RECORDS

EXILE ON MAIN STREET THE ROLLING STONES ROLLING STONES

I have nothing to say and I’m saying it. —Allen Ginsberg, “America. ”

That seems to sum up the Stones’ position in their new album. The title and some of the songs suggest that they are trying to make some sort of statement about America, while some of the other lyrics attest to a new-found feeling of lassitude and uncertainty in the Stones. This is at once the worst studio album the Stones have ever made, and the most maddeningly inconsistent and strangely depressing release of their career. I have been listening to it night and day since it arrived, trying to get at what’s wrong with it besides the inferior musical quality of some of the songs, because it is something deeper. And, even more, trying to find the strength in it that we‘ve always depended on the Stones for. The first time I listened to it, I became utterly depressed. Then I started to like it the second playing. Then it began to seem like it was falling apart the more I listened to it. Then I began to like it again for no particular reason than that it did make noise. But the uneasy feeling has never quite left.

I detect a lack of feeling in much of even the most exciting music here, a detachment and sense of meaninglessness. Many of the songs don’t seem to be about anything in particular. But what’s worse is that they’re not even meaningless in an aggressive way. On Led Zeppelin’s last album they got away with things like “Ooh mama said the way you move, gon’ make you sweat, gon’ make you groove,” because the music was so big and viscerally compelling that you were swept away in the rush and the album was a motherfucker even if it did seem to come from a certain cynical superstar detachment. But the Stones have had trouble feeling enough for so long that they just don’t know what to tell us anymore, and are beginning to have serious questions about themselves. Which - even if it bodes well - makes this their There’s A Riot Goin’ On at best, at worst a sort of auteur classic.

It’s a new music, perhaps. A lot of it can only be called downer music, and seems intentionally dense and detached. The lack of emotion on some of it is enough to make it a personal affront. Sticky Fingers had the emotion of its decadence, the loose, brassy self-destruction which so many of us got off on so vicariously. I was all set, before this came out, to write a* piece about how art has a right to be amoral, and point to the Stones as the classic proof that it does. “Memo From Turner” and Sticky Fingers gave you kicks even if you weren’t a degenerate, or rich enough to play at being a degeneracydilettante. They were the razzberry in the faces of our assumptions about racism, sex and sexism, drugs, maybe even life itself. We’ve already come to expect this from the Stones on safer topics. That they drew so much wrath with Sticky Fingers was only indication of what direct hits they were making.

But Exile on Main Street doesn’t give many kicks. It’s just a mass of admittedly scalding gruel beaded with Stones cliches, from old R&B (sounding at times close even to bands like Canned Heat) to uptempo cookers that seldom quite get there and don’t even have the strength or lunacy to be overdone. I expected it to be the Answer of the season, but it’s not except insofar as this is the season for down music. Just compare “Tumbling Dice” to the directness and cohesion of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” or “Gimme Shelter” or “Brown Sugar” — in their terms it misses.

In terms of what’s available on the radio circa spring-summer 1972, it’s good enough to make Number One. The density, the comparatively draggy tempos, the buried vocal and the general sense of tiredness all indicate that this is the best possible right now from a band still possessed by genius but as tired as anybody or everybody else. Which is why it’s a hit. You don’t feel “Tumblin’ Dice” like you felt “School Days” or “Paint It Black” or even “Iron Man.” You let it play if it’s on, you turn it up (always), tap your feet and nod your head; listen for the 98% of the words you still haven’t caught, think about it being a new Stones single.

But no matter how often you hear it, you don’t stomp and shout and slam your palms against the car-doors and ogle passers-by with a maniacal'and half-artificial (but so what?) sense of power. Corny as it may seem, you don’t find your life enriched much by either single or album. Though it smacks of the kind of how-much-do-you-expect that Dylan’s Self

Portrait occasioned, I expect more from the Rolling Stones, and I am damned pissed off that it isn’t what I thought it would be, in sound, content, impact, you name it. I once cut work the next day to drive 500 miles to see them at Altamont, not only because I was a drunken fan, but because I knew I could count on them for magic, and I didn’t even complain much when Altamont turned out like it did. For that alone, they owe me more than this.

On the other hand, everybody gets tired (or old — a possibility that must be rather chilling for a Rolling Stone). Tired music seems to be the order of the day. But this is dense, cloudy tired music, and dense music should always be energized, even maniacal, so it rocks out from the fog to grab you by the lapels and shake you. Oh, they still know how to play fast, but the core is emotionally sterile, a vacuity that manfiests itself in the most desultory type of music imaginable. It is especially strange for something that pretends (or tries) to be a party record at least part of the time. Well, one of. my ploys for rationalizing it was taking it to a party. People were wondering if there was something wrong with the record player.

It’s not even a matter of not believing Mick any more when he sings a line like “I need a love,” or “heard the children crying,” as much as that their cynicism no longer bears the same decadent glee. Like David Crosby’s, it seems a depleted motion without any point whatsoever except to get a new album out. Which also makes this a different kind of failure from Self Portrait, because you and I know that Dylan always wanted to sing “Blue Moon”, and Everly Brothers tunes, maybe even as wimpily as possible. Dylan bears a strong root love for everything stereotyped as Middle America. If he could make a record that Mom and Dad would dig, too, fine, even if it did turn out kinda muzaky. But the Stones bear love for — what, besides the Stones?

