PAINT BY NUMBERS FOR DEAF MUTES

PAINT BY NUMBERS FOR DEAF MUTES

RECORDS

AEROSMITH Draw The Line (Columbia)

Richard Riegel

Aerosmith have arrived for good, mates. Just check out the packaging of their new album: the front and back covers not only lack the emerging group-logo which graced their last two LPs, but also dispense with the title of the set. Instead, the denizens who haunt the record racks will be greeted with a black-and-white caricature of the group members (by Al Hirschfeld, no less), and a no-frills, listing of the song titles. Only those potential buyers already acquainted with Steven Tyler’s overbite (or those hip enough to turn the LP spineside-up) will know that they’re holding Aerosmith’s Draw The Line in their cash-crossed palms; Aerosmith are playing in Led Zeppelin’s if-you-have-to-tell-’em-who -youare - you -ain’t - made - it - baby! league now.

Aerosmith is thus solidly anchored to ride out the shifting currents of rock taste in the late 70’s, both on the album-sales charts, and in'concert arenas that have always welcomed them. Aerosmith emerged at just the right time (1973) to make a gigantic name for themselves; despite Steven Tyler’s' flirtations with various Jagger-derivative posturings over the years, Aerosmith’s real appeal has always been the bare fact that they p/ay sophisticated hard rock better than just about anybody else in the business. That ability was a sufficient, almost excessive, attribute for contenders entering the rock doldrums of the early 70’s, but with hard rock long since restored to its legitimacy (if not primacy), the race to exploit quirks which individualize bands is once again overturning everybody’s standards of ascendancy.

In a sense, Aerosmith are much more like the Rolling Stones than either their fans or their detractors would have them. The Stones have

,stayed in power and prominence for 15 years by sticking right to the guidelines Andrew Loog Oldham laid down for .them in 1963, by taking fewer c/hances than their competitors, and they’ve weathered every change of style or taste, no matter how radical, in the process. So what if the old guard didn’t like Black and Blue; the recordbuyers, in ever younger waves, validated it. Aerosmith have grown relatively little in musical vision since their first album, but everybody who was along for that exhilarating set has stayed loyal to the band and their consistent sound. 1 should know, I’ve been addicted to that supple Joe Perry-Brad Whitford guitar chug ever since I first heard it in 1973. Aerosmith have steadily deepened their fans’ hookdependency, by providing the visceral hooks that complement the cerebral variety dispensed by their label-mate hookmeisters in Blue Oyster Cult.

Draw The Line advances Aerosmith a half-notch (at most) on up their great chain of being, but the accustomed pleasures of their sound are, well, quite comfortably reiterated. Draw The Line frequently invokes Aerosmith’s (or

probably Tyler’s) songwriting formula, that of seizing some cliche or figure of speech, objectifying it with a hard-rock background and a correspondingly vague plot, at last making it stand on its own as a kind of born-again bromide. Need we recall “Back In The Saddle,” “Sick As A Dog,” and “Get The Lead Out,” all on Rocks alone? Draw The Line adds to our collection of r’n’r idioms—“The Hand That Feeds,” “Get It Up,” “Sight for Sore Eyes,” “Critical Mass” (a rather neat pun, by the way), and its own title cut. The kineticism in each of these cuts is as pat^ntedly Aerosmith as the concept itself; “Draw The Line,” with its echoed, pulsating fuzzhook, is a particularly tough opener.

. “Get It Up” ’s lyrics worry over our old nemesis of secondary impotence, but the rock-hard music doesn’t suffer either variety of that dysfunction. Joe Perry’s “Bright Light Fright” laments the numbing road life of rock bands for one more go-round, but his version is somehow more compelling than most other guitar-pilgrims’, presumably because he moves in higher circles of superstardom. (“Joe and Elissa Perry at Home,”

crows another rock mag.) Speaking of which, Tyler’s “I Wanna Know Why (everbody’s good intentions gotta make a fool outta me)” just may concern that same mag’s continued promotion of Joe Perry at Tyler’s charisma-expense, but Steve always was more superschemiel than star anyhow.

For now (and most likely for a long time to come), Aerosmith are solidly with us, and it just may be that there is something to be said for surviving the 70’s together.

LOL CREME & KEVIN GODLEY Consequences (Mercury)

This grandoise tale of “man’s last defense against an irate Nature” wastes no time getting off to an appropriate dramatic beginning. A tremendous hurricane rips across the Pacific, dumps Hawaii in the drink and heads straight for mainland USA as a monstrous howling voice declares: I AM THE WIND! The oceans have a field day, flooding all major cities, washing out entire nations and ruining countless pairs of Hush Puppies as a colossal voice exclaims: I AM THE SEA! Then a grander, even more malevolent sound, as full of bluster as the wind yet as sodden as the raging floods, casts a fearful darkness over the entire proceedings as it thunders: I AM THE RECORD REVIEWER!

And this is the biggest waste of vinyl I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. Consequences, as the liner so ably points out, is basically a demonstration disc for an invention of former lOcc members Godley and Creme called the Gizmo. Just hook it up to a guitar and you can produce most any sound your little heart desires. Violins, saxophones, bathtubs draining, conjuring noises from Bewitched, herds of squid achieving simultaneous orgasm|—you name it and the Gizmo can reproduce it.

