Real Life Rock (29 page)

5
Alex Bennett, a so-far undenied report, in two parts (Alex Bennett Show, KITS-FM, San Francisco, April 4)
Part one: Yoko Ono is married. Part two: she got married four months after John Lennon was shot.

6
Deficit des Années Antérieures,
When a Cap Is Rising
(Big Noise/Red Rhino 10-inch LP, UK)
Tape collages with song overlays, '82–'86, from a Belgian outfit: what Wire would be if it were a little more arty, but no less sly.

7
Coolies, “Coke Light Ice,” from
Doug
(DB)
Doug
is a “rock opera” tripping on its own parodies, but this tune may emerge in years to come as a classic of redeemed triviality,
which in some times (these) is at least half of what pop is for: a full-length song, driven by undifferentiated paranoia, about one man's inability to get more Coke than ice out of his favorite hamburger joint.

8
Rykodisc, press release for
The Atmosphere Collection: 8 Hours in the Big Apple
(April 1)
Including “Gowanus Canal,” “Busy Office,” and “Haitian Taxi Driver,” this eight-part ambient CD set is “intended for ‘passive' listening,” “designed to pummel the listener into resigned desperation,” and “can be programmed to play all day … thus inducing a low-range psychosis in most listeners.” It's just a joke—but why? Folkways once put out
Sounds of the Junkyard,
featuring “Burning Out an Old Car.” And the fidelity today would be so much better …

9
House of Schock, “Middle of Nowhere” (Capitol)
Best post-Go-Go's record, by the drummer, who had the only good smile in the band.

10
Henry Silva, in
The Manchurian Candidate,
(1962, MGM/UA) and
Above the Law
(Warner Bros.)
The linkage between the villains Silva plays in the new
Above the Law
(a sort of Chuck Norris-bloodbath for leftwingers) and the re-released
Manchurian Candidate
(the best American movie made between
Citizen Kane
and
The Godfather
) is a nice twist. It half implies that after the failure of the Soviet-Chinese Communist-American fascist Manchurian Candidate plot, the Silva character went over from the KGB to the CIA, found work as a torturer in Vietnam, made his pile with Company cocaine, and then—

MAY
31, 1988

1
Clash, “Complete Control,” from
The Story of the Clash, Volume I
(Epic reissue, '77)
The purpose of this conventional double-LP, complete with unreadable life-on-the-road notes by the group's “valet,” seems to be to certify the Clash as a conventional rock band. The fact that there was something more at stake in the Clash's career than a career is suppressed by the exclusion of idiosyncrasy, playfulness, and despair (“The Right Profile,” “Brand New Cadillac,” the broken, empty-handed '85 “This Is England,” what was left after Thatcherism erased the last traces of the white riot) in favor of rebel-rock shtick and chart hopes (“The Guns of Brixton,” “Lost in the Supermarket,” “Stay Free,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go”).

Given the shape of the package, the numbers on side three—all from '77–'78, when punk was still an idea seeking its field—send a nearly incomprehensible message of disruption, desire, and fear. Even less explainable, now, is that at the heart of this side is a performance that as pure sound stands as the greatest rock 'n' roll recording ever made. Oddly, it's about the Clash's career, at least on a literal, lyric-sheet level: their label-sanctioned protest single about their label committing the atrocity of releasing an earlier single without the band's permission. Big deal. Yet from this flimsy soapbox they leap musically to a dramatization of autonomy, community, personal identity and social contestation, and with a few scattered slogans (“
THIS MEANS YOU
!”) make those usually abstract notions as real, as dangerous, as any moment governed by love or money, hate or war. Across more than 10 years of listening to “Complete Control,” one reaction has always come first: disbelief. Disbelief that mere human beings could create such a sound, disbelief that the world could remain the same when it's over.

2
Monty Python,
The final rip off
(Virgin reissue)
The same stuff that's been on all the other records, but not in the same order.

3
Pet Shop Boys, “Always on My Mind” (Manhattan)
Now they say they meant no harm to either Elvis or the song. Trust the tale, not the teller.

4
Jimmie Davis, “Down at the Old Country Church,” from
Barnyard Stomp
(Bear Family reissue, '31, West Germany)
A two-time racist governor of Louisiana (elected on the basis of his purported authorship of “You Are My Sunshine”), Davis had a lot of alter egos way back when: Jimmie Rodgers
imitator, dirty songster, white Negro. Here the latter combines a rewrite of “When the Saints Go Marching In” with the bottleneck of black guitarist Ed Shaffer, a/k/a “Dizzy Head,” and the result is dreamy, sensual—humid.