Pop Music Review

Noiseworks' local debut at Bogart's in Long Beach couldn't have been too easy or uplifting for the Australian band. In its homeland, the quintet has accumulated a fistful of chart-topping records and is a huge concert draw. At Bogart's, there were fewer folks than Noiseworks probably has on its road crew back home--and most of those on hand didn't seem particularly familiar with the music. A lot of bands faced with this situation would have just coasted through the set, but Noiseworks played as though they were in front of a sellout crowd of adoring Aussies.

In his memoir "U & I," author Nicholson Baker writes obsessively, at book length, about his relationship with novelist John Updike, their intellectual confluence, the space Updike takes up in Baker's life . . . except there is no relationship--Updike doesn't know that Baker exists, and Baker, in fact, has barely read Updike's work.

Could it be h i m ? Gasps of anticipation were heard in the Summit arena here as a man in bright yellow Dick Tracy overcoat and hat stepped from the shadows to join Madonna on stage. Could it be Warren Beatty, the star of the upcoming movie about the famous comic book detective . . . the man who has been reported for months to be Madonna's beau? After all, this was the opening night of the 12-city U.S.

Though Tammy Wynette's songs served as much of the score of the film "Five Easy Pieces," they'd make an even better score for, say, a feature-length documentary version of "Beyond Co-Dependency." What other woman would dare sing the lines "Til I get used to losin' you, let me keep on usin' you"?

Underworld, the British band that made its local debut at the Roxy on Monday night, offers funky synthesizer echoes of an INXS along with the Christian peace messages of a U2. In fact, at one point singer Karl Hyde felt compelled to stretch his arms out in a crucifixion pose at the end of a particularly emotional ditty called--gulp!--"Pray." Subtle these guys are not.

Nellie Lutcher will be 80 next Thursday, but the veteran singer/pianist/songwriter's performance at the Cinegrill on Tuesday might easily have taken place 40 years ago. Lutcher has lost none of her exuberance, charm, enthusiasm and sheer, quirky musicality. Her ease on stage, her warm interaction with an audience, her buoyant sense of swing, and the joy which invests everything she sings should be part of a required observation course for anyone hoping to become a musical performer.

So many people saw Stevie Wonder arrive at the Coach House Wednesday for Take 6's performance that the room was abuzz with the hope that he might join the vocal sextet on stage. And sure enough, Wonder made a brief appearance, adding his voice to the ensemble's encore of "Spread Love," with Sheila E. guesting on congas. But the evening's real news was "this thing behind us," as singer Claude V. McKnight III said early in the set.

There were two tough battles at Jabberjaw on Wednesday. One pitted Urge Overkill, the hot, highly entertaining alternative pop band from Chicago that's just made its major-label debut, against the urge to get out of the even hotter sauna of an overstuffed mid-city coffeehouse and get some air.

On record, the Mekons have long spewed a heady brew-ha-ha of anti-politricks, provocative/evocative lyrics and multiethnic, punk 'n' country licks. On stage Friday at the Lingerie, the English sextet chucked all this promise into a shapeless, colorless, characterless, waaahhh of sound, obliterating the lyrics--and almost everything else that makes them interesting in the first place.