STEVIE WONDER Fulfillingness' First Finale (Tamla)

Stevie Wonder’s new album, with Sly Stone’s Small Talk, may be the first step in a new direction for avant-boogaloo; it is formula avant-boogaloo. The characteristics which distinguish Sly (for instance) from Kool & the Gang have dwindled, Sly offering us no more than a weird tic built around his own perversion of his beat. Earth, Wind & Fire, War, Kool & the Gang — all of them know how now. Why should we bother if Sly doesn’t?

With Stevie. Wonder, the problem is a little different. If he has never been as eccentric or arrogant as Sly, he has also never seemed as inspired. “Superstition” is a brilliant song, but it is no match for There’s a Riot Goin’ On as either cultural bludgeon or plain entertainment.

On the other hand, it is not likely that Sly could have written “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” FFF only has one ballad that’s up to that standard of elegance and grace, but Small Talk has none at all. In its best moments, FFF is formulaic because it uses everything Stevie has ever created Or beeninspired by. The record draws upon Stevie’s history and soul’s tradition with a command of resources which refuses to falter. (In its worst moments, it is the kind of album which could contain Paul Anka and the Jackson Five, but omit “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” which is where this disparate bunch seem to have met before.) Stevie draws upon the most conservative ideas in Tamla’s past (ballads, big ones, meant to be belted at supper clubs) but he also utilizes the Jackson Five in an almost ridiculously innovative way, as do-wop background singers (Michael Jackson as Frankie Lymon, god forbid?). And his. concept of “Heaven is Ten Zillion Light Years Away” came from nowhere but Led Zeppelin. (This is what “Stairway to Heaven” leads to?)

But, though Wonder’s exuberance at first seemed only superficial, it also (the longer you listen, and getting you to do that might be the trick he hasn’t mastered this time) conceals something uglier, and more honest. This album has no cohesive inner strength, as Talking Book and Inner Visions did, but it is in an ironic sense just the kind of culmination of a period of growth it claims to be.

Both of those earlier albums concerned a young man trying on personas to see which ones fit, dawdling through “Superstition” on his way to “Living For the City,” picking up attitudes and philosophies like so much haberdashery, and discarding them just as quickly and carelessly.

But on FFF, with its sense of a cycle completed, he has chosen his personas -disconsolate broken heart, pained believer, pop singing star to complement his vengeful streak (the wrath of “Superstition’s” synthesiser, the lyrics to “Big Brother” and “Misstra Know-It-All”) and the bottomless despair which must ultimately lurk beneath that.

No matter who Wonder may think he is fooling, he isultimately not even convincing himself that he really accepts this The Lawd Above Is Sho’ Nuff G6od ‘N’ Merciful baloney. Cruder truths erupt constantly — “It Ain’t No Use” and “They Won’t Go When I Go” are the best examples here — whenever Stevie is forced to deal with people. With his head in the clouds, Stevie makes even exercises in futility (“No Use”) seem romantic, Wonderful, full of bliss and glee.

Should Stevie eventually decide that the frustrations he feels dealing with humans are worth writing about, he’s liable to produce something as disturbing as Riot. And just as surely as Sly can no longer sing “Higher” with conviction, Wonder won’t be able to beg the question with “Heaven is Ten Zillion Light Years Away” anymore. This album is definitely a move in that direction, if only because it is the first album in which Stevie Wonder identifies himself as an adult, not a child or a precocious adolexcent. With luck, the rest will follow, just as “Superstition” came by circuitous circumstances from “Fingertips.”

PATTI SMITH "Hey Joe" b/w "Piss Factory" (Mer 601)

Remember when rock ‘n’ roll as poetry was a hot issue? All those wheezing oldbefore-their-timers trying to legitimize that fine honky noise by jamming its head through the academic wringer? Trouble was, though, that those cerebral creeps didn’t know what they were talking about; they had swallowed all that college-kid nonsense about poetry being a bunch of abstruse candy grams from the know-it-alls of the ontology circuit, and when they sent their poetic tracers through rock ‘n’ roll’s bloodstream, they didn’t even know what to look for. That’s why a Dylan couplet like “with your sheet metal memory of Cannery Row/ and your magazine husband who one day just had to go” was treated with more respect than a perfect three-syllable expletive scraighed over a series of berserk treble-clef triads by Jerry Lee Lewis. Those creeps couldn’t even see that without any of Dylan’s formal knowledge or arsenal of fancy words, Jerry Lee manifested an innate knowledge of the rhythmic nuances that have always been the essense and epitome of real poetry.