This record is loud, rocking mush for an indiscriminate audience. And it s not even much fun as mush. The Stones have always had a healthy love for trash — check Flowers — but this is trash without the hard edge of fury and humor and grossness that trash excels at. The Stones aren’t outrageous anymore, and they try to compensate with lines like “got to scrape that shit right off my shoes,” and “Turd on the Run” — gratuitous obscenities without targets or contexts that leave you feeling empty and as cynical about them as they must be about us.

That said, it must be admitted that there are moments on this album where the murk clears slightly — long enough for us to get some unsettling glimpses from the lyrics of the way the Stones must be feeling today. What generally appears at those moments is a real sense of self-doubt, fear and vague regret. I have heard that they are feeling extremely insecure about their importance now as voices and style-setters (they damn well should be) and are preparing for this tour with all the nervousness of kings whose domain seems likely to topple not from revolution but cancer. If that’s the case, this record is a desperate attempt to reassert their dominance, and everything about it down to the decision to make it their first two-record statement is symptomatic of that desperation. But even then it remains, from composition to production, a set-up. A smoke-screen. It takes you so long to hear the damn thing, and much of what’s underneath the haze is so insubstantial, that you’re liable to give up in disgust unless you’re totally obsessed with the band. In which case, you plow on through, doggedly, through endless replayings and end up feeling pretty unhappy about the whole thing.

Six of the 18 songs, a full third of the album, come on as sheer R&B and “party” music with no particular message, intended just to make noise and promote a good time. Lots of them, noisy as they are, seem cold and dull in the weirdest way and are fairly easy to ignore. I think the production is probably intentionally designed to conceal the holes underneath it. Perhaps the most telling comment I could make is that solos by guitar or by any of the Stones themselves are few and far between — the saxes of Keys and Price probably solo as much or more than the Stones.

“Rip This Joint” makes great party music, and the lyrics don’t have to mean anything i“Short Fat Fanny is on the loose” probably says more, after all, than “she’s a sweet black angel/Not a sweet black slave.” And the sax solo is okay, which is more than can be said for the one in “Casino Boogie,” which is decent filler, sort of like a messier “Parachute Woman” (but that was always a little too clean). It also contains a sort of guitar solo, mixed way down, that ain’t much.

“Hip Shake” has a good vocal and superb production — this is one case where the hazy quality of the sound really works, imparting a smoky, sleazy club feeling. Only trouble — and I swear this is the truth — is that Love Sculpture’s (an English power trio fronted by Dave Edmunds) version of this song fucking cuts the Stones’! Even if Mick does fill the proportions of Slim Harpo better.

But “Stop Breaking Down” is the killer king of the jive sides here, with harp work which is again masterful and a fantastic vocal. It’s one of the few songs on the album that demands that you move with it. The ensemble work is full and strong and distinct for once — Jesus, you can hear everything! Wham! This is the Stones! Energy and conviction and the raw sass we’ve always loved ’em for.

The songs that seem to be about something more than just letting the good times roll include a number of rocking scorchers among the aimless eviscerated dribblings and sheer dreck. “Rocks Off’ is a perfect opener in the Stones’ tradition, and one of the most successful things here — even the brass sounds good — but there are no solos except for a bit of guitar that seems to come curling out of the rolling ball of noise just seconds before the fade. The lyrics, occasionaly distinct, are some of the album’s best. They bear a strong undercurrent of uneasiness. “I always hear those voices on the street/ I want to shout but I can hardly speak” would seem to sum up almost perfectly the Stones’ dilemma vis a vis themselves and this record. You can’t help being moved by the passionate struggle with their own weariness:

The sunshine bores the daylights out of me ... Headin for the overload Stranded on a dirty road,. . / can’t even feel the pain no more. *

Where the album really begins to break down is in the ballads and slower, more moody and supposedly “serious” and “meaningful” songs.

“Sweet Virginia” is one of the worst, with some Dylanish harp, a bit of mandolin, and an awful, tired vocal. The lyrics pretend to mean something, and want you to think that some sort of statement about America is being made, neither of which is true. Lines like “Thank you for your wine California... yes, I got the desert in my toenails ... but come on down Sweet Virginia” are totally fraudulent. The sloppiness is just sloppy (although the horns are nice).

“Just Wanna See His Face” has great upright bass work by Bill Plummer, almost reminiscent in its capacity to haunt of Charlie Haden on early Ornette Coleman things. The song itself is somewhat adventurous in a weird avant-gospel way. On one level, you get the feeling that the Stones, trendy as ever, just wanted to write a song cashing in on the current Jesus-rock fad. On another level, they seem to be saying that they’re not believers: “I don’t wanna talk about Jesus — just wanna see his face;” Big deal.

“Sweet Black Angel” also rings false, like a sop to the people who criticized “Brown Sugar” on racial grounds. Arrangement, performance, and production are all okay, a little clearer than most of the rest.

And the whole thing runs out of gas about 2/3rds of the way through.

In the end, there are two things that must be said about this album. First, it really isn’t bad, with certain exceptions. A decent runof-the-mill record. But the Rolling Stones have not been noted for decent r-o-t-m’s. Most of side one is really great and all of it listenable, and 3/4ths of the last side really makes-it, too. But side two alone amounts to a vast, unremittingly horrible graveyard.

The second thing that must be said, as if you hadn’t guessed from reading the preceding tangle of self-contradictions, is that Exile On Main Street inspires endless ambivalence. One day you think you’re beginning to love it, the next it’s almost a total bummer. What it lets you feel, constantly, is mistrust and sadness.

