Page 4 DTII Omnibus
Thursday November 2, 1989
Album Charts
College Music Journal
1. Red Hot Chili Peppers
Mother's Miilk
2. Camper Van Beethoven
Key Lime Pie
3. Sugar Cubes
Hera Today, Tomorrow, Next Week
4. Big Audio Dynamite
Megatop Phoenix
5. Bad Brains
Quickness
6. B-52's
Cosmic Thing
7. Hoodoo Gurus
Magnum Cum Louder
8. Stone Roses
Stone Roses
9. Pogues -Peace
and Love
10. Soundgarden
Louder Than Love
WXYC
1. Snatches of Pink
Dead Men
2. My Dad Is Dead
The Taller You Are...
3. Neil Young
Freedom
4. Meat Puppets
Monsters
5. Spacemen 3
Playing With Fire
6. Lenny Kravitz
Let Love Rule
7. Mekons
... Rock-n-Roll
8. Kate Bush
The Sensual Worid
9. Various Artists
Live at the Knitting Factory
10. Beat Happening
Black Candy
Axemaster's unique
Yngwie Malmsteen
Trial by Fire: Live in Leningrad
PolyGram
OOOOO
Take Jimi Hendrix and throw
in some Beethoven. Now add
a little bit of Monty Python's
Flying Circus. And just a touch of
H.P. Lovecraft. What's the result?
Of course it's Yngwie Malmsteen and
his Rising Force.
Yngwie (pronounced ing-vay)
Malmsteen is right up there with Jimi
PYEWACKET
RESTAURANT
A looser
Bob Dylan
Oh Mercy
CBS Records
oooo
After several lackluster releases,
Bob Dylan is back with Oh
Mercy, his finest album in a
decade.
It seems as if the Traveling
Wilburys helped Dylan to loosen up
and concentrate on music again.
Certainly, he is not trying so hard to
be Bob Dylan on this one. Oh Mercy
contains more fully-realized, longer
songs than on recent Dylan albums;
and he is once again sharp, loose and
focused. -
Dylan has surrounded himself with
an all-star entourage. Daniel Lanois,
best known for his work with U2,
produces and plays guitar, dobro and
lap steel. Mason Ruffner is the fea
tured guitarist on several tunes, while
Cyril Neville, Willie Green and Daryl
Johnson add percussion.
Side One is the more upbeat half
of the album.
The opener, "Political World," has
a quick tempo and features Lanois'
bluesy dobro. "Where Teardrops Fall"
is slower, with catchy playing of the
Alisa DeMao
Hendrix and Joe Satriani in the Heavy
Metal Trinity of Axemasters. In an
age of copycat, formula music Malm
steen creates a truly new style, com
bining such diverse influences as Bach
and Beethoven with Hendrix and
Richie Blackmore to create a classical-metal
technique which has
spawned a host of imitators. "I like
the melodic and harmonic feel of
classical music and the logic behind
it," he says, "but I love the aggres
A complete repertoire
of seafood, pasta
& vegetarian specialties
Catering Sen ice
Late Night Menu
Espresso Drinks
Elegant Desserts
i I - if !
Dylan gets back to
Brian Springer
vj& av v.v: v-4 a--v v.'-
lap steel again, courtesy of La
nois. The first single, "Everything is
Broken," makes use of a vibey guitar
and a distinctly '60s approach.
"Ring Them Bells" contains organ
reminiscent of "Knockin on Heaven's
Door." The song recalls Dylan's Chris
tian period, with the lines "Ring them
bells for the blind and the deafRing
them bells for all of us who are left."
"Man in the Long Black Coat" has a
sparse, swampy sound.
On Side Two, Dylan uses a
stripped-down, brooding sound. "Most
of the Time" finds Dylan in a reflec
tive mood, singing, "I can survive
and I can endureAnd I don't even
think about herMost of the time."
