THE KINKS Give The People What They Want (Arista)

by Jeff Nesin

Like the ad copy says, there are only three left. The Who at their peak—alas, in the mid-60’s—were the absolute embodiment of adolescent kineticism. The celebrated Tommy was the beginning of the long road down as R. Meltzer, the Karnack of rock, said at the time. (Of course Who’s Next was a great and memorable album, but so were Electric Warrior and Killer, and who weeps for them?) And who could have predicted that Pete Townshend would try to build ah entire career out of maundering aloud that the “initial concept” would not support “mature development” and wondering—set to music—what to do. I wonder why it sells.

The Rolling Stones have used all sorts of canny strategems to divert attention from the fact that they have a fail-safe foundation—the blues. A good blues band, even on a bad night, can usually show me something—“Miss You” and “Start Me Up,” for example. Still, one’s expectations tend to get cramped from years on end of hunkering down and what’s great rock ’n’ roll without great expectations?

Then there are the Kinks, for whom I haven’t had expectations in years. The erstwhile Kings of Khaos and Kwirk became the Konsummate Kroniclers of the Kuotidian and then the tarts of rock operetta before repairing to Arista to reKonstruct their Krumbling Kareer. And, astonishingly enough, they did just that—even had a disco hit. On last year’s double live One For The Road, they emerged as masters of 80’s arena rock: clean, state of the art sound and focused, fast-paced theatricality from Ray Davies (both focus and pace were new to the Kinks arsenal), all recorded for home consumption on videotape. At a screening of the tape I could close my eyes and hear Styx or Van Halen, but after what had been borrowed from the Kinks over the years it was only fitting that they should borrow some contemporary gloss in return. And their new stance still left plenty of room for the Kinks of yore—what fan would have dared dream of a set closing with “David Watts”?

With mixed feelings and modestly rising expectations I received Give The People What They Want and found that, at least in this instance, nothing succeeds like success. The new enlarged audience—the Kinks have moved beyond cult band status for the first time in a decade or more—and newfound fiscal viability seem to have given Ray renewed vigor. The songs—I like nearly all of them and love several—are the best new work from R.D. Davies since the band left Reprise. Only in a Kinks song—“Around The Dial”—could the disappearance of a fave DJ (“somebody said you had a minor nervous breakdown”) be the occasion for a rock ’n’ roll meditation on faith in radio and probity in programming. Only in a Kinks song—“Add It Up,” a nouveau waveau excoriation of a girl risen from humble means to “hired limousines”—can Ray’s best working class accent be cut by a mock chorus of Charoesque disco thrushes breathing: “...Gucci, Gucci, Gucci, Gucci...Cartier, Cartier...” as brother Dave’s jagged chords pan from speaker to speaker. On this album we meet a very mellow, restrained pervert—or perhaps just a divorced dad lonely for his daughter—or maybe both. There’s a dispiriting tale of a woman who seems to dig getting beaten by her lover, and there’s “YoYo” in which a vintage Davies character pines, “Girl, you had me dangling like a yoyo on a string/But with you at the controls I could accomplish anything.” These songs are as strange and particular as modern life itself—a subject about which Ray has unburdened himself many times before, though rarely this well in quite a while. There isn’t the slightest shred of Springsteenian generalization or idealization in these vignettes but there are plenty of common meanings nonetheless. Davies even cops a Brooce riff for “Predictable” (“Yeah, it’s the word of the year”) and, staking out his favorite turf once again laments “Once we/had dignity and grace./ Now we/have nothing but our own time to waste.”

Give The People What They Want will undoubtedly be the Kinks’ biggest seller ever and their current tour should turn a few accountants’ heads as well. But GTPWTW not only gives the people—whoever we are—accessible, entertaining rock ’n’ roll, it is also the best Kinks album qua Kinks album since Muswell Hillbillies. The Kinks are no longer content to be one of the survivors, and for that—with the Who out to lunch and the Stones jogging in place—I am very thankful.

MEAT LOAF Dead Ringer (Cleveland International)

Meat “anywhere he wants to” Loaf is waxing rhapsodic once more. Who among us has not missed the grandeloquent sound of the corpuscles in his neck straining to communicate the tearful longings in his heart? Who, indeed, can remain impassive in the presence of his subtle etchings of love’s ironic pulpitudes? Meat Loaf. The very name summons up nights of Barrelhead Root Beer and Hamburger Helper, days spent watching the barges land at Battery Park. Meat Loaf. The Pavarotti of pulp rock. When his sits around the studio, he really...

Gosh, this album is ghastly. There’s no way around it (not without packing a canteen). Give the fellow credit for a spasm of good talste: his throat choked up when it was sup'posed to sing the songs that eventually wound up on Jim Steinman’s Bad For Good album. The lapse, alas, 'was impermanent. Steinman tore off another batch of ravings, and somehow (gunpoint? water torture? a threat to rescind grazing rights?) Meat Loaf found his voice. It isn’t exactly "the voice of Bat Out Of Hell— there’s a touch of astringence in his full-throttle bellow—but it’s still our Meat, cannonballing into Stein-

man’s pool of idiocy as hundreds flee from their chaise lounges in mortal terror.

