THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

Robert Christgau

Ace: “Five-a-Side” (Anchor). The catchiest debut album in years is even more banal than that term normally implies, sung and played with a mildness infuriating in musicians of such talent but totally appropriate to lyricists of such underweening triviality. C plus. Bonnie Bramlett: “It’s Time” (Capricorn). The first two cuts on this album are the only ones I want to hear again, and one of them was co-authored by Delaney. Not promising. C plus. Can: “Soon Over Babaluma” (United Artists). As uberrock goes, this is diverting enough, ricky-ticking along through various moderately arresting sci-fi soundtrack noises, some of them melodies. But fondness for the machine does not necessitate separation from the body. Just ask Miles Davis. B minus. 1

“Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen” (Warner Bros.) The whole point of glorified bar music is its expendability, but that’s no reason to record the world’s most otiose version of “Willin’ ” or to make up a song called “The Boogie Man Boogie” when you can’t find one on the back of an old 78. Side two has the spirit - I admire “Hawaii. Blues,” an original, as well as the Commander’s Phil Harris rip-off - but if you’re going to expend on Cody records you might as well start with the Paramount stuff. B.

Miles Davis: “Get Up with It” (Columbia). I don’t trust Miles these days. Sometimes I suspect that his newer LPs are ripped off in a day or two of noodling over a pick-up rhythm section, and although I’m never sure - I’m never even sure whether it matters -1 haven’t played any of those records twice, just filed them as beyond me. Well, this set I play; since it contains over two hours of what sometimes sounds like the best electric jazz ever recorded, it isn’t so much beyond me as around me. Granted, sometimes it just sounds like bullshit; it’s not exactly music to fill the mind. Just the room. A minus. Swamp Dogg: “Have You Heard This Story??” (Island). His best since the notorious Total Destruction to Your Mind, which was about five years, five albums, and five labels ago. A writerproducer with a voice like an AfroAmerican air-raid siren, Swamp is as ambitious as he is eccentric, as brilliant as he is misinformed. This time there is a one-side concept, Swamp’s hypochondria - what’s the last soul lyric to contain the word “hyperventilation”? -and side two leads off with the singer catching his wife in bed with another woman. B plus.

Eno: “Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)” (Island). For all its synthesized, metronomic androidism, Eno’s music is more humane than Bryan Ferry’s - its romanticism less strident, its oddness less devilish - and it’s nice that in his arch, mellow way the man (or even android) is willing to hide some politics behind the overdubs. A minus.

John Entwistle’s Ox: “Mad Dog” (Track). This bit of inspirational verse is meant to apply to “ladies,” but it might just as well apply to you and me: “Ooh you’re trying too hard, sit down and relax, I’ll tell you what you gotta do. There ain’t no sense in running after them, well turn around and let them run after you.” B minus.

Gloria Gaynon “Never Can Say Goodbye” (MGM). The disco-hit side (three multi-percussed six-minute cuts, two . of them Motown remakes) is a solid, danceable B plus. The flip (five shorter songs, the most irritating written by the singer herself) punches in at C or maybe lower. That averages out to B minus or maybe lower. But albums with listenable sides are all too rare these days. B.

Henry Gross: “Plug Me Into Something” (A & M). Living proof that rock and roll good times can addle the brain. Henry’s first album made him sound like a bright fella; now,he sounds like he remembers how a bright fella sounds. C plus.

Carole King: “Really Rosie” (Ode). I’ve been saying she needed a new lyricist, and here he is - Maurice Sendak, writer of children’s books favored by adults, which makes him a rock (not rock and roll) natural. By side two you begin to resent the repetitiousness of some of King’s devices, but since side one comprises her most exciting music since Tapestry you’re already converted and it doesn’t matter. B plus. Krafftwerk: “Autobahn” (Vertigo). The Iron Butterfly of uberrock - Mike Oldfield for unmitigated simpletons, sort of, and yet in my mitigated way I don’t entirely disapprove. A melody or two worth hearing twice emanates from one of those machines that sounds determined to rule music with a steel hand and some mylar, and the title track is longer than “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” sans drum solo, with a lyric (trot provided) that should become the “What’s Life? A magazine” of high school German classes all over America. C plus. John Mayall: “New Year, New Band, New Company” (Blue Thumb). And a brand new batch of cliches. C minus.

Keith Moon: “Two Sides off the Moon” (Track). It is hard to imagine the auteur of this alternately vulgar, silly, and tender record as anyone but Keith Moon; his madness translates not only to film (Stardust, Tommy) but even to the supersolo studio jobs that this parodies so deliciously. I mean, I can only presume they, thought it was funny to mix the back-up singers (Nilsson, Nelson, Flo & Eddie) up in front of the guy with the name on the cover. And it was. B plus.

Lou Rawls: “She’s Gone” (Bell). Since we’ve stopped resisting middleclass soul, why is Lou Rawls more objectionable than Gladys Knight? Because for Rawls, middle-class soul feels like a compromise rather than an achievement. Again and again, the sureness of his rich voice betrays a subtle disdain for what he’s doing, and even worse, what he’s doing often deserves it. Respectful Gladys would never settle for a song as fustian as “Hourglass” or as contrived as “Now You’re Coming Back Michelle.” Which is why she’s irresistible. C minus.

Ruffus: “Rufusized” (ABC). I can understand why a sexy-chick singer with the spiritual mannerisms of Stevie and Aretha (Chaka Khan, whose voice floats) fronting the first black garbagerock band (who’s ever seen a look-mano-hands organ solo at the Apollo?) attracts attention. But the singer has none of the power or interpretive ability of Wonder or Franklin (or Joplin) and some garbage-rock is better than other. This may jell, but not yet. B minus. Ringo Starr: "Goodnight Vienna” (Apple). Unlike “Ringo,” this doesn’t strain for unpretentiousness, so the upbeat stuff actually quickens the heart*. But if Ringo is out fb show that John Q. Tuneless has the right to sing the pretty ones (“Only You,” “Husbands and Wives”) he ought to shoo Richard Perry out of the studio and record with a piano and an engineer. On John Q. Star, tunelessness sounds like arrogance. B.

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Allen Toussaint: "Southern Nights” (Reprise). Like Toussaint’s two previous solo LPs (one on Scepter, one on Reprise) this has one good side (the first again). Unfortunately, even the good side is uninspired by either nonsense or philosophy, and is nowhere near as typical of the genius in the man as, say, Frankie Miller’s Highlife. C plus. Leslie West: "The Great Fatsby” (Phantom). Whaddaya mean, is Leslie West a singer? Is the Pope Jewish? Do bears hum in the shower? And why has that hairy guy in the wet vestments forgotten the tune to “Ave Maria”? C plus.

The Dictators: MGo Girl Crazy!” (Epic). If you love the Dolls you’ll like the Dictators. Maybe. New York smartasses who have fastened on circa-1965 California teendom at its dumbest - at times, the singing recalls (you remember) the Syndicate of Sound, only without that natural humor - they play punks rather than embodying punkdom, with a predictable loss of tone. But the production is three chords of pure power and the joke is often quite funny. Anyone who can make a sobersides like me laugh at a song called “Back to Africa” can’t be entirely devoid of subtlety, and I love this bit of inspirational verse: “We knocked ’em dead in Dallas, we didn’t pay our dues, we knocked ’em dead in Dallas, they didn’t know we were Jews.” B.