Reviewed by: CHRIS ALBERTSON, NOEL COPPAGE, PHYL GARLAND, PAUL KRESH,
PETER REILLY, STEVE SIMELS, JOEL VANCE
THE GREGG ALLMAN BAND: Playin' Up a Storm. Gregg Allman (vocals, keyboards, guitar); Bill Stewart (drums); Neil Larsen (key boards); Ricky Hirsch (guitar); Steve Beckmeier (guitar); John Hug (guitar); Willie Weeks (bass); other musicians. Come and Go Blues; Let This Be a Lesson to Ya; Brightest Smile in Town; Bring It On Back; Cryin' Shame; and four others. CAPRICORN CP 0181 $6.98, M80181 $7.97, M50181 $7.97.
Performance: Good
Recording: Good
Hyperbole is about average here; Gregg Allman and company don't play up a storm so much as they play up a lazy breeze, just enough to suggest they will be a dandy band if and when they find some tunes that interest them (or you, or me, or anyone else). The producers are listed as Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, and they're two of the best, but I suspect Allman did mostly what he wanted to do, as that's the only way to ex plain why the album starts with an inferior-grade rehash of Wasted Words, tries to out-Ray-Charles, Ray Charles, and repeatedly comes up with a tempo changer about one song too late. But mostly I blame Allman's songwriter's ego for including several rather weak tunes. Allman's history with the structure of bands, incidentally, has been interesting. From the outset the Allman Brothers was a two-drums, two-lead-guitar band (Allman alumnus Dicky Betts now has his own two-drums band), and this one is a two-keyboards (three in this album, counting Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack) and three-guitars band.
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Explanation of symbols:
= reel-to-reel stereo tape
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E = reel-to-reel quadraphonic tape
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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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But it sounds better than it reads; it's never as busy as all that. What it needs to be, and isn't very, is spontaneous. Maybe with better material it will be. Allman's singing continues to be very good technically, but on "Playin' Up a Storm" it takes on the same kind of up town civility as the band. It too needs a few songs with a speck or two of dirt on them.
N.C.
AMERICAN FLYER: Spirit of a Woman. American Flyer (vocals, instrumentals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Spirit of a Woman; Gamblin' Man; My Love Comes Alive; Victoria; Dear Carmen; Flyer; and three others. UNITED ARTISTS UA-LA720-G $6.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Very good
American Flyer is from the same country-rock mold as Linda Ronstadt (who appears as a back-up singer here), the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and the Eagles. The band is refreshing and sprightly, their material is above average (especially Gamblin' Man, The Good Years, and the title cut), and their vocal delivery is clean and appealing. Most enjoyable.
J.V.
AVERAGE WHITE BAND/BEN E. KING: Benny and Us. (vocals); Average White Band (instrumentals, vocal accompaniment). Get It Up for Love; Fool for You Anyway; A Star in the Ghetto; The Message; What Is Soul; and three others. ATLANTIC SD 19105 $6.98, TP-I 9105 $7.98, CS.:19105 $7.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Very good
On the evidence of this record, the meeting of that grand soul balladeer Ben E. King and the recently successful Average White Band pleased both parties. If every one of the tracks turns into a hit, I for one will be overjoyed. Though the material is pallid and the production and arrangements are sometimes overdone or off-center, the group's delivery and execution are clean and smooth, and King has lost none of the agility and warmth that first made him famous as lead singer with the Drifters. It is clear that everybody enjoyed making the album, sharing both respect and affection, and I enjoyed listening to it. J.V.
JOAN BAEZ: Blowin' Away. Joan Baez (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Sailing; Many a Mile to Freedom; Miracles; Yellow Coat; Time Rag; and five others. PORTRAIT 34697 $4.98.
Performance: Self-absorbed
Recording: Very good
Joan Baez, the folk singer with the wistful throb in her voice who turned vulnerability it self into a kind of profession, presents here a program of songs composed by herself and others that takes her out of the realm of politics and into the intimate area of autobiographical reminiscence. The "new" Joan Baez has a voice just as haunting as the old one, but it is not easy to swallow her persist ent self-pity and self-absorption. Time Rag, for example, a song of revenge aimed at a Time reporter who distorted something she said in an interview, is a five-minute diatribe this listener would gladly have been spared. A Heartfelt Line or Two, a kind of melancholy letter-lyric to former friends and lovers, is an irritating blend of conceit and condescension.
And so on. In all, I would gladly trade in the "new" Baez for the old one, whose tears were shed for Appalachian miners and California grape-pickers rather than for her self-a subject that turns out to be of less than universal interest. Revenge may be sweet, but it's also unattractive. P.K.
BAY CITY ROLLERS: It's a Game. Bay City Rollers (vocals and instrumentals); other musicians. It's a Game; You Made Me Believe in Magic; Sweet Virginia; Love Power; Don't Let the Music Die; and five others. ARISTA AL 7004 $7.98, 8301-7004(H) $7.95, 5301-7004(H) $7.95.
Performance: Laughable
Recording: Okay
What a relief. Now that the Rollers have peaked at a merely respectable level of American commercial success, we no longer have to endure tedious debates about whether they're the Next Beatles and can deal instead with more amusing questions-such as whether they've got the staying power to make it even as the Next Osmonds. In the meantime we can all have a good laugh listening to their new album. To be fair, it probably could have been worse, although I don't see just how unless it had been a two-record set.
Just wait till you hear these grinning wimps mutilate David Bowie's Rebel Rebel-perhaps the ultimate mismatch of song and performer (the Brady Bunch kids' version of American Pie, heretofore the champ in that department, pales in comparison). Because of the grueling pressures of stardom, the Rollers are now down to only four members. Well, more al bums like this one should ease the strain on the rest of them.
-S.S.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
BURNING SPEAR: Dry and Heavy. Winston Rodney (vocals and percussion); instrumental accompaniment. Any River; The Sun; Throw Down Your Arms; Wailing; Black Disciples; Shout It OW; and three others. MANGO MLPS 9431 $6.98, Y8M-9431 $7.98, ZCM-9431 $7.98.
Performance: Haunting
Recording: Excellent
Of all the reggae artists to have records re leased in America, Winston Rodney (who calls himself "Burning Spear" after Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta) is the least compromised by the temptations of white pop commercialism.
Although Rastafarian reggae is essentially a music of religious war, the Marleys, Toshes, and Diamonds can't be written off for couching their broadsides in musical terms seductively familiar to listeners in a land they find at best hopelessly corrupt: their tactics are directed toward a kind of subversion from with in. Rodney's comparative purism does not make his music automatically better or more "authentic." But it does make it a more unalloyed expression of the Jamaican soul, particularly of the people who live in the back country and have never seen cities or much else of what we take for granted as part of "civilization." The title song of "Dry and Heavy," for instance, tells of endless backbreaking hours spent cutting firewood and lugging it back to the village-ending with a message to the children not to take advantage of their father's absence to stay away from school. That may sound boring and simplistic, but it isn't. It is, rather, an evocation of a life style so primitive that most of us can scarcely imagine what it is really like.
