Oh, Robbie. You’ve got to find a new blade...

Oh, Robbie. You’ve got to find a new blade

RECORDS

CAHOOTS

THE BAND

CAPITOL

Outside the window is the back yard, and beyond that is a large bush, I don’t know what kind of bush it is; it’s just an amiable bush that sits there being green. If it were winter, the leaves wouldn’t be there, and I could see the white building beyond it, and read the chiseled inscription above the door: THIRD CHURCH OF CHRIST SCIENTIST. I have always imagined that inside hangs a giant picture of the Prophet of Galilee, dressed in a lab coat, peering into a microscope. “Quick, Mr. Watson, I think I’ve discovered a cure for sin.”

If I swivel 180 degrees, I encounter a shit bookcase, filled with old Rolling Stones, contact sheets, old newspaper clippings I once considered significant, and a stack of random books (No One Waved Good-bye; The Kingdom and The Power; Goode’s World Atlas; Is Five). Propped up against the books, staring at me with boyish melancholy, is the gelatinous cover of the new Band album, which is called Cahoots. I put it there three days ago to inspire me.

It didn’t work.

-How do you like it so far?

—I don’t understand the point.

—Neither do I.

-But surely the point of Writing something...

—Who knows? A lot of those theories have to do with the critical mystique, which is bullshit. Critics are just ordinary people with access to the media and certain jejune cleverness of syntax.

—Jejune cleverness of syntax. That’s pretty good.

—No it isn’t.

—But...

—Look. The point is that I don’t understand the point, and I’m never sure under those circumstances whether that’s my fault or their fault.

-Whose fault?

-The Band’s.

What I did was: I called Greil Marcus. That’s what everybody does when they’re stuck. He sits up in his long thin house on the hill, looking like an unreconstructed Trot ideologue and being the best rock writer in the world, and everybody phones him. Good morning, Mr. Wizard, and can you tell me why the trees grow?

So Greil said 17 or 30 pungent, graceful things about Cahoots, bitching about the “languid soul shuffle” which dominates so many of the cuts (I hadn’t noticed, but he’s right), talking around the issue, looking for the core. At the very end, he said: “I think Robbie Robertson had a lobotomy.”

Which meant, I realized, that Greil felt as tacky about the whole enterprise as I did. Remember all those rumors about Dylan after Self-Portrait was issued? He was in this motorcycle accident, see, and a bpne chip got inside his brain, and now he can only sing “Blue Moon.” It’s just that the real answer is somewhat more mysterious, undiscoverable really, but considering it is much too barren and sad to be entered into voluntarily.

The evidence is all tp the contrary anyway. The one thing you can say for this album is that it’s careful. They obviously spent more time on the post-recording work than went into either Music From Big Pink or Stage Fright. The record is marvelously produced. If it only sounded better, it would sound real good.

-Well, I can’t say I cared for that part too much, although you did talk at least a little about the album.

-Yeah.

—But Who cares about Greil Marcus?

-I do.

—I sounds unbearably incestuous to me. After bringing him up and throwing a bouquet at him, yOu extrapolate some kind of limited theory from one of the least meaningful of his remarks.

—That’s it.

-I think you’re just floundering around..

-Yes, yes ...

— ... groping for words ...

-Right...

— ... disorganized and fucked-up.

—Absolutely.

-I don’t see any point in visiting the tedious clutter of your mind on a larger audience.

—Because it is there.

—Oh, man. Fuck you and fuck your situational ethics.

-Gosh, there sure are a lot of contradictions involved in the critical process, whatever that is.

—That’s no answer.

—Exactly.

They printed the words inside the album, sandwiched between that attenuated, symbolburdened cover and the cutesy Richard Avedon photo of the boys on the back cover. It was a mistake. If they weren’t there, maybe we’d think we heard them wrong. There are, after all, lines in “Chest Fever” I still haven’t figured out. (My vote: “I know she’s a tracker, and she’s covered with crackers.” No?)

But they did. Here are some lines from “Last of the Balcksmiths”: “Dead tongues said the poet/ To the daughter of burlesque/ Cocteau, V&n Gogh and Geronimo/ They used up what was left.” And this kind of pretentious nonsense was written by the man who wrote “The Shape I’m In” and “To Kingdom Come” and “Rockin’ Chair” and ... hard to believe. One of things about The Band, one of things, in fact, that bothers many of their detractors, was their taste, their sense of effect and understatement.

Here’s more, this time from “Where Do We Go From Here”: “Have you heard about the buffalo on the plain/And how they’d stampede a thousand strong/ Well, now that buffalo is at the zop standing in the rain/ Just one more victim of fate/ Like California State.” Now, ambiguity doesn’t happen that often in rock and roll, it being a feature of the academic, rather than the popular, arts. But The .Band knew about it and how to use it. Their music is (was?) among the most satisfying, rewarding rock and roll ever recorded. It didn’t talk about things; it evoked the true depth and complexity of actual emotions. “Listen to the rice when the wind blows ‘crpss the water.” But Cahoots is at every turn literal and pedestrian, silly ideas inadequately packaged.

