ROD STEWART A Night On The Town (Warner Bros.)

First things first: this is as brilliant an album as any Rod Stewart has made, fully the equal of his first three solo efforts, all of which sounded so good so instantly that I never bothered to try ranking them against each other. After the perfunctory Smiler and the near-miss Atlantic Crossing, A Night On The Town comes as a partial surprise and a complete thrill.

When he’s on, Stewart never ceases to amaze. He can be like a pop Puck, pondering be musedly what fools these mortals (including himself) be, but also insisting on the need to “live it long and live it fast,” because it’s the only game in town worth playing at all. If he seems to move effortlessly between the world of the hard-working, hard-luck guy who longs for his protective “Big Bayou” and the world of the pretty French gowns in “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” or St. Tropez and Chardonay in “Fool For You,” it could be because he’s striven to remain open to both, and has come to realize that however much the former is romanticized for its simple values and the latter dismissed as vacuous, it’s all up to the individual, that the need for love, a feeling of security and a good time can be as real in the one world as in the other, and that they can’t be gotten alone in either. In this way, Stewart is able to remain both aristocrat and everyman, the small time kid who made it out, learned some valuable lessons along the way, and isn’t afraid to look back and remember. He is so true to himself, his songs, and his peers that when he sings, “When I read about you/in all the national press/on the arm of So-and-So/I may get depressed,” I bet he realizes just as quickly as I did that it could easily be one of his own ex-lovers speaking those lines.

Every good Stewart album has at least one song that only he could pull off. Last time it was the audacious “Three Time Loser; ” here it’s “The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II)," the story of a gay friend who taught Rod much of his philosophy of life, moved to New York to become one of the hotter items in gay circles, qnd was killed in the streets. Stewart’s stance is so straightforward and obvious, and yet so complex, that it’s easier to say what the song isn’t than what it is. Despite its subjects—homosexuality and murder—it’s not lurid, trendy, condescending to Georgie, or bitter towards the gang that killed him. Stewart simply tells the whole sad story just as it happened, and lets the facts speak for themselves. He even gives the New Jersey gang the benefit of the doubt, stating that all they wanted was Georgie’s money, but that the punk holding the switchblade accidentally got carried away, a detail which heightens the sense of tragedy.

This is potent stuff, a song in which nobody wins and everybody —Georgie’s uncomprehending parents, Georgie and his friends and the old queens who “blew a fuse” (great line) when they see him, even the kid who tried to rip off some easy cash and found himself facing a murder rap—loses. It is beautifully sung, pushed along by a chorus of dootdooting women and a magically light instrumental track. And when he’s finished the story, Stewart reaches further into himself than he’s reached in years to sing the coda.

Two other originals stand out. “Tonight’s the Night” (which opens the slow side) is just as tender as you please. “The Balltrap” (which opens the fast side) is a raunchy, bawdy cry of frustration with a delightful sense of humor. Both are typical of Stewart’s sexual flair. What I mean by that is there’s no way someone like Robert Plant can tell his lover to “spread her wings” without sounding like a hydraulic drill about to blast through a sidewalk, and while this is sometimes the stuff of the strongest rock and roll, Stewart’s eroticism is so much more seductive it can’t be denied. But then he can turn right around and fill a song with such rangy images as midnight trampolines and red-eyed juice (not booze, but that fluid which flows from a one-eyed snake), and it’s like something out of Henry Miller, or Canterbury Tales. Even when he delivers such a brutal line as wishing his wayward lover was paralyzed in both her thighs, you can hear a wink in Stewart’s voice.

Shoo boo doo boo doo, la la la/So glad John likes my album, tra la la/If ho thinks that's cool, than ho should soo/What silly little Britt Is doing to mo ...

As usual, the non-originals are also well chosen. “Pretty Flamingo” was never a richer fantasy. “Big Bayou,” with its punching horns and Chuck Berry guitar licks, rocks relentlessly. Stewart barrelhouses through the country classic “Wild Side of Life” as though it were written as a rock and roll song, complete with rock and roll fiddle, rather than as the medium-slow honky tonk weeper Hank Thompson cut 24 years ago. The only marginal song here is “Trade Winds,” which, while interesting at first, is too transparent to stand up to repeated listenings.

Finally, a few additional words about the musicians and how they’re used. Stewart is working with a different band on virtually every cut (as many players from L.A. as from Memphis or Muscle Shoals this time), but they all provide him with the ingenious harmonic textures that are the appropriate foil for his voice. The soloists are succinct, certain songs have those dramatic silent spots that have served Rod so well in the past, and there’s some string arrangements here that must have Stewart’s idol, Sam Cooke, swooning in his grave.

What more can I say without foaming at the mouth? Rod Stewart is back on top.

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY & THE ASBURY DUKES I Don’t Want to Go Home (Epic)

Nah, I don’t blame Bruce Springsteen a bit. I woulda done the same if I’d been in his Beatle boots. With all the vultures of both camps (the People-mag-inspired if-you’re-the-newDylan-let’s-get-this-shit-on-the-road goonies, and the smug how-dareyou-disturb-our-Eagles-defined-universe backlashers) circling impatiently around Asbury Park, N.J., ready to pounce on Bruce’s next album, he foxes ’em up by simply not doing one.

Instead, he rounds up a bunch of old pals from his scuffling days at the Upstage Club, gets ’em signed to CBS, gives ’em a couple songs and writes the liner notes for their debut album, and throws his critics a real curve. ’Cause Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, aside from sharing Springsteen’s odd, pre-dope consciousness, sound not at all like him.

Southside Johnny Lyon is a caricature of the archetypal straighthaired, bespectacled record collector; he caught my fancy with his statement that the Animals were one of the few Sixties groups that impressed him. Only thing is, he works backward from the Animals for his stylistic influences, and he’s apparently quite taken with pre-Chess R&B, swing jazz, jump blues, and other related genres which don’t get around much anymore, outside of private record collections and wheezy jazz stations.

