OUT THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR

OUT THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR

RECORDS

Billy Altman

LED ZEPPELIN Coda (Swan Song)

First of all, let me confess that I would have given anything to be a bat on the wall at Jimmy Page's castle the night the Atlantic brain trust showed up to talk him into piecing together Coda, the 'new' Led Zeppelin album of previous unreleased outtakes taken from recording sessions throughout Zep's humongous career as the reigning rock 'n' roll band of the last decade. 'Oi Jimmy,' I could've heard them whining, 'at least before it was only a jungle; now it's a farshtinkener arcade out there! Who can argue with a quarter? Look, take another million—this one off the books. Name it, you got it, OK? I mean, we have to have something to save the year. You want to know how bad things are? I'll tell you how bad things are. The Vanilla Fudge have reformed. And it was our idea! You sure we can't talk you into a' new drummer, like Varner's did with that guy with a big nose, whatszisname, Townsberg? We can find a sponsor, Jimmy. National, yet. It may be a shampoo...you're not getting your hair cut also, are you?' And on and on.

Anyway, Coda is now upon us, and perhaps the best thing one can say is that it's almost impossible to make either too much or too little out of the record. Whether this was really all that Zeppelin had stored up in the vaults is between you, me, and the accountants, but I would wager a yes vote in light of the fact that, of the eight tracks here, two are covers and one is literally just John Bonham thrashing away at all those drums of his. And. the remaining five clock in at an average of under four and a half minutes, a full 60 seconds less than the time it usually takes just for these guys to boil water ('Communication Breakdown,' 'Immigrant Song,' 'Tangerine,' 'Rock 'n' Roll,' and 'Dancing Days' excluded, of course) .

Which is not to say that Coda is without worth, because it does have its strong points. Especially on side two, where discounting 'Bonzo's Montreux,' and the aforementioned crash course in headbanging augmented solely by Page's 'electronic treatments' (utterly aimless percussive noodling on the old synth), there are three songs all recorded in '78 that make you wish that In Through The Out Door had been the double album instead of Physical Graffiti (that record is pretty much what I thought this one was going to sound like, but without the custard pie 'Boogie With Stu' or 'Kashmir'). 'Wearing And Tearing' is this album's winner of the Black Dog seal of mayhem award for its barefoot-in-Bizzaroland breakneck riffing and what is undoubtedly the most outre Buddy Holly reference I've ever heard, when right near the end, Page tosses into the whirlwind the intro from 'I'm Gonna Love You Too.' 'Ozone Baby' sports some authentic radioactive guitar spillage as well as sleight-of-hand dribble 'n' shoot basswork by John Paul Jones. And 'Darlene,' with its piano-shufflin' '50s ease and Plant*s unhippified 'I got a pink carnation and a pick-up truck' stance, neatly foreshadows most of what's going on on Pictures At Eleven.

As for side one, well, each track is moderately representative where Zeppelin was at various points in time. A '69 recording of Ben E. King (?)'s 'We're Gonna Groove' smacks of the bad white boy funk Zep tried to invent on Led Zeppelin II, '70s 'Poor Tom' has the peaceful acoustic looniness that earmarked Led Zep III, a live cover of 'I Can't Quit You Baby' recalls the band's earliest bouts of blues perversion fever and will no doubt make Willie Dixon a very happy man when the royalty check arrives. The closing track, 'Walter's Walk' (if nothing else, Led Zeppelin set the record for song titles based on nothing in the lyrics), features that most standard Jimmy Page trick, the patented steal-fromyourself guitar workout, since you can plainly make out the riff pattern from Presence's 'Hots On For Nowhere,' a mere four years early right here (just how many times did he use and re-use the Yardbirds' 'White Summer' and 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor' anyway?). Then again, one of the great things about Led Zeppelin—and there certainly were many—was their utter chutzpah in the face of all taste, until they ironically became the face of heavy metal taste itself. And, considering the fact that eight tracks', or even four tracks', worth of little more than disconnected drum and bass parts with regular intervals of Plantian shrieks and Page guitar snorts would have sold the same amount of copies as Coda will, their world, then, ends not with a bang but with class—and with a winner.

