B8-Sunday News, April 27, 1980 NEWER THAN NEW WAVE By DAVE JENNESON Nobody can predict when the true talent will arrive. The arrival I refer to is that of the musician/ writers with the visionary power and force to create the next real launch; the more-than-a- nudge needed to change the direction of our music forty- five degrees or more. The phenomenon ts so rare yet Comparisons are so common — Elvis, the Beatles, and now perhaps 4 third wise man for the 1980’s. The expectation seems to make sense. A final explosion of genius before the final explosion of everything. The problem is of course that the hype and promo act like obscuring foilage. It becomes hard to know who or what to believe. For example, is it possible to believe the liner notes on an album at all anymore? Or the Rolling Stones? Or High Times? There is so much money to be made that the praise has lost its value, and the enduring value of great music is sold in super- markets alongside the Kraft Dinner. So more and more of us tend to believe less and less of what is said about any new music. It is simply a defensive mechanism against the copywriter lodged deep in the foothills of Los Angeles, who at this moment is sitting down at his lypewriter to create another musical breakthrough. The truth is that the truth has nothing to do with the magic of selling records. The only thing you can believe is your own ears. Yet if no one believes the superlatives, how do you describe a music that sends cerebral prickles and thumps at the spinal cord like a string bass? . I cannot remember being held in such natural awe by a group of musicians — ever. My jaw sagged open when they entered and stayed that way, which is a strange way to watch a concert, but I had no choice. I was hearing a totally new kind of music and I couldn't believe it was happening like being there the night’ they discovered jazz these seven marvellous people were erecting a towering musical landmark right in front of us. The place was San Francisco, about a year ago, in a rundown joint called the Boarding House. They crazy the audience up first with films — Louis Armstrong and a gang of 1930 cyeball rollers — then they pounce. Suddenly, from the rear of the hall they come punching through with a seven-piece drum-drum assault that sounds like the marching band from the University of Mars. Wild and unearthly, an intricate and cruel alien TWO OUTSTANDING CONCERTS IN NORTH VANCOUVER THE CBC VANCOUVER ORCHESTRA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30 8:00 PM Jonn Ehot Gardiner Conductor Judith Forst, mezzo soprano F.J. Haydn: Symphony No 83 (la Poule) in Ga minor W.A. Mozart: Three Concert antas Symphony No i bs Mat F Schubert. Mayor G F Handel: Ode for St Cecthas Day WEDNESDAY, MAY 14 8:00 PM John bt hot Gardiner, conductor Guests Vancouver Chamber Chou Marganta Noye soprano Bruce Pullan tenor J.P Rameau: (Dance Sutte from Dardanus North Vancouver Centennial Theatre Tickets $4 Students and semor cuzens $3 Tickets available at Vancouver Ticket Centre & outlets including Eatons war beat picked up from the radio of a passing space ship. The audience is caught off ‘guard, swept forward in the bombast and transfixed. And from that point onward, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo are in concert. If you have ever fallen asleep and dreamed of hearing a song of almost unbearable beauty, then wake and try to remember it, you have an inkling of the Oingo Boingo style. The material is com- mercial, but not in any traditional sense — _ the verse/chorus/verse structu- re is replaced by some ar- cane formula from the Oingo Boingo School of Songwriting. The hooks are carefully concealed, tucked into the belly of the song to snag the listener unawares. It is as if the music inspires some mild form of hypnosis within the listener, so he or she is allowed to Lsten to it with a greater area of the coming soon — 13th only) . Stars. OFPRM: 8:00 P.&. - 9:00 P.M. - 2700 AM. Lover Boy (May Sth & 6th only) The News, Six Cylinder (May 12th & . Teen Angel, the Rhythm & Blues Al . the sensation is very very. pleasant. And, having invented this new musical form, the Oingo Boingo then had to write songs for if specifically. This does not seem to have been a problem -- in fact, they revel in it. Bear in mind that the Oimgo Boingo are L.A. session men, who earn their main income cranking out the band tracks for their better known brethren. They are, for example, infinitely more rewarding than George Thuragood and the Destroyers, yet they draw far smaller crowds. The B 52's, in a sense, play a Dave Clark Five to the Oingo Boingo's Beatles. The band has even gone so far as to imvent many of the strange, delicate instruments for their new breed of music. Their stage theater is dazzling ... when I saw the lounge band in Star Wars I recall wishing that I had been born well into the next PACHEENA 1421 Lonsdale North Vancouver 986-5010K SRE Cia AE ane a ’ The The most current Top 40 band around. with one of the best PA systems anywhere catch the high energy act of one of the most sougNnt after groups in Vancouver every Wednesday is ladies night 2700 Am. GXCEPT THURS. & Ful. The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo century, just to be able to see such an act performing, since I was sure that one day they would exist. And yet here I was, less than a year later, every cell of my being telling me that that far distant time was now ... seeing this wild future-broth of genius-mutated German cabaret, a lick from Devo, the Court Musicians of medieval Pluto ... After six years, the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo are convincing leery San Francisco night club owners of their ability to stun audiences. Heretofore managers apparently felt that their customers might not be able to understand. The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo recently received their first review in a San Francisco newspaper. critic's words zeroed dead on the bottom line of Oingo Boingoness: ‘One day,’ he wrote, ‘all bands will sound like this."