BOB DYLAN Planet Waves (Asylum)

God-bye baby. See I was hoping this would be the work that would sever me off. I been following him like some good dog too long. Trying not to be ashamed, as it does not seem to please him — this admiration. But you know I never looked to him to be no messiah. I don’t need no messiah. To me henever writ a protest songas great as Mick Jagger; as hardass as Jimmy Breslinoid as the Stones “Heartbreaker.” No man. To me Dylan was always a sex symbol. Positive energy behind a negative mask is very sexy.g Like a full basket under straining pants. It wasn’t the world he saved, in my dreams, it was me.

^ At dances in South Jersey I was a perpetual wallflower. Not the kind that’s lucky enough to blend with. the walls. I stuck but like a boil on a bareback. I’d lurk,about in my limp taffeta and fantasize, abou t Dylan. My James Dean my knight. He’d walk across the dance floor, cold and alone, take me in his arms and we’d do the strand .to “A Million To One.”

When he performed in, Phillie 1 just swooned. He played with such urgency. As if he had a stilted lifeline. As. if he had a pain in the nerves. It totally hit me then. Him in his plaid jumpsuit. How a guitar rests so completely on a man’s cock; I embraced every record. I walked his walk. I followed no parking meters. When he broke down I just cried and waited patiently for his return. With hope and quiet, r never waltzed in his garbage.. I know he’s human. He can’t even fly. He’s simply human. I think of him often but I’d just as soon give him the big kiss off;'Let the planet have him.

Planet Waves. I like the cover. Mostly cause it’s black and white. Like Baudelaire’s dress suit: His handwriting: “... space guys... big dicks and ducktails... searching thru the ruins for a glimpse of buddah... long insomnia*..” Two cuts (side 2) make it completely worth it. One black one white. One that swan-dives and one that transcends.

It’s a thin line between love and hate. Genet and Motown know all about it. “Dirge” is a love song even William Burroughs cduld get into. Relentless amphetamine IBM. Masculine honor broken on low streets. Beyond bitterness beyond homosexuality. .

.. can’t recall a useful thing/ you ever done for me/ except to pat me on the back/ when I was on my knees/ we stared into each other’s eyes/ neither one of us would break/ no use to apologize/ what difference would it make.”

Moth wings flapping — very Lorca-esque guitar ancj the way Dylan plays piano. Insistant plodding chords. A style second only to Oscar Levant’s. “Dirge” is the strongest, most man-head thing Dylan ever done. Drenched in “Ballad in Plain-D” guilt and an odor of ammonia and roses. There’s something so delicious in repentance; so seductive about shame. The maze you enter* his brain and spleen, the dark hotel and alley, where ‘angels play with sin.’ It’s very moving. A man lost in the barracks of any city cold and dead as crystal. > 7

. “Wedding $ong” is the white one. The hero is bleeding is tracked thru the snow. He sings it with the bitterness of one who’s forced to tell the truth. His Hattie Carroll voice. He’s such a handsome singer. Candles over Roy Orbison, He sings, like there’s nowhere else. Like a hotel room at 4 a.m. He \sings to her: “I love you more than madness!” There’s nothing more a man could §ay to a woman. It’s true that the art comes from man and man. But peace conies from man and woman. There’s nothing more perfect than the perfect union.

I don’t care for the rest of the album. There’s no balance. The Band makes me nervous. Like a bumblebee in the face. But I’m no hipster putting down the prince. “Going, Going, Gone” has fine lyrics and would rip your guts out if covered by Mick Jagger or Chuck Jackson. And for me, “Dirge” and “Wedding Song” go beyond any other. They are both direct and relentless. Like one determined to walk very fast thru the cold night. And sexy, sexy as hell.

In sex he’s never let trie down. Knocking me below the belt Just like The Who. Oh I been sicjc see. Laying in bed and my vision been bad. I was drawing a picture. I thought it was Rimbaud but it was Dylan/ I kept drawing. I thought it was Dylan but when I looked again it was me I was making. Sooner or later it hits, everyman like a claw in the brain. Everyman has got to do his own work. But when you get down to pure self portrait it’s just the end of the line.

Patti Smith

JONI MITCHELL Court And Spark (Asylum)

Court and Spark is more pleasurable but less powerful than For the Roses. It’s about the tentative beginnings of love more than its unequivocal crash, about ambivalence more than ache. As a result it lacks the rending intensity of Roses, • but if it is not so emotional an experience, to listen to Court and Spark is to encounter an analytical intelligence that is equally rare. For in stepping back from the depths of feeling which Roses sounded, Joni Mitchell has also stepped back from herself, acquiring a trenchant objectivity and insight. Whereas Roses ended with her embarrassing and maudlin identification with Beethoven, the last song on Court and Spark “Twisted” (also recently revived by Bette Midler), laughs, albeit grimly, at such delusions of grandeur.

