LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 79

4 FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23-THURSDAY MARCH 1, 1990 LA WEEKLY 79 'I 3 cover that Hatfield purrs through, her self-knowledge starts to know no bounds. That sense of belonging to the music, of being its slave and its channel, is what the Blakes have in abundance; the wobbly charm of conviction, a clarity of soul. In many ways Eanvig is only a young record, audibly innocent and clean. It is also somewhat exhausting. like a ride up a steep hill full of blind curves.

That kind of ride can end in tears, but it sure is fun while it lasts. (Gina Arnold) EARTH, WIND AND FIRE Heritage (Columbia) An Earth, Wind and Fire record, back in the late 70s, turned the rec room into a patchouli-scented, stately pleasure dome. All All and I Am were showy and shot through with burnished brass arrangements and flossy strings. African percussion and a cap-pella chants paid homage to the Motherland, MIDNIGHT OIL Blue Sky Mining (CBS) Midnight Oil is a perplexing band. My best calculation is that they're a post-punk Moody Blues: they can arrange their asses off; they're terribly earnest about their subject matter; they're prone to fabulously overblown, melodramatic presentation.

On Blue Sky Mining, much as on their last three LPs, the immediate problem is identity. You've got a group of gifted players (a tremendous drummer, gorgeous keyboards) who grace the songs with the required rage or sensitivity the music is passionate, or elegant and spacious. But singer Peter Garrett the tall baldie with political aspirations, has this habit of yelling all the time. He can't sing, but he can declaim. What Garrett inveighs against exploitation of workers, sexism, pollution are very bad things, to be sure.

But you've got to approach this stuff with a smidgen of An exception to this rule is Boston's Blake Babies. Their bassist-singer, Juliana Hatfield, is a woman whose voice sounds positively nubile, minus the lurking presence of any dirty old producers in the background. This. I'm convinced, is because Hatfield plays bass and guitar and co-writes all the Blakes' songs with guitarist John Strohm. The music is her own a sense that is missing from the creepy girl-vocals of the Primitives or SSQ or Berlin.

It makes all the difference. The Blake Babies is a band that happens to have two women in it (Hatfield and drummer Freda Boner), not a band that found a woman to front it. It would be simplistic to say that what's good about the Blake Babies is its feminine slant, since John Strohm (formerly of the hardcore outfit the Lemon-heads) is the one who makes the band rock out. But, as wasis the case with dueling-gender bands like the Reivers. Downy Mildew.

and the Walkabouts, there is a femi- sis), but Jonathan Bichman isn't naive. Here, hes using the Moonglows and Paul Anka for the cheapest of purposes: the ironist's. We don't need to be told of the "Fender Strato-caster," "Well the sound is thin and the is cheaplike a tin can failin' on a deadend street" any more than we're plunged into warm smiles at the mention of Thrifty-Washes in small towns and how hot she looked in just jeans and a shirt. But this album is not for an audience that might agree. It's for his audience, and our only honest response (and this is the sad thing) is nostalgia created from images, not memories, or just indifference.

So between the lame Spanish and French songs, the straight lounge covers and a bit of performance art (a cute poem entitled "I Eat With Gusto, Damn! You Richman constructs a skeleton from the barest bones of early rock roll and then impersonates his creation. Only on Closer" does he update his cliches! this time using relationship psychobabble, and inironically to boot. As for those covers, "Blue Moon" is one of the best ever, played with attention to its intricacy and paced to a slow swing. The other is "Sleepwalk," which no reasonably faithful version can destroy I'm just grateful to have the song on a record that doesn't hiss and crackle. selves into the present, in what just might turn into an instant trend of the early '90s, mega-artists of yore have been flanking themselves with "special guests." TV-variety-show-style (e.g., Quincy Jones and his new crew featuring everyone from Take 6 to Big Daddy Kane).

EWF chose rappers M.C. Hammer and the Boys as their chaperones. M.C. Hammer postures both icy and insistent throughout while Bailey and White understand that old hands should never try to.be new jacks. Their gauzy voices lace ih and out of the background, becoming an unlikely, though successful, complement to Hammer's full-force delivery.

Heritage doesn't eschew the familiar; we get horns, harmonies and the grand-scale opulence (most notably the finale, There are the hidden heirlooms as well: Sly Stone's voice unfolds out of mothballs hes wound tight and is especially raw and cranky. The whole is randomly interspersed with brief interludes "Soweto." "Bird," "Faith" representing Africa, the jazz tradition and unwavering religious allegiance, all cornerstones of the African-American experience. A little busy, hmmm? And you rfoget the feeling that nobody's quite sure where it's all headed this decade. But as songwriters. Earth, Wind and Fire can still design sacred musical hideaways, at once intricate and effortless.

