WHERE I’M COMING FROM - STEVIE WONDER - TAMLA T5308

This album is an atrocious bore so far. I’m a minute and a half into the first cut "Look Around” and it’s just hard to take. The lyrics aren’t so bad, really, but the background sounds like a bloody McCartney album.

In the past few months, I was feeling that Motown had gotten back to Godhead and to real soul music. The Miracles had come out with two .straight thumpers, “Tears Of A Clown” an obscure, two year old album cut, and “I Don’t Blame You At All”. Edwin Starr, for all his psychedelia, was still a stomper on wax, his “WAR” completely wiped out the Temptations original. Brenda and the Tabulations came out with “Right On the Tip Of My Tongue.” The Jackson Five put out the most beautiful single of the year in “Never Can Say Goodbye,” and even the single preceding Stevie’s “We Can Work It Out”, “Signed Sealed And Delivered,” was a good mid-sixties thumper; All that plus my Golden Oldies weekends filled with the recently departed “What Does IT Take” by Junior Walker & the All-Stars and any of the Jackson Five singles that I had come to tolerate and then to love, all that made me. one of the happiest dudes on earth (next to Vince Aletii of course). However I just couldn’t hack this album. I can’t quite put my finger on it, it’s not bad, music, really, it’s just, wimpy? Naw. It just isn’t!

All the songs are Wonder orignals (henceforth Where I’m Coming From) and (again) they aren’t bad, but they are out of context. Most of the songs sound like soundtracks to a Burton-Taylor movie, but I like the soundtracks to most Burton-Taylor movies but not from here. What I really want is IT. And if you can’t get it from Motown, where can you get it from?'

Richard Allen Pinkston IV

SKY’S THE LIMIT - THE TEMPTATIONS - GORDY GS957

Motown has endless vitality, and a large part of that vitality may have a direct relationship with the company’s very penchant for absolute crassness. Ever since David Ruffin, left, the Temptations have been on almost schizoid parallel courses, setting each fresh platter on a sometimes precarious balance between further definitions in their tradition of immaculately wistful ballads and their new style of sock-’em chart vaulters with their trendy distortion, baroque Sly-isms, nearly hilarious echoes of the 1967 white drug rock fad, and increasing penchant for the extended cut that purists or cynics might begin to call album-filler. Cloud 9 was one of their all-time great LPs, with “Run Away Child,” “Grapevine,” and the title classic wisely segregated by side from seven lush arrangements in the clastic mould. Puzzle People was nearly as good, but suffered by a track-to-track unevenness that its predecessor escaped.

By the Psychedelic Shack album they were broaching self-parody. “War (What Is It Good -For)” was funny and terrific, but the title (semi) hit, if not a joke outright, was simply not very inventive music, and the longuns like “Friendship Train,” though decent listening most anytime, seemed like mere piddle in the shadow of the mighty “Run Away Child”.

The essential problem was that the best of the new style, gimmicked though it might be, reflected the collective experience of theblack nation withstark veracity, it was Socio-Psychological Soul that really worked and was mostly free of pretension, while the later chaff like “Psychedelic Shack” was just contrivance sprinkled occasionally with newsy slogans and the breastbeatings of sheer hoke indignation, like cops from old P.F. Sloane and Eric Burdon songs. At its best, this resulted in “War,” which at least was sidewalk-solid as a sound; at its worst it maundered the mighty Tempts off in a “Ball of Confusion.”

Thankfully, they seem to be coming ‘round in ’71. Sky’s the Limit is their best set since Cloud,9 and one of the most beautiful and architecturally pristine pieces of work yet this year. The familiar dichotomy holds, and the spaceouts are longer than they’ve ever been — one runs 9 minutes and “Smilling Faces Sometimes” clocks in at a record 12:35 — but the jacked-up jive has scrammed, leaving all that was strong - in the whole concept of long cuts and the fresh realization of potentials in them perhaps not even previously suspected.

But it would be a mistake to zero in on the innovations there while ignoring the greatness of the latest excursions into the time-tested Tempts ballad style. “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” just happens to be one of the greatest Tempts hits in all of recorded history, a real love song that’ll make you think of your own girl and sigh for sure, whether she be cross town at work or 2000 miles away like mine is, or send you into reveries of future and past if you don’t have a love just now. It has that kind of universality, a quality of reverence that’s heartfelt and not at all strained, one of those rare love songs that talks about absolute devotion in terms not of subjection and jealousy but with dignity, the strength of the true natural victory over separation. Even if the song does bear a suggestion that the hero may be rhapsodizing over a girl he in fact doesn’t have, you still feel that no matter what the final facts of the current situation he’s at least halfway toward the attainment of the object , of his desires. His dreams are that strong. I don’t mean to make it sound like some wimpy pickaninny second cousin to Love Story — this is one instance of a song that is truly sweet without coming close to the saccharine, not a drop ofqueasy mush, and in that too it is mighty mighty rare. And the arrangement is simply gorgeous, one of Motown’s greatest triumphs in many a moon.

The other sweet bands are nearly as affecting. A measure of their persuasiveness, I suppose, is that this is the first time I’ve felt myself truly involved with and able to relate without qualification to what they call Sweet Soul music. Getting behind songs like “Ooh Child Things Are Gonna Get Brighter” and “La La Means I love You”, though they might have been great singles, was always an effort for me. I had to consciously put myself into their context to even begin to forget about turning the dial. But the ballads here are all absolutely inviting, easy to get into right away and substantial enough both in music and (usually) verbal content to keep you coming back again and again. One reason for that may be that, in both 'their structure and orchestration, they tend to bring sanguine reminders of more familiar styles to me-from across the tracks. “Throw a Farewell Kiss” is the best example — it stood out and stuck in the mind immediately, but it wasn’t until about the fifth listening that I realized the closeness of its melody and general sound to parts of Astral Weeks (specifically, “Cyprus Avenue”). It has the same sense of near-awesome spaciousness, a perfect piano intro as heartbreakingiy pure as an old Ray Charles benediction like “Sweet 16 Bars,” and a melancholy violin part near the end that is extremely close in the very succession of notes to that swooping bowed-string solo in “Cyprus Avenue.”:£

The two epics of Sky’s the Limit are more lyrically incisive than anything since “Run Away Child,” and sail out on equally brilliant arrangements that eschew all the quasi-acid gunk for something very like soul symphonies, if the associations of such a phrase are not too offensive. In sheer terms of sustaining themselves through all those minutes, they cut even “Child.” The fuzz guitars are still there, but build into large and mightily driving ensembles that deliver a constantly shifting vortex of instruments and tonal colors, resulting, in a sonic arena that can only be called vast, an oceanic sense of sailing out and alternately bathing and rushing aheadin tides and waves of sheer sound. If “soul symphony” is too easily tripped over, calling it the soul equivalent of an exceptionally dynamic . mqvie soundtrack is probably as misleading, thought equally applicable. You have simply got.to experience it.

“Smiling Faces Sometimes” is the real masterpiece — a perfect 12-minute marriage of epic sound and acidulous commentary that suggests brilliant new directions for Motown. The exultation of-“Love Can Be Anything” has turned to a rhythmic : tension that’s simultaneously almostfrustrating and ultimately addictive. The words are worthy of the best of Dylan, but without his elaborate safaris' into imagery; this is pared-to-bone street truth: “Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies...Beware of the pat on the back/ It just might hold you back...Your enemy won’t do you no harm/ Cause you know where he’s cornin’ from...”: _

I keep thinking of: Malcolm X saying that he preferred white politicians like Goldwater to the good intentions of all the solicitous liberals like Kennedy and Johnson, because with Goldwater he always knew exactly where he stood, that he was dealing with an adversary who could afford to be honest rather than a bureaucrat gloving self-serving chicaneries in the patronizing hand extended. I don’t know if the authors had anything like that in nind, but the wisdom of the song extends its pertinence across all sorts of levels, right down to the one where you and I sniff each other put and try to win each other with courtesies and affable words. It’s a great, great song.

And the arrangement is such that the most applicable word seems to be “grandeur” — moving through subtly bitter guitar and muted trumpet strings arching towards the sun and swooping down ominously into gulleys of distrust. A total wash of sound, replete with the pacing and cinematic brilliance that can conjure montages of personal images each time you sink into its swirling imperatives. If the whole idea of psychedelic music, of sonic trip as vision hasn’t been exploited and rehammered to the point of total emptiness, it must be called ironic that in giving up the superficial trappings of “psychedelia” the Teihpts and Motown have gotten into something as close as any music ever heard to the true and primal sense of the term.

This album came straight out of left field, I’d all but forgotten about Motown as a force for anything but AM meat-and-potatoes, and it captured me like no other single record I’ve heard yet this year. Having found it, I need it now as badly as I need my Mingus albums and Astral Weeks and White Light/White Heat and other life-sustaining collections even further afield. Buy it right away - it might well do the same for you.

Lester Bangs

MAYfiE TOMORROW - JACKSON FIVE -MOTOWN MS 735

From the very first moment I heard the pre-pubic voice of Michael Jackson, I made up my mind to hate the Jackson Five, and stood fast despite the temptation of the incredible bass under-rhythm in “Stop! The Love You Save” and all the way through their remake of the Miracles’ “Who’s Loving You” and “I’ll Be There,” certainly as beautiful as any of the “other sides” of file Temptation’s 45’s that we used to “social” to in junior high.

Well, I just couldn’t resist “Never Can Say Goodbye”: not at all. My God, it’s the most beautiful simplistic poetry I’ve ever heard. Anyone who can’t recognize that has never been to a party where his girlfriend’s mother comes to pick her up exactly at 11:00 just as you’ve finally convinced Cheryl’s parents to go to bed and you’ve turned out all the lights except one (this was before candles) and you’re desperately trying to catch that last feel. Issac Hayes, who’s also released a version of this, doesn’t match it-by a long shot. I mean Issac Hayes was never 14. Never. Can you imagine Issac Hayes at 14? Fourteen? Besides if you’re Issac Hayes, Notorious Consenting Adult, you don’t have to say goodbye!

To say that the musicianship on this album is superb would simply be redundant once you’ve said that it’s from Motown. After “Never Can Say Goodbye,” the star of side one is unquestionably the title tune “Maybe Tomorrow” with its beautifully underplayed flute in the intro and the sitar solo. This one would be the perfect follow-up to “Never Can Say Goodbye” — besides, I’m sure it’s Marlon who’s taking the lead in this. I’d always dug Jermaine’s voice most of all; but Marlon’s is incredibly pure.

“16 Candles” is the land of tune groups with names like the Magnificents and the Royal Precisibntones would have come out with. It’s a classic from that era of one shot hits and sequins.

Before I had gone through the rest of Side Two I wanted to hear what they had done with “Honey Chile” which was one. of the last Of Martha and the Vandellas’ major hits. However, I wasn’t prepared for what I heard. The thing starts out with a lazy harmonica and a blasted rooster corwing after which Michael comes in and with a molasses-soaked voice tells you about “Grandma’s farm, Where the grapes grew high on the vine”. It’s beautiful.

It’s a damn classy album, too. Authentic and. jam-packed with style and flair. Unlike some other recent Motown releases, I think I’m gonna be listening to this one for a long time.

