LYNYRDSKYNYRD Gimme Back My Bullets (MCA)

BADCOMPANY Run With the Pack (Swan Song)

Ahh, god bless the Seventies — the age when all pop pretensions were punctured by the simple revelation that every last god-loving idiom, from baroque art-rock fusions to funky shonuff Afro-sheenanigans, par-boiled down to a pure and simple Formula. H.G. Wells should only have lived to see it — Science triumphs! Just take all the elements — riffs, freeze-dried wordpacks like "brothers and sisters" or "movin' on down the highway," producers, session men, "artists" even — just feed every last damn bit of it into any old computer, let the machine work its own admittedly rather spectacular hoodoo, and the Rand Corporation guarantees that the readout will be identical to this week's Billboard chart.

Take heavy metal. Try to remember the great clashes of the decade's turning, when all the James Taylor mellow-rollers were lined up on one side of the jousting-field, tearstained noodles in hand, and across the green all the hard-chargin' feedbackin' machomutha metal monstrolas hunched and grooohaaarred like Michael McClure's Ghost Tantras come to life. Remember Grand Funk's bow and the rabid storm of controversy: "That's not music, that's not even rock 'n' roll, what a hype!" And then how all the critics (me included) had to turn around and stick our probosci about a half gainer up our collective colons when Grand Funk turned out to be not just a flash in the pan, but, well, gee, almost downright good when you sat and intellectualized it properly. Just like I sat myself down the other night and listened to the new Grand Funk album and found it not inly tolerable, musical, melodic, tasteful — but there was one track that I would swear if some deejay played it back to back with Chicago a hell of\a lot of people would have trouble telling the difference. Come to think of it, "Bad Time (For Bein' in Love)" stumped me for at least the first 364 AM plays — I had no idea who the hell it was, and was flabbergasted when I found out it was the scrapyard Things From Flint. Previous to that, I would have sworn it was Chicago, the Buckinghams, or some equally Guercioesque plop of plasticene.

So, Bad Company. The Superband of the Seventies, indeed. Now, this is a band that, if you didn't know there were actual human beings involved (since Mott the Hoople meant something to me, and Free probably did to you), you could make a pretty good case for the old dumping-the-riffs-in-thecomputer routine. When was it, oh, couldn't have been more than a year and a half ago, when it suddenly became obvious that you could take at least half the "rock 'n' roll bands" grunging away across the FM dial, and if you put all vocalists to death, almost nobody would be able to tell one of these instrumental aggregations from about 13 others. Like, mix out the vocal tracks from Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Saturday Night Special" and Bad. Company's "Deal With the Preacher," and you've got one already-belabored riff, played identically, only difference being that B.C. had a tendency to throw in a little lyricism once in awhile whereas L.S. were ji^st crude thudstomper hillbillies whose market value rested primarily on the fact that they could play their instruments about like they could plant their fists in your teeth, plus they was closer to them rootin' 'thenticated rural blues than B.C., not that that mattered anymore either anyway, since the blues ran dry at least 20 years before heavy metal.

Yep, Ronnie Van Zandt sure did write a song with George Wallace's name in one line. Another line carried Neil Young's name. Ronnie doesn't give a damn about either one, and neither should you. In fact, there really isn't much reason at this point why you should care about any facet of Lynyrd Skynyrd, not when there are Marshall Tuckers around. Because the only way L.S. have managed to unshackle themselves from that Allman chain gang is by picking up the bludgeondary accoutrements of just another rumblestumble heavy metal band. "Freebird" and "Sweet Home Alabama" were the only really musically interesting or emotionally puissant songs they ever had. Gimme Back My Bullets — naw, back off, you fool, playing on your redneck-bully image because it's all you've got, if you're really down to that you can't be so tough. Especially since your new album contains, approximately, one rerun of "Sweet Home Alabama," one Skypyrdized "Ramblin' Man," a slow blues obbligatto or two, and absolutely nothing, either musically or lyrically, that stands out except by dint of its similarity to past hits that defined the Southern/metal formula. Mean, tough, and drunk just ain't enough — you can find that in any working class bar. Not that it's particularly pleasant in the first place.