Rodney is a great artist: it requires a great artist to take a form as redundant and didactic as reggae and create from it three albums as completely different from each other, in both music and lyrics, as "Marcus Garvey," "Man in the Hills," and "Dry and Heavy." And it takes integrity at least as great as that needed for resisting commercialism to forsake the apocalyptic Rastafarian diatribes of "Marcus Garvey" for the concentration on Jamaican family life of "Man in the Hills" and then the ...
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Elvis Presley: 1935-1977; Elvis Presley is dead, but market figures make it abundantly clear his music is not.
His latest album, "Moody Blue," had sold well over 300,000 copies up to the time of his death in mid-August-and it moved to platinum status (one million copies) in the week after. RCA has in work the soundtrack from the October "Elvis" special on CBS TV (no release date yet), and discussions were continuing at the time of this writing in the matter of a "memorial" album, no decision having been made as to whether it will be one disc or several or what it will contain, other than that it will attempt to be a retrospective of the whole career(s) and that there will be only one package designed for world-wide distribution.
In addition, there are enough unreleased songs on tape from various recording sessions hither and yon to make up as many as four or five posthumous albums-once they have assembled the material and figured out just who owns the rights to it. In the meantime, Elvis fans new and old can turn to the couple of dozen catalog items still available (check Schwann-2) and to the new release at hand.
"Moody Blue" is pressed, appropriately enough, on transparent blue vinyl (clear as crystal-you can read through it), and it makes a strong enough visual impression to serve as a reminder that something like one billion equally colorful Elvis records have been pressed before it. Of its ten songs, six were recorded at Elvis' Graceland home and three on tour. It is not what I would call a great Elvis album, but of course that is not going to matter: for those who consider them selves fans of this almost invariably spellbinding performer it is quite simply a "must" keepsake item.
Unfortunately, Elvis was not in good voice throughout the greater part of the program. He sounds tired and drops too often into a phony, hollow-sounding chest voice (in She Thinks I Still Care, for example, or in Un chained Melody, in which he sounds like an overheated imitation Tom Jones-there's irony for you) instead of using that light, heavily ornamented country-gospel yodel that was his alone. If You Love Me is going-through-the-motions country, as is He'll Have to Go. And Little Darlin' is a piece of period doo-wop (I'm beginning to believe it is possible to date a rock song merely on the basis of whether the song's love object is called "darlin' " or "baby"). The title song is a nicely crafted Elvis song in the late Las Vegas style, but perhaps the best track is the wholesomely energetic, tent-gospel-flavored Let Me Be There, splendidly backed (by J. D. Sumner and the Stamps, the Sweet Inspirations, and Kathy Westmoreland) and complete with a neat little applause-inspired reprise.
“one billion equally colorful records have been pressed before”
Those who have just now gotten around to noticing the absence of Elvis from their record collections will want (in addition to "Moody Blue") the following: "Elvis Country," RCA LSP-4460, "From Memphis," RCA LSP-4155, and "Sun Sessions," RCA APS1-1675. If these three do not tell you why the better part of two generations of Americans went into mourning last August, then nothing will.-William Anderson ELVIS PRESLEY: Moody Blue. Elvis Presley (vocals); other musicians. Unchained Melody; If You Love Me (Let Me Know); Little Darlin'; He'll Have to Go; Let Me Be There; Way Down; Pledging My Love; Moody Blue; She Thinks I Still Care; It's Easy for You. RCA AFLI-2428 $7.98, AFSI-2428 $7.98, AFKI-2428 $7.98.
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Elvis-and rock-and-roll heralded major demographic changes
that have deeply affected how this country lives and how it sees itself.
It wasn't just that country-and-western and rhythm-and-blues flowed together;
rural and urban populations have had their visions of themselves and each
other radically altered, there is greater communication between them, less
insularity, less tension and bigotry. If all that seems to be a bit too
much to lay at the door of a popular music, just try to imagine those changes
taking place without the pulsating undercurrent of that powerful music.
And then try to imagine that music without Elvis."
-Asheley and Kerrin Griffith
STEREO REVIEW, July 1976
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... love, for one's fellow man and for a particular woman, that is the theme of "Dry and Heavy." Repetitive militancy (supply your own examples) is much easier.
In a time when a lot of passive fools will tell you that machine music is taking over completely, Winston Rodney sings the most elemental and humane of songs in a manner that universalizes the message of Rastafarianism.
All the clichés of reggae (" Ethiopia," "Haile Selassie," and "Jah") are absent from this al bum, but the message of social revolution through love is stronger than ever. Rodney is the blackest of reggae artists, yet he speaks to all of humankind, not just the black disciples and white hippie fellow-travelers. Listen to him and be changed.
-Lester Bangs
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
BURTON CUMMINGS: My Own Way to Rock. Burton Cummings (vocals and key boards); Randy Bachman (guitars); Ian Gardiner (bass); Jeff Porcaro (drums); other musicians. Never Had a Lady Before; Come On By; Try to Find Another Man; Gotta Find Another Way; Timeless Love; and four others. PORTRAIT PR 34698 $6.98, PRA-34698 $6.98, PRT-34698 $6.98.
Performance: Superior jive
Recording:Excellent
Burton Cummings is a superb pianist with a variety of styles that run the gamut from Lit tle Richard to Bill Evans. He is also a marvelously funny showman, a virtuoso vocalist, and a songwriter equally capable of infectious brilliance and pretentious bushwah (though the latter is usually leavened with a healthy sense of the absurd). All of which makes him, by any standard you care to apply, the Thinking Man's Elton John. If he was balding and wore glasses he'd probably be a superstar.
"My Own Way to Rock," his second solo effort, is notable for several reasons. First of all, it's the only record Richard Perry has produced in recent memory in which Perry has not dominated the proceedings; it sounds like Cummings' music, not Perry's usual L.A., mush-rock. Second, it marks the end of one of the more entertaining rock scandals of the decade-the continuing public feud between Cummings and his former partner in the Guess Who, Randy Bachman. Bachman plays (with surprising restraint and economy) on several songs here, and there's even a song-writing collaboration between the two. Third, it contains the best cover version anybody has yet done of a Bob Seger tune; Cummings makes an absolutely delightful cartoon out of the macho sentiments of Seger's Come On By, which, incidentally, rocks ferociously in the bargain. Finally, it's a very intelligent, well-crafted piece of pop, a commodity in short supply these days; it's slick, silly, hummable, and occasionally (as in Timeless Love, one of the most appealing ballads to come down the pike in some time) even legitimately affecting. I'd say it's the best thing he's ever done, and coming from an old Guess Who fanatic like me, that's saying something. Cummings may have gone Hollywood, but he still knows how to shake 'em down. S.S.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
EGG CREAM. Egg Cream (vocals and instrumentals). Maybe Tonite; Can I Stay; My De struction; I Wanna Be with You; Dark Nite Blue Lite Ladies; I Never Wanted To; and four others. PYRAMID PY-9008 $6.98.
