NODS AND WINKS REVIVE DEAD HORSE

ROD STEWART Tonight Im Yours (Warner Bros.)

Maybe the best album Stewarts done for Warners. Not an album, really—but a fistful of songs, most of them a relief after Stewarts compost-pile contributions in the last couple of years.

"Tonight Im Yours (Dont Hurt Me): Brisk, bright sounding, light on its feet. Great rhythm guitar way up front in a really appealing mix. Almost a new wave feel (well, he dinked around in disco, too). Lyrically, Rod as unapologetic lothario still looking for kicks without kickbacks (note subtitle).

"How Long: Carracks nowclassic made fresh. Lots of weight and momentum in the rhythm tracks, and Rod (in one of his favorite roles as the player who cant stand to be played on) singing as if he really means it.

"Tora Tora Tora (Out With The Boys): Competently done but so what? Weve known they like to get drunk for years. A Chuck Berry/ Jim Cregan throwaway with one good line:If you cant take a joke theres no point in living.

"Tear It Up: The Burnette Brothers anthem done too fast to think about, which is pretty near perfect. Again, Rod sings boffo, although this sort of thing isnt exactly hard for him.

"Only A Boy: Accordian, guitar, fiddle, and a yanker of a melody, if the lyrics were intelligible, this might be deemed worthy of Every Picture Tells A Story.

"Just Like A Woman: one more time Stewart goes to the catalogue, puts his pinky on a masterpiece and takes it home for his own trophy case. The pedal steel cries, and Stewart shrieks because it hurts way past crying.

"Jealous: Thematic reprise ofHow Long, and not too impressive except for Paulinho da Costa on percussion and some other playing with bite. Also may contain the million dollar question (if Im hearing him right):Is he really that big?

"Sonny: Arrangement a little mushy, lyrics nice but nothing to lose sleep over. Yet again, its Stewarts delivery that will bring the young tart back on her knees.

"Young Turks: The engaging hit single one of Rods few story-songs (thankfully) without a skillion verses and overserious tone.

"Never Give Up A Dream: Melodramatic but moving tribute to Canadian cancer victim Terry Fox. A FABLE

Once upon a time, there was a handsome young rake who lusted, (terribly so!) after a particularly fetching young lady. She had been chased by inumerable young rakes in her day, and really didnt take much notice. Wily as the boy was, he figured out that what she wanted was a rake with the sensitivity of a poet and the heart of a true original. So he got them, and she loved him. As the years went on, though, the poetry turned to parody and he didnt seem like much of an original anything. Besides, he was turning into a sexist asshole. She left him. He went on wth his silliness. A few years later, he called her, asking for a rendezvous. She sensed a change in his voice, and agreed to meet him at their old haunt. He showed her his new stuff, and she was greatly moved. Here looked to be bits of the sensitive young rake shed swooned for in the first place. At the end of his presentation, he looked at her with a hint of a grin, seeing that soft look in her eye.

"So, then, dearie, how about a bit of tit and leg for the old sweetheart, ey?

She picked up the wine bottle and smashed it over his head. He shook glass out of his hair and gave her a slinky smile.Well, whaddya want, dearie? Im only a boy.

THE CARS Shake It Up (Elektra)

One mid-70s morning, Ric Ocasek was sitting at some historicallyfated traffic light. His vehicle was idling strongly and he began idly to tap his foot along with the rhythm. An idea was .NO!

There is no truth whatsoever to the rumor that David Robinson has been communicating with Motorheads Philthy Animal Taylor about thefourth gear in Taylors drum set up. Robinsons kit evidently isnt equipped with.NO!

Benjamin Orr glanced down at his script one last time.The Cars have been using RTB motor oil additive for four years now, it read,and its really kept our engines.ENOUGH!

Lets try it this way. When times get rough, a lot of people get pissed off and some of em get the anger out of their systems musically. Rock n rolls made for this; punks hot, hyperactive attack has been the most obvious recent example. But most people tty to make some sort of accomodation with the madness, try to get along without letting thereal world intrude too often or too drastically. And rock n rolls made to keep people cool, too, and since more people wanna keep cool than explode, the cool school rides in style at the top of the charts. Cars.

The Cars are a cool school rock n roll band in the classic tradition. They wear their antecedents openly on their sleeves, ones whove been identified more with restraint than with aggression. Buddy Holly not Jerry Lee Lewis.? And The Mysterians, not Jimi Hendrix.Sweet Jane, notSister Ray.

To remain really cool, though, you have to be up-to-date and state-of-the-fart, which the Cars certainly are. They have their own brand new studio and all the latest toys, plus the expertise to use their equipment both tastefully and creatively within their chosen squeaky clean sonic context. Theyve got the professionalism of veterans, plus keep-it-basic aesthetics which ally them withnew wave minimalism. Even when they pour on the overdubs—that is a 36-track board and that is Roy Thomas Baker behind it—each part is kept direct as possible. So they have the ability to keep things simple or they can construct sophisticated arrangements, depending on the particular intent.

