LED ZEPPELIN In Through the Out Door (Swan Song)

by

John Swenson

Led Zeppelin has never made a bad album, and In Through the Out Door is no exception. You can call them cynical, you can call them whimpy, you can call them stupid, you can call them gimpy. Just don’t call them late for breakfast, because these guys bring home the bacon every time. And the nitrosamines with it. That’s the stuff in commercial bacon curing that’s, supposed to give you cancer, and it’s also been recently discovered to be in beer by way of the latest fast brewing processes. Schlitz beer, is the #1 beer for nitrosamines and wouldn’t you know it, the cover of In Through the Out Door is plastered with Schlitz bottles like so many of those black obelisks on the cover of Presence. The scene is a dive bar that looks like the last watering hole before the river Styx and Schlitz bottles, Schlitz signs abound. Maybe they’re trying to say Led Zeppelin causes cancer, or maybe Page is trying to come up with some kind of reverse heroin cure for cancer via his studies in parapsychological phenomenon. In through the out door:..

Although this record is a departure from Zeppelin’s standard orientation in favor of different musical styles and more emphasis on the keyboard sounds, the group’s basic formula remains the same. Bonham’s drumming is more complex and rhythmically varied here than it’s ever been but the technics of his sound are essentially unchanged—a crisp slog, an aural taffy pull, where every crack and crunch seems suspended for split seconds in mid-air. Naturally, the key to that powerful crunch is in Page’s astonishing production capacities—there’s no mixing board wizard who can top Page’s strange alchemic brew of sounds.

No time is wasted in setting the album"’s tone. “In the Evening” opens with weird, droning Indianlike backwards guitar effects blending back and forth across the channels until Plant invokes the title and the punch-out rhythms begin with 12-string electric guitar harmonies and synthesizer fills etching the spaces between Bonham’s four-on-the-floor slam. After Plant reaches high for the chorus, Page’s solo stumbles into the arrangement like an intruder and snaps an incredible sonority off the drone backing, then breaks to a guitar set piece: piercing, melodic lead lines over underwatery rhythms. On the last chorus the two harmony guitar parts burn Plant’s screeches, then in a brilliant last verse move Page quotes Clapton’s “Outside Woman Blues” line then extends it, bending single notes over four-bar passages in an exciting flourish. Some friends of mine listened to this cut and complained that Page wasn’t playing enough guitar, but it’s all right there and it’s not camouflaged either.

“South Bound Suarez” uses a honky tonk piano intro, doubletime walking bass line ahd an understated drumming pattern with guitar filling in the syncopation—a very uptempo dance step for these partners. Page is content to play a conventional rhythm guitarist’s role in the song until he rips into a screaming, cascading solo. His improvisational logic at such moments is so relentlessly twisted, constantly startling you with unexpected turns. Plant raves up at the end in a joyous vocal.

The structure of “Fool In the Rain” is one definite indication of change. It begins as a sprightly r&b June with more energetic drumming from Bonham 'and conventional harmony rhythms, then switches via a salsa piano pattern into an uptempo Puerto Rican vamp replete with timbales before returning to the chorus for a weird synthesized guitar solo with bass playing a close harmony line behind. When the original verse is repeated at the end it sounds like old-style Zep by comparison with the rest of the song.

“Hot Dawg” is the rubber band as it snaps, country»guitar and a semi-Texas r&b shuffle rhythm. Page’s accompaniment and solo here, in mock-country style, is a brilliant assimilation and demolition of stock pickers’ riffs.

“Carouselambra” is the album’s centerpiece, a long, hypnotic cut that begins with a synthesizer playing a souped up “Not Fade Away” pattern while dirty rhythm guitars roar through like Flying Fortresses with Plant screaming away and 3onham’s dry-ice drumming smacking it along. After two verses this powerful joujouka rhythm chorus blasts in with synthesizers and guitars whirling in frenzied concert. There follows chorus upon chorus of sonic battle, synthesizers and guitars trading fours, staccato call and response 12-string and singleline guitar passages, three synthesizers blatting out spongy counterpoint only to be sliced by dualharmony guitars. After endless variations on this routine the song fades, leaving the listener gasping in trance.

Just for a. breather, “All My Love” slots string synthesizers against subtle acoustic guitar rhythms at its opening before the sinewy electric guitar arabesques usher in a song very much reminiscent of “Stairway to Heaven” but without the bombast. “All My Love” is unambitious, a simple, pretty love song with beautifully interlaced guitar and bass lines and an instrumental section that contrasts horn like synthesizer solos and stately guitar lines with huge slabs of strings/acoustic guitar orchestration.

