BOB DYLAN At Budokan (Columbia)

by Joe Goldberg

The musical career I know of that most closely resembles Bob Dylan's is that of Igor Stravinsky. I don't mean to suggest by that that Dylan's work is on the level of Stravinsky's, who was, and is, the premier composer of the 20th Century, but the rest fits. As a young man, Stravinsky burst on the scene with three ballets that remain his most popular works, one erf which, Le Sacre du Printemps, changed the course of modern music. But Stravinsky was not satisfied with that. He never repeated past successes. He went on working in a bewildering variety of styles, some of them based on music of former eras (this was galled neo-classicism). Each time he changed his approach, his new music wets compared to his earlier successes, usually to the detriment of the current production. Later, when others began to realize what he had been up to, the music that had been formerly denigrated would begin to be imitated by other composers. He frequently revised his own earlier work (sometimes to secure a copyright on music written when he was a citizen of Russia, which is not a signatory to the internationa1l copyright laws). Late in life, he began to compose serial music, which was looked on as going over to the enemy, except that he beat the enemy at its own game (as Dylan did, with Nashville Skyline). He was influenced by fashion but never succumbed to it. ("Bad artists borrow," he once said; "great artists steal.") Except for his deep knowledge and connoisseur's transformation of past music, his motto might well have been "Don't Look Back." He knew he was in competition only with himself.

1 would hope that the similarities with Dylan's career need not be belabored.

The latest Dylan offering is the American release of a double album originally designated for Japanese release, tapes from a Tokyo concert in the spring of 1978. For the first time, lyrics are included (the Japanese album contains these in a handsome booklet; in the U.S., they are printed more economically on the inner sleeves). This would seem to be oneof Dylan's deliberate calculations^ Although the material amounts to a Dylan retrospective, he has radically rearranged most of the music, and is more concerned with music than words. There's Kttle of the old urgent intensity; this music is meant to be pleasing. The only performance that surpasses the original is "I Want You," a brilliant and moving vocal performance.

Dylan has appeared to us behind various masks: Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley. Now, he apparently wants to be Neil Diamond. Diamond's longtime manager is now also Dylan's, and this album has the physical look of Diamond's Hot August Night. The poses and layouts are the same, and there js even a similar little personal message, signed in script, from the star. That's fine, and up to Dylan, and we've all learned better than to count him out. But 1 keep thinking of what someone said about Francois Truffaut's reverence for Alfred Hitchcock, which had led to several imitation pictures from Truffaut. "Who'd want to be Hitchcock," this person said, "if you could be Truffaut?"

NICK LOWE Labour Of Lust (Columbia)

So here he is again folks, grinning irt the b&w inner sleeve photo like a lean shaggy puppy, no longer pup age but still puppy-ish, Mister Shake 'n' Pop himself, Nick Lowe. But before delving into the lowedown of Labour Of Lust—a more apt and clever title than is even immediately obvious—let's give about an ounce's worth of ponderance to a few words from Joe Percy, a character from Larry McMurtry's novel, Somebody's Darling:

"Craft, I said...Craft, not art. Art happens like love, but craft is loyalty, like marriage. To do it good is what's necessary. Maybe a few times in your life you get lucky and do it better than good, but that's irrelevant. Loyalty is what's necessary, if you want something good , to come out of the union."

Which is what's most admirable, I think, about Nick Lowe, whether it's songwriting, production, or whatever combination of his skills, From his flannel-shirt-and-sandals Brinsley Schwarz days ("Surrender To The Rhythm" being a personal favorite from that phase of his career), through his Jesus of Cool new wave status, up to his current Costello association and Edmunds /Rockpile arrangement (including his wonderfully restrained Spectorial production of the Pretenders' "Stop Your Sobbing" single), Lowe has, with an expected human share of errant ideas and bad mixes, proven himself as a man devoted to craftsmanship. To making available, or helping to make available, vinyl that is enjoyable, witty, sometimes provocative, and best of all, fun—in the pop according to Lowe, you must have fun.

And Pure Pop For Now People, the debut solo elpee, certainly was fqn; marvelously disposable, not easy (this a phrase describing a cheerleader my schoolmates fucked while 1, full of romantic wistfulness then, adored only platonicaliy), but instant. Labour of Lust, the first effort of Nick Lowe's Rockpile (as opposed to Dave Edmunds' Rockpile) is a more concentrated affair, its diversity geared more towards pacing than as a display of stylistic eclecticism. The s'ongs, as the title indicates, make numerous references, and inferences, to and from "those sexual concerns that affect, and afflict, us all.