As usual, they choose the 2-way street approach. Side one contains most of the hook-laden.radio rock; tunes likeSince Youre Gone and th frothyShake It Up ˜dress up well-worn themes and melodies in new electronic clothes and succeed as light-weight ear candy. Side two displays their more progressive side;A Dream Away andThis Could Be Love recall the best of Siren/Country Life-period Roxy Music, as Easton and Hawkes concentate on creating eerie atmosphere instead of flashing their chops.

So on and on they roll. No major overhauls here, just a lube job and a change of upholstery. I imagine if Ocasek has any surprises in his glove compartment, hell air em on his upcoming solo project—he sure showed he can produce well on the Romeo Void EP. But I sure wish hed put his foot down to the floor. Just once. He didnt on this album and the result is that just a little bit of shakins goin on.

Michael Davis

CHIC Take It Off (Atlantic)

The tufntables smouldering and the needles popping. And there it is again: that unmistakable duel between Bernard Edwards wristsnapping bass work and Nile Rodgers guitar hamming. Their art does not demand deep analysis. The female singers remain primarily functional, not as anything as demeaning as a sexist prop but simply peripheral to the whole shebang, subject to the whims of production values.

Further, Edwards and Rodgers are by no means serious (although they are serious artijts, which is an entirely different matter). They almost seem to be traversing the same tundra as Bjorn, Benny, and the everready ABBA. (After all, there is the CHIC Organization, a corporation every bit as inscrutable as that of those Swedish schlockmeisters.) Like B&B, E&R show no mercy when it comes to the aesthetics of production, putting themselves in the forefront only because their auteurism eclipses the concept ofgroup. (As evidence of the impact of their skill in welding art with pop, I once watched a talent show in which first-graders lip-synched and giggledLe Freak, while shaking their booties.)

LITTLE TOMMY'S JEWEL

TOM VERLAINE Dreamtime (Warner Bros.)

by

Joe (fons et origio)

Fernbacher

Just as those lynx-eyed demons of middle-aged rock cynicism were about to unceremoniously flick their fingers in my face and trundle me off, helter-skelter, into the swirling gray landscapes of yawndom, whocaresville and dulltown, and scary, looming thoughts of rock n rolls unerring nosedive towards the tentative, its seemingly impending loss of overall noisome context, began to invoke skulking images of mass filicide and tower climbing bravado inside my head, along comes Tom Verlaines Dreamtime, a roiling fireball of god-honest rockismo delight. Once again this here croakers rockaholic nerves and rockin soul are soothed. Once again he can feel the spartan joy that comes so often with renewed enthusiasm. Once again he can play an album more than once and not go through the pangs of selfembarrassment for doing so. Once again he can, ahem, lapse into the other dimension of rock n roll dreamtime.

Tom Verlaine is one of those lanky idiosyncratic icons of the punk muse revival who forever made one edgy with the hope of new, exciting rock possibilities. His cerebrating guitar fr&gments, muted velocity, and desert dry, entwisting vocals made him an instant spokesman for a newly emerging cult of punkoids who were slowly, gelatinously, seeping out from the hidden recesses of Americas suburban cellars into the klieg-light fury of the media. Punkoids fired up with the pure incendiary brilliance and intelligence of rock n roll at its reacting best, were telling us that their rock n roll was to be rock n roll sans fatcatisms, sans the dreaded philosophies of the $cabals, sans the loping insidiousness of that rapidly expanding beast of doom known as mellow. And Verlaines work with his band Television captured and encapsulated all the nascent passion and sensual etcetera of this new, yet old, music.

But like Morrison said,No one will forgive us now for wasting the dawn, which is in effect what happened when the punk muse allowed itself to be lingoized into the much less dangerous,New Wave. After this transition the sense of spontaneity went out of the music and it lost its context. Everybody seemed to lapse into a dull fugue state...

Intellect went quickly, and often forcibly being replaced by feigned, fashionable and ritualistically invocatory ignorance, which in turn was replaced by simple fashion, which was slowly being replaced by a gelandesprung nervousness thats invaded the basic texture of the music itself making it something hurried, rather than something with a graceful sense of texture and pace. Bands seem to be hiding a mass sense of insecurity when they rush out and whip-down a song willy-nilly and then leap into another without so much as a howde-do! Velocity seems to be the way they want to go about things and with such chaotic velocity (which isnt all that bad in and of itself) comes loss: loss of connection with the lumbering spirit of the music itself. Anyway, Tom Verlaines at least gone out«and tried to revive that sense of rock duty the punk muse revival so often promised.

Dreamtime is such a pleasant surprise that it not only caught me totally unaware, but also scared me a little. It is relentless in its irruptive cadence;Blue Robe,s pulsatory rhythms are infectious and studied,There Is A Reasons diabolized understatements are neat, precise grails.Mr. Blur andA Future In Noises rock n roll hearts are lyrical poems to a city boys ultimate fascination with exurbia and the farm. And most of the love songs seem to be written to some idealized combination of Sissy Spacek and Kate Jackson.

What Verlaine has done here in his own rock dreamtime is not only press an accusing finger down on the windpipe of current musical trends but also present a simple, unpretentious restatement of rock n rolls inherent intelligence (just because rock music is excitable and fun-loving doesnt mean it has to play dumb) and it comes none too soon.

