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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <link rel=stylesheet href="/rxgau.css" type="text/css"> <meta name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW"> <title>Robert Christgau: CG Book '80s: Z</title> </head> <body bgcolor="#e0ffff"> <table width="100%" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=10> <tr><td colspan=2 bgcolor="#1010e0"> <a class=xlnk href="/"><img class=xlnk src="/rxgau.gif" width=287 height=47 alt="Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics"></a> </td></tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#1010e0" valign=top> <table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 border=1> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap><a class=xlnk href="/cg.php">Consumer Guide:</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/web/cgusers.php">User's Guide</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php">Grades 1990-</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/bk-cg70/grades.php">Grades 1969-89</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="https://robertchristgau.substack.com/">And It Don't Stop</a> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap><a class=xlnk href="/books.php">Books:</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-bkreps.php">Book Reports</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-isitya.php">Is It Still Good to Ya?</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-goitc.php">Going Into the City</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-cg90s.php">Consumer Guide: 90s</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-guaw.php">Grown Up All Wrong</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-cg80s.php">Consumer Guide: 80s</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-cg70s.php">Consumer Guide: 70s</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-aow.php">Any Old Way You Choose It</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/bk-fest.php">Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough</a> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap><a class=xlnk href="/xgausez.php">Xgau Sez</a></td></tr> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap>Writings:   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/dontstop/index.php">And It Don't Stop</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/cg/index.php">CG Columns</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/bn/index.php">Rock&Roll& [new]</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/rock/index.php">Rock&Roll& [old]</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/music/index.php">Music Essays</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/cdrev/index.php">Music Reviews</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/bkrev/index.php">Book Reviews</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/najp/index.php">NAJP Blog</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/play/index.php">Playboy</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/bl/index.php">Blender</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/rs/index.php">Rolling Stone</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/bb/index.php">Billboard</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/vr/index.php">Video Reviews</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/pnj/index.php">Pazz & Jop</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/recyc/index.php">Recyclables</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/news/index.php">Newsprint</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/list/index.php">Lists</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/xg/misc/index.php">Miscellany</a> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap><a class=xlnk href="/biblio.php">Bibliography</a></td></tr> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap><a class=xlnk href="/xg/npr/index.php">NPR</a></td></tr> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap>Web Site:   <a class="xlnk" href="/index.php">Home</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/map.php">Site Map</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/contact.php">Contact</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/newest.php">What's New?