BROTHER ZIM’S TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW

BOB DYLAN Street Legal (Columbia)

by

j. m. bridgewater

Some several years ago, during a period after New Morning and before Nixon's second election, a Mexican-Irish tattoo artist and fragile backroad belle who was difficult to define and harder to look at became lovers of a strange and severe degree. Reynacho O'Rourke and Cora Blue spent their days together getting ripped to the extreme and listening to Dylan records; fucked away their nights in a deserted Negro cemetery on the furthest edge of town, energetically and adventurously attempting to make the moon blink. And although this initial part of their relationship was intense, it was also brief. Possibly because Cora Blue discovered that Rey no more believed that they could make the moon blink than he believed that they could waltz on water. Perhaps because the colors they had to show to each other then were of the variety that don't shine for very long. Certainly because Rey became disillusioned with Cora Blue's Zimmerman fixation. "Dylan in the morning, Dylan in the afternoon, Dylan all the god-fucking time/' he wailed. And it didn't help that Ms. Blue was given to clawing her fingers deep into Rey's back and moaning "Ooooh Bobby" in the instant before she lost herself in the flood of their juices. " I mean," Rey complained, flopping out his dingus for inspection, do I look Jewish?" It came to a head one midnight in the moonshadow of Rufus B. Jones' tombstone (1894-1932: "A No Account Loved by All but the Husband Who Shot Him") when Cora Blue wept to her god that once too often. "It's all over now, Cora Blue!" Rey shrieked as he disengaged himself. He rose angrily, pulled up his jeans, and wandered off into the night's exit lane.

In the aftermath of Rey's departure, Cora Blue worked hard at becoming an enigma. She took up cooking, sewing, and growing flowers for a legal-aid lawyer who quoted Dylan in his court briefs. And it was with that perpetual case bungler that she ventured far from the home hearth to attend one of Dylan's tour appearances with The Band in '74, where she saw Rey scurrying up and down the aisles of the concert arena with a battery Operated fan, snuffing out every lit match within his range. "Oh Rey!" she cried, tightening her Cheshire shawl about her slender shoulders as she ran to his side. "Your style sucks, but I do so admire your audacity!" And it was with Rey that she rode home on the bus that pight. And it is with Rey that she has been since. Including a supper date with me last weekend at Val's Taco Tabernacle.

"Yeah," Rey said, wiping some grease from his chin with a napkin, "I dunno. Like for uss it's a compromise. Cora puts me down a lot, but I don't think about it. It's the stuff she doesn't say that bugs me most." Eventually, despite frequent interruptions by Val ("Hey Rey, you still tryin' to finish that tattoo of the Sistine Chapel on Maggie's arm?" "Naw man, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's arm no more"), talk got around to Street Legal. I inquired as to Rey's disposition toward it. He cocked an eyebrow and shot a sideways glance at Cora Blue, who was smiling enigmatically, like a stoned sphinx. He squeezed the words out slowly. "I almo'st like it." Wincing slightly he added, "Maybe more than I think I should."

"There's certainly some aspects worth tipping your ;hat to," I ventured. "Billy Cross snaps off notes with an economy similar to Robertson, not as barbed, but never delivering more than is needed while giving every ounce of what is. Especially on the last three cuts, where the record really jels. The keyboards—"

"Aw, knock off talking like a goddam Rolling Stone review," Rey interjected somewhat huffily. "I don't read it; why should I listen to it?"

"Well I was just gonna say there's such a desperate power to 'Where Are You Tonight.' When he sings 'I can't believe it, I can't believe L'm alive,' it's like hearing a dam expand and explode."

"I guess l ean dig that. But what I dig more is when he raps that line about stitches beneath a heart shaped tattoo. Like don't go around with your tattoo on yOur sleeve."

"And," Cora Blue commented, breaking her apparent vow of conversational celibacy, "don't leave any room for regret."

1 nodded, more from dumb reflex than alert agreement, "but the question is, as it always is with Dylan, is there ample rock 'n' roll compensation for the unbearable nonsense that only Allen Ginsberg sitting oh Kerouac's grave with his beard flapping in the wind might find worth mentally hoeing? 'True Love Tends To Forget,' 'We Better Talk This Over,' and 'Where Are You Tonight' shift a precarious balance safely into the profit ledger. Still, it doesn't hit me anywhere near as strong as The Basement Tapes, Blonde On Blonde or 61. But it does seem to say he still has the heart to avoid elimination."

