DAVID BOWIE Aladdin San* IBCA)

On �Drive-In Saturday,� a song from the new David Bowie album, a space-age couple flirt and �try and get it on like once before/ When people stared in Jagger�s eyes and scored.� Elsewhere there is an actual Rolling Stones song, �Let�s Spend the Night Together,� camped up for all its offensive worth. The spoken finale plea included just in case you�re still listening goes: �They said we were too young/ Our kinda love was no fun...� This is the cut you�ll love to hate capse this is the performance Bowie�ll never live down. So warped a perspective does it present,' one�s tempted to say this entire album would better have been left below ground, and David Bowie with it. Not only has �the next Dylan?� overstepped his mark, miscalculated his audience, and revealed himself to be only another nut in the big fruitcake — he has blasphemed The Rolling Stones, for which there is no excuse.

Like it or not, one doody this smelly does not necessarily stink up a whole album and Aladdin Sane is okay in spite of some other mistakes which indicate Bowie has become a knowing victim of his own hype. The Tides of Lust world of Aladdin Sane is uneasytruce between the past, present and future. Homo superior has evolved from awesome speculation to drugstore reality. Peopled by a cast of cartoon characters — Aladdin, Buddy, Reverend Alabaster, legendary Lorraine, Jung the foreman and his Astronette mate, The Prettiest Star — the songs make reference in cinematic images to an America where the Oceans have dried up, the people�s sense of the past is conveyed through video, and Detroit has been swiftly depopulated by war in The Street. Sex/ romance in its major and minor variations (queer, straight, bio, ono, Orphean, fascist, anarchist, inanimate...) is the primary sign of recognition and the big-chief motif of the record. At a spooky party described in �Watch That Man,� the Lou Reed type yoii gotta look out for �talks like a jerk/ But he could eat you with a fork and spoon.� On the other coast, an ageing movie queen tells it like it is: �Smack, baby, smack is all that you feel.� And there�s the Jean Genie who lives on his back and loves chimney stacks.

Another 23-inch set-up you can stand to talk about more than you can stand to hear. Bowie�s appeal is intellectual (unless you go in for smooth-skinned fellas with no eyebrows — the bushier the better I say) and a lyric sheet or headphones are recommended for proper appreciation of his astute albums (of which this is not one). He continues to write often inspired, fascinating lines, but his music is hit-and-miss. What with �Width of a (Circle,� �Changes� and �Five Years,� �Watch That Man� is the one thing you wouldn�t expect this LP�s opener to be — a predictable Main St. readymade. �Aladdin Sane� features one of Bowie�s better, more hummable melodies (there aren�t many) but gets leftfielded midway through when an avant-gardy exposition takes its pretty time. �Drive-In Saturday� suffers from the way Bowie pronounces one word — �Buddy� — like Alice Cooper, and then is subsequently rescued, irony of ironies, by a Van Morrison scat rave-up. �Time� is conversely irritating in its mockery, not of some other star, but David himself; it�s the kind of Brelesque burlesque cabaret twirl that might come off better live than it does here. I�d just as soon not find out. �The Prettiest Star� is yet another la-may booger — a 1970 ode to my alterego — with a stunning guitar intro by Ronson.

These disappointing cuts on Aladdin Sane suffer from self-indulgence and self-abuse which in turn seem to have been spurned on by Bowie�s own self-imposed isolation, both real (business, media) and imagined (psychic), which in turn has given him a lot of artistic mileage. So what? There�s some good stuff too. �Panic In Detroit� and �Cracked Actor� show that Bowie can take it as deep as any 16-year-old pube, with plenty o� pizzazz left over for the adults to work out on. The former song concerns itself with the temporary relationship of Bowie/ Aladdin and a gun-totin�, truck-drivin� revolutionary (�He looked a lot like Che Guevara�). That opening clincher is introduced by a low-end bomp line from Ronson which is quickly vamped up by �Gimme Shelter� rhythm and chorus. Chugga chugga! There is fighting in the streets and the police are on the loose. Bowie goes to school one day to find his teacher �crouching in his overalls,� somehow scores a trillion dollars, and returns home to find that his cutie has shot himself, leaving Bowie the gun and a suicide note instead of the autograph he�d requested. It�s fairly obvious, subtly put together, and quite mesmerizing. �Cracked Actor� would be great to hear on the AM simply because you never will. Mick Ronson skawks out a massive dizbuster of a riff over Trevor Boulder�s grapefully lumbering bass and some quick drumming from Woody Woodmansey while Bowie relates the bitching of an S & M-inclined daddy and his Sunset & Vine trick.

If you turn Aladdin Sane over you�ll find a couple more goodies, whlich rescue Side Two from the disaster of �Time,� �The Prettiest Star� and �Together.� �Jean Genie� may�ve been insinuating itself for a while now: it came out as a single (in slightly different form) last year. Poor Little Greenie is the athlete of the future, a splendidly repulsive being reminiscent of a Samuel R. Delaney creation who �says he�s a beautician and sells you nuitrition.� Too long and consciously monotonous, a catchy little number nevertheless.

