Iggy in Exile: Love in the Fire Zone

IGGY & THE STOOGES Raw Power (Columbia)

Raw Power is the best high-energy album since Kick Out The Jams, and it sometimes makes me think that Iggy and the Stooges, could kick their ex-Big Brothers" butts in the right kind of alley.

I can't believe this is the same Stooges. No longer the group you love because they put out so much despite their limitations, this band is tremendously powerful and, with the aid of skillful production, the noise-raunch power tremble of complete ecstasy that Kick Out the Jams hitherto represented all by itself, is finally fully realized IN THE STUDIO. Consider that, boob-a-la — it's like staging an air raid on Hanoi in Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Iggy kicks it loose from the beginning. The guitar charge is just like the old Five guitar work, tremendous bursts of apocalyptic interstellar energy, limited only by contemporary technology, harnessed to a strong, if unsteady backbeat. Bassist Ron Ashton pulls down the sound, melding it into something almost Earthly, just like a great jazz bass player does, while the rest of the band accelerates beyond anything that's been recorded, or played live or even dreamed of, in years, so hard and so fast that if Iggy wasn't the singer you'd wonder whose record this\was. It's like they o.d."d Pete Townshend on Quaalude and acid, forced him into a 1965 time warp and made him keep all the promises he made in "Can't Explain."

By the time the second song, "Raw Power," comes on, you're startled, so busy trying to figure out what this meta-metamorphosis portends you can't quite believe that the record is doing it all by itself, so you look around the floor but no, not there and then Iggy screams:

Raw Power got a healin" hand

Raw Power can de-stroy a man

Raw Power is a boilin' soul

Got a son called rock'n"roll

which for once isn't some kind of call to the demiurges who guard rock'n"roll to come out and visit us but a simple statement of irrefutable, pristine fact. like the songs on the first Stooges record, which had titles like "No Fun," "Real Cool Time," "Little Doll," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Raw Power" is just the eye of the Ig roving around the street, putting down what he sees, not mincing words or trying for fluidity but letting it

ooze, rough and uh, raw, splat, screeeeeeeee: And "Raw Power," so help me god, begins with an authentic belch, a true-to-life burp — which is, like farting, a form of truly RAW POWER and it goes likes this: urgggllllpppppp. I swear.

Look in the eyes of the seventh girl Fall deep in love in the underworld You're alone and you've got the shakes So've I baby, but I got what it takes.

Now comes the part for people who never liked the Stooges. Whatever Stooges fans think about them, they are almost legion. "Give Me Danger" is the real Iggy ballad, the one El Pop kept threatening us with when he did tunes like "Ann, My Ann" and "Dirt." But this Iggy ballad is one where you can't make out the lyrics, because of the guitars, which is o.k. because these guitars are like Jimi Hendrix jamming with John Fahey. You are absolutely not gonna believe this song, or some of the other guitar here (by James Williamson, who switched places with Ron) until you hear it, and then it might take you a week; that's how long it took me and I heard "em in London only last summer.

Now, this is the part that you won't believe at all, as if you're gonna believe me when I tell you how great this record is anyway, but afterwhile you look at the titles and you begin to wonder what the fuck is this record about? Now, I am not saying that Iggy has made the first dementoid concept album, or some avuncular nonsense like that, I'm just going to tell you what this album is about and you can believe it or not:

Raw Power is what happens if you watch the Viet Nam war live on TV every night, and that is the central fact of the culture you live in, for ten years (or more).

Look at these titles: "Hard to Beat" (Kissinger'd buy that, even); "Search and Destroy," for which no explanation is necessary; "Death Trip," ditto; "Penetration," 3 sort of behind-the-lines excursion ...

Maybe Iggy was imagining — it's a big maybe, but what the fuck — that he didn't beat the draft, after all, in fact, he went to Viet Nam and got his legs and arms shot off and came back a crippled, quadraplegic junkie who got himself atomic-powered limbs and set out to avenge the destruction he had to endure. And the way he does it is to write this song about how he got fucked up, see, with these lines:

I'm the world's most forgotten boy

The one who searches and destroys

And then singing about his fantasy after he got shot, his dream while he was bleeding almost to death, which is that Madame Diem showed up and sucked him off and then fucked him in ways he hadn't thought possible: "Love in the middle of a fire fight."

Now you might think this is totally ridiculous, and you're absolutely right, but that's what this album makes me think about and I ain't even told you about the long songs yet.

Everyone talks about how we need a band that can hold the decade in the palm of their hand and spitshine and polish it, but the Stooges just come out and do that, and with their feet they dance a merry little gallows jig, too. Raw Power is like a great James Bond book that never got written, but its concepts are all here. Like when the Stooges play their own version of "St. James Infirmary," called "I Need Somebody," where Iggy is bad as Howlin" Wolf pounding Mick Jagger on the

head with a forty pound stack of Yma Sumac records.

And all the while Iggy just keeps singing, in his best Frank Sinatra voice (the one used to sing ""Shadow of Your Smile" when the amps blow up in the middle of a set):

I need somebody bab-uh

I need somebody to ...

I need somebody bab-uh

Just like you

He ain't singing about "I need somebody, too," like every dorkoid in the world could sing about how we're all lonely and shit, he's singing about how he needs somebody to do something so unapproachable you couldn't — he couldn't — imagine what it even is or how to do it, if you knew.

Then "Death Trip." "Baby want to take you out with me, came along on my death trip." Real-ly. Death to the death culture and all that rot as David Bowie taught him to say. Iggy immerses himself in all the rage of being fucked up, and more appropriately, fuqking YOURSELF up that anyone can imagine and then he sings, like a love song:

I'm with you and you with me

We're goin' down in history

And he ain't talking about no blow job, neither. He's talking about going down in history, like Hitler, like Rasputin, like every mangled dictator and dog-eared mass murderer there ever was, if you'll just come right along on his little death trip — here, step inside. Stab, stab.

I'm tempted myself. Only a truly diabolical mind could have made the best album of the "70s, of course, and Iggy apparently has it because he's summed everything up and it took him only nine songs to do it. And he didn't have to write any songs about being/ not being/wishing he was cosmic, or a star or some bullshit.

Step inside the Fun House, home of the O Mind, and we will all have a real cool time, AC/DC and Raw Power alike.

Dave Marsh

THE MOODY BLUES Seventh Sojourn (Threshold)

Jeez, I hate the Moodies. They're just so lame-ass and pretentious, and it irks me so much that everytime they puke out one of these over-schmaltzed pieces of muzak dung it slowly gropes to the top of the charts like an obscene belch that hangs in the air. I mean, what kind of people actually go out and buy Moodies albums? (Here's your chance, sports fans. — Ed.)

Mostly I figure it's the kids who were on the chess club when they were in high school and now that they're in first year at State they figure it's about time to join the revolution, so they grow a beard and leave their bras in the bottom drawer and get themselves some hippies" music. And the Moodies seems like a good place to start cuz they're English and have been around since the Beatles and Stones.

So they begin the painful process of getting down by buying a seventy dollar stereo through the Columbia Record Club rip-off through the mails gambit and then proceed to drive their unfortunate roommates batty with ten-hour-a-day philosophy-of-life lessons from the all cosmic Moodies. What kind of man listens to Seventh Sojourn? The kind who gets his high from incense, his sex from Playboy, and his philosophy from Ralph Nader. The Moody Blues are the Perry Como of the Seventies, and whatever your mythic history of popular music tells you, Perry Como sold a hell of a lot more albums than Chuck Berry or Little Richard.

So what about Seventh Sojourn? Well, from this totally unbiased viewpoint (oh yeah), the album shows the group at its best and worst simultaneously. On one hand it contains five examples of the kind of willowy pablum that these balding mods have been groaning out since "68 — overly-produced, always familiar but forgettable as soon as the last notes of one song give way to the introduction of the next, and with lush strings and paternal-uncle type vocals, but with nary a guitar lick nor solid beat to be found anywhere.

But there are three songs here worthy of note. "Isn't Life Strange" has a fine range of subtleties and evokes almost anthem-like power at points. "You and Me" has a catchy chorus that transcends the general Moody attempts, and "I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock and Roll Band)," while I refute the pretention of the title, might just be powerful enough to turn the group's heavier fans toward something better — like Three Dog Night.

So there's three decent numbers out of eight, a pretty poor showing for an obviously tiring bunch of pot-bellied old duds. But so what? It's gold already; the Moodies are sojourning off to the bank with another bagfull, Moody fans are ecstatic because they have another masterpiece, however halfbaked, to dote on, and everybody's happy but me and all the non-Moodyfans who will have to dodge highlights from Seventh Sojourn on AM and FM alike every month till Number Eight comes put. That's the way it goes, but if you don't like it you can always change the channel, and that's where I'm headed right now.

Alan Niester

THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA WITH GUEST SOLOISTS Tommy (Ode)

I Do you like shooting ducks in a barrel? Good, let's go:

It seems like every December the record industry has to release one piece of buffoonery that far outclasses the buffoonery they've been up to during the rest of the year, a project that crystallizes it and puts it all up front. Last year, Columbia decided it was their turn to bite it and they released the now-infamous Chicago Box. This year, Lou Adler's Ode Records took the big leap. They hired musicians, contracted superstars, and set about recording a rock opera. Nothing too odd about that, except the work in question is the Who's Tommy.

When I first heard Tommy, I was really disappointed. Townshend had really overextended himself. There was a lot of filler, mainly based around a chord progression (D, D susp 4, D susp 9, D) that isn't a chord progression. After giving it much listening and some thought, I decided that it woulda made a nifty single lp. And I gave my copy away. A nice idea, kind of clumsily rendered.

But jeepers creepers — it started a trend! Oooh, I kicked myself, remembering the days when I used to argue that rock was art. Now these balding 40-year-old record execs believed it, and, before you could say bologna

Local Lad

sausage, the market was flooded with rock operas and concept albums. And when the rock operas started playing Broadway and Off-Broadway, it spoke volumes about where the heads of those who instigated the whole thing were at.

By now the form is an institution, so much so that I won't bore you with details about how the onset of elaborate musical pageantry signals the end of a musical era, as it has in China, Elizabethan England, Wagner's Germany, and so on right down to Camelot. But if listening to this turgid remake of an already turgid rock opera doesn't convince you that the end of something is at hand, nothing will.

