Real Life Rock (81 page)

6
Fred Bronson,
The Billboard Book of Number One Hits
(Billboard/Watson-Guptill)
The third edition (“Rock Around the Clock” through Vanessa Williams' “Save the Best for Last”) of one of the most entertaining and informative books ever written about pop music. The format is strict—one page with pic per disc—and depending on whether he's writing about one-hit wonders Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs or four-time chart-topper Roxette, Bronson can cram the whole of a singular career into less than 1,000 words or stretch a pointless one over several pages without ever seeming bored. Exasperated, that's another story.

7
Lynn Hope,
“Morocco”
(Saxophono-graph reissue, 1950–55, Sweden)
Hope—a.k.a. Al Hajj Abdulla Rasheed Ahmed—had a national hit in 1950 with “Tenderly,” a sweet, snazzy sax instrumental typical of his relaxed style. Though you can imagine Big Red Little in the audience, you don't hear Hope's faith in Islam in his music—he led the only all-Muslim band in the country, turban on his head, fezzes for the rest—you hear rhythm & blues on the verge of taking shape, and then taking one step back.

8–9
Johnny Shines, Henry Townshend, Lonnie Pitchford, Honeyboy Edwards, Railroad Maintenance Crew, et al.,
Roots of Rhythm and Blues—A Tribute to the Robert Johnson Era
(Columbia) and George Thoro-good, “I'm a Steady Rollin' Man,” from
The Baddest of George Thorogood and the Destroyers
(EMI)
Proof of Robert Johnson's genius: there's more of his spirit in Thorogood's trash bonus track for a greatest-hits package than there is in a reverent tribute by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

10
Paul Schrader, writer and director,
Light Sleeper
(Fine Line Features)
Lousy as they almost always are, Schrader's films almost always contain elements of obsession that cough up incidents so intense they all but come loose from their own movies. This time not even Michael Been's obese soundtrack songs can filter what goes on in Dana Delany's face. There's a look in her eyes as she sits in bed with Willem Dafoe—a fluttering anticipation of ecstasy unto oblivion—that might have satisfied Louise Brooks. And too soon after that a look of such abasement and self-loathing even Brooks might have flinched at it.

DECEMBER
1992

1
Sinéad O'Connor, “War,” on
Saturday Night Live
(NBC, October 3)
For the record: live TV, O'Connor in a long formal gown, Star of David necklace, nose stud, chanting her rewrite of Bob Marley's “War” a cappella, her face shifting by imperceptible degrees from saint to thug, rat to Hedy
Lamarr. Then for the last line, “The victory of good over evil,” she produces a picture of Pope John Paul II, rips it into pieces: “Fight the real enemy!” On audiotape, no visuals, it's so suggestive: “Good . . . over
e
vil,” then just
switch
,
switch
, the sound loud in its oddity.

This was a classic media shock. Even if you were with her all the way—after the fact—you had to realize that someone this intransigent will sooner or later put you on the other side. And if the act itself seems cheap, a setup, self-aggrandizing, ask yourself this: given the chance to say what I wanted to the whole country, would I have had the nerve?

2
Bob Marley & the Wailers, “War” (1976), on the 4-CD Bob Marley reissue
Songs of Freedom
(Tuff Gong)
Originally the highlight of the mostly boilerplate LP
Rastaman Vibration
, and in fact Marley's rewrite of a speech delivered in California in 1968 by Haile Selassie—then still Emperor of Ethiopia, and also “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” With Aston “Familyman” Barrett leading the way with bass notes more ominously confident than anyone's found since, and a chorus of closely gathered horns following at a distance, the speech is turned into music, and the politics changed from one man's statement into a common rite.

3
Darcey Steinke,
Suicide Blonde
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
Very catchy jacket: nude blonde woman on rumpled bed lights cigarette. There's not a moment in this increasingly tense short novel when the first-person narrator the cover girl's standing in for is half so cool. As with most bohemias, punk slowly devolved toward oblivion and small-time criminal trade; set in San Francisco bad-news neighborhoods, this report on that milieu escapes the confines of genre. Near the end there's a voyeuristic scene so fast, blunt, and cruel that when you're told “her eyes were dead” there's no surface to go beneath; Steinke works with blood, sweat, and semen, not metaphors.

4
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, at the Quake, San Francisco (October 6)
Singer/guitarist Jim Bob and lead guitarist Fruitbat play with tapes carrying synthesized orchestrations that are at once huge and conveniently sized: they seem to fill a room precisely. That's because lead actor Jim Bob's physical and vocal timing is perfect, yet still comes off as no less spontaneous than any other rock performer's moves. The drama, though, is unique. Fruitbat plays bemused sidekick—but after a few tunes his Faith No More T-shirt no longer seems to refer to that band. Jim Bob might be playing someone dying of
AIDS
who's just realized Judgment Day is a con. Tall, thin, beaky, wearing a shirt covered with cartoon faces of the Big Bad Wolf, with just a buzz of brown hair save for a foot-long forelock he can shake for emphasis, Jim Bob has as evil a grin as you'll ever see, and this night the music was so thrilling he only had to use it once.

5
Bushwick Bill,
Little Big Man
(Rap-A-Lot)
To be young, four feet two inches tall, black, and conscious—a solo shot by the lead bad dream of Houston's Geto Boys. “Where I'm from is a modern-day motherfuckin' Vietnam,” he says plainly; movie suspense music keeps you hooked as crossing vocals trade violent fantasies and laments over how little is left of a chance for a decent life. The two sides come together with a true-crime track: “Ever So Clear,” the tale of how Bushwick, drunk on Ever-clear, tried to force his girlfriend to shoot him. She missed his brain but took an eye.