Bowie on the Brink: Waiting for the Gift of Sound and Vision

RCCORDS

Bowie on the Brink: Waiting for the Gift of Sound and Vision

DAVID BOWIE Low (RCA) by Billy Altman

In a career that has shown him to be perhaps the most successful graduate of the Evelyn Wood Genre Dynamics Institute, David Bowie has demonstrated that he can live uptown, downtown and all around. His track record to date shows only two real instances of failing to come up with the unexpected: Pin Ups, a weak-kneed attempt to stall for time after finally popping the top off the American market with Aladdin Sane thinly veiled as a solidarity maneuver with the up and coming punk scene; and Station to Station, a perfectly explainable bonus ball after lighting up the hit machine with “Fame.” And though there have been roughly an equal number of,strikes and gutter balls down the path, Bowie’s bumblebeeing amidst the flowers of inspiration has been, atthe very least, admirable. Were one looking for a thread of consistency with which to label him, one would have to pull on the one marked willingness to experiment. For better or worse, he hasn’t been afraid to try and that confidence has been, one supposes, one of the primary factors involved in making him one of the most interesting (if not always enjoyable) figures in ’70s pop.

If one delves in search of trends within Bowie’s work over the past few years, the most obvious pne is certainly the subordination of the words to the music, a conscious move that began after the overblown prophetics of Diamond Dogs. I remember seeing Bowie on Dinah! (!), moving into a trance with the mesmerizing rhythms of “fascination,” the lyrics and vocals functioning solely as nuances bouncing off the sweaty soul textures. I realized then that if Bowie had wished to, he could easily have become a Robert Palmer, except that let’s face it, Bowie’s got the charisma and Palmer equates on that scale to a mannequin in Bloomingdale’s window. To spend the rest of the time as a soul stirrer would probably have been a good and safe move, and with Station to Station I was beginning jo believe that such was the case.

Low, however, destroys that notion with a resounding crush. It’s as unaccessible an effort as Bowie has ever produced and its uniqueness , (and that’s not necessarily a compliment) is rather confounding. Although Bowie has utilized his imalge, rather than his actual music, to enhance his outreness in the past, Low finds him in a state of unrest that carries its problems on its sleeve aurally. To begin with, only two of the eleven tracks could be really classified as “songs”: “Be My Wife” and “Speed of Life”, the latter being one of three instrumentals on the record. Instead, we’re given-fragments to munch on, pieces that come across as technological landscapes to be filled in by our own imaginations. There is also little continuity between the tracks; seven short to medium timed cuts on side one backed by a second side dominated by two fairly long meanderings. And the barriers, even for the usually cold and distanced Bowie, are thick and complex. Case in point: “Breakirig Glass,” whose lyrics run thusly—“Baby, I’ve been breaking glass in your room again/Don’t look at the carpet, I’ve thrown something awful on it/You’re such a wonderful person, but you’ve got problems/Let me touch you.” Try humming that one the next time you’re in the shower.

Within the swirl of electronics (Eno is all over this record and believe me, his presence is felt quite heavily), what comes across most is an impression of sensory overload and a feeling of being on the brink with nowhere to turn. “Speqd of Life,” with its Telstarian Endless Summer post surf pulsations; the^ Silver Convention/Andrea True Connections of “Sound and Vision”; the smoke filled back room beat generation inherent in Bowie’s sax solo on “Subterraneans”; the tribal rites flavor of the 'xylophone/vibes percussion laden “Weeping Wall”; and the stark Bowie/Eno conjurings of plodding Gothic on “Warszawa.” That video bank from The Man Who Fell to Earth has been displaced by the whole of post World War II musical influences all coming through a wall of speakers each tuned to a different wavelength. There’s a search going on on Low, and the answers to the questions are as vague as the strange symbols up on the blackboard. And me, well I’m not even sure that I have my right glasses on.

