SUBTERRANEAN URBANESQUE BLUES

THE JIM CARROLL BAND Catholic Boy (Atco)

Richard Riegel

Jim Carroll’s the latest word pusher (as in prose, poetry, you know, the pen-meets-paper thing) to cross the art-will-be-convulsive-or-not-at-all line, into the authentically electric seizures of rock music. And if you appreciated the many jagged gems of word’n’roll hidden among the furious chaos of Patti Smith’s attempts to make that same leap of faith, then get set for major acupuncture on your jugular, as you listen to Carroll’s debut recording.

I’d never heard of Jim Carroll myself until last winter, when Atlantic sent me his book The Basketball Diaries as advance promotion of this record. Nonetheless, I quickly learned that Carroll had made his mark as a published writer so many years before as to have earned praise from beatnik godhead Jack Kerouac himself, who, as you must know, died in 1969. Since Carroll’s only 29 or so now, you can see what a prodigy he was when St. Jack smiled down on the earliest Basketball Diaries.

Kerouac was right about Carroll, too; The Basketball Diaries is nothing less than the manifestation of many an aware 60’s-kid’s dream of converting the consciousness-expanding riches of a full life into the creative expression that would open yet more doors to the rich life. The Basketball Diaries is a disturbingly seamless mixture of fact and fiction, written by Jim Carroll about a “Jim Carroll” character who reflects/cheats his true autobiography in probably equal measure as the -tail-tale writhings of Henry Miller’s favorite protagonist, “Henry Miller.”

And I’m emerald with literary envy that Jim Carroll not only really might’ue been the simultaneous Manhattan child/jock hero/ white spade/stud/prehippie drugfiend/ aware hustler/street aesthete he claims in his book, but also that he had the consummate imagination to fuse these elements into a wholly convincing narrative, either way.

So how come Jim Carroll didn’t get around to the modality of rock ’n’ roll until now, if he already saw and knew it all back in ’65? Oh, literary stuff he had to get out of his system first. Getting his poetry published in the littlest of the little magazines. Kicking his heroin habit. You know, all that groves of academe business.

The punch line is that Carroll didn’t miss a thing by absenting himself from the rock of the 70’s, even as the rest of us were denying the Eagles and celebrating the Sex Pistols. Catholic Boy confidently takes up that uniquely Eightyish urbanscape right where The Basketball Diaries left it off in the summer of 1966. The Jim Carroll Band (Jim on vocals, two guys on guitars, two more on bass & drums, just the basics as the Stones or somebody once conceived ’em) play dynamic, fluid, straightahead rock ’n’ roll that owes next to nothing to punk and its discontents. Rock music crafted (hell no, felt) as a direct challenge to Bruce Springsteen’s night-after-night urbancrest melodramas, yet sharing nothing of Springsteen’s flair for the eternal homilies.

The influences on Catholic Boy (if you insist) are more like Lou Reed (but the campus poet Lou Reed who idolized Delmore Schwartz, Reed before he thought of forming the relatively disingenuous Velvet Underground), or maybe even Iggy when he was still an Iguana, prior to making The Stooges because he couldn’t 'do otherwise. Jim Carroll phrases with the prophetic bemusement, with the dry and prurient wonder of a true believer Lou Reed. Dry and prurient, as the Jim Carroll Band forever pulse along on the liquid crystals they swiped from John Cale’s titanium pacemaker, as the Band urban-renew the sonic metropolis for us as New-York-on-a-$200a-day-habit.

One song off Catholic Boy’s plenty for weeks of psychotextual analysis, as I hear it tonight, and I’ve got to go with “City Drops Into The Night,” a stern Gotham moonscape beyond the blare of Bobby Keys’ sax, but somewhere this side of those horribly-flaming oil tanks I can make out on the apocalyptic Jersey shore. Jim Carroll sees it all, even as the sproinging guitars (credit Brian Linsley anchor Terrell Winn) and the cocksucking sax keep smashing into his vocals to underline/contradict his lyrics: “Before the darkness/There’s one moment of light/When everything seems clear/The other side/It seems so nearrr!”

