The Macaws come home to roost

The Macaws come home to roost.

THE POPE SMOKES DOPE DAVID PEEL & THE LOWER EAST SIDE APPLE

David Peel is everybody’s favorite NoTalent. And with good reason. He has managed to get three albums out since being discovered screaming somewhere in the East Village way back in the daze of the Summer of Love and all that. His new album is even produced by John Lennon (it sez, “And Yoko Ono,” but in spite of Ms. Lenono’s valiant stand against sexism I refuse to swallow that especially since it constitutes a kind of inverse sexism in itself) whom he recently latched onto when the footloose unemployed ex post Beatle landed in New York looking for scenes Avant-Artistic and Polit-Radical. All this in spite of the fact that David Peel has about as much musical talent as a rather loquacious talking macaw, which everybody knows even if rock critics do write reviews calling him a “street singer” and the like. Sure, he’s a street singer, but so is a 68 year-old semi-derelict I saw on a downtown corner the other day with a tattered Bable in his hand, frozen in a cataleptic trance with his head thrown back, bawling out Fundamentalist garb el punctuated by scriptures cited chapter and verse. But nobody’s ever gonna pick up on him, call him an outrageous new Sensation, sign him to a record contract and give him actual money for walking around screaming at people.

David Peel is an obnoxious idiot who has nothing to do with music and is outrageous and important to the precise degree that people will tolerate his obnoxiousness either because they still think there’s something behind it or because they just plain like obnoxiousness. I myself fall into the latter camp; I saw David Peel at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally with J&Y in Ann Arbor last December, where he managed to so offend 16,000 people merely by coming out and doing his act that they began booing him en masse. I had never heard such concerted booing at a rock event in my life — it was almost as good as a football game! The boos reached a crecendo as David launched into a song about Bob Dylan featured on this album, 16,000 strong against one man, hating his guts and making it vocally manifest that it was The Will Of The People that he get off that fucking stage! But David Peel ain’t Mighty Quick, David Peel is an old hand at hostile audiences, so he just ignored the assholes and kept on singing, while they kept on booing. He played his entire set, secure in the knowledge that there ain’t no reason in the world why he should accede to the decision of a tribunal of his peers in the Revolution that he should split the premeses and go crawl into a hole in the ground and pull a rock over it forthwith, because he’s David Peel and he’s paid his dues and what is the Revolution if not taking a Stand, even if it means flipping the bird to several thousand brothers and sisters.

That’s his genius. That and the Hustle, being in the right place at the right time and wedging himself into a suite on the gravy train from which he can work his magic and compose the anthems which have made him at a young age, in the words of A.J. Weberman, “the Woody Guthrie of the Sixties.” Somday all those people that booed Dave that night at Free John and on numerous other occasions, are gonna wake up to the fact that we need people like Dave around to keep us aware of just how far a poor boy can go in America with a black leather jacket, a steady dope source, and more fucking moxie than the average ten innocuous freaks.

I don’t know if you liked David Peel’s other albums on Elektra, which compare favorably with his live act in that production always helps something as monotonous as this, and unfavorably in that seeing him grimace like a spider monkey on STP always heightens the effect.

Have a Marijuana was okay but The American Revolution was in a word, ace. More electricity now, the Lower East Side sounded like the best garage band within any given 30-block radius, and the only one in town capable of dosing themselves with enough chemicals to kill a musk-ox and still managing to play every note offkey. They were great, and if you think calling them a garage band is a slur, just consider: when was the last time you heard a garage band? (I heard somebody say, “Yeah, but whose garage?”) Meanwhile ole Davey is yowling his fool head off, putting on a show that cuts his performance on the first album, and setting a new standard for gross imbecility and breathtakingly wretched excess on vinyl. If “Oink Oink” isn’t a classic of a sort, then Carlos Santana is a Jew, and David Peel is actually Trini Lopez (Hmmm ..).

