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SEIZE THE TIME by ELAINE BROWN VAULT 131

There’s a characteristic of the music industry that nobody ever talks about-I guess it just ain’t hip to mention itI call it the ‘pop star effect.” So far every rock and roll band that has “made it” in the biz has fallen prey to the pop star effect to some degree or other, and it’s just impossible to listen to or read about music nowadays without taking it inot account.

Take the Who, for instance. (They’re just one example.) If you’ll listen to the first record that that group put out back in 1963 you’ll hear a music that is intense, high energy in every degree, a music that speaks openly about the spirit and gut-level feelings of the Who and the social situation that they were a part of. Back in those days the Who were playing in little clubs all over England all of the time, they were close to their people, the young people of England, and their music had to show it. “Out In the Street,” a bad-assed tune about being alive, checking it out, looking for a fuck. “My Generation,” the title tune”and hit single off the album, the tune that became the anthem for the youth that the Who were a part of. “My Generation” tells it all, was the most basic and outright statement of feeling that we had back in the early sixties. Telling the old farts that run everything “Why don’t you all fade away”if I gotta be like you “Ihope I DIE before I get old.”

OK. Then our rock and roll heroes, the musicians of the people, the Who, they became pop stars. The hit records swept them up into the music industry the killer capitalistic system run by them old fuckers who haven’t seemed to have faded away just yet. After a while Pete Townsend and Co. ain’t got time to be hanging out with us anymore, cause they’re flying here and there and they’re playing gigs and they’re making records and they’re sleeping in rich hotels and they’re driving big limousines. We hardly get a chance to even see the group that we’ve made famous anymore, and when we do see them, at a ballroom or club or something they’ve got these creeps they’ve hired to guard the state, to keep the people from getting too close. So the music that was so killer cause it meant so much to us just gets watered down because the Who are no longer near us or hip to the reality of what we’re into and what we need. The music becomes pretend music, plastic music. The last album by the Who is A ROCK OPERA no less, and it’s nice to listen to and all, but it doesn’t say a goddam thing about us or about the Who either. It’s just a fantasy that the chomps who run the biz hipe will keep our minds off of what’s really going down. A fantasy about a little blind boy that those poor dudes that run the show tell us is the best rock record ever made and they hope we’re gonna just listen to “Tommy” and stop thinking about reality, and stop listening to real music.

Real music. Like this album called Seize the Time.

Elaine Brown wrote all the tunes on this record, and she sings and plays piano and wrote the liner notes for it too. Elaine Brown is out there on the street every day with the people, cause she’s Deputy Minister, of Information for the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Elaine is close to her people, the black colony and it’s right on for us too, cause we’re a colony in Amerika, too, the youth colony.

Because Elaine’s a Panther she’s got more to say than other black people about their state and Elaine knows things are fucked up for her and her people but she also knows what to do about it“We’ll just have to get guns and be men,” she says in “the End of Silence.”

Elaine speaks of the love she has for her kind in “Very Black Man”and she sings of the bullshit that they have had to face in “Poppa’s Come Home." Four hundred

years/...Lashed on his back/Just because he was black.” In “Take It Away” she tells a story of a withered drunk bemoaning his troubles - a symbol of the black ghetto existence -

and she closes with”... I’ve learned what mistakes/Have been made made in the past/And I know you can’t get a thing/If you ask/So I’ll just/Take it away/...From here.

Yes, sister Brown speaks with a special wisdom about black people in Amerika, and that wisdom has had a price. In “The Panther” Elaine sings about the “...Man who’d die/To get your freedom back.” Many of Elaine’s brothers in struggle have indeed met death and she devotes two songs, “All Stood By” and “Assassination,” to her murdered comrades.

The two highlights of the album are the title tune “The Meeting,” which has become the Black Panther Party national anthem. It is only through organized struggle for freedom that a colonized people can regain their lost pride, and “The Meeting” tells just how good and full and real a person can feel when he becomes a Man. “Seize the Time” is the closest to rock and roll on the record, it’s the first tune and by far the happiest. Happy as the people are happy, with the knowledge of what we have got to do to become a true People on this earth.

This is by no means a “perfect” album. What little background instrumentation is present is kind of listless, and there isn’t much to balance the slow, sad tunes that predominate. But, anyway, this is REAL SHIT. I mean, this kind of music ain’t entertainment, it’s something to get involved in, something you ARE involved in already cause it’s a reflection of being alive today.