If not the equally insistent claims of “People Who Died,” that stunningly exuberant yelp of awe from Jim Carroll, for all of his 60’s pals who paid for their own peculiar moments of light with some nonnegotiable currency: “Bobby O.D.’d on Drano/The night that he was wed...Kathy was 11 when she pulled the plug/On 26 reds and a bottle of wine,” et.sfeq. A communal legend as ancient as Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, of course, but even Neil Young’s never matched Jim Carroll’s wide-eyed scream of incredulity: “ They were all my friends/

And they DIED!”

Pardon my critic’s disbelief that rock ’n’ roll this intense and true has come from what I’ve always smugly called “a real writer,” but Jim Carroll’s done it, over and over, for sure. And I haven’t halfunravelled the intricacies of Catholic Boy’s intimate Patti Smith tribute, “Crow,” or of its title cut, a bittersweet storehouse of emotion that Ti Jean Kerouac would be sure to love, if only he and the 60’s had never ended...

ROCKPILE Seconds Of Pleasure (Columbia)

On paper Rockpile is as good a band as there is. On Seconds of Pleasure, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams sound bland and unconvincing—four aging gents playing careful, small time rock ’n’ roll. In a word: o-r-d-i-n-a-r-y. How could such fine players, such canny producers, deliver such undistinguished product?

I blame it on the Colonel. Under his guidance Elvis (Presley, 193577. You remember him.) overlooked England altogether and the English had to make do with surrogates. The vacuum at the center was filled by all kinds of would-be kings, some (Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran) obviously much better than others (Cliff Richard, the man who refuses to die), but the median fell somewhere around Ricky Nelson. This raises the crucial question of quality, of being able to distinguish between true brilliance and hot flashes. In 1958 England deported Jerry Lee Lewis as morally undesirable, so no tears for the scepter’d isle—the folks deserved what they got. Invasions are short but life is long and though most of this was forgotten in the reverse Lend-Lease of ’63-4-5, a couple of important U.K. g-g-generations grew up thinking the pure products of America struck poses or cracked jokes. Those who delved deeper could easily become absorbed by the minutiae of American pop with no real notion of content or context.

Rockpile, like the true and trembling British fans they are, seem unable to distinguish between the important and the merely diverting. Seconds of Pleasure is an elaborate monument to throwaways: loose, light-weight pure pop that wants to be clever and hopes to be bought but never risks or reveals much of anything. The heart of the problem is there’s no heart in the album, although there’s lots of affection. Rockpile’s three voices harmonize well enough but they simply cannot project emotional resonance and the material, like the singing, sounds insubstantial and uncommitted. The original songs—mostly machine tooled recreations of older rock ’n’ roll—offer nothing compelling. “Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)” is an ersatz roadhouse anthem that would never get played in a roadhouse west of Cornwall. “Play That Fast Thing”: rockabilly = “Happy Days”: American life in the 50’s. “Now And Always” is a pretty fine Edmunds/Lowe Everly Brothers imitation, if you’re too lazy to look for the real thing. Ricky Nelson would have been happy to record “Heart” and Bremner sings it better than Ricky ever could, but I wouldn’t pay six dollars for it. The oldies fare no better. They’re not forgotten masterpieces rescued and restored—only “You Ain’t Nothin’ But Fine, Fine, Fine” is even a minor gem. Dave Edmunds’ every hair in place r&b rearrangements and his obligatory Chuck Berry song (I can think of two dozen underrecorded Berries that would have been more interesting) are pale, pale, pale and dull, dull, dull. The biggest lapse should have been called Songs Our Daddy Didn’t Know—a pointless exercise disguised as a bonus EP in which Nick and Dave turn the Everly Brothers’ whole career into a throwaway.

Though scaled down and concise, Seconds Of Pleasure doesn’t really have even the modest virtues of pub rock—one searches in vain for moments of passion or conviction. When Fats Domino says he makes music to make people feel good, he does not mean mildly amused. Until they put something on the line besides minor wit and polished chops, all Rockpile will produce is seconds of pleasance.

Jeff Nesin

THE ROCHES Nurds

(Warner Bros.)

