MIDI Merging’Fabulous Thunderbirds$2.25 NO. 92 JUNE 1986 ICD 08582

JoeJ ackson^World Class Act Returns
to Rock By Scott Isler

Bob Seger
The Darker Side iof Success Â’ By Timothy White g ||John Lydon

What MadeJohnny Rotten?
By Charles M. Young

92511 AN NAIXOOdBIS 59 E2ST
VUU3G NJ>
Hfi AO Nb9 ÛME ¿5 WUG ÃÚ
74820 08582

Tuning was neverthis sophisticatedor this simple.
Tune anything from alute to a sampling synthwith KORG's DTM-12
Digital Tuner/Metronome.
It's KORG's most advanced tuner, andthat means it's the most advanced tuner —period. Automatic digital circuitry forhands-off convenience and total accuracy.
True signal bypass, so you can leave your in¬strument plugged in without affecting yoursound quality. An LCD display that tells you
the name and octave of the note you're play¬ing. as well as the calibration standard.
Choose from two calibration ranges — con¬ventional A from 430-450 Hz. or A 410-420
for baroque music.

The DTM-12 lets you tune by eye, ear orboth. The LED meter zeroes you in on theexact pitch visually, with a seven octave
range that covers every instrument in theorchestra — or the band. If you tune by ear.

the DTM-12 will give you four octaves of ref¬erence tones from its internal speaker.
Play with ‘click tracks' using the DTM-12's
built in metronome. The LEDs mark time
like a baton with flashes on each down beat,so you can follow the time by sight or bysound. Programmable audible or visible
downbeats let you set measures anywherefrom two to nine beats long. The tempo
is displayed on LCD; range is a full
40-208 beats per minute.
The DTM-12 comes complete with ear¬phone. AC adapter and soft carrying case.
For the stage, the practice room, the studioor the classroom. KORG's sophisticatedtuning technology makes the DTM-12 theeasiest, most accurate tuning and timing
standard ever.
For a free catalog of KORG products, send
your name and address, plus $1.00 for
postage and handling to: Korg U.S.A.,
89 Frost St., Westbury, New York 11590.
KORG products exclusively distributed in
Canada by: Erikson Music. 378 Isabey St.,
St. Laurent. Quebec H4T 1W1

KORG

Exclusively
distributed by
Korg USA Inc
c Korg 1986

MORE FOR YOUR MUSIC.

THE STEP

EYOND

Korg DW-8000: Totally TouchSensitive/The Widest Range of
Digital & Analog 5ounds/Built-ln
Programmable Digital Delay

contemporary sounds and beyond withexceptional depth and a unique character
all their own. DWG5 technology combines
the benefits of Digital Sampling, Digital
Waveforms and Analog Sounds in a flexi¬
ble and easy-to-control format.
The 8-Voice DW-8000 provides all pa¬
rameters critical to creating truly person¬
alized patches. Even a programmable
Digital Delay to integrate specific effects
like long and short echo, flanging andchorusing into each of the 8000'5 64
programs.

With the introduction of the new
DW-8000 Digital Waveform Synthesizer,
Korg moves straight to the head of theclass. The DW-8000 finally delivers what
the others only promise: the brilliance,
realism and clarity of digital sound alongwith the warmth and fatness of analog
sound. Our proprietary DWG5 System
leaves in the mystique of digital sound,and tabes out the mystery of digitalprogramming.

SOUNDS BEYOND
Korg's unique Digital Waveform Gener¬
ating System (DWG5) was developed to
produce the widest panorama of today’s

TOUCH BEYOND
The DW-8000'5 touch-sensitivity
makes sound come alive. Comprehensive
touch control combines Pressure and Ve¬
locity Sensitivity — individually program¬
mable for every patch.
Pressure-Sensitive control added to
Velocity-Sensitive control, plus four Key

KORG OW-SOOO
Assign modes, Oscillator Auto-Bend anda 5ync-able Arpeggiator allow every aspectof a player's touch to be programmed
into each patch.
The new Korg DW-8000 is based on
the notion that the creation of soundshould flow as a continuous process. It
enhances the player's ability to hear theunheard and get there.
Fora DW-8000 color brochure, please
send $1.00 (check or money order) to
Korg U5A, 89 Frost St, Westbury, hew York
11590.
For the name of the Korg dealer
nearest you call: (516) 535-9100.
BBBBBBBB« Exclusively
EH HU H V d'S'nOuted o»fW BI Il ll
Korg USA ■WBMBc Korg 1985

MORE FOR YOUR MUSIC.

ALPHA JUNO 1 & 2

ac flashy Matures and a flash ,0 operate the n. „ soüoû5' ds that are sure to move any mu^ new AlDh= ,a'e^^mance B° th Alpha JLJNOs offer PovveX/T S ^'Opin^0 1 a
Ot nCO 8 parameter envelopes) butaUh P ° Un(i synh toprooramming M>S^^Laocesnial Just whirl it to edit any of thef£a,Jres Th

P atches-sound ProgramZn^6'Pat^
Zl 64 Tart an M- 64 c Memory Cartr,d 9e a n7^ has npi cf>esor,06

a\^°’ sSy mod, ’y the many re,afed paran.y°hify^ p^tc¿
Ä, Modulation Rate andof ¿Xs£C\ie\o9e W uch of the Alpha Dia/—a system dt sar^ce
can add the optional PG-300 ProJ¿
nr y°ü caLno even easier. You’ll also finH^Prtn
P^^^o ementation to be the most son^ AlPha^ e 'CsW 'T Most amazing is that a// tb es X^*eÄe. Which means they re^s ^t

aV\UsUÿa°§3

GARY GERSHOFF/RETNA JOHN BELLISSIMO/RETNA

Joe Jackson 56
Snob Rock: Joe Jackson’s
first take. What’s more an¬noying than a guy who
thinks he’s hot? When heproves he’s right.

By Scott Isler

Chick Corea

By Josef Woodard

MIDI Merging

By Alan di Perna

Bob Seger 50
Bob Rock: Singing for the■slob on the job. Bob Seger
tries to make himself “totally
open”— without being acrybaby. The risks are ap¬
parent. So are the rewards.

By Timothy White

FabulousThunderbirds 10
By J. D. Considine

Level 42

By Rob Tannenbaum

Jackson Browne 19
Robin Millar

By Vic Garbarini

By Richard Buskin

Developments

By Jock Baird

MASTHEADLETTERSFACESRECORD REVIEWSROCK SHORT TAKES

Johnny Lydon 64
Gob Rock: The skeletons in John
Lydon’s closet. Everyone thinks
they know who Johnny Rotten is, but
do they? For the first time everthe real story.

By Charles M. Young

JAZZ SHORTTAKES
INDIE SHORTTAKES
CLASSIFIEDSREADER SERVICEJUNE 1986 NO. 92

A BILLBOARD PUBLICATION
Cover Photograph of Joe Jackson by David
Stewart, Bob Seger by Aaron Rapoport. John
Lydon by Davies and Starr—Make-up Maggie
Baker, Hair— Fraser Francis.

MUSTIAN

Publisher
Gordon Baird
Executive Publisher
Gary Krasner
Associate Publisher
Paul Sacksman
EditorJock Baird
Art Director
Gary Koepke
Senior Editor
Scott Isler
Executive Editor
Bill Flanagan
Advertising Manager
Ross Garnick
Pacific Editor
Mark Rowland
Contributing Editors
Timothy White Charles M. YoungFrancis Davis Freff Rafi Zabor
Josef Woodard J.D. Considine
David Fricke Rob Tannenbaum
Dealer Sales Director
R. Bradford Lee
Sales/Promotion
J R. MorsePeter B. Wostrel
Production Manager
Joan E. Lockhart
Assistant Editor
Keith Powers
Assistant Art Director
Lisa Laarman
Production
Will Hunt
Typography
Ruth Maassen Cindy Amero
Assistant to the Publisher
Michelle Nicastro
Administration
Peter Cronin Annette Dion
Main Office/Production/Retail Sales
31 Commercial St., P.O. Box 701
Gloucester, MA 01930 (617)281-3110
New York Advertising/Editorial
MUSICIAN, 1515 Broadway, 39 fl.
N.Y.C., NY 10036 (212) 764-7395
Circulation Director
Barbara Eskin
Subscriber Service
Cathie Geraghty (212) 764-7536
Founders
Gordon Baird & Sam HoldsworthMusician (USPS 431-910) is published monthly by
Amordian Press, Inc., P.O Box 701,31 Commercial St.,
Gloucester, MA 01930 (617)281-3110. Amordian
Press, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Billboard
Publications, Inc., One Astor Place, 1515 Broadway,
New York City, NY 10036. Musician is a trademark of
Amordian Press, Inc. © 1986 by Musician, all rights re¬served Second class postage paid at Gloucester, MA
01930 and at additional mailing offices. Subscriptions$20 per year, $38 for two years, $54 for three years.
Canada and elsewhere, add $8 per year, U.S. funds
only Subscription address: Musician, Box 1923,
Marion, OH 43305. Postmaster send form 3579 toabove address.
Current and back issues are available on microfilm from
University Microfilms Inti., 300 N Zeeb Road, Ann
Arbor, Ml 48106.
Billboard Publications, Inc. President and Chief
Executive Officer: Gerald S Hobbs; Executive Vice
President: Samuel S. Holdsworth; Senior Vice Presi¬
dent: Ann Haire. Vice Presidents: John B Babcock,
Paul Curran. Martin R. Feely. Rosalee Lovett, Lee Zhito.

6

tn us) Roland's spunky new TR-505 Rhythm Com„.. t 9\hs.2°z }0, ahn Percussion instruments. But don’t let ¡ t^ Pos^ SpOrfc
Aru^ a 0 weight digital PCM samples of kick, snare tn^" ^ann
QbO Ä^^jasts ^£-16 voices in all to give your rhythm tr'ac^’ han ^S
X öo\V ^0^\c and co^be"( B hjnd a|¡ thjs bra .
snnhc*S’ Wear^?5'¿uro sound and make this drum machine yomZ^Or/^eand ^7 0^n dru m patterns (in real-time o tin ? e f'^ta PU'
er“hS*-* r T h °" ”°' S"si^oQ’a^60 «ack of ev®^ beat a "d P^o^ance parameter 9
nta ^yUaCn haven’t seen. The TR-505 is a thoroiinhi But that*^ es Sd controls including an ability to respS^.^em
Cj^was 4 '®n\ teature 5 a™
sat¡| e TR-505 scores an easy Tpc^ 0 ^na^ 01
my“'" s*

McManus Attack
Bill Flanagan deserves araise. He is continuously writ¬ing excellent articles and"The Last Elvis Costello Inter¬view” is his best yet. Elvis
Costello is one of the best
songwriters of this day andage and his lyricism issuperior. Keep it up!
Gregg La Gambina
Wilton, CT

I was extremely saddened
to read about the departureof Elvis Costello from themusical world. I thought
Rockpile breaking up wasdepressing, but this reallyhurts! Personally, I’ve neverenjoyed any artist more thanElvis (my wife and I even

named our female cat Elvis—
has a nice ring to it, doesn’tit?— a cat named Elvis).
His songwriting talents
evoked emotions in me I
didn't think I had, and more
importantly, he helped getme through college. I justhope all his albums are re¬leased on CD’s— my vinyl iswearing thin. I, sniff, I’mafraid, sniff-sniff, I have to go
now before L. Wah wah
waaaaaaaaaaaahhh.
John Puffer
Milwaukee. Wl
Even if he changed his nameto Paul Simon, Elvis Costello
couldn't write a song like"American Tune."
Patrice Margaret
Mansfield, OH

I was really depressed byyour Elvis Costello inter¬view—it sounds like he’s
abandoning all of the songs
he’s written. Elvis/Declan
may feel like he wasted all
those years, but I think thathe’s produced many won¬
derful songs. However, I do
understand his bitterness
8

over having to be someone
he isn’t for over eight years,
so bring on the CostelloShow featuring Declan
McManus, and wave a sad
goodbye to Elvis Costello &the Attractions.
Karl Hendricks
Port Vue, PA

I am so tired of Elvis Costello
criticizing everything he everwrote. Why doesn't he justput a disclaimer on all of hisalbums, saying he was justtoo drunk or stoned or what-ever it was that prevented
him from producing the ulti¬
mate work of art that I’m sure
he feels he is capable of pro¬ducing.
Trent Delomore
Los Gatos, CA
Why would you want towaste thirteen pages of yourmagazine interviewing sucha worthless character as
Elvis Costello? His com¬ments regarding Led Zeppe¬
lin as "charlatans andthieves” are as one-sided as
his depthless pop songs. I
for one am glad this is thelast Elvis Costello interview.
Wade Coleman
Kingsport, TN

It appears that Elvis, I mean
Declan, has the typical, putyour-old-work-down syn¬drome. If it doesn't meanmuch to him anymore it still
does to us.
Carol A.R. Spencer
Victoria, BC
Stu Remembered
I should have known that
Musician would be the one
publication to appreciate Ian
Stewart's musical contribu¬
tions, both to the Stones andto others such as Ronnie
Lane, Led Zeppelin andRocket 88.1 will miss his
playing, both on record andin concert, and his intelligent
and gracious perspective at
the times when the Stones hit
the height of craziness. To
me, a die-hard tan of twentytwo years, there always havebeen and always will be six
Rolling Stones.
Susan Jelcich
Wood-Ridge, NJ

I was lucky enough in 1983
to be in London and catch
Ian Stewart, along with Char¬lie Watts and some otherjazz-blues buffs, playing a
set of their beloved boogiewoogie blues at the 100
Club. It was an experience
I'll never forget and unfortu¬
nately, will never get to re¬peat. Thanks again for thearticle which brought backthe memory of hearing themswing that night.
Robert Francis
Houston, TX
Different Drummers
Thanks for your special per¬cussion section in the March’86 issue of Musician. I'm a
drummer-singer with the
Ohio-based, country-rockband Silver Wings, and I
found the special section to
be very informative.
Mike Gladden
Johnstown, OH
About the Dave Van
Tieghem article: Here’s a few
extra percussive hints. Don’t
forget the diehard spiralbound notebook and the al¬
mighty album cover. I’m sure
we've all tapped a finger or
two on these items during
our youth.
RoscoeBloomington, IN
J D. Considine’s comment in
the recent Tony Thompson
article that “John Bonham’s
mighty thump seemed rather
puny next to the Power Sta¬tion’s drum sound" is rather
casually stated, but indi¬cates a lack of musicalawareness amongst many of
today's listeners. Bonham's
drumming transcended any
technique or apparatus used
to record him. He sounded
gigantic because of how hehit the drum, the balance heplayed them in, his tuning,and most importantly, thepocket, the time relationship,
the groove. There is not asingle drummer I've heard
who approaches John
Bonham's "sound,” and eventhough there are many tech¬nically superior drum sounds
out there today, recording
technique is no substitute forfeel.
Danny Caccavo
New York, NY
Al’s Soul
Count your blessings, sub¬tract your problems, and goout and apologize to your rac¬coon. Thanks to Al Green for
his insight. It makes a lot ofsense and it's easier to re¬member than most sermons.
Eric Stevens
Ottawa, ONT
What’s the big deal? WhenAl Green sings gospel, he's
respectable, and when
Stryper, or Amy Grant, or
Bruce Cockburn, or Dylan
sing gospel, it’s a cheap gim¬mick. It’s the same old story.
You press people think gos¬
pel music is the black cul¬ture's private turf, and any¬
one else who touches it isinsincere, perverted, insane
or worse.
The simple truth is that
Stryper and Al Green singabout Jesus for the same
reasons. Granted, Green is
an immortal genius and I'm
not trying to put him andStryper on the same artistic
pedestal, but for Christ’s
sake (and I mean that in themost reverent sense), stop
this nonsense about gospel
being exclusively blackmusic. Gospel is a message,
not a style.
Dwight Liles
Mt. Pleasant, TN
No More Calls Please....
Congratulations to Girl'sNight Out of Boston, MA. and
Visions of Cleveland, OH.
Both bands have tied andwon the fourth and final
round of the MUSICIAN/JBL“Best Unsigned Band" con¬test. Each group will receive
over $6,500 worth of JBL Pro¬
fessional sound equipment.
Tune in to next month's issue
for the announcement of the
grand prize winner and thecomplete contest wrap-up.
Film at eleven.

The amp heard aroundthe world.
Whether it’s the recording studios of London, the concert stages of New York,the garages of L.A. or the nightclubs of Sydney, one amplifier has done more
to shape the sound of modern music than any other amplifier in the world.
It all began in 1948 when the first Telecaster® was born. All that was needed
was an amplifier to match the classic electric. That’s when Fender created theSuper and Pro amplifiers, giving a whole generation the power of expression.
It marked the genesis of a musical revolution that swept across the world.
The Super and Pro were followed by the Champ," Bassman® Twin," Concert"and Showman* amplifiers. They’re all now recognized classics that have seen
every mile of every world tour from Lodi to Liverpool and back again.
And they’re the only true international amplifiers made. Designed with input
from the world’s greatest musicians and crafted in the UnitedStates and Japan, Fender amplifiers are engineered for playerswith features professionals need. And a great sound that you
can rely on night after night, year after year.
Played around the world, made around the world, one
amplifier is the past and the future of electric music.
© 1986 Fender Musical Instruments

The Fabulous
Thunderbirds
ByJ.D. Considine
FROM RIBJOINTS TO
MOVIES, THE T-BIRDS
MAKE IT TOUGH ENOUGH

isn’t just acting, either. These guys play
together as if they were born for thatvery purpose.
Not that they get mystical about it oranything, but there does seem to be alittle more than chance in the way inwhich these four guys wound up in thesame band in Austin. Jimmy Vaughan,
the only native Texan in the bunch, wasthe first on the scene, arriving from Dal¬las in 1969.
Why Austin? “You were less likely to
get the shit beat out of you in Austin as
you were in Dallas or Houston,” he ex¬plains in perfect deadpan. “I mean, I
knew when I moved down there that I
could get a gig playing. They wouldn't
let me play what I wanted to in Dallas. I’dwanted to play with a harmonica, anddo Slim Harpo and all that dirty stuff.
They'd say, 'Who are you?’ and 'What’sthat?’ in Dallas.
“So I said, ‘Okay, I'm going to Austin. I
know I can at least play in the hippie
clubs, or something."’
Vaughan did well enough in Austin,
forming a well-regarded band called
Storm. He also had a group called
Cobra, which featured his little brother
Stevie Ray. But it wasn’t until 1974 thatVaughan heard the sound he was wait¬
ing for. “I was playing in this barbecue

STEVE MARSEL

ne of the problems with life inmovieland is that things arenever what they seem. WhenPaul Schrader's Light of Day fi¬
nally hits the theaters, audiences will
see one sequence in which the Fabu¬
lous Thunderbirds perform their big hit“Twist It Up" before a rabid crowd in
Cleveland. So far as can be gleaned
backstage during the shoot, the idea
behind the scene has to do with the con¬trast between the big-time cool of the TBirds and the small-time hopes of the
struggling top-forty band built aroundthe brother-and-sister team of Joan Jettand Michael J. Fox.

In reality, Cleveland is being playedby Chicago, the fans are being playedlargely by kids who'd never heard of the
Fabulous Thunderbirds, while the band
members themselves are playing a tune
they hadn’t really learned yet. “That’s
because I'm just playing the song forthe second time," explains guitarist
Jimmy Vaughan. "We wrote it in Austra¬lia four or five days ago."
Granted, that’s not the way the TBirds usually do things, but everybody
makes exceptions for the movies. Theband had been contacted a few days
before the shoot, while in the midst of anAustralian tour, and asked to produce a
cassette demo of a new song for thefilm.
So they sat down that afternoon andwrote one.
“We were playing in a hall, and we
had the day off," explains bassist Pres¬ton Hubbard, “so we rented the hall towork the song up." He adds, “Wehaven't had much time lately.”
Still, you wouldn’t have guessed itfrom watching them. By the time thecameras begin to roll, the T-Birds look
as if they'd been playing the song foryears, from singer Kim Wilson's gruff,
offhand charisma right down to drum¬
mer Fran Christina's rock-steady beat. It

Wilson, Christina, Vaughan & Hubbard with Neptune & Venus.

10Choosing the right sampling keyboard
is an open and shut case.
There are lots of reasons why you see more Mirages on stage and in studios thanany other sampling keyboard. Besides being affordable, the Mirage can performmusical tricks* other keyboards can only envy.
The Ensoniq Sound Library now contains over 300 distinct sounds —from grandpiano and strings to synthesizer and screaming electric guitar—all on fast-loading
standard 3.5" diskettes. The Mirage can also sample any sound you can get a mikeon. opening a whole new universe of sonic possibilities. And for serious samplers
there are sound editing programs available for all major personal computers.
If your setup already includes a MIDI keyboard or controller, consider the Mirage
Digital Multi-Sampler. It’s designed specifically for MIDI performance and stu¬
dio use and it’s everything a Mirage is... without the keyboard.
Visit your authorized Ensoniq dealer today. See and hear why twice as manymusicians have chosen the Mirage over all other multi-samplers combined.

*lf sawing a waveform in half or pulling an entire string section out of a disk sounds like your kindof magic, a Mirage can make you a wizard The Mirage Digital Multi-Sampler retails for $1395—
the Mirage Digital Sampling Keyboard. $1695.

ensoniq]
ENSONIQ Corp, 263 Great Valley Parkway. Malvern. PA 19355 □ Canada: 6969 Trans Canada Hwy., Suite 123, St. Laurent. Que H4T 1V8 □ ENSONIQ Europe.
65 Ave de Stalingrad. 1000 Brussels □ Japan: Sakata Shokai, Ltd., Minami Morimachi - Chu-0 Building, 6-2 Higashi-Tenma, 2-Chome, Kita-Ku. Osaka. 503

place and Kim came in. I heard him
play, quit my band, and got a band withhim. That’s about it.”
Kim Wilson remembers things with alittle more detail. The California-bornsinger/harmonica player had only beenin Austin a few days when he met
Jimmy. “A lady in Austin had offered mea little business deal that had to do witha record label, production company, allthis kind of stuff," he says. “I was living
in Minnesota at the time, and I made her
buy me a round-trip ticket, because I’dnever met her before. I was down there
for about a week, and she took me
everywhere. She took me to this rib joint
called Alexander’s, outside of town.
Jimmy was playing there in a band
called Storm.

"At the time, I really didn’t listen to himthat much, because I was too interested
in whippin' up on the harmonica playerthat was there. But I do remember one
thing, and that was 'Everything’s Gonna
Be Alright’ by Little Walter. That's some¬thing that, for the guitarist, is tough to doright, and he played it [perfectly]."
Wilson sat in with part of the band dur¬
ing a break, and “the crowd loved it. It
was great. I met Jimmy, shook his hand.
Then I left, went back up to Minnesota,
because the business thing didn’t seemto be happening. A month later, Jimmy
gave me a call and said, 'Hey, I'm com¬ing up there."’ Needless to say, Wilson
was a bit taken aback by such en¬
thusiasm on the part of a guitarist he’dbarely heard, but the more he heard

Vaughan play, the more he was con¬vinced that Austin was the place to be.
Still, there were a few problems withthe band’s line-up. The drummer, for in¬
stance, turned out to be less-than-enthralled with the rigors of roadwork. "He
had never been out of Texas before,"laughs Christina. “He got up to Boston
with them, and just totally freaked out,
took off in the middle of the tour without
telling anybody he was going."
A mutual friend recommended Chris¬tina as a replacement. “He said, ‘Well, I
know this guy, but he’s in Canada andhasn't got a telephone.' I had thought I'd
get out of music for a while, so I moved

THUNDERBIRD PARTSI've always liked Fender guitars, ” Jimmy
Vaughan insists. “Just basic, straight
Stratocasters or Telecasters. Either
way. I don’t care if they're old, or thosevintage ones.” Despite his loyalty to Fen¬der, Vaughan also has several Robins.
“Robins are like mutated Fenders. They
just look a little different.” His effects in¬clude an ADA multi-effects with echo anda doubler, and he also uses an old Fender
Leslie cabinet along with the more tradi¬tional reverb and tremolo. His amps are“almost always" Fender. His strings are
D'Addario, a customized set he de¬scribes as being “basically just a lightgauge, starting with a .010.” He also uses
a Danelectro six-string bass he got from
Dave Edmunds.
Kim Wilson plays Hohner Marine Bandharmonicas. He also has a 64-Chromatica. He uses an Astatic JT-30 mikewith a stand-by switch drilled into it for his
harps, and sends the signal through a
MESA/Boogie amp. His vocal mike is a
Beyer or a Shure SM57.
Preston Hubbard carries an old Kay
double-bass on the road, "because it's
very sturdy, very road-worthy. It can takeall the knocks, and my good bass can't.”Thus, his best instrument, a German
carved bass, stays at home. His pick-up
was custom-built by Charlie Helpinstill.
For his electric work, Hubbard uses a '65
Fender Jazz bass, plus a Robin bass. His
rig is all Peavey, with a Mark VI amp andDietz cabinets, which are custom-madein Austin, with two or four 15-inch speak¬ers. His strings are Tomastic Spiracore
for the double-bass, and Fender medium
flats for the J-bass.
“I was always a big fan of old Slinger¬
land Radio Kings,” says Fran Christina of
his drum sound. "I designed a kit thatwould hold up on the road, and have theright sound for being miked.” The result¬ing kit boasts Yamaha tension casings,
Premier ribs, Pearl stands and Sonor
pedals. His snare is extra deep andwooden, because “I like the more woodysound, but it's got to have the projection.”
The heads are usually straight-coatedRemo Ambassadors or Emperors, and heprefers double heads. His cymbals are
Avedis Zildjian, except for a K. Zildjian
crash, and he prefers Hann’s hickoryrock sticks.

12

Enchanted eve

Chuck Mangione
Save Tbnight For Me *Chuck Mangione is the undisputed master
I of the flugelhorn, and on his new album
I and single, "Save Tonight For Me,” theI sound is truly magical. The album is full
I of surprises including a mesmerizing
I “storytelling rap" by Chuck himself,
j Save tonight for Chuck Mangione.

Nancy Wilson
Keep You Satisfied

Spend tonight with
Chuck Mangione
and Nancy Wilson.
On Columbia Records
and Cassettes.

Nancy Wilson delivers just what the title. of her great new album promises. She'll
1 "Keep You Satisfied" all evening long
I with her smooth and soulful voice. The
I album combines jazz, blues, soul andI pop to create the ideal showcase for thisI diverse song stylist to cast her spell.

*Also available on Compact Disc.
"Columbia.’ are trademarks of CBS Inc

1 1986 CBS Inc

U INTRODUCING
JONATHAN BUTLER
reveals a guitarist of uncommon sensiti¬
vity with an undeniable gift for melody.
The links to such guitar heroes as George
Benson and Wes Montgomeiy are unmis¬
takable, yet Jonathan makes his own
statement in his own way. Discover for
yourself the sublime sound of this very
special artist J,-Bill Milkowski/Downbeat/(Excerpts From Liner Notes)
Introducing Jonathan Butler, the American debut
album from an exceptional guitarist and composer.
Features the songs “Baby Please
Don’t Take It (I Need Your
Love),” “Crossroads Revisited,”“Gentle Love” and more.
AVAILABLE ON JIVE RECORDS,CASSETTES & COMPACT DISCS.

14

to Nova Scotia, where I have a little farm.
I was living in the sticks— no runningwater, no telephone, no nothing.
"What they did was call the Canadian
Mounties. And the Mounties always get
their man. I was out working with thehorse, and the Mounties came up. I’m
standing there, wondering, 'Oh, no!
What did I do?'”After learning that he was not wanted
for a crime but for a gig, he set off tomeet the T-Birds in London, Ontario,
hitchhiking across Canada. "Finally, I’m
standing outside of the gig when theypull up, and it was like, 'Uh...are you theThunderbirds?”’ Christina, who laughsthat he “looked like a lumberjack backthen,” didn't exactly inspire confidence.
“They said, 'Are you the drummer?' I
said yeah. And we looked at each otherlike, ‘Hmmmm, what am I getting into?’"Things worked out, though. “There
was no time for rehearsal or nothing. We
went into this club and played, and it
was like we had played with each otherall our lives."
Two years ago, bassist Keith Fergu¬
son was replaced by Hubbard, formerlyof Roomful of Blues, but even this switch
seemed blessed. After all, the T-Birds
and Roomful first learned of each otherthrough Muddy Waters.
Part of what makes the T-Birds tick istheir common taste. As Jimmy Vaughan
puts it, "I think that we all learned to playfrom the same guys that our heroes
did." Each musician learned out of love
for the music, and an almost fanatic
curiosity about the way it worked.
“See, we're all self-taught,” explains
Hubbard. “We all learned from records.
None of us went to school, none of us
went to Berklee. I think it’s better. You
learn by listening to the guys you love,and playing in dives. You can go to
Berklee for four years, and come out
churned out, sounding like a Berklee
guy. You can go join Maynard Fergu¬
son’s band, y’know?"“They can’t teach you how to do this,"
Vaughan agrees. His training camefrom slaving over his favorite records orfrom “just watching" other musicians. “Ilearned a whole lot from a band called
the Nightcaps,” he says. “It was one of
the first albums that I bought. They werelike a blues/rock ’n’ roll band from theearly 60s. They sat around and drankwine, and they were real weird....I
learned how to play lead guitar, rhythm
guitar, bass lines and halfway how toplay the drums off of that record.”
Similarly, Christina “was just infectedby the music,” and decided to take up
the drums. Trouble was, “I set the drums
up backward and upside down. I’m left¬
handed, but I play a right-handed kit. I
didn’t know; when I sat down to play thedrums I just set 'em up, and played
whatever came out."

New Magic

FROM THE DIGITALMASTERCOMPANYThe Chick Corea Elektric Band Quintessential
keyboard master Chick Corea presents a GRP debut
bearing all the earmarks of a new Corea classic. Featur¬ing heavyweights Dave Weckl on drums, John Patitucci
on bass, and guitarists Carlos Rios and Scott Henderson;
The Elektric Band takes its place as one of the hottest
releases of the year.

Billy CobhamIPowerplay The world's mostdynamic drummer makes his Powerplay with a fiery,
high-energy performance that is a dazzling display ofhis drumming mastery. Billy Cobham...truly the"Drummer for All Seasons"Special EFX|S/7ce Of Life Hot on the trail of
their Grammy nominated Modem Manners, Special EFX
returns with the perfect Slice of Life, k blazing invoca¬
tion of where "New Age' may well be headed whenpushed to its furthest limits. Here is proof positive of therare talents of guitarist Chieli Minucci and percussionist
George Jinda.

Available on GRP records, cassettes,
and compact discs.
For a free color catalog write io GRP Records. Dept. C. 555 W 57th Street, New York, NY. 10019

LAURIE ANDERSON MAKES A MOVIE.
HOME OF THE BRA VE
IS THESOUNDTRACKALBUM
TO LAURIE ANDERSON’S NEW MOVIE.
HOME OF THE BRAVE IS CO PRODUCEDBY LAURIE ANDERSONAND ROMA BARAN.
HOME OF THE BRAVE FEATURES“LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS.’’PARADISE IS EXACTLY LIKE WHERE
YOU ARE RIGHT NOWONLY MUCH MUCH BETTER.
“LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS” IS PRODUCEDBY NILE RODGERS.
I WANTED YOU AND I WASLOOKING FOR YOU
BUT I COULDN’T FIND YOU.
I COULDN’T FIND YOU.
“HOME OF THE BRAVE”
IS A FILM BY LAURIE ANDERSON.
“HOME OF THE BRAVE”
MAY BE PLAYING IN YOUR CITY
RIGHT NOW.
SUN’S GOING DOWN LIKEA BIG BALD HEAD DISAPPEARING
BEHIND THE BOULEVARD.
HOME OF THE BRAVE IS AVAILABLE ON
WARNER BROS. RECORDS, CASSETTESAND COMPACT DISCS.
HOME OF THE BRAVE IS RELEASED THROUGH CINECOM INTERNATIONAL FILMS C NB6 Bra* Record* Inc

16

Because Christina puts all his energy
into the groove, he avoids flashy play¬ing. “Al Jackson was my idea of the per¬fect drummer,” he says. “He laid downthese simple, great backbeat things
with just the tastiest doo-dads in there,
but driving, solid. You had no doubt.
"We worked with Booker T. on San¬tana’s Havana Moon album. We started
playing this shuffle thing, and during thecut Booker kept giving me these looks. I
thought, 'Oh, Jesus, I'm screwing up.’
After it was over, I said, ‘Booker, some¬thing’s bothering me. In that song, you
kept looking at me. Was I screwing up?’“And he said, ‘No, no. It was great. I
kept closing my eyes and hearing Al
Jackson. You’re the first guy I've playedwith who reminded me of Al Jackson.’ I
almost had a heart attack. That’s thebest compliment anyone could’ve given
me. I could’ve died that night, andwouldn’t have worried about a thing.”
Perhaps because they’ve never beensaddled with rules about how the musicshould be played, the T-Birds are able
to go by sheer instinct, just as theirblues-playing idols did. Take their ver¬sion of Rockin’ Sidney's “You Ain’t
Nothin' But Fine,” from their What's The
Word album. Unlike the subsequent
Rockpile recording, the T-Birds’ rendi¬
tion perfectly preserves the chorus’ pat¬tern of two bars of 4/4 followed by one
bar of 2/4. “Well,” laughs Vaughan,“that’s because the Englishmen can’t
understand that crazy Louisiana stuff.
“No offense!” he adds to the tape re¬corder.
“It’s American stuff. You have to behere to really understand what it is. I
grew up listening to that kind of stuff. It
was in the street, all over the place. I
don’t sit there and count, 'One bar, twobars, okay, it's time to change.' You justkinda go for it. I'm not thinking about
how many bars I’m playing.”
He shrugs. “It's like the water. You got
different water or something over there,
it makes everybody act different.”
For all that, there seems to be some¬thing uncannily universal about the TBird sound. Despite the fact that theThunderbirds have no interest in mak¬ing their sound more “marketable," their
popularity is growing steadily; “Tuff
Enuff," the title track from their newest
album, is featured in the movie Gung
Ho, and has done well enough to land
the band on Solid Gold.
“It's very appealing,” Christina saysof the Thunderbirds sound. “That's why
it’s always there. People can’t help but
get hooked on it. It may not be some¬thing that radio wants to play, butpeople still get off on it. And that's
what's kept us going.

SUBSCRIBE!

THE TEN BEST AMPLIFIERS
YOU’VE EVER HEARD

Programax™ 10.
The Programmable
Amplifier
Build a sound. Any sound.
Programax 10 will deliver.
Store the sound inmemory. Programax 10
will remember.
Build another sound,another program. Store
the program. You don't
have to be a computer
wizard. Programs are easy
to create. Simple to store.
Effortless to modify. A
snap to recall. Your
sounds will be there when
you need them.

Imagine thepossibilities.
Call up a sparkling-clear
rhythm sound. Programax
10 delivers. Ask formonster-metal distortion.
Programax 10 responds
at the touch of a switch.
Recall a singing heart¬
stopper overlaid with yourfavorite effects, or acompressed fat midrange
sound with a bit of reverb.
Your sounds. They're all
there. Instantly.
There's more. Programax
10 is remote-MIDI
capable. Programmed
sounds can be recalledfrom any MIDI programsource, such as Peavey's
new RMC"1 2000 Remote
MIDI Controller. MIDI
makes it possible.
Programax 10 makes it
happen.
Programax 10.
Another first.
From Peavey.

711 A Street Meridian, MS 39301(601 ) 483 5365 Telex 504115
1986

F

Tommy Shaw Grant Geissman
Tommy Tedesco
Paul Jackson. Jr.

md out what pro players the world over have already discovered—the Ibanez
MC1 MIDI guitar system opens up a world of new sounds to the guitar player.
Regardless of the style of music you play, this system allows you to control... th roughMIDI-synths, drum machines, sequencers and signal processors. The ideas that wereonce just in your head can now be realized either live or in the studio.
String bending, hammer-ons and pull-offs track with ease to give the player total
control. By combining the sound of electronics with the warm, full sound of the guitar,a totally new voice emerges. One that pushes the creative boundaries of the art ofmusic...expressive in a way that only a guitar can be.

Dean Parks
Yasuhiro Suzuki

It would be easy to list the merits of the IMG2010 guitar and MC1 MIDI converter/
programmer, but we’d rather let the music speak for itself. Listen for the Ibanez MIDI
guitar system. You'll be hearing the future.

~ Ibanez*
For a full color catalog send $2.00 to: Ibanez, dept. MD 4* P.O. Box 886, Bensalem, PA 19020• 3321 Producer Way, Ramona, CA 91748-3916 • P.O. Box 2009, Idaho Falls, ID 83403 • In Canada:
6969 Trans Canada Highway, Suite 105, St.-Laurent, Quebec, Canada H4T1V8.

