Wrong Ring, Wrong Classification

Wrong Ring, Wrong Classification

RECORDS

JONI MITCHELL

Mingus

(Asylum)

CHARLES MINGUS

Passions of a Man

(Columbia)

Nostalgia in Times Square

(Atlantic)

by Joe Goldberg

Unfortunately, Charles Mingus' death was of the kind that allows for considerable advance notice. It also coincided with a Long Awaited, Highly Publicized, Major Project from Joni Mitchell, an album of Mitchell performing her lyrics to Mingus tunes, some of them written especially for her. Mingus is said to have originated the project. He was a shrewd enough publicist to know that a Mitchell album would sell far better than any of his, and probably attract attention to his other recorded work, much of which was out of print. And then, of course, he pulled the greatest publicity stunt of all.

Now that Mingus is dead, and there are articles in Rolling Stone and more likely places about how we knew how great he was all along, he is being canonized as one of the great jazz composers. I doubt that assessment will outlast the current rush of interest.

What he was was the great jazz bassist of the modern era, the first to treat his instrument, in solo, as a large guitar, rather than simply continuing to keep time with a more interesting choice of notes, and he was certainly responsible for the flood of virtuoso bassists who came up after him, many of them, including the most remarkable, Charlie Haden, unearthed by Ornette Coleman. But when Haden played with the alumni orchestra called Mingus Dynasty assembled by Mingus' widow at the Hollywood Bowl recently, it was apparent that Mingus'music, like Ellington's, suffers when played by anyone other than the composer.

Mingus probably wanted to be Ellington. He worked for him, and revered him. But, even more than Ellington, Mingus' music was always in the process of becoming. He was notorious for stopping performances in the middle to berate a soloist, or start over again in a better tempo—going to hear Mingus in a club was often like attending a rehearsal.

The other side of that coin is that he seems to have recorded some of his music before he should have— there is a lot of sloppy ensemble playing to be found on the two recent reissues of his work from Atlantic and Columbia, accentuated by the sometimes overly thick textures he favored in his quest for collective improvisation. The Atlantic set features, along with later work, music from two of his finest albums; Pithecanthropus Erectus, whose title track may be the best thing he ever did, and The Clown, from which we get the superb 'Haitian Fight Song." but not the track that is almost its equal, "Blue Cee." The Columbia package has some unreleased material as well as longer versions of previously released music from Mingus Dynasty and Mingus Ah Um. If you can still find the tworecord set called Better Git It In Your Soul (Columbia CG 30628) (a reissue of those albums), it is to be preferred to this, and is, in fact, indispensable.

But despite all the flaws—there was a lot of cocktail lounge sophistication in Mingus' harmonies, when he wasn't writing masterful blues— he was a great bandleader, a better bandleader than he was a composer, and such people as Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, and Mai Waldron—the list could go on— came out of his bands to prove it.

Now, the Joni Mitchell record. What she did isn't so unique—a hack like Jon Hendricks has based a career on it. Indeed, Mitchell recorded one of his efforts, "Centerpiece." But pop idols tend to think history not only ends but begins with them, and so, unfortunately, do their fans. (Everyone marvelled when Linda Ronstadt recorded "When I Grow Too Old To Dream," which Dizzy Gillespie, who calls it "When I Grow Too Old To," has been playing for more than 30 years, and which my grandmother used to sing to me when I was a little kid, with no voice at all, but more emotion than Ronstadt knows about.)

Anyway, Mitchell told Ben Sidran about her project in Rolling Stone about a year-and-a-half ago, with a stupefying solipsism that still astonishes me when I haul out the piece to quote it. "It's a great opportunity to study a classical form and breathe new life into it," she said. Sidran wanted to know how Mitchell could write from Mingus' point of view, especially since Mingus knew he was dying. "I simply became him in my imagination and wrote, what he would miss," she said. "I cut myself off from everything and meditated on it. And I have a very powerful imagination. It's not too hard for me to imagine myself in his position."

