Page 4 DTH Omnibus
Thursday March 22, 1990
n
MUSIC I
Ex-Housemartins venture South
WXYC
1. Chills
Kaleidoscope World
2. MC SCO Foot Jesus
Hell with the lid off
3. Augustas Pablo
Rockers Story
4. Savage Republic
Customs
5. Pale Saints
77j Comforts of Madness
6. Silos
Sos
7. Various Artists
firaoro Cose Anti-Folk
8. Cynics
Rock-n-Roll
9. Wedding Present
flizzaro
10. Nice Strong Arm
Srass City
Rhythm & Blues
1. Quincy Jones
Back on the Block
2. Babyface
Tender Lover
3. Janet Jackson
Rhythm Nation 1814
4. Luther Vandross
The Best of Love
5. Miki Howard
Miki Howard
6. Michelle
Michelle
7. Regina Belle
S&y wtt Ate
8. Queen Latifah
All Hail to the Queen
9. 3rd Bass
The Cactus Album
10. Heavy D. & the Boyz
Billboard
All you do
The Black Crowes
Shake Your Moneymaker
Def American
12
hat can you say about a
group of guys that drive
their car into a trash
dumpster so they can
have the real thing and
not a sound effect on their album?
The Black Crowes have no con
cept of compromise. Their debut
album, $hake Your Moneymaker, is a
no-holds-barred throwback to the
heyday of Southern rock, marked by
a fervent intensity and a shattering
depth of emotion. This is classic stuff.
If you're looking for pretty-boys with
mass-produced lyrics and pre-fabri-cated
hooks, pack up and go home.
This group plays a raw, emotional
brand of rock'n'roll seldom seen in
today's high-gloss industry.
"We want to bring back thap ex-
The Beautiful South
Welcome tothe Beautiful South
Elektra
12
hen the Housemartins
broke up following their
1988 release, The People
Who Grinned Them
selves To Death, fans
were quite sure that any independent
projects or collaborations of individ
ual band members would retain the
same "happy-pop" British folk melo
dies that held the group on top of the
U.K. charts. But when the House
martins duo of singer Paul Heaton
and drummer Dave Hemingway
combined with other musicians to
form a rather eclectic-sounding quin
tet, The Beautiful South, the result
was a quieter, more poised sound, full
of soft, flowing ballads intermixed with
fusions of jazz and soul rhythms. This
cleaner, soulful sound is captured bril
liantly on the band's debut LP, WeU
come to the Beautiful South.
The first two songs, "Song for
Whoever" and "Have You Ever Been
Away," establish the gentle, tranquil
mood of the album. The band re
places traditional guitar riffs with
broader sounding pianos, woodwinds
and horns, creating a sense of ball
room grandeur rather than stadium
or garage rock. Heaton's heavily ac
cented voice can eventually become
annoying, but the band cleverly al
ternates vocal leads between band
members and guest vocalist Brianna
Corrigan, resulting in an ever-changing
and delightful sound. Heaton also
shifts his own vocal textures between
boyish whispers and fuller, soul-like
tones. The only track that closely
is shake well and serve with a
l
citement when a fan would be in the
blood of it all," says vocalist Chris
Robinson, "when you knew every
thing about a song like you knew
your girlfriend. When you know that
the guy who wrote it really felt that
way."
The best thing about $hake Your
Moneymaker is that it was obviously
recorded by a bunch of guys who just
threw on their jeans and whatever
old T-shirts they could find, picked
up their battered guitars, and played
for the sheer love of reckless
rock'n'roll. There's an honesty and a
reality to the album that is all the
more stunning for its rejection of the
glossed-over psuedo-emotion common
Charles Marshall
matches a Housemartins track musi
cally is "From Under the Covers,"
with its linear melody and folk-laden
hooks.
As the Housemartins lyricist,
Heaton was an "upbeat Morrissey."
He carefully painted accurate pic
tures of British culture and society,
rallying behind the working class in
tracks like, "We Are Not Going
Back," and attacking urban capital
ism with angry satire in "Bow Down."
But where Morrissey wailed and
moaned, Heaton jumped and jangled
(dancing merrily through his social
commentary?).
In his new effort, Heaton retains
his picturesque articulation of socie
tal ills and political struggles. "Woman
In the Wall" offers a disturbing re
count of a drunken domestic mur
der, while in "Oh Blackpool" Hea
ton wonders which way to ride the
shifting political tides, pleading, "I'm
out tonight and I can't decide be
tween Soviet hip or British pride."