Jackson
BrowneBy Vic Garbarini
PUTS HIMSELF THROUGH
CHANGES: MUSICAL,LYRICAL AND POLITICALPAUL SCHULENBURG

W

hen Jackson Browne fin¬ished the title song of his
latest album, Lives In The
Balance, he knew he'dcrossed a threshold of sorts. Aftertwenty years of writing soul searching,introspective narratives about his innerlife, he felt the need to shift his perspec¬tive from personal to social issues—
specifically, our growing involvementwith the crisis in Central America. On
the one hand, he didn’t want to churnout two-dimensional propaganda exer¬
cises, while on the other he was con¬cerned about violating the sensibilitiesof the very people he was trying to help.
So Browne resolved to play Lives for acinematographer friend who'd servedin Vietnam to get some feedback. "Iwanted to know if I was treading on any
raw nerves in talking about thesethings,” recalls Browne. “He basically
told me that, if anything, he could han¬dle a lot more of the kind of questions I
was posing. For instance, the image of'There are shadows on the faces of themen who send the guns / To the wars
that are fought in places where theirbusiness interests runs'—that image
disturbed him. He wanted to illuminate
those faces. He said, ‘I want to see whothey are....’“I realized he was right, and so I wrote
the third verse with those lines about 'I
want to know who the men in the
shadows are /1 want to hear somebody
asking them why.”'
Brown realized a while ago that if hewanted to infiltrate radio he’d have tocheck his tendency to write lengthy,
rambling tunes. "At one point I wasgoing to name my publishing company
Long Songs, because it seemed they
were all over six minutes long, ” he jokes.
“But I found that musically it’s more ex¬citing for the form, though not necessar¬
ily the song, to be shorter.
“I wrote so many songs with two ver¬ses before the chorus, and then anotherverse, and then the bridge, and thenanother chorus and bridge. And eachverse, being in iambic pentameter, waspretty long in itself. It gives you a longtime to form a thought, but it’s a lesspowerful form. I once played a song fora producer and when it was over hesaid, ‘I hope you won’t mind my asking,but did any of that repeat?' And nothing
did! In ‘Sleep’s Dark And Silent Gate’
nothing repeats till the last line, eventhough it’s only three minutes long."
A former folkie, Browne also realized
he’d have to come to grips with synthe¬
sizers, drum machines, sequencers
and all the other electronic exotica
utilized in modern recording. Inevitably,
there were a few kinks to work out: “Thesong 'Lives In The Balance’ came as afew words and a riff, as I was playing
with my DX7 when I first got it, with my
Fostex and a little Doctor Rhythm. LaterI put the DX on a sequencer. That rapid,
plucking passage came to me while I
was trying to do something else. I
played the whole thing almost the way it
is on the record and left it on the se¬quencer. A couple of days later I tried tofind it, but the Linn machine had latchedand erased, and I couldn't remember itall. There was a period of time, before
they got the disk drive, that the Linn
9000 would occasionally do that. So you
had to always interrupt your thinking
and dump everything on a cassette.”
Browne resolved the crisis with a little
help from the world's oldest computing
device: “The next morning I about six
a.m. I woke up with some music playing
in my head—and it was that thing that
I'd lost.”
But the real surprise is that Live's firstsingle, the bitter but hopeful “For
America,” has become a smash com¬
mercial success, lodging in the AOR
radio top five. That’s no mean feat in an
era when Springsteen’s “Born In The
USA" is misconstrued as a jingoistic an¬them. Browne's last LP, Lawyers In
Love, was a tentative foray into topicalsongwriting. Perhaps a little too tenta¬
tive.
“Not that many people got ‘Lawyers
In Love,”' laughs Jackson. “When my19

friends started calling me up and asking
me what they should say when people
asked what the song was about, I
thought, 'Uh-oh, I'm in real trouble.' One
DJ even ran a contest, ‘Guess the se¬cret meaning of the song....’ The song
isn’t about lawyers, it’s really just a
metaphor for yuppies and their mental¬
ity. So I began reading everything I
could find about Central America andU.S. foreign policy, and then when I was
asked, 'Why pick on lawyers, why not go
after Reagan?’, I couldn’t think of any
reason not to. Of course, it's very dif¬ficult to go after Reagan, because in a
way he’s not there. It's like the Wizard ofOz, a large projected image but behind

it there are just a bunch of sweaty tech¬
nicians putting together what they want
you to look at. And the worst part of it isthat people accept it.”
Browne visited Nicaragua with his
friend Steve Van Zandt, hoping to learn
first hand about the people and theirculture. He found it a moving and en¬lightening experience. "For a country
that's invaded Nicaragua eight times in
the past hundred years we have no idea
what their culture is about,” Browne
says. “They’re down there drinking Cokeand playing baseball and have thesame aspirations we do. They’re an im¬poverished nation struggling so val¬
iantly to implement their ideals, which

Gudarist John Abercrombie has been
AT THE FOREFRONT OF CONTEMPORARY
MUSIC FOR MORE 1 HAN A DOZEN YEARS.

On Current Events , Abercrombie
UNVEILS HIS STRONGEST SET OF ORIGINALCOMPOSITIONS EVER AS WELL AS THE NEW¬EST ADDITION IO HIS PROLIFIC ARRAY OF
GUHAR VOICES, THE GUHAR SYNTHESIZER.

Catch up on Current Even ts withJohn Abercrombie, bassist Marc
Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine.

( Ù RR I X I l;
A I X I s

ECM ( )X EC : M R E( iORDS AND ( CASSETTES
For a free ECM Catalog please wri te:
Warner Bros. Records

P.O. Box 6868-V
Burbank, C A 91510

M ani i \< i i red and distributed by Warner Bros. Records Inc. < iw», ECM Records

20

include their own concept of free enter¬
prise. Let them define their own culturalneeds. Who's to say that our brand of
capitalism’s going to work in Central
America? They have a mixed economy
down there, they refuse to call them¬selves anything but Sandinistas. You
can’t say that Nicaragua is following theSoviet example. They have free enter¬
prise, and how many communist gov¬
ernments do you know that have priests
as ministers in the government? How
pleased could the Soviets be about
having to support that? They [theReagan Administration] project onto
their imagined enemies all their own
very worst traits, and go around actually
behaving the way they're afraid thecommunists will behave. Let’s fightcommunism with democracy— not with
fascism. I can’t figure out how this pres¬ent policy works,” he continues, his
voice choking with barely suppressedanger. “There are people underneaththose bombs, people who are trying toforge something good for themselves.
People like us. It's not a bunch of clones
of our most feared enemies. That's what
I wanted to say on Lives In The Balance.
And not only are their lives at stake, but
the lives of our soldiers.”
Once he knew what he wanted to say,
Browne was faced with the problem of
how to put across songs dealing with
global policy with the same kind of im¬mediacy and depth as the self-reflec¬tive material he was known for in the70s. He was hobbled by his own legacy.
On 1974's Late For The Sky Browne
spoke from a place so beyond pretense
and artifice that he set an almost impos¬
sibly high standard. Could he bring that
degree of illumination to material deal¬
ing with public issues? “My answer,”says Jackson, “was to deal with externalthings in the first person. I think action isappropriate after reflection. Introspec¬
tion— as opposed to introversion—is avery good thing. I don't want to wax cos¬
mic on you, but it's a bit like breathing:
There’s a time to breathe in and a time
to breathe out."
Despite his fervent political convic¬
tions, Browne is in no way blind to the
foibles and failings of the left. “The left
went nuts when Joan Baez spoke out
against some things that North Vietnam
was doing,” he sighs. "Governments
are governments. I've never seen suchdissension and inability to come to ac¬cords as I have in the peace movement.
Some of these people are projecting
their individual problems onto society.
No wonder some conservatives thinkthey’re a little out of control.” IB

SEE READER SERVICEPAGE 35

SOME OF MAN'S GREATEST TRIUMPHS ARE PERSONAL.
Sure, making music is often a groupeffort. But there are crucial moments
when it all comes down to a one-on-one
relationship between you and your music.
Moments when only you can give form toa creative inspiration that is uniquely
your own. When you've got it, you know
it. But the only way to be sure is to hear it.
That’s where the TASCAM Ministudio
can help.There's no better way to capture
those personal triumphs whenever andwherever they occur. Bring TASCAM's
portable production facility to rehearsals,
out on the road... anywhere you and yourmusic want to travel. Four assignable
input channels give you plenty of space
to work out songs and arrangements, orto document practices and performances.

Overdub parts, combine tracks andmodify them at will with the convenientpunch-in facilities. The battery-powered
Ministudio has all you need to bringyour ideas to life. And TASCAM quality
means that with the Ministudio you can
put your message across with wider
dynamic range and crisper sound thanwith anybody else’s ministudio.
The personal satisfaction of creatingmusic on your own can be yours with theremarkable TASCAM Ministudio. Why
not visit your local TASCAM dealer for ademonstration? Or write to TASCAM for
details (and your free copy of "Are You
Ready For Multitrack") at 7733 Telegraph
Road, Montebello, CA 90640.

TASCAM THE SCIENCE OF BRINGING ART TO LIFE.
c Copyright 1985 TEAC Corporation Of America

THE TASCAM MINISTUDIOHow to Succeed
in Business...
reat white hope or
the latest rock hypefrom the UK? Well, if
Billy Idol can be raised fromthe gutter to the cover of Roll¬ing Stone, then his old guitar¬
ist from Generation X, TonyJames, certainly rates his
own chances at superstar¬dom. He's pinning his hopeson Sigue Sigue Sputnik, theglitzy band of “beautifulpeople-and-would-besuperstars" he’s gatheredaround him and told to act as
though they were a real pop
group...you know, arrogant,smug and as though life were
one big party!
EMI Records was con¬vinced of the band's com¬
mercial potential enough tosign them, if not quite for the$5 million Sigue Sigue Sput¬nik claimed. The result,“Love Missile F1-11,” is a hor¬
rible, insistent, disco-mashof 80s synthetic rock. It wasa hit in England even while
creating a split among rockfans—rather in a similar way
to the Sex Pistols.
This is exactly how Sigue
Sigue Sputnik (and James inparticular) planned it. Every¬
thing surrounding the bandis designed for maximum
outrage and minimum dura¬
bility. They flew into orbit withall the glamour and media
attention of Dynasty, and thesame artistic merit.
The members look like ex¬tras from Blade Runnercross-bred with mutantsfrom a rock ’n' roll zoo: wild
hairstyles, exaggerated fa¬
cial make-up, space-age
costumes and a love of tech¬
nology and, more impor¬tantly, of fun. “We felt like wewere the greatest group in
London before we could
play," James says, “before
we even had any of our own
songs! We knew it was just a
matter of time!”
James' attitude couldchange when the kids on thestreet get fed up with cartoon
characters masquerading
as musicians, or when theband attempts to progressbeyond their current simplis¬tic manifesto of sex, soft-core
military romanticism andfunny hairstyles. Will Sputnik
then crash to earth?
“This band could blow
apart tomorrow," Jamesagrees with a sly, mischiev¬
ous grin, “but that sort of ten¬sion and unpredictability iswhat makes great rock ’n’roll. A band should go on
until it explodes."- Johnny Waller

FACES
Rockbusters II
Remember last fall's sitcom,
PMRC: The Washington
Wives? It was about a bunchof bored housewives (mar¬ried to politicos) who want
the record industry to censor
its purported calls to drug,
sex and devil abuse. The
show got pretty good ratings
until it fizzled out.
A spin-off, however, didn’t
do as well. On April 1 Mary¬
22

land's Senate Judicial Pro¬
ceedings Committee killed abill that banned the sale ofobscene discs and tapes tominors. The committee vote
was seven-to-four; the bill
had previously passed Mary¬land’s House of Delegatesby a 96-31 vote.
The proposed legislation
had received bad advancenotices: The committee
chairperson called it “theworst bill this session.” The
Recording Industry Associa¬

tion of America and theubiquitous Frank Zappa lob¬bied against it. Maryland al¬
ready outlaws the sale ofobscene books to minors;
that could possibly be used
for music as well. The de¬feated bill would haveapplied to ads and covers,
as well as lyrics, describing
or depicting “illicit sex."
The bill’s sponsor said shewould file a revision of it next
year. You can’t keep a goodidea down.

NEWS
STORIES
BY
SCOTT
ISLER

JANE SIMON/S I N 1985

SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIKRUN-D.M.C./AEROSMITH
Two Great Legends!
Together!! Live!!!

KLYMAXX
A Long Timein Coming

LARRY BUSACCA/RETNA

A

II they wanted was a
hit. Certainly, Klymaxx
wouldn’t have turned
down a triple-platinum certifi¬
cation from the RIAA, or may¬
be a Grammy or two for thatbare spot on the mantel. But
it’s safe to assume that, after
two previous LPs that were
DOA on the charts, the band
would have settled for justyour basic, garden-variety
success. Instead they got
what the record company
has taken to calling “thealbum that would not die."Meeting In The Ladies'
Room, released over a year
ago, has been something ofa wonder. The initial singles,“The Men All Pause" and thetitle track, were bits of swag¬
gering female braggadociothat became big hits in the
R&B market. Then came “IMiss You." That ballad, withlead vocals by bassist Joyce“Fenderella" Irby is a throw¬back to the fluffy confectionsof the Delfonics and the
Stylistics— not exactly thekind of song that crosses
over to the top of the pop
charts these days. But that’s
exactly what it did.
“We are surprised,” admits
drummer and group leader
Bernadette Cooper "We had
no idea the record was goingto get as big as it did. It
sounds a lot like MichaelJackson. Fenderella sounds
a lot like Michael anyway;

she’s not trying to pattern
after him...she just sounds
like Michael Jackson."
Top ten chart success andMichael Jackson compari¬sons are pretty heady stuff
for a band whose main claim
to fame just recently was thefact that they were theworld’s only female funk out¬
fit. Now, faced with the unen¬
viable task of crafting a fol¬
low-up that will prove Ladies’
Room was no fluke, thegroup has turned to a rather
unlikely pair of producers:
George Clinton and Burt
Bacharach.
“George has been a per¬sonal friend of mine for about
fifteen years," Irby says.
“We're into a lot of funk stuff
and he’s the number one
funk cat. And ’I Miss You,'with its pop success, at¬tracted Burt Bacharach, whowrites tunes that are very
similar to that."
One or two other female
funk bands are now whis¬pered to be warming up in
the bullpen. Cooper says thethreat of competition doesn’t
bother her. Klymaxx is evenwilling to contributesongwriting and production
to the upstarts—as long as
they remember which bandis the founding “mother" of itall.
- Leonard Pitts, Jr.

eavy metal upstarts
Run-D.M.C. acknowl¬
edged a spiritual debt
this past March: They asked
the elderly but still quite ac¬tive Joe Perry and Steve Tyler
of Aerosmith to join them ona re-recording of the classic“Walk This Way.”For the twenty-year-old
new traditionalists from Hol¬lis, Queens, it was a dreamcome true. “A long time ago,
back in '80, we used to rap
on their tracks, and ‘Walk
This Way’ was one of them,"says Run (Joseph Simmons),
eager to show that his roots
are both sincere and authen¬tic. “[DJ Jam-Master] Jay
would scratch the beat, andwe would rap over it. Thiswas before rap records were
made, so you had to findbeats off of other records.”
At the New York recording
studio Perry sits alone, pen¬sive, a guitar in his hands, a

trademark stack of amplifiersby his side. His exposure to
hip-hop has been limited towhat he hears from his thirteen-year-old stepson, but
he says he likes Run-D.M.C.
“I can’t really name any of
their songs off," he admits,“but what I hear I like. ’Causethey’re using electric guitar.
I'm really honored that theywant to do this song."
Tyler also feels honored,
but adds an old master’s or¬nery insistence on getting
his due: “If you took Aero¬smith music and stripped
everything off except thedrums and vocals, it would
be rap music, right? We do
rap music, but we do it withrock ’n' roll, which is exactly
what D.M.C. is doing now."
As the historic session pro¬ceeds, with Tyler rapping,and Perry playing guitar andbass, one is tempted to ask
these living legends the ageold question: Just what is themetal? But it isn't necessary.
The answer is in the tracks.
This is really the metal.
- John Leland

Unlearned andUnashamedreciousfew bands
this decade haveinspired anywhere
near the volume of journalis¬tic dissection (much of it
fairly perceptive) as theJesus and Mary Chain. This
scruffy outfit from Glasgow
has rattled rock 'n' roll's cagewith an elegantly simple con¬cept: fetching pop melodies
sung with aplomb andsmothered in a psychedelicmaelstrom of fuzz, feedback
and echo. The resulting coolchaos is on Psychocandy, abrilliant self-produced debutthat finished second in New
Musical Express' 1985 read¬ers' poll. While hardly revolu¬
tionary, the album advances
art-pop aggression to awhole new level.
Despite the attention paid
to their current sonic ap¬
proach, singer Jim Reid is
enthusiastic about structural
alternatives. “People get terri¬
bly snobbish about what in¬struments you use. I want tomake good records; I don't
care what I use to get it. ” "CutDead" and “The Hardest
Walk," he muses, “would
24

have been great withstrings." So what happened?
“We didn't know how to getstrings on a record,” he ad¬
mits. "Is there a company
you phone up?”
Reid, twenty-four, co¬writes the songs with hisolder brother William. The
trio includes a bassist but nosteady drummer. Onstage, astand-in stands up to poundon a tiny kit with no cymbals;
guitarist William crouches infront of a squealing amp; Jimsings and blasts sporadic
white noise from an untuned
guitar. "We've built on ourlack of technical ability,” hesays with pride.
“I don't agree that a rock'n’ roll show has to be an hour
and a half. Even if it's yourfavorite group, half an hour isenough.” Some legendary
Jesus and Mary Chain showshave run ten minutes. “A gig
doesn’t have a time limit—
you play as long as you feel.
But if people are forking out
a lot of money you have toconsider that.” He’s alsodead-set against encores.
The secret to their sound?
“Shinnei fuzz pedals. They’reJapanese; you can't buy
them at all anymore. We’ve
got the last five in the world.”- Ira Robbins

You say that record youbought doesn't sound theway it did on radio? At least
one program director has
admitted increasing the 45
turntable speed three per¬cent, so music will be“brighter” than the competition’s.
This situation is bound to es¬
calate. If you have a very
deep voice and/or play very
slow music, now is the time
to make records. You may
end up with the only listena¬ble product on the airwaves.

PETER
GORDON
From Downtown
to Midtown

nthink there's sometradition of Americanmusic that I fall into,
somewhere between pop
and serious music—thesame pigeonhole that musi¬cal theater in its heyday
would fall into, or the same
one that Gershwin or Harry
Partch or Frank Zappa would
fit into.”
Move over, Stravinsky,
Copland and Glass: Peter
Gordon is out of the dugout

meshed, rat-a-tat lines are
instantly recognizable in
New York's downtown
scene.
Electric eclecticism has
always been Gordon's call¬ing card. “My band, the Loveof Life Orchestra, has reallybeen about people from awide range of backgrounds
playing together,” he as¬
serts. His tenure with Laurie
Anderson, for example, hasbeen mutually influential. “I
was around her when she
really began to come into her
own as a musician, 76
through '80....I’ve learned
quite a bit from Laurie—cer¬tain things about pacing,words, use of material.
“There's a problem with a
lot of music now; the song, in
combination with MTV, isover-literalized. So maybe
it’s a break for instrumental
music.” Miami Vice, watch
out.- Mark Dery

MARCIA RESNICKROSS MARINO

Jesus and mary chain Speed Wars

and into the big leagues.
Best-known as the honker
whose brass blats haveadded offbeat spice toLaurie Anderson's work,
Gordon is now coming into
his own—with a CBS Master¬works contract. On themostly instrumental Inno¬
cent, his first time at bat witha major label, Gordon's allstar teammates include An¬
derson, Elliot Easton of theCars, tinkertoy percussionist
David Van Tieghem, Tony
Levin (late of King Crimson)and gospel singers the Five
Blind Boys of Alabama.
Not that Gordon has beenplaying batboy all this time;
he's worked with David
Byrne, the Flying Lizards,
and his own Love of Life Or¬
chestra. The softspoken,
Telly Savalas-coiffedsaxophonist also scored The
Birth Of A Poet, a multi-media
collaboration. Regardless ofcontext, Gordon's tightly-START AT THE TOP:::DigîIech
The 1550 and 1700 Series.
PDS 1000(Digital Delay)

PDS 2000(Digital Sampler!

PDS 1550
PDS 1700(Programmable Distortion) (Digital Stereo Chorus/Flanger)

Digitech" is a registered trademark of DOD Electronics Corporation. 5639 South Riley Lane Salt Lake City, Utah 84107 (801) 268-8400

Photograph by Michael GoingChick Coreas
Alternating Currents
Last spring's Queen Mary Jazz Festival
was an odd setting to hear jazz. Framed by the Long
Beach marina and the leviathan, land¬
locked vessel turned tourist haunt, the acts were somehow
failing to communicate. Steps Ahead wasfrustratingly glib, Miles was coyly trans¬
lucent. As a saving grace, Chick Corea came onstage
under damp gray twilight, swinging,spiking and counterpunching phrases withdrummer Dave Weckl and bassist John
Patitucci. These guys were thoroughly having it all, in the ven¬
erable jazz tradition. Though the tune structures were sketchy andCorea wasn't taking full advantage of his wrap¬
around keys, the playing was ecstatically and definitively
electric. Great volume, great technical ferocity and un¬
caged fun were rampant.
A year later, after extensive touring/woodshedding, adding guitarist Scott Henderson
and recording in his own Mad Hatterstudio in Los Angeles, Corea has completed his first album
for the GRP label and is headlong into a new chapter in a careerwhich has yielded nearly forty albums (not in¬cluding sideman dates) in twenty years. A potent sense of homecoming marks Chick's return to electricity a decade
after his Return to Forever band generated a levelof mass audience huzzahs normally re¬served for pop artists. RTF ventured from town totown in grand, raucous style, leaving throngs of jazzand rock fans panting from adulatory exhaustion. But Corea
wasn't one to ride the gravy train. Carrying the fusion chal¬lenge beyond its increasing superficial¬
ity as the decade progressed, Corea bowed out ofthe pop/jazz game and branched out into spe¬cial esoteric projects—orchestrations for strings, a set ofSatie-like children’s songs, duets, a free trio...everything butthat which would insure large volumes of record sales.
It’s not that Chick Corea thinks big, exactly. He
thinks wide. He envisions music on a lateral, elastic
plane of creativity—a sort of boundary¬less wavelength of style. He’s not a rootlesseclectic, exactly, just someone with anample headful of composition and a handful of chops
for which the jazz, Latin, rock, neo-classical

By Josef Woodard

“Mozart’s music is not simple. It essentially kicked my ass.”

buoyancy of pulse. Unlike Stanley Clarke, Patitucci adheres
his warm tone and unified lines to the center of the music,
rather than prancing along the top of it. Henderson, veteranof bands led by Jean Luc Ponty, Jeff Berlin and his own debut
record project, epitomizes the second wave of disarmingly
fluid fusion plectrists.
And leader Corea seems to have found his own uniquepath on freshly unpacked equipment. At forty-five, Corea isold enough to be a father to Weckl and Patitucci, but his out¬
look is as a new recruit, obviously reeling from current synth
possibilities. Chick has gone elektrik.
When I first caught up with him one evening last January,
he was in a strange, chameleonic transition. In the control
room, Corea’s longstanding engineer Bernie Kirsch was busy
putting mixing touches on the epic tune, “Silver Temple."
28

Corea, his lobes working overtime as usual, was in an antsy
mood. He shuffled back and forth between eyeing the track
sheet and dashing into the practice room to work over hisscore for a new piano concerto to be premiered in Tokyo.
When he finally settled down to an extensive interview a few
weeks later, the grand piano had been safely wrested fromhis musical conscience. Before me, behind an officious oak
desk, was one of jazz's most prodigious offspring who had
come full circle and embraced, yet again, the power of alter¬
nating current in music.
MUSICIAN: Judging from the volume and variety of your out¬
put, it would seem that you thrive on perpetual motion.
COREA: I thrive on a lot of production. As you grow, I feel you
can either get better and expand or get worse. Improvement
has something to do with expansion. Conditions never remain
the same, even if you do nothing. If you do nothing, conditions
usually get worse. You maybe think things are in a normal
state, going on unchanged and, in actual fact, things are at¬rophying. Unless you’re continually creating in life, creating
new things, turning out new product, things will go down. So
there are only two directions in life—better or worse. It's kindof simple.
MUSICIAN: What gave you the urge to go electric again after
having almost renounced it?
COREA: I think since I put my first band together in 1970, I
began to develop an affinity for electric sounds—keyboards,
guitars, basses and audio systems, making music with thosekinds of tools. There are two reasons for that: They're very
flexible tools in that I can realize a real cross section of kindsof music and emotions and communication; and they're very
standard tools. It's my wish to communicate very broadly. I
want to find ways to do that.
But I'm coming at it from another direction. I started out as
more of an esoteric musician, from jazz and experimental
music into wanting to become a more broadly communicative
musician. So now, I’m having to learn new techniques—thetechnique of songwriting, the technique of production and or¬chestration to make the music meet the technical standardsof record making. And still I have to retain my own fun andgames with music.
MUSICIAN: But it seems like you've had a real roller-coaster
attitude between communicating on a broad basis and doing
personal projects that reach a smaller audience. Ideally,
would you like to have both aspects simultaneously?
COREA: My criteria now is very simply how valuable and how
much of an emotion can I stir in people. My experimental
music can be looked upon, in a certain way, as research:ways to find new techniques and resources within myself,
ways of expression. There's probably a way to organize it sothat I can continue to move forward with my main communica¬tion and then have my experimentation and expansion donein such a way that I can also put it out on this main line. But I
haven’t been completely successful at doing that. The way
I’ve approached it is the truth of your observation—like a roller
coaster. First it seems like I'm being a chamber music musi¬cian, then it seems like I have a jazz trio, then it seems like I
have a band, then it seems like I don't have a band, then it
seems like I'm a producer, then I wrote a piano concerto.
MUSICIAN: Return To Forever had a brute, rock 'n' roll energy
level, though on closer examination there was much moregoing on. Do you want to maintain that in this new band, or doyou feel that you've matured beyond that?
COREA: Well, that aspect of rock 'n' roll that we borrowed,
which was high energy and volume—real intensity in play¬ing—is not something which is either good or bad or fine orcoarse. It’s something which should be used. It's one of thethings on the palette of emotions for me, and one of the more
important ones. It’s a rousing point of communication, it's apoint of waking up. There’s something very nice about being

DARRYL Pin RETNA

nomenclatures are too imprecise and confining. Corea re¬mains ever curious, furiously creative, eager for collaborative
efforts, game for new technologies, uncowed by the atypicaljazz condition of making large sums of money.
Paralleled to the Corea band of a decade ago, the new unit
conveys an attitude that validates Chick’s decision to coin a
new spelling for the term—the dialectic— electric. Spinning
old RTF records reveals its musical aging process; what once
sounded propulsively progressive and deliciously complex
now sounds a bit like rococo exercise, fragmentary in form
and overstated in content. Evoking a latter-day maturity, the
new tunes comport themselves sleekly and without excess,lent a handsome taste of restrained intensity by the players.
The young second-generation fusion lions on-board serve
Corea's elektrik outlet beautifully. Drummer Weckl reverses
Lenny White's gregarious attack, instead positing a subtle

preset patterns, plus an almost infinite
If you thought you couldn’t take up
number of patterns you can create bysynthesizer until you first picked up achoosing from the 12 PCM tones anddegree in computer science, you’ve
100 PD tones. These can be stored
got to get your hands on a Casio
independently in one of the 10 rhythm
CZ-230S.
banks. In addition, the 230S has a
The time-consuming task of pro¬song memory which can hold up togramming sounds that most synthe¬
199 measures.
sizers require is simply not part of its
As you would expect from Casio,
program. Casio's unique RD. soundsource provides you with 100 prepro¬
there's more: MIDI in, out and thru
are built in for system-building versa¬
grammed sounds of exceptional,
professional quality simply by pushing tility. It's multi-timbral. A pitch benderand portamento are included to cre¬a few buttons.
And does it have rhythm—20
ate a wide variety of effects. And an

on-board speaker (almost unheard of
in a synthesizer) makes taking theCZ-230S around as easy as it is totake it up.
But then again, perhaps the easi¬
est thing to take about it is its low price.
If you'd rather play around with akeyboard than a computer, test playa Casio CZ-230S—the synthesizer
you don’t need a master’s degree inscience to master.

CASIO
Where miracles never cease

Casio, Inc Electronic Musical Instrument Division: 15 Gardner Road. Fairfield, N.J. 07006 New Jersey (201) 882-1493, Los Angeles (213) 803-3411

able to experience life intensely. I think there are aspects ofthat on the record.
It's hard to capture that on a record, on vinyl. When people
are listening to records, they're in different frames of mind,
even when they're sitting listening alone. That kind of intensity
is really stuff for live performance. And live, definitely
everyone in this band is ready to blow. I may have to be theone to cool it down—the old man to say "whoa," because
Dave and Scott and John are ready. I know that.
MUSICIAN: How do you put together a band like this? Did you

CHICK’S TRICKSM

USICIAN: Is the Electric Band an extension of Return toForever and the things you were doing in the mid 70s?
COREA: In the sense of having a steady band. In thesense of having an electric music band, and in the senseof me playing the same or similar roles— as bandleader
and musical director, composer and arranger. Of course,
it's different musicians. It's a different time. It’s different
music.
MUSICIAN: And not to forget, different equipment.
COREA: Definitely a different technical atmosphere. With
my old electric bands, the guys in the band— especially
Lenny White—would always urge me to orchestrate my
keyboard parts. I played mostly on the Fender Rhodes,
and only used synthesizers as sweeteners. Lenny would
say, "Hey, man, why don't you get some sounds" I’d say,
"Yeah, I’d love to!"But it wasn’t so easy back then and I never did find thetime to get into it— both of those factors. Plus I never reallythoroughly learned the basics of synthesizers, which I’m
now beginning to correct. But I can’t just take a year off andstudy a DX7 manual. Now I have Rory Kaplan and Bo Tom¬lin help me program my synthesizers.
The Rhodes was always more of a bridge for me fromthe acoustic piano because of the touch—the fact that I
can dig in and be expressive with my fingers, like I am withan acoustic piano. So when they came out with a MIDI’d
Rhodes, that was a good bridge to other synthesizers. It’sa staple, a central point of my set-up. It gives me time todevelop my synthesizer playing on its own, so when I takemy hands off the Rhodes and go to another synthesizer, I
can begin to develop techniques that will come up to thedegree of expressiveness that I really want to have.
For instance, an instrument I would love to master andget right, is the strap-around Yamaha KX5. I love it. It's adream of being able, finally, to get up and play a lead line.
I've learned from horn players as much or more about jazzthan from pianists. The jazz style I developed was a very
horn-like one, a Bud Powell, Horace Silver style—where
there's a melodic line.
MUSICIAN: What else do you use?
COREA: I’ve got two racks of Yamaha TX816s— like two
racks of eight DX7s. I have a J.L. Cooper MIDI box— aswitch box which allows me to select which modules arebeing controlled by which keyboard controller. I also use
the Synclavier, and an old Yamaha GS1 which I like. It's apreset instrument, with very rich, DX-like sounds. There’s
a Linn 9000 which I use to sequence the TX816s and also
to trigger the Synclavier sequencer. That’s about it. So syn¬thesizer-wise, the TX816S and the Synclavier are the basic
instruments. I’m going to add to it at some point, but I’ve
got all I can do to deal with these right now.
MUSICIAN: When you trigger a TX816, do you create com¬pound sounds, or just slight variations on each sound?
How do you take advantage of the module arrangement?
COREA: You have to use your basic sense of proportionate
sound with these things. If you have a sound and you add

30

snoop around for players with the right simpático, or did you
know these guys beforehand?
COREA: John Patitucci I knew somewhat. Gayle [Moran], mywife, came back two or three years ago with a glowing reportof some young bass player she had heard at a jam session at
Chuck Mangione’s house, and from around town, I heard
John's name mentioned several times. So I actually called
him and asked if he was interested in putting together a tapefor me of snatches of his various playing. Which he did, and I
the same sound to it, all it does is either wipes out the firstsound or doubles it in volume. It does nothing to the timbre.
That’s if it's exactly the same sound. So you quickly findout that the game here is to build timbres by varying thesound of one module against another. There’s an infinite
number of things that you can do, both with varying
timbres, different kinds of sounds added together to makea more complex sound or you can use one module, for in¬
stance, to get a sound in the low register and another to
get a sound in the upper register. At first, the tendency isjust to mash things together. All you need is four of theseand three of these. .. Forget it! Until you begin to knowwhat you have and how to combine them and be able toactually hear the result, it takes a while of experimenting
with it.
MUSICIAN: Has your Mini Moog then been rendered obso¬
lete by now? There was a time when that was a signatureaxe of yours.
COREA: The Mini Moog slipped out of the system because
it was non-touch responsive, but nothing has really re¬placed the sound of it. I don’t think anything ever really will;
it is what it is. I've gotten a couple of sounds on the mod¬ules that approximate the kind of expression that I used tolike to have on the Mini Moog. But it’s really a new gamewith a Yamaha KX5 around my shoulder and the KX88, to
try and articulate like the Mini Moog. I haven’t been able todo that.
The DX7 keyboard is much better to use to articulate likethe Mini Moog, because it’s a lighter action. The KX88 ac¬tion is heavy, like a piano is and can’t really fly like I did on
the Mini Moog. Rory Kaplan still has a great affinity for the
Mini Moog— he did a maintenance on it and he encour¬ages me to use it. We used it on one of the overdubs on therecord. It wasn’t the timbre of the instrument, but the feel ofit that you can’t really duplicate. Also, I have a slight aver¬sion to just piling up keyboards in my system.
MUSICIAN: How integral are you here at Mad Hatter
Studios? Do you actually do a lot of hands-on collaboration
with projects that come in?
COREA: The recording studio was a naive thing, because
when I first built it, I thought, gee, I’m going to have my own
studio because I make one or two records a year and I liketo do experiments and we’ll have this great studio upstairs
from the offices. Everything will work great. We built it, andI let my contract with Warner Bros. go. That was right after
Three Quartets. I started playing chamber music and I
never made a multi-track recording up there until the Elektric Band. I did a few projects up there, but they were oneor two-day projects, so the studio was atrophying. It wasup there dark and not being used. It turned out to be a mis¬
estimation of effort for me.
So then I contacted Ron Moss and said, "Look, can you
take the studio over, manage it and make it a place where
people can use it?" He did. It took him a year to do it, but heput it on the face of the L A. studio map. Now it's real nice;
we've got musicians and producers coming by using it.
We’re getting ready to move it up to the next level, with acomputerized board and upgraded equipment. It’s got thebest pianos in town.

MIDIVEFIB. ..as in Midi Controlled Reverberation.
Digital Reverb ...The Real Thing.
63 preset programs that cover the spectrum of recording andperformance reverb effects. From 2 seconds to 20 seconds,
smooth and lush.
Reverse Reverb and Gated Reverb.
Bright programs (10KHz response)to dark and deep bottomed programs. Small rooms to enormous
aircraft hangars. Controlled by the front panel or through MIDI patchchange data. Stereo in, full stereo out... wide and spacious. Dry¬reverb mixing for stand alone operation or with the sends and receivesof a console. Perfect for multiple reverb setups and small homestudios ...You can finally consider owning more than one digital
reverb... because the best part is the price...

uÂRGË-LARGER.

LARGE

BRIGAR!

nAAJ^

MEOlpM
SMd£U-

uarg^

—-—1

SMALL
l abG e—iab°eV»7ARM
V^AR^—

br»g h ^>/7AR^aR^—
BRXGHX

OAR*-V—- brigRI—V
SMAVX——
br^gRJ — Y
MEOiyM— ©fÚgR^-J^A^^--1

0R»G kTys» ARM _■ 2bg5-laÇJSï5-

V7 AR -

LaRgB
meo'lim

jjFUGKL-A
xnarm—J2Í2-—"255^^QAR*S-T"eRiQtfl—V

uARG^r uarge_Vearge-BR’GH T

¿aRge_

br'O^3oaR»Smêoujm.
ïabg£_"waR**—- -OAR'S——-LARGE:

s/s/ARMJ
MeoiyM

meo\l)MOAR*ORVG*^Q AR*S

GA-veo - ®°°^egse^-REVSSS^— Reisest

Meo'»?»*

O*^F^ÁR^M>O'suggested list price

STUDIO ELECTRONICS

K-MUSE, INC
announces

Photon Guitar & Bass Systems
Infra-Red tracks
at the speed of light.

r more info contact:
18653 Ventura Blvd. Suite 359
Tarzana, CA 91356
iuse.inc 818-703-1562

By Alan di Perna

BEYOND SOLOMERGING
MIDI TRAFFIC

M

quencer or tone modIW
ule is only one of many
I applications for thesehelpful little boxes. But it's
' one of the most exciting.
A MIDI merging device may
be just the gizmo you've been
looking for to let the fresh air ofcollaboration into your own* spare-bedroom Fortress of
1 Solitude.

usical solipsism. That’s been
the least healthy side effect of
MIDI’s power to turn a single, ordi¬
nary instrument into the London Philhar¬
monic. It’s not hard to see how MIDI has
tended to cut its devotees off from thecommunal/collective side of music
making. Chances are you’ve been
through it. The eerie feeling that you, Mr.
MIDI Hobbyist, are the only musicalbeing that really exists. That the out¬
skirts of musical reality itself lie justbeyond the four walls of that spare room
where you keep your MIDI gear. A ghost
and his machines.
It's not that MIDI musicians are abunch of solitary wankers by nature.
The limitation lies more in the equipment
itself. Most MIDI sequencers, tone mod¬ules and the like only provide one MIDI
In jack. This tends to restrict the equip¬
ment to use by one person at a time,
Sure, two or more people can take turns
inputting riffs to a sequencer; butthat’s hardly the same thing as

MIDI Merging:
What It Is■ and What It Ain't(A Crash Course
in Semantics)

H

playing together And as
you may recall from yourp ¡round days turnsquabblesyJ

BRUCE CROCKER

ta"eous access to ase

How to Get MoreThan One
MIDI Musician into
the Same Fast Trackere's the trouble. There
are so many MIDI acces¬
sories out there that itgets harder and harder to ap¬
preciate all the distinctions betweena MIDI merging device and, say, a
MIDI switcher or MIDI thru-box. And to
make an even bigger muddle of things,
the term “merge” is used in several dif¬ferent contexts in the post-literate worldof MIDI and computers. Then there's yet
another little wrinkle: The merging
boxes we’re talking about here aresometimes called MIDI mixers as well(but they're not to be confused with theupcoming new breed of mixing con¬soles that can respond to MIDI data).
Thoroughly perplexed yet?
Actually, the type of MIDI merging
we’re talking about here is very simple
in theory. It's a little like genetics and the
reproduction process, really. (Anything
to work a little sex into the article.) As
you may recall from your junior high sci¬ence class, two DNA molecules com¬bine and the resulting structure con¬tains all the genetic information of eachindividual DNA chain. It’s the samething with MIDI merging. You take two or
more 16-channel MIDI lines and com¬bine them to form one MIDI line that con¬tains all the data from all the lines thathave been merged.
Most of the MIDI merging devices on
the market give you either two or four
MIDI In jacks. The two-input devices in¬clude the Kamlet MIDI Merger, J.L.
Cooper's MIDI Blender and theSynHance M1X and M1X +. Among the
4-input merging devices are the
MIDIMIX 8 and MIDIMIX 9. the Garfield
Electronics Traffic Controller (which canalso be set up to operate as two inde¬
pendent 2-input mergers) and the forth¬coming Southworth Systems Jam Box.
Note that merging (again, in thesense that we're using the term here) iswhat happens to MIDI lines— not indi¬vidual channels. The data on several
lines is merged onto one line, but eachdata byte retains its original channel
identity. (And of course, just as you al¬ways end up with forty-six chromo¬
somes in human reproduction, you al¬ways end up with the standard sixteen
MIDI channels no matter how manylines you merge.) So say you're merging
four MIDI lines, and all four lines havedata on Channel 3. All of that data will
still be on Channel 3 of the merged linethat’s spit out of the device. In otherwords, MIDI merging is not the samething as rechannelizing.
As it turns out, though, some of themerging devices mentioned above alsooffer rechannelizing capabilities. Gar¬
field's Traffic Controller includes a re¬channelizing switch that takes incoming
channel data and "bumps it up" by one
channel number. When the switch is on,what comes in on Channel 3 goes out on
Channel 4; what comes in on Channel
16 goes out on Channel 1. The Kamlet
MIDI Merger goes several digits be¬yond that by letting the user bump up
channel data by one, two or threeplaces.
Our friend the MIDI merging box isoften mistaken for yet another type ofdevice: the MIDI switcher (or patcher).
Superficially, mergers and switchers
have a lot in common. With both, you get
multiple MIDI inputs that can feed asingle MIDI output. Both are used by
keyboardists who want to employ twocontrollers— say a master keyboard
34

and an around-the-neck auxiliary key¬board—to drive a single tone generat¬
ing rack.
But the difference is this. A MIDI
switcher—just as its name asserts—is aswitch. You can have Input A connectedto the output or Input B connected to the
output. One or the other. Either/Or Not
both. A MIDI merging device, on theother hand, is analogous to a Y connec¬
tor. Input A and Input B are both sent to
the output. So if you have two keyboard
controllers driving a single tone rack,both controllers will be on line all thetime. There’s no need to throw any kindof switch as you move from one control¬
ler to another.

