VILLAGE PEOPLE Go West _(Casablanca) _

First of all, I'm pretty upset about the big change imposed upon Alex Briles simply for the sake of a song. Maybe Alex liked being a GI and didn't want to swab the deck for producer/Village People mastermind Jacques Morali. But before we get carried away with concentric circle discussions of fascism from behind the control board and disco as conformist goose-stepping, let's assume—hypothetically, of course, that Alex made the suggestion himself, bored with his jungle combat gear as he may well have been ("Hey, man—now I can wear either white with blue trim or blue with white trim. I might even get a promotion and a new hat if I stick it out. Anchors aweigh, Jacques!"). What's next? Hot Cop Victor Willis might want to move to the bench, get into a little chief justicing, or maybe head north and become a Mountie (they've,got black hockey players now so why not?); David Hodo could head for Jelfystone Park and take up forest rangering; Glenn Hughes might trade in his leathers for elbow and

knee pads and join the Roller Derby as a jammer. And what of poor Felipe, stuck with those little bells around his feathered and moccasined tootsies? Sure, he got credit for percussion on the last album, but is he happy? Does he feel fulfilled? Every man has his needs, right?

But identity crisis isn't the biggest problem that the Village People are facing right now, which brings us to the second of all— namely, THIS RECORD IS NOT EVEN FUNNY! Can you believe it, these guys have sold out? Boggles the mind. The whole thing started as a rip-off of Christopher Street (let's quote from the new bio which,

unlike the album, is filled with more than a mere quota of yoks: "Morali, a Frenchman, was inspired by the varied lifestyles and role-playing he saw in New York's famous Greenwich Village. For him, it represented all the male American images that, somewhat romantically, Europeans have come to idolize..."), moved from semi-serious to totaHly ludicrous cartoon capers, went as far out there as one could hopewith Cruisin' (forget "YMCA," even though it was easily the coolest AM hit since "Walk On The Wild Side" for. sheer "I don't believe they're playing that on the radio" subversive silliness value. It was nothing compared to "The Women," an homage to every famous fag hag of the last thirty years, with, Willis yelling ^out cheers for everyone from Liza to Lucy to Jackie to Zsa Zsa. Or my favorite, "Ups And Downs," about bein' hooked on. , pills—"I take one when I work out to help me reach my peak/I take one late at night to help me get to sleep"), and now that they're'an institution, there's hardly any double entendres of even semi-outrageous stuff to be found on Go West.

Hell, the Navy coulda used "In The Navy" as a promo song. As Glenn Hughes puts it (back to the

Oceanography WHAT? 111

bio for this one): "It's real, it's basic, it's clean cut, it's All-American." So, whereas Cruisin' may have sounded like the Broadway show that Roger DeBris may have followed Springtime For Hitler with in The Producers II, Co West is little more than a bad summer stock version of Up With People, complete with references to finding one's own space (so Billy Joel hasn't cornered the market on the musical articulation of that important precept of modern living, after all), universal love ("Citizens Of The World" has Willis asking us all to trust one another as human beings for the sake of our children —"Children do what they see/They looks at you and at me'!) and the importance of taking time off from work ("Get Away"). In other words, a celebration of positive, boring robot-functioning existence. No more roommates keeping you up 24 hours a day with new dance steps, no more Joan Crawford fan clubs, no more pills or adventures in the Y. Just your basic "me decade" pop for the masses. "We're redefining 'macho' in a positive sense," says Randy Jones. "Previously, it meant that a man who was macho had to put other ^.people down to build up his selfimage. For us, macho is an inner strength that everyone can draw on to face the world assertively and independently." See ya at the selfish' armed forces recruiting office in the morning, Randy. Whips welcome.

RON WOOD Gimme Some Neck ■_(Columbia)_

The hair and the scarves tell the story. Gan you think of anybody who has tried harder, or for more years, to be Keith Richards? It is getting to be embarrassing, this aging, respectably successful minor rock star still parading around with the rooster-do, flaunting the whatme-worry lifestyle and gypsy approach to fashion, all in certain emulation of the cat many of us still wish we could be.