Now, this here new album is all right. In fact,' it’s David Peel’s masterpiece. It’s got a good title that mocks sacred cows and plumps for weed and all that good shit, but that’s not what makes it great. The first thing that makes it great is that it’s on the Apple label. You can watch it spin around, that lovely green logo, and listen to David yammer and earn his nodes, and think about how his is exactly what shoulda happened after Abbey Road and Let It Be and all that Dig a Pony quasi-humanist drivel, and about how Paul McCartney must feel knowing that his latest creations are going to be on the same very selective label as David Peel.

The next thing that makes this album indispensable is that it actually really is good. Oh, it all sounds the same, but that’s a plus in my book, and though John’s a terrific producer you couldn’t really honestly say that this piece of plastic is one whit more musical than the cracked larynx bass note which splits like an overripe casaba melon in the middle of “Oink Oink”, but who cares about music anyway? Or at least is so intimidated by it as not to see the necessity of keeping it in its place, and not let it get uppity. And of course this record scores real high on the Obnoxiometer, way the fuck up there; it’ll drive America fans out of the room, guaranteed. And, in comparison to previous items in David Peel’? oevre, it must be remarked that this album actually succeeds in being more cacophanous than The American Revolution, which is no mean feat, and the way it was accomplished was as simple as 2+2: AUGMENT. Now, the basic garage band has been abetted by flute playing which the rather, uh, free structures of the, uh, melodies allowed to blurt and wallow all over the place, from Thompkins Square to outerest space: Albert Ayler should’ve lived to see this! He’d blush! I mean, one advantage of being totally talentless is that people can jam free jazz with you and nobody but maybe Ralph J. Gleason will ever know the difference! And as if that wasn’t enough to kill you outright, there’s also a harmonica virtuoso on several songs who plays it like it was a pogo stick, careening mechanically from Dylan harp to folk-rock to acid-jams, sideswiping the blues and not stopping even for breath. As well as a whole bunch of people playing organic instruments concieved and produced in their very own Revolutionary homes, proving Ed Sanders prophetic when he said back in ’65 in the Fugs that “We’re aiming for a society in which everyone is creative; everybody will be a poet, a painter, a musician, a Renaissance man!” Those weren’t his exact words, but he was righton in spades judging by the action stirred up by the unlisted personnel on this album: sisters and brothers playing trash cans, beating on the ground with their hands, with pencils, sheafs of paper, broken drumsticks and palm-fronds! Wailing thru the toilet paper comb! Groovin’ high on home-crafted nose flutes! Or, if the old hands get tired, just throwing back their heads and howling along. And in the center of it all stands David Peel, the Leonard Bernstein of this musical Viet Cong gang rape in the grand tradition of the Godz, the Fugs, and Hapshash and the Coloured Coat Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids. Despite the fact that his writing of lines as brilliant as “The conspiracy seven should someday go to heaven” leads me to suspect that he may have some talent along lines other than those already mentioned, I am willing to suspend my doubts in the presence of his accomplishment which is so much greater than the mere mastery of an electric guitar and an ability to write Top 40 hits.

David Peel is living proof that The American Dream still works. David Peel is The American Dream!

Lester Bangs

DAVID BROMBERG COLUMBIA

I hate this fucking record. I hate it worse than anything I have ever heard before, and I suspect that I will not soon hear something to replace at the top of my bottom list.

Bromberg is ugly, his music is ugly, and the people who hype him are ugly fools who have been sucked into a whirlpool of hype they have themselves originated.

O.K., David Bromberg played on two Bob Dylan albums. That they were probably the two worst Bob Dylan albums ever made; that every cut Bromberg played on was inferior; that such other stalwarts as George Binkley, Sheldon Kurland and Hilda Harris also appeared on Self Portrait (where Bromberg is most in evidence), just doesn’t enter into it, I guess.

Really, man, maybe in a couple months, some other record company will release the Gary Van Osdale “I Played with Dylan Once, Too” album. What bullshit.

What does Bromberg do? He plays da blues man. It doesn’t matter that he plays them humorlessly. It doesn’t matter that his guitar playing is turgid. It doesn’t matter that he can not sing a single fucking note. It doesn’t matter that the lyrics are the most godawful witless collection of folk-rock cliches ever to hit the airwaves ... None of this matters apparently. What the hell does anybody see in this lifeless crud?

