22 - briduy, Marcel f1, 1x8

Aussie band targets injustice

North Shore News

AN AUSSIE band returns from the Outback to give voice
to aboriginal causes; the Jazz Butcher cuts a choice piece of

pop; a displaced South African conjures her ancestral spirits

in song; a Texan journalist meets his deadlines in ballad
form; and the man who turned down U2 sets his own terms

on vinyl.

Midnight Oil — Diesel and Dust,
CBS Records, 1987

It was inevitable, Australia just
wasn't big enough to hold these
Aussies in the Outback. These
people take to causes the way Paul
Hogan takes to pitching Foster’s °
Lager and the sincerity wiil most
likely take them over the top in-
ternationally.

Singer Peter Garrett, a tall guy
with no hair, can sound like Mick
Jagger with a different accent one
moment, and the next sound either
like Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler or
Stan Ridgeway.

1984 Australian election campaign.
as a candidate for the Nuclear
.Disarmament Party.’

- He was narrowly defeated, but | .

this time around it looks like Gar-

FAT WELL, LVE WELL

MICHAEL
BECKER

music reviewer

rett and the band are big winners
with Diesel and Dust as it moves
up the charts.

The album, thematically tied
together as a treatise on the plight
of Australia’s aboriginal people,
has a muscular acoustic edge io it.
The band’s urgent messages de-
mand emational! response and ask
for a bit of thought.

For those of us in the deepest of
despair for having missed out on
snagging tickets to the scheduled

- March 13 Midnight Oil date at 86

Street, there is fresh hope. The
concert was cancelled because of
an injury to Garrett. Perryscope is
looking to reschedule April or
May. Reports from Australia say
the band is phenomenal live.

Simply some of the best rock
from Australia to. date.

The Jazz Butcher — Fishcotheque,
PolyGram 1987

Uniquely psychotic, Pat Fish
goes for the jugular with a meat-
cleaver sharp wit on this collection.

The album takes its bizzaro title
from a fish and chip shop located
just down the road from the Lon-
don studio where the album was
recorded.

The band started playing five
years ago in Oxford and split in
carly '87. Fish carried the concept
on and the result is this quirky
batch of tunes.

His voice is limited and appeals
in a Lou Reed kind of way, but his
lyrical vision is a sharp 20/20.

The Best Way is a funky rapping
poultry strut through a chicken
nightmare laced with sampled
voices and incongruous noises.
Keeping The Curtains Closed
chronicles the living death of a
man broken in spirit. Get tf Wrong
takes an appreciated back-handed
swipe at the glut of wimpy songs
out there in the aural ozone about
‘getting it right in relationships.

Allin all, a pretty inoffensive
pop disc from a band with a very
good name.

Miriam Makeba — Sangoma,
WEA 1988. . _
*y Her first North American release
since the late ’60s is a wonderful
collection of 19 African tribal. ~
chants sung in three languages.

minimum of studio fuss — just
simple, clear voices accompanied
by spare percussion backing. The
songs were passed on to the singer
by her mother, a sangoma, a per-
son said to be possessed by the
spirits of her ancestors. *

. The songs are folk songs in the
purest. sense, carriers of a people’s
story, both past.and present. 'Tales
of civil.war, women working the
fields and spiritual exhortations
are given an eternal resonance

¥

through Makeba's soulful, layered
vocal tracks which together com-
bine to make a one-woman choir.
See Fearing
Page 26

PAT FISH of The Jazz Butcher
“goes for the jugular'’ with the
new release, Fishcotheque.

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