ROLLING STONES Love You Live (Rolling Stones Records)

I imagine that I should state right at the beginning that if you took all the songs on Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock 'n Roll, and Black and Blue, there wouldn't be more than a handful that in any way affected me. The last Stones album that I liked was Exile On Main Street and it was the urgency and the claustrophobic power of it, those qualities that have been present on each and every Stones album right up until Exile that made it that way. Since then, though, something snapped inside me and cut loose that cord that held me near the Stones' music. I'm not sure that I can even explain it properly—it has something to do with the Hollywoodization of rock in the Seventies and also something to do with the Stones following trends rather than making them by ignoring them. When It's Only Rock 'n Roll came out, all I could see in my head was a newspaper headline in bold block letters: WORLD'S GREATEST ROCK 'N' ROLL BAND SAYS "IT'S ONLY ROCK 'N ROLL." Although I realized that the Stones never asked for that albatross of a moniker and were rather annoyed by it, the music on that record seemed to say, more than anything else, please leave us alone. As for Black and Blue, I couldn't even get through a whole side of it at any one listening, and what was worse, I didn't really care. I know people who sat for months and months grappling with the album until they finally liked it, but that kind of consciousness, namely listening to something a hundred times until you like it, just revulses the.

As I sit here writing this review, Love You Live is not playing in the background. And point of fact, it's not even in the house. I've only heard it once, in a conference room at Atlantic Records. And yet, most of the two-record set is still spinning around and around my head. There are no new Stones songs here—of the 18 included, only two have never been recorded by the band before and neither of those are original tunes—but there's an ease and a grace to this set that is simply irresistible. Through four sides of live music, three of which were recorded in Paris and regular concert settings and one during the infamous stand at Toronto's El Macombo Club, the Stones function as they have not functioned in the. studio for five years, having a great time, loose, relaxed and full of energy. As far as comparing it to their other live albums, there simply is no comparison. It sounds great, unlike Got Live If You Want It, and there's none of the decadent under-, currents of Get Your Ya Yas Out.

There's just so much here that it's useless to get into blow-by-blow descriptions. The weakest tracks are, not surprisingly, the newest Stones songs—nothing could save "Fingerprint File" or "Star Star," although "Hot Stuff" isn't quite so repugnant as on Black and Blue. Yet the transformation of some of these songs in a live setting is astounding: "It's Only Rock 'n Roll," with Ron Wood and Keith Richard forming an impromptu backup chorus and Ian "Jerry Lee" Stewart elbowing the ivories, is just amazing. Similarly, "You Got To Move" finds the Stones out on the chain gang with instruments and voices as picks and your head as the rocks and gravel.

The El Macombo side is really the heart of the matter, though, with the Stones easily taking a sound that's been stuck in arenas and stadiums for far too long into a small club and pulling it off masterfully. The between song banter has been left in (complete with introduction of the band and Mick casually inquiring as to whether "everything's all right in the critics' section"). The reggae rendition of Bo Didley's "Crackin' Up" is probably the best single track on the entire set—Ron Wood playing a canter melody line while Keith rips it up on the other side of the stage. And "Little Red Rooster," with doubleslide guitars and Jagger tossing out some bonafide Howlin' Wolf moans, is also a high point and shows, when, you come right down to it, how little the Stones have strayed from their original roots.

It's really almost impossible to complain about anything here. And if you fail to be moved by any of the solid versions of such classics as "Brown Sugar," "Tumblin' Dice," "Honky Tonk Woman," "Happy," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Get Off Of My Cloud," etc., then you're reading the wrong magazine. I suppose the most fascinating thing about Love You Live is that it is so much against the grain of the general atmosphere of the last few Stones albums. Maybe it's because this band that has meant so much to rock 'n' roll isn't worrying about anything, but is just doing it by instinct. And maybe their contention that they really do care more about playing live than about making studio albums is a bit more valid than previously thought. Whatever, that cord seems to have been patched while I wasn't looking. I don't know how long it will last, but it's great to feel close to the Stones once more, if only for these few fleeting moments, which is—after all—what live albums are all about.

CAROLE KING Simple Things (Capitol)

Never read a lyric sheet cold—the words to some of the best songs ever written become pretty chilly affairs when stripped of their musical envelopment and presented, stanza and verse, as if they were poems. It's a mistake I often make under the misconception that it's similar to reading the table of contents of certain books in order to get the feeling of a piece of work and What's It All About. Perusing the lyric sheet of Simple Things was pretty grim. What pap! and God, that's embarrassing...and not that hoary sentiment again, and so on. But all this "We're all in this together but love will save us" jazz becomes palatable, even attractive in some cases, when mated with melody and, on at least one song, "One" by name, arch orchestration. The moral is clear.

