GREASE IS THE WORD

JOE ELY

Musta Notta Gotta Lotta (SouthCoast/MCA)

by Robert A. Hull

All the rockabilly revivalists have been clinging to every neo-rockabilly act (Matchbox, Crazy Cavan) and every honky-tonk hack (Delbert McClinton, Gary Stewart) so loudly for so long that maybe this will seem anticlimactic, but the fact remains: Joe Ely’s Musta Notta Gotta Lotta is a modern masterpiece of real-gone hiccuping.

His first studio album in two years (his last LP was 1980’s Live Shots, which MCA unjustifiably chose not to release in America), this album finds Ely with his hair greased back in all seriousness; you soon realize that his three previous LPs—Down On The Drag, Honky Tonk Masquerade, and Joe Ely—were only mellifluous illuminations from a cowboy too timid to surrender to bebop-a-lula hysterics.

Granted, there are no songs on the new recording that can approach “Because Of The Wind,” “Boxcars,” or “Gambler’s Bride” from the earlier albums. Ely has always been fortunate enough to get fine contributions from fellow Lubbock songwriters Jimmie Gilmore and Butch Hancock. For the record, Hancock’s “She Never Spoke Spanish To Me” (from Ely’s debut) is possibly Ely’s most evocative moment, recalling the landscape of James N. Cain’s Serenade while saying everything left unsaid in Dylan’s version of “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue.”

Nothing like that can be found on Ely’s current whirling tumbleweed. The title cut, for example, is a rip-roaring bow to the holy father, Jerry Lee. “Hold On,” “Road Hawg,” and “Hard Livin’ ” are truck-driving songs that break every speed limit, shifting gears at every turn. And what may be the work’s intended focal point, “I Keep Gettin’ Paid The Same,” has to be the best statement of economic frustration since the last Iron City Houserockers’ LP.

But brief descriptions of the included tunes cannot convey the intense interplay between Ponty Bone’s accordion and Lloyd Maines’ steel guitar at the appropriate spots on Smokey Joe Millar’s sax honking like a wild goose at the moon. In fact, most critics clamor about Ely’s virtues as an exciting Texas troubador, but few have recognized that it’s often the diligent virtuosity of his band that carries him over the humps.

Overall, however, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta offers nothing less than a steamrolled surface, even right down to the covers of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” and “Rock Me My Baby” (the concluding epiphany of the smoothest album ever made, The “Chirping” Crickets). Remember, this is not the work of an eccentric neo-rockabilly; it’s far removed from last year’s brilliant (but bizarre) extensions of rockabilly’s raving roots—T-Bone Burnett’s Truth Decay, the Cramps’ Songs The Lord Taught Us, and Rob Stoner’s Patriotic Duty.

With his plaintive drawl and relaxed phrasing, it’s easy to hear why the Clash have so openly embraced Ely—he is part of that endagered species known as authentic. Kinda like Johnny Guitar brought forth from the silver screen. And, like Johnny, Joe Ely’s got guns no one can see.

SOME KIND A GIRL

ROSANNECASH Seven Year Ache (Columbia)

by Jeff Nesin

What a cover! Set against a wall that seems to be two shades of aqua, Rosanne Cash gives us her best, “...right or wrong, honey I don’t know...” fetching (and ambiguous) gaze. Her dark hair is highlighted perfectly, the front of her embroidered velvet jacket plunges precipitously, and her fruity lips glisten (Rangoon Coral? Tulsa Tulip?). Her hands rest on a glowing orange ledge but—mon Dieu!—no matching nail polish...in fact, not much nail at all. Like Madge the TV manicurist, she obviously soaks them in dishwashing liquid. And sitting on the appropriately nubby finger of her hardworking left hand is, anamalous and quite literal, her wedding band. Is this an extended visual pun on fidelity? A lurid but chaste advertisment for same? It’s neither and both—a straightforward yet complex presentation of a straightforward yet complex woman ...which is exactly the point.

Seven Year Ache is the best and most interesting example of what country music can be about in the 80’s. Country music’s traditional strength has always been narrative —moral narrative at that. But the last 35 years of American life have seriously damaged the chgnces for credible moral narrative, especially of the right/wrong sort. “There’s a lot of static in the air, or hadn’t you noticed,” Jimi Hendrix once said. Doubtless country music will outlive us all, but for it to face the next century as more than a quaint anachronism it will have to come to terms with... uh... modern values (such as they are) and tell the usual true stories with more ambivalence and less rigid stylization. (Which is what Kris and Willie and Waylon are about—or at least pretend to be about. I think they reap the benefits of the new while reinforcing the tried and true.)

