ROCK • A • RAMA

ROCK • A • RAMA

RAMONES (Sire)::I was at a baseball game with Allen Lanier—the Twins vs. the Rangers or some such shit, it was in Minneapolis anyway— and he kept trying to explain to me why baseball was good because it was boring, a line of reasoning also pursued unsuccessfully (at least to my understanding) by R. Meltzer in barroom conversations past. I just kept drinking beer, and just happened to have brought along my trusty cassette deck, which I kept turning on, blasting out with the Ramones, whom I discovered were perfect baseball cheering music: "Eye! Oh! Let's go?" Even the assiduously scorekeeping little kid in front of us was getting off on it. In fact everybody was but Allen who kept shutting off my recorder, and Ric, the BOC roadie who wouldn't even deign to converse re Ramones or Kiss ("You gotta understand, he's kind of an earnest type guy," Allen explained privately). Later that day I scored an even bigger hit when 1 treated the other passengers to the, whole first side of Ramones and got thrown off United Airlines Flight 431 for my troubles. 1 foghat who won the ball game.

L.B.

ROY AYERS UBIQUITY - Everybody Love Sunshine (Polydor)::My daytime job as a welfare investigator ("Aha, he is a Nazi," cluck my critical enemies.) takes me into many a ghetto home in Cincinnati and Dayton. While I try to avoid staring too long at my ADC mamas' behemoth stereos and their jiving suggestion of the dreaded "unreported income," I can't help appraising their attendant record collections with my practiced honky eye. After spotting Roy Ayer's Mystic Voyage in an inordinate number of Afro-American homes, I consulted a black coworker. "Sure," he said, "I've got Mystic Voyage. Doesn't everybody?" So I gave this one an extrachance, but I still don't get it (Ayers, having proven himself in real jazz before turnin' to haute disco, presumably knows what he's doing). I mean, I admit I ain't black, but I thought I was at least middle-class. Jeez!

R.R.

WAR'S GREATEST HITS (United Artists):: Sure, Brian Wilson's recovery as a composer and a general human being is good for the collective karma of the biz, but if you still believe, after 15 Big Ones that the Beach Boys are Now, you just may be barking up the wrong Yucca tree. L.A. is the cultural Mecca of American blacks these days (Motown ever on top of the scene), and nobody captures that new L.A. synthesis better than War. The beaches have been integrated since 1962, and the black kids can crawl out from under the boardwalk and mount their own surfboards ("Summer"). The Little Deuce Coupe has been banished from the Boulevards by real Third World chrome ("Low Rider"). And "The World Is A Ghetto" is an answer you never got from TM.

R.R.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS-Rastaman Vibration (Island) a It took rock 'n' roll about a decade and a half to get so self conscious that all its principal adherents started writing songs about itself. It took reggae already; don't tell me how long this shit's been around unnoticed. Or maybe it's just this exploitative bastard's fault. Ethiopia gonna burn your ass (as if it could care less). Top 40, Boy.

L.B.

BRYAN FERRY—Let's Stick Together (Atco) ::Sure, he's George Sanders now, but will he turn into Leo G. Carroll later?

B.A.

ALICE COOPER—Goes To Heaven (Boy Howdy!) ::Age-old story of how a fading rock star goes to St. Peter for help, only to be laughed at .and turned away.

J.M.

PATTI SMITH—Teenage Perversity and Ships in the Night; LOU REED—Blondes Have More Fun (Both bootlegs—you can find 'em around somewhere) ::Patti's first bootleg is a good buy—lotsa time, plus new songs, plus a guest appearance by a luded Iggy ("I just got back from a date with a Transylvanian masseuse," his opening words, should be the first lines of a song), but she doesn't really transform the Horses stuff as she's capable of—rather perfunctoryin fact, if intense—and the new album should be out at least when you read this. Although this is your chance to cop her classic versions of "Pale Blue Eyes" and "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time" (complete with Patti-added lyrics "Went down to Harlem lookin' for somethin' nice and black/This cat comes up to me says 'Darlin' don't you know that the blackest thing in Harlem is white!'"—worthy orig. "Waitin' For My Man"). Which is the first cut on the Lou album, recorded during a tour of Australia. It drags and so does most of what follows. He says the word "whore" in "Sally Can't Dance," but somehow always seems to get it up for "Heroin," no matter what the circumstances or sidemen. Strange, maybe.

L.B.

ALICE COOPER-Falls To Earth (Boy Howdy!) ::The age-old continuing story of a fading rock star who's been laughed at by St. Peter.

J.M.

BILL COSBYBill Cosby Is Not Himself These Days, Rat On (Capitol) ::The originals by James and Barry are funnier. Bill should stick to peddling cereal to kids, either that or become a Kung-Fu star. And then, k.-f. the kids. The guy's implicitly funny. He doesn't have to try. Trying is the destruction of everything in the world.

L.B.

ALICE COOPER-Goes To Uhelszki (Boy Howdy!) ::Age-old story of how a fading rock star goes to a former Features Editor for help, only to be laughed at and turned away.

J.M.

PETER IVERS (Warner Brothers) ::This record comes vocalized by none other than Ms.. Carly Simon, with artsy-craftsy implication that she's hot for auteur Iver's precocious WASPerous peter—which may just explain why Mr. James Taylor is suddenly reinflicting his neuroses on the AM masses after so long in absence. Reject this LP at once, restore the Simon-Taylor's marital yumdrums, and clear the airwaves of bathos. You've got a friend ...

R.R.

This month's Rock-a-ramas were written by Lester Bangs, Richard Riegel, Billy Altman and Jeffrey Morgan.