THE B-52’s

(Warner Bros.)

Even before Fred Schneider has begun to chortle the impressionistically silly lyrics to “Planet Claire,” the lead-off track of the much anticipated debut album by the B52’s, the three-guy/two-gal band has joyously finger painted the musical landscape against which one is welcomed to frug, shoop shoop and mash potato the night away. Guitarist Ricky Wilson is jabbin’ away with the riff from Peter Gunn, Sister Cindy Wilson is beatin’ her bongos into the sand, Keith Strickland is poundin’ that four/ four beat-home and Kate Pierson’s organ and soprano voice is gliding over the opening credits to part two of our movie. The plot thus far: Mom has supplied the gang with plenty of lemonade and tuna sandwiches (mayo in the jar, plastic kjiives and. forks so’s they can make ’em up fresh at the beach). Everybody bops to the AM transistor until nightfall. Theftwilight cookout is a smash and then it's-time to pair off for a moonlit walk by the surf. Suddenly, a shooting star, or a meteorite, or something plummets from the skies into the ocean. Too far to swim out to anji check out, too close not to be intrigued. An hour later, at the wood frame shack, everyone is bopping again to the sounds of the swingin’ band. “Let’s go for another walk,” sighs Brenda. Bobby grabs her hand ,and they head for the back door, getting by the chaperoning old folks by moving through the jammed dance floor. They victoriously hug each other once safely outside. Then they look up. Their scream is muffled by a giant green webbed appendage. Freeze frame.

The B-52’s are at the forefront of a move back towards the goofy, fun side of rock ,’n’ roll; five intelligent and good-natured kids who have chucked the general selfish obsessiveness of the me decade in favor of a cooperative spirit of optimism and celebration of rockin’ ’n’ rollin’ good times that almost unbelievably manages to harken back to the early 60’s dance-crazed era without sounding like a bunch of drearyeyed nostalgiods, painfully trying to resurrect the past.'They’re so far out they’re in (as witnessed by the amazing success of the independent single, “Rock Lobster,” and the near-riotous crowds they’ve drawn in New York this past winter), so seemingly out of step with the aggressive tenor of the times (this band does not have one angry bone in its collective body) that their music is like rock ’n’ roll reborn and unashamedly having the time of its life.

The image and sound of the B52’s is simply too nutty to have been pre-planned, an unself-conscious—almost naive—assortment of wigs, sweat shirts, pasteLsuits, thrift shop chic, toy pianos, walkietalkies, guitars with the middled two strings missing, bongo drums. One female singer (Pierson) adept at duplicating any and all bizarre squeaks known to modern man and another (Wilson) whdse combination of raw sauciness and t&en dream innocence brings to mind the Shirelles at their intimate best. And in the middle, just an average Joe (Schneider) off the street, swayin’ jerkily to the cool sounds around him, shouting out a few cutand-paste phrases of non-judgemental observations of American life.

The B-52’s is an album of faith, of faith in that old axiom “Rock ’n’ roll won’t change the world, but it can change your life,” and affirmations of good over bad, of togetherness and comaraderie over*alienation apd isolation. There is heart and solil abounding here, from Cindy’s pained “Why don’t you dance with me? I’m not no limburger” on “Dance This Mess Around” (and you want to grab the Clyde she’s in love with and toss him onto the dance floor with her because he’s had the gall to get her upset and sure, she could do better, but it’£ him she wants and you like to see your friends happy, right?), to the sexy “Lava” (I gotta lotta love locked qp inside me”) and the Dada pastiche of “Rock Lobster” (“We were at the beach, everyone had matching towels...ptit on^your nose guard, put on the life guard, pass the tanning butter!”), to the undy-. ing dream of a swell time “Downtown” (“Maybe I’ll see you there if I can do my hair”).

So, while most of the music going around your head these days either commands you to have a good time by ramming that metronomical bass drum down your throat, sledge hammers you into synapse laps through sheer volume, or lulls you to sleep in sickening slickness, keep in mind these words: “If you’re in outer space, don’t feel out of place, ’cause there are thousands of others like you...others like you...others like you.” You can bet' that when the Ramones finally' get that ride to Rockaway Beach, the B-52’s will still be playing, even if the only audience is themselves and a few stray gulls and jelly fish. ’Cause to them rock ’n’ roll is fun, with a capital f. And don’t it make you feel good?

