THE DICTATORS

Manifest Destiny

(Asylum)

by Joe (They Call Me White Devil) Fernbacher

The burger thing crawled slowly through the mud, an amputee star fish lost in a sea of porcine pink. It flipped itself on edge and rolled over to the waiting crowd of confused spectators. Nobody had ever seen a three hundred pound, five foot high, burger thing before—naturally, it was an alien.

Cameras shuttered Film crews zoomed in People cringed Babies cried

A man from Disney waved a contract The burger thing opened a mouth and said, in perfect King's English (they'd been monitoring our airwaves for years), "Young, Fast and Scientific..."

The crowd shouts back, "Science Gone Too Far," gets bored and leaves.

The burger thing is confused.

Moments pass into idiot day.

A noise. The burger thing turns sensing new arrivals.

A stray band of young T.V. boys come round the comer escorting a bright red wagon overflowing with Velveeta! They smile.

As young Dictators they had gone a little girl crazy. Older now, and wiser, they are mature diplomats on a jehad of conquest, nervy and in search of their "Manifest Destiny." Only this time it's more than just a hobby, it's the main event, a face claw standoff with the world.

In a rare rhumba of reason, a collision of new rhymes, and a smirk of unexpected proficiency the Dictators return, proving they are as inevitable asthe death of punk music, which they so properly laid to rest a while ago during the heat of performance.

Manifest Destiny is a teenjunta blending the textures of 50's science fiction melodrama with the pawky precognition of car radio drone-whip. Its contradictions are brilliantly conceived and acted out, like a calculated blend of sonic tobaccos. It's almost impossible not to say it's great. It ain't, but what the hell, there certainly ain't nothing better.

Go Girl Crazy was a perilous harlequinade on the teenage condition, cutting through the complex psychology of the young and restless and putting the camel-clutch on teen reality. That's why it's one of the essential musical documents of

the blank Seventies. Manifest Destiny is much more cautious, as is everything these days, skirting alot of issues and dealing with entertaining, yet vague, ideas. It ain't teenage, so what? It's collegiate, and that's more important. As a whole it's a battle between style and class. Style's important because it's hard to come by; class is easy to learn. Most of the songs on Manifest Destiny have a lot of class, only four have any real style, and that's the only reason why this isn't one of the essential documentsofthe blank Seventies.

On one hand we have the style of the truncheon smacking berceuses, "Science Gone Too Far," sure to be the overall favorite, "Disease," "Young, Fast and Scientific," (formerly called "Dogs" and my personal favorite) and the cumshaw anthem, "Search and Destroy," all utterly flattening the ever budding campaign of preconceived punkitood. On the other we have the cool class of "Hey Boys," (the projected single), "Exposed," "Steppin' Out," and "Heartache." As far as the real Picasso mixed in with the Popeye cartoons, the nod has to go to "Steepin' With The T.V. On," one of the finest summer songs to come down the pipeline since "School's O ut. "

Adny Shernoff s crotalic lyrics to these songs prove that he definitely looks at the world in split level. His songs are some kind of inner struggle between the rock rowdyism and pop gentility. He's schizophrenic, maybe it's because he's tall, although the few times I've seen him he was sitting a lot. It don't matter—he's one of the better lyricists going.

Playing throat on the dumdum-splattering-into-the-skull numbers (I'll let you figure out which those are for yourself) is Handsome Dick Manitoba, be he Dick the Bruiser or DeSade, that crinoid-croupier of rock crimps, hijacking the listener like some half-mad rock 'n' roll Spartacus hellbent on silo madness and nuclear discussion. His vocals lance out at teenage cysthood with a vengeance that's refreshing. His opening monologue to "Disease" he wrote himself and believe me, it's demented. His suburban strappado funk stomp, that's what I call it when he tosses the mike onto the floor of the stage and does a goose-stepping tarantella around it, is genius.

Yet, the real shining silver dollar in this cache of anti-punk backbeat is the inspired guitar work of Ross the Boss. He turns short, simple passages into grinding headaches, the kind you enjoy aftera while. What with James Williamson opting for home delivery, Ross the Boss can now take his rightful place as the cryptarch of the powerchord. Just listen to his monologues on "Disease" and "Search and Destroy," they'll fuse your ear wax into glass.

Manifest Destiny is the kind of sonic Beau Geste that goes good with immersion tanks filled with insect boullion and dog burgers served up by old ladies on rusted roller skates. Buy it, you acres of human roughage out there, or I'll eat your mothers' brains.

Anyway, hey boys, what I really wanted to say is next time gimme a little more danger and not so muchcarbona (that I can get from anybody), and if ya can't get danger, I'll take a load of prolixity. Let's do it, huh!