Thus, though Southside Johnny considers his band’s sound as basically R&B, it’s an archaic R&B that makes the J. Geils Band seem positively avant-garde. Each song, from “The Boss,” by producer Miami Steve Van Zandt, to cops from ol’ soul men Sam and Dave, gets the treatment: hard, but , bouncy

rhythms; blaring, exuberant horns; and guitar mixed way, way down, in contradiction of everything we’ve known as the blues since the Animals and Stones first hipped up to The Way. The absence of dpminant guitar would seem particularly hard for a child of the technological Sixties to take, but, on the other hand, the Cab Calloway mannerisms (exaggerated bass vocals, etc.) of songs like “The Fever” might enable Southside Johnny to relate to the many kids currently enamored of Forties chic. (Me, I’m enamored of guest Ronnie Spector’s instantfellatio vocal on “You Mean So Much to Me.” Aahhhh . . . ) I Don’t Want to Go Home gets high marks for earnestness, djrectness, sheer nonpretentiousness, a lot of qualities that ain’t exactly a la mode. Lyon has a rich, deep bluesshouter voice, and if the band’s overall sound seems too clean (not funky enough), that cleanliness may be inseparable from the swing blues idiom. In any case, Southside Johnny Lyon is not the next Bruce Springsteen (don’t ask).

Richard Riegel

THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND Long Hard Ride (Capricorn)

It could be that the emerging stylistic identities of the various Southern rock bands derive as much from their differing geographic origins as from the diverse personalities involved. Ah, yes, Northern kids, the seeming monolith of the South is actually divided into at least thirteen States, and they’re far from being identical in history or culture.

Thus the Allmans, sprung from the traditionally-embattled, plains of Georgia, mean and rangy sons-abitches during the concurrent terms of Lester Maddox and Duane Allman, now progressive downtown Atlantans, all things to all people in the best Jimmy Carter upfront way. Or Lynyrd Skynyrd, sweet for their Alabama home, but also cocky, hellno-we-ain’t-forgettin’ pugs jus’ like The Guv’nor hisself. Or Wet Willie, also Alabama-bred, but less political, the funky side of life (Dothan, Ala. has 97.3% of all the gas-station-restroom prophylacticven ding machines in the whole U.S.).

I can’t wait to see what kind of convoluted badass r’n’r band crawls out of the incestuous jungles of Faulkner’s Mississippi, but in the meantime, Marshall Tucker have made their claim as South Carolina’s standard-bearers. Now South Carolina is a bit out of the way as far as the South goes—lots of history, but it all happened prior to 1865, and the current South Carolina scene is drowsy and mellow, more pleasant than any Marin Co. synthesized bower.

So it is with the Marshall Tucker sound, the warm, honey-laden guitar meshes, the lyrical celebrations of simple virtues which ring true because these guys aren’t going back-to-the-land as escapists from the urban willies: the M.T.B. have always been back on their land. As you’ll note on, the back cover of Long Hard Ride, all the M.T.’s (or at least 5 out of 6—George McCorkle’s left hand is out of sight in the stratospheric reaches of his gee-tar neck) are wearing wedding rings, and their belief in domestic bliss (echoed in several of the songs) seems perfectly convincing, in light of their unassuming pride.

Ya mean this stuff can legitimately exist in the same rock universe as Wayne County? Sure can. Is goodold-boyism for real? Jus’ very well may be—take a lissen to Long Hard Ride, podner, it’ll make you a believer.

Richard Riegel

THE TUBES Young & Rich (A&M)

Just what is going down here, huh? The defining images of our pop heroes seem destined for evershorter useful lives, as though we’re accelerating toward a massive blowout of the whole star scene (fin de siecle with a bullet, as it were). To wit: it took us over five years (until Altamont, c’est la vie) to find out that the Stones were no more streetpunk-wise than us humble intellectuals, huddled reverently around our component stereo sets.

But Alice Cooper and David Bowie shed their respective crossdressing and gayness even quicker, after about three years of legendbuilding each (platinum records secured, they became straighter than the gaping stooges in their audiences). And now the Tubes, who rode to national notice and a major record contract on the weltstriped back of an S&M hype just last year, are already (it’s only secondalbum time, kids) junking most of their S&M hoopla as though it were a used condom, in favor of revealing their own bourgeois boobaloo souls for all the world to savor.

Schlemieldom is in the air: after all, Elton John isn’t our most popular star for nothing, and “timely” has always been the Tubes’ middle name. So what we get on Young and Rich is big globs (right outa the Tubes’ K-Y tubes) of softcore satire, so densely and slickly produced that you can have plenty of fun without even auditing the lyrics. In fact, the Tubes’ satirical gifts derive more from their raw expressionism (all the way from Fee Waybill’s great bland rube voice, chock full of American graffiti, to the oodles of synthesizer doodles that yuk up every cut) than from any particular lyrical brilliance.

“Don’t Touch Me There” is one of the best examples of the Tubes’ aggresso mimicry. Arranged by Jack Nitzsche (’nuff said?), it’s a loving and kidding re-creation of the mid-Sixties teen melodramas of Phil Spector or, more precisely, Lou Christie. Re Styles has copped the best moves of Twyla Herbert, Christie’s composing partner, and the shrill-voiced Conscience of all of his papist sensuality/guilt playlets. Re wails out, “The smell of burning leather/As we hold each other tight,” while ten thousand assorted symphonic goodies bash away all around her. Ah, the bathos that was possible when virgins (guys, even) still walked the earth...

“Proud to Be an American” does a similar number on the Fifties’ double bass chauvinism, just scratch on Eddie Cochran and you get a fat fascist like Elvis. “Tubes World Tour” is the obligatory Blue Oyster Cultivation this time around, lots of nice metal urgency, plus some slippery frenulum-teasers from the assembled keyboards. “Slipped My Disco” might be regarded as an overdue comeuppance for them uppity disco dervishes, but they’re providing their own best parodies (cf. the Miracles’ “Love Machine”) these days.

