KEVIN AYERS, JOHN CALE, NICO, ENO & THE SOPORIFICS June 1, 1974 (Island)

Suggested Subtitle: The Persecution and Assassination of Conventional Musical Approaches by the Inmates of Island Records Under the Supervison of Richard Williams and Brian Eno.

What It Is: John Cale, Nico, Eno and Kevin Ayers, having found themselves together on the same label, decided to present a concert at London’s Rainbow Theatre.

Some First Thoughts: Island Records is now to the Esoterica wing of rock what Bearsville is to the Woodstock People, what Capricorn is to Southern boogie, what Casablanca is to desperate mutations, what Asylum is to the folkie elite. That’s good because it might establish unpredictability as a workable force in music biz (FutureFlash: Island becomes first major label to institute automatic mental-breakdown clause in all artist contracts. ..) Culturally, the concert was analogous to a major Dada exhibition back in its heyday; the Academy, in peril, will ignore or scoff, but time will inevitably mold it into an Event...

Here Comes the Warm Jet or Eno Sheds Some Light: “One reason for the concert was an artistic one, which was that we all really like each other as artists, and we all feel to some extent that we’re roughly in the same area.. .We just had a meeting and decided it would be a nice idea, and then we rehearsed very, very hard, and that was very enjoyable. Working for just one concert is a very nice idea, ’cause you know you’re going to be able to do things that wouldn’t be feasible over thirty nights.

“. . .[John Cale] did a really interesting version of ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ in a minor key. It’s incredibly suicidal. I mean you could never believe that that song could turn out to be such a downer as that. . .Nico did ‘Deutschland Uber Alles,’ which was very good. . .and she did ‘The End’ by the Doors, which is the one they put on the album.. . Nico doing ‘The End’ was so chilling, it really was. It was incredible. She invests it with so many levels of meaning I didn’t hear in the Doors’ one. She underplays it. . .there’sjust the harmonium, me playing synthesizer — almost doubling the harmonium part - and her singing. . .which is just like a rich, kind of non-specific miasma of sound. ..

“Each person [on “Baby’s on Fire”] had a part that was absolutely definite. . .Each performer had about four little parts, each of which was moved on a little bit from the previous part. When he moved to the next part wasn’t critical, but he had to stay there then for a while; he couldn’t move back to the one before, so it wasn’t like a jamming idea at all. . .There’s always this kind of mesh thing happening as different parts are overlayed. i .1 did that as an encore and the instruments were incredibly out of tune, so out of tune you wouldn’t believe it. But it sounds fantastic. There’s one little bit in it where there’s a riff between the guitar and one of the bassists, and they’re so out of tune it sounds like cellos. Amazing! I mean if you tried to make that sound in the studio it would have taken you ages. You wouldn’t have thought of making it, in fact, it’s such a bizarre sound. And the piano and guitar are quite well out of tune as well. Ha!”

The Album: Both of Eno’s songs are on Here Come the Warm Jets, but these live versions are different enough to have musical as well as collectors’ value. The mix on “Driving Me Backwards” gives his slithering voice due prominence, as the slippery, oozing music sucks you in like a slow, malicious undertow. It’s a somber, crazy, difficult piece of music, an unlikely album opener but, it turns out, the ideal mood-setter. “Baby’s on Fire” is indeed out of tune (it really does sound like cellos, that riff - roil over, EL.O), and it is fantastic. If Frogs is ever on TV again, turn down the sound and play this track over and over; Ray Milland, frogs flying into his wheelchair from every which way, would feel sorry for you.

The imaginative contemplator of suicide could utilize the rest of side one: Wire some speakers up on the inside of the oven, turn on the clean-burning natural gas, and start with “Heartbreak Hotel.” Elvis Presley as Venus in Furs. Gale’s fixated, possessed, nearly monotonic singing sits with disturbing calm in a boiling, dark mass of Enoise, tortured guitar riffs and the harpy chorus of Doreen and Irene Chanter and Liza Strike. It unfailingly takes you to the brink, and then comes Nico’s song.

Her “The End” is the soundtrack for the free-fall to the bottom. It’s a totally mesmerizing performance by this lady hidden in musical mists, yet at the same time all too clear. If Morrison sang it as a lizard, Nico is a sightless bird, lost but ever-so-calm, somehow knowing the right direction. She is the pure, dead marble of a ruined Acropolis, a crumbling column on the subterranean bank of Morrison’s River Styx.

Kevin Ayers gets all of side two because he was more or less the headliner. Of the four, he’s the least-known in Amerjca, and his five selections comprise a good, if incomplete, introduction.

He makes you think of Elliott Murphy a little, the way he’s both derivative and distinctive. He comes off more as an individualist than an actual eccentric, and he seems to be one of the few cultstars without an identifiable gimmick.

“May I” sounds like a meeting of mellow Velvet Underground and “Positively 4th Street” Dylan before it slips into a jazzy Astral Weeks shuffle. It’s musically diverting, and its mood is vivid, but it doesn’t go very far as it settles for being a quick, warm, sidewalks-of-Paris sketch. From there it’s a good variety show: The Dylan-via-Murphy “Shouting in a Bucket Blues,” then “Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes,” which, with Bowie’s “Queen Bitch,” can sit fairly proudly at the feet of the Velvets“Everybody’s Sometime and Some People’s All the Time Blues,” an amble through old Greenwich Village folk stylings, works better as mood than philosophy. “Two Goes into Four” sounds like it was written on an acid trip with the Incredible String Band.

Ayers’ persona is sincere (and sometimes even a bit sappy), somewhat wide-eyed yet worldly-wise. His deep voice is erratic but expressive, with a roughness that will be interpreted as charm by those who want to like it. Unlike Nico, Cale or Eno, Ayers shows little avant-garde leaning, either verbally (“May I sit and stare at you for a while?” is about as offbeat as he gets) or musically. In addition to the suggestions of Dylan and the VU, there are strains of the “progressive folk” school (like John Martyn) and a Syd Barrett tenuousness.

