THE KNACK ...But The Little Girls Understand (Capitol)

by Joe “Boy With The Green Eyes“ Fernbacher

"I’m smiling."

The questions that hang on the wine-stained lips of both critics and consumers alike are simply these; are the Knack the pop guano so many claim them to be? Are they just another pop band leading ordinary pop star lives? Are they the true hollow men (you know, all that form without motion, the shapes without color, rhythm without movement jazz—the standard T.S. Eliot rap) showing, in a grandiose manner, all those nasty little spaces that pop music allows itself to inhabit when indulging in all of its predetermined fantasies? Or are the Knack just plain old grubstreet boys grunting out cruel romanticisms for a buying public that sways the hype breeze like so much wheat in a windstorm? Or are they really as good as they claim to be? A lot of questions for just a few whine-stained lips, eh?

"I'm smirking.’’

The first Knack album was, despite all the publicity and controversy, a solid exercise in popology. It’s glassine energy was strengthened by subterrestial humor that made it a lot better than it should have been. Songs like “Siamese Twins,” (The monkey in me) and “Good Girls Don’t” had a teething edge that turned what would have been a pop peccadillo into a pop harangue. “My Sharona,” with one massive hook that clogged the air pores for so long that everyone liked it—a Pavlovian response if ever there was one. A Pavlovian response carefully planned and executed by the psycho-technicians in the Capitol Tower control room created in much the same -way that the Monkees and even the Beatles were. And that’s why everyone began to hate them: their talent was obviously marginal, but their management was certainly not. Punk music was scaring everyone and pop music never scared anyone, so it was natural for pop to become the next big thing. The Knack were chosen, shown the promised land and forced to wander the desert of the Top Forty. They liked it.

“I am laughing. ”

They’ve let the initial brouhaha die down before releasing this, their second album. ...But the Little Girls Understand is a confusing malmsey of contusive pop slukem and cynicism. The songs are wellwritten, sneering and often annoyingly good. “Baby Talks Dirty,” “How Can Love Hurt So Much" and “Can’t Put a Price on Love" all1 read like an instructional manual on the sufferance of teenage love, teenage confusion, teenage guilt. The team of Fieger and Averre has a rapscallion approach to their rocking, and it lends itself nicely to the pop idiom. Their songs are wellstructured, well-timed, tremulous ballads usually lost in the giscidity of the Knack “sound”. The thumpathumpa of the drums, way overproduced, and the almost destructive insistence on shoving the rhythm guitar right through the listener’s gut—that’s the Knack’s “sound.” It is boring beyond all reasonable belief.

“I am laughing louder.”

Musically speaking, this album is an incredulous hodgepodge of stolen riffs and stolen production values. So blatant are the lifted licks that they go beyond the realm of simply paying homage to those who have influenced them and leap into the calloused arena of the rip-off. They simply steal, often note for note, from songs by the Who, Gene Pitney, The Stones, (one song sounds so much like “Beast Of Burden” that it’s almost better than the original), and Phil Spector’s often-imitated wall of sound. There are more, but why list them? If you use this album for a parlor game— you know, sit around and pick the song they stole that riff from, etcetera—it would probably be more entertaining than this entire album.

“I’m beginning to choke. ”

So if you’re schizophrenic, maybe, just maybe, you’ll get a giggle out of this record. On the one hand, good basic songwriting and songs, and on the other hand, outrageous production and old and used music. Personally, I’d rather watch Robby Benson bite his fingernails and say “Wow.” The little girls might understand, but who the hell cares? I don’t. By the way, the answers to the opening questions are: Yes, yes, yes and no.

“I’m finished. ”

HEART

Bebe Le Strange (Epic)

I may as well admit out front that ever since I met these people on a quote-grabbing number for another rag, I’ve had a soft spot in my, er, heart for ’em. And you’d better believe that’s the only spot that’s soft when those yummy Wilson sisters are concerned. I mean, woo and double woo. Near as I can figure, their stage stances are pretty true to life—my memories of our chat are mostly Ann flashin’ wise cracks while I tried to keep my drool cool while Nancy played the li’l lady to the hilt, even going so far as to actually blush once. And you know you can usually count the rock ’n’ roll guitarists who even know hou> to blush on the thumbs of one foot.

