THE CARS

Panorama

(Elektra)

One morning about two years ago the clock radio woke me with the drive-time jock in mid-ramble. The program director, the jock gushed, thought so highly of a new album from a new group from Boston that his imperial edict was: Play Any Cut! (Rare enthusiasm from a P.D., to be sure.) As I recall, my man played “My Best Friend’s Girl” because he liked the title. I liked the tune. Enter the Cars, with as they say in the Motor City, the hammer down.

If it wasn’t just what you needed, someone certainly did, because that first record—sharp, novel, and energetic—is selling yet. Their blending of middle Velvet Underground with early Roxy Music (out of Outre' by Heavy Manners) was fine and firm while it was fresh, but Panorama is two releases and many millions of sales later and the Cars are now the royalty of technorock, colonial division. So why am I falling asleep under the headphones?

For one thing, I find myself resisting roughly 75% of the sounds they make—the bleats, squawks, and pings of futureland pop—the eurodisco of rock ’n’ roll. Side One is 10V2 minutes gone before one hears a song kicked off by a recognizable, visceral R & R guitar riff. On song 7 (out of 10) I was relieved to hear a real piano playing drone notes. I’m not really 20 degrees to the right of Rockin’ Ron Weiser—from time to time I too enjoy listening to electric interpretations of the outbreak of interplanetary hostilities. Psychedelic rock—the second great mannerist era—was certainly full of noisy sturm und drang and, lord knows, I was there with bells on. (So, I’ll bet, was Ocasek.) But if drug-drenched memory serves, there was a compelling thrust, however fleeting, inspiring most of those instrumental excesses. On Panorama everything is so chilly, detached, and aerodynamically correct that even the most brutal bursts of Star Wars static slip by with nary a photon out of place.

But there’s no denying it, these guys have their ’cept screwed down so tight it’s countersunk. It’s strictly a take it or leave it proposition and the charts indicate many takers. They won’t be disappointed because, at bottom, technorock is so easy to listen to—gurgling away off in the galactic distance, dressed up by Roy Thomas Baker’s shimmering sheets of sound, trading riffs for melody. Ocasek is clearly aware of the illustrious forebears: “...I’ll be your mirror..,” “...down at the end of lonely street..,” and “I don’t want to be your party doll..,” are the only three lines worth reprinting. (That’s a little too harsh—“Gimme Some Slack” is a good title.) Ric has now treated us to three innersleeves filled with careful transcriptions that I, for one, could have been spared. Lyrics that perhaps benefited from salutary neglect in the rush to acclaim the first record now must stand on their own. I find them snidely shallow and continually reaching for the occluded image—which still would be OK if they just didn’t insist on printing them. On record they float by as smoothly as everything else.

And yet, whether you’re looking for postmodern poptunes or not, no one will be seriously burned buying Panorama. Side Two is especially listenable—in some moods I’ll probably even find it entertaining. “Misfit Kid,” with its touch of Bowie, and “Down Boys” back to back are all right with me. “Running To You” is an obvious hit—I’ll bet the delirious program director of 1978 has been on it for weeks already. Given time enough, Panorama will appeal to anyone which, perhaps, is the heart of the matter. With this record the Cars confirm their position as the Eagles of the new wave and there’s so much backhand in that compliment there’s no room for the compliment at all.

YES

Drama

(Atlantic)

The brand name Yes has always been associated with a tradition of excellence that has remained unaffected by mere swings in public taste. One of the true originators of progressive rock, the band has been courageously poised on the frontiers of sound since the very beginning. Now, with the addition of some new creative input... thoughtful lyrics... neat cover...

Okay, all that porpoise poo should have lulled most of the Yes fans in the audience into a comfy moo-slumber so that we can get on with the real info. The info being: Peeeeee-U\ Now, there are people who enjoy this stuff, just as there are people who enjoy running over squirrels in beer trucks. Big deal— nobody has to like squirrel squashers or Yes fans. But before we round ’em all up and make ’em drain Lake Erie using Nicolette Larson’s hair as a filter, let’s take a look at the LP.

■ I’m afraid I have to confess upfront that I haven’t exactly memorized every single Yes album. A more accurate term would be ignored. I’ve heard “Roundabout” and a whole bunch of old Uriah Heep albums if it’s credentials you want. Still, the only memory I have of Yes’ past is sitting at a sticky table in a crummy bar with two hot young trotters and a stupid jerk who kept hollering ALL GOOD PEOPLE! ALL GOOD PEOPLE! at the copy band all night long. (I still see him around sometimes— he’s a coin collector now—and, while I’m thinkirig about it, he once gave me a ride hitchhiking and then threatened to beat me up. I love Yes fans.).

