PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE HERT

ROLLING STONES Emotional Rescue (Rolling Stones Records)

Without embarrassment or default this could easily be the album of the year, but true to recent form, the presentation has been a little hard to take. As seen from the corner of W. 8th St. and 6th Ave., the delivery of a new Stones LP—

the first in two years, as we are constantly reminded—is a textbook exercise in leisure industry capitalism. Five songs a year is hardly an honest reflection of the band’s productivity. Rather, it more accurately mirrors the unfortunate influence of international tax laws, capital management, contractual obligations, and marketing strategies, i And the attendant hoopla—the in1 stant gaity and forced punditrysis ft no more attractive. Consider New pYork Timesman Robert Palmer, the best working rock ’n’ roll reporter, driven by the journalistic feeding frenzy around him to posit a more humane, less hermetic Rolling Stones because Mick was seen hailing his own cab and Keith was actually sighted walking (that’s right —on his own two feets) between two downtown clubs! Let us be thankful that no one but me saw Ron Wood, rag in hand, researching funk at the car wash at Houston and Crosby. Who knows what claims might have been made for

the band’s sensitivity to the quotidian problems of the downscale New Yorker?

Which is not to abuse the lads for circumstances they can concoct but cannot control. If Howling Wolf had to deal with this lunacy could he have made a record as good as Emotional Rescue? The only remaining figure of equivalent longevity and magnitude, Bob Dylan, just chucked it all with a cooling (and numbing) cannonball into Pat Boone’s pool. (Dylanologists, if there are any left, will note that this is not the first time in. a long and often mean-spirited career that Zimmy is no longer talking to last year’s “close personal friends,” cf. “Positively 4th St.”) Through it all the Stones manage to roll on with a peculiar grace and sometimes faltering but never failing singleminded momentum that only the greatest—and perhaps the only— white blues band can maintain.

On Emotional Rescue that singleminded momentum attains a feroc-

ity and, simply, an excellence that marks this as not just one of the best records of the year but, more importantly, the finest and most consistent Stones work since Exile On Main Street. Excellence, compplexity, and discernment would seem almost impossible to still strive for in a world where nearly everything and everyone exist to make things “simple” for the “star” —a world that they have lived in nearly half their lives—but the Stones’ collective triumph is their renewed struggle with stultification and self importance, a struggle rarely as vital or sharply documented as it is here. Take, for example, the two typically blunt Stones kiss-off songs, “Summer Romance” and “Let Me Go.” In the first, amid razor sharp guitars and a unique two note solo, Mick rudely sends a schoolgirl packing without denigrating their passion and with more than a hint of self mockery. On “Let Me Go,” with its richly expressive vocals (The very nearly perfect way that Mick and Keith have sung together for 16 years has rarely been appreciated in print.) the hint becomes an arch caricature: ‘/Maybe I’ll become a playboy/ hang around in gay bars/and mo-oo-ve to the west side of town.” If that sounds like someone you’re read about in The Star, right down to the new Central Park West co-' op, you’re beginning to see the light. (N.B. Caveat lector: all lyrics approximate; none guaranteed. This is, after all, the Rolling Stones not Billy Joel.) On the ironic reggae plaint, “SencJ It To Me,” a disconsolate and companioniess Mick begs for any and all comers, “...could be Australian/could be the alien/ send her to me.” Best of all; over the spare, churning pulse of “She’s So Cold,” he pleads so convincingly it actually seems plausible that he is being not merely denied, but totally ignored. This from a fellow who has been denied little and never ignored since he turned 20. So much for the corruptibility of art. Through these tunes and “Dance (Part 1)” and 'especially “WherC The Boys Go,” the playing is as sharp and compelling as it was on Ekile, with Keith’s renascent excitement and concentration and Charlie’s always astonishing drumming being the special standouts on the album full of fine i work.

' For me, the most remarkable song on the recordus “Indian Girl,” . the tale^ of a young Indian “from Nueva Granada” (The Spanish colonial name for Colombia and part of Central America) who survives a massacre and, grinding poverty to metamorphose into an almost mythical guerilla, “...shooting down planes with M-16’s amid laughter,” while her parents fight first “...in the streets of Masaya...” (the 5th largest city in Nicaragua—Hi Bianca) and then with the Cuban brigades in Angola. Building up from a standard Stones country ballad frame) mixing marjmba with Floyd Cramer piano (Ian Stewart?) and mariachi, horn accents, they create a disturbing miniature-a glimpse of our romantic, relentless, and implacable enemy.

Over the fade of “Dance (Part 1)” Mick shouts, “I still stand accused...” a soul echo that, I think, points in affirmation and desperation to generations of reasons for rocking on in a style even better than the one to which hes become accustomed. The Rolling Stones are not jyst good copy like Son .of Sam, wonderful to look at and hear about like Lauren Hutton, an odd assemblage of characters like the Boston Celtics, or walking cultural (and sexual) history like Jackie ■ Kennedy (and Warren Beatty). They are all of these things and they are something more. They are, when all hands are present and off the injured reserve list, the best rock & roll band in the world.

ROXY MUSIC Flesh & E^lood (Atco)

Voices: “NBC, proud as a peacock!”