"Dose Of You" (reminds me of another high school slut, Penicillin , Paulette) relates a public service attitude ("don't wanna spread it all around"—something a lot of us wished Paulette had thought of) atop a bass line as melodically mesmirizing as the tight-skirted waddle of a finely sculptured rump. "Cruel To Be Kind," co-authored by Lowe's ex-Brinsley mate, Ian., Gomm, is a more unique affair; the singer's baby loves love, but prefers it to be of the S&M variety. The acoustic guitars strumming like breezes brushing against skin soaked with summer sweat and the dit-dittin' backing chorus make it a compelling slice of popishness. Possibly a limey's fantasy of getting some back-seat American nookie at a drive-in movie ("I made an American squirm, and it felt so right/On the screen was a musical worm/Deep deep, into the night"), "American^Squirm" has a refrain that's a fish hook in the brain, an anthemish solo by Edmunds, and maybe a metagory of America— the business of which, after all, has become killing time. "Born Fighter," indicative of the. presence of an r&b .flavor on the album, features the blues tension of some nice harp blowing, and doesn't dissolve into (he plodding that typifies most blue tinged pop, and its lyrics offer an incisive insight into the rocker's view of his relationship to the mainstream of his culture: "In between the pages of the glossy magazines, if the coffee table world I could never, ever fit in/I shout about how I could never buy it, but I stand up and fight for the right to go excite it." Ace to the max and keen to the core.

Elsewhere, you feel the results of Lowe's time spent in Carlene Carter country, "Without Love" (with a Gram Parsons-type vocal); and the very Who-ish "Skin Deep" informs, in maxim-a-matic lyrics, that "heaven is here, but only skin deep"—or, love is a wash-a-way tattoo, and it eiin't for keeping.

Labour Of Lust is a superbly constructed record, chock full of the ingredients that make terminal case delinquents like you and me (oh, I forgot to mention the one really bum cut, but it's only 1:49, so forget it) reek with bliss. It's better than good, but forget the bit about luck; it's simply that Nick Lowe is one crafty fellow.

j.m. bridgewater

» SUPERTRAMP Breakfast In America (A&M)

Let's get it out of the way: a confession. I once let Even In The Quietest Moments trigger a crying jag. Just one of those shameful moral lapses—like puking in a cab, or, living out of cartons—that leaves you with all the verve of limp celery. But, hey, I don't hold a grudge. I don't even mind that "The Logical Song" wins the clock-radio wakeme-up sweepstakes just about every other day (".. .ree-spon-si-bul, practi-cul..." sends me instantly vertical, eyeballs jumping around like frogs). If I don't go for Breakfast In America with relish, I'll still join in with falsetto nyeh-nyehs while brushing my teeth.

Fueled, as ever, by percussive keyboards, art-rock pretensions, and several coats of studio shine, Supertramp plays catchy commuter music: lie back in your seat and watch the Beatles riffs pass by like telephone poles. Read the newspaper, tapping along with the rhythm of the rails; look up every so often to see how far you've come. Don't worry; the route's a familiar one, and the service is "de-pen-dabul." It "reminds me of San Francisco's BART system: slick, sleek, reeking of moonwalk technology, it sends you hurtling through the deep and silent dark...to Oakland. Great. For all Supertramp's competence, polish & craft j they shuttle predictably between foppish, handkerchief-to-brow adolescent romanticism and bombastic attempt at cynical social commentary. When they moved to California in 1977 as exchange students in vapidity, they knew exactly what courses to take: Breakfast shows off their new expertise in go-with-the-flow paternalism ("Does it feel that your life's become a catastrophe?/Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy") and Hot Tub Sociology ("I never cease to wonder at the cruelty of this land/But it seems a time of sadness is a time to understand"). I mean, I could tell right away—when I saw how the smog-sunset colors of Breakfast's label exactly matched my' L.A.-souvenir authorizedscreenwriter-model Hawaiian shirt—that these guys are not dumb. And I'm sure they'd be the first to agree.

Debra Rae Cohen

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES The Scream (Polydor)

Siouxsie of the Banshees was a tantalizing pledge of the coming New Wave Millennium, when her photo began appearing in U.S. fanzines in early 1977. We were still sorting out the Clash from the Damned, but Siouxsie was already laced into her cabaret/dominatrix uniform (new black boots and panties) in those tiny snapshots, primed to emerge as the dark-woman obverse of Debbie Harry, if not a veritable Nico of the masses.

ON THE SUBJECT OF CULTURAL TRANSIENCY

DAVID BOWIE Lodger (RCA)

by Jon Paroles

Forget logic, thematic coherence, dramatic form. All that linear junk is ballast, and bn Lodger David Bowie travels light. Carrying only a vague itinerary, a passport, and a handful of riffs and oblique strategies, Bowie's headed for every, dark continent he knows—geographical, social, scientific, psychological, romantic. Sometimes he seems to be'a journalist—\ "Gotta get a word through/One of these days," he; spits through the techno-tribal drumming of "African Night Flight"—but his role wavers and dissolves. If he actually reaches the heart of darkness, he's liable to babble uncontrollably.

