LOU REED Take No Prisoners (Arista)

by j.m. bridge water

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.' Now you figure out where I am."

—Lou ("Don't Call Me Mister") Reed, quoting Yeats in a psyche riddle prefacing the opening cannonade of "Sweet Jane."

Me, I'm in a rock 'n' roll band. A qualitative assertion of being alive, at least part of the time. (As opposed to clerks and little people, who man-such for only a pitiful fraction and are clerks and little people because they're willing to put up with a lotta crap. A high shit-taking tolerance not being conducive to the best—or worst—brands of attitude. You might rock 'n' roll your way through several jobs a week, but hey! What the hell.) The lines from Yeats ("The Second Coming") obviously pack a qualitative thrust as well, or more, the opportunity to feign evincing it, which Reed has utilized recently. However, in the context of Lou live —his overtly subjective challenge —the threat of said thrust (which is, after all, a discrimination that is mythical and delusionary) is reduced to the possibility of a weak lunge. It isn't like the protagonist of "Street Hassle", who doesn't have to choose, but rathgr a matter of not needing to.

Lou Hon, who certainly is aware of the quantitative aspect of rock 'n' roll (and seems to have a tightfisted grasp on Eliot's contention that poetry [correlate freely] isn't a turning loose of emotion, or an expression of personality, but rather an escape from them), is simply fueling the enigmatic chariot that wheels him through the territory where the good shit and the bad shit fuse, creating from prevarication and integrity, passionate intensity and profound indifference, a—to again cop from Yeats— terrible beauty that rejects any ludicrous notions of Best or Worst, of genius or idiocy, of darkness, or light. And if Reed is aloof to any consummate knowing, the lines preceding the ones quoted above in "The Second Coming" do, I think, gaze a steady beam on the nature of his rock 'n' roll:

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."

Like glub-glub-glub? Hardly, A synthesis of ice, fire, and flood. Cool spite, venom and vindictiveness. Wrath and roll, better pissed off than pissed on, a preventive number—don't get mad, stay mad. Not tenderness really, but an appreciation of its rarity. No pampering sentimentality. A seething contempt for the inane and vacuous. Rock 'n' roll burning like a mattress warehouse ablaze, smouldering long after the flames have been quenched. A more intimate vulpine urban animal than has been pressed live previously.

Not that you should expect intimate to come out of the wash meaning easy. Whether practicing the gentle art of audience rapport ("Can't you fuckin' hear? What's wrong with you?), sneering an antirock press diatribe as part of the documentary rap of "Walk On The Wild Side," or endearing himself to fellow rock stars ("Fuck Radio Ethiopia, man. I'm Radio Brooklyn.

I ain't no snob"), Sweet Lou is ever biting and sardonic when facing what dances as bullshit before his vision. Telling it straight ("There's J.one time to vote and one time ^only"), singing it true, his vocals a lesson in textural dexterity. Expressive ballads ("Satellite Of Love," "Coney Island Baby," "Pale Blue Eyes," "Berlin"), demoniac bump and grind-ing blues grime ("Waitin' For My Man"), jukin' jump jive ("I Wanna Be Black"), slowly cascading to volcanic deluge street epic ("Street Hassle"—its free-blowing sax reminiscent of, Trevor Koehlor's intensity on Insect Trust's "Our Sister The Sun") —material familiar to any save the embodied monasteries among us. The band tight, versatile, and explosive, its back-up singers sounding on occasion like eerie ghosts from the nocturnal Harlem of the 30's.

A rock 'n' roll heart, smoke through a keyhole. Lou Reed who, just like he says, does Lou Reed better than anybody.

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (Warner Bros.)

The Captain has been doing battle with the Grunt people for so long that it's a strange and wonderous contradiction to have them take him back into fold, granting him his one simple wish—the freedom to paint his words and rhythms the way he wants to. So to ail you Grunt People out there, may all your Gruntettes 'n' Grunties be graced with the fantastic eternity that comes with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. To all of us who've been waiting for him to return and somehow make the world a little bit easier to look at, he's back with a really magical Magic Band, and an enthusiasm he's never really shown before. The Captain is excited and so should we all be, because the language is once again grinning.

Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) could almost fit chronologically right behind "Lick My Decals Off," yet it also projects a golden future for the word and its master. Backed impeccably by a new Magic Band composed of true disciples, the Captain runs a near hysterical gamut of emotions. From the hauntingly majestic love rite, "Candle Mambo" aqwn to the instrumental saga of "Suction Prints" and right back up the weeping recitation of "Apes-Ma," there is a vitality, a determination, and an absolute commitment that somehow just didn't present itself on his last two releases for Mercury.

"Candle Mambo" is as pure a love song as any produced by those so-called pop romantics. It displays love at an angle very few have been privileged to see. "Suction Prints," is a stronger instrumental than "Alice in Blunderland," and gives the new Magic Band a chance to show that they really understand the beauty and heroics of the Captain and his experiments in the landscapes of language. This is jazz music in an era of white noise and blood aesthetics.

"Apes-Ma," coupled with "Golden Birdies," would make a single release that'd cut all the so-called modern rock poets right to the quick. The one thing that any Beefheartian messenger will tell you is that they're waiting for the Captain to put out an entire album of recitations from his book of wonders. An album of his readings is essential; it's also something that'd open up new vistas for his novitiates as well as enhance the joy of his already devoted fans. In but a few stanzas he's able to break down the antifeeling defenses of even the most calloused listeners. He's got power in his rhythms.

The title song is a stroke by stroke compilation of Magic Band musical mania and Beefheart's bamboozle beauty of color 'n' rhyme. Could this album be the masterpiece that's been on the docks of time since the demise of 1969, with a real, honest awareness of life and happiness? Yup, this record is a masterpiece, and it ain't even theatre...

I could sit here and write for the next six weeks—non-stop—about the multi-leveled ramifications of this album, but I won't. What I will say is that the Magic Band is more mystical than ever, and Don Van Vliet is once again roaming the land preaching the word of the word. Watch him work.

Joe Fernbacher

BILLY JOEL 52nd Street (Columbia)

To hear Karen Lynn Gorney tell it now, she never was that creepy "Tara" character (a sensitive folksinger—yecch!) she used to play on All My Children; she's always been the disco-vitalized sexpot who starred in Saturday Night Fever. And country-music queens Tanya Tucker and Olivia Newton-John have recently released albums whose covers show them wearing suspiciously bl*ck l**th*r garments. It seems that the disparate punk and greaser impulses of the past few years are suddenly coming together to color and influence the more aboveground strains of pop music.

Similarly, Top 40 anchorman Billy Joel is posing on the cover of his new album as the young-man-witha-horn of 50's hipster tore, to tickle the jazzy fancies of his more rabid fans, but there's a bigger jolt in store for the acute sensibilities of us critical types; the official Columbia publicity glossy which accompanies this album shows Joel dressed in a black leather jacket, cleaning his nails with a switchblade. At least Billy Joel is a cool enough guy to appreciate the compound ironies of all these image-manipulations.

The cover photo is the giveaway, as Joel doesn't play any trumpet within, and as "52nd Street," for all its jazzed celebration in the title tune, also happens to be the corporate address of Joel's employer, the CBS conglomerate. If Joel wants to dress in latter-day-punk's leathers, that's an even better joke, as Joel got his r'n'r start in the Hassles, a late 60's band of Young Rascal-idolaters who exemplified every classic move of "Long Island punk," a style which led (through infinitely devious rockcritical routes) to punky bands like the Tuff Darts making the scene today.

But Billy Joel hardly became a household name through his precocious vocals and keyboards for the Hassles; his big break was reserved for his more "mature," singersongwriter phase, for the abilities he's parlayed into numerous hits since the breakthrough of the schmaltzy "Piano Man" jn 1974. His last album, The Stranger, contained multiple hit cuts, in some rather diverse permutations of his basic piano-centered, medium-tohard rock style, and 52nd Street appears to be following suit.