Fortunately for him, Ron Wood finally did get into the Rolling Stones, so now he can at least stand on the stage of sqme huge arena and figure that some of the kids sitting up in the rafters without binoculars are going to peer down squinty-eyed and mistake him for' Keith. Hey, it's something—more than you're gonna get, most likely—assimilation into the only great middle-aged rock 'n' roll band in the world.

Now that he really is one of the Rolling Stones, Wood comes out of the closet on Gimme Some Neck: this is off-season Some Girls

Stones, pure and simple, and I've got no complaints.

For Stones fans, Neck is musthear research material,* mainly because it demonstrates just how important Wood's joining was to the band's transformation from a decadent, roccoco, dead-end hulk to the more streamlined, efficient and viable vehicle of Some Girls. But let's not lose sight of the hair thing, either: Neck is peppered with more overt Stones poses than Wood has allowed in his music before. Like - F.U.C. Her," your basic Starfucker knockoff about the girl who never goes anywhere without her jar of Vaseline; you wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole, but with your ten-inch pole, maybe in a pinch. Or "Come To Realise," which 'works the same jaded vein by simply flipping the attitude over. Sample: "Well I almost made you come...[pregnant pause]...come to realise." Elsewhere, "Same old excuse, musta had too much to drink...tell me, am I good or am I bad?"

The haute sleeze rock star posing aside, this is mostly very straight-ahead stuff in a more Stones than Faces vein. The guitar work, all of it by Wood (don't be misled by the inevitable hyping of Keith's presence on this record; he shows up once, as a background vocalist), is sharp and edgy without much of the old Faces'-sloppiness^ posing as balls. It is too bad that his pretty, idiosyncratic solo dobro rendition of the traditional "Delia" is abbreviated to a 30-second interlude between songs. And certainly it doesn't hurt that the best drummer in the biz, Charlie Watts, plays on most of the tracks.

Unfortunately, into this otherwise tight, hot little package creeps one enormous, venomous worm; one that seems to infect a lot of your "mature" rockers. Its name is Bob Dylan, and in a single stroke at the beginning of Side Two, it threatens to destroy all of Wood's credibility as a cool cat. The sad facts: the song, "Seven Days," was penned "exclusively" for Woody (in 1976, it turns put—now that's planning); according to the promo notes, it is "the. stand-out track here"—read "single"—and, as the notes also helpfully point out, "you'll probably find it hard to believe that Mr. Dylan didn't drop by' the studio to do'the singing himself."

Can any right-minded individual explain to me this morbid need for the endorsement of a truly farty middle-aged self-caricature which seems to abide in .the minds of otherwise clear-headed musicians? It would be one thing if they were getting masterpieces from Mr. D that would singlehandedly salvage flagging careers, but this is, in typical fashion, no more than a first draft of Dylan's "Changing Of The Guards" from the hilarious, chickchanting Street Legal. Same tune, and same concept, only scaled down from "16 years" (chicks: "sixteen-YEARS!") to a mere seven spins around the polar axis.

No accounting for taste is the best I can say about the inclusion of this dribble; let's write it off as a bad case of initial Malibu infatuation syndrome. I only hope that by the time. you read this, you haven't already sealed your judgement qf Ron Wood's best solo, work to date with the third-hand chewing gum of this unrepresentative "single."

Kevin Doyle

PERE UBU Dub Housing _(Chrysalis)_

This record is a mess. It's energetic and bent, a mess of new ideas flung down with punk heat. It's also hilarious. As when seemingly ran-

dom sounds and phrases are combined with elemental but dictatorial structures, creating nothing out of something, an old Ohio pastime.

Make no mistake, it's a good record, real good. Pere Ubu leads the blurt parade of expressionistic rock, possessing Jhe necessary artistry and imagination to elicit from the listener a profound and deeply felt "Huh?" (as well as a conservative "Ha!" and a pensive "O..."). Their music arrives aggressive and alienating so that putting the record on is a bit like walking into the middle of a performance where dozens of basic and familiar precepts have been examined and found wanting during the first half. Not an unusual feeling when entering the world of fresh avant-gardist and those used to such plunges will know to hang in there until the new intentions assert themselves. Others can just dig the weirdness.