ZZ TOP Tejas (London)

As power trios go, Grand Funk are no longer a trio, and not nearly so powerful as their obstinate primitivism once made them seem. Yet their (or Terry Knight’s) shining idea—fourwalling basic rock so massively that a huge hinterland tide overwhelms the tastemakers and washes rock back to “the people”—survives masterfully in ZZ Top.

While they haven’t captured the unreconstructed masses as quickly as Grand Funk did, the “little ol’ band from Texas” has moved up on the rock scene with a more thoroughgoing calculation (Bill Ham’s exertions recall those of another little ol’ manipulator from Texas, LBJ), and ZZ’s national popularity is only just beginning, no matter how many million album sales or concert patrons are already behind them.

The kicker— beyond all the Lone Star-sized statistics and the livestock on stage (Alice Cooper takes gas) —is that ZZ Top also happens to possess a musical validity worthy of any fussy ol’ critic’s fave esoteric-vanguard combo. Billy Gibbons is not just a highly interesting guitarist, but a multiinstrumental threat (check his Magic Dick-league harp within the fat-guitar tour de force of “It’s Only Love”),and bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard provide an accomplished rhythm base that could really make the venerable AM crackle, if and when the times improve.

ZZ Top’s sound is an intelligent, textured boogie, Lynyrd Skynyrd with robust Texas ego replacing political menacing, or almost Aerosmith, if we could only shut our eyes to their

contrasting media trust images for long enough. ZZ Top sings of those Southwestern lyrical staples —mean women, drinking, two-bit West Texas pimps, existential madness on the desert (“Arrested For Driving While Blind”)—but with greater immediacy than the I’m-all-dressed-up-in-myRoy-Rogers-cowboy-suit Eagles have ever brought to the idiom.

Why sho’ podner, Tejas is hot hot stuff indeed, and it’ll eclipse Frampton Comes Alive during 1977. If it don’t (and it should, anyway), I’ll eat Dusty Hill’s ten-gallon hat (onstage, where the deer and the antelope play).

Richard Riegel

BLONDIE (Private Stock)

THIS BLONDIE SURE AIN’T NO BUMSTEAD! MORE MUSTARD THAN ANY DAGWOOD SANDWICH! Alright, all y'all lokul yo-kuls out there in hickland spliftin’ yer sides at the NEW YORK WHAT’S HAPPENIN’ ROCK SCENE, it’s time to cough up some apologies ’cause Blondie is tuff enuff to please (skyrockets blast in festivity as Blondie’s name pierces the dark shadows with a neon glow, melting the wasted vinyl glutting the veins of anesthetized teendroids!!)! Blondie saves the day, ya goobers.

From the dribble of the Farfisa to lead singer Debbie’s own hushed, seductive whispers, this is the band that’s sure to put Gotham City on the map. With the assistance of Richard Gottehrer (he produced “Hang On Sloopy,” kidz!), Blondie fashions a full bodied yet textured slab o’ sound that translates the flourish of surrealistic art into the pure momentum of rock ’n’ roll. And characterizations don’t help: sometimes they sound like the Ronettes flowing into the 1910 Fruitgum Co.; other times they could pass for the Archies in overdrive. Or is it the Monkees? the T-Bones? Question Mark and the Mysterians?(?) Suffice to say that influences overlap.

Blondie’s songs move quickly with the intensity of excitement. The vivid colors and sharp angles of a cubist work are expressed by a few moments of sounds that grate and stab, lyfics that stand out in relief upon the organized disarray of juxtaposed contrasts. The very first cut, “X Offender” (X replacing the word SEX ’cause it would look too naughty on the label of a hit single), immediately captivates you with guitar reverberations and the usual girl group formula. Meanwhile, the story of a hooker trapped physically and romantically by a cop unfolds, foregrounded in the lines “We sat in the night/with my hands cuffed.” Each track tells a story and does so with plenty of charm. “In the Sun” can only be described as psychotic surf music, “Rip Her to Shreads” displays Debbie Harry’s kickass pose, and just about every other frenzied tune contains wicked guitar action by Chris Stein. It’s no wonder that Ellie Greenwich, the queen of pop herself, joins Debbie on a couple of these songs, for Blondie adheres to both the form and spirit of girl group primitivism.

