MUSIC REVIEWS

Passionflies, Squid and Cherry wine
New Times feasts on a banquet of local recordings

It’s Arizona Music Conference and Showcase ’91 week in the Valley, so let’s celebrate local acts. In the spirit of the event–one designed to focus national attention on Arizona’s homegrown talent–we decided to feature the latest cassettes and CDs from Valley bands. Many of the groups reviewed below will be playing at the conference, so you may want to wander in and catch a live show.

This is also a good time to answer the most frequently asked question about reviews of local music: Yes, we do judge local music by the same standards as national acts. That “hometown” stuff doesn’t cut it with us, so Valley groups aren’t given any slack. Anyway, that would be an insult to the musicians. Besides, we value our credibility. The only rule governing what is reviewed is that the music must be for sale. As the scene evolves and demo tapes become more professional, it’s increasingly difficult to determine if an unsolicited cassette is a rough mix or a finished product. So we try not to review tapes and CDs that can’t be purchased in record stores or from the band during live shows.

If you don’t see a recording at local stores or on the bandstand, ask why.

SPINNING JENNY Spinning Jenny
(Local tape)

Stephen Easterling is one of the best tunesmiths in town. He’s clever, too. The singer-guitarist can cop a Beatles hook in broad daylight and mix it with so many other pop patterns that it sounds like he and his band Spinning Jenny are onto something new. Add the boffo back-up vocals of bassist Damon Doiron and songs like “First Man on Mars” and “Fastest Car in Town” come off as both fresh and familiar.

Easterling, Doiron and drummer Scot Beck have been around a while. They first played together in Trash Cadillac, a remnant of local country-pop fave the Strand. Shortly after the Cadillac was trashed, the surviving trio recruited guitarist Patrick Scot and set out on a decidedly Beatlesque beat.

The resulting power-pop works well on stage, but this four-song cassette loses something in the translation. Like a lot of local efforts, the attention seems to be on cleaning and separating a sound that’s stronger when meshed more closely.

The tape’s not bad–but it’s not that good, either. Still, Spinning Jenny is a good band. Keep an eye on ’em.–

ALICE TATUM Alice Tatum
(Local tape)

Alice Tatum shows that at least one local jazz singer isn’t trying to evoke images of Billie Holiday or Dinah Washington. There’s no see-my-jazz-roots posturing with this blonde chanteuse. Tatum just wants to belt out hot pop-jazz. Tatum’s latest release is straight-ahead contemporary stuff, more Natalie Cole than John Coltrane. No matter. “Picture of Today” is everything you, your flame and your fireplace want for this Saturday night. Tatum’s sexy vocal and the samba bounce supplied by Art Grigalva’s guitar conjure up the same slick groove that has made Michael Franks and Kenny Rankin hits on the current jazz scene.

In fact, if you put most of the cuts on this release between Franks and Rankin on the radio, Tatum would be in her element. She slides from passionate whispers to soulful cries to bluesy growls as well as any of her better-known counterparts. And there’s no reliance on band overkill to pull her through, either. Some of the best cuts on this album use only trio and quartet backing. Given the right breaks, Alice Tatum is the recording that could place this woman in the limelight. By refusing to ape the jazz divas of the past, Tatum has honed herself for the present competition. No need to look so shy, Alice. You can more than hold your own.–

TOM BARABAS Sedona Suite
(Soundings of the Planet)

Cue up Sedona Suite, Geraldo. Now the story can be told. It seems that an unidentified pianist, yearning to make a career in the new-age scene, is releasing the same album over and over again with a different name and new artwork each time. He has recently surfaced as Tom Barabas, and this time he has dedicated his piano work to the beauty of Sedona. The “mystery piano man” is succeeding beyond all expectations. The recording’s gorgeous graphics and mood-provoking keyboard tinkling are already wooing the zillion seekers who regularly head north of Phoenix to vie for a vortex.