Whether you want to pay in the neighborhood of twenty dollars to hear the Gizmo giz is another matter. The ultimate response to this project has to be who cares how all these novel effects were achieved. The records just aren’t any good to listen to. Three of the six sides consist mainly of instantly irritating dialogue written and performed by actor Peter Cook and interspersed with a handful of belowaverage Godley/Creme ballads. The other three sides are “instrumental,” meaning a lot of wandering piano, Gizmo-strings and plenty of unremarkable sound effects. Faucets dripping, wind blowing, revolutionary stuff like that.

No matter which way you slice it, there’s precious little music here, and what there is couldn’t even touch the worst of lOcc. I defy anyone to sit through one side of this set more than once, much less six sides. The Gizmo itself may very well be a great technical achievement, but Consequences will be of little more than academic interest to anyone other than prospective Gizmo-buyers. If it’s neat sound effects you want, send me a couple sawbucks and I’ll mail you a rubber band and complete set of instructions.

All together now: boinnnnnng!

Rick Johnson

lOcc

Live And Let Live (Mercury)

I dunno ’bout you, but it seems to me that when these number named bands split apart, their names oughta change accordingly. Like when Lol Creme and Kevin Godley left lOcc to gizmofy the world, leaving Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart to record Deceptive Bends with their buddies, the record shoulda come out under 5cc And Friends, doncha think? Likewise, when they (GG & ES) formed a touring band with four other musicians and released a double-live album (yep, another one—how many does that make this year?), it shoulda come out as 5cc & More Friends or maybe 15cc. Something to let the people who can’t read the fine print or rip open a double ''sleeve know that there’s been some changes.

And the changes ain’t for the best. All four know how to write, sing, and harmonize with clever melodies and all four know how to stroke a studio to get that super sterile sound that’s made ’em millions. But it was Creme & Godley who were the daffy duo responsible for such shenanigans as “Don’t Hang Up” and “I Wanna Rule The World” (and judging by what I’ve heard off their Consequences LP, their daffyness hasn’t abated much); Gouldman and Stewart seem to hit their peak when slightly twisting romantic themes, as on “I’m Not In Love” and “People In Love.” Their other songs, like “Good Morning Judge” &nd “Ships Don’t Disappear In the Night,” are catchy and well-crafted, but they leave me cold.

That said, I’ll still take Deceptive Bends over most of the studio stuff of their direct competition (like Wings and Abba). But this live thing, uh-uh. There’s not one tune that works as well onstage as in the studio. The vocals are OK but not striking and the lead guitars, while never ballsy, are positively limp. The longer numbers, in particular, “Feel The Benefit” and “Modern Man Blues,” are embarrassing.

But every band deserves at least one major mistake. Ah well, back to the mixing board.

Michael Davis

NEIL YOUNG Decade

_(Reprise)_

A 1988 undergraduate seminar— American Rock Romanticism 202. The midterm exam question: “Music historian Antoine Ferrand describes the music of Neil Young as ‘a body of work that tells us more than we’d like to know about the feelings of despair, betrayal and helplessness that characterized a segment of America during the 1970’s.’ Using Decade as your primary source, discuss how Young’s music over his first ten year period supports or refutes Ferrand’s assertion. Be specific (quotes, titles).”

It’s that kind of album. Like a Faulkner anthology. And it turns out that Neil Young is a figure to be seriously reckoned with (how else?; he is the most humorless of major rock artists). Decade probably shouldn’t have been necessary to convince us of that, but here it is, and it states its case for Young as a Significant Talent with thoroughness and minimal special pleading. Six sides, nearly three dozen songs, from Buffalo Springfield to Zuma, a few conspicuous omissions, some dubious inclusions, but quite a document. Young has, especially in the last few years, been an easy target. There’s a real annoyance factor operating—one wiseass comedian describes his voice as “Jerry Lewis on acid”—and he has been willing to let his instinct take him where forethought might keep its distance.

Here in one pla^e, however, Young’s contribution sounds formidable. He sprang on us almost grown, already with Springfield tapping a well of misery and Canadian innocence sunburned in California. (All of his great songs of that period are accounted for, so you might as well scrap your Springfield LPs, and since “Helpless” appears, you can toss Deja Vu as well; this is one considerate collection.) As the set progresses, through the searing, slamming guitar excursions of Crazy Horse, to the treacherous slide of Harvest, to the Meursault-on-the-beach scenes of the damage done, to the rueful capper of “Long May You Run,” we get a dark composite career picture. Taking in all of Decade is exhausting as well as instructive.

■ There are major failures dregged up, like “Southern Man,” an outsider’s cheap shot, “A Man Needs a Maid,” “Soldier,” “Campaigner” —who but Young would admit identifying with the image of Nixon walking alone by the water—“Old Man.” And stunning successes: “Mr. Soul,” “Broken Arrow” and “Expecting To Fly” back-to-backto-back at last; both opuses from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and later resurgences in that format, “Cortez the Killer” and “Like A Hurricane;” “Winterlong,” a real find; the title song of After the Gold Rush. For its breadth, the way it ranges from the only minimally battered naivete of “I Am A Child” and “Sugar Mountain” to the utter blackness of “The Needle And The Damage Done” and “Tired Eyes,” and for the amount of emotional energy expended all over these tracks, this may be the first threerecord set worth a complete listening to (well, almost—side four is a near-complete disaster) since Billie Holliday’s The Golden Years.

