KISS Rock And Roll Over (Casablanca)

It is 6:12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I have my TV tuned to channel 68 in Newark, N.J., and I am watching the Uncle Floyd Show (sponsored by Zip'Z Ice Cream Parlor), which follows reruns of Dobie Gillis (I had forgotten that early on in the series Warren Beatty appeared regularly as the nasty rich kid—even better was Michael J. Pollard as Maynard G.'s cousin). Uncle Floyd has, over the past few months, become one of my real heroes. Uncle Floyd is a mediocre actor, a lousy comedian, and a lipsmoving-all-the-time ventriloquist. All his hand puppets speak in squeaky voices; all of his "visitors", from the Fonzie-styled greaser to the Lyndon Johnson-eared country singer Cowboy Charlie are third-rate House of Frankenstein rejects,

Uncle Floyd's trademark is a loud plaid jacket and a pork pie hat which covers his prematurely balding scalp. There are Uncle Floyd fan clubs all over Jersey and New York City. You can buy Uncle Floyd buttons for 39^ each or, if you prefer, three for a dollar. You can see him on Saturdays at the shopping center, where he helps celebrate stationery store openings. Uncle Floyd knows that he isn't too smart. Uncle Floyd knows that he isn't too talented. Uncle Floyd knows that he is stuck on a fly-bynight TV station hosting a totally inane kiddie show. You can see it. in his eyes. You can hear it in his voice. The Uncle Floyd Show is a nightly installment of No Exit. I love Uncle Floyd.

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Uncle Floyd has come to the part of the show called "Pictures On The Wall". Scotch-taped to the panelled clubhouse wall are drawings sent in by viewers. Uncle Floyd describes each picture and identifies the drawer. This is a very important part of the show; it takes up ten minutes, or one third of air time. Without it, Uncle Floyd would be a lot more lost than he is already. "Here's a picture sent in by .Debbie Watkins of New Milford, and it shows Oogy flying over the Uncle Floyd house." (The sound of Oogy's voice is heard: "Let me see, let me see." "No, Oogy,, you've been bad today." "That's no excuse, I'm always bad." Nervous laughter from the stage crew) . "Now here's one from Jerry Weinstein of East Rutherford of Uncle Floyd and Cowboy Charlie singing a duet (the drawing consists of two stick figures, one with a pork pie hat, the other with a cowboy hat, and a few musical notes lingering over their head).

The camera moves up and over. And there, on Uncle Floyd's wall, is a perfectly-traced replica of the cover from Destroyer. "Our last picture, and a very good one at that, is from Nancy Loring of Paterson, and that's the rock group Kiss."

"We live in a world of carnivals and clowns/And buildings to the sky/That make us want to fly." So said the Strawberry Alarm Clock in 1968 and the prophesy certainly rings true when one considers Kiss's ascension to the summit ' of the American rock mountain. We all wish, at some time or other, that we were somewhere else or could be somebody else. In the Fifties, we created our own record hops and formed streetcorner quartets. In the early Sixties, we faked British accents and started to play our 6wn instruments. By the late Sixties we moved to unexplored territories of the mind. We created new dress and hair styles, new lifestyles. We sang the blues.

In the Seventies we have learned how to become tasteless, to become one with the teeming masses. In essence, we all were Grand Funk, the Archies, the Banana Splits. And now, with Kiss, we have become our own Final Solution. The search for inner identity abandoned in favor of a finely delineated outer shell. And with that outer masquerade, there are no explanations necessary. No questions to be answered or even asked. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Kiss says it with two guitars, bass, drums, and comic book visuals. And it works.

The rock star interview and the candid photos accompanying it seems to me to be one of the dumbest byproducts of, as Ms. Mitchell so aptly put it, "the starmaker machinery behind the pop-

ular song." If it isn't straight, heretofore unknown information being fed into the cassette recorder Fm rarely interested. I get most of my information from records and concerts. If a performer is good, I'll see all I need to see from his stage act. And if a songwriter is good, I'll hear all I need to hear from his songs. If the musician could sit down and articulate in words exactly what he does, then that would mean that he could communicate his feelings and emotions in another way separate from his various artistic communications channels. In which case, he probably wouldn't be writing those songs or singing that way because there would be no need for the artistic outlet. The only exceptions are artists who truly are their art, and those are rare exceptions indeed.

In the last few years we've seen the notion of image stretched beyond belief, because most of our biggest stars turn out to be all too ordinary offstage and off the record. If pop music reflects the times, and it usually does, then we're all in the middle of one huge personality crisis. Which is why Kiss makes perfectsense. Their image, their act, is no more or no less an image or act than Elton John or Lou Reed or Rod Stewart. Rock W Roll Over's one concession to the need for an AM follow up to "Beth" is "Hard Luck Woman", a hilarious compilation of four Rod Stewart songs roiled into one with Peter Criss singing in perfect Stewartian tones. It will probably annoy a lot of people and I like that. Because Kiss's masks are as valid as Rod's Sam Cooke vocal mask, aren't they?

