Taking Rock's Future By Artifice

RECORDS

Taking Rock's Future By Artifice

Wayne Robins

by

ROXY MUSIC Country Life (Atlantic)

ENO Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (Island) (Import)

Women, on Roxy Music covers, are like plants: lush vegetation, only more so. Unlike the reclining femme fatale on the cover of Stranded, who I've met many a lonely moonlit night (I call her "Amazona," as she drops her sarong) these ladies in Penthouse rnasturbatory pose dare one to fantasize — perhaps it's the red lipstick but they seem to come from the National Lampoon productions of "Chained Women" or "Big Bad Mama." You know, sex is a joke.

Roxy Music is about lifestyle. Stranded might have been titled after its most emphatic song: "Street Life," invoking London pinball energy and son-of-Lou Reed desperado stance. Though more urbane than specifically urban, the album was probably incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent the last five years in a major American city or European capital. The title of the new album is something of a joke too. Country Life, indeed. Do you like eating lobster in bed?\

When compared to Stranded's cool, clean lines of sound, Country Life is cluttered.

tempestuous. The password is tension, which sometimes transmutes to "intensity." It shows itself most splendidly in "The Thrill of It All," a long, whiny, excessive, frightening song that is the antithesis of the blues. When the thrill is gone, Ferry and company will be long gone. Behind Ferry's pop gothic vision

here, there is real emotion, and Roxy's idiosyncratic musicians are the ideal complement: Andy Mackay's 2001 King Curtis saxophone riffs, Phil Manzanera's lonely holocaustal guitar, and the best rock rhythm section in England play with a fury that transcends their own philosphy: pop is artifice, so let's make artificial pop, one last time, with feeling. If only the other compositions were less constipated!

Instead we have "Bitter-Sweet," conceived on the Ferry camp pedestal but executed like a tight Bonzo Dog Band's replay of the Dietrich-Brecht-Lotte Lenya-Velvet Underground-Roxy Music-Hogan's Heroes teutonic insolence theme. It took Lou Reed a whole album to get it out of his system as Ferry comments so trenchantly:

Gestrandet an leben und kunst Und das spiel geht weiter Wie man weiss Noch viele schonste/

... wiedersehn

Ferry is equally eloquent in "Out of the Blue," as.he notes: "I don't mind/ If it's only a passing craze/ Throwaway lines often ring true." But "Triptych" is as humorless as anything Yes might endeavor to do, and few things are as foolish as "Prairie Rose," which makes sense only if you believe that "Suffragette City" is really Houston, and David Bowie is really a front for the Doobie Brothers. "Texas, that's where I belong, it seems to me." Texas, dah-ling? How very chi-chi, no? One sympathizes with Ferry on "If It Takes All Night'as he sings: "Oh here it comes, that old ennui/ I hope it won't stay long." That's a joke too. Without that old ennui, Roxy Music loses its purpose, which is to be the paragon of bored (boring?) rock bands. So far, they have no peer.

Concept albums about Red China may not yet be the rage among the New Rock Guard. Though Matching Mole did an album about Mao's Red Book, and "Kung Fu Fighting" recently chopped its way to number one, Eno's the first to do an album of pop guerilla warfare: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) comes , across like "Fritz the Cat Visits Red China." Sometimes it seems that Eno composes the same way William Burroughs writes: with a splicing scissor. He grafts seemingly disparate elements in any way tfyat might be useful to his flow. We have Billy J. Kramer pop, Syd Barrett acid muse, Portsmouth Sinfonia classical confusion, Robert Fripp discipline, Velvet Underground undercurrent, and enough inanimate objects to appease the Gods of the cargo cult; posters, propaganda broadcasts, graffiti, Bryan Ferry, comic books, postcards of a Red Chinese ballet that inspired the title. It sounds like it might be pretentious; it's not, because Eno is comfortable with those pretensions.

The vanity, of course, is that he's a non-musician, therefore able to break existing rules, to not be tied to structure. I'm skeptical about the rationale, since Eno surrounds himself with high intellect musicians on all his records. On this one, Manzanera, Mackay, Robert Wyatt and others add more than a shade of expertise. We give Eno the leeway to indulge his fantasies because he plays the synthesizer like it was invented by the Ventures ("Third Uncle"), because he mixes

nursery rhymes with the Browns" "Three Bells"" ("Put a Straw Under Baby"), because on "The True Wheel," he marries Mott the Hoople to Reparata and the Deirons (here called Randi and the Pyramids). In other words, a man who can write songs like "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More," has seen the future, and the future is a sonic Disney named Eno, who makes music you can live with.

