Reviewed by CHRIS ALBERTSON NOEL COPPAGE PAUL KRESH PETER REILLY JOEL VANCE
ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND: Win, Lose or Draw. Allman Brothers Band (vocals and instrumentals). Can't Lose What You Never Had; High Falls; Just Another Love Song; Louisiana Lou and Three Card Monte John; and three others. CAPRICORN CP 0156 $6.98, C) M 80156 $7.98, C) M 50156 $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
Five years ago I was one of the entertainers at a "renaissance fair" held in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. As I wandered through the fair grounds I saw a Jamaican fellow who tended bar in the local spa. He was playing guitar left-handed and singing an absolutely charming island song with that accent, man. I rushed to the lady who booked the talent in the bar and insisted she put him on the bill.
Why is this guy pushing drinks, I demanded, when he is such a fine performer? She gave in to my entreaties. That evening my discovery got up and sang, to enthusiastic applause, the same charming song I had heard. He then sang five more songs, with thot occent, mon, all of them alike. The applause diminished noticeably. He was meandering into the next song when the booking lady gave me a knowing elbow in the ribs and said: "I could have told you about that guy. A walking sleeping tablet." It's something like that with Gregg Allman, whose album this is even though the Allman Brothers Band gets the billing. (He lets the sidemen have some space, especially guitarist Richard Betts, who knows only one solo, and ...
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Monophonic recordings are indicated by the symbol
The first listing is the one reviewed: other formats, if available. follow it.
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... that in high E.) I think Allman said all he had to say-and said it well-in his "Laid Back" solo album. Everything here is redundant and, what is worse, garrulous. J. V.
AMON DUUL II: Made in Germany. Amon Datil II (vocals and instrumentals). Dreams; Ludwig; The King's Chocolate Waltz; Blue Grotto; Emigrant Song; La Krautoma; and six others. ATCO SD 36-119 $6.98 f TP 36-119 $7.98, CS 36-119 $7.98.
Performance: Melancholic
Recording: Excellent
With the aid of the text supplied, I tried valiantly to figure out just what is bugging the eight members of this German group depicted on the album cover wearing a set of matching black raincoats. It's beyond me. They sing in English with German accents of a world they seem not to care for at all. Mouthing lines rife with references that range from the Valley of Kings in Egypt to Peter Pan, from Emmanuel Kant to Ariel, they appear to be reporting on their melancholy condition from a sort of latter-day Germanic wasteland, where not only is man vile but every prospect displeases.
Maybe they don't mean to be oblique; maybe whoever wrote the English lyrics just doesn't understand the language very well. When the vocals cease, there are instrumental inter ludes of outrageous length in the musical language of rock but lacking its usual force of spirit. All rather sad. -P.K.
BAY CITY ROLLERS. Bay City Rollers (vocals and instrumentals). Give a Little Love; Bye Bye Baby; Shang-a-Lang; Marlina; Let's Go; Be My Baby; and five others. ARISTA 4049 $6.98, C) 8301 4049 H $7.98, 5301 4049 H $7.98.
Performance: Cute
Recording: Good
The Bay City Rollers are a quintet of five young Englishmen with very white teeth who take up where the Carpenters leave off, harmonizing, in voices that seem to have changed only recently, on subjects of patent teenage concern: "huggin' and kissin' " in the moonlight with the date of the evening, the frangibility of the adolescent heart, the joys of sunlit summer days ("Run in the sun and have fun with the boy that you really love"). Cute, slick, and silly. P.K.
BLACK SABBATH: Sabotage. Black Sabbath (vocals and instrumentals). Hole in the Sky: Supertzar; Megalomania; The Writ: and four others. WARNER BROS. BS 2822 $6.98, C) M8 2822 $7.98, MS 2822 $7.98.
Performance: So what else is new?
Recording: Good
Black Sabbath is still hanging in there, as if it were still the late Sixties, as if volume and frenzy were a substitute for substance, as if their satanic gimmick still had some shock value. No way, as we used to say. This is frowsy, toothless, old-style rock that only fit fully glimmers with excitement or entertainment (parts of Hole in the Sky and a section of Megalomania), dated blather that, these days, couldn't shock a seven-year-old. P.R.
THE ERIC BURDON BAND: Stop. Eric Burdon (vocals): John Sterling (guitar); Kim Kesterson (bass): Alvin Taylor (percussion): other musicians. City Boy; Gotta Get It On: The Man; I'm Lookin' Up; Stop: and five others. CAPITOL SMAS- I 1426 $6.98, SXT-11426 $7.98, 4 XT-11426 $7.98.
Performance: Stop is right
Recording: Very good
Thinking of the talent that cannot be recorded because record companies are spending money on this kind of thing clicks you into that state known as pause. Eric Burdon's latest is gimmicky, tacky, and silly, his singing looking (that is, sounding) more and more like a caricature gone amok. It's not our fault he wasn't born a black American. N.C.
ERIC CARMEN. Eric Carmen (vocals, guitar, keyboards); other musicians. Sunrise; That's Rock & Roll; Never Gonna Fall in Love Again; All By Myself; Last Night; and five others. ARISTA AL-4057 $6.98.
Performance: Slick
Recording: Good
The problem with the Raspberries, the now defunct band that Eric Carmen fronted, was that despite a lot of very real native talent, they were locked into a stance no less rigid and ultimately self-defeating than incompetents like the New York Dolls. That is, their obvious desire to become the Next Big Thing was undercut by the fact that they looked and sounded far too much like the Last Big Thing-in their case, the Beatles; in the case of the Dolls and everyone else, the Stones.