Yeah, right, the record. For a group that eats personnel changes for breakfast, they sure have come up wi^h a consistent style. Closely clipped, weightless vocals splattered on the paralyzing underdrone of slightly dimwitted vocoders mulling over 101 ways to cook mud puppies (on a long stick is best). Even with the last minute grafting on of the Buggies (?!), this is fairly solid stuff.

Alright. Wake up, Yes fans! Hey —you over there in the corner with your ear to the fridge, rise and shine! All things considered, this is actually a pretty strong performance. Yoooo will lilllike it. That’s good, back to sleep now, 1-2-3.

(Yep, it’s so strong, you can smell it a mile away! Haw!)

Rick Johnson

The Devil's In My Cor (find Me With Nothing To UJear)

THE B-52’s Wild Planet

(Warner Bros.)

By Kathy Miller

Hey kids! What time is-it? It’stime to dance this mess around With Wild Planet, part two in the B-52’s campaign to get America ditty bopping. Today the U.S.A., tomorrow the world. Do you know how to pony? Do the dirty dog? The shy tuna? Better learn.

The first side kicks off . with “Party Out Of Bounds”—one of those swingin’ soirees we’ve thrown at least once in our lives. A parade of unfamiliar, uninivited “guests” elbowing their way through your door, The Things That Would Not Leave descending upon unsuspecting households like a plague of locusts. Glass shatters, food and beverages disappear, reputations splatter in the wake of carnage, plunder, mayhem, makeouts. “Who’s to blame?” Fred Schneider screams like an early 60’s protest song. “Be tactful when you’re making the rounds,” they caution, “then maybe you can save a party gone out of bounds.”

If Lesley Gore came from an asteroid she’d’ve sung “Give Me Back My Man.” Somebody’s ditched ex confronts her competitor to beg for the return of her beloved, but instead of the usual pleading and caterwauling these gals offer fish and candy (these people come from a strange place, indeed. I think they were permanently warped from sitting too close to the TV set, suckling radiation isotopes from Nippon transistors. Too many beach movies. Too much cheesy sci-fi at ungodly hours robbing their little brains of REM-sleep. The wigs the girls wear cause cancer in laboratory rats. Speaking of the girls, they sing back-up vocals the way Roky Erickson’s guitarist used to—like a hiccuping ostrich.)

“Private Idaho” is not a sitcom about any Army enlistee from spudland, I’m hard put to ascertain what exactly it’s about, except for cryptic references to the patio, the pool, the bottom of the bottomless blueblue and, of course, the obligatory potato. Hellish condition, whatever it is. And Hell figures prominently in my fave rave ori this album, “Devil In My Car.” The radio’s got static, and the unfortunate passenger screams for help, but the Devil (a bebop Beezelbub with a yen to burn rubber) has got a lead foot on the accelerator, rocketing the auto down the “freeway to Hell”.

Not since Chuck Berry penned “Maybelline” on Ray Davies writ “Lola” has there been a more confusing object of desire than “Quiche Lorraine.” Seems Quiche is a poodle, and her owner is more than a bit attached to her, so much so that when the pobch scampers off with a roguish Great Dane, he hurls the doggie’s possessions into the lake, pleading for her to return, then threatening “I’ll show her!” be Light” is a more pedestrian form of erotica; the mega-flickering light transforming the boudoir into a sleazy porno flick does much to liven up the B-52 libido. One can imagine their bated breath as they unwrap the brown paper parcel from the Spiegel Co. A hot time in the ole homestead, and a gratefully received tip on how to spice up those meatless relationships.

All in all, Wild Planet is aces, more relaxed and free-flowing than the debut LP> (and that was no slouch neither). The gang looks pretty composed on the cover, like they’ve gotten the knack and ironed out the bugs on*t this recording rigamarole. Scrambled images and word contractions are neatly augmented by sinuous organics, gutbucket Mosrite guitaring, and an approximated bass-bottom sound. Celebrating the banal and the plastic, the B-52’s are mining the vein of absurdity; they are to Pop what Talking Heads is to the Puritan work ethic. I wonder how long they can remain silly and special, in their own bizarre universe, before it (if ever) gets tedious. All I have left to say is: you one-syllabled Anglo eggheads, lay off the B-52’s They’re dada peachy. Roll over, Duchamps; Tell Groucho the news.

VAN MORRISON Common One (Warner Bros.)