Along with its pervasive aggres-, siveness, Ubu has its tender side (so does a week-old corpse) and "Codex" reveals if in all its slimey glory as the guitar keeps coming back to the same three sad notes and lead vocalist David Thomas warns "I think about you all the time." Tender but spooky..Spookyness seems to be an Ubu preoccupation—theJitle cut is a haunted house, or living house, piece while "Thriller!" is an eerie sound portrait of insect lust with what sounds like Boris Karloff stuck deep in the bowels of the mix. It's a common, avant-garde manifestation, spookyness is, a»4f the discarding of old forms of expression drive the practitioners into nameless depressions. Maybe Ubu's trying to tell ute that it's scarey out there, swallowing the foul horrors of urban freedom and trying to keep a steady beat. Maybe they keep their synthesizer out in the rain to get, a more warped sound. Maybe.

Despite their commitment to new forms, Ubu hasn't gone completely past parodv/S,"(Pa) Ubu Dance Party" has a classic cheezy rock 'n' soul riff with equally classic dry hump white soul backup singers doing "Nee Nee Nah Nah" (or "Didi Nah Nah", whatever) while lead Thomas does his Mrs. Miller sitting on a corkscrew routine. Pretty hysterical stuff. All of it.

Richard C. Walls

LOWELL GEORGE Thanks III Eat It Here '_(Warner Bros.)__

Lowell George's solo platter has been fueling the rumor mills longer than Apocalypse Now. For some Hollywood-watchers, George's project is the more importantpne— every time Little Feat's taken a false step over the past few years, some George auteurist claims that Lowell's saving up inspiration for his solo album. Now that it's he;re— cast of thousands and all—they'll

no doubt be lining up to sweep the cutting-room floor.

Which must be groin-deep in tape. Considering that Thanks III Eat It Here (its title is a rerun of the intended monicker for Little Feat's Sailin' Shoes) was years in the making, and that it clocks in at only 31 minutes, there must be bushels of outtakes. Yet the reasoning behind the nine songs that finally made it to vinyl is inscrutable..Five songs are covers (by Allen Toussaint, Rickie Lee Jones, Ann Peebles, Fred Tackett and Jimmy Webb), three are collaborations (LG with Van Dyke Parks, Fred Tackett or Jadques Levy), and one's an everything-but-the-chorus rewrite of 'Two Trains" from Feat's Dixie Chicken. If George was hoarding new material—well, he's still hoarding it. Ditto for his renowned spinal-toetapping slide guitar playing; he allows himself exactly two slide breaks, a tame eight bars in the cover of Rickie Lee Jones' "Easy Money" and a dramatic 16 bars in Ann Peebles' "Can't Stand The Rain." That's all, folks.

By default, then, Thanks... is a showcase for LG as vocalist, A&R man and producer. As product, it'll do. The arrangements are neat, well-executed, the whole professional schtick. Only the Ann Peebles cover is misguided; its brilliant Missa Luba intro gives way to a mindlessly jaunty New Orleans horn arrangement. George has some clever ideas, like the way "Cheek To Cheek" ("to cheek Chiquititita") deploys tremolo mandolin to match the built-in lyric stutter. And the remake of "Two Trains" is just as kinetic as the original, using all-new riffs. (Unfortunately, the heartsick original lyrics have been exchanged for rhythmic doggerel.) Since George is one of the great white-boy vocalists, the singing is unimpeachable, full of his twenty-notes-per-syllable moan-and-groan melismas. Yes, he's sung crazier with Little Feat—but not much crazier.

What's missing is a world view. George gave Little Feat gonzo truckers, cagy hookers and manicdepressive desert rats to conjure with, yet on Thanks... his closest brush with lowlife is "Easy Money"— not his own song. The album's only a grab-bag: competent covers; a superb song about procrastination

called "20 Million Things, which is kin to "Willin' " and "Long Distance Love"; and two exotic "huh?"-inducers, "Cheek To Cheek" and "Himmler's Ring." No sense, no inspired nonsense, no apocalypsejust a fizzled album Lowell should try to remember to forget.

_ Jon Pareles

DICKIES The Incredible Shrinking Dickies (A&M) __ Roll over, David Seville.