Luckily, one man's babble is another man's epiphany. When Bowie dives into the dark continent of his subconscious for words to fill out his riffs, he comes up dripping with post-meaningful statements only C.G. Jungxould explain: "Life stands still and stares" from "Red Sails," or "Can you see it in the sky/That the landscape is too high?" from "Red Money." (Incidentally, vot iss zis fascination mit "red," hmmm?) But since Bowie's been free-associating lyrics since Station to Station, and he refuses to be typecast, mpst of Lodger's songs have (comparatively) clear story lines or rhetorical points.

Lodger's lineup is suspiciously simple. The A side is a free-form travelogue: political overview ("Dignity is valuable/But our lives are valuable, too") followed by jaunts to Mombassa, Russia, Kyoto, Cyprus, Turkey, and a "sail to the hinderland." The gradually increasing momentum and fantasy content of this tour is matched by successively accelerating arrangements flavored by "native" music. "Yassassin," which is amazingly catchy for a Turkish blessing, mates belly-dance bouzouki lines with funk riffs that bounce between the speakers; "Red Sails" whips heavy metal into a pentatonic frenzy. Beneath the lyrics is an undercurrent of foreboding— is he escaping something?—while the band often sounds as if it would be happy to split like an amoeba and let the melodies writhe off in two different directions.

On Side B, Bowie tells stories—a "D.J.," a wifebeater ("Repetition"), a visit from an angel ("Look Back in Anger"), science gone wrong ("Red Money")—and explains the sociological position of boys ("Boys Keep Swinging"). These are the acces-

sible" cuts, because the beats a little clearer and the guitars a little closer to the front—in fact, "Look Back in Anger" could have appeared on The Man Who Sold the World with a slight remix—but Bowie keeps sliding out of his narratives instead of providing punchlines. The D.J. continues to spin discs; the wifebeater continues to wonder if he should have married "Anne with the blue silk blouse"; nobody hears the angel's dire pronouncements, or notices the impending disaster in "Red Money." Once again, the logic is dream togic—wraith-like, elusive at crucial moments—yet Bowie's riffs keep us contented with his solipsism. The hinterland is everywhere, so, a little traveling music, Mr. B.?

Living up to such expectations would have been difficult for any rock 'ri roller worth her salt, but Siouxsie and her Banshees are just how releasing their debut LP in the U.S., well into the 3rd year N.W., and the received impact of The Scream is predictably blunted. By now the Sex Pistols have expended the whole punkrock life cycle before t our curious Yank eyes, and the late Sid Vicious (who once sat in on drums for the Banshees) has placed state-of-the-art punkshock well beyond the reach of even the most ambitious new wavers.

According to the Banshees' patient followers, the group held off signing with anybody until Polydor came up with the requisite "complete artistic control" package, in mid-1978. As it happens, the Banshees' discretionary label-shopping is a tale .nicely symbolic of their musical themes, as The Scream is something of a concept album about controls, artistic and otherwise, about intellectual lives in psychic bondage to bourgeois moral values. The songs recount lives oppressed to the point .of breakdown ("Suburban Relapse" or "Jigsaw Feeling"), yet hardly more liberated when the subterranean border has been breached for the moment ("Overground''); the controls of the "decent" life still beckon.

Siolixsie delivers these lyrics with the icy intensity those pix of the Thin Black Suke once suggested, while guitarist McKay and bassist Severin and drummer Morris echo her lines with their cold-fire, sustained, hypnotic riffing, which always threatens to break out of its exquisite controls,, into unfettered screams of terror,

Caught sbmewhere between bourgeois and rebel lives, Siouxsie and the Banshees' music can fall into moralistic stances, as on theset's sirigle-choice, "Hong Kong Garden*" a clucking catalogue of the vice flourishing in that last outpost of Empire; or in "Nicotine Stain," an anti-smoking (yet solidly new wave) diatribe that's obviously, as useful as it is unique.

\ Still, "Carcass" is a rousing satire of necrophilia, in Siou^sie's own icily sardonic manner. And the album's one cover, the Beatles' jumbled "Helter Skelter ," is done up with such straight-ahead, snarling fury that the Banshees' ultimate allegiance to 1980's music is abundantly clear; Charlie Manson could never have read hippie-apocalypse into this version.

Memo to the "complete artistic control" guys and gal in Siouxsie and the Banshees: I love your record, but put sexsieSiouxsie(and the song titles) on the outside of the package next time around; The Scream's rich-with-symbols cover art could be concealing last week's disco-quickie, for all the uninitiated consumer knows.

Richard Riegel

WINGS Back To The 'Egg (Columbia)

For me, the most pertinent phrase on Back To The Egg comes in the second half of "The Broadcast,", a piece near the end of the album, before Paul McCartney makes his ingratiating final gesture to his audience ("So Glad To See You Here") and concludes by playing his baby's request. "The Broadcast" isn't a song at all, but rather -a sonorous BBC-esque voice reading passages from Ian Hay and John Galsworthy over a sturdy little McCartney piano melody; in it, a certain person's face is described as "the whitest thing in our museum of recollections." The line is worthy of Fitzgerald, and it has a lot to do with the values that Paul McCartney arid Wings' music tries to represent: continuity, preservation, memory, a purity of achievement. It also has a lot to do with the Way many of us think of McCartney's prior group, and with why I still cry when I see A Hard Day's Night. (The impromptu performance at the Boyd-Clapton nuptials seems to have started the blather up again about a reunion being "an historical inevitability," as one -particularly sycophantic columnist put it, which still smacks more of a desire based on iconography than on themusical promise of such an event.) As we've always known, and as the choice of that Galsworthy quote reinforces, Paul McCartney has a sharp awareness of the responsibilities of the past. He makes very mortal, very human music; fragmentary music that can be as cloying as it is charming.