All in the way of saying that Patti Smith knows what’s going on. She fully realizes that Mickey Spillane is a far more important literary force than some old fart like Allen Ginsberg; that poetry should be directed at the pelagic Currents beneath the skin rather than the cerebrum; that if you think too much it’ll make you sick in the head.

These two cuts offer a nice taste of what Patti’s act represents: “Hey Joe,” the nineyear-old rock ‘n’ roll watermark, is here breath-broadened to include the Hearst kidnapping and guitar enslavement without ever leaving the crime passionel/Mexican getaway flow; “Piss Factory” is a Smith original concerning the interfactory tensions of some South Jersey sweatshop and the thirst for New Yawk City deliverance. On “Hey Joe,” Patti’s chanteuse voice gives off some of the finest broad-warblings since Dolly Parton’s debut; on “Piss Factory,” she spews out chunks of nasty-mood fast-talk (Romilar prosody, they call it) and images of toothless, sausage-eating assembly-line bitches and schoolboy thigh.

Patti Smith comes about as close to being it as you can get. Before long she will be looked back upon as the one who wristwhipped both poetry and rock ‘n’ roll back to life. Here, with guitarists Lenny Kaye and Tom Verlaine and piano player Richard Sohl, she’ll show you why.

This is a limited pressing, so, to coin a phrase, act quickly.

Nick Tosches

(Patti’s record is available for» $2.50 from Sunburst Enterprises, 1545 Broadway, Rm. 502, N.Y., N.Y. 10036; it’s worth every penny of it and far more. - Ed.)

JOE COCKER I Can Stand a Little Rain (A&M)

Rock and roll has always had its share of tragic heroes, but Joe Cocker put his patent on the role. Carrying a simplistic, soulful dignity, he has lurched in and out of the limelight so many times that even his die-hard fans don’t know whether to consider him a has-been or a superstar on sabbatical. He’s landed on his face as often as on his feet, and played the role of patsy/pawn for a number of status-seeking musicians. He offered the world soul when it demanded synthetic pop, sweat when it wanted glitter. He became the main attraction in a three-ring musical caravan that left him spiritless, weak and wary. For the past three years. Cocker’s trail has decidedly run downward.

But with the release of his first studio LP since 1971, Cocker has not only taken a step upward, but perhaps the biggest and most dramatic one of his career. From the second you pick up the album jacket it’s evident that a new Joe Cocker is on the scene. Gone is the flashy, wailing pre-Woodstock cartoon howler. As pictured on I Can Stand a Little Rain, Cocker is somber, vulnerable and almost serene; staring solemnly at the record buyer with as much underplayed power as is found on the LP itself.

Beginning with a searing rocker, “Turn Out the Lights,” Rain dispells any and all rumors about Cocker losing his talents, presenting a full course of white soul. All the assembled tunes are magnificent, being penned (apparently just for Joe) by a feast of friends including Daniel Moore, Jim Price (who expertly produced the record), Henry McCullough (of Joe’s Grease Band), Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and Jimmy Webb. The insights into Cocker’s brooding persona found in their lyrics are almost traumatic.

Aside from two token rockers (“Light” and “I Get Mad”), the record has a moody, piano-dominated spirit that allows Cocker to escape from the brassy, overblown Mad Dogs motif and plunge into poignantly expressive blues. Hearing Joe wrench out lines like “How can I see the beauty of the light/When somebody I trusted, somebody I knew quite well, somebody I loved/Done reached up and put out the light” and “When I’m on my last go-round/I can stand another test/Because I’ve made it before and I can make it some more” packs a lot more wallop than any rehashed Leon Russell arrangement.

Yet in spite of the LP’s overall brilliance, one is never quite as involved with the music as with Joe himself. You are always aware of his hesitance to deliver fully. Of the clipped notes. Of the wariness. And it is because of this aura of uncertainty that I Can Stand a Little Rain transcends being just another white soul album to succeed as an intense personal statement.

There is Randy Newman, solitary pianist, backing Joe on his “Guilty,” the story of a broken man who sums up his alcoholic existence with “It takes a whole lot o’ medicine darlin’, for me to pretend I’m somebody else." There’s Nicky Hopkins’ fine honkytonk keyboard work on Nilsson’s “Don’t. Forget Me.” (“I miss you when I’m lonely, I miss the alimony too.”) Merry Clayton, Clydie King and Venetta Fields offering soulful harmonits on the title track. But best of all, there is Cocker. Growling. Prowling. Slashing out at a phrase one moment, lingering over a gentle line the next. His phlegm-filled vocals are no longer the center ring attraction — they are the show, and rightfully so.

