ADIOS EL KABONG

RECORDS

ADIOS EL KABONG

THE WHO Who Arc You (MCA)

by Billy Altman Strange how some tilings just stick in your mind well after you'd hoped they'd be forgotten. I suppose that one of the most sobering moments in my life came during the second game of the 1973 World Series, as I watched with horror and sadness Willy Mays, who for over 20 years just about symbolized the essence of playing baseball, fall down trying to catch a fly ball that he'd already lost in the sun. The whole play only took a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity as I watched him slowly get up offthe ground and turn back to where the ball had bounced by him. I prayed that perhaps he'd hurt himself, pulled a muscle maybe, and that's why he was so slow to rise. But no. Both Willy and the millions of others watching the game on television had suddenly grasped the same horrible truth—

he simply had gotten too old to play the game. I have hundreds of wonderful memories of Willy Mays the baseball player and yet I know I'll never erase that single terrifying one from my memory, ever.

Who Are You is an album that has troubled me ever since I brought it home and listened to it for the first time. It is especially disconcerting that it should trouble me so much, because frankly, the last Who album I liked was Who's Next which is, after all, seven years old. Quadrophenia left me cold, but I respected it as an ambitious, almost heroic, failure and The Who By Numbers, which also left me completely unaffected, was conversely so non-ambitious and unassuming that its mere presence as a simple collection of songs seemed a plus. Who Are You, however, just gnaws at me, and I've been returning to it with a dark, almost demented fascination asking myself can it really be so bad? And more importantly, why?

It's that second question that ultimately forces me to conclude that the four ghosts pictured on the cover of the record are not the Who. They may be named Townshend, Daltrey, Entwistle, and Moon and they may look and sound somewhat like the Who I used to know but this doesn't sound like a band. What it does sound like is a disjointed collection of utterly humorless and grim lyrics and music that reflect an alienation from simple life that is downright stupifying. Of the six songs written by Townshend, three are abput

writing songs and they arc so arid and laden with pretense that one reacts more with anger than plain sadness over Townshend's apparent void in regard to subject matter. "In your hands you hold your only friend/Never spend your guitar and your pen." Thanks for the tip, Pete. Ijlow utterly insane that a gifted songwriter who used to be able to construct such imaginative and observant narratives outside of himself ("I" as persona—"I'm A Boy," "Tattoo," "Pictures Of Lily," etc ) should see no inspiration anymore save reflections on the artistic process. "Music Must Change" takes four and one half minutes to tell us that a search is underway for a new kind of song that will, should it ever arrive, "Crush mountains as old as the earth." Meanwhile, the

piece itself just plods along, as exciting as the sound of shoes stepping numbly on pavement that opens the song. And, oh yes-fethe one joke on the record: a coin dropping to the floor. Coin. Change. Get It?

You could take one of so many old Who songs, and everything that Townshend is grappling with was there, as plain as day. Even a relatively minor song like "Our Love Was Is" makes everything on Who Are You sound ridiculously weak and yes, goddammit, OLD. Lyrical confusion about a love affair which is over (the word "is" never pops up in the course of the song) and which communicates completely all the leaps and crashes of a tumultuous affair: "Our love was famine, frustration. We only acted out an imitation of what we knew love should have been...Then, suddenly ...Our love was flying, our love was soarin', our love was shinin' like a summer mornin'." A capella angelic choir singing up in the skies and then...Keith Moon's drums, signaling confusion and chaos...the first note of that guitar solo, a literal scream of emotion, elation and pain thrown together at the same instant. Three minutes—a whole universe—a song, what music is all about. Expression of feeling. Not expression of expression.

I won't even bother with the rest of this album (Entwistle's three songs are simply disgraceful, sub "My Wife" status, less than zero on a one to ten scale). Tell me that this record is about transition and I'll tell you that after 15 years with a band, I'd rather have nothing than something not even somewhat realized. And if they go on tour and Fete jumps high and breaks his leg, don't even tell me about it. I've been there.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Original Sound Track ||_(RSO)_'

The recent discovery of this music-listening unit (or "ellpee," as they were then quaintly known) among the ruins of a "Peaches" software emporium in the southern suburbs of the Chitroit HI Megalopolis, has rendered moot for all time the dispute over whether the socalled "Beatles" actually wrote all of the many folk chants traditionally attributed to them.

While past scholarship in this field has concentrated on the theory that four individuals of the Beatles' degenerate breeding and education could not possibly have written so many important songs in such a short period of time, this latest archeological finding indicates that the Beatles probably did not write any of the tunes associated with their supposed "Prolific Period." The newly-unearthed "Sgt. Pepper" elpee is undoubtedly the original version of this classic suite, and thus proves that it was none other than the "Bee Gees" (contemporary "popgroup" rivals of the Beatles) who composed such significant Woodstock Millenium anthems as "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite."

Dr. Marco Bigpink, of the Marin Nation Institute of I'm O.K./You're O.K. Subcultural Research, has already challenged the Bee Gees' authorship of Sgt. Pepper, claiming that the Beatles' ellpee bears an earlier "copyright" dating than the Bee Gees', and that the Bee Gees' unit credits all the songs to the erstwhile "Fab Four" anyhow. To this vile canard, I can only reply, "What the fuck's the matter with you, Bigpink? To anyone even vaguely acquainted with the popular music of the late 20th Eon-Unit, it's more than obvious that the Bee Gees' safe, pallid renderings of immortal melodies like 'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window' are far more characteristic of the era's musical conservatism and gentility than the Beatles' raucous readings of the same tunes!"