"It sure does sound just like Paul," someone who should know said on first hearing Back To The Egg, and after multiple listenings that strikes me as the aptest assessment. It sure does, so whatever word-association you come up with vis-a-vis "McCartney," apply it to Wings' latest, probably the final LP of the 1970's by a significant exBeatle. Not the hollow frivolousness of which he's often proven himself capable (most recently with "Goodnight Tonight"), nor the great white pop-rock album we'd always hoped he'd pull together, nor the over-casual craftsmanship of the likes of London Town, Back To The Egg is a bit of all of the above, and so self-referential that McCartney may well have intended it as a kind of summing-up of his decade -on the wing.

There is some dandy material oh side one (designated as "sunny side up"), especially the jaunty new 45 "Getting Closer," wherein McCartney has coined a curious endearment in "my salamander" (a Bulle Ogier reference? Could Paul be up on new Swiss cinema?), and a clever riff-rave-up, "Spin It On," but it's the second side ("over easy") that I keep going back to, a collection of McCartney performances that string together like abbey roadwork. Opening with a brief, vmoderately distinguished all-star instrumental jam—no more fascinating because we know John Bonham is slapping one drum set and Pete Townshend chording somewhere in the background— called "Rockestra Theme" (as Macca finally succumbs to the supersession syndrome), it moves quickly into a series of song-vignettes that are like a box of chocolate miniatures, some with gooey centers, some harder at the core. "To You," a deceptively playful rocker, appropriates "Silly Love Songs" 's Texas Leaguer bass line, "After The Ball" has some of "Let It Be" 's hymnlike stateliness, "Love Awake" some of "The Long And Winding Road" 'S sweep and sentiment, but all of the current tracks are terser, sung better, have less of what I suppose would be called the recording artist's equivalent of camera consciousness. My favorite of this collage that precedes "The Broadcast" is "Winter Rose," mysterious nostalgia not unlike Picnic At Hanging Rock.

There is evidence on Back To. The Egg that Paul McCartney (I hesitate to call the force behind the LP by the collective name, since Linda McCartney is atypically selfeffacing, Denny Laine's one song is forgettable, and the contributions of the new guitarist and drummer arehard to pinpoint) is hitting a creative stride, that he could tick off one of these tantalizingiy accomplished packages a year for the next ten without astonishing anybody; he's like Sinatra in the late Capitol period, a masterful entertainer operating at an even, genial clip. To admire the way he can change gears from raucous wall of sound to muted Modernaires is to wish also that things didn't come so easily to him. Paul McCartney has been seductively assimilating for us since he sang "Till There Was You" on The Ed Sullivan Show, and he hasn't had to grapple with many of the conundrums of an aging rocker; still, he is the greatest left-handed bass player-singer-composer of our time, and that is not nothing.

Mitch Cohen

(6/18/79-Paul's 37th)

PETER FRAMPTON Where I Should Be (A&M)

Peter Frampton is one honorably consistent dink, but I'm afraid his ears are bigger than my stomach. He's still composing with the same Siamese pen he used to crank out Frampton Alive! and The Daddy Plants A Seed In The Mommy and the tunes he's coming up with are blander than a picture of some dorl^y honor student before he murdered his family in their sleep. Police are baffled, but an arrest is imminent.

Where I Should Be is almost as exciting as a surprise mass urinalysis. Peter's original material—audible pollen that it is—demonstrates vividly the necessity of a Strong double play combination. Get them runners outta here. His famous remakes of soul classics, the victims this time being "May I Baby" and "You Don't Know Like I Know," could para-legally be termed first degree manslaughter: intent to destroy by gross negligence.

That's not all (it's never all). Peter's vocals have reached a nearAlpha state of whineyness, surpassing even that weiner-thing they squeeze Journey's vocals out of. If ever there's a cartoon character based on amniotic fluid, Peter will be asked to do the voice. As if that weren't enough (it's never enough) he goes after his little' guitar in the same manner a dog eats grass when it's gonna be sick, a kind of desperate nibbling in the face of oncoming peepeeism.

The one thing 1 do like about Peter, other than his eyelashes, is th,e way he selects song titles that demand editorial replies. There's "Take Me By The Hand" (that's not my little finger), "We've Just Begun" (to exhibit symptoms of Parkinson's Disease), the aforementioned "You Don't Know Like I Know" (but the little girls understand) and, of course, "Everything I Need" (has lips like a fish).