So long as Loaf is stuck in Steinman’s world, his music will bear no resemblance to life as it is lived on this planet, except for a little-known sub-species of eggplant. Steinman, no doubt, sees his scenarios as part of a tradition that goes from “Summertime Blues” to “Gee Officer Krupke” to “Jungleland.” Uh-huh. Dead Ringer, while not as stupefying as Bad For Good, runs through the same non-themes ad nauseum (the Typesetters Union just awarded Steinman the 1981 Inner Sleeve Verbosity Plaque). Animal urges, automotive ram-

pages, sexual betrayals, that sort of thing. As raw material, fine. But Steinman’s lyrical ideas are invariably screwball variations on cliches: “Read ’Em And Weep,” “Dead Ringer For Live,” “More Than You Deserve.” This device worked exactly once, on Bat’s “You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth.”

Loaf/Steinman never shuts up. These dramas go one for six, seven minutes, and it’s words, words, words, , mini-piano solo by Roy Bittan straight out of the Wild, Innocent book of arpeggios, words, words, words, Davey 'Johnstone strangulated guitar riff, words, words, words, words, words, three drum beats (Max Weinberg! Take a bow!), words, words, unidentifiable sludge, and out. Phil Rizzuto didn’t show up this time, but Meat still has girls around to do his Bluto & Olive Oyl pas de deux with: Leslie Loaf (Leslie Loaf?? hope her insurance premiums are paid up) pipes in with eight words (poor woman needs to save her breath) on “Peel Out,” and Cher, known throughout the world for her excellent choices of gentlemen friends, plays a hot-to-trot bimbo (“I’m looking for anonymous and fleeting satisfaction;” that Steinman, what a librettist!) oh “Dead Ringer For Love.” You want melodies? Steinman has two: rev-up and dirge.

I’m inclined to give Meat Loaf, a nice guy, the benefit of the doubt (hey, there’s a title J.S. missed: “Benefit Of The Doubt”). What can you do with songs like these except spew them out and pray nobody’s paying close attention? Dead Ringer is comprised of immature babble (“Everything Is Permitted,” “I’ll Kill You If You Don’t Come Back”)’ psychopathic attitudes towards women (“More Than You Deserve,” “I’m Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us”—sounds like a straight line Jackie Gleason would feed Art •Carney), and plain dopiness (almost everything). Steinman even infringes Broooce patent #69034, rhyming “girls on the sand on the beach” with “just out of reach.”

The opening song of this musical gridlock goes, “my body is the car and my soul is the ignition.” Could be. The composer’s mind, however, is the empty gas tank.

Mitchell Cohen

BABY, LEMME BLUDGEON YOU DOWN

MOTORHEAD No Sleep Till Hammersmith (Mercury)

by Jim Farber

Because they can’t sing, can’t play, can’t write anything close to a distinctive or memorable riff, and because they display their lack of talent in such a monolithic, deafening manner, many people have come to view Motorhead as a heavy metal band. All of these people are wrong. Contrary to surface appearances, Motorhead does not espouse pleasure through pain or joy through suburban fantasies of rebellion. Though they may touch on several typical HM subjects lyrically (it’s hard to tell how much since the words are about as decipherable as subway announcements), the Motorheads, in essence, are not about playing your records loud, bugging your parents, cutting school, partying on the weekend, heading out to the highway, getting laid or wearing black. They do, in fact, happen to wear black (they also act very butch and have long hair—other seeming HM giveaways), and they do obviously deal on a certain level with pain/pleasure sentiments, as titles like “Overkill” and “Bomber” lattest. Yet the “inflection” in Lemmy Kilmister’s voice and the band’s irredeemably tortuous anti-music cast these subjects in a wholly different light.

The best HM is just kids out for a joy ride—a facetious, pseudo-rebellious adoration of destroying property and acting tough. It’s slurm ming and self-aggrandizing. Motorhead, on the other hand, through their completely unself-conscious music, express the angst of a seven car collision not as adolescent boasting but rather as a direct summation of life as they experience it. There is rro “pleasure’’ tease—only pairv as inevitability. Absolutely nothing in their music lifts you up—not the vocal inflections, not the riffs (however fast);,1 not even the briefer solos. It all sounds exactly the same, and it all pounds you down. Most importantly, the bludgeoning is not geared to make you feel good. It comes off instead as simple reflex necessity. The voice is quite brilliant in its way; a single-toned, joyless groan, earpiercing and bland. The banality of evil indeed. As Lemmy yells, it is not cathartic like HM, but a straightfaced unending embodiment of the awful truth. It’s all so tuneless and dour that all other HM seems like power pop by comparison—putting it safely beyond the clutches of American AOR (10 points in its favor right there).

Beyond all this, Motorhead also performs valuable social function. In the wake of all those fools who viewed early punk as nihilistic, Motorhead offers some perspective. They’re the real McCoy. When Johnny Rotten said “We don’t care,” his conviction implied a firmly entrenched system of values. When Lemmy yells “I don’t care” in “Metropolis,” there is an awesome emptiness of values; Likewise in “Ace Of Spades” when he says “1 don’t wanna live forever,” it isn’t HM’s typical braggadocio. Instead he’s just cynically submitting to the pull of fate. It’s not that the band consciously craves death and destruction (as if croaking were the ultimate Qrgasm—see: Jim Morrison). They simply play themselves into oblivion as if that’s all they know.

