Arts 4 The Michigan Daily Friday, August 14, 1981 Page 10 'Seize the Beat' 'Seize the Beat (Dance Ze Dan- ce)'-(Ze-Island)-Somebody should stop Ze Records before they hurt somebody. Remember that old "killer joke" bit by Monty Python? I fear that Ze Records are dangerously close to creating the killer dance cut. Indeed, most of the tracks on Ze's new collection of dance singles, Seize the Beat, are killers, but only in the figurative sense. "BUSTING OUT," the current disco hit for Material, is of course the an accessible cut from them. But it seems to me that their accessibility this time around simply carries their inven- tive funkiness to a new level of ex- perimentation. (Take that, you snobs.) THE WAS (NOT WAS) selection, "Wheel Me Out," is easily the best thing they've ever released, certainly far better than anything on the just- released album ('especially the despicably inane "Out Come the Freaks"). It's a maddening song to follow, though, largely because everything imaginable is thrown into the mix. There's the cool, jazzy hornwork of Marcus Belgrave; the heavy-metal lef- tovers from Wayne Kramer's guitar; the oblivious, floating keyboard theme; the sultry nonsense vocals from the mother of the brothers behind this whole thing ("I'm really in the mood today./I am a former scientist/ Now on wheels."); and the insane imitations by the Weiss (a.k.a. Was) brothers them- selves of everybody from a German scientist to an angry black poet, all screaming "Then I was discouraged by you"-everything forced through an aural meat grinder, altered, distorted, sliced, amplified, and finally pressed into a disorientingly danceable hash. The mystery of the whole thing is that it still hangs together with an astounding continuity that is sadly missing from many of the album cuts. Many will probably consider Christina's "Drive My Car" sacrilege, but I think The Beatles got just what they deserve-a version of their song complete with throbbing disco beat and vocals that make all the silly sexual in- 4 4 - UiiP5SAIMi5I' NE freshest and hottest of the lot. It's one of those songs that borders constantly on burning up on its own ferocious dan- ceability. But Nona Hendryx's vocals keep the whole thing just this side of the spontaneous combustion line. I mean, she's HOT, ya know, but she's cool. Need I say more? PIerhaps I should add that Material purists who have followed the band from their early days of tape-looped dance minimalism may cringe at such nuendo laughably obvious. Christina is a true national treasure-no one could deliver this song with such beautifully faked naivete. Her tuneless cooing and little-girlish squeals make her sound just like one of those supposedly in- nocent temptresses in a grade-B R- rated cheerleader movie.- THE SECOND SIDE of this collection is somewhat less eclectic but clearly no less enjoyable than its flip counterpart. It belongs exclusively to various spinof- fs of Ze stalwarts Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Each song features a new angle on August Darnell's and Andy Hernandez's continually playful mix- ture of disco, salsa, big band, and pop. All three of these songs seem more dan- ceable than most of The Coconuts' new album, Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places, even when the tunes don't seem to be as strong or as clever as we are ac- customed to hearing from Kid Creole (as is the case with "Cowboys and Gangsters" and "Deputy of Love"). As usual, Ze Records' new product makes just about everything else in the dance market pale in comparison. It's just not the same, dancing to even the best controlled disco beat after aban- doning oneself to the, uproarious, nothing-is-sacred dance school epitomized by the Ze stable of stars. In addition, the fact that none of these dance singles have ever been available on an album before and few of them are available as 12-inch singles any more makes this album an unbeatable bargain. 'Nuffsaid? -Mark Dighton I 'Hot Coffee' spills on the scene 4 By RJ SMITH Daily Arts Writer Jim Robins is one of those people who shouldn't exist. Too much excitability, too much disarming optimism; it just doesn't figure. It is hard to spend time with Robins without soon gauging your own energy. His enthusiasm is so exper- tly tailored that he wears it effortlessly. All of this bubbles forth in the first issue of Hot Coffee, a new magazine which Robins edits and publishes. The issue contains a single piece, a short story by New York author Francisco Goldman. On sale all over town, the publication looks to have been worked on and talked about by Robins and the staff an unusually long time for a new local publication. The result is a magazine that in every way, from the logo to the graphics to the way the thing is folded, is smart and catchy. ONE MIGHT suppose that it~should be topnotch, given that Hot Coffee num- ber one was two years in the making. "A friend and I were talking about doing something like this a while ago, we actually had a lot of ideas planned out. But then the whole thing went to sleep while I went to Spain," Robins explains. Af- PUT' EM AWAY If you can live without your cigarettes for one t dies day you might find you 0tto anl without thenm JUST POR A DAY. ter a year in Spain he returned to Ann Arbor, but had forgotten about his magazine ambitions. "And then one day I was sitting in a bar and Eric Keller (destined to be Hot Coffee's art director) said to me, 'Hey, whatever happened to Hot Coffee?' " Things moved quickly after that. Robins spends a lot of time in bars, and seems to do his best thinking in them. While mulling over the construction of a cocktail napkin, he came up with what is the magazine's most striking feature: its folded-over format. Hot Coffee is printed on a sheet slightly bigger than a newspaper, and is then doubled over in both directions like aforementioned napkin. "WE WERE looking for something between a chat book and a broadside," Robins explains. What they did not come up with was the new wave slap-dash layout scads of new "hip".publications are adopting. Printed on glossy paper, Hot Coffee manages a high degree of stylishness while still looking a lot more funky than either The Observer or Cabart, What really shores up the looks of the magazine, in the first issue anyway, is the work of Eric Keller. Keller does graphic work for Monthly Detroit magazine and was a founder of the old Lightworks. To accompany Goldman's piece he has come up with three sexy, atmospheric illustrations. Goldman's story itself is full of telling detail and smooth pacing. Titled "Trish & Laura," it tells the story of a couple of pretty and none-too-bright suburban teenagers who return home after running away with two carnival workers. We follow Laura around from the moment she first gets home to the moment she confronts her parents. While Goldman does a good job of getting Laura from home to the country club where she is to meet her parents, it is in the digressions, a pair of flashbacks, that the writing really comes alive. THE MAGAZINE is in the process of being put on a rather regular basis, although it will not be a monthly. The next issue, Robins says, will appear in late September at, a number of bookstores and other places around the city. These are absurd times for someone to invest time and effort in a small magazine; reports indicate there are more such magazines than ever before in America's history, and the market is witness to the daily death of publications that lose the battle for readers and capital. Yet, based on one issue anyway, Hot Coffee seems like a success story. "We'd like to be for the coffee bean what Wet magazine is for swim wear," Robins says. There are better reasons to wish his magazine well. I A 4