Reviewed by CHRIS ALBERTSON EDWARD BUXBAUM NOEL COPPAGE PHYL GARLAND PAUL KRESH PETER REILLY STEVE SIMELS JOEL VANCE
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
AMAZING RHYTHM ACES. Amazing Rhythm Aces (vocals and instrumentals); Tracy Nelson, Lisa Gilkyson, Joan Baez (vocals). Love and Happiness; Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette); Homestead in My Heart; Say You Lied; The Lonely One; and four others. ABC AA-I 123 $7.98, AA-1123 $7.95, AA-1123 $7.95.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Excellent
The Amazing Rhythm Aces, a crack outfit from the Muscle Shoals Studios in Alabama, seem to have succeeded in doing what Area Code 615 from Nashville and the Atlanta Rhythm Section couldn't: they've made the transition from studio back-up musicians to headliners. Area Code 615 was loaded with talent, but they couldn't find a lead vocalist and played in too many styles all at once; the Atlanta guys just play too cautiously. The Aces don't rely on a single vocalist, instead having several members of the group-on this disc Russell Smith, Butch McDade, and Duncan Cameron--sing together, and they're more concerned with a Southern sound than with whether the music is rock or pop or country. Maybe 615 played a little too Southern and Atlanta plays a trifle Northern, but the Aces strike a happy medium.
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Explanation of symbols:
= reel-to-reel stereo tape
= eight-track stereo cartridge
= stereo cassette
= quadraphonic disc
= digital-master recording
= direct-to-disc recording
Monophonic recordings are indicated by the symbol
The first listing is the one reviewed; other formats, if available, follow it.
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The Aces call on their personnel to provide original material, and the outside songs-Al Green's Love and Happiness, Roy Clark's If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody, and Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette), which is credited to "Naomi Neville" but was in fact written by Allen Toussaint in 1962-are excel lent choices. Their debut album is delightful all the way through, with Duncan Cameron's Homestead in My Heart and Russell Smith's Say You Lied also among the highlights.
Smith wrote the closing cut, Rodrigo, Rita and Elaine, which for anticlimax rivals the ridiculous and surreal Desert Blues recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in the 1920's. I don't know who's kidding whom on Rodrigo, but the way it sounds I'm willing to be kidded. -J.V.
ANGEL: Sinful. Angel (vocals and instrumentals). Don't Take Your Love; L.A. Lady; You Can't Buy Love; Bad Time; and six others. CASABLANCA NBLP 7127 $8.98, NBL8 7127 $8.98,. NBL5 7127 $8.98.
Performance: Metal bubble gum
Recording: Likewise
Angel is a unisex-and-Moog teenybopper organization, extremely loud with extremely amateurish lyrics. The thing the boys do best is grow hair, and the thing they give second highest priority, obviously, is wearing clothes. Somewhere fairly far down the list is making music, at which they are strictly run of-the-mill conventional hard rock with practically nothing to distinguish them from your Sammy Hagars and your other latter-day Led Zeppelin imitators . . . except, as I say, their lyrics are a little dumber than average. Yech. - N.C.
BADFINGER: Airwaves. Joey Molland, Tom Evans (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Look Out California; Love Is Gonna Come At Last; Lost Inside Your Love; The Winner; Sail Away; and three others. ELEKTRA 6E-175 $7.98, ET8-175 $7.98, TC5-175 $7.98.
Performance: Good, but . . .
Recording: Good
Two of the original members of Badfinger Joey Molland and Tom Evans-are here backed by studio musicians on what is less a comeback album than an attempt to capitalize on whatever value is left in the Badfinger name. The original Badfinger had such an arresting sound that for a time it was thought they might possibly be the new Beatles, not imitators but successors. They recorded for Apple and were produced by Mal Evans, once the Beatles' road manager; their debut single was Come and Get It, written by McCartney, but soon they were writing hits of their own, such as No Matter What, Baby Blue, and Day After Day. The collapse of Apple and the law suits and squabbles between the former Beatles and their managers hurt Badfinger a lot, and when Pete Ham died (he had been respon sible for their material and sound) this very promising group disintegrated. "Airwaves" has some good material-Molland's Love Is Gonna Come At Last and Joe Tansin's Sym pathy-and some good performances, but I think the name "Badfinger" ought to be per manently retired. While this is not entirely a case of false advertising, it is hardly in the best of taste. J.V.
BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST: XII. Barclay James Harvest (vocals and instrumentals). In Search of England; Loving Is Easy; Berlin; A Tale of Two Sixties; The Closed Shop; Sip of Wine; and five others. POLYDOR PD-1-6173 $7.98, 8T-1-6173 $7.98, CT-1-6173 $7.98.
Performance: Neo-Moodies
Recording: Very good
This is a British rock group with an electronic-keyboard sweep behind it, and, as such things go, I really have only one complaint: the lyrics are stupid. Not as stupid as the lyrics of many of our American rock groups, mind you, but stupid enough. Being ambitious doesn't help them, either; the thing is divided up into Fantasy (Loving Is Easy), Classics, Fact, etc., and only the comment on labor (The Closed Shop) seems to know what the hell it's talking about. The Streets of San Francisco, an "evocation" of a female killer prowling Golden Gate Park, is a cut or two be low Harry Chapin at this sort of thing, if you can imagine that, and A Tale of Two Sixties, which turns on name dropping, is even worse. Singing and playing, though, the group is okay. -N.C.
SHANNON BOLIN AND MILTON KAYE: To Alec Wilder and the World. Shannon Bolin (vocals); Milton Kaye (piano). Songs for Patricia; Four Children's Songs; The Plowman; Pied Beauty; The Rose on the Wind; Margaret; While We're Young; and five others. GOLDEN CREST RE-7079 $7.98.
Performance: Careful and well-meant
Recording: Good
This is a reverent homage to the work of Alec Wilder, probably best known to the general public as the composer of the wistfully lovely While We're Young. Wilder obviously goes to the best when he chooses his texts, since the settings here are of poems and occasional pieces by the likes of Carl Sandburg, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and James Thurber. But the hushed awe of Shannon Bolin's careful, well-meant vocals and Milton Kaye's almost sepulchral chording leads to an atmosphere so maternal and sacerdotal at the same time that I begin to have itchy, vague recollections of years-ago suffering at an Elisabeth Schwarzkopf concert when she was apparently deter mined to sing, in sequence, everything Hugo Wolf had ever written-including his letters to his publisher. Long before this recital (and this album is most definitely a Recital) tiptoed to its close, I yearned for some more active sport-such as bird-watching, or perhaps a snappy game of chess. Alec Wilder deserves less worshipful treatment than this. P.R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT CAMEL: Breathless. Camel (vocals and instrumentals). Breathless; Echoes; Wing and a Prayer; Down on the Farm; Starlight Ride; and four others. ARISTA AB 4206 $7.98, AT8 4206 $7.98, ATC 4206 $7.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Very good
Camel is a versatile British group that's been around for a while with shifting personnel.
They have an eclectic style-mixing elements of rock, light classical, jazz, folk, operetta, even some disco-that is impressive and most enjoyable. I especially like the baroque arrangement on Starlight Ride and the very funny Down on the Farm, which has a melody line reminiscent of a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song and a vocal reminiscent of Noel Coward. Breathless and Wing and a Prayer are both fine examples of the best sort of British pop: straightforward vocals and careful orchestration applied to well-crafted songs that are designed to charm. They do. - J. V.
