RECORDS

RECORDS

(When Johnny Winter and company traveled to Detroit to play at the Eastown and in the park in Ann Arbor and do the interview that we ran in Volume 2, No. 15 the conversation very naturally drifted to Johnny’s somewhat confused recording career. What follows are Johnny’s comments on what each of the records previously released means to him and, in addition, why a number of them are total rip-offs. Perhaps this can serve as some sort of consumer guide, as well as a cursoty note on how a recording artist can get jacked around by the small-time as well as the big-time recording industry.)

JOHNNY WINTER AND-JGHNNY WINTER AND—COLUMBIA

This is a new Johnny Winter record, the first one that can really begin to fulfill the promise that Johnny has always showed and, as well, one which can warm things up considerably, once one gets beyond a few obstructions. It’s not a blues recording and, while that may upset the purists, for the rest of us it’s a much better deal. Simply put, this is an album of rock and roll music, jams that you can slide right into, with which you can feel at ease and comfortable. It’s pretensions are only to eclecticism, and at least it’s eclecticism with raunch, not eclecticism in pursuit of any of several different forms of purity.

The weak spots are Winter’s voice (which becomes a strong point when it finds the right material and/or when you get used to it), Columbia’s too-clean production (though they’ve never had a record even this funky, at least not since Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde), and an occasional feeling that they’re perhaps trying a tad too hard to be like those other masters of the eclectic, the Rolling Stones.

Like the Stones, everything here is transmuted into Winter and Company’s personal style. Rick Derringer provides a strong second guitar line, one which is in every respect the under-stated equal of Winter’s flamboyance while Randy Hobbs and Randy Z. (no longer with the group) provide solid, tight and generally interesting, if not mind-blowing, rhythmic support.

However, where the Stones never seem to strain, this record has occasion to do so. Whether Winter and Derringer and company are merely over-extended (which is certainly doubtful) or whether they are simply beginning to: fit into some new stances and sometimes find an awkward pose is hard to tell. Only subsequent recordings will ever assure us of one or the other.

Winter’s guitar line has always seemed rather thin, somehow, and it really benefits from Derringer’s support. All the leads seem to be Johnny’s, all the lead vocals definitely are, but when Derringer fits well, things seem to cook. On “Guess I’ll Go Away” and “Ain’t That A Kindness” they seem to have achieved a sort of Amerikanized, not-overly polished (and therefore not overly-excessive) Led-Zeppelin-like feel. Sexy and raunchy but not too insipid.

The flash of the blues, when it leaves, always seem to lend itself to an excessive sort of rock and roll but this record still impresses me more than any that Beck, Page, Clapton and company have baned us with in the past. Its excesses are peculiarly Amerikan, at least, and that seems advantageous at this point.

Winter’s voice is most strained on “No Time to Live”, the old Traffic tune but doing it without saxophone at least opens some interesting guitar possibilities, which (if they aren’t fully realized) are at least well-explored.

The real meat of the record begins with the next tune “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” a stone kickin’ out the jams item. After the singing strain of “Live”, “Hoochie Koo” is a real treat... “Rock and roll, hoochie koo, lordy mama light my fuse/Rock and roll, hoochie koo, sugar mama spread the news.” All the guitar toughness is speed and frenzy, Derringer’s total tonality giving way to Winter’s flashy bluesiness and the whole thing soaring to happiness.

Meanwhile, “Am I Here” comes straight in from left-field. The only song I’ve ever heard that comes close to this is “Too Much On My Mind” by the Kinks or maybe “Paint It Black”, though it does have “Satisfaction” overtones. This is a great song, one of the few tunes on the album that is definitively of this group, and no other. It’s probably going to be offending people, or at least putting them off, for another six months and then they’ll just live inside it awhile and really love it.

“Look Up” is marred by a too-simple “everybody get together now” lyric and the fact that Johnny with a chorus of black women is just a tad too incongrous. “Prodigal Son”, on the other hand, is almost perfect, tremendous lyrically, Winter’s voice grinding its prodigal way through it. Still, even here, there’s something basically un-settling about Johnny’s guitar tone ... too thin, is all I can think, it sounds just about the way his hair looks, too stringy and maybe not enough chords or something.

“Out on the Limb” fits right in there too, in just about the same manner. It sounds like the Band, mostly, just like most of the tunes here sound vaguely like someone else with Winter/Derringer overtones.

The real undiscovered gem of this record, though, is “Let the Music Play”. The chorus is thoroughly effective here while Winter’s voice over the guitars and a trace of drumming ... “I don’t know what thoughts you have/But I know what to do/We can/Let the music play/We can dance all day.” Something about this tune excites me the way not many songs can do, especially few balladic songs. It’s not a love song, either, just „ a great tune.

All in all, this record seems a remarkable achievement if only because it is so incongrous, coming from Second Winter, to hear Johnny sing and play real tunes. I think this is an excellent record, despite its admitted flaws and well worth hearing a time or two. It has an easy familiarity to it, once it’s been played a few times, that lends it to finding its way to the record player when you want something that you don’t have to fight with constantly.

Dave Marsh

WINTER ON WINTER - THE PROGRESSIVE BLUES EXPERIMENT (IMPERIAL)

“We did that one because we’d just got the group together and we said, ‘O.K. we’re not going to play what anybody wants to hear, we’re gonna just play blues.’ Cause that’s what I particularly wanted. I’d always wanted to do some blues and I’d never been able to play any. There was these white blues groups gettin’ popular and that’s what we wanted to do, anyway. We did it and, because we’d had so much trouble with managers and club owners influencin’ our music, we said, ‘Nobody’s gonna tell us what to do at all.’ Man, we played in clubs, night clubs, and ran people off, it was just unbelievable. So we just carried that right along with the record and decided that we weren’t gonna sign with anybody that wasn’t gonna let us do what we wanted to do.' Money wasn’t ever any object as long as we had complete control over everything.”

“So we cut the album for Bill Joseph, he said ‘Do whatever you want’ but the equipment was a problem ‘cause he didn’t have enough bread for a studio but it was a good deal because we could do whatever we wanted and he wasn’t gonna tie us up at all. So even though it was a bad place to do it, we figured we’ll have somethin’ to show people. We figured he’d take the record and put it out locally, figured he’d probably press up three, four, five thousand and we’d have a record to show people and say, ‘O.K. this is what we do, here’ and then maybe one of ‘em would give us a contract. So we did it, got the album cut, took the acetate over to England, played it for several people over there;

I was gonna go with Blue Horizon records, Mike Vernon. I’d go back and live there and record for their label. But we didn’t sign a contract.

“I went back to East Texas to get ready to move and the Rolling Stone thing came out and things started happening in the States. So I decided to stay.”