I hope against hope that the Stones aren’t going to drag all those goddam horn players and sidemen along on the tour, although they undoubtedly will, since they’re so prominent on the record. Maybe they should, to help keep us from noticing the decline of Keith’s imagination.

It’s all so strange, I almost wish the record hadn’t come out, so we wouldn’t have to confront the decay of the Rolling Stones. Maybe this, is the only way they can find to begin confronting and reversing it themselves. In which case this album is as important and necessary as There’s A Riot Goin ’ On and Self Portrait.

Then again, maybe it’s just the natural process of growth and decay taking its toll at last on the final holdouts from the initial mid-Sixties explosion. Nobody, but nobody, ever said any rock’n’roll band was supposed to last forever. And just maybe the next few albums from Dylan and the Who will complete the cycle begun by the Beatles and Stones, and we really will have to begin to look to the younger bands in a serious way. It wouldn’t be any particular surprise.

Lester Bangs

ROCK AND ROLL MUZAK CRAZY HORSE REPRISE

This is their third album.

The first two were unique; the first was the worst album of 1971, and the second was the best album by an American band sounding like an English band imitating an American band in the month of January. With the issue of Rock and Roll Muzak, Crazy Horse clearly establish themselves as one of America’s ugliest looking bands. The current band was years in the making culminating with the firing of Danny Whitten, who refused to wear a stocking over his head for live performances. Nils Lofgren has returned to the band after a successful sex change, and Jack Nitzsch has packed in the ivories to host a talk show on channel 47. He has been replaced by Don Ameche’s 18 year-old son Pepe, who also contributes to the vocals and production. Drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot have sewn themselves together into Siamese twins, because as Talbot puts it, “We wanted to be tight.”

I must say that my anticipations of this album were pessimistic since Whitten was not on guitar and they have no replacement, yet the album is excellent. Perhaps A1 Kooper’s liner notes explain it all: ” ... so they .decided to try something new and different. Instead of replacing Whitten they bought a juke box. They now play along with whatever comes on it, adding to the basics of the song the magic that is Crazy Horse.”

Side one opens with the Black Oak Arkansas’ “Feet On Earth, Head In Sky” which Ameche produced, balancing the song to include in the background the jukebox rendition of the original. The rest of side one is an instrumental coda of 19 minutes featuring the highlights of Booker T. & the MGs’ McLemore Ave. album. I might add that'it’s getting heavy airplay on the “hip” FM stations.

On side two piano is double-tracked with Moog Synthesizer by Pepe, who distinguishes himself as the leader of the band, especially on John Entwistle’s “Heaven and Hell,” where his Moog sounds just like a harmonica. The surprise of the album is the second cut, on which Neil Young is the guest vocalist. The song is none other than David Seville’s “The Witchdoctor,” and this version not only does justice to the original, but it brings a tear to the eye of more than on discophile. From here «the album climaxes with an 8:04 “Theme From Shaft” and a 4:41 “Theme From A Summer Place.” I for one agree with A1 Aronowitz who says that this album is the sound of things to come in music.

Bob Cirkiel (reprinted from Teenage Wasteland Gazette)

(The above review is from one crazed rag, the ultimate bizzaro mockery both of fanzines and the pop scene in general. If you get off on this brand of deranged trash, send from $.50 to $1.00 [if you send too much you may get change by return mail] for the three or four available issues of Teenage Wasteland Gazette to Adny Shernoff, c/o Mr. and Mrs. Shernoff [Adny himself has no permanent address, and publishes the magazine with whatever paper and equipment he can steal] 35 Boulevard, Malba, N.Y. 11357. You won’t be sorry. -Ed.)

JOPLIN IN CONCERT JANIS JOPLIN COLUMBIA

It may well be an admission of blasphemy, but I was never one of the worshippers at the Janis Joplin altar. I seldom missed an opportunity to see her perform, derived a great deal of pleasure from her records, and yet I never somehow connected with the whirlpool of passion that she seemed to inspire in so many. She was so naked on stage — and in a way perhaps even brave — that it was nearly impossible to avoid investing something of yourself in what in what she was doing. Still, when they found her on the floor of a motel room, it just didn’t make any sense. Here was a woman who carried with her all the power that music could possibly offer — a power that millions drew strength and life from — and it wasn’t even strong enough to keep Janis Joplin breathing. Where does that leave us?

Selfish moralizing aside, this album boils down to a matter of context In Big Brother, we have Janis,at the starting gate of her career, while the Full Tilt Boogie album finds her playing out its final stages. And while these two records portray Janis at vastly different stations along the line, in their polarity they manage to give a remarkably full account of the entire voyage. They are the bookends of an artistry that touched all of us.

Though they suffered at the hands of critics whose vision was narrowed in the name of expansion and times that just didn’t seem equipped to accomodate them, Big Brother and the Holding Company stands as perhaps the finest band to come out of the Bay Area. Anti-intellectuals at a time when nearly everybody else was into the Tibetan Book of the Dead, they played a brand of straightforward Body music that took no embarrassment in being rough, raunchy and loud. The music was a demented mutation of R&B, but thoroughly saturated with all the joy and energy that one can only associate with the best rock and roll. They may have sacrificed a little precision and refinement to achieve it, but they were a genuine and uncompromising blood and guts band.

Janis was infected with the same joyous disease. Her voice was young and not as consciously disciplined as it would later become, but I’ve always taken for granted that you sing with your heart and not your lungs. It was obvious that a real emotional understanding existed between Janis and the band — an unspoken electricity — and that Big Brother was often capable of pushing her beyond her normal boundaries. Considering the passion with which she attacked everything she did, that’s no small testimony.