A Thousand and One UsesW

e started out by mentioning how
MIDI mergers can ease the lone¬
liness of MIDI sequencer andstudio-oriented work. But they're very
useful for real time/performance appli¬
cations too. MIDI drummers can use
merging to multiplex a whole kit’s worthof trigger pads, enabling them all to trig¬
ger a single MIDI sound module. In asimilar vein, Jim Cooper recently told
me how he used a network of his MIDI
Blenders to custom-MIDIfy a vibraharp.
Most merging applications revolvearound the same basic principle: multi¬
ple controllers on a single sound source
or data storage system (i.e., a sequen¬cer). But there are a surprising numberof possible variations on this theme.
(Think of all the ways you've used a Y
connector over the years.) The fact thatmerging allows all controllers to be “online-all-the-time" has all kinds of in¬teresting ramifications. For instance, itmeans you can use your best velocity
sensitive keyboard as your main con¬troller while simultaneously using a fa¬
vorite pitch wheel on another of yoursynths and the breath controller from
yet a third machine.
It also means that a band can communalize its store of MIDI sound¬generating gear. Even in the mostfuturistic groups (those which have
MIDI guitarists and a MIDI drummer aswell as a MIDI keyboardist) each band
member tends to stick to his own pile ofsound generating gear. Only usually,
the bulk of the wealth is unevenly distrib¬
uted on the keyboardist’s side of thestage. Thanks to merging, though, it’stheoretically possible for each band
member to have continual access toevery sound-generating device onstage. True collectivism! Everyone con¬trols the means of sound production.
This, of course, presupposes somecareful rehearsal and a little diplomacy
on the band’s part. If five guys all try tojump on the same oscillator at the sametime, there could be trouble. But hey,

who said socialism was perfect?
It’s when you’re working with sequen¬cers and tape, however, that you really
begin to appreciate what a pal your
MIDI merge box can be. All kinds of irri¬
tating problems stem from the fact that

SynHance MIX merger
most sequencers give you only one
MIDI In jack. Say, for instance, you wantto sync your sequencer to tape and re¬cord a new passage into the sequencer
via your MIDI keyboard. Without amerging device, you can't do it. If you
use the sequencer’s MIDI In jack foryour MIDI sync input, then you can’t
connect your MIDI keyboard. Connect
your keyboard and you can't sync totape. But if you merge your MIDI sync
input and the MIDI line coming fromyour instrument, you’re in business. To
make things even easier, the MIDIMIX 9
gives you an analog clock input which
can take various tape and drum
machine sync codes and output themas MIDI sync. The Southworth Jam Box
will provide similar facilities plus SMPTE
In and Out jacks.
But, as we said above, true “live-tosequencer" recording is the most excit¬
ing possibility opened up by MIDI merg¬ing devices. We’re talking about MIDI
guitars, keyboards and drum pads all
inputting data simultaneously. Or in sim¬pler words, wailing away together justlike they did in the good old days. Use asequencer that lets you switch off thequantized error correction, and you canachieve a true interactive feel between
players—just like recording live tracks
on tape. Of course, the advantage of
doing it with a sequencer is that you can
go back and edit the performance—changing notes, reassigning voices,
etc. in ways only sequencers allow.

That Pesky Time Lag Again

R

ight now, you can merge the MIDI
lines from two or three keyboard in¬struments and set up a “live-to-sequencer" situation on a modest scale.
But MIDI technology hasn't quite
reached the point where you can entera full-blown MIDI guitar/bass/drums/
keyboard take all in one pass. For one
thing, the tracking and time delay bugs
are still being worked out of guitar con¬trollers. And then we come up againstthat perennial MIDI problem: data
bottlenecking.
You know, being a MIDI musician cancontinued on page 46

ADVERTISING INDEXFREE
INFORMATION

Use our Reader Service card for additional
product information. Our advertisers will
respond because you read MUSICIAN.
For immediate information, call or write
our advertisers directly. Tell them you are a
MUSICIAN reader so they know you’reserious about your music.
ADA - 7303D Edgewater Drive. Oakland. CA
94621(415)632-1323(800)241-8888 .... 72-73
Akai Professional Music Products — P.O

Box 2344. Fort Worth. TX 76113 (817) 3365114.

Electro-Voice - 600 Cecil St., Buchanan. Ml
49107(616)695-6831 .
45
EMG - P.O. Box 4394, Santa Rosa. CA 95402(707)525-9941 .
48
E-MU - 2815 Chanticleer. Santa Cruz. CA 95065(408)476-4424 .
61

Recording Workshop - 455A Massieville Road
Chillicothe. OH 45601 (800) 848-9900
82
Resolution - Chace Mill. One Mill St.. Burlington.
VT (800) 862-8900 . 39

Ensoniq - 263 Great Valley Parkway. Malvern.
PA 19355(215)647-3930 .
II
Ernie Ball - 151 Suburban Rd . San Luis Obispo,
CA 93403 (805) 544-7726 .
95

RotoSound — James How Industries Ltd., Unit
One. Morewood Close. Sevenoaks. Kent TNI 3
2HU. England (0732) 450838 .
82

Fostex — 15431 Blackburn Ave., Norwalk. CA

90650(213)921-1112.

49

Gan-tone - Carnegie Hall. Studio 1105. 881 7th
Ave.. NYC. NY 10019.
89
GHS Strings - 2813 Wilber Ave. Battle Creek.

Ml 49015(616)968-3351 .
84

Alesis - P.O. Box 3908. Los Angeles. CA 90078(213)467-8000 .
31
Audio-Technica — 1221 Commerce Drive.

Stow. OH 44224(216)686-2600.
83
Beyer — 5-05 Burns Ave.. Hicksville. NY 1
1801(516)935-8000 .
42
Casio — 15 Gardner Road. Fairfield. NJ 07006(201)575-7400 .
29
Chapman Stick — 8320 Yucca Trail, Los
Angeles. CA 90046 (213) 656-6878 ...
46
D’Addario- 210 Route 109. E. Farmingdale. NY
11735(516)454-9450 .
126Guild — I Terminal Road. Lyndhurst. NJ 07071(201)438-4400 .
38

Roland - 7200 Dominion Circle. Los Angeles,
CA 90040 (213) 685-514 1. 4,7

Scholz — 1560 Trapelo Rd.. Waltham. MA 02154(617)890-5211.
55
Seymour Duncan - 203 Chapala St.. Santa
Barbara. CA 93101 (805) 963-0676 . .
29
Simmons - 23917 Craftsman Rd., Calabasas.

CA 91302 (818) 884-2653 .

36Soundcraft - 1517 20th St., Santa Monica, CA
90404(213)453-4591 .
69
Steinberger - 1
22 S. Robinson Ave . Newburgh
NY 12550(914)565-4005 .
62

Ibanez - West: Chesbro Music. P.O. Box 2009.
327 Broadway. Idaho Falls, ID 83403 (208) 5228691. East: Hoshino USA. P.O. Box 889, Bensalem,
PA 19020(215)638-8670 .
18

Syntech - 23958 Craftsman Rd.. Calabasas. CA
91302(818)704-8509 .
47

Invisible Keyboard Stands - 382 Franklin St.,
Cambridge. MA 02139(617) 354-7329 . 48

TAMA - West: Chesbro Music. P.O. Box 2009,

TAC/AMEK - 10815 Burbank Blvd.. North

Hollywood. CA 91601 (818)508-9788.

41

K-Muse - 18653 Ventura Blvd.. Suite 359, Tarzana. CA9I356(8I8)703 1562 .
32

327 Broadway, Idaho Falls. ID 83403 (208) 522869 1. East: Hoshino USA, P.O. Box 889. Bensalem,
PA 19020(215)638-8670 .
71
Tascam - 7733 Telegraph Rd., Montebello. CA
90640(213)726-0303 .
21

Korg - 89 Frost St.. Westbury. NY 11590(516)333-9100.
2,3

TOA - 480 Carlton Ct.. So. South Francisco. CA
94086(415)588-2538 .
63

87Peavey — 711 A St.. Meridian, MS 39301 (601)483-5365.
17

Ultimate Support - P.O. Box 470, Fort Collins.
CO 80522 (303) 493-4488 .
14

DOD Electronics - 5639 South Riley Lane. Salt
Lake City. UT 84107 (801) 268-8400 . 99,25

QSC Audio - 1926 Placentia Ave.. Costa Mesa.
CA 92627 (714) 645-2540 .
43

Yamaha - 6600 Orangethorpe Ave., Buena

Dean Markley - 3350 Scott Blvd.. #45. Santa

Clara. CA 95054 (408)988-2456 (800) 538-8330

S Pi

C I I *l”

JBL - 8500 Balboa Blvd.. Northridge, CA 91 329(818)893-8411 .
91

I • I T I 0 M

Understanding

Park. CA 90620(714) 522-9011 .

100

ORDER
NOW
U

NDERSTANDING MIDI, the only MIDI magazine designed to give you all the information
you need to make music. UNDERSTANDING MIDIfeatures the most practical MIDI articles from thepages of MUSICIAN plus the only available com¬plete MIDI product guide. Stay in tune with MIDI
technology. Order UNDERSTANDING MIDI today.

4 Nuts & Bolts Guide
to Harnessing the Power ofMusic’s Digital Revolution$3.95

Mail $3.95 plus $1.00 postage and handling to:
UNDERSTANDING MIDI,
Box 701, Gloucester, MA 01930.

LESS IS MORE?
ACOUSTIC DRUMSET
I. I great sounding, great feelingdruniset.

READ ABOUTIT!
In “Twenty-five Drummers Who Electrified the World"—adeluxe booklet featuring Phil Collins. Vinnie Colaiuta, JR.
Robinson and 22 of the hottest drummers, their set-ups.
techniques and tips. Send S3 check or money order to coverpostage and handling to: SIMMONS Group Centre. 23917
Craftsman Road, Calabasas. CA 91302 for your ct>py.

S/JS9s unties ted setup

SIMMONS SDS9 ELECTRONIC DRUMSET
1.20 great sounding pre-programmed
drumsets. 20 user programmable
drumsets with external memory stor¬
age and access to any MIDI soundsource via drum pad triggering.
2. Newly designed drum pads with softer,
floating heads for a more natural feel.
3. Snare drum with rimshot and crossstick capability. Also available, over 70
alternate sounds digitally stored oninterchangeable memory chips.
4. Computer enhanced dynamic
sensitivity.
S. Individual inputs and outputs for
direct recording, separate channel
mixing and unlimited volume control.
6. On board, user programmabledigital delay.

7. "Auto Trigger" for easier tuning
and review.
8. "Second Skin" feature for single or
double headed drum sounds.
9. Headphone jack for silent practice.
10. Extremely portable, quick to set up.
easy to maintain
More sound, more control, more versatility—no drums offer today's drum
mer more than a Simmons SDS9. In fact,
no drum company is more committed to
expanding the future of drumming thanSimmons. So, while there's no questionthat a conventional drumset is one
incredible instrument. SDS9 is muchmore. And. more is more.

(
SIMMONS)(¡roup ('entre. Inc 2.591“ Craftsman Road
Calabasas. CA 91502 (81S) 884 2(ñ5The Birth, Growth and Simplificationof Britain ’s Best Funk Band
By Rob Tannenbaum

MARK KING'S LEVEL 42 GOES BACK TO BASS-ICS

MALCOLM HEYWOOD RETNA

W

hen we began in 1979, it was verymuch as serious musicians,”
says Mark King, bassist, singer,
and hyperactive mouthpiece for Level
42. “We had a lot of scorn for pop music.
We thought it was mindless crap. We
were much too snotty and loudmouthed
about it, and considered ourselves tobe way above that. We knew what wewere doing. We could play fast if wewanted to,” he says, blue eyes glinting
wide with self-mocking glee.
Although they're as close to unknown
in the United States as any seven-album
veterans can be, Level 42 have long
been the most popular funksters in the
U.K. With a style King describes as“Mahavishnu Orchestra meets the Os¬
monds,” they'd reached a comfortable
position on the continent: every year,
Blues and Soul magazine named them
Best British Group; their singles regular¬
ly placed in the top of the pop charts;
wherever they played, fans popped
thumbs against belt buckles in imitationof King’s Gatling-style technique; andKing could have paid for several
semesters at Berklee with the session
offers he refused. But being the Best
Funk Band in England is a modest
honor, like being the convent stud or theWhite House intellectual. What was theircompetition, Shakatak and the Style
Council? As the gregarious, compact
King explains, Level 42 realized they
had to elude their reputation— it wastime to get into some mindless crap.
"We sat down at the beginning of lastyear and decided it would be nice toshift the emphasis away from individual
virtuosity to strength in songwriting. At
the end of the day, writing great songs
is more worthwhile than being respect¬
ed as a great musician. Of course I loveit when people in Europe say, ‘I think
you're a great bass player.' But it
doesn’t reach as many people as agood song does. Everybody sings. But
not everybody understands that the rootbass I'm playing is C# below the E."
The result was World Machine, which
King considers “our first American re¬lease” even though they’ve already had
two LPs released here. Indeed, thealbum represents a new approach forthe band; As with latter-day Police,
Level 42 now use their prodigious ability

in a crafty, collective compound ofrhythmic and harmonic subtlety, andpop narrative. By halving their efforts,
Level 42 have doubled their assets. And
if the political subtleties of their new
songs seem muddled, that completes
the comparison with the Police. World
Machine rose to number three on the
British charts. Now that “Something
About You” is storming the American
top forty, “Hot Water” is in heavy danceclub rotation and a national headlining
tour has been arranged for this spring.

it was John McLaughlin's guitar playing
which fascinated King. There wasn't
much demand for Bitches Brew on aholm of about 200,000, so King’s in¬terest inevitably lead him to brothers
Phil and Boon Gould, who lived on theother side of the isle. Boon, a guitarist,shared King's fascination with
McLaughlin, but because Phil was also
a drummer, the trio never played in thesame band. Still, Phil and Mark became
good friends, spending time immersed
in what King calls “that sort of moronic“God we were serious! Over six years you start to parody yourself.”
If Level 42 get any bigger, they could
put the Isle of Wight on the rock ’n’ rollmap.
There are, Mark King insists, more
worldly places to grow up than that
small island off the southern coast of En¬
gland. "It wasn’t all goats andshepherds strolling around with lutes,
but getting records was pretty hard. In
fact, discovering Miles Davis and Re¬
turn To Forever was very much a mis¬take of misorders by the record stores.
I'd see these records and they had themagic word jazz on them." Although hebegan playing drums at the age of nine,

drummers’ talk." ("You know the joke,'How many session drummers does ittake to screw in a light bulb?'” King
taunts. “Three: one to screw the bulb
and two to talk about how Steve Gadd
would have done it.”)King continued to play the drums
throughout his teens, supporting him¬
self by working as a milkman. "I was al¬ways convinced I was gonna be a great
drummer,” King continues, “the best in
the world. But the main experience you
get on the Isle of Wight was playing
cover versions in holiday camps for En¬
glish families that couldn’t afford to go
37

away on proper holidays. Occasionally
there were London session musicians
there, old farts that were just about at
the end of their tether, and they'd reel off
frightening stories: 'Oh wait 'til you get to
London, matey, it's terrible. Buddy Rich
playing drums in one window and Phil
Seaman playing drums in another.’“My hero at the time was Lenny Whiteof Return To Forever," King continues,
barely stopping for breath. “I wrote tohim in New York saying, 'Can I comeplay drums in your band?' How stupid!
He wrote back to me and gave me lotsof real good advice. Unfortunately, he
put his address on the letter. I thought,'He’s obviously giving me a sign.' So I
Went to New York and knocked on his
door. He invited me in and let me spend
a couple of days around his house. It
was too much for me: I kept rushing off
to the toilet to have a quick cry. At theend of the week, I'd seen none of New
York. At the airport on the way home, I
bought a Clint Eastwood hat and a repli¬ca Colt .45 pistol in a holster, and I wore
them back on the Isle of Wight during
my milk rounds. ‘Make my day, punk.
Order a pint of cream.”’
In contrast to the caveats of various
old-fart-vacationers, Lenny White ad¬vised King to move to London. “Ithought there were gonna be so many
brilliant musicians there. I was stag
gered to find out they they were all use¬less and there wasn't a famous guy tobe seen. Unfortunately, the only job I
could get was in a music shop that
didn’t sell drums. So I lied and said I
could play bass. Because there wasnothing else to do during the day, I'dpick up the bass and start drumming on
it, doing the thumb-snap thing. It was abenefit, not having a teacher to showme what you’re supposed to do."With such fusion landmarks as
Mahavishnu’s Birds of Fire and Carla
Bley’s Escalator Over The Hill more thanseven years gone, it was a difficult timefor Mark King to be looking for a band.
Few things were less hip in late-70s
London than fusion. King eventually be¬came the drummer in Reflex, which hadsome success in '84 with “The Politics
Of Dancing." But before long, King re¬discovered Phil Gould, who was study¬
ing at the Royal Academy of Music.
Boon Gould was in London as well, andhe'd met a keyboardist named Mike
Lindup at the Guildhall School of Music.
Rather than recruit a bassist, King took
the job and continued his unique drum¬
ming technique. They also met key¬boardist Wally Badarou, who became afifth member, recording with the bandand overseeing rehearsals, but not tour¬
ing. “We all liked Miles and Herbie Han¬cock and Stevie Wonder, so we started
jamming together. It was all instrumen¬tal, very jazzy and Latin, lots of pen¬tatonic scales. God, we were serious.”
In 1980, the Gang of Four was theclosest thing England had to a funkband. But when Mark King's quartet
began playing on the outskirts of Lon¬don, using borrowed equipment andcalling themselves Level 42 after a key
passage in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy, they became part of a transicontinued on page 48

KING’S SCEPTERSM

ark King's home studio is anchoredby a Tascam 38 8-track tape re¬corder, a Studiomaster 16-8-2 deskwith semi-parametric eq, a Sony PCM
701 2-track, and Tannoy monitors. Toys
include a Linn 9000 drum machine, a
Yamaha DX7 synth and a Roland Juno 60(“which is useless, if you're listening"), a'59 Fender Strat, and an Ovation acous¬tic. His basses include five J.D. Super¬natural basses, a pair of Status graphites,
two Pangborns (one sterling silver andone 18 karat gold), a Moon bass with
Alembic electronics, and a four-string
made by Joe Zon of New York. He favors
six Trace Elliott AX 500 amps in 4x10
cabinets, with a GP 11 graphic equalizer.
And what would Mark King use for strings
except Mark King Strings, the Super¬
wound Funk Masters named for him? “It'sa very light gauge—.30 .50 .70 and .90,
with a piano winding. They sound very
bright."Guild and Aerosmith

Brad Whitford is playing Guild's new Nightbird guitar and Tom Hamilton uses Guild's Pilot bass and Guild/Hartke
bass speakers on Aerosmith's current tour. The Nightbird features a hand-carved spruce top and acoustic chambers
for lightness, crunch and sustain that will amaze you. The Pilot bass is the new standard for power, tone, comfort and good looks.
Guild Guitars 1 Terminal Road, Lyndhurst N.J. 07071

38$J

LEVEL 42’S ELEVATORSP

hil Gould plays Tama acoustic drums;
his kit includes four rack toms, a floor
tom and two snares. Gould also uses
a Ludwig and a Pearl snare. His electric
drum kit is a Simmons SDS7 with an SDS1
module on the side. His cymbals are K.
Zildjians.
Boon Gould plays two Gibson Les Pauls
through two big Dean Markley amps. His
strings are Super Wound Selectras from
Rotosound. He uses a custom effects
rack which includes Korg Distortion, Oc¬
taver, Heavy Metal and Booster boxes, a
VGA, and Roland SDE-3000 digital delay
and SRE-555 chorus/echo.
Mike Lindup s keyboard stack includes a
Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, an Emu¬
lator II, a PPG Wave 2.3, a Yamaha DX7
and a Fender Rhodes 73. He uses a
Studiomaster 8x4 mixer to direct traffic
to his effects rack, which consists of a Ro¬
land Vocoder and SRE-555 chorus/echo
and a Yamaha D-1500 digital delay, Lin¬dup uses a Korg MIDI Link box to MIDI up
everything, sequences on a Roland
MSQ-700 and has a Yamaha TX816 DX
rack he keeps at home He records with aPete Cornish DI unit.
Wally Badarou who contributed produc¬tion and keyboards to World Machine,
loves his New England Digital Synclavier
system, but augments it with a Minimoog,
a Prophet 5, a Yamaha DX7 and TX816
rack. He also uses a Linn 9000

3^^

so*06

What’s Active EQ
Bass Pickups?
I’ve always loved the sound ofold basses with their solid, warm
tone. I also love the new soundwith a snappy almost lead guitar
tone. I wanted to design a new
pickup that could get bothsounds, a deep bass and theextended range needed for pop¬
ping high end.
My new active EQ Bass pickups
begin with a low impedance
design with fewer coil windings.
This reduces noise, extends thefrequency range, and starts witha good flat response. A built-in
circuit board preamp accurately
boosts the signal for plentyof nnfniit

Then I added 3 EQ switches
built right in the pickup so you
can choose eight different peakfrequencies. Tailor the sounds toenhance lows, highs, or mids
right on the pickup. With only
one instrument, you can playsolid back up bass, or take thespotlight with a snappy
lead tone.
I make direct replacement Active
EQ Bass Pickup Systems for
P and J Basses and a combina¬
tion P-J. Check them out at yourlocal Seymour Duncan dealer, orsend $2.00 for my color brochurewith full information on all
my pickups.

ffiBJ Seymour
títta) Duncan.
‘ 1985 Seymour Duncan, 203 Chapala Street. Santa Barbara. CA 93101

39

A British Producer with a Hot Hand andCool Ears Offers Some Good Sonic Sense
PRODUCING

By Richard Buskin

SMOOTH OPERATOR: SADE’S ROBIN MILLAR

40

BARRY MARSDENRFrance in the 70s for his work as a com¬ly. “Everyone seems to get beguiled byobin Millar is not too enamored withposer and performer, and as producer
this, but to me it’s obvious: The “go-forthe current trend of recording with
for French bands Extrabel andit” trend has got to stop, because
an overly bright sound: “When I say
Weekend. In 1981 he acquired Morgan
Synclaviers, Emulators and the like, with
I don’t like something that's too bright, I
Studios in northwest London andtheir fantastic bandwidth and frequency
mean artificial brightness,’’ clarifies thechanged its name to the Power Plant.
response, make it so easy to get things
producer. “I mean equalization. The sav¬
Since then, Millar has produced aharder and brighter without hiss orage eq on most modern mixing con¬steady stream of young lions like thenoise, and the poor old public is justsoles is just an excuse to make a mess,
Kane Gang, Pale Fountains, Everything
going to have to keep turning the treble
and the hard high frequencies end up
but the Girl, Fine Young Cannibals,
down and down on their amps!"
being added to absolutely everything.
Working Week, Tom Robinson, Blue
Millar has not come quickly to his rad¬
“The result is that at present— par¬Max and the Big Sound Authority. And
ically conservative production views. A
ticularly in America— everything is try¬
his latest clients are Big Country (a proj¬
law graduate of Cambridge University,
ing to sound brighter, louder and more
ect Millar admits is “pretty bloody
he first garnered favorable attention in'go for it’ than everything else, including
noisy”) and Paul Weller's
the singer. The poor old
Style Council. But it is Sade
singer is wheeled in to singthat has put the Power Plant
over this track where theirrevocably on the map,bass is as bright as aand Millar is all too happy tobloody lead guitar, the bass
explain his part in shaping
drum sounds as if it is being
the “Sade Sound":shot, the snare is like a car“I heard demos of ‘Hang
crash, the guitars come out
Onto Your Love,’ ‘Smoothof an Emulator and soundOperator,’ 'When Am I
as if they're just throwing up
Going To Make A Living’
every now and then, andand 'Should I Love You'
someone shoves some(which was a B-side), andrazor blades in your ear
they were stylistically fairly
and that’s the high-hat! So
similar to the way they
the singer has no choice
ended up on Diamond
but to just stand there andLife. They were of course
try to scream over it all fromrough and ready, not only
the back! You know, ‘Shout
because they were demosa bit louder dear, we can’t
but also because the grouphear you over all this!' So
had never been into aeverything is a belter, ev¬
studio of any kind before.
erything is 'go for it'....
“What wasn't there was‘Scream and Shout!”’
percussionof any descrip¬
Robin Millar's singers
tion, and so I introduced
don't have to scream andthis element as a funda¬
shout— unless they want to.
mental part of the group's
Sade Abu, for example, hasmusic as I felt that in a loose
parlayed Millar’s applied
sense it evoked the righttheory of smooth tapesort of mannerisms for theoperating into two smashstyle of songs that Sade im¬albums, Diamond Life andagined she was writing: 60s
the recent Promise. Bothand 70s soul-based music.
are exhibit A in Millar'sThis was the most definite
crusade to make the world
way of maintaining thesafe for human ears: “Notrack’s momentum in a for¬one can understand how
ward direction without clut¬
Promise has smooched its
tering it up with extra in¬
way to the top and settled instrumentation. Her voice
at number one in the British
seemed to need air around“Everyone’s trying to sound brighter, louder, more go-for-it.”charts with nobody reallyit to hear the way she
making that much noise atstarted and ended words.
all," Millar says pointed¬

The art of engineering
is serious business.

You made the decision
to engineer audio be¬cause you care for theart of music and sound.
The realities are thatyou also need tooperate as a business.
The audio console thatyou choose for yourcreative fulfillment is
the most expensive
piece of capital equip¬
ment in your facility.
Serious business.
We also consider theart of engineering aserious business. We
have devoted 12 years
to engineering andbuilding truly the finest
audio consoles. Yearafter year, we havereinvested our profit
back into our design,
manufacturing anddistribution facilities.
Tne result is that
TAC and AMEK
together are among
the world's largest
professional audio

console companies.
Serious business.

SCORPION 26/16/2
w/16 monitor

The SCORPION is oneof the highlights of the
TAC line With 9 different
modules. 2 mainframe
configurations. 5 meter
packages and 8 or 16
buses, the SCORPION
can be configured tosuit any professional
application. Of course,
each SCORPION
comes standard with
the EQ sound andchassis design that has
made TAC/AMEK
world renowned.
Affordable value
is serious business.
We ask only that you
look deeper than justan ad. a brochure, ora sales presentation
before you make yournext major capital
investment At TAC,
we treat the art ofengineering as aserious business

AMEK CONSOLES INC, 10815 Burbank Blvd, North Hollywood. CA 91601 Tel: 818-508-9788 Telex. 662526 AMEK USA
TOTAL AUDIO CONCEPTS LTD . Islington Mill, James Street. Salford M3 5HW England Tel 061-834-6747 Telex 668127 AMEK GThe good thing about percussion is that
because it doesn't constitute notes,
thick chords or continuous dense
music, it can be featured quite promi¬
nently without detracting from the voc¬
alist too much.”"Another thing they didn't have was
the doubling of acoustic grand piano
and traditional Fender Rhodes. At thetime Andy (Hale)—the keyboard
player—was playing on a Wurlitzer
electric piano, and that was the basis of
his sound. So I introduced the notion of
doubling two separate performanceson the acoustic grand and the Fender
Rhodes, which gave a slightly different
effect tothat achieved by the Forte MIDI

Mod which is currently very voguish [aMIDI interface allowing the acoustic
piano to trigger a synthesizer],“I also introduced sketched-out brassparts in place of individual sax solos,
and along with percussion this helped
enhance certain sections, to give rises
and falls. I also wrote and introduced
simple string lines, which became moreelaborate on Promise. In addition I pro¬vided some of the musical punctuationand sound sweetening of certain
rhythm sections, and gave the band thenotion of creating space, since record¬ing with great clarity and impeccable
performance can often allow you to getaway with a lot less. Things don't have

THE BEYER MCE 6 GETS
THIS CLOSE TO THE TRUE SOUND
OF YOUR HORN
Designed to take over 150 dB of sound pressure without overload or
distortion, this miniature condenser is durable enough to mount right inyour bell. The pickup pattern and frequency response have been optimized tocapture all the character of your sax, trumpet or trombone as no'moonlighting' vocal mic can. The MCE 6 puts brass and wind instruments
on an equal footing with electric and electronic instruments.
The innovative design of the MCE 6 gives you consistent, studio quality
sound on any stage. And it won't affect the mlance and tone of yourinstrument. Its uncompromising accuracy, typically Beyer, gives the audience
all the intensity you put into your horn without sacrificing the intimate
details of your sound.
The MCE 6 also connects to Beyer's TS 185 pocket wireless transmitter (orto any wireless system) for an even wider range of performance options.
Audio accuracy has made Beyer the leading choice of demanding European
engineers and musicians ever since we introduced the first professional
wireless system in 1962. For more information on the MCE 6 instrument
microphone and the full range of Beyer wireless products, write to:
Beyer MCE 6
mounting clip
(MTH5)
for wind andbrass instruments.

ACCURACY IN AUDIO

beyerdynamic))))to get cluttered.
“This even applied to the vocals
themselves: Sade is full of ideas forthese, and during a song she always
provides an answer for every questionthat she asks in the form of a kind of adlibbed backing vocal. Almost like thelater part of the traditional Motown
scene where you had the likes of Al
Green and Diana Ross doing questions
and answers in duet form, except Sadetends to duet with herself. Sometimes,
as on ‘The Sweetest Taboo' and 'Never
As Good As The First Time,’ it can be avery good thing, but at other times it canbe unnecessarily jumbled, stating theobvious and not leaving anything to theimagination of the listener. 'Your Love Is
King,' for instance, started life with agood many ad-libs, and I weeded a lotof those out to leave a little space and a
bit for people to ponder on.
"Vocally, however, it would be abso¬
lutely unfair to Sade’s natural quality
and ability for me to say that I createdsome sort of voice out of something thatwasn't there, like a traditional pop pro¬
ducer would do with studio effects; wedon’t use much in the way of effects onher voice. All I did was choose different
sounds that had both the right emotive
quality for that song, and that also en¬
sured her voice would sound the same
within different contexts.
“Sade has more than one voice: She
has a way of belting things out in a very
loud and abrasive manner, and this cancause certain microphones to go into
compression and rather enhance thatnasal harshness which isn’t her prettiest
sound. So for those sections we would
switch to a microphone that would avoid
doing this, and for other parts where shesings very breathy and very quietly andyou need to bring out as much as possi¬
ble of the tone in the voice we'd use avalve microphone like a Neumann 67.
Other tracks, such as 'Sally' on Dia¬
mond Life, demanded a very unstudied
performance, and so we used what I
would call a performance micro¬
phone—in that particular case, a Shure
SM58. It seemed to be responding in
the right way as she hurled her headback and sang.
"Sade has a very good sense of ob¬
jectivity, which is one of the things thatmakes her a great singer. She’s a goodlearner, so as the two albums pro¬
gressed, my job really became easierand easier. She doesn’t have great
technique or facility for singing difficult
things—but she knows she has an ag¬
reeable tone to her voice and she knows
how to use it.
“Like most people, Sade has a prob¬
lem tuning when singing with head¬phones, so we set up a system with her
at the back of the control room, with acontinued on page 86

“The New QSC MX 1500 Is The Most Powerful
2 ohm, 2 Rack Space Amplifier In The World.
And There
Are Good
Reasons
Why It Is.”The MX 1500 is designed for performance. To create modern music, musicians need

Patrick Quilter
VP/Engineering. QSC Audio.

modern equipment. Amplifying digital synths, popped bass strings and sampled percussion toconcert levels—without robbing the throb from the low end. the sparkle from the highs orclipping transients beyond recognition — requires both exceptional fidelity and awesome
reserves of power —that's the MX 1500. The MX 1500 is designed to be powerful.
Though only two rack-spaces tall, the dual-monaural MX 1500 can deliver 750 watts of brute
power per channel [both channels driven] into a 2 ohm load. The MX 1500 can handle
virtually any load a high-performance speaker system can present. The MX 1500 is
designed to be reliable. You might even say indestructible. Sophisticated multiple failsafe
circuits are built-in to protect both amplifier and speakers. Your system is protected from open
and short circuits, mismatched loads, overheating and DC faults. Dual-monaural amplifier
design means if one channel fails for any reason, the other will still keep on working. QSC
backs up the MX 1500 with a 3-year parts and labor warranty, and gives you the best service
commitment you'll find anywhere. The MX 1500 is ready for you. Best of all. at only 67
cents a watt, the MX 1500 is ready to rack and roll right now. Never has so much power been
packed into so little rack space. Maybe that's why the
Quality
volume knobs go to 11! For more information contact: f l¡jkj
CommitmentQSC Audio Products. 1926 Placentia Avenue.
.zCosta Mesa. CA 92627 [714] 645 2540. -Charvel’s MIDI Guitar, Ursa Major
Goes 68000 & Electro-Percussion NewsSOFTWARE CITY■

recently bought a $50 program for
my IBM-PC called Sidekick that a lotof PC users are agog over. It stays inthe background of whatever program
I'm running, and then pops up out of
nowhere when I want a calculator,
scratch pad, phone directory/autodialer or apppointment calendar. So
what has the desk-top utility boom got
to do with music?
Well, assuming you’ve got your se¬quencer up and pumping, do you re¬ally want to have to save everything
and exit the program just to change
voice banks in your Yamaha DX7?
Hell, no! To the rescue comes a little$140 memory-resident DX7 librarian
from Bäcchus called Voice Manager Byhitting Alt-Y (Yamaha, natch), you can
instantly access any of seventy banksof thirty-two voices each (that’s 2240
voices, by my pull-down calculator) ona single double-sided disk. Note that
this is not voice editing software— it
won’t help you program the sounds,
but it’ll save them, shuffle them, andredeal them any way you like.
Voice Manager handles either
whole banks or individual voices; it
can download single voices, movethem from bank to bank, rearrange
them within a bank. It’s quite fast,
especially at paging through the voicebanks, doesn't use a hodge-podge of
key combinations to do simple things,
and is very clear-cut about loadingfrom and saving to disk, something
Sidekick is pretty bad on. But above all
I like the straightforward way it’s laidout on a single menu page, with help
screens and prompts easily at hand.
And all memory-resident programs
have one other big hurdle to clear:since if they jam up they also takedown the foreground program, they
have to make big allowances for
idiots— this is called "user bulletproof¬
ing.” Believe me, I did my level best,
but I couldn’t make it freeze up. Call
213-392-1906 for details.
Of course, if you want to set up
patches for more than a DX7, may wesuggest the Octave Plateau Patch Mas¬
ter for IBM-PC. This does what VoiceManager does for up to thirty-two in¬struments, be they drum machines,
synthesizers or synchronizers. It recalls
whole setups, so you can save andload in system-wide patches, includ¬ing MIDI channel assignments.
There’s also HELP available on call,
32-character patch naming, andautomatic auditioning of sound. No,
it's not memory-resident, but O-P has
plans to integrate Patch Master with
Sequencer Plus so you can run themboth simultaneously.
44

ByJock Baird

DEVELOPMENTS

Ah, competition! Multi-national Go¬
liaths mixing it up with American
Davids...the breakthroughs, theblunders, lives and careers hanging in
the balance.... No wonder tech writers
are having so much fun these days.
Take, for example, the MIDI guitar wars,
covered extensively in these pages.
Just in time to combat post-NAMM let¬down is a new $1400 guitar-to-MIDI
converter from Charvel called thethree-button floor pedal for stagefront
control. Contact Charvel, 1316 E. Lan¬caster. Ft. Worth, TX 76113; (817) 3365114 for details.
If you've been keeping up with com¬puter hardware developments, youknow the number 68000 is more than thenumber of shoes owned by Imelda Mar¬cos. It's the microprocessor that gives
the Macintosh, the Amiga and the Atari
520ST their 512K leading edge. Ursa

GTM6. Hoo hah, looks like tag-team
Wrestlemania all over again!
This new rack mount brain and pickup/tremolo package does make a cer¬tain amount of sense. It's the wellpedigreed fruit of the recent marriage ofJackson/Charvel guitars with Akai MIDI
smarts, and it's designed (so far) towork only with new Charvels. The tre¬molo unit has six individual piezo pick¬ups right on the six bridge feet, whichcuts down on tracking problems
caused by string cross-bleed. The pick¬up connects via a standard ’/«-inch
stereo phone plug to the central unit,
which uses what Charvel calls "com¬puter digital multiplex circuitry" to con¬vert voltages to key-on, key-off, key-vel¬ocity, pitch-bend and program-change
MIDI info. The pitch-recognition system
samples at 2 megahertz and has 16-bit
resolution; the pitch recognition time issix milliseconds or two vibrations. Eachstring has its own sensitivity pot on thefront panel, and you can assign each in¬dividual string to a separate MIDI chan¬nel for extreme multi-timbral jollies.
The GTM6 has substantial program
memory—the combination of three dif¬ferent program chains can yield up toseven thousand presets. Will that doyou? Just to sweeten the pie a tad, theGTM6 throws in a 2000-note on-board
sequencer and functions as a high-res¬olution tuner. It also comes with a de¬tachable remote control unit to run thesequencer, program changes and MIDI
assignments, and the change between
the three pitch-bend modes (step,
quantized or bend). There’s also a

Major decided all that power shouldn't

Charvel GTM 6
just go to micro-computers and usedthe 68000 as the basis of their new Au¬
rora digital effects unit, the Model ADR68K. It'll handle reverb and special ef¬
fects, sample for eight seconds,
equalize, slice, dice and do windows.
Bandwidth is 20kHz, analog-to-digitalconversion is 16-bit, there's full MIDI im¬
plementation and a removable RAM
cartridge for doubling parameter mem¬ory. There's also some cool design
tricks like a 2-in/4-out feature that splits
the Aurora to run two programs at once,or the ability to take two different sam¬ples and run them through two different
effects programs. And since the wholeunit is software based, there’ll be newprograms and sounds long after you
buy it. In fact, the first hundred bought
will get free software updates for life!
Not for hobbyists at $4000 list, but a lotof hardware for the dollars.
Some good news in electronic per¬cussion: First, the KAT Expandable
MIDI Percussion Controller. It looks a bit
like one octave of a marimba, with
twelve pads per module—the modules
can be strapped together to make sev-

The Ultimate Beast of Play
S-1503 Stage System
4 rare breed. A speaker system that combines full-range response with
unparalleled power handling in the most versatile PA cabinet ever. Equally
comfortable with vocals, or keyboards, or in front of a fully-miked band, theS-1503 is that rare breed of product that does it all. No other speaker can match
its instinctive accuracy and fierce ability.
Beastly hut. The exclusive VMR® vented midrange breathes power into an
extended lower midrange, allowing seamless coverage of this critical area of
vocals and instrumentals. With a massive magnet driving a six-inch cone, the VMR
has a pleasing natural sound while providing horn-like efficiency and dispersion.
Survival of the Jittest. Exploding electronic drums or power-soaked bass
guitar. . . the 1503 tames any uncivilized sound. With patented thermal
protection, the 15-inch extended coil woofer handles 400 watts of "real world"
power and peaks up to 800 watts.
The nature of the beast. Remarkable, wide-range response. Unparalleledpower handling. And three-dimensional accuracy that enhances any instrument.
The 1503 Stage Systems speaker... the ultimate beast of play.
Write Music Marketing at Electro-Voice, Inc., 600 Cecil St., Buchanan, Ml 49107
for more information. Or see your nearby EV dealer and unleash the beast.

