CREEM REVIEWS

CREEM REVIEWS

NEIL YOUNG •everyone knows this is nowhere •

Reprise RS 6349

Neil Young is definitely one of the best all-around musicians to come out of the rock generation. He has combined folk, rock and country, three of the four truly American musical cultures into one fantastic soulful experience.

Technically as a guitarist, Neil stands out as one of the few truly great guitarists of the era. His control of the guitar and amplification systems is of the highest most professional degree.

Since the release of his first album, airplay has been so minimal it is surprising a second album has been put into the many fine musical outlets scattered across the nation. The new album is in a much more rocky vein and may be played on the local groovie radio programs. It should be played on AM and FM because you can dance to it. Maybe the dancers will be the first to turn on to a genius. Somehow the “low energy trip” may turn on a few people. It’s nice to see that a change may come in rock and turn it into music. Rock has been a very wonderful musical expression but without a change it will go nowhere -“Everyone knows this is nowhere”.

The virtuoso guitarist has become a very “in” thing and too many real musicians have been lost in the non-musical roar of many a hyped “rock”group. If you some night have a real craving to hear some music, call up your local “teen-age” radio station and ask to hear “Cowgirl in the Sand”. Just relax and you’ll be able to listen forever.

“Please Hear My Plea”

Chuck Pike

Crosby Stills & Nash

The musical backgrounds of

these three musicians is of the best of the whole Rock and Roll history. Graham Nash, leader and on the average, main writer of the Hollies, Steve Stills, co-founder and second writer of most of the Buffalo Springfield and David Crosby, deep mysterious writer and guitarist with the Byrds.

Quite sometime ago the Buffalo Springfield broke up with each member foing off into a new group, but each still maintaining the

unequaled perfection and variety which is common to

ex-Springfields. Graham Nash

decided it was time to leave the Hollies nad go off on a more personal and involved writing career. He moved over to Laurel Canyon and took up residence with Joni Mitchell. David Crosby, Steve Stills, and Graham Nash all somehow got together and have put out one of the finest albums ever to come out of the rock culture.

Crosby, Stills and Nash will have to go down in history as perhaps the New Beatles. They have attained such a subtle perfection in the first album, that it may take years for any gathering of musical gods to become so together, so much one whole sound.

One of the most welcome things of this album is its simplicity, yet it can be heard and lived with like a new friend. There are no added electronic “gimmicks” to make it sound heavy and exciting, It is just naturally pure, free, and good.

With luck this album may put music back on the radio.

Chuck Pike

TOMMY WHO

Overture; It’s a Boy; You Didn’t Hear It; Amazing Journey; Sparks; Eyesight to the Blind; Christmas; Cousin Kevin; The Acid Queen; Underture; Do You Think It’s Alright; Fiddle About; Pinball Wizard; There’s a Doctor I’ve Found; Go to the Mirror, Boy; Tommy, Can You Hear Me; Smash the Mirror; Sensation; Miracle Cure; Sally Simpson; I’m Free; Tommy’s Holiday Camp; We're Not Going to Take It.

Opera composed mostly by Pete Townshend with Roger Daltry, vocals; John Entwistle, bass and vocals; Keith Moon, drums and vocals.

Tommy, deaf, dumb, and blind because he saw too much as a child,. . .withdrew into the world of his inner consciousness which “ain’t quite so bad”, .and he was the world and the word and the word was love. . . love thy Cousin Kevin, thy Uncle Ernie (wicked though he be), love the Acid Queen, blessed be thy pinball machine.

And Tommy looked into the mirror and was drawn out of his world so that he may teach others as he had become aware. But the others weren’t ready. Never were, never will be. And Tommy turned back toward the mirror and sang a song of praise.

Here it is folks, after maybe two years of waiting, and its pretty good. Lotta good songs, good characters, good thoughts. Only it isn’t put together very well. The narrative derived from the songs if, to put it kindly, fragmented, spaced. And there are long

instrumental passages that don’t mean anything (like the “Underture”). Composed of a bunch of typical Who riffs, these sections became pale after one or two listenings.

