Real Life Rock (96 page)

5–6
Iris Dement,
Infamous Angel
(Warner Bros.) & Bratmobile:
The Real Janelle
(Kill Rock Stars)
The future of the past—the past being, respectively, the catch and curl of Dolly Parton's voice in “My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy” and the unaccompanied mountain ballads she harks back to, and the glee and resentment of old Blondie records like “Rip Her to Shreds” and old Au Pairs records like “It's Obvious.” Plus just a hint of “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.”

7
Joyce Carol Oates, “Waiting on Elvis, 1956,” in
Sweet Nothings: An Anthology of Rock and Roll in American Poetry
,
ed. Jim Elledge (Indiana University Press)
Set in a café in Charlotte called Chuck's (“I was 26 married but still/waiting tables”), written in 1987, and the most convincing Elvis-Clinton sighting yet: “I slapped at him a little saying, You/sure are the one aren't you feeling my face burn but/he was the kind of boy even meanness turned sweet in/his mouth./Smiled at me and said, Yeah honey I guess I sure am.”

8
Band, “Remedy,” on
The Tonight Show
(NBC, 22 February)
With drummer Levon Helm, organist Garth Hudson, and bassist Rick Danko accompanied by new guitarist, pianist, second drummer, and a four-man
Tonight Show
horn section, they were better than on their recent
Jericho
—John Hiatt's “Buffalo River Home,” from his
Perfectly Good Guitar
, is probably a better Band imitation than anything on Helm & Co.'s first album since guitarist Robbie Robertson left and pianist Richard Manuel killed himself. But this night there was a spark in the sound, muscle and play—and a definite, appropriate ordinariness. In 1968, when these men first announced themselves as The Band, the emphasis seemed to be on the “The,” as a statement of arrogance, which they proceeded to live up to. Now both capital letters might as well be gone. With a pretty good Diet Coke commercial based on “The Weight” running on TV, they played, sang, and carried themselves with a humility so complete it might not support any name at all.

9
Juliana Hatfield Three, “My Sister” (Mammoth)
Nancy Kerrigan's soul sister, anyway.

10
Tom Petty, “I Won't Back Down” (MCA, 1989)
How long before people here and there will be able to hear this without
thinking of Dr. David Gunn, shot to death last year as he arrived for work at a Pensacola abortion clinic? Not long before, Gunn, armed with a cassette machine, faced a crowd of protesters and blared the song right at them—not only because its message was right, you might imagine, but because the song made him feel more alive. Listening to it today, joined to the history it helped make, you can hear Petty take what on paper is no more than an exercise in the obvious past itself, or vice versa.

MAY
1994

1–2
Mudboy & the Neutrons,
Negro Streets at Dawn
(New Rose, Paris) and “5” Royales:
Monkey Hips and Rice
(Rhino 2-CD reissue, 1952–62)
A big, noisy rumble; a testament to Memphis eccentricity; a revel that leaps from a growled, updated riff by the late bluesman Furry Lewis (“Our father who art in Washington/Slick Willie be his name/He taken me off Rabbit Track tobacco/Put me back on novocaine!”) to the deep soul of “Dark End of the Street.” Led by Rivertown favorite son Jim Dickinson, the set almost disappears into its own black hole with a deliriously cheesy white-boy trash version of the “5” Royales' bizarre “The Slummer the Slum.” Released in 1958, the tune, Robert Ray of the Vulgar Boatmen recalls, “was always known in Memphis (where it was a huge hit, played by every high school garage band) as ‘The Stompity Stomp' (which was the way it was always sung).”

The “5” Royales themselves—a dynamic, still obscure R&B vocal combo featuring Lowman Pauling, a guitarist unparalleled in his ability to wring surprise from a song—get their due on
Monkey Hips and Ricè,
a model retrospective with sparkling liner notes by Ed Ward. Originally from North Carolina, the “5” Royales began in the 1940s, as a gospel group; by the early '50s they had found a protean rock 'n' roll style that combined tremendous excitement with open spaces in the sound, so that even in the midst of a rave-up their records always breathed. Their “Slummer the Slum” is no “Stompity Stomp,” but a dance-floor mystery: “Don't try,” chants Johnny Tanner off an extreme stop-time beat, “to figure out/Where I/Come from,” instantly summoning thousands of years of heavenly interventions, divine portents, and unnatural catastrophes, along with a couple of the most unlikely guitar solos ever played.

3
Elvis Costello, “Sulky Girl,” on
Brutal Youth
(Warner Bros.)
A quiet, vaguely noirish lead-in on electric piano, and then these opening lines: “She wears a wedding ring her sister left to throw them off the scent/Just let them guess/It's what they expect. . . .” Wouldn't you keep listening?

4
Tasmin Archer,
Shipbuilding
(ERG/SBK)
Archer is a classy young British singer with a voice she can take lower than you'd expect. Here she makes a better case than Elvis Costello did on
Spike
that “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” is one of his best. She does real damage with her own “Lords of the New Church.” Archer seems to sing around a song; then suddenly you realize she's singing straight from its heart. From her own heart: maybe not yet.

5
Mekons,
Retreat from Memphis
(Quarterstick)
Yes, fans, it's that big fuzztone sound of the Mekons! Except that on the very first cut the guitar calls up Sergio Leone's elegiac
Once Upon a Time in the West
, and by the last the band is back in the 1640s, laughing at the church: “Never wanna work, always wanna play, pleasure, pleasure, every day.”