WORKING MAN’S BLUES

WORKING MAN’S BLUES

RECORDS

BOB SEGER AND THE SILVER BULLET BAND The Distance (Capitol)

by Mitchell Cohen

There’s a new furrowed-brow earnestness now emerging in American rock ’n’ roll, a grainy neorealism that depicts workaday lives in ways that were once the exclusive province of country music, a neorealism which is attempting to chart the widening gap between what we’d hoped for (romantically, socially, economically) and what we’re currently experiencing. Rock for the new recession, rock that wonders how things got off the tracks. Springsteen’s Nebraska is the most blatant example, but traces of that melancholy befuddlement can be heard in varying degrees on Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly (from the perspective of the promises of the New Frontier), Tom Petty’s Long After Dark (“One Story Town,” “Wasted Life”), Steve Van Zandt’s Men Without Women (the horns on the LP are a call ro reclaim a lost spirit), Billy Joel’s The Nylon Curtain (for all I know; ndthing could make me listen to it, but I have seen the “Altentowri” video), and Bob Seger’s The Distance. This is a strange (although not unprecendented) posture for rock tojind itself jn—grim and defiant, ironic and embittered.

YQU don’t have to go back very far—-“Feel Like A Number” is far enough—to pick out songs that single ouf the depersonalization of factory work as a potential killer of the soul, something to be steeled against. But the Reagan years have made for some reversals: on Seger’s “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” the Ford conveyor belt, the vehicles that rolled out of the place, and the men who worked on the assembly line, are held up as a symbol of a young and proud America that is a part of our deep past. And on the song that follows, “Boomtown Blues,” the opportunity for employment down south (in Texas, presumably) lures a northerner who finds that making a living has stripped him of an essential pipce of his life.,

The Distance wants to be a mature work, as well as a return to rock-out form (after Against The Wind, which was perceived as draggy), and it is both: when Seger’s husky voice strains, it mirrors the strains of the characters fn these songs, and as someone to whom rock ’n’ roll means everything (how else could he have sustained a career so marginal until his bicentennial breakthrough?), Seger sounds thrilled to have new themes to accomodate his boisterousness. But while Seger’s commitment to the music itself—“Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets,” “Let It Rock”—could be heard as testimony of his faith (“This is where rock has taken me, and it can take you there, too,” was the implied message to. his audience) and a reprieve from the struggle, The Distance is a guide to the struggle, and that’s a whple other team of horses. Seger probably intends “Little Victories” to be inspirational (it holds the same place, and much, the same thoughts, as Nebraska’s “Reason To Believe”), but what is it saying? That these small triumphs (not crumbling to pieces, when a loved one kisses you off) are the best we can expect?

When the clouds of doom part, arid Segerisn’t singing about dashed dreams that send a man back to his hometown trying to hold on to some dignity (“Cornin’ Home”), or about “the sad resolve that it’s all gone wrong” (the readyfor-Rondstadt ballad “Love’s The Last To Know”), the determination in his voice takes over, and The Distance enters less defeatist territory. At the start of “Roll Me Away,” Seger hops on his bike to escape it all (he’s l,sick of what’s wrong and what’s right,” he insists, sounding like Jessica Lange’s Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice). By the finish, however, he’s hopping back on (minus a girl he picked up along the way, who got off and went home; Wimmen:can’t take ’em anywhere) and beginning a search for some Greater Truth. When rockers start looking across (literal) great divides at soaring hawks to give them direction, cover your head.

There are times when Seger wins out by virtue of his verve and believability: “Even Now” rolls out of the gate with the “it’s a jungleland out there on the backstreets of thunder road” flourishes of pianist Roy Bittari, and Rodney Crowell’s “Shame On The Moon” fits the LP conceptually (the distance between people sleeping in the same bed) and complements it musically (Seger tries out his “Solomon Burke sings country soul” phrasing for the cantering melody). And there are others when he doesn’t quite know what he wzkits to say (“House Behind A House” might as well be about outdoor plumbing for all it says to me, and I’m not being deliberately dense).

I don’t mean to carp: at the very least, the. neorealists are steering mainstream rock away from the strutting narcissism that has dominated the field of late, and The Distance is an album that has a lot on the ball. What it doesn’t have is play for the sake of play, that moment when the^ music can snap its head around and say the hell with it. Seger’s always had an awareness that memory can have a kick the present' lacks/" (what else is “Night Moves” but a tribute to the feels of yesteryear?), and his gruff old dog personality also contains “Betty Lou’s Gettin’ Out Tonight” (“Fun, Fun, Fun” in Motor City). On this album, the girl in the ’60 Chevy has to be home by 10, and Betty Lou’s parole has been revoked, leaving Seger with time on his hands, con-

tpmntatinn tho Amcriran ahucs

NEIL YOUNG Trans ' (Geffen)

After half a dozen listenings, to get beyond the requisite outrage and horror over Neil Young performing electronie-tinged “darice” music, I can now honestly say Neil Young has made a very, good Flock -Of-Seagulls-meets-Kraftwerk record. Whether he’s rpade a good Neil Young record is a stickier issue.

