LONDON SESSIONS CHUCK BERRY CHESS

LONDON SESSIONS MUDDY WATERS CHESS

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN BO DIDDLEY CHESS

No longer does Chess squeeze the stoife by forcing their blues masters to make creepy Electric albums with psychedelic rock bands; thanks to the artistic and commercial success of The London Howlin Wolf Sessions they can use that town — more as a concept than a place - as Resurrection City. The Berry and Waters lps were recorded there and have been issued in a format conforming to Wolfs album; Diddley's, while cut here, is part of the same market approach — not so much Fathers & Sons as Uncles and Cousins. None of the three is as good as the Wolf album, but Chuck Berry's is a strange sort of classic. Being best, I've saved it for last so read on.

I think Bo Diddley�s place in history will have more to do with �Say Man� than �You Can�t Tell A Book By the Cover,� more to do with his absurdity than his �ability.� The Meaning of Bo Diddley does not lie in his classic songs, which Willie Dixon probably could have written, but in his endless, tireless beat. (Listen to Buddy Holly�s �Not Fade Away,� then the Stones� version, and finally to Them�s �Mystic Eyes� for an idea of the strength of Bo�s rhythm — he wrote none of the songs and none is conceivable without him.) To find Bo Diddley we have to look for his beat, and submit to his love of everything ridiculous, his utter contempt for good taste. Bo is primarily raunchy.

Phil Spector was once asked to give a definition of that word and he replied with a .story about the rehearsals for the T.N.T. Show, which he produced as a follow-up to the T.A.M.I. Show. Bo and his entourage were fooling around and Phil asked them to liven it up a bit. �We want some action,� was what he said.

Bo reached into his nose and pulled out a large piece of snot, held it up to the camera, signaled his band for a beat, and began to dance around the stage. The girl dancers in his troupe formed a line opposite him and he flipped them the snot. One girl caught it, sucked it up her nose, and then spit it out into the mouth of the second girl. She commenced a kind of snot orgasm, finally pulled it out, and shot it back to Bo. He raised it to the light, admired it, and replaced it in his nose as the band ended the number. �Action for ya, man,� said Bo to Phil.

Compared to Bo Diddley the Stones are Victorian. To match up they�d have to put out an album called Mick Has A Problem and have a big red question mark on the cover surrounded by pictures of disappointed looking girls, you see? And they aren�t gonna do that.

Bo�s new lp has bounce, his voice sounds t younger than it did fifteen years ago, the back up singing is sordid, but it�s mostly dull. It seems like a producer�s effort (Johnny Otis and Pete Welding are the conceptual new

blood here). It�s not raunchy and there are no particularly interesting songs. Too much of it could have been done by any of a dozen soul singers. The impact of the cover — BO DIDDLEY IS LIKE A TORNADO FOR YOUR LOVE — isn�t brought out by the music, except on the last cut, �Bo Diddley—Itis,� which really does move lika a disease - BO DIDDLEY IS LIKE TYPHOID FEVER FOR YOUR LOVE.

�Itis� reminds me of Little Richard's Greatest Hits on Okeh — that �live� lp cut in a studio (now re-released on Epic with another album as Cast a Long Shadow). Bo and his producers mesh with one big hand-clapping, guitar-burning stomp. If that�s what you like, I still recommend Bo Diddley�s Beach Party, a bargain bin item recorded live in Somewhere, South Carolina, one of the most crazed sets ever put on tape. And it has some really memorable songs, like �Bo Diddley's Dog.�

The Muddy Waters London Sessions is ok; but it�s no landmark in Muddy�s career or of any of his sidemen, as the Wolf lp was for the man himself and Clapton, too. Big names include Rory Gallagher, who is much better on his recent Deuce lp on Atco, Winwood, Grech. No one steps out; there is no real excitement, nothin* shakin�. The horns, added later, don�t help. Not a bad lp by any means, but if you want new Waters, get his recent live set, and if you�ve never heard him, get Sail On, a magnificent �best of� lp on Chess.

I have to add, though, that in the end the album was a good idea. This album will get into the racks in markets and dime stores, thanks to Winwood, etc., without making a fool of Muddy Waters, and if kids who never heard of him before buy this, someday they will search him out on his own turf. It is a liberal album, bom of a liberal concept — sort of the Chess version of the Public Accomadations act. Eight years after it�s ok for Muddy to buy a coke at the soda fountain, the drug store puts his goods in the rack. Muddy Waters has been integrated.

�... then he started to sing �Roll Over Beethoven� and the room full of people started to bounce in perfect time and they yelled the words right back at him at his own machine-gun pace, with his own intonations. They all knew all the words and a few of them were putting on harmonies. They all knew the song well enough to sing it!

�Chuck couldn�t believe it either. He kept playing, let the people take the weight of the singing. He played for us and we sang for him. He kept looking over to the side of the audience, grinning in estatic disbelief, his face tracked with what could have been either sweat or tears. We knew them all and we sang along loud enough to wreck the tapes being made for a live album.�

— Charles Murray, �Big Red Cars, Little White Chicks and the Chuck Berry Lick,� British Cream March �72

Not quite loud enough to wreck the tapes, because half of the new Chuck Berry album was recorded that very night, at that very place. �I get to sing one,� says Chuck from the midst of some mythical rock and roll heaven that had opened up right here on earth, and he tears into �Reelin� and Rockin� � and busts the place apart. How does he get to sing it? He uses lyrics he never put down on record, like:

We boogied in the kitchen We boogied in the hall I got some on my fingers / wiped them on the wall

�This one�s alive," my wife Jenny said, after hearing the Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley albums. What you hear is Chuck�s voice, his guitar, and perhaps the best audience he ever faced. A back-up band is credited but it is the crowd that acts as the rhythm section.

After a good seven minutes of �Reelin� and Rockin�,� a death defying performance if there ever was one — it is everything you have always dreamed of Chuck Berry being — he moves into eleven minutes of �My Dingaling,� another of his classics about life in teenage America that has not, I think, ever been put down on record before. Chuck sings the verses, the girls sing �I want to play with� and the boys shout �MY DINGALING!� Chuck is Master of the Revels this time. Dig Pete Seeger doing a singalong with �My Drngaling.� Can�t, huh? Damn right.