Which brings us back to Rosanne Cash, whose first LP was called, interestingly enough, Right Or Wrong, and whose second release, Seven Year Ache, was my subject here before I wandered off without warning. The title song, written by Rosanne, presents random infidelity as infuriating, painful, and wasteful, but no one’s going to hell or to Marvin Mitchelson right away, either. If the transgression isn’t exactly understandable, it’s certainly comprehensible and portrayed with a sharp Nashville naturalism: “Don’t

bother callin’ to say you’re leavin’ alone/Cause there’s a fool on every corner/When you’re tryin’ to get home,” or flat out, “Baby, what is so great about sleepin’ downtown?” Sometimes it may be hard to be a woman but there are no tear-stained helpful heart hints here. The wellconceived production (by penitent husband Rodney Crowell) has all the savvy the song needs, from cheesy echoed handclaps to attractive swelling guitar lines, but Rosanne is the key. The country narrative tradition has never been better served.

What’s more, this song is just the tip of a substantial iceberg. Seven Year Ache displays real variety without becoming a patchwork (what some folks call eclectic) or a series of showpieces (what some folks call chops). Rosanne’s version of Merle Haggard’s “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go” is so direct and devoid of self-pity that I don’t even wince when I hear “...you’re turning down the flame of love too low...” (Passion as gas burner? Ring of fire? Quick, change the subject.) “Blue Moon With Heartache,” another Rosanne Gash original, is as close as she gets to a weeper, but it embodies and is sung with such clear dignity and self possession that the ritual is renewed. Here again sensitive productions helps immeasurably in setting the song apart from awhole catalog of Billy Sherrill “crank up the chorus and tear their hearts out’* maneuvers; RoSanne could Intrdduce the three hanky sdhg to a whole new generation. There are other fine choices: two excellent Keith Sykes songs, a Tom Petty tune (she does live in L.A. now), and Steve 'Forbert’s folkie smirk, “What Kinda Guy” blasted forever from its smug moorings. As a grand finale her husband’s “I Can’t Resist” slinks disconcertingly towards Manilowisrn (Rockabarry? Mellobilly?) but is so lush and seductive that, in the end,-I can’t resist either.

I haven’t even congratulated all those in supporting roles who helped make Seven Year Ache possible: Rodney’s flawless band, the cream of the Palomino players; Rosemary Butler, the finest harmony singer since Gram Parson’s untimely departure forced Emmylou out front; Mr. Crowell himself, without whose lapses the best songs wouldn’t have been written and without whose talents they wouldn’t have been so well realized; and of course, Johnny Cash, without whom... But the dark resonance, the coherence, and the soul is all Rosanne, the glamorous dishwasher who is clearly a woman to reckon with. Like the horse from Tennessee her daddy used to sing about, she has the nerve and she has the blood.

BRIAN ENO-DAVID BYRNE

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (Sire)

“You see, the problem is that people, particularly people who write, assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me that has never been the case. There are very few songs I can think of where l can remember the words, actually, let alone think that those are the center of the meaning. For me, music in itself carries a whole set of messages whidh are very, very rich and complex, find words either serve to exclude certain ones of those, or point up certain others that aren’t really in there, or aren’t worth saying, or sbmething.”

—Brian Eno

Apparently this record was created both before and after the recent Eno/Byrne/Talking Heads collaboration Remain In Light. It was"first completed before Remain, held up for legal reasons involving the use of a tape of the late evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman (which doesn’t appear on the finished album), reworked after Remain was finished, and now finally released. So', expectedly, it shares many of the concerns of that album— African polyrhythms, modern funk melodies and structures, exotic non-funk melodies, and repetition (of course). The main difference here, aside from shorter songs, is that there are no original lyrics. Instead, the words come readymade from a variety of taped sources such as a radio talk show host, a Lebanese mountain singer; and an exorcist in action, and each tape has been altered to fit a surrounding musical track (13 musicians are involved including Byrne and Eno and as usual with this type of music if s often difficult to pinpoint who has done exactly what to what instrument, but what does it matter when each played part is only a component to be reworked and altered by the masters of the tape?). For example, the track “Qu’Ran” is made up of a tape of Algerian Muslims chanting the Koran which has been chopped I and fitted to a musical track consisting of a moderately funky bass line, small percussions and smaller animals, and a whirling Synthesizer (the intention here seems somewhat rude as the song evokes ludicrous images of devout Muslims doing Temptations-like I choreography between bursts of chanting).

Warning: Long Sobs May Be Hazardous To Your Health

RAINBOW Difficult To Cure (Polydor)

by Billy Altman

Alright, alright. I am well aware that this newRainbow album poses questions that seem unanswerable. I mean, didn’t, Rick Johnson dismiss Ritchie Blackmore as., being better dead than plugged in, in his wellmeaning but woefully misguided appraisal of guitar plunkers in the last issue of CREEM? (Just for the record, R.J.: It wasn’t the guy from Bubble Puppy. Who on earth could ever forget that totally unexpected, uncalled for, unnecessary, thoroughly glorious double lead break around the sixth minute of “I’ve Got To Reach You”? I’d jot down both their names for posterity but my doqtor has warned me frequently about eye strain from poring over one too many dayglo posters.) And,* since there’s not a glimpse of aqy of the members of Rainbow portrayed photographically on either sides of the album cover or the inner sleeves, might not this be a sneaky resurrection of say, the Mighty Groundhogs or, heaven forbid, Captain Beyond?