Q: Did they ever hear you or come out and talk to you?

“No, but I think the guy who wrote the article had lived around Texas. So when that happened Blue Horizon tried to convince me to take everything . . . “Here take everything, take the record company”, but I decided I’d be better off stayin’ in the states.

But anyway, all that album on Sonobeat was supposed to do was just kinda be a demo thing.xfnsUa one shot thing, we didn’t dub anything on it, we made the whole thing in a day or two. We just set up in this big, old, echoey, dance hall and turned the tape recorder on and just played the songs.

That got the best response because it had the most live feel to it. What I’d like to do is just go into a studio and put one mike in the middle of a room and play mono, not stereo, just the way it sounded, just like the old 45s. Such a great sound on the early rock and roll and blues records, the greatest records in the world. It was a unit thing, when you heard a record, you heard this sound, not the guitar player and the drummer and the bass player, it was just the sound.”

JOHNNY WINTER (COLUMBIA)

“On that one, we weren’t tryin’ to be a pop group or a rock and roll band or anything. It was the whole blues spectrum from the early Mississippi delta things, acoustic things up to Ray Charles, and jazzy type blues, up to some things that I’d done myself that weren’t like anybody. It was a progression, up to real hard, Chicago bluest which is my favorite kind of blues, I think. And it evolved from that, through T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles and B.B. King into what’s goin’ on now, the British, white blues groups. And the idea of the Columbia record was just to show a little of all of it, ‘cause I like different forms of blues and I wanted to just do everything. It didn’t have quite the live raw sound that I would’ve liked but I was pretty happy with that album. People wanted a Cream record though, expected somethin’ I didn’t want to give ‘em. And it wasn’t supposed to be that at all.

We did some over-dubbing too on that album, where the first one we just set up and played. We really worked on that one.”

THE JOHNNY WINTER STORY (GRT)

“That’s not a crew-cut, man, that’s a pompadour. I’d drive from Beaumont to Houston, which was about a hundred miles, one way, and then drive back to get a razor cut because in Beaumont you couldn’t get razor-cuts. Then I’d put styling gel on it and take years gettin’ it; to stand. Cause my hair’s really thin, no body at all. I’d do all kinds of crap to it, tease, it and take about three hours every week to get it cut.

“So that picture’s from the middle or early sixties. That album would’ve been a real representation of what I was doin’ at that time, it’s just a bunch of local singles. And I would’ve liked the record (I wouldn’t have liked it to come out when it did) but I woulda liked it ’cept some asshole producer decided to make a few changes to bring it “up-to-date”, They dubbed in a whole new band, on some cuts. Really. They just wiped it out. Two drummers would be playing off beat to each other on some tunes. Probably some old fat producer/manager type cat, who’d walk around with his arm around you, ‘This is my boy, this is my boy, get up there and play for ‘em Johnny’. I’m sure he just took it in the studio and did all that so he could go back to Beaumont and tell all his friends that he just worked on the new Johnny Winter record.”

SECOND WINTER (COLUMBIA)

“I was tryin’ to work Edgar in the group at this time hoping that we could have a real group rather than have just Edgar come on and do some songs. It’s just like our set, at the time that we were writing and performing together.

1 like some of the things on it, for what it was; for what it was, it was good. I hate the way it was recorded. I hate the way . . . it’s just soft. We even went through that whole thing of putting less time on each side so we could get a louder record but . . . Nothin’. It just came out soundin’ real mushy and bassy and clean, no crash at all. So that album’s o.k. but that’s the one that I really like the least of the ones that I’ve done recently.”

FIRST WINTER (BUDDAH) and ABOUT BLUES (JANUS)

“That’s the worst, I don’t even sing on two or three of the cuts. Hardly any of that stuff was ever on any record before, just Huey Meaux and Roy Ames, they had a little studio in Houston where you could just go in and record. And we would practice things, try things, do things just for a joke. And he saw a chance to make some bread and put out this crap, that all of us knew, I knew and Huey knew, wasn’t good enough to release on a local label. The Janus was exactly the same.

“In fact, see, these two — I don’t know what it is about Texas, but everybody seems to be crooked down there - but Huey Meaux and Roy Ames were both working together and Roy Ames signed me to Huey Meaux without me knowing it. I never signed anything with either of them. Anyway, Roy stole all the rapes from Huey ’cause Huey got put in jail for takin’ this 14 year-old chick to Nashville to ball some disc jockeys so he could get a record played. Roy stole all the tapes but Huey was smart enough to keep some extras as home; so they released their stuff on different labels and they had four of the same songs on the two Ips ”

Q: What did you do, how did you react when those records came out?

“I couldn’t believe it. Cause they came out at the same time as Second Winter , and it really hurt our record sales, people didn’t know what to buy. But there wasn’t nothin’ that we could do about it. The law takes about four years to do anything about it, and then you don’t get any money out of it.”

JIMI HENDRIX & OTIS REDDING LIVE AT MONTERREY, REPRISE MS 2029

THE YARDBIRDS (“FEATURING CLAPTON, PAGE, BECK”), EPIC SOLID BOND, GRAHAM BOND, WARNER BROS, 2555

Remember Columbia’s “the man can’t bust our music” ads? Guess who “busts” more music than anyone else, often for periods of time longer than the usual grass or draft sentence?

Sure, it’s the recording companies themselves. The “industry” — wide practice of keeping recordings and tapes “in the can”, supposedly because the market “isn’t ready for them” is an unwarranted prison sentence which many a good jam is serving now. All three of the albums above did, in one way or another, and the backroom stock of most any major (maybe even minor) recording company would be quite a revelation to you. A little muckraking m this area might prove useful right now, for some hustlers with the right “connections” to expedite.

Audiences suffer. Who’s got the time machine that can pay you back for all the jams you didn’t hear, back when you could have? How do you make it up to a young harp player who isn’t hearing all the Little Walter he craves or a young jazz-rock guitarist who didn’t hear John McLaughlin do his thing until just last year?

The artists suffer, Graham Bond was a scuffling “legend” who never got paid enough or on time. The Yardbirds disbanded one of rock’s best and most influential groups, and hassled too much during their existence. Jimi won’t even be around to pick up any dust from the sales of his Monterey sides and Otis hasn’t been for years.

In an age of supersophisticated electronics and communications technology, what’s the overall efficiency of a dinosaur economics which doles out jams when they should be flying around like snowflakes?

These three albums are all more or less dynamite pieces of evidence. Jimi & Otis at Monterrey is an instant classic. If Are You Experienced left you craving an encore, then these are what you wanted — “Wild Thing” is practically a symbol of a whole, large trip, one that will never be so new to us again. Although too many phony imitators have muddied Jimi’s stream, the sounds he makes here are relevant as ever and retain their impact, especially since no one has yet quite gone beyond them. Which is only to say that if so-called “psychedelic” guitar has become a cliche for you, it’s your own soggy chops and bad taste which are responsible for it. You’re a cliche yourself.