The title cut of Young and Rich dabbles in depths already overplumbed by everybody from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Elliott Murphy, but as there’s an outside chance it’s about a rock critic (“It comes in the mail most every day.” “Famous friends, and big parties for me every night.”), it’s worth noting here. Gotta preserve the image...

Speaking of which, if the Tubes can keep making sets as good as Young and Rich, they can hang their S&M gear in their collective closet and get on with the R&R. Sorry to disappoint all the real S&Mers out there, but you guys (or the M’s, anyway) will get your chance with Billy Paul’s new rock opera, Me and Mrs. Jones’ Golden Showers, which should be out by the time you read this.

Richard Riegel

BILLY JOEL Turnstiles (Columbia)

Billy Joel has a soppy, boring voice. Two years ago I went to see him in concert and actually fell asleep. He’s a Jackson Browne folkie at heart with Elton John-like rock pretentions, and the worst part is he’s just too damned serious—no sense of humor at all. More like a preacher than an entertainer, he continues to sing real-life soap opera ballads that rarely show any signs of imagination. I mean, can you stand to listen to Harry Chapin? I can’t. I'm tired of hearing stories about the pains of the lonely and the strife endured by angry young men, and about how rough it is to be a musician and have to play the piano in bars where horny divorcees come to diddle with their gin and tonics.

Turnstiles is Billy Joel’s third solo album in the “successful” part of his career. In the late Sixties he played with Long Island club groups (Hassles, Attilla) and his earliest solo endeavors were a failure. Then “Piano Man” and “Captain Jack” became big hits for him, both of which I got out my violin and handkerchief for. He does have a natural talent for writing good, poetic lyrics but he never puts enough guts into them, mostly because he’s so pessimistic and spends a lot of time feeling sorry and apologizing for himself.

I found that just surviving was a noble fight,

I once believed in causes too,

I had my pointless point of view Give a moment or two to the angry young men

With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand’

He’s been stabbed in the back, he’s been misunderstood It’s a comfort to know his intentions are good.*

from “Angry Young Man” “I’ve Loved These Days” is the most boringly regretful cut on the album.

“We get so high and get nowhere We’ll have to change our jaded ways...

But I’ve loved these days”. Yuk.

Turnstiles does have a bit of musical variety—a reggae number, which is the only song I really like on the album. Called “All You Wanna Do Is Dance,” it’s really more calypso than reggae, and Billy sings with an island dialect, backed by steel drums. The tune is a great rocker but the lyrics contradict that because they’re actually about his disdain for rock music.

Well you can hide away honey, In your rock and roll dreams, You can stand by your blue suede shoes —

But the party is over...

He’s trying to be some sort of rock star and at the same time he’s saying it’s all over, he’s grown up, that’s not where it’s at anymore.

So where is it? Well, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood”, the opening cut on Turnstiles has a very ShangrilasPhil Spector sound. The saxophone and percussion are nice but it just comes off like Billy Joel doing Bruce Springsteen. “Miami 2017” is one fantasy tale on the album, and it’s pretentious, futuristic shit about the fall and sinking of Manhattan. He should worry more about the sinking of his own artistic and commercial potentials.

Pam Brown

*Copyright 1976, Home Grown Music and Tin Pan Tunes, BMI.

Listen, screwheads, not only will I not give you my alien card, but see this bottle resting in my right hand? I'll play some fusion music with your head.

JEFF BECK Wired (Epic)

What Beck is into in Wired, which is basically an extension of Blow By Blow that doesn’t really blaze any new trails, is fusion music, that peculiar amalgam of avant-garde jazz and rock distortion which all started in mid-1969 when a young Scottish cat named John McLaughlin got together with Tony Williams (who was only the best drummer irvthe world at the time, and might even still be if he would stop imitating people imitating him) in a group called Lifetime and redefined both jazz and rock with a brilliant album called Emergency.

For my money, nb fusion music (a phrase as awkward as “Third Stream,” except that it catches all this stuff so effortlessly) record since has surpassed Emergency, with the possible exception of a McLaughlin album called Devotion, and a good deal of it has been inferior in the worst possible way you can be. Artistic degeneration is one thing, but taking a slashing, adventurous style you invented and turning it into antiemotional quasi-spiritual MOR as McLaughlin did, is inexcusable. I believe that, just as with disco, there is good and bad fusion music, but I also believe that, the entire style having become so formulaized, most of it is predictably bad.

Where Jeff Beck fits into all this is that curious syndrome by which perfectly respectable rock musicians who may even (as Beck once, in the Yardbirds, was) have been soul-jarring innovators on their instruments, somehow think it makes them more “legitimate” or at least hipper to make it with the soul and jazz cats whom they all respect so much that they’ve stolen every single thing they could from, which may mean that all this musical toadyism can be explained by a simple guilty conscience. It’s the reason why, at least when I saw them live last summer, the Stones only really got excited when they jammed with Billy Preston. Because they were being sidemen.

Beck is a different case, of course —his rambunctious ego and general el crazola legend speak for themselves—but I do not think there was anything particularly brave, as some people have told me, about a rock guitarist going the Mahaherbiehancocorea route, as Beck did in Blow By Blow, instead of grinding out the let’s-fuck blues for the 983rd time or even doing something truly imaginative. This man has an enormous amount of technical ability, and unlike most fusion records, I can occasionally hear him feeling his music here just as I can feel it when he’s trying to do something besides play the same old backwards riff sideways. He does it here on Charlie Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” which he performs with a sensitivity that surprised me. But he doesn’t do it often enough, and in spite of your predisposition to like Beck for being such a loon in his personal life, this record remains just like all those other cokesniffing turquoise-ringed affluent hippies’ accoutrements: an item to possess as a matter of fashion, but never, as with even the most stunted of Miles Davis’ recent music, to hold in your heart. Because it doesn’t hold any.

