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BIG COUNTRY The Crossing (Mercury)

by Mitchell Cohen

Everything's an "anthem" these days* every song that asserts the simplest preference, celebrates any individual or social identity or activity (oh, "Flashdance...What A Feeling," or "The Safety Dance"). Maybe that's why the trend is toward no seats where rock is performed: we're expected to stand at attention from the throwing-out of the first electroblip. So it's at the risk of perpetuating this way of thinking that I report that the best songs of Big Country have a genuinely anthemic quality. Not that they go in for much rallying 'round the flag, boys—in fact, their political platform is "watch out below!" (Imminent Apocalypse 101) —but "Field Of Fire," "In A Big Country," "1000 Stars" arid "Harvest Home," to name but four, are walloping shouts, with guitars sending up warning flares, and drums rat-a-tat-tattirig to beat the band.

Big Country has big notions, and they keep all the corners of their canvas filled with arresting details:

musical themes that conjure up images of the American west (or, more accurately, the American western: Red River, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, et al.—sometimes The Crossing sounds as though the Ponderosa is on fire); arrangements that simulate, with guitars standing in for bagpipes, the wailing, mournful folk melodies of the Scottish highlarids; Biblical imagery (lots of nature turn-

ing against civilization in the Creedence "Who'll Stop The Rain"/"Bad Moon Rising" vein); martial percussive precision.

While the group-composed songs of the band—singer/guitarist Stuart Adamson, formerly of the Skids, seems to be the prime mover here— are forever on the alert for incipient crises, for dashed hopes, for the smallest cinder that threatens to set everything ablaze, Big Country are emphatically not a part of the U.K. doom 'n' gloom brigade. For one thing, droning just isn't in them; for another, they eschew synthesizers; for another, despite lyrics such as "I know I can never return to the time of hope when I was born," their tales of Innocence Lost are put across with f a punch that counsels perseverence during adversity. "Stay alive" is the chant in the song that bears their name and gets things rolling on the album.

At any given moment on The Crossing, Big Country are asking for trouble, but most of the time they evade it skillfully. A turte gets bogged down, and the guitars come whirring in like chopper blades; a lyric gets muddled in it portentiousness, and suddenly the melody spins to life. They've set their expression as one of stern, moralistic resolve, in contrast to so much of the bubbleheaded gurgles coming out of Great Britain. But as stirring as it is to hear a band swashbuckling through the fog, it's a little too early to go pinning any medals of honor (well, maybe a red badge of courage) on Big Country.

Sometimes their sweeping vision leads to a smudgy blur; after a while, so many storm clouds are hanging so low, so many promises have become as dust (in one number, a girl marries a factory guy to escape her oppresive father, only to be left alone holding the two kids; guess a river is a river is a river on either side of the Atlantic) that the band seems to be making its crossing burdened by the weight of its history. Still, if Big Country is too smart not to be worried, the band is also too charged up to be completely dragged down, and when the smoke clears, The Crossing frequently achieves the epic drama it's after.

X More Fun In The New World (Elektra)

First, you probably wanna know if this madcap quartet of L.A. postpunkers has sold out. Well, no. Not that there's any kind of consensus opinion about what "selling out" might mean anymore—we're all too pragmatic now to take such dreamy slop seriously. Still, with blatantly commercial efforts (i.e., full of "modern" configurations, airplay division) so recently coming from such heretofore champs of integrity and personal vision as the B-52's (identity crisis), Elvis Costello (not a masterpiece!), and Joan Armatrading (should know better), dark thoughts cross the mind. Especially after seeing this group, just before the new album was released, on that bastion of dippy popitude, American Bandstand.

Superficially, they hadn't changed at all—bassist/singer John Doe still exuded the same easy charm, singer Exene seemed distracted and wandered around the set during the customary embarrassing Dick Clark interview, guitarist Billy Zoom maintained his often inappropriate smile, and drummer D.J. Bonebrake was,

uh, there too—ibut the music, two cuts from this new album (literally, since it was lip-synched) was radically different than anything the group had so far committed to vinyl. The cuts were "New World," an anthemic political lament on behalf of all those misguided working class types who voted against their interests in the last election ("the tears have been falling all over this country's face.. .this was supposed to be the new world") and a sort of roots/homage funk number (yep) called "True Love Pt. II." That the lyric material on these two songs was different from X's previous concerns was actually welcome news— after three albums of thoughtful thrash about love and misery among the underclass (boho subdivision) it looked to be about time for a little expansion of vision. But the music, tho intriguingly full and melodic, was ominously slick, the vocals had their idiosyncratic edges beveled, and the group sound competent (which is a compliment). If the whole album was like that...

