Page 8 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 7, 1989 '0000 XTC Oranges and Lemons Geffen "I don't know how to write a big hit song," Andy Partridge sings self-effacingly on "The Mayor of Sim- pleton," this album's first single. It's ironic, since "Mayor," probably the catchiest song since - well, since "Earn Enough for Us" from XTC's last album, Skylarking - is probably the band's best chance yet to have a big hit song in the U.S.; the video is already in heavy rotation on MTV. And it's doubly ironic that the only thing that might keep it from being that is the fact that the song - a delightfully corny love song told from the point of view of an ignoramus (in other words, an updating of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World") - is that its lyrics are too long and contain too many big words. That would be a shame, because if any song could ever stand the repetition of Top 40 airplay, it's "Mayor." I probably listened to it 75 times in the first two days that I had the album, and I'm still not sick of it. I may never be. With a bassline pounding like a lovesick heart and Dave Gregory's Rickenbacker chim- ing like wedding bells, this is the kind of song that can make you want to quit your job, sell the house, and run away with the stranger in front of you in line at the computing center. I could die listening to this song. But why spend this much time spooging over one track on a 15-song album? Because it's so much better - sadly, too much better - than the other 14. Gui- tarist Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding are perhaps the best double songwriting threat in the business, but much of Oranges and Lemons falls prey to their own cleverness. Their creative juggling of tempos, instru- mentation, and lyrics are impressive. So is being able to recite the "M" section of the dictionary from mem- ory. But that doesn't make it entertaining. Likewise, many of these songs, for all their com- plex arrangements and chord structures, simply don't sound good. "Here Comes President Kill Again" is smothered under a dragging, soporific melody; "Cynical Days"' chorus sounds like a bad advertising jingle; and "Chalkhills and Children" is the kind of dull pseudo- jazz ballad that made you wish Sting would concentrate on his acting career. Still, when Moulding and Partridge's music lives up to their lyrical genius, they create some really bril- liant songs. "Pink Thing"'s mid-tempo, finger-snap- ping groove backs up a hilarious lyric - the "pink thing" is Partridge's penis, which he serenades in a Some Girls-era Mick Jagger falsetto ("I want to intro- Andrew Tosh The Original Man Attack Records Andrew Tosh, son of the late, great, Peter Tosh, thumps out solid, conscientious reggae on his debut al- bum, The Original Man. Using a mixture of material written by his father blended with his own brand of unerring self-confidence and dub poetics, he lends tribute not only to an equal rights activist who is sorely missed but to a father whose tradition of being a "living man with work to do" is one which must be carried on. "The world looks to me to sing his song," young Tosh cries out as he rides a beat at times closer to contemporary House than it is to the type of rock-steady melody his father helped to develop in the late '60s while still with The Wailers. But The Original Man is no traitor to the reggae riddim. In fact, it is the kind of album which packs the dance hall floor at Reggae Night. Fast and furi- ous. Synth-drums ride side by side with a skip-tempo electric bass which pounds out the drop beat on that ever so characteristic third mea- sure. Several extended dub versions accompanying two of the tracks pre- sent the music in isolation. One feels as if they were holding fast in the dark night to the reins of a Pazian horse galloping down a stone road- way until the pounding of its hoofs becomes inseparable from. the pounding of your heart which be- comes inseparable from the pounding of the Tosh's bass guitar. Tosh, just 21, considers himself no less an "Original Man straight from Creation - just like Peter Tosh." He performed convincingly in Ann Arbor last summer with a num- ber of his father's ex-band members and sang of his convictions by echo- ing the sentiments of the underclass. Politically, the album relies on innuendo and reference for its analy- sis. In "Poverty is a Crime," Tosh says that he does not know exactly who is to blame, but he does know that chances are "if you are Black, you will suffer all the time." Lyrics like these have strong roots in the Tosh-reggae tradition of international socio-cultural and eco- nomic awareness. Jamaica, having now rid itself of its elitist Prime Minister Edward Seaga and re-elected