Sweet Belly Hammers All
by: I. Kent Wright

Well, there are a few surprises in Belly's King, the long awaited follow up to everyone's favorite bubble-gum pop bonanza, Star.

Producer Glyn Johns, who has worked with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin, has brought a more live feel to the recording. The very heavy metal Gail Greenwood is now the official bassist. Vocalist/ guitarist Tonya Donelly co-wrote a couple of the tunes with Gail and guitarist Thomas Gorman.

Whoopee. I could care less if she co-wrote some of the songs with Lemmy Motorhead, it all sounds the same. Yeah, she was in The Breeders. Yeah, she was in the Throwing Muses. It doesn't mean that anything ol' Tonya pulls out of her ass is worth listening to. The only thing that seemed particularly exciting about King was the fact that the thousands of dollars blown at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas couldn't even make her sound on key. Other than that, I couldn't wait to get it out of my disc player and get back to my homework.

Thursday, April 13th, Tonya will do her cute, knock-kneed dance, Gail will head bang, and those crazy kids won't be able to get enough of Belly at the State Theatre in Detroit. You, my friend, should be studying for those exams.

Jon Wahl was first introduced to the world of rock when he roadied for Agent Orange. Soon after, he wanted to do some rocking of his own. The results were Claw Hammer.

Well, Claw Hammer ended up on tour with Mudhoney, Rocket From The Crypt and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and put out a whole lotta junk on Sympathy For The Record Industry and Epitaph Records.

Their major label release, Thank The Holder Uppers continues the tradition of garage- style rock and roll tattooed with Jon's barfy vocals. Epitaph's Brett Gurewitz (ex-Bad Religion) even cites the Hammer as his favorite band! He even produced the record for free! But anyone who has been keeping the tab on the garbage that Epitaph has been putting out lately shouldn't be too afraid. Claw Hammer mixes enough rootsy rock with their contemporary screech to stay interesting.

Claw Hammer rocks at the Blind Pig this Friday, April 14th. Ann Arbor's Morsel will rock with them.

Albums like this are pretty tough to review. Although I always like Matthew Sweet's albums (except the dreadfully wimpy and fortunately hard-to-find Inside and Earth) he has shown an uncanny propensity toward the same old singer/songwriter style of pop rock. Simply put, 100% Fun features songs that could be on Girlfriend or Altered Beast.

It will be interesting to see if the boys from All end up quitting the band to serve burgers in a few years. Since they have been doing the (sorry, gotta use it) pop-punk thing either as All or the Descendents since 1978, a major label release might not be such a good thing.

Picture this: Kennedy announces the new All video for "Long Distance" while thousands of kids are glued to their sets around the US. The kids like the song, it reminds them of Green Day or Offspring or something. The kids don Weezer shirts and go to All shows. Pre-Interscope fans of All don't like seeing All at Cobo Arena. They stay home and watch TV. All doesn't mind, they have been making squat for years, they like taking money from little kids and frat boys. Five years later, pop-punk is as cool as cheese-metal is now. All plays the Ritz or wherever washed-up punk pop bands end up playing.

Regardless, All's new album is great. The line-up hasn't changed, it's still Chad Price on vocals, Stephen Egerton on guitars, Karl Alvarez on bass and Bill Stevenson on drums.

Although there are still plenty of poppy All-style love songs like "Million Bucks" and "Long Distance," and quirkier numbers like "Button It" and "Gettin' There," Chad Price exhibits his new liking for abrasive yelling on such harsh songs like "Uncle Critic" and "On Foot." Within the 15 tunes of Pummel, All is as excitingly diverse as ever.

When I found out that Juicy was an all girl band, I planned to grab For the Ladies and head for Wazoo to get a dollar or two in trade. After I looked at the packaging a little bit closer, I could see that they weren't pompous girls trying to show that "they could rock like the big boys." In fact, they made no attempt to hide their lack of talent.

At the time For The Ladies was recorded, the Juicy girls had only played their instruments for a little more than a year. The result is New York, jangle-pop with way more tempo fluctuations, out of tune guitars and off key vocals than even the most indie- rockin' New York band.

Whether they meant it or not, lots of the tunes are pretty catchy, and their lyrics aren't as anti-male as I expected. As good as they've become, they still fly their flag of humility. On their inside cover they write: "thanks to the nice folks who let us borrow their equipment and practice rooms. You've given new meaning to the word charity and we've given new meaning to the word abuse." MR