainment - that’s communication! Twelve months have passed and fourteen new musical items, under the collective banner o f‘Trust’ (‘Trussed’?) have arrived on my turntable. What can I say apart from the man’s creative star has not dimmed one wit, and, dare I say it?, this is his best album yet. To subject ‘Trust’ to academic dissection would be a laborious and largely self defeating task, despite the feeling that Costello must be considered one of the finestt^nglish language poets of his age. If what I say can persuade you to listen, and I mean REALLY listen, to this record, the songs themselves will do the rest. O.K., a few selected highlights. ‘Clubland’, the single gets things off to a solid start, the Thomas’s (Pete and Bruce) locking into the pulse immediately, sharp phrasing from Steve ‘Ivories’ Nieve and Costello spitting out the barbs - ‘your hands and work ain’t steady’ as he sticks the boot into the false glamour of the ‘nevy’ dub scene. ‘Lovers Walk’ finds Costello’s voice carrying the melody over a thumping big beat and little else. The Big E’s singing throughout the two sides is almost a revelation, he croons, snaps, pleads and generally displays a range and control that have only really been hinted at previously. ‘You’ll Never Be A Man’ is an arrow to the inflated balloon of macho arrogance, {‘Give yourself awayland find the fake in me/You’ll never be a man/No matter how many foreign bodies you take . . ' ) The rhythmically innovative ‘Strict Time’

(‘DoubleuplDoubleupIKeep your lip buttoned up’) precedes the mutant rockabilly (ever heard the Cramps?) oVLuxembourg’ which sounds like it was recorded after midnight under the influence of heinous chemicals. Side one bottoms out with the moody and menacing'Watch Your Step’, Costello’s voice like a viper’s kiss, ‘Back slapping drinkers cheer the heavyweight brawl ISo punch drunk they don’t understand at all. ’ On side two most of the vocals are clearly audible (you have to strain on ‘Pretty Words’ and ‘Strict Time’ and ‘Luxembourg’ is just plain unintelligible) but even when he takes the wraps off the oblique lyrical strategies will still have your grey matter doing gymnastics. The ballady ‘New Lace Sleeves’ falls into that precise category. It’s followed by the duet with ex-Squeeze singer Glen Tilbrook, ‘From A Whisper To A Scream’, a frantic popper and the new single in the U.K. ‘Different Finger’ is pure C& W and wouldn’t sound out of place on a Tammy Wynette album. It doesn’t sound out of place here either Costello covers all the angles. The juxtaposition of pop melody and chilling lyrics reaches some kind of peak on ‘White Knuckies’, a brutal and yet vastly human account of intersexual violence. If that makes you reel, the knockout blow is swift and deadly - ‘Shot With His Own Gun’. ‘Howdoesitfeeltobeundressed/byam an witha mind like the gutter press . . . ” If ever anyone has pennedsuchadamning indictment oftheirgender’s sexual unfeeling, I’ve yet to hear it. ‘It’s too sad to be true’7 No way. ‘He comes without feeiing ILeaves without warning’ - ‘On your marks, get ready, set!Let’s get loaded and forget’ - ‘What’s in his mind is anyone’s guessIHe’s iosing his touch with each caress. ’ Nieve’s atmospheric solo piano is so appropriate it’s alm ost unbelievable. Most songwriters never even approach this calibre (groan of composition). Costello does it au naturel. ‘Fish’n’Chip Paper’ provides a little ‘light’ relief before the (All little sisters like to try on)‘Big Sisters Clothes,’ which I don’t profess to understand, but which moves me strongly. And that’s it! Elvis Costello demands to be let in. Trust him - it won’t be misplaced.

DONALD ROBERTSON

ADAM AND THE ANTS “ KINGS OF THE WILD FRONTIER” (C.B.S.) I’ll make this short, just enough to occupy your brain between the news agency and the record bar (or the bank, depending on finances). Yes, it’s ‘Ant Music’, tribalish and enjoyable, a full-tilt invasion, but on very different lines of attack to “The Naked Jungle” and other six-legged horror stories. Led by one Adam Ant (cute pun that), these ant-people urge us denizens of Western Decadence to ‘prick up’ our ears and take a more ‘human being’ look at real life, a feather taken from the Red man’s bonnet. The attitude and the music are both timely lung-fulls of fresh air. Adam’s fascination with the Red Indian culture is an important but non-politicakpart of this band’s raison d’etre and this album is just the first instalment in a progressing series. The only song that directly focuses in on the Indian aspect is “The Human Beings” - a list of six tribe names and G eronim o’s original name, G oklayeh-ho. Elsewhere references to Indian sensitivity are mingled with the T.V. blood of the swashbuckling mutineer. Very few usual views you’ll find in this bunch of songs, so read the lyric sheet on your first venture in. And the music. Well it’s neat stuff. Tons of

slap-happy echo and reverb, enough to make Garry Glitter go green (not just mould either). And Adam’s voice is an expressive whiplash I could listen to for ages. The sound side of things is taken care of by one Marco on guitar who has an unashamed and delightful nack for re-energizing the Ronson style and pushing it to new extremes. The depth of the whole production makes it unmistakable ‘Ant Music’. There’s little need to say anything about the band’s past, it’s all in brief in D.R.’s phone interview, and hopefully you’ll understand the lad’s sincerity concerning the Red Indian aspect, maybe even follow it up for yourself. It’s obvious that Adam has been catapulted to stardom (BestDressed and other honours in British Rock polls) but it is great to see someone handle such a position with a ‘humanbeingness’ that puts his mouth where his life is. Now, as you overcome your fear of ‘Top 20’ records, hand your sweaty fortune to the approp riate cashier, slip the paper bag under your arm and know that you have truly done yourself a favour.

