Whining Through the Paradox

Whining Through the Paradox

RECORDS

Robert Christgau

NEIL YOUNG

On the Beach

(Reprise)

We have reached the second stanza of the title song of Neil Young's new album, On the Beach, and Young is still whining: "I need a crowd of people/But I can't face them day to day." The words are uncharacteristically direct, but there's nothing new about the tone of voice; Young's singing borders on whining even at its most mellow. Then he repeats the same lines. Nothing new about that, either; Young repeats himself repeatedly. Then there is a change: "My problems may be meaningless/But that don't make them go away."

Then the original lines are repeated one more time.

Something in the obsessiveness of this music is easy to dislike and something in its thinness hard to enjoy. But there is no question of dishonesty, as there was with his biggest album, Harvest, and as there remains with the mammoth grosses he split with touring associates Crosby, Stills and Nash this summer. The thinness bespeaks a genuine, if comfortless, fragility, and the self-concern contains genuine self-doubt. Are Neil Young's problems meaningless? It's certainly good of him to ask.

It's not surprising that a song sensitive and intelligent enough to ask this question should frame it with such suggestive succinctness. "On the Beach" zeroes in on a pop variant of the simultaneously aesthetic and existential dilemma that occupies so much modern art, meaningless and otherwise. The jordinary avant-gardist believes that he or she is reaching out to a public that cannot or will not be touched; the popular avant-gardist can't help but feel that as he touches the public some ~ essential selfness at the source of his work is endangered. Young depends on his public; he opens his song, "The world is turnin"/I hope it don't turn away." And yet the technological means to thjs public are intrinsically alienating; when he ends up "alone at the microphone" in the "radio interview" of the third stanza, he is bemoaning (among other things) the solitude in which the farthest-reaching mass communication is invariably initiated. Both music and lyric break down in a final verse which has Young fleeing town in his bus with some friends, keening quietly in his anguish.

Like another great solitary of 60s rock, Bob Dylan, Young finds himself in full revolt against the pervasive slickness of contemporary music. Slickness itself can be tolerated, but when it becomes pervasive it begins to seem symptomatic of everything that is most disturbing about the business of music — its power to reduce the individual artist, no matter how sinewy and flavorful, down to whopper-burgers. Since Harvest, in which Young's recalcitrant wail was enveloped within (or counterposed against, although if that's what was intended it didn't work) orchestrations of almost somnolent lushness, Young has flouted his own commerciality with abandon. An undistributed movie provided the excuse for a failed retrospective album, which was followed by a presold tour. The new tunes from the tour were collected almost a yeW later, on an instant gold album that got terrible reviews.

The reviews disheartened Young, but they didn't daunt him. He just shied away a little. On the Beach is an attempt to recast Time Fades Away in studio terms. In need of an audience that had faced him down in his workaday life, as frightened by that audience's continued proximity as by its potential desertion, Young manufactured an extension of himself with recording technology. And not surprisingly, its problems are his problems. Always unique among laid-backs in his determination to understand his audience and the world it represents empathetically, Young has finally begun to indulge his own compulsive insularity. The honesty of the result, as I've implied, may be admirable. But that does not make it attractive.

The catch here, according to this reviewer, is, that the other reviewers were dead wrong. Time Fades Away was no crude throwaway or quickie rip-off. In fact, it was and is something of a masterpiece, epitomizing the brooding, wacked-out originality of Young's rock and roll. Hard and dense without flaunting its own heaviness, ringing with riffs concocted from the simplest harmonic components, it stands as the most forceful record Young has ever made, and it's no accident that Young's peak force coincided with his most intense confrontation with that crowd he needs and fears so much, both in the content of music and lyrics and the context into which both were projected.

Evidence that Young found the confrontation frustrating even at the time -recurs throughout the LP. He complains that his earthquake vision of Los Angeles is "just a show" and implies in "Don't Be Denied" that Neil Young is just an image for outsiders to hang their perceptions on. But "Don't Be Denied" is also an anthem of encouragement for kids whose naivete Young acknowledges to be no greater than his own once was. And 'in "Last Dance" he first evokes the day-job hassles that ultimately pay for Neil Young tickets and then suggests an opposite alternative: "You can live your own life/Makin" it happen/Workin" on your own time/Laid back and laughin"." Then, in a protracted and painful climax, he scotches that possibility by repeating the word "no" dozens of times over a repetitive, boogie-prone back-riff, which is the source pf the' last dance of the title. The fans takes these negatives as one more joyous, defiant nay-saying rock and roll doxology. They don't understand that all the nays are about them.

Rarely has the relationship between star, music and audience been presented with such complex, uncompromising force. The hint of unhealthy self-involvement in Young's cracked moan of a voice is overwhelmed by its own momentum, and although the man must have found it strange to see fans slowly boogieing to this epiphany, he must have known that it wouldn't have been an epiphany if they didn't. What he didn't understand was that the record of this epiphany, gold or no, would be counted a failure.

Young is reported to have loved Time Fades Away when it appeared, but later, after sales lagged and the critics turned on it, he changed his mind. And now there, is On the Beach, a much more private album, which is all right, except that for Young-private means insular. Did he intend it as a rebuff to his public? With an artist as instinctive as Young, talk of intentions is useless, especially when the results are so plain. On the Beach rehashes Young's hostility towards rednecks, whimpers about Mansonoid pseudo-revolutionaries with little more charity than Terry Melcher, and spells out the artist's' confusion in metaphors that are sometimes opaque rather than merely elusive. He entitles a song about prostitutes, departed explorers and bush-league baseball players "For the Turnstiles," for in Young's view, all are denatured into commodities. Even a wonderful put-down about cars. "Vampire Blues," can be construed to .be about Neil himself.

Young has talents worthy of his seriousness, and for those who don't demand instant shoogity-boogity, On the Beach offers its rewards. But as always, it is tempting to wish that the star Could have sussed out his dilemma a little more fully. Are we to endure his paradox forever?