Even if you agree with me that the Pac-Man hymns which dominate this record are about as catchy and likeable as any of the better trendy hits spinning in the clubs' these days, you still have to wonder what it all “means” coming from a heavyweight like Young. I don’t think this is simply Young’s sudden bid to be seen as relevant. The guy who created a punk anthem on an acoustic guitar doesn’t need to p/ove his hip credentials to anyone. On the other hand, making this fate-of-the-art album is certainly part of a bid to comment more, directly on the modern world—something he’s actually been building up to for a while now.

Since tne release of Rust Never Sleeps, Young has made increasingly direct attempts to deal with the outside world. Hawks & Doves was his state-of-disunion address, delivered on the eve of the 1980 election. Re-Ac-Tor dealt with some of the political and economic problems which at the time of the LP’s release, obscured the nuclear issue. Coming after these records (two of the strangest in a pretty wacked-out career) Trans could almost be called the next “logical” step. It isn’t directly political, but it’s a definite move into the firing line of modern life.

Of all the modern elements on the album, the one that will certainly piss off fans the most is the vocal treatment. On six of the nine tracks here, Young’s'voice is completely disguised by electronic devices. He really has become someone—or something—else. The weird part is, the three “normal” Neil Young songs are the least interesting ones on the record. Odder still, it almost seems as if he contrived it that way. He unambitjously kicks off each side with a “regular” pop love ditty, and both are pretty dippy. The record closes with the other “Normal”. song—“Like An Inca,” which has stifled verses arid the most disappointingly slick guitar ever allowed on a Neil Young record.

On the electro-rock tracks, once you accept the anonymous vocal distortion you can get into the simple catchiness of the riffs and pick up ort some nice melodic flourishes terboot. The only immediately recognizable Neil Young features are some of the guitar parts, especially characteristic on “Computer Age” and “Sample Arid Hold.” The guitar work also gives the music its only claim to depth. The lyrics don’t help much on that score. In fact, from the words alone it’s kinda tough to figure out exactly what Young thinks about this whole rnodern machine issue. In an interview with The Record, Young gushed over the proliferation of the new technology and, said he got off on tfye way a band like Devo Revolted his friends. Still, Young’s record has almost none of the vocal or lyrical wit of Devo. A song like “Transformer Man” does endorse the love of machines idea (when human input is accounted for). Then again, there’s somethinglike “We R In Control” which opts for the old machines-as-1984-fascists view. The other mechanized words are pretty ambiguous (not surprising, from someone like Young) and, in . a way, so is the music. It has agreeable passages of electro-pop melody but many sections are imbued with dread as well. Ultimately, thougn, for an oldster like Young to make the considerable leap to this music without offering an overt indictment must be counted as a relative embrace; which is strengthened by the message of the LP’s cover (presenting old world and new side by side).

Still, the new world Young has joined is perhaps more meaningful as gesture than as music. His album “plays” not much deeper than a Flock Of Seagulls record. Most telling in hi§ wired-up dead-pan remake of “Mr. Soul,” which, even taken on its own level divorced from the original, is just a pleasant curiosity . Like the rest of the album, it’s manily something that would sound pretty good in today’s clubs. On another level, though, the mere fact that Young would (even obliquely) reach out to the emerging computer-world offers a worth while lesson. As an old dog lapping up new tricks, Neil Young is offering a dramatic life example to the other old farts that the jiew world isn’t that much more scary or complicated than the incredibly confusing one that’s always been around.

' JimFarber

PAT BENATAR Get Nervous (Chrysalis)

Can’t believe I like this record (as in really' like); as a rule Benatar’s not my scene and most of the songs she sings are gross bummers of the highest order. But “.Best Shot” ’s hot-mama processed-rock succumbs here to finer pastures of passion and semi-beliqvable, seemingly genuine gestures of frayed psyche. Plus good performances all around. , , ,

SHADOW BOX

GARLAND JEFFREYS Guts For Love _(Epic)

by R.A. Pinkston IV

For far too many years, it appeared as if Garland Jeffreys was fated to §pend his whole career playing Phil Ochs to Lou Reed’s Bob Dylan. With a few differences, of course. While Ochs was dogged continually by the unfair comparisons he neither wanted nor needed, Jeffreys’ footrace with Reed seemed intentional, almost obsessed, as if coming out of the same clubs and running the same wild streets had convinced him that a tilt with Reed was necessary for ultimate recognition as the ultimate New York songwriter. And whereas Ochs was finally driven (at least in part) by the comparisons with Dylan to an unfortunate professional and finally personal downfall, Jeffreys’ stronger Constitution and general stubborness has precluded any noticeable fall from the fray, even as those very qualities contributed to some rather spotty records.

With the release of Escape Artist in 1981, though, things began to change. Admittedly, the songs there were uneven and the influences too easily isolated but, on the whole, a more distinctly individualistic Garland Jeffreys seemed to be emerging, a Garland Jeffreys tough land sure enough of himself to almost turn Question Mark’s “96 Tears” into a new hit. The following live album, Rock ’n’ Roll Adult, was aided immeasureably by the presence of the Rumour, the troubleshooting unit almost Unsurpassed in complementing a performer without stepping on his toes. Inspired by their play behind and around him, Jeffreys produced a record of. churning and frighteningly personal intensity on which one could just about hear him breaking free from Reed’s shadow . With the success of his new record, Guts For Love, the move is now complete.

