VAN HALEN

Diver Down

(Warner Bros.)

by Jeffrey Morgan

Not only is this album an insult to the average consumer (who will have to pay upwards to ten dollars for it), it is an exceptionally vicious kick in the teeth to Van Halen fans everywhere; fans who, by buying their albums, attending their concerts, and wearing their merchandise, have made David Lee Roth, Alex Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen and Michael Anthony millionaires.

And because I paid hard-earned money for my copy of Diver Down, I have a personal stake in the matter: I have been burned by Van Halen, and 1 don�t like it.

From start to finish, this album lasts less than half an hour—and if you don�t believe me, you can count up the label times and arrive at the shameful figure of 29:07 yourself.

This is a disgrace. In an era where the technology exists to make it feasible for someone like Todd Rundgren to release a single album of original material which lasts over an hour (Initiation: 68:11), there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of showing especial/y from a heavy metal band. None.

And, although there are twelve tracks on Diver Down, five of them are cover versions (one lasts a mere 1:39) and three of them are guitar instrumentals (none of which is long enough to synchronize a watch by), leaving but four original songs by the band.

Of the covers, the above-noted 1:39 version of �Happy Trails� is the kind of self-indulgent filler that only reinforces my anger at Van Halen for taking advantage of their audience: if you think that they would�ve gotten away with something like this on their first album, think again. (And a P.S. to historians who would like to point out �Mother�s Lament� on Disraeli Gears: don�t bother; it ain�t 1967 anymore).

�Dancing In The Streets,� �Where Have All The Good Times Gone!� and �Pretty Woman� are so close to the original versions as to be superfluous carbon copies. Unlike their reworking of �You Really Got Me,� which exuded sonic flash and style, these three remakes are, well, there.. .and nothing more.

�Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)� is the kind of campy period piece that people like to crucify Freddy Mercury for, but when Freddy has written original material in a similar vein (�Seaside Rendezvous,� �Dreamer�s Ball�), the results have been at least tasteful, with none of th'e cheap vulgarities encountered here (to say that it�s no �Take Your Whiskey Home� is an understatement).

Instrumental-wise, we�re talking filler again. �Intruder� is a pale, pale initation of the more successful �Sunday Afternoon In The Park� and the pyrotechnics which made Eddie the CREEM guitarist of the year in 1981 are nowhere in sight (or sound).

As for the originals, all four songs are lame, banal exercises that don�t even rock �n� roll all that much, except for �Hang �Em High,� which is the closet thing to �classic� Van Halen on this album in terms of sheer train-out-of-control, collisioncourse rock �n� roll.

Everything you loved on Women And Children First and Fair Warning are missing from Diver Down: the cheap asides from Roth, the glorious stereo guitar sonics of Eddie Van Halen, the well-crafted lyrics (yeah, well, compared to Diver Down, anything—including an air-raid siren—would have wellcrafted lyrics) and, especially, the killer hooks which permeated almost every track.

Just when Van Halen needed to come back with a killer album to cement their status in the market place as the current rock �n� rollkings, they had to go and pull a stunt like this.

Diver Down is as bad a career move as I�ve ever seen—so much so, that if these guys are featured in this magazine in two year�s time, I�ll be surprised. And don�t laugh: if it happened to Aerosmith, it could happen to these bozos, too.

RICHARD & LINDA

THOMPSON

Shoot Out The Lights

(Hannibal)

To Richard and Linda Thompson there�s a movement to life—and you could call it �falling.� The Thompsons� first U.S. album in four years is a hymn to the motion of desperation, betrayal and death— so they hardly come across as your classic fun couple. But if you think their morbidity is dark enough to make Neil Young look like a j dancing Pepper by comparison, you�re at least part wrong. To the Thompsons, �falling� isn�t all downhill. It�s more like a brutally ironic mixture of vertigo and the Nestea Plunge. After all, these are the voices of people who�ve developed a safety net philosophy and passion over the years which in the end (after much wringing of the hands and beating of tbe chest) gives all their kvetching some positive meaning.