Robert Christgau

ENO

Hare Come the Warm Jets (Island)

.. .shooting the new mania through your lobes and out your kicking sinews and pounding fists. You can throw all that other crap out -" Dylan, Bowie, Clapton — it may be nice in its place but Roxy Music is the only music that says anthing new or reflects the spirit of "74 with any accurate passion. If you still haven't bought Stranded GO GET THE GODDAM THING and wolf it down, it'll only leave you hungry for more. Which fortunately is in ample supply: Brian Ferry has already made two solo albums, having just released the first, brilliant one (These Foolish Things) in the U.S.; Roxy sax man Andy McKay has an album coming out; and Eno, brilliant keyboard experimentalist who contributed much to the Velvet Underground pulsating pungency of the first two Roxy albums before, his split from the group, is all around us on two worthwhile jam imports (one with King Crimson's Robert Tripp which — be forewarned — is monochromatic unto absolute stillness but mesmerising thereby, and one with Kevin Ayers and ex-Velvets Nico and John Cale), as well as this incredible record which joins Stranded in proving with absolute finality that Roxy and Eno parted are merely twin peaks.

I've had Here Come the Warm Jets in import copy since early spring, and the best of it still stuns and fries me every time I slap it on. Side two does tend to meander a bit, but side one has one of the most perfect lineups in years, solid and throbbing primitivo all the way but with the strangest increment of avant-girdings, like a cross between Nico's Marble Index and Slade. Don't worry, Eno may like synthesizer but this isn't one of those doodley-squats like George Harrison's Electronic Sounds V these are hard-driving, full-out rock "n" roll songs with consistent percussive force, slashingly economical guitar solos by Fripp and Roxy's Phil Manzanera (who is the most exciting new guitarist since James Williamson, whom he technically far surpasses), and the consistent acidulous edge of Eno's vocals.

Which is where the real twisto action comes in. This guy is a real sickie, bubs, sick as Alice Cooper once was sposed to be, sicker by far than David Bowie's most scabrous dreams. What will you make, for instance, of a song which begins with diabolical electronic telegraphy and the lyrics "Baby's on fire/Better throw her in the water/Look at her laughing/Like a heifer to the slaughter/Baby's on fire/And all the laughing boys are itching ..." Don't tell me about the sleaze in your Silverhead — Eno is the real bizarro warp factor for 1974. It's like he says in "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch": "By this time I got to looking for some kind of substitute/I can't tell you what kind, but you know that it rhymes with dissolute .. . " Meanwhile., the drums are pounding and the guitars are screaming every whichaway in a precisely orchestrated cauldron of terminal hysteria muchly influenced .by though far more technologically advanced than early Velvet Underground. Don't miss it; it'll drive you crazy.

Lester Bangs

JIMMY WEBB Land's End (Asylum)

Land's End is a straight shof of California sophisto-pop. Unlike so many, of his L.A. contemporaries who felt compelled to strut a manufactured set of cultural credentials (Marlboro Country at the moment), Jimmy Webb never loosened his grip on thfe fundamentals of pop. He staked out his own Stylistic territory early on, leaving self-indulgence the only unguarded flank. And while he has on occasion stumbled over that line, his indulgences were (and are) the birth marks of a personal vocabulary. Although the process may never see an end, he's developed enough fluency to give us an album that with each play sounds more and more like a pop sensibility update of Pet Sounds.

It's one of the few singer/songwriter albums that was made to be played at maximum volume. Not necessarily because it rocks, but because the recording is so clear and the music so skillfully constructed that volume only amplifies its power. The rhythm section on Webb's previous three albums, competent as it was, often left you with the uneasy feeling that it was using a small-club approach in a football stadium setting. But the drums on this record are often positively crushing, echoing Phil Spector's great drum vision. The sound is conceived on big terms even when it is most restrained, and the result is intensity. This is not music for casual listening.

Even "Land's End/Asleep On The Wind" W a nine-plus minute orchestral opus that might appear easy pirey for cruel innuendoes regarding, masturbation with violins — will leave an imprint if you give it time to sink in. As his grasp keeps an ever-better pace with what he's reaching for, Webb is emerging as a master at conveying a unified sentiment through words and music. Lyrically, he follows the path of least resistance. Nothing is disguised, but he knows exactly where to twist a cliche to release it from its banality. And release from sentiment is the noble objective of even the most transparent pop music.

The most welcome news this album delivers is that Jimmy Webb has finally made peace with his past. His signature has always been melody, but his melodic vision tended to become obscure when it was led down introspective alleys. The melodies on Land's End, though, are alive; they celebrate their movement. As an indicator of their seductiveness, watch the number of cover versions these songs are bound to inspire. Joe Cocker and Glen Campbell have already tackled the wonderfully gospel-tinged "It's A Sin," and Campbell's recorded "Ocean In His Eyes." "Just This One Time," which is as powerful a single track as> I've heard this year, sounds like the song that could recapture the magic of old for the reunited Righteous Brothers.

When you add to these melodies the depth of craft that Webb sustains - even his unmannered vocals transcend their limitations — you have the makings of a dangerously addictive album. Even its weaker moments take you in hand and leave you humming, as sure an indication of pop quality as you'll find. The success of Jimmy Webb with Land's End, along with the Roxy Music conquest that hangs over America's head, could signal the welcome exclusion of the word maturity from the. arsenal of critical badrap. If you only buy one album this year on recommendation, make it this one.

Ben Edmonds

SPARKS

Kimono My House (island)

General MacArthur returned and so have Sparks. Kimono My House bears a good deal of familial resemblance to A Woofer in Tweeer's Clothing. But where the latter landed with a dull thud, forcing the Mael brothers to scuttle L.A. obscurity and nOse-aim to Engleterra to lick wounds, Kimono clicked gears and zipped Top Ten BBC.

The bulk of material nestles in the realm twixt light opera and heavy metal, commercial Top o" the Pops just this side of cutesypoo and that side of riff ennui, capable of making the most jaded fops kick their heels bobbing and jumping like Nijinsky incarnate. A splash of ice cube to the brain cells. Audial nerves felled with an array of Dad ditties churned from the pen of Chaplin/Hitler lookalike Ron Mael, from the goofy LP title pun on Harry Belafonte's old Jamaican pop tune to "Hasta Manana, Monsieur," a multi-lingual word switch tango. Hollywood surrealistica and hummable theater. "This T^own Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" is what Yosemite Sam always says to Bugs Bunny before trying to splatter the hare's grey matter all over Dry Gulch. The Sound is a comic strip mating cross between moviola and the Move. The most melodically inventive stuff since Shazam, and cuts the bilge glutting the airwaves to ribbons better'n any band bar none save Wizzard.