The backing is first rate (musicians include Cale and Eno, Rabbit, Robert Wyatt) and is highlighted by the guitar solos from Ollie Halsall and Mike Oldfield.

A person like Ayers needs time to seep into the people’s consciousness and collect an audience. It sounds promising, but the sampling we get here is too small. A Volume Two album from the concert would be welcome soon, .both for some more of Ayers and because there are lots of us who would kill for the chance to hear Nico sing “Deutschland U6er Alles.

Richard Cromelin

LOU REED Sally Can't Dance (RCA)

Nathaniel West once wrote about Hollywood, “Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.” In the case of Lou Reed’s latest LP, that line might be amended to read, “Few things are more depressing than limp attempts by an aging rock ’n roller to titillate a mass audience.” So far has Reed’s musical/sensibility stock plummented.

There was a time when, beneath the facades of kinkiness, paranoia and demimonde weariness, Reed’s songs were compassionate, even tender. Short stories on messy people and situations. Reed’s material at its zenith qualified as near poetic expressions of desperation.

And, of eburse, there was the voice, which was the aural equivalent of a withering glance, a voice which easily out-Dylaned Dylan in 1966. Dylan’s vocals were sheer out-of-towner affectation (Minnesota boy cons the big city), while Reed’s was as real as the soot on skyscraper windows. It was a voice that was seduction incarnate, a voice that was capable of treating degradation for degradation’s sake with a terse sense of black humor that underscored an understanding of his compulsively depraved subjects.

However, the difference between the Reed style of, say, “Some Kinda Love,” with its subtly stalking melody, exemplary phrasing and beautifully turned lines such as “like a dirty French novel/the absurd courts the vulgar,” and any of his current output is rather like comparing the works of DeSade with a peep show. Any likenesses between the two are purely incidental.

Whereas a Reed lyric was once bitter and empathetic, and almost uniformly incisive, the present Reed oeuvre is marked by sloganeering tendencies. Can it be that he has determined that his audience is comprised of callow, post-pubescents who will “get off” to his merely listing various instances of JesusI’m-bored deviance in different songs? With Sally Can’t Dance, “decadence,” always a hollow, albeit occasionally interesting state, has foundered to new levels of vacuity.

“Ride Sally, Ride,” the set’s opener, begins on a glum, quasi-Teutonic note with a pianoFrench horn duet. Sally at this point is yet another ice princess that Lou has so enjoyed having a go at over the years. The melody is redolent of the far superior “Lisa Says” and the horns sound muddy and ill-defined (one wonders if the blame rests with the players or co-producer Steve Katz). “Take off your pants,” Lou commands Sally, “don’t you know that this is a party?” You could have fooled me, Lou.

Gallows humor of the forced variety abounds throughout “Animal Language,” and it would appear that Reed has conquered new worlds of corn with “Kill Your Sops”; but this is perhaps because the latter song was his reaction to psychoanalysis, the draft, the war and, from what I can ascertain from the lyric, his sister wedding a corpulent, self-satisfied Long Island commuter. In any case, “Sons” plods along dolefully and Reed’s voice sounds thoroughly ludicrous in its attempts to sound threatening, especially when, echo is’ added when he delivers the title line. Strictly the hooey.

Which brings us to the title song in which Sally, once the ice princess, has fallen on hard times from too much high living and amphetamine shooting. Like former Wairhol superstars, Sally is no longer “a big model” who “balls folksingers.” Her looks are gone, she is no longer amusing and, as such, she has been relegated to being derided by Lou and his chorus.

Trouble is, Reed would like us to dance when (or I should say if) “Sally” comes blaring out of an AM radio, but it’s just not to be. The melody bears a passing resemblance to Rufus Thomas’ “Funky Chicken,”bolstered by scratchy guitar, percussive organ chords and fatback drums. But the band fails to really cook and the overbearing horns make things bottom heavy. All in all, a large so what. ,

Finally (and at long last) we have “Billy,” a character study about a long-term friendship between two men with contrasting personalities. Billy was a stright arrow who scored touchdowns, got all A’s and went to Med. school. Lou was a lout who-got D’s, played a lot of pool and dropped out of college. Truly an odd couple, Ho? Billy is drafted, goes to war and comes back shattered. Lou channeled his doltishness into being in a rock ’n roll band and building a.mystique on his putative self-destructiveness — a mystique, incidentally, "Which he seems to be intent on debunking on this record. One would imagine that Lou sought to capture the bittersweet feeling inherent in any such situation in which two friends since childhood face the attendant problems of ought, in the philosophical sense. Instead, the song’s denouement is a cop-out.

v‘No one could figure which one of us was the fool,” Lou intones wearily. I’ll leave that one up to you.

James Isaacs

ROD STEWART Smiler (MercUry)

The first sound on Rod’s new album is a barking dog, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bite. For one side, at least, it contains the most successfully ambitious work he’s ever done, and if flipping it over dims the thrill a bit, I’d still rank it with any. of his others:

For the first time, Stewart has become musically adventurous. Here, he uses strings (as effectively as anyone in rock, including the Beatles, has ever done), a steel band, background singers, and a ragtime band. In the main, it works. Whena corny string crescendo, worthy of Hugo and Luigi, comes into the middle of the record’s finest moment, the medley of Sam Cooke’s ‘ Bring It On Home to Me” and “You Send Me,” he chortles with glee. He ought to. It is * a moment of pure kitsch expanded to genius, and the added fillip of that silly self-deprecating giggle only lets us know he’s the same old small town boy.

Which is at the heart of the record. I don’t know whether or not Stewart really grew up in some tiny English country village, but he knows what it means to escape a hick past. Listen to the best of his originals here, “Farewell” and “Sailor,” and you’re given the kind of sense, of place for which great novelists are celebrated.