TYRONE FLEX

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LOU REED ROCK AND ROLL DIARY 1967-1980 (Arista) Lou Reed, more than anyone, has been able to successfully rework his old songs, change them, keep them fresh, interesting and palatable. Well, now they’ve released an album of songs unchanged. Nothing new that hasn’t been recorded. But this is an intelligent anthology of Reed milestones over some thirteen years. Compilation albums are often in need of strong deodorants, and seem to be released for the most spurious of reasons. This is not one of those albums. It strikes me as an objective statement on a long interesting and creative (and, to some, continuing) career. “ Rock and Roli Diary’’ covers material from the first Velvets recordings through to the most recent “ Growing up in Pubiic”, and is assembled not in the usual haphazard compilation manner, but coherently and tastefully as an ALBUM. It follows continuous through time and moods. Reed’s individual albums have each been stylistically coherent and each song has been placed with consideration for its immediate sur roundings. Through the twenty songs, there are no fillers, and all the ‘recognised classics’ are present. No point mentioning one name without mentioning them all. Naturally some likely songs are missing, but as he said ‘so many favourites to choose from’. Rock and Roll diary shows the progression over the years of a man doing what he loves in a business for which he has little taste. In this environment he’s been able to remain objective and relevant, continue to be creative, and inspire others to creativity. Despite periods of disillusion ment Lou Reed has shown the courage to state his business, open himself ‘in public’ and take his chances (although the risk of poverty, at least, hasn’t been high for a while). This is a worthwhile and intelligent collection of some of Reed’s best work, and will be an asset to the many who aren’t fanatical Lou Reed collectors, but who given the finance might be.

JOHN DOE

THE TEARDROP EXPLODES KILIMANJARO (POLYGRAM) Pretension is an all too common ailment of modern rock. Despised at every turn by musician and critic alike, it has been the pitfall of many an artist and the sole attraction of others. Inevitably though, the paint cracks and the gloss

fades. Leaving very little but an empty shell. On the other hand, pretence, as utilized by The Models (to whom we will refer later). The Police and The Skids can sometimes be deciphered as a worthy and listenable edifice if suitably dressed. It seems to be ignored in some parts that pretence is one of the prime requirements to become a healthy, satisfying pop star. And for what it’s worth Bolan and Bowie are still the most memorable characters of the early seventies. Given time and money, pretence (in a band’s, formula) usually ends up being the sole surviving vertebrae in an otherwise knobbly collection ofi knuckles. So, while they still have the power (or lack of it) to control themselves, we may, as well greet A Teardrop Explode’s ‘Kilimanjaro’ with more than a minimal amount of glee and en couraging hip-hip. Teardrop are already toeing the dangerous line between gleeful (that word again) and anonymous rifferama. ‘Kilimanjaro’ is a quite sufficient state ment of Teardrops right to exist, so perhaps it’s better to grant them their leave and desist with the apprehension concerning any foilpw up material. Among the more successful rhoments on the record are the horns/keyboard dominated ‘Went Crazy’ and the deep thumping resonances of ‘Bouncing Babies’. It is when horns are assimi lated into Teardrop’s sound that the strain of finely wired rock/pop is picked up most adequately. The hooks are impeccable, although they exist in constant fear of becoming flat. ‘Bouncing Babies’ features some fine aural contrasts. Guitars mesh into distinct patches of sweetness with synth sequences neatly underlining the ear popping drum booms that prick the listener into sonic awareness. To offset these successes we have the much acclaimed (piece of drudgery) single, ‘When I Dream’ which serves little purpose at all. Along with that is the song Teardrop mainstay Julian Cope wrote with Bunnyman Ian McCulloch, ‘Books’. Sadly, ‘Books’ only occasionally snaps of the hard floss that McCulloch injects most of his music with. ‘Brave Boys Keep their Promises’ makes for high grade muzak onto which some astute lyrics have been taped. Gently and sarcastically prod ding young husbands with neat harmonies and short guitar sprints. ‘Thief of Bagdad’ creates enough atmosphere not to be a total waste of time but inevitably the synthesiser and cymbal shim mers are the saving graces in an otherwise bland arrangement. Overall the production (mainly by The Chame leons) is astute and makes the best of an erratic deal. Often the subtle shadings behind the main thrash are more rewarding which, I guess, makes for more arresting music and gives goons like rne something to get befuddled by. ‘Ha Ha I’m Drowning’ utilizes the front line to full effect again, being arranged in the sometimes all too appropriate (predictable) places. A finely paced piece of music, it climaxes to a point of sparkling guitar runs and winds itself down without gush or extraneous bravado. Dual vocal lines and a hypnotic rhythm are the two centrepin on which ‘Sleeping Gas’ spins. Ethereal flushes of sound swirl round and round, a dangerous piano spitting notes out as the vocals keep splicing through the mix in astonishing characterizations of wretched souls. Even though ‘Second Hand’ never quite keeps the promises it begins with, the boiling bass/drums collaboration keeps the interest high enough to keep one hanging around for the following song. And it is here in ‘Poppies’ that the promises are kept and the goods delivered. Bass notes continue to hit the solar plexus and rise up but this time the occasional guitar flourish the tinsel keyboard fairy drops and the determination of the Chameleons to bring minor echoes out of major instrumental clashes, combine to give a more colourful, successfully expressive song. ‘Treason’ is perhaps the highlight of the album. Exhibiting the best Teardrop has to offer fluctuating melodies, sparsely positioned instru mental runs hiccuping into grandiose pictures of eloquently mixed sounds and variations on the more run of the mill musical themes. The Models are about the closest assimilation Australia has to The Teardrop. This is meant neither to criticize either party or build a platform distinct from other bands. It is meant only to serve the purpose of pointing out a series of similarities between the sounds of both groups. Whereas the Model’s music is based on their abilities of structural diversification. A Teardrop Explodes work off the basic rock structure splintering off at various times. Each comes the full circle to stand roughly parallel. Dressed of the same material but with different cuts.