"Falling in Love with Myself Again" is a fit of fantasmo, a calliopedal polka that sounds like the spitting brother of Alice Cooper's "Nobody Likes Me." '""Equator," heavy on brass and burley-q, reeks of Kinksky rink-a-dink-a-doo breathlessly spewed in a marange scat. The snap crackle hand claps opening "Talent is an Asset" earmark what this band is all about — infectious, dizzying, gluttonous fun. Kid-like hijinx and nonsense with thumbed nose and winked eye lids.

The Madam Butterfly gossamer vocals flit in and about the multi-rhythmic dervish revved up on the gargantuan organ and assorted keyboard gizmos, slashed by bullets from the piercing guitar of Adrian Fischer quelling the wounded dinosaur bass and rapid fire drums. Sparks have reduced the English language to sighs, vowels, syllables, sounds all from the voicebox of Russell, eyepoking la lingua and driving more than one tank-rocker to yank their hair follicles out in clumps. Either like it or don't, but it works. Like tapdancing angels on the spike of a pin, or Tinkerbelle wiping' the floot. with Captain Hook.

Kathy Miller

JAMES TAYLOR Walking Man.

(Warner Bros.)

The rise of Carly Simon pretty neatly coincides with the popular decline of James Taylor. While James was the voice of the early 70s insularity and collective licking of wounds, Carly, was the direct beneficiary of the sudden and merciless reaction against this interlude. Where James was withdrawn, tortured, static, the Carly who replaced him was obvious and exhibitionistic. James complained, Carly brayed. Like a schoolgirl, Carly has been absorbed in her family history; as an aristocrat, James has a more general sense of the^ distant American past. ,1 guess you could call Carly that Cosmopolitan girl, glamorous, mobile, promiscuous, conventional in her values. James, as only an aristocrat could, hates the bourgeoisie even more than Ray Davies.

A strange match, to be sure. But Carly, true to form, has bequeathed to JamCs a home and family, in the process tethering that unstable ego, and James seems to like and need that. On" "Daddy's Baby" he sings, "I called my love my home." "Hello Old Friend" is likewise a song of jubilant homecoming. By offering a lullabye and a song of expiration, he shows that he's still concerned with the borders of our lives (to coin a phrase), but he is now also positively involved in the space between. "Let It All Fall Down," his first venture into political songwriting, approaches Watergate with gleeful anarchism. A contagious musical hook makes you into a cO-conspirator. "Migration" reiterates those classic feelings of helplessness, but this time the instability is not psychic but global. The upheaval is typically mysterious in origin, and typically can only be comprehended and mastered through song-making.

"Rock "N" Roll Is Music Now," about rock's coming of age, is the position paper. If "mama knows, papa too" that R&R is music, then that also means that rock "n" rollers can also be grown-ups, which must be very reassuring to Taylor. Despite his cold feet in the last song, in which he pretends he's invisible and says he's ready to chuck it all, the album deals with choosing music as a vocation. Whatever one might feel about the Taylor personality, it should be conceded that he is a skillful and commanding musician - both tunesmith and bandleader. However, Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" suffers from being presented as "Rock "N" Roll Is Music Now" "s object lesson. (In concert he performs it sitting.) R&R is not supposed to become music at its own expense, but it does here. The number just drags its ass.

"Me and My Guitar" also plays on the intersection of music and life. When Taylor sings, "I hear homs/I hear voices/I hear strings/Seems I was born with too many choices," he's objecting as much to the profusion of musical alternatives as to the myriad moral and professional courses available. Horns and strings are used here more luxuriantly, and more conventionally than before. And the rhythm section except for Hugh McCracken is blandly competent, rarely more.

All of this has its import. This LP was not recorded like the last in his house on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by his allies. The more public, confident, citified J.T. engaged the New York session men of the moment and knocked them into line. The sound accordingly is expansive, not hermetic ("Hello Old Friend" has the sweep of recent Stylistics and an audacious melody). The voice has never been rounder or more lissome. Even the increased complexity of the lyrics is a sign of confidence. The misleading simplicity of his earlier work was employed to fend off impending mental chaos; now he can afford to take some chances. Walking Man, with two songk not of his own authorship, and portions of two others derivative of earlier material, is compositionally slim, despite Taylor's vow last time that he would make his next LP only when he was ready. But in other respects it is fully grown. The man who has spent a good chunk of his careenshowing his followers how to leave society, only to marry the woman who has shown them how to rejoin it, has begun slowly walking in another direction.

Ben Gerson

JOHN DENVER Back Home Again (RCA)

AMERICA Holiday > (Warner Bros.)

MOR means music, and that means Olivia Fig-Newton, Chuck Rich, the Bee Gees with Tony Orlando, Drupi, Humperdinckbettemessinachapinetc., and the best klutz of all — John Denver. Why, he's such a good guest host on the Tonight Show that the Gov. of Colorado decided to give him the honor of poet laureate of the state. The whole ish of July 27 Billboard is dedicated to the spirit of Denver and the beautiful people of Colorado. And I'll be the first to admit, the guy's a goddamn genius, and "Rocky Mountain High" is a work of art, but HE STILL OUGHTA BE HIT BY A TRUCK!

Really, his albums are complete zeroes. It all sounds good when he's crooning at ya thru his moon-eyed dog face on the tube, but on record it's just boring music played down to the lowest level of the semi-college, semidouble knit, flared-pants, bankteller set, all sung with this adenoidal castrated drone. I even listened to his new album for chrissake, and it's just what you'd expect from a twerp who'd put a family photo on the record jacket (and . his old lady is no beauty; looks like the guts they keep spilling in Warhol's Frankenstein). So it's a worthless album any way ya look at it "cept it's got "Annie's Song" and lotsa hilarious McKuen sensitivity.

But America, man, they're alright. In fact, they are undoubtedly the tops'when it comes to MOR programming. Just look at this track record (!): "Horse With No Name;" "Muskrat Love," "Ventura Highway," and others too innocuous to remember. Right up to their new single which is an amazing blunder ("Tin Man"). On it, the band peepees slush better than tinkerbell Garfunkel and ditto. "Another Try" is a weak imitation of a true musical great — Gilbert O'Sullivan. "Lonely People" is for skool teachers who wanna be relevant and gotcha to read Norman Mailer. On "Glad to See You," I didn't wake up until it wis over (sorry). But "Hollywood" is best cuz it's the Rowan Bros, reincarnated with Mongo Santamaria riffs and Johnny Mann conducting. Good lyrics stolen from James Taylor, and all about getting drunk with the bizmo stars where all you can drink is free. Visions of Maria Muldaur, and then the song quietly fades into the perfect segue with the announcer at the end of the Doors" Absolutely Live album interrupting the dream with his infamous pitch: "All. you people here tonight can go downstairs and attend the rockfest free of charge. See the headshops, the lightshow, and take the trip. No charge at all."