Richard Allen Pinkston IV

THE MOTOWN STORY: THE FIRST DECADE - MOTOWN - MS 728

The Motown story is the classic tale of bizarro Amerikan dreamhood realized, with the usual cozmic twist — Berry Gordy’s black, and it happened in the scrotum of the continent, Detroit. Motor City mechanization shines through all these tunes anyway, you couldn’t miss the fact that it came from Detroit even if you know some of the later portions of it were done down in L.A.

The way I got it doped out, your hip is up, here. Either you like Motown or ya don’t. If you don’t like ’em, and it’s because they’re black bourgeoise, score two; if ya like ’em cause they ARE black bourgeoise; score two. Three points if you like ’em because they have a lot of hit records and therefore are representing something, somehow. Four points if you don’t like ’em cause they’re too gauche in both tjieir psychedelic and supper-club tiendishness. The big winners are: Five if you like it cause it sounds good (always a winner) and one if you don’t like it cause it’s unrepresented on either Woodstock Two or the local FM.

Either way, you lose because this Motown Story deal is a colossal rip-off; it lacks a lot of the tunes that should be here and has no less than 14 cuts by Diana Ross and/or the Supremes. Plus, it was made for radio stations to play, thus the horrible segues that fuck it up for at-home pleasure. Buy some 16 Greatest Hits albums and you’ll do better. (It’s only good for what Vince Aletti says it is good for; if you are ever put in a position where you can only have one record — if God dumps you on a desert island and says “pick”; like the backjabber he is, choose this. It’s the only five, record set around — but if you can have two, take this and Woodstock, you can have Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix AND the Temptations and meditate upon where it comes from. And it’%eight, which is better than if you took Miracles From the Beginning.)

like any record that pretends to be a big deal, the logical response is SO WHAT???

Dave Marsh

TAPESTRY - CAROLE KING - ODE SP 77009

Carole King is living proof that Tin Pan Alley wasn’t necessarily a dead end street. Her new LP is clearly among the best released this year.

The apprenticeship she endured in the early 60’s in a NY composer’s cubicle (writing the music for formula tunes like Bobby Vee’s “Take Good Care of my Baby” and — oh ray — Steve Lawrence’s “Go Away Little Girl”) was worth it. No matter how much we all had to suffer through it. Not only did she and her (now ex-) husband, Gerry Goffin, make money, they also wrote a few really dandy numbers. Remember “Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad About My Baby”, “Up on the Roof’ and “WiH You Love Me Tomorrow’’? But that’s not all. More importantly she used the opportunity to learn her song well. If you know what I mean.

Now, in the 70’s, Carole is still a young veteran who is ready to stand out front and sing on her own. Her first Ode LP, Writer hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Tapestry, however will solve that problem because it’s beautiful. Simply beautiful. Everything about it is right.

The twelve songs display a dynamic simplicity of spirit otherwise lamentably missing ftom contemporock. (7Is the gift to be simple.) Thee arrangements, perfectly , mixed, are crisp and light. And the side men run through their chores like lovers (new old man Charles Larkey, Russ Kunkel, Danny Kootch, and James Taylor). Plus a little vocal help from the likes of James, Merry Clayton, and Joni Mitchell.

Five songs, including “Smackwater Jack”, “A Natural Woman” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, were written in conjunction with either Goffin or Toni Stem. The other seven are all her own. “I Feel the Earth Move” and “Way Over Yonder”, especially, prove that she can string words as well as notes together.

We always knew she could play fine piano, but it’s her magnificent phrasing that does it for certain. Carole’s voice has an easy emotional understanding that brings it all back home where Tapestry belongs. Like on “Will You Love Me Tommorrow” when she sings “So tell me now and I won’t ask again”; you know she knows.

And, “A Natural Woman.” You thought Aretha did the definitive version? Well, she does do her version. But Carole’s, in its own way, is just as good, honest and moving.

All in all, Carole King is one of the most pleasant musical arrivals of 1971,, Without being heavy or particularly up-tempo — except on “Smackwater Jack” with its all-time line, “On the whole it was a very good year for the undertaker” — Tapestry comes in at the top of the rock pile.

Jack Hafferkamp

CHARLES MINGUS PRESENTS THE CHARLES MINGUS QUARTET -BARNABY Z 30561

TOWN HALL CONCERT - CHARLES MINGUS - FANTASY JWS9

Charles Mingus is probably the greatest bassist in the world and doubtless one of the most emotionally tempestuous writers and performers anywhere, and I’m leapin’ outa my brogans for joy because after over half a decade in relative seclusion with ho new records out he’s suddenly come storming back this Spring with not one but two new albums which are so cosmic that it matters not a shoeshine that one is a reissue of an album from ’61 and the other recorded in the very early Sixties. Because the reissue is one of his and jazz’ alltime long-lost masterpieces, and the other is just beautiful, engulfing music. What’s , more, he’s back with us again now, even played Mayday in D.C., so he should have new revelations on our turntables within the year, but don’t just wait because these are the real thing, searing black music hurtling from a battered but never beaten giant straight into America’s culturally deprived breadbasket. Charles Mingus Presents the Charles Mingus Quartet was originally released in 1961 on the bold but brief Candid label, and is a real must item if ever there was one because it’s probably the finest excursion ever conducted by Mingus with a small band. And what a band! Longtime rockribbed foundation Dannie Richmond drumming, the late Ted Cur on' just blooming with all the trumpet promise erased in tragedy, and even later and more lamented Eric Dolphy, the most thoroughly musicianly and universally respected reedman of our time, at the peak of his form.

The set starts off as peak energy level with “Folk Form, No. One,” a supercharged piece with a rare sly rhythm that comes at you from odd angles, each member of the quartet playing off the others’ bent notes and sprung riffs, escalating into a wild jam infused with the gleeful heart of jive.

The rest of the album is equally intriguing, if not such a total rush. The old standard “All the Things You Are” is Mingus-mutated and emerges as “All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was our Mother,” and “Original Faubus Fables” is a sardonic comment on the personalities behind the power in America, with an acidulous Mingus vocal, but it is “What Love” which may well be the album’s pinnacle. Based rather loosely on “What Is This Thing Called Love,” the piece moves from melancholy ensemble and solo statements into a stunning sequence where Mingus and Dolphy play melbdy, key and time signatures aside and talk to each other with their instruments. The conversation is electrifying: Mingus is angry, tearing Painful epithets out, but Dolphy replies with the most moving deep-drawn croon as if soothing and posing an alternative to Mingus’ rage with all the compassion and gentle lucidity that , was the hallmark of the man. Dolphy’s horn, always the nearest to human speech. of any of his musical contemporaries,. was here at its most vocal ever. Nothing quite like those moments has ever been recorded anywhere else.

The Town Hall Concert album is a bit misleading. At first glance it appears to be yet, another repackaging of Mingus’ famous 1962 concert in New York’s Town Hall; what it really is, though, is a previously-unavailable recording of an early-Sixties concert in Minneapolis with Mingus fronting a sextet again spotlighting Eric Dolphy. It’s a fine recording, on a par with all but a few of Mingus’ other albums, though the track titles are as misleading as the album’s. “So Long Eric” is a familiar Mingus composition whose original title escapes me just now (I think it has had at least two other titles on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus and older albums), and “Praying With Eric” is really the celebrated “Meditations,” which created a sensation at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival and was Mingus’ last major statement before going into his long obscurity. Certainly it is One of his most broodingly angry pieces — the doleful melody curls in via Dolphy flute over an insistent, agitatedly rhythmic riff by the other horns, then moves for 27 minutes through several stages of rage, sorrow and yearning, a volatile marriage of gospel blues and dark minor modes suggestive of Spanish and Asian music. It’s one of the fiercest pieces of music you’ll ever hear in or out of jazz, and one of the best sustained of the extremely long recorded performances some jazz titans came to favor in the Sixties.

Get both records; they’re very distinct from each other and serve as an introduction to Mingus as fine as any save The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady or maybe the two Columbia LPs (and while Columbia is into repackages and reissues, how about new, well-promoted editions of Mingus Dynasty and Mingus Ah-Um?) No artist around makes more rewarding or deeply-felt music; Mingus must be .heard now and tomorrow, and deserves the wide recognition that is now entirely possible perhaps even more than Miles and Pharoah did. If you can only afford one of the sets... flip a coin.

Lester Bangs

FRIENDS - ELTON JOHN - PARAMOUNT

What, you may well ask, is the handsome young English balladeer doing writing the score to a movie? The explanation lies down in the network of underground laboratories situated under Peter Max’s sweatshops in Culver City. Elton John was constructed there, Sunder the watchful eye of plant supervisor Rod McKuen, of the heartstring tug division, P. Max Inc. The brains up in planning and distribution had decided that heavy metal music had just about run it’s course, and a whole market of soft elegiac rock was just waiting to be exploited.

The boy’s instrument was to be the piano, the fabled ax of Chopin, and at times, Dylan. The violin was considered for a time, but was nixed by Rod himself, although an entire string orchestra was kept in reserve, pending the movie deal.

Just before the model was ready for production, disaster struck when a rival firm released a concoction entitled James Taylor, and got a jump on P. Max Inc. It’s one of the curses of Capitalism, that no one firm can exist without competition in any field, and so it came to pass that two singing automations were released on the airways, in the same fiscal year.

An independent testing firm examined both models, and found that the E. John was more advanced, although certain structural defects were observed.

“Subject was observed to produce excess salinity, when played for more than one side, indicating a defective lachrymose valve which could damage the record player.” — P.35 sub par. 2.

Even more disturbing, the testing firm found that the subject seemed to be. totally without any observable originality. “Subject was played extensively on the Name That Tune show, whereupon, the contestants spent all night guessing such diverse talents as a Robbie Robertson solo, an Aaron Copeland Western operetta, a Howard Hansen symphony, a Van Morrison number, an underground Dylan tape, and an endless stream of others without once guessing the true maker.” — P. 67, sub par. 5(a), & 5(c) inclusive.

Nevertheless, P. Max Inc. felt that they had a winner on their hands, and swung into full production. The response was phenomenal! E. John quickly went to fill the void left by the Simon & Garfunkle organization and, a couple of albums later, the Hollywood Movie interests actually closed the deal, and John made his first movie score. One of the laws of Capitalism is, “A stone left unturned, can trip up the company.” Truly shrewd advice for the P. Max execs.

This was to be a package deal. The movie was to promote the automaton, and the automaton was to sing about the movie. It was even agreed that the string orchestra would be used. Quickly, before all their fingers would have a chance to become arthritic through lack of use. Top level discussions determined that emotion and nostalgia was to be the expressed selling point for the project.

When the album finally came out the name Elton John was firmly enblazoned on a pink cover above a used still from the, Borneo and Juliet movie, and the appropriate title Friends underneath. What the movie could he about is impossible to say, because nothing is written about it on the album. The movie hasn’t been released yet, at least where I live, and so consequently, the score, music is dripping emotion to no motivating object. I keep wanting to reach, for a hanky but I never can figure out why. I guess I am just another victim of automation.