DONALD FAGEN TheNightfiy (Warner Bros.)

Despite whatever initial impressions you might get from hearing it on the radio, this is not the new Steely Dan album minus an apparently expendable Walter Becker— nope, this one is different. For one thing, it is, you should pardon the expression, a concept album, and not just in the overheated mind of some Rolling Stone critic, since Fagen himself tips his hand in a brief liner note. And the concept, 'certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties' is certainly a departure from recent Steely concerns (to the extent that those concerns have been deciphered). Also those famous 'tasty' fusion arrangements have been tampered with here, the pared down Gaucho approach (so disappointing after the promise of Aja) which left critics praising the little arrangemental touches—what else was there?— having been abandoned for a fuller blown and more referential one. And finally the lyrics, though sung in Fagen's familiar mushy-mouthed but effective style, are different too, private jokes and fragmented imagery having been largely replaced by plain spoken irony.

And ironic is the main mood here. When 'I.G.Y. (International Geophysical Year),' with its catchy chorus of 'what a beautiful world this will be/what a glorious time to be free,' is overheard on the radio, it comes across as a pleasant if slightly sappy little ditty (played on our local 'jazz' station, where 'slightly sappy' is a genre unto itself, it fits right it). But closer listening and the handy lyric sheet reveal that the song's starry-eyed future is being seen from a perspective of about 20 years ago, a time when future utopias seemed more probable than they do now. After the singer mentions those wondrous and nourishing innovations that once seemed inevitable to a naively optimistic present —space stations, widespread solar energy, controlled climates—we get the kicker, the punchline that elicits the rueful laugh that Fagen seems keen on provoking throughout the album, when he forsees 'a machine to make big decisions/Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision/We'U be clean when their work is done/We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young.' Far from being the sing-along pap we thought we heard on the radio, this is one very sad song. Similarly, 'New Frontier,' set at a party in a fallout shelter, conjures an era of would-be sophistication with a string of arch references—Tuesday Weld, Ambush, French twist, the limbo, Brubeck (the last referred to as 'an artist, a pioneer,' an overgenerous assessment but revealing of the callow narrator) and then derives a great deal of poignancy from the fact that we know what's going to happen—assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Reagan—and how the youthful idealism will curdle and sour into cynicism and apathy and worse.

On the other songs the mood of melancholic irony is less prominent. 'Green Flower Street' (the title is probably a respectful nod to the jazz standard 'On Green Dolphin Street') and 'The Nightfly' are both youthful ideas of exotic adult endeavors, the first being a suburban kid's purple dream of urban romance, in this instance West Side Story with an Oriental variation, the later being about a DJ on a combination talk and jazz show (say what?), a hard case with a soft heart, spinning the jams and handling the crank calls with deadpan aplomb. The music here is a • little Dannish, which is to say tow-keyed and ominous (even a cover of that harmless old chestnut 'Ruby Baby' comes across as menacing) but jazzier with nice bits from pianist Greg Phillinganes and tenor saxist Michael Brecker (and better he than the execrable Tom Scott). 'Maxine' is done as a Four Freshmen/HiLos type number, a pretty but anemic style that comments on its young lust story, while 'Walk Between Raindrops''s weepy lyrics are cleverly disguised by an upbeat organ/guitar group sound and shuffling rhythm.

Consider this with Nebraska and we may have the makings of a trend here—the admirable statement by the singular artist that aims to depress the hell out of everybody. Well, better depressing than misleading. And it's not really that downbeat.. .Fagen's lightly swinging surfaces and evocations of New Frontier optimism are so engaging that if you listen casually you won't even have to bother with the message. No harm in staying ignorant, right?