“Irrelevant,” the professor scribbles in the margin. Fine. There is little joy in the Neil Young represented on Decade. “I could be happy the rest of my life with a Cinnamon Girl.” Couldn’t we all? What he finds instead is that love is a thorned rose, unpickable. With the best of intentions, the purest and wildest of dreams, simple desires, what’s confronted is confusion and longing, loneliness and violence. “Some get strong, some get strange.” “I want to love you but I’m getting blown away.” “I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.” Death on the mainline, where “tonight’s the night” isn’t sexual anticipation but a danger signal. And, of course, “helpless, helpless, helpless...”

Before Tom Robbins, he knew that cowgirls get the blues, and he made more rock and roll than many of us might remember. He was the only one to name Nixon by name, the first to stake out the 1970’s as such, and he continues to make hairpin turns. I think of him like the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons. Lead over the edge, he doesn’t begin to fall until he realizes where he is: unsupported in the air. Then, with a look of lost resignation, involving us in his predicament, he plunges. Next scene, he’s up again, readying another scheme that’s doomed to backfire.

Mitch Cohen

DETECTIVE

It Takes One to Know One (Swan Song)

So far we’ve heard the Yardbirds, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, Free, Grand Funk, the James Gang and Bad Company to mention just a few of the more memorable “heavies.” Now, with their second album, It Takes One To Know One,” it becomes apparent that we have Detective, another in the recent series, along with Aerosmith, Lone Star, Foreigner—of third rate, third generation “heavy” bands. Why? Well, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, than perhaps that’s what motivated Jimmy Page to aid in this group’s signing to Swan Song. Unfortunately, Page’s love affair with his own ego doesn’t validate the group’s music; it simply encourages and gives the seal of approval to a band whose sound is so obviously derivative that they never get the chance to sound like themselves.

The breakdown goes something jike this: singer Michael Des Barres is limited both in style and range. When he isn’t preoccupied with Plant imitations, he’s a dead ringer for Paul Rodgers or Steve Marriott. Former Steppenwolf guitarist Michael Monarch lifts most of his rhythms and rides from Page adding an occasional Brian May or Joe Walsh riff just for color. Percussionist Jon Hyde does an amazingly accurate John Bonham impersonation. Tony Kaye plays keyboards in much the same style he did with Yes, and though this makes for some interesting textures, he never plays a strong enough role to rise above the sludge of the band’s creative limitations. Finally, Bobby Pickett’s bass, reminiscent of Chris Squire’s in “Fever”, is not enough to carry the band’s rhythm to a level of sophistication beyond what he accomplishes in one tune.

All members of Detective write, but somehow the combinations never click to form anything resembling identity. A pair of pretty melodies and the more complex rhythmic patters in “Tear Jerker,” break away from the monotony, but only temporarily.

This music sounds better when you’re not too straight, but it’s hardly worth the extra bucks. Besides, listeners shouldn’t have to go to additional expense to alter their senses, if the musicians are too lazy to commit the crime for them... another example of the old adage, “Crime does not pay.”

Kris Nicholson

BETTE MIDLER Broken Blossom (Atlantic)

Bette Midler’s sweet'" potato face graced my TV set three times late in 77, each time giving intimations that she hasn’t changed much, if at all, in the last five years. She appeared on the boring and unimaginative Rolling Stone Tenth Anniversary Special and didn’t exactly help the show with her tired routine of risque jokes and camp songs. Then there was her own special and tho, like Rolling Stone, she kept the traditional television “special” pacing, there was the opening which was off the wall and hilarious (you had to be there). The body of the show was a mixture of her old and her new repertoire with a lotta stale jokes to maintain her New Yawk Jewish drag queen persona. An entertaining show, but I wouldn’t want a record of it. The third appearance was on the Dinah Shore Show, just talking, plugging her special, and she seemed the same as always ’cause even tho some of the expressions have changed^ everything’s still the pits or simply devine and there were a lot of patting-the-hair gestures. But when describing what she wanted her performance to be, she said, “1 don’t wanna sound comj> or anything, but what I want is for them to be celebrations.” Well, I don’t wanna sound corny or anything either, but don’t let the image of The Divine Miss Dead End kid you, this record shows she has changed and it’s the best collection she’s put out yet. Not that (here’s been that many.

The main change is that Midler relies less here on cloying vocal mannerisms to get a song across— she sounds more than ever like a genuine chanteuse, less than ever like a burlesque of one. Also, tho the range of selections is as wide as ever, there are no cute novelty numbers that pale after two or three listenings. The jaroduction is never overbearing except when it’s meant to be, as on “Paradise” with its appropriately Spectorish overarrangement.

The first of two undeniable gems on the album is a duet with Tom Waits on Waits’ “I Never Talk To Strangers.” Two more disparate voices are hard to imagine, but the song, a moody bar conversation, is tailor-made and the experience totally musical. The second gem is “La Vie En Rose”—not a false note in it. At this point in her career Midler is a most convincing interpreter of Edith Piaf. I don’t think she could have done it five years ago—not straight, anyway.