It’s hard to review this record without just sticking the shiv in and twisting. There isn’t any answer; we’re all powerless in the face of a hype like this. But what shit! I mean, how do you tell people they’ve been had? I know this: I rarely buy records that I don’t like. Having paid the money, I feel compelled to figure out what is good about them, (And I do buy records, not a lot of them, but enough to be able to reconjure the experience.)

On the other hand, as boringly offensive, as grating, as stone insipid as David Bromberg’s album is, there are people who sincerely like it. Don’t ask me why. I still maintain that they are somehow rendered senseless by the over-powering miasma which emanates from its every groove... Maybe they mistake Bromsberg’s 1964 obnoxiousness for excellence.

A friend of mine said that this record make her want to listen to Elvis Presley. I guess I can leave it at that, except for a suggestion.

Give us a chance with the next one, David. Call it Hands Across the Blackboard.

Dave Marsh

HOT WACKS THE WACKERS ELEKTRA

Having nothing more pressing to tackle than a watered-down bourbon and some hotel room TV on one March mid-afternoon in New York, I happened to get plugged into Take A Giant Step, one of the numerous spin-off crutches devised for the children of Sesame Street Nation. After the expected amount of hip psychological cortizone, the announcer — some mini-Mod from Long Island — introduced a rock and roll band called the Wackers.

The first Wackers album had passed through my hands in the previous fall and I’d found it generally easy to ignore, but the band that flashed across that TV screen was close to magnificent. Their image was right out of the rock and roll handbook on stardom, just the proper amount of poise and charm, and more than enough talent to corroborate that image. Hot Wacks got immediate attention the day it arrived, and it did a pretty fair job of substantiating the delight which the TV appearance had inspired.

These five guys have the potential to do it all. Not only to make successful records and tear it up on stage (both of which they’re already highly proficient at), but to do the whole number in the way it hasn’t been done for at least the last six years. I can see it all now: after the screaming come the fan clubs', a magazine devoted to each individual member of the band, Wacker t-shirts, wristwatches, toothbrushes and egg salad sandwiches. They migh even be the band who finally makes a rock and roll movie to top the Dave Clark Five’s Having A Wild Weekend. Or would they be better suited to a Saturday morning cartoon show a’la the Beatles or J5? It’s a bridge that’ll have to be crossed sooner or later.

If it seems that I’m on the verge of attempting to convince you that Bob Segarini is everything Marc Bolan wants to be, it’s not really the case. It’s just that everything the Wackers do flows so naturally that they could effortlessly fit into any of those images and handle it with style.

Their music is much the same. They don’t always rock as hard as they could (at least not as hard on record as live); but all of their material is delivered with such ease that you find yourself caught up just about as readily. This music’s got a certain light touch that makes it always applicable whenever you can’t quite decide what to play; where some groups would jack up the fuzztone, the Wackers throw in some tasty tremolo or electric 12-string. And that makes all the difference in the world.

They almost always have three guitars at their disposal, and use them to better advantage than anybody in recent memory. At least one of those guitars is usually acoustic and, although they still might look to Moby Grape for some constructive ideas on how to do it all-electric, they have a firm enough sense of motion to keep it consistently interesting. Their harmonies are exceptionally full and well-coordinated, with equal capacity for soft beauty or a harder edge.

The album contains some real gems. “I Hardly Know Her Name” — the perfect single — is everything you expected from the Beatles when they enjoyed being a band, while “Oh My Love” nearly cuts Lennon’s original simply because it cares more about being good music than forcing a statement. “Breathe Easy” is the kind of good-natured romp that they seem to specialize in; lots of classic guitar efficiency and exuberant harmonies.