Performance: Excellent pop
Recording: Very good
This is a bouncy, sprightly, very well performed and produced pop album that is a treat to hear. Dead-ahead pop music, with no artistic pretensions and a goal of resolute commerciality, can sometimes get pretty close to being an art form. So it is here. The lyrics are colloquial, the plots of the songs are inconsequential, and the melodies are merely frames on which to hang Cheshire-cat arrangements.
It is all dash and dazzle and hoopla, but it is also quite enjoyable.
Most of the members of Egg Cream are not identified, but one Andy Adams is credited with having written the songs and with taking the lead vocals. Adams is a clever and ingratiating lad, and he has turned in a notable first effort. J.V.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
DAN FOGELBERG: Nether Lands. Dan Fogelberg (vocals, keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars); Norbert Putnam (bass); Kenny Buttrey, Russ Kunkel (drums); other musicians. Dancing Shoes; Loose Ends; Once Upon a Time; Love Gone By; Promises Made; Lessons Learned; and five others. EPIC PE 34185 $6.98, 0 PEA-34185 $6.98, 0 PET-34185 $6.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Excellent
This is a great, squashily romantic outburst from Dan Fogelberg--by far his best album.
Everything jells beautifully here. His gentle fantasy, which could easily turn to self-con scious mush in such things as Scarecrow's Dream or Dancing Shoes, instead has a lean, elegant vigor. And when he does pull out all of the red plush and patchouli stops in Love Gone By, Nether Lands, or Lessons Learned, it's like Vronsky explaining how-things-really-are to poor, childlike Anna Karenina. (You see folks, it is 1977, and even Fogelberg hedges his commitment by adopting the role of the sadder-but-wiser one comforting the unlucky friend who really got bent out of shape. Underneath it all, of course, his songs tell us that he's played both roles at different times.) The only nit to pick here is about Fogelberg's voice, or rather lack of one. Unfortunately, it remains a reedy squeak, which he sometimes masks by double tracking and similar techniques, and it still has a disconcerting way of giving out on him altogether. His guitar and piano playing, however, are wonder fully sensitive, and his production work, with an assist by Norbert Putnam, is first-class.
This is an album that is, at bottom, all flocked wallpaper, rendezvous at dawn, and passion-tremendously unfashionable things at the moment. But they all still exist and Dan Fogelberg's work proves that romance still has the power to involve and move us despite the "coolness" of the times. P.R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
BRUCE FOSTER: After the Show. Bruce Foster (vocals, keyboards, guitars); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Born to Break My Heart; Casino (Baby It's Gone); After the Show; Platinum Heroes; Shot Down in Denver; Maria in the Moonlight; Man with a Dragon; and four others. MNLP 8000 $6.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Good
Bruce Foster's album is an example of quality top-forty pop. His vocals are hurled at you with a gusto and savvy that come from years of experience as a musician and a firm knowledge of the music business (and perhaps from his musical genes also--Stephen Foster was his great-great-granduncle). His writing, while simplistic and sometimes burdened with clichés, contains some fine individual lyric lines. Foster produced most of the album with Skip "Wizard" Konte, but the best cut Born to Break My Heart--was produced by Jimmy Lenner, a veteran with many hits to his credit. The runner-up honors go to Platinum Heroes, a tribute to the Beatles that weaves musical phrases from some of their most famous tunes through the commemorative lyrics, which are Foster's best on the album and which hold together through the whole song. As Foster's debut album this is quite a calling card.
-J. V.
MILLENNIUM ARETHA FRANKLIN: Sweet Passion. Aretha Franklin (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Break It to Me Gently; What I Did for Love; Meadows of Springtime; Touch Me Up; and six others. ATLANTIC SD 19102 $6.98, 0 TP-19102 $7.97, C5-19102 $7.97.
Performance: Restrained
Recording: Good
It has been said by some Aretha watchers that Natalie Cole's arrival has forced the reigning queen of soul to settle back down to the serious business of singing. Young Ms. Cole came along at the right time to take up the slack that remained when Aretha altered her image, trimming down her figure to fit into de signer gowns and deleting some of the stomp-down Dr. Feelgood funk from her repertoire in favor of more polite fare.
Aretha seldom screams any more, but it was those searing outbursts that supplied much of the fire in her earlier efforts. Further more, she has been working of late with various producers, although Jerry Wexler was the guiding force behind most of her top hits.
Curtis Mayfield produced "Sparkle," her previous set, while Lamont Dozier handled this one. The result falls just short of being exciting, for there is no unifying spirit to bind the album together and mark it indelibly as her own. Aretha is featured primarily as a solo singer, and I miss her earlier impassioned antiphonal exchanges with a girl group that forced the music to swing back and forth compellingly.
-----CRYSTAL GAYLE: the aplomb of Marissa Berenson writing a Dear John
letter.
Yet there are more than a few delights in "Sweet Passion." Though Break It to Me Gently has been a chart-rider, Aretha is far more expressive on the ballads What I Did for Love and her own Meadows of Springtime.
She is surprisingly successful in an attempt at scat-singing on her and Clark Terry's Mumbles. (Even Ella might give her an "A" for that one.) A highlight of the album is the gospel-flavored title song, which is reminiscent of the old Aretha. Good as that track is, it might have been better if some girl group had been there helping her sock it to us all. P.G.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
CRYSTAL GAYLE: We Must Believe in Magic. Crystal Gayle (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. River Road; Green Door; Funny; All I Wanna Do in Life; Going Down Slow; and five others. UNITED ARTISTS UA LA771-G $6.98, UA-EA771-H $7.98, UA-CA771-H $7.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Good
If Crystal Gayle ever decides to break the ties that bind (her c-&-w background, her interpretive inheritance from her sister Loretta Lynn, and a performing remoteness that con notes "style" in some Nashville quarters), she's going to be one of the best straight pop singers we've got. It's all there vocally-a bright, clear voice with a rich, amber emotional undertow and an easy, floating top and, at least once on this album, it's all there dramatically too. The really smashing performance here is Cole Porter's It's All Right with Me, which Gayle delivers with all the aplomb, assurance, and bone-deep chic of Marissa Berenson writing a Dear John letter.
