Real Life Rock (74 page)

4
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine,
101 Dalmatians
(Chrysalis)
This first album by two former London buskers is the noisiest and smartest record I've heard since early Wire—and more hysterical, in both senses of the word. It begins slowly; after
five cuts the subject matter burns off its satire (“A Perfect Day to Drop the Bomb”) and the singing, or ranting, or insane critical recycling of pop references, leaves the world behind. Chuck Berry's “Memphis” is smeared into “Long distance information get me Jesus on the line,” there's a dialogue sample from (I think) Stan Freberg's 1960 “The Old Payola Roll Blues,” and then a quote from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's “The Message” so bloody and convincing (“
DON'T / PUSH ME / 'CAUSE—”
) you can't believe the disk keeps spinning. I hope these guys stay healthy; they could change a lot.

5
Nirvana,
Bleach
(Sub Pop, 1989)
A close call between this debut lp and the chart-topping
Nevermind
, but here there's less of a stagger, more inexplicable leaps. And whatever
Nevermind
has, it doesn't have anybody ending a song called “School” with terrorized shouts of “
NO RECESS! NO RECESS
!” And neither does anything else in the history of rock 'n' roll.

6
Lou Reed, guitar solo, “Magic and Loss: The Summation,” on
Magic and Loss
(Sire)
The talk-singing is no more pungent than elsewhere on this elegy, the lyrics are sticky (“There's a bit of magic in everything / And some loss to even things out”), but there's also a rising, hovering fuzztone that—to paraphrase Skip James on himself—has been and gone from places most music never gets to.

7
Termites,
Do the Rock Steady
(Heartbeat reissue, 1967)
With this on you could do it underwater.

8
Bob Seger, “Like a Rock,” in a commercial for Chevy trucks (NFL playoffs, NBC and CBS, December and January)
I'm not sure why the running of this 1986 single over glowing slo-mo shots of blue-collar folk sweating, hugging, and high-fiving is so much more depressing than anything else of its kind. It's not simply the use of Seger's “I was 18, didn't have a care, workin' for peanuts” reverie to drive home the message that in hard times, low wages + uncomplaining labor = patriotism—or “
TRAVAIL, FAMILLE, PATRIE
,” as the Gang of Four put it on the cover of
A Brief History of the Twentieth Century
, reproducing a coin from Vichy France. It may have more to do with the fact that Seger sings so insistently in the first person. This is a voice you don't often hear in commercials, the soulfully privileged “I”—though when you come down to it, it's unclear whether it's the worker or the truck that's singing.

9
Little Jack Melody with His Young Turks,
On the Blank Generation
(Four Dots Records)
There are moments here—mainly in “Happily Ever After (West of Eden),” a nightclub fantasia in which Frank Sinatra is both Adam and Eve and gives birth to all culture—where this would-be Weimar combo (banjo, harmonium, tuba) actually comes close to its ambition of realizing George Grosz in sound. But you probably wouldn't want to make too much of it.

10
Nedra Olds-Neal and Michael Brooks, producers:
The Words and Music of World War II
(Columbia/Legacy double CD)
This two-hour 23-minute documentary includes the expected words—excerpts from speeches by FDR, Neville Chamberlain, Churchill, plus copious Edward R. Murrow broadcasts and Axis propaganda from Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw. The shock is in the songs, from “Remember Pearl Harbor” (“We'll die for liberty”) to “Joltin' Joe DiMaggio” to “The Deepest Shelter in Town” to “Wonder When My Baby's Coming Home”—if you ever wondered if rock 'n' roll was really necessary, the answer is here. Save for a few numbers by the black a capella Golden Gate Quartet (especially “Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer,” seemingly based on Blind Lemon Jefferson's “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”), there is not simply an absence but a negation of any true emotion, be it fear, pride, anger, excitement, love, pain. The exclusion of subjectivity is too complete to be explained by the propaganda needs of the Home Front—the Home Front didn't need a version of “When the Lights Go On Again” that makes Barry Manilow sound like James Brown. After two hours, it's hard to feel anything but disgust,
and confusion: how could any country win a war on music like this?

But the narration—credited to Michael Brooks, script, and Gary Nunn, commentary—has all along been shifting, from stalwart to acrid, embattled to cynical. As General MacArthur announces the Japanese surrender, it shifts once again, into the real, which in the context that has been created is weird beyond weird: “The ghastly death and destruction, the broken promises, the men and the women physically and mentally destroyed by the war do not concern us here. For this is a fairy tale, and fairy tales must end happily. So let us relive that build-up to everlasting love, peace, and happiness, in the bright new world of 1945.” And then into one Ginny Simms belting out “I'm Gonna Love That Guy.” And then enter the Firesign Theater.

APRIL
1992

1
Vulgar Boatmen,
Please Panic
(Caroline/Safehouse)
I left town two days after first playing this light, irreducible set of songs about falling into ordinary love affairs and getting into your car and driving away; for four days “Calling Upstairs,” “You Don't Love Me Yet,” “You're the One,” and “Allison Says” drew in Buddy Holly's “Well All Right,” the Young Marble Giants, John Cale, the Fleetwoods, General Johnson and beach music, and spun them all off. The numbers played so casually in my head, the drift of one tune breaking off only to be picked up by the melody of another, and the songs seemed not made but found—but if it were that easy the songs would be faceless, and the people in them come to life as soon as they're named. More next month.