Anyone who can make the phrase “William Blake and the eternals” sound like the evocation of a metaphysical doo-wop group, as Van Morrison did on Veedon Fleece, is a conjurer of special stripe. Morrison’s career was practically constructed on the thesis of “tran. scendence,” so by his own chosen methods, and will of character, he has made it so the usual rock standards just don’t apply. He is a musical isolationist, absolutely untouched by anything going on around him in the rock world, neither following trends nor instigating them (although the Irish pub-punkery of Them was certainly not without foreshadowing significance). Until the end, Van The Man will be unusual, and unfathomable.

Common One is a reach, and a miss; an attempt to recapture the epic grandeur of Astral Weeks and St. Dominic’s Preview, an attempt at inspirational improvisation, an attempt at nothing less than the demystification and artistic transformation of the spiritual. The album is designed to communicate Morrison’s separate peace, but it’s a very unsettling peace, because the dynamic of his personality and his musical form fight against simple acceptance. His previous effort, Into The Music, was a success both as music and as celebration, keeping the tension so necessary to Morrison’s work. Common One, using music of the same themes, and recorded in one week in the south of France, falls more in the range of such downswing LPs as Hard Nose The Highway and Period Of Transition.

On this record, the road to salvation is a pastoral journey. The songs are peppered with mountainsides, hillsides, countrysides, waterfalls, meadows, woods, garden walls, long grass (not of the “behind the stadium” variety); they are meditations more than compositions, and they do contain sections of verbal and instrumental magic. The funereally-paced “Summertime In England” and “When Heart Is Open” (together clocking in at over a halfhour) gather in force in a. manner similar to late-Miles Davis ruminations from albums like Get Up With It; “Wild Honey” ' (really “wild, honey”) is a pleasant slow jazz love song; and when Morrison latches onto a phrase $nd flings himself into it with gyroscopic variations, he makes the scenery decorative, if not revelatory.

The music spins a serene spell, with N^ark Isham’s muted horn, Pee Wee Ellis’ questing saxophone, and an overall chromatic tone, but Van Morrison’s search for the holy grail is never totally convincing. Face it, contentment has never been the impetus behind his strongest work, and the message of Common One is “It ain’t why/It just is/That’s all there is about it.” Tell Werner Erhard the news. And unlike that startling reference fo Blake cited before, this album ceremoniously invokes Wordsworth, Coleridge (“They were smokin’ by the lakeside”), Joyce, Yeats and Catcher In The Rye, and the awkward line “T.S. Eliot joined the ministry” echoes like a line-up announcer on a public address system.

Van Morrison’s music demands to be approached with a synchronicity of tempo and temperament, like the films of Satyajit Ray, the books of Joyce Carol Oates, Knots Landing. Fall off the pace, or find a moment of solemnity unnervingly funny, and there it goes; it may as J well not exist. Intensity is a risky business, and Morrison has pulled it off more often than not. Common One lost me in a contemplative “shady nook,” and I found rnyself wanting to shake off the music’spious mood by playing something like “Little’Latin Lupe Lu.” Others may find Morrison’s illumination contagious. “Sometimes I think I know where it’s at,” sings Van on “Satisfied.” “Other times I’m completely in the dark.” On Common One, he’s pursued his vision of the light, which is not always the same as a good sign.

Mitchell Cohen

Costello's Inventory Closeout: B-Sides, 'A' Material

ELVIS COSTELLO Taking Liberties (Columbia)

by Billy Altman

You gotta hand it to CBS. Having suffered through the promotional and marketing difficulties that the jam-packed, 20-song-crammed Get Happy!! presented (they never got clear which songs to “push” and Elvis Costello chose not to tour last year “in support” of the record and indeed, the only good publicity on behalf of the album was Costello’s K-Tel-styled TV advert which played to millions of turned-off sets at such prime times as 9 a.m. on Saturdays), here they come with Taking Liberties,.another 20 song single LP made up of all those B-Sides, obscuros, and teaseroo unreleased tracks. Dig those hep liner notes! Wonder what they’ll do with this one. Talk about biting back those feeding hands.

Of course, I seem to recall Columbia having had its share of difficulties through most of the early 60’s with a certain Mr. Zimmerman and damned if these parallels between Dylan and Elvis just keep getting, more and more obvious, and I’m not just talkin’ stage names either . Or hadn’t you noticed that both of them showed up out of nowhere right in the thick of a new musical movement? How both, almost from the moment they got established, started crossing everyone up by heading towards varying, almost contrary directions? Go ahead, slap on “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and follow it with “Pump It Up,” which moves with the same pace and structure, utilizes the same quick-cut imagery, and we all know which pump it is anyway, right? I could go on, but since Taking Liberties is the main topic here, we can bridge things with the last verse of Van McCoy’s “Gettin’ Mighty Crowded,” on which Costelb’s “hangin’ arowwwnd won’t do me no goooood” is right up there with Levi Stubbs on “Reach Out” for spiffo Dylan appropriations. (Call me A. J.)