Announcer: “Fred Silverman

presents The Roky Music Flesh and Blood Comedy Hour starring Bryan Ferry. With The Doomdiggers, Brian Eno at the keyboards, and very special guest, Rodney Dangerfield! And now, it’s Roxy time!”

’ (Orchestra plays “Ferry Cross The Mersey,” Bryan Ferry, in a tuxedo, escorted by two javelincarrying lovelies, takes, center stage, acknowledges the applause.)

Ferry: “Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be on American television. (applause) Of course, I was a little wary when they told me my show would be on NBC. You know what NBC stands for, don’t you? Nothing But Calamity, (crowd chuckles) You’ll have to excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I just got some sad news. I learned that my ex-girlfriend and her lover are start-

ing a singing duo. Thpy’re calling it Hall and Oaf. (more chuckles) Oh well, the show must g6 on.”

(Ferry and Roxy perform “Over You” and “Same Old Scene” from Flesh + Blood to deservedly warm response.)

(Commercial)

Ferry: “Ladies and gentlemen, a man who knows the true meaning of ‘Running Wild,’ a real maniac: Rodney Dangerfield!” (applause)

Dangerfield: “Hey, this guy Bryan Ferry’s great,, inn’he? (applause) Reminds me of Julius LaRosa with gloom! Hey, I don’t wanna say he’s down, but I saw him backstage reading Bob Dole’s campaign speeches. I’ll tell ya, he could be a poster boy for Take a Zombie to Tea Week! He should be a big hit in this country; he’s the only thing more depressed than our econdmy! (rimshot) No, I’m kidding. Ferry s a great guy. What does he do for a living? No, I used to be confused about his band Roxy Music: I thought it was a delicatessen in Japan, (silence) A delicatessen in Japan! Hey, this audience must have listened to Manifesto once too often. Flesh and Blood’s their new one. Jdeard it once, I just had to buy it.Xjuest on his sho^, Ferry won’t even give me a free album! I’ll tell ya, I don’t get no respect—even/ from a rock lounge lizard. I hear they want Ferry to star in a new movie, Latvian Gigolo. No, he’s great, really. This record a’his is, too. When he sings, ‘I’m gonna wait til the midnight hour,’ wooo! My vyife left' a wake-up call. And ‘Eight Miles High.’ I hear he Wanted to be a hippie in the ,60’s. Sewed denim patches on his sharkskin dinner jacket. His idea of a good time is seeing Hiroshima Mon Amour with pig-latin subtitles.” (applause, hearty laughs)

(Ferry comes out, duets with Rodney on a medley of The Staple singers’ “Respect Yourself” and Isley Brothers’ “Respectable”)

(Commercial)

(Ferry slides down a fireman’s pole, lands in ;a bank of synthesizers.)

Ferry: “Ladies and gentlemen, my old. friend, and former member of Roxy Music, Brian Eno! (Eno stands, bows) Briaji has two brilliant albums of ambient knodze-ak out right now. (Eno snarls) We’d planned to do something.from them, but the FCC told us they’d probably be mistaken for civil defense tests, so we’ll take a trip down memory lane instead. To help us, we’d like to bring out Andy Mackay andt Phil Manzanera.” (applause)

(They do “Editions Of You,” “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” and “t>o The Strand”)

. (Commercial)

Ferry: “It’s been just wonderful to be here. I hope you’ll buy our new album, Flesh and Blood, on Atco Records and Tapes. Mitchell Cohen of CREEM magazine calls it ‘bleak, arrid, and yet somehow sensuous and fascinating.’ (applause) Tune in next week when my guests will be Slim Whitman, Klaus Kinski and Steye Landesberg. Goodnight.”

, (Sings “Love Is The Drug.” Screen goes black)

Mitchell Cohen

BLUE OYSTER CULT Cultosaurus Erectus _(Columbia) .

Mid-’72. The only two groups that were able to rev me up on a regular basis were the J. Geils Band and the Blue Oyster Cult. They had a few other things in common. Both bands were passionate about their work, both rocked with a burning vengeance on stage, and they both provided me with plenty of laughs

especially when they got real extraserious (“ME 262” - Cult as “Serves' You Right To Suffer” = Geils)..

Mid-’80. Two' common bonds remain. Neither band’s personnel has changed since the first album hnd for the last few .years they’ve been making crummy records on a depYessingly regular basis. For some strange reason Geils hit it big with Love Stinks. Let’s hope real hard that the same .thing doesn’t hapjten to the Oysters with Cultosauru's Erectus, since it is most assuredly the worst thing they’ve ever done in their lives. And this is a fan talking.

So what’s to be done aftenyou’ve flicked your bicat the'BOC schlock and written them off as more heavy metal blunderers on their way to dinosauric extinction? Well for starters, Cult sh'ould do the same thing the Who should’ve done to their lead singer years ago: Kick him the hell out. Anyone for Ionizers?