“Down On Me” wins easy honors as the best cut on these four sides. Janis’ vocal delivery literally explodes, while James Gurley’s guitar slashes like a bulldozer gone beserk; quite apart from its lyrical seriousness it is a celebration of all the energy five people could harness. The only cut that trips up the energy level on the Big Brother record is “Ego Rock,” which is eight-plus minutes of Janis trading excesses with Nick Gravenites. Otherwise, it’s a delightful rock and roll record, causing me to resent even more the contention of some that Janis outgrew this band. If anything, they were never allowed to develop properly.

On a very subtle level, Full Tilt Boogie may have been Janis’ attempt to recreate the spirit of Big Brother. Having failed with an inflated horn presentation, Full Tilt was a tightly reigned rock and roll band. By this time, however, Janis was a fully blossomed star, it was her band, and she maintained control at all times. This effectively reduced the members of the band to sidemen — the very same charge that had been so often leveled at Big Brother!

Janis’ performance is up to her standard level of excellence, but the band is never allowed into a position where they can challenge or push her to any greater heights. There she was with everything she was supposed to have wanted, and finding herself very alone in the middle of it. She was alone because the outcome of the performance rested only on how much she decided to put into it. It was a recitation of excellence, but a recitation just the same. Just compare John Till’s guitar intro to “Ball and Chain” with James Gurley’s on Cheap Thrills. One is tight and competent, the other raw and excessively energetic. I’ve made my choice, and I’ll always opt for rock’n’roll. The “boys in the band” (as Big Brother was always alluded to) sure beat the hired hands.

Still, this is an important set because it gives such a remarkably true account of an important artist, an account that is studded with unavoidable brilliance throughout. On that more subtle level, however, it documents how brilliance may be misdirected in its own name, and that is not a very pretty thing.

Ben Edmonds.

WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD? THE MIGHTY GROUNDHOGS UNITED ARTISTS

How good is this new Groundhogs album? It’s as good as Aoxomoxoa. Better even. It makes the work of most “far-out” bands look positively folky. It’s a dense, virtuoso exercise in highly evolved blues and rock by a band that has been maturing for a long time.

It is blues of a curiously mutated strain, processed through a cyclotron and bombarded with gamma rays, masking its lineage and winding up sounding in places like Captian Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, although not consciously I’m sure. The group is led by one of the finest and most technologically oriented lead guitarists around in the person of Tony McPhee. His playing is incredible enough that I was certain it had to be overdubbed in places, and while I’m not entirely sure that it was done straight. Either way this band is one of the tightest ensembles going, calling to mind the best moments of the early Jimi Hendrix Experience.

I don’t want to blather on beyond all discretion, but where practically every other album I’ve heard lately has sounded padded to extremes, Who Will Save the World feels absolutely packed with ideas, maybe even needing another record to give the Groundhogs room to explore possibilities left untouched here. The group improvises, but long directionless jams are avoided, and the songs are kept short enough that neither their inspiration nor your attention span run out.

Side one’s first three cuts, “Earth Is Not Good Enough,” “Wages of Peace,” and “Body in Mind,” rage on with an almost perverse complexity that can pass almost unnoticed because they’re so direct. It is here that the Groundhogs sound most like Beefheart’s Magic Band. “Music is the Food of Thought” and “Amazing Grace” are done with a bit less intensity than the others, but a good band at walking speed is still better than mediocre band charging along.

The Groundhogs have been around for a long time without any recognition in this country or much in the way of financial rewards. That they have lasted as long as they have, and then produced an album like this, is proof that there is a hell of a lot more to rock ‘n’ roll than a pile of rancid hype.

Rob Houghton

BANG CAPITOL

BUDGIE KAPP

Regardless of trends, heavy metal sustains itself. Although underplayed in all too many cases, this genre certainly has had its gems within the past year. Black Sabbath, Grand Funk, Deep Purple, Head Over Heels, UFO, Dust, Sir Lord Baltimore, Uriah Heep, Humble Pie, Alice Cooper, the MC5 and the Groundhogs all gave us topnotch rocked-up energisers. And if that’s not enough we can now include these two latest newcomers.

Bang and Budgie have much in common. They’re power trios, heavy, loud and as repetitious as an automatic can press machine. Rather than being rhythmic assaults like Baltimore and Dust, they’re quite content to be concrete plodding elephant stompers. Bang, like Black Sabbath, are socially conscious with spiritual overtones while Budgie is more lighthearted and a great deal more fun with their Shadows of Knight-Iggy style of lyricism.

What makes Bang so righteous is the exactness of their name. As soon as the initial fuzz blast shoots off we can rest assured we didn’t get fooled again, and they waste no time in making their convictions clear. “Lions, Christians” shows that they sensed the impending apocalypse Black Sabbath warned of in “After Forever.” Why, they even answer it with “We’re with that God/ He heard our cry.” And that’s pot all; diversity of topics reign here for sure. Ecological disaster is the subject of “Our Home.” And check out this message to the pop star elite:

Must you be a super star To find your means of living? Does it matter who you are? Can’t you stomach giving?*

That’s their critique in “Questions.” We’re even treated to a genuine metallic grind-up plea to the Indians to “give us a chance to start a new day” in “Redman.”

