METAMORPHOSTYZ

RECORDS

METAMORPHOSTYX

STYX Paradise Theater (A&M)

by Joe (Exterminator) Fernbacher

J was awake. He was also flat on his back. J was awake, flat on his back, and confused. He never knew he had a back before; as a matter of fact, he never knew he was a he before. He began to get uncomfortable. This WAS confusing. Frustrated, J slapped his hand to his forehead, whispered, “Oh, my go—” and then froze. Confusion and terror shook hands and had a drink. J had never had a hand before, nor a forehead. (WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? INSANE!) His mind reeled. (His MIND?) J stiffened as a little junta of fear rolled through his veins. (VEINS? THIS IS MADNESS!)

J finally settled down. His breathing came soft and slow. Slowly, as if rising from a deep trance, J let his eyes search the room. (ROOM?) He was beginning to understand... Somehow, he’d been transformed, mutated, altered, changed into a... a...(What’s the word?)...a MAN!!

Last night he’d been happily dining on some tasty dung heap and horning after the local meat. Last nigh J had been a happy little bug— an arachnid, indeed! But now... ugghh. A solemn cloud of loss wafted over J as he recalled his mandibles, his antennae, his chitin, his dung heap. So now he was a man; what was he supposed to do with himself? Looking through his many-eyes (ONLY TWO!), Jo saw the rest of his newly acquired body (TOO BIG!). Must get up from this b...b...bed. Stand on my own—he looked down and counted in disbelief—TWO legs. His new bodyhome gave a small shudder. Then one of his hands reached out and turned on the stereo (STEREO!)

Startled, J heard odd noises that were at once familiar and alien. He felt himself turning and taking a tentative step. There in that mirror, he saw, for the first time, his whole new body. It WAS big, too big. He shuddered. He reached out for a bottle he’d noticed on a table next to him. His mind registered: BEER. He smiled.

Joe stood there for awhile, taking a occasional sip from the bottle, and played tag with a sense of purpose that had started creeping through his head. He moved swiftly to another machine in the room. His mind registered: TYPEWRITER. He thrust a chubby digit towards a dull white key. His mind registered: REVIEW. Review what? Yes, that music coming from the machine he’d layed before. He would write a review of it. He did not like it; in fact, he did not really want to write about it. Why was he driven to do this? His mind registered one last time: CHECK. Joe smiled and began to type.

STYX, Paradise Theater (A&M)

When this troupe of para-metal garrous first stroked the scene, they had a lot of promise. Coming in on the tail end of the first heavy metal era, of BVH (Before Van Halen), they were doing rhythm crazed noise chunks textured with the usual flummery of death heads, doomrubes, wolves, witches, satanic litanies—all those cough syrup philosophies of disintegration lumped together under the cosmic nihilism of the demon blues riff. They were competent in their incompetence, a prime ingredient for any true metal success. They had even managed to pen a classic of sorts. That song from their very first album, “Krakatoa.” A geological blues-rhumba told from the point of view of the volcano itself—neet idea, huh? The song was filled with] doomsday riffing, some soft lyrical' moments and—oh yeah—a smattering of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” It was good, and true to the spirit of metal.

Correction and Amplifications Dept.:

Last month’s review of the Clash’s Sandinista! was attributed to Jeff Nesin instead of Mitchell Cohen, who really wrote it! The Eagles Live review, which appeared without a byline, was written by Nesin.

Yet, as the skirling gods of metal began to fade and be overrun by the burbling brooks and swaying meadows of a frisbee-flecked new age horizon, Styx floundered. They had missed the point. What to do, they wondered. And so, they changed personnel. Up from that limbo there arose a new, improved, mellower Styx. Chucking off the gritty coil of pur sang metal mambo stench, they settled into a groove that didn’t agitate, didn’t excite and most assuredly was pretentious. They tempered their imagery, tightened their musical texturings, and became lost in the grand illusions of their own devise.

Voila, Paradise Theater, a Styxian “concept” album about a crumbling stage house. Where’s Lon Chaney when you need him? And not only is it a concept album, but they’ve gone totally Hollywood by dressing the album up with their glorious monicker stamped right onto the record. Wow. Of course, if its a concept album, it therefore must be boring. As stated previously, concept albums are life’s way of smacking rock ’n’ roll in its insolent face. We have to live with them, I suppose, but we don’t have to like them. Besides, the last really good concept was original sin, and no rock band has ever tried to make that into a rock opera. Yet.

Paradise Theater is perfect for those dinosaurs who still think that progress, and progressive music, is our most important product. It ain’t. And for those who dislike this kind of music to begin with, why are you reading this, anyway?

Joe put down his 32nd beer. He sighed. He had not used any “big” words. He felt content.

Jo began to slip into a comfortable and comforting dull unconsciousness. He smiled sweetly.

