Adrian Belew: Lone Rhino

Adrian Belew: Lone Rhino

1982

Island Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Big Electric Cat  2. The Momur  3. Stop It  4. The Man In The Moon  5. Naive Guitar  6. Hot Sun  7. The Lone Rhinoceros  8. Swingline  9. Adidas In Heat  10. Animal Grace  11. The Final Rhino



For the longest time I  looked at the title of this album and saw it as "Love Rhino." I think it's the cursive on the front cover that made me think that...Of course once I actually bought the album and saw it typed out, I realized the error of my ways. However, things like that make me afraid to do this blog sometimes...What if what I see as "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys has actually been "Pep Sounds" by the Beach Bums all along and I've been publicly humiliating myself this whole time?!?! Oh no!!

Nah, I'm just kidding...I love being wrong! Here are some times I was wrong in previous posts:

Here's a post from the September 24, 1996 edition of the Friday Night Record Party blog:

"Jennifer Love Hewitt's self-assured debut reveals her as a singer-songwriter par excellence, cut from the same cloth as Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen...Her fierce lyrical wit belies her young age and 17 years from now there's no doubt in my mind that songs like "It's Good to Know I'm Alive" will live loud and strong in the hearts of discerning music listeners for generations to come...In fact, I predict that "I Want a Love I Can See" will be the National Anthem of the United States of America by the year 2012!"

Obviously  I was very wrong. It turns out that the album was not actually her debut album. That honor goes to 1995's "Let's Go Bang."

Here's my December 1968 post about  "20/20" by the Beach Boys:

 "Most impressive of all is "Never Learn Not to Love." A killer number that's the songwriting debut of a promising young talent who goes by the name Charles Manson. This track absolutely slaughters the competition with its razor-sharp tambourine, stabbing cellos and blood-on-the-wall lyrics. There's no doubt that the name Charles Manson will someday be synonymous with gentle, love-lorn, baroque chamber pop..."

I was wrong. A closer look at the credit reveals this song was written by Dennis Wilson alone and not by gentle, love-lorn, baroque chamber pop-meister Charles Manson. Silly me.

Alright, Adrian Belew is best-known for being the front-man for the 80's iteration of King Crimson and the guitarist on some of the Talking Heads and David Bowie's best work. Last year I did a post on his second solo album "Twang Bar King," but I didn't cover his debut, "Lone Rhino" because, well, I didn't own it then...I can remember going to FYE and seeing both "Twang Bar King" and "Lone Rhino," but only walking our of the store with "Twang Bar." When I went back to pick up "Lone Rhino," someone else had already bought it. Oh well.

I eventually ran across a copy at Zia Records and picked it up.  The two albums are actually very similar...David Byrne-worship that strongly recalls the twitchy, nervous world-funk of middle-era Talking Heads.  If you ever wished that "Animals" from "Fear of Music" could be expanded into a 30 minute album, then these early Belew albums are for you...Actually, the guitars are even more far-out and brain-melting than the Talking Heads material (and possibly some of the King Crimson stuff too), as he coaxes an endless array of animal shrieks and squawks from his six-string... Even songs I don't much care for, like the big-band swing parody "Adidas in Heat" contain fascinatingly contorted leads...

To me, the best tracks are the opening ones...I enjoy shaking my big, bouncy booty to "Big Electric Cat''s" African funk. But as much as I enjoy "Cat," I might like "The Momur" even more.  Fast-paced, catchy new-wave-pop that tells a story about the narrator's wife turning into a momur. Wait, you don't know what a momur is? Let me draw one in MS Paint real quick...

  Okay, it's official...Pictured above is a Momur.

So kids, remember to send in your own pictures of the Momur, and I'll take the three best entries, scowl at them disapprovingly, crumple them up and throw them into my fireplace...

(crackle. crackle)

Alright, let's listen to "Big Electric Cat" by Adrian Belew...