ROCK · A · RAMA

ROCK - A - RAMA

KID DYNAMITE (Cream)::Hey, is this the real mid-60s rock I keep reading about in every comer of the papers? These Lone Star geezers— most of’ em rejects from one Steve-Miller Band or another—were born in the 1940’s, which means that they were punks in the right place and time. Val Garcia hasn’t forgotten, neither, still pumps out those TexMex, tortured-bloozer, soulhistrionic vocals with a fanaticism worthy of the late Bemie “B.B.” Fieldings of the redoubtable Black Pearl. And the band mixes it right up with hotcha guitar & keyboard soulstewing. Hand me down my loose shoes, baby! The joker’s on you, Steve Miller, for firing these refried boogiers when you opted for rational-rock; they’re the authentic gangsters of lust now. R.R.

THE TROGGS ft THE PRETTY THINGS— The Vintage Years; NUGGETS—(Sire):: Three primers of punk rock from the company that signed the Rampnes. Snorting the aroma made from boiling these roots down beats sniffing glue any day, or is that just a generational preference? M.D.

AL KOOPER-Act Like Nothing’s Wrong (United Artists)::I shudder to think of all the literary mileage compulsive pundits like R. Christgau and M. Shipper are going to get out of the Koop’s self-penned title, not to mention all of the jollies R. Meitzer will extract from the symmetrical mammaries and other female accouterments A1 grafted onto his noggin’ for this cover. Why do some of you straight-man performers persist in handing the critics these readymades? Make ’em work for their sarcastic lines like the rest of us prosaic types do! Except for the obligatory reprise of “This Diamond Ring”, this sefs as musically slight as you already found out A1 Kooper was back in 1969. For connoisseurs of novelty jackets only. R.R.

ATLANTA RHYTHM SECTION-A Rock and Roll Alternative (Polydor)::’Tis the season of Southern-rock revivals of Cream revivals of old blues tunes—first Lynyrd pkynyrd’s “Crossroads,” and now the Atlanta Rhythm Sections’s “Outside Woman Blues”—which seems to indicate that the Delta Blues are finally coming home to roost. The ARS cut Cream’s speed-en■ gorged-veins frenzy on “Outside Woman” with the own crushing expertise, but their original songs don’t always bum so searingly. Somewhere among their precise guitar-texturing, the ARS possess all the basic potency of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but they continue to express it with studio-habituated impersonality. Ah, fora charismatic Gregg Allman or Ronnie Van Zant to emerge from the ARS and brawl-rock them into the media spotlight. R.R.

GROUNDHOGS-Black Diamond (United Artists) ::I haven’t exactly been keeping close tabs on Tony McPhee & Co. lately but this thing makes it. Applying a neo-Queen production technique to a two-gui-progressive blues band may not seem like the bees knees but it sure lets loose a hornets nest of hot ticks. Stings ya a bit.

M.D.

SM OKIE-Midnight Cafe (RSO) ::Thirteen years on in the British Invasion, and it’s degenerated to this? Authentically loonclad, Chinned and Chapmaned Anglorockers aping the weepomania of our own scabrous Dr. Hook, muscling in on that easy domestic moomoolah with instant shitkicker AM scores like “Living Next Door to Alice’? Well, more power to ya, Smokie. (One more year of) Daddy’s busted AM nerves. R.R.

LARRY CORYELL-The Lion and the Ram (Arista) :d’ve heard of jazzmen going disco, but folk?!? This set appears to be the liberated Mr. Coryell’s capitulation to the John ’n’ Yoko Syndrome—i.e., thrust your lifelove bodily into your lifeblood creative occupation—but Ms. Julie C’$ contribution is verse so wretched (preserved for the ages in that inevitable prissy calligraphy) that Harry “Relevant” Chapin could surpass it with the frontal lobe of his brain tied behind his back. Between Julie’s unlyrics and Larry’s unvocals and the Jose Feliciano blindmari’s bluff of L’s guitar-thumping, this LP adds up to too much of nothing, as some other folkies used to put it. R.R.