...but it isn't (integrity buffs can relax). Altho X is making a conscious attempt to broaden their subject matter (Doe sez the album is "a nationwide Los Angeles — our first record dealt with the city, and this one deals with the country") and are willing* maybe even anxious, having made and reiterated their no-frills stripped down statement, to embellish their music to the point of uninhibitedly borrowing from other genres— despite that, six of the 13 songs here (including a version of Jerry Lee Lewis's "Breathless," featured in the ill-conceived movie remake) are in the old crash and bum mode (which is beginning to sound more and more like heavy metal—that's what happens when punk meets production values) and all of them feature Doe and Exene's deadpan poetry and rough-hewn vocals, uncompromised and just as hit and miss as ever.

But it's also an album full of surprises. Apart from the two songsdebuted on Bandstand and the h-metal touches (honest, the opening of "Hot House" sounds like Bachman-Tiirner Overdrive) there's the rather self-conscious comment on their gloom and doom tendencies called "We're Having Much More Fun!" (I don't believe 'em), and exquisite melody and solo singing by Doe on "Poor Girl," and, best of all, the album's centerpiece "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts," which manages to touch on Central America and other implied U.S. indiscretions (things that are currently being forgotten as the politicians, left and right, righteously use the recent Russian massacre as an incident to assure the American public of how "civilized" we are—yeah, sure) as well as the phony "new Music" boom on the radio ("you know, the British invasion.") Musically, the song ascends and descends from a lyrical gentleness to its appropriately frenetic climaxes—which may be too programmatic for dyed-in-the-wool X fans but who cares? It's a complicated song (and a great one) but immediately effective on an emotional level, much like the group. X is a band astride their past and their potential, willing to grow out of their little scene (hanging on to the best of it), willing to offend old fans, more than merely desperate. Get used to it.

CHEAP TRICK Next Position Please __ (Epic)_

(During this paragraph we won't mention that Cheap Trick's new album has no zip.) Cheap Trick's production-go-round continues. Latest on the dials is Todd Rundgren, well-known something-oranother. You realize the only production talent Cheap Trick hasn't tapped consists of my younger son, a couple of dipso lobstermen from Maine, and you. They'll get around to you, though, if you just sit still. One good way to practice sitting still is to listen to this album a few times.

(Here we'll say nothing of their lackluster songwriting, which—for the most part—would have to improve to get banal.) Despite the presence of Mr. R., Next Position has no zip. I take that back. It does have its moment: namely, "Dancing The Night Away," which is thunderous modern rhythm at its best. But, wait a minute—Rundgren didn't produce that one (Ian Taylor and C.T. take credits.) With any luck, Epic will release "Dancing" as a 45 and the rest of the album can be reprocessed by America into limitless 12" dance-versions of "If I Can Make It To The Border."

(At this point, we'll respectfully refrain from making fun of Robin Zander's singing.) How in the world Cheap Trick write their songs is junk food for considerable thought. You could call this batch of tunes lackluster, but that would be another paragraph. I can't even guess what they borrow for motivation at this stage in their career. Are they still supposed to be clever? Eclectic? Dry to touch in half and hour? They sure can't be in it for the money with this sort of material. Hey, it took me 10 minutes to remember these tunes are forgettable. I'd even suggest they hang it up if I could accurately determine that there's an it in sight.

(We shan't sum up Cheap Trick in a few sentences here.) As Position drags from song to song until you want to use it as a weight to drown schools of unwanted guppies, Robin Zander's vocals become increasingly culpable. His voice does as much for rock as Silly Putty does for Dick Tracy's jaw when you stretch it way out. He ain't there, which puts him in a class with the back-ups, Cheap Trick's outstanding foray into weightlessness. The Beatles, they're not.