After all these elaborations on the problems of the day (there’s even one on divorce) one yearns for a return to punk rock so we can all laugh again. That’s where Budgie comes in most admirably.

The jams get kicked out immediately with “Guts.” no doubt about the words here — they’re familiar with the real cool times of Iggy:

I need a lover who will not a lover who might... I’m gonna empty you out I wanna be with you now I want your lovelf

It’s impossible to feel anything but good through this entire vacuum cleaner soundtrack, what with lyrics like “Give me a little bite on the apple/ My hands are tied.” Such titles as “All Night Petrol,” “Homicidal Suicidal,” “Crash Course” and especially “Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman,” are probably the most imaginative high energy choosings since the MC5’s “Rocket Reducer No. 62.”

“Rape of the Locks” is the best long hair hassle diatribe since the Count Five exhorted “please stay away from that barber shop.” Instantly sinking David Crosby’s staidly paranoic “Almost Cut My Hair” into oblivion are comical lines like “You say my hair is much too long/ And you are right and I am wrong ... You got it in for me/ You wanna cut my hair.” A bit of early Mark Farneristic guitar orgyin’ backed up by an occasional bass-drum thump and bump eventually giving way to allow the throbbing bass to hold his own, conjuring up images of a robot OD’d on downs slugging an electronic punching bag hooked up to twin Marshall amps, drives this one home most adeptly.

So there you have it. Budgie, a must for all punk rockers and Bang for those on the Black Sabbath side of the metal zone. And chalk up another year for the hopefully never-ending barrage of eardrum-annihilaters.

Scott Fischer

*©C.A.M. - U.S.A. (BMI)

f©Tro-Andover (ASCAP)

THE SIDEWINDERS RCA

Since I don’t like claustrophobic environments, I haven’t been too hot on live rock ‘n’ roll concerts in the last few months. I went seldom and when I did go generally spent the evening in a state of such stultifying boredom as to boggle the mind. Thus it was that, while visiting New York last fall, I allowed myself to be coaxed down to the celebrated Max’s Kansas City to see a new rock group called the Sidewinders that everybody was currently raving about. Despite the fact that anybody smart enough to think up a cool handle like the Sidewinders would seem to have some jive teeth in front, I went more because I’d heard so much about the decadent dive called Max’s than because of any desire to see the band.

Max’s turned out to be a boring beerjoint with a few salamanders standing around and the Sidewinders proved perhaps the live rock ‘n’ roll surprise of the year: a great young band in the classic mould, kicking and moving and grinding their guitars into splinters, exhibiting their chops on originals that sounded simultaneously new, fresh as hell, and like all the ultimo hi-fi chassis we ever heard. They alternated the plentitude of these with oldies but baddies (meaning good-bad but not evil except when they wanted to be) from every genre and era, including such a laugh in the face of purist snobbery as Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man.” The whole sound and show put me in mind of what it must’ve been like hearing the early Yardbirds in the Crawdaddy Club in London way back in, what was it, ’63 or ’64; in any case, there was that same sense of uncontainable youthful zest and energy busting loose as if for the first time that I got from the Five Live Yardbirds album and certain MC5 shows and precious few live rock experiences ever.

What it sounded like was if every bit of the life-force represented by a song like the Yardbirds’ “Train Kept A-Rollin’” were distilled and spilled back out in a thousand new configurations. Everybody was dancing, because the music allowed you, hell, prodded you into doing moreTfian merely sitting and nodding over your drink or even standing in front of the amp stomping your feet and breathing heavily. And not only that, but the originals registered not as noise but as songs layed out in a rumbling noise context and yet distinct, immediately identifiable. One of them, in fact, a Teen Romance ballad named “Rendezvous,” made such an impression that after one set it never quite left my head through the six months before this album came out. The song had a hook line that sounded like it could last forever, and the lyrics were as simple and true as they always should have been:

You and me We’ve got a date You know every second counts now, baby So don’t be late You know what We’re gonna do: Rendez-, Rendez-, Rendez-, Rendezvous! *

After a set like that, I built up such expectations for the album that nothing short of Instant Ecstacy could have fulfilled them. And in a way it’s here, but with certain qualifications. They still have the joy I heard at Max’s, and this album comes just about as close as any of the past year’s best to capturing the essence of Teenage Preor Post-Wasteland American rock ‘n’ roll, even though it tends to sound a bit thin (the live sound was anything but), for some reason. The band’s playing seems through much of the album to be much more restrained than it was at Max’s, which I can’t understand at all, and the production lacks bass, causing it to sound a bit thin at times.

But that’s not what really matters. What counts is that this band rings so true, and for all the fire they undeniably possess they’ve managed to recapture the spirit of innocence which was once a rock mainstay and is pretty hard to come by these days. Holding hands, even, and going steady and all those other cliches, but it works because it’s no rock ‘n’ roll revival drubbing you over the head with its selfconsciousness. The Sidewinders are the kind of essential band who don’t need to put on any airs. The are It, so they just go on and do It. The songs are as mainstream as their titles (“O Miss Mary,” “Got You Down,” “Reputation”), and for once the teen consciousness is real and not contrived. Any band that writes songs that stick in your head like “Rendezvous” did in mine can’t stay obscure for long, and despite the fact that this has the feel of a first album by a group not quite comfortable in the studio yet it’s coming from a psychic place not far from the Beach Boys’ Little Deuce Coupe, and music from that neighborhood is at this point probably the first thing we need.