Elaine’s work will keep her from ever becoming a victim of the pop star effect. She’ll always be close to her people, as long as she is alive that is. Cause Elaine says she doesn’t expect to live out this year. Her work and her music are just too much of the reality of living and trying to be free in Amerika for the powers that be to let her continue for much longer.

You already own Tommy by the Who. It’s time you heard Seize the Time by Elaine Brown of the Black Panther Party. Right on.

Frank Bach

Up,

Minister of Culture (music) Youth International Party (White Panthers)

SWEET BABY JAMES - JAMES TAYLOR-WARNER BROS. 1843

I like James Taylor on general principles. I like him well enough to write about him, unpressured, at 1:30 on a dreary Friday morning (late Thursday night). Understand, this is an excellent album. There’s little more to add.

Everything you can say about him seems obvious and more. The lyrics (lyricism, pointless), eclecticism, distinctive, country-tinged voiceall things you’ll pick up on immediately, once you’ve heard it. Which you will. Or should. Certainly should.

Keys to the record? Simplicity, first. “Lo and Behold”, 1970s Marthas Vineyard gospel, “You can’t kill for Jesus...Let it be.” (If I overquote it’s because it’s so much fun.)

The title cut is “North Country Blues”, sans Dylan cynicism. The same grey skies, though, which I understand very well at the moment (it’s so midwestern in an East Coast sort of way.) And then there’s even a John Sebastian cut, again updated,' very very simple. Even his pretensions are simple. I mean, not apocalyptic, just flashes.

And it’s so relatable, just ’cause it’s so much rock and roll. Like the Sebastian cut, a great ‘I’m feelin’ sorry for myself, I’m a white boy with the blues’ tune. “Sunny Skies has to stay behind.”

Funky, now and again, like “Steamroller”. Well, it won’t roll you over but it might make you sit up straight, sort of, the brass rollin’ over the words like that. “I’m gonna inject your soul with sweet rock and roll/And shoot you full of rhythm and blues.” (And you know I had to get that one in.) Indeed.

Best for me, “Country Road”, which reminds of that Buffalo Springfield ethos no one’s quite captured yet. Post-Dylan (postDelaney Bramlett?) white gospel rock. “Take to the highway/Won’t you lend me your name”America’s historical imperative. James Taylor, the best writer we have in the mellow medium they used to call folk-rock. (Well, Richard Farina’s dead, Dylan’s a Woodstock hillbilly and when’s the last time you heard a new song by John Sebastian? Roger McGuinn always was out of the question, he’s from L.A.) Diversified with a not unique, merely pleasant rendition of “Oh Sussanah.”

And after all, when the simplicity starts to lose its charm you can fall back on the lyric. “Fire and Rain”, for example. “I walked out this morning and and I wrote down this song/1 just can’t remember who to send it to.” Good boy gone wrong and a very Christian plea in there (“Won’t you look down upon me Jesus/You’ve got to lend me a stand”). Definite in his desperation. “My body’s achin’ and my time is at hand/And I just won’t make it any other way”. Ha!

Immediacy, totally tangible, fully (100%) relatable. To me at least. (“I always thought I’d see you again”.)

Sometimes he changes his mind in the middle of a line. “I know what you mean” he wrote then thinking better of it adds, “Girl it’s all the same”. Tfuth, Nearly innocous and deceptively wrong sex, third person, “Blossom” is summing up. Taylor is about condensation. So compact in “Baby Don’t You Loose Your Lip on Me” that he loses it for once. Not good as John Hammond. It’s sparse for effect and that’s why it loses its effectiveness, I think.

Involved with time, now and then. “Anywhere Like Heaven” talks about “People live from day but they do not count the time/They do not count the days slipping by/ And neither do 1”. Time.

Recluse that he is, he knows about all of it; this is a rock and roll child’s garden of verses (I know someone else said that before but it’s true.) “You can say I want to be free/1 can say some day I will be.” Tempered optimisn “Hold my soul, I’m sure enough fond of my rock and roll.”

Yeah.

Dave Marsh

DEJA VU - CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG, DALLAS TAYLOR & GREG REEVES; ATLANTIC SD 7200.

