,w w qw w NU IL A -IAW _3 lqr '"m IT'S HAPPENING NOW!! GRAND OPENING SA COME IN AND SAVE NOW ON THE BEST IN HIGH FIDELITY CHECK OUT THESE EXAMPLES OF THE GREAT BARGAINS TO BE FOUND FROM NOW UNTIL WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13 moved ahead oblivious to various trends both past-as-present and pseudo- techno-future. Retro maybe where it's forever. That said,here are some atlfor1984/ge breallre atiit i garage sounds Battle of the Garages, Vol. iii Various Artists Voxx/Bomp! Stone Cold World The Droogs Plug 'n' Socket Records Frontier Days The Del Lords EMI/Capitol All Black and Hairy The Gravedigger Voxx/Romp! The Best of the Music Machine The Music Machine Rhino This is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album ... Live! The Dream Syndicate A&M Beaver Patrol The Wilde Knights Voxx/Bomp! By Dennis Harvey IT'S WEARYING. It makes me feel older. I feel older anyway. In any case, '60's revivalism is already win- ding down and out like a speeded-up version of the Original Decade Itself. No, it's probably not beginning to wind down yet, rather still winding itself up and up to the point where some day soon, suddenly the generic Everybody will be attuned to Garagedom-Cool, and the whole groovey thing will (as a result of oversaturation) die the bitter death suffered by every underground movement that survives to stumble out of the cave and lie around in the public sun for a while. There are too many bands out there now currently doing it, mimicking their parents to death, lost in the latest fashion (which is just the fashions of 15- 20 years ago plus some mild irony that may well have been there in the first place). A few days ago someone groaned to me, "Oh god, I dread the day that the '70's are the new thing," and that dreaded day can't be far away. Retro-rock has yielded up much ascendant genius, from the Three O'Clock to the Bangles, but the purely retro scene that it sprang from and spawned is getting fast listener-jaded- who can care for long about bands so hellbent on living in the past? Maybe there's not much to live for in the '80's, but after the last few months I'm begin- ning to doubt I want to live the '80's for the '60's. The following reviews of new garagelike released and two re-issues generally lean toward the positive, and the records merit it. But nearly all of last year's best releases had relatively little to do with blatant nostalgia - they T HE THIRD compilation of America's caveteenworld limits itself to the ever-burgeoning L.A. scene (Vol. IV) will go international) and is hence more limited in scope than the prior two entries. On side on the sound is enough to garage you to death, though that experience must be one of the more pleasant ways to go. Starting with the 90-second surf-girl cliche monolgue "Intro '66" by the Zebra Stripes, the side regresses fast to cavetot status via the Fourgiven's for- cefully Neanderthal "Yeah!," on through The Gravedigger V's echo- ruptured "Spookey," The Untold Fable's sloppy-surfy "I Try," and The Mystery Machine's melodic "She's Not Mine." Other cuts exhibit nothing much beyond determined crudity, though, with the disappointing inclusion of the usually sublime Pandoras' lame "Gloria" parody "Melvin." Grunge can't get any grungier than side one's closing Tories' version of "Shout," which has virtually nothing going for it beyond -the energy generated at the recording party you and I weren't at. Most of these cuts are of pure fanzine quality - sound so thin that they can't have much musical interest unless You Were There. Side two sonically im- proves, and loosens up in range to in- clude poppier bands. The Eyes of Mind and The Things, both of whom released likeable Voxx lon-plays last year, come up with adequately mixed and well- written tracks. The Young Lords (good name!) have fine high energy - a harmonica always helps - on "Tearing Up My Heart," and SS20 go for a near- Motown Big Sound (with some Byr- dsdom thrown in) on "No Matter What." And the closing "I Think I'll Die" by Electric Peace at least tries for some sort of cheesy epic quality. Battle of the Garages Vol. III is all about what's momentarily cool in L.A. I'm prejudiced in favor of the genre, but the eventual effect it is like watching a parade - after a while you notice only . the floats that conspicuously stand out from the rest. There's tedium in too much of anything, and Battle III makes L.A.'s garage interiors a bit too lookalike for my tastes. T HE DROOGS have actually been playing this stuff since 1969 - when it was neither cool nor nostalgic, just obstinately outdated - which ex- plains why the album (which may well be their first, for all I know) carries its garage ambiance much less self- consciously than most of the newer groups. They've also certainly had the time to become accomplished and varied songwriters. If the band didn't constantly pull itself enjoyably back toward two-minutes-to-bartime stomp frenzy, they could probably rival The Rain Parade as serious, non-archival sculptors of revisionist psychedelic rock. They don't, and obviously don't have to, ape their influences, and Stone Cold World gonly rarely (as in the one live cut, "He's Waiting") sounds like a blatant turning back of the clock. Elsewhere this short eight-song LP has admirable variety and polish. "Mr. Right" has the gorgeous epic buzzing guitar of Neil Young circa "Cinam- STEREO RECEIVERS JVC R-K200 400 watt per channel Digital with Equalizer. 