Which is not to say that the accomplishment here comes quickly, or easily, for it doesn’t. At first listening, one quickly realizes that this LP is less derivative than past efforts, but somehow things sound compressed and a bit uniform— side one especially seems to brush too close tothe repetetive bullheadedness of will that has held Jeffreys back before. Side two fares better., mainly on the strength of i Jeffreys’ fine cover of Mr. Walker’s indestructible classic, “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love),” a song >that surely must be the “Stardust” of its generation (if a bad recording of it exists, it hasn’t reached these ears). And it is on side two that the record begins too slowly reveal its magic.

Let it run through a few more times, and soon the opening notes of “Shout” become crooked fingers and beckoning winks drawing you in deeper and deeper, from that tune through the Walker song, “Lbneliness,” the pinpointedly accurate and powerful “El Salvador” Jthe right song at the right time, it could be the sleeper hit single that “Wild In The Streets” always should have been) and right down to, the closing line of the final track, “American*Backslide” (“Everything is turning ghostlike/Sixfy minutes after midnight”), everything eventually locks into place, the flaws of side one becoming the virtues of side two. Repetition becomes litany, continuity and flirts with shallowness become revealed as tools of subtlety and understatement. Even better, the brighter side two shines, the more relevant light falls on side one. “Surrender,” “Fidelity,” and, especially, the title song take on a proud, reflective power, and one begins to understand the flow of the album as a whole. And when was the last time you heard an album work as a wholb?

Perhaps the best thing about Guts For Love, though, is that, despite its excellence, one senses that Jeffreys is headed for even higher ground from here. Having searched so long for just the right form and setting, he now seems to have perfected a truly effective Hind of “American reggae” that all the while cannot be mistaken for anything but rock ’n’ roll,, a rock ’n’ roll uniquely and undeniably his own. With his recent progress well documented, Garland Jeffreys is a fine example of what happens when rock V roll grows up. Now that he’s in the groove and not just searching for it, there’ll probably be plenty of young blood coming to hang out undef his shadow before long. And a fine shadow it is.

The songwriting substantiates actual clever twists and turns of beat, while the tunes build on some authentically groovy vocal calisthenics. Traces of “new wave” notwithstanding (from the alb cover’s Toni Basil “look” to the cagey, sparse guitar wanderings that are very different from past brute-force metallics), the package steers clear of gratuitous rock-star pukery and all its trappings. Most arrangements, for ex, are conspicuously lean (as opposed to ^jeavy)—credit the tasteful Geraldo/Coleman production in this regard. Could-havebeen non-entities (tunes) shine with some sorta self-aggrandized importance.

Like side one’s “Fight It Out” and “The Victim.” Keyboards and guitars egg on the vocal to higher dimensional planes of spiritual angst. In the best tradition.of Pats (Smith), she’s wailing on these two-'-and in a feelingly perceptual disposition/ times, these, but that’s not what it’s backing track.

“Anxiety” ’s OK too. Anxious times,these,but that’s not what it’s all about:

”I’m picking up the telephone {here’s no one I can call I need somebody bad tonight can’t fight this thing at all I wish I could relax I just can’t stop my mind I wish I could relax But my body’s not that kind... ” Terse synthesizer hooks snag guitar and vocal into the rousing chorus: “Anxiety’s—got me on the run/ Anxiety—spoils all the fun...” The song smartly sidesteps the ordinary with atypical type changes and an almost self-amused passiveness v-a-v topic matter. Goofy melodrama (’’get nervous, get nervous, get nervous” she hisses in cadent synch w/intro-mutes/synthnotes)i spars with the subject at hand in a romping (by way of Disney) fashion. Benatar’s reading of the song’s pain comes off playful and jocular in the vein, say, of “Ballad Of Dwight Frye” and/or Napoleon XIV.

Speaking of veins (jugular), “Tell It To Her” and “I’ll Do It” re-vamp the first side’s sharp formula (versebridgechorus/ softloud-louder) with overextended anthemic slaps in the face. At least half of the record’s songs earmark this M.O. for effect (presumably), which sorta gets annoying, but on the other hand it’s pulled off so well—Benatar’s whining*, pleading,, Ronstadtian turns of emotive range—that repetition and uniqueness (distinct lack of) count only if you’re keeping score.

Oh yeah, “Shadows Of The Night” (the one they play on the radio) is listenable but not nearly as frenetic and humanly off-balance as the rest. Makes more sense when you see the video (no kidding) of Pat in a WWII fighter-bomber way way up there^-flying, singing (into a.mike), doling it all.

Gregg Turner

TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS

Long After Dark

(Backstreet)

Why not just let it blurt? Tom Petty’s static, impregnable doltishness has made his recent LPs— starting with the alleged “breakthrough,” Damn The Torpedoes— so heartbreakingly DULL that I wring my hands, .gnash my teeth and fall asleep. The glassy-eyed, undifferentiated vervelessness con1 tinues unabated on the latest, Long After Dark, and perhaps the public is catching on. Hard Promises is mow filling cut-out bins, Long After Dark did nothing to, revive slumping, holiday record1 sales and as one who found You’re Gonna Get It' absolutely wonderful, I’ve been N trying to figure out what happened.

