PETER FRAMPTON I’m In You

“I don’t have to worry/And you don’t have to care,” declares Peter Frampton at the beginning of “You Don’t Have to Worry” on his new album, and I’ll certainly drink to that. Pete’ll never again have to worry about where his next guitar string’s coming from, not after the 13 million (and counting) copies of Frampton Comes Alive that’ve been sold already, and I certainly don’t, have to care one way or the other, yet the mass-with-a-bullet popularity of performers like Frampton keeps me lying awake at night, wondering how come I don’t appreciate ’em.

There’s no way I’m jealous of Peter F., let’s settle that right now; I’ll gladly grant you Frampton fans all the concessions you want; I’ll readily admit that Pete is more handsome than me, plays a better guitar, is four years younger than I am, is even (sine qua non!) more English than your strandedin-the-Midwest correspondent— you name it, I’ll confess to it.

And beyond all that, Peter Frampton is (as he demonstrated when I caught him on Mike Douglas last night)‘one helluva good fellow: pleasant, friendly, has a sense of humor, is completely unaffected about his own monstrous fame, blah, blah—in short, the Elton-John-Mr.-Nice-Guy syndrome all over again. C’mon, Pete, gimme a little pomposity, some outrageous hype, some kinda character defect to start the acidic prose flowing, something to justify the curious emotional blankness I experience when I hear your music. But no, you just flash that shy art school-dropout grin, shake your curly locks, and plunge into another lyrical guitar passage.

Okay, Pete, don’t worry, I’m In 'You is eminently a worthy successor to Comes Alive, I’ll grant you that right up front, too. Sure, I miss the vestigial Humble Pie guitar-churn of “It’s a Plain Shame,” but I know you want fo put those metal memories behind you now, and your guitar-finesse is getting more accomplished with each new set (DjangO’d be proud).

I’m In You is a “love album” (as Andy Williams once put it), with Frampton’s gratitude for his sudden success warmly re-expressed both as an all-encompassing ocean of love for album-buying+iumanity, and as a special appreciation of his own lovely lady in these fortunate times. (Beginning to sound like a contemporary soul-album liner-dedication?) In any case, the tender, breathless title track, “I’m In You,” is shooting up the charts hereabouts, and could prove to be the biggest-selling graphic fucksong of all time, the bright innocence of the delivery belying the lyrics (only it’s probably not about that at all...get your mind out of those R. Crumb comix, you unredeemed ’60s throwback!).

“Won’t You Be My Friend” springs from the same cheerful innocence, made even more engaging (for this fossil, at least) by the Ray Davies ring to the chorus. “Rocky’s Hot Club” has Frampton plumbing the depths of silly love songs first explored by fellowLimey McCartney, though Frampton is careful to point out in his liner notes that Rocky is his dog; no misinterpretations welcome here in the family hour, thank you.

“Tried to Love” has perhaps more blues-bite than the other originals on the set, both lyrically and musically, but the most interesting compositions on the album are still the two old Motown covers, Jr. Walker’s “Road Runner” and Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” Bolstered by the nifty segue between the two songs, this Motown medley could be the next hit single for Frampton after "I’m In You” finally fades away.

A fine album for all the legions of Frampton fans, and one your reviewer will continue to honestly admire, even if his copy eventually makes the one-way journey to the used-record exchange. Somehow I don’t think I’m In You is going to match Comes Alive in total sales, not in respect of any lesser merit, but because the whole Peoplemag whipped-up Frampton phenomenon has run its course by now, just as Fleetwood Mac’s has— Frampton can settle back to being an accomplished, bestselling superstar, branded with the 1970s’ big “E” for “effort,” rewarded at last for his many years of methodical effort in all the bands he’s toiled for. Someday soon he’ll probably even get to produce some other upand-comer’s debut album.

Like the aforementioned Elton John and Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton is an Anglo-American superstar act who no longer belongs to either nation, but to a kind of internationalist I’m-O.K.-You’reO.K. mass affirmation movement —Frampton belongs there, and on the cute li’l modular stereos of his millions of fans. With the Horizon-quality plastic-lined sleeve Herb A.’s authorized for this release, I’m In You should last forever, even with the multiple playings these hit songs will undoubtedly engender. You don’t have to worry, so why should I? (You might well ask.)