As the cognoscenti know, Richard Thompson�s been a public dour sort for some 14 years now, dating back to his work on the first Fairport Convention albums. On them, his overcast sensibility resulted in Stonehenge serenades like �Tale In Hard Time� and �Meet On The Ledge,� and Thompson, who left Fairport to go solo in 1970, hasn�t stopped making painfully gorgeous, very British folk-rock since. The latest album can easily function for dreamers as an extension of early Fairport. (Players here include Simon Nicol, Dave Mattacks and Dave Pegg). Of course, Linda�s voice is deeper and more down to earth than the late Sandy Denny�s (whose high Ophelia-like flutters I miss more with each passing year). Musically the new album has zilcho mandolin, though there are some strong traditional touches in �Backstreet Slide.� All the other pieces have free-flowing melodies except two—the title track, which relies on a powerfully bitter rhythm hook, and the album�s sole disappointment, the musically static �Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed.�

As usual, there are three distinctive voices on this record—Richard, Linda and Richard�s guitar. Thompson�s six-string work is shimmering around the edges but steely hard at the core. His guitar does thin psychedelic turns in the title track and flickers around the galloping rhythm riff in �Don�t Renege On Our Love.� Richard�s vocal phrasing is equally personal—sturdy and deep in tone with a lush vibrato. And Linda�s singing here is right up there with Richard�s. In the exquisite chorus of �Walking On A Wire,� when she sings the line �I�m falling,� her voice slips into the hook with perilous desperation. The way both of their voices fall with abandon and then doggedly climb back up again is the most compelling folk-rock vocalizing 1�ve heard since Jackson Browne�s debut. It also provides the musical momentum behind their tricky lyrical philosophy. Linda sings about �falling� while still aloft in �Walking On A Wire� and later scratches her head about a woman splattered on sidewalk, asking with rhetorical irony �did she jump or was she pushed?� But at the end of each side, the Thompsons put �falling� in its place.

Side one closes with �Just The Motion� which opens with a nearly motionless guitar, circling a halo around Linda as she tells you that even though everything is a disaster right now, that�s just the way life moves. Over a calming melody she sings with inspirational maternal assurance, betraying just a glint of fear. The uniquely Thompson twist, though, is the line �it�s only the pain that�s keeping you sane," which may seem like a glamorized view of hardship but serves its purpose as an ointment for real suffering. The Thompsons seem to know implicitly that falling into emotional pain can sometimes function like physical pain—as a necessary, helpful warning.

Things get a bit weirder on the album�s oddly rousing finale, �The Wall Of Death.� I can�t be sure of the intended significance of the title image within the Thompsons� religious beliefs (they�re Sufi Muslims), and if this is a paen to the afterlife, it�s gonna be hard for a lot of people to relate to it. But their glowing vocal delivery and uplifting, ringing guitars make a heathen like me interpret their gloomy death images as a positive hyperbole for looking at mortal life realistically and in calming long-range perspective. To the Thompsons, living may be a hard, gften ugly proposition. But once realized as such and transformed through art, it can become something else again. And on this album it�s become something absolutely astonishing.

Jim Farber

MARSHALL CRENSHAW

(Warner Bros.)

No rock writer 1 know would dare promote that dread obscenity �Next Big Thing� in print anymore,not after the Springsteen fiasco of a few years ago, yet an implicit version of the N.B.T. concept, starring one Marshall Crenshaw, seems to be rockin� around N.Y.C. these days. Rolling Stone mag, not particularly noted as a relentless seeker out of brand new talent, gave Crenshaw a full-frontal splash in a recent issue, publishing both a glowing feature and a 4V2-star record review nearly back-to-back, all of their raves down in cold type before some of us stringers had even received review copies of Crenshaw�s LP.

Well, okay, I�m sure Marshall Crenshaw might enjoy his very own 15-minutes-of-fame as much as the next guy, but both he and I respectfully request that you cast elsewhere for N.B.T. stooges. Yes, he is plenty talented, but he also happens to be one of those individualistic oddballs who doesn�t even know what the reigning pop style is let alone rebelling against and/or remaking it in epic fashion

Marshall Crenshaw grew up in Detroit, likes the original 50�s rock �n� roll almost better than he likes the Beatles� early records (don�t ask about the post-Pepper stuff), spent a few years of the 70�s playing John Lennon in a road company of Beotlemania, and, oh yeah, he�s good at twirling the dials in a recording studio. That�s all. Marshall Crenshaw�s musical bio is just that sketchy and singular; you can go back to my first paragraph if you need more of the rest-is-history stuff.