The Roches’ Nurd sorority is holding a party on their new album to which you are cordially uninvited. As the polar opposite of The Ramones’ Pinhead fraternity (which warmly invites you in for a free lobotomy—Gooba, Gabba, they accept you), The Roches’ glee club maintains an exclusive membership of three. When The Roches call themselves “Nurds” or sing of “My Sick Mind” on this album, they are not being charmingly selfdeprecating and embracing the great unwashed. Instead it’s a selfelevating claim of uniqueness— eccentricity as an end in itself— Sarah Lawrence girls go big time. (I ought to know, I’m anS.L. graduate myself). As they sing hysterically off, and then back on key, it’s often more a statement on their skill than our lives.

But the girls can’t help it. Right away there’s something so unavoidably elitist and egocentric about the perfection of their harmonies (aided by their self-satisfied delivery). Necessarily they are more often singing for us rather than reaching out to us. (The awed audience). On a lesser level all of this is sort of okay with me since I retain a soft place in my head for old madrigal exercises, even taking into consideration the snottiness of all those sing-around-the-campfire girls we remember in high school flaunting their barbership (beauty parlor?) vocal tricks.

But ultimately there’s the problem of intimacy. Luckily, The Roches’ last album had enough attractive features to make you overlook this flaw. Sure their singing was show-offey, but their humor was laugh-out-loud funny and tracks like “Runs In The Family” achieved an overpowering sense of communal heritage. Other lyrics told stories so undeniably real that they couldn’t help but bring the singers slightly closer to us. Also helping was Robert Fripp’s self-described “audio verite'” production, awarding some sense of intimacy if only by simplicity.

On Nurds, bass, drums and lead guitar are introduced, but these are hardly to blame for the girls’ remoteness here. The reason the album as a whole comes off as distant is because the songs are no longer funny/moving, but simply funny/ quaint. In cuts like “It’s Hard For Me” or “Bobby’s Song” the quirkiness becomes strained and somewhat deflating. And in the Irish traditional “Factory Girl,” the harmonies are just too weird to capture the needed ethnic egalitarianism. (The heart cries out for the dearly departed Sandy Denny).

The only two unscathed cuts are the very strange “One Season” and the gorgeous “This Feminine Position,” where the vocal exadurations reflect a knowing attitude on exasperating relationships. Both cehter on the least campy mefnber of the group, deep-voiced Maggie (the. only one on a recent Tom Snyder interview who claimed she didn’t have a sick mind). Here, as on .the first record, The Roches transcend most of their, egos and prove they can be sharp storytellers in the nonsequitur dramas of real life—not the glittering coffee table knickknacks the rest of Nurds would have you believe.

Jim Farber

NEIL YOUNG Hawks and Doves (Warner Bros.) i

I don’t know what Neil Young had in mind when he made this record, but its timing is so weirdly appropriate it’s, spooky. It was released on the eve of an election that has polarized this country more severely than it has been in two generations—the atmosphere of hate, fear, and Bible pounding recrimination is so charged it’s likely to make the late ’60s look like a picnic. So Young'puts out his most overtly political album ever, a~ flat statement of the way he views the world without resorting to the usual solipsism that makes everything he writes about seem of little concern to anyone outside the twisted confines of his own skull.

The subject at hand is apocalypse. Yeah, 1 know, Young’s been writing about this ever since that palm tree fell on him a few years back, but this time he’s not beating around the bush: “It’s awful hard to find a job,” he notes in “Cornin’ Apart At Every Nail,” “On one side the government, the other the mob.” That bleak and pretty concise^ observatio’n is just the warmup, though, ’cause in the next verse we’re about to get hit with thdt nuclear holocaust when “Way up on the old dew line/Some of the boys were feelin’ fine/A big light 'flashed_,across the sky/But something else went slippin’ by.”

That’s not the only thing that’s bothering Young, either. If the nukes don’t get him, he knows the Pacific Ocean will, and in “Lost In Space” he contemplates the inundation of the California coastline: “Breakers crash on the beach... They pound on my mattress door/ Have they got a big one in store.” With the weird irony that sits like a block of dry ice in the middle of many of his songs. Young goes on to lament “I heard I was losing you/That’s not the only thing that I got to lose.”