Incredible Shrinking Dickies is the fastest record ever made. It'sso fast, you can't tap your toes to it unless you have hummingbird feet. The speedy whine it creates will have all the dogs in the neighborhood wanting to lick your speakers. And by the time you finish reading the song titles, side one has been over for ten minutes.

But check out those titles! "Eve Of Destruction," "She," "Paranoid"— all proven ruts that, when jammed into Dickieform, give a whole new meaning toJhe idea of taking in the situation at a glance. Or rather at a blink. "She," Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart's vital legacy to mankind, zips by so quickly that the "hey!" parts are reduced to a fast "h." The protest hijinx of "Eve" are chopped into a cleansing babble that makes the line about Selma, Alabama, sound like Semolina Baba, or is it Salmonella 'Nana? And the fearless Dicks even rush Black Sabbath's famed mud-cry into fiendishly Hl-considered snappydom. Of course, if they were really fearless, they'd have done "The Pusher."

The original tunes are good and speedy too, kind of like old Who records in the hands of cheetahtorturers. Keep your ears perked and you'll hear tunes, chords, incomprehensible inspirational verse, ■ all that stuff. Obvious single pick is "Poodle Party," whichsums up the merits of doggy-style in a concise 1:09. G'mon, Rosalie, this is one the kids can really get behind!

BUT!, the United-Nations is wondering, are they faster than the speed of obsolescence? Let's wait until Dickies XII—it'll be out in another five minutes, or so. (Suggested reading time: an hour ago, slowpoke!) Where were you back in 72 Was David Bowie the man for you

Rick Johnson

SUZI QUATRO If You Knew Suzi... (RSO)

Yqu died your hair blue And painted your d*ck Well all you sqitares really make me sick.

Are you a square

What's the length of your hair

Are you a wimp

Just a power-pop simp?

"Are You A Square"—The Angry Samoans (®! 1979 Haizmap Music)

Square Suzi Quatro touches base on all four corners of square-city with an album of quadrilateral nonentities (orginals) and rhombohedral stomach-holds (covers) that STINK STINK STINK! Wimp, simp, gimp and limp are what this powerpbp shrimp's attempts at easylistening drek qualitatively reduce to.

The energy level throughout this RSO turkey comes off as positive a life-affirming force as the model railroads on Sid Vicious' arms. An exploration of Tom Petty's (a male square) "Breakdown" does just that, breaks down bland and gratingly INSIPIp, while a bass-attenuated version of the Kinks' "Tired Of Waiting" tires of waiting equally transparent and vague ad nauseam. BORING.

Moreover, so-called "originals" here are faceless animals of selfteffacing and listlessly weak inferiority. Four Chinn-Chapman comps (including AM's top ten single "Stumblin' In") vascillate between . gray and bleak; no power, no punch —not a hook. Occasional left jabs of dentist office-inspired muzak's the only aesthetic sparring Chinn, Chapman and Quatro seem comfortable with. The latter's own (cowritten with "guitarist" Len Tuckey) "Suicide," "Wiser Than You," and "Non-Citizen" in particular reek.

Quatro can't sing, never could ("48 Crdsh" and "Can The Can" of last century at least employed frantic Janis Joplinoid moves to cover for such inadequacies); her pathetic attempt to chirp serious, together with Chapman's lackluster

production of guitar-castrated foundations, conjures the ultimate archetype of feces-rock: "Stumblin' In" stumbles in and out of the foulest, most wretchedly boring and constipated MOR-mindrot maggots the. likes of Helen Reddy and Olivia Newton-John wouldn't sniff at. "Male singer" Chris Norman trades vocal honors with Quatro on this one, a country-styled duet glutting tedium on top of nowhere backing tracks and "I Got You Babe" testi-' monial.

All in all, there is not one vindicating, tolerable or endurable moment on this two-sided abortion; anyone who likes this record's gotta be an A-l creep. If You Knew Suzi... is music by squares for squares in Squaresville, U.S.A. Dig?