Craig N. Pearce

THE MOTIVATORS THE MOTIVATORS (Result) If you buy this album, I suggest that you play it very loud. I fear it sounds like a traditional Australian recording. It’s certainly got no wall of sound, which may well be deliberate, but it also comes out kind of dead sounding. I’ve never seen The Motivators live, but after this I certainly want to. They play energetic rock and

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RENEE GEYER BRODER ICK SMITH MALCOLM EASTICK I AN MOSS I GLYNDOWDING i DON WALKER t GRAHAM THOMPSON KERRYN TOLHURST JIM BARNES RICHARD CLAPTON MICK PEALING RICK FORMOSA JOHN-JAMES HACKETT GLYN MASON w .-. MICK TH E REVEREND’ O’CONNOR BILLY ROGERS

BACK AGAIN PICK UP THE PIECES PARADISE JIVETOWN GOOD TIMES LAST OF THE RIVERBOATS JUPITER CREEK OCEAN DEEP ’ LOOK AFTER YOURSELF . INNOCENT BYSTANDERS ICEMAN SOLITAIRE WASTED WORDS SONG FOR THE ROAD MIGHTY ROCK KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR

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.19th August, 1980 is now released as a double album set Andrew Durant, one of Australia’s most talented songwriters, died of cancer in May 1980. In a stunning tribute sixteen of Australia’s best rock musicians performed all of his compositions in a recorded concert at the Palais Theatre, Melbourne. Already acclaimed as the most moving and spontaneous Australian concert ever staged, the recordings are available to you as a charity album. After costs are recouped, all record company profits and artist royalties will be donated to The Andrew Durant Songwriter's Award and to the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute as a research fund.

60001/2. At a special price ol S 12.99 this double live album, complete with four-piece pictorial package is a MUST for every collection.

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roll in the good ole Sydney fashion, which is pretty nifty for a bunch of ex-Melbournites. It’s a hazardous guess, but I suggest that live Motivators fans may be disappointed with this record. Consider ‘Back to the Woods’-, driving bass and drums, quick, with simple but effective, colourful guitar. It feels like an excellent song, but sounds a bit drab. Must be a killer live. Most of the album’s like that. I’m not sure that I like it, but can see how easily I could. The first side is interestingly various. ‘New Blood’ and ‘Dead to the World’ are punchy, rhythmically strong whilst lacking that touch of genius which makes great songs. ‘After the Fall’ builds in power over the threatening line “ after the fall of you all’’. Wonderful guitar. Best song on the side (Lou Reed’s ‘Kicks’ is the worst). On side two ‘At This Point in Time’ and ‘Stuck’ don’t slay me, but The Child’ has some neat lines. ‘Just Don’t Care’ and ‘The Thief’ don’t exactly have me dancing on the table either. ‘Summer’ I really like, and somehow reminds me of the Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Last Days of May’. A potentially good album which probably won’t make the cut off line. Singer Kenny Miller’s voice has been virtually sabotaged by production or lack of it. The Motivators is an album I’ve found slightly frustrating and uncomfortable to listen to. Espe cially since I’d far rather hear a band live than on record. I had to look too hard to find the good bits, which are there, but could have been made to sound so much better.

and now proceed to burp ever so moodily (with rhythm of course) all over this unsuspecting piece of vinyl. After hearing what Orchestral Manoevres In The Dark and Adam and the Ants can do with the Pop-synthesis process I fail to see why this record has not been relegated to the period-piece pile. Soupy vocals blatantly nicked from the ol’ Ferrari himself and thrown up an octave hold the interest for a song or two, but give the album an over-common thread when flogged all the way thru. And the synthesizers! It’s ‘girgle-girgle-pingpoing’ stuff like this that leads to bad-mouthing of the instrument and its potential. Too much sequencer and not enough substance - it’s not that difficult to cover a thin song in such Emperor’s clothing. In all obvious honesty, this Parson’s Project mood-musak holds little interest for me and, for all the ‘niceness’ of the product, I can’t really recommend it as worthwhile listening.

TYRONE FLEX

JOHN DOE

SHOWADDYWADDY BRIGHT LIGHTS (Arista) I asked a friend, “ How the fuck am I supposed to review a.Showaddywaddy album?” “ Easy” he said, “ Don’t listen to it.” Well, being a responsible citizen, I did listen to it a few times. God knows why they put holes In the middle of records like this, the cigarette a'sh falls through onto the carpet. Really, I wasn’t going to. Boss, I was planning to say nice things about it. Really. People have a right to play/record clean, tight, nice, old fashioned pop music. And listen to it. Competent musicians who know exactly what they are doing. And that’s what they want to do, but I just can’t stop laughing: “ Laughing just to keep from crying.” Sorry Boss, the temptation is just too great. They might mean it, and, y’know, be sincere, but . .. UGH. Music for drowning kittens to, drilling teeth to, chevtring sand to, cremating stillborn orphans to, fucking razor blades to .. . Yep, it’s that time of the morning again. Aw, c’mon Boss, you know I’ve gotta have this lot typed by midday. Showaddywaddy ARE the future of rock and roll. The new Springsteen. Call them ‘Frank Nugan and the Exhumans’ and they’re the new Pistols. Lennon had nothing on these guys.