Well, I’m here to testify that I have actually listened to this recordmore than a few times, I might add—and (here is no doubt in my mind that this is actually the same wonderful Rainbow we’ve come to love and be unable to recognize in police line-ups. Luckily, Blackmore’s intensive hair weave operation, alluded to on the front cover of the record, was successful, although for awhile (see back cover) it was touch and go. We will not even honor with a comment the scandalous rumor that root grafting was,the price Ronnie Dio had to pay to leave the band. In fact, I have it on good account that by the time Blackmore reaches your particular city, results of the experimental follicle restoration process will have proven so successful that he will be a

dead ringer for the Addams Family’s cousin It.

Of course, what few realize is that this camouflage treatment is quite, intentional by Blackmore. Going unnoticed for this long has given Ritchie the much-needed time to take stock of what surrounds him. Hey, everybody in the whole revitalized world of metal has appropriated more than their fair share of snorts, bleats .and belches from the impressive Blackmore catalogue, and unlike fellow war horse Ted Nugent, Blackmore has realized that stomping around hollering about how you were there before the tourists showed up can often be a deterrent, over the long haul, to a lengthy and prosperous life. Therefore, you will hear the exquisite “I Surrender”—penned, I note, by another anonymous millionaire, Russ Ballard—and find it a great metal poptart with this lollapalooza of a guitar solo and wonder, hey who is that hot new guitarist? Take a quick look at the British charts before you start to snicker—as I write this it’s number two. And climbing.

I suppose I should mention Blackmore’s two neato instrumentals that close each side of the LP. Side one has this great slide guitar piece not unlike Jeff Beck (yet another whose ego has become more yminous than his feedback) caught underwater, and the album’s

coup de grace is Blackmore noodling around the first part of Beethoven’s Ninth. And you thought that the Vanilla Fudge demolishing “Moonlight Sonata” was hot. I know what you’re saying: Blackmore plays Beethoven and Beethoven...

.. .Anyway, “Can’t Happen Here” is as good as “I Surrender” and will knock the proverbial socklets off anyone who gets in its way, “Midtown Tunnel Vision” is a great title fora song, and Joe Lynn Turner vibrates those vocal cords as well as Blackmore can vibrato those long, leanin’ notes. And, as if all this wasn’t enough, there’s almost NO MENTION OF SEX on this album, which means that we have finally entered into a new age of metal angst. Too old to copulate, but never to old to rock ’ n’ roll. Right on, Ritchie!

Although this approach seems to have evolved from Eno’s continuing —1

desire to create non-self-conscious lyrics (the problem of creating lyrics whose meanings, intended or not, won’t distract from the music is solved by not creating the lyrics), the dexterity with which the tapes are juggled and land neatly in place is impressive in a way which draws the attention away from any overall impact the music might have. So one problem is solved and another, similar one is created. Also, the found lyrics result in the songs seeming a little slight, not on the sense of light, floating ambient textures (the sound is as densely rhythmic as you could want) but the ambiguity of the lyrics of Remain In Light (or even better, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)) are infinitely preferable to the documentary scraps used here.

Does it sound like a drag? Well it isn’t, really. It’s always interesting, even when it sounds too contrived, and two of the cuts are particularly effective: “The Jezebel Spirit,” a genuine exorcism set against an appropriately ominous thump and clatter (highly danceable too), and “Moonlight In Glory,” an eerie piece featuring The Moving Star Hall Singers of Sea Islands, Georgia and a voice wailing like the lonesome spirit of humanity, “Moooon.. .o the moon.”

Overall, this album strikes me as a clever and interesting but, vyith the two exceptions just mentioned, unaffecting experiment. But clever and interesting is more than a lot of albums offer and this one is recommended even if listening to it is like watching a good trick—a great trick, even—that dazzles and involves but ultimately doesn’t mean enough.

Richard C. Walls

SMOKEY ROBINSON Being With You (Tamla)

MARVIN GAYE In Our Lifetime (Tamla)

These albums are blueprints, for romantic strategies. Hearing them together is like eavesdropping on both halves of a double date, comparing style of seduction.

Smokey, emotional purist. A literate kind of guile. A heart of butter. “I don’t care about anything else but being with you.” Marvin, snake-oil salesman expounding on the ontology of lust. Elmer Gantry on the make. Rhythm and sin, as opposed to melody and love. Faced . with pain, Gaye is most likely to attribute it to moral accountability, to Adam’s fall; Robinson may weep over love gone sour, but probably wouldn’t turn it into a religious argument.