It was a shame, actually. They had a fine melodic gift, they played quite well, and they knew how to make records. But even the best of their work radiated an air of contrivance, and their pitches to what they clearly misread as an emergent teenage consciousness rang false. The Beach Boys were able to sing about high school and going steady in 1964, even though you knew they were several million dollars removed from such concerns, because they had in the bargain created a totally unique musical style to express those sentiments. The Raspberries, who merely aped that style, just sounded foolish, especially given the reality of their audience. The Teen Dream was long since dead, and their flair for production and knack for coming up with a catchy tune could not make their studied at tempts at reviving it any more credible.
Carmen's solo album, not surprisingly, is afflicted with most of the same problems as his band efforts. This time out, however, we have a record that lacks even the surface sheen that made his earlier work at least palatable. There are the usual Beatle influences, running the gamut from quasi-Liverpudlianisms to "Abbey Road" emulations; Brian Wilson pastiches, both musical (Sunrise) and thematic (All By Myself-sample lyric: "When I was young/I never needed any one"); and, of course, the obligatory rock and-roll song, this time titled That's Rock & Roll, which sounds like an uneasy pairing of the Beach Boys and late Ian Hunter.
But where Carmen truly goes astray is in the one or two "serious" songs, in which I gather he has attempted to nudge himself into the present by mimicking his early heroes (John Lennon among them, perhaps) as they are today. One result is No Hard Feelings, a soul-baring confessional that is simply Eric's addition to the by now utterly tedious genre of lonely-at-the-top-failed-superstar songs. "We was young and still believed in a Hard Day's Night," he wails. Well, he may indeed have believed in it at one point, but didn't we all? I think it's time for him to realize that not only is the Dream over, but that continued discussions of it are totally unnecessary, the flogging of the deadest of dead horses. Given his rate of growth up till now, that realization is probably three more overripe albums away.
Steve Simels
JIMMY CLIFF: Follow My Mind. Jimmy Cliff (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Look at the Mountains; The News; I'm Gonna Live, I'm Gonna Love; Going Mad; Dear Mother; Who Feels It, Knows It; and six others. WARNER BROS. MS 2218 $6.98.
Performance: Fair
Recording: Clean
Such ambitious album titles as "Follow My Mind" usually signal mediocre content, and there is no exception here. I enjoy Jimmy Cliff as a singer and occasionally celebrate him as a writer, but the fellow has the most maddening habit of being good every other al bum. His selections in the soundtrack LP of The Harder They Come were excellent, and Many Rivers to Cross was particularly effective, but his next album, "Struggling Man," was a collection of didactic, glum, corny songs about the peeeeeople. "Music Maker," in which he concentrated on making music, was fine. Now comes another snoozer, "Follow My Mind," where the songs are melodically feeble and the subject matter sounds like a United Nations resolution. I vote no. J.V.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
------------ BLOSSOM DEARIE: one of the true originals of American popular
music
BLOSSOM DEARIE: Blossom Dearie 1975.
Blossom Deane (vocals and piano); Jim Hughad (bass); John Morrell (guitar); Colin Bailey (drums). I'm Hip; A Face Like Yours; Feelin' Groovy; Send in the Clowns; I'm Shadowing You; and six others. DAFFODIL BMD 102 $6.98 (from Daffodil Records, Blossom Enterprises, Box 312, Winchester, Va. 22601).
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The Bicentennial Corner: American Composer Henry Clay Work
Grand Master of the Novelty Number
HENRY CLAY WORK, born in 1832, died in 1884, is the "other" big name in nineteenth-century American songwriting. Stephen Foster he isn't. But, with the Bicentennial hard upon us, it was inevitable that some one would try a Work revival. At least no one can say he didn't get the best possible treatment, for his songs are given silk-purse performances in a new Nonesuch recording.
Work's reputation rests on three unforgettable songs: Marching Through Georgia (mercifully omitted from this collection), Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now!, and Grandfather's Clock (the latter two very much included). Grandfather's Clock really should have been the title song of this album. It is the one song by Work that has never lost its currency, and, like the best of Foster, it has passed into the folklore. As for Father, Dear Father-well, it's just as terrible as you always thought it was. In spite of the enthusiasm displayed in Jon Newson's interesting liner notes, Work was not a great com poser of sentimental songs. There is nothing in this album to rival Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.
Work's real gift was the humorous song.
He had a knack for setting words-mostly his own-in an amusing way ("tick tick tick tick/It stopp'd-short-never to go again/ When the old man died"). The best songs are the ones in which the chorus chimes in with just the right comments: Poor Kitty Popcorn ("Meyow!"), the con man ("Tall! slim! ha! ha! ha! ha! Quick as a flash! He has jet black eyes, a grand moustache"), and the Lightning Palace Train crossing the Grand Sierras ("Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, ... "). In short, Work was the grand master of the novelty number. About the patriotic and dialect songs, however, the less said the better.
Good or bad, it all gets the full Nonesuch treatment. Putting Bill Bolcom in charge of this music is like getting the best surgeon to treat an ingrown toenail-at least no one can say Work didn't get the finest care. The tone and quality of these performances are close to perfection; every nuance is captured without fuss, condescension, or overplay. There is nothing to be done with the darky dialect, but Clifford Jackson gives it a heroic try (though 'twere better to have let sleeping dogs lie).
