The Royal Screw, Part VII

QUEEN Jazz (Elektra)

For a few weeks in 1978, an FM radio station in New York City was trying, earnestly and imaginatively, to create rock ’n’ roll counter-programming. A ratings turnaround didn’t happen fast enough, so it changed its format to something called “the Rock Champions” (i.e., more AOR elitism). This was around the same time that every film clip of The Yankees on television was scored with “We Are The Champions,” and the movie FM attempted to pass off “We Will Rock You” as the “We Shall Overcome” of the rock revolution. I started to despise Queen; a two-sided platinum single of aristocratic, pompous, triumphof-the-will arrogance in 4/4 time (if marches are to resound over the .airwaves, better Ace Frehley’s “New York Groove” any day) summed up for me the worst in royalist rock, and I couldn’t remember more joyless, numbing, contemptuous music reaching a mass audience. Frankly, I was wary of the implications.

I needn’t have been. I still despise Queen, but their music is so absurdly dull on Jazz, so filled with dumb ideas and imitative posturing, that it’s impossible to feel threatened by a barely competent rock group singing “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” (real 70’s-think: can you imagine a Queen Army, a pack of mascara’d lounge lizards walking in lockstep?). “Fun It” is their disco number for Christ’s sake, and it still sounds like a funeral march, with lyrical babble about dynastic movements. And no lead singer who evokes Joel Grey’s slimy Cabaret smarminess and who writes “the first Moroccan rock ’n’ roll song” (it sounds more like his haftorah) can truly be scary, just genuinely awful.

Queen used to make enjoyably ludicrous records like “Liar” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Roy Thomas Baker gave their music an entertaining art-rock veneer that he adapted so successfully for The Cars. But now, even their best jokes—“Let Me Entertain You”, a parody of their own worthlessness; “Dreamer’s Ball,” an extravagantly condescending jazz-blues—are pummeled by the approach to the material. All four of Queen’s writers seem to know what a song is (they’ve learned and stolen from the worst of The Beatles just as Cheap Trick have absorbed and adapted the best) and when to stop, qualities lacking in many of their progressive competitors, and stripped of their pretentious overlays, the tunes on Jazz turn out to be swipes from The Cowsills, “Holly Holy,” Magical Mystery Tour, Disraeli Gears, Mott The Who-ple. If only Queen could lock into the simplest formula without attaching dead weights, if Freddie Mercury weren’t such a screeching bore (even his cock-rock, like “Don’t Stop Me Now,” is flaccid), if their arrangements weren’t on the basic level of Mel Brooks’ “Prisoners Of Love,” then Jazz could be studied as a catalog of pop-rock sources.

Mercury, surprise of surprises, may have turned into the weakest link of the quartet (although the rhythm section does plunge to deeper depths, it does so less frequently); his compositions dominate side one and they are, without exception, earsores: “Mustapha” (the weirdest lead-off track in the history of rock albums?), “Let Me Entertain You” (a pure rocky horrorshow). Guitarist Brian May handles all the jazzing up around here, with his rollin’ and tumblin’ “Dead On Time” and “Dreamer’s Ball,” the only song that even approximates the LP’s title (if Queen pulled a Kiss and released four solo albums, May’d be the best bet (o be their Ace), but as he is also responsible for the sniggery “Fat Bottomed Girls,” it would be a misrepresentation to exempt him from blame.

Maybe Queen thinks all this is funny, that their undisguised condescension (“rock ’n’ roll just pays the bills”) and operatic mannerisms atop a beat more Rockette than rock is entertainment, but it’s not my idea of a good time. For me, their snappiest one-liner is on the inner sleeve: “Written, arranged and performed exclusively by Queen.” As if anyone else would want to.step forward and take credit.

