Rock-a-Rama
ROCK-A-RAMA
This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Richard Riegel, Michael Davis, Richard C. Walls, John Morthland and Jim Feldman.
DIVINYLS—Desperate (Chrysalis):: The Australian pop hegemony apparently continues unabated, to judge by the energy of the Divinyls, a woman and' four men at work enlarging our scope of the varieties of Antipodean rock. Emphasis here is on a hardrocking, somewhat adolescent fascination with sleaze for its own sake (best way to move into the real thing), reportedly a big fact of life in the Divinyls’ “Sin Capital” Kings Cross area of Sydney. Lead mouth (real big lips for a ’Roo) Christina Amphlett gets off some rather basic sex posturing in her attitudes and her vocals, which jerk between Benatarian melodrama and Marianne Faithfull used & abused holy gruffness, with a few Lovichish birdbath trills thrown in for flavoring; Ms. Amphlett’s erotic-slur message to malehood around the globe seems to be: “Come hither, but not too fast...” Video starstardom inevitably beckons to these raunchy Divinyls, need I add. R.R.