Pass jMSEf mrra RESTLESS HEART "Post Movin' Train" (BMGRCA single) gambli sound singetsongwriter 1535 EE nuTjT tvrrrrrrr.n Stewar fcfrcsjT guesse I 3HTi nll33(jEJT 00X1 XCEH3S1M-1 2H3 ISOCQaSlBDCHiJ' t- S9EU0iiES i I -2 'i i 4 'tit 0333 C3 aS-Tfc-J3XC5l E3tuEEtSJ MU $KOmi5QaBGt JOwMtltiS Tear- irs; i lirnri issu utjeos jc3 QIJSrH23iaE5-3I'0 U3j5) Ton $0X170 03 iEJipP.s: rtrrmnrrtt rrrnTirr 2BU nine presence here that sets the music apart from that of a four-guy band. This is because Hatfield is right inside every word she's singing. On Earwig she speaks, childishly, of childish things. But they are berthings, from the beach that's been wrecked by pollution (Cess Pool) to the shallow guy whom she eventually sees through (You Dont Give Up). That's a common enough love-scenario, but what's more unusual is the way in which Hatfield's disappointment often leads to a triumph of mind that's flat-out invigorating for those listeners who are less strong-willed.

On songs like "Your Way or the Highway," "Alright" and "Take Your Head Off My Shoulder," she sings of romantic disillusionment that results not in despair or sadness, but in freedom and pleasure. It's as if nothing bad's ever happened to her. "People wish that I'd come back, well, I don't wanna do that, is her conclusion, a calm but clear-sighted kiss-off to the powers that be. On "Loose," the Stooges INTO THE BLACK Back when the brothers were draped in dashikis and tended to their 'fros with red, black and green picks, even soul singer Billy Paul took time out from wooing Mrs. Jones to challenge, "Am I black enough for ya?" Almost 20 years later, what constitutes being black has undergone a dramatic, cultural metamorphosis: today Bad Brains are just as def as Frankie Beverly.

On Monday, February 26, the L.A. chapter of the Black Rock Coalition will host 'The Direction of Black Music in the 1990s, a panel discussion featuring DJs, recording in dustry execs, musicians and community activists who will predict what the future just might hold foe black music from the viability of black rock to the impact of race on marketing strategies. These roundtables stress education and encourage community input two of the BRC fundamental goals. Fall on by and let your feelings be known. (Lynell George) 'The Direction of Black Music in the 1990s, Golden State Mutual Auditorium, 1999 W.

Adams Blvd. at Western Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m.; admission is free. (213) 960-7730. subtlety, or you're going to come off pedantic, dogmatic, irritating, like Garrett.

Sometimes this overbearing voice in your face, in tandem with the dignifiedlovely music, produces an intriguing betweeri-area (wordsvoice and music birthing something beyond the properties of each) where your heart, mind, body, soul, whatever becomes engaged. But that doesn't happen often here. I'd love to hear this band do an instrumental album, though. As for Garrett, he would probably be a first-class MC at a rally to save baby harp seals, or something along those lines. (John Payne) BLAKE BABIES Earwig (Mammoth) Be wary of bands with baby-voiced female singers.

Those groups may be young in years, but their minds are as dodderingly lecherous and degraded as the folds in Mick Jagger's fleshy old face. Otherwise, Richman pisses on the rockers who inspired him; that's his way of growing up and moving out. The man should never have gotten laid. (Arion Berger) THE TAIL GATORS Hide Your Eyes (Restless) Cuh-moa-uhn, bay-he-buh, let's have some funt Well, it's roots-rock, don't you know, and the Tail Gators slip 'n' slide all over the damn genre. They grease it up real good.

The Gators are a Texas trio, and so the hookah and settle in. (Lynell George) JONATHAN RICHMAN Jonathan Richman (Rounder) With the Modern Lovers and on his own, Jonathan Richman sent up flares from where dangerous '50s rock met his own cocktail proclivities. Whatever came of this besides something fresh, respectful and joyous was never petty. Richman gets away with a lot as a naif a retard," snaps a colleague; I consider this an alternative analy- and nobody knew his way around a steamy sex-song better than Maurice White and Philip Bailey. These sensuous falsettos dimmed the lights faster than Barry White's rumbling basso demands.

They were an everyman's band who could sell out the Fabulous Forum in record time spans or would, in mere moments, integrate racially divided high school dance floors. Seems as though this mighty ensemble slumbered through the bulk of the '80s, yet with Heritage, the men still seem to be shaking off sleep's remains. To help usher them-.