The chorus is wonderful, and Joan Morris has captured the perfect style for this music. She has developed a way of singing--an American singing style--which is a wonderful amalgam of pop and classical, musical and dramatic style. Someone should record her and Bolcom material worthy of their talents: Ives or Gershwin or some of the pop songs of the Twenties and Thirties which they do so well together. Texts are provided but they aren't needed; for once, every word of the lyrics is comprehensible! -Eric Salzman
WORK: Who Shall Rule This American Nation? Grafted into the Army; Poor Kitty Pop corn; The Buckskin Bag of Gold; Grandfather's Clock; and ten others. Joan Morris (mezzo-soprano); Clifford Jackson (baritone); William Bolcom (piano); Camarata Chorus of Washington, William Bolcom cond. NONESUCH H 71317 $3.98.
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Performance: Unique
Recording: Very good
Blossom Deane, whether you like her or not, has got to be one of the true originals of American popular music: that wraithlike voice, so reminiscent, I've always thought, of the innocent (or was she?) little girl in The Turn of the Screw; that absolutely individual talent for twisting out, but not bruising, all there is to be had from a lyric-as vital as the lemon peel in a well-made martini; and her fabulous musicianship, so beautifully supportive of her short-story-telling art. She's been around since the days of the original Blue An gel/Ruban Bleu circuit, always singing in some small club or other to a select but rapt audience. Lately she's been turning up at New York's Reno Sweeney's, performing at what, in her case, would be called the dansant hours-four in the afternoon until seven.
But then there has always been something fastidious, Proustian even, about Blossom Dearie. She's about as far away from the average saloon singer as a Corniche is from a Chevette, and her latest album is a complete delight. Her performances of two standards, Sondheim's Send in the Clowns and Simon's Feelin' Groovy, are of the caliber that com posers dream about, and her work on her own I'm Shadowing You, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, is truly sensational in its quiet way.
The scent of patchouli may be a little too strong for some, but if you've never heard her I strongly suggest that you listen to this one and make up your own mind. -P.R.
JOHN DENVER: Windsong. John Denver (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment. Windsong; Cowboy's Delight; Spirit; I'm Sorry; Looking for Space; Shipmates and Cheyenne; and six others. RCA APL1-1183 $6.98.
Performance: Fair
Recording: Clean
John Denver is, by all accounts, a charming fellow and a warm, skilled entertainer. He is also a man of limited talent as a songwriter, delivering an effective tune about once every five or six years (Country Roads; Rocky Mountain High). Since his gestation period is that long, it follows that most of the songs he presents in the interims are bland, vapid, and mushy. There are, perhaps, extenuating circumstances. As a highly popular entertainer caroling the joys of home, family, nature, un complicated rural living, and atavistic peace of mind, his albums are in great demand by his label and his public. He is thus under constant pressure to produce enough material for new ones. It is also true-and sad-that it is a hundred times more difficult to write about bliss than it is to complain about the pains of life.
And yet ... and yet. Denver's efforts, even given the pressures of being a successful entertainer, might be better if he had more talent or more diversity. It might even be that Mr. Denver is the American Dream incarnate--the millionaire mediocrity. J.V.
JACKIE DeSHANNON: New Arrangement. Jackie DeShannon (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Let the Sailor Dance; Sweet Baby Gene; I Wanted It All; Bette Davis Eyes; Queen of the Rodeo; and six others. COLUMBIA PC 33500 $6.98.
Performance: New sound, too
Recording: Too reverberant
In the early Sixties, when Jackie DeShannon started her recording career on the Imperial label, she was still a teenager. There were hits, beginning with Faded Love, in 1963, but many will best remember Ms. DeShannon for her 1965 hit version of Burt Bacharach's What the World Needs Now. She has also had some success as an actress on TV, but with some five hundred songs to her credit-some of which have been turned into hits by such artists as the Searchers and Brenda Lee-and continued recording activity, music seems to remain Jackie DeShannon's mainstay.
This is Ms. DeShannon's first Columbia al bum, and what we hear is a new sound-new for her, that is. Actually, she sounds more like Paul Simon than anyone else I can think of, but that's better than sounding like the Jackie DeShannon I used to hear. The songs, all but one either written or co-written by her, run the gamut from Memphis to Mersey with pleasant stops along the way. The overly reverbed tracks bother me, but this is on the whole a rather good album. C.A.
FLO & EDDIE: Illegal, Immoral and Fattening. Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Illegal, Immoral and Fattening; Rebecca; Kama Sutra Time; The Sanzini Brothers Return; Livin' in the Jungle; The Kung Fu Killer; and four others.COLUMBIA PC 33554 $6.98.
Performance: Oink
Recording: Good
Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan were the founders and leaders of the Turtles, a West Coast pop group of the Sixties that made several successful records and one great one, Elenore. After the group broke up, they toured as a part of the Mothers, Frank Zappa's anti-band, then resigned to begin releasing albums as Flo & Eddie. Lately they have become the hosts of a syndicated radio pro gram and have contributed a musical "score" and dialogue for a porno movie.
Volman and Kaylan are presented as satirists of rock and life in general. As is so often the case these days, the designation of "satirist" seems to be a license for vulgarity and obscenity, gratuitous but oh so chic. Volman and Kaylan are not illegal (that would interfere with their civil rights). They are not im moral (they are amoral). They are, however, both rather fat (in the cover photo) and definitely hammy (on the disc). Ho hum. J. V.
FOCUS: Mother Focus. Focus (vocals and instrumentals). I Need a Bathroom; My Sweet heart; Hard Vanilla; Mother Focus; Tropic Bird; and seven others. ATCO SD 36-117 $6.98,C)TP-36-117 $7.98, CS 36-117 $7.98.