But I desist. The most telling argument for the Bee Gees' authorship of Sgt. Pepper is the fact that the gifted Gibb Brothers have long since been established as the sole composers of the period's other two popsong masterworks, Saturday Night Fever, and Life In A Tin Can. (The Bee Gees' crediting of their own Sgt. Pepper songs to the struggling Beatles is merely one more instance of the Gibb's welldocumented humanitarianism, while the ostensibly earlier date on the Beatles' ellpee can be explained away as yet another example of their liner-note deceitfulness. The Beatles are already notorious for having stamped the cryptic anagram "ABKCO" on many of their works, in a nefarious effort to circumvent the ASCAF and BMl tithe-extractors.)

While the shining creative genius of the respective Bee Gees has

been amply profiled in this column in past issues, little is yet known about the other individuals represented on the newly-discovered Sgt. Pepper. The function of the elusive "Robert Stigwood," associated with so many Bee Gees' products, is not clear; all that is definitely known about Stigwood is that he left the former Australian Subcontinent around the time of the Great Kangaroo Famine of 1965, and that he was worshipped as a saint by members of the Disciples of Disco faith (q.v.) in later years.

The attractive-featured "Peter Frampton" appears to have been an early transsexual experiment, and perhaps served the Bee Gees as a cantor, or priest, as a consequence. Similarly, it appears that the elderly being identified as "George Burns" was cloned specifically for the Sgt. Pepper ellpee, to function as a sort of no-deposit shaman to the grateful Bee Gees. Contemporary journalistic ac-

counts, which have survived only in fragments, indicate that the lovely feminine-unit, "Sandy Farina," was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident while playing her guitar with her back to the audience, shortly after completing Sgt. Pepper.

The less said about the ellpee's track "Got To Get You Into My Life," by the ill-named "Earth, Wind & Fire," the better, as the aggressiveness of its chord progression, and the ambitiousness of its delivery, mark it as distinctly non-Bee Gee, probably apocryphal.

Yet, although the magnificent Bee Gees have been validated once more as the supreme "superstars" of their time, archeologists and scholars continue to probe the "Peaches" dig for further knowledge of that amazing era. Carbonsyntaxing tests are even now underway, to decipher the meaning of a mysterious inscription found affixed to the "shrinkwrap" of the Sgt. Pepper ellpee; our society will

have gone a long way toward unlocking the secrets of the ages, once we grasp the full significance of the phrase, "Records Are Your Best Entertainment Value!"

Richard Riegel

DICTATORS Bloodbrothers

(Asylum)

With album #3 now squatting on the shelves like a fresh hunk of fish

You couldn't clean these guys up with a ten-foot Airwick, at least not with Handsome Dick in the band. With a voice that's the culmination of a text-book case of childhood emphysema aggravated by his taste for Comet 'n' crackers, H. Dick's a shun pig to be looked up to. He's so cool, he wears wristweights when he plays pinball. And voice-weights when he sings.

Adny Shernoff's the power behind the drone here and the Typo Kid is still hot. In fact, there's two or three actual songs on BBs besides the expected spider hoots and undercurrents of rioting. Adny does a lot of ugly things well for somebody who looks like he spends all his time in a basement building radio equipment. Like write "Baby Let's Twist," which he calls "the Dictator's version of 'Sheena,'" but which I call "the Dictators' version of 'Hang On Sloopy' with a pretty part stuck in." You bet it's cornball, but with those screwed-on backing vocals and lines like "She's got red lips, red lips/But they ain't the kind you wanna kiss," it's classic cornball.

Other good cuts, too. "Faster & Louder" proves that oink-lips Dick can eat, screw, walk the dawgetc., faster and louder than anybody, while Ross The Boss punches in with his trademark camel-bite guitar. He tears up "Stay With Me" too, a fine song that could maybe use a stunt vocalist on some of the bigger falls. As for "Borneo Jimmy", what can you say except it's about World Hero R. Meltzer (a joker & a gent!) and features lines about gore, gelatin and Sonny Liston. Plus enough feedback-for-theGipper on the Flamin' Groovies oldie "Slow Death" to make impressionable listeners zoned enough to go spread tacks in a crane refuge.

A couple med. stinkers too—the unswallowable "I Stand Tall" and the riff-fatigued "Minnesota Strip"— but none stuck on chords that pre-

date the two-car garage or anything drastic. This LP is way better than Manny Fights Destry and besides, as local noise Mike Wonder so ably put it as he peed in the refrigerator, it ain't a good party unless you make the hostess cry. Well aboohoo hoo & WAAAAAAAAAH!

Rick Johnson

STEVE GIBBONS BAND Down In The Bunker (Polydor)

Being jaded can be a problem sometimes. Like if you're used to being Beck-blitzed or Buck-fucked on the old HMS Oblivion and someone comes along with his volume turned down, you just might ignore him in your search for the next cheap thrill. And you might miss something.

Like the Steve Gibbons Band. These guys deal in pre-metal rock 'n' roll. Which doesn't mean they're revivalists but does mean they have a sense of tradition that they try to maintain and they don't mind putting it out front where you can't miss it.