Well, it goes on and on, and finally it ends and there is one more thing to do, one more note to hit, Chuck opens it up and the crowd slams back the choruses of a song Chuck wrote about himself, a song the Rolling Stones have played for a good ten years now and are still playing: �Bye Rye Johnny,� Check�s exit line. It�s all right here on the record, the man Himself fronted by the Rock and Roll Tabernacle Something or Other, and affection just bursts out of this song, something anyone can use. The mask of the riverboat gambler has been thrown away — this is Huckleberry Finn home free.

She drew out all her money at the Southern Trust To put her little boy

upon a Greyhound bus Leavin � Lou'siana

for the Golden West Down came the tears from her happiness Her little son Named Johnny B. Goode Gain � to make motion pictures Out in Hollywood

Chuck: �Now, bye...� The Audience: �BYE, BYE, BYE! BYE, BYE JOHNNY, BYE BYE JOHNNY B. GOODE!�

Well, Chuck has seen this all night but he plain can�t believe it, and he explodes. A tone of the purest happiness comes into Jiis voice, something we have never heard before; he�s the king of the whole wide world, and he shouts to himself, pinching himself like a man who thinks he�s dreaming:

�LOOK AT �EM, LOOK AT �EM, LOOK AT �EM SING! SING, CHILDREN! OH YEAH!�

Let it rock? Let it rock.

.. . he used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack Sit beneath the trees

beside the railroad track OT engineer would see him sitting in the shade Strumming to the rhythm that the drivers made People passing by

they would stop and say,

�Oh, my, but that little country boy can play!*

And this audience of British kids knows, as Chuck knows, that if there is an American Dream that is worth anything, this is it. They understand Chuck perfectly, as he has always understood them. Kids who first heard Chuck in �55, who found out about him through the Stones in �63 or �69, who never revived a damn thing but just linked up to something that had never gone away, were in on this holy moment. Their history! History that was made before they were old enough to talk had shaped their lives and they were living out a myth passed on by what is now two or three generations, a myth that is in the end a celebration of the special possibilities of freedom implicit in the first guitar line of �Johnny B. Goode.� And you can sum it up in song titles: �The Promised Land,� �Outlaw Blues,� �Let It Loose,� �Up Around the Bend,� �Proud Mary,� �Highway 61 Revisited.� It�s more complicated than Chuck lets on, but his job is to get /you out on the road because you can always stop in at Bob Dylan�s filling station and get a road map if you need it. Which you will.

It almost made me cry to quote those lines a paragraph back, but to hear them on this album is an experience that can�t be limited by tears or smiles, it�s the kind of thing that makes you want to grab the nearest person, be it someone passing on the street or sitting in the next room and yell, �This is it, this is the one, you gotta hear this, Jesus, I can�t believe it.� When you look at a response like that you realize there is an impulse to community in rock and roll, that rock and roll is primarily something to be shared. Well, I knew that.

But with such intensity!

Chuck ends the song. The audience refuses to let it end. You, the listener, root for them, trying to keep Chuck on stage. But there is another concert (Pink Floyd — the concepts bouncing around this record are too perfect) scheduled for the same hall, and Chuok has already been on too long. The crowd rises as one and cheers. They don�t quit. Finally the MC comes on and tries to get them to leaver

And I can�t resist putting down just what happens then, because somehow the dialogue sums it all up:

MC: Please, please, he�s already been on for .... minutes. All right now, all right now. Please.

Audience: ARRRRRGHHHHHHHHHAWOOOOOOOOOOW!

MC: Listen. Ok. Ok. (Beginning to get frantic. Sweat ,on his face). Look, look, there�s about TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE outside waiting for another concert! I�m sure lots more of you are going to come back to see the Pink Floyd. (Insanely rational now) We ... We ... don�t... have ... a ... Pink Floydconcertifwedontcleartheplace! (Hysterical) THIS IS THE MANAGEMENT! (He breaks down)

New MC: He will handle it: Hold it, kids. Hold it. Sssssh. Hold it for thirty seconds. Thirty seconds is all I ask. We�ll explain everything. We�ll... (he gives up).

Audience: We want Chuck we want Chuck WE WANT CHUCK WE WANT CHUCK . . .

And that�s how it ends.

Sure, I have to put in that the studio side with some of the Faces isn�t much, but that�s like going to hear Abe Lincoln give the Gettsyburg Address and complaining about the sound system. It seems like Chess may issue a cut down version of �Dingaling� as a single, with �Bye Bye Johnny/B. Goode� on the flip, but this whole epic side really must be heard as one. There is nothing like it anywhere, that�s for sure.

There are various versions of rock history; there�s the official one, made up of events like �Heartbreak Hotel� and plane crash and how cruddy things were before the Beatles and Woodstock and Altamont and Bangladesh. But there is a private history too, like the first time you saw the T.A.M.I. Show and the first -Beatles song you ever really dug. To me, what goes down on this lp is so much more important than Bangladesh I don�t even want to argue the point. I�ll just quote a little more from an article about it and let anyone who wants to hear �My Sweet Lord� play it until their brains rot.

�As he sang his beautiful songs, it seemed almost as if he was describing what he saw. Was Chuck Berry celebrating the realities of the rock and roll experience, or had he simply formed our future in his image? Did it matter?" Ever since ome unwitting fool made the stake of poi ting out that much of the rock avd roll music an evolved from the hillbilly, we've been pestered day and night by city boys who've suddenly taken to wearing spurs and howling at the moon. They hide in garbage cans and behind trees, waiting to leap out at you and drawl through a Brooklyn accent for hours about the wide open spaces and life behind the wheel of a truck. When they get especially desperate, these wretched creatures have even been known to dial random telephone numbers in the hope of plugging in to an unsuspecting victim. At night they go home and study Fredrick Remington paintings. The music they make is usually even worse.