But Sedona Suite is a collection of piano riffs at least as old and weather-beaten as the rocks in the cover photograph. Listen closely to the pensive “Moondust.” Remember hearing George Winston and a dozen other artists wrench identical brow-furrowed passion out of the ivories? It’s the same song. Notice how you find yourself able to hum along with “Inner Peace” even though you’re hearing Sedona Suite for the first time? If you have any new-age piano discs in your collection, you already own every musical idea on this album. How wonderful if this mysterious pianist presently calling himself Tom Barabas would drop the keyboard cliches and come up with some new visions. As for his Sedona Suite panorama, it’s strictly a deja view. –Dave McElfresh

RICK CYGE AND CINDY BARBER Waving at Strangers
(Desert Moon Productions)

With this collection of folk songs, Rick Cyge and Cindy Barber prove that they’re one of the finest acoustic duos in the state. Folk songs depend on words to carry their meaning. Folk lyrics have to make clear points, and rhymes have to be strong and easy to follow. For the most part, the music on Waving at Strangers fits the bill. The story-songs that are Cyge and Barber’s forte make sense and are enlivened with good details. In the more successful numbers, like David Massengill’s “My Name Joe,” the words provoke a chuckle and a tear in the same song.

Barber wrote or co-wrote the music and lyrics for six of the album’s ten tunes. Her most successful composition is the bluesy self-portrait “Chicken Legs.” Cyge’s specialty, on the other hand, is the instrumental. The two that made it on this record–“Arizona Highways” and “Clingstone”–provide a pleasant change of pace.

As musicians, both Cyge and Barber are proficient if unspectacular six- and 12-string guitarists. Cyge also plays mandolin and mandola, and programs the synthesizer and the drum machine. Of the two, Barber is the better singer. But both have the kind of clear enunciation and careful phrasing necessary for folk singing. Their harmonies weave in and out with an unmistakable grace.–

PASSIONFLIES
Passionflies
(Kept in the Dark)

It’s rare to run into an Arizona band with as polished a product as this 13-song, 52-minute CD from Tucson’s Passionflies. The music is clean, clear and accomplished, an impressive example of how studio technique can enhance a band’s vision.

All of which makes it too bad that the band’s vision is so narrow. Its line of sight is like a keyhole view of electro-pop’s glory groups: Spandau Ballet, Simple Minds, A Flock of Seagulls and just about every other U.K. band that was big in the early Eighties. Singer Rik Nicholson and guitarist Mike Sydloski, especially, allow their considerable skills to revive the past a bit too easily.

The Euro dance party breaks occasionally for a nice instrumental (“Screaming at the Leaves”) and a truly inspired piece of industrial angst appropriately titled “Bitter.”

But everything else is for Anglophiles only.–Ted Simons

VIVID SQUID Production Seduction
(Local tape)

The imaginatively monikered Vivid Squid plays an energetic brand of garage-rock that can be both fun and silly at the same time. At its best, like on the way-cool “Clouds” and “Growing Up,” Vivid Squid approaches a barracuda’s level of good-time verve. But elsewhere–“Beyond the Couch,” for instance, which concerns itself with life after TV–the band comes off as just plain dumb.

Speaking of dumb, Vivid Squid lists 12 songs on its cassette and accompanying “song list,” but only half the tunes are on our copy of the tape. The same songs are repeated on the other side. Can you say, “Oops”?

Boo-boos notwithstanding, Vivid Squid’s got something here. The six surviving songs employ a tankerload of fuzzy hooks and wah-wah solos from guitarist Chris W. Losey, and the rhythm section–bassist Kevin L. Wisleder, drummer Ian Kohen and percussionist Jamie Irwin–keeps things happy and peppy throughout.

Kind of makes you wonder what the other songs sound like.–Ted Simons

SLEEZY TEEZE Let the Music Quake
(Teeze)

Scott “Sleezy Teeze” Smith is a white man with a mission: He needs to rule the dance floor. A budding sex symbol known for his explicit rhyming and his swaying behind, Sleezy Teeze has spent a lot of time honing his shtick. A Valley resident since early last year, this 23-year-old El Paso native says he’s sold 1,125 copies of this four-song cassette, a figure that has supposedly roused major-label interest.

