THE DICTATORS Go Girl Crazy (Epic)

Betcha thought I’d up and puke, eh guys? Get pissed and pan your debut like a snotty azzole, huh? Like, how the fuck do ya get off on doing these crude Surfari ripoff cruisin’ tunes? Just how low can ya get? Think you’re real smart, eh? Bein’ cracked up as hotshit Noo Yawhk rock ‘n’ roll success stories means turd to me . . . I’m from Queens myself: used to hang out with the hippies, chewing gum and screwing up and bein’ a tuff cookie like my sister who was once the Queen of Green Point, Brooklyn. So I got you dudes all figured out. Another buncha sick turkeys. This rock ‘n’ roll gig’s “Just a hobby, nuthin’ but,” eh? Tell me about it. . .

Almost carried away by these rubble-rousing reprobates who’ve coined an idiotic image-imita1 tive style destined to gamer ’em derision or acclaim. Impossible to feel lukewarm over the Dictators - you either go ga-ga or Bronx cheer. Their music comes close to conjuring the surfing sound of the seventies, qualifying as passable heavy metal et al to boot. Good sick fun, shades of lOcc, not quite one-upping Flo and Eddie, a conglomeration of Alice Cooper, Mott, the NY Dolls, Iggy and the Stooges, the Beach Boys - besides smacking of so much else it’s ear-boggling. So what? The Dictators Go Girl Crazy features swell melodies and lyrics anyhow (or maybe I’m willing to spare the hook here because I’ve a weakness for deafening off-the-wall sleaze and pseudo-illiterate degento greasers).

Caveat auditor: this album is vulgar. But impressive. These talented hams play echelons better than bands I've come across jamming in Queens. Basically a vocal group using rudimentary riffs and instrumentals - frenetic fuzzed-out guitar, strong emphasis on beat, adherence to 4-4 tempb - the Dictators aren’t much bothered by having a facsimile sound or with taking tedjous breaks. But they are concerned with acting facetious and singing echoflex four-part harmonies which are a cross between fifties shoop shoop and Four Seasons ooh wee ooh. “Teengenerate” has a great melody line backed by lissome, shrieking leads (Ross “The Boss” FUNichello), chunkcih rhythmwork (“Top Ten” and his Pacemaker guitar), acme raunch percussion (Stu Boy King thumping his all elpee-long). Adny Shernoff’s basslines are inconspicuous, leaving bottom filler up to Stu Boy, who compensates mightily with virtuoso pummeling and booming bass drum. But Adny Shernoff contributes by singing lead and coming up with precious lines like “Won’t be happy till I’m known far and wide, With my face on the cover of the TV Guide,” “We play sports so we don’t get fat,” “I think Lou Reed is a creep,” and the immortal “Set me free, might know better when I’m older, But today, just give me a sopor...” Go Girl Crazy is tasteless, nihilistic, and revoltingly truthful. Viz: “Sometimes I wish I was black” (“Back to Africa”), “. . . I’m ascared of growing old” (“Master Race Rock”). Every track an uncouth jewel.

The Dictators parody the California Dream in Go Girl Crazy, eternally on the cruise fqr burgers, the perfect wave, sun and monkeyshines ooh la la * with punk aplomb. They insist that girls are as essential to the good life as “the fastest car.” According to “(I Live For) Cars and Girls,” “There’s nuttin’ else in dis crayzee world except for cars and g-g-g-g-girls,” which is a considerably loaded statement for some virulent anti-sexists and humorless dolts to take. Yet, as a woman, I’m not enraged by their macho attitude per se because, #1.) the Dictators cannot be taken seriously, *2.)

I feel flattered by their coarse, affectionate worship, singing of how their lives revolve around a Female Ideal (and Auto-Eroticism).

Proficiently transporting a time warp is a hard stunj to pull off, and I’m pretty sure the Dictators know damn well what they’re doing and why, and how to do it without stooping lower than the gutter, which seems to be their turf as well as point of departure. Go Girl Crazy is entertaining because the Dictators opt for un(or anti) pretension in lieu of refinement; like Roxy Music, they poke fun at “fun.” Braggarts and rowdies, the vinylized punk menace, they’re a slice of Deco-American life: casualties of Coca Cola Drain.

Roll over Brian Wilson.

Trixie A. Balm

The only real turkey is “Waiting For The Man.

1 just don’t believe that people waiting to cop junk shuffle their feet to this kind of disco tripe beat. And the vocal totally avoids the hip aloofness that made the song so sleazy before.

So there ya go .. . put it on, turn it up, pull another pop-top off. I’ll bet the kids that take Elliott Murphy’s Advanced Rock 101 at Harvard in ’86 will think Lou Reed was pretty incredible. Maybe a couple of them can hitchike down to Florida and visit him. “Hey kid, ya wanna hear some ballads?”