AL GREEN Explores Your Mind (Hi)

I bought an Al^ Green album about two years ago, Call Me. I just heard he was good, and there was nothing else I wanted to buy at the time. I didn't play it very much. I don't think I played it at all. Then I went to see him in concert. The hottest acts that summer were Blue Oyster Cult and Miles Davis, who was terrible. Al Green was shock treatment that summer. He woke me up. So did moving from St. Louis to Detroit. Al Green's concert was a comeback for me; he was more exciting than the Beatles.

There was a riot at the concert. All females. They rushed the stage and twice the house lights came up. Al was removed by bodyguards. The only fan who succeeded in staying close to him was a girl who stood the entire time leaning on the stage, bent over 90 degrees from the waist, weeping. He gave her a rose, even kissed her once. She never moved and was never removed.

After that concert I played Call Me all the time. That kept me. company for awhile, but it was an awfully long time before the next Al Green single came out. For two weeks I ran around yabbering, elated with "I Can't Stand The Rain;" unfortunately, it was by Ann Peebles. Fortunately, she also records on Hi Records out of Memphis, with some of the same musicians and producer as Al, so they have> a similar sound. But 1 was disappointed and embarrassed, and I decided that I should learn something about Al Green before I spoke up for him again.

Since then I have gotten all of Al Green's other albums except Let's Stay Together. That means six albums, seven including Explores Your Mind. It's not enough. Besides, Explores Your Mind is only seconds over 30 minutes long. Since then I have learned that many of the musicians on his records — Wayne Jackson, Andrew Love, Al Jackson — played on Otis" records and make up the Stax/Atco sound that produced all of the best r & b between Motown add James Brown during the 60s.

I have also learned that one of Al's favorite groups is Claude Jeter and the Swan Silvertones, a gospel group that formed in 1938. When I listened to them I realized that Claude Jeter placed Al at an embarrassing second in the very identifying characteristics of his singing: wafting, disappearing high notes contrasted by,low notes that hit bottom and bounce back. But that doesn't matter. Al Green has perfected a style and this is what makes him so good. He works with a crew of experts who feel his sound and reproduce it, throw it back to him. This is listening music. The more you listen, the more you find out about how the sound is put togetHer: what is a bass line, what would be missing without the drums, stuff like that. All the things other people go on endlessly about when discussing Jimmy Page and the like.

It is also dance music, endlessly untiring and funky. Put together it is show music. To show what it is like I must ask you to see Al Green live and hear him, watch him kick up his foot and do a little turn around when he sings "Love and Happiness." His act is subtle. Foreplay music.

But his act also says "I am a superstar" — from the comedian who warms up the audience for his show to the forboding bodyguard who brings him out on stage and stands nearby (thru the entire performance) to the long-stemmed roses he tosses to us one at a time from a basket nearer to him than any of us would be able to stand. (It's natural that I'd identify more with the rose than the guard.)

I'm a little disappointed with Explores Your Mind; I've had it three weeks-and only love four songs so far: "Take Me To The River," "One Night Stand," "God Blessed Our Love," and "School Days." But two of my Al Green mania friends have claimed "The City" as their favorite, and "Stay With Me Forever" and "Sha-La-La (Makes Me Happy)" are adored by two more. If we play our cards right, and if Al does a good show, the next time we see him we'll still be fans. By the time you read this, I'll have my tickets. Get yours.

Georgia Christgau

GRAND FUNK

All The Girls In The World Beware!!! (Capitol)

Poor guys. Would that Grand Funk were as diverse or colorful as their album covers have depicted them. They've been cavemen, he-men, 3-D supermen, silver cast coins. The plain fact is, their packaging has long been a more interesting operation than their music. Take a look.

Once the band's initial gleam (their inarticulate metal charm) faded they were revealed as just another less-than-competent riff trio. Once fhey progressed, through hard work, to the point of being minimally proficient (Shinin " On, maybe) their lack of imagination became apparent and they became merely boring. ^Their limitations, obvious from the beginning, clearly intimated a kind of planned obsolesence would eventually take over and cause the dysfunction of their moving parts. Which situation has been a long time coming, despite the band's and their management's and their record company's efforts to head it off.