There is one stanza present that should be spotlighted, in that it sums up the amount of emotionalism leveled at the listener. Although on the enclosed lyric sheet, there are only two verses listed for the Jimmy Webb tune “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” Cocker, sings a third, uncredited verse:

I fell down on the road I fell down awful hard I fell down on my face I tripped and missed the stars I fell...I fell alone The moon’s a harsh mistress The sky is made of stone

What can you say about a performer who’s admittedly on pretty shaky professional ground and yet is still willing to offer a sadly realistic summation like that? Nothing, I guess, except welcome back, Joe. We’ve missed you a hell of a lot.

Ed Naha

BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE Not Fragile (Mercury)

If I was cynical, I wouldn’t like this album. I could’ve told you everything about it before it even got released. In fact, I probably could’ve written this review about three months ago and just left a couple of blanks where I could fill in some song titles and quote a few lyrics. I knew it would be predominantly hard rock with lots of heavy riffs and mechanical guitar solos, featuring just a taste of jazz for diversion. The lyrics would sound sorta contrived (like when BTO rhymed mellow and fellows in “Takin’ Care of Business”), and occasionally, they would lapse into introspection, singing about the vagabond life of a touring rock and roll band. I even knew how it was going to be produced, and that somewhere on the album jacket, there’d be a picture of a gear just like there’s always a rabbit on the cover of Playboy.

My first surprise was hearing two lead guitars — and they didn’t sound overdubbed. I quickly checked the liner notes and discovered that Timmy Bachman, who played rhythm on the first two BTO albums, was no longer in the band. He’d been replaced by somebody named Blair Thornton and Blair added an interesting new dimension. In addition to handling the rhythm, Blair can also play some fine second lead. Right away, you know that opens new horizons, but although BachmanTurner explored the possiblilities, they didn’t

really exploit them.to their fullest potential this time out. Randy mixed his guitar in one channel and Blair’s in the other, and they cite who does what solo and which guitar is which in the liner notes, but other than that, BTO didn’t do anything too creative with the two guitars.

After you get used to the two guitars, there’s nothing much more different or unusual about Not Fragile. Everything is more or less the way you expected it. Side One opens with the title tune, a real heavy riffer that features some nice interaction between Blair and Randy. Then, they go into “Rock Is My Life (And This Is My Song),” which is Not Fragile's answer to “Welcome Home” off BTO II. Same light jazzy format. Same introspective lyrics about a touring rock ’n roll band. “Roll On Down The Highway” follows in the same lyrical sense, though instead of jazz, it’s powerhouse rock ’n roll, sounding like the group’s next single. The rest of the album fits neatly into either of those three categories. “Sledgehammer” and “Second Hand” are heavy metal. (You should’ve guessed.) “Freewheelin’” is sort of jazzy. “Blue Moanin’ ” is rock and roll. Sometimes, a song merges two categories. “Giving It All Away” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” are basically rock ’n’ roll, but they’ve got a taste of the jazz thrown in.

On the whole, Not Fragile works not because it’s so much like the other albums, but because it’s just a little different. Even if you know what it’s gonna sound like, you’ve never heard it before.

Jim Esposito

GOOD RATS Tasty (Warner Bros.)

Oh boy, eat em up!! The greaze, the gutz, the Music Machine is back! Right, this is the same group that gave ya that wonderful bargain bin classic years back when the only creatures that walked the earth were troglodytes, and surprise, the Good Rats is still good and knockin the beat. They have album art and everything!

What do they sound like? Like a swell combination of Steely Dan and the Guess Who doing bad jokes, that’s what! They sing bout pizza, topless bars, New Jersey, pyromania, Hell’s Angels, pissing in trash cans, and just about anything., They ain’t proud.

The truth: the Good Rats have come back strong. On “Tasty,” they do some obvious tasteless Bertha Butt kinda things in the Phlo and Eddie tradition. The bass player screws up, the band plays too loud, and it all falls apart into chaotic derision. Wears thin after a single listening. On “300 Boys,” the words don’t make no sense (they’re stupid), but on “Papa Poppa,” poetry erupts into complete nonsense. “Fireball Express” busts balls and falls fiat at the same time (kinda like Rod Stewart). Then the Rats even attempt some nostalgic 40’s bit scat and put down all dem Bette Midler creeps. “Phil Fleish” weirds out pretty clean with Blue Cheer imitations and some decent Nazi power pumps and pounding (maybe the last great heavy-metal ode). This sludge finally all manages somehow to plop into this rave up entitled “Klash-Ka-Bob” dat squirms like the Allmans and quivers like a bowl fulla Afrique Rebop Vanzetti. On which the guys ask the girls to grab their noses and suck out the snot. Wild!