A Period of Transition is a disappointing album, and at first I thought it was mainly because after his nearjy three years absence, I expected something more galvanizing from Van Morrison. On one listening, it seemed to be right in that Moondance/Band and Street Choir groove, except it just wasn't grabbing hold like it used to. In fact, the album is more like a difficult "what's wrong with this picture?" puzzle in which everything appears right but still provokes a vaguely uneasy feeling.

I still don't think it's a bad album, merely a humdrum Van Morrison LP, one that functions best as pleasant background music. When you listen closely, horn parts sound disjointed and melodies seem half-realized. Van's vocals have nohe of the exhilarating sense of breaking loose that marks his best singing, and Ollie Brown has saddled him with some of the most lumpen R&B drumming in recent memory. Too many of these cuts are three minute songs allowed to go on for five minutes, and Morrison fails to redeem that extra time with the vocal pyrotechnics that he often substitutes so effectively for lyrics. Only on "Flamingos.Fly" does Van himself soar, and the horn charts here are rich and deep. The rest of the album is professional but uninvolving; it sounds, more than anything else, like a marking-time LP, which is odd under the circumstances, and makes one wonder what he will do next and why.

THEM FEATURING VAN MORRISON The Story of Them (London)

VAN MORRISON A Period of Transition (Warner Bros.)

Meanwhile, The Story of Them, which collects nine Them tracks previously available only on imports, is a fresh reminder of just how much Morrison had right from the beginning. The title track, a slow, rambling blues that seems to go by quicker than anything on Transition, hasn't faded a bit in the last decade, despite its 7:28 length and its absolute simplicity. That's because it delivers an early version of Morrison's entire emotional spectrum and vocal skills. The romanticism, the tinges of bitterness, the pride, the hunger for strong personal relationships despite the frustrations they inevitably bring, the sense of wonder and of paranoia and of loss and gain, the stuttering vocals, the free association lyrics and/or cliches that he's able to infuse with vivid new life, the total dedication to his material—all are present in this track.

When these sides were recorded, Morrison had not yet fully found his own voice for his own blues. With "Philosophy" though, he was clearly pointed in that direction. Booming drums pull the listener in immediately, and Morrison then reworks some classic blues lines into something that transcends outright imitation.

The majority of these cuts are blues covers, and at least one ("Stormy Monday Blues") has little to recommend it. Of the two Jimmy Reed tunes, "Bright Lights, Big City" is probably the better record technically, but I prefer "Baby, What You Want Me To Do" for its rough, wasted harmonies. Van sounds somewhat in-over-hishead on "Time's Gettin' Tougher Than Tough," but it's a compelling cut anyhow because this is a swinging Jimmy Witherspoon band blues of the type that so few white blues rockers ever took on. Yet as Van's version of "I Got a Woman" demonstrates, it's only a short jump from that form to the Ray Charles style that so many of them swore by.

Of the two, Story is the one that actually captures Van making a crucial transition; he's past the raw, brawling sound of "Gloria" of "Mystic Eyes," but not yet up to the polish and maturity of later work. I prefer the re-issue to the new album, but Transition is not so far off the mark as to warrant feeling too glum about Morrison's future.

John Morthland

PARLIAMENT P-Funk Earth Tour (Casablanca)

I have a friend named Jimmy Isaacs. Some of you may have heard of him. Jimmy used to write reviews for Rolling Stone (he's the guy who made Buddy Miles so mad he kicked in Jann Wenner's water cooler), but now he retains a lower profile writing a weekly column for the Boston Phoenix (Gong Show master Chuck Barris gave Jimmy an honorary gong recently for kind words written in the Phoenix). An erudite fellow, Jimmy's liner notes on Elvin Jones' The Impulse Years should be required reading for anyone who has yet to decipher the vagaries of drum technique. Not surprisingly, Mr. Isaacs is a drummer himself, anchoring a noteworthy Boston jazz quartet that bears his name. His taste in music is pretty normal for a guy who grew up in White Plains, New York. Jimmy digs all sorts of old jazz guys (Charlie Parker, etc.), but he was also among the first to give good ink to Aerosmith and local Punk Rocketeers. Lately Jimmy has had this problem: he can't listen to anything but Parliament-Funkadelic music. It's gotten so his girl friend, vyho digs the stuff too, has threatened to move out if she can't listen to Weather Report at least once in awhile. Jimmy even plays P-Funk before gigs to get energized and has taken to singing "Cosmic Slop" while watching the Red Sox on TV. After listening to "Chocolate City," Jimmy proclaimed that "funk is its own reward."

Now Jimmy would seem to be an extreme case, if it weren't for one thing—I know other people who have gone through a similar metamorphosis. Like me, for example. After listening to Side One of Let's Take It to the Stage for example, if s kind of hard to put William Bell on the turntable, if you know what I mean.