�Lady Grinning Soul� shows just how far afield Bowie can go and still bring off his brand of sweet-lips. Similar to �Rock �n� Roll Suicide� in its concluding affirmation of life, love and the pursuit of�happiness, �Lady� salutes the momentary joys of a good fuck who�ll �beat you down at cool canasta� and then drive away in her Volkswagen to cruise for fresh converts. Bowie soars through the vocal in oddly convincing manner — affected, effeminate and mawkish. He�s the only guy with the nerve-plus-chops to pull if off.

Undeniably, David Bowie has got real problems. A very inconsistent live performer who is much too dependent on his charm to ever really step out with the authority R & R needs to render sophisticated lyrics convincingly, he would better serve his own interests by sticking to the studio where he could concentrate more on the musical end of things, and hopefully continue his fine production work (Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople). Rumor has it that Bowie and The Spiders are breaking up to go their separate ways in the fall after one more tour. Good. May Mick Ronson prevail.

Aladdin Sane is a complete letdown after the brilliance of Ziggy and more especially Hunky Dory. As a one-time short-term fan, I have the distinctly unpleasant feeling that Bowie is indeed guilty of many Of the charges his fag-baiting slanderers have levelled against him. He is hollow - but it has been his forte in the past to describe that vacancy with some degree of insight and lots of lyrical imagination. This album sacrifices insight for its descriptive purposes while various musical booboos call Bowie�s self-seriousness blatantly into question. The Art don�t rise above its Implications. A strong breeze could wisk Sane away at the shortest notice.

Tim Jurgens

PAUL MCCARTNEY & WINGS

Red Rose Speedway (Apple)

Now this is what I call tinkertoy music!! That don�t mean dull; that just means spastic. The formula is simple: one toy piano, light harmonies, cocktail slush, and tinsil squirts to back ya up.

Which is groovy keen if ya go for cartoon music. That�s right, you can almost hear Deputy Dawg buzzing the following lines from the album:

Do you need a pal for a minute or two

Do you?

Me too, me too, me too

I�m a lot like you

Did she turf you out in the cold morning rain again

Me too, me too, me too

And that�s the whole Archie Funhouse Gang doodling on the moog on �Loup (1st Indian \on the Moon),� ain�t it?

The packaging is like one monstrous arty comic book. It�s pretty, but it ain�t funny. And that�s the best part about it. This is the dumbest album ever madeW It�s dumber than jocks and hush puppies and Johnny Carson and even Jethro Tull ain�t a match for it.

What�s more, it�s sloppy enuf for all you slobs who spill your beer all over yourselves while watching Dean Martin and Archie Bunker and Ted Knight. I didn�t think that was even possible after hearing stuff like �Mumbo� from the Wild Life record, but it�s true.

Which puts this disc right up there on the charts along with its companion tasteless masterpiece known as Ram. (Admit it, �Eat At Home� made ya squeal with delight, and every cut tickled ya pink more than anything on Abbey Road.) Neither of those albums makes any sense, and the best part about em is the packaging. Screwy lyrics, wienie vocals, and special sponge segue techniques combine to give enj both gold stars.

Anyway, if you go for TV dinners, troll dolls, Gumby and cereal packages, then you�ll love this album. You can listen to it if you want, but my advice would be to give it as a gift to that mongoloid cousin of yours or mail it to Mike Douglas or something like that. For fruits only.

Robdt A. Hull

THE J. GEILS BAND Bloodshot (Atlantic)

From the guitar blitz that ushers in �House Party,� you know that, after a couple of false starts, Bloodshot is the record which finally begins to show some recognition of the tremendous potential which the J. Geils Band waved in our faces with their first album. It has its slow stretches; mostly the result of minor weaknesses they�ve carried since the beginning. But it�s awfully hard to read the fine print while you�re dancing, and Bloodshot is one of the great party records of 1973.

�House Party� is everything you could have hoped for the J. Geils Band to do. From the Geils guitar intro, it kicks into an organ thrust that suggests that this is what the Rascals might be doing had they not fallen under the whammy of Swami what�s-his-face back in 1968. You can see kids dancing frantically to this tune on American Bandstand (and maybe even Soul Train too), you can hear it blasting from a million summer transistor radios.

It�ll have to wait its turn on the hit parade, however, because it looks like �Give It To Me� has got the AM airwaves cornered as I write this. The version here is stretched beyond six minutes, but it manages — thanks to some butt-funk guitar from Geils and the best organ solo Seth Justman�s come up with - to sustain the pace of the edited single. It�s built on a simple reggae rhythm (as is �Make Up Your Mind�), but, as with nearly every influence the band picks up, it�s filtered through their own particular punk consciousness.

And make no mistake about it: the J. Geils Band are punk-rockers in the truest sense of the term. Their music swaggers and struts its way down the straza; and if these guys weren�t in the band, you�d probably find them drinking wine and talking trash on some urban streetcorner.

That�s precisely why a song like �Struttin� With My Baby.� which has appeared on every Geils album under a different name, can continue to come on strong. It ain�t what you do, it�s how you do it. And the J. Geils Band does it with guMevel style, energy, and an obviously ebstatic self-involVement that can move your feet even when your head wants to say otherwise.