"Big Shot" is the biggest hit so far, but "My Life" is coming on strong, and I expect to hear "Zanzibar," "Stiletto," and maybe even the Righteous Bros.-inspired "Until The Night" on the radio before this album has run its course. "Big Shot" is a tough, biting song which satirizes the well-heeled hangerson to the protagonist's scene; Bob Dylan said the same thing in "Like A Rolling Stone" back in 1965, with more literary flair, but Joel's attainment of satiric consciousness is better late than eternally sophomoric.

"My Life" exhibits a similarly rebellious social conscience, another aspect of Joel's continuing concern for the little people on the fringes of Greater New York. All the action's in Manhattan, undoubtedly, but in all the godforsaken exurbia, life goes on for millions of integers, some of whom actually own and operate motor vehicles, just like normal midwestern Americans. Bruce Springsteen already hipped us to the urban-romantic possibilities of these fringe lifestyles, and Billy Joel is carrying on the Boss's word in songs like "Until The Night" and "Zanzibar."

Billy Joel is his own best tune about the triumph of the little guy; from real punk, to singer-songwriter, back to a media ideal of a punk, all in one quick pop career. Only in America (just don't confuse Joel's songs with those imitations from Elton John's own desperate renaissance, now playing on your nearest radio).

Richard Riegel

TED NUGENT Weekend Warriors (Epic)

Ted Nugent's basic flesh flash Guitar Guitar Guitar EIYOWWL!!! was taken about as far as possible with last year's Double Live Gonzo, too far for token rock fans who might tap their feet to "Wog Eat Wog" or "Cat Snatch Fever" but just could not take th6 man himself unleashed live. Double Live Gonzo was great because it was so obnoxious it really separated the animals from the food; in an age when good taste usually means gutless, Ted drew the line with a solid wall of sound/energy.

But where do you go after that? If you're Ted, any major changes are unthinkable so the only thing missing from Weekend Warriors as opposed to his last few studio LF's is his facial hair. Oh yeah, and a couple of band members. No disrespect meant to Derek St. Holmes and Rob Grange y' understand, but their replacements take up the slack so well there ain't no slack at all.

So what is there? Rock 'n' roll, Charlie. "Smokescreen" 's all moan and drone; "One Woman" echoes the blues; "Venom Soup" travels over towards Rainbow's Devildirgeland. And "Need You Bad" is quintessential riffrock, the kind of tune that makes you wail along on whatever's handy—table top, wine bottle or stack of Fenders.

The only thing that doesn't ring true is the title. Obviously Ted's trying to identify with you/us, his fans who are tied to school schedules or nine-to-five nonsense and his attempt is admirable. But no way is Ted Nugent a weekend warrior; he's full time.

Michael Davis

FIREFALL Elan (Atlantic)

When you talk about Firefall, you're really talking about Rick Roberts—you know, the one whose face is just a binder for a perpetual smirk that makes David Crosby's fishy grin look like a pole hole. After years of cronying up to every Burritoid in the book, he finally rounded up a flock of pigeons where he's got the biggest chest, pointed a loaded Viewmaster at their altitudedazed foreheads and made 'em play his songs. Somebody call The American Girlsl

Roberts' material isn't composed, it's baked. It's not so much that all of his songs sound alike as that you can't tell them apart. He should cut notches in their ears like cattle so that when one of them wanders over to Stephen Stills' spread, it can be returned to its rightful owner. Oh, I see. Stills is the rightful owner.

Not all of these tweety cakes necessarily go down the wrong chute. The vague, Dick Van Pattenlike menace of "Strange Ways" is very enjoyable radio moo. Ditto with Kick's dead-cupcake-hard "Anymore" and a solid remake of CSN's "Sweet And Sour." What? They never recorded it? Well, why the hell not?

The rest of these mile-high goat dreams haven't got enough bite between them to worry a Snickers. Melodies as distinctive as smoke signals worm through rudely awakened arrangements further marred by entire hives of Tom Scotts playin' the reeds on reds. Duck noise of the year has to be "Sweet Ann," a flute-tormented fruit puke that should not have been recorded. They should have bottled it for health-nut suck appraisal. "Hey Randy! I gotta new bottle of Sweet Ann! Let's chug it and go talk to bears!"