JOHN DOE (Whassa matter kid - didn’t ya like it? - ED)

JAPAN “ GENTLEMEN TAKE POLAROIDS” (Virgin)

Yes folks, Roxy Music, or more accurately Bryan Ferry, does have a lot to answer for, but one must remember that we all have a wee choice concern ing the indulgent side of our influences. The ‘gentlemen’ of Japan have well and truly wolfed down their latest lessons

In China, ali the bicycle chains snapped at once. ’ ‘M.P.H.’ is the one straight-out rocker on the album. It almost sounds out of place. Side two’s opener, ‘Theater of Cruelty’ as a dreamy diatribe against the injustice of being a ‘housewife’ ‘Work my fingers to the bone For the sake of the home The wind blows it all away’ This is followed by the celebratory and Motownish ‘How Glad I Am’ with Davey Payne again blowing some delicious sax. Foley’s one selfpenned number, ‘Phases of Travel’ is next and stands up well. It’s very busy and direct and is perhaps the album’s key - a European trip with Mick? ‘Possession is more than I dare claim’ she sings. But I had to get to you’. Mickey Gallagher does subtle Rick Wakeman impersonations in the background. Tymon D ogg’s ‘Game Of A M an’ best •exemplifies the ‘femaleness’ I v^as talking about earlier. Almost a. lament, some of the lyrics are simply superb: “She threw out her warpaint And her birth controi pills She’s not going to pick up Emotional bills . . . ” Dogg’s bold, anthematic ‘Ind estructible’ is equally stirring. Both are given the full treatment by Foley’s voice. I dare you to remain unmoved. ‘In the Killing Hour’ is another short stirring song, sung from the point of view of a woman whose man is about to be wrongly executed. It’s performed with guts and feeling. Some may quibble about Ellen Foley once again doing an album of other people’s songs. But this argument must fall down when you consider the strength of the material and the fact that it was obviously ‘tailor written’ for her. For this is indeed a worthy collaboration of talents and should be appreciated as such. The Spirit of St Louis was the first plane to make the trans-Atlantic crossing - New York to Paris. Just in case you were wondering.

DONALD ROBERTSON

MATT FINISH SHORT NOTE (Giant) I recently saw (and heard) Matt Finish play to a small and undemonstrative Melbourne crowd. They saved me from certain death from poor company and bad finances. They are a tremendous live band; powerful, expressive, interest ing and not humourless. Matt Moffatt is a good stage performer, and a great songwriter. Short Note is a necessary album (even if Molly does like it), and sounds better after ten listens than one. I fear a couple of the best live songs are missing, but it’s a reflection on Matt Finish that they have songs to spare after an album with no fillers. It means perhaps that this band won’t just ‘fade away’. A deceptively energetic, subtle album. Short Note is not the same as Matt Finish live, but is the same characters expressed slightly differently in

ELLEN FOLEY ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ (Epic) ‘Sandanista’ part IV? It certainly looks that way at a cursory glance. Having skipped the high gothic Meatloaf/Jim Sharman camp for the grittier, but still neo-Spectorish, Ian Hunter/Mick Ronson axis on her debut solo release ‘Nightout’, 1981 finds Ms. Foley firmly fortified with a dose of Clash eclecticism. The signs were there of course. Foley guested on ‘Sandanista’ and her current beau (coyly credited on the album as ‘My Boyfriend’) is Clash guitarist Mick Jones, who as well as producing, co-wrote half the songs with fellow Clash guitarist, Joe Strummer. And, surprise, surprise (not really) the backing band comprises Mick, Joe, Topper, Paul, with help from Blockheads Mickey (Gal lagher), Davey (Payne) and Norman (Watt-Roy). Tymon Dogg, who contributed one song to ‘Sandanista’ has three here as well as playing violin, and there’s a mystery third guitarist simply called ‘J.G.T.’. A mite incestuous? Well, if there was any lesson to .be learned from the sprawling musicscape that was ‘Sandanista’, it was that the Clash didn’t give a damn about what an ‘ex-punk’ group were or weren’t supposed to do. They cheerily broke down barriers that neither the press or their recording company had even thought of erecting. The only thing that defines a Clash song these days is the fact that it was done by the Clash; the next logical step? Write for someone else! And who better etc etc? Ellen Foley has a superb voice. Technically, it’s as good as any in rock’n’roll today. But the interesting thipg is - this is not a rock album. I dunno how to describe it really, at least not in musical terms. One thing I can say is, it’s nothing like ‘Nightout’. O.K. I’ll have a stab. I’d say lyrically it was very ‘female’, but on a level that few males would understand completely (myself included) and musically, rather ‘European’. The European aspect is most blatant on ‘My Legionnaire’, a classic French torch song a la Edith Piaf, but the flashes of accordian, flute, castanets and Spanish guitars throughout the record are the backbone of its music. The album’s opening track, ‘The Shuttered Palace’ is also specifically about Europe; To the sons of Europe/Won’t you come inside/ My shuttered palace!And t am the bride’ Foley and Jones duet on ‘Torchlight’ - a love song, while Davey Payne’s warbling sax is the highlight of the first of Tymon Dogg’s songs, ‘Beautifui Waste of Time’. ‘The Death of the Psychoanalyst of Salvador Dali’ combines a hint of reggae drumming and double tracked guitar with some real bizarre images ‘Gene Vincent’s cufflinks rusted in his shirt, Priests married themseives with Bibies and

THE ROYAL ENGAGEMENT TOUR MARCH

Sat 28th..................... Ainslie Hotel, Canberra Sun. 29th............... ....Leichhardt Oval, Sydney. Mon. 30th..................Bayview Tavern, Gladesville. Tues. 31st..................Royal Antler, Narabeen. APRIL Wed. 1st.....................Dapto Leagues Club, Wollongong. Thurs. 2nd.................San Miguel, Cammeray. Fri. 3rd...................... Maroubra Junction Hotel. Sat. 4th...................... Vicar of Wakefield, Dural. Sun. 5th..................... Marquee Club, Newtown. Mon. 6th...................Newcastle. Tues 7th.................... Royal Hotel, Taree. Wed. 8th....................Pt. Macquarie Hotel, Pt. Macquarie. Thurs. 9th.................Ballina Bowling Club, Ballina. Fri. 10th.................... Good Intent, Grafton. Sat. 11th.....................Park Beach Hotel, Goffs Harbour. Mon. 13th..................Kempsey. Tues. 14th.................Armidale. Wed. 15th .................. Dubbo. Fri. 17th.....................Thebarton Town Hall, Adelaide. ROADRUNNER 27