The title track closes^the album without reaching any conclusions. Young is perplexed and maybe even a little bit scared as he asserts his patriotism in the face of reactionary hate. There is no irony in his statement of pride in his country,, and though his concept of freedom is certainly different from the right wingers who keep reminding him that it’s not free, there’s a desperation in his line “Ready to go, willin’ to stay and pay/So my sweet love can dance another free day.”

Young has always been known as a depressive thinker, but the pessimism expressed in Hawks and Doves is the most deep rooted and specific he’s mustered outside of the extremely personal tragedy of Tonight’s the Night■ Nevertheless, the music on side two is bright and practically cheerful, as fine a set of country music as Young has ever assembled. Large credit goes to the impressively traditional sounding, yet idiosyncratic, fiddle playing of Rufus Thibodeaux and the great steel and dobro work of Ben Keith. The way Young-pitches his scratchy rock guitar sound against the sweet strains of the fiddle in “Union Man” and “Cornin’ Apart At Every Nail” keeps you taping your toes even while you check the roof across the street for snipers. If the Minutemen come for Young at least they’ll have some real shitkicking music around to do the job by.

John Swenson

MADNESS

Absolutely

(Sire)_

“Just like their first album,” says Lisa Ann Adams—daughter of Rita and Les Adams, rhythm guitar of eL A punkrockers KAOS and selfproclaimed enemy of ska and reggae.

Rabid-toothed fans of the S&R genre bare fangs and say “no/’ but you gotta wonder what alia the excitement’s about here in his follow-up effort of liner sensations Madness. Absolutely delivers fourteen trax of questionable personality and arguable semantics (diversification), nothing terribly mad or absolute, crazy or different, scarey or peculiar, side one or Side too.

There’s HAPPY: post-punk friendly replaces S. Pistols arrogant and vindictive with smiling, sometimes melodic breakdown of Bob Marley and Secret Affair (??). “Baggy Trousers” and several others grin ear-to-ear with bouncy .carnival backbeat.

There’s STOOPID: Silly by way of d-u-m-b conscious pokes of nonseriousness w/titles s.a. “E.R.N.I.E.” (prominent Santa Mortica frogfood restaurant-for-the-rich incorporates under the auspices of A.C.I.D. (true) and “Shadow 6f Fear” (a veiled reference to local punk troublemakers fear one wonders? and “Return Of The Los Palmas 7” (likewise a salute to the Hollywood thoroughfare so-called?). »

There’s DISCREET: An homogenous appeal to mods and punks, “students and skins,” imploring acceptance of what seems to be limeylands analog of novelty-dance muzak. A continental B-52’s?

Forget it—this record starts going from bad to worse after two or three songs and that’s cos it all sounds the same and it’s boring as all heck. In fact, what’s really maddening are the glaring similarities to Doobie Bros-type goodtimemotif-1970’s marijuana-music for longhairs. Can’t find one instance of unleashed or explosive/unniness (“nutty”-ness claims the bio, but nowhere to be found); clown on sax blurts bits and pieces punctuating tempo, guitars join' ip—do the same. Not much screwy or very wee-eird goin’ on, so what’s th’ story, huh? Nothing wails, nothin’s psychedelic, nothing’s very instigative of movement.

Dance?

“Hop,” retorts an aficianado of the stuff, but I’ll tell ya, I honestly did not feel like hopping at any point listening to either face of this platter...absolutely not.

Gregg Turner

NRBQ Tiddlywinks (Red Rooster/Rounder)

One of the great unsung American bands. Possessed of an unconquerable r&r spirit. One of the few groups to take the stage in NYC during the infamous blackout of 77. (Came out stomping too.) An ever-present source of goofball, loop-de-loop humor. Whacked out and loving it. Able to leap any musical idiom at a single bound and infuse it with big beat appeal. When they rock, they roll. And vice versa, naturellement.

That’s the way it is with the New Rhythm & Blues Quartet otherwise I known as NRBQ. And after 12 years olf making albums they have yet to produce a start-to-finish brainblaster. But—they ain’t made any bum platters either. Not by a long shot. “Real good’s” the category most of their releases fall into and Tiddlywinks is just one more happy, heelkicking example of that.

