MOVING STARES

MOVING STARES

RECORDS

GRAHAM PARKER The Up Escalator (Arista)

by Richard C. Walls

I suppose Graham Parker’s gonna break through this year. It’s pretty inevitable. Following three years of critical acclaim and public obscurity on Mercury Records, he debuted last year on Arista with Squeezing Out Sparks, garnering more critical raves and making a healthy if brief apppearance on the charts. It’s a puzzle why he didn’t break tjjrough then, the album coming so soon after the public had clasped E. Costello to its trendy bosom. Not that they’re that similar (some people have wrongly seen great similarities—“another skinny bitter Britisher”) but. as AYM types go Parker is so much easier to take than Costello, being a little less oblique, a little kinder (don’t get me wrong, I think Costello is just peachy, but I’ve always assumed that the majority of people will take the line of least resistance, making it a small mystery that they would embrace the thorny Costello while passing the smoother Parker by). Anyway, this album will probably be the big one ’cause despite the fact that critics influence other critics more than they do the great record-buying public, all that good press is having an (as usual belated) effect. People are curious.

And a worthy album it is, better in some ways than last year’s stunner. There’s practically no filler and it’s fairly bristling with ideas, showing an artist at the peak of his prowess. Parker’s great talent is his ability to celebrate in the face of despair, to zero in on dead and dying emotions with a triumphal feeling that crushes depression. A paradox, perhaps, but it’s a nonsuicidal funk that he’s immersed in, mocking his worst feelings and getting away with it. When he sings “I’m cold-blooded and completely relaxed/I’m breaking legs and avoiding the facts” you think, well, yes and no, partly because Parker always sounds warm-blooded and a little nervous, but also because the tough pose is so obviously a pose— these songs rail against the harder feelings, not for them. Listening to Parker sing about defeat and paralysis, empty lives and dirty sheets, you’re never in doubt as to where he stands. And tho he ain’t really tough, he never asks you to admire his bleak insights as tho they were so many pretty broken blossoms. This dude deals in catharsis, npt self-pity.'

Each song is a treat of hooks dnd epigrams, some in an ironic vein like “Stupefaction” which elevates numbness to the level of anthem (it also contains, incidentally, the album’s worse line, the only real clinker—“I asked the neighbor/ why are you so stupid/giving us those dirty looks/and trying to murder cupid”—it’s too cute and too ’60s-smug. It’s also uncharacteristic), some a howl of dissatisfaction like “Devil’s Sidewalk” and “Maneuvers.” But two songs stand out—“Empty Lives,” a driven infectious number which displays the patented Parker twist by acknowledging the appeal of being cold, of not feeling anything anymore just as it disdains the pain it causes (as a bonus the song’s coda is extra hot —obsessive and exciting rock), and “Endless Night,” which deftly mixes moods of defiance and surrender with a resulting ambivalence that is refreshing and honest.

The record is rife with goodies and the band’s in fine shape (tho Parker is undoubtedly the star here—even the usual “and the Rumour” credit has been dropped). It’s just about a perfect rock record, if there is such a thing, and a great antidote to the bullshit that dominates radio nowadays.

PETE TOWNSHEND Empty Glass _(Atco)_

“Heroin” does not rhyme with “mellowing.”

It is tres cranky to slap the wrists of writers (punky Britcrits) whose major crime seems to be not caring so Very much when Keith Moon died.

Where is The Chord?

Just thought I’d get a few objections put of the way up front. Empty Glass is o.k., really. There aren’t too many skid-marks here. It’s kind of cheering (’tho not cheery by a long shot): an aging vpteran, one long preoccupied with both his mortality and eventual place in the rock cosmos, puts out a solo album that isn’t 80% wank-off or wasted motion. Pete Townshend could have saved “Rough Kids” and “I Am An Animal” for the Who’s Warner Bros, debut, and he didn’t.

Empty Glass sounds best overheard from another room while one is reading, say, Falling In Place; at a distracted distance, this might pass as a cool Who album that wasn’t. Its rhythms, its Townshendian tones, are reassuring—evocative in a sensememory sort of way, like the background • play by-play of any baseball game when you’re not following the action. There isn’t action much on the LP, but I like its subtle moves, its familiarly rising/breaking/coasting melodies, the voice.

Townshend has a magazinewhipped Augie Doggie face on the front cover, flanked by two floozies. He’s grinning it up on the flip, the ladies have become featureless white blanks. His halo is slightly changed. The listener has the nagging suspicion that on the altogether charming “Let My Love Open The Door” Townshend is singing not as a prospective lover, but as'a Cyrano for Ayjitar Meher Baba. What does this all tell us? “Let My Love...,” by the by, contains a line I like a lot: “You’re so lucky I’m around.” He’s gotten good at cocky. Also at Clapton. “Cat’s In The Cupboard” is intense Cream pure and easy (with a verbal nod to -Squeeze). Townshend combines the two c’s on the album’s closer, “Gonna Get You,” a confident rocker wherein he and valued collaborator Rabbit Bundrick whip up a little Layla traveling music.

