CD Reviews

DIXIE WITCH
One Bird Two Stones
(Small Stone)

Beer rock and stoner rock are different. Stoner rock is when the riffs are reinforced through repetition and absence-of-counterpoint. It's about concentration, whereas beer rock is fatalistic about having none. Denton, TX, trio Dixie Witch's One Bird Two Stones is beer rock with stoner-rock productionimagine if Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel drank beer. The rhythm section ambles a lot but still manages to touch its nose and pass the Breathalyzer. I like the bits where bassist Curt Christenson and guitarist Clayton Mills play the same thing, as on "More of a Woman." Actually I like this stuff best of all when the guitar, bass, and drums (Trinidad Leal, who also sings) are playing the exact same thing over and over. Oddly enough, the more bands play in strict regimentation, the more it sounds like they fight a lot. Then again, Lynyrd Skynyrd used to beat each other up with pool cues, and they invented this stuff, so there's that theory shot to shit. Beer rock lyrics also have a better-adjusted outlook on lifeno darkness and drugs and death. (Pace Skynyrd again. They really had somethin' evil goin' on! They "paid dearly," though.) Dixie Witch are less dark than the Darkness, even. The singing is straight out of BTO and Molly Hatchet, the music is Tad/Black Label Society, and One Bird Two Stones opens with same notes as Grand Funk Railroad's On Time (which means the same notes as Grand Funk's Live Album, too!!). The overall effect, take your pick, is of a band that opened for glam-metal asylum seekers with new stubble growth and down-tuning in 1991, to audience laughter, or a band that opened for Skin Yard or Mudhoney in 1991, to audience fear. The obvious punch line being that those bands (this band) were (are) better than the headliners most of the time. DAVE QUEEN

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium
(Epic)

No one ever changed the world hawking tapes out of the trunk of their car. That was Rage Against the Machine's escape hatch from hard-line grassroots idealists, their unspoken justification for accepting a corporate bankroll to peddle anticorporate principles. Was a difference made? Sure, although Rage's posthumous political influence pales compared to their deep footprints on the metal and hip-hop landscape. Face it, screaming "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!!!" in the pit doesn't necessarily translate to Googling Howard Zinn in the campus library the next morning. Ironically, this Los Angeles swan song went down nearly a year to the day before 9/11, a time when an assured, established renegade voice was desperately needed on the radio. It's a passable greatest-hits run-through, made substantially less vital by the obvious stagnancy of the players, who went on to plumb new, inane depths in Audioslave. Hindsight reveals that frontman Zack de la Rocha was the flaming battery acid driving the Machine. Barely able to contain his passion and/or venom in "Testify" and "Know Your Enemy," his spastic poetry afforded credibility for the stormtrooping, overfunked rhythm section and perfectly book-ended Morello's infamous, once-astonishing solos. Thuggish backup vocals courtesy of Cypress Hill dilute Olympic's ferocity, and it's worth noting that set/career ender "Freedom," Rage's first and most beloved call-to-arms, doesn't even end with the incoherent wailing and crippling feedback of the album version. A sadly fitting end for a cabal of wealthy, bright rebels that pulled back too many knockout punches. A.B.

PAUL RUCKER
History of an Apology
(Jackson Street)

The apology in question was issued by President Clinton in 1997 to victims of the notorious Tuskegee Experiment, in which black men suffering from syphilis were left untreated so that government researchers could track the gruesome progress of the disease. Responding to that woeful chapter in U.S. history, and with funding from King County, bassist Paul Rucker has composed a stirring, mournful suite, his large ensemble of Seattle musicians carrying themselves with elegiac dignity that aims to inspire and overcome, not rage and react. It's political music at its best (and, at 42 minutes, unmarred by the excess that this kind of grant-funded project can sometimes engender). The six tunes that form the bulk of the disc all cycle around an odd-metered vamp, with Rucker lumbering along the earthy bottom, Bill Horist adding gorgeous webs and filigrees of looped, processed guitar, drummer Jacques Willis subtly, insistently driving the groove. Over 16 months of recording, more than a dozen Northwest players stopped by Rucker's studio/bedroom to make their contributionsJay Roulston, Michael White, Elizabeth Pupo-Walker, Julian Priester, and others (including a typically invaluable two-cents from Bill Frisell). Rucker then layered the sounds into a soul-baring, multilevel procession richly imbued with bass clarinet, accordion, flute, and other textures, and with consistently evocative just-right soloing from Roulston, trombonist Jeff Hay, Jovino Santos Neto, and more. There's a pure sense of vision here and a nobility of spirit that responds better to the tragedy of Tuskegee than any shrill rage, or apology. MARK D. FEFER

How many of these things are they gonna make? Ever since Linda Ronstadt hooked up with the late Nelson Riddle and had an unexpected hit with 1983's What's New, every pop star in late-career-resuscitation modefrom Sheena Easton to Rod Stewarteventually decides to pillage the Great American Songbook and play the classy crooner. What's nextKim Carnes Does Cole Porter? Here's the big surprise, though: Lauper's CD of "standards" actually works, and then some. Whatever the impetus behind its creation, At Last never sounds like a desperate afterthought, and its inspired eclecticism includes everything from a delicate interpretation of "Unchained Melody" to an ebullient "On the Sunny Side of the Street." Beginning with a shivery, exultant title track that may knock you off your chair, Lauper treats several clearly personal favorites in small-scale arrangements with a mature mixture of impassioned restraint and combustive celebration. Stevie Wonder's "Until You Come Back to Me" (with Wonder himself on harmonica) bustles with a sunny confidence, while Smokey Robinson's "You've Really Got a Hold On Me," accompanied by a gentle piano, is crushingly mournful and insistent without getting maudlin. Guests are first-rate. In addition to Wonder, Sheila E. is around for the percussive Latin flair of "Stay," and an obviously amused Tony Bennett duets on a playful "Makin' Whoopee" (when Bennett sings the dismissive "He's so ambitious/He even sews," Lauper cracks, "2003, babe"). Anyone who saw her in full throttle as the opener on Cher's otherwise enervating Farewell Tour can tell you that Lauper has not retreated into the novelty-act sunset, but her craft here is still a surprisingly fresh pleasure. STEVE WIECKING