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Page 6 - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 18, 1984
It's high time or the lock to

By Dennis Harvey

L IKE A DOUBLE bill of solid but unin-
spired B movies, Tuesday's Flock
of Seagulls/Comateens concert at the
Michigan Theatre didn't cheat on the
promised amount of mild fun, but a
predictable case of ennui still set in
somewhere around the middle of the
second feature.
The NYC Comateens are a trio (with
welcome percussive help from Chuck
Sabo on this tour, and on their new LP)
of funk popoers with a finer ear for big
beats and solid melodic grooves, plus a
lack of pretension or overslickness in
playing that's rare among white
funkers. They have, as one would hope,
a really large sound in concert-huge
drums, especially, and cool basswork
from Nic North dominate, with Lyn
Byrd's uncomplicated keyboard lines
and Oliver North's funky strumming
filling things out. Their rather disap-
pointingly brief set covered several
tunes from the excellent new Deal With

It album, and not enough from last
year's Pictures on a String-they did
pull out its dancefloor hit "Get Off My
Case" (in which, confirming all
previous suspicions, they are indeed
saying "Get off my face!" half the
time), the addictive "Cinammon" and
the rather dumb rapper "Ice
Machine."
This could have been a fine set to bop
through (assuming that the audience
would have been willing to get off their
collective duff, which they weren't),
but the Comateens do not, unfor-
tunately, demonstrate any interest in
cultivating a stage presence, and
without that they can't expect to
generate much excitement. Nic and
Oliver North look affable enough, but
that's about it; and Lyn Byrd is less
than charismatic with her glacial com-
posure behind sunglasses, occasionally
emerging from the keyboard stand to
do an uninspired tough-girl high kick or
two. Ho hum. Lots of segues connec-
ting songs added to the rather

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Suffering the heartbreak
of "Cashum Interruptus?"

mechanical air and the lack of com-
munication between the Comateens and
their audience, who nevertheless
seemed fairly enthusiastic. The 'Teens
are, musically, a very entertaining lit-
tle band, and if they loosen up on stage
a bit they could be big-league fun.
Flock of Seagulls, by contrast, made
not infrequent and occasionally silly
use of several standard rock-star
gesticulations and devices. (Par-
ticularly idiotic was lead singer Mike
Score's hey-yeah-man pointing at the
audience everytime he said "YOU!" on
"I Ran," a goo-goo-da-da trick that, I'm
sorry to say, the audience responded to
as if blessed. The show's big visual
climax-a few seconds of strobe
lighting-was also a bit of a joke.)
The Flock also had a triangular stage
arrangement of ramps closed in by two
large slide-projection screens, which
were made the worst use of that I can
ever recall seeing at a concert. Slides
went no further in imagination than a
few stock space vistas during the
band's frequent references to U.F.O.'s
eand such; inane pictures of the band it-
self; and, shamelessly, the sleeve art
for previous Flock singles during the
appropriate songs. At best, we got
some psychedelic swirly things that
would have been old hat at a
discotheque in '66, and which (given
those ramps) seemed to cry out for ac-
companying go-go-dancers.
Indeed, the Flock sometimes came
off unfortunately in visual impact as a
teen-fab band on the old American
Bandstand or Ready Steady Go, due to
Slead guitarist Paul Reynold's general
could-have-been-in-The-Zombies am-
biance (looks about 17, hornrims,
Beatle cut, suit and tie, and those little-
big-man swipes at the gee-tar) and the
use of body mikes, which give them a
physical freedom'that somehow makes
them look like they're miming the
songs for TV. In any case, beyond this
rather plastic veneer, the Flock no
longer have the memorably large hair-
do's that distinguished them on their
first U.S. appearances, and they now
look pretty innocuous.
Their set started strongly enough,
getting the rather suburban (and con-
siderably less than packed) crowd ex-
cited enough to do your basic high
school sway/dance for a fairly long
spell. The opening "Heart of Steel,"
from their new Story of a Young Heart
LP, was probably the show's peak-a
real surprise of sorts after the expec-
tations roused by the band's hits and
their frilly-synth-popper image. This
was a BIG guitar number, inviting U2
as an unlikely but definite point ofcom-
parison in its sweep of sound, with
Score (whb generally played keyboar-
ds) adding to the impressive guitar

I

A Flock of Seagulls singer Mike Score, without his characteristic hair style, had lit
Tuesday night.

There IS a "Cure."
And it's coming October 26th!

' F
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Another friendly warning from
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overdose. A few other songs manager
to partially recapture this density, in-
cluding "Remember David" (probably
the best song on the new record) and
the older single "Nightmares."
A major error, though, was made in
concentrating most of these better new
compositions and the past favorites
relatively early on-when the Flock
launched into a glut of less interesting
new material midway, things began
getting seriously dull, losing audience
attention until the encores. There were
acceptable versions of the expected
chart successes, including the pleasant
"Space Age Love Song" (despite inane
accompanying slides of the Star Trek
ship Enterprise, etc.) and "I Ran,"
which wins the dubious distinction of
possibly being the song I've heard the
greatest number of times and never
have been able to remember even a
snatch of its melody (or even,
generally, whose song it is..
The bland majority of songs on Story

of a Young Heart remained bland in
concert-like the first single, "The
More You Live, The More You love,"
the title tune, and the perplexing sen-
timent "European (I Wish I
Was)"-and by the end of the set the
band's boredom was as obvious as
much of the audience's. It was a mild
surprise when they bothered to come
back for an encore of "Telecom-
munication," but that revived enough
interest to raise a few high-pitched (the
audience seemed somewhat tipped
toward the female) screams for more;
which resulted in a somewhat sloppy
"Wishing" and a welcome (to me, at
least) adieu.
Let's face it, the Flock has a nice
spaciousness of sound live and in con-
cert, but as songwriters they range only
from simple mediocrity to high
mediocrity. The new LP, even more
than its predecessors, is flawlessly
produced, it goes down smooooothly;
but in one ear and out the other, you
know? They know how to arrange

Daily Photo by STU WEIDENBACH
the else to offer the Michigan Theater
albums but not how to write songs that
aren't merely extensions of one or tw6
melodic fragments. The Flock is ob-
viously not on a current upswing, givei
the fate of their planned tour (most
headlining dates were finally dumped
in favor of lan opening slot for the God
Go's) and the size (looking a bit forlorn
in the medium-sized Michigan Theatres
and character (The Audience That
Time Forgot-I sat next to the apparent
Future Secretaries of America club, al
of whom had very long flaxen hair, ver&
high heels, very frilly blouses, and thi
most extraordinarily tight leather skir-
ts or designer jeans) of its admirers.
Sure signs of impending fatality. They
aren't bad at what they do, but the
problem is both that A), what the Flock
does is fast becoming ifrelevent, at
least uncool, and B) what they do 't
nearly enough to sustain a career TA
well.
What to say in conclusion? It was
night to forget, if not exactly to regret.
No pain, (but) no gain.



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