I mean, aside' from the minor problems on Erectus like recycled songwriting (they remember Secret' Treaties tool) and somnambulistic playing (lotsa 40 winks instrumentation) the main problem, the biggest problem is none other than Eric “Buffoon’7 Bloom. Everytirrte he opens his mouth he sounds like the next syllable could be his last. Bloom is definitely the white Sammy Davis Jr., specializing in hopelessly hokey melodramatic overkill’ on such divebombers here as “Divine Wind,” “Lij>s In The Hills,” and “Black Blade” (the most positively' awful BOC’s ever lumbered through). Eric’s a Shangri-La’s dream—he’"s good-bad but he’s not evil. Uh-uh, no way. .

Before 1 break this record in half I should also mention" that the band gets disastrously pseudo-jazzy on “Monsters”, that the darting keyboards'make “Fallen Angel” stick in my head, and that from start to finish former exhilarating guitarist Buck Dharma plays with all the fullthrottle force of a derailed choochoo train.

Wait. There’s more. In the middle of “The Marshall Plan,” right before an abominable guest appearance by Don “Master Of Mediocrity” Kirshner, Bloom lays down a riotous rap about a fledgling rock star wanting t5 make it desperately (just

like Eric!:): “...I'll put an ad in the paper. Get a few other guys (who wanna play as much as I do). Tell ya, I ain’t playin’ no surf music -I’m gonna,play some heavy music. I’m gonna play bad, I’m gonna play loud...I know just what I want it to sound like. It’s gonna sound like it’s gonna soupd like ’’

Words fail.the boy at that point but I believe the tifrn of phrase he needed to complete his train of thought was “human waste disposal”. That’s all Erectus is .'and Bloom, if you play your cards right, the next laser you see will be the same one Gert Frobe beamed down at Sean ConneryColdfinger.

Craig Zeller

PETER GABRIEL (Mercury)

The name is the same as his previous two sold' LPs, but this one’s got a stark B& W cover of His Nib’s face melting into his rugby shirt, one side'totally disfigured from the scalp to jaw like some Creature Feature. You may wanna remember that -since Gabriel has rendered it impossible to ask for these albums by. name—unless, of course, you want tp buy all three. But you just might want To buy this one because it’s good, even great.

P.G. has steadfastly chosen to remain ateult figure. He left Genesis right before the big bucks started rolling in. He, too, could be singfng gluttonous nursery rhymes in soldout hockey arenas. But instead he split, taking his surrealistic sickq wordplays with him, to a life of relative obscurity! It’s almost courageous. Ditto his style. New Wave/ No Wave, even disco, turned the whole shebang topsy-turvy and Peter has plugged onward as if it never happened, producing something's dinosaurous as ye olde Art Rock album. *

There is a consistent mood to the record, thanks to recurring musical signatures—sinuous guitar lines,, unnerving steel drums,-tentative piano notes, martial drums opening and closing the record. A male chorale of drill sergeants singing ad if conducted by Hugo Montenegro, even subliminal synthesizers and the odd bagpipe. It’s a spider’s web that neatly supports Gabriel in his -games without frontiers. This whole

slab sounds like various headaches, most especially blinding migraines,

: the type schizophrenics get. Gabriel convinces you he’s been 4here J psychopathic%second-story cat burglar, Arthur Bremer witness .to the police beating of South African, Stephen Biko, inmate of the asylum.

Albums like this just aren’t made in 1980. Albums like this are only made by Peter Gabriel. They’re worth owning when your circuits are overloaded by everything else.': Because Peter Gabriel can very • gently carry you away to another plane of existence, And just as gently return you home.

Kathy .Miller

JACKSON BROWNE Hold Out (Asylum)

Baumgarmer sits in his underwear watchingyhe television w/thevolume turned off. The moyte critic for a local channel' is giving a review. He. knows it is of Urban Cowboy. From accompanying still shots he feeds lines to the silently mouthing screen: the perkiest [job of acting belongs to the versatile and talented nipples of Debra Winger... John Travolta continues to exude a visceral ability for portraying morons and the casting of a thick-browed wop in the role of a thick-browed redneck is implicit social commentary...does a ,mechanical bull imply mechahical bullshit? He draws back from the purplish glow and appraises the girl, sitting primly, hands folded confidently, w/a smite that curls at one corner w/a hint of a smirk. He enjoys her reviews more when he is able to coax her skinny little body next to his on the couch in their apartment to view her taped seg-’ ment. of the Week-End Update, improvising (with the sound, as always, off) critiques of films such as Apocalypse Sow which concludes with Miss Piggy fondling a phallic sausage link murmuring “ the horror, the horror." When he looks, back to the tube Keavy has become a,pudgy blond man with Allen Ludden glasses who is smiling likka domesticated hyena. The latest news pf the day must be turning for the bad as, the man’s face, sours into a doughy ‘grimace. He gets up, punches off the TV and switches orl the stereo. On the turntable is the same vinyl slab that has been there for several days already and will remain.so indefinitely. She buys but four, at most \five, records a year and plays the most recent jjntil she no longer needs to remove it from the jacket to hear it. Baumgartner, a one-time writer on the hide-out from the werewolf moon of rock & roll deadlines, is weary of choice and his own opinion and is content with whatever suits her methodical passion. Her main dtag friends sniff that he is uncouth, sullen, and aimless, whileshe lights a Vantage, eyes downward; his backroad buddies snbrt that She is anemic-looking, has a big nose, is mousey, and acts superior like a,11 those city girls, while he lights a Winston and grunts, “Go stick your head up a holstein’s ass.” But they refuse affected views of the other and, experienced with the pure folly of optimistic prouncement and selfserving confession, will make do until do is palpably done by rarely speaking the unnecessary. But this is not what he is thirfking.