The songwriting team of vocalist Peter Wolf and Seth Justman continues to mature. They draw on traditional blues and R & B frameworks, embellishing them with a subtle sense of dynamics that could only have come from years of rock & roll subversion. In this respect, their ballads (�Start All Over Again� beingthe best example here) are oftentimes the equal of anything that �authentic� R & B masters will be actively soliciting Wolf-Justman songs to beef up their repertoires.

The only sour note struck on this album is the element of their material that, although performed with genre-shattering elan, relies a might too heavily on tired blues readymades and convenient cliches. There�s something vaguely discortcerting about a band that sticks this close to its roots, and more so when those roots are manifested most obviously in their original material. Beyond that, �House Party� and �Give It To Me� seem to have them headed straight for the future, a future that will undoubtedly see the J. Geils Band as one of the baddest bands in the land. In the meantime, kick off your shoes and crank up that old phono as loud as she�ll go. There�s a party goin� on, and there are no soapbox Swami�s in sight.

Ben Edmonds

THE PERSUASIONS We Still Aih't Got No Band (MCA)

I don�t know how they do it. The Persuasions just keep rolling, putting out top-notch stuff on every record, sounding like they have found a permanent musical home somewhere between the ghetto and heaven. Even a change of label, healthy for some and a kiss of death for others, has not derailed this group on their steady path of non-stop funk �n soul.

Of course, the fact that they remain within the realm of pure a cappella does preclude any real drastic change in sound from one album to the next, yet each of their four releases (I don�t even count their first effort, a Zappa bungle job) has a personality which is distinct from the others. Of the three Capitol albums (Capitol, by the way, deserves a lot of credit for putting the Persuasions in the position of relative national prominence which they enjoy today - I am given to understand that their departure from the label was more a matter of back office politicking than box office failure on any level), We Still Ain�t Got No Band most resembles the first, We Came To Play. Both are basic in their approach yet incredibly diverse and innovative in their execution. The Persuasions never stray very far from their patented blend of sweet harmony backgrounds and blood �n guts leads, but each song has a hook or a special twist of some kind that raises it above the norm.

One could easily forget, listening to the majority of rock (or even R & B) albums, what a flexible instrument the human voice can be. No matter how many tricks you can perform with a guitar and its accessories, a wider range of expression - and a more immediate impact - is always possible with a well-placed, heartfelt croon. The Persuasions — Jerry Lawson, Jimmy Hayes, Joseph Russell, Jayotis Washington, and Herbert Rhoad — are here to remind us that singing is just about the most human art form there is, and to exalt it to new heights of perfection.

But even with all their fantastic singing, all would go for naught if the selection of material wasn�t just as perfect. It is. The album opens up with a song written especially for the Persuasions (by a couple of former jocks from KPPC in L. A.), �Good Old Acappella,� which is simultaneously an ode to the group and to the form:

For I turn out the light

Say Goodbye to another night

Oh I rest my weary head

Upon my warm wedding bed

I�m gonna get on my knees and pray

Tell the Lord

to give me just one more day

Oh Lord hear my plea

That music means so much to me.

Singin� Soul to Soul

Brother to Brother

Acappella

And it sounds good to me.

A little sappy, sure, but when the Persuasions sing there is no emotion too trifling or saccharine. They hit below the senses, beyond the point of critical objectivity. If you try to step away from their music and analyze it, you are already missing the point — and the fun. I�m not gonna say that listening to the Persuasions has to be a religious experience, but I will say that it comes closer to being true rock gospel than anything this side of Aretha Franklin (in her prime).

Other songs include Sam Cooke�s �Love You Most of All,� Curtis Mayfield�s �You Must Believe Me� (a lot more poignant than the social consciousness drone that ol� Curtis goes into on TV these days), �Chapel of Love� (yep, The Dixie Cups� song) and, my favorite, Jimmy Hughes� �Steal Away.� Each one a delight. As a matter of fact, the only complaint I have against these guys is that they took me for five bucks ih a poker game last time they were in town and they haven�t come back since. I don�t care about the money; hell, I just wanna hear �em sing again.

Gary Kenton

LEONARD COHEN Live Songs (Columbia)

Leonard Cohen is no sissy! Now, I know you always thought poets were gushing queers and over-grown altar boys, but not our guy, Lennie. He�s got guts. Anyone who can make it as a poet in 1973 has to. Poetry has been passe since 1959, ever since the Beatniks followed the dinosaurs to extinction.

But in 1966, this Spud Canuck had the gall to pass off his vapid verse as music. What would induce this 33 year old geezer to try to break into show biz, when most men his age were selling insurance? What�s worse is he has no voice at all - all the tonal quality of Howard Cosell. His back up group was so far in left field they weren�t even camp. A git fiddle and a square dancing troupe. So how did Cohen crack into the rock scene? When cornered, Cohen admitted to playing old Ray Charles records over and over until they were warped so he could GET THAT BEAT. Imagine, trying to put an iambic pentameter into �Hit the Road Jack.� The self-made songster did it. He hit the heights as a Feather-Weight-Folky.