For variety, Elan also contains a few demagnetized rockers, with the compulsory induced labor grunts and drums like poodles dancing on a fire escape. Notable among this skitterish group is the always symbolic final cut, "Winds Of Change," the title of which refers to the breeze created by thousands of hands reaching for the reject switch. Of course, mere rejection of these weens is pleasure once removed, like backing your steamroller over the Big Book Of Baby Animals. Pianos on heads from skyscrapers is my recommendation.

With rampant Coloradoism sweeping the nation like honey in the gnat house, the only trick FirefalPs missed is recording the title tune to Mork & Mindy. Tuff pustules, 'cause Roberts could've quacked up a whole LP of his indignant baby-spookers and picked up the music industry's first Diamond Record. Suggested title: Play Mindy For Me.

Rick Johnson

VILLAGE PEOPLE Cruisin' (Casablanca)

You see, it all has to do with types: stereotypes, stenotypes, monotypes. Types, types, types. Say it 60 times real fast and you'll have expended as much time as it takes to listen to the latest from those disco anarchists, the Village People.

My fangs really wanted to sink into this one. I wanted to be caustic, bitter, annoying, predacious, and just plain rude with these guys, but I found myself in the exhausting position of actually finding them hysterically funny. They're a belly laugh, from the loin-cloth racism of

the Indian to the nipple-stroking egoism of the Construction Worker. And they're a complete put-on, which is satire, and satire is supposed to be funny.

You could write epics about each of the songs contaihed on this LP, but I'll just dash off a few mini-series because we're tight for space— seems somebody thinks rock 'n' roll is serious and wrote the nth essay on the "Paradoxes Displayed in the Street Images of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen or Sniffing Sulfur as Teenage Psychosis." So...

"My Roomie": This low-budget musical sitcom stars Tony Randall as an aging Disco Prince who drives his roomie bonkers with a myriad of new and inspired disco dance routines. As this episode closes, the roomie (Victor Buono) is on the phone ordering an air drop of Pittsburgh Paint cans on Tony as he's leaving for work at the Poodle Salon. Next week Tony, paralyzed from the neck down, drives Victor to idiocy by inventing new and inspired disco dance routines using only facial gestures.

"Hot Cpp": An adventure series co-written by Joseph Waumbaugh, concerning a vice cop (George Kennedy) whose beat takes him into the disgusting, depraved and horrifying world of discos, where he must deal with the day-to-day pressures and tensions of disco queens and their pimpettes. This week's episode shows the Hot Cop teaching a gay disco murderer the meaning of the law with his truncheon...Next he must solve the bizarre case of the "Paint Can" murders. (As an interesting sidebar, the show's producer has recently hired Patrick Juvet to arrange, in a comtemporary disco vein, the theme from Dragnet. Seems the producer was having lunch with John Travolta one day and John revealed that in order to prepare for his opening scene in Sat. Night Fever—walking down the street with a paint can— he watched every Jack Webb movie ever made, twice. Says, the producer, "John researched his role so completely he could actually tell the difference between a male and female sand flea.")

"YMCA": Originally scheduled as a PBS Masterpiece Theater project, this show caught the attention of network executives and they decided it would be a natural for a second season replacement. In the opening episode, the lives of the regular cast cross paths for the first time. The stars include Ed Asner as the Policeman, Gavin McLeod as the Indian, Ted Knight as the Cowboy, Mary T^ler Moore as Leather Man, Cloris Leachman as the Construction Worker and Valerie Harper as the GI. They all meet in the lobby and learn to do the New York Hustle while a chorus line of Paint Cans with legs invents new and inspired disco dance routines...

1 guess I could've been really nasty with these guys, but like I said, they're funny and a laugh is<» laugh. So if you like disco (ha ha), then this is as fine a piece of dance music (tee hee) as you'll come across (chuckle chuckle) this year. (Ho ho).