Visually speaking as well, the band is stunning. ’Course there’s Debbje (the Blond Venus for whom the band tolls; see her sexy foldout in Punk #4), but the guys complement the glamour of the lead beauty withtheirowntastefulblackand white aloofness. It makes the front cover of this record the best since Out Of Their Heads (Stones with zits), and the back cover is an eye opener too.

A final bonus is Blondie’s sense of humor. It undercuts the deliverance on most of the songs, but it especially blossoms on “The Attack of the Giant Ants,” a swishing novelty extravaganza. “Giant ants from space/snuff the human race/ Then they eat your face/never leave a trace,” followed by Debbie stringing “la la la” ’s together. This concluding song (complete with the noises of the ants munching) is the best summation of all those cardboard Jap sd-fi flicks ever captured on record.

Like caterpillars tumbling, the playfulness and dexterity of Blondie appears ih every trace of this record. You instantly become absorbed in their distinct image. With rock ’n’ roll music these days moving with the ponderous energy of an amputee wiggling his stump, Blondie’s debut LP is perhaps the coolest respite within the oasis of the New York rock scene.

Robot A. Hull

WAYLON JENNINGS Waylon Live _(RCA)_

It wasn’t until late 1974 that the Waylon Jennings mystique took hold for me.This is partly because to my mind thafs when his sound coalesced— resulting in the great Dreaming My Dreams— but more because that’s when I first saw him live. is

He has what’s probably the tightest, most sympathetic band in country music, with a beat adapted from Johnny Cash’s, guitars that crackle as well as twang (thereby baring his rock ’n’ roll roots as one of Buddy Holly’s Crickets), and the pedal steel of Ralph Mooney, who is hot only one sharp soloist, but who also fills holes in the sound most musicians wouldn’t even notice. But Jennings himself is a thoroughly charismatic performer, and what’s most extraordinary about his band is that no matter how exciting any one soloist is, everything that’s played somehow serves to focus attention back in on the man at the center of the stage. The effect is similar to that of Dylan’s mid-’60s tour with the Band, when the hurricane music guided you right into the eye of the storm, and you couldn’t take your ey6s off him.

As it happens, this album was recorded towards the end of ’74, and the concert holds up well. Jennings still dominates because of the way his voice is mixed, but the band is definitely on, and gets room to stretch out on a couple numbers. The show runs the gamut from Jennings trademarks (“This Time,” “Good Hearted Woman,” “Rainy Day Woman,” “I’m a Rambling Man”) to a couple of Willie Nelson songs to country classics both old (“T For Texas”) and new (“Me and Bobby McGee”) to one noteworthy wild card in “House of the Rising Sun,” with Waylon’s voice rising eerily out of swirling guitars to convey a feeling of a sort of predetermined, personal doom.

Live has little to do with the prefab “progres-

sive” country albums that seem to dominate the market today. It may bog down in a place or two, but if you only want one Waylon Jennings album, this is (he essential one.

John Morthland

ABBA Arrival __(Atlantic)_-

Gushing with enthusiastic naivete, here come those sibilant Swedes again, blanketing the globe with the affectionate harmonies of polar sirens! With the abra-cadabra of inventive wizards, Abba has hatched a presence that has been felt and absorbed on practically every inch of foreign soil. And the uproar continues.

Abba believes in ancient visions of American teenagehood; they romanticize infatuation and stolen kisses...and, like their Spector-born predecessors, they possess the big voices and the big production know-how required to promote their fantasies and win audiences. Abba’s innocence, in fact, was never more conspicuous than during their appearance on Saturday Night and Wonderama. The artificiality of Frieda and Anna’s go-go boots and miniskirts of the Saturday Night guest spots looked bonkers compared to the cast’s usual routines. In contrast, Abba’s Sunday morning stint on Wonderama (New York’s Kiddie Club) was a sugar coated delight of pre-pube choreography (gyrating forth the gummy bubble fans of the Wombles and Hudson Brothers with host Bob McAllister oohing and aahing at the female Abbas’ leggi^s). The difference here being that Abba survives only as alien rock ’n’ roll force, contained in a time warp, rippling through the seventies.