The album was produced by Chris Thomas, most recently Of Pretenders. He understands Townshend’s music better than Ken Russell does, and individual songs from the album are effective on the radio, especially “Rough Boys” (if Townshend had bobbled with a title like that, it’d be time to retire his number). The title song starts with the words “Why was I born today,” so morning deejays should avoid it, lest some sour awakenings occur. It’s not that swell a track anyway. Unfortunately, you will not hear Pete’s heavenly whimper on “I Am An Animal” on the radio. He says “fucking” in it. As an adjective. There you go.

_ Won’t Pete Townshend make a terrific old English curmudgeon 20 years down the line, dregging up mod memories for the BBC/PBS? He already has a weary, elder statesman aura. When the Cincinati crush took place, you knew his response would be measured, impassioned, concerned and thoroughly unshitty. He’s The Deacon. He’s one of the most heroic rockers because he’s one of the most human.

Another fine line: “He [a spiritual vision: don’t get any wiseguy ideas] laid me back just like an empty dr6ss,” from “And I Moved.”

On Empty Glass Townshend is shifting his weight. His songs take on different emphasis—less forced muscularity, less analytical mythconsciousness—when they’re not filtered through the idea of “The Who.” So theoretically, as well as musically, this effort is justified (so were Who Came First and the Townshend-Lane record and “Peppermint Lump”), but...

Once, Townshend’s creations were things we could not do without. Who Unreleased was the only bootleg LP I bought in the ’60s, and Direct Hits the only UK import LP, because there were tracks I couldn’t bear not owning and Decca was botching up left and right. “Substitute” was stolen from 'me, I in turn swiped “Happy Jack.” This was serious stuff. Empty Glass is a worthwhile piece of work, all right. Who else from the mid-60s has thrived through 1980 with as much common sense and sense of mission? But essential it isn’t. It adds to what we know of Pete Townshend, but not to what is rare and indespensible about him. Contrary to his accusations in “Jools and Jim” (cute), it isn’t "a standard of perfection” we expect of him, it’s a high jump so smart and so wild that perfection becomes beside the point.

/PAflKV AAD ALFALFA TH€V Alffe'T

GANG OF FOUR Entertainment! (Warner Bros.)

by Michael Davis

Count your blessings and count your change. It may have taken over a year-and-a-half but now you can buy the Gang of Four’s album at inflated American prices instead of £uperinflated import prices and be subverted and entertained at the same time. Get two mind massages for the price of one and get a free kick in the ass tossed in—or was that an ass massage and two free kicks in the head? Whatever. You get what you pay for.

And what are you paying for? Another new wave band. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that meaningless? What does new wave mean to you, anyway? Back in the Dark Ages (77 or 78—it’s been so long now I don’t remember), those words actually meant something: music that was powerful, angry, concise, noisy and often politically motivated, not the slick pop droppings that radio programmers point to as “new wave” to get their relevancy ratings up. But Gang of Four’s music is not only powerful, angry, concise, noisy and politically motivated; it’s also intelligent and well-played.

And it’s the playing that’ll catch your ear first. Crank this sucker up and you find out in a hurry how easy it is to move to this music. It’s spare and intensely driving, with bits1 of funk tossed into the mix; this is a rhythm-oriented band and Andy Gill is essentially a rhythm guitarist, extending a tradition that, goes back at least as far as Pete Townshend. Sometimes Andy plays right on the beat, sometimes right off the beat; sometimes he lays out altogether for a bar or two and sometimes, as on “Return The Gift” and “Guns Before Butter,” he goes berserk. His unpredictability coupled with the straight ahead power of the bass and drums is what sets this band apart from the pack musically.

Lyrically, well, they’re different, though equally impressive. They’re avowed socialists but avoid party lines like the plague: no solidarity anthems like Tom Robinson and no rants like the early Clash or Sex Pistols. They dig a little deeper than most bands into areas like media manipulation but they usually personalize the problems so they rarely come off as preachy or selfrighteous.

One of their main themes is the fantasy/reality relationship; they openly question who is controlling our fantasies about each other. Like in “Damaged Goods,” in which singer John King transcends the resignation in his lines, “Sometimes I’m thinking that I love you/But I know it’s only lust,” with the happy last verse built around the phrase, “The change will do you good.” No ego banging in this breakup song— change can be good. Simple, yes, but how many songwriters acknowledge it? Similarly, how many even mention how flesh magazine fantasies screw up bedroom realities like these guys do in “Contract’? May be a handful. Maybe.

The packaging underlines these ideas. What could be more universally entertaining than cowboys and Indians, so they’re put on the front cover, complete with a cryptic note about trust and exploitation. I mean, when was the last time you saw the word “exploit” on an album cover? Never, right? But we all know exploitation is a big part of the game, right? Rock ’n’ roller after rock ’n’ roller exploits his or her musical ability and physical appearance in an all out effort to “make it”, yet you’ll never see the word “exploit” used. But that’s show-biz; this is Entertainment! Enjoy.