NEIL YOUNG American Stars ’N Bars (Warner Bros.)

I’m lying on the porch playing tag with a loose pool of vomit (results of an o.d. on Gordon’s Gin), and blankly staring at the brick wall that is the scenery in front of me, just waitin’ for the bats to come outta the holes in the wall. They don’t, so I flip myself over like a demented sea lion in heat and stare through the living room window. On the wall above the fireplace where everybody used to store their assorted drugs is this gigantic picture of Neil Young. Now, the pose he had when the shutter clicked was as classical as Mona Lisa’s smile: hand on head, leg on leg, surrouhded by a myriad of guitars. Yet it wps his face that grabbed my attention that day years ago; on it was inscribed the truthful look of sheer and utter boredQm. That picture of Neil Young was burned into my mind and has been responsible for most of my attitudes concerning the viability of living bored. Neil’s the personification of ennui and stylistic slobbishness. It’s all reflected in his music, too, at least in the more recent material like Zuma and this current release, American Stars TV Bars.

This scaramouch of the late Sixties has managed through some magical process to shuck off the lividity of his compatriots (the CSN of the former CSNY) and flow into the stultification of the Seventies. Unlike CSN whose insistence on some mythical beau ideal is irksome, Young wallows in the aphptic nature of the times. Neil Young is an example of real punkhood in action. Why? Simple. It’s because he never has to explain himself; he just exists.

American Stars ’N Bars is a simoom caressing the sticky humidity of urban conciousness. As usual, there are cuts that are stronger than others—“Hold Back the Tears” is as good e^s anything Eddy Arnold’s ever attempted, and “Will to Love,” in spite of some awkward production, is not the sentimental megillah that the Eagles’ “Victim of Love”, by its own definition, has to be.

The most effective tune on the album is “Like a Hurricane,’’ which stands as a pop tune that’d do justice to the likes of Eric Carmen or Nils Lofgren. Unfortunately, Neil doesn’t get to another version of “Sugar Mountain,” which was cause for much discussion during the time of the “Sugar Mountain Syndrome,” when he kept releasing singles with “Sugar Mountain” as the flip.

American Stars ’N Bar is fresh and not the memento mori of a time so many are still trying so desperately to hang onto. Besides, Neil Young has the best hair in music and he eats crackers better than the Keebler parrot.

Joe Fernbacher

RAINBOW On Stage (Oyster)

Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow live, huh? Geez, I remember when I caught ’em in concert a while back. Swore off heavy metal for life (would you believe a week and a half?). Not that they weren’t “good,” whatever that means. Yeah, they were “heavy” and “together” and “loud.” And pointless. No brain to the band, not much heart. Mainly fingers and Ronnie James Dio’s lungs blasting away.

A technical band then, but one with a few peculiarities. Like their medieval fetishes. Dio’s come out in the form of his post-Tolkien toke-down lyrics—nightmares of strange powers, deranged castle dwellers, etc. But Ritchie speaks only through his axe and it’s kinda difficult to figure out if any of his licks are transcribed lute lines or not. What is evident is that the most interesting moments on this album come when he inserts a few moments of delicacy into the banshee bombast.

Like on “Catch The Rainbow.” A stereotypical Hendrix ballad (“Little Wing,” “May This Be Love”) through two verses, the tune then builds strongly from gentle picked notes to the fast ferocity Blackmore’s known for and back down again with nice control and restraint. Then, of course, Cozy Powell goes thun\! and we’re back to the chord progression repeated endlessly as Ritchie goes apeshit, up the scales, down the scales, in and out every which way, getting everything he can out of the stale structure he’s locked himself into. Why? Because there’s no way out. That’s rock ’n’ roll ’77, kid, at least for superstars whove been at it ten years like Blackmore.

Usually he takes the easy way out. He doesn’t even try to tie the gentle intro to “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves” into the body of the song; just flips a switch and starts pulling out the power chords. An exception is “Still I’m Sad,” which contains some impressive improvs based on the melody, both from Blackmore and Tony Carey’s keyboards.

Then there’s the out-and-out dogshit. The old Purple puke— “Mistreated” wastes all of side three; Dio steps out of his heavy metal munchkin role to ill effect as the whole mess swaggers/staggers to a standstill. Definitive dinosaur rock. But the pillar of pointlessness is reached by Carey’s synthesizer blues solo on side one, perhaps the silliest piece of technoflash I’ve ever heard.