Stunning as Jimi’s side is, Otis’ is even a tad more so. In fact, as a high-energy dispersal, its enough to blow the lid right off of rhythm and blues. Compare the same material from the Live in Europe album. Booker T. & the MG’s, always at their best as a backup band and especially backing Otis, also achieve their finest ^ hours. Why it took Buddy Miles, for instance, to hip people to what A1 Jackson could always do, will be a mysteryi after you’ve heard this side even once.i

As to the Yardbirds, it could be immediately argued that most bf the material on this double-albuni was released years ago. It was of noj help.

There was always this problem about picking up a new Yardbird$ side, no matter where you stood.; The popcorn crowd could hardly be expected to buy records half tak^n up with heavy British-brand blues, while the serious listeners couldn’t afford albums interlarded with half-hearted attempts at “hit” singles and Other out-of-it compromises.

Result is that, due 'to neither-fish-nor-fowl packaging, the Yardbirds enjoyed sales way out! of proportion to their relevance —j in inverse ratio. Now that they’re gbne and can be enjoyed as underground legends, we finally have a collection of their work which is worth haying without reservations. Even here, thejre’s a few of those shitty tunes like “Lijttle Games” and ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor”, maybe to demonstrate that the sheer musicianly aptitude of The Yardbirds could battle the rum material to a standstill.

No formal indication is made j of who plays guitar on which tracjks. Down by the title listings, the ccj>de tends to run; no asterisks=Page, One asterisk=Beck, two asterisks=Clapton. The Clapton cuts are classic examples of him getting his shit together, while the Yardbirds indulge in their patent sound. More casting around on the Beck tracks, including Jeff’s own tentatively flamboyant unpredictability. The Page cuts run a gamut from his main-disciple refinements on Clapton’s innovations to acoustic and ethnic things — where The Yardbirds might have been able to go, had they hung in together.

How much did that Rolling Stone review of the less readily available Five Live Yardbirds have to do with the unexpected appearance of this collection, eh?

Even more than the other two Solid Bond is a rock historian’s feast. Responses to it have tended to be kind of dumb, mainly, I suspect, because the instrumentation and approaches presented here do not readily yield to stereotype identification.

Nine cuts feature Bond on organ and vocals, Dick Heckstall-Smith on tenor and Jon Hiseman’s tremendous powerhouse drumming and Bonds romping drive keep an even flame going, while Heckstall-Smith weaves in and out in a way more familiar to jazz (Roswell Rudd w/Archie Shepp, Gerry Mulligan’s quartets, etc.). The sounds tend to be ragged and forgettable in a purely ensemble sense, but unique and brilliant in terms of the individual musical efforts. Hiseman is right up with Keith Moon and Mitch Mitchell as a rock drummer of matchless energy, while Heckstall-Smith has the best sound and some of the best execution of any rock reed. Try listening to each of them separate at least once around and if you’re not impressed, well, alright, then, go on back to sleep.

The three long quartet cuts feature Bond on his first ax, alto, with John McLaughlin on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Bond intended a Coleman-Dolphy sort of trip and Bruce helps him out, having heard LaFaro and Haden well enough to do some strong approximations. It should be plain enough, from these cuts, why Bruce has always wanted to go somewhere beyond the bounds of rock bass-playing — he was already there seven years ago. McLaughlin was clearly one of the world’s finest young jazz guitarists, then, and was for years afterward, though still a little straight, whilst Baker just couldn’t bring his Considerable chops to bear on an Elvin Jones-Billy Higgins polyrhythmic freedom.

If you can’t groove with jazz (i.e. are stupid), then, of course, skip these cuts.

Here’s a rundown of what holding these albums in the can deprived you of for some three to seven years — important Work of: five guitar players so good that you probably couldn’t name another five to stand against them, two of rocks best drummers, another of star proportions, r & b’s best drummer and most right-on group, rock’s best bassist and maybe best reed-player and singers of talent and individuality including the prince of them all.

If it turns out that you can’t always get what you want, that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it just the same.

Rich Mangelsdorff

IF - CAPITOL - ST-539

IF :are a seven man outfit whom we may tab as riding the crest of a new wave of talent from the British Isles, (Wave number 1,042, if you are keeping count). Along with such new hopes as Free, Mungo Jerry, Yes, If are one of the latest attempts to glean the greens from the teen’s jeans. (Who first said that? I can’t remember. I think it might have been Quatro).

The whole trouble is, we’ve heard it all before, from Blood, Sweat and Tears, from Chicago, and even more important, we’ve heard it from Britain before, in the form of Colosseum. I never really realized before just how much an exciting drummer like John Hiseman can add to the guts of a group.

If are obviously highly accomplished and talented musicians. The members take their expected solors, and perform them with taste and precision. But the group, as a whole, lacks the drive, the intensity, that their competitors in the neo-big-band field produce. Some sort of sparkplug is needed, be it the crisp energy' of Hiseman’s drumming, or even the pseudo-soul of a David Clayton-Thomas. (Vocals from IF often seem as if they are merely filling in the spaces between the instrumental breaks.) The horn section doesn’t attack you like Chicago’s does, but seems to perform miles off in the background. Its almost as if they were recorded from down the hall or something. In all, the album is well arranged1, very tight, very adequate in all respects but one it just doesn’t excite the listener the way a group of this size and potential should.

Al Niester

WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH-THE MOTHERS OF INVENTIONBIZARRE MS2028

Didja Gets Any Onya; Directly From My Heart to You; Prelude to the Afternoon! of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask; Toads of the Short Forest; Get A Little; Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue;! Dwarf Nebula Processional March and Dwarf Nebula; My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama; Oh No; The Orange County Lumber Truck; Weasels Ripped My Flesh

It should be widely known by now that Frank Zappa is more than just a master of j bizarre but also a brilliant composer and arranger as well as a consummate musician and satirist. Maybe it just isn’t. Zappa himself has no qualms about mentioning the lack of appreciation and understanding with which his music has been received. His contempt for his audience is legendary — and largely a part of his “act”, all calculated to shock the audience out of their lethargy. The target of his contempt and satire is often the Amerikan public’s musical taste. The alleged hip awareness which is carefully manufactured and nurtured by the media industry. And the peculiarly Amerikan inability to decide what we like and what has value outside of what we are offered (spoon-fed) through established mass outlets. Not that all cultural artifacts manufactured specifically for mass consumption are worthless. And not that everyone in Amerika is trapped and lame. And not that every Big Barny has a pickle on it. There are exceptions. Accidents, as it were.

