THE WHO Face Dances (Warner Bros.)

So the new Who album has finally arrived and it isn’t great. Ah well, it’s no great disappointment either—but it depresses a little when these legendary groups keep releasing albums that are no longer earthshaking or life-changing or even particularly involving. ’Cause even if I’m willing to give up on the idea that there might be rock heroes, I’ll never be very happy with the loss. Still, it’s silly to get depressed about this—a great album from the Who at this point would be like...uh...well ...I’m reminded of the latter day Hitchcock releases, the post-Psycho ones, when each new movie was greeted with a mixture of benevolent disappointment, kneejerk reverence and, from the faithful, awesome leaps of faith which resulted in reams of heartfelt but unconvincing analysis...maybe constructing cross-artist analogies is hopelessly inane, but there’s worse ways of making a point, so here’s more...if The Who By Numbers is Pete Townshend’s Psycho, a stark reaffirmation of his basic virtues, hot on the heels of some epic works and seen thru a darkening glass of maturity and dread, then Quadrophenia is North By Northwest— shooting the works, not for the first time, combining a master’s touch with miscalculated indulgence—and Face Dances is Family Plot, which is to say not great, but much better than we have any right to expect at this point, especially since overfamiliarity with the artists’ best moves has rendered them almost meaningless (this is fun! Who Are You is Mamie ’cause only the faithful can find it in their hearts to praise it. Odds And Sods is / Confess...had enough?).

Having got that out of the way then, how good/bad is it? It’s not easy to write an enthusiastic review of a merely good album by this group (and it’s not encouraging to settle in for some serious listening— with pen and paper in hand for some serious note-taking—and find after the album is over that you’ve written “nice little song” ten times) but I’m still fond enough of these guys to want to leave you with an agreeable impression. So I’ll deal with the bad stuff first.

THE BAD STUFF: Only one song on this album is truly horrible and, given Townshend’s penchant for maudlin philosophizing and remorseful autobiography, that’s good bad news right off. The song is “How Can You Do It Alone” and it is, apparently, about masturbation, a subject Townshend dealt with years ago with touching wit (“Pictures Of Lily”). Here the song just bumps along with no clear point of view and an ambiguous hook—“How can you do it without any help/How can you do it all by yourself,” which may or may not be a comment on paradoxical relationships, existential angst, the absence of God. Either Way, it’s tiresome.

Another bad thing is the generally bland sound of the band. Altho rhythmically and melodically Townshend’s compositions are still sharp, they’re also entombed in slickly well-crafted arrangements. There’s only a couple of brief guitar solo spots, a few bars here and there, but there’s a lot of dramatic synthesizer touches if you like that sort of thing (sigh), and running-while-standingstill riffing (yawn), and decorative piano runs (jeez)...

THE GOOD STUFF: This may be a little perverse but I think that the two Entwistle numbers on this album are the best he’s done in a long time. He’s been a big disappointment for years now, having had the bad luck of debuting with two extraordinary songs (“Boris The Spider” and “Whiskey Man”), but fans of his snarling bleakness should be delighted with these two new offerings—“The Quiet One,” which is short, nasty and hard-driving, and breaks up the first side’s longeur admirably, and “You,” again characteristically bleak, but with a great bopping chorus.

Aside from the group’s nifty imitation of the Police on “Did You Steal My Money” (counterbalanced by their Wings imitation on “Don’t Let Go The Coat”), two other Townshend songs stand out— “Daily Records,” which is his latest autobiographical flash, an assurance that he’s still in the throes of his post-adolescent identity crisis—“I just don’t quite know how to wear my hair no more/No sooner cut it than they cut it even more/Got to admit that 1 created private worlds/Cold sex and booze don’t impress my little girls”—catchy little melody too, and “Another Tricky Day,” which is much better than the string of stale maxims that make up much of the lyrics might suggest. Here he employs a tried and true Who device, the one where the music drops down and Daltrey, in his most wistful voice, delivers a few lines of sad, sad song. This time around the words go, in part— “Another tricky day/another gently nagging pain...the world seems in a spiral/life seems such a worthless title.” It’s corny as hell, and it never fails to get to me.

That then is the latest unspectacular Who album. Of course the next one, due in 1984, could be fantastic, full of rock truths and the sweet relevance of yore. It’s still possible. You bet.

JUDAS PRIEST Point Of Entry (Columbia)

We here at the U.S. Dept. Of Weights And Measures have always welcomed the arrival of a new Judas Priest album. We resoundingly applaud both their professionalism and their consistency over time. I just know that when I put this disc on the Scale Of Heaviness...well, wait a minute, let me show you. See? A solid 8, just like all their other albums. Actually, to be • perfectly accurate, there have been a few times when they’ve surpassed an 8—I remember that the double-: barrelled feedback fusillade on the live version of “Sinner” almost hit 9.5—but that was an exception that proves the rule. Anyway, let me punch this in and I’ll be right with you:1

Yet another 8 for Judas Priest. Another testament to the tried and true [or, at the very least, the tried and tried]. Another statement on the potency of heavy metal rock ’n’ roll. Another example of what happens when two guitarists find the Optimum Crunch tone setting and decide never to change it.

There. Of course, things aren’t as easy around here as they used to be; there’s a lot more work involved than you might imagine. Besides filling out the Sonic Environmental Impact reports—which are a cinch this time around, since Point Of Entry offers no new sounds—we have to check carefully for new directions, determine What effects these will have an various demographics, and punch our projections into the computer banks.

