Dead Guy Sorely Missed

LONG BEACH DUB ALLSTARS
Right Back
(DreamWorks Records)

On October 16th, the Long Beach Dub Allstars will make an appearance at Palookaville in Santa Cruz. At the risk of making rash predictions, the show will probably be a real downer. After all, it's been 13 years since Sublime's singer Brad Nowell first went to Santa Cruz as a freshman in college; the Long Beach Dub Allstars are what's left of Sublime after Brad died. The downer part is that if their new CD is any indication, the Allstars' show in Santa Cruz will only prove how much Brad is missed.

Sublime got off to a strong start. Their first gig sparked the infamous Long Beach Peninsula Riot of 1988. By 1995, they'd built a huge surf/skate following up and down the California coast, winning points with their thrashing reggae and hard-living image.

The partying was more than image, though, and a friend of mine who knew the band in their early years testified that Brad in particular was always screwed up on something and generally a pain in the ass. The other members -- Eric on bass, Bud on drums, and Miguel the manager -- were always much cooler and in control of themselves. But in the end, it was Brad Nowell who "took one for the team": his overdose in a San Francisco hotel room in 1996 may have killed Sublime, but it also made them famous. A Rolling Stone article about heroin chic featured Brad's death, and Sublime's self-titled album started selling like Wet Naps at Woodstock.

This is undoubtedly what Right Back, the title of the Allstars' record, refers to: a brief moment of outrageous success for the Sublime formula of white punk, spiced with reggae grooves and a cholo fashion sense. This album won't bring that moment right back, though, mainly because neither Eric, Bud, nor Miguel can sing anything like Brad. The best vocal spots feature Barrington Levy, a Jamaican dub reggae vocalist who sits in on just two tracks. But even the trademark dub-to-punk transitions that made Sublime so compelling are choppy and senseless on Right Back. The Long Beach Dub Allstars have their place, and I don't question their motives, but this album won't stand up to comparisons with Sublime. The Long Beach Dub Allstars are proof that despite all of his arrogant junkie faults, Brad Nowell made Sublime what it was. -- Nathan Thornburgh

Graduating Seniors Hit the Sophomore Slump

THE RONDELLES
The Fox
(Teenbeat Records)

There's a wonderful Yo La Tengo video -- okay, there are several, but there's one in particular, for the song "Sugarcube," in which the threesome get yelled at by their label bosses for filming an unmarketable video which features the three of them standing in a dimly lit room, staring at the floor, playing softly. The label honchos lecture them and send them to Rock School to learn how to be rock stars.

The Rock School professor, in full Gene Simmons makeup, teaches Ira how to smash a guitar, hits on Georgia ("You're really showing a lot of promise...." "Look, um, I have a boyfriend."), and shows them all the moves. In the end, they've filmed a number one hit video featuring the three of them standing in the same dimly lit room, staring at the floor, playing softly.

The Rock School lesson is obvious. Yo La Tengo is a damn good band, and Gene Simmons can teach them nothing. If only the Rondelles had learned the same lesson.

Their first album, last year's Fiction Romance, Fast Machines, was garage rock as it was meant to be played -- fast, cheap, and out of control. The 12-song record tops out at 23 minutes. The instruments are noisy, the timing is sloppy, the band members giggle and shout in the background, and the recording quality is next to nonexistent. In other words, they did everything right.

With their second album, The Fox, the Rondelles made a cardinal sin in the world of garage rock. They hired a producer. They could have done worse -- they could have hired Ric Ocasek. As it is, they just got someone to make the songs sound like they weren't recorded in a basement, but just doing that was enough to upset the delicate balance that made the first album work. They don't sound worse -- technically they sound better -- but with clean guitar and tight drumbeats they sound like every other band, which is a shame following a debut that had so much character.

That's not to say The Fox doesn't have its hooks. There's a break in "Mystery Bleach," with Juliet singing "Sentimental, sen-ti-men-tal" over a drum beat simple enough that Oakley can also play a simple keyboard part and two quick chords at the end of every measure. It's the kind of pure, simple, even stupid rock 'n' roll that's exactly what makes a lot of bands work.

This band is at their best when they're stripped down, and not because there's something inherently superior about lo-fi. The whole idea of the Rondelles, and their stated intent to write the cheesiest rock 'n' roll songs imaginable, deconstructs the idea of three-chord, boy-meets-grrl rock 'n' roll. The songs work at their best when they're stripped down to the point at which you can see their simple mechanisms at work. Tight drum beats and guitar overdubs obscure the lesson that the sloppy rhythms and raw fuzz of Fiction Romance illuminated: Rock 'n' roll isn't about smashing your guitars and turning your amps up to 11. It's about three kids having a good time making some noise. -- Mike Vago

Why Get Your Jazz from NYC When the Home Brew Is Just as Good?

