Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Sept. 6, 1990, edition 1 / Page 12
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Page 4 DTK Omnibus 0 Thursday September 6, 1990 MOSCC Area bands make mammoth effort Popular 1. M.C. Hammer Please Hammer Don 't Hurtem ; 2. Wilson Phillips Wilson Phillips 3. Poison Flesh and Blood 4. Marian Carey Marian Carey 5. Anita Baker Compositions 6. Bell Biv DeVoe Poison 7. JonBonJovl Blaze of GloryYoung Guns II 8. New Kids on the Block Step by Step 9. Keith Sweat I'll Give All My Love to You 10. Various Artists Pretty Woman Rhythm & Blues 1. M.C. Hammer Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em 2. Keith Sweat ' Give All My Love to You 3. Johnny Gill Johnny Gilt 4. Anita Baker Compositions 5. En Vogue Born to Sing 6. Mariah Carey Mariah Carey 7. Tony! Tonl! Tone! The Revival 8. Bell Biv DeVoe Poison 9. The Time Pandemonium 10. Ice Cube Amerikka's Most Wanted Billboard Same colour, but more vivid Living Colour Living Colour Epic 000012 rV uick! What shares the helm I as the best album of 1990 so I I I far ? Time's Up that's right I J J Living Colour's new jam " of the season. Most musicians who have had successful debuts have flaws from hell on the sophomore efforts in accor dance with the oP "haste makes waste" rule (refer to Terence Trent D'arby and The Outfield as examples. ) Living Colour, however, defies tradition with a 15-track compilation that even eclipses the work of their debut album, Vivid. Like Vivid, Time's Up relies on the handiwork of lead guitarist Vernon Reid, who, along with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Steve Vai (now of Whitesnake ) , heads the pack of today's innovative guitarists. Reid's frequeNCy Various Artists Mammoth Records oooo l j he latest release from J Raleigh's Mammoth Records II is a collection of songs from I I up-and-coming North U Carolina bands. Unlike WXYC's Chapel Hill-centered DemoUsten Volume I, frequeNCy covers local music with a slick pro fessionalism that is designed to sell the bands to a larger audience. The songs here gravitate towards the drum-heavy guitar rock which domi nates the college radio scene. Rather than choosing new or ob scure material, the folks at Mammoth have selected well-known or radio ready cuts from the bands, many of which will be familiar to Cradleheads and local music aficionados The result is a top-notch compilation that should garner airplay for bands who have yet to receive national expo sure. The album leads off, strangely enough, with "It's Over," a melodic rumbler by favorite sons the Veldt. Plagued by Living Colour compari sons, twin brothers Daniel and Danny Chavis, et al. have yet to release their debut album on Mammoth, since leaving a fruitless deal with Capitol. Chapel Hill big boys Dillon Fence appear with their audience-pleaser "Frances." To the three or four people unfamiliar with the Fence, this four some cranks out contagious soul-infected rock, highlighted by the deep, mellow, he's-too-small-to-sing-like-that voice of frontman Greg Tim Little ANilhufffifo flamboyant deftness with the guitar not only blends well with the strong rhythms and background noise per formed by the rest of the group, but also enhances the entire album with dare I say it Hendrix-styled solos. Also deserving of praise are bassist Muzz Skillings, whose playing adds a refreshing soul quality to the music, and lead vocalist Corey Glover. But the unsung hero of the group is drummer William Calhoun whose clever percussion talents are thank fully not wasted. The first release from the album, "Type," is not the best track, but serves well as a style connector from the first album to the second, using a Vivid-like sound in a more mature fashion. Other highlights include "Under Cover Of Darkness," "Elvis is Dead" (which features a few words from Little Richard) and "Someone Brian Springer Humphreys. The Popes unleash their twisted account of a hippie drug house in "The Cornerhouse." The Hemingway-esque eye for detail evident in lines like "the music was Aqualung side two" and "a freak in a hammock said 'have some of this' he was wearing a 'Keep on Trucking shirtAnd pushed a bong up to my lips" is a perfect match for the churning three-piece hard-rock backdrop. The MTV-featured blackgirls provide a break in the hard rock stream with the acoustic, violin laced sounds of "Broken Leg."The beautiful harmonies crafted by members Eugenia Lee, Dana Kletter, and Hollis Brown are what might be called ethereal, in