The Buffalo Springfield were one of my favorite bands; Again is one of my all-time favorite albums. By the time they broke up tneir music had begun to turn a bit stale, but you knew that wasn’t the last you’d heard from them. Then Neil Young’s first solo album; a bit of a disappointment, kind of flat, “easy listening with a country flavor” kind of thing. And the long-awaited, much vaunted Crosby, Stills & Nash. Having thought all along that Stevie Stills wrote most of the Springfield’s best stuff, figuring that maybe without the Hollies Graham Nash might be ok, and, like everybody, knowing what a good guy David Crosby is, I really looked forward to that album. But instead of updated Buffalo Springfield vitality, they gave us Simon & Garfunkel muzak, oh so nice, oh so precious, and very, very sterile.

After that came Neil Young’s album with Crazy Horse, which was an absolute bitch, and I figured that it was going to be Neil Young who would carry all those good things forward. When I learned that he was hitching up with CS&N I figured, fantastic, he’s just what they need to get them off that plastic bullshit track and give them some balls. It was him and 'Stills w'ho made the Springfield the band that they were; maybe they can do it again.

And so here is Deja Vie from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Y oung hasn’t had much of an effect on the music, and it’s still a pretty sterile sound, but I have decided that I like it. I wanted to like this record more than I’ve wanted to like anything since the second Rabbit McKay album, because individually these are some of my favorite musicians and because I basically like the idea behind the music, and I was glad when I found that I could. I couldn’t at first. All I could hear was those syrupy vocal harmonies, that sterile perfection, and I sensed a smugness that often comes with the easy California life. And every time some chick or another would rave about how great, what beautiful dudes they all are, how much they loved them, I would just grit my teeth (make no mistake about it, this is essentially feminine music, music that appeals to chicks). And I found I just had to hate the record.

I started to write the review, something along the lines of “fuck you, and fuck your silly, sterile music, and I don’t care how beautiful you are because this is 1970 and it’s time to get down, as they say,” but I didn’t dig doing it, and then I found myself cruising down the road singing “Helpless,” and “4 + 20” started going around in my mind, and I thought, Well...

I still can’t get past “Carry On” or “Our House,” just like I could never recognize “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” or “Marrakesh Express” as valid music. I’ve decided that David Crosby writes some killer songs, the closest to funky that anybody in the group cares to do, with a nice weltanschuung, too ,(I used to use that word in every paper I wrote -back in College, y’know - and I haven’t used it in a long time, so I decided to put it in here). I figure that the only thing I don’t like about this record is the vocals. They all have fine voices, you understand, but I don’t know why they have to make like the Swingle Singers. If they would just pare it down a bit they -would be the most dangerous (?) band around. Musically, they have a tightly controlled hard edged sound that I find completely satisfying. As a guitar player, good oF wierd-lookin’ Neil Young is a monster. The rhythm section is absolutely flawless and really tasteful. The album is superbly engineered. Vocally, though, I’m afraid that for the most part they’ve fallen into the trap of their own proficiency. They’re so perfect they can do anything, and they do, but they’ve forgotten that sometimes, no, usually, Less Is More.

I think “Helpless’ (Neil Young) and “4+20” (Steve Stills) are the best cuts on the album. I think, though, that the part in “4 + 20” where Stills starts to get the words wrong, hesitates, and then comes in off the beat points up the real flaw with the album - it stands out like a sore thumb because this album is essentially perfect you know, for what it is - and here they’ve obviously chosen to leave in a flaw that any other band would have done over. They give us their mistake gratuitously, but it doesn’t make any difference, because it’s so obviously gratuitous.

The music that the Springfield were making three years ago can really be felt in this album (“Country Girl,” by Neil Young, sure sounds like “Expecting to Fly” or “Broken Arrow,” for example), but you can also trace some of it to the Hollies, especially the saccharine vocals. Richie Furay, who, except for “A Child’s Claim to Fame,” I always thought was the worst thing about the Buffalo Springfield, (I think “Sad Memory” was clearly the worst thing they ever did - they should have given it to Johnny Mathis, who also lives in Los Angeles), would have felt right at home in this group. It’s starting to turn sour again, so I’d better end it here. I have no overall ratings to give or suggestions to make. This record will undoubtedly sell millions of copies, and the next one will probably be more of the same. Ok, but too bad, too.