Lester Bangs

CH ARLIE PARKER Bird / The Savoy Recordings (Master Takes) (Savoy) The Verve Years (1948-50) (Verve)

The jazz, reissue program, begun such a short time ago—Fantasy/ Prestige/Milestone deserves the credit, I think—has already gotten excessive, and if the trend continues, perhaps in twenty years we will see some gorgeous package wrapped in real fringed buckskin called something like “New Riders of the Purple Sage: The Columbia Years: The ‘Brujo’ Sessions: Alternate Masters.” A consumer guide is really needed, because not all of these things are historical necessities.

Some of them are, though, and the best news in a long time is that Arista has acquired the splendid Savoy catalogue, a jazz and gospel label that Herman Lubinsky ran out of Newark, New Jersey in the Forties and Fifties.

Unfortunately, it looks like Arista intends to perpetuate the-Savoy tradition of shoddy covers. But the music more than makes up for it. Most especially welcome is the Charlie Parker release, not only because it has been generally unavailable except on import for over a decade, but because some sense, it seems, is finally going to be made of an editing system that could drive you to tears by its willfulness and perversity.

Parker is one of the few jazzmen of whom it can truthfully be said—it is said untruthfully of maybe fifty others—that practically everything he played is of value. Sometimes, he took his best so to on an early take, when someone else goofed or the ensemble was sloppier than it got to be later. Savoy issued these alternate takes and short takes haphazardly. Now the released master of everything Parker ever recorded for Savoy is available on this two-record set; formerly, it ranged over five 12inch LPs.

It is to be devoutly hoped that the alternates will be reissued with the same chronological caregiven to this package, because there is some great music on them. But in the meantime, this is one of the most essential jazz records one could own. Parker, an alto saxophonist, is certainly the most influential jazz soloist after Louis Armstrong, and he probably makes more emotional sense to current listeners than Armstrong. He was one of the greatest blues players who ever lived; many of these tracks are blues. Parker was raw and urgent, stunningly facile, but he never played anything, not even the nearly-impossible “Koko” that is his version of “Cherokee,” that wasn’t deeply and necessarily musical; he never showed off, just because it was easy for him to do. He changed jazz irrevocably. Everyone on every instrument started to play like him. These records had an astonishing impact when they first came out, and there is probably no more startling evidence of the speed with which our culture moves than that these revolutionary records were made less than twenty years after Armstrong’s first great solo recordings.

Parker was not just an influential soloist, he led influential bands. On these records with him are Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, and the teenage Miles Davis. It’s ridiculous to pick out tracks or moments, but I will name two: “Meandering,” which is one of Parker’s versions of “Embraceable You;”.and one of the greatest blues ever recorded, “Parker’s Mood.”

A few years after these records were made, Parker became involved with—“fell into the hands of’ may be the phrase I want—the entrepreneur Norman Granz, who, while admitting in print that Parker had made some “original and sprightly” records in the past, set out to make his music more palatable. So he recorded Parker with strings, with a big band, with a Latin band, with a vocal group—“produced” him. Some of these tracks are horrendous, except that Parker is occasionally moved to make great music out of what seems like sheer irritation. The worst of these are probably still to come.

This first Verve reissue in the current program—these records have been coming out again and again ever since Granz recorded them, and especially since he sold out to MGM—contains some very good singles, the best of the “with strings” (including the great “Just Friends” solo that Parker said was his favorite record) and an excellent reunion with Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, marred by the inclusion of Granz’s then house drummer. Buddy Rich.

My suggestion is buy the Savoys whatever you do, try to find the even better Dial sessions on Spotlight import, get the “Massey Hall” concert on Prestige twofer, and then, if you’re still hungry, get the Verve. I have them all, and more, because no jazz musician ever moved me as much as Charlie Parker.

Joe Goldberg

BILLIE HOLIDAY ~ The First Verve Sessions Jazz At The Philharmonic/ The Historic Recordings (Verve)

Billie Holiday is the greatest jazz singer we have had. She is also the most painful to listen to. That may be a redundancy.

Why, we take profound aesthetic pleasure in people who are able to turn their anguish into art and communicate it is something I don’t pretend to know, but it has been true at least since the Greeks. And Billie Holiday did that superbly. She did first what Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles were able to do later because of her example—make the best popular songs, written by others, sound like painful fragments of autobiography.

Until the end, when she had ravaged her life and her instrument, she had a light, clear voice; she sounded like a wise, hurt child. But she sang for grownups. She was something like Piaf, mocking and indomitable, and never dripped all over you, like Garland or Streisand. Unlike them, and like the most interesting women, there was always more going on than she let you. see.

She sang the blues only rarely, and, surprisingly, not too well, but a line in one of the songs recorded here might have been her credo: “I can’t face the music without singin’ the blues.”

These reissues are from the recordings she made for Norman Granz. They are neither from her first great days nor from her last ravaged ones. The studio sessions, from 1952 and 1954, are made with fine jazz musicians who get a chance to stretch out, and contain some of her best material.

One of the four sides on the Jazz At The Philharmonic album contains a concert she gave in Los Angeles on April 22, 1946. I won’t bother to list tunes or personnel; it’s not really that important. These recordings are not quite up to the irreplaceable Thirties recordings for Columbia, but they are very good indeed. There may be times when you won’t want to listen to them; they cut too deep. Billie made every song her own; she seemed incapable of singing a melody straight, and incapable of not improving it. If you’ve never heard her, it might serve to say that if you were ever moved by three stark, minimal notes played by Miles Davis that seemed to distill all the pain in the world, and wondered how he was able to do it, and still keep so much in reserve, you might listen to his friend Billie Holiday.

Joe Goldberg

ALICE COOPER Goes To Hell (Warner Bros.)