Yup, that's America, and you can catch "em almost every Friday nite on Midnight Special. And that's John Denver — catch him every week in Billboard. And that's the best of the MOR crop for this month. Catch it all every shiteating day on the radio.

(Wake up!! It's over ...)

Robot A. Hull

lOcc

Sheet Music (UK)

lOcc has so many good things going for it: ebullient singing, colorful songwriting with surging melodies and charging rhythms, and precise instrumental work that manages to be both aggressive and related at the same time. But nothing separates this finest of young bands from the rest of the pack as much as their wit, and an eye and ear for nuance that transforms good songs into brilliant ones, and decent lines into masterful ones.

Imagine a conversation between a falling airplane, a mad bomber, and a passenger ("Clockwork Creep") in which the passenger tells the plane: "Oh, you'll never get me up in one of these again/Cause what goes up must come down down down ... Oh,.the gravity of the situation ..

If lOcc seem at times unable to resist the end result of prodigious wordplay - that is, overuse of puns — it's a trait to be tolerated, as if it were common to all clever English eccentrics. In "Silly Love," after piling line after line of Cole Porter/Bob Dylan style moon-June-croon rhymes, they acknowledge: "Ooh, you know the art of conversation must be dying. Ooh, when a romance depends on cliches, and toupees and threepees." It's not exactly Noel Coward, but the music is rock & roll (in this case an elegant chuckle with wink at Led Zep), and I don't suppose he'd be displeased.

What lOcc does with rock & roll is balance familiar hooks, riffs and melodies ("where have I heard that before"), with a fresh approach to those elements, especially with their unique blend of harmony and structure ("never heard anything quite like that before.") It's the key to all great pop culture, and lOcc manages to sustain it effortlessly throughout Sheet Music, their second album

and another pun, if you find their music sexy.

Their almost limitless wit, and vitality, their ability to assimilate sources and express familiar themes in seemingly new ways might be one of the reasons for lOcc's so far limited success in the states. While most critics like to think so, lOcc are most certainly not a singles band, though they may someday have a hit single in America.

In spite of what appears to be an AM sensibility, songs like "Rubber Bullets" or "The Dean* and I" from the first album, and peak moments from Sheet Music, like "Worst Band in the World," "Silly Love" and "Oh Effendi" don't repeat themselves enough. Instead of one hook, there are two, three and sometimes four. If one of those song's came on your car radio, the engine might overheat.

Meanwhile,, the vitality, craftsmanship, humor, talent and instinct so in abundance on the first two lOcc albums makes it obvious, that they are one of the best and brightest; bands you could ever have the pleasure to connect with.

Wayne Robins

ELVIN BISHOP Let It Flow (Capricorn)

There's a for sure southern sound; The Allmans, Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynryd etc. etc. etc. — now here's one of the original good old boys working under the Capricorn (southern fried) wing, with an album of good time and thoroughly cooking music.

For those who forgot, Bishop was one of the original members of the Paul Butterfield Band - ih fact guitarist Mike Bloomfield was added later. Elvin worked several years as rhythm player, taking over lead when Bloomfield split. After a few years on the road he too split to form his own group. There were several LPs (Fillmore and Epic) labels — and tho a few featured good-timey tunes like most here, the main emphasis was on blues and soul.

Here Bishop lets his Oklahoma side loose on numbers by Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Lightning Hopkins and his own funky self. The band is basically Bishop's traveling group; piano, bass, drums, and two guitars with some added studio folks like Charlie Daniels, Rich-' ard Betts, and Sly Stone. (Sly Stone??)

The track by track credits aren't given; my guess is that Sly pounds his organ on "Stealing Watermelons," an uptempo little ditty' about just that. "Sunshine Special" is the kick-off track, with an infectious rhythm riff and vocal chorus "ain't nobody crying..."

The Lightning Hopkins tune is "Honey Babe," given nice semi-acoustic touches here. "Traveling Shoes" has some fine twining dual lead work on it — sure sounds like Dick Betts

but it's not, it's Bishop bandman Johnny Vernazza sliding around with Elvin on an extended middle break that makes this one of the motherfucker cuts on the album - it's one of the happiest "I'm-leaving-you-babe" numbers I ever heard. (Dig the warbling fade ... )

The title tune is a production number with lots of background chicks do-wahing — nice, but not great. Betts does appear on "Hey Good Looking," the Hank Williams tune considerably updated by Elvin with lines like "got a hot-rod Chevy that can't be beat/got a little bit of weed stashed under the seat" — nice fiddle and guitar lines here. "Fishing" is another Bishop narrative, on the order of "Drunk Again" from the Butterfield days only this time set down south. "Bourbon Street" is the closing cut, and a good example of Bishop's mood and writing style; "On Bourbon Street in New Orleans/Every night's like New Years Eve - " and the music swings and stomps in the same vein.

A friend of mine (who oughta know better) said he didn't dig the LP much cause it was "too happy" - true, there isn't any blues here, but if you get over-happy, what the hell

— you can always get out a Neil Young side.

I recommend this LP to anyone who has

ears and/or feels the need of Valium — it's a good ass-kick to your depression center - and it'll give your toes something to do too. The rest, as always, is up to you.

Tony Glover

BOB DYLAN/THE BAND Before the Flood (Asylum)

I love this album. I think it's great. With all mannerisms aside (and Dylan has grown manners) it's got more guts than anything I've heard for a long time. Dylan and the Band ard simply the toughest, most evocative group in rock "n" roll. Theirs is a resonant American sound, with roots going back to God knows where, echoes of New York City and farmlands.

The unspoken focus of the album is Dylan's recapitulation of his past work and its value today. I can remember sitting in Nassau Coliseum waiting* for the concert to begih with little or no excitement. Four or dive years of bad Dylan records cluttering my memory, then suddenly being aroused with a stunning tell-"em-off version of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (I'll Go Mine)." What was stunning was the energy and intensity of Dylan's singing. Almost entirely gone was the self-conscious crooning he had engaged in since Nashville Skyline.