All of this comes through even stronger “musically” On this live album than on Ace Of Spades (their first U.S. release). I haven’t heard the band’s three previous records, but it’s'highly doubtful that they contradict any of the pontification here. The concert setting of the current album does bring up one problem, though. Lemmy, in a momentary lapse in bad taste, says “thank you” to the audience in several between-song sections, which is kind of like a killer saying “I’m sorry” to a crowd he’s just sprayed with bullets. On the positive side, when the audience cheers, they really seem to be screaming for mercy. Adolescents over here in the conservative U.S. may find the band’s minimalism-tothe-max style off-putting. (They probably won’t pick up on the depth of the group’s morbidity). But . a lot of things about Motorhead will aways be hard for people to accept. Many will still insisttin viewing them as a heavy metal band (even as yours truly did at first). But after one listens closely, if should be clear that their ultra-extremist style fits into only one broad category— Motorhead is an art-rock band.

GO-GO’S Beauty And The Beat (IR.S.)

First of all, you can forget about that dopey sauna-situated cover. And what in the name of Maybelline is that white gook they’ve got smeared all over their faces? I don’t want a Go-Go that looks like that. You don’t want a Go-Go that looks like that. And don’t dwell on the back cover unless you’ve got a fatal attraction for adult females striking terminally coy bubble bath poses. Hey, gang, I like to play Sink The Submarine and Torpedoes Dead Ahead as much as the next sex maniac but I do it in the privacy of my own tub.

I’m also np big fan of the inner sleeve, either, if you have to know everything. One side is printed lyrics (when I wanna read I go to the library), the other is your basic credits plus all five Go-Go’s assuming facial expressions of varying vivaciousness. It just comes off too darn cutesy—.though there’s no denying that Charlotte Caffey does have enticing eyeballs.

All this coming attraction visual stuff didn’t exactly have me raring to go-go when I finally got around to playing the record. Imagine my delighted surprise when the subsequent groove explorations revealed unto me one wonderful record. Simply put, it’s full of primo girl group gyrations, even better than Holly and the Italians or Blue Angel.

I’m not kidding. Out of 11 cuts, 10 hit the sureshot replay button in my head after two spins. The Go-Go’s have no difficulty at all in expressing glowing exuberance on a regular basis. And unlike the last all-female aggregation to show some rock ’n’ roll smarts, they’re not having their strings yanked by some hack mastermind. (Joan Jett—free at last!) The Go-Go’s do it all themselves—with a little help from co-producers Rob Freeman and Richard Gottehrer, who turns in Tiis best work since Blortdie’s debut hit the racks.

The one loser is “Automatic”*— too arty and disjointed. Everything else? Hey, it’s like hearing oneand two-shot wonders like the Jelly Beans and the Raindrops leaping from wide-eyed innocence to I’m special-so-special assertiveness and sustaining long-lasting appeal over whole albums instead of 45 A-sides.

Speaking of which, “Our Lips Are Sealed” sounds equally wonderful as a single. But then just about anything here would. Impec-„ cable three-part vocals (very folkrockish at times) blend expertly with sparkling guitar lines and snap-shot drumming (Gina Schock, you sure do rock) behind melodies that leave you hooked-out and harmonizing.

No sense in running away with raves here. Suffice to say the Go-Go’s make my hands clap, my heart beat and my heels click. And who needs a damn lyric sheet when you get crystal clear enunciations of a verse like this from “Skidmarks On My Heart”: “Rev her engine for your pleasure/Caress and fondle her steering wheel/When you moan and hug her gear shift/Stop! Think how it makes me feel.”

Right now it makes me feel great.

Craig Zeller

DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES Private Eyes (RCA)

I gotta hand it to these guys. Just a few years back, if the merest snatch of any of their biggies— “She’s Gone” was the agony-ofagonies worst of the lot, but “Sara Smile” wasn’t far behind—slunk out of my car radio, my middle finger rammed into the pushbuttons with blinding speed, furiously seeking out any head-on collision rock ’n’ roll left on the dial. I felt like smashing my hand right through the speaker, grabbing Hall & Oates by their scrawny white necks and screaming “Of course she’s gone, you jerks! She already went clear through menopause, just waiting for you snails to cough up the rest of that lame and halt song!”

Then again, I could’ve been a bit prejudiced. As a card-carrying Sagittarius, I’ve always believed that rock vocals should be direct & headlong, or not At All, and that whole early-to-mid-70’s anal-retentive pop subgenre, what I choose to call “constipated soul,” used to tie my roughage-sluiced soul in knots, just about any time 1 came near a radio.,

Hall & Oates had lots of fellow soul constipators—white and black —on the charts in those days: Gladys Knight’s stuttering “Midnight Train To Georgia,” the masochistic Billy Paul’s “Me & Mrs. Jones," all that funky junk from the John Hallcentered Orleans, the it-/ee/s-likecotton Player; in short, anything where the vocalists would hold back and dribble out the soulful-fecal lyrics, just so you could rub your nose in their savory, abject wimpiness. At the heights of my rage, 1 even suspected Boz “In-a-tuxedoyou’d -never -guess -I’m -a -hippie” Scaggs of deliberately, trying to sing backwards (continuously-indrawn breath), just to give the constipatee fans a blocked-bowel vocal thrill even Hall & Oates couldn’t match.