The reason Cohen�s musical contributions are still in the minors is because he has had the misfortune to be bunched with the Mickey Mouse Club of Contemporary Poets. The other honorary members are McKuen and Brautigan. Real Twinksters. You wouldn�t catch our Lennie incessantly describing the geography of his lover�s back or becoming obsessed with an �Affectionate lightbulb.�

No sir, in Live Songs Leonard sings about real life — hunchbacks, whores, and sandwich signs. Lennie�s no apathetic armpit. He�s got a mission, looking out for the little guy. �I�ve been listening to all the dissent and all the pain/ but I think I can heal it/ I�m a fool but I think that I can heal it with my song.� Cohen is a regular Dear Abbey. On that dismal Wednesday night when you�re keeping company with a mute phone, there�s your friend Len, with an antidote for your loneliness. When you get sick of leaning on Jagger, try Lennie�s shoulder.

When he�s not doctoring the horrible human condition, Cohen is rewriting �Suzanne,� his elusive supergirl - half whore and half Madonna. �Queen Victoria� is a classier Suzanne and is trashier, they�re still the same dream date that Cohen has been chasing all these years.

Don�t go away thinking that Cohen is a sodden old slack-mire. Leonard B. Cohen can laugh as well as cry. Contrary to popular opinion, even poets have a sense of humor. Besdies there isn�t any money in pain this year; listen to �Tonight Will Be Fine� �We swore to each other that our love would surely last/ You kept on loving but I went on a fast/ Now I�m too thin and your love is too fat.� See, Hillbilly corn, by way of Canada.

Jaan Uhelszki

MANFRED MANN'S EARTH BAND Get Your Rocks Off (Polydor)

Manfred Mann�s a survivor. What that means is that no matter where you got on the bus: be it with �Do Wah Diddy Diddy� in the summer of 1964, or with �Mighty Quinn,� some years later, or with the ill-fated Chapter III, or the Earth Band - no matter where you found Manfred, the dude was saying something.

Not that there�s any message to Manfred�s music. As_a lyricist, he�s often simplistic, as a composer he relies more on concept than song, and as an interpreter of others (especially Dylan) he�s a genius. But what he�s saying-is simply, as long as it�s happening, let the band play on.

It�s kinda hard to believe that a guy, especially a journeyman British musician without any personal flamboyance could find himself so together after seven or eight on and off years. But Earth Band�s first album, with its classic exposure of Dylan�s �Please Mrs. Henry,� was one of the most total blends of intelligent rock craft and gut-feeling music of 1972.

The follow-up album, Glorified Magnified, was good, but fell quite a bit short of Earth Band�s potential excellence: something about a lack of definition between intellect and instinct. Get Your Rocks Off stands somewhere between the two, both in content and execution.

Mann�s Dylan discovery this time around is the title song, a gem of a tune probably written in the era between Blonde oh Blonde and John Wesley Harding. The hook is great: �Get your rocks off, baby, get your rocks off me!�' As if to prove there�s not a more ironic wit in rock today, the band gives equal time to John Prine. �Pretty Good� is better than that: it hums and it soars, certainly rocking harder than Prine could ever imagine. It�s definitely a single: whether it�s a hit is up to Polydor, and us.

Manfred also revisits the Dr. John songbook (as he did on the first Earth Band album with �Jump Sturdy.�) This time it�s �Mardi Gras Day,� whose arrangement sort of straddles the line between funky New Orleans and cosmopolitan reggae. It bops.

The original material is more contemplative than visceral, and predominantly instrumental. The lengthy �Messin� is a simplistic Mike Hugg (ex-Mann sidekick) ecology warning that comes off because its roots are closer to Jeff Nuttall�s brilliant Bomb Culture kind of apocalypse than Sierra Club parlor game. �Buddah� borrows musically from both Mark Farner and Pete Townsend; lyrically, it�s Manfred�s fantasy of holy men (�saw Moses in a Cadillac. . .� at least he didn�t call it Jew Canoe) in ordinary situations.

Instrumentally the Earth Band — Mann, Mick Rogers, Colin Pattendon and Chris Slade - are tight, but fluid, and Manfred uses the synthesizer like an instrument, not some mutant rich kid�s Christmas toy. •

Get Your Rocks Off, then, is almost as good as the first Earth Band, and taken together, their three albums comprise one of the most impressive, innovative yet commercial sets of music to come out of England in the last two years. It also proves, in case there were any doubters, that �Do Wah Diddy Diddy� was no fluke.

Wayne Robins

AL GREEN Call Me (London)

The temptation is to dismiss the new A1 Green album, not firmly but with a slight shrug: oh yes, more of the same, right? The fact that it�s near perfection as a vocalist�s album makes any dismissal impossible, but the temptation lingers. There�s no real movement between this and Green�s previous album, I�m Still in Love With You just as there was little to separate that lp from the earlier Let�s Stay Together. But there has been a gradual smoothing out of the Green sound, as if Willie Mitchell�s waves of strings have worn away all the rough edges. A1 Green�s found his niche and it�s velvet-lined. That�s ok — my favorite cut here is the achingly sweet �Have You Been Making Out OK,� the epitome of this new style — but it becomes more than a little homogenous when the songs and albums, however brilliant, begin to feel interchangeable. When my review of I�m Still in Love With You could easily be reprinted here with a few title changes, something is wrong.

