Waiting For The Punchline

Waiting For The Punchline

RECORDS

ROCK OF AGES

THE BAND

CAPITOL

On a great night, the Band grab and mesmerize, so that neither your eyes nor your thoughts can be on anything else. It helps that they look like a society of Viennese doctors, of course, but their magic is mostly in the music — what they are playing, and how it is played. On a great night, the Band’s competition just doesn’t exist.

But on a good night, which they have sometimes, too, a night when the Band is just competent, maybe, or when Robbie is only strangling his guitar every third or fourth song, attention wavers, as it does with a.nyone. Unless you count the few minutes, where the Organ plays its garth hudson solo, there isn’t any show to lean on. If you sit and wait for the punch line a few times, and when it comes, it doesn’t overpower you, the edge of your attention gets dispersed.

Rock of Ages was recorded on a good night, and it is not always engrossing. It is good, but spotty, and in one way that is enough. You can’t recover from a disaster like Cahoots with a miracle, after all. Or you can, but most people don’t.

Besides, after the over-reaching of Cahoots, the mid-level excitement of Rock of Ages rehumanizes the Band. It’s not one of the classic live rock records, and there are no earthshaking new songs - no attempts at any, even. It makes them easier to live with.

There’s more to it than sublimated entropy, though. The Band are probably the biggest group in rock’n’roll who’ve never had a hit single. They’ll still cast the proverbial long shadow, of course, but a little AM play would flesh out the image nicely.

The latest attempt is “Baby Don’t Do It,” which is right out of the Band’s Motown heritage (dig the rhythm section). It’s not as good as the practice-tape bootleg that’s been floating around for a year or so, but it might be good enough to hit.

We’ve waited long enough. Here’s Greil Marcus in the May, 1971 CREEM on “Don’t Do It”: “The Band play the best hard rock in the world when they 'want to. Now,' why don’t they release this and give us a chance to believe it.”

As everywhere else, “Don’t Do It’s” horns are a throw-away. They don’t exactly suffer from lassitude, but from something like flabbiness. It’s an interesting experiment, but one which never comes off, except on “Life Is A Carnival,” and occasional flashes here and there.

The high-points have to be sought. Some are more obvious than others, but not one is arresting. “Get Up Jake” is the only “new” Robertson song, and it has been recorded before — notably by Roger Tillison last year on his remarkable Atco album. “Jake” also features what must be Robbie’s best guitar work on the record. “Life Is A Carnival” really comes off here; it’s another place where the horns work well. Hudson’s humorous organ solo leads into “Chest Fever,” in a version which does nothing to clarify the eternal question: “What’s it about?” (Chests, maybe?) Still, “Chest Fever” is the most powerful of all Band hard-rock. “Hang Up My Rock’n’Roll Shoes” is the other “new” song (they’ve never recorded it before); it might be the Band’s epitaph in another couple decades.

The rest is down to moments. Hudson has good ones all over. Richard Manuel has beautiful piano licks on “The Weight,” Levon bursts out now and again while Rick Danko’s bass is always there, steady as a rock. He’s the paragon of Motown-sessidn-man-as-Canadianrock-and-roll-hero. Robbie’s Robbie, primal energy force, quiet, but always forceful.

Like any snotty punk, my solution to the ennui of Ages would be to edit it. As one record, the album might have the kind of sustaining power and drive the set it was recorded from probably possessed. Rock of Ages might then be just that, compelling rather than interesting and a little bit curious (the horns).

On the other hand, there are advantages to a Band album that is less than crushing, but still good. Everybody has to have some entertainment betwixt the heaviness, and all of this record is entertaining. The Band isn’t wasting any time trying to find new things to worry about; they’re waiting for the old ones to sink in. Meanwhile they’re doing new things (the horns) but not over-reaching in superfluous attempts at profundity (Cahoots).

BEFORE

AFTER

Of course, it’s also nice to know that unlike the Greatful Dead, the Band are still listenable when they operate at less than perfection. It’s even reassuring to know they still see themselves in some sense as a live group; they haven’t toured in so long you might begin to wonder.

Most importantly, Robbie Robertson does not dominate this album. Robertson is great, sometimes awesome, but the show is not his alone, as it might have been. The Band are still, after all, a band, and they know it and reinforce it. Only Creedence, among mainstream bands, has the guts to say the same thing.

Indeed, there probably isn’t a group with more raw courage in all of rock’n’roll. They’re still here: the Band, playing the Music. Longer than almost anyone and better, too.

Dave Marsh

ROCK OF AGES THE BAND CAPITOL

You know something, this record would have been a lot better if it had cost, say, $2.38. No, but that ain’t the case though cuz it costs a lot more than that. If the damn thing had cost less, I wouldn’t be so disappointed.

Dawgone it, I wish I had the $5.52 I spent for this album; coulda bought some food or something. It’s too late for that now, cuz the money’s gone and I’ve got Rock of Ages to prove it. Gee, I’m stupid.

Hey, but listen, you don’t have to pay cash for this thing. Just go into the record store and hit the person behind the counter with a stick. Then pick up this nifty two record set and stroll on out. And don’t forget to take Bangla Desh too, you may have worn your first copy out. After you’ve done all that, the music on this record might'sound just fine.

Cordially yours,

Chester the Conger-Eel

EVERYBODY'S IN SHOWBIZ THE KINKS RCA

Showbiz is a two-record set, complete with the best cover art ever afforded a Kinks album (early covers were great in context only). Sides 1 and 2 are new songs done in the studio, while 3 and 4 are older numbers done live.

The Kinks are a difficult band to capture live. They are basically sloppy and alcoholic and, although the horn section (now a predominate part of the group) helps to smooth things over a bit, their live show is better left at the concert hall. For even though the writing of Ray Davies (the man who puts the kink, in the Kinks) may be preoccupied with those things in life that are lasting, his live performances are hardly designed to be saved for posterity. If, in his state of genuine or affected drunkeness, he can show you 3 good time, he is satisfied. But that is not the stuff that great live recordings are made of. Besides, even when Ray is having a great night, appreciation of his delivery relies on all the subtle nuances of the personality he projects, which are as visual as they are audial.

☺The main attribute of the live set is that it documents Ray’s ever-improving abilities as a showman. He is not, and may never be, the consummate craftsman on stage that, say, Peter Townshend is, but he is becoming increasingly comfortable as master of ceremonies of a good-timey, almost vaudevillian show, as opposed to his old role as lead singer of a British rock band. It is an adjustment which has taken years to be made in a way that Ray could live with, both in terms of general aesthetics and the music itself. He can now do a heartrending version of “Y ou Are My Sunshine” (my favorite song of all time), continue with “Alcohol,” done partly in 40’s Maurice Cheavlier imitation, and follow with a rocker like “Top of the Pops,” and make it work! But on vinyl? Ray is charming enough to make it fun to listen to, but it stands more as a reference point than as any kind of cohesive, significant recorded statement.