At his best Dylan has now found a voice which captures all his personas, past and present. The adolescent whine is still there

(thank you), but what we have here for the

most part is a barking, growling man. "All Along the Watchtower" has never sounded fiercer or more determined. "Lay Lady Lay" is belted out the way it always should have been. ""Highway 61" is sung for real, no longer Bobby Dylan crying for help playing with a police siren.

It doesn't always work, though; "It Ain't Me Babe" is almost wholly bent out of shape, and the acoustic set is the weakest part of the album. I enjoy it'more on record than I did in concert. It's simpler, more communicative than I remembered, but it's still Dylan trying to sing better than Caruso, which comes perilously close to sounding like a, drunk Italian tenor. "Justalikawooman?"

The Band's set is just fine. They march around a lot now. These versions are weightier, and *heir voices less dry than on previous recordings. On their own songs and with Dylan, I've never heard Robbie Robertson play better guitar lines, with the exception of the Albert Hall bootleg, flarth Hudson's organ sounds like windy nights now, as luxurious as strings. Listen to how he fills out the textures on "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and "I Shall Be Released."

The 'performance of "Like a Rolling Stone" crowns the album. Without losing any He's so good he's bent out of shape, and The Band marches on stage now a lot.

power, it s alternatingly nostalgic and majestic. At times Dylan seems to be almost mocking the villainizing, accusing tones he's employing. By the end of that song, an era has been summoned with the full ambiguity of recollection.

"Blowing in the Wind" follows as an encore, in a rough bluesy version where the chorus is practically hurled at the listener. It's almost a stoical reading, hard, implacable but in a way still bearing witness..

Before the'Flood is an heroic achievement, and it feels right once again to say that Dylan stood against the storm.

Donald Jennings

BAD COMPANY (Swan Song)

Before this debut LP was ever released, Bad Company was being spoken of as the band of the year, and I'm sure such slender evidence as an album to the contrary will not change a lot of people's minds. The band seemed to have all the earmarks of success — a widely admired singer from a band otherwise unrecognized outside of England, and an otherwise unrecognized guitarist from a newly admired band.1 Both reputations are a little unfair. Paul Rodgers was the flower of Free, but by no means its sole asset, while Mick Ralphs, a sometimes striking guitarist, the composer of "Ready for Love" and "I'm a Cadillac," and Mott's only real musician, deserved a greater share of the credit.

With a new record label, a media blitz all cranked up, the band on tour — all systems go — one feels like a spoilsport bringing up a small matter of the album. But Bad Company is some weird hybrid of prematurity and exhaustion — premature because the album was recorded last November, ten days after Boz Burrell joined up as bass player, seven months before its release, and long before the band ever faced an audience. And exhausted because only that can explain the half-baked, lacklustre playing and production from men who are by this time hardly novices.

In a word, the LP sounds like a demo. Now, the Stones" "Tell Me" was also a demo, but it was the demo of a band which vehemently knew what it was up to. This tjemo, recorded in rural Hampshire on a mobile facility, sounds shallow (which demos usually do), with rough edges more the result of carelessness than abandon. If you've never heard Free, Rodgers" singing may come to you as a revelation, but nowhere on this LP does he exhibit the hijinx of "All Right Now," the anguish of Heartbreaker, the sheer melodic improvisation and vividness of character — savvy coquette, dangerous predator, visionary — which have typified his singing over the course of seven Free albums. A vocalist as great as Rodgers is never not good, but .for the first time his technique is not perfect, and that is bad enough. His high notes sometimes falter, and his pitch wavers.

1 was hopeful for Ralphs. Unlike Paul Kossoff of Free, he didn't seem to reserve for himself the guitarist's privilege of upending a song, and his attack was not so self-consciously tortured. But in many other ways Kossoff was a much more creative guitarist than Ralphs shows himself to be here. Ralphs" rhythm playing is never more than stolid, and his boring leads often carry a ridiculously wide vibrato. Simon Kirke, always a muscular drummer, forgets the variety of tones and licks he's capable of and too often merely pounds. But Boz, who says he's never listened to Free, sounds like Andy Fraser, and that is all to the good.

Only two numbers on Bad Company are co-authorships between Rodgers and Ralphs (the second completely sung and played by Rodgers, so that the effect of the partnership is vitiated), and that perhaps is indicative of the band's failure to conceive its own voice. Rodgers's songs sound like Free, while one of Ralphs's songs, "Ready for Love" (pointlessly included here) cannot help but sound like Mott since it was done by Mott. His "Can't Get Enough," the single, is simple-minded, but "Movin" On" is a good rocker with the band functioning as a unit, and everyone getting in his distinctive touches. Still, the sound could have been fuller.

"Don't Let Me Down," the first co-authorship, is at the same time the album's most affecting and irritating track. The wonderful thing about the Stones was that they did R&B without the trappings, for great rock has no interest in accuracy as such. Bad Company, on the other hand, pile into an unassuming tune the washed-out horns and cooing chick singers of R&B at its most formulaic, stating what is implied, and thereby cheapening it. Only the title song with its sledge-hammer chorus completely satisfies.

I do not mean to dismiss the album, for it can be enjoyable even as it disappoints, but I think it's fair to say that it shouldn't have been made when it was. Certainly there is nothing at bottom wrong with Bad Company; in fact what is so exasperating is that the record doesn't do justice to the band's potential. The album is so old that all of the above criticisms may already be obsolete. The chief concern, then, is for the band to record again as quickly as possible.

Ben Gerson

KEITH JARRETT Solo Concerts (ECM)

Treasure Island (Impulse)

After spending several two hour sessions with Jarrett's 3-record solo set one comes to the reluctant conclusion that the pianist is not quite the champ that consensus has designated him to be. True, the music is rich, but not rich enough to satisfactorily feed the weighty attention that the presentation/context of the album commands. Jarrett's staple "number" while improvising is a blues inflected bit with the signature of a repetitive figure slowly embellished with traces of a more outre form until it evolves^ into a compelling dervish dance, often with the left hand still pounding the original ostinato base while the right hand has become free and impressionistic. This approach which is so uniquely Jarrett's and has served him so well these past eight recorded years (where in group settings surrounded by linear players he has displayed a style which is joyously self-conscious of being piano) become^ on this long solo record, monotonous. But monotony, like bronchitis, can serve an' artistic end and the style described above is only the part of Jarrett's oeuvre which prevents this album from being the masterwork I had anticipated. In short there is no in short about this record except to say that the champ is still only a contender in the solo arena, a stunning pianist with stunning limitations.

