Women generally have one of two roles in rock, says Alison Moyet-sex-fantasy object or earth mother. For a woman who claims to have been a feminist all her life and frankly admits to a ”dark thread” running through her personality, those are obviously not sufficient. Yet they were the only options Moyet faced in a musical career that quickly took on all the characteristics of a runaway train.
”The music industry really does attract a lot of odd bods,” Moyet says, ”people who`ve never quite fit in. I certainly was one of those as a child. I never felt like the other girls. I was never particularly popular as a child. My ambition when I was young was to headline an English pub, and I never actually got to do that. I went from being in a support band to having a No. 1 album overnight. My achievements always surpassed where I was at. So I think I made a lot of rash decisions that I didn`t realize I would then have to spend X amount of years answering for.”
Like a lot of kids, particularly alienated ones, growing up in `70s England, Moyet was attracted first to punk and then to R&B-influenced pub rock. She sang with local bands like the Vicars and the Screaming Abdabs. Then, tired of being the ”chick singer” who slept in the car while the guys in the group got hotel rooms, she ran an ad looking for ”a rootsy blues band.” Instead she got one-man techno-band and former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke-and the train started rolling.
Under the name Yaz (originally Yazoo in Europe), the duo rode the crest of the early-`80s techno-pop wave. A first single, ”Only You,” went to No. 2 and was followed by a second hit, ”Don`t Go.” The real surprise came when Yaz, which had yet to venture out on tour, saw its debut album, ”Upstairs at Eric`s,” hit No. 1 on the British charts the first week out.
Yaz had more hit singles (”Situation,” ”Nobody`s Diary”) and a successful second album (”You and Me Both”), but with two conflicting artistic and personal sensibilities, it was only a matter of time before the group broke up. Clarke put together another duo, Erasure, Moyet went solo and the train kept rolling.
Moyet`s 1985 solo debut, ”Alf,” spawned the hits ”Love Resurrection,” ”All Cried Out” and ”Invisible,” sold more than a million copies in England alone and hit the Top 10 in Japan, New Zealand and a half-dozen European countries. Her second solo album, ”Raindancing,” entered the U.K. charts at No. 2 and spun off the hits ”Is This Love” and ”Weak in the Presence of Beauty.” But Moyet wasn`t enjoying success even as a solo artist. She found producers treating her like just another instrument and hired hand and the result, she says in retrospect, were two seriously flawed albums.
”I know people don`t like to hear me say that,” Moyet admits, ”but that`s because they have their own relationship to those records. I have a different relationship to them. It`s like looking at a picture of someone you used to love. You remember that you felt that way, but you just don`t feel it anymore.”
And if Moyet wasn`t satisfied with what was happening in the studio, she was even less thrilled with record company marketing and media handling of her work and life. ”Because I had just had Joe (her first child) around the time of the first album, I was suddenly this `mother.` And people just then assume that you aren`t challenging, that you aren`t threatening, that you are going to be singing for the blue-rinse masses. Which is fine. I like doing that sometimes. But there`s also a very dark thread in my character. I felt like this dark, seething mass, but I was expected to be `Miss Accessibility.`
”It just go to the point, after the `Raindancing` album, that I went off on all systems. I couldn`t bear to be a celebrity for the sake of celebrity. I`d go out on the streets and everybody would recognize me. Not necessarily because they knew what I did or particularly liked what I did, just because I was a household name. It was such an unrewarding thing. I`ve never been the kind of person that lusted after fame or lusted after money. The only thing I ever found to do with my money was build bigger walls to hide behind. It just got to the point where I felt, `What am I doing? I`ve wasted all my life. I`ve wasted all these fantastic opportunities that I`ve had. I`ve wasted all the talents that I had.` It was a terrible, terrible feeling.”
So Moyet disappeared for four years, years she says were filled with personal and artistic turmoil and change. She had a second child, became a single parent, rethought her life and career and, through it all, wrote songs about her experiences and feelings. ”Hoodoo,” which was released last year, was the result. It is Moyet`s most diverse album both stylistically and emotionally. It is also the least successful record she ever recorded, spending only two months on the U.K. charts and barely making a dent here. In more ways than one, Moyet was finally off the train.