Now the studio platter, sport fans. It goes almost without saying that I like it. I am one of those people who always goes a little soft when the singer is Ray Davies. But I gotta admit that not only have the Kinks seemingly lost the desire (they have the ability) to rock’n’roll, they have also lost the intimacy and one-to-one communication with their audience that kept the fans loyal. Ray’s songs are much more like little vignettes and anti-social laments than the personalized observations and musings which marked his greatest compositions.. His tunes and sentiments have always been simple, but now they seem to be so consciously devoid of pretense and heaviness as to render them almost simple-minded. He still succeeds in entertaining, however, first because he is a great singer, and second because, if he is talking in cliches now, he invented the style and message which the cliches came from.

What it amounts to is picking out the better numbers. Dave Davies’ token cut, “You Don’t Know My Name,” like many of his songs, grows on you. It’s also quite revealing of Dave’s frustations about being the brother of the star and the guitarist who has been steadily driven into the background since the days when the Kinks were known for their chunky “wall of sound” riffs. (Remember “You Really Got Me”?)

“Supersonic Rocket Ship” is the strongest, most fully conceptualized song on the album

and will most likely be the single. It does rely rather heavily on political catch-all phrases, but the musicianship, including some real nice vibe work, more than compensates.

The big finale, “Celluloid Heroes,” is a wistful, nostalgic stroll with the Kinks down Hollywood Boulevard. The second longest Kink song ever, at 6:20, it is beautiful enough melodically and catchy enough lyrically to carry through without becoming tedious or flat, leaving you with a nice afterglow when the turntable has gone off.

When the Kinks first started making records, they were among the top three acts in rockdom (with the Beatles and Stones, natch). They have continued to make fine music, although they have had their commercial and artistic ups and downs. I am convinced that when Ray’s lyrics, and the band’s execution of his musical ideas, catch up with his plans for the perfectly stylized, lightheartedly sentimental Kinks show (all hopefully combined with increased massaudience awareness), they will again emerge as one of the major forces in music.

Gary Kenton

THE SLIDER

T. REX

REPRISE

The Electric Warrior hardly brought us to our knees the way he’d expected he would. After a string of superbly programmed chart-topping singles and genuine pandemonium all across Europe, Marc Bolan made some nice introductory noises here and then promptly allowed us to forget that they had ever been made. This album provides some of the reasons he was even able to make such pretenses, but it tells us much more about why he failed.

“Bang A Gong” laid the groundwork, but neither “Telegram Sam” nor “Metal Guru” succeeded in reinforcing his position. They are both substantial songs — “Telegram Sam” was a logical stylistic follow-up to “Bang A Gong,” while “Metal Guru” might be closer to Phil Spector 1972 than “Sisters O Sisters” — but both sound infinitely better through home speakers than over a car radio. For singles, that’s the conclusive kiss of death. What will hurt most - regardless of the extent of FM airplay — is that beyond these two, there isn’t another single on the album.

Counteracting Bolan’s occasional brilliance is a tendency to use that brilliance as a tool for self-defeat. He’s smart, all right, but sometimes a little too smart for the audience he hopes to conquer. And in rock and roll, that’s like taking a very sharp razor and and making a deep incision across your smarty-pants wrist. While he’s unquestionably got the European common market perfectly pegged, his understanding of teen America leaves a lot to be desired. Both non-hits were singles for an established star, and Bolan can hardly make those kind of assumptions on these shores.

The manufacture of the T. Rex phenomenon depends largely upon the projection of Marc Bolan as PERSONALITY, and his defined personality is remarkably attractive. Bolan is a Parisian rocker (as surely David Bowie is London and Lou Reed New York), which is only to say that he’s a dainty punk. His understanding of rock and roll and his refined awareness of art have their individual limitations, but the fusion is certainly alluring and potentially explosive. What makes the situation frustrating is that all too often he relies on his persona alone to get him by.

Bolan’s manipulation of rock and roll history — the borrowed riffs and catch phrases — is only marginally successful. Throwing in such references may work in Europe (where they inspire all the romantic associations that make early Stones references so appealing to us), but it’s too often just text-book stuff here. Occasionally they aren’t even used as strategic embellishment, but as vehicles to pull Bolan out of even blander situations.

Beyond the comparative success of T. Rex’s singles, Bolan has yet to really confront the proposition of creating a cohesive energy album. The Slider (as with T. Rex albums in the past) kind of bumps along from track to track, and only lead one to a nostalgic reference that I’m sure Bolan hadn’t anticipated: the time when albums were merely a vehicle to showcase a couple of singles. The rest of the material is nice but kinda lackluster, and Bolan isn’t helped much by a terribly ordinary rhythm section and Mickey Finn’s non-existent percussion. If you aren’t already a T. Rex fanatic, then The Slider isn’t going to do very much about making you one.

The major problem with the kind of teen idol Bolan is attempting to be is that something that intense has a relatively short life span. (If you don’t believe me, ask Gloria Stavers.) So maybe it’s good that he didn’t succeed in the manner he’s hoped for — an album as lazy as this one would’ve ended it quickly. He’s left himself the room for another chance, but he’d better put a lot more into it the next time around.

Ben Edmonds

NATIONAL LAMPOON RADIO DINNER

ASSORTED BRILLIANT SICKOIDS

BANANA/BLUE THUMB

Do you ever despair, while trying to stay out of earshot of the Lily Tomlins and George Carlins, of the dearth of any really Swiftinanly vicious comedy albums? There’s the Firesign Theatre, of course, but wouldn’t you sort of like to see them back down from their avant-garde position just a tad, get back and make a good old fashioned album aimed directly at “our” culture and “our” heroes with all the scathing brilliance of Lenny Bruce in his prime?

Well, bunky, you can climb outta your headphones and jump for joy, because that album is here. Whatever you may think of The National Lampoon as a magazine, you have got to have this record. Because it’s far less obvious, its aim is perfectly, bracingly, lethal, and ...

Imagine turning on the radio and hearing a familiar voice talking to you as intimately as you never thought he would again: “Hi, I’m Bob Dylan! Remember those Fabulous Sixties? The marches, the be-ins, the draft card burnings... and best of all, the music. Well, now Apple House has collected the finest of those songs on 'one album called Golden Protest. Performed by the original artists who made them famous ...”

And then he reels off a list of song titles we all remember well enough to know that somebody should be marketing such an item. And what with Dylan going out and squandering what scraps of charisma he had left at the Stones party, upstate New York folk festivals and wherever he gets his picture snapped these days, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t agree to do it, not meaning shit anymore and all. And besides, he adds:

“If you order now, you’ll also receive a treasury of acid rock, featuring Vanilla Fudge, Blue Cheer, Frijid Pink, the Electric Prunes...”

But that’s not all. How many of us have waited years for somebody to skewer Joan Baez properly in the heart of her dilettantism? Somebody’s finally done it, and it’s so good, it sounds so much like her both in sound and postures you’d swear it’s her even as you wonder how she’ll ever show her face around The People after this song about George Jackson with the chorus:

Pull the triggers, niggers

We’re with you all the way

Just across the bay.