Keavy first bought a record by the cute tyke whose album cover profile leans against a cinder block across the room after reading a plagarized review of it in the morning daily that spoke of aural cinema. She made use of the LP in a criticism of a flick he doesn’t recall the name of which prompted a scathing, letter from a viewer. She showed it to Baumgartner who remarked that some folks cap’t spell worth beans. She drew the inference and thereafter confined her musical references to film scores. And had no design to invest further in the windsorhe lad. But Leonard Cohen’s Recent Songs had at last remained in its sleeve for a period suitable to her logic and she found it appealing that she and this singer of songs now had practically 1 the same hair-cut. ,Which Baumgartner agreed was as good a reason to buy a record as he knew of.

He initially heard her purchase one evening after she had left the stereo playing in a mad dash out the door and he had arrived for supper to hear the first side’s endiqg track thinkihg how odd Keavy would buy a Jules and the Polar Bears. Setting his place, he listened to wh’at he assumed was a song to the daughter of Lowell George, itiusing that this fellow and Neil Young certainly had a lot of dead friends and he was glad to be acquainted with neither. Picking at the remnants of his s&lad during an exhortative recitation he wondered how Asbury Park would do in Laurel Canyon or Malibu. Chewing gristly meat he waywardly thought that a prime time televised funeral of a radiation death whose head was being j buried separate from the victimized body in a lead lined box might do more for antinukedom than any 3-LP set. Draining his iced tea f\e told himself Keavy couldn’t sing fbr'shit but was plenty good at taking the,trouble to stick around and he knew the greater talent; that she was no celestial body but he was no astronomer. Smoking a cigarette he summarized (old habits being hard to avoid) that perhaps the best thing would be to place the LP in a basket and leave it on the doorstep of the couple next door who had moved there from sunny southern California recently.

Now he sits sprawled on the couch, having turned on the TV as the record winds for the third time to its final cut. In a minute she will enter from the late, summer night heat in a boney besweated stoop, pausing to throw her head back in the air conditioned cool. He will look at her, all drained and frail, she will look at him, his hand lodged in his Haines 32s. Their eyes will latch just as that Browne person gasps “I love you, I meah just look at yourself, what else would 1 do?” He will grin drolly and she will smile her smirky smile. -She will say dum vivimus vivamus and he will winking respond in the custom of their litany ruat caelum. And they will hold close and fuck laughing and laugh fucking as Tom Snyder mtigs and quips futilely ,at their intertwine. And the last sound you hear from the apartment of Keavy and Baumgartner is the stereo rejecting. Click.

j. m. bridgewater

X Los Angeles _ (Slash)__

“Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of„ apocalypse, dnd just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence arid the _ unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its imperma-

nence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to , the edge we are. ”

—Joan Didion, 1967 X are perhaps the first band from L.A. ever to come dose to really exploring the end-of-the-continent consequences of the new wild west —the ultimate garbage dump for disposable income. Their' debut recqrd would very much like to be the real music for Joan Didion’s White Album, concentrating on a land filled with Woody Allen’s “wheat germ killers” and internalized, leisure class mental traumas. Unlike New York, where most problems can\^e externalized (blame your woes on the subway slashers, the roving gangs of armed youths, or worse, your landlord), in easygiving L.A. it at first seems you have only yourself to blame. Yet when there are external problems in L.A., there, it’s the very earth that turns on you-^mudslides, brush-fires, floods—all the Kiss tours put together.

This is the sort of plague parade we hear on the best of X’s albumsome mud about to crash in on your million dollar Laurel Canyon home, the first knife wound in Leno j^aBianca’s stomach. What threatlens to keep the record from fully embodying Ibis sense of waste is, its reliance on 1977-level cliche punk chords, sometimes stressing rousing beats and catchy choruses over conceptually correct moods. In places it seems like everything that’s enjoyable about the record may run counter to what X is really

about. But wait.

More immediately correct moodwise is the organ, which is partly responsible for the band’s comparisons with the Doors. Actually, in one way X are just the opposite of the Doors. While, Jim Morrison (a symbol) reveled in sex-death linkups, X (as human beings) are repelled by them. Like Didion, they are most essentially vulnerable, at times self-righteous moralists. Listen to X’s vocals. Despite the punk chords underneath, the band doesn’t really want to be tough (though they may sound that way at first). John Doe’s voice is actually vibrato-tinged wimpy and when he and Exene sing together it could be a 1980’s version of folkie commupal—earnest, lovely, very

clean-living. Also unique about the voices is their flat, detached delivery, coming on like objective newsclips of recent slaughter from Didion’s “senseless killing neighborhood.” The voices keep wavering off-key, as though giving in to the lure of deaths which seem selfdetermined—slow suicides. This is ultimately what makes the record work as a whole. Some of the lyrics do get condescending and preachy (“Sex And Death In High Society”), but then what do you expect from a bunch of moralists? The song that puts it together best is “The Unheard Music,” which moans very Doors-like into the mystic.