Peter Laughner

ERIC CLAPTON There’s One In Every Crowd (RSO)

Welcome again to the English country estate of Eric Clapton’s mind. As you can see, no more of the hustle and bustle for him. No, those years as heavy metal poet laureate and tortured soul on parade are just a dimming memory as he ambles about his garden tending those long-ignored rosebushes. The voice - way back with Mayall he used to think, “I can sing better than this lout, at least!,” but it was only the guitar they cared about. Now he’s got all the time in the world out here in the country, not only for the voice which he enjoys so much, but for fooling around with all those charming little idioms like Reggae and Gospel that just didn’t pass as DA BLUES. Not that the blues isn’t great sometimes, when you’re in the mood. Rosebushes.

Eric Clapton is comfortable and happy in his mental semi-retirement. It’s hard to condemn him for his current lack of commitment. He has given us some of rock’s most durable moments and, eventually, collapsed in front of us having produced our music’s most anguished masterpiece,

Layla, and two-records worth of it at that. Perhaps only in conjunction with the emotional trauma that surrounded Layla, will Clapton ever again be able to produce something as injured and powerfully beautiful. We can’t really ask him to go and get screwed up again, though, can we? 1 know/the sadists are cackling, but I’m going to try and be satisfied with listening to the master rock craftsman craft a little and maybe fool around some to boot.

There’s One In Every Crowd (there ain’t) is much the same as 461 Ocean Blvd. - generally laid back, lots of acoustic guitar, not much soloing. If you hated that one, forget this. There are some new twists. Clapton takes an odd angle on a couple of old gospel tunes here, starting with an upbeat, syncopated version of a song called “We’ve Been Told (Jesus Coming Soon),” and following that with a straight reggae treatment of (no need to retch) “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” The female voices (Marcy Levy and Yvonne Elliman, held over from the last LP) may have sparked the idea of doing gospel - they do appear to be intrinsic to the success of the song - but nevertheless his new and vital arrangements, particularly on the former, indicate real thought and enthusiasm. (I cite the former because the reggae “Sweet Chariot” may be just a capricious sense of humor at work.) The other departure from 461 is an honest-to-goodness slow blues, Elmore James’ “The Sky is Crying.” Don’t get too excited, though, this is mainly a vocal workout. There is a brief guitar solo, but, in the meantime, even the fills are from Dick Sims’ piano. I always liked Clapton’s singing, however, and he passes this rather difficult test quite sufficiently.

The stand-out of the record - of both his latest albums - is the drifting, bluesy “Better Make It Through Today.” It’s basically oriented to acoustic guitar and organ, but does build from the jazzy staggered chording of the verse intro to a delectable centerpiece for the song consisting of a lyrical electric solo. Although Clapton almost seems nervous about the whole idea of a guitar solo as he rushes through the first few notes of each phrase, this is his most satisfying soloing since the onset of his laid back period. ^

The remaining songs run from a pale Claptonauthored reggae th^at is a follow-up to his great cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff,” to some affable acoustic diddles. From the heavier slide-dominated “High” to the raggedy and unnecessary one-chord rocker “Little Rachel.”

The most significant point about this and his last album is that these are Clapton records that won’t knock you out. But these are not lazy performances - not with all the meticulousness implicit in the production of this distinct feel - merely contented. God bless you, Mr. Rosebush.

Robert Duncan

LESLIE WEST The Great Fatsby (Phantom)

Oftentimes, somebody that I really like makes a so-so album, and I, umm... tell lies about it, trying to make it sound better then it does. So, I could tell you things about this album like “ ‘Honky Tonk Women’ starts out with some body-pound, ing slide that sounds like a bandsaw cutting a train in half,” which is totally true, but then I’d omit the fact that about halfway through, this squeegee clarinet comes in, sounding like Woody Allen came toodling through the studio on the way to the little boys’ room, and they decided to leave it in.

Or, I could tell you there’s a Jagger-Richard song on it that was also co-penned by West and Laing called “High Roller,” which is totally true, and then omit the fact that it could also be called “Brown Sugar Revisited,” because about all they did was change the damn lyrics.

Anyway, you get the picture. It’s been a long time since Leslie got to make an album all by himself, and he’s turned around and crammed a bunch of his favorite songs by other people on this one as well, like “House of the Rising Sun” (not bad) and “If I Were A Carpenter” (bad). He also does an obscure Free song, and a song that I think is a Sharks song, but I honestly don’t care, because I saw them once with Mountain and they were the worst band I’ve ever seen in my life. Oddly enough, it’s about the best song on the album, with some Mountainesque guitar vamps that are sorely lacking on the rest of this album.