Now to the album. First let me say that it's not without problems. The compression is bad and the result is a mix that finds the horns and rhythm section off in the third balcony somewhere. On "Let's Take It to the Stage," Michael Hampton's lazy strumming sounds like it was recorded on a hand held Sony. There's also the pacing: the absence of Funkadelic songs knocks everything out of kilter. And then there's Side One which should be avoided at all costs (it's a double album).

If the record isn't as triumphant as I hoped, it's still quite impressive. I'm moved by the momentum incurred when "Star Child" seques into "Swing Down," though it's a real shame that the moment is marred by a 20 second band of silence. Other songs are more than impressive: Maceo Parker's feverish alto solo highlights "Do That Stuff' and George Clinton has a whole audience singing "ga ga goo ga ga" on "Night of the Thumpasorus People."

A few years ago, Sly Stone created a brand new aesthetic. P-Funk has to be approached in the same way. It,may take some getting used to, and sometimes the concoctions are a little shaky. But Parliament Live isn't a bad place to start. Now where's the other half?

JoeMcEwen

HEART Little Queen _ (Portrait)

Two untamed sweeties' crystal-clear voices linger in the wake of cardiovascular thumping, and your libido is awakened by the enchantment of the sirens' liquid song. Silk floss sisters, in fact, Ann & Nancy Wjlson, whose only competition hails from Sweden in the dual, custom-made windpipes of Anna & Frieda Abba (that's not counting the golden-throated warbling of the Laverne & Shrirl combo). No comparison, tho. The upfront Abba gals (supported by two gaudy gigolos) spread the globe with thick, gooey syrup, whereas the Wilson sisters transmit concentrated signals of mesmeric purring—kinda like Jayne Mansfield inhaling and exhaling with split-second precision.

Heart's Dreamboat Annie was the one that caught everybody off guard—records released on small labels named Mushroom rarely even dent the charts much less see the light of top forty status, and it's superfluous to add that "Magic Man" and "Crazy On You" were the highlights in a dismal swamp of 76 bump 'n' grind disasters. Very few critics endorsed Heart's quiet debut until "Crazy On You" was actually screeching from car radios in full-blooded pandemonium, but by then the band's pumping energies were impossible to ignore.

With Little Queen, the Wilson's dreamboat smoothly rides the currents of intoxicating harmonization and timbre, never running adrift against the flotsam of fluffiness. The awkward thing is that it's all presented as the passionate strains of wandering gypsy minstrels, but only "Sylvan Song/Dream of the Archer" fall prey to this insipid Jethro Tull approach, any of the remaining tunes could wedge their way into Heavy AM Playing Position (there's seven singles on this lp, but who's counting).

Most of these songs have their roots in either Houses of the Holy or Physical Graffiti—it's always the acoustic edge battling it out with the metallic plotz. Contrast the swagger of "Barracuda" and "Kick It Out" with the sentiment of "Love Alive"; "Little Queen" boasts a wammy of a punch, but "Cry To Me" recalls the moods of Joni Mitchell's Blue. This careful blend of honeyed folksiness and homy sexual overdrive is the secret formula to Heart's immediate appeal. The palpitations succumbing to the murmur.

Heart accomplishes this delicate task without skipping a damn beat, but it's the attraction of the Wilsons' erotic vocals which really control this nonchalant fluidity. And it's their aura which prevents Heart from becoming merely another case of rock & roll cardiac arrest.

Robot A. Hull

MINK DEVILLE

_(Capitol)_

Willy DeVilles's the kind of guy the Shirelles used to harmonize about. Once bitten, twice shy: "You didn't want him when he wanted you." It figures, 'cause Willy's boys are sd atmospheric they make the E Streeters look like a minyan to Springsteen's reform rabbi (I know...I know he's only passing). I mean, Mink DeVille,. whatta name: sounds like a Caddy with rodent upholstery. And what credentials: Jack Nitzsche's first production since Nurse Ratched hacked off Nicholson's frontal lobes and lent his housekeys to Roman Polanski. Anyhow, Nitzsche's the guy who penned "The Lonely Surfer" back in '63, and he COLLABORATED WITH SONNY BONO before Sonny met Cher. Forget about Spector and the Stones, even 'tho Mink DeVille sounds like 12 X 5 meeting the Righteous Brothers.