TANYATUCKER TNT (MCA)

We’d be sitting there, my father and I, contemplating the drunk tank, our hoosegow eyes scanning back and forth in a demented dervish to the glee of glug-glug; and we’d trade off playing tunes on the record player. He’d play Merle Haggard and explain why “Fightin’ Side of Me” was important and I’d play “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath and explain why that song was important. You see some father ’n’ son teams go fishin’ or play football and some even go to the movies together that’s what’s called doing “father ’n’ son things,” but me and my father were content with spending weeks in our little backroom playing records and hittin’ the bottle.

So anyway, one particular lost weekend, he decided to get cute, so he starts playing all these modern country western songs I’d never heard before. Most of ’em were mere cavatinas for living on the bside of life, but one stood out like a nova blister on my mind. Thfe song was “Blood Red and Goin’ Down” and it was hot and the little country honey who sang it was Tanya Tucker and she was hot. And right then and there I knew, I mean I just KNEW, that she was going to the be next Jim Morrison. You could see that she was gonna win the tot rock sweepstakes between Lina Zavaroni, Marie Osmond, etc., right off. She was young, but she exuded the aromas of an eventual rock destiny.

With the release of TNT, the new Queen of the Beat has made herself visible and woe unto those who remain skeptics. Encased in vacuform leathers, Tanya Tucker is the Lizard Queen and she can do anything. On this here record, she simply sucks dynamite and blasts the listener with unaltered, adulterated tsunamis of sensual chaos ’n’ candescent displays of canorous rhythms. She breathes fiery life into some of rock’s moldy reliquiae. “Not Fade Away” never sounded better; “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” doesn’t need sunglasses after a visit with Tanya; and her version of “Heartbreak Hotel” takes that song out i of its traditional stance and creates in it an aura of depravity, sexuality and just plain seediness, which in turn takes the song into the stark realms of sheer poetry. The only other person who can do righteous justice to this song is John Cale because he simply knows what it’s all about. Presley didn’t even understand this song the way these two do.

Even though they’ve released “Not Fade Away” as the single, the best song on the album is “Lover Goodbye” and when they wake up and realize the potential of this here lady, “that” is going to be her million seller. The other zipper poppers here are “Angel From Montgomry” and “Texas (When I Die)”. rNT is the crossover country al>um that everybody’s been trying to nake and Tanya (what a great iame, eat reality Patti Smith, she loesn’t have to sing about Tanya, E’s her real name...) Tucker IS the iext big thing. Listen to her and 'ou’ll warina stick blasting caps into 'our cavities and run around naked n a thunderstorm—know what I nean.

Joe (Buffalo—When I Live) Fernbacher

ROD STEWART Blondes Have More Fun (Warner Bros.) '

People used to complain that ■tod didn’t write enough songs for lis early albums, that only when he illed up two sides with his own :unes would he reach his true potential. Well, he’s come close here —only the Four Tops* “Standing in the Shadows of Love” is a cover— and he’s covered all bases but, um, ntensity evidently ain’t his primary priority. “Nowadays what we go for s lyrical things”—you read Rod’s .words in these pages a couple issues back and Blondes back ’em up.

Figures, though. Like ’em or not,* “You’re In My Heart” and “Tonight’s the Night” are what pulled Stewart out of his short-lived slump and made him the platinum pussycat he is today. And come to think of it, “Handbags and Gladrags” is the best-known number of his solo debut (nearly ten years ago) and his main man Sam Cooke was mainly a balladeer too. So if it’s rock ’n’ roll yoil want, you get quality'but not quantity here. Two tracks to be exact: “Blondes Have More Fun” and “Dirty Weekend.” At least Rod’s not just going through the motions when he does get moving and he proves it especially well on the raunchy “Weekend”: “Course I know that you’re my best friend’s girl/But it’s the weekend, I don’t give a hell.” Still two-for-ten ain’t takin’ no title.

