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Pop Rock Nation

Author: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #37: Midnight At The Blurasis

    Desmond Child & Rouge "Our Love Is Insane"

    DESMOND CHILD & ROUGE  “Our Love Is Insane”  b/w  “City In Heat” (Capitol Records #4669, 1978)

    I was never one of those “Disco Sucks” guys.  In fact, disco pretty much freaked me out and blew me away from the beginning, before the genre even had a name.  George McRae’s super-sexy and shimmering “Rock Your Baby”…was it soul?  Funk?  Pop?  Or was it such a smash that it didn’t even matter?  On a daily basis, Merv Griffin brought the most inventive and outlandish disco acts of the ’70’s into suburban American living rooms via his afternoon syndicated chat show.  Among them were The Village People, Chic, Grace Jones, Sylvester and the unforgettable Donna Summer, whose operatic moans coupled with Giorgio Moroder’s pulsating European synthesizers propelled popular music into the techno-sexual stratosphere, never to fully recover.  By this time, disco was (and still is), like it or not, an indelible part of the American landscape.

    Trolling for obscure new wave imports in a little restroom-sized headshop called Grooves, I stumbled upon this pug-fugly slab of vomit-swirled purple vinyl by Desmond Child & Rouge.  I had never heard of them, but this record looked so disgusting (like a baby had puked up a messy mix of grape sherbet, blood and charcoal) that I just couldn’t resist.  I had seen colored vinyl before, even owned a few pieces of see-thru plastic, and picture-discs were popular then amongst collectors, but Lord Almighty.  I’d never encountered anything this revolting that didn’t require a mop and lots of Pine-Sol.  Sold!

    Our Swirled Purple Vinyl Is Insane

    From the opening bass-&-kick-drum punch on the first listen, it was very clear that “Our Love Is Insane” was not going to be the slick, glossy, overproduced kind of disco then cluttering up the post-Saturday Night Fever airwaves.  This was grittier, more underground and more urban in nature.  This was a foreshadowing of the dance-rock about to come.  This was the future.

    Play \”Our Love Is Insane\” by Desmond Child & Rouge

    The hot, pounding rhythm section and hard-rock guitars lay a nice rough bed for the intertwining, cascading vocals of the Rouge girls, who ooze a very natural, classy, liberated New York sexiness that I just don’t see anywhere anymore.  “Insane” never significantly charted, but became a considerable club smash.  Within weeks, more rock acts were allowing disco rhythms to creep into their repertoires, and more disco acts were beefing up the guitars and sneaking in a little more rock.  Soon Donna Summer herself would score big with the one-two punch of “Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff,” which both sound eerily close to this track. On the streets of New York, rock drum patterns and disco basslines were being rapped over in the Bronx, and a young Madonna was planning her attack down on the LES.  Let the ’80’s begin.

    On the flipside, “City In Heat” provides a heavy swirl of hard guitars, piano, bongos and jazzy vocal scatting that ebbs downward and builds back up to staccato crescendos.  Perfect soundtrack music for an episode of Starsky & Hutch or S.W.A.T., but not the unique barn-burner the A-side proved to be.  That’s OK, though;  they can’t all be winners.

    “Winner” is, however, a word that can easily be applied to Desmond Child.  After a 2nd Capitol LP with Rouge, Child embarked on a songwriting career that singlehandedly leaves most others in the dust.  You can find a stunning (and ever-growing) list of his hit credits here, and you can see, hear and learn more at his website, but chances are you probably have a Child-penned song running through your head at any given moment.

    NEXT WEEK: Your head is shaking and your arms are shaking and your feet are shaking because the Earth is shaking.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #36: Shag Motor Pony

    Sad Cafe's "Run Home Girl" single

    SAD CAFE  “Run Home Girl”  b/w  “Feel Like Dying”  (A&M Records #2111, 1978)

    What do the words “Manchester, England” mean to me?  (Football hooligans and songs from Hair aside.)  Probably the same things you’re thinking:  Factory Records, Joy Division, Crispy Ambulance, New Order, The Smiths, The Buzzcocks, The Fall, Happy Mondays, John Cooper Clarke, Tony Wilson, 24-Hour Party People, that damn “Blue Monday” 12-inch, The Stone Roses, The Verve, The Hacienda, the whole “MADchester” proto-rave scene that seemed to dominate MTV before the grunge (and the E) took hold.  Oh, OK…and that band with the two snotty brothers who verbally gob all over each other constantly…what was their name?  I forget.  Anyway…

    Radio-friendly adult-contemporary soft-rock wasn’t exactly pouring out of Manchester in the late ’70’s, but a shiny little slice of it can be found in Sad Cafe’s woefully underrated catalog, exemplified here by this single taken from their 1978 LP, Misplaced Ideals.  I probably would’ve never heard of this record had it not been for a late-night radio call-in show that invited listeners to win prizes by answering trivia questions.  I can’t recall what question I answered, but I remember being invited to show up the next day at a local record shop to claim my prize, which was a fresh (and very sweet-smelling, if I remember correctly) copy of Ideals, plus this single (for some unknown reason).  And claim it I did.

