CRY FOR A SHADOW

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CRY FOR A SHADOW

JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO Double Fantasy (Geffen Records)

by

John Swenson

I was all set to write about Double Fantasy; about what a beautiful sounding record it is, as smooth and accessible as the Beatles at their whipped cream production best; about how great it was that Lennon was able to write this easily about his life, bringing the same emotional intensity to the feelings of his approaching middle age as he brought to the renderings of teenage passion (he compared it to Rubber Soul); about how good Yoko sounds next to John on this set, how their songs blend together better than they ever have in the past.

It was hard to write, though, because virtually everyone 1 talked to was using the record like an ash tray heart (thanks, Beef, that’s the metaphor of the 80s). The consensus of critical opinion was that Lennon had wimped out again—1 heard more than one snide remark along the lines of “who cares about his domestic life” etc. Double Fantasy is an intensely personal album, but that’s no surprise to anyone who has taken Lennon seriously over the years. Virtually everything he’s done post-Beatles has been intensely personal, and has met with the same snide ridicule the rock press was ready to hurl at Lennon. You could look it up— take a peek at the CREEM reviews, for example, of previously released Lennon records.

It was easy to throw rocks at Lennon—even National Lampoon got their shots off on Radio Dinner.

We all laughed, right? Lennon was an easy target. Ex-Beatle, lots of money, easy to talk about peace and imagine this and that, right? RIGHT? What’s all this fucking piety all of a sudden?

Lennon was great, but he was great then, when he was alive. It doesn’t do any good to laud a ghost when you kicked his body around for all it was worth while he was alive.

Now he’s dead and suddenly everyone loves Double Fantasy, wasn’t it fabulous how he was a house husband, he baked bread you know, I was with him. Yeah, you were with him, you fucking hypocrite—you were laughing at him all the time.

How about our great Self proclaimed rock-crit establishment? They were right there too. We find out on the front page of the Village Voice that John Lennon was the only rock star Robert Christgau would ever actually go out of his way -to meet. What an honor!!! John Rockwell writes a tribute in the Times in which his nose really gets off the ground as he tells us what a fit subject for rock ’n’ roll isn’t, namely Lennon’s personal life. Likewise, a Washington columnist gets on Cable News Network and tells us how Double Fantasy isn’t Lennon’s best solo work because “he assumes you have some interest in his personal life.” These are songs we’re talking about, no soap operas or novels. The experiences of “Watching the Wheels” of “Starting Over,” or even “Beautiful Boy” for that matter, are universal experiences. They’re not just about John Lennon, they’re the kind of things that people with more to do with their lives than worry about what color shirt they’ll wear to the opening can actually relate to.

The whole pious charade makes me sick. People who’ve been dumping on Lennon for years are now taking credit for what he did. Critics who laughed at the John and Yoko solo outings and went on to make deep, pretentious statements about minimalism and conceptual art in rock overlooked how much Unfinished Music 2: Life With The Lions explored that terrain long before somebody got the idea it would be a neat way to legitimize punk rock. It wasn’t fashionable then, so Lennon and Ono got slaitimed and dragged through the dirt and laughed at. Only now that fashion has caught up to them have these sophists raised a serious eyebrow in the direction of these well meaning artists.

I was talking to a Rolling Stone editor the night Lennon was assassinated, about three hours before it happened. The editor was complaining about the problem caused by a proposed Lennon cover story that was in the works. Two different writers had been sent to cover Lennon, he said, but neither had gotten the hard story Stone wanted. They like the album too much.

DIRE STRAITS Making Movies (Warner Bros.)

Folk-rock, phooey. When Mark Knopfler put pen to paper for the latest batch of Dire Straits songs, he wasn’t thinkipg folk-rock. Nof any more. He wasn’t thinking threeor four-minute ditties. Hey; he’d played with Bob Dylan. He wasn’t thinking guitarist-songwriter-singer, neo-J.J. Cale. He’d sold millions of records all over the world. He wasn’t even thinking about his band. He’d played with Steely Dan. For his third album, Mark Knopfler was thinking Art.

Not modern Art. Not some kind of Ad Reinhart black-on-black minimalism, the sort of thing you might invoke when your first two albums sound like the same one or two songs played over and over: the same gruff inflections, the same couple of minor chords, the same slidey leads. Modern Art doesn’t offer enough romantic idealism— for Mark Knopflejr. Nor does it offer him enough Depth, enough Emotion, enough Symbolism. In modern Art, they all think the epic is dead. Modern Art, phooey. Knopfler knows what Art, real Art, is all about. Real art is long songs with lots of space for slidey leads, lots of chances to repeat a few chords, lots of words to deliver gruffly. Real Art means intensely subtle Symbolism, like the title of Knopfler’s epics (he knew they weren’t dead), “Romeo and Juliet,” or the delicately modulated metaphor—sorry, Metaphor—of “Solid Rock,” which Knopfler contrasts with “a castle in the sand” and “a hourse of cards.” Real Art is also opening the album with a carousel playing Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “The Carousel Waltz,” and then writing a whole song comparing life—sorry, Life— to an amusement park. And in case you’/e thinking Springsteen got there first, Knopfler has discovered not only Springsteen’s three-chord vamps, but his keyboard player, Roy Bittan, thus proving that real Art is In Touch With Its Sources.

