ROCK A RAMA
THE FIBONACCIS—(fi bo na chez) (Index EP):: If the B-52's had milked Henry Cow while waiting in line to become extras in a Fellini film, it would have sounded something like this. For a low-key, quirk-art band, the fibos are surprisingly easy on the ear: Enticing rather than demanding, they may yet find themselves appealing to all sorts of people who'll never learn to pronounce their name right.
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ROCK A RAMA
This month's Rock-A-Ramas were written by Michael Davis. Richard Riegel, and Richard C. Walls.
THE FIBONACCIS—(fi bo na chez) (Index EP):: If the B-52's had milked Henry Cow while waiting in line to become extras in a Fellini film, it would have sounded something like this. For a low-key, quirk-art band, the fibos are surprisingly easy on the ear: Enticing rather than demanding, they may yet find themselves appealing to all sorts of people who'll never learn to pronounce their name right. (Available from places like Green world, 20445 Gramercy Pl., Torrance, CA 90509.)
M.D.
PETER BAUMANN-Repeat Repeat (Portrait):: This guy was already a big squirt of Vitamin C from Tangerine Dream when DEVO were still knocking around their Montessori graduate schools, so we might be able to excuse Herr Baumann's very late discovery that synthesizers can be used to make something other than space-travel grandiosities. As his countrymen in Kraftwerk demonstrated almost a decade ago, symmetrical tron-boppers plug right into basic pop lyrics, no AC adaptor needed. Suddenly Baumann's got this secular religion himself—"1 love the realtimes/The make me feel so real," he exuberantly chants—and he's all set to conquer the DOR turntables of the universe. Other words, you've heard this before, but this record is notable for containing one of the first anti-videogames songs ("Playland Pleasure") we've found.
R.R.
CARLA BLEY-Llve! (WATT/ECM):: Bley continues in the more restrained mode of last year's Social Studies and it's a worthy, lesser effort—even if we've all heard the gospel trombone solo before and the Las Vegas funk of "Song Sung Long" isn't parodistic enough to avoid tedium, there's still two original rockish cuts, "Blunt Object" and "Real Life Hits," and a catchy pop song, "Time And Us," which sounds like a Grover Washington Jr. number without the glop. Bley seems to be in a transitional phase, exploring more. traditional forms with varying degrees of conviction, working in a space somewhere between Buddy Rich and Sun Ra. Personally, I miss the more overtly zany stuff, though this is not without a certain, ahem, modest charm .
R.C.W.
ANTHONY BRAXTON-Six Compositions: Quarter (Antilles):: Back in the mid-70's, it seemed that each record Braxton released broke new ground in the "trans-African music" (jazz, to you and me) tradition but as time wore on, the ground grew drier and drier as his music began taking on the strange-but-dull qualities of much of the academic avant-garde. This album, however, finds him not only back with a quartet (including heavies like pianist
Anthony Davis and drummer Ed Blackwell) but also doing material written in the mid-70's, and the results are great. The sidemen all get their shots—the rhythm section workout on "Composition No. 40B" never fails to leave me ga-ga—and their heat warms up Anthony's alto like it hasn't been in years.
M.D.
CLOCKS (Boulevard):: Like many current groups from the deep Midwest, the Kansas (the State not the group) -bred Clocks are caught in the protracted, uneasy transition from countryrock to the newer powerpop, per their debut album. Vocalist Jerry Sumner's two compositions show that he has aspirations to be at least the-Ric-Ocasek-of-Wichita, but drummer Steve Swaim wrote most of the songs on here, and he sticks a bit closer to the tried&true-in-every-barwest-of-St. Loo cowmetal waltzes that probably got these Clocks their record contract in the first place. A well-produced album, by a very well-intentioned group, if the results are a trifle bland. Bleed 10 more years out of these guys on the road, and they'll be about ready to knock off REO Speedwagon.
R.R.
PAT METHENY GROUP-Offramp (ECM):: Guitarist Metheny and keyboardist Lyle Mays have always leaned toward the pretty in their playing and composing, which is no sin (especially when you have an original style), but this time it gets just plain boring, too often sounding like an uninspired soundtrack, e.g., "Are You Going With Me?" sounds like the music for one of those Franco-Italian potboilers the local late late show features so often, something with Alain Delon perhaps, while "Au Lait" is warmed over Nino Rota on the first theme, Michel Legrand on the second. The title
cut is an avant raver that generates some heat but, of course, what's going to keep this one hanging in the charts for a few months this summer are the pretty melodies that don't go anywhere. Harmless.
R.C.W.
THOMAS DOLBY-The Golden Age Of Wireless (Harvest):: Dolby's been a peripheral figure on the music scene for some time now as a songwriter (Lene Lovich's "New Toy"), sideman (Bruce Wooley & The Camera Club) and studio synther (everyone from Foreigner to Joan Armatrading to Girls At Our Best), so it's not too surprising that his self-produced debut should be such an accomplished piece of techno-pop. The cleverness of his arrangements — he does stuff like insert XTC's Andy Partridge's pseudo-blues harmonica into the otherwise totally high-tech "Europa and the Pirate Twins"—is a consistent plus and when more-or-less compared to his contemporaries (he's more melodic than Kraftwerk, less melodramatic than Ultravox, more upbeat than OMD, less concerned with beats-per-minute than the New Romantic bunch) he comes off ahead of most of the pack.
M.D.
BLUE OYSTER CULT-Extraterrestrial Live (Columbia); DEEP PURPLE—In Concert (Portrait):: Against my better judgment, I've sneaked these twin metal-monster twofers onto my turntable rather frequently the past few weeks. I don't think I'm indulging nostalgia as much as I am in desperation over Lester Bangs' passing, which has stunned me with greater rock-is-dead finality than any other event in the history of the music. Bangs died with the Amerikan pop scene still aesthetically corrupt and unrepentant, and it feels like we might as well revert to the early 70's, when we dug into trenches with little more than these twin speedhook metallico bands for comfort. To wait for punk to be reinvented, all over again. I won't comment on how many live and best of LPs these groups have already amassed between them, other than to say that the Cult's continuing existence as a band shows to advantage here—their best-produced live set yet, with a free lyric sheet no less—especially as compared to the uneven tape quality and wretched-excess guitar solos on the Purps' album, just the sort of fermented leftovers you'd expect to be dished up from the abandoned deepfreeze of a group who perversely enough gave up issuing new product in 1975 or so. (But "Highway Star" is forever.) Both these albums keep finding their way back to the top of my play pile, and after a while I just put 'em on, I don't ask why.
R.R.