Rock V Roll Over does what it says. It rock 'n' rolls over. And over. And over. It is loud. It is simple. And it is fun.."Mister Speed" has an Ace Frehley solo that is as succinct and devastating as that incredible break in Slade's song "Mama, Weer All Crazee Now". "See You In Your Dreams" is a primer in tongue-consciousness, creating spaces and then filling them with exactly what you anticipated. "Calling Dr. Love", on the other hand, leaves all of the spaces open, causing a buildup of tension that doesn't get resolved until the beginning of the next song Ladies Room",

Add to this a little Hendrix overtone on "Baby Driver" and some Led Zep thump on "Makin' Love" and you've got an amazing album from a band that knows just what rock 'n' roll is, and they don't just like it, they love it. And I love it. And the little girl from Paterson loves it. And what the hel 1 is wrong with fantasies, anyway?

JACKSON BROWNE The Pretender

_(Asylum) _

Jon Landau has lately found a rather unique specialty for himself—

producing long-awaited, long-delayed albums. First Bruce Springsteen's, and now Jackson Browne's. So far, he's batting two for two.

But with a considerable difference. The cult of personality surrounding certain producers has puzzled the hell out of me (you hear, for instance, about a Richard Perry album, and sometimes you even hear who's on it), and Jackson Browne makes me think maybe I was right to be puzzled. Because while Springsteen's Born To Run took a diffuse, prodigious talent and chopped and channeled it into a sword to pierce the heart of writers mourning their lost leather jacket youth, the new Jackson Browne is pretty much more of the same.

Most of the songs sound like each other, and like songs on Browne's previous three albums. Somehow, that doesn't bother me. A tot of very serious people only have one song to sing, one thing to say. Most of us don't even have that, which is why we depend on Jackson Brownes to do it for us. Jackson Browne's song is mystical and apocalyptic, about the deluge, lost love, changing personality, friends become strangers, the self becomes a stranger, and the healing powers of Mother Water. He has rfext to nothing to do with Good Time California; he has everything to do with the rootless terror and hope of redemption that the endless summer sun shines down on. A hundred years ago, he would have made a fine hellfireand-damnation preacher.

No, Jackson Browne is no Lord Byron: put him in the line of happy idiots behind T.S. Eliot...

The songs have the same tong, sinuous, hymnlike lines as before. When they don't—Browne's attempts to be a rocker, and to sing falsetto on the Latin "Linda Paloma" —they don't work. When he isn't trying to stomp it out, he sings better than ever. And he still has his pals around: David Lindley, Lowell George, John David Souther, David Crosby, Graham Nash, all that crowd.

There are any number of memorable lines. I especially like one in "Daddy's Tune", about the singer's attempt to re'concile his difference with his father: "Make room for my forty-fives/Along beside your seventy-eights." Several places in the record, Browne has the happy facility of being completely specific and totally universal at the same time.

The moment that keeps running around in my head, though, is on the title track, where Browne sings, "I'm going to be a happy idiot/And struggle for the legal tender." I wouldn't presume to say whether or not that line is autobiographical, but it did send me hunting up an essay called "Tradition and the Individual Talent", which T.S. Eliot wrote about fifty years ago, and I found these lines, which put me in mind of Jackson Browne: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from them."

Joe Goldberg

KINKY FRIEDMAN Lasso From El Passo __(Epic)_

Some good cuts on this elpee and when ya think about it all Kinky albums've ever been good for is cuts, never really been a whole dyn-o-mite thirty-three and a thirder from him yet and probably never but what the hell, y'know? Yeah so anyway what's primo this time is "OL' BEN LUCAS," the first significant snotsong since that one by Love back on Forever Changes, whatever it's called. . .wait, lemme go look it up, want this review to be on the money so lemme just go look it up... "Live and Let Live"—not "Live and Let Die." A great snotsong it was and so's this one plus this one's ALSO GOT the best chiDun's chorus since "Bungalow Bill" and kids singin about snot's MORE IMPRESSIVE than kids singin about elephant killers ANYDAY. That's the best cut.

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"Waitret, Please, Waitret" woulda been a good cut if he at least carried the et biz all the way thru but he don't so if s only half good but of course half is better'n none so that's one 'n' a half so far.

"Men's Room, L.A." is a whole entire bonafide WHOLE GOOD CUT courtesy of Ringo as the voice of Jesus X. Christ and in case you were wonderin in advance of maybe PURCHASING this elpee whether or not it's a lavender men's room tune lemme just tell ya no if ain't it's just a guy on the crapper findin the Lord, happens everyday, y'know? So that's two and one half already which means it's already AN ALBUM WORTH OWNING cause ?ince '68 the official standard for a.w.o.'s has been TWO CUTS, PREFERABLY ONE PER SIDE.