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ALBUMS order to project the same ‘message’ into a different environment from the pub. Namely your lounge room. From the opening ‘Look at Me' the feeling is moody and strong. Sensitive, ringing guitars with powerful riffs, work together to form engaging rhythms. This whole thing could’ve been blown away by bad production, but it wasn’t. The production is brilliant, and gives the band flexibility enough to get away with the softness/power contrast used so effectively. ‘Short Note’ is a beautiful song, mixing acoustic guitar, powerful electric (well produced lead breaks) and great singing. I’m glad that I heard ‘Mancini Shuffle' a while back, because it took some time to grow on me. It’s like Pink Floyd meets the Police, only this song has some soul, which those two don’t have. ‘Younger Days’ is a quiet, sad song with some touching piano. Short Note is an album of contrasting sounds, made possible by brilliant songwriting and produc tion, an intelligent approach and a fair bit of guts. A debut to be proud of. Buy it, steal it, anything, but make sure you don’t pass it by.

JOHN DOE T 3 X ? A "O T .

H A RBO UR o IV T ■F- ^ 1_ 1_ O W

factions. They may travel on an intricate couple of parallel lines yet never do they meet, never do they dare touch each other - seemingly in the fear of an encroaching affair, an affair of love, attachment and the willingness to give and take to colour a total picture of involvement. That must be The Associates most notable trait. Just like the artists that still perform at their cabaret roots, they refuse to become involved. This refusal to rouch on romance is not new, but the way in which the refusal is delivered is. And so we may not , be truly affected by The Associates we may admire (and dance, if somewhat sullenly). The fluent chords which drip from Rankine’s guitar are the undoubted cornerstones on which the sound is built. They are given time and space to build and develop the songs whilst still managing the odd flourish to complete the picture. Rankine plays all the instruments on this album (excepting drums) which is probably the reason for the total understanding each instrument has for the part it must play - though a true human empathy has been replaced by The Associates own production. S tatuesque arrangem ents are deployed throughout the album, even the tiniest embellish ments being brought to the fore giving the effect that the songs have been painfully constructed to towering gems of patience. No stone left unturned. No hair out of place. This album' is totally a studio album with a complete touring band being created only after the album was completed. This no doubt being the reason for the songs detachment. I’ve no doubt some warmth and real belief in their material would shine through brightly in an amply rehearsed band. One hopes they’ll follow their labe mates. The Care, and tour Australia.

CRAIG N. PEARCE

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PEARL HARBOUR “ DON’T FOLLOW ME, I’M LOST TOO’’ (WEA) Good Gard, its Foil ’Arbour trying to put the irrelevance back into poor old R’n’R. Actually, it’s not all that much of an odd situation. Hundreds of equally silly people have been hard at work on the same project ever since the whole thing began. It seems that dear Pearl has been given the perennial ‘50’s Revival’ folio, and to give her her due, she’s taken to it like a greaser to Brylcreem. Cute pseudo-Motown vocals, classic rough drum sound, a spot o’ thumpy piano and the essential blues sax lines snorting away are enough to keep the old (and young) rockers fooling themselves for the sake of a cheap boogie. This record will bounce you to nowhere faster than a lot of the retrogressive pulp around but the result’s pretty much the same. P.S. The title’s a dead give-away.

TYRONE FLEX

THE ASSOCIATES The Affectionate Punch (STUNN) The Affectionate Punch’ is not a particularly pretty record. It is neither glossed nor has it been pedantically pickled with tasty foreign spices. It is a clean, verging on sterile record, emo tions being wrought on occasions by Mackenzie’s voice but his work in cabaret has castrated much of his undoubted technical proficiency. Cer tainly the instruments never reach the point of truly emoting. Yet neither medium has the excuse that the material they’re working with is thin or cloyed. The melodies and song structures are finely balanced, delicately poised and immaculately mixed whilst Mackenzie has said that though his lyrics may appear absurd he could only find a belief and depth in his vocal delivery if singing his own words. So he has no excuse for being soulless. Both a flaw and a strength is The Associates ability to use voice and music (as opposed to voice) in separate idioms yet mistify being able to connect them. There is never a gelling of the two

ROADRUNNER 28

MASTERS APPRENTICES HANDS OF TIME (Raven) Come on, admit it. This stuff used to drive us El Banana Troppo when we were crazy-mrxed-up-kids. Now we’re crazy-mixed-up-adults, and too cynical for our own good. I was a teenage changeling AM radio junkie, and it was largely the Masters’ fault. For an Australian band, the Masters enjoyed incredible longevity - seven years. They had a Shot at almost as many styles. The difference between the head-shredding R’n’B of “ Unde cided” and the grandiose acoustic pronounce ments of “Because I Love You” are testimony to their adaptability to fickle trends. Actually, a band couldn’t help but change its sound if the personnel were constantly being re-arranged. If sides one and two sound like two different bands, that’s jDasically because they are, save for the common inclusion of Jim Keays - if nothing else, the Masters endured more line-up changes than a Fraser ministry. Certainly, the greatest casualty in the Masters’ Apprentices erratic existence was Mick Bower, an amazing songwriter who managed to contribute an example of almost every facet of sixties pop to the Masters’ repertoire: including “ Undecided” , a piorieering Vietnam protest piece {“ Wars or Hands of Time” ), “Buried and Dead” , and an example of Australian psychedelia, “ Living in a C hild’s Dream” . After Bower’s untimely departure under doctor’s orders, the group simply stopped havinq hits for a while. Not realising their potential as songwriters, Keays and Doug Ford enlisted Brian Cadd to write “Elevator Driver” for them. It’s not much different from the rest of Cadd’s music, basically tedious brain candy with as much musibal value as “Elvis in Heaven” . The next disaster was “Brigette” , which marked the dubious songwriting debut of Ford/Keays. Things became worse with the release of “Unda Unda” . Although it was a moderate chart success (their first since " . . . Child’s Dream” ), it’s been e x c lu d ^ from this compilation, very possibly at the insistence of Jim Keays. A good thing, too. Thankfully, this was to be their last attempt at marketing themselves as teen-scene fodder;