Reg munched slowly on the dregs of his last taco. He looked at me, to Cora Blue, and then back to me. "I think it's something like Tom Wolfe said: You get tired of considering the poet of the week, or the month, or the decade." Cora Blue understood his implication and pulled her shawl up over her head in readiness to depart. "I do think that I'm going to write Bob and tell him next time to forget the saxophones and get his harmonica out of the drawer." Rey stood and she stood and they left. Leaving me to sit alone for over an hour with those places where money isn't always green on my mind.

TOM ROBINSON BAND Power In The Darkness (Harvest)

Back way back in the happeningdays of Championship Wrestling (pre '73), a superstar's claim to fame weighed heavily on the gimmick or trademark stamped into the act—the bigger-than-life secret weapon incorporated to accentuate the image, augment the caricature, enhance the hype. For instance, The Destroyer implemented the dreaded "Figure-4 leglock," Buddy Austin utilized the very illegal 'Piledriver (banned in every state), Fritz Von Erich instilled fear with the brutal "Claw Hbld." Freddie Blassie bit, The Sheik threw fire; Mil Mascar&s was fast and scientific, The Peace Brothers were hippies, tag-team low-lifes' The Chain Gang hadn't "washed .in five years!" Even L.A. Olympic Auditorium veteran referee Johnny "Red Shoes" Dugan garnered reputable acclaim for wearing yoti-know-what-ori the job.

The rule still applies, still adheres, E.g, within the framework of rock 'n' roll's very own "New Wave:" Patti's realm of the ecliptically prosaic and tough-shit spells n-e-o b-e-a-t-n-i k, while, the Ramones' realm of the mentally retarded spells n-e-o m or o n i c. The Sex Pistols, and the Clash, were/are figures of-anarchy, The Pop are "media radicals," former 13th Floor Elevator Roky Erickson's "crazyRipper's drummer Quito Ecuador's a skinhead, Screamers Tomata and Gear are spineheads; Vom's Dave Gtizman is fat, Pere Ubu's David Thomas is ''grotesque." Metal Mike Saunders has catalogued 1205 riffs of prototypical heavy-metal onl5 cassettes, L.A.-cult-legend "Wildman" Tony Conn has catalogued "1205 women" on "fifteen years of rock 'n' roil!!"

Tom Robinson's a homo. And a political crusader, active in an endeavor tightly (no pun intended) termed "Rock Against Racism;" Notes adorning the TRB debut Harvest platter explain "RAR" to be a "campaign supported by rock fans arid musicians alike," endorsing "rebel ixiusic, street music. Music that breaks down people's fears of one another. Crisis music. Now music. Music that knows who the real enemy is." And so forth. I mean, the songs on this record espouse a recycled, retreaded formula of Bowie-oid gay liberation and Ray Davies social protest. Nothing new; if anything the aforementioned progenitors of such top'ical matter(s) were more eloquent and succinct.

But' it's the bitterness, the upfront vitriolic rage and ambitiously crude aggression of "oh my god I'm a Tag and I hate the system and I want to eradicate the prevalent corruption and two-facedness of a political hierarachy insensitive to the needs of..:" that effectively engages a contagious passion and rock n' roll conviction to the entire affair. This overpowering (often clumsy) and unrefined posture flavors the more folky tunes ("Sing If Yer Glad To Be Gay") jts acceptable filler, and reinforces the rockers ("Z-4-6-8 Motorway") as dynamic anthems of pissed-off protest.

So the songs off this two-elpee set (one studio disc, one live; both for $7.98 lisf!) work. And they work because the songs are just good, clean, stoopid rock 'n' roll (nouveau wave) fun. Which ultimately is the most valid gimmick of all; the heart punch is Tom Robinson's submission hold!