What do you say after you say I love you? I suppose it's inevitable that Carole King progress from intimate love songs to the cosmic love songs here (she wrote all of the album's ten songs, assisted by Rick Evers on three), tho' there has been no progress regarding musical devices since the Carole King Music albumkeeping in mind that they .were ambitious devices for pop music to begin with. And it's the same woeful voice we all know and love—at worse desultory, at best musical, sympathetic.

It's safe to assume that most people know what a typical Carole King song sounds like (all those weeks on the charts, ya know) and about half the songs here are typical. Legions will be comfortable with 'em. Some atypical shots— "Hard Rock Cafe," which isn't hard rock, natch, but a Mongo Santamaria/"Hang On Sloopy" riff with come-to-the-party lyrics. It's the only song on the album that doesn't try to deal with something, and the most likeable. "Hold On" would sound at home on a Who album—it's easy to imagine Daltrey singing it—because it so resembles a Pete Townshend composition, not only musically with the leading guitar and dramatic accents breaking up the rhythm, but also lyrically—it's mystical past the point of comprehension. And, as mentioned, "One" has (unintentionally) arch orchestration, meaning it manages to make a lyric like "He,is one—she is one/a tree is one—the earth is one—the universe is one" sound a hell of a lot better than it looks.

Alright, easing up on the critical stance, I've listened to this album about seven times today and it keeps getting better. I'm still not too crazy about some of the lyrics, but that becomes less and less important as the music and the "woeful" voice take over, holding my attention right up to the end of the last song where she sings, wistfully, "What am I gonna do"—and wistfulness, like this album, is a very charming disarming simple thing.

Richard C. Walls

BARBRA STREISAND Streisand Superman (Columbia)

Streisand Superman indeed! Barbra's been feeling her bagels ever since "Evergreen," flexing her vocal chops in the face of flabby rock manhood still going down slow like Kris Whatsiswhiskers did in A Star Is Born.

This set contains at least one real gem, "Don't Believe What You Read," a rouser written by Barbra (with help from Ron Nagle and Scott Mathews) to castigate the gossip magazines who've been claiming that Barbra allows her parakeets to fly freely through her home, letting, the birdshit fall where it may.

Personally, I don't care whether Barbra's house is full of birds or not (I've been known to keep a rabbit in my domicile), but her protest song strikes me as another instance of an encouraging trend of musicians talking back to the journalists and critics who hound them.

Joan Baez similarly picks on Time mag on her new set, with less charm than Barbra, but with equivalent indignation. And rockwriting's own Lester Bangs, frustrated that he could never get Jon Lord to admit that Deep Purple were only in it for the money, finally took to the stage himself recently, inviting musicians to criticize him, all in the growing spirit of ecumenical dialogue.

So Barbra Streisand's in on the ground floor of the rock/journalism cultural exchange, and a year younger than Bob Dylan she is, too. Plus the other songs are pretty good, Ma Pdrtnoy stream-of-consciousness liner notes by Barbra herself, nice cheeks (for the true believers) on the lyric sheet. Get it now.

Richard Riegel

ROBIN TROWER In City Dreams (Chrysalis)

There can be no denying Robin Trower his position as ONE OF ROCK'S BEST GUITARISTS, yet neither can he be denied the dubious honor of being the only one ever to PUT ME TO SLEEP IN MIDSHOW. (REM STAGE, no less!) And rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, he has not forsaken his distinctive, plodding wah-wah-grind (TURTLE NOISE) style of guitaring for the more structured, more danceable style of. Don Davis' (COMMERCIALLY HOT) producing.

Not to say that R&B/DISCO kingpin producer Davis' input isn't present...it is very prominentin the begining of the first song, appears momentarily in the middle of the second, dominates the CLEARASIL OPTIMISM of the third cut, greases the fourth and BEST CUT with an easy slip and slide rhythm, but only to be eventually beaten down with Robin's muff-tone-growl and singer Jimmy Dewer's Gaelic drone (TRIUMPH OF TURTLE NOISE).

There's a lively acknowledgement of Trower's debt to the Hendrix Screech & Thump Blues genre in one number and even a genuinely VERY PRETTY, VERY SOFT, VERY SWEET guitar intro on another whereRobin makes his singing debut (SHADES OF MARY TRAVERS).

