Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 14

SELECTED CUTS 1 Just listen to the beat By James Muretich (Herald writer) (and wire services) i hev ve sot the beat, tsrains Well, that's another matter. IN-XS, who perform at the Saddle- A -X VP 1 i) i I DANIEL ASH Once again one of the Herald's venerable music writers steps forth, compact discs in hand, to reveal what tunes have been occupying his ears in the past month. The envelope please. And the winners are: DANIEL ASH: DAY TRIPPER (from Coming Down, 1991). A truly sensuous, sinewy rendition of ye olde classic by the boys who used to hang out with Brian Epstein.

Tune in, turn on to the weird, whispery sound of Love Rockets' Ash on this solo flight. BLACK CROWES: HARD TO HANDLE (from Shake Your Money Maker, 1990). It took a late, far too late Saturday night before I realized The Black Crowes cut to the heart of rock a la early Aerosmith and Rolling (Exiles period) Stones. This version of Otis Red-ding's Hard To Handle is all grit and guts. GALAXIE 500: LISTEN THE SNOW IS FALLING (from This Is Our Music, 1990).

Who woulda thunk? A seven-minute version of a Yoko Ono tune that captures the fragile rock edge of Velvet Underground without sounding derivative. Too bad this group is still only available as an import in Canada. THE DOORS: BREAK ON THROUGH (from The Doors, 1967). OK, OK, yes I've fallen head over heels for all The Doors hoopla. The flick is a great excuse for rediscovering the still vital music of one of the '60s bands that tried to expand rock's boundaries.

Light my desires. RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: THE SHELTERING SKY THEME (from The Sheltering Sky Soundtrack, 1990). The haunting theme song from this recent film is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to beautiful tunes by one of Japan's leading composers. Blending cinematic flourishes with Arabic musical influences and chants, this is a stellar soundtrack. dome March 23, have become one of the best-selling bands in the known universe by shooting chunky, funky grooves into their brand of rock 'n' roll.

Blaring out over a car radio, you're tempted to pull over to the side of the road and start imitating some instant dancing fool from a Pepsi commercial. However, don't try to unravel meaning from lines like: "Yes, it's dark sometimes, when the people are shoving, pushing you into the ground, and you cry in the daylight, with the sun in your eyes." And what does Suicide Blonde, the Australian group's recent hit single, mean? Nothing heavy. Just close your eyes, think of Marilyn Monroe and dance the night away. Still, what the heck, we all need to get down 'n' dance every now 'n' then. And INXS do it in a way that bridges the gap between musical genres.

"Radio in this part of the world is all segmented between classic rock, new hit rock, new music, college stations, your black stations," says guitarist Tim Farriss during a telephone interview. "We've never tried to see ourselves fitting into any category. We use elements of rock and soul. You name it. I think we've ended up filling a role by the very nature of what we do." Michael Hutchence, the group's lead singer and leading sex symbol, agrees.

"Where we were growing up, there wasn't a line between rock and soul and pop and funk or anything. Australia doesn't have an enormous population, so the media has to cater to everybody at once. So we listened to Led Zeppelin and James Brown on the same radio station, thinking that good music is good music, whatever its type." And there are good grooves on its seventh and most recent album, which is why it's been marking its spot at the top of the charts. It's just not ground-breaking. But, as Farriss points out, doing something completely original in this day and age is like saying you've just discovered sex.

It's been done before. "It would be easier to be spearheading some movement or pioneering some territory. That really hit me when we played Mexico City in Jan- INXS: Aussie rockers have always tried to be themselves, instead of projecting a prefabricated image INXS and The Soup Dragons at the Saddledome, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. rolling has apparently kept Farriss forever young. "I still feel like the complete odd person out when I go to pick up my oldest child from school.

All the fathers there look so much older than me." Still, having been together for 14 years, INXS is starting to get up there in terms of band-age. Soon, people will be calling them the Rolling Bones of the '90s. "Hey! It won't be until the next century that we'll be like the Rolling Stones literally." ferent look. "Whatever you're doing, it's very hard to shock people and, to be honest, it's almost pointless trying. The best way to shock people is just to be yourself." Farriss says how shocking that's exactly what the members of INXS do.

"We've always tried to be ourselves and not project any image that isn't us. People don't expect us to dress or act a certain way. We live a life of rock 'n' roll and not an image of it." And living a life of rocking and uary. We were the first (major) band to play there since The Doors and that was a real buzz," says Farriss. "We did three nights in a seater and it felt just great to have that sense of being pioneers.

I mean, it's very hard for a band in the '90s to do that. It's now all just the same old thing with a dif Despite the fame, rock band succeeds in staying genuine By Harry Sumrall (Knighl-Rldder Newspapers) SAN FRANCISCO A line of groupies is peering through the gate of Roddy Bottom's Pacific Heights es REUNITED: From left, Young, Sampedro, Talbot and Molina til a fJ HORSE CRAZY tate when he drives up in his silver Jaguar. A few yell and offer him their bodies, but he cruises on through and hops out at the front has risen from the dead door. A hairdresser is waiting inside, to freshen him up for a public appearance. Roddy sips champagne from a lead crystal goblet and It's all a lie.

"Hi, I'm Roddy," says Faith No More's keyboardist almost shyly. NEIL YOUNG CRAZY HORSE, with Sonic Youth opening, at the Saddledome April 13. and ln9 for furTrr Judas Priest all at By Parry Gettelman (Orlando Sentinel) Crazy Horse called its last album Left for Dead. Not so. The band bassist Billy Talbot, drummer Ralph Molina and guitarist Frank Sampedro is alive and well and on the road again with Neil Young, including a stop at the Saddle-dome on April 13.