Now I imagine you’ve heard the dirt on the whys and wherefores of the year-plus distance between Dog & Butterfly and this bebe—that lead guitarist Roger Fisher left the band, that his brother Mike split up with Ann, and that Heart is continuing as a five piece, with both Howard Leese and Nancy filling the electric six string gap. And you might be worried that the band could be moving toward the “butterfly” ballads that Rog didn’t have a whole lot to do with anyway.

Well, rest easy. The album is reportedly inspired by the Wilsons’ fan mail—specifically, letters by young female musicians thanking them for being rock ’n’ roll models —and it kicks D&B’s ass from here to CBS Central. Everybody rises to the occasion. Michael Derosier

dumps the Mick Fleetwood thumps he borrowed for “Straight On” in favor of more power while Leese, who did more lead work in the past than he usually got credit for, comes through in the clutch. There are re&lly only a couple of times when I miss Rog at all because the band is moving from a “heavy,” post-Zep sound to a more basic, classic rock ’n’ roll style which emphasizes rhythm guitars more often than leads.

The songs themselves have undergone a change or two as well; there’s a whole lot less talk of magic hands, that’s for sure. Several— “Strange Night,” “Rockin’ Heaven Down” and “Bebe Le Strange”— connect rock ’n’ roll itself with a ladies’ night out air that nobody else even attempts, much less pulls ..off, but it’s the traumatic trilogy of “Down On Me,” “Break” and ‘.‘Even It Up” that makes me sit iip straight. Ooh, Annie can sound mad when she wants to; I dunno if her, um, personal situation has given her voice more bite than before but I’ve been noticing these teeth marks on my speaker cabinets lately that weren’t there before 1 got this album.

True, the second side tapersoff a tad when the femmes tackle the guy’s instruments during a couple of overdub o.d.s, but overall, I’d say the transition to a five piece ain’t done ’em no harm. But I’m hopin’ Bebe is just a warm up for an album based on the letters they must get from their male fans who’d be real willing to even it up, whatever “it” is.

Michael Davis

CflF€T€Rlfl GOTHIC

LYDIA LUNCH Queen of Siam (ZE)

Queenof Siam aptly displays Lydia Lunch as the dog-eared,: rabble rousing priestess of passion and primordial angst that Patti Smith used to be and Chrissie Hynde pretends to be. Beat (as in nik) raps wrap attention around her cagily crafted sagas of hate and fun through the cartoon shaped strains of her vojce. The music, a juxtaposition of pathetic and mean, keeps good pace with the voodoo chant and monster-metaphors-visceral conjunctions of Lydia’s lust for life horror stories, disaffected love mini-Gothics and lost for live affection affectations. Dig the pain, Jack, these fangs are real:

“...i’ve blackened the walls as I suffer my youth

i’ve got the cancer of youth and I ask ‘what’s the use?’

there’s knives in my drain, and there’s shafts in my brain..:”,

Don’t let the “fc. of birth” or the “What’s the use?” fool ya; Indications here are on the pro-life side because even if she may resent the knives in her drain, knives and drains are, after all, what it’s all about—the so-called symbols of procreation (continuation of the species and etq.). More along the same lines in “Atomic Bongos” (a personal favorite): “all the girls go wild, start to shake their seeds/ when the boys start to play that bongo beat...”. Perpetuating the seed in this case!!

Rest of the tunes are top notch too: “Mechanical Flattery” speaks of “running from the dark” and that’s real good and some more “boy chases girl” stuff in “Gloomy Sunday”; the Classics IV’s “Spooky” —a particularly smart reading (she. can sing!); plus a few circus sideshow beauts like “Lady Scarface” and “Carnival Fat Man” (which one’s the fattest).

I’ve listened to this record three times all the way thru. Dunno nothin’ about Teenage Jesus really (don’t care neither) just that T.J. et le Jerks collectively bit raw vinyl to the likes of this L.L. material.

Not since the time Irene Forrest (parttime actress/poet) seized command of R. Meltzer’s L.A.Hepca'ts From Hell KPFK-FM radio show with stunning recitals and acapella ritual singing has a female chanteuse so demonstatively exuded the hideous and heartfelt pangs of existence evidenced on this record. Lunch serves generous platefuls of slices of sliced life, and Queen of Siam’s darn good Thai food.

Gregg Turner

RAMONES End Of The Century ■(Sire)

Repeats and remakes and vocals in slings; dream sequence piano and sax without swing; disc jockey blabber and let’s throw in some strings! These. are a few oi my favorite things.