Theres a lot of inner conflict and fast and furious action of Dream time, and it ain t there just for show...its there as a constant reflection of just where we might be headed musically—one... more... time!!!! And if a new revolution does leap upon us, Tom Verlaine will be recognized as an arcade gladiator of the new fiction. If you think this idea of a new revolution is Silly, just take a look at the daily rushes of life under Reagonomics and Haigenethics and youll see what I mean... the streets are waiting and there are new anthems to be written: Dreamtime just might be one of them.

Chics Take It Off is the backfired KooKoo with verve and pure nerve. The latter album was a thoroughly bleached patchwork— there was nothing our ingenious producers could do to disguise the fact that Debbie Harry is a stonecold zombie. (In fact, whether its Sister Sledge or Diana Ross, all E-Rs pet projests seem inconsequential when compared to the sleekness and charm of Chic.) But Chics new LP merges the delightful urbane playfulness of Risque with the arcane nice-and-easiness of last years undervalues Real People. What emerges is a record so tough and hip that somebody should tell Rick James and Prince to shuddup.

OnFlash Back, the singer postulates,making love and dancing ife all we do...a little teasing...a little pleasing...,; „ this, and only this, is the grand theme which carries the album. As onBurn Hard and the title cut, the sex can be gritty and worthy of much humping. The record even features an exquisite double entendre (fromTelling Lies:youre just like Pinocchio/every time you tell one, now you know it grows).

Perhaps more impressive are Edwards and Rodgers staggering seqse of dynamics. They have an uncanny feel for musical punctuation: voices appear from nowhere, a syllable is flung out like a cat from a tenth-story window, a car down below screeches to a halt, the bass thumps against the tires, the cat hits the pavement, and a guitar starts swimming to the sound of a city too cool to notice.

And what are we to make ofYour Love Is Cancelled, a sort of screwy new-wavy version of Eric Burdon and WarsSpill The Wine? What aboutWould You Be My Baby, a Costello-ized calypso ditty weirder than anything from the funk clones? These unorthodox songs, and other ones like them on the LP, may represent urban style at its very finest—I dunno. Im from the sticks.

But I do know this: any combo that can write awful lyrics likeyour Calvins fit snug but I dont think they hug you like I do and make you forget it has more heart than flash.

Buy Take It Off and put it on!!

Robert A. Hull

DAVID BYRNE The Catherine Wheel (Sire)

David Byrne—what a creepy looking guy! Rogue eyeballs and an Adams apple that calls its own shots. So stiff that, if he stood in a draft, hed twang (as Cher pointed out in a recent Scooby Doo episode). Seems like hes coming to take you to his leader, or maybe on a suicide Pepsi date.

A far off voice on the telephone told me that this Byrne album is■more important than Jerry Harrison." Big deal. So is Dacron, Bosom Buddies, new improved LysolI Love My Carpet and the square egg machine.

What are we to make of a bushel of songs com misioned for a Broadway dance production? (Do I hearmincemeat?) Well, choreographer Twyla Tharp says her piece is abodtthe horrible family, featuring images of love, war, apocalypse and pineapples. Take that, Cricket Blake!

Byrnes songs can be broken down into four categories. Some likeHis Wife Refused andWhat A Day That Was, are fairly typical Talking Heads type tracks, with totally unexpected blips and doots identifiable as pretty stuff in the latter. Sounds like our boys been playing his Devo albums upside down again.

More interesting are the instrumental cuts.Big Business andTwo Soldiers are friendly enough to be used as background music in a transit authority radio commercial. DittoEggs In A Briar Patch, which has the extra play appeal of consenting vibes until somebody starts playing tapes of either Walter Brennan or George Wallace that were leftover from Byrne and Enos Bush Of Ghosts LP.

Ha! Ha! Sittin Pretty, All Together In Miller City

STEVE MILLER BAND Circle Of Love (Capitol)

by

Jeff Nesin

When the Summer of Love faded to fall, rather late in the protracted, drug-addled, seemingly formless corporate bidding wars over protracted, drug-addled, seemingly formless San Francisco bands, prize holdout Steve Miller entered the Capitol Tower for some hard bargaining. When he came down again, having signed a much heftier contract than his more colorful confreres had ever dreamed of, Steve said that he always intended to sign with Capitol because it was the label Les Paul had recorded for. A true story— you could look it up. He might well have cited Merle Travis and NatKing Cole (notable pre-hallucinogenic Capitol artists) too, but that might have divulged Millers own master plan. Off to London with Glyn Johns.

When Children Of The Future was delivered late the following spring, between the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, it made strange sense. The absolutely intimitable combination of sublime yet soulful accessibility laced with the inanely weird (title cut, finstance) was hidden behind the all-time most psychedelic cover in the history of are direction. (It could only be read by dogs doing DMT.) Clusters of folk and blues based fragments strung together nearly seamlessly and spiced with period effects (Oh wow, man, heavy, lets do another explosion. Heavy!) seemed to be Steve Millers declaration that both good and bad taste were timeless and that he was a man for the ages.