All told, three of the nine songs you probably wouldn't mind hearing more than once, plus if you hate "Disco," then you'd be interested in how Trower & Co. manage to CRAWL OVER & CONQUER its predictable simplicity and boredom with their own SLEEPY NOODLING. So, if you liked Trower before, then you'd be quite happy with this one 'cause it's MORE OF THE SAME, but I'll be damned if he didn't PUT ME TO SLEEP ON MY TYPEWRITER.

Air-Wreck Genheimer

AC/DC Let There Be Rock (Atco)

Australians are the Good Old Boys of the Southern Hemisphere. After a hard day at the billy club factory, your avg. Aussie guzzles a couple garbage cans of beer and heads down to the beach (it's that or the desert) where they all sit around comparing leg hair, telling aborigine jokes and hitting each other over the head with surf boards. Folks everywhere regard them as "right sorts," even though they're currently banned from seven European countries due to an unfortunate incident, in 1972, when an Aussie soccer team devoured Czechoslovakia's entire barley crop while in the throes of pilsner withdrawal.

AC/DG, despite the iffy connotations of their name and the fact that their 18-yr-old lead guitarist, Angus "Schoolboy" Young, always wears shorts onstage (legs like Greg "Schoolboy" Luzinski), are the boogie kings of down under. Big deal, you might say, but then you've never had an Aussie beach queen (who's probably an off-duty tugboat captain) thump pubic boomerangs at your rear while kangaroos hop up and down wildly in the background.

Enough local color. These guys suck. Somewhere in the granite mudpies of hard rock, there's got to be a distinction between boogie and plod, and AC/DC falls in the latter category. Even drone-prones like Status Quo have enough sense to play with their food before it plays with them, but these olfactory infants just donkey the old bambam to death with all the inspiration of a pajama flame-retardant.

What you get is a few Humble Pie artifacts with singer Bon Scott trying to force his throat out through his nose (Steve Marriott with a koala bear on his back), a pair of victim-of-birthorder boogies, and the ever-present Title Cut, as stupid a Story of Rock song as ever there was. Besides all the saber-tooth skeleton clatterings, Mr. Hotshot Guitarist Young never once takes off, content to lay back scraping off the Nair rusted on his strings.

Stay tuned for their live-in-N.Y. album, tenatively titled Wallaby Of Broadway.

Rick Johnson

CHEAP TRICK In Color (Epic)

Somehow, American rock 'n' roll musicians have gotten it into their beans that to be associated too closely w,ith the Beatles is to be less than masculine. In tale after redundant tale, we hear the Seventies rocker claiming, in deep, guttural tones, "Yeah, man, I was a Stones freak. The Beatles weren't aggressive enough for me."

The fact of the matter is that the Beatles were plenty aggressive and furthermore, these third generationers, contrary to their own popular opinion, got started on the Beatles and because of the Beatles and believed—whether they now choose to admit it or not—that the Fab Four were the coolest thing going. Sure, they liked the Stones, the Stones were great. But the only reason they started playing Stones music when they took up their own instruments was because it was a helluva lot easier. Whiph is also the main reason they're still playing it (or variations thereof).

All of this has left us in the dire situation in this country of having no true rock 'n' roll band capable of writing and playing songs with strong melodies and vocal harmonies. That task has been relegated to the folkies and the tin-pan alley-manufactured teenybopper groups. (In Britain, a country that is traditionally less concerned with macho—what with prep schools and all—the Beatles' style is more widely invoked, by such bands as Pilot and Sweet.) If they have, the courage and faith in their own masculinity to do it, Cheap Trick could change all that.

Though they chickened out in a recent CREEM article, spewing, forth the same old Stones-over-Beatles rationale, Cheap Trick demonstrate on In Color that they can produce Beatlesque tunes of the First Order. Certainly, "Downed," "Oh Caroline," "I Want You To Want Me," "Come On, Come On" and "So Good To See You" reveal a real commitment to the melody and harmony/ as well as to the old standby, energy, that the rest of the songs on the album do not succeed, has something to do with the. group's lackluster lyrics and lots more to do with the fact that they restrict themselves too much to playing in the heavy metal/Aerosmith mode. In attempting to construct this musical macho stance, the band includes throwaway riff numbers like "Hello There," "You're All Talk" and the gimmicky "Clock Strikes Ten" which do not fit in with the group's evident sensibilities, and they mar good songs like the aforementioned "So Good To See You" with demi-heavy transitional guitar lines, the obligatory nods to rock's reigning genre.