Like the opening track, "No Spitting On The Bus". Match the title with the modified Bo Diddley beat and you might be tempted to yell, "Who rip-off," and tune out before you get to the lines, "But as long as I'm holding the wheel/I don't want no spittin' on the bus." These guys even look like a maintenance crew.

Then there's the rockabilly raveup, "Eddy Vortex", whose Eddie Cochran looks have Steve all shook up^ "He's a brand new rocker/He's got a brand new name/ He's livin' for the kick of it/An' lovin' every bit of it/An' he don't use cocaine."

Other influences abound but Steve always ' prefers the light-

fingered approach to the heavyhanded. You could call the bizarre mixture of military, golf, and sexual imagery on the Dylanesque "Down In The Bunker" many things but never pretentious; the same goes for "Big J.C.," which finds Jesus walking in on a poker game.

But my favorite songs here are the down-to-earth ones that remind me of the best things Ian Dury and Tom Robinson write. "When You Get Outside" is this wonderfully uplifting message of reassurance to a buddy who still has a couple of years behind bars in front of him. And "Mary Ain't Cornin' Home" treats racial integration with a rare quality—acceptance— and so is more effective than all the protest rants on the subject put together: "So the black and white they mix it up/They have a cocoa kid from the lovin' cup/An' if the powers that be don't interrupt/ Things could be alright."

So maybe this stuff is your cup of tea and maybe it isn't. Heavy can be habit forming and Gibbons' music definitely recalls the era when rock was taken for granite, not machineshop slurpuss. Bunker ain't no clunker but you'll never find that out if you're content to kick back, waitin' for the Next Big Thing. Ya gotta give this music something back; it's the only fair way.

Michael Davis

THE CARLA BLEY BAND European Tour 1977 (Watt)

MICHAEL MANTLER Movies (Watt)

Carla Bley's polymorphous, perverse, pleasurable and subliminal hot-stuff arrangements and compositions for avant-garde big bands

are vyithout peer. Sun Ra may have more impressive conviction and Gil Evans more impressive flexibility as the elder statesman who refuses to age, but Bley has her ear on the proverbial pulse of the times with her inexorable grasp of the liberatingly silly. European Tour is a hoot, a perfect balance of free-form howls and premeditated spitballs, a balance Bley has been perfecting for the past fifteen years, at least. It is (what the hell, might as well go out on a limb) the best jazz record released in '78 even tho technically a lot of it isn't really jazz—but technical consideration don't count for much regarding musical definitions these days. It's the spirit that counts and the music here reflects the spirits of Ellington, Mingus, Ornett, and Bley. With honorable mention going to the expansive spirit of trombonist Roswell Rudd who produces, along with his usual friendly wailings, some of the most bone chilling (no pun intended) cries in the annals of the avantgarde's pursuit of a heartrending approximation of vox humana.

The big band here is ten pieces, with Bley foregoing her customary piano spots to concentrate on organ and tenor sax. The set opens with a Latino-tinged piece called "Rose And Sad Song" which features some full-bodied trumpet playing by Bley's husband Michael Mantler—a trumpet player not known for his full-bodied playing but who, on this as well as his own album Movies, displays a style of playing that his detractors (like myself) will find as engaging as it is surprising. "Wrong Key Donkey" is the closest thing to a blowing piece on the album but the tricky time keeps everybody on their toes. "Drinking Music" first appeared almost ten years ago on Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra album and it's a short pithy Kurt Weillian piece that is a modern classic of high foolishness. The final piece, the album's tour-de-force, raison d'etre and, other French phrases of praise is "Spangled Banner Minor and Other Patriotic Songs." Beginning with the Star Spangled Banner played in minor key, which seems like an appropriate piece of post-Watergate humility, the composition runs thru several national anthems as well as Bley-anthems with about a dozen significant mood changes ranging from apocalyptic (a subdued version of "Deutschland Uber Alles" with an unrelentingly screaming sax on top—an evocation of the holocaust) to silly (a hoked-up version of the "Marseilles"). The overall effect is exhilarating and pleasingly exhausting.

Meanwhile, the thing about Mantler's album that is genuinely surprising is that it is so eminently listenable—so good. Which sounds like a backhanded compliment but I think he deserves it (and that can be read two ways, too). On recent albums Mantler has attempted to write simpatico music to accompany the writings of Samuel Beckett, Edward Gorey, and Harold Pinter (two geniuses and a playwright) the results in each case being turgid and monotonous—and making Edward Gorey monotonous is no small feat. But Movies moves along at a satisfying pace thru eight medium-sized numbers (3-5 mins.) played by a quintet consisting of Mantler, trumpet; Larry Coryell, guitar; Carla Bley, piano, synthesizer, and tenor sax; Steve Swallow, bass guitar; and Tony Williams, drums. Each cut has a decent hook, Mantler's playing is direct and forceful, Coryell's is uncluttered and melodic, and Williams', tho to a great extent shaped by the contours of each composition, is free from the metronomic crap he lays down on so many fusion sessions. It's a nice album. Not an instant classic mindfuck like Carla Bley's, but nice.