Lester Bangs

* © Pokey (ASCAP)

GOLDEN BUTTER:

THE BEST OF THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND ELEKTRA

Anticipation of this anthology’s arrival was always accompanied by a warm feeling somewhere between nostalgia and celebration. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band(s) have ranked with the most influential of the last decade and yet all were touched by the tragedy that their fame could never quite equal their influence. Though this set has been issued largely because Butterfield has abandoned Elektra for Bearsville, the time for pause and some tributary retrospection has long been due.

I fully realize that demeaning the cut selection is like challenging a quadruplegic to a fistfight, but I feel compelled to bitch about one omission. It’s “Come On In,” a single released in early 1967, which met with success in some European markets and never found its way onto an album. Produced by Albert Grossman and John Court, it was the last document of the pre-horn period and gave a clear indication of just where Butterfield was headed. Bloomfield and Bishop carried the horn lines on their guitars with Naftalin giving solid rhythmic support on piano. In its two short minutes it manages to give a more vital account of Paul Butterfield than nearly anything he ever accomplished after the horns were added. And, come to think of it, whatever became of those legendary sessions with John Mayall recorded in London in 1966?

Though I would urge that this two record set be in every record collection in the country, I do so with certain reservations concerning the packaging. The cover is great, Tony Glover’s liner notes excellent and yet there is a feeling of incompleteness here. Whatl’d hoped for was an expansion of Glover’s notes, with a lot of pictures, a a package that would give a cohesion and detailed testimony to the career of a musician of paramount influence. In short, the kind of treatment which United Artists accords its Legendary Masters Series. No man could have been more worthy of it than Paul Butterfield.

Butterfield’s legacy has been as full as these past eight years themselves. His original and most legendary band (with Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Mark Naftalin, Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay) gave the blues its first access to the white, middle-class audience, an audience that, quite ironically, embraced the genre but managed to overlook the band. Tunes like “Bom in Chicago,” and “Look Over Yonders Wall” — gutsy and driving — gave us a basic blues education which seemed very far removed from rock and roll. In addition, Elektra has included two cuts (“Spoonful,” “One More Mile”) previously available only on their What’s Shakin’ sampler. Cut at approximately the same time as the first album, they are good examples of the group’s electrically dynamic approach to the blues.

The “East-West?’ period cemented the role of electric guitar as an exploratory instrument and made the name Mike Bloomfield synonymous with lead guitar. Butterfield had already made the harp a staple in any high school band, and now his band was helping to guide us through the darkness that lay beyond the boundaries of tradition. They helped initiate the jam as a legitimate art-form, and with things like “One More Heartache” injected horns into the mainstream. Although it?s true that Butterfield’s horn period has been his least successful — either artistically or commercially — a song like “Last Hope’s Gone” more than asserts his basic brilliance. Even the weak links like “Love March” have never been completely capable of undermining the magic that still happens whenever you see his name.

Ben Edmonds

THICK AS A BRICK JETHRO TULL REPRISE

Jethro Tull’s admirers are wont to believe that the lads are an inventive, entertaining, eminently witty, oft profound rock group, with a propensity for satire matched only — if at all — by the Mothers of Invention.

While I prefer Tull’s verbal sallies (or sillies) to the L.A. Philistine’s, I can’t bring myself to entirely embrace Ian Anderson and his pack of Anglo-philistines, either. Jethro Tull may think they are making art, which is something that isn’t of much use in the twentieth century in the first place, but it looks from here as though they are only making an ultra-sophisticated lounge music for the postlunar space age.

Thick As a Brick is Tull’s most ambitious work to'date. It is full of what Jethro is beloved for, lengthy, pseudo-weighty musical passages, much given over to soloing and other forms of British excess, and your typical comedic bit here and there.

Bonzo Dog they ain’t.

And, to be perfectly frank, Thick As A Brick bores me to tears. It doesn’t even have the calm chutzpah to offend. You can listen to it but it is beyond me why anyone’d want to.

The targets are too easy. Organized religion was buffooned out of existence by Lenny Bruce’s “Religions, Inc.” sketch, and it is perhaps typical of Ian Anderson’s vaguely meglomaniac stance that he thinks himself capable of rendering the target worthy of the missile. Anderson’s ambition is finally so low, that it is easy to find even the most pedestrian and finally, the most pleasant, portions of it offensive. Ian doesn’t really like his audience — veiled contempt was a phrase designed for persons of his demeanor — and the result is that his only ambition seems to be to please himself and some unnamed-butobviously-elite clique of true artisans and the appreciators of same.

What you get, if you like it, is probably just what you paid for: some validation of your own sense of values, no matter how defensively couched. Some rationalization, even, of the idea that pop is made for low-level mentalities. Those are not necessarily bad things to get from a piece of what is, after all, pop itself — unquestionably, mass culture has earned its own disrespect. And, after all, Thick As A Brick’s posturings probably aren’t any worse than Lennon’s or McCartney’s, or particularly, Frank Zappa’s.

Like the Mothers’, in fact, Jethro Tull’s stance is finally self-defeating, in all probability. As Zappa found out to his chagrin, when people you’ve trained to out-hip each other find out what’s up with YOU, then you’re positively outhipped.

Dave Marsh

FLASH SOVEREIGN/CAPITOL

Jeez, this has just got to be the most eye-ball popping, rush-instilling album cover I’ve ever seen. I’d just love to see the beauty who posed for this incredible graphic, if indeed there is such a magnificent vision of pulchritude. What an absolute bitch she must be. I honestly haven’t seen thighs like that in years, not since I stopped refereeing the tug’o’wars between the Home Ec classes on field day. God, just thinking about it makes my veins go acquiver and the muscles in my neck tighten. One of these nights when I’m really drunk I’m gonna do very remarkable things to this cover, and I can tell you right now, I’m gonna love every minute of it.