Better yet (it's never better) Peter has indicated in recent interviews that these tunes are based on events in his actual life and reveal all sorts of heavy personal shit. Let's check with Dr. Joyce Brothers! "Well, psychologically speaking, the man's obviously a total puss."

Honey, you don't* know like I know.

Rick Johnson

999 High Energy Plan (PVC Radar)

When the encyclopedia of truly great rockv'n' roll albums is finally compiled, this record will not be included. Though it does display a certain charming crudity throughout, there is nothing here that wasn't done as well or better by the Who or the Kinks back in 1965 or '66. The lineup of two guitars, bass and drums is nothing if not traditional; if this is "new wave" rock, what's new about it?

Oh, cram your encyclopedia up your academic asshole, ya nerd. "Charming crudity, "geez; the thing rocks, tune after tune, and that's what counts. Who cares about moldy old Who and Kinks sides todqy; you can't find 'em anywhere anyway anyhow. When 1 wanna rock, I wanna rock NOW; I don't wanna have to search out obscurities and with this album sitting in the stacks, I don't have to.

Yes, yes, I know the immediacy of the impulse to rock as well as anyone but with the Who's new The Kids Are Alright soundtrack available, 999 becomes superfluous. There is nothing on their album as mem9rable as "My Generation," "I Can See For Miles" or "I Can't Explain," just to name three classics, and the informative booklet included in the Who package just makes that double LP set that much more irresistible.

Yea, and that's what makes it so expensive, too; with the high prices of gas and drugs these days, 1 can't afford to lay out ten bucks for a bunch of history. I just want something that rbcks; "High Energy Plan," "Subterfuge" and "Action" may not become classics but they sure get me off. And they sure rock rowdier than anything on Who'Are You, right?

Yes...well...(ulpl); well yes.

Michael Davis

TONY WILLIAMS The Joy Of Flying (Columbia)

It's been the bane of Tony Williams' recording career that, with the exception of Emergency, which was released ten years ago, and two experimental sides released in the mid-60's, all of his best recorded work has been on other people's records. From the releases of his teen prodigy years with Miles in the 60's thru such 70's landmarks as the V.S.O.P. dates, Williams has been consistently excellent while the records issued under his own name have been, to put it not too mildly, wretched. This isn't a controversial point of Oiew—Williams is an exciting drummer who, when given his head, makes dull records. Why? I dunno. 1 suspect it has something to do withjack of direction, but there's not enough space here to pursue the motives of his failures. The point is that Tony Williams has, after ten years, finally put together another record worth checking out. In part, anyway.

It's a purposefully mixed bag, most of it being slick fusion music featuring people like Herbie Hancock, Jan Hammer, George Benson, Stanley Clarke, and Tom Scott—not all together but in three different combinations, which breaks the inevitable monotony considerably. If that were it, the record would be another disappointment but there's also a straightahead rock cut with Ronnie Montrose, Brian Auger, and M^rio Cipollina as well as a duet with Cecil Taylor.

Some of the fusion stuff isn't too bad. Honest. Williams'drumming is exemplary, i.e,, straight to the point bomp bomp bomp with a modicum of busy ness and splashy-ness (tho his trusty cymbals stay close at hand). He's never sparse and muscular (and boring) like1 Billy Cobham and never anonymous like Harvey Mason or Lenny White. On one cut, "Eris," while Hammer overdubs Synthesizers, Williams plays his ass off, rushing the beat then catching it, doubling up, spraying the cymbals but never becqming sloppy. Always in control. And on "Coming Back Home" with Hammer and Benson, he displays the kind of rapid time twisting that's his specialty so that even tho what's going on up front is determinedly unremarkable he manages to make it seem exciting. Still, altho the synthesizers are pretty and Benson is jazzy (for a change), the fusion cuts are a bit like having your cake and not eating it too, the idea seemingly being to tighten up the beat and then try to hang loose. For all its emphasis on rhythm, it's a form that doesn't allow the drummer to be much more than a hip metronome.

With Ronnie Montrose on "Open Fire," a Montrose/E. Winter riff, Williams is freed frpm the contradictions of strained directness. With his unabashed bashing and Moonrolls he coulda been, had he pursued it, a great rock drummer. He coulda been somebody, Charlie, instead of a bum with a one-way ticket to fusionville (scene in the backseat of a car driving through studio lights and shadows—"I coulda been somebody, Miles, I coulda been on Midnight SpeciaF'). And on the duet with Cecil Taylor he's freed in a different way. His sense of drama is as keen as it is eccentric, making him an ideal playrrtate for ^Taylor and his hurried impressionism.

The best thing for Williams to do would be to forget about all them fusion folk. Sure it works here, it's pretty and farily interesting, but that's unusual. Most fusion has already gone past modern MOR into the ungodly realm of Muzak. It's not only reached a dead end, it's reveling in it, as a listen to any of the above mentioned fusioneers' latest records (Hammer excepted) will reveal. And having forgotten them he should hook up with a straight ahead rock guitarist like Montrose to record with more extensively as well as seek and record wjth new breeders like Oliver Lake, Lester Bowie, Frank Lowe, and other people who keep the blood flowing. And more Cecil Taylor.