As we all know, Art is also a merciless taskmaster. To pursue his Romantic Vision, Knopflier had to reorganize Dire Straits; there’s space now for Bittan’s ivories because there s no rhythm guitarist. Dire Straits’ rhythm guitarist was, of course, David Knopfler—Mark’s own brother, vanished without a trace. Blood may be thicker than water, but Art is thicker than blood, and as Knopfler puts it so well in “Solid Rock,” “I’m solid rock now.”, You can’t get any thicker than that.

TURN TO PAGE 52

Jon Pareles

THE SPECIALS More Specials

_(Chrysalis/2-Tone) _

So how would you like to be sitting on top of the Specials’ 2Tone global music empire right about now? You can bet it’s a real sWord-of-Damocles proposition, the kind I’m sure Marley or some other reggae guy was singing about, before most of the Specials were born.

I mean, can you imagine being granted your own, world-distributed record label before you’ve even released your first album? And then watching that label (and others inspired by it) set off a whole skarevival rock ’n’ roll movement, mostly stimulated by your own shining example? Coming off those kind of whirlwind origins, the Specials could rather easily grow wealthy and content, merely by repeating themselves forever.

Which is exactly why. More Specials is one of the more radical second-album followups I’ve heard in years. More Specials sets out to blow away evefy perception of the band’s appeal their followers hold dear; more than one porkpie hat will be knocked off in the process,! but the new album will finally break through as organic Specials music, as modern music almost certainly predicted among the popular grooves of The Specials. Just the sort of familiarly brand new music the Specials needed at this point, to distinguish themselves from the adulatory Selector/Madness/Eriglish Beat/etc. crowd.

More Specials uses ska as stylistic flavoring rather than as a rock1 steady beat discipline. The opening cut is a fatally-ska’d reworking of that horrible Borscht Belt/polka (or whatever) chestnut, “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think),” which I’m sure you must’ve heard Lawrence Welk’s orchestra wheeze out on some moldy topical-theme show or another. The Specials make “Enjoy Yourself” work, as a satire of the more hedonist varieties of new wave idealism, and if you get that joke, th*e rest of the strange songs follow naturally.

“Rat Race,” “Hey Little Rich Girl,” and “Do Nothing” are the more traditional Specials riumbers on this set. They tend to restate the “Jug-u-war”-hating, class-conscious observations of the first LP, as in “Do Nothing”’s wonderful Lynval Golding lyric, “‘Cos fashion is my only culture.” But each song als threatens to bolt from ska into a bizarrely hip MOR, a mutation as inevitable as Jejry Dammers’ interitionally-dragging organ lines. Much of the Costelloesque urgency of the first album keeps sweetly hissing out Dammers’ missing front teeth, but he (and we) don’t feel a moment’s loss.

“Sock It To ’Em J.B.” is a brassup-yer-ass boomer that kids (reveres) James Brown (Bond) by celebrating (satirizing) both those man’s man’s world types. In the new Specials 3-D universe, you can have your cake and have it too. “International Jet Set” is reminiscent of th4 airplane songs the Stones were writing when they first took acid, but th^ vocal is mixed .. so farrr . . downn . . . You Can Just Read It On The Lyric Sheet, like a normal raver. Or take “I Can’t Take It,” take-out soul food with a Terry Hall/Rhoda Dakar joint vocal so simultaneous even Steve & Eydie couldn’t squeeze between; somebody go tell Chris Stein and Debbie Harry that this is exactly the shade of summer Blondie they’ve been after.

Plus an “Enjoy Yourself’ reprise,of course. Which means it’s time to flip the disc7 and go sleep all night (some more) in the Specials’ cocktail lounge (avant-pop) kitchen. Have the Costelloes (Elvis) (Lou) heard this yet (now)? Talk about “crawling to the U.S.A.” (of Stan Kenton) music!

Richard Riegel

HEART

Greatest Hits/Live (Epic)

What Heart means to me: 1. it’s the name of the best song on the Rockpile album; 2. it’s that thing that goes thump-thump-thump inside me every time I flick on the local ten o’clock news to catch a certain weather forecaster chatter suggestively about her low pressure fronts; 3. it’s a cockamamie mook band fronted by a pair of let’s-playat-being-sexy sisters from Seattle.

Since this is neither a/Rockpile review not a storm warning, I’ll concern myself with number three. To be honest, Heart’s gotten me pumping at least once or twice—to be exact, the ravenous “Barracuda” and the still-entrancing “Crazy On You.* And maybe “Kick It Out.” And that is it. (And thank God or whoever the hell’s up there that all three are available on singles.)