And here I thought her work for years had been based on the premise that none of us understands the other one's pain. But I shouldn't knock her record because of what she says about it. The main thing is that she didn't do what she said she was going to do. There are six songs here, interspersed by conversations with Mingus and Mingus-with-Mitchell (one of the former duplicated on the Atlantic set) that make the project seem like a party record. Four of the songs have music by Mingus— only four songs after all that? One of the remaining two, "God Must Be a Boogie Man," is "inspired by the first four pages of his autobiography" (don't do any more research than is necessary), and the other, "The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey," which has what sounds like a real live wolf on the backing track, doesn't seem to have anything to do with Mingus at all.

The remaining four tracks could be put on one side of an LP. "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," in which Mitchell is forced into the Hendricks bind of writing to a preconceived theme, is less about black and white troubles, about which Mitchell says nothing that isn't commonplace. "The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines" is nice light singing, almost as good as Annie Ross used to do. "Sweet Sucker Dance" shows that maybe Mingus knew more about Mitchell than he let on—he tosses one right down her alley, a tenuous, amorphous, slithering melody of the kind she herself writes. But "A Chair in the Sky" is absolutely the best singing I have ever heard from her. For the m'ost part, her little, sly voice isn't up to the demands of deep thinking, but here she sounds marvellous^ like those great, jazzy lounge singers you knew would never become popular.

I wonder why Mitchell rejected the brilliant jazz players she says made the first of these tapes with her—Eddie Gomez, John Guerin, Phil Woods, Danny Richmond, Tony Williams, John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer, and Stanley Clarke— and preferred to release the neoWeather Report tracks included here. Did they blow her off the stand?

This album comes with four paintings by Mitchell, each about Mingus, and each based on a different style, and they—especially Mingus as a Roualt angle—are the best things about this set. I don't think she was anything but well-intentioned, I just think she was fighting out of her weight.

DAVID JOHANSEN

In Style

(Blue Sky)

Speaking to a new acquaintance, I mention having received David Johansen's latest album and ask him if he's familiar with the singer. "Well," he says, "I used to hear the Dolls once in awhile but that was a long time age...haven't heard him since...but I understand he's highly regarded." My n.a., who is young (younger than me anyway), a B-52's devotee, Rock Against Racism maven, a serious partaker of the local scene, makes the "highly regarded" remark without sarcasm. Johansen is highly regarded, a critic's favorite whose name is familiar to a large number of people who've never heard him sing.

In Style is a calculated, purposeful attempt by Johansen (with the aid of co-produger Mick Ronson) to break through the dead end of cult status and reach more people. Cries of "sell out!" are anticipated from purists but this is one instance (of several) when the denouncements of the diehard should be ignored. Johansen hasn't sold out but rather bought into several musical forms, with the conviction an opportunist invariably fails to muster. The album is intelligent, fun, rocking in parts, in parts moving. And, for all its calculation (the programming balance on this album is positively scientific), Johansen remains a singer of immense rough charm and surprising turns of talent. This record deserves to be a success.

The sound here is mostly that of densfe textured (tho not lush) pop rock, sometimes shaped into a Motown homage ("Melody," "Swaheto Woman," which is also pared down disco, not bad in small doses), sometimes coming across with a post-Springsteen full-tilt weightiness ("Big City," "You Touched Me Too"). There's very little "noticeable" guitar on the album, just a monolithic chording sound augmented by keyboards, occasionally a saxophone, strings (twice) and xylophone (once). With the exception of two cuts, the usual instrumental ravings have been tamed and molded into subservient backgrounds for Johansen's vocals. Fortunately, his voice ably withstands all this attention. His is a high bellowing instrument (not so reminiscent of Jagger as Eric Burdon) rhapsodizing love/hate relationships with the big city, telling tales of hard luck women, hard lost love, seductive, bullying, even, as much as a full-throated baritone can be, wistful.

The two exceptional cuts alluded to above are short pithy hard rockers harkening back to the Doll's sound. On "She* and "Wreckless Crazy" Johansen growls spitefully, the guitars momentarily come out of hiding, the record temporarily burns. But fast and furious isn't enough anymore—throughout the record Johansen wants, gets, and delivers more.

I like this album, it appeals to my lazy desire for loud, uncomplicated pop rock sung with conviction, presented with smooth diversity and a clever manipulation of modes —Motown, hard rock, reggae, .(power) pop, middle-Dylan ("Justine" is a sterling example of the genre), balladry. And yes, a shard of disco, a soupeon of punk.