Anyway, most of what we’ve come to expect from Zappa can be found on this album - the satire, the carefully loose arrangements and experimental compositions, the weird titles. But being made up of bits and pieces from ‘67-‘69 the album lacks coherency — it seems a little skimpy, almost like a sampler (though the usual 40 minutes are here). The extended compositions and reoccuring themes that held his last two albums together (“Uncle Meat” and “Burnt Weeny Sandwich”) are missing. What Zappa has done here is put eleven variegated compositions, half of them recorded in live performances, together in an album for the express purpose of raising money to put into such current programs as the infamous Uncle Meat movie. So it isn’t a masterpiece. We still have to wait for that. But there is a lot here to get into.

Of the three vocal cuts “Guitar” is the best, concerning itself with a favorite theme of Zappa’s, the transmutation of adolscent frustration into rock ‘n’ roll. Rechanneling frustrated emotions is often an integral part of creation — but here the emotion is not totally sublimated and the desire to murder is attributed to the guitar. Pretty heavy, huh gang? And it has a swell beat, too. “Oh No” is a too brief comment on that too brief era when love was going to solve everything. But love found itself staring down the barrel of a gun and frustration was back again (I just love to simplify things). The song isn’t as timely as it might have been whenever it was written. (Historical footnote: a quote from Zappa-1967“I believe in what George Harrison says that you can change the world with love - if you really get it. If you really care, you can do it.”) The remaining vocal, “Directly”, the only non-Zappa number here, features the violin and voice of “Sugar Cane” Harris. How Harris fits into Zappa’s musical concept isn’t clear, but he’s a beautiful exponent of the current violin renaissance — his singing is less impressive.

The instruments here could be broken down into two types — the simpler singing melodies usually featuring Zappa’s guitar work and the more complex pie'ces usually featuring electronic and vocal effects as well as longer orchestrated passages. The most appealing of the former type is “Orange County” which is edited to come on immediately at the end of “Oh No” — a definite rising of the spirit after such cynicism. Unfortunately, again, it’s too brief. And for some reason it ends abruptly in the middle of the guitar solo - to be followed by the irritatingly dull title cut, two minutes and five seconds of unmodulated feedback. Though I imagine there are times when one might feel the desire to listen to two minutes and five seconds of unmodulated feedback.

The “advanced” pieces seem even more sprawling than usual — but “Dolphy” has the widest emotional range and less effects than the others. (The “effects” of the others are usually humorous and, though imaginative, a humorous effect simply doesn’t sustain interest for as many listenings as a musical one — but a combined humorous/musical effect is something different and a Zappa specialty.)

I have mixed feelings about this record. With the exception of “Weasels”, all the cuts have something of interest to recommend them (as they say in Downbeat.) Yet taken as a whole the album is a sloppy pastiche of some of Zappa’s past efforts. I dunno. I’d still buy it if I didn’t have it already.

Richard C. Walls

STAGE FRIGHT-THE BAND-CAPITOL 426

How to make sense of The Band? Each of their albums has been a puzzle, not on the level Bob Dylan’s have been certainly, but a musical quandry, resolvable only by repeated listenings. I’ve had this record for a good three months and it’s only in the last two weeks that I’ve been able to listen to it.

It occurs that they might be the Amerikan Beatles, maybe . . . they put together that sort of meticulous music, rock and roll around inside it just a little bit, can turn a catchy lyric phrase when they’re pressed, seem almost determinedly iconoclastic. On the other hand, they’re also distinctly Amerikan, the more-so because they’re Canadian. Canadians seem to be the archetypical Amerikans (consider that l say this from the vantage point of living close to it, having numerous Canadian relatives and after enough visits to Toronto to convince) in their worship of the mundane and the mediocre. Even their vaunted televised liberation smacks of a fascination with reducing everything to the least common denominator. No wonder Marshall McLuhan seems so confused.

This could easily turn into a comparison of The Band and The Doors; I don’t know if the Band sees it that way. I do know John Densmore does (which I think is noted in my Doors review in this issue) and I certainly find myself drawing inevitable comparison between this album and the Morrison Hotel record, both of which seem to deal with Amerikan stereotypes.

But the way this record leaves me vaguely dissatisfied, the way its flaws seem to glare out, destroying the occasional flash of rock and roll intricacy that can make me smile a bit and get up and move about to the music, the crux of the matter. Stage Fright simply won’t stand up to the other two; there’s no single song here that’s anywhere near as strong as “Look Out Cleveland” or “King Harvest” or “Jemima Surrender”. Further, it always seemed to me that if you could write one “The Weight” you could write half a dozen. And a half a dozen songs like that, or even one, would totally change the context of this record. What this record needs, just like what Abbey Road needed or what even such a mind-fucking effort as the Kinks’ Village Green album needed, is a single song to break it loose and shake things up.

Instead, we’re given a bunch of songs that are good but not great, all fitted together nicely enough but with some sort of spark lacking. It seems more and more like Abbey Road all the time.

“Sleeping” is even more Beatle-like .... the kind of title they’d use, the lyrics they’d write, the piano that Paul might play. Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko even pull off a little guitar exchange in the middle that sounds like something that Harrison and Lennon might riff behind. But its finally Richard Manuel’s thoroughly unique voice that provides this song with the energy it needs to captivate me to the limited extent it does.

“Time to Kill” sounds like a left-over from the second album, not quite strong enough to be there, a classic throw-away. Stylized Band, a near self-parody. Still, Robertson’s guitar is its ever tasty self. The Band can do it, you just wonder whether they get off on it anymore. (Once again, that’s like the difference between the Beatles and the Stones.)

On “Whistle Stop”, Robertson even plays exactly like Harrison, the same tone and the same kind of chords. Even so, the song is distinctly the Band; like I said, determinedly iconoclastic.

But “Whistle” is just such a tasty tune that you can’t help but listen to it. just a real good tune, moving along properly with a nice Band-country-whimsical-philosphic lyric .... might even be about the whole Isle of Wight thing, in places.

“All La Glory” sounds like a John Sebastian, post-Lovin’ Spoonful, parody, except for Garth Hudson’s organ which will probably be featured at your neighborhood roller rink in the near future. Hardly funky.

Maybe the whole thing is a self-parody? “The Shape I’m In” seems that way, so does most of the rest of the second side, and it also seems vaguely pugnacious. “Save your neck/or save your brother/Looks like it’s/One or the other” seems exactly the kind of line people like me are supposed to pick up and quote and say nasty things about Bands that are managed by Albert Grossman and live in pink, aluminum sided houses and talk about rock and roll as some kind of art form at the end of which I would say well, bullshit, because there are more important things than music in this here world of ours and they’re too mellow for my tastes (which they are alotta times but not always) and so on and so forth. Not a chance.