Not too surprisingly, Crenshaw�s first album is blessed with singular rock, almost extravagant in its utter simplicity. A basic three-piece (1955 not 1968) group, Marshall on guitar, his brother Robert on drums, Chris Donato on bass, and twelve full (i.e., right around 2:20, the optimum length for any r�n�r song) cuts. What else is there? Well, there�s Marshall�s jangly, Hollies/ Searchers guitar style, and his niceguys-finish-first vocals, not to mention his many 50�s-basic songs, all of them ripe with happy-sad sexualromantic i/earning..

Marshall Crenshaw as told by Marshall Crenshaw, in his low-key but lyrically-acute plots, is just a plain ol� generationless guy who wants all the native individualism he�s entitled to—he�s looking for a �Cynical Girl,� one �who�s got no use for the real world.� Or maybe he�s already found his cynical girl, in the preceding �She Can�t Dance (She can�t sing, but she�s got to be part of that pop music thing!).� We�re never too clear in these softedged pieces whether the singer has satisfied any of his quests, but his yearning never quits, it sticks in your ears just like the bittersweetly buoyant melodies that convey it.

N.B.T.? Nah, I have to admit I sneaked off this review assignment a couple times to listen to my own necessary-thing recent albums, namely John Hiatt and Human Switchboard, and even as I was rejoicing in their loud & nervous rock (my fave), Marshall Crenshaw�s melodies were still jumping against my legs like playful puppy dogs. He�s just that kind of guy, y�know?

Richard Riegel

ORNETTE COLEMAN

Of Human Feelings

(Antilles)

Well for one thing; check the pers�nal management credit: Sid Bernstein Associates. Which tells you something about his, uh, upward financial mobility of late (12 bucks a throw when he played L.A.). And maybe tells ya what he�s MUSICALLY WILLING T� DO FOR IT—y�know to help Sid out, he can�t do it all himself—altho that would not be fair (�cause maybe he actually thinks this stuff is boss).

I�ve got 31 albums by Ornette and think this one stinks. No, it�s okay for typing to (I�m not gonna get up and take it off) but it sure ain�t one I�m gonna go out of my way to �try �n� like� by playing it a dozen times like I tried (t� no avail) with Body Meta from �78 which had three of the same bozos as this one (Ellerbee, Nix, Tacuma). Problem there and problem here is electric jerks, which maybe I�m just flat intolerant of �cause I never even liked MILES�s early fusion albs altho I did like Dancing In Your Head and I really like Sam Rivers� Sizzle. And I don�t think it�s even the ersatz r&b-ishness that�s both�ring me �cause I think Julius Hemphill�s Coon Bid�ness (f�r inst) is the bees� knees.

But enough of I think and I like and all that. Ornette�s do-or-die leap into trendy �lectric funk is simply NOT TOO SONICALLY INTERESTING. There�s actually people who claim what he�s doing here�s a semi-return to the doublequartet format of Free Jazz or at least a textural approx of that (1960) alb�s landmark SONIC DENSITY ' (wall-to-ceiling-to-wall w/a gun at everyone�s head). Well aside from the fact that this time around there�s no three other superdupe hornfolks in the stew (no Dolphy, no Cherry, not even a Freddie Hubbard-just Ornette h�mself in his first OFFICIAL superstar outing), aside also from there�s just one bass (who is neither a Charlie Haden nor a Scott LeFaro), aside from diminutions in body count and musicianship and aside from the gen�ral absence of passion or daring—even with alibis accepted (hey, some of those people are dead) and all the slackoffs arithmetically considered (and Ornette�s still-consid�able ad hominem quotient factored in)—even THEN there�s not much here that makes it as MERE SOUND ON A MERE DISC (many, many released per week).