Nobody’s saying these guys Can’t play their instruments; the problem is what to do with all that technique. Most of the old guard guitarists have changed their tune somewhere along the line—Beck has opted for an all-instrumental approach, Clapton has settled for a slow fade, and JimL.well, he always was in a class by himself. But Ritchie remains in a time warp, slinging his riffs across the yeairs, seemingly unable to make a major shift in direction. Will the recent addition of ex-Uriah Heep/Tempest bassist Mark Clarke help matters? Does a Rainbow ever change its stripes? 1 dunno; ask Judy Garland.

Michael Davis

JIMMY WEBB El Mirage (Atlantic)

Jimmy Webb has had an odd career, even for someone so famous. It began when he wrote “Up, Up and Away,” which became so popular that he could probably live comfortably on the royalties from it (and its later incarnation as a TWA commercial) forever. What was so unusual is that “Up, Up and Away” wasn’t an easily, grasped novelty quickie, but an extremely romantic song based on highly sophisticated harmonic progressions. The Fifth Dimension had the hit,, and Webb continued turning out hits for them. Then he did the same for Glen Campbell (“By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and the brilliant anti-war song “Galveston”). He was a phenomenon. Webb and Campbell were as potent a partnership as Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick, except that Webb was his own lyricist, a poet who made Hal David’s banalties seem as inapposite as they were. Then, for some God unknown reason, he found British actor Richard Harris, and made an album called A Tramp Shining, which included “MacArthur Park” and “Didn’t We,” and which he also arranged and produced. It was clear he knew more about popular music than anyone except Randy Newman. Then he made a second album with Harris, called The Yard Wept On Forever, so private and pretentious that it sent many of the lovers of A Tramp Shining scuttling back to see if they heard it right the first time. Then he dropped out, and came-back as a singer/songwriter, making three superb albums that no one ever heard, and a fourth, And So On, that sounded like an attempt to see if he could get more lost by himself than he had with Harris. Then he did a splendid Reunion album with Campbell, and one with Cher that 1 would prefer to think was an exchange deal for the Webb album David Geffen (who was going to marry Cher at that time, 1 believe the magazines said) released on Asylum.

Now Webb has turned up on Atlantic and, in another switch, the credit line reads: “Produced, arranged and conducted by George Martin.” You know who he is. Martin has made his arrangements as much' like Webb’s own as possible—lush, full, and romantic, but rock. And Webb, as before, is a fascinating, committed singer of his own songs (though no star vocalist) and an excellent pianist. So the focus is on the songs.

It doesn’t please me very much 1o say that the two best ones aren’t new. “P.F. Sloan” was on Webb’s first vocal album, and was done with a rage and fury it doesn’t receive here. “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress,” a title copped from Robert L. Heinlein to convey emotions Heinlein might not understand, is perhaps the finest love song of our time, the one the singers who do “Send in the Clowns” will get around to after they’re done with that.

I don’t mean to say there aren’t good songs on this album. There are. A couple of them, “The Highwayman” and “Where the Universes Are,” deal with reincarnation, eternal recurrence, simultaneous existences, things that are obviously much on the writer’s mind. “Mixed-Up Guy” goes over that «same I’m-no-good-for-youbaby track that got Webb started. Another embodies such a startling, simple visual metaphor for emotion that you can only be surprised no one ever thought of it: “If You See Me Getting Smaller I’m Leaving.” I could name ten hip singer/songwriters whose reputations would be assured if they came up with stuff like this. But this is Jimmy Webb, after all, and while it’s better than most records I’ve heard this year, it’s not his best, there’s even some instrumental filler, and I want him to amaze me some rtiore.

, Joe Goldberg

TROOPER

Knock ’Em Dead Kid

(MCA) .

Okay, so these undercover mounties aren’t even stormtroopers at heart (why not? mein Gott!), and an easy half of Knock ’Em Dead Kid is a drooper. The scummy black-and-white backcover pic (more on the front cover au fin) was snapped at the Cabbage Town Youth Centre which may be (maybe not) near British Columbia. See, this here’s a canuck superduperstar outfit on their latest (third) MCA LP (you never heard of them, either) produced by “Stormin’ ” Mormon Randy Bachman. But they still aren’t closet stormtroopers (I know, ’cause I got skin-searched in Halifax last summer).

