BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Born To Run (Columbia)

And in his excited way of speaking I heard again the voices of old companions and brothers under the bridge, among the motorcycles, along the wash-lined neighborhood and drowsy doorsteps of afternoon where boys played guitars while their older brothers worked in the mills. All my other current friends were “intellectuals”... But Dean’s intelligence was every bit as formal and shining and complete . . . And his “criminality” was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy . . . long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides).

Jack Kerouacof Neal Cassady

Bruce Springsteen reaches his stride at a time when the listening audience is not only desperate for a new idol but unprecedentedly suspicious of all pretenders to the throne. We have no idea what the Next Big Thing will be, but we’re pretty certain what is isn’t—and one thing it certainly isn’t is Another Bob Dylan. So here’s this kid Springsteen, coming on like a customized \ wordslinger in a black leather jacket, • his mother’s own favorite Francois. Villon. And as if we weren’t suspicious enough already of all run-on rhapsodic juvenile delinquents, we have another cabal of rock critics (including one who later went on to becqme his producer) making extravagant claims for him, backed up by one of the biggest hypes in recent memory. Out here in the Midwest, where at this writing Springsteen has not even toured yet, you can smell the backlash crisp as burnt rubber in the air.

Springsteen can withstand the reactionaries, though, because once they hear this album even they are gonna be ready to ride out all cynicism with him. Because, streetpunk image, bardic posture and all, Bruce Springsteen is an American archetype, and Born to Run will probably be the finest record released this year.

Springsteen is not an innovator— his outlook is rooted in the Fifties; his music comes out of folk-rock and early rock ‘n’ roll, his lyrics from 1950s teenage rebellion movies and beat poetry as filtered through Sixties songs rather than read. Springsteen’s gifts lie in the way he has rethought traditional sounds and stances, coming up with a synthesis fresh enough to constitute a minor renaissance. After all, what’s more old-fashioned than the avant-garde?

When his first album was released, many of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, §ang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and led a band that sounded like Van Morrison’s. We were too hasty, of course, but I still don’t think Springsteen’s true voice began to emerge until this album, and a friend’s criticisms still nag: “When I listen to Bruce Springsteen, I hear a romanticization of New’ York. When I listen to Lou Reed, I hear New York.”

Maybe so, but maybe that’s precisely the point. Springsteen’s landscapes of urban desolation are all heightened, on fire, alive. His characters, act in symbolic gestures, bigger than life. Furthermore, there’s absolutely nothing in his music that’s null, detached, or perverse and even his occasional world-weariness carries a redemptive sense of lost battles passionately fought. Boredom appears to be a foreign concept to him—he reminds us what it’s like to love rock ‘n’ roll like you just discovered it, and then sieze it and make it your own with certainty and precision.

If I seem to OD on superlatives, it’s only because Bom to Run demands them; the music races in a flurry of Dylan and Morrison and Phil Spector and a little of both Lou Reed and Roy Orbison, luxuriating in them and an American moment caught at last, again, and bursting with pride.

If Springsteen’s music is calculated, it’s to extract the most emotional mileage out of relatively spare instrumentation—rich without being messy, the solos are succinct, built for speed, providing a perfect counterpoint to the headlong surge of the lyrics. Particularly intelligent use is made of keyboards and instruments like glockenspiel which contribute mightily to the Spectorish feel. And Clarence Clemons’ sax solos, like Andy Mackay’s in Roxy Music, demonstrate that in terms of sheer galloping exuberance, Johnny and the Hurricanes are just as valid an influence as John Coltrane.