No other tracks contain this High

Marianne Faithfull-level of gloom, but they all have at least some hint of mountains crumbling and smog impending. Someone here may get out alive, but at least you can be sure they’ll be left with some kind of much-deserved, unflattering scar.

Jim Farber

BOB DYLAN Saved (Columbia)

I never bothered buying Bob Dylan’s landmark albums when they were released, in the frantic 1960’s. All my friends then already had all the albums, and at the liberal colleges I attended, it got tb be nearly impossible to walk down the hallways in ti^e dorms»without hearing Dylan’s raspy vocals and I warbling harmonica issuing from each cell.

Even so, I sprung my three bucks for a brand new mono copy of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits the day it appeared in 1967. Maybe I just liked the bright (Jewish) blue of the cover, maybe I was subconsciously looking years ahead to rockwriting and the convenience of these compilations, but I went for it. When I brought my proud impulse purchase home to thd’ campus, my blonde-on-blonde Quaker girlfriend of the moment took one look at the cover, and wailed, “But Rich, how do you know Dylan those these songs himself?”

Ah, to be young and to believe in Bob Dylan’s infallibility once again! I can’t speak for my ethical-culture girlfriend any longer, but' too many comrades from my generation have dragged just such romantic notions of Dylan’s omniscience all the way through the 70’s and into the 80’s. They’re still convinced—probably by recalling the dramatic-but-thenvindicated stylistic shifts of classic Dylan sets like Highway 61 Revisited or John Wesley Harding—that Dylan knows exactly what he’s doing each time he makes a bold change, and that everyone will have to come around to Bob’s new morning in an album or two, no matter the fans’'initial revulsion.

Thus all the horrible hair;pulling and teeth-gnashing over Dylan’s recent conversion to born-again Christianity. I’m not: a Christian myself, but I’ve taken a rather sadistic pleasure in watching Dylan dump on his obsequious hordes the past couple of years.

First there was the wholesale greatest-hits revisionism of Bob Dylan At Budokan, and then the startling self-righteousness (which , shouldn’t have been startling, given I the tone of Dylan’s long-ago “pro1 test” albums) of lAst year’s Slow Train Coming. Through all that, I didn’t doubt Dylan’s “Jewishness” for a minute. I figured that he was building up to an enormously sarcastic Jewish joke, to a j kind of metaphysical Don Rickies routine, in which he could appear to become the Jesus-incarnate his disciples had thrust upon him from the beginning, and then, with everybody waterlogged from their Dylaninduced baptisms, he could jump out of the burning bush, and holler, “Hello, Dummies!”

But Bob Dylan’s grandiose joke (if that’s ever what it was) is wearing very thin on the new Saved. This album is all mellow and babbling and rather dullard (“A Satisfied Mind,” as the lead cut has it), where Slow Train Coming was fiery and ornery with precious Old Testament bluster. If Dylan’s truly .found all the peace he needs in Jesus, then he may need to look for a new mode of emotional expression, too, as Saved doesn’t convey much passion or belief in anything to me.

All the gospel-rock conventions are in place on Saved: it was recorded in Muscle Shoals, with noted Southern session players like Barry Beckett and Jim Keltner, and the song titles—“Are You Ready,” “In the Garden”—herald enshrined gospel themes. But the Dylancentered performances are so lackluster, so meandering, so bloodlessly weak, that I wonder just vvhat Dylan thinks he’s promoting here. The Biblical cliches in his lyrics remain just that—cliches—under Dylan’s once-trariscendent pen. And some of his vocals (cf. “What Can I Do For You”) are little better than the gruesome caricaturevoices Mr. Rogers visits upon his frozen-faced puppets.

I don’t know about this Dylan guy; I heard more, fervent gospelrock than his oh the early, “secular” recordings of Leon Russell and Delaney & Bonnie, let alone Ray Charles. So what’s the punch line?

Richard Riegel

ROSSINGTON COLLINS BAND

Anytime Anyplace Anywhere _ (MCA)'

. Most of you gotta know who these people are but for those of you who’ve been dodging firebombs in Afghanistan or chemically altering your memory cells, these are the Lynyrd Skynyrd survivors, four of ’em anyway. The comeback trail ain’t the easiest one in rock ’n’ roll and when the bottom falls out from under you like' it did for Rossington, Wilkeson, Powell, Pyle and Collins; it’s enough to make most people consider another line

of work. But not these guys. They’ve recuperated, regrouped, and come back for more; along wJith the Allman Brothers, they’re one of the definitive never-say-die bands bands around right now and they provide"' inspiration for the rest of us to hang in there when things get rough.

Of course they’re not doing it alone. Evidently Artimus Pyle isn’t quite up to it yet so they’ve added Derek Hess on drums and brought in an old friend, Barry Harwood, who co-wrote several songs here, co-produced the album and. completed their three guitar lineup. Now you may think that’s an excess of axes but that’s Gary and Allen’s decision; I always thought that Skynyrd’s lone two guitar album, Gimme Back My Bullets, was their weakest so I’m not about to argue. Anyway, though there are a few places where somebody’s lead doesn’t quite cut through the multi-guitars-plus-keyboards backing, business is usually taken care of just fine, though to be fair to the competition, the new Henry Paul Band djisc burns with more straightahead 6-string firepower.