Deday LaRene

WILLIE AND THE POORBOYS CREEDENCE CLEARWATER -FANTASY 8397

Creedence Clearwater has been bandied about as the saviour of AM radio and the first American super-group. Neither of which statements really hold water on the basis of their records. They are the best group on AM, though they can’t save that beleagured medium without a whole lot of help, and they are an occasionally excellent groups. But supergroups have a whole lot more than that, and CCR ain’t got it.

Fortunate Son and Down on the Corner are certainly ace songs, good tight rock and roll ones but no works of great genius. They have a formula, like the Byrds have and had for so long, and they stick to it most of the time. When they do it works; when they don’t it expsoses itself.

Both Fortunate Son and Down on the Corner are substantial, with heavy beat and clear vocal and guitar lines. Corner’s lyric is thematic, Son’s nearly fascisticneither is as good as anything on the new Stones album and as for Abbey Road that’s up to you. Actually, Fogerty as a guitarist leaves a whole lot to be desired; often, he’s as repetitious as the Stooges without being as bizarre.

But the songs do point up CCR’s strong points— excellent, supremely strong vocals by John Fogerty, simple music (also by Fogerty) and easily relatable lyrics (of course by Fogerty). It’s almost too much Fogerty. The two songs that follow this pair (each of which opens a side—it doesn’t matter which since they’re constructed in parallel) are also out of the same mold that’s produced the hits. It Came Out of the Sky is a paranoic epic, almost leaning on songs such as John Birch Society Blues for help thematically.

Still, when CCR strays from its sound, you find out that those excitingly simple guitar lines are just as boring here as anywhere else. Cottonjields is evidence enough that Fogerty (John) is the only one in the group with a decent voice and the rhythm section has yet to amaze me. And, as for the rest of the tunes, Poorboy Shuffle is a delusional rock-it’s what happens nearly every time healthy rock and rollers try to get eclectic. It bores—Fogerty is, on the basis of this cut, easily the most uninventive harp player I’ve ever heard on records. Side of the Road reveals how boring CCR’s basic riffs are without the added excitement of a vocal. (I don’t think that kind of music was designed solely as instrumental; in fact it’s almost a vehicle for the voice.) The last Cut on each side, Feelin’ Blue and Effigy, nearly makes it only to fall prey to being overly long.

Don’t Look Now (It Ain’t You or Me) on the other hand comes off as a Populist bad-rap of hip lifestyles. Maybe it’s not but then again, I seem to distrust Fogerty as a lyricist after this song...it almost makes one go back and look at Fortunate Son with different eyes. Seems it ain’t revolutionary after all. Populist is the only political/sociological phrase I can find to describe it. And, like Abbie Hoffman once said, there’ll always be chumps around like Spiro Agnew to do the real shit work—what’s really essential we’ll take care of ourselves.

Cotton Fields and Midnight Special (and if I keep describing the songs in pairs, it’s because the album really /s constructed in parallel) are re-worked from the Kingston Trio and Johnny Rivers, respectively. Not a trace of Leadbelly. If anyone thinks Fogerty sounds black it’s only from listening too much to Alvin Lee. Cottonfields reveals what is probably a strong force in Fogerty’s writing, the Buddy Holly/Elvis Presley rock-a-billy guitar lines. Swamp-rock, indeed. It’s just good old hillbilly rock and roll, even if the latest cracker is from ’Frisco.

Certainly, Creedenee is the most exciting Top 40 group around today and, definitely, they are one of the most exciting bands we have. But to try to draw anything else from a band that so thoroughly reveals its limitations here is improper. Cre -dence Clearwater may have the potential to be a 'super-group... but they have yet to put out an album full of material that can back that assertion up.

Dave Marsh

SHAt)Y GROVE QUICKSILVER MESSERNGER SERVICE CAPITOL SKAO 391

This is a pleasing album to write about. Really. Lots of good rock and plenty of good old San Francisco funk. Old Quicksilver fans will love this album. The cover, done by excharlatan George Hunter (who started Globe Propaganda) is a perfect example of Quicksilver’s antique, western-style funk. This has been Quicksilver’s trip ever since they started playing together. Add Nicky Hopkins to all of this and. you come up with a truly enjoyable album.

The story goes that Hopkins arrived in the San Frdncisco area last spring to do work on the Airplane’s Volunteers album. He loved the Bay area, decided to stay and took up residence in John Cippolina’s (Quicksilver’s guitarist) house. The rest, as they say, is history. Hopkins decided to join Quicksilver-although he will still appear on other albums -and the result is this album. If I seem to be lampooning Hopkins super-star status. I’m not. His work has always been superb and he deserves that label as much as anyone in rock.