Thing is all two 'n' a half of em are on side two cause aside frbm Little Jewford Shelby as the voice of the camel on "Ahab the Arab" side the first AIN'T IMPRESSIVE but even .3 of a.cut is still better'n you find on most Led Zep albums so at least you got Jewford if you ever feel like turning it over so let's just go back to side the second cause I ain't finished yet elucidatin just how outasight it is: very.

"Catfish" stinks but so do both the pitcher and lake creature of the same name, particularly if y'leave em outa the freezer too long. But "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" is hot shitte, even if it took association with fellow Hebrew Bobby Dillon to bring the FOLK SIDE OF KINKY into the light. Like Bob himself really cooked when he did it on Dylan the album (which y'can't even find in cutout bins anymore even tho it was good) and now an actual cowboy's doin likewise in tribute to the mighty injun who won us WW2 singlehanded before drownding in that puddle with C2H50H in his bloodstream: bless him cause we all know he really hates niggers and gooks and the like so it's all reef if he don't mind the redskins (arbitrariness makes the world go round).

Okay so that makes three and one half plus point-three which ultimately add to 3.8 cuts of note' which is nothing to spit on in these lean days of puke, right? Best album on Epic since The Dictators Go Girl Crazy so there's hope yet for the bastard child stepson of Columbia which itself hasn't really gotten down since A Portrait of Johnny back in '61 and that's a long wait for decent product but we at CREEM have eyery faith that it can be done so hope springs eternal and yakety yak blah blah blah blah...

R. Meltzer

FOGHAT Night(Shift (Bearsville)

After a pretty sketchy beginning when they were just another set of fuck-you-Willie-Dixon pyro slaves and a couple of false starts along the way, Foghat is now undisputedly one of the top' dogs in the meat house. Having dumped their pumped up Canned Fat progressions for intuitive three chords from a helmut riffs and needling vocals designed to make you roll over on your back with all four paws in the air, they've become more of a Deep Purple without aerial dramatics than ZZ Top with a thorn in its paw. Anatomically correct heavy metal.

They haven't entirely ditched their roots, nudheads, but almost. The only concession to blues drool this time out is the middle section of the title cut, where they drop down a few speeds so that Lonesome Dave (hear those train whistles blow?) can deliver his patented "I work so hard all night just so I can come home and screw you" moan while Rod Price discovers arcane connections between every blues lick known to man. That's quickly forgotten though, as "Hot Shot Love" fades in like pissing on a behive with its blurry echoed vocals and soundproof booth guitar. Then comes the prime cruncher, "Take Me To The River", where Roger Carl's huge out of pro-

portion Adrienne Barbeau jungle drums make that Al Green song sound like "I Just Wanna Make Love To You" reworked for the Angolan disco circuit. The only nose holder is "I'll Be Standing By", a definite crib-death, candidate with hot air strings.

The flip side is high speed too, especially "Drivin' Wheel", reminiscent of the great Herman Munster line: "I don't wanna burn it or marry it, I just wanna drive it." Brain shrinking lyrics are as big a plus as their thought smearing music in fact, eliminating any potential Eno meaning with good stuff like love lights, lost-you women, and sweet little angels spreading their wings. Your elbows can get so sore slyly nudging your friends that you almost wish they'd just go ahead and do a song called "Suck Me Off" and get it all over with.

Elton Cops Some ZZZ's

by Richard Riegel Rieg

ELTON JOHN Bine Moves (Rocket)

The other evening a bunch of us were sitting around in my mother-inlaw's living room, watching John * * 'Barbarino* * * Travolta emote his way through The Boy in the Glass Bubble on her 24" TV (and the;? say Cincinnati's a dull burg on Friday nights), when my friend pointed out that Travolta was assuaging the loneliness of his antiseptic quarters with, among other paraphernalia, an Elton John album. "John?" says my mother-inlaw, ever in awe 9f the miracles of the evacuative processes, "Where does he go to the john?"

So, if "Elton John" is not quite a household word, not yet, Reginald Dwight could never have been mistaken for a W.C. in anybody's household. (Someone's in the kitchen with Bemie Taupin, reading old Paul Simon lyric sheets out loud.) After all, here it is the late '70s already, Elton John has been bigger than the Beatles for years and years, and let's us get on with this here march of popcultural history.

Blue Moves is Elton's "White Album", similarly color-coded and

four-sided, not to mention just as massively anticlimactic. Elton's done with touring for the moment, but he's left his legions of fans many a robust single for the interim: I'm hearing "Crazy Water" on the infallible FM already, and "Between Seventeen and Twenty," "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)," and "Boogie Pilgrim" ("Honky Cat" goes discotrekking) will make fine successors.

Yeah, there's filler in between: "Cage the Songbird" is "For Edith Piaf" (smirk), while "One Horse Town" invokes the Paul Simon patronize-your-provinces formula noted above (us one-horse-town alumni are going to have to start

writing songs about how tough it is growing up sensitive in subwayrattled N.Y.C., all salient points based on our first-hand reading of old J.D. Salinger novellas.) But, hey, whaddya want, a single-record album?

