OZZY OSBOURNE Speak off the Devil (Jet)

BLACK SABBATH Live Evil (Warner Brothers)

by

Joe Fernbacher

At first I thought, “Hmmm, Romilar slugs braying out an unerring barrage, of gloomytoons symphoniously heralding in 1984 with enough noise and annihilability to tweak the consciousness of the long dead...”, but that really didn’t sufficiently describe what goes on during the course of these eight sides of unabashed metalunacy. What? Will the metaphor fail at last? Has metal actually gone and exceeded the boundaries of the metaphor? Is this possible? Will Johnny really ever be good? Will...never mind.

Maybe. Because after closely listening to these “live” sides and drunkenly culling out all the juicy metaphors to use in a review I somehow find them all lacking in... wait a minute, I’ll show you what I mean:

Metalmaniacally speaking, both of these records fuse together nicely and form a huge cloud of noise that would satisfy, but not wholly satiate, because we all know that the true secret of metalunacy is that it can never be loud enough, long enough, or crazed enough. Just think of it, 8 sides of brain ravaging torpor, eight sides of sonic-shivs stabing directly into the heat of darkness, VIII sides that could easily soundtrack a severe head cold, ten minus two sides of the most unquestionably pure and contradictory metal available today.

Beginning with Ozzy (That Preemie of Paunchy Geekery) Osbourne and Speak of the Devil, the metalphrenia begins to rattle about —pleasingly, invitingly—through the pipage of my mind. Like, I like Black Sabbath with Ozzy and I like Ozzy without Black Sabbath and the jury’s still out on Black Sabbath without Ozzy, but each of these sets have just enough to make ’em both pleasuredomes of chaos; both are suitable for gnawing. Yet, without a single reservation, I have to say that Speak Of The Devil wins this battle of the bands teeth down.

After all, Ozzy is the Voice of the Void, the Landlord of Loud and the unimpeachable Master of Reality. His singing, antics and sense of the metal psyche have gone unchallenged since the first Sabbath album and are probably unchallengeable. His was the voice that took us through the Age of Syrup ’n’ Gloom, the decade of Downers ’n’ Gloom and the era of the Big Shbulder Shrug’n’ Gloom. And his industrial strength attitude virtually created the classic sheath of metal from which all others have sprung forth.

Speak Of The Devil gives us an older Ozzy, but an Ozzy that’s strok-. in’ the symptoms of the universe with more intensity than ever before. When he kicks into high gear on songs like “Paranoid” and “Symptoms Of The Universe,” he just can’t be denied. And when his good, fundamental power, trio mates egg him onwards, as on “Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath” and “War Pigs,” he truly excels. It should be noted here that guitarist Brad Davis is about as close to Tony Iommi, chop for chop, as any metal guitarist to come along in some time. (The fundamental difference between the two being that Davis is raw, and obviously enjoying what he’s doing, while Iommi is polished and used to what he’s doing.)

Naturally, the best song on Speak Of The Devii is “Iron Man,” perhaps the quintessential metal song, This is metalunacy at its quirky, contradictory best. And it needs Ozzy Osbourne to fuel it into attics of annihilation.

Which brings us, to Black Sabbath’s Live Evil. Black Sabbath without Ozzy Osbourne is like despair without alcohol; doom without joy; AC without DC; Sonny without Cher. Ronny Dio is a good front man, but he’s too “pro,” which is the main criticism for this whole record—it’s just too damn slick. Yet, somehow, It can’t help but like it, because it is Black Sabbath; and it is Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler and Vinnie Appice, as good a bunch-of metal mavehs as there are, and when they do their post-Ozzy material, they’re good. It’s just that when they get into that battle of the bands thing doing the same songs Ozzy does, it’s no contest.

Case in point, their edition of “Iron Man.” Now only the true metalunatic will understand this—when those opening guitar screeches and moans lead into the grim exclamation of “I am Iron Man,” an involuntary shudder goes up the spine, like someone walking on your grave or long fingernails running down a blackboard. In order for the song to work correctly, it must invoke these sensations. Ozzy’s does, Black Sabbath’s doesn’t. It’s as simple as that.

“Heaven and Hell” and “Sign of the Southern” didn’t really work on the studio album, and on Live Evil they come across like the Allman Brothers on belladonna, which for some people might be okay. Maybe even more than okay, actually.

