RECORDS

RECORDS

AND REMEMBER, CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS

VAN MORRISON Beautiful Vision (Warner Bros.)

by Richard Riegel

As I sit down to write this review, it’s the morning of March 10, 1982. Even casual followers of the news must be aware by now that the End Of The World is hard upon us, due at 3:38 this afternoon, when the dread “Jupiter Effect" planetary alignment begins its assault on Earth’s gravity.

Obviously I’m not betting on that outcome, but I am certain that two, maybe three months from now, just supposing J-E Day has demolished all our metropolises, and still Van Morrison will come putt-putting down the mountain in his silver BMW some afternoon, his wavy red hair wildly tousled, his nervous eyes darting crazily over the ruined sidewalks of Mill Valley, searching for some trusted musician friends to go into the studio with him, to begin laying down his next album. And Van’ll find just who he wants, among the scrabbling caveman survivors, and in a few more months there will be another new, semi-provocative Van Morrison album to puzzle over.

Which is just about where we stand with his actual newest release, Beautiful Vision. Who really knows whether this is the best Morrison since Veedon Fleece or Moondance or Astral Weeks? Van must like to keep the whole debate on his greatness open-ended, by continuing to release these flawed masterworks each time out. I had kinda thought that his previous album, 1980’s Common One, was his best in years, mainly because I liked its showcase epic, “Summertime In England,” for its real-jazz instrumental base and for Van’s invocation of “Wordsworth and Coleridge” in the heart of the song (a

brilliantly goofy moove for our postliterate age).

“Cleaning Windows,” which opens Side Two of Beautiful Vision, picks up some of the threads of “Summertime In England,” and is the most interesting song on the new set as a result. “Cleaning Windows” stars Van Morrison as a repatriated Belfast window washer, who measures his life in the number of sparkling panes he’s left behind; “*36!” exults Van, in a spoken interjection, marking both his years and his progress in the morning’s work. On his rounds, Van spots the whole poetic gang who first drove him to beautiful visions, in his early-60’s awakenings: “I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemoh on the street where I was born.” Van lets all the light in, as he recalls more of his adolescent pantheon—Sonny Terry, Muddy Waters, finally holy Jack Kerouac. A lively slice of Morrison’s pre-Them life, at last.

Unfortunately, nowhere else on Beautiful Vision does Van Morrison allow us such crystalline metaphors for his life. All 10 cuts have his trademark beautiful-vision melodies but lyrically too many of the other songs celebrate those vague bromides favored by Bob Dylan in recent years, songs in which the satisfaction of the singer’s belief is supposed to substitute for acute lyric detail. As in the title cut, where Van thanks his eternal female savior: “In the darkest night/You are shining bright.” Fair enough, but does She do windows? Likewise in “She Gives Me Religion” (you know the number, look up the name to make sure Dylan himself hasn’t already done it).

In fact, Beautiful Vision has an intriguing number of strange references, apparently accidental, to other singers and their songs. In “Northern Muse (Solid Ground),” Morrison drops a clanking “If you -see her, say hellp,” direct from Dylan’s song of the same name,, and goes even more bizarrely afield in “Across The Bridge Where Angels Dwell,” with a “Close your eyes in fields of wonder,” an almost exact cop of “Catch your dreams in nets of wonder,” from Bob Lind’s ancient “Elusive Butterfly’,’ (a song Van Morrison presumably knows, somewhere among the neatly-filed Cyprus Avenues of his mind, as it was popular when he was still touring the whorish rock ’n’. roll world with Them).

But why “Elusive Butterfly”? why now, Van? Is this the iceberg tip of that infinitely subtle sense of humor you claim your early concert fans always missed? I was wondering about “Celtic Ray” on Beautiful Vision—the other mags are digging up religious potatoes all over that song’s mystic earth, but I can’t get past the punning title: “Celtic Ray.” You do answer to that “Irish Ray Charles” comparison the writers are always pinning on you! An ever-sosly pun, maybe to soften the recognition that your two best “religious” numbers on this album, “Dweller On The Threshold” and “Across The Bridge Where Angels Dwell,” celebrate the joyous release of death, for you believers.

Ah, Celtic Van, when you croon, “Ahead where home is waiting,” in “Across The Bridge,” I can almost agree with you, in my own agnostic way, it’s just that let’s not stop living quite yet...

