Sly Jabs at Absurdity

WHAT'S black and white and red all over?

My father used to ask me that one when I was seven, along with the knee-slapper about what has four wheels and flies? Even then, the joke seemed pretty lame, but an appealing new response has appeared in the form of the album Red All Over by the group Busload of Nuns, featuring the performances of Marc Lowenstein '85 and Andrea Burke '85. The record's somber album jacket is, you guessed it, black and white, but the slyly absurd title is just a harbinger of the album's unexpected jabs at presence and pretension. Red All Over, like a musical rendition of a common old joke, ends up commenting on the failure of reason in a crazy world.

Lightness is the key to Red All Over, which shares with current releases The Nylon Curtain by Billy Joel and Nebraska by Bruce Springstcer an emphasis on the lunacy and pathos of daily American life. In "work song," strong vocals power an emotionless ballad which is somehow Russian-flavored, evoking the Brothers Karamazov singing capitalist work hymns. The music is effective and lively, the repeated lyrics "I've got a quite important job with many things to do my stenographer is pretty and my wallpaper is new" come across with just the right amount of subdued pride to make "work song" an appropriate response to employed America. The spirit of the song is strong, but the voices are convincingly flat, making the music echo with the cadences of American experience.

Music about basic experiences runs the risk of over-simplification and leans towards judgment, a trap which the weakest song on the album, "sleepyhead," falls into. An annoying guitar whines while a syncopated rhythm pounds out what might have been an interesting musical question what will happen to Russia tomorrow, according to the Bible' The song mostly fails to lift the Intener above an unengaging level of absurdity, typified by the litany "Follow the money, follow the crowd, follow the fashion, follow the leader, follow that car' follow the yellow brick road!"

But Red All Over balances itself out with a satisfying rendition of "stayin' alive," which combines the tongue-in-check humor of the groups's style with a comprehensible, even expressive interpretation of the lyrics the Bee Gees mangled with their baffling falsettos. Vocalist Scott Young gives "stayin' live" the feel it needs to work, singing in a deadpan which avoids both the fervent excitement of the Saturday Night Fever version and the desperation which words like "I'm going nowhere, somebody help me!" seem to require. The delivery is perfect, and when the group sings "That's alright, that's O.K. I'll live to see another day. And you can't try to understand the New York Times' effect on man," the rhymes in the lyrics produce a rain of blows.

BY FAR THE BEST of Red All Over is "chicken song." In the style of a mellowed-out Blondia under a reggae influence, the group proves its versatility with a sorrowful song which mourns, "No chicken today," The protagonist awakes to this dreadful state, accompanied by the best horse, dog and chicken pounds civilized man has yet produced. Young laments, "All my chickens, they all run away" and the background vocals swell in a dirge of sympathy. The hero returns to a dinner of pork and beans--as obvious symbol of the heartbreaking compromises of modern life.

Aggreseively enjoyable, Red All Over leaps feet first into the American mainstream. The music is upbeat, danceable, and the spirit is fun; the combination of some devastatingly arch lyrics and beautiful instrumentials recommends itself as music for repeated listening. Studying to its insistently noticeable backdrop is less likely Red All Over has some interesting questions to ask, and its purpose is not to disappoint with quick, cute answers.