Thirteen years later Circle Of Love, the latest Steve Miller Band release, finds Steve down the same shaft mining the same strange vein. The man takes three years off and makes a record he could have made ten years ago—my kind of guy. Circle Of Love is beautiful and dumb and it must be listened to from the beginning, cause thats where the best stuff is.Heart Like A Wheel, the wonderful opening cut, leaps out at you with an Eddie Cochran meets Les Paul intro and rolls brilliantly through 3:55 of warm multi-track vocal and hto guitar. The playing is so immediate (you can heat his fingers on the fretboard throughout,) and so seductive that its hard to think of a more attractive radio song to see us through the winter. The euphoric rush continues intoGet On Home which must contain at least one line from every folk or blues song Steve ever learned. His multitrack vocal is now backed by the Miller Time Singers (more layers of S.M.) and radically panned synthesizer. The pastiche of folk cliches makes me wish he would give his pen a rest and record his old Dallas football buddy Lewis MacAdamsFolk Songs Of Our Land. The wish gets stronger inBaby Wanna Dance when I actually hear him sing,Sho nuff, now/Get down woman/Whatd I say... with little apparent embarrassment and no guitar solo at all. On the title track Steve is backed by the Miller Time Massed Radio Choir and his trusty axe again, so I really shouldnt complain about the dopey lyrics. Hes been the only guitar player in the SMB for many years now and here he stretches out and shows off his Peter Green dreamtime chops— fine with me. Makes a nice side...a nice side.

The other side is another story: an 18:32 extravaganza calledMacho City (what a way with words) in which Steve exposes himself at length as the modern talkingloudandsayingnothingchampeen. Over an ersatz disco riff, Mr. Miller (whos been doing some thinking on the farm), lays bare the facts behind recent global power struggles:El Salvador/Afghanistan/Ask those people about the Macho plan. After a few minutes of bad rap Macho Man, a prime Buck Turgidson asshole, dukes it out at very great length (hey, its your dime) with Root Man, a Kind of neo-hoodoo Mr. Natural (Has S.M. been reading Ishmael Reed?) and the lyrics mercifully disappear. The track, of course, goes on and on. Listening to the whole thing on headphones is like playing aural Asteroids, and by the time Gerald Johnson, the patient bass player, gets a solo— about 11 or 12 minutes in—1 was once again enjoying myself. (What the hell, Im easy to please.) After about 17 minutes theres a very long rainstorm (its still your dime) which may mean the forces of Nature have triumphed over phallic militarism. Then again, it may not. Anyone who is surprised by this odd behavior is directed to Children Of The Futures monumental (and virtually worthless) side closer,The Beauty Of Time Is That Its Snowing (Psychedelic B.B.). You could look it up.

Speaking of the cold hand of Brian Eno, waitll you hear what the credits refer to as his Prophet Scream onThe Red House. Sounds like the Bloodless Pharaohs throwing brass nail grooming kits and magnetic backgammon pieces at a talking soda machine.

Even further out isCloud Chamber, featuring Byrne on Kitchen Metals, a credit rarely seen on labels other than K-tel. Boing, conk, p-toot, wacka, yovo, klute, dinka-dinka it goes.

Final category is stinkers.My Big Hands (Fall Through The Cracks) is a plain old dead mans rap and the aptly entitledPoison is the albums think piece.When time is tight/Huh? he sings,You can use it/Uh huh. Uh huh.

Also included is this declaimer for hard core fans:The time limitations of a single long-playing disc do not allow for a complete presentation of this work—all 73 minutes of songs and instrumentals. The entire musical production is available only on The Catherine Wheel cassette. Thats the first and last time youll see a plug for tape on an American record.

Nebraska, surprise naps, delighting your friends with ceramic rabbits, diplomatic immunity at dogtracks, Mac Davis, utility infielders...oh yeah—other things more important than Jerry Harrison.

Rick Johnson

QUEEN Greatest Hits (Elektra)

DAVID BOWIE Changestwobowie _ (RCA)_

Just what, you may wonder, do everybodys favorite cryptofascist chartbusters have in common with the Thin White Object Dart anyway? Well...

Queens Greatest Hits is almost as necessary, and as welcome, as another kamikaze budget cut from Chairman R, unless youre one of those people who want the singles (and Queen often makes excellent singles—its not their fault that the radio continues to play them long past the point of endurance) .but cant bring themselves to buy the albums (or the original singles, for that matter). For the schematically minded the album offers a handy overview of the groups career, tho unfortunately the career seems to begin and end in the same place with no stops in between.. Still, overview buffs may derive some satisfaction from the following (not too) gross generalizations: bassist John Deacon writes the best songs ("Youre My Best Friend,Another One Bites The Dust); lead guitarist Brian May writes the dumbest ("Flash,Fat Bottomed Girls); lead vocalist Freddie Mercury writes the ripest, with unabashed sentiments lolling unashamedly on rich, oozing melodies ("We Are The Champions,Somebody To Love); and drummer Roger Taylor isnt represented—tho if the world had a better sense of humor,Im In Love With My Car would surely have been a greatest hit.