J was savoring once more the tart ’n’ tangy taste of his favorite dung heap. Mandibles clicked, a chitter echoed softly into the night. And then everything faded into white as a huge stump of foot exerted a massive pressure downwards and crushed chitin, dislodged mandibles...

ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE ATTRACTIONS Trust . (Columbia)

“Access” is a word that has never tripped lightly off Elvis Costello’s devilishly silver tongue. As in “Access All Areas, ” rockbiz parlance for an unlimited backstage pass, the type Costello and manager Jake Riviera have been only too glad to issue to hopeful interviewers and photographers, over (these same journalists”) dead bodies. Or consider that recent minority-rights cause, “access for the handicapped.” Even for the disabled group potentially most amenable to Mr. Costellorock critics, with their “special” need to take their audio-visual reality cut with a minimum of print coherence —there were no lyric sheets. The gimpy textual analysts among Costello’s public could be damned.

All of which made it so shocking to see Elvis Costello talking turkey to Tom Snyder on Tomorrow, volunteering the same accessibility he’d never permitted us. Or to confront the new Costello LP, Trust, with its cover photo of Elvoid the Pelvoid, almost (thinking about it) smiling from behind his rosy-guilt & rosyrevenge-tinted glasses. Still no lyric sheet, but Trust is the first Costello album to list the Attractions’ surnames (a state secret evidently as , sensitive as the Queen’s bra size, j heretofore) on the package. Where will all this soul-cleansing confession end?!?

In decent amounts of U.S. airplay'and resultant record sales, hopefully. Costello’s last previous all-new album, Get Happy!!, turned out to be another of those depressing 60’s-euphoria vs. 70’s-&-80’swe-have-our-standards-thank-you confrontations: with its 20 intensely realized, insanely mature Costello songs, Get HappyW was every bit as modern-age Blonde On Blonde, a highwater mark every bit the equal of Dylan’s, yet hardly anybody, even many writers previously sympathetic to Costello, seemed to notice.

Because, I guess, Get Happy!! was so rich it .invited its own invisibility; it’s such an inconceivably extended tour de force of rock ’n’ roll that the listener, after a disbelieving spin or two, is no longer sure it really exists. (A state of affairs not much helped when Columbia dumped the similarly 20-cutted, similarly exhilarating Taking Liberties, a collection of Costello B-sides and other odd bracks, onto the U.S. market a few months later.) Elvis Costello on record was just too mind-boggling a subject to deal with, throughout 1980.

Trust is hardly another Get HappyW, but it’s far more accessible (a timely term, that) in ways which should bring Elvis Costello and the Attractions many new listeners who, once they’re hooked, can work their way forward or backward in the band’s catalogue, at will. At once, of couse, Trust has “merely” 14 cuts, a manageable but still generous number; playing a side through isn’t so exhausting in its unrelenting stimulation.

Elvis Costello’s vocals on Trust are projected and mixed right up front, smooth to the point of crooner-like clarity on cuts like “Shot With His Own Gun.” Steve Nieve’s beloved pump-it-up organ pulsebeats are replaced in many of the song by slow-rolling, majestic grand-piano flourishes, almost worthy of a post-electroshock-therapied Barry Manilow.

The heart of Trust is suitably hard-rocking (check the electric opener, “Clubland”), but late-night mellowness, if not the mixed fortunes of “adult contemporary” radio-radio, beckon from around the edges of nearly every song (cf. the straight-country “Different Finger”) , all without compromising the basic Costello artristry. After all, Elvis always almost said that he wanted to go Nashville/Broadway, in good time. It was us who demanded that he go ever onward as the punks’ (surviving) elder brother.

The Costellovian lyrics on Trust are as obliquely provocative as ever, whatever musical contexts they occur within; always clearly enunciated, they’re easy to grab in one-line or couplet-length meteor chunks, but the songs’ controlling-imagery plots continue to zoom in cryptic clusters, like those neon borealises in 2001. It’s still difficult, this early in my acquaintance with Trust, to say precisely what Costello’s singing about, but his tone is clearly far more conciliatory than on his previous efforts. Far from his early misogyny, Elvis has become precociously feminist, as on “White Knuckles” and “You’ll Never Be A Man.” I could hazard an educated guess, and say that Costello has discovered that women are just as moral as he is but still, what’s it all mean? Interesting, these transitional albums.

Still to be revealed, in future Costello lyric and/or interview confessionals: Does E.C. push a power mower during family yardduty? Is easy-going Nick Lowe allowed to call him “Elvis” when they work late in the studio? Did the incipient Elvis ever assemble Airfix model-plane kits, in his narrow Catholic youth? Stay tuned.