Put another way: Being With You is marked with the rapturous possibilities and elegance of expression that characterized the finest 60’s work of the Miracles. Three of the four Robinson originals—the title song, “You Are Forever,” and “If You Wanna Make Love (Come ’Round Here)”—are temperamentally and lyrically akin to such indestructible songs as ‘Til Try Something New,” “More Love” and “If You Can Want.” In Our Lifetime is a continuation of the post-Shaft, pre-disco free-form funk of the early 70’s, a return to the sociologically aware eroticism of What’s Goin’ On and Let’s Get It On. The groove is the thing.

It’s almost always been so. Compare songs as old (two decades!) as “Shop Around” and “Pride And Joy.” Smokey Robinson’s songs were built on clever metaphorical conceits, Marvin Gaye’s on infectious repetition; Robinson’s on heart-stopping vocalese, Gaye’s on production energy. (I’ve alway thought that if Smokey’s talent for phrasing and construction were applied to Gaye’s technique, the results would have been not unlike “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” Is it a coincidence that that is still Gaye’s greatest record?)

What they’re up to now is an extension. Even when they’re saying almost the same thing, the difference is in the approach: Gaye’s “Love Me Now Or Love Me Later” traces the reasoning behind sexual desire back to God’s creation of good and evil and then says “Your decision is free/Don’t you want toi be with me?” Robinson’s “If You Wanna Make Love”: “If you wanna make more than conversation/ Come ’round here.”

There is some irony in the fact that Marvin Gaye, who was handled by various songwriters and producers dyring the Motown machine glory days of the early and mid 60’s, took total control over his records during the last ten years, while Smokey Robinson,, creative cog at various times behind the Temptations, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Supremes (minus Diana) and, of course, the Miracles, has put his newest network in outside hands. Robinson produced only one song on Being With You (the rest were done by George Tobin in a tame MOR manner) and wrote but half of the eight (one, a cautionary calypso, “Food For Thpught,” is negligible). “Who’s Sad,” composed in emulation of the Smokey school of smiles-masking-heartbreak (and lifting its opening line straight from Bacharach and David’s “Walk On By”), is the best of the ringers; “I Hear The Children Singing,” pious pap about finding the child inside the man, is the worst.

Being With You is something of a slip-up after 1980’s semi-miraculous Warm Thoughts (in a barren year, 1 gratefully accepted Smokey’s resurgence as a personal gift); In Our Lifetime is a snap back after the refracted bitterness of Here, My Dear. It’s a spooky album, from its cover illustration—Angel Gaye facing Devil Gaye across a table in the clouds, with tanks and leaking nuclear plants below—to its menacing mixture of fire and brimstone, sexual aggression, percolating music and Gaye’s weirdly hesitant singing. Gaye has a complex line on carnality with a conscience. Accept the pleasure, accept the pain. Smokey may have* to dance to keep from crying; Gaye instructs us to dance in service of God (“Praise”), to head off the apocalypse (“Love Party”). His raj5 is like “To His Coy Mistress”: make love -before your fate is sealed, there’s no time to waste.

While Gaye is dealing in demonology, explicating revelations and prophesies for his lover-to-be (you can almost hear him saying, “Let’s pray before we do if’), Robinson is celebrating some of the oldest victories in pop scripture: love over public opinion, love over time. “I’ve heard the warning voice from friends and my relations/They tell me all about your heartbreak reputation.” “Time changes, rearranges mountains and kings, everything/But you are forever.” For two-thirds of my life, I’ve believed in the gospel according to Smokey. It hasn’t worked all the time, but I still figure it’s worth a shot.

Mitchell Cohen

BOOMTOWN RATS Mondo Bongo (Columbia)

Well, All Right! My editor hands me perfect fodder for a great, or at least potentially great, rock review, a la the Britpop New Wave. Yes: it is time to think hard about that part of Great Britain’s cream-o’-the-crop, the BOOMTOWN RATS. Okay. (All you publicists for Columbia out there listening? Check out this concept by just another poor American hack, which I’ll entitle as follows...)

N Y. CAT DIGS U.K. RATS . Although it almost sounds like a sportswriting title, it is a good way to reveal one fact o’ this new journalism disciple’s life. Of course I live with a cat—a little punk-kitty I sometimes call Spike (that is, when she tears up my favorite Sitting chair and wears her real tuff black leather, spiked collar).

Believe it or not, this wonder-kitty is the most discriminating critic in my home. I know, you’re probably asking yourself: Just what the hell does a feline know about all the frill-elements that go into making, marketing and reviewing records these days? Such as:

1) The people in a given group being good (or at least interesting looking.

2) Cover art and photography (as is the case with the Boomtown Rats and Mondo Bongo, Spike-kitty would have to hand the judgment back oyer to me, so I’ll say, yeah, this B-Rats group does well on all counts thus far. Hbwever, I did notice a tendency to look D-E-V*0ish.),

3) Production, and

4) Music theory. So what could a cat know?

Really, to you this whole concept probably does sound ridiculous and preposterous, but.../ basically do believe rfhat cats have a definite aversion or inclination to rodents. And, since I know I’m right about my cat’s critical expertise and I am an Anglophile, I’d sooner play the BOOMTOWN RATS for her to review instead of the GOOD RATS, n’est-ce pas?