If all these things are true, then how is it — you might well ask — that you’ve probably not heard of this band? Well, it seems to be a small matter of a hit single. All of their material is nice, but not all of the tunes snap your head around the first time you hear them. The average listener apparently needs that hit recognition to be drawn into the entirety of what they’re doing, and the album in that context would do the yrest. “I Hardly Know Her Name” could be the thing to do it, and that’d be all it would take because, as I said before, these guys can do it all. Just give ’em a chance.

Ben Edmonds

STRAIGHT SHOOTER JAMES GANG ABC

“Hey Jesse, Jesse, I wuz jus’ down at Molly’s Tavern and Johnny Clay was tellin’ me ’bout this band of desperados a-callin’ themselves after us! Let’s get ’em, Jesse.”

“Cool it, Frank. There ain’t nobody ’round these part's that’s even half as tough as us. They gonna learn that they can’t mess with the Jess. Hey, Clyde, saddle me up a couple of travelin’ horses.” Stopping first at Molly’s Place, the James Brothers discovered that the imposter Gang was workin’ outa Cleveland. It was pretty near seven hard days in the saddle from St. Joseph, but Jesse had to uphold the righteous code of the Gunslinger.

“Well, this here’s Ohio. Let’s check around some and find out where their stakeout is.” Looking in a Cleveland phonebook, they found it, 3101 Euclid Ave. The James boys buckled their gunbelts a notch tighter and cruised into the town.

“This place looks pretty tame, don’t it Jess?”

“Shaddup, this is serious business,” Jesse growled. Strutting boldly up to the front of the cement abode, Jesse prepared to bust in. Something stopped him. A noise. He listened a minute. More noise. “Hey, that sounds like an ailin’ prairie dog! Wonder where that caterwaulin’s a cornin’ from?”

Instead of breaking down the door, Frank muck a peek. “Haw haw haw, that bellyachin’ is the James Gang, they ain’t no fearsome desperadoes they’s a music playin’ band! And that ain’t even heavy shit they’re playin’. It don’t even spark my spurs none. You’d think if they wuz gonna steal our name they at least coulda played like they deserved it. I’m just ashamed them varmints copped it.” And with that Jesse and Frank Weisterwald turned around and rode back to St. Joe.

Jesse was right. They aren’t the hard riding metal motherfuckers they was cracked up to be. No sir-ee-bob. Hell, they’re just suburban kids who watched too many John Wayne movies when they were kids. I mean, how far West do you think Cleveland is? These guys don’t even know how to twang. If this is “straight shootin’ ” music I vow to fall right out of my saddle, and be dragged 18 miles raw.

So then what’s with the constant Western motif? James Gang Rides Again, Straight Shooter, Yer Album. The only thing cowboyish is the album cover. Simulated woodbumed cardboard. Wow. Well, if they’re not cowpunchers then what do the James Gang do? They warm up. They’re the best warmup band this side of the Mississippi. They’ve played with all the biggies. Cream, the Who, everybody. They even got themselves five albums. And in Straight Shooter they had a “minor face lift.” Now they are four. But they sound just like they did when they were three. Howcum?

Bacause they are still the band that always wanted to be. Be Three Dog Night. Be the Rolling Stones, be the Amboy Dukes, be Spooky Tooth. They got themselves a recipe, thinkin’, “Hey guys, if we take the best of all the groups that Made It, and shake thoroughly, we got ourselves a winner, right?” Wrong. What they got is computer music. Predictable, calculated and meticulous. Maybe they’re just searchin’ for that “magic chord.” One thing for sure is that they’re searchin’. Can You Answer the Existential Question? The James Gang can’t, but they ask it often enough. This album sounds like it Was made directly after finishing the complete works of Herman Hesse. The J.Gang confess that “I don’t know where I’m going/ Don’t know where I’ve been/ I just can’t find my way/ I can’t seem to fit in/1 believe I was placed in the wrong time/ I’m too early once again.” Or: “Who can know what roads we lead you to/ Hard to choose which way to go/ No one finds out to the end/ Even then do we really know, do we find the right way to go?”

And that’s exactly where their problem Bes; they haven’t decided which way to go. They’re kind of the Jack of all Trades, master of...

Jaan Uhelszki