Well, I could go on forever (you mean this ain’t forever?—Ed.) so for now; “ The extermination tourist lounges casually in a shattered doorway, adjusts his leathermask, snaps his fingers in a cold blood travel trance and fades ever so slowly into the shadows....”

See what I mean? Later.

RANDY NEWMAN Trouble In Paradise (Warner Bros.)

There’ve been some recurring rumors of late to the effect that rock critics are fools for a well turned phrase or a bit of peripeteia and positively wet their collective pants for a plangent vision or two. The old literary bias bugaboo rises again, “Sex Bomb” notwithstanding, and it’s worth a thought now that Trouble In Paradise, Randy Newman’s eighth LP (not counting soundtracks, a family tradition) of his own curiously observant songs, has garnered such incontinent praise in the national press.

Now, I have been heard to rave about Mr. Newman myself once upon a time. The first half dozen years of his decade and a half of making records was chock full of brilliant songs that depicted the touching, idiosyncratic gestures and tremors that we all recognize— “Have You Seen My Baby?,” “Lucinda,” “Sail Away,” “Marie,” “Guilty” to name only a few—and two LPs of unqualified genius: Twelve Songs and Good Old Boys. But somewhere in tfye smog of the mid-’70s he began to lose warmth like a leaky ship, turning inexplicably sodden and mean-spirited.

So if all you know of the bard of Beverly Hills is 1977’s novelty hit “Short People,” it’s not your problem—Newman’s output has been rather sparse. And the fact that a lot of otherwise innocent folks learned his name because of a venal fluke single that was tired the second time they heard it galls his more articulate supporters and seems like simple justice to me. So long as Newman prefers to stay at home beneath the lofty palms and take dead aim at a barrel full of rare and generally bent middle class fish.

ALMOST GROWN

U2

War

(Island)

by

Richard Riegel

Jerry Mathers’ days as TV’s beloved Beaver were numbered the second his voice began to crack and change, and U2’s new War may force similar loss-of-innocence crises upon the band’s anxious fans. The band’s first two albums, Boy and October, were heavy with the implicit Peter Pan hysteria of latelate adolescents who wanted vault right into responsible adulthood, without going through any awkward teenbop (read punk) stages.

The serious little men of U2 were precociously brilliant in their expression of the fear of sophistication, in the drawnout, cherished atmospherics of Boy and October. The Edge’s blocked and stutterprone guitar lines worked as insistently as Bono’s blurred-moan vocals to express the nervous moralist convictions of jate bloomers constantly on the verge of getting it on. Friendly reviewers compared U2 Tom Verlaine, and parallels to his I’m-gonna-come-but-I-don’t-wanna sonic approach couldn’t have been more apt.

But U2 also happen to live Ireland (Verlaine don’t), and the persistence of The Troubles there has forced the into 1980sstyle adulthood, with lifetime passes to all the weighty seriousness they aspired to in their mooncalf-banshee days. War is an implied concept album about life amid (against?) strife, a song set which doesn’t even call out The Troubles by names and facts, let alone take sides. Instead, it’s an album of love-search vignettes as U2-anxious as always, but made even more walled and lost by the constant threat of violence and disruption.

Bono’s words are more pronounced and plain-talking than before—“Only words will stop the fight/Two wrongs don’t-make a right/A new heart is what I need/ I can’t make it bleed!” he broods, in “Like A Song”—but The Edge’s buried-rush guitar rescues the plain lyrics from any hint of cliche, throughout the album. On many of the tracks, Larry Mullen’s clonky drums crowd right up on Bono’s vocals, from the martial beat of “As The Seconds Go By” (Europe will still lie naked to the nukes, even if Ireland somehow resolves its intramural bloodshed) to the near-techno pop Symmetry on “New Year’s Day.”

The beat goes on, necessarily, and the Christian redemption U2 Tiint at in “Drowning Man” is yet another word, at best, to stop the fighting. War vividly evokes the sexual desperation of people who come of age down in “the trenches dug within our hearts,” as U2 put it in “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” It also provides grim nostalgia for the Vietnam paranoia behind our own Summer of Love celebrations. War is hauntingly morose music, as non-trendy as U2 and their partisans have always dreamed of remaining (as long as possibleeven if the cancer of adulthood comes & stays.