THE CARS

Candy-O

(Elektra)

Candy-O is Peggy Sue’s daughter. Candy-O is this year’s model. (Is the band furious that such an obvious title for their second had already been taken?) “You’d like to come in colors/You don’t know which one.” The Cars put the cap on the late 1970’s: technocracy, confusion, conceptualization, perfect mating of motive and style, efficiency (high MPG); they are in touch, with the modern world. Twenty years ago they’d have been The Impalas, but they’ve chosen the right name for their method and for an age when dungarees have Gloria Vanderbilt’s signature stitched on the rear—The Cars are a non-status brand name band.

fl Serene Communique From Those In Dire Straits

DIRE STRAITS

Comminiqife

(Warner Bros.)

by Richard C. Walls

Dire Straits’ new album consolidates all the virtues of their first one without expanding on any of them. No surprise there, but it’s, not a lapse of creativity or a cashing in on proven formula that accounts for the similarity of the two records— rather, it’s the nature of the musical form lead guitarist/singer/composer Mark Knopfler has developed. WithN the reflective, imagery-laden lyrics, the precise and sparse instrumentation (staying in that middle range, emotional but not too emoted) it’s natural that he turns inward, musically, for his inspiration, that he turns the facets of his evident talent over, shifting them as tho they were prismatic crystals that he holds in his hand, each subtle change giving us a different view of the same thing. Sytlistic changes will come slowly to a group like this and it seems inevitable that they will be thoughtful and welcome ones.

Meanwhile, we have Communique, a lot like the first album but not boring or strictly repetitious (and before 1 bring in some specifics here a little parenthetic whining is due— why no lyric sheet here like with the first album? So many superfluous lyric sheets floating around'never to be perused, and yet when one is needed...Knopfler likes to let the ends of certain syllables slide off into the void creating an effective drawl but also, occasionally, incoherence—which I don’t think is what he has in mind. I mean this ain’t Kansas or Journey and if you’re going to tell low-keyed stories and carefully create moods but you’re going, to swallow your key words now and then, you should include a lyric sheet. Really. Enaof whine).

Some specifics then: There’s nothing quite as grabbing as “Sultans of Swing” here and some of the songs are much less impressive than the album as a whole, mainly because despite Knopfler’s poetic bent' Dire Straits remains a band of small (tho virtuous) pretensions offering, among reams of tight pleasant playing, small rewards. Which is not to say that some of the songs are throwaways (small pretensions should not be taken for granted), it’s just that the impact of certain cuts is less than the considerable impact of Dire Straits. “Once Upon A Time In The West”, a reggae inflected pre-apocalypse song (cautionary) has little to do with Sergio Leone’S'operatic western of the same name aside from the sun baked toughness of Knopfler’s singing, but it’s solid and sincere and hummable. “Where Do You Think You’re Going?” offers little lyric substance but Knopfler gives it the most insinuating reading this side of Blonde On Blonde (it was only a matter of time before I dragged Dylan into this, but it’s only to say that the resemblance between the two is mostly superficial. Some similar intonations, the folk/country influence—that’s about it).

Getting back to small rewards— a line like “Just the way that her hair fell down around her face/I recall my fall from grace” ih “Lady Writer” jumps out at you and you’re grateful, a casually beautiful instrumental interlude occurs in “Angel of Mercy” and you know that this band is special. It’s not just that they’re bucking a trend or boldly coming out of left field. Or even that they’re occasionally brilliant. It’s the fact that they’re able to convey a serene intelligence without putting the listener to sleep. That’s the amazing thing.

They are not Boston, but they capture more genuinely the academicliberal -American Mischief pop life associated with their corner of New England (they’re not them either) than Scholz’s schlocksters. Blame it all on a lust for kicks, and hooks are where you find them: who’ll know that you’ve borrowed the chorus of “Let’s Go”—title, handclaps and all—from an early 60’s surf instrumental by The Routers? Does that make it any less a song for this summer? The Cars have put together a sleek chassis around a lot of spare parts, and the finished product purrs along the freeway like a broken white line. The Cars are fashionably ellipticalwhen the rule of the road is to deliver everything complete and without ambiguity. >

That Buddy Holjy reference up front was not random. Ric Ocasek’s jumpy word play echoes Holly’s disjointed image-on-image “Looking For Someone To Love” ap-. proach, his vocals have Holly’s insinuating herky-jerkiness without being comparably boyish. He even opens “$hoo\Be Doo,” the most outre piece on the LP, with a line right out of “Maybe Baby” (“It’s funny honey but you don’t care”) as if to assert such associations in the unlikeliest circumstances; in syn-/ thesizer disguise, roxy musique stylization, it may be possible to forget that Ocasek writes real tunes about girls and other real-worldly matters or that his tricky phrases are links between utterly catchy choruses (“Since I Held You,” “I Got A Lot On My Head”). But let’s not make too much of this Holly with a bachelor’s degree business. Ocasek’s talent is to take whatever he can use: fechno-lingo (“homogenize, decentralize”), rock stutter (“You keep it cool when it’s t-ttight”), Dylan noun-as-adjective games (“robucl purse*” “romeo mink,” “crossword smile”), a Steely Dan-ish flqjr for the anti-cliche, and from such components are captivating songs like “It’s All I Can Do” and “Dangerous Type” assembled.