Anyway, to get this meat in motion, you are hereby advised by this ever-undaunted pop observer .that/Greatest Hits/Live, to put it delicately, blows.

It’s an extraordinarily wretched amalgamation of a few hits, an unhealthy amount of misses and (to completely finish off this idiotic double set) there’s a veritable treasure trove of unremittingly abysmal live inactions. Sides one and two highlight (make that lowlight) the past five Heart LPs but like I said, once you charge through “Barracuda” and swoon down to “Crazy On You,” it’s all basically art-onmy-sleeve pretensions and ludicrously artificial stabs at rocking out. But really, who knew way back when on “Magic Man” that Ann Wilson’s eye-batting flirtation with shrill melodramatic obnoxiousness would spring forth and blossom into a lifetime love affair?

Sides three and four take things to a progressively worse level. There’s unreleased studio stuff that never should’ve been allowed to escape, like the two-fisted wank-off combination of “Hit Single” (it’s anything but) and “Strange Euphoria” (ditto). And if I ever run into Aaron Neville, I swear I’ll never tell him that Heart took the intensely longing atmosphere of “Tell It Like It Is” and turned it into whining, nagged-out muckity-muck. I wouldn’t want a suicide on my hands. _•

Taken lightly, the live stuffs a bad joke. Taken seriously, it’s crying time. Their own material is done up deader than doornails and that’s just fine but their clubfooted treatments of “I’m Down/Long Tall Sally,” “Unchained Melody” and Led Zep’s stomping “Rock AndRoll” (welcome to Excess Junction) do nothing but put me in a neckwringing mood.

Ah yes, I remernber the night I made the near-fatal mistake of going to see these yo-yos put it to me in person in NYC against the vehemently expressed wishes of one of the founding fathers of this rag. In retrospect I realize now that I was dead' wrong in going; the music was a shoddy shambles, the sisters’ throb appeal was nada and I could’ve been back at my aforementioned friend’s house watching Return To Gilligan’s Island. Let’s face it: all the lip gloss and valentine cleavage in the world can’t disguise the fact that Tina Louise generates at least 10 times more sex appeal than Ann & Nancy put together.

(I hope the Wilsons don’t think I’m playing hard to get with this review, because if they do—well, sorry girls, but I’m saving myself for the Currie Sisters. Young blood’s what we need around here.)

Craig Zeller

STEELY DAN Gaucho * _(MCA)

She stomped into the living room, as much as one can stomp in pink slippers and an extra-large Close Encounters t-shirt, and conspicuously clicked the “stop” button of the cassette machine. /

I continued to write.

“Steely Dan,” she announced, “are a symptom of everything that is wrong with our felationship.”

Conversations that start with sentences that include tjie words “our relationship” are invariably not fun. I put my Pilot Fineliner down.

She continued, “Those noodleheaded pseuds take four years—”

“Three.”

“Three years to concoct their little jazzoid meanderings that any junked-up tenorman in 1954 could have spun in a three hour session. And you sit there and take notes on them. How can you even pay attention at a time like this?” She was visibly upset. The date was December 10,1980, which accounts for a lot.

“Sharon,” I said, “I’m as distressed as you are. I’ve had no sleep in two days. This is work. As in deadline.”

“This is folderol for college juniors who are in poetry/workshops find think that lines about ’bodacious cowboys in spangled leather ponchos’ are profoundly something or other, and I’m aghast that you seriously consider Fagen and Becker hotshot songwriters.”

“Wait a minute. You’re the one who puttered around the house for days singing ‘They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues,’ and you think the NCAA is a black militant organization.” -

/‘I also sing ‘Catch that Pepsi spirit, drink it in, drink it in.’ Catchy little phfases, so what? Steely Dan haven’t made a decent record,since Pretzel Logic. ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.’ There was a neat song. Gaucho tries so hard to be Duke Ellington 1980, and it’s more like Sergio Mendez with a headcold. Give me a break, kid.”

‘You talk like a rock cirtic.”

“Heaven forbid.”

s I got off the couch, grabbed a pint of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream from the /ridge, and turned on the TV. Geraldo Rivera. I turned off the TV. Sharon sat in the director’s chair next to the stereo and smoked a Camel Light.

“The only reason you like Steely Dan is because you used to be a hippie. Maybe if I’d taken as much mescaline as you did in 1969, I’d find Fagen’s drippy little voice appealing. Enough hashish and, what’s that song where' he keeps singing ’jolly roger’?”

“ ‘My Rival*.”

, “Yeah. Maybe that would make sense.”

“Hey. That’s a cool song. Wait,* Sharon, I’ll read some of the lyrics to you.”

“Don’t Bother.”

“No. Wait. Here: ‘I struck a match against the door/Of Anthony’s Bar and Grill/I was the whining sfranger/A fool in love with time to kill’.”