With three ever-active songwriters in this group (A1 Anderson, Joey Spampinato and Terry “1 play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chico Marx were my uncles” Adams), it’s no surprise that the material’s as fresh as it is. And of course this is one of those mutual admiration societies where everyone pitches-in and gives full throttle support to the other guy’s latest opys. You can hear clear-cut cameraderie in each and every cut.

' Naturally, there’s highlights, one of which is the buddy anthem “Me And The Boys.” With the fuelinjected keyboard action and those friends-to-the-end choruses you just knew this cruiser’s delight was the perfect choice for 45 status. (Actually, half these songs could be easy Top Ten pop smasheroonies if radio wasn’t in the hands of such a lotta fools—but Elvis already told you about that.)

Other candidates for instant gotta-hear-it-again-and-again memorability would have to include “Feel You Around Me” one of those superbly understated love Songs that sounds so pretty and feels so right when you’re applying rhythmic pressure to your main squeeze. Then there’s “Beverly,” a winsome Everly Brothers;Style ballad that’s done up just—well, loverly. “Want You To Feel Good Too features A1 Anderson wrealfing wonderful havoc on his smokin’ axe while the rollicking “You Can’t Hide” featdres Tom Ardolino smashing holy hell outta them there drums. And sure enough, both sides’ closers (“Roll CalP’ and “Hob1 bies) are shot through with patented doses of daffy Nurbuk weirdness. But it’s the LP’s non-original that gets me the most, sending me on a literal joyride everytime I hear it. Another one of NRBQ’s many virtues is the knack they have for unearthing obscure and/or unknown past blast and doing them up' inimitably. That’s the case here. I forget who originally did this swing standard first, but in NRBQ’s freewheeling hands “Music Goes Round And Around” is an unfettered delight, a regular fun-lovers paradise, and all-too-typical of this amazing band’s unofficial “All For Furr And Fun For All” philosophy. Hey boys, how much would you charge to play “Music Goes Round And Around” 10 times in a row when I get married?

Craig Zeller

JOE JACKSON Beat Crazy (A&M)

Is Joe Jackson as tired of goofing on wacky 50’s graphics as I am? Apparently not, because Beat Crazy sports the squarest, most cliched cover art since Wild Planet. There are some people who’ll tell you Joe’s a little late for everything, that maybe Mr. “Look Sharp” isn’t all that sharp. But'it ain’t so. With Beat Crazy, Joe-boy proves he’s on the track," right on schedule for the one-punch welterweight he’s always looked to be.

After two albums of digestible, not altogether unpleasant poppyrock, Joe’s decided to make that big move. You know the one: auteur-hardguy wants to stretch out a bit, test his wings, shake some action. So he grabs the production reins, rechristens his act the Joe Jackson Band and decides to give us a glimpse of what he can really do when he sets his mind to it. What he does on Beat Crazy is take considerable liberties with song structure, let the boys behind him “do their thing” and sort of experiment with sound properties. Sometimes it works (for a few good lines, “Battleground” is probably the most mature piece he’s written, and “The Evil Eye” proves Joe’s been digging the Safe As Milk scene maybe). But just as often, Joe’s sense of adventure leads him down some bland alleys.

The title cut invents “surf dub.” “Pretty Boys,” a standard-issue rant against cosmetology, aims for atmosphere with a wild continental harmonica solo (yawn). In “Fit,” Joe sings for the hung-up ones and worse: drag queens and mixed marrieds. “Biology,” a third rate romance between Costello and the Dead Kennedys (muted minor chords), is the kind of thing that earned J.J. a bad name eons ago. “Someone Up There” muses metaphysick and “Crime Don’t Pay,” with its overlong intro sounds like Joey’s belabored attempt to give the Band their democratic due.

You can’t fault him for trying (who wants to keep asking “Is she really going out with him” anyway?). But jeez, Joe, try to pack a little more punch, will you? And grab yourself a new designer. The 80s are here and the time’s right for psych-out in the sFreet. Trip or freak.