Mitchell Cohen

JOURNEY Departure _(Columbia)_

A rotten apple , with jno core. Tampa Bay without sunken buses. The Partridge Family without Danny. Lysol Basin, Tub & Tile Cleaner without the dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. Sex without love. Love without sex. Lite Beer without the aftertaste of marbles and Band-Aid boxes.

Departure is all of this...and les$. There’s just nothing here except a cover you’ll want to keep handy in case your anaconda gets sick and a hole in the middle. Dry heaves conceptualized.

So what is it that millions of 1831’s see in this group? Their own reflection, like the dishsoap commercial? Beats me—I go through my notes looking for a clue and all I see is the wbrk SUCKO scribbled insanely all over every page. This is what we in The Biz refer to as “critical insight.”

It could just be the music. These staggering hooks and weeping fills couldn’t wake up Styx even if you painted them the color of cashier’s checks. The one track that can be differentiated from the rest of the upholstery, “Walks Like A Lady,” walks more like a duck. Journeywatchers might say it leaves off right where “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ ” left off. This observer would go so far as to say that Journey is to R&B what Queen is to Rockabilly.

It could just be the lyrics, most of which seem to have something to do with “unlocking your mind.” I dunno, last time I unlocked my mind, it rattled for two weeks.

It has to have something 'to do with vocalist Steve Perry, a true journeyman of minor mouth pain. His voice isn’t just thin, it’s runny. Sounds like he sticks dental sponges in his nose and then sings through a clam. Yes, Steve, we dig your valves.

Since you’re already here, let’s take a look at some of Departure’s good points. The production is remarkably clean. You shouldn’t listen to it. You should hide it under Neil Young’s soap dish. There’s more. They do “Walkin’ In The Sand” almost as well as Aerosmith, only they’ve put the wrong composers underneath and changed the title to “I’m Cryin’.” And me without my hanky!

No matter what it all adds up to, it’s the total emptiness, the caramel void in Journey’s center that really leaves me cold. They’re the sinking feeling of “now what?” that comes after the afterglow. They’re the sleazy maneuver you thought you got away with until you noticed none of your friends were speaking] to you. They’re the crusty sheets and sinkful of dirty dishes left over from that one night stand.

And they can’t even take a joke!

Rick Johnson

SMOKEY ROBINSON Warm Thoughts (Tamala)

“The fireside, the lamplight intimate and low, reverie with finger at the brow, and eyes that lose themselves in answering looks...”

—Paul Verlaine,

“La Bonne Chanson”

Born on February 19, 1940, William “Smokey” Robinson was' blessed at birth with an extraordinary poetic vision: God stepped down from His lofty perch and kissed the newborn’s brow. Since then, Smokey—with a voice that can melt M&M’s—has made us swoon, massaging our hearts with a romantic lyricism that justly earned him the title of World’s Greatest Living Poet (awarded by Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, prior to their recent demise).

From the Miracles’ inception in the late ’50s, Smokey swore that his music was inspired by the 12-yearold Frankie Lymon; presently, because of his meticulous phrasing and air of self-confidence, he seems to be inspired by a more ancient deity, Frank Sinatra. During his waning years, Sinatra’s voice has mellowed, like a fine whiskey, into an authoritative perfection; similarly, Smokey’s voice now sails through a melody as if guided by the wisdom of a navigator so sure of his course that not even an approaching fog could dim his visibility.

Warm Thoughts, Smokey’s seventh solo album since splitting from the Miracles in ’72, is the Motown Symbolist’s most vital effort at keeping the embers of love burning since One Dozen Roses, his 71 twilight masterpiece with the Miracles. His lyrics still rely upon the turned around phrase (“Into Each Rain Some Life Must Fall”)—a sure sign of an intrinsic faith in language —but more than that, they reflect the poetjc maturation of an artist no longer deceived by a mirage. Smokey has not only grown up, but his voice has changed, too.

His intertwining verse is still the stuff that romances are made of. Only a genuine madrigalist could have composed these lines from “Heavy On Pride (Light On Love)”:

So you say you stopped by

To make sure I watered creeping charlie

And to use the phone

But that ain’t so

Baby, cause I know

You well enough

To know that kind of stuff couldn’t bring you home

To comprehend the adulthood of Smokey’s rhyme scheme is to understand why the soul of his ballads belongs to a heaven light years away from the sleazy pit where Barry White and Teddy Pendergrass croon in June about spoons.

The album, of course, is not without flaws, but they are tactical errors, due primarily to the presence of intruders. On “Wine, Women and Song,” Smokey sings a duet with his wjfe, Claudette, that’s only saved from the schmaltz of Peaches and Herb by the magical allure of Smokey’s voice. Co-written and co-produced with Stevie Wonder; the Godfather of Plants, “Melody Man” never really rises above its pop-disco sound to give Smokey a chance to paint his words across the landscape.

Nevertheless, the erotically rhythmic moments of the album (the pendulum swing of “Let Me Be The Clock,” the shame-shame-shame groove of “Heavy On Pride”) offset any of its headaches. Already wellestablished as a Top 40 hit, Warm Thoughts (its revealed intimacies perhaps even designed for our own bedrooms) may become the makeout album of the year. So start smooching.