Wrong choice. Sharon was in hysterics.^ “Oh, perfect. Perfect! Of course. Springsteen on ludes. You would think whining fools are something to sing about. Dearest, when it comes to kvetching—”

“Look, Sharon, it’s only a record. Not as good as Aja, I guess, not as many memorable tunes, but—” -

“We’re not talking about tunes here, bozo. We’re talking about you wallowing in narcissistic despair over your thirtieth birthday. We’re talking about ‘woe-is-me’ and ‘woeare-us.’ Gaucho reminds me of Welcome To L.A. for goodness sake,”

“I iikecj Welcome To L.A.”

“Figures.”

“I like you.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“Carrying on, finding a Way to cope. I’ve been crying a lot lately. Even before this—”

“I noticed. I don’t know. I just don’t want to thihk that this album” —she reached over and hit the “play” button and “Glamour Profession” came On—“has anything to say to you. Emptiness is not something to celebrate. Meticulousness is not rock ’n’ roll. Well-placed notes are not going to wake you up.”

“We have a difference of opinion:”

“As always. Finish the piece, o.k.? Don’t let me influence you.” She smiled as she left the room.

I poured some Jim Beam and wrote: Pessimism is appropriate. We play out our dramas in Chinese restaurants, on long-distance telephone calls from the beach, and it gets harder and harder to get a grip. The new Steely Dan album is so in control that, naturally, it sounds ready to snap. Beneath the precision, the effort to make it Right, is a recognition of how bizarre, how out of hand it’s all getting. Why do I like Steely Dan, and Gaucho? Because there are lyrics like “It’s hard times befallen/The sole survivors/She thinks I’m crazy/But I’m just growing old.” And because they’re in a hit single.

Mitchell Cohen

ROD STEWART Foolish Behaviour , (Warner Bros.)

Rod Stewart has become a secret vice, like furtive 3 a.m. Twinkie feasts or wqtching “The Price Is Right” and crying when somebody wins a car. Lots of people do him, but it’s hard to find someone who would willingly own up to it. One of the most accessible, easy-to-like performers of the past decade has become sort of...embarrassing.

Rod evolved into Superstar in the Liberace tradition of peacock flamboyance, falling somewhere between the supposedly threatening androgyny of Mick Jagger and the ultimately pathetic buffoonery of Elton John. It was pure showbiz, and for awhile he was able to temper the spx symbol §tuff with enough good-natured self-deprecation and boyish charm to avoid travesty. It was hard to dislike a guy who Wrote lines like “Think of me and try not to laugh” and turned rock concerts into soccer matches. And there was his music. Rod had an incredible way of wrapping himself around a song, and his covers were as skillful and involving as his autobiographies. But in time Rod got lazy; the stage image was allowed to obscure the power of the music. As his albums got lamer and lamer, even the good songs like “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (basically a funny, on-target dissection of the one-night stand on a level with “Love is the Drug”) were turned into vehicles for Rod’s distracting booty-shaking. He had gone Hollywood in the worst way.

Fdolish Behaviour is exactly what we have come to expect from a Rod Stewart album. If you want to sift through the garbage the gems are there, but it hardly seems worth the bother. True to formula, the opening track is “Better Off Dead”—his press kit describes it as “white knuckle rock ’n’ roll” (sounds like a variety meat)—a “Rip This Joint” remake teetering on the brink of hysteria (yawn). The title track is one of the gems, Rod the storyteller at his best. Ever-fashionable, “So Soon We Change” is Rod’s obligatory reggae number. All of the songs here are originals, but Stewart’s “My. Girl” might as well be the customary Temptations cover.

“Passion” is the album’s centerpiece and first single. For a song that calls out for the world to show some emotion it is curiously lukewarm and mechanical, recalling M’s (the'Archies of the New Wave) “Pop Muzik.” If only my man would practice what he preaches.

Rod Stewart dedicates Foolish Behaviour to “all those who engage, in a little foolish behaviour on a Friday night; all those who enjoy a good laugh and a drink; those who don’t take life too seriously.” Okay Rod, we can take a joke, but it’s just about used up. Spandex pants don’t age gracefully. You still wear it well, but what are you gonna do when the buns start to sag?

Terri A. Huggins

BLONDIE

Autoamerican

(Chrysalis)

Plainly speaking, Autoamerican is indisputedly the biggest bomb by a major act since Christianity. It raises more questions than Fred and Ethel in oom-pah-pah gear. Questions like: What in the world could they have been thinking? Is this a joke? Do worms wear earmuffs? What is pop? And the everpopular: But, does it work?

In a word—no way, Jose. As befitting a splat of such immense proportions, I submit to you a rare sequential hit-and-rundown of the proceedings in their entirety. Design: Program A

l.“Europa—ff not one to waste time, Chris Stein plants one foot firmly in Chrysalis’ return percentage with this heavily orchestrated instrumental that stumbles into a speech by Ass. Prof. Harry (B.S., Wind in the Willows) on the decline and fall of the American automotive industry. As we in The Biz sometimes say—Hotdogl Dead on arrival.