1»
Ev Electror

SOUND IN A

ION

including case, stereo cord & book. For purchasing
information, brochure or discography please contact:
STICK EN T E R P R I S E S, INC.
8320 Yucca Trail, Los Angeles. CA 90046(213) 656-6878. Dealer inquiries welcome.

46

MIDI from page 34
sometimes be like having asthma or abad sinus problem. As soon as you start
having fun, the old passageways startgetting clogged up and you have tostop. That's how it is with our “live-to-sequencer” application. All those simulta¬
neous inputs make for a heavy flow ofdata. Then, suppose four players all hit
four-note chords at once. That could
very well stop up the pipes for good.
Knowing that their equipment would
be dealing with situations something
like this, the manufacturers of all the
MIDI merging devices we’ve mentioned
have taken steps to streamline the data
flow as much as possible, restoring freebreathing in your MIDI cables. All our
merging devices have some provision
for filtering off data that might not beneeded in a given application. Most ofthem let you filter off some form of
keyboard velocity information, which
can generate quite a lot of MIDI bytes
that go to waste if velocity data can't beprocessed on the receiving end. Manymergers let you filter off System Exclu¬
sive data as well. This too can be very
useful, as the MIDI Spec says that Sys¬tem Exclusive data must go through un¬interrupted. It can even take prece¬dence over MIDI clock bytes, making
things very awkward if you're dealing
with any kind of timed, synchronizedapplication. At the far end of the filtering
spectrum is J.L. Cooper's MIDI Blender,
which lets you mix everything from after¬
touch commands to all MIDI data com¬
ing into the device.
Good data management also helps
minimize flow problems in MIDI merg¬ing devices. In the course of merging
and rechannelizing incoming MIDI
data, all merging devices have to keep
careful track of those all-important MIDI
status bytes—the data packets without
which no other types of data would
make much sense. If you know your
MIDI theory, you'll recall that statusbytes come down the line before databytes and identify what type of informa¬tion the data bytes will be conveying.
You may also recall that when a wholebunch of identical data bytes comedown the line, there is provision in the
MIDI Spec for something called Run¬
ning Status. Rather than sending afresh
status byte for each identical data byte
that's transmitted, one status byte canserve to identify a whole stream of iden¬
tical data bytes. Cutting out the redun¬dant status bytes helps decongest thedata flow quite a bit. Recognizing this,the designers of the Kamlet MIDI
Merger wrote their software in such amanner that normal-status data is au¬
tomatically converted to Running Status
wherever possible.
Another route over the time lag humpis to provide the merging device with aspeedier alternative to the standard
MIDI baud rate. The MIDIMIX 9 offers
one input/output pair that operates atdouble MIDI speed. And on a more am¬bitious scale, we have the Southworth
Jam Box, which is still in development at
the time of this writing. Although it will
work with other equipment, the device isbeing designed around Southworth's
Total Music software for the Apple
Macintosh—a program which includes
a 1,584-track (!) sequencer. The com¬pany is considering two possible
schemes for picking up the pace in thelink between the Jam Box and the Mac.
One option would be to use a SCSI
(Small Computer Standard Interface)parallel interface, which would greatly
exceed the speed of the serial MIDI in¬
terface. And even if they stay within theserial domain, says Southworth spokes¬
man John Carr, they can still step up the
speed to four times the MIDI baud rate.
Either way, the device will still operateon the standard MIDI baud rate when
outputting to any other MIDI device.
Although they're relatively modest in
appearance and price (most retailsomewhere between $200 and $400),
MIDI merging boxes seem like one of
the more useful MIDI accessories tocome down the pike in a while. A MIDI
merger might not help you write better
songs, but it can make it easier for you
to get another musician in to help withthe job. So those walls of solitude are al¬
ready starting to crumble. Now, if there
were a MIDI box that could settle royalty
disputes and arguments over songwrit¬ing credits.... 0
Developments from previous pageeral octaves. The rubber surface has asofter feel than a typical drum pad, andthe MIDI implementation is very
thorough. Not too cheap at $900, withexpanders for $500, but this may be the
MIDI controller top percussionists havebeen praying for. (413-567-1395). The
nifty little Model 2020 Krash Pad from
Barcus Berry isn't as elaborate, but for
its $80 price tag you get even sensitivity
all over the pad. Barcus Berry s new
clip-on electret cymbal mikes and drum
triggers are also well worth a look-see.
Pearl did a nice job showing their new
Syncussion electronic percussion mod¬ule at NAMM—good sounds! And in the
acoustic realm, Paiste has come out
with an affordable line of cymbals called
the 400s younger (read “poorer") play¬ers will want to investigate. There's an
excellent selection of high-hats,splashes, crashes, power crashes,chinas, rides and power rides. A basic
high-hat/crash/ride set goes for $285.
Next month, more MIDI guitar mad¬ness, this time from a small Berkeley,
California company called Zeta Sys¬
tems. Ahh, more competition.... B

Suntechthe composer

presents. ♦.

the player

Duane Hitchings

Chester Thompson

Software: Syntech

Software: Syntech

Grammy winning songwriter (Kim Carnes,
Rod Stewart, Rocky IV, Iron Eagle)

Drummer for Phil Collins, Genesis,
Frank Zappa, Weather Report

the engineer

Bruce Jackson

Owner /Engineer of Westlake Recorders, astate-of-the-art 24/48 track recording
complex located in Westlake, C4

Software: Syntech

With SYNTECH MIDI software now you can be the composer, player, and the engineer. ..
Right in your own home!

No experience necessary!
See us at NAMM booth #2X1
Distributors—
Midwest: Chesbro Music
Australia: ASEACO
Canada: Kaysound Dist.
Syntech is seeking all types of MIDI software packages for the IBM, Apple 11+/e, Macintosh, Atari 520ST & Commodore 64/128

5699 Kanan Road, Agoura, California 91301 (818) 704-8509 Telex: 650-254-8720
IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines. Inc.. Apple Ih/e & Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer. Inc.. Atari 520 ST is a registered trademark of Atari Corporation.. Commodore 64/128 is a
registered trademark of Commodore Computers. Inc.

More thanjust notes.
EMG Pickups.
You want more than just thenotes you play. With an EMG,
get the response you needfrom a pickup Get theperformance you put into it.

Hlllllllll(707) 525 9941

. CANADA: Louis Musical, Quebec

CLEAN UP YOUR ACT!

Stiff vibration free support forany size keyboard from KURZWEIL
to CZ101. Sets up in seconds.
The new choice of pros like

THE MOTELS!

48

KEYBOARD STANDSINVISIBLE PRODUCTS • PO 80X 230 CAMBRIDGE MA 02139 • (617) 354-7329

Level 42 from page 38

tional atmosphere. “Punk had finallybeen nailed and new wave was fizzling.
Suddenly, after all the anarchy andnegativity, it was hip to dress up and go
dancing. There were lots of clubs andbands. They called us Brit-funk."
The qualification 8r/t-funk is impor¬tant, because Level 42's early music
was far too genteel to qualify as morethan a drop in the gutbucket. It was atinkly, mellow sound, with lots of hotel¬
bar piano solos and a light beat that
could bore even George Benson, astyle perfectly described by titles like
“Wings Of Love” and “Woman." But thenumerous independent labels that had
sprouted needed bands to record, andin the summer of 1980 the owner of Elite
records offered to produce a 45 forLevel 42.
This required two things Level 42
lacked: a singer, and some words forthe singer to sing. The latter was pro¬vided by Phil Gould, with inauspicious
results. And Mark King was selected as
the band’s vocalist. “It wasn’t because
they said, 'You sing all right,’” King con¬fesses. “Everybody was cringing when
I auditioned, but we just had to get on
with it."“Love Meeting Love,” the 45, gar¬nered considerable club play, and theband was signed by Polydor in Eng¬
land. With their 5,000-pound advance,
they bought their own equipment and avan to transport their bounty. Their firstalbum, Level 42, cracked the British top
twenty in the fall of '81. “Without trying
too hard, we achieved a crossover. The
songs were poppy, and in the middle
the band could fly around a bit. The
press always said we were serious
musicians, because that’s what we’dtold them. And the BBC used to play our
stuff, whether it was horrible or not.”
Their next record, 1982’s The Pursuit
Of Accidents, was their first American
release, although King says PolyGram“made the mistake of trying to promote
us as a rhythm & blues band.”By the next year, Level 42 hadswitched to A&M and Earth, Wind & Fireveterans Larry Dunn and Verdine White
were called in to produce Standing In
The Light. Although King thinks of Level
42's early work as Mahavishnu meets
the Osmonds, their fourth album wasmore like Yes meets the Blues Brothers.
All that acclaim at home only encour¬
aged the band's bombastic tenden¬cies. “Over six years, you start to parody
yourself," King confesses. "Between
vocal lines I’ll pull out a few fast bass
licks and the audience goes ayyyyy. It’s
like getting slapped on the back by
three thousand kids at once. So thenyou find yourself doing it more andmore. Before you know it, you're topcontinued on page 86

YOUR OWN STUDIO, S350
Record yourself and friends— the layout and design
make this one of the best
multitrack demo-makers
ever made. Precious Metal*
rehearses on Fostex before
recording dates at Sound
City.

Make the most of your elec¬
tronic instruments — build

up to nine individually
recorded parts by "layer¬ing" or ^bgUhcing tracks.
Fostex tramer Tom Lubin ex¬
plains the ins & outs.

BASS

Build better chops — there's
nothing like a multitrack
TReett recorder with sync to im¬prove your timing, your ear,
• I your overall playing.
Rocker Jamie Bertman’ ,opractices monster licks with^his Fostex»

You'll enjoy compatibility with standard cassette decks —noise reduction, speed and track format — so you can ex¬change musical ideas by trading tapes. Or, become a partof your favorite hits: record as you normally would, then:overdub your own voice or instrument and mix yourself
in. Some talented owners have even heard their X-15 ef¬
forts on the air. So no use waiting. Go see your Fostex
Dealer for the best deal in personal multitrack. For only
$350, how can you afford not to?

TVIultihacker•Actual retail prices are determined by individual fostex Dealers
Precious Metal appears courtesy oí Caiman Productions and folyGram Records

FostexCONSUMER MULTITRACK
15431 Blackburn Ave.
Norwalk, Ca 90650(213) 921-1112

Bob
Seger
Forgives,
Doesn’tForgetBy Timothy White

Somewhere tonight,
Someone’s packin' up and someone’s really leavin’
Someone's not quite sad—only disbelievin'someone's walkin' out the door....
"Somewhere Tonight." by Bob Seger. 1986very morning, Bob Seger
wakes up to the image ofa ghost. It sits on his night¬
table, a creased andashen photo of a broad-featured
man in a smart suit and vest, his
thick hair brushed into an upswept
pompadour. The impish, wounded
expression on his craggy face calls
to mind a playful James Cagney orVictor McLaglen; the phantom
holds a ukulele in his hands in astrumming pose, but the jaunty ges¬ture does not convince— his darkeyes are stark in a haunted cast.
The ghost, it seems, is a specter
even to himself.
“That’s him, that's my father,”murmurs his graying but still indefatigably boyish son, smoothing his
silver-streaked beard as he squints
at the small, battered snapshot. “Isuppose I should do something topreserve that picture, especially if
I’m gonna have it along when I’m

Eaway from home. I don’t really have
all that many memories of my dad
as it is.”Indeed, Bob Seger was ten years
old when Stewart Seger, a former
bandleader and failed medical student-turned-Ford Motor Company
medic, abandoned his family in Ann
Arbor, Michigan and lit out for
California.
“I was never too close to him, un¬like my first-born brother George,”
says Bob, indicating the nearby
framed portrait of a successful busi¬
ness executive and his own family,“and then I only saw my dad threetimes between the time I was ten
and about twenty-four, my age
when he died.”
Bob Seger, forty-one, slim and fit,leather jeans and black boots, isambling restlessly through his rent¬
ed canyon-top Bel Air hacienda,
an expansive pool-and-patioencircled complex located several
miles and nearly two decades fromthe site where Stewart Seger met his
demise. Toiling as an itinerant malenurse in Los Angeles, the senior
Seger had been assigned to keep
an alcoholic patient sober, but actu¬
ally was sharing drinks with hischarge. He perished while appa¬
rently intoxicated in a freak fire in his
apartment house.
“When my father died, my mother
had never divorced him— and they
were separated fifteen years,” says
Bob, shaking his head in puzzle¬
ment. “During the 1930s, when they
courted, it was traditionally ac¬
cepted that you were married forlife. My mom is seventy-two years
old, and she still wears his wedding
ring. The memory of love is a power¬
ful thing; it's a tangible possession
in and of itself, and I guess that’s
been a theme running through mywhole personal development aswell as my career. Nothing can evercorrect and make right the stunt myfather pulled; you have to forgive
him for it and then you have to livewith it.”Bob Seger is but a few days pastokaying the master pressings ofLike A Rock, his fifteenth album andthe most wrenchingly wrought(three probative years in the pro¬cess) of his solid quarter-century inrock ’n' roll. Among the most difficult
tracks to realize was an epic fiveand-a-half-minute ballad entitled“The Ring,” which he cut and recut
on four separate occasions sincespring 1984 (in Michigan; Muscle
Shoals, Alabama; Miami, Florida
and Capitol Studios in Hollywood)
before deciding the last version wasa keeper.
“The original song was eight min¬utes long,” he offers, “and I guess it
was real special to me. It starts out
with a guy totally in love with his wife
and what they share, but by the mid¬dle of the second verse the story
has shifted to her point of view, andshe reveals how she came to giveup all her youthful dreams during
the course of accepting her fate.
When you're in a relationship, you’realways surrounded by a ring of cir¬
cumstance— joined together by awedding ring, or in a boxing ring.”
He lights a cigarette and takes a
deep, deep drag. “It’s so scary tocommit to one person, to depend on
or rely on someone in particular, be¬cause you can end up mighty dis¬appointed. I'm by myself now,” heallows bluntly, referring to thebreakup in 1983 of his eleven-yearbond with lover Jan Dinsdale as wellas the recent denouement ofanother two-year romance. “Oddthing is, for the first time since I wasin this foolish, impulsive marriage back in 1968 for one day
short of a year, I would definitely consider marrying again.
“The most important things in my adult life have been mycommitments to certain women. I always tried to put themfirst. And in every relationship that lasts a long time, someone
always has to give up more than someone else."
This rueful sentiment could hardly be more directly expli¬
cated than in the gripping verse ultimately deleted from thefinished recording of "The Ring":
He came on so strong
He hit her full force
Like a storm raging out of control
He touched something deep in her soul
She gave in, and let herself go....

“Sooner or later, we all sleep alone, ” Seger rules with a hesit¬
ant grin, “and it’s my turn. Music means a lot to me, andpeople close to me have told me—with a certain amount ofuneasiness in their voices—that Like A Rock is the most inti¬
mate and soul-baring album in a pretty candid stretch ofwork. But I can’t help it, ’cause for me everything flows frommy relationships, and I’ve come to believe that, creatively, tomake yourself totally open is the bravest and, hell, the bestthing you can do. I learned that from what happened with myparents, ” he says, nodding to himself. “They became for me alife-long model of what not to do. "T

he freshly inaugurated John F. Kennedy was plotting
the Bay of Pigs debacle and Moscow was preparing to
put the first human in orbit on the frigid evening in 1961
that Robert Clark Seger took his own first bittersweet shot at
immortality, cajoling a kindly DJ at Ann Arbor's WPAG radio
into spinning an acetate demo of his song, "The Lonely One.”The primitive guitar, bass and drums treatment of the awk¬
ward ballad had been recorded in the basement of one Max
Crook, then gaining notoriety as the nimble keyboardist re¬sponsible for the skedaddling Musitron solo—“It was the firstrock synthesizer riff," Seger maintains—on Del Shannon’s
fleet-selling chart-topper, “Runaway.”
As his song seeped out of the dashboard console of a car
aimed down Stadium Boulevard, fifteen-year-old Seger
gulped a Hamm’s beer and let his mind gallop with a peculiar
longing. But Bob Seger quite pointedly had no designs onthrilling the lilywhite crowds at the Walled Lake resort clubs
where Jamie Coe & the Gigolos performed for jammed
weekend hops, and where a generation earlier, the thirteenpiece Stewart Seger Orchestra had been a featured post-war
attraction. The otherwise introverted father had been a skilledswing clarinetist in the classic Benny Goodman mold, but his
mounting insecurities at the bandstand found expression in
too-frequent trips to the beer gardens and jealous rages withhis attractive wife Charlotte, a coquettish ballroom dancer
whose outgoing nature at his gigs he came to detest.
When Stewart Seger walked out on his wife and his sons,he pulled the rug out from under their middle-class existence
and submerged them in a world of seedy studio flats to which
they were virtual rent slaves. Radio was the only escape avail¬able to the mortified boy, the sole source of accurate solace.
“Living on the poor side of town, I not surprisingly hadgreaser tastes,” he recalls with the vibrantly husky haw-haw
that is his version of a chuckle. “So after my mom and brotherturned in for the evening and the Michigan stations had shut
down or reduced their power, the 50,000 watts of good ol'
WLAC in Nashville would come beaming through on my teenytransistor earphone. I'd listen to John R. the Horseman getting
down with James Brown & the Famous Flames, or Garnet
Mimms & the Enchanters doing “Cry Baby.” Then Ernie's
Record Mart from Gallatin, Tennessee would urge you
to mail in $1.25 for any single ever pressed anywhere,or Music City Songcrafters would do their pitch
about sending in a poem that they would write asong around!
“It was my R&B and raunchy rock 'n' roll obsessions thatpushed me off the Honor Roll after tenth grade, really, butmaybe it was the Songcrafters that got me into writing all thatpoetry in English class. I discovered I had a natural gift for
rhymes that weren’t dumb-sounding. My main thing school¬
wise was cross-country, and even though I was a big smoker
I cleared 5'6” to place third in the high jump at the Ann ArborYpsilanti High meet—which was my biggest non-musical mo¬ment as kid. I needed to blow off all my general resentment
any way I could."
Seger's track and field prowess also came in handy when
he and his well-to-do friends from the upscale side of theMichigan college town began breaking into the exclusive
Barton Hills country club. There were other incidents of petty
hooliganism and flirtations with the shadowy side, among
them a memorably delinquent 1961 Detroit weekend in which
he and six other chums took turns (his less successful thansome of the others— “a pretty nasty scene") plying their inau¬
gural night moves with an unflappable black hooker.
It was the entrepreneurial preppie scion of a prosperous
K
Michigan produce distributor who introduced Seger to a oworld beyond the borders of cheap adolescent thrills. Eddie £“Punch” Andrews first collided with Seger during University |of Michigan Delta House frat blowouts fueled by Bob's threeg
piece Decibels band. Andrews and partner Dave Leone had«“Creatively, to makeyourself totally openis the bravest
and, hell, thebest thing you
can do.”KEN SETTLE

seen the overnight boom of British Inva¬
sion-instigated teen bands as a poten¬
tial gold mine and begun renting a net¬
work of halls dubbed “Hideouts” in sub¬urbs like Harper Woods and and South¬
field. They charged underage Beatles
and Kinks fans a buck admission to sip
Cokes and frug to the top forty reper¬
toire of fledgling combos.
As the bands improved, so did theircommercial potential, and the five Hide¬outs’ receipts funded the launch of the
Hideout and Punch labels, whose early
releases included sides by Brownsville
Station, a Glenn-Frey-led act called theMushrooms (whose record “Such A
Lovely Child,” was written and pro¬
duced by B. Seger) and somethingcalled Bob Seger & the Last Heard.
“The Last Heard”—whooo what anawful name that still is! —were formed
from remnants of the two post-Decibels
bands I was in, Doug Brown & theOmens and the Town Criers," says
Seger. Most hardcore Seger fans areaware that Bob's 1965 “Gloria”-derived“East Side Story" was picked up by
Seger hammering it out in 1964 with the Town Criers
Cameo-Parkway and became the call¬ing card that led, by a tangled route, toa deal with Capitol.
“But most people don’t realize that I was almost signed to birds. When I brought the “2 + 2 = ?” anti-Vietnam thing in, I
Motown as one of their first white rock artists! The band that conveniently didn’t reveal what it was about until it hit theoriginally cut ‘East Side Story,’ the Underdogs, they got a stores. They literally threw me out of the office when I told
Motown deal and then the label was pursuing me. Motown ac¬ them it was questioning an illegal war and they half¬
tually offered Punch more money than Capitol, but he had suggested we should be thrown into jail! Of course, it was im¬friends at Capitol and was unsure how much exposure we’d mediate curtains for the single.
“The period around 1972 when he left Capitol for [the Smok¬
get with the Suprêmes, the Temptations and all those other
in'O.P.’s, Back In 72 and Seven LPs on] Reprise and thenacts taking off. Also, I don’t know if ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin' Man,'
my first Capitol hit in '68, would have fit on Motown. It was got dropped was the hardest time. Nobody knows this, but
Warner Bros, rejected Beautiful Loser outright and Bob and I
more in a Wilson Pickett rather than a Smokey Robinson vein.”
And how about “Sock It To Me Santa,” his sizable 1966 Mid¬ were dead broke. I had to find a way to borrow $1,000 to remix
the tape to play it for Capitol at a time when I had $4,000 worth
western holiday hit on Cameo-Parkway?
“Haw!! You know that tune! Shit, what a riot! Listen, I want of $3 bounced-check charges against me. Nobody also
you to know that single came out a full year before Mitch knows this, but after Capitol welcomed us back for Loser, they
Ryder's record; plus I had a nice little tribute to James Brown turned around and rejected Live Bullet, thinking it was awith the line, 'Santa’s got a brand new bag!' And on the flip cheap excuse for Frampton Comes Alive. It was a long, longside was 'Florida Time,' where I praised the Florida surfing argument.”
But all’s well that ends well, eh?
scene out of sheer gratitude for that state being my only loyal“Not exactly," says Andrews, "because after Live Bullet hit,market outside of Michigan. I was giving everybody the bestCapitol
rejected Night Moves'. I hope I don't get into troubleof both climates!"
Seger is in stitches, howling so hard he begins gasping for for revealing this, but they thought it wasn't as exciting as Live
Bullet had been!! No wonder Seger has so much heartache
air. “Whew! All that stuff will always come back to haunt you. I
also had a track Punch put out on the Are You Kidding Me? these days deciding whether he’s got a finished record ornot."label in '66 called “Ballad Of The Yellow Beret." I did it under“Which is the gospel truth,” Seger concedes sheepishly as
the pseudonym the Beach Bums, and it was catching on withcollege kids when Sgt. Barry Sadler sent a telegram threaten¬ we leave the restaurant, heading for friend Don Henley'sranch house compound in the coyote wilds high above
ing a lawsuit. I guess we were lucky Capitol was willing to take
Mulholland Drive. “I wouldn't even let the Capitol execs hear
us on."
a note of anything until late February, and they were con¬Well, yes and no, if you consider the initial behind-thecerned. I wrote twenty-five songs for Like A Rock, had a series
scenes identity problems Punch Andrews, still Seger's man¬of false starts in Miami and Muscle Shoals, and threw out aager after twenty-one often lean years, had with what he usedwhole heap of interesting songs—‘Wildfire,’ 'Star Tonight,'
to call “the Lettermen Factor.”‘Days When The Rain Would Come,’ 'Living Inside My Heart.'“We love Capitol, they’re like family now,” says Andrews,
I had an anti-drug song called 'Snow Today,' which I shelved“but at the time they were quite conservative. In fact,
in favor of 'American Storm' and I’m glad I put ‘Storm’ out as aeverytime I asked for anything they would tell me, ‘The Lettersingle.
men don't get that, and so you're not about to get it.’ They
“I'm not saying I’m a saint but I've never had a drug prob¬
were the standard at the company, and you have to re¬lem. Yet I saw the cocaine thing become this insidiously de¬member that Capitol was forced by EMI to take the Beatles;
structive juggernaut in the lives of friends. When I thought thethat signing was dictated by the mother company.
whole coke mess couldn’t get worse in the late 70s, that’sk “So in the beginning it was the Lettermen, the Beatles, thek Beach Boys—and us. And we seemed like fucking cuckoo when it exploded as a hemispheric plague, wrecking govern53

merits in South America and threatening to ruin a generation
here. Next, I pick up Newsweek and read about grammar
school kids buying crack with their allowance!
"Somebody has to let them know that it's not hip anymore to
do drugs, that there will always be pressures and times inyour life when you'll need answers, but that coke and the rest
offer nothing—no outlet, no information. And, believe me,
you're only as good as your information.”
While Henley shaves and gets dressed for dinner, Seger
cannot resist a short testing of the handsome grand piano inDon's splendid modern adobe living room, and he plays an
abbreviated rendition of the poignant “Star Tonight,” an ambition-versus-ardor adult lullaby that actor Don Johnson has re¬quested for his forthcoming solo album.
“It’s an interesting thing about love,” Seger mulls. “Youhave to choose who you want to love, because you get a lot ofdifferent chances. My mother made her choice and I think a
lot of her for sticking to it. She's had some health troubles withher heart in recent years and I almost lost her in ’85... ” Hedoesn't finish the sentence. “She’s still full of spunk and op¬
timism."Henley appears, playfully chiding Seger about his irreso¬lute dating habits— “Don’t make any hasty decisions now,
Bob!"—and then it's off to a meal at Helena's, a chic private
supper club in a remote pocket of LA. On arrival, it's disco¬vered a number of the regular patrons have stopped by totake in “Tango Night," an evening of lessons being offered on
Helena’s dance floor by Argentinean experts. Actor Harry
Dean Stanton, a kindred spirit, shifts his meal over to the Hen¬
ley-Seger table and sparks a semi-whimsical discussion ofwhat could constitute superior “tango rock. . Hotel Califor¬nia’ is something you could do the tango to,” Seger muses.
“The Eagles had a bit of tango potential on that one."
Stanton concurs and Henley grins, ordering another roundof beers by way of thank you and asking a lovely raven-haired
wallflower at an adjoining table if she’d like to join the glowing
gentlemen for a drink.
“Did I hear somebody mention Eagles!" she says in a shrill
Italio-Spanish brand of broken English as she plops herself
down. With that, the Eurotrash social butterfly launches into aringing denunciation of all things American, but particularlyrock ’n’ roll and the Eagles. Both Seger and Stanton look toHenley with embarrassed apprehension...but he’s beaming.
“Well, if you knew more about American culture, madame,"says Don, “you'd know that the Eagles were not a big grouphere. Like most people in rock 'n' roll, they all became junkies
and died in pathetic obscurity." The woman snaps hertresses
over one bare shoulder and eyes the speaker suspiciously.
"You toy with me," she decides coolly. “Are any of you rock'n' roll?"“Him,” says Henley, patting Seger on the shoulder. “Why,many years ago, he used to do it as a hobby, an outlet."“But I eventually changed all that,” says Seger, lifting a
glass of chilled cerveza. “And now, I'm proud to say"—atoast, followed by a slow, satisfied swallow— “that I do it for aliving. "Stepping out into the Hollywood night, Seger leads the way
to his siren-red Stingray. He tucks a cassette of Jackson
Browne's Lives In The Balance in the car's deck and we head
onto the freeway “I used to actively dislike the past," he says,“because the memories of struggling were always so painful,
I wanted success and legitimacy so badly it was tearing meapart. The first 1975-76 compositional trilogy of albums,
Beautiful Loser, the Live Bullet collection and Night Moves,
took that on. But when I gained some ground publicly and in
my own mind, I was a little terrified of losing it. I had an almost
crippling dread about the idea of growing old in rock ’n' roll.
Then the two anxieties got intertwined, as if they were thesame threat, and they became the undercurrent of the mater¬
ial I wrote for the second 1978-83 trio of LPs, Stranger In Town,
Against The Wind and The Distance.

54

He's reminded of the chorus of “No Man’s Land," the songthat was supposed to be the title track of Against The Wind:“The haunting and the haunting IPlay a game no one canwin/The spirits come at midnight/And by dawn they'regone again.""It was spooky stuff, ” he affirms. "Then I tried to confront the
aging process in 'Can’t Hit The Corners No More,’ mybaseball player-inspired allegory about a publicallyacclaimed phenom who’s faced with the private instant when
he suddenly doubts he still has his peak faculties, his poweredge. I was in that head when I was saying goodbye to thedays of the original Silver Bullet Band with the Nine Tonight
live set of 1981.
"I almost put a new version of 'Corners’ on the flip side of
the 'American Storm’ single, but instead I now suspect I maycontinued on page 97

YOU’LL ACCOMPANY ME:
BOB’S HORIZONTAL BOPPERS I986

B

ob Seger has oftened threatened to do away with hisbeard and disappear into the madding crowd—“There's nota soul who would recognize me, I'd be home free!"— but if
and when he ever should, he'll remain best-known for his sub¬limely lacerated larynx and jackhammer style of industrial¬
strength rock. After the Nine Tonight live LP (1981), he said a fondfarewell to gifted Silver Bullet lead guitarist Drew Abbott andsteady ashcan-school drummer Dave Teegarden and began to ex¬
periment on record with new personnel and guest artists. Buildingon the bedrock unit of horn man Alto Reed, bassist Chris Campbell,and Craig Frost on keyboards, Seger invited veteran Silver Bullet
guest star Bill Payne (“He’s been contributing wonders to my rec¬ords since 1978; I love the smooth way he and Craig collaborate
and interact”) to participate, as well as the unfailingly articulate
drummer Russ Kunkel and guitarist Dawayne Bailey.
“But the crucial new players on Like A Rock," he insists, “wereRick Vito, who's been a standout feature on recent Jackson
Browne albums, and John Robinson, who played great stuff on
Michael Jackson's Thriller and toured with Glenn Frey. When Johncame into the studio with us in LA in July, 1985, that was the turn¬around moment for the entire project."
Seger stresses that Like A Rock is the closest he’s yet come toachieving a sound “identical to what I imagine when I write, which
I thank the patience and care of co-producer David Cole for. Also,
I ultimately decided to emphasize a live band sound, with as many
live solos and live vocals as possible. The 'Like A Rock' vocal is
live; we cut Miami,' which is about the Cuban boat people, on the
fourth take; 'Sometimes' was a wrap on take three we had 'After¬
math' on take five; all of the piano solos are live.
“As for writing the record, I did the spade work on guitar andkeyboards, using either my Ovation Adamas acoustic or my Fen¬
der Thinline Telecaster with the acoustic portion on top and the
Humbucker pickups. I used the Telecaster a lot in the studio with
Dean Markley electric medium-gauge strings and either sent it
through a Roland JC-120 or a Mesa Boogie amp. I sometimes use
a Roland RE501 chorus/echo.
"For keyboards, I pounded stuff out on my Yamaha PF15 elec¬
tric piano or on the classic Bosendorfer I've got at home in Michi¬
gan. It’s a twenty-four-year-old, 6-foot-11-inch ebony grand with a
one-piece acoustic bridge, and it brought 'Like A Rock' and'Somewhere Tonight' into the world. I purchased the piano in 1970
out of a bankrupt Detroit studio; it was a $40,000 beauty that costme just $8,000 and I'd say it's priceless now—certainly to me.
“But there’s one more secret weapon on Like A Rock. I spent
four solid months mixing the album and one of the reasons wasthat I wanted to hone the limiting on the mix so that it would leapout of the compression of the average car radio like a monster. No
matter how good anybody’s stereo is at home, I think they'll marvel
at how remarkably there it will sound in a car. And that also goesfor ‘Fortunate Son,' the completely overdub-less 'American Storm'
B-side I took from a live 1983 encore tape, and Dylan's TH Re¬
member You' from Empire Burlesque, which I cut with Roy Bittanof the E Streeters at Kenny Rogers’ Lion’s Share Studio as the Bside for the second single. Hope the folks like these little bonuses.
I’m planning more, too!”WE EXIST FOR
GREAT GUITAR SOUND
ROCKMAN ROCKMODULES

IT’S 1986. We Offer the Technology to Create Exceptionally Produced Stereo Guitar Sound You
Can Adjust and Footswitch...On Stage, In Any Studio, At Any Volume...Without Piles ofEquipment, Old Amplifiers, or a Degree in Audio Technology.
“double tracking” mix to a dramatic centered mix,
Tom Scholz Record Production experience of fifteen
or...footswitch both simultaneously, with just one
years has enabled us to design the Rockman
touch.
Sustainor’s™ Compressor specifically for Guitar,as opposed to the normal compressors designed for
The Sustainor™ together with the Stereo Chorus/
radio broadcasts, speeches or test tones. The gain
Delay gives you six footswitchable functions
reduction curve has a smooth variation from hi gain
providing you with a wide variety of sounds on stage
to low gain as opposed to a discrete step. The carewithout touching the front panels. Make adjustmentswith which we tune the Attack time, Release Time, Hi
with the front panel sliders...now the available sounds
Frequency Pre-Emphasis, Compression Curve, Hi
are countless, and they’re ALL great! Both are A/C
Compression Trigger Override and the Extreme Level
powered and compatible with amplifiers, mixers andClip Limiter reduces such typical guitar signal
guitar amps.
problems as “ragged release” and distortion at
extreme levels of compression. A special circuit isincluded to prevent “squash-out”. Our compressor
design is so unique that even if you patch together
your favorite equalizers and compressors, you will
still be unable to duplicate what the Sustainor™
Compressor does!

The Smart Gate™, found only on the Rockman
Sustainor, automatically removes hi frequency
noise. This noise gate is smart enough to adjust its

own cut-off time, without cutting off the end of notes.