Besides, that atmospheric instrumental, "Out of the Blue", is not jazz, but it's not bad, as Mr. Haggard once almost said. This song just may exemplify the "blue moves" of the title, and if Elton continues this trend, soon he can take the late Vince Guaraldi's place as the chief scorer of those Peanuts TV specials. (Bemie's already completed a thorough self-analysis through his rigorous study of the complete works of Charles M. Schulz, so he's all set.)

Bitter? Nope, not me. Elton John's a damn nice guy, a superstar for all our times; his level-headed modesty has already obliterated both the compulsive moronism of Elvis, and the galloping schizophrenia of the Beatles. He's a bigger American than half of the ElektraAsylum roster are, and more power to him if he's bi without bragging about it. (If there's a God in Heaven, what's He doing tonight? Blue Moves filtered through the ol' headphones.)

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What with most of the other Engljsh slash and burn outfits either splitting up or developing onstagebedsores, it looks like Foghat's onethud minded determination to rule the ear brutes is finally paying off. Aural homocide, said the Sheriff. We don't put that kind in jail.

Rick Johnson

SPARKS Big Beat (Columbia)

"WHAT HO IS THIS ZLUB?" asks the mug in the street because to the average Kiss/Zep Mr. Normal, Sparks must sound like Tweety Pie experiencing strangulation. For to the klutz clinging to hang on sloopy, Sparks smacks of hi-falutin caterwauling and self-indulgent prissy twists. But who ever said you gotta be stupid and sound dumb to play decent rock 'n' roll? And who claimed that clobbering the shit out of your gee-tar was gonna instantly make you uh...duh...BIG ROCK STAR?! For pud sake, let's get a little kool intelligentsia back into the heatwaves of the mainstream of pop schlop.

Gone are the days of psychotic reaction, ya know (boo hoo hoo). Alas, let's forever weep...no more rama lama fa fa fa!! (tears pouring in torrents) Instead, replacing the maniacal gutbust of yesteryear's fuzztones is the neverending assembly line of schmoos (buy a record today and there's one behind it just like it). That's why it's special delivery to have a band like Sparks STAND ALONE amidst the buf-

foonery of conforming contortionists. Yeah, Sparks is just plain weird.

Unlike an innovative band like Roxy Music, however, Sparks has never overcome its cuh appeal. Instead, they frolic in their elitism, pushing their pubescent tremelos to maximum tolerance. From their first elpee identity as Halfnelson to Indiscreet, Sparks has persisted in maintaining a hi-quality level of show biz mimicry, but you had to get beyond their squeals and jerks. Force-feeding Russell Mael's vocals on an unsuspecting dufus is no way to make a Sparks fan!

Luckily, Big Beat fulfills a compromise. Answering the challenge that all of their looney tunes sound like tinkertoy musical numbers, the Mael Bros, have decided to sizzle awhile in the backbeat erf hard rock. What survives is a spindizzy example of polished finesse that's guaranteed to please even the most diehard Sparks antagonist. "Nothing to Do" stormtroops in the splendid tradition of Slade and Sweet, spiked by inspired lines like: "If I had a million thumbs/Pd twiddle, twiddle/But I just have two." Roll up the rug and dance to the lightning flashes of "Fill-Er-Up" (dedicated to gas hogs everywhere)!"White Women" could be the theme song to Captive Wild She Demons (deranged Nazi scientist dabbles in scar tissue experiments that result in the creation of a pure mutilated race). It's total fascist dominance and submission as the boys wobble their Adam's apples on "Throw Her Away (And Get a New One)." Anywhere the needle drops, ya see, it's evident that Sparks has never been in a better stance, positioned to swing a powerful right hook at all opponents of their particular eccentricities.

And at least Big Beat Sparks haven't done a flip-flop by assuming a radically more esoteric post. Okay! YOU CAN ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THIS RECORD!! Admittedly, Sparks ain't everybody's bowl of granola, but they do traverse the Doom Machine of mechanical Top Twenty Gonad Hits in order to reach for intense ultrasonic levels of sophisticated gaga. In a dawgeatdawg record biz, that's no simple feat.

Robot A. Hull

HOT TUNA Hoppkoru (Grunt)

Hot Tuna! What a great name for a band, eh? Visions of sweaty, dripping kielbasa casings flap through your head. Mmm-mmmgood. Lickety licky slurp suck juicile smack smack ahhh! Of course you'd naturally expect something licentious from a label called Grunt, but oo-wee baby, you really get one hell of an underpants wetter with this one! Even the inner sleeve undulates. A real throbber of a painting (by Jerry Leiberwitz) drips all over your legs with its swirling mass of poozle and pooter twisting and turning into and out of each other all around this anguished debit type character with an exposed cerebellum and a tongue LONGER THAN GENE SIMMONS' that splits like labia at its end.