If nothing else, Smith looks the part. In June 1991, he was featured on the cover and in the centerfold spread of a national beefcake magazine. When it comes to music, all you have to know about S.T. is that, like so many other dance kings today, he knows synthesizers. The process goes like this: S.T. builds the rhythms with a drum machine, programs a spare melody line into a synthesizer and voila!–electricity does the rest. Actually, Smith does sing. On the title cut, he manages to stir up enough “We bad!” energy to make this tune the tape’s best dancer. From then on, however, this cassette goes for the crotch. Living up to his stage name, Sleezy Teeze knows how to talk hot trash. The cassette’s second cut, “I’ll Take Control,” is a ringside account of Sleezy and his squeeze gettin’ it on. For the junior linguists out there, this cut also features the entire spectrum of English words used to describe female genitalia. On the next cut, “Hard Core,” the narrative gets even raunchier. This porno jam features rhymes for the word “backdoor.” You can guess the rest. Suitable for private dirty dancing, Let the Music Quake is definitely not for the kiddies.–Robert Baird

DAVID JAMES If It Feels Good
(Arcade Group)

What would happen if Barry Manilow got really happy and began to write love ballads again? Let’s hope the world never has to find out. But for a hint of that experience, there’s David James’ new six-song cassette.

The lyrics on If It Feels Good are juvenile and the music is cliche. An I’m-gonna-love-you-till-the-end-of-time kind of lyricist, James belts out, with complete conviction, lines like, “You are my shining star/And I feel your love from near and far.” Throughout this six-song cassette he works in a Seventies-crooner mode that will gag all but the most hardened Manilow fans.

With his voice overwhelming the mix, James sings original material that can get downright embarrassing. What kind of Nineties pop musician would name a sweeping love tune “Shining Star” when everyone remembers the Earth, Wind and Fire classic of the same name? It’s almost as bad as if he had called it “Stardust.” Things are further complicated by James’ inability to program a drum machine with more than the simplest patterns. James isn’t a bad piano player or vocalist, but he ought to stop singing his own songs.–Robert Baird

LOUD VERBAL INSANITY Loud Verbal Insanity
(Local tape)

Not a lot of chuckles on this one.
Loud Verbal Insanity is a Mesa-based crew of angry young men in love with the smell of their own noise. The band’s four-song cassette–recorded and mixed at Tempe’s Cereus Recording–plummets deep into the nether regions where hard-core and heavy-metal slam dance on each other. It’s a gory kind of controlled mayhem, with vocalist D.R.M. playing the part of a post-pea-soup Linda Blair and guitarist Mark Johnson, bassist Fred Barringer and drummer Tim Acedo doing a decent audio impersonation of sustained carpet bombing.

Effective? Yes. Unsettling? You bet.
But it’s predictable, too. Loud Verbal Insanity does what it does very well, but what it does can get tedious fast. This kind of stuff sells, sure . . . but who’s buying?–Ted Simons

DEAN EVENSON Desert Moon Song (Soundings of the Planet)

Desert Moon Song is a lot like the desert itself, especially the stretch from here to Tucson, the city where this recording was produced. Is the Tucson trek your ideal trip because of the calming open spaces and absence of anything attention-grabbing? You’ll discover the same thing on this disc of Dean Evenson’s keyboards and wind instruments. Every cut is a hypnotic string of undulating synthesizer tones and dreamy flute chirping. Evenson’s aural trip is so relaxing and even-paced that the liner notes recommend that it not be played while driving.

Others are more prone to scream than snooze in the midst of such repetitive terrain. There’s nothing on Desert Moon Song any more exciting than that minor turn in the road near Picacho Peak. If you don’t have an overpowering affinity for the land of the saguaro, you’ll find Evenson’s meditative offering an hourlong headache. From the Native American flute chant of “Prayer” to the coyote yelps on “Desert Moon,” this record contains more Southwestern references than the curio shop at Nickerson Farms. Heed the warning before strapping yourself in. Desert Moon Song’s narrow focus guarantees that you’ll either love its consistent feel for the environment or howl along with the record’s coyotes, begging for more hummable melodies and less local color.–Dave McElfresh

DASHBOARD MARY Baby Ruthless
(Primary)