KIM CARNES: St. Vincent's Court. Kim Carnes (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Jamaica Sunday Morning; Paris With out You; Lose in Love; Goodnight Moon; It Hurts So Bad; and six others. EMI/AMERICA SW-17004 $7.98.
Performance: Imitative
Recording: Good
I doubt that Kim Carnes could get any closer to being Carly Simon without being married to James Taylor. Not only does she sound remarkably like Simon, but her songs reflect the same sensibility-you know, the smart girl trapped by her own cleverness but ready for lowdown love as soon. as she can sublet the Paris apartment and put the finishing touches on her doctoral thesis. Carnes does enough groaning and panting in It Hurts So Much to convince you that it really just might. In Take Me Home to Where My Heart Is and Good night Moon, she seems quite at ease with the fine gothic-romance touch that Simon mastered long ago. We're going to need a new la bel to fit the swarm of young women who have come to our attention on recordings in the past few years. How about Aspiring Lady Novelists on Records? Insulting, perhaps, but right now I can't think of anything else that fits quite as well. P.R.
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The Eclectic Tin Huey
WELL, forget all the hype about Akron's being the new Liverpool. Devo, the Rubber City's most famous native android sons, have already revealed themselves as not much more than Kiss for kollege kids, and the adorable Rachel Sweet, although a lot of fun in person, is basically just a younger version of the early Tanya Tucker. Hardly a Renaissance. Tin Huey, on the other hand, although unlikely to alter the face of Western Culture, are considerably more substantial musical ambassadors than their better-known co-conspirators. In fact, they're about the most accessible non-mainstream rock band I've heard in a long time, combining a pop approach with occasionally topical lyrics and a musical style that manages to make more than a token nod toward the more outré of the British avant gardists. They do the Monkees' I'm a Believer here, for example, but in a somewhat spacy version swiped from ex-Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, pretty good indication of their collective intelligence.
Their own Hump Day illustrates their wacky eclecticism particularly well: it starts and finishes as a sort of mutated Chicago blues tricked up with electronic sound effects and a brief instrumental bridge that flirts with free jazz, all the while taking an effective swipe at the blue-collar, assembly-line men tality of their home town. Yet the whole thing still comes off sounding like a Top-10 single because of its oddly martial (though ironic) exhortations to "keep your mind on your work." There's some discrete synthesizer in the background, plus some very good sax stuff and a lot of rhythmic transitions that shouldn't work but somehow do, but for all the slightly modernistic decorative overlays, the sound is still pop. Which only proves, I guess, that Devo was right about at least one thing: today's noise is tomorrow's hootenany.
I'VE never really liked a band this self-consciously intellectual before, but these guys have charmed me. Highly recommended.
-Steve Simels
TIN HUEY: Contents Dislodged During Ship ping. Tin Huey (vocals and instrumentals);
other musicians. I'm a Believer; The Revelations of Dr. Modesto; I Could Rule the World If I Could Only Get the Parts; Coronation; Slide; Hump Day; Pink Berets; Squirm You Worm; Chinese Circus; Puppet Wipes; New York's Finest Dining Experience. WARNER BRos. BSK 3297 $7.98, M8 3297 $7.98, M5 3297 $7.98.
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Alberta Hunter
As one who counts an evening's exposure to the rough-hewn but radiant art of Alberta Hunter at Barney Josephson's Cookery on New York City's University Place among the richest musical experiences of a lifetime rich in such riches, I had some misgivings when I placed on my turntable a selection of previously unreleased recordings made by this singer at the peak of her career between 1935 and 1940.
She belongs, I suspect, to that type of artist whose communicative magic can be fully appreciated only within a radius of twenty yards or so of her physical presence. Mabel Mercer is the prototype; Sylvia Syms and even Peggy Lee are other good examples. So much is de pendent upon, and identified with, the mock-severe frown, the sense of fun, the compassionate, omniscient smile, the knowing, insinuating, impudent wink, the arching of an eyebrow, the angling of the head, the throw away gesture of a hand.
It's all there in the voice, too, of course: the warmth, the humor, the wisdom, expressed in an approach to phrasing dictated by a love and comprehension of the lyrical faculties of speech and especially its expressive rhythms.
But, on a record, divorced from the physical presence and the illustrative auxiliaries of facial expression, posture, and gesture, a vital dimension is missing.
All this is true of Alberta Hunter, but still I found myself enjoying the record hugely. I could not help asking myself, however, whether I would have experienced the same delight had I not been able to evoke the mental image of Alberta Hunter at work one Saturday night at the Cookery last November.
The answer was certainly "No"-which is not to say that there is no substantial reward here for the uninitiated. There is, but it is inevitably less than one gets "live." My reaction to the first track, You Can't Tell the Difference After Dark, was surprise at how much the Alberta Hunter of 1935 or 1940 sounds like the Alberta Hunter of today though obviously I should put it the other way around. Surprise was tempered as, track after track, the explanation became clear. The reason Alberta Hunter can pretty accurately du plicate at eighty-three what she did forty or fifty years ago is that she has never been-this is true also of Mabel Mercer-a singer in the sense of a vocalist sustaining a melody. Her art is more oratorical than lyrical. She is (and, as these tracks show, always has been) more diseuse than singer. But the art of the diseuse is the discovery and mastery of the music of language, and in this context Alberta Hunter is a great musician.
She is more of a jazz musician than Mabel Mercer, and on five of these tracks she is obviously rejoicing in the brilliantly inventive collaboration of Charlie Shavers on trumpet and Buster Bailey on clarinet. The backings elsewhere are less distinguished, but with Alberta Hunter the participation of a Shavers or a Bailey is simply a luxury bonus.
No credits are given, but the songs-an en gaging potpourri of Tin Pan Alley, blues, and (very) soft porn-are all presumably hers.
-Henry Pleasants
ALBERTA HUNTER: The Thirties. Alberta Hunter (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Downhearted Blues; Send Me a Man; Fine and Mellow; Chirpin' the Blues; The Castle's Rockin'; Take Your Big Hands Off; You Can't Tel! the Difference After Dark; Second Hand Man; I'll See You Go; Ye1pin' the Blues; The Love I Have for You; Someday, Sweetheart; Boogie Woogie Swing; I Won't Let You Down; He's Got a Punch Like Joe Louis. STASH ST-115 $6.98.
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CHEAP TRICK: At Budokan. Cheap Trick (vocals and instrumentals). Hello There; Come On, Come On; Look Out; Big Eyes; Need Your Love; and five others. EPIC FE 35795 $7.98, FEA 35795 $7.98, FET 35795 $7.98.
Performance: Pleasant noise
Recording: Good remote
Cheap Trick is one of the more likable of the wall-of-sound rock groups, possibly because it's so hard to dislike a lead guitar player who looks like Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys, as Rick Nielsen does. Nielsen also writes most of the Trick's material, which ranges from songs that amount to practically nothing ("Would you like to do a number with me?" is the only thing that gets said in Hello There) to songs that wander off surrealistically in ear ly Captain Beefheart style. Surrender starts out about the girl Mommy warned the singer/ narrator about but ends up about Mommy and Daddy being a little weird, Mommy having been a WAC during the war, and so on. One suspects Nielsen's songs get this way by de fault, because he doesn't know enough or care enough to get them to stay on a point and make sense, but the more important thing may be that he realizes it doesn't make any difference. The subject deserves to be taken about as seriously as he takes it. The same attitude seems to infuse his guitar playing, which is everywhere; there's nothing very skilled going on, but one realizes it wouldn't make any difference if there were. In an era of throwaway rock-and-roll, Cheap Trick earns some points for being frankly and honestly cheap. And it does have a good beat. - N.C.