Is that self-parody? See, the question is one of consciousness and I can’t decide. It’s like trying to sort out whether they thought they were making some kind of attempt at emulating him.

But that’s exactly the kind of attraction this record has and, coming off their past record (both with and without Bobby D.) it ain’t quite enough. Sure, “Daniel and the Sacred Harp” seems like a Dylan remnant but then so does “Lola” by the Kinks, only Davies-ed up and that single means way more.

No, this one won’t warm your head the way the other two did and it won’t excite you the way, say, the live “Tom Thumb’s Blues” did. It’ll tease ya and taunt ya but it just won’t ball ya. So at best, this record ain’t fucked but at worst it might be tormenting.

After eleven years, Stage Fright? It don’t hardly make any kind of sense at all.

Dave Marsh

BESSIE SMITH - THE WORLD’S GREATEST BLUES SINGER -COLUMBIA GP 33

It’s very difficult to describe the musician’s lifestyle back in the 30’s, but for the most part it was determined by the sociological problems that afflicted the rest of society. We are accustomed to seeing black and white musicians ‘jamming’ and creating together these days but in Bessie Smith’s era those gatherings took place privately. The later part of the roaring twenties and the first eitht years of the thirties saw an incredible number of lynchings in the south. It was a particularly dangerous time to be black and have expectations.

Bessie Smith, sometimes called the world’s greatest female blues singer was born April 15, 1898 in Chattanooga Tennessee in brutal poverty. Eleven years before brought down a supreme court ruling that the fourteenth amendment and the 1875 civil rights bill were unconstitutional. And the states, both north and south, were making up for lost time in reclaiming what they felt was theirs during the period of reconstruction.

Bessie’s father was a preacher named Moses, who died during Bessie’s first year leaving his wife Laura to feed seven children. She couldn’t do it, and ran herself to death seven years after Bessie Smith’s birth. The children went to live with other relatives and at nine years old she had a street routine worked out that usually brought in a few pennies here and there. Her brother Clarence played guitar while Bessie sang and danced, and it was during this routine she was being scrutinized by some unsavory looking characters.

While out alone in the streets of Chattanooga one night, Bessie was kidnapped. She was hauled in a sack and dumped in front of a heavy-set black woman. The heavy-set woman was called Ma Rainey and she was the top blues singer of her era, a shouter that made enough money during those days to actually have an entire travelling show, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Rainey deduced that anyone walking the streets at night didn’t have a home and if she did have a home, she might have been grabbed anyway. Ma Rainey also recognized talent and figured that there could be money made in this venture. Rainey taught Bessie Smith to sing the blues properly and for a number of years after that they toured together through a circuit consisting of gin mills, small theaters and various honky tonk joints. Bessie Smith was eventually discovered by Frank Walker, a representative of Columbia Records, and in 1923 she cut her first wax disc, for Columbia, “Down Hearted Blues” and “Gulf Coast Blues”. “Down Hearted Blues” was already a hit, but despite that Bessie Smith’s version soid what was estimated as three quarters of a million copies. Unfortunately, there were no such things as royalties in those days; a singer was simply paid an amount to do the job. At her height she commanded a thousand dollars a session in which four sides were cut.

Bessie Smith was not a woman to take life gently; she drank alot, and refused to abide by what many people considered proper carnage for a woman, particularly a black woman. She absolutely refused to go in the back doors of theaters and places she decided to visit, and this also made her hated by white bigots, and they seemed to be everywhere.

In 1929, she appeared in a movie that to this day is banned because of its realism. It was called St. Louis Blues. Bessie sings an extended version of the title song. The movie was never distributed and it still sits in the Museum of Modern Art in Washington D.C.

Shortly before she cut her first hit with Columbia, she met a policeman named Jack Gee who had been wounded in a gun fight with a bona-fide desperado named Bad Sidney. Jack Gee eventually took over as the personal manager of his wife. Bessie Smith fired Frank Walker who discovered her and dismissed him with a shrug. She was making plenty of money and felt that she didn’t need his advice, but Jack Gee was not a manager and realty knew very little about the business. It was a financial disaster and eventually contributed to her decline as a star.

Her career sank to rock bottom and in 1933 John Hammond, a producer for Columbia who also recorded the great Robert Johnson, found her singing pornographic songs for tips in a gin mill in North Philadelphia.

She was constantly drinking and very depressed. She refused to do the blues that made her famous and insisted on doing a series of jazz sides. Her session men included musicians like lack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Chu Berry and Louis Armstrong. They sold fairly well but not enough to return her to stardom.

In 1937 she finally got another chance. She was tutoring with the Silas Green Show and was knocking the crowds out.

But on September 15, near a place called Darling, Mississippi she was going home after a successful show. Her friend, a musician named Richard was driving a Packard and he had been drinking. The car pulled over a hill only to encounter a truck marked “National Biscuit Co.” parked on the road. His reactions were not quick enough and he sideswiped the truck and stalled. He turned to see Bessie drenched with blood. One of her arms was torn off and she was bleeding profusely. He ran down the road shouting for help.

But the only drivers at one o’clock in the morning in Mississippi were white and they were not going to stop for a Blackwoman stained with blood. Eventually a man on his way to a fishing trip stopped and bandaged her arm the best he could. He said he was a doctor, but he neglected to park his car and it was rammed from the rear. Several other people were hurt. It was a long time before another driver showed up and drove for help.

Finally several ambulances arrived. They loaded Bessie and Richard in one and the other passengers who were white in another. They drove ten miles to Claskesdale, Miss, but were refused admittance. Richard jumped from the ambulance screaming, ‘I’ve got Bessie Smith in there, and she’s hurt bad. Please help.’ But they informed him in no uncertain terms that they “just didn’t take niggers there.” They informed the driver that there was a place in the ‘colored’ part of town that they could take her, a combination hospital and funeral parlor. The ambulance took off for the place but by the time they reached there it was too late.

She cut a total of 180 sides for Columbia of which 160 sides are being reissued. The remaining twenty were never released and the master disks were lost. The first two volume set called the Worlds Greatest Blues Singer consists of her very first Columbia sessions and her last jazz sessions. The records are invaluable for an understanding and appreciation of the blues. She has been dead almost forty years and her life is a testimony of what the blues realty evolved from.

Wilson Lindsey

ALSOLUTELY LIVE - THE DOORS - ELEKTRA EKS-9002

Well, if it ain’t hip to like this record, at least it is hipper than, say, Blood Sweat and Tears 3; in fact, the really hip thing to do with this set. is to ignore it, quite convenient for those who’d like to deny the reality that Morrison Hotel forced upon us. Which is simply that the Doors are still here, if you know what I mean.