Robot A. Hull

GENESIS Duke (Atlantic) _

On Duke, as on their last three to ten albums, Genesis are attempting a statement so subtle, so movingly complex, that most lay individuals haven’t a chance of comprehending its far-reaching implications. V6ry likely only those used to seeing people shoot themselves in the arm “for art” or offer pavans on fashionable Soho floors will be able to appreciate the peculiar genius of the post-Peter Gabriel Genesis.

Some may say Genesis’ recent music is a lot like Charmin Bathroom Tissue; all squeezeably soft melodies that should be used only for cleaning infant behinds, but these philistines are completely missing Genesis’ brow-knitting point Genesis offer the true test of ambient sound—this is the real music for airports. Even if you play Duke at full volume, it still whispers. For a rock disc, with quick-paced bass cresendo drums, hooky vocals and fully formed melodies, this is truly a first. Unlike Fripp and Eno, who deliver their somnambulance-isbliss theme through Mr. Bubble ooze music, Genesis do the same with a totally conventional musical structure; thus offering themselves as a sacrifice to the form of the age. It’s perhaps the most subtle, ironic ploy Since Foreigner’s ever-elusive Head Games, which embraces cruel-hearted conformity to transcend it, or Linda Ronstadt’s last LP, which slyly lampoons the notion of cashing in on the new wave. It’s sort of the inverse of fellow artists Van Halen who, through their highly conceptual anti-nuance music, show how aggression, power and arrogance can indeed be made boring; a daring encapsulation of the limits of macho (particularly relevant in these nouveau-jingoistic times). Similarly, but devastatirigly conversely, Genesis show how coherent , pop tunes can be made utterly shapeless—a brave usage of form to prove the uselessness of form. On Duke the sublimnity of Eno is transformed into a mocking ironic joke—as if to say that their fans’ concept of melody and emotionalism is so bankrupt'that this shallowness must be represented literally, to prove how truly empty their miserable little lives are.

Also involved in this heady work are Kraftwerk’s profound notion of mass-produced sound (I dare you to differentiate one sound from another on the last three to ten gurgling Genesis albums); plus final proof of the “punks’ ” beef against > the fascism of technical talent. C5n Duke, Genesis present conclusive evidence that being able to play your instruments means absolutely nothing. The Sex Pistols would be proud.

Even beyond all this, Genesis here deliver some of the best pop philoso-lyrics since Cat Stevens went Buddhist. Example: “Beware the fisherman who’s casting out his line into a dried up river bed.” Richard Brautigan could not have said it better.

While the irrelevant cowards of the new wave use outmoded concepts like “true emotion” to decry the world’s lack thereof, bold pioneers like Genesis just sink into Hallmark emotionlessness as a last ditch effort at redemption. It’s kind of like the highly facetious Warhol project a few years back where he sipped drinks with the Shah of Iran (back when the ex-monarch was still torturing “so called students”) —to embody the most hateful sleaze in a sleazy world. It’s all quite brilliant and, oh yes, tres apocalyptic.

Jim Farber

LOU REED Growing Up In Public __ (Arista)_1

For more than three weeks I’ve struggled dutifully with this record. As with all of Lou Reed’s music I was looking forward to it, but the longer it took me to reach an accommodation with Growing Up In Public the more disturbed and distracted I became. A djlemma: On the one horn Lou has only rarely wasted his time (or mine) over the last 15 years. On the other horn, taking Lou too seriously can lead to the dreaded Bangs Syndrome, which turns normally clear headed critics desperately grim and feverishly apocalyptic, causirig them to grapple to the finish with Lou in a two out of three fall steel cage feature. The esteemed Dr. Bangs, who first isolated the virus at great personal risk (some of his most daring experiments were chonicled in these very pages), is not fully recovered—after nearly 10 touch and goNyears—but the rest of us could be stricken without warning, so one must always be careful.

However, as much of the writing in our critical journals regularly indicates, one can do a lot worse than Bangs Syndrome, especially since Lou Reed is the smartest person regularly recording rock ’n’ roll. Taking him as seriously as I dare, I have finally concluded that Growing Up In Public is a difficult and unsatisfying album for several related reasons. First and foremost, the man who was one of the great rock singers of the late ’60s (“Sister Ray,” “Cool It Down,” “Head Held High,’’ etc. ad infinitum) simply cannot sing anymore, at least not in a recording studio. This has, of course, been a substantial issue through most of the 70s, but on Growing Up In Public he seems to be showcasing the deterioration. Though he uses sharp rhythmic phrasing and some expressive dynamics to disguise the problem, he has no tonal or pitch control anymore and a drastically reduced overall range. In “Standing On Ceremony,” a terribly sad song about the effects of a mother’s death, Lou misses notes all over the place; he attempts “Think It Over,” a rapturous love song, as a basso profundo, quickly turning the sublime to the ridiculous. The sad fact is that even on a good night he can’t doo doo wah with the best of them anymore.

