Newsday from New York, New York • 93

I 17 laMilUHMM Bodyguard Plays It Safe home studio somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania by a couple of strange guys named Dean and Gene, Pure Guavas 19 stylistically promiscuous songs cover an emotional spectrum ranging from bucolic (Little Birtfy) and exhilarating (Push th Daisies) to disturbing (Mourning Glory) and unabashedly obnoxious (Pumping 4 the Man). lake nlffcw technobillies. Ween employs a game little drum machine and primitive effects to invoke such eariy-70s vinyl icons as David Bowie, Peter Frampton, Elton John, and other inhabitants of your local used-record stores 99-cent bin. Do I need to mention the extent to which their homage is ambivalent? Fueled by anger and awe, in nearly equal proportions, Weens backwoods grunge pop is a thing of unsettling beauty. Richard Gehr By Wayne Robins stavt warns L.

JHE SOUND TRACK to The Bodyguard I I ia Whitney Hoiutona new album, sort of. I I With aix new Houaton tracks, its more I I like half a new Houston album. The other half is a collection of trailers featuring her Arista Records labdmates Kenny (who performs with Aaron Neville), Lisa Stansfield, Curtis Stigers, and The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. (A 6-year-old Joe Cocker-Sass Jordan song is tacked on at the end).

Any doubts about Houstons continuing commercial appeal should be dispelled by the runaway hit I Will Always Love You, the albums opening track and the sound tracks first single. It took just three weeks for the single to top the Billboard chart, the fastest rise to No. 1 since Paul McCartneys Unde Albert Halsey in 1971. The song a Dolly Parton composition, unexpectedly has an admirably simple arrangement, leaving Houston plenty of room for some compelling gospel melisma. Its one of three tracks produced by middle-of-the-road master David Foster.

I Have Nothing is faceless pop-soul, the kind of filler tune Arista has the knack of finding for Aretha Franklin or Dionne Warwick. Rim to You" is similarly unexceptional, a big ballad in the Manilow mold. By contrast, Queen of the Night has Houston rocking out, complete with an elaborate, uncredited electric guitar solo. In theory, its nice to hear Houston cutting loose. But although she had worked with producers L.

A. Reid and Babyface on her Im Your Baby Tonight album, Houston doesnt make a convincing baaaad woman here. She finds most satisfying middle ground on her cover of Chaka Khans Im Every Woman, on a track put together by blue-chip committee. The basic track was produced by Narada Michael Walden; Khan is credited for inspiring the vocal ar rangement, which is a polite way of admitting Houston really didnt find her own hsndle for the song. The tame but pleasant mainstream dance groove is the result of additional production and remix by Robert Clivilles and David Cole, the Cof the Music Factory.

I presume we can expect the remix EP by half a dozen other producers any week now. The final Houston tune on The Bodyguard is Jesus Loves Me, a gospel standard produced and featuring vocal arrangement by Houston and BeBe Winans. Its a nicely understated performance so much so that its almost immediately forgettable. The presumptive success of the Houston tracks should provide a marketing opportunity for the others on the album: With the exception of Joe Cocker and Sass Jordans negligible Trust in Me, each of the other tracks features an Arista artist Suburban saxman Kenny is featured with Aaron Neville on Even If My Heart Would Break, an incredibly derivative People Get Ready knock-off. Neville would sound gorgeous reciting the alphabet, but Kenny Gs banal tone undermines what even this prince of New Orleans can achieve.

Lisa Stansfields Someday (Im Coming Back) showcases a good singer saddled with a bore of a song, which she co-wrote. Clivilles and Cole are the prime movers behind The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M.s harmless rap ballad Its Gonna Be a Lovely Day." And though music lovers should be happy that Nick Lowe stands to make some money off (Whats So Funny Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, recorded here by Curtis Stigers, it doesnt much change ones opinion of Stigers. Hes a superstar wannabe without much justification whose handlers seem insistent on making him the hip Michael Bolton at any cost. Trey Lomz1 (Epic) When Mariah Carey tapped him to join the back-up team far her Unplugged EP, Trey Lorenz nearly stole the show with his interpretation of Jermaines part on Careys hit version of the Jackson 5's Ill Be There.