1 think the present dreariness began when Tom Petty became TP, when he started his tireless drive to

polish and perfect himself as a marketable commodity. Long After Dark once again raises the telling question: How far can you roll a carefully crafted signature style uphill before you get stultified, exhausted, or crushed? Tom Petty, it1 would seem, has been victimized by his own albatross formula. On the inner sleeve Petty gives special thanks to co-producer Jimmy Iovine and engineer Shelly Yakus, for their “immeasurable dedication and contribution to this project.” Would Mark Lindsay have said that? Would Duane Eddy have called a rock ’n’ roll record a “project’*? All of which reminds one that the last three albums have had exactly the same sound—a cook glistening, distanced FM blend that could be the Eagles at their most arch and that, for FM purposes, a great LP needs a couple of memorable tunes and lots of immediately recognizable filler. Sound familiar?

The songwriting suffers, too, from the rigidity of the overriding concept, the stiffness of the expected TP pose. “One Story Town,” the lead-off cut—a crucial TP choice (Refugee,” “The Waiting”) —is particularly depressing. A churlish, predictable few verses of lifeless anamie, it showcases Petty’s ongoing confusion of credibility with charmlessness. “Between Two Worlds,” a churning urn of burning funk that is well crafted but too long, reaches new heights of lyrical fogginess. Obviously depicting the torments of the flesh it could be about one woman, two women, or Tom’s secret struggle with transsexuality, 1 don’t remember having to

read anything to understand Listen To Her Heart.”

“Deliver Me” is the one song to love on Long After Dark, set in the pleading middle of Petti/s attenuated snarl-to^a-whine emotional range, and graced by a lovely floating bridge and energy that, if not exactly light-hearted, is at least momentarily not DEADLY EARNEST. But finally, Petty’s limitations cpnspire with his singlemindedness to betray him. It’s hard to tell, for example, that “Finding Out” is a happy song without looking at the' lv/rics. It certainly SOUNDS the same as the sad songs or the ornery ones. In fact though the songs may attempt to say different things, TP’s voice and the cool, filtered radioready rnix seem always to be saying pretty much the same thing. If that’s your idea of a good time,good luck.

It ain’t mine and it didn’t used to be Tom’s, either.

Jeff Nesin

SJUPERTRAMP ...famous last words...

(A&M)

Many fine nouns come to me whenever I think of Supertramp, and most of the printable ones can be found in the section of my thesaurus which begins with “toady” and “sycophant.” I once credited James Taylor and Seals & Croft with the most obsequious, spineless “pop music” ever whined into my face (and into America’s recordbuying hearts), but at least they had excuses for their jellyhood:Taylor had already suffered the twin-filleting indignities of prep school and heroin addiction, while S & C were apparently whining in synch with some religious fanaticism centered upon folkie jai-alai and secret baldpates.

But Supertramp, who are seemingly free of any of those’routine axes to whine, are fawning crybabies nevertheless, well beyond the call of duty (and all the way to the bank, per the X-million copies of their four-your-old Breakfast In America still oozing through the cash registers). Supertramp relentlessly remind me of a yippy, masochist little Maltese “fart dog” (the generic term) who used to live with us, and who used to court our attention by peeing repeatedly on our good couch, in hopes of earning a delicious curse and swat.

Similarly, Supertramp have relieved themselves all over my radio and TV with their insufferably chirpy-but-cringing “It’s Raining Again” the past few months, and while they’ve earned plenty of curses and dial swats in the process, 1 do have to congratulate them for the incidental revelation of the “It’s Raining Again” video, which shows off their collectively rubbery artistic backbone even better than their records.

The video is a slick pastiche of half-digested Americanisms, of randomly-assembled, textbook-r ’n’ r fetishes, such as ‘‘The Soda Jerk,” “The Drive-In Movie,” “The Pickup Truck,” none of which the immigrants in Supertramp remotely understand, even on a fifth-hand level, as the elaborate but pointless plot makes obvious. Not that the song itself reaches any more coherent conclusions: Roger Hodgson starts off whining about “rain” (same worldview as John Denver) sun = “good”, rain = “bad”) because his “love’s at an end,” the sdng burbles through many more stanzas and chord changes of chirpy misery, until Hodgson finally begins to exhort himself to “get back up again.” But the tone of his flat-emotioned wheeze hasn’t changed a whisker throughout, since, after all, losing’s just as good as winning when you don’t' want either one anyway.

Worse yet is the fact that the bouncy abjection of “It’s Raining Again” may be the most interesting moment on the new .. .famous last words... The balance of the album’s cuts are even more nondescript in their cloying hummability and the group’s lyrical defensiveness about their own nullity. Dig these solipsistic saps: “We’re helpless can’t you see” (“Put On Your Old Brown Shoes”); “If this world is unimpressive” (*Waiting So Long”); “Nobody listens when you’re singing the blues [sic]” (“Crazy”)—but I desist, listening to these contraceptive jellyfish is its own reward.