The playing is clean, but the mix is keyed to a slightly distorted throb in which Springsteen’s voice is almost buried. When you do get to the words, you discover that they have been tightened up from his first two albums; no longer cramming as many syllables as possible into every line, he is sometimes almost economical, and the album resonates with breathtaking flashes like this: $ 1

The amusement puric rises bold and stark

Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist

I wanna die with you out on the streets tonight

In an everlasting kisst

It could almost be a concept album, from the opening “Thunder Road,” where Springsteen grabs his girl and . fats the highway in his car, “riding out tonight to case the promised land,” to the melded metaphors of “Jungleland”:

Kids flash guitars just like switchblades

Hustling for the record machine The hungry and the hunted Explode into rock ‘n’ roll bands That face off against each other out on the street

Down in Junglelandt

Through all of these songs Springsteen’s characters “swegt it out in the streets of a runaway American dream,” skating for a longshot'in automobiles and beds with the omnipresent roar of the radio driving them on to connect anew, as even in the failure of their striving they are redeemed by Springsteen’s visioij: “Tramps like us—baby, we was born tojjun.”

In a time of squalor and belittled desire, Springsteen’s music is majestic and passionate with no apologies. He is so romantic, in fact, that he might do well to watch himself as he comes off this crest and settles into success—his imagery is already ripe, and if he succumbs to sentiment or sheer grandiosity it could well go rotten. For now, though, wT can soar with him, enjoying the heady rush of anothei gifted urchin cruising at the peak of his powers and feeling his oats as he gets it right, that chord, and the last word ever on a hoodlum’s nirvana.

† Copyright 1975 Laurel Canyon Music Ltd. (ASCAP)

~ TAMPA RED Guitar Wizard BIG MACEO Chicago Breakdown _(Bluebird)_

Frank Driggs, who produced so many fine reissues for Columbia— among them the two Robert Johnt son LPs—has gone to work for RCA, and the results are starting to come in. The impulse is to call Driggs a musical archaeologist, but the music1 he has found is every bit as alive as anything to be found today, and more than most. «

For the older material, RCA has resurrected its Bluebird label, which i§ more or less what Okeh was to Columbia, a repository for music appealing to special audiences. Country music, for one example, and “race” records for another.

Two interrelated blues sets have come out of this project, featuring Chicago lpluesmen. One is Hudson Woodbridge, who called himself Tampa Red, and played the guitar and kazoo,i as well as writing and singing blues. The other, Maceo Merriweather, played piano, wrote, and sang. Being first-class session men, they appear oh each other’s records.

Tampa Red’s is the higher, clearer voice, and his the happier album. His guitar is clean and sure, and he gets more emotion out of his kazoo than many people can get from a Moog synthesizer. It’s not a funny hat, New Year’s Eye instrument in his hands. Most of the music is from the thirties and forties, but for me, the highlight is a previously unreleased track from 1953, “Rambler’s Blues,” which features an astonishing harmonica solo by Walter Horton. If the record had been issued, you would think that the Ray Charles small band pieces like “Rock House” came from it.

But of course, that’s the pointy '“Rock House” is supposed to have come about because Ahmet Ertegun played Jimmy Yancey records for Ray Charles. And Big Maceo sounds a lot like Jimmy Yancey on many of these tracks, a hair away from straight boogie woogie while only rarely Sliding into jif. His is a dark, rueful voice, and depending on your situation, he could be singing about your life.

And that’s the point, too. One of the most implacably accepting lines ever written is sung here: “If you can stand to leave me, I can stand to see you go.” But Bessie Smith sang it earlier. And Tampa Red is credited here with “When Things Go Wrong With You (It Hurts Me Too),” even though current orthodoxy gives the song to Elmore James.

And that’s the point. Blues scholars call lines like the ones quoted “floating verses.” The music floats in the same way, until a human synthesizer like Ray Charles puts it all together and takes it higher than it’s ever been. Bach did the same thing, copping from a hundred church organists. Some geniuses start things, others finish them. Tampa Red and Big Maceo were part of a mix, part of where a lot of people came from, singing folk music, in Bill Broonzy’s definition: “What the folks sing.”

These are two-record sets. Jim O’Neal and Mike Rowe, respectively, did extensive and invaluable annotation. The sound is excellent, the price is right. The music is better than that...

Joe Goldberg

ERIC CLAPTON E.C. Was Here (RSO)

I have never knelt at the altar of Eric Clapton’s guitar prowess. That is, the endless arguments about who possesses the most virtuoso fingers in Anglo-America: Beck, Page, B. B. King, Slowhand, Fast Fingers Alvin Lee, Roy Buchanan, Albert King — have left me far more disinterested than debates about who was better in* his prime: Mays or Mantle. (Willie, because of power, grace, speed, fielding.)