Richard Riegel

DEXY’S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS

Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (EMI America)

What a gaseous hoot this album is. Such a conglomeration of goofy pretentions, cornball horn charts and blowsy singing hasn’t been heard since the pre-War work of Eric Burdon. Dexy’s Midnight Runners want to fuse the spewing rancor of punk with the fluid passion of their treasured soul sources, and are so bleeding self-conscious about the whole thing that they come very close to parody. Their bleak vision, their falling-all-over-themselves arrangements, their conspicuous literacy (this is a record that drops names like Samuel Beckett, Kierkegaard and Edna O’Brien) make Searching For The Young Soul Rebels a party record of true British eccentricity.

It’s difficult to describe what goes on here without making the Runners sound dreadfully somber and inept, but I’ve been playing the LP a lot since it was available as an import in 1980, and songs like “Seven Days Too Long,” “Thankfully Not Living In Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply” and the great “Bum It Down” (with the classic chorus: “Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan, Sean O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw... ”) continuel to be impressive in their brassy' effusiveness. It’s also typical of what’s going on in U.K. rock these days that as the album finally gets released in America, word comes that Dexy’s Midnight Runners have split into two separate camps. Just perfect.

When last heard from, lead singer-chief writer Kevin Rowland was ranting a la Rotten for an outfit called the Killjoys (c. ’77), doing songs like “Johnny Won’t Go To Heaven.” Having failed as a punk posturer, Rowland assembled this neo-Stax outfit (two saxes, a trombone, a Hammond organ, guitar, bass and drums) as a vehicle for his unrelentingly sour outlook. As a soul belter, he’s something of a joke, As a thinker, he’s an Angry Young Man, bitter and self-righteous. Rowland as critic on the open letter to someone named Robin (Gibb? Yount? Ward?): “Perhaps I’d listen to your records, but your logic is far too lame and I’d only waste three valuable minutes of my life with your insincerity.” Rowland on the concept of love on a poem he recites over a noodling tenor sax: “Am I the first to ever question you exist?” (Is he kidding? Nosiree!) Rowland on his “hero” Geno Washington: “Now you’re all over, your song is so lame.” Rowland on non-involvement (“Keep It”): “You’re scared to scar your pretty face.” Fun guy, right?

While Kevin’s kwest seems to be to carve a path through a thicket of thick-headedness, using soul music as his rallying cry, the Runners would be content to be the Bar-Kays (did this cause the Dexys’ breakup?). What they sound like—and this is meant as a compliment, believe me—is Chicago stoned on a mixture of Jack Daniels and Diet Dr. Pepper, or the Jukes with Look Back In Anger temperament. As produced by R&B maven Pete Wingfield, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels has a wicked bar-band gurgle, a slovenly deportment that enlivens the straightforward hookery of the more poporiented tunes (“Seven Days,” “Geno,” “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”). If thewband played with more Memphisian precision, the frantic awkwardness of Rowland’s singing would stand out like Johnny Venture fronting the M.G.’s.

If there never is another Dexy’s Midnight Runners LP, it will not be cause for grief. Searching For The Young Soul Rebels, which went to the top of the pops in England (naturally), is a one-off of such ambitious foolishness that it should forever stand alone. Invest now in a 1993 collectors item.

Mitchell Cohen

TODDRUNDGREN Healing (Bearsville)

Roll over, Martin Luther King: Todd Rundgren’s got a Dream, too. “The world needs a healer,” quoth} the Dream, and in its wisdom it anointed Utopia’s soul child himself, right there in color on the cover (film at 11?). Scholars already know how close Philly is to Bethlehem and Nazareth, not to mention Bird-InHand and Intercourse; no wonder the Dream chose Todd, gave him the right to call each and every one of us “child,” and instructed us all to “rejoice.” Beyond that, the Dream covered every angle: “There are enough destroyers and criticizers,” Bunky, and that’s that. OK, swell, there goes my career as a rock criticizer, but who am I to argue with a Dream? Yea, verily, I shall believe in the almighty multitrack—“you are but flesh, and flesh will obey,” he saith—for I know that he will heal me. Cheaper than est, too.

But it’s not gonna be easy. Before the healer makes the lovelight shine—before he even sends someone out for batteries—we all have to feel “Compassion.” Lots of it. The real thing, too, and don’t anybody try that cut-rate pity or sympathy. Compassion, deep in the heart, yea, brethren and cistern, compassion. You, with the Herpes Type II— compassion. Now! Look, it’s a sure cure: a little compassion, a little Tomita-pureed Debussy, a little lovelight with the rhythm machine on “fibrillate.” Then, and only then, you pain-wracked compassiondrenched rubes, can we proceed to side two for the three-part (everybody got their mystic number decoder rings?) “Heating.”

You’d better be ready for a profound experience. “Listen to the sound that is not in the music,” instructs Todd the Healer, and he doesn’t mean that he wants you to troubleshoot your hi-fi. While you try to figure out what he does mean, a three-note melody like a snakecharmer’s phrase repeats over and over and over and a drum thumps over and over and a saxophone joins in an begins to echo over and over and over and you are getting very very relaxed and very very calm and you begin to hear celestial calliopes and sweet tinkly bells and the beat begins to fade away and long notes pulsate and Todd’s ever so sweet and ever so gentle voice tells you “Where you are going,'you cannot take your body...” and WAIT A DAMN MINUTE! I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!