Oh yeah, Supertramp still cop a Beatles quote here and there, but in typically fart dog fashion, they grab only the most gristly melodic scraps from the Beatles’ decadent later period; and only when no one is looking. Jeez, this stuff is so soddenly bland already that the Muzak folks are going to have their work cut out for them in reducing the ‘Tramp to their preferred level of nada-buzz. See ya in the elevator, guys.

Richard Riegel

JAMES BLOOD ULMER Black Rock (Columbia)

RONALD JACKSON SHANNON Man da nee (Antilles)

' Two steps forwarcLfor the punkfunk/harmolodic funk genre (no, I don’t like the names either but this has to be distinguished from the sleek, overly-refined stuff played by chic, well-fed musicians). This is rough stuff: the bass lines attack your gut like angry elbows, the drums get you up on your feet to dance, then knock you down again, the horns wail every which way and the guitars, heh heh, the guitars!

How did this freaky, funky stuff come to bevanyway, you’re asking?

We)l, capsule historically speaking...in the mid-’70s, after unleashing Agharta and Pangaea on a , world that still ain’t ready for ’em, Miles Davis abdicated his position -; as head honcho of the whole jazz trip for awhile until Ornette Coleman picked up the slack. Coleman had already spearheaded the so-called free jazz . * movement in the early ’60s, along with people like Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra; with Dancing In Your Head, recorded in ’76, he updated the funk by injecting it with a shot of his own style of freedom, Ulmer and Jackson, both Coleman alumni, are taking this music in their own directions, sort of in parallel to what Weather Report and the Herbie Hancock Septet did with Miles’ innovations a decade ago.

Ulmer is a guitarist and that’s an understatement. People sometimes compare him to Hendrix but I figure that’s mainly ’cause he’s black and gets some wild sounds out of his axe, though the intro to monster jam “Open House” sounds kinda like “Little Wing” flying around Jupiter. But then the music" starts divebombing you: grooves connect up and collapse, melodies fly by without even saying,'“Hi,” a second guitarist adds some fusion licks, and all the while, Ulmer’s fluttering around like some hyperactive helicopter, funky, friendly and all over the place. Beef heart fans will have no trouble with this; anyone else— and that includes all you would-be guitarists out there who have to , hear this stuff—might try playing it two or three times through to let the structure sink in.

RIC OCASEK Beathnde (Geffen)

by Joe (Barely Ambulatory)

Fernbacher

However:

Most polyrock, polypop, or polypap, vyhichever name you care to pigeonhole it with, is strictly yawnsville. Nothing more, you see, than soundtrack muzak for people who have a penchant for falling in love with various sized O’s. A kind of music lost in the pretense of £eing a great sonic tenderizer enabling us to have more fun living in these od’d ’80s. An unusual sound wallowing in the not so interesting philosophical quandary of how to love your Lowry and still justify cruisin’ the flesh pits for perversion and pleasure. A collected beeping noise being perpetrated by slavering legions of junior Rotwangs caught up in the desirous search for that ever-elusive

greasy heart. In other words (pause) music that’s fadelessly monotonous and mystifyingly chameleonic.

MICROWAVE RANGER RIC,THE TECH-MECH KID

Yet, interestingly enough, Ric Ocasek’s Beatitude, a borderline polypopper—actually more pop than poly, but poly enough to be tossed in the polypop corner—isn’t the yawnorama of tech-mech I expected it to be. Instead, it’s a strong solo effort rife with inner contradictions and some fairly glitch-free musical melodizing.

Added to this is, of course, the blitz word poetry of Ocasek, whose vision of the world is one of implosion and velocity. His quirky little raspings of language paint an awkward, occasionally humorous (and therein lies his strength) canvas of a hip gone world where remoteness and estrangement are viciously replacing planet love and one on one personal Contact. Surprisingly, his lyrics read pretty well when taken out of the context of the Cars sound, a sound he’s a driving force behind. Generally, lyrics taken out of the group context and left to their own devises suffer from their own inner pretense, but hefe they don’t.

And, unlike most of the new mechanicians of the tech-mech sound, Ocasek somehow manages to add a little bit of funky meatinesS to his music. Some of it even rocks a little: praise the lord and pass the sterno, mechismo music that rawks, at last!

Of course,’ the attitude of Beatitude at any altitude comes from its toons, and just like most albums these d^ys (when was the last time you heard an album where ALL the songs were well thought out and capable of standing on their own, outta the framework of the album... doesn’t happen much anymore, now does it?), there are songs that oscillate between moments of clarity and vision (“A Quick One,” “Out Of Control”) and moments of quiet terminal stasis ("Jimmy, Jimmy,”

“Time Bomb”), with a few blinks, like “Connect Me Up” and “Something To Grab For,” that are about as entertaining and exciting as sitting butt-naked on an ant hill (or formicary as we in the arachnid biz call ’em...).