John Lennon? How about an until-now suppressed outtake from somewhere between Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, primal screams capping a truly Pompeiian airing of pentup pissoffs: “I should have beat the fuckin’ shit out of him {George]/ Him with Jiis fuckin’ Hare Krishna... Genius is pain! Genius is pain! I wanted to be a fuckin’ fisherman but I can’t because I’m a fuckin’ genius! . . . aurrggghh ...”

This is an album, nay, a document, that every clear-thinking American with a drop of concern for his fellow man and woman, not to mention rodents and geese, should have. Buy it, toke it, blast it, put it on at parties, test your friends on the most incisive badtasteometer since Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. And ten times as chockfull of socially redeeming importance, but don’t let that put you off. I hope the creators of this modern masterpiece of vitriol and outrage will not put off the making of a sequel a single day.

Lester Bangs

PHOENIX

GRAND FUNK RAILROAD

CAPITOL

Here’s an interesting new group. Straight from the heartland of punk, Grand Funk Railroad play that interesting brand of heavy-metal rock the Motor City has long been famous for. Their roots show a little — Black Sabbath, Cream, MC5, certain brands of R&B — but their stance is unique. They are the first populist rock band and they manage to pull both politics and music off.

Capitol has such high hopes for the group they’ve granted them their own (“honorary”) label, featuring a photo of each member, and no wonder. Lead singer and guitarist Mark Farner has certain vocal weaknesses, but on at least one song here (“Tryin’ to Get Away,” a beautiful rock ballad) he comes through perfectly, and the rest of the way, the band is powerful as a locomotive.

Organist Craig Frost is the instrumentally dominant member, and coupled with the more than competent rhythm section of Don Brewer (drums) and Mel Schacher (bass), Grand Funk is as instrumentally solid as any group around. Farner’s guitar lines are sometimes derivative but always in place, less excessive than many more celebrated players’.

“Flight of the Phoenix,” which opens the record, is an instrumental out of the great midwestern bar-band tradition. It is full of brewer’s yeast and boob-grab, and you can imagine a couple hundred thousand sweaty kids dancing to it at any pop festival. “Tryin’ to Get Away,” on the other hand, is almost a post-Beatles ballad. The chorus and the hookline after the first verse make it an almost certain single hit. “Freedom is For Children” is the most eloquent possible statement of rock’n’roll juvenile delinquent alienation, as are several of the other songs. Farner will obviously become a major songwriting force, his positive populism in contrast to the semi-collegiate scribblings of the pseudofolk-rock set.

There are several other cuts which work — notably “Rain Keeps Failin’ ” and “Rock’n’ Roll Soul” — and only one which throws me. Why “So You Don’t Have to Die,” a ridiculous Jesus ballad, had to mar a group with an otherwise rational, humanist posture is beyond me.

Maybe it’s a joke. Here’s Farner, otherwise a tough stud (another brief, but blatant objection) who knows where his brothers’ and sisters’ sensibilities lie, claiming that Jesus has come to him in a vision to say “Overpopulation is the problem of today/ There’s too many children and more on the way/If you don’t start some birth control you won’t last much long longer.” Obviously not a Catholic. Perhaps this is the price paid for such engaging naivete in all else the group does.

Aside from “You Don’t Have to Die,” and a few production lapses (which might be attributable to the group performing that function for themselves), Phoenix is a great record.

For those of us who can remember, it is an interesting fantasy to imagine Shea Stadium becoming a rock ballroom once again, with a group as talented and honest as Grand Funk Railroad commanding the stage.

Terry Knapp

SEVEN SEPARATE FOOLS THREE DOG NIGHT DUNHILL

It was on a Friday night during Doctor Zimmerman’s goup therapy session that Danny, Corey and Chuck first made a breakthrough at the South Cal Home for Retired Dope Dealers. Since they all shared similar symptoms of acute paranoia and subscribed to that old axiom “One is the lonliest number that you’ll ever do,” they decided to join together in a band with the blessing of Doc Zimmerman and sing their troubles away.

So during Occupational Therapy 0101 they began to make hits instead of weaving baskets. They made one hit, two hits, many hits. They were mellowed from their sedate life at the Home and their music reflected it Pretty soon they were acclaimed as “the get it on band for nice people.” Here was the group that could pry our more academic brothers from their reclusion in the Studen Unions and Grad Libraries, shelling out their book money for 3DN albums, which they played between classes and then immediately stuck between Bookends and Theme From Love Story.

Three Dog Night was every Joe and Mary College’s dream of the ultimate rock band. Not a frantic musical phenomenon, but an uncomplicated Sound that was easy to sing and dance to. More and more Liberal Artisians began discovering 3DN and soon they had a mass following. They became America’s Number One Hit Makers.

But alas, this new status reproduced that whole set of neuroses the Three were trying to flee from. Their new-found fame has rocketed them into the category of Pop Stars (who everyone knows are different from real people), and they felt isolated all over again. Dr. Zimmerman suggested that the weight of fame might be lightened if they found more members to share their malady. So they returned to the Retired Dope Dealers’ Home and scouted for outpatients with potential and the same affliction (which wasn’t hard to find, since paranoia is common among this peer group).

Soon they were seven and well on their way to recovery. To keep their collective minds off their problem they made an album. Well, at least they said it was an album. Strangely enough, it looks like a deck of cards.

“Doctor, dear Doctor, I think we have a problem here.”

Dr. Zimmerman suddenly appeared, wearing the traditional horn rimmed glasses and white lab coat, radiating inflexible authority even if he is shorter than you might expect. “Yes?”, he inquired.

“Seven of your former patients have claimed to be making an album, but all I see is an oversized deck of cards,” I said.

“My dear friend, I implore you to have more compassion for my boys! They have spent a great deal of time trying to recover from their culture shock. What with Acid Casualty and the Seconal Drift you have to expect some problems with readjustment.” His voice trailed off and he went into some kind of supra-conscious trance.

Maybe the Doctor is right, I thought; so I felt inside the album cover for a record. Instead I found cards. These guys have really gone off the deep end. I held the package upside down and shook it till all the cards and finally the shiny black disc spilled out onto the floor. So there is a record somewhere in here after all.

' But oh, those cards. A real celebration of insanity. The first one features a tall becloaked figure sinisterly slid between the gleaming silver spikes of an upright coffin. And look at that velvet-swathed and star-flecked popster furiously pedalling a tricycle five feet tall; I would suspect regression. And what about the fuchsia flame costumed character, whose card when turned upside down reveals an almost perfect Jeckyll and Hyde dichotomy in the two prints of his pasty face? Schizophrenia, I’d say.

Unfortunately, their bizarre malady does not extend to their music. Seven Separate Fools is depressjngly predictable and overproduced. All of the madness is wasted. Gone is the playfulness of their other albums - not a bullfrog in sight. Instead the boys have become terribly concerned with Important Contemporary Topics. Just guess what “Black and White” is about. Or “Writing on the Wall.”

In fact, after a long convalescence and a brief vacation in limbo, it is rumored that Three Dog Night have become cured to the point of being insufferable. Their next project will be a series of anti-smoking commercials.