The music, by the way, sounds like what would have been the result had the original members of Yes, the ones that cut Time And A Word, stayed together and continued to mature as a band. It’s great. Very exciting, and it sounds more like Yes than Yes does. But then again, Yes are getting kind of fragile, anyway.

Get Flash, folks. Beats Playboy anytime.

Alan Niester

SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY JOHN & YOKO APPLE

ELEPHANT'S MEMORY APPLE

I’m listening to a tape of The New John and Yoko lp. If you thought, as I did, that Sometime in New York City was going to be a complete disaster, cheer up. It’s not half bad. It may be 49.9% bad, but not half.

Strangely enough, for once, this politicalvaudeville act sounds good. Credit for this probably is due as much — or more — to Elephant’s Memory, Phil Spector and the classic Lennon intuition than to design, but nonetheless: it sounds good. (N.B.: There is a second, jam record, recorded with George Beatle 1968 Xmastime in London; I don’t have a copy of it, but it doesn’t seem to be missing, if you know what I mean .. . )

At any rate, Sometime in New York City isn’t a terrible record. It is more than listenable. Some parts of it — including one of Yoko’s songs, a cosmic-rocker called “We’re All Water,” which just might be the very best thing here — are as good as anything the Plastic Ono’s have ever done. In terms of music, it’s an 80% success.

Problem is, the album isn’t conceived in terms of music. It stands and falls on its lyrical themes, and the ways in which they are carried out. And, I’m afraid, it doesn’t always treat them very well.

It isn’t just a question of good politics vs. bad. That’s part of it, but the problem runs deeper. Good songwriting is juxtaposed with bad, posturing with commitment, real life with someone’s inadequate fantasies.

That last is what it’s really about. This may come as a surprise to John and Yoko, but “real” songwriters — from Dylan on — have never written about real events. They’ve sometimes written about events that you’ve heard of in advance, but in general, Penny Lane still means more than Hollis Brown.

The songs on Sometime in New York City are content to be “just songs.” They try to be something more than that, and as a result they often come off as less than what a good song is. They’re forced, and frequently they are pretentious. Good songs are neither. They’re literal, and the best songs — the genre classics, a few of which John Lennon has written — are mythic.

Lennon seems to have made a decision, with the Plastic Ono Band lp. Richard Williams describes it perfectly in his book on Phil Spector, Out of His Head.

... the answer was total honesty. No longer could his music be “art”; his words must carry nothing but the most naked truth, the starkest expression of honesty. No more images, conscious or instinctive, could be allowed to get in the way of the message.

There’s John and Yoko’s real dilemma. They’re idealists, yes, in a world that, certainly, has little room for that brand of conviction. But they are also didactic and painstakingly boring, because they refuse to give us images. And, frankly, as nice as either of them might be, when they stopped giving us images — reflections — of other things, they started giving us images of themselves only. And they won’t stand up. One album, and then a second but by the third, we’re ready for a change.

Deeper than that, there is a crucial problem with trying to inform people about public events. If the events matter in and of themselves, the point is moot. Everyone already knows, and so the reportage is superfluous and even a little bit pompous. No matter what Yoko’s theories are, each newspaper song drives home the awful truth once more: you can’t communicate with The World via ballad. It’s just too slow.

Songs that try to be newspapers don’t belong on stage. Like David Peel, they belong in the streets. They are no longer entertainment. And, if Lennon really wants to write those kind of songs, he’d be best advised to keep them there.

He doesn’t, of course. If he did, he’d probably do something like Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac did: disappear for a while, and reappear incognito on the streets of Liverpool. But Lennon is still a public person.

That’s to the good. John when he is on, is the kind of person who belongs out in front. Hisdilemma is to find a way to transfer whatever his political concerns are into entertainment and — while that isn’t easy to do — he seems to be avoiding it at the moment.

If what happened to John Sinclair and Angela Davis ain’t fair — and it ain’t — saying only that is nontheless redundant. These quasi-political songs are just the sort of “political” acts which allow us to feel righteous without challenging our assumptions or testing our commitment. Telling Angela that she’s “one of the millions of political prisoners in the world” is doubly ridiculous. We know, if we can hear, and so does she.

Maybe the supposition is'that we don’t know. That’s false too. I don’t have much use for' voting songs, but that they are so preponderant this year is evidence enough that American rock’n’roll kids are already politicised.

In a way it’s very funny that the cover of this album satirizes the N.Y.Times. Like the Sunday Times, this record is anti-ecological. It is just more ideological clutter. It doesn’t add much of anything.

Sometimes it does worse than that. “Luck of the Irish” is a beautiful melody but it is also about the Irish the way “Old Black Joe” is about blacks:.

If we could make chains with the morning dew The whole world would be like Galway Bay Let’s walk over rainbows Like leprachauns The world would be one big Blarney stone

That isn’t just false, it’s racist — in the same way that the insistence of John’s Yoko-hype is invertedly sexist. I used to be sure that Yoko was great — if I’m not now, it’s because I’ve been overexposed.

And anyway, the I.R.A. don’t need — and they probably don’t want — a pop star to shill for them. Having the luck of the Irish hasn’t made the Irish wish they was English instead. It’s made them prouder, and more committed to being Irish.