Rob Houghton

STONEGROUND - WARNER BROTHERS 1895

“Jeez,” says a friend, looking through last week’s copy of Billboard, “even Billboard’s got Stoneground pegged. Listen to this: ’Stoneground has a lot of advance publicity to live up to, and in light of their first LP the predictions may have been somewhat inflationary, although there’s no denying the potential for excitement here.’ ” A lot of advance publicity, indeed. Every notice Stoneground got in the press, from the moment they hit the road with the infamous caravan, got reproed and sent to everybody on Wamer/Reprise’s mailing list. In the eight weeks preceding the release of their album, I’ll wager I. got over 200,000 words of promotional material on them in the .mail, and there was even more that came with the album itself, including reprints of some of the stuff they’d already mailed out. Then there was the time when San Francisco whiz Warners promo man Pete Marino let the word out that there would be a “Faces party” with music and everybody kind of assumed that it’d be a party where the Faces would play, but instead we got treated to one of the worst, bands I’ve heard since the golden heyday of the Black Dome in Cincinnati and then.. . STONEGROUND.

This weird melange of musician-looking types got up on the stage and as soon as they got set up, launched into their set. After about two minutes, I noticed several unpleasant physical sensations occurring in my body — indigestion, stomach cramps, gas, etc., nothing serious, but it was certainly an interesting phenomenon. Then I figured it out — I could just not stand to look at those people on the stage. They were making me very uptight. For one thing, there are the four girls who serve as background chorus except when one of them has a solo song to do. Mistaking a cocaine rush for enthusiasm or soul or whatever, they grimace, contort their fingers and bodies, scream unmercifully (not to mention unmusically), and bash at various percussion instruments, all the while trying to push each other off the stage. Then there’s the lead guitarist, who grimaces with his rubbery face as if each note wais the distillation of years of pain and suffering, although I doubt if he’s much over 23.

They seemed to have a knack for choosing good material and completely missing the point. When they did the Kinks’ “Rainy Pay In June,” for instance, it was I who did the grimacing, and also a bit of screaming, things like “NO! NO!” when they blew a phrase. I mean, you go your way, and I’ll go mine and like that, but that song is just not an uptempo jump number. Especially not the chorus.

Well, the album came, and it’s not as bad as they are on stage, I’ll give it that. “Added Attraction” would be real good song if Dierdre LaPorte didn’t sound so. much like a spider trying to sing, and “Brand New Start” is good all the way through. But mostly it’s just indifferent, mass-produced rock a.id roll. If you laughed at the people who fell /or the Monkees and then, went out and got to 3k by Stoneground, you should hang your head.

But, like the man said, there’s no denying the potential for excitement here. Lay off the coke, find some decent material that you understand, don’t let anybody kid you about how good you aye, do some serious woodshedding, decide if you really need all those people, and maybe you’ll have something, Stoneground.

Ed Ward

JACK JOHNSON - MILES DAVIS -COLUMBIA S30455

Miles’ new popularity is a puzzle to me. While his previous three records - the almost-perfect In a Silent Way, and the ieknowned (if, in a sense, less fulfilling) Bitches Brew and Live At Fillmore — as well as this one have all been titanic efforts, the fact that he, and he alone, of modem jazzmen, has become a popular figure with stellar credentials, seems a matter of some concern.

Jack Johnson is more clues, more confusion and one motherfucker. For me, anyway, it’s easily the best thing the man has done since In A Silent Way, the second side of which is so exquisitely realized that it really will bear no comparison. Jack Johnson, while not achieving' that pinnacle (at least not as frequently), is everything good about Miles’ music: strong, resourceful, searching, moving, elegant, challenging. Most of all, challenging.

It is precisely the element of challenge which was not present, for me at least (and my tastes are supposedly over idiosyncratic anyway, so who knows?), on Bitches Brew and Live At Fillmore. I mean, they were nice, I could listen to ’em easily enouth but that was the problem: it was too easy.

Strange to tell, Jack Johnson’s issue has not received an nth of the furor attendant upon the release of Bitches Brew and the Live album. There are a number of reasons, no doubt: it’s a soundtrack, it is not a “deluxe two album” package, thereover art is far less flash — if more tasteful, there are only two cuts: both of considerable length. And, of course, it’s a lot harder to hear. That is, it requires a lot more effort, a lot more response and inter-action from the listener.

Brew/Fillmore were almost pop; they WERE pop, in the sense that they got played on pop stations and were successful there. That’s a good thing you know - it could’ve lead to Pharoah, Alice Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Mingus, Monk, Shepp, Carla Bley and a host of others getting a whole lot more exposure to a mass audience, because all those musics go hand in hand. And, as everybody who loves this music (jazz, sort of) is convinced, all it needs is exposure to become extremely popular. I agree, of course, but what I want to know is why it doesn’t get exposed?

In Jack Johnson’s (and In A Silent Way’s) case there are a couple of factors operating: 1) This is developmental music, made (for sure in Silent Way’s case, probably in Johnson’s) before Bitches Brew, when Miles was still in the process of seeking out his electro-vision, and 2) This music just doesn’t leave you ALONE, it requires really intense concentration. There’s no chance of it EVER being mistaken for background noise, because it’s about real stuff: life, and blackness, America and all those other tritenesses that it’s almost painful to put on paper.

This is daring music, then, in a way that Miles was daring from ... well, from about 1954 on, or something like that. He’s always jutted off in different directions than almost any other respected black jazz-man; he was the only one to get involved in. the whole West Coast Brubeckian, “cool,” time-signature number, for example, and emerge with any kind of image left. (If you’ve heard Don Ellis, you’ll know how this music is somewhat an extension of that.) More than that, though, Miles has always achieved plateaus, when, in a sense, he allowed a whole lot of his admirers (and cohorts) to catch up (and on). He’s beeh off on a new tangent ever since Nefertiti and Filles de Killimanjaro and that period, the later part of the sixties with Shorter, Williams, Zawinul and Hancock in the group growing right alongside him. During that time (and up to In A Silent Way) there was a “New Directions in Music” logo printed on each cover. Not so with Bitches Brew, which was the beginning of the.plateau.

Well, sometimes directions don’t turn out so well. Live At Fillmore, if it is the peak of this new development, would indicate that this one didn’t, at least for me. Jack Johnson on the other hand, indicates that there might be other forks on the same road that could be much more fertile. I’d bet money that this record was done before Bitches Brew. It seems to be part and parcel of the same conceptual search, even the theme — in some places — reminding one of In A Silent Way.

As for the music itself, it’s great. It doesn’t let up, not once, for about 35 minutes, which should give you some idea of how potent it is. Miles himself is in fine form, never1 finer, actually: staccato shots alternating with long, emotive phrases that foreshadow his fascination with Echoplex. (Which pisses me off, in a way — he doesn’t need all those gadgets, you know, he’s Miles. That’s the worst part of the record, when he fucks around with technology;

John McLaughlin if that’s him on guitar, is at his finest. He’s never been recorded like this before: he sounds like he does live, or at least ljke he did when I saw him. Really roaring, super-charged and mean. When McLaughlin is playing well, there is really no other guitarist who can compare, and on this record he’s devastating.

Billy Cohham probably isn’t quite the drummer Tony Williams is, but then hardly anybody else is, either,. He’s damn good though, strong and urgent, everything the band requires.

At certain times, the pain here is visible, tangible even, a. hurt that’s real — both universal and specific, in the most engrossing manner. Unlike the equally pained (if les$ expressive) James Taylor set however Miles knows the way out -*-, and that’s when the real rock’em, sock’em punch that makes this record Jack Johnson begins.

It closes with an almost-orchestral passage that should blow everyone, out and these words: “I’m Jack Johnson heavy weight champion of the world. I’m black and they’ll never, let me forget it. I’m black all right, and I’ll never let THEM forget it.” It might be Miles speakipg.

Dave Marsh

EGO - THE TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME -POLYDOR 24-4065

This record’s given me a lot of trouble. The first time I listened to it 1 found my mind wandering, an unusual occurence when listening to Tony Williams. The second time I didn’t even make it through the whole record. After listening to bits and pieces for a couple of days I decided to play the record through and jot down notes during each cut — perhaps I’d find out where the wrongness was. Here are the jottings, raw and unedited. Maybe you can figure it out

(Note: this .isn’t the same Lifetime that has appeared on previous recordings. Ted Dunbar has replaced John McLaughlin On .guitar, Ron Carter has replaced Jack Bruce on bass [Carter most likely doesn’t travel with the band — just made the studio gig], and two percussionists have been added.)

Side One -

“Clap City” — Fifty-four seconds of conga and hand jive. Nothing.

“There Comes a Time” — Sounds a lot like the old Lifetime despite the new replacements and additions. The song fades in, which is a drag. Guitar player is slightly more blues oriented than McLaughlin, i.e., there is slightly more use of space and more repetition of blue notes for dramatic effect. Rhythm bops around and chums. Tony sings — pure selfindulgence. He isn’t a singer or even a good non-singer. Not yet anyway. Very distracting. Song fades out too.

“Piskow’s Filigree” — Fade in again, to percussive interlude. Music is sound as rhythm is sound which creates time and measures space. There are an infinite number of possibilities concerning how to dicide any given space in time. This cut is low-keyed rhythmic interchange of spontaneous divisions and measurements.

“Circa 45” — Is that a marimba? The melody is almost maudlin. When Dunbar comes in it starts to move — but more leisurely than the early Lifetime. You can hear, at times, what makes Williams brilliant, - an unexpected accent on the bass drum or a flash on the cymbals to direct the guitarist. But the melody comes back too soon and it is maudlin. Oatmeal music. Yasin’s (orgainist Larry Young’s new name is Khalid Yasin) eerie effects aren’t eerie this time around.

“Two Worlds” — Another vocal. Shit! I already got a Grady Tate album (any offers?). I can’t even concentrate on the words. I can’t lie tO ya folks, this album is gettin depressing.

Side Two —

“Some Hip Drum Shit” — The whole record should be like this — but this only lasts 1:31. Tony cooks and flays like the vengeance we all have somewhere.

“Lonesome Wells” — Nice arrangement and decent melody. Then Tony starts singing again. But there’s a lot to listen to here — this is Yasiiv’s cut mainly. He doesn’t play the organ like it was fat piano. He explores its potential and delivers. Still, this cut, like all the others thus far, seems to be on the verge of taking off but never getting down to it. The sound is good, under and between Tony’s voice.

“Mom and Dad” - Lilting, almost graceful The soft side of the electronic apocalypse. Yasin is really beautiful on this, conjuring new colors for the new spectrum. Tony, though he chooses to remain more subdued than usual, accompanies with the old taste and invention. The guitar player remains faceless, but fits in nicely. This cut should have been first

“The Urchin’s of Shermese” — A semimarch with a subtle, urgency that can give you chills if you' get inside it. This is cold music, death, outer space, nothing. Soundtrack from a catatonic improvisational ballet. Pretty scary. At times like a computer gone berserk. No doubt we’ll soon teach our machines to hate. There’s a percussive coda, for no particular reason.

Here’s my own coda: Tony Williams is my favorite drummer in the whole world. Now you know. But aside from the last two cuts, this record just isn’t very interesting.

Richard C. Walls

IT AIN’T EASY - JOHN BALDRY -WARNER BROS’. 1921

It Ain’t Easy, the new here-he-is-folks lp by (sort of) fabled Long John Baldry, hero of the English musical underground (and, embarrassingly, the Family Favorites overground as well), is the first chance in many a year us benighted Americans have had to delight in the dues-paying authenticity (documented in the liner notes) of this English legend.

I’d heard tapes of the lp a few months ago, and it sounded lousy, and then I heard a test pressing, and it sounded lousy, and then the actual lp came Out, with the best cover . Warner Bros, has come up With in ages, and I got all enthused and played it some more. It isn’t good.