It's legit to remark that Mink DeVille ain't generic to the dread CBGB from whence these jokers sprang. But what was so piss-all homogeneous about Radio Ethiopia, Blondie, Marquee Moon, Ramones Leave Home and Manh jest Destiny, anyway? Fact is, the Minks neatly intersect with an R&B revival spearheaded (or chucked) by Graham Parker and Southside Johnny. And this album bears a resemblance to the latest Jukes in its profusion of liner-note dedications which suggest not only authentic neighborhood connections (Pop's, Gem Spa, Mission Street, etc.) but a sense that the Minks have been creaming in their pegged Levis to cut an album FOREVER and were busy accumulating dumb Thank-You's since King Curtis got stabbed. But this is the Barrio, not sunny Asbury Park, as evidenced by the poor man's back-up support, an obscure trio in threadbare cableknit called the Immortals. Also, there's only one paltry nickname in this band: "Manfred."

Well, let us now praise Louis Erlanger for his electric slide on the urban amphetamine blues of "Cadillac Walk" and greasy sanctimony of "Party Girls." At 2:09, "Gunslinger" is the pithiest samba-paced schizoid peaen called "Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl" casually injects junk poetry like "tap it in" and "got me so strung out" to make its point. Get it, jack?

A coupla tunes here could've been contenders, but Nitzsche's production emphasizes atmosphere at the expense of impact. Too many Fender Rhodes cum "Spanish Harlem" marimbas versus too few Farfisa wipe-outs, ie. the guys are going easy on the schmaltz. Why trim the chicken fat? Half the fun is left up to Willy's larynx, which shifts from Percy Sledge to Johnny Maestro, then disconcertingly double-clutches into Paul Stanley (unbridled semitic/Dixie lust) and ultimately totals Soul Brother Number One. DeVille's "One Way Street" is every bit as Bad as "Lowdown Popcorn" (or "Funky President," for that matter). Then there's the LFs throwaway pisser, "Spanish Stroll," which segues from Raspberries thru Bluebelles into ethnic Lou Reed anecdotal with switchblade precision. By the time Willy shrieks, "Rosita," Spruce Bruce seems like a bloated Lenny Bernstein outtake. or Richard Beymer at his very best.

Wesley Strick

BETTE MIDLER Live At Last (Atlantic)

"There is danger now for any woman musical comedy star that she will begin to give her screaming fans what they want, not realizing how much malice and how much bad taste are mixed with their worship."

Pauline Kael wrote that about Barbra Streisand, but it is a warning with particular relevance to Bette Midler. The promise was a woman with humor, intensity, and the widest possible pop music range, and you can still hear that woman on Live At Last; she's hip enough to include both Tom Waits and Bertold Brecht in her repertoire and to resurrect frivolous Hit Parade antiques with vivacity and affection. Her ideas about the unity of pop experience are good, and her oddball medleys well executed. She's also one-ofthe-guys bawdy-funny, and this is the first album to capture that. But she settles for too little, pandering to the easily won-over audience, camping it up, playing a 1970's floozie-bitch for easy laughs. The possibility is—and at least she seems aware of it: a section of her act is devoted to a fantasy of becoming a "Vicki Eydie" lounge singer doing a "global revue"—that image and schmaltz will overtake her, and make her no more than a joke.

Live At Last is a very accurate document; this is what Midler is: alternately flippant and histrionic, a crowd-pleaser. Miss Personality with a bleat of a voice that, depending on material and mood, can be effective or irritating. She's often breathlessly busy on the fast numbers, and mannered on the slow ones, but there is a middle ground—on "Shiver Me Timbers" and parts of The Story Of Nanette song cycle—and it's there that Midler does her best serious work. The four sides, recorded at a Cleveland engagement (there's one studio track with a bad case of cutes), give her room to show off the range of her merchandise. Her taste runs to the sentimental, the dramatic, and the quaint, and her song choices vary widely. Brecht & Weill, Leiber & Stoller and Dietz & Schwartz, all brilliant composing teams, have to share time with Klingman & Linhart, perpetrators * of the wretched "Friends," Midler's theme song and albatross.

Except on novelty numbers, Midler is a barely adequate singer, but she barrels through dirty blues, cabaret, rock, ballads and big band songs —we're spared her desecration of Dylan and girl groups—on pure energy. Even with the visual element missing you can hear how hard she works. Energy along with hoked-up emotion, however, added to an already exaggerated show-biz style, could push her irrevocably into the wrong direction, the one suggested by the resemblance of the LP's cover picture to the Jayne Mansfield shot on Hollywood Babylon: a sexual caricature, amusing to gays who like cartoon women with their nerve ends exposed. Was it only a few years ago that some of our saner critics were comparing her to the Beatles? Will she now be satisfied to be a Jewish Liza Minnelli with funnier lines, better song selection and bigger tits?

Mitch Cohen

OUTLAWS Hurry Sundown

_ (Arista)_

You don't usually hear the Outlaws mentioned when people talk about pretenders to the boogie king crown vacated by the Allmans. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels, the Atlanta Rhythm Section—these are the names most bandied about.