Richard C. Walls

RY COODER Bop Till You Drop (Warner Bros.)

Ry Cooder's latest album is a really wonderful surprise, especially when the cover of this album does everything in its power to get you headed in the other direction. I mean, there's the Coodie, lazyeyed and purplish, his hands almost slumped over his guitar—looks like he'd just slowly float down to the ground if you blew on him. Bop Till You Drop? More like yawn till you snooze. And right underneath the title, a nice dumb sticker informing us that this here elpee is "Rock's first all-digital recording." As if declaration of new studio techniques is just the thing to get you to shell out some money for a record you might otherwise not care a hoot about. Quad, binaural, directto-disk...it's enough to make me wish that (could just have a ear with no engine and a battery in my living room, so's 1 could test everything out on the factory-equipped tinny AM.

'Course Ry Cooder's always been a strange character and, after hearing this record, maybe the package is just his bizarre wit surfacing in its usual subtle form. The one and only time I ever talked to him, he would neither confirm nor deny the rumor that he had played on some Seeds albums back in the glory days of Punk 1, then proceeded to give me a rollicking ten-minute monologue on Sky Saxon. Likewise, he gave me a real annoyed glance when I mentioned how neat it was that he had taken the cover of Into the Purple Valley, an album studded with Depression era songs, from King Vidor's socialist classic, Our Daily Bread. Like the only good joke is one no one else gets. Go figure.

Nonetheless, Bop Till You Drop is probably Cooder's finest hour to date, an album of casual elegance and exquisite ease that has often escaped Cooder's work. For once, he's managed to make the transition from aspiring student to relaxed participant. Cooder's often painful self-consciousness about his voice is at a minimum here, and indeed, walk into any of the last three tracks on the record and you'd hardly know it was Cooder in the middle of a gospel quartet ("Trouble, You Can't Fool Me"), slow-cooking a duet with Chaka Khan ("Don't You Mess Up a Good Thing"), or blending in a harmony behind.Bobby King's soaring, sensual lead vocal on the set's heartstopper, "I Can't Win." Instrumentally, the presence of everybody's favorite guitar player's guitar player, David Lindley, is a huge blessing, for Lindley's style is as unique and understated as Cooder's and the two work together so well that it's often hard to distinguish one guitar from the other.

Bop Till You Drop is an album of nuances, auras afid atmosphere that makes you realize that great rhythm and blues songs are timeless rather than were timeless for those of us who went through the sixties without pigeon-holing everything we bounced our ears against. It'§ nice to know that Cooder has finally created a work that can be liked without having to be respected first.

Billy Altman

GRUPPO SPORTIVO

Mistakes

(Sire)

"Which isn't Dutch to me! I learned the language when I sold wind to the windmill makers along the Zuyder Zee!" Scrooge McDuck, in 1960, reminiscing about his early capitalist adventures.

Nearly 80 years later, with the release of Gruppo Sportivo's debut U.S. platter, the doughty Dutch at last have their golden earring of an opportunity to recoup ol' Unca Scrooge's Amerixploitation of their native industries. Mistakes is an extravagantly . conceived satirical broadside aimed at American pop culture, as encountered by these enterprising Dutchpersons during a lifetime of consuming our trashiest records, movies and TV shows.

Gruppo Spprtivo's triumphant discovery of America echoes Europop predecessors as diverse and as rewarding as Franz Kafka's novel Amerika, an incisive, surreal travelogue based entirely on secondary sources, or their fellow Beneluxbopper Guy Peellaert's amazing paintings of (exclusively) AngloAmerican rock'n'roll myths.

Gruppo Sportivo is the brainchild of guitarist-chief songwriter Hans Vandenburg (or "Van Defruits," as he disarmingly bills himself from square one) who, to flesh out his Yankrock conceits, recruited several rather nice packages of same: the indispensably female vocalists Meike Touw and Josee Van Iersel, and keyboardist Peter Calicher, who plays organ in that wonderfully rinky-dink, Farfisal style favored by Jimmy Destri of Blondie.