Bad Company are, by heavy metal standards, relatively refined. I don't like them, particularly, but that's not because I wished they would perform hari-kari on my prefrontals. The reason why I can't get worked up enough about this band (or Aerosmith, or Deep Purple, or...) to even resent them is that they are so utterly, logically predictable, the type of group that starts at a level of proficiency and stylistic identity that makes you know to the soul they don't touch that they will never, ever get any better (and perhaps never any worse) than they are right now. They are a vending machine for packaged, prefab riffs, out of the lowest common denominator of what Ron Wood calls the "stock house," and the only characteristic that makes their macho distinctive from Aerosmith/Tyler's is that you get the sense that Tyler and company are trying just a wee bit too hard to live Up to their stud dude Big Ten Inch image, a bunch of overreaching kids, whereas there can be absolutely no doubt that Paul Rodgers etc. are, as they have so often reiterated, "bad men," perhaps even badder .than Lynyrd Skynyrd, which leads us back once again to the age-old (as old as 1972 and Teenage Wasteland Gazette) speculation that perhaps today's rock fans would do better to convert to Big Time Wrestling fans. I would certainly take Dick the Bruiser over Paul Rodgers any day, even if he doesn't have as much hair on his chest, for the simple reason that Bruiser has a much better sense of humor. There was a certain mildly pretentious grimness about Free that has carried over into Bad Company, even tingeing mousy Mick Ralphs, who looks pretty funny in a beefcake band. Will Bad Company be doing TV spots for Vic Tanny's in 1978? Is there anything to distinguish Run With the Pack from its two predecessors? Yes: the title is rriore outfront than Straight Shooter — even though these boys keep doing their damnedest to live up to their name by demolishing hotel rooms and such ^conformity is the name of their game, they're a corporation as surely as Kinney, Sears, or Elton John and Earth, Wind & Fire are. The fact that they are now imitating themselves merely makes them a double negative. And the fact of bands like Bad Company and Lynyrd Skynyrd is enough to make you long for the good old days of a true personality like John Kay.

ELLIOTT MURPHY Night Lights (RCA)

The real oddity on "Night Lights" is a condescending tribute to Patti Smith titled "Lady Stilletto" in which we learn about her politics ("She leads the anarchist parade"), her dietary habits ("She keeps her weight down by fasting/On Jim Morrison's bones"), and her theatrical flair ("She's a rock dream witch/With MatBeth on lead guitar" .. .Lenny Kaye as MacBeth? GetKen Russell on the phone!). The song concludes with Elliott Murphy giving his backhanded benediction:

Her wounds are open for the sake of art She's living right near the edge I love to see that kind of power It's getting lonely on this ledge.

Not only lonely but demoralizing, especially when thousands gather in the streets below, chanting, "Jump, Elliott, jump!"

Yes. "Lady Stilletto" wins the 1976 Dory Previn Award for Inadvertent Comedy, an award bestowed last year upon Neil Young for his classic of preening pathetica, "Borrowed Tune." Like Tonight's the Night, Night Lights is a venture into rock noir atmospherics, which is certainly preferable to the creaking Major Statement portentousness of Lost Generqtion. yet a venture which fails for Murphy just doesn't have the far-reaching sweep with which to gather in the treasures of the night. The cover shows Murphy firmly astride 42nd Street (flagging DeNiro's taxi?) but the recdrd is the product of a tourist, not a streetweathered veteran, and this dilettantish stance robs the album of any urgency. He pumps a lot of fake pathos into going to a porno movie in "Isadora's Dancers" and "You Never Know What You're In For" has the trite cynicism of a recycled Sam Peckinpah interview. When he sings about "Rich Girls," his sentiments are so antiquely cliched that it's as if he never met any debutantes,, only read about them in yellowed copies of Mademoiselle. Even the album's best track, "Never as Old as Yoii," echoes Bob Dylan during the D's metaphysical-misogynist phase.