Gregg Turner

FOREIGNER Double Vision (Atlantic)

Dear Mr. Altman (I'm not on a firs name basis with anyone who tries to shove, uh, "foreign matter" down my throat),

Whaddya mean you "saved" the Foreigner album for me this month? You mean you couldn't pawn it off on anyone else, right? I know my phone's been acting strange so you couldn't get though to me sooner but...hey, I know, get Ma Bell to review the album.

Now back when Spooky Tooth was still together, I interviewed Mick Jones. And the guy tried to be helpful but he had nothing to say. Success apparently hasn't changed him one bit. Foreigner has the language down pat but they don't say a damn thing.

Okay, okay, I prdbably listened to too much Dylan back when I was an impressionable teenager and so I got my rock aesthetics all screwed up. Yes, I know that rock 'n' roll is largely concerned with S-E-X. But no matter how many times I listen to this album, I can't bring myself to give a fuck if Lou Gramm gets laid or not. Sorry; I just get bored. Don't you know any 14-year-old girls with Bad Co. complexes and typewriters?

Of course I can't fault the sound of Double Vision. The production is clean and everything is in its' place—punchy guitars up front, soaring synthesizers in the background and a rhythm section that matches Gramm swagger for swagger. But when this solid musicianship is used primarily to back up a bunch of one-sided sexist diatribes, ( lose interest in a hurry.

Now I've bailed you out before and I'll probably do it again, man, but I gottadraw the line somewhere—and this is it. It's not that I hate this record, I just can't relate to it and I'm not gonna waste my time squeezing my already-schizedout brain cells into some awkward position so it'll sound "heavy" or something. No way.

Didja hear me? NO WAY!

Sincerely yours, Michael Davis

PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT

TNEIL YOUNG Comes A Time (Warner Bros.)

by Billy Altman

Okay, here's the plan. We all know that you need a crowbar and possibly teargas to get Neil Young out of the house. The guy doesn't want to talk to anybody, doesn't like playing in front of people more than once a year and even then only in a small club, and probably would record all of his albums in his living room if he could (I wonder if his fireplace got session money for "Will To Love"). So here's what we do: we show up at his house with one of those giant flatbed trucks, pick the entire house up by the foundations, arid simply move him across the country. Plop him down in. say, Jersey (New York would be the final destination, but he'll need some incubation time so he can practice walking for a few months). I'm convinced we can do it. He wouldn't wake up 'til at least 1000 miles had been traversed and it'll be the -dog barking wildly that will rouse him and when he finally sticks his head out the window to see what's going on (another 500 miles) whoever's in the shotgun seat just has to tell him that an earthquake struck and he's being evacuated. Bein' an existential kind of fellah, Neil'll shrug his shoulders, pat the dog, and lie down again and go back to sleep.

I mean look,' here's a guy who probably thinks that the whole wo.rld is isolationist-oriented. Back in '69, on "The Loner," he got freaked out by one weirdo on the subway—the Toronto subway. Now that's what you call a sheltered life. And even before that there were things like "Sugar Mountain"

—the poor kid wouldn't have even had his first cigarette or taste of the old boy-girl spark flies if he hadn't been dragged out by his cronies ("It's so noisy at the fair/But all your friends are there"). So he winds up driving an old hearse out to California. in search of, of all people, Steve Stills. And did anyone stop him? No. Naturally he figures no one cares.

Here on Comes A Time (which is, by the way, one of the very best albums he's ever done; a real summing up LP, with echoes of things from his entire career—there's the Nitzsche-esque string arrangements a la his very first album; splashes of the early Crazy Horse era—"Look Out For My Love" has the same tension as "Cowgirl In The Sand" and doesn't even need the guitar wrenchings to make its point; "Lotta Love" combines the ease of "Cripple Creek Ferry" with a real genius stroke, a quote from the Stones' "Let's Spend The Night Together" tacked onto the song, thereby fulfilling the obligation set up by Tonight's The Night's "Borrowed Tune"; and even the happy idiot stuff is tolerable this time out, since Nicolette Larson, who duets\ with Young on eight of the ten songs here, carries her voice in a much more earthly setting than Emmylou Harris, and she also makes Neil sing on key, which is a nice change of pace)—here on Comes A Time, Neil refers to the loss of the past, a journey through which is not even feasible anymore ("I feel like goin' back/Back where there's no place to stay") and his two two-lane references—guess he finally got his car out frpm under the sand—are "I got lost on the human highway" and "Runnin' down this suspicious highway,"

