4 ARTS Monday, September 19, 1988 The Michigan Daily Page 12 e S Despite the slick production that sometimes Colour's d( dulls and blurs Living ebut,Vivid, Reid's feedback- frenzied fretmanship is scalding enough to melt the goods in your grocer's freezer... constant gigging and tours in which (Soul Asylum) wiped the stage with headliners the Replacements and blew the flab off of Husker Du brought scads of attention from underground fans and critics alike, culminating in labeling them the planet.' the Village Voice 'the best live band on 4 Flannel shirts, ripped jeans and all, Minneapolis' Soul Asylum will unleash bedlam upon the Nectarine tonight. JOHN MUNSON/Daily Vernon Reid of ,Living Colour grimaces while giving an exhibition of fretboard gymnastics at last summer's New Music Seminar in .New York. BY MIKE RUBIN After a concert drought of Iowa proportions, local power-chord connoisseurs will have the opportunity to experience not one, but two guitar encounters of the loudest kind tonight at the Nectarine Ballroom, as New York City's Living Colour and Minneapolis' Soul Asylum take amplified aim at the dance-club's glitzy glass interior. Since both acts have taken quite different routes toward their major label debuts, and given the quite different nature of their recorded efforts, the concert pairing of the two groups may seem somewhat incongruous at first. However, given the incendiary live reputations of both bands, the differences between their sonic styles should be melted away by show's end into puddles of sweat on the disco floor. This evening's show is the area debut for Living Colour, a quartet founded two years ago under the auspices of the Black Rock Coalition, a New York- .based organization created to combat racial sterotyping in the music industry and to promote talented and "undiscovered Black musicians. The band is the first act 'from the Coalition to be signed to a major label - Epic -- and is, not coincidentally, the only Black rock band (excluding Fishbone in their non-ska attempts and Prince in his more full-blown efforts) currently recording for a corporate giant. Contrary to the writings of a number of mainstream rock critics, this fact has less to do with the absence of Black bands playing rock music (as opposed to funk or jazz) than with the racism inside the record industry and radio programming. This stereo segregation dictates that hard rock music (defined by loud and abrasive guitars) is by and for whites only, and isolates music by Black artists on Black-targeted, dance-floor oriented, synthesizer and beat-box-based, "urban contemporary" stations. Therefore, a song like Living Colour's "Desperate People," which bears more more simil- arities to Def Leppard than Def Jam, is excluded from rock radio airplay by the color of the band's skin and omitted from urban contemporary radio by the style and decibel-level of the music. And, despite their positive intentions, a number of critics, like the Detroit Free Press' Gary Graff, perpetuate this pigeonholing by portraying Living Colour as a sort of novelty act, rather than as a passing of the electrified baton blazed by osmium- heavy jams like Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" and Funkadelic's "Super Stupid" and the Bad Brains Jah-with-an-Uzi hardcore approach. Or, as Funkadelic decried on their One Nation Under a Groove LP, "Who Says-a Funk Band Can't Play Rock?" Ignored amidst all the attention paid to Colour's color is the pyrotechnic guitar-playing of Vernon Reid. After a decade spent playing with artists as varied as Ronald Shannon Jackson, John Zorn, and Mick Jagger, Reid has finally found a project to gain him more widespread acclaim than the considerable respect he commands from his fellow musicians. Despite the slick production that sometimes dulls and blurs Living Colour's debut,Vivid:, Reid's feedback-frenzied fret- manship is scalding enough to melt the goods in your grocer's freezer. Live, the studio shackles placed on the band's sound and the glossiness gooped on singer Corey Glover's voice should fall away to provide a rawer rock thatVivid hinted at, and not the polished stone the album provided. In contrast to Living Colour, Soul Asylum are familiar houseguests in this part of the country, having appeared more than six times in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area in the last three years. Constant gigging and tours in which they wiped the stage with headliners the Replacements and blew the flab off of Husker Du brought scads of attention from underground fans and critics alike, culminating in the Village Voice labeling them "the best live band on the planet" and A&M Records signing them to a big-bonus contract. Com- bining their day-at-the-races, loud-fast-rules approach with various musical forms (like acoustic balladry on "Never Really Been," barroom blues on "Passing Sad Daydream," and fiddle-stomping folk on "Twiddley Dee"), the band has had no problem crafting memorable songs; unfortunately, production problems make those songs better to hum to yourself than to listen to. Their first three Twintone Record releases,1985's Say What You Will, 1986's Made To Be Broken , and last year's While You Were Out suffered from that particular fuzzy-sounding fungus called Moulditis (as in Bob, of Husker DU, their first producer). Their most recent LP and A&M debut, Hang Time , suffers instead from production cleaner than the band's trademark flannel shirts have ever been. Live, however, Soul Asylum still play with the urgency and velocity of a Saturday night reveler trying to get to a liquor store five minutes before it closes. Fueled by an energy part adrenalin, part Wiedeman's, the band are the epitome of Don Quixote rock: anthemic wind mill guitar-smashing, high-speed windmill drum-flailing, and fly-away windmill hair- throwing. Surrounded by the comfortable roar of their Marshalls and the hum of a crowd, Soul Asylum can kick like tequila and pound like a hangover, making their sometimes Goebel's-quality recordings sound like an Elephant. Danish Carlsberg, that is. Minneapolis' Soul Asylum and New York's Living Colour pair up tonight at Ann Arbor's Nectarine Ballroom in an attempt to cram "New Music" back down the throats offrequenters of the disco-danceteria and give them a taste of what music is really like. Tickets are $12.50 in advance, and doors open at 10 pan. U I 4 Ann Landers says ... "Take my advice" If you're looking for a fun group to join, try the 1989 Michigan Ensian,. U-M's award-winning, all-campus yearbook. They're having a MASS MEETING Tuesday, Sept. 20th at 7:30 pm, Student Publications Bldg., 420 Maynard St. 1) rirrr q II I t 1 f'4 f 4 'a 9 lVt I CLASSIFIED ADSICall764-0557 Great Pay! Flexible Hours! Good Experience! MICHIGAN TELEFUND - $5-6.50/hour + Bonuses - Gain Experience In: :D " Flexible Evening Hours - Communications " Great Campus Location - Marketing - Fun Place to Work - Public Relations Zr