Treasure Island is a whole different cake, a champ's record, excellent, fine, four stars. Tenor saxist Dewey Redman is so convincing here, so easily funky on the funky numbers and so fittingly frenetic when he feels the call that it's hard to believe that it's the same-D. Redman that recorded the dismal Ear of The Behearer album. But it is and the hero here is' context "cause it would seem difficult if not impossible to play in these surroundings with anything less than imaginative assurance. And Charlie Haden on bass. Generally bassists of the jazz persuasion are felt rather than heard, but I can hear Haden's inventions when I'm in the next room doing the dishes. Paul Motian on drums and two percussionists add to the swirl but I dunno - 'maybe too much sometimes. Still, this is Jarrett's album and he's dazzling in a setting where he can seemingly do no wrong. A few cuts should get FM airplay, dog knows the audience has to be receptive considering all the exposure Jarrett's gotten in the last two years in mags of this sort. People are ready now. Or more ready. Treasure Island indeed. ,

Richard C. Walls

URIAH HEEP Wonderworld (Warner Bros.)

Uriah Heep is one more leftover high voltage sludge-rock outfit living on borrowed time. Like so many others, they recorded one worthwhile, definitive album, Look At Yourself, limped on their rep thereafter, and have recently swapped labels, praying that fresh hype would regain the ground their tired music lost.

Funny thing is, the ole Heepsters fooled everybody with a bouncy little tidbit called "Stealin" " on their first album for their new label, Sweet Freedom, that indicated they weren't altogether dead yet. "The rest of the album wasn't much to brag about, but it was okay for a spin or two, which is a bit more than I can say for its followup, Wonderworld.

The fab quintet's latest got "em slafnmin" away in their usual lowslung, prosaic fashion with th^ir particular floating choral harmonies going in every direction trying to stir up a little excitement - which, predictably, they don't. The Heepsters finally drag in an orchestration by Michael Gibbs on "The Easy Road," and, would you believe it, the frustrated British classical-jazzoid comes thru with an even more boring effort than he does on The Mahavishnu Orchestra's Apocalypse.

And ... oh yeahv the lyrics. Well, there's not much here either, just more of the samey pseudo-philosophic, pseudo-love homilies too many heavy types have been passing for "meaningful" for far too'long.

Andy McKaie

J.J. CALE Okie (Shelter)

Leon Russell might sing about goin" back to Tulsa one more time, but J.J. Cale doesn't have to worry about that "cause he almost never leaves Okieland except for maybe a short trip to Nashville every once in a blue moon to record a few tunes. Talk about your laid back musicians - most bf Cale's new album, Okie, was recorded over a year ago (summer "73). I can just see J.J. goin" down the dirt road three miles to the general store so's he can use the pay phone and make his yearly collect call to Leon to see how Shelter is doing. "Who? MCA? I thought we were bein" distributed by Capitol! I don" have to go nowhere cause of this, do I?" "No, J.J., just stay there, we'll send you all the necessary papers. Got enough songs in the can for a new record yet? ... J.J.? You there?" "ZZzzzzzzzzzz."

Of course, Cale's records are so out of synch with the rest of the pop world that it really doesn't matter when he records them. The man's found his little niche in the scheme of things and his music, a peculiar blend of down home country, R&B rock,and barstool blues (the kind the band plays after the last call to slow things down and get the hangers out out of the building), just seems to roll along, nice and easy. Understatement and Subtlety are the keynotes of Cale's songs, and since those qualities went out the window years ago, his records are really a nice change of pace.

One cardinal rule that Cale follows is the "if you want it to be a good song, make sure they can't understand the lyrics" axiom. So you get tunes like "Rock "n" Roll Records," whose first verse gops "I'm makin" rock "n" roll records/I sell "em for a dirhe/I make "em to feed my children/unintelligible." Great stuff to read the White House Transcripts by. In fact, Cale's use of double tracked vocals on almost all his tunes just confuses the issue, since he's usually singing just above a whisper, and double tracked it's mostly a case of heavy breathing with a few sparse consonants and vowels thrown in.

No trouble hearing his guitar playing though, which is just sublime, especially on his version of Ray Price's "I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me)" and his own "I'd Like to Love You Baby," Excellent arrangements throughout the album (check out Weldon My rick's nifty pedal steel work on "The Old Man and Me"), with good use of horns on a few cuts and a tinge of vibes on the old gospel number "Precious Moments." Late night boozers can revel in "Everlovin" Woman" and "I Got the Same Old Blues," the former number sounding like Chuck Berry on a slow moving freight train and the latter one featuring some of the most spaced out slide guitar (courtesy of Mac Gay den) to ever slip out of Nashville. If you live in an urban area, you'll like this record. It sounds like a back porch, not a fire escape.

Billy Altman

NAZARETH

Rampant

(A&M)

Hold on, you'll need a pencil. Go on, get one, it'll be fun. This is a test for you to take so you'll know whether or not this album is for you. Check the letter of the answer that comes closest to your own feelings.

1)——A. I like noise bands in general.

——B. I don't like noise bands, they all sound the same. As a matter of fact, you can take them all and hang them in your ass.

—C. I like pleasant songs that tell stories, even if some of them are a little loud.

2)———A. It embarrasses me when a usually mean-ass band starts interspersing love songs among the noise but it doesn't really bother me, I either turn up the noise louder or skip the maudlin songs completely.

——B. Love songs are fine, but not noisy ones.

-C. Love is all there is.

3) You're listening to a song on the new Nazareth album called "Shanghai'd In Shanghai." There's a line about the Rolling Stones and guitarist Manual Charlton immediately whips off a few bars of "Satisfaction." This is:

-—A. Fine with me.

—B. Dumb.

—C. A drag for me, I never liked the Stones.

4)Here are some lyrics from "Jet Lag:"

Driving down a Detroit freeway just lookin" at these concrete walls Hey but it's a good town to rock "n roll in "What do you mean the police closed the God damned hall?"

You think these are:

-r A. Throw-away lyrics, the best kind in

rock "n" roll.

-B. About as good as the average ten

year old could write.

——C. Kind of dumb, but I'm sure the writer felt strongly about the situation described.

5)1 would rather see:

-A. Leslie West play his guitar with

someone's face.

-B. Rick Wakeman pop ready-made

tapes into one of his many keyboards.