the latter from "Already One" which is about his and Carrie Snodgrass's kid and is a disarmingly beautiful song about the acceptance of responsibility for one's actions (a subject that usually doesn't pop up very often on rock records), so you know that he is pretty lost. As the album's closer, he does the old Canadian folkie anthem, Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds" and he doesn't do it especially well but I get the message, the plea for help. Neil desperately wants a change of scenery, a change of seasons, to be able to step in two feet of slush and curse out God and the sanitation department, something he can't do in California. All he has to look forward to out there is the earthquake and I don't think we should have to put up with his death wish any longer. Let's just move him out and he can go and wile away the hours in Washington Square Park, giving out crumbled white bread to the pigeons and spare change to the winos. In a few months, he might even make some friends and in a year, who knows? He could grow up to be Lou Reed.

TALKING HEADS More Songs About Buildings And Food (Sire) ,

Pretentious, just pretentious. That's how it struck me when, in the fall of 77,1 first heard an album of art-student songs made by art students. Lennon and Townshend both went to art school; they didn't come out sounding like it. Well, not Lennon, anyway; and the earth iness at the base of Peter's Tommyperiod esoterica wasn't art school either. But here were these four post 60's musicians making gimmicky, esoteric, avant-garde pop with no earthy base at all—and that's a dissatisfying dichotomy when the lead singer has an earthy voice. I found it a fucking shame that the best David Byrne could do for his voice was "Psycho Killer" and one or two cuts on side one of 77. That LP never quite clicked cohesively for me, because so much of it lacked the edgy intensity of David Byrne's voice. He was writing cutesy songs for a voice that demanded better and the conflict between singer and material just rankled in my ears, refusing to resolve itself.

With this second effort, the band has resolved the conflict. More Songs A bout Buildings And Food is so solid it shimmies—well, at least stomps some. There are several ingredients involved in this turnaround, and among them are all the basics: piledriver drums (stronger than '77's) bouncing bass (less pedestrian than '77's), and aggressive rhythm guitars (ditto).

Now, this dynamism is a radical reversal in a band that's previously dealt with distance. Every song here sounds fresh, even the finallyvinyled old warhorses that've been live set staples for years. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" is a great song which gets powered to perfection by their present attack; I'm glad they waited 'til now to record it, 'cos I suspect it would've died the distance-death if they'd stuck it on 77. Likewise for oldies like "Artists Only," and "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls." Even the former live covers work well on vinyl now; "Take Me To The River" may be slow and uneven, but it's a pleasurable art-school-soul break from the originals, and the £rangement is kept from dragging by the drums. This last trait is shared in common by every cut on More Songs: drums don't drag, so tempos don't lag. A nice switch from 77.

But dynamism is' an impotent' ingredient without direction, and song-scribe Byrne sounds surer of his than ever before. The two finest tracks on More Songs are as vibrant with vision as they are melodious musically. "Found A Job" argues Art For Art's Sake as a way of life more convincingly than many artists ever do: "If your work isn't what you love/Then something isn't right." This on top of the tensest riff David's ever twisted his voice aroundBut by far the better "of the two position pieces—and the best track on More Songs—has to be "The BigCountry." The view of America Byrne reveals here is both panoramic and precise, and even here he doesn't deny his distance, but admits the desire to build a bridge: "Pm tired of looking out the window...I'm tired of traveling,

I wanna be somewhere." Talking Heads may still be traveling, but they're surer of where they're going on this leg of the trip. And that's a step forward from 77.

Vicki Taylor

MARSHALL CHAPMAN Jaded Virgin

_(Epic) __

"I don't do as much honky tonkin' these days as I used to. I'd rather watch Charlie Chan on TV now. I'm gonna start writing some TV songs..."—Marshall Chapman, Country Music, Sept. 77

Marshall Chapman is country music's Patti Smith—a lawless woman with a six-gun voice that can send men (including rock critics) sprawling at her feet. Like her stylistic sidekick Patti, she maintains a sassy, sultry pose to keep the hounds at bay while she exploits this pseudo-toughness. On her first LP, Me, I'm Feelin' Free, the front cover pic has her looking like an honest-to-pete shitkicker; appropriately, the back cover reveals her barebacked (cheap trick via Joni Mitchell), exposing herself to the sky as if practicing total liberation from the wifely duties of the typical country female, who stays chained to her man, her beehive, and her soaps.