“You will learn to fly...you can touch the sky...” SURE, SURE... “See the pretty lights shining up above you...” WHAT GODDAMN LIGHTS? “When you need its peace and powers it is always here... ahhh...ahhhh...oooh...” WHO DOES THIS GUY THINK HE IS, ANYWAY?

Todd, Todd, rhymes with...Oh. I see. Amen?

Jon Pareles

BUNNY WAILER Sings The Wallers (Mango)

The prodigious travesty of our time may be that rock bands rooted in reggae like the Clash or the Specials are more familiar to white American kids than the Jamaican forebears. Let’s face it, all Casey Kasem’s chillun have heard of the Police. Well, last year, instead of gambling wads of fivers on insolent art-rock imports (sneering at you with cheap post-punk flamboyance), you could have saved yourself a few hundred smackers and purchased some samples of a sure thing from the beatific stateside releases of Mango Records. Ijahman’s Are We A Warrior, Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Forces Of Victory and Bass Culture, Burning Spear’s Harder Than The Best, Sugar Minott’s Black Roots, Pablo Moses’ A Song, Toots and the Maytal’s Just Like That, assorted ska anthologies, and Black Uhuru’s matchless Sinsemilla (1980’s very best reggae album)—all are records worth* searching out, and all were released by Mango in just over a period of one year. For a small American label, that’s a mighty impressive batting average.

So pay attention.

Ex-Wailer Bunny Livingstone, who has never been known to squander his talents, has produced possibly his crowning achievement with Bunny Wailer Sings The Waiters. Bob Marley and the Wailers, of course, are the only group to have crossed through the history of ska, rock steady, and reggae, and the purpose of Livingstone’s project is to recall that timeless continuum. How he does this is made to appear so simple (the very nonchalance behind the idea is staggering) that the only explanation for its success must be found in a literary term— that unique conjuration of modem Latin American writers known as “magical realism.”

If dub has come to imply any alteration of an original track, then this is dub of the highest order. Livingstone has re-created 10 Waiters tunes (some by Marley, some by himself) with the brilliant assistance of Jamaica’s leading “ridim” session players, Sly Duncan and Robbie Shakespeare. The surprise, however, is that Livingstone has supplied all the vocals. Ovprdubbing himself into a complete harmony group, Livingstone turns this artificial studio feat into a pure expression of compassion for that once was and now can never be. (In recent memory, the only other thoughtprovoking act of renascence was the Belmonts’ Cigars, Acapella, Candy, on which doo-wop was not only faithfully revived in 1972 but also achingly put to rest.)

Livingstone’s work opens with the slinky “Dancing Shoes,” carrying you onto a dance floor amidst writhing bodies sweating with lust. From there, the passion never lets up as he takes you into the soul of Rastafarian ideology (“I Stand Predominate”), the harmony of coexistence (“Dreamland”), the inevitability of death (“Burial”), and the hopes of social revolution (“Rule This Land”). Whether he’s being playful (“Walk The Proud Land”) or closing in on himself (“Hipocrite”), Livingstone constructs a panoply of visions over the sound of rude boys marching to Zion, his single purpose clear and committed: to recapture a consciousness of which he was only the third “I,”

As he states in the liner notes: “You might hear a little bit of Tosh, and you might hear a little of Bob, and you will hear the I, as well as the harmonies. You will hear Waiters still, and that is as close as I can get. ” Such self-assurance is what makes the album’s finest cut, “I’m The Toughest,” such a bold, swaggering spree; it is a confidence that could only come from the depths of someone who has spent 14 longago months in a penitentiary for a ganja bust. But it isn’t merely his determination to echo the past which makes Livingstone’s work so moving, it’s also his desire to come close—to an era, to an image, to himself—that persistently reverberates behind every evocative note.

Ironically, many years after the Wailers of Livingstone’s dreams, the usurpation of Jamaican music by rock bands is on full blast. But bands like the Police and the ska revivalists have shown themselves more concerned with style than content (even though they could never really understand the meaning of the struggle that Jamaican music implies). While the “ridims” burble beneath the surface, rock groups who dabble in reggae will achieve notoriety and possibly world acclaim. In all fairness, Bunny Waiter Sings The Wailers does not deserve the harsh fate of an unmarked grave.

