ROCK • A • RAMA

ROCK.A.RAMA

ADRENALIN—Gimme Good Lovin� b/w Change of Heart (Musical Signature Records 45):: Can you resist buying a record by a bunch of guys described in their own liner notes as �messengers from the streets,� �sensitive artists,� �natural street survivors,� and possessors of that unbeatable combo of �overwhelming personality and a welcomed sincerity?�

If not, wallpaper your room with pictures erf the horses on the new Bob Seger album and order this disc from Musical Signature Records, G-705,18000 Vernier, Harper Woods, MI 48225. Oh, dem streets, Oh, dat welcomed sincerity.

J.K.

DIRTY LOOKS (Stiff/Epic)::This is one of the flashiest pew English bands I�ve heard all season, and as these guys �really� hail from Staten Island, N.Y., their overnight absorption and regeneration of the best recent trends in British pop is that much more impressive a piece of applied Anglophilia. Dirty Looks are thoroughgoing Mods, closer to the Jam than we�ll ever be again but they also like to play punkily fast & loud. �Drop Than Tan,� man, and listen mod while ya can. R.R.

MIROSLAV—First Meeting (ECM)::Those few of you who�ve followed the former Weather Report bassist�s descent into obscurity can finally cheer: the man has delivered. Not only has he avoided the well-paid path of session man mediocrity so many fusioneers have taken but he�s set aside electronics altogether. These days, all he needs are his upright, his fingers, and his bow to energize the ECM regulars who accompany him here; if Weather Report had decided to pull the plug and given up on the funk, they might have sounded something like this. M.D,

TERRY ALLEN—Lubbock (On Everything) (Fate)::Ya might know Terry Allen from covers of his songs by Bobby Bare and Little Feat. He�s a �Pan Handlin�, man handlin�, post holin�, high rollin�, Dust Bowlin� Daddy� and artist of the funky school of painting who has put some pepper into country music by applying to it the idea of alternate space, the transferring of art from the stuffy confines of galleries and museums to more free-breathing venues, such as, in Allen�s design, honky tonks. The upshot being that trad country is transliterated, receives a theme transfusion from Allen�s experience in the realm of the High Aesthetic and his resistance to its stratospheric ostentation, and is invigorated with hues of dirty bop funk. With Joe Ely�s gang providing support, *Lubbock offers a music that�s been weathered in the sun and blown by the wind, pill poppin� crazy and butt-stumbling drunk, a music with a renegade grin and rhythmic gumptiop guaranteed to seduce even the most jaded virgin. And it just wouln�t do not to also mention Allen�s 1975 Juarez, an aural short story of asphalt brimstone, pachuco blood, and Henry Millier sex. Get em, twelve bucks for Lubbock and six ninety-eight for Juarez, from Fate Records, 63 West Ontario, Chicago, Ill., 60610. j.m.b.

This month�s Rock-A-Ramas were written by J. Kordosh, Richard Riegel, Michael Davis, andj.m. bridgewater.

MASTER CYLINDER—Alcona Aroma b/w Green Cadillac (Ramblin� Cow Records 45):: Alcopa is a county in Michigan�s northern environs, and a charming place it is. Best known for Ki Cuyler�s (son of hall-of-famer Kiki Cuyler) Bar, it�s also the stomping grounds of Master Cylinder, one of Michigan�s most prolific group of tunesmiths. The local boys doff their baseball caps to the mother soil on this somewhat jazzy side, and do justice to large, green automobiles on the flip. Someday these guys might be legendary, or at least well off. Available from Ramblin� Cow Records, E. Dean Rd. Harrisville, MI 48740. J.K.

THE JAGS—Evening Standards (Island):: These hew U.K. pop contenders have the working-class credentials that always make for the best lyrical sensibilities, and the tracks here are full of the battered-but-stubborn great expectations that also populate the waking dreams/songs of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker. Need I add that Jags Nick Watkinson and'John Alder also sing like the redoubtable Messrs. Costello and Parker? Watkinson�s & Alder�s lyrics are uniformly articulate and rewarding, and in at least two songs here they refer to rental televisions, a British subject Elvis the C. has never properly touched upon. But why does the Jags� �Back of My Hand� sound so exactly like our own Knack, right down to the Fiegerian world-view? An odd lapse that makes the album that much more interesting. R.R.