Rod Stewart (pictured on the lp) and Elton John (pictured on the lp) each produced a side. Stewart’s side offers a plodding, over-orchestrated beat and a flood of back-up singers. Baldry is most evident in his tiresome and unfunny spoken intro to the lp, which I haven’t bothered to time but is certainly too long. John’s side is cleaner, if unmemorable, but it serves mainly to better expose Baldry’s inability to make a song exciting, novel, fun, or moving. He has an ordinary voice and carries no evident commitment to his material. The hang-over from his Englebert Humperdink period (just recently abandoned as plastic, man, not where I’m really at, my heart belongs to the blues you dig) is all too obvious. The only time Baldry begins to get anything started is on the Small Faces’ “Flying,” where he is suitably mysterious, but a big chorus sweeps in to soften things up and then a wah-wah solo you’ve heard many times before hustles it off to the junk pile. Elton John, on piano, is at least trying.

I wait'eagerly for each new Rod Stewart record and I don’t care if Elton John never makes another one, but in the producing game Elton defintely has the edge. As for Baldry, I imagine he’ll have to go back to being a star on the BBC or ah underground saint, ’cause I doubt if anyone over here is going to buy his music once they hear it. Look for a few East Coast critics to hail huh as their “new discovery,” the “new Rod Stewart,” the “new Elton John,” but don’t take it too seriously. The story on>the back of the ip speaks with wonder about this man who could kick around for a decade or more, working out with Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Julie Driscoll, and many others, but never make it himself. He may be a great guy, but I think the reason he never made it is that he hasn’t got it.

Greil Marcus

HUMBLE PIE - ROCK ON - A&M SP 4301

A bunch of nice guys get together over in England and discover that they’re pretty compatable on their various instruments, so they decide to become a band and see if they can get some gigs. Sure enough^ they do the college circuit over there in England, and the kids dig diem, so they try and get third billing at one of the few clubs, and they do, but their manager calls them up the day after and lays it right on the line to ’em. “Look, I’ve got this deal here on my desk, and you may not like the sound of it at first, but I’m telling you that it’s a good One, and it’ll work out best for you in the long run.” And what that deal is is an American tour. Thirty-eight appearance in forty-five days. It’ll tell the record, it’ll net them good bread, it’ll get their name out to the one remaining people of the world with any loose cash to spend at all -the youth,of the United States. So the guys say okay, and they round up a couple of roadies who haven’t been busted before (makes it harder to get passports if they have) and they set off.

Thirty-eight appearances doesn’t sound too bad to you, sitting there in a chair with your stereo going, perhaps ingesting some of your favorite chemicals, does it? If somebody offered you a deal like that — say to lecture to people or something similar — wouldn’t y ou take it? v

Thirty days into the . tour we find our boys in the Ramada Inn just off route 70 in Dayton. The bass player is sitting on a rumpled bed with the first beer of the day in his hands, damning the. Americans for demanding it ice-cold. He’s rubbing the can to warm it up. He’s not saying much, because a groupie gave him a tab of acid in Chicago, and it turned out to be STP, and he’s just now coming down from it. The lead guitarist comes out of the bathroom, carefully capping the tube of crabs ointment. He caught them ten days into the tour, and nobody except the other members of the band could understand why he thought that reviewer’s line about his voice “having a slightly hysterical, edge to it, playing guitar like he was possessed” was such a crack-up. Aggggh, Chicago. One of the roadies had disappeared into the South Side, claiming he was gonna look up Howlin’ Wolf and to the best of their knowledge, he still hadn’t come back. So there had been a day’s delay (and that was supposed to be a relaxing day off, at that) while they recruited another one from Chicago’s rock legions. But the bass player and the lead guitarist are worried now mainly because the drummer has picked up a tasty smack habit somewhere along the line, and not only is it imperiling their day-to-day existence, but it also isn’t doing all that much for his drumming. So they talk awhile about it; and don’t come to any decision. “Well ” muses the bass player-philosophically “It’s * almost over, and anyway, there’s still Los Angeles and San Francisco to come, and they ought to be a gass.” “Yeh,” the other says, “if we live that long.” And so saying, he drops their last piece of hash, which he has been trying to maneuver into a tiny pipebowl, into the deep-pile carpeting. “Fuck.”

. Well, friends, Humble Pie has, I think, done this twice. They’re still together) still making music, and, I’m happy to report, making nice*music that is a lot Of fun to listen to. I’ve never heard any of'their other albums, I’ll be frank, neither the English classic Town and Country nor the' egregiouslyBeardsley-covered Humble Pie (actually I did listen to that one twice, I think, and it made no particular impression on me), but I do like Rock On. Mainly what I like is the fact that it is a road album, an album that accurately reflects the life of a British band on the road in a strange country where they can’t understand the speech of ninety percent of the folks they talk to, where the beer is cold and the women hot but neither for long, and the grinding monotony of motel rooms becomes so commonplace that after a While you forget that you ever had it otherwise. There fa a De Blooze jam that sounds like it Was fun to do, so you forget that it really isn’t that good (maybe they included it because it has the same name as a magazine that Viciously roasted their last , album or because they want to pay royalties to Muddy Waters). There are a couple of completely bizarro attemp ts at country .music, Which brings to mind the old saw about seeing ourselves as" others blah blah. And there is especially “79th And Sunset,” which is one of the all-time classic perfect road songs. Dig: “Sure will be some dramas inside yer pajamas tonight/ShoObee shoo-wah;” “She’S young, she’s wealthy/She’s far from healthy/She does it up in Beverly Hills/She wears a foam-backed bra/She drives her daddy’s ear/Has a pill to bend your will. . . .” “Y’know, there’s sucha lotta good ways/(Ow!)/To be bad.”

I hope for the sake .of their physical well-being that Humble Pie doesn’t have to put out many more albums like this one. Because — did I mention this, incidentally? — the boys play some real good rock and roll when they get going, and I like the kind they play. They’ve got the same fine conception of putting a melody together that most of the British bands have, with the same individual touch to it so you can tell them from one of the others, and so on. Yeah, rock on, Humble Pie.

Ed Ward

JOHN COLTRANE FEATURING PHAROAH SANDERS LIVE IN SEATTLE -IMPULSE AS 9202-2

Another Coltrane record. Bob Palmer has already paid his respects in Rolling Stone, in a good piece aimed at the non-jazz audience. Downbeat will probably have already published a review of it by the time this one gets in print — their review will be quite favorable, serious, slightly academic and honestly respectful. Jazz arid Pop will also be honestly respectful, only funkier than Downbeat. Possibly display more political consciousness, but funky for sure. Another Coltrane record and a lot of brain-storming going on to properly herald its arrival.

I’ve always thought that I wrote reviews for people who. aren’t too heavily into jazz, but were curious, the main purpose of the reviews to be “coatpullers” (thank you, John Sinclair). I always thought I knew these people, but I’m not so sure anymore. Recently I was at a “party” — about ten people, none of them into the new music or jazz, but all with open heads. I put A Love Supreme, Coltrane’s poetic masterpiece, on the box — the energy level in the room went up a couple of ergs and spread out like some sweet telepathy. The next morning, having crashed in the living room, I heard a girl say to someone (I couldn’t open my eyes just yet, ’cause my eyelids were stuck together — but that’s another story): “That jazz last night was so depressing.”

That’s frightening.

If she found A Love Supreme depressing, then this record would probably do her in altogether.

So this review is for her (and the rest of you, of course) even though she may never read it. And if it sounds shit-simple, don’t feel too superior, ’cause it’s very hard to be intentionally simple nowadays.

The music here is of an incredible intensity, a new music being created by Black artists, being devised in a mode they have created over hundreds of years. Radically new concepts are integrated with not-so-new concepts. At first you may hear an ear-splitting wall of sounds, but if you break down the components (in order to put them back together again) then you begin to hear what’s actually happening.

Elvin Jones’ drums are the most immediately accessible component — but the drums are not used here in the pop/rock context — rather as an extension of the modem jazz concept. There is rhythm, but not always in the manner of “how many ways can you break up the four beats of a measure.” Besides being a rhythm machine, the drums here are an energy base, gigantic crashings and thunderous sound patterns to feed the intensity of the horns’ outpourings (the howls, screeches and sounds human and otherwise). If you can get with that, then you have one foot in the door already.

Then the horns themselves — Pharoah Sanders’ tenor sax making fast, speech-like sounds, an extension of a characteristic of jazz that goes back to the beginning of the music itself. Pharoah and John celebrating together, making great strong testimonies of pain and beauty. Elvin feeding, joining together.

It’s a celebration, complete with exorcisms of pain, proclamations of joy and songs of lyrical ecstasy (like Trane toward the end of “Cosmos”). And the only thing depressing about a celebration is not being able to take part in it. You have to open up, give it up, and make a joyous sound.

Richard Walls

WILDLIFE - MOTT THE HOOPLE % ATLANTIC SD 8284

The only thing underground about Mott the Hoople is the name, and the only thing bad about them is the last cut on die album “Keep A Knockin’”. Everything else on the album is good. Really good.

It is both a strength and a weakness that they don’t seem to have an identity of their own, but are an amalgm of Byrds, Jethro Tull, Donovan, Burrito Brothers and more. It should be easy for them to move into AM radio and a mass audience, if that’s what they want. Mott the Hoople is the kind of group that plays five card draw with a Tarot deck, fools or better to open, and the big question is who holds the winning hand.

The vocals are very fine, with tight easy arrangements. Even on their one incredibly bad cut, the music is good; it is only the vocals that throw “Keep A Knockin’” off. Way off. Yet, “Keep A Knockin’” really humanizes what is otherwise a flawless album. When you have the guts to take on the singing of Richard Pennimen, you had better have a strong voice to carry you.

TWo cuts in particular are outstanding, “Whisky Woman” and “Home is Where I Want To Be.”

Archie Anderson

BAD RICE - RON NAGLE - WARNERS WS 1902

Bad Rice? Well only if you can’t cook. Otherwise it tastes just fine* Provided you put it in the right pot. Oh multi-level, multi-level.

See Ron Nagle is this guy who’s been around the scene for quite a while. Unless you’re really into it, though, you probably missed him. I mean, the Mystery Trend was a pretty obscure band, right? I say ‘was’ because now it’s filed in that special niche for esoteric R & R in history's famous dustbin.

So here’s this guy, Ron, who plays piano and writes songs. He can't sit around all day looking at his lady. He’s got to do something with his fingers. Like make a record. Aha, that’s it. Let’s get together with some folks like Ry Cooder, Jack Nietzsche, and West Virginia Creeper. (Remember that name. Chances are good he's gunna come creepin’ up on you along with hi& friends, Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen) While we're at it, lets make a good record. Straight forward rock and roll. The kind that rolls while it rocks.

Here it is. And it is. Yep. I know, ’cause I'm listening to if right now. If you're not, too bad for you. That Ron, he sure does know how to use the words.

I had an Unde Prank who ran rite local bank

what he died of no one really knew.

Frankie's pretty wife prayed to heaven to give him life.

Purgatory was the best he'd do.

Cracks me up. It’ll crack you up too.

Warner’s tried to hide Ron — that’s him on the cover with the blacked out tooth - in a big fat release package. But it won’t work. Good shit will out. Horatio Alger said that Local boy makes good rock. 1 said that.