Oh, Robbie. You’ve got to find a sharper blade or have a new one made.

—Well, very good, very good. You did have something to say, after all. It sure sounds like a shitty album.

-It isn’t.

—But... Jesus, you brought up lobotomies and all.

—That’s just a measure of disappointment. This is a perfectly good album, as the run of albums goes. It’s just that this is a bad Band album. That’s what the agony is all about. -Agony?

-Hadn’t you noticed?

The musicianship is militantly ordinary. Robbie’s mathematical guitar is reduced to simple sums, Rick Danko’s bass and Richard Manuel’s piano are bored and perfunctory. Levon Helm, the only drummer who could make you cry, isn’t doing anything either. And Garth Hudson, the greatest rock and roll organist who ever lived, the lyric virtuoso who usually sits behind The Band and pushes and pushes and then rides out in .front, grinning and thumping and soaring... that Garth Hudson isn’t around. That must be some other fellow on organ.

The Band has always gotten into the virtues of age, but here they seem to have descended into senility, Everybody seems tired and bored with the whole enterprise. I liked them old better when they were younger.

Oh yes: On one cut, “Life Is A Carnival,” protean producer Allen Toussajnt is credited, probably for arranging the horns. They’re nice horns, but who cares? On another cut, Van Morrison sings with Richard Manuel. The song is called “4% Pantomime.” About halfway through, Morrison, takes the bit between his teeth and, with sheer strength of will, tries to make something of the unimaginable mess behind him. £ for effort, but it doesn’t work. In fact, Morrison’s effort is the best bit of singing on the album, another major disappointment. There are so many, I almost neglected it.

-My, my. Aren’t you. . . over-reacting a bit? It’s just a rock and roll album.

—I suppose. But, listen ... have you ever had a friend that you were really fond of, mostly because his head and his creative impulses work so well together, a genuinely sympathetic, together person, and all of a sudden he gets hung up on something and starts ripping off his friends and telling Rastus jokes and throwing empty bottles at passing cars and sending approving telegrams to Richard Nixon, wouldn’t you want to tell him, in the strongest possible terms, that you’re not sure what his problems is but he sure better get his shit together because he is going the wrong way?

You’re not saying The Band,is acting like that?

—No. It’s an analogy, not a simile. But you see the point.

—Sure.

I just went over to the bookcase and took down Is Five, from its place behind Cahoots. It was there all the time, waiting for me to find it. Is Five is a book of poems by e.e. cummings. cummings is a romantic, coiv cerned with spring and youth and immediacy, and therefore, in an indirect way, he knows

race to is Five, ana nere s pari oi what it says: “If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter. very littlesomebody who is obsessed by Making. Like all obsessions, the Making obsession has disadvantages; for instance, my only interest in making money would be to make it. Fortunately, however, I should prefer to make almost anything else, including locomotives and roses. It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island .the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

“They are also competing with each other, with elephants, and.with El Greco.

“Ineluctable preoccupation with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage: whereas nonmakers must content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two times two is four, he rejoices iri the purely irresistable truth (to be found, in abbreviated costume, upon the title page of thepresent volume).”

Jon Carroll

LOOK AT YOURSELF

URIAH HEEP

MERCURY

SUICIDE

STRAY

MERCURY

I don’t pretend to be a member of the Grand Funk generation, I’ve never taken a red, and most of the time my outlook on life is cheery and optimistic. My favorite music is the classically simple rock ‘n’ roll of the 50s and early 60s; And yet, God damn it, I like these noisy punks with their banks of Marshall amps and their grandiose self-images. Not only Grand Funk, but Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Sir Lord Baltimore, in fact anybody that sounds remotely like these groups, has a place in my affections.

It’s not really too hard to figure out. The pure volume is designed to penetrate the very marrow of your bones and suck you into the overpowering rhythm of rock & roll. Which, on one level, is all that Jerry Lee Lewis did. And as for the pretentious egotism of the musicians, well, I can take pretension from teenagers because to my mind anything teenagers do will always be somehow primal and valid. As long as they re doing what comes naturally and not what they read in some book they oughta be doing. It’s only pretension on the part of liberal arts students in their 20s; who should really know better, that makes me want to take the old motorcycle chain off the wall and go out stalking some of these flower-assed jokers.

These two albums are among the better offerings in the genre lately. Uriah Heep in particular has turned in a brilliant performance, far better in my opinion than Black Sabbath’s latest. Where the latter group is tending to get too arty for my tastes, Uriah Heep is doing things with overfuzzed guitars and mindless rhythms that the Stooges and the Flamin’ Groovies in collaboration would be hard pressed to match. There is no point in describing the individual songs-what you want to know is if they’re all good, and I can tell you that with no qualms. What you get here is 40 minutes of uninterrupted electricity; not that it’s all loud and heavy, there are the quiet moments, but the crackling tension never leaves for a moment. There are two five minute songs, three four minute songs, an eight and a ten. On the latter they are assisted by none other than Manfred Mann, which indicates something about either the group or Manfred himself, depending on whether you’re a fan. of his.