Which is why it’s all so weird to ride in the car with me these days, and to watch me turn up the volume and bop along if Hall & Oates’ “Kiss On My List” or “You Make My Dreams” or the new “Private Eyes” comes on. Seems that I like everything'the boys have done the last year or two. Faithful CREEM readers will confirm that rny rock aesthetics haven’t changed over the years, so it must be those old Philly dogs who’ve learned some new tricks. Yeah, they have, real tricky stuff like how rock ’n’ roll’s supposed to have beat and rhythm as a bottom line. I realize that Rev. Gamble and Prof. Rundgren tried to keep it a secret from you guys, but it’s a fact that all that great black soul music of the 60’s was chock full of beat and rhythm and drive. Glad you guys finally discovered all that stuff in your own music; saves a lot of wear and tear on my car-iadio buttons.

So how’s this new Private Eyes? Oh yeah, you’ve already heard the . title song in your car, same as me, and the other 10 cuts are very similar in style and beat and propulsive energy, actually it’s a lot like an old Motown album, where all the songs sound pretty much alike and they’re all great as a .consequence. The shrink wrap sticker on my copy of the LP lists “1 Can’t Go For That,” “Looking For A Good Sign,” and “Head Above Water” as the enclosed hits, so you can listen for ’em to top the charts in approximately that sequence, over the next year or so.

Okay by me if they’re all hits,I since Daryl & John finally got on] their good feet. I’ll be in the john if anybody calls.

Richard Riegel

LENE LOVICH New Toy (Stiff Epic)

“...the story-line was inspired by a series of French fashion designs... worn by models with the heads of cats...to these are added suggestions of sexual anxiety and antagonism, the identification of physical passion with destruction, and overtones of lesbianism. With its persuasive though wholly invented mythology of Serbian devil worship, Cat People is, for all its flaws, remarkably engrossing.”

Val Lewton: The Reality Of Terror

Joel E. Siegel

'“It’s easier to be taken seriously if you wear jeans.”

Lene Lovich

Is Lene Lovich on the verge of abandoning, or at least altering, the image she has so carefully proffered these past few years? Signs, as the black ball used to say, point to yes. The cover of this latest release, ah EP with filler no less (or no more—but more on that in a moment) shows no sign of the whacked-out Balkan tart with the pipes of a sultry munchkin (no disrespect intended—^believe me, folks, it’s hard to ring new changes on this rapidly aging Central European riff). Instead we get art school graphics—well done but neutral— and, with the review copies, a publicity shot that should be the cover of the next album, it’s that stunning. Showing La Lovich posed under Lewtonesque lighting, the problematic braids out of sight, the eyes lined and browed with a graceful severity, it evokes (in spirit at least) no less an icon of feline sensuality than Simone Simon as she appeared in the legendary Cat People.

This is just speculation, of course, but if it’s so—not that the next album may be called Hairballs From Zagreb, but that the commissar’s daughter image is going thru some modification—then it’s a good thing. A major problem for the performer who has created a striking anti-cliche image ia being able to realize when the image’s effectiveness has passed and it’s time to loosen it or drop it altogether. Costello is on the outskirts of this problem now but has developed an interesting visual corollary to the new richness of his music by becoming plump...the Clash have changed their music but not their image—understandably— so now some who once perceived them as white hope primitives see them as merely idiot savants of studio know-how...Bowie has made image modification an essential part of his image.. .Devo doesn’t appear to have a clue about all this and so, one sm'ash hit notwithstanding, are doomed...Lovich is due for a hew hairdo, at least...

OK, then, enough prattle, what have we got here? Not much; a six-song EP that runs a little over 20 minutes and has two instrumentals —.“Savages,” wherein Lovich makes the music of unsubtle grandeur she has confessed a liking for in the past but which, despite some pleasingly, incoherent vocal effects and clever synthesizer fills, is strictly De.odatpsville, man, and “Cats Away,” which is strictly boring; two Lovich/Chappell songs that sound like instant B-sides, competent, lesser efforts with unfocused lyrics and lowrkeyed hooks; and then two very good songs, the title cut by T. Dolby, a catchy ditty about consumer relations(hips), and “Never Never Land” by J. “Say When” O’Neill/ which starts in a Stevie Nicks vision—“the present tense makes perfect sense/and all our ends are happy ones”—and ends in a private hell. A typical EP, perhaps, some good stuff, a little skimpy, but that’s all right, Lovich is in good voice, the band is tight, the image is loose, and the next album could be a killer creative leap of some sort or another.