Robert A. Hull

THE DECLINE... OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION (Slash) DETROIT DEFACES THE EIGHTIES (Tremor)

If God had meant rock writers to sing, he wouldn’t have given them typewriters—so goes the conventional wisdopi. Nevertheless, the last few years have seen numerous scribes ignore the warning and enter the fray: Lenny Kaye, Nick Kent, Lester Bangs, Mick Farren, Richard Meltzer...the list goes on. -And on: Claude Bessy aka Kickboy Face was the editor of Slash, the apparently defunct house organ of the L.A. punk scene. As an inspiration for new bands and a cheering section for those that already existed, Slash was a marvel. Still, when Bessy formed his own group, Catholic Discipline, scenesters anticipated a joke band. Hardly. Catholic Discipline’s single contribution to The Decline...Of Western Civilization, the soundtrack to a new film about L.A.’s punkrockers, turns out to be the album’s highlight. Amidst Doors-y calliope organ and military bangbang drums and guitar, Bessy rants in his French nasal rasp the lyrics to “Underground Babylon”: “Sitting in a room, surrounded by bottles/My friends have all left/And my head is on fire/It’s already moming/But pieces of night/ Are all stuck , to my hair/What we did is fading/ln the light of day/What we say is bullshit/We live the modem way.”

It’s not pretty—no apologies. But neither is there the pseudo-glam glorification of a Keith Richards. It’s a rock ’n’ roll underground—disaffected and confused, yeah—in relentless confrontation with the El Lay legacy they’ve inherited. Seven bands, 16 songs on Decline... and “Underground Babylon” is the thing nearest to a party, and the Circle Jerks’ “I Just Want Some Skank” (“Every night the scene is set/I’ve got to drink, to forget/I cannot incur this debt”) is as close as it comes to crotch-obsession. Not a one of these bands knows a chord so crunching or a volume so deafening as to make all problems even momentarily evaporate into heavy metal cliches.

It’s all urgent; most of it’s brusque: from X’s gut-slamming “We’re Desperate” (“Get used to it”) to Black Flag’s sure-kid “White Minority.” Elaboration gets mixed results. Musically, the Alice Bag Band’s “Gluttony” is strictly sludge. But their guitarist (also Catholic Descipline’s drummer and Slash staffer), Craig Lee, saves it with his extended metaphor lyrics (“Nights rise, dough boys crumble”). Then again, Fear let their punk-Rickles stage patter diffuse the (considerable) impact of their songs.

It’s all raw; most of it’s quick: only four tracks last longer than 2:20. Catholic Discipline, lor one; X, for two or three; and “Mammal” by the Germs. With a strong-selling Slash LP of their own, X represent the great hope of Los Angeles’ netherworld ’81. They synthesize punk and power chords, rockabilly roots, and boy/girl singing that’s not as much reminiscent of Balin/Slick or Papas/Mamas as it is good' enough to be worthy of those ’60s forebears. Their words outrage, but go beyond outrage’s sake; there's a graceful morality at work, even during the mondo porno of “Johnny Hit And Run Paulene,” that ultimately make X, if not optimists, romantics. The Germs are the antithesis of all that. Their Slash album mashes non-stop speedshock and roarriffs into a harrowing portrait of a man/band trapped in a jello mold of hate and being hates (“Defects in a defects’ mirror”). It’s ugly, but it’s not gratuitous. It’s sick, but it may just be real. Germs songwriter/vocalist Darby Crash killed himself just after the release of The Decline... (eerily foreshadowed on the album jacket), spotlighting the paradox that fills this record and all that it documents. Was Darby Crash as dumb as the (implied representative) fans interviewed between cuts on Decline seem to be (sample: “I’m a total rebel, I rebel against anything”)? Or are the fans as sincere and messedup as Darby Crash: No answers— but plenty of questions, plenty of sweeping attacks without a rug of Art or distance or moderation to hide the dirt under. L.A.’s punks are potent and proud. “They pick on me ’cause I really got the beat,” sing X. No lie.

And the list goes yet onward: chiming in with two-not-bad-at-all cuts on Detroit Defaces The Eighties, a not-bad-at-all sampler by seven of the city’s musical graffitiists, in none other than Mark J. Norton, associate editor of your current magazine of choice. Pretentious introduction aside (“This one I wrote after reading Arthur Miller’s A Memory Of Two Mondays.”), Norton connects with “Letter To David,” by slowing down a “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” melody into a dirge and using violin to complement his shaky singing pitch. “Drunken Poetry” is notable for Russel Sumner’s handling the synthesizer with all the taste that the Cubes and the Twenty-Seven don’t demonstrate on their keyboardmarred selections. The Ivories, with the blues-rocking chugger “My Baby” and the (almost) too-crudeto-power-pop “She Wants You,” are the other group to impress on a record without real standouts. Detroit Defaces’ chief virtue is its consistent listenability—especially on side one; side two continually threatens to fall apart but never does. Minor as it may be, if a slew of local partisans have their ambition stoked by this D1Y effort by their brother (where are the sisters?) Motowners, that’s argument enough for its release. (The Decline...Of Western Civilization is available from Jem Records; Detroit Defaces The Eighties is, available from Tremor Records, 403 Forest, Royal Oak, MI 48067.)