2. “Live It Up—” standard Blondie filler w/dance option. “It’s like dating yourself, only twice as expensive.”—Phil Donahue

3. “Here’s Looking At You—” a dumb old-timey novelty tune from the “When I’m 64” period. Deserves the same reception as Candy grams from the dead.

4. “The Tide Is High—” a pleasant enough excerpt from the Baja Marimba Band’s Jamaican Album. Like 99.5% of all white reggae, it’s as stilted as Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding pics.

} 5. “Angels On The Balcqny—” sorrieone with a mellotron to grind takes on “Shayla,” but the main resemblance to the earlier halfsong is that neither has p chorus. If

you want to sing it in the shower, don’t wash everywhere.

6. “Go Through It—” this year’s most insightful song title.

Design: Program B

1. “Do The Dark—” statistics show that this is the 257th appearance of the .chords to “I’m A Man” (S. Davis version). You can’t listen to them without wondering where they’ve been.

2. “Rapture-*"” when you realize the band dumped Giorgio and still came up with this remarkably stupid rap tune, you have to wonder about the wisdom of pets firing their master.. Artistically speaking, the inclusion of this track is like Kurtis Blow calling me up and asking me to review leukemia.

3. “Faces-4-^ mmm, sultry sax. Soft lights. Piano bar .'Julie London moodily gazing at reruns of Emergency. Another joke? C’mon—like picket signs reading “Actors Are People Too!,” some, things just aren’t funny anymore.

4. “T-birds—“Shayla” again, only this time they remembered to stick in a chorus. Too bad.

5. “Walk Like Me—” more filler w/dance option. Kind of a “Call Me” meets “Watch Out For Goofy.”

6. “Follow Me—” as this stringridden Lerner/Lowe tune floats away lik,e the mist off Lake Prell, you can almost sense embarrassed ex-Blondie fans worldwide hiding under Plasmatics LPs.

That about raps it up, little fishermen. They say there’s no accounting for taste and I’m in no position to argue. After all, you’re talking to the guy who listens to old Yardbirds records for the vocals.

Final warning: Blondie fans beware. I personally guarantee that this album sucks the runny, slimy egg whites of TV fame. Autoamerican: bent frame, squeeky brakes, tape on the hood.

Rick Johnson

PAT METHENY 80/81 (ECM)

The controversy thus far: Pretty is the word you want to use when you talk about Pat Metheny—from his guitar styling to his dimpled chin, the guy radiates “pretty.” Unfortunately, for many people into jazz-(talking about critics here, mostly), “pretty” is an almost exclusively perjorative description, denoting as. it does a surface attractiveness without any of the emotional undercurrents and cojnplexities found in the best of the music. Why settle for pretty when you can have beautiful? Metheny’s alleged prettiness has rubbed some critics the wrong way ever since his debut as a leader four years ago lBright Size Life—ECM). His playing was too clean for some, too facile, the concept too folkish, too pastoral, the sound too ECMrestrained, too Manfred Eicherrealized. In a word, too white. With' his third album’s release in ’78, insult was added to imagined injury for at the impolite age of 24 he was suddenly, immensely popular. Early ’80 saw the release of American Garage to a general critical drubbing—even those won over by Group’s bright sized fusion music disdained the formulaic rut displayed by Garage. Meanwhile (and these things always happen independent of any critical consensus), his popularity increased, t

And now, having become that most common of modem phenomena, a popular musician that critics are wary of, Metheny has made a rather bold and satisfying move and released 80/81. Bold for someone with his commercial clout because the album’s bound to alienate some of the fans won over by his last two releases (early chart action bears this out), satisfying because Metheny shows here that he is, as he’s always maintained, a serious musician with something to say (altho one critic has already accused Metheny of “being on this album *‘in way over his head”— some people, once they get a line on someone, just won’t give it up).

80/81 isn’t a masterpiece or anything like that but it is a solid musical jazz album ably featuring, over two records, Metheny’s compositional prowess and improvisational abilities as he leads a group consisting of Michael Brecker and Dewey Redman, tenor saxes, Charlie Haden, bass, 'and Jack DeJohnette, druqis. Heavy company, but Metheny holds his own (tho DeJohnette, whose consistency of energy and invention is aweinspiring, occasionally plays rings around the guitarist—but then DeJohnette plays rings around a lot of people). Everybody’s up for the date including the chameleon-like Brecker whose playing is always only as good as the intentions of any given session’s leader. Here he sounds like Jan Garbarek—ugh— on the melodies but solos in a postTrane mode with long-lined gusto. Haden is a commanding presence, as usual, and Redman, in his few appearances, is more restrained than Brecker, utilizing less reaching for effect, more subtlety. The songs range from typical Metheny compositions—“Two Folk Songs (1st), ” “Every Day (I Thank You),” &nd “Goin’ Ahead” are programmatic but simple with pop song overtones (tho Brecker’s keening intonation on “Day” bring it closer to torch song)—to atypical Metheny compositions—the Ornette-ish title cut and “Pretty Scattered” whose melody seems derived from equal parts Ornette and Horace Silver. There’s also a convincing trio rendition of Ornette’s blues “The7 Turnaround” and a token free opus called “Open,” the only real damp spot on the album due to Metheny’s favoring of doodles and static riffing.