Sure they are, right up there alongside the Ayatollah, Marshall Tucker fans, songs about lemon squeezers, bringing back the draft, New Zealand, Insanity Plea Frees Killer Of Six and certain people who exist solely for the purpose of asking stupid questions. But there’s one stupid question that has to be asked: whose bright idea was it to pair up the perennially underrated Ramones and the most overrated producer of all time, Phil Spector?

One thing for' sure is that it wasn’t the Ramones—they’ve already had their idea. It wasn’t (hat long ago that these guys seems to be the only real rock ’n’ roll band in the universe. As the single most important popularizers of. the Relentlessly Primitive school of thud, they were the true masters at making the most of low-cost chicken. No two ways about it, they were the actual size.

These days, however, the Ramones sound more quaint than anything else. I mean, even Mold Creatures grow, but Joey and the boys keep cranking out the same old stuff like musical Rose Maries. Sure they’ve thankfully replaced their pinhead songs with up-to-date tributes to mercenaries, but that’s about as much of an improvement as replacing Nixon with Ford was. Hey, Ronnie, what’s that funny smell...oh, nothin’, just a career burning.

The Phfl Spector production takes the Ramones past quaint into cute. So the guy gets a neat drum sound, that’s just wonderful. Trouble is, he’s still stuck on tinkly little piano fills, monolithic chunks of braying saxophones and an overconstructed trademark production that makes the bank itself sound stilted when they try to squeeze into the picture or fill in the core. I’ve sad it before and I’ll say it again and again: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it catch fish.

Sour grapes and sitting ducks aside, there are some winners on Century, although, in the finest baking soda tradition, the good is surrounded by stinkers. The two best tracks, “I Can’t Make It On Time” and “This Ain’t Havana’ show evidence of* dramatically improved songwriting, with unusuaDy strong lyrics and a little more variety in the melody. Like Rob said to Laura when Richie started showing an interest in sex, “He’s getting to be a real person, isn’t he?” So is whoever or whatever pens the Ramones tunes, proving once and for all that there is life after Carbona.

, Aside from a remaining handful of decent enough rockers, the rest of this LP is strictly shiny side down. “The Return Of Jackie And Judy” is a pointless, heavied-up remake of “Judy Is A Punk,” “Rock ’N* Roll High School’ already sounds old and “Danny Says,” the boys’ very own life-is-so-hard-on-the-road number, is positively the most sickening song ever to disgrace the Sire label. I hope Boney M. are satisfied.

Now, listen up, porkchops. I don’t want to hear any “build ’em up and knock ’em down” bull from you Ramones fanatics nohow. These guys were once my heroes too (at least until Gary Lewis reformed the Playboys) and thenr debut album was the #1 rock ’n’ roll event of the 70’s. But neither their music nor their attitude is any big deal today, anymore than that of the Stones or Led Squeezo.

An unpleasant, yet apt, cbmparison, I’m afraid. And one more thing—you don’t have to fucking grow up to change, you just gotta be a little different!

Rick Johnson

DOUG SAHM Hell Of A Spell (Takoma)

After 15 years of Texas rock & roll, Sir Doug has entered into the realm of the “folk.” He’s signed to Takoma and John Fahey writes his ad copy now. The president of the company is quoted in the liner notes as issuing the categorical edict, “I want a Doug Sahm blues record,” with, no doubt, a phone in each hand and a cigar waggling between clenched teeth.

It's hard to guess what this folkie ‘capo’ had in mind. The only actual Doub Sahm blues album to date isthe 12-year-old The Sir Douglas Quintet Plus Two=(Honkey Blues), which has fared rather better in dim memory than it ever did in record stores. (Look out Doug—small sales figures have often been a point of beknighted folkie pride.) At any rate, no matter what the acoustic pasha wanted, what he got is Hell of a Spell, a roadhouse rhythm & blues record and a damn fine one at that.

The tone of the entire LP is set by a formal dedication to Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones and by Doug’s remake of Jones’ classic, “The Things That I Used To Do.” In one of his patented, totally off the wall spoken introductions Sahm praises Guitar Slim as—hold on to your headphones— “a great Sagittarian”! He and his band then launch into a reasonable facsimilecomplete with a reproduction of Jones’ amazing aberrant guitar tone which unfortunately gets buried in the final mix. This is an honorable idea and a creditable performance but the original, arranged by young Ray Charles and recorded in a blinding flash of agonized lucidity, is readily available on the absolutely essential Specialty LP, Guitar Slim: The Things That I Used To Do. No one before or since has made a guitar sound quite like Guitar Slim did and you should hear it for yourself. But, like they say, I digress. There’s more than just memories of Guitar Slim. Sahm tips his ten gallon to Houston’s Duke Records with an exciting version of Junior Parker’s “Next Time You See Me” and a serious attempt at Bobby “Blue” Bland’s lovely “I’ll Take Care of Yob” with warm organ and a breathy, soothing ‘please let me in your pants’ vocal just like The Man. Arjd, of course, the spirit of Aaron “TBone” Walker hovers over the entire enterprise and it must over all Texas jump band music because, for all intents and purposes, he invented it. Stop me before I digress again.