The virtues of Stray may be more elusive, for Lester Bangs himself said “you like them?!” when I asked to review the record. But he must not have listened to it closely enough, for while it’s true that Del Bromham, besides being a fairly good singer also plays 12 string guitar and mellotron, not to mention harpsiqhord, he doesn’t play them very much. And any group containing a guy who plays both bass and fuzz-bass guitar (Gary Giles) has got to be on the right trade. One thing about Stray is that their songs do have messages. They’re about the wrongness of war, or the rightness of nature, or the squareness of Mr. Businessman-but that’s all right, the Beatles even wrote songs about those things, and so what if they did it first? The important thing is that they combine these ho-hum homilies with that driving buzzsaw effect we love so much, and I don’t ever listen to lyrics anyway.

Another thing, these guys are smart. They put all the harpsichords, mellotrons, and assorted distractions on two short cuts (“Dearest Eloise” and “Where Do Our Children Belong”) instead of mixing them up everywhere in an eclectic hodgepodge. “Jericho” has a tremendous acid-rock segment reminiscent of the Shadows of Knight’s version of “Hey Joe,” but, with the energy on a Yardbirds level, it takes on new dimensions of pazazz. An unusual treatment is given to “Do You Miss Me”, which starts out with a minor chord arrangement that gives it a jazzy sound and a basic boogie bass pattern that enhances the effect, then it’s back to acid/ raga rock with a long improvised guitar solo as the boogie beat continues, and altogether it’s, one of the nicest things I’ve heard today.

The longest cut on the album and the title song besides, “Suicide” is evidently meant to be the tour-de-force. For the first three minutes it contains little but the sort of plodding bass that originated with the old Blue Cheer, along with the worthwhile elements of the ‘heavy’ style of course for which we are all in their debt. But it picks up as the drums go into double time and the guitar comes roaring in, and then just as things are rolling they go back to the start and thump their way boringly through the remainder of the song. A disappointment, though I bet it’s a real showstopper in concert.

All in all, however, a record you shouldn’t miss. If you can only afford one, get Uriah Heep, although both of these are albums no high-energy fan worth his “Funk You” button should be without.

Greg Shaw

SURF'S UP

THE BEACH BOYS

BROTHER/REPRISE

I have, at one time or another, been a Beach Boys fan. I was even more a punk then than I am now, though, and so, after I’d heard the Who, my interest, started to dwindle. I kept up with the Beach Boys, though, because they were making incredible post-surfing music: “Fun Fun Fun”, “I Get Around,” the brilliant “Help Me Rhonda,” and “California Girls.”

And then, one day when I was sixteen, I went into a department store and saw a new Beach Boys album: Pet Sounds. I couldn’t help myself, I took the last three bucks out of my pocket and bought it. I took it home and tried to listen to it. It was awful.

I hate Pet Sounds. 1 think that it is probably the worst record the Beach Boys had made up to thaty point. I’m positive that the reason it went unrecognized is not because teenage America was too stupid to recognize a brilliant work of “art” but because the Beach Boys had deserted the trashy,' exciting -and most of all, fun, music they had been making for something contrived and-finallypointless.

The only sense the Beach Boys ever made was in capturing American teenage humor, the spirit of reckless fun and adventure that made surfing and hotrodding more than just fads. The Beach Boys were the first band to promulgate a lifestyle through their music, and all you have to do is go back and listen to “Shut Down” or “Little Deuce Coupe” or “Surfer Girl” or any of a dozen other pre-Pet Sounds hit singles to know it. Even their last big hit, “Wild Honey,” has way more to do with what makes Brian Wilson brilliant-if not a genius—than any of this art nonsense.

It seems essentially stupid to me to pretend that the Beach Boys are 'as good as ever. They’re not; because they don’t have their finger on our pulse anymore! And to presume that making some vague “art” record is more important than that seems to me to deny the central value of rock’n’roll: pure fun.

It isn’t fun to listen to Surfs Up. There are a couple of good songs here—like “Student Demonstration Time,” even if it does have terrible politics and is stolen straight from the Coasters—but for the most part Surfs Up is boring. Merely boring, at that.

I wouldn’t trade a single of “I Get Around” for everything the Beach Boys have done since Pet Sounds. I resent being told that that makes me unappreciative of art. The sort of pompous people who would tell us that “Surfs Up” is a more important record than “409” or “Dance Dance Dance" are the same sort of people who told us that we should have listened to something more weighty than rock and roll in the first place. It’s a shame that they are being listened to by so many of us.

Brian Wilson’s not a genius. He was, once, an incredibly astute assessor of our moods, but he’s not even that anymore. Surfs Up is a drag because it isn’t fun. And the Beach Boys I remember, and love, will always be fun. Send Warner Bros, your copy of this record and ask them for one of their used copies of ‘Surfin’Safari. You won’t be sorry you did.