All this i§ made painfully clear because the driving thick synthesizer textures and superb reed work (What became of Marty Fogel?) that took weight off Reed’s vocals on The Bells have vanished entirely. The music on Growing Up does not have palpable strength and character of its own, nor is it inextricably wedded to the content —it’s often as clever as the lyrics, but it’s rarely essential. In fact, the music seems to have been conceived separately, in a way reminiscent or Rock V Roll Animal, takes I & II. In that case the music—though entirely overblown —was somehow special for being too much. Since the songs being rearranged were also too much in their own way, a successful truce emerged. Here, however, the songs, extremely—sometimes excruciatingly—personal, don’t fall very far from the vest and the music is unable to enhance their universality and suggestibility as the best rock ’n’ roll should. With the exception of a few codas where the spirit is finally unleashed (“How Do You Speak To An Angel”), the music is completely subordinate to the lyrical content—always an unproductive balance of rock ’n’ roll trade.

Finally, even the finest music Lou has ever produced would be hard put to kick ass behind the following (the very first verse on the record): “A son who is cursed with a harridan mother/Or a weak simpering father at best/Is raised to play out the timeless classical motives/Of filial love and incest.” Lou’s relentless investigation of psycho-sexual mores and behavior has turned inward with—as you can see for yourself—decidedly mixed results. I have witnessed Lou Reed in many strange incarnations over the years, but never could I have imagined him as a prattling, self-absorbed Central Park West analysand. He’s still as smart as ever, but that’s colder than usual comfort in this context. Even more distrubing is that many of the songs sound oddly distanced and less moving than the more formally abstracted work (e.g. “I Want To Boogie With You” and “Families”) onlast year’s album. Perhaps all this marks significant psychoanalytic progress, but it sounds like a major rock ’n* roll setback to me. A track by track comparison with previous ' work leaves little to get excited about. The problems I’ve enumerated are evident in different degrees in all the songs on the album—no song is utterly without redeeming virtue, but all of them could stand considerable work. As a follow up to The Bells, Reed’s best recorded 'Work since Coney Island Baby, Growing Up in Public is truly depressing, and I wish Lou would get off the couch and back into the streets.

Jeff Nesin

JOE PERRY PROJECT Let The Music Do The Talking •_ (Columbia)__

Regardless of how you may feel about Joe Perry and his music, you gotta hand it to the man for having the necessary gumption to haul himself out of what was, undoubtedly, a stifling situation. And, lucky for him. Let The Music Do The Talking does just that — in spades. It’s to Perry's credit that this album doesn’t sound all that much like an Aerosmith record as some of us might have initially feared it would. “Come on boys, let’s shake it up!” Perry adlibs during “Conflict Of Interest” (a paean to his Aerosmith split?), and true to his word, it’s a declaration of intent that never gets reneged on.

Furthermore, it cements Joe Perry’s position as successor to Jeff Beck’s throne as rock ’n’ roll’s premier guitar hero, and don’t laugh. Beck — an Ali of rock who lays claim to the title every two or three years between lube jobs — has obviously defaulted, bent as he is on the trappings of jazz/rock, leaving the position wide open for Perry.

Indeed, the Joe Perry Project is, in many ways, a streamlined Jeff Beck Group for the 80’s. Perry, the man responsible for such past solo rave-ups as “Bright White Fright” and “Combination” (the latter of which features the immortal Nouveau Wave credo “Walking on Gucci, wearing Yves St. Laurent, barely stay on cause I’m so goddamned gaunt”), works out steady on all nine tracks (no ballads here; you don’t see Joe crying) from the instrumental “Break Song” (an encyclopedia of all guitar licks known to man or beast distilled into two minutes and nine seconds of fury that could boil Iran off the map) to the bludgeoning title track, a slaughterhouse of a shaker, worthy of inclusion on Rocks itself.

The bass and drums (a tip of the Hatlo hat to David Hull and Ronnie Stewart respectively) fit between your ears as snugly as pulsing mortar between red hot bricks, while the vocal chores are shared, between Perry and Ralph “Don’t let the name fool you” Morman, who hails from the Rod Stewart/Bob Tench/Steve Marriott scotch-forlunch-bunch school of nodenotchers.

If only half—hell, a quarter—of the people who bought’n’ wound out to Rocks pick up on Perry’s Project, then you can bet that there’ll be plenty good rockin’ not only tonight but for a lot of nights to come.

Shake it up, Joe.

Jeffrey Morgan

ROBIN LANE AND THE CHARTBUSTERS _ (Warner Bros.)_

Brain: Anybody home?

Bridgewater: Wha? No. Who’s there?

Brain: C’mon, off the couch, ya stercoraceous wad of sloth. Or do I hafta get rough? Ya want I should punch in a couple heart-like-a-flattire memory cassettes? (Unwilling body coughs and grumbles to a sitting position.) That’s better.

Bridgewater: Couldn’t you just leave me alone?

Brain: Now now, buddy-boy, you know how Incredibly dull you are without my agitation. So. How do we go for the check this month? Name That Derivative? Perceptional Mumblety-Peg?