Crazy Horse has backed Young off and on since his second solo album, 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. Many of the albums on which the band played Zuma, American Stars 'n' Bars, Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust, Reactor and Life are considered Young's best. "A lot of people think that way, and I think it's obvious to all of us, too," says Talbot. Young's work with Crazy Horse has a garage-rock fervor many fans missed in the '80s, when Young leapfrogged from electronic music to rockabilly to country to blues. "I just think we (Crazy Horse) go for the feel, totally, of the song," Talbot said.

"We get the real feel, and Neil's able to respond in a real way with his guitar solos. He responds to gut feelings rather well." After 1986's Life, Young left Crazy Horse to its own devices. Sampedro and Molina played on This Note's for You but were not part of the main backing band. Talbot and Molina, meanwhile, began collaborating with guitarist Matt Piucci, formerly of Rain Parade, and singer-guitarist Sonny Mone. They were duly inducted into Crazy Horse.

The group used its own money to record Left for Dead, which was picked up by the relatively new Sisnpa Records. The title track, written by Mone, is a furious tribute to experienced musicians Left for Dead with lyrics like: "So they burn you, leave you dyin' in He heads up the path to his apartment, just off a busy Nob Hill street. Inside, there's a mattress tossed on the floor, a body-building gizmo next to. it, a load of stereo gear on a makeshift bookcase and, at the end of the living room-bedroom, a kitchen that could use a good talking-to from Mr. Clean.

It's not the stuff of rock 'n' roll fantasy. But Faith No More's third album is. The Real Thing went platinum in 1990, which means more than a million copies sold in the U.S. alone. A group like that would have to be rich and pretty insufferable by now right? "We're not rich by any middle-class standards," says bassist Billy Gould.

"When we go out to bars with our friends, we buy the drinks. And my girlfriend says that the women at her job keep telling her how to take me for all I've got. But other than that Other than that, Faith No More is about as genuine as the title of its record and its music. Like it or hate it, The Real Thing displays a range of expression that could come only from a bunch of hardcore rock types. There is little of the prefab feel of many heavy-metal records or the plastic "product" sound of pop.

Instead, the tunes bristle with an idiosyncrasy that seems to be, well, 'real. There is the pounding slash-metal rap of Epic and the manic rock 'n' roll of the title cut. And on Woodpecker From Mars the group somehow sounds like King Crimson, Country Joe and the Fish (with Bottum's wheezy keyboards), the Sex Pistols once. Only a group that really likes music and likes to play it as opposed to playing for profit would try such a thing. And make it work.

"I don't know why we sound the way we do," Bottum says. "We do some metal things, and we like to do some things that are melodic, too, and for a while we had this thing about a Middle Eastern sound. It just all seems to balance out when we write our songs." Now about that platinum record. And the acclaim. And the fans.

"We're one of those overnight successes that took years," Gould says. "We spent years playing bars and touring. We toured the U.S. eight times and Europe six times before anything really worked out. Until the past few weeks, we toured steadily for a year and a half." Bottum, Gould, drummer Mike Bordin, guitarist Jim Martin and original vocalist Chuck Mosely formed the group in 1982.

An album was released in 1986, and the group hit the road in a '66 Dodge with a stolen trailer. The song We Care a Lot became a cult hit of sorts and was included on the next album, Introduce Yourself (1987). Tours of Europe followed, with Faith No More making a name good and bad for itself. "In Europe, we were doing stuff to get a reaction," Gould says. "One night we were doing an interview with this guy from a British magazine, and Chuck was drunk and started to get obnoxious.

The guy had the tape (recorder) on and we started fighting with Chuck, and it just became this thing. People thought we were going at it all the time." The result was a flurry of attention from the British press and a "bad" image that seemed to draw in as many fans as had the good notices about its sound. Not that the image was incorrect. When the group came back to the Bay Area in 1988, Mosely quit, and Mike Patton joined. And with his histrionic vocals and over-the-edge performances, the image went from bad to berserk.

The Real Thing was released in 1989. And did a belly flop. Or did it? "When we released The Real Thing, I don't think the label even wanted us," Bottum says. "They didn't know what to do with us." But all that press in Europe paid off. When Faith No More crossed the Big Pond later that year, they realized they had become Pop Stars.

And their label began to take notice. "Warner Bros, really felt stupid about ignoring us. They hadn't broken a group in three years," Gould says. But that changed. And with a video for Epic on MTV and increasing press in the United States and raves from everyone from Guns n' Roses to Metal-lica, The Real Thing became a real hit in 1990.

"We like all the attention," Bottum says. "But we don't want to be sold like breakfast cereal. We are stubborn people, and we want to play whatever we want to play. When we started, we were really reacting to all the commercial groups." the sun, you always knew that one day, they'd find a faster gun" (an obvious parallel to Crazy Horse's abandonment by Young). "That's a pretty angry album," Talbot said.

"We just were in an angry mood, and the song fit the mood." He said it provided a valuable release for the emotions running high at the time. "Music is expression of the self; it's like better than talking," Talbot said. "It's almost like making love. You can't really hide anything, just like you're naked. And the more you get into it, the better it is; the more you express how you feel, the better you feel.

Then people (listening) pick up on it, they feel it, and the mission is accomplished." Young has said he decided to reunite with Crazy Horse after weeding through old recordings for a planned boxed set. He began to realize his best work had been done with the band. Hard feelings from the past didn't get in the way. Talbot and Molina had no problem getting back in the groove to make Ragged Glory, recorded live in the studio with plenty of long jams and extended feedback codas. "It was just like putting on some good old clothes; they just fit right away," Talbot said.

"We all had got together and we'd been playing together so many years, the music's the most important thing. That's what throws you together, making music. You can't let little differences get in the way." Young didn't have much difficulty getting Crazy Horse back on the road, either. "We love to play," Talbot said..