Performance: Mellow
Recording: Good
Here's some good, soft-core, slightly staid rock from Focus. Jan Akkerman, on various guitars, is still the big talent of the group, al though Thys van Leer's keyboard and flute work is also of the first rank. This becomes very obvious indeed in such as the dreary I Need a Bathroom (surely the title of the year), in which Akkerman does some fantastic playing in the background. While there is considerable charm to the gaillard-like instrumental Bennie Helder (written by Van Leer and distinguished by his flute playing) and to the exotica of Tropic Bird, Focus itself seems head ed in the direction of Sergio Mendes country-pleasantly mellow, agreeable sounds played with great technical flourish. Too bad.
They used to be an interesting group with a lot of interesting ideas. P.R.
DAN FOGELBERG: Captured Angel. Dan Fogelberg (vocals, guitars, keyboards); orchestra. Below the Surface; The Last Nail; Old Tennessee; Next Time; Man in the Mirror; and five others. FULL MOON PE 33499 $6.98, OPEA 33499 $7.98, PET 33499 $7.98.
Performance: Music minus one
Recording: Good When Dan Fogelberg makes an album, Dan […]
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The Who: the Spirit of Rock
(1) Daltrey, (2) Townshend, (3) Entwistle, (4) Moon
---------- "...a tentativeness about the new directions they are exploring ..."------------------
THE WHO BY NUMBERS" is the most confusing album ever from this supremely gifted band, and, that being the case, the only way I can think of to deal with it is to share the random observations of this long time Who freak after several days of intense listening.
1. It is not a concept album, but several of the songs do indeed seem to be linked thematically. Peter Townshend appears to be exploring the problems he's articulated in the press lately-trying to reconcile the contra diction he set up for himself when he wrote My Generation. "Hope I die before I get old," he declared in song, and now, ten years later, he is "old." But, as the Stones ob served, what can a poor boy do except play in a rock-and-roll band? Peter is genuinely concerned about what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Who's stance-never mind the fact that, remarkably, the band still appeals as directly and powerfully to teenagers as it did when it first started out. However Much I Booze, in which Townshend discusses this quandary most openly, is an excellent song, despite the self-doubt which could easily have reduced it to yet another whining bit of rock-star self pity. It features the best vocal he's ever done, and the guitar break following his furious cry of "Won't somebody tell me how to get out of this place?" is positively thrilling.
2. Slip Kid, the album's opener, is probably the finest song the band has done since "Who's Next," an absolute masterpiece full of marvelous unexpected rhythmic changes and structural tricks, glorious answering background vocals, and matchlessly imaginative guitar work. It is also the most consciously atypical piece Peter has written in ages. I haven't the slightest idea what the lyrics are about, except perhaps that they are an extension of the sentiments of Won't Get Fooled Again, only this time seen from the other side: this is not the rock star talking, but a street kid.
3. They Are All in Love has the prettiest Who harmonies since Behind Blue Eyes. Just lovely.
4. There is a lot of filler here, some of it harking back to older styles (Squeeze Box, a "Sell Out"-period bit of whimsey done as a vague sort of c-&-w) and some ambitious failures that seem to me forced attempts at the kind of Big Statements Townshend thinks his audience expects. Imagine a Man, in particu lar, is rambling and confused, as is In a Hand or a Face, a treatise on callousness that is only partly redeemed by some crunching power chording (lifted, oddly enough, from Wasp Man, the band's humorous Keith Moon-penned B-side of a few years ago).
5. John Entwistle's usual one-song-per-album is a minor success, by no means as good as Boris the Spider or My Wife, but typically funny. Success Story, as its title sug gests, is about a band in the process of making it, and it has some excellent lines ("Back in the studio to make our latest Number One/ Take 276 ... you know this used to be fun"). It also boasts a sizzling bass figure, perhaps motivated by John's publicly stated annoyance with people who continually mis take his playing for Peter's guitar work, and in general it rocks along quite satisfyingly.
6. Blue Red and Grey is the Who's first ex cursion into the fey Twenties music-hall territory exemplified by Paul McCartney's When I'm Sixty-four (and since beaten to death by both him and a host of lesser talents). Featuring Townshend on ukulele (!) dispensing plati tudes about how he digs every minute of the day, its brevity cannot disguise the fact that it is easily the worst thing they have ever com mitted to vinyl.
7. When the album is good, it's terrific. When it (more often than not) isn't, it is still quite listenable; the band's playing is superb throughout, and Glyn Johns' production is characteristically excellent.
8. Peter's fears notwithstanding, the Who are not getting old, they are by no means be coming stagnant or self-parodying. Although this is probably their weakest album so far, its problems are not the result of repetition of fa miliar riffs but of a certain tentativeness about the new directions they are exploring. It may also, simply, have been a rush job, the band's collective energy being frittered away while Roger busied himself working on his solo LP and Ken Russell's latest film, Keith recorded a solo in Los Angeles, and Entwistle fronted his abortive group tour.
9. The Who are still the spirit of rock, as "The Who By Numbers," regardless of its in consistency, amply testifies, and you should get the album immediately.-Steve Simels THE WHO: The Who By Numbers. Peter Townshend (guitar, keyboards, vocals); Rog er Daltrey (vocals); John Entwistle (bass, horns, vocals); Keith Moon (drums); Nicky Hopkins (piano). Slip Kid; However Much I Booze; Squeeze Box; Dreaming from the Waist; Imagine a Man; Success Story; They Are All in Love; Blue Red and Grey; How Many Friends; In a Hand or a Face. MCA MCA-2161 $6.98, ® MCAT-2161 $7.98, MCAC-2161 $7.98.