(Buy at your own risk.) Position's got everything from a crummy ballad ("Y.O.Y.O.Y.") to an early-Who rip ("I Can't Take It"... good songnaming there) to a tepid ZZ Top takeoff ("Younger Girls") to a Todd Rundgren original that proves there's two things he can't do particularly well ("Heaven's Falling"). The band that tries to be everything will invariably wind up being nothing. Next album, please. J. Kordosh

THE BONGOS Numbers With Wings (RCA)

New! From The Bongos! A Specially Priced Mini LP! Or Is It A Maxi EP? Who cares? Five entertaining tunes is more than you're likely to find on most boxed sets, so no more jibes at post-modern marketing strategies or conglomerate bethedging from me today. In fact, there's really nothing on Numbers With Wings, the mid-sized, midpriced major label Bongos debut* that's overtly disagreeable. No mustto-avoid tracks. Nothing, really nothing, to turn off. Which, come to think of it, makes this no fat format ideal for most people making records today. (Heavy metal, diametrically opposed on the quantity/quality question, is the important exception. When Iron Maiden makes a mini, you'll know they've gone limp.) Size queens and couch potatoes can just get a changer and put on a stack-otracks like Marvin Gaye and Bob Christgau. But I digress.

The Bongos—since you're probably wondering—are a four piece (originally three) sweetly retrograde pop band based in Hoboken, New Jersey, a mere light year or two from neighboring Manhattan. Founded in 1979 by singer, guitarist and principal writer Richard Barone, bassist Rob Norris and drummer Frank Giannini, their early indie releases, including a remake of T. Rex's "Mambo Sun," (I'm glad other people remember Marc, too. Electric Warrior is my favorite lost '70s album.) were collected on the 15-track (maxi?) LP Drums Along The Hudson two years ago just as guitarist Jim Mastro was joining the band. Since then Barone and Mastro have split an album, the original but largely overlooked Nuts And Bolts, which bore the memorable retail sticker "Half of the Bongos." Like Drums, it did not leap out of the racks and out of dashboards en route to the beach. Which is rough on interesting, industrious guys who make songs that are, first and foremost, meant to be liked. Enjoyed. Sung along with, even. You remember...pop.

So a five-track package promoted and distributed by RCA, with Richard "Go-Go" Gottehreris name on the back as producer, should be destined for. broader recognition and airplay, maybe K-Marts and EmptyV. Which would be fine with me and well-deserved, too, though I'd be happy just to hear a couple of these airy, seductive songs on AM for old times' sake. And though each cut is recognizably distinctive, all five are suffused with a quiet, layered mystery that makes me comfortable and intrigued at the same time. The sound's not drastically different from their earlier work but it is more focused, more perfectly realized, the details nicely lit. Gottehrer may be hot }n the '80s, but he was working in the '60s, so he knew what they wanted. And they knew what they wanted, too, so he couldn't foist any tired tricks on them. A good match.

The title track, a "Pipeline" update with words, is a carefully modulated piece of pop studio craft with a modest modal guitar solo and a very well recorded vocal. Both Barone and Mastro sound like innocent charmers and while neither sings as wonderfully as Colin Blunstone, they're much less naive and much better produced, so the gap isn't as noticeable as it might be. And they all sing harmonies. "Tiger Nights" builds from acoustic layers to a precise Searchers/Byrds bridge of chords and "Barbarella" thumps through more leafy memories from the salad days of pop. The last two songs, "Skydiving," with genuine bongo drums and a chorus you'll be singing before the song is over, and the dreamlike "Sweet Blue Cage" are richly atmospheric and so well constructed that I've stopped looking for seams. If you're lucky, you'll be hearing them too before long. Gotta go—the Strawberry Alarm Clock is ringing. Jeff Nesin

POST-HALO COWPUNCH, SACRED STYLE

JACKSON BROWNE Lawyers In Love (Asylum)

by Laura Fissinger

God help the corduroy and flannel set when they see how much Jackson Browne is digging the sweaty embrace of his blue leather jacket. They trusted him, dammit, and here he is wearing a dead cow dyed a loud color, singing about people who wear business suits. For six albums Browne was the prototype for the Sensitive Man, the father confessor to the midnight insight. How dare he put party bulbs in the lighthouse? How dare he write lyrics with words like "jive"? Geez, is nothing sacred?

Well sure, but Jackson Browne never was. And there's a whole new faction of fans who much prefer the post-halo albums (Running On Empty, Hold Out), in spirit if not execution. They found it suspicious (not to mention dull) that Browne seemed to be sincere, meaningful, deep and caring, virtually all the time. Screw scared—is nothing fun? Despite the magnificent lyrics and scattered unarguable classics, non-corduroys couldn't get past the apparent imbalance in Browne's musical personality. After all, jive turkeys have late-night revelations, too. And in fewer words, to boot.