To begin with, orchestrating Tommy is such a ludicrous idea that I could scarcely believe it had been done. There's practically nothing there to orchestrate! But they did it, and if you can hear the orchestra, buried as it

Cousin Kevin is under the rest of the' noise, you'll hear a lot of aimless noodling. Then there is the "Chambre" choir. Orchestra and choir work together to smooth out any irregularities, dissonances, or other rough edges there might be, making the work even blander than it started out.

But it's the soloists that really did me in. Each with his own painting in the libretto, each with his own cameo appearance, some measurable in seconds. Most of them mediocrities of astounding dimension - you have not really plumbed the depths until you've heard Merry Clayton attempt "Acid Queen." (I wonder who buys her records?) And you haven't blushed with embarrassment until you've heard Richie Havens stumble thru "Eyesight To The Blind." Most of the performances here don't even reflect the artists in a light that their fans would recognize them in. Miscasting is the order of the day.

The musical atrocity of this undertaking pales, however, next to the commercial atrocity. People aje being shoved this Brobdignagian vulgarity, this monument to overproduction and being told that it is an art work, something of lasting value. And, because the American record-buying public is well-trained, they're buying it. They'll listen to it twice, maybe, and put it away. And they'll wait for next Christmas. The record biz'll be ready for "em, too, the suckers. Yeah, forget this mess. If you haven't already.

Ed Ward

Uncle Ernie

2 Boy, I need a vacation. All this rock & roll is starting to get to me. Why I'm even starting to dream about rock & roll. Just the other night I had this awful nightmare. The nerves are shot to hell. Maybe it'll be therapeutic if I tell you about it.

My dream started out with me interviewing Alice Cooper at his mansion in Connecticut. I was asking him about plans for his next album, Billion Dollar Babies. He started talking about the pressures that were brought to bear on him to surpass his past achievements. "It's horrible," he complained, "if I don't come up with something better than Killer and School's Out, every rock critic in the country will be aftertny ass." He went on, getting more and more irate. "I mean, I don't have to take that shit. I can come up with anything I damn please. If the public doesn't like it, they don't have to buy it, but I ain't gonna let a bunch of snot-nose punks tell me what I've got to live up to." I extended my sympathetic reassurance that he really didn't have to worry about reviews and such; people would like whatever he did. But he was working himself into a rage and wouldn't be assuaged.

All of a sudden, a gleam came into his eye. He started jumping up and down pointing his finger in the air and yelling "I'll fix those vultures!" In a moment or two, he settled back down in his red leather reclining chair and sat petting his pet cobra with his eyes moving back and forth in obvious response to some plan he was cooking up. After swearing me to secrecy, he told me his scheme: "The only way for us rock stars to avoid being singled out for "selling out" or being "washed up" is for all of us to sell out together! Yes! I'm going to get all the big names together on a spectacular project. There'll be the biggest promotional campaign ever. We'll build it up for months. And it'll be horrible! Trash from start to finish. What could the critics do? Nothing! They couldn't put down all of us. Haha!"

Next thing I knew I was on the phone with some pert publicity lady from a major Los Angeles Public Relations firm. "Wait'll you hear it," she said, "it's the hottest thing we've ever handled, including Mick Jagger's birthday party! First there's the London Symphony Orchestra, a real hard-working group that's paid its dues. Then there are a whole bunch of guest soloists including Rod' Stewart, Pete Townshend, Steve Winwood, Ringo Starr, Roger Daltrey, Richie Havens, Maggie Bell and many others. It's incredible!"

"What about Alice Cooper," I asked?

"He's opening up his Broadway show soon and had to stick to his rehearsals. We may get him to do an ad, though."

And then I woke up in a cold sweat, relieved to find that it had all been a bad dream. I should have known better. Our heroes would never do anything like that, would they?

Gary Kenton

THE SECTION (Warner Brothers) FULL MOON (Douglas)

Anybody that tells you there's no place for muzak in this world is a lying sac of smegma. Muzak ain't just the mush gushing in supermarkets, it's any music designed to fit into the environment whether you listen to it or probably not. Which includes a hell of a lot of noise. As time marches on, muzak swells to accomodate the changes and innovations in more "respectable" fields of music. Thus sooner or later everything in the universe ends up gurgling in muzak's Lysol heaven. Blues and funk and all that shit got co-opted by the mush maestros a long time ago, and beginning

with the Beatles rock waged a losing battle with its "purity," as first Hollyridge Strings albums of the Beatles and Beach Boys, Baroque "n" Stones, and finally all manner of hothouse productions hit the racks.

The really interesting part of the muzak revolution circa now is thkt muzak has dilated just like a jellyfish and swallowed the avantgarde whole. That's right, all them far out jazz cats have been writhing in basically the same sandbox for over a decade now, so it's all old hat and corny as camp can be.

The upshot is the proliferation of New Jazz Muzak. Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders were in a sense the harbingers of this genre — everything Miles has done since In a Silent Way has been muzak, just like space music a la Pink Floyd or some of the real terminal San Francisco jams was. Any static feedback is muzak, especailly the Grateful Dead's album closers. As for Pharoah, most of his stuff has been kozmik muzak ever since Trane died and left him to scout around for ideas, although the biggest purveyor of muzak in all of jazz is Coltrane's widow Alice.

Full Moon and the Section are prototypes of the new young muzak. They offer similar salads: a natty mix of some old Coltrane, a little Roland Kirk maybe, all the appropriate Sly isms and bows toward current trends in R&B (which is getting pretty muzaky itself, what with things like Marvin Gaye's last two albums and Super fly ruling the airwaves), and most especially a heaping helping of what Miles has been doing since 1969. They mix it up with enormous finesse, which is only fitting since most of "em are longtime sessionmen, and the end product is so pleasant, so lightly funky, so groovily palatable that you just can't resist.

I suspect Full Moon to be slightly benighted regarding their MOR affiliations, since they're on Douglas and don't smile a whole lot and people have already been talking about them like they was something strange and new. They've been around, it's true: guitar man Buzzy Feiten alone has been in every studio on the East Coast, especially Stevie Wonder and Rascals albums (which are monuments to muzak as an art form). Full Moon sound real nice, whether they're Milesing it up in all due competence or coming on like the Doors doing "Ships With Sails."

But if you wanta ease into the avantmuzak interior slowly so as not to get your sensibilities bruised by this new sound sensa-

tion, then start with the Section album. These guys have seen and done it all — played behind James Taylor, Carole King, this jazz cat and that, movie soundtracks - and now they're up on the boards all smiles, anxious to make us the beneficiaries of their years of experience. Danny "Kootch" Korchmar will, of course, be no stranger either to Fugs or Carole King fans; that's how versatile he is. Russ Kunkel has been in every studio in Hollywood at least three times, and Leland Sklar is another instantly recognizable nonentity, one of the great "Qh yeah ... who?" getters of our time.

The great thing about the Section is that not only do their laidback improvs go down easier than just about any recorded sound in rescent history, but they've got a sense of humor. They're not astral travelers and they know it; in fact, by title alone their opus "Mah-Hoo-Dah-Vah" qualifies as the definitive razzberry rebuttal td all the somberly soporific John McLaughlins salaaming around. Other great chart toppers here include "Zippo Dippo," "Doing the Meatball,"" and "Sporadic Vacuums of Thought." if you don't think these guys have the subtlety and know-how to back up them titles with instrumental ditties fully as unpretentious, witty and interesting, you just don't know what manner of velvet underground you're dealing with.

When you look at the scoreboard, the conclusion becomes obvious: jazz has fallen, soul too, folk never stood a chance, rock doesn't even exist anymore, blues is off in a comer somewhere with no teeth drinking itself to death. Face it: Muzak rules the world, and is the Sound of the Seventies. It's about damn time all oppressed minorities had their day in the sun, and muzak's annexing of the power that rightfully belongs to it is only one more small step toward the total liberation of Western Civilization and the return to a more natural, organic, fully realized way of life. I myself am sleeping better already.

Lester Bangs

NEIL DIAMOND Hot August Night (MCA)

Yeah, it is pretty dismal. Yeah, there's a dearth of R&R and a wealth of vacuous pap for the most part. Yep, old ND has gone almost completely to the dogs, and he even has the nerve to appear for his first live double-lp performance in Elvis pose and clothes, wearing the soft-sewn soul of Rod McKuen on his sleeve. Yes, just like Rolling Stone said, his whole schtick nowadays is a pretense-laden over-inflated self-aggrandizing bore.

Why? Well, that's what gripes me. The way it looks from here, if it hadn't have been for Rolling Stone and the all-pervasive influence of its standard depiction of rock as something more than a handful of chords and a 3-minute view of the world, as something capable of overpowering conventional experience and leaping into the glorious abyss between Art and Life, maybe ND would still be handcrafting and hawking his trademark Tex Mex AM nuggets for us all. Without the sterling models of Artistic excellence which ideologies like those behind Rolling Stone (and its sons & daughters & cousins) have introduced, lubricated and paylayed into musical demigods and goddesses, maybe Neil and Bobby Vee and Dion and every other perennially hitbound R&R kid wouldn't have felt the pinch to come through and deliver themselves as Livers of Life, Seers, Sages and Signposts To New Space (what?!!!!).

This true rock'n"roll spirit, this honest to God Brooklyn roadmaster who hung out and scribbled tunes and waxed demos with the likes of Carole King and Jeff & Ellie, who began his climb to candyrock greatness with one song ("We Got Love") on the Rockyfellers" Killer Joe album, then marched on, head held high, to pen "I?m A Believer" and the fantastic "Look Out (Here Comes Tomor-» row") for the Mohkees, and breezed through

a dozen of his own chart-toppers from "66 to "69, this guy has blown it. So bad that only one side out of these four even deserves comment.

The side is Side One. It starts with the "Prologue", an ornate strings & things Mason Williams-ish instrumental exercise in studio rock, then Neil himself hits town and it's down Tex Mex alley for some hard latinate stuff called "Crunchy Granola" (the intro's as shotgun brazen as "Good Lovin" ", I swear). Next qomes "Done Too Soon," which starts as a P. F. Sloan rhyming name catalogue, then dissolves to thick slop and Neil's throat spoken promise to deliver special goods this night.

A sharp top ten hit in "66 "Solitary Man" loses here, the band sounding too tight for comfort, his vocal attempting to import even more vulnerability and wisdom than the thin lyrics withstood in the. original version.