Bridgewater: Christ Jesus, man, how’d I - get stuck with you? My bladder has more imagination.

Brainy Piss bn, then.

Bridgewater: O.K., grey jell-o, try this on:

Ya got this kid, name him Thud. He’s, oh, 25. Has just executed the classic Waco Getaway. Bussed out of that Cen-Tex urban calamity with a hot check warrant singeing the hair on his neck. Now he’s at the Trailways terminal over on Jackson St. in Dallas. Typical atmosphere there: the air conditioner’s blowing full-filt but it’s still suffocating with the humidity of people who have broken clocks for faces, folks whose souls are like the cracked block of a ’67 Chevelle. The mugginess is pervaded by the stomach-souring aroma of velleity and dolor, nauseously thick with the clammy stench of moribund expectations, the rotting scent of people who would never be more passengers. Like, adult-rock fans, or cats still clinging to New Wave.

Thud, a copy of Famous Potatoes stuffed in his hip pocket, he don’t care. Just sees ’em all as a blur. Thinks he’s a scout for doublearrow love. And he’s got as many hours to kill as a blind man at an allday peep show. So he scouts. And encounters this blonde dolly singing her marshmallow voice into a telephone shaped transistor radio. A shaggy underarmed ugly who obviously possesses Soul and Vision. A Little Miss Muffett who s^ys stuff like “attachment to obligation through guilt and regret, shit, that’s so wet.” After three minutes he loses interest, he ain’t no backroad descendant of Paul Marie Verlaine, and Miss Muffett is too, hmmm, sexually aggressive to suit his cute persuasion.

But then he sees this other blonde—maybe a strawberry—in the company of a pair of modern lovers. Thud, he falls. Mad love with this chick in a Loony Toons tee-shirt who speaks so sincerely and in vogue. She’s a warm familiar place to be swept into. Like Cohen said, ’65 and ’80. She’s the answer to the grassroots question of‘where were you when I needed you,’ tough-sweet enough to qualify for the Year of the Broad Sweepstakes. And she can wink—God, can she wink! Truly goddam cute. However. She’s got to catch a bus to ’Frisco to thank Greil Marcus for makin! her #1 in his Real Life Rock Top Ten. And Thud gets busted tryin’ to pass rubber paper for a ticket to Birmingham, Michigan.

So, Brain, all that’s left is to mail it to Billy, and depend on him to take care of the trivialities, like subjects, verbs, plu-fucking-perfect grammar, and lucidity. What do ya say how?

Brain: Feed me a couple of Vanquish and shut the hell up.

j. m. bridgewater

GRATEFUL DEAD Go To Heaven (Arista)

RHYTHM DEVILS Play River Music (Passport)

The Grateful Dead are dumber than the next man, evert if the next man is a Beach Boy. Consider: though Love, Jardine et al have yoga-ed their neurological wires bare to the extent that they now seem to believe that they’re actually responsible for the coming of summer, you have to admit summer does indeed come. The Dead think they can artificially respirate flower power. Hoo-hah. Once again womanless, they’ve acquired an ungroovy macho look they can share with their old hippie/neomustachioed pals Jefferson S’shlp. In their hands, mello(w) is nothing but the beginning of a soft drink, so the Gratefuls hang out a lot in Jersey, where they don’t have to use deodorant tomorrow. Ripple in still water, indeed.

Now if the Dead only had a brain, at least when it came to choosing a producer for their new album, they’d have learned from past boo-boos, mushmice like the Fleetwood Mac sackee Keith Olsen and Lowell the Fat Boy. They’d have gotten Jack Douglas, who’d name the LP something tough like Dawn of the Dead. The first time Jerry Garcia tried to play one of his idiotic scales posing as a guitar solo, he’d find Jack giving him an Indian bum, making ' him promise never to play “Tennessee Jed” again. “Cry ‘Uncle John’s Band,’ Garcia,” Douglas’d sneer through clenched teeth. Cover song: “Walk This Way.”

Or the Dead could’ve gone for David Bowie. Benefits galore. A) He’d insist on writing all the songs himself which’d be fine, since Messrs. Garcia and Weir ran out of melodies back around the time of their first solo LPs anyway. B) He’d sing backup vocals and play keyboards, thus saving the group all the dough they had to spend to hire Brent Mydland. C) He’d get them to'cover “Cars.”

But like I sez, these guys are multiple I.Q. pts. stupider than the average bear. Turning the dials on Go to Heaven is one Garj; Lyons; I’ve never heard of him before and don’t expect to again. This is your runofthemill, every year GD album, except on Mydland’s songs wh£re it’s worse. It’s beyond me what a castrato singer/songwriter with nascent sensitivity is doing in a band like the Dead. On his Songs they patiently play what they’re told, all the while scanning the arrangement for an opening, some daylight to burst through, and then it’s run to BOOGIE.

