Local and Listful

If there’s one maxim we believe, it’s that musicians and other people in the biz– like record-company bigwigs, deejays and retailers–are really frustrated critic. MICHAEL CORNELIUS BASSIST Housequake, Jodie Foster’s Army, Junior Chemists, Zuwal (in alphabetical order) BAD BRAINS I Against I (SST, 1986). BAUHAUS Mask (Beggars Banquet, 1981). BEASTIE…

Single-minded

Songs to learn and sing. The Eighties’ Top 10 singles: 1. PUBLIC ENEMY “Fight the Power” (Motown, 1989). PE drove home the decade’s most vital and direct statement with a hip-hop hammer. No wonder Radio Raheem fought to death for it in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” 2. MADONNA…

Born Yesterday

BORN YESTERDAY Ten albums from the Sixties and Seventies that sounded better in the Eighties: 1. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO The Velvet Underground & Nico (MGM/Verve, 1967). While everyone else was doing peace and love in 1967, Lou Reed and John Cale explored the degenerate, gritty, stinging reality of…

Slipped Discs

1. PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION Around the World in a Day (Paisley Park, 1985). Prince thought he was making Sgt. Pepper II and forgot he was the world’s premier funkateer. Then again, whenever Prince stepped out of character–witness his acting–it turned out to be a blunder. 2. NEIL YOUNG Trans…

First and Ten

As you’re no doubt aware, we’ve been granted Top 10/Bottom 10 licenses by the proper authorities. In other words, these are official lists of what was good and bad about Eighties music. If you see similar lists elsewhere and someone tries to pawn them off as the real thing, just…

Days Break

It’s never pretty when a band makes that monumental plunge from cult favorite to big-money, arena-playing, leather-clad rock group. Critics inevitably scream, “SELLOUT!” Long- time fans feel betrayed. And the college radio stations promptly hawk the band’s back catalogue to used record stores. Most bands only have to face the…

Commercial Success

In the Eighties, your grandmother listened to enough Eric Clapton to join in any discussion of guitar heroes. Of course, grandma only heard one Clapton song during the past ten years–and that short number was always interrupted at the end by a commercial announcer proclaiming, “The night belongs to Michelob.”…

The Ace of Clubs

Had Trevor Rabin been alone when he headed down to L.A.’s Roxy recently to catch Steve Stevens in concert, the latter-day Yes guitarist probably would’ve gone unnoticed for the night. While Rabin is well-respected among serious six-string students, his long rocker’s hair and boy-next-door looks don’t exactly make him stand…

No One Talks About Altamont Nation

Well, we’ve seen the waning of the Woodstock wankarama, thank you very much. Unless newscasters and the glossies run totally out of filler for the next ten summers, we won’t have to hear that story again for a decade. Today marks the year’s true dash down the gauntlet of memory:…

Racial Harmonies

1989 will go down in history as the year racism came into vogue in pop music. Guns n’ Roses, Public Enemy and an ugly rash of skinhead bands have taken command of the public ear and commenced to babble on about the superiority of their own races. As these groups…

Night of the Living Led

If you thought it was wacky, cool, normal or stupid when everyone in the world from critics to moshers started liking Led Zeppelin a few years ago, check this out: In the time since, “Zeppelin” has become an entire category of music, and scientists have come up with Zeppelogical studies…

Abroad Jump

For all its cross-cultural posturing, world-beat is still very much an American concept. The Bonedaddys, the current leading exponent of the genre, are ample proof. The eight-man band from Los Angeles does stew up some interesting blends of Caribbean, Latin American, and African music, but the meat of the soup…

Gross Profits

To many of the tragically hip nightclub hoppers on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, the posters plastered all up and down the boulevard probably looked at first like advance publicity for a This Is Spinal Tap sequel. Picture it: Five typical-looking heavy-metal glamour boys in studded black leather trousers, shirts opened to…

Roots-Rock Redux

Two years ago, Del Fuegos front man Dan Zanes stood in the place where he was and watched his world spring a major leak. “My band was falling apart, the record company situation was falling apart, and my songwriting was falling apart,” Zanes says. The band that had once thrilled…

Calm Together

When many listeners hear the term “new-age,” they immediately conjure up images of nuts-and-twigs folks hanging out in the wilderness playing nature-inspired ditties. Others think of the Windham Hill label, whose acts specialize in calming, atmospheric whooshes. But the description often turns out to be a misnomer. Promotional material for…

Jazz Buzz

On the day after the earth moved and moved again under the feet of northern Californians, Yellowjackets bass player Jimmy Haslip worried for the families of his fellow band members who live in the area–until the news came that they were alive and well. “It was upsetting–pretty wild,” Haslip says…

Squier Straits

No one would accuse Billy Squier of being a ground-breaking artist, or even one who swam against the tide of radio excessiveness. But the guitarist who reopened the Top 40 door to pop rock in the early Eighties is not exactly in the limelight these days. And though his music…

Sub Deb

It wasn’t the voice of, well, rapture that you’d expect. From Deborah Harry’s tired, borderline cranky tone during the first few minutes of a phone call from her San Francisco hotel room, it’s hard to tell whether she’s lost about a week’s sleep or if she just hates interviews. It’s…

Nicks’ Knack

For a while, David Letterman would randomly run on his show the portion of Stevie Nicks’ 1986 “Talk to Me” video where she spins with incredible velocity and abandon, perched high on her platform boots and weighed down by yards of draped velvet. And if Stevie Nicks has been the…

Timbuk-ing The System

Timbuk 3’s lead singer Pat MacDonald is unfazed that his band might have one of the most misunderstood hit singles of the decade. Although his 1985 hit “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” probably ranks right up there with R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t…

Roland’s Role Landing

There’s a scene in the movie Tin Men where Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito are hanging out in a smoky, airport-type cocktail lounge filled with Baltimore suburbanites. It’s 1963, and this is the kind of place where you’d expect to be treated to a middle-aged crooner wheezing up Perry Como…

The Doobie Double

“Cycles. The return of that classic high-spirited, uninhibited, good time rock ‘n’ roll sound only the Doobie Brothers can create. Cycles. Reuniting the founding members of the legendary band. Cycles. Resulting in the same great guitar sounds, smooth ensemble vocals and sparkling songwriting. Cycles!” –from a recent Capitol Records press…