An on-again, off-again project, this Valley punk-alternative band has re-formed. From the sound of this new cassette, Dashboard Mary has found vital new energies. Built around the guitars of Tim Roth, the music here varies from borderline thrash to quiet guitar meanderings. The group is at its best when such variety occurs within a single song, like this tape’s second cut, “Sodomizing Annette.” Despite the bizarre title, “Sodomizing Annette” is not a tune about sex. Dashboard Mary is one of those bands whose titles have more to do with humor than meaning. Changing pace repeatedly, “Sodomizing Annette” varies from punky guitar fury to breaks during which Roth puts on a jazz hat and does his best Wes Montgomery. It’s a strange mix, but it works. Other side-one highlights include an outright punk screamer, “What I Hated For,” and “Ninja Jew,” a midtempo rocker that uses the famous Magnificent Seven whistle as its opening.

After that, however, Baby Ruthless begins to bog down. Opening with the countryish twang of “Hell Amen,” side two ends up sounding like recycled Alice Cooper. Still, there are enough good moments here to make this a very listenable return to form.–Robert Baird

BRIAN O’CARROLL Yesterday’s Dreamland (Rich)

Brian O’Carroll has kept close tabs on the folk side of pop music. You can hear him catalogue his influences as he moves from song to song on Yesterday’s Dreamland. The title cut of his solo album rings with hints of Phil Ochs’ musical pontificating in the Sixties. “Long Way From Home” borrows heavily from Dan Fogelberg’s popular Seventies love songs, and “Ivory on the Sea” is straight from the recent Bruce Hornsby songbook.

O’Carroll’s one-man-band approach to singing, songwriting and piano and guitar playing has all the appropriate folkie elements down. Except one. The local musician’s lyrics are no more engaging than a telephone solicitation–a serious flaw in music that revolves around a message.

Still, O’Carroll is far more musical than most songwriters nursed on Bob Dylan. Every tune on the cassette is a confident stab at melodicism. In the end, you won’t remember the greeting-card lyrics, but you will find yourself returning to listen to the appealing way O’Carroll turns them into songs. He chose the right teachers–and it shows.–Dave McElfresh

IN SCARLET AND VILE In Scarlet and Vile
(O2)

Anyone remember synth-pop? Remember the legion of bloodless British bands that washed ashore about ten years ago and infected American nightclubs with the toots ‘n’ tweets of keyboards and drum machines?

In Scarlet and Vile apparently remembers. This Tempe twosome (Kurt Lorenz and Jay Bitsue) takes to heart the old Soft Cell approach of floppy disc-o beats and earnest, mournful vocals.

The only thing that keeps ISAV’s eight-song cassette from sounding like a restored relic of trends past is a creeping instrumental ambiance. The ethereal underbrush suggests that while Lorenz and Bitsue have apparently never heard of R.E.M. or the Replacements, they’ve certainly been exposed to the sonic vagaries of new-age.

All of which is peachy, I guess–or “limey,” as the case may be–especially for those who speak and spell the language of synth-pop. But hearing an Arizona outfit croon like sullen, bed-sit Brits seems as hard a sell now as it was a long time ago.–Ted Simons

CHERRY WINE Cherry Wine
(Local tape)

Metal and hard-rock bands all dislike being stereotyped, yet most turn into low-budget distillations of Van Halen, Motley Crue or Metallica with their hair styling, wardrobes and loud music. And if the look of most metal/hard-rock bands isn’t bad enough, their heavy image often lies over lightweight music.

One thing you can say about Cherry Wine, however: This band knows marketing. The tape looks good, the press kit is glossier than Van Halen’s and there’s an address inside the box where you write to get fan-club goodies or “merchandising information.” But no matter how many tee shirts they sell, most hard-rock/metal bands discover that sooner or later they have to make good music. So far, Cherry Wine hasn’t.

Filled with the usual complement of Eddie Van Halen guitar moves, monotonous monster beats and lyrics about “little girls,” this five-song tape contains nothing that hasn’t been done before. Just the title of a tune like “Time” tells you everything you need to know about that obligatory hard-rock ballad. And the four rockers that make up the rest of this tape have none of the ferocious bite, blistering instrumental work or shining hooks that make for memorable hard-rock.–Robert Baird