But the monster is next and I'm talking about "Cherry Cherry"! "Man's" acoustic tinkle gives way to a single struck chord, then Neil's own guitar up front, bass drum thump and ELECTRICITY, on full, exploding in an instant and Neil Diamond is up, home, and there's absolutely no denying the lean radiant adolescent radioblast of this song. He knows it and you know it. A lightning fistfull of Holly, Who, and Capitols" "Cool Jerk" rhythm, an exultant whoop of eternal girlfriend consciousness as super-fine as "Mony Mony" or "I Think We're Alone Now."

That's it, though. The remainder of the show pays homage to Neil Diamond the sensitive healer who intones at the close of "Holly Holy" " . .. I need ... I want... I care ... I weep ... I ache ... I am ... I said "I am" ", whose audience clamors for and gets "Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon," "Song Sung Blue," "Play Me," "Morningside," the sum statement of their man's near total consignment to their everyday housewives" cause. By "Song Sung Blue" ukelele rhythm replaces "La Bamba" chords and it's complete. Another good man gone.

Gene Sculatti

THE WACKERS Shredder (Elektra)

The Wackers are like the guys you used to know, hang out with, get wrecked with and share neighborhood jokes with, who also

incidentally happened to be in the best band in town. Lots of bands from around the neighborhood were really good, but didn't make it because 1) they didn't have any original material, or 2) got interested in something else, like girls, heroin or law school, or 3) had a local fatso manager who rooked "em, or, well, you know the story.

But the Wackers are really good, and they write their own songs, and somebody says this is their third album. Note also that they're only half-American, being muchly Canadian. Now, everyone knows there's a time-lag once you cross the border, that Canada's way behind in styles and stuff, which means you can still find songs like "Big Girls Don't Cry" or "The Rapper" on Montreal jukeboxes. There are some people in Canada who never heard of hyphen-rock, as in folk-rock or art-rock, or even punk-rock. That's where the Wackers come in, since they play rock "n" roll with a sixties sensibility without dragging nostalgia into it: they just play.

What that means is that they play like a band, not like a wrecking crew, with actual songs (all but one in the three-minute range), with melodies that stick to you, good harmony, and rhythm guitar tracks that make you want to "whoop!" between the spaces the first time you hear it. In other words, there's hook lines, the stuff of great singles — try the calypso-mint "Day and Night" or "It's My Life" for the obvious hits.

Naturally they're a derivative band, as are all bands, which means you can relate to their influences to get closer to the music! "Hey Lawdy Lawdy," which features the nearbrilliant line "my love is like a saxophone," lets you bring in Dr. John, while "I'll Believe in You" is soft as rubber soul. There's a great suicide song ("Put Myself to Sleep"), a couple of simpy-nice ballads which are unfortunately programmed at the end of each side (that's no way to say goodbye) and the "Buck Duckdog Memorial Jam" which includes in its medley a very natural evolution into "You Really Got Me."

In cultural terms, the Wackers are the guys who were the most sought after band for church or temple dances, sweet sixteens, even Knights of Columbus hall promotions. They weren't leather greasers, like the Blue Oyster Cult, nor were they the smartest kids in their class, like the Raspberries, and their music can be said to be somewhere in between as far as density goes. Like somebody said, the Wackers are neat, and really good, and I like them a lot.

Wayne Robins

MILES DAVIS On the Corner (Columbia)

It's short, punchy, beefy music, taut, untattered (tight) and tautological. Tautological? Yes, because it's internally consistent. It's true to its school. Quel school? Well...

I honestly believe that this album - were it by a new, well-schooled but unknown multi-nationality jazz/rock ensemble and not by some legendary jazz cat who used to play with Charlie Parker and all those dudes -would be easily, widely accepted, not to mention luxuriously praised as a beautifullyplayed, imaginative kind of pop/jazz fusion. But it is Miles, goddamn it, and ... well, remember Kind of Blue?

Look. Miles has always changed. His style has always had some constants (a rich and rounded lower register, the construction of long, integral solo lines, the concurrent ability to shatter and chop up these lines without destroying their flow, etc.) but it has never been constant. For better or for worse (as you wish), it has changed from year to year, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. And with each change, I suspect, Miles loses some lovers/listeners. And gains some.

Anyway, On the Corner has turned the comer on Miles for a lot of people. People who had kept the faith even up through "Live/Evil". Okay. A player's commitment to musical style ought to be stronger than an audience's, anyway. On the Corner is just a logical, chronological progression, a natural next step on the road he's chosen for himself (at least for the time).

Miles, as a bandleader, might be seen as one of the great rhythmic innovators in all of jazz history. (Most of the rest of these, with the notable exception of Charlie Parker, have been drummers — Baby Dodds, Sid Catlett, Kenny Clarke, et al.) He has altered the pulse of the music, and has thus influenced musicians from Slug's to Carmina's to Motown West. He has taken a music that was still, basically, straining at the strictures of 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 time, still basically constrained by the limited tools of the percussionist's kit and by his sense of place, and he has led it out onto the street, has allowed it to become much more simple and yet much more complex by allowing it to react more closely to the rhythms of the body, internal and external.

He's done this largely because he has embraced what might be termed a parallel musical tradition to jazz: that of rhythm and blues. (The visceral - as opposed to cerebral - jazz musicians of our day almost unanimously favor firm, repetitious Fender bass, lines, for instance, rather than intricate, lightfingered acoustic work. They'd rather work with Chuck Rainey or Jerry Jemmott, in other words, than with Dave Holland or Charlie Haden.) For Miles, black music is still the most valid of musical forms, but he refuses to value one black musicial idiom over another, because he has presumably divined how inseparable, how strongly intertwined, these different idioms are or ought to be.

It's hard to break On the Comer down into constituent parts. It just sort of plays on, lurching and whirling and stomping and sailing. Some members of Miles" current (or lately current) group are here, like bassist Michael Henderson and reedman Carlos Garnett (and Jesus that man has grown, ever since his recent days with Max Roach); some of Miles" old players, too, like Herbie Hancock and Jack de Johnette. The fact that it's hard to pick out and comment on individual accomplishments on this album is perhaps best proof of all of Miles" strengths as a maker of music.

Colman Andrews

DAVID CLAYTON-THOMAS Tequila Sunrise (Columbia) LITTLE JIMMY OSMOND Killer Joe (MGM)

Here are auspicious entries by a pair of honchos who are not only important vocal forces on the contemporary scene, but look like each other to boot. One is a reigning monarch of bulge-node, captured in his second solo outing at the pinnacle of his powers; the other is a power-packed little carburetor from a long line of crankcases just clogged with talent, making his recording debut. Both records should put these men in the limelight where they belong.

Nobody ever wrote to Rolling Stone that "David Clayton-Thomas is god." Even when he was in Blood, Sweat & Tears, he was strictly Mr. Melodrama, his lungs were a DeMille production. But DeMille never made a B picture, and this is no second run album. David Clayton-Thomas, aside from being an all-around groovy dude, has surrounded himself with one of the best, most empathetic combinations of studio musicians this year. Listen to "Failin" By Degrees," and tell me who's the real Ray Charles circa "73 — Joe Cocker, Ray Charles or this cheery Canuck?

It ain't Joe Cocker because he's just a bag of nerves, so it's a toss-up between Ray and Dave. Ray's been making easy-listening albums for years, and this is better MOR than

most of "em, plus which Dave's young and gotta lotta miles ahead to hoe, so he wins hands down. Plus which he's got a sense of humor: this album begins and ends with his very own jumpin" guitar jam called "I Could Just Boogie All Night." Not only that, but he wrote most of the songs here, and they all work. Some don't even pretend to mean anything, like "Bread "N" Butter Boogie," and some verge on the trendily pretentious, like "Friday the 13th Child." Then there are the ones that find a perfect middle tack, like "Yesterday's Music," which is one of the great hangover songs of the year, all about hearing awful lame-o songs you heard on the radio last nite spinning in your buzzing head. Which is even a worse fate than the one painted in Chuck Berry's "Down Bound Train," whose "boiler is fulla beer/ And the Devil himself was the engineer," headed for you know where! Do you realize what kind of cool moxie it takes to record a song this corny in 1972?

But even at his most melodramatic, bellowing, ballooned excessive (and BS&T brought it out a hell of a lot more than Dave left to his own devices) he has a basic affability that makes him almost like the Eric Burdon of studio funk. I'd buy him a drink any time. I'd even buy this album now that I've heard it.

Little Jimmy Osmond is another jib o" stud altogether. The official story is that Donny O. got older, his voice changed, they were hard up for a marketable moppet, so they inducted Baby Jim into the show. But that's all bullshit: the facts are that Jimmy is not only the cuddliest (all the others look like farmers) but also the funkiest of the Osmond Brothers, and they just couldn't keep this little trojan back in the sandbox any longer. Just dig his hot, frisky "Killer Joe," originally recorded by Killer Joe Piro and the Rockyfellers, a buncha PR's not much older than Joe himself, back in the Twist era — this brat burns! His version of "My Girl" cuts Mick Jagger's, but it's not only grease that Jim's up to: "Mother of Mine," the heartbreaking ballad theme from Louis Malle's film Murmur of the Heart, bubbles with all the hot blood of the Continent and is a sure fire Number One for Italy. Most amazing of all, though, are "If My Dad Were President," and especially "Long Haired Lover From Liverpool." The former is a frankly soulful essay, in a setting reminiscent of those old Bacharach-Dionne Warwicke assignations, on the nature of power politics, charisma and nepotism (and who better qualified to comment on this subject than Jim?) in America today:

If my dad were president How happy I would be 'Cause he knows just how it goes With personality ... He'd fly me to the moon To the stars And maybe Mars In a great big new balloon.*

Eat your heart out, David Bowie! And as for "Long Haired Lover," it might be argued that Jimmy's delivery, his phrasing and such, is awkward, but then so is Lou Reed's; it's part of his style. Lou always wanted to be infantile anyway, and with Little Jimmy (sounds like a midget wrestler) it comes natural; no closet case, he! "Long Haired Lover" bastardizes ragtime in exactly the same way that Lou's "Goodnight Ladies" bends Dixieland. Little Jimmy Osmond is THE REAL LOU REED. And as if that wasn't enough, on "Tweedle Dee" he actually impersonates Satchmo to good effect. And all the people he impersonates are males except a couple of Millie Small jobs, so he ain't no won't you come home Jim Bailey, so don't make bad jokes. Little Jimmy knows what he's doing, he doesn't take Sopors ("I can walk straight/ All on my own," he is singing right this minute) and the front cover of this album portrays such a self confident little man .that colleague Ben Edmonds just came in here, took one look at it and said, "I'd like to smash his little face in!" (Obviously had nothing whatsoever to do with having to listen to the record Jullblast for eight hours — Ed.) So as you can see Little Jim ain't no undifferentiated erogenous mass either.