Okay. Here goes, I’m about to reveal whether this Spike cat likes the Rats. At first listen to Mondo Bongo, dear Spike’s dainty ears perked crazily. She was inflamed with the sound of jungle drums and the mambo/reggae/Brazil beat... you should’ve been there to see her tear my place to ' shreds on the opening cut, “Mood Mambo.” For the remainder of side one, she was frantic! Hence, let’s safely say that Mondo Bongo is a difficult listen at first (like so many great new records by people like Elvis Costello, Adam and the Ants, and Squeeze, even).

However, by side two, the little cat had calmed her kitty-self down perceptibly, enjoying most of the tracks—especially “The Elephant’s Graveyard,” “Don’t Talk To Me,” “Hurt Hurts,” and the premier FM-radio oriented cut from the LP, “Up All Night.” (Too bad there’s nothing like the grandiose beauty of “I Don’t Like Monday^,” but then, why should an artist or group be expected to sound totally representative?!) Here, on this new album, the cat and I could hear influences as broad and various as Ultra vox and the Kinks (An ultra-bizarre snippet of a song closes Mondo Bongo on side two that’s kinda Kinks, so—hey!).

... It’s just too bad that Spike didn’t tag along to see ’em live, as the Boomtown Rats are always a great, robust group in concert...

CONCLUSION: Though cats might not know much about music, mine is certainly keen on the Rats. With critical surety, I highly recommend most people who like this sort of thing to buy the album, get' a kitty-cat, and witness the amazing effect of Rats music on domesticated pets. (Beasts.)

V.D' Arcangelo

FUNKADELIC Connections And Disconnections (Lax)

This is starting to get funny. In 79, one-time Parliament-Funkadelic drummer Jerome Brailey declared a Mutiny On The Mamaship, casting his former boss, George Clinton, in the strictly off-stage role of Captain Bligh. Two years later, here come Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas, original members of the Parliamentfunkadelicment Thang before boltiqa around 1976. It took ’em five years to assemble ’Connections And Disconnections but assemble it they have. To them, Clinton is no less than the Wicked Witch of the West (which means they’re ripping off the Fifth Estate, as well as...); what’s more, the trio have dubbed themselves Dr. Funk, a transparent and witless cop of Clinton’s Dr. Funkenstein persona. Dreary? You bet.1

And as Ernest Evans once put it, “There’s more, much more.” Not content to ransack concepts they were never more than mouthpieces for, Haskins, Simon & Thomas are apparently believers in “Once A Funkadelic, ,,always...” and have dubbed their band thusly. Legally, their terra seems to be firma ’nuff. And you thought “How Do You Sleep” was bad.

Looksee-value-wise, that’s about as far as this platter goes, although I don’t mean to mininjize it. Sure, an ex-manager of Fleetwood Mac may have once decided he was F Mac and sent four or five bozos on the road to spead his gospel, but they never got to make a record. The Fakedelics have risen a class above that, though that’s all the class they’ve got; Con And Discon is as bilious as it is humorless and it’s both of those a-plenty. For the most part, these self-proclaimed Phunklords are too busy tearing down Clinton to remember to tear it up. They waste their best joke on a fadeout: A JFK imitator/paraphraser states, “It’s not what you can do for funk, it'what the funk can do for you.” The second best yukker is left to the predictably ersatz-Clinton liner notes. Pay particular attention CREEM editors: “We would like to give a Super Special Thanks to Canada for her courageous a'nd daring rescue of six American diplomats during the month of January 1980 in Iran. We Love You Canada.” Musically, there’s none of the wonderful bombarding electrons production of the real Funkadelic; no locals on top of vocals on top of handclaps on top of screaming guitars on top of that beat. A smoker of a guitar solo opens “Come Back” and that’s the peak of excitement here.

For all the P-Funk sub-divisions, there hasn’t been an honest-t’G Funkadelic album since 1979, though that’ll have been remedied before this reaches print. The sleeve of Clinton & Co.’s pre-release 45, “The Electric Spanking Of War Babies,” put it this way: “We of the P-FUNK Uncle Jam’s Army have the reserves of Neutron Funkativity to render asunder the flunkfunk musical artillery of even, generic alumni drones/clones into blamflam atoms!” Or, as the singers sing it, “You can walk a mile in my shoes, but you can’t dance the step in my feet.”

Ira Kaplan

THE BRAINS Electronic Eden (Mercury)

It takes a certain amount of nerve for a rocker to even admit he has brains, much less, name his band the Brains. It’s true that rock thrives on diversity, but it’s also true that the I-wanna-ball-you-baby and the youbroke-my-heert-you-evilbitch schools of songwriting remain the most popular. Not that the Brains come off high brow hoity-toity— there are no Marxian analyses of makeup or treatises on the secret activities of stamp collections to be found on either of their albums— but they’re not afraid to keep their eyes open and twist a few cliches around if they have to.