“I’m going down to that dirty town no matter what you say,” he tells his brother in the former. You could see it as a song about the pop dilemma (I’ve gotta be me, and me-’s a star). You could also miss the point. “Farewell,” which has “Maggie May’s” mandolin, and some if its despair, is about what it means to become a refugee from a past that will never jibe with the sophisticated present. When he sings, “And I think I’m always gonna misf you, even though you try to hold me back,” he isn’t just referring to an invented family. He is talking about the place itself, the limits his life there have placed upon his* vision, and his deeply felt need to escape them.

In consequence, he is always on the lookout, pen in hand (“If you don’t get no letters, you’ll know I’m in jail”) trying to avoid all the traps of conventionality. In “Sailor,” he’s running from his wedding. In “Dixie Toot,” really just a fragment of Stewart piece-work, he’s escaping boredom for good times. Ever on the run, yet, like a good small town boy, he always writes back home, singing his letters with such universality of emotion that he stirs sympathetic lingerings even in the most urbane.

Like that small town boy, Stewart retains his sense of home — always somewhere, even if it’s only where he lives, without anything else to recommend it. He knows where to “Bring It On Home.” He means it when he says “You Send Me.” He really misses “The Girl From the North Country.” Stewart’s longing for each of the women involved is almost saccharine; here’s where the strings become most prominent. But, eveh if he also dallies with Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Rock‘n’Roller,” in one of his greatest hard rock moments ever, he knows who’s worth more effort.

Unfortunately, the album is marred by several failures. Many small town boys have heroes, and though Aretha Franklin may (understandably) be one of Rod’s, it was probably a mistake to attempt her “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman.” (Here, the title, and the lyric, is changed to “Man.”) He has neither the perfection of voice, nor the rhythmic sense, to match her version, which is surely one of the greatest things she has ever done.

Filler aside — and there is more than enough here — the only other time he falls on his face is with Paul McCartney’s “Mine For Me.” Though we’ve all had to realize since “Jet” and “Band on the Run” that McCartney is not the answer to Lerner and Loewe we suspected him of becoming, if yoil doubt that he is capable of just the vapid and maudlin sentimentalism he’s been accused of, a listen to this should reassure you. (Small town boys are often impressed by great success, after all.)

Elton John’s “Let Me Be Your Car” fares much better, obviously, for Elton also retains some sense of what it means to be a hick kid on the make. There isn’t much except a half-formed automobile metaphor and pure energy to recommend this but the spirit, and the way that Stewart uses a Stax-style horn section to drive the song, is impressive.

Two years on, Stewart has made his move for real greatness. This album is, by some standards, one of his least successful. But it also works best when it is most ambitious, a healthy sign.

Lonnie Morgan

I've Got My Own Album To Do (Warner Brothers)

The average cynic would probably expect any album by such a long-time competent sideman as R. Wood (original Marriot Small Face and Stewart sidebar) to be merely competent. What he wouldn’t expect is a juicy cross-breed of Sticky Fingers, Every Picture Tells a Story, and Hands of Jack The Ripper. But that’s what My Own Album is. Sticky Fingers because Keith Richard is as much a part of this album as Wood, constantly mainlining ever-right guitar fills behind Wood’s, and chipping in with patented vocal accompaniment that makes this the best sounding Stones album in a long while. Every Picture Tells A Story because Rod Stewart’s albums always owed more to Wood’s solid, unobtrusive yet fundamental instrumental touches than many care to recognize, and Hands Of Jack The Ripper because, like Screamin’ Lord Sutch before him, Ron Wood is one of the most incompetent vocalists imaginable, no better than you or I and probably worse, and destined never to inspire jealousy in a throat cancer patient.

Half of this album is super, though. “I Can Feel the Fire” is the sort of opening every, album needs — ballsy, accessible and interesting, with Keith R. propelling it vocally by echoing and propping Wood’s efforts, and Ron’s live-wire guitar doing the rest. “Fkr East Man” is a complete reversal, in which Wood meets the Delfonics and comes out credibly sounding moody and melodic. “Crotch Music” is a scintillating, riff-infested prance that’d do the Allmans proud and should have been a lot longer, and “Shirley” and “If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somer body,” featuring friend R.S. on pipes are nearly as good. Only a few tracks don’t make it. “Mystify Me” and “Take A Look At The Guy” suffer through Wood’s untrained goofy warble, that ruins what otherwise might have been two merely boring songs.

But in total there’s so much pure power in this album that I can recommend it without question. In these days when every toad who ever overdubbed a bass run on a “Bubbling Under The Top 100” reject figures he can make a solo album, it’s good to find some one with both the talent and the friends (for when the talent runs out) to come up with a passable effort that should sell on more than just name alone.

Alan Niester

ITtLE FEAT Don't Fall Me Now Br Brothers)

On a recent visit to where-it’s-at-today, aka Austin, Texas, there was one record I heard being played constantly everywhere I went. Was it Michael Murphy? Was it Jerry Jeff Walker? Was it Willie Nelson? Nope — it was \ Dixie Chicken by Little Feat. Here you have one of the world’s most sophisticated listening audiences, one drenched with the best of American music, and, as discriminating listeners, they choose the best.

THE BEST rhythm section in rock.

THE BEST slide guitarist in the world.

THE BEST foot-shufflin’, finger poppin’, backbone slippin’ funky chicken...

Hey, look — I’ve been telling you about Little Feat for years. / know how good they are, even Warner Brothers knows, Or so they’d have you believe from all the support they’re giving them. And ya know, I think people are coming around.

So here we have the next Little Feat album, a proud successor to Dixie Chicken, in the noblest Little Feat tradition. Including a smashing medley of two great classix from previous records: “Gold Cold Cold/Tripe Face Boogie,” in which the pinnacles of guitar virtuosity are scaled.

For some ineluctable reason, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now seems more accessible to the uninitiated listener. Therefore, if you are an old fan, you will like to know that the usual standards of Little Feat quality have been met in this product. If you are NOT, an old fan, become a new fan by following these two simple steps:

1) Buy the record.