Court and Spark is a celebration of freedom and a troubled admission of Joni Mitchell’s inability, as a star and as a woman, to be free. Her success and her money burden her with guilt, and the demands-of her position are such that she’s “Tethered to a ringing telephone,” chained to “the star maker machinery/ Behind the popular song:’’ Yet she cannot escape from captivity because^ as she concedes (and in conceding this she differs from so many whining stars), , she cannot give up her popularity and her wealth. When love appears “With a sleeping roll” and promises distant happiness, she isn’t strong enough to “Let go of L:A./City of fallen angels.” But it is her weakness as a woman who must be in love arid who cannot conceive of love in terms other than of bondage that finally rnakes freedom an impossibility. For Joni Mitchell freedom and love are mutually exclusive, and' no matter how keenly she yearns for the former, she cannot live without the latter. Thusi in many of Court and Spark's songs she resists yet invariably succumbs to love, ending up, yet again, in “The Same Situation,” no longer free. • Certainly this dilemma and ambivalence have been contributing factors in Joni Mitchell’s hectic and redundant lovelife (“I used to count lovers like railroad ears”); they are the substance of this album, and they constitute, to varying degrees, the plight of many women. Significantly, the only song on Court and Spark in which Joni Mitchell is really free is sung from a masculine point of view: “I was a free man in Paris.”'

All of this hardly seems the makings of a cheerful albfim, but that’s what Court and Spark by and large is. Cheech and Chong even make a guest appearance!

I wish I had more sense of humor

Keeping the sadness at bay

Throwing the lightness on these things

Laughing it all away*

Court and Spark does achieve a willful lightheartedness made possible by Joni Mitchell’s newfound detachment. Even if the humor is sick, she cari joke about her internal contradictions: “And you know two heads are' better than one.” Hence the music is determinedly uptempo and pop (like the album’s glam photo of Joni in lipstick and eyeliner), and this finally is the. record’s weakness: it tries too hard to be pleasant. The spare integrity of music at its best is compromised here by silly frills. One of the finest melodies she has ever written, ‘‘The Same Situation” (and this is also one of her most compelling vocal performances) is irritatingly sweetened by an insipid string arrangement and by a trite guitar embellishment copied from a Bread single. Other songs are dolled up with orchestral interludes, interjected chorales, even Andrews Sisters/Bette Midler harmonies. Such superfluities may be good fun, but they tend to trivialize Court and Sparkmaking it sound less like Joni Mitchell and more like any other chick singer.

The desire to produce Joni' Mitchell is understandable. On first hearing her tunes seem so sketchy, her instrumental abilities so slight, fier, voice so limited and even monotonous. But her music shouldn’t be fiddled with or dressed up; it should be left well7 enough alone, with only the most modest accompaniment, standing on the strength of its pristine singularity.

Despite the acuity., of its lyrics and the pull of most of the melodies, Court and Spark too often sounds ordinary, even vapid.' And that’s a long way from For The Roses. Yet because it’s such easyilistening, Crinrf and Spark for the wrong reasons, may very easily, beeome Joni Mitchell’s biggest seller to date.

Ken Emerson

*Crazy Crow Music/BMI

SANTANA

Welcome

(Columbia)

• God told me to give this record a bad review. I’m not being facetious. It took me a long time to find God and a hell of a lot longer to get him to talk. I had to dangle my sOul over the very abyss of hell — I drank, took dope, swore, and associated with women - before I was ^plucked like a feather from some vast eternal chicken and placed in the hands of the benign, forgiving Divine Creator. (What a night that was. But God just told me to stick to the matter at hand).

God told me tacos and cocktails don’t mix. He explains: Take Leon Thomas, please. Although the yodel is valid and a tradition of black music from centuries past, the rest of Thomas’ approach is exactly what you would expect from an ex-Count Basie vocalist. Pleasant .slickness and blues tinged like Joe Williams who is also an ex-Count Basie vocalist although he doesn’t yodel. In public. Possibly' in the shower (God knows, but he isn’t telling). Leon Thomas is not as good as Joe Williams, not as vital and original says the Original Mixmaster. That he is identified as a force in progressive music is a misrepresentation. He ha.s associated with many progressive forces but has contributed nothing himself except the revival of the yodel. God is displeased with Thomas because He says the yodel was a mistake in the first place and He was glad when it died out. So be it. Although Thomas appears on only three of the nine cuts here, God is picking on him because! He says it’s three too many. They’re dull and Carlos Santana has no business recording dull cuts. God says he has better plans for Santana and though I would not dare presume to interpret the words of the Divine Everything I think it’s a safe guess that this is just a transitory phase and we should forgive and forget it.