Well, there are some notable names on the credits: Corky Laing, Gary Wright, Mick Jagger ... but keeping with this honesty policy, I have to

tell you that all sausage-mouth does is play guitar, for God’s sake.

Anyway, Leslie took the painstaking time to do a swell job of producing, but I think it’s overproduced, in the sense that Leslie West at his best is Leslie West killing dogs with noise, and he’s trying to be so damn tasteful now it’s embarassing. In any case, I’d like to go on record right here as declaring Leslie West still the funniest man in America . . .

The hype sheet 1 got with this album has a third party quote from Jeff Beck calling-Leslie “the greatest living guitarist in the world,” which is true, but how the hell do we know he didn’t go on to say “over 350 pounds’? See? Other people tell harmless lies too.

Clyde Hadlock

JEFF BECK

Blow By Blow

__(Epic) _

Although it was Duane Eddy who first used the phrase for the title of an album way back when, I can’t think of anyone more suited to use it as a calling card: HAVE GUITAR WILL TRAVEL. WIRE JEFF BECK. ENGLAND. For ever since 1964, when the Yardbirds handed Beck Eric Clapton’s fallen pick, with the skeptics smugly awaiting Jeff’s performance under pressure with an “All right, what can you do that’s fabulous?” look on their faces and Beck responding with a crash course in feedback, distortion and fuzz tone or “Psychosis as seen from the inside of a six string electric guitar,” Beck has gone along his peculiar lunatic wayjn a manner that has pleased and excited many and has angered and alienated an almost equal number. And he could care less. With his only real friend, his Les Paul, at his side, he is, always has been, probably always will be a loner, a rock ‘n’ roll outlaw of the first order.

Blow By Blow finds Beck re-launching a solo career that started back in ’68 when, fresfj off fighting his own ghost in the form of Jimmy Page as documented for posterity by Michelangelo Antonioni in the film Blow-Up (Beck smashing his guitar over the head of a faulty amplifier while the crowd at the club gasps and cheers their hero, Page over on the side on second guitar, smiling oh, so sweetly as if to say “My day will come too”), Jeff tried to sing, came up with two English hits, “Tallyman” and “Hi Ho Silver Lining,” then suddenly decided that he should form a group and find a “real” singer. He picked up then unknown Rod Stewart, hit it fairly big, and then it became ego versus ego, paranoia about upstaging creeping in, ergo breakup. \

The cycle was again repeated with the second Jeff Beck group, with mutual distrust between Beck and his mixed bag band which included Cozy Powell, Max Middleton and Bob Tench, and though Beck’s musical horizons were definitely expanding, the band died after two albums. Next up was a delightful (although admittedly regressive) move into the power trio arena with Tim Bogert and Carmen Appice, Vanilla Fudge excessives, and again, it was short and not too sweet. One monster album, a little touring and time to get back on the road to nowhere in particular.

It would appear at this juncture that Beck has finally found the answer to the question of what to do with himself. Blow By Blow is an all-instrumental album with no singers trying to take the spotlight away and a group of backup musicians (Richard Bailey on drums, Phil Chenn on bass and the resurrected Max Middleton on keyboards) who Can get down to it but vyho know better than to even get close to stepping on Beck’s guitar cord. And oddly enough, this record is absolutely fantastic, which just goes to show that Beck’s “They’re all out to get me” overview, when mothballed away, leaves bare a character who, when he wants to be, is the best damned guitarist on earth today.

The record gives us a brilliant picture of a consummate (though a little weird) musician as Beck picks and claws his way through a lot of different moods, styles and forms. On Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” he is as melodic as he’s ever been; “Freeway Jam” uncovers Jeff Beck, guitar boogie king; “Constipated Duck” and “Thelonius” drip with a funk that’s been missing since the Rough and Ready LP; the Beatles’ “She’s a Woman” gets transformed into a light reggae number with Beck singing through his airbag guitar distorter and it took me four listenings till I realized just what song it was, so neatly is it rearranged.

The real needlestoppers are both on side one. “Y'ou Know What I Mean” has just about everything but the kitchen sink thrown in atop a guitarmoog theme, with guitars screaming from each speaker and Jeff just laying it on, riff upon riff, blending jazz, soul and rock incredibly unselfconsciously. And “Scatterbrain,” played in off time, has Beck revving up through a circular theme repeated by a manic string section orchestrated by producer George Martin (hey, I remember him!) in what sounds like “Route 66, ’75” while keys change every sixteen bars or so. Beck goes crazy on this one, even lets Max Middleton throw in a snappy electric piano solo and all the while Bailey and Chenn are cooking away underneath. A real devastator. Blow By Blow is but another notch on Beck’s guitar strap. If he’d never played another note after leaving the Yardbirds, he’d still be a legend, but this whiz kid’s on the move again. So support your local madman. He might not need it, but we sure as hell do.

