JOHN LENNON Mind Games (Apple)

Poor John. When the Beatles broke up he was the only one of the dissipated Fab Four who put in a bid to be taken seriously as an artist who still; believed in demons and was committed to reflecting the vile. humours on tap in today's world. And yet look who's taken the most post-splinter abuse of any of them. Sure he and Yoko have just kept making asses of themselves, and sure his politics^are crackerjack boxtop level, but still and all you gotta give the man one thing. He's among those increasingly rare pop squackers (Lou Reed's another) who, ho matter what else ybu might be able to say about "em, is at least SINCERE. John still believes, and is still placing himself in some measure on the line.

That is what in one simultaniety makes him, both one of our supreme artists and the most fascinating (next to Lou) example of total idiocy alive. He places himself out there, makes himself vulnerable with each embarrassing song; in fact, it's their very embarrassingness that makes them so relatable — somebody's gotta live out the idiocy of these times, after all, and most of these asshole popstars are too busy working to assure that they won't be one dollop less enviably elegant than last year. It takes real courage to be a douse. '

We shouldn't' in all fairness expect John Lennon to have anything new to say at all, we should rather judge him on how Veil he acquits himself on the stale ground he's apportioned to himself. Mind Games is the best album any of the Beatles have released this year, and even if that ain't saying much it's at least reassuring that we always knew John was holding on to some of his talent and, he's just committed enough to bring this admittedly sometimes wheezy nag in under the wire. .

You'll certainly miss Elephant's Memory when confronted with this Nonentoid Names studio band (Spinoz?a, Keltner, etc.), but still they perform with adequate emotion, which should suffice and even breathe you clear should you happen to listen to this right after, being subjected to Ringo's Shinola session.

to the actual songs, you shouldn't mind asking at all. The title cut is'"probably the catchiest, a haunting balladie yawp of dilating grandeur, even if the lyrics are the usual muzzy manifestoons: "We're-playing those mind games together... Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil... Playing the mind guerilla..

_ Now, yOu may see these lyrics as nothing more than cosmo-rev gruel strung between Grand Funk and Donovan, final proof Of the total naive banality of John Lennon's vaunted pamphleteering. But that would be taking a shortsighted and entirely too supercilious view. This ain't Franz. Fanon, it's the same fat limey who sang "Twist & ShoUt," and through his successive^ solo albums John's always incredibly gauche topical toons have been undergoing a purgative loosening-up, which has now reached its final stages and the pinnacle of eloquence here/where he throws all those trite slogans around like dice, or like he was P.F. Sloan insteada Phil Ochs, 'which, obviously can only be healthy fqr all concerned.

I think he really realizes at this point what meaningless gibberish all this is, and as a result he's having fun with and so are we. How else would you explain the Eric Bqrdonlike douchebag brilliance of "Only people know just haw to change the world/ A million heads are better than one, so come on, get it on!/Now we are tapper we been thru the trip.,.. Make no mistake it's our future we're sf making, bake the cake and eat it too!"*

More than any of the Beatles, you always knew that John Lennon really wanted to rock "n" roll, and he's still kicking the wall in his stocking feet. ? The album's best moments occur when he crunches all .this crimepently nutopian^,catarrh up in one big churning jumble of lights-out rave, Uke "Meat City" Which sounds like Jefferson Airplane if Somebody doused "em with gasoline and struck a light.

The other half of the songs are all about † how much he loves Yoko again, and it's hot only that you don't believe him so readily this time'due to rumor and sUch, it's also that there's only so many ways you can declare your fascination with some othef creep before both of you become plain burlesque, and the best moments in the Yoko songs occur when he takes the noodle reigns in hand and makes them both look even more ludicrous: ^"From Liverpool to Tokyo/What a way to go/ From distant lands one woman one man... 3000 miles over the ocean... The twain shall meet. . Ah, another Eric Burdon reference, all right!

This album is firm evidence thkt John Lennon's career can only prosper. He's run -the Leftoid gauntlet, and now he can venture out into the world and start a whole new cycle. Like back when he did "Yer Blues" I said to myself "Yep, one of these days John Lennon's jfist gonna end up blowing his brains out," but I don't believe that anymore. Because free of the Beatles lead weight it's John's peculiar genius to always shove himself teethfirst straight into the thick of whatever fashionable mental muddle he next sets his sights on, and when he gets there he never stops thrashing till he's made a complete spectacle of himself, at which point this folly has'worn out its usefulness, so he dumps it and moves on to something else. Which is the mark of a truly great man and artist. Nobody else except Lou has stuck out his gauntlet the way John has, and I sometimes .wonder, if anybody else who claimed to shake the planet in his time will still-be doing it as tirelessly as

he for years since. He's got the dignity of the most profound fools whomever lived.