Hedging all bets as usual, producer Allen Reynolds has thrown in what sounds like a jug band to accompany her, so you might have to strain a bit to hear just how well she does it but it's more than worth the effort. The rest is pretty much the same semi-husked corn that is obligatory material for anyone as glued to the fence as she seems to be. Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue or All I Wanna Do in Life would make the going difficult even for a Streisand. - P.R.
ANDY GIBB: Flowing Rivers. Andy Gibb (vocals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Words and Music; Starlight; In the End; Flowing Rivers; Let It Be Me; Too Many Looks in Your Eyes; and four others. RSO RS-1-3019 $6.98, C..) 8T-1-3019 $7.98, 0 CT-1-3019 $7.98.
Performance: Agreeable
Recording: Good
Andy Gibb, youngest of the Brothers Gibb (better known as the Bee Gees) and fresh off the Stigwood Organization's assembly line, is a bright enough young composer-singer with an agreeable performing manner. But he's been programmed here in a pseudo-country style that doesn't really fit him. When he drops the moonshine manner, as in such things as (Love Is) Thicker Than Water, he's a very engaging fellow-easy, assured, and on-target all the way. Since he writes all his own material, it must be his choice to opt for the grits-with-everything performances. If so, it is also his mistake. - P.R.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Terrapin Station. Grateful Dead (vocals and instrumentals); instrumental accompaniment. Estimated Prophet; Samson and Delilah; Passenger; Terrapin (1-7); and two others.ARISTA AL 7001 $7.98, 0 8301-7001(H) $7.95, 5301-7001(H) $7.95.
Performance: Languid
Recording: Fine
Back in 1970, Lenny Kaye, now lead guitarist with the Patti Smith Group, reviewed a Grateful Dead album and called it "a place where rock is likely to be in about five years." I bring this up only to show just how out of hand the Seventies have gotten, especially if you consider the place rock actually went to in the next few years (for instance, the music of the Patti Smith Group). At any rate, Kaye's remarks notwithstanding, the Dead's appeal has always been something of a mystery to me. They can't sing (didn't you ever long to hear their lovely Uncle John's Band tackled by real voices-the Hollies, for example?), and their attempts at straight country or rock and-roll are ludicrous. Even the most fervent admirers of their longer, spaced-out improvisatory epics like Dark Star admit that the band has as many bad nights as good ones.
Bringing things up to date, though, the sounds emanating from "Terrapin Station," their debut on Arista, seem to indicate that the Dead have entered a new chapter in their ongoing saga, a break with their past as radical and as likely to be upsetting to hard-core fans as "Workingman's Dead" was back in 1970. Produced by Keith Olsen, featuring string arrangements by Paul Buckmaster and Donna Godchaux's vocals firmly up front and double-tracked for the first time, the whole thing sounds like "Elton Garcia and his Fleet wood Dead." In other words, it's a California pop record, about as improvisatory as a Swiss watch, and utterly indistinguishable from all the other California pop albums that dominate the charts. There are, to be fair, some attractive moments-Bob Weir's Estimated Prophet is as cute as a bug's ear and gives new evidence for the theory that the boy has been a closet rocker all these years-and it certainly goes down easily enough to accompany your housework. But it's doubtful that it will yield a hit single and rejuvenate the band in the manner of the Starship's somewhat similar "Red Octopus." I can already hear the Dead heads out there yelling "sellout!" As far as I'm concerned, it couldn't have happened to a nicer band. S.S.
EDDIE HOLMAN: A Night to Remember. Eddie Holman (vocals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. You Make My Life Complete; This Will Be a Night to Remember; I've Been Singing Love Songs; It's Over; Somehow You Make Me Feel; and three others. SAL-soul. SZS 5511 $6.98, S8Z 5511 $7.98, SZA 5511 $7.98.
Performance: Sleek
Recording: Very good
This album hits its peak on the first track, You Make My Life Complete, a lushly arranged ballad with an appealing, undulating melody. Holman sings it in a startlingly high tenor that makes Smokey Robinson sound like a baritone in comparison. But it's all downhill from there. The songs slip into such a predictable whumpety-bump pattern that one wonders where the magic went.
Holman is a singer of considerable talent, possessing what many others lack: a vocal quality that is distinctly his own, marked by a
----- EDDIE HOLMAN: a startlingly high tenor that makes Smokey Robinson
sound like a baritone
dramatic use of falsetto (you may remember his high, sweet sound from his one big hit of the Fifties. Hey There Lonely Girl). This set is something of a teaser; it arouses curiosity about what he might do if he had material of more varied pacing.
-P.G.
PHYLLIS HYMAN. Phyllis Hyman (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Loving You- Losing You; I Don't Want to Lose You; Was Yesterday Such a Long Time Ago; and six others. BUDDAH BDS 5681 $6.98.
Performance: Hemmed In
Recording: Good
Phyllis Hyman, a statuesque beauty from Pittsburgh, became a legend in certain New York bistro circles before she had recorded a note. The excitement she generated among a star-flecked following was comparable to the underground furor Roberta Flack created during her long incubation in Washington, D.C.
Here, at last, was a female vocalist who could handle everything from cool jazz to heavy soul with consistent excellence. Ms. Hyman's rendition of the ballad Betcha by Golly Wow on Norman Connors' album "You Are My Starship" fanned the flame of anticipation, for it displayed a honeyed sweetness of voice, deft phrasing, and deep expressiveness.
Now she has recorded an album in her own right, but it is bound to inspire sighs of disappointment. Her producers have wrought a miracle in reverse by managing to make her sound like just about everybody else. In an obvious attempt to "popularize" her sound in order to sell her to a broader pop-soul audience, her enormous talent has been shaved down to fit sound-alike songs with banal lyrics and repetitious arrangements.
Though she stooped to the occasion, Ms. Hyman did not completely camouflage her artistry. There are moments here when her exceptional vocal control and interpretive skill come through, particularly in the introspective Was Yesterday Such a Long Time Ago, which she sings with such fluidity and rare sensitivity as to evoke shivers. There are traces of the young Nancy Wilson on this number, though Ms. Hyman possesses a better voice than her idol.
So I'm still waiting for the real Phyllis Hy man to step forward on disc. She's worth waiting for, though. - P.G.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
SONNY JAMES: In Prison, In Person. Sonny James (vocals, guitar); Tennessee State Prison Band (vocals and instrumentals). In the Jail-house Now; Don't Let Me Die on Prison Land; Abilene; Heartaches by the Number; and five others. COLUMBIA KC-34708 $6.98, 0 CA-34708 $6.98.