2) Slip it out of the shrinkwrap, place the record on the turntable, and place the phongraph needle on the first cut, “Rock and Roll Doctor.”

Easy, wasn’t it?

Ed Ward

DAVID CASSIDY Cassidy Live! (Bell)

Here’s a guy with some claim to status. His dad’s distinguished himself, right alongside Claude Akins, as one of the slimiest heavies ever to grace the TV cop shows and his mom runs a tight musical ship nightly, riding Qver a rowdy herd that includes Danny Bonaducci and Dave Madden.

Where Cass Jr. shines is up onstage, out in front of maybe six or eight thousand screaming Briton hoppers. He’s got a lot of what pre-rockenroll audiences used to clamor for — polish, showbiz spunk, that trouper stamina occasioned by plenty of public pratfalls on the boards. Davy’s thoroughly pro; slick and choeographed, well versed even in intra-song patter and convivial coyness. Since these qualities are generally associated with another, older brand of performer, and since his vocal skills, while impressive, are hardly commensurate with that kind of bravado and slickness, he comes off beautifully — as a precocious starkid having way too good a time to worry about credibility or critcs or anythirig. He’s a natural ham, takes to smalltime Bigtime like Anka or Darin did.

Who’s to say this isn’t the best live “rock” album of the year? I’ll take this Dave over that downhill skidding other one anyday. Coiffed and spangled, this one sounds like a cross between a 38-year old karate chopping Presley and the grinning, apple-cheeked Wayne Newton. He picks killer material, strokes it with a gentle show biz hand (“Some Kind of Summer” and the slowed-down “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” sound like companion pieces to sloppy El Pres glut like the live “Suspicious Minds,” all overrecorded rhythm and trashy tambourine-on-highhat), and walks away a winner every time.

His versions of oldies by the kiddo Beatles (“Please Please Me”) and Rascals (“How Can I Be Sure”) are doublesided xerox, his rock medley (a gruntoid “C.C. Rider,” “Jailhouse Rock, etc.) irreverent and his job on Stills hoaiy “For What It’s Worth” the best that song’s ever had; the band goes crazy once Cass burps up his helium vocal, running amok like 1969 G. Dead turned loose on 12,000 Haight St. regulars on a ’67 Sunday. “Mae” is classic Dennis Yost and “Delta Dawn” outbludgeons Cocker and Russell’s well-known assaults on subtlety.

flicker than the once-blissful Bonos, almost as powerful as Rory Gallagher, twice as hammy as the Hudsons, Jack and Shirley’s firstborn has distinguished himself this time. Are you ready, brothers & sisters?.

Gene Sculatti

STEPPENWOLF Slow Flux (Mums)

The first Steppenwolf album sounded great on cassette. Best part was on “Sookie, Sookie” when John Kay told the chick to let it hang but and you could absolutely feel her flesh shake as the reel of tape spun around the machine. Then on their second album Steppenwolf proceeded to the heights of ambivalence with lotsa technical trivia that was re-echoing the Vanilla Fudge’s The Beat Goes On bout the same time. At Your Birthday Party had a great cover but was total cereal, and. Monster was too political to matter. The Steppenwolf live stuff was great cuz you could hear the dirty words to “The Pusher” performed with greater strength and clarity, hissing between his teeth. All in all not a bad track record, overlooking the gaps on my shelf, for a band that finally gained the reputation of becoming the first heavy-metal Grateful Dead.

Yeah, I remember it well. A friend from Texas sent me a brown envelope in the mail, and inside there were the remaining fragments of a broken copy of “Born To Be Wild.” I was confused. That song had meant total power, total violence, to me whenever it throbbed on the radio, and I stomped on the accelerator. Did this mean that Steppenwolf was not to be trusted?

Of course!

Everybody shoulda known way back when this lame band decided to brand themselves as a positive identity after being hip and reading a dumb Hesse novel. Then John Kay parodies the creativity of a loser like Question Mark by wearing shades at all times, and then he even tries to cop Jim Morrison’s scene by constantly showing off in black leather and hurling obscenities at the teenyboppers groping at his feet. He was A-l Nazi but not tuff. A sure bet: John Kay was kicked outa every Hell’s Angels movie he ever tried to get in. He was fake; Steppenwolf was fake.

It’s really hilarious, too, that they gotta new record out. John Kay preaches bout how great it is to be a part of the Woodstock Nation and growls in return:

You might call me brutal ’Cause I’ve got a few sadistic notions Oh, but I ain’t lying I’d kill my own for some commotion

Oh, yeah, sure.

And the whole album is wrapped in tinsel with the titles" punched out like Life Savers, and it’s all really very hard to take. If the music is what’s important, it sure gets in the way of all the clods in the band stamping their feet and pooling on their horns. In fact, it is not only an extension of SteppenwolFs earlier recorded abortions, but it seems so outa place that it almost makes you forget that V. Fudge and Rare Earth and all the other “heavies” just ain’t around no more. It’s like this mummy escaped from a tomb or something.

Needless to say, a perfect Xmas gift for that special young guy/girl in yr life who still globs on the Clearasil and thinks that John Kay is synonymous with bully.

Robot A.’ Hull

HYDRA (Capricorn)

If I hadn’t heard Hydra before, I don’t think I would’ve been prepared for this album. Do you know there isn’t a single twelve bar dada-dada blues progression on the whole disc? There aren’t any references to fried chicken or watermelon, either. I bet that if you closed your eyes, you’d think they were English. If you hold your nose, you’d swear they were from Texas. Still, some people would say Johnny Winter was just another Duane Allman rip-off if he recorded on Capricorn, but anybody who categorically classifies Hydra with the rest of the marshmellow music on Capricorn Records oughta get fed to the Legend Of Boggy Creek.