But guitar power was never what these people were all about and the real question on everyone’s mind was who was going to be up front. You just, don’t snap your fingers and replace Ronnie Van Zant. No need to eulogize the man; just pick up any Skynyrd album ana he comes across directly: his down-to-earth demeanor, his rowdiness and his sense of justice, his charisma and his compassion. He was one of a kind and any dude who tried to take his plate would undoubtedly be compared to him and that wouldn’t be fair to the band or the fans.

So the R-C gang sidestepped that , potential problem by getting a lady by the name of Dale Ki\antz to front the band instead. She’s had just a few gigs singing babkup before this break but she looks and sounds able to carry the load. Vocally, she veers between a fullthroated Tracy Nelson-like moan and a more Joplinesque intensity when she really wails. Plus, she’s handling her end of the songwriting as well, getting cq-composition

credits on every tune but one.

As you might have guessed, determination is' the main theme here and it’s expressed in a variety of comtexts: determination to make one s' own decisions, to keep a relationship real, to forget any past doubts and make this band happen. The songs that put across this idea most forcefully—“Don’t Misunderstand Me,” “Opportunity,” “Get Away,” and the funky finale, “Sometimes You Can Put It Out”—are the ones that stay with me but I’ve gotta admit that there are some \ barely recall after spinning this platter several times. So I can’t call Anytime, Anyplace Anywhere a great album but it’s a good enough beginning; once this band gets its momentum rollin’ on the road, I ain’t gonna stand in their way, that’s for sure. Michael Davis

KISS Unmasked (Casablanca)

My favorite Kiss story has to do with my mother. I hereby swear on a stack of Gideons that my mom is a sex education teacher in a John Cheever Shady Hi|l-type suburb of New York where she regularly shocks the bejesus out of hef 13year-old students by showing them grotesquely acted semi-porn films which she claims she gets from The Unitarian Church, following it up by passing around plastic tubes filled with unborn fetuses. A few years back, dear old mom decided to do something even more perverse by making it a regular practice to have your truly come to speak at said classes about the most oily elements of rock ’n’ roll I could come up with. A snap obviously.

. The weird part is, in the do2en or so classes Eve spoken to, whenever we come to the question and answer period, the kids inevitably come up with only two questions that they really want resolved: “which rock stars are gay?” (1 tell them they' all are, except Freddie Mercury, who’s simply too butch). Ahd “WHAT EX) KESS LOOK LIKE WITHOUT ITHEIR MAKEUP?” r

I tell you all this not only for the purpose of filling up space in a review of a band about whom too much has already been written, but also to show the sophisticated CREEM reader that there actually are people out there who still care who these guys really are. Which brings us to the cover comic strip of Unmasked, where the guys finally take off their make-up and (surprise, surprise) they look exactly the same underneath. I’m sure the 13-yearolds will accept this “phonybeneath-the-phony” cop-out, and with music like there is on this album, I’m willing to play along as well.

The disc at its best is like a K-Tel “amazing simulation” of the B-sides of Partridge Family singles; like the kind of songs that used to come attached to the backs of old Wheat Honeys cereal boxes. At worst, the thing reminds me of another skinny tie pop L’.Pi in the Richard Perry school bf hot tub punk. To be honest, a lot of the hooks here stroke, rather than really pull you. Ye;t there are still such groovy numbers as “Easy As It Seems,” which ranks in the profound-league with “Christine Sixteen.” What’s best about recent Kiss, though, is that they’re making fewer and fewer attemps to be “dangerous” or even “sexy”, finally admitting their essential Kristy McNichol pettinglevel preferences.

Besides this, there’s a nostalgically amateurish thinny-thin production to beef up the general anonymity—which brings us back to the 13-year-olds’ obsession with Kiss. The positive by-product of the band’s anonymity is that by putting on the make-up and dressing like them, we can be Kiss.,Perhaps this idea was actually expressed better in;The Ramones’ film Rock ’n’ Roll High School, when the principle, Miss Togar, asked our boys: “do your parents know you’re Ramones?” (as though being “a Ramone” was some special sect anyone could join, like The Moonies). Kiss do not inspire such brotherhood in me, but I can certainly see how it would for my fellow 16 Magazine followers. And with such pleasantly mediocre albums as Unmasked one hopes that Kiss has not peaked (as their bargain-binned solo L.P.’s indicate), but rather that their road will go smiling pn forever, i Jim Farber

Heavy Metal Kool-Aid!

PHILIP LYNOTT Solo In So)io (Warner Bros.)

It’s tough to feel much sympathy for Phil Lynott’s gripe over his lack of commercial success in the U.S. With a few scattered exceptions, Thin Lizzy failed to ever match the wit and energy of 1976’s “The Boys Are Back Jn Town,” their only

bonafide stateside hit and, with their ascent to superstardom in Great Britain, their live appearances here dwindled to a precious few. Even their move to Warner Bros.* removing the excuse of ‘Mercury poisoning,’ failed to noticeably reverse their fading fortunes.