What I do like about Clapton — why I prefer him to virtually' all the other supernames we could banter about — is many of those same virtues (especially grace), but mostly, consistency and sensitivity. It took Six months and a trip to Florida for me to feel comfortable with 461 Ocean Blvd.; perhaps that is why, unlike Claptonophiles, I felt immediately relaxed with There’s One in Every Crowd. Rather than being lifeless, I felt Clapton for the first time believing that, in his life, peace was at hand. E.C. Was Here proves it.

The album, recorded live on his last tour with his regular band — Jamie Oldaker, Carl Radle, Dick Sims, George Tqrry, Marcy Levy and Yvonne Elliman — works as both a guitar album and a song album. Having shaken off his reggae shoes, Eric has come to playing the blues’in a way he never could during the years that, ironically, he became a most famous blues guitarist. For the most part, it used to be mimicry; at its best, it was technically superior homage to Albert King, B.B. King, Elmore James. What was lacking was emotion: playing (and singing) as a primary expression of the pain and joy in the artist’s own life, trouble, love, booze, drugs, prison.

I’m not saying that Eric Clapton’s years as a junkie make his blues playing more valid now than if he’d never shot himself down the tubes. But when he sings “I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home,” there is a unity of music and spirit that could never have been reached through Blind Faith. The same is true for “Presence of the Lord,” also from that doomed supergroup’s album; the song reflects a journey in progress;, rather than what must then have been (for Clapton) an unsatisfied need.

Clapton’s blues singing now carries more depth, soyl and conviction than' anything he has ever done in his career. Covers of two more or less familiar Bobby “Blue” Bland songs — “Drifting Blues” and “Farther On Up the Road” — don’t send one back to the dusty originals. And “Have You Ever Loved A Woman” makes me feel involved with his passion in a way I’ve never been before. A triumph, even for those who don’t care for guitar players as heroes.

Wayne Robins

PROCOLHARUM Procol’s Ninth (Chrysalis) GARY WRIGHT Dream Weaver (Warner Bros.)

After eight albums with only minor format variations, Procol ^. Harum seemed jo be a predictable institution that may have outlived its usefulness. I started losing interest with Broken Barricades’ incipient Hendrixisms (transmuted by the long-departed Robin Trower into three albums of progressively denser sludge). The live orchestral album bored me, and the next two on Chrysalis kindled occasional flickers of interest not sufficient to replay the albums. Chart figures indicated that my waning ardor was a not untypical reaction, and on their ninth album even the group shows rudimentary awareness of the problem. They’ve allowed the legendary Leiber-Stoller team to produce, and have included their first two non-original tracks — both of which (a Leiber-Stoller song called “I Keep Forgetting” and the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week”) xare more to be praised for conception than performance.

Despite the less-than-incandescent cover versions and a largely formulaic and monotonous first side, Procol’s Ninth is an encouraging album. Intermittent flashes of pop or R&B flavoring indicate increased versatility, and a three-song stretch on side two, sandwiched between the outside compositions, is as strong a musical block as anything in the group's last five years—powerful, stately rockers with appealing melody lines. “Typewriter Torment” is actually catchy and were its subject more universally relevant might be the miraculous Leiber-Stoller hit single coup (cf. Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle”) the group needs to escape their profitable but stagnating progressive pigeonhole. Promising. Gary Wright is teamed with Procol here because of similar late 60’s British background (Spooky Tooth for Wright, who’s actually an American) and a shared fondness for keyboards. Wright is really obsessed with them—he informs us that everything on his album except drums, vocals, and one guitar track was performed by keyboards. As it turns out, he’s contrived it so that the keyboards sound just like Are absent bass, guitar and strings would have had they been employed instead.