God told me the rest of the record is bad too (dullness again) with the exception of three cuts which please Him. “Samba De Sausalito” cooks with promise but seems better than it actually is because of afothe dreck that surrounds it — it’s dead in the center of side one. God noted some nice electric piano (the Devil’s invention, incidentally) by Tom Coster. Another cut that gets the close but no cigar nod is “Mother Africa,” with splendid Latin percussion, nice change of pace soprano sax solo by Jules Broussard, but a foolish melody by Herbie Mann. Where’s Carlos Santana? Featured prominently on God’s favorite cut, “Welcome.” Don’t make comparisons with Coltrane’s inspired original, He spake, just accept it as a tribute and an example of Carlos’ ability to beautifully handle a difficult piece of music (God says it could have been a real piece of slush),

’ I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoy “Flame-Sky” which features some intelligent and exciting guitar by Carlos but God won’t even listen to this piece because Mahavishnu John McLaughlin appears on it. So I must discipline myself not to like this cut.

God told me this record was an orgy of underachievement. I believe Him.

Starman

THE SIR DOUGLAS BAND Texas Tornado (Atlantic)

Sir Doug rides again! This is his ninth album (if you count the one Mercury put together -of various out-takes — and you oughta, it’s a good one) and it follows pretty much the same pattern as. most of the earlier ones; some blues, some ballads, sqme country, and the all-pervasive underlying Tex-Mex organ Rock and Roll.

Years ago, Sir Doug and the Quintet were reknowned as the first of the English groups to come from Texas — of late he’s known for various super sidemen - but the main trip is him and his energy flash. A couple of years ago 1 spent a day with him when he was on a promo tour, meeting writers and radio people lh NYC, and trying to set up future gigs. He has the energy and purpose of a desert whirlwind, talks like Dean Moriarty (the hero of On The Road) and smokes some of the heaviest shit I ever ran across. Two or three hits had everybody else hung up on their knees, but Doug was still explaining,declaiming and zoning like a room full of grandfather clocks.

Much of the same feeling domes across in most of his LPs on the Smash & Phillips labels — they don’t sound as much like recordings as like tapes captured from a week long party that people will still be talking about in years to come. The songs usually ranged from Texas blues shuffles (with fine, unselfconsciousblues guitar licks by Doug) to spacey ballads (like “Stoned Faces Don’t Lie”) — and don’t forget the singles like “She’s About A Mover” and “Mendocino”... but all had the common grounding of being just isolated several minute segments from a whole lot of music. (If you ever find the first LP The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet onf Tribe, check out the Tex-Mex version of the classic “In The Jailhouse Now”; it’s a stoned delight.)

Like I said, all of these influences show up on the _ new album - but it seems like somehow some of the energy has been siphoned off somewhere. On the last album, with Dylan, Dr. John and Bromberg, Doug was in the role of party host instead of main madman and the album suffered a bit for it. Here there are a few less supersidemen, but there’s still a contained, ordered feel to some of it. (A few of foe tracks have almost identical personnel as the " last LP, which causes me to . wonder if they aren’t from the samesessions.)

There are three tunes that are positively laid back: “Someday,” a blues ballad in the classic mold with lots of horns, “Blue Horizon,” a spacey lyric bossa-novaed (with a line about “tranquilizers” — maybe that’s the problem), and the new'Bobby Charles classic, “Tennessee Blues” — again with heavy horn section. The big-band blues number is a nice “Ain’t That Loving You,” with tasty guitar and horn work.

In the old Quintet/Honky Blues vein are “San Francisco FM Blues” (a riff off “Backwoods Girl” who “floats around the house, doesn’t get much anymore” on the Together After Five album) and “Hard Way,” a song about the real yin/yang of it, with some classic Augie Meyer organ riffs... and “Nitty Gritty,” another slice of road life.

The C&W song is “I’ll Re There,” with foe twin fiddle sound, the Tex-Mex riff taken care of by “Chicano,” an accordion anthem. “Juan Mendoza” is a semi-topical song with the chorus “the world is a world is a world, and I don’t care what you say”... and in the market for foe hit single spot is the title track “Texas Tornado” — with the old familiar sound, and drive.

. All the elements are foere, but in some cases they’ve been polished, up just a bit too much - Doug just doesn’t seem comfortable in nice clean tight arrangements, which means about a third of the album But the rest is theTexas Tornado doing what he does best — making good jumping music. (If you like side two of the LP, check out his earlier albums — they’re more of the same, with the sloppy edges still there.) Good beer drinking music, and that’s awww-right!

Tony Glover

BLACK SABBATH Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (Warner Bros.)

The question, Sabs, is where you been so long? So highly irresponsible was their disappearing act over a year ago that heavy metal almost vanished from the face of the earth. Unlike every other gang of electric warriors, Black Sabbath alone retains ultimate dignity. Would they ever let Todd Rundgren produce them to get a hit record? You know that answer. Would they ever do a reggae to get some cheap airplay, like Jimmy Page and the Blimp That Pissed in the Continental Hyatt House? No way, man. The Sabs got integrity.