Now, the opposite of a skinsearch (in terms of epidermis titillation) is an archaic Kris Kris weeper by the Smith-McGuire tag teem about “waitin’ (sic) for,a ride to Disneyland,” i.e. hitch-hiking to Los Angeles without a .44 Magnum, a Visa card, or a bottle of Mandrax for barter. So to the line, “I’m gettin’ (sic) from here to nowhere in no time,” I say: get a credit rating, rockstar. And quit elevatin’ puling eroS (“Oh, Pretty Lady”) into Dip Opera yia Procol Scarum noodling.

Next on my hit list is “We’re Here For A Good Time (Not A Lon» Time),” said revelation provided by “a very good friend” whose name is neither Soren Kierkegaard nor Grandma Moses. It’s Cabbage Town (long way from Trenchtown) reggae, and righteously bauxite, mon. The title track, a Starz-cum-BadCo riff-pisser that puts me in mind of rifle darts (Bruce Dern beware) suggests Bachman as crunch-rock’s Andy Carnegie (“You’re gonna knock ’em dead this time...”).

The good news: “Waiting’ On Your Love” is a sprightly amalgam’ of bad Queen, good Lulu and genetically damaged Ritchie Family. The producer (Randy again) who approved the “save some time” bit ought to be administered Olde English 800 (God Save Liz) via intravenous injection and promptly breathalyzed by Anita Bryant’s proctologist. “Cold, Cold Toronto” contains the album’s inspired chord change (it’s an extra half-step up) and buried acid-flash string charts courtesy of Ben McPeek. At last, “You Look So Good” winningly shoves Forman’s and Jeffreys’ Cahiers du Cinema fantasy crap where the sun don’t shine with the line “The camera zooms in on me and you.” Like, forget fat Orson Welles and auteurism altogether. The camera just zooms in on me and you, baby. And the cover photograph exploits boys.

Wesley Strick

DENNY LAINE

Holly Days

(Capitol)

For a while it has been fashionable to regard the 70s as being similar to the ’50s. Fortunately for both decades, Ho//y Days, a collection of Buddy Holly songs sung by Paul McCartney proteg^ Denny Laine, shows how silly such comparisons really are. In Laine’s hands, the exubetant boyish horniness for the likes of Peggy Sue and the exhilarating sensation of one’s own heartbeat moving faster than a rollercoaster that Holly conveyed become something akin to the dreary morning-after sensation that leaves you wondering what you saw in her (him) the night (decade) before. Happily, I find, in giving Holly’s “Peggy Sue” a vigorous whirl on my turntable, that we can still eagerly treat Holly like we did the night before, though we must, out of respect for that late great Texan, leave Laine obliviously playing with himself in the fool’s paradise he so calmly sings of.

Since there are other golden greats I consider even more immortal than Holly, my disdain for Laine’s efforts is not that of a Holly purist. (I love, for example, the Beatles’ “Roll Over Beethoven” and Ronstadt’s “Tracks Of My Tears,” my affection for Berry and Robinson slightly exceeding my heartfelt Hollymania.) What I object to is Holly Days’ clumsy cuteness and the unearned casualness, which come across as the laziness of a ripoff artist rather than resembling, as it intends, the provocative playfulness of Laine’s mentor McCartney. Incidentally, the best ’50s rock, for all its rawness and roughness, always sounded like its singers cared about their songs’ subjects, inane as these often were. Laine, however, tambourine jangling as conspicuously as in a fifth grade music class in “Moonbeam”, for example, persistently reminds us we’re only at a come-as-youwere twentieth reunion and we’ll all be our normal sophisticated selves come tomorrow. Not surprisingly, such condescension pulls the ingenuous guts right but of Holly’s rhythms and withers the boyish bloom of the lyrics.