Jann Uhelszki

BUMP CITY

TOWER OF POWER

WARNER BROTHERS

THE BRIDGE IN BLUE

BUDDAH

There seems to be a great revival of interest amongst rock cognoscenti these days in a type of music that has been branded “punk rock.” This music is coming into favor because it represents the primitive, basic foundations from which the rather more complex ruminations of the Golden Age sprung. So you’ll find yer top rock critics gathered around some mouldy Ron Cobb production (Standells, Chocolate Watch Band), loving every minute of it and discussing garage bands they have known.

Of course, one of the primary features of punk rock is that those selfsame critics who are so into it today derided it when it was around. And so, I sez fo myself, I sez, what is there around these days that will be qualifying in a couple of years as punk rock? I think part of the answer is these two discs.

Punk rock is, of course, performed and listened to primarily by punks. Therefore, a band like, say, Malo would qualify. But Malo is almost totally an artificial creation, a band made up of a given number out of a large floating mass of Bay Area Latino musicians. What I’m talking about is a real band, a single musical unit that never changes. And Tower Of Power, in the San Francisco area anyway, qualifies. Everybody I know hates them, primarily through massive overexposure. When they were managed by the Fillmore concern, they managed to get stuck at the bottom of every decent bill Bill presented, including Aretha Franklin, where they put on one of the most bonecrushingiy boring sets of their career.

On records, though, they are quite a different matter. Tower Of Power is a band that has mastered evey single cliche in the book of Soul, and while that may sound like a putdown, it’s not intended that way. Soul music, like blues, is a matter of cliches, set phrases, “licks.” And. these guys have ’em down. They’re seldom as exciting as any great soul act you could name, but they also avoid the egregious “Unh, unh, git dawn, mah beh-beh, got-ta,” bullshit that so many white would-be-soul acts employ. Of their two records, the first is most like the band on stage, while the second is more produced. Either one’ll do, although I prefer the first, East Bay Grease.

Zipping across to the other coast, we have a ponk band with a great tradition to uphold

— Johnny Maestro’s Brooklyn Bridge. Originally the worst “jazz-rock” band in the BS&T tradition, the Bridge has mellowed. Led by Johnny Maestro (whose voice sparked the Crests’ hit of “Sixteen Candles” yea those many years ago), the Bridge is now doing — get this — big-band versions of Loudon Wainwright Ill’s amazing songs! AND DOING THEM WELL!!. Yeah, for those of you who find Loudon’s piercing voice and simple guitar too hard to listen to, The Bridge In Blue has some nice versions of “Bruno’s Place,” “School Days,” “Glad To See You Got Religion,” “Uptown,” and “Hospital Lady,” along with a socko seven-minute big-band “I Feel Free” (the Cream hit) and band member Jimmy Rosica’s own 11:21 opus, “Man In A Band.” Almost all the arrangements are identical, but anybody who denies this album is fun in the grand old New York tradition — the Good Rats, the Vanilla Fudge, and all that

— needs to have a bottle of Lime Rock wine poured down his throat. I’m even looking forward to their next one.

As long as there are punk ears to listen to it, there will be punk rock, and as long as there are critics who hate it, it’ll be healthy.

Ed Ward

FULL CIRCLE

THE DOORS

ELEKTRA

An optimistic Doors album? Full circle from what, in other words? Is Jim Morrison really dead? Who is Bernard Wolfe and why? “Good Rockin’ ” (Tonite)? 'And what the fuck is a verdilac (pronounced voodeelac, mother)? Indeed, a rhetorical mishmash like this should prime some kinda pump. So let’s hump ’em:

ABSOLUTELY FACTUAL INFORMATION: L.A. Woman was a perfect album, literature and boogie, mind dorking escape holes twixt cerebral dirties, with more than apt attention to our old friend production values. Fact is, every single one of the Doors’ albums was optimistic’., make me smile anyway. If they haven’t been a comfort to my mom and dad, at least they’ve been a comfort to me. L.A. Woman and its predecessors, well, Other Voices was simply a fuzzier version of the same damned thing. Loved it. If you couldn’t hack the other voices, then you’ve let your situation run away with you.

Maybe that’s a bit too harsh; Morrison is unique. He has stopped putting out new records though; it’s been over a year since he released his last one. Anyway, my Jim Morrison’s not dead, sorry about yours.

Bernard Wolfe is, in the phraseology of the 50’s, a shithook. If you don’t take such things too seriously, one of the great laff riots of Newt Journalism is to be found in his June, 1972, Esquire article on “The Real-Life Death of Jim Morrison.’’ Why wuz the snake seven miles long, huh Jim? This is important!

What Full Circle is, is distinctly unimportant. When you pass through the midsection of the infinity loop, full circle in other words, what happens is that you squeeze out the intellectual doodoo, and that’s what the Doors have done for this album. In fact, in the headier boogie moments Manzarek’s organ work sounds as neat as that on the live punk rock album of the ages, Joey Dee And The Starliters’ Doin’ The Twist At The Peppermint Lounge. If you think that means I don’t like it, Sport, you better check out the bargain bins so’s you can be as sharp as 1 am.

I’ve had trouble getting past side one. In fact, I don’t care about getting past side one, bass beat oriented hardwood floor stompin’ good rockin’ — let yore verdilacs all hang out!

If I say it’s perfect music for a Coke date at the local teen club, you might get me wrong. So I’ll just say, what the fuck is a verdilac?

Buck Sanders

HOT LICKS,

COLD STEEL & TRUCKERS FAVORITES COMMANDER CODY AND THE LOST PLANET AIRMEN PARAMOUNT

In these days of soporific wizards, omnipotent groundhogs, bisexual Martian spiders and baby-faced sliders, it sure is good to be confronted with nothing more taxing than “Here I sit/alone with a broken heart/I took three bennies/and my rig won’t start.” Yes, it’s been nigh unto a year since\ Commander Cody’s humble debut album, Lost in the Ozone, first emerged to tranquilize harried minds the world over, and if this new album is any indication, the band has spent the entire time since doing nothing more strenuous than playing three gigs a day, immersing their entire collective body in a lagoon of draught beer, and watching old re-runs of Cannonball on the tube. Hot Licks, Cold Steel &. Truckers Favorites (pronounced fay-vo-rights) presents exactly the same mixture of laidback, oft humorous and tittilating countryfied booze-rock that its dee-lightful predecessor did.

That is to say, if you had any morbid fears that this followup disc might present some radical new change of direction in the band, forget ’em. Over half the songs here, after all, are little more than re-writes of the stuff from the first album. “Truck Stop Rock” is merely a slowed down “Midnight Shift.” “Truck Drivin’ Man” has a remarkable “Lost In the Ozone” flavor, and for those of you who dug the spoken verse of “Family Bible,” you’ll choke on your ‘Bud’ when you hear the story in “Mama Hated Diesels” of how a certain trucker’s mama who lost her man to the intoxicating odor of diesel smoke and freedom is found one day trying to flag down semis in the middle of the highway in a vain and pathos-ridden attempt to find him again. There are three or four more songs on the album that you can mix and match in this manner. If you look real hard you can find mates for such other Ozone faves as “Seeds and Stems,” “Beat Me Daddy,” (a maso-sadistic lament from a daughter to her pater, incidentally, a meaning which some of the more intellectualized critics missed completely when the song first appeared), and “Twenty Flight Rock.”