And not just wordwise either; their originality carries right through to their sound. Rather than jumping on any stylistic bandwagon, they’re cutting their own course, right across fashion’s boundaries. Which is to say that they’ve got more crunch than the Cars or Talking Heads, more drive than Devo or Gary Numan, and more directness than Styx or Kansas, yet they don’t sound radically “different.” This leaves ’em open to a potentially big audience, but also leaves ’em open to defectors who define their tastes by what they don’t like. That’s life; it sounds to me like these guys are just playing what they feel instead of thinking about how to fit into the Big Playlist In The Sky.

So the playing is fine and the production’s a step forward from their debut, but the Brains on Electronic Eden do fall prey to the sophomore jinx when it comes to the material itself. The stuff on side one, especially “Hypnotized,” is very well-crafted but seems a bit hollow; frontal lobe Tom Gray has proven himself a potentially heavy duty songwriter and here he’s-come up a little short.

Fortunately, he finishes strong, with tunes like the sarcastic “House Of Cards” and “Little Girl Gone,” which strews clues across several verses before ending up in the air, evidently a common situation with him. But the closest he comes to a classic is “Heart In The Street.” The opening (conscious or unconsscious?) cop from “Heroin” introduces the theme of media addiction fighting it out with disappointment in the “real world” and the way Gray sings the chorus—“Jesus Christ/Can’t we do anything right?/What’s the matter with you?/What’s the matter with me?”—with everything he’s got never fails to send shivers or recognition up my spine.

These Brains aren’t dumb but they’re not overly cerebral either; as long as they don’t lobotomize themselves to go after mass acceptance, they’ll be welcome in my play pile anyday.

Michael Davis

ELLEN FOLEY Spirit Off St. Louis

(Epic-Cleveland International)

On the back of Spirit Of St. Louis and on the inner sleeve photos, Ellen Foley projects an attitude of fetching vulnerability; a pensive lass enamored of tender emotions, tentatively willing to risk having her heart broken at a moment’s notice. A regular fool for romance. You’d never know this was the same shrieking siren that wreaked havoc on Meat Loafs tuna casserole charisma by the dashboard light. Or that,, more recently, she nearly nagged Ian Hunter into wrapping his shades around her throat in the middle of “We Gotta Get Out Of Here.” Truly, Ellen Foley could’ve been the subject of one of Bobby Vee’s more philosophical treatises: devil or angel?

Actually, she’s a little of both, the kind of woman Don Henley’s been searching for all these nights. Nowadays, Ellen’s spoken for—in fact, Mick Jones has been so smitten with her charms (musical and otherwise) that he produced Spirit Of St. Louis. (The credit actually reads: “Produced by my boyfriend” —how’s that for head-over-heels sappiness?)

And where main squeeze Mick goes, Joe, Paul and Topper are a cinch to follow. That’S right, fans, the Clash, Mickey Gallagher, and fellow Blockhead Davey Payne, even Sandinista! guest star, Tymon Dogg, are all over this damn record. In addition, there’s half a dozen brand new Strummer-Jones numbers and three others are penned by the redoubtable Mr. Dogg. It?s a wonder that Foley managed to squeeze in one of her own songs.

But for all the chefs cooking up this broth, it’s still Ellen’s show and it’s practically a pleasure to listen to about half the time. Gone is the emotionally histrionic bombast she so flagrantly revelled in on Nightout. Instead, we have Ellen-as-low key-chanteuse, a communicator of subdued but poignant feelings.

Sometimes it works. “The Shuttered Palace” is the opening enticer, sounding a bit like early Marianne Faithfull visiting Astrud Gilberto for a day in Ipanema, and T. Dogg’s “Beautiful Waste Of Time” saunters along quite marvellously. (The other two Dogg efforts, “Game Of A Man” and “Indestructible” have their alluring moments too—maybe the next album should be called Ellen Sings Tymon )', Foley’s own “Phases Of Travel”, rocks with a glowing propulsion. And the renewal of that past blast “How Glad I Am” is seductively ingratiating.

And sometimes it fails miserably. Most of the Joe-Mick songs are something less than mind-boggling, let alone rug-cutting. “The Death Of The Psychoanalyst Of Salvador Dali” and “Theatre Of Cruelty” are more weighty than their titles, if that’s possible..’ I’m surprised they weren’t able to cram these cast-offs onto Sandinista!, that bloated monument to gargantuan excess/ Other rejects include “M.P.H.,” which runs on fumes, and “In The Killing Hour,” minordeague angst set to a military marching beat. Most disastrous is an English-speaking version qf “My Legionnaire,” an Edith Piaf agonizer in which Ellen sounds like she’s in possession of both the legionnaire and the disease that goes with him.

Here we go again: the Carlene Carter Syndrome. Half decent, half ho-hum. Better go back to being an excitable girl, Ellen. I’d rather you shout than snooze.