Trouble In Paradise—the title means what it says—collects 12 more smug bullseyes to little point that I can discern. “Mikey’s” catalogs the xenophobia of encroaching middle age over an atonal synth din. (Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept.: “Mikey, whatever happened to the fucking Duke of Earl?” is the best last line of the year.) “Christmas In Capetown/’ with Salvation Army horns and an Abba quote, develops a sense of confusion hedged against chaos that may actually point toward tire heart of the matter in South Africa. “Miami”

dive bombs Dade County with some short-story characterizations (“...the women down here/are so impure...”) and a bizarre carnival backing track. There are a couple more that are mildly diverting— “I’m Different” could be another cutesy AM hit and “My Life Is Good” was born to run onto FM playlists.

But Rand, I’m tired...tired of comfortable cynicism and twists contrived to add validity to songs that otherwise might just be... songs. “The Blues,” a tuneful duet with genuine short person Paul Simon, is so pale and pointless as to be possibly sinister. “Same Girl” plays it cheap by slipping needle tracks into a dreamy piano ballad and “Song For The Dead” is so goddamned SMUG it makes me want to puke. But I really lost all

hope with “There’s A Party At My House” in which Newman spites his finest rock ’n’ roll move by turning Fats Domino into Fatty Arbuck!e in the last verse. Big fun. Deep meaning. Etc.

Perhaps it’s just my shortcoming, but another chapter of White Life In Sunny Climes Observed From Poolside, full of desperate, irksome, cleverly inarticulate characters doing things they, (and you)' don’t understand, makes little sense to me in 1983. In fact, it’s been nine long years since Newman’s worked up to his gifts. But don’t take my word for it—by all means listen for yourself. Just don’t talk to me about Significance when I’ve got my headphones on. I’ll be listening to “Wooly Bully.” You remember that one, Randy. Uno, dos...

Jeff Nesin

DEF LEPPARD Pyromania (Mercury)

It all comes down to how many ways there are to conjugate the regular verb “to rock” in a context that suggests endurance of a formidable span, and how many ways there are to simulate the throes of glandular agitation using one piercing tenor and some fretted instruments. The borders of hardrock are so well patrolled, and activities within the walls so circumscribed by tradition and audience expectation that it’s an outsized task just to make a fresh impression in soil that’s been trampled on over and over again (unless you’re going in for conspicuous excess in wardrobe, behavior or other such extramusical gimmickry). So if Def Leppard are the next arena-filling (their tour with Billy Squier is only way station to top billing and contract riders specifying what brand of taco chips go in the dressing room serving dishes), platinum-acquiring al dente-rocksters, chalk it up to a strict adherence to the values on which the highrise that is HM was constructed,

The whole hardrock thing’s become the musical counterpart of the detective show, anyway. Formula: frantic guitar solos and car-chases, shoot-outs and ostentatious displays of machismo. You start to look for little signs of spirit to compensate for the lack of content and innovation. By that yardstick, Pyromania is a perfectly decent episode of Starsky & Hutch, from its plot-setting opening frames (“Rock! Rock! Till You Drop”) to its weapon-wielding climax (“Billy’s Got A Gun?). When it’s over, you’re impressed with the slambang efficiency of if all, by the pacing. Forty-some minutes of zipping around tight comers.

That doesn’t sound like high praise, but Def Lep—the abbreviation is inevitable—and producer (and co-writer of all the songs) Robert John “Mutt” Lange (who handles these HM projects with juiced-up professionalism) have turned out a piece of work, that doesn’t get carried away by its own vein-popping exertion and become the self-parody that so much ’80s hardrock stoops to. Neither, it should be stressed, do they succumb to the sleek pomposity of any number of AORbominations you or I could name, despite the background high harmonies that tiptoe into the polluted waters of such practioners (oh, all right: Journey and Rush, to single out a couple of offenders).