Richard C. Walls

THE SHIRTS

(Capitol)

An old cemetery dirt road winding up a modest slope to the harbor hill where skeletal ships have dropped final anchor, marble sails inscribed with the usual eulogizing lies marking the depths in which they eternally rot. There, parallel to decaying fence posts strung with barbed wire rusted by weather and slackened by time, leaning on its right wheels into a slight ditch besieged by tall weeds and sunflower stalks, is parked a late model Plymouth. In the front seat a couple, distantly together. She, Miss Denton County Dairy Products, sitting primly, her mind a dreamless ocean beneath a black ash sky, hugging the door handle, not afraid but empty, counting first the stars, then the different sounds in the summer night, each with a detached fierceness. He, Horny Me, making low noises, fidgeting the fingers of his left hand through his unruly hair while urging from the car radio some golden song of seductive reasoning with the five of the other, gingerly dialing with safe-cracker's finesse and patience for the com-' bination of soul and science fusing at the optimal moment; that might

relieve the miserable silence of their mismatch. For no reason he can think of she draws closer to herself, pulling her napkin-folded hands to her ample chest, crossing her legs with bitchy finality, moral theatrics as wooden as Sarah Bernhart's peg leg. After a time lengthened considerably by mutual discomfort he wearies of the crackling static, the docile music, the garbling and tedium and switches the knob off.

"Well," he grins diffidently, "radio ain't much." She shoots a steel-melting glare his way, her eyes saying, neither are you Bub and why did I let Rose Ann talk me into this? Inwardly he winces, but carries on. "Gotta new record though. Well, a tape of it really. You, uh, wanna hear it?" Miss Dairy Products says nothing. "Okey doke. I'll stick it in the ole cassette machine if you don't mind. It's not the whole record you understand, just some of it. I mean, if you've got

Thundermug's 'Orbit', you don't need 'Lonely Android', and Little Feat's 'Teenage Nervous Breakdown' is manically truer than 'Teenage Crutch', and some of it is kinda like Fleetiron Mac or the Talking Heads if they were still in grade school, so "

"Is that all you know about?" she interrupts icily. "Records I mean? Do you realize I could have had a date with a guy from S.M.U. tonight? But my friend"—she paused to savor the irony that was evident to her—"my friend Rose Ann talks me into going out with you—a goddamned walking talking record review."

Horny shrugged helplessly, realizing he had been blathering like a Goddamn Idiot, that the date with Miss Dairy Products had been too good to be true in the first place. "Rose is a friend. I guess that's it." Miss Dairy Products started to reply some sarcasm, but for a

reason she didn't know, held her tongue. "Go on and play your tape then," she said, softening against her will. "Play that and then you can take me home." He nodded, a badly whipped puppy dog, and slipped the cassette into the tape deck. "By the way," he said softly, realizing he hadn't said, "if you're interested, the name of the band is The Shirts." Intent on nothing more than enduring what was.left of the evening she signaled no response. But.

Found herself being lured into the rock 'n' roll, particularly the second song on the tape—infectious she thought and that line about writing a nasty letter, she knew about that—and thought the half dozen songs were over rather quickly. "That was," she said with obvious surprise in her voice, "good!" "Isn't it?" Horny replied, pleased. "I mean the all of it ain't as good, but for a first album." He paused. "Listen to these again," he enthused, and rewound the tape, to where he had recorded "Empty Ever After" and "Running Through The Night" back to back. And after she had requested that he repeat the whole tape he played "Empty Ever After" a third time. "God in heaven," Horny sighed heavily at its conclusion. "If I could get kissed with as much power and fire as that girl sings that song, I'd happily die for. it."

"Well buster," Miss Dairy Products said, smiling for real, "don't make any funeral plans for tomorrow because it's not going to happen tonight." He laughed and after a moment furrowed a questioning brow her way. "So you shave your legs?" She looked at him kind of funny and then shook her head yes, she did. "Well then," he said, gunning -the engine, "it wouldn't work noway." He popped the car into gear. "Gimme a leg with hair!" And although she didn't kno.w what in hell he was talking about, she couldn't help but join in laughter.

j.m. bridgewater

ROBIN TROWER Caravan To Midnight (Chrysalis)

-Aha! Caught you! Stop right there! You can't fool me, I heard you say, "not another Robin Trower elpee—Next,please." Lissen, I felt the same way when I first approached this thing. Tentative, yeah, tentative as hell. But open-minded, like it's a listener's biz to be—and you'd be surprised how you start hearing diamonds drop when you leave your ears open...

Now, if I have your ears for a few more milliseconds—o.k. First off: 1 have some good news and some bad news. This album has two aspects—the sung songs and the Hendrixite excursions. When it is good, it is very very good; but when it is bad, it is boring. Now, lining up those two sentences respectively, we have:

One side of a coin is the songs, which are very ably rendered by vocalist James Dewar. This guy is the closest thing I've heard to Paul Rodgers since Free—and that's good Paul Rodgers, not the self-indulgent wimp you've come to expect with Bad Compainy's ascendance (and I haven't heard a more aptly named band since Blind Faith ...). This guy sings soulful, like he means it; none of that egothroated lowing-'til-the-cows-come -home stuff. Which makes the warmly uptempo -.boogieblues song cuts, like "Burning Love" and "Fool," quite pleasant and worthwhile excursions to dream a rainy day away to—sorta like what Free were good at serving up in their time, and it's nice to hear some of that stuff again in these latter days...