But if Green seems at a standstill creatively, he�s stopped at a height few others have reached. And if the recent albums are near-interchangeable, they are also exceptionally good - how many other performers can match his run of three excellent records? Problem is, the excellence has become, in itself, boring; the consistency, monotonous. Cut by cut it glows, but taken as a whole, Call Me is disappointing - only because it�s utterly unadventurous, it goes nowhere new. Well, there are one or two surprises - a more or less political/ social consciousness song by Green: �Stand Up,� which has a nice up-beat, and a beautiful Green-styled gospel number, �Jesus is Waiting,� closing out the set with some gorgeous double-tracked vocals. Either one would be worth the whole record, but neither carries Green in a new direction stylistically. The choice of the standard �Funny How Time Slips Away� for this album's long ballad cut (cf. �How Can You Mend a Broken Heart� and �For the Good Times� on the previous lps) seems to take Green a bit further in the direction of sophisticated supper club music, but he remains too essentially funky to fit comfortably into the growing black easy-listening market. Or does he? If there aren�t already enough implicit contradictions in this review, I�ll have to add to them by saying I like just about every cut here, skipping �Funny How Time Slips Away,� but I hardly listen to anything but �Have You Been Making Out OK� — the only song to make a deep impression on me. You figure it out. All I can say is, this is very likely one of the great black albums of the year, but so what? And A1 Green shouldn�t be making us ask questions like that so soon.

Vince Aletti

ARLO GUTHRIE The Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys (Reprise)

Arlo�s life hasn�t been easy. Famous people�s kids� who decide to follow in their parent�s footsteps seldom are. They tend to have whatchacall yer identity crises, and lord knows Arlo�s had a few, and even recorded �em on occasion. But despite the hungry maws of those who would just love to see Woody�s son do a pratfall and fuck up big, he�s managed to keep himself on a relatively even keel, and the natural result is that he�s getting better and better.

Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys is easily his best record to date. His voice, never anything to shout about, exactly, is losing much of its adolescent out-of-school quality, and when he tackles, say, Hank Williams� �Lovesick Blues� — no easy number for sure — he sounds self-confident and professional, bringing something of himself to the song. And, as any seasoned folk singer does, he has chosen nine of the thirteen cuts here from his vast stock of traditional material.

Nearly everything on the album is fine. Buck Owens� Buckaroos - including, appropriately enough, Buck�s son, Buddy Alan -help out on two cuts, �Week On The Rag� is one of Woody�s instrumentals, and Arlo�s piano is joined by a woodwind quartet, and there are even two stunning Irish fiddle numbers by one Kevin Burke.

Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys makes it clear that Arlo Guthrie has survived his hype, his movie, and the pressures of fame and can now be regarded as one of America�s very best folksingers and songwriters. That should be good enough.

Ed Ward

FOLK YOU:

A Strong Revival of �Music Among Friends**

MUDACRES Music Among Friends (Rounder)

SPARK GAP WONDER BOYS Cluck Old Hen (Rounder)

FRANK WAKEFIELD (Rounder)

THE HIGHWOODS STRING BAND Fire On The Mountain (Rounder)

STEELEYE SPAN Below the Salt (Chrysalis)

STEELEYE SPAN Parcel of Rogues (Chrysalis)

Wow. It�s sort of like watching a whole new generation grow up. I mean, what I mean to say is, uh, it kind of looks like folk music is coming back. Not heavily, not yet, maybe, but...

This year opened with the meteoric rise of Eric Weissberg�s single of an old bluegrass show-off number, �Feuding Banjos,� re-titled �Dueling Banjos� and taken out of the music for the film Deliverance. They tacked this single onto an ancient album recorded during folk music�s last go-round, and came out gold again! I remember New Directions in Banjo and Bluegrass (as it was called) as a kind of unspectacular citybilly high-technique/ lowcontent album like a lot that came out then, and neither I nor anybody else could have predicted this. But...

A friend calls up, all excited about a new dulcimer. Bill Monroe plays Marin county and gets a five minute standing ovation before he�s played a note. A hard-core group of British folkies go electric and receive overwhelming response from the audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. The other day in Berkeley, I heard some amazing claw-hammer banjo being played on the street.

And I was listening to ABC/ Dunhill�s superb album of Junior Parker�s Duke sides, Sometimes Tomorrow My Broken Heart Will Die, and flashed on the fact that the Stones had started as a folk band, a band consciously imitating their mentors. The guitarist on the album sounded like he�d stepped off 12X5 or Rolling Stones Now!, even though common sense told me that it was the other way around.

This looks like a hot summer. Wonder what�ll be happening in Washington Square?

�HEY, LOOK! IT�S EVERYBODY!!� That was folkie-friend Jerry, looking at a record called Mudacres: Music Among Friends (Rounder 3001), featuring Happy & Artie Traum, Maria Muldaur (my teenage heartthrob), John Herald, Eric Kaz, Bill Keith & Jim Rooney and (on the cover, anyway) the smiling face of Israel G. Young, proprietor of the legendary Folklore Center. Just like old days. The music is fantastic, loose, like being at a party down in the Village twelve years ago. It took exactly two spins to make this one of my; favorite records of the year, and I�d like to apologize to Jerry right now for tripping him as he was sprinting out the door with it. Get well soon.