Gene Sculatti

BLUE ANGEL

(Polydor)

For a few years, roughly coinciding with the campaign and administration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, rock ’n’ roll was the music of an era on the brink of eager surrender. Implied in the songs, even in the spngs of frustration, ego, or just dancing, were the tantalizing words “maybe” and “if only.” Politics, innocence and romance came together in a burst of possibility, and it was like the feeling you get when you realize you can make a certain girl laugh," and start speculating where it might go from there. Blue Angel’s endearing thrift-shop rock purloins the elements of that spirit; their Roy Halee-produced debut is a grafting of girl-group yearning onto instrumental boy-combo spunk to yield a twenty-years-after twist* on the dynamics of infatuation. Neat.

At the same time, I’m very aware that my affection for Blue Angel may be out of proportion to its musical virtues, that it hits my own sensibilities and points of susceptibility a bit too closely (there’s a lot of that going around lately) for dispassionate analysis. Not everyone, I concede, is likely to be charmed by a'band who adopts riffs From Dave “Baby” Cortez and Jorgen Ingman and has a lead singer who in,her more chirpy, hiccupy moods seems to have had Teresa Brewer as a prenatal influence.

But Blue Angel" isn’t' quite as retrograde as all that; the leaping vowel-play of vocalist Cyndi Lauper," and the miniaturist agility of instrumentalist-composer John Turi combine to make contemporary sense. Lauper has a reserve of power that she unleashes at surprisingly opportune moments, and the Lauper-Turi {songs are more than antiquated paraphrases: “Maybe He’ll Know,” “I Had A Love,” “Fade” (with the fine phrasemaking of “fade you away”), “Just The Other y Day” (an ’80 Shirelles cha-cha), the schoolgirlish “Take A Chance,” and the frantic rockabilly ‘*Late” are all shrewd and slick updatings of tried and true, rock subjects (The Crush, The BreakUp, Tardiness).

The guys in the band do their bit with some flair, and get a chance to blow unaccompanied on the 1959 instrumental “Cut Out”—honking sax, twangy guitar, organ washes, rigid drumming—but it’s Cyndi Lauper, syllabist supreme (“know,” naturally, becomes “know-oh-oh, a-oh-oh”) who is Blue Angel’s snazziest feature. Her voice, & tangy, dramatic yelp, would probably sound inviting reading Silas Marner, but how much more fortunate that she sings lines like “I can see by now/You don’t want to know/Can’t blame me if I love you so,” or flashy excusions like “Lazy, dizzy, daisy/It’s a quarter to whoops, uh-oh,” or ballads like Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s “I’m Gonna Be Strong,” a throbbing piece of stiff-upper-lip emotionalism that was a hit for Gene Pitney (Lauper goes for vocal broke on the last line, quivering a little on “break down” and belting out “cry” four times, and it works). She’s a terrific technician, and she communicates a sexiness that eludes more blatant women rqckers like Benatar and Wilson, a vocal intimacy that suggests not arena-scaled eroticism, but selective availability.

Among its twelve (12!) tracks, Blue Angel has a couple of clinkers, notably the unduly sluggish “Anna Blue,” and “Everybody’s Got An Angel” (nice thought), which sounds like a finale for a dim little movie like The Lively Set. And the cover is one of the most avoidable of 1980. Don’t let that Stop you: Blue Angel flirts with kitsch, but comes up with heart, If you can imagine a couplet like “I watch your window from the street/1 guess I’ll etch a vision in my daydreams of you!’ sung by a stylistic cousin of Claudine “Party Lights!’ Clark, and the prospect intrigues you, take a chance. C’mon, kid, (as they said during the Cuban Missile Crisis) whaddaya got to lose?

Mitchell Cohen

XTC Black Sea (Virgin/RSQ)

It’s good to see that the creative explosion in British rock ’n’ roll over the past few years hasn’t been stifled by the inability of America’s broadcast media to pick up on it. Maybe the new generation isn’t raking in the Yankee bucks like the Brit-bands of a decade ago did but the lack of income hasn’t stopped the music (yet).

XTC is as good an example of this process as any. To call ’em productive would be an understatement; since 78, they’ve churned out four albums (all now available over here) plus a surprising number -of import 45s, EPs, and dub experiments, plus occasional solo recordings by the songwriters of the group, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. And the most impressive thing about ’em is that the quality has pretty well kept up with the quantity, even though only a few thousand Americans are currently into the group.