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[…]
for those who look for it-that much of it is a put-on anyway. But, ah, he does sing well; he has a sophisticated, trained musician's ear and a voice that seems utterly reliable. I like it best when the production takes time out from being so fussy, as it does in the kind of thing Muldaur started with, a loosey-goosey jug-band tune, Jailbird Love Song. There are a couple of reasonably straightforward blues numbers, too, but Muldaur would have been backed better on those by the band he just left-Butterfield's Better Days. There's a bit too much period posturing through most of it for me, a show-biz stagey attitude that doesn't exactly make this music to live the examined life by. It may have something to do with the Geoff Muldaur quotation on the jack et: "Life is a snap." N.C.
TRACY NELSON: Sweet Soul Musk. Tracy Nelson (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Looking for a Sign; Same Old Blues; I'll Be Your Baby Tonight; Joabim; Lies; and five others. MCA MCA-494 $6.98, C MCAT-494 $7.98, t MCAC-494 $7.98.
Performance: Fundamentalist
Recording: Purposely rough-hewn
Tracy Nelson comes roaring through the speakers like a fundamentalist through the swinging doors of an old-time saloon hot on the trail of all you sinners. Considering that from her photographs she looks like any sub urban young woman on her way to a sensitivity class, perhaps, or at least a health-food store, it comes as a bit of a surprise when she howls and belts her way through the title song with all the fervor and ferocity of a Bessie Smith, or offers a Joabim in gospelese riper than anything heard this side of the Abyssini an Baptist Church. Oh well, we all know the middle classes have been getting out of hand for some time now. The best thing here is her own composition, Nothing I Can't Handle, in which, with the assist of some really fine piano work by Leon Pendarvis, Nelson lets up a little on the decibels and the fancy vocalizing and delivers a solid, sincere performance that makes the folk-gospel style seem an integral part of the attempt to communicate-not just a tacked-on prop. Still too young, still too at tractive for the kind of commanding image she seems to want to project, Tracy Nelson reminds me of the Colleen Dewhurst of sever al years ago-a bit too much at that moment but, oh my, what a Presence she finally did become. P.R.
NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND: Dream. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (vocals and instrumentals). Sally Was a Goodun; Ripplin' Waters; Gotta Travel On; Mother of Love; Bayou Jubilee; and ten others. UNITED ARTISTS UA LA-469-G $6.98, a UA-EA-469-H $7.98, UA-CA-469-H $7.98.
Performance: Relaxed
Recording: Good
I think I'd have liked this album more if I could have seen the performance, or group of performances, with which the material has so obviously been honed. Everything here is "presented," in the sense that it seems to have been rehearsed and performed so often that it all comes out like a reflex. That's not a put-down, merely an observation; actually, I enjoy the relaxed atmosphere that the band creates here. As usual they are eclectic, ranging from Cajun to bluegrass to folk to plain ol' c-&-w. The best bands are Hank Williams' old leer Hey Good Lookin', done in fine, ripe style without a hint of patronization, and John McEuen's banjo transcription of Malaguelia, something you gotta hear to believe. P.R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
PINK FLOYD: Wish You Were Here. Pink Floyd (vocals and instrumentals). Shine On You Crazy Diamond; Welcome to the Ma chine; Have a Cigar; Wish You Were Here. COLUMBIA PC 33453 $6.98, C PCA 33453 $7.98, C PCT 33453 $7.98.
Performance Classy rock
Recording: Excellent
My reactions to this seem to vary, more markedly than they do to most albums, with time of day, mood, checkbook balance (mine), and so forth. It is moody music, usually grandiose, sometimes cryptic, and quite patient with itself. It is the kind of late-Sixties/ early-Seventies rock that isn't often played any more, soft-core psychedelic and full of soundings pegged to the concept that goes with the song itself, rather than being based upon what we've learned about the electric guitar from our B. B. King records. There's some saxophone, but none of the period pseudo-jazz other rock groups seem to think is growth of some sort. And, oh yes, there are some sound effects of the space-age type (took me a full minute of staring to figure out that the design on the record label is actually a close-up of a handshake between robots).
These go with the cover art and some cute packaging-the shrinkwrap is an opaque dark blue, so you can't see through it-to remind us that Pink Floyd is interested in surrealism.
Well, so am I, but I was glad to find some un vague lyrics in here: those of Have a Cigar a mount to realism with hard lighting, and were written after some good listening was done.
The sound is beautifully recorded; the instrumentals seem to dominate the album, and there's a sense of machined purity about the whole thing-but not a sense (despite that la bel) that it's untouched by human hands. It's a pitch to the head, an old-time, artsy-craftsy way of making rock music. And, just now when so many other groups are playing period jazz or pseudo-swing or something pitched to the feet, it's a hell of a relief to have a recording nobody in his right mind would try dancing to. N.C.
ELVIS PRESLEY: The Sun Collection (see The Simels Report, page 48) BONNIE RAITT: Home Plate. Bonnie Raitt (vocals and guitar); orchestra. Run Like a Thief; Fool Yourself; Sugar Mama; Good Enough; I'm Blowin' Away; and five others. WARNER BROS. BS 2864 $6.98, C) M8 2864 $7.98, M5 2864 $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
Bonnie Raitt bounces around as if she's been nipping at mom's Geritol. But all the healthiness and high spirits seem real enough, and she's come up with a beautifully produced (by Paul Rothchild) and energetically performed album. She's at her best in such freewheeling things as What Do You Want the Boy to Do? and Pleasin' Each Other, but she can get serious enough to do some very nice things with My First Night Alone Without You. Her voice sounds much improved from her last time out, less strained at the top and the bottom. And, believe it or not, her up-beat (dare I say it?) wholesome approach really is appealing with out being cloying in the least bit. P.R.