Lacking the talent to innovate or even to become competent stylists, the group has been treated like the classic problem kid; they change producers regularly, musical direction intermittently, in the futile hope that the new teacher or the new classroom will make the problem go away. (Sometimes it did; Rundgren lent them a style with "Locomotion," they ran on its steam for awhile before floundering.)

This time they're in Jimmy Ienner's class, which turns out to be a comfortable place where solid, white R&B adaptations are taught, Mark, Don, Mel & Craig bump and grind through tough enough versions of Howard Tate's "Look At Granny Run Run" and the Soul Brothers Six" "Some Kind of Wonderful" while testing their penmanship with "Responsibility" (pretty good), "Wild" and the blustery title cut. With "Runnin" " you get Chicago horns, and "Good & Evil" grafts Joe Walsh aluminum blues to "Dominance & Submission" vocal trickery (some kinda speculation too: maybe -the Funkers should get Pearlman & Krugman to produce them).

Actually, All The Girls isn't any worse than Shinin" On or E Pluribus Funk. It's just that, given the band's basic musical situation, there's only so much you can do. A whole string of judicious moves (add an organist, get Todd to produce, do this old Sixties dance number, try on some R&B) have been made on behalf of Grand Funk's bid to stick around. If the boys" deportment remains good, and they improve in spelling and handicraft, they may graduate. But for now, continuation is fine. Pass the smokes.

Gene Sculatti

THE ROTO ROOTER GOOD TIME CHRISTMAS BAND (Vanguard)

On a recent trip to California (highlights of which included: attending a tapihg of the new Dinah Shore Show, with special guest James Franciscus; driving fifty miles to Disneyland on a Tuesday only to find upon arrival that Disneyland is closed on Tuesdays during the winter; seeing Joe Don Baker in the flesh at an all night restaurant; putting my hand in Wally Cox's pawprints at the snack stop during the Universal Studios tour; watching a solid week of Fractured Flickers reruns), I had the good fortune of catching one of Doctor Demento's Sunday night radio extravaganzas. The Doc was in fine form this particular evening ("Martian Hop" and "They're Coming To Take Me Away" back to back), and after previewing Roy Rodgers" new hit, "Hoppy, Gene and Me," with Roy yodelling up a storm during the final chorus, he played his theme song, the already legendary "Pico and Sepulveda," an absolutely gonzo tune about some clown whose life dream is to live in the La Brea tar pits, with the band doing a great impression of Desi Arnaz and his orchestra and two guys singing "Pico and Sepulveda" instead of "1-2-3-4 Conga" over and over in the background.

For the entire rest of my stay in L.A. I kept singing the song in my head and whenever we'd drive up Pico Boulevard and come to the enshrined intersection of Pico and Sepulveda (two lumber yards, an abandoned gas station and an empty lot), I'd find a tear coming to my eye, the melancholia of a visitor who knows that his vacation will be over soon and all he'll have to keep him warm through another bland East Coast winter is his memories. So what do you think happens? I get home from the airport and sitting on my doorstep is a package of records from Vanguard. More Vanguard records, I ask myself? Haven't they run out of Manitas De Plata, Sandy Bull and Clancy Brothers two-fers YET? I tear it open and my eyes must be playing tricks on me because, there in my hands, is the Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band ALBUM, featuring the hit single "Pico and Sepulveda!" Who said there ain't no God?

Now were "P and S" the only good song on this album, I'd recommend it anyway, but the fact is that this entire Ip is just splendid. The RRGTCB is comprised of six fine young American lads whose names could come from the house next door: Little Orphan Ollie, Sgt. Charts, Awfthe Walle, Dr. Mabuse, Bb Baxter

and Buffalo Steve. Three of them play saxes, the other three play trombones, but it doesn't stop there. They are more than just proficient on such varying and difficult to master instruments as trash can lids, whoopee cushions, tympani pedals, Nasal lasers and dust pans. Their repertoire is so boundless as to be beyond reproach - they can demolish any old standard, be it Brahms" Hungarian Dances, Shirley Temple's "On the Qood Ship Lollipop" (Shirley meets a candy giving geezer in Griffith Park and discovers the secrets of life), Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" (Igor meets the Ventura Freeway at five p.m.) or the "Beer Bottle Polka," featuring Lawrence El and the Shampoo Music Makers.

