The Michigan Daily-Thursday, June 18, 1981-Page 7

Fred Frith -s 'Speechless'

Fred Frith - 'Speechless' (Ralph) -
Public Image Limited's The Flowers of
Romance has finally thrown the whole
thing back into our faces: Experimen-
tal rock music has become little more
than an elaborate conceptual game. If
you can bring yourself to say that you
actually enjoy listening to that crap,
other people will realize you are one of
a select few and will say things like "Oh
FMPm
RREE
Bill, you're so cool" or "You really
know music."
HOWEVER, those of us who trusted
John Lydon implicitly and went out and
paid good money for the disc now know
that the - thing is almost totally
unlistenable. It's even gotten to the
point that I wonder if Keith Levene can
actually play the guitar. (Imagine!)
OK, now it is for this very reason that
Fred Frith's emerging trilogy on Ralph
Records is to be so highly valued. Along
with Lydon, Mayo Thompson, Daevid
Allen, Robert Fripp, the Gang of Four,
and the Clash (I guess), Frith is one of
rock's few committed "leftist anar
chists." Yet unlike all the other artists
mentioned, Frith is a frightfully ac-
complished and uniquely versatile
musician. He is best known for his elec-
tronic improvisations (the incredible
Guitar Solos, a Caroline/Virgin import)
and his work with the jazz-rock cham-
ber ensembles Henry Cow and the Art
Bears (for which he wrote com-
positio"sand played guitar and violin).
ONLST year's Gravity and once
again on this year's Speechless, Frith
has successfully made politically con-
scious music which is rather abstract,
yet enjoyable and rewarding on its own
terms. Both albums find Frith's im-
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pressive musical talents in evidence;
with near-equal virtuosity, he now also
contributes keyboard, bass, and drum
parts. He composed all but two of both
album's tracks and they are rich in odd
meters, dissonant melodies, skipped
beats, and abrupt changes in texture.
But Gravity and Speechless are two
different LPs. The former was an
album of "dance" music (dancing
being the victory over gravity) and it
was Frith's most lighthearted music
since the first Cow LP. A firm, audible
beat was present in each segment of
every song. The cover of Speechless,
however, features a young child crying
(crying being the victory over
speechlessness) and the music con-
tained herein is darker and less ac-
cessible than that of its predecessor.
Unlike Gravity, Speechless makes
plentiful use of tapes of street fairs,
demonstrations, and general weirdness
(recorded in Washington Square, NYC)
and of the manipulation and editing of
those tapes. Frith's collaborations with
Ralph stablemates, the Residents,
clearly has some role here (in songs
such as the title track, "Women Speak
to men; Men Speak to Women,"
and "Navajo"), yet I sense a greater
connection to the Beatles' "Revolution
9."
Unlike Gravity, which was primarily
recorded in San Francisco with the help
of studio musicians, Speechless was
recorded in a number of places (the
Square; live at CBGB; and Kirchberg,
Switzerland) and in collaboration with
Etron Fou LeLoublan (side 1) and
Massacre, sometimes known as
Material (side 2). For so-called "anar-
chists," collaboration is both a tool to
foster decentralization and a stimulus
for the creative process.
-Bill Brown

Split Enz
Split Enz - 'Waiata' (A&M) -,This
album strikes me as a real anomaly in
the pop genre. It's really an album!
Usually, pop albums are comprised of a
string of pop songs that often work bet-
ter individually than as a collective en-
tity. In fact, too many slick little pop
cuties in a row can be pretty damn an-
noying.
But Waiata still manages to work bet-
ter as an album than as single songs.
That may be because, with the excep-
tion of two irresistible ditties ("Hard
Act to Follow" and "One Step Ahead")
and two intriguing instrumentals, none
of these songs really stand on their own.
Although each has its requisite pop
hook, these songs are too restrained
and hauntingly moody to jump right out
at you as most pop songs are designed
to do. But the instrumentation is plenty
inventive enough and the hooks are per-
fectly paced so that Waiata never
falters in holding your interest.
It may be true that as songs, this
album doesn't match up to traditional
pop expectations, but as an album,
Waiata succeeds on its own terms.
-Mark Dighton
Thne Cramps
The Cramps - 'Psychedelic Jungle'
(I.R.S.) - Now this is psychedelic
music: fuzzy guitars thrashing around
in a bass-heavy echo-chamber mix,
inane lyrics, drugged-out yelps and
howls in the background. The Cramps
approach weirdness in a serious man-
ner, showing up contenders like Devo
and the B52s as the lightweights they
truly are.
Most of the material on Psychedelic,
Jungle sounds like music written for a
Halloween party. Imagine "Monster
Mash" sung with humor, conviction,
and sexual innuendo and you've got a
good idea of the tone of much of this
album. "Goo Goo Muck" is typical of
this sort of Cramps song, a horror story
dissipated by pure silliness; "When the
sun goes down and the moon comes
up/I turn into a teenage goo goo muck."
Just how rockabilly fits into this
sound is difficult to say, but it definitely
is present. I first noticed it creeping in
during "Rockin' Bones," in which the
singer expresses the desire to have his
bones nailed to a wall after he's dead as
a memorial to the great rocker that he
was.
MOST OF the songs crawl by like
night creatures suddenly exposed to
daylight, but the tempo picks up
somewhat for the dance song "The
Crusher." After cataloguing several
dance steps (such as -"The Ham-

merlock" and "the Eye Gouge"), we
are instructed how to dance the very
latest:
"First you take yourfist
And you put it on your waist
And then you squeeze your
partner's head
Until she's blue in the face.
You do the Crusher.,"
My favorite song was the self-
explanatorily titled "Don't Eat Stuff
Off the Sidewalk," which uses the riff
from "Shaking All Over" and includes
the memorable couplet "Don't eat stuff
off the sidewalk/ no matter how good it
looks."
There is no need to apologize for a
group like the Cramps. Their music
may not appeal to mainstream musical.
taste, but there is room for quirkiness
within rock and roll. It's nice to know
that someone out there still takes weir-
dness seriously.
-Karen Green
Thanks to Schoolkids Records for
the use of some of the albums
reviewed in our record columns.
Afl
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