Craig Zeller

PHIL COLLINS Face Value (Atlantic)

Taking a temporary leave from Genesis’ sensory deprivation tank, Phil Collins reveals on his first solo album that he has more talent than most reasonable people have been led to believe. With Genesis, one was tempted to diagnose Collins as a premature narcoleptic, since his shy little yap of a voice seemed all-too-eager to bed down with the wall of squishy synths, wimped-out guitar and enormous pillow production. His soft, furry vocals seemed potentially likeable but were too often camouflaged by the snowy-light, overlong song structures.

What makes his solo album work is not just better material but also a less congested production job and some good arrangements. He uses jazzy pop funk to make the more up-paced songs bounce (courtesy of the Earth, Wind and Fire horns), and some sparser backdrops to give the squishy songs edge and intimacy. Collins’ voice in these new settings becomes an enjoyable sappy instrument with a coziness that is no longer cloying.

The pithiest slap in the face of the “mother group, though, is the jazzy ^ re-do of “Behind The Lines” which S also appeared on last year’s Duke.

K With Genesis it bordered on Christopher Cross slushyille. Here it’s as good a piece of slick pop funk** as any recent Doobies hit. The real surprise, though, is the success of the ballads, like “In The Air Tonight,” which allows the voice and percussion to carry the tune, or “The Roof Is Leaking,” whose slight musical accompaniment gives Collins the breathing room he needs to put across his sweet, modest sentiments.

Collins fails when he gets too ambitious, like the over-arranged “Hand In Hand,” which includes a pallid vocal chorus of impressionable youths enlisted from The Church Of Los Angeles (which from the sound of these kids is probably a front for the Moonies). Also overstepping the bounds is “If Leaving Me Is Easy,” the sort of pseudo-stylish jazzy blues that will be embraced only by those who used words like “class” and “chic” without irony. His one cover here is a bomb as well—the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows," which sounds as murky as the worst of Genesis.

For the most part, though, Collins establishes himself as a good lightweight pop crooner who can be forgiven his occasional gushiness— he actually has the nerve to end the album with a whispering acapella chorus of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” For Phil Collins, schmaltz, more than love, conquers all. But within his limited realm, he makes that sentiment seem not so bad after all.

Jim Farber

THE NUNS

(BompJ

Punk dead? Some of the other rockmags next to us on the stands would only hope so, while even us precociously hip boys & girls at CREEM stumble unwittingly into writing obits for the dog-collared critter now and then. I know I’ve tossed off allusions to punk’s demise in at least a couple of my recent moody-for-modems outings. %

Okay, so punk didn’t conquer the rock ’n’ roll universe, the way we Blondie/ Ramones/ Pistols/Richard Hellasized beings hoped it would, back in ’77. But the good news is that with horrible reactionaries like Christopher Cross now dominating the public’s gramophone consciousness, there’s still infinite opportunity (or infinite space, maybe I should say) for stylistic anarchy to flourish. Punk revolution is dead, long live the punk revolution.

Take the Nuns, as a for instance. You probably knew about them even before you’d heard of Devo, right? Ah yes, “The Nuns,” one more of those blazing-with-punkrock’s-millennial-promise names we were always reading about in the heady days of ’77. Provocative little pix of the Nuns’ blonde singer/ keyboardist Jennifer Mire, were at least as common as those of darkly demonic Siouxsie Sioux, in the hyperventilating fanzines of that era. But, just as with the cruciallyimminent Ms. Sioux, readilyaccessible slices of the Nuns’ vinyl were overlong in arriving.

Don’t a$k me why the Nuns stuck around their Frisco nunnery so long before recording this debut LP— that’s just par for the arbitrary nature qf the r’n’r beast—but thank whatever crazy circumstances made The Nuns so white-hot ferocious an album. Nearly all the songs here were conceived during the earliest outrageousness of 70’s punk, and are highly archetypal of that style, but these versions weren’t recorded until 1980, when the Nuns long since knew the songs inside out, after years of performing them.

I was taken in by all those early snapshots of the Jennifer Marlower ish Jennifer Miro—1 expected an icily continental chanteuse like Nico—but her singing’s actually as transcendentally thrift-shop tawdry (i.e., neat) as Deborah Harry’s. But even more exciting news on The Nuns is that Miro’s only one of the twisted sisters in this abbey; there’s also a self-contained, dark-haired, male, Ramoneish punk band (not “behind,” nor “supporting,” but more like “Simultaneous with” Miro) among the Nuns.

The Nuns is almost equally divided between songs which Miro wrote and sings lead on, and songs written by the guys and sung by Jeff Olener or Ritchie Detrick, but again (thank the Mutha Superior!) the programmed schizophrenia comes together with magnificent explosiveness. Miro’s keyboards and Pat Ryan’s chain-drive guitars and Jeff Raphael’s headlong (speedier than Motorhead) drums are prominent on all the cuts (except Miro’s neo-Peggy Leeish “Lazy,” just as fine anyhow.) Wow! Reva-reva-reva guitars, frantically desperate rhythms, sarcastic lyrics, neck-snapping chord changes: everything 1 loved to death in punk still exists here in The Nuns, in this chance meeting of Blondie and the Dead Boys, on a free-clinic dissecting table.