Billy Altman

ROBIN TROWER For Earth Below (Chrysalis)

Here, if you want to go read something else, this album’s about a B plus or A minus, as far as I can tell. A little better than the first two, hardly a filler track to be found, less blatant Hendrix mimicry (Hendrix should be down to just another influence in about three more albums), and the usually fine vocals of bassist James Dewar

It’s really hard to say anything about this guy without hauling out Hendrix’ ghost and waving it around in your face for a few more rounds, because that’s just what Trower does, though it really doesn’t bother me all that much any more. It’s obvious he’ll continue to do it, so it’s up to the listener to accept Trower’s music on his terms, or find yourself another guitar wonder.

Myself, I’m pleased as hell to see him long gone from Procol Harum and enjoying the success other members of the band hopefully predicted he’d never see, not because they wanted him back; because in their eyes, anyone who thumbed his nose at their sacred institution of safe-formula muzak deserved to suffer.

I loved Procol Harum, and once would have gotten violent with anyone who said the things about them that I just did. But face it, they had a rigid, successful format that left absolutely no room for exploration, and it finally choked Trower out of the band, and his leaving took away the last hope for freshness they had. His playing in Harum was inspired, sometimes demonic, his guitar in those days was described as sounding like “a voice in terror,”, and it did.

Anyway, his departure was a decidedly chancey one, and certainly looked foolish at the time. Procol Harum will continue in their safe rut, filling up small halls and college gymnasiums until Gary Brooker has to be hauled to his piano on a bench with wheels, and Keith Reid will have to write his lyrics like “The birds are pretty, The sea is calm, I ate some fruit, I killed my mom” from a nursing home bed.

Whatever. Like I said in the first paragraph, a swell album, hardly a filler track, lots of good rockin’ to be found, liven the slower things (and there are only a couple of those) smoulder along in such an intense, floating way that they’re equally captivating. Dewar is an excellent singer, and he lends to the songs a voice that could best be described as soft, expressive growl. His voice and bass, Trower’s guitar and Bill Lordon’s drumming (he’s new), throbs like hot molasses with a pulse.

The Hendrix sound is still there, but only that: the sound. The content is now mostly Trower’s, the blatant riff-copping is all but gone. That sound coupled with Trower’s compositions produces some damn fine rock and roll.

Clyde Hadlock

NILS LOFGREN

Nils Lofgren (A&M)

Just as certainly as Lou Reed is rock ’n’ roll’s poet of the streets, Nils Lofgren is its poet of the cul-de-sacs. Suburbia may not be the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll, but it is the birthplace of its audience, and Nils deals better than anyone with its demons: love and boredom. Part of this albuhn was even recorded in Falls Church, Virginia, the heart of America’s second richest county. Credentials like that left me with only one reservation.

I like rock ‘n’ roll bands, and I’m as disconcerted as anyone with the current trend toward an enormous pool of Superstars backed up by fen or fifteen supersessionmen. Still, Grin’s lack of success was clearly an important reason for the aimlessness of their last two records, so I decided to be lenient toward Nils’ decision to break up the band and go solo, provided that Neil Young, Tom Scott, or Elton John didn’t turn up on his first release. ,

I’m happy to report that not merely are none of the above present, but that indeed only bassist Wornell Jones and drummer Aynsley Dunbar are allowed to intrude on Nils’ splendor, which is just as it should be. The fact that it sounds just like Grin on a night when Bob Berberich had laryngitis is completely in its favor. But then there’s so little that isn’t in this album’s favor, right down to the - imagine! - six cuts per side.

Like Grin’s 1 plus 1, this disc is a masterwork of overdubbing. Nils lays down wave upon wave of shimmering gyitar, as well as keyboards and most of the backing vocals. It’s funkier than the earlier record, but still reminiscient of the Byrds at their most Apollonian, though perhaps more in spirit than in sound. And the vocals are as perfect rock ‘n’ roll punk as ever.

Execution is not Lofgren’s only strength. He knows just how to combine chords, melodies, and words in a way that will both catch and keep your attention.