What’s so good about em? Mainly the material: Partridge and , Moulding are two of the top songwriters around right now. Their eye for detail rivals Ray Davies’, and their ability to twist normal song forms around reminds me of Eno’s pop stuff a bit. Add a double dose of whimsical humor and you’ve got the basic idea.

Of course since they’re English, their perspective’s somewhat different than yours or mine and the difference comes across especially on “Towers of Eondon” and “Living Through Another Cuba,” a polyrhythmic political commentary of sorts. But there are lotsa .things that are the same on both sides of the Atlantic and XTC tackles them too. Suburbanites everywhere can certainly relate to “Respectable Street” (“Sunday church and they look fetching/Saturday night, saw him retching over our fence”) and “Paper And Iron” (“Working for

paper and for iron/Work for the right to keep my tie on”) just about defines white collar existence.

The songs don’t just stand (here by themselves either; these guys sing and play ’em well too. Plenty of diversity in the rhythms, which is just as well since the drums are mixed up higher than the guitars, making even the interesting solos on “Love At First Sight” and “Travels In Nihilon” come off a bit too tame. And while I’m nitpicking, Black Sea is probably a little less initially ear-catching than last year’s Drums and Wires.

It’s also got a lot more military imagery in it—though it doesn’t totally neglect those dangerous necessities, pretty little girls?—but don’t let all the talk of sergeants and generals and majors throw you: these guys are anything but goosesteppers. They seem to regard the power pushers as just as much of a giggle as everything else; if we gotta whistle our way to WWill, it may as well be to XTC.

Michael Davis

GEORGE THOROGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS More George Thorogood And The Destroyers (Rounder)

By crediting the only original composition on More George. Thorogood Arid The Destroyer to Jorge Thoroscum, Rounder Reccords’ answer to Rolling Stones Now offers a self-deprecatory smirk at the most aptly surnamed George since Mr. Jetson. That’s assuming* Thorogood’s truly his nom de birth; anywho it’% certainly not the only thing about the gent that strains plausibility. Faced with the opportunity to cash in big on the surprising success of his first two LPs, George Thorogood and the De: stroyers and (especially) Move It On Over, G.T. didn’t ditch Rounder for the distribution/promotion^services dangled by the major wheelerdealers. He didn’t criss-cross the country playing two sets a night of streaming rock ’n’ blues to the convertibles. Gosh no. Thorogood laid low for two years before Recording a third album and spending much of that time off the road as well to defuse the impact of an (he said) inferior collection of demos released without his authorization by MCA. Now that the baseball season has ended, G.T. and the D’s is among us, and, to keep things cookin’ on the hot stove circuit, Thorogood’s thrown a high hard one at the MCA album, re-recording “Night Time,” the radio staple off the LP, and “Goodbye Baby,” which ought to brush that thing all the way back to the dugout for good. Inverting a song title by labelmates NRBQ, That’s nice....

...That’s neat—the new LP,. that is, just like the other two. Yep, More is more of the same, but so what? Thorogood’s charm lies not in the breaking of ground, but in the way he blasts through his material —both familiar (the 671st version of “House of Blue Lights”) and non(Hound Dog Taylor’s “Just Can’t Make It”)—linking rock ’n’ roll with Chicago blues as in the ’50s, when the Chess roster included both Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, and the ’60s, as accomplished by the early Stones and the early Butterfield Blues Band. It’s no stunner to discover that Thorogood & the Destroyers lack the range musical and emotional) of even the first Stones record. But Thorogood also shows no sign of the dreaded Artistic Progression syndrome that .rendered Butterfield foolish by the time he counted of& the “Love March” at Woodstock.

Nor does he display the selfconscious pose of culture preserver that’s always made, say, Canned Heat and John Hammond, Jr. tough on the ear. You’ll never think for even a split-sec that George went through sleepless nights grappling with the White Boy Sings Blues problem, not with his atypically casual disrespect for tradition; when he decided to add a piece to* the trio, he passed over the obvious harmonica, and went for Hank Carter and his-swinging saxophone. Put the Library of Congress on hold, honey. Three albums on, Thorogood remains no more/less than a kid who got wise to a form that allows him to wax flash on guitar, brag a blue streak (“I’m wanted by the women, by the men, by the boys aftd girls”) and wrap it up in four minutes; a form in which nobody’ll holler if he never writes another song.