JOE ELY: Down on the Drag. Joe Ely (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Fools Fall in Love; BBQ & Foam; Standin' at the Big Hotel; Crazy Lemon; Crawdad Train; and five others. MCA MCA-3080 $7.98, MCAT-3080 $7.98, MCAC-3080 $7.98.
Performance: Mediocre
Recording: Average
I don't demand tremendous technique from singers, but I do want them to not let the damned pitch waver around at critical moments. Mostly I want them to be believable singing the song, whatever it is. Joe Ely here lets me down on both counts, coming up shorter on credibility than he does on technique. Sounds like a boy posing as a man, a middle-class kid posing as a cowboy, and so on. Some of the songs aren't too bad, actually (they have been on previous Ely albums I've heard), probably because four of them come from Butch Hancock, who has a certain flair for simplicity. And Ely's band plays pretty good back-up, about in the middle of the country-rock road. But I need more authority out of the main man, and less bluffing. - N.C.
MICHAEL FRANKS: Tiger in the Rain. Michael Franks (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. When It's Over; Living on the In side; Hideaway; Underneath the Apple Tree; Satisfaction Guaranteed; and four others. WARNER BROS. BSK 3294 $7.98, M8 3294 $7.98, MS 3294 $7.98.
Performance: Not up to the songs
Recording: Very good
I'll vote for Michael Franks as a songwriter but not as a singer. His lyrics are witty and cosmopolitan, his melodic and harmonic constructions agile and frisky (he writes in a largely jazz style), but his unisex vocals don't do the material justice. Although this album has excellent arrangements and production by John Simon and the back-up presence of such master musicians as bassist Ron Carter and guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, Franks' voice is too thin and breathy and his vocal range too limited to give his songs the coloration they deserve.
But every Franks album I've ever heard has lyrics worth quoting. From this one's Living on the Inside: "I play the scales/And you protect the whales . . . Make love to me/Listening to Satie . . . We're so francais With lime and Perrier." Satisfaction Guaranteed has this confession of sexual desire: "When I saw you there in your Danskin/Then the wolf jumped out of the lambskin." How can you dislike a fellow who writes like that? -J.V.
STEVE GOODMAN: High and Outside. Steve Goodman (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment. Just Lucky I Guess; You Can Turn to Me; The One That Got Away; Luxury's Lap; One-Bite of the Apple; and five others. ASYLUM 6E-174 $7.98, C) KT8-174 $7.98, TC5-174 $7.98.
Performance: Low and inside
Recording: Very good
This is the worst album Steve Goodman ever made. He sort of pointed toward it in the last two, which showed him headed toward dry ness and stylization and detachment, but there's nothing of a redeeming nature like Ba nana Republics this time. Men Who Love Women Who Love Men is an attempt to take things less seriously in the old-time Goodman fashion, but it comes off a pale and silly play on words. The verse Shel Silverstein contributed to What Have You Done for Me Lately is the best thing about the album, but it's the kind of joke you only need to hear once.
Elsewhere the album falls flat when you stop listening to it because you owe Goodman something and just listen to it, period. It's more produced than anything else; all the pro duction touches are there, brilliant segues from guitar to piano, harmonizing wood winds, la-la voices in a Motown mode, and so forth, but "So what?" looms over every song. Goodman's been edging toward writing 1940's music and this time he just about has, managing to say practically nothing at least as moronically as Tin Pan Alley used to say nothing in the real Forties. And-except for Luxury's Lap-to couch it in less melody. I think he's been hanging around the middle of the road too long. - N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
DOBIE GRAY: Midnight Diamond. Dobie Gray (vocals); other musicians. You Can Do It; We've Got to Get It On Again; Weekend Friend; Miss You Nights; Sharing the Night Together; and five others. INFINITY INF 9001 $7.98, INFT 9001 $7.98, INFC 9001 $7.98.
Performance: Exuberant
Recording: Good
Dobie Gray has had a disproportionate share of downs in a career that got off to a promising start back in 1964 when he released the durable hit The In Crowd. In fact, there was one long period when Gray disappeared from music entirely and turned to acting.
He's been back in the musical mainstream since 1973 and now seems to have achieved professional stability. It's a good thing, too, for he has much to offer, including a warm, earthy voice and a fine sense of phrasing (both of which make him sound at times like a male Gladys Knight). He can take a rather simple r-&-b song or a country-flecked melody and make it swing by biting into its core and set ting the juices to flowing, as is apparent here on the joyous number We've Got to Get It On Again. A wonderful exuberance pervades this album, which includes an amazingly fresh re working of that worn-out reggae item, I Can See Clearly Now. There's no disco here, no "cute" capers, just plenty of plain old-fashioned good singing. P.G.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
DAVID GRISMAN: Hot Dawg. David Gris man (mandolin, guitar); Richard Greene (violin); other musicians. Dawg's Bull; Devlin'; Minor Swing; Dawgology; Neon Tetra; and two others. HORIZON SP-731 $7.98, 8T-731 $7.98, CS-731 $7.98.
Performance: Sparkling
Recording: Very good
David Grisman just doesn't think like other musicians, except maybe vaguely and superficially like some of the guys in Oregon. What ...
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Exit Elvis, Pursued by graham
COSTELLO: ex-computer operator
PARKER: ex-gas station attendant
IN case you hadn't noticed, the Elvis Costello backlash is upon us, and it shouldn't come as any particular surprise, the recent brouha ha over his allegedly racist remarks about Ray Charles and James Brown quite aside. But it is an indication of just how fast things happen in pop music that the man who absolutely creamed the competition for Album of the Year in a January Village Voice critics' poll could get punched out by Bonnie Bramlett (whose stock with critics is about as low as Barry Manilow's) in March for being obnoxious, and yet it's Bramlett who comes off looking like the good guy.
But, like I said, no surprise. Costello is both a commercial success and a bona fide star now, and he's done for punk/New Wave what his namesake did for rock-and-roll: made it "respectable." So, given that none of his work up until now has exactly dripped with compassion for human frailty and that he's the B.M.O.C. of the whole scene, it's only natural that people should be gunning for him both critically and literally (there were 150 anonymous threats of violence the night of his recent appearance at New York's Palladium).
Unfortunately for the new King, his album "Armed Forces" comes out at roughly the same time as the Arista debut of Graham Parker (himself also--and already--the victim of an Elvis-derived backlash); viewed dispassionately, it looks distinctly second best in comparison. In pop music, timing is every thing, and Parker (who has, superficially, things in common with Elvis-they're both short, intense, pub-and punk-influenced) made the mistake of coming to our initial attention mere months before Costello. He suffered for it commercially, and it was probably a question of focus. Elvis' first two albums immediately established an identifiable style, both musically and in terms of image-mongering; his lyrics were all revenge and guilt while his band sounded both pop and serious. Parker, on the other hand, had a tendency to wander stylistically--a Dylanesque diatribe here, an r-&-braver there, and while I found his first two records generally as compelling as Elvis', there was no question that he came off a tad lightweight. A muddled third album and a second-rate live set released to fulfill a contractual commitment didn't help the situation much either.