Budding Costellogians are already filing away the chorus from “Clean Money” (“You won’t take my love for tender”) and, more importantly, the various references to currency—cash and/or plastic— abounding through such songs as “Sunday’s Best and “Crawling To The U.S.A.” (“Attach me to your credit card and then you can undress me”). Shrewd devil that he is, Costello keeps everyone on their toes throughout most of his songs (these Attractions work for their money) and if you blink, you’re apt to miss some of the cliche twisting and punning that are becoming his trademarks. For me, on this album, the most interesting things crop up where you’d least expect them, like Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentime” (Get Happy!! is as much about the necessary precision work of lyrics and melody as it is about the history of Motown and Stax and the reading of this song neatly foreshadowed that increasing sense of care, about how compact you can make a song and still make it count; Costello just might be the only traditional young songwriter around right how). And the absolutely awesome “Just A Memory,” 2:14 of voice and Steve Nieve’s swirling keyboards and lyrics that wind around themselves tighter and tighten “Lying’ about layin’inbed/Maybe it was something that I thought I said...The pen that I write with won’t tell the truth...It’s the moments that I can’t recall are moments that you treasure/Better take another measure for measure...Losing you is just a memory/Memories don’t mean that much to me.” There are stops along the road here that reveal much, from the lonesome resignation of “Hoover Factory” (“It’s not a matter of life or death, what is?/It doesn’t matter if I take another breath, who cares?) to the hypnotic landscapes,, of doom in “Night Rally” and “Ghost Train” and the abject rage of “Tiny Steps” (“She’s your baby now, you can keep her”—when Costello gets ugly, he certainly gets ugly).

Elvis Costello still hasn’t worked out all the kinks in his writing—I still cringe when I hear things like “you lack lust, you’re so lacklustre” or the rhyming of Elsie with Chelsea in the Seeds-styled “I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea,” but there is so much crackling energy and unbridled talent running through most of Costello’s recent work that one is at most times justifiably nonplussed. Realizing that a supposed “major talent” like Jackson Browne will take, at his present pace, five albums and 12 years to simply match the number of songs Costello’s given us in less than 12 months, it makes you stop and think about who’s fooling who in these days of diminished expectations. I guess Elvis Costello wasn’t kidding when he said that he didn’t intend to be around for his own artistic decline.

PAT BENATAR Crimes of Passion (Chrysalis)_

You’ve probably heard much of. this album on the radio already, maybe you’ve gone ahead ,and bought it (I see that the album’s now #5 in the nation), so my comments may be anticlimactic by the time you read this. Still, I just want to say that it’s fine by me if you like this album, I do too, what are rock critics for, after all?

Stop me if you’ve heard this, but back in the golden age of AM rock’n’roll radio, say 1964-66, when you heard a new artist’s record for the first time, you had no idea from the performance or the name as to what the artist(s) looked like, or what label your hot find would turn up on. You’d hop down to the record store and purchase this mysterious 45, on some major-label esoteric subsidiary like Parrot or Smash if you were lucky, or on something totally undreamed-of & offthewall like Arctic or HannaBarbera if you were even luckier. And your new fave was greatlooking, too? Forget it, this guy (gal) hadn’t earned a picture sleeve yet, had to. wait until the LP came out to size up your teen dream.

Pat Benatar’s two albums remind me of the wonderful first albums of those days; they’re true collections of radio-validated singles, rather than tedious, take-it-or-leave-it concept pieces. Not to mention the soft undersides of these collection albums, down there among the oddball cover versions your heroine dug up to fill out her album. Maybe some of the filler songs work better than others, but uneven albums have always been the most fun to listen to.

Like on Crimes of Passion, you and I already know “Treat Me Right” (by Benatar and the<Doors’ phantom “occasional bassist” Doug Lubahn), and the Rascals’ timeless “You Better Run”, and maybe Benafar-guitarist Neil Geraldo’s “Little Paradise” from the radio, but did you know that Benatar also applies her Memorex-shattering squeal to the surrealistic soapopera of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” on this disc? Or that Pat and her band wrote an anti-childabuse minidrama, “Hell Is For Children”, and put it right after the “playful” S&M of “Hit Me With Your,Best Shot” on this album? Eclectic programming & guitar dynamics abound!