GreD Marcus

THE EAGLES ASYLUM

-And I hate most of it, I played cowboys and indians when 1 was a kid, too. It's one thing to be an authentic shitkicker, but it�s quite another to let your foot get caught in the shit. Having a steel guitar don�t qualify you for the Grand Ole Opry, and country rock is more trouble than it�s worth.

Or so I thought.

I got equally sick of white boys coming on like they starved on the South Side of Chicago with Johnny Shines, and it took the J. Geils Band to convince me that the blues was still a viable form. Now it appears as though the Eagles might do the same thing for country-rock. If you�ve heard �Take It Easy� come spilling out of your car radio even once, then you know why there�s cause for optimism.

Though they might come on with all the trappings — the worst offender being the album cover, a panoramic sweep of an evening prairie which is missing only the Cisco Kid — they aren�t really a country-rock band at all. They�ve spared its any steel guitar or fiddle, opting instead for your standard two-guitar quartet, and they seem to work best when they think of themselves in terms of that alignment.

�Take It Easy� is a fine example of the things they're capable of doing with energy and motion, but �Nightengale" might be even better. Here Glenn Frey�s rhythm guitar spearheads the charge, while Bernie Lead on�s lead only serves to enrich an already full sound. Both songs have a toughness that doesn�t back down in the face of their sweet harmony overlay. �Some Of Us Are Sad� demonstrates that they can be just as effective at a softer pace.

Unfortunately, not all of the material is commensurate with the boundless potential that even the weakest moments can�t avoid. None of the tracks - with the possible exception of an instrumental exercise called �Earlybird� — is outrightly poor, but a disconcerting proportion just don�t demand to be played again and again, as was the case the first few days I had the �Take It Easy� single. The production is almost too dick and smooth, holding too tight a grip on the energy reigns. What�s missing most is fire.

Even with its weaknesses in full view, however, the strengths of this band win out in the end. If the packaging leads you to believe that this debut album is what you should give Poco fans for Christmas, be forewarned: at the heart of the Eagles lurks a very talented

and persuasive rock and roll band. (Glen Frey, having played guitar on Bob Seger�s �Heavy Music�, certainly understands about rock and roll.) They don't go to the head of the class just yet, but were this a high school yearbook they�d get my vote for �most likely to succeed�.

On second thought, go ahead and buy this record for that friend of yours who sleeps with a picture of Poco under his pillow. It just might do some good ..,

Ben Edmonds

TAKE A SAD SONG GODFREY DANIEL ATLANTIC

I waste so much time concocting theories about rock & roll that I�m always on the lookout for records that tend to support my ideas or indicate trends that fit in with my notions. But this album, which I'm convinced is highly significant in some way, continues tc baffle me.

Here�s the deal: these two anonymous New York session guys took a bunch of well-known songs of the past few years and did versions in archaic styles ranging from Vito & the Salutations to vaudeville. Some of these are great and some are pretty dull. The cover sports the old Atlantic logo, phony liner notes by a phony DJ, and a photo of an empty studio.

For just listening, this is a good record. It opens with a typical New York vocal group rendition of �Hey Jude� — the bassman leading off with �doolie bomp a bomp, cow cow ca bomp� •and the whole thing continues on that level. It works as an oldie because these guys know the idiom thoroughly, it works as a song because the inanity of the style is in perfect contrast to the pretension of the lyrics. The best things on this album all work that way, deflating the balloons of hot air we�ve all voiced over the years about this supposedly avant-garde music, revealing at the core just plain ol� moronic rock & roll songs.

�Purple Haze�, �Honky Tonk Woman�, �Woodstock�, �Whole Lotta Love� and especially �Let it Be� work on this level, with �Dance to the Music� a near success. Where they fail is by bringing in the vaudeville routines, the megaphones, and the brassy schlock jazz arrangements on �Them Changes�, �Mercy Mercy Mercy� and �Groovin� �. Maybe it�s my fault for liking doo-wop and not this other stuff, but I think mixing the styles like this destroys whatever illusion of Godfrey Daniel as a real group in some kind of weird time warp that a listener might have enjoyed entertaining.

There are two schools of thought regarding this album. One is that these guys are ripping off rock & roll by parodying the group sound. The other is that they�re a couple of good old boys who love the stuff and were just trying to have a good time when they made this record. I favor the latter view because they didn�t put their names and pictures on the cover, with phony leather jackets and ducktail wigs, like Sha Na Na would�ve done'. They just put it out as a statement that you can take or leave, depend^ ing on whether you�re hip to what they're doing. You can tell they�re well-versed in the real thing from their version of �Proud Mary.� They start off with a great parody of

Ike & Tina, �ya know, people sometimes ask us why we don�t do something more contemporary, heavy, or funky. But you see, we don't do nothin* heavy or funky — we like to do everything old. The next song, we gonna do the first part old, and then we�re gonna do the finish real old.� Okay, so they start off like the Flamingos and you think �that sounds real old to me� and then they break into a raw, stomping version with boogie piano and a frantic beat, like the Crows might�ve done if they�d lived in New Orleans. So they know the difference between 1954 and 1958 R&B, and how many other musicians today can make that claim?

I think I trust these guys, trust that their intention was to have some fun, spread it around, and then be forgotten without really caring. So in that light, I guess they do fit into my rock theory, under the heading of �Importance of Not Making a Big Deal Out of Oldies.� In that area they�re miles ahead of everybody else, not only the obviously destructive parodies like Ruben & the Jets but even albums like the Royal Teens� Newies But Oldies, which had the same concept but blew it by trying to build it into a comeback for those dorks.

The best thing about old rock & roll, and fun of any kind perhaps, is that you don�t have to think about it or analyze it — it just keeps you amused for awhile until something else comes along. This album is ideal for that purpose.

Greg Shaw

BOB MOSLEY REPRISE

The cover photos may be Frank SinatraisH, but the music inside is such a contrast it may well do your head in: save for one major flaw. Bob Mosley could�ve been the best Moby Grape-derived album ever, and that includes the legendary Grape debut album.

