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OXFORD BLOUSES
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reg.7
Top of
the bops
The Ever Popular
Tortured Artist Effect
Todd Rundgren
Bearsville Records
The Bible of Bop
Kimberley Rew
Armageddon Records
It's A Wonderful Life
Chris Stamey
DB Records
By Larry Dean
THESE THREE ALBUMS reflect
the current state of things in the
pop music world beyond the reaches of
your car radio or American Bandstand.
Sure, WABX has gone "cool," and I'm
all for it - Van Halen is only palatable
between slices of the Thompson Twins
and Janet Jackson, after all - but even
with such a widened format, there's
still an armada of delights out there
waiting to be heard. These are but a trio
in a cornucopia of unknowns.
Honestly, there is some linking
device utilizable in reviewing these new
releases. Rundgren records for (and
not coincidentally owns) Bearsville
Records, so-named for the homestead
upon which its offices and recording
studio lays; Stamey is a member of the
still-existent dB's, whose next LP (their
first to be released domestically in their
native.USA) will be coming out on
Bearsville; and Rew is backed up on
three tracks of his EP by the dB's.
How's that for homework?
Beginning with Rundgren (who's ac-
tually not much of an "unknown"): The
Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect is
the latest in a line of ascending steps for
the founding-father of the Nazz, that
late-'6Os'/early '70s combo (featuring
Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick in their
ranks as well) who scored a moderato-
hit with the enchanting "Hello, It's
Me," commonly miscredited to Run-
dgren alone.
Todd has of- recent turned his talents
to the art of production, twisting the
knobs for the likes of the Tom Robinson
Band, Patti Smith, and most recently,
the Psychedelic Furs and Jules Shear.
However, he has either stored up his
chutzpah or learned a lot form his clien-
ts, or both, 'cuz this is one helluvan
album.
This is Todd's most-assured work in
years, and just a damn fine LP on its
own. From the sprightly-and-optimistic
opening pulses of "Hideaway," Ar-
tist's opening cut, you know you're in
for pure pop for now people ("Thanks"
- N. Lowe). In it, Todd begs to be let in-
to the secret world of a fellow human
being (most likely female) for solace
and warmth.
The thing is, despite its obvious wor-
nness, "Hideaway" works, as do all the
songs on Artist. "Influenza" compares
love and trust with disease in one of the
oddest love songs since Ian Hunter's
"Bastard." "There Goes Your
Baybay" is the LP's prime hopper,
made even happier by its self-taunting
of the pop idiom's shrinkage of terms of
endearment to simple tra-la-las. Nice
to hear a sense of humor so wonderfully
expressed and interwoven in music that
used to mean just that - fun fun fun
- but which has lately become too stoic
and serious.
Rundgren originally hails from
Philadelphia, home of the newest ver-
sion of the Righteous Brothers, Hall and
Oates (whom Todd once produced, way
back in 1974 - the infamous War
Babies), so it's no surprise that there's
at least two H & O sound-alikes on Ar-
tist, the preachy "Don't Hurt Yourself"
("I've done some bad things/This I
know/If I can't change things/Tell
me so/I does no good to break your
toe on the wall/ I know you're
angry/That's all right/i said I don't
care/Well, I lied/ But I don't care
who wins the fight after all... and
"Bang the Drum All Day, " which
recalls the good old anarchistic free-
for-all bombasticism of Daryl and
John's "Alley Katz," from Along the
Red Ledge, and "Room to Breathe,"
from Bigger Than the Both of Us. Mind
you, neither of these songs are rip-offs,
but compositions traceable back to the
same environment which gave us the
so-called "blue-eyed soul" music 'on
whose robes the titanic-two have ridden
in on; there's touches of it here,
especially in Rundgren's voice, and if
that attracts some interest amongst the
entourage out there, then all the better.