Back in '75, though, the Outlaws were considered real comers. True, their debut disc was something of a readymade, but it did yield the primo guitar gam, "Green Grass & High Tides," which still sells the record today. The followup concentrated on the softer, country side of the band and didn't quite make it; when -you have two hot-shit pickers, you gotta wind 'em up and let 'em rock, right?

This time around, Bill Szymczyk takes over the production chores. Now you can yeU "carpetbagger" all you want but sometimes even the heavies need an outside ear—check out Dickey | Betts' latest if you don't believe me. Anyway, g Szymczyk's best known for his work with the ^ Eagles but he's also captured some kick-ass rock J 'n' roll for posterity so there was no way to know « beforehand which way the album was gonna lean.

As it turns out, it doesn't lean at all. Or fall flat on its face. Nope, Bill leads the band right down the middle and if it's not into an ambush, it's not a shortcut to the big time either.

Yeah, there's lotsa moderately rocking sensitive stuff; some of it works, some doesn't. Harvey Dalton Arnold has his post-Jackson Browne bit pretty well together and Billy Jones' "Night Wines" nods nicely to Dan Fogelburg. But the rest of Jones' tunes are just hum-drum strums; more mediocre country-rock I don't need, not at this late date.

So where are the hot guitars? Out west, where they belong. What gets these guys going are oat operas; pure and simple, tales of drunken revenge like you see on the tube every Saturday morning. But who am I to complain about what gets the jams jumpin' when they get as fine as the fadeout of "Gunsmoke?"

Or "Hurry Sundown"—what a beaut. The steady rollin' rhythm, the vocal harmonies, the twin twangs of Hughie Thomasson and Billy Jones feeding off each other...but you probably don't need me to tell you about it. By the time you read this, it'll probably be played to death by every FM rocker in the country.

And it proves that the Outlaws still have it in 'em; they just don't show it off too often. Now it's okay to have a couple of aces up your sleeve, but you're not gonna win many jackpots unless they finally hit the table. Which is to say that mayfce Thomasson, who wrote both "Hurry Sundown" and "Green Grass..could bring a couple more tunes to the next recording session. Otherwise,

I'll keep filing their albums under "also-ran" and wait for the live one.

Michael Davis

THE GREGG ALLMAN BAND Playin' Up A Storm

_(Capricorn)_

Hey, this is a surprise! I mean, after having been inducted into that small, but exalted group of famous people called the "they're no fun— they fell right over" club (Gregg's initiation ceremony was not as inspired as, say, Ruth Gordon's plopping face down into her mashed potatoes in Where's Poppa?, but at least it was un-rehearsed), and what with the never-ending soap opera of a marriage to Cher finally taking a Swan Lake dive (as of this writing, anyway), I didn't exactly pounce on this record when it came to my door. I don't know about you out there, but 1972 is definitely not the year that I'd like to live over again—and that's precisely the message that all manner and form of Allman Brothers groups and splinter groups have been giving me for five years. Duane Allman made that band go, and you can say whatever you want, I know that they're all fine musicians (but who the hell isn't in the Seventies? The new wave bands in England are playing bad on purpose because at least it sounds different) and all that, but great music has magic and that's what Duane was for the Allmans—the secret ingredient, the catalyst, the spark.

Ah cain't find mah plate.

Playin' Up a Storm is a pretty decent record though, the first to these ears by any of the aforementioned gang of players since Eat A Peach. And though none of us take (or have taken) Gher too seriously as a human being, it's obvious that the gypsy lady has nearly knocked Gregg to a prone position with all her fickleness. What makes this record good is the simple honesty of it, and that honesty rests upon a flock of songs that with one exception—an instrumental, no less— concern the heartbreak of heartbreak. Two of them ("Sweet Feelin' " and "Let This Be a Lesson To Ya' ") involve some messin' around by the singer leadin' to trouble, but on the whole, it's the singer telling the singee that she done him wrong. Rarely have I heard such a depressing set of lost love songs by anyone outside of your basic acoustic strummadour, which Gregg certainly isn't. What he is is a better than average blues singer (endangered species, this blues form) and when you have a set of engrossing, well-written and arranged blues songs coupled with a good blues singer, you're gonna get a good record.

, The fact that Gregg doesn't sound all that strong actually works for the album. He has to wail to hit the high notes and his voice gets so rough in spots that one hardly expects him to make it all the way through a track—hell, he even does a Howlin' Wolf howl on one track and it's effective. The big production numbers, like "Brightest Smile in Town" in particular, go down hard and slow. "Matthew's Arrival," the instrumental, is the only up spot on the LP, with Willie Weeks pushing everybody along with his bass riffs. Everywhere else though, it's Gregg feelin' bad, and that picture on the inside looks like some gauze was stuffed in his cheeks to make him appear smiling. And on the front cover his eyes are closed, cadaver-like. The blues is supposed to get you out of them by singin' 'em out. I hope that's what this album has done for Gregg Allman, else we've got one mighty dejected and broken fella on our hands.

