Soundbites
The Pogues
Peace and Love
Ireland's Pogues, from the spittle
on their beards to the fire in their
hearts, are a great rock ’n’ roll band.
The Pogues built their reputation
in the mid-’80s as a band of drunks
who sounded like the Sex Pistols
gone folk. Peace and Love, the
band's fourth release, is an eclectic
work bound together by the
strength of its convictions.
Whether the Pogues are playing
jazz, psychedelic Celt-pop or their
more familiar folk-punk brew, they
do it with a kick-out-the-jams ener
gy that’s hard to deny. Lead singer
Shane McGowan and his band
mates also deliver some interesting
lyrics about living, loving, drinking
and dying in a world full of stupid
ity, vice and innocent beauty.
Although McGowan contributes
some of the album’s finest
moments, his fellow Pogues also
hold their own in the songwriting
department. The Pogues sing
about fallacies and frauds, but still
make it all seem like a party
instead of an apocalypse. ■ Jesse
Fox MayBhark, The Daily
Collegian, Pennsylvania State U.
Various Artists
Young Einstein Soundtrack
What a strange mix we have here:
everything from R&B and gospel to
post-punk and mid-'60s British
pop. You don't have to see “Young
Einstein” (which (lopped in the
United States following a lucrative
run in Australia) to appreciate its
soundtrack. Unconventional
instrumentation and rhythms
punctuate the songs. Paul Kelly
and the Messengers ofTer “Dumb
Things,” a buoyant R&B number
with trumpet and a cheesy ’60s
organ. Big Pig serve up a slice of
gospel, “Hungry Town,” which
sounds like a rootsier version of the
Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance.”
The record is marred somewhat by
the interspersed dialogue from the
movie, which becomes tedious after
repeated listenings, but on the whole
this is a fine collection of Australian
music. aTom Dahlstrom, The
Minnesota Daily, U. of Minnesota
Once-proud MTV
is a big-time bore
By Hank Stuever
■ The Loyola Maroon
Loyola U
Music Television exploded into the
Amencan consciousness on Aug. 1.1981,
with a rocket blasting of! and a neon-1 zed
version of the lunar landing Hack then,
it seemed so revolutionary, yet so
painfully obvious: all day, all night, in
stereo — FM radio with pictures.
In its earliest days, MTV was a trendy
secret of the cable sect, an offbeat chan
nel flipped to between _
ruined — music.
Culturally, the network has grown to
personify the decade and everything
that's wrong with it In his popular book
"The Closing of the American Mind,"
Chicago Professor Allan Bloom main
tamed that MTV was specifically to
blame for several problems with today’s
students and the way they think
The key to understanding MTVs fall is
to realize that the station tinkered with
the formula that initially sold the prod
uct Simply put, they now show fewer
_ videos. They
reruns. HBO movies
and ESPN.
The original VJs
were soon-to-be-leg
endary pioneers of the
new medium There
was J.J. Jackson, a
roly-poly soul brother
designed to attract a
black audience to a
station that would for
years be painfully
white-onented T)icre
Analysis
COURTESY MTV
MTV s ever-mutating logo
also canned
their VJs and
failed to replace
them with
equally inspir
ing people.
Once set in a
friendly, junk
strewn, attic
type studio,
MTV now has a
dull, high-tech
feel. The five
was Nina Blackwood.
MTV’s mistress of the night, with her
shag hairdo and death-warmed-over
approach to TV commentary.
There was geeky Alan Hunter, the
class cut-up who never managed to be
funny There was Mark Goodman, the
KM blow-drv guy who tried unsuccess
fully to promote MTV’s video offerings as
real music meant to lie taken seriously
We saw right through him the whole
time, of course.
And there was Martha t^uinn, the
squeaky High Priestess of MTV, with her
trivia questions and poodle earrings.
By 1982, the network was popular
Musicians and the record industry
began to regard the music video as the
essential to the marketing of the 45 sin
gle. MTV’s success revitalized a sagging
recording industry that had sleepily
stalled at the starting gate of the decade.
MTV saved and, some still argue,
original VJs
each had their little nook on the cluttered
set; today's replacements are superim
posed against forgettable moving pat
terns.