I’m not even gonna wax feminist this time—the thing I like about Pat Benatar is her consistently unpredictable variety. Any of Crimes of Passion’s 10 cuts could leap into monster radio hits at any moment, and, as I said, that’s okay by me. Skip the boring art-rockers for today and pick up on an unspoiled commercial -rock’n’roller like Pat Benatar while you still can.

Richard Riegel

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS

(Columbia)

The affinity between bands of the golden Age of Psychedelia and the current rash of art-progs is fairly obvious: both possess a nauseating need to expand our minds, intellectualizing rock ’n’ roll into a vapid structure. It may be true that bands like Essential Logic are “reinventing” rock ’n’ roll, but they’re also killing it, annihilating a tradition that presently seems as remote as the oral narratives of Greek epic singers. And whereas the head music of 60’s acid-rockers who attempted to explore consciousness seems relatively silly today, the sounds of contemporary mindbenders are deadly serious, frequently assimilating Marxist dialectics and structuralist theories into their humorless approach.

I wonder how Fever Tree would regard the Psychedelic Furs.

It should be noted initially that, although the Psychedelic Furs by their very name express a proclivity toward the hippie-dippie beat, their music does not exactly resound with the rhythms of Mad River. About as close as they come to the pretensions of psychedelia occurs on “Wedding Song,” where the' Devil’s Anvil wafts amidst the oriental dreams of the Kaleidoscope.

In general, the Furs sound like the majority of modern bands suffering from postmortem depression—forced music, restrained feelings, ideas obscured by the momentary high of maybe, just maybe, creating art. This artistic aspiration is particularly evident of the lyrics, the inner sleeve bearing the words of the songs packed together like suffocated sardines, each an empty symbol that can only be deciphered with the decoder ring of a qualified surrealist poet (“the filth on Sunday saying the words for the idiots you are miracle drivel optical sewer listen to the flowers fall paint the”).

Produced by Steve Lilly white, whose specialty Is grating muzak (i.e. Peter Gabriel, XTC), the Furs’ album was carefully designed not to offend—it blends in well with Make Room For Daddy, Budweiser, and’ the word “ambience.” (Speaking of blending, do not confuse the blackand-white LP cover with a similar one by Young Marble Giants— Colossal Youth, Rough Trade import.) Richard Butler’s raspy vocal style may frighten small children, but it shouldn’t bother anyone raised on Noddy Holder and Jim Dandy. Predictably, there’s only one intense cut on the entire album, “Flowers,” on. which pseudo-intellectualism becomes unconsciously stupid. Imagine a rock ’n’ roll band trying to convince the world they’re cool just because they’ve seen Weekend and Un Chien Andalou!

Psychedelic-schmychedelic, these guys are merely the It’s A Beautiful Day of their era. Forget ’em while they’re still hot.

Robot A. Hull

HAZEL O’CONNOR Breaking Glass

(A&M)

Due to an unavoidable publicity campaign, it was drummed into my consciousness some months back that something calling itself Hazel O’Connor is the star of a British film about a “new wave” singer who starts a band, is miraculously discovered by a high-powered film-maker, and instantly made into a dreamcome-true multi-media star. Call it a punkspoitation Funny Girl or Bette Midler does The Lydia Lunch Story, but what’s most teethgnashingly insulting about the resultant LP is its perverse class of musical and lyrical sensibilities.

On the one hand we’ve got a song like “Monsters In Disguise” which sounds enough like Lene Lovich’s “Sleeping Beauty” to put the babushka’d singer on the phone to her lawyer pronto. Yet Hazel O’Connor (sister of Glynis?) has accompanied these “borrowed” cute, funny vocals not with absurdist imagery but rather with this-isthe-modern-world protest lyrics. In “Eighth Day” we get the most doomy crystal ball predictions since Zager & Evans’ “In The Year 2525.” And in “Who Needs It” Hazel dangles her finger down her throat, telling us the whole world is one, endless George Romero film festival.

Soon the wretched truth sinks in. Hazel doesn’t really want to be Lene Lovich. She wants to be a Sex Pistol (and Nancy Spungen simply won’t do). Now it’s one thing to coopt a clothing style or a musical form (i.e. L.A. pop/new wave). But to steal an entire end-of-the-world view is bucking for first-class evil status—Terry Knight division. Whatever her true convictions may be, O’Connor here comes off about as much a symbol of rebellion as Chicago were in 1970 when they wrote on their second LP cover: “We dedicate ourselves, our futures, and our energies to the people of the revolution, and the revolution in all of its forms.” (Charles Manson, call your lawyer).

