The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 8

THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL. THURSDAY. SEPTEMBER 18. A I C9 MM Ml ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR: LUCINDA CHODAN 987-2568 OBITUARY Sentimental clown Has creativity at last gone pop? Stolen songs littering the rock tracks 4 1 -V POPARAZZI ERICSIBLIN Red Skelton delighted audiences for more 20 years playing such characters as Clem Freddie the Freeloader, and the Mean Wid-dle Kid. Below, he is shown with his wife, Lothian, in December 1976.

A 1 ur 1 iky snags the listener A similar act of creation is currently involved in Wyclef Jean's Guantanam-era, the rice-and-beans Latino staple. As it happens, the tune is an apt choice for a hip-hop springboard: there is a time-honored tendency from Mexico southward to use Guantanamera as a vehicle for its crooner's personal story (as was demonstrated to me once in a coastal Colombian bar called Paco s). At any rate, Jean is prone to this sort of thing; the first time being his conspicu ously faithful version of Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly, which put the fame into the Fugees. Plundering is fundamental to rap, which began with a microphone, two turntables and a flexible approach to We 're pleased to introduce two new elements in the Entertainment section today: our new pop critic and new pop charts. The new pop charts, supplied by SoundScan, rank albums and singles in Montreal and nationally, based on album sales.

You'll find them at the bottom of this page and in every Thursday Entertainment section. Cur new pop-music writer, Eric Sib-lin, moves from the city-news section of The Gazette to Entertainment today. He's covered a variety of news stories, from the Bloc Quebecois bus during the federal election campaign to the wayward trail of a Montreal escape artist He previously worked as a reporter for the Canadian Press news agency in Montreal and plays both major and minor chords on guitar. You're in the shower, water cascading on to a sleep-deprived head and the radio playing on the other side of the plastic curtain. The song might be I Feel Good by soul czar James Brown.

He feels good. You start to feel good. You vocalise that feeling, off-key perhaps, but softened by the sympathetic acoustics of H2O. A stream-of-consciousness singing follows in which you muse to the music, Brown's punch-happy horn section punctuating what is otherwise a mediocre Thursday morning. But hey, the shower-powered production sounds impressive.

Should you immediately contact a recording company representative? Maybe. A rough listen to the prevailing pop trends reveals heavy borrowing from recent hit-making history. Call it recycling, sampling, deliberate referencing, unconscious repetition, the sincer-est form of flattery, or possession of property rights. But contemporary copycatism may be running amok. REAR-VIEW MIRROR Has pop music run out of ideas, the musical equivalent of what one politi cal theorist has dubbed The End of Ml m.

L.m.jPL..,,,.,,......:! I History? Or has it reached one of its many genre junctures, entering a new digitally enhanced creative phase that puts new spins on collective pop un consciousness? There does seem to be a heightened awareness of recent rock history. Oa sis, which claims to be more popular than divinity (thus casting its spiritual net wider than the Beatles, who only made the point regarding Jesus) is so bent on its doomed Fab Four mission that it makes few moves without first checking Beatle footprints. Even at the more imaginative end of the spectrum, whi2 kid Beck borrows freely from the past. If the result is thoughtful, lovable and danceable, the AP PHOTOS rationale is unclear. On the track Jack- Ass, for example, off Beck's Odelay, the reader of liner notes is alerted to a Skelton outside New York's Carnegie Hall on March 10, 1977.

At right, Skelton as San Fernando Red. Red Skelton captivated generations sample from Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. At first listen, one is hard- pressed to detect any Dylanism; on closer examination a pilfered harmon ica solo can be heard Bob-ing and RICHARD SEVERO New York Times NEW YORK Red Skelton, a master weaving through the song. More refer ential than reverential. stolen goods with a value exceeding $2,000.