I’m glad to note several Grinners in this collection. “Goin’ Back.” for example, an off and on item of Grin’s repertoire for more than four years, the urgent “Keith Don’t Go,” which permiered at Grin’s farewell concert, and expecially “Duty,” which Tom Lofgren introduced at the penultimate Grin performance as “a song that may never be recorded.” I’d mention some more, but this is one of those rare albums where every song will be your favorite at one time or another. But it is Nils’ sensibility that finally pushes this beyond the realm of mere master craftsmanship. He’s not ashamed to be middle-class, but neither is he a slave to his origins. Most notably, he is not willing to write more tired hump tunes. Nils is one rocker for whom “One More Saturday” is truly “one more not quite right.” He’s the victim more often than victimizer, and he conveys the pain of failed

romance better than anyone since the Shangri Las: a swagger born of reacting to yet another cheating lover. The hurt of “Two by Two” and “I Don’t Want To Know” leads naturally to “If I Say It, It’s So.” A loser with class.

Right now, I’d say Fear and Nils Lofgren divide 1975 between them. I got this record the day after I saw Roxy Music, and only two listenings got the bad taste out of my mouth. It sounds so good it’ll hurt your head.

Mark Jenkins

KOKOMO Kokomo (Columbia) -

The Average White Band is being beaten at its own game. Kokomo, a new British band and album of the same name, features white soul delivered clench-fistedly by musicians who know the rudiments of successful soul: lots of voices. White soul has attained a whole new dimension. The backing vocals of Paddie McHugh, Dyan Burch and Frank Collins form the strong crust around which the rest of the band can maneuver. Strong and happy voices run amok. It’s enough to make a mother proud and a human unafraid to admit he’s from Earth.

The members of the band are not unknown.

The band, intact, backed Alvin Lee on his last tour. Alan Spenner and Neil Hubbard at one time formed the nucleus of the Grease Band, Joe Cocker’s old band and one whose only album remains a classic in its own right. Mel Collins, on sax and flute, is highly sought after as a session man.

And so on.

The human creature, given enough time and encouragement, can come up with more and better of anything (it’s in the blood), because Kokomo is both mote and better than AWB’s latest (which is not to take anything away from those Scottish scruffers). Therefore, this album could possibly be found guilty of exploitation-bandwag,

onism now that the Average White Band has captured (deservedly) a devoted following. Leave it up to every record company extant to search

their rosters for an act to match the latest trend. Give everyone a chance and we’ll have fourteen different Average White Bands changing uniforms, playing musical chairs, and selling the worst claptrap this side of the Strawberry Alarm Clock to an audience starved for more of the same.

With Kokomo, though, it isn’t just more of the same. They are Columbia’s entry in the race and it is obvious that they will be the best of the flock. If it takes a new trend to get these musicians out from behind the backup role, then let there be trends, get the cotton out of your ears, listen and dance. Don’t spend your time getting old.

Their version of Bobby Womack’s “I Can Understand It” does as much justice to the original as AWB does to The Isleys’ “Work To Do.” Concievably, it could snap a catatonic out of a stupor. It’s an extended version with Paddie McHugh and Dyan Burch urging the boys in the band to keep cooking for the duration of almost eight minutes, during which time some eggs get fried and some bread gets baked. “Angel,” written by Carolyn Franklin, finished me off. When Paddie wails “Gotta find me an angelllll” on the fadeout, heaven does exist and God is not so cruel. “I’m Sorry Babe,” the best of the original material, is the obvious choice for the single which will surely follow. And it would indeed be an honor to be driving down the road to the accompaniment of this song as it blares from the AM radio wonderland. “It Ain’t Cool (To Be Cool No More)” has the best title. '

Veteran Chris Thomas produced the album with an emphasis on clarity, and the band itself is a tight unit. What more can be said then, except maybe to point out that the name of Kokomo’s song-publishing company is Anglo-Rock, which says it all.

Alan Bisbort

f 3 ACE

Five-A-Side

(Anchor)

Maybe it’s because England is such a small country. Tight knit, incestuous even, it seems almost as if no single musical style can emerge there without reverberating back and hitting every musician on the isle. The walls are so close.

For instance, right now, halfway into the third decade of rock ln’ roll, it sounds as if the whole of contemporary British rock ‘n’ roll boils down to 2 distinct (but growing closer every day) reference points; the Bowie-Mott post-glam slam stuff and the smooth and easy post-pub rock as exemplified by Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, the Sutherland Bros, and now Ace.

Five competent enough lads, Ace are far from the worst of the lot. But it’s just hard to compute

the distance between worst and best in a style wherein every band sounds like every other band. Pert little melodies, nice springy instrumental backing, a bit of husky vocal shading pinched from Stevie Winwood and you’ve got it. It’s not love but it’s not bad; the least or most you can say about this music is that it’s comfortable.