A Bowie compendium, on the other hand, is a bit more welcomed. This one isnt a greatest hits album or a sequel to Changesonebowie, exactly, since much of the material on the two albums overlaps in time—not does this collection have the grand design of the first, which, with its chronological order had a developmental logic that was truly impressive, making its stylistic divergencies seem less than random, more the inevitable result of Bowie synthesizing his baroque originality with the more pointed modes of his influences. Changestwobowie is something of ,a hodgepodge, but pretty good, nonetheless. Theres only one damp spot, tho a rather long one, with an alternate version ofJohn, Im Only Dancing done in Young American style which leisurely descends into an interminabledancing dancing coda that bloats the song to seven minutes, preceded byWild Is The Wind, an unfortunate cover illustrating that (in this case) no amount of conceptual savvy can redeem a truly dreadful song (does anyone remember the movie its from, that features Anthony Quinn as a widowed Italian sheep rancher in Nevada? No matter...). Aside from that 13 minutes of flatulence you get the catchiest bits of Scary Monsters and Lodger (thoBoys Keep Swinging is missing), likeable excerpts going back to Ziggy and Hunky Dory—its a non-cohesive mess but, despite the usual apocalyptic, moody lyrics, the more expansive aspects of Bowies pessimism are absent due to the anthological demand for dancable tunes with upbeat hooks. This is Bowie for those who have no patience with the hit and miss audaciousness of his more experimental stuff. And, conversely, an enticement for those who might have come in a little late to investigate the earlier sides. Always a worthy endeavor. Exactly where all this leaves Loverboy on the scale-of-terror Im not quite sure. They dont have quite as disgusting a vocalist or as many pretentions as an atrocity like Styx yet, by using a band as scummy as Foreigner asroots, theyve managed to make that group seem less awful then they actually are. (For the record, Foreigner also rates above Journey basically because of that aggravated hernia which calls itself Steve Perry). How Loverboy rate with, say, Cactus or Bloodrock is for future generations to decide. What really matters right now is that however depressing the bands success is (especially in this evershrinking market) there is some comfort to be taken. With a sound this derivatively anonymous, it hopefully wont be too long before the fickle stadium-rock hordes tire of them (if they havent already) and move on to the next flashy logo that captures their fancy.

So, again, whatta they have in common? Nothing, except that they share a tune on the Queen album. On first hearing of this collaboration, one might well wonder—will the mighty mega-hacks bring Bowie down to their level of platinum pustules or will the Elephant Manque elevate the boys to the level of his own rarefied airs? (And why is the song,Under Pressure, listed as being composed by Queen and David Bowie? Are we supposed to believe that it took five guys to write this thing? Whore they kidding?). The results would seem predictable —its definitely Bowies song from the herky jerky rhythms to the coy melody and desparate lyrics. Thats what happens when a genuine artist with a constantly revitalized personal vision (and, gee, I hope I wasnt out of line with thatmanque crack) encounters four cleverly manipulative artisians who are continually recycling theirs. So there.

Richard C. Walls

LOVERBOY Get Lucky (Columbia)

One thing Ive always liked about being a critic is that it allows you so many opportunities to engage in the noble aesthetic pursuit of discerning truly evil crap from mere yucky, stinky junk. Deciding on degrees of awfulness may strike some as rather perverse, or at best, intellectual enterprise. But there does remain a certain thrill in confidently recognizing the difference between, say, Triumph (who are laughable, boring fakes) and Rush (laughable, boring fakes, who—far worse—like to think of themselves as high artistes).

Though they do not sink as low on the proverbial suck-o-Scale as Rush, fellow-Canadians Loverboy should also by judged in relative degrees of horribleness. Listening to their two albums, it appears Loverboy represents life only as it is lived in promotional -meetings at CBSsblack rock. Its as though theyve never left corporate headquarters in their entire lives, knowing nothing about the world and the heart of rock n roll—i.e. fornication, croaking, and shopping malls —except what was fed to them in Billboard clippings and the cheeriest AOR radio. Unsurprisingly, their debut album of 1980 went platinum —at the time, the first major new band breakthrough for CBS since that factory rebate called Toto in 78. The interesting part, though, is that on theworse-to-worser scale the bands two albums barely even rate as product. Theyre closer to pseudo-product. Call it the imitation margarine level —a copy of a copy. Their leaden, emotionless guitar riffs, allegedly frisky sentiment and self-satisfied squawking vocals sound most like upchucked Foreigner (who in turn ripped off Bad Company, who are nothing more than a downscale Free). Like otherForeigner-out-of-Bad Company bands (Journey or the new Jeff Starship), Loverboy do have a few minimally memorable songs. As always the great revenge of nobrand corporate punk, their cynically slick choruses can sometimes force you to sing along anyway. Still, the grand majority of the bands material is pretty dreary and the lead singer has an awfully annoying, if blanded-out, Lou Gramm-"style crotch scratching voice. As for the bands newest lyrics—any record that opens with as original a statement asWorking For The Weekend is practically daring you to get to track two. Ami while Im complaining—how dare these guys call themselves Loverboy when not one of them is anything close to a hunk? (And dont tell me they meant it sarcastically cuz tongue-in-cheek is definitely beyond them).

