ROCK.A.RAMA

ROCK.A.RAMA

This month’s Rock-a-ramas were written by Billy Altman, Richard Riegel, Richard C. Walls, and Arnold the Pig.

JAMES BROWN—The Original Disco Man (Polydor):: Wherein the inscrutable Soul Brother Numero Uno finally comes to grips with a genre he just about invented singlehandedly, parts the sea of strobe lights, and proceeds to do the Camel Walk all over most of the undeserving, competition that had pushed him off the charts for far too long. Brad Shapiro’s sympathetic and somewhat adventurous production keeps these moving without too many discoid cliches, as Brown is surrounded by snazzy horns, standard JB maniacal bass playing and Some exquisite guitar work. But be he wailing incomprehensibly (“Too Funky in Here”) or preaching himself into a frenzy (Bill Anderson’s "Still”), Brown is totally in command, as befits royalty. Cross cultural moment of the decade comes when Brown confronts a dobrO on “Let the Boogie Do the Rest”: “That’s a ug/y guitar... that (guitar’s so ugly it could jump behind a tombstone and spit monkeys.” Like I said, inscrutable.

B.A.

AVIATOR (EMI America):: After all the years of Maynard G. Krebs-inspired bad jokes, suddenly everybody is saluting Cleveland, Ohio (cf. Ian “Schizoid” Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks”), and it’s about time!'Thus Aviator present us with their own fond memories of Kucinichvilleon-the-Lake, in a song of more or less the same name; otherwise, their LP is your usual rock/ fusion/disco fusion of the day, more kinetic than some, less pretentious than most (no lyric sheet). How much you wanna bet the singular name and trademark logo came first? Still, I’ll grant Aviator Clive Bunker 30 extra points for having walked out on Jethro Tull even before us Yanks knew any better.

R.R.

BEN SIDRAN—Live At Montreux (Arista):: Singer, composer, pianist, jazz critic and one time late movie host in Madison, Wisconsin, Sidran comes across as a caustic Mose Allison on his vocals (“Eat It”, a sly song about selling out dedicated to Tony Williams, is particularly mean) and a two-fisted purveyor of bluesy jazz thru his piano playing. Solid support, with nice ,£oltrane meets Stanley Turrentine solos from Michael Brecker. Terribly hip, fairly entertaining.

R.C.W.

DAM ASK AS—A Day In The Life Of Green Acres'(Asinine, 45rpm)::I tried to warn you about that Gi7/igan’sJs/and/“Stairway To Heaven” reedrd, but nobody listened and Led Zep made ’em take it off the market. Now there’s another one, “A Day In The Life Of Green Acres,” by Damaskas. Send whatever along with your name'and address to Asinine Records, 6120 Barrows Dr., L.A., CA 90048. Snort, snort.

A.T.P.

DISCO CIRCUS (Columbia):: Arrangers' Mats Bjoerklund and Jorg Evers and producer/“conceiver” Jurgen S. Korduletsch succeed in assembling a Bizarro Noah’s Ark of disco, with enough only slightly altered swipes from Kraftwerk, Donna Summer and the Bee Gees to prove once and for all that cloning has become a reality in our lifetime. The atmosphere is cartoonish and giddy, just like the funny animals on the cover, highlighted by “The Mexican” (or, the Lonely Bull gets past the bouncers at Studio 54) and the real piece de resistance, a reworking of an old monster that’s been waiting eleven years for a definitive treatment—namely, Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida.” Believe me, it never sounded better.

B.A.

GEORGE WALLINGTON QUINTET— Dance Of The Infidels (Savoy):;Pianist Wallington is a semi-legend—he played with Dizzy Gillespie in ’44 at the age of 17, went on to become one of the more proficient of the Bud Powell disciples/then quit the scene in the late 50’s to go into the air conditioner business (that’s cool...sorry) with his brother, never to return. This is unregenerated bop recorded in ’57, with Donald Byrd on trumpet (a little sloppy) and Phil Woods on alto sax.

R.C.W.

POINT BLANK—Airplay (MCA)::Point Blank mosey back onto our turntables this month, to fill that. Texrox credulity gap left by the continued absence of their Bill Ham stablemates, the elusive ZZ Top. This stuff sounds sticker than Point Blank’s Arista LPs; as they say in the biz, “airplay” beckons. And it appears as though Point flank’s ditched the dwarf, too, probably on cosmetic-conscious orders from above. (Don’t laugh, ZZ Top used to take real steers and broncos on stage in their heyday; that little guy coulda consumed half as much oats & Lone Star as them livestock groupies!)