As the latest band to emerge in the style, Ace is at least kind enough to throw a few new wrinkles in with the deal. Thus, while “Sniffin’ About” and “Why” and “24 Hours” sound virtually indistinguishable from companion pieces off any BrinsleyDucks-Bees Make Honey album, cuts like “Time Ain’t Long” and “How Long” at least point toward new directions; toward Marshall Tucker and Eagles airspace, respectively.-

Maybe the phenomenon of these inoffensive soundalikes is England’s answer to the legion of low profile, near-faceless bands currently grabbing a good portion of the pie on these shores; all the Doobies and Montroses running on the steam of skill and stock licks and indebted to producers for endowing them with the personality they never cotold have fashioned for themselves.

For all its comfortability and competence, Ace’s music lacks the immediate impact the best rock and roll is expected to make. It makes up for the deficiency by being as seductive as hell (“How Long,” “Sniffin’ About”), like Traffic or Dave Mason, on prolonged exposure. It just may be a matter of time; how many listeners will have enough of it to keep Ace around for a second or third go at the prize?

Gene Sculatti

LES VARIATIONS Cafe De Paris (Buddah)

The French are the coolest breed (that’s a fact), even more cool than blacks or faggots, Rimbaud and Cocteau were no poopoos, fella. In fact, the only people cooler than the French are the retards (but we ain’t reviewing no Paul Williams at the moment).

So blow the French influence into every medium cept records. For awhile it was just Michel Fugain et le Big Bazar, Nicole Croisille, Pierre Vassiliu, and a host of other Englebert Humperdinck look-alikes. Then along comes Les Variations,^ band that decides to put some oomph into the piddling pop mainstream of their country. And they base their success on the fact that they can creatively interweave Mideastern fragments with hard-driving boogie energy (evidence: the band is frequently compared to Grand Funk, Alice Cooper, Queen, Status Quo, etc.). Les Variations has yet on any of their recordings to overbalance this fusion as was the case with Amon Duul, Can, and more recently, all them progressive twits of the German rock species. Les Variations creates in the tradition of the late-60s fusions in Amefican rock (jazz-rock, cartoon-rock, psychorock, dingdong-rock): witness the examples of such fine hitmakers as Kaleidoscope, United States of America, or the Devil’s AnviL But this fusion concept in Les Variations’ recordings works because simply this band is billed as the first French heavy rock combo. (Excluding the Dave Clark Five, of course, who were always French at heart.)

Consequently, the band’s latest album is a real tempest with hands groping all over the place. The hookers on the cover are bored stiff, but that’s only because they haven’t heard the pounding kachunk inside. True, there is not any of the aggressive barfaroni to be found on Moroccan Foil (none of those hurling defiances like “I don’t know why I love to get high!”). Instead, the screeching rock zooming cross the skies in one ear and out the other over and over like a bowl fulla jelly displays more control from the band and less extreme electronic gargling “I Don’t Know Where She’ll Go” storms as it opens the album, owing a great deal to Bitton’s kickapoo and stompathud drumming. “Shemoot (The Prayer)” is a stinger of an instrumental with chanting as a bonus. Also, the formula never dies cuz it seeps into their verbiage: “Come Now,” a sensitive exploration bout not being able to stay in Algeria, and “Superman Superman” which attacks the Amerikan system in the same corny trivial

way as Steve Miller’s “Living in the U.S.A.” (note the lines: “Turn around your cape’s on fire”). All in all, a multi dimensional album which charts Les Variations as the kings of their particular genre:

French heavy rock ‘n’ roll (no competition, tho, get it?).

Then there’s Guy Peelaert who did all that other wet dream stuff designing the cover of Cafe De Paris. In the CREEM ’74 Poll, Diamond Dogs was second, and It's Only Rock ‘n’ Roll was first, and both album covers were the work of this Peelaert guy. Watch out, then, Les Variations may move to the top fast with a cover decorative enuff for the coffee table and a record inside which •

don’t poopoo around (well worth its weight in vinyl).

Robot A. Hull

lOcc

The Original Soundtrack (Mercury)

Qu’est-que-c’est que ca? C’est un crayon bleu! Qu’est-que c’est que ca? C’est une disque nouvelle de lOcc!

On peut s’addresser immediatement a l’idee d’un autre rock opera, ici un chanson appelle “Une Nuit A Paris,” qu’endure pour 8.39 minults (Sacre Bleu!). A premier coup d’oeil cette concepte repulse certainement. Mais ces quatres musiciens tres accomplis avec leurs voises parfaitement claires et faciles, comme les Garcons de la Plage (les Beach Boys) ou numereuses des doo-wop groupes de ’50s, et leurs jouant precision salvagent cette efforte un peu dejointe et dilettante. II m’embarasse d’ecouter ce chanson devant mes amis, mais (Ne dis un mot!) vraiment j’aime des parties d’ “Un Nuit A Paris.”

