The Michigan Doily-Friday, August 11, 1978-Page 5
The old gives way to the new
[Ii e, IFsm,2 r,
Some Girls
The RollingStones
Rolling Stones COC39108
I find it a formidable task to sort out
my feelings about a new Rolling Stones
album, because I desperately want the
band to succeed. Instead of sitting back
and letting the music wash over me, I
instinctively comb any new Stones
record for transcendent moments,
feverishly hoping I'll discover some
new treasure to place alongside their
best work.
This conflict with my admitted biases
has never proved a more difficult ob-
stacle than with Some Girls. I can't help
but agree with everybody that the
album is the Stones' finest effort since
Exile On Main Street. Like Exile, Some
Girls successfully scrapes off the glitter
for the benefit of raunchy energy, and
springs from that same seamy nether-
world that spawned many of the band's
most dark and powerful triumphs. The
mix isn't as calculatedly muddy as
Exile's, but the album's gut-stabbing
rock has an energetic immediacy that
seems to be a belated apology for the
fuzziness of the Stones' recent efforts,
and for the gimmickry and tongue-in-
cheek excesses of Black and Blue in
particular.
YET AS much as I'd love to love this
album, I can't; the Stones may have
cleaned up their act, but not to totally
inspired ends. In a recent Rolling Stone
interview with Mick Jagger, Jonathan
Cott wrote that Some Girls
"thematically chrystalizes the Stones'
perennial obsession with 'some girls' -
both real and imaginary."
Cott's right, but I think the album's
extreme depth-of-focus is precisely
what's wrong with it. The Stones have
nev;er been so simultaneously serious
and unambigious. Some Girls is such a
preconceived "chrystalization" of the
Stones' obsessions that nothing has been
left to the listener's imagination. The
Stones have always been outrageous,
but when they glut an album with pic-
tures of themselves in drag and toss off
a myriad of racial-sexist slurs in "Some
Girls," my only reaction is, So what?
The band was far more "outrageous"
filtering their misogyny through a
dream-fantasy maze, such as in "Rocks
Off," where they sang:
which I don't even happen to think is
especially cute, is blasted to
smithereens by the luminous beer-in-
hand joyfulness of the Exile cut.
Still, Some Girls isn't going to leave
anyone writing eulogies for the Stones.
The album is very consistent, with only
two cuts I don't like - "Faraway
Eyes," and a scratchy, uncalled-for
cover of "Just My Imagination". On
"Lies," Jagger sings with the violence
and bitter English inflection of Johnny
Rotten, and Charlie Watts drives the
song into a pounding frenzy.
THE DRUMMING on the whole
album, in fact, is superb; Watts
provides the lean, angular backbone
these songs demand, playing fiercely
but with simple, sparse regularity. The
relentless drone of "Shattered" - one
of the most bizarre Stones songs I've
ever heard - might have come from
some science-fiction nightmare, as
Mick rants about getting his brains
splattered all over Manhattan, the band
supplying an oddly frightening
repetitive rhythmic pattern. "Beast of
Burden," my personal favorite, is a
gentle rocker that shows off the band's
ability to instantly discard their ironic
distance.
Except for an album here or there
(most notably Their Satanic Majesties
Request), the Stones have always led
the way for everyone else. That's why
Exile On Main Street was a landmark;
it was something new, and shone
because of that newness. With Some
Girls, the first Stones album in a long
while to show large-scale ambition, it
looks like they may never have the
benefit of that edge again.
-Owen Gleiberman
these art school rockers are all about -
one has only to look at Mick Jagger or
Ray Davies, say, or Niagra to under-
stand that - the music undeniably con-
nects on a level as inexplicable as
human feelings, and it is chrystallinely
plotted out, like some statistical flow
chart.
IN A WAY, the sound of the band on
their first release, Talking Heads '77, is
very similar to that on More Songs.