The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Ef-
fect has Rundgren once again playing
all the instruments himself. He is well-
versed in things with strings to snares
to saxes, and plays them all excep-
tionally here, and even more importan-
tly, smoothly - if you didn't know it
was just T.R., you'd swear that impor-
tant "band" feeling was more than just
a feeling. Whether it is the cover of the
Small Faces' "Tin Soldier," the
amazingly-goofy "Emperor of the
Highway," or the blatant optimism-
Candide-style of "Drive" or the album
closer, "Chant," Todd Rundgren shines
with fresh energy in a marvelous disc of
hook-laden pop.
Moving over to a slightly different
sphere, we find Kimberley Rew's eight-
track, 45 r.p.m. the EP, The Bible of Bop.
Rew used to be in the seminal British
art-school-evaders The Soft Boys,
whose debut album Underwater
Moonlight emulated every weirdo
musical source from Syd Barrett/early
Pink Floyd, to Frank 'Zappa, Wire, and
the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.
Unfortunately, The Soft Boys didn't.
do so well as an enterprising, commer-
cial outfit, so they did the traditional
thing and broke up amicably. While
head Boy Robyn Hitchcock put out a
few solo albums, Rew laid low and
prepared himself mentally for the task
of putting together his first solo effort.
There are three groups backing Rew
up on The Bible of Bop. His ex-mates
The Soft Boys contribute on three
songs, The dB's on three, and a group
called The Waves are featured on two.
Each session had a separate producer,
yet the subtle differences in technique
don't really matter. dB bassist Gene
Holder holds off from playing on the dB
songs so he can focus on production,
and lets whiz-kid Mitch Easter sit in for
four-string duties (Easter owns Drive-
In Studios in Winston, N.C., and has
worked with such other notables as
R.E.M. and Pylon.)
The songs are all excellent. In
"Stomping All Over the World," Rew
sings in an unabashedly British accent
about searching high and low to find his
true love. "Nothing's Going to Change"
seems at first to be proclaiming a
rather pessimistic notion, as the title
insinuates, until Rew chimes in a wist-
ful "until we got lo-o-o-o-ove." And in
the side one closer, "Fighting
Someone's War," Rew rants about
seeking false cover in ditches and
nuclear fallout shelters; in typical rock
and roll fervor, the song climaxes with
fierce guitar work by Rew and bassist
Matthew Seligman.
"Walking in the Dew" sounds very
dB-like, and is almost hard to
distinguish vocally (is it really ' Rew
singing, or Peter Holsapple?). Equally
traceable to the late-'60s-ish abandon of
the dB's is the British Invasion-styled
"Fishing," which has fine backing
vocals by Holsapple, Easter, and
drummer Will Rigby.
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The Bible of Bop culminates with a
song entitled "Hey, War Pig!" which
has the dubious honor of sounding
like "how you work pink" even as Rew
reminisces, in near-rhyme, "how you
pig done killed my kid." The musical
accompaniment is peppy and bright,
and totally wonderful - a fitting end to
an EP of contradictions and integrity,
one that shows a potential talent in pre-
album full-swing splendor.
By far the best. of these three pop
platters is dB-on-sabbatical Chris
Stamey's It's A Wonderful Life,
released on the small, Atlanta-based
DB Records label. With the help of Mit-
ch Easter on bass and Ted Lyons on
drums and recorded at Easter's studio,
this first solo effort from the more-
bizarre of the two songwriting dBs
sounds eerily like John Lennon's
Plastic Ono Band album- his first solo
LP - in both content and musical ap-
proach.
It's not typical of me to make such a
statement, because I think com-
parisons to the genius of McCartney
and Lennon's compositions; usually fall
flat. However, Stamey's position in the
dB's sets him up as a Lennon personna
as he is prone to write the more unusual
songs, to take more risks - and then
there's the voice: rich and slightly
strained, but full of personality, wit,
and know-it-all.
"Winter of Love" starts off side one,
with pitched, munchkiny voices chan-
and armh. et he sbtl diferncesin echiqu