The Rockman Sustainor™ Distortion, unlike
conventional amps, is achieved through amultitude of signal processing both before andafter the Distortion-generating stage. Each time

you adjust or change your mode setting (Foot¬switching or by hand), you change numerous filters
and the parameters of the compressor and limiter.
Actually the entire signal path is changed with justthe flick of a switch. If you could set up one of thesesounds with outboard E.Q., you would be saddledwith adjusting dozens of knobs.

If you thought Tom Scholz Rockman Chorus was
spectacular, wait until you hear the amazing Long
Chorus™ on the Rockman Stereo Chorus/Delay
Rockmodule™. You can footswitch from Chorusing
to Echo/Delay, then footswitch from a wide stereo

Scholz Research & Development, Inc.
1560 Trapelo Rd.. Waltham. MA 02154(617) 890-5211
Rockman Sustainor™
Rockman Stereo Chorus/Delay
19” Rockmodule™ RackmountPrices subject to change without notice.

Rockman Sustainor, Auto Clean, Semi Clean, Cln 2, Phase Notcher, Phase Notching, Long Chorus,
Smart Gate and Rockmodules are Trademarks of Scholz Research & Development, Inc.

$349.95$269.95$19.95

By Scott Isler

Joe JacksonHowlearnedto stop worrying and love pop music.

W

eekday afternoon, Manhattan,

ence. There can be no remixing, overdub¬“He’s certainly a character,” the tactful

Chelsea district. Joe Jacksonbing or changes of any kind save splicing

Kershenbaum says by way of description.

enters a sparsely populated

segments of different performances. “It’s

Guitarist/bassist Graham Maby, the one

low-tech restaurant, cases‘back to the future, ’ ” says longtime Jackson

link on all Jackson’s records up to Big

the joint, turns around and leaves. Not

producer David Kershenbaum. OtherWorld, is more direct: “He's his own worst

suitable for an interview. “They all recog¬

terms that come to mind are “bravura,”

enemy. He can get very unapproachable. ’’nized me, ” he explains. “They’d be eaves¬“foolhardy” and “hazardous to your emo¬

(Jackson asked Maby to play on the Big

dropping. ”

tional health.” It’s pure Joe Jackson.

World shows. The latter, however, took

First reaction: rockstar hubris. Second

And the music is only partly recidivous.

Jackson at his word that his previous tour

reaction: maybe he’s right. Jackson may

Big World is a bounty of delights, fifteen

was his last; in the meantime he’d joined

not be Don Johnson material, but he is rec¬numbers embracing an appropriately ecu¬

Marshallognizable. His babyish features under amenical range of influences. Jackson's real

Others have had to deal with his apparently

bulging forehead and retreating hair (se¬revivalism is not in playing “rock” but in fa¬

sullen, taciturn personality. His record

verely cropped) make him a caricaturist’s

shioning long melodic phrases regardlesscompany can't be too happy about his re¬delight. Put this head on a six-foot frame,of rhythmic context. In the age of beat-box

fusal (post-Night And Day) to make promo¬

drape with baggy clothes, and you’ve got

riffs, this guy is still writing songs. At least

tional video clips for moral reasons.

quite a distinctive human being.

Crenshaw’s touring band.)his lyrics reflect an up-to-date jaundice.

Yet the crustiness may mask suspi¬

Jackson’s true distinctiveness has noth¬

Big World includes Jackson’s most point¬cion and defensiveness rather than out¬

ing to do with physical appearance. Over

edly topical attacks yet, among other dourright misanthropy. After finding a dinerseven years and eight albums, this thirty-

reflections on life and love— and even one

without eavesdropping customers, Jack-

two-year-old Englishman has provided

or two wistful tries at being upbeat.

son proves to be quite talkative between

some of the most thoughtful, tasteful and

The album is a triumph, and Jacksonsips of cream of mushroom soup washedtuneful offerings to be tossed into the cul¬

knows it. You won’t find him resting on his

down with a vanilla milkshake. The setting

tural compactor that is pop music. Even on

laurels, though. A month after wrapping

sun through the window highlights his

his first two albums— when Jackson was

Big World, he is in a New York recording

green eyes and blond stubble only slightly

still considered a byproduct of Britain’s

studio with guitarist Vinnie Zummo, drum¬

shorter than the peachfuzz on top of his

punky new wave—his compositional skill

mer Gary Burke—and two flautists, ahead. Jackson shields his face from theseparated him from his Rousseauvian con¬clarinetist, a soprano saxophone player,

rays; after sunset he continues to shield his

temporaries. A reggae-influenced third

eighteen violinists, six violists, six cellists,

face— from snooping pedestrians on thealbum, Beat Crazy, was his declaration of

three double bassists, a percussionist andsidewalk outside? His coastal British ac¬

independence from the rock treadmill.

a boy soprano. The Joe Jackson Symphonycent, mild enough to begin with, has with¬Since then he has dabbled in 40s swing

Orchestra (actually a pick-up group) is tap¬

ered further during residency(Jumpin’Jive) and reaped his biggest com¬

ing half of his next album, consisting of four

adopted New York. He smiles frequently.

mercial success with the elegant, cos¬

instrumental pieces. One of them, “Soli¬

Jackson deserves to be proud of his

mopolitan Night And Day.

tude,” is a fantasia on a theme by Duke El¬

achievements. He has never compromised

in

his

Jackson's new Big World album seems

lington. Jackson stands behind the mixing

his musical ideals, and even had a couple oflike a step back. For the first time in six

console with a look of intense concentra¬

hit albums in the process. He is an ac¬

years he is using a simple guitar/bass/tion. Occasionally he makes curt, softspo-

complished musician who writes his own

drums back-up, and exhuming four-four

ken comments to the players (“Thecharts and scores— an ability he credits

rhythms redolent more of blue jeans than

dynamic there is mezzopiano... . Can we getmore to cabaret experience than threewhite tie and tails. But Jackson is no musi¬a harsher sound out of the soprano andyears at London’s Royal Academy ofcal apologist, and Big World is a typicallyclarinet?”). The music is impressionistic,

Music. A few weeks after the interview

willful project: a three-sided double album

sinuous, carefully scored and, naturally,

Jackson remarried in England. Maybe

recorded live direct to two-track digital re¬unlike anything Jackson has done before.

cording equipment in front of a paying audi¬

Moral: Don’t ever try to pin this guy down.

Photograph by David Stewartdomestic bliss will soften his hardboiled behavior and song
lyrics. But don't bet on it.
MUSICIAN: What was the thinking behind the Big World re¬cording project?
JACKSON: There are several reasons why I wanted to do that.
One is that I always felt my best performances have been livein front of an audience. I've always found it hard to really beinspired and do a great performance in a studio. To me, a re¬cording studio is a very uninspiring place: a soundproof roomwith a lot of microphones and cables. And I really think itworked. I think this is by far the best I’ve sung on a record,
definitely. I actually listen to it and think, “This sounds okay!"[laughs] I never have before.
I could never understand these people who lock them¬selves away in a studio for months on end and tinker around.
I’m more interested in direct communication between artist
and audience. I feel so many artists now are hidden behind asort of smokescreen of carefully crafted image on video, andcarefully crafted records which are all done with drum
machines and synthesizers; the real star of the record is theengineer or producer, a lot of the time. There’s a big gap be¬
tween artists who are kind of fantasy figures, and people on
the street who see them on MTV. It makes me uncomfortable.
It's almost getting like Hollywood in the 30s, big untouchable
stars that are up there on the screen—the average person
goes there to escape from the troubles of life. That’s kind ofwhat the music scene's like now, in America more so thanother places. I never believed in escapism in any kind of art orentertainment. I want to understand life better and experience
it more fully. I don’t want to escape from it.
What I try to do in my music is communicate between me
and the listener, share human experiences, share impres¬sions of what’s happening around us all. It's trying to see life
from different angles, trying to appreciate areas of it you
maybe didn't appreciate before, trying to learn things. It’svery satisfying for me to learn something that opens my mind
in some way. You don't get that from escapist entertainment.
I'm not even talking on the level of “high art" here. Just on abasic entertainment level, things are always better when they
touch you in some way, when they move you. I don’t particular¬
ly like movies which are one blockbuster special effect after
another. It has a real parallel with the music scene: Everyone
wants to come up with new, more outrageous LinnDrum
sounds. It’s kind of missing the point.
I wrote all the Big World songs in quite a short time. What
happens is. I write two or three songs; by the time I get to thefourth or fifth an overall concept starts to emerge, and one
song starts to influence another song. A couple of themes go
through this record. A lot of songs complement each other,
they're in pairs or threes. “Big World." “Fifty Dollar Love Affair"and “Shanghai Sky” are all about travel and exotic places
and, to a certain extent, about the romance of travel, looking
at it from different angles. Other songs are political or social¬awareness songs, like “Right And Wrong," “Wild West,” “Forty
Years," “Tango Atlántico.” I just feel at this point in the historyof the world—I mean, we are in 1986. The world is a tense anddangerous place, and it's no longer good enough to be con¬cerned only about what’s going on in your own back yard.
People have to become aware of each other's cultures, bemore open and respectful toward different cultures and differ¬ent ways of thinking. I suppose that's one of the ideas behindquite a lot of these songs.
MUSICIAN: Have you changed your mind, then, about music
not being able to change anything?
JACKSON: No, I still pretty much think that. But I write verymuch from the heart, and whatever I experience, the way I feel
about things, is going to come out in songs no matter what.
People are telling me this album is more obviously politicalthan the earlier stuff I've done. There was no conscious deci¬

58

sion to do that. It’s not a manifesto. If that's what's happening
in my head, it’s going to come out in the music, that's all. It
comes from a lot of things— being British and living in Ameri¬ca, for instance. It comes from having traveled quite a bit. It
comes from just having the sort of brain I have, being curious
about what’s going on. I don't like to see things in black-andwhite and make quick judgments. So when Ronald Reagan
comes on TV and says, “We’re giving so many million dollars
to contras of Nicaragua, and this is not a political issue, not aquestion of right versus left, it's a question of right versus
wrong”— to me that's really disturbing. This whole thing of, “If
you don’t go along with that you're un-American”— God! It's
getting more and more frightening. I'm writing about it more'cause I'm thinking about it more.
MUSICIAN: Beat Crazy was a political album, in a sense.
JACKSON: They're all political albums in some way or
another. Unless you only write love songs, which a lot of
people do; unless you just write songs about being on theroad with a rock ’n' roll band, or “we're gonna party tonight,
dance till dawn”— I don't do that. I write songs about whatever
I have any strong feelings about. If you work that way it’s inevit¬
able that at some point it’s going to be political. Politics is justabout people in society, and the way societies relate to eachother. It's not a conscious decision to make political statements.
MUSICIAN: Did the charity records of last year affect yourthinking on music versus politics?
JACKSON: Bob Geldof is a great guy. It's not very hip to bepositive; it's much more hip to sneer and not show any feelingor commitment. I like the fact that someone doesn't give adamn about looking hip and just tries to do something. But
beyond that, to me, especially with USA For Africa, I really feelit’s a reflection of how conservative the country is right now.
It’s such a safe thing. All those people who did that knew it
would just make them look wonderful.
MUSICIAN: Would you have turned it down?
JACKSON: They didn't ask me: if they had, I would havethought about it. I don’t know what I would have done. I justfeel it was such a great way for people to look like wonderful,concerned human beings—to look like they're making astatement without being controversial, without rocking theboat, without taking any risks. I don’t think I’m that cynical,
really. It’s funny: I get told I'm cynical and I also get told I’m anidealist.
MUSICIAN: Most cynics are idealists.
JACKSON: You probably are right, [laughs] I like to think I'm
pretty realistic about things. It just seems to me to be veryironic that people are saying how rock is getting a social con¬science back, rock is becoming political again, and there's
no element of challenge in there. If Lionel Richie sang about
what’s happening in his country, what his President is doing
and what's happening to farmers, to old people— that would
be a political statement. We have a very conservative climate
right now, it’s very materialistic—this thing comes along andit’s like, great, here's a way to really look good without making
any waves. There’s a good side to it as well. I question more
the way it is being interpreted and talked about than the mo¬tives of the people who performed.
MUSICIAN: So the Big World songs came together in a shorttime?
JACKSON: A few months. I didn't write anything for a year.
“Taking a year off to relax" sounds like I lay on a beach some¬where [laughs], I had to take time off. I really didn't relax
much. By the end of the Body And Soul tour I didn’t know what
I was doing anymore and I needed some time off. One of thethings confusing me on that tour was I just felt that what I wastrying to do musically was so wrong for the settings we were
trying to do it in. We were starting to play bigger and bigger
places. I couldn't see any way out of that. I got into a realcatch-twenty-two in my head about playing live because I
really can't see playing hockey stadiums. Also I couldn’t see

“Is this going tobe perceived as
rock ’n’ roll? Am I
going to be as¬sociated with all
those people I
don’t like? Am I
going to have tocompete withpeople I don’t feel
I should be com¬

LAURA LEVINE

peting with?”

playing small clubs at this stage of my career. I just can't see
being on the road for—the Night And Day tour was elevenmonths! With Body And Soul, the idea was to do a short tour;
we still ended up on the road for six or seven months. The
shows have to suffer. I'd rather do less shows and make every
one special. I just can't tour for months and months on end. At
the end of that tour I was saying, “That's it, I’m not going totour anymore.’’ At that point I really believed that. I was
exhausted and I couldn’t see any workable way of doing it.
Now we have a compromise all around. I feel it’s better than
not doing anything.
MUSICIAN: What if Big World hadn't been in the can after
those five live shows?
JACKSON: I was wondering about it myself 11 just wasn't goingto allow that situation to happen. If it did, I guess we would
have had to go somewhere else and do it again. It was pretty
intense. We did do a couple of pick-ups; in between the twoshows on Saturday we got one song down we were getting
worried about. When I got the idea to do the thing live and di¬rect to two-track everyone was saying, “Oh, but of course
you'll run twenty-four-track at the same time as a back-up.’’
And I’d say, “Nooo.” “Oh, of course you'll mix it afterwards.
Why don't you run it two tracks of a twenty-four track? So if you
want you can overdub or something." I said, “Nooo." To me, if
you have a goal in mind you have to go for that and not giveyourself escape routes. Otherwise you'll use them.
MUSICIAN: Who chose the Roundabout theater?
JACKSON: David Kershenbaum and I went around to a few

theaters. That just seemed to be the best one. We were very
lucky to get it. We could only get in there for six days. We had
three days to get everything set up and sounding right, andthree days to do the actual recording. We really could havedone with another couple of days. But we did it! When you
have to do something, you do it.
MUSICIAN: Isn't it perverse to invite people to shows and tellthem not to applaud?
JACKSON: We didn’t tell them not to applaud, we just asked
them to be quiet during the music. I don't think that was suchan unreasonable request. It wasn’t really that we were re¬cording a concert; they were invited to a recording session.
I'd do it again. It's a really great way to record. I’m reallypleased with this record. I can’t remember the last time I felt
so enthusiastic about something. I àctually still like it! Nor¬
mally, by the time I’ve finished a record, I've been mixing it forweeks, I can't hear it anymore, I don’t know if it’s any goodanymore, I’m sick of it. This, we never went into a studio; wejust played to people. It’s probably my least perfect album
and yet it's the one I’m most proud of. It has all kinds of little
things wrong with it—there are mistakes here and there,
sometimes things aren’t quite balanced right—but it has areally spontaneous feel. It sounds very fresh to me, different
to most of the obviously-pieced-together-in-the-studio rec¬ords that are what you’re hearing these days.
MUSICIAN: Could y ou go back to conventional recording after
this?
JACKSON: Maybe. I think one should have options. You use
59

On Big World guitarist Vinnie Zummo switched between two
Steinberger Trans-Trems—one converted to a three-pick¬up—and a regular Steinberger six-string, outfitted with
LaBella strings. Zummo’s effects rack includes an Ibanez harmonizer, Delta Lab Super Time-Line digital delay, and Yamaha R1000 reverb unit; on the floor he’s got a Boss Chorus, DeArmondvolume and Rat distortion pedals. He uses a small Roland line
mixer and Hush 2C noise reduction. Amps are a Seymour Duncan
Convertible into a Seymour Duncan 4x12 cabinet, and a Gallien
Krueger 250RL into two Guild/Hartke 4x10 stereo cabinets.
Zummo also plays an Ovation Adonis acoustic guitar. He uses
Manny's heaviest small oval picks.
Rick Ford has two custom five-string basses (one fretted, one
fretless) from Bass Shops in New York, and is adding a six-string
on tour. Strings are LaBella 760RMs with a low B. His floor pedals
are a Boss Chorus and Octaver, and DeArmond volume. Ford’s
amp is a Trace-Elliot AH500 plugged into two Trace-Elliot 815
cabinets.
Gary Burke’s old Gretsch kit includes three tom-toms—a 9x13,
10x14 and 16x16—and a 14x22 bass drum. He has a 1930 brass
Super Ludwig 5'/2x14 snare. Cymbals, all Zildjian, are 14-inchhigh-hats, 17- and 18-inch crashes and a 20-inch ride. Burke uses
Pro-Mark 808 sticks.
Joe Jackson's taste in eighty-eights runs to Yamahas ("butsometimes they sound a little too hard") and Steinways; "it de¬pends on the instrument." He plays a Yamaha C-3 on Big World,'
he owns a Yamaha baby grand, a DX7 and a Sequential Circuits
Drumtracks drum machine. He demoed Big World by runningthese into a Tascam four-track. He set aside saxophone to con¬centrate on writing—“I was getting too clever"—but his reedwork
gave him insights on scoring for horns. Jackson also used to playviolin; other items in his arsenal are a twelve-bass musette,
Hohner melódica and recorder of unknown manufacture. One in¬strument that continues to stymie him, though, is guitar. “In ten
years I've learned two chords, E and A. It’s always been a bloody
mystery to me.’’Thanks to multi-tracking, J.J. can be both organ grinder and monkey.
the way appropriate to the project. I'm not saying I’ll never go
into a recording studio again, but I would do it [live] again if
it’s right for the project. I'd like to see other people do it.
MUSICIAN: Do you anticipate, or dread, people telling you
you've gone "back" to rock with the three-piece on Big World?
JACKSON: You know what? I really don't care what they say
anymore. It used to really confuse me. There've been a cou¬
ple of points in my career when I've really gotten lost on this.
Beat Crazy was one, Body And Soul was another, where I re¬ally floundered a little bit, didn’t know which direction to go in.
60

JOHN BELLISSIMO/RETNA

FOUR GUYS, TWO TRACKS

It’s partly because I have this love/hate relationship with rock’n' roll. Sometimes I really feel I don’t want to have anything to
do with it. I was feeling that way around the time of Body And
Soul; especially when we were touring I began to feel like,“What the hell am I doing up here on this stage?’’ But I reallydo enjoy performing. It just gets confusing sometimes. Overthe last year or so I got my priorities straightened out. I
realized it was important for me to do the music I wanted todo. I shouldn't keep thinking, “Is this going to be perceived as
rock ’n’ roll? Am I going to be associated with all those people
I don’t like? Am I going to have to compete with people I don’t
feel I should be competing with?” All those things were driving
me nuts. I forgot about all that. The album came out as some¬thing which I suppose /s a bit closer to rock ’n’ roll than the last
two. It’s just the way it came out when I stopped worrying
about it. I felt the last two albums were very multi-textured andmulti-colored, and I wanted to do something which was morebold and simple.
Rock ’n’ roll's associated with so much decadent bullshit.
I really hate a lot of the so-called culture that goes around it
and which is perpetuated for profit and constantly sold to a
new generation of fifteen-year-old guys in the Midwest! Howlong has heavy metal been going? It never changes! And it’s
still being presented as rebellious and anti-establishment,
and it’s just big business. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing; but
it’s just the way these images are built around rock 'n’ roll andmarketed— I just hate it. Every time I see a new heavy metal
band I partly want to laugh and partly want to puke. I don't
mind heavy metal, but the thought of taking it seriously is
what’s weird to me.
MUSICIAN: Who do you learn from?
JACKSON: Everyone. I sound like I’m trying to be clever say¬ing that, but it’s really the only answer. I don’t want to get too
influenced by one particular thing, get locked into it. I try tolearn from as many different things as I can. It’s all related insome way or another; that’s the interesting thing about it. Big
World and this instrumental record, when it comes out, will
have a lot in common. It’s still music and it’s still me.
My tastes haven't really changed since I was fourteen. Any
idols I have in music are people that are dead, and some ofthem have been dead for a long time! Beethoven, Mahler,
Shostakovich, Sibelius. Carl Nielsen is very underrated, I likehim. You know, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker—the giants.
MUSICIAN: No pop performers?
JACKSON: Well, Elvis was pretty good when he was young,wasn't he?
MUSICIAN: You don't hear anybody now whom you respect?
JACKSON: Who cares, really? I’m not trying to be uncoopera¬
tive. It just seems to me every interview I ever read with any¬
one, they ask, “Who do you like? Who are your influences?” I
just can't be bothered with it! But if you really want to know,
okay, what do I like that’s out right now: Prefab Sprout, thePogues, Tom Waits’ last album, Joni Mitchell's new album—
there’s never an awful lot.
MUSICIAN: What do you think of "new age" music?
JACKSON: If I was one of those artists I probably wouldn't likehaving that label put on me. If you mean George Winston, Kitaro and those people, I don’t really like it. It's wallpaper to me;
I like music that involves your brain a bit. I haven’t heard a lotof it, so I don't want to come across as being too opinionated.
But George Winston to me sounds like what I could do if I sat
down in a mellow mood and noodled on the piano for a while.
It might sound nice to someone who doesn't play piano, so I
can't complain about that. It just doesn’t mean that much to me.
MUSICIAN: Your music is sometimes criticized for being too
controlled.
JACKSON: How does one “let oneself go” in music? You justget onstage and scream? Does that result in good music? I
don’t understand that way of thinking. People have a naive
and idealistic view of the artist, of someone getting onstage

The Emulator 11+ and Emulator 11+ HI) Digital Sampling Keyboards

Time is MusicTime.
If you're a professional with a deadline it
can be your most valuable commodity.
With the original Emulator Il s combina¬
tion of superior sound quality and expressive
control. E-mu Systems offered the world ofmusicians, composers, producers and soundeffects designers a creative tool of truly
stunning power.
Now we offer the means to use that powerwith even greater efficiency.
The Emulator lb and Emulator II ■ 111)
digital sampling keyboards. More sounds inless time.
Much less.
Double the sound storage.

If you're a performer, the last thing youneed to worry about in the middle of a song isfinding the time to load a new sound disk.
So both the new Emulator Ils feature
Double Bank Memory.
With over 35 seconds of sampling time you
can have two complete Emulator sound disks
loaded in memory at one time and switch
between them with the push of a button.

IWice the number sounds.
Available instantly.
The wait is over.

Whether you're on stage or in thestudio, if your music requires many different
sounds but you can t afford to wait for
conventional floppy disks to load, you need
the Emulator II HD.
In addition to Double Bank Memory, theEmulator II ■ HD is equipped with a rugged 20
megabyte internal hard drive that allows you
to store the contents of 46 complete sounddisks and to reload any of them into memoryin less than two seconds!
With the Emulator II HD the only thing
you'll ever have to wait for is inspiration.
Thousands of sounds from a single
compact disc.

For the ultimate in sound access, arevolutionary new CD-ROM data storage
system is now available for the Emulator 11.
Emulator II and Emulator II HD.
The CDS3 from Optical Media Interna¬
tional provides up to 500 million by tes of

Emulator sound storage on a single laser
read compact disc.
The CDS3 consists of a high speed
CD-ROM drive and an initial compact disccontaining a comprehensive library of over14(10 complete Emulator 11 presets
A library that would fill 536 conventional
Emulator disks.
And that's just the beginning. Additional
CD-ROM discs will be made available
periodically.
Time isn’t all you'll save.

For all their power, the new Emulator II ■and Emulator II HD are substantially more
affordable than you might expect.
To learn more, see your local E-mu
Systems dealer for a complete demonstration.
We think you'll find it lime well spent.

E-mu Systems, Inc.

applied magic for the arts
1600 Green Hills Road
Scotts Valley, CA 95066
408.438.1921

and something happening by magic. The magic can happen
just as much with something completely written, arranged
and controlled as it can with spontaneous improvisation. I
want to write music that's good every time you hear it! I havea vision of what I want it to be, and I want it to be right, that’sall. It's really puzzling to me when people find fault with that. I
remember reading an article in Musician by someone who
was amazed that I had actually written out charts for somesongs— like, “Wow, why doesn’t he let the band rock out?” It's
this rock 'n’ roll way of thinking: “We’ll just get together andget blasted and we play, man, and what comes out, that’s themusic, man.” To me, that's like fucking hippies high on acid in
the 60s. It’s so stupid to me! I wrote out the parts 'cause I knew
what I wanted! It’s my music, why shouldn't I? No one evercriticized Beethoven for writing all the parts out. You want tohear jamming, go to see a band that jams. Jamming is very
boring. That's one of my complaints about jazz. There arevery few players whose improvisations are going to be goodevery time. I don't like the battle of egos that goes on with a lotof improvisatory music. I prefer a composer’s music. Some¬times I feel people have this impression of me as a school¬
master or something — “You've got to play this and you’ve got
to play that”— it's so unfair of me. I just don’t get it!
MUSICIAN: Do you ever wonder if people want to hear what
you have to say in your lyrics?
JACKSON: Sometimes, in between writing songs, I reflect on
it. I get that dreadful writer's block. For a long time, when I was
taking that time off, I didn't write anything. I didn’t know what I
was going to write and I thought maybe I'll never write any¬
thing again. When I go through that I very often think, “Whatcan I possibly say that's going to be worth hearing? Who am I
to put my opinions in a song and broadcast it to the world?"
But then I’ll get an idea for a song and stop thinking about it,stop trying to justify it. Around the time of Body And Soul I was
thinking too much about, “How is this going to be perceived?

mu

And is it really rock 'n’ roll?” This time I just said, “To hell with
that, I’m just going to do what feels right.” “Rock ’n’ roll"doesn't really mean anything now anyway; I just would likepeople to enjoy it. I don't see why I shouldn't like Beethoven
and the Ramones.
As far as what I can do as a musician, what people areaware of is like the tip of the iceberg. I don't want to soundarrogant, but I really feel there's so much more I can do. I
haven’t even started yet. That's why this instrumental record
is going to be a big step forward. Whatever I do, I apply thesame principles: a desire to make something of quality.
There's not a big difference between the songs and the instru¬
mental pieces, but I’m a bit confused about doing both. That’s
another thing I was trying to sort out during my year off.
MUSICIAN: Were you disappointed that Body And Soul didn't
do as well as Night And Day?
JACKSON: Yeah, but what the hell. I think Night And Day wasbetter, and that sold better. I always do the best I can at thetime. When I did Night And Day I was well rested and I had areal strong idea of something I wanted to do. That wasn’t re¬ally the case with Body And Soul. But I still think it's a good
album. I really didn’t expect Night And Day to do well, and it’s
my most successful album. I remember when I was recording
it, thinking, “God [laughs], maybe my mother will buy a copy."
The only way I know how to write is to be honest. People
can say I’m full of shit. But I would hope that from listening to
the different musical influences on my work and also listening
to the lyrics, maybe it will stimulate people to have more open
minds. What I hope to achieve first and foremost is goodmusic, a good work of art, whatever you want to call it. I don’t
make a distinction between art and entertainment—it’s thesame thing to me. I just want to do it well. As for messages insongs, I’m just sharing my feelings, my views with people who
can either accept or reject them. I want what I do to be
nourishing. The kind of stuff I like is nourishing. 0■ 1986 STEINBERGER SOUND CORPORATIONFOR THE FEW

GL3T

I

III
131

GP2T

who instinctively pursue
the highest levelsof performance.

(■■■I
(■■ni
!■■■■
■■■■i

XP2

XL2A
ACTIVE EQ■JI

GL2T-GR"
SYNTH

GP2S

CONTROLLER

LserhsP w

STEINBERGER SOUND CORPORATION • 122 South Robinson Avenue • Newburgh. New York 12550 USA • (914) 565-4005 FREE BROCHURE
IN CANADA CONTACT Louis Musical Ltd., Telephone: (514) 332 6907; Telex: 05-825-785

62

The microphoneis the launchpad
to astounding
audio performance.

ur sonic universe ispopulated by an evergrowing
array of digital-based sound£ gear. . .gear that can reproduceTalmost any input signal
with amazing accuracy.

The Source
Must Be Equal
How accurate is yourmicrophone? Digital audio
systems expose microphonecoloration that was once
acceptable. It's not anymore. Digitalprocessing, recording and samplingtechniques rely on microphonetransparency and ultra-wide dynamic
range. Because quality (or lack of it) is/ magnified. . .from launchpad to loudspeaker.

Countdown to Quality
The path to astounding performance has neverbeen more accessible. If you're navigating in thedigital realm of audio production. . .recording, sound reinforcement or
broadcasting. . .Toa microphones can give your gear the quality input
it deserves.

Call or write for free technical information.
Toa Electronics Inc.. Professional Music and Entertainment Division, 480 Carlton Court,
South San Francisco. CA 94080, (415) 588-2538•

In Canada (403)489-5511

In the U K (0277) 233882

In Germany: (040) 811127

C’986 Toa Electronics. Inc

THIS IS THE REAL STORYOF JOHNNY ROTTEN

A

ccording to the most recent surveys, 38.6 percenof the people who read this magazine arehosebags who write letters to the editor that say shit like,“Why don’t you guys live up to the name of your magazine and usethat space for a real musician like Phil Lesh/Rick Wakeman/AI DiMeola?” Under normal circumstances, I pay no attention
hosebags, don’t even open their letters because I can smell hosebag attitude
right through the envelope. But this article is not normal circumstances. This .
article is Johnny Rotten. And this one time, I gotta sympathize with you 38.6 per-'cent hosebags: I also get unglued when I’m reminded that this Rotten dude exists on
the same planet. So go ahead and send your drooling, stupid letters and know that
I ache for you as I ache for King Canute commanding the tide to roll back.
’Cause, see, the difference between you hosebags and myself is that you
hosebags think Rotten shouldn’t be in the magazine 'cause he has no talent. I
say he shouldn't be in the magazine because when I see his name in print, I am ]reminded that on five of the seven occasions when I met him since 1977, he
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVIES & STARR. MAKEUP MAGGIE BAKER. HAIR- FRASER FRANCISÀcame within a hair of giving me a nervous breakdown....Yeah,
yeah, I know: tough job I have, flying around the world inter¬viewing rich and famous people. But the next two years aregonna be tough on me and on all you hosebags. The Sex Pis¬
tols are coming back. A docudrama (apparently) centered on
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen is due out. It’s directed byAlex Cox, who did Repo Man, the best fictional treatment ofpunk on film ever. The Great Rock & Roll Swindle, the Sex Pis¬
tols’ own sort of autobiographical movie, is finally going to getreleased in the States. And there are a number of books in the

THEIR WILLIE UP MY BUM!!!”
Then he fodders off to take a leak. This woman he’s been
putting the moves on—she’s got dyed black spikey hair andis wearing a Rodeo Drive designer punk outfit in black anddayglo pink and has a skeleton earring—leans over and asks,“Who is that guy?"“John Lydon," I say.
“Who’s that?” she asks.
“Johnny Rotten.”"Who’s that?"

J. Lydon, Sr. on J. Lydon, Jr.: “We were digging out cesspits and they were full ofrats... John would chuck them off with an axe.”
works, not the least of which I’m hoping will be my own Blowin’
Chunks: Punk Passage and Beyond (Doubleday/Dolphin), a
skewed social history of punk in which the Pistols figure heav¬ily. And then there is the matter of Rotten’s own new album
Album (Cassette in cassette, Single in single), which to uni¬versal surprise is listenable and interesting and—if his repu¬
tation with radio programmers doesn't sink him again—some¬what commercial.
Let us furthermore recall why the guy is important aestheti¬
cally and historically: He changed singing. No one sounded
like him before him, and thousands have tried to sound likehim since him. No band has ever declared itself to the world
with such force and rage as when Johnny Rotten announced“He sang for the Sex Pistols....You never heard of the Sex
Pistols?"“No."
Young people today, they got no respect for tradition. They
don't deserve to know who this John Lydon/Johnny Rotten of
the Sex Pistols/Public Image, Ltd is. Fuck ’em. On the other
hand, I want lots of young people to give me their money when
my book comes out, so I’ll lay out a portion of my stuff.
First of all, Johnny Rotten is one of the least informative in¬terviews this side of politics. Inteviewers tend not to notice
they are getting nothing, because he is such a difficult per¬sonality that they are overly grateful or overly resentful of any
small tidbit he tosses their way. I plead guilty on both counts.