Speaking of which, if you want to cut this critical crap right now, go ahead and listen to Gruppo Sportivo's "Blah Blah Magazines," wherein the band yuk it up over all the comparisons the European writers have already drawn from their sound, e.g., Abba, Blondie, etc. I'll drink a Heineken to that; with those lush, darting, cockteasing girl-gruppe vocals up front, Gruppo Sportivo's sound suggests Blondie (sans angst) or, even more explicitly, American rock of the pre-Beatle 60's. After one or two spins, each of Mistakes' cuts sounds like some enshrined U.S. oldie or another, and you begin to realize just how many r'n'r archetypes Gruppo Sportivo have acquired through our psychic Lend-Lease.

Dutch-rock pioneers like Shocking Blue and Focus and even the froggin' Tee Set sang in English, too, but Gruppo Sportivo write and sing in perfectly idiomatic American better, even, than some Limey musicians manage. Nothing like taking a tongue-lashing in your own tongue; e.g., "P.S. 78," with its imagery of U.S. high school life, lifted from back numbers of Betty and Veronica: "We are American kids/Rich daddies and big tits." (Yes!) Or in "Superman": "Standing on my doormat/Dogshit under your. shoe." (Streets are paved with...) Mistakes abounds with such exquisitely casual detail, the kind native bards like Springsteen too often have to reach for.

Now for the clincher: Mistakes is a compilation of Gruppo Sportivo's two European LPs which, despite their all-American musical propensities, were never released here. Still, as Mistakes includes both a 13-song LP, and a bonus 6-song EP, the lucky purchaser ends up with nearly all the tunes from the European albums anyway. No "Dutchtreat" from this gruppo! (Or, as the irrepressible Van Defruits has it in "Dreamin' ": "It's the cheapest motel, baby!")

Richard Riegel

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY AND

THE ASBURY JUKES

The Jukes

(Mercury)

A new Southside album with no mention of Springsteen or Miami Steve anywhere? What can it mean?

A change of direction, of course, and if it ain't altogether for the better, * it's sure understandable. The Jukes' last LP, Hearts of Stone, was their strongest shot: dynamite tunes, playing that hits you in the chest again and again, Johnny singing straight from the gut, and production that let it all through. But the 3rd album charm that helped Bruce break through broke down. Southside was out of action for several weeks due to onstage injuries and by the time he got back on the boards, the album had stalled. Then Epic dropped him before the record even dropped off the charts, a real cheap shot if you ask me. So the boys have downplayed the Asbury Park connec: tion, risked mercury poisoning, and recorded in Muscle Shoals...

...an album of their own songs. They've been threatening this move for some time and now that it's come, it's nice to know that Johnny, guitarist Billy Rush and bassist Allan Berger have developed into pretty reasonable writers. It's Rush who's the sleeper; he's in on eight of the ten tunes and only goes cosmic once. Otherwise, he lives in the real world with the rest of us, starting off determined to succeed, then watching confusion and dissipation set in. A fair amount of this is grim stuff but Billy's got a sense of humor too as his jokey ("She'll need a piece of the rock/If you decide to roll"), J. Geils-like "Security" shows.

Otherwise, Johnny's still singing well, Barry Beckett's production is nice and clean, the horn arrangements are a bit more imaginative than usual...but I gotta admit that I miss the aggressive desperation of Hearts of Stone that left me staggering away from my stereo more than once. But it ain't no use in whining about what this album isn't; what The Jukes is is good solid stuff and., if enough of you buy it, you'll have the premature axemen at Epic watching out for the fall of the blade themselves. Tell your friends.

Michael Davis

ATLANTA RHYTHM SECTION

Underdog

(Polydor)

It looks like there's trouble in Doraville. That tiny studio in suburban Atlanta has witnessed some of the finest moments in Southern rock's rise to popularity over the last decade, but the resident ARS is showing alarming signs of solution on this, their eighth album recorded there. Underdog has some nice moments and lives up to the band's impeccable technical standards but sounds hastily thrown together and formulaic next to the rest of the ARS output.

Certain ARS trademarks continue to shine even in otherwise dull moments. The band's exquisite arrangement sense gives a subtlety and emotional nuance completely lacking in other Dixie tockers. Simple melodic figures and harmony shades, particularly on "Indigo Passion" and "While Time Is Left," provide the rich instrumental texture which has been the obvious goal of the band's later albums. In this understated context vocalist Ronnie Hammond has developed into a great singer and Underdog is his best vehicle yet. Unfortunately, the band has apparently sacrificed all the guts and intensity of its basic form in order to arrive at this rarified melodicism.