1 So we’ve been stuck here, having to chew on Tiven-jizzems about Queen, putting automatic throwaways like Atomic Rooster in. the “maybe” pile, and reluctantly dealing with imitators like Uriah Heep, Martin Mull, Captain Beyond and Helen Reddy. Of course, the Sabs have had more important things to do than lay the only metal on us. It’s been suggested that Tony Iommi went back to college, got his degree in anthropology, and thought about becoming a teacher. And everyone knows that Ozzie Osbourne went to Hollywood, only to get stuck with the worst new TV series of the year. Everytime I watch Ozzie's Girls I just can’t believe they did it to us.

How to cope? One day for a lark Dave Marsh suggested listening to Master of Reality at 45 r.p.m. You know what it sounded like? The Allman Brothers! So for the last few months we’ve been reversing the process, listening to Brothers and Sisters at 16 r.p.m. But the thrill is wearing thin, since that ruined two $55 cartridges, and hey, man, I’m running outta Placidyls. And “Ramblin’ Man” certainly ain’t no “War Pigs.”

Finally, Salvation. Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is here, and you know, they didn’t let us down. Even if when you put it on, and "get engrossed in conversation for what seems like a half hour, you find out the first song is still going. Even if we had, extended discussions with authorities when they found this kid in my English class on the sidewalk, having splattered in the parking lot from the third floor of our school. He did say that “Spiral Architect” was “Kahlil Gibran for Satanists,” didn’t he? The dude’s lucky he can still drink through a straw.

No questions asked of the Sabs, though. They’ve been too busy making their most ambitious album to date. There is actually a chord change -on; “Who Are You,” and a certain amount of melodicvinventiveness that some of the more Cro-Magnonesque elements of Sab culture' might have a hard time dealing with. The most difficult aspect of all this to relate to is the appearance of Yes’ Rick Wakeman on some kinda screwy keyboard. You know what that smells like to me: attempted artistic achievement, and if the Sabs ever fall for that, they’re sunk.

Fortunately, no such disaster has occurred on this album. Wakerhan makes it as an honorary Sab with the same ease,that sensitive smart guy Curt qualified for membership in the Pharoahs in American Graffiti. They still write songs with lines like “God knows as your dognose/ Bog blast all of you.. Can there be any doubtabout who is back in town? Sabbra Cadabra!

Wayne Robins

*Copyright 1973 Rollerjoint Music

BETTE MIDLER (Atlantic)

All this diverse material - old Broadway show tunes, a Phil Spector classic, a Wardell Gray jazz novelty, soul songs, Dylan — you can almost hear those presenting Bette murmuring, “See how versatile she is?” The singer herself doesn’t project that sort of pretension, but her unfortunate misunderstanding of the material, her inability or unwillingness to distinguish between the real and the artificial, the astigmatism that has her seeing camp as humor and pathos as tragedy are all as insidious „as the adulation of her adoring audience. Yes, she does lots of different types of songs. But she does nearly all of them wrong.

In the first place the notes are not there. Listen to “Skylark” and “Drinking Again” — you’d have to be pretty drunk to hear some of those tones without flinching. Maybe it’s due to her technique. Her most Characteristic device is to pull her lips back tight and bleat. For anything stronger than that she just ups the voltage; but it’s not strength that comes across, it’s screeching.

This isn’t the latest chapter of the old chops-versus-soul argument that used to . rage in the pages of Downbeat magazine. She hasn’t the soul either.

She’s not a good rock and roll singer, not on “Da Doo Run Run” (sic). She’s no Aretha. Her best moments are the thirties-forties numbers, “Lullaby of Broadway,” “In the Mood,” with herself overdubbed as a vocal trio and lots of fast scatting to rush us along to the finish line. She rushes through all these songs and milieus, hurrying the tempo, jumping from one mood and era to another, here a spot of comedy, there a bit of the blues — what will she be recreating next, “Ball and Chain”?

What is the past to her? It seems like she’s suffering from nostalgia for a time when people had genuine feelings. Wow, in 1938 love really meant something to people.

The sacrilegious summit is her “tackling” of the Weill-Brecht gutwrencher “Surabaya Johnny,” a sung-spoken lament delivered by a longsuffering woman to her faithless, mocking captor. The classic version by Lotte Lenya is readily available in both English and German, and its currency makes clearer how invisible was the need for this embarrassing cover. Bette sighs, catches her breath, clutches her bosom, but you still don’t believe she’s lived what she’s singing about. The chorus, delivered with that fullthroated bleat to (he accompaniment of obtrusive cymbals a la an Anna May Wong film, is the perfect auditory affront.