But let’s face it. Even with an’ almost constant shuffle of personnel, Lizzy nas been a one-sound group, Lynott’s thumping bass echoed by double lead guitars, on mid-tempo rockers that usually I were more threateningly ominous f than genuinely challenging. For all that, it still seemed that Lizzy had a shot. How many bands could boast a lead singer bass playing who was black and Irish? Since the group barely appeared able to contain him anyway, it was with some high hopes that I approached his first solo album. Lynott unleashed. Phil unfettered.

The good Pews is that Phil has stretched out somewhat, testing some unfamiliar ground. There’s reggae (“Solo in Soho” sounds remarkably1 like The Motors’ “Cold Love”), soul (the Motown-ish “Tattoo (Giving It All Up For Love)”), calypso (“Jamaican Rum”), synthesizer noodling (the politically sophomoric “Yellow Pearl”), talkathons (Phil delivers the oral history' of the punk movement in “Talk in 79,” dropping every name from the Pjstols to Devo) aqd even a lullaby (“A Child’s Lullaby” shows his softer, almost religious side). By the time we get to a conventional Lizzytype rocker like “Ode to a Black Man” (more namedropping, this time invoking prominent Black figures from Malcolm X to Jimi Hendrix) it’s a real treat, proving the wisdom in Lynott’s effort to diversify.

Thev bad news is that Phil’s bass still overpowers, giving Solo in Soho,, like the latter Lizzy albums, a gloomy density that is difficult to penetrate. A reverential ode to Elvis Presley, “King’s Call,” for example, is reduced to a low mumble on the average sound system, obscuring some characteristically slinky guitar work from Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfl.er, among other things. So while there is an impressive stylistic range here^and Lynott demonstrates a willingness to reveal more of himself than on the Lizzy LPs, supposedly the purpose behind the solo venture—the variety fails to shine through the wall created by Phil’s bass guitar and husky vocals. Jt!s sort of like cooking up a gourmet meal and smothering it with ketchup. If Phil were just to mix down his bass somewhat, I think he might find that all that stands between him and the wider American audience he seeks -is a little treble.

Gary Kenton

JEFF BECK There And Back (Epic)

as free as the wind blows§ as green as the grass grows the wonder of bein’ alive | the warmth of the sun in the sky

hey—there’s a knife in your head!

KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL / gof a rage to Hue t KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL I got so much to give “Rage To Live” © 1980 ! Haizman Music

Jeff Beck’s gotta rage to live. Says so somewhere in Epic rec’ds’ newly biographical rundown of the man’s career. Says also thafstudio-' Stratocaster technology ca. ’75 manifests “the sounds of a hundred angry bumblebees.” However^—no angry bumblebees to bee found on this, the latest of J. Beck product. No bees: not a hundred, not 64, not two or one. Nary a swarm nor one lone African killer bee. Or a__VVasp Woman.

Could explain ..the morass of - mediocre meandering prevalent thruout. The hive of six-string stingers Beck so notoriously mined in the fantabulous 60’s has been debunked hon-toxic. No poison, just bunk. & in fact, speakin’ of bees,, this is the most anti-insect album of sounds...Nothing for chrissake is pollinated. Just this real hapless jazzbo-type funk, not angry, not stinging, not nothin, man. Rage to die.

Eight trax—'scuse me, compositions—of instrumental exploration go, nowhere fast. Beck’s gee-tar drones and frolics thru these particularly non-abrasive soporific passages punctuating (...) Jan Hammer self-indulgence and dullsville sonic “experimentation.” This mishmash of electronic^ and guitar’s just real wjmpy, lightweight stuff. At its worst it comes off like rancid -mr. Son-of-buddhist-John McGloughlin (ech!) W/fhese wormy "turns and dull dull dull segues of quiet to “intense.” Hmmm.

Credit the rhythm section of Simon Phillips (drums) and Mo Foster (bass) for skeletal congruity and reinforcement holding together the otherwise limp monotony. Production overall’s pretty good for what alia this, baloney amounts to; somehow very sympathetic with motif and execution. For ex, percussion and rhythms in “Space Boogie” are well defined (!) and not as tedious as you’d expect; tight syncopation so it, er sounds all reet.

“El Becko” actually’s O-K too. Beck’s playing’s sorta listenable and it’s quite possible that somewhere in the middle it starts to cook. Yeah, so maybe...

Beck and I share the same birthday (June 24)—Chris Woodfx of Traffic) *and Barbara Bose (a friend’s mom) too. Otherwise, this record basically eats pumice and as I’ve failed to mention the balance of cuts, they are: “Star Cycle,” “Too Muclfi To Lose,” “You Never ♦ Know/’ “The. Pump” (Side 1); the aforementioned “El Becko,” “The Golden Road,” “Space Boogie,” & “The Fjnal Peace.” Yawn,..

' There and Back?

HERE AND GONE.