The generally superb quality of Bob Mosley�s solo album comes down to two basic factors: rock and roll songs and execution. Mosley has written a score of rock songs that are awesomely perfect in their simplidty-as gut-level basic as his music has always been — and come up with what has to be the perfect rock and roll backup band for his music. They go by the title of The Mill Valley Rhythm Section and Choir, but that name is as far from the music as the cover of the album. They�re not the raunchiest band ever, nor the most technically proficient - but the complement here between singer and group is one of the most perfect I�ve ever heard.

A majority of the music on Bob Mosley dates right back to the style of the first Moby Grape album: �The Joker� opens the LP with a burst of energy, that is at least the equal of anything Mosley ever did with the Grape. Mosley�s back-up group sets up that familiar kinetic Moby Grape drone, only this time bass-dominated and tense, without that sense of unfocused franticness that ultimately was the one major flaw of the first Grape album.

On the very second cut, �Gypsy Wedding,� Mosley�s Achilles heel stares you right in the face — someone has added horns on three cuts in a way that, if not outright stupid, is at least irritating. Soul horns on a pure rock 4n� roll album??? I can�t believe it. �Gypsy Wedding,� �Let The Music Play,� and �Nothing To Do� -in each case a fine song seriously flawed by the horns. Worst of all, these three horn cuts are situated in such a manner as to disrupt the flow of the LP.

The rest of the album is uniformly good. Bob Mosley possesses a rare control of tension in his music that is complemented by both his singing — easily some of the best I�ve heard in the last couple years — and his band, whose intense bass-dominated sound couldn�t be more perfect for Mosley's music.

This is great music, simple as that. The opening of �1245 Kearny� has a sound that reminds instantly of 1967 rock and roll, and �Squaw Valley Nils� is a pure early Moby Grape song. Gorgeous falsetto singing! �Where Do The Bird,s Go,� �Hand In Hand,� �The Joker� are all driving, powerhouse uptempo rock and roll. For my money, Mosley has to be one of the most impressive shouting rockers ever.

�Gone Fishin� � is the strangest cut of all, a song that starts out centered around a simple repeating guitar line and Mosley singing in a relaxed gravely country-ish voice mixed, way up front. Then at the end Mosley shifts into his normal shouting voice, and you expect the song to explode (it doesn�t). It does, nevertheless, demonstrate the amazing tension (and continual potential for it) that is so much a part of this album. Mosley�s music is so distinctive and unique I can�t think of anyone (save the early Grape) who sound even remotely like him.

So much of the music on Bob Mosley has the urgency that is absolutely essential to first-rate rock and roll: it�s the type of music

that, once you hear it, seems as if it had to get out. And that, believe me, is the mark of a rocker. The best music on this album has an edge — both in vocals and instrumental execution — that few rock artist ever achieve. It could�ve been a magnificent, near-perfect album; as it is, it�s still as good as an uneven (reference: Nils Lofgren�s uneven but Magnificent 1+1) or flawed album can be.

Most of all, much of this album possesses a tension and drive that only pure difinitive rock and roll has. Coming as it does after five whole years — the time elapsed since the first Grape LP — Bob Mosley has to be, without doubt, the surprise album of the year so far.

Mike Saunders

(THE RISE AND FALL OF) ZIGGY STARDUST (AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS) DAVID BOWIE RCA

David Bowie may become a star this year, or he may not. This may or may not make a difference in your life. But, for all the people who are assured it will, take it easy: it�s unlikely.

Ziggy Stardust is excellent, it is true, but it all seems old hat. If David Bowie is a genius, then we have reduced that term to mean nothing more than someone who is familiar with relatively exciting readymades, is able to execute them competently, interestingly, in-

tricately. And if that is what genius has become, it may as well be laid to rest next to our already-lengthy list of �So what�s.�

Why David Bowie isn�t what we are looking for is more difficult. The music here is excellent, it rocks as well as almost anyone�s this year. Like Marc Bolan, Bowie understands much of what makes rock�n�roll so powerful, in both musical and social ways; raw energy, simplicity, an intensely sexual persona.

What Bowie and Bolan — and the other T. Rex-off-shoots who will infallibly crop up in the next year — don�t seem to understand is the missing element. Innocence.

Every great rock and roll singer has been great because, while he or she was potent and strong, they were also uniquely naive. David Bowie and Marc Bolan are worldly and they want to make a virtue of their worldliness. The requisites of rock are such that being jaded won�t do. Rod Stewart may be misogynist, but his misogyny is tempered with naivete. Ringo is the only Beatle who could have sung �Yellow Submarine,� or �Rocky Raccoon,� or even �Lady Madonna.� Ringo is the least objectionalble ex-Beatle. Listen to Peter Townshend or Nils Lofgren or even Van Morrison when they are on. Mixed in with the electricity and the simplicity is — inevitably — a gap, where more wordly knowledge would infuse a blase stance. Rod Stewart sums this up by talking about the loss of innocence: �You led me away from home/ Just to save you from bein� alone/ You stole my heart/ And that's a pain I could do without.� If lack of innocence is why David Bowie is not genius number one on the Hit Parade of the '70's, there is much to substantiate his presence somewhere in its midst.

Bowie now has a rock and roll band, and it is a fine one. Much of its music, like many of David�s lyrics, are drawn from already-tapped Sources, but whether serving up T. Rex, MC5, Alice Cooper or Face to Face period Kinks� licks, the music is invariably well-made and interesting. Bowie's vocals are infinitely stronger against this background; not so strangely. The weaknesses of his singing obviously needed shoring up.

Lyriely, particularly thematicly, Bowie is more ingenuous than ingenius, but that is something we have come to expect. A few phrases jangle the nerves — I can�t trust a song which contains the phrase "freak out,� or �blow your mind� — and his frequent and superfluous hetero-sexism rankles, especially coming from one so supposedly so �liberated�. Nonetheless, on the whole, Ziggy Stardust succeeds, if on more limited terms than the cultists would have us believe.

Bowie�s sexual ambivalence gets curiouser and curiouser. When he is singing tunes of hetero-sex, he is so blatantly chauvinist that you want to blank out the words. �Stardust� on the other hand, is a simple, plaintive song about a queen whom Bowie rhay or may not have desired and it works. I don't know whether Bowie is still gay or not — I wonder if it matters. Those ambi-sexual posturings can be ruinous — they have made a liar out of Alice Cooper. Bowie may have more success with it, because he is more honest, but I don't see anything resolved here — either about the singer himself or about the whole �problem� of being homosexual..

