THE MEAT GOES ON
With her androgynous looks and lowercase moniker, Canadian country
singer k.d. lang knows how to attract attention. But she may
have bitten off more than she intended when she agreed to make an
anti-beef TV commercial. Produced by the Washington, D.C.-based
animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the
ad is set to air nationally late next month, but it caused an
immediate stir after being sneak-previewed on Entertainment Tonightin late June. Angry radio programmers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri,
Montana, Iowa, and Nebraska banned her records. A two-year-old ''Home
of K.D. Lang'' sign in her hometown of Consort, Alberta, was defaced
with such slogans as ''Eat Alberta Meat.'' Cattle associations in the
U.S. and Canada condemned lang, though she was praised by Paul and
Linda McCartney and the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, all of whom are
vegetarians. But will any of it hurt lang's career? Not likely. ''They
(radio stations) didn't play her to begin with,'' says a spokesman for
her label, Warner Bros., of the radio boycott. ''It's blown out of
proportion.'' Also lost in the fuss over lang's aversion to meat was
her seemingly contradictory penchant for wearing vests and boots made
from things that go moo. As lang admitted to Vegetarian Times last
year, ''I still have to get to the point where I don't wear leather
anymore. I have to make a commitment.'' Lang, on vacation in Canada,
was not available for comment. But Paul McCartney, no stranger to the
power of the media, offered this insight: ''When they banned the
Beatles in the '60s, it only helped to make us more popular. I think
the same will happen with k.d. lang.''
JAM PACKED
The sessions that produced ''Layla'' — both the single and the
two-album set — are legendary. They brought together the champions of
two great blues-rock schools: Eric Clapton from England and Duane
Allman from the American South. This fall Polydor will document that
1970 studio outing, recorded under the name Derek and the Dominos,
with The Layla Sessions: The 20th Anniversary Edition. The three-CD
(or three-cassette) boxed set takes a scholarly approach to the
album's creation. One disc presents the original recording in
digitally remixed form. Another includes five free-form jams,
featuring players from the Dominos and the Allman Brothers Band. The
third disc is filled with alternate takes, a couple more jams, and a
23-minute chunk of one session that documents the evolution of the
song ''Mean Old World'' through various incarnations, punctuated by the
chatatr of Clapton and Allman. The liner notes for the package will
detail who's doing what on each track — meaning that, for the first
time, guitar fans will know exactly which hero to credit for each
solo.
NOT A BOY TOY
Patrick Leonard would rather not talk about Madonna. Sure, he's
cowritten several of her top hits, including ''Like a Prayer'' and
''Live to Tell.'' And he coproduced her past three albums. But at the
moment Leonard is excited about Toy Matinee, his five-man band that's
about to release a self-titled debut album. Leonard plays keyboards and cowrote all of the songs
with his bandmates. He says he wanted Toy Matinee to recapture some
of the excitement of the '70s with music ''that is a little less
fast-foody.'' The album's straight-ahead rock probably won't remind
listeners of Madonna, and that's just fine with Leonard. ''This is not
'Like a Prayer' with a guy singer,'' he says. If Madonna had any
influence on Toy Matinee, it had to do with how the album was
recorded: Most of the tracks were done in one take with little
overdubbing. ''Madonna has been a great teacher,'' Leonard says. ''She
and I do things with reckless abandon.'' — With additional reporting by David Browne
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