Yes, morons, this is the album that Planet Waves could only pretend to be. Highly recommended by road manager Eddie the Mouse. Completely controlled by the Marchello Bros, with a sense of humor that never gives up. Bryan Ferry would luv this record.

Inspiration: a film called The Killer Shrews in which dogs with paper cones over their noses growl menacingly and attack this huge black sailor and chase him up a bamboo tree until it cracks and they eat him alive. Whatta scream sez Phyllis Diller. A real cheap fractured flicker, and my impromptu guesswork leads me to believe that it’s the source for most of the funny lines from the Good Rats’ songs on this album. And if that ain’t it, it’s gotta be Creature of Destruction, filmed on videocassette like Police Surgeon and Starlost by director Patzop Peters (no. import of Cahiers Du Cinema), a worthless exercise in parodying the original Creature From the Lagoon but actually most of it wuz chopped up from a previous Russian horror feature in which Mamie Van Doren played the part of a fish (that one filmed in color and with handheld camera) which swizzled up outa the toilet. And all of these films can be purchased in both View-Master reels and special slices for yr Kenner’s Give-A-Show Projector. And as far as the Good Rats’ album goes, it should only be bought on 8-track tape to fully be appreciated.

Robot A. Hull

THE MIGHTY CLOUDS OF JOY It's Time (Dunhill)

1 Formulas work in unpredictable ways. Take the Philadelphia sound. Who would have guessed that this frequently bland style could blend so successfully with some of the strongest gospel singing in the country? And yet that’s what the Mighty Clouds of Joy and producer Dave Crawford have accomplished on It’s Time, an adroit-fusion of gospel voices, pop material and glossy arrangements that manages to be funky and polished simultaneously.

Crawford has had a mixed track record recently. In the past year, he’s produced two lousy B.B. King “In Philadelphia” sessions, but he’s also worked on an undeservedly obscure venture by Charles Mann, a singer/ songwriter and also Crawford’s collaborator (he co-authored two of the Clouds songs). It’s Time, however, maintains a consistently high standard, despite some unlikely ingredients (most of the material strains to incorporate psuedo-religious imagery — can’t compromise these fellows too much; and the instrumental moves are all pretty obvious, lifted from the MFSB book of dependable disco dance riffs).

The bulk of It’s Time represents, quite simply, the best stuff to come out of Philly in months. The rhythm section bums; the Clouds sing, powerfully; and there’s rarely any of the mush gumming up the works. In fact, the Clouds, one of the most popular gospel groups of recent years, make pop stars like Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, whom they occasionally recall, sound like overnourished amateurs in comparison. The Clouds’ uninhibited gruffness by contrast gives the Philly formula some real guts here, and the band responds in kind.

The album contains two should-be hits, “Mighty Cloud of Joy” and the title tune, which, for good measure,receives an instrumental reprise for the album’s tag. Both tracks are up-tempo dance records with strong hooks, and both are given authoritative readings by the Clouds. While the rest' of the album varies in quality, side two rarely falters from the norm set by “Mighty Cloud.” The result is an eminently commercial Philadelphia production, catapulted into greatness by the gospel quintet’s undiluted performance. Together, Dave Crawford and the Clouds have fashioned one of 1974’s finest soul disks.

Jim Miller

THE PERSUASIONS More Than Before (A&M)

As the last aboveground, still-recording example of accapella, The Persuasions have done their share to bring that music up-todate and into the public eye. They even put up with' the benign love/contempt of early benefactor Frank Zappa to take their boppin’, gospqlized version of the trad black ghetto music to a wider audience, so I can’t blame ’em much when they finally give into outside economic pressures and add a band for one side of their latest lp, More Than Before. Yet, the wisdom of the move must be questioned, especially in this instance.

Y’»ee, with the instrumental backing here, The Persuasions are not that much better than any number of other gospelized R&B vocal groups I can think of and are surely nowhere near the tjopnotch soulful warblets. More often than not, side two’s instrumentation, however spare, gets intAe way of the quintet’s remarkable vocal interplay and winds up dragging the vocalists down instead of giving ’em any sort of lift. For that matter, the five tunes selected for the group’s “with instrumental support” debut are trite and all-toopredictable.

The album’s “recorded live” and without band first side is more like what you’d expect from The Persuasions, although we could’ve hoped for more ingenuity in their song selection. I mean, how many times do you wanna hear “I’ve Got To Use My Imagination,” even if. this version is'topnotch accapella? Nonetheless, there’s a great, churning rendition of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong’s “Gonna Keep On Tryin’ Till I Win Your Love,” a pretty good workout of The Temp’s oldie “Beauty’s Only Skin Deep, and, as usual, a sparkling rendition of a gospel ditty, “Jesus Build A Fence Around Me.”