Originals like “All the Way to Nothing” and “I Don’t Mind at AH” are largely cast in the same mold as the covers though without the explicit burden of recent history. The real standouts are “Hangin’ on by a Thread” and especially “Tunnel Vision,” both full bore two guitar rockers that don’t so much disrupt the flow as stand apart from it. Which leads directly to my problem with this record. 1 enjoy listening to Hell of a Spell and I recommend it—with 'this serious reservation: there is nothing at aU wrong with the premise. Sir Doug seems to have fallen into the hands of people who “remember” him the way he wasn’t. This is not a gratuitous characterization. Doug Sahm is too young and vital to be mummified by well meaning conservators of local traditions. In fact, Doug is a local tradition, but not for his contributions to rhythm & blues. He’s a rock & roll original who should be encouraged to pursue his own wonderful vision, not to churn out worthy versions of music he received second hand—admittedly closer to first hand than most, but still no cigar.

My idea of a great Doug Sahm blues record—a great record, period—is “Oh, Baby, It Just Don’t Matter,” a heartbreaking rock & roll testimony to resignation-and passion on Mendocino (which 1 doubt the Takoma people have listened to). And I believe there’s lots more where that came from—it just has to be nurtured. In 15 years Joey “King Emeritus” Carrasco will sign with Arhoolie and his first release will be dedicated" to Doug Sahm. I doubt if any of these new songs will be on that record. I rest my case.

Jeff Nesin

WILLIE NILE

(Arista)

The music here doesn’t quite fit the package. Black and white pictures of Willie adorn the album, not stark but film noir-ish with poetic shadowplay, pictures of Willie smoking a cigarette, quaffing a beer, levitating1 on stage, his face and greasy Highway 61 coiffure always only partly glimpsed—it bespeaks a music of Springsteenian romanticism and punk valor. But, alas, the romanticism on the record is closer to that of a Dylan' reeling from speed paeans and taking refuge in small couplets while the valor is more that of an energized folkie.

To deal with the worst of it first, Nile has a tendency to get cute. Since his vibrato-filled tenor is always threatening to slip into Chipmunk land anyway, he should stay away from cutesy melodies like the one he’s given “That’s The Reason” and coy attempts at humor like “Dear Lord.” Both songs get very tedious very fast. When h^reaches just beyond cute and goes for irony, as on “They’ll Build A Statue Of You,” he encounters a similar problem—lack of bite (the Dylan phrasing really takes over on this song. Maybe it’s meant as a homage). Nile’s particular vision just doesn’t include any effective use of humor and his efforts in this area give the album an unpleasant padded feeling.

When Nile just wants to rock steady, either in an inconsequential pop mode (“She’s So Cold”) or in a darker, meatier urban one (“Old Men Sleeping On The Bowery”) he does just fine. The backup band, anchored by the ubiquitous Jay Dee Daugherty, is clean and unobtrusive.

But the best stuff happens when he drops the pop references and pursues his own semi-poetic style. As a lyricist Nile favors thin wispy strokes, dealing not in stories but in pictures and fragments of pictures. “Vagabond Moon”, probably the best song on the album with undoubtedly the best" line—“What a fine thing—to make love and survive”—is a rapturous love song, small, concise, and sincere. “Sing Me A Song” is another deft miniature while “Behind The Cathedral,” with it’s folkish acousticness and romantic rendering of screwing behind a church, is an apt vehicle for his angelic timbre.

There are some signs of promise on this debut, mainly the flashes of intensity and originality on the moodier songs. But Nile is working in a pretty exhausted genre, that of the hardboiled electric poet with a heart of mush, and the result is a ■ fairly cliche-ridden album.