"Squeezing Out Sparks," however, is not only the definitive Graham Parker but a watershed work that may one day be regarded as the first true Eighties record. Its theme, in the immortal words of P-Funk mastermind George Clinton, might be summarized as "Think! It ain't illegal yet," except that Parker wants to shake you up and make damn sure that you feel, too. This is a savage, furious indictment of the failure of nerve of the narcissistic Me Decade, and the aim is unerringly true. There are lethal snipes at all sorts of Seventies preoccupations, from the disco mentality (Saturday Night Is Dead, and with this song is it ever!), to easy acceptance of the futility of relationships (Discovering Japan), to the idea that our salvation will come from some "outside" force, be it political white knights like Jerry Brown or Margaret Thatcher or Close Encounters aliens (Waiting for the UFO's). But there's no glib sloganeering; these are not Sixties protest songs. Rather, Jack Nitzche's pared-down production, the Rumour's whiplash guitar attack, and Parker's choked, soulful singing all combine, in the best rock tradition, to form an almost physical assault: the message comes across in the sheer intensity of the sound and the beat.
You may not catch all the words, but nonetheless you'll know exactly what they mean the minute you hear them. Like all the greats, from Presley to Dylan to the Who to Springsteen to Phil Spector to the Clash, Parker's new music sounds like what it says.
ELVIS' new music does too, of course, but only in the sense that it sounds like what he's saying is that he's unsure of what he's saying.
It's a holding action, but he gets away with it because his sense of craft is intact and be cause he's wisely jettisoned both the amphetamine rockabilly of the first album and the organ mysterioso of the second in favor of something more accessible. "Armed Forces" is actually a little pop tour de force, with the Attractions and producer Nick Lowe providing an irresistible sonic backdrop that generally allows you to overlook the fact that he's playing image games, being deliberately vague about what's bugging him. The give away in that regard is the album's final track, an old Lowe tune from his Brinsley days called (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? Its flower-child sentiments, transparently insincere when Lowe wrote the song as a genre exercise/exploitation piece, nonetheless get Elvis and the band excited enough that they turn it into a passion ate, raging wall of sound. They sound so much like they mean it that you're not troubled by the double irony, and the song simply overpowers everything else on the album.
There's no question that Costello's next record is going to be crucial. On the basis of the new songs I saw him unveil in live performance recently, it's clear he can crank out brilliant pop forever, but I wonder how long he can pull off the Dylanesque myth-making he obviously aspires to. Especially now, with a revved-up Graham Parker nipping at his heels.-Steve Simels ELVIS COSTELLO: Armed Forces. Elvis Costello and the Attractions (vocals and instrumentals). Accidents Will Happen; Senior Service; Oliver's Army; Big Boys; Green Shirt; Party Girl; Goon Squad; Busy Bodies; Moods for Moderns; Chemistry Class; Two Little Hitlers; (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? COLUMBIA JC 35709 $7.98, 0 JCA 35709 $7.98, JCT 35709 $7.98.
GRAHAM PARKER AND THE RUMOUR: Squeezing Out Sparks. Graham Parker (vocals); the Rumour (vocals and instrumentals). Discovering Japan; Local Girls; Nobody Hurts You; You Can't Be Too Strong; Pas sion Is No Ordinary Word; Saturday Nite Is Dead; Love Gets You Twisted; Protection; Waiting for the UFO's; Don't Get Excited. ARISTA AB 4223 $7.98, e AT8 4223 $7.98, 0 ATC 4223 $7.98.
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... he has been evolving, and here evolves another notch, is a kind of hillbilly jazz. It really isn't as complex as it at first sounds-or as far out, when you compare it to Stephan Grappelli and Django Reinhardt's Minor Swing, included here. But it is wonderfully difficult to play with this kind of rippling clarity and cleanliness, and Grisman and his mates, al though they are virtually flawless, maintain a tension and a high dramatic quotient through out. It's one of the more engrossing instrumental albums I've got, ranking just behind the previous one by Grisman. N.C.
THE GUESS WHO: All This for a Song. The Guess Who (vocals and instrumentals); other musicians. C'mon Little Mama; That's the Moment; It's Getting Pretty Bad; Raisin' Hell on the Prairies; Moon Wave Maker; and five others. HILLTAK HT 19227 $7.98, 0 TP 19227 $7.97, CS 19227 $7.97.
Performance: Not bad
Recording: Nice
Salivating for a Guess Who reunion? Well, neither am I, although I was a fan. This one, however, is the Guess Who only in the sense that a band featuring Ringo Starr and the late Stu Sutcliffe could be called the Beatles. Un remarkable bassist Jim Kale is the only per son left around from the band's glory days as a hit-single machine (Don McDougall was briefly involved with one of the post-Randy Bachman incarnations of the group, while the two new members are unknowns), and, frankly, the Guess Who were never much more than a vehicle for Burton Cummings anyway.
He gave them their vocal sound, most of their musical direction, and their entire slightly warped sensibility (a lot less pop and more hippie/punk than many supposed at the time).
But, wonder of wonders, this new effort actually sounds like a middling Guess Who al bum. Song for song, it's a lot stronger than the last two they did with Cummings still aboard, and the dual guitar work and lyrical spitefulness faithfully recalls the spirit of the original edition. (On Taxman, incidentally, either someone is doing a really great imitation of Burton or else the old Gross Out King himself is doing the vocal un-credited.) Much of the record, especially the title song and C'mon Little Mama, has the typically Canadian mixture of heavy-metal and wheat-field soul that made this band almost special, and while I don't hear anything here that really knocks me out, I hope they stick together long enough to try again. - S.S.
HORSLIPS: The Man Who Built America. Horslips (vocals and instrumentals). Loneliness; Tonight; I'll Be Waiting; If It Takes All Night; Green Star Liner; The Man Who Built America; and four others. DJM DJM-20 $7.98, 0 DJM8-20 $7.98, DJMC-20 $7.98.
Performance: Promising
Recording: A bit dense
There's a germ of something here, but maybe if you take a lot of vitamin C you won't get it.
Seriously, folks, Horslips sounds better than it has a right to; it's one of those synthetic rock groups of the Seventies, its sound based mainly upon radio-listening experience. The band isn't punk, but echoes of the pioneer groups-the Who, Jethro Tull, and Free-run through this, along with hints of traditional Irish instrumentation (the five members of Horslips all hail from Ireland). I include Free not because it pioneered anything but because it was as muscular on guitar as this album is.
The mix, not much better than you get at an actual rock concert, makes this muscularity seem even more pronounced. The Horslips are not great writers, but they are at least interested in writing, and their songs, like their style, suggest there's a fair amount of potential crawling around here. A little of it is al ready realized. - N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JOE JACKSON: Look Sharp! Joe Jackson (vocals, piano); other musicians. One More Time; Sunday Papers; Is She Really Going Out with Him?; Happy Loving Couples; Throw It Away; Baby Stick Around; Look Sharp!; (Do the) Instant Mash; and three others. A&M SP-4743 $7.98, 0 8T-4743 $7.98, CT-4743 $7.98.
Performance: Spiffy
Recording: Likewise
Well, first of all, you baseball buffs will be interested to know that that is his real name.
This Joe is hardly shoeless (check the cover and that spiffy pair of white Densons), and, being English, he's probably a soccer fan (I have it on good authority that he's never heard of the Chicago Black Sox scandal, "say it ain't so," and Hannibal, Mo.). Second, he's much taller than he looks in the photo on the back of the album, and not terribly angry, so let's hear none of those Elvis Costello comparisons some people are already beginning to make ("New Costello" seems to be replacing "New Dylan," which probably makes both Elvis and Bob very happy, if perhaps for different reasons).