Forgive the contradictions, but Def Lep strikes this listener as a good lite beer version of heavy metal. All the ingredients, enough of the alcohol content, doesn’t leave you too smashed, too bloated. (What a recommendation, right? Well...) Look, these guys dish out the bromides right from the get-go: “tear this place apart,” “anything goes,” “women to the left, women to the right,” “mama don’t mind what mama don’t see,” “we’re gonna rock tonite” (don’t hold your breath for “we’re gonna dry the dinner dishes and finish our geometry homework tonite!”), but darned if the melody (yeah, that’s right, melody, wanna make something of it?) doesn’t sound like a bit of Rick Springfield’s “Calling All Girls.” And here—at this very moment on the dreaded MTV (how’s that for ultracosmic confluence?)—they’ve got this “Photograph” video on |which they’re indulging in one of these usual Violence -Against - Females -WhoResemble-Marilyn-Monroe scenarios (chalk outline on the pavement, “Passion Killer” headline, women behind bars) that dot this channel. At least, ’tho, one could point out that the Leps don’t actually participate in these sinister goings-on. Steve “Steamin’ ” Clark just plays these flibbertygibbet solos and Joe Elliott yelps out thecomparitively docile plea, “I wanna touch you!”

On the (where else but) surface, Pyromania is more of the ol’ Shriek Above/Sludge Below HM, without overdoing the obnoxiousness and sexism. A genre piece without being a museum piece. I’d lose some of the more thudding lyrical pronouncements—one simply does not begin a song called “Rock Of Ages” with a line about it being better to bum out then fade away, or even call a song “Die Hard The Hunter” (sequel to “Die Hard The Battery”?), or toss in a phrase like “ghostly sound of silence”—but their youthful purism just about compensates for their bulging mannerisms. It almost goes without saying that the Leps know what they’re doing; they’ve sprinkled enough “Kashmir” on their breakfast cereal to grow into strapping examples of British metalhood. They cower not in the face of cliche. They gotta crow (yet with an unmistakable tremor of adolescent panic). They have a logo created for 50% poly-50% cotton.

Mitchell Cohen

JOHN CALE Music For A New Society (Ze/Passport)

My stereo has a slight leak. If you turn the power on and leave the radio and record player off you can hear, very faintly, one or two uninvited radio stations trying to come thru. When the radio’s on it goes away, but when you play a record the leakage continues, tho usually unnoticed—it’s a little irritating to hear a few bars of “1999’s” gamboling rhythm filling in the spaces of some artfully constructed piano solo, but more often it’s just an indistinguishable sound, a twittering, a barely heard and spectral voice living in the spaces of some of my slower, quieter records. I don’t much mind, I don’t play that many slow and quiet records anyway, and on this record, which is mostly slow and quiet, it doesn’t really matter. Because this record is haunted already. Musical slurs and sighs, knocks and stray plunks, ghoulish laughter and ghostly bagpipes adorn the lugubroious ballads here. Unfortunately, Cale’s cryptic lyrics seldom bring the horror show into focus and we’re left with the exVelvet Underground member muttering to himself, the occasional outburst of painful lucidity floating in a sea of freely obsessive associations..,

Obviously this isn’t the record that fans of ’81’s Honi Soit..., a relatively tight collection of relationships-as-armed-combat scenarios with no-nonsense (just a handful of felitious arrangemental -touches— once a viola player...) might have hoped fory For the house sounds, doleful pianos and organs, Cale’s large and morbid voice...“Sanities,” for example, is not sung but recited, enunciated with goonish intensity, yet the murky swaths of despair don’t hang together. The thing falls apart. Or “Rise, Sam, And Rimsky Korsakov” (RisS is Cale’s wife, who recites the song, Sam is Sam Shepard, famous playwright/ actor who wrote the words, and RK loans the classical music backdrop) which starts to make allusions but ends before it really begins, like a metaphor excerpted from an unfinished fable. A fragment.

It’s not all incoherent death rattles, tho. Anguished panache enlivens “Damn Life,” which also has an electric guitar and an actual drum beat, and “Changes Made” is plainly put and affecting. But that’s about it. If you really want to find out about John Cale’s music, try to get a copy of ’74’s Fear on Island or Honi Soit... on A&M, both of which are far more compelling introductions to his downhearted concerns than this not very interesting dismal, and willfully skimpy record. Richard C. Walls

BRYAN ADAMS Cuts Like A Knife (A&M)

If this were a CREEM feature story, the boldface headline would plead with you thusly: CAN YOU IGNORE THE PAIN IN THIS FACE? BRYAN ADKMS, 1983 CUTE POPSTER POSTER BOY: ONE MORE VICTIM IS ONE TOO MANY.