LEON REDBONE: On the Track. Leon Redbone (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Joe Venuti (violin); Don McLean (banjo); Milt Hinton (bass); Stephen Gadd (drums); other musicians. Sweet Mama Hurry Home or I'll Be Gone; Ain't Misbehavin'; My Walking Stick; Lazybones; Marie; Desert Blues; Lulu's Back in Town; and four others. WARNER BROS. BS 2888 $6.98.
Performance: Crafty curios
Recording: Very good
Showmanship is an important part of Leon Redbone's act, but not all of it. For once, we have a ham, a stage character, in pop music who took the trouble to learn something about music beyond what a good excuse it is to get up there. Redbone's showmanship is pretty slick-he refuses to say how old he is or where he came from, but he's old enough to know what similar talk of off-stage privacy did for Garbo. He wears a three-piece suit, walks like he might be Garbo's grandpa, and brings out with him a big cigar, a glass of something, and, of course, a smallish, funky-looking gui tar. But this seems to have steel strings that he fingerpicks bare-handed, and it is about there that the listening becomes as rewarding as the looking. Redbone's guitar work doesn't come through in this album as well as it does on stage-possibly because it still helps if you can see him doing it-but you do get a fits-and-starts impression of why he attracted so
-------------- LEON Redbone Funny, funky showmanship.
…much word-of-mouth notoriety before he deigned to record. It's a hodgepodge style, taking off from somewhere in the vicinity of Blind Blake. His mumbly baritone vocals are honestly represented here, so honestly represented that his occasional inability to sing in tune through the whole damned song is flaunt ed at us a time or two, along with his tendency to flatten out some of the hard vocal parts of other songs, but it's such a furry, funny old voice you don't mind these aberrations. He has good to excellent backing, with the famous jazz fiddler Joe Venuti doing an occasional high-gloss run.
Redbone seems to know every pop song written before World War II, and his prefer ence for the light-to-daffy ones makes this seem a little like a novelty record. That may be its most serious drawback in this sound-only medium of ours. Steve Goodman says some performers will fare much better when the video disc becomes a consumer product. I'd say Leon Redbone is one of those. N.C.
RENAISSANCE: Scheherazade and Other Stories. Renaissance (vocals and instrumentals).
Trip to the Fair; The Vultures Fly High; Ocean Gypsy; Song of Scheherazade. SIRE SASD-7510 $6.98, C) 8147-7510 H $7.98.
Performance Elaborate
Recording Outstanding
Renaissance seems to be the company name for a group of English singers and musicians who, in their more ambitious moments, even call on members of the London Symphony Orchestra to augment their efforts. Especially ambitious is the side of this album devoted to a retelling, in a curious mixture of rock and Romantic idioms, of the story of Scheherazade. The Song of Scheherazade is made up of a fanfare, an opening instrumental section, and interludes, all taking their cue from Rimsky-Korsakov and improvising from there, and three songs by Michael Dunford and Betty Thatcher, the resident lyricists for Renaissance. The lead vocalist is Annie Haslam, who has one of those vulnerable-sounding folk-singer voices, and the accompaniment, nothing if not elaborate, calls on every sort of choral and orchestral effect during its overwrought and busy progress. The songs on the other side of the disc are decked out in colorful arrangements that fail to dispel a generally dismal mood. P.K.
CARL SANDBURG SINGS AMERICANA.
Carl Sandburg (vocals, guitar). Mama Have You Heard the News; The Good Boy; Woven Spirituals; I'm Sad, I'm Lonely; The Horse Named Bill; Foggy, Foggy Dew; I Ride an Old Paint; Gallows Song. EVEREST FS 309 $5.98.
Performance: Natural
Recording: Transferred 78's
Young people who haven't heard Carl Sandburg's speaking or reading voice, live or re corded, might still guess that he could sing a song. It shows in his poems, how conscious he was of timing, how he could find drama in unlikely places, how determined he was to get things right. It didn't hurt that he also had a nice, mellow baritone voice and could do a passable job of playing the guitar. His versions of The Horse Named Bill and Gallows Song (usually known as Samuel Hall) are as playful and provocative as you're likely to hear, and they alone justify the tape-splicing and tinkering it took to get the most out of the scratchy 78's Everest started with. Sandburg listened well to America singing; America can well afford to listen to him. N.C.
LUCY SIMON. Lucy Simon (vocals, guitar, piano); Hugh McCracken (guitar); Russell George (bass); Ralph MacDonald (percussion); other musicians. Pavane; My Father Died; From Time to Time to Time; Harbour; Sally Go Round the Sun; and five others. RCA APL!-1074 $6.98, APSI-1074 $7.98, APK1-1074 $7.98.
Performance Very good
Recording Very good
Lucy and Carly used to be known as the Simon Sisters, a folk-pretty act in which Lucy did a lot of the lead singing. She has a cleaner, more petite, higher-pitched voice than Carly, but her songwriting so far is considerably less caustic, less spicy, less interesting than Carly's. And . . . let's see, now . . . the al bum cover pose lets you know she's got legs, so they're about even there. These comparisons are inevitable, but you really should measure Lucy's progress not against someone hip and sassy like Carly but against someone earnest and romantic like Judy Collins. My Father Died, which Lucy wrote in 1973, is a song Collins might tackle; it is more impressive read than heard-most of the Lucy originals provided here are, in fact, for her melodies, the tempos she chooses, and the attitudes she seems to strike don't always go with her lyrics.