Lester Bangs

URIAH HEEP The Magician's Birthday (Mercury)

A dud. There was some controversy over whether Uriah Heep's last album, Demons and Wizards, wasn't a bit of a tone-down itself, a retreat from the joyously blasting excess of Look At Yourself. I personally said pox on the whole issue, since Demons and Wizards had enough fuzzbox to keep me satisfied, and the material was much more even than Look At Yourself (which may have been two-thirds exciting, but that remaining third was pure tedium).

The first side is listenable, being a holdover from the Demons and Wizards style. The first three songs rock, with "Sunrise" and "Spider Woman" good and raunchy. Right off the bat, however, you notice how poorly recorded the LP is and how over-mixed those goddamn vocals on "Sunrise" are. The side trails off toward the end: though "Rain" is a nice ballad, "Echoes In The Park" drags as a slower-paced number.

Side two reveals what seems to be the shape of things to come for Uriah Heep. I don't think I've heard a more irritating LP side this year from a previously kickass group. A Moog keeps shrieking throughout "Sweet Lorraine," messing up what otherwise might be a good rocker, and it's all down hill after that. "

"Tales" is non-rocking pablum, with the vocals so loud they drown out everything else (as elsewhere on the LP — Uriah Heep seem to have gotten the notion that their vocals are hot stuff or Art or something), and then comes the magnun opus: the title cut. "The Magician's Birthday." Ten minutes. It's a cryptic tale with a supposed weighty message, musically mostly pure pretentious fatuousness, with the instrumental tracks so undermixed that the rest has no punch anyway. Absolutely awful. It's enough to drive a grown man up the wall.

It's beyond me how a group that could sound so much like the Music Machine on "Easy Livin" " could come up with a package as full of dreck as this one. Worse yet, if the trend continues, the next album will be completely schlock and Uriah Heep can join Yes and Jethro Tull in the ranks of the foremost Art practitioners of our time. And Ken Hensley didn't even go to a conservatory, as far as I know. It's all a shame, really.

Mike Saunders

THE FIRESIGN THEATRE Not Insane Or Anything You Want To (Columbia)

The Firesign Theatre's latest pre-frontal lobotomy is here, but it's not nearly as clean an operation as were the first four. Some post-op scars still remain — though to be fair I must say I've listened to it just five times through so far, and Firesign fans will understand my present state. I still don't have the True Divine Word (that should come sometime next week), but I'm far enough above the LP now to see some directions, which will be sufficient for this review. Capsulizingly speaking, I think you will find it somewhat of a letdown (though an improvement over Dear Friends) but I'm still glad I'm on our side, which of course is side 2.

The lion's share of the album was recorded live, which makes for some clumsiness that is not characteristic of Firesign: the group has to stop the show several times to wait out

laffs, etc. And there's another element — the boys are obviously using some sight gags for the live audience, and it's maddening to hear these gales of laughter for no apparent reason. Before this album, we knew we were all in it together, that if we didn't get it right off, at least the Word was somewhere on those grooves. For this one, it could be a facial expression or some other visual turn •— something which the Audience At Hbme can't possibly get.

The record begins just like a continuation of the adventures of the Kafkaesque Firesign hero who led us through side 2 of Electrician, side 1 of Two Places and the complete Dwarf and Bozos plays. The gadget now is an air conditioner, and the Firesign recording technicians are concerned that the hum of the unit will spoil the sound of the record in the studio. Remember the chromium switch in Dwarf and the electric typewriter in Bozosl The Superior Fan settles back to have his mind probed.

But it is not to be. After a period of many voices talking at once, Firesign segues into the performance of a long-ignored stage play by the revolutionary Shakespierre. It's clever and witty, with double punning and non-logical associative leaps rampant upon a field of combat; each Firesign member puts on his best Elizabethan Declaiming voice as the strange tale of Edmund Edmund the Bastard and the attendant nuncles, storm-tossed ships and ghosts is unraveled and then raveled again. Catch phrases from previous Firesign albums abound and there are also the numerous Firesign Sneeze Jokes (a duelist says "Have at you!" and his opponent says "Gesundheit!").

The play is interrupted periodically by Peter Bergman as Rocky Rokomoto, who's the host of this afternoon's Million Dollar Monster Movie. Firesign's interest in Japanese monster movies is evident on the album cover (the boys running wild over a Toho set) and in the interlude with Young Guy, a sort of Nick Danger piece with an Oriental background. Lt. Bradshaw is back, and it is discovered that the "Brad" in Bradshaw stands for Bernard; therefore the lieutenant is in reality George Bernard Shaw and the reason he has always been on the side of Right is because he is a Righter.

Finally, the album takes us to the convention of the National Surrealist Light People's Party, which is in the process of nominating George Papoon for Resident. (This bit is from the soundtrack of Firesign's film Martian Space Parly.) While Philip Proctor and Phil Austin are manning the anchor in the newsroom, David Ossman is screaming out Papoon's platform and Bergman is covering another news story, the President's badwill visit to Monster Island and his troubles with the recently escaped monster Glutumoto. The beast attaches itself to the President's Marsbound rocket and it's a mudslide for Papoon back on earth.

Whew. It's as exhausting as the first four Firesign albums, and the boys" capacity for Wordplay and offbeat association is not diminished. But while this LP is funny, it is not profound. It is another rest stop, as was Dear Friends: a break from the more important Firesign charge of finishing the story of the hero who's learned Turkish, bought a car from Ralph Spoilsport, seen himself on teevee and been to the future. The abiding theme of a world out of control is not here the anxiety and terror which made the first four records beautiful is not here, and Firesign has reduced itself to the position of a highly intellectual and incisive Vegas comedy group. These bits are done for yucks, and there is very little here beyond a good laff. That's a letdown to me.

I would like tq think that Firesign couldn't give a damn how many records Cheech & Chong sell, and I am not yet prepared to accuse them of commercialism. But this record has moved them closer to the C&C show-biz style, and if the group now has its collective rocks off, we need another LP of the insane grace and topsy-turvy insight that characterized the first four efforts. I left Uh-Clem in the gypsy's wagon, and then the sailor took his place. Continue, please.

Tom Dupree

SMOKEY ROBINSON AND THE MIRACLES 1957/1972 (Tamla)

A friend urged this album on me with the recommendation that, though he was not a Miracles fan, it gave him chills. Of course, records like this trade in chills: they're incidentally musical commodities and essentially memorials, historical documents, designed to offer the minute part of the public that heard the particular concert a bit of final deja vu. The rest of us, depending upon the artistry of the singers and the vividness of the

imagination, may create our own pleasant reminiscences of the occasion.

1957-1972. That's almost the entire breadth of popular music as we're likely to know it. In music, though, as in anything that touches us emotionally, it takes but a second to rein in the memory, to corral those little pockets of time that mean so much more in retrospect than in their actual points in chronological time. Smokey and the Miracles allow us these cinematic afterthoughts not through the actual songs from the concert nor through their execution, though in their spontaneity and warmth they may surpass any recorded versions. We fill in those blanks.

In any event, the music here is superb. Smokey doesn't throw a single song away and the musicians anticipate his changes instinctively. These men create a sort of spur-of-themoment professionalism that can only be bred of countless evenings just like this one last July in Washington, D.C. The tunes are the essential ones, the trivial and the classic, and they yield a concise and accurate picture of the legendary group. From the late fifties ballad "Bad Girl" (complete with Smokey's introduction of his wife Claudette and his parody of the group's debut performance) to "72's "We've Come Too Far to End It Now," the style hasn't changed. It has matured intact, rising above the posturing so much soul music has engendered in its annexation to rock. The audience greets "We've Come" with the same enthusiasm it does "The Tracks' of My Tears," "More Love," "Ooo Baby Baby" and all the rest. I suspect not as many people really know it as well as those older

songs, and I also suspect that the point of recognition stems entirely from Smokey's introductory "Oooo..." The prospect of just one more song is sufficient.

The Miracles" spartan fidelity to the form and content of R & B is but the slightest reason for their greatness. There's also their willingness to give all there is, musically, lyrically, emotionally, the quality that has produced some of the finest records ever made. That generosity extends to their stage performances, where the rapport between singer and listener is almost tangible. The applause that accompanies "Mickey's Monkey" just has to mean they're out there, jackets awry, crouching and leaping, doing the finest version of that long-dead dance ever seen.

And yet, behind the gaiety, an unspoken sadness permeates the whole performance. It's there in Smokey's introductions, his banter, his giddy laugh as he fields the audience requests. The remarkable photo on the back sleeve gives us an awful picture of it, this feeling the album conveys, the one we long to suppress. It really is goodbye. J.J. Cale just loves to mumble. Like, if he were peeking over my shoulder right now, watching me write this, and I suddenly asked him if he's pleased with the results of his new album, well, he just might fumble his sandpaper hands thru that brush crop on his head and dribble an ant twitch like: "Yup." I mean, what else could he say??

Mark Vining

J. J. CALE Really (Shelter)

Cause if you really listen to JJ. Cale ya got no choice but to fall asleep. Goddamn, kidz, this dude is dead!! Not only does he just soul screw around and say "Sheesh," but he's the laziest sonuvabitch since Michael Hurley hit the jackpot. That's right - just another lazy southern drunk.

Which ain't a myth neither. Every one of us southerners gets a kick outa simply puttering around with the lawnmower or dipping snuff and chomping on chaw tobacco or greasing rifles or guzzling grits or scraping off peach fuzz or fucking loose cows. Yeah, we know how to play it kool naturally, but J.J. Cale best of all cause he can do it without playing like a yukyuk rocky raccoon (along the lines of baloney bladder like Goober Pyle, Festus and Little Luke).