And electric jerks IS the problem, or at least half of it. Let�s say a third. Other thirds are tinny production (digital!) (by Ornette) and the fact that all he�s doing with the whole wall-of-tin is use it as a neutral springboard for—dare I say it— dullardly riff in� (great great GREAT melodist pulls a See Spot Run, altho more often it�s just See Spot). Mainly what you get from this alltime master of the geometry of note-production is an occasional pseudo-radical pitch change and series upon series of bleats-by-rote; even his incredible goddam TONE is of no service �cause in this context it�s just the sour EDGE to what (speaking of these here electric jerks) is no great shakes to begin with, by which I mean there ain�t even what could pass for �organic unity� between their garbage and his garbage, making it not substantially different in the sonic admixture dept, from Gato Barbieri with strings or Bird, Diz & Monk with BUDDY RICH.

(He riffs and they riff; neither�re riffing very good. But their riffs aren�t really even sequences of functional electric sound like you got with Dancing In Your Head, they�re just the idea of same altho as such—with a prod from his production—they deliver. His riffs meanwhile operate as complexer mere ideas than that, and thus�re trickier to vinylize or whatever with the same degree of mechanoproficiency: the idea of the suppression of the idea of Ornette—y�know bracket the accustomed majestyetc. for the next several hundred �genre exercises� he�s got a mind to trip to. Try as he may, there�s just too much to suppress, so the best he can pull off is a failed feigning of rhythmic / melodic / harmonic mechano-inanity. So some of the distance—between him and them —is before-the-fact, like he can�t possibly get all the way there and still be superstar to their would-be idealized foil. More, however, is the result of he�s simply not LISTENING to these hireling robots NOHOW. Brion Gysin once claimed

something about certain notes make you smell something and Ornette didn�t Meten to ttasshrejlinfka adnafedne tieesplfeyedm Withe lifterring to these slaphappers either. Heck, maybe you wouldn�t yerself.)

I hope Talking Heads fans�re happy and they play this shit on noo-wave sound systems and he makes a bundle (non-vocal �neoavant� is just around th� bend).

Richard Meltzer

RAINBOW

Straight Between The Eyes

(Mercury)

The new Culligan Man commercials on TV promise that they can get rid of bad taste. But can they deal with it on as big a scale as Rainbow?

Do cohos send valentines? Ritchie Blackmore and the rest of the noise may not taste good but they sure can throw a come-as-you-areparty for your brain that�ll make you forget the other metal outfits. After all, Blackmore and bassist Roger Glover practically raised these tributes to cud vixens and crunch momma from orphan eggs back in their Dope Purple days. Now, years later, they�re almost as good as Van Halen. Mere irony or disqualified for bumping?

Probably some new faces in the band, which is a sukkuh bet because Rainbow goes through musicians faster than Gary Coleman does inner organs. Heavy Metal players, in general, seem to be almost perfectly interchangeable, especially singers. So for today, Rainbow�s aaa-ooo is Joe Lynn Turner. This subject will never appear on the New You Asked For It,

S.B. T.E. has some pretty decent stats. Nine cuts, four fast, four heavy, only one balloon. No need to get real particular but, while we�re on the subject, let�s make a note of Ritchie�s absolutely stunning, insanely impish porkchops bertinelli of a guitar solo on �Death Alley Driver.� Use your red crayon.

Another great move is the insertion of actual human handclaps to augment the four-alarm riff in �Power.� The way I see it, anytime a living simian can get a paw into all this hi-tech ice cube death rattle, it should be rewarded. One complete set of suction-cup moisteners to the guys.

We�re talking over-and-overkill here because it is, after all, the point. You can�t just play one simple guitar note anymore. Oh no, first it�s gotta be echoplexed to death, fibrilated amidst benign whirr patter and then submitted to the full Inseminoid treatment: �conceived in violence, carried in terror, born to devastate and brutalize a universe!� In one ear without a paddle, I call it.

Got all that? This might not be as big a cosmic issue as the great Bosco vs. Ovaltine controversy, but it�s what the old timers call a �good� record. The �nice� record may be just around the corner and I can�t take it!

As a bonus, you�ll already know the lyrics before you even whap the vinyl! Test yourself • with these sample from side one: �bum all you bridges, rock �n� roll survivor, white lines, dirty angel, back to the wall, live for today, two wrongs don�t make a right, oh the snot has caked against my pants, out of control, little miss lonely� and the beloved �ooh you/drippin� with desire/ skintight dynamite/fever take me higher. �

This ends the entertainment portion of our program.