Billy Altman

DAVE EDMUNDS Git It

_(Swan Song)_

Best curative for lonesome blues being music—not always music and lyrics in accord with mopd—I've found that the gutsiest, most absorbing records and performances act not merely as total preoccupations, but as a combination catalyst and companion in emotional alteration: my favorite escapist means. When depressed, I'll put on angry music or something surreal (maybe the soundtrack albums to Fiorello or Dark Shadows, or a Mrs. Miller record); when in love, emotionally satisfied, I play records concerned with the woes of unrequited love or infidelity. Make sense?

Okay, so maybe my ways of coping don't suit you like other, more usual methods people employ. What I'm raving about in theory's the pleasant and salubrious—anti-lonely—abandon of this extraordinary '70s LP produced and performed by Dave Edmunds (a Welshman and devoted rocker like John Cale), the long awaited/long in-the-making Git It.

Truthfully, I first pursued and listened to Git It without knowing or caring much about this Dave Edmunds character. Sure, I'd heard about his work with Nick Lowe and the Flamin' Groovies at the genuinely legendary Rockfield studios in Wales where replicating Phil Spector's wall of sound became the main and honorable objective. But, being smitten with Everly Brothers music, I tracked down Git It for "Here Comes the Weekend," a song which most convincingly duplicates the Everly quintessence, steeped in essential themes with that desperate duo-toned bittersweet Don & Phil feel: teenage frustration, release in romance and time off from the obligations of a schoolgoing workaday world.

Enthusiasm notwithstanding, by merit of vocal and instrumental prowess, I'm also hooked on "Worn Out Suits (With Brand New Pockets)"— great song, words and all—"I Knew the Bride," "Let's Talk About Us;" ditto for Bob Seger's "Get Out of Denver" and the Presley yeowler, "My Baby Left Me"—the latter which, Edmundsized, while not barely straying in vocal execution from El King's souped-up emotionality like "Back to Schooldays" and "Git It" on the album, serves as a welcome return to vitality in rock. Your "basics," yeah.

Dave Edmunds seems to be making more than homage on his record, though. In playing Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin'," assuming vocal inflections akin to yet not identically Hank's (as Edmunds affects on "Worn Out Suits..."), the way he copied Elvis on the aforementioned Presleyesque numbers—Edmunds seems truly a fan flattering these rockabilly classics via imitation. When hearing Git It for its rockabilly exuberance (not exclusively to the 5Q's due to a small-scale rockabilly resurgence), responding to a feeling without pondering inordinately over what the album must mean thematically or schematically, what category's most applicable to such an odd quasi-1*nostalgic" longplayer (14 songs!), then this LP'll probably get under your skin, as it did to me. Git It: a walkin' proud, finger snappin' album suitable for stroll-singin' to.

Trixie A. Balm

BROWNSVILLE STATION (Private Stock)

A damn good comeback album. Brownsville Station were Ur-punks but those of you who don't like your music shaped by a New York artworld sensibility (the Ramones as the rock rejuvenation of Rauschenberg, Rivers, Johns and Rosenquist), Brownsville just is what they is: four guys fingering some primal riffs.

What's kept them from solid stardom heretofore is the attitude of people like me: when "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" came out I said, sure, nice hook in that chorus, but the subject matter—oh please! 1 couldn't identify with smoking in the boy's room—it was those guys, sucking at their unfiltered Camels like Jacques Cousteau on an aqualung, that used to pummel the beans out of me all the way through high school. I mean, I can just tell from his picture that a bozo like Brownsville bassist Bruce "Beezer" Nazarian would have lifted my milk money with an easy sneer, and further compound my case of terminal constipation: YOU COULDN'T GOTO THE BATHROOM WITH TOUGH NUTS LIKE BROWNSVILLE STATION AROUND!

But now I know—and not too late, because they did make this beauty of a record didn't they? —that it was this feral worldview that makes Brownsville Station such a terrific album. Cubby Koda still wears those Edith Head glasses and snorts out stuff like "Hot Spit" and "Mr. Johnson Sez." "Throw Me a Lifeline" sounds like the surest shot for a hit single I've ever heard. And the whole shebang concludes with a seven-minute "Martian Boogie," a production that isn't even pretentious and/or too silly. Bravo Brownsville, and encore.