It might also be the future of an industry that is burdened by too much past. CUT AND PASTE The ranking song on the charts lately has been a cut-and-paste rendition of Sting's I'll Be Missing You, as interpreted (to overstate the case) by Sean (Puffy) Combs, better known as Puff Daddy. The puffster manages to superimpose some heartfelt rapping over the 1983 hit It sounds fine, leaning so heavily as it does on proven musical merchandise Puff Daddy, the sveldt cohort of slain rapper Notorious BIG, is not alone in such inflated efforts. A more subtle usage is m( king the music video rounds by Janet Jackson, whose Got Till It's Gone is indebted to Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. To her credit, Jackson adds something of her own while cutting a melodic snippet from Mitchell's chorus.

Yet it is Mitchell's hook that Oasis best sums up this rear-view mirror vantage point, on one occasion managing to squeeze three lyrical thefts into just two lines on its new sin of mime and clowning whose gentle humour captivated generations of North Americans, died yesterday at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 84. had his own television show on CBS. Although it never ranked below the Top 20 in the ratings and was No. 5 in 1972, CBS ordered it canceled that year, apparently because the network thought Skelton's vintage act replete with pratfalls, pungent one-liners and comic characterizations of everything from bumbling yokels to a couple of seagulls named Gertrude and Heath-cliffe did not appeal to younger viewers.

But Skelton stuck with the material that made him a star. "I'd rather have people say, 'Boy, he's hokey, isn't he said, "rather than, 'Who was the guy who told all those dirty He did not approve of swearing: "I don't think anybody should have to pay money at the box office to hear what they can read on restroom walls." Each show concluded with his trademark line: "Good night, and God bless." Please see SKELTON, Page CI In the early 1940s, Skelton's radio comedy show rivaled such formidable gle, D'You Know What I Mean: "The blood on the tracks must be mineThe fool on the hill and I feel fine," and then, a suggestion in their next lyric competitors as Bob Hope and Fibber McGee and Molly His popularity grew throughout the 1950s and '60s, when he Oasis would do well to follow "Don't look back because you know what you might see. There is blood on the tracks, and it belongs to other musicians. Global puts out puny signal TV HIGHLIGHTS MIKE BOONE Gazette Radio and TV Critic Global-Quebec is on the air but not Inquest looks at soccer tragedy everywhere. Some Montrealers who try to watch the new station using UHF antennas are having reception problems.

While CKMI-46 is readily available to cable subscribers (at channel position 3), the station has a weak over-the-air signal network, pumps out 1,334 kW Signal strength of Montreal's VHF stations varies from 100 kW(CBMT-6 and CBFT-2) to 325 kW (CFCF-12 and CFTM-10). City-TV, a UHF (Channel 57) station in Toronto, beams off the CN Tower with a signal strength of 280 kW. CFMT, a Toronto multilingual station at position 57 on the UHF band, transmits at 1,200 kW. The only station in Quebec putting out a weaker signal than Global's is CBGA, the 3.7 kW voice of Radio Canada in Matane. Michel Castonguay, who oversees frequency allocation on Montreal's airwaves for the federal Industry Department, said TV reception of local signals is "sometimes awkward, because of echoes and reflection on But Castonguay, whose department conducted tests on Global broadcast signal before the station's Sept.

14 sign-on, says everyone on the island of Montreal should be able to receive CKMI-46. "I can understand someone in Val-leyfield having reception problems," he said, "but not in Montreal." Yves Cere does not live in a south-shore suburb. Cere is a resident of Ville Emard who has been trying to pick up Global's UHF signal since the station began pre-launch promotional broadcasts 10 days ago. "It's still all fuzzy," Cer6 said yesterday Please see GLOBAL, Page 10 Broadcasting from a transmitter on Gazette television columnist Mike Boone picks the best of tonight's programs: Rainmakers (CBMT-6 at 7): Series finale looks at a native activist in Winnipeg. Inquest (Channel 6 at 8): Superb British drama about soccer tragedy Kids Say the Darndest Things (WCAX-3 at 8): Bill Cosby talks to children.