Having gone beyond romantic images (Sinatra), having discarded flawless technique (Ella), we’ve arrived at this weird stage where Bette Midler can be cheered for doing an impression of someone who has heart.

We’re all starved for entertainment, but need we settle for ersatz emotion?

Tom Nolan

SAM J. ERVIN JR. Senator Sam (Columbia)

Alright Horikies, show your colors. Tired of this Un-American rock ’n’ roll garbage? Was J. Edgar really right? About everything? Wish we could return to the good old days when our fair land was strong and proud and Paul Harvey was looked upon as a saint? Well then, open your door and let this record into your life. Eat some hickory, smoked country ham, sit down with your favorite brew, throw some more wood on the fire, light up a White Owl, take your shoes off, slide into that rocking chair and listen to this here album by the “Conscience of the Nation,” none other than Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr., this year’s Emmy Award winner as the outstanding combination afternoon soap opera/ talk show host. ,

All kidding aside (course I wasn’t, but so what), Senator Sam is definitely my choice for best new artist of the year in the CREEM reader’s poll, even though I ain’t a reader, just a writer and besides, I refuse to vote for anybody or anything. as long as I live. This record could very will be the grand finale of the Great American Trilogy of American Music. It all began with Everett Dirksen’s “Gallent Men” back in the sixties. You remember him, he’s the one who did that great version of “Wild Thing,” with Bobby' Kennedy’s version on the flip side. Ah, memories.

Part two of the trilogy took a long time to complete. Barry (Sgt. to you Jack) Sadler’s “Green Beret’’ record started it, and it was the number one record of 1965, go look it up, it’s true. Now part two was finished just this past summer when the Duke himself, John Wayne, released his America, Why I Love Her album. A ■ top ten choice for sure in many circles, sporting such classics as “The Hyphen,” which dealt with all those unpatriotic immigrants like Mexican hyphen Americans and Italian hyphen Americans, not to mention Catholic hyphen Americans, and Wayne’s heart rending rendition of “God Bless America backed by the musicians of Muzak Inc. And the lyrics to most, of the songs were penned by Robert Mitchum’-s son!! How heavy can you get? Sock it to ’em Duke. I recall a savings bond commerical that he did awhile back. He was sitting in his trailer on the movie set wearing a red hunting Jacket and he actually apologized for the color (“Business is business, and I gotta wear it for the film. Hope you’re not offended.”) What a man.

Anyway, here’s old Senator Sam with an album" chock full of recitations, songs, tall tales, and homespun philosophy. Real theatre, it d make Jim Morrison downright proud. Sam Ervin doing such classics as “Bridge Oyer Troubled Waters,” “If I Had a Hammer” (Hi Trini, wherever you are) and yes, believe it o.r not, THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Aawwreeet. And the old fart talks about such diverse subjects as religion, matrimony, law and drunk driving with the wit and insight expected of a 77 year Old man getting ready for the biggest trial of them all up there someday soon.

Best joke on the album is on “Zeke and the Snake.” Zeke has just applied for a new insurance policy and is accused of deliberately lying on the question “Did you ever have an accident?” The fast talkin’ Northern lawyer confronts Zeke with the fact that a rattlesnake once bit him. “Hell,” Zeke retorts, “That weren’t no accident. That snake meant to bite me.” Great delivery by Sam. He’s a spectacular breather. Reminds me of Beach Boy acappella numbers.

I don’ want to give away all the joys of this lp so I won’t go info much further detail.. I will say that there’s over 20 cuts on the record and they’re all dynamite, right down to the final track'when Sam does the last verse of the National Anthem, complete with new arrangement. And not one Watergate reference on the whole album! Sam ain’t np opportunist, no sir. Say, when’s Martha Mitchell’s LP coming out?

Billy Altman

STORIES Traveling Underground (Kama Sutra)

The original Stories was an ill-fated though briefly fruitful combo. There was just no way finally to harmonize and reconcile the very different personalities and ambitions of Michael Brown, chaste retiring classicist, and Ian Lloyd, ersatz Angloid flash. So Brown skulked off to play chess and putter. One could only assume that Stories would quickly go the way of the Left Banke. After all, Ian Lloyd’s pipes, though a fashionable blend of Robert Plant’s and Rod Stewart’s, hardly seemed strong enough to carry a band which had been known primarily for the quality if Brown’s compositions. What would they do for material? Cover versions, even when they go to No. 1, will only get you so far.