Ira Kaplan

RYCOODER Borderline (Warner Bros.)

What can you say about a Ry Cooder album, little lest his ninth? His.name may sound like a Nabisco cracker you eat with cottage cheese, but long ago, rumor has it, he fathered “Honky Tonk Woman.” Record store rack stuffers hardly know wnere to stick him. I guess I’d file him under “cult.”

(wish I could say the Faithful have been rewarded with Borderline’s release ^ but a more limp potpourri from a ballyhooed behind-thescenes-guitar hero-cum-pop musicologist-song stylist I’ve never heard. I do not mean to discredit the previous eight albums where Cooder’n’ Company have clicked to the max. It’s just this time it falls flat.

For instance, it takes balls of iron to cover Wilson Pickett’s “6345789” period. But to churn it up & out a la the Band takes balls of lead. (Kryptonite, even.) Too bad it’s zipless funk. Ditto “Speedo,” the Eisenhower era R&B chestnut given a new souped-up Roy Head-ish arrangement by Cooder. Can’t do a thing if it ain’t got that swing. And “Speedo” don’t cut the mustard.

But there are three real atrocities close to my heart. Lend an ear to Billy Joe Royal’s (himself no culthero, but a humble Top Forty hitmeister) “Down In The Boondocks” sambaized, suitable for Harry Belafonte. Pass the Leche Dolce, mon.

Once the aforesaid is heard, you’re primed for “The Way We Make A Broken Heart.” A Mexicali mesquite sob song that, in this incarnation anyway, only Jay and the Americans, circa ’63, could’ve served up with all due weltzschmere.

“Crazy ’Bout An Automobile” scuttles its original bop ’n’ circumstance to Bye Bye Birdie-ish rockabilly rhythms. For your added enjoyment there’s an Amos ’n’ Andy-aping street rap, white boys talk like muscatel-drinking post-war knee-grows, yar-yar. As for “The Girls From Texas,” do the hokeypokey hoe down? Tex-Mex pola! Anna one, anna two, where’s the bubbles? The accordian?

Maybe what’s sorely lacking is a sense of fun, of devil-may-caredom. Maybe that’s why-the best “song” on this album is the only Cooder original, a music boxical instrumental of various textures. It’s the only thing on the album still breathing oxygen.

As for the rest of it, do we really need more Ronstadtesque grave robbing? Maybe it’s the arrangements, the mostly mournful Bayouvia-Woodstock vocals, but whatever the snafu, this disc reeks “serious,” an unearthing and reinterpretation of seminal Pop classics. Rigor morti Hall of Fame Hits. Makes it hard to remember that these songs once boomed out of jukeboxes and dashboard radios. What ought to be bouncy and light sounds like it was shovelled on thick with a spatula. Like eating a potato pancake before bedtime. If only this array of studio whizkids had let.themselves go, full tilt, like a drunken journeyman bar band slapdash rehash hellbent on rocking ’till last call, then this platter could’ve been a blast. But Borderline is so sincere in milking pop-vein Americana that any new life is strangled stillborn. Just like weeds in a flower bed.

Kathy Miller

PEARL HARBOUR Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost Too (Warner Brothers)

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person by the way they dance; I guess I never knew I loved Pearl Harbour ’till I saw her rock ’n’ roll. On vinyl she initially hadn’t promised much. Her album with the Explosions was for the most part little more than freshly pruned, garden-variety you-know-what wave music. Yet live, Pearl gave us the full Tora!Tora!Tora! treatment with much gruffer than expected vocals and a dance style that made her seem like a cerebral palsy victim trying to drum up big bucks for the local telethon. She may have danced like a human twist-tie, but she came across as simply endearingly twisted, indicating the kind of personality that very likely' could only be fully developed outside of the Explosions. Smartly, Pearl soon exited, dropping her nom-de-doom (Pearl E. Gates) and making off with the band’s marketplace brand name.

Happily, the solo end-product, which zeros in on beat crazy rockabilly and country, is every bit the demenfed dance-a-thon her stage persona promised. Her singing is deeper and more healthfully character-flawed than before and the whole album is full of nifty surprises. Take the two opening rockabilly tracks. Pearl’s voice alone would be enough to drag this moldy genre into the present tense, but helping things along are some ambience-of-dread backup noises and, on the second track, a posthuman guitar not heard in this solar system since Lydia Lunch was last in search of historic teenage Jesus. I only wish there were more of this destroy-all-guitars dogma elsewhere.