Alice Cooper Goes To Hell is pretty much Welcome to My Nightmare Part II, and works about as well as maybe Airport ’75 and Charlton Heston ain’t even on this record although A.C. may have sat in C.H.’s chair once or twice on Hollywood Squares (bottom row middle so they never ask you a question). Would have been a neat cameo, y'know, Chuck talks to the devil in Moses disguise, makes him let Alice escape from the old fire and brimstone—a million times cooler than Vinnie Price who’s a lot cooler than Alice anyway (perhaps Price’s guest shot came from Alice’s secret desire to have been a contestant on Story* book Squares, a Saturday kiddie version of Hollywood Squares). Jesus Christ, at this point in time just about anyone is cooler than Alice— Peter Marshall is cooler than Alice, ’cause he’s got a good nightclub act and his real name is LaCock and his son Peter Jr. plays first base for the Chicago Cubs and they’re cooler than Alice not only because they stink but their ballpark doesn’t even have lights for night games because owner Phil Wrigley don’t wanna spend a few mill, and he can afford it since he owns Wrigley’s gum— makers of Freedent—won’t stick to most dental work (most, mind you). Phil has not even been to the ballpark in forty years so he’s cooler than Alice.

Bob Ezrin is cooler than Alice. This record is really just an excuse for Ezrin to finally whip it out on the old 88’s, credited to self too for a change, and not one baby giggle or cry, formerly the Ezrin trademark, so now he’s becominga regular antiauteur. Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner are cooler than Alice ’cause they continue to rake in the bucks as studio whizzes and Wagner has now become Alice’s new Michael Bruce, co-authoring all the songs. Probably wrote ’em all himself, but Alice’s name must go on, ’cause he is the star, ain’t he?

Great concept: Alice falls asleep, goes to a disco in hell, can’t get out. Meets the devil himself, played by Alice himself, devil won’t let him loose, obligatory “I’m not such a bad guy after all,” “Only Women Bleed” follow-up is “I Never Cry” which says, “My heart’s a virgin, never been tried”—gimme a break, huh? By now Alice is just a goddam nice guy and his cartoon capers are too bland for even the Froot Loops set and when George Burns and Groucho kick off he’ll have no one to play golf with. Sleep tight, Steven. You can go to hell, too.

Wanta see my dupa? No?

Billy Altman

ELVIS The San Sessions (RCA)

Some fat slob in a gas station attendant’s uniform returned this to the record store where I used to work, claiming it was “hillbilly shit,” and that he wanted some ELVIS PRESLEY for him and the wife. We promptly steered him to the $1.99 bins, where he found a copy of Elvis Sings ‘Flaming Star. ’

Actually, The Sun Sessions is rockabilly, a maniac strata of 50s po’ white trash meets de darkies over a gallon of muscatel by no means confined to the sides on this LP (check out “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Charlie Feathers next time you find one at a local garage sale...let’s just say that if, like Charlie Feathers is to rockabilly what Burning Spear are to reggae, that makes Elvis on Sun Bob Marley . . . but, oh, forget it or you wouldn’t be reading CREEM . . .

To say that Sun Sessions is “essential,” “definitive,” etc. is to add unnecessary overstatement to a glut of information already surrounding the subject. The damn liner notes to this set are reference point enough, if you’ve got your spy glass handy to cipher ’em.

What does count is the happy fact that certain record companies are beginning to see the light in their vaults and go for a sophisticated, well presented series of re-issues aimed primarily at people who missed this stuff on the first, second, third or fourth go-round . (The Charlie Parker volumes on Dial come to mind, as do Blue Note’s superlative “two-fer” packages. And a British label is apparently putting Phil Spector’s entire pre-Beatle catalog, in glorious MONO!)

Sure, I’ve got a friend who’s a 40s-50s R&B/Rockabilly fanatic, and can pull out three different copies of “That’s All Right” on Sun,

drool, and show yo on a microscope how many times each one hasn’t been played . . . but who needs that, right? All you really want to do is throw it on the box and ROCK! So here’s the Real Thing, in sensible MONO LP form, SOLD ONLY IN STORES; NOT ON FUCKING TV!

And ... if you think Elvis is just some Fee Waybill imitator your big sister who lives in a trailer park with a gas station attendant likes to listen to on Friday nights over 7&7s . . . FORGET IT! This stuff is as raw, sappy, poisonous to the mind and just plain GOOD FUN as Kiss, Aerosmith or the Modern Lovers. It also being history (capital “H”), you can probably cull an English paper out of it (hell, just steal the liner notes, or refer for Peter Guralnick’s chapter on Sam Phillips and the Sun Sound in “Feel Like Going Home” [Fusion Books].

ELVIS—The Sun Sessions. Available wherever Real records are sold.

Peter Laughner

ANGEL Helluva Band (Casablanca)

“Feelin’ right tonight Yeah each and every night Feelin’ good today Yeah each and every way . . .”

from “Feelin’ Right”

Here they are, kids . . . Casablanca’s new Kiss! Five pretty faces with long, long British haircuts. Flowing white robes, very sheik in the style of Shah Freddy Mercury. Pink Floyd orchestration and Queen operation with lots of o-o-o-o-o-o’s. And lyrics so unoriginal that you can guess them before you even hear the LP.

Angel is just another load of sickening synthesized slickness. These guys from Washington, D.C. claim the Beatles as their main influence but I think the Fab Four would probably die at having created such a monster. The Beatles had simplicity, whereas Angel is just simpleminded; vacuum lyrics combined with music that is overdone for no reason.

Frank Dimino’s voice sounds exactly like all the other Robert Plant imitators singing “pretty” heavy metal. The musicians (Punky Meadows, guitars; Barry Brandt, drums; Greg Giuffria, keyboards and synthesizers; Micky Jones, bass) are all technically adept. There just ain’t nothin’ new here.

Pam Brown

FLAMIN GROOVIES Shake Some Action (Sire)

For those of you wondering where rock & roll has been all your lives (grew up on Jimi Hendrix and heavy-metal, didn’t ya, boscobrain?), well, kid, HERE ’TIS! Without being imitative, Shake Some Action takes death-defying leaps into the days of ’68, proving that the Flamin Groovies can rock with the best of them (meaning the Stones, the Byrds, the Beatles, the Kinks, etc.). Finally, some magic is in the music.