There's a story behind this. On early ARS albums the band sublimated its fiery chops in order to concentrate on the songs themselves, which were remarkably good. The approach was that of a crack session outfit, which is what they were. As the band's live sets got hotter and hotter, producer Buddy Buie allowed them to go for more energy in the recordings, climaxing with their rawest album, Red Tape. On the albums since then a balance was struck between a "live" studio sound and the exquisitely controlled engineering of Rodney Mills, which enabled Buie to focus the band's energy in a commercial direction. The result was hit singles, follow-ups and, inevitably, a formula. Up until Underdog the formula didn't control the group's sound but was in service of it, but now that's changed. The attempts to liven things up here, "Do It Or Die," "Born Ready" and "I Hate the Blues," don't work at all. Barry Bailey's devastating lead guitar lines are missing—he sounds bored, maybe even disgusted.

If nothing else, the band finally went ahead and gave a nod to its pre history as the Classics IV by recording a version of "Spooky" that does credit to the group's background. J.R. Cobb played the rhythm guitar pattern on the original and here he shows how the concept has remained pretty much the same although there's plenty of room for elaboration. In the interplay between Cobb and Bailey we get the album's only real guitar pyrotechnics.

John Swenson

THE RECORDS (Virgin)

MEMORANDUM

From: Carraway LP Analysts, Inc.

To: CREEM Magazine

Re: THE RECORDS

Preliminary listenings to the current record album and accompanying extended-play disc by THE RECORDS (4-piece standard configuration, augmented by . keyboards) reveal this band to fall somewhere between the north of innocence and well to the south of cynicism. On a few tracks the intent is calculatedly "teenage" in theme, but the musical attitude is comparatively sophisticated, and the playing adroit and knowing, so it is obvious that The Records are no novices. (Indeed, perfunctory research indicates that the prime creative component—writer/drummer Will Burch—was previously a member of a band of some reputation in Britain: see KURSAAL FLYERS for further elucidation; and that The Records have had an association with Stiff Records, and Rachel Sweet in particular, e.g. "Pin A Medal On Mary.") Their new single, an extremely buoyant song called "Starry Eyes," with a Byrds-derivate guitar line, is noteable, for being concerned with a professional (seemingly band-manager) conflict, and tough-minded at that, without sacrificing either catchiness or humor (i.e., "The writ has hit the fan"): such a combination should take the quartet far.

While the aforementioned "Starry Eyes" is the most obvious focal point of The Records, there are a number of other cuts that incorporate the fundamentals of late' 1%0's poprock into a clean, professional and altogether likeable framework. The Records (the other three members, whose history has not been uncovered by our agents, are guitarists John Wicks and Huw Gower and bassist Phil Brown; all sing) are unique in that they fuse a spirit that has Mersey elements with a distinct post -Revolver modernism; instrumentally, they aim for a streamlined clarity, while vocals are tricked up, even tampered with electronically (the word "me" on "Teenarama," for example, is fractured and elongated in the mode of HicksClarke-Nash, and there is a whole lot of Lennonesque phasing going on throughout the LP: "Up All Night" has been analyzed as a conversion of "I'm Only Sleeping"). They know their craft well, and are ingenious song-architects. "Girl," "AH Messed Up And Ready To Go" apd "Affection Rejected" make real structural sense, and are fun besides.

Thematically, as implied earlier, The Records are hopeful realists, beyond illusion. They think a lot, which may be one reason for their "insomnia." They reason before they act: "Teenarama" is a sweet and sour bit of nymphet-attraction that goes wrong. "I wanted a change of style/To be with a juvenile for a week" (note the internal rhyme), Wicks (?) sings, only to be dismayed by the girl's dietary habits (sugar candy, c-c-c-Cola) and "all that melodrama" that comes with young lust. An excellent song. "Girls That Don't Exist" chronicles the poignant disappointment that results when comparing the kiss of a real-life girl to the fantasy photos on posters and in magazines. Their only crucial misfire is on the closing "Another Star," rank sentimentalism in the manner of "Mirror Star" by the cutesy Fabulous Poodles.