The surprise, if there is one, is that on album two, with,the employment of already familiar devices, The Cars haven’t gone at all dry. I don’t know if I’d want a third Cars LP to sound just like this, and I definitely fear the increasing influence of Roy Thomas Baker. But for now, the belching, slithering keyboard work of Greg Hawkes, Elliot Easton’s guitar underlays and infrequent solos (for some reason his sharp rock playing always seems unexpected in this circuitous context), Ocasek’s analytical passion (“Condition’s red, disposition's blue/ Why am I so attracted to you”) strike me as capable of inexhaustible variation and refinement. “Double Life,” for example, is more scene than song, more evocation than information, and the mystery accounts for much of its appeal. What’s happening here: a woman driving home to her husband after an illicit rendezvous with h^r lover? What is the line “alienation is the craze” doing in there, and why does the music move almost imperceptively forward? We’re in Didion country here, blank space and undercurrents, and it’s kind of chilling.

The Cars are cool by temperament, but not corporately cold, clever but not funny; programmable but hardly anonymous. They suggest accessibility without simplicity, without intimacy, art without artiness. The Cars are very much in qur time, have achieved an absolute pop-electrosynthesis with a motor that is indisputably (but not overtly) rock ’n’ roll. Musical behavior this calculated—especially s since it appears to have captured millions of ears—should be monitored closely, yes?

Mitch Cohen

KISS

Dynasty

(Casablanca)_

•“We had some good times, but now they’re gone. So long,.”

—Ace Frehley,

“Save Your Love”

So long, Ace, it’s been good to know ya.

And, uncool as it may be for someone my age to admit it, y’know, five years ago I held high hopes that, you guys would ultimatey transform yourselves into the great American white (faces) rock ’n’ roll hope. But hey, Ace, the Ramones now have that title—and they don’t even wear make-up. But they sure can rock ’n’ roll, eh?

Remember rock ’n’ roll? You guys used to rock ’n’ roll real good. As a matter of fact, Dressed To Kill and Rock W Roll Over still rank, along with side four of your second live album, as your supreme studio moments (and that’s not even considering Hotter Than Hell's “Parasite,” which features your most homicidal guitar solo ever). I mean, the original Alive! still packs enough punch to render Helen 'Keller senseless.

But then something went wrong, beginning with the dreaded (for the wrong reasons) Love Gun, foreshadowed by the equally ominous (again, for the wrong reasons) Destroyer. And Ace, what happened to the much-vaunted “Strutter 78” which appeared on the Double Platinum album? It was actually weqker than either of the original -’74 or live 75 versions. Then came the glut of solo albums, TV specials and comic books— each new enterprise a coin in the coffer and a nail in the coffin.

By this time, Ace, the low points were beginning to greatly outnumber the highs. Somewhere along the line’ you guys lost your demons.

And I miss that. There just aren’t any demons on your new album, Ace. Why don’t you leave the pop diddling^ to Abba and the disco stuff to Giorgio Moroder? You guys were born to rock ’n’ roll and, Although I know you think you’re making a good move career-wise by recording this stuff, believe me, you’re making a lot of your vintage fans (you know, the ones who put you where you are today) angry and—even worse—sad.

Go back to Eddie Kramer and tell him you want to rock ’n’ roll. He’ll know what you mean.

Jeffrey Morgan

NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE

Rust Never Sleeps

(Reprise)

Good oP Neil. You remember Neil—he did som§ good lead whine with Buffalo Springfield, added some bite to CSN, jumped on and . off crazy horses, then started to burn out about the time he,struck paydirt with “Heart Of Gold.” Funny thing is, he kept raking over his own coals and burning out again ’til he produced his neo-wastrel classic, Tonight’s The Night, then turned it around, burning his way through to the other side, burning his way back in to togethersville (about halfway between L.A. and Salinas). So it’s no real surprise that Rust Never Sleeps is a good album and yeah, some of it burns.

Side one is Neil with few distractions, mainly acoustic guitars and harmonica, doing folk ballads to... Johnny Rotten? Well, one anyway, where he sets out his point-of-view —“It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.” As if we couldn’t have guessed.

The rest of the soft stuff deals, in one way or another, with Neil’s frontier fringe ethic, the gotta-getaway escape valve that keeps him functioning. He lays it right on the tdble in “Sail Away”: “I could live inside a tepee/I could die in Penthouse thirty-five/You could lose me on the freeway/But I would still make it back alive/As long as we c^n sail away.”

But he also understands the consequences of indulging in the frontier exploration urge, both for the Indians’way of life (“Pocahontas”) and for his own friendships (“Thrasher”): “They had the best selection, they were poisoned by protection/There was nothing that they needed, they had nothing left to find...So I got bored and left them there, they were just dead weight to me.” And he sings this stuff in an evenhanded manner; no “ain’t I cool for being Mr. Independent” jive'for him.

But I know most of you wanna rock so you’ll be playing side two more, four tunes slam-banged acrpss in the style first formulated ten years ago—basic boisterous rhythm work behind Young’s urgent, elemental guitar scrapings. Neil’s heroes here get offed or get delivery jobs (he doesn’t say which is worse) while the axes crackle; he himself finds out that “Welfare mothers make better lovers,” makes as good a riff as jt would a bumpersticker. He closed out the set with an all-electric version of the opening ballad, featuring the most gorgeously ugly fuzz sound this side of the Seeds, splintering spastically across lines like, “Rock and roll will never die/There’s more to the picture than meets the eye.” I ain’t gonna argue with him; are you?