But so what if they steal songs from themselves. Is there really anything at all wrong with that? No sirree, especially seeing as how they also thought to include some great new things, like “Watch My .38.” This song sounds like what might have happened if Sly Stone had been born in Saginaw, Michigan and spent the rest of his life doing the Detroit-Akron run for Goodyear; eating in truck stops, and listening to WDEE Detroit (country shit) with one ear and WCHD (soul) with the other. Which is all tantamount to saying that “Watch My .38” sounds somewhat too funky for Commander Cody, but is Cody nevertheless. Weird.

Yes, Cody fans and diesel afficionados, Hot Licks, Cold Steel and Truckers Favorites is what truckin’ is really all about. Amphetamines and steel pedal guitars, not Robert Crumb t-shirts. T can hardly wait til the next one.

Alan Niester

THE PHLORESCENT LEECH AND EDDIE MARK VOLMAN & HOWARD KAYLAN REPRISE

The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, alias Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, have gained repute of late as comic Mother mouthpieces; but before that they comprised the core of the Turtles, for whom they sang, wrote, and generally administered. Now they have an album of their own and to me it’s just like the Turtles finding (pardon the expression) a new leech on life; good tidings indeed. Volman and Kaylan have lost none of their surehanded commercial mainstream pop touch, and they’ve created a consistently enthralling lightweight rock LP, with the familiar impeccable (sometimes spectacular) vocals intact and a host of brand-new infectious and hummable tunes.

What’s different here is that the Turtles gever used to rock out as vigorously as the P.L. & Eddie can, in such songs as “Thoughts Have Turned” (with an intro straight out of “Street Fighting Man”), “Stange Girl,” and especially “It Never Happened,” where they pack a superbly solid punch. Of course there’s still plenty of melodic pop tunes, too — notably “There You Sit Lonely,” with echoes of the memorable “You Showed Me,” or “Goodbye Surprise,” reuniting Mark and Howard with Gordon-Bonner, the ex-Magician composing team who wrote their biggest smash “Happy Together” (fine wordless vocal bits in this song) and “Lady Blue,” both titularly and musically reminiscent of the enchanting “Lady-O.” Frequently the listener is reminded of the Byrds, in snatches throughout and particularly in “I Been Born Again,” which if I’d been quoted in the Melody Maker Blind Date (a lifelong goal) I’d have presumed to be an unreleased Younger Than Yesterday dub by David Crosby.

The album is straight pop for the most part, though delving briefly into a fairy tale realm (“Strange Girl”) and also featuring a slightly wacky prologue. The only out-and outre bizarrity is the indescribably hokey “Nikki Hoi,” a presumably harmless bit of tropical fluff sung in some kind of bastardized Chicano/Polynesian dialect and quite silly withal, though it earns a couple of points for being the first pearl-diving rock number since Roy Orbison’s “Leah.”

Anyway, the Phlorescent Leech and Eddie (whose actual identities are prone to frequent and unpredictable shifts) is an exceedingly enjoyable record. It’s not going to become a posh de rigeur hyper-hip must, nor are Kaylan and Volman going to become teenage idols (a more visually unprepossessing duo,, in fact, would be hard to unearth — Volman is, as amply illustrated by the back cover, on the rotund side, while Kaylan looks like a dissipated Emmett Kelly in a gray fright wig), but the LP will bring you good cheer, and there aren’t all that many albums out nowadays you can say that about.

Ken Barnes

VINDICATOR ARTHUR LEE A&M

Like Van Morrison, Arthur Lee has been gifted with enormous catalytic power in his writing, the often innocent enunciation' of a phrase capable of transforming the human spirit. While Van has successfully battled from darkness in search of sunshine, however, Arthur Lee has continued to explorevthe dark side of the soul, as if the intrustion of light would obstruct him from his task, which is to batter away at the punching bag in the Stillman’s Gym of his psyche.

Vindicator is a mad, desperate, articulate album. Articulate not because Lee is at the peak of his poetry, because he often is not. There ate some ordinary riffs, and ordinary lines, as well as the flashes of scenic brilliance Arthur Lee followers revel in. The picture presented asks more questions than it answers. Nevertheless, it’s the kind of honest statement we keep looking for from people who claim to be making “honest statements.”, If you asked Arthur Lee, he’d probably tell you half of it’s a lie, and half of it don’t matter.

There’s an overwhelming obsession with death on Vindicator, with explicit lyrical references in at least half the songs. “Everybody’s Got To Live” (“ ’cause everybody’s gonna die,” Lee sings) is closest musically to the medium paced Lee-Love riff used too infrequently since Four Sail. It seems less effective than the implicit agony of Lee’s vocal in “Busted Feet,” or the black humor that surfaces on several cuts.

Try the 56-second “OF Morgue Mouth,” who’ll “eat anything that don’t crawl off the plate — or movin’ too fast.” It’s the companion piece to “Hamburger Breath Stinkfinger,” which features Arthur’s most romantic (if less brilliant) line since “Oh the snot has caked against my pants from Live and Let Live” on Forever Changes. Speaking of his date the other night, Lee repeats the line in a somehow cheery, dirgelike chant over , a march beat: “Oh what a dish/She smelled just like a fish.”

Arthur Lee is very much involved in the Sly-Hendrix equation, which states that black rock ’n’ rollers working for the while masses tend to self - destruct. The proof of the pudding here is the cover. Lee, head shaved, carrying broom and janitor’s suit, slapping palms with himself, in blonde wig, carrying an electric guitar, looking over his shoulder.

Since the abrupt end of his mutual admiration society with Jimi Hendrix, pictures like that must turn up with haunting frequency in Lee’s mirror. The frequent Hendrixisms, both musically and vocally, which make up much of this album, even though they are not Lee’s traditional forte, are nevertheless part of the karma he’s got to work out. As he wails on “Busted Feet”: “Think about the future,” (sounds like futility), “but don’t forget about the past.”

Right now, Arthur Lee is the unrecognised Joe Louis of rock V roll, and Vindicator is an urgent, personal but entertaining work by a former champ sparring in run down gyms, building back confidence because somewhere along the line he’s convinced himself he’s over the hill. This album isn’t quite vindication for Arthur Lee, but it’s an important step forward on the comeback trail.

Wayne Robins

LONG JOHN SILVER JEfFERSON AIRPLANE GRUNT

The fact that some groups persist long after they’ve passed their peak might seem like a credit to their stamina, but efforts like this to try and recapture their artistic past are inevitable failures.

Where to begin? Well, for one thing, it’s obvious that Marty Balin’s departure was the prime factor in the Airplane’s current vocal liabilities. Grace Slick’s worn out vocal chords are more strained than ever. And if Paul Kantner ever knew how to deliver a song in the first place, his scientific-politico-religious pretensions are enough to make you appreciate David Peel. Grace and Paul’s vocal harmonisings were always just flat and ragged enough to be a hair away from disaster; by now they ve degenerated to the point of sustained clashing irritation. Their only saving grace (?) is that they’re so garbled as to render incomprehensible the lyrics (which are more pompous than ever), but the Airplane took care of that one by printing every last word on the slipcover.

