Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / April 1, 1993, edition 1 / Page 14
Part of Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
Page 4 • DTH • Omnibus Thursday • April 1, 1993 music charts WXYC 1. Falling off the Plaeet compilation (local bands) 2. Mnsci/Venosta A Noise, a Sound (world coilage) 3. Dog Faced Hermans Hum of Life (Scotch/Dutch punk) 4. Superchunk On the Mouth (local punk) 5. Hew Bomb Tnrks Destroy-oh-Boy (punk rock) 6. Paris Sleeping with the Enemy (rap) 7. Treepeople Just Kidding (Idaho punk pop) 8. Digable Planets reachin'(lounge jazz rap) 8. Charlie Feathers Uh Huh Honey (rockabilly legend) 10. Basehead Not in Kansas Anymore (hip hop) Top 10 1. Snow Informer 2. Silk Freak Me 3. Or. Ore Nuthin'ButA 'G" Thang 4. Whitney Honston I Have Nothing 5. Jade Don't Walk Away wniiney noasion I'm Every Woman 7. Duraa Duran Ordinary World 8. Arrested development Mr. Wendal 9. Ugly KM Jee Gat's In The Cradle 10. BeaJevl Bed of Boses GMATCUTS Hair You'll Love at a Price You'll Like! S() the courtyard 431 w. franklin st. willow creek shopping center H H 6020 jones fern' carrboro (Food Lion) no appointments Cappucino music keeps listener warm Bettie Serveert Palomine Matador Records ••—M2 By golly, it’s only April, and al ready critics are hailing this record as 1993’s Imperial f.f.r.r. (Unrest) or Slanted and En chanted (Pavement). Reviews of Neth erlands fuzzpop quartet Bettie Serveert have run in Spin, Alternative Press , Sassy and Rolling Stone. So were the glowing reviews justified? “Leg,” the opening track, was the warm and cozy. Slow, chiming guitars gradually speed up, drums are hardly there and basskeepsthequietnessnailed to the ground as lead singer Carol van Dijk croons "Tuesdays and Fridays, I wait at the bus stop/And guess who won't show up/I’m tired of waiting ...for you. “ Van Dijk’s and Peter Visser’s guitars are jangly, and they mingle with those old pals feedback and distortion. Along with Herman Bunskoeke’s rumbling bass and Berend Dubbe’s sloppy drums, you could easily compare them to Pavement, ex cept you don’t get the Lou Reed/Ray Davies-with-a-stuffy-nose singer this time around. Van Dijk possesses the voice that has been criminally missing in rock: an amazing blend of the quiet sensuality of MargoTimmons (Cowboy Junkies), the sunny warmth of Edie Brickell and the assured toughness of Chrissie Hynde (Pretenders). She croons, shrieks and whispers, often in the same line, and How much do they suck? Let us count the ways fIREHOSE Mr. Machinery Operator Columbia Records My roommate argues that it's not fair to. give this album only one blob. He argues that the only reason I don't like this album is because 1 don't like funky bass stuff and faster jazz stuff. He may have a point. I'm not real fond of the Sex Police, and I'm not real M^/7? Summer Leases! KENSINGTON MCE Weaver Dairy Rd. 967-0044 album KRISTI TURNBAUGH always with soulful beauty. Bettie’s songs seem meant to be lis tened to when it's raining outside and you're inside keeping warm, staring out the window and sipping cappucino. When listening, you get the feeling of familiarity that you’ve heard this stuff before (and I don’t mean Pavement), but you don’t know where and you don’t really care except that you’re hear ing it now and that’s all that matters. The eerily quiet “Brain-Tag” espe cially highlights van Dijk’s warm vo cals: “Down under lock and key, there’s a brain-tag to every secret/Now comes a time to figure out whether we should keep itlFeel familiar and l wanna feel some more/Have I ever laid my hands on you before? “ In “Tom Boy,” the first single, she shows her vulnerability when she sings, “From where I stand I can seel They’ve got the upper hand on me” but in the chorus, she fights back by asserting "You coil me a tom boy/And I love itl ’Cause only a tom boy /Could stand above it. “ Even in the wistful, lonely “Leg,” van Dijk explodes, screaming, “You won’t have me worried. I can still take care of myself. “ Obvious influences like the Velvet Underground and Neil Young apply, but don’t live by them. Live by this: the presence of Karen Carpenter’s drum riffs (it says so in the liner notes). Bettie earns extra cool points for having the impeccable taste to cover a Sebadoh song, “Healthy Sick.” I guess that makes album MARKPRINDLE familiar with jazz technique. He thinks this record sounds OK. In fact, he kinda likes it. I kinda liked the old Minutemen stuff, but I've never been real fond of fIREHOSE; I just don't think their stuff is as interesting. Yeah, me neither. So when I picked up this Mr. Machinery Operator thing, I thought, “Hey! 1 bet i'm not gonna like this!” But I was willing to listen. And 1 kinda enjoyed the first song, “Formal Introduction,” which has an enjoyable screwy guitar line with words like “I fuck the U S. Army and they fuck me ,” and'' you scratch my back, I'll scratch your jock-itch.” Now there’s a great pick-up line for ya! You just can’t get any more roman tic than personal fungi. The vocals were atrocious, but then, 1 can't sing worth a flaming pile of dog doo either. Then that second song was kinda generic, but still it was OK, and 1 started to have high hopes, but the next three songs were real bad! One sounded just like newer Dino saur Jr, and one was a boring instrumen tal, and the other one ... well, it just hurt. But I liked “Powerful Hankerin'.” I shook my groove thing to the neat rn jpr va ||| 1 lit .. JP fe P 4 * Jg * Jiv % JBp' Bettie’s small stuffed dog up for their dumb name, which comes from Dutch tennis legend Betty Stove (Bettie Serveert means “Betty serves”). Most of the songs on Palomine start slow, slowly speed up and maintain some sort of mid-tempo groove with the same three or four chords played over and over and over. (Only one tune, “Kid’s Allright” flat out rocks from start to finish, complete with the double tracking of van Dijk’s voice.) And com The decapitated members of fIREHOSE wiggly harmonic guitar thing, and there were more dumb sex lyrics ... at least I think they were sex lyrics. Truthfully, I have no clue. Might be about fishing, for all I know. But I liked it! But then what happened? The next eight songs all bit my big kangaroo! That's what happened! I couldn't sit through any of them!!! Not even the minute-and-a-half drum solo! The Meat Puppets cover was even more boring than the Meat Puppets themselves, and the rest were just atro cious, and the vocals were horrible. Superchunk's own “Mac” did a gui tar solo on one of the songs, but the song still sucked, although I really LIKE Superchunk, and... why does this record have to suck so bad??? I'm gonna get more threats on my MUSIC ing from someone who worships fast, punky tunes with little concern for un derstandable vocals, this wouldn’t seem to be my flavor o’ the month. But 1 sit alert, attentive and Indian-style in front of the stereo when listening to Bettie Serveert, entranced by its loveliness. Check them out when they hit Cat’s Cradle on April 15. That should be kinda lovely, too. answering machine from people who take their music too seriously. fIREHOSE are playing at the Cat's Cradle on April 12, and somebody's gonna tell them, “Hey —some reviewer guy trashed your album. You want me to give you his address?” Mike Watt's gonna hate me, but 1 did like the Minutemen, and I can tell that these guys can really play their instruments, but the songs are abysmal. \rcitings •—forget it ••—watt for a bargain bin buy ••• tape it from a friend ••••—bey it •••••—toy two copies
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 1, 1993, edition 1
14
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75