Eventually, Bowie is going to have to come to terms with this kind of stuff. How he does it will undoubtedly be both interesting and confusing. He is, no doubt, a large talent and in some ways, a brave one. Ziggy Stardust is his best record, so far at least, but I can't see him stopping here for long.

Dave Marsh

DEMONS AND WIZARDS; URIAH HEEP MERCURY RECORDS

All I really wanna know is, What Happened? Without boring you with an elaborate overview of Uriah Heep�s recording history, let's just say that they progressed from a fairly uninteresting first album to an .ex-

tremely powerful, potent and electric endeavour with their last, (entitled Look At Yourself, available in record stores everywhere on Mercury and every self-respecting person who likes to have his cranium bored out from the inside really ought to have a oopy). After playing Look At Yourself enough times to drive my odd few friends into paranoic frenzy at the . very sight of its shiny cover, and after watching Uriah blow Deep Purple off the stage in concert a few months ago, I assumed that the band's fourth album would be at best an offering from a nearby nova, or at the very least potent enough to establish the band as the new raw noise on the circuit.

So I repeat, What Happened? Demons and Wizards, I really hate to say it, is excruciatingly ordinary. What would induce a bright young bunch of boys like this to discard the style they strived so long for? Uriah Heep has always had the problem of sounding too much like everyone else. Reviewers have compared them to groups as diverse as King Crimson and the Hollies, admittedly not without justice. Finally the band got a style of their own, however, and showcased it to perfection in their last album. The sound was dynamic — it was probably the best loud record of the year, and easily the best party album. It hinged purely on repetition, and as someone pointed out in a letter too Flash Magazine, it was one of the best examples ever seen of purely organ dominated rock. But Demons and Wizards is a fizz out. The band has exchanged their incredible drive for some false sense, of artiness, and comparisons to the hopped-up King Crimson school are once more applicable. It seems to be a conscious attempt to produce a real live piece of art-rock, from the cover on in. It has no drive, no guts, large amounts of pretentiousness, a high level of boredom-inducement, and themes end lyrics that are overused, to say the least. Gems such as �today is only yesterday�s tomorrow,� (from the song �Circle of Hands�), may cause the far-reaching six year old mind to pause and contemplate existence for a second, but hardly rate critical raves from those of us with at least seven year old fields of experience.

So what good is it, really? Well, its a great cure for insomnia, or if you ever need a tray on which to serve delicious brew to your house guests, the album conveniently carries fourteen bottles, a good amount by which to listen to 197l�s principle rave-up, Look At Yourself.

A1 Niester

LET'S MAKE UP AND BE FRIENDLY BONZO DOG BAND UNITED ARTISTS

�It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realize our perfection; through Art an through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.�

Oscar Wilde

�They spat at Oscar Wilde ... on the way to Reading Jail.�

Vivian Stan shall

There are real dangers in listening to new music in terms of older music, particularly if the comparison involves works by the same artist. For example, many Lou Reed fans now scoff condescendingly at his new album and call it second rate as compared to his work with the Velvet Underground. But my ears hear nothing but wonderful things in that record. Part of this has to do with the fact that I never listened to his earlier work and was not burdened by any fancy critical expectations. For me, Lou Reed is a new artist and his album a delight.

Now, I have listened to the Bonzo Dog Band before and cannot get around that fact. A couple of years ago, before the group disbanded, I was an avid and interested fan — one of the very few thousand Americans who purchased and enjoyed their recordings. The single time that I saw the Bonzo�s perform still remains in my memory as the best onstage outrage that could ever be. It is in terms of my previous experience that I find the new album, Let�s Make Up and Be Friendly, a disappointment. But it is an eager disappointment with a certainty that better things are just around the corner.

The Bonzo�s gems of yesteryear — especially Gorilla and Urban Spaceman — were filled with comedy, tunefulness, brilliant satiricalinsight and a special slapdash learn-by-doing musicianship that made the band at once funny and important. When the group did battle with an opponent — British blues,Dixieland, Elvis, night club atmosphere, English leisure, self-beautification and uplift programs — their victory was swift and total. No one survived the onslaught, for it was always true and to the heart of the matter. In the end, not even the Bonzo�s themselves survived. Dada eventually led to gaga (particularly in the mind of their leader/wizard Vivian Stanshall) and it became emotionally impossible for them to continue on the path of social criticism and science fiction as musical, sculptural art that they had been following. The organization dissolved in the sea of its own implications and the various members went their separate ways.

It would be wrong to say that the Bonzo�s have now �reformed,� but they have gotten back together (or most of them have anyway). The present record finds Stanshall, Neil Innes, Roger Ruskin-Spear, �Legs� Larry Smith and assorted colleagues caught squarely between two groups and two very different ideas. The first is the defunct Bonzo of old, doing parodies of a much less pungent sort than they managed in the late 1960�s. The second is one which pokes its head above the surface only occasionally, but then with astounding power. This inchoate group, the one still shrouded in the crepusculine realm of their collective imagination, is much further out than anything the Bonzo�s have tackled before and, it seems to me, much more ambitious artistically than most of the performing bands now in business.

As for the backward part — Do we really need any more boorish rock and roll spoofs? Does the world cry out for yet another silly return to the 1950*s a la Zappa, Sha Na Na

and Daddy Cool? We should admit it to ourselves: the lame is just one little mark away from the lame. Let�s Make Up and Be Friendly contains no fewer than six songs of rock nostalgia. The anal retentiveness of �The Strain� was funnier when Screamin� Jay Hawkins did the same thing years ago. Why bother with two consecutive early Beatles imitations? That stuff was slightly funny at the time when the Bonzo�s quit. It was funny for about 36 hours. Then it began to wretch. Lord knows, rock and roll is perfectly capable of doing its own feeble imitations of itself these days.