Making up for the loss are Pearl’s equally off-beat country numbers, which mix downhome charm with Flannery O’Connor-level wry southern depravity. On songs like “Heaven’s Gonna Be Empty,” a lovely country rocker, or “Out With The Girls.” a fast-talking “Hot Rod -Lincoln”-type yarn, Pearl is all urban cowgirl, balancing modern confidence with hokey traditionalism. Her humor never undercuts her innocence; it’s smart but never smart-ass. There’s a tenderness and a deadpan quality to her titters that make even her novelty song, “At The Dentist” seem not a strained joke (like Rockpile’s “Knife And Fork”) but rather just another revelation of character.

Actually, the neatest angle to all this is'the full profile Pearl carves out for herself, aided by some facetious bits of autobiography. Like Cher, Harbour is a half-breed—part filipino, .part yankee girl. (Mom and pop even got hiiched on the original “date which will live in infamy.”) So when she sings “Filipino Baby,” a jaunty tale about a white guy showing off his “dark-faced” lover, it’s more touching than silly. And in “Fujiyama Mama,” when she sings “I been to Nagasaki/been to Hiroshima too/the things they did to them/I can do to you,” it awards her the campy persona of a filipino version of Tokyo Rose, Here and everywhere Harbour’s personality comes through so strongly that I can’t help but envision that screwy dancer of her live shows bopping in and out of the album grooves, never tiring, no matter how many times the record is spun.

Jim Farber

McCOYTYNER 4X4 (Milestone)

After perusing the Best Jazz Album category of the latest CREEM Readers Poll, two thoughts occur— 1) apparently very few of the people who bothered to vote in this category actually got a chance to hear much jazz during the past year and 2) the jazz they did hear, and liked enough to vote for, was some of the most mediocre stuff available under that generic label.

I mention this not just to insult the readers’ taste; I think there’s another reason for these atrocious poll selections. I know there’s A reason why very few people get to hear any jazz—aside from concerts and clubs, which attract the already converted, there’s not a hell of a lot of places to hear the music. There’s the occasional NPR and/or college station but that’s about it—the rest of what radio offers is, at best, diluted. Even here in Detroit, which one would imagine has a relatively large jazz constituency, the local “jazz” station specializes in MOR black pop (what else to call it? it’s an acknowledgement that mediocrity has no racial boundaries) , punctuated every hour or two by a pre-Coltrane acoustic jazz “classic” (which turns out to be anything from Miles Davis to the Three Sounds). On TV, jazz is as rare as ballet—in fact, both are viewed as heavy cultural events and so are kept out of the way, making only rare kiss-of-death appearances somewhere in the PBS ghetto. So it’s not surprising that readers of America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine, even those enthusiastic enough to vote in the Readers Poll, haven’t heard much of The Real Thing lately.

Which brings me to my second post-poll perusal thought, concerning the mediocre quality of the jazz that so many of you are settling for, aka the Wimp Factor. Fusionoid votees like George Benson and Jean-Luc Ponty and Stanley Clarke are regrettably understandable since these are the brand names of the sonic wallpaper currently getting heavy display on the nation’s alleged jazz stations, but the inclusion of Chuck Mangione and Chicago and Herb Alpert is baffling. Who voted for this candy-assed mood music? Clash fans? (More likely Bob Seger fans—people who could dig, a, uh, good production). It never fails to amaze me that people who are open to vital and exciting music in the rock idiom will settle for the corniest kind of pablum when it comes to jazz (and I’m convinced that the fact that this super slick, drivel is all that’s available is why so many people are turned off to the music—rather than as a result of viewing jazz as consisting of impenetrable abstractions or undecipherably weird sounds).

The unalterable truth then is that at this point in time in America If you want to hear jazz (i.e., if you still want to hear it, given what you probably think it it), you’re going to have to make a little effort, first of all, to find it. Otherwise you’re simply never going to hear it.

And as good a place as any to start with would be the music of pianist McCoy Tyner. Tyner’s music has always been, for me, the acoustic jazz equivalent of heavy metal— doom and thunder chords struck by the left hand give the music an unrelenting rhythmic strength while the right hand unravels uninhibited melody lines. Almost all of Tyner’s music is delivered with the same incredibly sustained intensity—even the ballads sound driven—and this has led many critics to disdain his music’s sameness (while paradoxically, praising the validity of his approach—it’s a complex sameness that Tyner offers). Fortunately he has the good sense to offset any potential monotony by varying the format of each of his albums, using guest artists, voices, strings, whatever. This time out it’s a double album of the four quartet sides with bassist Cecil McBee, drummer A1 Foster, and four guest artists, one per side—trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, guitarist John Abercrombie (here on electric mandolin), vibist Bobby Hutcherson, and alto saxist Arthur Blythe. The results, predictably, are mixed. The Hutcherson and Hubbard cuts make up exemplary mainstream sides, not particularly exciting but satisfying .efforts by masters of the vernacular while the Abercrombie side is an interesting experiment that doesn’t quite come together with Tyner’s intensity and Abercrombie’s reflectiveness going their independent ways. The Blythe collaboration results in the best side. Blythe can match Tyner’s lyrical intensity apparently without effort and at times actually seems to give the pianist pause. It’s exciting to hear Tyner challenged by a voice as fearsome as his own.