In all, this is an above-average record by a band that is exceptionally promising. I hope two things happen: 1) They make up their minds on the right side of the melody/metal controversy and 2) They get rid of the dumb comedy outfits.

Robert Duncan

THE ORIGINAL ANIMALS Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted (UA)

As America's foremost living Animalophile, I've been waiting anxiously for this album since it was first announced last year, or, more precisely, since the original Animals broke up back in 1966. I didn'r dare put too much hope on this set as an immortal musical document, partly because of the evidence of the respective Animals' erratic solo careers, but even more so in regard for the bitter lesson of the previous such reunions of 1960s bands.

Expectations thusly guarded, I'm pleased to report that Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted is exactly the album the Animals might have made in 1966, if Alan Price had been able to overcome his fear of flying, or in 1967, if Eric Burdon hadn't let his acid-engorged ego get out of hand. As with The Who By Numbers, the implied theme of the Animals' reunion set is that of learning to live with your strengths as well as your limitations in your reflective thirties—the Animals were always simply enough the premier British bluesmen, even if Eric aspired to hippie nirvana, or film direction, or Negritude, and this album brings that fact solidly home to Newcastle-on-Tyne.

The band's traditional weaknesses are intact: there's only one original ("Riverside Country," a Burdonian seduction blues for the elusive Ms. Caulker) and, as ever, the band's true forte is inspired covers of other artists' hardy blues standards, from Ray Charles'"Lonely Avenue" to Leiber & Stoller's "Brother Bill." Even "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," where Burdon tries to ape Dylan's nasality and sarcasm, he paradoxically (if characteristically) manages to evoke wholly new emotional nuances.

Instfumentally, the Animals are as tight and spare and rhythmic as always, though with a subtly-dilated '70s sophistication. Chas Chandler has produced his old mates with a directness and clarity that the pop-deluded Mickie Most couldn't always master.

Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted is a fine album by all of the high jazz-blues standards these guys set for themselves from the days of the Alan Price Combo on, yet it somehow lacks the 1970s urgency of the sadly-defunct Eric Burdon Band, Or even of Alan Price's film scores. Even if the blues are forever.

Richard Riegel

RY COODER Show Time (Warner Bros.)

The best test for a "live" album, I guess, rests in the answer to the question, "Do I wish I'd been there?" Although I hate the state of California as much as The Beach Boys loved its girls (more, in fact), I do wish I'd attended Ry Cooder's appearance last year at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall when he and, a group of superlatively talented musicians calling themselves Chicken Skin Revue recorded Show Time.

Historically and harmonically, Show Time, like most of Cooder's work, both pays homage to and innovates on much of what's best in American music. A favorite rock genre of the late '50s and early '60s, for example, was ^"oppressed" high school student's lament, made famous by the Coasters in "Charlie Brown,12 Sam Cooke in "Wonderful World" and Chuck Berry in "School Days." Though the lyrics in Cooder's rendition of Gary "U.S." Bonds' "School Is Out" don't quite measure up to those songs' poetic standard, the hot sax of Pat Rizzo and the vocal warmth of Cooder's backup singers— Eldridge King, Bobby King and Terry Evans—gives this leadoff song more than a touch of class.

These voices also mesh effectively with Cooder's guitar virtuosity to create in "Alimony" an intriguing blend of the kind of elegaic soul reminiscent of Percy Sledge and Ray Charles and Cooder's own characteristically refreshing and gutsy gospel. We get the most invigorating sample of Cooder's handling of traditional gospel material in the Revue's rendition of "Jesus on the Mainline."

Cooder's own voice works best in the lusty, freewheeling "Smack Dab In the Middle" and in the provocative but not quite seductive Mexican lovesong, "Volver, Volver (a tus brazos otra vez)", which features some stunning riffs on the accordion (an instrument that rarely stuns) by Flaco Jimenez. This same virtuosity, however, seemed grating in a medley entitled "Viva Sequin/Do Re Mi," which seemed to trivialize, or" carnival-ize," Woody Guthrie's impassioned anti-California satire "DoReMi." If the frivolousness was meant to heighten the satire, the effect was lost on this longtime Guthrie lover.

Or, maybe in all fairness, you hadda be there —as I suggested at first. Guthrie notwithstanding, I wish I had been. Show Time is full of fun and discipline, cohesion and resonance qualities one seems to bump into on each and every Ry Cooder album.