☆ ☆ ☆

March 10, 1982, 3:39 p.m. This Aryan missed the end of the world, seems to be with us for another spin or two. Van Morrison presumably spent the day enraptured in the permanent spiritual quest he set out on in his own Janet Planetary— alignment days. Maybe he worried about glamour, a world problem of great proportions. Since my stereo also survived, it’s time for another listen to Beautiful Vision.

THE HUMAN LEAGUE Dare

(A&M/Virgin)

If the guy who built a pinochleplaying computer for his Science Techniques Lab in high school married the gal who wrote poems called “alien/nation” for the Sansculottes Literary Review, and they had a kid, that kid would probably grow lip to lead an electrq-synth pop “band.” Most of these crews smack of ink-stained shirt pockets and post-pubescent gloom.

The Human League’s sound is as remote as you’d expect from an outfit that utilizes such hardware as Roland Microcomposers, Linn Drum Computers and Casio VLT, MIOs. They’ve got one of those droners singing lead (Philip Oakey, chief writer and one of four synthesizer players; one only plays “occasional” synthesizer, actually, but someone else programs the microcomposer and drum composer), and there are songs on Dare that are real downbeat chuckle-bait (like “I Am The Law,” where Oakey takes on the responsibility of squelching society’s criminal impulse, to no avail: on the next song, “Seconds,” there’s a murder that you hope against hope wasn’t committed by Chapman).

There’s a built-in neutrality to this all-singing, all-synthing approach. You can’t coax much in the way of emotion out of a Yamaha CS15 as compared to (author’s prejudice) a Rickenbacker. It’s a depersonalized rock method, but Human League’s name turns out to be not all that ironic, and the album title is meant to be taken literally. As in: open yourself to experience. Fee/, something. Disguised by the whooshes and clicks is often a heart of goo, and sometimes even a cheery melody. The contradiction between vyhat they’re saying and how they’re saying it is striking. Prick a robot’s skin, and he not only bleeds, he gushes.

Dare, for all its surface coldness, makes an anti-cynicism statement that is close to 60’s rock utopianism (and to its converse, Doors-like bum trippery). Here is a modern album, a microchip extravaganza, that opens with a song called “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of’: “Everybody needs love and affection,” sings Oakey (the other Philip, P. Adrian Wright, wrote the song), “everybody needs two or three friends.” He extols, the glories of travel, of food, of Ramones, and I don’t think sarcasm is intended. Not when the next tune, “Open Your Heart,” could have come from Hair, complete with tribal girlie chorus. And “The Sound Of The Crowd” combines 80’s chic trappings—dance-floor fake bass, persistent (not to say nagging) pulse— with the* enduring message of Petula “Downtown”/“I Know A Place” Clark: “Get around town/ Where the people look good/ Where the music is loud.”

The flip side of this cellarful of noise has bats in the belfry. The dreary “Darkness” (by. Wright) is a perfect theme song for Count Floyd’s Monster Chiller Horror Theater; as one of those damned machines does an impression of a cathedral organ, Oakey is being shadowed by voices, colors, sounds, shapes. “Don’t turn out the lights or I’ll go over the edge.” Ahhoooooo! Scaaaary stuff, boys and girls. Oakey’s “Do Or Die” has something of a Latin hook, and goes on far too long without point or purpose.

Human League’s team includes females, but they don’t have much to do. Dare is mostly a vehicle for synthesized “riffs”—once a computer latches on to a pattern nothing short of a blowtorch can pry it loose—and the philosophies according to the Philips. (“This is Phil talking,” “Love Action (I Believe In Love) goes. “I want to tell you what I’ve found out to be true.”) The women are there for atmosphere.

The one exception is (no coincidence) the best track on the album. “Don’t You Want Me” get a little intersexual debate going, and not only is it a relief from the standpoint of breaking up the vocal monotony, but the song has a real kick in the chorus-and a story yvith two sides. After a five-year romantic arrangement, she wants out. He thinks she’s an ungrateful wench (says he picked her out of a cocktail bar and made something out of her). She thinks he’s a possessive swine (says she loves him but has to move on and anyway she could have made it alone all along). I believe her, but her gets to sing the chorus, and you can’t help feeling sorry for the fella who’s deluded himself into thinking he’s dispensible. It’s the album’s clearest acknowledgement that in the human league, there are any number of divisions.