�But Mudacres is the only record we�ve put out that sounds like 1961,� says a member of the Rounder Collective, and it�s true. Of the thirty records this small, threeperson operation has released, by far the majority are by old-time folk singers like 80-something-year-old Almeda Riddle, who sings mountain ballads in an incredible belllike voice or else young country/ bluegrass/ old-timey bands like the Spark Gap Wonder Boys and the Highwoods Stringband. They have also gone to North Carolina to record The Golden Echoes, a Black gospel group (album cover of the year, so far) and have released an album by a Boston Women�s Liberation rock band.

Of the Rounders I have (by the way, I knew about this company for six months before I caught on to their name; pretty dense, huh?), Mudacres is still my favorite, but coming up close is Cluck Old Hen (Cluck 610/ The Dow-Jortes average is down again) by the Spark Gap Wonder Boys (Rounder 0002). The SGWB are an old-timey trio like the famed New Lost City Ramblers, and they can pick like crazy. They also like to modernize things a bit here and there, which is one reason why their �Lee Highway Blues� is head and shoulders above most of their colleagues�. Singing is something else. They tend to mumble a lot, and there really isn�t any point to doing Leroy VanDyke�s �Auctioneer� unless you�re gonna learn the rap. But they do okay.

Part of what attracts me to Rounder is the obvious informality of their stuff. The Highwoods Stringband wanted to record outdoors, so that�s where they recorded. Once again, the vocals don�t come charging through, but something else does, and the group manages to generate real toe-tapping excitement. Fire On The Mountain is not only the title of their album (Rounder 0023) but an accurate description of their sound.

Former Greenbriar Boy Frank Wakefield has an album out too (Rounder 0007), backed by an excellent young bluegrass band called Country Cooking, and including two of his weird �classical� mandolin pieces, �Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player� numbers 2 and 16. Rounder wisely plays down his Jesus Freaking for his mandolinning, and the result is spectacular.

Rounder has incredible plans for the future, including a double album of Western Swing, a Holy Modal Rounders album (yes!) and much, much more. Their catalogue Is available from Rounder Records/ 727 Somerville Avenue/ Somerville, MA/ 02143, and all the records are (*gasp*) $3.50 postpaid. You cannot go wrong.

A boomlet in American folk music is, of course, easy to explain, but how can you account for people digging on Ye Olde Englysshe Ffolke Musicke? On the part of the young American audiences? By the old Return to the Roots excuse? No, but...

But that�s what it is, in a way. Just as everybody knows that Americans came from Laf everywhere, so, it follows, did their music. And where an awful lot of it came from was England. Of course, between 1673 and 1973 it got changed a lot on both sides of the pond, but a lot of things didn�t change.

According to their publicity, a group called Steeleye Span has been turning on American audiences during their recent tour with Procol Harum. The audiences have actually been dancing, jigging, in fact. And does that ever sound good! I�ve been a Steeleye fan ever since their wonderful Please To See The King album of some years ago, and with their new album for Charisma, Parcel of Rogues, it looks like they�re getting the acclaim they�ve deserved for so long. The odd thing is, for all their electricity (they do play LOUD!) they mainly perform real uncompromising traditional British folk music, right down to performing songs in Scottish dialect (�Cam Ye O�er Frae France�). What makes people like them so much, though, is that they play so well and sing even better. Ears accustomed to sloppy, dull CSN&Y-style harmonies cannot help but get excited by something like the acappella singing at the end of �The Weaver and the Factory Girl,� and the tremelo-laden instrumental break in �Alison Gross� isn�t all that far away from the Ventures.

Steeleye uses strange chords and unusual, modal melodies, and it�s true that the words aren�t easily penetrated lots of times, but I think they, like the new folkies, are hitting some long-hidden chord in the hearts of their audiences. For example, on one of their British albums they�ve included a song called �When I Was On Horseback,� which is a dying soldier�s song. I couldn�t figure it out, but the first time I heard it, I realized that I knew the tune. The more I listened to it, the more I realized there was something odd going on. And finally it hit me: that song was the direct ancestor of �Streets of Laredo!� It shares some verses in common, and the tunes are even similar. Of course, what they�ve done with it bears, no resemblance to what Marty Robbins did with it, but...

Parcel of Rogues, like Below the Salt and, in fact, all their albums (those two are the only ones available on U. S. labels currently), is a superb folk music album, but that�s not the point. The point is, people Who could care less about that aspect of it are listening to it and enjoying it, and you will too, I think.

As for a new folk revival, well, maybe it is just �music among friends,� but hell, isn�t that what it�s all about anyway?

Ed Ward

THE SPINNERS Spinners

. ,(Atlantic)

Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Spinners are one of life�s delights. High Seriousness may harumph that they�re mere spun sugar and demand the sophomoric and predictable �relevance� of All in the Family and The Temptations, but this is to miss the point. The Spinners offer a sumptuous substitute for the real world. The Black Man�s woes and Whitey�s workaday blahs just don�t stand a chance against The Spinners� fullness, art, and joy. At four bucks or whatever, happiness is cheap.