ironically, it was only when they began to release rock’n’roll records again that they began to regain a piece of the teen action. “ Merry-Go-Round” , a vague stab at a raunchy sound, was the flip of “Unda Unda” and IS included. It’s pretty dire, but at least points us in the right direction. Now came the second classic Masters’ era, probably the one best remembered by those of us under thirty (I used to think that was an advantage, but lately I feel I might have missed something). Remember “5.10 Man” ? It was their first song worth taking seriously in eons. It also illustrated the advantages of a stable line-up. The group remained the same for the rest of their recording career, very gradually finding a balance between exciting, meaningful hit singles and albums which, like so much early seventies rock, varied from embarrassing homespun hippie philosophy to credible musical milestones. “ Think About Tomorrow Today” is viva le revolution set to a turgid twelve-bar rhythm. Something of a contradiction in terms, really, but it was a thrilling sentiment while it lasted; three minutes 20 seconds. Jesus! This used to send me into a near-fatal soaking sweat at age 12. It wasn’t hard when the competition consisted of Johnny Farnham, The Zoot (Pink Version) and Ross D. Bloody Wylie. “ Turn Up Your Radio” is a meaningless, fun celebration of being able to go into the studio pissed and record a hit without having to be either calculating or deliberately “creative” . And isn’t that how the best rock’n’roll gets started? Doug Ford apparently picked up an acoustic guitar for the first-time in his life at this point. Happily he changed his style after the excesses of “A Dog, A Siren and Memories” and learned to play acoustic a bit more like Pete Townsend and other angries. The Easybeats took their talent to England and were kicked in the teeth by the cultural cringe after initial breakthroughs. The Masters hit the shores of the Old Dart and suffered a mortal blast of culture shock. Musically they never recovered from the experience, and suffered the classic Oz musi cian’s dilemma of anticipating trends too far ahead of Australian punters, while remaining depressingly conservative in the eyes of the world market. “Future of our Nation” is the closest Australia ever came to “Something In The Air” , but its message is drowned in a mire of heavy metal chunderama. With their final two albums (remember that by this time record sales were overwhelmingly longplay oriented) the Masters obviously “ pro gressed” , but their presence became increasingly irrelevant. It’s pretty bloody tragic that any attempt at seriousness by Australian bands from the era was accompanied by every cheap hustle in the book. How could you believe a boutique refugee like Issi Dy or any “ pop personality” prevalent at the time telling you to buy it without question? One of Meldrum’s few saving graces is and has always been that he at least appears to have listened to the product (good and bad) that he so expertly peddles. Glenn “ Mr. Trivia” Baker has grossed right out again, and produced a painstakingly detailed history, complete with the usual exhaustive discography. Accompanying this is a biography, which, like his Easybeats thesis, documents the group’s history without fear or favour; and without actually expressing an opinion, lays bare a few of the ugly truths of the industry. Get it. It’ll make you feel young again.

MARK CORNWALL

a time. There’s nothing quite like listening to a couple of incurable drunken cynics mouthing off at abso lutely everything. Derek and Clive slag the world and win. If you don’t find this funny, then you are probably: (1) an Australian Democrat, (2) a paranoid ultra-heavy feminist with a nazi haircut, (3) one of the people victimised by these foul-mouthed scumbags, otherwise known as Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Side one is totally ad lib, which makes it even more twisted than Cook and Moore at their usual hilarious best. Right from Clive’s laboured description of “the worst job I ever had” (which you probably know by now as the legendary “ lobsters up the arse” scam), it’s obvious that these two treacherous maniacs are hellishly wasted on alcohol, and quite possibly a bizarre chemical preparation or three besides; but contrary to popular experience, this seems to make them rather more inventive. After a while it turns into an obscenity contest, which spurs them on (especially Cook) to some of the best toilet jokes you’ve ever heard. For instance: imagine a scenario where Clive, having dropped a five-and-a-half-pound load of “warm crap” in his trousers, is arrested for causing such an offensive stench that the Queen Mother has complained (“ I knew it was five and a ’arf pounds ’cos dey weighed it later at der forensic laboratories” ). Much of side two is actually performed live, and these bits are gobs more ‘professional’ than the hopelessly psychotic ‘studio’ pieces. Shades of “ Bedazzled” or “ Not Only But Also” (their sixties BBC series) crawl their way in at this point, and things become almost polite. Fortunately, they sabotage any possibility of wider access before any of these sketches become TOO controiled. Whatever your misguided pretensions to adult hood, leave them at home when this platter hits the player. All the best filth from primary school pales into insignificance under Derek and C live’s shitstorm avalanche of wanking, farting, fucking and crapping - the four big ones (sorry, Donald, I couldn’t resist). There’s even a joke about snot, hereafter known as “ bogeys” . Derek relates to us the story Of his short-lived employment as Winston Churchill’s bogey collector (greenies, oysters or cockles to non-snot aficianadoes), culminating in the news that “the Titanic was in fact one of Winston’s bogeys . . . and the fucker sank!” Have they degenerated to the level of crazed character assassins?? HELL YES! I leave Clive’s reply to your filthy, addled imagination. All savage jokes have victims. In the case of this album the innocents include Churchill, Jayne Mansfield, ancient ex-British Army staff officers, soul singers and many others - intended or otherwise. I’d hate for you or I to become the subject of one of these stream-of-sewerageness discourses. Unfortunately, this record has recently become very popular among insurance salesmen, acid casualties and other bullet heads. They can be heard loudly misquoting bits from it in middle-class suburban pubs (or should I say taverns?). These humans are giving obscenity a bad name. They’re the same sort of people who sat mute(d) throughout “ Life of Brian” . But suddenly went terminally hysterical every time somebody said “ Fuck” . Half the fun of Derek and Clive is spotting the puns, double entendrd and miscellaneous subtleties for which Cook and Moore are so dangerously renowned. Look, there’s really only one way to review this record; if you can’t stand the stench, get out of the shithousel!