And on stage this creep is even more obnoxious than John Fahey. Well, Fahey would often run thru a six-pack of Colt 45 before he'd even say anything, then he might just start tuning up. You had to be pretty goddamn patient to sit through one his ragas, too. But J.J. Cale is even worse! I'll be doggone if he don't bring a portable TV out with him as he gooses onto the platform, and then he turns it on and starts watching it in front of his audience (which would be some kinda heavy statement if it weren't J.J. Cale) and begins yakking about all of his favorite shows from wayback then to now (with such a detailed monologue that you'd swear you'd, just entered Sherman's Wayback Time Machine). He likes what you and I like best — McHale's Navy, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Paul Lynde Show, Tugboat Annie and espe-

"J.J. Cale can be safely categorized as the biggest sleeper artist of 1972. "

Billboard Magazine

dally Amos V Andy. Usually after about two hours of TV chatter, the audience starts yawning and jeering and pleading for Little Rock Willie (an old blues coot who tags along with "Boss Man" Cale) even tho they know he's gonna be just as boring and dull.

And, in any articles/interviews on J.J. Cale which I've come across, in every fucking one of "em, he just dadblame don't talk. Somebody asks him a question and he just nods or wiggles his ears. He'd make a fantastic talk show host.

Therefore, there's absolutely nothing to this album. It's not as good as the first cause at least on the first ya knew you were on the threshold of a childhood fantasy (and it was also a surprise to see someone who could look kool like Elton John but didn't have to kool ya out to prove it). But this is nothing more than a collection of songs which just don't make an album. Sure, it's got the same laid back atmosphere and the crap is all recorded in the usual downhome grooveout joints like Muscle Shoals and Bradley's Bam, but I fell asleep before the first side was over (which really don't mean shit cause I been snoozing at McLaughlin and Cactus concerts lately).

Nevertheless, it's a great LAZY album that ya can relax to when ya don't feel like doin" nuttin" but sittin" around doin" nuttin". And if bland southern drone elpees like this keep pouring outa Rebel territory then the South definitely will rise again. Like, take yer overalls off and settle into a warm bubble bath and let yer thoughts swirl away with J.J. Cale, a true southern bum.

Robot A. Hull

JOE COCKER (A & M)

Too many singers say, "I don't know anything else. I've never done anything else." So they croak away because they feel their talent is indispensible. Well, Bill Russell left basketball for celebrityland and Joe Willie is preparing now for his retirement from modeling for Sports Illustrated covers. Actors past their peak go on to make more money in real estate or franchised chicken joints and astronauts buy hotels. These artists have smarts or smart managers.

Now I'm not insinuating that Jumpin" Joey should give up his craft for greener pastures. Hell, I wouldn't buy a used car from him. But at the risk of sounding auteur, this work of art just don't compare to some of Cocker's earlier stuff.

There are advantages to records. Not only can you bring the music home, you can leave the group behind. Have you ever wished you hadn't seen somebody live or even their photo on the cover? Their looks or stage presence mined it for you. Or vice versa — the music blew their looks.

Despite unpopular opinion the songs on this album don't all sound like "Hitchcock Railway." That was one of his goodies, too. Thank god they don't all sound like his live set which sadly came off as a "St. James Infirmary1" jam. However, the material is similar and familiar. Maybe because most of it is penned by the dynamite duo of CockerStainton and you've heard most of it already.

Even though Chris Stainton looks like the Grim Reaper's brother, the piano work and

his half of the songs are quite lively. It's the damn rhythm section that's worrisome. They get so caught up in their great, subtle, funky, James Brown riffs that the repetition becomes downright boring. The thing needs some umph. Some bomp, not bump.

Don't play the album too often if you can help it. (Seriously, there are some wonderful songs, especially on the first side, that only Joe Cocker could possibly do justice to. "Pardon Me Sir" and "Something To Say" are my favorites today. Yesterday "High Time We Went" and "Black-eyed Blues" were and tomorrow "She Don't Mind" and "Midnight Rider" will be the best of the bunch. "Woman to Woman" waxes and wanes.) Don't concentrate on it either. Besides the grooves lasting longer, so will your tolerance for it. In other words, don't O.D. on Joe C. He's worth it but this album is worth liking too.

Robbie Cruger

TIM HARDIN Painted Head (Columbia)

Although Tim Hardin wrote none of the material, Painted Head may mark the beginning of the end of Hardin's painful disintegration, which began even before he became popular six years ago. His new album can't compare with his early work on Verve, but things are definitely looking up, and if he can't compose anymore, no one ever said Hardin couldn't sing. Here he is in fine voice.

Painted Head is a puzzler, second-rate where you'd expect it to excel, and quite good where you'd think it would be poor. The more unabashedly he rocks the better Hardin is; when he turns to the sentimental and slower tempi, originally his strongest suits, he falls flat. This is partly a function of the band and the production. The rockers feature Peter Frampton's incisive guitar and a massive and ebullient percussion section including Reebop Kwakubaah. Producer/ arranger Tony Meehan leaves these tracks pretty much alone and they do quite well • without him. But on other cuts he obtrudes stodgy orchestrations and choral parts which bog down the performances and rob them of vitality.

The most delightful numbers are Willie Dixon's "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover" and his less familiar "Do the Do," both of which cook irresistibly. Hardin tears into them with gruff and glorious gusto. There's nary a trace of the jazzy effeteness which made his early attempts at rock somewhat pallid. And the band rollicks with an equally joyful abandon. Either of these tracks could be a happy single. A third prime cut is a supple, snaky version of Peter Ham's "Perfection," on which Frampton shines. A second Ham number is undermined by its arrangement. (By the way, the symmetry of Painted Head is utter: each side begins with a Dixon tune and follows with Ham.)

Unfortunately, after this it's all downhill. Admittedly it's a gentle decline, for Hardin's renditions of "Lonesome Valley" and Jesse Winchester's "Yankee Lady" are all right, but who needs merely alright music? The real duds are an insufferably treacly "Sweet Lady," "I'll Be Home" with its pompous chorale out of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," and a spare "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." In another context this last song might be moving, but with its austere instrumentation (merely the acoustic guitar of Alun Davies, Cat Stevens" accompanist) and its sober autobiographical intensity it has no business being on this album. It closes the record on an incongruous down note, incongruous because of the light tone of the rest of the album and also because after Painted Head I'm quite ontimistic about Hardin's future, especially if W*gets a new producer and manages to write once again.

Ken Emerson

CARLY SIMON No Secrets (Elektra)

You wouldn't catch Carly Simon eating Malto Meal with a fork. No sir, that girl has class — no taste, but lots of class.^After all, her daddy is Richard Simon of famed duo Simon and Schuster (Yeah, then how come she never had a "Bridge Over Troubled Water"? — Ed.), and you can just bet your silver serving set she had all the advantages and was weaned on Ethel Merman. But taste! First she blew two albums worth of Laura Nyro-esque female folkie stuff, and then she has to go and marry James Taylor!

But don't despair, fans, there's still a ray of hope. This time I think she's done it. She's cut those euphemised odes to marriage, maturity and mush and injected some guts into her act. Who'd have thought a kid from

Riverdale, New York could pull such a punch. "You're So Vain" just oozes with that hardboiled drive of sweet revenge. In fact, it has been reported to me that at one concert Carly took advantage of the second chorus of "Vain" to spit right on the stage!

You couldn't ask for any better lyrics than "You probably think this song is about you," and what's even better is that Carly has the prince of narcissists singing backup. It was rumored that Carly kept his appearance on No Secrets a secret because it might upset Sweet Baby'Jim. It's even a bigger rumor who the song is about.

On No Secrets Carly gathers all the biggies. Linda and Paul, Doris Troy, Klaus Voorman, Nicky Hopkins, Bonnie Bramlett and even her brand new hubby. But she doesn't rely on these heavy characters to get her through — my god, Carly's a heavy too, she even met Bob Dylan this year. Pretty soon they'll be backed up like bananas just to see Ms. Simon. ~And she'll well deserve it. She's got an amazingly versatile voice that can take on more Tennessee than Tammy Wynette, sneak in some religion, cop a cooled-out folkie, and then come right back to rock'n"roll. James lent her "Night Owl Blues" for this album and she don't ever gotta give it back — that slippery sax is right out of the Blue Angel Club circa 1950.

So Carly's finally learned how Jo cook. And now old James wants to stick her in the kitchen, he wants to give her some kids and a one man dog. He wants to change their name to Simon-Taylor, and he's put a joint album on the agenda. Big plans, that man; but let's leave the last part up to the record company. Thank god they're on different labels.

Jaan Uhelszki

DON CHERRY Eternal Rhythm (MPS/BASF)

This is an immensely difficult record to review. All I really want to say is "listen to it," and I'm half afraid that adding anything . to that will scare you off. But here goes.

An awful lot of what passes for jazz these

days leaves plenty to be desired. On the conservative side, you have your soul-jazz stuff, with guys with Africannames playing Sly Stone on a thumb-piano with a James Brown-style rhythm section in the back, and occasionally some female doing her best to sing exhortatory Black Consciousness poetry. This stuff is the mainstay of the after midnight soul stations and the few jazz stations left. On the more radical side, you have a lot of gleeping and skronking going on more or less randomly that kind of starts and then kind of ends. Occasionally the performers will paint themselves in Mau-Mau colors and stick bones in their hair, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Then you have your spiritual jazz performers, whose range goes from the novocaine orchestra music of Alice Coltrane to the rather more down-to-earth spirituality of Pharoah Sanders.

But nobody — and I mean no-body — makes music like Don Cherry. And with Eternal Rhythm, I do believe Don Cherry has made an album to stand alongside the jazz classics. His intention in making the album was to create "unity in sound and rhythm," and he has succeeded. The music on this album is what I call "being" music — music that happens all at once, instead of going from one place to another. You listen into it instead of listening to it. It's comparable to the kind of intensity that was generated by Cream, say, in their fiery on-stage battles. It's most definitely a music of textures — there are plenty of flutes and Indonesian gong-ing gamelan instruments besides Cherry's trumpet and the trombones, saxes, piano, bass and drums — and of cycles, of ideas going round and round until they evolve into something else.

And — if I haven't scared you off already — the wonderful surprise is that it's listenable. Side II especially is one of the most wonderful listening experiences I've had all year, starting off with Cherry piping on two wooden flues, transforming into clanging gamelan music, boiling, thrashing "new jazz," and coming out on the other end, twenty minutes later, with a shuffling, bluesy, busting-out-all-over-with-joy TUNE that gives me such a rush every time I hear it that I want to leap out of my seat. And then it goes down again, and Cherry pipes away on the wooden flutes, and it fades out. Whew.