But there’s some really nice stuff, like the two songs composed by the creepy Mr. Entwistle (I wish I could say the erstwhile Mr. Entwistlebut, though it sounds good to the ear, it doesn’t make any sense). “Cousin Kevin” and Uncle Ernie who likes to “Fiddle About” are added to his list of nefarious creations (re; “Boris the Spider” and “Whiskey Man”). The songs, all of 'em, can stand apart from the opera, which may or may not have been intentional. And which adds to the fragmentation.

And Tommy. Everyone I know (myself) is deaf and/or dumb and/or blind, all at once or on a rotating basis, so Tommy is Everyman as well as Christ figure and Avatar. Throw away your metaphorial pinall machines, brothers and sisters, gaze into the mirror of your fellow man and love one another. Don’t nobody believe that shit no more. Tough.

This is the Who’s best album to date which makes it one of the best albums in the world (this too shall pass). OF weird Robin Sommers, professional dope creep and good guy, commented that it is basically a low energy album. Maybe. But this album is as equally literary as it is musical and the energy that goes into a literary creation is not as immediately apparent as the energy that goes into a musical one. Always leave them thinking.

Richard C. Walls

THE SONS OF CHAMPLIN LOOSEN UP NATURALLY

-Capitol SWBB 200 1982-A; The Thing To Do; Misery Isn’t Free; Rooftop; Everywhere; Don’t Fight It, Do It; Get High; Black and Blue Rainbow; Hello Sunlight; Things Are Getting Better; Freedom.

Bill Champlin, guitar, organ, and any other instrument in the band, vocals; Bill Bowen, drums; Tim Cain, tenor sax; Terry Heggarty, guitar; Geoff Palmer, organ, vibes, tenor sax; A1 Strong, bass; Jim Beam, trumpet (actually no personnel is listed on the album-1 copped this information from a Berkely Barb article).

The sons are extremely together as they demonstrate on this 2-record set of grassy music (you could spend many a spaced hour just checking out the jacket). Music caters to spaced feeling by use of original repetition.

This is also instruction music-the lyrics are philosophical (Eastern variety) when they’re not high jokes (“Don’t Fight It, Do It!” is the chuckle tune for all you chuckle tune fans). The pace is relaxed, even when the tempo’s up, the band very highly orchestrated. Vocalist Champlin has a pleasant funky voice but the tight ensemble is the focal point.

Cont. from 12

Specific instructions: “Get High” has good intentions but after listening to alot of jazz it’s hard to get high on a vibe solo, unless it’s by Bobby Hutcheisen. Champlin does some good scat vocalizing toward the end of “Freedom”. Floats by nicely. Tenor player on “Rooftops” sounds like Flip Phillips or one of them old timey dudes then slips into a post-Coltrane bag. Funky rock, loose and fight, good musicians,: loosen up and give a listen.

Richard C. Walls

velvet underground

“You’re right, people would associate the slow, pretty songs with Nico and the hard, electronic stuff with us. I never thought of that.” Lou Reed.

Though probably these are the associations that most people would make concerning the Velvet Underground, for the Velvet Underground are easy to mentally associate into classification. Hard music, hard drugs, hard New York. That they are in reality none of these things does not make them less than I expected them to be. Rather I found them to be far more aware of their particular place in the world at large (and the world of

Pop music) than any junkies I’ve known.

Collectively they are all college educated (whatever that may mean in this age of education factories) and did not actually even intend to play publicly (they had to be forced to go to their first live gig). They became the musical part of Andy Warhol’s multi-media and “Exploding Plastic Inevitable”, recorded an album produced by Warhol sometimes featuring Nico, then split with Warhol while Nico split with them. They recorded a second album full of feedback and hard rock, but continued to dwell in relative obscurity, especially with the record company, MGM, who never spent any money to promote or exploit them.

“Obscurity at MGM gave us freedom to do what we wanted to.” Sterling Morrison

Then, aftej losing, four million dollars in what was the biggest year

ever for the record industry, MGM took stock of all the acts it had under contract and wonder of all wonders that first Velvet Underground album, the one with the banana on the cover and all those nasty songs about drugs, well it had almost earned a gold record for a million dollars in sales without even being promoted or even appearing on the charts and with virtually no radio play . . . Imagine that

“The people at MGM didn’t even know us by name.” Sterling Morrison

Now their third album is out. It brings together the softer types of material from the first album the way “White Light/White Heat”, did to the harder stuff. It does not outdo the others, or make everything done before it obsolete. It is soft and quiet, but in its own subtle way. It is as “far-out” as either of the other two. And

records are not like machines each new one doesn’t have to be a definite improvement over earlier versions in order to be a success.

