Real Life Rock (22 page)

5
Contras,
Ciphers in the Snow
(Whit-tier Records)
“The name, of course, is not a reflection of our political views but our musical vision, to be rock's counter-revolutionaries”—whatever that means. Since the real contras are Reagan's Rasputins, and just as hard to kill, these “Contras” are probably even dumber than their little disclaimer. The music is smart: rangy punk with lots of room in the sound for cowboy-ballad guitar and a singer who, no matter how fast the tempo, settles all questions with a deadpan drawl, most notably on “Dead Guy,” probably the best ever why-I-didn't-do-my-homework song (are there any others?).

6
Five Jones Boys, Four Blackbirds, Three Peppers, Five Breezes, etc.,
The Human Orchestra—Rhythm Quartets in the Thirties
(Clanka Lanka reissue, 1932–40, Sweden)
This is a very entertaining collection of formally ambitious performances that now seem like novelty records. It shouldn't be that way: the “human orchestra” of, say, the
Jones Boys Sing Band's “Pickin' a Rib” is likely a direct (if forgotten) ancestor of today's human beatboxes. In any larger context, though, this music is stranded in time: most of all, evidence that the theory of musical evolution cannot account for the shift from the pre-war black group sound to the doo-wop rock 'n' roll style that first gained shape in 1948 with the Orioles' “It's Too Soon to Know.” The shift was a breach, and it was social.

7
Residents,
Stars & Hank Forever!—The American Composer Series, Volume II
(Ralph Records)
One side of John Philip Sousa, as “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis” might have worked on the
Eraserhead
soundtrack, and one of Hank Williams, whose “Ramblin' Man” no longer lusts for the other side, but comes from it.

8
Richard Berry,
“Louie, Louie”
(Earth Angel reissue, 1953–58, Sweden)
Lacking the crucial legal-jeopardy discs (“Riot in Cell Block #9” with the Robins', “The Big Break,” “Next Time”), this is solid L.A. doo-wop, which was greasier than the East Coast version. Plus more proof that if there's a hell the composer of “Besame Mucho” belongs in it.

9
John Carman, review of Martin Scorsese's video for Michael Jackson's “Bad”
(
San Francisco Chronicle
,
September 2
) Good rock criticism from a TV columnist: “Scorsese's film turned out to be the longest build-up to one bad song since the conception, birth, and early life of Debby Boone.”

10
Mick Jagger, “Let's Work” (Columbia)
There are moments when you find yourself responding, yes, there is a reason, a reason beyond a love of one's own celebrity, even beyond the fear of losing it, that this song was written and sung . . . not that Jagger's words, which in the course of his long and distinguished career have often impinged on a world inhabited by persons other than himself, provide a clue as to what that reason might be.

OCTOBER
20, 1987

1
Chuck Berry,
The Autobiography
(Harmony)
“I adjusted swiftly back to the general trends of society's majority,” he says of his release from prison in 1963, “and settled down with friends in the subtle minority.” There are volumes in that line, whole sociologies and poetics, and it's altogether emblematic of this remarkable testament: if the controlling theme of the book is racism (just overshadowing sexual adventurism, family love, and money-wit), its heart is in its language. What at first seems like doggerel (“Speaking of beauty, she had little to share, but if charms were hours, she had years to spare”) turns into a unique and open voice, which only occasionally calls up the voice Berry used in his songs. (That voice, it's now clear, was not his at all, but his rendering of a fantasized conversation between audience and performer, crowd and observer: a pop construct.) Berry leaps past such categories as “prose style,” demanding older, more ambiguous locutions: “phraseology,” “cacology,” “conjure.” And of course there are countless good stories, none quite exhausting its facts, most sealed with a touch of bile: “I remember having extreme difficulty while writing ‘Promised Land' in trying to secure a road atlas of the United States to verify the routing of the Po' Boy from Norfolk, Virginia, to Los Angeles. The penal institutions were not then so generous as to offer a map of any kind, for fear of providing the route for an escape.”

2
Big Black,
Songs About Fucking
(Touch and Go)
As with Sonic Youth's
Sister
, a slight move towards accessibility makes the void this now-defunct band tried to map more believable than ever before. With great sleeve art, a drum machine with a personality, and a cover of Kraftwerk's “Model” as a Rosetta Stone, the songs—events, really—quickly open into the terrain once occupied by PiL's “Pop-tones,” and then dig in.

3
Pussy Galore,
Pussy Galore, Right Now!
(Caroline)
A little vague, maybe—
nothing so arresting as “Pretty Fuck Look.” Still, if when the Rolling Stones made
The Rolling Stones, Now!
, they'd also cut a secret version, this is what it might have sounded like.