The rest of this record is more of lOcc’s noteperfect homogenized artificial rock ‘n’ roll. They have a distinctive, if coldy professional and inexorably constant sound. (In this respect they are much like Steely Dan, but without that band’s

sharp instinct for the hook.) Furthermore, the lOcc sound treads a very fine line between prettysweet (good) and saccharine (very bad).

Their latest outing (their first on Mercury) valiantly strains at the heights of Rock Candy Mountain (viz. “Une Nuit A Paris”), but, at the same time, the searing steel guitar solo in “Blackmail” is a gritty, emotive piece of brilliance that puts Buddy Cage to shame. In between are likable Beatley songs, like “I’m Not In Love,” that beg for the added depth that could be accomplished with a decent bridge. I like the gushing, tongue-incheek “The Film Of My Love” (the sentimentalist self-voyeur in me almost takes it seriously); but it, too, suffers from an obsessive sameness throughout (that also happens to cut into the movie romance music parody). “Life Is A Minestrone” seems to stick in listeners’ heads, but I don’t get it lOcc have the chops. If they could loosen up a little, both in playing and writing - some of the songs are so mechanically assembled that you can hear the parts clunking around inside them -lOcc could be a great pop *n’ roll band.

Robert Duncan

SWAMP DOGG Have You Heard This Story?

(Island)

In one sense Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams suffers from the same ailment which all but debilitated acts like Slade or Roxy or (until recently) Randy Newman in their bids for acceptance. He doesn’t fit. He can’t make it through any of the proscribed access routes; could he manage a Top 30 hit or FM album acceptance? It’s a long shot. Could he make it With His Own Kind, back to belly on the airwaves with chumps like Barry White and the B.T. Express, or as a Vegas warmup for the Black Moses?

Probably not. What would any of them make of this overstuffed teddybear who was sued by Irving Berlin over liberties he took with “God Bless America” (“the senile cocksucker” - S. Dogg), posed for an album entitled Rat On perched atop a huge white rat and who recently took out a Sunset Strip billboard with the message: “If you don’t like my new album, pucker up while I back up!”

A guy like that it’s kind of hard for a record company, much less an audience, to get a bead on. This is Swamp Dogg’s sixth album but it’s only the fourth ever released. What it boils down to is this

character, who looks like Bo Didddley and wrote Gene Pitney’s last hit, is in possession of one real quirky quasi-comic vision, one dynamite set of pipes and too much originality for his own good.

Maybe it’s his vocabulary or the fact that he’s been seeing a shrink for what seems like half his life, but the fact is he writes like nobody else under the sun; sentimentality, cornball moralism, dorky blues, but it’s all peppered with this undeclared declaration of intent: to be so provocative and tongue-in-cheek outrageous you’re never sure if he’s putting you on or not.

This time he takes aim at all the usual clay pigeons under the Current Events banner; psychiatry, political shenanigans, Jesus freaks and lesbos. “God Ain’t Blessing America” is pretty literal James Brown political commentary, but “Dr. M.L.G. (J.A.)” is totally off the wall - all about some jerk board chairman who’s singing the blues because he got a hiccup that lasted a week. “The Mind Does the Dancing While the Body Pulls the Strings” may be an inverted lovesong and then again it may not. “When He Was No One” (about “Christ-niks”) is only slightly more droll than the outrageous, if slightly more predictable “Did I Come Back Too Soon.”

Have You Heard is certainly nowhere as brilliant as his debut, Total Destruction to Your Mind (which got him called, in these very pages, something like “the next Chuck Berry”) but it serves notice that one of the few true eccentrics is still among the greatest. At the very least, Swamp Dogg - along with every certified lunatic from Beefheart to John Cale - deserves to be subsidized forever by some lucky record company or another. We need them.

Gene Sculatti

RAY CAMPI Rockabilly Rebel (Rollin’ Rock)

If rockabilly’s gonna be the Next Big Revival as Greg Shaw unnervingiy predicts, it’ll come not through conventional mainstream pop channels (in this case, Commander Cody’s rockawhatever big band sound) but from the submerged undying hard core underbelly - in this case, Rockin’ Ronnie Weiser’s totally-dedicated-to-the-purist Rollin’ Rock Records and its number one star Ray Campi, the forty year old bopcat who still bugs his eyes and hiccups like a walking echo chamber.

Back in the fifties, when rock and roll was beginning to stir in the primordial soup, good ol’ southern boys got wild and reckless with their Country-Western, bulging hardons in their tight levis, generally going clackers through the miracle of rockabilly. Campi, though never recognized beyond central Texas until Weiser discovered him a few years back and made him a cult figure with European fanatics, continues to this day to run his energies in the same nervous directions as Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, George Jones, even Charlie Rich, once did. But while the old-timers have mostly settled down to Country MOR, Ray wants to rock!