Hopkins presence on this album is felt so strongly on each track that I’m almost beginning to wonder how Quicksilver ever made an album without him. He wrote one song on this album and it is a dandy. “Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)” a nine-minute instrumental track, is the most original, enterprising cut on the album. The song builds to an intense jazzy sort of jam with Hopkins’ piano leading the way. The band really cuts loose on this and it is a joy to these ears.

Quicksilver exhibits their funky old rock’n’ roll style on two tracks on side two. The title tune of the album “Shady Grove” and another cut “3 or 4 Feet From Home” are right in the old Chuck Berry tradition but are alone in Quicksilver style.

The band blends several other styles into this album and all are done in a tasteful fashion. “Words Can’t Say” is a mellow country-rock cut written by bassist David Freiberg. Several songs on the album were written by another well-known piano player, Nick Gravenites (Butterfield, Electric Flag, Mother Earth). The best of his contributions is a cut called “Holy Moly”. Cipollina’s guitar and vocal work sound especially good here and this song is one of my favorites on the album.

Quicksilver has never 'really attained the type of popularity elsewhere that they enjoy in San Francisco. Too bad, because they are an honest, unpretentious group, and this album ranks with their best efforts.

Leslie Schwartz Tom Jones - Tom Jones Live In Las Vegas - Parrot - PAS-71031

I 'begin this review in the full knowledge that many of you don’t like Tom Jones. The trouble is that a lot of people just don’t take time to listen. They don’t dig Tom Jones because they feel their not “supposed” to dig him. I mean, we’ve got Mick dagger - the unisex symbol we all aspire to. We’ve got Robert Plant - blowing our minds with the pulsating rhythms of Led Zeppelin. As for Jones, what the hell, even your mother likes Tom Jones (and she watches Lawrence Welk every Saturday night).

And when was the last time you saw a spread on Tom Jones in any of the underground rock papers? It was TV Guide; that’s right, TV Guide that did a cover story on him entitled: Tom Jones-Apostle Of Life After 30. My god, if TV Guide says that about him, he’s probably fit for the over 60 crowd. Next, they’ll be doing a story of him in the Reader’s Digest.

But wait, before Tom Jones got his own television show, did your mother ever sit and listen to someone sing “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, “Rip It Up” or “Bony Moronie”? Did she ever see or hear Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Janis Joplin, The Moody Blues, Dusty Springfield, The Rascals or Crosby, Stills and Nash (all of whom have appeared on Tom’s TV show)? And remember Jones is still only 28 years old. That’s a year younger than John & Ringo; a year older than Paul & George and the same age as Dylan.

But on to his album: Tom Jones Live In Las Vegas. Immediately, the two words Las Vegas rubs you the wrong way. The sight of these busty, dumb broads draped in ermine guzzling booze with some short, fat, cigar-chewing Mafia type. The middle class, young honeymoon couple from Des Monies, Iowa, out for their one big night. The whole scene is a natural down. Will Jones cop out like The Temptations do every time they play the Copacabana in New York? I mean, like instead of coming on with their good, genuine stuff; the Temptations came out doing “Hello Young Lovers”, a tribute to Rodgers and Hart and a ridiculous renditon of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”. Is Jones going to play it straight to this audience? Or will he lay it on them raw and mean - “straight ahead”.

Side one begins, ^Ladies and gentlemen this is Tom Jones”. The orchestra flares up and right away Tom hits them with a good strong version of “Turn On Your Love Light”. The lead guitar work of “Big” Jim Sullivan is, already, apparent. From this Tom moves into “Bright Light And You Girl”, another good rocking song. He’s working them up, now.

At this point Tom welcomes his audience and says, “Isn’t it warm here, isn’t it?” From the female screams you can guess that, obviously, the bow tie has come off.

Side two opens with Tom, the ace dude, telling some chick at ringside, “I’m gonna’ come right over there, right now. Gimme’ a kiss.” Then he goes in “Help Yourself’ and, again, it sounds better than the original .studio recording. At the completion of this song, Tom asks, “Has anybody got a handkerchief or something - or something”? There’s an apparent rush of handkerchief bearers and one of them, seemingly, gets through to Tom, as he says, “You’re a fast runner aren’t you; you don't run away that fast though, do you?”