“Cat People is, in its best moments, so frightening because it never really shows us anything, thus affording us that greatest indulgence of terror—the freedom to frighten ourselves.”

f? —Siegel

“1 like classical music a lot, only because you can make up different stories .each time you hear the music.”

—Lovich

Richard C. Walls

ARTHUR BLYTHE Blythe Spirit (Columbia)

Whyzat of the month: we’re told that an album has to sell 100,000 copies or more before it can contribute to the financial health of Major Entertainment Corporations-,,/ yet many of these self-same corps (like Columbia) keep releasing jazz records that have no hope of moving many “units.” But some things are best left to the powers-that-be_ (lawyers and the IRS in this case), since Columbia has provided a haven for a handful of uncompromising jazzmen to develop their music over the last few years. As a result', people like Dexter Gordon, Woody Shaw, Max Roach and Arthur Blythe are accumulating a substantial body of work that sounds good and is readily available to the public.

Since coming to Columbia, Blythe has probably been the most acclaimed alto sax player around. He’s one of the current generation of jazzmen able to embody all of 20th Century black music to his playing, from the most basic forms —blues, gospel, rock—to the most sophisticated and intuitive ones. Which means that he’s able to pull off some pretty fancy stuff while still bumpin’ butts into motion.

And his bands are pretty amazing too. Four of the seven cuts here are played with his alto-guitar-cellotuba-drums quintet, the same personnel that did half of his previous Illusion LP, 'except that guitarist James “Blood” Ulnrier has been replaced by the tamer-but-still-tasty Kelvyn Bell. Typically, Blythe will weave warm, melodic inventionsover the top, prompting splitsecond reponses from cellist Abdul Wadud, while Bell’s sparse, spacey chords stay clear of Bobby Battle’s hyperactive drumming and Bob Stewart’s tuba keeps the bottom -thick and funky. Unusual? Sure, but t-he power these guys generate is genuine: they also do the fastest version of “Strike Up The Band” I’ve ever heard. -

But. Blythe’s equally impressive; on the slower stuff. He can take a tune associated with worldwide wimpdom, such as “Misty,” and blow it into a ballsy ballad. Similarly, he sticks close to the melody of the spiritual, “Just A Closer Walk With Thee,” but the sheer authority of his tone commands attention. Whew! Anyone who thinks the saxophone begins and ends with Clarence Clemons i’s instructed to get this album for some remedial listening.

Michael Davis

DAN FOGELBERG The Innocent Age (Full Moon)

First off,, let me tell you how much civic pride I feel that local boy Dan Fogelberg has made it in the Big Game. A near-Peorian in his eensyhood, Dan is still the subject of anti-Semitic slurs, bad seed jokes and pet-naming here in the large intestine of the Heartland. (Prairie dogs singing “This Land Is Your Land” become audible in the background.)

He doesn’t let it bother him though. He laps it up like firehouse dogs at a cow spill. This album, in fact, is a virtual Dan Fogelberg Saga. Melissa Sue Anderson has already been signed up to play Dan in the mini-series..

Says here in the enclosed booklet that Innocent Age is a song cycle. Not a rinse cycle, not Cycle dogfood, but a song cycle like V.D. Parks reeled in way back when. Donny O. would yank it up by the ears and holler “Aloha, tropical fruit!” ;

Fogey’s material is actually pretty good, a fact I find as disturbing as Larry Hagman’s performance in The Group. While acoustic guitars boss the dock, Dan has his big toe planted firmly on the esophagus of 60’s folk-rock. His songs may be limpid/ gutless and generally sickening, but you really can hear Neil Young, McGuinn, Crosby and all those characters slapping each other around, roots-wise.

Speaking of influences, Danno ’fesses up all to his inspirations on the inside cover. Among those receiving his kisses of doom are the Byrds, Stephen Foster, Joni M., Edvard Grieg, Hermann Hesse, Kahlil Gibran and that other major Western philosopher, Joe Walsh.

He left out a couple, though. For one, he honestly does sound like Peter, Paul and Mary. That may seem as improbable as Elizabeth Montgomery riding with Jesse James, but it’s true. The other skipee is Jackson Browne, after whom “Steely” Dan modeled his hard-to-describe voice. The plaintive wall of a neutered coyote? Not quite. The sound of a hard-fought mosquito abatement program? Very warm. I know, the sardonic whinny of a carnival pony whose mulching teeth are just coming in. Amen.

But forget all that. The plain facts are: 17 songs, equal in the eyes of the law. Guest strokes by everyone from Emmylou Harris to Don “Calling Belgrade” Henley. Neat strumming. Tendrils on everything. Plus an eight-page lyric cribsheet which, taken alone, is a worse jinx than the words “Shuggie Otis” on an album cover.

Now that Danny boy has this song cycle out of his system, maybe he can get some roughage into his performance. Because after this record sweeps the sheds and stables (of Macomb, I don’t want to hear any more about it.

It’s like this, Remember back when the heroic Allies dropped the big one on Hiroshima, the message was a concise, direct, “This time we mean it, guys’? The Japanese kingpins don’t get the joke, apparently, and went right on fighting. So we dropped another one of Nagasaki. Our way of saying. “Now how much would you pap?”