Since we’ve already weighed the product, what we have to do is examine the packaging. First the album cover— now this is a relief. No black leather, no metal studs, ho surly grimaces. I probably shouldn’t mention this, but in the past we’ve had trouble keeping Judas Priest album covers in mint condition. A couple of the keypunch girls used to “borrow” them and take them down to the Ladies Lounge on their breaks and giggle over them. I remember when we got the Hell Bent For Leather cover back, not only did it smell funny but there were rude remarks lipsticked all over it. But this landscape won’t provoke any such disgusting behavior, I’m sure.

Now for the sleeve. What’s this—a lyric sheet? A Judas Priest lyric sheet? Hrnmrn, this could be interesting. No, ’fraid not... “You got it/I want it”...“I wanna go Hot Rockin’ ”.. .“Wind’s in my eyes/ The engine roars betwfeen my. thighs.” This may as well be Foghat; what ever happened to Rob Halford’s Marvel Comix Marquis de Sade pose? Whatever, it’s long gone now. Did his Father Confessor tell him to cool it? Did his accountant? That’ll make the Moral Majority happy, although it’ll also reduce Halford’s substantial Jerk Appeal considerably.

Well, it’s almost 5 o’clock. Let me punch the rest of this in and we can go get wasted. I’ll just leave the Scale set up the way it is; the new Iron Maiden album’s due in tomorrow.

Michael Davis

SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET Border Wave (Takoma)

If you haven’t already learned by personal experience, you can take my word for it: reunions generally bite the big one. I, for one, have no desire to see taped highlights of a Mickey Rooney ex-wives bash. Of course, if you’re a glutton for debilitating situations, you can always attend your high school reunion. That’s the place where you can let your jaw drop freely while you watch the teen dream you once lusted after in study hall wearily blow smoke in your face while she drunkenly bitches about the semiannual orgasm she enjoys with her stud of a husband. Try and discreetly derail all the class clown cronies who’ve just discovered iridescent leisure suits and eagerly await the chance to ram loophole life insurance policies down your throat. And give the last rites to a good buddy who ten years ago had a U.S. flag tattooed to his chest and now espouses the joys of daily marijuana intake.

The worst ones are those that get recorded for posterity, like those let’s - get - back - together-and-trashour-past efforts from such former stalwarts as the Animals, the Byrds, the Four Seasons and other numerous “comeback” cases too pitiful to mention. You can only go home again in your mind.

But hold the loco weed, because the Sir Douglas Quintet’s Border Wave is one time when one of these try-to-remember get-together actually works and I mean successfully! And no one’s more surprised or pleased than me that it does, ’cause I’m an exception-to-the-rule aficianado from way back.

This is actually the second time the Quintet has reformed, the first being Live Love, an average outing from 1977. That was just a warm-up for Border Wave though, which can safely take its place with such Quintet mainstays as Together After Five, 1 +1 +1 = 4, and The Return Of Doug Saldana. And it’s a perfect companion piece to last year’s marvelous The Best Of The Sir Douglas Quintet. Play ’em side by side and you’ll be more than happy to admit that the sunny side musicianship and rollicking good spirits that sparked Sir Doug’s work in the past are amply accounted for here.

T.V.O.D.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Struck By Video (Warner Special Products)

by Mitchell Cohen

Everybody talks about the effects that television has had on the new generation of rock ’n’ roll. Finally, there exists an album that does something about bringing that synthesis to vinyl-life. Organized by “editorial consultant” Claude Kirschner, and produced in London and New York by Nick Lowe and Giorgio Moroder, Struck By Video is warm, energetic evidence that where the roots of the rock of this decade are concerned, the Munsters are as influential as the Kinks or Phil Spector. It must have been an enormous undertaking, executing the cutting of ten different tracks by ten of today’s most significant bands and musicians, but the results are more thanworth it: this is a compilation that puts Times Square (not to mention No Nukes) to shame conceptually and musically. It is the first indispensible multi-artist disc of the 80’s.

From the moment that, after a “one-two-three-four” count-off from Dee Dee, Joey sings “Here’s the story/Of a man named Brady” backed by some of the most thunderous Ramones playing since Rocket To Russia, to the final rave-up version of “Car 54, Where Are You?” by David Johansen (the

way he punches' out the lyric “Brooklyn’s broken out in in fights!” is the epitome of his post-Dolls singing), Struck By Video is filled with epiphanies, with exciting moments that make crucial connections between rock stars and their cultural upbringing.

Highlights are numerous: The B-52’s’ jubilant “Patty Duke Theme” with Cindy’s exuberant chanting of “But Patty loves to rock and roll/A hot dog makes her lose control”; Eno’s instrumental melding of the music from The Dick Van Dyke Show and My Three Sons; Deborah Harry’s impeccable Dorthy Provine impression on “The Roaring Twenties,” as Blondie provides the first Eurodisco charleston backing. But above all stands the unanticipated duet of Elvis Costello and Linda Ronstadt, an inspiring pairing, on “Green Acres” that draws out performances both artists can be proud of: Linda yelping “Gimme Park Avenue!” Elvis retorting “The chores!” This is a natural new waveAOR-country crossover smash.