J. Lydon, Sr. on Jimmy Lydon: “They jumped him. Cut the eye clean out of his head.
You’ve never seen anybody fight like Jimmy. Since he lost the eye, he’s terrific.”
he was the anti-Christ on the Sex Pistols' first single “Anarchyin the U.K." No band did more to spawn the still flourishingpunk subculture than the Sex Pistols. Although it never broke
the Billboard Hot 100 and radio programmers still loathe it,
Never Mind The Bollocks remains one of the most influential
albums of the 70s, maybe the most influential if you countpunk influence in other art forms.
And let me recall last summer when I met Rotten in a Los
Angeles saloon to get some information for my book. In twohours, the guy drinks ten screwdrivers, several of which aredoubles, and, having asked every question I can think of, I fig¬
ure I better get him home before he pulls his usual Jekyll andHyde. He, however, wants sushi.
“I answered a//your questions,” he snarls.
Maybe food will sober him up, I'm figuring as I drive to Sushi
On Sunset where he eats about two grams of fish and pours
down six or seven 21 oz. Sapporos, growing ever more bel¬ligerent over a question I’d asked hours before. See, certain
types of punks are homophobic and like all Americans, they
love to believe their heroes are homosexuals. I asked Rotten
about certain rumors concerning him, which he denied (he’s
had a girlfriend for years), saying what difference did it makeanyway? Fair enough, but as he gets drunker, he wants todeny it some more, getting increasingly irritated with me forasking in the first place, and flirting with all these women at
the sushi bar to show how heterosexual he is. And he’s getting
louder and louder, really stinking out the joint for anyone in¬terested in eating and he’s ordering numerous Sapporos for
all the women he’s trying to flirt with on my tab. I’m tellin’ ya, I
was hoping for botulism in my tuna roll, or maybe in his tunaroll. Course, the bastard wouldn’t have eaten it anyway.
So finally he stands on the bar and announces— nay,
screams— to the entire restaurant: “NO ONE EVER STUCK66

His first impulse is not to reveal but to calculate how much toreveal and/or provoke. He almost never volunteers informa¬tion if you bring upa general subject in hopes that he’ll ramble
for a while and drop a few factoids on you. He rarely tells
anecdotes, mostly just throws thunderbolts of judgment.
One of the tricks of interviewing is to shut up for a momentand let the interviewee rush to fill up the silence. Try it some¬time: Conversation abhors a vacuum, and people will say
anything to fill up those uncomfortable pauses. Rotten is the
only person I ever interviewed (excluding a couple of lawyers)
who is smart and sadistic enough not to fill up those silences.
He loves to look haughty as I squirm and stutter to formulate
the next question out of the absolute minimum of information
he has revealed.
There is also the problem of what to do with one’s eyes
when talking to Rotten. To return his glare is to be blasted with
two laser beams of contempt; it is to know you are in the pres¬ence of someone who is quite sure you are ridiculous. If you
look elsewhere on his face, you are confronted with massive,
deep, red, poisonous zits, the sort you could squeeze until
you cry and still never pop the root infection. His scalp is piled
with hairballs so vile they would get any stray dog euthanized
immediately as a public health hazard. And his body, thesedays, is bloated.
The biggest problem, however, is figuring out when he istelling the truth. The first insight I had into the guy’s charactercame in 1977 when I was interviewing Sid Vicious for a coverstory on the Pistols. Vicious had attended Kingsbury College(a "college of further education,” that is the equivalent ofAmerican high school) and recalled that John had once skip¬
ped school and returned with the excuse that he had piles solong they were hanging out his pants and he had to cut themoff with a razor. The teachers had believed him, even sent him
flowers. Rotten confirmed the story in 1977 (describing him¬
self as an “atrocious liar") and again in 1986. Like any goodpolitician, he learned early that the most outrageously absurd
lie, if propounded with enough emotional force, will be be¬lieved. At the same time, his life has been so strange that you

wouldn’t tell me, because I would bring him back to schooland sort it out. ’Cause if the master called him a liar in front ofme, I'd smack him in the mouth.”
You didn't actually smack the schoolmaster in the mouth,
did you?
“But I would have. ’Cause I've been in pubs with John and
I’ve had me jacket off more than once. All the time. I used to

LISA HAUN

Young John - once he was somebody’s baby.
cannot dismiss anything out of hand. One of the early stories
about Rotten was that he once had a job as a rat killer in a
cesspool. To the extent the story has been repeated, it has
been assumed to be part of the Sex Pistols' hype, a lie calcu¬
lated to build their legend. But he really was a rat killer in a
cesspool.
“He used to work with me in the crane when he was young,”says John Lydon, Sr. “He used to spend his holidays as mybanksman. We were digging out cesspits and they were fullof rats. When I would chuck out the dragline, the rats used to
grab the rope and climb it back towards me. We had an agent
there sometimes and he used to shoot them. But John would
chuck them off with an axe.”
The elder Lydon appears to be a robustly healthy man offifty-four, his complexion ruddy and weathered by years ofworking the oil rigs in the North Sea. Margarite Byrne, Mr.
Lydon’s girlfriend and widow of his first cousin, divides her at¬
tention between the interview and the English version of The
Dating Game on the living room telly. I tell him the story ofJohn’s piles.
“I didn't know this, you see,” he says. "Even if it was true, hesort out all the problems in the pub. Whenever there was arow, I was the first one in it. Well, you know Irish people. They
have a temper."
You would fight over John in Pubs?
"Regular it used to happen. In the pub across the street. We
used to go there and you’d have girls come in and a girl would
say, ’Hallo, Johnny darling, can we have your autograph?'
And then her boyfriend would call him a wanker. Then thepunchup started. I've had all me knuckles broken fighting
there. John will tell you that himself. I’ve had three fights in one
night."
Over John?
“Yeah, it's jealousy, isn’t it? If anybody is famous at all, somegirl wants to kiss him. Especially in the pub. That's where it all
starts. When he comes home, we go to the pub. If there's a
problem, we sort it out between us. We just have a go. Win or
lose, what do you do? That's what life is all about, isn't it?”
Seems like it would make life difficult.
“No, not really. I'm hot-tempered, you see. I drive a heavy
goods lorry in the city, and when you drive a truck down a nar¬row street, everybody is going like this to each other." Mr.
67

J. Lydon, Jr. on his family: “They’re such raving loonies, the lot of them. They don’t mind
going out and scrapping with anybody or anything.”
Lydon makes what I always interpreted to be a “V” for victory
sign but which means “up yours" in London. “And that's it
then. I have sort-outs in the streets every day. Every day I havea punch-up. Well not every day. Most days I have a punchup”
Mr. Lydon tells a long story about throttling another lorry
driver who sneaked in front of him at a construction site andended up bleeding in the gutter (“I don’t see why I should let
him slip me the mickey") for his affront. Sheba, the family dog,a muscular cross of Labrador and Doberman, grows restless
and Margarite shoos her from the room.
“The dog has one fault," says Mr. Lydon. “If we take her out,
she'll be walking along the green, calm as can be, and for noreason out of the blue she’ll chomp on someone. All of a sud¬den she’s just got someone in her teeth, and she’s got someteeth. Like a tiger. We just have her to keep the blacks away.
Something about them that dogs don’t like. I don't know what
it is. Maybe it’s the color of their skin."
The Lydons live in a two-story flat—the same in which
Johnny grew up—in a housing estate (project) in the Finsbury
Park section of London, a working-class Irish neighborhoodthat has in recent years become racially mixed. Of the four
Lydon sons, two have been seriously hurt in fights, according
to their father, with blacks.
“Jimmy was almost as famous as Johnny," says Mr. Lydonof his second eldest, standing proudly next to his pretty

SIDEBARE

nergy has been missing from music for so long," notes
John Lydon, “particularly in England, where it’s all nailvarnish and Nancy-boy keyboards, which people
have been trying to break away from for some time."
Clearly, the PiL leader sees Album as just such a breaka¬
way, one which he feels returns to “my own little mine” ofthe Sex Pistols and first Public Image releases in terms ofpure rock energy.
Having established a “brilliant” working relationship withBill Laswell on “World Destruction,” the Afrika Bambaataa/
Lydon 12-inch, Lydon again tabbed Laswell to co-produce Album under a shared “umbrella theory." Explains
Lydon, whose goal was an “uptempo, non-disco”-sounding record, “We both like to cover a lot of musical ground,"and Laswell indeed brought his customary far-reaching
world-view to the project.
Noting that the recording was “well thought out in ad¬vance” and “definitely organized but with room to impro¬
vise,” Laswell says that the finished product was a teameffort guided by specific musical “reference points.” For
the record, the musicians enlisted were Ryuichi Sakamoto,keyboards; Bernie Worrell, organ; Nicky Skopelitis, sixand twelve-string guitars; Steve Vai, guitar; Malachi
Favors, acoustic bass; Bernard Fowler, background voc¬
als; L. Shankar, violin; Ginger Baker, drums; Tony Williams,
drums; Aiyb Dieng, percussion; Jonas Hellborg, electric
bass; and Steve Turre, didjerido. As for the reference
points, Laswell names Led Zeppelin for its “sound and at¬titude," as well as Zulu music, Joujouka, and other Northand South American musics, while Lydon singles out The
Stooges’ Fun House.
“There was a definite plan to make a more rock-oriented
record, more direct and musical than past PiL records,"
68

young wife and baby in a snapshot. “He had his own band,the 4" Be 2", you know. But he married a school teacher andshe put the block on it. He’s quite content now, painting anddecorating.”
One of Jimmy's first projects was his living room, which heredecorated like a pub in the green and gold colors of Ireland.
Various aspects of his handiwork are displayed in the photo¬graphs, but it is hard to keep from looking at his face. His righteye socket is a grotesque mass of red scar tissue.
“He lost his eye about five years ago. He was at a stag party
on a Friday night. He came out of the pub carrying a wedding
present at half past three in the morning. When he got to thecorner, he met nine darkies. They said, ‘What have you got in
the bag?’ He said, 'Aw, go away.’ So they jumped him. Two ofthem picked up bottles and they both got him in the eye. Cut
the eye clean out of his head. You’ve seen guys fight, but
you’ve never seen anyone who could fight like Jimmy. Since
he lost his eye, he’s terrific. He's got the method, and he neverloses, not now. If somebody cut your eye out, they'd never doit again to you, you’d make sure of that, wouldn't you?”
Bobby, the third eldest (the youngest Martin works for John
as a roadie), has a semi-circular, almost glowing red scarfrom just below his right earlobe to the corner of his mouth.
“It was August a year, a year last August. He was coming inat midnight and there was two colored guys playing theirradio down there. And he sleeps in the front room, over thecontinues Laswell. “But even though we were dealing witha simple beat and chord changes, we didn't want to use
just rock clichés. And while there was a basic direction, themusicians were given a lot of freedom. I think that the totalsound shows the personality of the individual musicians."
The recording process itself, says Lydon, was “veryquick,” taking three weeks of one-take recording time “inevery studio in New York” and one week of mixing. “Wewere determined to get the best drum sound we could, butthat doesn’t come cheaply. We had an awful budget.
Ridiculous. Arcadia gets $800,000, and we had two-six¬
teenths of that. Outrageous!”
According to Laswell, the drums were recorded at The
Power Station by Jason Corsaro, who also mixed the entire
album there. "It was necessary to record the drums with aparticular engineer with a big drum sound," explains Las¬
well, who adds that Vai's guitar was recorded at Electric
Ladyland because of its “historical resonance and goodlarger room sound on a live amp." Additional recording
was done at RPM Sound Studios and Quadrasonic Sound
Systems, Robert Musso engineering all but the drum tracks.
“It was like the good old days,” says Lydon of the swift
recording pace. “We went for high energy and instantreaction. I could play the master before editing and it
sounded perfectly finished.”
Laswell now looks ahead to forming a musical “con¬tinuum” using the same musicians and stylistic relation¬
ships established in Album. “It’s the beginning of some¬thing that you'll hear in future projects,” he says, noting acommitment by the PiL collaborators to work together
again and solidify their initial undertaking. Reporting that
his most recent production of a forthcoming Motorhead
album continues in his current harder rock direction, Las¬
well says that there may even be a Ginger Baker solo
album using many of the PiL players. - Jim Bessman

The Soundcraft Series 200 has been thedefinitive statement in small frame con¬soles for years. They find homes in record¬ing, broadcast, video production, live
music, and stage productions. They have areputation for being reliable like a rock.
The new Series 200B reflects our design
experience with our TS 24, as evolution
would demand. The new 200B can be used
as a main console, or as a submixer for con¬soles costing hundreds of times as much. It's
open, sweet and clean at any dynamic level,
thanks to internal headroom level of+ 26db.

It is enormously flexible, with — 10 or +4
internal switching, and full 8 track monitor¬
ing. 48v phantom power is switchable oneach individual channel. There is direct
assign to subgroups and to stereo busses.
There are aux sends pre or post for both
fader and EQ. Balanced ins and outs — andlots more.
Most of all, there's reliability which comesfrom 10 years experience in evolving the artof the small frame console.
That's appropriate technology. Only fromSoundcraft.

SoundcraftSoundcraft Electronics, Inc.
1517 20th St.
Santa Monica, CA 90404(213) 453-4591

Soundcraft Electronics, Ltd.
Unit 2
Borehamwood Industrial Park
Rowley Lane
Borehamwood, Herts, England(01) 207-5050

Soundcraft New York1841 Broadway #511
New York, NY 10023(212) 315-0877

Soundcraft Electronics,
Canada Inc.
1444 Hymus Blvd.
Dorval, Quebec
Canada H9P Ij6(514) 685-1610

front door, and he said, ‘Go away, it's a bit late to be shouting
outside the door.' One went inside and the other said, 'What
did you say, man?' Bobby said, ‘You heard me. Piss off.' And
as he turned around, the colored guy stuck a Stanley knife in
his neck. Just nipped the jugular. When he come in, his head
was hanging off him. You could see into his neck. We almost
lost him, he lost so much blood. He’s very lucky. Tough to con¬trol him afterwards because he wanted to get the guys. He
couldn’t get the bloke who did it, because he's inside. Got
three years. But Bobby got five of his mates. Caught them atthe chip shop and gave them a good hiding."
Born in Galway, Ireland, Mr. Lydon moved to Scotland on
his own at the age of fourteen, supporting himself on thepipelines and eventually working his way down to London. He
met his wife there, the former Eileen Barry of Cork, at an Irish
dance club.
“She was so quiet. It was funny: My son has a wife and she’s
exactly the same as mine is, Jimmy's wife is. And all she lives
for is the baby and him. Nothing else in the world. And my wife
was exactly the same. She idolized the children. Neverwanted to go anywhere, just the children all the time. Except
church. She was a really good Catholic. If there was a churchthat said mass twice a day, she'd make you go twice a day.
She was a great Catholic. And as the lads grew up, they could
never do anything wrong in her eyes. Anything. She backed
Johnny all the way."
It was up to you to whack him when he got out of line?
“She'd never let you hit him. No way. You'd say, Tm going togive you a smack on the ear,' and she wouldn't let you touch
him, no way. She'd say, ‘Go away with your Irish temper andleave the lad alone.’ They got on very well together, all the
kids. But Johnny was more attached to her than anybody. It
was always mum and John. She was so calm, she would sit
down and talk to him for hours and hours. He wouldn't go
nowhere without telling her. He wouldn’t go outside that door
without telling her where he was going. Maybe it was themeningitis that he got to depend on her so much.
"Johnny was eight years old when he had meningitis, you
know. And he was in the hospital for months, I'd say threemonths. It's water on the brain, meningitis, isn't it? He kept
getting pain in the back of his head. He used to have theselumbar punctures, you know, big needles into the spine, and70

SUZAN CARSON

It’s better to burn out than to fade away. My my hey hey.

they would draw the fluid. I used to have to hold him down on
the bed when they gave him the lumbar punctures. He
wouldn’t let them give him the lumbar punctures unless I was
there. And he forgot everything in the hospital that he hadlearned in school. Lost his memory completely, couldn't re¬member who he was. And she taught him everything again
herself. She was a genius at math, you know. You could havea calculator and she could do the problem in her head, andshe could beat you to the answer. I’ll be damned if I know
where she learned it, but she could beat accountants with Alevels in mathematics."
When Johnny returned home, he lived mostly an indoors
existence, reading books and listening to music alone in his
room. There is a football (soccer) pitch right outside theirbackdoor, but even when he could be coaxed onto the field,
he would refuse to kick the ball, just sort of waft his foot at it if
it rolled directly to him. He was equally resistant to his formal
education, getting expelled from Catholic school at the ageof fourteen.
“It was a silly old master there, kept dictating to him," says
Mr. Lydon. “Johnny had a bit of an accident, twisted his ankle
one day. I took him up to casualty and they gave him a little
card saying he'd been there. The master said he didn’t want
to hear any bloody excuses, didn’t want to see it, it was all lies.
They almost had a punch-up, you know what I mean, and hegot expelled over it."Johnny was standing there with a sprained ankle and acard from the hospital and the master wouldn't believe him?
“More or less called Johnny a lyin' b, and he got expelled.”
Despite Mrs. Lydon prevailing on the Bishop of London to
pay a surprise visit one Sunday morning ("I felt bad about it
because you can't let the Bishop see you with a hangover,can you?") and promise to reinstate the lad, John transferred
to Kingsbury College and fellow student Sid Vicious was soona regular visitor to the Lydon home.
“My wife used to feed him here. She thought as much of Sid
as she did of John, and Sid had never had nothing, really. I'dcome home and if I’d had a few drinks, I'd say, 'Who's thatwanker?' And she'd say, 'That's Johnny’s friend. Leave off.'
And she’d be pushing me out the door. I used to be a bit wild,
you know. Martin, I’d pick him up and sling him under me arm.
But she wouldn't let you do that. Even a colored person. If acolored person passed the door and he was hungry, she’dbring him in and give him a meal. She was that type. Me, I'dshoot him. The difference in people, it's unbelievable, isn’t it?”John and Sid went on to make history, causing hysteria on
both sides of the Atlantic with the Sex Pistols, John getting
thrown out of the band for being an asshole at the end of theirbrief American tour, Sid more or less murdering his girlfriendand committing suicide. The biggest blow to John, however,came in the fall of 1978, just after a trip to America with hismother to discuss plans for a solo career.
“She thought she had a tummyache from all the parties andfood and drink. They couldn’t find anything at the hospital, but
she got bad and they opened her up and they discovered she
had malignant cancer. He took it really bad. Because he wasreally attached to her, you know. He adored his mother. Really.
From the meningitis. He set there all the time with her, day andnight he set in the chair. The way he felt at the time was hethought it was all his problems that was causing this to her, hispunk rock, you know what I mean. But it wasn’t. Cancer is adisease, and there’s nothing you can do. We talked to four ex¬
perts and they all said not even a miracle could cure her. He
wouldn't believe the doctors couldn't do anything. I don’t think
he's trusted them since.”
Wasn’t he also mad at the priest?
“He was alcoholic. Before she died, she wanted to be annointed, and he was dead drunk at four o’clock in the after¬
noon. We’d been calling him all morning. Someone who goesto church every Sunday, and you can’t get the priest to comeMl HH WIM«
6wsMimsfsnN
.

X

'

t x—

X-

'M/

'~\x\

-

'/,

'M--/'-> specific need^¿ iroçtí । \ about yaur'drummingjaok <laying the drumsis a. very serio'us busi'? toar ' l\o ide compahy^tnat is very - 'Uness for me andJqmg has noy/ made'/ 7 Z
cymbal arm attacY -- serious ç6ouhd(U(ris; Tqmá^v;pthingsjnuch easier-A' 1~2~ ' ' '*।
devetaped-' jTk■i mer^¿preinde^n-'
í/VrA-Vr/
Tir? ’ the first complete drum'i\/I'.dentiÿjïdjustabte^sô.
' tack system featuring d'>l\/'çwiy posütan-^P'ebmptëte lineotctamps'< and Cubing that can be Y pibsos w/ abiioò
ghd'
put tdgetbèrtg< - f> ? ' q7'7 down
- - js^asY
x^œw.l^.-l^prKtCAW^S^ei-Sx
C - ; 7 Í ro.
Y', V'2 simple..^ and xwitly stainless, steekdubing,-.- I■' -,. J'á.Box 'MW jaan^ Wis, 10^0404. ». In x 7
Hear AtarConjufian Lerinon’s Jatest reléa»e~ - ' stability 13 rdck solid; _ 7 ; '.- ■ ^L> . ’ Còno<|a ’$W Irone CÒnorlo Highway Su«e7, •"THE SEC«! VALUE OF DA* DREAMING" Sa when the time Bornes to get serious I,<0S ajourent QÙèbeç.'ÇqnddqWuva x

J / \ -

\

-x'',

I "

'' -

t '

!

V

> > ' - 1 "I

? . “*.

- ' / \'X >

when she's dying. She’d already been annointed four times
because they expected her to die. They were giving her somany injections in trying to keep her alive that they were killingher. It seems like you could save people from suffering someof that agony and misery, but they won't let you."
Sheba the dog trots back into the living room looking for alittle affection and Mr. Lydon gives her a pat on the head.
“Only one bad habit our dog has," he says. “You mention theword black and she’ll smash up against the window, trying to
attack whoever’s out there. She's prejudiced. She doesn't likecolored people."
Johnny Rotten's solo career, it seems to me, can be character¬ized as a lot of thrashing around looking for someone to blamefor his pain. It has often been musically adventurous, but notvery listenable unless you are into narcissism, despair andscapegoating. Unlike his work with the Pistols, there is little
funny about it. In his personal life, he has left many of his
friends behind, angry and embittered and full of accusations
that he lies. He seems more comfortable holding on to his
enemies, like the Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren, al¬ways the mongoose to John’s cobra, and recently John's vic¬
tim in a court suit in which he and the surviving Pistols and Sid
Vicious’ mom won complete control of Glitterbest, McLaren’s
management company, and Matrixbest, McLaren's movie
company. After a disastrous first album for Elektra in 1984 (ahalf-million dollar advance and 30,000 copies sold) and an
equally disastrous tour, Rotten is again selling albums withAlbum and is going to assemble yet another version of hisever shifting band, Public Image, Ltd. for a tour.
“I honestly didn't think this album would be commercial in
any way, shape or form,” he says, sitting behind the desk ofsome absent executive at Virgin Records in London. “Ithought it would be perceived as absolutely preposterous forme to delve into that kind of music, particularly using those
guitars. I thought it would drive people against me but it'sdone the exact opposite."
The first time I heard it, I thought you'd brought in Eddie Van
Halen for the solos.
“He couldn't play that good. He’d have beaten it to death.
Hah, hah, hah. I wanted to make a jolly good rock album, andthat appeared to be the best way. I've worked with Bill Laswell[the producer] before and we’re a good team."It's getting quite a bit of play in dance clubs, especially thesingle "Rise.” When I heard the chorus—“May the road risewith you"—my first thought was what’s this guy doing in agood mood.
“Hah, hah, hah. I deserve to be. Hah, hah, hah. What a thing
to say to me: 'You have no right to be happy. It’s against all my
preconceptions.’”
It is against all my preconceptions. Preconceptions basedon getting verbally eviscerated, physically threatened,thoroughly embarrassed in previous meetings, recently hear¬ing that you hit a friend of mine over the head with a beer canand shot blanks from a submachine gun at bystanders on theset of the video for “Rise” and....
"Got any cigarettes?" Rotten burps. "No? I’ll go get some.”
Upon his return, I tell him I talked with his father.
“What lies did he tell you? Did he get out the family snap¬
shots?"Some.
“My God. Was he currently in jail, or just getting out, or
what?”
No, but all his stories were about giving someone a goodhiding. He seemed proud of it.
“I know."
I got this vision of you as a small child in a house like that.

© I986MA. 7303D Edgmiler Drive. Oakland. CA9i62l. HI5) 632 1323. 1800)211 8888

Software control for
maximum performance& simplified use

15kHz bandwidth nt all
settings

INPUT
HEADROOM

Three pitch modes:
Cents, Ratio or Standard Regeneration insert forInterval (3rds, 4ths,
creating harmonized
5ths. etc.) I

PROGRAMMABLE PITCH TRANSPOSEROUTPUT
MAJOR

BYPAS

The Secret To Perfei
72

"Hah, hah, hah."Obviously you know what I’m getting at.
“Yes. No comment. Hah, hah, hah. I definitely decided thatwas not going to be my lifestyle.”
Another thing he talked about was the blacks who live in theestates.
“Oh, the race hate nonsense. I can't stand that. Most of theworking-class people here have that problem. It seems to be
the only thing that unites them, their hatred for each other. It’s
outrageous. If it isn’t against blacks, it's against people wholive on the other side of the Thames, or Northerners andSoutherners. It's just on and on and on. I am my own person.
I wouldn't.allow any of that nonsense to infiltrate my sensible
brain, thank you."
A small child doesn't have a choice about that.
"It does, you know. I cannot be easily swayed. I've always
felt what was right and what was wrong."
From the beginning you felt your father was wrong about
black people? Or was there a single incident that turned yourmind around?
“I don't think violence is the answer to anything,” Rotten
says but doesn't answer. "Never have, never will."Two of your brothers were carved up by blacks.
“More coincidence than anything else. They're such raving
loonies, the lot of them. They don't mind going out and scrap¬
ping with anybody or anything. I’d rather not talk about it. It
depresses me, as it happens."
I found it kind of depressing, sitting there.
"I know—wondering when someone is going to turn onyou."
I change the subject to meningitis he contracted at eight.
“I blame it on the pork chops. I haven't eaten pork since. I
was in a coma for a long time. I don't remember too muchabout it.”

16 user definable & 16
factory preset programs

SHA[
PRG

Sweep & regeneration
for detuned chorusing.
± 1200 cents I two octave octave shifting &range) synthesized textures

Your father held you down while you had your spinal
shots?
“Yeah, that was bad. Every fucking six hours. That was tor¬ture. You can’t imagine that thing.”
Every six hours for how many days?
“For months. For about six months."
Every six hours for six months you got a hypodermic needle
up your spine?
“Yeah. I nearly died."Your father said that you’d forgotten everything you’dlearned in school.
“That’s true. I had to start all over again.”Your mother taught you your schooling?
“No, I taught myself. I’m self-taught."
At this point, Rotten whispers something to himself which I
don't catch during the actual interview. Two weeks later, I play
the tape back twelve times and Rotten is distinctly saying,“Don't you listen! I’m bored! Don’t you listen!" For this I see
three possible explanations: 1) He is possessed by Satan,
who is not a fan of psychoanalysis; 2) He is commanding him¬
self not to listen because questions about his mom are pain¬
ful; and 3) He thinks Idon't listen and finds the entire interview
a snore. In any case, his manager, perhaps by extrasensory
perception, seems to pick up on Explanation #3 and inter¬rupts with a suggestion that we finish, which I do by asking if
he’s seen his family lately.
“They're doing all right. They're still fighting."
It's a hell of a way to get through life.
“You can’t change them. They won’t have it. They’re selfrighteous about it."
What I’m trying to figure out is why you’re different.
"I can fight if I'm pushed into it. I've had very good training."
Yeah, but your face is not a mass of scar tissue.
"And it won’t be.” H

Our Pitchtraq™ program
mahle pitch transposer produces
sparkling, glitch free harmo
nizing effects.
Our design combines thelatest in digital technology witha unique combination ofe asyto-usef eatures.

MEMORY BANKOur advanced digital splic¬
ing algorithm provides audio
quality superior to pitchtransposers costing three times
the price.
Visit your dealer today anddiscover the secret Io perfectharmony The Pitcbtraq™

STORE-CWTC DATin STANDARD DRY EFFECT REGEN SWEEP SWEEP
CENTS RATIO INTERVAL LEVEL LEVEL LEVEL DEPTH RATE

Harmony For $599
73

BMI. The world's largest music licensing organization. New York (212) 586-2000 Nashville (615) 259-3625 Los Angeles (213) 465-2111

RECORD REVIE WS

T

POST-LOBOTOMY
VAN HALEN GO ON WITH
HALF A MIND
VAN HALEN
5150(Warner Bros.)

he war of words between DavidLee Roth and Eddie Van Halen
has become the best show biz
feud since Jack Benny andFred Allen. Unfortunately, their schism
also figures to be the most commer¬
cially disastrous move since Peter Wolf
was freeze-framed out of J. Geils.
Poised on the verge of crossover masssuccess, 5150 plunges Van Halen backInto Dante's third circle of metal hell, withDavid Lee's devilish bon mots replacedby Sammy Hagar's red-neck leering.
Who's the more obnoxious? Only theirminoxydyl dealers know for sure.
So for those who believe (a) DavidLee Roth is a closet cabaret buffoon, (b)“Jump” was a sign of creeping senility
and/or calculated sell-out or (c) Eddie
Van Halen is God, well, yeah, 5150's theticket. For the rest of us, who came toappreciate the old Van Halen throughthe band's self-deprecating sense ofhumor, the new Rothless model nolonger evidences the capacity to laughat its own reflection. Like the Atlas
model on the cover, 5150 is more
musclebound than muscular.
5150 does boast the ever-inventive
fretwork of guitarme/sfer and bi-monthly
Musician coverboy Eddie Van Halen,
whose sonic creativity seems lessleashed playing off the compe¬
tent, vulgar stylings ofjourneyman Hagar. “Jump's” blatantsynthpop is here refracted onto the“Baba O'Riley”-like strains of "Dreams"
and “Love Walks In,” with hooks firmly
anchored in place by dense, overlap¬
ping guitar harmonies. But the obvious
single, "Why Can’t This Be Love,”sounds like a clunkier version of
Foreigner’s "I Want To Know What
Love Is,” (Mick Jones co-produced it).
And familiar sexist dreck like “Good
Enough" in which women are comparedto sides of beef, and “Summer Nights,"
another of Van Halen's patented rifting
fillers sans David Lee's tongue-incheekiness. is hardly redemptive. “BestOf Both Worlds" and “Get Up" are in¬teresting only for what they reveal about
the band's recent ego squabbles. “In¬side" dabbles in some modern funk¬rock grooves, but by then it’s too little,
too late.
The dynamic creative tension be¬
tween David Lee Roth's ebullient toast¬master general and Eddie Van Halen’s
isolated, chain-smoking guitar junkie
had everything to do with lifting Van
Halen above the metal masses. Now
that that friction has been traded in for
more musical compatibility, Van Hagar
is just another rock ’n’ roll band, boast¬ing one brilliant musician and one bor¬
ing frontman. In other words, squareone - RoyTrakina collector’s thrill. It’s classic music
made easily available; every homeshould have it. (Mosaic Records, 197
Strawberry Hill Ave., Stamford, CT
06902). - Peter Watrous

CHARLES MINGUS

recall tracks from his preceding New
Sensations. But even if Mistrial marks aholding pattern in Reed's artistic de¬velopment, it’s a charming one. The
funny mouthfuls of verbiage in “TheOriginal Wrapper” make clear that rap¬
ping is the only way Reed’s ever beenable to sing; and the concluding “Tell It
To Your Heart" is a pleasant throwback
to an earlier era of songcrafting, withharmonies that (for Reed) are positively
baroque. Mistrial is oddly moving in thebest Reed tradition, the artist giving al¬
most against his will.- Scott Isler

Tlw Complete Candid Recordings
Of Charles Mingus(Mosaic)

C

harles Mingus’ early-60s
quartet featuring Ted Curson,
Eric Dolphy, and Dannie
Richmond, was as viscerally
exciting as jazz gets; the first five tracks
on this set, including “Folk Forms No. 1,“
and “What Love,” are among the finest
jazz performances ever put on record.
Mingus’ meticulous control over struc¬tural detail—tempo variations, combi¬
nations of instruments, time changes—
and his prescient understanding of how
traditional New Orleans and church ex¬pressionism could mix with modernism
lends these records an aura of godli¬
ness. Add the political ramifications of
the group's brash virtuosity and they
become integral to any recounting ofthat era. For without Mingus' innova¬
tions, the high points of jazz in the 80s—
Threadgill, Murray, Dara, etc. — simply
wouldn't exist.
This set collects three sessions origi¬
nally released in scrambled form on four
records— Charles Mingus Presents
Charles Mingus, The Jazz Life—Various
Artists, Mingus, and Newport Rebels',
five then-unissued tracks are also in¬cluded. "Bugs,” an unpolished near¬masterpiece Mingus never recorded
again, is hobbled by occasionallylethargic soloing— Mingus was only al¬
lowing one take per tune. “Reincarna¬tion Of A Love Bird," like all the materialon the set, features the telepathic
rhythmic interplay that characterized
Mingus and Richmond at their best. A
final session, which included Roy El¬
dridge, Jo Jones and Tommy Flana¬gan, forks up “Body And Soul," with aslow Roy Eldridge solo opening thedoor for a double-time Dolphy outing.
As the sessions are ordered chron¬ologically, it’s possible, for instance, tohear all the tracks with Roy Eldridge to¬gether. Another benefit is hearing Min¬gus’ influence in retrospect— listen to“Lock ’Em Up” and hear David Murray.
Several of the unissued tracks unearth
powerful solos by Eldridge, Dolphy, andBooker Ervin, making this more than just76

LOU REED
Mistrial(RCA)

I

t's got a beat and you can stomp to
it—but that’s not the best way totake a Lou Reed album. On Mistrial
the Godfather of Punk continues
serving up a metallic musical brew towash down his dryly delivered observa¬
tions. He thinks of himself as a writer,and his music bears that out, cushion¬
ing lyrics rather than vying for attention.
Not to imply that Mistrial doesn’t siz¬zle instrumentally. Reed provides his
own screaming guitar solos on “Video
Violence" and “I Remember You.” The
rest of th.e compact band—essentiallybassist Fernando Saunders and drum¬
mer Sammy Merendino—uphold
Reed's belief in tastefully aggressive
guitar-based rock. (No keyboards
within hearing range.) As usual, thesongs stick to the most elementary
structures and chord changes. Reed
could be a bar band's dream; if only his
lyrics weren't so idiosyncratic.
Oh yes, the lyrics. What’s been on
Reed's mind lately? Well, love, though
not the Hallmark-cards variety. “Out¬side" desperately celebrates and/or
ridicules the escapism of romantic
bliss; “No Money Down" is a slightly
obscure limning of hopes and respon¬
sibilities; the plaintive “I Remember
You” may or may not be directed at aformer lover. “Mama's Got A Lover," on
the other hand, is vividly specific: “Hesays he's into dirty rotten essence ofurban decay,” Reed deadpans in his
gum-chewing way. Urban decay itself
crops up in the streetwise narrator of“Mistrial," the Burroughsian scenario of“Video Violence," and “The Original
Wrapper's paranoia.
There’s a slight sense of Reed repeat¬ing himself: The apologetic woman¬beater of "Don’t Hurt A Woman" and theconditional clauses of “Spit It Out" both

SPARROW
A Touch Of Class(B's Records)T

hat burgeoning crowd ofsocially sensitized American
rockers could still learn a thingor two about fashioning political
pop from Trinidad's Mighty Sparrow,and a lot about fashioning a beat. For
three decades Sparrow has reigned su¬
preme over the calypso scene, and thislatest effort shows why: The guy has aneffortlessly captivating voice, decep¬
tively incisive lyrics and a band thatmelds the freneticism of merengue witha relaxed calypso groove.
As the LP’s title and cover shot indi¬cate, Sparrow enjoys his regal role, butthat doesn't dissuade him from address¬
ing topical issues from drug abuse to
Aids to apartheid. He’s no milquetoast
moderate either; on “Invade South Af¬
rica" Sparrow suavely suggests that a
U.N. army rid that nation of it's “blood¬sucking vipers” and that a lynch mob
string up Pik Botha— all to a great dance
beat, naturally. He frames “Ah Fraid de
Aids," in terms of honest fear instead of
pious moralizing (calypso singers tend
not to be keen on calls to celibacy), andelsewhere proffers the advice that
“Coke Is Not It." Sparrow pretty muchrelies on one standard musical arrange¬
ment, but it's a great one, with punchy
horn fills, rich background choruses,
and a relentless percussive drive.
Trinidad's calypso tradition is every bit
as rich and varied as reggae's, so if
you’re looking for a place to start explor-

LET’S ACTIVE
Big Plans For Everybody

ACTIVE

IRS-5703

B,G

You, too can

PLAY ALONG WITH MITCH!
Musician Magazine, lower Records and I.R.S. Records invite you
to enter a drawing to WIN Mitch Easter’s personal Hamer guitar.
Tell us about it, Mitch.
‘‘My Hamer Special is green in color andreminds me of watermelon rinds. Nice curlymaple top. Perfect condition. Ifs been on acouple of tours and is in the new video for ‘In
Little Ways!! used it on the ‘Waters Part’ tour.
Ifs been a really solid, reliable guitar.”

To win this incredible collectible, simply go to any Tower Records
store location (36 nationwide) and pick up an entry blank from theLet’s Active/Musician Promotion display. And while you’re there,
pick up the new Let's Active album Big Plans For Everybody formerely $6.99 LP or cassette. Sale price and entry forms available
at Tower from May 28 through June 15.

' You must respond to all questions to vali¬
date your entry. Incomplete forms will bedeemed ineligible for the drawing. The win¬
ner will be chosen randomly from all valid
entries. No purchase necessary to enter.
P. S. You may say, “Hey, there's no Tower
Records In my town. How do I enter?”Fill in the entry form completely and mail to:Play Along With Mitch
Musician Magazine
P. O. Box 701
Gloucester, MA 01930

Simply send a stamped postcard or your own entry form design tothe address above responding to the following two questions:
Include name, address, phone ♦, age

1. In 25 words or less, what are your Big Plans for this guitar?
2. What is the 3-digit number that appears on the back of the Let's
Active Big Plans For Everybody record jacket (the inside flap on thecassette J-card).

Void where prohibited by law
employees of Musician, Tower, I. R.S., and Mitch’s band not eligibleRKDRÛSNew York ♦ Washington D.C. ♦ San Francisco ♦ San Mateo ♦ Campbell ♦ Berkeley
Concord ♦ Mountain View ♦ Anaheim ♦ Brea ♦ Sherman Oaks ♦ West Covina ♦ El Cajon
Panorama City ♦ El Toro ♦ Hollywood ♦ Westwood ♦ Honolulu ♦ San Diego ♦ Las Vegas
Tempe ♦ Christown ♦ Seattle ♦ Tacoma ♦ Portland ♦ Beaverton ♦ Stockton ♦ Fresno ♦ Chico

MUSICIAN £ing, this record should boot you on yourway. (B's Records, 1285 Fulton St.,
Brooklyn, N.Y.)- Mark Rowland

JOE JACKSONBig World

political, and still make us dance. Ex¬
cepting Elvis, he’s turned out to be thebest thing England's new wave has
washed upon these shores - David Wild

CHERRELLE

(A&M)

W

hat's notable about most
live albums these days is thechilling sound of contractual
obligations being met. Fearnot, Joe Jackson's Big World isn't justanother aurally air-brushed career
move. Like Jackson Browne’s Running
On Empty, it's an album of original mate¬rial that just happens to be performed in
front of an audience, and recorded di¬rect to a two-track digital master. As aresult there are no overdubs, no mixing,
no applause, and, thanks to audiencesobriety, no requests for “Free Bird."
All of Big World's audio ambiencewould be for nought had Jackson notdelivered the goods. But over thecourse of these three sides (the fourth
was left blank), he reclaims all sorts oflost territory: the herky jerky power
chords of Look Sharp, the slightly Dada
reggae rhythms of Beat Crazy, thejazzy jokiness of Jumpin' Jive, and theultra-smooth FM Gershwinisms of NightAnd Day. Lyrically, Jackson sounds likehe’s been wearing out his passport (orat least, as he joked during one of theshows, “spending a lot of time in Tower
Records' International section.") With wit
and occasional venom, he casts an eye
on Americans abroad (“The Jet Set"),the Falklands (“Tango Atlántico"), post¬
World War II politics (“40 Years"), andReagan’s reductive world view (“Right
And Wrong"). The most powerful song
here, however, is “Home Town," asemotionally direct as any Jackson has
written.
Joe Jackson doesn’t always get thecredit he's due, perhaps because he re¬fuses to play the hype games of the"pretty boys and material girls" he puts
down on “Soul Kiss." What other malerocker would have himself portrayed asa balding Tintin on his own album
cover? But if Joe is willfully unsexy he's
also savvy enough to personalize the78

High Priority

S.O.S. BAND

ments are still reaping their share of re¬wards.
The Time connection also figures
heavily on their production of Cherrelle's LP. “You Look Good To Me" and“Oh No It’s U Again" feature the clever
keyboard licks and clicking percussionthat were once that band's stock in
trade. And while there’s a lot of variety
here, “Saturday Night Love” is clearly
Lewis and Harris' triumph to date. A
hook that needs to be heard but once isa songwriter's ace-in-the-hole, and on“Saturday Love” Jam and Lewis draw afull house.
For those who pine for the days whensongwriting and production expertisemade Motown hitsville, Stax the soundof Memphis and Philly International the
inner city groove, Jam and Lewis soundlike renaissance men. It's time for New
York and Los Angeles to wise up: Min¬
neapolis is calling the shots.
Fred Goodman

Sands Of Time
(Tabu/CBS)W

hat has Prince wrought?
Legend has it that songwrit¬ing and production duo Terry
Lewis and James “Jam” Har¬ris III, a.k.a., Jimmy Jam, were fired fromthe Time by His Purpleness for missing
a gig. That shouldn’t have caused themmuch concern: “Just Be Good To Me"
became a huge hit for the S.O.S. Band.
After that Harris and Lewis enjoyedmodest success with “Just Be Good To
Me" sound-alikes.
Two singles have recently changed
all that: Janet Jackson's sly "What Have
You Done For Me Lately” and Cherrelle
and Alexander O'Neal's “Saturday
Love,” a chipper duet with an unforget¬
table days-of-the-week hook. Now
Lewis and Harris appear poised on thebrink of a career that could rival the likes
of Gamble & Huff. You could say their—
ahem—time has come.
Which brings us to Cherrelle and the
S.O.S. Band. For the latter, Jam andLewis have been instrumental in trans¬
forming a Southern one-hit wonder(1980’s "Take Your Time [Do It Right]”)
into a powerhouse of black radio. De¬
spite the presence of an outstanding
lead vocalist in Mary Davis, the group’s
vapid live performances only em¬
phasize Harris and Lewis' role in thestudio. Slow rolling funk with chiming
percussion and Davis' soaring vocals
have become the band’s trademark
sound, and on Sands Of Time they play
it for all it's worth. The Time's influenceis very much in evidence on “No Lies,”
and there’s another obligatory “Just Be
Good To Me" copy via “Borrowed
Love.” But the LP's first single, “The
Finest,” suggests that Lewis and Harris’
songwriting and production experi¬

HASIL ADKINSOut To Hunch(Norton)G

ood lord. Hasil Adkins is best
known, if at all, as the com¬poser of "She Said," awhacked-out monologue re¬corded by the Cramps. But that perfor¬
mance will not prepare you for what's
concealed inside Out To Hunch agathering of Adkins recordings madebetween 1955 and 1965. Although inno¬
cently packaged as yet another compil¬
ation of vintage (if obscure) rock 'n' roll,this stuff is to that era's chart fodder
what white lightning is to Tab.
Billy Miller's liner notes present Ad¬
kins as a West Virginian noble savage
from a musical Twilight Zone. This is auniversé of irregular phrase measuresand primitive home-made recordings;
of out-of-tune whistling and jumbled
lyrics; of shrieking falsetto and maniacal
laughter. Adkins accompanies his yowl¬
ing and rubber-drone electric guitar
strumming with his own drum work. No¬
body else could follow his peculiar
rhythmic elisions.
With the exception of a relatively un-

41

35

The Doors

Miles

Carla Bley. Bob Marley

Genesis. Lowell George

54

57

Bob Seger

Bob Marley

Todd Rungren. Missing Persons

81

Sting

Graham Parker, Getting Signed

86

Joni Mitchell.