Hot Tuna! HOT-TU-NA! Yep, it's also a great name because when you break it up into syllables, hot-tu-na; the name provides three slick evaluative categories to lump all the songs for purposes of review. (I don't know about you, Jackson, but that sure makes my life easier.) Like the first song on side one falls into the HOT category. This song not only cooks, it steams. It's called "Santa Claus Retreat," which mayseemlike a real limp boner of a title, but nevertheless pounds the ears in your rear with a genuine rockhard-on grind reminiscent of the Rolling Stones circa "Honky-Tonk Woman."

The second song fits the TU category, the category that stands for "hot, too," because this song is hot, too or hot, as well. (Get it?) Song number two doesn't fit the HOT category not because it isn't any good, but because it's pretty with its acoustic guitar intro, and that's "pretty" a la Led Zep's "Over The Hill And Far Away," not "pretty" a la John Denver. These guys ain't sissies, ya know!

Number Three, "It's So Easy," (that's right, the Buddy Holly Creation) dips itself into the HOT spot by virtue of its psychedelic swirl-stomp treatment of Holly's simple shuffle structure and by the titillating pleasure of Karen Tobin's background vocal and Jorma Kaukonen's sweet scream lead guitar overlay.

"Bowlegged Woman, Knock Kneed Man," the fourth offering, jumps on the fence between HOT

and TU. This song is definitely hot, but at a slower tempo and therefore simmers as opposed to steams. Kaukonen's lead guitar is prominent again here, but this time it's right down and dirty nasty screaming (most creative tiffin' I've heard in a long time, if ever) and the slowed down tempo gives one time to at least think about the finer projects of the flesh that two bodies are capable of. As the title suggests, this song is pure fuck music.

The last song on side one, "Drivin' Around," is I guess what a couple could get up and do after listening to the fourth song on side one.

Well what do you know? All the way through the first side and hot one tune in the NA pile! NA would of course be an undesirable category for a song to fall info since NA sounds like "nah," as in "nah, that song ain't no thrill." Which would make the record about average, but at up to seven dollars a crack per record these days, you don't want too many NA songs on the records you buy, unless you're some kind of sickie masochist. At any rate, Hot Tuna's new one has a clean bill of health.. .so far. All the songs on side one are either HOT orTU. Congratulations are in order. But what about the second side?, you may ask yourself if you haven't left for the record store already. Well, there's no sense in delaying the news any longer... There isn't one single NA song on side two, either!

The first ditty, "I Wish You Would," is awarded a strong TU rating because it's sexy with a capital "x," which I believe is the symbol for the 86th position in Johnny "Wado" Holmes' infamous love manual for the well endowed. (You may award your own plus or minus according to any feelings you may have toward vocalists trying to sound like Frank Zappa trying to sound like a wart hog's pole thrusting against tree bark.)

Prepare to pump and curl your lower spine because the next two numbers are certified standouts in the HOT pile. "I Can't Be Satisfied," is the saga of true lust frustration envolving someone's T-bone steak and "Talking 'Bout You," is indeed the classic Chuck Berry young tush serenade, although the basic I-IV-V chord pattern is barely discernable once the Tuna boys crank their whawha's to the hilt and start to hump. Hot Tuna has certainly captured the very essence of that which can only be accurately described as electric dog grind music in these two tracks.

The fourth title is highly suspicious: "Extrication Love Song." Extrication?! I looked it up for you and as one might suspect, given the general musky flavor of the album, it involves gooey genitalia, ie., to disengage, to release from entanglement. In other words, extrication describes what happens after Napoleon shoots his shot and retreats from Waterloo. This tune offers a popular suggestion as to what you can do about it...Suffice it to say that the chorus says, "l want to go down on you. "

RECORDS

Last and probably least comes "Song From The Stainless Cymbal." This final effort is very similar to.Neil Young's "Southern Man" and is the only song on the album that comes even close to the NA category.. .but that's probably just because I'm evaluating it after the 20TH STRAIGHT LISTEN IN ONE SETTING.

Hot Tuna's Hoppkorv gets my vote for dark horse album of the year.

Air-Wreck Genheimer

CHARLIE HADEN Closeness (Horizon)

The prospect of listening to a series of duets featuring acoustic bass plus one doesn't exactly get the adrenalin flowing—but Charlie Haden is no ordinary bassist and this record is the genuine article, a masterpiece achieved in a minimal setting whose emotional and intellectual impact is in direct proportion to the listener's willingness (and desire) to be immersed in the creation of magic. Being a nonmusician and only semi-literate reader of music, musicians (of this caliber) have always been for me magicians, alchemists, sorcerers, people who carry within them Big Secrets. Another album like this one and Haden may be burned at the stake. The range of these duets is best conveyed by a piece by piece survey.