And what of the back line of the Dead, who have so little to do here that nobody would notice if they collectively slipped out for a burger? Well, apparently sometime during what was down on the recording schedule as “recreational therapy,” Mickey Hart managed to record his third (count ’em) solo LP. His Rhythm Devils (inch Dead men Phil Lesh* and Bill Kreutzman, and honest to god ethnic Airto) provided all those peachy Run Through the Jungle sounds to Apocalypse Now. My ears tell me that Play River Music, unlike the ultra-recommended soundtrack album on Elektra, is not made up of those same noises, but rather an incredible simulation; on the whole, none of it’s as good as the beginning of “Lust for Life,” and I do wish they’d put a good-play-by-play plot summary on the back cover instead of all those drum pics. Still, if you’ve got six spare dollars, and already own the Elektra record and the Eleanor Coppola diary—why not? Any record with a track called, “Napalm for Breakfast”is worth something, right? Besides, it shuts down an Eno ambient music album no sweat.

Ira Kaplan

BOZ SCAGGS Middle Man *_(Columbia)

“Soupe a l’oignon, por favor,” said Estelle, mixing her languages as nonchalantly as she was knocking her ashes into her vodka stinger. Then she turned to me, placed a red-gloved hand on my arm, and said,' “Honey, you know I always thought Fred Astaire was the real ticket, Mr. Cool himself, dancing on walls and ceilings, one day in a gondola, the next day on an ocean liner, always dapper and smiling. But you know, there’s more to life than just dancing, and times are changing and anyhow, after picking up Boz Scaggs’ new album, Middle Man, I’m beginning to , think that Boz may be the coolest of the cool.

“Oh, he’s had the moves down for a long time now, a genuine fancy dancer himself, soul struttin’ and rockin’ with the best of ’em, a sharp dude who knows more than a thing or two about romance. In fact, I took a lesson from that fantastic primer on some of the machinations of love, Silk Degrees, only last month. I was trying as politely as I know how to get rid of this guy Alphonse, he hung around much too long. And finally, I said to myself, ‘Estelle, it’s too late for manners, what is it Boz sings in “It’s Over”—oh yeah: “Go away,/So far away/It’s too late to turn back now/ And it don’t matter anyhow...Why can’t you just get it through your head/It’s over, It’s over...” ’ I liked that mixture of directness and what-the-hell. Of course, what I said sounded more like, ‘Leave my bones alone,’ but you get the point. •

“Anyway, Boz—even his name is cool—he has come up with some really great stuff on his new album. If you’ve lived in the Big City as long as I have, you learn that everybody’s restless, always lookin’ for something—maybe just a place to take off their shoes, peruse the goings-on, maybe tryin’ to figure out the differences between the glitter and the real beauty. It sure ain’t easy. The sophisticated discos are usually right around the corner from the neon-lit go-go shows, and who’s to say one is any different than the other? It’s the same set-up with love and lust, romance and a bit of raunch. And Boz takes you right along with him to some Big City places, be they high-tone or low-down, where things may not be as they seem and where he fits right in, dressed in a tuxedo whose pant leg may have gotten dirty in that puddle back there. Most of that group Toto plays on this record— they must have been forced-fed a mess of adrenaline—and also David Foster and Ray Parker, Jr., not to mention some hot-to-trot back-upgjrls, and Boz sings some plaintive, sentimental love songs so lovely, so schmaltzy—if that chick Rita Coolidge goes near this one ‘You Can Have Me Anytime,’ well I just might do something not very nice.

“Middle Man makes a pulkout-allthe-stops, hard rock frontal assault on some woman, but whether he’s trying to buy her services or become her, xhow-shall-I»say, business manager is as unclear as the hopped-up strut. Goodness, Boz doesn’t overlook any point of view; ‘Breakdown • Dead Ahead’ is a snappy, cheery, and therefore unsettling warning of romantic disaster. And he can be downright nasty when he puts his mind to it. ‘So stop your scheming/ You must be dreaming/To think I’d fall for you/You got some imagination.’ But like m ‘It’s Over,’ sometimes you gotta let it all out. Whoa, doll, I better shut up and get goin’-*I’m late for a lecture on Art Deco and then a Veronica Lake picture. Before I make my tracks, though, let me add that not only is Boz— just love that name—my ideal of cool, not only is Middle Man one elegant intriguing and very smart album, but ‘Angel You,’ a joyous attempt to make a date for whatever —Boz: ‘How ’bout Saturday’/Rosemary Butler: ‘How ’bout tomorrow/ Boz: ‘We could make it tomorrow’ Rosemary B.: ‘I need to know’—is the best damn song he’s ever done and numero uno on my 1980 hit list. Ciao, honey.”

BRflhnSFDRBOnEQ

THE BRAINS (MERCURY)

BV THE MAD PECK * ROBOT A HULL ASSISTED BV CAROLYN BERMAN

FRAZZLED OUT OF HIS GOURD FROM OVERWORK, FROGMAN CONTACTS A TALENT AGENCY TO PROCURE A REPLACEMENT FOR THE MASKED MARVEL.

' WADDAVA MEAN THE ONLY PERSON AVAIL ABLE FOR THE JOB IS SARAH TUCKER ? NO, I WOULD ,N0T SETTLE FOR SLIM WHITMAN!