But speaking of rainy-daydreaming-away, we come to the other side of the Caravan-coin: the much-touted main man and his main influence as it manifests itself on this effort. Trower and his Hendrixite style are also amply represented on this LP, equally if not more than the talents of his lead vocalist—and the very problem Dewar doesn't have as a singer is what makes Trower sound soporific as a guitarist. Ego-in-instrument with consequent lack of inspiration and intensity. Musical masturbation that calls Frampton's and Clapton's recent stuff to mind, and if Trower thinks that copping some of Jimi's moves makes him a member of the Explorer's Club, he better realize that he's still rather far away from earning his merit badge. The result of all this is ah album so schizoid at times that you'll need a cue lever and an equalizer to sort out the Dewar from the Trower so you can enjoy what you're hearing for five minutes straight. One minute James gives you the goods like you ain't gotten 'em in years, the next the guitar comes in so much like I'm In You outtakes or Slowhand sleepers and you begin to contemplate picking up the platter and throwing it out the window-1—or selling it to the local record store or your kid sister who just loves Peter Frampton (and boogies to Bad Company and doesn't know or care who Free were, right?)...

But like I say I'm glad someone with style does know who Free were. At least this wasn't an ailTrower LP. (Thank-goodness...). Five out of ten is better than none. And if Robin wakes up for the next album maybe it'll getcha ten. Miracles have been known to occur on this planet...

Vicki Taylor

I lit MU IUK5

Approved By The Motors (Virgin)

The Motors play rock 'n' roll with an almost religious zeal, but their debut was an example of misguided fanaticism—postpub rockers trying like the devil to be punks. Led by ex-Ducks Deluxe duo Nick Garvey and Andy McMaster, they could strip down their songs and throttle them out with the requisite energy, but the dark sides of their heart just weren't there. British critics described the mess as something like the Sex Pistols meeting Status Quo, and even their witty ad campaign— "Actually, I like The Motors," meant to imply a refreshing difference—became more of an apology. They were loud, fierce, maybe too adept and not very interesting.

Those Motors are dead, and the advent of power pop is their resurrection, if not their very salvation. On Approved By The Motors, they've retained the one great merit of their former selves—an economical, bass-heavy wall of sound—but instead of trying to blister paint with a single chord they've chosen to deal in tasty pop decorations—minimally employed for maximum effect, and the result of this about face is one fine album.

The difference is exemplified on the opening cut, "Airport," an almost classically constructed shot at the hitbound sound. Instead of the interlocking screech of guitars found on a song like "Dancing The Night Away," "Airport" soars on a buoyant bed of synthesizers and grand piano—instrumentation antithetical to the new wave. Yet despite the pretty trappings, the song is still passionate and wonderfully basic.

Throughout the LP, equal doses of power and pop combine for tongue-in-cheek commerciality

—crunchy chords interfaced with caressing harmonies. A number of cuts are in a Beatles/Badfinger vein (the tough "Mamma Rock 'N' Roller" recalls Lennon at his bulldogish best), while the thumping "You Beat The Hell Out Of Me" and "Breathless" fall somewhere between the Ramones and Rockpile—virtual musical fistfights by a rough and tumble, yet melodic band of rowdies.

"Forget About You" and "Soul Redeemer" recall the junk pop of the Foundations and Edison Lighthouse ("Forget About You," in fact, is almost a literal transposition of "My Baby Loves Love"), and the LP's one airy acoustic ballad—"Today"—brings to mind Alex Chilton's Big Star. This is pop music—youthful, zealous and catchy. Frankly, even the Jesus Of Cool couldn't ask for better disciples.

Rob Patterson

DEBBY BOONE >' Midstream (Warner/Curb)

SHAUN CASSIDY Under Wraps _(Warner/Curb)

This is some trap. Can a writer for this magazine retain some credibility and still say kind things about Shaun and Debby, without fixing one's reviewer face in a contemptuous sneer and making witty remarks about this pretty-boy pin-up and this confessed-in-print virgin? Debby's dad, it needn't be recounted, was a genuine musical villain, one of the people responsible for rock's WASP-ization, who made it so the right to rock was not earned, but assumed. And as for Shaun, isn't he just another second generation Hollywood no-talent

even costarred in April Love, in which Shirl bestowed on the reluctant Christian his first screen peck), created by TV? "You Light Up My Life" and a dissipated remake of "Da Doo Ron Ron" should be enough to banish them from serious consideration in these pages, no?

No. Or at least a qualified no. No one is suggesting that you forego your weekly Teflon high or your ticket to the Emerson, Light & Speedwagon concert and fork over real cash for Under Wraps or Midstreamr but listen:—keeping in mind that these words are scribbled by someone whose copy of The Partridge Family At Home With Their Greatest Hits gets more turntable time than the combined works of Jethro Tull and Kansas— each in its own way is just about half good. On one side of her LP Debby is as nifty as a demure Sandie Shaw, everybody's first or second favorite Hardy boy spreads a fistful of likeable tracks over his newest disc, and those averages don't seem so disgraceful to me, not after hearing the latest efforts by some so-called pantheon rock figures. Besides, Debby' neo-Rita Hayworth bedclothes pose on the cover of Midstream indicates that while she may intact, she has sex object potential (there exists, I swear to you, photos of Debby at a Hollywood party, with her blouse buttons daringly open revealing no bra, but white against a California tan), and ever since I was persuaded to catch Shaun's act in person and found his show to be slick, fun and hysterical, I guess you could call me a fan,, almost.

