Eat a Bowl of Wimp

Eat a Bowl of Wimp

AMERICA Hat Trick (Warner Bros.)

America's newest LP is one of those innumerable albums that is best when it slips onto your turntable unnoticed, unheralded, and when you're doing something else much more important, like cleaning your goldfish tank, because if you take too much time thinking about playing it, you then might take too much time actually listening to it. Not hearing it, mind you, but listening to if. That could be dangerous. America is not a group that you can really afford to contemplate seriously in toto if your critical faculties are intact, because the totality of their music has a certain tedious sameness. Each cut isn't bad per se. Quite the contrary. Most are quite nice, if they are separated by at least 25 minutes of Elton John, Carole King, Buckingham Nicks, etc. It's for that reason that they sound so nice on the FM. You never see the whites of their eyes. The distinctive America sound is a real rockin MOR FM hit. By now, it is terribly passe to note that the sound of America has more than tenuous roots in Neil Young & Co., because that tenuously rooted America sound is now unmistakeably their own. Who can argue it? The millions of buyers can't be that wrong, right? The validity of America's sound is much the same as Deep Throat's validity. The records and the tickets sell like mother sucks. (In America's case, that should perhaps be pubescent fucks. As D. Rensin, the lad who had the first Eagles T-shirt in town, said about his travels with America, ".., no fuck, man, I had my choice of 15 year olds, but I held out for this little 12 year old honey. And / got her!"). The young ladies like America a lot. Jt puts them in that mood... There's no reason to tamper with success. Young ladies don't like explora-

tion. Most radio stations don't either. So... just don't question the sum of the music.

"Muskrat Love," the great Willis Allen Ramsey song, is the best cut on the album (which America merely repeated note for note from Willis" original "Muskrat Candlelight". .. but that isn't as weird as Lani Hall's version. She changed hot only the title but also the lyrics. "Muskrat" became "sundown." America changed "candlelight" to "love." Lani changed "love" to "lady," and that's how Willis" "Muskrat Candlelight" became "Sundown Lady." So there!); and a song that I felt sad about getting tired of through overexposure. It's one of those songs you love to love the moment you hear it. Mellow. Laid back. Almost dreamy. And the absolute best lyrics of the year. "Muskrat Susie... Muskrat Sam... do the jitterbug out in Muskratland.")

"Windwave" is mellow, laid back, and almost dreamy, with the now familiar choppy chorus that Neil Young periodically uses as a signature to emphasize the severe emotional tidings that counterpoint the serenity inherent in the abundant use of the windchimes.

"She's G.onna Let You Down" is mellow and laid back, almost dreamy, with a familiar Paul McCartney tempo and riff that develops into a guitar laden orchestrated goulash that complements the Paulie-like sentiments.

"Rainbow Song" is mellqw and laid back, almost dreamy, arid the'' most ambitious puntai rhythms developed to their fullest in "Wind Waves," and here developed even further.

"Submarine Ladies" is mellow and laid back, almost dreamy, and the windchirties have been neatly replaced by a banjo to emphasize the basic simplicity of a sound that" sells well to little girls who only last week discovered that their active middle finger fits neatly between their downy thighs and into their sticky and tasty pudding... and if they wiggle their finger just so...

"Hat Trick" is mellow and laid back, almost dream, and the most ambitious America bit thus far,and nothing else if not reminiscent of Neil and the Bee Gees on quaaludes and ether and coming down off a two week speed jag declaring their own musical sanity by getting it altogether (the sum total of their purloined and precious existence) into one eight minute plus musical extravaganza that opens next week next to the nearest MacDonald's.

"Molten Lqve">,is mellow and laid back, almost drearily, arid the actual sound of moulten love ("Yes brothers & sisters, right here on this alburn, the actualy, untouched, unrehearsed, uncensored sound of, would you believe, molten love!" the pudgy man barked.) sounds like the bubbling water filter in any $8.98 10 gallon fish tank, and although the moon is only 1/49 the size of the earth, it is still further away.

"Green Monkey" is mellow and laid back, almost dreamy, albeit the heavy fuzztone guitar intro is different... byt then Nixon has probably two to three inonths before he has to go on TV and make the most pathetic, heartrending and perhaps final speech he'll ever have to make, and no matter what you believe, it won't be easy to watch..

"Willow Tree Lullaby^" is mellow and laid back, and almost... Gene Krupa died a few weeks ago. He invented the drum solo back in 1934, and for all essential purposes, the goddamned drums as we now know them in 1932. His death garnered second page headlines (and two pictures) in the LA Times, If Mick Jagger died tomorrow, RChristgau would probably give it a C minus and label if "inaccessible."

"Goodbye" is mellow and... ah, do any of you guys out there ever worry about farting when some chick is giving you great head? 1

Is any of this necessary, much less fair?

J.R. Young