—-—C. Judy Collins pet a kitten.

6)-A. I like screechy, Noddy Holder/

cocker spaniel-type singing voices like Nazareth's Dan McCafferty has.

-B. I like real singers, not barking dogs.

-C. I usually listen to the words more

than1 anything else.

7)-A. Whenever I hear anything by

Nazareth on the radio, I turn it up.

-B. Whenever I hear anything by Nazareth on the radio, I turn it off.

-C. I don't know if I've ever heard

anything by Nazareth on the radio or not.

If you have six or more A answers: This album is probably for you. If you have six or more B answers: This album is definitely not for you. Six or more C answers: You have an unconscious desire to meet Don McLean. If you have some other split combination of answers, (one A, three B, two C, etc.): You have serious character conflicts and should proceed through the rest of this magazine at your own risk. Turn the pages slowly.

Clyde Hadlock

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON Spooky Lady's Sideshow (Monument)

It took a friend of mine, who recently discovered Kris Kristofferson's first album (originally issued as Kristofferson, retitled Me and Bobby McGee), to remind me once again how good that record was. Though it has several lapses, the album contains at least four classics: "To Beat The Devil," "Me And Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make It Through The Night"" and "Sunday Mornin" Cornin" Down." These songs plus "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" provide the basis for Kristofferson's reputation. He has never written anything as good since, but I can go back and listen to these songs (with the exception of "Bobby McGee" which reached the irritation point long ago) over and over again.

The first album maintained such an unpretentious air — Kristofferson's voice is clearly unprofessional, the production haphazard, almost slipshod - that it immediately established Kristofferson's reputation as the rebellious, but reluctant artiste. Replete with Johnny Cash's atrocious poetry for liner notes ("Kris, he took slices of life/And salted it down to rhyme"), the album exuded "the musk of masculine conmaraderie — whiskeyfilled nights in smoke-filled bars.

At the same time, it evoked the mythos of the struggling, but heroic loner, a strain that permeates much of C&W. Kristofferson, at his best, balanced his melodrama ("With a stomach full of empty and a pocket full of dreams/I left my pride and stepped inside a bar") with self-effacing humor ("I ain't sayin-" I beat the devil/But I drank his beer for nothin" and then I stole his song"). The album seemed to mark Kristofferson as C&W's and perhaps pop's next great songwriter.

The first time I saw Kristofferson perform in New York's Gaslight Cafe I thought he might become the Robert Johnson of C&W. He obviously lacked Johnson's daimonic intensity, but like the bluesman Kristofferson posed a fundamental relationship between the devil and freedom. For both musicians the devil personified the ultimate price — the emotional and physical anguish - of personal liberty. Kristofferson, as my friend wrote me, acutely understood the grimness of Sunday mornings, which perhaps is the modern-day equivalent of F. Scott Fitzgerald's three-oclock-in-the-morning of the soul. Or Robert Johnson's crossroads.

Spooky Lady's Sideshow, Kristofferson's sixth album, now comes along four years later. It represents an ambitious attempt to ^expand his vision, by incorporating the experience of his success; yet it is so seriously flawed that it marks Kristofferson's disintegration as a songwriter. The album shows off Kristofferson's worst traits, which have dominated his recent work: a painfully limited voice, a lack of musical resourcefullness, and a complacent urge to repeat old lyrical formulas.

No longer the enfant terrible of C&W, but now a thriving rock star, Kristofferson has undertaken a literal and symbolic shift from Nashville to Los Angeles. Only one cut, "Stairway To The Bottom," is given C&W treatment. Kristofferson mars this by singing off key. In fact, his vocals are flat throughout. Producer David Anderle provides Kristofferson with whining guitars and droning organs, apparently to compliment Kristofferson's newfound pessimism, but the resultant stridency renders everything humorless.

Kristofferson has exchanged his past romanticism for bitter ruminations on success. (The one exception, "I May Smoke Too Much," was written seven years ago.) "Broken Freedom Song" offers the most explicit denial of his own past - "No one listenin" when you need "em/Ain't no fun to sing that [freedom] song no more." "Shandy" and "One For The Money" are particularly despairing visions of life at the top. Only "Same Old Song," written two years ago just as Kristofferson was making it, offers an affirmative statement on success — "And the bars get a little bit better/And the sweet a little bit sweeter."

Unfortunately, most of the songs are simply banal. He actually sings "I got to get myself together" in "Late Again (Gettin" Over You)." Where once he was spare, he is, now lyrically crude — "All I want is my old lady/That old lady wantin" me." Moreover, Kristofferson has failed to write a single memorable melody. The tunes sound like bar songs composed after too many beers. In sum, this is not a failure of vision, but a monumental failure of execution. The album is a disaster, and whether Kristofferson will ever repeat his earlier triumphs remains an open question.

Kit Rachlis

THE SOUTHER, HILLMAN, FURAY BAND (Asylum)

Country rock albums are a very particular brand of medicinal relaxation. When well done they mix up a healthy dose of tentative cheery optimism and mere hanging-on, as a specific for the rusty barbwire blood poisoning slash of love termination-rejection pain, and the darker moments of The Big Cosmic Lonely. The lyrics may sometimes slap the listener down to ground hugging level, but the music is designed to bounce her/him right back up like a red rubber ball. As with any other medicinal specific the genre is to be used with caution, because reaction will depend on mood. But, shit, you already know that.

This is an excellent album in the EaglesPoco tradition. The three Richie Furay compositions pick up where Crazy Eyes left off, continuing his delicate shift and shuffle search through confusion, culminating in the beautiful hope offering, "The Flight of the Dove." Chris Hillman provides a fine trad based effort \ ("Rise and Fall") and a rocker ("Safe at Home") which snaps and crackles like it ought. However, the big, more than passing pleasant surprise is that J.D. Souther, who attracted so much undeserved critical badmouth with his last album, has written the two best songs on this record: "The Heartbreaker," driven by the metal mesh perfection of Paul Harris" organ, slices off more than worthy subvariations on the similarly titled song on Goat's Head Soup, and "Border Town" is an absolute perfecto posture for the suburban outlaw.