Richard C. Walls

JONI MITCHELL Wild Things Run Fast (Geffen)

Wild Things Run Fast, Joni Mitchell's most accessible album since the exuberant 1974 masterwork Court And Spark, is also her first successful artistic statement since die exquisitely haunting story song cycle, Hejira, in 1976. Having relegated to the back burner her frustrating, if fearless, commitment to jazz (The Hissing Of Summer iLawns, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mingus), Mitchell opts here for standard, pop-length songs with relatively melodic structures that she and her small band perform in a joyful, loose-limbed fashion—indeed 'Solid Love,' 'Underneath The Streetiight,' and the title song are refreshingly direct celebrations of the rock 'rt' roll backbeat. And the giddiness signaling that accessibility was her aim ('Big Yellow Taxi,' 'Raised On Robbery,' 'Twisted') turns up here in an off-the-cuff cover of Leiber/ Stoller's '(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care.'

But ever the consummate pop artist, Joni Mitchell also incorporates into her patented, quirky musical melange various stylistic elements that were at the heart of Hejira or the jazz albums. The informed, conversational 'Chinese Cafe' and the personal ruminations, 'Ladies' Man' and 'Man To Man,' have the intimate, slowly unfolding narrative flow that made Hejira so subdy captivating. And in 'Moon At The Window,' and 'Be Cool,' Mitchell's advice-to-thelovewom are underscored with tensile rhythms and syncopated phrasing to indicate the influence of verbal expression over musical form. Familiarity and flexibility combine to imbue Wild Things Run Fast with an unfettered, easy playfulness. It follows that Mitchell sings with eager abandon, lightly cavorting from note to note, rather than nervously edging her way through.

The album's final cut, 'Love' (adapted from I Corinthians, Chapter 13), reaffirms that Mitchell is still driven by the credo of the true romantic: 'Love's the greatest beauty.' But the hopeless idealism that this line might once have suggested has been transformed into an optimistic statement of realistic possibility. Having given up her tortured self-doubting and destructive attempts to analyze love's ineluctably mysterious nature, Mitchell displays the mature composure to distance herself from the past right at the start, in 'Chinese Cafe£—'We're middle-class/We're middle-aged/We were wild in the old days'—and to acknowledge, albeit wistfully, that 'Nothing lasts forever.' This isn't an expression of defeat, though; Mitchell simply realizes that naive belief won't make anyone's dreams come true. Singing a verse of 'Unchained Melody,' she recalls, with amused detachment, the innocent origins of her former blind faith.

Mitchell's more patient approach to romance isn't necessarily rewarded by smooth couplings, however: 'Man To Man,' 'Ladies' Man,' and 'Wild Things Run Fast' are all concerned with unfulfilling or imperative self-hectoring, she tosses away—in fading, hushed tones— the questions that end 'Chinese Cafe' and the title song, and she even can mock her previous obsessional stance: 'Well, I've known heartbteakers' ('Ladies' Man')... 'Love has always made me feel so uneasy' ('Solid Love').

The hopeful determination that inspirits Wild Things Run Fast becomes pure elation in 'Solid Love' and 'Underneath The Streetlight,' both of which find Mitchell rocking with gleeful wonder at finally being involved in a successful, healthy relationship. In the latter, the world takes on a magical glow as Mitchell exclaims* 'Yes I do—I love you!' And in 'Solid Love,' she ingeniously puts aside her poetic verbal skills to express her joy; 'Unbelievable... Hot dog darlin'.' Able at last to see 'the moon at the window' Without suffering over how to reach it, Joni Mitchell smiles. And, I think, the moon smiles back.

Jim Feldman

BUCK DHARMA Flat Out (portrait)

For me, Donald Roeser (Buck Dharma to you) has always been the heart and soul of Blue Oyster Cult, a band that usually gives love a low priority rating as a tit subject to celebrate in song. But Roeser, stepping out on his own on this, the first Cult member solo album, makes no bones about what makes his motor run: Flat Out is chiefly concerned with the ins and outs of that crazy little thing called amore, and with neither a diz-buster nor a flaming telepath in sight. (Also happily absent are sci-fi bombastics, cornball sinisterisms and strained laser-likely posturings.)