As a marketing device, The Records' record company has inserted an additional 7-inch EP in the album package, on which the band does interpretations of four non-original songs of varying vintage. Conceptually, it would have worked better if Spirit's "1984" were replaced by The Byrds' "Have You Seen Her Face" to go along with "Seen My Friends" (Kinks), "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby" (Stones) and "Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her)" (Blue Ash), but that's of no importance. Performances: unexceptional (the AshKinks side has a definite edge). Taste: fine and off-beat. Value: somewhat misleading but instructional guide to band's U.S./U.K. sources.

In closing: a recommended record (especially side one) in a thriving genre of "new professionals" from England who were spawned by the "pub-rock environment (see: BRINSLEY SCHWARZ, DUCKS DELUXE and indexed spin-offs) and accompanying trends, who believe in song and in image, and who counter balance personalityless "industry rock." We hope this report has been of some use in determining the quality and kind of THE RECORDSAn invoice for the firth's services is attached.

Mitch Cohen for CLPA, Inc.

NILS LOFGREN

Nils

(A&M)

Thunderstorm highway from Temple to Waco, the muted splash of the jazz party's damp poolside conviviality behind the Subaru's redlights in the bleary blacktop roll and rumble. Between downpour zones Julie behind the wheel implores us to say something to help keep her nodding head in the right lane. But bridgewater, full of sillyshit bliss after a daylong overindulgence of Pearl, wicked weed, and Jack Daniels, rapturously captivated by the violently random logic of lightning flashing like neon scar tissue in the billowing heartmass of troubled nightsky, is an empty spool of conversation. Andy is curled bong lullabied in the backseat, the high beams, passing truck shadows, and flickering of agitated weather undulating across her pretty fallen angel face. Perusing her classically imperfect intricacies, bridgewater, whose faith in passion is strictly kiss to kiss, winces an abashed pang of yearnful innocence transmitted from some long dormant secret radio artery as Waco's coarse brights emerge obscurely in the nearing distance, behind the floodveil of another sudden deluge. "Like rain," he mumblemoans under his breath. And after insisting he be allowed to stagger the soaking three blocks from Andy's apartment to his own, he sits on the complex stairsteps, drenched, his Kools wet and ruined, repeating the line "always failin'," until the rain, lightens to a drizzle.

And as I tumbled brainaching from this noon's hangover couchnap to quiet the bastard postman's hammerfisted doorpounding, that Grinsong was still echoing faintly through my head's wreckage. So it was only right that the frogfacedtwerp deliver Nils to my unsteady hand. Maybe too right, considering the previous night's palpitations -. is this just another Lofgren edition soggy with potential unrealized?

Maybe, for those who have idealized the vernal promise of 1+1 into quasi-myth; but to me, in late summer '79, Nils is a helluva fine record, easily the most potent solo Lofgren to the moment. Principally because The Mooritears Kid has collaborated with r&r artisans of an efferent affinity-producer Bob Ezrin and songteammates Dick Wagner and Lou Reed (and A&M has been better served by the Lou/Nils union than Arista) -to coalesce his earnest choirboy'and exuberant waif vocals, acrobatic pealing of trampoline guitar, and athletic agility and deftness, into a paced, polished, robust program. He's been given direction.

Any of the tracks could go 15 rounds with the champeen of your choice, and a couple would likely score early KOs. The sharp affirmation of "I'll Cry Tomorrow," febrile homeboy cover of Randy Newman's "Baltimore," j.d. leering of "Kool Skool," "A Fool Like Me" 's double-edged passion, and the lamenting, omnipotent delusion of "I Found Her" all score well with jabs, hooks, foot speed, and durability. "No Mercy" despite Madison Square Garden production effects that wear thin is a forceful tale of laced-up ambivalence, and the gracefully skating melody of "Shine Silently" is a heart punch in an ethereal clinch. The wavering lowblow sarcasm of the latently disco "You're So Easy" might incur a warning from the ref, but it'll rope a-dope for the crumpling right cross of "Steal Away" 's pugna ciously furtive appeal.