The forward-looking part of the band is another matter entirely. Seen only in bits and pieces in �Rawlinson End,� �Turkeys,� �Rusty (Champion Thrust),� �Bad Blood,� and �Slush,� this is a direction which, if allowed to continue, should help us out of the abject poverty of imagination in which our music is currently mired. There is something amazing at work here — something abstract and perverse, something which trots gingerly along the lines which separate comedy from pathos, playfulness from terror. As best I can tell, Innes has the musical side of this development within his grasp, Stanshall its verbal/ conceptual aspect. And Mr. Smith and Mr.

Spear are obviously not far behind. What it points to is a whole new medium: extended musical fantasies which investigate (rather than just hint at) the burned psychological foundations of British and American sick normalcy. I can�t really tell you where this might lead, but I can describe what it reminds me of.

Several years ago I saw an interesting but obscure movie about Oscar Wilde. It starred a very corpulent and witty Robert Morley and traced the down fall of Wilde — his place in high-brow English society, his homosexual romance, his trial and jail sentence. In the film�s last scene Wilde is sitting with an old friend in a run-down cafe drinking a glass of wine. He tries to remember an amusing story that he used to know, but in the middle of the telling, his mind goes totally blank. As the camera pans away, Wilde sits alone at the wooden table starring off into space laughing in a hideous, remorseful cackle. The song �Slush� oh Let�s Make Up reminds me of that cackle.

How far the Bonzo�s continue in this new direction will depend on how seriously they can stand to play with their own madness.

Langdon Winner

LAST OF THE RED HOT BURRITOS: LIVE A&M

Listen closely to �Tumbling Dice� and then tell me who�s playing drums. Not Charlie Watts! No sir, that boy could do movie soundtracks and still sound great; he can play chair seats with his hands and sound like a million dollars. On �Tumbling Dice,� it sounds like somebody throwing spare change at tom-toms every now and then. If it�s not Charlie, who could it be? Well, it could be Keith Richard�s old buddy, Gram Parsons. McCartney plays drums in Hard Day�s Night, and Parsons is a much better singer than Paul. Much better. Listen to �Hot Burrito #1� from the first tfurrito album, listen to the gentle whine of �I�m your toy, I�m your old boy.� That song delivers more raw pathos than anything since �Don�t Worry Baby.� Gram Parsons even outdoes Andy Kim!

All right, so what happened to him? Don Everly and Glen Campbell predicted he�d be a super heavy star (check the liners to International Submarine Band�s album) and those guys don't mess around. He could have joined the Stones if he wanted to. He could have

fronted the Mindbenders. But what does he do? He cuts one brilliant album with the Byrds, forms the Burritos, makes one amazing, astounding album with them, one pretty good album with them, then suddenly disappears into total obscurity, surfacing here and there to play harp or piano for Fred Neil and Steve Young or write flipsides for Johnny Rivers. Where�s that at?

People claim he�s the laziest bastard in the world. He likes to hang around swimming pools and get drunk and get lots of chicks. Great! That�s what rock �n� roll is all about. I knew a girl from St. Louis who lived next door to Chuck. Berry, and he had a pink, guitar-shaped swimming pool. Gram just forgot about the guitar. And his group got left over.

That sounds cruel, and it hurts, because back around the time of Notorious Byrd Brothers, I figured Chris Hillman for the best bass player in the world. �Lady Friend� confirmed that idea. No one could do what he was doing, no one at all. And he plays respectably on this album. But who needs that? The Burritos are tight, they play well, their harmonies are swell, and fast numbers cook right along ... only problem is, without

Parsons they no longer have any focal point. Picture Herman�s Hermits without Herman. Gerry and the Pacemakers without Gerry. Don Quixote�s horse without Don Quixote. It doesn�t make any sense, and it makes less sense when they�re good than when they�re bad. When they're bad, as on Wilson,Pickett�s �Don�t Fight It� or �Losing Game,� they could be just about any second rate Seatrain getting ready for their first album on Uni or something. But when they move, as on �A Lot of Love� or �Devil in Disguise� (not the great one by Elvis, but actually a retitled �Christine�s Tune�), you expect something to happen, you�re left waiting for a guitar, a piano, a voice to come in and carry that song out of the dance hall and clean up to heaven. Nothing does. I guess it�s too late to hope for Gram Parsons to get back with them or for Jackson Browne to become their lead singer. This is their last album, a final ditch effort for some bread and some fame. I�d like to have more good things to say. A1 Perkins plays some dynamite pedal steel; and Mike Clarke doesn't fall asleep even once. Sorry, fellas. Gram, give those fucking sticks back to Charlie. What we have here is a rock and roll singer, Mr. Jim Dandy, combining all the more finely gross elements of Peter Stampfel, Captain Beefheart, Dr. John, Zappa�s varous back-up hoorays, and David Clayton-Thomas. In other words, his vocals suck with a mighty reeching persistence that leaves you somewhere just short of being absolutely amazed. Except for the David Clayton-Thomas tinges it�s a right likeable combination, though. However, this here David Clayton washday blues fiddle-doodah has been causing a buncha critical comment to the effect that perhaps Black Oak would be better off without the able assistance of Mr. J.D., even to the point of Jim Dandy being offed, if necessary. Even though you may have rushed out and bought their first two albums, or rushed out and failed to buy those particular albums despite what you may think about Black Oak�s lead vocalist, that�s all irrelevant, �cause Black Oak quite simply does it dirty. Merely dirty.

Brian Cullman

THE BOY'S AT THE BAR"

IF AN ANGEL CAME TO SEE YOU BLACK OAK ARKANSAS ATCO

Now,�•just let me say here and now, you ain�t gonna get no fulsome amphed imagery in this review. In writing this review I am completely irrevocably straight. In fact, I have refused to evaluate music of any sort under the influence of sundry chemicals since that time back in �65 when I downed a full tin of nutmeg laced with Crisco in order to determine the true meaning of the Ray Coniff singers. What my one chemical exercise taught me is that if you listen to too many violins too closely that grand moment of realization is liable to be accompanied by an upset tummy and streaked with brown turgid barf. Those dangers aren�t even lurking below the surface with Black Oak, however, �cause there ain�t no violins on this album!

