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Christgau's Consumer Guide

With best-ofs proliferating faster than yup weekles around here, my
annual Additional Consumer News summation skips the multidisc
monsters from Clapton, Santana, and, God help us, Jethro Tull (already
passed on to the highest bidder) and saves pre-'70s and
multiple-artist stuff for a future I hope doesn't abandon jump space
as a relic of the age of pre-yup literacy.

EDIE BRICKELL & NEW BOHEMIANS:
Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars
(Geffen)
Her Suzanne Vega voice is jazzed up with glowing slips
and slides that recall Jo Mama's long-forgotten Abigale Haness. Her
well-named boys are nuevo-hippies with chops, also like Jo Mama, a
braver band they probably never heard of. Her lyrics are escapist
as a matter of conviction--"Don't let me get too deep," she implores,
as if she could if she tried. I await the Jo Mama CD.
B MINUS

CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG:
American Dream
(Atlantic)
Forget
the careerist compromise, dazed ennui, and soggy despair, and take
this hustle for what it pretends to be and at some level is: four
diehard hippies expressing themselves. Poor old guys can't leave
politics alone--there's more ecology and militarism here than when
they were figureheads of pop revolution, and though the rhetoric
is predictable, the impulse has a woozy nobility. Not that that's
ever been reason to pay Graham's ditties any mind, or that Stephen's
steady-state egotism is redeemed by stray references to judges and
changing the world. But while David's cocaine confessional makes
"Almost Cut My Hair" seem self-abnegating, his "Nighttime for the
Generals" sure beats Sting. And Neil lends musical muscle and gets
commercial muscle back. So, not as horrible as you expected--nor good
enough to give a third thought.
C PLUS

SONA DIABETE & M'MAH SYLLA:
Sahel
(Triple Earth import) Two
singers from the storied policewomen's band Les Amazones de Guine
join a guitarist-marimbist and a flutist-saxophonist in Paris, where
everybody plays folk music once removed. Falsetto intensifies the
high-end voices and the flute is very prominent, so that the intrusions
of saxophone and sometimes even guitar have the effect of male voices
demanding confidently to be heard. Secure in their realm, the women
continue to muse or chatter or make a joyful noise.
B PLUS

STEVE EARLE:
Copperhead Road
(Uni)
This time, it isn't only
the heavy beat, loud guitars, and wild-ass vocal mannerisms that
make it rock--giveaway's the melodrama that rock set pieces substitute
for the flat inevitability of the country variety. So my prescription
is simple: more Tom T., less Bruce. Meanwhile, just say his vision
of history is more convincing than his vision of personal relations.
Which these days is another giveaway.
B

FISHBONE:
Truth and Soul
(Epic)
They're better at truth than
soul, always a harder sell, and harder to push beyond interesting,
too. Taken one at a time, about half these experiments would change
any radio station's pace quite satisfactorily. Taken in sequence,
they don't follow.
B

JUNGLE BROTHERS:
Straight Out the Jungle
(Idlers)
Like an early
Bambaataa jam with comic timing, it starts out looser and more comradely
than most rap dares any more. Then it stays that way. Crew name
turns an insult around while permitting some light pan-Africanism,
a Melle Mel hook, and the simple point that anywhere people get
killed for the color of their skin is a jungle for sure. Samples
come every which way--here Mingus, there Farfisa-cum-Hammond-B3, and
over there drumbeats so offhand I'd half swear they were live. And
reinforcing their professions of solidarity is the fact that they
hardly boast at all--unless you're afraid claims that their jimbrowskis
are seven feet tall will be taken literally by their tragically
ill-informed audience.
A MINUS

KID 'N PLAY:
2 Hype
(Select)
If professional rap can get tired,
it can also get busy. Joyous safari-movie go go, Billy Crystal rip,
James Brown rip, James Brown rip, above all the bust-this "Gittin'
Funky"--every one, well, gits funky. And when they stick in some sexist
shit, the joke ends up on them.
B PLUS
[Later]