I scratch my bestubbled dewlap, think twice, walk over to a shadowy comer, do a 180 degree turn to the right, raise an eyebrow, do a 180 degree turn to the left, raise another eyebrow, then stutter step through a 360 degree turn realizing as I do so that even though this record doesn’t offend me—as most do—I *

really prefer listening to the sound of far off freeway accidents and my Ultimate Spinach albums—especially “Hip Death Goddess,” (whatta toon).

Hey, how do you like that I didn’t even tell you what “Beatitude” means, nor did I mock out tall, lanky people who look suspiciously like they come from Philadelphia...

The followirtg track, “Black Jack,” snaps back to Earth in a hurry. Heavy funk, but fast: the holes are there but they keep changing places as the music starts and stops and starts again, punctuated by the earthiest grunts this side of the late Howlin’ Wolf. The rest of the album doesn’t have quite the impact of its lead-off one-two punch but if you’re not knocked out by then, you’ll at least be punch drunk. Or is that funk drunk?

Now Ronald Shannon Jackson is a drummer, the only man to have drummed with Coleman and Ulmer and Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. More to the point, he’s , the best writer and arranger in this whole bag and Mandance takes the music to places even Ornette doesn’t know about.

Where? Everywhere. It’s almost as if Jackson has access to some pian-cultural mixing bowl to concoct his compositions in. How else could he come up with “Iola,” a funky hoedown/showdown between a banjo and two bass guitars? Or the wildlife workout, “Giraffe.” Or the ingenious fantasy safari, “Alice In The Congo.” Each musician adds tasty bits of his own—I especially like the way Vernon Reid sneaks his guitar synthesizer in at the end of his solo on “Belly Button”—but this music is more about group interaction than jerked off solos. Jackson’s drums often lead the vyay without bombast or flash—although the thump ’n’ thrash boys will have fun trying to cop the chops he uses on “Sparkling”—but his main triumph is in making all this exotica sound perfectly natural. Jackson (and Ulmer too) can bring the funk home no matter what planet you live on.

Michael Davis

DEXY’S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS Too-Rye-Ay k (Mercury)

When we last left Dexy’s pugnacious leader Kevin Rowland,, he wore a knit stocking cap, a navy peacoat, a pencil-thin mustache and the leering mug of a swaggering stevedore, daring all comers to meet his idea of the new soul rebel. He and his band hailed from England’s industrial Midlands, Birmingham to be precise, “with their Stax records under their arms” and their attitudes firmly in place. One could have been forgiven for assuming the brassy but weedy r ’n’ b of their debut album was merely the Anglo approximation of the boisterous barroom blooze of party bands like Southside Johnny or J. Geils, and all the worse for its arrogant, intellectualized self-mythologizing.

But Searching For The New Soul Rebels has as much to do with the Sex Pistols and the Specials as it did with Sam & Dave. The record opens up with the sound of a rasio tuning into “God Save The Queen” before launching into the vituperative “Burn It Down.” Live, Rowland took to stopping concerts in the middle of a song and glaring down any hecklers who dared break the silence. This was the last of the angry young men, an ego-tripping megalomaniac who viciously put down pseuds with withering contempt.

The beauty of British rock stars is their understanding that rebellion is merely style and style is all. So, with Too-Rye-Ay, Kevin Rowland exchanges philosophies by opting for anti-style (in other words, he’s changed his. clothes.) And a new sound. Goodbye New Soul Vision. Hello New Folk Vision. A vision complete with overall dungarees, hennaed, au natural hair, stubbly, three-day-old growth and an inspired syntheses of Northern Soul and Celtic Folk, just like Van Morrison.

All this would seem to make Dexy’s no more interesting than, say, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, except Rowland has hit upon a faily novel hybrid betaking the punchy horn charts of Memphis and fusing them whole onto the trad Irish fiddling of Belfast. He’s also managed to turn his anger into sorrow, with a plaintive spirituality that blatantly sails into the (Van) Morrisdn mystic. Sorta like the Chieftains meeting Booker T. and the MG’s.

“The Celtic Soul Brothers” introduces this, musical marriage which is fully spelled out (and marred)1 by the too-literal cover of “Jackie Wilson Said.” But the soothing “All In All (This One Last Wild Waltz)” evokes the sepia-toned authenticity of David Mansfield’s melancholy Heaven’s Gate'score while “Old” points up Rowland’s new-found maturity. “Come On Eileen” is, of course, the full-tilt new music radio hit, with a rousing chorus that proves Dexy’s are more than capable of cutting through Kevin’s selfconscious pretension with swinging abandon.