But enough of the sunfighters — the rest of the band could traditionally be counted on, in spite of all Grace’s and Paul’s turgidity, to cook. No more. Immediately and detestably discernable is Jorma’s unimaginative, tastelessly uncontrolled use of wah-wah. Evidently he’s been playing the blooze so much lately that he’s forgotten how to rock. So why is his embarrassing display of musical exhaustion featured prominently while the beautiful and far from burnt-out fiddle of Papa John Creach is reduced to a single solo that fades out right in the middle? .

The piss-poor production, done by the Airplane themselves, also obscures the excellent bass playing of Jack Casady. How’s the new drummer John Barbata? Impossible to tell (when he plays at all, which is on only about half of the tracks), because he’s submerged in the pervasive, clattering mishmash.

This idea of sacrificing individuality for group effort only works when everybody is inspired. When nobody is, the band ends up a soft dull sphere and the audience with a definite preference for solo albums. The members of the Airplane function separately so much lately that it’s no longer possible for them to work and produce together as a collectively compact unit. It just don’t fuse at all anymore.

The only creative aspect of the whole thing is the cover. By folding it a certain way you can get a real nifty stash box. Then there’s no place for the record. That’s fine, though. Mail it to Cheech and Chong.

Hot Scott Fisher and Drew Ford

CORNELIUS BROTHERS AND SISTER ROSE UNITED ARTISTS

Basically, there are two Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose (CB&SR) sounds. One is the basic, upbeat piano sound layered with tight, spiralling harmony, as in “Treat Her Like A Lady,” their 1971 summer hit. The other is the smooth, nice ‘n’ easy soul sound so popular in the summer of ’72, what with the Stylistics, Chi-Lites, reemergence of the O’Jays, A1 Green, and CB&SR’s own “Too Late to Turn Back Now.”

Generically, CB&SR stem from the same kind of soul pop hybrid the Jive Five developed in the early sixties. In fact, lead singer Cornelius’ vocals are quite reminiscent of the Jive Five’s Eugene Pitts, who on “My True Story” and “What Time Is It” was the model for street corner acappella singers throughout the five boroughs of Manhattan and Long Island too.

Anyway you look at it, the CB&SR have a pretty good album, in fact, it’s probably the best 1962 album of 1972. Just look at the terrible cover, a classic example of bargain bin provincial; the colors are running, as if it were left out in the rain, the pictures are so goofily posed and astonishingly out of focus it had to be done on purpose. Any cover that corny has to have something good inside.

Most of the material is written by E. Cornelius and most of it is samey, sounding like one or the other of the group’s two hits. There are subtle differences though, and some very high moments. “Lift Your Head Higher” is brilliant, with spare, low down piano, magnificent “Treat Her Like A Lady” harmony builds and intelligent race consciousness/transcendental lyrics. Horns here are used very effectively, as they are through much of the album, as italics rather than complete clauses. Similarly, “Good Lovin’ Don’t Come Easy” begins with a well-developed Edwin Starr riff and climaxes beautifully because of restraint in production.

But with all great (or awful) 1962 albums, even in 1972, there’s gotta be a catch, and the catch here is strings. “I’m Never Gonna Be Alone Anymore” and “Just Ain’t No Love (Like A Lady’s)” are both touching, powerful songs, but in both Brother Cornelius’ vocal is muscled to the ground by strings from the very beginning. Same thing happens on A1 Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” — Brother Cornelius misses the trademark subtleties of Green’s vocal, the organist sounds like a refugeee from Dodger Stadium, and anybody who likes strings as much as this arranger did should be exiled to A1 Caiola Island.

The Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose ends up a plus for me. Out of eleven songs, four are great, three are good, all but two always listenable, which isn’t a bad percentage for your typical pop singles R&B vocal group first LP. In the future, Mike Lewis and Bob Archibald should mix more carefully, because it’s quite shoddy in spots, and keep those goddamn strings out. The CB&SR have great voices that can wrap themselves around phrases, sustaining a song with only the most minimal accompaniment. They just might be the Jive Five of the Seventies, and when they’re on I’m a happy man.

Wayne Robins

ROY BUCHANAN POLYDOR

This guy isn’t gonna make you come in your pants or anything, but he knows his licks the way a salamander knows wet leaves. The most amazing thing about him is that he isn’t even an androgynous-bisexual-rock’n’roll queeny slither and yet he’s still a member of the Living Legend club, good old Roy, quiet unassuming Roy of the onanistic guitar. He probably hasn’t even seen A Clockwork Orange for that matter. He’s whatcha call a musicians’ musican and you know, it’s amazing how boring these fellas can be. This album should have been called Roy Buchanan Shows the Whole World That He Can Play All Different Kinds of Stuff Without Once Causing Anything Really Fully Structured to Appear; it’s a collection of stylistic exercises that ranges from hard rock (“Pete’s Blue”) to lard rock (“Hey Good Lookin’”) to quasispiritual dreck-rock (“The Messiah Will Come Again”) complete with a spoken introduction even more embarassing than A1 Hirt playing the national anthem at a New Orleans Saints football game. One begins to wonder if there’s any real reason for Mr. Messiah to risk his neck again if this is the best that can be done.

As an exhibition of flash guitar, the LP succeeds; Buchanan really does seem able to play anything he likes .. . but is that enough to call this debut an important musical statement? I think not; there’s just nothing happening on this record (except for the often brilliant guitar work) that we haven’t heard a million times before. He’s backed by an almost faceless aggregation called the Snakestretchers (who may as well): five men certainly comprise an extravagant metronome.

All in all, this is one disappointing LP. What Roy Buchanan needs to do is get a band together that can give him some kind of energy feedback. Maybe then he’ll be the supersonic cat he’s been made out to be.

Dann DeWitt

THE GUESS WHO LIVE AT THE PARAMOUNT RCA

Lately some people have begun to assert that, what with 1967 so far gone and all, ain’t nothin’ cosmic anymore. They say that rare evanescent psychic Pez drop, the flash has gone out of contemporary life. But I Know Different. Ever since last Thursday, when I was awakend at 5 o’clock in the morning by a bolt of lightning from a flash thunderstorm striking the streetlight in front of my house, creating such a big boom, with a slowly fading aftermath hiss so close to the one at the end of “A Day In The Life” that I was sure the Russkies or the Chinks had dropped the Bomb on us at last, and just lay there waiting for the shock wave to come and snort me up.