Richard C. Walls

WARREN ZEVON Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School (Asylum)

It’s easy to see why the music of Warren Zevon—make that the idea of the music of Warren Zevon—has the more cine-Iit minded rock professionals (this correspondent stands guilty as charged) doing compareand-contrast cartwheels. For one thing, he’s smart. He makes theme criticism a snap. And like many other auteurist faves, he creates a visceral tension between his technique and his sensibility. When he’s sharp—as on side one of Excitable Boy and the best songs on his Asylum debut—Zevon deserves all those associations with hardboiled novelists, pulp moviemakers, existential alcoholics, and just about anyone else you’d care to nominate. There is something continually fascinating about an artistic “man of action” with a streak of SinatraOrbison “Only The Lonely” sentiment. Zevon has those qualities, and talent besides.

Zevon is, in fact, exactly as brilliant, and as infuriating, as the title of his new album, Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School. He came up with a cover to match it— a Capezio-Chandler tableau—but the track doesn’t live up: it’sa notion, a plea, a riff, not a fullfledged song, and it gets the LP off to a shaky start. Before long, however, Zevon hits his stride, with the glossy ballad “Empty-Handed Heart” and with the compact and biting “Play It All Night Long,” triumphing over what appears to be the self-imposed limitations of his musical furnishings (L.A. modern).

Of all the most exciting rock composer-performers to emerge in the middle-late third of the 70’s (Springsteen, Parker, Costello, Petty, Johansen), Zevon is the only one without a crack recording band to give his vision shape and push him over the top. Instead, he'uses a consortium of all-purpose AsylumAzoff sidepersons (Schlemeagles, Browne-men, Ronstadt & Souther, the flamboyantly awful Waddy Wachtel), and the kick comes in hearing Zevon’s muscle and intelligence zinging off their platitudinous wall of sound. Sometimes that conflict is exactly what the song needs; “Wild Age,” clearly a “young and reckless” offshoot of “Life In The Fast Lane” and “Running On Empty,” gains from David Lindley’s guitar and the Eagle harmony. So does “Gorilla, You’re A Desperado,” which finds an escaped ape staying at L’Ermitage and playing racquetball, as' Browne plays slide and a trio of familiar voices do ‘‘Excitable Boy” wha-oohs. For that matter, Ronstadt’s counterpoint soprano hardly detracts from “Empty-Handed Heart” ’s emotional effectiveness. But the assembled players can’t cut it in the clutch: Ernie K-Doe’s “A Certain Girl” is stripped of all, exuberant carnal innocence by Wachtel’s plundering and the fatuous' back-up vocals; “Jungle Work” is apocalypse whenever; and the strength of “Bed Of Coals” (co-composed with T-Bone Burnett) is diluted by pedal steel guitar and the choral chimings of J.D. and Linda.

For all the pedestrian (wrong word: no one walks in Los Angeles) playing, for all the conceits that fail to come off, Warren Zevon is a writer with real descriptive gifts, and advanced sense of humor, and a heart of tough-guy schmaltz. Bad Luck Streak’s highs aren’t as impressive as Excitable Boy’s, but they’re pretty lofty all the same. Zevon takes off on a title by Springsteen, “Jeannie Needs A Shooter,” and gives a perverse, moving twist to the Brucian fatherdaughter-lover “let’s-get-outtahere” story. He sings a song as “Bill Lee,” exiled Bosox hero-flake, and tags his tribute-vignette with some Phil Linz harmonica. Best of all is this LP*s rousing rock hymn in the “Mohammed’s Radio” / “Johnny' Strikes Up The Band” vein. “Play It All Night Long” is recognizable as Randy Newman territory (specifically “My Old Kentucky Home”): “Daddy’s doing Sister Sally/Grandma’s dying of cancer now/The cattle all have brucellosis/We’ll get through somehow.” But it’s also about rock & roll as escape and redemption; Zevon’s character washes it all down with booze and “Sweet Home Alabama” (“Play that dead,band’s song”). .

Zevon’s finest sorigs—the songs that make Bad Luck Streak1 his third half-terrific album in a rowhave that balance of the mordant and the exultant, the grace of a slow dance in the badlands, the restlessness of the heart.

Mitch Cohen

J. GEILS BAND Love Stinks

_(EMI America)_

Love Stinks is some kind of package in all its audio-visual implications. Right off there’s that title, as punk-pluperfect as if Cheetah Chrome had thought of it first, short-circuiting the gleaming cover photo of that 1952-modeme couple, all bright-eyed and blissfully ignorant of the 1960’s about to crash down on ’em.