And should you be one of those who opts for a more contemporary sound, may I suggest the band's version of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," with the saxep playing the guitar line and the vocals strictly Four Prepsville, causing the whole thing to come off like a Nelson Riddle Untouchables soundtrack outtake. The Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band makes crazy music, the likes of which I haven't heard since I broke my only Spike Jones 78 the last time I moved. Buy this record quick, before the wrong ears hear these yokels and put them away for a nice long rest. Billy Altman

Billy Altman

JONI MITCHELL Miles of Aisles (Asylum)

"Joni, you've got more class than'Mick Jagger, Richard Nixon, or Gomer Pyle combined, a male Joni junkie interjects after "Cold Blue Steel apd Sweet Fire." By the logic of her most devoted, she is better looking than Catherine Deneuve, the Mona Lisa, or Otis Sistrunk. She has more soul than James Brown, Joan of Arc, or Telly Savalas. She is more mysterious than the girl in the white T-Bird, Mr. Moto, or Duane Thomas.

That is, of course, a fan problem rather than Joni's problem. Because they need to be uplifted as. well as entertained — in fact, because in their way, they need to feel inferior — Joni's audience demands that she sell them truth. Truth is something she sells as well as Ralph Nader, John Wayne, or Guru Maharaj Ji. Unlike Dylan, who sold public truths that inspired social awareness, Joni's truths are private. Most concern The Relationship. Tt has been said that Joni has had many with, among others, many well known pop stars. This may be a pain to the private Joni, but it's been great for her career; what other starfuCker could become a bigger star than the names she's loved? (Compare and contrast, say, with Dana Gillespie.) As a result her private truths have much to say about the mixed blessings of promiscuity, which may be this era's favorite obsession.

The inner life Joni reveals is not so different from Laura Nyro's, the first of the independent vulnerable women (and also the one who gave David Geffen, via management and publishing, his first •million). Laura appealed to me and my crowd because she was a New Yorker, a rhythm and blues street whore madonna (the Shangrilas meet the Virgin Mary after the Leader of the Pack clashes). Joni's songs are beachnut California. She sings of canyons rather than fire escapes, of a world that is as attractive as it is repellent to a native New Yorker. How I've learned to tolerate, even appreciate, her "Yin Yang" I don't know, except that maybe what she calls "portrait of a disappointment" is becoming one of my "favorite themes" too. This two album set was recorded in California, which may explain the ease and comfort with which she goes through sixteen familiar and two new songs. Tom Scott and the L.A. Express add their Malibu jazz and funk, which works best when it gives new dimensions to numbers that should have been retired, like "Woodstock." Joni thrives, however, when she's alone, just the breathless sun sliding into the Pacific vocals and I Ching guitar tuning. "Friends say I have changed," Joni sings in the standard version of "Both Sides Now." Here she adds "And I have." Me too, Joni, me too. Fve become a fan as well as an admirer.

Wayne Robins

JOHNNY WINTER John Dawson Winter III (Blue Sky)

Since his "69 debut, Johnny Winter's learned all the tried and true formulae (as a communicative angle, rock has more ostensible new dimensions than you could shake a protractor at) and seems to feel that "74 might be an opportune time to profit from peer example — condescending caterwauling, the bonus element. Well, bogus is more like it... yes-suh, here's the original attenuated albino bloozeaxe gone sequin and tux, with personal reflections from his boogie-on soul. If only they were as fine on plastic as they are in theory; can't help wishing Johnny'd be

good — i.e., wake up.

First of all, the elpee cover employs fad appeal (John strikes a dignified pose in elegant attire — zilch raunch), let alone songtitles on John Dawson Winter III: "Golden Olden Days of Rock & Roll," "Raised On Rock," "Rock & Roll People," "Roll With Me," "Pick Up On My Mojo," plus a whole mess of contributions less obsessed or otherwise neutral'("Stranger," "Mind Over Matter," "Lay Down Your Sorrows"). Only five compositions are Winter's, but the album reeks of commercialism. In spite of the sell-out stratagem being directly proportionate to the extent of internal pressure, it still doesn't justify Johnny's bandwagon approach.