The rest of the album is pretty straight too (as in “straight ahead”) —straight blues on “Empty Bed Blues,” straight wistfulness on “A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes,” straight sensuality on “Make Yourself Comfortable.” The kid’s growing up. If this album doesn’t sell, shell probably go back to covering lousy 50’s songs and hoary jazz warhorses. That alone should be motivation to buy.

Richard C. Walls

RICK WAKEMAN Criminal Record _(A&M)

Gag!!!! Now here’s a useless bore that deserves to have his noggin bashed with a hockey stick until it’s a gorgeous pool of pulpy gelatin. I forget what cesspool this snake slithered from (ELP? Atomic Rooster? Yes? one of those progs, anyway), but I’ve seen his dashing mug plastered on record jackets, billboards, & cereal boxes (yeah, it’s Yes!) for so long that he’s getting under my skin. Wakeman may be the Liberace of rock, but to my ears he’s ah innocuous shyster wasting precious vinyl.

Wait a sec...ain’t this the Hi& Mighty that petitioned the Lord in prayer via A&M to get the execs to kick those dirty filthy Sex Pistols off the label? Not that I blame him, y’know cause you gotta protect yr kapitalistic interests. If the whole world goes krazee over minimalist rock, A&M ain’t gonna pay for all those grand pianos & pipe organs anymore. Besides, what would Papa Herb Alpert think? (Video De-lite: Didja catch A&M’s Xmas float during the always slee-zee SantQ Claws Lane Parade? It absolutely exuded the bloated goodwill of Wakeman & Co., complete with lotsa Woolworth’s glitter.)

Look, I’m sure this proto-prog is gonna milk his success ’til the cosmos dim, and there’s nothing any measly rock scribe can do to see him put back in the gutter. But goddamn, a concept album. I can’t believe this spaced-out, batterwhipped AIR that record companies keep churnin out, as if in defiance. (“DON’T PLUG IN THOSE GUITARS, BOYS AND GIRLS. DONT STOMP ON THOSE FUZZ TONES, OR WE’LL RE-

LEASE A 12-RECORD BOX SET FEATURING THE COMPLETE DOODLING OF GARY WRIGHT & EX-YES JACKASS...” “No..no,” a feeble voice pleads in the darkness, “anything but that, kind sir.” “...OH YES, OH YES, WE WILL! THAT FANTABULOUS SUPERJERK...” “Please, give us one more chance. We promise we’ll never listen to Chuck Berry again.” “... INCREDIBLY BORING DRIP OF AN ASSHOLE...MR. RICKY WAKEMAN!” “Alas, we’re doomed!”)

The conceptof Criminal Record is even so elusive for Wakeman that he’s hired a clever 14-year-old liner note hack to scrawl some explanations about the overly-obvious titles. Maybe it’s the libretto, & you’re supposed to sing along, I dunno. Nevertheless, it’s just chock full of interesting fax for the rube mentality. Like, didja know that “The Statue of Justice” (the title of a keyboard finger-exercise included on this criminal offense) is not really blind-folded as m£ny folks believe? Didja know a camel doesn’t really carry water in its hump? Didja know that Rick Wakeman is really a stoopid fool?!

Other swell Compositions: “The Breathalyser” (WakepuSs the Mellow Doper speaks to the alkie generation), “Judas Iscariot” (a criminal only to committed Jesus freaks), “Birdman of Alcatraz” (hear Gooseberry Alarm Clock’s “Birdman of Alkatrash” for the authentic version), and “Chamber of Horrors” (48 hours in an enclosed shower stall listening to this record). The only unifying element to this hodgepodge is the keyboard stunts intent upon toppling the most timid of young pianists whose moms make ’em practice right after school. All supported by a cast of thousands usually reserved for Carpenters’ cantatas, lOth-Ahniversary Rolling Stone specials, & rousing renditions of “Hey Jude”. A perpetration so entirely mindstaggering that it take? me six cups of java to even ponder its immense worthlessness.

Only improbity could allow Wakeman to hastily throw together this two-bit concept LP with ajl the nonchalance & condescension of an Inflatable Egghead. /

Robot A. Hull

RUNAWAYS Waitin’ For The Night (Mercury)

RUNAWAYS Live in Japan (Mercury-Import)

These daughters of orgone madness jump from confusion to confusion in a grand teenage style; contradicting, enticing, and eventually seducing the listener with a self-assuredness that turns intp outright aggression and straight ahead rock ’n’ roll. They’re not punks by any stretch of the imagination and they’re not the delicate images most girl groups are pushed into portraying. They kick ass, know it, and like it, so what else could you ask for in a group?

On their earlier albums most of the true spirit of the group was glossed over by the bombast of lead songstress Cherie Bomb, and now that she’s left for weirder pastures the awe-inspiring talents of Joan Jett are being pushed into a leading role. Her initial venture as leader comes in Waitin’ For The Night and she doesn’t disappoint.