Hydra sounds nothing whatsoever like any other Southern band you ever heard before. They come from Atlanta, and it’s generally conceded that the best thing that ever happened to the city of Atlanta was when Sherman burnt it down on his March To The Sea. It got rebuilt by the Yankees, so in effect, Atlanta is basically a northern city in the middle of the Deep South. This environment gives Hydra a uniquely cosmopolitan sound. You won’t find any of Macon’s laid back depression in Hydra’s music. If they reflect anything Southern, it’s the reckless frenzy you find in many Texas bands. They’ve got the same hard, sharp edge. They pound on your skull and stomp on your guts. Anybody who’s really listened to Hydra knows they’re not just another Southern blues band.

That’s the main reason why so many people always talked about Hydra. They had a grapevine through the South that was nothing short of phenomenal. You always heard everything that was going on with the band. There were lots of people waiting for this album, and maybe the best thing you can say' about Hydra was that it was worth the wait. Nobody who was really into Hydra can be disappointed. The group packed the album with over forty-six minutes of hard, driving music. Vocalist Wayne Bruce sings with the same gutty raspiness as Johnny Winter. Spencer Kirkpatrick plays a slicing lead with overtones of heavy metal, and sometimes almost jazz phrasings. Bassist Orville Davis is all over the scale with innovative bass lines, and drummer Steve Pace holds the whole bottom together with a solid rhythm. The whole sound is accented and highlighted by Dan Turbeville’s production. All in all, it adds up to a dynamite debut album. And perhaps that’s the most amazing thing about it. It is Hydra’s first album. Somehow, you tend to lose sight of that fact when you’re listening to it. It takes most bands at least three or four tries to get an album this good,

Jim Esposito

TRIUMVIRAT Illusions On A Double Dimple (Harvest)

If you add to a large dose of Emerson, Lake and Palmer,some Yes songs, a dash of Genesis, and a sprinkle of Procol Harum and Matching Mole, you will be left with the Frankenstein Monster album of 1974, Triumvirat’s Illusions On A Double Dimple, a patchwork creation of direct cops and influences sewn loosely together like a body of spare parts, not at all a cohesive structure. Producer, composer and keyboard director Jurgen Fritz, the herr doktor of this German trio, has taken the above mentioned ingredients and stacked them one atop the other, with no visible attempt at fusing all of it into a work at least vaguely unique.

But when last sighted, Illusions On A Double Dimple was No. 75 on the charts after a month’s residence, and rising faster than Hitler’s armies marched through Europe, and with a bullet to boot! Who the hell is buying this undisguised bastard, and why?-Well, it’s obvious that the infinite mass of iinborable ELP freaks are leading the crusade. If ELP can mesmerize a generation,'why can’t an equally adept duplicate pull the same trick? It seems Fritz recognizes a plunderable market when he sees one.

LLUSIONS A DOUBLE DIMPLE TRUMVIRAT

Though they’re shucksters, Triumvirat are capable of being exciting at times, which probably answers the question of why this record is selling so well. Maybe England’s tiresbme trio, ELP, are beginning to wear on their legions with their constant repetition. Maybe the kids' are searching for something that moves, for Chrissakes, which Triumvirat does for most of this record, avoiding that wishy washy ELP ephemeral blah binge. Triumvirat’s vitality has probably grabbed the naive Yesfans too, their band currently mired in v that molassigraph'ic ocean. Yes once lenew how to rock, and, ironically, side two of this record has a cut called “Roundabout,” but the group is now more into moving lobes than feet. Maybe their fans miss the energy too, and at the moment, Triumvirat seems the plug to stop the outgoing flow.

Maybe it’s a revolution. Maybe it’s a well-orchestrated plot. You vant energy, ve gif you energy!

Peter Crescenti

THE FIRST CLASS (UK/London)

THE WOMBLES Remember You're a Womble (Columbia)

I’ve decided to give up surfing and become a homo. - Les Crammer from Surfing Comedy Annual’74

Time warps are acary. Like, if the weather’s fine and no airplanes, I can get My Little Margie, Sgt. Bilko, Jack Benny, and Dobie Gillis on Mon. - Fri. nites on this weird little station outa New Hampshire. It stinks of the Twilight Zone. Now even the pop chart exists in such a time warp. I mean, I could visualize it with TV cuz maybe some underground pirate is guarding all the old series in some cave and beeping em out in irregular patterns so he won’t get caught. It’s like preserving some lost form of primitive art. But, Sheesh, when even pop radio coughs up the sounds of circa ’63, it’s getting kinda ridiculous.

Take the Wombles, for example. This combo is extremely big in England-but for no apparent reason other than that they sound like the Beach Boys and the now familiar surf scene. Yeah, OK, they’re fun, but how the hell you gonna support a buncha clowns that look like Cousin It from The Addams Family and a second-rate version of the Banana Splits, the Bugaloos, and the H.R. Pufnstuff tribe? Every cut on the album is about Wombles and Womblemania from square dancing imitations to soul riffs. The Archies were a disguised pop band of a cartoon mentality like the Wombles, but their particular flair for bubblegum, whoever they were, was sorta unique. Here, all the Wombles can do is imitate other genres and other trends.

It’s more like a summer gimmick record cept that unsuspecting tykes will buy “Wombling Summer Party” before they ever even hear “Surfin Safari.” It’s truly a shame that the Pipkins can’t be around to wipe this crass mediocrity off the charts for good.

The other surprise of the summer was “Beach Baby” by the First Class, an acceptable blend of 10CC with imitation Beach Boys. Once again, the summer was so bare and hot that people were buying anything/ and so it skyrocketed. Then the album sizzles off the press, and the members of the group all look like rejects from the Swinging Medallions. Yessir, all beer-gut frat snooks with no talent cept local talent. Put on the disc, and it’s more of the same “Beach Baby” production with razzledazzle and peon jokes. Yet, the same problem exists as it does with the Wombles: how ya gonna sit and listen to a pack-of chumps that look like something you wouldn’t even park you car next to at a drive-in?! It’s like the Raspberries and their awful matching white suits.