Then people will quit talking about what a bad mutha Tony Williams used to be.

Richard C. Walls

THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND

Running Like The Wind (Warner Bros.)

Now I'm not the kinda guy who takes his rock 'n' roll with a lump of irony, but the mere fact that the Marshall Tuckers are still cranking out albums prompts speculation about whatever happened to all those boppin' benefactors who purchased tickets to one of the Tuckers' 1976 benefit concerts for Jimmy Carter, naively believing that rock 'n' roll really could change the world for the better. Well, that was four years ago and I'm willing to bet these chumps are doing a slow burn because Gregg Allman isn't the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Phil Walden ain't Secretary of State and Charlie Daniels wasn't offered so much as the ambassadorship to Guyana. As for the Tuckers, they're still shooting the breeze ori' the proverbial highway to a new, improved South, a constant survivor in a sea of shattered shards of Disillusioned Youth.

The reason for this is that the Tuckers, spearheaded by les freres Caldwell, are still firmly entrenched in the same sound that charmed half a nation when Billy Beer foamed over our hills and dales, i.e., singing those Riders in the Sky cowboy anthems while doodling around with jazzrock, most of which is due to Jerry Eubank's bleating sax. Nothing wrong with that, especially since the Beach Boys' softness and Michael Murphy's hippie vision of the West ain't what they used to be.

Granted that the Tucks fill an obvious void and certainly deserve special commendation for scribbling the first decent rock ode to senior citizens ("Pass it On") of the year, but the truth is that they and everyone else short of the originalAllmans, the old Lynyrd Skynyrd and Gary Stewart impress me. as being as kickass sumbitch cowboys as a pair of Dingo boots from Bloomingdale's. Worse, it looks like four more years of the same laid back stupor. Perhaps if the Marshall Tucker Band stages more benefits, J.C. will make them special envoys to Sun City, Arizona, or at least Knott's Berry Farm.

Joe Nick Patoski

EARTH, WIND & FIRE I Am

(ARC/Columbia)

TEDDY PENDERGRASS Teddy

(Philadelphia International)

Dear brothers and sisters: If you' are interested in being a part of the Universal Community of Mellow Truth, sip a glass of wine and please pay attention. In order to qualify, first, one should possess the ability to stay stoned and party indefinitely; second, one must intuitively sense the subtleties of black MOR r&b.

A supreme cosmic order controls all destiny, dwarfing one's ego into a shriveled cocoon. This is the spiritual message of Earth, Wind & Fire, creators of space fantasy and dreamscapes. Unlike George Clinton's various P-Funk aggregations, Maurice White's EW&F does not schismatize with scatology but instead promotes harmony. The band enyisions a rhythmic utopia, a shining star that recalls the universal theme of Sly Stone's "Everybody Is A, Star."

Earth, Wind & Fire cosmology (essentially cosmetic, well-groomed and costumed like zodiacal butterflies) creates a muddled aura; however,. such supernatural hokum is pierced by the jagged acumen of the music. On I Am ("I'm a Pisces, therefore I am"), over, 80 musicians (not counting the Emotions) explore their space, occasionally getting elbowed in the process ("Hey, man, there ain't no room in this big beautiful boogie wonderland"). The sound is the usual overwhelming EW&F mixture of stabbing horns punctuated by a lonely kalimba in a tousle of dynamics closely akin^o both Chicago and Santana.

Side one of I Am is a pleasurable voyage with no apparent humanoid deficiencies. "In the Stone" is justas melodically funky as "September," and "After the Love Is Gone" has the heavenly texture of "Can't Hide Love. " I'm especially fond of the way vocalists Maurice White and Phil Bailey on "Let Your Feelings Show" punch up the rhythm with their expressive falsettos (no sissified BG's/Chipmunks, these guys). Although "Boogie Wonderland" is no opus, I Am (like Raydio's Rock On or Donna Summer'sBadGirls) is an album that actually deserves to hit the Top Ten. (Recommended for the novice: All 'N'All and Best Of.)

In contrast to Earth, Wind & Fire's cosmic consciousness, Teddy Pendergrass is rooted in a more down-to-earth ontology. His idea of a life cycle is a single intimate moment: poking a log in a cozy fire/getting his ear nibbled by a luscious woman/ kissing with passionate moans/softfocus/The End. Teddy's fortune is that his singing has been enhanced by the luxuriant expanse of GambleHuff's production; unlike life in EW&F's overcrowded universe, Teddy has room to move.