Less successful is Devo’s “The Addams Family,” which lacks the menace of the 'original, and similarly second-rate is the Clash’s well-meant homage, ’’The Monkees Theme” (inside word has it that Joe Strummer first asked iTthere was a song from his favorite show, The San Pedro Beach Bums); the intent is honorable, but they just don’t have the requisite snap. The most unexpectedly bizarre tracks are the Pretenders’ “The Love Boat”— Chrissie rocks out more than Jack Jones, but the material is probably unsalvageable in any hands—and a chugging live version of “Petticoat Junction” by the expanded Talking Heads.

In all, Struck By Video is a project that highlights the vitality, humor and eclectic approaches of modern rock. It’s a record that will last well beyond this year’s fashion. This is true and important prime time fusion. Don’t miss it.

This time around, the membership is three-fifths original. That means ace skin-hitter Johnny Perez is aboard for the rise, along with one of the great tag teams in rock ’n’ roll, Sir Doug Sahm himself and Augie “My organ can only hit high flying notes” Meyers. Speedy Sparks (bass) and Alvin Crow (guitar, vocals) make five. The only one missing is overlord Huey P. Meaux, but Craig Leon and Cassell Webb’s bright and beaming production work here is surely a tip of the ole stetson to Huey P.

Time to drag out an old cliche and one that I love: there’s not a bad cut in the bunch. Ten songs, ten winners, from non-nostalgic livewire covers (the Kinks’ “Who’ll Be The Next In Line” and the 13th Floor Elevators’ “You’re Gonna Miss Me”) to deliciously fresh originals (the title cut, the partying of “It Was Fun While It Lasted,” the Buddy Hollyish ravings of “Tonite, Tonite”). And so forth. My fave rave is “Revolutionary Ways” (a brand new remake of an old Quintet classic) where Doug very convincingly, states that he’s quite radical in his livin’, lovin’, walkin’ and talkin’. A Renaissance man for sure.

Yessir, Border Wave is just plain perfect for bopping, philosophizing, and blasting out of car windows while you yell: “Lay it on me one time, Augie!” at passing strangers. Shake ’em up; you’ll be glad you did.

Craig Zeller

THE LOUNGE LIZARDS (Editions E.G.)

More than 20 years ago TV was graced by its hippest private eye ever: Craig Stevens, the poor man’s Cary Grant, as Peter Gunn. Always well turned out—Ivy League suit, white shirt and tie, carefully barbered hair—Mr. Gunn brought order to the naked city with his unassailable, Himalayan cool. Somewhat less cool were the women: Pete’s patient chanteuse girlfriend Edie (Lola Albright) who, once a show, between sets, would get to grope Pete a little up on the roof and then look wistful as he went off to fight crime, and Mother (Hope Emerson), zaftig proprietress of the jazz club that bore her name and served as 'Pete’s informal office. Least cool was Herschel Bernardi, not yet a rich man, playing the carried cop confidante, Lt. Jacoby. To underline all the cool, Hammerin’ Hank Mancini, for his first miracle, turned bop into pap. “The Theme From Peter Gunn” was a heavy metal hit—trombones are very heavy. Clearly the coolest show on the tube.

You all remember cool I’m sure. Cool is what you were if, no matter how you fumbled with her buttons, the record on your Webcor was Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain. The quintessential cool joke was: Q. Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? A. No one. They’re waiting for Miles. Got it? Cool was sleek, understated, and bloated with a shared undercurrent of ironic content: the White Negro. Since rock ’n’ roll is most often concerned with explicit rather than implicit texts, the cool style has been more or less dormant for two decades; “Mony Mony” was wonderful but was not cool. That’s why the Beatles were “fab” and James Brown was “out of sight.”

The Lounge Lizards, whose first LP named after (who else?) themselves is on the hidden agenda here, are neo-cool; would-be inheritors of the sleeping tradition; purveyors of the new, new, superfrigid late-late show bop. But why, I wonder incredulously? Because no one else is, I answer myself wearily. Like all such aggregations, they have some plusses: the rhythm section of bassist Steve Piccolo and ex-Feelies drummer Anton Fi6r, .and some minuses: spite guitarist Arto Lindsay, who is mixed down most of the time (modesfeplus) by Miles’ own producer Teo Macero (definite plus). No one sings, which is a resounding plus and leaves room for a guest spot by Chris Connor or June Christie down the road. “Well You Needn’t” is a relaxed and humorous Monk tune that’s OK by me, but you won’t catch the Lounge Lizards being relaxed and humorous very often because the band has mastered cool jazz paradigm 1A, viz., unison riff leads to meltdown leads back to unison riff as if nothing happened. The boys are so proud of cracking this nifty formula that the record is full of examples. “Incident On South Street” starts with an ersatz Peter Gunn riff which leads inevitably to seriously unpleasant guitar abuse by Arto, their idiot savant manque, and then back to Peter Gunn. “Fatty Walks” substitutes West Side Story for Peter Gunn in the same pattern. “Wangling” goes from speedy imitation late bop to chaotic mush to speedy imitation late bop. Any number can play!

But now the big news—“Conquest Of Rar” (hip, light riffing), “I Remember Coney Island” (the chase scene), and “You Haunt Me” (the rooftop embrace) are proof positive that these guys are ready to provide the soundtrack for Peter Gunn Cheats Social Security, a two hour blockbuster I’m producing. I see the Lizards as the house band at Mother’s and I’ll give John Lurie his big above-ground break with a modest supporting role as well—a shoulder for Edie to cry on when Pete’s away. Maybe Debbie Harry should play Edie. Just the tonic for early 80’s ennui. Craig Stevens, call your agent.

