Tales of unease

HRIEKBACK is back;

Nina Hagen roots

are revealed; Lil’ Ed
shows the blues can be
plenty o' fun.

Shriekback — Sacred City,
Capitol Records 1992

After a hiatus, alternative-type
Britisner codgers pull from their
bag of tricks a concept album
consisting of loosely affiliated tales
of unease, sensory overload and
urban entropy.

Barry Andrews’ monotone sing-
speak-sneer threatens to overly sap
the low-key momentum of the
project, but right decisions made
as a producer coupled with
neatly-detailed production and
engineering work by lan Caple
make a few of the songs stand out
when standing alone.

You free your head to focus in
on some musical lines worthy of
further exarnination. by ditching
the concept of a uniform whole
and the attendant pitfalls of at-
tempting to connect up all of the
dots.

Signs, Exquisite Corpse and
Beatles Zebra Crossing offer up a

Michael Becker
RECORD REVIEW

metro-melange of ironic
challenges. The best tunes are also
rife with the piquant sense of si-
multaneous attraction and repul-
sion always to be savored in con-
crete corners of Big City Any-
where,

With lyrics just telegraphic
enough to be interesting and a de-
liberately cocl-toned electronic
patina to counterpoint the intent,
Sacred City is worth a ramble
through.

Nina Hagen — Rock Aus
Deutschiand Ost Voi. 12,
Deutsche Schaliplattes: 1992

For major fans only, this import
shows us what this over-the-top
pop creature was doing long be-
fore east met west in Germany.

She screams, she gusgles, she
twists her vocal chords like a
strudel, She hops up and down the
vocal register through a collection
of 13 tracks recorded in German
aad culled from the mid-1970s
when Hagen recorded with
Gruppe Automobhil, Fritzens
Dampterband and sundry studio
musicians.

It's plastic oompah pop, clunky
yet cute like the east German
people's car, but her roots music
shows the kind of up-yer-bum-
chum cheek she’s built a durable
career with.

Li’ Ed & The Blues impezials
— What You See Is What You
Get, Alligator Records 1992

Ed Williams plays a mean bot-
tle-neck boogie — the jumped-up
chooglin’ kind,

Eddie McKinley holds down the
rowdy bottom end on tenor sax
for a full-steam packet of churning
rhythm,

Lil’ Ed deals in basic aphorisms
— it always somehow seems to
come down to not treating your
woman wrong.

What You See Is What You Get
is goodtime blues music, unadul-
terated and simple as all good
things in life are.

Ulrich financed recording herself

From pege 3%

get all the wheels turning again by
- myself. i’d never done that before

— it was all sort of handed to

me,” she explains.

‘4 started singing to Valdy’s
audience, (then went) to having a
record dea! and recording three

“albums, to having all the tours or-
- ganized. Then all of a sudder: |
had nothing.

“44 sort of did it backwards from
most people, and | had to start
paying all the dues that most peo-
ple pay to build up to that point.”

lt was seven years before she
released Every Road, which she

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financed herself.

Produced in 1990 by former
Skywalk keyboardist Graeme Col-
eman, Ulrich did most of the work
on the album in home studios
which helped to keep costs down,
and eventually secured a distribu-
tion deal with CBS.

Looking back, she says she feels
a great sense of satisfaction know-
ing she made Every Road without
the initial backing of a record label
or major management.

“For years | sat there and

‘thought I was at the mercy of the °

record companies. Once | realized
it was strictly economics it gave

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me a lot of power.”

On the other hand Ulrich says
she will always be frustrated
knowing there are millions of
people out there who would like
her music if they only knew it ex-
isted.

lf she can’t get funding for a new
album she says she'll upgrade her
studio and record from home.

Barring any romper room mis-
haps, Ulrich and her music are
sure to be around for a long time.

“It goes way too deep,” she
says of her music. “It’s nota
hobby | was successful at. | can’t
imagine ever letting it go.”

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