Lawyers In Love is not just a change in costume. Most of the music here is real-live rock, albeit featherweight. What a relief— Running On Empty and Hold Out had too much of what amounted to

fortissimo folk-rock with doubledipper drum tracks. Could someone as self-conscious as Browne (in the good and bad senses of that phrase) find the nerve to just fuckin' let go (in any sense of that phrase)? On Lawyers In Love, he still doesn't quite admit that getting loose is not really getting loose if you're doing it in front of a full-length mirror. But at least he's not checking his trouser crease every two seconds anymore. He has so much fun (in a corduroy kind of way) that you can almost forgive him for ever having named a song "Disco Apocalypse."

And who would have expected a guy who'd almost always worked the same generic melody lines to really try out some new chord progressions? "Tender In The Night" is the only one that sounds too familiar on first listen; the rest, for Browne, are real structural departures. Some of the melodies are even forced to try to convey the message that excess verbiage used to take care of. "Knock On Any Door" has so few words to hang on that we have to depend on the music to tell part of the story. Browne keeps the chords moving into minors, as if throwing us the song's sadness in mute fistfulls. Less repetition in the melody, a few more words to make the central feeling hit harder, and "Knock On Any Door" would have been a classic.

Some tracks really do manage to wiggle out of Browne's overprotec -tive grasp in places—"Cut It Away," "On The Day," "For A Rocker" and "Say It Isn't True" have the gristle of real rock. Interesting that "Say It Isn't True" is almost slow enough to be a ballad but outrocks everything else on the disc. After it weeps and bleeds all over the roadside, Browne doesn't go back and try to clean up the mess. The boy's figuring out that sock hop tempos (i.e. the so-so "Downtown") do not a hot song make.

Lyrically, Browne is closer than ever to that writer's heaven where more is always said with less. If anything, all this nascent musical restiveness makes the words sound more meaningful, besides forcing him to make his point and shut up

lest the backbeat run him over. It's also worth noticing how the penultimate de-briefer from '60s to '70s mind-sets seems to be explaining our thorniest transitions to us once again. The album says to the corduroys: you've got it wrong, because you can't fix the world with an unfixed fixer. The suits and leathers have it wrong, too: you can't just fix yourself and forget about the world. We're left with "questions I don't have answers for" and some pretty good lightfooted rock 'n' roll. Jackson Browne has never seemed more sincere in his life.

UB40

1980-83

CA&Mji

UB40, a multiracial reggae group whose name derives from the code on British unemployment cards, emerged from Birmingham in 1980, right around the time the two-tone craze peaked and began dissipating. This is their first American release; it includes both sides of their first single (which also appeared on their debut LP), three songs each from their second and third British albums (including three also released as singles), and both sides of an early 1983 single.

The word on the group is that it's lightweight, that it began with such upfront commercial aspirations it could never approach the credibility of more purist groups like the Specials and Madness. I beg to differ, and not just because it's hard to imagine anything more lightweight than the likes of Madness. With the exception of the English Beat, which quickly transcended the form entirely, UB40 came up with the most personal and original sound of the bunch. Furthermore, they've been so consistent, and so single-minded, about what they're doing that these 10 sides sound like they could have been crafted over three days as easily as over the last three years.

The heart of UB40, unusually enough, is in the brilliant horn section of trombonist Norman Hassan (who adds various percussion effects), saxophonist Brian Travers, and trumpet player Astro (who offers apt toasting to here and there). All of them can take a solo that's jazzy but still true to the rhythmic base .of the music, while their ensemble work is impossibly rich and sonorous; on intro after intro, or break after break, they play unforgettably buoyant lines that glide away with the song.

Guitarist Ali and Robin Campbell present contrasting styles, the one providing meaty rhythmic underpinning while the other plays biting fills. The rhythm section of bassist Earl Falconer and drummer James Brown rocks steady even when it shoots back and forth between Jamaican and Brit beats on "I've Got Mine." Michael Virtue provides dramatic colorings on keyboards, often playing directly off the horns to keyboards to guitars, with dub effects used sparingly enough to shake things up when they do appear.

Vocals come from the two Campbells. Ali's leads are full of pain and perseverance, while the harmonies are yet another crucial link to British pop. Modestly, but appropriately for a predominantly white band, UB40's lyrics don't espouse militancy so much as they pledge affirmation and solidarity in songs like "I Won't Close My Eyes" and "Silent Witness." Admonishments like "Present Arms" and "Don't Do The Crime" are unyielding but compassionate. They allude to Jamaican religious thought, but they're the only reggae band I know of with a Christmas song, too. UB40 writes tunes like these not only because they can't rock the boat if they want to get hits, but also because they're not foolish enough to try passing themselves off as anything more than a simple and sincere blue-eyed reggae band. Besides, any group infectious enough to get me singing along on ungainly lines like "statistical reminder of a world that doesn't care" (from "One In Ten") has nothing to apologize for.