Innovative? Sure. But more than that, the music that Don Cherry (and his remarkable sidemen, who include Sonny Sharrock, Albert Mangelsdorff, Karl Berger, Joachim Kuhn and the amazing M. Jacques Thollot on drums) is making is music of uncompromising artistic integrity that ordinary folks like you and me can listen to and enjoy over and over again. Stuff like that ain't easy, and we should be glad we have people like Don Cherry around.

Listen to him.

Ed Ward

JIMI HENDRIX War Heroes (Reprise)

Gravedigging. Maybe they should let Jimi Hendrix rest in peace. He's beginning to resemble that aging baseball star who craps up his lifetime statistics by wobbling through one last season. Warner Brothers should think about retiring Hendrix's number, despite the box-office draw. The flood of "new" Hendrix albums won't renew any life contracts, and, judging from much of War Heroes, it threatens us with an O.D. of lesser-quality stuff.

But at any age, any stage, Jimi Hendrix is sure to prpduce a few hits, a few homers, if

by reflex alone. The album is a Frankenstein — some of it rots, some of it is fresh. There are a few solid instrumentals — yes, fans, instrumentals! Jimi's guitar minus the mediocre singing. (How could such a slugger be so average a fielder?) They're not as cosmically incredible as f expected from an unleashed, unbridled Hendrix - but fuck, they're still roaring loud, inter-dimensional, and authentic. Good enough to make you wish you had a better stereo and no neighbors. "Tax Free" and "Midnight", which feature Noel Redding on bass, are especially up to par. (Mitch Mitchell goes the whole route as drummer, but Redding is replaced on seven out of ten cuts by Billy Cox, who lacks the real fullbottomness of his predecessor.)

The vocal cuts range from forgettables to utter rejects. Cliched lyrics crammed into very melodramatic rhythms, punctuated by guitar leads that we've heard before: songs that didn't make it onto other albums. "Bleeding Heart" and "Izabella" are two exceptions that are rousing enough to be enjoyed a few times. But the rest are annoyingly stilted, formula songs that should have been left in the closet..

I guess that I listened to this album with too many expectations. I was haunted by remembrances of Live Hendrix, of amplifier walls and flaming guitars; of purging my evil young soul by listening to the feedback crash in "Foxy Lady"; of wah-wah conversations and orchestrated guitar leads; of the best guitarist in the world. I should have realized that post-mortem albums are like pirate albums — you're grateful to possess them, and you expect the worst while hoping for the best.

Nearly all of Hendrix's albums have been disappointingly inconsistent, and War Heroes is particularly so. It's best is not good enough, and its worst is dismal.

Larry Bush

RENAISSANCE Prologue (Sovereign)

These soft little pooks are just as schmaltzoid as their monicker implies; an artsy-fartsy lot with a goil soprano into wordless, off-key vocal gutterings and a piano player who might be the revivification of Ferrante and Teicher (if only it was Santo and Johnny). They bear little relation, if any, to the previous Keith (ex-Yahbuhd) Relf Renaissance, an infinitely more listenable conglomeration though born out of the same LaBrea of pretension. Relf had a shitty voice but he kinda looked like Brian Jones in a man-sized dwarf suit, a definitive rock'n"roll anemic who grew long hair together with Eric Clapton, hassled with Jeff Beck, and got to die a manic Yardbird death with Jimmy Page. And played harmonica on "Lost Woman," the greatest of all Yardbird song?. So he brought * something more to the first Renaissance than musicianship or experience or how to sing bad and somehow sound good ... yes folks, he dragged his balls along and it's a good thing he did or they would've sounded like a flock of petticoats floating on the puff-puff with little tiny bells and chimes tinkling and Graham Nash doing a curtsey, cuticles neatly trimmed and hair all in place. Which is, uh, how they sound now. Of course, one of the reasons for

this sad collapse might be that there is absolutely no one from the Relf incarnation in this present band ... it's a real mystery and one that Basil Rathbone would have flared his nostrils at: what happened to the Renaissance that was led by Keith Relf and released in the States on Elektra? Why is this latest Renaissance totally different personnel and recording on a Capitol subsidiary label? How come there's such a big-time packaging job for the new group, complete with glossy-tearfull-yetsensitive-and-hopeful violins-ebbing-and-throbbing-group-history and all? How come all that is said about the previous band in that history is that it was indeed named Renaissance? How come these punks suck so bad? You might well arsk.

Dann DeWitt

FLASH CADILLAC & THE CONTINENTAL KIDS (Epic)

In the stinkeroo tradition of sudsy dedications, I would like to dedicate this review to the spitfire soul and inspiration of genuine rock'n'rollers like Mark Shipper, Greg Shaw and Monte Hall...

There have been rather lame nostalgic parody attempts by groups like Sha Na Na and Dan Hicks, and there's been some excellent subtle wisecracks likewise (Zappa and Godfrey Daniel). And most people have a hard time realising that groups like the Frut or Flamin Groovies or even Commander Cody are not to some extent tongue-in-cheek. Never fear, tho; if you have scruples about the frankness of such endeavors, then let your hair down with these beasts from the past. THEY'RE THE REAL STUFF!!!!

This group has had fanzine appeal for so long it's no surprise that they finally came out with an album. They've been touring the South and out West from high school gyms to burger joints, and kids everywhere have fallen in love with the klass these guys generate onstage. You're liable even to find yourself actually abandoning your tiedye, dope, and bellbottom frigidity to get yourself a little piece of the ACTION. Jeez, it's WHAMMO!

Now I'm not talking about the usual rigamorole rock'n"roll revival type groups. Sure, Brownsville Station and the Wild Angels is fine stuff, but this group isn't any mere revival horseshit. They don't need to be. Eating twat, scrabbling in the street, slamming heads in ... that's their way of life. Goddamn, you think these twerps are some third-rate Columbia students out to klown around for beer-orgy revival parties?!!

Hell, no! Especially not when they got pix of themselves giving each other the finger on the back of the record jacket and especially not when they admit right there in print on the back that they do stuff like eat girls out and carry shotguns. That don't sound like pussy college jerks to me, and if they're as raw as they look in their photos, then it sure the fuck ain't no put-on.

The problem with the album, tho, is that motherfucker Kim Fowley has stuck his puss into the profit. Always cashing in on the novelty branch of our pop society excrement, Fowley has managed to do some jigs with the Hollywood Argyles, King Lizard, Wild Man Fischer, and younameit. So what he does is treat this group as just another GaGa fad in producing the album. Thus, the yokum dishes out special effects and has em do a couple of cute tunes ("Muleskinner Blues" and "Endless Sleep") so he can show off like David Bowie's ass. The result is a very uneven album, but there's enuf evidence here to prove that these guys could really blow yer top off if experienced live. Which is what I hope Epic does for the next one — record "em playing at a dance in some gym in, say, Omaha.

Meanwhile this record still has plenty of titillating tweek-peaks to carry ya into genuine doodah fantasy. Incredible rockers like "Teenage Eyes," "She's So Fine," "Up on the Mountain," "Cryin in the Rain," and a re-hash of "Pipeline" plus other 15 year old tearjerkers about falsies, shotgun weddings, and feeling off/putting out/going all the way/ etc. Wherein you'll hear the oozy sound of Del Shannon, Eddie Cochran, the Trashmen, the HubKapps, Greasy Wyatt Urp, and even some Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

I'm sure it'll receive your "Hot Snatch Album of the Year Award."

Robot A. Hull

PLAINSONG (Elektra)

It's very democratic of him not to plaster his name all over this record, because Plainsong in fact amounts to another Ian Matthews

album — he wrote most of the material, he does most of the singing, and his musical sensibilities set the scene. All of which is fine by me: 1 like Matthews, and I like this record better than anything else he's done.

Matthews was an original Fairport Conventioneer, then leader of Southern Comfort, then solo artist, and now de facto leader of a band which plays a synthesis of his various musical antecedents - traditional, folk cum rock instrumentation, and country. And aside from what is surely the prettiest, most melodic male voice in Recent Pop History, the man's signal quality is his uncommonly good taste. His sidemen are always consummate musicians, his arrangements are terrific (remember "Woodstock?"), and when the material isn't his own lyrical ballads or crisp rockers, it's the best of what others have to offer, to wit: Neil Young's "Tell Me Why," Jesse Winchester's "Brand New Tennessee Waltz," songs by Richard Farina and Phil Spector, and, on this record, Paul Siebel's lovely "Louise," Judy Henske and Jerry Yester's "Raider" (from their excellent Farewell Aldebaran) and a Dave Dudley-style truck-driver's boogie by some genius named Fagan. It is to Matthews" eternal credit that none of these songs eclipses his own — this record is singularly free of the noisome detritus which collects around such supposed wellsprings of originality as James Taylor and Rod Stewart.

Plainsong rocks, rolls, swings, and stomps with equal aplomb. It's a record of deft eclecticism, paramount subtlety, immense charm, and wonderfully good music. A complete success; let's hope it augurs well for Ian and his band — I seem to be awaiting their next effort with unaccustomed pleasure and, let's also hope, not unwarranted enthusiasm.

Gerrit Graham

NITZINGER One Foot In History (Capitol)

Nitzinger's first album was the most overlooked effort of Summer, 1972. Not all that much by the consumer, since Nitzinger got onto the charts for a few weeks (thanks to their tour with Leon Russell) and sold pretty well for a debut LP. But as I write this, in early December, Nitzinger remains the noisiest album I have heard all year. And to think that no one has pointed that out, in a

year when piledriving rock and roll has been so hard to come by, seems strange indeed.

At any rate, Nitzinger was odds-on the most impressive debut (with the exception of Blue Oyster Cult) by a new heavy metal group since Dust. The four hard rock cuts on Side two embody everything dynamic about heavy metal rock, from sizzling rhythm guitar to what may be the definitive style of hyperactive kinetic drumming. Excellent songwriting throughout; "Witness To The Truth" may be one of the best decibel scorchers of the year. Even the one ballad has some fine, searing guitar riffs in its chorus.

Though not as outstanding, the first side of Nitzinger is pretty solid all the same. "L.A. Texas Boy" and "Louisiana Cock Fight" have been all over AM radio here in Texas (Nitzinger are from Fort Worth), which is fine by me since they're both unstoppable spews of high velocity rock. This side's ballad is pretty drippy, but drummer Linda Waring's strange Bolan cum Plant backup vocals (which pop up several times during the LP) make it worth sitting through.