Ken Tucker

TED NUGENT Cat Scratch Fever (Epic)

Ted Nugent is my hero whenever I am sober and he is my God whenever I am drunk.

, And do you know something? My God is neater than your God because not only does my God play guitar but I actually got to sit across the room from Him while He was composing the title track of His new album! Yep, one hot and sweaty afternoon on July 16, 1976 while Michael Marks (who is my Satan whenever he is throwing up all over the darkroom in CREEM's Birmingham offices) was taking pictures of my God and all His guitars to go along with the interview I just finished doing with Him; (which eventually appeared in the January 1977 issue of this magazine. I'll bet your God never let you interview him!) My God sat there on a simple wooden stool, surrounded by His 13 Gibson Birdland guitars, while Mike's flash bulbs were poppin'; my God was riffin' out the verses to "Cat Scratch Fever"; trying out different chord progressions and singin' out different words. Gee, it was swell. (Just think how you'd feel about sitting across the room from your God while He was trying to decide where the trees would go in the garden of Eden!)

Anyway, my God is through with the album that He started working on that afternoon and now, as you read this review, record stores throughout the world as we know it are opening up their doors, just standing around waiting for you to rush in and buy it. (Even though Ted is my God doesn't mean He couldn't use the money; but I'll bet if He had His way. He'd take a copy of this LP, walk right up to you and shove it smack down your throat, no charge. That's just the kind of God He is.)

Alriqht, enough of my jibberish...Here's Ted!

SIDE ONE

1. "Cat Scratch Fever"—Whhhoooow. Rheeeeee. Uhooooo! "I don't know where they come from but they sure do come/I hope they're coming for me/I don't know how they do it but they sure do it good/I hope they do it for free." Wah-Wang Yeow Meow.

2."Wang Dang Sweet Poontang"—Bow dow bow dow bow. Bow dow bow dow bow. Bowdowbowdowbow. "See what I got in my hands/I got it right here for you/I think I'm gonna yank on it for you one time." WEEEEEEEEEERheee Doo doo doo. OOOOhhhh.

3. "Death By Misadventure" (This one's about Brian Jones, says Ted) —Erh-ow! ERRRR! Bup bup be bup. Re dip! Re dip! "Hear him on the radio/See him on the news/See him on the TV/Hear him sing the blues...No one understood him/They just left him alone." Bum-bump bum-bump. Doodly doodly doodly REEEEP!

4. "Live It Up"—Ppppppptptptptptpt! "Skin to skin is how it should be/Touch me, touch me and I'll tell you what I see." Boodle boop, Boodle boop nee-nee-nee.

5. "Home Bound" Bah-reeereree. Ree ree ree reeh. (This one's an instrumental. It's an instrumental that makes Jeff Beck/Jan Hammer fusion sound like oatmeal dripping out of a bowl and hitting the floor. It's an instrumental that, in and of itself, is well worth the price of the album. Hearing is believing.)

SIDE TWO'

1."Workin' Hard, Playin' Hard"—Tucka-

WEEEEEEEE. Rheee Doo doo doo. OOOhhhh.

tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka woof! "Makes every-1 thingalright." Wham. Deedledeedle. (This one's short, but to the point.)

2. "Sweet Sally"—pu-pu-pu-peedy peedy pee. Ye-uh rah-ow! "Sweet, sweet Sally likes it all the time/Sweet, sweet Sally likes it double-time/ Sweet, sweet Sally is a friend of mine." Zoup zoup. Zoup!

3. "A Thousand Knives"—Gu goo goo goo! "I was-just a schoolboy/Doing as I please/Young girls in my classroom/They was putting on the squeeze." Goobip yoodle ye yoo.

4. "Fist Fightin' Son Of A Gun"—Nu-nuhitty pu-pu poo! "He's on the cruise and he hits every bar in town/He's busting loose and he's only having fun/Oh, he fights like a dog/He's a fist fightin' son of a gun." Beep bop bam!

5. "Out Of Control"—Ping! Whoop whoop zing zing alinga. "Sold out at the second show/Detroit is a friend of mine/Oh, my soul/lt's rock 'n' roll/It's out of control." Gooboodle thump-pa-thumpa zip-zoot.

Whew!

Look. It's simple. Ted is the most frantically creative guitar player in the world. If you've never seen Ted, go see him. (Even at His worst, He's like a million sledge hammers; at His best He's like ten times that many pneumatic drills.) If you've never bought a Ted album, buy this one. (It's an excellent introduction and an excellent summation of the artist and it will make you feel alive.)