I noticed in Laine’s soporific rendering of “Take Your Time” that I was saved from absolute catatonia only by a completely incongruous chipmunk chorus. (Perhaps Laine’s trying to tell us the time’s ripe for Alvin or Theodore to cut a solo album.) Laine also displays this tendency for cheap retread in his efforts to fake the kind of improvisational ambience we hear in the Si99ly start of Dylan’s “116th Dream” or the rowdy grin we can almost see in the Beach Boys’ “Honkin’ on Down the Highway.” In Laine’s version of “Rave On” we get some self-consciouss handclapping and “spontaneous” gasping that only remind us how cheaply calculated the album’s relaxed atmosphere really is and that Laine lacks the genius that would make it worthwhile for him to remind us that he’s just a kid having fun with his friends. These gratuitous noises also remind us that Laine dismally lacks Holly’s most distinctive quality—his dazzlingly acrobatic voice.

I can’t think of a reason for anyone to buy this album as long as any original Buddy Holly material is available. If Bob Seger s harsh judgement that rock ‘n’ roll never forgets is just, let’s hope for Laine’s sake that maybe, baby, rock ‘n’ roll Will forgive Laine his hubris. As his work with Wings, with the Moody Blues and on Holly Days’ echochamber perfect “Fool’s Paradise” cut demonstrates, Laine is a competent if uninspiring rock ‘n’ roller. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to fall in love with Denny Laine as it was with Buddy Hojly.

Jim Bloom

GEILS

Monkey Island

(Atlantic)

Things were rough, bordering on tough, I’d had enough, I called my bluff. I spilled my guts in a lengthy article for,an international magazine announcing my rock ‘n’ roll retirement. I was awaiting its publication, which would surely mean getting stricken from the record industries’ freebee lists for life. In a related rash move I mislaid my address book, thus sparing myself the hair-tearing agonies of trying to sort out hundreds of cross-referenced, musical-chaired publicity types. I had thrown my reviewer’s cap into the ring and stomped on it. I was out of business. Free! No more tedious tunes wasting my tempera; mental turntable’s time. No more complimentary tickets to diseaseridden civic center concerts. Now I’d be lounging around listening to James Brown’s “Oh Baby Don’t You Weep,” and O.V. Wright’s “Rhymes,” and there’d be plenty of time to make my tape loop of The Henhouse Five Plus Too clucking “In The Mood.” Happy go larky me.

Then one morning I was in a Boston disco ogling metamorphosized liberal arts sparrows shaking their money makers and flashing their rubber cemented nipples in the faces of their astonished male partners, and, who should I spot but Peter “J. Geils Band” Wolf! Seized with excitement I leapt on the dance floor to renew old acquaintances. Yes fans, he really can dance and is not above a seif-serving hype. A new album. The best yet. The first the band had produced itself. I was sucked in and he offered to send me a copy. The next day I called our fave rave review editor and signed up for one more time once. Never one to trust a wolf in drinker’s clothing 1 requested that Atlantic send me a copy of the new elpee. Days passed and no packages showed. I seethed. Tidal waves of irritability swept my soul. I was as cross as a mommoe bear. No record, no review, became my bad attitude. Weeks later, 36 hours before deadline, my promo copy arrived from Atlantic. So okay. So all right!

These guys, still trooping about some seven years later and now known as just plain Geils, deserve all the respect we can heap upon them pretty babies. Their legend is rife with heartwarmers about cashloaded briefcases being wrested from the grasps of meaty pawed shyster persons, and they resurrected the early Atlantic speedball lettering for their album labels. The boys paid their historical dues disc after disc introducing impressionable youth to such wunnerful wunnerfulls as The Valentino’s “Looking For A Love,” The Contours’ “First I Look At The Purse,” and “So Sharp,” an early Dyke and the Blazers’ napper. Early on they recognized the true value of a front man in the person of The Woofer Goofer, who not only had a record collection, but was willing to live beyond the fantasies of billiops in the grandest of styles. He dressed in black and strapped a movie star to his back and got so he could scream and shout real good. This community spirited group drummed, strummed, tickled assorted ivories, and included that marvelous mouth-man Magic Dick, who has hit the notes that have lit the light at the end of many a tunnel.

Whether this is the group’s best album to date 1 leave to the quib * blings of the folks in the stax. I fell for “I’m Falling,” and the album includes “I Do” originally recorded by The Marvelows (#37, nine weeks on the charts in ’65 according to Joel A. Whitburn). There are some pretty fancy riffs and rips and strings and horns and sweetie backup and some - lyrics which cause the scringes. All in all, another platter to be preserved in an expensive plastic jacket and passed on to my test tube grandchildren. Listen up. Thanx men. Bueno veestas darlings.