“When I was typing the transcripts of what later became the novel “a”, every time I came to a dirty word I left it blank.” Maureen Tucker

Unlike their other two records, where the spirituality of the Underground was of a nature that few people could even see, let alone feel, the new record is about a spirituality that is apparent at the very first glance, about an almost Christian redemption the likes of which pop hasn’t seen since “Eleanor Rigby”. But whether the Underground’s audience, which took almost two years to accept the electronics, junk, and sex is ready to be redeemed will be determined by the record buyers not the readers of Delmore Schwartz.

Bob Stark

ARSLONGA VITABREVIS; NICE

-Immediate 212 52020

Art is long but life is short. It would seem this sentence more or less explains where the Nice’s heads are at musically. The album Ars Longa Vita Brevis is a work of art, (side two anyway). The second album was done without a guitarist (David O’List has left the group). Membership in the Nice is three people: Keith Emerson, organ and vocal; Brian Davidson, drums; Lee Jackson, bass and vocals.

The album is a great example of some top-rate organ work. Mr.

Emerson definitely knows what he’s doing. Lee Jackson writes most of the lyrics (take that for what it’s worth-they either mean nothing or a helluva lot depending on the individual’s frame of mind). Musically all the tracks on the album are outstanding. Even though, they sometimes get repetitious, the music is never boring. (Vocally I don’t know what comment to make other than Lee Jackson has a strange voice, he sings weird). Two tracks on side one are instrumentals, America (a Bernstein/Sondheim composition from West Side Story, remember that flick?) and the other is

something called Intermezzo written by Sibelius. This band can adapt classical compositions to their own interpretations very easily. And with the added orchestration the album really comes off great.

Side Two, Ars Longa Vita Brevis, is an adventure in music. Done in four parts with a prelude and a coda, the whole side is very unusual listening and might take getting used to if you don’t care for variations on classical themes. High point of side two has to be their treatment and variations on the basic theme of the Brandenburger by Bach. The only thing I didn’t like about the album was the singing of Ars-Lon/ga-Vi/ta-Bre/vis during the second and ninth movements. There isn’t too much else to say other than the Nice are accomplished musicians, playing what they want and doing a great job of it.

Eric Jaggers

CLASSICAL REVIEWS

STRAVINSKY

: Four Etudes, Op.7; Ragtime; Piano-Rag-Music; Sonata, Serenade in A; Tango; Circus Polka. Noel Lee, piano NONESUCH -H 71212, $2.50

Although this record does not include all of Stravinsky’s solo piano works, it, however, does contain the major ones. The “Sonata and Serenade in A” (1924-1925) are the relatively well-known “pieces of resistance” here which are more like the style of Bach than any of the other late 18th century composers.

Less popular are the Four Etudes (1908), excellent, but conventional in a kind of Chopinesque style. Xhe two jazz pieces “explore” the use of

syncopation (first used by Stravinsky in “L’Histoire du Soldat” and “Ragtime”) Originally for eleven instruments, it is played here in the composer’s rather “tame” piano version and isn’t as wild as the much more difficult “Piano-RagMusic”.

The “Tango” is a “dead pan satire”. The “Circus Polka”, originally written for the Ringling Brothers’ Band, is better in its orchestral version.

Noel Lee’s performances are reasonably passable, although on the heavy-handed side, especially compared to Charles Rosen's outstanding recording of the “Sonata and Serenade” (Epic-BC 1 140), which shows a greater use of dynamic subtlety and accentual variety.

Judy C. Adams

DEBUSSY

: Six Epigraphies antiques Milhaud: Scaramouche, OP. 165b Ravel: Ma Mere l’oye Walter and Beatrice Klien pianos TURNABOUT TV-34234 $2.50 In this well-recorded disc^ the Klien couple offer an attraction to its first volume of French four-hand music. Although these pianists do not diliberately concentrate on emphasizing the authentic French school style, and some listeners may find their interpretation a bit ample and “bass heavy”, the Kliens do give us remarkably vivacious and unaffected playing. The Kliens also capture the whispers Debussy and Ravel have established in their pieces, with frail lyricism.

Judy C. Adams