The pop diva lends her considerable influence to this effort, helping to produce the albums premier single, Someone to Hold, and in attracting an all-star cast of producers and Bongwriters that includes Lionel Richie, BeBe Winans and Glen Ballard. Although the album is a bit ballad-heavy, the 23-year-old wisely follows in his mentors footsteps, showcasing his considerable vocal range throughout from his falsetto ad libs to the stirring lows of the albums bump-and-grind cuts. Lorenz helped write nearly every song on the album; his impassioned pop-soul ballads soar cm the strength of their melodies. Granted, this is familiar territory, but some songs, in particular Photograph of Mary and Richies Just to Be Close to You," are so Buperbly produced (both by Carey) that they sound fresh. Keith Thomas oversees a couple of the albums other standouts: the Bolid Run Back to Me, one of the discs few uptempo numbers, and the celebratory Baby Im in Heaven.

Lorenz loses his footingonly with a lifeless new jack swing number driven by drum machines and a lightweight plea for racial harmony that would better serve Up With People. A promising, mature debut. Andy Jones Pure Guava Warn (Elektra) By dint of chutzpah alone. Ween falls somewhere between They Might Be Giants (minus the cutes) and the Beastie Boys (minus the forced B-boy tude). Recorded in a fly-infested four-track The Real World Beat By Frank Owen Playground Psycbotics Frank Zappa (Barking Pumpkin) Have you ever wondered what famous rock and roll bands really talk about on the road? Me neither.

Which is why this double-CD half music, half documentary is so surprising. During an early- 70s Mothers of Invention world tour, Frank Zappa eavesdropped on his band with a portable tape recorder, invading its privacy and preserving the impromptu witticisms, grumbling, and sleazy stories that inspired his movie 200 Motels. The results are both stupider and more revealing than youd expect. The sets other half contains previously unreleased material from the same period, one in which the Mothers virtu osic and spontaneous condemned-music hall chops were at their apex, working the blues and the Stravinsky. Special bonus: Zappas half-hour mix of the raucous Lennon Ono Mothers jam that appeared on Some Time in New York City.

Psychotic indeed. Richard Gehr dose encounters of every kind Brighter minds to which we too bind Catch a notion about the secrets of creation We sense. Bight, understand our collective imagination. Someone who knows a lot about the secrets of creation is Terence McKenna, the ethnobotanist, psychedelic traveler and leading theorist of the neo-pagan revival who is interviewed by the Shamen on Scientas," a track from the U.K. outfit's intriguing new LP, Boss Drum.

It says a lot about the current healthy state of dance music that a complicated philosopher like McKenna is being introduced to a mass audience over a four-on-the-floor beat. Three other albums by U.K. dance groups are largely instrumental affairs where the listener is encouraged to project his or her meaning onto the abstract spaces created by the music. The most daring is the Orbs U. F.Orb, an album of so-called ambient house music where the vast soundscape of the nearly 18-minute-long Blue Room dwarfs a 49-second cut like Sticky End.

The most commercial of this bunch is Sesames Treet by Smart Es, a British quartet that recently scored a pop hit with a techno version of the theme from Sesame Street. In between the Orb and Smart Es comes Eon and Void Dweller," a collection of sci-fi dance musk that provides the missing link between techno and house musk. Though these albums are sometimes gimmicky and too generic, they make the point that dance music, not rap, is pops true global language. Frank Owen is a free-lance writer. Cra HE DJ-driven, ecstasy-fueled global un-I I derground that is contemporary dance I I music began in America with Chicago I I house.

New York garage, and Detroit techno. But it is Europe, especially Britain, where the culture has most successfully taken root. A string of new releases One World Nation (SBK) by Ya Kid Boss Drum (Epic) by the Shamen, Sesames Treet (Big Beat) by Smart Es, U. F.Orb (Big Life) by the Orb, and Void Dweller (Vinyl Solution Columbia) by Eon show that in Europe dance music is not regarded as the limiting medium it is seen as in this country. Overseas, chib music is a vehicle for musical experimentation and, on occasion, the expression of serious ideas about the nature of the post-modern, post-industrial, post-human world we live in.

Why cant we be one world nation?" pleads Technotronic rapper Ya Kid on the title track of her debut solo album, evoking an image, common in dance musk, of a planet transformed on the model of the utopian community experienced on the dance floor. There, differences of race, gender, and nationality are magically dissolved. One World Nation is a far more ambitious work than one might expect coming from the skinny, bi-racial androgyne who crops up in Technotronic videos. Flitting effortlessly from reggae to techno-house, ftom rap to soulftu ballads, Ya Kid occasionally lapses into corny platitudes (The Kids Shall Overcome is the LPs alternative title) but on most of the album she exhibits a restless musical and lyrical On Life," over an eerie orchestral backdrop, Bhe raps lines like Onto SUNDAY. NOVEMBER 29.

1992 FmFM.