What follows is a LennonMcCartney medley. First, Tom does “Yesterday”. His rendition is powerful yet tender. Then, with the precise guitar accompaniment of Sullivan, Tom lets it all go on “Hey Jude”. His delivery of “Hey Jude” is every bit as good (if not better) than the much acclaimed Wilson Pickett version. Tom closes out “Jude” with a beautiful wailing finish that is equal to the best soul singers around.

As he’s about to go into his next song, Tom’s attention is drawn by some chick in the audience who hollers, “Please, bring it over here”. Whether he brought it to her or not; the next cut is a full, rich offering of “Love Me Tonight”. This leads into Tom’s tarde-mark song, “It’s Not Unusual”. The gasps of the women in the audience (which grow louder at certain strategic drum beats) gives you some idea that Tom is going through some of bis usually strenous choreography. He says, “Thank you very much”; the orchestra plays on; the audience cheers wildly (is this the Flamingo in Las Vegas or the Fillmore in the East Village).

Then, suddenly, he’s back. Got to give ’em one final blast. “Here we go now”, Tom yells. And he’s into a wild, screaming “Twist And Shout”. Tom bellows, “Do you feel alright?” Audience responds, “Yeah.”

But not loud enough for Tom, “I said, do you feel alright?”

The audience grows stronger, “YEAH.”

This has gone past the Fillmore. This is the kind of stuff Alan Freed used to get busted for, at his Rock & Roll shows up in Boston.

Now, Tom’s got everybody singing “Land Of A Thousand Dances”. He switches from “1000 Dances” to “Uptight” and then slows it up.

“Let’s take it nice and slow and easy. It’s better like that sometimes.

I been here, now, three days -that’s all - three days.

And already, already - I want a woman.”

He’s got this audience into it; and into it deep. He’s wailing about needing loving “in the middle of the night” and the audience is stomping, clapping and screaming. He could have probably cursed Howard Hughes and been cheered for it. Back to “Land Of A Thousand Dances”, keep pouring it on. By now, this once stylish group has reached the peaked frenzy of a wild mob. Tom rides it on home be returning to “Twist And Shout”. The orchestra plays him off and one of the most vibrantly exciting albums I’ve heard in a long time comes to an end.

Mike Monahan

Continued on page 26

THE RATIONALS - THE RATIONALS - CREWE CR 1334

Well, out with it then...no one else seems to think so but it seems to me that this might be one of the two or three best, (maybe the best), albums to come out of the entire Detroit/Ann Arbor scene yet. Only the Stooges (and perhaps the Amboy Dukes, depending on whether or not you can stomach them) have come up with a record that, represents its style so well. And I enjoyed listening to this record, from the first time I heard it (expectedly; I’d certainly waited long enough) to the last. So, at the risk of being totally alone (which is kind of nice, for once) I’ll say it, out in front-this is the best home-grown album I’ve heard yet.

It’s certainly flawed, but you can get past it if you’ll give it a couple of tries. First, somehow, even if you have to scratch them into obliteration, get rid of those horrid segues that fuck up the first side. Taken from “Ha-Ha”, which is an excellent song, despite it all, they’re just out of context with the highenergy music.

Secondly, be prepared for a big switch when you turn the record over. The first side is midwestern as hell...“Barefootin”, the Robert Parker classic, starts it off, “Somethin’s Got A Hold On Me” finishes it (that “Deep Red” follows is one of the things that makes this record work; it’s like an introduction to the what’s to come.)

In between we’re given what are probably the two strongest cuts on the album, “Temptation’s Bout to Get Me” and “Guitar Army”. “Temptation” is actually pretty traditional Rationals material;it doesn’t slip into a sort of Motown parody like I was afraid it would and it doesn’t lose its energy trying to be anything it sin’t either. It’s simply an excellent Scott Morgan vocal set against the killer rhythm section of bassist Terry Trabandt and drummer Bill Figg.

Scott sort of carries the album, but it’s not his alone; the brunt of the instrumental work seems to fall on the rhythm section. It’s not that Steve Correll isn’t an able guitarist but simply that all of the Rats tunes, expecially on this record and even more expecially on the second side, are /involved with rhythms and rhythm patterns.

The first side is kind of like R and B though, what with “Barefootin"’ and “Temptation's” and “Something’s Got A Hold On Me”. It’s closest, spiritually and concretely, to the old Rascals (like when they were still the Young Rascals). I’d kind of hoped that the Rascals would start to get into what the Rationals are into now but, after See it looks like it just ain’t gonna happen.