Jim Farber

JOAN JETT I Love RockNRoll (Boardwalk)

If any of rocks male marauders (say Triumph, or Rush) opened up an LP with a stop n start thumper about spotting a 17-year-old number by the record machine and taking said number home for some action, and if the thuumper had a chorus likeI love rock n roll/So put another dime in the juke box, baby (Dime? Try three plays for eight bits), you can bet that the crapometer would be reading about 88% by the time the guitar solo came galloping around the bend.

Joan Jett gets away with a lot of such hand-me-down foolishness. Part of her escape hatch is likeability (oh, all right, lustability, but who ever said that dark bangs and well-applied mascara had nothing to do with rock n roll?), the .spunkiness of her self-invented character, and the pop shimmer surface—courtesy of producers Ritchie Cordell and Kenny Laguna— that wraps around the hard rock cliches. Compared to such complex females as Romeo Voids Deborah Iyall and Girls At Our Bestls Judy Evans, Jettsdont toss me no guff, bozo gruffness is a middle ground stance, but as middle grounds go, Ill take hers over Benatars, or even Hyndes, for smarts and lack of mannerist pretention.

As singers go, Jett shaves some points off the spread. Range, phrasing, tone, all pretty ordinary. But she does project, on songs like(Im Gonna) Run Away andYoure Too Possessive (two originals; the latter goes back aways) the purposeful, cut-loose autonomy that she has made her theme since she was a 16-year-old Runaway. Her unaccented declamatory style is perfect for lines likeI dont need your interrogation. She screams well. Theres a touch of Leather Tuscadero in her swagger (and of Chinn-Chapman in some of the arrangements) (Suzi Quatro, sold before her time).

Joan Jett, done in 79 and 80 with a bunch of punk, pub and pop professionals, was one of the nicer surprises of last year. Jett, dealing with a concept of Great Trash Through The Ages—Lesley Gore to Gary Glitter to Tommy James to early Isleys to Joey Levine to Jett herself—reconstructed her tough girl image, withBad Reputation as the opening declaration. At times the ideas outstripped her abilities, but the hodgepodge didnt sound manipulative, maybe because Cordell and Laguna arent Kim Fowley, Jett entered her twenties with a dandy coming-out party.

The sequel, I Love Rock TV Roll, was done with her own band, The Blackhearts. Theyre OK, if more than a touch obvious. They come down too hard on the ephemeralCrimson and Clover, and all through the album you can hear them swiping from their betters. Some of the graftings are inspired. It was quite a stroke to concoct a Who instrumental flip-out ofLittle Drummer Boy (probably off the LP by now: it was to be replaced after the holidays), to blast through The Halos early-60s gripe oldieNag as a Pistolish outfit (Jett does a smidgen of Rotten in the vocal). But the Antmusic approach to the DC5sBits And Pieces is a notion of best left to Annabella (suggestion for next Jett:Try Too Hard) , andLove Is Pain is almost capsized by its Free-Bad Co.-Foreigner formula.

Mostly it works, like Joan Jett, because of the mixmaster juxtapositions. A Christmas song, a basic Bo Diddley cop with composing help from fellow Oriole fan Greg Kihn, another song about her bad rep ("Victim Of Circumstance:They say that Im demented and I never could sing), would-be rock anthem, some cool rock relics, a piece of her teenage past. Jetts mainstream-aggresive image covers more ground than you might expect, and does so with contagious enthusiasm.

Mitchell Cohen

ROSSINGTON COLLINS BAND This Is The Way (MCA)

Some Northern critics, honorable folks all, used to consider Lynyrd Skynyrd the voice of the True South, right up there with Ill Take My Stand as a pillar of populist agrarian reaffirmation. All I could hear was the rock n roll equivalent ofRoll Tide, Roll, which is interesting because the people who shoutedSooey, Pig andHook em, Horns had previously danced to soul music. It occurs to me now that the rise of Southern rock to what the latest Allman Brother bulletin callsa traditional art form in American music coincides neatly with white kids listening to white bands. This does not necessarily mean that residual racism is on the upswing (though Charlie Daniels has forgotten the words toUneasy Rider) but it does mean that cultural miscegenation, long the singular strength of Southern music, is slipping away. So what? Who needs it when youve got renewed regional pride and rftore defense contracts than the KGB can keep track of. Welcome to the New South.

A bizarre, if increasingly successful subdivision of New South music is the Three Guitar Band—a form of excess that completely escapes me. Why not five guitars? Why not John Sinclairs moth-balled Guitar Army? Creedence, the prototype American band, had two and finally only one. The Allman Brothers Band, the Corleones of New South music, offered, with two players, all the guitar you could eat plus great singing and waves of polyrhythm. What, I wonder, is the atavistic fascination with gangs of longhaired, Stetsoned and booted journeymen guitarists touring the country carrying heavy armament? In search of the Three Guitar Band I dauntlessly donned headphones and listened to This Is Thi Way, the second album from the Rossington Collins Band, a 3-G-B descended directly from Lynyrd Skynyrd, the folks who first reasoned,If one is good and two is great, then three should be outta-fuckin-sight. Under the headphones I found:

1. No more music than a decent 2-G-B can make. It seems likely that, volume levels being what they are, there are only so many lead lines the ear can differentiate at one time. Surprise.