Everyone has already told you that the wham wham electrics these guys put out are really .swell. Let it be said here only that they combine amplified subtlety with a healthy dose of flatout grossness that�ll make you either want to dance or scream. And that's rock and roll. The drummer knocks out speed lick variations on Bo Diddley�s concise ultimate mystic statement behind a mess of guitar picking that is purely Moby Grape gone native and bizarre. These guys aren�t going to ask if they can walk down your street naked

if they want to: When we re not on stage/ We�re everyday hippies/Some don�t dig our gig/But to us our life is trippy.�

So, the label that I�m pasting on this review reads — Not For Everyone. But that�s true of most of the good things in life, and where else can you get the 70�s only logical successor to �Summertime Blues,� a little school�s out ditty titled �Spring Vacation�:

Less clothes on women From the warm skies of heaven The season of creation Comes with spring vacation I tell ya that

, there�s much anticipation Yes for nature�s chain reaction And it comes with spring vacation All across the nation

Buck Sanders

THE NIGHT IS STILL YOUNG SHA NA NA KAMA SUTRA

Here�s a brand new package from Buddah introducing — Sha Na Na. Well, not exactly. They�ve had a couple other albums, with slightly different personnel, but they weren�t half as outstanding as this one. The previous Ip�s (Rock and Roll Will Stand and Sha Na Na) contained poor mockeries of golden oldies which didn�t even come off as well as cult-appealing Flash Cadillac or Frut.

Nostalgia ceases to survive when you can�t remember what you�re supposed to be reminiscing. So it goes with 50�s hits in *72. Fourteen year old kids just don�t know who the Duke of Earl was or anything about �Teen Angel� because they�d just been bom when they were hits. But you can bet they buy Andy Kim records. Who co-wrote two of the several highlights on this album.

The Night Is Still Young is played at least three times a day here. It sounds like a celebration of their revitalized, renovated music, packed full of goodies. �You Can Bet They Do,� a strong city ditty and �Bounce In Your Buggy,� a �dit-dittle-dit-dit� great hit single. A new version of that hand-clappingoooeee-jolting �Sea Cruise� and �In The. Still Of the Night� prove they�ve gotten better at what they did.

They call albums like this summer records. Windows down, hot wind in, tearing along with the radio blarring: �I wanna put more bounce in your buggy, put more hope in your soul/When things go wrong I�ll simply sing this song and it�ll be all right.� Those inane words work. There�s also this summer�s sequel (equally as good) to �What You See Is What You Get� - �It�s What You Do With What You Got.� This album brought me out of shock, it�s so good.

Sha Na Na write their own stuff too with a Mad Mag. sense of humor. Bowzer Bag�s �Glasses� is a cut about 14th centpry squinting people tuning into sound. In �The Vote Song� Screamin� Scott Simon�s solution to Nixon�s nifty policies is to �Vote For Me.� Dare Ya.

These twelve Columbia College kids have left their gimmicky theatrics, gold lame and lame versions of blastos from the past-o. Their formerly too clean computed and overly-

vocalized arrangements sounded like musical majorettes trying to be The Lettermen but who had never actually seen a tube of Brylcream in their whole Sunday School choir existence til it packaged the �Dry Look.�

Finally, Sha Na Na found out how sha na na�s and dits dittle. They met Jeff Barry, the master of 60's smashes, a veteran of the halycon days, the guy whose songs Sha Na Na had been singing since their inception as the Meyer Davis of the junior jet set.

Barry co-wrote with his wife, Ellie Greenwich (they were another Carole King/Jerry Goffin team) and Phil Spector songs like �Chapel of Love,� �River Deep,� and �I Can Hear Music.� Along the line he produced the Shangri-La�s, making this Sha Na Na production the logical step. What a perfect match: the spirit of the 60�s, 70�s style, with a competent and creative new group.

Some may feel it�s too bad they turned into such nice clean fun but they still look outrageous. I can�t wait to see them live again. Sha Na Na are here to stay.

Robbie Cruger

THE FABULOUS RHINESTONES JUST SUNSHINE

I always thought that the bassplayer was the guy who stood there and didn�t say much. While the rest of the band goes out partying, he goes back to the motel and watches TV. He�s always the member of the group that�s married. His hobby is home and yard improvement. He�s got no illusions about superstardom, he just gets paid to play bass. You never caught Peter Quaife shaking his ass, or Bill Wyman for that matter. They didn�t need to; they were above all that They played bass.

Now / know all about Harvey Brooks. I remember Highway 61 Revisited (on which he�s listed as Harvey Goldstein, which is the name his parents chose for him), the Electric Flag, the Mama Cass Vegas Band (which, I believe, he called the Fabulous Rhinestones as well) and a good 90% of th$ most treasured folk-rock albums in my considerable archives. I grew up in the Sixties. Yet I still can�t understand why people persist in taking me aside at parties and whispering (in strictly confidential tones): �Hey there�s this new band called the Fabulous Rhinestones, and they�re led by Harvey Brooks.� Yes, but Harvey Brooks? He�s a bassplayer, for chrissake. Well, it turns out that the Fabulous Rhinestones aren�t really Harvey Brooks� band after all. It is a band — period — and not a bad one at that. The problem is that you�d never know it by this album.

I�ve heard talk that the band spent the better part of the last year putting this record together, as if that should mean that the record will consequently have a lot to say. I could take until 1997 to finish this record review.

The album shows remarkably little in the way of identity development. They try out swatches of style from a variety of sources — the Band to Santana, and a whole lotta stops in between — yet fail to come up with anything that could be readily identified as them. They�ve got sufficient technical mastery of their instruments, and show signs of activity in their brains to match, but somehow those ideas are never translated forcefully enough into their fingers. They may be Rhinestones, but they ain�t fabulous yet.