R.R.

RON OLDRICH—fBlackstick (Classic Jazz):: Oldrich plays clarinet and bass clarinet with a lot of fugue-ish overdubs in the head arrangements, improvs closer to Buddy De Franco than Eric Dolphy, and a penchant for sambas and Gerry Mulligan tunes. It isn’t as bad as that: sounds. In fact, it’s an engaging little record and that, considering that I’d place clarindt second (right behind bagpipes) on a list of instruments whose sound can send me' screaming into the night, ain’t faint praise.

1 ‘ R.C.W.

DAVID WERNE> (Epic):: True modern day eclectic music from a former boy pheenom (two albums for RCA in the early 70’s) who is literally bursting at the seams with talent and energy. Almost all the music is played by composer/ singer Werner and guitarist/bassist/keyboard player Mark Doyle, and though stuff like this usually smacks of preconception, Werner manages to make it ring true. Almost every track gets high marks, from the Music Machines styled, hook infested “Can’t Imagine,” right through the Beach Boys/Cyrcle choir-like “Melanie Cried” (love that harpsichord), and on to the Roxy Music homage, “Every New Romance,” which comes complete with Ferry-boat vocal, Mackay-ish sax and Manzanerian guitar chomps. Sayjng that this album is impressive is understating things greatly.

B.A.

PAT TRAVERS—Go For What You Know (Polydor)::So Anglo-Canuck Pat Travers is still making with the high-power, high-charisma geetar hero stance all these many years later, after role-models Robin Trower and Rory Gallagher have fallen by the wayside of contemporaneity and relevance? Yeah, and this set 7s Travers’ Seger/Frampton live bullet oyerthe-topper, too, so it’s now or never, you read it here first (if & when this guy does hit the Big Time Boogie Bucks)! A biodegradeable alternative to wasteful aerosol Ted Nugent guitar sprays, protects yer jeans from the grease stains , associated with Terribobble'Ted’s raw-flesh extravagonzos...

R.R.

GIBSON BROTHERS—Cuba (Island)::This stuff is the true organic disco, just like the black folks have been assuring us all along: three hepcat Martinique siblings, transplanted to Daniel Vangarde’s Parisian back lot, to feed that dancin’ beat back to our Western-hemi feet. Not reggae, if Island, or maybe reggae before & after recording science.

R.R.

GARY BROOKER—Fear of Flying (Chrysalis):: Good to have Brooker back, especially with an album as stately and flowing as this. The music, played by Brooker, Tim Renwick, Bruce Lynch and Dave Mattacks, is impeccable, and the rnaterial is top notch. Lest anyone has forgotten just what a graceful and distinctive singer Brooker is, we point you towards the haunting “Give Me Something to Remember You By” and Murray Head’s “Say It Ain’t So Joe,” that plea to the original Mr. Jackson of Black Sox notoriety. Maybe no mammoth homers here, but lord, what i a Sweet swing.

B.A.

HENRY THREADGILL—X-75 Volume I (Arista Novus)::Threadgill is the unnominal leader of the ace avant-garde trio Air wherein he is a searcher, a surrealist, a spontaneous composer of unflagging intelligence and feeling. Here he uses the unlikely instrumentation of four woodwinds, four basses plus voice to display four different extentions of his compositional reach. And the “Air Song” sounds too much like the theme from House on Haunted Hill, still “Sir Simpleton” and “Fe Fi Fo Fum” are, at the very least, very interesting and “Celebration”, with its combination of earth and sky, pavement beating and ether delerium is, to use an unjustly archaic word, a delight—a real find.

R.C.W. *

TOM BROWNE—Browne Sugar (Arista GRP)::Warm, quietly lyrical trumpet and flugelhorn, by a youthful veteran of Sonny Fortune’s exemplary group; warm and lyrical without kissing the rock public’s unimaginative asses the way Chuck Mangione’s pasta-packed horn's always seem to do. Music more subtly rewarding .than workaday fusion, too bad somebody cluttered up Browne’s clean moods with those languid vocal choruses on some of the cuts. Give it to us straight next time, Tom, we’re old enough to know better.

R.R.