No faggoty plastic shoes here. No hip hip craperoo. No look at my pretty body (Well... ) Just boogie your mind and body as one to toe music. Not a bad trick, huh? Ha.

Jack Hafferkamp

4 WAY STREET - CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG - ATLANTIC SD 2-902

Listening to CSNY makes me wanna throw up my hands in frustration.

Their first album was pleasant - for a cquple listenings, after which it all seemed like' one long, pablum-like song. Cynical, I went to see them live shortly after they added Young and, playing mostly songs from that same first CSN album, they knocked me out with a solid, rocking set that made me a believer. Duly convinced that there was something there after all, I waited with reasonably high hopes for their second album, which turned out just like the first with an interruption here and there for Neil Young.

This set me to thinking. The Byrds, after all, were at their peak when Crosby was there, so he couldn’t be all bad. Stills and Young never ceased to thrill me with Buffalo Springfield. Nash sang nice, even in the context of the Hollies. The whole, I decided, was somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Then came the spate of solo albums, blowing that theory all to hell. By After the Goldrush, Young’s virtues seemed highly stylized and self-conscious vices; he was now straining for effects that once came naturally. The Stills album was as boring and empty for me as it was flawless. And the Crosby was boring and deeply flawed. Nash, it would seem, deserves some kind of Good Taste Award for holding back this long on his, though I understand it’s coming pretty soon.

All this time, of course, everything they touch is turning instantly to gold. They have been quoted so often in so many publications as saying they don’t believe in hype that that, in itself, has become a most ingratiating kind of hype. They have broken up, because they can’t stand each other. They’re back together, because they “make such beautiful music’’ (and such carloads of money) together. No, they'll never work together again. Yes, they will. Does this all sound like an American version of another famous four-man group?

Enough philosophizing, though; the proof is in the music, and the music is in this 2-LP live album. And while it may please the hard core fans, 1 doubt if it will'make any converts.

It’s easy enough to dispense with the “wooden” LP. With a few exceptions, it’s simply Crosby and Stills and Nash and Young, each aping his way through his own songs. They are for the most part uninspired, often neglect to tune their instruments, and make me embarrassed more than anything else, because I realize they (and lots of other people) take this all very seriously. But can you keep a straight face hearing Crosby's version of “Triad,” for example?

The exceptions: Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand” sounds pretty good in a short, accoustip version. Not better than the original with Crazy Horse, but different and still damn good. Likewise, Stills’ “Love the One You’re With” is his best song since the Springfield, no matter how he does it. And “49 Bye Byes” sounds much better with just Stills pounding a piano than it does in the studio version. Unfortunately, he chooses to segue it with “America’s Children,” an updated, preachy version of “For What It’s Worth,” which was a gem of a song.

On the band LP, there’s flashes of what I heard in concert many months back. I guess it’s songs like “Long Time Gone” that have kept me interested in them at all. With its just-beneath-the-surface tension, razor blade guitar, and foreboding lyrics, it remains a song for all seasons. “Southern Man,” as usual, provides a good verhicle for some worthy jamming; it simply shows they can do it when ■ they want to. And the jam towards the end of “Carry On” is live rock at its finest.

The rest is competent electric music; certainly nothing to get excited about, but nothing glaringly bad, either. It’s that simple: nothing more, or less, than we’d get from any proficient band. For a group whose trademark is harmony, they’re pretty sloppy. For a group noted for energy, they engage in a lot of dispirited over-indulgence. But I think weVe almost come to expect that of them already.

There's no telling what the story is with them, if they even exist any more aa group (howeyer loosely-knit), so maybe I'm flogging a dead horse. But one would hope that, collectively or individually, they’d put their talents to better use in the foture.

For the hard core, there's three (besides “Triad”) previously-unrecorded songs on this album, all accoustic. They are Crosby's “The Lee Shore” and Nash’s “Chicago” and “Right Between the Eyes.” But I'm warning you in advance — they sound just like all the others.

John Morthland

CROWBAR - BAD MANORS (CROWBAR'S GOLDEN HITS VOL. 1) - PARAMOUNT

Momma, getcher dancin’ shoes on. Friend, the openers’s on the table and the beers in the sink. Everybody ready? Then steady yourself for the jivinest rock *n’ boogie band in the land, cuz Crowbar is about to smash your body to rock and roll Valhalla. They come on about as subtle as a herd of King Kongs in heat. Fast and eager, with a gleam in their eyes. What can you say about a band that, in one song (“Oh What A Feeling”) combines the Woodstock Rain Chant, early Association background vocal moans, the bronchial asthma raspings of lead vocal Kelly Jay, with what sounds like the biggest beer bash in the history of Ancaster, Ontario, and turns it into the incrediblest rockin’ song since, um, er, well shit, since I don’t know when.

They might just have to rearrange the whole music awards format because of this one album. I can see it now.

♦Best Yodel by a Contemporary Rock Musician-!King Biscuit Boy, guest starring in “Baby Let’s Play House”)

♦BestLyric by a Canadian Over 250 Pounds-(Kelly Jay for “Grab yer ol* ladies” or “Come on in, everyone’s invited” both from “Oh What a Feelin”)

♦Best Contemporary Use of Ritchie Yorke-(They let him hit an anvil on “Prince of Peace”)

♦Best Soundtrack for a Betty Boop Cartoon-(“House of Blue Lights”)

♦Funniest Named Rock Performer Since Crunchy Cristals Award-(The Ghetto-lead guitar) -

Crowbar are so incredibly tight that they sound loose. Or is it the other way around? But you can’t merely talk about Bad Manors, you gotta experience it (with a full case of Black Label nearby).

Listen, if you’re planning to go deaf pretty soon, pick up on Bad Manors before you do. May as well go out in style. (And just think, while you’re doing that, you’re also doing your little bit to aid Canada’s National Debt). “A massive damn against the inevitable tide of surging Taylorism”-Al Niester, Creem. “Crowbar’s Golden Hits” indeed.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

OH! PLEASANT HOPE - BLUE CHEER -PHILLIPS PHS 600-350 THE ORIGINAL HUMAN BEING - BLUE CHEER - PHILLIPS PHS 600-347

There are too many albums released. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it mainly boils down to the fact that record companies will market anything that they think gives them, even the slightest chance of making a few bucks. Sometimes, and this is one of them, some very fine albums get lost, because radio stations don’t even think to play them.

Blue Cheer has a lot going against them. First off, in their original incarnation they stunk. Even to walk by a club where they were playing was a painful experience. They had their devoted followers, though it’s hard to see why, and there, were as many that hated as loved them. But in the last few years there have been quite a few changes in the band — only bassist Dickie Peterson remains from the original company. In two short years the group that epitomized everything that was wrong with rock, in 1968 (sludgy overindulgence in noise to no point, lack of real excitement coupled with fake energy) has evolved into a band that’s an A-l rock and roll ensemble reflecting just about everything that’s right and joyous about the music.

There were two Big Change albums released before The Original Human Being, but stupidly being arrogant and condescending to the New Improved Blue Cheer, I let them go by and missed some fine music. Thankfully, I caught on with Human Being. The music hit me right off, strong and fine. “The Good Times Are Hard To Find” opened with the old Spencer Davis “I’m a Man” riff, but Blue Cheer had made it their own . — if possible, there was even more excitement in this song than the other one.

I was leery, though, so I waited for the next cut. Damned if they didn’t throw me another surprise: “Love Of a Woman”, abetted by the old Sir Douglas hom section, was a great R&B-rooted rock ‘n’ roll song.

Still I wasn't convinced. But “Make Me Laugh” came out hard, and ripping, slicing away with a stinging lead guitar, sort of like some of Alice Cooper’s new sides. So I turned up the volume, and by God, with the new band it sounded better. Turning the record over (after listening to their “Babaji” raga and not even minding a little sitar monkey business), I came to “Black Sun”, an out-and-' out rocker with ominous lyrics: “My black sun will lay you in your grave.” But they don’t tell you that it’ll also lift you right out of it so you can .dance.

I’ve been enjoying The Original Human Being since last summer. It’s hot one of the all time landmarks in rock and roll history, but it stays with you. Oh! Pleasant Hope is out now and it’s another step along the road for Blue Cheer. With these two albums (and Blue Cheer, the one just before ‘emf — Ed.) they’ve made the complete journey from schlock to fair to good to excellent. They don’t rock quite as hard this time, but it’s aU great music. “Hiway Man” starts with some loosely tuned acoustic guitars, then picks up some insinuating Ralph Kellogg organ work that moans the song on its way. The words are great and the song has understated power. “Believer” is a tough, no-garbage rocker: “Even you can be a believer/ Even you! A mighty believer.” Believe in what? In living and rock and roll. I won’t spoil the rest of the lyrics for you, but I will say that new Cheers Yoder and Grelecki have come up with some surprisingly strong and accurate ones.

The album is marked by a diversity of styles, from light jazzy blues like “Money Troubles” to the title song, which is about the universal fantasy of cannabis legalization. “Lester the Arrester” has shotgun drumming and rinky tink piano, but my. -favorite is “I’m the Light” I don’t even know if the lyrics are bad or good, but the music is incredible. Not that it’s amazingly innovative or astounding, but this is one hell of a well-put-together song. First acoustic guitars, then a real harp, then kettle drumming to lightning effects and thunder, with organ and sitar, all blending in %,o give the song an eerie effect. Craftsmanship.

All of this may seem too complimentary. I don’t really care if it does. Blue Cheer’s been through a lot and have come out -smiling and in control. They nave won a place for themselves, and deserve to be given their due respect and listened to. All you radio programmers out there who played their garbage sludge to death owe it to Blue Cheer and the rest of us to play their fine new music as well, even if they aren’t “Heavy” or “Happening” anymore.

Andy Zwerling

THE WEAVERS’ GREATEST HITS - THE WEAVERS - VANGUARD

Who are these cats, the Weavers? Its been a long time since I’ve heard of them. But The Weavers’ Greatest Hits has two things shaking for it right off. First, it’s on Vanguard, and Vanguard is well known for putting out fine, solid, though-esoteric old folk music. Second, the unmistakable figure of Pete Seeger graces the front cover playing a recorder.

We all know and love ol’ Pete Seeger. Guthrie’s boy, a radical Christian, contempt of (Congress, black listed on Hootenany and all that Inspiration and spiritual granddaddy to Joan Baez and sundry early new culture folkers.

Then there’s three other folks, all with big question marks on their faces — identified as Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hayes, and Fred Hellermart, on the back cover. Betwixt them, apparently, they’re the Weavers.

Just 21 years ago (figure it out) those who knew spent many good column inches trying to figure if the Weavers were rhythm and blues or Country and western. Somewhere since then folk music seems to have been recognized as a legitimate art form.

Looking" over the numbers (twenty-five in all), a friend of mine snorted: “They don’t do much original material do they?”

But what can any green child of the 60’s say about numbers like (oh Jesus, here we go): “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” “On Top of Old SmOkey,” “This Land is Your Land,” “Follow The Drinkiri’ Ground,” “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” “Darlin’ Corey,” ‘‘So Long, Its Been Good To Know You,” “Rock Island Line” and “Gotta Travel On?”

SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE - LENARD COHEN - COLUMBIA CS 30103

Dear Lenard,

I read that you thought your second album Songs From A Room, being very bleak and broken down, would becoime mote popular, as more people “crack up”. Well I suppose, but I began to wonder if neglect had made you bitter..