SAM MANGWANA:
Aladji
(Syllart import)
A notoriously footloose
and political Angola-born Zairean, Mangwana shocked loyal followers
of both Rochereau and Franco by working first with one titan and
then the other before his African All-Stars brought kick-drum kick
and Brownian nonstop to soukous. Long since single again, he here
joins up with the hot Guinean-Parisian producer Ibrahima Sylla for
an album said to stand with such landmarks as Maria Tebbo, Canta
Moambique, and the legendary Franco collaboration Cooperation.
But much as I enjoy the sustained midtempo lyricism of "Aladji"
and the chunky mbaqanga subtext of "Soweto," only the jet-launched
"Trans-Beros," which leads French Celluloid's Zaire Choc compilation
as well, leaps my language barrier.
B PLUS

NAJMA:
Qareeb
(Shanachie)
With no aesthetic judgment implied,
the reality encompassed by mass-produced soundtrack schlock and sitar
masters fills me with disinterest, and although I find ragas inoffensive
accompaniment to chana vazi and shag poonir, I've never voluntarily
played one. So I put this on out of professional responsibility
(not even curiosity), and fell. Najma is a British Pakistani who
popularizes an ancient Urdu lyric form called the ghazal. The words
are traditional, with translations that read like abstract love
poetry provided. The melodies and vocal harmonies are hers, with
soprano sax or fretless bass or guitarlike santoor adding just
a touch of Western exoticism. The overall effect is twofold: gentle
culture clash and sheer physical beauty. Either one of which would
do.
A MINUS

BUCK OWENS:
Hot Dog!
(Capitol)
The two rock and roll covers are
unbelievably clumsy coming from country's great lost missing link,
and not just rhythmwise--did he choose the teen protest "Summertime
Blues" because his gerontologist thought it would do wonders for
him? Nor are many of the originals worthy of the career-capping compilation
that I suspect (and hope) is on the way. But he does have a lesson
to teach both his cocky epigones (emotion and commitment) and his
exhausted contemporaries (emotion and commitment). Sounds like
he's learned some things, too--from premier contemporary George Jones,
whose late work had the same phlegmy maturity and every-syllable-counts
concentration until the emotion and commitment went out of him.
B PLUS

THE PONTIAC BROTHERS:
Johnson
(Frontier)
First they were Stones
clones, then replacement Replacements, their rough-hewn ways a joy
to those who find the former too slick and/or the latter too clever.
Me, I take pleasure in how closely they resemble their superiors
without surrendering their independence--you never get the feeling
they're trying to be anybody but themselves. Also enjoy their sonics,
lyrics, hooks, etc.
B PLUS

THE REAL ROXANNE
(Select)
Roxanne Shant's the real Roxanne.
This one's the real Lisa Lisa--smart, fast-talking, Puerto Rican and
proud, up on the get down. By working her fine brown frame off without
ever taking chance one, she verifies rap's pop scope, from Hurby
Luv Bug's cute stuff to Howie Tee's dense samples. Also scores two
out of three half-sung slow ones, including a
day-in-the-life-of-a-rapper-and-aren't-you-jealous?
that can only be described as a modest boast. Would I like all this
as much if a guy did it? Of course not. And of course, no guy has.
A MINUS

R.E.M.:
Green
(Warner Bros.)
The "air" side combines the bite
of their realest rock and roll with the shameless beauty their cult
once lived for--it's funny and/or serious and/or rousing and/or elegiac
right up to "The Wrong Child," a title that speaks for itself and
heralds the shit to follow. Which they dub the "metal" side, with
heavy tempos and dubious poetry that make good on their intermittent
moments only during the funny, serious, elegiac "I Remember California."
B PLUS

SALT-N-PEPA:
A Salt with a Deadly Pepa
(Next Plateau)
"Shake Your
Thang" is a stroke because as a duo they can come out for two opposing
sexual prerogatives at once--one does, the other doesn't, and it's
nobody's thang but hers either way. Nor does E.U. hurt their soul.
Elsewhere, the confusion signalled by the "See label for Sequencing"
is reflected in ordinary rhymes, scattershot beats, and a second
Isleys cover, this one masquerading as a Beatles cover.
B