The funniest part of In Through the Out Door is the finale, a good old slow blues with a full string section playing the intro and Plant show casing a gutsy performance worthy of the “squeeze me lemon” days (that was back when he wanted that lemon squeezed; now it’s an heroic posture). The slow blues guitar solo is Page’s most conventional moment on the record —after all, what can you add to that format by now—but he takes his role seriously and lays out a beautiful run that reaches for the sky and ends up out crying Plant in the process. It’s fitting that Page should sign off in such a standard format after an album’s worth of production dazzle and stunt guitar work.

BOB DYLAN Slow Train Coming (Cdlumbia)

FADE IN.

CARSON: My next guest is probably best known for his songs of protest in the mid-Sixties. Since then, he’s had a book published, appeared in a movie and made one of his own. His latest album, Slow Train Coming, has just been released, and he’s here tonight to talk about it. Would you welcome Bob Dylan. (Dylan walks on stage and lip-synchs “Gotta Serve Somebody” to polite applause. He then sits down next to Carson, alongside Robin Williams and Robert Blake.)

DYLAN: Hi John.

CARSON: Hi Bob. Great to finally have you on the show.

DYLAN: Uh, well, it’s great to finally be on the show. (Grins)

CARSON: What’s all this I hear about you becoming a/born-again Christian? Your new album seems to be pretty, heavy.

DYLAN: Heavy? Now what do you mean by heavy?

CARSON: I don’t know. (Laughs and adjusts his tie) You tell me. (Audience laughter)

DYLAN: Uh, maybe we’d better go on to the next question.

CARSON: You don’t want to talk about it?

DYLAN (to Williams): Hey, you’re a pretty funny guy.

WILLIAMS: Thanks. So are you. Say, you ve got little snakes coming out of your hair. Mmmmmm, bad sign.

DYLAN: What?

CARSON: Uh, Bob? Bob? (Audience laughter) Y’know, I listened to Slow Train Coming and I didn’t think there was one song on it that matched the religious intensity of “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” or even “Knocking On Heaven’s Door.”

DYLAN: That’s what you say.

BLAKE: Baloney, man. You’re just scammin’.

DYLAN: What?

BLAKE: I listened to that album, man, and I wouldn’t let my dog toilet train on it. You’re Bob Dylan, man. What’re you wasting your time doin’ crap like that for? (Audience applause)

DYLAN (to Carson): Who is this guy?

CARSON: Don’t mind Robert, he gets a little emotional at times.

BLAKE: Don’t give me none of that, John. You know it don’t got nothin’ to do with gospel or religion—and it certainly don’t, got nothin’ to do with rock ’n’ roll. Leon Russell rocks better than you, man. And at least George Harrison puts up money tor Monty Python movies,. bottom line. But you, man, you’re just a drag. (Audfence applause) And that’s the name of that tune. J

DYLAN: I don’t believe you.

BLAKE: And I bet you’ve never worn a dress, either.

WILLIAMS: Hey, this is getting interesting.

CARSON: I understand you’re going to do another song for us...

DYLAN: Well, I don’t know—

CARSON: Great, we’ll—what’s that? We do? Listen Bob, we’ve got to take a small break. Can we do this first? (Carson pulls a tin can from behind his desk) Is your dog getting it regularly? (Audience laughter) If not, Itere’s Ed with some tips from new, improved Alpo.

DYLAN (pulling out af gun): HOLD IT! You can’t pre-empt me for some dog food.

BLAKE: You’re nuts, man.

WILLIAMS: Mmmmmm, heavy scene.

DYLAN! You don’t know what it’s like to go from selling over two million albums to just a couple of hundred thousand. You think I wanted to use Dire Straits on my album? I had to. Had to do something...

CARSON: You wanna give me the gun now, Bob?

DYLAN: Christ. He told me what to do. He knew that—

CUT TO:

ANNOUNCER: We interrupt this program to bring you a special NBC News Report.

CHANCELLOR: Good evening, I’m John Chancellor. At this hour, Bob Dylan, who is probably best known for his songs of protest in the mid-Sixties, is hplding the cast, crew and audience of the Tonight Show hostage in NBC’s studio 8A.

...An agent for the aging folk singer has released a list of Dylan’s demands, which reads as follows: First, Dylan defnands that his new albdm sell at least as many copies a^i the first Boston album did. Second, Dylan demands that his entire back catalogue be certified double platinum. Third, Dylan demands that PTL Club host Jim Bakker officially replace Johnny Carson as host of the Tonight Show and fourth, Dylan demands the immediate acquittal and release of Hurricane Carter.

Unless these demands are met within twenty-four hours, Dylan says he will start converting members of the audience to Christianity, one at a time.

* We’ll have more on this story as it happens. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

FADE OUT.

Jeffrey Morgan

ROY WOOD On the Road Again (Warner Bros.)