Mitchell Cohen

MOON MARTIN Mystery Ticket (Capitol)

“An artist is somebody who produces (things that people don’t need to have but that he—for some reason—thinks it would be a good idea to give them”—A. Warhol. Well, there’s no longer any mistaking Moon Martin for Johnny Denver. Gone is that dumb puddingbowl haircut. On Mystery Ticket, Moon’s looking, and for some reason, acting just like Warhol.

Like most artists mixing colors for another mid-career work (this’ll be his fourth tableau in four years), MM gives us what we expect: more of the same. For Martin, that means serial work and multiple images of the same icon on a level that is equalled only by Warhol (soup cans, Monroes and Presleys) and the immortal Redbone, who gave out with 87 or 88 reruns of their hit “Come And Get Your Love” between ’74 and ’76. Consistency is the name of the game, and Moon wails like 60 on Mystery Ticket, clicking off no less than four more versions of “Bad Case Of Loving You” (this time they’ve got titles like “Dangerous,” “Firing Line” and “XRay Vision”).

Which means this LP oughta be a real Pasadena, goodbye and thanks. But, wait, Moony’s consistency is nothing if not thorough. That means that Mystery Ticket, like its predecessors, hides one stunning gem in with all the clunkers and bedevils the hell out of you: as in, “Is this guy one of the great unsung, potential pop muthas of his time or the relentless hack he seems like the other 80% of the time?!”

The point: “Aces With You,” buried in the middle of Side Two (and produced by Andrew Gold, unlike the rest, which is Robert Pretty-boy Palmer’s), is such goddamn pure melodyrhythm greatness (with references to Spector, Buddy Holly and Martin’s own superfine “No Chance”) that it almost justifies the rest of the LP. We’re talking fearless naivete on a major level here—and coming from a pushin’-40 midrange rocker in 1982, that’s no mean feat. 1 mean, were there justice, “Aces” would be covered by at least as many singers as appeared on the first side of Q’s The Dude and Moon’d be hauling sacks to his local B of A branch right now.

It’s a tough one. The ideal solution would be one Martin LP that contained “Signal For Help,” “Victim Of Romance,” “No Chance” and the rest of the good stuff, topped with “Aces.” BUT artists don’t always work that way. They think they know what we need. Doctor, doctor, doctor...

Gene Sculatti

VARIOUS ARTISTS Giants Of The Blues Tenor Sax VARIOUS ARTISTS Giants Of The Fiink.

Tenor Sax (both Prestige)

You used to be able to hear this kind of stuff all the time— bluesy/ funky tenor saxes, usually backed by organ-guitar-drums—it was, in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the mainstay of commercial jazz (CJ) radio stations and the many small black urban clubs and bars that featured no-nonsense entertainment. Such a mainstay of CJ radio, in fact, that at its peak it was crowding out more interesting and exciting sounds—avant garde wasn’t about to get airplay, of course, but even post-boppers like Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson and the rest of the Blue Note gang were getting squeezed out, causing among certain listeners (like myself) some resentment toward the music. It wasn’t that it was without merit, just that it was becoming all that CJ listeners were allowed to hear (the AOR/New Wave parallels should be obvious).

But that was a long time ago and CJ radio has gone on to embrace other trends-^disco, urban contemporary (Grammy music), whatever sells and can reasonably fall under the black music label without modern r’n’b or funk (too aggressive) . By now the tenor/organ thing has become rare enough, its hegemony receded far enough into the past, that when organist Jimmy McGriff’s album Movin’ Upside The Blues was released this past year and received heavy CJ play it sounded, amidst the soporific vocals and last gasps of fusion, like a model of musical integrity and intelligent entertainment. Like the Real Thang. Jazz, without pretense.