I.C. Lotz

WILDFLOWERS

The New York Loft Jazz

Sessions Vol. 1-5

(Douglas)

If one depends on records and the radio for the majority of one’s input, it would seem that jazz has been dragging its feet for the past

few years—lumbering, like rock, toward some inevitable collision right in the middle of the road. When the best that's happening in the music (talkin’ ’bout jazz now) is to be found in re-issues and previously unreleased cuts from years gone by, and when fusion music, which dominates commercial jazz stations and your local record bin under the label “Jazz: New Releases,” is fusing itself with a level of consciousness where the excitement which drew you to the music in the first place is non-existent (becoming “chewing gum for the ears,” to paraphrase Fred Allen)—well, when all that’s what’s happening, then the state of the art looks pretty bleak. And me and my friends sit around and listen to old Stones records, if anything.

Then along comes the Wildflowers series, whose liners say, among other things, “Jazz is by its very nature a music of improvisation...Therefore of invention... therefore of ongoing change.” Spread over the five albums are 22 cuts by 60 musicians in various small group combinations, ranging from raw to finely honed, from frenetic to lugubrious, all recorded in concert in a week’s period at Sam Rivers’ New York loft. And then comes the realization that things aren’t bleak at all, that the excitement is still possible and jazz is still capable of rejuvenating itself...and that there is a balance not represented by (commercial) radio or what the record companies choose to promote. Meaning, I wouldn’t want to live with just the music of Jan Hammer Or just the music of Roscoe Mitchell either, got it? The rougher stuff here makes Return to Forever more listenable and vice versa. So jazz is in fine shape, it’s the media that’s screwed (don’t you just love happy endings?).

So many things happen during the course of Wildflowers' 22 performances that it’s impossible *to convey all that goes down here within the limits of this review. There are, however, two albums of the series that stand out and which I’ll briefly delineate (assuming, of course, that the more adventurous listener, burdened with a hungry imagination, will feed his/her craving by copping all five records).

The stand-outs are Vols. 3 and 5. Volume 3 contains some of the more conservative music of the loft sessions. It starts with a piece by pianist Randy Weston with bass and conga which swings, or “congas”, along nicely; there’s a piece by guitarist Michael Jackson featuring acoustic guitar and Oliver Lake’s flute with bass and drums on a pastoral free piece; then a selection by Dave Burrell (late of Charles Mingus & Co.) playing in customary sloppy style over an attractive Latin rhythm played by bass and drums; and then (flip the record over) something by trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah (don’t know him), up-tempo and anchored by electric bass with comping electric guitar, acoustic bass, drums and Charles Braken doubling on soprano and tenor; and then a track by drummer Andrew Cyrille, the only piece on the album without any conventional “time”—there is a personal time, though, as befits the drummer who’s played so much with Cecil Taylor—and collective! improvisation between drums, bass, tenor and trumpet. When I said brief descriptions, I wasn’t kidding. The point is that the music on the album is a varied representation as well as the most accessible of the series. I suppose I should add that it’s all extremely enjoyable.

Volume 5 consists of only two cuts. Side one has Sunny Murray and the Untouchable Factor (also featured on Vol. 1 where they play an incredible version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”— not as a parody either, but as a lovely investigation by alto saxist Byard Lancaster) playing a freeform foray, but the real stunner and highlight of the whole series comes from Roscoe Mitchell’s 25-minute opus on side two called “Chant.” Backed by just drums (two) and saw (as in musical), he begins by playing the same riff with only the slightest of variations accompanied by a churning drum for almost ten minutes. Satori. And then...if your curiosity isn’t piqued by now concerning what all this stuff sounds like, what all the new music has to offer you, then forget it. But if you’re a curious malcontent, then cop. ’Do you a world of good.

Richard Cr Walls

JOAN BAEZ

Blowin’ Away

(Portrait)

CAROLE BAYER SAGER

(Elektra)

Hello fans, it’s time once again to play Who’s The Cooz. That’s right, folks, this is the program that answers the question, Who will be the next flashy female singer/songwriter? Whose platter will be spinning next fall in all those co-ed dormitories as the young ladies choose new partners for next year’s matriculation? Will it be the former champ, Joan Baez, or the challenger Carole Bayer Sager?