I lay in wait for about 15 minutes, and when I was finally and absolutely convinced that it definitely was not coming, I got up and played the 16 minute version of “American Woman” on the new Guess Who album recorded live in Seattle, Washington. In the process of auditioning this performance for the first time, I was hit by not one but two of the first flashes I could remember having in, oh, it must be at least four years. I realized simultaneously that:

1. The Guess Who is God.

2. Burton Cummings is the rightful and unquestionable heir to Jim Morrison’s spiritual mantle.

I saw the Guess Who do this version of “American Woman” live a year ago, and I have never been more offended by a concert. Just as he does on the record, Burton Cummings indulged himself in a long, extremely cranky rumination on Yankee Yin, in a sort of fallen-out Beat poetic style: American bitch American cunt American slut American lesbian American schoolgirl American housewife American beaver

etc.,etc.,etc. Wouldn’t you be offended by this Canuck creep coming down here taking all our money while running down our women? Sure you would! Until you realized, as I did, eventually, that that kind of stuff is exactly what makes the Guess Who great. (Huh? — Ed.) They have absolutely no taste at all (Oh, that — Ed.), they don’t eyen mind embarassing everybody in the audience, they’re real punks without even working too hard at it. This was all brought home when I went to see them a couple of months ago and got offended all over again by a song which had Cummings hollering: “I got cocaine and morphine too/Lots of stuff to get you all high ...”

I mean, these guys just don’t know when to quit! That’s what puts ’em so far ahead of everyone else. They’ll say anything. What do you think “diesel fixer, fixed a diesel, diesel fixed me, what a weasel” means? Do you care? No! Do you love it anyway? Sure! (Aw c’mon Lester... — Ed.)

This album, as far as I can tell, is the Guess Who’s magnum opus so far. The “Woman” alone, starting with a long sloppy medium tempo blues, proves that Burton can improvise the best gauche jive lyrics since the Lizard King himself. Who else but Burton or Jimbo would have the nerve to actually begin a song with the line “Whatchew gonna do, mama, now that the roast beers gone?” (Eat pork, dork! — Ed.) Then he actually has the gall in the course of his rant to list every last way that the American Woman just totally submits to and serves him, and proceeds to dump on her for “messing your mind”! Man, that is true punk (You should know! — Ed.); that i^ so fucked up it’s got class up the ass. And on top of all that, he’s getting into some great, lazy, uncontrolled scat singing and he plays harmonica better than anybody since Keith Relf. (NO SHIT!!!! - ED.)

In case you wondered about the drug commercial, it’s in a song called “Truckin’ Off Across the Sky,” the main character of which is the Grim Reaper. There he is, head and shoulders looming over yonder bluff (This one? — Ed.), grinning, arms outstretched holding bags of you-know-what. (No, what? — Ed.) Positively the best drug song of 1972. And this may well be the best live album of the year. Fuck all them old dudes wearing their hip tastes on their sleeves: get this and play it loud and be the first on your block to become a public nuisance.

One Who Knows

THE TWO OF US SONNY & CHER ATCO

“Like Sonny Bono will never know what happened when it’s all over. He’ll never know why it happened, because he didn’t know what happened to make it happen. So he won’t know what happened to make it fail.”

Phil Spector, Rolling Stone interview

How come nobody ever got around to debating the pros and cons of Sonny Bono being a genius? Lots of people have enjoyed writing him off all down the line. Spector’s interpretation of him as a has-been rock star who got lucky once, came in 1969 and has since been joined by a chorus of less-flattering derisions as the years pile up. Sonny’s stock has peaked and dipped several times since he and his child bride burst onto the bellbottoms and bearskin scene in 1965 on the coattails of something termed “folk-rock.”

Which is to say, Sonny & Cher have been responsible for some thoroughly likeable pop presentations, period classics even, over the years, and they shouldn’t be written off just ’cause they opted for a boob tube slot and the schlock-hungry dinnershow denizens of the Sahara and Caesar’s Palace. Lotsa rock-type stars have to take that route when they run out of riffs. Darin did it, Darren did it, even Anka Shmanka did it, and Sonny Bono had deeper R&R roots than all of them. Hadn’t he co-authored the flipside of “Bony Moronie,” and wasn’t he, along with Jack “Specs” Nitzsche and Julius “Baja Marimba Band” Wechter, listed as a percussionist on the back of all those Spector albums?

If nothing else, Sonny Bono ought to go down as a premier mid-Sixties pop showman in the grand style. His ’65-’68 hits, neatly repackaged in this clever twofer, represented an era when some of the shiniest candy-rock gems ever spun coarsed through the transistor soul of teenage America. Outside of Bob Crewe’s Four Seasons and the Walker Bros, and maybe April & Nino’s “All Strung Out,” who else was carrying the sweet Spector torch in those days if it wasn’t Mr. & Mrs. Bono and “I Got You Babe,” “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in Love,” and “Baby Don’t Go”?

Mott the Hoople proved conclusively how vital his pioneer ego-rock protest in “Laugh At Me” was to the whole fantastic canon of Dylanized rock. And Sonny was right there where he evidently belonged, setting preteen fashions with the supercool Cher, mixing the Crystals with McGuinn and Dylan, churning out highly imaginative AM folk-rock bulk alongside P.F. Sloan, Barry McGuire and the Turtles, even making the covers of Time, Newsweek and Hit Parader next to Bob Dylan. So he must’ve mattered. In the minds of lots of kids, he probably was equally as important as Dylan and Lennon.

And if his rock’n’roll life is ended, Sonny Bono at least had the good taste to remove his rotting corpse from plain view, which is far more than can be said for either the tambourine man or the Intellectual Beatle.

Most of the hits, and some lesser known dandies, are here: “I Got You Babe,” “The Beat Goes On,” “You Don’t Love Me,” ' The Letter,” “Little Man.” Just what you always wanted, relevant history and fun.

Gene Sculatti

LETTERS JIMMY WEBB REPRISE

Over the last four years, I’ve suffered some of the worst abuse and harassment imaginable simply because of my insistence that Jimmy Webb is the best songwriter in the Western Hemisphere. At parties — the few I’d get invited to — the room would get silent and nervous every time I made a move toward the stereo. High energy zombies would sneer through their pentagrams and recite ominous passages from Black Sabbath. Even the laid-back set offered little sympathy: I’d get treated like a member of the chess team at football practice. Well, the time has come again for all you non-believers to load your big guns — Letters has given me all the ammunition I’ll need to make similar claims for Jimmy Webb as a performer, and this time you’re going to find it exceptionally hard to disagree with me.

Letters continues the de-escalation pattern established by his first two, taking the concept of a studio-created experience (Words and Music) and backing away toward the simple components of a supportive band. The primary difference, however, is his singing, which now features a confidence and control the first two records lacked. On those albums, he tended to concentrate on his established areas of expertise — songwriting and arranging — and Letters becomes the first expression of a complete performer.

This album, paradoxically, is both Webb’s most commercial and in some ways his least accessable. It is superficially his least complex, partially attributable to the fact that for the first time production coordiantion was given over to outside hands. But what the presence of Larry Marks is really all about is convenience: freeing Webb from tiie burden of playing at performer and producer simultaneously, allowing him to channel his fullest energies into himself. Consequently this is an intensely personal album, and demands time and energy from the listener. • As the title indicates, it’s as if he’s speaking on a one-to-one level.

Though the central instrument is his

piano, Webb gets fine support from a band consisting of Freddie Tackett (a guitarist whose name you’ll all know within a year), bassist Skip Mosher and drummer Ray Rich. His biggest asset may be his sister Susan, who has one of the purest voices you’ll ever hear and could probably charm even the gruffest New York cab driver just by humming a few bars. Everything is designed to bring out the best in Webb, and he delivers with a consistency which could only be the result of a greater self-knowledge.