It's an admirable stance, and Me, I'm Feelin'Free was certainly gutsy rebellion from a woman's heart and a landmark LP in the development of female consciousness in country. But Jaded Virgin merely transfers the woman from the prison of the country kitchen preparing grits into the cell of the suburban kitchenette slaving over the microwave.

This project was doomed from the beginning. A1 Kooper was tagged for producer, the songs were recorded in L.A., and Chapman was anxious to try a more rocking, less country, approach. She should've listened to some Wanda Jackson records and gotten this "punkabilly" notion off the ground. Instead, she pokes through Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line" and allows an okay Bob Seger tune ("Turn The Page") to fall apart, serving as little more than a vehicle for some studio electronic wizardry. The only authentic moments occur on "Why Can't I Be Like Other Girls," and here she's just talkin' autobio and sufferin' the pains of alienation. Her new topics are New York City and cocaine, a far cry from Nashville, beer, and Opryland. Instead of freeing the country female from bondage as expected, Marshall Chapman has enslaved herself within the phony techniques of synthetic rock.

Hopefully, Chapman will dump her present producer, get back to country music, and shake things up again. It's possible that her problem may be inherent in the stance she has chosen. I mean, if women's lib in country music is going to lead to records like Jaded Virgin, I'll take the sweet unliberated voices of Tammy Wynette and Lynn Anderson any ofo time.

Robot A. Hull

FLAMIN' GROOVIES Now (Sire)

What more could I possibly add to all the thousands of words this band's rabid cultists have already expended on their heroes over their (many) years of existence? The legend's still intact: San Francisco band doesn't make good in its own 1960's hometown 'cause the peer group ain't exactly into English Mod, y'know? So they go into exile, wandering the globe from England to Holland to the U.S.'s friendlier Eastern shores, living out all that rock 'n' roll glory that should have been.

The classy references to Nanker Phelge Land are retained on Now, from those clanging chimes-of-freedom Byrds-guitars, to Love's uptown-folkrock invincibility, to the eclecticism of the December's Children-era Stones, to uncounted echoes of groups I can't quite place, but who most assuredly flourished^ in the 60's (did somebody mention the Nightcrawlers?).

Cover versions abound: two of the Stones, one of the Beatles, one of the Raiders, several of even earlier R&B. Plus the Groovies' originals, derived from all those sources, plus the Monkees, plus... wait a minute. Has anybody who's ever expounded on the Flamin' Groovies realized, before now, that the group's sound might contain all these influences organically, without consciously exploiting the amalgam? Maybe the Groovies' benign anachronism accounts for all the elusive sounds that ring from cut to cut: the Flamin' Groovies are laying down the ultimate remakes of no less a band than the Flamin' Groovies.

Fourteen fat-guitared cuts here, more for today's dollar than just about anything you can purchase through exclusive T.V. offers, let alone the general-issue racks. Dave Edmunds' echo-obsessed production complements these ' guys' eccentricities perfectly. I'll play this one again, even if it results in my bound-for-1990's-glory kid having me probated (to the Rockfield Asylum, no less).

Richard Riegel

RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK Boogie-Woogie String Along For Real (Warner Bros.)

This is Rahsaan Roland Kirk's last recording and tho I hate to be the one to break it to you it's pretty boring. Kirk made a lot of records during the two decades before hisx death in Dec. 77 and on most of these he displayed a creative frenzy so intense that any record on which he didn't practically break his chops was something of a disappointment. His return to recording and performing after his stroke in 75 was a fantastic show of will and strength and reports of his performances during that period were so favorable that this subdued effort comes as a surprise. Not that it's the first unsuccesful record Kirk made—anyone so willing to take risks was bound to blow it now and then.