Gregg Turner

VAN HALEN Van Halen II _(Warper Bros.) __

When Van Halen is soarin', when they're creatin' massive disturbances in the molecular structure of the cosmos, when they're lurching forward from the frosted mists of an alien suburban haze, when they're

magnetizing, when they've got all those lug-nut rioiseasms working just right, they can chip the rust off any satellite. Why is Van Halen a group hysterical enough to cleanse the fading soul of an aged metal mahatma? Well, while so many other bands of the h & m ilk are busy careening about the inner philosophical workings of machinehead, the VH's are ignoring said workings and not so quietly weaving a noisy chastity belt for a world intent on destroyin' its only prophy-1 lactic1 against radiation impregnation. Y'see, this little orb is surrounded by many layers radiation. The fits) layer is the dreaded Van Allen Belt, the second the not-so-dreaded Van Cliburn Belt, the third the ever-yawnful Van Heflin Belt, followed by the slowly-developing girdle named (drum roll) the VAN HALEN BELT (rimshot).

On their first LP, the VH's ran with the devil and created the next-, to-last big thing—the atomic qunk, the nuclear nerd, the radioactive rapscallion, the—you get the meaning. So on this second eagerlyawaited release, they've got quite a lot to live up to, and they do crack away at the wailing wall of noise to a certain extent, only this time around they're a little too subtle and a little too clean and a little too' cautious and a little too boring.

Following their soon-to-be-developed trend of doing cover versions of good old songs (sort of like a .comedian stealing material, which ain't all that unusual seeing as how -it's been found out through the

grapevein that Ed Roth, aka,the Face, is none other than a blood relative of Uncle Miltie Berle hisself), Van Halen begins its attack with ah absolutely cringing version of "You're' No Good," originally a pop love song, then transformed into an angst-laden feminist dirge, and finally transmortified into an anthem of misogyny. It woyks if you've just mass consumed 1^ cases of beer and nine bottles of no. 10 Valiums and you can't pick up that beautiful, blonde over there at the bar because you can't figure out how to make your mouth work. Frustration translated into anger ip dn emotional display of the old physics addage (taugh^to me a long time ago by an old physic), every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Hubba hubba.

Following all this aural sensuality comes this summer's BIG hit, "Dance The Night Away," a song that cooks like a body under the sun. It reminds me of high moons, no wind and car accidents. The other truly noteworthy toon emerging like a Van Gogh amidst the Walter Lantzs on this set is "D.O. A." (not another cover, nobody has that much nerve), a nice quiet . cavatina to the bliss of oblivion and the sigh of brain rot.

Van \ Haleb, the group, not the Belt, are here to stay, so we might as well get used to it; at least Roth is better than Jini Dandy, and those Van Halen brothers sure can make good faces, which is a primary part of the ever-complex definition of heavy metal sonicology. Put simply within the barbed-wire history of the movement of metal, this bunch isn't as good as early Montrose or the Black Sabbath boys, but they are a sight better than, 80% of the other slag passing itself off as metal music. This year's II LP is good prod-rock and all the udderless drones will glom the glint and drool the decibel when Van Halen hits the airwaves like Kronos crunching sbme poor Mexican with a metallic plunger...yadda yadda.

Joe (He Stares In Teenage) Fernbacher

TOM ROBINSON BAND TRB Two

i • -_(Harvest)_,

Maybe you think of Tom Robinson as a) a unique rock polidicker who exhibited snits and snatches of a keen sing-songy sensibility on his Pqwer In The Darkness premiere elpee; b) a pplickdecal sermonizer whose game is more of crusading humanism than grown-up, powe*r in the money vaults politics' c) the fella who inspired Mitch Ryder to come up with the germ of a national anthem for r 'n' r gays and heteros alike: "Cherries poppin' in the dawn's early light" (beats the hell out of bombs bursting overhead); d) nothing more than a regal-toned fag with a lotta ambition and a calculating digit in the wind of his homeland's unsteady weather. All of the above, some of the above, none of the above; pick 'em and lick 'em, but do it on yer own time. My outline says to cut the crap and get on with TRB 2 itself.