Around the corner from Crew Cut and Sorority Sister are instantanalysand snapshots of the incipient J. Geils Band (ca. 1955), showing all the future whammer jammers as prisoners of middle-class environments so stultifying—check out J. Geils’ ramrod bow tie and sixshooter—that you can just feel why these guys ever wanted to grow up to be black-badass Jewboys.

The inside liner of Love Stinks includes reprints of various pathetic trivia frpm confession magazines of the 50’s, completing the whole package’s portrait of the consuming social and sexual innocence of the times that launched more than one group of bright lads into die rock ’n’ roll upheavals of the 60’s.

From the sleaze of Juke Joint Jimmy’s origins, it’s but a short step through'the next couple decades (I trust you kids snapped, up all the Stones and Geils records that came out in the interim), to the brand new downtown 1980 set from the J. Geils Band, Love Stinks. Musically, this album is no real advance on Sanctupry—it’s the same solid, competent, comfortable, non-adventurous blues rock you’ve come to trust the Geils Bros, to provide—but the halfrealized concept of the album, stronger graphically than musicaDy but equally there, is something new.

“Love Stinks”: No two ways about it, Seth Justman’s frighteningly contemporary synthesizer squeals underline Peter Wolfs incisive lyrics on the title cut—“I been thru diamond^ been thru minks”/ -(you supply the rhyme)—and showcase a theme that*s hot (necessarily) a pretty sight. I realize that a lot of People subscribers will be jumping off buildings to the conclusion that Love Stinks is all about Peter Wolfs estrangement from Faye Dunaway, especially when they catch on to the woman-yearning and-pleading (blues staples, y*know) of “Come Back” or “Just Can’t Wait”.

But I’m banking on Love Stinks as a bigger metaphor, signifying (did I say signifying, my man?) the J. Geils Band’s farewell to their youthful musico-cultural enthusiasm for the Blues Life. Losing Faye could „be a minor detail when yoyr real lifetime dream goes sour, and you’re Not On Atlantic any longer. Got no Lutime for blues poses when I got the blues, man.

That’s ariother fun thing about 18them of devil blues, they always really do come true for you, sooner or later. Just about the time you ^feel like dropping your spade jive and going off to Monklock Island to lie around on them beaches being Just Geils, you get the Real Blues rammed up your lollygagging ass. B.B. Faust is got .his due: the J. Geils Band will be making solid albums like Love Stinks into perpetuity, just like the grizzled bluesmen (of their dreams).

(Special consumer notes: Magic Dick harp workouts will be found on “Takin’ You, Down” and “Tryin’ Not to think About It.” “Come Back” and the Strangeloves’ “Night Tirru?” sound like crossover smashes, on disco and punk playlists, respectively. “No Anchovies, Please” should wow the “Short People” crowd unmercifully. Readers interested in further discussion of the shiksosexual phenomenon of Ms. Dunaway should consult their Norman Mailer volumes.)

Richard Riegel

LENE LOVICH

Flex

_(Epic)__

If the Addams Family ever decided to start a rock group, like The Archies did, Lene Lovich would be the perfect choice for the lead singer spot. Even more than on her first album, Lovich seems like something that just escaped from the cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It’s all chiller theater melodrama (the bulging eyes, writhing tongue and Camillelike hand flailings of Isabelle Adjani in Herzog’s Nosferatu remake), creating a campy effect that’s rriore Young Frankenstein than Boris Karloffs original. (Though the earlier one is sometimes funnier, like the monster drop kicking the pigtailed girl into the well.)

To beef up the camp appeal, Lene doesn’t so much sing as “orate”—kinda like the way Richard Burton “acts.” But whereas the first album used this ironic bravura to indicate a distance from love, here the subjects is pure fantasy eve-eel. In “What Will I Do Without You?*” Lene chirps, “I take disasters in my stride...and those who mean me harm are sorry that they met me,” while in “The Night” she cheerfully informs you that dying won’t be an effete drifting off downstream Ophelia-style. (More likely we’ll all kick off from agonizing digestive diseases garnered from ail those years of shoving Old Family Recipes frozen pizza into our guts.)

But Lene’s broad-stroked Volga boat cfies here are defiantly and delightfully meaningless. Like Bryan Ferry, she may put eye-rolls into each phrase, but her ironies on this album are reflective of nothing. Rather her singing is purely visual; worthy of as much post-Nietzschean analysis as a B-52’s record.

