That's the Way God Planned It

RECORDS

That's the Way God Planned It

BANGLA DESH INTERNATIONAL POP MUSIC COMMUNITY APPLE

The whole Bangla Desh set was premiered over the radio a few nights ago, neatly coinciding with the Indian Army�s rout of the West Pakistani forces and the liberation of the East, putting the sweet seal of history on the cause that launched this record in the first place. Three of us sat listening for an hour or more, though admittedly we weren�t as polite as the studio audience; we turned off the first half hour of Ravi Shankar. Then the George Harrison-Leon Russel-Mad Dogs & So On Part began.

I found most of it dull, and after a bit the whole show bega^i to bother me immensely. Admittedly the huge band was tight and well rehearsed, Harrison sang with conviction, and Clapton was absolutely spectacular. OK, it was well-produced. Well-produced oatmeal.

1. God saving us.

2. This is the way God planned it.

3. Chant the name of the Lord and you�ll be free. (Nick Tosches has suggested that this course of action did not seem to be getting the people of Bangla Desh very far; nasty of him to bring that up.)

All of these devout rockers seemed to be missing their own point. If this gibberish had any relation to reality, or even any internal consistency (perils of pantheism) then the same God that allowed this wonderful concert to take place was also raining hot death on the other side of the globe. To achieve some kind of spiritual balance, perhaps.

Well, it reminded me of Joseph Heller�s God, the Vicious Practical Joker. The material made a mockery of what the event was supposedly about, and I imagine this comes across much more blatantly on record than it did at the concert itself, since the electric presence of the stars doesn�t blank out these feelings in a mindless glow of being there with Ringo, George, and Bob. Which is nothing to sneeze at; I�d have liked to have been there too. But I wasn�t, and I have to take what I can get, along with the rest of the audience that wasn�t there either, and what I get is a feeling of being sold down the river, smothered by some of the silliest ideals of Western civilization, and flattered by a superstar glitter that fails to hide the almost total emptiness of the production.

There�s a line in Harrison�s �Beware of Darkness� in which he warns, �beware of maya� - �maya� being an Indian word for �veil of illusion�, and without even going into the fact that the avoidance of darkness is a perfect definition of illusion, it has to be said that a veil of illusion is precisely what this concert has to offer.

There are some exceptions to the bland sound, the horrible fake gospel shouts, and the silly songs. Leon Russell makes a valiant attempt to erase the pompous mood of the event; he delivers a wild version of �Jumping Jack Flash,� brakes into a long jive story that resolves itself into the Coasters� old �Youngblood,� and finally edges out and roars back to finish what he started. That�s exciting, and it is as anomolous to the general drift of the concert as two other high points, Ringo�s �It Don�t Come Easy� and Bob Dylan�s last number, �Just Like a Woman.� While on this record most of Dylan�s material seems a little inaccessible to him, here he clearly rises to one of the great performances of his career. He sings the song the way Hank Williams would sing it if he was still alive, with the ghostly chill of �Lost Highway,� and finally he transcends the concert, the record, and even the ideas and feelings about the song we may have had before, until he reveals nuances of meaning and emotion that are not even implied in the version we know from Blonde on Blonde. If the genius of this man seems occasional now, when it comes it is staggering, and nothing can touch it. Ah, Bob Dylan!

One of the best things about Dylan�s side of the set is that it can make you feel like a fan again. A Bob Dylan fan. It�s exciting to hear George Harrison say, �I�d like to bring out a friend of us all, Mr. Bob Dylan,� and implicitly join in on the cheers; to recognize, in yourself, the thrill the audience is experiencing; to delight in the applause that breaks in on the choruses they and you have publically celebrated and privately cherished for years. In spite of the fact that the movie promises to be uniquely boring, I�ll be there to see how Ringo looks playing tambourine with Bob Dylan.

Dylan�s performance is steady, but most of his material seems just out of his reach, as if he couldn�t quite catch the emotional rhythm of the songs. But from the first notes of �Just Like a Woman,� the number he chose to end his set, it is clear that something else is happening. Here he rises to one of the great performances of his career. It may well be the equal of anything that he has ever done, and if it took him five years to regain the power he once had, then what matters is not how long it took, but that he has in fact regained it. As Dave Marsh made clear in his piece on �George Jackson,� what has happened is that Dylan has regained that power within new forms, in a process that involved reconstituting his artistic resources and seeing them in new ways. What began, some years ago, as a change in attitude, seems finally to have grown into a changed point of view, and an authentic, as opposed to a contrived, maturity.

It�s not only Dylan�s choice of material here that demonstrates this, of course, but what he does with it, and especially what he does with this last song. He is not merely singing the song in a new way for the sake of novelty, but deepening it, until his performance reveals nuances of emotion and commitment that do not even seem to be implied in the recording we know from Blonde on Blonde. What is absent from the song, now, is the sense of bitterness that emerged both as complaint and contempt five years ago, and the performance here imposes an enormous agony on the simple matter of living through the day, until finally, in the last verse, it increases in intensity and Dylan�s voice is acting out a resistance to the calamity of life that stops a long way short of forgiveness.

There are words in this song that Dylan sings with such an unholy intensity that they literally vibrate, like the arms of a tuning fork. There is that moment when he sings,

�/just don�t fit�

and the first word echoes off the rafters of the Garden. The song has the impact that is really what we have missed in Dylan s work of the last few years, a force that makes you drop your jaw with amazement and recognition. He has reached it in moments, like the first line of �All Along the Watchtower,�

�THERE MUST BE SOME WAY OUT OF HERE�

and in the long, last choruses of �George Jackson,� but here it merges in a sustained performance: you can�t get out of the way.