Joan Baez won the coin toss, so the android is putting her album on the turntable. The celebrity panelists have their stereo phones in place. She starts out with a beeootiful rendition of “Sailing”. Elliot Randall & Dean Parks are trading blistering Claptonesque guitar riffs in counterpoint to her vocals. Jaye P. Morgan’s hands have disappeared below the celebrity table. It looks like a fast start for Joanie. Next up is a wistful treatment of Traffic’s “Many A Mile To Freedom”, and the rhythm scores an 87 on the horizontal dancing meter. Okay, now we’re moving on to an original composition, “Miracles," and it looks like Bert Convy has passed out from post-coital depression. No doubt about it folks, Joan’s voice could make a kept rock melt. What’s this now? Oh yes, SteOe Goodman’s “Yellow Coat” and the entire panel has been reduced to tears. So far Joan has built up what looks like an insurmountable lead. Wait a minute! What is this crapola? Oh no, it’s an autobiographical rant in ragtime. Joan’s recounting an unpleasant encounter with Time magazine. She’s kvetching about slipping record sales, knocking her old record company, and—sweet Jesus! — she’s bringing up that acey-deucey stuff. The panel is getting restlessno, make that hostile. Here comes Arte Johnson with a flame thrower. GRAB HIM, ANDROID! Too late. Well, that’s it for Joan’s album. Too bad, just when things were going so swell for her, too.

This is a big break for the challenger, Carole Bayer Sager. The android is cueing up her album, her first by the way, although she has co-written a number of Melissa Manchester’s recordings. The first tune, “Come In From The Rain,” seems to be mainly riffs from Carole King and Eric Carmen. Carole Bayer’s voice is rather thin but she may be holding back. On to “Until The Next Time” and the arrangement is still carrying the show, but she has gotten through to Rip Taylor, who is jumping on Shirley Jones. ANDROID, throw some water on them. “Don’t Wish Too Hard” with its disco beat has calmed the panel down a tad and Carole is starting to display some unique vocal techniques. Now for the showpiece of t he album, “Sweet Alibis,” which she co-wrote with Marvin Hamlisch. Paul Williams has turned green with envy and is throwing a fit. The final song on side one is kind of a downer, and the panel is urging the android to flip the record over.

Side two starts with “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love.” The panel is conferring. It’s all over! Carole Bayer Sager is the unani mous winner. What’s that, panel? You want to hear “You’re Moving Out Today”? That’s right, Carole co-wrote Bette Midler’s last hit. Android, give us a taste of “Moving Out.” Veeerrrrry slick. The slightly different rap is nice. Well folks, that wraps it up for today on Who’s The Cooz. Stay tuned for The Out Of Work Celebrity GamestarringThe Hudson Brothers.

The Masked Marvel

MOODY BLUES

Caught Live + 5

(London)

The shapeless acouasms of primordial mellotrons harkening the age of the machine, that’s what the Moody Blues were about way back when they first hit the planet like Gort-oids plotting the theft of Earth’s power. Having the prevoyance to recognize the gogability of the up and coming Seventies, these Blues played the blues of drug moan and an inherent generational urge to attain encephalic— yet spiritual, just to make it valid— rigor mortis.

Taking the nubilous chaos of the time and molding it into a less effervescent, more ephectic sensibility, the Moody Blues and their mighty mellotron laid the foundations for the likes of ELP, Tang Dream and Kraftwerk, as well as a host of other pretenders to the elctron. Their ex.cursibns into a sapid reality left many people smiling, contented, and as blank as any in the current generation.

This double album is vintage material culled from the less than overflowing vaults of London Records. Recorded at a time when they were at their most effective—5 1969—the four sides run the gamut between eye-squinting sloppiness to eye-raising moments of nostalgic quality, and even a moment or two of real drama.

“Nights In White Satin” and “Legend of a Mind” are as Seconal clean as they’ve always been, “Ride My See-Saw” is a might less rockin’ as the original, and “Tuesday Afternoon” is as boring as Tuesday afternoon really is. The rest of the“Live" material maintains a level that’ll please any Moody Blues aficionado.