Simple Minds. Hall & Oates

Don Henley. Ramones

8
9
10.
13.
14
IS.
17
18
20
21
23
24
25
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
37
40
42
44
45
48
49
52
53
58
60

Warren Zevon. Squeeze

50Billy Joel

Pink Floyd. Corporate Rock

74

73

Springsteen

Miles Davis. PiL. Producer Special

Bowie

Summers/Fnpp, Yoko Ono

BACK
ISSUESVSOPAl Jarreau. Herbie Hancock

Ornette Coleman. Frank Zappa
Charles Mingus. McCoy Tyner

Tyner It Hubbard. Woody Shaw
George Benson. Jazz Radio Special
Chick Corea. Ralph McDonald
Art It Funk Charles Mingus. G. Clinton
Pat Metheny. Dire Straits, Marvin Gaye
Steely Dan Session Players, Reggae
Brian Eno. Reggae Festival. Weather Report
Sonny Rollins Townshend. Bonnie Raitt
Bob Marley, Sun Ra. Free Jazz/Punk83

85

Dire Straits

RE.M,, Brian Eno. John Cage

Talking Heads

Neil Young. Eurythmies

Bob Seger. Daryl Hall. Tom Petty
Mark Knopfler Roxy Music, Van Morrison
Mike McDonald Capt Beefheart, Surf Music
Bruce Springsteen. Miles Davis, Rock & Jazz
Steely Dan John Lennon, Steve Winwood
Talking Heads Brian Eno. John Fogerty
The Clash Joe Strummer. Mick Jones
Tom Petty. Carlos Santana. Dave Edmonds
Reggae, The Rolling Stones. Rickie Lee Jones
Ringo Drummers. Devo, Rossington-Collins
Hall & Oates. Zappa. Jaki Byard
Graham Parker Nick Lowe. Lester Bowie
Willie Nelson. John McLaughlin, the Motels
Steve Winwood Steve Miller, Brian Eno
Neil Young Foreigner. Go-Go’s

Joe Jackson Men At Work. John Cougar
Tom Petty. Don Cherry, Ric Ocasek
Kinks Marvin Gaye. Bryan Ferry

89

91

Elvis Costello

Al Green. Mick Jones

Stones

INXS, Bangles

Elvis Costello. Motown. Culture Club

61 Jackson Browne Eurythmies. Keith Jarrett
65 Pretenders Paul Simon. ABC

67
69
70
71
76
77
80
82
84

46

Pete Townshend

Thomas Dolby. Chet Baker. Alarm. Marcus Miller
Michael Jackson. R.E.M., Charlie Watts
Peter Wolf King Crimson. Bass/Drum Special
Heavy Metal. Dream Syndicate. George DukePaul McCartney Rickie Lee Jones. Big Country
John Fogerty. Marsahs/Hancock. Los Lobos
Phil Collins Joan Armatrading. Josef Zawinul
Brian Wilson. Sting II. Jerry Garcia
Cougar. Bryan Ferry. Maurice White

1 have marked the issues I'd like to have. Please send
me_magazines at $4.00 each ($5.00 outside theU.S ). Please Allow 6-8 Weeks Delivery(U.S. funds only.) Money Orders 2-3 Weeks Delivery
NameStreet
CitY

State

Zip

g ¿8 45 67
q 7q
,q
10

30

48

70

13 31 49 71
14 32 50 73
15 33 52 74
17 34 53 76
18 35 54 77
20 37 57 80
21 40 58 81
23 41 60 82

MUSICIAN, RO. Box 701. Gloucester. MA 24 42 6i 83
01931-0701 »DO NOT SEND CASH**
25 44 65 84

For a free ECM Catalog please write:
Warner Bros. Records
P.O. Box 6868
Burbank, CA 91510

ino, Saluzzi

with Charlie Haden,
Palle Mikkelborg
and Pierre Favre

Once Upon A Time—Far Away In The South
Blending traditional South American
MUSIC WITH TOUCHES OF AMERICAN JAZZ, AR¬
GENTINA’S Dino Saluzzi emerges as one of
THE MOST ORIGINAL VOICES IN IMPROVISATIONALMUSIC.

mangled version of Chuck Berrys"Memphis," virtually everything here is a
twelve-bar blues structure, or bizarre
permutation thereof. Adkins compres¬ses "Rockin' Robin” and distends Jerry
Lee Lewis’ “High School Confidential,"
but his original tunes are the real draw—
and a psychiatrist's field day. “I wantyour head," he drools, “to hang on mywall tonight.” (Now there's an angle theStones haven't covered.) That motif,
from “No More Hot Dogs,” returns more
menacingly on “We Got A Date" and "I
Need Your Head,” where Adkins
sounds like a ghoul out of The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. Lousy recording
quality adds to the creepy effect.
Elsewhere, though, all is sweetness
and light: Adkins bawls out “I'm Happy,”
the album's acoustic country number,and introduces those dance crazes“The Hunch” and the “Chicken Walk."
His own version of “She Said” makes the
Cramps sound accomplished. This rec¬ord has to be heard to be believed.
(Norton Records, Box 646, Cooper Sta¬tion, New York, NY 10003) Scott Isler

ECM

ON ECM RECORDS AND CASSETTES© 1986, ECM Records • Manufactured and distributed by Warner Bros. Records Inc.

CULTURE CLUB
From Luxury To Heartache(Virgin /Epic)C

ulture Club's attempt to re¬bound from the commerciallydisappointing Waking Up With
The House On Fire finds Boy
George and crew as jumpy as cats on a
hot tin roof. Signs of distress aren't con¬fined to the title: The clenched-teeth
edginess of dance tracks like "Gusto
Blusto" complements the paranoid ten¬dencies of “I Pray” and "Too Bad,” while
producers Arif Mardin and Lew Hahn
heighten that tension by piling on
enough percussion, synths, and back¬ing vocals to cause a splitting
headache. And you thought this waslight entertainment.
Despite the neurotic overtones, From
Luxury To Heartache reaffirms Culture
Club’s mastery of breezy pop-soul.
Though nothing matches the instantly
appealing “Karma Chameleon," plentyof tunes have that hitbound sound.
"Move Away,” the first single, soars
80Wear it on your sleeve.

Shortsleeve T-Shirt
100% Cotton, Black or Red

Shortsleeve Sportshirt
50% Cotton, 50% Polyester
Blue or Black

Crewneck Sweatshirt
50% Cotton, 50% Polyester
Black or White

Sleeveless T-Shirt
100% Cotton, Black or Red

Flange Jacket
100% Cotton, Black
Baseball Cap
Corduroy, Black or Red&M.I.XIQ)

Color Size Qty. Price ea. Total
Shortsleeve T-Shirt$8.00

Sleeveless T-Shirt$7.50

Crewneck Sweatshirt$14.00

Shortsleeve Sportshirt$18.00

Flange Jacket$45.00Baseball Cap (not shown)
Add $2.50 postage and handling for all orders.

Send check1
1 ioi iey Oi de* to.
NEW ENGLANDPROMOTIONS
384 High St.

or

Name
Address

Please allow 4-6 weeks Statefor delivery.

$7.50
$2.50

Total enclosed $

__

City
Zip

MUSICIAN WEAR

gracefully on the wings of Philly-stylestrings and gospel voices; “Work On Me
Baby" could be a great lost Suprêmes
song in modern drag. “Sexuality" toys
with George’s exotic image while“Gusto Blusto” equals the manic energyof the Bee Gees’ disco smashes.
These good grooves could havebeen better had the producers given
the material— and the Boy— morebreathing space. Smokey Robinson heain't, but George can make nasty lyrics
seem sweet (“Move Away"), teach amelancholy waltz to swing (“Come
Clean”), and stand his ground against
powerhouse female singers Jocelyn
Brown and Ruby Turner. Only thing
George can't handle here is the cloying"God Thank You Woman" (probably to
his credit).
Maybe From Luxury To Heartache willsell truckloads and allow Culture Club tostop trying so hard. Maybe Boy George
will quit playing a cool jerk and let more
people appreciate his talent. Maybe thegroup will settle down and finally makea great album. Maybe they'll call it
Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's Cul¬
ture Club.- Jon Young

LEARN THE ART OF RECORDING—the leader in training creative music professionals. For overa decade, hundreds ot sound engineers, as well as pro¬
ducers and recording artists have made their start with us.
We offer the industry's most successful program in record¬
ing technology and our 5-studio educational facility
is the world's largest and most equipped ► No previous
experience required ► Extensive hands-on ex
perience in 24 track recording ► Digital recording. MIDI
and automated mixing ► On campus housing ► 6 week
program is conveniently offered 7 times year round.

THE RECORDING
WORKSHOP

Enrollment is limited, for free brochure call or write today
THE RECORDING WORKSHOP, 455-A Massieville Road, Chillicothe, Ohio 45601

800-848-9900 614-663-2544

Ohio State Board of School and College Registration #80-07-06961

82

JUNIOR
Acquired Taste(London/PolyGram)J

unior's music may be an acquired
taste, but it’s hard to know why.
From all evidence, Junior is a major
pop talent whose songcraft sug¬gests Stevie Wonder's and whose bliss¬fully poignant vocal style rivals Boy
George. Perhaps not coincidentally,both peers are sort of represented here,
Stevie on drums and the Boy via pro¬
ducers Arif Mardin (“Somebody”) andSteve Levine (“Together"). Indeed, thisrecord sports five different producers,which means Junior's record company
is either deeply committed to showcase
his impressive range or as abjectly con¬fused about his failure to chart as I am.
Well, the music here certainly sounds
high-tech enough, but the question lin¬
gers— will fans still make passes atblack pop singers who wear glasses?
Junior’s last LP, Inside Lookin' Out,If you settle for oneof those cute “portable studios”
look what you’re missing:Six channels with both balanced Lo-Z
and unbalanced Hi-Z input circuits
48v Phantom power for pro condenser
microphones
Two-band parametric EQ on every input
Choice of peak-dip or shelf-rolloff EQ
control
Two switchable sends on each channel• l\vo independent returns• Solo bus to monitor any channel, submix, or return• Professional + 4 dBm output level• Full-featured 4-track/compatible stereo
cassette recorder• 1% and 3% IPS tape speed• ± 15% Pitch adjustment (tape speed)• Dolby B and C

AT-RMX64

It’s not just for fun!

And these are just selected highlights!
Get the complete story about the very
professional AT-RMX64. Write for ourbrochure or ask your local Audio-Technica
sound specialist. Today.

audio-technica 1221 Commerce Drive, Stow, OH 44224 (216) 686-2600

was a wonder of confessional writing
and understated arrangements, and it
bombed miserably. Maybe that's why
the production values on this one so
often translate into production numbers
to rival MGM's. The true triumph here is“Oh Louise," a sunny romantic ballad
replete with gospel choir that shows off
Junior’s exciting falsetto—you canpractically hear him skip for joy amid thewarmly embracing vocal choruses. At
the other end of the spectrum is “Some¬body,’' a heard-it-through-the-grapevine weeper that's overwhelmed by
Mardin’s powerful but all too calculated
dance/scratch mix. Junior's personality
seems too whimsical and sophisticatedto survive such a sonic assault—
he's much better crooning seductive
grooves like “Not Tonight," the Stevieish“Look What You’ve Done For Me,” ormelodic confections like “Together.’’
These songs are at once tasty andtasteful, the kind of polished pop thatgives MOR stations reason to live. But
will they discover the guy? Stay tuned.
- Mark Rowland
Corea from page 30

immediately had that feeling.
With Weckl, it was slightly different, inthat I started asking some musician
friends about drummers. I asked
Michael Brecker, “Who’s the best drum¬
mer in New York now? I’m putting to¬FINALLY

gether an electric band." He didn't hesi¬tate at all and said, "Oh, Dave Weckl.”
Then after the gig, I went over to Tania
Maria’s loft in the city. Her husband
played for me a tape of a young
keyboard player's band, to see what I
thought. I went, “Who the hell is that
drummer? He's happening." We were
getting ready to leave town the next day
and Gayle spotted in the Village Voice,Dave Weckl appearing with the Billy
Connors trio at the Bottom Line. It was
this series of coincidences, so we
stayed over an extra day and went
down to hear him. He was great. He
sounded like the record [/aughs],
Dave, besides his great abilities as a
drummer, has this great drum sound.
It’s incredibly rich, with an accent on
drums and de-emphasis of cymbals.
He uses cymbals for effects andrhythm. The kind of cymbals he has
don’t swell up, develop and last a longtime; they hit the effect and they disap¬
pear. It's the drums that are featured. So
we played a few gigs just to see how it
felt and it snapped from the first rehear¬sal. Dave and John met and they locked
into a groove on the very first tune.
musician: I notice a Steve Gadd-like
quality in Dave's approach.
COREA: Steve is a strong influence, I
think. The thing I like about Dave is that,even at the young age that he is, hismusical conception is his own. Gadd

was one of the first drummers I’d ever
heard— him and Tony Williams—whoorganized their drum rhythms in a waythat was almost like a composer. Before
that, jazz drummers used to get arhythm and a roll going, but they'd never
be able to repeat themselves and play
the same thing twice; it was a continu¬
ally varied rhythm. It wasn't until Gadd
and Tony that they began to study theirplaying enough so that it became a very
controlled thing. For a composer, it’s adream to have the drummer play thesame thing when that part of a compos¬
ition rolls around because that's what’s
required.
I always used to think it was kind of
unfair that I would go to a rehearsal, give
the written part to the bass and to theguitar player or horn player, and I'deven have my own written part, and thedrummer was left free. I’d have to say,“Well, no, a little more of that, less ofthat.” The drummer was the last one tolearn to read music.
MUSICIAN: You've been a very prolificcomposer yourself and yet there are acouple oteases— with your Mozart workand the Monk album— that you focusedon other composers. How do you view
those side trips?
COREA: They’re not side trips at all. It's
just great music that I really want to play.
continued on page 88

LING MADE
No longer do yoi
sampling creatiC

io be a computer whi^ffo unleash yourV in just 8 secondsujjrcan sample anything
toeing 747 . artfrermanently store your,ounds . . . Trom a C D. ti
00Q synthesizer!
[he AKA]

Write to us fi
dealer.

is your own creativity. Of courses‘amples to get you started.
¿sit your local AKAIñnothBrProiluctofV84

For the past six years, the mostinnovative, successful and influentialmusic business professionals have madethe New Music Seminar an essential
annual event. Last year, 4,900 of theseindustry leaders attend NMS6, and we
expect this year’s attendance to be far
greater.
The New Music Seminar is unique
because it is the only convention to
attract both rock and black music’s mostimportant individuals from all aspects of
the industry, including representativesof major and independent labels, A6?R,
marketing, publishing, booking agencies,
concert promoters, as well as artists,managers, producers, songwriter, andDJs.
For the first time, the NMS is compilinga new music tape from unsigned bands
and artists to be distributed free to alldelegates in the Registration Package. If
your song is selected for the tape, it will
be heard by over 5,000 music industry
professionals from around the world!
Tapes will be selected by NMS staff judges.
If you are selected, there will be a fee of$350 in duplicating and packaging costs. For the
price you would pay for 2 Seminar registrations
or a few hours of studio time, your song will beheard by the most powerful and important people
in all aspects of the music industry. Call Jeff
Dorman at (212) 728-2115 for more details.
This tape will be manufactured by ASR Recording.
Please send only high-quality demos (the best youcan!). Deadline for entries is May 30, 1986, andall styles of music are encouraged. '.

——Aver ne 'morel***®1** 1747 F^ 8**
C°
UP °
m« 11

First Nam^
CoinP any Nam-

Zip
State — "Postal Code

Addr esS
City
Country
Ph°n®

tieS atNMS7.
tuniti e& alnf^ver«^ 0PP01"NMS

WCUI,a “°”« ní«s<’ndm^« 8TB,, ”!

SAVE $5 °?

«may 30

Level 42 from page 48

ping last night by doing it faster andlonger." “The Sun Goes Down (Living ItUp)" went top ten in England, but Level42 lost their American contract.
Mark King took some time off to re¬cord a solo album, a "self-indulgent, im¬provised album of very 'muso’ stuff"
which also gave him the chance to playdrums again. But King also feels thesolo venture gave him valuable produc¬tion experience, and when Level 42
began recording a new album in 1984
with producer Ken Scott (fresh off suc¬cess with Missing Persons), they began
to stress melody over pomp. The results
were encouraging enough that PolyG¬
ram took a chance with them. Then,
while writing material for their next
album, “we felt that since we werechanging, rather than alienate our fol¬lowing completely, we’d give themsomething to remember us by. 'Thanks
for your support over the last five years.
Here's how you’ll always rememberus.’" The double live album, called
Physical Presence, includes much ofLevel 42's hit singles, as well as gener¬ous solos from all the band members.
Mark King wisely applied the lessons
he’d learned to the next album, begin¬ning his songs with a strong vocal
melody, rather than a clever bass riff.
And the entire band played with newfound restraint. On a few songs, King's
langorous bottom approaches thespareness of reggae. “If you look at theway I play bass on a ballad like 'Leaving
Me Now,' it wouldn’t do for me to slapaway like a maniac. It doesn’t wantthat." King's vocals also improved, andMike Lindup adds eerie falsetto parts.
Not only did “Something About You” be¬come a hit, but the band began to re¬ceive good reviews at home, with theusually-hostile Melody Maker declaring
the album “the best that Level 42 has
made.”In addition to recording eight albums
in less than six years and playing atleast a hundred shows a year, MarkKing has done sessions with Nik Ker¬shaw and Midge Ure, and turned downscores of other offers. "I don’t feel keen
about blatting my sound all over every¬
body's records, ” he shrugs. Other extra¬
curricular activities include producing
Leisure Process and remixing Robert
Palmer's "You're In My System.” "Who¬ever produced Robert at the time wasn’t
overly tidy, and there were lots of burps
It’s not often you get twenty-five ultra¬
hot drummers together to discuss tech¬nique, setups and playing philosophy.
But Simmons has managed it in a nifty lit¬
tle book entitled Twenty-Five Drummers
Who Electrified the World that's a steal for$5.00. Send check or money order toSimmons Group Centre, 23917
Craftsman Rd , Calabasas, CA 91302

86

and coughs and farts all over the tape.
Of course, I thought it was great. I was
whapping them all over the remix.”
For all the acclaim, King claims he’s
“not a big fan of the bass. I wish I could
take more credit when people compli¬
ment me, but I've got to say it’s beenreally easy.” Although he pays homage
to a few bass legends, including Stan¬ley Clarke, Jaco Pastorius, Jack Bruce(“the live version of Tm So Glad’ is ab¬
solutely ridiculous”), Doug Rauch ofSantana, and Alex Blake of Billy
Cobham's band, King says “a player
like Jan Hammer makes my hair standon end. A synthesizer can be as indi¬vidual as you are." He pauses for one of

the few times this afternoon and frowns.
"That sounds like an ad for underwear.”
Except for one show in New York in
1983, the spring tour represents Level
42's American debut. “Please come,” isKing's message. “We're gonna try likehell. I’ll give them money, free beer.”
Doesn't the world's fastest bass player
feel ambiguous about embracing what
he once dismissed as “mindless crap?”“There's a plus and a minus with every¬
thing,” King muses. "We’d be stupid tojust get up onstage, like, ‘It's been six
bloody years and now we're here.
Christ, youYe gonna pay for it.’ It won’t
be like that. But it would be nice to meet
Madonna and squeeze her bum.” H

Millar from page 42
corrugated, anodized aluminum screen
providing live reflection about nine in¬ches in front of her. The corrugationsplashes back the sounds in different
directions without any howls on the
microphone, and the rear of the screen
was damped down with a blanket. Im-

mediately behind this was a mono
speaker playing the backing track, andthis was set out of phase with anotherspeaker which had her vocal coming
out of it quite loudly. This helped im¬
measurably, and the results speak—orsing—forthemselves!" E)

THE POLLUTION-FREE POWER PLANTM

ost of Robin Millar's taste in re¬cording technology is reflected in
the equipment at the Power Plant,
as exemplified by his favoritism for Harri¬son consoles: “They are sweet musicaldesks with a lovely clear sound to them. I
love the eq— even on the cruder desks. Itnever takes away before it adds— when
you press the eq in, you don't feel thatyou've stripped your sound down to abare minimum. On many boards the eq iseither very hard or it sounds like a blanket
has been thrown over the sound.
"Operationally I find the Harrisonsfiddly and unnecessarily complicated—
one button does twenty-seven things de¬pending on how you set up the desk—and people can be easily confused bythem, as opposed to something like an
SSL which really is almost completely
idiot-proof— apart from the computer. But
as with a favorite guitar or a favorite car ora favorite woman, the eccentricities al¬
most become endearing after a while. If
you can't kick and cuss at something
every now and then, it ceases to have apersonality I I'm generally less happy with
the new style generation of mixing desks,
and I find some of the complexities of themodern computers extremely irritating. I
use an Audio Kinetics Master Mix com¬puter on the Harrison— you put in a disk,
press a button and pretty well ignore it."Millar puts a lot of stock in his boards
because that’s almost all he uses: “I
could take ‘Smooth Operator,’ put thefaders up in a straight line and run off amix, and I bet I wouldn't be asked to re¬mix it! That's not because everything's at
the same level; I’m not that good! I don’t
record everything so I can mix in astraight line! But it would be okay be¬cause it would just sound like you're in an
ordinary room except for some reverb

and a few other touches, in addition tosome eq on the overall mix as it soundeda bit dull. You should never worry if you’remixing and the whole thing sounds a little
dull. Just mix it together, and when you
think it's right put some eq on it and fiddle
around until you’re got the relative fre¬quencies that you like. Remember you
can do anything you like on the eq, unlessthe drums are brighter than the vocals
which in turn are brighter than the
saxophone or whatever; then you’re introuble. It's no good making one thing tentimes as bright as everything else."
The Power Plant consists of three sepa¬
rate studios. The first has a Harrison
Series 24 36-channel desk, Studer A-18
and B-62 decks and Urei 813B monitors
powered by a Studer A-68 amp. As formini-monitors, Millar favors AR 18S's ("flatand uninteresting but true") and Yamaha
NS10s. Outboard gear includes EMT 140
and Yamaha R-1000 and REV-7 reverbs,
a Bel 8-second sampling delay, Drawmer
noise gates, Urei and dbx compressor/
limiters, Urei equalizers, an AMS phaser,a Bynaflange and a Marshall Time mod¬ulator. A Hammond organ and a Steinway
with Forte MIDI Mod are on hand.
Studio two uses an SSL 4000D com¬puter automated desk, with Otari MTR 90/
2 and Studer A-820 analog decks and a
Sony PCM 701 digital recorder. In addi¬
tion to much of the equipment found in
Studio 1 there's an AMS RMX16 echo andan AMS stereo delay, Pye compressor/
limiters, a Gain Brain, a Vocal Stressor, aScamp rack with parametric eq, Meyer
noise gates, a Roland chorus/echo, an
Eventide Flanger and a Yamaha DX7.
Studio 3, known as the Gallery, boasts a
Harrison MR3 44-channel console, aStuder A-80 deck with Dolby noise reduc¬tion and a Sony F1 to master on.

ALL NIGHT LONG.

>
D

»
S

0.

»'
G PLAY S TRINGS.
SLF's... more than a one night stand.
When other strings leave you begging for
more. SI J’s really deliver.
Super Long 1 ’lay strings are a dist inettve i icw
blend of nickel (for long life and resistance totarnish land iron (one of the strongest magnetic
metals). The result: an extremely long lasting,powerful string that holds its tone and sounds

L

better, longer. And SLTs special nickel-ironallo}-makes them pull into tune quickly and
May then-.
Super Long Play st rings... New from Dean
Markley. They keep on rocking as long as you do.

For Information Write:
DEAN MARKLEY STRINGS. INC. 3350 SCOTT BLVD. #45. SANTA CLARA. CA 95054 (408) 988-2456
TELEX 9103382046 ' 1986 DEAN MARKLEY STRINGS. INC.

Corea from page 84

When I sit down and put the repertoireof a project together, I use composition
as a vehicle. Usually I'm composing myown music and playing it, but there aretimes when the combination of the musi¬cians I'm working with and the environ¬ments I’m working in, plus my playing
desires, come up with something likethe Monk record.
Years and years ago when I started
listening to Monk and studying his
tunes, I was also into the likes of Bartok
piano concerti, string quartets andorchestral music, as well as Stravinsky
and Edgar Varese, and various othercomposers— mostly twentieth-century
composers. I thought, "How interestingthat Monk's music is not considered asa similarity to these composers, simply
because his music is not an orches¬
trated music.” In actual fact, it is an or¬
chestrated music. If you listen to Monk’s
records or Wayne Shorter’s records,
you find this great composition, only
taking the form of a different style, a jazz
form, a form of improvisation.
I thought to myself, gee, we have aheritage and legacy of music here rightunder our nose that’s not regarded in
the same light as classical music, but
it's actually classic. So I began to ap¬
proach playing Monk's music as I would
approach playing Mozart. When I sit
down with Mozart, I regard the score,
listen to what else has gone on before
with this piece— where is the culture atwith this piece? Then I come up with myway of playing these notes and my origi¬
nation on it. Similarly, with the Monk trio
record, I took the pieces and playedthem with a lot of love and reverence forthe composer. I hope it sounded like
Monk’s music. I think it did. It didn't copy
Monk’s playing.
MUSICIAN: I didn't hear many minor
seconds.
COREA: Although it didn't sound com¬pletely unlike Monk either. I tried to keepsome of the voicings and some of theangularness. That's an expansion forme, when I can find another composer’s
music to involve myself in as a per¬former.
Up until about five or six years ago, I
never really thought about myself as a
pianist or as a performer. My mind wasalways into being the composer, being
the one who put the tunes together. I
would think of my playing as a tool to
use to realize these compositions— acomposer’s playing. I thought, "Gee,I’m a pianist too. Why don’t I develop
that?” Inspired by certain pianists andcomposers, I started to do that. One of
the ways I did that was to get into
Mozart.
MUSICIAN: How did you land on Mozart,
as opposed to Bartok or one of the morejazz-oriented composers?
88

COREA: That's an interesting story, be¬cause before I did arrive there, I sort ofheard classical music— the music of
Beethoven and Mozart and on back— it
had the sound to me of syrupy simplicity
and I never got too deep into it. I didn’t
dislike it, it just never really grabbed me
the way the modern composers or eventhe romantic composers did.
But an interesting thing happened tome when I involved myself in this piano
festival in Munich. I had an opportunity
to play with Friederich Guida. He's very
well known as a great interpreter ofBeethoven, Mozart and Bach. But he’salso a jazz musician. The first time I saw
him play was in the early 60s, where hehad a trio at Birdland. I didn’t know he
was a classical pianist then and I
thought, “Wow, what a fantastic tech¬nique this guy has!” I’d never seen a
jazz pianist with a technique like that.
So when I played this festival with
Guida, he had his solo part. He impro¬
vised for a while and then landed on a G
pedal, made a dramatic pause, andplayed this classical music in C major. It
went on for twenty minutes, three move¬ments—fast, slow, fast. It captured me.
It just took me unaware. I think it did tome what he intended for it to do to an au¬
dience in that context. There was all thisimprovising and freebag playing goingon and an occasional bebop change.
All of a sudden—boom—classicalmusic, delivered with impeccable clar¬
ity and ease of rhythm. I loved themusic— the orderliness of the composi¬tion, its pure beauty and simplicity.
After the concert was over, I jumped
all over him and said “Guida, what was
that? That so so gorgeous." In a ratherbored way, he said, "Oh, that was a
Mozart piano concerto." I said "Guida,
you’ve got to teach me a little bit about
this area of music." A month later, hesent me a mini score in the mail ofMozart’s Double Piano Concerto in Eb,
for two pianos and orchestra. He said,
in a teacherly manner, “In eight months,
you and I will play this piece at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with Nicolaus
Harnoncourt conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra. You take the sec¬
ond part.” I naively accepted the chal¬lenge. I thought, well, gee, Mozart iseasy. It’s not as hard as Bartok. I canwhip this off and it will be some good ex¬perience for me. That’s how I got into it.
The Double Piano Concerto was my realentrance point into Mozart.
I totally fell in love with Mozart as acomposer and I also found out that themusic is not simple to play. It essentiallykicked my ass for eight months. I arrived
in Amsterdam with my knees knocking,but was taken under the loving wing ofGuida and the most incredible musi¬cian— Nicolaus Harnoncourt. They bothjust tried to show me what they thought

and felt of Mozart in a couple of rehear¬sals. I took in what I could, did it andmade a record which I’m very proud of.
MUSICIAN: Having sort of delved into
the heart of Mozart, do you think you’vebeen influenced by his ideas, harmoni¬cally or structurally?
COREA: Impossible not to have been.
How it will show itself is going to be amatter for whoever is interested in com¬paring. While I was practicing the D
Minor Concerto, which I’m playing with
the Philharmonia Virtuosi, I took a break
and wrote a song which I feel had a
Mozart flavor. It’s on the record. When
you listen to “All Love,” see if you canhear Mozart.
MUSICIAN: Could we cover your back¬ground a bit? I understand you're fromthe humble town of Chelsea, Mas¬
sachusetts. Was that anything of a mus¬ical hot spot?
COREA: It was a musical cold spot. But
my dad was a musical hot spot. He got
me going. He had a band, was a musi¬cian all his life and made an atmospherewith his life and around the house thatjust made being a musician the thing to
do. I owe a lot to him in getting me goingon the road to making music.
MUSICIAN: Were you classicallytrained?
COREA: A little bit when I was eight
years old, after my father had showed
me some changes; I had listened toCharlie Parker and I could play “Per¬dido” on the piano. Then I studied with
Salvatore Asualo, a Boston pianist who
was real great for me at the time. He in¬troduced me to classical music. I never
did much with it until after high school; I
spent a year practicing a set of classicalpieces as a Juilliard entrance examina¬tion. I went to Juilliard for a year andthen opted to not be in school, but go on
the road. But that was the extent of for¬mal training. Everything else was rec¬ords and intense hours at home with myinstrument.
MUSICIAN: Were you pretty obsessive
about playing as a kid?
COREA: I wouldn't call it obsessive, im¬plying something insane about it. WhenI was young, I felt that I easily made apact with myself, deciding that I wanted
to be a musician. I just loved playing.
When I was real young, my dad used toencourage me to practice every day
and I was out on the streets. But after I
was nine or ten, I started to get more in¬terested. Later on in high school, when I
discovered Horace Silver records, that
was a turning point. I started to spend
hours transcribing Horace Silver rec¬ords. From that point on, the number ofhours I spent with music increased, until
it was twenty-four hours a day. And it stillis.
MUSICIAN: Does that mean that you
continued on page 97

Vocalists suffering fromfatigue, hoarseness, andthe inability to realize
their full range, power,
and timbre will discovera new dimension in
their vocal abilities byutilizing the Gan-Tone
Method.

Illustrated
324 pages.
Hard Cover.
$38.50
8W X 11W

SINGING
ENERGY
N THE

WORLDWIDESALES

GAN-TONE METHOD of VOICE PRODUCTION

The Gan-Tone Method
described in this bookrevolutionizes the traditional
beliefs for producing thesinging voice by revealing thenatural laws that unify the
body for the ultimate insinging energy through total
body power!
The Gan-Tone Method will
enable any sincere seeker todevelop a beautiful and power¬
ful singing voice, either for
Rock or Opera, and will enable
the professional singer—
popular or classical—to retain
the voice for many years.
In Singing Energy, Robert
Gansert rejects traditional
beliefs and establishes newreference points to enable thevocalist to understand andmake use of the entire body inthe production of the singing
voice, resulting in previously
unknown depth, power andquality.
Singing Energy is required
reading for anyone who
wishes to become aware of a
new dimension in energizing
the singing voice!

Morcas Hegnfrados

ROBERT GANSERTAbout the Author:
Robert Gansert has been aperforming vocalist for overtwenty years, and has beenfeatured in numerous concerts
and recordings. His work has
been internationallyacclaimed. He is currently anoted instructora! theCarnegie Hall studios.
<1986 GAN-TONE PRODUCTIONSGAN-TONE IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF GAN-TONE PRODUCTIONS

6-86

MAIl ORDI R FORM

Plea.se send me _ copies of SINGING ENERGY in the GanTone Method of Voice Production (a $38.50 each, which includes
postage, handling and sales tax. (Outside U.S.A., $39.50 U.S. cur¬rency.) Includes FREE audio cassette tape.

NAME
ADDRESSZIP
Send to: GAN-TONE PRODUCT IONS, ( arncgie Hall, Studio 1 105.
88 I 7th Avenue, New Vork City, f(Allow 3 to 5 weeks for delivery.)

GAN-TONE PUBLISHING CO.

LARYNGEAL-PELVIC • FUSION • AWARENESS

The Del Lords
Johnny Comes Marching Home(EMI /America)
Good instincts don’t always guarantee
great music, but they don't hurt, either.
The Del Lords want so much to capture
what rock ’n’ roll means to them as fansthat their own songs often force theissue. But just as the Del Lords seem
about to tumble into pretension, their in¬stincts save them, mixing grit into Neil
Geraldo's polished production or un¬
derscoring the Guthrie-esque “Dream
Come True" with real feeling instead ofliterary allusion. Which is far truer torock's spirit in the first place.
Paul Brady
True For You (21)Considering that he sings like Van Mor¬rison and plays guitar like Mark Knop¬fler, it's hard to imagine why Paul Brady
remains a cult figure at best. Maybesome of it is that his roots are in Irish
traditional music, not rock (though that
hardly compromises the bluesy
grooves behind “Helpless Heart" or“Trouble Round The Bend”). But be¬
tween the perceptive wit of the writing
and the warmth and charm of his perfor¬
mances, it's hard to imagine any listener
not becoming a fan.
ModelsOut Of Mind, Out Of Sight (Geffen)
At first hearing, you may find yourself
wondering why the world needs another
INXS. As the Models insinuate them¬selves, though, doubtless you'll feelless cynical. This is a great groove
band, smart enough to sync up a se¬quencer pulse, canny enough to rockout on top of it. Add a couple strong
songs— the title tune, “Stormy Mind”
and “I Hear Motion”— and the Models
end up more addictive than derivative.
Ministry
Twitch (Sire)
Speaking of grooves, Ministry deals in
the industrial-strength variety; muscu¬
lar, monolithic megastomps that stop
just short of the danceable noise dishedout by Cabaret Voltaire. It's a far cry
90from the mannered synth-pop of With
Sympathy (their last major-label re¬lease), but no less hookish; if anything,
Alain Jourgensen has moved beyond
melody to the pleasures of sound itself.
Not exactly top forty, but better for it.
Laurie Anderson
Home Of The Brave (Warner Bros.)This is very much Anderson's “rock”
album. Not only are there old ideas inslicker sonic settings, but session
player professionalism and ready refer¬ences to the artist’s burgeoning celeb¬rity as well. Not for nothing is the most
repeated lyric here “Look at me!” Next
time, how about including a poster?
Let’s Active
Big Plans For Everybody (1RS)
Mitch Easter's music can be annoyingly
deft. It isn’t that he plays too much too
well, or even the overwhelming glibness
with which he resurrects his Beatleisms. What really galls about this album
is its sense that facility is enough tosweeten the nasty notions underlying
the likes of “Fall” and "Talking To My¬
self.” Love isn't just a matter of chord
changes, y’know.
Translator
Evening Of The Harvest (415/Columbia)
This has always been a capable band—
good singers, solid players—but thebest songs here finally put all that craftin context. They're still a little mush¬brained at times, flailing at feelings withall the subtlety of a Care Bear conven¬tion, but they usually manage to soft-sell
the sentiment or rock out at the lastchorus. This is a vote for the latter.
Roky Erickson
Don't Slander Me (Pink Dust)
Still crazy after all these years? Maybeso, but it takes a lot more to seem weird
today than it did when the 13th Floor
Elevators were the talk of Houston. The
real lesson here is how much Texas
psychedelia relied on basic blues. Takeout the Arthur Brown overtones and add
a boogie beat, and it’s amazing how
much Erickson recalls that Gibbons

BY J.D. CONSIDINE

fella.... (1750 E. Holly Ave., Box 2428, El
Segundo, CA 90245-1528)
The FallThe Fall(PVC)_

This five-song collection of B-sides andother oddities does more than save a
few bucks off the imports, for the Fall
presented here is less intimidating,though equally bracing, than the usualalbum version. Credit in part the noveltyof hearing Mark E. Smith carry an actual
melody through “Rollin' Dany," and Brix
Smith’s resilient pop for the rest. (3619
Kennedy Rd., So. Plainfield, NJ 07080)
Julian Lennon
The Secret Value Of Day Dreaming(Atlantic)
At least he got his father's looks.
Humpe Humpe
Humpe Humpe (Warner Bros.)
Imagine if Conny Plank had createdAbba, and you’ve got a sense of thisGerman girl group. They’re a bit moresubversive—could Bjorn and Bennyever have been so frank about sex as on"3 Of Us”?—and their sound is moreheavily synthesized, but the pop appeal
remains about the same. Slightly higher,
if you count the Japanese joke behind“Yama-ha” as a hook.
The Art of Noise
In Visible Silence (Chrysalis)
They’ve got “Legs,” but do they know
how to use ’em? Not really; all the sam¬pling and synth tricks seem just a better
grade of sound effect this time aroundThough it’s nice to hear Duane Eddy
again, it would’ve been even nicer had
he had something to play.
Judas Priest
Turbo (Columbia)
An all-digital metal record, Turbosounds super, but the album seems
lacking in fury. Granted, there’s a sort ofgothic splendor to the title tune and a
few others, but “Parental Guidance,”
Priest's protest against the PMRC, war¬
rants only a “B” (for “boring”) at best.