Lester Bangs

Apple Records, Inc.

BONNIE RAITT Takin' My Time (Warner Brothers)

One of these days, Bonnie Raitt's-gonna make a real monster of a record. One incredible song after another, an album that will amaze and astonish and — better yet — be bought by everybody who's been to the Troubador, all the people who love mellow 'blues, old folkies, and dozens of other categories of music fans. They'll all have their separate reasons, but they'll all be Bonnie Raitt fans.

Until that album comes along, this one'll have to do. It's her best album yet, the one that shows best both what she can and what she cannot do, the one that's going to get the full treatment from the'record company, and the one which will make her stand out in the public eye as distinct from Bonnie Koloc, Bonnie Bramlett, Bonnie and Clyde and so on.

The basic problem with Takin " My Time is material. Somebody — one Suspects not Bonnie —_ did a pretty uneven job (of selecting material for this album. It goes from such goodies as Martha and the Vandellas" "You"-ve Been In Love Too Long" and the obligatory - for, Bonnie - Fred McDowell medley to 'Such nadirs of the songsmith's craft as Jackson Browne's "I Thought I Was A Child," which is so bad that one can almost hear Bonnie blush as she sings it,

Now, there is, I realize, nothing at all wrong with singer-songwriter songs per se. Some of them are very good, in fact, and there is a wealth of material waiting discovery on the countless solo albums the past few years have blessed us with. But in choosing material, you simply have to .consider ,the interpreter, and that is something that few producers seem to know how to do. A gutsy woman, with a tender side, like Bonnie Raitf can handle "sensitive" material like Eric Kaz" "Cry Like A Rainstorm" but only because it

is a very strong song. Same with Randy Newman's "Guilty," one of his most chilling sOngs, and one which Bonnie sings in a way that invites favorable compaison with, say, Etta James. But Randy Newman and Eric Kaz have mastered the writing of songs that are both strong and sensitive by writing for such diverse talents as Irma Thomas and Tracy Nelson; Bonnie can handle them in the same way she can handle tougher stuff, -but this wimpy crap has to go.

For all I know, she herself did the choosing, but that still doesn't matter. Takin" My Time still isn't the album it could have been, but it's nonetheless a fine, fine record by a lady who is going to be recognized as a major talent real, real soon. Unlike some who have come before her, she is taking her time, and at the rate she's progressing that's fine with me.

EdWard

THE BAND Moondog Matinee (Capitol)

Moondog Matinee — named after one of rock's founding fathers, primo DJ Allen

"Moondog" Freed, supposed coiner of the

term "rock "n" roll" in the early 50s — is further

proof of the Band's dominence in the field of

vreal mu§ic." "Real music'v fans will know what .that means. This time out, the Band, as noted, gears down and heads out the 50s highway, draggin the gut, picking up on some rock n roll milestones, and stealing roadsigns from those vintage years. The sound selections range from Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" to Clarence "Frogman" Henry's "Ain't Got No Home" to Sam Cooke's "Change Is Gonna Come." What's truly amazing about the Band and their approach to such an endeavor is that nowhere does the "fact -that "this is a goddamned mouldy-oldie" get in the way of the music (as it does in, say, Pin-Ups or Sha Na Na or anybody else). The Band pulls a neat trick by making you forget the actuality of an already forged big song, but never the'familiarity and warmth of the known sound. Chuck Berry's presence, for instance, is never felt per se on "Promised Land," but the heat that the original sound generated still manifests itself inside the Band's splendid interpretation. What you hear is familiar (Smile!), but you still only hear the Band. It's simple. Straight' ahead. Punctual. Sublime in its understanding (it... the song. The Band is each song.) of the basic Chuck Berry elements, but without the usual Chuck Berry distortions that lesser bands indulge themselves and their listeners in. The. Band doesn't do Chuck Berry. They do rock V roll. But the Band proves that ol" Chuck is nothing hut pure rock through their, interpretation rather than mere mimicry. A valuable object lesson, folks, and that seems to be the point of the album. An: object lesson in the sublime rudiments of rock n roll. Only the Band could pull it off. .There's no way the Stones could follow "Promised Land" {that they could do... and' it would sound / just like "Carol" ' or i. "Little Queenie"...) With "The Great Pretender." The Band does, however, and it's truly wonderful, handled with both finesse and spunk.