Jim Bloom

LIVE AT THE RAT Various Artists (Rat 528)

This album is Boston's (the town not the group) answer to Max's Kansas City 1976 and Live At CBGB's. Recorded live at Beantown's Rathskeller, it includes 16 performances from nine local new wave bands plus three from an unreconstructed protopunker who's been fucking up for so long that the music scene has come 'round full cycle and caught up with him from behind. You may have never heard Thundertrain, The Real Kids, Third Rail (the serious musicians of the bunch), DMZ, The Boiz, The Infliktors, Mark Thor (who out-wimps Jonathan Richkid), Sass, or Susan. But if you know anything aboufpunk rock, you're bound to have run across Willie "Loco" Alexander Back in '65 he lead a group aptly named The Lost. Their first-disk, "Maybe More Than You" (Capitol), was released months before people like The Standells and The Syndicate Of Sound started making the charts. The Lost broke up before the fans got hip to what they were doing and Willie moved on to Grass Menagerie, then to Bagatelle and finally he sang lead for The Velvet Underground after Louie left. More recently he formed The Boom Boom Band and released a few self-pressed records before that move became de rigueur. All this experience and bad timing have given Willie plenty of time to polish his act and imbued him with such a blatant I-don't-give-a-shit attitude, that there's no way he can avoid becoming the next rave short of throwing himself in front of one of those Bosstown trolley cars.

One of The Boom Boom Band's three cuts, "Pup Tune", lifts At The Rat beyond historical interest into the realm of commercial possibility. No matter what your musical preference, this song insults your tastes and assaults your sensibilities while maintaining a very high level of primitive integrity. The disparate elements include several verses of total gibberish (one in Spanish), bass figure number one with minimal variation, visions of Puerto Rican hookers, Gucci-trimmed bikinis, Miss Veronica, and a chorus of " Baby I Love You." The high point is a semi-coherent tale of some coozie's dog swallowing another pair of panties and puking them up in the hall. My name may. not be Art, but I know what I like.

The Mad Peck

JESSI COLTER Mirriam (Capitol)

Jessi Colter once told an interviewer, "I've always had a great, deep tragedy/romance type of complex. I'm crazy about unrequited love stories. They tear me up, but I love them." Accordingly, her new album Mirriam (Jessi's real name) is a collection of original compositions that deals exclusively with the greatest unrequited love story ever told: Christ's love for us all. Though my own credo tends toward the "Jesus-died-for-somebody's-sins-but-not-mine" school of theology, it's hard not to be impressed by the warmth, tenderness and musical energy on Colter's album.

"Put Your Arms Around Me," the best of these unabashedly amorous addresses to God, succeeds by virtue of its stylistic play between Colter's plaintive wailing descriptions of what life was like before being born again—"one big heartache"—and her boldly belted out discovery "that you and me and me and you and love would find the way." We hear a similarly successful use of earthy energy and vocal sex appeal on the Lord's behalf in "Let It Go," an exuberant admonition to "turn it loose" and trust in God. Turning rock's conventionally hedonistic suggestion to take it easy and play it cool into rousing commercial for God, Colter had even me believing for a minute that the man upstairs is holding all the cards 'cause "he can make you so real."

Mirriam's most moving moment comes on the leadoff cut, "For Mama." Though the lyrics of this eulogy to Colter's minister mother can strain belief ("The faith mama has in God/ Makes people wonder/ If mama's a natural human being"), the warmth and gentleness in Colter's voice passionately evoke the beauty of this faithful old woman and helps us skeptics to understand how her talented daughter comes by her love of God rightfully. The vocal love Colter lavishes on her hymns similarly overcomes the lyrical lameness of her pedestrian plea to Jesus ("He died a lonely man/He was the only one"), "Consider Me."

As Mirriam pleases most when it is most personal, it begins to dull this sinner's senses when it tries limply to tackle abstractions like beauty, purity, theology and theories of musical composition in "God, If I Could Only Write Your Love Song." Less palatabe to the point of offensiveness is Colter's patronizing plasticizing of the so-called Negro spiritual in "There Ain't No Rain."

If you gotta get that ol' time religion one way or another, Jessi Colter's soft Southern Comfort voice sure beats Billy Graham's White House prayer gigs and Moonies on the subway.