Which is of course Murphy's crippling flaw: that in his third album he still hasn't cut loose — he's still copping poses and twirling homages. As "Lady Stiletto" suggests, and "other Murphy titles ("Hollywood," "Marilyn," "Last of the Rock Stars") confirm, one of his obsessions. perhaps his central obsession, is with fame and its discontents. The obsession never becomes compelling because Murphy isn't famous enough to write about fame from the inside and his observations from the outside are more journalistic than artistic. Bereft of autobiography and art. his sorrows-of-fame songs are little more than votive candles flickeringly illuminating fan-mag icons.

Listen, it is no thrill to scorch this album's pretentions because I drubbed Lost Generation in the pages of the Village Voice and was slightly remorseful afterwards; 1 was hoping that this album would offer an occasion for recantation. No such luck. Steve ("Sally Can't Darice") Katz's production is more poundingly straight-ahead than the timorously Paul Rothschild-produced predecessor, but Murphy's first (Aquashow) is still his best because it not only had a brittle vitality but a callowness soslashing it had a certain bravura. Now it seems that there are concentric circles to Murphy's callowness and that his voice is not going to hold out long enough for him to reach the outer rim.

.James Wolcott

All lyrics copyright Sunbury Music, 1976.

SWEET Give Us a Wink (Capitol)

I see here in this clipping that Sweet lead singer Brian Connolly got his throat kicked in during a pub brawl in London in 1974. Besides calling up fascinating parallels to English literary history (Elizabethan poet Kit Marlowe, whom rock critics of the day regarded as the Next Shakespeare, was killed in a tavern brawl at age 29), this incident suggests that the Sweet possess an authentically lusty vitality outside the realms of hype (i.e., a press agent would have arranged to have Connolly kicked in the stomach, head, groin — anywhere but the crucial windpipes).

'With Connolly's tonsils now mended, the Sweet are ready for another grab at the Next Beatles laurels. Certainly they've already paid enough mortal dues to be the Beatles several times over: these same four guys have been playing together since 1970 (when killer Queen were still in Pampers), have survived all the bubblegum Muppeteering of their Chapman-Chinn days without writing one ballad lamenting the repression of their artistic souls, and are now bashing out harder rock than when they were under Phil Wainman's heavy thumb (just the opposite of most groups who finally get to do their own production blah-blah.)

Though it's less design than fateful coincidence, the Sweet have mastered the Beatles' old trick of adopting every worthwhile contemporary musical influence and channeling them all back into an unshakably bourgeois center, thereby winning over the greatest number of fans in the shortest possible time. Thus Sweet's classical metal riffs and hooks, played with clean precision. Timely hints of jetset S-M and bisexuality, always secondary to the pure aggression of the music. Four pub-crawling closet skinheads, in matching shags and platforms.. From "Little Willy" to "Fox On the Run," both in the Top Ten. The list of contradictions the Sweet have mastered (and transcended) is endless, and suggests something of their formidable reserves of r'n'r energy.

Give.Us a Wink lives up to either side of Desolation Boulevard (take your pick), with impressive performance, production, and composition throughout. Many of the songs depict a universe as tumultuous as Connolly's pub depths prophesied. "Action," "Lies In Your Eyes," and "Yesterday's Rain," among others, reinforce the misogynist stance of "Fox On the Run": the usual Sweet protagonist enjoys an I'll-abuse-youbefore-you-can-abuse-me relation with all the young ladies of both sexes.

"Cockroach," indeed, contains some of the meanest invective uttered since the real punks departed for that great circle jerk in the sky: "You crawled into my bed like a cockroach.. .but 1 love you." Mick Jagger didn't think of that, even after A.L. Oldham had buggered him! Nope, a nod's never been as good as a wink. Get Sweet's Give Us a Wink now, and tune in to the best British Invasion since Slade hocked their spellers to buy guitars.