Truth...

_ Or
Consequences.

If you haven’t heard JBL's new generation of Studio Monitors,
you haven’t heard the "truth” about your sound.
TRUTH: A lot of monitors "color" theiran extended high frequency responsesound. They don't deliver truly flatthat remains effortlessly smooth through4400s deep, powerful, clean bass.

response. Their technology is full of

the critical 3,000 to 20.(XX) Hz range.

CONSEQUENCES: Conventional mag¬compromises. Their components are

And even extends beyond audibility to

netic structures utilize non-symmetricalfrom a variety of sources, and not

27 kHz. reducing phase shift within themagnetic fields, which add significantly

designed to precisely integrate with

audible band for a more open and natu¬

to distortion due to a nonlinear pull oneach other.

the voice coil.

CONSEQUENCES: Bad mixes. Re-mixes.

ral sound. The 4400 Series' incompara¬
ble high end clarity is the result of JBL's

distortion, and is key in producing the

TRUTH: 4400 Series monitors also

Having to "trash" an entire session. Or

use of pure titanium for its uniqueworst of all. no mixes because clientsribbed-dome tweeter and diamondfeature special low diffraction grill frame

simply don't come back.

surround, capable of withstanding forces

designs, which reduce time delay distor¬

surpassing a phenomenal 1000 G's.

tion. Extra-large voice coils and ultra¬

CONSEQUENCES: When pushed hard,

rigid cast frames result in both

TRUTH: JBL eliminates these conse¬
quences by achieving a new "truth

most tweeters simply fail. Transientin sound: JBL's remarkable new 4400

detail blurs, and the material itself

Series. The design, size, and materials

deforms and breaks down. Other materi¬have been specifically tailored to eachmonitor's function. For example, theals can't take the stress, and crack underpressure.

2-way 4406 6" Monitor is ideallymechanical and thermal stability underheavy professional use.

CONSEQUENCES: For reasons of eco¬nomics. monitors will often use stamped
rather than cast frames, resulting in bothmechanical distortion and power com¬designed for console or close-in listening.
While the 2-way 8" 4408 is ideal for

TRUTH: The Frequency Dividing Net¬

broadcast applications. The 3-way 10"

optimum transitions between drivers in

TRUTH: The |BL 4400 Studio Monitor

4410 Monitor captures maximum spatial

both amplitude and phase. The precisely

Series captures the full dynamic range,

detail at greater listening distances. And
the 3-way 12" 4412 Monitor is mounted

calibrated reference controls let you

extended high frequency, and precise

adjust for personal preferences, roomcharacter of your sound as no otherwith a tight-cluster arrangement forvariations, and specific equalization.

monitors in the business. Experience theclose-in monitoring.

CONSEQUENCES: When the interaction

CONSEQUENCES:

work in each 4400 Series monitor allows

pression.

4400 Series Studio Monitors at your |BL
dealer's today.

Universal" monitors,
those not specifically designed for a

between drivers is not carefully orches¬
trated. the results can be edgy, indistinct¬

CONSEQUENCES: You'll never know

precise application or environment,

ive. or simply "false" sound.

the "truth” until you do.

invariably compromise technology, withinferior sound the result.

TRUTH: IBL's 4400 Series Studio Moni¬
tors achieve a new "truth" in sound with

TRUTH: All 4400 Studio Monitors fea¬
ture JBL's exclusive Symmetrical Field
Geometry magnetic structure, which
dramatically reduces second harmonic'JBL

I BL Professional
8500 Balboa BoulevardNorthridge. CA 91329

L. Subramaniam
Mani & Co. (Milestone)
This brilliant violinist wasn't going to pay
the rent in L.A. on the box office pro¬ceeds from South Indian classicalmusic. So like his brother Shankar, he's
made accommodations; but whereas
Shankar's moved from Shakti to a kindof new wave, Subramaniam's moving
towards jazz. With the help of ringers
like Maynard Ferguson (well cast in therole of a Mexicali wailer), Bud Shank,
Larry Coryell/Tony Williams (who show a
predilection for Eastern ragas and tonalrhythms) and a very sensitive keyboard¬
ist named Mark Massey, Mani fashions
a curiously Californian sense of theSouthwest, with Indians (American, thatis) and Spaniards hovering round theborder. Subramaniam’s synthesis is alot less corny around the edges than on
earlier efforts, and when he brings you
past all the familiar geographical terrain
to the doorstep of his own culture ("Let’sTalk," "Vision In White,” “Motherland"),his “neo-fusion" is mesmerizing.
Bobby Hutcherson
Color Schemes (Landmark)An appealingly swinging cross-sectionof mainstream moods by one of jazz’s
premier mallet voices. The absence of ahorn centers more attention on the rap¬
port between Hutcherson and Mulgrew
Miller, to special effect on their duet
"Rosemary, Rosemary," as Hutcher¬son’s log-drum like tonalities on marim¬ba seem to linger in the air (quite a featgiven the marimba's inherent lack ofsustaining qualities). The title tune is afantasia for Hutcherson's multi-layered
tintinnabulations and Airto's subtle
Brazilian colorations, while the matrix ofcrossing rhythms on "Second-Hand
Brown” showcases the vibist's firm
sense of time even when laying cun¬ningly off the beat (amply grooved byJohn Heard and the delightful Mr. Billy
Higgins). No surprises or revelations
here—just the truth.
Dizzy Gillespie
Closer To The Source (Atlantic)
This'll probably get lost in the shuffle be¬92

cause jazz crits’ll be ashamed to belly
up to its sensual fusion of R&B and jazzfor purely theological reasons, while
radio programmers will miss the point.
Dizzy’s forgotten more about modern
jazz and the trumpet than is even worth
mentioning, and these slick settings forfeatured vocalist aren’t trying to behits—they are hits. With cats like Mar¬cus Miller, Buddy Williams, Branford
Marsalis and Hiram Bullock (and somede-vinely serpentine Stevie Wonder
harmonica on “Closer To The Source”
just in case you didn’t get the message)
that sound is built into the mix...ah, butpolitics. With the sly reflective wisdom ofan old long distance runner, Birks
haunts the silences, blurs, airbrushes
his line (the affectionate Milesish nod on“Could It Be You”) and retells his story incontemporary jazz/pop settings. Don’t
shrug it off.
Ahmad Jamal
Rossiter Road (Atlantic)
Having ventured into more ambitious
realms on some recent works, Jamal re¬turns the focus where it belongs—to theclear, colorful, dynamic strains of his
own piano. The combination of Manola
Badrena's Latin percussion, the full re¬verberant sound and firm swing of thebassist and drummer point out the vag¬aries and string-like quality of Jamal’s
touch; the contrasts of balladic andblues feeling within a single chorus (soinfluential on Miles' pianistic conception
in the 50s along with his distinctive
blocked voicings); the shifting har¬monic sensitivity which extends thevamp-like structures into lovely, mys¬
terious directions. Oh, yes, it grooves
like hell.
Jane Ira Bloom/Fred Hersch
As One (J MT)
I know comparisons are odious things
we crits use as frequently as ll-V-l pro¬
gressions, but this intimate set of duetssuggests to me the poignant otherworldliness of Shorter and Zawinul on "Black¬thorn Rose." Bloom's pursed, contem¬
plative voice pirouettes lightly about
Hersch’s brooding impressionistic
chords like a helium-filled dancer.

BY CHIP STERN

Kenny Burrell Trio
Live At The Village Vanguard (ARO)
When I was a geekish young man,growing up green-eyed and impres¬sionable in Plainview of Hicksville, L.I.,
my blood required a high octane ratingwhere guitarists were concerned. I wasnever sure whether Kenny Burrell
wanted to be Johnny Smith or Charlie
Christian and so I spaced on thesesides. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it’sremarkable how much sweeter and hot¬ter Burrell's warm, understated lyricism
has grown in a decade, what with his
glowing blue tone, relaxed stealth of line
and plangent swing. Buttressed here bya scorching rhythm team of Richard
Davis and Roy Haynes, Burrell's subtly
probing sound contrasts nicely ontunes like “Will You Still Be Mine,” “Just
A Sittin' And A Rockin'” and “Well You
Needn't." They don't make ’em like thisno more. (Street Level Trading Co.,
5298 Valley Blvd., L A CA 90032)
Dave Grusin/Lee Ritenour/Diane
Schuur/Dave Valentin
GRP Live In Session (GRP)
Nouveau quiche jazz for yuppies
who’ve considered suicide when MOR
was not enough. Pristine production
values, clear MIDI-induced keyboard
textures, a good rhythm section and asinger who should seriously consider
an Apex training course in welding. Sur¬prisingly enough, I found myself waftingalong on this inoffensive magic carpetof adult contemporary, and can in good
conscience recommend this for people
more naturally inclined toward it.
Chick Corea
The Chick Corea Elektric Band (GRP)
This is a likable, bouncy record: John
Patitucci and Dave Weckl are one of thebest of Chick's recent rhythm sections;
Carlos Rios has a taut, Holdsworthish
tone and a sweet, concise lyricism.
Chick's textures are provocative without
being gaudy, his harmonies suggest
positive aspects of dance, and his
wretched excesses are limited to the
sci-fi balderdash on the inner sleeve towhich I can only say thank you L. Ron
Hubbard, wherever you are.

ALLTHISJftZZ!

THREE UPBEAT NEW ALBUMSFROM THREE JAZZ GIANTS

The Neighborhoods...the high hard one...
(Restless Records/Enigma)
About five years ago, when every top
band in Boston was signing record
deals, the Neighborhoods wouldn't
touch a contract that wasn't perfect.
When the Boston gold mine caved in,
the 'Hoods were left without offers.
Suckers? Those other bands are his¬
tory, and the Neighborhoods are better
than ever. When David Minehan’s guitar
is most Ramones-like, the vocal har¬monies go Lennon/McCartney. When,on "Arrogance," his voice becomesabrasive with fury, his guitar rings like abell. The Neighborhoods understandhow to balance power and melody.
They're a great American rock band.
(Box 2428, El Segundo, CA 902451528) - Bill Flanagan
Soul Asylum
Made To Be Broken (Twin Tone)
Now that Hüsker Dü and the Replace¬ments have stepped into the big leagues,
the Guys to Watch from the Twin Cities
are Soul Asylum. Made To Be Broken is
the gut-ripping sequel to 1984's Say
What You Will..., and the disbandedand-recently-reconstituted quartet tossaround huge chunks of ultra-dynamic
geetar noise on their second Bob
Mould-produced disc. Lead vocalist/
guitarist Dave Pirner bellows signaturefrom the Hüsker songbook; elsewhere
he suggests George Jones fronting theMC5, 445 Oliver Ave. South, Min¬
neapolis MN 55405.- Chris Morris
Pedro Aznar
Contemplación (Interdise)
On his solo debut Contemplación,
Argentinian percussionist Pedro Aznar
plays everything (including idiomat¬
ically perfect bass), does a mean multi¬
layer wordless vocal, and even jazzes,
samba-style, with former employer Pat
Metheny. The two group exchanges arejuicy, but the focus is on Aznar’s own
not-just-pop creations. These base¬ment tapes, circa 1982-84, bear thestamp of a fresh and sometimes melan¬
94cholic personality. An ever-ascending
vocal chorus on "Para Acunar A Leila,”and the duck-and-weave intervals of“23” are indicative of Aznar’s sense ofsnowballing motion. - Tom Moon
Otis ClaySoul Man— Live In Japan(Rooster Blues)
The vamps journeyman soulster Clayslides into at the end of a couple tunes
on this two-fer excite as hard as any¬
thing I’ve heard on a live album. Behindthe standard gospel genuflections,
Clay knows how to supercharge stan¬dards like O.V. Wright's “A Nickel And A
Nail,” proof that words aren't as impor¬tant as emoting. Hi Record’s studioband (Al Green's ex-back-up band)
piledrives behind Clay; the silence be¬
tween notes rings out, Clay preaches,
pleads, the band shouts back. Soulecstasy. - Peter Watrous
The B-People
Petrified Conditions 1979-81 (Enigma)
Now that Jesus and Mary Chain havemade feedback trendy again, meet theformal no-wavers who did it earlier andbetter. With a singer who out-Vegases
Spandau Ballet’s while playing guitar
solos that out-atmosphere Romeo
Void's, a suitably sleazoid saxophonist
and a coiled rhythm section smart
punks should kill for, the B-People wereclearly prophets without honor, and themost unlikely L A. ensemble since Cap¬
tain Beefheart relocated to the desert.
Be the first on your block to rediscoverthem. (1750 East Holly Ave., Box 2428,
El Segundo, CA 90245) - Mark Rowland
Irma Thomas
The New Rules (Rounder)Not much new under the sun here, andthank the lord for that. I rma Thomas’ firstrelease in seven years goes a long way
to reestablishing her cachet as a New
Orleans soul chanteuse par excellence,
and while her home-grown band kicks
up a sweet fuss on the title tune and“Thinking Of You,” as always it's the bal¬lads that matter. Irma delivers “I
Needed Somebody” with such elegant

BY ALL HANDS

restraint her longing seems ever morepoignant. Buy. (One Camp St., Cam¬bridge, MA 02140) - Mark Rowland
Count Basie
Swingin' At The Daisy Chain (Affinity)
When big-band dinosaurs roamed theearth, none stood taller or packed agreater wallop than this 1937-38 editionof the Basie orchestra, brimming withsuperstars and yet, as the liner notes
put it, "swinging as one man." This tasty
collection includes the honeyed voiceof young Helen Humes, notably on Cole
Porter’s "My Heart Belongs To Daddy.”
Groove to a surprisingly silky arrange¬
ment of “Cherokee,” a hard-pumping"Honeysuckle Rose,” a classic “OneO’Clock Jump”...hey, don’t just sit there!
Order now from Street Level Trading
Co., 5298 Valley Blvd., L.A., CA
90032. - Mark Rowland
Kahondo StyleMy Heart's In Motion (Neto/N.M.D.S.)
Sandwiching short, crystalline improvi¬
sations, My Heart's written pieces—a
Russian sing-along, a Japanese pop
song, a 60s film score pop romance—
drip with irony. Comprising British im¬provisors and one half of a Japanesesort-of avant twosome (Frank Chicken),
the ensemble plays everything frombouzouki and accordion to saxophones
and guitar. They’re for humor and con¬trol, and they pull it off. (500 Broadway,
New York, NY 10012) - Peter Watrous
Various Artists
Live At The Continental Club (Profile)
Twelve, count ’em, twelve Austin-based
groups recorded direct to two-track one
hectic day in a local institution. The
music is a catholic mix of blues (theLeroi Brothers, the jazzy Sarah Brown),
Tex-Mex (Joe "King” Carrasco), post¬
punk (the Kill, with Charlie Sexton’s kid
brother, and Wild Seeds), neo-country(Randy Banks, Butch Hancock) andvarious hyphenated stops in between.
Special honors to the reunited Bubble
Puppy, whose “Hot Smoke And Sassa¬
fras” is timely again. How are things inyour town? - Scott Isler

S

800-223-7524

HOW TO ORDER AN AD

Regular Classified : ads without borders)

20 word minimum. $2.35 per word, minimum$47 per insertion.
Classified Display (all ads with borders)$l35 per column inch, per insertion; $l25 percolumn meh for six consecutive insertions: $ 117
per column inch, for 12 insertions.
Bold Face Caps. I irst line, additional $20.
Box Number: count 7 words for our Box# and address, and add $4.00 per insertionfor handling.

Payment Must Accompany Order.
Deadline: Two months prior to date of
publication. All ad cancelations must be

in writing and mailed to the Musician
Classified Department.

Address All Ad Orders:Musician Classified Ad Dept.

1
51
5 Broadway, New York City. NY 10036
Phone: 2I2-764-7388

BOOKS/PUBLICATIONSINCORPORATE WITHOUT LEGAL FEES!

Free booklet tells how, includes forms and instruc¬tions. Call HARVARD BUSINESS SERVICES now.
800-345-CORP

FREE CATALOG: LARGE selection guitar, bass

’and drum instruction book, cassettes and records
DMW, 390M, New Market, VA 22844

EMPLOYMENTFIND BANDS TO JOIN. Find musicians andgigs. Write: MUSICIANS NATIONAL HOTLINE. Box7733. Murray UT 841 07 Phone (801 ) 268-2000

FOR SALES

FREE COPYRIGHT forms hotline with protection
package. Secures music, lyrics, sound recordings,
visual arts, more .$2.95. Amerifax-Mu, Box 636,
Brunswick, OH 44212. _LOTS OF MEAT—NO FAT. Play guitar or

keyboard immediately without notes. Send $10 00
for Fingerboard Lead Lines. $10 00 for Visual
Keyboard Chord Progressions. Book I. Add post¬age: $1.00 one book, $1 50 two. FOWLER MUSIC.
808 S Alkire St , Dept M. Lakewood. CO 80228

PUT YOUR MUSIC TO WORK FOR YOU. Suc¬

PIANO DEALERS WANTED—WHOLESALEPIANO Company, 6934 Woodland Avenue,
Philadelphia PA 19142 We have a large selectionof used grand pianos, spinets, uprights All in ex¬cellent condition at discount prices For more infor¬
mation contact William Rowell. (215) 726-8817

D

FREE! FREE! P.M.I. 85
Musical Instrument Catalog

The most complete DISCOUNT listing ofname brand instruments and accessories.
Write P.M.I. Dept (M), P.O. Box827, Union
Est. 1939
City, N.J. 07087

cessful Composer explains techniues for packag¬
ing and marketing production music for Industry.
Education, Documentaries. Film. Video, and TV. In¬
cludes listing of hundreds of Producers actively
seeking new music. Send $19.95 to: Chromotone
Music. Dept. N. 741 N. Formosa, L.A., CA 90046.

GUITARS — Pedal steels, Dobro. National. Vin¬
tage. new. Martin, Taylor. Guild. Ovation; Gibson
mandolins, banjos; Kentucky. Goldstar. Stelling.
Wildwood, Mastertone; D’Angelico, amps, multi¬
trackers. books, accessories. FREE 72-PAGE
BROCHURE MANDOLIN BROS . 629 Forest. Sta¬ten Island, NY 10310. (718) 981-3226. _*GUITAR*MIDI*SONGWRITING The national
guitar summer workshop will help you become abetter musician Join us this summer for courses in
Jazz, Rock, Songwriting, MIDI, Bass, Keyboard
and more. Free brochure: NGSW, Dept. M, Box 222,
Lakeside, CT 06758, (203) 567-8529

FREE ADS! NO CHARGE to list your equipment

MUSICIANS!

SAVE BIG ON STRINGS and other guitar acces¬

Why program when you could be playing? Any
32 from BIG library of CASIO & DX7 patches:$30! Bulk discount! Index—$2, demo tape w/
index—$7. Specify synth. DX7 128/RAM—$89 95! Jupiter6, Juno106. Korg—write. LOW
prices on Syntech, Hybrid software, Casio
synths—Call! Livewire. 79 Shrewsbury.
Oceanport, NJ 07757 (201)-870-3115

Discover How Well You Can Play!

Homespun Tapes makes it easy and fun tolearn Hot Lead Guitar, Rock ’n' Roll Rhythm,
Fancy Soloing, Dynamic Effects and theSecrets Of Great Guitar Technique Now in
our 19th year, with dozens of audio and video
cassette lessons taught by some of America's
hottest players. Send now for free catalog withhundreds of exciting cassette lessons tochoose from Homespun Tapes, Dept M.Box
694, Woodstock, NY 12498, or call (914) 6797832 for immediate service

BUMPER STICKERS!

Full color Beauties—
choose "I (heart) my (electric guitar)’’ or “If I can’t
play music. ..I’ll settle for Sex.” $3 each, $5 for both.
Many more, write with requests. Dealer inquiries.
Mu-STICKS. Dept. M. P.O. Box 3143, Vernon, CT
Ö6066

E

Music business careers!
Learn the music business from the inside—prepare yourself for the marketing management
or technical career you want. Top pro training
in studio/concert/video production, artist representation/management, retail/wholesale, promotion/marketing, publishing, much more. Employ¬ment assistance and financial aid available.

in the "Locater Monthly"! The national paper for
used music gear! Call (213) 477-9222 (24 hrs.) Pri¬
vate seller only! Subscribe for $12 per year. 2265
Westwood Blvd Penthouse 494, Los Angeles CA
90064.
_
sories. Write for FREE information and price list
MEG-BETH MUSIC. P O. Box 722, Dorchester. MA
02124.

SYNTHESIZER PROGRAM DATA

DX-7. DX-21, DW-8000, JX-8P, POLY-800.
CZ101/1000/5000: Introductory offer! Profes¬
sionally engineered program data for Studio,
Film & Performance. 16 PROGRAM PACKAGE$3 00. 32 PROGRAM PACKAGE $6 00 (Data
Sheets) with programming info & catalog of
our complete product line We re confident
that once you try PSDI’s programs, you’ll beback for more! We have 15 years of synthe¬
sizer & programming experience & a commit¬
ment to live up to our name and your expecta¬
tions. Please specify model synth.

PRECISION SYNTHI-DATA INT’L
Special Order Dept-MQ
325 Brookshire Road
Youngstown, New York 14174

MISCELLANEOUS
ORIENTALS WISH TO correspond with Amer

icans Presentations by American-Asian couple
Asian Experience, Box 1214JC, Novato, CA 94948

A SINGER'S DREAM!

Free brochure/career guide:call toll-free 800-554-3346. or write
THE MUSIC BUSINESS INSTITUTE

Dept. M-2401 3376 Peachtree Rd., N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30326/

Economical 19 rackmounl

INSTRUMENTS

X
X

Furniture for the Professional or Home Studio.

BEST PRICES IN THE NATION!! On drums

and keyboard equipment. THE DRUM/KEYBOARD
SHOP will BEAT any price any store quotes nationwi dellCallus and well prove it to you (713) 524-1577

X FX RACK FEATURES:X • Holds up to EighteenóSpaces’ of EquipmentX

ELDERLY INSTRUMENTS. Send for our freecatalogs of electric and acoustic instruments andaccessories Kramer, Flatiron. Ibanez. Deering,
Guild, Shubb, Tascam, Martin. Cort. Wildwood.
Gibson and much more. ELDERLY INSTRUMENTS
1100 N Washington, POB 14210-N5, Lansing, Ml
48901 (517)372-7890_• Complements any room
decor (Basic Black)
Ask Your Dealer
For A Demonstration
FOUR DESIGNS CO

653’Gross Ave

Canoga Park CA 9’307(818) 716-8540

INSTRUCTIONSLEARN SOLOS NOTE-FOR-NOTE—Marantz

cassette recorder makes it easy Plays normally or
half-speed, one octave down Variable pitch tunes
tape to your instrument, eliminates frustrating retunmg Built-in microphone, speaker; also connects tostereo. Free brochure. Shade Tree Stringed Instru¬
ments, 28722 Marguerite Pkwy #9M. Mission
Vië|O. CA 92692 (714) 364-5270 Mastercard Visa

96

DRUMMERS! GREAT PRICES ON STICKS,

heads, etc Send or call for free catalog N J PER¬CUSSION CENTER, 80 Route 46, Rockaway, NJ
07866. (201)625-8134_

REPAIR GUITARS? FREE 80-page catalog

packed with tools and hard-to-find parts for guitars,
banjos and mandolins. Stewart-MacDonald, Box
900Z, Athens OH 4570 1 (614)593-3021_

The MIDI STATION® has the best selection ofsynthesizers, computers, music software, record¬
ing gear and accessories anywhere. Send forcatalog: MIDI Station, POB 731, Bardonia, NY
10954

REMOVES VOCALS FROM RECORDS!
Now You can sing with the world’s best bands!
The Thompson Vocal Eliminator can remove
most or virtually all of a lead vocal from a standard
stereo record and leave the background!
Write or call for a free brochure and demo record.

LT Sound, Dept. MU, P.O. Box 338,
Stone Mountain, GA 30086 (404) 493-1258

MUSICIANS
32 VOICE PACKAGES FOR DX7 AND TX7
Fat analog synth sounds, dazzling special effects
and splits— instructions and programming tips in¬cluded. (Demo Cassette available $3.50.) Write to:
R.L PRODUCTIONS, P O. Box 4692, Bay Terrace,
N Y 11360-4692 or call 1-718-939-1649

MUSICIANS EXCHANGE! Bands/musiciansYour serious referral service for working musicians.
Make the right connections. P.O. Box 742681, Dallas TX 75374 (214)392-1455.__

DX-100 SOUNDS! CENTRAL PA’S HOTTEST

producer has created 120 useful sounds for the
dynamite DX-100. Send $29.95 to Leister Produc¬tions, 806 S. Market St . Mechanicsburg PA 17055

Listen

Before You Buy!
Time Delay
Reverberation
Crossovers
Noise Reduction

Compressor/Limiters
ExpandersSpectrum Analyzers
Parametric EQ

Don’t have regrets about paying too much for alesser product. In demos and comparisons, we’ll
show you why we’re Better! Our Factory Direct
sales allow us to produce a Superior product andoffer it to you at a Lower price. Call or write for a
free full length Demo Album and 24 page brochure.
Write to:LT Sound, Dept. M-3, P O Box 338
Stone Mountain, GA 30086
In Georgia Cali (404)493-1258

TOLL FREE: 1-BOO-241-3005 —Ext. 14
RECORDS/TAPESFREE CASSETTE CATALOG! Be amazed!

Your favorite Rock, New Wave. Heavy Metal. FunkReggae bands. Not available on vinyl! ROIR. 611
Broadway. Dept M NYC NY 10012 __ _NEWEST RELEASES PLUS 21.000 LPs
TAPES. CDs. VIDEOS by phone'mail Rock. JazzClassical, etc. Catalog only $9.95 Includes $50
purchase discounts. Free monthly updates.
EXPRESS MUSIC. Dept 709M1. 175 Fifth Avenue.
1-212-254-6161

ÇoundOff^T^Woys
Ideal For Demos or Retail Sales

AUDIO CASSETTES: Send for yourfree “Cassette Talk” newsletter completewith latest prices.
SOUNDSHEETS: Inexpensive, flexible
vinyl discs sound great, won’t break!

EWTQNETOLL FREE 1 800 EVA TONE
P0. Box 7020 P, Clearwater, FL 33518

SERVICESYOUR PUBLICITY PHOTOS COPIED. 500
B&W glossy 8x10s for $79.95. Free price list &paper samples. MUSICIAN'S PHOTO SERVICE,
706 N 76th. Seattle. WA 98103

NEED CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY of enter¬tainers or recording artists? Well, call Kenya (215)849-0263 _FINANCIAL BACKERS to sponsor your musiccareer: full report, including who to contact. Send
$10 to FINANCIAL EXCHANGE. P O. Box 872. Bil¬lings. MT 59103.

SONGWRITERSSONGWRITERS: JAPAN. THE WORLD'S #2

music market, wants your music. The demand isgreat We have the contacts and the protection if
you have the songs. For info write: EAST/WEST
MUSIC BANK. Kodaira-shi. Tsuda-machi, 1-21-11:
Tokyo 187, Japan._

ATTENTION PRO/AMATEUR SONG¬WRITERS: Your song/idea professionally and fullyarranged, performed and recorded by us for a low
flat rate 1»»ALL SONG-RIGHTS 100% YOURS*» A
unique demo recording service thru the mail—not
a publishing scam Free Info Song Factory. Suite#737. 12555 Biscayne Bl vd., Miami FL33181.

SUBSCRIBE!

Corea from page 88

were somewhat ostracized from thenormal rounds of kid behavior?
COREA: No, I wasn’t ostracized— I had
good friends. But I think, in retrospect, I
missed out on a few things. I don't regret
it, although when I look at it again, at theage of forty-two I’m beginning to study
rock ’n’ roll and R&B whereas I missed
that when I was young. My school
friends were really into Elvis Presley andlater on the Beatles came around. I
completely missed both those waves ofmusic. I mean, they were there on theradio, but I never got interested in it untilmuch later on; when I had Return To
Forever I started getting into rock ’n' rolland pop music.
Now I’m very interested in pop music
and rock ’n’ roll and the history of theblues especially. I'm sort of studying
these musics in the way, when I wasyounger, I studied Charlie Parker. It’s afunny turnaround. When I ride in the car,I always put on rock 'n' roll stations to
see if there's anything I like. On the way
over here I heard something, a tune
called “Kyrie," with a group vocal thing.
Sounded nice.
MUSICIAN: / was just listening to the Cir¬cle, Paris Concert album. That's anamazing artifact, and quite removed
from the sort of public Chick Corea.
How do you reflect back on that project?
COREA: An incredible point in my life. It
was actually the first point of my step¬
ping out of being a sideman into aleader’s capacity with Dave (Holland),and putting out into the world what we felt
strongly about. And it was a strange
music to feel strongly about because it
was so experimental. But I think weplayed it with so much conviction that it
had a communicative point about it. Theband lasted about a year and a half.
There are some other records floatingaround with Circle, too.
MUSICIAN: How did you make that large
stylistic leap into Return To Forever?
COREA: It was quite quickly. We got into
this kind of music that we were making
and it ran a cycle for me. After a year
and a half, I began to want to movethrough the experimental part and do
more composed music, to present it
more to people. I think Dave and theothers wanted to continue to involve
themselves with free improvisation, so
there was a point when we needed to go
separate ways. That was the point I
founded Return To Forever.
MUSICIAN: Did you have any inkling of
the impact the band might have? Itseems as though RTF and a few others
spearheaded the fusion movement. In
hindsight, did you feel the sense ofleading a pack, historically?
COREA: I didn't at first. But then the en¬
vironment was so bubbling in the con¬certs we were playing, and with themusic other bands in the genre wereplaying— Mahavishnu, Weather Reportand Miles— there was a sense of a re¬naissance of some kind happening. We
did several concerts with Mahavishnu
that were very exciting.
There was a moment, with Return To
Forever, that I know Stanley, Lenny andAl will remember. Especially Stanley,because he and I started the group andplayed these gigs at the Vanguard
opening up for Roy Haynes.
Then we built up the-group and kept
going. That was in 1970, and then in 74,
there we were standing on the stage inCentral Park, playing our own concert to
15,000 people. We got a tear in oureyes, because we remembered playing
in the Vanguard to thirty people. It was agreat trip.
I don't know, to this day, exactly what
occurred, except that what's happen¬
ing now amongst bands in the jazz area
has a similar flair to it. The formation ofWayne's band, the reformation of John
McLaughlin’s band, Gil Evans put aband together; lots of bands are being
formed in this genre of music. Bill Con¬nors and DiMeola have been putting
bands together. Stanley Clarke’s been
going around with a group. Plus
younger guys, like Stanley Jordan and
Wynton Marsalis, who have greatgroups. It feels like a good time to me.l
Seger from page 54
give it to [director] Martin Scorsese forhis soundtrack for The Color of Money,
the Tom Cruise vs. Paul Newman film
sequel to The Hustler. But the point isthat I wrote that paranoid tune aboutcashing it in back in 1979— seven years
ago! And look at me now, I feel a greater
sense of renewal than at any previous
time in the last decade!"
So what’s all this got to do with Like A
Rock, much less the new Jackson
Browne record?
“Well, both are about the loss of inno¬
cence regarding ideals and what you
make of it. ‘Rock’ was the song I wrote
in the spring of 1984, several months
after the Distance tour ended. It was areexamination of my unguarded days inthis business, the time when no stroking
mattered, and when ten years of a$7000 annual salary and a lifestyle oftravelling a hundred thousand miles in astation wagon were something I just en¬
joyed doing instead of a conventional
day gig.
“I played bump-and-grind joints,
where the stripper genuinely had a god¬
damned horse in her act, docksidedives in New Orleans where the owner
got a .357 Magnum stuck in his
stomach, and an underground cave inFestus, Missouri in 72 where I fronted aband called Julia on a bill with Ted Nu¬
gent. The cave was foul, with water drip-

97For your copy of ‘The Multi-Directional Drum Stylist
Please send $4.95 Check or Money Order to: Hitmen, 5909 Wilkinson Ave.,
North Hollywood, CA. Dealer Inqueries Invited.

ping through the fissures shorting out
the amps, and I was freaking out backstage when an infuriated Nugent
walked in and barked, 'Shit or get off thepot, Seger! No crybabies allowed inrock ’n' roll!’ I never got better advice.
“Unfortunately, the phoniness you
more regularly get showered with colors
you, or at least creates a big wariness,and in my tune I’m singing about 'theweight of all the hustlers and theirschemes,’ the industry types who urge
you to ‘stay confident' about your suc¬cess when what they're really saying is'keep working fella, and stay available
to us.’ The vision of that fresh and bold
beginning also has a ghostly quality tonow, but I can draw strength from themusical contribution I've made and the
bit of influence I’ve had."
But what about real or perceived
competition from matriculants of theRobert Seger Heartland School of RockKnocks who have since earned theirown distinguished post-graduate de¬grees?
“Aww, I know what you're saying," headmits as he guns the Corvette throughan upward spiral of hairpin curves.
“People talk about me, Springsteen,
Tom Petty, Don Henley, Glenn Frey,John Mellencamp, Jackson, a few
others, as being part of a family tree in asort of modern American rock heritage.
And I definitely like the idea of being aprime link, just like I enjoy giving enorm¬ous credit for my growth and approachto James Brown, Otis Redding, Mitch
Ryder and most especially the master
himself, Van Morrison.
“What I try todo, which is a very Amer¬ican thing I guess, is to dig in and try tofind the truth in an idea. And if others like
Bruce, Tom and John also try to do thatwith maybe a tiny trace of me in mind,
I'm incredibly flattered. But as for rightnow," he asserts, punching up
Browne’s “Black And White" on the tapeconsole, “nobody is playing, singing orsaying what I'm driving at this very min¬ute with more eloquence thanJackson!"And as the gorgeously ominous track
resounds through the canyons, Seger
can’t help but sing along robustly on his
favorite portion of the plaintive lyric:
And the high ideals and the promiseThat you dressed the future in
Are dancing in the embers with the windTime running out time running out
For the fool still asking what his life is about.

“So if you don't have to ask that ques¬tion," Seger finishes as the song sub¬sides, "then you've at least come torealize that, in experiences, nothing
gets wasted. I’d like to think that it allgoes to good use, it all has the chanceof making the rest that's coming along
better." 0
98

.
ROAD
WARRIORS«

You can only begin to imagine
the sounds you and your guitar
can create with the FX 65 Stereo
Chorus and FX 75 Stereo Flanger.
And they’ll sound just as good
down the road as they do today.

Because they’re built to be
tough, gig after gig.
Check out the entire FX line
from
DOD.

The largest line of signal processing equipment in the world.

The digital effects.
COMPRESSORRELEASE =525ms

PARAMETRIC EQ.
MID FRQ = 500 Hz

AUTO PAN
DIRECTI0N= L++R

TRIGGERED PANPANNING =525ms

FREEZE A
REC M0DE= AUTO

FREEZE B
0UER DUB

PITCH CHANGE A
BASE KEV = C 3

PITCH CHANGE B
1 FINE = + 8

PITCH CHANGE CL DLV = O.lms

PITCH CHANGE D
F.B. GAIN= IO

ADR-NUISE GATE
TRG. MSK= 5ms

SVMPHONIC
MOD. DEPTH= 50 4

STEREO PHASING
MOD. DLV= 3.0ms

CHORUS A
DM DEPTH= 50

CHORUS B
AM DEPTH= 10 4

REO 1 HALLREU TIME= 2.6s

REU 2
ROOM
DEL AV = 20.0ms

REU 3 UOCALLPF =8.0 kHz

REU 4 PLATE
HIGH
= 0.7

EARLV REF. 1
TVPE = RANDOMEARLV REF. 2
ROOM SIZE = 2.0

STEREO FLANGE A
MOD. DEPTH= 50

STEREO FLANGE B
MOD. FRQ= 0.5 Hz

STEREO ECHORoh F.B = +58 "i

DELAV L?R
Lch DLV =100.0ms

TREMOLO
MuD. FRU= 6.0 Hz

UIB RISE= 1400ms

GATE REUERBLIUENESS = 5

REUERSE GATETVPE = REUERSEREUERB & GATE
TRG. LEUEL= 65

Without the expensive side effect.
If you want highly cost-effective,
extremely versatile digital sound pro¬cessing, you may not need anything
more than the new SPX90 Digital Multi¬
Effect Processor. Or want anything less.
Built into its rack-mountable chassis are 30 preset
effects specifically designed to suit a wide range of studioand live performance applications.
All the preset effects have up to nine user-program¬
mable parameters. So you can further individualize themfor your particular need and store them in any of the 60
on-board RAMs for instant recall using the front panelkeys, optional remote control or footswitch.
The SPX90 offers MIDI-compatibility including
the ability to make program changes during live per¬formance via MIDI. Some effects can even be actuatedby a change in input level duringperformance.
So whether you’re a studioor sound reinforcement engineer,
keyboard player, guitar player,
bass player, even home recording enthusiast, the SPX90
can add incredible creativity to your music. At a very
credible price.

See your Yamaha Professional Products dealer. Or write: Yamaha International Corporation.
Professional Products Division. P.O. Box 6600. Buena Park. CA 90622. In Canada: Yamaha
Canada Music Ltd.. 135 Milner Avenue. Scarborough, Ont. MIS 3R1.
♦Suggested U.S.A, retail price. In Canada. $1095 CDM.