Arrival, then, is the typical Abba album, complete as a collection of wholesome singles (designed for the younguns with pocket change who have not yet graduated to big bubba’s gullible level of rock sophistication) but incomplete as a total unit (featuring the filler between the hits). Still, Abba’s moments of extreme exhilaration are produced with enough precision to flutter your senses into oblivion. Of course, “Dancing Queen” has already evolved into a disco cliche, but the elaborate use of strings on this record forces you to ignore the trendy rhythms. Any band that can make even disco sound like the Ronettes can’t be all bad!

There are at least five more smasheroos destined for the dj’s turntable spread all over this LP. You can just bet your Frampton records that a song like “Tiger” will pulverize the transistor waves this spring, shifting the planet on its axis with a sheer magnitude of sound. Same goes for “When I Kiss the Teacher” (don’t expect a light case of puppy love). Ditto for “Knowing Me, Knowing You” (would give your parakeet goosebumps). Likewise for the majority of these fine Abba melodies and on the whole, not really one lousy gasp worth mentioning.

It’s possible that Abba’s effusive charm may eventually wear,thin, for lately the unemotional, and synthetic seem' to be alf the rage. Certainly Abba could croak overnight competing with the recent plague of lobotomized superstars. With Arrival as a testament of Abba’s stamina, however, better give them another fifty years.

Robot A. Hull

A few years ago, when synthesizers first became available to rock bands on a large scale, technolbgy freaks hailed ’em like the second coming. Any sound would be available at the flick of a switch, masterworks would be the order of the day, and we would all be transported to a new electric nirvana, located somewhere between AC and DC.

Well, we’re not there for a lotta reasons, one be[ng that it takes a lot of patience and discipline to set up patches and work out tonal subtleties and taking the time to do it often blows the spontaneity of the music. So most rock V rollers settle for your standard series of bleeps, whirrs, and wooshes which can be controlled easily and replicated at will.

But Gary Wright is not your workaday flash synthesizzler; spontaneity is not his game. In his main previous gig, as organist/vocalist/songwriter for Spooky Tooth (sorta Cream meets the Righteous Bros, with Procol Harum refereeing), his songs built slowly to grand climaxes with few surprises thrown in. His “radical” new all-keyboard sound just transposed his style to new hardware and added aTunkbeat on some tunes. No matter; Dream Weaver proved a platinum-plus revelation to a whole new generation who probably ne\/er even heard of Spooky Tooth.

GARY WRIGHT The Light of Smiles (Warner Bros.)

So now it’s fdllow-up time and finally finding himself on the right road, Gary’s taking no chances. His high, clear vocals have certainly developed well beyond his Bobby Hatfield imitations of the past but his keyboard work merely repeats the cliches of last year more starkly. Standard space sounds whirl around standard piano chords in song after song after song.

On top of that, many of the compositions themselves are blatant rehashes of tunes from Dream Weaver, “Silent Fury” is another strained melodrama modeled meticulously on “I Can’t Find The Judge” while, “Are You Weepin’ ” combines the sentiments of “Let It Out” with the style of “Love Is Alive.” The lyrics, in tum, push the; credibility of pop cosmology to the limit, dropping references to astrology, time travel, and self-realization (and I do mean self—four of the five tunes dealing directly with a one-to-one relationship begin with a derivation of the word “I”) like road apples.

End of tirade. Obviously, anything that appeals to millions of people has a lot going for it. I guess what burns me the most is that Wright’s huge success neatly points out a current (universal?) phenomenon. Namely, that if a technological breakthrough can be used for either unlimited exploration or controlled replication of a proven product, the latter will almost always crowd the former off the market. And I’m peeved that Gary Wright uses a trunk full of synthesizers to studiously achieye the sound spectrum of a stylophone.