SCHOOLLY-D:
Smoke Some Kill
(Jive)
Anybody as smart as Schoolly,
who on his own testimony turned down a scholarship from Georgia
Tech because he only wanted to study art, must be held responsible
for his own bullshit, especially if he makes a large part of his
living selling black fantasy to white thrill-seekers. Are B-boys really
like this? How the fuck am I supposed to know? What I do know is
that between his cheeba and his malt liquor and his foldaway dick
and his casual "faggot"s and his eagerness to blame an unspecified
cocaine habit on a nameless and maybe even figurative "white bitch,"
he's the white audience's paranoid-to-masochistic fantasy of a B-boy.
He deserves credit for realizing the fantasy so scarily, and for
commanding his own tough-guy sound. But that doesn't mean you have
to like him.
B MINUS

MICHELLE SHOCKED:
Short Sharp Shocked
(Mercury)
"Anchorage"
is the fondest friend-from-a-former-life song you've ever heard. The
East Texas barn burning, driving lesson, and beer run evoke the
bored fun of a rural adolescence like nothing you could imagine.
Shocked understands the tougher formal challenges of protest and
metaphoric flight, too, especially on the unclassifiable "When I
Grow Up." The Jean Ritchie cover seems unsuitably traditional until
you realize it's Jean Ritchie. And the uncredited punk-rock extra
reminds us that this singer-songwriter puts music second, just like
they all do.
A MINUS

NEIL YOUNG & THE BLUENOTES:
This Note's for You
(Reprise)
Those
who detect surer songwriting and tougher guitar amid the eccentric
horns are right, but the horns render such details irrelevant if
not unlistenable--their sour blare mimics Young's crude guitar sound
all too crudely, and the charts lack that spontaneous spark, as
charts generally do. Grabber: solo blues, with solitary trumpet
fluttering in the background.
B MINUS

Additional Consumer News

The best-of has always been a dubious consumer service: even when it's
a genuine bargain, it allows bizzers to make money off the same music
twice, and don't think they don't love every dollar of it. These days,
compilation-only bait cuts and CD programming make them dicier than
ever. But critically, the big problem remains the same: this specific
second time around, is the same music better, worse, pretty much the
same, or none of the above? In other words, just how useful are
these items? Such a judgment is even more subjective than a mere
aesthetic one, and to illustrate I'll steer you away from three
offerings whose constituent parts sound fairly dandy. Most egregious
is Imagine: John Lennon: Music from the Original Motion Picture
(Capitol). Foreshortening the first half of his career and
romanticizing the second, it wouldn't exist without the tireless
promotional efforts of Albert Goldman, and you can certainly do
without the two work tapes it's suckered with. Then there's Fleetwood
Mac. Since what distinguished them from your average great pop band was
that their hits were improved by their filler, the radio-ready
Greatest Hits (Warner Bros.) makes them seem blander than they
actually were. I had more fun replaying side two of Mirage. As
for Paul Simon's Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986 (Warner
Bros.) it's what's called a gyp: a $12.98-list double-LP of perfect CD
length that features just three more songs than CBS's superb and now
out-of-print one-(vinyl)-disc 1977 best-of. What's more, the
Graceland cuts cry out for home. I love "Mother and Child
Reunion" myself, but this means boycott.