Apart from this remarkable effect, Wright’s album is impressive—he writes straightforward songs with strong choruses and memorable riffs. Set off with austere pseudostrings, it’s a rather fascinating blend of contemporary R&B and progressive^rock. Wright sings well, too, belaying fhe falsetto screech which often rendered Spooky Tooth unlistenable. “Blind Feeling” is the current favorite here, but Dream Weaver is a homogeneous LP with evenly distributed strengths. One man keyboard army'exhibitions or not, Gary Wright is worth some attention.

Ken Barnes

JQE COCKER Jamaica Say You Will (A&M)

It’s my theory that ahy LP with ten tracks and 13 recording engineers is in trouble to begin with. But never mind.

It can no longer be said that Joe Cocker is dead and gone, that his voice is shot, that overindulgence in this or that has ruined what oncq was a powerful vocal talent. His voice is not, in all honesty, that sadly in disrepair any more. (It certainly was once.) I don’t know if it was hormones, religion, or plenty of Minute Maid unsweetened grapefruit juice, but Cocker just doesn’t sound that bad.

Jim Price’s arrangements and production are solid (but please oh please will somebody make him and all those other L. A. studio musicianproducers stop using those ridiculous wavery quavery female backup voices mimicking every phrase of every song?), but the material hp has chosen for Cocker, including originals by Matthew Moore, Daniel Mopre, and himself, is mostly not very good. Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” has been recorded to death, and Cocker’s Version of the same writer’s “Lucinda” sounds dangerously close to unintended parody. Of the unfamiliar songs, not one stands out — with the exception of “Jack-a-Diamonds,” a reworking by Daniel Moore of a traditional blues.

There are lots of familiar names on “Jamaica,” including the Richard Tee/Cornell Dupree/Chuck Rainey /Bernard Purdje axis, plus Nicky Hopkins, Ben Benay, Jimmy Karstein, Henry McCullough, Bobby Keys, Jim Horn, Clydie and Vanetta, and Price himself. But that “Jacka-Diarrionds,” on which the only accompaniment to Cocker’s rough voice is a couple of overdubbed guitars and a stomping foot by D. Moore, has more cool power and more hot lust than anything any of those other folks can put together. What Cocker really ought to do, if you ask me, is to do a wljole album of stuff like that, with nothing but an acoustic guitarist or two behind him. Hell, he could be the Dave van Ronk of the ’7Q’s. Though I doubt, alas, that he aspires that high.

Coman Andrews

RICHARD PRYOR Is It Something4 Said? (Reprise)

It’s horrible to review comedy albums. After a week of intensive immersion in even the funniest human oh earth, whoever he is, you’re not likely to see much humor. But the problem with reviewing comedy records is eventually the problem with comedy records themselves. Just how many times can you hear the same punchline and laugh? After the second or third time around, you’re just remembering past pleasure, and beyond that these records tend to become a rather grim experience.

But the ephemerality of comedy is something the “new” comedians are trying to eliminate by rendering their material more — if you’ll pardon the expression — relevant. The new comedians — this category usually includes Pryor, Carlin, Lily Tomlin, and in his worst moments Robert Klein — are working towards something abng the line of spoken literature heavily dosed with — again, pardon my sixties — social commentary. Unfortunately the new comedians are not the new literati and their social commentary quickly becomes predictable. And since they took the jokes away the whole thing is turning into an outand-out drag.

Richard Pryor is an extraordinarily funny guy. But his social viewpoint is just becoming all that much more familiar with this album, and so the twists and endings (punchlines?) to his bits are that mudh more predictable. But still it is Pryor. Right, so “Eulogy” was very funny the first two times around, and “Just Us” (Justice, get it?) holds up into the third or fourth spins. The major opUs here, “Mudbone,” a cut of a* bout 15 minutes length wisely divided between sides one and two, is a captivating piece of hyperbolic 'black folklore (folk literature) and a great bit of acting that one would love to see bdt it’s not really very funny. “Our Text For Today” is a surprising low point for Pryor. It’s supposed to be funny that this preacher takes the lyrics from Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ For The City” as his Sunday text. But has Richard really been subjected to one of those “new” preachers yet, those guys who try to make church “relevant’? Perhaps he’s misjudged their impact. Because those cats is deadly dull.