Mouthing political statements isn’t the same as making political action. Here, Yoko seems to have convinced John - or they have convinced each other — that it is form, not content, which matters. But that isn’t it, either. It is the integration of the two which makes greatness and brilliance, and all the other things John could conceivably be.

John, used to write songs that worked dialecticly. It was exciting to listen to “Revolution’s” contradictions almost rip it apart. The same thing happened with “Power to the People” if in a different way. But the songs on this album have already flown; the new dialectic is a challenge between the words and the music and it is always the music which is oppressed, which must fight its way into the spotlight.

But even though many of the songs are musical hodge-podge too, what has excited me about this record is the music. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” cuts McCartney’s “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” and it don’t even matter much that “Backoff Boogaloo” is a better statement on the subject than either.

“Luck of the Irish” says to me that John really does care about the I.R.A., in much the same way that he cared about “Julia.” It says that musically, not lyrically. And “We’re All Water” says that Yoko is beginning to figure out how to apply her ideas to Western music effectively.

It all says that Elephant’s Memory is a killer band. John still knows how to rock consistently, and it is the Elephant’s album which proves it.

Lennon produced this and it is much thicker, denser — heavier, than the Spector production on Some Time which mostly sounds like vintage John & Phil with occassional overlays of T-Rex overproduction rhythms.

The Elephant’s were a “political” band long before they met John & Yoko. Their last album — Take It to the Streets (Metromedia) — isn’t laden with the sort of newspaper statements that Some Time is, but it does reflect a real concern with the same kinds of issues. If “Sisters O Sisters” finally sounds like a joke that Spector is playing on Yoko — making it sound like a lame Darlene Love tune — Elephant’s Memory are obviously in on all their album’s laughs.

“Tex” Gabriel’s guitar playing is monstrously good on both records; and so is the sax playing ofStanBronstein. Stan’s vocals are bizarrely powerful on the Elephant’s record; he sounds literal on “Gypsy Wolf.”

Elephant’s Memory have made, I think, a good, tough rock and roll record, one which is political but not self-righteous, conscious but not self-conscious.

If anything, the Elephant’s problem is that they are always wide open. This works wonderfully live, where they immediately sweep you off your feet, but less so on record. You want some respite. If you listen to the two records, one after another, you get it of course. If not, you’d better be prepared for some high intensity rocking for a half-hour or so.

And finally, Elephant’s Memory have better politics than the Lennons — I’d bet that the lyrics aren’t on the Elephants’ album cover. I haven’t figured them all out yet, but with “Power Boogie” and “Liberation Special” and the rest, they are, to my mind, more what the sound of revolution might be like. But then, so is Beatles ’65.

Dave Marsh

COME FROM THE SHADOWS JOAN BAEZ A&M

It was so strange that first day. A new baby, our first real house in the suburbs. Having my next door neighbor come over for coffee was something that I looked forward to with mixed feelings. I was anxious to meet new friends, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. This would help, but I was nervous. I wanted so to make a good impression. Then the doorbell rang.

“Oh, there she is!” She entered, resplendant in a crisply-pressed rose-pink and yellow flowered dress cinched lightly at the waist by a gold braid, with a toothy rosy-cheeked smile, a Harmony Sovereign guitar in one hand and a German chocolate cake in the other.

“Hi. I’m Joanie.”

“Hi. I’m Helen. Coffee?”

“Coffee? Uh ... sure.”

I hoped for this to be the start of a fast friendship, so I had prepared the best: Maxwell House. “Cream and sugar?”

“Say, what brand do you use?”

“Uh ... Maxwell House. Why??”

“Maxwell House!” She looked slightly green. “Did you know that one third of all Maxwell House coffee, or approximately every third bean, comes from the tiny Central American island of San Marcos, 83.5% of the total industries of which are controlled by American big business?!”

“Why, uh, no, I didn’t.”

“And that the natives toil 18 hours a day in the hot sun for a total of less than $5.00 a year?”

“Fm.afraid I don’t understand!”

She was becoming a little overwrought. Suddenly she was standing over me, holding the coffee can in the air. As I looked down at the floor I saw that the veins in her small strong feet had become red and had bulged to the point of popping a strap on her left sandal. Also her “Bus Judges Not Wetbacks” button had fallen to. the floor with a clatter as she continued her tirade.

”... or that 6.9837648282c of your tax dollar goes to help keep those oppressive industries alive?!” She was hysterical' rtoW. Her P.O.W. bracelet was turning green.-

“Please,” I sobbed. “You’re giving me a headache! Please go!”

“ .. . that while the birth rate goes up at a rate of 76.5% a day these people are constantly denied effective measures ...!” She was on a rampage. Yanking open my cupboards and jar by jar, can by can smashing a week’s supply of groceries, yelling things like “imperialist” and “Yankee dog oppressors.” I knew there’d be nothing left of my lovely new kitchen if I didn’t take action, so I dove for her and tackled her around the waist. She was about to attack a jar of expensive Greek olives when we both crashed to the floor.

“Please, PLEASE GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!”

She looked at me as if I had been responsible for the deposition of King Constantine. We rose very slowly and she walked toward the back door. In the doorway she turned and very quietly said:

“I pity you.”

“GET OUT YOU CRAZY BITCH!” I yelled, throwing her button and an imperialist can of Coca Cola at her. “Who do you think made your goddam sandals? Howard Hughes???!!!”

Richard Allen Pinkston IV