Richard Riegel

BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE Head On (Mercury)

One's boredom with this latest gut-grinder from BTO arises not only from the music itself — which, aside from a number which sounds like "The Girl From Ipanema," is mostly the same old Bachmania buzz — but fronp its run-down, reamed-out on-the-road ethos. That rock and roll highway to speeding metal glory is now so crowded — what with the Bachmans, Steppenwolf (John Kay revs up now and then, just for the memories), Jonathan Richman, the Dictators, and that sweetie who wraps her legs around Springy's velvet rims — that if a deer ever edges across tfje white one, there's going to be an apocalyptic crash-up comparable to the traffic jam sequence in Godard's Weekend. *

Richman and Manitoba's crew at least pay homage to that ethos with crazy-ass parodic wit — Richman's classic "Roadrunner" (on Beserkelely's ChartbusterS Vol. 1) rhapsodizes about being "in touch in the modern world" by rolling down the road with the radio on, and the Dictators' Go Girl Crazy! is a comic celebration of teen prole activities like cruising, girl watching, throwing up, and making a fool of yourself at McDonald's. True American pleasures. However, BTO's auteur, Randy Bachman, is a Canadian Mormon and, as Martin Melhuish documents at merciless length in his authorized bio on BTO, St. Randy of Bachman doesn't drink, smoke, grope, drink Romilar, or wear women's clothes. Melhuish's book is an unwittingly devastating portrait, for despite (or perhaps because of) his slavish worshipful attention to Bachman, the latter emerges as a thoroughly unlikeable entrepreneur —cynical, singlemindedly ambitious, obnoxiously self-righteous.

In short: a Nixonian nerd. Con-N sider the following sentiments from "Head On": "The only way to the top/Is looking out for Number 1"; "You can't be a winner/if you don't play the game"...sounds like our fallen Unindicted Co-Conspirator, yes? BTO certainly resembles a cabal of Young Republicans in their approach to rock for, unlike the Dictators, they're not on the road for fun or heightened kicks, no, for them it's all Hard Work, Taking Care of Business, Pay ing Your Dues. Not all the hooks in the world can disguise their rock-as-drudgery approach , which results in records like this — records so uniform, tasteless, and processed that they're the vinyl equivalent to Pringle's Potato Chips.

James Wolcott

PETER FRAMPTON Frampton Comes Alive (A&M)

Why, after four moderately successful solo albums — rtot to mention a tempestuous and musically prolific stint with Steve Marriott in Humble Pie — has the American public suddenly seized upon Peter Frampton -with the release of this live set? Three months ago this writer had to argue for and in the end drastically alter a small feature on the nimble guitarist . What gives?

The right emotional chemistry, for one. A recent replaying of "I Wanna Go To The Sun" off a battered copy of Something's Happening (1973) sent me scurrying to the turntable to check for wow and flutter. The tempo wasn't right — too muddy. On the live set the same number is positively...yes, effervescent.

The precise guitar playing has always been there, and it is as exquisite and rhythmic as ever (Frampton displays his delicate sence of rhythm throughout, from the chugging guitar work in "Doobie Wah" to his jazzy vocal riffs). Frampton himself is hesitant to attribute his ability to the four years of classical guitar he suffered through. It taught him theory — why certain notes make up certain chords — but he insists that he was learning that anyway. It certainly gave him the broad musical base (he's an ardent jazz buff, and is impatient to compose orchestral music) that gives his music that undefinable, refreshing something in, the midst of an industry of stock riffs and chord changes (I wish he'd give Randy Bachman vocal inflection lessons. Randy needn't reciprocate with big boom-boom pointers — witness "Money" or "It's A Plain Shame.")

Just one word about the talkbox — although the cut on which it is showcased ("Do You Feel") is rather long, Frampton's technique is amusing and flawless. Sure, Jeff Beck sang "She's a womah who understands" through his, but he sounded like a robot's imitation, of Lou Reed (which sounds rather'compelling now that I think about it). The Frampton talkbox has a distinct Southern English accent and is capable of intricate communication with the audience. You'll have to either catch him on the Midnight Special or hustle seats in the battle zone to see how he does it.