Overall this record is pretty funny, though I may have been spoiled by the last one which was not as consistent but certainly had higher peaks (“Exorcist,” “The Back Down”) at least the first time.

Robert Duncan

BLACK SABBATH Sabotage (Warner Bros.)

Latest fad among all the intelligentsia in my neck of the woods is Silva Mmd Control. All the null-andvoiders who found that T.Mand Yoga couldn’t return them to the passive, guilt-ridden gel of their Calvinist childhoods have now turned to Silva Mind Control, which for a mere $300 guarantees fo cure them oft noxious habits like obesity or smoking (including smoking of Silva Thins, if so afflicted).

The sight of so many of my contemporaries voluntarily prostrating themselves is pathetic, especially as they could’ve gotten the same effect for only $6.98 (or less, at better discountefs everywhere) by purchasing the new Black Sabbath LP. I can’t guarantee B.S.’s effectiveness in ridding one of the vices mentioned above (per the cover photo, Ozzy Osbourne —■ him in the silhouetteconcealing dashiki — seems to be developing a doublechin of his own, and we all know how B.S. feel about smoking), but for sheer mind control, they can’t be beat.

Black Sabbath have been preaching hellfire and inducing wholesale guilt in their audiences since before Silva M.C. was an Alpha-wave gleam1 in some deranged sperm’s noodle. Heavy metal sensuality makes Black Sabbath’s message all that much more credible; even an honorary Christ-killer like me can almost swallow B.S.’s medieval brand of Christianity.

Moving on from the apocalypse, Ozzy’s own Bible reminds us that the leopard can’t change his spots, and that dictum applies with a passion to English heavy metal bands. From Deep Purple on down, all English H.M.ers were bom with their sound full-blown, and attempts at artistic growth are necessarily fruitless; constant refinement is the name of the game. On Sabotage, consequently, disregard “Am 1 Going Insane (Raidio)” (an exercise in Move dilettante lunacy which comes out sounding like Gary Lewis) and “Supertzar” (an envious satire of Tommy's ideals of redemption) ; the teal texts herein are “Hole in the Sky” and “Symptom of the Universe” (heh, heh), further chapters in the Master of Reality dogma.

Try Black Sabbath today. You have nothing to lose but your old muddled self.

Richard Riegel

THE OUTLAWS (Arista)

This is a band to watch. It presents the first valid fusion of the Southern (Tampa, Florida) sensibility with the West Coast Country brightness of groups like Poco. Even their name is right, for it calls attention to the fact that Skynyrdish bad boys have a lot in common with the Wild Western ethos that brings us most of what’s fresh in progressive country (whatever that means). I don’t see how any FM programmer in the country could resist this record — but, more importantly, it includes some intelligent thinking pulled off with elegance and taste.

The Outlaws use multiple lead guitar lines, but they studiously avoid textbook Allmans licks. The result is an attractive compromise: while retaining the fluidity that is the , Allmans’ trademark, the Outlaws’ lead work emphasizes fast-picked, bouncy melodies, the prototype of which is the instrumental included here, “Waterhole.”

As if that weren’t good enough, these guys have control of some of the finest harmonies in recent memory. Within the territory they have staked out, the Outlaws are electric enough to make their future development quite interesting; they are equally at home with Western-type songs (“Cry No More” reminds you of the Eagles, but not in a cheap way), ballads, straight rockers (tho none of the truly greasy kind ala ZZ Top), and fine melodic pieces. The guitar work of Hughie Thomasson, Billy Jones and Henry Paul is strictly professional all the way through. Every lick seems to fit.

This same feeling extends into most of the Outlaws’ melodies. As I implied, they have the rare capability of suggesting other musicians without being accused of ripping them off. What this means is that their better tunes are immediately accessible and memorable (“There Goes Another Love Song” is singalongable on the second chorus), but it’s only through hearing a whole album’s worth that the Outlaws persona begins to break through.