Do you get the moral of the story Dan? Don’t make me bomb Nagasaki.

Rick Johnson

CHRIS SPEDDING Friday The 13th (Passport)

You think you’ve had a bad week. Saturday I got canned from my night job just as the rent was due; Sunday I got out of bed and landed right on my kitten, who wobbled around for a few seconds then promptly died; Monday I was hoodwinked into buying half an ounce of mud for $25; Tuesday I broke up with a brand new girlfriend; Wednesday I lit the oven with the vague urge to commit hari-kari and nearly burnt off my hair; and Thursday I got the new, Chris Spedding album.

Suffice to say that I’m not yer biggest Spedding fan. It sez on the press release that most of these tracks come from his four British-released solo albums, which means zippity doodah to me—the only song I’ve heard before is “Motorbikin’” and this is a pretty rank version. I’m sure you’ve heard of Spedding; he’s the bloke who produced the Sex Pistols demo tape, the supersessionman' who’s played with everybody from Jack Bruce to Dusty Springfield,’ so he’s hardly behind the door. But; on this particular album, something went wrong.

Friday The 13th was recorded in March of this year at Manhattan’s Trax, with (what I take is) a pick-up band of Busta “Cherry” Jones (who’s just replaced Dave Allen in the Gang Of Four).on bass and Tony Machine (now with David Johansen) on drums. And that’s the first problem. For a trio to mesh successfully they’ve got to be real tight (like the Jam) or real heavy (like Cream circa Disraeli Gears]. This ensemble is neither. The idea behind the platter is the. second problem: I’m certain the concert itself was very good, but it wasn’t that good, and it certainly wasn’t worth actually vinylizing. The final problem is something integral to Spedding, ’cause, like Tom Robinson, he’s simply not a very good rock singer. His voice doesn’t have the pitch or the gruffness for great rock, and he tends to the atonal, or worse, the strained. And that’s a big no no. So it’s hot surprising that the best song on (he record is Busta Jones’ “Rush On You.”

What Chris Spedding should have done was bring out a great misses collection culled from the solo albums that have never been released in the States. As it stands, this isn’t the one to convert the masses or even the uncertain. I wish it was, but it’s been one of those weeks.

Iman Lababedi

THE RAINCOATS Odyshape (Rough Trade)

Pat Benatar? Sheena Easton? Judie Tzuke?! You’d think this was the Stone Age—it’s as if feminism had never existed, as if women in rock ’n’ roll had never progressed beyond the role of sex objects for drooling adolescent males.

Arguably many women are making great music (Debbie Harry, Robin Lane, and Carlene Carter are among the multitude), but they rarely address themselves to the provocative question, why pose at all? In their public masquerades, most women rock stars play up the sexuality because if s good business while claiming such calculated deceit is in itself a liberating act. The ethical problem of all this can be left to Jerry Falwell or Gloria Steinem; the real problem, though, is that the disguise becomes predictable and boring, and thus must be dealt a blow.

Enter the Raincoats with fists clenched. Vicky Aspinall (violins, guitar, piano), Ana da Silva (bass, guitar, percussion), and,Gina Burch (guitar, bass)—they all sing—are three women who comprise this London band; their music is so uncompromising that, if they weren’t women, the press would be squawking about the next Sex Pistols.

On the Raincoats’ second album, Odyshape (their first, The Raincoats, released in 1979, is available only as an import) , there’s a sense of retaliation, as if for almost 20 years these women have been seeking an opportunity to vindicate the oppressive role-models first established with the endearing girl groups of the early 60’s. Although the Raincoats do not aim their rifles directly at the manipulative powers behind the Shangri-Las or the Ronettes, their vengeance is at least formal—for Odyshape is shapeless, swirling with whimsy and desire, trusting in nothing but instinct.

At first the sound of the Raincoats’ radical feminism may seem garbled, an odd cross between defiant post-punk and thrashing folk-rock. On the album’s quieter moments, you will undoubtedly hear the influence of the Velvet Underground; during its wild outbursts, however, it’s difficult to say what you’ll hear—the Slits, Patti Smith, Fairport Convention, and the some. “Their nearest neighbor,” a New Musical Express critic deftly noted, “is perhaps an imaginary fusion of Richard and Linda Thompson’s eerie «folk tragedies if they’d been produced by Lee Perry.”

Indeed, heard in conjunction with Perry’s current Upsetter Collection or Augustus Pablo’s Dubbing In Africa, Odyshape begins to make sense: female consciousness allied with the subconscious of dub. This is given further credence by the fact that the Raincoats are missing a drummer (assented stand-ins appear on the album)—in fact, the “meaning” of their music somehow evolves from a search for a definitive rhythm, a center, a sense of place.

While songs like “Shouting Out Loud” or “Go Away” begin in the midst of a shrill tantrum, they soften and then violently overthrow that moment of tranquility. Primarily these shifts are accomplished through the touch sawing of Aspinall’s violins—she challenges every instrument (voice, guitar, bass, percussion) with a resistance previously unheard of in rock ’n’'roll. Clearly the classicist in her wants out.