Too-Rye-Ay ain’t just yer ordinary Jack Mack & the Heart Attack boogie-’til-you-puke LF; Kevin Rowland is an intense young man with definite .ideas. He’s abandoned the self-righteous indignation of his first effort for an ascetic, self-critical, back-to-the-roots (and some would say masochistic) pragmatism. As the cocky horns melt into sorrowful strings, the once-proud seaman kneels before the ghost of Them and sings about “punishing my body until I believe in my soul.” Kevin Rowland’s secret all along was that not even he could live up to his own ideal. And it’s exactly that expression of a Catholic fall from grace which makes Dexy’s Midnight Runners true soul rebels after all. 1

Roy Trakin

MICHAEL JACKSON Thriller (Epic)

I’m hot surprised by all the critical praise so far lavished upon Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but please, Louise! Don’t get me wrong, I think Michael Jackson is the real deal, even though I ultimately prefer the Jacksons’ snappy mixture of camaj raderie and sibling rivalry to the 7 ultra-gloss, techno-marvelous designer music on Michael’s Off The Wall. (How long before Patti Austin says, “Nothing comes between me and njy Quincys”?) And Thriller certainly has its good points. At 24, Michael Jackson seems willing at last to step out\ from behind his Pe{er Pan persona. His vocals are tougher than before; coyness is kept to a minimum. Three of his four self-penned songs—“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Billie Jean,” and “Beat It”—are sincere, if lyrically awkward, taking on the darker side of his “charmed” life dancing all the while, Jackson faces up to scandal-mongers and general . busybodies, a paternity suit, and macho attitude, respectively. All three, are worth getting up to get down to; the first two are familiar, disco-funky, while “Beat It” has a rock-ier edge, with an insistent guitar solo courtesy of Eddie Van Halen. And Rod Tempton’s title cut amusingly translates Jackson’s anxiety into full-blown paranoia— it’s creature-feature time, with a delightfully inane rap by Vincent Price.

The only really bad cut on Thriller is Jackson’s “The Girl Is Mine,” his intolerably cute duet with Paul McCartney. (The guest roster on this record couldn’t be weirderwell, maybe if Shelley Winters sang backup.) Though it is worth noting that somewhere in this sludge is the rare suggeston of an interracial romance. As for the rest, “Baby Be Mine” and “The Lady In My Life” are1 unremarkable, obligatory love songs for Michael-the-teen-dream. Both were written by Temperton, resident writer and arranger on ,all Quincy Jones productions of late; he has written some fine songs, but these indicate that an extended vacation is called for. The quiet charm I of “Human Nature” evanesces quickly, particularly if one pays I attention to the lyric—“If this town/

I Is just an apple/Then let me take a | bite.” And the light-funk “P.Y.T., I (Pretty Young Thing)” has no chance at all with lyrics such as “Tenderoni you’ve got to be” and “Let me take you to the max.”

In other words, while Thriller may be an above-average, slick pop /soul album in today’s market, it isn’t impressive in the context of the Jackson(s) previous work. In some ways, its just dull. Even the dance numbers pale by comparison with Michael’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” and the brothers’ “Walk Right Now,” “Lovely One,” and best of all, “Shake Your Body (Down to the ^Ground)”—not to mention the zillions of Jackson '5 classics. And if Quincy Jones’s productions are as technically admirable as ever (Michael Jackson coproduced his own dance tunes), they’re beginning to seem programmatic and unrelenting. Why not pull the plug on your synthesizers, QJ, and get away with Temperton for awhile?

So how come all the raves? Well, for one thing, by now Quincy Jones inspires a Pavlovian response from critics. (Even I jumped to .write about Thriller, the fourth QJ-produced album I’ve covered this year.) But I think the bottom line is that Michael Jackson is becoming, inadvertently, the great token black soul artist (along with Prince) for white critics who are essentially willfully indifferent to black music. I’m not trying to say that Prince and Michael Jackson don’t make soul music, but Prince certainly has one foot anchored down, on the rock side of pop and Jackson always has been rooted in the crossover consciousness that virtually defined his original Motown home. And it’s certainly a sad state of affairs when, by over-praising Jackson and Prince, some people can claim to be aware of black music without really extending themselves in any appreciable way.

Jim Feldman

WES MONTGOMERY The Alternative Wes Montgomery (Milestone)

SONNY ROLLINS Reel Life (Milestone)

This art vs. commerce thing gets kind of complicated. On the one hand, it’s infuriating and frustrating to witness the way in which talented musicians, either through coersion or willingness or a little of each, stifle their talent and dilute their playing to make their music more acceptable in the marketplace. On the other hand, what wouldn’t you do for a million dollars? Or, if not that, just enough financial security to partake of that comfort that we Americans feel is our inalienable right? After all, suffering for one’s art is the sort of thing that only appeals' to certain kids who have nothing to lose (and no family to support), or professional idealists, for whom suffering is a reassurance that their integrity is intact...right? But, then...-

Maybe looking at individual cases could shed some light. For example, guitarist Wes Montgomery, who, for a brief while in the mid’60s) attained a popularity that few jazz musicians even bother to dream about (surely you remember “Wendy”). Montgomery’s commercial style, his innovative use of octaves, i.e., playing a line in two registers simultaneously, very plea1 sing to the ear. What it de-emphasized or eliminated vyere the( raRid fire single note lines, the rhythmic and harmonic complexities that he dealt out with the virtuoso ease of

an accomplished improvisor, and the democratic communing of fertile minds that is perhaps the most profound pleasure jazz offers— Montgomery’s commercial records were done with unresponsive orchestras. Reportedly, Montgomery was ashamed of his pop albums, but then they made him a lot of money, and it could be argued that when he died of a heart attack at the age of 43 (in ’68) it probably had more to do with his years of scuffling as a sincere but unrewarded jazz artist than with his few years of raking in the dough as an Easy Listening pop st^ir. But, still...