Michael Davis

EMMYLOU HARRIS Luxuty Liner (Warner Bros.)

On the face of it, there’s no apparent reason why Emmylou Harris’ Luxury Liner should be much of an advance over Elite Hotel, its predecessor and prototype, but it is. Her Hot Band is still playing Conventional licks with unconventional skill, Brian Ahern’s production is a competent constant, and, the musical mix is familiar: country standards, Gram Parsons songs, a Harris-Rodney Crowell original, a Crowell ballad, some rock for a kicker. The difference is that after three albums Miss Harris, she of the Okie cheekbones and haunted green eyes, is just beginning to establish a niche for herself as an interpretive artist, and is evolving an identity, part heartbreak kid, part honky tonk woman. At present the parts are slightly out of balance, but not enough to make Luxury Liner any less than a honey of an album.

Her voice, that lonesome, vulnerable sound that made such an ideal match for Gram’s affecting cracked whine, hasn’t always had the right vehicles as a solo instrument; Hafrjs’. song choices have often been predictable or inappropriate. The best tracks on Luxury Liner are an indication of how wide she can stray with success within her country framework. She’s adopted a time-tested female role, unlucky at love, a loser with soul, wounded but still walking, and her selection of older country material—“Making Believe,” “When I Stop Dreaming” and “Hello Stranger” (not, sad to say, Barbara Lewis’, but the Carter Family’s)—is strictly separation blues handled with restrained passion and an attempt to communicate the ache without overdramatization.

With newer songs like Susanna Clark’s exceptional “I’ll Be Your San Antone Rose,” she takes that tradition and expands it, reworking the beer and sawdust cliches into a cut with one foot in the realm of Bob Wills and Kitty Wells and the other in a forthright, woman-identified ’70s style. The song is a first-person account of a barroom pickup with delusions, without the pretense that momentary desire and mutual need for fantasy are any more than just that. Crowell’s “You’re Supposed To Be Feeling Good” is a sensible, mature delineation of a triangular conflict, and the boat and train songs that open and close the album are proof that however good Harris is as a traditionalist, she’s even better as a traditionalist with a twist. The real surprise of the LP is a rocker, “You Never Can Tell;” on a record short on humor, Chuck Berry’s detached commentary on a teen domestic idyll makes a break in the present-tense melancholy.

Emmylou Harris has staked out well-trod territory: roadhouses, cottonfields, trains whizzing by in the night, a mournful lady watching, yearning for something else. And it all would be at least bearable if only love would go right. It never does. She’s determined to get this atmosphere and attitude down, to be a Patsy Cline for a new generation, and Luxury Liner is a positive move in that direction, a moody, reflective and touching combination of fragility and pragmatism in a contemporary country setting. Because she’s not as blatantly eclectic as friends Linda Ronstadt and Maria Muldaur, she may miss out on that breakthrough hit, and on reaching the audience that buys Byrd-Burrito offspring records, but one suspects that somewhere Gram Parsons is wearing a satisfied smile. The music he spent his life working towards has a future, and Emmylou Harris has a pretty big chunk of it.

Mitch Cohen

RUNAWAYS Queens Of Noise (Mercury)

These bitches suck. That’s all there is to it. Despite what the West Coast Blow Job Coordinator might say, they’re not any good, they’re not so bad they’re good, they’re not anything. Their only hope for crawling out of the mung heap is making those sperms wag their tails and their collective slurp appeal is enough to make your entire body feel like morning mouth.

,. How do I hate the Runaways? Let me count the ways:

1. Cherie Currie and Joan Jett are the most tiresome, artificial singers to escape from the echo graveyard in a long while. Ballerinas trying to be weightltfters. Waiting for them to inject some glands into a song is like listening to a stream dry up. Did Mom forget to turn on the vaporizer?

2. Sandy West is the worst drummer in the history of rim shots. She might have sounded good during WW II, when one-arrried outfielders had their day, but mostly she sounds like somebody relieving herself while standing on her head. Bam. Bam bam. Flop.