There are those who tell me that the Doors are not necessary any longer, that Jim Morrison has been replaced by (or never was) the real thing in Iggy Stooge. Even Iggy feels that way, I guess. And for my money, Morrison is not anywhere near either Jagger or Iggy but on the other hand no one else is anywhere Jim Morrison either. He carved out his turf on the Elysian Field of rock a long time ago and nobody is ever going to touch it. 1 would imagine that one would have to be pretty deep into the sexuality of the whole thing (or, admit it, which is a whole other thing, if done honestly) to understand that — simply, Jim Morrison is a unique figure and he’s carved out his territory in rock and roll the same way the Dr. John has done or that Captain Beefheart has or Iggy or Jagger or (if we move into jazz, for a moment) in the way, really that Theolonious Monk, especially, or Charles Mingus or John Coltrane did.

The whole question is, certainly, one of vitality and, I have to come back to this again just like I did with the Morrison Hotel review, the Doors represent a peculiarly Amerikan vitality. It’s not the vitality of the Stones, which is peculiarly British, nor yet that of the Stooges, which is peculiarly Ann Arbor in character and could only have come from there, but it is peculiarly Amerikan in character. What it’s closest to (and when I talked to John Densmore a couple of months ago, he agreed) is that of the Band but it’s as different from them as Woodstock (city not Nation) is from L.A. - a higher energy, not at all laid back and spaced out, like the Band might be, but at just a higher, fuller, less mature and at the same time more fulfilled plane.

I think the Doors’ impact is revolutionary and I think a lot of their most subversive material is the material that is least appreciated by most critics. You know, the old fuse; if Morrison hooks the 14-17 year old set into coming to see him by singing anything (even anything as near-lame as some of the tunes on the Soft Parade album) and then whips out his dick when he has ’em, visually, I can only say right on. It raises an question of male chauvinism, I guess, which I can only defend by saying yes, but.. . The but being that, at the stage of liberation which most of Morrison’s young listeners find themselves, any shove in the right direction is a commendable act.

Then there’s the Doors’ as songwriters. Morrison and Krieger are involved here, primarily, though I think John Densmore’s role, especially, has been underplayed. For one thing, because the Doors have rewritten certain songs (especially “Back Door Man”, which we find here in its most fully developed state) totally and totally redefined them, the same way that, perhaps, the Stones have forever changed “Love In Vain?’ orT more appropriately, “King Bee”. And Densmore leads the way, he drives the sound and controls it. And who’s doing the controlling is the most, important element, as far as I can tell, because when the music of bands like the Doors loses control it’s all through.

Which is to speak of precision orgasm. And to get hung up with what the Doors are really doing, you kind of have to lose sight of some technical precision. When it’s “Five to one, baby, one in five/No one here gets out alive” you begin to see what I mean, especially if you turn it up til it’s loud and sweaty like it’s meant to be.

For me, at least, the Doors will always speak of the revolution as it really is, as it really must be; livin’ it from day to day, with the guns and balling unseparated, a whole thing that can’t be fragmented by any body. “Get together one more time” is a battle cry at a time when we need battle cries, or was when we did, if you’re of the opinion that that time is over. I’m not and to me that “Get together” is a thousand times more efficient than the Beatles (“come together”), or Cocker’s in “Space Captain” or Delaney and Bonnie’s or all the rest.

Again, this record represents Morrison’s real effort at becoming the rock poet. I think it works, if not as poetry, at least as minstrelry - “Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin.” WAKEUP! ... “I mean the game called go insane.”

Let’s face it, or at least let me face it, we’re all obsessed with our own insanity and we’re all striving to get as deep into our own madness as possible. Morrison is as valuable as he is crazy, as valuable as the crazy he lets us be/see. it’s no coincidence that he’s Irish, he speaks with an authority that one finds in Joyce, in Behan, but in few others. Acid-crazed, for sure, but that’s o.k. Morrison is not shucking, his theatrics are the most efficient in rock (more deliberate, less waste motion). Go and see a recent Alice Cooper set, which will sound just about like a circa 1967-68 Doors’ set, and you can see what I mean. When Morrison does it, he does it. No parody, no farce, just stone cold reality in the face of insanity. Or in the face of sanity, I don’t know the difference anymore.

I want to save the rest of what might be said about Jim Morrison as a sexual figurehead for a later essay but it should be clear what his symbols and his riffs are by now. (And I don’t mean riffs derogatorily, either, just that they can be construed that way.)

For the rest, I’d rather talk about the Doors in the context of the live music that is presented here, with the show largely missing. In a lot of instances, this record’s audiences remind me of those on Kick Out the Jams or the Live in Detroit Stones’ bootleg — that is, they’re all getting off equally on one another, the energy is not the one way energy of so many groups but rather the audience feeds the performer and vice-versa.

Now in that sense, this is easily the most successful live recording released this summer, more-so than Woodstock (save for Sly), more-so by far than the Who and, as much as one might love the dude, more-so, incredibly more-so than Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Which leads me to believe that the Doors aren’t quite as dead as it is, apparently, hip to believe they are.

Morrison, anyway, is the key to this record, just as he always is the key to the Doors, He’s not the whole show, not by any means, but he epitomizes exactly why a number of people can’t relate to the Doors anymore. And that is because, I think, that they’ve really matured, they’re really professional and they really DO IT and they do it consistently. Morrison is a colossal leader of the youth of Amerika down a wayward path, in all senses, and as much as he might hate that role, he fulfills it admirably.

And that very sense of maturity, which is kind of strange when you consider that the crux of Amerikan rock stardom (viewed as distinctly separate from British rockdom) has been a certain Peter Pan quality, lends that easy comparison with the Band as the most Amerikan of groups. But where the Band got mellow and less mad in their maturity, Morrison’s maturity (and that of Krieger, Densmore and, l think, Manzarek to a lesser extent) has merely mellowed their madness and made them more adept at it.

Where the Band merely got tighter and tighter, the Doors got tighter and at the same time looser, even sloppy in a lot of places on this record. You can weave an entire cosmology around rock and roll these days, and Morrison is definably the Father as sure as Mick Jagger is the wayward Son, sent to deliver us all into darkness, and Iggy is the ethereal Holy Ghost. And Krieger is to Robbie Robertson exactly what Morrison is to those two; the one who can be ignored but when he’s there, it’s reassuring.

Manzarek still seems a good-time youngster and Densmore the steady rock, both key to the Doors but neither as essentially necessary as Jim and Robbie. Morrison understands that perfectly, especially in a little book called “An American Prayer” that he has published recently (apparently independently):

“Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages,

Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests . . .

We have assembled inside this ancient & insane theatre To propagate our lust for life & flee the swarming wisdom of the streets”

That says more about why the Doors are liver than you’ll ever be than anything i could tell you. Perhaps pretentiously, though I don’t think so, just well-stated, well-thought-out.