Frith is the message. Frith is the key to understanding this record. Frith is finally all we have. (“Not so!” declares current “Letter From Britain” correspondent Penny Valentine—Ed.) Yes, English rockwriter Simon Frith has brought the glaifaour of perpetually Swinging London home to us credulous Yank readers for many a season, though he apparently spends about as much time in London as does Chairman Mao.

Frith defines London for us from a vantage point some 70 miles further up the motorway, from Coventry, home of the legendary Coventry-Climax (the auto-racing engine, of course, climaxes of the audible-orgasmic variety being prohibited within 200 miles’ earshot of Bonrtie Prince Charlie’s bachelor pad, by edict of his royal Mum). And just west of Frith’s Coventry lies macro-industrial Birmingham, England’s answer to Henry Ford’s vision of Detroit (motor city shakedown).

Birmingham, U.K., has brought us many significant rockers over (he years, from Black Sabbath to Steve Gibbons, from Traffic to the whole variegated Move/Idle Race/ Electric Light Orchestra travelling minstrel show saga. The recent ELO kiddies seem to have forgotten growing up amid the stimulating clatter of Austin Motors Ltd. stamping plants, but their fellow Brumboogerman (& erstwhile mate) Roy Wood sure hasn’t.

Wood continues ensconced in" Birmingham, spiritually intact, gazing down from his lofty perch upon ELO’s corporate harvest of consumer gold with disdainful and myope eyes. Between marathon sessions of muskrat love with the beauteous Annie Haslam, Wood occasionally gets around to making solo LPs, and On the Road Again, his first in a>good three years, justifies all fhat wait.

In the interim, Wood has applied himself to practicing on his multiple arsenal of instruments (guitars, saxes, cello, bagpipes, etc., eitc., etc.), and his expertise on all of ’em, especially the drums, is really telling this time. Still, Wood warn’t born a drummer in the Keith Moon mold, and he tends to bludgeon his traps in a ham-handed, plodding-thumping style that really grows on ya after a cut or three. Combined with those other bass-voiced axes he favors—tubas, baritone saxes, and their ilk—Roy’s thudbucket drumming provides a whole LP of sonic boom-boom, the perfect orchestralthump workout for iyour new', speakers.

All of which isn’t to downgrade Wood’s compositions--he still has the knack of “writing hit singles almost at will,” as the infallible Logan-Woffinden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock once put it. I’ll nominate “(We’re) On the Road Again,” “Keep Your Hands on the Wheel,” and “Road Rocket” as pickto-clicks from this batch. In the meantime, this LP should be great power-pop deja vu for fans of the current Nick Lowe or (especially) the rockpiled Dave Edmunds.

Good oP Roy Wood. He’s as eccentric as a foot (or maybe even Eric Burdon). He’s as good as he ever was, maybe even better, j

I am hearing voices.

i , Richard Riegel

TOM VERLAINE (Elektra)

One of the most repulsive things about hippies (and don’t be fooled; you can still find them today in every prep school across the Country) is their self-righteous deification of mer|ia as symbolic of “man moving slowly in pace with the natural earth.” (I think they call this “hanging out”.)

In Television, Tom Verlaine’s guitar work “hung-out” even further than the hottest of “fucking Tuna,” but the amazing thing was that there was always a tension even in his loosest moments, coupled with a speedy sense of humor that offered a nice contradiction to the lethargic persona. For Tom’s solo album that tension has been shoved into a vice grip and the lyrical dippy hippy essence has all but been dumped into the arms of Venus DeMeelo.

The quintessential Television lyric of old could be found on the coincidentally ending sum-up song —the last cut on Adventure called ‘‘Dreams Dream,” housing the line: “Dreams dream the dreamer,” indicating that the reality we know apart from dreams is moved by that very unconsciousness and therefore in our conscious states we are not responsible for our actions. Now that’s flannel-shirted hippy talk if ever I smelt it and what’s stranger, it’s dangerously close to the existentialist “single moment of being” thinking that had Camus and Sartre often sympathizing with * the murders or general violent types in their novels.

Irresponsibility can be made awfully romantic, however (with the help of the mystic music and the aforementioned with in the lyrics), making it a timeless concept that succeeded in yanking Television out of their* psychedelic time-warp and making them one of my favorite groups ever. No such arty rationalizations are needed for Tom Verlaine’s solo album. That wonderfully tightened up Jerry Garcia guitar sound may still linger on, but Tom’s songs are far less “unreal” now. In “Souvenir From a Drjeam” he boldly separates reality from unconsciousness asking his dreams: “It seems you have something to say/Why don’t you say it?” The dream winds up telling him to scram and Tom’s “souvenir” takes the form of a valuable lesson (i.e., get back to the real world where you’ve got enough crap to deal with without bothering with your unconscious mishegaas in here).