But we’re still left with just another 50-50 lp from a group who could do a hell of a lot better. With the right material, musicians, arrangements, and this experience under their belt, the quintet’s next effort-with instrumental accompaniment could possibly be considerably better. Meantime, I’ll play the first side till the grooves wear thin, and hope the powers-that-be recognize The Persuasions’ primary talents for what they are and leave ’em alone to make it or break it that way.

Andy McKaie

ELTON JOHN Caribou (MCA)

The way I see it, if it wasn’t for Bobbie Gentry, Elton John would never have happened. See, Bobbie did “Ode to Billie Joe” and it had this peculiar acoustic guitar/string arrangement and that laid the foundation for Jose Feliciano’s version of “Light My Fire” which had that same peculiar acoustic guitar/ string arrangement. Skip a couple of years and here’s some guy named Elton John sounding just like Jose Feliciano had Jose taken up piano instead of guitar. And since we never did find out just what was thrown off the Tallahacnie Bridge, what good has all of this done? Not one speck.

And speaking of specs, that Elt sure has a million of ’em. Course he has yet to do an album cover wearing the ones with the windshield wipers built in, but I have seen a photo of the ones that light up and say “Elton.” On Caribou, his latest lp, there’s a nice big picture of his pink ones, complete with floral arrangements along the rims, autographed and oh, yes, suitable for framing. This man is no fool. I’m sure that early in his career he realized that if just one million kids who wore glasses were to identify with his ocular impairments and buy his records, he’d make a million, and that he has.

Course when you get right down to it, Elton is the Milton Berle of rock, stealing ideas from every imaginable source without paying back any dues. His ripoffs include David Bowje (“Rocket Man”), Lee Michaels (“Honky Cat”), even Slade (“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”). Small wonder then, when I heard his latest single, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” I immediately assumed that he was swiping some Beach Boy moves, and I might have added, quite nicely. So what happens? I get the album and damned if a few of the Beach Boys aren’t actually singing on the song. Well, at least it’s a good sign for the future. From now on, when he wants to steal something, he can just call up the potential stealee and they can come into the studio and do it themselves. Waste not, want not, and all that.

Seriously though, that Bernie Taupin sure is one amazing lyricist. My personal fave on Caribou is “Solar Prestige A Gammon,” where Bernie writes (and I believe he’s speaking for all of us when he says this) “Solar Prestige a gammon/Kool kar kyrie Kay salmon/Hair ring molassis abounding/Common lap kitch sardin a poor flounidin.” Lines like that can really move you. Or how about “Ticking,” a lovely little anecdote set to music about a young man who goes to a bar, pulls a gun out and kills fourteen innocent people. Harry Chapin, call your office.

Was Elton really meant for this trial and tribulation rock star life? Does he secretly dream of playing in cocktail lounges from coast to coast, wowing the suburban housewives who dressed the way he dresses now years ago? Does he have to put on dark contact lenses to go out on the street unrecognized? A parting thought: if your parents don’t mind when you listen to his records, even with the volume up high, how good can Elton John be?

Billy Altman

HARRY NILSSON Pussy Cats (RCA)

There is a kind of pervasive ugliness about Los Angeles that serves to keep me well away from it. Everything down there is touched with the tawdry, pessimism is the order of the day, and the two words which characterize it best for me are mechanical and psychotic.

Pussy Cats is a mechanical and psychotic album. It is so ugly that I can’t for the life of me understand who it was made for. I can’t believe that given a choice between this and almost any other album a disc jockey wouldn’t opt for the other.

You always hear the old saw in biology class about how if a family gets too inbred, it starts producing idiots. The record business is that way, too, it seems. John Lennon has caught himself in a place where pasting a kotex on his head is far-out funny and getting drunk and coked out every night is a way of life. His little buddy Harry Nilsson, padding in his footsteps, writes loveless lovesongs with no particular melody, and submits to John’s production, which sounds like you’re listening from the inside of a vacuum cleaner.

This album made me feel unclean just listening to it. In just twelve inches of plastic, a summation of everything that’s wrong with rock today, from insensitive renderings of hip songs (“Many Rivers to Cross”) to the amphetamine oldie schtick (“Rock Around The Clock”).

Nilsson isn’t a large enough talent to worry about, no matter how cute his friends are. And as for Lennon, in the words of Woody Guthrie, “...when you ride the big airplane...all they will call you will be Deportee.” Bye-bye!