TUXEDOMOON—Half Mute (Ralph):: Honks, squeaks, and grunts from a variety of electronic and wind-driven instruments abound on this longplayer, and for modern mods more accustomed to the traditions of rock, this could be just what to take until the Dolphy comes. Did I mention that the concept of this album is the allcomsuming mechanization of modern map/ person? I know you popsters will have run into that one somewhere along the line, maybe you even listened to Kraftwerk in the original Kraut. Tuxedomoon are arty and intellectual as all getout, but the record�s still fun in its pix of latterday S.F. sorrow. R.R.

DANNY SPANOS (Windsong)::Digging into the latest additions to the Whatever Happened To...file, we come up with Earl Slick, ex-sixstring slinger for the Bowie band. Evidently, the man keeps himself in guitar picks at the moment by loaning out his powerchords to lather lungs like this Spanos character, a big-voiced bronco intent on �feelin� fine� and getting the ladies to �be mine.� The whole project comes off with such rock �em, sock �em professionalism that you could have a footstompin� good time to it one minute and forget all about it the next. These guys sound like they�re paddling healthily

up today�s mainstream but don�t yet realize that they�re in danger of quickly becoming becalmed in tomorrow�s backwaters. M.D.

BRAVE COMBO—Polkamania (Four Dots):: If you�re a whore and the future�s a pimp even* tually you�re gonna get polka-porked. Brave Combo, Texas Next Wave, anticipates this with a double EP of neo-polka stomp ranging from A1 �Coco� Czelusniak�s �Zorro Polka� to Flaco Jiminez�s �Los Naranjales.� A bit stiff compared to BC live (which includes the famous �James Brown Polka�—�Superbad� at 78 r.p.m.), and subsequent recordings with Carl Finch originals will include more poppish snazziness, but the boys need your money now. $3.98 from 1302 Coit, Denton TX 76201. j.m.b.

BOB SEGER—Persecution Smith b/w Chain Smoking (Hideout Records 45):: A rather disappointing effort by another of Detroit�s bar musicians. Rather than recording inept imitations of Dylan that will only serve to embarrass Capitol Records, should he ever sign with them, Seger should concentrate on songs about stuff like gambling and the streets. You know, real life. In this way, he can develop some rapport with the always-wary buying public.

One more disappointment: not only are there no pictures of horses on the record�s cover, it�s not even a picture sleeve! When will this guy wise up and get a logo and some horses? J.K.

THE ELEVATORS—Frontline (Arista)::This group is somebody or other�s answer to the Cars, a question that hasn�t been asked nearly often enough since, the Hi-C�s broke thru a couple years ago. The Elevators also hang out up in Massachusetts, also favor keyboards with nice shapely legs, and have echoed �My Best Friend�s Girl� so precisely in �Girlfriend�s Girlfriend� that Rick Ocasek himself would probably flunk a blindfold test. Otherwise, though, the Elevators are not so electronic as you know who (�Back up that technologoshock a notch,� sed veteran pop producer Earle Mankey), and they�ve played in bars so much that they sometimes fall into the common musicians� delusion that the nightly sexual pleabargaining going on there has something to do with reality. Tell somebody or other to keep �em on the prescribed maintenance schedule, and I'll reappraise them at 30,000 mi.. R.R.

RUSSIA (Warner Bros.)::A great (nay, a groovy) name and concept, no doubt about it, how come none of us consciousness-expanded Amerikan proles thought of this back in dialectic �68? These Seattle-based �Russians� appear to be into alternative Olympic games of their own, as they play those familiar pompo-rock synthesizer marches (cf. Styx, Toto, ad.infin.), but unlike all those other fudgefaces, Russia also project no little sense of humor. Would Ambrosia ever do a song entitled �Poignant Clams�? Neither would I, but Russia remain authentic curiosities for their implied parody of the genre next door. Maybe it�s all a Commie plot? R.R.