The music, then. Boone's album splits conveniently right down the middle. Brooks Arthur produced the A side, and the songs' composers read like a mid-60's pop litany: Peter Noone, Mann & Weil, Goffin & King, Carole Bayer Sager, Sedaka & Greenfield. The B side starts with the theme from The Magic Of Lassie, and the remaining five cuts were written and produced by the man who gave Debby and the rest of us "You Light Up My Life." No surprises here: Boone is no Dusty Springfield, God knows (by the way the LP's opening tune is called just that—"God Knows"— lest we forget that Boone is born again), but with the material she's given on the Brill Building side, no one could totally screw up, let alone a girl who hits her notes pure and true. They're all love songs of one stripe or another, all middle-tempo ballads with telegraphed hooks ("Oh No Not My Baby" and a nearXerox of Arthur's production of "I'd Rather Leave While I'm In Love" for Sager's own LP are the most familiar), and can be played first track to last painlessly. Just don't turn the record over, ever. Trust me on this.

Shaun Cassidy's been given a gift here: a wonderful new Brian Wilson song, "It's Like Heaven", and it's a more than capable Beach Boy/ Spring pastiche as produced by Michael Lloyd. Nothing else is as enjoyable, and Cassidy's sidetwo originals are charmless. Even so, this kid who claims he was born late, who fancies himself a true contemporary of Phil Spector, does not embarrass himself on the remainder of this collection, primarily a batch of bleached-white discotempoed tunes. More spunky than talented, Shaun gets as close as he can to rocking out on his own "Hard Love" (no innocent, he. Would Pat let him date his daughter?) and Carole Bayer Sager's "\Our Night", while "Lie To Me" and "Taxi Dancer" settle nicely into moderate grooves. But you've got to hear this sweet-faced goy singing just like his half-brother David on "One More Night Of Your Love," the subject of which is impotence, as Shaun, in an Ibsen mood, blames his plight on ghosts getting even for past sexual exploits. "Bobby Sox To Stockings" it ain't.

Mitch Cohen

LYNDA CARTER Portrait _(Epic)___

Honestly, some people would package caviar to make it look like Grape-Nuts Flakes. Take the cover of this album, for instance. You've got Lynda Carter, Miss U.S.A., Miss World U.S.A., the most beautiful woman on earth according to the London International

Academy of Beauty, ice-blue eyes and a body that even Wonder Whalebone can't stop—and Epic Records hires some guy to make her look like the Breck girl.

No surprise that my record store had her languishing in the back room—did they want people to think they were selling shampoo out there? Of course the back cover is better: Lynda in a thin, open-necked shirt tied beneath her cleft and tethered breasts, thumb hitching down her jeans to just below the navel (a lovely lambdashaped inny),clawing denim off one gorgeous hip, solar plexus (seat of breath and song) disturbingly bare. Make a damn good poster. Still, the effect is a little too Harry Belafonte. So we have shampoo and calypso —and nowhere a clue that this is supposed to be a rock album. I can think of better ways to break into the business.

But the cover does reflect Lynda's own identity crisis as a singer. The woman has a good strong alto. On songs like "Tumbledown Love" she shows spirit, flair, and—yeah, heart, if not exactly soul. But her ballad style is largely filched from Karen for God's sake Carpenter, and on the rockers she seems shy and uncertain of the form. The unnervingly confident competance of her L.A. backup group, the crisp-to-nearly-brittle production, and the careful harmonics only emphasize that uncertainty. When in doubt, she heaves a few mannerisms into the mike and plunges ahead. Sometimes there are so many sexy little growls punctuating the phrasing that she sounds like an AnnMargret revival. But then your voice doesn't get much seasoning doing Wonder Woman and it's been a long time since she sang in that Arizona pizza joint as a teenager*

Unashamedly, I hope she gets to do another record, for this album has its moments. There's a nice Billy Joel ballad, "She's Always A Woman," and a pretty respectable top-ten rocker "All Night Long." My favorite is one of three for which

Lynda shares the writing credits, another ballad called "Toto (Don't It Feel Like Paradise)," sporting the transcendently coy lyric, "Toto, I get the feelin' we're not in Kansas anymore." Anybody who can make me like a spinoff on a Judy Garland movie cari't be all bad.

Now, with movie-and-TV star albums you pays your money and you takes your chances. Some of them actually turn out to be oddly memorable. (Who could forget Robert Mitchum singing "You Derserve Each Other?" "I'm returning your gizzard, lizard/Here's your dreary old rear, dear/I'm giving you back your world, girl/ You deserve each other baby.") Portrait is not exactly memorable, but it's not Adam West's Greatest Hits, either. I give it a hickey.

Dallas Mayr

GENYA RAVAN Urban Desire (20th Century-Fox)

We here at The University of Musical Perversity have a pretty ambivalent attitude towards Genya Ravan's recording efforts. We went to some trouble and expense to get all the singles she made as part of The Escorts and Goldie and The Gingerbreads back in the 60's. On the other hand, we still haven't bothered to pick up any of the Ten Wheel Drive albums or the solo LPs she made after that.