Everybody is tight; the band has obviously taken * some time with these songs and the confidence shows. Guitars aside, the Outlaws are mainly an ensemble group, which makes it easy to overlook the exceptional rhythm section of Monte Yoho on drums and Frank O’Keefe on bass.

I would be remiss if I omitted mention of the extra-crisp production by Paul A. Rothchild, which probably does more than anything else to sell the record on first listen.,There’s a lot going on in each cut, and one’s attention can easily shift from the actual music to the general sound of the record. It’s a bright album, a happy one, as if the band pays more that lip service to being proud of their material. I was delighted by it the first time through, which is rare, and sorry when it ended. 1 only hope the band can match the professionalism of this album in concert. If they can, the sky’s the limitfor ’em . Clive, you done good.

Tom Dupree

JESSE BELVIN Yesterdays (RCA) SAM COOKE Interprets Billie Holiday (RCA)

If it wasn’t for Sam Cooke, we wouldn’t have Rod Stewart, Bobby Womack, Al Green, or Hirth from Earth, and if it wasn’t for. Jesse Belvin, we wouldn’t have had Sam Cooke. No value judgments implied, mind you. Just sketching out the continuum.

R&B balladeers like Cooke and Belvin, or like Clyde McPhatter, Sonny Knight, Don Julian, and such, were always a lot closer to jazz than we (poor we) realized at the time. Cooke, of course, had gospel roots, but he had jazz-style loungesinger roots too; Belvin represented one of the highest refinements of the urban black cocktail-lounge ballad style.

Both men recorded standards from the ’30’s and ’40’s — not reworking them into the R&B idiom like Fats Domino did with Gene Austin songs, but inflecting them with loose, saxophone-like phrasing, recording them sometimes with jazz orchestras (especially in Belvin’s case).

The Sam Cooke/Billie Holiday album is a strange one. In no way can Cooke be said to be interpreting Holiday; what he is doing is singing songs she was identified with, but very much in his own liquid, nearyodeling style. The album was originally released (on the Keen label in 1961) as Tribute to a Lady — which title made a lot more sense. (And by the way . . . This RCA reissue bears the legend, writ large, “A COLLECTION OF PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED SELECTIONS.” This is false advertising, is it not?)

Cooke sways more than he swings. He never gets near the hard, sharp edge of the material he sings (which, God knows, Billie Holiday did). A voice like Cooke’s, soft as well-worn sandpaper, was provocative and tauiiting singing lines like “You send me, honest you do.” But “You say potato and I say Potahto”? He just doesn’t sound comfortable singing Gershwin, or Arlen, or Rodgers and Hart; his voice is too refined, and his manner is not refined enough.

Belvin had better timbre to his voice, and could sound a lot more knowing, a lot more forlorn. His version of “What’s New,” included here, is the definitive one. He walks right into hip white-man’s stuff like “Angel Eyes” and masters it superbly. He even takes unlikely fodder like “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” and makes it smolder headily. Other particularly impressive songs are Allen Russel's torchy “It Could’ve Beeii Worse” and Belvin’s own “Guess Who.” (But where’s “Goodnight My Love”?)

Five of the tracks on “Yesterdays” are previously unreleased — if, that is, we can still believe RCA about , such things. There is some recording information provided, including the fact that conductors were Shorty Rogers, Marty Paich and Ray Mar■ tin, and that jazzmen like Shelly Manne, Barney Kessel and-Red Callender are present on some tracks. The Sam Cooke LP has no recording information whatever, but for the record, as it were, the orchestra on it was conducted ,by Rene Hall.

Colman Andrews

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL Texas Gold (Capitol)

To call this stuff hepcat music is to cheapen it. Yet there is a certain unerasable sense of, how you say, joie de sleaze that not only dominates but defines much of Asleep at the Wheel’s music. It’s the music of crazy niggers, and of half-loaded cowboys trying to focus in on barmaid tit through diplopic eyes. It’s good music, great music even, and a music which nobody else has the audacity to make.