Scott’s vocal on, and the Rationals version of, “Temptations Bout to Get Me” make the Rascals’ effort on the same tune pale in comparison. Morgan is perhaps the finest singer I’ve ever heard. Not the stage1 magician that Jim Morrison or Mick Jagger is, he’s also not that peculiarly raspy throated laryngetically calisthenic type of singer that say, Rod Stewart or maybe Robert Plant is, either. He’s a singer, you dig, and he sings remarkable well. He’s got more control than anyone this side of the “good music” stations and he’s also got a real fast feel for the proper type of material. Apparently so, anyway, because almost all the songs on this record are matched to him perfectly.

“Guitar Army” is maybe the strangest song the Rationals ever Culturally revolutionary, like the Airplane might be (along with the Rascals I think of the Jefferson Airplane most in connection with the Rats) it’s kind of a weird reaction to the MC5 guerilla hype of last year (if it was a hype). That’s on the first level (“Some folks talkin’ 'bout burning down/i’m just talkin’ 'bout gettin’ down” the song begins). The segue nearly kills this song’s effect but it still emerges as one of the best rock songs you’ll ever hear. It’s kind of rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets without guns. Sort of a rationalized (a pun, yes?) version of “Human Being Lawnmower ”

The heavy emphasis on vocals is one of the standards here (and one of the things that leads me to think of Airplane/Rascals music). Not only Scott but the whole band can sing and together too.

The First side closes with “Deep Red”. Well, the segue works here but I still don’t understand the song either lyrically or musically. Interestingly enough, this is the one song on the album that Scott most needs to carry and just can’t. Or can’t because it doesn’t fit him. I don’t really know. I just don’t understand it.

The second side opens with “Sunset” which was the ‘B’ side of the single that they released a year ago (“Guitar Army” was the ‘A’ side.) I don’t really quite understand this either, though talking to Scott about it seemed to help. It’s really inventive, lyrically, rhythmically and musically.

The lyric is sort of about a sunset but more about “sunset as allegory for death”. (“In 24 hours they’ll be again dead down under the lawn”). Sometimes I think this side of the album is sort of drug music but then I never listen to the Rationals when I’m stoned (or ’cause I’m stoned) so maybe not.

“Glowin'” and “Handbags and Gladrags”, the current single, reveal the Rats talent at finding ace cover material. This record was cut about a year ago, the same time as the single, so they definitely hadn’t heard Rod Stewart’s version of “Handbags”. Which doesn’t matter, really, since theirs cuts his to shreds. Again, you have to appreciate the difference between a gritty tonsil torturer like Stewart and a singer like Scott.

Scott’s vocal on “Glowin"’ is sometimes an almost direct imitation of Dr. John’s, especially on the verse, and then again it turns into something a dozen times more distinctive. It’s near-perfect Rationals music~the incandescent lyric belies the mellow music. And the Rationals seem to travel packed with ambiguities.

The strength of their rhythmic/vocal devices lets them get away with a lyric involvement that might ordinarily be pretentious. “Handbags and Gladrags” is gonna be a “standard” shortly and, of the three versions I’ve heard, I’ll take this over Rod Stewart’s or Chris Farlowe’s. The subtlety of the arrangement, down to the clavichordish piano is the tune’s greatest strength.

“Ha-Ha” which closes the set is nearly as strong as anything else on the album. It’s eerie and futuristic and inventive in its rhythms, reminding me a lot of “Cornin' Back to Me” and “Today” off the second Jefferson Airplane album. Scott’s flute is just as haunting as Grace Slick’s recorder was then and the lyrics (especially those “ha-ha-ha”'s) attack your head with the same sardonic effect. They’re deliberately that, a little offkey, I think. It works. And I think that the reason I like it so much is that I know I’m not that bad off yet.

This really might be the best Detroit album we’ve got yet; so far, no one else has managed to convey their sound so well (except the Stooges and their music is just in another realm entirely). Scott Morgan is decidedly the best singer in rock (like the Stooges, Joe Cocker is also in his own class) and the rhythm section is as funky as you can ask from a bunch of white Ann Arborites. The album makes it more than anything else I’ve heard so far, at least from home.

It took them six years do do it but it was worth it.

Buy it.

Dave Marsh