</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/rss.php"><img src="/images/rss-button-12.jpg">  RSS</a> <tr><td class=xlnk nowrap>Carola Dibbell:   <a class="xlnk" href="http://caroladibbell.com/">Carola's Website</a>   <a class="xlnk" href="/u/cd/">Archive</a> <tr><td class=xlnk><a class=xlnk href="/get_artist.php">CG Search:</a> <form method=get action="/get_artist.php"> <input type=text name=name size=15> </form></tr> <tr><td class=xlnk><a class="xlnk" href="https://google.com/search">Google Search:</a> <form method="get" action="https://google.com/search" target="_blank"> <input type="hidden" name="sitesearch" value="robertchristgau.com"> <input type="text" name="q" size="15" maxlength="255"> </form></tr> <tr><td class="xlnk"><a class="xlnk" href="https://twitter.com/rxgau">Twitter:</a></td></tr> <tr><td><a href="https://twitter.com/rxgau" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false">Follow @rxgau</a> <script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');</script> </td></tr> </table> </td><td valign=top width="100%">  <a href="/bk-cg80s.php"> <img src="/images/cg80s.jpg" height=145 width=95 align=right border=0 alt="CG-80s Book Cover"></a><h2>Consumer Guide '80s: Z</h2> Chaba Zahouania: Nights Without Sleeping (Mango, 1989) Maybe singers dominate rai where Arabic is spoken, but as an export it's producer's music. When Rachid and Fethi electrify conventional Algerian arrangements on the A, Zahouania remains a travelogue novelty for all her lowdown. Second side they go to town--the pulse and timbre and timing and juxtapositions of the indelibly Middle Eastern elements are all arrogantly eclectic in the great rock-disco tradition, only this time these priceless cultural resources are misused, and transfigured, by insiders. B+ Zapp: Zapp (Warner Bros., 1980) "More Bounce to the Ounce," exactly. Like Bootsy's other funk alternative, Roger Troutman is a bit light--even when he grooves rather than croons he bounces rather than whomps. What makes him a smash with the black audience where the Sweat Band is barely a swoosh is his drolly mechanical detachment--especially when he turns on the vocoder, he could be Gary Numan with ants in his pants, or Kraftwerk on the one. C+ Zapp: Zapp II (Warner Bros., 1982) This idly functional, playfully mechanical six-cut dance LP tested my tolerance for innocent mindlessness, especially after I realized that my favorite tune appears on both sides. But unlike its predecessor it is a real dance LP--side one will function your ass off. And you'll want to play "Playin' Kinda Ruff" again. B+ Zazou Bikaye: Mr. Manager (Pow Wow, 1986) Zairean Bony Bikaye's Felaesque chants (sans agitprop, avec Afrobeat girls) provide the identity, but the substructure is all French-Algerian Hector Zazou, whose synth arrangements are praised for their orchestral density and distinguished by their propulsive linearity. Most of the Afrogallic music I've heard makes too much (Toure Kunda) or too little (Manu Dibango) of its Africanness. This strikes me as an original balance: minimalist Eurodisco that trades pseudosophistication for pseudoprimitivism. A- Zeitgeist: Translate Slowly (DB, 1985) I don't want to alienate my target audience or anything, but I can't contain myself: from their offhandedly opalescent songpoetry to their hints of social commentary to their chiming pop polytechnique to their better-name-than-Angst-at-least-only-these-fools-try-and-live-up-to-it, this is one collegiate band. There's hope, though--if they get picked up by Elektra and break through on a fluke video, they may start writing about cocaine and Holiday Inns. B- Warren Zevon: Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School (Asylum, 1980) I don't know why the title tune's the title tune, except maybe to contextualize the classical interludes he composed all by himself, and Lord help us he's been hanging out with the Eagles, just like Randy Newman, who could teach him something about slandering the South--even Neil Young could do better than incest and Lynyrd Skynyrd, though the brucellosis is a nice touch. In fact, just about every song boasts a good line or three. But the only ones that score are the jokes: Ernie K-Doe's sly, shy "A Certain Girl," and "Gorilla, You're a Desperado," a satire of the Eagles, not to mention Warren Zevon. Don Henley sings harmony. Linda Ronstadt will not cover. B- Warren Zevon: Stand in the Fire (Asylum, 1980) If your idea of rocking out is lots of bass drum on the two (even during "Bo Diddley's a Gunslinger"), then Warren at the Roxy will do you almost as good as the climax of Live Rust. The three best songs are all from Excitable Boy, and only one of the two new originals stands the fire, but any Zevon album that bypasses "Hasten Down the Wind" and "Accidentally Like a Martyr" is the one I'll play when I need my fix. A- Warren Zevon: The Envoy (Asylum, 1982) What convinces me isn't the deeply satisfying "Ain't That Pretty at All," in which Zevon announces his abiding desire to hurl himself at walls--he's always good for a headbanger. Nor, God knows, is it the modern-macho mythos of the title cut and the Tom McGuane song. It's a wise, charming, newly written going-to-the-chapel number that I would have sworn was lifted from some half-forgotten girl group. If "Never Too Late for Love" and "Looking for the Next Best Thing" announce that this overexcitable boy has finally learned to compromise, "Let Nothing Come Between You" is his promise not to take moderation too far. A- Warren Zevon: A Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon (Asylum, 1986) Unlike so many