To tell you the truth, none of us here are very fond of Gravel Gertievoiced, bluesy broads unless they are a Big Mama Thornton or a Janis Joplin. Genya Ravan has neve, even come close, and after all this time it is safe to assume she never will. Recently though, she has started getting into the production end of recording. Her job on the first Dead Boys album weis creditable enough considering what she had to work with, and her production on Urban Desire may save the album from total obscurity.

Eleven twelfths of the album is pure self indulgence. Genya shouts her way through a Doo-Wop/Spector tribute, a Rod Stewart parody, a Heart impersonation, an Asbury Jukey-duet with Lou Reed, and several other routines whose time has come and gone. There is one cut, though, that may be a hit thanx to Genya's producing impulses

finally getting the better of her inflated estimation of her own vocal abilities. On her rendition of The Supreme's "Back In My Arms Again" she pushes her voice back a bit and brings up the instrumentation, and the result is a tidy little single that has gotten Genya on the charts.

Now I gotta admit it's pretty hard to screw-up a Motown song, but Genya's approach was ambitious enough to involve a certain amount of risk. Instead of resting on the song's attributes, she introduced a "Honky Tonk Woman" rhythm and turned it into a heavy metal raver that comes across like Van Halen doing Vanilla Fudge. I think that's right on the mark for right now.

Okay, so we file the single with the hits. Now what are we gonna do with the album. There's no more room in the Lou Reed-related material section. The main stash is bursting at the seams. I guess it will have to go down to the basement with all the dubious' promos until we get that computer we been dreamin' of.

Dr. Oldie & Big A1

PERE UBU

Datapanik In Year Zero (Radar)

The Dada rampage of Breton and other jujube surrealists culminated in the craziness expressed in Alfred Jarry's Pere Ubu, prompting a whole generation of teens to grow goatees, go underground, and carry toy submachineguns. It also happened to be David Thomas' main literary influences in high school (besides Nero Wolfe & Two Years Before The Mast), inspiring him to undertake the demolition of Cleveland's pop afterglow by sonically reproducing the machine hum of Ohio's A-l Junk City. David Thomas a.k.a. Crocus Behemoth (a nom de plume that conjures up the image of Gorgo, unleashed upon a crumbling metropolis, grinding skyscrapers between his jaws) grew lotsa hair, became pleasingly plump (do not confuse with Meatloaf), and then confirmed himself as a true believer in the idealogy of King Shit by forming Pere Ubu.

Prior to their first LP, The Modern Dance (Blank 001—get twenty copies!), Pere Ubu released four singles on the underground label, Hearthan, and unless folks start dropping acid in Minnesota, these records could represent the very last vestiges of psychedelia; Singles One and Two, especially with their hallucinatory sleeves, suggested that P.U. were haunted by the ghosts of the 13th Floor and Choc. Watchband. It was these records, mysterious and hypnotic music degree-zero rumbling from beneath Cleveland's inner sanctum,. that originally attracted me to this band, back in 75. But after The Modem Dance was released, their enigmatic aura disappeared into the formless Void. Being a snob for the arcane, the major label ti£-in put me off.

However, Pere Ubu can still hold its own amongst the growing Ohio competition. They make an artsy band like Devo sound like buffoons from Femwood. And two years before the Euclid Beach Band's "There's No Surf In Cleveland" via the Raspberry's Kool-Aid Sound, Pere Ubu had conceived "Street Waves", a song that inverted the obvious by claiming that in Cleveland there's a surf that comes down the streets. Their trick is that they're as much into sound effects as Ross Bagdasarian (Crocus' fave Xmas disc: the Chipmunks' & Canned Heat's "Xmas Blues"), so they're able to weave the noises of the city into their music.

Datapanik In The Year Zero (a 45 rpm 12-inch) collects the early Ubu sides for the fans who recently got hooked through The Modem Dance. Included are both sides of the first single, "Heart Of Darkness" and "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" (Black Sab chanting over the soundtrack to Midway), "Cloud 149" (Seeds riffs featuring the late Peter Laughner at his best), "Untitled" (the original, faster "Modern Dance", done Roy Headstyle), and "Heaven" (the only reggae my mom ever lets me chew). What you don't get is "My Dark Ages (I Don't Get Around)" (another mechanical surf tune using the car as metaphor for the surfboard) and "Final Solution". Because it's P.U. at their best, the crime is the omission of "Final Solution", a song that captures the hysteria of a teenager trapped in Machine City: "Living at night ain't helping my complexion"—then the cold roar and scrape of machinery overpowering adolescent frustration; "Mom threw me out 'til I get some pants that fit"—white noise from out of the darkness. Even without "Final Solution", though, Datapanik takes you into the very core of the sound of Cleveland (literally) and even deeper into Gorgo's ravaging mouth.

Now if only Cleveland still syndicated Don Webster's Upbeat, we could watch the Upbeat dancers doin' the jerk to Ubu music.

Robot A. Hull

WAR OF THE WORLDS (Columbia) WHITE MANSIONS _ (A&M) _

Okay. Let's hit bottom line on this right off: Richard Burton is the only human being on this planet who can say the word "crotch" with eloquence and style. Remember his eventually-to-be-famous scene in the never-really-famous, The Longest Day, in which he made audiences writhe in their popcorn boxes by simply describing a wound of wounds? "Ak Ak caught me, split me from knee to CROTCH ...Medic came along (pause) He'd lost his kit on the beach... (pause) he pinned it together with safety pins." Eekk, squirm 'n' eekk again. It was at this point in time that Richard Burton took his first steps into the murky glee of grotesquery.