Performance: Funky
Recording: Very good
Here's something novel and not that bad, and you can enjoy it on two or three levels at once. On one level you can wonder about the meaning of Sonny James' enigmatic success: his has always been a soft-core country act, and yet for years only the hard-country audience has seemed to appreciate him (and he has calmly sold a ton of practically everything he's recorded since his single of Young Love went up against that of Tab Hunter [!] years ago). Then there's a sign of change from the "Southern gentleman" image: James is growing a beard and he's doing off-beat stuff like
this live recording made in the Tennessee State Prison in which he is backed by inmate musicians he discovered when he played there earlier. As musicians, the inmates range from a little scruffy to excellent, which suggests still another level: James is a bona fide musician, and this album has a spontaneity hard to come by in Nashville studios. He has a distinctive and pleasant voice without much range, but he's mature enough to work around that. He's also a distinguished acoustic guitar player, and he and an inmate picker trade flawless runs in Wildwood Flower.
What hurts the album is including automatic "standards" like Heartaches by the Number and straining too hard to get in some prison songs. But it also has Pistol Packin' Mama, a deft stroke indeed (that was either the first or second song I ever noticed, when I was about three). James is an interesting fellow, and a beard isn't the only thing about him that's growing. - N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
GREG KIHN: Again. Greg Kihn (vocals, guitar); Dave Carpenter (vocals, guitar); Larry Lynch (drums, vocals); Steve Wright (bass, vocals). Love's Made a Fool of You; Island; Politics; Hurt So Bad; and six others. Be SERKLEY PZ-34779 $6.98, PZA-34779 $6.98.
Performance: Intriguing
Recording: Good
Greg Kihn isn't quite the oddball his label-mate Jonathan Richman is, but then he isn't exactly a Barry Manilow either. He has the soul of an early Sixties folkie such as, say, Tom Rush, which means that his music is basically acoustic, monochromatic, and unambitious. But he seems to have awfully catholic ears, which means that his influences are strangely varied. On different tracks on his new album one can hear echoes of CS&N, Lou Reed (!), Creedence Clearwater, and even commercial folk-rockers like P. F. Sloan or the Grassroots (!!). But this isn't one of those pop revival efforts; Kihn seems to reflect these influences unselfconsciously, which is refreshing.
I was never big on early Sixties folkies, and there are times here when Kihn's insistence on unadorned simplicity gets a little wearing.
By and large, however, this is a highly listenable record by a performer who clearly has a lot on the ball. Anybody audacious enough to cover songs by Buddy Holly and Bruce Springsteen in the same album is okay in my book.
- S.S.
KISS: Love Gun. Kiss (vocals and instrumentals). Love Gun; Got Love for Sale; Christeen Sixteen; Plaster Caster; Shock Me; and four others. CASABLANCA CHR 1131 $6.98.
Performance: Not much fun
Recording: Quite nice, actually
I first realized that the Kiss phenomenon had probably peaked when they played Madison Square Garden last spring. It was the first time I had seen them since the dawn of their career-when, as they applied whiteface in their dressing room, they waved their fists at each other and blustered, "Let's take Detroit!" And take it they did: the Michigan Pal ace audience clapped on beat with such fierce monotony, jaws slack in awe, that I thought I was looking out on a sea of stoned seals. But a mere three years later, they palpably failed to take the Garden. They had their biggest set ever-all the smoke-bombs, fire-breathing, and blood-spitting in the world-but the one thing they didn't have was much enthusiasm for their music, and that kind of non-excitement is distinctly contagious.
Probably 1976 was when Kiss got as close as they are ever going to get to international super-band status comparable to that of Led Zeppelin or Bad Company. I actually like Kiss better than either of those groups, be cause I think that if you're going to be taste less you may as well go all the way, but so far the teen fans of England and the rest of Europe have proved noticeably resistant to having this scam shoved down their throats. And it's not going to get any better, for Kiss at least, since they have one problem that is a lot more serious than those faced by their peers in the heavy-metal league: namely, it's much harder to come up with new faces than with new riffs. What do you do next when your lizard-bat costumes start to provoke yawns and your nuclear smoke-bombs are greeted as so much flaming flatulence? It's really too bad, because-and you may not believe this-Kiss is actually a decent band. True, they have a propensity for sounding like the MC5 played backwards and slowed down, but that still leaves them with more energy than their plodding competitors.
Sure, their lyrics are all sexist macho bluster and Gene Simmons offensively brags in print about his sexual exploits. Kiss, Aerosmith, Bad Company, Ted Nugent, and the like are all offensive on certain levels to normally sensitive human beings. But Kiss was never sup posed to be a collection of human beings any way. What distinguished them from the slimy narcissism of Aerosmith or the grim beef cake-flexing of Bad Company was that their act was fun. However, with "Love Gun" I am beginning to wonder if they are going the Grand Funk route of boring competence.
What's absolutely certain is that neither Kiss nor their fans will ever again have as much fun as when they were the aural equivalent of a barnyard full of mutated livestock.
- Lester Bangs
MELISSA MANCHESTER: "Singin'." Melissa Manchester (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Sad Eyes; Stand; You Make It Easy; Time; My Love Is All I Know; The Warmth of the Sun; and four others. ARISTA 4136 $6.98, 8301-4136(H) $7.95, 5301-4136(H) $7.95.
Performance: Old hat
Recording: Good
Melissa Manchester and the pop sisterhood she springs from (Melanie, Laura Nyro, Carole King, and so on) are beginning to sound and look as quaint as those "free women" of the Twenties that Fannie Hurst, Vina del Mar, and Adela Rogers St. John used to write about for the ladies' magazines and the silver screen. Manchester's latest album is as costumey as an old Joan Crawford movie, and just about as in touch with the realities of the Seventies. On the cover she's prancing about in the rain, on what looks like a studio-constructed street, a la Gene Kelly in the film Singin' in the Rain. She wears a dress made especially for the occasion (the designer gets liner credit), but what's inside the album is mostly the same old Sixties-type hash, such as Sad Eyes and the clammy I Wanna Be Where You Are. Things get a little more contemporary with James Taylor's You Make It Easy, but then it's right back to the pits with her own No One's Ever Seen This Side of Me.
In one of her books, Nancy Mitford drew a very funny, very sad portrait of a stereotypical-Twenties female free spirit, complete with wisecracks, spit-curls, and beach pajamas, uncomfortably stranded in the realities of wartime England. I'm afraid that's what Manchester reminds me of. - P.R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JOHN MARTYN: So Far So Good. John Martyn (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment. May You Never; Bless the Weather; Head and Heart; Over the Hill; Spencer the Rover; Glistening Glyndebourne; and three others. ISLAND ILPS-9484 $6.98, Y8I-9484 $7.98, ZCI-9484 $7.98.