His third album, like all of Weiser’s current releases, is recorded in Rockin’ Ron’s living room on a two track for that authentic cretinous feel, Ray playing all the instruments including his patented upright Slappin’ Bass (for reference check out Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”) that has astounded regressive country experts Ike Asleep at the Wheel’s bassman Tony Grenier (I saw him flip out with my own eyes).

For the uninitiated, the title cut explains the deep meaning of rockabilly, chronicling Campi’s early influences, listing many of the stars of rocka-b’s early and mid-fifties heyday, and closing with a blast charging “that Nashville sound has gone sugary sweet, they’ve boiled it down, and laminated the beat,”* before he growls out one last orgasmic howl of pleasure. While he covers old hillbilly rhythm ’n’ blues with the original rawness of Jimmie Skinner (“Doin’ My Time”) and Webb Pierce (“When I Saw Your Face In The Moon”), Ray’s own material raves up on its own sans apologies, combining twang guitar, popping snare drum, and bass with absurdist elements of fellow Texans Sam the Sham and Doug Sahm. “You Stick Out in Pretty Places” bumps along recklessly in the primal search for that essential rock and roll direct object - poontang - and is suggestive enough to leave stains on the pants of teens round the world (Eeets the language of, how you say, zee hump). “The Rip Off’ offers Ray room to work all the Big-Music-Biz-HasPassed-Me-By anxieties out of his system from a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins stance, even taking a swipe at Weiser’s Rollin ’ Rock Magazine, tonguein-chic no doubt.

You say you miss Gene Vincent? Country rock hits like Gerber’s baby food and Coors mixed together? You want something a tad more savage, sexy, sensuous, and slurpy than the norm? Here’s the ferocious meat to take away those vegetarian synthesized blues. Tear it away, wildcats, and Eat It Raw. If the record shop in the neighborhood ain’t hip enuff to have it, all of Campi’s albums, his sharp four song EP with the Father of Rockabilly Guitar Merle Travis, and a host of other fierce eroticisms (ask for Alvis Wayne’s “I Wanna Eat Your Puddin’ ” by name) can be mail-ordered from Rollin’ Rock, 6918 Peach Ave., Van Nuys, California 91406.

* Copyright Winsor Music

Joe Nick Patoski

LEO SAYER Just A Boy (Warner Brothers)

Leo Sayer is the quintessential orphan. Orphans look pretty much like everyone else, however, so on his first American tour last year Sayer dressed as a clown to emphasize his alienation. That was probably a mistake: it made him seem like just another trendy performer with a gimmick to get attention. (Clown Rock?) On the other hand, he did get attention.

He’s getting even more with his second album, Just a Boy; in fact, he’s already been touted in some quarters as “the great rock hope" of ’75. That’s probably a mistake too. Sayer’s apparently still struggling to control his ciitrent neuroses - orphanage favorites like rejection, failure and inadequacy - and he hardly seems ready to take on any more.

Still, Just a Boy is a near-perfect album, not least because it elevates Sayer’s neuroses to the level of universal experience. The story isn’t exactly new - the autobiographical tale of a young entertainer struggling for success - but you don't have to be an orphan to identify with feelings of rejection, failure and inadequacy, and Sayer projects an honesty and a fumbling lack of pretension which makes it all seem fresh.

The album -which alternates in mood between exuberant optimism and bittersweet nostalgia -opens with Sayer, his voice full of quavering expectancy, singing, “I’m laughing at all of my future plans, Shining like gold in my hands.” Not very convincingly, however. There is a song which shows him apprehensive (“I’ve seen a glimpse of the other side, And the lights are much too bright”) but determined; a song in which he registers blank incomprehension at a lover’s rejection; “Long Tall Glasses,” a clever parable about the life of an entertainer, and two songs recycled from the album Sayer wrote for Roger Daltrey two years ago.

Sayer’s expressive voice, balancing tenuously between bravado and uncertainty, is the embodiment of winning naivete, set perfectly against David Courtney’s fluid, sensuous music to create a compelling urgency. The effect is heightened by the David Courtney - Adam Faith production, which emphasizes Sayer’s roughness while creating a carefully polished effect overall.

An album as egocentric as this is always risky, especially when the artist is not well known, but Sayer displays an equal appreciation of the peaks and the pits, and his spunky self-reliance keeps him from lapsing into self-pity. And he does show the makings of a major star. This is the third album he’s written with the same theme, however, and he won’t be able to present another tale of innocence next time. He has fashioned a winning persona from the qualities of a loser; now he’ll have to make sure the winner doesn’t lose.

Frank Rose