Real Life Rock (34 page)

8
Four Tops, “Reach Out I'll Be There (Remix)” (Motown '88/'66 12-inch)
First, a remarkable atrocity: no crisp drum machine, no sharp synth sound, just poorly oiled disco machinery plugging on to nowhere, forever, a now-defeated Levi Stubbs reaching out to—his old song, maybe. But then, no doubt as a sop to moldy figs unhip to what the new breed breed, is the song as it hit number one 22 years ago, and in an instant, before the singing even begins, there's tension, drama,
suspense
. “I'm horny already,” the woman next to me said.

9
Gary Stewart,
Brand New
(Hightone)
Drunk again, as he says, but the old stuff is fine, and what's new is “Lucretia,” which owes more to Lynyrd Skynyrd's “That Smell” than to anything by George Jones or Jerry Lee Lewis.

10
Sut Jhally and Ian Angus, “Introduction” to
Cultural Politics in Contemporary America
(Routledge)
The editors of this wishfully “interventionist” academic anthology of no one's best work tip their hand straight off: dedication to Joe Hill, “genius of cultural politics,” “Murdered by the Authorities of the State of Utah”; acknowledgement note re the “fruitful experience of collaborative work, which is at the very heart of socialist practice” (fascists always work alone, that's why they never get anywhere); the “
alternate
sphere” of cultural politics defined as “the ‘sixties' tradition of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, the Weavers, Pete Seeger”—you know, all those people who later formed the Rolling Stones. But it's the discussion of Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon, “the two most important figures in mainstream culture, from a left perspective”—thank you—“in the last twenty years,” that rings the bell: though Springsteen allowed people to misinterpret “Born in the U.S.A.,” Lennon “suffered
from: no such ambiguity”—“there being no possible misunderstanding of his art.” Forget that when there is no possibility of misunderstanding, there is no art—the privileging of Lennon leads straight to a bemoaning of the fact that “in the postmodern context,” even Lennon's “Revolution” can be turned into a commercial and stripped of its revolutionary message, which of course it never had, since the song was against revolution, not for it. Well, socialist realists never did know what to make of rock 'n' roll (“it is too early, or too late, to throw out Pete Seeger,” Jhally and Angus say, summing up), though rock 'n' roll has always known what to make of them.

NOVEMBER
1, 1988

1
Shinehead,
Unity
(Elektra)
As a Jamaican toaster in a hip-hop milieu he's a motormouth, and as a motormouth he's a Porsche: words tumble by so fast it's a thrill not to keep up. He's also a joker, he wants to know what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding, and as a ballad singer (“Golden Touch”), he's Shep and the Limelights.

2
Quartzlock, “No Regrets” (Reflection/Pinnacle 12-inch, UK)
Aerobic disco, with a thick, exuberant sound—and a showcase for an unnamed female singer. She might be Tina Turner recording for Motown in 1966: her voice is all pleasure, warmth, knowledge.

3
King Butcher, “Spud-U-Like” (King 12-inch)
Jon King (late of Gang of Four) resurfaces with new partner Phil Butcher and a cutting, expert noise based on “One Potato, Two Potato.” Songs should follow.

4
Nigel Fountain,
Underground—The London Alternative Press, 1966–74
(Comedia/Routledge) and Jonathon Green:
Days in the Life—Voices From the English Underground, 1961–1971
(Heinemann, London)
Two good books—Green's a long, hundred-headed oral history set without commentary in the manner of
Edie
, Fountain's a conventional narrative. The adventure and cruelty of the time come through, especially in Green, but what's odd is the unity of the story. “[It was] as if we had rubber bands stretched all over England and we could just pull one,” Spike Hawkins says in Green of the first stirrings of new culture—yet both books are fundamentally about the same small group of people, the same few legendary scenes, events, pranks, and disasters. The books make it plain how much a small group of people can do—or how small the U.K. really is.

5
Keith Richards,
Saturday Night Live
(NBC, October 8)
Mesmerizing, the way tricky melodies slowly crept out of the blur of rhythm and rasp; as for
Talk Is Cheap
(Virgin), a few numbers suggest a tune you heard on the radio once, 10 years ago, forgot the next day, and spent the next decade trying to remember.

6
Michael Cormany,
Lost Daughter
,
a detective novel (Lyle Stuart)
New twist on generically requisite cop/dick banter: “He picked at the cassettes on the seat between us. ‘Replacements? Hüsker Dü?' He pronounced it Husker instead of Hoosker. I let it go.”