Ed Ward

BLACK OAK ARKANSAS Street Party (Atco)

H.L. Mencken once wrote that he could toss an egg out the window of a Pullman car anywhere in America and splatter a yokel. It’s not recorded whether Mencken ever took a train through Black Oak, Arkansas, but if he had, undoubtedly he could have exhausted a dozen eggs in no time. Nobody’s fool, however, Mencken balanced his universal dismissal of the American booboisie with an ardent championship of yokelborn novelists like Sinclair Lewis, who were obviously best equipped to dissect and expose the foibles of their native regions.

In similar fashion, Black Oak Arkansas have been rapidly emerging as the Southern rock’n’roll band, the Southern group most successful in comprehending and making peace with their roots. There’s no end in sight to racism, but there is a point of diminishing returns in continually apologizing for it, which is what the Allman Bros, seem to be doing in their, achingly melodramatic rereadings of the blues. Black Oak Arkansas, on the other hand, have already exorcised their racial guilt (if they ever had any, since they’re po’ boys they own selves), and have gone ahead to a wiseassed, joyful celebration of their own regionalism and naivete.

Black Oak lead singer-spokesman Dandy Jim Mangrum would probably be voted the most obnoxious rock personality in America if a special election were held today, but that mandate would only prove that where there’s smoke, the fire ain’t far behind. Detractors cite Dandy’s obvious and obsessive sexism, his counsuming egomania (it’s a tossup which head’s bigger, the one on his shoulders or the one at the tip of his shlong), his pretensions to cosmic understanding, and even his prematurely aged, tobacco-juice-choked voice (yeah, they laughed when Dylan sat down to sing, too). Dandy’s list of offenses against hip decency is endless, but like other controversial megalomaniacs (Eric Burdon and Norman Mailer immediately come to mind), what irritates people so much is not Dandy’s specific traits but his totally unfettered individuality in expressing them.

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t even bother with rationalizing Jim Dandy’s offensiveness if it weren’t for the potency of the context in which he presents himself — Black Oak Arkansas are not only the best Southern-rock band, they’re also the best country-rock band in America, simply by the divine default of being genuine country people and not thirdgeneration intellectuals from Scarsdale. Dandy’s compulsive mythmaking about the band members originally huddling together to defend their long hair aside, it’s evident that the various B.O.A.’s understand each other intimately in a • way that could only come from growing up together, and this intimacy is reflected in the intense tightness of their instrumental sound. Drummer Squeezebox Evans and bassist Dirty Daugherty, in particular, provide one of the best rhythm sections this side of the J. Geils Band, and Burley Jett, Goober Grin Knight, and Ricochet Reynolds, in the various combinations of their threeguitar frontal assault, while not so Allmanimaginative (the inevitable comparison), propel Jim Dandy’s preachments with appropriate fire.

Street Party suffers a bit when, stacked up against last year’s ignobly ignored High on the Hog, but only because it’s not so consistently fine as the earlier LP — the highs (and most of the songs are) continue just as high. “Dancing in the Streets,” the old Martha and the Vandellas number, of course, is cranked up to a new Seventies sensibility, with staccato, nearly metallic rhythm. “Sting Me,” “Good Good Woman,” and “Jail Bait” are variations on Dandy’s sexist saturation, and their lyrics should furnish a wealth of quotations for the new season’s diatribes against B.O.A.

“Dixie” (yep, the “Dixie”) features a Southern-stentorian, Foghorn Leghorn accapella reading of the lyrics, followed by an Allmanesque guitar-waltz, and finally a jiving and proud “A — men!” B.O.A.’s ethnic pride also inspires “Son of a Gun” and “I’m a Man,” the latter song indeed living up to its puissant predecessors by Bo Diddley and Stevie Winwood. Only “Everybody Wants to See Heaven (Nobody Wants to DieV’ harks back to the shitkicker sententiousness that mired Keep the Faith in manure, but one dud out of twelve is not a bad average these days.

Richard Riegel

ROGER MCGUINN Peace On You (Columbia)

And everywhere I’m bound I got to play that same old sound Got to play that same old sound Goin’ round and round.*

“Same old Sound,” the one number on his second solo album Roger McGuinn wrote unassisted, is a study in ambivalence. Partly it’s a complaint: the memory of the Byrds is an albatross around McGuinn’s neck. Whatever he does under his own name will inevitably be compared to what the group he masterminded did in the past, and he will never be able to escape (nor probably to satisfy) the expectations aroused by everyone’s fondness for the Byrds. But the song is also a celebration: McGuinn, justifiably, is proud of “that same old sound.” After all, he created it and it still works. “I did it for your sister last year/Going to slip it right into your ear.” Peace on You’sfinest tracks are those which most recall the Byrds, particularly “Same Old Sound” (at the end of which Flo & Eddie aptly recap the la-la’s which concluded “Goin’ Back”) and “The Lady” (which revives the guitar lines of “Mr. Tambourine Man”). These songs have the ringing splendor of the golden era.