Jackson is yet another in the seemingly end less procession of post-punk English pop craftsmen that recalls nothing so much as the halcyon days of 1964-1965 and the British Invasion. His rock-and-roll is predicated on both melody and riff (just like the old days), it is primitively spare in a knowing and sophisticated way (here the Costello comparison is apt, because his band gets exceptional mile age out of a sound quite devoid of overdubs), old-fashioned romantic, and quite irresistible.
I wouldn't be at all surprised, in fact, if Peter Asher wound up producing some of these songs (Is She Really Going Out with Him? in particular, which has a Hook for the Ages) for the next Linda Ronstadt album, and that's not meant as a criticism. This kind of stuff will al ways sound timeless: it's not a throwback, and it's certainly not the Sound of the Eighties, just a wonderful pop-rock confection that will remind you of everyone from Paul McCartney to Steely Dan while it offers a little something for the mind as well as the ear.
An auspicious debut. S.S.
LEAH KUNKEL: Leah. Leah Kunkel (vocals); instrumental and vocal accompaniment.
Step Right Up; Under the Jamaican Moon; Souvenir of the Circus; Down the Backstairs of My Life; Losing in Love; and five others.
COLUMBIA JC 35778 $7.98, 0 JCA 35778 $7.98, JCT 35778 $7.98.
Performance: Poor
Recording: Good
You may not think it possible that there is a Rita Coolidge school of singing, but, judging from Leah Kunkel's vocals, there is. Like ...
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Mark Murphy's "Stolen Moments"
MARK MURPHY has been in the music business, and recording, for over twenty years, so it's slightly surprising-or no surprise at all, depending on how you look at these things-that his "Stolen Moments" on the Muse label is one of the freshest, most imaginative, and most expertly entertaining albums of the year. But, good as it is, there's a good chance it will be overlooked, since the tunnel vision of the pop-music world seems worse than ever in 1979. Everyone is fiercely squinting beyond the blue horizon in an effort to discern who, or what, will be tomorrow's noonday sun-thus fairly well cutting off sight of what's happening here and now. The public still seems mainly to be backing and filling: buying five million dollars' worth of Elvis' old recordings since his death, listening to a lot more c-&-w than ever before (John Denver feels that that's where the New Biggie will come from), and expending much of its energy following the relentless but largely anonymous beat of disco.
While waiting for the musical millennium, which everyone assures me is as inevitable as the 1986 reappearance of Halley's Comet, I've become more than content with the discovery, or rather rediscovery, of some truly fine talents operating in our midst right now.
Recently I extolled in these pages the pleasures of Helen Merrill, one of our best and most neglected singers, and now I'd like to advise you to give Mark Murphy's newest al bum a try, for his kind of music-making, like Merrill's, is timelessly satisfying.
His voice is a blend of Sinatra and Nat "King" Cole, among others, with perhaps just half a jigger or so of Arthur Prysock. The repertoire on "Stolen Moments" includes the Jobim classic Waters of March, the old Frankie Laine hit We'll Be Together Again, Annie Ross' jazz-bebop tinsel-streamer Farmer's Market, and even, believe it or not, Again, a song I thought had surely met its per manent end at the hands of Ida Lupino, who gurgled her way through it in her role as a nympho-dipso night-club singer in the old movie Road House.
No matter what the material, Murphy has the sure touch of a man who knows instinc tively what artistic results he wants to achieve. His generous, freewheeling style-a fusion of jazz, pop, and rock, in that order has a bounce-board liveliness seldom achieved in studio recordings. A good deal of the credit for this would have to go to the superb collection of musicians he's gathered around him, in particular Richie Cole, whose alto sax is almost Murphy's co-star here.
Lyou have the idea, however, that Mark Murphy is only an assemblage of known styles and techniques, or that he merely assumes any convenient old commercial mantle, a single hearing of any track of this album will demonstrate otherwise. Like anyone who has securely mastered a craft, he's not afraid to borrow and rework whole musical genres.
His bossa nova in Waters of March uses Jobim's original as a jumping-off point to develop his own ideas, his ballad singing in Again uses Sinatra as touchstone, and his deft and angular work in Farmer's Market is the kind of root-fed jazz singing that makes eminent sense in 1979. These are no smoke rings of nostalgia for "the better days I've seen," but an enthusiastic rediscovery of the useful beauty in our bulging popular repertoire.
Combining the skills of an explorer and an editor, Mark Murphy has already outlasted several pop messiahs of the past couple of decades, and there is ample evidence here to suggest that he might bury a couple more.
-Peter Reilly
MARK MURPHY: Stolen Moments. Mark Murphy (vocals); Richie Cole (alto saxophone); Warren Gale (trumpet); Mark Levine (trombone); Smith Dobson (piano); Jim Nichols (guitar, fender bass); Chuck Metcalf (bass); Paul Breslin (bass); Vince Lateano (drums); Jack Gobbetti (percussion). Stolen Moments; Again; Farmer's Market; D.C. Farewell; Waters of March; Sly; We'll Be Together Again; Don't Be Blue; Like a Love (O Cantador). MUSE MR 5102 $6.98.
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... Ms. Coolidge, Ms. Kunkel is a handsome lady, but it would be stretching the bounds of gallantry to pretend that she sings beyond a one-and-a-half-octave range or that she has an individual style. In plain fact, she is doing well here to strike a note or a phrase that is not sharp or flat. Leah Kunkel is not only related to Russell Kunkel, a Los Angeles studio drummer, she is also getting a boost from her association with Art Garfunkel. It wouldn't make any difference to whom she were related or allied if she had talent that could stand by itself, but, alas, she does not. J. V.
JIMMIE MACK: On the Corner (see Best of the Month, page 85)
MAX DEMIAN BAND: Take It to the Max. Max Demian Band (vocals and instrumentals). Havin' Such a Good Day; Still Hosed; High School Star; Paradise; Through the Eye of a Storm; and four others. RCA AFLI-3273 $7.98, CD AFSI-3273 $7.98, AFKI-3273 $7.98.
Performance: Fun
Recording: Good
The group is named after a character in a novel by Herman Hesse, but the focus is on lead singer and songwriter Paul Rose. His writing is sometimes effective, but the arrangements and performances are too derivative of mid-Sixties groups-the Stones on Still Hosed, the Kinks on High School Star, and the Byrds school of zonked Los Angeles bands on Paradise. Not that these cuts aren't fun, especially High School Star, but why call yourselves Max Demian when Mick Davies and the Slow-Motion Fingerpops would be just as ac curate? There are some other figures from the Sixties involved here too: Charles Koppelman, who has published Rose's material and once owned a production company whose prime client was the Lovin' Spoonful, and producer Artie Kornfeld, an instigator of Woodstock who wrote and produced The Rain, the Park, and Other Things for the Cow-sills. Talk about old home week! - J. V.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
RALPH McTELL: Live. Ralph McTell (vocals, guitar, piano). First Song; Grande Affaire; Big Tree; Zimmerman Blues; Maginot Waltz; When I Was a Cowboy; Naomi; Streets of London; and seven others. FANTA SY F-9571 $7.98.
Performance: Real
Recording: Decent remote
Although Ralph McTell's Streets of London finally became a hit in England in 1975, he still is not very well known in America-but, by God, he is surviving the Seventies, no small thing for a folkie. McTell started out as a street singer, and his music is filled with com passion for the working class from which he sprang. This set, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London and in Sydney, Australia, serves Americans as a pretty good sampler of some of his better songs-although he has written some good ones not included here.