Ira Kaplan

CHEAP TRICK All Shook Up (Epic)

Cheap Trick probably figured that having George Martin produce them would make good sense both business-wise and weisenheimerwise. After all, Cheap Trick does sound like the Beatles every now and then, so why not work with the Beatles’ very own producer? And from the ha-ha viewpoint, they could say, “Hey, everyone always accuses us of ripping off the Beatles, and nbw we can rip off their producer, too.” However; in addition to being a gentlemen—a very clean gentleman—and an excellent producer, George Martin is also no man’s fool. Although Cheap Trick got their obligatory hit (“Everything Works If You Let It”) with Martin at the controls pulling some neat White Album moves, it’s George who’s gotten the last laugh on All Shook Up, which is only as it should be since Martin used to produce comedy albums before he hooked up with the Fab Four. The fiendish Trickies thought they were going to get a “definitive” album and that they sure did—a definitive George Martin production portfolio that George should be able to use' to get work with every conceivable type of band in the years to come.

Admittedly, Rick “Huntz” Neilsen and his fellow goofballs didn’t give Martin much to work with. Lots of skeletal material, lousy excuses for songs, a tonnage of stolen riffs and melodies. (Let’s face it, these guys had their 15 minutes way back on In Color, where they at least showed a modicum of ingenuity in the field of riff appropriation as they shuttled from influence to influence, kept moving by way of Robin Zander’s chameleon paces, and at least all the songs were brief; these days'all their tunes require two minute coliseum-oriented preludes.) In short, little more than .a cover band’s homage to their ancestors. For Martin, however, wily veteran that he is, there was a way out gracefully; namely, a production style that laid bare all of those robberies, thus exposing Cheap Trick not only as thieves but as bumbling thieves to boot. Rarely does a record come along that has every track begging to be returned to its rightful owner. Let’s check the recovered inventory:

—“Stop This Game”; Martin slaps an orchestra onto this one, which is only logical since it’s little more than the “Underture” from Tommy with a few chords re-arranged. Townshend shoulda known that George could’ve easily have orchestrated all of that rock opera. Maybe f\e never heard the second side of Yellow Submarine.

—“Baby Loves to Rock”: Nice one. Led Zep’s “Black Dog” arid “Rock and Roll” spun around in a mixmaster with just a pinch of Jeff Beck guitar tossed in for seasoning. So much for anti-crunch knocks against “Megaton” Martin.

—“World’s Greatest Lover”: More strings! Great imitation of John Lennon doing Jeff Lynne doing “Across the Universe”! And dig that three second nod to “I Who Have Nothing,” the Terry Knight and the Pack version! Tres hip, non?

—“I Love You Honey But I Hate Your Friends”: RockStewart title, Rod Stewart lyrics, Rod Stewart vocal, Ron Wood guitar bleats. Perfect, George. Lord knows how many nights in dingy bars playing half of A Nod is as Good as a Wink Cheap Trick spent before trying their hand at “original” music.

—“Go For the Throat (Use Your Imagination)”: Well, Todd did produce Badfinger and did a swell job, so George returns the compliment by having Cheap Trick do “Is It My Name?” with lyrics chariged to protect against lawsuits.

—“Who’d King”: Hey, marching band music is in, right? Just ask Fleetwood Mac’s accountant. I’m sure George thought they should’ve put this at the end of side one, for maximum halftime effect, but he let the band call the sequencing to throw them off the scent of what he was really up tou

So there you have it. The Who, Zep, ELO, Utopia, F. Mac, Faces, Stones. George can do it all. As for his vehicle here, Cheap Trick, well the opening line of this album is “I can’t stop the music, I could stop it before.” It’s easy, Robin; you just push down On the tone arm and move from right to left until those scratchy noises stop. No fuss, no muss. Just one dead album.

Billy Altman