Sixteen of the 23 cuts on the pair of 2-fer re-issues we’re considering today come from ’58-’62, the period of the great market glut (the remaining seven are a little more recent—and for the record, the difference between blues and funk is defined here as being generational, the tenors on the blues album having been bom before ’23, the ones on the funk album after— aside from that the categorization seems capricious, and even the definition that funk is just blues with newer, tighter rhythms isn’t always adhered to) and now the music that timid radio stations made a pain in the ass, or at least in the throats of those it was being shoved down, can be heard in an early 80’s context as a breath of freshair, tinged with nostalgia...that, at least, is how much of the music here comes across. Some of it, though, is transcendent. On the Blues album there’s Coleman Hawkins’ “Soul Blues,” wherein he surrenders his usual fluidity to some soulful shouts, and two cuts affording stylistic comparisons, “Light And Lovely,” a non-cutting conclave where they talk it four different ways—they being Arnett Cobb (wild), Buddy Tate (suave), Coleman Hawkins (sincere), and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (macho) — and /‘Soul Street,” where the conclave is cutting, Jimmy Forrest’s easy bop chopping up King Curtis’ honest but stiff effort and Oliver Nelson’s cool modernity (nice approach, wrong song). The Funk album, with such bar war veterans as Willis Jackson and Houston Person, the ubiquitous Sonny Stitt and the loquacious Johnny Griffin, is a more meat and potatoes collection, though Gene Ammons, who carries his own echo chamber and times his pauses with occult precision, is represented by the classic “Hittin’ The Jug” (somebody oughta write one called “Droppin’ The G”), which King Pleasure turned into the also classic “Swan Blues.”

If you like this sort of thing, or think you might, this is a good selection and the scholarly angle ain’t ignored either—aside form, the usual informative liner notes, each tenor gets a short bio and a brief listing of major influences and key recordings. It’s good, but I hope it doesn’t catch on too much (as in “revival”) because then CJ radio is going to play it ’til you just can’t stand it anymore...and no music deserves such abuse.

Richard C. Walls

GRAHAM PARKER Another Grey Area (Arista)

Look, just because I’m a critic, that doesn’t mean that I understand critics any more than you do. For as often as I find myself in accord with / the official verdict on a record, when it’s time for certain artists like Graham Parker to fall from.the tastemakers’ grace, I tend to wander a little bit off the company line. Howlin’ Wind and Heat Treatment are not my favorite Parker LPs (I’m waiting for the firing squad). I loved the slop-bucket production of Stick To Me and I even liked (they’re raising their rifles now) “The Heat In Harlem.” While many of the Great Bylined Ones had a Mexican hat dance on Parker’s critical darling status in regards to The Up Escalator, I sat on the sidelines. Somewhere under the busy veneer of Jimmy Iovine’s production, Parker was hacking through a difficult personal change, and that made big hunks of the album fascinating. (Can I have one more cigarette?) Although Escalator had too many songs that didn’t sound comfortable with themselves, it offered the minimum number of Parker classics. Besides (here comes the blindfold) , even mediocre Parker is good music.

This record is good, too, but it’s hard to tell how good right away— so far, better than Escalator and not as amazing as Squeezing Out Sparks (ah, a stay of execution). Jack Douglas co-produced with Parker and they came up with a soft-shell, commercial sound that, oddly enough, works, except for some pressure points when the ol’ Rumour arrgghhhh should be there and isn’t.. The El-Lay girlie choruses are the only blatantly cheap pitch to AOR radio. Sounding quasi-marketable, in fact, gives the albums a gentleness that’s part and parcel of what the songs are about.

Not that Parker isn’t mad anymore. As long as people commit the sins of personal and sociological sloth, the betrayal of human possibility will be there and Parker won’t be able to rest. It is a personal fuckover for him. Mass-marketing stupidity has first person consequences: on prior albums, lovers were constantly being gypped out of a shot a real connection by unwitting slides and the hypersensitivity that used to be protected by rage is being forced to come out and see some daylight; it’s that or lose the relationship. That puts him in a new set of binds. He has to come eyeball to eyeball with his own capacity for betrayal and bull (“No More Excuses,” “It’s All Worth Nothing Alone,” “Crying For Attention,” “Can’t Waste A Minute”). He has to figure out when to crawl back to Cover and when to stand up in the foxhole (“Dark Side Of The Bright Lights,” “You Hit The Spot”). Instead of growling at folks who act like turkeys in a rainstorm when looking for something to stay sane by, he slips an emphatic sigh around the sneer (“Temporary Beauty”). His choices of respite aren’t always so terrific either (“Another Grey Area”), but he seems to have found the guts to go to the line for the ones he makes, sans guarantees (“Fear Not”).

So ignore the critics and go buy this record. Aside from Foreigner and Olivia Newton-John, we’ve been known to make mistakes. The guns are only for skeet shooting, anyway.