The joy comes from the group, which has every right to be blissful. After eighteen years in the business, the last nine of them spent as one of Motown�s lowest priorities, The Spinners have finally grabbed the brass ring and turned it into gold. This, their first album on Atlantic, contains two million sellers, �J�ll Be Around� and �Could It Be I�m Falling in Love,� and a third song, �One of a Kind (Love Affair),� well on its way. The fullness and the art are Thom Bell�s doing, and he deserves a paragraph to himself.

Thom Bell is, and I�ll defend this statement to the death, the finest arranger in black music today. He deserves at least half the credit that Gamble & Huff have received for the Philadelphia Sound, for he has been responsible for the best of their charts. And The Delfonics, The Stylistics, and The Spinners are Bell�s babies entirely, Produced, Arranged & Conducted by The Master. What Bell achieves is elegance which never becomes effete, splendor which never becomes bloated, beauty which never becomes drippy, and a right-on sense of rhythm. It�s the beat, so hard, that keeps the. music vital. And unlike almost every other grandiloquent producer from Phil Spector to Norman Whitfield, Bell has the light touch. His orchestral scores, of an almost unparalleled imaginativeness and sophistication, nonetheless have a magical air of insouciance. Bell�s not out to impress you (although he can hardly help doing that); he just wants to make you happy.

One of Spinners� greatest assets is its variety. Bell has a lot of friends who write well and differently, so no song is a pale copy of another. Moreover, Bell�s arrangements are anything but formulaic. �I Could Never (Repay Your Love)� begins as a stately ballad and then surprisingly but easily segues into gospel testifying. �Don�t Let the Green Grass Fool You� has a humorously incongruous big band sound (and The Spinners could be The Four Lads). �Ghetto Child� is Bell�s answer to Burt Bacharach (Dionne should cut it as a single), and its lilting refrain is irresistible. And of course there are the hits, as well as others which might jqst as easily have been (especially' �Just Can�t Get You Out of my Mind�).

The Spinners sing with understated grace and cool. At first their sweet, smooth harmonies may seem a mite too nondescript, but they�re slyly beguiling. They don�t seem to be trying, which is what makes their Neverneverland so inviting. Just relax and you�re there: effortlessness is what it�s all about. After eighteen years The Spinners know how to take it easy, and they deserve to be able to. Buy their album and dance your way to heaven.

Ken Emerson

URIAH HEEP Uriah Haap Live (Mtrcurv)

If you listened to the critics, your dossier on previous Uriah Heep releases runs something like this: The first album, (Uriah Heep) is an unknown quantity to you, because nobody bothered to review it. Salisbury, by generaT agreement, sucked. Look At Yourself was an absolute genital squeezer, easily one of the finest heavy-metal workouts of 1971. Demons and Wizards was either a disappointment in light of L.A.Y., or a great party album synthesizing Heep�s own brand of rock with a more commercial-sounding production, and Magician�s Birthday was more of the same, with much less success. The end result? A confusing mish-mash of styles and a tremendous discrepancy in critical success from album to album. That�s if you listened to the critics, which isn�t all that incredible, since those were the only people listening to the band before 1972 anyway.

But surprisingly, incredibly, unbelievably, Uriah Heep has proved everyone wrong with their new double set Live. Live, you see, contains selections from all of the band�s previous albums but the second, and when placed together in a concert situation, Uriah Heep�s music all begins to make sense. The songs fit together like pieces in a musical jigsaw, with the heavier things from L.A. Y. sounding no more (or no less) impressive than those from Magician�s Birthday. Even �Gypsy,� from that grizzly first album is represented, and surprise, surprise, fits into the poup�s over-all sound exactly like it should. The final and depressing result is that Ken Hensley and friends have made relative asses out of critics like myself, who were intent on making comparisons that perhaps (and only perhaps) were undeserved. (Or then again, perhaps not, because I�d, still take L.A. Y. over any other.)

Anyway, Uriah Heep Live means that if you don�t have any of the band�s other releases, now you only have to buy this one. It comes across neatly as a �best oF� collection, most of the songs remain pretty true to the originals, and the sound quality ranks among the best of any live recordings I�ve ever heard. And it is to the band�s credit also that they can take a crappy bunch of old rock standards, put them into an encore medley, and even make them sound passably interesting.

Uriah Heep Live is a solid album in all respects; a peat party album, a fine showcase of a hard-working band, anql a valuable piece of music for those few people who want nothing more or less than pure rock entertainment.

Alan Niester

DAVID BLUE Nice Baby and the Angel (Asylum)

I live in L. A., see, and a lot of people in L. A. tend to say �David Blue? Shit, man . . .� and things of that sort, for no particularly good reason other than the fact that David Blue sits around the bar at the Troubadour a lot and drinks a lot and mopes a lot and goes over to Tana�s next door to have dinner a lot and then about 10:30 or 11:00 on Tuesday nights usually goes into the club itself and wanders around in his famous white raincoat for awhile and then goes back out to the bar a lot.

Just like�the rest of us!

But, anyway, there�s obviously a good deal more to David Blue than all of that. As his new album, his second for Asylum, most eloquently demonstrates.

Blue�s songs on this lp are nearly all about finding or losing love (or a love); in fact, there are probably a lot of trendy hip TroubaStageDoor-Johnny types around who could tell you exactly which ladies were involved in this various finding and losing. If you cared enough to ask. But that�s hardly the most important facet of Nice Baby. And Blue is no Harold Robbins.