I probably wouldn’t want to be Bryan Adams, and you probably wouldn’t, either. Even though I would love to look that lethal in blue jeans, would love to have those Jean Shrimpton cheekbones, and would love to be 23 years old, cocksure and just releasing my third album. (Timid title: Cuts Like A Knife.)

If I were Bryan Adams, I think 1 would see Nick Gilder haunting my dreams. I would hear too many songs by the Paley Brothers and the Pop and a million other scrumptious boys with photogenic faces and fixations on jukebox pop. I would be sick to my stomach with the spectre of such high-profile anonymity. I might even write songs about women with ships or war or the guy that gives me my perfect haircut—“better to be weird than to be woodwork” is an old rock ’n’ roll credo, isn’t it?

If you and I were Bryan Adams, though, I don’t think we’d listen to this condescending shit for another minute. No sweat, you know? The guy may be young, and from Vancouver, to boot, but there is no identity crisis afoot here, at least not according to the new press, releases and the album lyric sheet.

“Heavy metal pop” he calls it, and the shakers and the movers in his life are ready for starland. Adams has been opening for bands like Foreigner, the Kinks and Loverboy. His songs have been covered by Ian Lloyd and metalists Prism.

Well, I don’t think Bryan or Cuts Like A Knife rate more than a five oh the Richter scale. Of course, who the hell am I to know? 1 pegged Cougar’s American Fool a DOA the first time I heard it;' 1 thought Benny Mardones was going to be a bigger arena draw than Billy Graham.

Actually, I just can’t imagine what it would be like to be Bryan Adams. I suppose it goes beyond cheekbones and bluejeans. How can someone have such a perfect sense of the possibilities between metal and pop and allow it to be wasted on songs that redefine the phrase “average”? Adams can play a snappy guitar; he comes up with the occasional killer hook (“The Only One”); he sings great; he has that the true faith, that indefatigable belief in the healing, power of pop music, powerchord telekinesis and all that. So why isn’t this a fun record? Hey, don’t ask me, I’m not Bryan Adams. And, judging from Cuts Like A Knife, perhaps neither is he.

Laura Fissinger.

ALBERT LEE Albert Lee (Polydor)

Albert Lee is: (A) someone for whom it’s all been downhill since Woodstock; (B) the brother of a woman nobody doesn’t like; (C) an unassuming guitar whiz who’s been all around the town, having served time with everyone from lullabyeand-goodnight warblers like Emmylou Harris to notorious laurel-resters like Eric Clapton. All those who didn’t pick (C)can hold it right here.

You know the situation: The session player or the sideman with the hot rocks rep accumulated from years of stints in other people’s bands decides to go out and grab some limelight all his own. What usually happens is that these I-memine grabs for the brass ring result in nothing but massive ego-tripping and excursions into equally massive mediocrity. Welcome, then, to Albert Lee, a warm and wonderful exception to the usual session-tosolo syndrome.

This time, Lee has done it up just right, assembling a crack back-up band free of sterility and. studio “professionalism” and using them consistently throughout—you won’t find any v credits here listing 14 drummers or two dozen superstar vocal assists. And he doesn’t attempt to shove a lot of third-rate originals written during mid-morning studio coffee breaks down our throats either; he’s put all his compositional oomph into a single selection (“Your Boys”) and emerges with an irresistible sureshot. Instead, tnost of the material consists of a well-rounded batch of genuinely ingratiating songs by underappreciated songwriters like John Hiatt, Hank DeVito, and Don Everly. Plus, in Rodney Crowell he’s found a producer who’s encouraged him to snap to it and put out rather than just laying back and watching it float by.

All these smart moves add up to what sounds like the best Dave Edmunds album of - the last six years. “Radio Girl” and “Pink Bedroom” ring out with the same sort of brisk verve that John Hiatt originally brought to them (here with the added benefit of Larry Londin’s dapper drumming). Lee’s own “Your Boys” is probably the finest uptempo outing to be found on the record, a jaunty stroll under blues skies that sports a wonderful little vocal lift at the end of every sunny chorus.

