22 - Friday, October 14, 1988 -

North Shore News

Not quite the musical ~
second coming but
Rattle & Hum has variety

Vite TOO must hear
the new U2; a U2
EB sound-alike rises from
the east; Pee-Wee is lost at
the circus; Clegg’s on top

with bouncy Afro-pop.

Rattle And Hum — U2, Island
Records, 1988

The release of a new U2 col-
lection has taken on the relative
significance of the second com-
ing in some ciscles. Shost of the
transfiguration of Bono, the fuss
is well justified.

The follow-up to 1987's The
Joshua Tree, Rattle And Hum
cautiously stakes out new
musical territory for the group
by including a number of big-
name guest artists. In some
cases the result is limp, such as
the binding of Bono with the
Memphis Horns on Angel of
Harlem. \n other cases the
gambit makes for some tran-
scendent moments, such as the
juxtaposition of Edge’s wafting
guitar work with the syn-
copated blues riffing of B.B:
King on When Love Comes To
Town.

There is more new material
here than expected. After a
couple of listenings, the new
songs that jump out and grab
you are the Bo Diddley-inspired
Desire, the slow-burning All |

Want Is You and the Dylan
co-written Love Rescue Me.

There’s a decent live version
cf The Beatles’ Helter Skelter
opening up the set. The live
rendition of Dylan's All Along

The Watchtower doesn’t match
Hendrix in terms of creative in-
terpretation. Check out the ear-
ly XTC cover of the song for
brighter sparks from the pop
classic.

The live version of The
Joshua Tree's Bullet The Blue
Sky scorches and the live gos-
pel reworking of / Still Haven’t
Found What I'm Looking Far is
an outstanding cut.

The release lacks the unity of

vision so successfully
developed with the most recent
studio albums. But variety is the
key here.

My wager is that we are
witnessing a great band in tran-
sition, soaking up the sound
mosaic of America first-hand,
playing a little with the musical
icons and readying itself to kick
out in new directions.

MICHAEL

BECKER

record reviewer

Big Bang, Spy Records, 1988

What does one say? Hello
U2, too! Surreptitiously slip the
debut disc from this Toronto
outfit onte the turntable/CD
player/tape deck and you'll
have your friends astounded by
your seeming ownership of a
rare and overlooked collection
of U2 songs.

Did. Big Bang simply absorb
the style of the most successful
band in the world today by un-
conscious osmosis, or was it a
case of careful dissection and
faithful recreation?

All of the pieces are there
and you can’t help but marvel
at the impassioned skill of it all.
The press release puts it this
way: “...just three hard work-
ing guys with something to
say.’ {f the laborers could just
find something to say in their
own language, they will have
something.

Music to clone by.

Big Top Pee Wee — The Orig-
inal Soundtrack Album, Arista
Records 1988

The release is especially
disappointing since | have
systematically inducted my
daughters into the P-Man

fellowship. It’s really a matter of
dishonest packaging. Having
boycotted the film because of
reports that the child-man suc-
cumbs to carnal inclinations,
the sounds that accompanied
the movie were a total mystery
to me.

The whacky picture of Pee-
Wee, leaping like some gimpy
bird in white sacks from a flying
trapeze, made me reach for the
disc.

What you get once the
package is opened, is a flimsy
collection of instrumental,
not-very-good circus music and
one Pee-Wee Herman-sung
song, to wit, a sparse rendering
of Pee-Wee Herman Had A
Farm.

The offspring were put off
and | felt ripped off. Pee-Wee,
your slick marketing pals suck-
ed me in. Are these the kinds of
friends you really want as
guests in your playhouse?

Shadow Man — johnny Clegg
& Savuka, Capitel Records,
1988

Johnny jumps back after the
departure of his Zulu partner
(who turned to farming) with a
new band and a bouncy batch
of tunes. The sound is very sim-
ilar to the South-Afro pop Clegg
created as Juluka, but it’s more
consistently good.

Clegg’s high, strident voice,
like that of an African version of
reggae one-world-crusader
Jimmy Cliff, chronicles the
struggle, ‘You've learned to
live inside the space that con-
nects each link of chain,” and
deals in a persistent hope,
‘There's magic in some
words, something you can’t
explain, that conjures up that
feeling, of the sun inside the
rain.”

Just doing what he's doing, as
a white man embracing and
singing the lot of black South
Africa, is bold enough. To
make it so up-tempo is
downright seditious.

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