songpoets, Zevon's a real writer, and as lyrics his ravers hold up better than his songpoems. So this is where Warren the Rocker kicks Warren the Poet's butt. Though the selection forgives more reveries than one might prefer, they function as a well-earned respite from dementia; only "Accidentally Like a Martyr" throws up the kind of tuneful fog Linda R. fell for on the tastefully omitted (again--maybe he knows something) "Hasten Down the Wind." Because he inhabits his tricksters, blackguards, and flat-out psychotics rather than reconstituting variations on a formula, he tops his boy Ross Macdonald any day. Thompson gunner, mercenary, NSC operative, werewolf, easy lay, he puts his head on the tracks for penance, and when the train doesn't come gets up and hurls himself against the wall of the Louvre museum. Really now, could Ross Macdonald imagine such a thing? A- Warren Zevon: Sentimental Hygiene (Virgin, 1987) The real question about Zevon isn't whether he's really a wimp. That's a setup. It's whether he's really a clod--whether his sense of rhythm is good enough to induce you to listen as frequently as his lyrics deserve. I'm not talking swing or funk or anything arcane, just straight propulsion of the sort punk made commonplace, and here his latest sessioneers, R.E.M. minus Michael Stipe, add a rhythmic lift to this album's sarcasm. All three songs about the travails of stardom are a hoot. "Even a Dog Can Shake Hands" updates "Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man," "Detox Mansion" sends up every pampered substance abuser turned therapy addict in Tinseltown, and "Trouble Waiting to Happen" establishes the right unrepentant distance form Warren's amply documented binges: "I read things I didn't know I'd done/It sounded like a lot of fun." Taking off even higher is "The Factory," which sings the collective ego of the working-class hero, dissenting with a touch of nasty from the tragic paeans of the best-known of Zevon's many hairy-chested collaborators, Bruce Springsteen himself. A- Warren Zevon: Transverse City (Virgin, 1989) With his eye on the fate of the earth, from malls and gridlock to entropy and deorbiting heavenly bodies, Zevon succumbs to the temptations of art-rock. This beats country-rock, at least as he defines it, and given his formal training it was decent of him to wait until his material demanded sci-fi keybs--arpeggios and ostinatos and swirling soundtracks. With Little Feat's Richie Hayward the timekeeper, the stasis is a little heavier than anyone concerned with the fate of the earth would hope, but you don't get the feeling Warren's hopes are high enough to warrant anything livelier. "Splendid Isolation," about solipsism as a life choice, "Turbulence," about perestroika and Afghanistan, and "Run Straight Down," about the fate of the earth on the 11 o'clock news, are exactly as grim as they ought to be. B+ Zvuki Mu: Zvuki Mu (Opal, 1989) Described by an admirer as "a witty drunkard, wild dancer and failed poet," Peter Mamonov is also an old-fashioned beatnik, with woman problems to match: "Yesterday you gave yourself to me/And now you think I owe you," "just don't thrust yourself upon me with your endless meals." These he recreates in a wild and witty way, complete with hypnotic cabaret-rock (or something). Like a lot of glasnost culture, he has his retro attractions--in his own language, the quarter-truths of his boho sexism give off a pleasant shock. But like a lot of beatniks, he can't resist experiments that aren't as avant-garde as he thinks they are. B ZZ Top: El Loco (Warner Bros., 1981) Their boogie's gotten grander again, more nationwide than homegrown, which at its best--the euphemistically misprised "Tube Snake Boogie" (and did you know "Pearl Necklace" is Southwestern for blow job?)--means only that it packs a more powerful kick. That they're eccentric nonetheless is proven not just by the harmonizer-processed voice of evil shaking the DT's while working street PR, but by the brown-eyed mama who guards their groovy little hippie pad with .44, jeep, and German shepherd. The easy life ain't what it used to be. B+ ZZ Top: Eliminator (Warner Bros., 1983) Arena-rockers who never forgot heavy metal was once white blues, they took a long vacation and resurfaced as a fine white blues band starring a guitarist who always sounds like himself. Now, with hitest b.p.m.s speeding the groove, they've motorvated back toward metal again--boogie in overdrive, a funny car that's half platinum and half plutonium. The videos make you smile, the record runs you over. That's the pleasure of it. B+ ZZ Top: Afterburner (Warner Bros., 1985) With sales on Eliminator over five mil almost by accident, this hard-boogieing market strategy is defined by conscious commercial ambition--by its all but announced intention of making ZZ the next Bruce/Madonna/Prince/Michael, with two beards and a Beard at every checkout counter. The Trevor Hornish synth touches and out-front hooks are