Word: wails
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...Publishing; 00 pages; $0.00) is making its own noise in book stores. Rhino Records has issued The Spike Jones Anthology, a handsome, 40- song dose of the band's top tunes, including the chirping, barking, cackling Love in Bloom and the magnificent Hawaiian War Chant, which climaxes with a wail of electric-guitar dissonance that predates Jimi Hendrix by 20 years. A quirkier collection -- Spiked!, on Catalyst -- has some prime oddities, notably a suave, six-part ribbing of The Nutcracker Suite (1945), which must count as one of the earliest "concept albums...
...clear what inspires Peck's musical eclecticism, and how he imagines it to all hold together. Adding a polished studio saxophone wail to a folk guitar song does nothing but bewilder the listener, as does a tune like "Strange Weather," with its hip jazz shimmy that sounds like it belongs on Sting's last album. Add in a trumpet solo (as Peck does on many tunes), a walking bass and sampled strings, and you have a very curious tune. It has the same value as the likes of buster Pointdexter or Thomas Dolby, minus the better arrangements, interesting voices...
...etched in acid. Bogosian is politically incorrect enough to play an unappetizing street black, arrogant enough to enact an egomaniacal fan and complex enough to risk a jolting tirade against "starving Africans" who, by their unsettling omnipresence on the evening news, "spoil everything." This rant is at once a wail over injustice and a plea for the surcease of not caring -- and it makes audiences careen between those poles of feeling...
...wonder about Annie Lennox. At one point, the pop diva (incomprehensibly top-billed) appears from behind a pillar, only to wail a version of Cole Porter's "Everytime We Say Goodbye" as the two lovers caress and cavort around sadly, if such a thing is possible. There are several such pointless dance sequences (sans Lennox), which look as if they might have been choreographed by Janet Jackson. Aside from the sitar music with which "Edward II" opens, the MTV analogue, like that of the perfume ad, is impossible to avoid. All you "campsters" out there might be getting...
...soundtrackwell stocked with memorable hooks and defiantlyrics. At its best, the album is comparable toAgainst the Grain or No Control. Andwhile it is blighted by some real duds--theFugazi-inspired "All Good Soldiers" comes tomind--Recipe is chock full of terrifictunes. "Don't Pray on Me" is a lilting wail aboutthe L.A. Riots which manages to work in mentionsof Daryl Gates, South Vietnam, Moses and MarilynMonroe. "Skyscraper," a crowd favorite at lastmonth's show at Avalon, is a straight ahead rockerwhich colonized the ear with its soaring andsimple chorus...