It hasn’t been easy. These groovers have been verging on a Flash Cadillac identity crisis for ages. Flamingo and Supersnazz (not gonna mention their first EP Sneakers. which remains filed forever) were HARD but disappointingly singed no nerve-ends. To avoid the fate of Daddy Cool, the Groovies shipped every critic and his mom to New York to witness the construction of Teenage Head. It worked, and the album still remains a crazed example of rock & roll fever gone berserk. Shake Some Action, though, is no mere nicotine fit. Every cut, I repeat, every cut (unbelievable?), EVERY CUT (and that’s fourteen, Sam!), scores perfectly on anybody’s seismograph . That’s a rough test to pass.

On this album, the Flamin Groovies speak to you with the passion of Sixties enthusiasts. Remaining fixed in their adolescent consciousness, the Groovies remind you of the frightening fact that the living dead have been killing rock & roll music, smothering its warmth only to multiply a lifeless species of androids. It’s not funny anymore. Ten years ago this elpee would have been just another fine record; today, in 1976, it sounds like a masterpiece.

With cannibalistic fervor, the Groovies have nourished themselves on every great Sixties band. They’re all represented here, from the Spoonful to the Beatles. The beauty is that the influences remain absorbed; there are never any obvious Stones’ riffs, for example. Each moment on Shake Some Action is like the first moment when you heard “Lady Madonna,” “Pictures of Lily,” or “Jumping Jack Flash.” Take “Shake Some Action”: punk fury ignites into Aftermath, busting out at full speed. But it is punk flash controlled, not cheapened, let loose under the guiding hand of Dave Edmunds. And the sound exists only as a captured moment: constant flashbacks to the mid-Sixties charts, but who knows where? Like “Yes It’s True” may sound like the Beatles to a novice (some twerp born and bred on Alice Cooper), but it doesn’t really. It simply possesses the sound and spirit of a zillion British Beat Groups (from the Zomboids to Gerry’s Pacemaker).

Clearly it becomes impossible to praise every detail. Songs like “You Tore Me Down” and “I Can’t Hide” already lingerin the memory, having merged with identifiable classics by the Beatles and the Stones, to be rediscovered and re-articulated. And damn, when was the last time you actually played an album until you’d worn out both sides?! Shake Some Action does not mark a return to that magical Sixties consciousness; it builds upon it. Here, in 1976, there is no Action; hopefully, Shake Some Action will be the grenade which will trigger another rock & roll revolution, the inevitable backlash against disco for the dead.

Robot A. Hull

ROGER MCGUINN Cardiff Rose (Columbia)

Cardiff Rose signals a return to the kingdom of the living for Roger McGuinn, and there’s no mistaking the simple truth that it was his successful participation in Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue that has gotten him off his Rickenbacker case and back into the flow. Of all the “names”_in Dylan’s traveling side show, McGuinn was the only one who came out for a featured solo spot and rocked his chubbier as the years go by ass off. “Chestnut Mare” worked for McGuinn as both nostalgia (which was cool since it was nostalgia when you first heard it anyway) and as a slice of real rock ‘n’ roll in the middle of an evening of Hootenanny flashbacks. Not that the evening was bad, it wasn’t—it’s just that there was definitely a different tone when Rog did his bit and the night I saw the show the audience went as nuts for McGuinn as they did when Joni Mitchell came onstage unannounced and did a few tunes. When you realize that McGuinn hadn’t played before crowds bigger than the average club and javahouse circuit size in more years than he’d care to recall and got that kind of response, well, such is the stuff that inspiration comes from.

On this record McGuinn is backed by the basic Rolling Thunder band— Rob Stoner, Howie Wyeth, David “I can lick any instrument in the house” Mansfield and most importantly, Mick Ronson, who also produced the album and is, I guess, as responsible as McGuinn for this LP having the balls that it does. McGuinn is finally standing on his own with ah assurance and a confidence that is almost Hyde-like in terms of his past history. The only Byrds allusions are the harmonies on the chorus of Joni Mitchell’s “Dreamland” and there ain’t one outer space reference (although there is a plane flying above the clipper ship on the cover). In fact, McGuinn does his best to demolish his old ties— he takes the traditional “Pretty Polly” and turns it from murder for love’s sake to murder for murder’s sake. “Jolly Roger,” about a sailor turning into a cutthroat pirate is equally fierce, neatly counterpoised by Mick Ronson’s innocent recorder. (Finally, a Limey with real roots!)

“Rock ‘n’ Roll Time” (“If sometimes it seems I’m failin’ behind/Remember I’m runnin’ on rock ‘n’ roll time”) and “Take Me Away,” a short chronicle of the Thunder Revue (“It wasn’t very long ago, I used to say this kind of work was rough/Yeah, you shoulda been there, but I can tell you even that wasn’t enough”) blaze through you, raw and heavy, and Dylan’s “Up To Me” is a damned interesting song; long, involved and engrossing, given a fine reading by McGuinn. Always prone towards a smirk song every time out, Rog throws in an open letter to Abbie Hoffman (“Partners in Crime”) that unlike his usual Byrds ploy of tossing a clinker onto the end of the second side, comes at the end of side one, making it a commercial rather than a backpage mental funny paper. Don't touch that tent, McGuinn. You’re finally getting somewhere.