”I knew that it wasn`t going to be as commercially successful as the other two (solo albums),” she says. ”I knew that if I wanted to do as well in England and Europe as I have ever done, I would have to make a record along the lines of Phil Collins. That`s what my record company wanted. I just had to weigh up what I wanted. And to be honest I would much rather have an audience of 5 or maybe 10 percent of what I used to have, but people who understood what I was and where I could just be myself.
”I think the problem is-not so much in America, because I`ve never sold lots of records in America, but in England and in Europe-the problem is when you become that successful, and I sold something like 4 million albums just in England alone, you get accepted by the establishment. And by being accepted by the establishment, you`re automatically rejected by the young record buyers. When I was younger, we did the same thing and understandably so because you`ve got different sensibilities.”
Ironically, ”Hoodoo” is undoubtedly Moyet`s finest album. Her voice, the strong, soulful instrument that first won her acclaim, is as powerful as ever, yet more subtle and varied now. The music is more diverse and organic. Freed from techno-pop, Moyet ranges over stark balladry, James Brown-styled funk, bluesy shuffles and smart modern pop, choosing what best suits the more honest and heartfelt, alternately pained and proud lyrical ground she covers here.
”Women have always been valued for their youth,” Moyet remarks. ”As far as rock and roll is concerned, people are always expected to be in their prime when they`re 19 and 20 because we`re talking about a male business here. Maybe men are in their prime at that age, but I certainly know women are not. I certainly know that my voice is much better at 30 than at 20. I know that I`m a far more interesting person at 30 than I was at 20. That I`m a far more sexual person at this age than I was at that age.
”I`m just so much happier now. I feel so much more content with what I`m doing and what I`m achieving. And I feel proud of it. I feel proud to be able to promote what I`m doing because I feel good about what I`ve done. If you get badly criticized for what you`ve done and you know there`s a lot of truth in it, you feel bad because you feel like you`ve let yourself down. If I get criticized now, it`s subjective. If people don`t like it, fine. But that`s not because it`s not good or not valid.”
Alison Moyet appears Tuesday at Park West. Opening is Jules Shear. This clever pop craftsman has skirted along the edges of commercial success for some 15 years now as a solo artist and member of cult faves the Funky Kings, Jules & the Polar Bears and Reckless Sleepers. Shear penned Cyndi Lauper`s hit ”All Through the Night” and the Bangles` successful single ”If She Knew What She Wants” and saw his songs covered by Ian Matthews (who did an entire album of his material), Elliot Easton, Art Garfunkel, Tommy Conwell, Olivia Newton-John and Roger McGuinn. His last album, a stark vocal-and-solo-acoustic-guitar set called ”The Third Party,” was the inspiration for
”MTV Unplugged,” which Shear hosted for its first 13 episodes. Shear is now back with a new band and his first studio album in three years, ”The Great Puzzle.”
Other shows of note
David Murray Octet, Friday at Hothouse: Like so many brilliant jazzmen before him, tenor sax/bass clarinet player David Murray finds his warmest reception abroad. Still he ranks as one of the finest musicians of his generation, a protean talent pushing out the boundaries of jazz without losing sight of the church music of his childhood or even the R&B and funk of his adolescent bands. This restless innovator also continually explores new alignments, from solo work to duet settings (including ”The Healers” album with Randy Weston) to the innovative all-sax lineup of the World Saxophone Quartet (which he co-founded) and the equally challenging uni-instrumental Clarinet Summit to his own trio, quartet, octet and big band. Murray makes a rare appearance with Hugh Ragin, Rasul Siddik, Craig Harris, James Spauling, Dave Burrell, Wilber Morris and Andrew Cyrille in what promises to be one of the more exciting and challenging evenings of jazz to hit town in some time.
Uncle Tupelo and Ween, Saturday at Lounge Ax: Uncle Tupelo put Belleville, Ill., on rock critics` maps with a 1990 debut, ”No Depression.” The indie release, a fresh wind through the increasingly stagnant alternative- rock scene, offered an oddly effective ”grunge country” style that sounded like a gentle collision between Soundgarden and ”Sweetheart of the Rodeo”-era Byrds. The band just released a second, more detailed album called ”Still Feel Gone” and now returns to one of its favorite haunts (as credited on the new album`s liner notes). Absurdist shock-pop outfit Ween spills a bizarre blend of bile and bemusement to open the show.