clues, but the proof is "Rough Boy," an attempted top-five ballad that would sound like pure take-me-or-leave-me revved up. And in case you think they've lost their sense of humor, there's a new dance called the "Velcro Fly." I'm laughing, I'm laughing. B <h3>Z: Compilations</h3> Zetrospective: Dancing in the Face of Adversity (ZE, 1989) Resuscitating the four standout tracks from the 1981 nouveau-disco anthology Seize the Beat and 12 others besides, this is the soundtrack to a lost era--art-scene disco according to Michael Zilkha on one side, art-scene DOR ditto on the other. It's very Manhattan, even more dilettantishly cerebral after all these years, and I prefer the disco even though the beat does get repetitive (those handclaps): only Kid Creole's "I'm a Wonderful Thing Baby," which oddly enough is the compilation's only readily available cut, has much give to it. But good work by uneven or ultimately tedious artists abounds. From Cristina's satiric "Disco Clone" to Was (Not Was)'s literal "White People Can't Dance," from Coati Mundi's bad-rapping "Que Pasa/Me No Pop I" to Lydia Lunch's sweet-talking "Lady Scarface," from Don Armando's cheesy "Deputy of Love" to Breakfast Club's cheesy "Rico Mambo," this is the first postmodern dance music--dance music with a critical spirit. And it's funny as hell. A- Zetrospective: Hope Springs Eternal (ZE, 1989) Rock anthologies rarely cohere like dance-music anthologies, because they have no groove running down the middle--at whatever level of execution, they're about meaning more than pleasure. Anyway, Michael Zilkha's rock tastes were more received than his disco tastes, and while there are lost wonders here--three great songs by the Waitresses, two or three by Davitt Sigerson--John Cale and John Robie and Zilkha's wife Cristina are middling at best. Kid Creole and Was (Not Was) you probably know. B+ Zimbabwe Frontline (Earthworks, 1988) Hot Thomas Mapfumo, hooked Four Brothers. Fervent call for unity in a non-Zimbabwean tongue, husky cry of independence from a natural feminist. Mbaqanga rumba with West Nkosi in the control booth. Tart pop sweetmeats from Devera Ngwena, who outsell the Bhundus in Harare. A generic or two. Except maybe for Mapfumo's Ndangariro, which gets over on groove rather than songs, mbira guitar's most convincing showcase. A- Zulu Jive/Umbaqanga (Earthworks, 1983) There's an urban punch and pace here missing from most Afropop, although the singing and rhythms are less power-packed than we're told they can be, and only Aaron Mbambo, whose urgent high shout lifts his two cuts well out of the mix, is well-known in the style. Selected stanzas on the back refer painfully to curfews and pass laws as well as the money worries and familial perfidies of the companion compilation Viva Zimbabwe!, and they gain emotional thrust behind astringent harmonies from South Africa and instrumental colors from assorted ports of call: squeezebox, electric organ, heavy electric bass, oudlike fiddle, everything but horns. Which aren't missed. B+ <hr> <table width="100%"><tr valign=center><td> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=Y&bk=80"><img src="/icon/prev.gif" alt="Y"></a> </td><td align=center width="100%"><a href="/get_chap.php?k=A&bk=80">A</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=B&bk=80">B</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=C&bk=80">C</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=D&bk=80">D</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=E&bk=80">E</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=F&bk=80">F</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=G&bk=80">G</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=H&bk=80">H</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=I&bk=80">I</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=J&bk=80">J</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=K&bk=80">K</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=L&bk=80">L</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=M&bk=80">M</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=N&bk=80">N</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=O&bk=80">O</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=P&bk=80">P</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=Q&bk=80">Q</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=R&bk=80">R</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=S&bk=80">S</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=T&bk=80">T</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=U&bk=80">U</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=V&bk=80">V</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=W&bk=80">W</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=X&bk=80">X</a> <a href="/get_chap.php?k=Y&bk=80">Y</a> [Z] </td><td><a href="/xg/bk-cg80/app_howto.php"><img src="/icon/next.gif" alt="How to Use These Appendices"></a> </td></tr></table>  </td> </table> </body> </html>