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Page 8-The Michigan Daily -Tuesday, November27, 1990

LADY
Continued from page 7
rious New York City apartment
where the bachelors lived in the first
film, is an equally-exaggerated
townhouse filled with more toys
than inhabit F.A.O Schwartz. Mary,
now a ripe 5 years of age, is getting
ready to begin school as the movie
opens. American actress Nancy
Travis, continuing the charade of the
fake accent, plays Mary's British
mother. The three men, and I often
forget which one is which (although
it doesn't really matter), have plenty
of free time to play with Mary,
worry about her future and at the
same time earn enough money to
support this insanely extravagant
home. Hmm.
The details of the plot are rather
inconsequential. To make A boring.
story short, they all end up in Eng-
land which provides for some gen-
uinely funny scenes. The humor
eventually becomes tiresome how-
ever, and a poor senile butler is rele-
gated to being the target of most of
the jokes. Even the penis jokes con-
tinue. A sophisticated British
woman, admiring the pole of a tent,
says to Tom Selleck's character,
"Not as splendid as your mighty
erections I imagine." Evidently, it
is acceptable to throw an array of
double entendres and penile humor
into mainstream filmmaking.
The three men (Selleck, Gutten-
berg and Ted Danson) have some
amusing scenes together and Danson
is especially funny as a struggling
commercial actor. However, I still
demand to know who gave Steve'
Guttenberg his first acting job and
why we must we all suffer for it?
Watching him attempt to sadly pout
is excruciatingly painful.
Undoubtedly, people will proceed
in droves to this film as they did to
the first one. And certainly there will
be another sequel. Hey Disney, how
does "Three Men and a Cheerleader"
sound? This time, the men help
Mary, now 15 years old, cope with
boys, zits and algebra (traditional
American adolescent problems).
What is a penis anyway?
THREE MEN AND A LITTLE
LADY is showing at Ann Arbor 1 &
2 and Showcase.


somewhat laudable, he does abso-
lutely nothing to further the
medium. He stagnates within an au-
ral landscape that has been re-pro-
duced so many times by now that it
has grown stale. His statement of
rebellion loses most of its power
when it is set to lukewarm rhythms.
Instead of producing a record of stag-*
gering force, Paris has made an al-
bum of disappointing impotence.
- Peter Shapiro
My Life With the Thrill:
Kill Kult
Cuz It's Hot (12")
Front Line Assembly
Iceolate (12")
Wax Trax!
It seems that getting into a rutv
has been an easy thing to do in in-
dustrial music.. Detractors of the:
genre have long complained that "it
all sounds the same." Although this:
comment was largely false for a
great while, it has increasingly rung
true lately. So it's no surprise that
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult
and Front Line Assembly have con-
tinued in their same general direc-
tions --the former with their funky,
death disco and the latter with their
cybernetic slam dance music. Yet{
both of these singles rise far above
one's expectations.
Thrill Kill Kult's "Cuz It's Hot"
is a masterpiece of its style; its,
slappin' bass line, goofy samples,
Groovy Mann's distorted vocals and,
a tight groove combine to form the
perfect (bad) acid house trip. Al-
though the song is similar to tfie
group's earlier song "Waiting For
Mommie," and is less humorous and
more evil, it nonetheless stands on
its own as a great dance tune. The B-
side is a remix of "A Daisy Chain-4-
Satan," a track that appeared on the
band's last album, Confessions of a
Knife. Featuring the repeated use of
the sample "I live for drugs," thIs
song also kicks.
Front Line Assembly's "Iceolate",
also clings to the group's earlier
style: ultra-fast synth lines, 16th-
note bass drums and non-melodic,
vocals. Yet, this time around thre
group incorporates a catchiness that
was missing from previous efforts.
Not bad at all.
-Mike Molitor

Take a good close look and listen. One sampling of The Devil Made Me Do It and you, too, can attain that same
when good rap tunes are recycled into a mediocre Paris album.

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RECORDS
Continued from page 8
in rap history, set to the guitar
strains of Steve Miller's "The
Joker."
Dwarfen Bushwick Bill explains
that if a bitch refuses to perform
fellatio, "I just put my fuckin' pants
on/ and tell the idiotic female to take
her tramp-ass home." Willie D. adds
in, "I like bitches/ all kind of
bitches, to take off my shirt and pull
down my britches/ If she's got big
titties, I'll squeeze 'em and hold 'em/
watch her suck my dick and lick my
scrotum."
Bushwick then gives a heartening
account of losing his virginity, "Oh
Cathy, that ho was hot/ the first
piece of pussy I ever got/ she fucked
me till I was comin'/ put my nuts in
her mouth, and started hummin'/
then she commenced to jankin'/ she
started scratchin' my dillbag, I said,
'hold up a second'/ she turned me
over on my back, homes/ opened up
my butt cheeks and started lickin'
out my asshole."
And then there's "Mind Of a
Lunatic," with the G.B.s relishing:
their own depictions of domestic
dementia. "The sight of blood ex-
cites me," Bushwick growls, "shoot
you in the head/ sit down and watch
you bleed to death."
Scarface describes the vent of
insane frustration upon his drug-'
addicted girlfriend, "My girl's gettin'
skinny, she's strung out on coke/ so
I went to her mother's house and cut
out her throat/ her grandma was
standin' there, and screamin' and ran/
I put the blade to granny's ass/ went
to the back and got the shovel/ now
granny's on her way to meet the
devil." And when police interfere
with the Geto Boys' wrath of car-
nage? "The sounds of buckshots and
flesh! pigs dyin,' from bullet
wounds to the Chest."
Ultimately, The Geto Boys could
almost serve as an argument for rap
as a strictly singles medium. While
the first side works very well with
classics like "Gangster of Love" and
"Mind of a Lunatic," only "Let a Ho
Be a Ho" and "City Under Siege"
save side two from total obscurity.
Still, with songs like "Fuck 'Em,"
this imbalanced collection seems
good enough. The groove flows like
spewing magma, guitar crunches and
synth hits churning together into