Jim Bloom

STEELEYE SPAN The Steeley Span Story: Original Masters (Chrysalis)

Talk about folk-rock! Here we have a band that not only plugged in songs that are at least half a millenium old, but that rocks them, baby, with a steady roll. Steeleye Span is an idea that sounds good on paper but better on vinyl, and their appeal cuts across all kinds of lines of scholarship, musicianship, and age. Still, it's understandable that a band playing electrified British traditional music might not catch on in the U.S.A. Too little feeling for the roots over here, too much reluctance to try something new.

That's okay. Steeleye has an audience, and with this record it ought to grow. Culled from their ten albums, with one unreleased cut, it shows off nearly every facet of their talents, albeit with a decided emphasis on the more pop (and less traditional) sides. My major argument with Original Masters is that it is heavily weighted with more recent stuff, after Nigel Pegrum was added on drums. One of the great spooky

things about early Steeleye is their lack of a drummer—electric guitar, bass, fiddle, what have you, but no drums. As anybody who has seen them knows, they're very much involved with dancing, and listening to these drumless tunes, you add the drum part—or some sort of rhythm, perhaps in your feet—-yourself. It's very involving, and that may very well have been the point of not having a drummer in the first place. Clever.

Of course, for all the band's instrumental virtuosity (considerable) and folkloristic authenticity (ditto), the big attraction for many people is Maddy Prior, whose voice, while hardly trained, is nonetheless capable of amazing power and range. She is also, in her somewhat bony way, quite pretty, and live, her enthusiasm is completely infectious. To hear her soar above the assembled males on. acapella numbers like "Gaudete," "The King," or "A Calling On Song" is to realize why England's held on to these songs for 500 years—they must've known she was coming.

It's hard to pick out best cuts here, although I've always liked "Alison Gross" for its Ventures and Who cops, and the songs from Commoners Crown, "Little Sir Hugh" and especially the odd "Elf Call" made me perk up. But this here is one singing, dancing band, and if they're not singing and dancing like you sing and dance, then may I suggest that they're nonetheless on to something that's stood the test of time for a very good reason—it's fun. And fun is good for you. Get this record and see if it isn't.

Ed Ward

DENNIS WILSON Pacific Ocean Blue (Caribou)

This big, brave album—the only Beach Boys solo spin-off ever—is a small revelation. No one who has heard Dennis croak "You Are So Beautiful" in concert could have anticipated Pacific Ocean Blue; it is the singular, even bizarre, statement of a John Lennon qua Santa Monica beach bum.

Granted, these twelve songs (all co-written by Wilson) lack the stature and focus of Lennon's better work. Still, they are Lennonesque in their unlikely blend of pathos and crazy, incantatory energy. When the plaintive melody of "Time" explodes into primitive repetition, Dennis is opening up to the primal idea of truth as an object of willfulness. Similarly, "End of the Show," which escapes bathos with just the right (wrong) chord change sustained with strings for one disconcerting (riveting) bar, works itself into a "Hey Jude" like chant, a Sufi-by-the-seaside Celebration.

For all their self-conscious effects,.the arrangements (by Jimmie Haskell with Dennis) neither hobble nor intrude. "Dreamer" is a spare, sinuous exclamation (with athletic funk bass and artless Ringo-ish drumming) that suddenly expands into a serene, Whitmanesque benediction. "Thoughts of You" opens into melodramatic space, then abruptly retracts into guileless introspection like the mechanism of an inflamed mind. Sound contrived? It works, thanks to the persuasive power of Wilson's voice.

That voice—the familiar Wilson foghorn (part Lennon mumble and Randy Newman bleat)—is Pacific Ocean Blue's miracle. It's so uncannily expressive, so raw, so real, that all the risks come up right. "Friday Night," an afterthought by any standard of craftsmanship, sounds authentic. "Farewell My Friend" is so banal, so relentiessly simple (simpleminded, even) that it sounds like art. And "Pacific Ocean Blues," despite the participation of the dreaded Mike Love, sounds as ironically demented as Dylan's Blone On Blonde-period blues.

And, of course, Wilson's poignant vocals prevail upon the tracks that take no chances: the revivalist "River Song," the satirically seminal rock of "What's Wrong," the rollicking, sea chantey "Rainbow," and "You and I," which sounds even prettier than it really is with the haunting "No more lonely nights" refrain.

Maybe Pacific Ocean Blue is the album Brian could have made if he wasn't such a goddamned genius, and maybe not. But the chilling grandeur of "Moonshine" is all Dennis Wilson: eccentric, obscure, yet emotionally accessible. Dennis is an original, and that's got to count for something.