Today. MTV7 relies on just three VJ’s
who are effective only at making viewers
hate what they’re watching
There’s Julie Brown, perhaps the most
distasteful factor in MTV’s decline, a
cockney lass with an acute ability to
make her audience want to gouge out
their eyes Equally offensive is Adam
Currv, the daytime V.J who attempts to
make the 5 p.m countdown show, “Dial
MTV7," a matter of world importance
It is harder to judge the nightime VJ,
Kevin Seal, because he is MTV’s obvious
attempt to reach a college audience
Plucked from the l\ of Washington. Seal
is in the time slot where one can see
videos that the network considers “pro
gressive” while avoiding as many Poison
COURTESY MTV
MTV VJ Downtown Julie Brown
clips as possible.
An inordinate amount of time is now
devoted to packaged programs like
"Remote Control ”
Designed to be a spoof on the classic
American game show, “Remote Control'
is an indicator of two things: how stupid
fraternity and sorority members nation
wide actually are and how desperate
MTV is to get them to watch.
“Music News" is suddenly important
enough to be programmed like an “ABC
News Brief.” The show is anchored by
“newsman” Kurt Loder, a Rolling Stone
staffer who ought to have something bet
ter to do.
More recently, MTV actually began
celebrating its own demise with a show
called “Deja Video.” Martha Quinn has
been re-hired to show “oldies" from 1984
85, an era when MTV still lived up to its
original claim
Musically, the channel now regularly
lumps innovative music in with the non
progressive. In its prime, everything
MTV'' showed was progressive in one way
or another.
Once an outlet that took chances and
broke new groups, MTV is now a ponder
ous, conservative station
Whether ratings plummet or not,
MTV’s fate is sealed All it would take
now is for some bright network to come
along and do the innovative thing; show
rock videos interspersed with dialogue
from likeable hosts. How innovative,
huh°
Even solo, Bob Mould stays loud and powerful
By Josh Sparbeck
■ South End News
Wayne State U.. Michigan
Bob who?!
The wheels ofjustice grind slowly in the music indus
try, so don't worry if you haven’t heard of Bob Mould.
For the better part of the decade, the singer songwrit
er/guitarist was the frontman for Husker Du, a
Minneapolis-based post-punk trio. The Buskers, along
with bands like R.E.M. and The Replacements, gradu
ally helped edge the loose, powerful, do-it-yourself ethic
of independent rock toward the mainstream.
Unfortunately, Husker Du never got the chance to
enjoy their growing impact. After a half dozen stunning,
ambitious albums (the last two on the Warner Bros,
label) the group packed it in early last year. The
breakup was attributed to those two perennial rock &
roll hobgoblins: drug problems and creative differences.
Mould’s solo LP on Virgin Records, Workbook, is his
attempt to rummage through the emotional debns left
m the wake of Husker Du’s breakup Given the low
level sparring in the music press between Mould and
Grant Hart, his former Husker drummer/singer co
writer, I was expecting Workbook to be something along
the lines of an LP-length version of “Ho\s Do You Sleep.”
the vengeful vendetta John Lennon hurled at Paul
McCartney after the Beatles’ split
The record has its moments of accusation, to be sure,
but in comparison to Mould's merciless bitterness of
earlier years, it’s a relatively easy pill to swallow Most
of the pieces I've read on Mould and Workbook have
fixated on the idea that the album somehow presents
a more “mellow” side of the guitarist than was apparent
in his work with Husker Du. but this hardly seems the
case. Mould had already been experimenting with
broader, acoustic-based songs on latter Husker I.Ps like
Candy Apple Grey and Warehouse: Songs and
Stories.Some of the songs here, particularly the open
ing instrumental, “Sunspots," and the uplifting “See A
Little Light” do seem exceptionally cheery, given
Mould’s usual penchant for angst But Workbook is far
from mellow.
One can only hope Mould can keep up his momentum
in the future by drawing on circumstances less horrible
than the breakup of one of rock’s best bands.
COURTESY VIRGIN RECORDS
Bob Mould formerly played with Husker Du, described as one
of the post-punk movement s most significant bands.