Billy Altman

JOHN SEBASTIAN Welcome Back (Reprise)

It seems to me that with this new teen craze over the Sweathogs (and in particular, John Travolta, whose current smash hit “Let Her In” is the best thing I’ve heard since Paul Petersen’s immortal “My Dad”) and good ol' Henry “Don’t call me Fonzie” Winkler, we just may be hitting the ten-year cycle of rock ‘n’ roll again. If you recall, the early Sixties gave us a bunch of TV-recording stars: Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman scored with “Cindy’s Birthday,” and the aforementioned P.P.,

NELSON SLATER Wild Angel (RCA)

You wonder who the packaging of this record is aimed at. There’s the “Produced by Lou Reed, Photography by Mick Rock” angle, which may be calculated to make ’em slaver in Manhattan, Kansas; White Plains, NY; Australia; or wherever the Bowie/Hoople/MainMan Axis a la late ’72 still draws silver-lashed admirers. There’s the cover photo. Can be looked at two ways: Ohio Players B&D (dey be cold blooded righteous nigguhs, so thafs a possibility), or Tubes stroke-mag insensibility (Tubesbeingthe Monkees of the ’70s, just as Oui & Penthouse are the 16 & Tiger Beat of same . . . “Lookit our cute clits, dope and wee wees!”) Then again, Nelson Slater is carefully pictured with a beard and blow dried hair, sort of a cross between Gino Vanelli and David Clayton-Thomas. God knows what that market be!

Inside we find music and lyric spread smooth to go down smooth . . . more like the photo of Slater than the chained orgasmic cover girl. The title cut, “Wild Angel,” may or may not be about You-KnowWho (“The most original person I know...” —recall how often Lou likes to use that noun “person”), but no matter, because as the only hard rocker, it’s fairly mundane, despite the bass mix which bottoms out every speaker system I’ve tried it on (if you can’t beat ’em, blow ’em). But pass on ... through side one, half of side two. Slater’s singing, while he may be attempting genuine emotion, just sort of sits in the grooves. It doesn’t have any distinct tonal quality (like total monotonesque guttural spew or the sort of sweet dog frequency nuances only Village Voice writers can detect) to set it apart from the music. Ditto for the playing and the arrangements. Horns. String synthesizer. Nice record so far. Could’ve been done by Richard Perry for a lot more money.

But halfway through side two, here is where you come to the Eureka: a six-minute masterpiece with capital “M,” called “We.” As chillingly fatalistic and out-zoned as any piece of music I’ve heard since Nico’s “It Was A Pleasure Then” on the long out-of-print Chelsea Girl. (That song being one of the five most remarkable things ever committed to vinyl.) “We” establishes Slater’s ability to write a compelling, dramatic, and, if it be possible, emotional anti-emotional song. Not to elaborate to the point of giving it away . . . each listener will have to feel it for himself. . . but have you ever been trapped in that twilight zone of en nui, numbness and interpersonal impotence where you realized that while lights may shine through other’s eyes, you and whoever you were trying to connect with could never... “We ... built our nest in a falling tree/We ... sold our lives to an enemy ...”

This cut also presents strong evidence in a case begun by Metal Machine Music that Louis Reed actually knows exactly what he is doing, at least for periods of time long enough to produce six minutes this monumental . . . “We” being obviously the only song on the record that Lou gave a damn about working on. It bears his signature strongly in the prominence of his voice over Slater’s shoulder, “WE ... sold our lives to an ENEMY!”... but most incredibly: lacking Bobby Hatfield, Bill Medley, a full orchestra and god knows what else, Lou has re-produced the power and glory of what he once called the greatest record ever made,” Phil Spector’s “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” Of course emotionally and thematically, the two songs are as far apart as fire and ice. Slater is not about to get down on his knees.

The last song on the side, “Complete This Story Now,” seems intended to tie up a thread that you have to assume is supposed to run through the whole album. The thread is present only in the frozen angst of “We,” where it manifests itself as a huge cord of fucked up tension that threatens to redline both your sensibilities and your sound system. But “Story” (great line: “defeat must take its bow ...”) shows a further glimmer of real promise for Nelson Slater as a songwriter. He won’t need beards, bound women or even much vocal panache if he can deliver this kind of simple and touching lyric garnet.

Look: in these troubled times, if you’re the kind of person who finds only one or two minutes of worthwhile sound amidst the choking dross to be sufficient (I, for instance, own Jesse Winchester’s last album solely on the basis of a three minute song) , Nelson Slater’s debut is far worth your while, unless RCA releases “We” b/w “Story” as a single.

And that little guy from Brooklyn ... y’know, he coulda been a producer ...

Peter Laughner

(now a pulp novelist—suspense paperbacks starring “The Smuggler”) and his series sis Shelley Fabares also made the top ten. Which means . . . THE NEW BEATLES ARE JUST AROUND THE CORNER!!

Until then, we can relax with an equal taste of what can be accomplished when you pay no attention to what the sands of time say in the form of John Sebastian’s new LP. The Kotter theme is a nice song, surprising that John B. hasn’t been grabbed for a theme sooner, since he has two flick soundtrack credits (You're a Big Boy Now and Woody Allen’s What’s Up Tiger Lilly) under his belt—which, by the way, like the rest of his apparel, is no longer of the tie dye variety. Let’s face it, Woodstock almost killed this guy’s career (in the long run, it may have killed all of us; who knows what history will make of these times?), branded him Dr. Goodvibes, and he chose to enter the Seventies by ignoring his identity in the Sixties, which was ridiculous because the guy wrote some of the best songs of the decade with the Lovin’ Spoonful and if they were light, happy songs, it doesn’t make them less important than the heavier, more socially concerned pablum that the floweroids were force-fed from ’67-’69. Besides, Sebastian was allpeace and love in ’65, before it was hip, and if I could write only one song for posterity, “Do You Believe in Magic” just might be my choice.

Welcome Back has two old Spoonful songs re-worked here, the bluesy “Warm Baby” and the ethereal “Didn’t Wanna Have To Do It,” now a waltz, both good ones if you never heard ’em before (nothing like re-education) and what’s very satisfying are the new songs here ’cause they’re rather jaunty and happy and trivial and that’s fine with me. Sebastian actually swipes the bubblegum hit “Indian Lake,” turns it into this great song “Hideaway” and donates an autoharp solo to boot. “You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine” is a friendly piece of advice about breakups and divorces. “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” is a dance tune that is actually fun both to listen and/or to dance to. Welcome Back is a snappy little record and remem-. ber, Sebastian had wire frames before either John Lennon or David Bromberg.