Jeff Nesin

OZZY OSBOURNE Blizzard Of Ozz _ •(Jet)_

This may be a little hard for Cliff Richard to take, but his fellow Xian, Ozzy Osbourne, has by now become the English Elvis Presley. As in Elvis’ latter-years, live-in Graceland decadence, when his payroll was topheavy with sycophants and scarves, and he practiced instantaneous rock criticism by shooting Bob Goulet right off his TV screen.

I caught Black Sabbath live when they “headlined” for Bob Seger here a few' years back, and noticed, that Ozzy was getting a bit -tubby then; as you can see on the cover of this new LP, he’s now wearing capes and fringes (tres Elvis) to hide how waisted he is. Not that I’m musically prejudiced against the chubbette persuasion—Mama Cass and Leslie West have always been welcome on my turntable—but someone who’s consistently written such selfrighteous lyrics as Ozzy should observe the Biblical admonition to let those who are without 20 stone cast out the first sins.

Maybe Ozzy put the pounds on when he was sitting around his T-shirt-shaped castle after quitting Black Sabbath, getting nervous and depressed watching Ronnie James Dio take the Sabs higher on the charts than they’d been in years. Either way, he’s fighting back with the British heavy metalleers’ fave recreational drug (& the one that put Dio into his current success), incest. It’s true, Blizzard OfOzz is so metallically incestuous it’ll cause Marie to donate her polyester diaphragm to the Smithsonian and Donny to will the identifiable parts of his body to Oscar' Mayer. They could never keep up with Ozzy’s new (old) lineup: Bob Daisley (ex-Rainbow), Lee Kerslake (exUriah Heep), and Randy Rhoads (a Yank, but where do you think the limeys got the idea for H/M in the first place?).

Taken as a group, the songs on Blizzard Of Ozz range from half-assed to mediocre. Black Sabbath were always so onedimensional (in their grass-rooted hippie fundamentalism) that you had to wear 3-D glasses to hear all the lyrics. Their near-classic Master Of Reality achieved that status only because it was released into the incredibly vacuous rock scene of the early 70’s. But on Blizzard Of Ozz, Mr. Osbourne sounds like he doesn’t even care about challenging the sitting-honker Black Sabbath, let alone catching up with the light-years-more imaginative postpunk bands spearheading English rock now.

The new band manages some bracing (Sabbathian, of course) zizza-zizza rhythms here and there, but Osbourne s patented dronewhine vocals are so meandering and uncommitted and ultimately lazy that the songs end up falling flat on their pasty faces. As in “Goodbye To Romance,” where Ozzy sounds exactly like Gilbert O’Sullivan did the night he found a piece of gristle in the hot dog his aunt had fixed him.

Lyrical themes on B. O.O. include the tried & tired love-one-anotheror-else (“Revelation”), characteristic lunkhead mystification (“I Don’t Know”), and Ozzy’s continuing fascination with the heavy subject of DEATH (as long as no one gets hurt). In “Mr. Crowley,” Ozzy sounds jealous of old Aleister the C.

. precisely for his Zeppelinesque good fortune in having kicked off first, while “Suicide Solution” tempts Mr. O sorely, but 10 to 1 he’s not Ian Curtis-enough to do it. Naaah, he’ll go quietly, like the Elvis he’s become.

Anyone for a midnight game of handball?

Richard Riegel

GARLAND JEFFREYS Escape Artist _(Epic)

To his credit, Garland Jeffreys swung streetside long before the Boss—Springsteen was still tuning his catgut back in ’73 when Garl unleashed his big-city-r&r anthem “Wild In The Streets.” He was duly acclaimed a genuine urban poet, some kinda rarity in those days when people like Elliott Murphy and David Johansen were passing for rock saviors.

Now it’s eight years and five albums after and where is our Garl? All too predictably, he’s padding those same mean streets, now crowded with Bossmen and runaways from Indiana, dozens of loose Dolls and junior Dyls. “She had the heart of a Siamese cat and he played the part of an acrobat” sings Gariy and you know what you’re in for: mystery kids, street walkin’ women, black Cadillacs, concrete and steel. Jeffreys has been reading Willie Nile’s mind, maybe?

Music-wise, you’ve got E Streeters Federici and Bittan, Rumor-mongers Bodnar and Goulding. You’ve got Louie Reed, Gilda’s hubby, Johansen, Big Youth and Linton Kwesi Johnson and guess what? Together, they make the sweetest, most unremarkable kind of AOR grist imaginable.

Garl reprises “96 Tears” (why?), revives “Wild In The Streets” (as “Mystery Kids”), apes El C on “Modern Lovers” and “True Confessions,” and rocks rocksteady on four or five sides. Plus, he throws in that bonus EP, dedicates one song to Lennon and the rest to the continuing struggle against racism.

Who was it wrote “Look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did/God knows when but you’re doin’ it again”? Somebody get me a D.L. Byron.

Gene Sculatti

ROBIN LANE & THE CHARTBUSTERS Imitation Life (Warner Bros.)

Passions can’t be rationalized. ’m just an idiot over you/When I see you I fall apart.” No matter how much smarter than our emotions we think we are, pangs of the heart are still known to knock the sense out of us. “I built my heart upon solid rock,” Robin Lane sings in her husky post-folkie voice, “so that I would be sur6 it would stand.” Then, of course, the rains come and wash the whole shebang into the river.