BEN THOMAS
The Madman's Difference
(Origin Arts)

"Ballard Jazz" is still far from being a household catch phrase, but Origin Arts Music is trying to change that. Under the direction of John Bishop, Seattle's most furiously gigging jazz drummer, Origin Arts has produced a baker's dozen of high-quality local jazz releases in recent years. Most of the records have leaned heavily on mainstay jazzers like Don Lanphere, Marc Seales, and Bishop himself, but the label has been expanding in 1999, first producing the debut album of drummer Steve Korn and now releasing The Madman's Difference, vibraphonist Ben Thomas' first record.

Ballard folk (Ballardites? Ballardians?) may remember that Ben Thomas spent his spring holding the jazz line at the Old Town Alehouse with his trio. But hosting a weekly jazz jam is no obvious symptom of greatness. Good improvisers are not necessarily good band leaders or good composers, but Ben Thomas manages to do all three jobs well enough to make The Madman's Difference as good a straight-ahead album as you're likely to find coming out of Seattle.

The secret, of course, is math. Or at least, that's how Thomas himself sees it. A mathematician in college, he enrolled in a rigorous Masters in Musical Improvisation program for his post-graduate study, and began studying improvised music as quasi-mathematical variations in timbre, dynamics, and instrumentation. Although that may sound like a nerdy approach to music, the payoff is evident throughout the album.

In compositions like "Melicatu," the first track of the album, precise changes in rhythm and dynamics create a series of fresh backgrounds for alternating solos by Brazilian wunder-pianist Jovino Santos Neto and Thomas. Most of his compositions share this calculating crispness: Even though the instrumentation remains mostly the same, the songs vary in structure, dynamics, and feel enough to hold the listener in place.

The only knock on The Madman's Difference is that the dominance of vibes and soprano may take some getting used to: It's an uncommonly delicate sound. But once your ear has worked through that, the album has enough nuance to offer some new improvisational or compositional virtue each time you put it on.

But perhaps the most pressing reason to buy this album is local pride: This is Seattle jazz, and it's good. You drink Hale's Ale and eat only Washington apples, so why get your jazz from New York City when the home brew is just as good?

[The Madman's Difference can be found at Bud's Records, Orpheum, or at www.originarts.com] -- Nathan Thornburgh

PRINCE

The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale

(Warner Bros.)

His name is Prince... but he ain't very funky. Or rather, his former record company isn't, for allowing this release -- yet another -- of out-takes and half-formulated studio ideas originally recorded between '85 and '94. It's telling that the finest track here, the brash, lively ego-strut of "The Rest of My Life" is under two minutes long. "It's About that Walk" and "5 Women," too, are fair sub-"Sign O' the Times" brass-led funk workouts, and both the title track and "There Is Lonely" are appealingly dark, but that's about it. Elsewhere, the album degenerates into interminable jazz noodling, all guitar twiddles this and guitar twiddles that... exactly the sort of thing followers of the diminutive, purple-clad sexy thang have grown to expect and loathe over the years. One for serious Prince fanatics only. EVERETT TRUE

BOY GEORGE

The Unrecoupable One Man Bandit, Volume One

(Back Door)

Like every good queen, George is an unabashed sentimentalist. Forget all those floor-filling stints he does as DJ with Ministry Of Sound and the cash cow reunions of Culture Club; what he really loves is a good, old-fashioned wallow. Witness his sentimental, slushy reaching out for his estranged brother Gerald, on the God-fearing "Broken Spirit." Witness his pub rock reading of Bowie's "Suffragette City" and KISS-esque righteous diatribe against MTV on "Who Killed Rock 'n' Roll." This isn't to say this album is bad -- not at all. Songs like the anti-Clinton "GI Josephine" and almost gospel "Spooky Truth" resonate with good humor, intelligence, and consummate early '80s pop style -- more surprising, in its full-on traditionalism. Mostly recorded in '96 following George's tour of the U.S., it could've easily been written 15 years earlier. EVERETT TRUE

Love as Laughter

Destination 2000

(Sub Pop)

If you're any kind of rock fan, there's bound to be something for you on Destination 2000, as nearly every track represents some sound or era of the genre. There's the vaguely '80s punk of opener "Stay out of Jail," and the modernized glam of "Aftermath," followed by a pretty good approximation of Jesus and Mary Chain's more playful moments on "Margaritas." Later tracks reveal that LAL is also smitten with Velvet Underground, Bowie, the Stones, and even cute li'l indie rock. Yeah, it sounds like it would annoy the crap out of any self-respecting rock lover, but when it's done this well, this consistently, who cares? KATHLEEN WILSON