Aside from the lackadaisical free playing, Metheny’s soloing throughout the album is coherent > and exciting, combining flashy chops with thoughtful, musical ideas. And some of it, his more cautious fans should be assured, is actually quite pretty.

Richard C. Walls

THE POLICE Zenyatta Mondatta _(A & M)

The Police are a phenomenally successful, modern pop banc) in a classic mold. They’re witty, inventive, charismatic, and possess a unique vocal and instrumental style. They’ve even staked out their own turf, a sensual bleached-reggae combining exotic Jamaican rhythms with accessible English, pop song structures. Yet, the Police are constantly maligned in the press for their “homogenized” new wave sound. Not that a group in their position might acknowledge a few hack critics, but this band has yet to make the album their Jofty sales or even their vast potential might indicate. Once you skim off the] hits, you’re left with uninspired though well-crafted filler.

Zenyatta Mondatta does contain the hits though. “Don’t Stand So Close” is impossibly catchy in the style of “Roxanne” and “Message in a Bottle.” Sting reveals his academic roots in this tale of classroom seduction, including a sly reference to Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita. The top twenty single, “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” is resplendent in its inarticulate simplicity, an 80’s version of “Doo Wah Diddy.” My favorite track, though, is the upbeat “Canary in a Coalpiine” and obvious follow-up single. Check this one for Sting’s cutest vocal performance yet.

A major factor ift the Police’s rise to stardom is their crafty management, who pulled a brilliant publicity ploy in sending the band (along with the world press) to India and Egypt for the first live rock concerts in those third world countries. It might have raised the rock community’s consciousness, but the resultant songs are not exactly the shining stars of the album. “Behind My Camel” is a one idea instrumental that sounds great for half a minute before wearing thin. “Voices In My Head” serves as a new wave mood piece should anyone care for one, while “Bombs Away,” apart from some hot Andy Summers riffing and lyrical references to Bombay and Afghanistan, could be an outake'from Outlandas d’Amour, the first Police record.

Yet the album is a worldwide smash. A good deal of credit for that lies in the beautiful production job by Nigel Grey artd the band itself; a sparse, yet lush sound in the 1980’s style the band helped to originate. This is achieved through precise and imaginative playing, where each member occupies his own sonic space without intruding on the other’s-territory, bass and drums creating a relentless dance beat, while Andy Summers’ effectsladen guitar provides rhythmic color. The Police are here to stay; let’s just hope the classic album this band deserves to make is their next

°ne' Andy Shernoff

UTOPIA

Deface The Music (Warner Bros.)

At last. Now that almighty Bearsville has deigned to collect all these tracks on one longplayer, the only question remaining is: what took so goddam long? Otherwise, Deface the Music should go a long way towards shutting up all the doubting Thomases whb, through the years, have consistently cast aspersions on Utopia’s credibility, commitment, and balls.

Under the guidance of demigod Tpdd Rundgren, the label has done a superlative job in terms of packaging and sequencing. The liner notes (by John Ned Mendelssohn, with a nod at Andrew Oldham) are not too ponderous, and certainly place Utopia in enlightening perspective. There’s^something marvelously self-effacing in the way all parties concerned have refused to wax vindictive over the rip-offs that these Utopia chestnuts have engendered over the past decades. Kudos to Todd, Kasim, Roger and Willie. Maybe Deface the Music’s stunning chart-climb will inspire these four to get back together, if only for.one reunion album or U.N. benefit. At least this compilation will put some bona fide Utopia product back on the racks. Not since Faithful—a 1975 one-sideonly retrospective of Rundgren’s solo oeuvre—has such a.wealth of wax been made commercially available. -

OK, students, it’s ancient history time. Deface kicks off with “I Just Want To Touch You,” the single from the debut album, From Me to Utopia (VeeJayj. It’s even fresher sounding today than yesterday, thanks to Todd’s own mono to stereo reprocessing, patent pending. Where were you when you first heard this nugget? (Dallas? Phnom Penh? The guest bathroom?) Or “Crystal Ball,” the then-crazed rocker that uncannily seems to have anticipated Nixon’s Watergate1 related abuses? “Where Does the World Go to Hide^’ (from album #2, From Here to Utopia) retains every ounce of its original pathos. (Actually more, since it was remastered with more • reverb.) “Silly Boy” has never struck me as one of Utopia’s seminal creations. (So sue me, all you defenders of the Eight Legs to Hump You videodisc.) It’s worth the wait ’til “Alone,” the gutsy ballad that firmly reestablishes Billy Joel’s enormous debt to the vocal stylings of Kasim Sulton. (The much later, much more mature “Always Late,” featured on Side Two here, clearly reveals itself as Joel’s source for “Anthony’s Song (Moving Out).”