Laura Fissinger

SAMMY HAGAR Standing Hampton (Geffen)

As Bugs would say, “What a maroon!”

I’m talking about Sammy Hagar3 and, let’s ’fess up: you probably don’t even know who the hell Sammy Hagar is—and if you do, you still probably confuse him with similarly faceless pseudo-crungers like Pat Travers.

So who is he? In a nutshell, he’s a guy who churned out a whole slew of records on Gapitol a while back, and is now trying for the mega-platinum ring on Geffen Records.

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that Sammy Hagar couldn’t punch his way out of a usedkvet-nap most of the time, and he writes songs as if he lost half of his brain in an accident when he was five years old.

(There is one glaring exception to the above paragraph, which is the monster rocker title tune from the soundtrack of the Heavy Metal movie. It closes side one of this mess, and the track sounds as if Hagar downed a couple of I.Q. pills before he penned it. Mutiple power chords abound, and almost witty lyrics—c’mon, you know: lyrics that seem witty even though you know they weren’t meant to be—cut through the remaining dross on the rest of this album like a wedge (to paraphrase The Hague himself). If Sammy Hagar deserves to collect a million dollars from the masses for what he’s doing, then it should be on the merits of “Heavy Metal’’ alone.)

Songs like “Baby’s On Fire” (.not the Eno tune), “Surrender” (not the Cheap Trick tune) and “Sweet Hitchhiker” (not the Creedence tune) are so lame and unfocused it makes me wonder why the hell anyone would bother to steal the titles to three of rock ’n’ roll’s all-time classic tunes if he couldn’t come up with a song that deserved to be confused with the originals.

Anyway, with albums pushing a cool 10 bucks a throw these days, there’s absolutely no reason why this album should be part of your collection unless (a)—you want a copy of “Heavy Metal” (in case which you’d be better off with the soundtrack album instead) or (b) — you lost half of your brain in an accident when you were five years old.

As for David Geffen, shed no tears: every label needs at least one cartoon guitar hero in the stable, and now David’s got his.

Jeffrey Morgan

LOU ANN BARTON Old Enough (Asylum)

I approached Old Enough, the big league debut of Lou Ann Barton—an old enough Texan sporting impressive minor league stats—with modest hope and considerable suspicion. First there was the problem of nearly universal critical acclaim. Could Ms. Barton actually be as good as people said? Then there was the problem of producer Jerry Wexler. After a decade and a half of essential involvement with some of the best American music ever—reaching a glorious zenith with Aretha’s gold— Wexler has contented himself over th^ last decade and a half with a sort of serni-retired search for the Great White Thrush. Many’s the time he’s lured otherwise sensible women into a Southern studio (Muscle Shoals, where Old Enough was recorded, has been a special favorite.) to no discernible purpose or benefit. I love Dusty In Memphis and have a particular weakness for Jackie DeShannon’s' “Vanilla O’Lay” and “Anna Karina” but I’m old enough too and I remember Lulu, Cher, and (oi vey) Ronee Blakely. Jerry’s also passed some time playing outlaw with Willie and rabbi with Zimmie and the bottom line is decidedly mixed. Would Lou Ann be just one more heartache? Lastly, there was the problem of Jerry’s co-host this week, Eagle Scout Glenn Frey. Was there a reason for this collaboration? Did somebody owe somebody or was the corporation simply diversifying? Hmmm...make that less than modest hope and more than considerable suspicion.