As musicians, What can anybody say about the boys that hasn't already'been said? Danko on bass and Helm on drums Work together as if their brains are fused, and the two tools they use have become ope new precision: instrument played by its inventor and virtuoso. Always right. Never Obtrusive. And, pushing. The album is always moving, and has not " only the punch and | sponteneity and depth of musicianship and content found in original Band numbers, but also the instant accessibility of the "new" oldies. Rather thah fitting into the mold of the old song, the band brings said song info their fold. It's like knowing something really well, but one night you get stoned and hear something differently. The same but different. And the boogie joy is greater than ever.

"Holy Cow," the Allen Toussaint song •(originally done by Lee Dorsey, if Mike Ochs" "memory serves him Well) has the Band written all over it, almost a signature tuni, including some of Robbie Robertson's (that old shitkicker) tastiest guitar licks since the days of

the Hawks. Ditto on "Mystery Train" fpr the punk.

"Ain't Got No Home." Baritone saxes. NeW Orleans rinky tink piano, and one ,of those phrases ("ohuouh ouh ouhh ouh ouhouh ouhouhh...""), as Deborah says, "You can't get. it out of your head." A delightful infection.

"I'm Ready." From the opening raunchy sax... ah... through the... ah. solid big beat and tinkling... piano.ah... Fats Domino ain't ever heard it... sO good. "Well, I'm ready, I'm willing, and I'm able to rock & roll all night".. .so full, so,... ah... "scuse me, I think I'll get up and play it... again... *

*Look, it's hard to write this stuff because a review doesn't do the music justice. Usually the worse the album (at least in terms of a reviewer's regard), the better the review, in itself because it's easier to deal with subjective imperfections. You can have fun with shit albums. Confronted with pristine perfection, however,'is a different story. Words fail. Descriptions worse. Quit reaping! Start listening!

J.R. Young

Yeah, Alice threw everybody but the Kitchen Cinq into this album. Above, the Pointer Sisters.

ALICE COOPER Muscle of Love (Warner Brothers)

Alice musta been on dope to make such a messed up album. That's the bfest excuse I can think of (being drunk don't count anymore), and he sure needs ah excuse from somewhere, becaqse this is just bad, and not even bad enough to be interesting. I don't like it one little bit, as Gilbert O'Sullivan said, and I surer do wish Alice would get ddwn. No I don't, I'm lyiiig, cause I know better, at this point there's no reason fpr AUce to work very hard at anything and since there was never much substance there in the first place it's no wonder this " b$nd is turning to . powdered milk. After all, what else you gonna feed all those dead babiesl.This one sounds like it was recorded in about two days of one or two takes apiece fpr the most part, in-other words it's sloppy enough and rattles its raunch half-heartedly, and you're supposed to think this "unslickness" means the boys have cut back the Belasco flash and REALLY GOT INTO IT THIS TIME, but,of course that's just another hype because in spite of Some promising if hackneyed spng vehicles they can't at any point get excited enough to do more than run thru their instrumental and vocal paces. I mean it's really dead in its own amiable way,' It's like watching the absolute worst of Saturday morning cartoons, which is where this group belongs now anyway. There isn't much real violence or sex, no threats or Urgency or humanity, but everybody knew that a long time ago. Although on second listen there may be the usual clumsy attempt at some kinda thematic contrivance: you know they always take this shit outa movies they happened to be watching on teevee lately. It's On The Town this time, they're all swabs on leave in the big city, where they whore and get whored, winos spit pn them, it's a great life. There's also a teenage lament ju.st to keep the iron of their original single hit in the fire, but this time it's tedious enough to be insulting to any true pube. I mean everything he does is pandering, that'sihis biggest talent, and great panderers aren't easy to fincL But this is just limp — imagine this old drunk Whining cutely about,how, being 15 was'such' a drag he ran in his room and started tiyin" to play his guitar but his old man hollered "Turn that damn thing down" — does anybody really give a shit? Does this, song answer anybody's frustrations the way "I'm 18" did? Hell no, cause any brat knows that he doesn't mean it when he says "Why don't you get away?" His hostility's as phony as everything else, he's still just a nice guy. You can't even get mad at him, because you know he can't even do a good burlesque anymore, he's not even good enough to be broken or dissipated or pathetic. He's nothing but a piece of Kleenex.

Wally Cleaver,

QUEEN (Elektra)

Queen is the greatest discovery I've made since I found out that my own armpits smell like MacDonald's hamburgers (which is the absolute truth). Yeah, that's right, I discovered Queen myself. You see, one of my better scams for getting free albuihs is to appear at the front door of the CREEM office with a dozen cans of cheap beer and wave them under the editor's nose. You see, after he's had a few he invariably starts speculating on the Meaning of Life, which, he decides, ain't collecting gargantuan piles of noisy plasticized black etchings like this album, and therefore he usually sends me off home with enough of his personal rejects togive" a susquatch a fatal hernia. This all happens about fifteen minutes before he passes out.