Dave Marsh

WELCOME TO THE CANTEEN TRAFFIC UNITED ARTISTS

I dunno, maybe Steve Winwood’s just getting old. Or maybe the constant disintegration and reunion of the musicians in that most high strung of the great rock groups, Traffic, is just giving the music mental fatigue.

Anyway, they brought it all upon themselves. Winwood, Mason and Capaldi were some of the finest songwriters in the entire field and had a chance to create great and beautiful music through their compositions. But they played up the fact that they were (or thought they were) virtuoso multiple-axe men. Through their encouragement, people began to listen to Traffic albums for the purpose of realizing that “Yes Indeed! Little Stevie is omygosh playing Each and Every Single Instrument on that song!”

Yes Indeed. The only problem is that it’s not all that difficult to find virtuoso musicians in a music industry that includes thousands of people. What we all desperately need is for people to give us songs that can weave subtle moods without being maudlin, or to rock out without becoming incoherently lost in feedback. I firmly believe Winwood and company can give us both, but they haven’t. Not for a long time.

“40,000 Headmen” has always been my favorite dope song, not through any doubleentendre but through its imagery. Here, they play the song, then take three minutes to end it in a sodden brand of West Coast jazz improvisation. “Dear Mr. Fantasy” suffers a similar rendition, but in much greater degree they stretch it to ten and a half minutes, failing totally to sustain interest.

This album was recorded live at the OZ benefit in London. Live albums are an easy way for a group to keep its name before the public, even though the music often turns out to be a pedestrian run-through and little else. I propose a six month moratorium on live albums. Let’s help get groups like Traffic off their asses and back to work.

Rob Houghton

GRACE

THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST COTILLION

THE COLMANAIRES OF WASHINGTON, D.C. COTILLION

Black gospel music is a strange twilight music, in practice. It smears the boundary between holy and hellish, arouses emotions that would have made St. Paul tremble with mortification, but docs it in the Lord’s service nevertheless. Its practitioners scare me, to tell the truth. The power they exert over the black community is something few white people know, and yet I can’t help thinking that they’re not all that different from their brothers and sisters “doing the devil’s work.”

Let me explain. A few years ago, I was working in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art sorting Christmas cards with my assistant, Mark. It was boring work, and Mark suggested that it would go faster if he brought in his transistor radio. Fine, I said, and the next day he brought it in. But the problem was that we were down in Manhattan’s bedrock so far that no radio stations came in. Finally, we found that we could pull in WLIB, the Voice of Harlem, one of the greatest black stations in the country, and one that is surprisingly weak. After a few days with it, we really began to look forward to the Joe Bostic Gospel Hour, which ranged from one hour (on Monday, to about four come Friday. Interspersed with the saving music would be commercials for all of the classic rip-offs of Harlem - special Bibles, funeral parlors, sewing machines, a 125 th Street furniture store, and so on. It became obvious that the people who listened to the show were mainly old women, and when I made that discovery, I began to be afraid of gospel music, for in more Harlem households than I care to think,about, it is Granny, old, crotchety, quite probably senile, but matriarch to the end, who holds the purse strings. Her daughter may have seven kids to raise, financial problems aplenty, but still she has to come to Granny practically on her knees, and even then she may go away empty-handed. Then the old bitch dies and leaves it to the church.

But still, the more I listened to Bostic’s show, the more fascinated I became with the music. I still credit Joe Bostic with making me hyper-critical of any rhythm and blues music that didn’t surge like the raw, powerful music he played on his show. (Still docs play, as a matter of fact — New Yorkers take note.) And it was on the Gospel Hour that 1 first heard the Southern Michigan All-State Choir of the Institutional Church of God In Christ oT Detroit. In vain, I searched for their albums, trying to find out just what it was I had heard. I didn’t even remember it, except as a rush.

Mostly, though, the show featured smaller groups - the Swan Silvertones, the Dixie Hummingbirds, all kinds of Blind Boys from all over the South, individual preachers playing roller-rink organ, primitive guitar, or bass-chord piano, and a seemingly never-ending stream of -aires.

After the Christmas season was over, so was the job. At my new residence in Greenwich Village, a scant two miles south, WLIB wasn’t even a static patch on the dial. And a couple of years later, when the Edwin Hawkins Singers were making the white kids sit up and take notice, I put on my cool exterior, and said “Awww., that ain’t nothin’.”

All of which is prolegomena to my telling you that these two discs, part of Cotillion’s mostly-killer Gospel Series, are somethin For one thing, there is the Institutional Church of God In Christ. If you can imagine the well-trained chorus of the Edwin Hawkins .Singers fronted by two soloists who sound like Aretha Franklin and the Chantels’ Arlene Smith, you have a picture of a group that’s almost as good as these folks are. I don’t have any idea who any of them are (the liner notes are so busy telling you about the choir’s awards that they never bother to tell you anything else about them), but they exceed any boundaries on a human voice I’ve ever heard. The soprano soloist is especially thrilling, and it’s a shame that she’s only given three numbers on the album. One of the few things I remember about hearing it on the radio is that the sound was too big for Mark’s tiny transistor. Well, Grace is too big for my hefty-sized speakers, but that hasn’t stopped me from listening to it. If you like records to knock you over now and again, try it on. And look for the group’s earlier Savoy albums, too.