You went on to say your Songs Of Love And Hate “was the way out.. .another kind Of strength” which interested me.

You see I broke down too, gradually, then immediately, and what is a breakdown, but. a collapse in consciousness? Yes the limitations of love, monogamy, the treachery of friends in these matters were all revealed, and none of these new truths were greeted joyously, for I was alone.

From the sounds of things you haven’t found “the way out” but you manage a good awful laugh at this country in “there are no Diamonds In the Mine” and yes “the trees are burning in your promised land” but is that all we can do, laugh? .

“Avalanche” hardly gives a clue, but it’s true “the crumbs of love you offer me, and the crumbs I’ve left behind” that’s the situation exactly.

I was happy to hear “Love Calls You By Your Name” though, it gives a little hope “between the hour and the age”.

“Famous Blue Raincoat” is a lovely incestous song, for those of us who have been in triangles. You came through it with a minimum of jealousy, and a great deal of grace. I was touched.

“Sing Another Song, Boys” and “Joan Of Arc” aren’t worth much, lousy poetry, everything searched for, nothing found.

But thanks for recording “Dress Rehearsal Rag” it was “a long way down” and “a strange way down”.

Well, Mr. Cohen it’s a good album, maybe not as prophetic as you intended, but that’s another matter. I really didn’t expect it to save my soul, but it will feed it.

v Sincerely,

Donald Jennings

Oh, Funky indeed! Mr. Seeger: “We’re developing a mass urban culture. We insist on originality and we’re terribly afraid of anything traditional. I have great contempt for people Who insist on the cult of originality. There’s nothing evil about the imitation of good things.” Spoken in ’64, well past the peak of the Weaver’s popularity, so you know where they’re coming from.

I vary on this; but at this,writing I am of the school of thought that there are certain things one simply does not fuck with — thanksgiving, baseball, Woody Guthrie, and American folk traditions among them.

Therefore I wouldn’t give a generally bad review of the Weavers even if I wanted to. I am saved, however. Except for a few songs — notably “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” .whose sheer repetition has driven me beyond ever appreciating it again — there can be no complaint about the selection of songs for this Grea test Hits album.

Though the lyrics are a bit slicker than they were when the songs found their way out of the mountains, the banjo pickin’ and guitar work are pleasantly earthy. Which, I suppose, is to say that they are a bit rough. Yup. Rough in that no agent or promo man ever sat these folks down to a stereo recording session, making a thousand little cuts and repasting it all' together, making it come out like a Kingston Trio session. Nope The mpisjc is in a proper folk tradition,

That’s pretty good for a boy like Seeger who had to forget dll the eastern ways one would pick Up during two years of Harvard. But I imagine hanging' around with that Guthrie feller and hi§ bad crowd took the edge off it pretty quick'.

Being as how the Weavers are no more, and being as how it is probably more trouble than it is worth to go around finding scratchy 78’s and old Ip’s, The Weavers’ Greatest is not a bad collection. Throw it in just before the line of Dylan albums. Impress the frien'ds, play it for the wife and kids now and then. Cook up some home brew to the tune of “Darlin’ Corey.” It gives the brew the proper, paranoid flavor which, is hard to getin anything but politics and weed anymore.

Don Russell

LOVfcJOY - ALBERT KING - STAX STS 2040

I’ll accept the, fact that Albert King claims to be B.B.’s second cousin and the fact that B.B. lilts with Lucille and Albert labors over Lucy. I’ll even accept the fact that B.B.’s last UP before the production of this one was named after his birthplace and that Albert has done the same with this new offering.

I’m willing to accept all this and more. It' was fine as long as Albert King wanted to be B.B. King. But now he wants to be a rock and roll star! A rock and roll star!! A ROCK AND ROLL STAR???? Albert you don’t have to play rock and roll.

He’s got everything here but Leon Russell (he does, however, have Jim Keltner, one time Mad Dog and Don Nix, Memphis’ answer to Leon Russell) and throughout the entire first , side, with the exception of “She Caught The Katy and Left Me A Mule to Ride” it seems that may be just what he needs. Though he does get in some very sweet licks on “For the Love of a Woman”, it isn’t until Side Two that he realizes what he’s here for ... to sing, the blues. Les bleu. Los Azul. Da Blooze!

“Lovejoy Ill.” is good for little more than some nice licks but it is the turning point. When he gets to “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven” he’s settled down and from there on out it’s all smooth and sassy. Indeed “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven” is the snakiest cut on the lp. He’s always had that silky voice and if he fails in out-subtiing B.B. instrumentally, he. certainly does vocally. Being only a cyclical Albert King fan I had to put on-a copy of “Bom Under A Bad Sign” to make sure I was listening to the same dude. And it was. There was that same satin voice under all them horns, one of the trickiest records ever heard. Like “Going Back To Iuka” on this album, one remembers it.as if he had been belting it out, but I don’t think Albert’s ever belted a microphone.

All in all it’s not a bad album. It doesn’t rally stand up to his previous works but, hell, at least it don’t have no violins.

Richard A. Pinkston TV

AIR - THE CECIL TAYLOR QUARTET -BARNABY CANDID SERIES Z 30562 THAT’S IT! - BOOKER ERVIN -BARNABY CANDID SERIES Z 30560

In ther very early Sixties Nat Hentoff got some money together and founded one of the shortest-lived and most prolific. small companies in jazz history. Candid records had a beautiful label, generally fine cover art, and a rare combination in actual recording situations of relaxation and true concern with each artist’s aims. Before the label folded around ’63, they had recorded some of the most difinitive statements of at least three jazz titans and caught a fine selection of lesser artists at the peak of their form. Somebody has finally seen fif to reissue that body of work, and together with last year’s Otis Spann, and Lightnin’ Hopkins sets and the Charles Mingus album reviewed elsewhere in these pages, these two albums sound as fresh and vibrant today as they did in 1961.

Cecil Tayjor is simply one of the very greatest pianists of this or any other era. Listening to him now with the perspective of time, you can hear in his skittering dissonances everything strong in the jazz keyboard tradition, right back through Monk and Bud Powell and especially Duke Ellington,1 It’s all there, but it wasn’t always so easy ‘to see. I recall being unable to sit through a first hearing of this record in 1961. I almost had to work to like it, but after piany fries it all suddenly came clear one night and I. sailed along on every wayward, tearing solo, breathing the music like air-

No one will have as much trouble today, but the music remains as revolutionary and as thoroughly fulfilling as ever. The first impression is one' of scattershot rhythms and near disjunctive, but as you listen deeper Taylor’s long lines t become not merely coherent but an energy charge equalling of surpassing such proven brain-blitzes as “Sister : Ray” and the MC5’s “Come Together.” Not that it sounds so iriuCh like them, but that it achieves . equally superhuman levels of intensity. Taylor’s originals are " truly mind-bending, but he can also take old standards like “Lazy Aftefnoon” or “This Nearly Was Mine” from South Pacific and transmute them. like some fierce alchemist first through blues changes. and finally into the stratospheric realms where the band cooks most brilliantly. And two strong plusses about this record, which make it ideal as a first Taylor purchase arid indispensable to anyone deeply into jazz at all, are that it includes some of Archie Shepp’s first recorded work, and that, as opposed to later, more fiendishly complex Taylor sets, its tracks generally build from initial statement to supersonic flurries with a measure of linear logic. Check out

. B., ” whose swirling. riptide of improvisations finish with a mirror-reversal.of its opening riffs, for an example of the sort of circular systems that Taylor was later to elaborate into even more challenging structures.

For a variety of reasons, some external and some mercenary and/or idiosyncratic, Cecil Taylor has recorded very little iri the past few years. Despite that, he remains the most original and influential pianist of our tune. After Conquistador, Air is probably his most moving album. If ypu are only'going to buy one jazz record this year, make it this one.

Listening to Charles Mingus albums of the late Fifties and early Sixties was often somewhat frustrating. One continually had : the feeling that the emotional output of the sidemen fell far short of Mingus’ own volcanic eruptions, that he expected more of them than they perhaps could give. Yet every so often in the middle of a piece a tenor would rear up shrieking and break out with a testament fully as fiery as the leader’s own. That tenor belonged to Booker Ervin, and before he died in 1970 he made severdl fine albums witji bands of his own. He had a big full-bodied Trane tone, and if his own outings were never as ferocious as his work with Mingus they had a warmth and richness that was positively invigorating. No challenges, no violent divergences from the familiar, just the joy of jazz as pure pleasure, that good good sound,. with the special strength of its universality. Along with Settin ’ the Pace Booker’s great Prestige set with Dexter Gordon, this" is music that feels good to everybody anytime. -

The reappearance of these albums is a godsend. The only downer is that the greatest, most pertinent and far-reaching Candid release has not been reissued, and, “according to Bamaby’s West Coast office, js nqt on the listof material purchased. We Insist: Freedom Now Suite was an album written by Max Roach and Oscar Brown, Jr. and performed by a searing Roach ensemble with V9cals by Abbey Lincoln, the Grace Slick of the new black music. It was firebrand-militant'before it became fashionable to be so, and featured songs like “Freedom Day” and “Tears For Johannesburg,” a long stretch of wordless Abbey Lincoln cries that presaged Yoko and one burning solo by Coleman Hawkins. It was one of the most powerful jazz albums I have ever heard, and I only pray that Barnaby will not be restrained by some vague paranoia from bringing it back to us.

Lester Bangs

PECULIAR FRIENDS - TEN WHEEL DRIVE WITH GENYA RAVAN -POLYDOR 4-406

Geriya’s always been one of the top 20 of ■ 30 broads in the business. And evet since J apis up and left - the planet she’s felt especially free to let it all hangout. Way out. ^Far enough; out to hit Janis right on the head. Which is fine since directly imitating Janis can’t be that much worse than checking,out her Original sources arid then just assimilating them in the same old Janis way. So Janis has proven herself a real help to at least one of her sisters. But it sure doesn’t help when you’re backed up by Chicago. After all Genya (Or even Janis Jierselfj with Blood, Sweat and Tears can’t be that much better than A1 Kodpey. And better' and worse is the name of the game when similarities are flying as fast and furious as they, are on this album.

But once ir\ a while things get Spectorized, like on “ShOotin’ the Breeze, ” and then it domes off like the Ronettes. Which is a treat that can’t be-beat. So it so happens that every other cut on side one - excluding the title cut of only 19 seconds — is sort of special. Or maybe it’s just that .every other cut is the Ronettes or something else other than Janis. Well “No Next Time” is actually more like: Bonnie and Delaney but it doesn’t really seem that way until ttie male voice coines in and then you know fpr ..sure it’s a Bonnie cut. Another feature of this cut is the absolutely worst trombone solo* ever leaked out of a studio for purposes other than comedy. It’s a bone that wouldn’t even be permitted within a hundred yards of the Ides of March but then you gotta realize that now that all the dust has cleared rock and roll is music and only music and maybe it’s time to go to the movies or watch television.,

Side two spotlights Geftya as, in order, Janis (“Love Me”), somebody a little blacker than Janis (“Fourteenth .^tpet”)», David Clayton-Thomas doing “God Bless the Child” (“I Had Him Down”) (so she’s got somebody else’s C-T to match her own), and Dusty Springfield (“Down in the Cold”). If you -wanna know anything more about these puts you’ll have to listen or buy the sheet music or ask a friend. If you wanna know anything less about these cuts then give yourself a few weeks and by then you’ll have forgotten the issue completely. The only other thing worth mentioning >is that there are bnly nine cuts: now shouldn’t every Ten Wheel Drive album have ten cuts?