In this ring, for this bout, Lofgren has donned heavyweight trunks, and backed it up. Whether Nils heralds a succession of main attraction vinyl, I dunno—like I said, it's kiss to kiss, and punch to punch. But when I meet Andy at the IHOP for coffee tonight, "Shine Silently" is what I'll be humming in her ear. Or maybe "Steal Away." It just depends how much rain is in the forecast, if ya know what I mean.

j.m. bridgewater

ASHFORD & SIMPSON

Stay Free

(Warner Bros.)

DIANA ROSS

The Boss

(Motown)

Nick Ashford & Valerie Simpson sure are talented. They have released Stjay Free, their best album to date; they have written and produced Diana Ross's The Boss, reminding us that, given the right material and a swift kick in the ass, Ross is still one of the classiest soul singers around; and they provide more than ample evidence—half of the albums' cuts—that SOUL MUSIC remains the best dance music (as anyone who owns the Four Tops' Greatest Hits or Martha's "Heat Wave" has always known). Impressive work, huh?

Stay Free and The Boss are based on some rather unexpected choices. Not only have Ashford & Simpson departed from the sexually-charged chants that were the high points of their last few albums, they have done so in a manner that hearkens back to the exuberant, clever pop/soul that worked so deftly for them in the early Seventies. Certainly they are not unaware of, nor unwilling to acknowledge, current musical trends—yes, the beat is emphasized, there are spacey synthesizer effects, hooks galore, and the requisite breaks. But at a time where even someone as'talented as Giorgio Moroder is writing songs to go with the beat, it's a relief to hear tunes as welldefined and catchy as "The Boss" and "No One Gets the Prize" on Ross's album and "Stay Free" and "Found a Cure" on Ashford & Simpson's album. The latter features some mid-tempo and slow numbers that have a sophistication and hpnesty that only Ashford & Simpson seem capable of, and it also includes "Dance Forever," a song whose intro could be used to welcome Disco Loretta Young. The progression from verse to chorus, Ashford & Simpson's hot vocals, and a production that enhances the melody combine to create a truly exciting and original dance tune that is at once both logical and familiar. And, as a bonus, the lyrics on these records are more than just sounds for the singers; "The Boss" and "No One Gets the Prize," in particular, cast interesting points of view on the love-lost-and-found story.

For the past several years, Diana Ross has spent so much time being a famous star that it appeared she was forgetting that you gotta deliver the goods at least once in a while, or all that's left are poses and an image. Her producers, especially Richard Perry, conceived albums for Ross the star and pretty much forgot about good music. But on The Boss, Ross relaxes and has the time of her life. The standout cut is "1 Ain't Been Licked": "Roll down the gangway so they'll see that it's me/1 know they're wond'ring about my recovery...! ain't been licked..." And for once, I have no doubt that Diana Ross means what she sings.

Jim Feldman

ALAN PRICE

Lucky Day

__(Jet/CBS)_

Unfortunately, the prevailing notion of class among rock fans seems to be epitomized by Rod Stewart's dyed-platinum blonde shag, Elton John's sequined glasses, and Alice Cooper's eye shadow. Of course, rock 'n' roll has always been more concerned with defiance and stances than fashion, but it does seem'Sort of a shame that rock hasn't produced more stars of wealth and taste. I mean, you know, just for the Grammy Awards and stuff like that so that we could be represented by someone who knows how to wear a suit and string two intelligent sentences together. My main nominees for such a prototype are Bryan Ferry and Ray Davies (Randy Newman's a little too sloppy; Brian Eno's a trifle obscure; David Johansen is chic but funky), but a darkhorse who could make the grade is Alan Price. He'? moderately tall, dark and handsome, his songwriting reflects equal doses of Chuck Berry and Cole Porter and, besides, any guy who was a founding member of The Animals must be the nazz, right?

Price's latest, Lucky Day, is a refined delight, striking a perfect balance between his British music hall shmaltz, romantic love songs, and rock. Even his stab at disco, the title song "(This is Your) Lucky Day," is done with such flair and aplomb so as not to offend. The better uptempo track, in more of a rock vein, is the autobiographical "Pity the Poor Boy," a bittersweet ode to one of Price's pet themes: survival. "I've learned to laugh at my life going wrong," he sings, but as the song comes to a pounding close with Price screaming, "I'm a dreamer, I'm a schemer," a sense of optimism is somehow conveyed. Politics pops up on "Citizens of the World Unite" and "England, My England," the latter Brechtian indictment of English society ("She saves all her wages for a Japanese TV/To please her man who is struggling on the dole"), is enough to make Maggie Thatcher run for cover.