This return to reality offers some pretty kvetchy results, like “Kingdom Come,” which rivals Joan Didion’s White Album for pure selfimposed suffering—the kind Tom idealistically idolized in T.V.’s charming “Friction.” Also on the negative side is an externalization of the occasional humor that made Verlaine’s older lyrics as fascinating as they were frustrating. Generally, Tom has less fun here. The lyrics are no longer word game prisms, with humorous reflections of a more, bitter inner meaning, but rather offer imposed “jokes” like the throwaway “Yonki Time” (which is the kind of childish Vidulgence that made all sensible people hate hippies to begin with).

Musically, though, Tom is now much more concentrated and direct. While most of Television worked on a linear level, with solos developing horizontally from the twisted pricker bush riffs, here Tom layers on the fields for a thicker, more integral sound. The music is ''more immediately tense and less “dreamy,” though I must admit that as much as I enjoy this vertical sound I wish there were more stretched out guitar parts—a request 1 can only recall previously desiring from my other, favorite guitarist Neil Young. Like Young, Tom’s guitar work always seems piercingly to the point even in 15minute interludes. Neil plays shell garnes with his smooth melodies, hiding and suddenly revealing them in the most unexpected places, just as Tom works around his highly dissonant anti-riffs.

\ Never has his guitar work been , more hauntingly dyslexic than in) the opening “Grip Of Love,” and never more sweet than in his John Cippolina-style tremolo in “Red Leaves.” “Flash Lightning” is also movingly tenuous (made even more mysterious by the title lyric which is expressed like “flashing tit”). Throughout, though, Tom’s greatest strength is in his brittle sound* as teasirigly breakable as his fragile figure.

P.S. Speaking of Tom’s physique; this is the first time cutie-pie Verlaine hasn’t tried to make himself look as ugly as possible on the album cover. Now if that ain’t kissing hippydom goodbye, I don’t know what is.

Jim Farber

JUDAS PRIEST Unleashed in the East (Columbia)

Not only is* this meat-grinding, teeth gnashing, morsel of machine -head gone tee-hee a grandiose exercise into the sonic escarpments of EXCESS (the kind of rabid self-indulgence .that is the gamey undergarment of all heavy music), it also proves once and for all that heavy metal music cannot be wiped away from highly structured cosmos of rock ’n’ roll.

Since the early days of metal it was obvious to even the casual cough-syruped obserVfer that this music was destined to become the folk music of the future. Not the clean, precise, droneathons of boring synthesizers that was to become the muzak for the technocrats. Metal music was to be the last remaining populist musical fo’rm. It was (is) a kind of music that wallows in its own pretensions, its own facial distortions, its own inbred sense of the absurd.

The early years of metallic; chaos were rifled with bands doing hopped up, LOUD, versions of hootenannfy -type folk songs. Nazareth slid into the Noise Hall of Huh wheYi they covered not only a Joni Mitchell song, “This Flight Tonight,” but also (gasp ’n sigh) Dylan’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” turning it into a top-ranking primer of lead ’n’ steel kvetching. It stands right up there alongside “D.O.A.,” “IN-AGADDA-DA-VIDA” and “We Will Fall.” The song is an agonizing eight minutes of sheer gulpy ennui, textured with pure noise. It also points up some interesting “What-Ifs” like: what if Dylan had decided upon Black Sabbath rather :than the Band when he went electric? Then we’d have bone-crushing editions of “Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Lands,” “Desolation Row,” and a myriad of others. But Dylan missed the boat.

The Judas Priesties haven’t; they’ve stuck to the tradition on this new album by doing a fierce cover version of Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust.” Unleashed in the East is a bit of iconnosonicism that hits the technosoul right off by being one of the first “live” albums recorded in Japan NOT to be recorded at Bu^okan. It was recorded at Koseinekin Hall and Nakano Sun Plaze Hall...where they are, I haven’t the slightest. But at least the kids of America will know that Japan lets music be played in more than one place.

The album is LOUD, NOISY, and complete with all the right kinds of songs. Like all good jazz albums that are made more impressive by their carefully crafted use of titles to augment the music,.heavy metal also gets an aura of speoialness when the correct titles are brought into play. Titles ai;e important because, unlike its floundering child, punk music, heavy metal isn’t political, it isn’t economic or even social; what it is, is pure unadulterated sneer music. So all the titles have to have that sneer quotient in ’em; and the Priests know how to do ’em right. Track tags like “Exciter,” “Sinner,” “Ripper,” -“Genocide” and “Tyrant” all show the listener the kind of attitude the album has before they even listen to it.

So the Priests have tradition, and genre savvy. One more thing is crucial—they need the right amount of fiery guitar sounds, and they have it with guitarists Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing. While neither one can hold a decibel to Tony Iommi, together they are the Dante and Virgil of metal, tittupping their way through hell into the gasping boredom of Purgatory. They’d never make it to heaven; they are too, too loud.