Rick Johnson

THE JIM CARROLL RAND

Dry Dreams

(Atco)

You may know the Jim Carroll story by now but the highlights bear repeating—bom in �50 or thereabouts, NYC, poetry-junk-basketball prodigy, published in Paris Review and such during �60�s, high praise from Kerouac for the kid, which is impressive even though it was given at a time in Kerouac�s life when his judgement probably wasn�t all that sharp, book of poetry Living At The Movies (�73) nominated for Pulitzer Prize, went to California and cleaned up, published the �Boys Life� under the editorship of William Burroughs saga The Basketball Diaries, and then last year the first album, Catholic Boy, which was met with cautious critical approval and decent if non-platinum audience response. Soften the character somewhat (Carroll doesn�t bother to make himself real likeable, coming across in the Diaries as an insufferably self-centered young thief, albeit a victim of society, with the saving points of being able to occasionally articulate his underlying bewilderment in a poignant way and having the smarts to choose hip enemies, e.g., the government, hypocrisy, religion) and it�d make a great TV movie, perhaps a vehicle for Philip McKeon (the kid on �Alice�) to extend J himself in. Or maybe Scott Baio, who isn�t Irish but then Charleton Heston wasn�t exactly Jewish, right? Anyway, it�s an inspirational tale and this is probably the last time you�ll read it in a record review because the milage is running out, fast.

And now the second album which reiterates much of the pleasures and problems of the first. The band, despite some personnel changes and alleged augmentation (trumpet and violin are listed in the liners but frankly I don�t hear �em), remains as tight as a mo�. No Wagnerian heavy metal or new wave irony, just stripped down Rock One going in for the kill with a minimum of asides. Carroll seems to be trying to stretch his Dylanesque yowl a little so that occasionally he squeaks, but he shouldn�t bother with it, it�s a good voice for his urban nightmares and contemptuous metaphors, tough and insinuating, Also new is Carroll�s first out-and-out protest song, �Barricades� (kinda quaint, no?) and it ain�t bad, making all the proper Vietnam/El Salvador/IBM connections.

Another first this time is a lyric sheet which unfortunately serves to emphasize the album�s big problem —reams of phantasmagoria, rabid images crammed tight between the beats, get pretty wearying pretty quickly and the music, well-oiled machine rock though it is, isn�t so compelling that the songs don�t sometimes collapse under the weiweight of that esoteric wordiness. The album�s best songs, �Evangeline,� �Rooms,� and especially �Still Life,� which Carrol co-wrote with Lenny Kaye who guests on guitar, are those where the word-phrasing allows the music to breathe and the thrust of the lyrics is somewhat less obscure. Carroll has said that if his words overwhelm his music it�s all right with him. He�s also talked a lot about wanting to reach �the kids� but if he doesn�t lighten the load a little and up the coherency quotient of his lyrics, the fabled �kids,� especially the brighter ones, are going to see his wordy obfuscations as just another ruse—one more artist indulging himself—and he ain�t gonna hardly reach anybody. Which I think is less than he deserves and know is a lousy ending, even for a TV movie.

Richard C. Walls

PHILIP GLASS

Glassworks

(CBS)

LaiMonte Young is one of those eccentric contemporary composers that you never read about in CREEM. He�s done things like retune pianos and create sound/ light environments that can be experienced for minutes or days— real off-the-wall stuff. Needless to say, his few recordings are difficult to find but strangely enough, those of his disciples are not. Terry Riley�s on Columbia, ingeniously combining Indian scales with Western technology as a soloist. Steve Reich�s on ECM and has incorporated voices, strings, and Third World rhythms into his own ever-enlarging ensembles (love those grants, huh Steve?). And Philip Glass is on CBS, on the way to recombining this �trance music� or �minimalist� school with the European classical tradition and on the pop charts.

On the pop charts? Well, uh, yeah that�s a little odd but no stranger than half the headlines on the front page of your local newspaper, right? Certainly no stranger than having Vangelis�s Chariots Of Fire soundtrack make it to #1. I figure lotsa factors are involved, including mainstream moves by those few progressive rockers left—best typified by Asia— coinciding with Glass getting good distribution with his most melodic and sophisticated music yet.