Joe (Are We Not Men? We Are Disco) Fernbacher

AEROSMITH Live Bootleg (Columbia)

I'm not a particularly big fan of live albums. The live album's raison d'etre used to be along the lines of a souvenir of an especially great tour, or perhaps one startling performance by an artist or a band. The last few years, however, have seen a glut of live albums, resulting mostly from corporate thinking that rests almost exclusively along two planes: a) Using the live album to break a barfd that has come up with a slew of good tunes scattered throughout past records (greatest hits, but you can't put out a Greatest Hits album if none of the songs have actually been hits) or b) Satisfying the needs of our fabulous onerecord-a-year-or-else-you-don't-exist -anymore system, commonly called the stall maneuver—the band doesn't have new material ready but you still gotta get that product out.

One would have to say that Aerosmith's Live Bootleg double album falls more towards the second category. It was planned not long after the rather listless Draw The Line came out, and I guess the intent was to get some pressure off of the band. And if the letdown on Draw The Line was unfortunate, what Live Bootleg does make clear, as it highlights the best of their past work, is that Aerosmith really is one of the best hard rock bands that the U.S. has ever produced. I don't think that they set out to be an important group; no great messages to get across,' no big causes to champion. They just wanted to be one hot rock 'n' roll band, rooted in the second generation guitar-calisthenics-plusfrontman approach of their heroes. And I'd have to say that, on the whole, they've carried the ball well.

Live Bootleg steers clear of most of the hoopla and self-congratulatory bravura that it could've had, from its packaging right down to the music itself. In concert, Aerosmith just gets out there and plays and, frankly, the first time I saw them after they'd hit it big with Rocks I was surprised by how little showmanship Tyler and company displayed. But that's not meant as criticism, for Aerosmith has built itself up on its music and not the grandness of itself. And the music on Live Bootleg hangs in there solidly, often treading close to chaos country (especially "Sweet Emotion" and "Lord of the Thighs," both of which feature some psychotic manglings by Perry and Whitford), sometimes getting just plain barroomy frivolous ("Walk This Way," "Train Kept A' Rollin' ") and the inclusion of two cuts recorded back in 1973 in sweet home Boston helps that "Hey, this is no big deal" feeling come through. One just hopes that Aerosmith doesn't waste the breathing time they've given themselves with the release of this set and doesn't get bogged down in yet another where-do-wego-from-here-now-that-we're-there attack.

Billy Altman

ERIC CARMEN Change Of Heart (Arista)

First the facts:

A record that leads off with something called the "Desperate Fools Overture", which sounds like Chicken George's love theme, is not a rock 'n' roll record, and should not be mentioned in this magazine.

A guy singing the words, "I wonder sometimes what's becoming of me" reminds me of an old Vee Jay package called The International Battle of the Century: The Beatles Versus The Four Seasons. Because this record suggests that the Raspberries' McCartney has become Clive Davis's Frankie Valli.

Eric Carmen has the highest hair around. Higher, often, than Beck's on the back of Beck-Ola.

Eric Carmen's "Heaven Can Wait" is actually based on an old black-and-white song called "Here Comes Mr. Jordan." Eric's version sounds like Chuck Grodin's toupee looks.

Happiness is writing a song which David Cassidy's little brother croons to girls who're still waiting for pubic hair. "Hey Deanie" is the name of the song. Eric inexplicably apes Elton on the verse and risks the Integrity of his bouffant. The bridge is tripe but the chorus is ecstacy. (Remember "Ecstacy"?) The a capella part sounds like old Beach Boys; Bruce Johnston is singing in the background.

"Someday" sounds like recent Beach Boys; Bruce Johnston is singing in the background.

"Haven't We Come A Long Way Baby" sounds an awful lot like James Taylor's "Your Smiling Face" yet is somehow less funky. "End Of The World" resembles the Bee Gee's "Love So Right," but is less macho. Eric wheezes, hyperventilates, and barely starts singing "Baby I Need Your Loving" by the fade-out. I would be embarrassed to sound asthmatic in front of Samantha Sang. But Carmen doesn't seem to care.

Some relevant "Solo Career" information:

Before it became a hit single, "All By Myself' flunked a computerized "hit single" test. Eric's second solo album was called Boats Against The Current because that's sort of part of the last line of The Great Gatsby. But Change Of Heart's theme is Lost Love, which may be a more palatable pop concept than Daisy Buchanan herself. What do you think?

A quick re-cap:

Change Of Heart is melodic, poorly-sung, well-played (by the usual suspects) and feeble-minded.