As Bubba Lou would say, love's all over the place. 'Bom To Rock,' rambunctiously spurred on by the old Alice Cooper rhythm section, is not just any old fist-shaking statement of purpose; it's about a guy whose parents conceived him while the Top 40 blasted out of the car radio. 'That Summer Night' and 'All Tied Up' deal respectively with feelings of it's-all-over agonizing and I-only-have-thighs-for-you infatuation. 'Five Thirty-Five' revels in the same kind of after-workassignations that Sheena Easton did on 'Morning Train,' only with a better sense of uncontrollable urgency.

'Cold Wind' is what 'blows on the empty hearted' and its pervading atmosphere of ominous uneasiness puts it in line behind such past Dharma-Cult mood unsettlers as 'I Love The Night' and '(Don't Fear) The Reaper.' And if you really crave heavy duty eeriness awash in deep tragedy, then immerse yourself in the tingling waters of 'Your Loving Heart,' an unnerving epic of true love ways. The whole middle section gets needlessly melodramatic like some torturous TV movie, but it's obliterated by Buck's O. Henryesque finish, his best denouement since 'Then Came The Last Days Of May.'

You should also know that these songs all have striking arrangements, superbly plaintive vocals, and un-ostentatious guitar dynamics by the man whose incisive combinations of metal and melody never cease to amaze. And, in closing, I'd just like to say that 'Come Softly To Me' is one of the most loving remakes I've even heard, thanks to a beautiful assist from Sandy Roeser (Mrs. Buck Dharma to you). Flatly stated, Flat Out, is my kind of pleasant surprise.

Craig Zeller

THEROCHES Keep On Doing (Warner Bros.)

It's taken me four years and three albums to find two good words for the Roches, What immediately endeared this nouveau folkie family to most critics immediately made me cringe. With their Minnie-Pearlgoes-to-Greenwich-Village loungewear and retard routines (why didn't anyone tell these sibs the telethon was over?), the a capella, off-kilter rounds of their debut were precious. And useless—unless you needed a souvenir of the trio's coffeehouse performances. For the fan, the Roches preserved their live act. For the non-fan, they rarely transcended it.

The Roches must have had second thoughts, too. On their second album, Nurds, they attempted to back their bone-wry harmonies with a band. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to use a band. The band didn't have the slightest idea what to do with them either, and brought up the rear of the sisters' marches like draftees with bad blisters.

With Keep On Doing, the Roches sound as if they're finally beginning to figure out how to make records. They still break phrases into a zillion syllables when a few would do just fine, embroidering insignificant mo-1 ments as well as important ones. Maybe that's because they're used to depending on'their unamplified selves to fill a room. Maybe it's the only way each sister can get her own word in edgewise.

The best songs on Keep On Doing are the straightest, not the novelties (like their standard stage encore, 'Hallelujah'—a mistake here). They nicely deliver Maggie's 'Losing True' and George Gerdes' 'Steady With The Maestro,' letting the stories, not the vocal frills, dominate. Why they deliver David Massengill's 'On The Road To Fairfax County' at all is a mystery. Even Joan Baez, at her most sentimental, would say no to this smush. On 'I Fell In Love,' the superfluous notes are struck by producer Robert Fripp, who couldn't resist adding a discordant dash of King Crimson. His gizmo-y guitar here is cool but inappropriate —like ordering a bidet before you've even got a working toilet. A solid basic track might have been more impressive than a tacked-on ego-Fripp. But within 'I Fell' 's tidy anecdote is a perverse wit that illustrates the levels the Roches are capable of operating on. Is the protagonist falling for her 'Switchblade flashing motorcycle freak' because she gets off on his shirt and tie or because she wants to be his mother?