Teddy, along with last year's Life Is A Song Worth Singing, shares the silky smoothness of Jerry Butler's The Ice Man Cometh and Ice On Ice, recordings also guided by Gamble-Huffs understated handiwork. Pendergrass is so debonair that he makes Barry White sound like a horny child molester. Most of Teddy seems designed, not for disco shenanigans, but for sitting, drinking, and pondering the barflies. "Come Go With Me" is a masterpiece of bar music (i.e., an exercise in how-topick-up-girls), combining a sensual foreplay with the dizzy feeling of reeling intoxication. "We'll just let the evening flow," whispers Teddy. And the sweetie replies, "Please, I cannot stand any kind of pressure." In Teddy's apartment, they come together, dancing to the soulful beat of "Do Me," Pendergrass's funkiest groove tune (the fire is really roaring now!).,.

Whether life is a cosmic cycle (as performed by the awesome spectacle of Earth, Wind & Fire) or simply a song worth singing (as intimate as .Teddy Pendergrass's monologues), it was made for dancing. So heed, brothers and sisters,' the bywords of the U.C.M.T.—get up, get down, get funky, get loose!

Robot A. Hull

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA Discovery (Jet)

The Electric Light Orchestra was a shaky proposition from the beginning, as far As this hard-boiled Yank observer was concerned. Roy Wood's announced intention of recapturing the Beatles' most studio eclectic (degenerate-excessive?) ^period (e.g. "Strawberry Fields Forever") in live 70's rock, promised to bring forth trivialities upon pomposities.

Roy Wood bailed out of the group early on, of course, and I found the Jeff Lynne-dominated ELO more palatable than I might have imagined, from the evidence of Lynne's previous Idle Race. Chuck Berry's timeless universality sounds great in practically any context, and ELO's bombast-bopping "Roll Over Beethoven" was a neat joke on their own pretensions. Singles like "Showddwn" and "Evil Woman" were as /innocuous as most of the other mid-70's popchart totems, but pleasantly dynamic enough in their own synthesizer-hamstrung fashion to preclude wholesale dial-switching.

But when the double-monolith Out of the Blue appeared, I couldn't face placing it on my turntable until CREEMmate Rick Johnson had already tracked its pathless wastes, and had emerged, more or less unscathed. And the new Discovery, although slimmed down to an energy-conserving lone disc, has little r'n'r focus as its bloated predecessor did.

Unless you like the Bee Gees a lot better than I do, Discovery may well strike you as the nadir of ELO's long descent from the progressiver'n'r idealism Wood and Lynne started out from in the Nightriders and the Move, way back in the Birmingham of the mid-60's. The new album-opener (and single), "Shine a Little Love", is almost exactly the ca. Sat.Nite Fever Bee Gees, fa-fa-fa-falsettos and all, much the way ELO's earlier "Strange Magic" approximated the late 60's Bee Gees more than it did the Beatles of the same period. Ditto for "Need Her Love"; imagine Barry & Maurice & Robin warbling those very lyrics, and you've got ELO 79.

The Electric Light Orchestra undoubtedly have been ripe for whitey-sepulchre disco throughout their career, what with all their defining banks of strings, but "The Diary of Horace Wimp'? "Don't Bring Me Down", the last -cut on Discovery, is the only one with any rtick bite at all (as well a Pretty Things/Animals classic-tunes namesake should have), but by that time your stereo's tone arm is already lifting itself skyward.

At least Barry Manilow knows that Ray Stevens knows that he's schlock. Tell Roy Wood to quit putzing around with his bassoon, and to make with the fire brigade for his wayward brainchild before it's too late!

Richard Riegel

ROBERT FRIPP

Exposure

(E.G./Polydor)

Exposure begins with Fripp talking to us via Frippertronics, asking "Can I play you some of the new things I've been doing which I think could be commercial?" Diehard King Crimson fans or others of us who have noticed Fripp's name popping up in all the right places are quick to say, "Sure, show us what you got." But if this British hipster thinks that this stuff is mainstream, he's got his radio tuned in to another planet. Not that Exposure is that bizarre; it is more annoyingly disjointed than it is unique. Fripp's King Crimson was an anarchic band with fanciful lyrics and heavy metal overtones, and many of the songs on Exposure hardly advance on that formula. And what was interesting, even avant-garde, in the late 60's only grates now. Unlike Brian Eno, Fripp's sometime collaborator, Fripp does not deign to employ such mundanities as hooks, or to waste more than one melody per song. While Eno, using a rock springboard for much of his solo work, or Reich and Glass, using a classical foundation, gives the listener a basis from which to pursue the artist's musiqal line of thought, Fripp merrily zips by, urg-. ing us to jump on without a foothold.

Those willing to make the leap will not be completely burned by any means. Even such ponderous, heavy metal drones as "Disengage" (with Fripp doing his best banshee imitation of Robert Plant), "NY3" and "I May Not Have Enough of Me But I've Had Enough of You" are redeemed by their energy and intriguing minimalist lyrics, mostly by Joanna Walton. More successful are the tracks where Walton's oblique lyrics are given some space to shine through as on the bluesy "Chicago" ("I smile like Chicago, she laughs like the breeze...").and the lilting "Mary," which features Terre Roche (of the Roches, whose brilliant debut LP Fripp recently produced) on haunting lead vocal. Of the uptempo numbers, the only one that really gets off the ground is "You Burn Me Up I'm a Cigarette," a Chuck Berry via Dave Edmunds rocker with music by Daryl Hall (whose Fripp-produced Sacred Songs LP has been held from release for fear it will ruin Hall's good standing with the teeny boppers).