Performance: Spaced-out
Recording: Mostly very good
Categorically, John Martyn is the English type of enigma we Americans have in Tim Hardin and used to have in Tim Buckley-the jazz-folkie. Martyn started out as a foikie only, or so people thought, but he lost the purists by doing such things as using a revolving Leslie speaker for his guitar on old Gaelic airs. His singing style had evolved into a jazzy montage of slurrings and bendings by the time he recorded the albums from which these se lections are reissued, "Bless the Weather," "Solid Air," and "Sunday's Child." You couldn't call this a greatest hits album, at least not in America-where in most parts of the country it would take a private detective to find one of Martyn's earlier releases-but it will do nicely as a retrospective. And, lo and behold, May You Never and Over the Hill, this time around, are getting some deserved air play, at least in the area of New England where I live. These two are simpler and more tuneful than the "typical" jazz-period Martyn song, of which Solid Air is a good example: a blues progression stretched to sixteen measures and gussied up beyond recognition, where the trick is to listen to the voice as an instrument and to syllables rather than words.
"So Far So Good" darts back and forth be tween the experimental and the recognizable, as Martyn himself has been doing, but its values are musical and its standards are high. If you relax and go where it goes, you'll find the trip invigorating.
-N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
THE METERS: New Directions. The Meters (vocals and instrumentals); instrumental accompaniment. No More Okey Doke; I'm Gone; Be My Lady; My Name Up in Lights; Funkify Your Life; and three others. WARNER BROS. BS 3042 $6.98.
Performance: Strong
Recording: Very good
The Meters are a delightful quintet from New Orleans who worked as studio men and free lancers for a number of years until they hit it on their own in the late Sixties with a string of popular instrumentals. They were discovered by Allan Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn, main movers in New Orleans, and have re leased a few albums since the beginning of this decade that are certifiably swell but not too commercial.
"New Directions," an impressive lunge into the mainstream pop market, is the first Meters album not under the control of Sehorn and Toussaint, The Meters' vocals have be come much more forceful and bold, but they have lost none of their admirable musician ship. All the material is their own, with three exceptions: Toussaint's I'm Gone, Peter Tosh's Stop That Train, and Give It What You Got, a rollicking, syncopated tune by Steve Cropper, Carl Marsh, and Jimmy Tarbutton. The Meters are long overdue for popular success. If enough people hear this al bum, the score may yet be put right. J. V.
WILLIE NELSON: To Lefty from Willie. Willie Nelson (vocals, guitar); Bobbie Nelson (piano); Paul English (drums); Dee Spears (bass); Mickey Raphael (harmonica); other musicians. Mom and Dad's Waltz; Look What Thoughts Will Do; I Love You a Thou sand Ways; She's Gone, Gone, Gone; A Little Unfair; Railroad Lady; and four others Co LumetA KC 34695 $6.98, 0 CA-34695 $6.98, CT-34695 $6.98.
Performance: Not quite the point
Recording: Good
You remember how, last summer, when they hit a fly ball toward Lou Piniella it became an adventure? Well, that's how songwriting was in the hands of the late Lefty Frizzell. The tune might go spiraling dizzily down the scale like a W.W.1 Spad with its rudder shot away, or it might snake back and forth like a buggy whip. The words were sincere to the point of making you grind your teeth, and Lefty was given to putting them in junk-food-jingle rhymes and stretching them into odd contortions to fit his vocal style: "Always la-a-a yate with your kisses. . . ." The thing about Lefty that everyone respected was his singing, of course (one of my favorite albums is still the one of him singing Jimmy Rodgers songs), and so this Willie Nelson tribute to Lefty, involving songs identified with Lefty and, alas, many written by him-doesn't quite work. It's interesting enough when Willie's singing something that isn't so arch, say Harlan Howard's She's Gone, Gone, Gone, but considerably inferior to a typical Willie Nel son album of typical Willie Nelson songs. The way to remember Lefty, I think, is to reissue Lefty singing, if possible something less bizarre than his own stuff. Willie does a good enough job on most of these, but-the only per son who ever could put such monstrosities across with a straight face was Lefty. Some projects, though undertaken with the best intentions, are best aborted. N.C.
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: Making a Good Thing Better. Olivia Newton-John (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Slow Dancing; Ring of Fire; Coolin' Down; If Love Is Real; Sad Songs; I Think I'll Say Goodbye; and five others. MCA-2280 $6.98, O MCAT-2280 $7.98, MCAC-2280 $7.98.
Performance: One fascinating track
Recording: Excellent
Everyone's favorite little sunshine girl, Olivia Newton-John, is back in another album that flows as smoothly as lukewarm fudge into a cooling pan. Even that old house-burner Ring of Fire gets petted and tucked in with her customary cheerful, cozy, young-nanny style.
The exception is the last track on side one. The song is called Don't Cry for Me Argentina, from the opera Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and listening to it in Newton-John's performance is a fascinating experience. It is a vivid, highly dramatic set-piece in which Evita (Eva Peron) explains to her countrymen that she seemed to have had no choice in her driven, seeking life: "I had to let it happen, I had to let it change/Couldn't stay all my life down at heel/Looking out of the window staying out of the sun/So I chose freedom running around trying everything new/But nothing impressed me at all, I never expected it to." The way Olivia Newton-John sings this is startling in its intensity, depth, and fire. That one might easily substitute "Australia" for "Argentina" and thereby suggest what must be the singer's own am bivalent feelings about leaving Down-Under to become an international star only adds to the song's fascination.
So, for one really incredible track, the Western world's favorite ingenue has dropped her cutesie, adorable mask and shown that she's an actress of considerable force and an even more intriguing woman than we sensed she was all along.
-P.R.
ALAN PARSONS PROJECT: I Robot. Alan Parsons Project (vocals and instrumentals). I Robot; I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You; Some Other Time; Breakdown; Don't Let It Show; The Voice; Nucleus; and three others. ARISTA AL 7002 $7.98.
Performance: Bland
Recording: Bland
I, Reviewer, quote from the liner notes to this album: "I Robot ... the story of the rise of the machine and the decline of man, which paradoxically coincided with his discovery of the wheel ... and a warning that his brief dominance of this planet will probably end, because man tried to create robot in his own image." Pithy. There's nothing like a fresh idea, is there? Alan Parsons is a producer and engineer who occasionally makes a "concept" album--that is, one in which all the songs are connected, however loosely, to a central character or dramatic theme. "Sgt. Pepper" was the first rock concept album, but most attempts in the genre have not been memorable.