Musically, this direction often signifies a lack of inspiration but in Glass�s case, it�s for the better. His earlier stuff, like Music With Changing Parts, always struck me as being too academic; you could hear his mini-melodies going through changes in their relationships but the end result was...what? A clear case of process music with the process getting in the way of the music. I confess I never made it all the way through his rare boxed �masterwork� Einstein On The Beach, but this is very easy to get through.

His basic idea of repeated melodic fragments is kept intact but there�s more harmonic movements (sorta the equivalent of a guitarist playing the same lick at different positions on his fretboard) than before and there�s more textural variety as well. Beginning and ending with just piano, he gradually adds woodwinds, French horns and strings and in an updated paint-Debussyby-numbers approach. Add the rhythmic repetition and you have the potential modern equivalent of Ravel�s Bolero.

And since the movies have taught us what kinda fun things can be done to Bolero, that gives me an idea. Since Glass is into multimedia events and crossing over the lins between �serious� and pop cultures, he should get into soundtracks. I can see it now: 10 On The Beach starring Nina Hagen and Laurie Anderson as the beach bunnies, and Polyrock as the local synth-surf group terrorized by heavy metal bikers led by Lemmy. Could be a crack-up. If Hagen can get horizontal to this stuff, she deserves an Academy Award.

Michael Davis

ROBERT PALMER

Maybe It�s Live

(Island)

The book on Robert Palmer is: interesting records, awful shows. This was passed on to me by so many people as an unimpeachable article of faith that I naturally began to suspect it. When I read that six of the 10 tracks on Maybe It�s Live were recorded in concert, I thought I might have a shot at overturning the conventional wisdom. Well, I guess I shouldn�t haye flattered myself—or Palmer. It is my sad, though unsurprised, duty to report that this record is utterly undistinguished, and that the live material is especially tepid and zestless.

What, you ask, did I expect? Well, conventional wisdom aside, Palmer�s six previous LPs projected an aura of sophistication and a layered, percolating vocal and rhythmic counterpoint which was never seamless but always smooth. Successful manipulation of this fragile formula—and a couple of hits—have allowed him to stretch a slight career over eight years without either establishing a clear dynamic of his own or, alternately, making strong connections to dynamics that already exist. It is this very freedom by default—a doubleedged stylistic license—which allowed him to make 1980�s forwardlooking Clues, count to 1,000,000 slowly, and then release this vague, unfocused turkey sporting the most uninflated title I can recall. Maybe it�s live.. .then again, maybe it�s not.

Why did he bother? Was it contractual? Why would an artist wait nearly two years after his best record ever and then, in the summer of �82, release dull concert tapes from the fall of �80? Only AC./DC and the Eagles, in recent memory, have had the gall or the momentum (or both) to get away with tarting up old goods and sending them off to market. Palmer has neither, so the pressure drops on the four unrelated studio tracks, and they can�t stand up to it. If I received an independent 45 in the mail that featured �Maybe It�s You,� a hard, bright rock song b/w �Si Chatouillieux,� a listenable bit of ersatz Francophone tribal musique mud (featuring the ubiquitous A. Belew making his usual guitarhino snorts in the jungle night outside the electric kraal), I would be interested. In this context, though, I�m just dazed and confused. How off-hand, how minor, can a minor, off-hand artist get and still thjnk he�s delivering work of substance? Then again, maybe he doesn�t.

Jeff Nesin

PAUL MCCARTNEY

Tug Of War

(Columbia)

My coolitarian ire was anxiously poised, ready to strike out viciously, like a pit full of slightly agitated pythons. I was lost in the angst of a You Asked For It ecstasy. Venom was slowly dripping onto the tiles of my mind, pooling like some mad mongoloid�s spittle. Vitriolic fungoes were bouncing around in slow motion in front of my already bloodshot eyes. Bubbles of smirk and grin were floating around me in delicate circles just waiting for me to pick them out of the air and insert them into my review. At last I was going to loose my pent-up dislike for Paul McCartney in print. Whaahooo!!!