The Colmanaires just don’t stop. I’d love to see them in performance. Four ladies and one gentleman, accompanied by one dapper-looking dude in a neat suit. When they sing in chorus, the sound is almost as big as half of the Institutional Church’s. Ethelean Colman has a big, big voice that just comes welling out of her like a spring, and all of the harmonics are tight. Actually, for gospel music, it’s pretty conventional, but for just listening it’s energy-giving, uplifting, jumping-around music, and that’s pretty unconventional.

The rest of. the Cotillion Gospel Series ranges from Brook Benton (which I never even bothered to listen to) to a disappointing disc from one of gospel’s grand old men, Alex Bradford (try his Specialty stuff if you want to hear him at his best), the Harmonizing Four, who are getting old, but are still interesting, Gloria Griffin (you’d better like gospel a lot before you get either of those — they’re both excellent, but really esoteric, and Marion Williams, who is a bit commercial for my taste, but fine nonetheless.

Yeah, if you liked Edwin Hawkins and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, you’ll go apeshit (sorry, Lord) over these records.

Ed Ward

SMASH YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL

JOHN ENTWISTLE

DECCA

Here’s John Entwistle and he’s got this solo record, see, and it’s really GOOD. Better than I thought it would be even. He’s away from the Who almost completely (Keith Moon bangs a tin can on one cut or something), he writes great songs and tells fabulous stories, he’s got a guitarist'(Dave “Cyrano” Langston) who can play as good as Thunderclap Newman can sing, and all the music is nifty, real nifty, rock and roll, even heavy metal sometimes, and good arrangements. All that kinda stuff.

But none of that is what I wanna get at. None of this “spirit of rock and roll” stuff. Fuck that. Entwistle’s onto something bigger. He’s got his role sorted out so good, you don’t have to hardly do any sorting for him. He can kick ass (“My Size”) or be superdrunk and falling down (“Pick Me Up”) or a lonely pop star out on the road (“What Are We Doing Here” which contains the immortal lines: ‘And there are only 25 days 6 hours and 10 minutes/And this’ll all be five thousand miles away’). And once he’s even Satan, and once Dr. Faustus translated into plastic ‘ole rock and roll.

In fact, I can’t find, anything wrong with the whole album.

I agree with its philosophy, or spirit or whatever, and I love “Heaven and Hell” as much as I did when it was a Who B-side (“Summertime Blues,” I think). But who wants to write a record review that says: “It conveys the boredom with traditional JudeoChristian cosmology /demonology we’ve all felt at one time or another?” Not me, I’ll tell you that.

There’s even hits here, solid AM fucking hits. Like “My Size”, and “You’re Mine” and if somebody has the nerve, why they’ll put out “I Believe In Everything” right NOW as a single, because it ends with a British rave-up version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that’d make Gene Autry shed a tear. And it’s; got neat words of its own too: “I believe in every thing. ’cos that’s the simplest way for me to be.” Me, too.

But who wants to talk about all that. It doesn’t get anywhere near the sense of how much pure fucking fun this goddamn thing is. It doesn’t. And it doesn’t grab ya the way “You’re Mine” does.

John Entwistle is neat.

Dave Marsh

IRON MAN

ERIC DOLPHY

DOUGLAS

TWINS

ORNETTE COLEMAN ATLANTIC

The late Eric Dolphy is turning up with increasing frequency on reissues. First it was Mingus Presents Mingus and Town Hall Concert, and now we Jiave a previously unreleased Dolphy performance on Twins and a reissue of Dolphy’s own Iron Man.

Some jazz critics faulted Dolphy during his lifetime for not going far enough, for trying to graft his liberated conception onto a tired bebop superstructure, or for repeating certain pet phrases from tune to tune. But then almost everyone was taking sides in the early sixties; it seemed you were either for bebop and against ’Trane, Coleman, and the rest, or you were a staunch free music partisan with nothing but contempt for players who “leaned on” “outmoded forms and procedures.” By this time we should be able to appreciate Dolphy-as the musicians themselves always did—as a brilliant improviser with a distinctly personal style and a lot to say. He was simply an inspiration and a joy to hear, and as for his historical importance, and his pet phrases, you can hear a lot of valid “Dolphyisms” in the work of trailblazing moderns like Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Huey Simmons, or Murk Cohen. Beyond this,, his incredibly developed sense of (musical) humor survives in the work of numerous musicians; when Chico Hamilton’s performance from this year’s Montreux Jazz Festivel is released on Flying Dutchman, you’ll hear an entire album that uses Dolphy’s sense of humor as a major premise.

