CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

AEROSMITH: 'Rocks' (Columbia) ::This is the teen crossover of the year, but it ain't the Stones—the resemblance is strictly facial. You should have known. The great motherlode of hard rock in this world is Led Zeppelin, and this is the most convincing American version to date—more fluid and less melodramatic, limited but powerful. Zep's fourth represented a songmaking peak, before the band simply outgrew itself, and the same may prove true here, too, so get it while you can.

B+

'JOAN ARMATRADING' (A&M):: There are lots of reasons to like this forthright black Englishwoman, but interesting music isn't one of them. The world does not need a post-feminist Odetta.

C+

ARTFUL DODGER: 'Honor Among Thieves' (Columbia)::Conceivably, these kids could turn into teen heroes everybody can be proud of. They respect the rock 'n' roll verities, but in a dynamic rather than an arty or nostalgic way; their instrumental wallop is powerful enough to keep them in there with the heavies, but so deft that the lyricism of their songs is left untouched. A lot of bands around CBGB's will spend their lives wishing they could have gotten it together like this.

B+

THE BECKIES' (Sire):: Michael Brown (the Left Banke, Stories) keeps getting better. The weld between his snazzy European colors and textures and the concise, kinetic pop structures of American rock 'n' roll is by now totally invisible, and the playing is energetic and expert. But for all the distinction of the lyric-making these songs might as well have no words at all—not just that they don't reward careful attention, but that the vacancy of the vocal tracks simply cannot be filled by the valiantly serviceable singing of Gary Hodgden and Scott Trusty. This failing might be set aright by intensive radio play, but alas, Brown's songwriting is probably a little too sophisticated for that.

B

FANIA ALL STARS: 'Delicate and Jumpy' (Columbia)::I don't know much about salsa, but I know what it means when it says "arranged and conducted by Gene Page." In or out of clave, elevator music is elevator music.

C—

'GASOLIN' (Epic)::This wonderfully improbable record may signal a new movement—here comes the Copenhagen Sound. Would it were true. The LP compiles the best material from three Danish albums—which means not only released in Denmark, but sung in the native language of . that funky land, with translations provided in part by an Epic PR man who deserves a new job. Gasolin's music miraculously overwhelms the musicianship and symphonic textures of Yurrupean technopomp with the raucous good humor of genuine rock 'n' roll, and their epithet of the U.S.—"the redskin land," they call it—should make any American chauvinist swell with irony. Just when you're afraid they're indulging in a little Guess Who-style sexism, "It's all the same to an American dame," you figure out that what they're reallysaying is, "It's all the same to an American Dane." Must be.

A—

JOHN HARTFORD: 'Mark Twang' (Flying Fish):: Hartford's come a long way from "Gentle on My Mind," singing about the mighty Mississip (too thick to navigate, too thin to plow) and recording this eccentric river music for a distinctly minor folk label. He's slightly the better for it, too, I'd say—but not so's he should turn down a gig on the Proud Mary.

B

THE HEPTONES: 'Night Food' (Island)::This reminds me that British skinheads were the first white reggae fans—it shares its sexual brutality and rhythmic monotonousness with the most desperate and overbearing heavy rock. Saved by admirably intense and cogent vocal stylings and (I count) three good songs—not enough to really give such styling someplace to go.

B

'HIDDEN STRENGTH' (United Art ists)::I get to play this once every two or three months, when it works down to the end of the shelf. I put on side one and enjoy the easeful nonsense chorus of "Happy Song." But nothing else— including "Hustle On Up (Do the Bump)," which UA foolishly slotted for a disco breakout—catches my ear. Someone in a position of authority should listen to "Happy Song." It's nice.

C

HI RHYTHM: 'On the Loose' (Hi) ::Some stickler for detail is sure to point out that the singing on side two is completely out of tune, but that's OK—so is most of the singing on side one, the best side of black pop music to appear this year. It's no coincidence that the main competition comes from Al Green's Full of Fire, out of the same studio; in fact, it would appear that his sidemen, disgruntled at Green's unwillingness to record their songs, just got together and cut them themselves. I think they proved something. One of the more carefully thought out tracks features a lyric about Green himself, but it's the eccentricity of the music, which sounds as if it includes a banjo, that does him in. Loose indeed.

A—

DOUG KERSHAW: 'Ragin' Cajun' (Warner Bros.)::The lesson of this (Paying attention, Waylon?) is that, given minimal professional competence, those who act macho are more appealing if they also act a little nuts.

B

DELBERT McCLINTON: 'Genuine Cowhide' (ABC)::Texas partisans tout this whoopersnapper as God's own leather-lunged, bicentennial rockabilly truth, but I can't quite hear it. He's not ravaged enough; his crazy enthusiasm sounds too professional, too glib; there are none of those spaced-out moments that lend such vulnerability, and credibility, to a Billy Swan. Does this mean I'm complaining that Delbert sings too good? Could be.