critical buzz-word lingo, and the song is highly reminiscent of "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. On a Saturday night uptown, there are two choices for dance-'til-you-hemorrhage rock the Sex Police and Johnny Quest. John Plymale and Sex Police appeared on DemoUsten, so Quest takes the honors here. Their contribution is the noisy-yet-danceable "Lady Cop," which sounds , like Sister Ray in an Arthur Murray studio. Vanilla Train wreck unloads what the liner notes call "a twisting ava lanche of sonic depravity" hard driving rock with a twinge of psychedelia. Despite indecipherable lyrics, with irresistible hooks and hy peractive bass this one takes my vote for the album's best cut. Like You.' Strangely enough, the group again gets the assistance of seemingly different-styled artists: rappers. Vivid featured raps by Chuck D. and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy and Time's Up follows with performances by Doug E. Fresh and Queen Latifah. But the unlikely combo works even better the second time around, especially in Latifah's mellow rap in "Under Cover Of Darkness." All in all, Time's Up is simply one for the ages a symbol of rock music in the early years of the 90's, which probably will be revealed in the fu ture as the best music of the decade. Don't look for any sudden downfalls in Living Colour or their music any time soon. O miserable OO mediocre OOO enjoyable OOOO quite good OOOOO unmissable , III SlUlllllbS; . : j , , - . T if M J Kurupsure provides the album's metal assault with a complex speed metal sound drawing on both Tri umph and Metallica, represented here by "The Damned." Leap of Faith and Finger add their melodic-yet-high-decibel fury with "Overcome" and "One Light Shinin," respectively. And Siamese Urbain comes across like Andrew Lloyd Webber on acid, blending thundering drums and syn thesized horns with picked guitars and striking contrapuntal female vo cals similar to Kate Bush. On "Geor gia JO," A Picture Made borrows This is no -Mart blue-light special, it's royal funk Prince Graffiti Bridge " Paisley ParkWarner Bros. 000012 n the summer of '84, his Royal Badness said, "Let there be rain ... purple rain." Thus began the storm of U Prince madness that included the sale of more than 10 million copies of his most accomplished ; work: the soundtrack to the suc cessful motion picture Purpk Rain. Six years and six albums later ( including one double album) , again ; : Prince conquers all with a 17-song soundtrack compilation, Graffiti Bridge, the sequel to Purple Rain, The unique aspect of this new master piece is that it has songs showcasing artists other than Prince, such as Mavis Staples, The Time, George Clinton and the Quincy Jones dis covery, Tevin Campbell, although of course all of the songs are either written, produced or instru mentally performed by Prince. But what really makes . Bridge work is that it shows off the range of blackgirl Hollis Brown on violin for the album's quiet closer. While DemoUsten is a must-buy on principle alone, frequeNCy suc ceeds better as an album. MTV, Spin, etc. seem to consider North Caro lina a possible successor to the rapidly stagnating Athens, G A scene, so ku dos to Mammoth for putting out a solid piece of vinyl for national con sumption. Since frequeNCy is not completely representative of the ex pandingNorth Carolina music scene, it is, one may hope, but the first in a series. A first-rate job. Tim Little Prince's critically-acclaimed "funk" sound. From the bluesy "The Ques tion of You" to the "ol'-style" funkadelicism of "We Can Funk" and "Love Machine," Prince mixes masses of tones and styles perfectly within each song. And with other strong tracks such as "Round and Round," "Melody Cool" and "Joy In Repetition," Prince makes a lot of cu-rent soul and R&B records look like blue-light specials at K-Mart. Die-hard Prince fans will hear a lot of trickled-down, familiar Prince aspects in the music. The lead-off ; song, "Can't Stop This Feeling I Got," recalls pre-1999 synthesized sound that was mastered on such albums as Controversy and Dirty Mind and the theme song title track is similar to the dream-like style of : 'The Ladder," featured on the al bum, Around The World In A Day. an a After listening to Bridge a few hundred times, the true music lover will only regret that he or she doesn't have a better stereo system. ,
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Sept. 6, 1990, edition 1
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