Unleashed in the East is raw, rabid and rowdy, Judas Priest bowing to the sonic-kiblah of the great god of the greasy heart. That’s the way uli-huh, uh-huh, I like it, that’s the way..\

Joe (Kissing Bug) Fernbacher

GARY NUMAN & TUBEWAY ARMY Replicas (Atco)

“What’s riew, man?” If you’ve ever worked in a record store, you know that question is as inevitable as price raises and surface noise. And you can’t blame customers for asking it ’cause you know that rock fanaddicts just gotta know, gotta be first on their block with whatever is new. Your job is to find out what they mean by “new”: just recently released stuff or something that actually sounds different.

Now this Nurban guy introduces some problems into the natural order of things. You can tell by the cover that he’? attempting to write himself into a bizarre low budget future (and what could be newer than the future, right?), a time of high rises and high contrasts, of inevitable engimas and, unanswered questions. The questions suggested here include “what brand of eyeliner do androids prefer?” and “who is he looking out the window at?” Ten to one, it’s Ziggy Stardust, lurking in the alleys below.

So is Gary just a test-tube boob or what? You can almost hear the mad scientists at work. Begin with a bubbling Bowie brew, stir in equal amounts of Eno and Kraftwerlf, add a couple drops of Ultravox and for a catalyst1, use Freddie Mercury’s fingernail clippings. And whadda you get, something new or,just a replica of the main ingredients? Check the LP title for the answer.

But Gary’s a clever done. He knows his limitations; hell, he exploits them on every song—static synthesizers, leaden rhythms, simple melodies. He uses his science fiction diction freely, ticking off tales of machmen, aliens and electric friends, sounding all the while like his batteries are running down. It works in its own grey way but there ain’t no excitement nowhere and who needs yesterday’s androids, anyway?

Lotsa people. The album and the “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” single recently topped the British charts and Gary’s rapidly becoming a cult figure Stateside. So what do I know? I’m used to dealing with humans, not numans.

Michael Davis

VAN MORRISON Into the Music (Warner Bros.)

Despite -the evidence of Astral Weeks (which, as the years goi by, seems to have been if not a total fluke then a serendipitous blend of luck—the right musicians, the right time—and talent), Van Morrison’s considerable gifts do not lie in the area of the composition of either words or music. He simply isn’t, at this point, a poet or tunesmith of any consequence tho his impact, when he impacts, is decidedly poetical, definitely musical. For the past decade Morrison’s moments of highest grace, as well as those of his worst self-indulgence, have been sub-literal, often sub-vocal, having little to do with the fact that the songs he’s singing are existing within a small and simple range and often having little to do with the actual words he’s singing. When Morrison’s singular approach to music works, it results in dazzling trance songs of longing, litanies of affirmation and faith—and when it doesn’t work, when the words are too banal to be risen above, the melodies too trite to contain his emotional onslaughts, the results are ludicrous and boring. Into the Music contains instances'of both tedious self-indulgence and triumphant transcendence, with much more of the latter than ha? been evident on his recent albums.

Actually, it’s a more cohesive album than you might have come to expect—more than you might have hoped for at this point—with even the low lights, the by now traditional vocal milking of unworthy songs never going on for too long and the high lights," the expansive passion of the trance songs, still as evocative as they were ten years ago. Fart of the album’s success is due to the fact that (unintentionally?) the small rewards are on the first side with the heavier stuff on the second, so that listening to the record is definitely a journey “into the music,” from the folkish puffery, of “Bright Side of the Road,” which opens the album, through to the finale of the lyrically elliptical but emotionally potent “You Know What They’re Writing About.”

Along with the troubador songs and blues on the first side are two original hymns, “Full Force Gale,” a jaunty born-again testament, and “Rolling Hills,” a pastoral paean with a Celtic lilt sung by Morrison in his most tongue-swolleVi and infectious, incoherent manner. If this is a sign that he’s going to become more overtly religious in future songs, then it’s an encouraging one since these two songs are among the most catchy and upbeat in his entire canon. One would expect a directly religious song from this veteran brooder to sound something like a Calvinist threnody with funk or perhaps like George Harrk son with panache, a morbid thought for sure. But Morrison still sounds most religious, in the sense of being at his devotions, when he immerses himself in his secular love songs... the matter and manner of side two, ostensibly comprised of four tunes, actually three and an extended coda, all similar enough in spirit and construction to form a suite. Pain and healing are the subjects* and tho (as mentioned) I’m hardly impressed with Morrison’s lyrics (duly printed on the album sleeve’), I’m more than impressed that after all these years We can still exhort healing and try to exorcise the pain as tho he’s just found out what his gift is...as if he still believes it worth the effort to try (o reach out to someone. In his enthusiasm he may, at times, overburden the listener’s spirit, but he never makes a false move. He doesn’t seem to know how.