Analytical and shrewd one minute, a wreck of bungled-up feelings the next: too bad Lane couldn’t call her band the Modern Lovers (there are two former members of Jonathan Richman’s group in the Chartbusters). With her wounded-but-wise sensibility, Robin Lane could easily become a hip musical touchstone for people of a certain age and’ certain romantic temperament who have spent a certain amount of time in Boston (or in the non-geographical idea of Boston, which is a whole other subject).

Imitation Life, a record of formidable drama-rock, is just a little panicky, and probably isn’t the album that will do it for her. Compared to the Chartbusters’ splendid three-song (“When Things Go Wrong,” “Why Do You Tell Lies,” “The Letter”) debut EP, or to last year’s WB LP, it sounds too blatant an attempt at rock contemporaneity. They’ve surrendered some of the formal folk-rock restraint that made Lane’s obsessive explorations so mysteriously captivating. Lane is a rock balladeer; frenzy doesn’t really suit her.

■ Fervent expression of generalized [anxiety does. So do the honeyed 'melodies and sentiments of “Say Goodbye” (“Isn’t it a strange way your eyes look into mine,” she softly shirelles, “whenever I want to turn away”) and “For You” (“When I go to sleep at night I dream about you/ But you’re not here when I’m not dreaming”). If the music sounded earlybird-like before, this time out it moves the calendar up about 18 months and makes a Back Bay-Bay Area connection by approximating the first stages of Northern California flash: pre-Grace Jefferson Airplane, pre-Columbian Big Brother. Lane and . the Chartbusters take the electric stirrings of folkadelia and blend it with herky-jerky new waveisms on tracks like the moderately frantic “No Control” (from what I gather, the song is about the singer’s eating habits, fave colors, friends from outside of town, and a guy named Fred with x-ray eyes, who is something of a calming influence in times of stress).

Some of Imitation Life has the flaky fudginess of a hash brownie; some is direct and intense. When Lane, a capital-C Christian, sings “Send Me An Angel,” her plea can be taken literally (the fact that I relate to the lyric on more secular terms only proves that I’m a heathen beyond redemption). “I’d Rather Be Blind” is a non-preachy response to being faced with pervasive misery, and the old-fashioned instrumentation for her pleas and paeans to be heard. It's OK to be emotionally adrift—who isn’t?—but things are confusing enough these days without having to wade through modified raga-guitars.

Mitchell Cohen

CARL WILSON (Caribou)

Decisions, decisions.I could make this a progressive review, but then again I really can’t: never heard B. Boys’L.A. orSummerA/iueunlessI did once and forgot ’em completely. Might opt for the famous brother angle, but nope: I’m sure I never grabbed an earful of any Tom Fogerty or Chris Jagger or even Dennis Wilson platters (fond 'memories, however, of Scaffold’s “Thank U Very Much”). That means this’s gonna be concerned with merits, of which Carl Wilson has semi-precious few.

The Wit and Wisdom of Myrna Smith, Volume 1: “Am I the kind who could run over my brother/ Just to get where I should be?” No Carl, no chance and who’s Myrna Smith anyway? Well, in addition to penning all the lyrics to CW, she’s singing proof that Carl has yet to conquer the psych-confirmed insecurities of being a little bro. The chief pleasure of this alb ought to’ve been getting to hear that voice without the annoying distraction of, say, Mike Love. (There wasn’t much hope of getting better material than a Beach Boys LP, after all.) Instead, Carl has Ms. Myrna in the Curses, Foiled Again role, so just when you’re ready (maybe) to forgive the nondescript un-chick of the opener, “Hold Me” and celebrate that v., you get the slap-in-face revelation that it’s a masc/fem duet. Slap, the second: “Bright Lights,” “Hold Me” all over again, with Smith on backg. vocals. Slap, the third: “What You Gonna Do About Me?”—not a Dino Valenti cover. Slap, the fourth: “The Right Lane,” a distressing and predictably slower Jeff to the Eagles’ Mutt-ode to Life In... The Wit and Wisdom of Myrna Smith, Volume 2: “Am I the kind to be content in my splendor/After all the trouble gettin’ on the freeway?”

Nobody could be blamed for not wanting to slap on side two. Do it anyway and you find the one great moment on Carl Wilson, right at the end of “Heaven,” itself already a vast improvement, a ballad. The song has died down seemingly for good when all of a sudden it picks up again, with a breath-impeding chorale of overdubs, oohing and aahing and ba-baing lovelier than anyone has a right to expect from a Wilson anymore. And there’s even a band-mark to help you spot it! The [<descent to Earth is quick and mundane with “The Grammy.” The Wit and Wisdom of Myrna Smith, Volume 3: “We thought you wanted to be a star/Who the hell do you think you are?” (So good, they left it off the lyric sheet. L^/ric sheet.)

A1 Jardine, don’t get any bright ideas.

Ira Kaplan

KATE& ANNA McGARRIGLE French Record (Hannibal)

Ah, what’s the use? If you’re the kind of geek who reads this rag, there’s virtually no hope that you’d understand, much less have a taste for (a) subtlety, (b) intelligence, (c) irony, (d) delicacy, or, mainly, (e) women. No doubt Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s songs—Kate’s especially—go right past you; you probably think the sisters are just warbling folkies, all sweet harmonies and wheezy concertinas and grueling banjos and public domain. If you’ve got a McGarrigles record, it’s probably just to convince your girlfriend that you’re a sensitive guy, not the total loss you appear to be. Maybe you think McGarrigles songs make nice lullabies, something to play after you’ve run through the BTO collection and still want something Canadian. Fine. Fine. Believe whatever you want. The McGarrigles don’t need bohunks like you, anyway. In fact, their soulof-innocence sopranos and wholesome backup bands might almost have been designed to keep you neanderthals from noticing that they can be dangerous.