AROUND THE COUNCIL TABLE , THE TALKING NOGGINS CONFER ON THE BEST POSSIBLE STRATEGY.

LET'S GIVE HIM AN EARFUL OF "MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING." IT'S A SURE-SHOT. HE'LL THINK IT'S THE ANTHEM FOR THE NEXT GREAT DEPRESSION.—--«

-YEAH 1 AFTER ALL, WE'VE GOT A LOT MORE SPUNK THAN THE CARS AND THE REST OF THOSE POWER POP PEONS. ONCE WE POUND HIS GRAY MATTER WITH OUR GUT-ROCK,THAT TOAD WILL STOP BEING SUCH A NAMBYPAMBV.

`OK~YGAN6~, LET'S KNOCK SOME SENSE INTO HIS IiE~%D.

FROM THE PLANET ATLANTA IN THE GALAXY CLASSICS IY, CEREBRAL ALIENS VIEW THE PLIGHT OF THE FRUSTRATED FROG.

THIS GUY NEEDS OUR HELP) HE’S SUCH A WHINEV WIMP THAT HE MAY GET STUCK WORKING WITH SHEBWOOLEY.

BROWBEATEN INTO SUBMISSION, FROGMAN JACK YIELDSTO THE GROWING RAGE OF THE NEW WAVE OF "YflltTM mm i i i i

—■ i "C" HAH! 'THE BRAINS ALBUM IS THE¶ GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE, BV ANYBODY, HONEST INJIN,KIDS!

WE THINK WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING~, BUT WE DON'T PULL THE 5TRINes.

HI~THISIS K.C.CASEM. `-.. HOLDING DOWN THE. NUMBER-ONE SPOT FORTHE TWENTYSIXTH WEEK IN A ROW I~ THE HIT BY THOSE LOVE ABLE NOODLES FROM NOWHERE (

Jim Feldman

TONIO K. Amerika • _ (Arista) __

Tonio K. is more of an oddball than Elvis Costello will ever be. Costello continues to astound, of course, with every new leap of his boiling brain, yet all his bold moves, from his sacrilegious name on, have been eminently logical, supremely relevant to their peculiar times.

Whereas Tonio K. is (and will certainly always remain) a crank howling in a wilderness without time and genre. I mistook Tonio K.’s first album, Life in the Foodchain, for a Californian, embitteredhippie reaction against the ascendancy of the new wave, but now that the new Amerika has reprised that set so neatly, by neither challenging nor patronizing the new wave, I’m realizing just how singleminded Tonio the K actually is.

You can’t even peg Tonio K. by calling him a bundle of contradictions; his strangeness lies outside the' easy ironies. He would be inexplicable even if he hadn’t borrowed his name from a Thomas Mann character, even if the bios which accompany his records weren’t already full of big white lies; he’d still be as profoundly odd as the (God bless ’em) Good Rats, whose vocalist Peppi Marchello Tonio K. sometimes echoes.

But his vocal growls also echo everyone from Tom Petty to Peter Wolf to Cap’n Beefheart to Warren Zevon to Leon Redbone, for starters, so you never know. And Tonio K. gets great raggedy hard rock mileage put of West Coast studio gas-guzzlers like Earl Slick and Nick van Maarth. And he’s managed by—get this!—Irving Azoff, whose Full Moon empire was founded precisely to perpetuate the conventional hippie pieties of such solid citizens as the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, and Dan Fogelberg! '

So maybe Azoff keeps Tonio K. around as a kind of court jester, to amuse away the stress of all those days making high-stakes deals over the WATS-line? Could be, money can make people eccentric, though Tonio K. seems to have extracted his own idiosyncrasies from the thin air of econpmic and' spiritual recession.

Tonio’s still real pissed about the state of the world within his beloved Amerika (Ever the, literati, he’s referring to Kafka’s novel, rather than to that mythical State the leftists were always attacking, a few years ago); life’s still doomed to the foodchain, while love takes place among the ruins, if you’re lucky. Yet even workaday despair’s not enough for him; in “Spy Goodbye,” he warns us to “Say goodbye to the Beat Generation and the Woodstock Nation/Say goodbye to all the old great expectations”; i.e., get off yer nostalgic ass, while you’re at it. And love among the ruins is as chancy as ruinous as ever. In “Go Away,” the woman attempts to reclaim the Tonio K.-protagonist by reciting the names of his fave philosophers—Mann, of course, Robert Oppenheimer (?), etc.—but the studio Tonio K. doesn’t even bother to have anyone sirtg the names, the listener has to go full audio-visual by following along on the fine-print lyric sheet, and the net effect is hilarious. Or note the tragic “Fast Rodney,” who mistakes his Chevy for hjs cock, and ends up stuffing “that chevy through the itrophy wall.”

Much like Lester Bangs (the singer) in his “Live,” K. is exuberant in his ranting and raving over human frailty; undoubtedly, the Jehovah’s Witnessing Tonio K. just can’t'wait for the holy Apocalypse to begin its own spectacular muckup of setting things straight. In the meantime, there are always more record albums to make and listen to...

Richard Riegel