Buck Sanders

FOCUS

Hamburger Concerto

(Atlantic)

FUNKADELIC

Standing On the Verge of Getting It On (Westbound)

Focus is just another one of them foreign bands that can yodel real good and can sound progressive and be cute at the same time. So they up and call their new record Hamburger Concerto and run the gamut from "Rare" to "Well Done" in labeling each section of the title instrumental piece. Something real clever that Herbie Mann shoulda thought of, huh? Thijs the vocalist (pronounce his name like you was spitting out Abba) and Jan Akkerman (that exciting personally who recently appeared on What's My Line? and Soupy Sales thought he was Ted Nugent) are also multi-talented like the Incredible String Band. Yeah, they can play all these instruments and more (as listed on back of album): auto harp, Chinese tinger cymbals, handclaps, swiss bells, woodblock, Chinese gong, and recorder. But, at least you can listen to their spacey vibes which is more than you can say for Can. (New Flash: watch for Pazop. A million dollar band from Belgium. Previously known as the Wallace Collection.)

On the flipside of the cosmic coin, however, there's the trashy 8-track menagerie called Funkadelic. For some reason, their albums sell like crazy, and that's mainly cuz they can play the co"smic""sCene, but only by clowning around. Their covers (esp. this time around) are always outa monster-space flicks like Wild, Wild Planet, and their liner notes are definite plagiarized excerpts from the script of The Beat Generation. "Beyond the rings of AMMAGAMMA-GOO-CHEE," sez the first line ... " I would wait in limbo for precious eons to become: HOT, NASTY, and LOOSE!" With stuff like that, you're bound to get a real cult following, one that knows about "the speediest booglerizer, the Parliafunkadelicmentthang!"

The bizarro mutants of this tribe are all identified like the Spaced Viking, a prototype werewolf, the World's Only Black Leprechaun, a registered and licensed genie, and the Supreme Maggot Minister of Funkadelia, and THEY ALL GOT WARTS ON THEIR FACES!

They can't really play nuttin either, but it's okay, cuz like on "Alice in My Fantasies" they can still sound like Jimi Hendrix getting his brains crushed in my motorized clams (huh?) and remain kool thruout the whole mess. Or, on "Jimmy's Got a Little Bit of Bitclj in Him," the band pulls together a showcase of stingray puk*e (well, that'q what it sounds like) into a dramatic narrative about how this kid Jimmy gets turned on by the heat of his meat after he's taken a piss. And on "Red Hot Mamma," they really breathe like a black Red Krayola. Included are some most objectionable and slanderous attacks against the female sex, the most offensive ever recorded, all speeded-up in flashback poetry.

In short, Funkadelic has the cosmic inspiration it takes to move this planet while poor slobs like Focus sludge thru their own deliberated excretion til they sink into the bargain bins with no healing force for this, or any other universe. Let it be known, then: the only battle of the bands in this galaxy that would be worth a laugh would be Funkadelic Vs. Zolar X, and maybe throw in the Blob and make a good movie, too.

Robot A. Hull

CLEO LAINE Live At Carnegie Hall (RCA)

People who criticize Cleo Laine usually take the same tack as those who, believing, criticize God: God's perfect and all that, they might say, but doesn't that arrogant bastard ever make a mistake???

And a real criticism can be leveled against Ms. Laine on simliar grounds: she just seems too damned flawless. Who does she think she is, never doing anything wrong???

The sad truth about human emotional expectation is that, while we seek it on one hand, we do not really want to be confronted with perfection, or even near-perfection. People who are too good (as lovers, as football players, as singers) get boring after awhile. Human weakness (one's own and that of others) is one of the nicest, funniest, most human things in the world. When it is even relatively lacking, we tend to get uncomfortable, to get restless.

And that's the only trouble I can see with Cleo Laine. She has one of the finest voices, technically, that has ever been committed to record. She has a range that makes Yma Sumac sound like Arlo Guthrie. She has tremendous dramatic abilities (every word she sings' is believable), and she has a formidable sense of both dramatic and musical humor. She has a widely varied repertoire, a faultless sense of dynamics,' and a great romantic beauty of tone and phrasing. What more could one ask, other than a few mistakes now and again?

Most of the now-stahdard Laine showpieces are on this album, including a wonderfully infections version of Carole King's "Music," a Bessie Smith-style "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer," a reading of Cole Porter's "Riding High" on which she clearly and mightily hits notes that Maynard Ferguson would envy, a tour-de-force version of Dory Previn's "Control Yourself" into which are integrated stretches of everything from "Unchained M_elody" to "Old Man River," and a fantastically chilling modern Broadway torch song, Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowhs" (from "A Little Night Music.")

Get this album, and also get I Am a Song (RCA), which includes another version of "Music," and "Thieving Boy," with music by Laine's husband, John Dankworth, and words by the Welsh poet Alun Owens, who wrote the screenplay for A Hard Day's Night. And also get This is Cleo Laine: Shakespeare and All That Jazz (English Philips) and Portrait. Then sit back and wallow in the near-perfection until you get sick of it. Then go put on a Peter Frampton record, or something.

Colman Andrews

LINK WRAY The Link Wray Rumble (Polydor)

Way back in 1959, I savored Link Wray's instrumental hit single, "Rumble," as if it were some sort of musical "dirty book." With one of my more progressive (read that as two years older) friends, I would spend hours sneaking listenings to the song while posing in front of a mirror, broom or tennis racket as surrogate guitar in hand, pretending to be the creator of Wray's crawling, bruisirvg sound. We weren't the only ones to think that Wray's music was the epitome of evil rock'n"roll. My mother was positive that this "rumble thing" would turn me into a card-carrying, 11-yearold juvenile delinquent.

The Link Wray Rumble is a collection of new material that proves the years have done little to mature Wray's style. The raw edge to his guitar sound is as jarring as ever. Liner notes by The Who's Peter Townshend favorably compare Wray's singing style .to a cross between Mick ,Jagger and Van Morrison. Recent recordings by those puffs are actually pale compared with Wray's snarl. Anyone wanting a rebel's eye view to street life in America backed by pure chromium guitar runs can rely on this new LP. Any song from the album would fit perfectly into a soundtrack for the inevitable James Dean biography.

This new version of "Rumble" is even .more raunchy than the original, but now my "dirty" habit of idolizing Link Wra/ is out in the open in hopes that a new generation of listeners falls victim to his musical strut.

I might add that this album helped me recover from the Rolling Stones" dreadful new single, "It's Only Rock and Roll," which is, one hopes, the low point of their upcoming album, If Wray can stay charged up for over 14 years, is it too much to ask the purported kings to do likewise?

James Spina

(Reprinted by permission from Women's Wear Daily;