Unfortunately, Iron Man isn’t Dolphy’s best. He plays with characteristic fire and feeling throughout, but somehow things keep getting fragmented. Part of the blame must rest oh the rhythm section; vibist Bobby Hutcherson sounds very stiff and uncomfortable, without a trace of the flow he was to bring to Out to Lunch or his own early Blue Note albums, and J.C. Moses sounds a little untogether as well Dolphy’s playing too is less coherent than usual. There are two gems, however. “Burning Spear” is Dolphy’s most interesting recorded composition, and uses the band in a really innovative way. And the two duets with bassist Richard Davis are marvellous, especially the somber “Come Sunday.” Still, you could do better with dynamite Dolphy collections like Out There on Prestige, or Out To Lunch, or Last Date, (Limelight).

Twins is a stone gas from beginning to end. Ornette’s new record will be out on Columbia soon, but everything he did for Atlantic has the ring of “classic” about it, as if the improvisations had been written out by some divine hand, as if every note were exactly in place and every spontaneous squawk carefully composed. More, Atlantic’s Coleman “leftovers” from 1959-61 haye proven consistently as good as anything released during those years. The recently compiled Art of The Improvisers was as good as any of Ornette’s albums, but Twins is even better. It’s so good it makes most of the jazz records released this year sound pretty tired by comparison.

The album’s highlight is the unreleased first take of “Free Jazz” by Coleman’s famous “double quartet.’ It’s a scorcher with fine Dolphy (on bass clarinet), excellent Ornette and Don Cherry, and plenty of double bass wizardry from Charlie Haden and the late Scott LaFaro. The original Free Jazz lp is a milestone recording, but the seventeenminute first take on Twins holds its own with anything on record. The rest of the album consists of equally groovy quartet performances.

The further we get from those Coleman performances, the more perfect they seem. But it isn’t a lifeless or manipulated perfection. It’s organic perfection* the rarest commodity there is, the result of important, original musicians meeting each other when the “New Music” was fresh and really new, and playing for themselves, for the people, and for the ages. The music may be ten years old, but it’s younger than yesterday, and you really should hear it.

Bob Palmer

ADVENTURES IN TIME

DAVE BRUBECK

COLUMBIA

This is Dave Brubeck’s oldies but goodies album. Man, how I loved Dave and the quartet back in those days of yore. Big block chords moving through their ineluctable patterns. Paul Desmond playing alto as if it were a flute, Joe Morello trying desperately to find a drum style to measure up to his jazz poll ratings. Bringing bebop to white suburbia. Everything carefully controlled so as not to get out of hand. Here was a music you could justify to your parents because it was safe and obviously a product of the finest schools. Mr. Brubeck was obviously a nice man, not like those unsavory types who hung around Art Blakey and Horace Silver. A gentleman and a scholar. But once you’d gotten Brubeck into the house and his sound had begun to seem a little pale, where else could you turn? Blakey, Silver, Miles, Bud, Monk ... delivered into the hands of the Devil himself.

I’ll always dig Dave Brubeck and his wonderful sound, both for what it was and where it led. A pox on those who put it down for being too commercial, rigid, derivative or sweet. I’m glad too see that they’ve re-released all of that corny stuff from the “Time Out” period. .Listening to these toe-tappers now — “Take Five,” “Blue Rondo A La Turk,” and the others — I’ve finally . realized the uncanny nature of Brubeck’s accomplishment. Dave could play any time signature under the sun — 7/4, 9/8, 10/4, A—/B+ — and make it sound exactly like 4/4! What if... Hmmmm. What if we should ever learn that he meant it that way?

Langdon Winner

ANGEL DELIGHT FAIRPORT CONVENTION A&M

REFLECTION

PENTANGLE

REPRISE

ROSEMARY LANE BERT JANSCH REPRISE

PLEASE TO SEE THE KING STEELEYE SPAN BIG TREE

England is a funny place, which is certainly an understatement, but none the less true for being one. The tenacity with which the British cling to their past is both laughable and commendable, and it is never more commendable as when it gives new life to the contemporary scene. At best, that is what these four records are all about.

Someone who is a .close watcher of the rock scene may shake his head in disbelief when confronted with the staggering amount of bands coming from a country about the same size as Oregon (I looked it up), but he’d shake his head even more to discover that there aren’t all that many places where the bands can play. Sure, there are clubs throughout England, but they don’t cater to a rock audience — they’re folk clubs. Now, I know that everybody’s making noises about a “folk revival”, happening these days, but they’re wrong. James Taylor is no more folk music than,Burl Ives. And, while these British folk clubs get their share of the sensitive (or shadows-of-my-mind-type) songwriters, by far their main fare are traditional or traditionallybased, singers. Sure, these are the clubs where the Incredible String Band got started, but that’s more an anomaly of the scene. Mostly, you find your old ballads, Woody Guthrie sdngs, protest songs, American traditional mountain music, acoustic guitar virtuosos, imitation bluegrass bands, and the like. And sure, 90% of them suck.