A glance at verbal clue-ins. "Golden Olden Days" entreats: "Take me back to those good old days again/ When guitars were guitars and men were men/ We worked heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul/ In the golden olden days of rock and roll." A yearning for second adolescence, obviously; after Winter's spiel, I yearn for Mott's "Golden Age Of Rock & Roll," a less myopic approach. Rollicking horn and vocal tracks elevate the cut's enjoyability, and by virtue of the fact the words aren't Winter's own, I can accept "Golden Olden Days" " lyrical whimsy. On "Self-Destructive Blues" ("Self-Imposing?"), Johnny . informs the listener he "Don't trust women, don't like men/ ... might not feel this good again," but that once he "... gets to boogyin" there'll be no more blues around."

All right. Whatever gets him through the blight must: 1.) exalt yesteryear, comprised of tight, time-frugal material — the accepted "hit" length, and 2.) therefore contain viable commercial material. "Raised On Rock" falong with "Love Song to Me," a supposed spoof on the Nashville/poprock recording biz,

replete with pedal steel and hickory smoked harmonies) condones national youth audiophilia: "I was raised on rock/ Got that rhythm in my soul/ Everyday when I get home/ I turn on my radio," cliched lines galore ("... Time goes by, the beat goes on/ And everytime I hear it, it takes me home ..."). "Love Song to1 Me" is especially frivolous; this Winterwrit gem concerns a stereotyped jerkoff idol, instructing fans to "Keep a rockin" and a rollin"/ Never settle down/ Keep my records playing all the time/ Spend your money on my concerts/ Everytime I come to town/ And maybe you can be a friend of mine" (snicker, snicker ... ).

Instrumental imagery: guitar riffs that yowl like a horny as hell, skinned-live puma; Winter's irresistable roar, endearingly hoarse as always; aforementioned oomph from studio support, notably the horn section (Edgar's arrangements) and backup vocals by Tasha Thomas, Carl Hall, Monica Burruss. Too many of Johnny's leads swerve sloppysonic, and on cuts where impeccable guitar work isn't blundered, it's dopplered into lambent reverb for a welcome switch ("Stranger" — a Winter composition — and "Lay Down Your Sorrows" are two sensitive, very pretty features of John Dawson Winter III.)

Maybe I demand too darn much from rock "n" roll people. True, Johnny Winter never purported being a spokesman for his generation, a great songwriter, or anything other than a rough "n" ready, willing "n" able guitarist. He's still a distinctive stylist; however much John Dawson Winter III exhibits his divergent handicaps, fundamental Johnny Winter strives.

Trixie A. Balm

GEORGE HARRISON Dark Horse (Apple)

The key word and bottom line to this music is competence, because that is all that can be said for the exertion involved in the sounds that emanate from albums like Dark Horse. It's at least appropriately titled, since there is a whole stable of faceless dark horses who turn up inevitably on the album's of half the stale superstars working these days: names like Tom Scott (backing up Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Barbra Streisand, George Harrison, and walking off with a sizeable percentage of control over what passes for the personal musical creations of all four), Klaus Voorman (who should have retired after drawing the Revolver cover), Andy Newmark (from Bowie to Harrison in no great leap), Willie Weeks (Ron Wood's solo album, Dark Horse, with Lou Reed in hot .pursuit), Jim Keltner (whose name on an album jacket is almost a sure guarantee of pablum within) ... the list goes on.

These boys get around, because they're technically unsurpassed and totally professional, because people use their buddies for "solo album" backup these days instead of forming integrated units (aka "rock bands") as in the Sixties, and the result is a whole lot of albums by wildly disparate stars that sound disturbingly similar until you get used to the conclusion that our "artists" are down to grinding out product in the purest Jerry Vale sense.

So there is hardly any point in reviewing Dark Horse as a distinct musical entity, if not for the distinction between the stars and the hired help based on the notion * that stars embody somd'unique, universally appealing attitude. George Harrison stands (or rather crawls) for Krishna, and from all' reports of his recent tour is doing a pretty good job of laying down his weary tune for good right in the middle of the street. In other words, appeals to the putative overlords of the universe are less than universally appealing. Nevertheless, it's a momentary sigh of relief to note that the blissed-out fizz is not nearly

so all-pervasive in Dark Horse as in its predecessor, Living in the Material World (which is where you gotta get competent help to deliver product on time). That album was duller than this one, which basically means that what went into the grooves wasn't quite as glossy, which is the only word for George's instrumental tradeoffs with Tom Scott, who imitates himself so identically in all surroundings that you've got to admire the man in the same way you respect the fact that you can go anywhere in the world and walk into an International House of Pancakes and be at what passes for home.