John Morthland

SETZER, SETZER, LEND ME YOUR COMB

STRAY CATS Raiit N' Rave With The Stray Cats (EMI America)

by Richard Riegel

Rant N' Rave With The Stray Cats has got the patented oilspill 1950s sound jammed up its quickchange rear end tighter than Lincoln Zephyr gears. The production, by rekhowned poodleskift-activist Dave Edmunds, is just excellent. Even on my territory-of-the-art stereo, this record jumps and throbs like mad, with an exuberant, brash but smooth-as-aWurlitzer juke sound. It's a lot more fun to listen to than most of the other LPs clogging up Top 40 this week, but the nonstop fun is also where Rant N' Rave's problems start—it's so lively that you don't notice at first that the Stray Cats have advanced maybe an inch, at best, from the rockabilly revivalism that got them launched in England in 1980. So, even though the analogy has been drawn (by Mr. Bill Wyman, no less) that perhaps the Stray Cats could do for rockabilly what the fledging Rolling Stones did for rhythm 'n' blues, it seems, at this point, kinda unlikely that these guys can extract some brand new rock 'n' roll from their rockabilly homages the way the Stones sprang their eternal badboyrock style from the row of R&B.

Anybody with such a perfectly sculpted quiff has gotta be applying some Brylcreem to his lyrics, too, and sure enough Brian Setzer's got little dabs all over his '50s genre pieces. Lyrics so utterly, so authentically 1956 that they leave grease spots on everything. As in "Hotrod Gang," which celebrates a "'49 Merc, ridin' an inch off the ground," real hot stuff in '56 of course, but anyone fortunate enough to actually possess a '49 Mercury by now rations out its museum quality raciness only in Careful Sunday afternoon drives. The real hot-slicks-scorch-the-boulevard teen-projectile action these days takes place in the big-rumped-'67-'69 Camaros, uncharted (but richly American) lyrical turf the Stray Cats really oughta explore if they want to grow up and be a real original band.

In "Rebels Rule," Setzer takes an awkward stab at modernity, when he climaxes his rant against a classically Mr. Weatherbee-like educator with "You can take that school and shove it up your ass!" Obviously, that last word sticks out like a sore posterior, as the real '50s guys the Stray Cats emulate so slavishly in every other second of this album wouldn't have been allowed to sing "ass" right out loud—on their records they would have alluded to it 10 dozen ways, but the word itself would have remained implicit. Which may just have been a large part of what '50s rock was really about; Chuck Berry left out more than these '50 idolators will probably ever know.

Elsewhere on the album, the Stray Cats push their pegged-pants language to its limitations, in ambitious cuts like Setzer's "18 Miles To Memphis" (the rather unclimatic account of his pilgrimage to The King's shrine), and the group-penned "How Long You Wanna Live Anyway," which is a bit too heavy on the you're-square-and-we're-not party

line they push in their Videos, but sounds wailin' good anyhow.

Still can't see how these guys are ever gonna outgrow their terminal '50 fixations, though. Seems like all the original rockabilly boes drifted into various shades of country music rather than enlarging upon the r 'n' r they virtually created, so the Stray Cats could very well pop up in Nashville someday.

In the meantime, guys, aren't those wall-to-wall tattoos starting to itch even a little bit?

AC/ DC

Flick Off The Switch

(Atlantic)

Loose wires/Cause fires/ Getting tangled in my desire so /Screw 'em all in/Plug 'em in/Then throw the switch and start all over again. —Young, Young, Johnson,

"Let's Get It Up"

William Shakespeare would have appreciated the subtle irony and perceptive insight contained in those lines, just as he would have applauded Young and Johnson's use of foreshadowing to effectively link 1981's For Those About To Rock We Salute You (from which the above quotation stems) with this, AC/DC's 10th anniversary album.

But Big Bill is dead now, and that's probably best for all concerned. Because, although he may indeed have enjoyed the lyrical content of, say, "Highway To Hell," or "Inject The Venom," it's doubtful he would have sat still for the dull, plodding sentiments expressed throughout Flick Of The Switch.