First off, the new album is more diversified than .its predecessor; one plus point of which "is that ya won't be confused that the title of every track is "Up Against The Power Of The Long Winter Darkness You Never Saw." Another is a resultant availability of varied terrain for the intoxicating organ-izing of new TRB keyboardist Ian Parker, whose style is akin to an out-of-his-beard Garth Hudson mating up vyith Procol Hairum's earlyon "Long Gone Gdek." And,a third is an infusion of blackness into the musical proceedings, with the jotular "Black Angel" (no Angela • Davis pin-up, but a cup of brown sugar in the mix) featuring a Holy Ghostette backing chorus, and the boozy "why did the homosexual cross the road?" of "Crossing Over The Road" (answer: 'cos he wasn't no closet chicken) done up with a Traffic-ish, maybe latter period Family, sort of pull, Johnny Walkered along by some Parker piano that'd make Nicky Hopkins proud. Predictably, in the scheme of style expansion there is a loss of immediate impact, the diffusion of focus syndrome. Which raises its middlin' head in "All Night y All Right" (the lyrical suffixation that curdles the milk of yer imagination doesn't help) and "Why Should I Mind" (a rhetorical question that burps inconsequentially), but is most noticeable in "Days Of Rage," a thumper that oughta be a scorcher. And a variant effect is the inclusion of potty material, evidenced by "Law And Order," which is camped up enough to make a wizened Mtiswell Hillbilly yearn for the days of Soho, a can of Coke, and Lola in his lap.

The anti-apathy Robinson/Peter Gabriel collaboration, "Bully For You," will no doubt receive the most attention of the LP's cuts, and with its "All Day And All Of The Night" derived chords leading into familiar Gabriel melodic ground, and the implicit irony of its "We don't need no aggravation," it's an effective performance, but more of an ass-pincher than a ball-grabber.

The mourning narrative of "Blue Murder," the tale of Liddle Towers (no George Jackson fire-brand, but just a "regular guy"), who died (was killed) in the custody (at the hands) of the police (uniformed thugs) is more substantial fare, aided in no small part by the catchy chantalong chorus, the lament of Parker's dark cathedral organ, and Danny Kustow's countering pissed-off guitar. /

"Hold On" is TRB 2's final statement, a dressed in "Climb Every Mountain" gospel drag delineation (with hell and high water wailing from Kustow) of the observation (from John Rechy's City Of Night) that hope is an end within itself; suggesting, in a paraphrasing of R.L. Stevenson, that to arrive you must travel hopefully—and be willing to tote your own luggage. A worthy message perhaps, but it's j delivered with such god-awful solemnity that it's difficult to swallow whole.

As is TRB 2.

Personally, I'd be a lot more willing to travel further with Robinson if he'd rev up his grey Cortina for a motorway spree, with a couple of black angels along for the ride (and nuthin' personal, Tom, but make mine female).

j.m.bridgewater

SQUEEZE Cool For Cats (A&M)

Go ahead, squeeze it. Not that hard, dummy! Gives you a real direct physical sensation, right? Now you know how Squeeze got their name.

No, forget any "lemon" connotations; these guys have jiothing to do with the post-Plant citrus scrunch 'n' scream school. I guess they're into a post-pub-rock thing 'cause their songs are mostly about what happens in, about, around and after bar activities—getting pissed and getting laid, breaking up and breaking down—taken from every fantasy/reality angle imaginable.

And it sure sounds as if they've been doing research on the subject since the day they discovered hormones. They know that a simple score ain't easy—and it ain't simple either. "I give a little rhuscle and I spend a little cash/But all I get is bitter and a nasty little rash," be-

muses the singer on the title tune. "Successful" relationships get sticky —"I worked eleven hours and bought the girl some flowers/She said she'd seen a doctor and nothing now could stop her." And of course, various sexual combats are covered —"If her old man gets, word of what's going on here/You'll end up at the bottom of someone's next beer." Tillbrook and Difford—the writers/vocalists/guitarists here— don't miss a lick, pinch, slap, or tickle.

The sound of this record is more down to earth than their last (U.K. Squeeze): no John Cale-induced dementia on any level, just rocksolid, bop-solid pop with an occasional synthesizer tossed in for modernity's sake (though no excited Aphexes hre listed anywhere). The kind of sound that doesn't get in the way of the songs and that's good 'cause the songs are good— sex and drink and Iqtchen sink, all real enough to make you blink and think.