Anyway, 1 usually take it all home and play about one cut off each album before I trade it to the guy across the hall for laundry detergent, and it was just after I'd finished making an ash-tray put of Richard Nixon: A Fantasy that I put on this EMI import version of Queen.

''The first chords came out so mean that you could actually see them tearing back and forth between the speakers. The very first song, "Keep Yourself Alive" simply has every trick in the world going for it. It's like a Capsule history of the famed Nottingham Amateur Night (the legendary amateur band battle that featured the sibling Yardbirds, Kinks and Freddy and the Dreamers going head to head in 1964) all wrapped up into four minutes. It's sonofabitchin" incredible, sensational, stupendous, and it wasn't until Elektra released the Queen album here, by which time I'd already just about worn out "Keep Yourself Alive," that Factually got around to listening to the rest of the album.

Now naturally, it doesn't have the impact for me that the first orgiastic whizz-bang of sound had, but it really ain't half band. Good solid underground rock and roll all the way through, and they don't hiiss one commercial trick, not one. If you trive on heady stuff, you can't, go wrong to spend five fucks on this one, and despite my feelings, toward the vinyl barons in the record industry, it might even be a bargain. Like that tie-died geek said so long ago, the magic's in the music. Yeah, it still is.

Al Niester

Big A1 K's still a honky honcho (carpetbagger now).

BLUES PROJECT Reunion In Central Park (Sounds of the South)

Here's the culprits! These are the ones, all right, who long ago (1966) bolted the confines of the American Rock & Roll success formual, and Dared To Be Different. These are the guys who first eschewed the whole AM Hit handbook approach to "making it," and without any prompting, dove off into ambitious' genre fusions, oddball musical transplants and precedent-smashing artsyfartsiness.

-These jerks were earning accolades like "incandescent" before there was even a rock press, and they were amazing tweedy, pipesmoking musicologists and recent Stones-bred hard rock fans alike. They were among the first to play, if not name, such hot hyphen items as blues-rock, folk-rock and raga-rock. To look at the five unassuming clods slouching on parked Haight St. jalopies on the coyer of their second lp (Projections, on VerveFolkways yet!), you'd never guess... that in their exaggerated idiom-fusing, exotic instrumentation (hey! flute, harp, sitar, theremin, besides guitars, organ and drums) and penchant for improvisation, they ushered in a heaping portion of the ills that now plague modern man.

Back to the history-writ BP can be traced, directly or indirectly, such anathema as "the long version," the Democratic Solo Act of 1968 (everybody gets one), jazz-rock, Passion Play, jelly-brained Southern jam bands, and all manner of indulgence programmed faithfully by "progressive radio"; all the soppy FM gruel , from Traffic to Isaac Hayes and Marshall Tucker. By circumventing ascribed R&R success channels, they made it all possible.

What bastards, huh? Oughta be handcuffed and forced to listen to their musical progeny (they do; who do you think thought up BS & T, -Sea train, or Lynyrd Skynyrd?), right? They must've been the most fat-assed, Pretentious excuse for a. rock band ever, no? and their records oughta be remelted immediately to alleviate the current vinyl shortage, huh?

No sir. This double set documents One of the most effective "reunion" concerts ever recorded and it validates a sneaky notion I've long held about the infamous BP. Their hyperactive attempts to fasion "new music," their rampant eclecticism, their cocky indifference to conventions both musical and economic, required a certain irreverence and audacity. What a ridiculous sendup; five Big Apple honk types playing Blues, overamping and triple-timing hallowed chestnuts like "Goin" Down Louisiana" and "Spoonful," electrifying folk music, hauling harpsichords and mini-moog keyboard attachments onstage, building some wild new synthetic rock stuff from blistery guitar "freak-outs" and amplified flute solos! Screw Roxy Music.

IF JOHN LENNON IS SUCH A BIS FAN OF ROCK $ ROLL LIKE HE SAY'S, WHY DOESNT HE DO OF IT.

YEAH, AND GET HIS HEAD OUT OF THE COSMIC OZONE, OR . WHEREVER IT IS...