Morrison is probably as aware of his limitations and strengths as anyone—I doubt if he takes himself too seriously as a lyric poet, just as I’m sure he has faith in his ability to dazzle, to explode the simple emotional/musical premises of his songs into passionate chants and wordless expressions of heart. Unfortunately, the impression that he’s been singing the same song for ten years isn’t diminished by this latest album. Fortunately, it’s still a hell of a song.

. Richard C. Walls

CHIC

Risque

(Atlantic)

There’s only one alternative to being stylish, and that’s being trashy. Consider fascist Steve Dahl touring the country with his antidisco army, a slow funeral train coming your way, and in its wake, tanks and jeeps hauling disco records in caskets. Regrettably, some herds really try hard to appear cool; luckily, there are those who don’t even have to try.

Certainly the exemplars of cool, the Clash of disco music (although cynics may opt for a Kiss analogy), is Chic, more an organized mob than an actual combo. They are not trashy-chic (as is the case with a certain Larry Flynt glossy of the same name)' but’ share with, say, Frank Sinatra that rare ability to be stylishly aloof, at a calculated distance from the bumping bodies of Adonis’ children, humping to disco’s beat in a thousand-and-one dens of iniquity.

Some prefer not to forgive Chic for their original sin—that horrible cliche-hit of 77, “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah).” Thanks to this smash, every club, garage, supermarket, and tpllbooth seems to harbor a group of groping exhibitionists, huddled close together like a school of octopi, punctuating their every whistle and handslap with shouts of “Yowza, yowza, yowza!” Honestly, jepks like that ought to be zapped like the zombies in a Romero movie.

But Chic redeemed themselves last year with “Le Freak,” a peculiar blend of self-advertisement with an antique psychedelic expression that became the craziest dance tune of the disco era. Yet, whereas “Le Freak” provides an audible background for going tapioca with one’s limbs, Chic’s recent summer hit, “Good Times,” offers a substantial message of hope, bombarding phonj/ inflation and hohum depression with a bolt of optimism: Rolling Stone may decide to ordain Reverend Zimmerman, but his inspired verse is no more spiritually hairraising than these lines from “Good Times”—“Don’t be a drag, partici-' pate/Clams on the half shell and rollerskates, rollerskates.”

Chic’s third album, Risque, contains not only the joyful “Good Times,” but a wealth of similarly. happy sounds. In fact, there is no filler here—not one instrumental that might, as on C’est Chic, mar the flow; every cut from RisquS is presently bouncing up and down the disco charts.If disco music is ultimately a producer’s medium (for most disco bands have about as much personality as a(Hanna-Barbera cartoop character), then Chic has the ultimate producing pair, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. Aqd undoubtedly, RisquS is their most melodious work to date. (A close second would have to be their production of Sister Sledge’s M/e Are Family, which deserves to have as 1 many hits as it does album cuts.) From the'rolling, whispering wavelets of “Warm Summer Night” to the schmaltzy gush of “Will You Cry (When You Hear This Song),” Rodgers and Edwards control Chic’s sound, not with a grand Spectorish sweeping motion, but with tiny, subtle brush strokes.

To many, the very rhythm of life can be discovered by dancing (certainly not by jogging, a very dangerous sport indeed), and one cannot deny that this is disco’s basic reason for existing—no matter what snub is tossed at the genre this week. Therefore, as a sign of ' good faith to all dedicated hoofers (mama says their brainy are in their feet), Qhic has issued a word of caution, printed'on RisquS’s spine: “Warning! This record will burn your hefels.”

Robot A. Hull

DUROCS 1 (Capitol)

California strikes back! And not by homogenizing limey riffs or New York postures, hut with a full-blown rock confection that lays to waste (again) the notion that a group must be able to recreate their records on stage in order to validate their music. Ron Nagle and Scott Mathews, who comprise the Durocs, couldn’t possibly duplicate this stuff live...this is an earphone junkie’s dream, with Spectorian layers of instruments, walls of harmonies and subtle studio tricks galore. What it also is is a hell of an album, of a type that is hardly made any more—dedicated to the notion that rock ’n’ roll records should be, first and foremost, fun to listen to.

If the name rings a bell, Ron »Nagle did surface before, nine years ago, with an album entitled Bad Rice. Long since relegated to bargain-bin obscurity, Bad Rice found Nagle striking an engaging balance between hard rock (including some fine Ry Cooder slide guitar). and unabashedly sentimental ballads, a tight rope walk he pulls off agaimon Durocs. With whiz-kid Mathews playing just about every instryment known to man (a kind of West Coast Todd Rundgren), there is a musical cohesiveness here that tjie session-player-dominated Bad Rice lacked.

