ROCK-A-RAMA

PROCOL HARUM IN CONCERT WITH THE EDMONTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND THE DA CAMERA SINGERS (A&M):: WHAT Edmonton Symphony Orchestra? Well, that’s not being fair. The poor Ork does what it can with the exceedingly weak scores they were handed. From the sound of things, PH would’ve been better off renting a Mellotron, for all the inventiveness the orchestral parts have, and the performance by the band sounds like they died and were stuffed two years ago.

PAMELA POLAND (Columbia):: A master race of hippies lives in Mill Valley, Calif. Basically a matriarchal, vegetarian society, these people believe themselves blessed by God due to the fact that they live near and on Mt. Tamalpais, a sacred spot to the Indians who formerly lived in the area. They spend hours in study, trying to refine their vibrations. They procreate like rabbits, a holy act to them, and spend much time in nude sunbathing. What they fail to realize is that the REAL master race of hippies lives in Bolinas, with Paul and Grace. In their time, the master race likes to gather at various acoustic clubs in Marin County and listen to Pamela Polland sing and give off vibrations, which she learned to do from the Maharishi. If you can stomach this record, you are invited to join the master race. Send for an application to: Master Race of Hippies, Inc., P.O. Box 666, Mill Valley, Calif. 94969.

LUIS GASCA (Blue Thumb): Absolutely the worst of the Latin/rock albums so far released. The backup band (which is mostly Santanans of one stripe or another) is usually going four different ways at once, and Gasca’s trumpet playing is so totally colorless as to be invisible.

BLUES PROJECT (Capitol):: Now they’ve got Tommy Flanders back. The smell of necrophilia is so strong it teaches to A1 Kooper’s nostrils. The Pruitt-Igoe of rock’n’roll.

I’M SATISFIED - JOHN PAUL HAMMOND (Columbia):: He tries to look like Jean-Paul Belmondo, and he still sounds like a punk. (Is that a positive comment? — Ed.) This is his all-time worst album, and you can see why Delaney didn’t bother to credit the musicians here — they’d probably sue.

A MESSAGE FROM THE PEOPLE - Ray Charles (ABC-Tangerine):: Ray Charles just keeps getting older and less interesting all the time, and I bet nobody who used to stomp and jive to “What’d I Say” ever dreamed he’d someday be recording “America the Beautiful,” much less “What Have They Done To My Song Ma?” I don’t think anybody needs to ask that by now. Also, this album has what is undoubtedly the ugliest cover yet this year, although the liner notes claim that they scoured the country looking for an artist capable of rendering this vision (Ray sitting on the grass in matching striped shirt and pants, while four little kids of varying nationalities and the ectoplasmic visages of Lincoln, M.L. King and the two shot Kennedys emerge from the mist behind him). And the bio informs us that Ray repairs TV sets in his spare time.

MEET THE BRADY BUNCH (Paramount):: Listen, bunky, you ain’t lived till you’ve heard these bright-eyed brats do “American Pie.”

THE DAY AFTER THE DAWN - Albert Dailey (Columbia):: This album arrives complete with Walter Carlos’ Trans-Electronic blessings, but mostly sounds like cocktail piano subjected to occasional moogey business.

GETTING IT TOGETHER - Yogi Adonaiasis (Universal Awareness):: Nobody’s ever gonna buy this, but it’s worth noting as a record industry classic, just like California 99. This guy is a New York Greek Yogi who has suddenly decided to dilate the cause by flexing his vocal mitts on things like “I Gotta Be Me,” “My Way,” and “For All We Know.” Not only that, but the first side of this two record set is 13 minutes of his explaining the cosmic symmetry of the whole thing. Latest news is he’s starting a record company for deserving artists a la Apple, and will even fly them in from wherever and fix up their financial situations to whatever degree is indicated. Only catch is that since the Yogi Knows All you better not try to take advantage of his generosity or... Send your tapes to Universal Awareness Federation c/o Morty Wax, 1650 Broadway, New York, N.Y.

MOUNTAIN LIVE (Windfall):: Strenuous, but no fun.

TOM FOGERTY (Fantasy):: An affair of honor. Blah.

COUNTRY WINE - Raiders (Columbia):: Any old Paul Revere and the R’s picked up in a bargain bin is better than this, sad to say. These guys have been dumped on far more than they deserve, and their last, Indian Reservation was a nice slice of mainstream journeyman rock, but this sounds flat and tired in a way that no professional studio journeyman ever should. Which makes ’em authentic at last?

NO ANSWER — Electric Light Orchestra (UA):: Here’s the formula: Get some lowsonority orchestral instruments — cellos, basses, bassoons — a couple of high-register instruments — violin and oboe — put them all just slightly out of tune, record them at the end of a cardboard tube, overdub a poorlyfiltered vocal singing a three-npte melody, then have the instruments come to a bridge, sawing away madly on one note and just before fading it out have them interpolate “God Bless You Merry Gentlemen” or something like that. Face it, folks, this is deadly dull.

ACCELERATION — Middle of the Road (RCA):: A most peculiar group. Scottish, come to prominence and recorded in Italy, they mix rock of the most pleasurably commercial kind, and not always generically upto-date either, with a touch of rushing acoustic folk and a strange female vocalist that grows on you, sounding as she does a bit like a cross between Little Eva, Savage Rose’s Anisette, early Sixties girl groups, the voice of Betty (or is it Veronica) on the Kirschner Archie TV bubblegum charts, and at certain times Marc Bolan’s (of T. Rex) slithery vibrato. Anybody influenced by Neil Diamond has got be alright, even if slight CSNY traces do creep in at times. Not only that, they sing about America a lot: “She’s a woman/ She’s the talk of all the U.S.A.” In case you forgot, they’ve already had a worldwide chartbuster with “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.”