Wesley Strick

THE JAM In the City (Polydor)

Anarchy in the U.K.? You ain't heard nothing yet—just wait till the Sex Pistols wake up to the realization that they pissed away their big chance by urinating on their potential record labels while the rival Stranglers and Jam were going ahead with recording debut albums for the crucial U.S. market.

The Stranglers are timely balm for us oldsters, living proof that our generation (the original "my generation") can still get it up for the ol' Zeitgeist. But the Jam are in the authentic prime of their rock 'n' roll lives (all three members were born after Elvis' first recording date), and the fortunate conjunction of epochal need and the group's musical abilities should take them farther than most of their New Wave competitors.

The Jam have been unfairly categorized as a mid-60s nostalgia band thus far, thanks to their heavy identification with the styles and attitudes of that period, especially as absorbed through what must have been a worshipful study of the earliest Who albums. The Jam's resident incipient genius, 19-year-old singer-guitarist Paul Weller, has been prone to parody his own reverence for the Who, what with his 1965 Peter Townshend haircut and his windmill-arm guitar leaps, but there are suggestions in the body of the Jam's debut LP, In the City, that Weller may just share Townshend's manic intelligence, a decade removed from the mod/rocker apocalypse that informed Pete's visions.

Confrontation of sorts is in the air again, and the Jam speak to that ideal in Paul Weller's compositions. The opening cut, "Art School," not only conceptualizes and satirizes the Womb of all of the English rockstars of the 60s, but flings a new challenge at the rapidly-aging generation that grew up with those stars: "The MEDIA as watchdog is absolute SHIT!" Now we're talking anarchy, Johnny R., and we were already agreed that the Queen was a tinhorn irrelevancy, long before you were pierced with your first safety pin back in your bassinet.

"Time for Truth," In the City's other "blue" cut (got a "fuck" in there somewhere), reiterates the nouveau-reactionary stance of "Art School," nagging those decaying radicals who've been coasting along on their Consciousness III credentials for too many years. And "Away From the Numbers," a "Happy Jack"-era Who cop on several levels, may just as well refer to those numbers of $$$$$ being raked in by the current crop of smugrockers (a.k.a. superstars).

Lest I portray the Jam as unbearably polemic rabble-rockers, I should mention the potent energy of their music, which smashes through on the sensual raveups like "Non-Stop Dancing" (a paean to pogoing) and "I've Changed My Address" (Townshend/Davies domestic farce) as well as on the more intellectual pieces. Bruce Foxton is a cool, relentless bassist, and Rick Buckler's drumming is channeled fury; both styles suggest the assault of you know Who. And Paul Weller's guitar lines are just as slashing as his lyrics.

But don't take a rock critic's word for it (that's what got Slade in trouble); give this LP a listen however you can, and decide for yourself that the British Invasion is alive again, here in 1977.

Richard Riegel

FIREFALL Luna Sea (Atlantic) BERNIE LEADON— MICHAEL GEORGIADES Natural Progressions (Asylum)

Picking a Folk Rock album to listen to is like picking an apple full of worms to eat.

Did you know that an apple full of worms doesn't really have much apple to it because worms like to take up all the space when they're inside the apple just lying around, undulating back and forth being rubbery? Now you do.

Hey, did you know that Firefall's Mark Andes was the original bass player in Spirit, that Michael Clarke was the original drummer for The Byrds—who splintered into The Flying Burrito Brothers—where he teamed up with Rick Roberts who filled the guitar and vocal void left by a soon to die Gram Parsons, that Bernie Leadon was also in The Flying Burrito Brothers at the same time as Clarke and Roberts; after he stopped working with Linda Ronstadt after he quit being an original member of The Eagles, and that Michael Georgiades used to gig with Johnny Rivers? Now you do.

Did you know that these two albums sound just like every other non-emotional, uninteresting and limp LP you've ever heard (except that the Leadon-GeorgiadeS disc sounds even worse)? Now you do.

Did you know that if you bite into an apple full of worms some of the worms will be biten in half and get stuck between your teeth, wiggjqing and screaming, and you'll want to spit them out before you barf and never want to eat another apple again? Now you do.

Did you know that these albums sound so damn insipid that you want to bash your turntable to bits with a baseball bat? Now you do.

Did you know that an apple full of worms doesn't taste as good as an apple not full of worms and that there are lots of apples around that aren't full of worms? It's true.