Melvin Pork

SEARCH AND NEARNESS - THE RASCALS - ATLANTIC?«276

The Young Rascals, created from the remains of Joey Dee’s Starlighters, had an immense effect not only on the ihusic but the entire .New York suburban teenage lifestyle of the post-Beatle, pre-psychedeljc sixties.

They were something of a. local legend by the time they were discovered by entrepreneur Sid Bernstein at' a ritzy Westhampton, Long .Island club called The Barge, where even Liz and Dick Burton would go tb get their rocks off. When the Rascals first .single came out, an amazing screamer called “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore,” it rated a “first and exclusive on WABC” on the Dan Ingram Show.

By .the time the first album was released, and “Good Lovin’” hit number one, there wasn’t a self-respecting band on Long Island that couldn’t play every song from that album note for note, or a reasonable facsimile.

You could walk into the Lutheran Church on Hillside Avenue any Friday night and experience the sub-teen Court Jesters, 'Wearing the knickers, knee socks, little boy ties and berets their heroes wore. Their lead singer, a kid named Tasiy was a cross between Don Rickies and Englebert Humperdinck, and looked and sounded like a trainwreck with acne.

Somehow the Court Jesters got themselves a Farfisa organ, so they could do all the neat Rascals ystuff, much to the dismay of their arch-rivals, the Mongs. The Mongs were the best British group in New Hyde Park, but they had to fake those cascading Felix-organ riffs with a six-string Gibson and it didn’t work out so well.

And of course there were the Patriots, who were famous as far away as Glen Oaks even before they became the Young Blues, the tightest, most brilliantly unoriginal'band anyone had ever heard then, who not only did “Slow Down” and “Midnight Hour” Rascals style, and “Baby Let’s Wait” when it was time for a slow dance, but could also do “Sueno,” a little-known B-side from the Collections album.

The Rascals inspired a host of imitators that either made it or came clo.se. The Vanilla Fudge, whose survivors make up half of Cactus, made one good song, “You Keep Me Hanging On,” and five cheesy albums. Kids liked the Fudge because they were not only sike-a-delik but Italians from Long Island too.

Finally there were'the Vagrants, superstars of Queens Blvd., Forest v Hills, and the best discoteque band around, who’d flood the Action House with sweat eVerytime they played “Gimme Some Lovin’”. But the Vagrants were not prolific songwriters, and c6uld never get it together in the recording studio. Besides, they were always getting busted because they had this outrageous lead guitarist named Leslie West - that’s right, the very same Mountain-man, and if you were a narc in the borough of* Queens in 1966 wouldn’t you have busted Leslie West?

RAM - PAUL & LINDA McCARTNEY -APPLE RECORD'S

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Richard Allen Pinkston IV

Somewhere along* the line the Young Rascals dropped the fauntleroy pose ahd became the Rascals, but .continued to make songs that were unbeatable on 6 transistors at Jones B^ach or in that ’61 Chevy while cruisin’ for a part-time love on. Hempstead Turnpike. Things like “Come On Up,” “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long,” '“Groovin’,” “A Beautiful Morning,” “Heaven”, “Ray of Hope” and “Carry Me Back/’

Their albums, unfortunately, have alwaysmissed the mark. They were either full of schlock, like “More” and the insipid Judy Garlandesmte '‘‘No. Love to Give” on Collection?; Or were thinly produced and pretentious to boot, like the neo-psychedelic Once Upon A Dream, the mock-psychedelic See, or the overdone double album Freedom Suite.

Perhaps tired of making-cruddy albums, the Rascals have finally made an excellent one. The sound on Search and Nearness, produced by the band with Arif Mardin, is fuller than the Rascals have ever been on record. The reason for this is the addition of a rotation of bass players, which frees Felix from stomping the pedals on his Hammond While he sings and works the keyboards. Also an asset is the inclusion of a sympathetic horn section,consisting of Joe Newman, Joe Farrell and Seldon Powell.

The compositions are consistently superb, even though this is the first Rascals album without any hit songs. “Right On,” the lead track and one of their best ever was released as'a single but the only place J ever heard it was WWRL, a New York soul station.

“I Believe,!’ “Thank You Bafcy,” “You Don’t Know,” and “Ready for Lcjve” are typical classic Rascals songs, organ* guitar and vocals cooking together and always building, with the solidest New York beat south of J25th Street. “'Fortunes” ahd the jazz spicy i n strumental “Nama” reaffirm that Dino Danelli Was and is the first great rock n roll drummer, who all the kids would try to imitate by twirling their sticks ip the air, but they could never come down right on beat the way Dino did (and does) every time.

The only song the Rascals didn’t write is “The Letter,” the Box Tops/Joe Cocker tune, and it’s hilarious. It begins, ironically,Tike the Vanilla Fudge would do it, so there’s the Rascals imitating someone imitating Young Rascals, for the Fudge were nothing if not Bizarro Rascals.

But halfway to the end something happens, and we’re transported to the first Blood Sweat and Teats album, copping the sound, style, substance and fade-out of “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” with Eddie Brigati doing a marvelous A1 Kooper imitation in ope of the neatest musical jokes since Tiny Tim’s perfect version of “Great Balls of'Fire.”

Finishing off the album is “Glory Glory,” a gospel rocker which shows why in spite of their proverbial “blue-eyes” the Rascals have always gotten as much airplay on black radio as they did on white stations.

Search and Nearness marks the end of an era. Since finishing the album, Eddie Brigati and Gene Cornish have decided to head for the hills after 7 years as Rascals. Replacing Gene and Eddie are Buzzy Feiten, former Butterfield quitarist, and female singer Ann Sutton to help Felix and Dino keep the soul free.

Wayne Robins

FOR ALTO - ANTHONY BRAXTON -DELMARK DS 420/421

Braxton is a member of Chicago’s still not justly famed AACM cooperative who has recently been knocking about Europe (where' he met, among others, Gunter Hampel, on whose The • 8th of July 1969 Flying Dutchman LP he can be heard to everyone’s advantage) and .evert more recently is supposed to be doing a number with Chick Corea.

This album is a two-record set of unaccompanied alto sax improvisations.

Its implications are so far-reaching that it. is almost impossible to get into the very meat of the album itself in a small space.

Consider —

The sweeping nort-electronic and back to basics trend brought about by (only a handful, really) abusively loud rock bands. Rather than an endless stream of folk guitarists, think of what Braxton does here as an antidote. Is it possible that “acoustic” freaks would automatically censor this effort because it is not only “jazz” but complex and sophisticated as Braxton and the cumulative acheivement of the new music itself? More than likely.

The New Jazz. Which no longer has to be drivingly expressive at all times. Not that theAACM hasn’t been, throughout its Delmark recording series, charting^ out alternative paths - a thorough familiarity with the body of their work definitely enhances your appreciation of how Braxton can achieve what he achieves here - but it falls to him here, in particular, to create a sense of poetic possibility within the individual consciousness which has heretofore largely been the province of such as Bill Evans.

Contemporary classical. This record is another spike in the grave of fey “contemporary ensemblists” famed for their overworked attempts at “improvisational” pieces. And while this record has not, say, the breathtaking effects of a Gazzeloni playing solo flute, it has every bit as much personal depth and effect.

Saxophone, long the front-line jazz vehicle. Not even Sonny Rollins, not even Lee Konitz, put it on the line like this. .

Art as means of breaking ort through to the other side (remeber??). Braxton has got it, is going there.

The gamut of moods, effects and conceptions which Braxton acts as channel for is amazing all in itself. High energy-free blowing— “To John Cage” (each of the cuts here is a personal Statement to or at someone). High-energy free blowing with emphasis on sax techniques, intervalling, etc. — “To Kenny McKenny”. Exploration of predecessors (Braxton recreates the lonely, isolated sound for which the sax used to be more noted in various periods of its pre-Coltrane & Rollins infancy, and also gives a viable alternative to the Desmond & west coast “cool” stylizations) - “To Murray DePillars”, combined with high-energy in “To Cecil Taylor”, wherein he reviews the neo-Parkeristics of Jimmy Lyons and sorta projects himself into a role with a Taylor band, combined with. the utterly personal lyricism of which he’s capable on. “Dedicated to Susan Axelrod”, and combined with a serial conception which wouldnot have shamed Morton Feldman in his salad days on “Dedicated to Ann & Pete^ Allen.” “Dedicated to Leroy Jenkins” (fellow AACM member & one of THE BEST of the new violinistsjysort of ties It all together in a tour de force which can stand with ANYONE’S sax solos.

You could hardly better prepare yourself for the soul-searching days ahead than by getting inside of this record and grokking hard on the sound of the one saxophone playing. It’s about time stuff like this started going down, anyway, and if you have trouble relating to Braxton, well, I unhesitatingly recommend your enrollment'in self-help ear-braille training.

Rich Mangelsdorff

MWANDISHI - HERBIE HANCOCK -WARNER BROS. WS 1898

Herbie Hancock is one of the geniuses of the age. He is one of a handful of artists who are so good that even when they produce shit it has some merit. This music is not shit but, at a time when the music scene (at least the recording front) is at a sickertingly low ebb, this record comes to us like a bright, shining star.

This is a symphonic work. All of the pieces blend together with a kind of perfection (or near-perfection) that shows itself in only a few works. It is continuous, but never monotonous.

The band for this date is the working sextet of Herbie Hancock. I’ve had the opportunity to see them operate live and their music is just as lovely on this record (barring, of course, that feeling a live performance has that no recording can capture.) t

Lovely is the byword for Mwandishi (which, I am told, means arranger in Swahili and is Hancock’s Swahili title). Lovely is the embodiment of this record.The expected screams and shouts are there, but they are given a kind of care that renders them easier for some people to understand. In other words it won’t scare you away. In fact, this stands as one of the most attractive peices of music anyone could want to listen to. Hie music has that Hancock touch of soft but firm grace. A grace that allows all elements into its domain, but handles them with an expert touch. Notice, for example, that on side one there is a section (“Ostinato”) which uses a very rhythm-and-blues-like rhythm as the basis for the peice. The solos are hot really in that particular idiom, however, they’re well within the contemporary Black Classical Music mood.

Because of the symphonic feeling embodied in the music you never get the feeling that there are three separate compositions on the record. I suppose this is due in part to the nature of the music, which is reminiscent of pre-Fillmore, pre-electronic “europeanized” Miles Davis.

As for die individual members of the band, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about them. They are excellent, and though I have my favored spots, the whole record is filled with magnificent music. You will, you must, you better buy this record.

Geoffrey Jacques

GETTING READY - FREDDIE KING -SHELTER 8905

Freddie King With Strings? Nope, that’s only the first cut. Leon Russell Plays De Blooze? Nah, that’s only the second cut Well, what is this shit anyway? Well, it’s like this. Leon Russell and Denny Cordell and Don Nix and their buddies were going to make an album, so they got this guy named Freddie King — who wasn’t a star like them, sure, but sort of funky, you know, really funky (like Delaney Bramlett or somebody) unknown guitarist - to play guitar on the album. Even let him sing a bit too. “Stick with us, Freddie, and we’ll make you a star,” they said.