AFRICAN COOKBOOK - Randy Weston (Atlantic):: This album was recorded in 1964, but hasn’t aged a bit — in fact it makes much of the “pop,” “cosmic” jazz of today look just as artificial as it is. There is a whole subgenre of recordings in which black American musicians pay tribute to their African roots,and until somebody finally reissues Max Roach and Oscar Brown, Jr.’s incredible We Insist: Freedom Now Suite, this may well be the best example of this kind of music. Certainly there hasn’t been a more listenable instrumental .album released in the last few months.

GRAHAM NASH/DAVID CROSBY (Atlantic):: See Stephen Stills review.

P-FLAPS & LOW BLOWS - Gross National Productions (Metromedia):: Onstage they come on a bit like an American ricochet off the Bonzo Dog Band, what with doing their showstopper “Bees” with one bandmember in full bee drag. The influence of Alice Cooper is felt too, though in the theatrics rather than the music, which is more reminisicent of old Mothers. Rock, MOR, jazz, ragtime, a bit of everything, used as musical props. This sort of thing is done here as well as it possibly can be, but who wants it?

ROCK & ROLL CITY - Randall’s Island (Polydor):: The title tells it all. These guys are all proficient musicians who have been together for awhile, but seem to lack inspiration and rely on a variety of current schticks to disguise the fact that they’ve got nothing to say.

CREQUE — Neal Creque (Cobblestone):: Five out of every four jazz albums released since In A Silent Way feature blatant and usually unimaginative cops of the Miles Riff which is threatening to bury the musicians of the 70s in the same way Charlie Parker did the hard boppers of the 50s. This may be the first one ever with a sense of humor: Creque actually makes those spacey collective improvisatory snippets have a sense of humor, for what may be the first time in history. He knows they’re just etherised funk, and this album is like a breath of fresh air.

GREAT GRAPE - Moby Grape (Columbia):: Since at their strongest they may well have been the best San Francisco group ever, and despite the absence of such beloved classics as “Hey Grandma,” this record manages to be great on its own slapdash terms and you should certainly buy it if you don’t have their first album, which was one of the finest pieces of music marketed since'the Crusades at least.

EVERYTHING STOPS FOR TEA - John Baldry (Warner):: Frankly, it irks me that Warner-Reprise insists on releasing at least 20 albums a month, 19 of which are almost sure to be duds of the shoddiest kind. Whether you get them free or have to plow through them in the record stores, it amounts to the same thing: Clutter. John Baldry is not the worst example by far, but it hasn’t even been a year yet and here he is with another album that, if anything, is even more blah than the first one. Ignore the fact that Elton John and Rod Stewart each produced a side again, the productions aren’t that interesting and are only intended to cover up the fact that not only can this man not sing at all, he has no personality discernable on vinyl whatsoever.

1200 HAMBURGERS TO GO - Imus In the Morning (RCA):: I don’t know how you feel about comedy albums, but most of them make me uncomfortable, because I almost never laugh because they don’t seem that funny, which; makes me uncomfortable if someone else is playing it for me and makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing listening to it if alone. So believe me when I tell you that this is one of the funniest, freshest, most attention-grabbing spoken word albums to come out in a long time. Whether he’s calling up an actual McDonald’s and posing as a U.S. general who wants to order 1200 burgers for the troops quelling a local student demonstration, or imitating a bugeyed revivalist with more obscene precision than anybody since Lenny Bruce, or calling Hertz in Indianapolis and asking to rent a car with a roll-bar on the day of the 500 (and those are just the first three cuts) Imus, who has been fired from radio stations around the country for general outrageousness and is currently testing the mettle of ABC in New York, is a very funny man who doesn’t even need to come on excessively hip to make his point.

FM-AM — George Carlin (Little David):: Carlin is a bit different, a former “straight” standup comic who discovered somethingor-other one day and grew Jesus-Manson hair and beard and immediately took the variety shows by storm with his cute little routine about “I can tell you’re aware of my hair, people stare, I don’t care, au contraire, mon frere,” etc. etc. etc. A lot of people were offended by that simply because of its total pandering idiocy, as well as his attitude toward women which was not even sexist as much as it was almost pathologically obscene. Believe it or not, though, this is a very funny record, especially when Carlin is making some rather obvious, but still close-to-home, points about sex in TV commercials.

AND THAT’S THE TRUTH - Lilly Tomlin (Polydor):: Well, I didn’t believe she could do it, but Lily finally managed to think of a characterization more disgusting than Ernestine, her hog-snorting telephone operator. And this record is about half as funny as her first bomb. Maybe she should start singing, like Goldie Hawn.

RETROSPECT — Mike Nichols & Elaine May (Mercury):: Lilly Tomlin me this, you partisans of current comedy albums. This is a very funny record, folks, and almost two albums for the price of one. I’m tempted to say they don’t make ’em like this anymore, but where would that lead us? Just try “Mother and Son” or “Second Piano Concerto (The Dentist)” — and realize how basically lame, how unimaginative, what a poor excuse for satire, people like Lily and George Carlin are.

ERIC DOLPHY (Prestige):: This man was a frontrunning genius of the new untethered jazz pioneered by Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, and one of the plain finest musicians of the last two decades. No one else could do what Dolphy could do, because no one else had the technique or the feeling that was his alone. Those who waited for his albums to come out when he was still alive felt a personal sense of loss when he died in 1964. Those who didn’t are missing something beautiful. Get into it.