\ Gregg Turner

MITCH RYDER Naked But Not Dead (Seeds & Stems)

If it weren’t so uninspired and imitative, Mitch Ryder’s Naked But Not Depd would easily win the award for most obnoxious album of the year. Moreover^ Ryder displays none of the spitfire energy that , made, his* 60’s oldies remakes such whirlwind, urgent erotic messages, and—perhapsfthankfully—a lot of the lyrics are mumbled or arrogantly slurred together. At best, Ryder comes off as a punk (in the old sense of the word) offering sophomoric social commentary and rude sexual posturing. Sadly, there are moments of pure ugliness—Tblatant prejudice and meanness. If irony is intended, which I would rpuch prefer to believe,.^/ou find it. I can’t.

I tried hard, ana all I found was a musically dull, sometimes stupid record.

Such charges must be substantiated. So:

The music has no impact. Melo-, dies seem to . havd been written grudgingly, offered out of necessity. “True Love” and “Hometown” are as much-lethargy as they are reggae. (Isn’t it interesting that so many artists are trying a bit of reggae, while the real stufLgoes nowhere? Isn’t it depressing that, for most of the same artists, reggae is obviously inappropriate? Ryder,~for example.)' I can imagine someone being influenced by the Bob Dylan of yore blit, my god, “War” sounds like an out-take from Slow Train Coming. Of course, this Dylan motif is apparent throughout the album, as Ryder’s thick snarl has no traveling power and sounds testy, ‘ruture Looks Brite” borrows heavily from Randy Newman—the same goodtime music hall melody and pianoplaying; the same sort of ironic intent (of which* Newman is the reigning expert): the cheery music is enhanced by the sounds of nuclear explosions; lately, I’ve been humming “Short People” and “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear.” And although the band is competent, the guys are going to be disappointed (especially the guitarists) when tfyey learn that the Allmans aren’t holding auditions.

As to the lyrics, there are antiestablishment messages fhe likes of

which haven’t been heard since the dog days of'Woodstock and protest marches. In “Corporate Song,” Ryder lets us know where he stands: “Special interest, it’s not for me.” That’s Commendable, but Messrs. Reagan, Carter, and Anderson say the same thing. “War” juxtaposes short verses about cars, a girl, whiskey, and rich men with the line: “I don’t wanna die.” But what really gets me steamed is “Ain’t Nobody White/’ These are some of the words: “Ain’t nobody white can sing the blues,” “White men never die young,” “White men

never suffer/Never lived in pain.” Nice, huh? (Ryder tries to indict Ray Charles as a co-believer.) Any suggestion of irony is b.s. It’s dump-onwhitey-time, and it stinks. Even if it’s whitey pulling a mea culpa.

However, “Ain’t Nobody White” isn't any nastier than “I Don’t Wanna Hear It”: “You think you’re so hot/You’re just another screw,” and “Don’t ask me why I waste my time on you/I’ve had so much vyhiskey, anything will do.” Well, Mitch, you don’t look so hot yourself on the album jacket.

Aha! There is irony. Kfound it in “Future Looks Brite.” Ryder sings, “Ah yes, the future looks brite, the future looks brite for me:” Not when people hear this record, it won’t. '

Jim Feldman

JUDAS PRIEST British Steel (Columbia) _

Judas Priest have been gradually slithering qp the peeping order of the hit-it-again school of crunch and mangle, and it’s no surprise. Theyve got the Load Lifnit power

chords, the criminally insane frontman, the screen door production values, and the overall sound of death by drowning required for membership in the may-causedrowsiness club.

They still stink, though. As in most other -T-team sports, heavy metal is no place for the hesitanf. Ask Lenny Randle, who’ll tell ya “You gotta take it to ’em and make things happeri.” Too bad nobody coached J.P.’s guitarists (Sleepy and Grumpy) on this strategy. You can almost hear them waving their hands in the air, asking permission to proceed to the next riff. Same deal with the rhythm section, who sound like they’re being rolled away on a tin cattle cdr.

Lead singer end .all-around lout Rob Halford is *the real problem here, however. His vocals range from thin to whiney, with the overall conviction of Sheriff Lobo. He’d be much better off cast as one of those skinny, creepy pests from a collection agency. Picture him on his hog, crashing down your front door, strapping you to an ironing board with’chains and Saran Wrap. Then, in his best no-stick croak, he looks you in the forehead and says, “Okay, matey, now whqt are you gonna do about this drthodonist bill?” Oh well, leave it to Repulso!

Lack of true heaviness is a chronic problem with this record until you get to the last two cuts, by c which time you could’ve listened to 110 Dickies albumsrThere’s no mud Ito hide in either, as Robby Baby _ spitefully enunciates each word in a E manner not unlike Quinn Cummings. And these are definitely not lyrics you’ll want to learn for future rope'skipping, rhymes. Just the usual lines from How To Screw Single Chicks, Man, gnd readings from butcher block instruction pamphlets, lists of War-Dead, garbage truck operator’s manuals and a wrinkled old copy of You and Your New Minuteman Silo.

What’d’ya say we all get together on this one and prevent these dog wieners from getting too bigtime. Simply substitute Van Halen, Triumph, Scorpions, Nugent, etc. the next fime you feel a need for the sonic degradation of your nervous system. \

Now I can go back to beddie-bye.,

Rick Johnson