Now, the rhetorical question:

So why do I play this record a lot and whistle the "Desperate Fools Overture" in the shower?

Wesley Strick

TOM WAITS Blue Valentine (Asylum)

Once I was really drunk in this very fancy bar where tfjey had this woman playing piano, looked like somebody's grandmother, and I kept asking her to play "Body And Soul" but she wouldn't. Maybe she didn't know it. Anyway, when she took a break I slid onto the stool, having decided that I was gonna play it myself. I was a good twelve bars into the song before I remembered that I couldn't play the piano.

I was reminded of this ihcident when I first heard Tom Waits trying to sing "Somewhere" (the one from West Side Story). It took a lot less than twelve bars before I realized that there is no way in the world that Waits can sing that song. His growling low notes that slide into cool highs serve his own compositions beautifully and his off the wall phrasing is the calculated cadence of a well-versed story teller. But "Somewhere" is simple and small and well-known and Waits has nothing to bring to it—he lays all his best qualities on this little ditty and all that happens is that he makes it sound freakish.

Fortunately, "Somewhere" is the first cut on the album so you can always start with the second and sail on thru because the rest of the album is typical Waits—excellent, superb, rough, smooth, absurd, insightful, cold, sentimental, grim, funny and original. Two songs in particular stand out—"Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis" and "$29.00." "Card" is the best short story I've heard in a long time and the bitter twist at the end is expressed with the kind of poignant attitude toward sleaze that is a Waits specialty. O. Henry meets Nelson Algren. I can't tell you anymore about the song 'cause I don't want to give away the plot.

"$29.00" isn't so original. It's the old bit about the young girl who leaves home and, in this case, almost gets snuffed. But what makes it special is Waits' use of a phrase which begins as a small image and thru repetition becomes a large irony. There's no poignancy in this sleaze but there is some humor (there always is, I swear, I've been there) like after a stabbing Waits sings: "The cops here always get there too late/They always stop for coffee on the way to the scene of the crime/Then they always try so hard to look just like movie stars/ They couldn't catch a cold." Perfect.

Do you get the impression that I think Tom Waits is the best thing to come down on the tubes since flavored douches? Well, not everyone agrees with me there. Recently an acquaintance of mine accidentally spritzed beer all over the cover of the new Yes album and then, like a true drunk, start slobbering apologies all over me like he had just killed my mother or my dog or something. I reassured him, saying that it was a lousy album anyway and to just consider the spritzing as a symbolic gesture, which didn't make any sense but he was drunk and I figured he wouldn't think about it too hard. But a few moments later he sez listen man, as long as we're being symbolic, would you mind if I pissed on your Tom Waits album?

Richard C. Walls

ELVIS PRESLEY Canadian Tribute (RCA)

Spooky to consider (but some measure of his isolation and the efficacy of The Colonel's bring-themountain-to-the-prophet gameplan) that, monster international star that Elvis was, he toured only one foreign country, and that just up the block—Canada. There were only three dates, in April and August of '57, his fourth year of performing. By then he had already passed his G.I. physical. The movie Jailhouse Rock was in the works. (He kisses the girl. "How dare you think such cheap tactics would work with me?" she says. "That ain't tactics, honey," says Vince, "it's just the beast in me.") It was the year of Too Much andAllShook Up. If you were an Elvis fan, it was the year Two.

If any live recordings exist from the Canadian appearances, then Red Robinson is the man who knows. Red, a local deejay, was MC for the Vancouver show. His pre-concert interviews, released on a small Canadian label a few years ago as The Elvis Tapes, conclude with a tantalizing statement. "These excerpts from the Elvis Presley show in Vancouver show Elvis at his most vibrant." You wait. There are crowd noises but no excerpts. I suspect they exist, but so far Red's playing it close to the chest on this one. Give, Red.

RCA have chosen to build an album around bits and pieces of these interviews, and ordinarily that would piss me off. Who needs another Greatest Hits album? By now we could all make up our own and trade 'em. Apart from the interview material, the only rare cut here is a lightweight version of Gordon Lightfoot's That's What You Get For Loving Me, available thus far only on the 1973 tape, Fool. The rest of the record is composed of hits from '57 and songs by Canadian artists, most of which Elvis recorded in the early 70's.