Yet the man gets away with it. Not only does he have the Voice and the Looks, he’s got brains plus the ability and desire to share enough of himself so that the bullshit goes down easier. Only on “Last Summer” and “Ain’t Love A Bitch” does he cross the line into MOR on mucous territory; the rest of the time, contact and context win out. For instance, on the “thankyou-for-putting-up-with-me” tune, “The Best Days Of My Life,” Rod admits to being insufferable (though he also says, “We ain’t got money” —believe what you wanna) and* comes across introspective and apologetic. Then his ego rebounds (as the drums become more pronounced) on the following track, “Is That All The Thanks 1 Get?”, a jab at a former lover’s betrayal; put together, these two tracks put across the bittersweet theme of the album.

So Rod’s vinyl vulnerability may be a bit calculated but he does make it fun now and then. Like on “Attractive Female Wanted” when he admits to tiring of published pink pulchritude and wanting the Real Thing. He’ll share everything he’s got—his records, his color TV, his single bed, his toothbrush!?! Whadda jerk, you think; sounds like something your weird cousin Harold would try...and then you’re hooked, cause Rod’s come across like one of the family. Sneaky, huh? Never trust a blonde.

Michael Davis

EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER Love Beach (Atlantic)

Tommy crammed the double cardboard down in the rim of the already overflowing trash can, then bent over to, pick up one of two record holding paper sleeves leaning against an upraised toe of his Converse tennies. Subtracting the vinyl disc within, he nonchalantly tossed it, frisbee-styie, down the length of the alley, not bothering to watch it bounce feebly off the aged red brick at the alleyway’s end.'Tucking the empty sleeve under his left arm, he drew the second sleeve up with his right and placed its contents into the former, crumpling the latter into a wad and stuffing it into the trash. Kneeling down on the litter-stained pavement, he removed froma paper sack an album cover and slid the mismatched record and sleeve home. It was a weekly ritual practiced with blunt ease, just as the shoplifting which had secured the new Clash LP had been. Tqmmy would, after zipping up his bulky ski jacket, now carry said disc home to the house of his father, Harry Dattsun, the pop music critic for the city’s morning daily.

To some of his school mates, Tommy was a fortunate son: in the prime of teenhood, the beneficiary of all sorts of promotional loot and paraphernalia. But Tommy saw it differently. His old man was a fuckhead who never brought anything home that Tommy would honor by using as butt wad. He constantly •ridiculed, besmirking witlessness, the albums and bands that meant most to his son. A duplistic print swine who had aged disgracefully. Pausing at the front entrance of the family’s hollow comfort, he was aware that the old man would be home already. He poured fingers through his neatly-cropped hairstyle, and felt a momentary tinge of anxiety. Nonetheless, he smiled craftily to himself. He had the bastard foxed. Dad detecting the hard reality of his eye’s apple was a remote likelihood, something similar to God discovering that the boy Jesus was a mainliner. It would make getting caught worthwhile.

“A little warm for the old ski jacket,” Harry Dattsun said, smiling benignly as Tommy pushed the door shut. “Aw, you know Mom. Sniffled at breakfast and-she made me wear it.” “Yeah,” Harry said, arching his eyebrows pointedly, “well enough to know that she’s gonna be none too pleased with that pants knee. ” Tommy shrugged contritely, thinking you bitch. “Well, that’s a boy. So what record did you buy this week?” His offspring edged the album out of the sack so his father could see the three idiot grinning figures on its cover. “Oh, yeah. I’m giving that a B. Maybe a B+.

' What do you say we go down to they den and play it on the system?” Harry bulged his eyes in a ridiculous manner, hoping to be funny. “Smoke a little weed?” Tommy frowned disinterest. “Gotta lotta homework.”

“Maybe later ,” Harry said to himself as his boy trudged down the shag-carpeted hallway to his room. He was proud of his son. Tommy didn’t go for that paranoia shit like a lot of other kids. He inherited his taste from his daddy, he thought. A good kid. Not like those three hoodlums that had been caught pilfering cans of paint thinner from the hardware store in the shopping center down the street. Sure, one of them got away, but he’d be caught. Probably the same bunch who’d been shoplifting the neighborhood stores crazy. He was luckier than a lot of fathers. His kid was alright.