Singing like somebody out of D. H. Lawrence and backing himself with better-than-average guitar, McTell may remind you of the days when live and spartan were the only ways for folkie albums to be. But his music is more programmable than that, and now he is said to be working on a studio album with a band. I'd get this one to compare that one to, if not for its own sake. Either way, it's worth it. - N.C.
MILTON NASCIMENTO: Journey to Dawn. Milton Nascimento (guitar, piano); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Alouca; Credo; Idolatrada; and seven others. A&M SP-4719 $7.98, 8T-4719 $7.98, CS-4719 $7.98.
Performance: Great guitar, but ...
Recording: Overdone
Plastic mood music, the mood being Brazilian (murmurs in the rain forest, chants in the night, doomed Amazonian lovers, etc.) and the music, by Milton Nascimento, being one long churning cliché trying to pass as "what's new" since the muttering demise of the bossa nova several years ago. There is a gaudy vo cal chorus chugging away in the background, but Nascimento's arrangements keep it from colliding with his superlative acoustic guitar playing. Trying to admire that guitar playing, however. is like trying to admire a spray-shellacked orchid in a bowl of lime Jello. - P.R.
WILLIE NELSON: Sweet Memories. Willie Nelson (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment. Everybody's Talkin'; Wonderful Future; December Day; Both Sides Now; and six others. RCA AHLI-3243 $7.98, AHS1-3243 $7.98, AHK1-3243 $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
What is so rare as a month in which some record company doesn't bring out some sort of Willie Nelson reissue? It's RCA's turn, and, as these things have been going, RCA's old tapes and takes are less ridiculous than most.
In fact, if the instrumentation weren't so can died-over with strings, this would be fairly interesting. As it is, you can hear Willie's guitar and now and then some other members of his present band. The attraction is the repertoire, Joni Mitchell and Fred Neil songs and all that, and it serves to demonstrate that Willie wasn't quite ready to do the "Stardust" bit until he actually did it-not quite ready, but quite a singer nonetheless. It also demonstrates that an important part of "Stardust" (and of the groundbreaking "gospel" album before it, "The Troublemaker") was Willie's band and its way of honky-tonking this "softer" music. "Sweet Memories" demonstrates that negatively, with soft instrumentation that doesn't work as well. The thing in it that does work pretty well is Willie Nelson. - N.C.
RUFUS: Numbers. Rufus (vocals and instrumentals); other musicians. Ain't Nobody Like You; You're to Blame; Dancin' Mood; Red Hot Poker; Don't You Sit Alone; and five others. ABC AA-1098 $7.98, AA-1098 $7.95, AA-1098 $7.95.
Performance: Resourceful
Recording: Very good
When Chaka Khan, the incendiary soul sister who stoked the fires of Rufus with her blistering vocals, struck out on her own to climb the popular charts as "every woman," the question arose how the remaining five members of the group might fare without her. Quite well, I think, judging from this album. Though ABC says that Ms. Khan will continue to record with Rufus from time to time, it must be gratifying to this combo to know that they can pro duce a satisfying album on their own. Khan's electric presence amplified the group's essential power, but at times she tended to obscure their solid musicianship. Indeed, Rufus is as much an instrumental as a vocal group, and it is the former aspect that shines brightest on "Numbers." Two of the best tracks, Dancin' Mood and Red Hot Poker, are primarily instrumental, using the vocals in a complementary manner. On Bet My Dreams, the lead voice is assumed by jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. He is not likely to win any accolades for his limited performance here, but he performs well within the group's general context. -P.G.
MARC TANNER BAND: No Escape. Marc Tanner (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. She's So High; Elena; Edge of Love; Never Again; In a Spotlight; and five others. ELEKTRA 6E-168 $7.98, ET8-168 $7.98, TC5-168 $7.98.
Performance: Surgica
Recording: Good Here is an album in search of a hit single.
Marc Tanner is an ambitious and hardworking young songwriter, but his approach to his craft seems rather clinical: take a stock musical formula and a stock character expressing stock emotions, then diddle around with the chord changes and--who knows?--with a little luck you've got a Top-10 smash. The band here is not a regular unit but consists of studio musicians, some of them topnotch, such as keyboardist "Smitty" Smith. Although the sound and performances are professional, I don't hear anybody working overtime or go ing for something original. J. V.
UFO: Strangers in the Night. UFO (vocals and instrumentals). Natural Thing; Out in the Street; Only You Can Rock Me; Doctor Doc tor; Mother Mary; The Kids; Love to Love; and six others. CHRYSALIS CH2 1209 two discs $11.98, TCH-1209 $11.98, DCH-1209 $11.98.
Performance: Grand Funk recycled
Recording: Good enough, considering
Sometimes the suspicion overtakes me that the editors send me obnoxious teenybopper albums like this one because they like to hear me cuss and carry on about the certain disintegration of the human race. Maybe they think it's good for me, cathartic in some way, and maybe it is. But why do so many of them, like this one, have to be live two-record al bums? Do the editors have any idea how long these damned things run, or how long they seem? I will say one thing for UFO: it must be hard to play with virtually no ideas at all beyond dumb riffs and cliche uses of feedback and still make it seem canned-before a live audience yet. More for them I will not say. As for the human race-bah, humbug. -N.C.
PORTER WAGONER: Today. Porter Wagoner (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. I'm Gonna Feed 'Em Now; Ole Slew Foot; I'm Gonna Act Right; Tennessee Saturday Night; High Country; and five others. RCA AHL1-3210 $7.98, O AHS1-3210 $7.98, AHK1-3210 $7.98.
Performance: So-so
Recording: Excellent
I heard ol' Porter was tinkering with disco music in the studio, but there's nothing here that verifies that. There is a smidgin of synthesizer and a little clavinet, and, of course, there's a lot of tinkering in general, as Porter tinkers a lot better than he sings. And he usually produces a better album than he should, musical talent considered. There are a couple of nice cuts here, I'm Gonna Feed 'Em Now being the best one, but there's also much mediocrity and humdrum and notes not quite held and songs not worth it and stuff like that. - N.C.
MUDDY WATERS: Muddy " Mississippi" Waters Live. Muddy Waters (vocals, guitar); James Cotten, Jerry Portnoy (harmonica); Johnny Winter, Luther Johnson, Bob Mar golin (guitar); "Pine Top" Perkins (piano); Charles Calmese, Calvin Jones (bass); Willie Smith (drums). Mannish Boy; She's Nineteen Years Old; Nine Below Zero; Streamline Woman; Howling Wolf; and two others. BLUE SKY JZ 35712 $7.98, JZA 35712 $7.98, JZT 35712 $7.98.
Performance: Just fine
Recording: Good
You won't catch me saying anything bad about Muddy Waters--I love him-but I wish there had been more variety of tempo in the selections here. Of the seven numbers, five are as slow as they can be, even allowing for blues tempos, and only Baby Please Don't Go is relatively upbeat. Although some individual cuts are terrific (for instance, She's Nineteen Years Old and Mannish Boy), the album as a whole is less than satisfying.
But Waters is in fine voice. After nearly fifty years of singing blues, he is recognized as an important artist, he is at the peak of his popularity, his talent is intact, he is solvent, and he is having a good time. By God, there is justice! J. V.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
DOC AND MERLE WATSON: Live and Pickin'. Doc Watson (vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonica); Merle Watson (guitar, banjo); T. Michael Coleman (bass, vocals). Dig a Little Deeper in the Well; Milk Cow Blues; Wild Bill Jones; Memories of You Dear; Daybreak Blues (Blue Yodel No. 12); Big Sandy/Leather Britches; Let the Cocaine Be; All I Have to Do Is Dream; Got the Blues; St. James Hospital/ Frosty Morn; Streamline Cannonball. UNITED ARTISTS UA-LA943-H $7.98, EA943-H $7.98, CA943-H $7.98.