3. Both guitarists sound like someone trying to scrape their way out of a grave with a rusty spoon.

4. Guiding vapor Kim Fowley has apparently recovered from his brain bypass operation, but when you start cranking out lines like “the damned don’t cry” and ’’your eyes are sparklin’ with teenage fire,” it’s time for a long spitbath and fast.

5. On the whole, they just play too slow. You can almost hear ferns turning into coal in the background. If you’re gonna stick to subsistence level musicianship, you at least should have some vague racoon sense of dynamics. You have to make those thuds quiver like Black Sabbath do. The Runaways just slap at their instruments like elderly mongoloids splashing at their babyfood.

Like Danny Partridge says, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck. These pusses have no business playing “puck rock,” much less capitalizing on the music industry’s current infatuation with the same. The whole hype reeks of that age-ole rock ‘n’ roll maximgirls are just sissies after all.

Rick Johnson

CHICK COREA My Spanish Heart (Polydor)

It’s gotten to the point where I don’t expect a hel 1 of a lot from Chick Corea in terms of depth of emotion, excitement, or a high level of creativity in relation to past achievements, but he’s still capable «of whipping up some pleasant confections (cotton candy comes to mind—tho that may be a bit too harsh) a fact which last year’s The Leprechaun album proved with its cute melodies, rose perfect reflections, ballads sliding across shimmering lake surfaces and such. Positively charming. ,

And now this, collection of Iberian boogjes, ballads, and blues, a more ambitious effort not in any musical sense but in the sense of what he’s asking of his audience—not the audience that’s dug him from ten years ago but the one he garnered and nurtured the past few years thru Return To Forever. You see, it’s a two album set and 80% of it features Chick playing solo acoustic piano and I’ve always maintained that the morons who thot that RTF was HeaVee had the attention span of a catatonic amoeba and the musical perception of some of the more belligerent forms of fungus (I’ve given up on gentle persuasion—it may work in conversation but in record reviews it’s too awkward and transparent. From now on it’s insults). The absence of the numbing combination of electric guitar and various synthesizers will disappoint those who are used to having the music do all thetvork for them (ain’t no guitars on this record, Jack). Still, as mentioned above, the music isn’t really any more ambitious than what Chick’s been churning out the past four years or so. Only the presentation has changed. .

When Corea plays solo acoustic piano here it’s not to be compared with his earlier ECM improvisations or with the solo efforts of a contemporary such as Keith Jarrett—there’s no special virtuosity, either of the stunning variety or the selfindulgent “Look ma, hands” variety. There’s also no feeling of spontaneity or emotional involvement-well, that’s not entirely true ’cause there’s over seventy minutes of stuff here and some of it, particularly “Spanish Fantasy” which takes up all of side four, threatens to burst thru the restrictions Corea has chosen. But most of the record sounds carefully pre-planned, highly professional, and1 a bit impressionistic tho always in keeping with the Hispanic theme.

Having established the shallow disposition of the record I should add that I like it very much and recommend it unhesitantly as a piece of superior mood music.

Richard C. Walls

THE TRAMMPS Disco Inferno (Atlantic)

If Where the Happy People Go showed the Trammps moving perilously close to routine disco, this followup is proof positive that good things can still be done with the'form, no matter how oppressive it has become in the hands of most practitioners.

That’s because for the Trammps, disco isn’t a departure from the black pop music tradition, it’s a continuation. Though they stay right on top of the most current trends, they still hearken back to the black vocal groups Of 20 years ago; if anything, their vocal attack is becoming more gospeloriented. In the past, lead Jimmy Ellis has played the sweet soul singer to bass vocalist Early Young’s black dandy, and the two dominated the sound. But here Ellis is singing his grittiest parts ever, Young has been downplayed, ahd other singers are better utilizedThe other big difference between this and previous albums is that here there’s a more prominent lead guitar. While the overall sound is unmistakeable Philly, the Trammp’s arrangements remain the brightest and the classiest in the entire field.