Drifting back into the days when the Moody Blues were more pop oriented than Metropolis, side four is comprised of five unreleased studio takes. Most of these are a shade more embossed than “Go

Memo to: Cat

Re: Your Career

I’ve been hearing a lot of your “(I Never Wanted) to be a Star” on the radio lately. I’m glad you feel that way, that you’ve finally, resigned yourself to the facts.

So, now that the rest of your life —career-wise, I mean—is pretty much a wide-open ballgame, might I suggest one promising alternative to this ill-advised-singer-songwriter thing you’ve been doing?

It’s a unique opportunity (really) —enrollment in (he Lost Art School of Hand Pinstriping, located in Stamford, Conn. I’ve been hearing a lot about it on the radio, too. You can live on campus (or commute), and when you get your degree, you can make a salary you never dreamed of. And operators are on duty 24 hours a day, waiting for your call. Yours, Cat.

Howcanthisbeso? You may well ask. Well, the demand for custom pinstripe work on vehicles of all types far outweighs the supply of skilled painters available to do the work, the radio ad says.

I realize the synthesizer lessons have been costly, but face it — there comes a time when you just have to decide to cut your losses. At L.A.S.H.P., they supply the brushes.

It’s can’t lose, Cat baby—for both-of us, if you catch my drift.

Honestly,

Your agent

Kevin Doyle

CAT STEVENS

Izitso

(A&M) Now” and “Can’t Nobody Love You” from the very first Moodies album. “King and Queen” is likeable and so is “Long Summer Days,” which could’ve been a respectable hit on the radio. The only draggy song on this side is “What Am I Doing Here?” which insists on containing all sorts of covert drug references.

These siffleurs of noctambulation aren’t as repulsive as so many make ’em out to be (at least not back in ’69, they weren’t), and Caught Live + 5 should be gotten as an artifact, if for no other reason.

Joe Fernbacher

TUBES

Now

_(A&M)_

Product breakdown: Smoke (La Vie En Fumer): Butt anthem (ambiguous). Imperative like a burning rug. Palpitates w/ self-pity. (The man sounds miserably immacho.) Musical antics & semantics (a nuance for every nerve ending, with the emphasis on glissandos). For all you sitting bar-ducks. It’s how you do me. Hit Parade: Country curdled through a phase shifter. Polynesian piano, re-styled soul & ten-gallon countryplunk. Salted midsong with a grain of Roger Miller. Jesus. It feels so real. Strung Out On Strings: Tangerine wetdream intro. Prairie thunder drums get sectioned by whitewashed wooden guitar fences. Delusions of grandeur and an admonition. Could go full length on celluloid. Golden Boy: Lyrics lead to Memory Lane, the resultant Pain, Life Down The Fast Drain, eye strain, novacaine. Elegy—Fee weeps gilded tearbits from your every tweeter. My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains: Obscure & obsessed.' Sentimental & semimental. Definite anatomical barriers to overcome. Recommended for med students, esp. anaesthetists. God-Bird-Change: Reverence preserved in plastigoop squiggles. Most redeeming feature: God (played by a misanthropic synthesizer) (or is it a synthesizer portrayed by God?) breathing heavily. Latino-musicers hire munchkins (cheapest labor yet—paid by the square yard) to perpetuate the genre while they siest. Dig? I’m Just A Mess: Take out the trash (and what have you got?). Cathy’s Clone: Brilliant—Re rivals Fee for trophies in atonality (watch for a game show). Meanwhile, asexual reproduction comes of age. Synths whisper rumors between manicomputeriffs. Frankenstein wanks in a nebulous background of batflap and epidermal decay. Word has it that the song itself was actually cloned from a recording of Walter Carlos’ skull being ground up with vibraphone mallets. This Town: Frisco, of course. I can smell the Rice-A-Roni (ah, the wonders of production). Synthesizers overheating like hill-weary auto engines. Watch for an MOR'perversion of this one on your local WMOR. Pound Of Flesh: Ah, yes...finally. Sex. I was beginning to wonder about their potency. “When you’re hot as a sauna, You know that I’m gonna Make you cool and refreshed...” Hectic like an orgasm. Even leaves a stringer at the end. You’re No Fun: So there. (No fun, Fee insists, though with hot-buttered highschool armpits.) (Nervous lover, he.)

Alan Madeleine