Actually, this is a lovely, strong, sensitive bunch of songs for the most part. (Remember sensitivity?) Of course, Blue can be accused of being excessively (obsessively?) Dylanesque, if that seems important. And he sure can write an awful lyric when he wants to. Like �Then you took my song/ and placed it between your lips/ And I fell a slave/ To those eyes and those hips.� (Those eyes and those hips'? Jeez.) But he has also refined his Dylanesquery into a confident, independent stylistic device, and he can also write an absolutely beautiful lyric when he wants to.

His melodies are plain and his poetry is very direct, as if he were distrustful of subtlety. There�s almost an attractive naivete about what he sings, as though he presupposes our interest in his experiences (because they are experiences all of us have had or have sought out), and as though he wants to make absolutely sure that there will be no misunderstanding; thus he says just what he means, not getting his songs cluttered up with metaphor or painterly imagery or any of those other things singer/songwriters are supposed to lard their work with;.

Blue sings with a tired-sounding, reedy, nas£}l voice, which shapes melodic lines into an almost Oriental contour; it�s a loose, fretless voice that sings around the notes rather than on top of them, and it somehow seems the perfect vehicle for his uncomplicated words.

The best songs include �Outlaw Man� (which could almost be an out-take from John Wesley Harding), �Lady O� Lady� (with Jennifer Warren, among others, singing backup — adding a strangely haunting, unorthodox harmonic texture to the chorus), �Darlin� Jenny,� �Train to Anaheim,� �True To You� (which is mainly an infectious, classic country-blues repeat-riff), and the rather fragile �Yesterday�s Lady,� which is a kind of song Dylan might have written once if he had ever been secure enough to let his guard down so much.

Colman Andrews

SIEGEL-SCHWALL BAND SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ORCH. SEIJI OZAWA, CONDUCTOR Russo: Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orch. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Well, it�s not very good, but it isn�t a total flop either. The main problems are Ozawa�s heavy-handed direction and the fact that, with the exception of Corky Siegel�s harp, the band�s sound isn�t amplified or electric enough to cut through the great mass of noise generated by a full symphony orchestra. Jim Schwall�s guitar playing, very effective in a club or small hall, is thin and underproduced - when he solos, it sounds as �though you were tuned in to an FM classical station that keeps drifting towards its rock neighbor. Part I, meant to be a sprightly shuffle, suffers particularly; the incongruity of Schwall�s guitar breaks gives the thing a totally slapdash air.

PartJII slogs along like a dying rhino. Ozawa, the young hotshot who is now musical director of two symphonies, one on each coast, conducts it with leaden stodginess and no sense of dynamics whatsoever — loud or soft, but nothing in between. The guitar sounds better, having been mixed (or maybe just turned) up; there�s no ok violin solo, and the woodwind arrangements are nice; but as my friend Rich says, �You can�t even fall asleep to this music.�

Part III, built on a. Sonny Boy Williamson boogie riff, is the most successful of the thfee movements. Composer Russo has done a nice job on both the strings and the brass, and a boogie beat is better suited to the bassy symphonic sound. Siegel�s harp carries well over the orchestra, though his bleating recitativos, an echo of Part I, are a little tedious. This is the �hit single� from the album; catch it if you can, because you ain�t heard nothin� till you�ve heard a blues lead played by a thirty-piece string section.

Generally, the whole thing sounds like the soundtrack for a hippy spy movie - �The Doper Who Came In From The Cold�, starring Peter Wolf and Faye Dunaway.

Gerrit Graham

THE NEW SEEKERS Pinball Wizard (MGM)

Here�s the group that started the crazy pinball mania all over the country — even in places where the closest thing to a Bally Fireball is 'maybe a Remco electric gridiron game!

The New Seekers,, three pretty guys and two semi-foxy gals, have been riding the crest of success since their version of the Who�s �Pinball Wizard� became an overnight rage. Their new MGM album is already making them nationwide symbols for the exhilarating sport that has taken America by storm. The eleven rockin�, sweet-rollin� tunes here are aimed right at the heart of the sensational new craze consciousness.

�Time Limit� addresses itself to the gnawing sensation deep in every table king�s gut when he finds he�s flipping away at his fifth ball when �I�m down to the wire on the Follies of France/ You know I ain�t gotta chance!� �Look Look� characterizes the chapin of the novice player who, after spilling a pocketfull of dimes into the Autocross, watches a vet take over and �burn up that quarter mile,� while �The Further We Reach Out� dramatizes the remorse of a paraplegic flipper undergoing therapy who �will never tilt again.�

�Utah�, the poup�s next single, celebrates the salt lake empire which is rapidly replacing Pacoima as the capital of the new teen fun craze. Pete, Marty, Eve, Lyn and Paul invite the listener to �join the fun� as �it�s only just begun� and beckon us midsong to �bring �em young!� to Utah, with the admonishment �Now I don�t know what town you�re from, but don�t tell me that they got hotter games/ �Cause everyone that goes digs the saline arcade!� Why wait? It�s all happening.

Gene Sculatti