Real Life Rock (38 page)

7
Peppermint Harris, et al.,
‘Black' Rock 'n' Roll
(Savage Kick)
Hear black singers get just as confused by Little Richard as country singers did.

8
“Quarrymen,”
Quarrymen Rehearse With Stu Sutcliffe Spring 1960
(Pre-Beatle bootleg)
Possibly. Also possibly outtakes from
Let It Be
.

9
Nancy J. Holland, “Purple Passion: Images of Female Desire in ‘When Doves Cry,'” in
Cultural Critique
#10, Fall 1988
“Textuality is all you really need,” is Holland's punning motto, and her reading doesn't betray her text. But watch out for “Rock Music and the State: Dissonance or Counterpoint?” by Katrina Irving, who doesn't understand the meaning of the word “state,” let alone “rock.”

10
“Louie,”
Louie's Limbo Lounge (Las Vegas Grind Vol. 2)
(Strip)
Preternaturally crude and worthless go-go rock recorded at a syphilitic dive (“Featuring the world's loveliest buxotics!”) between '55 and '65. It's a version of the primeval sink from which sometimes emerge crazed masterpieces—the chord changes in Art Roberts's “Give Her the Axe, Max!” might be signals from outer space—though not this time. Still, there is “Louie Oversees a Recording Session With One of His Artists”—that being “Wiggles,” a “retired burlesque singer” an armed Louie shoots halfway through the date because “Wiggles,” who according to the liner photos was Adlai Stevenson, sings too clearly.

FEBRUARY
21, 1989

1
Elvis Costello, “Tramp the Dirt Down,” from
Spike
(Warner Bros.)
This ode to the death of Margaret Thatcher—Costello names her—recalls his “Pills and Soap,” “Little Palaces,” and “Sleep of the Just” in its arrangement. Anchored in regret and hatred, it also begins in Bob Dylan's “Masters of War,” “With God on Our Side,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” There's a lot of death here, in the deliberate cadence of the first verse, in the rage that follows, in the way Costello forms the words “cheap,” “maimed,” “pitiful,” and especially the phrase “subtle difference”—the “subtle difference,” in Thatcher's England, “between justice and contempt.” To make true political music, you have to say what decent people don't want to hear; that's something that people fit for satellite benefit concerts will never understand, and that Costello understood before anyone heard his name.

2
Ciccone Youth,
The Whitey Album
(Blast First/Enigma)
More fun than their cover of the White Album would ever have been—and, finally, Kim Gordon's show, from the bad-dream “G-Force” (hers, yours)
to a version of “Addicted to Love” that makes slick pop into everyday speech and, after all his worthless years, really ought to send Robert Palmer back where he came from.

3
Drifters,
Let the Boogie-Woogie Roll: Greatest Hits 1953–1958
(Atlantic CD)
Forty cuts to match the label's 40th anniversary, mostly the ethereal, playful, deep soul meanders of Clyde McPhatter, but highlights too from Gerhart Thrasher: “Your Promise To Be Mine,” pressing hard, histrionic, almost a threat. With the first notes of McPhatter's “Lucille,” the opening cut here, an obscure B-side, the intensity, the directness of feeling, is staggering, and you don't know where it comes from—it's as if centuries of emotion could be called up and shaped at will. You can hear the Orioles, and also Hoagy Carmichael, a hint of Fred Astaire, more of Billie Holiday. Making McPhatter into an actor in plays of his own device, the CD sound is perfect for the ballads; with the big tempo numbers, “Money Honey” and “What'cha Gonna Do,” it can't find the rock. But you can find the big tempo numbers anywhere else.

4
James C. Faris, “Comment on ‘The Origins of Image Making' by Whitney Davis”
(
Current Anthropology
,
June 1986)
“Can we predict from Davis's generative approach the images that came to characterize the Upper Paleolithic? Why
these
images rather than others … ? Nor will this approach to capacities account, in any non-trivial sense, for fascism, belief in afterlife, the periodic table, rock and roll, or the incest prohibition.” And they said it wasn't world-historical.

5
When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water,
Timothy
(Shimmy Disc)
A triumphant cacophony riding an against-all-odds melody, the last sound you hear before every barrier falls and liberty reigns forever—and an oddity on an EP that includes covers of Herb Alpert's “This Guy's in Love With You” (1968), Eric Burdon's “Girl Named Sandoz” (1967), and the Singing Nun's “Dominique” (1963), all of which are better remembered than the Buoys' “Timothy” (1971).

6
Alphaville,
The Singles Collection
(Atlantic)
“Big in Japan” is still chilling; the fast mix of “Forever Young” is still the best Eurodisco ever made.