Michael Davis

QUEEN

Live Killers

(Elektra)

The first thing people will want to know about'Queen live, is: can they reproduce their “sound” in person? Well sure, just give that great moment in wiggle-voice, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a spin. Freddie starts it off by singing the opening lines and then the band leaves the stage and puts on the actual studio recording for the audience to figure out. The' liner notes call this a “typically uncompromising” move on their part. My own notes call this “the biggest heap of bullshit since that truck full of moo overturned on the highway.”

, The second thing folks want to know about Queen is: why does the rest of the band put up with Freddie and his pigeon-butt? Good question, candy ass, but hell, take a gander at co-boss Brian May. 'If Truman Capote were God, Freddie and Brian would be his salt and pepper shakers.

The third thing congressional fact-finding committees are currently investigating is: what are the words that are bleeped out of the intro to “Death' Qn Two Legs?” Freddie goes, “This is about a (BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP)...we call him ‘Death On Two Legs.’ ” What do;you think he said? This is about a chicken-haired member of the Rolling Stones? This is about a moving experience I once had in a garden hose showroom? Or possibly, this is about a minute and a half? Limey humor, ha ha. See now where Canada went wrong?

The next thing our men overseas are wondering is whether this version of “Get Down Make Love” is what the liner describes as the “eerie” version, the “earthy” version or the defendant’s sleazy version? I’d go for the “eerie” version on this one. Makes you feel like somebody’s peeing on your grave.

While we’re at it, concerned officials at the Central Premonitions Registry (P.O. Box 482, Times Square Station, NYC 10036) are curious as to who actually wrote the incredible smoochprints of kissass that fill the innersleeves. Was it Ed McMahon? Steve Garvey? Miss America? A1 Ubell? It doesn’t say, but I’ll bet it’s the same person that writes Ronald McDonald’s speeches.

The last thing anybody should want to know about Queen is this: should I spend my hard-earned pimping money on this double album, or save it for something I can really use* like a dead weasel?

Have the weasel gift-wrapped.

Rick Johnson

THE KNACK

Get The Knack

(Capitol)

PREAMBLE: In these inflationary (and indifferent) times, one expects a great deal from the investment of his/her time and/or money. Consequently, I have designed this review expressly with you, dear reader, in mind. To peruse its wealth of information with a minimum of effort, all one has to do is skip to his/her special classification as follows: (a) collectors, (b) teens, (c) critics, and (d) all-round nimnuls.

A Bunch Of Stiffs Arrive On These Shores

RACHEL SW(EET

Fool Around

_(Stiff/Columbia)_

By rights, as a charter member of the CREEM reckless-airwreck crew of dirty old shut-ins, I should probably be launching into a slobbering rave over Rachel Sweet’s toothsome, leather-clad sweets & innocence, along about now...But hey! You know I’m not that kinda guy, no psychic casting couches clutter up my brain-pad, and besides, Rachel Sweet’s debut Lp is so good that nymphet-hysteria should be ‘the last resort of even the most tone-deaf & infirm reviewer.

Rachel Sweet is a 16-year-old native of Akron, Ohio (cf, Devo, Tin Huey, Bizarros), who just wants to sirlg the country music she grew up with (cf. Tanya Tucker, Dolly Parton), but who in the meantime has found her Grand OF Opry-like breakthrough on the improbable venue of England’s nouveau-wave Stiff Records (cf. Nick Lowe, Ian Dury) and their Be Stiff tour. Not surprisingly, Rachel’s absorbed bits and pieces Of all these influences, and Fool Around is a wonderfully varied album.

Rachel Sweet has the kind of bright, spunky pop voice that makes her unafraid to tackle any type of material; on Fool Around, she can belt out the R&B over a bud rock band (on Carla Thomas’s old “B-A-B-Y”), or drag i,t down country-raunchy for the tears-in-mybeers crowd (Elvis Costello’s “Stranger in the House”, as told to Lofetta Lynn). Del 1 Shannon’s ancient “I Go to Pieces” enables Rachel to explore that odd country side of her British Invasion, just as the tune did for Peter & Gordon during the original incursion.

But even if Rachel Sweet has had her biggest hits with these diverse remakes, so far, Fool Around’s interior cuts are graced with a bunch of equally-impressive, equallyassorted originals, by producer Liam Sternberg, an old Akron friend of the Sweet family. “Who Does Lisa Like?” captures that thriving-hermetic Akron teen scene, with Rachel’s Brenda Lee/Leather Tuscadero vocal layered over a neat Tin Huey mechano-rubber beat. “Cuckoo Clock” suggests mobilization of an Akronite female auxiliary to confront Devo’s wiggly world, while “Wildwood Saloon” is a fatally fine rendition of being down and out on the Rubber City’s own Market Street axis. “It’s So Different Here” is a culture shock of a vacation outside Akron, but who doesn’t dream of such things?.