The Essential Tom T. Hall: Twentieth Anniversary Collection/The
Story Songs (Mercury) is more like it. I'd call him a cross
between Chekhov and O. Henry, but that would date him, because next to
what the lit crowd calls sentimentality, sometimes played as a capper
and sometimes as an offhand theme, the self-conscious narrator is his
most characteristic device--one he never seems self-conscious about,
fancy that. Nobody who owns fewer than 18 of these 20 gems should do
without this gift from the Lords of Nashville. Ann Peebles's
Greatest Hits (MCA) is another long overdue document from those
halcyon early '70s, recommended to young people who think "I Can't
Stand the Rain" is a Tina Turner song (ha!), though its 10-cut,
28-minute duration is almost as inexplicable as the tedious completism
of her two import reissues from Demon. If your copy of The Gilded
Palace of Sin remains as pristine as the Shroud of Turin, you can
do without the Flying Burrito Brothers' Farther Along: The Best of
the Flying Burrito Brothers (A&M cassette/CD), but even the
outtakes prove that Gram Parsons saved this band from folk-rock, with
folk-rocker Chris Hillman adding his less than gracious (and less than
trenchant) commentary. The Psychedelic Furs' All of This and
Nothing (Columbia) sounded tired last summer, but when I returned
it to the turntable in early November, "President Gas" was prophecy
and Richard Butler's existential fatigue, faithfully explored over
what is now a full-length career, had taken on unexpected dignity:
raging against the dying of the light, he refuses to act like a
cornball in the process. James Brown's Funky People (Part 2)
(Polydor) showcases the likes of Bobby Byrd, Marva Whitney, and Lyn
Collins with Cliff White's customary brilliant instinct for the
experimental anachronism, the soulful moment, and the def beat. At one
clinker and one dubiety per side, Earth, Wind & Fire's The Best
of Earth, Wind & Fire Vol. II (Columbia), drawn almost
entirely from their '70s catalogue, is every bit as solid as volume
one, which happens to be the best album they ever released. R.E.M.'s
Eponymous (I.R.S.) is divided into "early" and "late" sides
that acknowledge the dichotomy between their formalistic lyricism and
their rock and roll content, and though it depends too heavily on
Document for the latter, their longstanding avant-singles
commitment justifies the package. Though Kool & the Gang's
electro-disco "club remixes" of such bare-bones funk milestones as
"Jungle Boogie" and "Hollywood Swinging" are off-putting, they're far
from sacrilegious, and for the most part Everything's Kool &
the Gang: Greatest Hits and More (Mercury) performs a valuable
service for a perennially compromised band. On The Greatest Hits
Collection (London), Stock Aitken Waterman's odious synthpop suits
Bananarama's affectless echo better than Swain Jolley's shallow
synthsoul, but it's some kind of camp achievement that just like the
totally plastic singles group they play at being, they're equal to
their most, er, meaningful early material. The Judds' Greatest
Hits (RCA Victor) recycles a full one-third of their definitive
debut mini and returns to life both "Love Is Alive" and "Grandpa (Tell
Me 'Bout the Good Old Days)," yet at their most neocon they sound
confidently prog-trad, and they have a knack for finding tunes that
transcend their titles. Shoes' Best (Black Vinyl CD) is
quintessentially problematic right from the label name, surely the
most ironic ever entered in the digital sweepstakes: its generous
length places an impossible burden on these quintessentially slight
popsters, reducing them to the background entertainment those with no
tolerance for fragility thought they were to begin with. By finessing
his recent past, Peter Tosh's The Toughest (Capitol)
camouflages the sad deterioration of one Jamaican artist whose hazy
alienation always had a political edge. Human League's Greatest
Hits (A&M) is body snatcher music, articulate simulated
emotion fortified with the coldest hooks ever manufactured, and I keep
feeling fascination despite myself. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the
Dark's Best of OMD (A&M) puts "Electricity," "Enola Gay,"
and "Tesla Girls" on the same record, and what more do you want 'cept
maybe the catchy medium-tempo trifles also included? The Thompson
Twins' star power was so evanescent that on Greatest Mixes/The Best
of Thompson Twins (Arista) they commemorate themselves as a dance
act rather than a pop act--fine song selection, but their tepid beats
will drift you off the floor and their pop fades before their dance
mixes are over. Anybody who doubts Aerosmith made a great album once
(and only once) should check the title of their second best-of,
Gems (Columbia), and then explain why buried gems from
Rocks lead both sides. The Best of Gladys Knight & the
Pips: The Columbia Years (Columbia) makes you wonder what it takes
to jolt this woman from her own competence. After Conscious
Party, we can dismiss Time Has Come . . . : The Best of Ziggy
Marley and the Melody Makers (EMI-Manhattan) for the juvenilia we
always suspected it was. And after Dire Straits' wittily entitled
Money for Nothing (Warner Bros.), we can dismiss Mark Knopfler
as the lifetime member of the Fraternal Order of Old Farts we always
suspected he was. Finally, though it'll be hard to resist the Journey
and REO Speedwagon best-ofs, why don't you make a sacrifice in favor
of the multiple-artist AOR-cum-CHR The Heart of Rock
(Columbia)--Robbie Nevil's "C'Est la Vie," Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It
Is," proceeds to Tony Martell's cancer/AIDS research foundation?

Village Voice, Dec. 27, 1988

Nov. 29, 1988

Jan. 24, 1989