So their music isn’t complicated, it’s not supposed, to be, just like all good rock ’n’ roll isn’t supposed to be complicated, it’s supposed to be energetic and capable qf inciting a crowd of bored kids to spasnjs of sexual abandonment and freedom: freedom from the restrictions of passing into atrophied adulthood, freedom from all rules, and freedom from repression; if a teenager wants to be an asshole and sniff glue and run his moped into a brick wall, let ’em—at least that’s quicker than being a miserable, confused alcoholic until you hit senility and then jumping on your moped and running it into a brickVwalJ. The Runaways are capable 'of making any male listener molest the knothole of a tree. And they know it.

The songs (most co-written with Kim “The King” Fowley) run the linear gamut of love desired, love teased, and love as destruction. The two really searing numbers are Joan Jett’s anthem to Saturday nights in America, “Wasted,” and Lita Ford’s drive-in movie epic, “Trash Can Murders,” which is not to say that the other songs are weak-' er, because they ain’t, it’s just these two songs transcend normal bounderies and take you (at least they took /me) 'into realms of frenzy forgotten., '

The only thing you can say for Lita Ford and her guitar is hubbahubba and stun me baby. This lady, whose heroes are Jeff Beck and Ritchie Blackmore, is the Queen of the Power Chord and mark my words someday she’ll be doing an album with Ross the Boss of the Dictators, like Two Great Guitars where Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley lay down all the riffs of the rock ’n’ roll foundation; someday it’lk be Lita Ford and Ross the Boss teaching all the kids of the 90’s all the power chords of the 70’s. By the way, many people have said that the 70’s have had no redeeming musical value, wrong! The 70’s have given us the refinement of the power chord and that’s IMPORTANT.

Which brings us to Japan. The only nuclear country in existence, so far ahead of its time it’s almost science fiction. This island of bonzai rockers lacks all style, all class, all pretense, and possesses the most refined sense of rock ’n’ roll on this planet. While most of the kids in the States were being afraid of the bomb jin the 50’s (whence came rock n roll), the kids in Japan were growing up with mutated parents _ from the BOMB. So while the States and England were busy creating rock ’n’ roll, the sleeping (or dazed) giant of Japanese teenhood was just waiting in the wings picking out the best parts of the music and the scene and changing them to fit the “real” twentiest century attitude.

Which brings us to the Netherlands—no that’s not right—which brings us to the reason why the Runaways are one of the top attractions in Japan where they’re treated like the honest to god stars they really are ’cause in Japan the Runaways speak directly to the technology of the country.

So that’s why the complement album to the release of Waitin For The Night in the' States is the re) lease of the Runaways Live In Japan, and it’s one of the most essential documents of the waning 70’s. On it are all the moves, all the noise, and all the confusion of the era. The band here is the original band with Cherie Bomb, but taken out of the context of L.A., even Cherie Bomb is palatable, and Lita Ford is definitely my hero, on this live record she simply stuns like nerve gas injected into the right temple.

The way they do “American Nights” with its great chorus: “American nights/You kids are so strange/American nights/You’re never gonna change” with Cherie dping her Patti Smith imitation on the word “strange,” and “I Wanna Be Where The Boys Are”— you’ll just squirm in your seat. This album is better than Beck, Bogart and Appice Live in Japan, and that’s saying something.

So come on everybody, let’s have some support for our own Queens of Noise, and maybe when they reach 18 we’ll see ’em in Penthouse. , Hell, I’d rather see these lean teens than that country chub Ronstadt anyday.

Joe (In Mute Nostril Agony) Fernbacher

PARLIAMENT Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome _(Casablanca)

And so it came to pass that Parliament-Funkadelic became the Great Black Hope of all the honky rock critics, became the champion musical force that, would restore black pop to its former driver’s seat on the existential mainline. And thus it happened that your reviewer attended a Parliament/ Funkadelic/Rubber Band/etc. concert in his (& Bootsy Collins’) home town of Cincinnati, Ohio, and came away cortvinced that THIS IS THE BIG ONE, ELIZABETH, THIS IS tHUH BOMB!

Okay, so much for paying my dues of funkativity, George, suffice to say that I do live in a vanilla city (not suburb), and that I’ve been rendered maggot-brained (just as you planned it) on more than one occasion. But I’m even more ecstatic that you and Parliament et al. are taking on the Black Establishment (in your own oblique way), challenging the preachers and matriarchs and their smug fundamentalist moralism (Rev. Jesse Jackson has 'praised the Sylvers for their “family values”).

Parliament-Funkadelic are the authentic back door men of our time, existential agents ready to take up the sensual cause of all those celebrated bluesmen now deceased, or known only to Caucasians (same difference). George Clinton’s constant message has been “funk, funk, and more funk”, and any geepie can change one letter in that mantric word, and know what’s really happenin’, baby!

And so the placebo syndrome leads to the funk panacea, as expounded again on the new album. In the latest installment of funk mythology, Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, a respectably priggish black (!) man, is the villain, but after Star Child (“protector of the pleasure principle”) zaps Sir Nose with his Bop Gun, the schnozz gives up the funk and dedicates his own refunked carcass to the new life of funkentelechy.

“Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” is the hit-me singje of the new set, and also happens to be “Lil’ John the Conqueroo” brought right up to date in appropriately [technological terms. Music moves that way, too, George Clinton’s closing the gap on electronic Kraut music, and how ’bout a package tour with those disco stars in Kraftwerk this spring?

But that’s all I’m doing to say in praise of Parliament-Funkadelic for now, don’t want to queer ’em with all the black kids the way we did the bluesmen. OK—bye.

Richard Riegel

BILLY JOEL The Stranger (Columbia)

PETER ALLEN

It Is Time For Peter Alien

(A&M)_.

One of those things we’ve had to deal with in the 70s is a growing rapprochement between rock ’n’ roll and pop (also known as easy listening, middle-of-the-road, or dogshit). Rock ’n’ roll started out as an alternative to pop, y’ know, but only during brief periods has the hard stuff supplanted the mush.

Most of the crossovers/crossbacks/crossed-ups seem to be piano-playing solo artists; guitar pickers usually claim folkie roots. I mean, didja ever try to hitchhike with a set of 88’s on your back? But anyway, ever since Elton John and Carole King started the decade off pliinking their way up the charts, we’ve been blessed/cursed with a cackle of clones intent on marrying every form of rock and pop within earshot. And like Elton and Carole, the best of ’em come up with some decent tunes; it’s just that a heavyweight sifter is needed., to sort the garbage from the good stuff.

Billy Joel’s been around for a little while, mainly living off residuals of his lone sma'sheroo, “Piano Man.” Stylistically, he’s stuck somewhere between Elton and Harry Chapin and with a professional-plus production and a higher percentage of listenable songs than usual, he may be ready to make his move.

The record starts ' out with “Movin’ Out,” a nice little tale of middle class disgust, complete with a few politely gruesome lines about one Sergeant O’Leary who’s tradin’ in his Chevy or a Cadillac/... And if he can’t drive with a broken back/At least he can polish the fenders.” Other tunes I wouldn’t turn off if they attacked me from the airwaves include the “Rosalita”like “Only the Good Die Young,” a Catholic come-on of sorts, and the character sketch, “She’s Always A Woman.” But then, 1 rarely listen to the radio...

As for Peter Allen, his roots are strictly in the air. He pa'rlayed a Judy Garland groupiehood to a stint as a jet-set lounge lizard to his current status as a rising popper. He may claim Little Richard and Elvis as his primary inspirations, but the only oldies he includes in this double-live set are “The More I See You” and “As Time Goes by,” hardly rockers.

Most of Allen’s best tunes—the ones that don’t reek of sentimentality—detail the high life, with some occasionally embarrassing perceptions. He slyly cheers, “Let’s go backward when forward fails,” in his “tribute” to nostalgia, “Everything Old Is New Again,” and then admits that “Sou/ Train taught us to dance” in “Continental American.” Sometimes, though, he goes overboard, like his equating Latin rhythms with sexual potency in “I Go To Rio.” Only a metaphoric cultural ripoff, I know, but it still makes me wanna cram one of Garland Jeffreys’ chili dogs down his throat.

,, I gotta admit it, however, Peter has his uses, I mean, say you got a rich aunt in Jersey, totally entranced with the shellac-tight might of (gulp) Barry Manilow and Neil Sedaka. You could send her this for Christmas and make a lotta, points. Of course, if you don’t give a hoot, there’s always Metal Machine Music...

Michael Davis

MEATLOAF Bat Out Of Hell (Epic)

More like Spamloaf, Jack. This greasy mixture of pseudo-Springsteen (if that’s at all possible) street lyricism, garbage dramatics, and dog-pus guitar drone is like the odor of three week old chopped meat doing the maggot number in your sink because when ya took it outta the freezer you was so drunk that it took you three days to sober up and by the time that happened the fog from the kitchen was so bad you couldn’t even get three feet near to it. I mean, this is as cute as a plague victim walking into a beauty parlor and asking for a perm.

It’s this kind of junk that gives rock music an even worse image than it already has, a manic fusion of progressive and heavy metal that just doesn’t work. Why don’t all you pro-oids out there in the flatlands of doom give up the search, ’cause no matter what happens, you’ll never have the subtlety to understand the essence of electric music. -Try sex, it’s much more creative.

' So big deal, the guy in this group is fat, so he thinks it’s cool to call himself Meatloaf, there’ve been a lot of fat rockers and they didn’t have 'to crawl under the guise of protein to project the angst of carbohydrate overload. Take for instance Fats Domino, Big Tiny Little, Barry White, and Leslie West; they’re all rotund but they’re not afraid of using their real names. So big deal, the guy in this group sets up the Mutt n’ Jeff routine by gettin’ aceskinny Todd Rundgren to sidekick him on guitar. So big deal about this record.

About the only creative thing about this record is the cover painting by ace-illustrator Richard Corben and ya know the music’s gotta be pretty dull when all a reviewer can talk about is the damn record cover. I guess what it all boils down to is this record is one of the very few that come along that have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Bat Out Of Hell is more like a wimp outta water. Later.

Joe (Pro-Protein) Fernbacher

JACKSON BROWNE Running On Empty _(Asylum)_

(The following is excerpted from a hearing held just prior to presstime at Record Review Supreme Court) D.A.: Mr. Altman, just exactly how far have you progressed in your review of (looks down at paper) Running On Empty?