DOCTOR GONZO

C I W J E

4 SHOWft Uftr

PETER COOK and DUDLEY MOORE DEREK & CLIVE LIVE (Krass) At last! Just the thing for alienating oppressed minority groups at their doom-stricken parties; you know, the ones where the piss and drugs run out at ten o’clock, and half the people there must be the type who sit in Rundfe Mall wailing wounded animal versions of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ for hours at

VARIOUS ARTISTS UGLY THINGS (Raven) I’ve just been reading one of the best record reviews I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s by Glenn A. Baker and Is on the back cover of this album. I’ve listened to this thing fifteen times and confess that I can’t dig up a musical opinion from anywhere. My few remaining brain cells remind me

ALBUMS Kaye’s “ Nuggets” , that venerable plethora of mid-sixties yankee also-rans containing gems like The Knickerbocker’s “Lies", the most expertly blatant Beatles sound-alike you’re ever likely to hear. No, it wouldn’t be an appropriate procedure. The only thing in common is that few, if any of the songs contained in either compilation ever got within lights years of the charts. The beat group phenomenon was a crazy period in Australian rock history; perhaps the closest equivalent we ever had to England ’77. Where (yes, I know you’ve heard this one before) any kid with energy and suss could form a band, make singles independently or otherwise, and pretend to be a megastar. Brutally speaking, it’s a bit like monkeys with painting sets. Sooner or later some of them will produce some classic stuff. As far as “ Ugly Things" is concerned, it’s absolutely crawl ing with Australian musos who were later to make their mark. Vince Maloney, Doug Ford, Lindsay Bjerre, Greg Lawrie, Brian Cadd, and Jeff St. John all make appearances on this vinyl, and play some of the most raw rock’n’roll ever recorded in this country. ; It’s not all pioneering stuff, of course. A lot of mid-sixties Australian bands sound like they were more influenced by The Monkees than The Beatles, Yardbirds or Kinks. The Sunsets’ “I Want Love" is a case in point. Sorry, fellows. Even my ruined eardrums picked up on that “ Steppin’ Stone” hook immediately. The Elois borrowed dangerously from The Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” with their “By My Side". Glenn Baker has always had a curiosity for rarities bordering on a fetish. In this instance, Trevor Gordon and the Bee Gees(!)get my vote for a revolting squeaky toy rendition of “Little Miss Rhythm and Blues” . I suppose they had to start somewhere, but this is a far cry from the world domination they now revel in. Trevor Gordon, to his credit, does not appear on any other record before or since, to my knowledge. Glenn A. Baker probably knows better. Second only to this gem is Jeff St. John and the Id, performing an ad, for Chrissakes, for Sunaroid shades. The Easybeats get a look-in with “ Goin’ Out Of My Mind". I suppose legends have to make B-sides, too. Impeccable harmonies as always, however. You ought to sneak a dekko at some of these photographs. This album is aptly named. Listen to it and see what you think. Definitely one for collectors. Most definitely a different perspec tive bn Australian rock’n’roll, and perfect for annoying shit out of the neighbours.

The Nobodies Cassette

style is intelligent without pseudo-intellectual post ure, and is accessible yet challenging. The band’s melodies are strong but not over sweet. 7 Can’t Sleep’ is a treatise on insomnia and loneliness. Its lyrical preoccupation lies with the mental rather than the physical nature of humanity, and this typifies the sensitive lyrical stance throughout the songs on this cassette. Another example of The Nobodies’ slant is ‘My Girl’ , a minor psycho-drama set in white reggae. The supreme naivety iridicative in the line, “ She’s the most fantastic girl” sets up the dramatic irony of the lines, “ My girl is going to be famous So why do I feel so bad” . Love is threatened yet again by the onset of fame and fortune. The wistful, sighing melody of ‘Peace Of Mind’ continues the trend and pre-empts the neuroses preying and preyed on in ‘TV. Afternoon Drama’ and the social pressure of ‘Keeping Up With Mr. Jones’. However, the same sensitivity which leaves the writer open prey to terminal mind warp also allows peculiar insight into the working of other minds. Such is the case in ‘Windows’ which, apart from its

The manifestation of an eight song cassette by Perth thinking pop band, The Nobodies is indicative of a couple of trends. It characterises the quiet explo sion of minor-league bands (in terms of popularity) present in Perth despite a dearth of people with the sensitivity and intelligence to give them support. It also reflects the English trend of preoccupa tion with cassettes; an idea that was realised years ago in Western Australia by The Triffids, who, as pioneers, have produced six cassettes. The Nobodies bear the traces of all the right influences, in the sense that they have listened and they are aware, but in crafting their music, they have remained their own men. Pop, Nobodies-

concern with mental states, is delighttui, s pop, and the best song included here. The exception to the quiet problems and realised delights previously dealt with come form of ‘Dragging You Out Of The Sea' through its explicit physical threats, is a r concrete slippers revenge. ‘James’, the tape’s closer marks a re thoughtful concerns, this time with leaders; inspiration. ^ The playing throughout is generally of standard, although there is an occasional Ik and there. Thought has been directed to t; duction too, and the band are not afraid textures. The Nobodies’ cassette is more than a p!v surprise from a band which seems to keef profile while attempting to carve a niche and a following. The band deserve acclaim and tion for their intelligence and encouragem their potential.