Yes, yes, they’re still the most Amerikan band, because they understand Amerikan youth better than anyone else. One more thing from “American Prayer”:

(When the true Kings’s murderer’s are allowed to roam free a 1000 Magicians arise in the land)” We’d do well not to ignore them and call them obsolete.

Dave Marsh

TASTE - TASTE - ATCO

ON THE BOARDS - TASTE - ATCO

With the exception of Them (featuring Van Morrison), who had a couple of hits circa 1965, Ireland has not been known for turning out too many top rock acts.

Taste is a group which hails from that land of shamrocks and four leaf clovers, bringing with them a sound reminiscent of Ten Years After but still uniquely their own.

Rory Gallagher is the group’s leader; he might be described as an Irish Jimmy Page, to whom he bears a striking resemblance. He handles ail vocals, lead guitar, harp, alto sax and wrote all the material on their second album, along with most of the first.

Taste, their first lp, is simply basic blues with a couple of heavier rock numbers thrown in. Gallagher handies the vocals competently, while John Wilson on drums and Richard McCracken on bass provide a solid backing.

It’s on their second release. On the Boards, that they really shine. The set opens with “What’s Going On”, Rory’s guitar double-tracked on a fluid rocktune.

A steady very predictable bluesy rocker “Railway and Gun” follows and then Gallagher really turns it on with “It’s Happened Before, It’ll Happen Again”.

Although Gallagher indicates how fast he really is on guitar, he doesn’t resort to Alvin Lee speed freak riffs to prove it. His restraint, along with some bass work that walks right through the entire number, makes this one of the finest jazz stylings I’ve ever heard put down by a rock band.

The last cut on the side is the most commercial, with a driving guitar line that’s repeated throughout the song. A little heavy for AM radio, maybe, but if Led Zeppelin can push a million plus copies of a 45 why not these guys?

The title cut, “On the Boards”, is probably the top track, with subdued guitar and alto sax solos by Gallagher. The song is very effective in creating a mood of someone who is down and out, or on the boards.

“See Here” is also very moody, as Gallagher turns down the amps for an acoustic effect. The volume is back on “I’ll Remember”, with a pounding bass and , drums backing Gallagher’s jazz-rock lead. Rory joins Lee and Johnny Winter as one of the few rockers who attempt to sing note for note with their guitar and manage to pul), it off.

In the few short months that I’ve had to listen to their albums, Taste have proven temselves to be both talented and tasteful, seemingly a rare combination in these days of stais like Lord Sutch. Give Taste a listen and find out where rock will probably be in a couple of years.

Andy Mellen

THE LAST POETS - DOUGLAS 3.

Black poetry is revolutionary poetry. It speaks of an experience that is different from that which you come across in most academic .(white) poetry. That experience is the Black experience, the daily hopes and frustrations of Black people. And in these times the Black experience is a revolutionary one, and Black men of Tetters are responding to this experience in their writing.

The Last Poets is Black poetry_on record. This poetry is typical of much work found in Black literary journals, and in the work of such poets as Don L'. Lee and Sonia Sanchez. The poetry was written to be read aloud to be fully appreciated. As in all good poetry, reading it aloud brings out the rhythm of the verses and in this case the rhythms are the speech rhythms of Black people. Reading of the verses in this rhythm, with drums and chant-echo-scream background vocals, gives the poems a musical feeling (a Black music-al feeling, of course). But the music of this poetry isn’t the most important part of the record. The most important part of the record is not how the poetry is read, but what the .poetry says.

And what does this poetry say? Well to begin, the Last Poets speak of revolution. They are talking to those of us who are still waiting for a revolution and don’t know that it is charging down our throats:

“When the revolution comes Some of us’ll probably catch it on TV

With chicken hanging from our mouths

You’ll know it’s revolution Because there won’t be no commercials”

And there are some people among us who are “romantic revolutionaries” who think revolution is a baseball game, or that it’s like But

revolution is war, and some of us might not live through it,'or:

“Some might even die Before the revolution comes”

All' of us who are ' would be revolutionaries should keep in mind that people die in revolutions, and that you,.or I, might be one of them. But some of us might even listen to this record. We might hear the words, but not listen to them. And after all they are only words. Weapons of the mind or, as Don L. Lee says'“I ain’t never' seeirno poems stop a bullet”.

But there are other things in -life besides revolutions. Poets have always glorjfied the loves in their lives; and one of the primary positive aspects of Black poetry is its glorification of the Black woman, of Black love:

“Black thighs loving ME!

Whew! Do it! Whew! Do it! Ooh Black thighs holdin’ me Ooh Black thighs doin’ a job to me Possibly one of the greatest jobs of a Black poet would be to educate. To tell Black people who and where they are:

“Niggers are scared of revolution But niggers shouldn’t be scared of revolution

Because revolution is nothing but change.”

Some people will not like this, record. They might not like it because it says too much, or not enough. Well, too bad for them. Some people will think this, record is a hype. If this record was made just to exploit the New Black Poetry, then it backfired. If anything, it should advance the purpose of the movement . Personally I can give you only two words regarding this record. Buy it. Geoffrey Jacques A BEARD OF STARST Y RANNOSAURIS REX-BLUE THUMB BTS 18

I really liked this group’s first American record {Unicom, Blue Thumb BTS 7) and when they played over here, they were really, really excellent, despite being second billed to the Turtles. Unfortunately, a lot of the magic is gone out of this record, replaced by a kind of cuteness that is damn near offensive.

It might be the amplification, newly found in Marc Bolan’s music for the most part, and it might also be the fact that his lyricism and vocal riffing simply aren’t as suitable here as they were on Unicom. Assuredly, there are few moments here that are anywhere near as interesting as, say, “Chariots of Silk”, ‘The Seal of Seasons” or “Catblack” from that record. “Fist Heart Might Dawn Dart” holds some interest if only for its catchy chorus but “Pavilions of Sun” sounds like a sacchrine Donovan ode, with the added insult of some senseless wah-wah. Where before “Organ Song” would have been a magical song of real delight now it is merely pretentious and a mite simpy; my god, I haven’t changed that much, have I?

“By the Light of A Magical Moon” seems like a Donovan tune, and Donovan has always represented to me exactly the kind of trap Bolan’s tunes cpuld most easily fall into; previously they hadn’t but now they do. Pretentious, precious a n d oh-so-pretty ... ugh!

Of the rest, “Great Horse” is listenable, “Dragon’s Ear” rhythmically interesting, “Elemental Child” sounds. like y slowed down Robert Plant mind-come. All in all, this record is flatulent, fatuous, and generally pretty, boring.