Rachel Sweet’s Fool Around is the freshest, most musically horny'* LF experience I’ve discovered all year; it reminds me of finding Sandie Shaw’s initiatory album, way back iri ,’65. New wave? No, man, Fool Around is country music, just like Rachel wants it to be. Next thing I know; you’ll be trying to tell me Porter Wagoner’s going disco!

Richard Riegel

IAN DURY

Do It Yourself

. (Stiff/Epic)

You can’t find a decent Everyman anymore. Forget the Pillar of the Empire, the Regular Guy, the Contented Homeowner, the Solid Citizen, even the Noble But Downtrodden Laborer. Instead, we got geeks like Ian Dury, a leering, sniggering, belching, farting Cockney misanthrope with, as Do ft Yourself suggests, a bit of an arse fetish. Dury represents a disenfranchised bunch of rude, dull losers (itemized in “Dance of the Screamers”) who have all the lofty aspirations of pubic lice; “Here I stand,” Dury mumbles in “Don’t Ask Me,” “wif a boner for a brain.” Yet like generations of troupers before him, Dury does his best to render his lowlife lovable.

How? By turning sleaze and strife into slapstick. Like when the handy man in “This Is What We Rind” arrives home to see his wife in flagrante delicto with some other swain, what does he do? WS1I, he takes out his Black & ■ Decker and...Under the musical direction of Chaz Jankel (who co-wrote most of the songs with Dury), the Blockheads back up such sagas with grooves derived from music-h^ll oompah, disco thump and reggate boom-chicka, topped by Davey Payne’s bleating saxes and every percussion toy the Third World has to offer—net results, a jaunty bumpand-grunt thcit’d be the perfect scene-setter for The Keystone Kops Go Disco. Dury plays it for laffs-and nothing else on “Waiting for Your Taxi,” which is a chant that breaks up a bunch of trick endings; in “Quiet,” which mingles polite conversation with more sincere undertones (“Your highness, your worship—you silly pompous arse”); and in “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick,” which Dury sings like he’s on the business end of a cattle prod. All three are little more than excuses for the Blockheads to riff merrily along with more confidence and swagger than they showed on last year’s debut, New Boots and Panties!!!

Back then, Dury seemed more sensitive, a sometime Chronicler of Everyday Life who could be downright touching in songs ljke “My Old Man” and “Sweet Gene Vincent.” The remnants of those gentle tendencies show up in one line of “Inbetweenies” (listen to the way he sings “I die when I’m alone’’]Tand in “Dance of the Screamers.” Otherwise, if Dury wants to show vulnerability or compassion, he thinks he has to be Cruel to be kind, so as not to upset the album’s jokey tone. Well, sentiment’s tough to pull off, and who needs it anyw,ay? Do It Yourself is made for shimmying— good clean borderline perversion— and it’s irresistibly jovial. Who says vaudeville is dead?

Jon Pareles

LENE LOVICH

Stateless

'(Stiff/Epic)

Rocky: Whew! It’s’ about time we got a break. We’ve been taping all day. Boris, you want to deal? Hey Natasha, are you playing?

Natasha: I’ll be with you in a moment, darling. Just let me put this record on.

Boris: What is this, Mary Hopkin? I love “Those Were The Days.”

Natasha: Don’t be silly darling. This is Lene Lovich’s debut album. She sang on Rachael Sweet’s LP and was part of that Stiff tour last year.

Boris: I still love that song. Maybe she’s Mary’s sister. Hey Moose, got any eights? '

Bullwinkle: GO FISH!

Natasha: Such a brooding, thick, athletic voice, Nobody is knowing where she is coming from. Ah, so sensitive, she’s got to be having aristocratic blood flowing in her veins. And yet she is having a profound understanding of proletariat pathos. Listen to this song “Home”. She is needing a guy so she can get away from home. Rocky darling, have you got any deuces?

Boris: I still say she’s Mary Hopkin’s sister. Stiff is coming from England, is it not?

Rocky: Sorry Natasha. Gee, .this “Lucky Number” number is kinda cute. How does she do that with her voice? It sounds like she got pinched. \

Bullwinkle: I’ll pinch you if you don’t give me some fours. *

Rocky: Go fish. Bullwinkle, cut that out! ,

Boris: I can picture it now; she escaped with her life from raging peasants, listened to Bryan Ferry records in her pitiful rented room, began singing torch songs in dismal pubs to support herself. I’d rather was listening to Mary Hopkin. Rocky, you have to ask for something.

Rocky: Okhy Boris, how about queens?

Boris: Take her she’s yours.

Bullwinkle: But isn’t she really a man?

Boris: No you stoopid moose, Queens is borough in Beeg Apple.

Rocky: Alright already, enough is enough! Gimme*; those, queens. Really you guys, this, record is getting to you. Just because it’s loaded with sterilized emotions and hopeless foreboding, that’s no reason to get snotty.

Boris: Ha Ha Ha! Nogoodniks like us can do whatever we want, right Natasha?

Natasha: Naturally, darling.

Boris? Nines dear?

Natasha: Go fish.

Boris: Oh no! What has she done to my song? “I Think We’re Alone Now” with' simulated heartbeats instead of crickets in the bridge!