So you can imagine how I quailed when this LP, Tug Of War, turned out to be not only fascinating, but quite good. Now what the hell was I supposed to do? Give it a good, objective review? (...excuse me, 1 just smashed my head against the; wall) Miss my deadline and not have to deal with it at all? (...excuse me I just had to check my wallet) Or, was I supposed to go out and in typical CREEM style forge ahead with dauntless courage and fury of purpose? It was a dilemma. How was I going to resolve the tug of war that was raging between my soul and heart? Hey, Tug of War, not a bad segue. (Slow dissolve to black.)

Now let me just say I haven�t read any of the reviews on this album yet, but I�m sure every mother�s son is going to call it a classic, a masterpiece, a work of genius, and all those other tedious homilies. The other thing I�m sure of is that those same sons are going to focus in on Paul�s song to John Lennon, �Here Today.� I, for one, don�t have to be constantly reminded of Lennon�s death; it happened, it wasn�t pleasant, and I don�t think he should be eulogized by every recording artist his music influenced. That, in my book, is exploitation, and rock �n� rollers always seem to come in for some of the grossest and most vengeful exploitation when the take that ride on the big bar chord into the void. It�s a shame, and I�m sick of it.

Anyway, enough from the soap box. �Here Today� is a simple song recalling a few shared moments between two friends. The sadness in McCartney�s voice speaks louder than anything any reviewer could possibly write about it.

Okay, so now that my obligatory John Lennon paragraph is out of the way let�s talk a little about Tug Of War. As a whole, the album is without a doubt the most palatable thing McCartney�s released in quite L a while, and the reason for its digestability has a lot to do with his teaming up with George Martin. Martin�s production 'helped out the Beatles to the nth degree because he was able to fill in the spaces they�d leave behind with snippets of musical texturing that rounded out their overall sound just perfectly. And that�s exactly what he�s accomplished on Tug Of War— whenever there�s a lapse, he�ll add a little extra echo, a shushing of strings, or an over-produced tinkling of the ivories. Just enough to flesh the whole thing out. Just enough to make it feel more complete.

The two collaborations with Stevie Wonder are contradictory. �Ebony And Ivory� is just a little too cutesy and reminds me of all the bad qualities McCartney displays when he�s trying too hard. He knows he can sing, write and play almost any style he want to, and it�s this very quality that makes him, on occasion, boring and pretentious. What you hear when you listen to �What�s That You�re Doing,� a song that�s got the same funkalicious power and potency of Wonders� �Superstitious,� is McCartney lettin� loose with all his power and style.

The collaboration with Carl Perkins can be easily summed up by the low, rumbling cackling from Perkins at the end of the song. �Get It� is just filler.

Now we come to the two songs that were responsible for me taking this record (sort of) seriously. �Ballroom Dancing� is in the grand silly tradition of �Why Don�t We Do It In The Road.� and �Maxwell�s Silver Hammer,� and it shows that McCartney still has that sense of wackiness that made the Beatles so endearing. (I never really thought the Beatles were all that exciting— but that, as they say, is another story.)

�The. Pound Is Sinking� is my favorite. I mean, Paul does a great job rhyming pesos, liras, marks, drchmas, francs, dollars, yen, rubles, and of course, ye pound. But if he wanted to make this a truly great work of art, he�d have done a 10 minute version including a few of the other great monetary units like the afghani from Afghanistan, the Albanian lek, Algeria�s dinar, Chile�s escudo, Costa Rica�s colon, the krone of Denmark, the ever popular markka from Finland, the Hungarian forint, cordobas from Nicaragua, the wons of North Korea, the Polish zioty, the baht of Thailand, or perhaps my personal fave, the kwacha of Zambia. He should�ve mentioned some of these. But hey, no matter what your currency may be, you could do worse than spending some of it on Tug Of War.

Joe (Whatta Ya Want It�s Summer) Fernbacher

P.S. I don�t know if this means anything, but is it mere coincidence that Tug Of War was released all too close to the date of Sgt. Pepper�s release? Does this mean that the 60�s �really� are coming back? And, if they are, does anybody know where I can get some good mescaline? Anyway. Later.