Nothing Sacred (CFCF-12 at 8): New series about street priests. 1997 MuchMusic Video Awards (Much, MusiquePlus at 8): The nation's music station picks the best. Gregory Hines (CKMI-46 at Time slot debut. Diagnosis Murder (WCAX-3 at 9): Fifth season begins. Cracker (Channel 12 at 9): Robert Pastrelli plays Robbie Coltrane role in CBS version of British series.

Bethune (Channel 6 at midnight): Donald Sutherland plays surgeon. Husbands (Bravo! at 2:30 a.m.): John Cassavetes works with pals Ben Gaz-zara and Peter Falk. Mount Royal, Global puts out a signal of 4.8S kilowatts. This is puny compared to the signal strength of Montre al's two other UHF station: CFJP, the Television Quatre Saisons flagship, delivers 697 kW while CIVM-17, Montreal station of the provincial Tele-Quebec Top 20 singles Montrec! metro Top 20 current albums Montreal metro Top 10 albums Week of Sept. 14, 1997 Week of Sept.

14, 1997 Week of Sept. 14, 1997 This Last This Last This Last Week Nationally ArtlstTltle Week Week Nationally ArtistTitle Week Week Nationally ArtistTitle Week I 1 PuffDaddyEvansl'll Be Missing You 115 Andrea BocolllRomanza 111 Puff DaddyNo Way Out 1 .2 .2 Notorious BIOMo Money Mo Problems' 3 1 Backstreet BoytBackstreet's Back 22 ,2 10. Wyclef JeanCarnival 3 3 3 Marian CareyHoney 2 3 3 Puff DaddyNo Way Out 3 3 2 Men In BlackSountrack 2 a Bacl(tiBoSEvervtdoVa 2 SarahMcUchlanSurfaclnfii 5 'J NotwBIOUfa After Death 5 I ir'TM, 18 I. -2i BTPo.let.rMiserere 6 -J. 5ErS0 4.

6 5 Boyx II Mon4 Seasons of Loneliness 6 7 ProdigyFat of the Land .7, 7 6 CoolloMy Soul 8 7 30 Frurt la PwtlonVai Val Val 8 7 9 OastoBe Here Now 4 12 Tonl BraxtonSecrets '7 18 '2 BlackttrtetRx VU.wv'. 1 9 8 37 VartousHotmut Lottl Goes Classic r.1 9 5 Wu-TangWu-Tang Forever 9 9 4 Leeann RlmetHow Do I Live 6 9 8 JewelPieces of You 10 '10 .13 Tha AlkahollkaLikwldatkm 617 ilO 17 Fruit de la fcualonTic Tic Tad 5 .10. 7 23 RadIohed0K Computer 8 1 II 10 ProdigyBreathe 17 IX 11 Spice GirlsSpice 13 iU "ara MlUSIC 12 ,1:17. dr pnkHomework 111 1 1 ourUdypMceciumsy 1 13 86 Capital SoundHigher Love 13 13 58 Wyclef JeanCarnival 18 12 Sufior RayFloored 2 14 551.: BrthtiriimBoclllTime to Say Goodbye 13 Men In BlackSoundtrack i'. 9 3 3 3 SoundtrackSpawn 3 14 8 RobynDoYouKnow 20 18 4 AquaAquarium 5 AerosmlthNlne Lives '4 88:: KIllarmyWuRonegadca 10 Our Udy PeawClumey 16 3 I "Colour and the Shape 5 ii 2 il songs -106 17 40 PortlshoadGlorytlmes 11" i 18 37 Jamlroquolrfavellng Without Moving 8 Marilyn MantonSmells Like Children 10 17 22 EMon JohnSomething About the 19 59 Bran Van 3000Glce 20 9 12 PanteraOfficial Live 7 20 53 RadloheadCarma Please Version 1 20 26 Notorlou 610Ute After Death '10 '7, Of fiprtngyixnay on tho Hombre Rating bsMd on retail record tare SoundScan, Inc..