Robot A. Hull

THE COMMODORES

Machine Gun (Motown),

I was sitting in L.A.’s killer soul club, The Total Experience, a few weeks back waiting for the inimitable Bunny Sigler to come on (and he’s a whole total experience unto himself) discussing soul music with the lady next to me. My enthusiasm fired by a few Chivases, I was babbling about The Commodores, the best new soul act I’ve heard in years. The gentleman in front of me turned around and said “I couldn’t help overhearing you talking about The Commodores” (I bet he couldn’t...) “and I want you to know I -went to school with those brothers down in Tuskeegee. They used to play all them funky joints in town.”

No more - they’re playing French Line Mediterranean cruises and the best clubs now — but one listen to their debut Motown /album, Machine Gun and you’ll see why the cat couldn’t help but brag that he knew them. I simply cannot keep this album off the old turntable, and it makes me jump around everytime I play it. I even try to do “The Bump” when that song'comes on, but like the man says in “There’s A Song In My Heart,” “I don’t do no dance steps — I just do what I feel.”

My car radio Is broken, so I don’t know if the title track was ever the hit it deserved to be, but I do know what happens to instrumentals on the radio — “News in forty seconds - this is the Commodores!” - so even if you’ve heard it, you may not realize just how much MUSIC these talented folks packed into that two - minute - forty - secdnd bit of danceability. The follow-up, “Rapid Fire,” is just as good. Basically wah-wah clavinet-and-synthesizer workouts, both are densely textured, rapid-paced, and not quite long enough to satisfy you, making it necessary to play them again.

Lest you think that they are another gimmicky instrumental band, however, let me hasten to point out that the vocals, led by druminer Walter “Sweet Clyde” Orange, are top-notch. And when the whole band lets loose in harmony — vide the a-cappella opening to “I Feel Sanctified” — they’re irresistable.

Nearly every song on Side One is a hit single, or at least a smash dance track, and as for long, exhausting dance numbers, try the incredible “The Assembly Line,” which has a brass riff and a vocal so assertive that they wouldh’t be out of place (but they would, on second thought) in a Broadway musical.

Most of the keyboard wizardry that forms the cement for the Commodores’ sound is the product of Milan Williams, but mention should also be made of Thomas McClary’s tasty guitar, and William King’s superb choreography. I swear - he’s listed and pictured on the album as a bona fide group member, and if you don’t know why, you haven’t played the album yet.

The Commodores have been knocking around the Motown stable for three years now, touring as support unit with'the Jackson 5, Eddie Kendricks, and Stevie Wonder. Thev’ve paid their dues, and come out fight_ingMachine Gun is so funky you’d scarecely think it came from Motown, but I believe it singals the birth of a major new talent.

Ed Ward

SUZI QUATRO Quatro (Bell)

There just might be something to what a British popster said recently — that Suzi is third-priority on the Chinn-Chapman songmachine, so S\veet get the best ones, Mud the second-raters, and Suzi, as it were, waits for the droppings. And just now someone on the phone was saying, “Yeah, it’s just like Lulu. She was a good, energetic singer and they went and turned her into a drip.” Suzi herself has said that she’s still not comfortable in the studio, and it shows here in the album’s pathetic lack of direction. She hasn’t yet learned what pose to strike, so she’s very moLdable, and the sculptors — producers Chinn & Chapman — are at best misguided and at worst complete hacks.

If they feel guilty about giving Suzi less than the best to work with, their method of atonement is curious. They’ve tried to punch it up with a lame attempt at an undisguisedly artificial live sound, surrogate excitement that comes off as clinical, engineered hollowness, stuff much better suited to • the Partridge Family. Suzi’s band isn’t the greatest, but their lacks have been anywhere but in the area of energy. They play rdugh on stage, but here they sound surprisingly tight and emotionally arid. Chinn and Chapman must do it with mirrors.

Not the least problem is the fact that the whole package reeks faintly but surely of oldies mold. One or two would be great (“All Shook Up” was a highlight of her live show, and “I Wanna Be Your Man” an inspired cover), but on Quatro she does five outright and most of the remainder affect that air. Suzi should be good fun, but this is-downright insignificant. The format also restricts the backing vocals mostly to 50’s-style “BomDoo-Wid-Widdy”s, so gone are those slobbering he-man choruses singing things like “48 crash, 48 crash” over and over like a mechanized mantra. Anyway, obsession with roots is an advanced form of necrophilia and is unbecpming of someone who could be as original as Suzi.

Her actual performances are the one worthwhile thing about the album, the sole element with any personality. Her singing is great, an impossible meeting of clarity and grittiness, aggression and winsomeness. It’s a bit more sultry this time out, and it seems to be crawling up your spine instead of entering your ears. The change-of-pace tunes are especially well handled, to the point that they emerge as the album’s highlights. “The Wild One” is slow and haunting, a swampy cross between B-movie Tennessee Williams and “The Wayward Wind.” The other one, “Cat Size,” is a slow blues with pointed and poignant lyrics by Suzi. The mood of both is aching, but take it — it’s the only real emotion you’ll find here.

Suzi Quatro appeared to be on the verge of proving that women don’t have to become products in order to make it as rock ‘n’ rollers, and suddenly she’s uncomfortably close to being just that. She needs to take the aggression that’s her forte on stage and apply it to the direction of her career and the shape of her music. Write your own album, Suzi; I’m sure it would be something we could feel. Spit, Suzi! You’re beautiful when you’re tough, because toughness is the thing that will make you survive.

Richard Cromelin

MIKE OLDFIELD Hergest Ridge (Virgin)

Where’s the movie? Mike Oldfield’s latest opus, Hergest Ridge, needs a movie, a picturebook, something as badly as his highly touted first effort, Tubular Bells, did not need, The Exorcist to make its impact. Tubular Bells was a simple, dynamic musical melodrama, and I thought Oldfield maintained a sense of humor about the whole thing, particularly evident in his flamboyantly grim announcements of the entrance of the instruments (“Spanish guitar.. .tubular bells”). Hergest Ridge, on the other hand, is an extremely one-dimensional, disjointed album that displays unmitigated self-reverence. The concept behind Hergest Ridge is to imply to the listener that great ideas and emotions lurk behind the general understatement, where, in fact, nothing lurks.