"Ellen David" w/Keith Jarrett: This is a beautifully melodic piece dedicated to Haden's wife. After a forceful solo bass opening Jarrett enters, caressing the melody then making it a declarative statement which leads intp the dialogue. The strong simple theme hovers over Jarrett's ecstatic variations while Haden, who is never merely supportive, responds to the pianist's cascades with large full bodied notes of almost stately romanticism (out of meter—"phrase freely" it says on the sheet music which is reproduced on the typically attractive and informative Horizon liner). When the hovering theme descends it's first played with light touches but the resolution is an all out statement, grand piano and contra bass.

"O.C." w/Omette Cbleman: This is a straight ahead blowing piece (is it possible that Ornette's alto playing was at one time actually considered wierd?) with Haden playing a fast four, tho breaking it up when the spirit demands, behind Coleman's human voice crying blues solo. Haden's solo is "busy" but ever conscious of space, as if he's breaking it Up into sentences and paragraphs. Even in the context of a cold form, i.e., one where the structures are

built faster than the listener can disassemble them (during the first listening anyway) and the breathless dexterity seems an end in itself (seems), Haden's warmth shows thru and it's a few particularly passionate licks that introduce Ornette's second statement which is alternately ruminative and swinging and more than a little humorous.

"For Turiya" w/Alice Coltrane: Turiya is Alice's adopted name. A swirling harp has so many associations—heavenly choirs, a revelation, in the movies a cue for something breathtaking—and it's such a difficult instrument to hang loose on that it's small wonder that it's never been properly explored in contemporary improvisational music except by Ms. Coltrane. During most of this cut the harpist's glissandos and pizzicatos serve as setting and punctuation for Haden's non-stop bass story (it's a sad story but with a maestro's touch for cleansing pathos). The least interesting of the four cuts but the most intriguing. Like I said, harps and associations.

"For A Free Portugal" w/ Paul Motian: The title tells the thrust of the piece. A political tract in the form of a musical collage. Altho the dramatic highpoint of the album is percussionist Motian and Haden accompanying over-dubbed battle sounds from Eastern Angola, the prevailing mood here is quiet, almost resigned, almost a dirge capturing the tragic aspect of liberation, the losses which add up to gains.

Chalk one up for the wizards.

Richard C. Walls

DEEP PURPLE Made In Europe (Warner Bros.) '

Okay, the Purp's pooped, gone the way of allflash, at least until the '70s nostalgia craze hits sometime next decade. So it's time to hit the vaults to see what's tying around. Always good ploy for the corporate pocketbook but this time, it even makes aesthetic sense, makes aesthetic sense. Deep Purple were never known for spending much time on their material. Most of it was jammed in the studio whenever an album was due anyway. Somebody (usually Ritchie Blackmore) would come up with a riff and off they'd go, pounding outthe beat, spraying notes right and left while

whoever was singing bffeated out some hard luck story usually concerning some chick or another. Not real deep.

But what the hell. Techno-flash was their game and raking cash was their gain. The songs were just an excuse to get those fingers flexing and nothing inspired flex fever more than getting down in front of a few thousand stoned-out fans intent on getting blitzed out to oblivion. The grind got to 'em eventually, got to Ritchie first and he bailed out right after the Paris gig from which some of this stuff was taken. To do what? To form his own band and repeat the process of course.

Now what we have here are five tunes from the Bum and Stormbringer LPs done up live. Live means the solos' are longer and faster, Dave Coverdale does dorky cheerleading between songs (the dumbest "all right's" I've heard in a long time) and there's lotsa claps and whistles. No one musician really dominates. Ritchie rips his extended licks during "Mistreated" and "You Fool No One," Jon Lord's baroque organ solos are slick but sound dated two years later in an age of synthesizer overload and the underrated Ian Paice takes a brief bash or two. Sure there's excess—that's what these guys built their career on—but it's used as flavoring, not the whole meal, like Zep's Song Remains The Same.

Purp's petered out now for good, but there's no reason to cry, not with Ritchie's Rainbow going Trill steam and the forthcoming projects for the other Purples. Not to mention the hordes of bands that have been inspired by 'em to some degree— Boston, Angel, etc. and even Urfeh Heep's back on the track, having lured Ian Gillan soundalike John Lawton away from Lucifer's Friend. The Endless Boogie continues.

Michael Davis

NAZARETH Play 'N* The Game _(A&M)_

The dumptruck came again today and delivered the new Nazareth album. And, once again, we had to take it over to the car wash and hose the gunk off (does that stuff stink!). Anyway, we finally got it up the stairs with a little help from the kids at the rehab center next door, and, you know, I think it looks great next to the lavender couch. Not since I bought that granite mausoleum from the Vanilla Fudge eight or nine years ago have I enjoyed having something so large in the house. Of course, I realize that if they send us another one of these things we're going to have to move, but what the hell. I certainly can't fault the band. As mama used to say, when you think like a cinder block, you make better bomb shelters! (This is sort of off the Subject, but did the Druids ever build a turntable for Stone-

henge? If so, does Radio Shack have any in stock?)