Guitar buffs know the magic Frampton can evoke with an open G tuning — but hot licks are present on all the solo albums. What Frampton Comes Alive demonstrates for once and all is that Frampton has a Voice. He is not a singing guitarist, like his brothers of the axe, Clapton or Harrison or Ronnie Wood. Todd sings like a wimp. Jimi talked. Jimmy Page? Jeff Beck? Ffampton's are basically a set of youthful, winning pipes, but he stretches them and sets them vibrating with emotion. He sounds raw-throated on "Show Me The Way", but it's great to hear him hit the deeper registers and tear the words out of his diaphragm. The words in a standard' line of lyrics like "Lost all my money" are bitten off and mangled rather heatedly. If the lyrics don't tell you what he's thinking, (and they're often facile), he gets it across in the delivery. And this is what Frampton Comes Alive conveys — the feeling behind that bell-like, transcendant guitar. Without it the songs would be chillingly beautiful but not half as affecting.

So many live albums don't cut it because the material is never lived up to. The material here is transcended dramatically; there isn't a cut that isn't more compelling than ip the studio. Which leads you to believe, especially since the newest songs are from Frampton (1974), that some fresh songs that are more reflective of bis current heart and mind are in order.

Charges against Frampton of Muzakish repetition apd terminally languid riffs are borne out by parts of the post-Pie LPs that I am somewhat impatient to listen to. But Frampton Alive is more than just a cheeky title; it's an accurate summary of the goods inside, of the emotional energy of the 1976 model Frampton — confident, vibrant with feeling — still able to view himself with considerable humor. What's next?

Susan Whitall

SIDNEY BECHET Master Musician (Bluebird)

Yes, he tuas a master musician, just like the title says. He was one of a very few jazz musicians — Django Reinhardt was another — whose talent was completely unique, sui generis, transcending time, place, and style. He was, with the probable exception of Louis Armstrong, the most gifted improviser to come out of New Orleans. He wrote an autobiography, Treat it Gentle, that is as moving as his finest solos, and that is about as moving as music, gets. He taught Johnny Hodges directly, and, by example, John Coltrane. In his later years, he moved to France, where he was considered a monstre sacre. He was Sidney Bechet, who played clarinet and soprano saxophone, and it is no exaggeration to call him one of the great American musicians.

He came out of the New Orleans

tradition, but he transcended it. Sometimes his horn was pure emotion. Listening to him, you can hear one of the origins of Ellington's remarkable synthesis of American music. This Bluebird reissue contains thirty-six tracks on two records, with the Blue Notes, the finest things he ever did. Here are the names of some of the other musicians on the records: Tommy Ladnier, Kenny Clarke, Sid Catlett, Red Allen, Charlie Shavers, Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Baby Dodds, J.C. Higginbotham. And there are two tracks by Sidney Bechet's One Man Band on which he plays clarinet, spprano, tenor, piano, bass and drums. Just like-a synthesizers As Robert Palmer remarks in/his excellent and extensive notes, these selections are remarkably free of "the 'novelty' vocals, pop-influenced banjo interludes, and other ephemera which were endemic to earlier recordings." One could write for pages about the wonderful, felicitous bits of music on these records, made between 1932 and 1941, but perhaps a few song titles will give the scope: Ellington's "The Mooche" and "Mood Indigo," Jelly Roll Morton's "Wild Man Blues," Basie's "One O'Clock Jump," Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag," plus standards ranging from "Indian Summer" through "Limehouse Blues" and "Ain't Misbehavin'" to "Strange Fruit." And remarkable one-of-a-kind performances like the trio with Earl Hines and Baby Dodds, "Blues in Thirds."

This is really some of the loveliest music anybody ever made, and there's so much of it at such a reasonable price that, if you don't have earlier LP releases of this material, it's an essential record. Bechet lived for his music, and it shows. As he wrote in his autobiography, "You tell it to the music, and the music tells it to you. That's the life there is to a musicianer."

Joe Goldberg

SPEEDY KEEN Y'Know Wot 1 Mean? (Island)

Speedy Keen's basically comical persona is good enough by me: the inebriated ex-Mod, a tad daft, struggling for equilibrium in ci world whose quirks don't quite coincide with his own. His faltering, slightly hysterical voice fits nicely.

