24 - Wednesday, November 30, 1988 - North Shore News

music

Group delivers
hard-bodied

tunes

LOVE GETS twisted by The Pursuit Of Happiness; Disney
classics are dusted off and polished up by a orilliant mix of
recording artists; a seasoned soul queen scratches the R&B

itch.

The Pursuit Of Happiness — Love
junk, Chrysalis Records 1988

Toronto is vying with Vancouver
for the distinction of providing this
year’s most fertile proving ground
for the musically ultra-hip.

The Pursuit of Happiness
(TPOH), the latest contenders to
take a determined run up the local
album charts, deliver an unadorn-
ed, hard-body guitar sound.

MICHAEL
BECKER

music reviewer

The neophyte rough edges of
the band have been sanded in the
studio by ‘70s pop purveyor Todd
Rundgren, a hero of TPOH lead
singer, guitarist and songwriter
Moe Berg.

Moe has a natural ear for a
tuneful hook, a firm grasp on the
ironic turn of phrase, and a solid
band to back it all up. The tone is
set with the lashing opening guitar
salvo of Hard To Laugh and the
hyper-energized hormonal surging
of Ten Fingers. Adolescent rite of
passage is turned on its head on
Vm An Adult Now. “\ don’t write
songs about girls anymore, | have
to write songs about women, no

more boy meets girl, boy loses girl,
more like man tries to understand
what the hell went wrong.”’

Anxiety is a great motivator.
Moe and his pals milk it for max-
imum angst levels on this debut
recording.

Stay Awake — Various Enter-
pretations of Music From Vintage
Disney Films, A&M Records 1988

Whether we care to admit to it
or not, Walt Disney (cryogenic
immortality aside) continues to live
on in the fabric of the lives of all
who came of age in North
America during the past 50-plus
years.

The music accompanying
Disney’s prolific film output was at
times unforgettably good and
often times unforgivably bad. Re-
cord producer Hal Willner, who
recently put together an oddball
cover-versions compilation of
sengs by German composer Kurt
Weill, strikes again witn Stay
Awake.

Willner’s modus operandi is to
assemble an eclectic cross-section
of popular recording artists and
then give them free-interpretive
rein as they romp through a given
composer's catalogue. The con-
cept is an inherently tough one to
pull together with any kind of
consistent success. It’s doubly dif-

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ficult when you risk trampling the

LOVE, in all of its problematic *noto Submitted
splendor, is explored on a BO a i nn
eee (he Golden-Touch of Chef Peter Bucher.
Happiness. oe ; mp ~ ~
| - The New World
F Harbourside Hotel
7 proudly congratulates
our Executive Chef, Peter
Bucher on his Gold Medal
win at the prestigious
. 1988 Culinary Olympics
Sample his cuisine at
Vistas on the Bay.

sacred ground of, say, a Mary
Poppins or a Dumbo. There is an
eternal, internal resonance to a
song like Feed The Birds or Pink
Elephants On Parade.

For most of the more than one-
hour’s worth of music included on
this strange and wonderful Disney
song-fest, the concept clicks, with
the musical interpreters often rais-
ing old tunes to new heights in the
process. The truly inspired match-
ups feature Buster Poindexter
doing a neatly twisted version of
Castle in Spain from Babes In
Toyland; Los Lobos covering /
Wanna Be Like You (The Monkey
Song) from Jungle Book; Harry
Nilsson’s rendition of Zip-A-Dee-

See Itchin’
Page 26

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