The ouija board fun begins with “Bird Song,” where Lene pulls out a series of Fruit Loop toucan calls from the glass menagerie in her throat. And in “Monkey Talks” she’s got that great “lions and tigers and bears, oh my” tone to highlight lines like “men and monkeys all are we/swinging through eternity.” As on the debut onslaught, the rockdisco synths throughout are terrifically catchy, as are the gruesomely flagellating rhythms in “Joan” (Of Arc, of course).

Overall, the post-conscious brain drain is so imaginatively escapist that it even snares someone like yours truly, who normally believes “fun” can only be experienced by a confusing mixture of guilt, concentration and morbid epiphany. Now, as we enter the post-ironic nuclear era, Lene Lovich seems like a last gasp submersion into the formal structure of camp. In itself it’s empty, but like Rod Serling, it points the way to the land just beyond the sign post up ahead.

Jim Farber

GARYNUMAN The Pleasure Principle (Atco)

April 1, 1980: Kraftwerk, Arkansas (I think). My name is Maria Sanchez. I’m 24, about 5 ft. tall, approx. 110 lbs, with long brunette hair. I am single. The doctors here insist that I am not pregnant. I am sure that I am. The doctors say one other thing—they say I am crazy.’

Writing materials here are forbidden. So are Other things like belts, shoe laces, and razors. That is why I write what I have to say on sheets of toilet paper from the hospital’s only bathroom.

I was brought here from a soybean field outside the town of Kraftwerk. I was brought up in this peaceful community; but I don’t recognize any of the doctors, the nurses* or the hospital staff. Maybe that’s because of my condition. They tell me that when I was found in the field I was stark naked and that ! kept screaming that I had been raised by someone from another world.

People were around me when I woke up. I was on the ground, flat on my back. There were nurses and men who looked like doctors. I started to scream again. They tried to shut me up, saying it was okay now and that I was safe. But I didn’t believe them. I continued tor scream until somebody jabbed me with a needle and I passed out again.

The ward I am in has no windows and no other patients. The doors are always locked. Yet I am examined frequently. I ask the doctors when I will have my baby, but they , keep saying that I’m not pregnant. I asked one doctor if I might watch television and he snapped, “We don’t have such barbaric trash here!”

That was when I got a real close look at him. .At his hair. There was something about it that didn’t look natural. He was wearing a wig! His face and chin were clean and hairless. I looked at his hands, his wrists...there was no hair on them!

I suddenly knew where I was. This wasi not a hospital in my little town. I was with theml To prove it to myself, I reached quickly for the doctor’s hair and.pulled the wig off. The gesture startled him, but a moment later he just sneered and then remoyed his fake eyebrow.

After that, there was no pretense. My captors came to me without their Wigs. I was flatly informed that I was here for only one purpose: I was an experimental breeder. These aliens were anxious to see if inhabitants of twoN different worlds could mate and have children!

There is no night and day here. But during my sleep period, the lights are dimmed and I use that time to examine my room. There are no cracks. I’m looking for an opening, a slit through which I can push these slips of toilet paper, with the hope that they will fall td earth and that someone will read them. I know, it’s like putting a note into a bottle and tossing it into the sea...

(Editor’s Note: A missing persons report has been filed on Maria Sanchez. As of this writing, the girl has not been found. Police officials in Arkansas suspect foul play. They have discovered a spot in the Sanchez’ soybean field where it is apparent a scuffle had taken place. Nearby 4s a burnt area for which no one has an explanation.

It is a hoax or the truth? If it’s the former, someone went to an awful lot of trouble to pull a cruel gag, which so far has amused no one. Should it be true, however, we can only hope that the “powers that be” read this story and take steps to reunite Maria with her grief-stricken family. That would be the humane thing to do. That is, if they know what being humane means...)

Robot A. Hull

D.L. BYRON This Day And Age (Arista)

Boy, times have sure changed. Used to be that young punks who wanted to imitate their fave pop stars had to content themselves with posing in front of the hall mirror,, lonely lip-synch sessions and playing imaginary guitars in the privacy of their own Bedrooms. Vices like that were best kept out of sight, practiced strictly in private, nurtured (but never publicly revealed) as fantasies until the kid just gave up or grew up tobe Rich Little.

