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■ BEST BET
* » Tht Rad and Black « Friday, March 13. 1992
A&E
This weekend rent a video. But put down that old, tired copy
of 'Home Alone.' Why not snag 'Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’?
Tura Satana stars in the Russ Meyers cult classic about three
loaded strippers who drive, drink and Kill like Sasa & Stina.
Critic’s plea: Support decent American music
By NOEL MURRAY
Campus Correspondent
• Uttle Village: -Little Village" (Repnse) At
• Loe Reed: "Magic and Loss" (Sire)
• Yo La Tengo: "May I Sing With Me"
(Alias) ***1/2
• Uncle Tupelo: "Still Feel Gone"
(Rockville) **★*
(all albums rated on a 15 it scale)
“Will the last American band to get
played on the radio please bring the flag?"
Those are the words of the great Los
Angeles punk band X, from a song called “I
Must Not Think Bad Thoughts." The lyric
refers to the Second British Invasion
(Culture Club, Duran Duran and the like),
which drove quality American Music off the
airwaves again.
Strange how things change and stay the
same, eh? Now, while everyone moves to ap
plaud the breakthrough of Nirvana on the
pop charts, there are still hundreds of oth
er good American bands who can’t catch a
break because of the Mr. Bigs and Marky
Marks of the world. People who want to
hear American Music have to go digging for
it, reading every record review column for a
clue as to what’s out there.
But sometimes the critics don’t help ei
ther. Take the case of the new band Little
Village, a supergroup made up of Nick
Lowe, John Hiatt, Jim Keltner and Ry
Cooder. All four of these artists have, at one
time or another, made good music based
around the themes of country, folk, blues,
and rockabilly. As a unit, though, their de
but album is a stuffy bore, saddled with re
cycled rock licks and the rarefied air of leg
end.
For some reason, the grizzled old critics
dig this stuff, tossing out words like “solid”
and “mature.” But I’ve said it before and 111
say it again - Mature Means Boring, Nine
Times Out Of Ten. There’s no electricity to
this stuff, which is bothersome enough, but
even worse its very existence means that
the critics will ignore really inventive
American Music while they write raves for
Little Village’s eponymous debut.
You want really mature, but good, mu-
■ AMERICAN MUSIC, part 2
sic? Lou Reed’s “Magic and Loss" is the
proverbial tenth time out of ten that mature
isn’t boring. This is a marvelous album, a
thing of beauty.
Reed has aged gracefully since his days
as the leader of the seminal Velvet
Underground, and he’s gained the objective
distance to pick and choose what bits of his
musical dabblings worked in the past. This
album takes the mellow grooves of The
Velvet’s third album and lays over the po
etic depth of “Berlin," and the contemporary
sensibility of “New York "
Reed used to talk about writing The
Great American Novel in rock and roll, but
his literary pretensions never matched his
talent until now. On “Magic and Loss,"
Reed explores mortality - his own as re
flected through the deaths of two of his
friends in a series of interconnected mu
sical short stories. There’s not a bad track
in the bunch, and there’s quite a few out
standing ones, like “What’s Good,"
^Dreaming" and the startling “Harry’s
Circumcision," which deals with a dissatis
fied man’s attempted suicide with humour
and poignancy.
Lou Reed is the grand old man of
American rock and roll and this is his best
work - gentle but uncompromising.
And while we re on the subject of un
compromising American Music and Lou
Reed, let’s talk about Yo I^a Tengo, a bru
tally unyielding New Jersey rock band that
has been accused of having a crippling
Velvet Underground obsession.
Okay, it’s true that lead singer Ira
Kaplan’s voice sounds a little Reedy and it’s
true that their music is often Velvety, but
to typecast them is to underestimate them.
Over the course of their almost 10-year ca
reer they have been nothing if not unpre
dictable. Their new album, “May I Sing
With Me,” comes on the heels of 1990s qui
et and charming “Fakebook,” an album of
folksy, quirky cover songs. This new record
is neither quiet nor charming, but it is bor
derline brilliant.
The songs find a raw groove (almost dis
cordant) and stay there, dropping in instru
mental lines and only yielding to lyrics
when the tension becomes unbearable. The
entire album plays like a cross-country car
trip, with songs that drone on and create al
most every mood imaginable. Occasionally,
you sing along.