But Price is an unmitigated romantic, and he shines brightest on the ballads. The best of these is the gospel-tinged "Baby of Mine," initially released in England last Valentine's Day on heart-shaped red vinyl. Price employs an understated doo-wop background on "Those Tender Lips" to set up a shimmering electric piano solo that is light as air. He gets a bit melodramatic on "I Love You Too"—I can almost hear this one being done by Ray "Tell Laura I Love Her" Peterson—but Price's unabashed sincerity raises it above the saccharine. And "Groovy Times" has all the content of a helium balloon, but its quasi-bossa nova beat is so wistful and dreamy that it would make a perfect summer single.

Price refuses to sugar-coat his sentiments, so it is unlikely that even his prettiest ballads will ever reach the audiences of shlockmeisters such as Manilow or McCartney. And his tours are infrequent enough (and costly—on his last tour he was accompanied by a full orchestra) so as to further undermine his chances for commercial success. But, hopefully, the guy will find his niche, maybe sneak a single onto the charts, perhaps receive some TV exposure, who knows? He might be just the guy to lend the rockers a little respectability...and class.

Gary Kenton

MARC BENNO

Lost In Austin

(A&M)

THE FABULOUS

THUNDERBIRDS

(Takoma)

Dear Billy,

You think you got problems with all the Big Apple tourists bugging you for being the fifth Ramone? Well, listen to this sob story from your bro in Austin, Texas. Just when I thought I'd seen the last carpetbagging, guitar-toting drugstore yahoo leave town, who steps off the Grey Line bus with his mirror shades but popmeister Marc Benno. You remember him—the Beverly Hills shitkicker who used to write songs for Rita Coolidge, giving new meaning to MOR rock in the process. After a seven-year hiatus from the biz, he's got the itch to jump on the Cowboy-As-LastAmerican-Hero bandwagon by singing a bunch of trifling ditties about dusty bordertowns (let ZZ Top do it), Meskin jails, and (what else?) looking for Willie Nelson in Austin. I don't know why he did it cuz Willie don't live here no more. Maybe he's just trying to cop a nod from his former sidekick Leon Russell, who has currently lent his dead weight to Nelson's stage show. Maybe he just picked up some designer jeans or a Ralph Lauren bandana at Neiman's. Or maybe he's entertaining the same fantasy that sooner or later strikes every other repressed Dallas suburbanite. Whatever the reason, this album hereby qualifies Benno for psychosurgery at the Austin State Hospital (my compliments) and a subsequent fern bar gig where he will be forced to croon "Luckenbach, T exas," "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother" and "Goin' Home to the Armadillo" for no less than 30 consecutive days. With that prescribed treatment, 1 predict Benno will be the next Great White Hope of Reggae.

Austin's Fabulous Thunderbirds, on the other hand, must know how Private Cecil Gant felt coming up in Nashville. Like the piano-pounding servicemen of yore, the Fab T's are practically strangers in their own hometown simply because they indulge in a musical style that does not mention pick-up trucks, horses, or LSD (that's Lone-Star draft, y'll). Their specialty instead is blood-in-the-alley, low-down, dirtyshame blues, a rare kind of black cat moan better than any second generation progeny since Butterfield and Bloomfield hung around Southside Chi-town in the Sixties. Combining a strong suit of greasy originals like "Let Me In" and "Pocket Rocket" with obscure chestnuts likq Lil Millet & his Creoles' "Rich Woman," town from the twang charts of Bo Diddley, this four-man band makes the most of nature's best, relying on Kim Wilson's vocalizing and devastating harp honks, a rhythm section raised on the wrong side of of the tracks and Jimmy Lee Vaughan's jagged one-man lead and rhythm guitar show. Ain't no lie, next to these boys, Geo. Thorogood sounds like an octaroon.

Well, I gotta go put a nickel in my ear and work on some biscuits and white gravy. Say hello to A1 Fields,

Jojo Fineaux