But it’s 1980 and, just like the price of petrol, the quality of life or the incidence of TV shows featur-. ing Larry Hagman,the dynamics of fantasy fulfillment have changed. F’rinstance, somewhere in upstate New York (they do a good job of keeping the exact location secret),/ they’ve got the Wild & Irinocent Institute of Springsteenology. There, under the watchful eye of a number of ex-Boss hosses (ex-producers, engineers, managers, roadies and distant relatives), dozens of young men and Women from places like New York, Los Angeles and Bloomington, Indiana, enroll in classes to become Bruce Springsteen. The idea—actually pioneered in the late 60s and funded by various record companies eager to produce The Next Bob Dylan—is pretty simple. Would-be Jersey Devils embark on an intensive 18-week program consisting of courses like Posing I, Advanced Crooning & Stage Swagger, Rock & Roll As A Way Of Life and Lyric-writing (3 weeks alone are spent on “Night” and “Road” imagery). Field trips to the Jersey shore are included.

The Institute’s an unqualified suecess. Applicants the world over are clamoring to get in and already the list of W&IIS graduates is long and legend: Billy Falcon, Johnny Cougar, Arlyn Gale, Carolyn Mas, John Hiatt, Pat Benatar, Ellen Foley, Meat Loaf...

D.L. Byron, who looks suspiciously like a cross between Steye Forbert and Art Garfunkel, is the latest grad. At the head of his winter ’80 class, he’s clearly learned his lessons well. Produced by Jimmy Iovine (recordist of Darkness On The Edge Of Town), D.L. here runs through 10 exceptional (tributes, each one high on verisimilitude, extended verses ancj Harley-in-heat histrionics. “Get With It” is an uncannily Boss-ish stab at the anthemic, “Today” manages a nifty reversal on standard “Night” moves while “Listen To The Heartbeat” exhibits a dangerous deviant streak. “Big Boys” shows that D.L.’s seminar in Costello rubbed off well.

My favorite cut here is “Love In Motion,” a genuine pacemaker of a commercial rocker whose lyrics— “When I get drunk she makes me sob'er/She’s got a rough touch when she does me over/Nuclearinjected on a Sunday drive/I’ll be pretty lucky if I’m left alive”—leave me with but one question. Is he singing about his bike or his masseuse?

Gene Sculatti

THE SEARCHERS ' (Sire)

Of all the bands involved in the first British invasion from the 60’s, the Searchers had the least group personality or individual celebrity status. The batjfle of the bands was always the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones or the Dave Clark Five pitted against Gerry & The Pace* r makers. Fans could (at least pretend 1 to) relate to members of those bands and their public images.' But The Searchers were known almost solely for their hit songs albne, and when those hits stopped, they faded from the public eye. Their, importance in the scheme of things rock ’n’. roll was. overlooked, and the band was left to either break up or slog on. They chose the latter alternatiye, playing small venues and smaller clubs while the crowds called for, and got/ the expected oldies (and who Can be blamed for® wanting to hear “Needles & Pins” and “Take Me For What I’m Worth” just one more time?), the Searchers refused to relegate themselves to rhe nostalgia category. They stayed on top of musical developments; worked on new material, and waited for their chance to reemerge. j

It is both ironic and fitting that the Searchers’ first album in years appears in the mist of a plethora of new wave and power pop groups whose admitted references are mid60’s English bands. The Searchers is not a brazen attempt to come back on the strength of remembered glories. Having played together for close to 20 years (Frank Allan joined in late 1964, Billy Adamson in 1970)„the Searchers’ sound derives naturally from their past work. Yet they have no need for self-conscibus backward glances —their album is as contemporary as Tom Petty or the Records, who each owe a debt to the Searchers and who both, in a neat reversal, have songs successfully covered on this album.

The group’s relaxed yet energetic approach to their , material, which once upon a time,was a sign of folk rock to come, emphasized the pop hooks that could be responsible for a number of hits. The Searchers is a simple, clear production that features just guitars, bass and drums, but avoids the studied minimalism that attracts many of the young bainds today—for example, they aren’t averse to sweetening Petty’s “Lost In Your Eyes” with Bob Jackson’s expressive piano. Their crisp, soaring harmonies are abundant and make Bob Dylan’s “Coming From The Heart” a pop testament of belief. Best of all, is Mike Pinder’s luxuriously glistening twelve-string guitar—the original source of what became Roger McGuinn’s trademark And the Searchers still really rock; Noel Brown’s “No Dancing” zooms right along and their rendition of Mickey Jupp’s “Switchboard Susan” beats out Nick Lowe’s. I was a Searchers freak back in ’64, and I guess I still am.

Jim Feldman