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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 28, 1982)
w mna^ U'lflCKim <«*tnn \ ■ ict cntnn I_ _w-m Try our Spring Ice Cream flavors mr • Lemon Chiffon Coconut Pineapple • Fresh Banana 13th & HilyardBHBaBMi Mon-Thors 9:30—11:00 Fri 9:30—12.00 Sat 11:00-12:00 Sun 12:00-11:00 Tha Atrium Monday - Saturday 11:00-530 YIPPIEU! Next stop 3,265,891 flavors® ^HUMP x NIGHT EUERY WEDNESDAY MUSIC FRIENDS j R&R (Refreshing & Revitalizing) O'CaUatotf* 440 Coburg Road. Eugene * 343-1221 Now at the right price $49 95 Every logger knows the importance o* the right pace the new Casio togging digitals give just that Art electronic pace-tone can be set to any speed to keep the runner in rhythm, and can be adjusted to methodically increase (or decrease) course speed Even more important, it lets (he logger know his/her daily performance by automatically coordinating stride length with pace to give distance covered and elapsed 4me In a sporty, featherweight syle. this watch is a natural plus tor both the casual and the serious jogger It also has a calendar. 12/24 hour tormts. full lap timing facilities an alarm stopwatch, and a fingertip calculator Jog over this week to see our | full line of Casio watches. I JC J 13,h 4 Kincaid Mon-Fri 7:30-5 30 Limited to stock on hand BOOKSTORE sat 10 00-3 00 Textbooks 686-3520 • General Books 686-3510 • Supplies 686-4331 H Johnny gets distracted Let It Rock Johnny and the Distractions A & M Records Let It Rock. Johnny and the Distractions' bid for a national audience, is a polished, slickly-produced album No doubt long hours were spent carefully mixing, rewriting and overdubbing to get ev erything perfect. As a result, much of what is essential to Johnny and the Distractions' appeal has been systematically destroyed, while at times, using the resources available to acts on a major label, they have aspired to new heights The key to Johnny and the Ds music has never been their technical proficiency or musical vir tuosity, but rather the ur gency and intensity of Jon Koonce's voice Koonce is not a gifted lyricist The opening lines of So Com plicated," possibly the al bum's finest cut, pretty much sum up everything Koonce has to say and how he says it: “Five boys in the back of a van / night after night we play, / play and sing that rock and roll / 'cause that's the only way / Ten years slip down the drain / like no time at all, / didn’t somebody warn you / you're headed for a ran Once in a white he will capture an image with an interesting line, word or phrase (“Octane Twilight ’), but by and large he depends on an emotional response to cliched and conceptually limited verse, through gut-wrenching vocals so seemeingly sincere and intense that, frankly, the words are rendered unimportant Testimony to the validity of this appeal is their regionally released first album, Johnny and the Distractions. On an independent label, it was rather shoddily produced, but at the same time it captured the essence of their appeal The very rawness enabled Koonce's voice to come through unfiltered and uncensored Koonce. like Keith Richards during his rare ventures as lead vocalist, forces your attention not because he s a polished finely-tuned singer, but because any body who sings with that kind of intensity, under those limitations, demands attention His singing hits at a gut level that technically skilled singers rarely reach His voice is not so much another musical instrument, as it is a vehicle for expres sion Let It Rock often stifles the raw expressive ness of Koonce s voice with too much attention paid to production and not enough to the baser elements of his sound Particularly wounded by the production are two of the four carryovers from the first album, “Guys Like Me" and "Octane Twilight.” “Guys Like Me," once their “hit," is easily the worst song on the album It contains none of the vivacity of their first album or their live perfor mances Koonce sounds as if he's dying because he knows he's just going through the motions — you can almost hear him cringing as he sings. His voice sounds lackluster and contrived He's changed a few of the words in the refrain,and this also shows how utterly sick Koonce is of singing it The listener feels as compromised listening to the song as Koonce must have felt recording it. Producer David Kershenbaum should be relegated to producing the next ten Sheena Easton albums for letting this song onto the vinyl "Octane Twilight" isn’t as obvious a failure as "Guys Like Me ” The “national audience" production has taken most of the engaging subtlety out of the song The faint piano that ran through the background in the first album has been replaced with more guitar, and the volume of the bass is up so high in the mix it hammers down your spine I guess musical understatement is necessarily precluded with making sure the audience can dance to an easily identifiable beat All subtlety is abandoned when the song reaches the line “You're a runaway and I'm a bastard " On Let It Rock Koonce sings it. "You're a runaway and I'm a BASTARD!” Instead of seducing the listener as the regional album did, Let It Rock shoves many of the finer points down our throats The bright spots, how ever, are worth the occa sional suffering "In the Street" and "Shoulder of the Road," the other two repeats from the first album, are much improved on Let It Rock, due mostly to the cleaner, more professional produc tion "Shoulder of the Road" kicks off the album, and is really only improved because the brighter production allows the listener to hear and feel it better It's not exactly a rocker, but a cross between that and a ballad with a climax that will rival even the most turbulent rocker, and is likely do send you sprawling out of your chair "So Complicated” is arguably the best cut on the album Musically the song is simple, but it moves full-tilt and unrelenting to the end Koonce s voice is at its finest on songs like this, where the chord changes are few and far between and he's allowed to howl and hoarse it out without the hassle of changing keys "So Complicated is only arguably the best cut because My Desire", one of the strongest songs in their live repetoire, has also surfaced on this disc It is the only reasonably slow song on the album, and shows off the band's flexibility, leav ing the listener yearning for more It is a truly wonderful performance that must be heard, if only to appreciate how good a lousy voice can sound The other four songs on the album are basically nondescript rock and roll tunes that are compe tent, but not particularly noteworthy One can only wonder why the album is named after "Let It Rock", a tired phrase to begin with Perhaps it was chosen because it expresses Koonces approach to life: “No time for words / no time for talk / no time for anything / just Let It Rock " by gordon brown service copies Quality Copies • Xerox 9500 Resumes • Thesis • Reduction Custom Paper • Binding • Lamination /£lubs-dorms-greeks\ FREE T-SHIRT WITH MIN ORDER OF 12 CUSTOM SCREEN PRINTED SHIRTS IN SAME DESIGN WHOLESALE PRICES Emblem?) 1885 W. 6th Am. 686-8104 CAPS - B.B. SLEEVES - JACKETS darn... it says ICE CREAM again april 28, 1982