Billy Altman

STEVE MILLER Fly Like An Eagle (Capitol)

Out of the turd bed death camp of recent releases rises a valiant long playing effort which could have been a 45 as far as I’m concerned.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) Steve Miller, fat-boy guitar picker, has finally discovered the oscillating world of synthesizers and has put out an album that is sure to contain something to please everyone (maybe). In the beginning, there’s some synthesizer drool that drifts into some windy funk dissolving to an East Indian tinkle song. This is followed by a cosmic cowboy call to arms, a jumpy country pickin’ and flickin’ ditty, spieling into a very dull 12 bar blah-blah blues number. That takes care of side one. Side two kicks off with a familiar (to Miller fans) Billy Joe and Bobby Sue Texas Adventure which blends into the only good song on the album (for my money anyway) “Rock’n [sic] Me,” and it’s too short. The third cut is a howlin’ coyote rendition of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” which features S.M. trying to hustle some poozle into the back seat of his Ferrari. Then, more synthesizer slipslop serenade coupled to another poontang anticipating blues bop, which drags. The LP drips to a close with a bad imitation of circa ’74

Clark Peterson

Looking hoalthy, wealthy and wise; friends, we give you the Beach Boys. Take 'em.

THE BEACH BOYS 15 Big Ones (Warner Bros.)

So the Beach Boys ar& back again, this time with former leader and group guru pro tem Brian Wilson working with the Boys for the first time since Sunflower in 1970. Does Brian make that big a difference? Not really.

There is no question that Brian Wilson is a genuine talent in American music (mind you, we’re talking about a category somewhat beyond rock ‘n’ roll) and the controversy about whether he did or did not destroy/bum the famous Smile tapes just might be the valid rock equivalent to the search/confusion over the missing portions of Von Stroheim’s alleged film masterpiece Greed. Nevertheless, Smile was ten years ago and one can wait only so long for the vanquished hero to return. Unfortunately, on 15 Big Ones at least, he hasn’t.

The overriding concept (a term not unfamiliar to Mr. Wilson; after all, wasn’t Pet Sounds the first acknowledged concept album?) behind 15 is not dissimilar to the recent work by another well-known conFrank Zappa.

One would think that after three and a half years, even Miller could come up with something more exciting. There just isn’t much of anything here to either pull the listener into the record or repulse him away from it (which is just as valid). Apparently the artist was trying so hard not to overlook any of his potential fans that his concoction of musical democracy has become a sour MOR mush. If in the future Miller chooses to wander the stylistic gamut of contemporary music, Capitol could market his efforts in neatly joined plastic ring top tied six packs of the smaller 45 rpm discs which the individual consumer can pick and choose from. Not having to waste his/her money on tracks that don’t appeal to his/her autonomous musical preferences, everyone will be happy and Stevie will have achieved his highly ambitious, yet cept artist, Todd Rundgren, on Faithful: re-recorded oldies mixed with new material. (In fact Rundgren even went so far as to include “Good Vibrations” as one of his tributes, so all the Beach Boys needed to do was to record “Hello It’s Me” to make the tradeout complete.) The Beach Boys oldies (“Rock and Roll Music,” “Chapel of Love,” “Talk to Me,” “Palisades Park,” “A Casual Look,” “Blueberry Hill,” and “In the Still of the Night”) are both more interpretive and better produced than Rundgren’s choices; though they range from the tentatively inspired (“Blueberry Hill”) to the downright banal (“Rock and Roll Music”). The same question still lingers throughout all of them: what’s the point?

The originals sound even more forced than the oldies. Whatever happened to Brian Wilson the composer, the guy who was someday supposed to write these symphonies and be like Beethoven or somebody? Here he’s reduced to merely a glorified producer, an arranger no less. In his heralded comeback, Brian Wilson remains an invisible man and the state of his talent in the Seventies an unanswered question.

Bill Gubbins

rather naive goad of universal acceptance.

Air-Wreck Genheimer

JEFFERSON STARSHIP Spitfire (Grunt)

It would be pretty hard to deny the fact that what made Red Octopus the biggest Airplane/Starship album ever was the return of crew member Marty Balin. All thpse years that the Airplane was flying high under the guise of being a sociopolitical aggregation, one looked at Grace and Paul and Jorma and Jack as chief constructors of the Airplane’s wash of sound. But the Airplane’s nosedive after Balin’s departure and the Starship’s self-indulgent failures made it pretty clear as to where the true energy source of the band lay. It was always Balin as both catalyst and foreman, his vocals sailing over the rest of the music, directing the band more by sheer presence than anything else.

Spitfire is a record of sounds, the kinds of sounds that made the Airplane what they were in the late Sixties. The songs have those threepart harmonies wrapped up together like days of old but with two major differences. First, the music: Kantner, Craig Chaquico, John Barbata, Pete Sears and David Freiberg finally are confident enough in their own blend of rock and soul to divorce the group’s general instrumental sound from the Kaukonen/Casady psychedelic folk alliance. Second, the lyrics: all songs of love here, only one quasi-politico tune, “Dance With the Dragon.” The combination of the lyrics and the music throws Balin outfront; this is his territory to be sure, and he chums through the album with four lead vocals and a helping hand on most of the remaining tracks. Though Kantner has coauthored four songs, he is heard mostly in the background, stepping out only on his two-tune “Song to the Sun” minisuite. Mostly, though, it’s Marty and Grace back and forth, and it’s all pretty damn grand. “Cruisin’” and “St. Charles,” the latter featuring a standout solo by Chaquico, are the high points here, but for the first time in ages we’ve got a complete group package from the Starship. The music isn’t too important or relevant but then again, what is these days?

Billy Altman