It is both my pleasure and surprise to report that Old Enough and Ms. Barton are indeed as good as people said. It turns out that she is a very serious hardcore blues singer who is perfectly matched with the Muscle Shoals sound that Wexler has had his ups and downs with oyer the years. The secret of the Muscle Shoals studio crew— Johnson, Becket, Hood, Hawkins, et al.—is superb playing totally subsumed in the spirit of the work at hand. Artists as various as Aretha and the Osmonds have hits to prove it and now, if the fates are kind, so will Lou Ann. Several songs on Old Enough would substantially brighten what passes for radio fare these days starting with the title track, “I’m Old Enough.” Written by Scottish soul singer— now that’s an interesting subgroup —Frankie Miller and revved Up by guitar vet Wayrie Perkins, the tune features a genuine tough vocal (as in Sugar Pie DeSanto, not Pat Benatar). Lou Ann’s style is direct and anti-decorative; no complexity is forced in where a gritty simplicity will do, yet every phrase has sensibility as well as focus. I’m impressed. Her ballads display the same virtues: Irma Thomas’s wonderful “It’s Raining” here lacks the casual subtlety of the original but makes up the difference with heart. On Percy Sledge’s “The Sudden Stop” (A brilliant choice. My compliments to whomever.) Barton takes on Percy in his home studio and gets my vote by turning the song into a power ballad—my favorite genre. She gets a little carried away with the Chantels’ “Maybe,” piling too much twangy jalapeno relish on what I still hear as a pure gospel powerhouse, but that’s the only mannerist lapse on the record. Sweet lazy phrasing on “Finger Poppin’ Time,” patented Muscle Shoals guitar insinuation matched with a truly ferocious vocal on “It Ain’t Right,” (curiously credited to Little Walter) the fat soul genre of “The Doodle Song,” the fine sounding Texas jump blues of “Every Night Of The Week”...I could go on, but you should really hear Old Enough for yourself. With the right band, Lou Ann Barton could open for the Rolling Stones or trade verses with Bobby Bland and I’d pay to see her do either. And now that Olivia Newton-John has had more weeks at #1 than any other woman ever (thank you Casey Kasem), perhaps you should, too. So much for suspicions.

Jeff Nesin

DWIGHT TWILLEY Scuba Divers (EMI-America)

I’ve been in Twilley’s corner ever since he and former partner Phil Seymotfr catapulted out of their Okie surroundings with the 45 rprrt splendor of “I’m On Fire.” The record slowly got noticed and stardom seemed just a lunge away when NYC’s then-biggest AM station opted to keep it off their playlist and added “Rhinestone Cowboy” instead. That was seven years ago.

But they prevailed, releasing two more-often-than-not superb LPs, the second one containing “Looking For The Magic,” a rip-roaring stunner that topped “I’m On Fire” for all-out ecstatic intensity. But both albums quickly died the death and the partnership dissolved. Twilley released a solo album that got fresh dirt shoveled on it, and after that came “Somebody To Love,” a single that still had the spark but,unfortunately, not the audience.

Three long years go by. In the interim, a Jack Nitzsche-produced album gets scrapped. Twilley leaves Arista. Phil Seymour releases a solo album and gets a hit, and with any luck and a lot of justice, so will Twilley with Scuba Divers, a highly invigorating comeback.

Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t the great pop masterpiece I was hoping for. J mean, what’s a review without a few pomplaints? First of all, the credits are one big mishmash, jammed together in one big eyestraining paragraph. Close scrutiny reveals the participation of everyone from mainstay guitar whiz Bill Pitcock to members of the Cowsill family. And Twilley loses points for crediting his hair stylist.

Musical drawbacks include the patently strained heavyisms of “Cryin’ Over Me” (huffing and puffing at brick walls), “I Found The Magic” (the searching was far more exciting than the locating), and “Falling In Love Again” (turning a flirtation with moist sensitivity into soaking wet infatuation). These three close side two, so you rejectbutton fans can have yourselves a real swinging time.

But what comes before...just listen to what comes before! “I’m Back Again” kicks things off with a shimmering wallop, Twilley soaring in and around a heady swirl of affirmative backup voices, dramatic pause drumming, and superlative Pitcock guitarisms. The tension release at the end feels like having your favorite date embrace you— all Russian hands and Roman fingers.

“Somebody To Love” reappears here in slightly revamped form. The slowed-up lowdown beginning gives way to one of Twilley’s most emotional smoldering vocals, with plenty of his beloved sultry syllablestretching antics to keep you hooked. On “Touching The Wind,” his “hurts so bad but feel so good” singing turns the word “wind” into a major weather disturbance.

Then there’s the muffled bedlam of “Later That Night” and “Dion Baby” ’s glorious yearnings and— hey, Twilley’s back, he’s got what it takes and seven out of these ten cuts proves he still excels at creating deft, involved pop-rock melodies that follow you wherever you go. I mean, anyone who can get you humming a line like “ten thousand American scuba divers dancing” must be doing something right.