"Somebody to Roll" sounds like that 747 that crashed here last week which sort of creates a nice continuity within the neighborhood, and the Joe Tex blues thing should really get the Nazis across the air shaft all hot and bothered (I adore seeing them touch their genitals!). "Down Home Girl" fell on Deirdre's toe again and the doctor thinks he'll have to operate this time, but I still like it.

1 just realized how much fun we have around here when we get a new Nazareth shipment. It's a damn shame they aren't making things like this anymore. Most of the stuff you get today—to me that just seems to lift up and fbat away on little pink gossamer wings after a day or two. Nazareth—now here's a group that satisfies, a band you can rely on for substance, for recordings you can set down on the floor in any room of the house without ever having to worry about refrigeration.

Robert Duncan

BLACKSABBATH Technical Ecstasy __(Warner Brothers_

Since there is only a couple of noise bands that I can think of right away who product entire LPs of nothing but metallic noisegrind (Sab not being one of them), it's best to tally up the throwaways immediately; those tracks that the decibel aficionado would prefer to never hear again after the virginal spin. Out erf the eight tracks here there's only two such gobblers, which leaves a whopping six cuts that thrash along with varying degrees of ballthrob Sabbath intensity, a few that actually approach that said intensity of old, even...

Yeah, there's one called "All Moving Parts (Stand Still) " that even reeks of that patented Sabbath destructo-doomsaying sludgeriffing, with a speed-up tempo part in the middle, just like all your favorite Sab classics always had. Yes, I'll even go so far as to say that this one along with "Rock 'n' Roll Doctor" (why not?) and "Dirty Women" (why not again?) could proudly stand alongside "Paranoid" and "War Pigs" in the B.S. hall of fame.

My big complaint is this: the lyrics suck more desperately than a starving baby calf with a stopped-up Mommy. I really don't expect fucking Shakespeare from Ozzy Osborne, but good god, "Don't you know that it's so good for you/You can be making love and see it all god through/But it's alright, yes it's alright." ARGH. Some silly bastard had the lyrics printed , up on the sleeve for the whole world to see, when we coulda otherwise ignored 'em and pretended that Ozzy was just barking and growling and exorting us to get our frames seriously bent and kick ass...

RECORDS

Which brings me to my proposal for Sab and most other sludgeriff bands: instead of wasting ten minutes in the studio writing it's-gonnabe-alright-daddymama lyrics while the guitarist is playing like he wants to main somebody, why not just bark and growl and make up nonsense syllables to fit the music. Nobody'd complain, especially during concerts, and the singer could get even more loaded that he usually does, without detracting one bit from the performance.

Anyway, go buy this album if the Zionists at your favorite record store aren't clipping too bad for it this week. And anyone who still thinks it's square to be seen buying a Black Sabbath album still has time to catch the last local Flyin' One for the moon:

Clyde Hadlock

STYX Crystal Ball _• (A&M)_

Nope, I won't deny it, I've liked Styx since I first heard their "Lady" single. The ferocious chords of that tune crashed out with a benign pomposity suggestive of Lucifer's Friend and other krautrockers of the day, and it was fine to hear music from the Old Country in my own Midwestern backyard. Then I saw Styx live, in support of Blue Oyster Cult, and the two groups seemed like respective editions of the same darkmetal professionals, before and after exposure to rock critics in the know.

Then, just last week, some jazzbo punched out "Lady" on the oF juke while I was supping at a local pizzeria, and I got a double dose of Italiano sensuality—the Rockolasupercharged bass swoops of "Lady" merged with the boiling mozzarella/tomato sauce in my shaking viscera. Prirriasalsa, indeed.

So Styx was a rock 'n' roll legend in my own time long before I received Crystal Ball, and this reinforces my belief in Styx's mastery of the long-lost art of AM authenticity. Matter of fact, this set's "Mademoiselle" is starting to break hereabouts, and could be Styx's biggestsince "Lady"—welcome to a new generation of the anonymous fans of this most unknown band.

Styx are prime practitioners of pomporock: heavy on Dennis De-

Young's keyboards, strong but mannered vocals ("sweet madmwah-zelle"), Wagnerian guitaring, "classical" overtones around every comer, and that's made $$$$ for ELO and Queen, hasn't it? But Styx are merely from Chicago, and canT attract those snobby pomporock fans, who require an organic British background to assuage their own insecurities.

Besides "Mademoiselle", the two side-openers of Crystal Ball are its strongest cuts: "Put Me On" sound & furies Deep Purp's "Smoke On The Water" one better, killermetallicizing not just the mere recording of the song, but rather the humble consumer's audition thereof in the privacy of his own home; while "Shooz" is a straightforward rocker with hotshot guitar licks (lix?).

C'mon consumer^, let's turn things around and make Styx the foremost rock reps of their native Chicago! Impeach those namesake jerks who've hid their ever-moreflaccid rock behind Columbia's gemof-the-ocean respectability for too many years—Chicago would've been lucky to make it to III or even II if they'd had to struggle upstairs on labels like Wooden Nickel (don't take any more).

