The4Michigan Daily-Wednesday, September 16, 1987- Page 9
Records
(continued from Page 8)
Woman truckdriver, about a rough;
and tumble cowboy who's "been to
Hell and Texas," and about "Momma
ad her singing in the kitchen,
ftying that Sunday chicken." All the
standard characters show up: war-
heroes, dishwashers, farmers,
jailbirds, and of course, the angel-
faced country girl. He sings about
the American dream like he was the
first one to notice that "Easy Street"
isn't all it's cracked up to be.
In addition, Jones' observances on
the heartland are far less mature than
a Springsteen or a Waylon Jennings.
Jones writes, "And the road just gets
l'onger and you feel like it's getting
you nowhere," whereas Bruce would
go for the gutsier approach (as in
"I'm heading straight into the storm"
from "Promised Land"). The Boss'
protagonists are at least as down and
Out as those of Jones, but they do
offer some hope, some reason to
believe. Hard Times on Easy Street,
biy comparison, comes off like and
endless whine.
Some bright spots on the album,
especially the title track and "No
Easy Way Out," surmount this
shortcoming. Sharp sax playing and
catchy guitar riffs can make up for a
lot. David Lynn Jones needs to grow
up, however, if he wants to fill the
shoes of those he idolizes.
-Mark Swartz
The Brandos
Honor Among Thieves
Relativity
The Brandos are another in the
new breed of guitar-oriented bands
for which the "roots-rock," "country-
punk," and "Creedence of the '80s"
tags were invented. Invariably they
are stuck with these labels despite
their insistent protests that they are
simply a rock 'n' roll band and that
such categorizations are an injustice.
However, if the Brandos are to be
labeled, file them with Bryan Adams
and John Cougar Mellencamp.
Strong cuts like "Gettysburg" and
"Matter of Survival" bear the same
full throttle sound as those
Americana rockers, though the
arrangements are markedly fuller here
than on recent works of either
Mellencamp or Adams.
Other apparent influences include
The Stranglers whose Aural
Sculpture album could have easily
been a model for the more-calculated
tracks such as "In My Dreams,"
"Come Home," and "Nothing To
Fear" (the chorus of which will
become tattooed on your brain after
three listenings). However, even at
their mellowest, The Brandos still
maintain the energy and enthusiasm
of the aforementioned roots rockers.
"Strictnine," one of the two covers
on the album (the other is "Walking
on the Water," by John Fogerty)
also exhibits a slight resemblance to
the later-day Stranglers as for the
morbidly ironic humor which the
lyrics display.
The only weak spots are the title
track and "Walking on the Water,"
both of which suffer from an
artificially slow pace. In addition, it
is on one of these tracks that David
Kincaid's vocals are at their most
Fogerty-esque, thereby transforming
the band into a third-rate Creedence
imitation. Oddly, "Come Home"
works well because it possesses the
same quality in its vocals. T h e
reason it works when the others fail
is that it begins amid sparser
arrangements. Though it does
become more full-bodied by the end,
it is not the same electric wall which
sounds suppressed on the other two
tracks.
Despite its two weak tracks,
Honor Among Thieves is a highly-
recommendable debut effort from a
band with much promise.
-Marc I. Whinston
HELP WANTED
for
Student Publications Building
Early morning hours - 15 hrs/week
Start immediately - Work Study welcome
Call 764-0550,
ask for Nancy
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764-0553 News 763-0379 Arts
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747-3334 News 763-0376 Sports
763-2459 News 747-3336 Sports
Relativity recording artists The Brandos try to dodge retro-roots rock comparisons on their debut album, 'Honor
Among Thieves.'
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Macintoshpersonal computers have
been getting quite an education over the
past few years. From faculty members
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versities worldwide.
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And the Macintosh II.
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And like the Macintosh Plus, the SE
comes standard with a 32-bit Motorola
68000 microprocessor and a full mega-
byte of internal memory expandable to
4 megabytes. -
But since SE is short for"System Ex-
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You get your choice of either two
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You also get a choice of keyboards. the Mad
Either a Macintosh Plus-l& -nnfiguration, It's
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more specialized applications. 68020 n
For an even brighter future, the SE floating
has its very own expansion slot. So you even fa
can add cards that let you do everything duty nu
from tie into the campus computer net- has thec
work to work with data created on You
MS-DOS computers.
Now; between the Macintosh Plus
and the Macintosh SE, most of the fac-
ulty and administration will find all 1
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But for those who want a powerful-
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cintosh II. The Open Macintosh.
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Yet powerful as it is, the Macintosh11
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It can still run most advanced Mac-
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So if your department is actively re-
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