Despite a loopy, loping melody, 'Jerks On The Loose' isn't so neat once you start thinking about 'Too Many Creeps' and 'Want Not Want Not' has a cloddy chorus and cloddy piano stomp that ultimately defeats it. Maybe next time the Roches will trust a producer or arranger enough to let him (her?) help them make their anti-materialism, nonconformity, humanity and humor accessible to the people who need it most. Who can't identify with Suzzy and Terre Roche's lament, 'I wish there was a true love/I wish there was a great art'? If they were really smart, though, they'd know what to do: give it a beat and just let us dance. '

Deborah Frost

MARVIN GAYE Midnight Love (Columbia)

Marvin. Gaye, the Muhammed Ali of the turntable, hasn't floated like a butterfly since 1972's 'You're The Man' and parts of '73's Let's Get It On, and plainly hasn't stung like a bee since '77's 'Got To Give It Up.' Still Gaye, like Ali, is a considerable presence, even in his self-imposed exile and such shadow-of-my-former-self LPsas/ Want You and In Our Lifetime. A true champion is always greater than the sum of his singles, but M.P.G. had clearly seen better days...a lot of them.

What a pleasure, then, to report that on Midnight Love, Marvin's first record in two years (and his first since parting with Motown founder Berry Gordy), the man does not coast and does not sing just well enough to win. Still the prettiest— and the greatest—he's more scientific, too. With his career at a treacherous transition point—will he remain a force or slip into history?— he 'deliberately set out to make the most commercial album that I could.'

Working almost entirely alone in a Belgian studio, Gaye handcrafted each track, playing most of the instruments and singing all the background vocals. Happily, there is none of the solo studio sterility that crops up in similar projects. Midnight Love is as full of human touches and passion as any record this year. There are more echoed handclaps & fingerpops, for example, than in the entire recorded output of the Cupcakes, the Cookies and the Dixie Cups combined. Lots of life in the old boy yet, which you certainly know by now from 'Sexual Healing,' the loping, graceful first single from the album. Effectively a jingle for fucking, 'Sexual Healing' wins this year's coveted Barry 'I Don't Want To See No Panties' White Medallion. Marvin even sings 'Baby I'm hot just like an oven' so beautifully you just don't care.

Since Harvey Fuqua is credited as production advisor and mix master, the stunning ballad ' 'Til Tomorrow' makes sense as a living testament to Harvey's legendary vocal group the Moonglows where, after all, Gaye started his recording career. He here delivers simply the best recorded 'oh babys's since mid-'60s Smokey, singing pure on-the-note tenor mixed with a few fadeaway jumpers. The Koolish 'Rockin' After Midnight' sports a gorgeous floating bridge.. .'Call out in the name of love...' that Multiple Marvins sing in a loose sprung rhythm. The same MMs whoop merrily, nodding in the general direction of Bob Marley on the masterfully simple 'Third World Gfrl.'

And not a trace of pretention in the tracks. On 'Turn On Some Music' (where Gaye sings his best '...honey, honey...'s since 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine') he tells his lover, 'Put three albums on baby/We're gonna make it long, long, long.' At last a Hall of Fame star who, for ail his gifts, remains absolutely unalienated from what he does best. The Stones studied him assiduously in '64 and they still do today. They may even use Lem Barney and Mel Farr on their next LP. Meanwhile, Marvin Gaye is as back as a man can be. If white programmers wake up, radio just might get to be fun again.

Jeff Nesin

LINDA RONSTADT Get Closer (Asylum)

For all the heavy breathing over Linda Ronstadt, I've always found her voice hard to really warm up to. It's certainly nice and pretty and all that but, despite her sex kitten/ cheerleader image, it isn't very sensual. In fact it's usually a bit stiff and hospital-clean. In general I wouldn't call her singing deeply emotional and she never sounds either wise, witty or ironic, which is why she really puts her foot in it when she covers smart-ass material like 'Sail Away' or 'Poor Poor Pitiful Me.' A lot of her other famous covers may be likeable enough as radio pop fluff, but her insistence on attempting so many songs already done brilliantly by others makes her a constant sitting duck target. The only way for her to survive the embarrassing comparisons would be either to give her versions an individual passion, or else radically re-define them. Ronstadt seldom has the wherewithal to excel with the former (there's 'Desperado' and, um, 'Desperado,' and, um), and she's never even taken a stab at the latter. Even most songs with her name scribbled all over them—those slow ballads offering 50 ways to love your leaver—have usually been done better elsewhere. (For the most telling example, match her 'Love Has No Pride' up against Bonnie Raitt's. Ronstadt's reading is a mildly touching moment. Raitt's is a revelation.)