Air-Wreck Genheimer

KIKI DEE

(Rocket)

Funny, for a lady whose two biggest hits thus far—"I've Got the Music in Me" and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"—have been upbeat rockers, how strenuously Kiki Dee avoids that style on her latest album. The opening cut, a cover of Robert Palmer's "How Much Fun," chugs along nicely (keep the evil critic's finger away from the reject lever for 3:08, at least), but the succeeding numbers quiet the tempo right down to the accustomed country-MOR hybrid that dominates pop music these days.

It seems that MCA or producer Elton John or somebody is determined to make Kiki Dee a success on Olivia Newton-John's terms, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" or not. Which is okay if you're a lilting, ingenuous Aussie like Ms. N-J., but I had higher hopes for Kiki Dee's husky-soul English-dolly voice—could have taken up where SandieShaw (me first pop-heroine) left off when she succumbed to MOR way back when.

In fact, Kiki Dee teases us with some Bonnie Bramlett muscle-your-shoals inflections on "Standing Room Only," among other moments, but those instances are too brief, too little sustained for satisfaction—too much of the album falls back into the blondes-(as in Olivia)-havemore-fun business as usual.

It would be too easy to pick on Elton John for the disappointments of Kiki Dee, even if many of the cuts do share that curious emotionally-blankcenter-maid-tasty-licks ambience of his recent work; besides, Kiki wrote most of these quiet cuts herself, so that seems to be the style shq favors, too.

So be it, but I'd still like to hear her cut loose on some raunchier material, on a regular basis. For starters, how 'bout having Kiki cover (and I mean this only half-facetiously) Lynryd Skynyrd's "Workin' For MCA"—kill two birds with one stone, while paradoxically helping this endangered-species English bird survive and prosper. Okay, E.J.?

t Richard Riegel

THE JACK BRUCE BAND How's Tricks (RSO) •

GINGER BAKER & FRIENDS Eleven Sides of Baker

' _(Sire) _

So how goes it among the retired superstars these days? "Busier than ever, thank you," chorus Jack Bruce, 34, and Ginger Baker, 38, those gold-plated limey geezers who were founding members of Cream, the group that started (and maybe finished off) the whole s/star racket.

"The sound of Cream really was the sound of Jack Bruce," declares the official RSO bio accompanying Bruce's LP, a sentiment less shocking in its substance than in the realization that the zealous RSO publicists seem to have pasted their own man Clap-tron in the process. Did his contract run out or sumthin?

But, yeah, the combination of Jack Bruce vocalizing Pete Brown lyrics certainly does recall Cream's sound, although the lack of Clapton's and Baker's flashy instrumental prowess tones down the whole proceeding to a sombreness more suggestive of Procol Harumthan Cream. In fact, cuts like "Without a Word" and "How's Tricks" almost exactly approximate the usual Keith Reid-Gary Brooker 20-DistinguishingMarksrof-a-SuccessfuI-Existentialist catechismrock number, and as P.H. themselves seem to have gone right off the deep end and into the drink of their cosmic-limey-secrets-of-existence cover painting last time around, Jack Bruce's LP is doubly utilitarian.

Pete Brown's lyrics remain adequately literary, if less strikingly no-deposit than they were in the days when he was dropping acid morning, noon and night. (No more rolling on the dope-carpeted floor of your coldwater flat, green & pink incandescence flooding the eyes of your mind— no more green & pink, that is, unless you share your apartment with The Man Who Paints In His Tuxedo, and he's gone hogwild with his revolutionary painting tool.)

After the painting's all done, and the Man's exchanged his work tuxedo for a nice, dressy T-shirt, it's time for him to slap TV-mate Ginger Baker's latest LP on to the oP turntable. I haven't been able to locate the K-Tel logo on the jacket or label of this LP yet, but I know it's gotta be there somewhere—this is the party record of the season, provided your pals are ethnically assorted and broadminded enough.

Eleven Sides of Baker is studio jagoff time put down for posterity with no apologies, and most of it turns out to be (directly enough) plenty of fun More musical styles than you can shake a drumstick at, and a cast of thousands, including old Blind Faith et al., bassist Rick Grech, one-time Sharks Snips and Chris Spedding, and the usual quota of Ginger's West Indian and African buddies—an ol' skin-pounder like Baker never forgets (or neglects) his Roots.

To live outside the blonde-brunette law you must be humorous (take it from this lifelong carrot-brain), and Baker fulfills his part of the bargain. On "Don Dorango," he bongo-furies away like mad, all but drowning out Snips' synthetic-outlaw lyrics and the "Lonely Bull" trumpets. The equally schizoid "Gingerman" mixes the traditional Cream-mate worship of the Chicago blues with a contemporary [sic] fiddle sound. "Don't Stop the CarnivaP' kids Clapton's recent "Carnival" along the road of life.

Not me, that's who. Why bother living in the presence of the Lord when you can sublet a room from His henchmen at half the price?

Richard Riegel