8 instock . SAVE 41.00 199.00 PARASOUND DR-25j 25 watt per channel Digital with pre-amp output. 8 in stock SAVE 30.00 1 69.00 PIONEER SX 303 25 watt per channel 7 in stock SAVE 50.00 1 09.00 YAMAHA R-7O (silver) 45 watt per channel Digital with Equalizer. 5 in stock SAVE 86.00 3 79.00 CASSETTE RECORDERS YAMAHA K-320 Dolby* B and C with light touch controls 0 in stock SAVE 21.00 199.00 YAMAHA K-520 Deluxe Dolby* B and C with many features 6 in stock SAVE 31.00 269.00 PIONEER CT 501 Dolby* B and C 20 in stock SAVE 50.00 99.00 SPEAKERS PIONEER CS 101- 2 Way with 10" Woofer 12 in stock SAVE 21.00 49.00 JVC SKS-44 3 Way System With 12" Woofer 12 in stock SAVE 31.00 119.00 YAMAHA NS - 50T Delux 2 Way System 10 in stock SAVE 51.00 179.00 PARASOUND CRS -200 Mini bookshelf Speaker in Pairs 12 pair in stock SAVE 30.00 59.00 STEREO PHONO CARTRIDGES ORTOFON FF-15 2 PRICE 25.00 AUDIO TECHNICA PRO lE 1IPRICE 15.00 SIGNET H 11P P-Mount Eliptical SAVE 15.00 35.00 EQUALIZERS TURNTABLES PIONEER PLS-40 Quartz Locked Direct Drive Auto Return with PARASOUND EQ-20 10 Band graphic 24 in stock SAVE 53.00 77.00 PIONEER SG-540 7 Band Graphic 7 in stock SAVE 49.00 99.00 PERSONAL AND, PORTA BLES SONY WALKMAN F 10 DELUXE FM STEREO CASSETTE 24 in stock SAVE 50.00 79.00 PER P01 SON) AM-FM PORTAE EQUALI' 4 in stoci SAN 4 SPEA PORTAE 6 in stock TAP AC( YAM 60 MIN Limit 10 500 in st TDK| 90 MINI Limit 10 500 in st SIGNI LIGHTV HEADPI 12 in stc SIGNI DELUXF CLEANI 40 in stoc 8 in stock SAVE 40.00 88-00 The Dream Syndicate: mixed reviews mon Girl" around an appropriately melancholy "Nowhere Man"-themed tune. The title song is bigbeat tough-boy rock a bit reminiscent of the Hoodoo Gurus' debut album last year. "Change is Gonna Come" and "Get My Love On You" are further evidence of the band's solid writing instincts, and there's even a mournful ballad in there somewhere. Agreeable stuff, this. It would be more than welcome if the Droogs pulled up their west coast roots for a while and toured a bit, since few of us whelps have ever had a chance to see a band from back then in the First Garage Era. N YCS DEL LORDS are doing exactly what the Del Fuegos do - no pretenses, yee-hah! boyrock with mouths open and tongues danglin' out, stuff that's designed to make the Senior Prom bust into spontaneous flames. So why do I think the D-Fuegos' Longest Day LP is keen and want to throw the. D-Lords' debut under the next snowplow? Maybe these guys just had a bum time in the studio, because Fron- tier Days seems as arid as their Bostonian counterparts' vinyl seems juiced. It can't all be passed off as Bad Day At The Mixing Board, though. The mix admittedly is too emptily slick and the production frills (especially the vocal harmonies) often ditto, but the blame can't be dumped entirely on co- producer (with band) Lon Whitney. The Del Lords are mediocre singers. adequate but uninspired players, humorles reiterators of cliche as lyricists. When they finally do abandon CYBERNET CM- 00 Belt Drive Auto Return with Cart- ridge 5 in stock SAVE 50.00 49.00 JVC QL-F320 doggedly sincere boy/girl politics for something else, it's for the vapid mock- macho posing of "Mercenary." If these guys have any satirical bent at all, it's way too subtle for me; they just sound dumb. "I play the Drums" has a game idea (" 'Stead of beatin' on my little brother's face/I play the drums"), but the . tune is generic and, em- barrassingly, so is the drumwork. The appealingly sparse, snakey "Livin' on Love" threatens briefly to become in- teresting as a Springsteenish domestic drama of love amid the po' white folks downtown, but it jumps ship at the first opportunity for an ancient cop-out: "Then one morning about two years on/I woke up, and she was gone." So much for the in-depth observation. At the end of the road there's a slow purty tune called "Feel Like Going Home," which should tell you just how far these guys' imaginations can stretch. (I'm surprised the first song wasn't called "It's A Big World" or something.) The remainder of the songs play source- hopscotch, and there may be some mild fun to be had in figuring out just where you've heard that riff or melody line before. (I found it infuriating.) All of them are 'catchy' in a way that vanishes from the mind as soon as the track is over. Simplicity is the rule here, probably not because it's a virtue but because the band wouldn't know how the hell to do anything else. The Del Lords badly lack the abandon and humor of the Fleshtones, the dirtrock conviction of the Del Fuegos, and the songwriting knack of either. They don't even have a real revivalist stance to fall Quartz Locked Direct Automatic 12 in stock SAVE 41.00 Drive Full 119.00 C )) CE * Traden EREO FLINT'S MOST RECOMMENDED STEREOSHOP ... NOW IN ANN ARBOR 605 E. WILLIAM ST. OFF STATE ST. HOURS: Mon. & Fri. 11 - 9 / Tues., Wed., Thurs. 11 - 6 / Sat. 10 - 6 Telephone (313) 663-3600 12 Weekend/Friday, March 8, 1985 Weekend/F