Dylan�s impact is a simultaneous clarifying and deepening of our lives, never in a facile celebration of his life or ours, but a challenge to the very sensibility that looks for such a celebration. And it is not all that complicated to define it. When Dylan has this force, it is risky to listen.

Finally, as the last song of the set, there is �Bangla Desh,� ^hich flopped when Harrison released it as a single. The performance here has such fire it might well hit now if released a second time. The lyrics still fall miles short of their subject (�It sure seems like a mess�) but Clapton especially reveals all the power that previously lay dormant in the song. This performance, inevitably calling up images of carnage and terror, is inspiring, and scary. Harrison beats his fists against that veil of illusion as he sings, and his words are helpless to pierce the velvet curtain this concert has thrown over itself, in a sense to protect the event from the terror of its own object, but this time the music breaks through and you get some idea why it was that Harrison called all these people together in the first place.

Still, that�s not much out of three lps. I can�t honestly recommend that anyone buy this set for musical reasons, but I can encourage you to keep the radio on and listen to some of it. The recorded concert is a ponderous document of some of the worst foibles of the counter culture, but buried within is a hint of what power that culture still retains.

Finally, though, it must be said that the most pathetic thing about the event is its almost total lack of risk (and Dylan�s �Just Like a Woman� is the only real exception) be it artistic, or political. Bangla Desh, unlike Mayday, was a safe issue. It�s always easier to turn to the troubles of a distant land than to enter into situations that directly threaten yourself, and if you are a musician, your audience. The music, for the most part, could not have been less adventurous. Though many have implied that the soul of Woodstock nation, having been sold to the Devil that day at Altamont, was bought back with this concert, they ought to know that not only can�t you buy it back, you have to re-create it, on terms that recognize the fall implicit in the original deal. You can�t redeem yourself by the spectacle of someone else�s suffering, you have to come to terms with your own. That is why no matter what George thinks about my sweet Lord or Billy Preston about the way God planned it, Ringo deserves the last word.

It don�t come easy.

Greil Marcus

E PLURIBUS FUNK GRAND FUNK RAILROAD GRAND FUNK/CAPITOL

This album should really have been live from Shea Stadium, but that�s the only real complaint I think of. Farner and company have emerged, with this album, as not only the populist princes of heavy but as the unquestionably best artists within third generation rock.

Their roots have become more apparent so that this is almost r�n�b heavy. The music has the impact and assorted drives that make soul such a fine music to conglomerate with teenage passions, without belying any of its secondand thirdhand derivations. In some places, this is almost an organ-based third generation version of what the Rascals or their midwestern equivalent, the Rationals, might be doing were either of them still together.

The most exciting part of all, and the thing that lets this album stand as a classic without reservation, is the almost unparalleled effectiveness with which GFRR have cured their principal artistic problem: a tendehcy for an over-modulated bass line. This time out, the bass stands back enough so that you aren�t obliged to remix on the amplifier. (It is true that the droning bass dominance is the band�s most effective live attribute, but this isn�t really a workable premise for an album.)

Farner has really emerged here, too, stepping forward in a new manner. He is more than the group�s leader, he is also the synthesis of the group. And, since the group is simply the synthesis of every pristinely innocent influence in the counter-culture this must make Farner the ultimate dope smoker�s everyman. Still, he is an unquestionably talented and charismatic symbol; his sex appeal is one measure of how incredibly powerful this band�s aura, on record and on stage, is becoming.

�Loneliness,� I hope, is as far into the orchestral stratum as they�re going to chose to go for a while. This works, because it is kept in context with the rest of their music: simple and driving. I don�t think, however, that on the whole they could pull off a whole album of orchestrated music. Their sound is so complete, even in its simplicity, so full, that it really doesn�t require confection like this; it would be super-fluous if it became anything more than an occasional, added fillip.

This is definitely a step forward from Survival, no doubt about it. I�d like to see them tackle some more cover material in the future, and shy away from printing their lyrics since their lyrics are mostly just words to songs, not poetry, and eat up space where we could get pictures, but all' in all this is probably one of the twenty or thirty best albums released this year, in any genre. I�m listening to it a lot, after a month, and that�s about the best recommendation I could offer.

Dave Marsh

BELL AND ARC COLUMBIA

Did you ever get the sneaking suspicion that everybody in Great Britain must belong to a Rock and Roll band? I mean, they just keep coming out with new rock bands — and good ones to boot. (If it�s any help, my dear old Granny lives in England, and she doesn�t belong to a band, although she used to be the head roadie for The Deviants until she hurt her back carrying a B-3 organ up six flights of stairs while soned on Mennan Skin Bracer. Now she has a part-time job writing Christmas songs for John Lennon.)

Anyway, Bell and Arc are a new group from England, this is their first album, and it's a very nice effort. The intensity level isn�t that of a Black Sabbath, but it certainly isn�t meant to be. It ranges from a couple of weaker accoustic numbers to some fine middle energy anglo-rock. If I had to compare them to somebody, intensity wise, I guess I�d say that they fall in somewhere between Lindesfarne and Spooky Tooth. (What does that do for you?) They have a tendency to start slow and work to climaxes, (I guess that�s the best way, huh?), and their version of Cohen�s �So Long Marianne�� almost knocks me out of my Red Ball Flyers.

No famous names here, but I like it anyway. I seem to be playing it lots, which is more than I can say for Sticky Fingers, Tarkus, and a few other so-called biggies that never did much for me.

And that, as they say around my neighbourhood, is the biscuit. Sincerely yours,

Alan Niester