I wanted magic aftth got pretension. You can’t have everything but oh, shit, Unicom is so much nicer; yes, Aretha, the thrill is gone.

Dave Marsh

SUNFLOWER-THE BEACH BOYS-BROTHER/REPRISE 6382

The Beach Boys have come through the psychedelic age like feathers out of an exploding pillow. The group is just fluttering to the ground, softly touching down here and there with narry a noise to notice, along with a mediocre album called “Sunflower”.

This first album on their own Brothers label — distributed through Reprise — starts off with some drive, but not much. The first five songs on side one are filled with single key piano beats clinking behind other cute little 1960 recording tricks such as voices going “om-dum-diddee ” as well as oohs and ahs. This is the Beach Boy’s style but we all thought they’d passed that up with their hit “Good Vibrations”.:

If you’ve never been a Beach Boy fan it’s difficult to understand why everyone talks about the genius of Brian Wilson. All it seems to be, to the un-Beached ear, is a lead singer using trite words or going “auwWww” through his nose while the “dum-diddees” fill in the empty-spots. “Good Vibrations” was a recording masterpiece and a break from the Wilson way. It reportedly took them six months to put the one song together. The Beatles, for example, could have done a whole album of songs equal in calibre to “Vibrations” in the same period of time... Where does that leave. Wilson?

Appropriately enough, “Sunflowers” tightens up a bit with a song, called “It’s About Time”. On this tune the straining lead voice is there but the words are somewhat intelligent ahd the production jumps up to a professional level. As a result of. busy bongos clutching around a solid up-tempo drum beat and a light bass trying to keep up with a loud but controlled guitar, a good rock tune drives but at you. The “dum-diddees” have been replaced with horns and you get the feeling the song had been worked on before they recorded, for a change:

The rest of the album, which means all of side two, generally follows that scheme. The drive is watered down some and at times The Beach Boys use their infamous falsetto combined with a soft lead voice and a lilting orchestra to almost leave the. world of rock. Middle of the road radio stations could make use of many of the album’s, songs. The group often sounds like the Four Freshman, the act they based their surfing music on eight or nine years ago. There’s the four part harmony with a predominant falsetto voice and the orchestrated musip. The un-intricate single beat piano is there, as always.

The album ends with a, Brian Wilson-Mike Love composition called “Cool, Cool, Water”* A bass voice lays the foundation and the falsetto and soft background voices alternate to build but then fade into sounds of great, ocean waves crashing on to the shore. Moaning voices come right out of the waves then we end up back at the be ginn ing. And, of course, the one-note piano’s still in there.

Mike Gormley TIMOTHY LEARY - YOU CAN BE ANYTHING THIS TIME AROUND -DOUGLAS 1

Tins time around you can live in the decrepit building of Theodore, in the shadow of the magnificent Ait; Institute, this time around...this time around * you can be an ADC mother whose child has barely'enough to wear, let alone eat, this time around...this time around you can emotionally hurt,, (pain) yourself because you look strange, this time around...this time around you can be a nigger and party your ass off to forget the reality Of your situation, this time around ...this time' around you can be a long haired white dude, clinging to your friends" for identity, this time around...this time around what is wrong with j» Amerika, what is wrong with the * people around you, will drive you to FRUSTRATION, to where you’ll either probably consider carrying a gun, or be put away (hospital, jail) this _ time around...this time around, this time around, Tim Leary speaks of. the glory, the alternatives available through acid consciousness...a prophet? No! ’ Cause he doesn’t seem to realize that this time around we are desparate and we need to touch, 'the power, the strength.

Leary is just selling another brand of wine, a Gallo Nirvana, where ecstaey is the goal and those poor children on Theodore no longer exist.

Leary is beautiful. Dig? Leary is high, Leary has reached a new level of consciousness, Leary has the answer, LeaTy ...Leary means little to those of us who are concerned. I am concerned.

Richard Walls

{Efl. Note: for Richard and the rest of us disillusioned with Brother . Leary’s ' . seeming naivete» his escape and subsequent re-definition of^ the proper approach to the proper means of attaining cosmic consciousness on the planet (s$e page J2) must come as equal parts of--surprise, re-assuarance and inspiration Right, as they say, on -to both Walls and Leary.) 1

LOLA THE KINKS - REPRISE 0930

Ray Davies writes the best songs in the world. “Lola” is the kind of tune Bob Dylan would be writing if he were still with us. The music is nothing short of incredible and that’s real important up front because you’re going to ignore it a lot.

“Lola” who drinks a lot of “cherry cola” (it was gonna be “Coca Cola” til they ran into brand-name censorship problems) is a transvestite, a fag, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She takes the singer home (is this a true-to-life saga or is it merely a fantasy?) and I fell to the floor/I got down on my knees/I looked at her and she at me”. And finally, “Girls will be boys/And boys will be girls/It’s a mixed-up, hung-up, shook up world ...”

Davies nearly lisps his way through the tune, which extends to four minutes primarily on the basis of an over-extended ending, a piece of remarkable stupidity. They’re having enough trouble getting this played without the added hassle of length.

But this is just great rock and roll, the chorus (Well, I’m not the world’s most passionate guy/But I’m glad/I’m a man and so’s Lola”) is lovely in every way. It advances the cause of Gay Liberation in several different ways, out of the closets/into the recording studio, as it were.

I’ve seen both Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and “Lola” does more in four minutes than either of those two do in two hours.

God Bleth the Kinkth

Zeeman

IN THE SUMMERTIME - MUNGO JERRY - JANUS 125

Richard Robinson tells me that the whole Mungo Jerry album, which I have somehow missed hearing (at least cognitively), is like this, one Jesse Fuller rip-off after another. And for those of you who don’t know who Jesse Fuller is, you undoubtedly know his “San Francisco Bay Blues”. Fuller, a San Franciscan one-man-band is kind of to Duster Bennett what Luther Allison is to John Mayall.

And similarly, Mungo Jerry is to AM radio what Ten Years After is to EM. That is, the reflection of the least common denominator theory of everything, which states (basically) that if you can make it totally inane, you can not only get it played, you can probably get it on TV.

Somehow, that absolute paucity of anything exciting or relatable beyond the mere superfluity of their spontaniety upsets (even enrages) me no end. One has the feeling that Mungo Jerry isn’t quite the accident we’d like to think it is.

And after all, there is precedent — or have we all forgotten “Winchester Cathedral” so soon. Me, I like Jesse Fuller (who has an album on Prestige, I think) the same way I like Tiny Tim, the obvious analogous situation to “Winchester”. It’s about time we started spotting the high level bizarre and leaving this limp shit to those who are totally uncluttered with taste, good sense or even integrity.

By the way. Jesse Fuller is black. Dig it?

Dave Marsh