Side one of Durocs is an absolute delight, unified not by a single theme but pulled together by neatly crafted sequencing, flowing seamlessly from cut to cut. The band quickly reveals its fetish for pigs (a duroc, by the way, is & breed of hog noted for its outsized ears and genitals as well as for superior intelligence), opening with a Ronettes-inspired rocker called “Hog Wild.” Equally delectable, but with a bitter-sweet taste, is “Lie to Me,” the old story about a guy who doesn’t want to face the fact that his romance is dying: “Lie to me...the truth couldn’t help me now...” This segues into “Don’t Let the Dream Die,” an ethereal piece of optimism so pure it can only be called heroic (“good things never come from giving up”), and which could have been an outtake from Abbey Road. The bouncy. “We Go Good Together” is next, stealing a page from Brian Wilson’s book of pet sounds, a simplistic but irresistible piece of pop fluff. The side ends with the somewhat more ambitious “No Fool No Fun,” which appears to warn against the dangers of playing it safe and climaxes in a swirl of studio racket and chaos.

Side two fares only slightly worse, kicking off with the only non-original song, Gene Pitney’s “It Hurts to Be in Love.” The Durocs go fairly topical in “Seeker You Be Sucker,” an almost Funkadelic-like funk-rocker which exposes the folly of such short-cut paths to enlightenment as EST. astrology, TM and others. Further down the road is the shlocky “One Day At a Time,” a ballad that is almost Manilowian in its wimpiness. Closing the record on the upswing, however, is “Saving it All; Up For Larry,” wherein a 50’s Four Seasons -type chorus is contrasted by a rocking 80’s refrain. There aren’t nearly as many plot or musical turns as in The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away,” but the story is the same: a girl at home trying to remain faithful to absentee fiancee. But wher£ Towrishend’s heroine surrendered to temptation and was subsequently forgiven, the Durocs leave us teasingly up in the air.

Despite clearly revealing its influences nearly every step of the way, Durocs does not come off as derivative. Especially since this is a twoman operation (excluding co-producer Elliot Mazer, who took the Duroc.s motto “We Shall Overdub” too seriously and obscures some of the nuances of the LP), the idiosyncrasies of Nagle and Mathews are evident on each song, adding up to a quirky, somewhat sardonic, wqrld view. Personality is something that has been creeping back into rock, thanks largely to the punks and new-wavers, and here are. two Californians who’ve got plenty' of it without resorting to outrage or minmalism. Give the Durocs a little time in your pigpen and, as another of their mottoes goefe, “the sty’s the limit."

Gary Kenton

GARLAND JEFFREYS American Boy & Girl (A&M)

Garland Jeffreys writes rock ’n’ roll songs about the struggles and terrors and triumphs of urban life— not an especially attractive nor notably popular subject these days. Those of you who can recall music before Esalen, however, will remember the sound of the city: rock ’n’ roll which documented the stances, dances, and romances of dazzling urbanites everywhere. It is this honorable tradition which glows at the heart of Garland Jeffrey’s work.

As befits a New York artist, he is not only quintessenfjally urban, but endlessly urbane. His songs are1 populated by Little Willie John and Edmund Spenser, Wilhelm Reich and Francisco Goya, Chairman Mao and Lester Young. (I must admit I was astonished to find Reich in a rock ’n’ roll song. I’m not sure the Videos would have understood, but this is, after all, how traditions grow. Lou Reed has certainly rung some Unusual changes within this same tradition.) Those important personages who don’t make it into an actual lyric get honorable mention in the liner notes. (Personal to G.J.: Next time spare pr>e Nathaniel Branden, the Objectivist stooge. How about Susan Sontag and Willie Naulls instead?)

If this all sounds a bit much, you might be right, except that Garland Jeffreys sings, beautifully. Whenever I am put off, puzzled br otherwise unmoved by a particular tune, his voice will lead me to the ljght which, more often than not, is. worth the journey. This leads me to another important point: Garland Jeffreys writes difficult songs,, songs that do not readily reveal themselves, though they clearly have real'Significance for the writer: songs that challenge conventional wisdom and wander where rock ’n’ roll songs ordinarily do not.

In eary 1977 Jeffreys released Ghost Writer, his first record for A&M and his first for anyone in a long time. Characterized by the ironic toughness of his unique rock/reggae blend '(“Cool Down Boy,” “Why-O,” “I May Not Be Your Kind”) cut with the tenderness of ballads like “New York Skyline,” it also contained—as_a perfect bonus—a remix of Jeffreys’ underground classic, “Wild in the Streets.” I was captured by the best album of 1977. It seemed as if the Velvet Underground and the Heptones had fallen in love...just my kind of mixed marriage.