What signalized the Byrds was McGuinn’s uncanny ability to assimilate any form of music — folk, rock, raga, jazz, C&W — and create not just hyphenated rock but an integrated whole. No matter how disparate its components, the Byrds’ music was always of a piece. But over the years, as the original members of the band broke away and their replacements lost interest in submitting to McGuinn’s vision of unity, the synthetic quality was lost. On his first solo album, McGuinn couldn’t recapture it. The record was eclectic, not organic, interesting but uneven, and disconcerting as it hopped, skipped and jumped from folk music to 2001 to calypso.

Peace on You returns to a more homogeneous sound, which it achieves in part by echoing to great effect the original Byrds, and in part by turning to Southern, gospel-flavored rock. And this is where McGuinn gets into trouble. At its best his music has always been stamped with his own sensibility, which gives it its meaning and coherence. But by putting himself in the hands of Bill Halverson and A1 Kooper, and by drawing on conventional good ole boy .material and styles, McGuinn has surrendered a good deal of his personality and compromised his status as a rock auteur. Several tracks are smooth and pleasant but utterly ordinary. With their backup vocal choruses, church-derived piano licks and lyrics about “the blue-banked bayou” and “them southern folks,” they could be the work of any one of a hundred bands in Georgia (even if the musicians — Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar, Paul Harris and others — are from L.A.).

Peace on You is superb when McGuinn himself predominates, which he does by dint of his singing as much as anything else. Over ten years McGuinn’s seemingly drab voice has acquired tremendous authority. The absence of apparent style or contrivance in his plain, slightly strained vocals makes them convincing, their unremarkableness compelling belief. McGuinn may have mixed emotions about the same old sound, and he certainly has yet to come up with a satisfactory new one, but in the meantime Peace on You will do pretty well.

Ken Emerson

* 1974. Blackwood Music Inc. and Patian Music

PHOEBE SNOW (Shelter)

Phoebe Snow has a great voice. It’s sweet without being sticky, big without being leaden, sinuous without being whiny. It’s a voice that stands out above the drone of standard FM programming, a voice that calls attention to itself from across a crowded record store.

You could call it Maria Muldaur mixed with Joni Mitchell, maybe, though it’s neither rusty hot as the first nor cool blue as the second, and anyway that sort of comparison does an injustice to all three singers. It’s also strongly reminiscent of the voice of a fine, lost singer named Ruthann Friedman (one album and a single or two on Reprise some years ago) — though much richer and more mature.

Snow’s voice sounds especially good coming out of the tight, understated ensemble sounds of the various small bands that accompany her; this sort of thing is almost a textbook example of the intelligent, sensitive wedding of musical textures. (Besides some familiar session-work guest stars, like David Bromberg, Dave Mason, and the Persuasions — on one track each — there are some surprising names here: veteran swing pianist Teddy Wilson appears on one song, veteran cool bop bassist Chuck Israels on another, and the big, warm tenor of Zoot Sims, God bless him, appears thrice!)

That’s the good news.

Now...There’s the unfortunate matter of Phoebe Snow’s lyrics. Her melodies are simple but work well; her words have one overriding problem: they’re bad. Consider, for instance, “I said it must be Sunday/’Cause ev’reybody’s tellin’ the truth/And then again it might be Monday.../ ’Cause ev’rybody’s drinkin’ vermouth.” Or maybe “The dirty city mist/Had seeped too deep inside/It took me on some kind/Of heady ride/They told me Charlie Parker died..." Or the creeping McKuenism of lines like “Do you like or love/Either or both of me.” Or (when he ripped off Sheila Graham) “I’d like to get behind his eyes/ And sing and cry from that position.”

As a writer, in other words, she’s trite. obvious, and uncomfortably serious (in the same way that, say, Janis Ian usually is); she has also gifted the literature of contemporary songwriting with some of the worst, most incongruous rhymes this side of Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

But she sure does have a great voice. And the two non-Snow songs on the album, “Let the Good Times Roll” (yes, that one), and Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues” are wonderful. And even her own songs sound so good, you don’t really have to listen to them too closely.

And is “Phoebe Snow” an alias? Is it sheer coincidence that “Phoebe Snow” was also the name of the finest train that ever ran on the Lackawanna Line?

