that convey elevated sentiments, pure pop THE MOOG COOKBOOK. for now -and -then people - all that and Rhs I LEsti 72914 (45 min). more can he found on "Live atSpirit Performance: Necessary Square." P.P. Recording: Whiz-bang e omebod) had to do this sooner or later: BILL KIRCKEN: Have Love, Will Travel. 1117 's greatest hits rendered BLACK TOP 1130 (44 min(. in the style of those tacky, instrumental Performance: Head -turning Moog that were briefly the rage in Recording: Good the Seventies. In fact, this sort of thing has

MPill Kirchen is the man responsible for been done before: Devo used to release the high-powered guitar licks in Com- easy -listening versions of its own songs, mander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen's and Seattle musician Sarah DeBell scored a Hot Rod Lincoln. If you liked that, you'll be recent cult hit with the CD "Grunge Lite." entranced by "Have Love, Will Travel" - But neither of those projects had the deli- a rip-roarin', impeccably played composite cious nastiness of "The Moog Cookbook," of rock, western swing, blues, , which takes ten sacred -cow songs down a twang, doo-wop, and R&B sealed with the few pegs. personal stamp of a very funny if nerdy - Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun, for in- Ben Folds Five: world's biggest trio? bright guy. Whether he's pondering "Which stance. becomes an unholy cross of generic Came First" - the heartache or the sad bossa nova and the theme to the old Dating Contempt for the smug and self-satisfied is song - or steering home two oddball Game TV show, while the deep brooding dished out in Sports & Wine, a song you trucker's songs (Womb to the Tomb, a of 's Free Fallin' gets trashed should play at the first opportunity for that "dieselbilly" ghost saga, and Nitro Express, via robot vocals and some Rick Wakeman- certain obnoxious someone in your life. A about trying to commandeer a runaway esque keyboard flourishes. Even less mercy split-second segue leads into yet another load), Kirchen is that rarest of breeds: a is shown R.E.M.'s The One I Love and character study. Uncle Walter, about a bag first-rate, serious axeman and a dyed-in-the- Green Day's Basket Case, both of which of wind from another generation: "And he wool musicai prankster. Chances are, you'll come out sounding like space-age bachelor - sees the children smoking pot / He knows thank him for it. A.N. pad music gone horribly wrong. The most that in a moment they'll be shooting up deserving target. 's Are You heroin / Teardrops in his armchair / A 50 - MARIA Mann: Life Is Sweet. minute lecture / Tobacco juice rolling down GI 24814 (SI min). his chin." These irreverent musings are Performance: Stand back THE DISCONTENT OF breathlessly yelped as the band frolics in its Recording: Very good own alternative universe, where the tunes 61lie Is Sweet" is the breakthrough al- OUR WINTERS are usually uptempo, the playing is virtu- bum for Maria McKee. a dizzying, osic. and the spirit is animated. Do not miss soul -baring work that catches you up in the Talk about our over -litigious society: this record: It's the freshest thing I've heard G -force of her insistent, confessional can- Now comes word that Johnny and in years. P.P. dor. McKee confronts and exorcises her de- Edgar Winter, America's best -loved mons in a suite of songs that unfurl with a albino twin -brother rock stars, are MARTI JONES: Live at Spirit Square. bruising but liberating intensity. Make no suing DC Comics. Seems the Winters SUGAR HiLL 5502 (71 mini. mistake: This is her . She wrote or took exception to two suspiciously Performance: Definitive overview co -wrote all the songs. She plays all but a familiar -looking bad guys featured in Recording: Excellent handful of guitar parts and sings as if her he new Marti Jones album is actually sanity hangs in the balance. This isn't just r Tsix years old, but after a hiatus triggered some grungehead's fashionable and gener- by motherhood and music -biz disenchant- alized disenchantment with the way the ment, anything from this siren -voiced sing- world works: McKee fearlessly decon- er is welcome. Recorded in concert in structs her own life with strokes both boldly Charlotte, North Carolina, in front of what hacked and finely etched. amounted to a hometown crowd. "Live at Her agitation finds expression in restless Spirit Square" was originally conceived as songs that modulate uneasily and lash out a promo -only CD to help fan the flames for when a Pandora's box of repressed memo- Jones's then -current album, "Any Kind of ries is opened. Listen to the sudden surge in JOHNNY WINTER Lie." Instead, it languished in the vault, and volume and intensity that turns I'm Not Lis- now it serves as a career overview and a re- tening from painful remembrance to primal minder of just how much Jones has been scream. Like Marianne Faithful! or Yoko missed in this decade. Ono, McKee strips back layers to expose At the time of the recording, she had a the hidden kernel of pure, unadulterated simpatico ensemble, including bassist/pro- feeling. The little -girl voice of Everybody ducer/husband Don Dixon and guitarist bears a child's hopeful wish - "Every- Jamie Hoover (of the amazing Sponge - body, everybody gets to be somebody tones). The arrangements here are artfully sometime / Maybe tomorrow" - while the uncluttered and classy, building on a rhyth- music paints a bright, pop -hued rainbow mic framework provided by Dixon. percus- around her. The ghosts of family members sionist Jim Brock, and drummer Toni Wil- and childhood traumas haunt songs like helm. Refreshingly, there is no stooping to Smarter and Human, which describe cycles the adolescent mindset (wrongly assumed of compulsive and codependent behavior DC's recent Jonah Hex mini-series, to be the only target audience for rock that while rising to emotional and musical who (I) are albino twin brothers matters). A brace of Dixon/Jones originals, crescendos that are like a bloodletting. named Johnny and Edgar Autumn, many from "Any Kind of Lie," are fleshed "Life Is Sweet" is not an easy album to (2) are half-human/half-worm, out with covers of Elvis Costello. John Hi- listen to: it couldn't have been an easy one and (3) apparently have sex with barn- att. and others that demonstrate Jones's to make. All the same, itis a brave and yard animals. Hey, dudes, where's ability to claim a song as her own. thrilling one, suffused with the will to rise your sense of humor? S.S. Peerless vocals, flawless playing. songs above and rebuild a scarred life. P.P.

STEREO REVIEW JULY 1996 79