B

JANE OLIVOR: 'First Night' (Columbia)::The three best-selling record albums of all time are Tapestry, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and The Sound of Music. One way of explaining how unmonolithic "mass" culture really is is to point out how few consumers are likely to own all three. And a way of explaining how stupefying Jane Olivor is is to guess that she not only owns all three, but would put them in her all-time top 10. Live, she enunciates Neil Diamond and John Denver lyrics with the intense credulity of someone who thinks poetry is anything that rhymes; her LP is marginally more adventurous, but if she becomes a star it will be by embodying the half of Barbra Streisand that Bette Midler put in the garbage. Recycling should never go this far.

TURN TO PAGE 70.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14.

C—

DOLLY PARTON:'All I Can Do' (RCA Victor)::I ask myself, am I a fool in love? Am I getting suckered by this record? It's all pretty formulaic, predictably enough, 10 songs clocking in at only 27:21, a typical country album shortchange. Just how much of a genius do I want to make this woman out to be? But the explanation is simple. This collection succeeds by avoiding greeting-card goop for Dolly's perky, upbeat side, and if none of the compositions quite match up to any of those on the must-hear Best of Dolly Parton (APL1-1117), not a one is less than intensely pleasant to hear.

B+

GUNTHER SCHULLER: Country Fiddle Band' (Columbia)::Why do I love this semi-classicized perversion when country fiddle and bluegrass music that strives for authenticity leaves me cold? It's all in the candor of the striving; as usual, I'm put off by the way so-called folk groups formalize a tradition that had spontaneity and unselfconsciousness at the root of its attraction. This silly symphony is something else. The melodies are fetchingly triedand-true, the (unintentional?) stateliness of the rhythms appropriately 19th century, and the instrumental overkill (24 instruments massed on "FlopEared Mule") both gorgeous and hilarious. A gran d novelty record.

B+

SIR DOUG & THE TEXAS TORNADOS: "Texas Rock for Country Rollers' (ABC)::For 20 years, Sir Doug has lived the archetypal rock 'n' roll romance: raised on C&W and R&B in Texas, doping in California when that was a good idea, then digging back to his own beginning, by then changed utterly by dop& and rock 'n' roll. He almost never writes great songs or makes great albums, but he never never writes bad songs or makes bad albums. The survival of his fatal fuzziness—an LP called Rough Edges, compiled from outtakes after he'd left Mercury, remains one of his aptest and best—is here assured by old mentor Huey Meaux, a producer whose renowned feel has little to do with conceptual or aural clarity. But it's been well over two years since the last one, so the songs are a little richer than usual. Worth having.

B+

THE STILLS/YOUNG BAND: "Long May You Run' (Reprise)::The album, like the tour, is probably a profittaking throwaway. Good. Young is always wise to wing it (you like Harvest?), and this session finds him feeling droll. As for Stills, the less he expresses himself the better; several of his compositions are little more than hypnotic chants. There's an exponential advantage in hearing him sing lead only every other cut, and Neil's backup singing and guitar is a nice palliative. Also; lest we forget, Stephen is very talented; he belongs on this pleasant non-masterpiece, the most listenable L.A. rock of the year.

A—

TAVARES: 'Sky-High!' (Capitol):: In the tradition of the produced group, they make hit singles, not albums; last year's In the City, done with Lambert & Potter, was apparently a fluke. This time they've switched to Freddie Perren, the Motown alumnus whose radical affinity for the transcendently awkward lyric is best represented by the Miracles' City of Angels. (Two samples from this outing: "The mighty power of love/It's got more force than any shove" and "Son you gotta give a heck/You gotta promise to give respect.") Three fine tunes, four or five drecky ones.

B—

THE ANDREA TRUE CONNECTION: 'More, More, More' (Buddah)::Forget Donna Summer—this is the real disco porn. She's covered on the cover right up to the clavicale, her rhythms sound more binary than her producer's, and she can't sing a lick. But even if you haven't seen her movies, she projects an exhibitionistic suck-and-fuck tractability that links the two pervasive fantasex media of our time, and from such conjunctions great art arises.

B

WILD CHERRY* (Epic/Sweet City) ::This record is regarded by the pure of heart as a racist vulgarization of black funk music, but although I'll go along with the argument that the hook on "Play That Funky Music" isn't the rhythm track but the words "white boy," I insist that it's real, hard to vulgarize Graham Central Station. Sure the performance is a bit on the crude side, but the relationship is more that of Grand Funk to Cream than of, say, Jim Dandy Mangrum to Sly Stone.

C