John Hart, Saturday at the Green Mill: Like many young jazz lions today, Hart`s heart belongs to straight-ahead hard-bopping jazz and that`s what he recorded on two solo albums, ”One Down” and the newly released ”Trust.”
Hart claims guitarists Jim Hall, Tal Farlow and Grant Green as influences and has gigs with Lou Donaldson, Jack McDuff and Terumasa Hino on his resume. He performs here with his own quartet, which includes saxist Chris Potter (a Red Rodney Quintet alum and recent third-place winner in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition), bassist Bill Moring (whose credits include work with Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams and Mel Torme) and drummer Andy Watson (formerly with Woody Herman, Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath and Urbie Green).
The Cramps, Saturday at the Riviera: The Cramps have been making musical mayhem since the mid-`70s with a giddy ghoulishness borrowed from grade B horror and skin flicks, early `60s rockabilly, surf and garage-band music and that cesspool of sick humor from which bad puns and Dan Quayle jokes crawl forth. The telltale heart and lost soul of the band, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach, are now joined by a rhythm section of ex-Weirdo (as if they all aren`t) Nicky Alexander and former Panther Burns and Mad Daddy member Slim Chance. With a new album, ”Look Mom, No Head!” and a recent rave European tour under their belt, the Cramps are again crawling across America in a show that should be just about the best thing since ”Attack of the Giant Leeches.”
Patty Larkin, Sunday at the Old Town School: Every now and then someone comes along to remind you that ”folk music” doesn`t have to be excruciating. Wisconsin-raised, Boston-based Larkin doesn`t hit you over the head with her sensitivity or social concerns, but you`ll never miss them. She likes a good joke and tells plenty of them in songs like ”Dave`s Holiday,” ”Not Bad for a Broad” and ”The Mall” (which features Larkin`s dead-on impersonations of Marlene Dietrich, Ethel Merman and Carmen Miranda) and in the witty banter delivered in her live performances captured on the albums ”In the Square”
and ”Buy Me, Bring Me, Take Me: Don`t Mess My Hair” (recorded with Christine Lavin, Megon McDonough and Sally Fingerett). She`s an appealing singer, excellent guitarist and eclectic stylist who borrows not only from folk but also rock, jazz and other styles.
Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, Tuesday at the Cubby Bear:
”Tonight,” Hilda Tloubatla of the Mahotella Queens is fond of saying in concert, ”we all speak zulu.” And before the show is over, everyone will. The deep-voiced Mahlathini and the irrepressible Queens are, you might say, the Beatles of mbaqanga (the South African pop style Paul Simon borrowed for
”Graceland”). In fact, just as the Beatles were conquering Western pop, Mahlathini and the Queens backed by the Makgona Tshole Band (”the band that knows everything”) were shaking up South African townships with their bright sound. The catchy melodies, insistent call-and-response vocals and bouncy rhythms of mbaqanga are irresistible on their own, but these originators give it a force and appeal few others can match. The group`s recordings (including the new ”Mbaqanga,” easily the best record out here since their late-`80s comeback album, ”Thokozile”) capture some of the magic, but it is only in a live setting-the band sharp as a tack, Mahlathini roaring and the Queens dancing and singing up an exhausting storm-that the full power comes through. Tonight we all speak zulu. Yebo!
Jim Lauderdale, Wednesday at Schuba`s: When Vince Gill, Kelly Willis and Shelby Lynne cover someone`s songs and Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris want to be on their debut album, it`s a safe bet they`re onto something interesting in the way of modern country music. Lauderdale recently released his first album after working as a Rolling Stone mailroom boy, Nashville songsmith and actor in touring productions of ”Cotton Patch Gospel,” ”Diamond Studs” and ”Pump Boys and Dinettes.” As you`d expect from an album coproduced by Crowell and featuring Harris as a guest, Lauderdale`s ”Planet of Love”
offers smart modern country stripped down to its essentials-lots of gin-soaked honky-tonk music, some ringing rockabilly, a touch of soulful Southern blues and a bit of Beatle and Orbison-esque pop.