Defendant: Ten rough drafts, sir. The court clerk has them. They were taken out of the wastebasket near my desk last night when I was brought here.

D.A.: Mr. Altman, it is not the desire of this court to embarrass you anymore than necessary in regard to this affair, but...Your honor, I am holding in my hand Exhibit 15, one of the defendant’s so-called rough drafts. I will not bbre the court with the messy details...Really, Mr. Altman, a love letter to a former girlfriend? Just what do you think we’re running here? A lonely hearts club?

Defendant: No, sir. It’s just that, well, I’ve had this copy of Jackson’s third album, Late For The Sky, sitting around for three years. I never liked it much before, but I wanted to listen to it as part of my preparation for the review in question and I’ve been very depressed this month and one thing led to another and I started writing letters...

D.A.: Get to the point, please. Defendant: Well, I guess I just realized that these albums of Jackson Browne’s take a very long time with me. I’m never sure, at first whether I like them or not, then I ignore them for periods ranging from six months to a few years, and ultimately they all get to me.

D.A.: Mr. Altman, I have here Exhibit 2-B, an article written about this Browne character carrying your byline and dated 1972. Do you or do you not wax effusive in your praise of his first album? Defendant: I do.

D.A.: And is it not a fact that this article was written no more than one week after you first heard said record? I warn you, sir, we have witnesses.

Defendant: 1 can explain. I had no difficulties with that particular album. I thought it was a masterpiece immediately and have never waivered in that opinion. It’s all the ones since then.

D.A.: I see. Do you have any explanation for your confusion in regards to the rest of Mr. Browne’s work?

Defendant: Lately I’ve begun to think that it’s not him so much as me.

D.A.: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please note that the defendant is, in so many words, confessing to a loss of critical perspective. Does this happen often, Mr. Altman? Defendant: No sir, hardly ever, which is what is so baffling. Even though I know that transcripts of this case will soon be made public, I can do no more than ask the court’s forgiveness and promise that, if found innocent, it’ll never happen again.

D.A.: Mr. Altman, do you realize that, as editor, it was you yourself thcit gave out this assignment? Defendant: Yes, I am fully aware of that. I thought would be different this time.

D.A.: I am afraid that all of this is not furthering the objective of this trial. Mr. Altman, allow me to be blunt. Do you like this record? Defendant: I don’t know.

D.A.: Do you dislike this record? Defendant: I don’t know.

D.A.: I rest my case.

Billy Altman

THE STRANGLERS IV No More Heroes (A&M)

I’m sorry, but I just can’t get too worked up about this punk crap. Maybe I’m jaded ’cause I wuz hangin’ around when the term was foisted on the public (by this very magazine no less—wanna buy some out-of-print back issues?), but I think my indifference is a natural reaction to another short count. Take these guys, The Stranglers, please! Everyone from The Village Verse to the/local Beatle memorabilia hustlers are pushing them as English new wavers who are gonna make the big musical breakthrough. It’s possible, but I’m not holding my breath.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing I like better than rock ’n’ roll that appeals to one’s sociopathic tendencies. I hate people as much as the next guy, but I’m not gonna get sucked into institutionalized misanthropy. Especially when it is second rate. Strictly speaking, a punk is the guy who gets fucked up the ass in prison. Now supposedly these punk rockers are providing catharsis for tfre young bugees in the prison of life, but in fact, usually they are just serving up the same old shit with a rougher mix and calling it nuevo wavo. No More Heroes would stand a better chance jf it was just another album in the mail instead of the eagerly awaited cultural millstone It’s being billed as. '

The Stranglers are playing around with some potentiallypotent elements but ..none of the combinations on No More Heroes really quiver my liver. When the sound is cooking as on “Bring On The Nubiles”, the lyrics are just too too (“Lemme lemme fuckya fuckya”) and the effect is bad Tubes. “Bitching” is a catchy rant but it is spoiled by larckluster singing and sloppy arranging. The most inspiring moments occur on “Somfething Better Change” when they mix The Doors with bubblegum, but even here the full possibilities are not realized. The Stranglers are not only no Ramones, they aren’t even another ShadoWs Of Knight. However, with a little practice, they could become as highly regarded as Question Mark & The Mysterians.

In the meantime, save your money or go see “Hardware Wars”.

The Mad Peck

GOING LEGIT

Joe Goldberg

If you want to know what’s the matter with jazz, despite its resurgence, look at the reissue program. Anybody’s -reissue program. Peopie like the musip they like, and it’s not entirely a matter of nostalgia. I might sound like an old fart here for the next few minutes, but listen anyway, especially if you think Tom Scott invented the alto saxophone (or even the solos he plays on it), or that fusion music is where it’s at. Or that Ornette Coleman’s brilliant new record is capable of giving lasting pleasure.'

Lasting pleasure, I said. Not the same as the rush of being hip, or with it, or digging stuff that your asshole friends aren’t sharp enough to appreciate. Records are made to be played more than once.1

/ What is going on in jazz is what has been going on in the movie busi_ ness for the last several years now. Books about* the past proliferate, and tickets for the current product go begging. Even the most successful jazz act in the country, Herbie Hancock’s VSOP, is only the Miles Davis Quintet of ten years ago with Freddie Hubbard sitting in a chair far too big for him. It’s a smash, and not even close to the best group Miles ever had, members of better ones being dead or otherwise unavailable.