The whole stance and attitude behind such a ludicrous folly had to be fundamentally a rock "n" roll one; smart-ass post-teen pickers with hot ideas and itchy fingers, one-year-ofcollege music freaks bored with Greenwich Village acoustic action and ready to become the next Beatles. As preposterous a proposal in "77 as nasalteen Liverpudlians revving up behind Little Richard copys in "63, or an expatriate Seattle spade welding white themes and technology to.black bluesforms in "67.

Wild-ass stuff.

What the hey? Blues Project "73 is sharp. The patchwork quilt quality of their music still wears Its novelty and charm well; Kalb's buzzy sawmiU leads and totally irrelevant freakouts, hisnonkoid toss-offs of. phrases like "nrojo hand" and "black cat bone." A1 Kooper's hebe sOul sermonizing on "Wake Me Shake Me," what a gig! It's all too loud, much too fast, too perfect-.a live rock "n'roll album.

When you listen to it, it's hard to believe this is what led to Yes, the Dead, ELP, TYA and the Allmans. The first steps are the funniest. Next .ups. A1 Kooper's reformation of the Royal Teens. Watch out.

Gene Sculatti

THE GRATEFUL DEAD Wake of the Flood (Grateful Dead Records)

The Grateful Dead's studio albums have always contradicted the sense of risk involved in their live shows. In concert, there's only two ways the Dead can play, exhilirating or awful. When you buy a ticket, you're never quite sure whether you'll be blown away or blown out the door. That, I think, is the source of the Grateful Dead mystique, still strong after nearly seven years as the rock's most erratic common denominator.

All of the risk involved with the Grateful Dead at this point seems to be wrapped up in economics. They've started their own record company, not surprisingly named Gratefur Dead Records. It's unlike every other spin-off label associated with major groups, from Apple to Grunt to Rolling Stones Records, in that each of those labels continues fo be distributed by a major label (Capitol, RCA and Atlantic, respectively) who also take a substantial share ofthe profits.

Not so with GDR. It's entirely owned, operated, and most importantly, distributed by the Grateful Dead clan. They've formed their-own, network of independent distributors, who are contracted to deal with Dead "product" in their own local areas. The money grossed is funneled " directly to the Grateful Dead's bank (unfortunately, an "establishment" bank, since the Dead don't own any banks... yet),, with no record company slices. No hassles with wazoos'in L.A. or N.Y. about cover art, content, contracts, overworked promo men or publicists. The Dead do it all.

Somewhere in all of this comes a new album, Wake of the Flood. I think it's new, anyway, since there's i nothing different or innovative about the music. It's not a bad record, and it's certainly not a'great record. If I was an FM disc jockey, I wouldn't mind playing a cut or two once in awhile, because it's sure to please most -of their old-fans, which make up a large enough number to keep a little new San Rafael record company solvent. For the time being.

At its best, there is an aggressive song like "Eyes of the World," which at least has some semblance of both memorable melody and catchy instrumental refrain, so it's possible to remember it fondly when the album's off the turntable. Nice chunky organ riffs Churn steadily while Garcia moves pointedly, rolling here, staccato there, actually playing like the. ace guitarist everyone tells me he is.

"Row'Jimmy" is the song I liked least the first time I heard it. Reluctantly, I'm coming around to enjoy it, especially the Robert Hunter line that goes "That's the way it's been in town Ever'' since they tore the jukebox down."

But Hunter, one of the few people left in rock "besides Steely Dan's Fagen and Becker who is capable of enigmatic lyrics that actually mean something, is rarely compelling in his wordplay on this album, just as the )ead are rarely more than complacently

competent. The pits is probably the lengthy "Weather Report Suite," in which the Dead may have underestimated their audience in terms of devotion as well as attention span. The refrain: "And like a desert, spring/ My love comes and spreads her wings."

I don't exactly know why I Expect more from the Grateful Dead at this point. I ceased being a fan right after the first album, though I remained an admirer right past Workingman "s Dead, about halfway through American Beauty. Since then, they've been satisfied to give Watkins Glen Nation what they thought they wanted, and amazingly enough, do precisely that with every album, until the fact that they're a rock *tt" roll band seems rather secondary to their emergence as an irtstitutiqn, and now, a corporation.

I've got no quarrel with any of that. They did do it, and that's almost enough reason enough for-me to respect them. What I don't like is the mood of false nostalgia contained

in many of the songs ("Let Me Sing Your Blues Away," "Here Comes Sunshine,"; "Mississippi Half Step.") I don't mind cleanli ness, but this record, as moni would say, is so clean you can eat off it. I just hope next time: they' let Hunter put insane words of wisdom; in their mouths instead of Marin County: platitudes, and let them get some crudeness1 into the act. Until then, remember: good karma means good business.

Wayne Robins: