THE ROLLING STONES Black & Blue (Rolling Stone)

There are two things to be said about this new Stones album before closing time: one is that they are still perfectly in tune with the times (a.k.a., sometimes, trendies) and the other is that the heat's off, because it's all over, they really don't matter anymore or stand for anything, which is certainly lucky for both them and us. 1 mean, it was a heavy weight to carry for all concerned. This is the first meaningless Rolling Stones album, and thank god. No rationalizations — they can now go out there and compete with Aerosmith, or more precisely, since just like the last two before it this album's strongest moments are Jagger singing ballads, the "adult pop" market. Barry Manilow, even.

This album is so good 1 don't even hate it like the new Led Zep, which admittedly is unworthy of hatred from anybody except a true patriot who expected more than what you knew you were going to get — what you get here is sweet flow muzak dentist office conversation piece' bright eyes shining in the face of nothing at all which they will not. even confront and more power to 'em. Yeah, I watched him die. Shit, don't even feel like a voyeur, twas all done in the name of art or the roto swagger or something, soda sokay Mick, 1 still like you like an old dull friend who you keep around for purely compassionate (empathetic?) reasons and because you remember when. Like whoever it was that started the Velvets. You're stuck in a retread, stomp on it, no, not good enough, I hear you growling but you can't barge in, especially since you insist on invoking Jamaica/Reggae which you mighta been there but' on the recorded evidence you know nothing about or at least can't translate as you used to godamighty do so well.

So you're a washout. That's why 1 like you now. I identify with the wretched of the earth, like any self respecting liberal, beyond that all my vicarious fantasies are numb nullnodes, and dgmn if you haven't qualified some time now. So welcome to the museum, jump and shout work it on out goo goo wah wah pedaling backwards. All the uptempo "numbers" on this album with the exception of the of course by now obligatory "reggae" numbah and the disco chant which is not so droll nor offensive as plain palatable like okay you wanna reduce yourself to the level of the most banal music around because you've always tried to keep up, fine, but all the other rockers sound like waterlogged "Brown Sugars" and even that's okay because what the hell you know I mean they're good guys even if they did fuck up Ron Wood apparently because even last tour last summer he played such monstro chunka wailout guitar with the Faces (in such contrast to how blithely he blended into the general lifeless woodwork of the Stones tour), whom he apparently hatted (nobody with sensibilities intact could like Rod at this point anyway) and maybe that was why he was so good therein at least at the end, but now he's slapping palms foreheads synapses collapsed with his idol Keith (which makes him Nick Kent) and the result is that, going strictly by this album, Ron Wood is no longer a raucket guitar hero. He's succeeded in becoming as dead and anonymous as Keith. Take a gander at the cover and realize they're even coaching him in the art of lqoking grim, I mean you cannot be a trueblues badass Rolling Stone and SMILE, which is .further loggings of toobad toolate blues, because Ron Wood has proven himself one of the great smilers of all time. It's like he's in Keith school, and at this point the smartest move missah Richard(s) could possibly make would be to start a mail correspondence course sent off matchbooks to look sexily defunct.

Because Keith is just a dumb shit who never figured out that there was anything good to be said on guitar after Chuck Berry, the worst kind of oldies-fetishist, fuck his image, you could look like that if you were a rich junkie too, outlaw my ass, he's boring, a word I seldom invoke because there's too many good books to read to ever get bored and too many fine fine records to listen to but this ain't one of them.

I won't even comment on the lyrics because they don't mean shit. They're stupid and deserve to be. Not even "Memory Hotel," which I could get a cheap shot off by saying the line "You're just a memory that used to mean so much to me" applies to the Stones, but I don't believe that, I just love 'em for getting wasted, as they are, and slowly dying with such immaculate sense of timing, I mean they still can do no wrong, except if you really are dumb enough to expect a Statement, well, NO STATEMENTS HERE. They even copped out on the S&M cover packaging originally envisioned, for which actually I am glad, gladder than about any of the music herein, because there is plenty enough too much ersatz plethora of S&M culture around as it is, and even S&M freaks probably gotta resent the Stones for not really contributing to it but always playing at the most chichi trendy formulaic cuffs of bondage. When really they were always in bondage to some stupid idea of themselves. I mean, Jagger and Townshend — who cares if they're 30 years old? Even a single reader of this magazine? No. Nobody gives a shit about their hangup about that but Jagger and Townshend. Patti Smith is 30, the author of this piece is 27 and still stands upon his head on occasion cartwheels for theparty, Charlie Mingus is 54 and still breathing fire in his stance if not his most recent music. He learned the obvious lesson that old can mean Duke Ellington mellow, not the garbage heap, but the Stones want to be on the garbage heap, where else you gonna pitch outlaws, but sorry, I can't take it for anything butproduct, a year and a half in the making too, ha, what a joke, what a great laugh, what a band what a group what a charge what a rock 'n' roll band what a band what a band what a band, goodbye.

P.S. (of, course)

But and then at that time also, I recall with my old tyud Mick, swam out scenes a good drifter cannabisaltoff the boardwalk entirely, and we listened a tune or time or two, and to conclusion we did come, most specifically that this here makes hay jump .and spindly-leg jeckyl hustle because it's funny and good as gone can be — "Hot Stuuff" — when Mick comes on with that jive Rasta growly blab and actually nerves up to "Allayoupeapalinnyaksitay, I know yall goin' broke, to everybody in Jamaica, livin' workin' in the sun, yer hot stuff," yeah, hot hicks wack on down, let those Jaymochan rude boys get their mitts on your gullet dad, they'll squeeze till you forget about tryina be anybody's v badass, but slopfingered wimp as you are you're all right. Because for one thing we figured out that Bianca is smarter than you and it blew your mind that such a phenomenon could exist so you write all these mushy love ballads your last alpees while she fucks off with Ryan O'Neill. "Hey honey would you like to get something to eat...?" Chick sal san on rye, quick or slow don't make no, gone bleared kid you are in the age you have declaimed yourself, hand of fate sureshot horseshit, you still could if you would but you won't but that's okay because we love you for what yOu are. Less than nothing, because you were something once. So thank you for not aspiring; you are an inspiration to the blank generation whole.

DR. FEELGOOD

Malpractice

(Columbia)

Dr. Feelgood is building on a fine ar.d noble tradition. Their music is rooted in Chicago rhythm andblues, but while they may have gone back and. listened to the old Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf sides, I seriously doubt if that's where they first heard these sounds. More likely their, original inspiration was groups such as the early Stones, Animals and Yardbirds, for Dr . Feelgood represents the third generation British blues band. But rather than emphasize the showy solos and metallic riffs to which British blues always seems to descend, this b&nd prefers to make it on raw vitality, with a whopping measure of sleaze thrown in for good measure.

The cover photo gives a good enough introduction to the music inside. They stand there looking outside even The Outsider, like the villains in a Colin Wilson nightmare. Drummer Big Figure, whose ultracool cymbal work actually carries their version of "Riot in Cell Block #9," and especially bassist John B. Sparks nail down the bottom. Singer Lee Brilleaux shares a little stylistically with Jagger, but there are even stronger intimations of Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop; he places a certain icy distance between himself and his material so that a song like "Don't You Just Know It" — a goodtimey tune that was almost a novelty song in Huey "Piano" Smith's original — becomes instead something more akin to a swaggering adolescent threat. Wilko Johnson, who is responsible for the original material here, writes lyrics along the lines of ". ..rock me on the floor/Til I grow sore," and doesn't seem to cafe about much of anything else. As a guitarist, he is from the bellringing (Chuck Berry via Keith Richard) school, except his solos are done with a lot more fuzz, contributing the essential factor to this band's murky sound. He also handles the rhythm power chords like he was born in a cement mixer.

Malpractice, the group's American debut (though there is a previous. LP in England)-, achieves its desired effects while maintaining the loose, snappy feeling of an old Suri record. It presents a balance of classics and originals; of the latter, "Don't Let Your Daddy Know" is one great slice of jailbait lust, while "You Shouldn't Call the Doctor (If You Can't Afford the Bills)" closes the album out in pile-driving fashion. 1 hope there's more of it to come, and soon.

John Morthland

NILS LOFGREN

Cry Tough

(A&M)

I think we'd all agree that in his pixie jumpsuit and Audrey Hepburn coif Eric Carmen is no rock-and-roll match for a scarved buccaneer like Nils Lofgren — even tepid Lofgren is preferable to the gloopy pudding of Carmen's solo album. Yet when the two of them played NY's Bottom Line a few days apart, I sat happily through Carmen's set while Lofgren's sent me reeling out into the street, my nerves crackling with irritation. Unlike the other faves on the punkola jukebox (Spfingsteen, La Smith, Lou the Reed), Nils Lofgren has yet to get beyond a cult audience and, using that sour Bottom Line gig as a touchstone, I'd like to offer some tentatively explanations as to why Cry Tough isn't likely to change that situation.

Actually, only one explanation: Lofgren's music is utterly dramaless. Unlike Smith and Springsteen, Lofgren hasn't built a strong band around .himself and his concerts become merely a star turn without material strong enough to justify a star turn, he., he's no Bowie. What he is, is a phenomenally 'adroit guitarist whose solos go endlessly rippling on because he has no one to play off; without any tensions of counterpoint, Lofgren's quickfinger dexterity becomes mere doodling.. .intricate scratchings in search of a design. And since his yocalsare also floatingly blurred, his on-stage music evokes an electronic fog swirling with static. I don't believe in genuflecting before hooks * but if he's going to write songs without them, then he better learn to nail his ditties down with some form of musical punctuation. Because in their absence: gaseousness.

What's uncompelling about Cry Tough then is its lack bf tension, of friction. Sartorially, Lofgren goes in for the iayered look (vest, scarves, jewelry, ett.) and musically this layered effect can be appealing, as on "Mud in Your Eye," where the upright bass, acoustic strumming, and laconic vocal all sjidingly complement each other. However, his cover of the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" suffers from the same treatment since such a song needs a sharp-focus directness; here, it just gurgles lazily, monotonously. So it is with the rest of the album. The musicianship is meticulously fine (except for Aynsley Dunbar's thickfisted drumming), the production is impeccable, none of the songs are deadhead clunkers, and yet — well, none of it matters. Beneath all those layers of proficiency is a dramalessness which leaves me cold. As on stage, Lofgren's manner is so nonchalant that when he sings a song like "Jailbait," he makes balling a Lolita sound about as lasciviously thrilling as an evening at the laundromat. Lofgren is hailed as a rocking street-punk, another son of Studs Lonigan, but what comes through in his obligatory teenagelust number is the sensibility of a sessionman. Even if that's what most rock stars have become — glorified session-men, I mean (and listen to the walking-dead Black and Blue for the most depressing evidence) — it doesn't have to happen to Nils Lofgren, not if he can gust away the dry-ice narcissistic miasma which now enshrouds him. For what he shouldn't become is what his fans want him to become: the Complete Rocker. Because to be a complete rocker means to be sealed off from the rest of the world, entrapped within the airless hermetic void of the studio. Hand Lofgren some explosives for his escape, because if he doesn't break loose, the future of rock will be physically emblemed by Eric Carmen's coif, Peter Frampton's nipples, and Lynyrd Skynyrd's bruises. A coif or a bruise," it's all the same scam.

James Wolcott

SLADE

Nobody's Fools

(Warner Bros.)

Back in '68 I was in this indooroutdoor drive-in place for a biker triple feature and between pics the PA guy was playin some utterly obscure British album with little or no rhyme or reason in terms of English mainstream of the time, obscure influences and everything. Got no idea what the album was. No idea. SOUNDED ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE THO. Matter of mainstream warp (not a time warp) or something, like both groups're grabbin handfuls of turf with their eyes closed (or maybe even open!) just to ground themselves in something — and all the something ends up being is a few random cubic feet ■of somebody else's turf that don't even fit together (like thinking that clouds're substantial enough to walk on and even Jesus requires water at least). Y'know: WHAT IS IT THEY THINK THE STUFF THEY'RE DOING IS?

Like is the title cut of this here Slade whatsit the "Fixing a Hole" beginning followed immediately by "My Sweet Lord" followed in sequence by other latter-day Beatle rip-offs? (Speaking of "obscure influences!) I mean that's what it is, point is what do they think they're doing? Y'know cause being an actual early New Beatles (first scouting party for the Bay City Rollers!) seems to've permanently made them that forever. But there's a developmental patience showing through the whole continued charade even in its decline. Like any other New Beatles could be excused if they didn't wait five years to do their "Revolution #9," y'know who's got the patience? Slade has: it's taken them this long to develop even a feeble simulation of a John Lennon persona out of all that solid core of an insistence on Ringo-is-allwe-are. "Let's Call It Quits" is John doing his famous "rock and roll" riff of not too many years ago however so it's really post-Beatle get-down John and not even the original Beatle John from scratch...

Which means their selection of what to plagiarize is really offthemoney by gum. Like "I'm a Talker" just up and steals the entire first line of Tompall Glaser's "Put Another Log on the Fire" of all things — and presumably THEY'RE THINKIN IT'S LIKE THE BEATLES DELVING INTO C&W BY HAVING GEORGE DO CARL PERKINS. Kk-k-k-krazy group!

But. But there is a kind of durable "childlike" quality about the way they construct songs around a concept. Like "All the World Is a Stage" is really just as "cosmic" exposition of that old standby the Jack & Mrs. Sprat theme. "Did Ya Mama Ever Tell Ya" is nursery-rhymes-to-birds&-bees. "Scratch My Back" is yet another scratch-it song. Y'know they take kinda easy subjects y'might say. Great! Kids can understand the message!

Nothing difficult at all and only the slightest "educational value—you'd have to be five for cryin out loud to be hepped to something new by these jokers. So maybe they'll go down in "history" as folksongwriters of "Big Rocky Candy Mountain" type schoolboy stuff or around-thecampfire or something, y'know they might actually have a continued useful function somewhere...

"Do the Dirty" tho is a good Rodney-type disco item. Seemingly. Which means at least you can still dance to em once in a while, lotta other bands you can't...swell.

R. Meltzer

JOE WALSH You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind

(ABC)

ROBIN TROWER Live

(Chrysalis)

Having established their audiences and developed a solid, dependable base to work from, both Robin Trower and Joe Walsh are at the Live Album point in their careers. It used to be that the live set was the final filler before the Greatest Hits package, but thanks to the rock audience's antlike response to the stars, it's now just a kicker before the performance heads out for bigger and better things.

Walsh thankfully has some things to go on to. With his current connection with the Eagles, this album exists primarily to keep him in cigarette money until the summer tour's gross receipts can be audited. Trower, however, had better find a new ship to sink on. His undeniable Hendrix obsession is reaching the stupor perfection where even Mahogany Rush fans probably laugh up their diapers at him.

Trower is known primarily as a hotshot guitarist, while Walsh, not as easily categorized, is primarily known as Joe Walsh. In that alone he has a lot going for him. He may have all the image of a smoke detector, but his music is superbly styled in the boogie mode, along with a few surprises. Side one is given to three big rockers, winding up with his trademark, "Rocky Mountain Way." All the cuts are guaranteed to leave your head feeling like the inside of a toaster. His superb, all-names stomp band comes surprisingly close to sapience at times, but with bam geniuses like Joe Vitale and the great Jay Ferguson in the lineup, the thump only occasionally gives way to finger diddling. The flip, which includes flutes, is better left unmentioned.

Trower's set, on the other hand, is constantly marred by pockets of languishing turtlenoise. Potential killers like "Too Rolling Stoned" and "Rock Me Baby" are slowed down midway for guitar chase scenes and slowly die. The life-on-other-planets Hendrix ballads are total Pamprin, particularly "Daydream" with its rainbows-turning-to-drizzle lyrics, and the numbing "I Can't Wait Much Longer." You're not the only one, Robin. Either drive it or park it.

Rick Johnson

C.W. McCALL Wilderness (Polydor)

Let's face it. "Convoy" was probably the one moment of pure inspiration C.W. McCall's adcopyblighted brain will ever enjoy, and those fans hoping for a comparable rerun can line up over there with the Don McLean and Pipkins retinues. "Convoy" was perfect, too good; better than we ever could have expected among the AM wastes: it offered real humor, more potential revolution than any of the MC5's forcible-rape skits, better capsulization of American history than a whole shelf of Band albums, and the purest button-slamming car radio fun in many a dark of moon.

Oh, yeah, C.W.'ll be good for at least three or four more albums, not to mention innumerable repackages (if Polydor has acquired MGM's merchandising philosophy along with its other assets), but "Convoy's" roadblock-smashing exuberance is already as dead as last week's swindle sheets, On Wilderness, McCall's rushed-up second album, C.W. at least avoids trying a tooexact copy of "Convoy," but the results are thin. "Four Wheel Cowboy" and "Riverside Slide" feature the Rubber Duck's beloved growl, but the incisive lyricism and robust satire of his earlier declamation have been replaced with facile romanticism and Marty Robbins melodrama, respectively.

In fact, "Convoy" may have been even more of a psychic core-melt for McCall than I've already hyperbolized, as Wilderness' featured single, "There Won't Be No Country Music (There Won't Be No Rock'N' Roll)" handily destroysall the mythic cockiness C.W. exuded in "Convoy". "T.W.B.N.CM(T.W.B.N. R.N.R.)" opens with an ecological rant worthy of John Denver (at least), but quickly degenerates into an orgasm of garden-variety conservative paranoia better suited to Ronald Reagan: "When THEY take away our country/THEY'LL take away our soul." •

Ecoactivist McCall's equation of maintaining pure air and-water with preserving rock'n'roll country'n' western, two of the most plasticprofligate entities we know, is a muddled irony which must derive from his abject terror of those anonymous brain police from T.H.E.Y., who'll never again permit him me private-property luxury of a foldoutjacket scene like that inside Wilderness (snowy woods & playful dog.)

Ah; wilderness. Love it or love it. When pop music is outlawed, only outlaws will make solo albums. Register admen, not firearms.

Richard Riegel

IAN HUNTER

All American Alien Boy

(Columbia)

After Mott the Hoople, after that abortive Hunter-Ronson collaboration and tour, after sequestering himself in his Westchester estate for a few months, Ian Hunter is going it utterly alone. Gathering a truly oddi set of instrumentalists together, including three members of Queen, Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius, Journey drummer Aynsley Dunbar, and ace soul session cats David Sanborn and Cornell Dupree, he has tried something new, very experimental, and very different. All I wish is that it had been very good, too.

Notthat All American Alien Boy is terrible — an artist of Hunter's'considerable talents doesn't fall apart that quickly — but it could have been much better. The main problem is that the solid, hard-charging background supports a bunch , of songs that rapge from very good to awkward, with most of them falling in the latter category. One of Hunter's big weaknesses has always been his preachiness (although it's also been one of his virtues when it works the right way), and oh this album, in songs with titles like "Letter to Brittania from the Union Jack,". "Rape,'V"Apathy 83," and "God," he is stretching his listeners' patience to the breaking point. When you've got Something to Say, as Bob Dylan conclusively proved during his political period, it's easier to get people to attend to what you're Saying when it's couched in something less than specific language. There is a difference between journalism and song-lyrics, after all, and lyrics like "God said... There's no religion, you did that/it helps to keep your little leaders fat/Like faith 'n superstition say/To help you pass the time away" aren't calculated to keep anyone on the dancefloor, let alone on the same radio station.

But some of the songs here are right up with the best he s done: All American Alien Boy may be a little chaotic lyrically, but the performance is as exuberant as you could want; "Irene Wilde" is a rather more personal song than he's done before and it shows a sensitivity, both lyrical and musical, that Hunter should exploit more; "Restless Youth" is a heh-vee number about a young Mafioso, a sort of secondcousin (all but morally) to Dylan's "Joey," with some killer lead guitar from one Gerry Weems.

For all its faults, this album shows Ian Hunter striking out in a new direction. His songs deal with life instead of show business, and even if he has bitten off far more than he can chew here, I think All American Alien Boy, a transitional and somewhat equivocal step; is nonetheless a step in a direction that may eventually result in some of Ian Hunter's best songs.

Ed Ward

KISS

Destroyer

(Casablanca)

After three near-perfect studio albums and an excellent live summing-up LP that finally put them in the platinum, Kiss have pulled an abrupt change in direction that goes over about as well as a lead Buckinghams.

As the prime purveyors of desensitized stupidity in the twilight of the behavioral sink, Kiss could not be matched. Their 70s treatments of Chuck Berry succeeded wh, e others of the same "mentality" fell short because they alone had a true insight into the realities of day-today teenage dumbness not unlike a latter-day Beach Boys. Songs like "Strutter," "Deuce," "Strange Ways," and the great "Rock 'N' Roll All Night" could only be created by drainage experts of the first degree, and several of their tunes have already become bar band classics.

So just when they're starting to truly make it big, on their own terms no less, what do they do but hire on Alice Cooper producer Bob Ezrin to mold them into the next Billion Dollar Babies. His influence, while not altogether dippy, is still unfortunate, having deprived them of much of their rusty coathanger appeal while fjlling the album with cute Cooperish touches like giggle children effects, female backup singers, and worst of all: strings!

While there are still several good cuts — "Detroit Rock City," "Shout It Out Loud," and Kim Fowley's "Do You Love Me" — the only way you can get to them is to skip around because Ezrin, in his guiding wisdom, has stuck a totally ludicrous ballad on either side along with other random atrocities like the tubular bells in "Do You Love Me" and the aforementioned kiddie voices which ruin an otherwise fine "God Of Thunder." Ezrin takes several writing credits as well, which may explain such Alice-like baby anthems as "Flaming Youth" and the token inclusion of the words "rock 'n' roll" in nearly every' song.

This sure ain't the scuzzy Kiss we all came to love (and hate) so well and, while Destroyer is selling faster than reds dp at one of their concerts, 1 still think they're making a big mistake in the long run.

Rick Johnson

LAURA NYRO

Smile

(Columbia)

Mystique is Laura Nyro's mantra. During the Sixties her delicate urban lyricism made her a Cher for middle-elass bohemians — a bohemian princess — and a four year sabbatical fashioned that mystique into drama, the sort of drama generated by Dylan's prolonged convalescence after Blonde on Blonde. The release of Smile aroused curiosity as to what Laura Nyro would have to report after several years in the shadows: as with Joni Mitchell, Nyro sparks in her audience a sense that they are not only watching her grow as artist and woman, but that they are shaping that growth — that a collective autobiography is being written.

Smile makes for a very dull chapter. \

Smile suggests that those years were spent in a hammock, or on the front porch watching the waning moon, or on a tranquil beach... evenings without lightning. Like so many female-artiste works (Snow's Second Childhood, Janis Ian's Aftertones, Carole King's Thoroughbred), the album is fluid, wistful, jazzy.. .caressingly inoffensive.., inoffensive except for Nyro's voice which sounds as if a starving cat were trapped in her ribcage.

Two nice moments: the album's opening, when Nyro says "Strange" as the acoustic guitar enters, and the Oriental ballet instrumental which softly closes side two. In between, the screeching of the cat and the swaying of the hammock...cosmic jottings and scratchy musings...if Emily Dickinson had mastered the acoustic guitar and her morbidity, she might have written songs like these... luckily for us she prefered to dust the furniture. You see, Dylan got his goddesses mixed up: It's Laura Nyro who is the Scorpio sphinx in a calico dress...and I bet she'd like it in Mozambique, too.

I'll go with her if she'll leave the cat home.

James Wolcott

WET WILLIE

The Wetter The Better

(Capricorn)

Not one of your great Wet Willie albums. The band is still as tight as ever, but they don't seem to be using that tightness to take them anywhere this time. They sound tired, perfunctory.

In fact, all of side one is barely worth a C Plu,s. The reason may lie in new member Michael Duke, who sings totally undistinguished lead vocals, plays boring piano, and writes terrible songs. The winning Hall/Hirsch combination is only heard on one song, "Walkin' By Myself," and it's not much.

The only two songs on the album worthy of mention, frame side two. "Comic Book Hero" by John Anthony, is a touching little number about the loneliness of being a superhero, looking out for people all day and catching crooks at night. Plays hell with your social life, he says. And "Everybody's Stoned" is a nice bitter, insightful look at (probably) the audiences who come out to see the Willies: "Everybody's stoned/But the feeling's gone," he says. Used to be magic. But then, so did Wet Willie.

No, I'm hardly going to write off my favorite southern combo just because of a turkey like this. But next time, get those blues roots outa the dirt again, whip the Williettes on us, and I'll be happy to do a cannonball into the pool.

Ed Ward

GIL EVANS There Conies A Time (RCA)

Only three composer-arrangers, to my knowledge,.ever mastered the secret of writing for-jazz orchestra that is so simple everyone else continues to overlook it. The secret is that you don't mass your forces — brass, reeds, rhythm — in blocky Basie platoons, but employ them like guerillas, mixing and matching, having'them go where they're needed . What you get by that method is the richness of tonal color that made Andre Previn once remark, "You know, Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture, and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, 'Oh, yes, that's done like this.' But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don't know what it is. " Previn was speaking of Duke Ellington, of course, the greatest of the three musicians I have in mind. And Ellington is dead. And so is Gary McFarland. And we are left with Gil Evans.

Evans, ih the days when he was making his classic recordings with Miles Davis — Sketches of Spain is the most notable — seemed to be tending toward sheer massed sonic ecstasy. It was gorgeous music, but there was often little or no rhythmic propulsion. Then he found rock, young musicians and electricity, and the discoveries seem to have rejuvenated him. I think that if I-had never heard of Gil Evans, and someone played this record for me and told me that its arranger-conductorcomposer-producer was in his sixties, I would politely request that my informant stop putting me on. Age isn't chronological, after all.

This new LP is a considerable improvement over Evans' last, perhaps commercially inspired collection of Jimi Hendrix songs, on which most of the arranging was done by others — the feeling was like buying a Dylan album and finding out that while Dylan plays guitar, he's left the vocals to Donovan, and the songs are all Gordon Lightfoot's. But now he's gone back to doing his own work, and the results are a joy to hear.

I don't think Evans is much interested in melody. He seldom writes them, and those he chooses to arrange — recompose Would probably be the better word — often get work ed over several times. Here he includes two pieces he's recorded before, "King Porter Stomp" and "The Meaning of the Blues." What he loves to do is get a bass line going involving a rhythmic figure and let it build and build piling on different sounds and textures until the cumulative effect becomes hypnotic. Here he does it with Tony Williams' "There Comes A Time" — oddly, the only piece on which Williams does not play — and it gets 16:10 worth of synthesizers, assorted exotic percussion and something called electric drums, which sound to me like tuned, amplified tympani. Evans' own two compositions, "Makes Her Move" and "Anita's Dance," are fragments, 1:25 and 2:53 respectively, and sound to md like different takes of the same piece — collective improvisations, Dixieland rideout choruses for the space age.