High points are reached on two cuts where the rocking eases up. “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)” is a beautiful rendition of that classic Everlys heartbreaker; the feelings of regret are immensely abetted by Albert’s only appearance on piano. But nothing beats,. “On The Boulevard,” which is blessed with a shimmering melody, dreamboat guitar riff, and a deep-in-astate-of-desire vocal that’s the essence of a midnight rendezvous.

I wish those last two had ended each side instead of tossed-off throwaways (albeit spirited ones) like “Rock ’n’ Roll Man” and “One Way Rider.” Always go for the big finish, Al. Keep that in mind next time. And don’t let that brass ring get tarnished.

Craig Zeller

THOMPSON TWINS Side Kicks (Arista)

Don’t know if you’ve noticed or not but all of a sudden, the floodgates are open and new British pop groups are being welcomed into the American musical mainstream at an amazing rate; haven’t seen anything like it since the ’60s. No longer is it a case of a token breakthrough after years of hard work like the Clash; now, brand new acts can get exposure and gain an audience as radio stations finally accepting the need for change, are trying to figure out how to format (i.e. control for maximum profits) this stuff. Many of the bands themselves call what they do “dance music” instead of “rock ’n’ roll,” substituting thumps for crashes and synths for guitars but that’s really just verbal camouflage, like growing trees with new names from the same roots of rhythm, or someth ing.

HOLY HOLY

BUDDY HOLLY For The First Time Anywhere _(MCA)

by

Billy Altman

It seems rather appropriate that For The First Time Anywhere, collection of vintage Buddy Holly recordings that have never appeared on vinyl before in un-stereoed, un-overdubbed fashion, should surface at this time. If nothing else, the success of the Stray Cats, whose greasy kid stuff has been oozing through the top ten recently, has shown that rockabilly certainly has a potentially sizeable audience. And this record clearly shows that, despite the fact that Holly is best remembered as the pop artist whose most long lasting music formed the influential basis of many early British Invasion bands (those Hollies weren’t named after Christmas plants, you know, and to four kids from Liverpool, a Beatle was the next best thing to a Cricket) he started out his solo career as a rocker in much the same way that almost every other white Southern kid did in the mid-’50s—namely, by trying his damnedest to be like the King, Elvis Presley.

The setting is early 1956: singer/

guitarist/songwriter Buddy Holly, fresh from some disappointing sessions for Decca Records up in Nashville (the Lubbock, Texas lad had wanted to rock out, but Decca had opted for “safer” bailad material, resulting in two bomb singles), books time at the Clovis, New Mexico studios of engineer Norman Petty. The idea is to make some demos of new songs written by Holly and his band—Sonny Curtis, guitar, Don Guess, bass, and Jerry Allison, drums—and let the Nashville folks hear him the way he thinks he should be heard.

The tracks laid down are all patterned pretty much after Sunstyled Elvis; in fact, Don Guess’s “Baby, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” sounds like a carbon copy of “Baby, Let’s Play House,” right down to some manic “go, baby, go” ’s by Holly during the intro. But in general, Holly’s sound is more adolescent, whiter and Fenderizedly cleaner than Elvis’ unholy racial mix. His guitar .break on “Rock-ABye Rock” shows a clear Texas blues and Chuck Berry R&B permutation, while Curtis tosses a little Carl Perkins into his clean pickin’ on “I’m Gonna Set My Foot Down.” (“You tell me this,” wails Holly, “you tell me that, how come your dog bites me and not that other cat.”)

History notes that Holly’s demo ploy didn’t immediately work; his two other ’56 Nashville sessions didn’t turn the trick. Soon he was returning to Clovis, with Petty taking over the producing reins, and in no time “Thatyll Be The Day,” with a guitar solo almost exactly like the one here on “RockA-Bye Rock,” was vaulting Holly into stardom. The songs on For The First Time Anywhere were then by and large laid aside, resurrected only in the early ’60s when the unending demand for anything and everything the late Holly had recorded brought Petty and his over dubbing deputies, the Fireballs, back into the studios for touch-up work. And now, in all their rawedged unpressured vitality, these tunes come back as a beacon, perhaps to the young rockers of tomorrow. Will the circle be unbroken? By and by friends, by and by.

