TIGHTEN UP

TIGHTEN UP

Vince Aletti

by

I�ve been thinking about the past year but I can�t remember it. It seems like the year before, continued the next page (like the second sheet of a pad that still holds the impressions of the message written on the sheet above, now torn off and stuffed into the purse of the woman gone off to meet the man who�s been threatening her over the phone while the detective rushes in to read the near invisible traces she didn�t know she�d left). Looking through my notebook, the first thing I have written in 1971 is from one of Jill Johnston�s Dance Journal columns: �Deja vu is the form of any utopia. The global village would be a beautiful bore of the already seen. Until then we must enter the keyholes and commit lurid and brilliant crimes without leaving a trace. Bergman�s Magician. Parsifal�s Lohengrin. Post Toasties� Lone Ranger. Surrealists� Fantomas. I have to refine my techniques. My timing is off. I�m tempted to wait and watch the effects. The perfect criminal is off the premises before he becomes a victim of his own gag.� The temptation of. course is to return to the scene of the crime again and again and if you haven�t left a clue, a fingerprint, to create one. Leaving traces is compulsive; if Jill�s perfect crime is one spectacular gesture, what if no one noticed it? It�s no good to do it again so you drop a few clues maybe even recreate it again in another form. I confess. In my notebooks I�ve recorded other people�s gestures obsessively (Wednesday July 14: �B. pokes at me with his finger sweetly on the street and makes me think about him.�) but seem to erase myself as I go along. But the notebook exists; that�s a clue. This is a clue. Where�s the detective?

What I was trying to remember before I started researching my life (August 5: �Go over to Jimmy�s and watch Willie as a perfect statue, Egyptian but warm, half smiling.�), what I was trying to remember while I was watching Lee Remick and Lawrence Harvey on tv in Spain thinking they are being pursued for insurance fraud — clues and counter-clues — was very simply what records have come out this past year and which of them will fit comfortably into a ten best list. At first I couldn�t find more than four that I cared about, then it seemed impossible to narrow the list down to ten. It remains a mess of scribbles in two different inks but it�ll probably come out pretty much like this:

1. Sly & the Family Stone�s There�s A Riot Goin� On because it�s the only album which really broke through to me this year, that really made me struggle with its form and content problems. I still dislike a lot of it but I can�t think of any album that I haven�t disliked cuts from; I don�t like Sly�s self-destruct style any more than I liked John Lennon�s breakthrough on Plastic Ono Band or Burrough�s Naked Lunch or Lautreamont�s Les Chants de Maldoror or some of Godard�s more rigorous later -work like Le Gai Savoir — all made me struggle in different ways having less to do with �entertainment� than coming to terms with a very personal and personally unavoidable vision/style/form. I�m not sure how much Sly was consciously saying as opposed to what he was unwittingly demonstrating about his (our) condition, but sometimes intent gets in the way (witness Lennon�s Imagine, where he seems at the same time more in control of his message and his style but less involved in saying and doing it; Plastic Ono Band seemed a necessary, almost cathartic album, as does Sly�s Riot, but Imagine feels like just another piece of work again). There are other albums on the list that I�ve enjoyed more but not one of them seems half as important or, if you will, significant to what went on (for me at least) in music this year.

2. Tupelo Honey. Van Morrison. Any reasons would be superfluous.

3. What�s Goin� On. Marvin Gaye. Another breakthrough album, again with a few bad spots, but quite an independent, personal achievement for a Motown artist. Is this the question that Sly tried to answer? And what has Gaye done since?

4. Labelle and If I Were Your Woman by Gladys Knight & the1 Pips. My favorite rebirth of the year and the beautiful Miss Knight in what could be a rediscovered 1964 album if. you just skip over those remakes. I�ve probably listened to both of these more than any of the other albums on this list.

5. Sticky Fingers. Rolling Stones.

6. Moments and Boz Scaggs & Band both by Boz Scaggs. An unexpected discovery for me; real soulful simply �cause you know he�s not even trying to be.

7. Gonna Take a Miracle. Laura Nyro. I don�t know if this would be here if it had come out in March; perspective, ya know. But I�ve been putting it on every day, even after I finished reviewing it, so that must mean something.

8. Blue. Joni Mitchell. Well one day I was sitting around eating or something and I didn�t even know I was depressed until I got to listening to Blue and I started crying for no reason that I could figure out. At first I was very embarassed that I should cry to something like Joni Mitchell since .I usually reserve old Smokey Robinson albums for that, but then I figured maybe there was really something there and now I think yes there is.

9. Leon Russell and the Shelter People. I don�t like this as much, not half as much, as his other album but Russell�s one of the very few performers still performing and some of that energy comes through on the album; besides, Benny likes it.

10.Tapestry. Carole King. And I�m not making any excuses.

Is that it? No actually that�s too simple and even if I mentioned �Bring the Boys Home,� The Stylistics, The New Birth, �Have You Seen Her,� Lee Dorsey, A1 Green, �Never Can Say Goodbye,� the Supremes Touch album second side it�s still only pieces. Just more clues, I suppose. What did you expect? The butler did it: a tight wrapup, final fade on the relieved hero and heroine, closing titles. I prefer those science fiction films that end with an ominous question like, �But will they return?� or merely a cynical, �THE END?�

Loose ends: Quick snapshots of the Apollo show tonight. Brenda & the Tabulations are one of my favorite unknown groups. Last time I saw them, the Tabulations were the guys in her band, each back there with their own mikes, but now only the organist sings and Brenda is joined by two other girls just as sexy as she is but still she stands out. I�ve liked her ever since the mysterious �Dry Your Eyes� and she just keeps gettin� better. One of my old favorites, the Five Stairsteps, were on the bill and indescribably awful. I�ve rarely seen a group so obviously full of themselves yet with so little to be pleased with. Somewhere along the line they all forgot how to sing and only one can really get down and dance so their macho-intricate routines fall apart. Ugh. The surprise of the night was a group from Baltimore called Jimmy Briscoe and the Little Beavers whom the MC described as the �new Jackson 5.� One is Snough, thank you, but these five dudes were all say ten, eleven, twelve, short kids, energetic but without much distinction vocally. The lead, breathtakingly cute in a big smile and big afro, comes close to Michael Jackson, but without his flawless assurance and powerful voice. I don�t know about their first Atlantic release, but I�ll take a pin-up.

It was Stevie Wonder�s show and he took the longest head-line time I�ve ever seen at the Apollo (which does seem to be expanding its shows). Much of it was self-indulgent, with an uncomfortably long time spent fooling around on the Arp synthesizer and altering his voice with some mechanical device called a bag, but when he stopped being a kid with a new toy, he soared right to the top. Damn, he�s a brilliant performer, and now that he�s made himself a little more independent, his band is right up there with him and he�s got himself one of the brightest, warmest back-up groups I�ve seen. I need a whole column to do him justice — we�ll see about that.