MICHAEL MANTLER—The Hapless Child (Watt), TERJE RYPDAL-After The Rain (ECM) ::Norse guitar legend Rypdal seems to need some help getting it up these days. When faced with the task of biting through the Jack deJohnette-led rhythm section on The Hapless Child, he bares his teeth and proves himself quite a carnivore. But left to his own devices, he joins Mike Oldfield in overdub oblivion, laying down muted mosaics in cold steel, aiming no doubt for a spooky serenity but coming up with little more than sleepy time time. Solution: record his next solo outing with deJohnette or some other skins scuffer who’ll make him focus his fangs. M.D.

THE ENID—(Buk)::The British press has been touting these guys as the most promising pretension pushers around so I got all hot for an ersatz culture fix. No show though. This rancid recipe mixes Mancini mantras with Camel droppings. Muzak of the spheres .meets the Entropy Express; if this makes it, we’ll all be in trouble though too nodded out to notice. M.D.

TARGET (A&M):: Jivetalkin’ Bad Co. from Memphis, pretty fair boogie blooz, burdened by an atrocious cover that’s going to stiff it faster than anything any of us kritikers^ould say. How come the whole A&M art department is so afraid of bright colors? Done ha know that’s how Atlantic made their fortune, selling their intensely-hued jackets to us sensuou?folks? R.R.

MOTT THE HOOPLE— Greatest Hits (Columbia) ::Mott The Hoople were a band whose time came...and went. This collection of their English hits singles out many of their high points but also traces their gradual fade on side two. Fine as a decline and fall number—the band always did find success in failure—but if you wanna skip the history lesson and just get down, check out Brain Capers, All The Young Dudes and Mott, when Hunter, Ralphs, and the rest gave their best in search of a Golden Age of Rock ’N’Roll that just eluded them. M.D.

WERNER ERHARD—How To Avoid Probate (Audio Fidelity)::! found this in a bargain bin, haven’t been able to listen to it all the way through, but the tits and ass on the cover were too much to resist. ■ 1 L.B.

THE OSMONDS-^Brainstorm (Polydor/ Kolob):: Didya ever wonder what it would be like to be an Osmond Brother, but not look like the standard Donny O. physiognomosis? A mutation of the basic unicellular worm structure, as it were? Check out Wayne, or Merrill, or whatever his name is (the folks got desperate for unused monikers after umpteen reproductions) on this cover. Stee-range, isn’t he?-And to think that some people merely don’t look like Marie.

R.R.

THE QUICK—Mondo Deco (Mercury) ::Ariother Fowley find, the Quick try to suck you into the West LA Wimp-a-thon, using the Maelstrom in a Sparkletts bottle technique with mixed results,. A must for fanciers of whine-rock; everyone else beware. , M.D.

WES MONTGOMERY-The Small Group Recordings (Verve) ::If you wonder where George Benson copped a lot of his licks from, Montgomery’s the man to hear. What’s more,, this album catches him just before he became famous as a muzak maker; side four’s team-up with Jimmy Smith even anticipated the original Tony Williams Lifetimein places. M.D.

DAVID FORMAN—(Arista) ::If you can1 get beyond the constant piano plod, this guy has something to offer: white soul with a street slant, romantic intentions blurred by a clear view to the heart. He lives in the same world as Randy Newman, Paul Simon, Smokey Robinson and Jackson Browne. This one. M.D.

JIMMY OWENS-(Horizon)::Trumpet player Owens leads a group of electric jazzers who manage to assert a more far-reaching sense of tradition than rriost. Not everything is ear-shattering but anyone who can funkatize Ellington’s “Caravan” and keep it musical (even though he does kinda lose the beauty of the melody) has got somethinggoing for him. M..D.

DIANA MARCOVITZJoie de Vlvre (Kama Sutra) «A femme singer/songwriter like no other, Marcovitz is as Jewish as Streisand with similar schmaltz tendencies that she camouflages with one wacko sense of humor. Though the arrangements here aren’t as sharp as the ones on her first album (which should be in the next batch of Columbia cut-outs), she makes up for it with added bile,. Songs like “The Divorce,” “Drop Dead” and the title track are downright vicious; if ya wanna get hit with a flower, bub, here’s the place. / M.D.

WIGWAM—The Lucky Golden Stripes and Starpose (Virgin Import) ::Wigwam have putFinland on the international rock ’n’ roll map, like Magma did France and Savage Rose did Denmark. Low-keyed crazed paranoia is their current stance and their lack of flagrant flash makes it just that much more convincing. M.D.

This month’s Rock-aramas are by Michael Davis, Richard Riegel, and Lester Bangs.