Most songs on the new album are from
the same period as the songs on '77 -
several even pre-date them. And yet,
while my copy of Talking Heads '77
perhaps can still be found in the "T's"
bin at Wazoo records, More Songs is
undisputably one of the very best
albums of the year.
Whatever else they may be, Talking
Heads are a group obsessed. Singer
David Byrne squeals and yelps his way
through songs as much as he "sings"
them, paradoxically evoking both a
man having the breath pressed out of
him and a person very much in control.
And indeed, his voice is but the capper
of Talking Heads' sound; they are
maniacally tight, with an economical
rhythm section reminiscent of the
Velvet Underground's moribund back-
beat. Embodying the sheer psychoses
of the '70s, Talking Heads conveys a
sort of sickening vertigo.
AND YET, ONE cannot run away
from the songs on More Songs. There is
no typical "New Wave" affront made to
the listener, and neither does Byrne
seem to be reaching out to the listener.
The tension in their songs is the result
of their obsession with communicating
feelings and experiences; for although
they employ that nearly martial beat
and simple song structures - and Byr-
ne sings of feelings systematically,
utilizing any mechanical simile that
might help - the product is more vital
energy than anything else. What comes
across is the importance of the thing
more than the thing itself.
For instance, there is the song "The
Good Thing," in which Byrne speaks of
love: "Straight line exists between me
and the good thing/I have found the line
and its direction is known to me/ab-
solute trust keeps me going in the right
direction/the intrusion is met with a
heart full of the good thing."
The provocation of feelings can also
obstruct them, and to Talking Heads
the modern world gives meaning to
feelings while simultaneously acting to
hopelessly constrict and garble them.
Thus it is that the best lines on the
record, be it "there's just no love when
there's boys and girls," or Byrne
singing of America, "I wouldn't live
there if you paid me," are pointedly
enigmatic.
Like the kind, of talking heads
McLuhan would speak of, Talking
Heads' greatest impact is non-verbal
and symbolic. But the feelings they
provoke are as real as the concrete that
covers the world.
-R. J. Smith
Walk a mile.
Play Billiards
at the
UNION.
Open 'til 1a.m.
Peter Gabriel
Atlantic SD 19181
By R. J. SMITH
By the early '70s, a whole rock and
roll sub-cult had sprung up around
popular bands of technological
visionaries, supposedly peering into the
future and seeing tyranny, doom,
mutation, holocaust, and nowhere to do
one's laundry cheaply.
Today humanoids like The Alan Par-
sons Project, Yes, and ELP are rock's
answer to H. G. Wells, extrapolating
today's trends and telling us of the
holocaust to come.
The problem with groups like these is
that the future is now - technology is
right here, and all the freak-outs a per-
son could want afe sitting on his front
porch. Pessimistic sci-fi futurisms, by
and large, are a sham - it's so smug
and easy to be negative, especially
when you're talking about the future;.
you can't be wrong.
BUT PETER Gabriel could be an im-
portant distinction. At first listening, he
sounds a lot like the aforementioned
bands; there are swooping choirs and
See GABRIEL, Page 11
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MoreSongs About
Buildings and Food
Talking Heads
SireSRK6058
I was makin' love last night, The way I rationalize it is that some
To a dancerfriend of mine of them went to an art school (one in
can't seem to stay instep, Rhode Island - which is where Martin
'cause she comes every time she Mull also matriculated), so they're way
pirpuettes overme. too smart to let everybody know what's
pirpottesgoing on in their music.
SOME GIRLS' conceptual unity Or else - and this is the scary part -
makes it infinitely more convincing they're simply so deluded that they are
that a directionless pastiche like Black telling us, but the message leaves the
and Blue, but it seems a calculated band far too garbled for clear com-
restaging of Exile's crude brand of prehension.
rock, which was in itself calculated. Anyway, the new Talking Heads
e 'Faraway Eyes". with the album is out. It's called More Songs
c ngma e .,aaway irEyenitheeAbout. s ihand Fee.And while
country affectation of the' former''''you cen't ever tell with certainty what
II
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