But it's impossible to just dismiss this album. RCA in Toronto have remastered all the material and they've done a beautiful job of it. You wonder why the U.S. product is so rarely this good. "Jailhouse Rock" and "Teddy Bear" have

never sounded better—much cleaner than the originals, with the voices moved back some and the instruments up. And one of the loveliest moments on any Elvis record occurs when "Loving You" slides ever-so-gently into Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Until It's Time For You To Go" (and pre-Priscilla meets post-Priscilla head-on, by the way, with worlds of imagined heartache stirring in between). With the exception of an odd, lurching "Put Your Hand In the Hand" and the live, noisy, campy "Little Darlin' ", the material's good and mates up well together.

Like most Elvis interviews this one could slip into the archives without much notice of it ever having been here. I have a favorite moment, though. He's on the spot over all that lurid wiggling. Why not ditch the controversy, some guy asks him, by abandoning rock 'n' roll for other stuff. "No sir, I can't do that," says the King, as though someone had asked him to rat on a buddy. "Anyhow," he says, "to be truthful, I can't do ballads nearly as well as the other kind. I don't have the voice for it." This with "Loving You" only three tracks behind. I wonder what Dino would say of this confession. What a swell lie.

Dallas Mayr

WEATHER REPORT Mr. Gone (Columbia)

I've always been for labelling music, an unpopular attitude among some critics, s6me musicians and practically all record companies. The irritating thing about the anti-label faction is that they almost never give you the real reason for their "just call it music" stance. It was about ten years ago that I received a letter from Bernard Stollman, then head of ESP-Disks (as he still may be for all I know), in which he politely but firmly suggested that I refrain from using the word "jazz" in my reviews since most musicians found the word "perjorative." What he really meant and what most people who eschew labelling mean, is that the term isn't "profitable." I've never heard a rock musician bristle at the word "rock." So I long ago figured a musician could call his music Spot for all I cared 'cause labelling was a good way, via shorthand, of giving a prospective listener some idea of what a musician was dealing in. And I was wrong.

For the past eight years I've been reading and hearing Weather Report described as a premier fusion band and, since fusion conjures up sounds of boring loud guitar solos, wimpy electric piano diddlings, unshaded and pointless virtuoso drumming, and monotonous unmelodic head arrangements, I've managed to avoid listening to Weather Report's music up 'til now (it wasn't easy). But listening to Mr. Gone I find none of the fusion attributes listed above. In fact, I think it'd be a little rash to call Weather Report a fusion band. This is definitely something different.

It's avant-garde disco. No it isn't, though being an old label, freak I'd say that that bit of shorthand is not too far off Jhe mark. The thing that raises Weather Report above the fusion murk isn't a thing at all but rather Josef Zawinul's approach to electronic music makers (talking, about things like the Oberheim Polyphonic Synthesizer) as player, arranger and composer. The sound he gets is upbeat and extroverted but the blendings are subtle and, on first hearing, sometimes chilling. As new sounds should be. Bassist Jaco Pastorious is no slouch at developing new sounds either and aside from his audacious bass playing (sounds like no one ever told him that the bass isn't a lead instrument) he composed and arranged the album's most immediately ingratiating cut, "Punk Jazz."

In the midst of all this futurism, Wayne Shorter sounds somewhat old-fashioned. Whereas his sax solos with Blakey were appropriately brash and the ones with Miles appropriately introspective, with Weather Report they're negligible. He hasn't developed a style as original as the sounds that surround him. I mean, he's still playing jazz for chrissake. And his two compositions on the album—"The Elders" and "Pinocchio"—sound very similar to his mid-60's material.

One way of looking at it is to see Shorter as the group's link to the jazz past, Pastorious as their hotshot connection to a bold present, and Zawinul as their spaced out hookup to the mellow future. But I wouldn't want to label it 'cause I might mislead you. Weather Report sounds like Weather Report and that's it. And "it", as Symphony Sid used to say, is real gone.

Richard C. Walls