When Miles Davis was about the age of the Runaways, and younger than Television, or Talking Heads, or the Sex Pistols (or whatever that group is called), he played with Charlie Parker, who played the solos that Tom Scott plays today. Late at night, in New York Qty, certain dis^ jockeys and radio stations, most notably WJZ and Symphony Sid Torin, would broadcast this music live from the Apollo or Birdland or whatever to the freaks and cabdrivers who were still awake. An enterprising Brooklyn gentleman named Boris Rose, probably old enough to think that “bootleg” referred to unlicensed liquor, jacked an acetate cutting machine into his radio, and made dubs of the results, which you could buy for an enormous amount of money.

In recent years, these performances have found their way onto LP in England, via Tony Williams (no relation to Miles’ drummer), who is at least devoted to spreading the word of Bird as Simon Peter was doing the same for Jesus. You could get them on French labels, too, if you were willing to pay enough.

I find it extremely interesting that Columbia Records, which has slipped in the ratings since it bestrode all areas of music like aColossus, has used its enormous, reserves of money and prestige to legitimize these bootlegs, fitting them out with a scholarly apparatus at least as appropriate to T. S. Eliot, and getting then), by way of its distribution network, into places that usually make do with Percy Faith Plays John Denver. Columbia, much as I admire it, is not a charitable organization. The message must be that fusion doesn’t get it any more.

Legitimizing these recordings can’t have been easy. The eltate of Charles Parker, Jr., largely because of the differing claims of the women he married and lived with, is as tangled and complex as that of any American artist.

These are, as I said, airchecks. The repertoire comes in two parts; Bird’s favorite small group pieces, and the small selection of standards that Norman Granz hajs arranged for him for strings, and which later formed the basis for a tour. You get some of the same tunes more than once, but that’s alright, because Parker was an amazingly fecund musician, and hfe really improvised. No two alike. He scattered his favorite blues-based riffs around profligately, but they’re worth hearing too. There are, for the record, three albums. The first title is self-explanatory: Bird with Strings Live at the Apollo, Carnegie Hall, and Birdland. Then there is Summit Meeting .at Birdland, on which he plays with Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, and on it is a .gorgeous, painful “ ’Round Midnight.” Then therq is a two-record set, One Night in Birdland, recorded June 30, 1950, subtitled “The Charlie Parker Quintet Live! featuring Bud Powell & Fats Navarro.” These albums are classic American music, and we are in Columbia’s debt for making them available. The true story of their provenance, however, is in the line on each jacket: “This album contains previously released material.” Perhaps, in time for the next holiday season, they’ll launder Bird’s record of “White Christmas,” which is one of the few things I can play that time of year without gagging.

The Parker sides are part of a project instituted t>y .Columbia I President Bruce Lundvall. There are also two Lester Young two-record sets produced under the aegis of John Hammond, volumes two and three (where is volume one, and why is it not by a Contemporary Master?). One is called A Musical Romance, and contains the great recordings Pres and Billie Holiday made together, included some unreleased tracks. The other, self-explanatory title is Enter The Count.

The next self-explanatory title is The Miles Davis/Tadd Dameron Quintet In Paris Festival International de Jazz May, 1949. These guys really know how to tell you what you’re buying. Miles is 23,. Kenny Clarke is on drums, Tadd Dameron is the late composer of “If You Could See Me Now,” as well as a couple of tracks here, and the music is spoiled only by a French M.C. who insists on making announcements over a good deal of it.

Then there is an album called Gerry Mulligan—The Arranger, consisting of charts he wrote for Gene Krupa, Elliot Lawrence, and an orchestra he put together in the Fifties with some of his favorite musicians, including Lee Konitz, Bob Brookmeyer and Zoot Sims. These lean, uncluttered charts emerge as timeless, owing nothing to fashion as boppish big-band records of the time do. They sound like they were made yesterday.

Finally, there is an album that doesn’t say “Contemporary Masters” on the cover, but I never heard a record that deserved the title more. It is called Stan Getz Presents Jimmie Rowles—The Peacocks. Rowles is a jazz pianist who worked for several years with Ben Webster, and recently began playing in one of those small New York clubs where Whitney Balliett of The. New Yorker goes to make heroes of people. But he was a favorite of the late Paul Desmond, *and of Getz, who produced this wonderfully tasteful albutn, and is the composer of the absolutely stunning title track, which is, a duet between Rowles and Getz, whose tone and lyricism increases in rapturous clarity every year. They are joined by bassist Buster Williams and former Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones, who I didn’t know knew how to be so quiet, on a version of a wonderful old song, “My Buddy,” which is the best single recording I’ve heard all year.. First Rowels sings, in lazy Matt Dennis fashion, then Getz plays, and then they play together—listening to one another as few musicians do—and then they quit. Three choruses. I dare you to play it if you miss someone. You’ll pick up the phone, even if it’s been years.

Thank ybu, Columbia, for these records. I’m glad fusion didn’t work out, if this is what happens.