    Sad Cafe's "Misplaced Ideals" LP (US artwork)

    Side A, “Run Home Girl,” is glossy, sexy, sax-driven, and chock-full-o’-hooks like all good ’70’s AM-radio classics should be.  It reached the lower echelons of Billboard, and, several weeks after my victorious contest win, briefly became a pop radio staple, keeping its momentum throughout 1979.  Back then, the glistening guitars of “Girl” sounded ace blasting from a dashboard on a hot summer day (while sucking on a lime Slurpee, of course) alongside tracks like “Rich Girl” and “Smoke From A Distant Fire.”  Today, I hear elements of this track in young groups like Phoenix, who are mining the lesser-exploited aspects of ’70’s pop for a new generation.

    The real payoff here, however, is the flipside, “Feel Like Dying,” a deeper cut also taken from the Ideals LP.  With its lugubrious, Mick Karn-style bassline and all-night-jazz-club piano, “Dying” starts off in that sorta bluesy, cigarettes ‘n’ whiskey after-hours-bar mode that Frank Sinatra made fashionable, then suddenly builds up and explodes into a splashy wet-wash of blistering guitar and sax, then drops you back down and lets you drift out to sea, breathless.  Slap this on your next late-night-spliffs-&-cocktails mix between some Daryl Hall and some Boz Scaggs and you’ll see what I mean.  Purely great.

    (Unfortunately, there’s no clips of either of these tracks anywhere on the ‘net, but you can take in some of the Cafe’s other classics here.)

    Sad Cafe’s singer/songwriter/frontman/mastermind Paul Young (not to be confused with “Every Time You Go Away” Paul Young) moonlighted in Genesis’ Mike Rutherford’s successful side-project Mike + The Mechanics while simultaneously recording and performing with Sad Cafe throughout the ’80’s and ’90’s.  Though they scored several more hits in the UK, stateside success eluded them, and Young died of a heart attack in July of 2000.  Sadly, the Sad Cafe is now closed.

    NEXT WEEK:  It was the ugliest slab of puke-like purple vinyl I’d ever seen.  And I had to have it.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #35: Ass Burgers

    Rage Against The Machine's "Bullet In The Head"

    RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE  “Bullet In The Head”  b/w  “Darkness” (Epic Records #35-74927 promotional single, 1993)

    Now-legendary L.A. alterna-agit-punk-rap-funk-metal-core alchemists Rage Against The Machine rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the eternally-youthful (and forever broke) late-’80’s Revelation Records leftist hardcore scene in ’92, signed to Epic Records, released a stellar multi-platinum debut LP, took their face-melting show on the road with Perry Farrell’s first Lollapalooza tour and never looked back.  Critics balked.  How could de la Rocha, Morello & Co. hold the machine in contempt, much less rage against it, while simultaneously massaging the giant American corporate schlong to wargasm by selling their souls to a major?

    One word:  Platform.  The little toupeed, four-eyed midget spouting misinformed Biblical shit at the top of his lungs every Saturday from the town square sidewalk won’t get heard by anyone.  But the giant, towering behemoth on the big stage with the loud PA system and the pummelling electric guitar and thunderous bass will be heard by all.  At a time when students shelled out $20 for Che Guevara T-shirts, the RATM boys knew all too well that revolution sells.  Not only will it be televised, the networks will shuck for ad space.  The time was right.  Let’s get the word out.

    Rage Against The Machine's self-titled 1992 debut LP

    Married to Japanese corporate giant Sony, Epic Records (who over a decade earlier had begrudgingly released The Clash’s budget-priced 3-LP Socialist manifesto, Sandinista!) squeezed out this little promo 45 in ’93, probably to fan the flames of RATM’s blazing Lolla showcase.  Side A is their notorious smackdown, “Bullet In The Head” from ’92’s eponymous debut LP.  According to the sleeve art, the track clocks in at 4:67.  Very cute, guys.  Just close your eyes & smell the mosh pit.

    Play \”Bullet In The Head\” by Rage Against The Machine

    I probably should’ve warned you…these clips are full of F-Bombs.  But you knew that already, so hopefully you covered Junior’s ears.  (He hears nastier stuff daily on the playground, I assure you.)  Anyway, as great as “Bullet…” is, side B holds the real gem here with the non-LP “Darkness” (also known as “Darkness Of Greed”).  This soft/LOUD/soft showstopper later became widely available on a rarities comp, but for a brief and shining moment, I wore the crown of Mixtape King through mere possession of this promo.  Get your crowd-surf on…NOW!

    Play \”Darkness\” by Rage Against The Machine

    Since the days of this earth-shattering debut, RATM released more stunning LPs (including one of covers), got banned from this and censored from that, and broke up and reformed several times.  Tom Morello took his guitar pyrotechnics to the very successful Audioslave (as well as projects such as The Nightwatchman and Street Sweeper Social Club), while Zach de la Rocha’s long-talked-about collabs with ?uestlove and El-P never fully materialized.  But their style, sound, intensity and hands-on activism still remains as a heavy influence to today’s youngsters.  So I’m warning you, always keep one eye glued to the RATM website, ’cause you never know when or where they’ll turn up, amps cranked and fists raised.  And you won’t want to miss it.

    NEXT WEEK: I cry tears in my coffee.