Thematically, the titlecut is the key song. “She looks embarrassed, she looks in mirrors,” sings Birch, as a voice recites, “Blot on the landscape...I’m no ornament, it could be my bodyshape.” But “Odyshape” is not merely a protest against having to. live up to the expectations of commercial sexist images; it’s also about the anguish of never fitting in. In a world overrun by Barbie dolls, the “blot” begins to wonder if indeed external reality is all that does matter (“is it my breath? my body odor?”).

Because Odyshape exhibits such a keen naturalness (and because it sounds too much like a folk record), it probably doesn’t stand a chance in today’s kiddie-rock marketplace. But those already familiar with 1981’s other major challenge fof grown-ups, Au Pair’s Playing With A Different Sex, will find Odyshape equally complex and demanding. And consistently, from “Dancing In My Head” (a thoughtful dirge that goes beyond the McGarrigles’ mere moodiness) through “Baby Song” (a dense probe of the mysteries of biological changes), the Raincoats delve into the question of what it means to be female in the modern world.

Search diligently for a copy of Odyshape—that may be the only way you’ll find it, for the Raincoats assuredly aren’t going to be plugging their album by showing cleavage as next month’s “CREEM Dreem.”

Robert A. Hull

THE NEVILLE BROTHERS Fiyo On The Bayon (A&M)

I was once dining in New Orleans, enjoying what 1 thought was a delightful beef bouillon. As I chomped into a piece of meat, my companions queried the waiter about the soup. “Alligator,” was the polite reply.

Fiyou On The Bayou by New Orleans’ Neville Brothers is the alligator soup on this year’s musical menu, a spicy but highly palatable sampling of traditional New Orleans musical fare, rich with the variegated flavors of that region’s particular culture. Albums like this nourish my critical appetite for a cause to champion, although I know that all the points I can summon in its favor aren’t going to make much difference to the deadened taste buds of Everyday Joe. I’d never have eaten prehistoric lizard soup if I’d known what it was beforehand, so even if you tell someone that alligator tastes good, it doesn’t mean he’ll try it. Who wants to chew down what looks like funky of leather when you can have the 100% all-beef-pattyspecial-sauce-and pickles-etc. aural junk food dished up by mass appeal radio?

Well, let’s try it this way—can you dance to it? Answer: of course you can!. Side one’s first three cuts are irresistible calls to footwork, and even the Neville’s sole concession to the science of disco, “Sweet Honey Dripper,” features a sublime, lipsmacking sexual imagery that is far more appetizing than the blatantly crude bisexual chic inherent in songs like “Pull Up To My Bumper” or “Push Push In The Bush.” The side’s capstone cut—Art Neville and the Persuasions’ majestic rendition of “The Ten Commandments Of Love”—even recalls the amorous balladry that made slow bump and grind dancing at high school hops as thrilling as a peek at Dad’s hidden Playboy. But with today’s sex as fast as our food (and just about as nourishing), who needs to hug another body with clothes on? One wonders if the true romantic sensibility is as archaic as the alligator (the preppie movement notwithstanding. Who knows, maybe they’ll adopt the Nevilles as a cause celebre).

“Hey Pocky Way” and “Iko Iko” are already well-known to fans of the Nevilles, the Meters and the New Orleans sound from previous versions, and are probably repeated here in an attempt to record a definitive album of New Orleans soul. The LP’s certainly a success on that count, with each track spiced with the multi-ethnic lingo and melodies of Creole culture. The vocals are all sweetly impassioned, and the up-tempo tracks bristle with the syncopated rhythmic accents that today’s dance music all but ignore. Producer Joel Dorn has even gotten the kitchen sink somewhere into the mere eight songs on this album (too few songs, I might add), but without the whole affair becoming a cluttered mess.

Of course, like any good gumbo, it’s not Fiyo On The Bayou's ingredients that count, but the taste. The LP reflects New Orleans’ continuing prominent position as a musical melting pot—the supposed American dream—at a time when popular culture pressure cooks away any distinctive flavors from our musical meat like a microwave oven running out of control. Which leaves the Nevilles “sitting here in limbo,” as they say in a most telling rendition of the Jimmy Cliff song. Perhaps the only way to feed this stew to the public is to slip it past their lips before they know what they’re getting (sort of like Heart’s recent hit version of Aaron Neville’s “Tell It Like It Is.”). Either that, or pray that “Brother John/Iko Iko” inspires Wild Tchoupitoulas Indian garb to replace Adam Ant’s Pirate parodies and New Romantic drag (and what a drag it is...). Although this stuff will never be trendy.. .just tasty. But I do know that, one thing the public loves, it’s proving that critics are dead wrong. So go ahead America —I dare you! Y6u might even like alligator...

