LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 87

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(Sandra Tsing Loh) DANNY ELFMAN Batman: Original Motion Picture Score (Warner Bros.) Look how small Danny Elfman's Batman symbol is on the cover of this album compared to Prince's Batman symbol on his album. I mean, Prince's symbol doesn't even FIT on his soundtrack. Elfman's is this tiny bat-shadow on a bitsy moon in a jet-black sky. Prince's bat is in your face, black on gaudy gold. Elfman's bat is demure, elf-like, embarrassed.

On this "Original Motion Picture Score" (as opposed to Prince's "Motion Picture Elfman captures the moody, strung-out emotions of a late-'80s millionaire in a styrofoam muscle o7 3 suit. Like Warner's batmovie, Elfman's orchestra (the Sinfonia of London Orchestra) drools richness and emotion on a level that is not matched by plot or linear ideas. It's lovely listening, as inspired motif after inspired motif lead to nowhere and nothing, nothing but a reprise and, ultimately, another pile of pointless tinsel and marketing. Where Prince's album has almost nothing to do with the movie but does explode with energy and meaning, much more akin to the wild color-blasts of TV's Batman in spirit, Elfman's album matches Warners ambiguous dribble 100 percent using brutality and grandeur as a substitute for perception. Pretty ironic coming from the guy who played "Only a Lad" in that super-energetic and downright nakedly perceptive Oingo Boingo.

Danny's bat is really a chicken, and Jhe powerlesssall expresslngVourseltjhiswa. can beCTjnotbjnention ho Enemyeithejsdr5vas (51 otherelements Hfr VTa 1 1 i i i'i i 1 1 iggil3IE0Q3Iismc i 7fEffi woartists so. should nstinctivelyequated selfiexpressioitwitfiighting the power, that both vTdeosactuall tshCcaaturnevert tl UheTeaf erotic highf'pointllsdthlipabestlOKWAhena ihLMarleneDiichjndbrazenlenSslB iQhesame.bmelfAndJhlevemesdjjLthy Lfletropolisaiiusionialtho7gtoesj0efrsTsomiletelyl is TrhovvWel jt complementladon? youavetgedim-wttedpop'sinaerCTonjatalie sayldlmostcertainly aveTommitted thIsuaJpB iialapmpisrrof incmdingerlf.ambngtheoppressedjvorkeg jronesllnsteadjVladbnnajeliberately'castsJn manufactured pnncessicorL selling point immiir r2asEH) OTIi maginative. expressions assay eaponuPnoritand Sire AVamerBros Iw one leg in heels, no less and they barely vibrate. Why are her legs opened over a canon? Why are the sailors cheering? Is this a comment on war? The video pushes buttons Vietnam, Cher's buttocks for four minutes and 16 seconds, and in a dull, sloppy way a sullen grip is maintained on my interest.

Cher's Cher who stars in the new rock video, "If I Could Turn Back Time." Scandal! This mother of two who bested Streep for the Oscar has torn off all her clothing to go prancing about on an ocean liner laden with gurgling sailors in a kind of ambiguous personal tribute to the USO, her tattooed buttocks so lean she can hop up and down on waves I greatly enjoyed the letter; for that alone I would buy a bottle of Uninhibited. But let me say here that the Cher who took the time to write me the Cher who once loved a simple muffin- maker called Rob, the Cher of Ladies Home Journal who talked so candidly about turning 40 is not the same CHER "If I Could Turn Bade Time" (Geffen video) Several months ago, I was excited to receive, in my very own mailbox, a letter of a highly personal nature from Cher. Granted, it was a form letter, but as Cher is busy 'round the clock, I was flattered to be included on her computerized national mailing list. After a brief salutation Cher talked openly and compassionately about how women (I had never before imagined that Cher and I were linked, but Cher and I are, of course, both women) smell. Basically, to slap the Lady Speed Stick onto the armpits in the morning is to do oneself a disfavor; with the candor of a sexy older sister, Cher revealed that she likes to dab on her perfume in a figure-eight pattern so that when she moves her clothes rustle gently against her body and an exotic scent wafts towards you in undulating hypnotic This is the first album to come out of Ruthless Records and the N.

W.A. crew since they became an international press phenomenon as the meanest, cruelest, most socially irresponsible and blatantly funky hitmakers in the universe. The D.O.C. is a good rapper, with a powerful, super-uptight voice and rhymes that spring out like menacing jacks in the box just when you think he's about to tread over the same old rap cliches. It's got bravado and loathing and deep sexual phobias (like almost all other rap records around today), but it's also got grace and elocution and literary richness.

Of course, the real TNT in this music is the further producing adventures of Dr. Dre, who does the mixing for N.W.A. and Eazy-E. Dre is a magician, a sound-collage artist to a degree no other producer in rap even touches. On No One Can Do It Better, Dre outdoes the D.O.C.

's lyrical finesse by miles, snatching and blending the tiniest, most obscure milliseconds of funk and dropping them in at the most sublime moments. If the rappers in front of Dre weren't so often obscene, and if the act of sampling and mixing were taken with the slightest bit of seriousness as an art, I'm positive Dre would be considered the Phil Spector of his generation. The D.O.C.'s album includes some live-action playing real drums, real guitar, real bass and vocal cameos by Dre himself. Ice Cube, Ren, Eazy-E, Krazy Dee, JJ Fad and others. Less a dance record than an aural experience (try playing it through headphones).

No One Can Do It Better brings turntable twisting to state-of-the-art, and busts some sucker- punk heads along the way. (Daniel Weizmann) SEPTEMBER 1-SEPTEMBER 7, 1989 LA WEEKLY 89.