Each side is presented as a whole piece or “movement,” as Oldfield might say out of self-reverence. But it’s actually a series of unrelated riffs that are bracketed by a reprise of one distinctive riff and really only hold together because they are not separated. Each riff is hammered in with pointless, obsessional repetition that becomes even more annoying as none of these riffs is in the least bit memorable.

On the whole Hergest Ridge sounds like movie mood music, something you wouldn’t really notice while the hero and heroine either a) ride across the desert on a camel or b) drift lazily in a canoe down placid Hawaiian streams. Thei;e is one section on side two of movie action music that might be a Hollywood Indian attack as scored by Deep Purple on speed. And that’s the lowest point in a record that never gets higher than tolerable. Should we be impressed that Oldfield once again plays the majority of instruments on this album? Not really. The whole thing is so slow that I think even I could be taught to play it.

Tubular Bells was something new for rock audiences. It had power and didn’t take itself too seriously and so was very successful. Hergest Ridge is. the work of someone who is thinking of hiinself as a serious composer rather than thinking of serious composing. Speaking of movies, I saw a flick the other night where the wise old agent tells the brash young starlet, “Isn’t it a little soop for you to begin believing your own publicity?” Beware, Mike Oldfield.

Robert Duncan

THE ROLLING STONES It's Only Rock 'N Roll (Rolling Stones)

Hey, it’s not bad - not at all\

Coming on the heels of a single that’s merely lame, and before that an album distinguished solely by the fact that it was undistinguished for the Stones, this one comes up a real winner, one of the finest LPs this year, with more than a taste of the bite and fire - that once backed up that title of World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

For one thing, they sound like a band of > interacting members playing songs that they" care about, rather than faceless session men layin’ down some tracks. They seem to have something to say this time out; these songs areabout something.

Now Tm not naming names mind you, but in one way or another, nearly all of them refer to a romance on the rocks. “Workin’ all day just to keep you in luxury,” the reggae takeoff. “If You Really Want to be My Friend.” “Too bad/She’s got you by the balls.” “Time waits for notone/And it won’t wait for me.” Even the inclusion of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” originally recorded for a since-scuttled oldies album, points to same. (They could’ve instead included “Drift Away,” recorded at the same session, y’know.)

Mick sounds angry, bitter, confused, mortal, as if there really was something at stake. So does the band. Tne best Stones’ music has always been the most turbulent Stones music. Not only does this lend more credibility to the softer ballads, which sounded so vapid last time, but it jfrees Mick to take on the personnas he’s assumed so enticingly in the past. As on “If You Can’t Rock Me,” which finds him prancing the stage with convincing arrogance, sizing up the sexual prospects in tfie audience as the. band blazes on, in a performance that recalls “Stray Cat Blues.” That song opens the album with the kind of immediate impact that “Sympathy for the Devil” or “Gimmie Shelter” did, but it meets its match in “Dance Little Sister,” another straight ahead stomper that has Keith spewing out nasty clusters of notes like in the days of yore.

Which isn’t to say that this is an unqualified triumph. While it sounds better in the context of the album than as a single, “It’s Only Rock ’n Roll,” with its ghoulish lyrics (“a Mick and Keith parody that didn’t work,” says Mick Taylor) and assembly line riffs is still a self-conscious blunder best forgotten. And “Fingerprint File” doesn’t ev^n measure up to that.

But for the first time in ages, this mortal finds himself relating to the Stones, again. Ladies and Gentlemen, Presenting the Rolling Stones laid the biggest egg in my neighbor, hood theater since The Great Gatsby, slinking out of town after a week of playing to an empty house. If they can’t rock you, somebody else will; they acknowledge that fact on this album, and accept the challenge. They always were better fighters than lovers.

John Morthland

LINDA HARGROVE — Blue Jean Country Queen (Elektra);': She writes her own stuff; she sings with a folk based C&W soft-edged briar, and fans of the other Linda are being sexist only if they don’t try her. I love it; and catch “Bye Bye Babylon.”

B.S.

LORETTA LYNN - They Don’t Make ’Em Like My Daddy (MCA):: Whereas Loretta is an actual C&W topper who oozes the purest form of sweetness, does her songs just sparky right, and arouses in me the most bizarre sexist (curse my wretched fingers) cravings..

B.S.

RONNIE HAWKINS - The Giant of Rock V Roll (Monument):: If Ronnie Hawkins is the absolute crazy off-the-wall sun-uv-a-bitch he says he is why does he need sweetening. If you, have the original albums you can appreciate this stuff, ’cause Ronnie’s as good (a fact) himself as he ever was; the frustrated ballad singer (Elvis another example), has always been there. I like this record. Ronnie’s more schizoid than even you or me.

B.S.

THE GIL EVANS ORCHESTRA V Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix (RCA):: This is the big disappointment of the current period. Gil Evans has arranged only two of the songs. Sombody even sings on a couple Of cu ts. What should have been peat is merely better-thanaverage good.

B.S.

PAUL KELLY Hooked Hogtied & Collared (Warner Bros.):: The cover’s too farking cheese and an undue indicator. Paul Kelly is an excellent singer with a total feel not unlike Bill Withers, and his earlier two albums for the Warners are just as good.

B.S.

BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE - Not Fragile (Mercury); JAMES GANG — Miami (Atco):: Put itte on some noise. I want to hear noise. I want it to be consistent. I want to get so whichway that I barf up mutilation. One step backward for the B-T’s, one step forward for the James Gang.

B.S.

TERRY SYLVESTER; COLIN BLUNSTONE - Journey; VIGRASS AND OSBORNE -Steppin’ Out (all Epic):: Colin and Terry are the Brito Adam Faith syndrome: Brito pop — “O, my vocal wonderful.” Both are spiff, and it all works out here too, ’cause Colin is to Terry as the Zombies were to Hollies. Vipass and Osborne were (then) the Chocolate Watchband, to (then) mere tiresome singersongwriters, to (now) Elton John without keyboards and also spiff. ,

B.S.

PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA - Plays the Popular Classics (Columbia):: Eno’s solo album has been the second best-this year CStranded, unquestionably first). This record really sucks, as in swamp goo and suction cups. I beteha I keep putting it back on the record player from time to time too. God bless Eno.

B.S.

THE FLYING BURRITO BROS. - Close Up the Honky Tonks (A&M):: Gram Parsons is about the only one of the folkie C&W spiffs to break through (he famous predetermined boundary and bleed on you. For that reason alone this collection of Burrito primes and obscures is worthwhile.

B.S.

THE ISLEY BROTHERS - Live It Up (T Neck):: While there is a peat deal of concern among other poups with the process of “getting down,” when they finally (if ever) get there, they’ll find the Isleys. Excellent as usual.

B.S.

TAJ MAHAL — Mo’ Roots (Columbia):: Reggae and Cajun slurp, along with general Taj and “Blackjack Davey” make for a heady combination of ordered fineness.

B.S.

AORTA (Columbia):: You’ve heard of Medicine Bend, and Medicine Ball, now it’s Medicine Rock. What really happens when Marcus Welby can’t get it up? He listens to this 1969 LP. Lotsa heavy heartthrbbs and wheezing, and if that isn’t enough there’s always titles like: “Main Vein” and ' “Heart Attack” Christian Barnard rock, to orb swivel with. And if all else fails forget everything and skip on to a toon called “Catalyptic” which is the true predecessor to Bloodrock’s “D.O.A.” which Blue Oyster Cult made intelligent and called “O.D.’d on Life.” Junkies would get off on “Main Vein”: sorta like a hymnal. This is jeal blud rock. A continuation of what Nervous Norvus started with ‘Transfusion.”

„ J.F.,.

WEST COAST POP ART EXPERIMENTAL BAND-Vol. 3 (Reprise):: After a few scuffles with mid-psychedelic anti-war punkitudes these guys settled down to a sedate life of post-teenage bliss. But when they were out there soaring away with songs like “Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came” and “Queen Nymphet” they was good. If you’re ever crawling around a dusty bargain bin and come across this record, steal it like it was an ounce of uncut Sani-Flush. With tunes like “Eighteen is Over the Hill” — which exceeds anything Alice has ever attempted; “Our Drummer Always Plays in the hfude” — which is sum thing Todd ain’t done yet; and for those still nursing a hangover from that war with the slants, they throw in a reel psi-kiildelic number called, “A Child of Few Hours is Burning to Death,” how in the world could you go wrong. And if that doesn’t do the trick they do a song dedicated to Enrico Fermi. It’s called “Anniversary of World War III” and is nothing more than three minutes of silence. This is the roots of Iggy’s “I’m a runaway son of a nuclear A-Bomb” line and THAT’S important. Angst on.

J.F, i

PINK FAIRIES - What A Bunch of Sweeties (Import) (Polydor):: For those of you who missed all the action with the Deviants and are a bit confused with their latest American release, Kings of Oblivion, this one’ll make the catatonic connection. Real rock ‘n’ lead muzak. “The Pigs of Uranus” is okay, but if you wanna get your mons pubis singed listen to the spine buster “Walk Don’t Run” (with lyrics). Move over Ventures. Better than any Who concert ever.

J.F.

GENE KRUPA, his ORCHESTRA and ANITA O’DAY featuring ROY ELDRIDGE -(Columbia):: I still think Sal Mineo’s better, but it’s impossible to resist the lilting tones of Anita O’Day. This honey was the white Billie Holiday and nobody knew it. Gene’s okay, but he’s dead. He should’ve smoked more “funny cigarettes.” “Thanks for the Boogie Ride” is outtasight and “Bolero at the Savoy” is fannnn-ttttt-ass-tic. Bette Midler go fish.

J.F.

STATUS QUO - Hello (A&M):: Just some more of that thudda-thudda kind of limey bar music. When they can’t think of anything interesting to play it’s back to wacka, wacka. Like fucking one of those plastic vaginas — totally gratuitous pleasure. Gimme the Shadow anyday.

J.F.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE - Remember Shirley (20th Century):: This is all squishy and ikky, but oh, so sweet. Shirley Temple before she became Black made 42 feature films and sum thing like 22 of these were made like when she was six or seven. All the songs are lifted from the soundtracks of her films. Personal favorites: “Animal Crackers in My Soup” from Curly Top and “You’ve Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby” from Poor Little Rich Girl. “On the Good Ship Lollipop” sucks because the Chordettes did a better ■conceptual rendition of the theme — hotcha. This is a definite collector’s item. I’m putting it right alongside my copy'"of the Privilege soundtrack. Surely for all Shirley fans.

J.F.

THE RASPBERRIES - Starting Over (Capitol):: They may be Starting Over, but they’fe still a singles band that makes mediocre albums, plus the fact that both potential singles suffer from the Mott the Hoople syndrome, namely they’re about rock‘n’roll. Scratch ’em off; they’ve had long enough.

M.J.

WILLIE NELSON & TRACY NELSON -“After the Fire is Gone” (Atlantic single):: Ever heard the Horbiger/Hitler theory on the “Eternal Ice”? Thought not. Well, it’s all about*how all of the planets in the solar system are actually gigantic oval icebergs in outer space, and their orbits around the sun will one day cause a melting, and the melting planets will eventually fall into the sun, causing a mother of a cataclysm, resulting in the termination of this universe and the birth of new one. Dizzy conception or no, when Tracy Nelson says, “And there’s nothing cold as ashes.,.” you just know from the marrow in your bones that that particular moment is a billion times more cosmic than 873 hours of Hawkind.

J.W.O.

This month’s rockaratnas were written by Buck Sanders, Joe Fernbacher and Joshua W. Orange.