Trouble is, he doesn't exploit those qualities very much anymore; there's nothing here nearly as bizarre as his songs from Thunderclap Newman, and what he does rely on is fairly routine pop rorhancing and posturing. His songs are full of hooks that sound good the first time around but don't stick in the mind; his melodies are mostly ordinary, with too little effort put into fleshing them out. He's got to use his imagination. As it is, the two most memor-

able cuts here are "Almost 18" (yes, yet another Roy Orbison fanatic comes out of the ebset) and "Bad Boys," a rather disorienting reggae goof. Bunching the rockers on one side and the ballads on the other has only dramatized the essential sameness of the rest of his material.

It's a shame, too, because I'm still convinced that underneath that bland surface there lurks a genuine pop original, maybe something along the lines of an aging Jonathan Richman. Whoever it is, I hope lets him escape soon.

John Morthland

PRETTYTHINGS Savage Eye (Swan Song)

Angloid droolers can breathe a sigh of relief (toot, toot). Although the twittering (sometimes hairy, often comical) falsettos of lOcc and Sparks are cracking under the strain, the Pretty Things remain consistently intact, immune to the castrated trendiness of other anglopoid crybabies. Along with English bands like Nazareth and Status Quo, the Pretty Things sacrifice flash for mediocrity (keeps them away from the dump-heap). At one time THE UGLIEST BAND IN THE WORLD (see "Midnight to Six Man"), the Pretty Things have evolved from frantic punkers to progressive evangelists, their best work patterned on their recently reissued early70s cult faves of S.F. Sorrow and Parachute. The miracle is that their guitars are still in tune.

The eye on the album cover denotes the contents (no Murine needed). The Freak Scene put an eye on the cover of their Psychedelic Psoul album (signified the mesmerizing folk-rock contained within), the Mesmerizing Eye did too (psycho^ orchestration for the handicapped),

and let's not forget them bloodshot 13th Floor Elevator peepers (hypnotic trash for the mind and body). Likewise, the Pretty Things' Savage Eye equally holds the senses. "Under the Volcano" rips into Led Zep hurtling and smashing, "My Song" possesses the acoustics and the harmonies of the Who, "Remember That Boy" dry heaves like Bad Co., and "Drowned Man" repeats the patterns so apparent on "Joey" from the Pretty Things' own Silk Torpedo (last year's quality I release).

This whole album, in fact, creates a trance. It's like watching the fuzz on the teevee screen for X-hours straight. Blue splotches appear before your eyes, and your ears hum. Not implying the boys are bland, nosirree, just restful: they ease the tensions.

Readers of the Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press will not be disappointed. Neither will any staunch Angloid supporter. For the truth is that the Pretty Things are strong third basemen for the Swan Song label (holding fort for Bad Co. and Led Zep), Remaining in the background, their records are always good for a spin or two. Unlike the sliced eye in Un Chien Andalou or the eye of Janet Leigh's cadaver in Psycho, the Savage Eye here does not represent a destructive force. More like Lautreamont's ambivalent eye, perhaps, peeping into the dark comers of the universe. Obviously not that intense or serious, but the music on the Savage Eye does remain that hypnotic and certainly as controlled as previous Pretty Things efforts.

Robot A. Hull

BARRY WHITE Greatest Hits Let The Music Play (20th Century) -

He's back. Of that we can be certain. Once again, just at the moment you'd expected him to shrug off the well-worn mantle he's shouldered for a generation, Barry White has bounced back, with two monumental albums, an expanded political stance and unprecedented plans for a 40-city "Black Lightning Revue" which will take him into the small clubs of this great land later in the spring.