Of course, in the end, this album does inadvertently give us one valuable piece of advice: DO NOT EVER DO ANYTHING INTERESTING OR DIFFERENT WITH YOUR LIFE THAT COULD POTENTIALLY START A TREND. This way the drone leaders will have to come up with their own dull for mass trenddom and all your real feelings and ideas will never be implicated by any soyfilled imitations.

Interestingly, Hazel, does not spend the entire LP railing against “the system.” Occasionally she, can be seen at home, darning sox, Melissa Manchester-style, as in the love song “Will You?” When she’s not trying to be “new wave,” O’Connor actually has a nice, sappy voice, some good lyrical twists and catchy songwriting ability (“Writing On The Wall” in particular). Who knows? If she plays her cards right she may very well wind up as the next Olivia Neutron-Bomb.

Jim Farber

POLYROCK

(RCA)

What’s the most boring thing you can think of doing? Watching grass grow? Working on the line in a factory? Reading CREEM’s letters column? Obviously, there are levels and degrees, and the wages of boredom can range from mild irritation to a pysychosis-inducing agony. Listening to Polyrock generates a feeling somewhere between these poles, which is a not entirely glib estimation of this album since exploring the nuances of boredom is an integral part of the musical genre the group is working in.

Polyrock is a quintet out of New York that plays what they describe as “electronic dance music” but which can also be described with some accuracy (and in that snide labeling manner we critics have) as Devo without teeth. Actually, the music is somewhat closer to that of Phillip Glass (who co-produced the album with Kurt Munkacsi) and Steve Reich than that of Devo and/or Talking Heads (more devolved as it were—compared with this groups’s austerity Devo’s sonic variety sounds wanton), with lyrics that are negligible, being either buried in the music or pinched out with new wavish anxiety but always fragmented and vaguely alienated. The music itself is full of that rhythm that seems to throb endlessly under the spell of its own monotonous momentum—monotony being at the -heart of this rather pleasant, boring album;

The music is abstract and muted but there are clues as to its intent. Calling one of their songs “Bucket Rider” is appropriate since, like Kafka’s fable of frozen will in an indifferent cosmos, Polyrock’s music is all icy monotone, locked in chilly repetition (assuming that they had Kafka in rpind and not cars). But despite any frigid (possible) allusions the music isn’t hostile, brandishing only the threat of ennui as each minute riff goes on and on and on, the undulating synthesizers pleasingly devoid of challenge—on and on— (when they switch rhythms toward the end of “This Song.” the listener is grateful, much too grateful).

Whether or not you find the invitation to trance enchanting or irritating depends on more subjective considerations than I’d care to consider, even tho the music’s monolithic blandness mades it vulnerable to the most picturesque interpretations (coming soon, no doubt, in Rolling Stone). Meanwhile, suffice to say that the album is slightly intriguing, noncommittal in effect; and capable of putting your furniture to sleep.

Richard C. Walls

Pop Art (Passport)

From Elton Motello, the man who engineered “Ca Plane Pour Moi” by Plastic Bertrand (and sang the English language, X-rated version of the same song) comes “Pop Art.” Interesting credentials, but Elton, it seems, is suffering from the Gary Numan Syndrome. You know the symptoms; a pallid, anemic complexion, robotlike movements, and the tendency to stand in room corners looking alienated. And why not? If in the 70’s it was de rigueur for the rock star to be “wasted,” the 80’s require total alienation from society. But while Elton may be bored with the modern world, he is

ELTON MOTELLO obviously not bored with modern music. He cops vocal moves from Devo to Bowie and keeps his music hard driving with dabs of synthesizer and Farfisa organ for that New Wave touch we’ve all learned to know and love.

Elton’s lyrical themes do, thankfully, sometimes vary from his emotionally detached image. On “Pay The Radio,”; he suggests payola “if the media won’t buy/what you’re doing as a high.” A bit more “me” generation than devoluted philosophy, I’d say. And the outcast hero in “Panic In The Classroom,” which sounds like an outtake from Bowie’s Alladin Sane, is the standard punk glorified in rock songs from Eddie Cochran to Johnny Rotten.

The question does arise as to why Elton insists on synthesizer bleeps and weirdo hooks to make his musical points when he writes such powerful straight ahead rock songs. Lead guitarist and co-songwriter Mike Butcher’s power chords lead the way on “In The Heart Of The City,” and Elton sings with a strength and conviction lacking on his more eccentric numbers. The band really shines on “Pocket Calculator,” a humorous look at man’s dependence on technology, and it’s the Catchiest song on the album. A more proper rock and roll attitude could not be asked for. But typical of Elton’s overdependence on gimmickery is his cover of "I Can’t Explain”—Who fans are advised to. stay clear as the trademark riff is forced over a herky-jerky rhythm with Elton’s affected vocals whining away. It shoyld be obvious that Pete Townshend material was just not meant to be covered except in tribute to the Who. Elton, unfortunately, insists on rearrangement.