Bullwinkle: I may be dumb, but I’m not deef.

Natasha: I think she is having soul. Do you have any sevens darling?

Bullwinkle: Here.

Rocky: BULLWINKLE, cut that out! Gee, isn’t this “Tonight” from the first Nick Lowe album?

Natasha: Yes, don’t you $dore that

Ronettes sound darling?

Bullwinkle: I’m out!

Boris: Moose, you were out before you»came in this morning. I guess this record is okey-dokey but is no match for Maria Ouspenskay^’s brilliant performance in Tarzan And The Amazons.

Bullwinkle: That’s on next week you know. Right after us.

Patty Andrews & The Mad Peck

(a) Do not confuse this band with’ the Knack which had four singles, also on Capitol, back in ’67’68: ’79’s Knack is no echo. Although their bios do not mention the fact, the Knack certainly borbowed their name from Richard Lester’s film, • The Knack...and How to Get It, which he directed between working with the Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night and Help!. Unfortunately, the Knack does not share The Knack's mod kookiness.

(b) The Knack has TEEN SCREAM written all over their PhisoHex-scrubbed mugs. Since I was 16, a decade has passed (most of it spent wondering why the fantasy of Wild In the Streets never happened). Listening to the Knack, though, I don’t feel like an old coot—to the contrary,’their music makes me feel younger than the audience at which it is aimed. The reason for this is that during my teen years carnal knowledge was not obtained through the AM/FM: all formulaic pop records (i.e., Gary Lewis & the Playboys) were presumed to contain a subtext of sexual innocence. Get the Knack, however, contains nothing but sexual cynicism, exactly what polished pop music does not need. “My Sharona,” their Top 40 smash, is what kids are playing on their car 8tracks as they lick each others’ inner thighs. “Good Girls Don’t” is about getting into a girls’, pants and then getting her to sit on your face.

/ “Siamese Twins (The Monkey and Me)” is a gruesome, scatological , song from the perspective of a Siamese twin who wants to kill his attached brother (“shits on my back, piss on my be\ck—cut it clean, leave it out on the highway”). I hate to sound like Ann Landers, but the obscenity of the Knack’s lyrics not only does not cohere with their clean-cut image, but it also is completely antithetical to the underlying principle of fabricated pop. l^would not want my teenage daughter to marry a Janusfaced Knack.

(c) The Knack are experts in the growing field of “Xerox rock” (writer Gregg Turner’s coinage). Musically, they are no fakes, carefully produced with an ear on the bull’s-eye by Mike Chapman, the brain behind #1 hits by Exile, Nick Gilder, and Blondie. Supposedly, all the songs on Get the Knack were recorded in one take, which is a commendable feat since only one of the 12 cuts, Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat” (see Herman’s Hermits On Tour for swell cover), > totally bombs put. But as for originality, the Knack sounds like a combination of a dozen different bands blend into one glop. “Oh Tara'’-the Rubinoos. “(She’s So) Se!fish”=Bo Diddley doodling. “Maybe-' Tonight”=Eric Carmen goo. “My Sharona”=Led Zep squ&eze-my-lemon riffs. “Frustrated”=the Stones’ “Shattered.” Arguably, all a-ok tunes; nevertheless, the only cut that converges with Get the Knack’s" Beatlesque approach is “That’s What the Little Girls Do,” a kissing & smooching sigh, minus any sicko lyrics, that could’ve been an outtake from Beatles V/.

Certainly Capitol has chosen to pattern the Knack’s image-hype after the Beatles (ten years from now, will anybody remember Klaatu?), but that genre, forged by the Knickerbockers (as well as Badfinger), can be heard best on recordings by frailer (and thus, more human) bands like the Yankees and Shoes. As a carbon copy band of nothing particularly original, the Knack is standing in the shadows of the Cars and Cheap Trick, waiting their turn in line with a ruddy glow.

(d)Gosh. Golly. Gee whiz.

Robot A. Hull

JOHN COUGAR

(Riva Records)

“(My hometown) is so small, so boring that the kids resort to developing poses for themselves. I had a friend who would actually rehearse standing next to «a parking meter with such precision and regularity that seemingly insignificant pole-postures were refined to a fine art status. It’s typical of the options available to a rebel without circumstances, growing up in a small Midwestern town in search of an identity. A lot of us played a't being hoods...”

—John Cougar (bio)

Everybody has to start somewhere. Semi-rural Indiana is where John Cougar started, three albums and as many years ago, when (as now) his fave flicks were East of Eden and From Here To Eternity, so-obvious (maybe even unconscious) role models were such nifty knock-off greats as Gene Vincent, P.F. Sloan, the DC5, L6u Reed and the Sex Pistols; i.e., not the familiar prime movers of their respective ages, but those eager junior leaguers whose sheer desire to shine like seniors led them to equal, then trample in the r&r historical dust, their own former idols.