“May I Sing With Me," is full of catchy
melodies, but is still not always easy to
take, due to bursts of feedback and a gen
eral oddness. Know this though - Yo La
Tengo is one of the four or five best bands
working in America today.
Uncle Tupelo is one of the others.
Coming out of the American heartland
(Illinois, to be exact), Uncle Tupelo traffics
in the distinctly American genres of country
and folk ... but they were weaned on hard
core punk. In an article last year I described
them as “a cross between Johnny Cash and
a 747,” a description that holds as well on
their exciting new album “Still Feel Gone,”
as it did on their auspicious debut “No
Depression.”
Uncle Tupelo plays music based on coun
try chord progressions, with lyrics reflect
ing working class concerns, and at a volume
that sounds more like Husker Du than
Marty Robbins. Their playful changes in
tempo shows a major Minutemen influence
as well, which they acknowledge in a song
called “D. Boon” after the late Minutemen
guitarist. “Still Feel Gone” doesn’t take
them anywhere they haven’t been before,
but it does represent a refinement of their
style. And new Uncle Tupelo songs are al
ways welcome in a market flooded with bla
tantly calculated music.
They'll be heading here soon, to play
some gigs and work on a new album with
Peter Buck. Make ’em feel welcome.
As for the other bands I’ve talked about
over the course of these two columns, give
them a try. Indigenous forms of American
Music will die out and become unavailable,
unless we support them. Think twice before
giving your money to slickly packaged
Europeans who are watering down our
styles, or to ultraslickly packaged
Americans who are watering down what’s
already been watered.
And then maybe someday I'll turn on
MTV and see American Music Club instead
of Warrant. And then I will weep tears of
joy-
The Bass section of the
UGA Men’s Glee Club
practices for tonight’s
performance of
Beethoven's “Mass in
C." They’ll join the
Women's Glee Clubs,
University Chorus and
the Concert Choir and
the University Symphony
Orchestra for the
Biennial Oratorio tonight
at 8 p.m. in Fine Arts
Auditorium. Tickets are
$3 for students and se
nior citizens, and $6 for
general admission.
In This World serves up substance
By DEE SHURLINQ
Staff Writer
Sometimes it’s great to cut loose and
see a show that requires no more mental
effort than deciding whether or not you
should splurge and buy another beer.
But it’s a proven fact that a diet of noth
ing but booty-based music kills more
brain cells than a drug habit, and be
sides, nobody said entertainment
couldn’t move the mind as well as the
body. Those of you looking for a little
substance along with your melodies
should head to the Flying Buffalo
Saturday night when the Atlanta-based
duo In This World will open for local fa
vorites - The Vigilantes of Love.
In This World, an acoustic act con
sisting of Dave Ceppos and Sheri Kling,
has recently begun playing in Athens af
ter gigging around Atlanta for the last
two years. With all their benefit work,
including writing and recording the 1990
Georgia Earth Day song "Ticking Away,"
and playing for social projects such as
the Atlanta Hunger Walk, it’s easy to en
vision a throwback to the protest singers
of the 60’s.
But Ceppos, while acknowledging his
roots in social activism, said he sees the
band as a “new folk” outfit, and when he
explained the term it sounds like it
might describe the Vigilantes too.
“There’s a difference between singing
about a social agenda and singing about
social values," Ceppos said. “The most
important thing is we’re talking about
values and telling stories, but our songs
aren’t always about some issue.”
Even when the songs do confront spe
cific problems, they don’t beat you in the
head with somebody’s idea of what the
answer may be.
“Rather than write up-front lyrics, we
try to do it in a poetic, roundabout way,”
Ceppos said. His list of most admired
songwriters includes people like Randy
Newman and They Might be Giants.
“The most important things is that
when somebody comes away from seeing
us they realize we are trying to say
something. We’re not going to hand you
a plate of whipped creme; we want to
give you something more substantial
than that," Ceppos said.
In This World will be touring region
ally summer and fall to support their
first album, “What Key Is This In?"
Future Athens dates include March 21
at a new local venue, LuLu’s
Normaltown Cafe.
Athens, Georgia
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