At its best, the concept album might have been a kind of phonographic parallel to musical theater, but the form never jelled, and concept albums have generally been more an excuse for ego-speak than anything else. This latest Parsons example is a pseudo-intellectual enterprise in which what was supposed to be the plot is neither supported nor advanced by the performances. It is not really either music or drama. It is not, in fact, much of anything at all. J. V.
TOM PAXTON: New Songs from the Briar patch
(see Best of the Month, page 82)
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JERRY REED: Rides Again. Jerry Reed (vocals, guitar); instrumental accompaniment.
The Bully of the Town; It's My Time; We've Called It Everything Else; Somethin' 'Bout You Baby I Like; With His Pants in His Hand; Phantom of the Opry; and four others. RCA APLI-2346 $6.98, APS1-2346 $7.95, APK1-2346 $7.95.
Performance: Among his best
Recording: Very good
We New Englanders sometimes find when we're watching Jerry Reed that it's all we can do to keep from laughing. He has a loose, what-the-hell style about everything he does, is fiercely anti-establishment in a ribald sort of way, can tear up the pea patch on the guitar (his version of Bully of the Town, for example, is a corker), and can sing better than he realizes. It's been a problem getting him to sing instead of act, as he loves laughter from the audience so much, but this is a bona fide musical record, and he may show you a thing or two on the low notes. The song selection is quirky to bizarre, about normal for Reed, and it works. The backing is a little slick, but in a quiet way it's also technically dazzling, reminiscent of the way Chet Atkins, co-producer with Reed here, plays a guitar. At times, when Reed's guitar is driving it, it really cooks in spite of its attempted manners. Manners is one thing Reed himself never attempts. He's a caution, all right, and so's most of this album.
N.C.
JOHNNY TILLOTSON. Johnny Tillotson (vocals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. A Thousand Miles from Home; Toy Hearts; Sunshine in My Morning; Freckles; What's a Little Dirt; Fingerprints; and four others. UNITED ARTISTS UA-LA758-G $6.98, O UA-EA758-H $7.95.
Performance: So-so
Recording: Good
Johnny Tillotson has been around longer than I have and isn't much more famous, God help him. He's been vaguely rock and vaguely country, and this time he's more distinctly country with a sort of station-wagon-down town cast to the arrangements. He ... well, he emotes in song like an old pro, only you can tell he's emoting. What bothers me more is the way he sings with a smile in his voice so much of the time. It reminds me of an obnoxious radio singer who was on when I was a kid, Smilin' Jack Smith ( Dinah Shore and Margaret Whiting were also on that show, in turn, I think). And I don't care much for the bulk of this material, either, as it's mostly froth and bubble. If you want to know the truth, I think this album ought to be beaten into a Frisbee. It would make honest vinyl of it. N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JERRY JEFF WALKER: A Man Must Carry Osi. Jerry Jeff Walker (vocals, guitar); Lost Gonzo Band (instrumentals). Stereo Chickens; Don't It Make You Wanna Dance; Roll On Down the Road; Song for the Life; Leavin' Texas; Mr. Bojangles; Honky Tonk Songs; Derby Day; Long Afternoons; Rockin' Chair; Luckenbach Moon; and thirteen others. MCA 2-6003 two discs $9.98, MCAT 2-6003 $9.98, MCAC 2-6003 $9.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Very good
This is a bit erratic, but a fair amount of it, if not a fair percentage, is worth spending time with. It's another double album that probably should have been edited down to one disc. It has some nice Texas hillbilly poems read at some length, but I came to it for music, and there is some other stuff that should have been jettisoned too. That doesn't include the live versions of L.A. Freeway and Mr. Bojangles, though-the former especially swings, adding something to the definition of the song.
Jerry Jeff Walker is a distant but respectable third behind Waylon and Willie in the small so-called "progressive" country field. One of the things that keeps him from narrowing the distance is the gap between the quality of their bands and the quality of his.
This album suggests that the closer it comes to rock, the better the Lost Gonzo Band can hack it. The country slant on the fills that comes so naturally to Waylon's and Willie's bands just plain evades the Gonzos much of the time. But the good news here is that the band is getting tighter with rifting and figure-cutting and is getting so it can really propel something it has an affinity for, such as L.A.
Freeway. And the better news is that Walker, often a lazy singer in the past, is pretty with-it here. He repeatedly goes for the more difficult note the better to shade his interpretations, working harder at being precise. He is an en gaging singer, grinning-rascal image and all, and presents some varied and engaging songs.
One of the most impressive is Rodney Crowell's Song for the Life, which of course Walker identifies with to a tee. Padded though the album is, I think it is Walker's best since "Viva Terlingua." - N.C.
WAR: Platinum Jazz (see Best of the Month, page 85)
DOTTIE WEST: When It's Just You and Me. Dottie West (vocals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Every Word I Write; Tiny Fingers; Till I Get It Right; All Night Long; Save a Little for the Morning; The Lovin' Kind; and five others. UNITED ARTISTS UA LA740-G $6.98, UA-EA740-H $7.98.
Performance: C-&-W chatter
Recording: Good
Dottie West looks like Sylvia Miles and, in her more dramatic moments, sounds like Gene Autry. She's got a permanent catch in her throat as she prates on and on about one "hawrtbrayke" after another. Her accompaniment includes a vocal group that just possibly might be the original Sons of the Pioneers.
She reaches an apogee of sorts in Save a Little for the Morning, a plea to her lover that is de livered in a voice so throbbing with emotion that she sounds as if she recorded it while lying in one of those "magic fingers" beds. Your move. - P.R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
THE WHISPERS: Open Up Your Love. The Whispers (vocals); Wah Wah Watson, Lee Ritenour (guitars); Wilton Felder, Alphonso Johnson (bass); Sonny Burke, Joseph Sample (keyboards); Paulinho da Costa (percussion); other musicians. Make It with You; Chocolate Girl; You Are Number One; Open Up Your Love; and four others. SOULTRAIN BVL 1-2270 $6.98, BVSI-2270 $7.95, BV K1-2270 $7.95.
Performance: Flawless
Recording: Excellent
This is one of the best balanced and assembled group albums I've heard in quite some time. It's a winner on three counts.
The prime factor is superb singing by the Whispers, highlighted by lead vocalists Walter and Wallace Scott. Though not yet stars, the Whispers have developed the smoothest ensemble sound since the Main Ingredient was at its peak. Each note clearly shines through, and the spirited interplay between the soloists and the rest of the group is based on razor-sharp timing. Of equally high quality are the instrumental backings. From start to finish, the musicians avoid clichés, supplying truly imaginative licks on keyboards, guitar, horns, and percussion. Rather than over whelming the singers, they blend with them perfectly, and the blend is enhanced by excel lent recording techniques.