“Simile” is indicative of his expanded approach to the love songs he’s long been a master of: the melodies are drawn out to accomodate more exploratory emotion, the lyrical roads have more curves, but always lead home. Though his vehicles might now be more varied the sentiments they convey never fail to' strike the most responsive human chords. “Hurt Me Well,” for example, sounds at times almost like a parody of the kind of blind hurt song it succeeds so well at being.

Some songs — “Camp de Encino” and “Once in the Morning” - give off a satirical glow (though they’ve as much to do with just plain fun as satire) and act as an effective change of pace. It says a lot that Webb now has the confidence to go back and do a song like “Galveston without fear, or be loose enough to tackle a song (“Love Hurts”) that he didn’t write. (That both songs are among the album’s highlights may say even more.) The only let-down is “Catharsis,” a song that aims its intensity at a series of generalities too cold to be brought off.

What Letters says over and above all is that even for one who has already accomplished so much, Jimmy Webb displays a remarkable capacity for growth and development. To say that he is the best is to confine him to a place that by tomorrow will be part of his past. He is simply Jimmy Webb, and that’s something 1 think you’ll find satisfying, if not totally exhilirating.

Ben Edmonds

CARNEY

LEON RUSSELL

SHELTER

I’ve always had trouble enjoying Leon Russell. I had a Mad Dogs & Englishmen impression of the guy, seeing him as more of a supersession type who hangs in the background God-like and pulls all the right strings for Cocker, just like in the movie -and because of this I’ve always been slightly suspicious of the man’s ability to relate to an audience on his own terms. His first $olo albums (discounting the Asylum Choir stuff) didn’t do much for me. I’ve always found them to be somewhat over-intense, somehow superficial in their desire to be noticed. It’s almost as if Russell put them out mainly so’s he could say “Look at me! I’m the real star! I’m the real talent!” But with Carney Leon Russell finally seems to have dropped the whole pretense of the mystic over-star, and is starting to play music that anyone can relate to, even relative simps like you and I. It’s more like fun music than tortured soul drippings, and because of this Carney is the most accessible album Russell has yet released. If you don’t believe it, turn on one of your hipper AM stations and chances are you’ll find a variety of things from the album getting repeated airplay.

From the very outset Russell shows that Carney is an album to listen to, not bear with. “Tightrope” and “Cajun Love Sung” have a light, airy, almost drunken feel to them. There’s lots more light stuff on the album, too, stuff that makes even ’’Delta Lady” seem ponderous by comparison. For example, side two starts off with “Carney,” a shitty little piece of screwing around on trumpet and, I think, milk bottle, which slides directly into “Acid Annapolis.” Samuel Johnson defined pandemonium as the noise of all the devils and demons in hell, or some such, and “Acid Annapolis” starts out with the self-same tortured caterwaulings from some Tyrolean castle, slips into an interesting Swiss Alps type shuffle (still inside the castle, mind you) and finally ends up with a T.V. show laugh track. It’s an absolutely pointless four minutes on an album that isn’t exactly overlong in the first place. That the formerly dour faced and dour minded Russell should show such an irreverent attitude toward his music and his audience is absolutely unthinkable — and great. Next comes “If The Shoe Fits,” the pointed and humorous ode to groupies and other such animals that mentions Rolling Stone, not CREEM, in its lyrics, which in the context of the song, is just as well anyway.

Now, all this isn’t meant to imply that Carney (which, incidentally, was named after a Hollywood acquaintance and longtime friend of Russell’s, Art Carney), doesn’t have its serious side, too. There are songs on the album equal in intensity to anything Russell has done before. In fact, my favorite piece from the album is a down-tempo thing with an infectious near bossa nova beat called “Masquerade,” which features not only a haunting flute passage, but also some of the tastiest guitar playing ever heard on a Leon Russell album. Also, long-time Russell fans will be more than satisfied with the crassness of “My Cricket” and “Me and Baby Jane,” which both fit in well the traditional Russell concept.

In short, Carney ought to win Russell a lot of new fans. Its songs are generally melodic and approachable, and they keep you coming back after the first playing. Hell, I’ve already played the album about ten times, and I don’t even like the guy. But Leon Russell has come to earth, finally, and it ain’t bad:

Alan Niester

MARTIN MULL

CAPRICORN

This new Martin Mull record raises several crucial questions: Is this band really made up entirely of midgets? When they say that they’re the only band that sucks on purpose, do they mean it? And what does a whistling dwarf have to do with a 17 year old amputee? Is Mullitis contagious?

We simply cannot afford to ignore these matters any longer. Ask yourself what you actually know about this Mull character. Not much. Only, perhaps, that he’s 28 years old, a graduate and former instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design, and he’s been on the Warner Bros, payroll for some time as a staff songwriter and musician. And I’ve heard that there are many subversive elements festering in that organization.

Look, I’ve met this guy Mull and I can tell you what his act is. He’s a wise guy. He’s got a smart crack for every occasion, and often, he’s quite funny. Plus sometimes,' just sometimes, he’s got a point to make. But for the most part, Mull is in it for the yuks and the bucks, and the result is irreverent, sarcastic and uproarious, not to mention slightly off the wall (if you lived in a mansion with nine parrots, all of which have something to say, you’d be pretty weird too). The only way Mull can be described by way of comparison would be as a cross between Dan Hicks (though not as scat) and Randy Newman (though not as sardonic) with a touch of Cole Porter thrown in. But he’s difficult to nail down to any particular category. He can mambo, waltz, charleston, cha cha, or twist, all with the same deadpan candor.

Side one is a pure delight, with such gems as “Ventriloquist Love,” the sad lament of a guy who can’t get a word in edgewise, except the ones his girl puts in his mouth: “Ventriloquist love/ it ain’t such a groove/whenever I kiss you/your lips never move.” Or “Loser’s Samba,” the confession of an alcoholic: ‘ the bag I’m in is just a package from the package store.” Admittedly, some of the arrangements on side two grate a little after the initial impact of the gags has worn off, but by and large it’s all quite easygoing entertainment with a satirical kick. Sort of like sipping lemonade spiked with tequila.

Mull lays it all down in the last cut, “Songwriter’s Blues

I got to be managed, booked and published and still pretend I've got some soul When the ladies all want waltzes and the kids, they need their rock’n'roll I gotta be nuts to try and please them I guess I am, just a little bit But I’m stuck on rhyming for the Simple reason I just might get a hit.

Mull is not likely to attract hordes of swooning fans, but he will probably gain a decent following of ardent admirers. Plus, with the exposure that he gets through this album, his songwriting talents should begin to be more widely recognized and we can expect to hear more Mullisms (like Jane Morgan’s version of Mull’s “A Girl Named Johnny Cash”) from various sources in the future. See, it’s just like I said from the start; it’s a plot. A creeping, contagious, cancerous conspiracy. Better be on your toes, ’cause the way things are going it won’t be long before we all have to deal with Martin Mull and his mob of motley midget musicians.

Gary Kenton