Sleeper of the Month

HIRTH MARTINEZ Hirth From Earth Warners

Jonathan King again, with another zany moniker and another album full of potential hits. Particularly enjoyable are the four-part Sly Stone send-up and a sublime transfiguration of “Wolverton Mountain.” But “Hirth” has some of his facts wrong. Psyches, for instance, do not fly. And how can he say that “Nothing could be sadder than a monkey on a ladder in the middle of the morning while the alligator’s chewing on the rabbit” when there are thousands of orphans starving in India? Now that’s sad.

Colman Andrews

As with the Wheel’s previous two albums, a lot of the stuff here is old: Amos Milburn’s “Let Me Go Home Whiskey,” which goes back to 1953, Bob Wills’ “Fat Boy Rag,” which goes back to ’47, and “Trouble in Mind,” which goes back to the invention of movable type. Original material includes Leroy Preston’s “Tonight the Bartender is on the Wrong Side of the Bar” and “Run. hin’ After Fools” is the sort of thing that jukeboxes were created for, a truculent Fats Domino type song with lines like “The pants may be baggy, but it could be worth your while.” There are also some sweet lines in “Tonight the Bartender is on the Wrong Side of the Bar,” a tale of unrequited everything: “Less talk, more music/You pour the booze, and I’ll abuse it.” “Bump Bounce Boogie” is a sexy little ass-twitcher featuring Chrij O’Connell, the greatest broad singer in country music since Texas Ruby. The Wheel have always been the best interpreters of jump blues, as their past renditions of Louis Jordan and Wynonie Harris attest. Here, with “Let Me Go Home Whiskey,” the Wheel take on Amos Milburn in a cut that just won’t quit.

Asleep at the Wheel are not a trendy group. If they ever did a concept album, it would probably be aboutfaliing off a bar stool. But they know what they’re doing, they do it well, and Texas Gold is an American classic.

Nick Tosches

BROWNSVILLE STATION Motor City Connection (Big Tree)

INSTANT CUT-OUT!! Its a shame, too, cuz Brownsville Station produced many sweathog elpees over the years. Cept now you find ‘em all in bargain bins. No kidding, this album is the only BS album that ain’t a cut-out, which is baffling considering the success they had with singles' picked from Oh Yeah (a landmark recording in punk rock; remember that?).

They just always had that bargain bin feel, you know (ask an oldtimer about 39 cent bins: tears will pour from his eyes, poor slob), the harddriving force of giving ya yr nickel’s worth. Them were the holy days when the Motor City actually counted, and all the klassics were dumped into the bins (MC5, Stooges, etc. right up thru Quatro). The energy levels in that city were rumored to be supersonic (yes, the next Liverpool), but wha happened?! INSTANT CUTOUTS!! Piles and piles of Detroit madness.

L think Brownsville Station was probably at the top of that heap. With “Smokin’ In the Boys’ Room,” for example, they at least exhibited a commercial expertise. Also, the boogie frenzy on all their albums is totally consistent in sound, depending largely upon a live spirit just made for dancing and speed and barfing and booze.

Yet the fact remains: NOBODY CARES ABOUT THAT SHIT ANYMORE. Hell, the last thing I expected was another Brownsville Station album, simply assuming that the band had already run its course (that heavy-metal boogie gamut which yielded to country-rock a year ago). The end result is pudding. It becomes dated upon release. It remains a leftover from an era when music meant WAR (bullets and bazookas). >

But go out and buy it anyway. Shit, yeah. Go out in droves and yank put yr bills and say, “I demand the new Brownsville Station album!” just to get. this stinking, rotten, moronic,* halfwit, monotonous, wasted, cheap DISCO CRAP outa the country. Yes, this BS album is a pleasure, an answer to your prayers, merely cuz it AINT, GOT NO DISCO.

Instead, it has FIERY GUITARS on “Automatic Heartbreak,” WILD ‘N’ WOOLY KAMIKAZE STUNTS on “Self Abuse,” SEX on “Give It To Get It,” FOUR ON THE FLOOR on “Combination Boogie,” LOUD GORILLA NOISES on “Crazy Legs,” and SHEER BALLS on “Load of Love.” Also, an extraadded special feature (one of the healthiest BS tricks to date, by the way): A GODDAMN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL MEDLEY. Flabbergasting! I haven’t heard anything so worthless since the Animals’ “Story of Bo Diddley” (a true fine medley in its own right). Put it all together, and it spells: MOTOR CITY MADNESS. Possibly years too late, but with the dull thud of NOTHING on the radio, who cares?