As mentioned, you could do worse, and 1 somehow think that you will—critics are notorious pessimists about change, or should be, since they usually start out as enthusiastic fans before learning very quickly how little influence their cherished enthusiasm has—and I’m pretty sure that Next Year’s Readers Poll will show that the same Benson/Alpert/Mangione type confections are still winning the public’s hearts and minds. Because that’s the way things are.

Richard C. Walls

CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL The Concert (Fantasy)

One evening in May of 1968, while Paris was burning, I was lined up in the warm San Francisco night (you remember them) waiting for the Avalon Ballroom to open its doors on one of those interminable four band bills that we all loved then...or at least had enough patience and/or drugs to last through. They began taking tickets and, as I started up the stairs, I could hear a band playing—a first (and last) in my experience. The lowliest group on the bill had been asked to begin their set as the folks filed in and, in their straightforward and workmanlike “glad to be here” manner, Creedence Clearwater Revival was rocking hard as 1 walked onto the ballroom floor.

You’ve got to admire that kind of proletarian pluck—which many groups claimed but few actually had. Around the same time I saw the declining Electric Prunes leave the stage of a travel money gig in a huff because the P.A. wasn’t up to their usual high standards. (“The Prunes don’t have to stand for this kind of shit,” bleated the road manager as he wrapped his American flag cape around himself and fled.) No such vanity from what was soon to be one of the best bands America has ever produced. I’ve wracked my usually ordered brain trying to recall the other bands on the bill that night (I’d go check, but my collection of psychedelic dance concert posters is off appreciating in storage). Fever Tree? I think Quicksilver was the headliner and the Sons of Champlin probably did their dull best, too. Whoever they were they made no lasting impression but through the years I’ve remembered Creedence, not only for making the best of an improbably dispiriting situation, but for making first class rock ’n’ roll in the bargain. The local FM stations had been playing “Suzie Q” and “I Put A Spell On You” and, though the songs didn’t knock me out, they certainly showed muscle and taste. In a few more months Creedence, in their curious, modest way, were bigger than the Bay area, which none of the other SF bands ever could manage. The rest is history— at least through 1971.

All of this was brought back in a vivid rock ’n’ roll rush by the release of The Concert, 50 minutes of brilliant live CCR from 1970 though exactly where and when isn’t clear. Fantasy released the set as The Royal Albert Hall Concert only to have some wag point out that it was really recorded at the Oakland Coliseum. Such details are immaterial in the face of Creedence at the top of their form. Not all detail are immaterial,, however, and the complete absence of personnel data seems yet another attempt to deny the primacy of John Fogerty. Bassist Stu Cook, drummer Doug Clifford, and rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty were worthy stalwarts and, at this remove sound better that they were credited with being then—especially Clifford—but Creedence was always and only John Fogerty’s band. Omitting credits means not acknowledging that John Fogerty wrote the original material, sang the songs, played lead guitar and harmonica, produced the records, rowed the boat and drove the truck. He was (and, I hope, is yet), as potent a triple threat as rock ’n’ roll has had. His superb singing is fashioned from the churchy grit of R&B> his guitar playing and production have (he acerbic sting of rockabilly simplicity, and his songwriting is graced by the slightly surreal narrative style of the very best country songs. If that sounds like florid gush, listen to The Concert.

The great songs are all here— “Fortunate Son,” “Green River,” “Who’ll Stop The Rain,” “Proud Mary”—14 in all. The band is up to the occasion and Fogerty’s amazing voice and terse drive make it all sound as fresh and clear today as ever. The real question is why— since this record is as fine as anything that will be released in 1981—the Creedence movement was over so fast and gone so long. There are many complex personal issues involved and I won’t know the full story until Fogerty picks up the phone at his Oregon retreat one night and invites me out for some fishing: (I’m in the Manhattan directory, John.) Asa start, though, I’ve never spoken with anyone who didn’t like Creedence. And as we stood on the brink of glitter and the polymorphous perverse, a band that wore flannel shirts arid couldn’t make enemies seemed hopelessly prosaic. (I will take up the strange case of the Grateful Dead in my next volume of memoirs. The Dead, holding little of the essential vitality and promise of Creedence, could, at least, make enemies and could make large numbers of numb people believe they stood for something.) Fogerty’s prescient pessimism and simple dignity seemed less and less germane as Woodstock Nation—not really his constituency, but he was there with the Fylts— segued into the Me Decade. When platform boots were fresh and sparkly, Creedence was just too stoopid and American, without novelty or cachet. It was our loss and The Concert makes clear just how great that loss was. Buy it. Don’t get fooled again.

Jeff Nesin