Sadly, the flip side of Deface the Music captures a band simultaneously at the height of its powers and yet obviously succumbing to ego problems and career pressures. Still, the innovations follow one after the other with awesome ferocity: the Baroque horn figures of “Hoi Polloi” were used some ten years after the fact, to great effect, by the Rutles. Again, Kasim Sulton’s warbling provides a stylistic touchstone for the Seventies supergroup Queen, (ie, Freddy Mercury is a copycat.) “Feel Too Good” and “All Smiles,” for that matter, can be seen to have provided the “inspiration” for the work of Mike McGear and his band Scaffold, as well as slavish Utopia-imitators like Badfinger and the Raspberries. Ironically, only Deface’s final cut, “Everybody Else is Wrong,” shows the band as anything but prophets, pioneers, trendsetters and fashion plates. Although few seemed to notice at the time, “Everybody Else is Wrong” sounds as though it’s been lifted from a Beatles tune. But the resemblance is elusive and, ultimately, unimportant.

What is important is that Deface the Music remind those shortmemoried rock afficionados th^t Utopia has been far more instrumental in directing the course of contemporary music than rival bands like the Searchers and Blondie. And, to reiterate a pet point, this LP conclusively proves that Freddy Mercury and Billy Joel are nothing but bargain-basement Kasim Sulton clones.

Wesley Strick

BILLY JOE ROYAL

(Mercury)

Ever since they started out in the same band in the early 60’s, Billy Joe Royal has been Joe South’s alter egoi South produced Royal’s earliest sides (he wrote and produced “Down in the Boondocks” in 1965) providing the sound (nofrills American pop) and the lyrics (straightforward blue-collar wisdom) while Billy Joe supplied the voice (a pure, high tenor) and the temperament (vulnerable with a touch of Southern punk). And, even though South doesn’t show up in the flesh on Royal’s new self-titled solo LP— he wrote one song, “Untie Me,” a lovely variation on the theme of “Chains”—his mark is all over it.'

As a matter of fact, Royal is surrounded by the same bunch of good ol’ boys that he (and South) have worked with from the beginning. Billy Joe did disappear to Lost Vegas, for a time (got an offer he couldn’t refuse), but since returning to Atlanta he’s plugged easily back into the old network, and the old sound. Robert Nix, an old cohort who co-wrote “Cherry Hill. Park” (Royal’s second biggest (lit, in 1970) and who has since spent time with the Atlanta Rhythm Section, produced this album, aided and abetted by such members of the Georgia music mafia as Danny Roberts, Jimmy Jackson, Jay Scott, John Fristoe and others. So, even though this is something of 9 comeback (Royal did have a minor hit in ’78 with a nice rendition of “Under^the Boardwalk,” but the accompanying album got bulldozed when the record label, Private Stock, went down the tubes), it has the feel of a family get-together.

And, like all families, this one has its problems. The foremost of these is a lack of judicial editing. Almost every one of the nine cuts is too long, the shortest, the heavy rocker “Mr. Kool” (a typical South-like indictment of wealthy decadence), clocking in at 3!4 minutes. Another, less pervasivfe problem is also Royal’s main selling point: his voice. He seems to have slipped an octave or two over the years, singing more huskily than he has in the past. Perhaps because of this, producer Nix has opted for some harder rock than one would normally associate with Royal. “Fever Blind” and “Love Jones” are what Jerry Wexler would refer to as “Swamp Rock,” a typically Southern . mixture of gospef, funk and rockabilly, and the band does some steamy cooking. But, even in a lower range, Royal is no one’s idea' of a shouter. Better suited to his vocal talents are “Home and Homesick” (written by Tommy* Dean of Joe South’s band), on which Royal sounds like Jessie Winchester minus the self-pity, and “Be a Fool With Me,” alovely midtempo confession that builds on a simple descending guitar riff and a scorching sax solo.

Another drawback is the prevalence of the backing chorus which lives up to its name—the Vicious Voices—on the aforementioned “Fever Blind” and “He’ll Have To Go.” There is hardly any excuse for doing this latter song—everybody from Ry Cooder to Solomon Burke has had a crack at it; Royal brings nothing new to this classic, and takes six minutes (!!) to do it.

But for all its flaws, the family plays together and stays together. The high point is “Slowly,” a waltzlike ballad that repeats a circular riff and lyrical phrase: “How do 1 like to dance/Slowly/How to 1 like my romance/Slowly.” Again, it’s a trifle long (4:42) but it’s so achingly pretty that one does not get restless. “Slowly” could also be an anthem of sorts for Royal, Joe South and their whole crowd. These guys are in no hurry to keep up with the latest musical trends or to hard-sell their unique and considerable talents. They are content to make finely crafted, common-sensical records at their leisure. They make it seem as if that’s the way music ought to be made.