For songs, they took a few things by Don Nix and Leon Russell. More were needed, so instead of, uh, rehasing the old blues standards, they did some obscure blues numbers like “Dust My Broom,” “Five Long Years,” “Key To The Highway.” You know. Even let Freddie King daone of his songs.

Shit! Well, bluesmen have had to endure unending indignities over the years, so this ablum isn’t anything new, is it? The Most infuriating this is that in the few places where he’s shown as a totality, as on “Tore Down,” “Worried Life Blues,” and maybe “Same Old Blues,” Freddie’s guitar work is great, quite like B.B. King’s best middle-period stuff on Crown/Kent in style. Singing, Freddie’s tops there too, much more versatile than his goodbut-samey vocals on his old King releases indicated. That is, when you get to hear him here in any sort of appropriate setting. The result of the insensitive bungling is a mediocre album where a great one could easily have been possible.

Freddie King, Otis Rush, you name it -the infallible rule of thumb seems to be that anytime they finally get a chance to record, there’ll always be a Mike Bloomfield, et al., to screw things up. Perhaps someday someone will hit upon the ingenious solution of just letting them play, which after all is how those great King and Cobra sides came about in the first place.

Mike Saunders

SAVAGE GRACE - “2” - WARNER BROS. RS 6434

One oif the most technically perfect and certainly one of the tightest non Motown bands to come out of Detroit, Savage Grace have degenerated into an everyday ho-hum roll band that takes too much time getting into it and too little getting down with it.

“Mother’s Son” is atrocious save for the vocals (something I’ve never been able to find fault with in the Savage Grace). I kept getting the feeling that I was listening to some bargain-bin record with an interesting title purchased out of curiosity.

“Tinboy” ain’t nothin’ but “Lady Rain” from the first album revamped with some ’heavy’ lyrics smeared in and if I (or you) didn’t think anything could be worse than “Mother’s Son’’, listen to “Sandscript” except I may have to retract my previous statement about SG’s vocals. The harmonies on this one sound like Arthur Lee’s early Love with paper bags over their heads.

“Roll River Roll” wouldn’t be so bad except for the lyrics again. I keep wondering what the Hell Grosse Pointe boy John Seanor knows about being bom in a “slummy house” or working on a chain gang.

I keep wondering what the hell happened to Savage Grace. I keep wondering what the hell I’m doing listening to this record. If you hear it you’ll wonder too.

Richard A. Pinkston IV

GOOD TASTE IS TIMELESS - THE HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS - METROMEDIA

I’m afraid the fact that after a few listenings the music of Good Taste Is Timeless begins to assert itself as mostly quite passable and sometimes’ even extremely good is not going to assuage the disappointment of dyed-in-the-wool Holy Modal Rounder freaks (among whom I gladly include myself) at what is, in sum, a less than extraordinary record. S,o to you for whom this album is your first encounter with the HMR, a word of advice: dash about madly, from record store to wherever else you might find old and ignored albums, in an unflagging search for both their first few albums (on Prestige, and ESP and I confess S don’t recall how many of them there are) and their 1968 marvel, The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra EKS-74026). And here’s an assignment for you: track down a copy of a performance tape recorded in Detroit ages ago that includes “Take Me Back To Random Canyon,’’ surely one of the overlooked classics of the 60’s. Once you’ve done all that, and digested the music you’ve thus acquired, feel free; to do what you want with the new one. You’ll probably keep it, but I’ll wager it won’t spend a whole lot of time on your turntable once you’ve discovered what the HMR were on,ce about.

For in one very importantrespect the Holy Modal Rounders were once to urban folk music much what Captain Beefheart was/is to blues-derived rock ‘n’ roll. Through idiosyncratic, highly personal mutations and extensions of the style to its logical extremes (but always anchored by a penetrating understanding of the whole nature of the idiom), each has forged a unique music that', by virtue of its humor, its individual stamp, and its ability to concisely capture the essence of the form, is destined to transcend the inevitable dissolution of the form (at least as a “pop” music). You might speculate as to where the HMR might be today had the folk movement of the 60’s been graced with the pervasive media attention that has been showered on rock music these last few years (and that is finally lifting Beefheart to the hallowed land of Recognition and Acceptance).' You may be sure they wouldn’t have come out with a Good Taste Is Timeless.

Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber were once the entire HMR, and even on the heavily populated Moray Eels HI the supplementary musicians were set in a position that was

decidedly subordinate to the visions of these two mad minstrels. But now the group is a sextet (Richard Tyler, John Wesley Annas,. Michael McCarthy and Robin Remaily are all now Rounders), and, regardless of their musical and lyrical merits, the inevitable if unwanted result of their presence has been a dilution of the Stampfel/Weber aesthetic. Of the twelve selections, five are from the prolific pens of Peter and Steve, and it is in fact those five that save the album from being dispensible: the former’s “Spring of ’65” is the record’s longest and strongest cut. That weird Stampfel voice is right up front, creakily intoning a modal melody that pulls us into a strange drunken fiddle party held in the eerie, moonlight; starting quietly it builds slowly and inexorably to a gorgeously full finish. His “Livin’ Off the Land'’ is a delightful semi-satirical paean to the back-to-the-earth folks (“We will have a pet racoon/Maybe we’ll have two/if you ask me real nice/I’U let him sleep with you”), while Steve’s contribution consists of “Black Bottom,” one of his characteristic “updated traditional” pieces; a bouncing, definitive rendition of his “Boobs A Lot;” and the strangely touching “Generalonely.” For the rest, it’s mostly rather homogeneous light country-rock stuff, some of it quite pleasant (e.g. Mike Hurley’s “Love Is the Closest Thing”, along with some bits of slightly-fbo-exaggerated satire. Only Remaily’s “Happy Scrapple Daddy Polka,” which vividly portrays the horrors of eating meat, is on a par with the Stampfel-Weber material. The musicianship is all very adequate (but what isn’t these days?), and there are even guest stars like D.J. Fontana and Pete Drake and Tracy Nelson. Oh well.

Good Taste Is Timeless is a disappointment mainly because it is such a conservative album. It’s a bit disheartening to see one of the few groups we know is able to retain its artistic integrity while being outrageously experimental more or less abandon the outlying fields to the hordes of no-talent shucksteri who have been coming at us from all sides lately. Any time you want to come back and take over, guys, we’ll be waiting.

Richard Cromelin

L.A. WOMAN - TOE DOORS - ELEKTRA

The album has an original cover. It is the top of a pair of jeans with a gimmick zipper done by Andy Warhol You grab the zipper with trembling hands, and pull down slowly to reveal — OH NO! It’s Jim Morrison! Why you sly dog, you, Jim, and after all the trouble you’ve been through!

Warm blooded animals seem to loath reptilian forms of life. That might have been the reason for the incredible wellsp rings of • disgust that washed over the Doors, who were almost universally loved, after Jim Morrison proclaimed himself to be the Lizard KingNo other rock group went so dramatically from a position of admiration to sheer hatred in so short a time as did the Doors. Something about them must have just rubbed people the wrong way.

It ‘ couldn’t have been the music/ The Doors are infinitely greater musicians than groups like, say, the Grateful Dead. Check it out. Take out the first Doors album, and compare it to the first THREE Grateful Dead albums. The Summer of Love was along time ago, and those first experimental, “trippy” acid rock albums sound so quaint, and transparent that they would be funny if they weren’t so embarrassing. By contrast, the first Doors album has lost none of its hard onyx sheen that will make it a rock and roll classic. Only the Jefferson Airplane, of all the groups of the San Francisco “sound,” will have the same value in five years that they had in the beginning. The rest will fade in impact, and influence, Until people will wonder what it was that made the Frisco groups the heralds of a new age, Monterey Pop and the trips festival not withstanding.

The Doors might have been treated with disdain because they were from Los Angeles, which seems to hang like a pall of smoke over all the bands that start out there. The Byrds, Love, and The Doors were all hurt in the minds of the ^intelligentsia, for having the crass lack of taste to actually like ol’ Rip Off City.

It might have been Jim Morrison’S; sometimes silly apocalyptic poetic lyrics: Thousands of flower children, and their intellectual cohorts, who were trying to save the world through love, were put off by that punk in his black shirt and pants made of the leather of an unborn lamb, or whatever it was singing about killing his father, raping his mother, throwing animals out of boats in the midsts of horrible storms, walking in streets with blood up to his knees, and so on.

Their image was definitely wrong. I remember seeing them on television only once, on a rock survey show hosted by Murray the K, back in 1967. After^a half hour of sitars, meadowlands, arid velour caftaans, the Doors came on looking like a road gang and completely ruined the effect. We used to hear strange rumors of the Doors forsaking acid for heroin. And this was at a time when Timothy Leary was still stomping the Ivy League circuit., Of course, later when all the superstars were using cocaine, and heroin, everybody was scandalized to find out that Jim Morrison had turned into a beer hound.

What kind of sex symbol can a group have, once the lead anger has grown a full beard and a beer belly? That would be like John Wayne with his toupee off, or Iggy Stooge with a partial plate. If Papst Blue Ribbon Beer was smart,/they would sign up the Doors for a whole series Of commercials. They could increase sales by as much as a hundred per cent. Mostly by me.

“L.A. Woman” is the last album of the Doors’ present contract with Elektra. The capitalists in the front office are no 'doubt thinking hard adout the possibility of dumping one of the all time headache groups. Which would make it very awkward for them if the record turns out to be a hit “Love, Her Madly,” which is settling in for a long stay on AM radio, is a great boogying song. Not a fantastic piece of music, mind you, but when sandwiched between The Jackson Five and Steve Stills, it shines. “The Changeling,” “Been Down So Long,” and “L’America” show Jim Morrison at his most mock tough, like some kind of fifties delinquent, as played by John Cassavetes in a B movie. When too many rock .musicians are overpraised as virtuosos, almost no words have ever •'been laid on_ the organ of Ray Manzarek, or the guitar of Robbie Krieger. And yet it is they who actually make the Doors. They are the ones who fill in the background to Morrisons melodramatics, and provide the primeval power to the group’s sound.

“Crawling King Snake” is Morrison at his most reptilian. He just kind of slithers up to ya in a vision right out of Burroughs. “The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)” combines Morrison’s finest imagery with some of the most engrossing music that anyone has made in sometime.. “Cars Pass By My Window” “L. A. Woman,” and “RidersTOn the Storm” are some of the best songs that the Doors have ever made. They seem to be that strange breed of songs that the Doors use when they want to end an album. They are like “Light My Fire,” “The End,” or “When the Music’s, Over” but with a subtler Affect, more calm, more resigned.

The Doors were a group who were forced to pay their dues after they had become a success. Even now, too many people are content to dismiss them as not being worthy of attention by serious listeners with limited time on their hands to listen to pop music. The Doprs at their worst were one of the most wart covered, pretentious bands of the sixties. But no other group had a clearer grasp of the age. Too much passes away from us too quickly these days. Are we really going to be better off if Jim Morrison becomes a single act? Are we really so affluent that we could jive up one of our best bands in a swamp of indifference? What I’m trying to say is that we should hold on to those things that have value. What I’mtrying to say is, let’s make sure that “L.A.y Woman” will not be the album that will finally close die Doors!.

Rob Houghton