The production on Pop Art is excellent sortie-wise. What bothers me is the attempt to blend hightech synthesizer rock with standard, almost Nick Loweish pop. The pop rock excites while the hightech rock bores. With Elton singing, writing, producing and engineering there is a tendency for one’s sensibilities to get lost amid all the ego. Though there is the possibility that one’s sensibilities were misplaced anyway. A situation which just might be in existence here. Maybe Elton should listen to “Ca Plane Pour Moi” one more time.

Andy Shernoff

DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES Voices

(RCA)

How peqple deal with success has always been a source of amazement and/or amusement to me. “Making it” opens up possibilities usually undreamed of by the artist and that includes all sorts of ways to screw up. Trying to figure out how to maintain artistic growth and commercial momentum at the same

time has driven lotsa rock ’n’ rollers - right over the edge—and musical njartydom is only romantic if you don’t look at the blood stains.

HallnOates have been dancin’ down that fine line for some time now, scoring a hit or two here and there while still maintaining artsy alliances with people like Robert Fripp. But their last couple . of albums reeked of a “Let Joe do it” attitude, the “Joe” being producer David Foster who messedupminded the guest star glut on Along The Red Ledge and the funk cliches of most of X-Static. So it’s good to hear that H&O have decided to reassert themselves, producing this album themselves and opting for a more straightahead sound.

Now straightahead isn’t always best—trying running straight into your garage door a few times and you’ll see what I mean—but when the songs’ sentiments are as direct as most of ’em are here, simple arrangements are what work. And while a lot of these tunes are done a little too precisely and tastefully to excite my own mania-crazed tastebuds, I’ve gotta lotta admiration for anyone with the guts to strip down the production and then tackle “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” originally one of the most melodramatically produced numbers in rock ’n’ sort! history.

“Lovin’ Feeling” is the only oldie on the album, but it’s not the only example of Daryl & John looking back; classic rock ’n’ roll rhythms and riffs show up all over the place. That’s OK by me, though sometimes, it makes ’em sound kinda similar to their contemporaries who do the same thing—the 12-string jangles on “How Does It Feel To Be Back” remind me of Petty, the vocal delivery on “Big Kids” reminds me of Joe Jackson, blah blah blah.

My faves are the tracks where they graft their ’50’s R ’n’ B vocal roots onto trees of other species. Like “Diddy Doo Wop,” a bizarre tale of subway escape and musical obsessions, with just a hint of mayhem at the beginning. And “Gotta Lotta Nerve,” a perky, quirky...well, it sounds like a doo wop Gentle Giant, an idea so perverse I can’t resist it. Hall & Oates evidently feel secure enough in their success to be WEIRD if they want to. Goody, goody. More, more.

Michael Davis

RONNIE SPECTOR

Siren

(Polish)

I’ve been waiting for this album; I’Ve had my fantasies.

1. Ronnie emerges from the hermetically sealed glass case in Phil Spector’s castle, where she’s been since 1965. She sings about love and boys and being in love with boys in the rain. People, can go steady again; Pat Benatar, Carolyn Mas and the Wilson sisters form a Girl Group, and it doesn’t matter anymore that no one can tell them apart.

2. Ronnie escapes from Stalag Spector, scaling barbed wire fences and braving attack dogs. On the run, with Phil’s goons always one step behind, she adopts the name Veronica X and spits out bitter Songs about the horror of her entrapment, including a remake of “Be My Baby” orchestrated by rattling chains where the sleighbelis used to be. Patti Smith is inspired to stop being a housewife in Detroit, and together they establish a Recording Studio/Shelter for Battered Girl Groups.

Obviously, 1 was setting myself up for disappointment.

Time did not stand still for Ronnie Spector during the years she was holed up with the boy genius, and if she has scars she’s not baring them here. Ronnie has surfaced periodically to do a brief stint on the oldies circuit, and she was for a While associated with the Asbury Park/E Street Rat Pack (resulting in a wonderful version of “Say Goodbye To Hollywood,” produced by Miami Steve Van Zandt, released as a single, and gone as quickly as it came). Siren was released without much fanfare, and Ronnie has delivered an album that is, well, better than nothing but less than extraordinary.