Well, Lloyd hired a bass player and a new keyboard man, and with becoming modesty christened the result Ian Lloyd & Stories. The new name and the new album’s garish cover (flaunted chests and hoary psychedelia) boded so ill I contemplated welshing on the review I’d casually agreed to. Yet when I played Traveling Underground, I was pleasantly surprised. Not bad, not bad at all.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t some real clunkers here, most notably “Mammy Blue,” the failed follow-up to “Brother Louie.” Why cover a song that was so unimpressive the first time around? And the album is cluttered with a lot of gimmicks like echoed and distorted vocals that were considered far out eight years ago. But the band can play," Lloyd can sing — although at times his voice is not simply strained (which is cool) but weak (which isn’t) - and best of all, Lloyd and guitarist Steve Love can write songs on their own. The melodic lines of “Soft Rain” and “Stories Untold” have the poignance of Brown’s best, and the shifting and complex rhythms of “Hard When You’re So Far Away” make it a fascinating track. In fact, what Stories misses is not Brown’s material so much as an intelligent arranger and producer. Too often the quality of the in-house writing is obscured by gratuitous effects, awkward transitions, and a certain sludginess of sound. Brown’s taste and discipline more than his talent are what is lacking. Kenneth Bichel is a fine keyboard musician, for instance, quite Brown’s equal and especially good on electric harpsicord and clavinet. But he needs to be told what Brown could tell him: skip the excrescent doodles and easy on the ARP.

ROD STEWART/FACES Coast To Coast Overtures And Beginners (Mercury; Warner Bros.)

Well, now that we know this is not the .boys’ next great album, we can be comfort-, able in admitting that it is a good one. Nothing startling, if yPu’ve seen the lads in the last year, but a beautiful “I Wish It Would Rain,” and a nice remake of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” help to make up.

Of course, this is one sloppy record. But compared to the last Faces’ studio effort* Ooh La La, that isn’t particularly upsetting. But in another way, the sloppiness that leads to the best parts of songs like “Every Picture” being omitted is annoying. The point of the Faces was once that they had something to say, about good times and bad. That spirit could parry us through more of both than any band that has come down the pike since, I guess, the Who, But the boys might have given up by now; at least, they haven’t added anything substantial to the idea since the last song on A Nod Is As Good As A Wink.

That song was called “That’s All You Need,” and though it revealed itself a time or two — those “maybes” were the message - I think the Faces probably really believe it. But rock isn’t soccer, at least not yet, and Rod Stewart has to do a little more as a singer than he would as an inside left. Maybe winning is everything in English y football, too; when I buy rock records, I’ni looking for more than just the flippancy I -could have purchased last year. Or yesterday, if I was interested in buying the imitation spread. The Faces are not Humble Pie, and what I get from Steve Marriott (a minor kick) is not what I get, or want, from the Faces. Someday, Rod Stewart should push a few faces in, perhaps, instead of tossing the same old pianos into the same old swimming pools.

They’re still my favorite group, of course, and I haven’t given up yet. But how long I keep listening — or caring — is a function of what happens when I do. The answer here is pleasant but minor. If we don’t deserve more, and if we shouldn’t have expected more, that still doesn’t mean someone isn’t selling short. And it ain't me, babe.

Dave Marsh

;-r Although by virtue of ,Bichel’s classical tendencies it retains something of the original Stories’ sensibility, Traveling Underground is louder, heavier,, and admittedly less distinguished. But it’s no slouch, and the band is a viable proposition.

Ken Emerson

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (Columbia)

Well, talk about outa nowhere. Not completely out of thin air, maybe, but I woulda never thunk... Listen, this album is great! I know, Iknow. You think Springsteen is some kinda wind-up wordmill* and that’s pretty much what his first album sounded like to me, too, but this here is something else.

It’s either a flawed work of genius or else a work of flawed genius. It’s irregular as hell, inconsistent, annoying sometimes, but once you’ve listened to it a couple of times and start to see, what’g going on, you forgive all that and just Get Off. I do all the time. In fact, I haven’t been so mystified and entertained by an album since Astral Weeks, and there’s more than a couple of parallels there...

He sounds like Van Morrison, for one thing. But he also sounds a lot like Mick Jagger, and Bob Dylan and Lou R^ed. A lot of the time he sounds like Bruce Springsteen, too. The lyrics are... maddening. Thoroughly frustrating because a lot of the threads of story-line that get thrown out are never gathered together, a lot of the same words and images appear through the songs, and more than once he blows a powerful line by putting too many words in it, which makes me think he needs an editor. But Jesus, when the words and music jell, there is something there that’ll make your hair stand on end.

Nbt that I can omit mention of the band, either, since Springstten’s band is what ties this whole record together. Springsteen plays electric guitar as bizarrely as he writes words, David L. Sancious is an absolutely incredible keyboard man, arranger and all-purpose cat, Clarence “Nick” Clemons plays rock and roll sax the way they only seem to know how to in New York, Danny Federici plays accordian, an instrument that is essential to Springsteen’s music, and the rhythm section, Garry W. Tallent, bass, and Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez on drums, is able to cope with all the changes nicely, as well as propelling the band along when things are at their most frantic.

