STEVE SIMELS
THIS MONTH'S BIG SIX
IT'S a strange time right now for pop music.
Oh sure, lots of interesting things have been going on-the remarkable return of Brian Wilson, the Led Zeppelin film, the second (and I hope the last) Rock Awards TV show, and punk-rock festivals in (where else?) France but it's hard to get a fix on what it all means. A new sensibility seems to be emerging out of the ashes of the Slowly Sickening Seventies, but there's a vagueness about it, a tentative, slippery kind of feeling that resists analysis.
For myself, I find that most of the records I'm listening to now are retrospectives of one kind or another-the Faces' "Snakes and Ladders," a lovely memorial to a band that never really got it together the way they could have; Leo Kottke's "1971-1976"; even the latest reissue of Phil Spector's sublime Christmas Album-and that's got me muddled even more. So, rather than try to make sense of all this, I'm cribbing an idea from Simon Frith, who cribbed it from Charlie Gillet, who cribbed it from God-knows-who. Here is this month's Big Six.
1. Patti Smith Group: "Radio Ethiopia." Before Patti's new album came out, I was fortunate enough to stumble across an excellent live bootleg featuring some of her new songs as well as to catch an unannounced low-pro file gig she did at a bar in Soho, and I think I've finally figured out why she gets to me. As knowingly as she comes on, she is really an ...
---- GRAHAM PARKER: the English have caught it too.
... innocent. It doesn't matter that most of the criticisms that have been leveled at her are true. Sure, her singing isn't much more musical than Yoko Ono's, her band isn't virtuoso, her poetry is at times laughably overripe-but she's still open enough to fit Smokey Robin son and Dolly Parton in there among the fever dreams. "Radio Ethiopia," different as it is from "Horses," has just as many problems, but she's getting closer to whatever it is she's chasing, and for the moment at least the ride she's taking us on is the most exhilarating one in rock.
2. George Harrison: This Song (from "33 & 1/3"). That little old cringe-maker is back, but with a difference. Not only has he shaved his beard and started eating meat again, he seems to have regained both his sense of humor and his songwriting chops. I have not yet heard the whole album, so I will have to restrain my enthusiasm, but on the basis of the single inspired by his recent loss in court, it's his first rocker in ages, and it works both as a novelty tune and as a love song-George may finally be about to demonstrate that his work with the Beatles was not the fluke the intervening years have indicated it might be.
3. Graham Parker and the Rumour: "Heat Treatment." R-&-b lives! No sooner had I predicted that Southside Johnny's passion for Sixties Soul might be contagious than Mr. Parker and a fine group of refugees from the English pub scene show us that the English have caught it too. The Rumour isn't as flashy as the Asbury Jukes, nor is it as purist, but the groove is similar and "Heat Treatment" might just be the best original white r-&-b al bum since, oh, let's say the Beach Boys' "Wild Honey."
4. Elton John: "Blue Moves." Gosh, but it must be lonely at the top! It seems that it isn't enough for poor Elton that his records sell by the zillions, that he's adored by the pop stars and the fans-those nasty critics just keep picking at him, and it's ruining his breakfast.
Insensitive barstids. The odd thing is that al though "Blue Moves" is, if anything, even more numbingly turgid than anything he's done previously, it's also, in a peculiar sort of way, the most honest; it is full of the peevish petulance he demonstrated when, in a radio interview, he vented his spleen at a poor New York Times critic who had confessed to being only moderately enthused over his last con cert. The Rock Star Self Pity Syndrome claims its least likely candidate. Can Peter Frampton be far behind?
5. Boston: More Than a Feeling. This song, of course, has been the left-field smash of the year, coming seemingly out of nowhere from a first album by an unknown group of musicians who have only just quit their day jobs. It really is good: a soaring riff out of Lou Reed by way of Joe Walsh, stunning playing and production, and the best job of adapting the George Martin/Beatles approach to heavy metal that anyone has come up with in ages.
Todd Rundgren, not to mention Eric Carmen, must be reaching for the razor blade every time he hears it. But, like most left-field smashes, it's a one-shot. There isn't another song remotely as memorable anywhere on the rest of the album, and, unsurprisingly, the group's singing is as faceless as all the rest of the metal bands'. Still, in a period when imaginative rock-and-roll hit singles are getting harder to find than practicing Druids, it's nice they're around. File with The Boys Are Back in Town.
6. Bruce Springsteen: Rendezvous. It's been over a year since "Born to Run" put the Bard of Asbury Park on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and Springsteen, embroiled in a lawsuit with his old manager that prevents him from recording anything new, must be wondering if rock stardom is all it's cracked up to be. He doesn't act like it, though, or at least he didn't during his recent six-night stint in New York. Instead, he put on the most sweeping, ambitious, and deceptively spontaneous show I have ever attended, one that reduced several extremely skeptical friends of mine to actual tears. Two of the new songs he introduced are obviously still being worked out, but the third-a hypnotically compelling teenage lament called Rendezvous that is also the most English-sounding thing he has ever done-is clearly the Bruce Springsteen Song for the Ages. No wonder the New York bands resent him so much. Incidentally, he dedicated a tune at each performance to Patti Smith, and actually pulled her on stage during one version of Rosalita. If Springsteen is the New Dylan, perhaps this means that Patti is the Baez of the Seventies. Well, why not? though I admit to being a little uncomfortable still with the idea of Revelations taking place in New Jersey.
Also see:
POPULAR DISCS and TAPES (Jul. 1976)
Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)