ROCK • A • RAMA

ROCK • A • RAMA

This month’s Rock-A-Ramas were written by Richard Riegel, Billy Altman and Richard C. Walls

FRANKIE ELDORADO (Epic):: Are we fated to suffer a whole glut of these bastard-wave third-stringers during the next few years of chart upheaval? Is this “Frankie Eldorado” character really Eddie Money (same record corp., y’know) refitted by his haberdasher for the 80’s? Maybe you already know this sound? Yeah, here it is, the guitars on “I Know” sound sorta like Kiss, who are hardly the boogermen they once seemed. Say, I do like the mock-disco packaging of this ellpee... R.R.

ROOT BOY SLIM & THE SEX CHANGE BAND W/THE ROOTETTES—Zoom (Ille gal/I.R.S.):: Y’know with a little, luck and some hype, Root Boy could someday be as big ?s Exuma. In the meantime, Zoom is a vast improvement over his first album—it is pleasantly offensive enough for almost all tastes. Highlights here include the chant-along “Dare To Be Fat” (“..She weighs in at 202/That’s fine with me, I’m portly, too”), a ballad (“The Loneliest Rootn in the World”) that sports a vocal hot unlike what Barry White would sound like at 16 r.p.m.s and a hot ode to nodness possibly inspired by Gregg Allman (“Dozin’ and Droolin’”). At last, a life overview that is equally at home in both the gutter (“Quarter Movie On My Mind”) and Ralph Kramden’s living/dining room (“Kids cost too much”). What miraples Shel Silverstein could work with this bozo... B.A.

MINGUS DYNASTY—Chair In The Sky (Elektra):: My reaction to this record is irreparably colored by Joni Mitchell’s “Mingus” album since hearing the same songs that Jorii tackled interpreted by four accomplished post-bopmeisters and two new wavy gardistsXas well as John Handy, returned from the funk) is something of a revelation—these are some of Mingus’ finest compositions. And tho the record doesn’t have the heat of a Mingus session (how could it?) it rises above tribute to become a solid all1 star gig. R.C.W.

CRISTINA (ZE):: Hate to indulge my bio-fetish so soon again, but this record was accompanied by a terse sendup of a bio that’s a rewardingly incisive parody of certain overkill promo effects of the recent past. To wit, the fortunate Cristina always gets what she wants: “She’s acted in plays and reviewed them for the Village Voice.” Which, if you knew Christgau like I know Christgau, is a sheer critico-ethical impossibility. And the music on this set is just as infectiously ironic as the promo: conceptual disco, because it’s there, as esoteric as the ZEpurchaser demands, yet a happy FM-arttidote to the omnipresent Tusk as well, should we all get so lucky. Cristina’s somewhat Debbie Harryish voice makes me feel real decadent. Suggested second album title: Ethel Mertz in Bondage. - R.R.

DAVID ROTER—“I Think I Slept With Jackie Kennedy Last Night” (Unknown Tongue 45):: Readers of R. Meltzer need no further intro to the fab piece of work known as David Rater. An eccentric genius travelling the earth disguised as a middle class, 9 to 5, Hebrew? London Lee’s illegitimate cousin? I ain’t tellin’. All I can suggest is that you rush two or three bucks (Ladies may also enclose snapshots, phone numbers and/or marriage proposals) to David c/o Unknown Tongue Records, 202 Riverside Drive, N.Y. 10025 and discover the intriguing tale of a nice boy who finds himself in an all too brief encounter with a woman who wears “the ever popular bouffant hair-do” and now is hopelessly addicted to old Anthony Quinn movies and Carvel’s Nutty the Ghost cakes. The B side is just as neat: “He’s a Rabbi,” or, “I dreamed that the Crystals came to my Bar Mitzvah in their Maidenform Bras.” B.A. 1

BUGGLES—The Age of'Plastic (Island):: This album contains the “hit” version of Bruce Woolley’s “Video Killed the Radio Star-/’ though I’m more than glad to recommend the original of that tune (now available on our shores) over this innocuous cover. These Buggies clairri to be making “Electronic Fop of the Eighties,” but if I were a former advertising-jingles writer, I wouldn’t talk. Tastes rather of regurgitated Alan Parsons, as we glide through the Buggies’ alimentary tracks, though they’re hardly as pompously dyseptic as the old Lord & Master himself. Loiv-key, meekly minimalist stuff, just right for the My Mother the Car alumnus on the verge of puchasing his first pary Numan album. Whatever happened to the Hawklords? R.R.

STEVE WALSH—Schemer-Dreamer (Kirshner):: Wherein the only halfway-sexy number of the Kansas jumbo-jet gets to step out and wing-walk through his first solo LP, which sounds somehow more kinetic than the usual Kansasinine corn & blood grain futures. Fact, if you didn’t already know that this guy’s a 5Corvette millionaire who hasn’t lived in the state of Kansas since Dorothy and Toto were pups, you might even mistake this record for the prototype so|o dirge from those gloom & doom jolly-boys in Black Sabbath. No B.S. drone, but Walsh’s defensive megalomania will make ya groan. As Walsh himself puts it: “You thinkyou got it made?” - R.R.

ROGER McGUINN AND CHRIS HILLMAN FEATURING GENE CLARK—The City (Capitol):: As a close friend said to me lately .here it’s taken Tom Petty five years to get just within shouting distance of the majesty that was the Byrds and meanv/hile jolly oF Rog just pisses it away. Hillman has turned into a bonafide middle‘aged-crisis rocker—I’ll believe him referring to “Street Talk” as soon as the Mets win another World Championship. Clark, who1 always has known better, doesn’t sound like he feels a whole lot better about being involved in this travesty—he’s no longer gigging with these two businessmen masquerading as musicians (Do you believe that their accountant gets a credit on the back of the lp?), and his two contributions here find him sounding as if he can’t wait to get the hell out of there. As for McGuinn, he actually has the gall to tpss in some “Eight Miles High” riffing into f he abominable title track and, worst of all, “Skate Date,” which concerns itself with alternative transportation modes in light of the energy crunch (how utterly charmant), is just catchy enough and embarrassingly familiar enough to be a hit. The problem with history is that it often goes on for far longer than one cares to record it. B.A.