She does each thing pretty well, but she doesn't quite make them all fit together. She has a good assortment of raw talents, though, and this effort should earn her the chance to try again. N.C.
SPINNERS: Pick of the Litter. Henry Fambrough, Billy Henderson, Pervis Jackson, Bobbie Smith, Philippe Soul Wynn (vocals); orchestra. Honest I Do; Games People Play; All That Glitters Ain't Gold; Love or Leave; and four others. ATLANTIC SD 18141 $6.98, TP 18141 $7.98, CS 18141 $7.98.
Performance. Glossy but mild
Recording: Very good
This is mild stuff, though it has a highly polished patina, from the Spinners, a group whose performances have a certain soporific, mechanical charm. Everything's been made beautifully wrinkle-free by the classy production work and lush arrangements of Thom Bell, and the drip-dry songs are breezed through with a high degree of professional ism reminiscent of the Ink Spots. P. R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
10cc: 100ce. 10cc (vocals and instrumentals). Old Wild Men; Wall Street Shuffle; Some where in Hollywood; Rubber Bullets; Water fall; and five others. UK UKS 53110 $6.98, 0 853110 $7.98, 0 553110 $7.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Very good
Some of the tracks here were British and/or American singles hits-Wall Street Shuffle, Silly Love, and Rubber Bullets (the last a takeoff on the Beach Boys)-but most of the selections are from the band's first two al bums. Of these, The Worst Band in the World and Somewhere in Hollywood are outstanding. I admire 10cc for the extraordinary quality of their writing, which is perfectly complemented by their tailored arrangements and clean, clinical execution. What remains of the rock era that is still of artistic merit is satire of the form, and 10cc are accomplished satirists.
Commenting on the demise of the Beatles (and rock in general) as a cure-all for social/ spiritual ills, John Lennon said: "The dream is over." 10cc is a Task Force Commission filing a thoroughly researched Report on the End of the Dream. J. V.
THE TUBES. The Tubes (vocals and instrumentals). Up from the Deep; Space Baby; Mondo Bondage; White Punks on Dope: and four others. A&M SP 4534 $6.98.
Performance: Average
Recording: Good
The Tubes are supposed to be satirists. At one point in What Do You Want from Life, a radio-announcer type comes on to catalog things dear to Americans. such as swimming pools, microwave ovens, and automobiles (now there's a death blow to materialism for you). Photographs of the group show them all looking very mysterious (comatose?)-maybe they just don't know they are ten years too late to audition for the now defunct Velvet Underground.
The production of this album is smooth Al Kooper is responsible for it-but the performances are noisy and feeble. The end product of mediocrity trying to pass as social humor is always: "Yoo hoo! Look at us! Aren't we being outrageous?" Sure you are, kids. J.V.
TINA TURNER: Acid Queen (see Best of the Month, page 76) JERRY JEFF WALKER: Ridin' High (see Best of the Month, page 77) GENE WATSON: Love in the Hot Afternoon.
Gene Watson (vocals); Jim Colvard (guitar); Charlie McCoy (guitar, harmonica); Henry Strzelecki (bass); Buddy Spicher (fiddle); oth er musicians. Love in the Hot Afternoon;
Through the Eyes of Love; Bad Water; Long Enough to Care; Harvest Time; and five oth ers. CAPITOL ST-I 1443 $6.98, OO 8XT-11443 $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
Easy now. Gene Watson looks like a member of the Pompadour Mafia, the horde of pretty boys that has descended on country music lately saying love and meaning sex. But there's more than heart-throb visuals here; this one can sing. He has a smooth, natural delivery, good range, and a gliding, well-lubricated way of phrasing that doesn't interfere with his good diction. The song selection is one of the things that might lead to snap judgments about his being another pretty face, as it is lopsided in favor of bedroom sagas (in the long run the bedroom doesn't suit a country singer as well as the highway does), but that may be just the normal first-album jitters that lead to restating, as much as possible, what it says in the hit song of the batch, in this case the title tune. What he, or someone involved in this production, is really terrible at is spelling-in the credits, Jim Colvard's last name is spelled Colbart, Buddy Spicher's is spelled Spiker, Henry Strzelecki's is spelled Stryleki, Jim Isbell's is spelled Isabel, and Buddy Harman's is spelled Harmon. The Nashville sidemen, accustomed to no credits at all on country albums, must be wondering what you have to do to win. Keep playing those nice Spanish (or Tex-Mex-Watson, like so many of the pretty ones, is from Tex as) guitar runs the way "Colbart" does, one supposes, and hope for a producer who can spell. The album, all in all, is not particularly unusual or exciting, but it does suggest quite a future for that voice of Watson's when the repertoire and production shakedowns are completed. N.C.
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Bernard Herrmann: In a Class By Himself
. . a giant bird right out of Jules Verne......
----------" ...he has never written a score more brilliant than Citizen Kane" ---------------
THE marriage of a newspaper tycoon merges imperceptibly into the theme of a waltz and a set of wistful variations . . . the Devil himself calls the tune at a barn dance . . . Jason and his Argonauts set sail in search of the Golden Fleece on the Aegean Sea over waves of molten musical gold . . . the Lilliputians march toward Gulliver to the beat of a miniature march . . . a giant bird right out of Jules Verne appears on screen to the accompaniment of an obscure organ fugue. . . .