Colman Andrews

MAHOGANY RUSH Child of the Novelty (20th Century)

You know Frank Marino. He’s that kid from Montreal who had a heavy date with Alice D (age 25) a few yrs ago and ended up receiving Hendrix messages from beyond the 6 feet under. Good messages too and damn good receptions thereof even then and this is 4 yrs later. Like there’s that other gent the Masked Phatasm or whatever his name is who did that Morrison immo for one single but here’s a stand-in for a stiff that’s so transcendency solid and eternal (internal too) that it’s a whole different slow boat to Borneo. And what’s wrong with doin a Jimi anyway? He hadda be better’ll Johnny Winter or Jimmy Page or Dicky Betts or even Derek Clapton too when you get down to it, like y’know that cat was really (pardon the cliche) farrout (cause he genuinely for the love of Mike was) and well anyway it does take a superior somebody to actually deal with all that meat in any but the superficialest of manners.

Which is pretty much even the way most of the fans even took Mr. H (like how many of em who dug the first album were still available for even Electric Ladylandl) but not Frank cause Frank knows the whole score note for note and then some and that includes even the ballads (and even the ballads that were merely pretty). Listened to “Driftin" from Cry of Love and came up with “Chains of (s) Pace” which stretches stuff to logical extremes even the bossman himself wouldn’t of bothered with. Real great hauntingly aquatic melodiousness that goes on and on and on and on and on. Spaced-outness that really is and only a Canadian could do it (Canada = more space!). Takes it to places that ain’t even threatening, places Hendrix mighta liked to land himself had all that tremendous Anglo-American pressure been off his soul. Frank really demonstrates how to be an unscarey dragon at play (check out the cover: the smaller of the two large flying reptiles). A non-jive psychedelia that took its time to happen and just might last for yrs (less chance of politics, sleaze or runaways to officially close the book so quick), maybe the real San Fran’s right now rearing its head in Quebec...Speaking of which Frank’s got this. one called “A New Rock and Roll” and if you remember the last new R&R didn’t sprout in the US of A either, showed up on foreign soil (before Anglo-Am even existed): high time for Canado-Am or Quebeco-Am at the very least! Lotta technology for the yanks to steal in such a venture cause these Mahoganies grew up using it (Frank just turned 19), didn’t just come to it as a mid-60’s lark.

“Guit War” in fact is as close as the biz has gotten to technology per se (blows the heavy metalists under the table!) and yet Frank’s so unsure you’re gonna believe he did it simply that he has this note about it on the cover to the effect that “all the effects except voice were made with a Fender Stratocaster and Super-Reverb amp; no other devices, instruments, or sound effect record or tape were used.” Modesty in spite of itself cause Frank’s even his own producer as well as writer of all the (Hendrixian - natch) lyrics. Title cut has this great chilling line about “squeezed his soul bone dry” that works like a sonofagun cause when need be Frank forces more definite up-front enunciations than Jimi ever did within the mixes he either chose or were chosed for him (oughta mention that yes of course Frank’s vocals are patterned after Jimi’s too and who else has even bothered to approach THAT whole universe?). Song even ends a la Sgt. Pepper without the pretense!

R. Meltzer

DOUGSAHM Groover's Paradise (Warner Brothers)

This is not Doug Sahm’s best record. Doug is odd that way - his career has those ups and downs, and he’s always man enough to lay them out there for you to see. Of course, Doug, even when he’s not at his best, is still, real good. In other words. Groover’s Paradise is not a bad record, it’s just not a very good Doug Sahm record.

The cause is obvious to those who follow Doug closely — he hasn’t really had a permanent band for some time. Various conflicts led to the Quintet and Doug having an irreconcilable split. Since his move to Austin he hasn’t done any touring, and when he needs a band, he usually collects various members of Frieda and the Firedogs around him. Somethimes — like at this year’k Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic — the results are electrifying. Sometimes like out at the Soap Creek Saloon about four days later — they aren’t.

There are some rather adventuresome —

and very un-Sahm-like — tracks on Groover s Paradise: “Houston Chicks” doesn’t sound like anything Doug’s ever done before, and the confessional, intensely personal “Catch Me In The Morning” is a really mature, well-thought-out number. But with the exception of “La Cacahuata,” a mariachi instrumental, and the good-timey “For The Sake of Rock N Roll!” there isn’t much else of compelling interest on the album — and certainly nothing on the level of “San Francisco FM Blues,” “Ain’t that Loving You,” or “Texas Tornado” off his last album.

As an incurable and devoted Doug Sahm fan, I Certainly hope his next album is better than this. I also hope that Warner Brothers’ gives him enough of a chance to produce a better one, because he’s certainly capable of it. Doug has been as they say, “going through changes” recently, and it shows. Maybe next time he’ll replace the Creedence rhythm section with some good ol’ boys from San Antone, feature lots of the better Austin pickers, and interspeerse his own tunes with some kick-ass Tejas conjunto Or maybe he’ll surprise us another way. I just hope he does it.

Ed Ward