I never could reconcile Ghost Writer’s commercial failure. Like Sailin’ Shoes, it will always be triple platinum in my heart. A year later One Eyed Jack arrived. It was a good record, but after brilliance the merely alright is disappointing. The playing was not as hard-edged and sweet, the songs were not as hardnosed and sly, and though “She Didn’t Lie” and the title tune were memorable, none were incandescent. I adjusted my expectations and hunkered down to wait for new product.

Which brings us to American Boy & Girl. After some initial skirmishes (he does, as I said before, write difficult songs), I have surrendered. I will probably never feel comfortable with the point of view expressed in “Living For Me,” for instance, but comfort is generally worthless as an aesthetic measurement, the point of view is certainly valid and, most important, it’s a great song. The acid-tinged ambivalence and fierce determination are here in full flower and Jeffreys’ singing is as electric and intelligent as ever. The playing, in this case by the Mao Band.bas not quite recaptured the crystalline sharpness of the tracks on Ghost Writer, but it is strong and warm throughout.

“City Kids” and “American Boy & Girl,” back to back on Side 1 (along with the cover photos), comprise a five-year update of “Wild in the Streets.” “City Kids,” with its hypnotic litany of heinous crimes (“...For a thrill I killed a cab driver/For a laugh I raped an old survivor...”), manages against all odds to turn the predators of the Evening News into sad little humans. The title cut addresses all Young Americans and is by turns both rousing and touching as it urges, “Please don’t you let me down.” There are two fine love songs—one lonely and one celebratory—and a few songs about strange days and nights which each have their merits. The record closes with “If Mao Could See Me Now” (what a rhyme!), a strong slow song about taking stock.

In my imagination Garland Jeffreys, an explorer, a traditionalist, a politician of the heart, bobs precariously atop" a New York art geyser supported by the Dubs and Ted Berrigan. These difficult postures are painful to sustain over long periods of time. Help keep Garland’s head above the steam.

Jeff Nesin

MOON MARTIN Escape From Domination (Capitol)

Moon Martin’s brooding with a vengeance. Literally. He’s been done wrong, and he can’t get it out of his mind—or his songs. Escape From Domination, his second LP, is shot through with the same warped-genius eye-for-an-eye peevishness that marked last year’s Shots From a Cold Nightmare. Martin’s resentful, gritty lyrics can even make Robert Palmer sound believable (if “Bad Case of Loving You” isn’t Moon’s hit, at least it’s an RBI)—and you know the closest he’s ever come to frustration is a bad job of tailoring.

No such golden-boy fortunes for Moon. He stares from the cover of Escape From Domination like an owlish Paul Williams afflicted with tapeworms and bad dreams. You can practically see clear through to his retinas, to the reflections of the film clips he can’t help replaying. (A man and a woman enter a hallway. She grabs at the doorknob. He grabs at her arm. She wrenches away; he clenches his fists. The door slams... A man and a woman are sitting in a restaurant. He frowns at his plate. She laughs, slowly at first, then louder and louder, as he, grips his knife hard. Still laughing, she slings her pocketbook over her shoulder, and walks out... On a bus, arm on the seat behind a woman’s shoulders, a man is talking, quickly and earnestly. She stares out the window, looks at her hands, plays with her hair. He grips the seat in front of him. She nods, abstracted, peers through the glass. Excited, waving, she taps on the window; she turns, climbs over him, and leaves... The door slams... Still laughing, she walks out... She climbs over him and leaves.)

Not that Moon goes into detail about his reasons to be sneerful, the roots of hisvindictiveness. “I’ve got a reason,” he insists (on the song of that name), voice quavering like Seals—or is it Crofts?—high above a buzzing, repetitive guitar lick that sounds like it was played through a kazoo. But the song’s away and done before you realize that he’s never quite told you. what the reason is. Instead, the album’s full of muttered imprecations (“You think you’re so cobl/You think you’re just right/I think somebody should/Stick it to you good”) and intriguing non-sequiturs a la Warren.Zevon (“Your, daddy may be judge/Sure know how to nudge”). Martin’s nagging voice (a perfect match of style, and subject, oh yes) is mixed way up above the Chuck Berry riffing, supported by drums so relentlessly pounding it sounds like they’ve enlisted in the service of Moon’s obsession. It all adds up to-uh, rockabilly trance music?—that’s insidiously infectious, engaging you by forcing cqmpletion of Moon’s mental mutterings; you imagine the end oT“I’d like to just...” with a set of film clips of your own. (He slaps her face hard and she clings to him, crying... He trips her; she sprawls on the restaurant floor. He drops the check on her back as he leaves... As he steps past, he slips the wallet from her jeans pocket, stows it in his jacket: He smiles shyly at the woman who sits down beside him.) It’s unsettling; does impotent rage ever reach consummation? But reluctantly, you obsess along. After all, the guy must have some reason...and it’s bound to be better than “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

Debra Rae Cohen