This set is another document of Kirk's love affair with Black Classical Music, the label he preferred to jazz. BCM means all jazz, from New Orleans to avant-garde and all points in between and on eitfler side. The album opens with the title cut, a boogie-woogie featuring Kirk's bluesy tenor, rhythm section and a rather fey contingent of strings. The rhythm section was his working group at the time and they are, as was so often the case during Kirk's last decade, a nondescript bunch. Unfortunately, his tenor solo here offers little in the way of, contrast. "I Loves You Porgy" is a brief (1:51) rendering of the Gershwin tune on tenor accompanied by what sounds like a music box. A serendipitous realization that no song is too short. "Make Me A Pallet On The Floor" is a New Orleans song taken from the public domain and arranged for clarinet and rhythm. Webster defines pallet as a "rude bed" but the song is restrained. "Hey Babebips" rounds out the side and features Kirk on electric Kalimba which Sounds like an African Thumb Celeste only there's no such thing. Percy Heath picks and bows on cello and it's all "cis cute as it's title, which is a little too cute—Kirk's puckish humor usually fared better live than on record.

Things don't pick up on the second side. There's a respectable version of Ellington's "In A Mellotone," another brief Gershwin, this time "Summertime," on harmonica clocking in at 1:40 (these beguiling fragments were becoming a standard part qf Kirk's records), an ungarnished jazz piece for his wife called "Dorthaan's Walk" and a Percy Heath number called "Watergate Blues."

The civilized thing to say about this album is that it is pleasant, generally unassuming and has the appropriate demeanor of a farewell. But it remains, by any standards, mild fare.

Richard C. Walls

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL Collision Course (Capitol)

Nostalgia and emulation are the modes of the day. Connoisseurship is a bit harder. To be sure I knew what I was talking about, I looked up connoisseur in the Oxford English Dictionary. Just like I thought: "A person well acquainted with one of the fine arts, and competent to pass judgment in relation thereto." A critic, in other words, which I would distinguish from a reviewer if there were more space. But that's the second meaning. The first, exactly what I wished for, is: "One who knows."

Connoisseurs tend to rise to the top, especially in times of blandness and stupidity. Critics can see what was best in the past. Artists can synthesize it into something new. For examples: Bob Dylan, connoisseur of folk; Randy Newman, connoisseur of pop; The Rolling Stones, connoisseurs of rhythm and blues; Bruce Springsteen, connoisseur of West Side Story and Sam Katzman hot rod movies.

The connoisseurs of homemade

American music are supposed to be the Canadian group, The Band. Maybe it's Asleep at the Wheel instead. Or at least, they're the connoisseurs of the first mechanistic step from that. They know (to connote, to be able to define, comes from the same root) Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, Count Basie, Cajun blues, Charlie Barnet, the classic r&b record of I Only Have Eyes For 'You, King Curtis, and Randy Newman's superb Louisana 1927, which I thought had about as much chance of being covered as a bet on Duane Bobick.

Asleep at the Wheel (I don't know who does what, and no single personality emerges from the group), or their record company, apparently consider this a breakthrough album. They have been shrewd enough to get Joel Dorn to produce this LP. Dorn specializes in this sort of thing, most notably for Leon Redbone and—think about it—Roland Kirk. He's the right producer, and the band seems to be getting better, more on course. On form, I would say that their next album will send people scurrying back ta the others, so you might as well get this one now.

Joe Goldberg

PETER GABRIEL (Atlantic)

A wing-pair opalesces in jewelbit refractions to the belowland. Made shadow by a sun like a prodding Father at his shoulder, the angel Gabriel, at last; his face resigned, indifferent, bereft of emotion as weather, time, space...

Clouds veer in a sedate trafficking; his hunter-bird panorama holds the piteous prey immotiie in a lastinstant's pathos—that prey that is the predestined world.

Now, by the quivering tones of silver and St. Vitus orange, the good pensive angel, his location confirmed, his purpose urgent, finally stills his robes, the wind, the world;.raises to unflawed lips the resplendent Lord's-wrath horn, and blows... 16 bars of "Moribund The Burgermeister"?!?