Finally, there are the songs, a choice mix ture. There are irresistibly danceable up-beat numbers such as I Fell in Love Last Night (At the Disco) and Make It with You, the get-down, gut-level entreaties of Open Up Your Love, and melodically attractive ballads such as Love Is a Dream and You Are Number One. And solid jazz rhythms and arrangements lend an arresting flavor to You Never Miss Your Water ('Til Your Well Runs Dry). The clever cover is a bonus. Inside and out, this is an album bound to satisfy.
-P.G.
NANCY WILSON: I've Never Been to Me
(see Best of the Month, page 83)
STEVE WINWOOD. Steve Winwood (vocals and instrumentals); other musicians. Hold On; Time Is Running Out; Midland Maniac; Vacant Chair; and two others. ISLAND ILPS-9494 $6.98, 0 Y8I-9494 $7.98. 0 ZCI-9494 $7.98.
Performance: Soporific
Recording: Okay
For those of you out there whose remembrance of Steve Winwood has been dimmed by his long silence, he was the boy genius of the Spencer Davis Group, the one who wrote, played on, and sang their mid-Sixties classics Keep On Running and Gimme Some Lovin'.
After that he joined a group called Traffic, which produced two classic albums in 1968 and then more or less snoozed through the rest of their career-although they were celebrated to excess for a later FM hit called The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys. Just how desperate semi-defunct superbands and product-hungry record companies can get was illustrated when Island resorted to rereleasing a still-available one-record live Traffic album as a two-record set-with the only addition an extended, forty-five-minute version of Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys! The current release is now being touted as Steve Winwood's comeback album. Unfortunately, it is one of the most colorless, energy-less, soulless, and generally all-around less LP's in recent memory. The songs plod along aimlessly, the lyrics might be about some thing, and Winwood's once thrillingly rich voice is weak enough here to qualify him as a finalist in a George Harrison sound-alike con test. I know this is the guy who once wrote the song Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired, which was an insult in itself, but if this new al bum shows how uninspired he's been in the nearly half a decade since Traffic did anything of note, it might be a good idea for him to re evaluate his choice of a career. One advantage of starting out as a boy genius is that if you find yourself completely burnt out at twenty-nine there's always dental school to fall back on.
- Lester Bangs
TAMMY VVYNETTE: Let's Get Together. Tammy Wynette (vocals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Let's Get Together (One Last Time); If We Never Love Again; Cheatin' Is; I Can Love You; Your Sweet Lies (Turned Down My Sheets Again); and five others. EPIC KE-34694 $5.98, 0 EA-34694 $6.98, ET-34694 $6.98.
Performance: Regular Wynette
Recording: Very good
When I first typed the heading for this review, I typed "Performance: Very god," which can only mean. that Tammy Wynette's producer, Billy Sherrill, was weighing heavily on my mind. He's got her firmly under control and on a tight rein again here, with a very slick, very professional gaggle of spangling guitars, muted violins, and quivering steel guitars be hind her. Oh yes, and an assortment of cheatin' and hurtin' songs you'd need a scorecard to know were this year's instead of last year's or the year's before that. Dolly Parton may be taking new directions, but Tammy's still taking the direction pointed out by Billy, which is a good, proved, commercial one-as if Tam my needed more money, as if having money solved her problems. And that, ironically, is her strength as a singer: she sounds just as sad rich as she did poor, and therefore she sounds believable to those her songs are pitched to, including the people who work in beauty shops, which is what Tammy did when she was poor. The hard core of her audience is working-class, mostly female, and her manager seems to be betting that it's conservative as well, an audience you can't pull radical image changes on. I have my doubts about that assessment; hers is a heavily-into-TV audience that is probably quite sophisticated, in a non-verbal way, about "images." Anyway, Tammy sounds believable again here as she skates around on top of the slick arrangements, and the songs don't have any gaffes in them. (It might, come to think of it, improve things to have some spots of weirdness here and there.) It's just so . . . pretested, guaranteed. But how many times can essentially the same album be guaranteed? How about once in a blue moon taking a chance? - N.C.
YES: Going for the One. Yes (vocals and instrumentals). Going for the One; Turn of the Century; Parallels; and two others. ATLANTIC SD 19106 $6.98, TP-19106 $7.98, 0 CS-19106 $7.98.
Performance: Flash
Recording: Excellent
Yes has claimed to be the best musical conglomerate in the world, which is okay by me though it might miff the New York Philharmonic, the Swan Silvertones, the Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Big Band, the Juilliard String Quartet, and the Who, to name just a few. If you're a Yes fan, you probably agree with the group's high opinion of itself. I'm not a fan, but I can see-up to a point-why one might be. They're meticulous craftsmen, gifted and even individualistic instrumentalists (Steve Howe and Chris Squire in particular), and they've managed to shatter, for better or worse, the rigid structures of the music from which their own material derives. Where fans and I differ is on the "for better or worse" part. Yes strikes me as having achieved its freedom at the expense of compositional logic and discernible emotional content, but Yes fans think the music has Olympian grandeur.
With all that up front, let me simply report that "Going for the One" has a certain boozy brashness that has been absent from the band's last few albums, and it confirms that the Yes-men do have a sense of humor after all (which was suggested by reports of their performing I'm Down as a concert encore).
Nevertheless, the material here is mostly more of the usual sterility masquerading as serious" music. If you like Yes, of course, you don't have to take my opinion any more seriously than I take the band.
- S.S.
DISCO
CAROL DOUGLAS: Full Bloom. Carol Douglas (vocals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Light My Fire; Dancing Queen; We Do It; I Got You on My Mind; and six others.
MIDSONG BKLI-2222 $6.98, BKSI-2222 $7.95, BKK1-2222 $7.95.
Performance: Standard Recording: Standard Carol Douglas tries valiantly to get in on the action here, but the arranging and conducting of John Davis and the production by Ed O'Loughlin keep her so tightly wrapped in the standard disco groove that she never becomes more than an adjunct to the total sound. It's a very listenable-and danceable-album, but poor Carol's been placed so far out in left field that you'd need binoculars to find her. P.R.
RECOMMENDED DISCO HITS
ROSE ROYCE: In Full Bloom. WHITFIELD 3074 $6.98, M83074 $7.98, M53074 $7.98.
FIRST CHOICE: Delusions. GOLD MIND GZS 7501 $6.98.
EL COCO: Cocomotion. AMERICAN VARIETY INTERNATIONAL AVL 6012 $6.98.
BELLE EPOQUE: Miss Broadway. SHADY BROOK 5016 $6.98, 8314-33009(H) $7.98, 5314-33009 (H) $7.98.
UNIVERSAL ROBOT BAND: Dance and Shake Your Tambourine. RED GREG RG 1001 $6.98. (List compiled by David Mancuso, owner of the Loft, one of New York City's top discos.)
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