KIM WILLI Anyone interested in purchasing The Nobo cassette can write to them Cl- Dennis Bero;: Southport S t, Leederville, W.A. 6007.

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MARK CORNWALL

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ROADRUNNE

STEVE WINWOOD While you see a chance (Island)

PRETENDERS Message of Love (WEA)

You might find it more satisfying to play this one with your fingernail. Synthesised strings, simple commercialism. I don’t like Steve Winwood’s voice on this single, I don’t like the sax, I don’t like the drumming, or the tambourine. In fact I don’t like anything about this calculated, commercial scam, but then, take it from*Gtevie ^^AWMej you s^ a chance’. It may be his last.

This is a pretty neat song'. Standard Hynde-type lyrics (and classic Hynde vocals), but a murderous rhythm. Oh, hang on boss, has The Pretenders backlash started yet, I tend to miss these things. Breaks, (.subJimates)into a^.rajgeful airline-ad to n e , in the middle, which is an effective contrast, arid " then back into one of what’s her name’s (can’t take any chances) simple, powerful gut (does a woman have a gut?) rhythms. A stylish, tough love song.

WRECKED JETS!

DAVE AND THE DERROS

Two cans of beer and a bucket of chips (IVIushroom)

A bit of weak, plagiaristic wank, with about as much going for it as a bad case of encephalitis. Wouldn’t you rather buy a blank tape? An interstate phone call (after six)? A joke’s a joke, but I’d rather hear this one after I’ve passed on.- Shit guys, if you want a beer, and you’ve got this much firrie to whinge about it, go to the bottle shop. DON’T waste my time with a piss weak song about it. Not funny and I hope you don’t make the bucks you obviously thought you would. • Speaking of making bucks from ripoffs, would the author of ‘Shaddup you face’ please step forward to be tarred and feathered. My older brother was singing that (with tons more verses, too) about six or seven years ago.

ns GO-BETWESNS

heads

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THE MAL GREEN SOUND Follow Me ”(Mushroom)

I liked ‘Automatic Gun’, but I don’t like this. Devil synthesiser sounding just like everybody else’s synthesiser. Cute lyrics about driving in the country. They’re a bit upemselves. Hangover rnusic.

A split en. Pooey synthesiser soup, but well structured and arranged lyrics. Sings like Ian Anderson though. Appreciable sentiments, Char lie Manson gets a mention - follow me.

NEIL YOUNG Staying Power (Reprise) Honky tonk piano, violin. I think he probably had some fun making this record. A bit of a throwaway, and if not in the context of his other stuff, would be very hard to take seriously (except by Dr. Hook fans). B-side Captain Kennedy is better.

JAPAN Gentlemen take polaroids (Virgin)

WYLIE-WEST BAND Coyboy is a state of mind (Country Club) Apparently it’s pretty good Country and West ern. Right out of my class altogether.

WRECKED JETS Can I go home (Au-go-go) A driving, kind of powerful, but rough recording. Although I agree with the sentiments expressed, I don’t find the lyrics very . attractive or well expressed. Short, sharp and rusty, but not altogether bad. Flip side ‘The howling life’ is quirky and a little more interesting.

PHILL COLLINS In the air tonight (Atlantic) Odorous synthesiser garbage. Slow. Very slow, but get some gizzards towards the end. Pretty drab.

Stop belore yoa say it

THE GO-BETWEENS I need two heads (Missing Link) This one’s pretty good, makes me listen. Wonderful contrasts as the sound drops away to the bare minimum, then comes back, not over bearing but filling spaces and making spaces for the '.Aiords. Suitable, effective guitar. An engaging, interesting song.

RUSSEL MORRIS AND THE RUBES Rosi' of the Wild Torpedoes (Mushroom) Pop music. Meaningless. Should make a few bucks. Molly’ll like it. Russel Morris has a wonderful voice.

TALKING HEADS Once in a lifetime (Sire) This is a brilliant song, but don’t buy the single. Get the album. Gets better with every listen. Catch, complex and simple at one time. Jungle rhythm, and modern music, powerful, subtle. Not smelly.

THE PERSONNEL Never be your man (Method Records) Hard to tell about this one. Triffic bass and guitar sound. Ringing, jangling guitar, very dynamic. Driving, solid bass. Not sure about the vocals though. A pretty good record if my opinion counts.

YOKO ONO Walking on thin ice - For John (Geffen Records)

JO JO ZEP AND THE FALCONS Sweet (Mushroom)

Mr. Moog has a fuckin’ lotto answer for. Well, it’s not really his fault, I s’pose, but someone’s gonna have to pay. Yoko’s not a BAD singer, though she barely gets above a whisper. The rest of it, w e ll. ..

Cripes, what’s this? Not what I expected, that’s for sure. A very deep recording, lot’s of guitar, booming drum sound. This isn’t yer average Falcons. Someone’s switched the labels. Things don’t look too rosy for the Falcons future. Y’see, this is the first one of their records I’ve liked. They must be in trouble, thinks I.

ORCHESTRAL MANOEVRES IN THE DARK Enola Gay (Dindisc) I’m beginning to become a little peeved.

X.T.C. Sgt. Rock (is going to help me) (Virgin) I’m bored Donald. The only thing keeping me listening to this drivel is that I know that the Angels are next. X.T.C. have perfected the musical piddle.

THE ANGELS Into the Heat (Epic) Well, it’s just the Angels with echo on the vocals. Meaningless lyrics, the mandatory quiet patch with build up. Still, it’s not ‘Get off my cloud’, or ‘New Race-this time. JOHN DOE

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