Real Life Rock (15 page)

10
Malcolm Bradbury,
Eating People Is Wrong
(Academy Chicago reprint, 1959)
As author of
The History Man
and
Rates of Exchange
, Bradbury has become increasingly impressed with his own sense of humor since publishing this rather chilling comic novel about the wasteland of postwar British liberal culture. Here the humor cuts, and it never claims the page merely for the sake of a joke. Bradbury understands that sometimes the gift of humor is to ease the way to seriousness, as in the following passage, just the musings of one of his characters, and also a eulogy appropriate to any person, at any time, in any place: “But the life one leads cuts out all the lives one might have led; one is never a virgin twice; events engrave themselves. Life is a unity to the soul. We meet events halfway; they are part of us, and we are part of them; nothing is incidental. Ahead comes the point where all events exist at once, and no new ones are in sight, the point on the edge of death, which is a reckoning point.” Play that dead band's song again.

MARCH
10, 1987

1
Chris Isaak
(Warner Bros.)
Neorockabilly as received will and idea: formal almost to the point of abstraction. In print it sounds sterile, and in a year it may sound that way on record, but for the moment, shaped by Roy Orbison's “Only the Lonely” and Jody Reynolds's “Endless Sleep,” it sounds like the last breath of true, which on Isaak's terms is to say lost, romance.

2
Peter Davles,
The Last Election
(Vintage)
At first, a rather obvious black-humor novel about England as Margaret Thatcher heads into her fifth (fourth?) (third?) term; then it gets ugly. Then it gets uglier. Then the worst happens: you start taking it seriously.

3
Age of Chance, “Kiss” (Fon, UK)
Here's Prince's elegant masterpiece, turned into a trash masterpiece; ripped to shreds, beer poured all over the pieces, which are then lapped up and spewed out all over again. Instant party, with an edge of menace—the Beastie Boys should be half so tough, or so touching.

4
Ben E. King,
Stand by Me—The Best of Ben E. King and Ben E. King and the Drifters
(Atlantic reissue, 1960–75)
Craven cash-in on the second appearance of the title tune in the Top Ten (1961 and '86), shamefully omitting “Tippin,” a mature and measured '78 comeback bid. Great anyway—notably for the way King's singing on the Drifters' 1960 “This Magic Moment” now stands out as one of the most commanding performances in rhythm & blues.

5
James Brown, “How Do You Stop?” (Scotti Bros. 12-inch)
It's hip to dismiss Dan Hartman's productions of the Godfather of Soul as white-flour makeup, but this dance-floor ballad is something new for Brown: full-toned, emotionally generous. It brings to mind the Brook Benton of “Rainy Night in Georgia,” or Van Morrison, who thinks soul music came from
“Caledonia”—i.e., Scotland, when whiteness was in flower.

6
Not Bored
#11
A critical-theory fanzine dedicated to the proposition that not all received ideas are bad, especially if you can play with them. Highlight: inside dope on recent graffiti wars at SUNY Buffalo, based on an article about undergraduate negation that appeared in
Internationale Situationniste
#11, a critical-agitation journal published in Paris in 1967. Numbers of serendipity, or serendipity of numbers?

7
Scotch, “Take Me Up” (zyx 12-inch, West Germany)
What New Order would sound like if they went bubblegum—which they may yet.

8
Alvis Wayne, “Sleep, Rock-a-Roll, Rock-a-Baby,” from
Texas Rockabilly
(RR reissue, c. 1956, France)
With Presleyish fervor filtered through a shimmering rain of steel guitars, the result is a reverie: a curio as gorgeous as it is unique.

9
Bill Flanagan,
Written in My Soul—Rock's Great Songwriters Talk About Creating Their Music
(Contemporary)
Given his stated limits—the rock tradition that can be traced to message-mongering folk music—Flanagan's interviews seek out clichés and turn up revelations. Willie Dixon (a token ancestor) damns gospel music as a means of social control; Neil Young (a typical inheritor) argues that while as form blues and country preceded rock 'n' roll, as spirit rock 'n' roll preceded blues and country—rock 'n' roll, Young says, is what blues and country emerged to control. Flanagan is prissy about music in the marketplace, and time and again he tries to get his subjects to buy into his equally prissy brand of ethics, but they won't do it. As always, dumb questions provoke the best answers.