Safe in his sanctuary, Tommy sighed extravagantly. What an asshole. He set the sack by the stereo, alongside three other LPs. Road to Ruin inside the last Yes cover, Parallel Lines hidden in Octave jacket, a Dead Boys in a live Kansas. After checking to see that his sniffing goods had remained uncovered in his closet, he laid down on his bed, hands folded behind his head, wondering if his buddies would narc on him. So what if they did? He’d rat on them in a minute. Besides, getting busted wouldn’t be so bad. It’s not a question of who gets caught with the goods, he philosophized. It’s who’s willing to break probation.

j.m. bridgewater

J. GEILS BAND Sanctuary (EMI America)

Yeah, and once you get inside the church, be prepared for little more than a few less-than-rousing choruses of “I’ll Have A New Label, I’ll Have A New Life.” Actually, just about all you can recommend on this new J. Geils Band recordnow that the great name change experiment is over—are the vocals, for Peter Wolf continues to earn his keep while the rest of the band just keeps their eye on the punch-out clock. It seems by no means an accident that the one really memorable track here is “Teresa”, a slow ballad with a lot of harmonies and the only music on it is Seth Justman’s piano.

You see, the problem with this band, a band that a whole lot of people thought were gonna develop into our own real American version of the Stones back when they busted out in the early 70’s, has simply been one of diminishing returns from the musicians ih the band. After those first two albums, the J. Geils Band has continued to ride over and over the same small bit of turf. Except, of course, for 1974’s Ladies Invited, their one honest attempt to break out of the rut and that was the record that not only stands up as their best LP ever, but also is probably the biggest reason for their decline; when it bombed, the group headed for the bunker and they’ve never climbed out. Most of the blame for all this probably lies at the feet of Magic Dick and Mr. Geils himself, for neither of them have made any progress in their roles as soloists or fill fillers—in fact, they seem to have regressed. The last time I saw the group live was some 2% years ago, and you kind of sensed that Little Peter was indeed being thrown to the wolves, for everyone else in the band raised nary a bead of sweat. The easy part about being in a band with a good front man js that you can hide and he can’t, which leads to a “Well, everyone’s watching him anyway so why not let him do all the work” philosophy. And that’s exactly what the last four or five J. Geils Band albums have sounded like. So stop the sermon Peter, grab hold of that pulpit and smash it over their heads. Maybe it’ll wake them up.

Billy Altman

DIRE STRAITS (Warner Bros.)

The English new wave continues to diversify, which is good news for all of us. Dire Straits are less artrockers than they are academicrockers (though that designation is more an explanation of their origins than a criticism of their worthwhileenough music). Seems as though Dire Straits founder-vocalist-songwriter-lead guitarist Mark Knopfler was a journalist and college English instructor before he committed himself fully to rock music, and it also happens that Dire Straits got their break through rock critic/historian Charlie Gillett hearing their tapes, and arranging a record contract.

So Dire Straits have plenty of rockwriter credentials to appeal to you-know-who, but even after acknowledging that fraternal background, I can’t get over how much Dire Straits sound like the potent Steve Gibbons Band, who achieved their current state of rock’n’roll grace through years and years of the grungiest dues-paying experiences imaginable.

I can’t conceive of any other rockers consciously attempting to model themselves on the eccentric Gibbons, so I’ve got to assume that Dire Straits have simply come to the same comprehension of contemporary English life, through alternative means. “Sultans of Swing”, a gentle satire of trad jazzers carrying on their obsession despite all the styles of British pop that’ve come and gone since the Beatles, is particularly like Gibbons’ songs in its instant-color characterizations, and its sharp-eyed detail. But there are echoes of Gibbons all through the set, from title-concepts like “Water of Love”, to Mark Knopfler’s continually Gibbonesque vocal inflections; like Gibbons, Knopfler lavishes a warm, homely voice over his beloved London characters.

