POP CULTURE

BORN TO LAUGH AT TORNADOES,by Was (Not Was) (Ze/Geffen). Was (Not Was) is what P-funk has to do with heavy metal, what heavy metal has to do with jazz, what jazz has to do with absurdist satire, and what growing up together in Detroit did to Donald Fagenson and David Weiss. In 1981, under the aliases Don and David Was, the partners assembled an impressive if unlikely confederation of studio musicians and released Was (Not Was), a catalogue of aural oddities, musical styles ranging from calypso to low-budget Mexican romantic. The package held together, though, through the courageous good humor of the Wases. This year’s album, Bom to Laugh at Tornadoes, is not as aggressively peculiar—at least not on the surface. A new “Out Come the Freaks’’ sounds at First like a neo-Motown remake of “Up on the Roof” but tells the tale of a boy who’s bought a tape machine to record the screams of visiting girlfriends. As on the last album, guest musicians are drawn from a variety of idioms: lead vocals on “Shake Your Head” are sung by Ozzy Osbourne, and on “Zaz Turned Blue” by Mel Torme. Bom to Laugh at Tornadoes, with its understated perversity, is a marvelous piece of aesthetic subversiveness.

JOHN HOUSE

■ PYRAMID COCKTAIL LOUNGE(New York). Now one and a half years old, this cabaret with the “attitude” bar on the first floor and the “mood” lounge in the basement just keeps on rolling faster. Live soap opera, drag wrestling, tax-evasion seminars—you name it, the Pyramid presents it: everything, as they say, but water sports. The programs change every night.

T.S.

■ PUNCH THE CLOCK,by Elvis Costello and the Attractions (Columbia). Elvis Costello has gone all sweet and sticky with an overproduced, underdeveloped sound that leads listeners into temptation only to deliver disappointment. Costello’s thirteen (this is another long record) vignettes of life in the slow lane cover his usual themes—obsessive attachment, attitude adjustment, and living by the time clock—but the mainstream pop melodies drag down even lines like “Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal / I’d still own the film rights to be working on the sequel.”

Costello earned his name with a series of brilliant, consistently inventive albums that signaled the triumph of the second British invasion. But only once on this album, singing to a down-at-the-heels debutante in “Charm School,” does he even sound like himself. After Punch the Clock and the failure of his country album, Almost Blue, it may be time to wonder if Elvis Costello’s aim is still true.

D.D.G.

■ AREA (New York). One wall of the hundred-foot-long entranceway to this new club has four built-in showcases large enough to display dioramas, live wildlife, or whatever fancy suits its latest theme. The developers plan to change themes in the 12,000-square-foot club each month, aided by other showcases; a DJ’d dance floor; slides, film and video; a freshwater pond and a waterfall; and the nonfunctional space in the oversize bathrooms. This is nightlife for unnaturalists, variety on the installment plan—maybe a missing link between hippie happening and theme-park extravaganza. The 1,800-gallon saltwater tank could hold a shark.

J.B.

■ INSIDE PRIME TIME, by Todd Gitlin (Pantheon). Todd Gitlin, who labors under the burden of being called a “media sociologist,” has created an engaging and (almost unduly) sympathetic portrait of network TV— without slumming. Inside Prime Time, which is just about to be released, combines thinking and reporting (rare alone, unheard of together) and laces them with giddy anecdotes. T.Y.

T.Y.