Air-Wreck Genheimer

NILSSON Knnillssonn (RCA)

One way to look at Harry Nilsson's last few oddball albums is that they were a belated response to hSs nauseously need-filled ballad hit of some years back, "Without You." Must have been 71 or so, the damn thing was all over the radio. Harry didn't write it, but his half-caress, half-caterwaul vocal really scored with the melodramatic and melancholy crowd. It looked like he was all set to step into the croon-in-June crew and be set for life.

Fortunately, it didn't happen. Instead, he substituted his slightly bent Schmilsson persona, then collaborated with John Lennon on the puzzling Pussy Cats, half of which was great (the post-Randy Newman originals and a classic cover of "Subterranean Homesick Blues"), half of which wasn't (the "hip" remakes of dumb oldies).

With the follow-up, Duit On Mon Dei, he adopted a different strategy, filling his albums with strange little songs and tossing 'em out like frisbees every fetv months. Some of the stuff was genuinely funny (most of Duit) but as time went on, it appeared that Harry was losing touch with whatever it is that passes for reality these days. On last year's That's The Way It Is, he began to hedge a bit, recording quite a few covers, including one of America's wan weepy numbers, "I Need You." But no one was buying; clearly, Nilsson's public image, influenced no doubt by his reclusive habits, was closer to a loony than a croony.'

So more changes were in order for the new LP. Forsaking his L.A. studio pro buddies, Harry took his Songs to England to find a new sound. And he did. He found strings and acoustic guitars and strings and percussion and strings and more strings.

What's worse is that the songs are as hamstrung as the arrangements. Nilsson wrote 'em all but most seem aimed at middle of the road toads. Lotsa love ballads, some happy, some sappy, some sad, and most of 'em are sung straight, too. Oh, there are a couple of tunes that don't fit the mold, but they're pretty hohum too.

And that's about it—not a trace of rock 'n' roll anywhere and just vestiges of the weird wordplay that's been Harry's trademark lately. Just a lotta slush. But there is hope. 'Cuz if something like "Perfect Day" or "All I Think About Is You" or "Lean On Me" becomes a huge hit (a definite possibility), then Harry will once again be faceto-face with the crossover curse and the potential for large scale suck-cess. And he may freak out all over again and start the cycle one more time. Keep your fingers crossed.

Michael Davis

BE BOP DELUXE Live! In the Air Age (Harvest)

I am told that the first 50,000 copies of this record were pressed on (a few processional trumpet blasts of you please, maestro) WHITE VINYL! Somebody give that guy in the marketing department a raise. What a great idea! Word gets out and pretty soon 50,000 crazies across the country buy this LP so they can proudly display their collectors' items. And what if they lied and the first 100,000 copies are all white (I don't know about you, but I never believe anything I read in the papers, and that includes my own stuff). Who's gonna know? I can just see some speculator investing in 30,000 copies, only to discover at next year's rock memorabilia convention that he's been hopelessly duped.

But wait, there's more! A special twelve-inch E.P. I'm not sure I grasp that concept correctly. I used to think that only 45s wi.th more than one song per side were E.P.s, but then of course, there was the Blue Oyster Cult radio record that only,had four songs on it, but that was so it could be the loudest record ever made. This one's not loud at all, and it easily could have been a 45, but it's not, and I'm getting out of this paragraph before I start babbling about disco records...Oh yeah, before I forget, give thatmarketing guy another raise.

This is incredible! I mean, between colored vinyl enthusiasts and E.P. fanatics, Be Bop Deluxe could have a hit record on their hands! And, the best part of it all, most of the people buying it will probably never listen to it, since it'll be viewed mostly as a commodity to be dealt. Which means that all future Be Bop Deluxe records can be the veryvsame album in different packages (sure, a few people will catch on. I did listen to it and it's pretty nondescript, seeking to be alien but just falling into the whirlwind of the progressive rock yawnstorm and sure, Bill, Nelson plays a good guitar, but the best track here is an instrumental called "Smile" because there aren't any foppish, studdy lyrics on it, and these guys do not bop; they're rather mild and definitely not outstanding. But who cares? But I'll be part of a tiny minority of those who actually recognize the music on the platter) ...Yes, I can see it all now:

Unborn! In The Womb Age—flesh-toned vinyl with special bonus nipple.

Drunk! In The Beer Age—buy the album and get a coupon for 50¢ off your next six pack of Old Milwaukee.

Asleep! In The Comatose Age—after you get the record home, you can inflate it into a small pillow.

Frozen! In The Ice Age—specially treated record which turns into dry ice when mixed with water.

And you thought these guys would never hit it big in the U.S.

Billy Altman