But the point remains: This is a music that deals in sharply delineated areas, which demands a lot of dedicated research to perform so you won’t get booed off the stage when you’re playing the more rural clubs. Because the kids who’ll go see you there know their stuff — they’ve grown up with grandma (or even Mom) singing songs and following traditions that are older than anybody knows. The kids still kill wrens and put them in boxes on Twelfth Night, and bring them around for the neighbor to see, and it’s the cultural anthropolgist’s worry to figure out why. Not only that, but they listen to rock and roll, dig it, turn on, and more likely than not, when they jam with their friends, it, comes out folk music, one way or another.

What we have here, then, is four records showing varying degrees of traditionalism by

four of the leading lights of the British folk circuit. The Pentangle are perhaps the least traditional, with their forays into jazz and classical music all fitting neatly into their format. They’ve made one superlative album, Sweet Child, and a lot of not-so good ones. Reflections, while not as poor as their last, Cruel Sister, still suffers from the ravages of sameness. Oddly (or is it?), the best stuff on the album is American stuff re-made - so-so versions of “Omie Wise” and “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?” And a muddy recording job doesn’t help. Bert Jansch, resident guitar genius -of the Pentangle (along with John Renboum), is better off when he’s not singing, and better off yet when he’s duetiing with Renbourn. He’s got a lot of good albums out, and, while Rosemary Lane isn’t one of the best, Jansch fans will like it.

By far, though, the seminal group of British folklorists in pop disguise has been Fairport Convention in its many different incarnations. They’ve had six major changes of personnel - not bad for a five-man group - and they’ve done everything from Dylan Basement-Tape songs to painstakingly-researched variants on ancient witchcraft ballads, and through it all they’ve shown themselves to be one of the very finest groups that the British Isles have to offer.

Their last three albums have been folk music things, for the most part, and, oddly enough, Sandy Denny’s departure has served to strengthen the group’s forays in this direction. I’m not saying that she took anything away from the band, and certainly her performances of “Tam Lin” and “Matty Groves” are the two finest performances of traditional material Fairport’s done yet, but her leaving has forced the guys in the band to work harder. And so, on Full House, they not only gave us some great traditional songs, but also goodies like “Sloth” and “Doctor of Physick,” originals that sounded traditional by. using modal scales and the like. And not only that, but Fairport came to master their brilliant mixture of folk and rock elements, mainly through Dave Mattacks’ incredibly melodic and incisive drumming, which can only be compared in its subtlety to Levon Helm’s. And the comparison with the Band doesn’t stop there, because Fairport, like the Band, have fused the best of their country’s traditional musical elements (modal scales, many-versed ballads/Motown, country & western, and 19th Century sheet music) into a music that is as undeniably in the traditional spirit as.it is rock and roll.

After all the foofaraw in the buildup here, though, I’m disappointed to tell you that Angel Delight is a disappointment. Released without the band’s knowledge (and since when is Island pulling shit like that?), it is made up of songs that were to be released as singles, and nowhere on the album does the band get to stretch out at length. Still, most of the material is pretty good, and some of it, especially the traditional stuff, is fine. Especially notable is the odd little instrumental “Bridge Over The River Ash,” a string quartet based on traditional melodies. Also of note are “Lord Marlborough,” and “Banks Of The Sweet Primroses,” the latter of which proves, as did their “Matty Groves,” that no song is so overdone that it couldn’t stand another good version.

Which is what the folk tradition is about, no?

Steeleye Span is a Fairport spinoff based around bassist Ashely “Tyger” Hutchings, and, unless you’re into British folk music or a Fairport fan, perhaps a bit difficult to get into, especially since they don’t have a drummer. They have the advantages of a very pretty-voiced lady singer, Maddy Prior, and some top-drawer material, of which the tiny acappella version of “The King,” the song sung by the kids bringing the dead wren around, stands out. Since I don’t have an American copy of this record I don’t know whether or not they bothered to mix down the oppressively loud bass on the rest of the songs, but the recording on the British version is lousy. Nevertheless, the spirit of the music comes shining right through, and the fact that all the instruments are electric (there’s even a Leslied guitar!) doesn’t seem relevant. In fact, with the incredibly large impact Fairport and Steeleye have had in folk circles in Britain, the future of British traditional music may well lie in the twin direction of acappella singing (especially in duets), Which is a vital tradition even today in rural areas, and (*GASP*) electric bands. It may sound like heresy, but I do believe that in Fairport and Steeleye Span, we have two electric groups that even Cecil Sharpe would dig.

Ed Ward

THE WAY TO BECOME

THE SENSUOUS WOMAN

ATLANTIC

J

1. Anybody who needs a record (or book) to tell them how to jerk-off is pretty effed-up. “The head of my clitoris is ultra-sensitive ...” No shit, Sherlock.

2. Did your mother ever come? Did she ever blow your father? Think hard. You can’t picture it, hunh? I can’t picture my mother sucking-off my father. I can’t picture my father telling my mother to spread her legs. I can’t picture them asking each other if they’re coming yet. Well, maybe this record can’t aid their bicho/chochos animus but it could prompt her to spend a little more time in the bathtub tomorrow nite. But, then again, anybody who reaches the heights of sexual satisfaction by sucking on a double-dip ice cream cone (with or without sprinkles) has got to be you know what I mean.

