Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Rollins’ latest full of ‘help yourself’ platitudes

Friday, March 10, 2000 | 8:53 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@vegas.com

Henry Rollins once said of Bono: "He could never fool me." Rollins hated the U2 frontman's telegraphed politics, his idealism and his "bubble butt." Most of all, Rollins seemed to hate Bono's too-willingness to be a rock star, to stamp his face on the foreheads of his fans.

He should know. I've often wondered why Rollins bothered with music at all; anyone who's heard his spoken-word records knows Rollins would make a fine motivational speaker -- the only one who speaks the language of Everyone Else (read: you). Put a thicker neck on Tom Cruise's "Magnolia" character and you've got the idea.

After listening to the slight metal of the Rollins Band's latest, "Get Some Go Again," a few times, I finally made the connection. He wants to be Bono. He doesn't necessarily want Bono's audience or critical clout -- he wants his power of persuasion. One of the most important roles of any motivational speaker is to grab the unwilling listener in any way possible. If charm fails, use metal.

And that's about the size of it: an hour-plus of "help yourself" platitudes like "Don't justify your complacency to me," delivered over by-the-numbers metal riffs by Los Angeles trio Mother Superior. Rollins had dissolved the original Rollins Band, a crack set of talented fusion players.

The old Rollins Band -- drummer Sim Cain, guitarist Chris Haskett, bassists Andrew Weiss and Melvin Gibbs, and engineer Theo Van Rock -- knew how to handle its singer. Whenever Rollins got into one of his vamps, they'd roll around him: if the band was a motorcycle, it would lean about the same time its rider did.

By contrast, the new band is obviously in awe of the renowned postpunk, and slows to accommodate Rollins' yapping. They seem ill at ease with the Led Zeppelin-esque pretensions of "Illumination," and the dry funk of "Love's So Heavy" is so amateurish it seems remarkable that the producer let it go. Oh, wait -- Rollins produced this one himself.

The shame of it is that he might have made it. Rollins' breakthrough records with his old band -- "The End of Silence" and "Weight" -- hinted at arena godhood, and if Rollins had tucked his ambitions back into his trousers, they might have made it. "Get Some Go Again" is the sound of a man who needs to deliver a strong, motivational talk to his creative impulse.

Joe Satriani is suffering an entirely different plague of egotism. (I just know Rollins would hate me for reviewing Satriani in the same column; tough luck, Hank.) The celebrated axeman -- he's one of a dying breed of axemen -- fortifies his progressive-metal riffs with techno beats on "Engines of Creation." It's the end result of a Crystal Method love jones.

Needless to say, it doesn't quite work. Satriani is a man, not a machine; in order to survive in a world of androids, you must be born into them. The most successful talents in Satriani's newly-chosen genre -- Orbital, Moby, the Method -- have trusted their humanity to machines, creating records that Satriani is too meticulous to attempt.

"Borg Sex," "Devil's Slide" and "The Power Cosmic 2000 (parts 1 and 2!)" sound approximately like what they are -- half-baked progressive rock instrumentals on cruise control. If there is to be a war on machines, Satriani is the obvious one to lead it -- he's set techno, as well as his own career, back several years.