Chicago Tribune

              April 18, 1991, Thursday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION

SECTION: TEMPO; Pg. 9; ZONE: C; Rock notes

LENGTH: 820 words

HEADLINE: Their noise Superchunk makes musical mountains of life's molehills

BYLINE: By Greg Kot, Rock music critic

BODY:

   The finest of many stirring moments on Superchunk's pin-your-ears-back debut
album occurs in the song "My Noise."

   Through a maelstrom of guitars, singer Mac McCaughn lets loose with a defiant
assertion that seems to define not only his existence, but also that of many of
his fellow musicians and listeners: "It's my life and it's my voice . . . it has
no choice!" Or, as another band of pale, skinny rockers once said, "What can a
poor boy do, 'cept to play in a rock 'n' roll band?" Except Mick Jagger 
was dripping with irony when he sang that oft-quoted line from "Street 
Fighting Man."

   One gets the opposite impression from McCaughn.

   "If you're going to try to write something ironic, more likely it'll come out
clever or silly," he says. "I just didn't ever attempt to write that way because
I don't ever want to sound cute."

   As for "My Noise," McCaughn says it's essentially a paean to bassist Laura
Ballance's boom box, which serves as his car "stereo."

   "It's not really an anthem. If anything, it's a tribute to the 'noise' coming
out of the box and what a drag it is not to have one in the car," he says. "It's
funny. These songs never start out as focused things."

   It's how they finish that makes Superchunk one addictive band. The Chapel
Hill, N.C., quartet writes about mundane, everyday occurrences - a slack
co-worker, a teetering relationship - and shouts about them from the rooftops.

   "That's the fun of it," McCaughn says. "The challenge is to take a small
thing and make it into something worth talking about, even though it probably
wasn't to begin with."

   The quartet's self-titled debut on the New York-based Matador label is an
unrepentant throwback to the passion, sincerity and flamethrower guitars of the
punk era. It's a style that's timeless - itself a throwback to the garage rock
of the '60s and the Sun Records rawness of the '50s - yet no longer fashionable.

   Superchunk couldn't care less about fashion, because they play it like they
feel it. The band will headline Saturday at Czar Bar, 1814 W. Division St.

    - Not many people outside the rap community know who Bill Adler is, but his
role in spreading the word about the long-misunderstood inner-city art form
throughout the '80s can't be measured.

   As chief publicist for Rush Artists Management from 1984 to '90, Adler helped
launch the careers of such influential artists as Run-D.M.C., L.L. Cool J,
Public Enemy, Eric B. and Rakim, the Beastie Boys, De La Soul and Big Daddy
Kane. Adler came to publicity from a pop critic background, and understood rap
as an exciting extension of the rock tradition rather than as an aberration.

   That idea is forcefully argued in his new book, "Rap: Portraits and Lyrics of
a Generation of Black Rockers" (St. Martin's Press, $13.95). Blending his prose
with rappers' lyrics and the wondrous photographs of Janette Beckman, Adler
presents hip-hop in all its glorious diversity.

   "I didn't just write for people who love the music, but for people who hate
it or who have a one-dimensional idea of what the music is: It's about riots or
it's about misogyny," he says.

   "I was fairly confident that if all Janette and I did was set it out in all
its variety, it would help demolish that rap was any one thing, and particularly
any one negative thing."

   Especially given the paucity of informed writing about hip-hop, "Rap"
realizes that goal splendidly. Those who thought they "knew" a scowling
hard-core rapper such as Ice Cube, for example, may change their minds after
seeing Beckman's astonishing photo of the South Los Angeles rapper hugging his
mom.

   Neophytes may also be tempted to seek out the music, which is pretty much
banned from commercial rock radio.

   "I grew up at a time when you could hear the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Wilson
Pickett and Paul Revere and the Raiders back to back on the radio," says Adler,
now the vice president of publicity for Island Records. "A hit was a hit and
people didn't think in terms of genre. It was all rock, until that unity fell
apart in the early '70s.

   "The subtitle of the book was written very deliberately for people who think
that rock must mean a white artist. These days, whatever it is a black artist
makes, it isn't considered rock. Bon Jovi makes rock, Guns N' Roses makes rock,
while black artists make rap, soul, reggae - which are just ways of putting the
music in a ghetto.

   "But you tell me, who rocks harder: Bon Jovi or the Beastie Boys? For me
there was never any question."

    - A showcase for four unsigned local bands - Captive Heart, Daisy Chain,
Steve Grissette and Rite Mind - will be held May 4 at Cabaret Metro, 3730 N.
Clark St. The Midwest office of the American Society of Composers, Authors and
Publishers will host the showcase for the public and for national record-label
talent scouts. A free songwriters workshop will be held in the afternoon. For
details, call ASCAP at 312-527-9775.