Dylan is introspective in the moody
"What Good amir
On "Disease of Conceit," Dylan
notes, "Conceit is a diseaseThat the
doctor's got no cureHe does a lot of
research on itBut what it is they're
still not sure." Dylan avoids the temp
tation to fall into the self-parody
which has marked many of his re
cent releases. "What Was it You
Wanted" finds both Dylan and the
style triumphs in Trial by Fire'
sion, the impact, the noise and the
extreme power of metal."
Trial by Fire: Live In Leningrad al
lows Malmsteen and his band, Yng
wie Malmsteen's . Rising Force, to
display their unique style in a truly
virtuositic fashion. Recorded in SKK
Stadium in Leningrad during several
sold-out performances (which, inci
dentally, along with his sold-out dates
in Moscow's Lushniki Sportspalace,
gave him a total audience of 240,000
the largest ever for any artist,
Soviet or Western, in the USSR),
the album gives Malmsteen an op
portunity to prove himself a master
of his craft without the benefit of
studio takes and re-takes.
m
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a
listener wondering "Are you the same
personThat was here before?"
With this album, Dylan has over
come the urge to recreate the past
shown on "Silvio" from last year's
Down in the Groove. At the same
time, he doesn't attempt the high art
which flawed such work as
"Brownsville Girl" from Knocked Out
Loaded. Instead, Dylan seems to have
stopped trying so hard. The natural,
less-belabored sound is classic Dylan.
Oh Mercy is a fine example of an
artist returning to his roots. The al
bum displays a sharp dichotomy of
moods, with consistent songwriting
marking both sides. Bob Dylan has
never been a great singer, but his
voice is better than it has been in
ages. By not being so forcefully
Dylanesque, for the first time in years,
Dylan avoids becoming a caricature.
On Oh Mercy, Dylan turns in loose,
fully-realized performances, with the
strong songwriting of years past intact.
The Ratings
O miserable
OO mediocre
00 enjoyable
OOOO quite good
OOOOO unmissable
Citing classical violin as his biggest
influence, Malmsteen is very much a
technician. But he doesn't let that
get in the way of being a musician.
Filled with Malmsteen's guitar licks,
what this album lacks (and for the
best) are the gratuitous musical acro
batics so common in today's metal.
Malmsteen plays from his heart and
his soul, imbuing his music with an
uncommon depth of feeling.
Vocalist Joe Lynn Turner, formerly
of Rainbow, has a tone richness that
fully complements Malmsteen's mu
sic. On their last album, Odyssey,
Turner joined Malmsteen in the crea
tive process, co-writing tracks such
as "Heaven Tonight," which appears
his roots
1 Concert
Bob Dylan will be in concert at
8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8 in
Cameron Indoor Stadium on the
Duke campus. For ticket info, call
Ticketron at 1-800-453-3041.
on Trial. And yes, it still sounds like
Journey on speed. Or acid. Or both.
The rhythm section, Barry Dun
away on bass and Anders Johansson
on drums, provide the same richly
full background, balancing the gui
tar focus with a powerful beat and
acting as a foil for Malmsteen.
And how many metal groups have
a full-time keyboard player? Bon Jovi,
Guiffria? Come on, real metal, not
bubblegum. Keyboardist Jens
Johansson (brother of drummer
Anders) is an integral part of the
group.
Malmsteen himself writes, arranges
and produces his work. His strength
is in composing, however.
While Side A of the album is still
his unique classical-metal blend, there
is more of an emphasis on metal tech
nique, resulting in hard rockers such
as "Liar" and "Deja Vu" which nev
ertheless retain some kind of integ
rity. It is on Side B that Malmsteen's
classical background becomes more
evident, particularly on the blend
ing of styles in "Dreaming," featur
ing an acoustic theme inspired by
Bach, with a touch of . . . could it be
jazz? And break out your tie-dyed
shirts and bell-bottoms for the Hen
drix tribute "Spanish Castle Magic."
Trial by Fire: Live In Leningrad is
one of the best metal albums to be
released in a long time. Which is
only to be expected it is merely
another in a long line of Yngwie
Malmsteen's triumphs.