The sense of humor remains intact, too. “Body Contact Contract,” the most sizzling track, is a takeoff on marriage vows, and the title song’s hook describes a dancer with “Burn, baby, bum! Bum that mother down!” Perhaps in accepting most of the1 dictates of disco, but being able to execute them in a more personal way, the Trammps are simply assuring themselves the best of both worlds. They are quite a bit more than muzak for the feet.

John Morthland

SKYHOOKS living In the 7 0'»

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A rock ’n’ roll band from Australia? A real one? Wait a minute. Judging by past exports, Australian music is strictly from sopors. The Bee Gees, Helen Reddy, Olivia Newton-John, even more recent chart-grazers like Sherbet end the Little River Band—they’re all bland-outs.

But Skyhooks is different, at least for down under. They’ve got a reputation as the outrage of the' outback and checkingrout their Ego Is Not A Dirty Word album last year, it was easy to'see why. A male lead singer named Shirley, bizarro make-up and costumes, songs like “You Just Like Me ’Cos I’m Good In Bed”—it all added up to an assault on good teste, even if the stance was kinda derivative of various American and British bands.

But that’s cool; homegrown stuff always has a taste that even the most exotic competition lacks and those who wanted something new and local picked up on ’em. Besides, they were easy to take musically, with reasonably catchy melodies, undersfandable singing and all.

This time around, they sound pretty much the same but the material is stronger; they no longer have to grab an audience’s attention, just entertain ’em. So Greg Macainsh keeps grinding out these in-search-of-satisfaction songs with lines like, “Here in the land of all time lows/You can make it big and get your own quiz show” and “F m throwing out my rubber sheets and kinky kneehigh boot/Going back to holding hands, that’s where 1 got my roots,” and people keep eating ’em up. The line that best sums up the band’s approach, though, comes from Red Symons’ “Mumbo Jumbo": “Dada you demon/1 got no room for reason now.”

All of which is fine for Australia but whether, they’ll break big here where the competition is stiffer is a big ?. 1 mean, can a group of self-confessed weirdos inhabiting a nebulous netherworld between Alice Cooper, Steely Dan, the Stones, and the Bonzo Dog Band Really Make It? Do I care?

Yeah, well, a little bit. I’m^not gonna go hock my John Cale records for ’em or anything rash like that but I’m glad there are bands like these guys and Crack The Sky on the way up. It just makes living in the 70s a little more interesting.

Michael Davis

SANTANA Festival (Columbia)

I’m about to peg this as Latin MOR, but first realize who’s reviewing this record: an emaciated white child who, in a piece less than two years ago on the Fania All-Stars for a certain New York weekly, referred in passing to the All-Stars as looking like, from my nethermost perch in Madison Square Garden, “an energetic bunch of Hispanic ants.” Well, you never heard so much invective in response: the nicest thing I was called was a racist.

Naw. I just don’t care for almost any erf the Latin music that reaches the white airwaves—too diluted. God knows Carlos Santana diluted himself out of any valuable musicianship a while ago, and so even if Festival is pleasant to listen to— the second side especially, with “Reach Up” as nice a piece of non-rock music as you’ll hear currently—ultimately, the album still strikes rfie as listless and hackneyed. Carlos’ failure has been compounded by his effort to defuse his religious image. No matter how active his faith, “religion,” especially non-Christian religion, means to most young whites a monkish life of self-denial, out of which no vigorous rock music can arise. Santana has tried to play this religiosity down recently, so misunderstood has it been by nearly everyone, and this image conflict has marred the music with a lot of forced jumpineiss. If he wants to regain the pleasing rawness of his early stuff, he might just put aside all things extra-musical: his image will work itself out. In the meantime, selfLconscious festiveness like Festival is just another case of clever wool-gathering.