Join the Brownsville Station Fan Clfiib TODAY!!

Robot A. Hull

“ HYDRA Land Of Mortey (Capricorn)

Hydra refuse to lie down and be your standard Southern band. They don’t go in for any mdre-rebel-thanthou hype, blues quackery, or prowrestling level twin guitar duking. They’re confident enough to smile on the cover instead of looking at the camera like it’s a stain in their collective underpants. No nature crap for these guys — one of their hottest numbers is “Get Back To The City.” And better yet, they like the Stooges.

Getting right to the hard-on of the matter, Hydra’s sound is a toxic mix of amped-up Anglo guitar flash and pulp riffs from the power base of solid American rock ingenuity. Although bearing an occasional resemblance to some of L. Skynyrd’s harder stuff, their basic approach is more like that of Kiss, with cruel vocals and quavering obelisks of rhythm guitar. The tight teamwork of guitarists Kirkpatrick and Bruce produces killer jagoff licks and decibel harmonies, keeping rhythm men Pace and Davis off their butts at all times.

The highlights keep on coming — the Free-ish “Pistol” with its doomsday bass line and bullet effects scattering like telepathic hickies, the stalking portrait of an indiscriminate pole-vaulting glitter goon in “Get Back To The City,” and a complement of crashing hard rockers like “Little Miss Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Makin’ Plans” that are guaranteed to get your ears by the throat. The fluidly segmented title cut goes through' more lascivious shifts than Lou Reed’s entire career, finally piledriving into canine screams of “gimme money money money money” with additional “vocals” by, the Primal Greed Glee. Club. No closet psuedo-intellects in this band.

With the only low point being the sincere (i.e. boring) ballad “Take Me For My Music,” Hydra’s second album puts them in the ranks of major American hard rock contenders. It their next LP tightens up and pulls away from this record like it did from the previous one, Aerosmith had better stay out of dark alleys.

Rick Johnson

THE METERS Fire on the Bayou (Reprise)

Enlisting early fans like Faces’ drummer Kenny Jones, the Meters have always been respected as “a band’s band.” That’s fitting since they’re studio musicians for Allen Toussaint, for years the most talented and now prolific producer in this country. In a recent interview the Meters wondered out loud if he still had time to make their records.

When they co-produced Fire On The Bayou with him, though, Toussaint was only part of the problem, because they had become as busy as he was. Their “Cissy Strut” and “Sophisticated Cissy” were top ten r&b singles in 1969, but this year they played on “Lady Marmalade” and it was a hit everywhere. The strident beat and come-on lyrics of that song made New Orleans nightlife grounds for a perfect AM romance, and gave veterans Labelle, as well as the Meters, more recognition than they knew what to do with. Hence the Meters’ spot on the Stones tour.

But the band on “Lady Marmalade” was minus one essential member: Zig Modeliste, drummer. He’s back on Fire on the Bayou, but he’s no longer the band’s rhythmic leader. The Meters aren’t a percussive band anymore; nor are they as much fun.

Probably because they strung out their lungs touring, the Meters now fancy themselves singers. Previously, hoots and shouts sufficed; the barnyard squawks on “Chicken Strut” are unparalleled in vocal brilliance. While fiddling with their vocals too much on Bayou, they’ve neglected their melodies. The first three cuts have the same one; and a particular low is the AWB ripoff, “Can You Do Without?” Yes we can, canr.

These problems aside, there is always the beat, which brought us to the Meters in the first place. “Talkin’ ‘Bout New Orleans” is good enough to be reminiscent of the Meters’ work with Lee Dorsey (of “Ya Ya” fame), and the lyrics are playfully coincidental, as they should be, But their (two previous albums, Cissy Strut and Rejuvenation, are still their best.

Georgia Christgau