The band, which includes Mark’s brother David on rhythm guitar, provides an accomplished, subtly rhythmic background for Mark Knopfler’s incisive vignettes of the London scene. This is a modest debut album, but one which doesn’t fail to deliver on any of its promises.

All that established, why do I keep receiving an image of Dire Straits’ music as the cool-jazz equivalent of the late 70’s, with bunches of alienated intellectuals sitting around in clubs, thinking how perfectly DkS. sums up (their) quiet lives? I’m not sure, but maybe Mark Knopfler (or Steve Gibbons, for that matter) can address a composition to that very question, next album around.

Richard Riegel

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN Totally Hot (MCA)

Olivia Newton-John lost her virginity on the cover of her Greatest Hits album, released last year. Inside the grooves, though, she was caught begging sadistic jukebox pimps to quit playing a Bowie/Eno tune called “D17” and assuring Elizabeth Montgomery that “you know where I am.” But Totally Hot is the first O N-J product to hit these mean streets since Danny Zuko took Sandy the way of all flesh suddenly last summer. In the interim, Livvy herself has moved onto kinkier pastures. More in next paragraph.

Any ordinary woman would be severely limited in her ordinary activities with rayon bandana wrapped around her jawbone. But our Olivia is no ordinary lass. Lo, she can work wonders (see startling inner sleeve) even while celebrating The Great Train Robbery's Golden Anniversary. Here’s the rub, however—she kinda sounds like she’s singing thru the bandana on some of the tracks here.

Take “Gimme Some Lovin’,” a swell inspiration that shoulda stayed in the can. I don’t know, maybe it was Honeysuckle’s widescreen opportunity that opened up new vistas of low-key histrionics. The polite melismatics, phrased in cries and whispers—such is not the stuff of Steve & Muff Winwood, Spencer et al., and never the twain etcetera.

Eric Carmen our Lovely can handle; Liv’s “Boats Against The Current” capsizes the pathetic fallacy that life is anything but a bowl of busted cherries.

Achtung, this is a tremendous achievement. Adam Mitchell’s “Dancin’ ’Round and ’Round” is surely the hookiest and heartbreak -ing-est Country Pop number on plastic since Linda California put ball-bearings under Elvis Costello’s dirty bucks. In fact, should Jennifer Warnes sublet Aleister Crowley’s bachelor digs for one lost weekend, she couldn’t warble any more wonderful. Of course, “Talk To Me,” a Reichian rebuke to group therapy, is snappier than Cheryl Ladd’s version of “I’ll Come Running.” Call me a ruthless genetic engineer, but blondes do have more fun—they don’t experience free-floating anxiety in terms of passive aggression. And they have rich boyfriends, too.

So anyway, Olivia NewtonJohn’s old producer John Farrar arranged a metric bunch of tracks here with sizzling steals from everywhere. And then he cooked up the whole concoction with enough Aphex Aural Excitement to cause acute performance anxiety. “Gimme what you got,” Our Lady of the Lowlands chirps on the title cut, “ready dr not.” And believe me, them that’s got shall get.

Wesley Strick

DEAN MARTIN Once In A While (Reprise)

I have much to say about Dean Martin, and it is all good. Here, first, some facts.

Dean Martin played the best drunk in movie history, in Some Came Running (1958).

The Dean Martin Comedy Hour (1965-74) was the best non-blackand-white series in the history of television. Since the Golddiggers' left us, there has been no sex, and we have known emptiness.

Although stockings have been vanquished by pantyhose a few years before, Dino saw to it that the first Matt Helm film, The Silencers (1966), featured Stella Stevens in black nylons and garterbelt.

And the music! The music like the languid, endless rain of life’s colors—taupe, beige,.off-black! It is no secret that Dean Martin has influenced more singers in the hep idiom than any other man alive. He taught Elvis the dramaturgy of sincerity, Jerry Lee the powers of liquorish decrescendo, Jim Morrison the nuances of erotic estrangement, and Randy Newman how to do his hair.