Rob Patterson

NILS LOFGREN Night Fades Away (Backstreet)

It is both annoying and tiresome to hash over why a particular artist fails to maintain that cutting edge, and what is called a watering down by some can often lead to a broadening of commercial appeal. Boz Scaggs, Bob Seger and Rod Stewart have all benefited from fleshing out their music with a little styrofoam. For others the changes are less deliberate and they seem unable to make past measure. Dave Mason hasn’t come close to the excellence of Alone Together with his subsequent output. While Nils Lofgren’s earlier work doesn’t have the classic quality of that LP or say, Gasoline Alley, his Grin material and pieces of his solo, works showcased some fine examples of pop music of a meatier nature than most, flush with wit and teenage angst. Through the influence of Buddy Holly and mid-60’s English bands, Lofgren was a progenitor of Power Pop and that’s a distinction of sorts, but Night Fades Away owes more in flavor to Dino, Desi and Billy than to Aftermath.

The Beatles’ “Any Time At All” and Peter and Gordon’s “I Go To Pieces” would seem perfect for Lofgren’s style and temperment, yet neither works completely. Between Nik Lofgren’s uninspired vocals and Jeff Baxter’s Clearasil Clean production, “Any Time At AH” is hopeless gelded, and perhaps it was only Del Shannon’s presence and pinpoint harmony that sparked a better handling of “1 Go To Pieces.” (Shannon’s vocals are right up front and if the singing wasn’t so consistently lackluster throughout the album, it would make the compliment to Shannqn, who wrote the song, look less incidental.) These guys are right in line with the times, though—the charts have been full of uninspired, filtered remakes, and the song does maintain an infectiousness of its own and a single might make the airwaves and even carry the album.

What nags at the listener most, though, k that on Night Fades Away, Lofgren gives the impression of being outside of his music,. and repeated lktenings expose a serious mismatch of artist and producer.

Jeff Baxter has styled himself affer Gary Katz, whose crisp and fastidious work was perfect for Steely Dan’s brassy, layered, big city cockiness on albums like The Royal Scam. But that under-glass sound doesn’t work here. Granted, the material isn’t exceptional, and the producer can’t be blamed for that, but besides the wrongness of the overall sound, Lofgren sounds done in and bored. The lyrics and the album’s nocturnal title indicate that this might be Nils’ dark album and that he had a greater emotional stake in the songs than the finished product shows. Maybe it was endless retakes in the style of Steely Dan (who might agonize for hours over four or five notes of a guitar solo) that caused Nils to end up walking through it all. Whatever the particulars, what was juice for them is Kryptonite to Nik and it takes repeated listenings to find out that B-minus songs have been turned into D-minus tracks. The only really impressive tune is “Ancient History,” a strong rocker on side two. Baxter and Nils seem to find each other on this one.

Lofgren, with Grin and alone, has made flawed albums before, often carrying a good thing into hyperkinetics, but the balance was definitely toward the good and sometimes outstanding. A strong producer would have made the difference. That’s still true, and maybe the idea was to tighten things up and go for that broader appeal'. That’d be great, but there are moments when Baxter makes things sound like ABBA and surely nobody had that in mind.

R.A. Pinkston IV

TIM CURRY Simplicity (A&M) NOT THE RIGHT KIND OF ESOTERIC

An’Unfinkhed Play In Four Acts ACT I. Obscure, classically trained British actor rises to cult pop-hero status as the mad scientist/singing transvestite in the film version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

ACT II. Tim Curry ignores the imperatives of his devotees and does Read My Lips (his debut, if the Rocky Horror soundtrack kn’t counted—which it shouldn’t be) sans platform shoes and lingerie. A bizarre mix of Broadway musical finale and mainstream heavy metal should be esoteric enough for at least a couple of critics and a small, rabid following—it is, alright, but the wrong kind of esoteric. And the critics have trouble with forgetting act one. The masses of kiddie arena-star makers don’t like it either because it’s got literate lyrics and sounds nothing like Dr. Frankenfurter or Foreigner.

ACT III. Fearless, LP #2, is a good omen for the protagonkt. Curry stops trying to play a different leading role in every song; his own rather large, contradictory and opaque persona, he begins to discover, k more than adequate, anyway. “I Do The Rock” has a great clumsy dance beat, a wicked verbal poke at esoterica freaks and becomes a minor summer hit.

ACT IV A Broadway success and some juicy movie deals do wonders for Curry’s rep in American acting circles; he gives pop music a third try, Simplicity. Allies and fans are temporarily nostalgic for the extremes of good, bad and-ugly on the first two LPs—there was something unprecedented in those scrambled genres and ten-ton vocals. But the old habits that remain are strange enough, and this time they might make some sense to the uninitiated. He picks yet another batch of classics, again doing a radical alteration of their personalities, like “She’s Not There” as an ominous, futuristic ritual, or “Dancin1 In The Streets” without a hint of joy or jeunesse. His lyrics are still smart, sometimes smarter (“Simplicity”). Heavy metal guitar and jazz-dive saxophone still get used in tandem like it was normal to dp so. With a confident obliviousness that only a rock ’n’ roll immigrant could muster, Curry continues to lift moods and riffs from anyone he wants—Yul Brynner, Bob Marley (“Working On My Tan,” “Betty Jean”), Tony Bennett, Squeeze, David Bowie, even an emasculated AC/DC (“On A Roll”).

But the fact that there would be a great justice in a modicum of acclaim for this record doesn’t mean that act five will be happy for our hero. Check in after admission.

Laura Fissinger