Yes, pure Hollywood, but if the credits read "Music by Bernard Herrmann," it is likely the movie at hand will contain real mu sic instead of the gummy stickum of sentimentality and pretentiousness that so often passes for it. "I like to get inside the drama," Herrmann once said, and he is remarkably good at doing just that-and at the same time supplying a score you might want to hear again on its own.
Herrmann has always stood apart from his Hollywood colleagues. For one thing, he came to the profession not by way of Broad way or Tin Pan Alley or even Budapest, but from the Juilliard School and Carnegie Hall.
At twenty, in 1931, he founded the New Chamber Orchestra of New York in his home town. At twenty-three he became staff conductor of the Columbia Workshop in the gold en age of radio. Then he met Orson Welles and worked with that Wunderkind on the Mercury Theatre of the Air. In 1940, when Herrmann was going on thirty, Welles (who was twenty-five) took him along to Holly wood to write the music for Citizen Kane.
Scoring Kane turned out to be a dream assignment for the young and ambitious com poser. Herrmann had twelve weeks in which to do the job instead of the usual three. "I worked on the film reel by reel," he later re called, "as it was being shot and cut." Instead of being presented with a finished print, he had the opportunity to work on the music as the film grew. When montages to denote the passage of time were being developed, Welles matched the sequences to music Herrmann wrote instead of the other way around. The composer was able to do his own orchestration, even to supervise the final dubbing.
For Citizen Kane, Herrmann devised arresting themes and fitted them out with artful variations: a motif to denote Kane's power, and another for the protagonist's dying word ("Rosebud") to suggest the secret reason why he might have lusted after such power; music to mock the vulgar opulence of Kane's castle, Xanadu; a parody of newsreel music; hurdy-gurdy tunes; even an opera aria. The result was a score that added to the strength of a great film and is still an impressive musical edifice. There have been several recordings of it, notably Charles Gerhardt's for RCA, in which Kiri Te Kanawa sings the aria from the fictional opera Salammb5, an effective parody of nineteenth-century pseudo Orientalism. In the movie, Susan Alexander Kane's performance is excruciating, while Miss Te Kanawa sings it straight-but at least she sings it. Nobody sings it in the new United Artists recording, and its absence is a disappointment. LeRoy Holmes is effective in con ducting this concert version, with its passages for small groups of instruments instead of the usual swamping symphonic sound, but the unexplained fine-print notation on the record jacket that says "orchestrations/Paul Swain" indicates at least some tampering with Herrmann's original.
After Kane, Herrmann went on to score The Devil and Daniel Webster and Welles' second film The Magnificent Ambersons. The suite Welles Raises Kane combines key pas sages from Citizen Kane with the nostalgic music to which the dismayed Ambersons watched their world fall apart. Unicorn Records (which has also issued albums of Herrmann's too-ambitious opera Wuthering Heights and his cantata Moby Dick) has recently released Welles Raises Kane along with a suite from The Devil and Daniel Webster under the composer's own disciplined direction. Some of this material, too, has been recorded before, but never so incisively.
All that brings Herrmann's composing career up to 1942. Since then, he has scored Jane Eyre, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and a number of adventure movies, having been practically composer-in-residence to Alfred Hitchcock, fashioning scores for Psycho, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Marnie.
London Records' "The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann" takes us into lesser-known territory. Here is music from Mysterious Island, in which the composer harnessed his own imagination to Jules Veme's with ingenious innovations for the soundtrack-a monstrous concatenation of sounds for the "Giant Bee," an organ fugue based on a theme by J. L. Krebs for the "Giant Bird," a moto perpetuo for the giant bal loon tossed about above the sea by wind and rain. Here also is Jason and the Argonauts, for which Herrmann requisitioned a huge ensemble of brass, winds, and percussion and concocted a biting, rugged, dramatic musical seascape. But the most unusual part of this collection is the music for The Three Worlds of Gulliver-with a minuetto to suggest the hero's home town of Wapping; a tiny orchestra of piccolos, sleighbells, triangles, glockenspiels, and harp for the Lilliputians; a gigantic combination of tubas, bass, and contrabass for the Brobdingnagians-all based on themes from eighteenth-century dances composed by Jonathan Swift's contemporaries. London's Phase Four sound supplies just the sort of movie-theater resonance that presents such material most strikingly.
HERRMANN'S "serious" music for the Op era house and concert hall seems short on genuine inspiration and rather long on the calculated application of compositional technique. As a movie composer, though, he re mains in a class by himself. Perhaps he has never written any score more brilliant than the one Welles was able to coax out of him for Citizen Kane. But, as these new releases re veal, he has never done a really hack job of scoring anything.
-Paul Kresh
BERNARD HERRMANN: Citizen Kane. Concert presentation of the film score. Orchestra, LeRoy Holmes cond. UNITED AR TISTS UA-LA372-G $5.98.
BERNARD HERRMANN: Concert Suites: The Devil and Daniel Webster; Welles Raises Kane. London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Herrmann cond. UNICORN UNS 237 $7.98.
THE MYSTERIOUS FILM WORLD OF BER NARD HERRMANN. Excerpts from the scores for Mysterious Island; Jason and the Argonauts; The Three Worlds of Gulliver. National Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Herrmann cond. LONDON SPC 21137 $6.98.
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AUDIO NEWS--Views and comment on recent developments
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)