Performance: Elegant
Recording: Good
Doc and Merle Watson are better equipped to make good live albums than most people because they play better. There are practically no gimmicks or "studio magic" in their studio albums. It comes down to the night's pro gram, as a practical matter, and for "Live and Pickin'," recorded in San Francisco, they've uncovered yet another tasty batch of charming but not overly familiar songs, these having been written by everyone from Jimmie Rodgers to John Hurt to Roy Acuff.
Doc has favored this one with more flat- than finger -picking, which always helps--not that his finger-picking isn't fine, but his flat-
picking is so extraordinary. This one has good examples abounding everywhere (and here and there a humanizing unclean lick), but the fastest example is on Leather Britches. The album has an extraordinary quality of no-frills directness, a spontaneous affability that makes live recording worth the trouble. It re ally is a lot like being there. - N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JOHNNIE LEE WILLS: Reunion. Johnnie Lee Wills (vocals, fiddle); Johnny Gimble (fiddle, mandolin, vocals); John Thomas Wills (vocals); Joe Holley, Curly Lewis (fiddle, vocals); Eldon Shamblin, Don Tolle, Roy Fergu son (guitar); Ted Adams (bass); Clarence Cagle (piano); Gene Crownover (steel); Glenn Rhodes (saxophone); Wayne Johnson (clarinet, saxophone); Alex Brasheare (trumpet); Claude Clemmons, Tom Montgomery (drums). Silver Bells; Rag Mop; Memories of You Dear; Four or Five Times; Rosetta; South; Milk Cow Blues; and seven others.
FLYING FISH FF-069 $7.98, FLF-8359-069(H) $7.95, FLF-5359-069(H) $7.95.
Performance: Sweet swinging
Recording: Excellent
Johnnie Lee Wills is the brother of the late Bob Wills, who had the most famous country-swing band of them all. Johnnie Lee played in it for a while, then formed his own, making his home base the huge dance halls in Tulsa. I find it hard to believe Johnnie Lee's band reg ularly sounded this good-this is just about the most congenial country-swing album I've ever run across-but he had his own little trademarks that set his band slightly apart from brother Bob's. Johnnie opted for more of a jazz sound, mainly, and here the horns and reeds are beautifully used behind the fiddled three-part harmonies. It's extraordinary that these fellows could come back after all these years and play together like this they must have been some musicians in the first place. Of course, the two names most familiar now-Johnny Gimble, a super musician now ubiquitous in Nashville sessions, and El don Shamblin, who still tours occasionally with Merle Haggard-were members of Bob's band, not Johnnie's, although Gimble sat in with Johnnie sometimes. Gimble also seems largely responsible for these utterly right and natural-sounding arrangements, made on the spot. But no matter; here's an album with fine taste and a friendly spirit that shows you can have more fun with country swing than I thought you could. And wouldn't it be neat if Rag Mop became a hit again? -N.C.
FRANK ZAPPA: Sheik Yerbouti. Frank Zappa (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment, Baby Snakes; Rubber Shirt; Dancin' Fool; Wild Love; I'm So Cute; Flakes; I Have Been in You; Tryin' to Grow a Chin; and ten others. ZAPPA SRZ2-1501 two discs $14.98, ZT-8-2-1501 $13.98, ZT-4-2 1501 $13.98.
Performance: Offal material
Recording: Good
Introducing his own label gives Frank Zappa the opportunity to deposit several giant do do's on your carpet and then, in an equally infantile way, wait for you to tell him what a good boy he is. He giggles and pants and shouts through such things as the swinish Wild Love, the repellent S&M, pansexual excesses of Broken Hearts Are for Assholes, and the childish exhibitionism of I Have Been in You with all the gleeful abandon of one of Rodney Laing's patients smearing his feces on the wall to prove his essential "health." The all-time low point (one must hope) is plumbed here in Jewish Princess, a belligerent, incredibly gross piece of hate-filled crap that belongs in a shrink's office and not on a recording. The delusional aspect of all this is that Zappa apparently considers himself something of a social and sexual satirist along the lines of a musical George Grosz and de serving of some kind of Award for Candor. In actuality he's more like the clumsy illustrator of one of those little porn comic books that are devoured by experience-starved kids who still think that scatology and sexuality are the same thing. An abusive, sickening album. (Sheik Yerbouti, if anyone cares, is Zaplish for the 1976 disco hit Shake Your Booty by K.C. and the Sunshine Band.) P.R.
COLLECTION WALLS TO ROSES: Songs of Changing Men. Charlie Murphy, Fred Small, Willie Sordill, Kenny Arkin, Chris Tanner, Blackberri (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Gay Spirit; Brothers; Walls to Roses; The Matador; The Flowers, the Weeds; Are You Karen Silkwood?; and four others. FOLKWAYS FTS 37587 $7.95.
Performance: Well-meant but numbing
Recording: Good
When all the rhetoric and woolly ideology are cleared away, what we have here are ten songs mainly on the subject of gay liberation.
Members of the all-male Walls to Roses collective (originally from Denver, Portland, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, now in Cam bridge, Massachusetts) wrote the songs and sing them. Six women were hired as supporting musicians, a technical engineer, and a staff photographer.
On the face of it, the album is a worthy effort, and some of the songs are rather touching: the title song, for one, by Jeff Langley, and Willie Sordill's reflective For My Men Friends, as well as two sturdy contributions The Flowers, the Weeds and When Will the Ignorance End?-from the black member of the group, who signs himself Blackberri.
Chris Tanner's The Sensitive Little Boy also merits mention. The rest is rather slurpy stuff, such as Tears Fall from the Sky, with its bum grammar and self-pitying sentimentality, that is not likely to coax too many "brothers" from the dark safety of their closets. The singing and guitar accompaniments are generally good, though never quite good enough.
Biographies and pictures of all the participants are provided, along with complete texts and guitar chords-I guess for those who might want to join the cause and mount their own performances. -P. K.
DISCO
BROOKLYN DREAMS: Sleepless Nights. Brooklyn Dreams and Donna Summer (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Make It Last; Sleepless Nights/Send Me a Dream; First Love; Street Man; Heaven Knows; and five others. CASABLANCA NBLP 7135 $7.98, NBL8 7135 $7.98, NBL5 7135 $7.98.
Performance: Not good enough
Recording: Fine
I can understand why Donna Summer would lend her name to this album. Brooklyn Dreams is clearly in the crossover disco mode she pioneered: they produce lots of music, well arranged by Bob Esty, with a solid disco beat and mood-changing dynamic shifts; and they also display a concern for song structure and musical performance. You are meant to listen to Brooklyn Dreams, not just dance to them.
The three guys can sing. That's Not the Way rips through three dynamite choruses; the title song is a rocking stab at funk that keeps promising more than it delivers; First Love is rock-burnished Fifties material delivered just about straight; and their best effort, Street Man, sets a strong, fast electronic beat against nicely extended melodic lines. Despite Brooklyn Dreams' vocal strengths, though, there's precious little invention in the songs.
There's just too much of the Bee Gees in them, in their lyrics and even in their sound, especially in the background vocals to Touching in the Dark and Long Distance.