Ronnie still looks as trashy-sweet as ever, she still has that baby coo voice—and herein lies a problem. Siren was produced by Genya Ravan, who back in the late 60’s was one of the pioneers of the current “I can be as heavy as the boys” formula for women in rock. Ronnie’s style is still suited to the gently persuasion of the Girl Group tradition, and she (and my fantasies) gets mushed in the middle of conflicting approaches. She tries to be as tough as her material—the sexual boasting of “Tonight,” the cynicism of “Boys Will Be Boys,” the anger of “Hell Of A Nerve”—but something in Ronnie’s voice convinces me that she’s still holding out for a guy who’s kinda shy, real good looking, and will take her strolling in inclement weather.

Musical accompaniment is provided by a motley crew of Bar Band musicians—referred to on the liner as “N.Y.C.’s Greatest” but sounding as predictably dhaotic as a four a.m. jam at Max’s. Add to this a bevy of boy backup singers who manage to sound appallingly like the Village People. But there is a lot of enthusiasm here and whe.n it works—particularly on “Dynamite,” sort of an updated “Give Him a Great Big Kiss”—it works.

Siren closes with “Happy Birthday Rock ’n’ Roll,” a rather macabre nostalgia song (“You’re pushing 40 but you’re not old,” snatches of Ronettes hits sounding like they are being sung from beyond the grave), appropriately enough dedicated “to Phil.” Material like this inspires fresh fantasies. Excuse me while I go play the album backwards and check the cover for “Phil is Dead” clues.

Terri A. Huggins

JETHRO TULL A

(Chrysalis)

Don’t be misled by the title of this album, it’s not about Canada. There are no musical portraits of Burton Cummings; no vast, noisy murals depicting Paul Muni’s discovery of the Moose; no sonic-sculptings of Gordie Howe’s reportedly grotesque looking feet; and no popplaylets concerning the sins of a certain Prime Minister and his wife. None of this rears its surly head on this particular Tull-toon. Too bad, it would’ve made a great concept

album, y’know, Bungle In Manitoba.

No, the concept on A is a little different, but a concept it is nonetheless. Therefore, A) A qualifies as yet another in a long line of irksome concept albums; B) A walks that slippery thin ledge between gory pretentiousness and misunderstodd brilliance C) A is so boring that it could dry your clothes off even if you were stranded in a rain forest with the Ooogie-Boogie Tribe and Sheeria of the Trees.

But first let’s have a word about “concept albums',” BOOOOOOH! Now let’s have a few more in order to clarify that declaration of teenage rudeness. Right from their innocuous beginnings concept-albums have been nature’s way of paying rock ’n’ roll back for its impertinence and cocky attitude. They’ve developed as a major influx ence in rock ’n’ roll as rock ’n’ roll itself developed in its understanding of its own technology. A technology that was being created just to soothe the savage creations of the demon rock spirit. And therein lies one of the reasons that rock ’n’ roll is simply NOT what it used to be. As it became more and more aware of that special technology that was being created in order to keep it going and growing, rock ’n’ roll leapt headfirst into the seas of ohms, wires and impedences that would eventually enable it to recreate note for note, sound for sound, noise for noise, absolutely anything that rock musicians be they talented or simply hackmaster, wanted.

Now some of you are going to say what’s so bad about that? Well, the basic fissionable material that made rock ’n’ roll at all POSSIBLE was that it was created on a simple, fundamental level, at all titnes lacking sophistication. All the innocence of the psychedelic wars, and all the power of its music which is just NOW being fully re-appreciated came from the sense of wonder’ being enjoyed by musicians as they went into a studio, not knowing exactly what was going on, creating, from raw nerve, (attitude, if you wish), a sound that influenced an entire generation of listeners. Production values weren’t cluttered, as they are now, simply because the equipment lacked the complexity to accomplish everything. (Let’s just say that back in those days, properly miking a drum set was not the most important thing on everyone’s mind.) Whew—talk about concepts!

Anyway, to get back to A and Jethro Tull. How can anyone take seriously an album that was admittedly (and proudly) written in the studio and on the road, fit scrap here and a scrap there—it makes for fine fragmentation stuff, but a . concept?

The other thing about A is that it is the same album that lan Anderson’s been making since the burbling days of Aqualung. Repetition is fine in nuclear physics, but in rock ’n’ roll it’s simply old and in the way.

I can’t seriously judge this album because it sounds the same as everything else that’s been clumped together under the title of “progressive” music. Kansas, Genesis, Yes, Tull—all these bands have about as much to do with rock ’n' roll as Ernest Angley. has to do with salvation.

Josef Von Fernbacher