First, the incredible Greatest Hits, ten songs from the great 1973-1975 period. Despite his occasional participation in outside projects (Love Unlimited, Love Unjtd. Orchestra, Weight Watchers), it's clear from one listen to Hits that White cares, cares deeply about the direction of our generation. No longer outgunned by the New Romantics, he is at full command, aware and confident that his triumph of haunted uncertainty will continue to gliide us and those who follow. The anguished voice that bemoaned Our Fate in "What Am I Gonna Do With You" has become a Conscience, active and affirmative, strong enough now emotionally and spiritually to respond that he is "Never Never Gonna Give [Us] Up." So be it.

TURN TO PAGE 80.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 59.

If subterranean tension wins out over an overwrought tenderness in Greatest Hits, the reverse curiously holds true in Let the Music Play. White has reclaimed overstatement as a vocal tool (thank God) and attuned himself acutely to his musical antecedents. White's best work has always been self-referential, existing in the context of His own past; hence "I'm So Blue And So Are You" resembles "Baby Blues" as the title track compares to "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe." "You See the Trouble With Me," a new masterpiece every bit as potent as "Honey Pjease, Can't Ya See," receives almost a stoical reading, hard, implacable but in a way still bearing witness.

Reclaiming his title, his role as Spokesman, his destiny to lead a generation born in conflict, bathed in Vietnam and blow-dripd at Woodstock, White has Succeeded as no pop" performer before or after him. Let the Music Play is an heroic achievement and it feels right once again to say that Barry White stood against the storm.

Gene Sculatti

GARYSTEWART Steppin' Out (RCA)

What most attracted rock fans to Gary Stewart's first "album was his raw, exuberant singing, and the subsequent suspicion that he was really a closet rocker. But while he obviously does have an affinity for rock, this album demonstrates that he is a country singer by choice, not by accident of geography, and that he is also a staunch country music fan.

The songs — hymns to the southern honky tonks and jails, affectionate pokes at redneck pride, tales of sex accepted or rejected on the run — have been chosen meticulously to summon up his particular brand of country mythology. It's all selfconscious enough that lyrics are printed in full on the sleeve (a first, I believe, for country music), and the variety of styles he works adds up to something like a country music Art Statement.

Hence "Flat Natural Born GoodTimin' Man" opens the album with Stewart's own keening slide guitar, and it rocks a lot harder than country' songs are supposed to. There's a sensitivo Danny O'Keefe song in "Quits," and a traditional/progressive Willie Nelson special in "I Still Can't. Believe You're Gone." Stewarf-~does a Charlie Daniels rocker ("Trudy") pretty straight, then turns around and cuts Lefty Frizzell's honky tonk classic "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time" the way Jerry Lee would have done it. "Easy People" gets a souped-up bluegrassy arrangement appropriate to the moonshinesipping, cockfight-watching "rednecks all the way" described in the song.

Stewart sings superbly throughout, though it's increasingly clear that his "rock" voice tain't nuthin' but an unfettered Kentucky moun: tain tenor. He is so uncompromisingly country that he's likely to have more trouble crossing over than the Tompall/Willie/Waylon axis of country music. But I bet he'll do it anyhow, because his enthusiasm is so infectious and his instincts so good. He appears to want it both ways, and so far I'd say he's doing fine, just fine. .*

John Morthland

lOcc

How Dare You!

(Mercury)

This albu m is so cute that it should be packaged in Dr. Denton jammies) tucked into bed, and awakened in the morning by a Fonzie alarm clock. Though lOcc, unlike Bowie and the imperial John, will never make it on Soul Train, there's enough juvenile jive here (McCartneyesque sprightliness mixed with Monty Pythonesque whimsy) to put them over with record-buyers whose minds never left the high school cafeteria. In fact, nty favorite song was "I Wanna Rule the World" until I discover-' ed that the refrain wasn't "I wanna be a bus" but "I wanna be a boss." They were more convincing as buses.

