ZANG TUMMM TUMB ARTICLES “the first draft of history”

Singles

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

LOVEBUG STARSKI ‘House Rocker’ (Epic) Monster of a record: monstrous record. Coming on like a half breed mix of just about all the most exciting strands in the electronic disco, ‘House Rocker unites go go rhythm, hip hop dynamics and some mighty dirty, brawling electric guitar. It’s a record of abrupt full stops and punctuation marks. It’s a record of wonderful flowing interludes and corny chanted choruses. Take away the awful go go style rap and it’d be as near to perfection as anything’s going to get this week.

CONTENDERS

Played back to back with the Lovebug Starski record, it’s pretty clear that BAD — ‘E=MC2’ (CBS) — haven’t got it quite right. A neat set of clothes, a neat set of ideas in search of a good tune, BAD are still too tentative to grasp the chances they’ve set up for themselves. Their mix of film track, lyrical cut up and hip hop slang production promises much, but here, as on much of their debut LP, the whole thing is not followed through. ‘E=MC2’ may have enough hook to carry it onto the airwaves, but there are too many ends left untied for this to be the realisation of all those neat touches A group that can only grow.

Something that you could have said of ART OF NOISE (featuring Duane Eddy) — ‘Peter Gunn’ (China Records) — but here they’ve stopped looking forwards and started to tread water. Taking Duane’s unmistakeable big twang, if you’ll pardon the expression, they’ve topped this old chestnut with the usual studio decorations, and done it all very neatly. Therein lies the problem though, for while this is on amiable enough cover, it really doesn’t cut the original enough to be worth all the effort.

Something you could say about SHIRLEY MURDOCK’s ‘Truth Or Dare’ (WEA), but that would be a bit cruel. Although it’s a bit of a ‘Billie Jean’ ripper, ‘Truth Or Dare’ is not actually a cover. Still, popped up and down by a variety of tasty keyboard trickery and Shirley’s sugar’n’spice vocal delivery, this is superior chart soul fodder.