The Thompson Twins are right in the middle of all this—they just may be the most 1983 group of the year. They nave 12” dance club hits like “In The Name Of Love,” “Lies,” and “Love On Your Side.” They now have synthesizers and no guitars, drum programmes but no drums, since their drummer and guitarists were booted out after the TTs decided to trim their ranks down the the threesome of Tom Bailey, Alannah Curtis and Joe Leeway (although they did swell back up to six again for touring purposes). So they may not have stability but they’ve got instant pansexual, pan-cultural credibility and a logo as well: a trio of blank faces topped by three different colors of hair, meaning, I suppose, that all sexes, creeds and colors can get along as long as they all have funny hair-dos. Let Fun Boy Three top that.

Musically, the Thompsons keep up with the pack pretty easily. While I prefer the unkempt clank ’n’ clutter of the pre-clean up band, the current group does more than play thump along with Kraftwerk—afterall, two of ’em are percussionists, plus vocalist Bailey avoids the throaty, self-obsessed simperings of so many ofthese clowns—you, know, the kind of singing that makes you wish the bartenders in those classy London clubs would reach for the ground glass more often.

And what does Bailey sing about? Well, if you’ll pardon word, “love.” Mainly the b.s. that surrounds “love” relationships and the consequences of deceptions, put across in a manner that is both emotional and sensible. But my favorite tunes are the ones drawn primarily from the band’s imagination; “Watching,” “Kamikaze” and “We Are Detective” display a Dolbyesque gift for creating high quality pop songs out of unusual situations that few groups would even bother with. That the Thompsons do shows (to me, anyway) that their creativity is still alive underneath their trendy trappings and I’ll wager they’ll be around, in one form or another, after many of today’s one-hit wonders are tossed out with the next change of fashion.

Michael Davis

HEAVEN 17 Heaven 17 (Arista)

Back in 1980, after producing two terminally grim LPs that delighted morbid brooders worldwide, Human League split up trumpeting the usual cliches, vis-a-vis artistic differences and the need to explore exciting new directions in music. The Phil Oakey faction kept the name, added a funky two-four backbeat and went on to sell more records than the Beatles, an exciting new direction at least for their accountants. Meanwhile, Ian Marsh and Martyn Ware recruited Glenn Gregory, a singer who sounds like somedne cloned from the aforementioned Mr. Oakey’s adenoids, added a funky two-four backbeat and recorded the matter at hand, now seeing light in the U.S. some two years after its recording.

It’s ai catchy hunk o’ wax, but those expecting it to fry their brains on first listen will be disappointed. Like their erstwhile companions from H. League, H. 17 purveys an ultra-detached brand of upper crust white funk that can sound downright blase, even when crooning about the fascist threat.

Musically, it’s typical British fast food soul—lots of keyboard twitterings, bass lines with enough punch to lobotomize a club full of dancers, plenty of high tech adaptations of early Motown rhythm section licks, obligatory “girl” backup vocals, and a lead singer whose insouciant irony tends to put you off.

Lyrically, it’s surprisingly weighty —Fascism, the battle between illusion and reality, racism, religious fanaticism, war, the pains and pleasures of love, stuff like that. One would expect a smidgen of emotion in the performances, but what you get is a neo-Spockian performance that’s long on logic and short on feeling. It may compute, but it’s overly cerebral; what’s meant to sound like concerned musings comes across like rhetoric and, despite the lofty ideals, embarrassingly naive rhetoric at that. Take the record’s most well known track “(We Don’t Need) This Fascist Groove Thang.” Here the singer urges well meaning populists to “Brothers, sisters, lend a hand (sic), increase our population,..”. In a country where everybody over the age of 12’s on the dole, that’s kind of muddle-headed thinking, doncha think? Yet, despite the group’s high-falutin’, semipolitical/hyperbole, they’re a dance band, and dance music’s created with the booty in mind, not vice versa. So it’s best to just put on the record, park your brains at the door, come on in and get down. After all, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. I give it an 85.

j. poet

PHIL COLLINS Hello, I Must Be Going!

(Atlantic)

Phil Collins has come a long way since'the days when nobody ever saw him playing because Peter Gabriel’s headresses blocked him out from the audience’s view. Collins not only replaced Gabriel as lead vocalist for Genesis, he managed to steer that band in an entirely new direction, away from the ponderous obscurantism of the Gabriel era and into a straightforward style which emphasized the band’s ability to make musical point rather than just show off.