a majority of PNP (People's Na- tional Party) representatives includ- ing Michael Manley as Prime Minister, is a nation of African- Caribbean with a poverty rate of over 80 percent. Tosh finds this appalling as well as preventable and has begun his career with a mind - a mind with no cocaine runnin' through its brain, he tells us - to do something about it. -Rollie Hudson al q Love Tractor celebrate their love for Batman in their press photos and their love for art rock on their albums. XTC (left to right, Dave Gregory, Andy Partridge, and Colin Moulding) succeed at least once on their new album Oranges and Lemons. duce you, take you to the brink, thing/ I want to intro- duce you, make that missing link thing"). Moulding's fretless bass dances a dizzy jig around "One of the Mil- lions," recalling their 1982 English Settlement. "Poor Skeleton Steps Out," lamenting our bags o' bones' imprisonments in "bad blood, bad brains... brown, black, white skin," trips merrily over a percussive ar- rangement that bonks together like a chorus of dancing bones. XTC is often compared to mid-to-late era Beatles - who isn't, yes, but here the analogy is especially true. Problem is, the same Fab Four that concocted the White Album is also responsible for embarrassments like "Magical Mystery Tour," and XTC shows itself capable of both attainments here. This is why AMS was invented - this would have been a great ten-song album, but at 15, Oranges and Lemons is awfully heavy on the latter. -Jim Poniewozik Guadalcanal Diary Flip-flop Elektra Love Tractor Themes from Venus DB Records Reason #34 why music writers should not be allowed to major in En- glish: After enough comparison/contrast essays for all those core classes, you start writing double record reviews. Why compare these two albums? For starters, both bands emerged from the much-heralded southern rock revival of the early '80s; both share that generation's proclivity for melody-oriented songwriting and wackiness; and both have released several albums with enough strong ,tracks to promise greatness, but enough duds to fail to deliver same. And on these albums; both bands have finally delivered. But while members of the same all-Georgia team, these bands represent the two opposite traits for which it is known: artsy ingenuity and flat-out rock power. On the artsy end, Themes from Venus finds Love Tractor, which has experimented from jazz to funk to country and back again, deciding to play rock band for an entire album - and the results are stunning. Whereas previous Tractor efforts have shown a tendency to ramble, Venus channels their crazy-quilt song structures into much tighter, to-the-point works. "Satan's New Wave Soul Losers" could inspire dancing at a funeral, and the powerful vocals on "I Broke My Saw" make it almost impossible to, believe that this band started out playing entirely instrumentals. Love Tractor's diverse background gives them sufficient distance to have, fun with the rock genres they take on, such as their foray into psychedelia on the title track; its campy carousel-organ intro, featuring a "Yellow Subma- rine"-like intercom vocal, segues into a ELP-style acid anthem, and even asl you're shaking your head along with Michael Richmond's tripped-out vo-. cals, you can almost hear him laughing up his sleeve. Guadalcanal Diary, on the other hand, was, is, and evermore shall be a rock band. In terms of sheer instrumental talent per member, Guadalcanal; Diary may well be the best rock band in the world, and on Flip-flop, the- band finally has a full album of songs good enough to do justice to their ability. "Whiskey Talk," with its killer cowpunk riff, hyperkinetic beat, and, a bridge jarring as a fall down a spiral.staircase, demonstrates their power; bassist Rhett Crowe and drummer John Poe thunder like ten divisions of art. tillery, and Jeff Walls' Jimmy Page-influenced solos and Murray Attaway's wails pelt like sleet in a 50 MPH wind. The band's playlist is bolstered by Poe's emergence as a songwriter, penc ning all or part of half the songs; what he lacks in lyrical maturity he makes up for with a feel for beat-heavy rock ("The Likes of You" and "Pretty is As Pretty Does"). But their main strength remains Attaway, whose pure.tenor can carry the furious "Whiskey Talk" as well as the dreamy "Always Satur, day," a tongue-in-cheek paean to the suburbia where he croons, "I wish I lived in a shopping mall." And they cap the LP with a uproarious reworking, of a childhood rhyme on "Vista" (as in "cumalata, cumalata, cumalata..."). This pair of albums reveals another dichotomy of the New South: the Mitch Easter-produced and the Don Dixon-produced. Just as Venus bears the distinctive pawprints of Easter - catchy, perfect-for-fruggin' melodies, lay ered guitars and keyboards, and interspersed studio effects - Flip-flop is trademark Dixon - lots of clear power chords, a minimum of murkiness and fancy tricks, and drums like the footsteps of God. But they aren't musically exclusive; both albums show the new music connoisseur that creativity still lives beneath the Easter-Dixon line. -JimPoniewozik, The Sneetches Sometimes That's Have Alias All We paths - lyrically as well as musi- cally - has much better chances of climbing the chart. The second would have to be sound. When the music is largely synthesized, leaving acoustic musicianship behind in fa- vor of progressive noise, you might have a hit. This record is neither. It's beautiful music. Even the name Sneetches sounds reminiscent In today's big world of music, usually there are two basic things that constitute pop, the first being musical form, which when it fol- lows more predictable, palatable of a time when music and money were not interlaced. This sounds like the older, more inventive stuff of the '60s. The first song, "Unusual Sounds," has great guitar interplay and the lyrics are sung well. The rest of the album is as good, especially "Another Shitty Day." -Forrest Green III CLASSIFIED ADS! Call 764-0557 R-R-R-Rin.g "Hi! I'm Karen Brown, your AT&T Student Campus Manager here at The University of Michigan. I want to tell you how AT&T can help you cut down on your long distance bills without cutting down on your calls-the best time to reach me is between 3-5 p.m., Monday and Wednesday, and 1-3 p.m., Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. But you can call anytime-747-9581 ." What is the issue? Consider covers the topics that are important to you. Topics like: BETTER THAN THE BATHROOM WALLS! Give your messa Touch. Gt %ltc f tt I D1thI Personals age a 764-0557 Get the SCOOP Sexism in Advertising Test Preparation Courses U-M Ticket Policy Freshman Eligibility So pick up an issue and see what you are missing. ON ...C Coupon Page COUPONS Coming March 8 AV II Take a break from Daily life. De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising Tommy Boy Rap was originally created as a language for the streets, from the streets. These young rappers were said to be too poor, too raw to buy instruments, so they gathered their favorite records and used them as backing music to rap to. When they wanted to strip it down even further, they used nothing but a drum ma- chine. Musical purists, and stylists, possibly the more narrow-minded of us, slammed it as "puerile doggerel" and being too "banal" to qualify as music in any way. But as far as music theory, rap could be considered genius. How else to describe a form that breaks the concrete concept of time into unre- lated snatches of sound and sample? And the language... by expanding the gangster lingo into a mental criminality that includes us all, rap- pers sketch a vivid picture of Amer- ica at its worst (or best). With so much groundbreaking innovation going on, how could they slam a form that is cleverer than clever? Or, Play Your Cards Right... Be A Blackjack Dealer at: true to rap form, stupider than stupid? De La Soul turns that form a hard left, then glows a fluorescent yel- low. While the majority of the rap plethora capitalizes on anarchic vio- lence, this crew are rap hippies, no less. Check out the record cover with its peace sign, daisies, and radical coloring, if you don't believe me. The concept here is peace, three feet high and rising. And while their contemporaries fail to achieve art through mental inertia, De La Soul, through their weirdness, become a class by themselves. "Plug Tunin"' pushes the brutal activity of bass from hard, exagger- ated beats to fuzzy thumps that revel in their clumsiness. With counter samples of magic sounds, the song hits rap standard, then redefines it. "Potholes In My Lawn" is a cheesy, funk groove that creates a mellow: atmosphere of super-reality. But these are just aspects of a brilliantK record with 23 tracks, no less..On another, more humorous level, "AA Little Bit Of Soap" tells the listener e "that's right, you smell" to the sampled music of "Stand By Me." Cuts "De La Orgee" wand "Transmitting Live From Mars" stand out as well. Through samples of Disney, records, cartoon dialogue, '60s funk tracks, even Hall and Oates, D.J P.A. Pasemaster Mase and producer; a r M ichigras 1989 a Good Time" The University of Michigan SCHOOL OF MUSIC ved. Faculty Recital--Robert Hatten, piano, March 8 with Leslie Delk, Chicago-based soprano. Chopin Preludes Brahms Lieder and Intermezzi Ann Gebuhr Triptych Recital Hall, 8:00 p.m. FREE R a iAJ Win c Firli__Fay~1+.1 P,~h "Gambling, Games, and Read aMi Casino Mass Meeting 1E 6 I i