Only thing is, he's way behind the field, which already includes the likes of Petec. Cushing (the eternal Frankenstein), Chris Lee (the best Prince of Darkness ever), and Vincent Price (the ghoul's ghoul). The way Burton's going lately it's obvious he's trying to set himself up as the Vincent Price of the 80's. Never gonna happen, though. Price is the godhead of gore and he knows it, his audience knows it, and besides he keeps at it with a deep-seeded joy born and bred out of the terror realized when a little kid comprehends the fact that no, Dr. Phibes cannot be destroyed.

Actually Price is so good at what he does he can even outdo Burton on the Shakespeare scene, especially when it comes to doing the Bard on the silver screen. Burton did a movie about frontier actor Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes (who was played by

John Derek who was ACTUALLY married to Ursula Andress) called Prince of Players, which concerned itself with America's first big-time Shakespearean actor. So Burton had his big chance to take over the international championship of Willie the Shake talk, and he did himself proud with the role. Only thing is that lotsa years later Vincent Price ambles along and deals out a tight little effort called Theater of Blood, about a Shakespearean actor who is driven out a window by critics and then returns completely demented and proceeds to wipe out those critics one by one. Vinnie does all these great scenes from Willie the Shake as he's wasting his enemies. The movie was sublime and Price was unreal.

Now Burton's lurking about trying to worm his way into the action. Only thing is he's a little late to get gory, just like he's a little late to be entering the pop music biz. But he's trying and maybe someday he'll do a movie with Price, winner take all.

Bringing us finally to Burton's initial lapse into pophoodery with those sidereal guys from the Moodies, closely akin to the Moonies, but a shade more evocative, in a venture aptly emblazoned, War Of The Worlds a musical conception, or should we get critical right away and say a musical mis. conception of Orson* and H.G. Welles' famous tale of interplanetary shenanigans and parochial angst.

The first mistake that's made on the LP is that they take the story back to its original setting, England, and herein lies the major fault in the original work: England is simply too subdued for this kind of cosmic raid. The setting has always worked better in the U.S. (e.g. the Halloween broadcasts heard yearly as each city gets its chance at Martian dominance and submission, the award winning movie version, etc.) simply because the people in the States are more likely to wallow in the necessary hysterics to make such an invasion plausible; England is too sedate (though a version of this starring Johnny Rotten could be very interesting).

Secondly, if they're gonna get anybody to do narration for this piece it has to be Orson Welles, his recorded version of that famous Halloween show is shattering, and maybe With his sonorous ear, the necessary texture, between story and music might've been attained. As it stands the music gets in the way of the narration and the narration gets in the way of the music; even the tricky ending can't save this effort. Simply put, it comes across like a Moody Blues album with a bad case of blueballs.

Two spots do however show signs of life. "The Red Weed," though quite long, does sustain and

maintain a certain invocation of destruction, and "Dead London" might give a couple of punks a giggle with its assured images of rubble and ruin. Of course, if this starts a trend and we get musical editions of Godzilla us. Ghidrah or The Mysterians then this project has served an important purpose thereby insuring itself of a small niche in the Museum of Warn Bama Lamma-Womp Bam Boom...

War (good segueway just like on Lou Grant): the best movies—war: the most influential emotion in mart's history— u/ar:it couldn't kill Richard Conte—war: it did kill the Duke—war: that third person delight of all peace grunts—war: the ultimate plaything of a bored, deviant culture—war: brought to you by Don Kirshner, Ciive Davis and now, Herb Alpert. Would you believe a musical rendition of the Civil War starring Waylon Jennings, Eric Clapton and Bernie Leadon... No? Would you believe...

White Mansions is a fragmented disassembled look into the race hatred surrounding the American Civil War—a cheerful topic, one worthy of two-record sets, instead we only get one record and a lavish booklet, which is more polished than the LP. Yet, even with all the startling black 'n' white photography this "concept" just doesn't come to grips with the grim realities of that vicious little firefight.

Waylon Jennings is sufficiently Robert Mitchumish to make it through this without any visible scars. He plays the brifter, a sort of Melmouth the Wanderer character who oversees the whole shebang, and his one solid musical moment, (and really the only good musical moment of this whole mish-mash) is a song called, "Dixie, Now You're Gone." Jennings still isn't as good as he was in Nashville Rebel but then again could anyone ever attain that kind of style more than once in a lifetime?

Eric Clapton can just about be made out on some cuts, which is just as well; he's used to hiding during embarrassing moments, at the preview performance of the Plastic Ono Band he hid behind his amps all night. Why Bernie Leadon is here is anyone's guess.

White Mansions is an ambitious outing that fails because it tries to encompass too much in too short a time, whereas War Of The Worlds is an effort doomed to yawndom because it encompasses too little in too long a time. There is definitely a confusion of space 'n' time between these two potentially good records; so when you guys straighten it all out give a call. I'll be playing backgammon in the Twilight Zone, trying to get the Stars 'n' Stripes on my black 'n' white TV to go color at sign off time. War: never mind and much later.

Joe (I liked Barry Sadler) Fernbacher