Because the thing I like especially about this, group (they play like one, so they must be one, no?) is how jazz-oriented the music they play is. That is why I finally forgave Springsteen some of his eccentricities wfyich had been annoying me - I figured he was just improvising, like a jazz musician. The music has the same kind of freedom as good jazz, and it has the beat and drive of good rock. The arrangements, credited to Springsteen, are breathtaking, full of good ideas, like using the band to chant-whisper “Here she comes, here she comes” in “Kitty’s Back,” and the clapping and singing in the middle of “Rosalita.” Even when the words aren’t coming along too well, your ear keeps glued to the music because it’s changing so often.

I’ve now gotten to like the whole album, but after you rush right out and buy it you might like to start with Side Two, which consists of three masterpieces in a row: “Incident on 57th Street,” featuring Federici’s haunting “lead piano” figure, a blurry stqry of Puerto Rican love, and a beautiful chorus; “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” which is the album’s most easily-grasped number, and closest to the style of the last album musically, although it is light-years ahead of it lyrically; “New York City Serenade,” with the advice “Walk tall/ Or baby , don’t walk at all,” and a string arrangement by Sancious that captures the mood perfectly, although the “She won’t take the train” thing in the middle kind of breaks it. But once you’ve heard this, check out the other side. Specifically “Kitty’s Back,” which is the band’s tour-de-force, and which I think Barry Manilow and Bette Midler’s band ought to perform while she’s off changing, just so they could chant “here she comes, here she comes” as slyly as Springsteen’s band does here and she could leap at the mike and sing the final “Kitty’s back in town” section. Until that happens, you’ll just have to buy this album, to check out the original.

I’ve still got questions about Springsteen, like can his band play anywheres near this good on stage and can he keep this up (one astonished person I know who’s met him reports that he doesn’t use drugs, by the way) ^ but on the strength of this album I’d say that there is every possibility that Bruce Springsteen is a major talent and certainly somebody to keep an eye out for. His music and his lyrics evoke New York City for me like nobody has since the Velvet Underground. Even if he does need an editor.

Ed Ward

GIL EVANS Svengali (Atlantic)

CANNONBALL ADDERLEY Somethin' Else (Blue Note)

What with Weather Report, Mahavishnu, Return To Forever, and the rest of the cosmic Our Gang gaining more popularity and more or less setting the pace for accessible jazz recordings (as opposed to all that good stuff that’s hard to find), 1973 was a pretty dreary year jazzrecordwise.

One notable exception has been the appearance of the rarely recorded Gil Evans on the very accessible Atlantic record label. Evans’ past recordings under his own name have been low-keyed, almost solemn affairs -music to die of old age by — which have never found an audiencebeyond the cognoscenti, probably a vanishing breed now that everyone has less money. Not so with Svengali (Trilby’s mentor, the prototype of the hypno-maestro, and an anagram of Gil Evans). Evans has assembled a 16-person band, mostly youngpersons, and has devised arrangements which, while retaining some of the ethereally eccentric tuba-flute-french hofn wisps of old, are designed to compliment the soloist as well as display ensemble grace and dexterity. Subtle invention meets high energy and there’s not even a hint of religion in the wings.

There’s humor and movement in the music, a hysterical baritone sax solo by Trevor Koehler (late of the Insect Trust) on “Cry of Hunger” that really peels the onion, a sly synthesizer appearing throughout the album courtesy of David Horowitz, lovely guitar by Ted Dunbar on “Summertime,” a song called “Zee Zee” which never ends (it just... disappears) — in sum, more to play with than on most albums and worth the price.

Only one song here, “Summertime,” recalls the famous Gil Evans-Miles Davis collaborations of the late 50s (many homes disdainful of jazz still contain copies of Sketches of Spain or even Porgy and Bess — not just because it’s hip to show, but because people like the sound). The rest offer a new direction and a refined degree of satisfaction - which is precisely what one used to expect from a new Miles Davis recording. But Miles has declined in the last few years, a surprising turn of events after he injected so much fresh blood into the jazz idiom with the brilliant plunges of In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Lately it’s been fragmented playing in mundane context. Fortunately Miles has been a prolific recorder during the .last 26 years and his records date well. Although Somethin Else was originally released (in ’58) and is now reissued under Cannonball Adderley’s name, it is obvious that Miles is the auteur of the session (a fact pointed out in the original liner notes). Not only does he dominate the head arrangements but also the mood of the quintet with each member contributing to the atmosphere of smouldering intensity that Miles had perfected by the late 50s. Even drummer Art Blakey sounds restrained.

This is one of Miles’ all-time best dates (and you should snatch it up before it disappears again), a beautifully swung album that, in light of the recent offerings of both Miles and Blue Note records, seems suffused with the wistful aura of the posthumous.