Ken Tucker

JOSE FELICIANO Sweet Soal Music (Private Stock)

Let’s face it, except for Vegas, Jose Feliciano’s career was nearly shot. Used to be that whenever a variety or talk show needed a blind act (the real geniuses of the genre, Mssrs. Charles and Wonder, priced themselves out of that set years ago), Jose was their man. The attitude was: Mike Douglas wants someone to giggle and nod and make his stage moves look professional? Mail Jose to Philadelphia pronto. Lately, though, a new blind guy has taken Feliciano’s place on TV, a singer named Tom Sullivan. Sullivan is even more palatable because...well, because he’s never sung the National Anthem in an offbeat way, and because, let’s face it, again, kids, Sullivan’s white.

So having exhausted all possible avenues of show biz exposure—schlock covers of schlock hits, writing TV theme songs (Jose sang “Chico and the Man” in such a way that you just know he thinks Freddie Prinze looks like Rifcardo Montalban—strong and classy instead of obnoxious and cross-eyed)—and finding, himself on the skids, Jose has taken the last option: this time around, he’s actually trying to make a good record. And with the inestimable aid of co-producer Jerry Wexier, he’s succeeded. Wexler’s formula is simple; he gives Jose a lot of decent material to cover—Willie Nelson’s “Funny” and “Night Life,” Jake Holmes’ “Marguerita,” Dave Mason’s “Every Woman," for example—and supplies one of his patented rhythm sections and some immaculate horn arrangements. Most importantly, he channels Feliciano’s erratic phrasing into a more sensible, sensitive style, The result ain’t Jose’s usual stop-and-start pap; it’s damn good r&bpop. If Sweet Soul Music sells as well as it deserves to (and it won’t, if 11 take Feliciano a couple more records like this to shake his mediocre rep), Jose should be in line to host a summer TV replacement show, at the very least. Then he can invite Tom Sullivan ;on, and trip him.

Ken Tucker

THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND Carolina Dreams (Capricorn)

The dust blows forward and the dust blows back. Sagebrush and tumblin’ tumbleweeds roll across the field of view. Somewhere in the distance a coyote growls. Orion beams down at me and just like a little kid, I count the three stars on his belt with knowing glee. The fire burns low and I fall asleep with visions of Gabby Hayes' and Pat Buttram dancing in my head. Sure hope the ramrod doesn’t .work me too hard tomorrow. Hell, we ain’t even halfway to Missouri yet.

Suddenly, I’m rudely awakened by the automatic shutoff oh my turntable. I get up and look around, go over to the window just to double check and well, yeah, it’s two degrees outside and there’s a half a foot of snow on the ground. Now just how the hell did I drift into Nelliebelle and Championland anyhoo? My go'd, that record on the box. That unmarked test pressing. That’s the reason. (Hot tip #3 for working rock critics: Remember years ago when they told us that test pressings were no good because their lifespan was only about ten listenings? They lied.A moderately well cared for test will probably outlast you and me and everybody on earth except maybe Mrs. Marsh from the Colgate commercials because she’s discovered the elixir of life—namely chalk dipped in colored liquid. Wonder if we’ll ever get to see Mr. Marsh?) What’s this thing that’s been playing? Marshall Tucker? Oh, no—gotta run out to the drugstore and fill up on Chocks again—the doctor told me about too much Southern stuff in my diet.

Now what am I supposed to do? I fall asleep in New York and wake up in dreamsville somewhere around Wyoming (y’know, now that I think about it, I did see Curt Gowdy cornin’ by with some Desenex foot powder just before I came to) by way of South Carolina. Don’t make sense. I mean I’ve never been too hot in geography, but jeez! All these Southern bands keep coming on like cowboys—just about all of side two of this redord, especially “Desert Sides,” with a sideways takeoff on “Happy Trails” (now there was a song!) and noted diminishing fatso Charlie Daniels on fiddle, has its compass point turned west. And it moves about as quickly as Lee Marvin’s horse in Cat Ballou. And believe me,1 no reason at all to import Chuck Lea veil to get those Floyd Cramer imitations. You say “I was bom a wrangler and a rounder” in “Heard It In a Love Song” and yes, I believe you, guys. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with your music. And there’s (nothing, especially right with it either. It’s just there. And unlike mountain climbers, that’s not a good enough reason to listen.

Billy Altman