"Ticklelick" in particular is a great example of noise for*its own sake: take one of those Savoy Brown boogies, and speed it up to 78 RPM or maybe twice that. You have to turn the bass up and loudness contour on to get the sound on this album to rattle around and resonate like it should, but if you don't know what a loudness contour is by now, you deserve to have your Led Zep albums taken away from you (unless you're the proud owner of a $79 Sears Portable run through a beat-up guitar speaker, in which case you go to the front of the class).

One Foot In History is Nitzinger's second album, and it's a letdown coming after the kickass quality of the first. It sounds like John Nitzinger exhausted his supply of strong material on Nitzinger, and the new LP additionally suffers from a decreasing commitment to the idea of metal. Two non-metal cuts an album is acceptable, but more than that is out! Spelled O-U-T! Fact is, a couple songs on One Foot In History get pretty pretentious, not unlike Dust's second album.

Run through the famous Noise Meter test, Nitzinger clocked in at 95. One Foot In History doesn't do as well, but forget that, most groups only make one good album anyway. Nitzinger may not quite have equaled the famous (zooommm varrrooommmm) amphetamine streaks up and down the scales of Dust's debut album, but it was the closest thing to it heard from a new group in 1972.

Mike Saunders

CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL Creedence Gold (Fantasy)

What a pisser. Here's the first in what promises to be a ten year cycle of Creedence Hot Rocks from Fantasy. Now, of course, this, like all CCR albums but their last two, is a great record. Even if it does have 11 minutes of boring, repetitious Fogerty guitar jam on "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and 8 boring big "uns of "Susie Q."

You may say that the inclusion of these treks is justified since they're both big faves in Creedence fandom, and even if Fogerty warn't no Duane Allman "Grapevine" was better than most of the other lengthy lollapaloozas on FM. But everybody knows CCR were an AM group and their greatest classics were sheer 3 minute Fab 40 jukebox stuff. And there's not enough of that here, and you know why.

Just like RCA with Elvis, Fantasy knows just how to repackage and wring out the

optimum coin from a group that specializes in two-sided hits: they didn't call this slab o" flab Creedence Gold for nothing. Next Xmas they'll just flip over half the hits here and let the uninitiated (are there any left?) luxuriate in "Fortunate Son," "Lodi" and "Up Around the Bend." And they'll call it Creedence Gold Vol. II: The Other Sides.

Maybe. Then again, they might just get real perverse and pitch a few more "Midnight Specials" at ya and even make a point of saving "It Came Out of the Sky" for Creedence Gold Vol. XII which'll feature the fifth repackaging of "Proud Mary" and Stu Cook outtakes from Mardi Gras. So don't be a cheapskate - buy Bayou Country and Green River for your loves, and leave this set to the dilettantes.

Lester Bangs

NORMAN GREENBAUM Petaluma (Reprise)

Norman Greenbaum, you will remember, is the blithe soul who gave us "Spirit In The Sky" a few years back, before slipping into the relative obscurity of a farm in Petaluma, California, once known as the chicken capital of the country. Norman has gone back to the land, as it were, raising a few goats to supply his dairy business, growing his own veggies, and hatching out a song here and there.

The results of this organic existence are contained here: gentle, bib-overalled sagas of a man and his family tromping around kneedeep in goatshit and loving every minute of it.

Norman's existence now is pretty much summed up in Petaluma's lead-off song:

I'm going to build

a grade A barn for my goats So I can sell their milk to the folks

Who wanna be healthy, who wanna live right 1 got the supply (Chorus)

Greenbaum's Dairy, that's our name Norman, Vicki, Jethro, Sara Jane Oh me, Oh my Such a long way from Spirit in the Sky

Lest one should get the impression, that life in Petaluma is just a big bowl of crunchy granola, however, Norman sets the record

straight in "The Day the Well Went Dry" and the heart-rending, "The New Dead Shrimp Blues" ("Woke up this moming/All my shrimps were dead.").

One of the few cuts on the album that doesn't relate to the great outdoors is "Diary Queen," a girl named Crystal Norman must've known in high school who dug a football player with a "56 Chevy.

Greenbaum possesses a soft melodic voice and writes songs to match it. His tunes are structurally simplistic and sometimes even jingle-y, but are catchy enough nonetheless, and given the expert instrumental help he has here, they carry his lyrics along nicely.

Noteworthy assistance is provided by Ry Cooder on bottleneck guitar and mandolin, Mark Naftalin on accordian, Kenny Burt on banjo and Henry Diltz on glockenspiel, among others, and Norman, no slouch himself, performs on guitar, ukelele and comb in addition to having penned all the songs himself.

The old "back-to-the-land" schtick has been done so often lately that it's getting to be a bit of a yawner, but Norman Greenbaum comes across as such a genuinely sincere dude, and his music is so deftly understated, that Petaluma is a joy, albeit a slightly recycled one. It's certainly the best record this year from the former chicken capital of the country.

Alex Ward

LYNN ANDERSON Listen To A Country Song (Columbia)

Lynn Anderson is a weird figure in the record scene of 72/73. In country music, she's at the top and can't really get any higher, but more and more people from way outside shitkicker territory are falling under her spell. At first it makes no sense whatsoever. The songs on her records are so deliberately mediocre as to defy all the laws of random selection; the laws which, of course, apply to all country artists who don't write their own random material. With the exception of "There's a Party Coin" Oh" and "It Don't Do No Good to Be a Good Girl," the choice of songs and arrangements here is terrible. But that doesn't keep this from being a fine album.

Lynn Anderson's appeal doesn't rest with her songs or her phrasing or her vocal range, but with something about her voice that hearkens back to the early sixties. Of all the girl singers currently flooding the market, only Lynn Anderson has retained the desperate, hurt little girl voice that propelled Lesley Gore to fame, that made everyone love Sue Thompson, that endeared Reparata & the Del-Rons to millions, and that filled all of our daydreams with visions of a half-naked Veronica of the Ronettes straining back the tears. It's the voice of a love-starved nymphet who wants desperately to have her first orgasm but doesn't quite know how or where or when, and that voice grabs you every time. God, I love Lynn Anderson. ird have to, to put up with the shit that she records, but I love it anyway. In a year of liberated, outspoken ladies, who can resist a woman in chains?

It's only a matter of time before Columbia gets hip to what they have in Lynn Anderson, but you can't really place much faith in time or Columbia. Her growing sophistication and maturity (I mean, she's even got her own TV show in some states!) may weaken the admittedly primitive hold that Lynn has on her loyal listeners, although that hasn't been the case so far. Columbia, for all their good intentions, may try to turn her into a universal Kate Smith or Gale Garnett (God help us!). It's a lot to ask, and too much to hope for, but there's always the possibility that somehow, someday, she'll magically record "Baby I Love You" and "It's My Party" and "James, James Hold the Ladder Steady" and "Whenever a Teenager Cries" and just melt the hearts of everybody in the world. Meanwhile, if you can just get past the material, this is a fine fine album for wet dreams and faraway looks.

Brian Cullman

KEITH JARRETT Expectations (Columbia)

One night a couple of years ago, I was listening to some FM station, and on came this beautiful instrumental piece, really delicate, light as a feather. Vibes and piano — a good combination. Turned out it was Gary Burton (of course) and Keith Jarrett playing piano. The way Jarrett was playing the chords on the piano was very open, very reminiscent of — of all people — Floyd Cramer. I got the album, and while that cut was the standout (it's called "In Your Quiet Place"")* it turned me on to a whole school of jazz that I never knew existed, one that I call "country-andwestem jazz." So far, I've only been able to find two pianists who really fit into it, Keith Jarrett and Mai Waldron. Waldron's been around a while, playing with Mingus and Eric Dolphy, and Jarrett is a newcomer whose credits include the 1966-67 (and best) Charles Lloyd group and a stint with Miles Davis.

What makes Jarrett so fascinating is the fact that he knows the piano inside and out (he's obviously had a lot of classical training), he chooses to work within a pretty conservative melodic/harmonic context and manages to bring off amazingly inventive ideas anyway, and on top of it all, he is capable of playing his ass of on piano and sax. And on Expectations he does it all, four sides" worth.

He has expert help, too — Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian,.Sam Brown and Airto Moreira on bass, tenor sax, drums, guitar and percussion, respectively. Some cuts

also feature a string section and/or brass section, neither of which, fortunately, gets in the way.

Not all the cuts on Expectations are super-cosmic, of course. Jarrett „ has a tendency towards aimless noodling, where he'll box himself into a melodic or harmonic situation and not quite be able to figure his way out, but even at times like those, he never irritates or bores you. And the best cuts here are exuberant, full of energy and good spirits. Cuts like the rocking "Take Me Back" or the side-long tour-de-force "Nomads," with its layer upon layer of themes and funky brass section are, whether you choose to call them jazz or not, some of the most exciting and original music being made by anybody anywhere these days.

I must add a final note to this album, though. It is commendable indeed that Columbia has seen fit to honor Jarrett's artistry with this splendid album (two-for-theprice-of-one-and-a-buck), because it presumably means that people who don't have access to a large stock of imported jazz records will be able to hear him. The second-best album Jarrett's made (after this one) is called Facing You, a solo piano album, on the German ECM label, and it's real hard to find outside of big cities. But Mai Waldron, who is an equally fine artist, has not only had to move to Europe, but records mainly for the tiny independent German label Enja, and his records are impossible to find. Fortunately, several of these small labels, domestic and imported, have banded together for U.S. and Canadian distribution, and are available through JCOA Distribution Service, 1841 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10023. They have low prices, and the catalogue's free. If Expectations whets your appetite for new sounds, and I don't see how it could miss, they provide a lot of places to go from there.

Ed Ward

JOE SOUTH A Look Inside (Capitol)

This whole package is pretty deceiving: First of all there's the title: A Look Inside, along with that cheepy illustration of the windows and the clouds and the grass and the sky which John Hoemle of Capitol's Art Dept., slapped onto Joe's forehead. Then there's the songs themselves: Joe slips in "Games People Play" about five times at

least, and in one egotistical shitload, I m A Star," he mentions the aforementioned by name. In another he talks about "Coming Down All Alone," a cliche-ridden vehicle which won't convince anyone with its Mickey Mouse, forced-rhymed sincerity; in "Misfit" somebody (probably Joe) farts and synthesizes the aural result for the song's duration, and on the very same piece (as throughout the entire lp) Mr. South tries to come across like Tony Joe White's younger brother, talking about having a good time and, though he doesn't actually come out and say it, he's thinking about crocodiles and the Bayou.