3. Good ways to rub-off: lay on your back & kick your legs up, tubbing them together quickly until you cum; put a dog yummy twixt your pubes and call Rover; with a freshly-snuffed candle; lustily; out of boredom; so you can go to sleep at peace; pick a number out of the fone book and tell them to scream “Peter Piper Picked A Pack Of Pickled Peppers!” and quick quick quick as a laser flash shove the receiver up against, your crotch; rub up against your infant child; sit on your turntable and switch it on to 78 rpm; have a politician shake hands and/or kiss your unborn baby; put the carpet attachment onto your Hoover & point it smutwards; snap an amyl nitrate while riding a two-prop thru a ceiling-zero thunderstorm.

4.1 especially, liked the segment on amputee eroticism, the “warm, wet kisses” planted on the stump of the lovee’s hacked limb. And all the while she’s pretending he’s John Wayne.

5. Razor blades affixed to the lingam? Sounds sick to me. Red Devil Sparklers in the uretha? Some people may get a bang out of it but I have my hesitations. Cruciform roachclips on the clitoris? Don’t try it witl) my sister, buddy.

6. Would you respect your mommy if she let you schtup her in the heinie? Think hard, citizen. ,

7. Tell your lover he’s a good lover and, even tho he still doesn’t get it up, he’ll try a little harder.

8. Cures for impotence: “Ha, ha! What’s the matter with your ding-dong?”; “What time are you supposed to call your mother?”; “It doesn’t matter — we can still be friends.”

9. Did you ever come in somebody’s hair? King Street Smith did. Sounds neet to me.

Could I come in your hair? Write me c/o Fusion.

10. What’s all this sex shit about anyway? Take the Pope — he looks happy. The Lone Ranger too. And my kitty who was spayed at a very early age. Whose mother was an Arden.

Or, as it was so aptly put in The Sensuous Basket Case, “you can’t get veedee from it but it shore won’t excite your brocolli either.” Racka racka.

Nick Tosches Patti Johnson

ELVIS SINGS

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHRISTMAS RCA

And a merry fuckin’ Xmas greeting to you and yours, whether early, belated or otherwise. And merry fuckin’ etc. to you too Elvis wherever the fuck you are while your wife and kid do the unwrapping under the old family tree. There’s this old 78 with an Elvis interview on it and he sez he wouldn’t want his kid to be an only child, this was in 195X or something. Well his kid’s still an only child and the least Elvis coulda done for her was give her a baby brother for Xmas this year, it’s the least he shoulda done. Even if he’s not fucking Priscilla anymore he could’ve at least jerked off in a bottle and sent it to her gift wrapped for artificial insemination purposes. Or is his sperm too valuable to him to waste it on conception?' What’s lie expect Priscilla to do, get knocked up by immaculate conception or something?

Well anyway time was they used to use Elvis' to sell Xmas, if Johnny Mathis could do it Elvis could do it too if not more so. Well these days they’re tryin’ to use Xmas to sell Elvis, his latest bunch of albums haven’t been such hot shit ahd the folks who buy ’em would probably just as soon buy a 69cter like Moldivar Sandoz Plays the Sacred Season on Camden. This one could have been on Camden but they don’t cost enough, JesUs imagine, using the name of God’s offspring to make a fuckin’ profit!

Yeah you’d think so but then the pious sounds of “Come All Ye Faithful” come wafting thru the speakers and thfere’s good will to men all over the place. Bing Crosby never did it better, in fact Bing Crosby was shit. His whole rep with the 20 th century is based on Xmas shit anyway, “White Christmas” to be exact, so he’s just a seasonal hack and nothing but. Elvis' rep’s got a little more meat attached to it but it’s too bad he ain’t at least cyclical himself, he could do with a little upsurge in relevance but for the time being “The First Noel” will have to do. But what’s it do? It doesn’t even put him back in the Tupelo hall of fame, even the whole New Testament couldn’t do that if it was as downright European as “T.F.N.”

But then there’s the freshness of “Winter Wonderland,” that tough mother of a gem that’s been recorded more times than “Stardust” or “St James Infirmary” and the best version of which is still Johnny Mathis’. Wait a minute, no I’m thinking of “Sleigh Bells” or “Sleigh Ride” or whatever it is and that’s not even on this album. Come to think of it this album stinks. And they better stop trying to sell Xmas so early in the year from now on. They used to get the campaign going the week after Thanksgiving, now they start cranking the whole thing up two weeks before Halloween. Polaroid Copy Service has even started pushing Xmas cards in late August. Spiritual Xmas died a hell of a long time ago, no way of reviving that worthless corpse nohow. Anyway commercial Xmas is a gas, better than the original goddam holiday ever could’ve been. But it’s gonna have to be safeguarded or pretty soon it too’s gonna be headed down the drain. So next year (people at RCA are you listening?) no Elvis yuletide disc until the first or second week of December (and that means review copies too), okay?

R. Meltzer