Still, How Dare You! is preferable to the previous The Last Soundtrack, since there aren't any pools of oily gunk like "Un Nuit A Paris" or the insufferable "Life Is a Minestrone." Technically, the album is gleamingly accomplished — the band must pitch tent in the studio until every knob and dial become intimate friends — and musically it has enough eclectic lifts and tempo changes to hold one's attention; Too often however those changes are there solely to prevent attention from drifting off. The stretched-out lyricism of Bowie's Station to Station is more tonic than lOcc's sputtery cleverness, yet given their droopily fey lyrics, it's understand-' able that they feel it imperative to provide a sense of merry-romping momentum. The failure of the album, and of the band, is that it isn't understood that such lyrics (like the repeated "Life is a roller Coaster that we all ride") should be blurred in an Enoesque rush of sound rather than rendered with Beatley bounciness. Though lOcc is prolific in producing rubied cutesies reminiscent, of "Ob-La-Di,v Ob-La-Da" — a process aided by a lead singer who at his best sounds like McCartney (at his worst like Eric Carmen) — they fail to come up with an equivalent to "Back in the USSR," i.e., a song which provides an injection of compelling energy.

Mercifully, this time out lOcc spares us anything as dreary as "I'm Not in Love," with its whispered "Big boys don't cry" floating through a myriad of monotonously murmuring voices, but they still haven't risen above such overbred, undernourished pretentiousness. Despite its title, How Dare You! is without any moments of shock or outrage — it's as innocuously diverting as an evening spent at the Ice Capades watching rows of Disney Animals do comic pirouettes.

James Wolcott

ROSITA MANGUAL El Monte Nights (Chimera)

Of course, you have to see her live. The visual impact of this proud Chicana lesbian stomping out her songs of urban rage in her green beret and black leather zipper jacket is too overwhelming to be suggested by an LP; listening to her powerful voice, it's hard to believe she's only four feet nine. You can believe her when she cites the legendary Cuban vedette Libertad Lamarque as her major influence. The band, Second Hand Rose, is everything that's been said about it, and no one should overlook the work of Anthony (Tony Pro) Profesionale on electric trombone, or the sly hint of polka and schottische in his tight arrangements.

Of course, she's had help. It's now practically legendary how David Crosby, acting on a tip that either Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, or Emmylou Harris was recording, wandered into the studio where El Monte'Nights was being mixed, and sang the harmony part cold on "Martin Fierro and Jose Marti." Later, on being introduced to Rosita and being told who she was, David said, "The music that happened was pretty spontaneous and righteously amazing, and, as a matter of strict fact, got me off more than anything I've ever done. It was like joyous. I've been a member of some pretty powerhouse groups, you know, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Crosby/Nash and Crosby/Byrds, but I'd go out as Crosby/Mangual in a minute. Because harmony gets me off, and if there's one thing Rosita can do like a fucking bird, if you'll pardon the pun, it's sing melody, and anybody with any musical chops at all knows it's that a harmony singer, which is basically what I am, needs a melody singer to put that harmony to. It's sort of synergistic." David is rumored to have written a song for Rosita's possibly forthcoming second LP, called, we are told, "You've Gotta Save the Blue Heron or the Jig is Up,"

Great as the harmony admittedly is, everybody comes to hear the words. Because make no mistake about it, Rosita Mangual is a poet. Some of her songs are straight auto-, biography, the over-familiar tale of the feisty street kid growing up hooked on rock ln' roll that she manages to make new by her striking imagery ("The bastards picked me clean/at seventeen"). Others, like the masterful 34 minute "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias" (a littleknown Tijuana bullring trumpeter who died of natural causes at 83) brilliantly combine intensely personal psychosexual rumination with acerbic social commentary:

Jean Harlow, I dream about your tit

Raquel, I'd die to lick your clit

President Ford, come off that shit.

Hugues Panassie, the great French jazz critic emeritus, has sensibly kept the production as spare and lean as Rosita herself.

For all its flaws *— the dazzling "Che and Cher," heartbreaking as it is, is a bit overstated — I doubt there will be a better Chicana lesbian rock vocal album produced this year. A true artifact of our time.

, Joe Goldberg

Rockaramas are by the incredible Nancy Miller, Peter Laughner, John X. Morthland, Michael Davis, Lester Bangs, Burt Reynolds, Delmore Schwartz, Jeffrey Morgan, Tony Mastrianni, and Richard C. Walls.

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