Everybody knows Vincent cut Presley; P.F. and Lou skinned Dylan alive; for a time, Dave Clark outbeat the Beatles and for a few seconds the Pistols eclipsed the entire universe the Ramones had built. On JC, Bloomington’s hood poet effortlessly out-dillies Dylan (in “Night Dancing,” “Sodom and Gomorrah, they run the roadhouse”), outdrives Springsteen (each of the 10 cuts here pitches such popular catalog items as night, streets and cars), and generally parades his inspirational patches so proudly you can’t help but smile. You also can’t help but notice that, just for his spunk, youth and lack of guile, JC is everything Bobby and Brucie, at this point, are not: passionate, driven, disarmingly honest, genuinely funny.

Me, I’d trade my copjes of the last six Lou Reed LPs or the last dozen Stones albums to hear this Hoosier belt out that line about “Electricity runs through the video” in “I Need A Lover.” I’d gladly swap all those Jersey Devil bootlegs for JC hollering about “The Great Midwest.” Derivative and excessive? Hell yes. Bloodless and unfunny? Never. What’s great is that Cougar’s at least still playing at it, over there by the parking meter, the world on his shoulder, his r&r heart pinned to his sleeve, his mind still set on proving it all night.

Gene Sculatti

DAVE EDMUNDS

Repeat When Necessary

(Swan Song)

Among the faculty at the Rock ’n’ Roll Academy, graduate division, v there are a couple of members who are certain to be denied tenure. Profs. Edmunds and Lowe are talented, yes, and well-versed in the lore and method of their field, but somehow not quite serious. Kind of flip, a bit too facile-'-in a word, lightweight. Quite in doubt as to whether even their well-known close ties to Dean Costello will help them make the cut.

The question is largely one of detachment, and their lack of it. It is one thing for third generation rock scholars to demonstrate for the edification of young students the poses of a bar band, but quite another to actually be in one. And one finds it hardly seemly to see in such learned and self-aware men so much dogged enthusiasm for certain forms and conventions at their most primitive level. They treat the extant body of work in what is generally acknowledged as the most important art form of the late 20th century, the vehicle for man’s truest expression of his condition, as if it were some pop thing] To be taken with a beer, we -suppose, these little songs that run their course for 2/2 or 3 pleasant minutes and then,gone. The approach runs counter to everything rock ’n’ roll has come to stand for.

Edmunds’ latest work bears further testimony to his own wellestablished bent. Do not be fooled by the pink and baby blue cover and its photograph so evocative of the “dumb” and “cheap” movements of some nearly two decades ago. Inside, we find the predictable pastiche of sounds known to excite, much of it tinged with the flavor of white rhythm and blues. But the musical and lyrifial references are made without tne scholarly contextual accuracy of a Ry Cooder, or the exacting precision of, let us say, Robert Gordon. Most dismaying is his pretentious excess of exuberance, as if we were meant to accept the notion that his music derives from some primal desire to create a joyous noise.

To be perfectly blunt, this is a record for rock fans; students of the form will merely be confused by its contradictions, and its refusal to state its sources clearly. To label this, a' straight-ahead, “fun” rock record hardly conveys the sense of letdown one inevitably feels in contemplating it.

Kevin Doyle

THE KINKS

Low Budget

(Arista)

Ray Davies is the Segovia of iconoclasm at a time when a lot of people are hitting power chords; he’s less a convention-trampler than a flamenco dancer. Others may sneer and swagger over darelines drawn in the dirt; Davies flirts with them, walks them blindfolded, minces around them, balances on one toe as close to them as possible, or, self-mockingly, trips over them backwards in a Fosbury Flop. By tracing and retracing the lines of convention, he makes the decision to be different itself an object of celebration as well as the subject of scrutiny.

That’s why “(Wteh I Could Fly Like) Superman,” the disco single from Low Budget, is so perfect, such a joyous joke. It’s quintessential Kinks, not only in its subject matter (measuring up and opting out), its tone of rueful resignation (“I’d like to fly but I can’t even swim”), and Davies’ tongue-incheek, wide-eyed expostulation and walking-wounded wails, but also in the way it toys with and subverts expectations. I mean, “I’m too weak, I’m so thin’\hardly gibes with the doncha-think-I’m-sexy bodystocking disco ethic, while cutting a disco number is just the sort of gentle, gleeful mindfuck that Davies has always found irresistible—toe in the waters of conformity, eyes rolling at tfie heavens.