My only quarrel with the record is that Evans lets Hannibal Marvin Peterson take two dull vocals on cosmic-cliche lyrics by Williams and Hendrix. The rest of the record has more delights, surprises and mindbenders than any SuperSpectacularSonic electronic albym you'll ever hear. Don't miss it. Evans has probably invented the orchestra of the future. Some old rrtan. Just like Duke.

Joe Goldberg

DAVID SEVILLE & THE CHIPMONKS * Alvin For President (London single) :: Thanks to the lack of interest by so-called rock magazines like CREEM that only print cover stories about current stars like Alice Cooper and Iggy Stooge, the original fathers of rock and roll, the real pioneers of the genre have remained buried and iorgotten for the past fifteen years. Of course, I'm talking about those innovators of the studio, Alvin, Simon and Theadore who, in their prime, did more on one two minute single than Todd and Eno could ever hope to do within the next two hundred years. And don't laugh. Alvin For President with its election music and speeches predated "Elected" by over a decade while the sound effects and theatrics of "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" make Killer pale by comparison. And as for your much vaunted "punk attitude," the Chipmonks had it all down pat before anybody ever heard of the Dolls or Iggy's Funhouse. Every single would invaribly end with David Seville (ever the straight man) screaming at the top of his lungs, "ALVIN!" while the Mighty Monk proceeded to not only destroy the recording session, but everything else in sight as well (I always had a mental picture of Alvin lunging for Seville's throat seconds after the record ended in total chaos). Anyway, seeing as how '76 is an election year, I think it only fitting that London re-release on one album not only the above mentioned classics, but all the rest including "The Chipmonk Song" and the original uncensored version of "Alvin's Harmonica" which ranks as the all time predecessor of all the Heavy Metal/Violence epics which were to see light in the years to come. After all, I mean even I can only listen to Sparks for so long until I begin to wish that I had a more readily accessible version of the original.

J.M.

KEVIN COYNE - Matching Head and Feet (Virgin) :: Everybody on Virgin Records is a quirk. Kevin Coyne is a quirk. His old band, Siren, were inept quirks. Marjory Razorblade was the work of a quirk. So is this. But he's the only quirk on Virgin Records I've ever found to be worth listening to. (He doesn't let his eccentricity get in the way of his rock and roll.)

T.H.

MAGMA • Mekanik Destruktiw Korn* mandoh (A&M):: Ti tghim eb a doog mubla fi I dluoc dnatsrednu eht nikcuf sciryl! Ylbaborp on taews rof niatpac thgindim snaf, tub Sti 11a keerg otem.

A.D.L.

ROXY MUSIC - Siren (Atco):: No tits on the cover so I'm not interested.

A.D.L.

EDGAR FROESE - Epsilon in Malaysian Pale (Virgin Import) Did you ever wonder what became of the Solenoid robots on Roger Ramjet? No?

A.D.L.

THE NEW TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME -Believe It (Columbia) :: The man who formed the first rnetallic jazz-rock band has discovered another super talented English guitarist and is back to take over the field. If you aren't already fed to the teeth with this stuff, investigate immediately; the title says it all.

M.D.

HUSTLER • Play Loud (A&M):: Good bourgeois Anglo-boogie in the Foghat mold (i.e., more bounce than raw edge), plenty of fun anytime. But no more variations-on-a-bootleg cover art, okay? Live at Leeds was 1970, after all, and any and all reruns are superfluous. You don't wanta join Bark in the bargain bins, do ya?

R.R.

HAWKWIND - Warrior On The Edge Of Time (Atco) :: Some of these guys wear wool hats on stage. Despite that, I weht home from one of their concerts and woke up at quarter after five the next morning, convinced I was being attacked by fiery space Armadillos.

C.H.

THIRD WORLD (Island) :: Not since'Jimmy Cliff has reggae been presented to the North American public in a more accessible package. My favourites are "Slavery Days" and "brand New Beggar," and they'll be yours* too, if you give this one half a chance.

J.M.

This month's Rockaramas were written by Jeffery. Morgan, The Hindenburg, Aid to Dependent Lazio, Michael Davis, Richard Riegel, Clyde Hadlock. *§5,