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Groovie Ghoulies
Re-Animation Festival
(Lookout!)

Rock shtick has a short radioactive half-life. For example: When was the last time you listened to late-Eighties English dipsticks Gaye Bykers on Acid's Drill Your Own Hole? Somehow, Sacramento-based schlock-rock trio Groovie Ghoulies (bassist-vocalist Kepi, guitarist Roach, drummer Panic) have persisted through -- what? -- four albums, including their most recent, Re-Animation Festival, blithely reconstituting straight-ahead Ramones-style riffs and beats while surgically attaching them to cartoony creature-feature lyrics.

On Festival, songwriter Kepi keeps the winking goofball factor at a fever pitch throughout: picnicking in a cemetery ("Graveyard Girlfriend"), agonizing over alien invaders ("Evading the Greys"), and, on the revved-up "Graceland," resurrecting the King ("Well, we took off like a Sabre jet for Tennessee/Pulled up to Graceland, pulled out my skeleton key/Gonna find out where he's buried, gonna dig him up/Throw his remains on the back of a truck/Perform some kind of voodoo-type ritual thing/And sit back and laugh while we watch him sing").

Kepi intones everything in a nasal deadpan, Roach stokes the melody with relentless chords, and Panic drops cymbal bombs every few beats: in short, Ramones-a-rama. Additionally, the Ghoulies Ramonize Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home" and cover Wilson Pickett's R&B ballad "If You Need Me," although they appear to be working from the Rolling Stones' 1964 version of the same song. Good for some grins certainly, but all the innate horror-show bumptiouness and lowbrow sanctification in the universe won't coax a one-trick pony to perform more than one trick.

As for the Donnas, current pet rocks of the music press, well, on their truth-in-advertising second album American Teenage Rock 'n' Roll Machine, the quartet of adolescent girls from Palo Alto, California, tumbles through ten tunes in 24-plus minutes, suturing the Ramones' aural bedrock to the Runaways' randy sensibilities. Key phrases: "checking it out," "rock, rock, rock and roll," "looking for some party action," and "c'mon and stick it in." Memo to Gary Glitter's attorney: Give a close listen to "You Make Me Hot." Sound a bit like "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" or what? (Lookout! Records, P.O. Box 11374, Berkeley, CA 94712-2374)

-- Michael Yockel

Groovie Ghoulies and the Donnas perform at at 7:00 p.m. Saturday at Squeeze, 2 S New River Dr, Fort Lauderdale; 954-522-2151. Tickets cost $6.

DJ Shadow
Preemptive Strike
(Mo' Wax/ffrr)

People often misuse the word epitome to refer to the most extreme or notable exemplar of a given type. Actually the epitome is the least extreme, most typical example of something. That distinction is made here with the intention of avoiding any hint of the hyperbolic accolades heaped upon DJ Shadow's fine 1996 album Endtroducing, while at the same time noting that his new Preemptive Strike is the absolute epitome of a singles collection following up an acclaimed debut. But the "new" DJ Shadow album is superfluous, not superlative.

Most of the tracks here were released on vinyl before Endtroducing was issued (some also showed up on that album). Two have come out since -- an extended remix of Endtroducing's "Organ Donor" and one new song, "High Noon." Preemptive Strike also includes a bonus CD that features mixes of some of the same previously released Shadow material -- this time cut up and scratched up by DJ Q-Bert. (He's the star of the Bay Area DJ crew Invisibl Skratch Piklz and was a cameo scene-stealer on Kool Keith and the Automator's Dr. Octagon.)

It would be a waste of time to discuss how Shadow's early tracks offer insight into the development of the major artist who emerged on Endtroducing. As for Q-Bert, his showcase merely corroborates previously demonstrated abilities. To dwell on either disc would be to join them in revisiting well-covered territory.

Instead, it makes sense to note how Preemptive Strike provides evidence for each of two opposing camps' opinions regarding DJ Shadow. To listeners who find contemporary hip-hop abrasive and anti-intellectual, Shadow's laid-back instrumentals present a refreshingly cool and detached alternative. His perspective is no less nourished by beat science than is the work of Gotham's grittiest grandmasters, but he adopts a broader and more calculating approach. Compositions from 1993 and 1995 show Shadow approaching hip-hop with the restraint of a jazz musician, building lush imagery from disjointed melodic forms that he repeats and revises.