Once In A While, Dino’s first album in more than six years, proves that il padrone (as Morrison called him) is still the master.

There is great continuity in Dino’s vision, and, as with all true artists, his life and his vision are one. Upon hearing “Twilight On The Trail,” the longest song the man has ever recorded, I, could not help thinking of the 1966 TV Guide interview with Dino, in which he foretold, “I’ll wind up on a ranch someday. I like cattle and horses.” The vision, like the tumbleweed, rolls on.

Dean Martin has wrought of mediocrity an art as fine and powerful as Dante’s. In “It’s Magic,” the Sammy Cahn dry-hump hymn from 1948, Dino is not merely mellow. He is mellow unto decomposition, transforming magic into a metaphor of ennui. “The Day You Came Along” becomes grim and foreboding. Dino spits the word ’twas, to tell us he has as much right to employ it as John Milton ever had. “That Old Gang Of Mine” is frightening. For a man so capable of conviction to utter such sentiment without conviction—let lesser men call it irony.

Above all, Dean Martin is a classicist. In these days of way-out trends, of punk, of disco, and of socalled progressive jazz, who else but Dino would record two songs written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, the authors of “Underneath The Harlerh Moon’? Who else would pause to pay homage to the dead Bing with a version of “Only Forever’? Who else, indeed.

Nick Tosches

GRATEFUL DEAD Shakedown Street (Arista)

The Grateful Dead used to play a brand of music that was exciting, viable, hardly ever complacent, and most certainly dangerous. Times have changed, and so have the Grateful Dead. Ever since the release of Workingman’s Dead, they’ve allowed themselves the sin of accomplishment, slipping into the swamps of acceptance and the dire straits of mega-grouphoodery. They’ve given up the initial innocence of their art for the glory of their bankbooks, which’d normally be fine and good—nobody likes to be a starving artist—but in striving for the monetary they’ve let the spark of their music die out. Simply put, the G ratefulDead are not as good as they used to be, they have not grown with the age, and they’ve digressed and flummoxed a whole generation of listeners into a fandom that’s wallowing in the manipulation of history and the joys of “the way it used to be...”

Shakedown Street is musically competenTbut so what, there are a lot of groups and LFs that are “musically competent.”-This particular shakedown is just another lazy exercise for a band of musicians who know they can make more interesting music, but don’t have the ambition to do so anymore. Too bad. If these guys had to deal with the real honest energies of the 70’s they’d wilt up and become their own moniker. They could hunker onto the stage and wail off the right kinds of music, the kind they’d set forth back in the heyday of heydays, BUT NO, they won’t, they’d rather let their brains and talents seep through their fingers like so much oatmeal.

People ask me why I dislike the Dead with such a passion. Part of the reason you’ve just read. The other part is the simple fact that they used to represent a major part of a lot of people’s lives. They changed people and they were able to get them through rough times, the days of peace grunts ’n’ acid flame-ons; the confusions of anarchy were the foundations for their musical spirit. It’s not much fun to be deceived by something you once had faith in, and for those who are just jumping on the Dead wagon, be wary, these guys are tricky; they like to betray.

Okay, that was all aesthetics and politics. Musically, despite everything, there are a few modestly interesting moments on Shakedown Street. One of them is “Fire on the Mountain” and the other is...on second thought take that few and make it a single interesting moment, this is the stuff zomboids are made out of, the stuff that forges the iron dreams of fascism...figure that one out between tokes, you nitrousflaked protoplasmoids.

P.S. If any of you Deadouts out there in the flatlands wanna argue with me about the efficacy of bein’ a Dead head, I’ll meet you on any street corner and we can do nitrous bottles at fifty paces; one word of warning though—I don’t fight fair... snicker, snicker.

Joe (So I’m Obnoxious) Fernbacher