Most of Heaton's new themes deal
with the excesses and shallowness of
popular culture. In "Straight in at
37" Heaton attacks musical commer
cialization and the emphasis on physi
cal pleasures to quench the public's
lustful appetite. He writes, "Why don't
your videos have dancing girls? With
hips that curve and lips that curl
Legs are where the heartbeat starts
It's low in neckline and high in
charts."
Heaton then comments on the
fickleness of "loyal" fans in the jazzy,
"Love is ..." singing: "Ooh you know,
you really, really know inside out-
to today's charts, a la Poison.
With the alternately crunchy and
whiskey-smooth twin attack guitars
of Rich Robinson (Chris' brother)
and Jeff Cease, the solid-but-never-intrusive
drums of Steve Gorman and
the sultry bass of Johnny Colt, the
Crowes make Moneymaker the epit
ome of what made rock'n'roll great
the classic "'three chords and a
bottle of beer,' lowdown, no-account
scum with an attitude and little else"
formula. The Crowes are in touch
with their roots in a big way.
The blues on the album are so
tangible, you can reach out and run
your fingers through them. It's sultry
and sensuous, with a decadent, las
civious edge to it.
The Stones do Skynyrd. Skynyrd
does the Stones. The Stones and
Skynyrd do each other. Wait a min
ute, that doesn't sound quite right ...
Anyway, you get the idea.
It's hard not to like the Crowes
they've essentially taken every
thing you've liked in the past two
decades and recombined it in new
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side in, from head to toe But were
you there in the colder days I'd like
to know." Later in the song, he twists
the Beatles' inspiring love song, "She
Loves You," into an egomaniac solo
ending with "I Love Me." "You Keep
It All In" is a beautiful ballad that
begins like a duet and then integrates
even more vocal leads. "I'll Sail This
Ship Alone" features an orchestral
sounding melody that becomes more
enjoyable with each listen.
The lyrical content within Wel
come to the Beautiful South is dense,
to say the least. The poetic stanzas
fit brilliantly into the soft, flowing
accompaniment and diverse, subtle
instrumentations. Welcome to the
Beautiful South is a successful piece of
cohesive artistic quality. It is defi
form. The group's first single, "Jeal
ous Again," is representative of their
music: a little Stones, a little Skynyrd,
a little Aerosmith real Aerosmith,
no"Dude Looks Like A Lady" or "Love
in an Elevator" schlock shake well,
serve with a six-pack. It's nothing
that's actually new, but it seems fresh
and exciting in light of the current
drivel masquerading as music. The
fact that they do pull it off, and sound
good doing it, attests to their' talent.
"Sister Luck" is pure Skynyrd. You
need to have a bottle (not a can, a
bottle) of beer in one hand and a
pool cue in the other, and preferably
be surrounded by cigarette smoke, to
realize the full effect of this song.
"Seeing Things" is a classic
rock'n'soul ballad a thing most
heavy metal power ballads try to pull
off, but never manage. The Crowes
do something not many bands can
do retain the blues and the soul
necessary to keep the song from being
just another gratuitous ballad.
"Thick N' Thin," a song described
by Chris Robinson as "a nasty little
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nitely not in line with the traditional
Housemartins rhythms. Though the
tempo is much slower and the sound
softer and more mellow, the music is
more complex and skillfully inter
woven to produce a surprisingly en
tertaining sound. Welcome to the
Beautiful South may not be one of the
best-selling albums of this year, but
it may be one of the most enjoyable.
O miserable
00 mediocre
OOO enjoyable
OOOO quite good
OOOOO unmissable
six-pack
song that Mom wouldn't like if she
knew what I was talking about," is
the afore-mentioned "trash dumpster"
song. Gorman rammed his '66 Dodge
Dart into the dumpster outside the
recording studio seven times to make
sure the group had the sound they
wanted. Unfortunately, I'm not sure
this song was worth it.
But that's the one dark spot on
Moneymaker, an album that includes
(there's no other word) classic-sounding
tracks like "Struttin Blues" and
"Twice As Hard," from a group that's
not afraid to put its real feelings into
its music.
Where have these guys been all
my life?
kill 'em all
I used to love her,
but I had to kill her
what's not to like?
'check this shit out!1
I tost my underwear