On her new album Ronstadt offers the usual mixture of famous, marginally known and brand new covers, with all-too predictable results. 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' is a perfect fit for Ronstadt's character, and while she scores points in the bravura dept, by really shouting out those high notes, the real seven hankie award obviously goes to Joe Cocker's classic interpretation. 'Talk To Me Of Mendocino'has a gorgeous melody and Ronstadt takes a nice straightforward run at it but from any angle, the McGarrigles' more full-bodied original wins hands down. The only other good track on the album, 'My Blue Tears,' comes from the unreleased Dolly Parton-Emmylou Harris-Ronstadt LP, and here, Dolly's wonderful little-girl vibrato steals the show.

The rest of the album is various degrees of dull. There are the usual snoozeable torch-ers, like 'Easy For You To Say,' 'Mr. Radio,' and 'Sometimes You Just Can't Win,' which includes harmonies from mush king J.D. Souther ('nuff said). As expected, the sound of the studio band is pure Peter Asher-approved pod music. The title track has that forced pseudosexy 'spunk' of many rockier Ronstadt efforts like 'Back In The U.S.A.' and 'It's So Easy,' but it's the fast-paced oldies, however, which get the worst treatment. The Knickerbockers' old Beatles impersonation, 'Lies,' has all the punch knocked out of it, and her bridled belting out of The Exciters' 'Tell Him' has none of the camp outrage the song fairly screams out for. It all adds up to a pretty lame album— especially for a singer who's rarely more than just another pretty voice.

Jim Farber

THE BEAT Special Beat Service (IRS)

This is the kind of album your mother warned you about (and if she didn't, she should have). Dull and ponderous, it shows the dance floor's number one salt and pepper ska team over-extending itself way beyond its creative reach and coming up short in the process.

Of course, this is only my opinion—but if you don't want to take my word for it, you may wish to heed those of a local fan I know who, after listening hopefully through both sides of Special Beat Service, came away from the Hi-Fi asking, 'It's not exactly hot, is it?'

Which is exactly the point: it isn't (and if there's one thing a Beat album should be, it's hot).

What helped make I Just Can't Stop It one of the all time hot rockin' dance albums was the fact that you could get just as much enjoyment listening to it at home as you could dancing to it at the Klub-Domino.

From 'Mirror In The Bathroom' (with its Eno-meets-May Ray imagery) , to the snapped elevator cable acceleration of 'Two Swords,' to the sing-song polemics of 'Stand Down Margaret,' the Beat created one hell of a debut album that didn't let your feet or your intelligence down.

This time around, however (Round Three), the Beat have altered their previously successful musical formula by opting instead for a slightly newer (and seemingly more versatile) game plan—one that spells disappointment for both the dancers and thinkers amongst us.

For although the attempt is admirable, it's weakened the qualities of the Beat's sound sufficiently enough to the point of making it not only redundant, but ultimately unnecessary. And while I'm sure that the Beat team worked full steam at recording Special Beat Service, all I can hear are the tell-tale sounds of laziness and overindulgence scattered throughout.

The opening trilogy of 'I Confess' (the soul number), 'Jeanette' (the wacky continental number), and 'Sorry' (the full tilt riff number) gets the album off to a promising start, but things start going downhill immediately thereafter, beginning with an Elvis Costello pastiche ('Sole Salvation'), continuing through a couple of dumb-Negro 'rap' numbers ('Spar Wid Me,' 'Pato And Roger Ago Talk'), and coming around the clubhouse turn with a 'Lost In The Supermarket' Clash melody swipe ('Sugar And Stress').

Why no one deemed it necessary to can producer Bob Sargent and hire an impartial third party to take the original tapes, cut out all the dross, streamline the project with a lot of much-needed direction, and submit a superior project for release, is beyond me.

However, just because I dropped bucks on this one is no reason for you to do the same. Do as I say, not as I do, and avoid this one like a bad case of Simplex II.

Jeffrey Morgan