Due partly to their lack of clutter, the most affecting tracks are two stark ballads. Fripp displays a restrained Rundgren-like falsetto on "North Star," whose spare, slow rhythm achieves an exotic afmos: phere reminiscent of the mood created by the Beatles on Abbey Road's "Sun King." And one of the few effective tape contributions on the album, aSedate ecological warning of an impending return to the ice age, flows into "Here Comes the Flood," a fittingly apocalyptic ballad written by Peter Gabriel (another artist whom Fripp has previously served as producer). Otherwise, a lot of Frippertronic tricks abound, with phones ringing, men laughing, women shrieking; and tapes of mystic Shivapuri Baba, who died in 1962 at the purported age of 137 after having spent his years doing such things as seeing God and living with Queen Victoria (I wonder which was better).

Exposure is supposedly the first of three solo works Fripp plans to complete by September, 1981, which his record company autobiography refers to (hopefully) as the "the year of the Fripp." Although we wish him well, Fripp will have to find an alternative to the shotgun method which renders Exposure too eclectic to effectively showcase Fripp's intensely personal musical Statement. Until then, we'll leave with one of the better lines on Exposure, from Joatina Waltons Disengage : Walking out's just another metaphor." Bye bye, Bobby.

Gary Kenton

TED NUGENT State Of Shock __ (Epic)

Dear Ted:

Just finished listening to your latest, SOS, but have drawn a blank as to the so-called "critique"aspect v-a-v reviewing for the CREEM-oids! Thought I'd drop you a line, could be you have some comments regarding the following perceptions...

. A friend of mine rages with victoriolic condemnation, etc., claims you're a "maggot" and "beneath" contempt, that to seriously consider ^ the ramifications of your "song writing" would be an "ultimately degrading position" (something t'do with getting down on your "mentality wave length" ha ha ha!!). I, on the other hand, do not hate your guts. I think you're basically the typical rock starinsect incapable' of operating beyond the usual low life sub-strata of Recycled putrescence et so forth...

Like, this new alb, man, is really awful. All of your songs sound like endless end-groove dispatch repeats of the rest. Like a giant cloning process: throw in the worst of ejaculatory guitar-definition, retread-cliches, transparent vocals and superficial vision—stamp on I .the expected titles ("Bite Down I Hard" (chew it off!), change keys | (you sly dog!)), and uoi/a—two I sides of stranglehold-bait! '

Heck, the guitar sound on this record absolutely reeks, like on "Paralyzed," for example. I think you should stick to playing chords, Ted—all those constipated note patterns and riffs and turkeys s.a. "Take It Or Leave It" and the pseudo-atmospheric "Alone" (falls short of ethereal) could simply/be beyond your means. You should probably lock yourself in a room with the first Ramones album and practice down-stroking a lot. Just like Johnny Ramone. I mean, I think it's there, you know? No bout adoubt it, you've got the trappings to be a real good guitar player some day (a Melody Maker is an excellent axe to learn on); it's just a matter of motivation and research. You should check out 45s like "No God" by the Germs and "This Generation's On Vacation" by Shock, maybe even "Wholesale Murder" by the Misfits, too, for reference and an overall starting point to re-orient your brain.

Also, yoiKshould get a haircut. .You look like a sissy with that hippie's nest hangin' down below your shoulders (recordjng George Harrison's "I W$nt To Tell You" for this el-pee eats K cos speakin' of sissies, we alkknow'about that lame brain; your rendition here adds little to a song mucho boring to begin with and in the end what we're talkin'' about is limey-phag muzic anyway. Not a wise selection for porkorama cow peoples of your ilk!).

My idea of the one passable cutis the title track. It reminds me of the Weasels' "Beat Her With A Rake," except your vocals aren't as good as the Weasels' lead singer; in any case, the chords here are (structureally) tolerable, and if'you can get ahold of the Weasels' record, you can practice on those vocal deficiencies.

I am told that sales of your records have been dropping off. LISTEN, Ted, if that's the case, keep in touch, cos maybe we can work out a few new ideas (imagechanges—why not?) for "yotir sound" and eventually release an independent-based EP. I've had some success with Jem distributors, disseminating locally released product (one by a fabulous West Coast-flavored summer band, the Mod Frames, on Hit records. If you want, I'll send you a copy. HEY, check this out, try practicing the vocal cues here as well, cos this Mod Frame singer's got it together, and in no time at all...who knows... so if things go downhill, REALLY FAST, lemme know.

Thanks a skank, look forward to hearing from you,, Gregg Turner (a Nugent fan of the future!)