Maybe if he tries recording "I Am Woman" somebody would pay attention.

Lou Papineau

PINK FAIRIES What A Bunch Of Sweeties (British Polydor)

There are those who believe that pop trends bounce back and forth across the Atlantic every few years, altering the direction of various scenes only to be supplanted by the next wave which pushes things back the other way and so on into infinity. There are also folks who opine that it s nothing more than a huge divider which encloses vacuums to either side of it. The Pink Fairies could pop up as evidence for either point of view, embodying as they do the Dead Kitten Theorem - full speed across the divide until it hits something and doesn't bounce back.

What didn't richochet in this case was a heady beam of late sixties neo-acid-martyrrock, which is best defined by the space between the Airplane's Crown of Creation and Volunteers. This force, which I believe they used to call "vibrations" back in those days, seems to have reached the English shore with little or no deflection, and still retains its chief elements of utmost electronic distortion coupled with dope-toking, pig-offing, and on-trucking. The poke in the panelling apparently shut up tight after this final streak got through, leaving the Fairies and other anachronisms like Hawkwind in a hippy limbo where they continued to thrive, untouched by greasy hands.

I stumbled upon them like an octogenarian anthropologist discovering an uncontaminated stone-age tribe in the Forest Preserve, stunned with disbelief that such a phenomena could still exist without having been diluted by all the dreary claptrap in abundance these days. But the artifacts are plastered all over the cover for anyone to see: lapel buttons with messages like "BOOGIE WITH CANNED HEAT" and "I AM EXPERIENCED," a pack of rolling papers, a hash pipe, flowers, a tiny carving of a pig and even a little china buddha face. The cover opens up to reveal a comic strip faithful to the R. Crumb school right down to the illustrated song titles of dancing light bulbs and eighth notes darting across the desert. And the music? Well, this is no fancy colored rhino tranquilizer, brothers and sisters, this is the real shit!

Like any crack pack of anarchist goons, the Fairies get the dose of political clunkery over with early, complete with beer can rhythm section in "Right On, Fight On" and proceed directly into the more beguiling dope and sex tunes like "Marilyn," which asks the

musical question "Oh Marilyn/baby whatcha carryin" while the band pays an intense visit to riff heaven. Along with guest star Trevor Burton (ex-Move), the Fairies never slack when it comes to putting down combustible, brazen hard rock on every song, particularly on side two where in four stalwart numbers they proceed to: (1) bury the famous "Walk, Don't Run" in a blaze of feedback and dance on the ashes, (2) carry out a fetching acid grotesquery that would give Hendrix flashbacks in his grave, (3) render a brand of heavy-metal indigenous to jagged, desolate asteroids, and (4) have the cheek to wrap it all up with the most splinter-voiced version of "I Saw Her Standing There" since it was last performed at the American Legion Hall.

The entire album is given an enormous lift from the live-in-the-studio production which gives everything the sound of having been filtered through a few hundred hunched, sweaty bodies.

So if yer looking to really truly get off and stir the old nodes, skip the strychnine this weekend and hit your local import bin for the Pink Fairies while you can, before they turn into another country-rock band.

Dick Johnson

THE MELLOW FELLOWS Snorting (Raccoon)

Dino Valente used to be their lead singer, but that was after Nick Gravenites and before Marmaduke. Howard Wales played organ for them and Jerry Garcia played with them before the New Riders were even formed. John Cippolina sits in with them and Gracie Slick says they're her all-time favorite band. All I want to know is what took them so fucking long to record this album? How many zillions of living room jams did they have? How many spoons of coke did they snort. And how many amazing sets were played at the Lion's share club?

The many Mellow Fellow fans are divided into two camps arguing why in the five years they have existed they haven't recorded an

album. Some say they had to wait until they were ready, while others say in the five years they have existed they could have released five albums. Then we would have four albums plus this new one to enjoy! What a gas.

The Mellow Fellows .were the originators ot the Mann ^uuiuy uviug -They've been playing the laid back, country influenced music since they were born, or so they say. And boy is it mellow! We all know the Dead's harmonies were influenced by CSN&Y, but who influenced CSN&Y? The Mellow Fellows, of course.

Each member of the Mellow Fellows, besides being a virtuoso instrumentalist, is also a master of the vocal chords. Take Redeye Framis (pedal steel) for instance: since the age of 2Vi he has been singing professionally. He even got a scholarship to Julliard, but he turned it down to vegetate in the country. Or take Skitter Lewis (guitar). He won the Ted Mack Amateur Hour competition for the year of 1963 by singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" He looks back on it now with remorse, saying: "If I wasn't tripping at the time I would have lost."

The album starts off with the usual opening jam where everybody gets a chance to play faster than one another. It's entitled "Tamalpais Rag," and believe me it really cooks. They then do the obligatory dope-running song, "El Paso Express." And of course the compulsory Merle Haggard goof. The Mellow Fellows turn in a hilarious version of the obscure Haggard classic "Hippie in the Woodpile." Not to be left out in the cold, the Mellow Fellows do an ecology song which will undoubtedly end up on the top of the heap. It s a catchy tune called "Pidgeons."

So much for side one. All of side two is taken up by a suite written by all the members of the group. It's the story of how all the rock musicians in Marin County kidnap the county and take it to the moon where they start a new society. Everyone sits around meditating, snorting coke, and jamming. The spng ends with Taos, N.Mi, Boulder Colorado, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and New Paltz, New York all being captured by longhairs and taken up to the moon to join Marin. A beautiful society is the result and the album ends on this joyous note. It should be added that 30 seconds into the side there is a short beep which acts as the signal to drop two tabs of orange sunshine.

All in all I'd have to say this is the best album ever to come out of Marin County. Subdued music and exciting lyrics. I also just heard that all five members of the Mellow Fellows have begun recording solo albums. There's nothing like making up for lost time.

Bob Cirkiel

DAVID BROMBERG Demon in Disguise (Columbia)

A few months ago in the pages of this magazine, David Bromberg's first solo album was reviewed. It was one of the greatest record reviews ever written — how can you fault something which begins with the lines : "I hate this fucking record. I hate it worse than anything I have ever heard before"? But a lot of readers didn't like it (the review; they didn't like or dislike the record because almost nobody bought it), and only I know why.

Because we didn't print the author's first David Bromberg review, the one written before the vituperation quoted above, that's why. This was even more of a masterpiece, being one of the most scurrilous documents since the middle novels of Louis-Ferdinand Celine. It had a title: "David Bromberg's 115th Dream." It had swastikas in the margins. It was written on a rare lampshade. It was genius: The gods meet on Mount Olympus, see, to decide what to do about the Dylan gap. "Shit," says Zeus, "no real folksingers left atall - justa buncha japs and wops and spies!" But in strides Apollo, plays David Bromberg's first album, and proclaims: "Gentlemen, David Bromberg is the answer to the Jewish Question!"

Only hitch was the author immediately called up all his Jewish friends like Greil Marcus and Barry Kramer and read it to "em, and most of "em didn't like it, so he concluded it was antisemitic and shitcanned it in favor of Review No.2. Which is bullshit, since this writer is the most Jewish goy rock critic I've ever met: most of his pals are yids, all of his girlfriends till the current one, he's a real Hyman. Ah well, sic transit.

Cut to this week and the arrival of the new David Bromberg album. First thing I gotta do, of course, is take it and show it to Mr. Goyboy. He takes one look at it, and proceeds to bend and shatter it to smithereens IN THE COVER, without even slitting the shrinkwrap. I went down to the basement that night, eight hours later, and he was still at it, leering and breaking up the slivers of black wax into even more miniscule pieces. I picked up one the size of a Frito and bit into it. It wasn't easy to digest.

Now, by all accounts and to be perfectly fair, David Bromberg is a loser. Just look at that face: Demon in Disguise, Every Mother's Son! He's a very nice boy, and he means well, so we shouldn't hold his acquaintanceships against him. And this is a very nice record. David can't help it if "When I ask for water/She brings me gasoline" ("Jugband Song"). Although one must take offense at the rampant sexism:

I say watch out now mama,

Don't you treat big David bad,

You don't watch your step,

Your're bound to make big David mad.41

C'mon Dave! Ain't it really just like you said in the title song, "I know we all have brothers and sisters." And David's problem with sexism, cropping up again, almost keeps "Sharon" from being the best "Little Egypt" rip-off since "Lady Stardust." "Tennessee Waltz" is a real heartbreaker, and proves that vocally David is much better off when he's trying to make his voice break like Hank Williams" than when he's groaning a la Kristofferson. Of course, he can't hold a note, but maybe his next album will feature him yodel-ing! Finally, there's the epic seven-minute version of "Mr. Bojangles," the story of an ole feller who just loved to dance, that'll jive yer buns to glory. Yessir, David Bromberg's sure enough fond of his American folklore.

Lester Bangs

*© Sweet Jellyroll Music

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE'S GREATEST HITS EPIC

I don't understand it. It's not like I'm new to rock'n"roll "cause I ain't. My dues are almost all paid up. In fact, my hearing is almost gone. I've been to every muddy festival, and I spend money I don't have on records. And I've never seen these guys on TV. Consequently, IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when I found this record in my collection, and it looks like it's been played 300 times at least. But, as G-d is my witness, I've never even heard of the Dave Clark Five!

But I don't mind telling you that Dave Clark has stumbled across something extraordinary, something ahead of its time, something that may change the course of musical recordings. And it's not a record you can eat! Dave Clark, who produced this record, has the SAME THING coming out of EVERY SPEAKER, in a method called Monophonic Sound. It works something like this: the band comes into the studio and lays down all the tracks on one tape, giving one the same effect one gets listening to

everything else in the world with the exception of stereo and quadrophonic recordings.

Imagine, a sound achieved that is more realistic and lifelike than your present equipment! Plus more consolidated too -going from these forty and seventy track tape, system studios to one track is like going from tubes to transistors. Not only is mono better and easier in the long run to produce, but it's cheaper! It is reasonable to believe that the records would cost up to $1.50 less if they were mono, a saving for the buyer, namely you!! So why not get on the ball and write the record companies demanding them to issue all records in beautiful mono instead of ripping you off with the inferior, higher priced stereo product.

In addition, conversion of a stereophonic system can be easily and cheaply done by yourself right in your own home! All you have to do is attach a copper wire to both prongs of the systems plug right before you, put the plug in your wall socket, and presto, a mono system!

Dave Clark is truly a genius.

R. Evan Cirkiel