But somebody has to go through the motions of saying something somewhere, so Harrison has filled out Horse, past one instrumental and one old Everly Brothers song, with his latest musings on the state of the cosmos and the relative squalor back here in Philistine Junction. Things set off promisingly enough with "Simply Shady" and "So Sad," which manage to keep at least the soles of

their tennies planted in the mud. "So Sad" is trite but heartfelt, with a kind of moribund recognition of his own helplessness in the face of a standard and a dream he cannot possibly live up to: "Take the dawn of the day/ And give it away/ To someone who can fill the part/ Of the dream we once held/ Now it's got to be shelved."

Hell, George, sometimes-I-feel-so-uninspired defeatist dirges were the rage two years ago! The man's frustration is understandable, though, which is one reason why, in spite of the same kind of strained, sloppy manneredslur vocal as Dylan's late work held, the taste of rancor in the title track is more than welcome: "You thought you had got me in your grip/ Baby looks like you was not so smart/ And I became too slippery for you/ But let me say that was nothing new."

I have no idea what this miserable slave/ zealot is talking about there, especially since most of the other "you's" on this album, as well as a plethora of mysterious "he's," are addressed to and talking about none other than Sri Krsna, as the starving ghee-caked wretches of Calcutta spell it. Krishna, from all indications via George's work, does not seem to be nearly so much of a merry old soul as we'd always heard in school, though that may just be George projecting his own innate defeatist melancholy on his muse or wampeter or avatar or Sky King or whatever He is. The rest of the songs on Dark Horse are hymns to Krsna, varying in quality, especially depending upon the degree of the listener's allegiance to has-been deities from backward nations.

Lester Bangs

P.F.M. P.F.M. Cook (Manticore)

Although the concept of Pizza Rock is pretty interesting to think about, let's just skip it for the nonce. Some of the most intelligent and freethinking populoid music of the last two years is coming from previously uncontemplated countries. Not the States or England (we have Donny Osmond, they're just discovering him there), but off-the-wall spots like Holland. Sweden. Germany. Yugoslavia, for God's sake. And along with Amon Duul and Focus and ABBA and Man and the rest, there's P.F.M. from Italy. On this new album (their third Stateside), they deliver a

live performance which can be enjoyed on many different levels, depending on just how much you wanna Get Into It. Sort of like a pizza which is good with cheese, or with anchovies, or pepperoni and black olives ... naw, we were gonna skip that.

The new European rock most commonly employs pop and classical ideas together on a Wagnerian scale, and P.F.M. is the prototypical example. Though the band is composed of seasoned pop session men (three of them were in Italy's Quelli, a group of session cats who produced most of the country's pop output for a while),'all are classically-trained. This doesn't mean ties and tails a la New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, but it does mean a liberal profusion of riffs and passages one would be tempted to call jazz if the basics hadn't been put down in the eighteenth century.

Fusing the delicate intelligence of the classical idea to the power and energy of rock is not easy to do; a failure can be easily spotted by the number of yawns per capita that surround such a disk. On this album, P.F.M. never runs an idea into the ground, but insists upon each one just enough to make sure you've paid attention to it. P.F.M. Cook is a remarkably moody album, best exemplified on "Alta Loma Nine Till Five," which includes a 78 rpm bit of Rossini's William Tell played with fingerhurt speed by Flavio Premoli. On "Four Holes In The Ground," the band states its capabilities (which include especially Mauro Pagani's lovely violin work, which calls up Jean-Luc Ponty and Sugarcane Harris), and the rest of the album is devoted to assuring us that "Four Holes" is not a

fluke.

I hate two-song albums as a rule: P.F.M."s pieces are each long enough to completely explore their particular thought, but short enough to assure some nice FM play and lend the variety that fulfills a musical performer to the LP when taken as a whole. Cook ain't an easy record to hold on to; it is one of the few current albums that not only deserves, but necessitates repeated listening. For a five-man group to call up visions of a huge orchestra, without losing sight of the aesthetic fact that they arc a small electric band, is no mean feat, and it's only one of the delightful and superior effects that P.F.M. commands. Plus, this album is on Motown, and could you possibly have expected that?

Tom Dupree