one livid miasma.
Willie D. kicks the word from
Houston's Fourth Ward, "Fuck the
motherfuckin' critics, fuck newspa-
pers, fuck the radio stations/ And
fuck your parents against rap. We.
buried you fuckin' cockroaches!!"
The G.B.s proceed to take the
fight to their enemies in the Kul-
turkampf: "To every motherfucka
who diss my crew/ I'm sayin'
FUCK YOU, now what you hoes-
wanna do? Parents confiscatin' my
tapes, sendin' letters and shit, sayin
how they hate/ the album contro-
versy and they're rebellin'/ I don't
give a fuck cause the shit's still
sellin'/ so this is how the D. re-
sponds/ I'm'a cuss my ass off for
your daughters and sons! And if you
don't like it, spouse/ you can suck
my dick until your lips fall off!/ I've
had it up to here with this bullshit!/
To each our reach, without a pulpit!"
The revolution might be legitimized,
but it's still a threat.
-Forrest Green III
Paris
The Devil Made Me Do It
Tommy Boy
Tragically, Paris' first full-length
statement of Black militancy offers
substantial proof that hip hop is a
singles medium. After giving us two
of the most incendiary singles ever
("Break the Grip of Shame" and "The
Devil Made Me Do It"), Paris seems
to have run out of steam on his LP
- offering only a mediocre facsim-
ile of Fear of a Black Planet.
The Devil Made Me Do It is
ideologically framed around the
shooting of Yusuf Hawkins by a
gang of whites in Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn two summers ago. Paris
attempts to make FOI and Black
Panther programs for revolution rel-
evant to a nation of new jacks that
are content to listen to the pacifying
rhythms of Bell Biv Devoe, DJ
Jazzy Jeff and Young MC by settinf
his rhymes against this background.
After a TV news account of the m:-

der and a speech by an activist, Paris
kicks into a dated and frighteningly
New Kids-esque sucker MC dis that,
despite its assertion of individuality
above a collective stereotype of
Blacks, seems to subvert his politi-
cal message.
His radicalism is further re-
strained by a surprising melange of
sedate samples and instrumentation.
From Kenny M.'s guitar solo on
"Escape From Babylon" that is rem-
iniscent of The Outfield or Night
Ranger to the sickening lounge jazz
(from "Careless Whisper"?) on
"Mellow Madness," the music be-
longs on a Big Daddy Kane or Doug
E. Fresh disc, not on a revolution-
ary's. When he spews rhetoric about
not selling out and decorates the
liner notes with brief historical info
on Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, Eli-
jah Muhammad, El Hajj Malik El-
Shabazz and the Black Panthers, and
then turns around and talks shit
about "the girls in the summertime"
set to an urban contemporary-quiet
storm "groove," it just doesn't cut
it.
More often than not, though,
The Devil Made Me Do It is a terri-
bly blat; mt rip-off of Fear of a Black
Planet. The old school-Run DMC
beat of] '.E.'s "Reggie Jax" is copied
verbatit on "This Is a Test," the
Barry White filtered through a mega-
phone style of vocals on
"Polly' vannacraka" shows up as
"Waring," while the streetsriot col-
lage (f whistles, hand claps, sirens
and c ouble-dutch call and response
char ts of "Burn Hollywood
Bur /Power to the People" is repro-
duc Ad here on "Panther Power."
Chuck, Shocklee, Sadler et al.
bf sed their chromosome-as-weapon
c ncept on Bensonhurst, and Paris
t -peats that idea on "The Hate that
-ate Made," where he describes, over
a guitar part that grooves as hard as
Mudbone or Catfish, the death of
two brothers who were shot because
they supposedly wandered into a
neighborhood where a white woman

Weekends just aren't weekends Y
witho~ut:
the
..1

sense of deja vu that occurs
was "screwing a Black man."
The album's best moments re-
volve around the first single, "Break
the Grip of Shame." When the
"Revolution has come/ It's time to
get a gun" chant on "Panther Power"
fades, it flows directly into the J.B.
guitar riff of "Break the Grip of
Shame." As a result, the funk be-
comes the weapon in the Panthers'
Mao Zedong inspired motto: "We are
advocates of the abolition of war;
but war can only be abolished
through war; and in order to get rid
of the gun, it is necessary to pick up
the gun." This is more than the or-
dinary oppositional cultural politics
posited by academics, this is revolu-
tion.
This is a rare instance of tran-
scendence, though. Although Paris'
motive of making his philosophy
palatable to a large audience is

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The Office of International Programs
Information Meetings for
Study Abroad
FRANCE (Aix-en-Provence)
Tues., Nov. 27, 1990
4:00 pm B-113 MLB
GREAT BRITIAN (Essex, York, London, St. Andrews)
Tues., Dec. 4, 1990
7:00 pm 443 Mason Hall

UAC

SPECIAL

EVENT

Date:
Friday, November 30
Time:
8:00 p.M.'
Place:
The University Club
Tickets:
$ 3.00
Awards.
Gs olda war
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0u~~s~andrtMam8 CO'y Award

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