So the next time you reach for it, don't tease it, Squeeze it.

Michael Davis

IAN HUNTER "You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic" (Chrysalis) GENERATION X Valley Of The D6lls (Chrysalis)

Although it's the part he plays best, it's just possible that Ian Hunter has tired of being the jaded journeyman rocker; he's always wanted a bigger piece of pie, but it was always clearly demarcated what he would and wouldn't do to get it. He has never been above copping to fashion, but he's held on to his integrity. Hunter is the type of

performer that writers love to praise, because he thinks so much like thefn—analytically, ironically, selfreflectively—and because rock 'n' roll is as dear to him and, in a like way, as it is to those who are involved with it critically. Mott was judged by many the best rock album in the same year that Day For Night was the best film, for many of the same reasons: Hunter, like Truffaut, was examining what it was about to dedicate yourself to an art, to be aware of the randomness, the artifice, the pitfalls and disappointments and yet give yourself over to the creative process. But in subsequent work, Hunter's absorption became something of a pain, and his preoccupation with his outsider status seriously marred his music. Soon, he was all but forgotten, even unwittingly demeaned by having his name assigned to a photo of Uriah Heep's David Byron • in Rolling Stone's history of rock tome. It was an ignominious fall.

"You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic", his solo comeback, and Valley Of The Dolls, the second Generation X album, which he produced, look like fairly shrewd career moves for a man who is nothing if not calculating: he aligns himself with two separate rock factions with clout; the trouble is, on neither side does he kick a clean point. Schizophrenic is a bid, and a respectable one, for mass (read: radio) acceptance that rocks in an effectively slamming manner with the help of cohort Mick Ronson and a trio of E Streeters: Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg, Gary Tallent. If nothing else, the irresistibly silly "Cleveland Rocks," a slice of hot wax, guarantees WMMS airplay, and in its less turgid moments, the album does get across an authoritative sound that is meaty without being Meat Loaf.

As for linking himself up with perhaps the most simplistically anthemic of U.K. new wavers, Hunter could be forgiven: he was probably fooled by "Ready Steady Go" and a knack for ersatz Springsteenian titles into thinking that the mushmouthed Billy Idol hatf something to say. He doesn't—this is a lame attempt at punk maturity—and Generation XV stupidity is reinforced by the severity with which Hunter treats their most ponderous notions (i.e., "King Rocker," "Paradise West"—"It's all the same/Like Citizen Kane/You end up with nothin' "—and the two-part "epic," "The Prime Of Kenny Silvers"). The teaming may have looked smart on paper as a vehicle to establish Hunter's contemporary credentials—Generation X has actually had Hoopleish hits—but the union

is flat on wax.

Hunter has his musical strengths, and before the LP is swamped by the inflated allegory of "The Outsider," his record demonstrates some of them. At creamy rock 'n' roll, at anecdote, memory, description, he'sdamned good, as when he revels in the urban seediness of "Wild East" or plays with a blatant riff in the opening of "Just Another Night." He can be funny, too, but he isn't very often on Schizophrenic, unfortunately. Mostly, he's a poperatic philosopher too impressed with his clichdd metaphors, repeti-

tive and dreary despite the exertion of Mighty Max and the occasionally jaunty Ronson licks. Vocally, Hunter's still on the vowel-twisting projectile that has gone from a comical Dylan/Bono source to a more flamboyant style more of the Bowie/ , Newley school. Worse, he doesn't realize that "bastard" is a terrible word to sing; maybe John Lennon could get away with it, but place no bets. v

Unlike Valley Of The Dolls, "You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic" isn't an actively unlikea51e record; it is, however, a very

confused ope. Even at his creative peak with Mott the Hoople—that Brief moment that lasted about 2% albums and a few singles—Ian Hunter had a hard time deciding whether to watch the scene or plunge into it, be a reporter or participant; the duality made his rpck 'n' roller an interesting character, an aging young dude ambivalent about Jijs experiences and able to transmit that ambivalence brilliantly. On his new album he says too jnuch and knows too little, and that's an unhealthy balance. \

Mitch Cohen