Craig Zeller

UTOPIA Swing To The Right (Bearsville)

Aha, I thought. A political album from Todd and the guys. Nothing like some hard times and good oldfashioned fear to bring these idealists down to Earth. The targets may be easy ones—war/greed/intolerance—but they’re certainly and always potentially dangerous as us all. Then I heard the lead-off track, which sounds like Billy Joel backed by Styx doing a remake of Pink Floyd’s “Money” Oust about the song of the past decade, except maybe “Stairway To Heaven,” or weren’t you aware that Dark Side Of The Moon has been on Billboard’ s charts for eight years now) and I had to wonder what had gone wrong this time.

Now 1 know how tricky writing social satire is ’cause it’s really easy to come off as smug, preachy and generally assholian as the people being satirized. But that’s rarely the case here. The problems revolve around good ideas—ones that agree with mine, that is—being sabotaged by unclear intentions or inappropriate music.

For instance, “Lysistrata” may be the most confusing anti-war song ever written. Its point of view changes from deadpan sarcasm to a straightforward statement of intent with no vocal or instrumental cues to clarify things. And while I can agree with Todd’s impassioned rant on “Shinola”—“There are your leaders, come on take a look/ They’ll lie and cheat and steal and sell the rights to the book”—the song’s melody just sags after the screaming is over. Plus, hearing the word “shinola” is perfect choral harmony makes me think “Styx” again and go looking for a sledgehammer, but I guess that’s justkrieejerk reaction on my part.

Of course, the whole album ain't all that bad; Utopia has never been so awful that they can be written off entirely. Their cover of Gamble/ Huff/Jackson’s “For The Love Of Money” works well despite the trebly mix, and “Fahrenheit 451” effectively hits a mindless funky party groove to accompany the equally mindless activity of book burning. Sandwiched in between the two is my personal fave, “Last Dollar On Earth,” where the band focuses its sarcastic sights on the marketing process while keeping the music edgy and to the point.

But will you hear it on your radio? Not likely. The airwaves will probably pick up on “One World” and “The Up,” both of which are not only as catchy as Coke commercials but resemble that product itself: bubbly, sweet and insubstantial. I insist on hearing “The Up” as a satire on airheaded optimism because it’s “Down just ain’t me style” shtick is hilarious in this context of expressed/repressed anger (if people wanna take it straight, that’s their business). Personally I’d seriously consider keeping sharp objects away from anyone over the age of 15 found humming these tunes but all that means is that even creative, sensitive souls (like rock critics) are subject to swings to the right. Does this mean we’ll never be welcome in Utopia? Stay tuned.

Michael Davis

BONNIE RAITT Green Light (Warner Bros.)

Bonnie Raitt’s recording career has had its artistic ups and downs— in no sequential order—due, in part, to the near-ecumenism of her musical tastes and influences. On her seven previous albums, she has delved into blues, country blues, R&B, soul, rock, folk, pop/folk, and pop. Her numerous producers have included east coast-oriented Jerry Ragovoy, west coast-inspired Paul A. Rothchild, pop/folkster John Hall, and Linda Ronstadt’s and James Taylor’s mentor, Peter Asher. And her session players have run the gamut from Junior Wells to Lowell George and Bill Payne to New York’s finest instrumentalists to everybody’s favorite (or least favorite) L.A. mellow men like Fred Tackett, Waddy Wachtel, Danny Kortchmar, and Rick Marotta. Raitt’s eclecticism and her willingness to experiment are certainly admirable, and have resulted in the rejuvenation of many old (especially R&B) songs and the exposure of then-not-so-wellknown songwriters such as Jackson Browne, Eric Kaz, John Prine, and Karla Bonoff.

"Trust me. Really."

And yet, the various twists and turns in her career over the last 11 years (some of them, no doubt, considered commercial moves, since Raitt has never had a really “smash” record) have on occasion proved incongruous with the earthy naturalism, the visceral conviction of her vocal style. Nowhere did she more clearly miscalculate than on her last record, the Peter Asherproduced The Glow. Although Raitt’s sensuality and her no-illusions romanticism were well-suited the the material—e.g., “I Thank You” and “The Boy Can’t Help It” —Asher’s production was so squeaky-clean and stultifying that Raitt seemed to be working in a vacuum.