Ben Edmqnds

MOTORCYCLE MAMA SAILCAT ELEKTRA

Jeez, I thought I was schizophrenic but these guys — John Wyker and Court Pickett, who are Sailcat — got about twnety personalities. The first time I listened to them, I started jotting dowh obvious traces and influences: Velvet Underground, Bobby Fuller, Stones, Four Aces, Mezz Mezzrow, Todd Rundgren, A1 Kooper, Delaney & Bonnie, Jimmy Day, Mystic Moods, the Hodges Brbthers, Bloodrock, McGuiness Flint, Flatt & Scruggs, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jimmy Smith, Sam Butera and the. Witnesses, White Ughtnin�, Incredible. String Band, Jim Kweskin, and the Archies. And that was just on the first listening.

Opening� the album is a brief fiddle-banjo duel. Ah, that was nice, I decided, and settled back for some solid pickin�. Then comes a Harley kicking off, a real clunker from the sound of it. Then we get to �Rainbow Road,� wherein Wyker informs us that he can ride his bike through a solid brick walk But he don�t sing like he can. He sounds more like an anemic Lou Reed backed up by Keith Richard playing with two hangnails.

And that�s only the beginning of the schizophrenia. You gotcher tender acoustic ballad with �The Thief,� you gotcher jazz in �Highway Rider and Highway Riff,� gotcher treacle in �The Dream,� gotcher artsy piano in �Ambush,� gotcher boogie in �B.B.Gunn.�

Some of it is really fun, though. �On the Brighter Side of it All� is a brilliant parody of the �we-all-got-together-on-the-front-porchand-wuz-pickin-a-little-for-our-friends� genre of crap practiced by those who patronize country music* If it is parody, that is.

And' �Motorcycle Mama,� the single, is a good idea that almost works. It�s about a biker who�s asking a little girl to run away with him on his Harley. But it sure don�t sound like a road song.' None of the 13-yearold girls I know would leave Mom and Pop on the strength of a wimpy crooner like this. They�d rather have John Kay anyday in his skintight leathers.

Gee, Sailcat, I just don t know about you guys. Maybe what you intended was a keen parody of a dozen styles of music. Then again, maybe all you did was try to cut an album the best you knew how. Anyhow, there�s no need to feel ashamed. Stronger men than you have tried and failed.

Chet Flippo

WORDS OF EARNEST GOOSE CREEK SYMPHONY CAPITOL

Goose Creek Symphony are a crew of deranged teen aged hillbillies who are kept busy in the south and southwest, touring and playing a fairly witty brand of country rock. As these things go GCS are more than competent. They are excellent on �Mercedes Benz,� which was once a minor hit for them — and they have the courtesy to credit the song�s true author, playwright Michael McClure, which is more than Columbia did for Janis Joplin�s Pearl. (This may or may not have caused J.J. to execute a double-back-flip in her place of internment.)

For the rest they are witty enough; they have the raw nerve to start the second side of their album the same way Rod Stewart started the second side of Every Picture. But they don�t doJ*�Maggie May:�

Somewhere, Goose Creek has a following. It is probably centered around wherever their hometown is. Thus fulfilling David Rubinson�s criteria for signing an act: they should be able to fill a hall in a place of their own choice. Or be able to make a hit single, as the Midnight Raiders once proposed. Goose Creek probably have more to do with the former than the latter. This doesn�t make the record unnecessary, but it probably does make it fairly inconsequential, unless you are a regional admirer. (Or a country-rock glutton.)

If it were ten years ago,Goose Creek would have had to have a hit single, period. I guess this is an improvement, though I've never really understood the principle of nationally releasing the record of an act which is popular at home largely because of regional eccentricities of taste.

Suppose, though, they come up with a hit single ... what does that mean? Then they can be on Fillmore Records, and be certified by the Midnight Raiders too. I wonder if that sells records?

Dave Marsh

MIDNIGHT SUN KAPP

I've heard for years that Europeans went absolutely berserk over Jazz, and looked askance at the short shrift that was so often delivered to black jazzmen in America. There was even a movie on the subject that was made back in 1961 called Paris Blues, which was based on a novel .about the adventures of a black musician in the city of light. Of course, Hollywood couldn�t, for reasonsof prosaic business sensibility and rank cowardice, have a spade for a leading man, and substituted Paul Newman,and relagated Sydney Poitier to tonto. But for the most part, the movie showed crowds of wigged out Parisians dancing in the streets to the most second rate swing music imaginable, and a token performance by Louis Armstrong.

But I�ve never been able to take European claims to jazz buffhood seriously, because it was founded more on a debased lusting after anything �American� than it was on any genuine appreciation of the music. Historically, Europe has always used music as a means of class distinction and discrimination. Even today, there is a dominant attitude that seeks to misapply the very characteristics jazz has exemplified. French drummer Daniel Humdir: �In the U.S., you don�t respect Jazz as an art form. It�s just another kind of entertainment. That's one reason -why your best musicians have come to live in Europe.�

Well, I know no quicker way to ruin one�s appreciation of a popular art form than to treat it AS an art form. When jazz is treated as an entertainment, then the sparkling, rich moments can shine through to an audience that is open to the new directions that the music can take. When you have �music as art form,� you are imprisoned in the �recital' syndrome: stultification of the performance, and intellectualizing musicians, who become academic in their outlook. It is similar to the �auteur� school of movie criticism, in which long dissertations and detailed analysis are made of old John Ford and Howard Hawkes westerns. Nothing is facilitated when �art� is pinned like a Boy Scout, achievement badge on every form of human expression.

All this is an introduction (rather long, I admit) to a Eruopean jazz group called Midnight Sun. These guys are from Denmark, and readily admit to a strong influence from progressive rock groups, and jazzmen. I would also guess strong influences from Blood Sweat and Tears, and possibly a little (feedback) from that bunch of Kraut wierdos, Amon Duul, although they lack Duul�s brooding, Teutonic quality.

They are, by and large, an enjoyable group, but seem to lack any definite idea of what kind of band they want to be. Mostly they borrow whatever sound appeals to them in a haphazard manner. It�s all constructed of ready mades and never manages to make a statement, like the American jazzmen they admire so. It's mostly and assemblage of disconnected riffs that sound good seperately and together make for an enjoyable, but hardly pioneering album.

After all tinker-toy music is fun to do, isn�t it?

Rob Houghton