Collins proved he wasn’t limited to Genesis on his first solo LP, Face Value. The record’s rhythmic audacity and fresh outlook marked him as a force to be reckoned with— he even managed to come up with a version of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” that actually stood on its own.

Unfortunately the currents that propelled Face Value seem to have ebbed to a halt on Collins’ new. record,. Hello, I Must Be Going! There are moments when the qualities shown on Face Value peek through, but overall the record sounds like an empty attempt to coin a commercial formula. Things start off well with “I Don’t Care Anymore,” driven by the hypnotic rhythmic style which has become Collins’ trademark. Collins overdubs all the percussion and synthesizer parts, using only guitarist Daryl Stuermer for added effect. 'But the second tune, a modified disco number called “I Cannot Believe It’s True,” you know something’s wrong. Sure enough, the rest of the album is more fill than Phil.

Collins’ penchant for r&b styles is one of the key elements in his rejuvenation of Genesis, but on his own it’s not always as successful. “It Don’t Matter To Me”'features a nice horn chart and a clever reference to the melodic line of “On Broadway,” but Phil is just never gonna be Solomon Burke. A Chicagoesque horn arrangement dominates the instrumental track, “The West Side.” The real grimaces, however, hit with “You Can’t Hurry Love,” a fairly faithful cover of the Supremes’ Motown classic which manages to miss all the drive and spirit of the original. This may have been a sound commercial ploy, but it swamps the record fatally.

John Swenson

THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS T>Bird Rhythm (Chrysalis)

Well, this is more like it! I had pretty much given up on the possibility of ever being thrilled by a Fabulous Thunderbirds album, but with the help of l’il Nickie Lowe, T-Bird Rhythm is guaranteed to send a shiver up your driveshaft. Their first three records, produced by manager Denny Bruce, had all the excitement of a ’68 Dodge Dart—I mean, if you were the hottest blues band in Austin, Tekas, wpuld you want Leo Kottke’s producer fiddling with the knobs, while you burned? 1 thought not. Well, these demented Longhorns have finally come to their senses and brought Nick the Knife in, for somemuch needed sonic punch, figuring, perhaps, that if one of their albums didn’t sound like it was recorded in some Alabama cottonfield, maybe it would actually get played on the radio and maybe more than the usual 178 Elmore James fanatics would actually go pick up a copy. Lowe has indeed done a spendid job, too—the guitars crackle, there’s a bit of cool echo on Kim Wilson’s wheezings, a smatter of organ now and then, and drums, drums, drums pushed right up front. The band’s rawness is still intact, but foronce the music leaps off the grooves and reels you in.

Yup, T-Bird Rhythm is one beautiful, revved up rhythm and blues machine, and if you don’t believe me, just take it for a trial spin around the turntable. Right off the line the Birds push the accelerator through the floor with the frantic “Can’t Tear It Up Enuff” and the full throttled “How Do You Spell Love” fm-o-n-e-y, indeed), the pace slows momentarily, with “You’re Humbuggin’ Me,” a bit of tight and funky Chicago blues featuring the standard nifty harp, and then buckle your seatbelts ’cause it’s a fast 0-to-60 on “My Babe,” as Fran Christina’s drumming and Jimmy Vaughn’s stinging guitar make the tune literally bum vinyl. The side slows to a victory lap close with Huey Meaux’s “Neighbor Tend To Your Business,” and the words of “The Monkey” (a poem Wilson found on the back of an antique postcard) chanted over some traffic stopping hoodoo raunch.

Side two lacks the intensity and consistency of the flip, and I, for one, could easily live without another cover of “Diddy Wah Diddy” (actually the only clinker amongst the remakes). But, overall, this is a major leap forward for the T-Birds, an album of superior American music, as the Blasters have so succinctly termed this blend of funky rock and rhythm and blues. And not enough can be said about Nick Lowe’s contribution to this project; his production has finally brought out the power and soul of this excellent band. So, head on down to your local record dealership and tell the man you want some, you got to have some. T-Bird Rhythm, that is.

Matty Goldberg