Richard C. Walls

HELEN REDDY Long Hard Climb (Capitol)

All men are weasels. The only use they have for women is to get their rocks off, and half the time the only reason they wanna do that is to prove something. Which is why all women hold them in such utter contempt.

But every bbdy knows that. What everybody doesn’t know is the hot pulsating goodies Helen Reddy’s got to. offer up. Cum here woman, do your duty; drop them drawers and gimme some pooty! But no, this is one Boopsy won’t do the do — she’s a holdout, she’s not even a tease. Anne Murray was demure but carnal — Helen is downright prim at times.

But that’s her genius. Clearly the world stage is now readyer’n ever for some kinda prim popstar. People who think in slow motion got Roberta Flack, fags got I forget who, drunken speedfreaks got' Lou Reed, hippies and jigoros got all kindsa icons, but all the young ladies of the handsoff persuasion who are good and sick of all these big pigs leering and smacking over ’em all the time have finally got a pop, force of major magnitude to speak for them. And that’s no small shekels, Bashkar.

In the first place everybody knows that at least as much great pop music comes outa repression as comes outa lust - that’s why the fifties and early sixties were so rich, cause all that repressed lust just bubbled up through the wax. Everybody’s too damn blatant today; the dildo-brandishing comic strip superficiality, of a Wayne County is a real bore. Grace Metalious said that the real sickness (which is what pop thrives on) is in the clean places, and it’s still true today. MOR is more perverted that glitter ever dreamed of being because glitter irtoo upfront — it’s like how S&M freaks don’t really dig each other: they want somebody who’s NOT DIGGING IT! They want straights! Fresh meat!'And the, four-square decks of Helen Reddy with enough bendo twisto English to satiate even the most jaded mugwump.

Take for instance Long Hard Climb's “The Old Fashioned Way,” where Helen sings “Just melt against my skin/ And let me feel your heart” — obviously an emetically graphic depiction of Burroughs’ classic scene of terminal parasitic absorption as the two Venusian organisms schlup together in a slow froth of creeping green ooze like when you put salt on a snail.

But the real masterpiece here is “Leave Me Alone.’’ Guys have had all kindsa great hostility songs for years, from John Lee Hooker’s, “I’m Mad’’ to Lou’s “Vicious,” but all Women had to fall back on was masochistic laments like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” or at best C&W you’re-cut-off sops like Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ With Lovin’ On Your Mind.” But this a great, a woman’s song that goes all the wayin the most basic terms: just “Leave me alone, aww leave me alone...” Not since Dylan’s pinnacles has there been such revivifying and totally irresistible rancor. I can see this tune being a hot number on jukeboxes in bars across the USA, as the stags smooth their shags furtively eyeing the always two babes just a few tables away (“YourS doesn’t look so good,” if on’e really fat and ugly; “Well, which one do you want — makes no difference to me.” “The blonde.” “I thought you were gonna say that.”) So now besides just smirking “No” at these losers, the sisters have a blare of support to blast the brummels to cowering jelly under their own tables. It’s the same kind of release from sexual suffocation ‘ expressed in the lines of her hit “Peaceful”:': “No one bending oyer my shoulder/ Nobody breathing in my ear!” This is real woman’s pop anthem, and not that queasily self-conscious sisters-unite pap set in a perfect marriage of watered-down Sousa and “Waltzing Matilda.”

Even when she’s toeing the line Helen manages to get the irony in. “A Bit O.K.” is about connubial fructification. In the morning she tap dances while making the coffee, at night she turns off the late show and reaches for him. Perfect joy, perfect fulfillment: “Now I’m really livin’.” Now you might think that’s just a bogusly suburban mythical wifey poo copout on Helen’s part, but it’s not. Subtle as ever, she saves her wealth of sarcasm for the chorus: “Hey hey, it’s a bit O.K. [whotta testimonial!)... By the way, thanks a lot for giyin’ me a little. lovjn’...” [you miserable clumsy inconsiderate prematurelyejaculatin’ grunto lug!].

I don’t blame Helen and the rest of womankind for being mad. All men but me are puds. What I’d like to see is an all-girl band that would sing lyrics like “I’ll cut your nuts off, you cretins,” and then jump into the audience and beat the shit out of the men there. Meanwhile, Helen’s chops are up: she’s no artist, she's a constant pulsation, 50,000 watts of Helen Reddy arcing into diffusion with a glow that touches every stucco nautilus in every housing project from here to Bobby Goldsboro’s composite dream suburb. Helen is not merely heavy, Helen is not just a downy-necked sex object like Anne Murray - Helen is a beacon, the perfect 70s incarnation of Miss Liberty herself in pantsuit and bowler crooning for America in a voice like the tenderest walls brushing together — the real velvet underground.

Lester Bangs