2. Two good songs—a textured acoustic track calledIm Free Today which features the only interesting vocal on the record (not the lead singer), andDont Stop Me Now, a harmless AOR sure shot.

3. A woman singing lead—smart move, at least at first. After you listen a bit youll wish she stayed with her copy band in Florida or wherever. She sings with conviction. (She sings everything with conviction.) but has no emotional depth or expressive power. Then again, the material leaves something to be desired, too, which leads me to

4. Absolute sludge for songs. I understand that this band has seen some hard times, but please —such humorless, tendentious tripe needs a better excuse than tragedy. Where would we be if, struggling to survive, Howling Wolf had written...the grass is always greener on the other side of the road...

I dont want to go on beating a dead horse, but the flagship aggregation of New South music ought to be minimally distinctive.Im Free Today holds out a glimmer of hope that nuance isnt entirely lost on the band or their audience. I respectfully suggest flowers for A1 Jacksons grave, a regular tithe to Steve Cropper, a new singer for whom soul is not a misspelled fish, and careful study of southern roots.

Next month: In Search Of The Small, Mobile, Intelligent Unit.

Jeff Nesin

ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE ATTRACTIONS Almost Blue (Columbia)

Im reminded of that Honey -mooners episode where, in Alices absence, Ed gives Ralph a hand with the household chores.by doing a little ironing. Stretched out on the board is Ralphs beloved bowling shirt withHurricanes stitched across the back. Ed gets distracted, leaves the iron sitting on the shirt, and before you can sayBang! Zoom! its presto scorcho time Just before he throws one of his gargantuan fits, Kramden inquires of Norton:Is this your idea of a joke? To which Americas favorite engineer of subterranean sanitation replies:No, thats my idea of a burn.

Almost Blue is my idea of a burn. Its certainly no joke. Costello has always had a soft spot in his solar plexus for country music; after all, the flipside of his first Stiff single was a C&W lamenter calledRadio Sweetheart. And even king weeper George Jones thought enough of ElvissStranger In The House to record it himself. But they were side trips, not the sort of main roads an angry young rocker like Costello was meant to go careening down.

Almost Blue is one big side trip. The main problem is that he didnt write any of this stuff. Every damn songs a cover...although this shouldnt really be cause for initial alarm. Recall the verve he implanted in Sam and DavesI Cant Stand Up For Falling Down and Betty EverettsGetting Mighty Crowded. But they were from the realm of soul music, which is only a stones throw from E.C.s original rock n roll base. But these country cuts, while sharing lyrical kinship with fave E.C. themes like betrayal and rejection, are musically turgid strangers in town.

It didnt have to be that way, but it appears that producer Billy Sherrill cowed the Attractions into submission—theyve never sounded more docile or sluggish, with pianist Steve Neive (what happened toi beforee?) particularly asleep-at-the-wheel. Add to thisspecial guest John McFees pedal steel yin-yang twangs, occasional syrupy string arrangements and embalmed female back-up singers and youve got musical mildew up the drainpipe.

None of which wouldve mattered if Costello had taken the trouble to put some conviction in his crooning. Time after time he comes off like some hack lounge singer coming to fingertip grips with heartbreak. Only thing is, the heartbreaks drowning in a sea of cliched saphead angst vocal mechanisms. Somebody shoulda whacked that whine right outta his voicebox.

Theres at least a half a dozen classic songs here by people like Merle Haggard, Charlie Rich, Hank Williams, Gram Parsons, Don Gibson, Big Joe Turner (token blues) and (surprise!) George Jones. All are available in their original (and far superior) versions as either 45s or assorted album cuts. Especially bad is Costellos trampling stampede job on HanksWhy Dont You Love Me (Like You Used To Do) and the flattened-out dixie cup-depth he brings to Grams mournfully sadHot Burrito #1.

So pass this by unless youre a diehard Costello fan (and even then you should think twice) and go score copies of the Burrito Bros. Gilded Palace Of Sin, The Fabulous Charlie Rich or a good greatest hits set by Hank Williams or Patsy Cline. And wait for Elvis next collection of covers, one that sticks to nothing but R&B and soul standards. Working title: Almost Black.

Craig Zeller

HUMAN SWITCHBOARD Whos Landing In My Hangar? (Faulty/I.R.S.)

l ean hardly wait until the Human Switchboard have become legendary enough in the international rock n roll community that Guy Peellaert will want to do up their portrait for his the-wages-of-fameis-surreal rockstar gallery.

Ive got it all visualized for you, Guy: guitarist Bob Pfiefer and farfista Myrna Marcarian are standing in their dismal book-andrecord-littered railroad fl^it, Bob behind Myrna, his hand on her shoulder. She looks anxious but in control of things, while Bob is wearing his inscrutable Lou Reed shades, even though the only illumination in the room is the wan light escaping from the half-opened refrigerator door. Inside the refrigerator, their last edible foodstuff, a jar of olives, has tipped over, and vinegar is slowly dripping onto the empty Entemanns coffee cake package on a lower shelf. Outside the rooms only window, we can just make out drummer Don Metz and bassist Steve Calabria, who are about to be teargassed by National Guardsmen, a not-so-subtle reminder that this is nowhere-else-butKent, Ohio.