The Alternate album, besides offering kicks for the already converted, is (unintentionally) a good sampler of what is unacceptable in the marketplace. Here is the precommercial Montgomery with all the things I mentioned he had to give up in order to make his fortune. The album is comprised of alternate takes, recorded from ’60’63, all of excellent quality (though they somehow fell short pf Montgomery’s perfectionist standards culled from six different settings, including a live quintet situation tenor titan Johnny Griffin, a tres funky organ-guitar-drums set up, another quintet date with vibist Milt Jackson, and a climactic, prophetic rendition of Miles Davis’ “Tune Up” with strings (but these strings, rather than being sappy, actually swing and the whole cut, coming after 80some minutes of hard groovin’ jazz, has a lightly ironic tone). If one were to compare the aggressively expressive improvisational stretches on this album with the rather placid plucking on the commercial records and wasn’t hip to the oppressive adjustments , musicians sometimes have to make to survive the harsh socio/economic/cultural realities around here, one might conclude 1 that the poor guy had had a lobotomy.

Consider also tenor saxist Sonny Rollins, who appears to have handpicked and tailored his straightjacket mostly by himself. Unlike Montgomery, whose capitulation was aided by the presence of schlockmeister, producer/auteur Creed Taylor (boooooo...), Rollins is his own producer. And for reasons that are never made clear despite the many interviews he gives, Rollins has chosen, after a two-decade career as a shaper of modern jazz, to make slightly superior background music (hearing it piped into Detroit’s only hip inner-city Burger King near where I live was a trip). True, he’s too much the idiosyncratic original to totally blend into the pseudo-rock/semi-r ’n’ b/demi-jazz environment he puts himself in, but he sure as hell tries. Occasionally he’ll cut out with a no-bullshit improvisation (here it’s the original “McGhee” and Billy Strayhorn’s “My Little Brown Book”) and you feel that he’s still got it, that the great Sonny Rollins LP is still a .possibility. But it’s only because Rollins’ current records are so uninteresting that any little outburst of the old creativity seems like a gift...

Still, why begrudge a person for trying to make a living? If repressing your talent and creating innocuous music is the only way to do it, then why not? Why be true to your talents if it doesn’t build your dreamhouse? Why be an elitist when a little pandering could keep you and your loved ones off the welfare rolls? What’s the harm?

Richard C. Walls

CHIC

Tongue In Chic (Atlantic) SYLVESTER All INeed (Megatone)

(In ordker to take the following two extension courses, students must have successfully completed Disco 101, centered around this basic precept put forth by Chic in 1979: “Sometimes I think my brains are in my feet.”)

Disco 201: Contemporary Disco Dance ^ Music As Middle-Class^ Wrinkle Free experience.

' Students here will be required to have at least a working knowledge of the extensive catalogue of Chic (a.k.a. Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards), this includes omnipresent groove classes like “Good Times” and “Le Freak”, as well as both good and bad producer/writer projects involving Diana Ross, Sister Sledge, Deborah Harry, et al.

Chic’s 1983 release, Tongue in Chic, will be examined in all its excruciatingly subtle details. Students will learn to identify seminal disco arrangement trademarks initiated and/or propagated by Chic, such as the following: hand-claps, pop bass, percussive lead guitar lines running unison with vocals, heavy use ofv high hat, heavy .use of Strings, lyrical buzz words, and boogie mantras.

The LP’s”hottest” tracks (“Hangin’,''“City Lights”) will be analyzed from the perspective of the band’s (unavowed) chief purpose: to provide dance music for people too couth to sweat, who shower both before and after sex, and who think that black music is just white music waiting to calm down and get some good manners.

In addition, students will be asked to furnish papers using Tongue in Chic tracks as illustrations. Why, for instance, does Tongue In Chic perfectly embody the somnolence of those people who feel that eyen during moments of physical abandon, one must have panache and good posture?

Disco 202: Contemporary Disco Dance Music As Inducer Of Verifiable Primal States.

’ In this course, students Will study the diametric opposition to those musical and covert psychosocial priorities of Tongue in Chic. As students will quickly note, the “brains in the feet” is just about the only thing Rodgers and Edward have in common with Sylvester. Required listening will be All I Want, the 1983 LP release by this black/homosexual/ transvestite/singer/songwriter.

Students will be asked to attempt to explain how Sylvester and his producers (one cut features the late Patrick Cowley) managed to turn a mob of synthesizers into an activity more^ personal than' sucking someone’s lip. Layers of the latest spaceage sounds become a libidinous cauldron safe to dive in only for the extremely brave. The class will seek to explore how that effect, in part, is reached by the contrast of the synthesizers and Sylvester’s voice. Sylvesters’ vocal lineage (i.e. James Brown, Little Richard, Little Eva) will be discussed at length.

The final exam will consist of students trying to find anyone with a mobile pelvis who can hold still during “Do You Wanna Funk” and “Hard Up.” Those transformed most thoroughly into wanton creatures of unleashed lust (on a dance floor, of course) will get the highest grades.

Laura Fissinger