At their best, the McGarrigles perforate all your jove-and-romance banalities. Anna exaggerates her heartbreaks until they turn almost gruesome (or just soppy enough for Linda Ronstadt to try to cover them), while Kate always has a knife palmed for a quick twist (in a lovers’rendezvous song: “I know you like to think you got taste/so I’m gonna let you choose the time and place.”) And both write extremely peculiar melodies, then manage to get their bands to sound utterly casual, as if Stephen Foster had gotten hooked on reggae and wanted to sit in on fiddle. Of course, the McGarrigles’ music fits no known radio format, which means they have to write off one more set of yahoos. C’est la vie, as they say up in the sisters’ hometown of Montreal; the pair always did have a talent for aligning themselves with the minority.

French Record—a full LP of McGarrigles songs in French— forges deeper toward obscurity. Even in Canada, Francophones (a linguistic grouping, not a pasta) only make up a third of the population; in the U.S., most of them are in high school, and CREEM readers just attend French classes to watch the teacher’s lips move. At the same time, the fact that you can’t understand the words (the album jacket provides only partial translations) makes this the ultimate McGarrigles LP for you would-be sensitivos: you don’t even have to pretend to figure out what’s going on. So what if “En Filant Ma Quenouille” is about wife-beating? So what if “Entre La Jeuness Et La Sagesse” start with puns on street names and ends up wry, romantic and profound? You don’t have to notice. You can let the melodies lilt, listen to the band bounce along, maybe even take in the casual originality of the asymmetric clip-clopping “Excursion A Venice,” bagpipes and all. Now’s your chance, bozo: until the McGarrigles put their brilliant new songs in English on an album, you can go on thinking they’re cute.

Jon Pareles

JEFFERSON STARSHIP Modena limes (RCA)

Dear Stockholder,

We are very pleased to report to all of you who own stock in the Jefferson Starship Corporation that our 1980 financial gross was one of the largest in the corporation’s history. Likewise, we fully expect 1981 to maximize profits even further. As you all know, back in early 1979 the future of our company looked somewhat less bullish. With the departure of several top executives, we lost some essential economic draw—even though this was somewhat of a mixed blessing since the personal habits of said executives had brought our company to a saw low in professionalism (almost as bad as when we used to be actual artists back in those foolish pre-corporate days of the late 60’s). Remember too that in 1979 we faced an ever-tightening market amid a major economic slump. To boldly meet these difficult challenges we decided that on our 1979-1980 product-line (labeled Freedom At Point Zero) we would adapt some of the same sleek new machinery successfully employed by our chief competitor on the N.Y. Stock Exchange, the Journey-Foreigner Conglomerate. Aiding us greatly in this venture was new vice-president Mickey Thomas, graduate of the distinguished Rich Little Business Institute. Thomas’ skillful imitation of the JourneyForeigner vocal style accounted for such high yielding dividends as “Jane,” and Thomas also did a bang-up job of adding placebo Grace Slick tones to several other pieces of merchandise. Musically, guitar solos became 20% more standarized, the rhythm section was 30% heavier-weighted, and the energy wasting emotion quotients were reduced to nearly zero. Popularity with the great masses of America was up while the effete corps of intellectual snobs tried in vain to discredit us. They made moves to halt our off-shore drilling projects in the River Styx, but the government backed us all the way. The press has been a constant annoyance, but in our 1981 product—so aptly called Modern Times—we offer some innovations we believe will appease them.

Grace Slick has returned to take over as our national publicity director, and will serve to keep the press at bay with what they have labeled “her zany den mother persona.” Grace is also doing some backup vocals on our new product—singing better than ever since taking extension courses at V.P. Thomas’ alma mater, ole Rich Little. After much study there she is now able to imitate Mr. Thomas just as he once imitated her. She is, in fact, blended so perfectly into our new project that to most consumers her presence will be wholly undetectable. The result is an even more homogenized product than last year’s.

To stay on top of the market, though, a company must grow and so we have added some new features. First, we have adapted some element we believe to be incredibly witty—like using the cover credit “introducing Grace Slick.” Also, we’ve added a song putting down the rock press, lumping them in with other irrelevant, uncontrollable issues like toxic chemical dumps and the draft. In addition, for ‘one track we have taken a small, though well-advised financial risk. We’ve bought out the ailing stock of Boston Inc. to construct “Find Your Way Back,” which is made up of leftover scrapmetal from their “More Than A Feeling” project,

In general, many people will be watching us especially closely this time around to evaluate the input of company president Paul Kantner. I trust you received a copy of last October’s letter of corporate sympathy to Mr. Kantner, praying for speedy recovery from his stroke. Thankfully, Mr. K&ntner has recovered completely, but we do not wish to boast about this to the public or stoop to proving his continued use to the company. Consequently on our new product Kantner offers absolutely no sign that he is anything but a walking vegetable. Only we will know better. He only sings a few lines here and there, but his passion is translated in the guitar work of Craig Chaquico— a shrewd mix of dependable heavy metal riffs that consumers have never tired of. So there you have it—all systems go for major windfall profits. And we’ve done it all for you.