1 won’t elucidate the Nuns’ lyrics at any length. If you listened to enough punk back in the throbbing era when Sid Vicious still walked the earth and "Cheetah Chrome” was a near-household word, you’ll know ahead of time exactly what tunes like “Media Control” or “You Think You’re The Best” or the dazzling “Child Molester” are all about: raw, barely-focused, endlessly-rebellious anger, which we certainly can use more of in these anal-retentive times. Sometimes I’m not sure which sucks worse in 1981—the politics or the pop—but I know for a, fact that as • long as Jackson Browne’s still drawing his tortured breath over your radio, you need the Nuns’ album!

Richard Riegel

QUINCY JONES The Dude (A&M)

Estelle is an inveterate party-goer (“Got to get down, yeah yeah”). Having seen it all (“I stood on line for the john ahead of Jackie O and Barbara Mandrell once”), she is able—as she likes to say—to tell “the wheat from the calf.” Expensive and lots of stars don’t necessarily mean a" good time to Estelle: “You know, [James, all-star affairs can be just so much clutter.” So when she called and started carrying on about “QuincyJ onesandRodT empertonandPattiAustinandStevieWonderandLouisJ ohnsonandH erbieH ancockandSteveLukatherand...,” I figured it sounded like sumfum and asked for the details.

“Baby, you are one lucky man, because even though you didn’t make the party—I’m sure your invite got lost in the mail—you can listen to Quincy Jones’ latest LP, The Dude, which might well be the party soundtrack, except without the chips V dips ’n’ another-drinkwould-be-lovely ambient chatter. Now, there’s no denying that QJ has done plenty of groovy stuff, including—I’m inclined to saymarrying The Mod Squad’s evercool and ultra-zoned Peggy Lipton. And the streak he’s been tiding these last couple of years has been so hot I have to shake my wrists and fan my face just thinking of it. I challenge you to produce a human being who isn’t into Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall. And just how many people do you know who don’t shake their bootys to Brothers Johnson records? But I do want to point out that from time to time, even Quincy Jones has been known to come up with a real mess. You don’t remember the movie version of The Wiz? Well.

“So the only thing I was certain of when I reached for my first martini was that most of the usual crowd was in attendance, plus many, many other pros. One real old acquaintance ‘Toots' Thielemann was in Brussels, Belgium at the time; thanks to the wonders of modern technology and the magic of electronics, he sat in on a nice piece of instrumental light jazz, ‘Velas,’ playing harmonica and guitar with style and whistling strong enough and precisely enough to shatter Ella Fitzgerald’s glasses.

“Speaking of wonders and magic and future shock, I guess when Quincy told everyone to bring an instrument or two, some people couldn’t resist showing off their up-to-date-ness. There were so many syrithesizers, Yamahas and mini moogs and all—I mean, I knew this was 1981. Someone called Craig Hundley got the prize for best instrument; showed up with something called beam-microtonal tubulons. I was worried—1 mean music needs that human element. I thought: what is that beam-microwhatever thing—these are R&B aces, not Gary Numan devotees.

“But not to worry, honey, because everyone was really into partying, and after you check out The Dude, you will know that this was the best party I’ve been to in a long long long time--and I’m a native New Yorker, a natural party doll: Rod Temperton co-hosted with QJ; he brought along three can’t-stop dance tunes of his own, including ‘Somethin’ Special,’ which is, and sounds like his/Off The Wall.’ He was responsible for many of the arrangements; dig the swirl and jerk rhythms of ‘Turn The Action.’ And along with Quincy and Patti Austin, he introduced ‘The Dude,’ the street-wisest bad-ass in town. ‘I graduated from the college of the street/I got a Ph.D. in how to make ends meet/inflation in the nation don’t bother me/’Cause I’m a scholar with a dollar/You can plainly see.’ Miss Austin was kept pretty busy, too—arranging, working with a backup gang that couldn’t stop singing, and grabbing four leads for herself. I’ve been into that lady for a whije now, especially since she got a hold of that Squeeze tune ‘Another Nail In My Heart,’ and her voice has never sounded so clear and full of, uh, zip. Ooh, hang on the line a sec, James, let me shift my weary legs...

“...Anyhow, I could go on, but I see that Toni Tennille’s got June Lockhart on soon, and neither of us wants to miss that. That Quincy Jones, though. He gives some kind of dance party. Talk about mixing it all up and letting the soul flow. This man knows more about textures and layering and arranging than any interior designer or record producer 1 know. So his guests keep coming back for more and, I must admit, I only left the party because it was over. ‘Sister E-flat tomato, Brother B-flat/ balloon/Somethin’ funky’s goin’ down, better listen to my tune.’ Yessir. James, you ought to sue the Post Office for losing that invite.”

Jim Feldman

We Wizard Of Ozzie