Yeah, and he probably went back to Heaven and made a fullblown production of the whole fiasco, too, with a bunch of weirdy wart-faced costumes, well-synched stage lightings arid the whole poop. Certainly the songs on this new album were scribed essentially vehicular for such charade. And who could hope to accurately forebode the feasible designs on such'lurkies as: the ham-radio recluse of "On The Air",, who engages in "silent communion...by the sodium lamps"; the psychotically warsome wonky of "Animal Magic"; or the mental-less gambler-go-lucky of "Home Sweet Home" who parjays his suicided spouse's insurance monies into a house buster at the roulette wheel (a real classy job on background vocals, too—like a bowling team bleating a dirge at the funeral of their favorite automatic pin setter)?

The balladory is stirring. "Mother Of Violence," "Indigo," and "Flotsam And Jetsam" (which could've been a really good idea if given as names to the singer and singee); all work to chillingly pry the soul's motif from Peter's beleagured corpus.

As for personnel: Bayette is real, like, automatic, man on keyboards where employed; Roy Bittan of at least Bowie and perhaps et. al. is his more conservative counterclaim. Robert Fripp, Jerry Moratta, Sidney McGinnis, Tony Levin, Larry Fast, Timmy Capello, George Marge, round out a roster that rosts pro as any.

In all, not as accessible as the first album; still, sex isn't always accessible either, but it's still worth the lick. Oui?

Alan Madeleine

JOE WALSH But Seriously Folks... (Asylum)

RANDY MEISNER (Asylum)

So the editor on the phone is babbling on about how this one's in the Eagles, and he didn't used to be, and the other one used to be in the Eagles, only he isn't any more...so let's twin 'em! "Bird Droppings" as a headline? Tenuous at best.

But. I get the discs into my skeptical claws, take a little look-see, and I'll be damned if there isn't a rich, fertile, illuminating world of similarity awaiting my comparative analysis. (This, I realize, is the mode o( thinking that makes an editor an editor.)

First, they are both made of black vinyl but let's skip on, since those depths might take tomes to plumb. Both Walsh and Meisner choose to encase their work in foldout covers, each one brightly printed with color photographs bearing the artists' respective likenesses more than once. Allthe pictures on Walsh's album embrace an aquatic theme, while only one on Meisner's does. And scholars will someday note that both men, in their liner notes, offer expressions of fond thanks to a man named Azoff, although Walsh employs the rather formal surname Irving to Meisner's more familiar Irv. And let us not lose sight of the

fact that both collections are manufactured by the same record company, and carry serial numbers only "one digit apart.

As to the audio aspects. Here we find the chain's weakest links. Aside from the the fact that both discs make noise if you scratch them with a needle, there isn't a great deal to report, comparitively-wise. So let's get on to the contrast part.

Joe Walsh, my favorite Eagle because he has the most prodigious beak, turns in a workmanlike set that opens with a sweet guitar refrain ("Over And Over") and closes with a flukey but catchy hit ("Life's Been Good"). In between, a collection of tight, surprisingly restrained tunes, and an instrumental interlude that appears to have been recorded aboard a boat. Nothing jumps out of the speakers and demands to be reckoned with— and if you're looking for boogie, keep looking, because you'll find precious little of it here—still, Walsh does have a certain quirky charm, and he uses it well.

Speaking of things that demand to be reckoned with, there's Randy Meisner. This former bass player for a major California rock band must be spoken of only in extremes. His choice of songs (and choice is -the word, since he chose not to write any of the 12 on the record except "Take It To The Limit", and there he had help), his renderings of them, and his voice—especially his voice—are nothing short of incredible, mind boggling, unique, possibly once-in-a-lifetime. I think maybe Meisner thought he was making a Linda Ronstadt album. A couple of Eagles and many Eagloid numbers, plus two well-remembered oldies ("It Hurts To Be In Love" and "Save The Last Dance For Me"). There is even an appearance by David Cassidy singing background vocals. You think you've heard everything? (By the way, you won't hear everything on this record, since everything is mixed in the background, making for density without intensity. Like I said, unique.) Well, you haven't begun to comprehend the breadth and the deep, deep depths encompassed by contemporary pop music until you've had an earful of this. Randy Meisner is one-of-a-kind, and don't you regret it.