Sincerely,

The Jefferson Starship

Corporation

Jim Farber

WILLIE NILE Golden Down (Arista)

Willie Nile’s second album does not require repeated listenings to confirm its badness. So I’m not complaining; next to a great record, this is the kind of LP a rock crit likes to review be§t ’cause it’s so easy. Yuck.

Let’s start with the sound. Thom Penunzio, if you’re reading this, it’s not ’cause you nixed a rehearsal tape of my band. It’s just that your

production (with Willie Nile) sounds like (to cop one of Willie’s more arresting images) “restless mud.” Mainly it’s the drums, which kinda come across like sludge. (The drumming itself isn’t so together, either, to be fair.)

Then let’s go to Willie’s voice. The phrasing, pitching, and tonality are straight out of mid-period Arlo Guthrie (remember Running Down The Road?). Which is what makes the straining to sound like Springsteen really embarrassing.

Okay, onto the songs. Again, what hath Springsteen wrought? A track like “Poor Boy” (the opening cut, yet!) is such an obvious (and crummy) rewrite (no make that puree) of Darkness and Born To Run that to say any more on the subject would be overkill. Still, I can’t resist submitting the first verse

for your perusal:

I am a poor boy from the other side of town

I shovel black coal and 1 watch the sun go down

Beyond the crooked streets of pain and misery

There is a girl who is waiting there for me *

And that’s without the Roy Bittan-ish piano arpeggios, the Danny Federici organ, and all the other junk they shoulda left on E Street. Y’know?

Nile’s supposed to be some kind of street poet, I think. Yet on one cut, he sings “Some folks want diamonds/And some folks want stew/Some don’t want nothin’^ yeah/But me, I want you,” which in itself is no great shakes, poetry-wise. But then, on the very next track, he comes up with “Some like jewels and money/Some like to' travel uptown/Some like to think it’s funny/Some want the heavyweight crown.” Well, some songwriters repeat themselves/Some are giants/Some are elves.

To sum up with a smattering of awards. Redeeming Factor: it’s a short (about thirty-five minutes) record. High Point: the guitar break on “Shine Your Light.” Low point: Girl tells Willie, “Put your head on my shoulder/Lay your awesome burden down.”

Lay Golden Down down. ’

Wesley Strick

SPLIT ENZ

(A&M)

No vestige of vinyl—the new Split Enz album—available today at A&M publicity. Just an advance cassette and bio (“August 1980”). Advance cass’s are nowhere, they’re like the worst—it’s strictly guesswork as to when and where tunes end and begin (onna rewind/fast forward level). E.g., the concentric circles of groove run-off on sides of a record facilitate easy song-skipping (cueing); such designations on tape are conspicuously absent. The bio here alludes to “songs streamlined into perfect modern pop tunes” and this band’s status as “rock-fashion trendsetters.” Dubious accolades, these (“rock fashion’Vs usually a tipoff of fruitcake-leanings...), but what the hey.

Plug in portable tape-player, insert side one—no, wait, hafta rewind. OK, lessee what we got. (PLAY) “A Hard Act To Follow”? Thumping drums, some gtr residue (very residual!), keyboards—all this being somewhat palatable. Sounds sorta similar to early Stranglers material, textures.. .Stranglers? Hold on (STOP) Uh...(RWD)... Nah, more like, uh...(RWD) Genesis? I mean, I’ve never listened to a Genesis record in my whole life —I have no idea what they sound like and I really don’t care, but I’m guessing this Split Enz “Hard Act” cut’s pretty close. Dredging synthesizer, thin guitar mix, weak vocals riding a contrived-sounding melody (my idea of Genesis)...(STOP)

Hold on—before 1 go any further, it should be mentioned that I, uh, have aesthetic qualms about this kinda stuff (to be polite). Music s.a. this, that melds banal buzzwords the like of “progressive,” “electronic,” “art” and (yep) “fashion” into the spectrum of sound underlying what seems to be a common denominator so far, excludes my personal objectivity insofar as evaluation. This becomes a problem w/regards to reviewing product, especially when Strangler-moves start to transform into Gary Numan or Ultravox hallucinations...

(PLAY)... (F-FWD)... Even worse —the slow one following reeks to the rafters of a slowchirped David Bowie ballad...“One Ste£> Ahead” (F-FWD) “I Don’t Wanna Dance” (F-FWD)...singer’s voice is really annoying (EJECT).

Side 2 (PLAY): “History Never Repeats”: Like a grim flashback of side one—Synth-derived vocal-line overriding fragmented six-string layering and a vacuous rhythm section: floppy beat that flops and beats...then flops. I’m beat—next? (F-FWD)...This could either be “Ships” or “Ghost Girl.” (may have F-FWDed too enthusiastically). Either way, whatever I’m hearing right now’s no different from any of the other stuff. Same deal—in this one, Enz-singer Tim Finn starts effecting a Freddie Mercury pretense (fruitcake theme once again) tangent to sub-rate Queen melodrama... (F-FWD)... Now, somewhere deep into the second side; got some fade-out gtr maneuvers, turgid vocals hand-inhand w/more lamed-out electronics, WAIT A MINUTE!\ this track’s “Ghost Girl” (he’s crooning the chorus this very moment); means “Ships” was the one before. Means the fantabulous “Albert Of India” ’s due up (F-FWD) next... (oh boy).

Hey—’s not too bad, actually. An instrumental, a piano boogiewoogie like on those Carol Lou Trio 45s everybody was sayin’ were the Velvet Underground (instr. version of “Afterhours”—much like this “Albert” cut)! Kinda cool, they get a real “old people’s sound” here — like theme music from General Hospital w/twists of Pink Floyd (Atom Heart Mother) and the 50 Foot Hose. Not quite psychedelic, but eclectic as all hell!

(EJECT)...

Gregg Turner

ELVIS PRESLEY JERRY LEE LEWIS CARL PERKINS JOHNNY CASH Million Dollar Quartet ’ (OMD)

To refresh your memory, the moment—I’m hoping to call it the legendary moment, if you don’t mind—happens thusly. It’s December 4, 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis. Carl Perkins is in the studio with his band, brothers Jay and Clayton on rhythm and bass, W.S. Holland on drums, and the bad new boy in town, Jerry Lee Lewis (homo agrestis americanus ultimus, as Nick Tosches has called him), hired for a miserable 15 bucks to play piano for the day. In walks Elvis. With a Vegas chorus girl on his arm. Reeking success. He interrupts the session and people start to sing. Jack Clement flips on the tape recorder.

Now, to get the rest of this I think you’ve got to picture Jerry Lee.

Here’s Elvis. He owns 1956. He’s already had hits this year with “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Blue Suede Shoes” and god know what-all, he’s been on TV, the Dorsey Show and Berle, and he’s a movie star, for god’s sake. Love Me Tender is in the nation’s theatres and grossing like mad, 550 prints of the thing all over the country. Probably Jerry’s even seen it, sitting in a movie theatre with two billion squealing teenage girls giving him the screaming meemies; and something to think about. So picture Jerry Lee, his first ■single cut but as yet unreleased, his huge hits months away—but he is full-blown Jerry Lee, there is not a trace of the self-effacing about him like there is in, say, Carl Perkins. He’s the Killer, he knows he’s as great as Jolson, knows it, he can just taste the steaks and wine and the thighs of godstruck women.

They meet. Does the earth tremble? Nah. But she do rock.

And the tensions that exist on this recording—and in some ways they are exquisite—result largely from that meeting. The Quartet might just as well have been called a Duet all these years. Johnny Cash iS nowhere to be heard. He is supposed to be on some other tapes of this day, which may or may not exist. Carl Perkins’ contribution, despite a great solo rendition of Wynn Stewart’s “Keeper Of The Key,” is mostly guitar—his strong suit anyway. So the event that the Quartet records is The Meeting—the two most prodigious talents of their age, in a kind of duelling banjos of rockabilly pipes.

They seem to have a helluva time. When Jerry Lee became a front man—and this is the only time I know of when he wasn’t a front man—the world lost a reckless, unrelenting backup vocalist. On most cuts Elvis takes the lead, with Jerry Lee flying loop-the-loops around him like a demented, joy-juiced hornet. Neither man has ever been recorded in finer voice. To hear them trade off leads on cuts like “Walk That Lonesome Valley” or bop-bop their way through “I Shall Not Be Moved” (my choice, by the way, for the gospel single. Back it with a beautiful, heartfelt “Farther Along,” the only real trio on the tape, if you can ditch Carl’s sodden bass-note at the end), to hear them work together this way is to want to beat your head with bricks because they never got around to trying it seriously.

Because it’s just a jam, after all. Half the cuts with full band—a time-capsule of Sun-sound (all new tunes!)—and the other half with Carl and Elvis trading off on guitar. The material is almost all gospel except for a couple of spoofy, affectionate imitations of Hank Snow and Bill Monroe from Elvis. It's sloppy and even snappy sometimes (“Down By The Riverside,” ye gods), and sometimes just snippets of songs, but that’s not to say that Carl Perkins was right when he called it “junk, but historical junk” either.

It’s better than that. It’s fun. There are moments of surprising power when you can almost see Jerry Lee rising to all that bait, his tenor snaking over Elvis’ baritone lines like a lariat, with Elvis in his prime just the mane to buck him. He slips in a couple tentative lines from “Crazy Arms,” his just-recorded single. Elvis retaliates with two verses of “Don’t Forbid Me,” which Pat Boone has just released (“It was written for me, sent to me, it stayed over mah house for ages, man, ah never even seen it...”)

Yet moments of open one-upmanship like this are rare. The mood is more you-just-watch-me-fly, and the voices are effortlessly great together. It’s quite a moment, a future alcoholic, a future pistoltoting maniac, and a future sad dead bloated icon all playing together in boyish high spirits, frozen on top of the world. The gospel shout. Heart. •Even innocence. Where all this stuff comes from.

“What about the rumor that you once shot • your mother?” Hy Gardner asks Elvis in a 1956 interview on RCA’s soundtrack from the This Is Elvis movie. “That one takes the cake,” says Elvis, and in a lot of ways it does, because these boys wouldn’t hurt a fly, not then. Why should they? Bet they wouldn’t even hurt themselves. And if you listen to the Quartet awhile, its possible to get thinking that if there weren’t peckerwoods like Hy around to ask questions like that and worse, if there weren’t the crazy fans and money, gobs of money,.then this is what would be left, exactly this. This music. In that sense, sure. Call it legendary.

Dallas Mayr