Richard Riegel

LED ZEPPELIN The Song Remains The Same (SwanSong)

First, the bad news: this is a boring collection of heavy rock, listening to which arouses only the same fatigue that obviously went into its execution.

The good news? It's also a really good Druid folk-rock album with solid performances climaxing in a 10:58 rendition of the Stonehenge Nation's national anthem, "Stairway To Heaven."

This compulsion of the Zeps to grind out the rockers, long after it's become obvious that they no longer 'have any feel for them, is bewildering. C'mon lads, it'snosinto prefer lute music to the blues, to be more taken with faeries, glade nymphs and questing knights than with the jet age concerns of heavy metal. Just unlock your chastity belts and do what comes naturally. The evidence of Led Zeppelin's love for what you might call extremely nostalgic patriotic music is all over this long awaited effort:

•In the music. Jimmy Page's most compelling guitar work here is on the 12-string, where he calls to mind a Jim McGuinn with a degree in music history—specialty, modal; emphasis, dulcimer; minor, sitar.

•In their own fantasies, as conveniently visualized in the movie for which all of this is but soundtrack. There, we see a lusty interest in maidens, misty moors, tombstones, swords-in-the-stone and all things mystical—magickal.

•And, in the performance of the numbers here intended to rock hard in the mode modeme. Talk about songs remaining the same! I saw Page do precisely the same violinbow-echo trick on "Dazed and Confused" back around '69. It was class then and powerful in its drama, but even then it was just a trick, and how does a guy who's been doing the same riffs for seven or eight years shave come the dawn? For guitar students only, and not all of them. "Moby Dick" is not for drum students only, and not for anybody else either. And "Whole Lotta Love" suffers by being much longerand even more pointless than the original. "Rock and Roll" is less disappointing but no more and "Celebration Day" is just nothing.

This leaves a little less than one single disc's worth of extremely pleasing antiqued morbid mood music, all of it, with the exception of "Stairway," from the Houses of The Holy LP (released just before the 73 concert which produced this package). With the addition of "White Summer", "Hangman", and maybe "Ramble On", this could have been a great little record.

I have to think that the ultimate Led Zeppelin tour-and live record have yet to be done. It will happen when and if Page and Plant develop the courage of their convictions and hit the road to perform the acoustic, or "soft" set they keep talking about. Now that would be a shot in the arm for pagan sensualism. And boys, don't worry about being mistaken for elves. Jethro Tull's got a lock on that schtick.

Kevin Doyle

GRAHAM PARKER &

THERUMOUR Heat Treatment _(Mercury)_

Second albums are the ones to go by. Good first albums come and go, but the second time around is where lasting quality will generally present itself. HeatTreatment, the follow-up to the triumphant Howlin' Wind, bodes well for Graham Parker and Rumour and, since it has already outsold its predecessor, may deliver Parker from that most horrible of fates, that of perennial cult figure.

Ironically, part of the doubt cast upon Parker up till now was the very self-assuredness which made Howlin' Wind seem like such a bolt out of

the blue, too good to be believed— but Heat Treatment makes it clear that such overall strength is not contrived, but lies within the man. Like John Fogerty, whose pre-eminence among American rockers is often overlooked, Parker writes in classic molds, structuring his compositions emaculately and without excess. The very simplicity of the" songs, familiar from the first hearing, shows the lack of repetition over the two Parker LP's to be the work of a craftsman. And if Parker lacks Fogerty's across-the-board accessibility, he more than compensates with a lyrical punch that strikes deeper than most of Fogerty's efforts.

As was the case with Howlin' Wind, I find a new favorite on Heat Treatment almost daily. At first it was the confessional rocker, "Pourin' It All Out," but quickly changed to "Black Honey," a cryptic ballad which is the antithesis of Howlin' Wind's uptempo "White Honey," answering it without copying it in the slightest. Then 1 fixed on "Something You're Going Through," a bouncy, quasi-reggae word of condescending advice in the tradition of the Beatles' "Think For Yourself." But as of this writing, "Fool's Gold," the album's finale, is the one that gets me, telling both a personal love Story and a career autobiography:

I've been doing my homework now fora long, long time/

And everything that I look fori know I will one day find/

I'm a fool so I'm told/

I get left in the cold/

'Cause I would search the world for that Fool's Gold. .

The song builds to a stirring climax with the band churning away and urging the singer to "Keep Searchin! Keep Searchin!"

.Each song is delivered commandingly by raspy vocals revealing that no small part of Parker's homework was done on Van Morrison and middle-period Dylan. And each step of the way he is backed by a band which seems capable of placing each emotion conjured into its proper musical setting. It is no surprise that such a fine group was collected from the ruins of a couple of English pubrock bands whose commercial downfall was their (tncompromised tastefulness. Heat Treatment is, as advertised, hot stuff indeed.

Gary Kenton