How come I’ve taken so long to get around to the topic at hand, Green Light? Well, folks, it’s all been a shameless set-up for that fact that on her eighth album, Raitt has found yet another producer, Rob Fraboni, and another group of musicians, the Bump Band— Johnny Lee Schell, Ian McLagan (former Face), Ricky Fataar (once a Beach Boy), and Ray Ohara—and a few guests, most notably sax player David Woodford. But Green Light is not once more example of fumbling around. While it isn’t as powerful as Give It Up or Takin’ My Time, Green Light is aces all the same, and is perhaps the most sensible album Raitt h§s ever recorded. The musicians—including Raitt, who plays rhythm guitar throughout the album and takes some leads away from Schell— have the raw drive and unstudied .approai^h’of a first-rate bar band. A couple of R&B-and-blues-based songs retain the grit hat would have led Peter Asher to hire a live-in maid, and Raitt’s confessional reading pLBob Dylan’s “Let’s Keep It Between Us” is proof that compilations of unreleased Janis Joplin material aren’t all that’s necessary to keep the blues alive in a rock format. (Check out Raitt’s delivery of the line “I know we’re not perfect/Then again, so what.”)

Mostly, though, Green Light is straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll, often reminiscent ,of the Stones in their Exile On Main Street period. Guitar chords break all over the place, drummer Fataar’s back beat has an insouciant gait, and McLagan pounds the keyboards with delighted abandon. Giddy little frills from everyone pop in and out of the mix, suggesting a running battle between playing and taking another swig from the bottle. And Raitt’s singing? She sounds like she’s never had a better time. After far too long, this singer has found her band and the right producer, and you can tell she knows it.

Jim Feldman

JAMES BOOKER New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live! (Rounder)

In one of the oddest occurrences in recent memory, a newly-released album that recalls the smoke-filled music of a French Quarter bar better than any record released in many of moonlit eve has little to do with the Crescent City: that is, it was recorded in Zurich, Switzerland. “We want more!” begged the Swiss at the Boogie Woogie and Ragtime Piano Contest of November 27, 1977. And indeed, they got more—a veritable bargain of interpretive dexterity as James Carroll Booker III, the self-dubbed “Piano Prince of New Orleans,” let what seemed like 88 fingers fly across the 88’s. New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live! is an impromptu delight; it will (and does) stand with the very best of the rhythm and blues LP^s from the Mardi Gras homeland—Chris Kenner’s Land of 1,000 Dances, Ernie K-Does’s Mother-In-Law, Aaron Neville’s Tell It Like It Is and Like It ’Tis, Professor Longhair’s Crawfish Fiesta and the numerous collections of Fats Domino and Huey Smith..

The truth is that Booker has, at one time or another, studied under, tutored, performed or recorded with most of New Orlean’s finest musicians; they, in turn, still confer upon this Merlin of the Keys the usual titles^-“legendary,” “genius,” “prodigy.” But while Booker is well-known among his colleagues, he is all but forgotten beyond the narrow and dusty corridors of rock history. Up to this point, his chief claim to fame was the fact that' he introduced the organ to Bourbon Street, which resulted in a minor national hit in .1960, a rather average organ instrumental called “Gonzo.”

But they eat him up in Europe, where Booker has had at least three LPs available (all live recordings) long before the release of the current Rounder album (itself a reissue of one of the imports). After hearing Booker hang his head on “Come Rain Or Come Shine,” or sharing with him the tragedy of loneliness on two Percy Mayfield songs, you recognize that he doesn’t deserve this ill fate of obscurity—not just because of the sensitive touch of his omnipresent hands, but more because of a soul that can transform any material, however bland (an amazing example—Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Something Stupid”!) into a sheer ecstasy of eccentric entanglement.

As he walks through the mist on “Black Night” or bounces into a brothel on Joe Tex’s “Come In My House,” he brings with him the atmosphere of a magical place and the consciousness of an era that perhaps he feels has not vanished. This desire—this carnival of dreams —does not get lost in translation; the Swiss audience responds deeply to Booker’s sense of loss and renewal (they go crazy throughout the entire recording). What the audience hears is indeed absolute wizardry: a strange man, wearing a black eyepatch with a gold star imprinted on it, far removed from the city where he was classically trained, having long ago abandoned that formal background for the love of the boogie-woogie beat and now pouring out that love in a time and place alien to his magical homeland.

Such a magnificent exchange between audience and performer is certainly rare, and such a perfect performance even rarer. Pojur the bourbon and sip slowly.

Robert A. Hull