If most of Low Budget doesn’t work as well, you can’t blame it on the music. The Kinks (now six) sound better than ever, with Jim Rodford (ex-Argent) on bass providing a new punch. Ray takes his usual amiable Milton Berle-esque stroll through playlists of the past to produce a few terrific recycled riffs—notably, this time around, a lot of Buddy Holly and “Jumping Jack Flash.” “National Health” is the Kinks’ answer to “Shattered”— complete with teeth-chattering vocals (“nervous tension nervous tension nervous tension...”) and air-tour-of-Nicaragua latinisms. But much of the material is^-sigh—as familiar as the guy next door (why go out of your way to meet him?). Ray made his survive-and-revive task harder last year when the Kinks came out of the closet with “Misfits”—lilting, elegaic, the perfect song to get drunk to by yourself on a Saturday night when you want to look in the mirror on Sunday—but it said too much too clearly about Davies’ concerns and his turf (Yeah, we know you write about misfits. Don’t tell us). Now it’s hard to watch without seeing the wires—and he doesn’t hide them well on Low Budget. Recorded here, it’s the Kinks’ American album down to the lyrical details— they’re ten-gallon rather than teacup .sized. We don’t need Ray Davies to be cute about the gas shortage (come on); “A Gallon of Gas” should go straight to the circular file along with “Catch Me Now, I’m Falling,” a sort of emotional ode to the Marshall Plan. “Attitude”—“Misfits” Mark II, but louder—gets by. for its rock-out exuberance, the title cut for its lyrics (I can forgive a lot for “cutprice person in a low-budget land”). Score 4 for 11; not bad. But when you know the guy can fly like Superman, it’s hard to settle for Allegheny.

Debra Rae Cohen

BLUE OYSTER CULT

Mirrors

(Columbia)

A quarterway through “The Vigil” after giving its pussier-than-thou acoustical intro the benefit of the doubt, the bridgewater realizes with a disbelieving shudder that a heavily muddled melodic variation of (“Oh my Holy Nights!”) the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman”js being worked. Strong of stomach, he endures not only this, but also the “Runabo6t”ish banality some several bars later. The idiot monk prayer-chant to the Silver Surfer that follows, however proves to be too much. Not yet smelling the trap, he curses, hurls his cigarette lighter at the stereo, and begins to thumb through his memory log. B, hummm, BF, eh, here we go, BL: Blimp Sisters (see Whale Bait), Bloody Noses-ahBlue Oyster Cult. With a crossreference to a Thin Phil.

Thin Phil was a bluebelly stick of a Ft. Hood army boy who kept a house in Waco as a sanctuary from khaki dratf regiment. It was a place to get his PFC stripe ripped to the max, a spot where his friends could gather for some serious jammin’. I recall one week-end evening-a typical one-starting with the few of us faithfuls huddled over a burner on the kitchen stove, putting heat to some vile, oily lookin’ goop that was smoked from a glass pipe. After everyone passed the diligent scrutiny of our good host (“You fucked up, man? I mean really fucked up?”) we adjourned to the purple candle dimness of the living room, where the beanpole soldier gleefully rubbed his hands together: “Now’s for some BEE OH SEE!” And on ,at fullest volume came that 1st LF’s iron sandman’s nether-urban blues, reducing as always the less sturdy" souls of our troupe to states of catalyptic. paranoia. At the eerie irony of the\“what luck” retprt to “hadn’t seen a cop all day” on “Then Came the Last Days of May,” my cuddly blonde dumplin’ roomie of that time shivered, her glazed brown eyes squinting. “Oooh, oodles of ominous.” “Beaucoup menace,” Phil agreed. “This is the heaviest fuckin’ record ever!”

Well, not quite ever, Phil— wherever you are—cos Tyranny And Mutation followed, the merciless extention of havin’ tpo much to dream, as unrelenting a rock ’n’ roll record as exists, due to the most awesopne track transitions ever branded into vinyl. At the time it was released, I thought of BOC as a brainier Blues Magoos, a band that was able to create, control, and multiple-orgasm minatory agitation. They had my kind of roots (listen to the Burdonish “now she’s bound for a lower station” segment of “Baby Ice Dog” and see the logic of the Animals cover on Enchanted Evening—tho “Inside Looking Out”, woulda been more logical) and T&M remains one of this bridgewater’s most played passions. The funny thing is, except for hearing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” a few times on the radio, I hadn’t any recent studio BOC ^contact until Mirrors. Which is why I wasted some anger, and almost missed the boat; ^anticipating ear meltin’, and gettin’ what? ,

Well, at first I thought I’d conclude this piece by offering a 33rd possibility of a TV pilot for Rocky Graziano (see Gulcher): Rocky As the .manager of a once fearsome rock ’n’ roll band that’d lost its nerve. But then it hit me: Mirrors is a cunningly deceptive collection of parodies. Of Bee Gees disco (“Lonely Teardrops” is built on a very “Stuporstitious” vamp, with real 'girls singing the high parts), pomp rock (“The Vigil”), ro^d-life songs (the acutely pathetic Larry Gatlin type lyrics of “In Thee”), the vainglprious (“Dr. Music”), Crisco cooked hard rock, (“I Am the Storm”), and Sven the Blue Oyster Hit (“The Great Sun Jester”). With the Who Oyster Cult and Blue Oyster Cars thrown in to show that the boys could become a lounge band tomorrow, if they had to. And it’s pretty funny. Not failin’ down, Best of Meltzer funny, but, uh, skillfully humorous: I’d rather they’d done like the Sabs did with Never Say Die, and provided further evidence that rock -n’ roll vets needn’t bind their act with restrained survival tactics to get it on.:.but say. What can I write but good health to you, guys.

Before the kiss, a joke?

j. m. bridgewater