Gary Kenton

PERE UBU The Art of Walking _(Rough Trade)

There’s no denying th^tt it’s becoming increasingly difficult to move: the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other is now a major undertaking. Toddlers know more than the average schmoe, while joggers trample those foolish enough to tackle the leisurely stroll. Perhaps we are destined to remain immobile...but there is still a glimmer of hope.

On their fourth (and most revelatory) endeavor, The Art of Walking, Pere Ubu teaches us that the nbblest revolutionary act we can perform within a lethargic culture is to just get out of bed and ambulate. This social radicalism will not sit well with sleepyheads like Frdn Lebowitz or John and Yoko, but its recalcitrant truth cannot easily be ignored.

This learned analysis of dillydallying, mind you, is from the same band who debuted with The Modern Dance, that noisy monument to nuclear waste and industrial pollution. Now there was an album that jerked and jitterbugged —except for one cut, “Sentimental Journey,” on which vocalist David Thomas (whose nom de plume, Crocus Behomoth, was the best since the Big Bopper) droopingly names objects in a room, (“tables and chairs and TVs and books and, uh.„”)...and, uh, falls asleep. The song’s message (albeit latent in the trash-and-bash days of ’^8) pot only foreshadowed the current stasis in society but also prefigured the direction Ubu would pursue on later experiments (the xerox reality of Dub Housing, the prdphetic religiousity of New Picnic Time). It is as if all Ubu’s work since were only in preparation for their first step, The Art of Walking.

“Here’s to the small things that give pleasure!”—thus begins an album so preoccupied with life’s minutest details (ants scattering in the dust, the singsong improvisa: tions of children) s that it almost forgets td move; but in so doing (by rambling along with what naturally rambles), it traverses the earth— and even walks on the water.

The underlying difference be-, tween the new LP and the other three Ubu holograms (as well as the Datapanik collection) is that the band has created a conceptual theme to overshadow the purple passages. Briefly, the concern is with the evolution of motion, the process of getting from one spot to another. If it sounds dry, just' remember: This is the work of America’s funniest buffoons (if America isn’t laughing, it’s only because it has lost its sense of humor). Like all great clowns from Chaplin to Jerry Lewis, Pere Ubu’s comedy springs from a refusal to walk a straight line, only to become entangled in the web of the detour.

There is a central voice (who, from the word “go” on the first cut, “Go,” wants to slip out of the viaducts of his dreams and actually move somewhere), but it’s hard to determine whether or not the character behind it really travels any distance. Things just keep messing up. On “Rhapsody in Pink,” he’s transformed into the Incredible Mr. Limpet, his body rolling with the ocean’s currents (“little birdies looked at me under the bright green sea”). On “Arabia,” fascinated by the tiniest movements on terra iirma’s topsoil, he is unable to move (“oh no, I’ve gotten carried away again”), and on “Misery Goats,” unbelievably, a goat herd intrudes.

The character continues to confront frustrations—homesickness (“Miles”), riddles (“Loop”), and existentialism (“Rounder”). But he seems to get nowhere as life bogs him down. On “Birdies,” however, he realizes that by not moving he ceases to exist (“the birdies are saying what I want to say”), and so, he pulls himself up by the socks and shakes some awareness into his skull.

“Lost in Art,” the album’s comic tour-de-farce, is where he finally arrives. It’s a patheic place, an asylum for retarded motion, and what progress the1 character has made toward an initial step is now obliterated. He can only move with the pace of a snail crawling through Jello, throwing tantrums like a cheap comedian rebelling against rimshots. A paraplegic rising from his wheelchair at the commalnd of a faith healer would possess more graceful moves.

The Art of Walking, though, is no mere exercise in the despair of a clodhopper, perhaps thanks to the overall influence of• new-member Mayo Thompson, the guiding spirit of Red Crayola. (Ubu assisted Thompson on his Soldier Talk LP in ’78, and after Tom Herman left the Ubu tribe, he was invited to join.) A Texas artist who practically invented free form experimentation in rock during the psycho-daisies era, Thompson has recently returned with a sweeping grandeur (i.e., “Born in Flames/The Sword of God,” Rough Trade single). As Ubu’s lead guitarist and poet-iriresidence, Thompson offers an artistic balance to David Thomas’ Jehovah insanity. Taken from Thompson’s solo LP (Corky’sDebt to His Father, Texas Revolution 2270) and remolded, “Horses” codifies the theme of The Art of. Walking into a charging gallop: a mane brushed back by the wind.

Further, in the liner notes to Red Crayola’s The Parable of Arable Land, Thompson once wrote what could be regarded as the7governing aesthetic of Pere Ubu’s latest masterwork—“limited definitions define limit and, one can go just so far. Here we go.”

But lest we forget: “Here’s to the things,” sings the voice of the staggering Ubu, “that make God smile.”

Robert A. Hull