Kevin Doyle

COLIN BLUNSTONE Never Ever Thought (Rocket)

ALLAN CLARKE I Wasn't Born Yesterday (Atlantic)

What's missing on these LFs is the quality of delight. Nobody would consider the early records of The Zombies or The Hollies particularly well-crafted, but in their raggedness they were often joyful, mesmerizing and endlessly listenable; songs like "Whenever You're Ready," "Look Through Any Window" and a dozen others still fascinate, largely because of the interplay between voice, material and arrangement. Colin Blunstone and Allan Clarke sang as though they were finding nuances on the spot, and the frisson of discovery was contagious. At this stage of the game, a decade and a half down the line, it probably isn't fair to expect the same kind of pleasure we got from "Tell Her No" or "I'm Alive," but it isn't too much to ask that two such distinctive voices be spared the calculated tedium of the solo album session syndrome. Never Even Thought and I Wasn't Born Yesterday have successful moments where the contexts are transcended, yet far too often a dearth of creativity is camouflaged by the over-prqduction and incongruous instrumentation; there are Zombies singles like "Remember When I Loved Her" that say in just over two minutes more than the title song of Blunstone's album does in six.

There can be no doubt: Colin Blunstone's vocal equipment is superb. It has a breathy sexuality that sounds as if he's been roused from post-coital slumber and stuck behind a microphone. Compared to the majority of cock-strutting lead singers he's almost too intimate, nearly effete. He's a crooner, and he needs a special type of song to set him off; just framing his voice •with a pretty tune neutralizes it. Never Even Thought is a collection of ordinary love songs about such romantic topics as sense-memory, reunions, falling together and apart, and when it stays simple it's rather nice. "Who's That Knocking On My Door?" is a catchy jazzy doodle, Colin's singing on the slight "Ain't It Funny" and "Photograph" is lovely, "Touch And Go" has a nostalgic seductiveness, and if all this tastes of faint praise, that's all Never Even Thought really deserves.

With the exception of the muck and mire of Murray Head's title track and Severin Browne's inappropriate "Do Magnolia Do," all of the album is composed by Blunstone in collaboration, and that does pose a problem. Without the sympathetic producer-composer assistance from fellow Zombies Rod Argent and Chris White, or the intriguing eclecticism (obscure Beach Boys and Buddy Holly songs plus tunes by Sedaka, Elton John, Kiki Dee, Argent, Tim Moore) of the LP he made under Gus Dudgeon, Blunstone flounders as producer Bill Schnee tries to hype up the less-than realized songwriting efforts. When you cut through the banal lyrics, the swelling strings, the flailing guitars, there is still that voice at the center as a reminder that it's possible to make airy pop records without turning to mush. Or haven't you listened to "She's Not There" recently?

While Blunstone is soothing explusion, Allan Clarke is all whiney projection. Buffered by Nash, et.al., that whine could be bracing instrument. On his own, Clarke's shrillness of tone is matched by a shrillness of approach, and the album is hardly tolerable. There are songs that conceivably could have been Hollie tri-annual ballad hits—"I'm Betting My Life On You," "(I Will Be Your) Shadow In The Street"— but otherwise Clarke's LP is pure dentist's drill. He also fancies himself a composer, but he's not content, as Blunstoneis, to recycle.sentimental axioms. Clarke, from the fussy, frantic title song to the subZevon excursion into some metaphorical ''valley of destiny" on "No Prisoner Taken (Light Brigade)," is guilty of overreach. "We need some new blood," he shrieks. "Let's keep the sheets clean!...Stop this confusion/We need a transfusion." (What?)

"The Man Who Manufactures Daydreams" is as bad as its title, and "Light Of My Smiles" is the silliest theatrical conceit since something or other by Leo Sayer, but the nadir is reached on the closer, "Off The Record," which is hilarious vitriol. As the guitars play Barry White's "Love's Theme," Clarke goes on about the "suicide cold storage of your mind": "You're just an android/You can't feel...You spill the beans and leave without a stain." At the fade, he's shouting "You're obsceeeene!" Clarke bolted The Hollies once before, only to return; if there's still an opening for a lead singer, and if he truly wasn't born yesterday, he'd be wise to apply for the slot.

Mitch Cohen