Atmospheric, huh? Yet nearly that whole visual (plus a bunch more) can be found right inside the intensely graphic music on the Human Switchboards debut studio/ major label album, Whos Landing In My Hangar? I told you in an August BGO how great the Switchboard are live, and their album is far more of the same.

For starters, Bob Pfiefer still has a huge Lou Reed fetish which tends to brand almost every note that issues from his nervous mouth and hands. Hes got Unca Lous clipped snarl-drawl vokes down cold (check the opening of(I Used To) Believe In You), and hes often caught in the act of playing frantically Reedian you-got-an-itchyou-scratch-it! guitar lines.

Which is just about where Myrna Marcarians cool-burble organ plunges and her sweetly genitalmelting vocal assertions come in, to rescue Pfiefer from his compulsively NoDoz soul, and from further Lou Reed comparison from the reviewers. The Human Switchboard take off from the Velvets, but bring the thrust of their own music back to a more—shall we sayheterosexual? nah, more likeconnubial—level of intensity.

The Human Switchboards songs fire up from 24-hours-a-day, 7days-a-week cohabitation encounters, with Pfiefer ranting and raving about female infidelity (now do you get theHangar metaphor?), while Marcarian fires back from her cool Farfisa hip, huskily intent upon her own bill of complaints, the intellectual vanity of males at the top of the list. Painful-beauty male/female exchanges in these songs, early Sonny & Cher girlboy duets raised to the millionth power, love at the base of all this clatter.

Searingly exciting Pfiefer/Marcarian duets, and the best of these is onRefrigerator Door, a tour de force every bit as coldwater kitschen surreal as that mythical Peellaert vision sketched out above.Ooh, baby, where you been all night? taunts Myrna/"Now theres tire tracks across your bedroom floor! snorts Bob. Did I mention the part about the Switchboards nonstop rhythm section colliding with their songs abrupt changes as the lyrical fur flies?

Perpetual crisis rock n roll flows through every crossed circuit on the Human Switchboard. Some people would call this musicavant-garde, but heck, Ive always thoughtgood old rock n roll should sound just about like the Human Switchboard already does. Pick-to-click for radio:Book On Looks, Pfiefer at his most lyrically sanguine, for a compact 2:34, 50s-honker sax, etc. If not Marcarians own semisweet(Say No To) Saturdays Girl). Yes.

Richard Riegel

RINGO STARR Stop And Smell The Roses (Boardwalk)

In his heyday, Hank Williams would strut backstage at the Grand Ole Opry singing his latest and askYa like that .un? Pretty good, huh? Of course it usually was, and when someone would say so, hed crowYeah. Too good for the likes of you. Think oP Hankll keep this one for hisse//.  One doesnt like to think of his former co-workers playing out a similar scene with Ringo, but at least in Pauls case his contributions to this album are far less clever and even more lightweight than thegood stuff he keeps hisself. For Harrisons part, he hasnt shown any good stuff since his first solo album and Bangla Desh anyway. Both of them should think twice before they again swing by a Ringo session with lead vocalless masters from their reject pile and have him connect the aural dots.

With the exception of John Lennon (who unlike the other exBeatles actually wrote for Ringo) and Carl Perkins, Ringo has usually been his own best source for material. Granted, carrying the Ringo Starr Songbook is not going to activate any hernias, but he come up with a choice one from time to time likeIt Dont Come Easy orEarly 1970 and Stop And Swell The Roses boasts some very successful collaborations.

Indeed it is the lesser lights who provide the brighter sparks here. A better choice for a single would have been the Starkey-Ron Wood pennedDead Giveaway. Lowkeyed and dusky, it and Stephen Stills and Michael StergisYouve Got A Nice Way bring something positive—even outstanding—out of Ringo that Harrison and McCartney are too close in to see or take seriously.

Long time crony Harry Nilsson does better by Ringo.Drumming Is My Madness is a throwaway (ironically the funkiest, most in-demand drummer in Liverpool shares the percussion work on this cut with unabashed protege Jim Keltner), but Nilsson co-wrote the fairly amusing title tune (not the smarmy Mac Davis ersatzcountry hit) and, with the usually suspect Van Dyke Parks, reworkdBack Off Bugaloo into a brassy rhythmic juggernaut fleshed out with a background medley of Beatle lyrics.

Listeners have been conditioned over the years to expect so little from Ringo that anything more than adequate ("Boys,Honey Dont,Dont Pass Me By) has been considered gravy, a perk. Certain cuts here do sound like hes stepped in for a guest vocal on somebody elses session, but when he keeps his own hand in, or works with someone like Wood or Stills (whose own erratic career sdoesnt allow him to waste such an opportunity onB material), Billy Shears does benefit with a little help from the right friends, the ones who understand that the key word islittle

Richard A. Pinkston IV