In this atmosphere, Donna Summer's disco hit Heaven Knows sticks out like a healthy thumb. Even speeded up, and with Ms. Summer contributing only backgrounds, it's the most interesting song in the album. - E.B.
HERBIE MANN: Super Mann (see Best of the Month, page 86) MECO: Superman and Other Galactic Heroes. Meco (keyboards); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Themes from Superman; The Boy Wonder; The Caped Crusader; and two others. CASABLANCA NBLP 7136 $8.98, NBL8 7136 $8.98, NBL5 7136 $8.98.
Performance: Disappointing
Recording: Super
I'm afraid Meco is running out of steam. The latest in his series of disco-adaptations offers neither the exhilaration of "Star Wars and Other Funk" nor the freshness of his treatment of Harold Arlen's classic Wizard of Oz film score. Of course, John Williams shares the blame; his Superman score sounds like leftovers. The main theme and the so-called love song, Can You Read My Mind (which is recited on this record with considerably more feeling than it is in the movie itself), are indistinguishable from pieces of Close Encounters and Star Wars, with the same old pretentious, movie-epic sound. Aside from the two themes, there are no real melodies to work with, and Meco is left with lots of repetitious bridges to hook things together. The result is uninteresting despite superb engineering that captures every electronic "whoosh." Side two is devoted to four other super heroes. Half the side sounds like a military march, and the rest substitutes rain-forest sound effects for musical imagination or indulges in bravura percussion work (eight drummers and five other percussionists are listed on the jacket) to no disco effect whatsoever. Skip Meco this time out. -E.B.
GIORGIO MORODER: Battlestar Galactica. Giorgio Moroder (keyboards); instrumental accompaniment. Evolution; Themes from Battlestar Galactica. CASABLANCA NBLP 7128 $8.98, NBL8 7128 $8.98, NBL5 7128 $8.98.
Performance: Half super, half bland
Recording: Fine
Giorgio Moroder's name on a disco record jacket sells records. The Battlestar Galactica program started the new TV season as the best bet for top ratings. Apparently, someone added up the two and got platinum. But don't be fooled; Moroder himself had little to do with the Galactica.side of this LP, and it shows. Not that it's bad-it's a perfectly danceable set of arrangements of the principal themes from the TV series-but the music lacks distinction and the arrangements are merely ordinary.
But side two, a single unbroken Moroder composition called Evolution, is something else again. The Munich musicians and engineers know how to lay down original, evoca tive sounds and how to work them into a memorable synthesized tapestry. I warn you that the experience is so fascinating that you might find yourself drifting off into Never-Never land instead of dancing. The disco beat is clearly not Moroder's only concern, and purists might object to the distraction of all the weird sound effects. But Evolution is certainly a musical trip worth taking. E.B.
SISTER SLEDGE: We Are Family. Sister Sledge (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. He's the Greatest Dancer; Lost in Music; Somebody Loves Me; Thinking of You; and four others.
COTILLION SD 5209 $7.98, O CS 5209 $7.97, TP 5209 $7.97.
Performance: Better than the songs
Recording: Satisfactory
The four singing sisters named Sledge project an inviting sound that blends high-spirited, hand-clapping funk with lightly teasing seductiveness. In fact, they are so appealing that I would like to hear them tackle something more ambitious than the mindless material that makes up most of this record.
This may be adequate party or disco fare, but it doesn't hold up well for forty minutes of continuous listening. The main flaw is that the major device is repetition. The set gets off to a thunderous start with a thumping trifle, currently the rage on the disco circuit, called He's the Greatest Dancer (and he'd have to be to inject any life into this leaden morsel). Lost in Music, the next track, provides no music to get lost in, and the popular We Are Family offers eight minutes of monotony from two notes reworked repeatedly.
Once Sister Sledge departs from this tedious pattern, the group's true potential begins to show itself. You're a Friend to Me, with its tiny trace of blues intonations, permits a bit more latitude and they use it to cut loose with a few moments of vocal excitement. It's to the group's credit that they can show any quality at all with this sleazy material. - P.G.
TAVARES: Madam Butterfly. Tavares (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Never Had a Love Like This Before; My Love Calls; Positive Forces; Madam Butterfly; and five others. CAPITOL SW-11874 $7.98, 0 8XW-11874 $7.98, 4XW-11874 $7.98.
Performance: Uninspired soul
Recording: Good
Tavares has never been a purely disco group, but their by-now-classic Don't Take Away the Music suggested an affinity for the sound.
With this album, the five brothers drift further away from disco and back into a more traditional soul style. There are some nice moments here: Games, Games, for example, is a beautiful performance of a fine new song, and Let Me Heal the Bruises, with Tavares' best soloist Perry Lee "Tiny" Tavares singing lead vocal, is very good blues.
But the title song is a silly exercise in which lyrics, style, and melody (which at times veers dangerously close to Tangerine) are all at odds. Never Had a Love Like This Before is a slow, repetitious ballad that goes nowhere, And the up-tempo disco-inflected numbers One Telephone Call Away, Straight from Your Heart, and I'm Back for More are only marginally better. Every arrangement is drudgingly four-square, sounding as if the music were designed to support the "step-step-point" choreography that live performances seem to require these days, especially of soul groups. Then, too, everything sounds like exit music, the stuff they play when a group is marching off the stage. I (for one) wish Tavares would march off this mainstream soul stage and come back to disco. -E.B.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
ULTIMATE. Ultimate (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Medley-Love Is the Ultimate/Touch Me Baby/Dancing in the Night; Ritmo de Brazil; and two others. CASABLANCA NBLP 7128 $8.98, NBL8 7128 $8.98, 0 NBLS 7128 $8.98.
Performance: Beautiful
Recording: Lush and lovely
Part of disco's phenomenal success can be credited to producers who recognized that, within the basic beat, there is room for variety. Not all disco music need be manic or assertive, spacy or serious. It can be witty, or like Ultimate's, it can be gentle and romantic.
To begin with, Ultimate's voices are all female, which immediately establishes a soft sound, and the arrangements center on a large string section and avoid electronic embellishment. The tempo is definitely up, but it's light hearted, and the strings swirl around you.
This is a beautifully conceived dance album.
Things start slowly, with the sensuous voices dancing through a medley of Love Is the Ultimate, Touch Me, Baby, and Dancing in the Night. Then the lushness builds to a slightly harder sound that peaks with the al bum's penultimate cut, Music in My Heart.
This is my favorite song here, and one reason it's so good is that it makes such an effective climax for everything that precedes it on the record. To get the full flavor of Ultimate, you really need to listen to the album straight through. You'll have fun, I promise. -E.B.
RECOMMENDED DISCO HITS
BRAINSTORM: Hot for You. TABU 2Z8 5515 disco disc $3.98.
DOOBIE BROTHERS: What a Fool Believes. RFC WB 8725 disco disc $3.98. The latest, and in my opinion the best, example of rock/disco fusion. A Jim Burgess mix.
REAL THING: Can You Feel the Force. EPIC 28-5069 dicso disc $3.98.
SKYY. SALsouL SA 8517 $7.98, 0 S8 8517 $7.98, SC 8517 $7.98.
THEO VANESS: Bad, Bad Boy. PRELUDE PRL 12165 $7.98, 0 PRL8 12165 $7.98, PRL9 12165 $7.98.
WAR: The Music Band. MCA MCA-3085 $7.98, 0 MCAT-3085 $7.98, MCAC-3085 $7.98.
(List compiled by John Harrison.)
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Also see:
AUDIO BASICS: From Infrasonic to Ultrasonic.
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)