This isn't to say that Flick Of The Switch is a bad album per se; on the contrary, when compared to anything done by, say, Anvil for example (who solely exist, it would seem, to provide the world with a frame of reference for what truly bad heavy metal sounds like), Flick Of The Switch sounds as if it were indeed the work of inspired musicians. It's only when compared to previous AC/DC albums that Flick Of The Switch fails to click. And, next to We Salute You, Flick sounds incredibly inept.

For one thing, the past habit of beginning songs with a guitar riff in the right channel has been abolished in fave of a more pedestrian two channel start—which wouldn't be so bad if at least the endings had a bit of variety in them (as it is, believe it or not, all 10 tracks on the album end on the same note, played in the exact same manner).

For another, when there is a moment of genuine creativity on the alburn (i.e., the guitars on "This House Is On Fire"), it's offset by the blatant swipes which can be found elsewhere (the "In My Time Of Dying" riff on "Badlands"; the Ted Nugent xerox on "Landslide").

Although, admittedly, the lyrics do attempt, in a few places, to deal with topics above and beyond the call of sex (witness "Bedlam In Belgium," a "Smoke On The Water" for the 1980s), the results aren't nearly as clever as they have been in the past, even when the topics ate of a sexual nature. ("My body's full of juice" would've been a great line had it been sung by Alice Cooper while he was being electrocuted, but deprived of such a context, as it is in "Rising Power," it becomes an empty slice of macho bravado that staggers more than it swaggers.)

After three or four listenings, only a couple of tunes stand out as being strong enough to go the distance: "This House Is On Fire," the Iggyinspired "Brain Shake," "Guns For Hire" (the only track on the album to sound like vintage AC/DC), and the title track itself.

Perhaps the most telling commentary on Flick Of The Switch is that Krokus's Headhunter blows it away on all counts.

Or as the Bard would have said: nice play, guys.

Jeffrey Morgan

JONATHAN RICHMAN & THE MODERN LOVERS Jonathan Sings!

(Sire)

Jonathan Riehman is back and signed to a major label but his musical vision has neither dimmed with time nor changed in any major way. He's still writing songs to early rock 'n' roll progressions and his current Modern Lovers are still playing them with understated enthusiasm. Simplicity and candidness remain central to his songwriting and if you think that rheans he's just another wimp, you don't know Jonathan Riehman.

No, the guy s grown a lot since he was a precocious tyke, tagging along after Lou Reed in the latter days of the Velvet Underground, but he has determined the direction of that growth. After seeing the consequences of lowlife existence' firsthand, he turned his back on the heart of darkness long before Lou did and though it seemed for a while that he was just reverting to his childhood, he came out the other side with a world view that combined innocence and experience in a way that is uniquely his.

What that means today is that he's still writing songs from a very personal standpoint. Some of 'em, like "Give Paris One More Chance" and "Those Conga Drums," may be a little too personal to mean much to many other people but some of 'em make connections nobody else is making.

The tunes that start off each side, for example, could best be described as post-Beach Boys, because although they're obviously derivative, they're also wiser than most Brian Wilson classics. "That Summer Feeling" ("is gonna haunt you the rest of

your life") could even be presenting the central dilemma of the Beach Boys of the last (next?) 10 years, while "Stop This Car" could be heard as a realistic followup to "Fun Fun Fun." Here, Jonathan demands to be let out after his obviously wasted driver has "taken three red lights, four wrong turns/She's got the leatherette seat full of cigarette bums." Is he being cool? No. Smart? Yes.

And so it goes throughout the album. Richman writes marvellously affecting songs, in topics that range from the scary wonder that happens when you find the right lover ("Somebody To Hold Me") to the great feeling one gets from just putting one foot in front of the other ("When I'm Walking") —there's even a song written from the viewpoint of a toddler confronting enforced nappy time ("Not Yet Three"). That he can do so means that he's obstinately kept himself open to experiences and viewpoints that most of us are too blinkered to even consider. Sure, he occasionally sounds like nothing more than a dorky-but-well-meaning camp counselor, but as long as he can keep coming up with songs like these, he'll be worth having around.

Michael Davis

RICK JAMES Cold Blooded (Gordy)

This business of celebrity vinyl duet guest-appearances is getting out of hand. It's grasping (if your fans don't buy it, someone's will); it's ghoulish (you're as critically important as the company you keep); it's capricious. Who's out there concocting these suites for guitar-and-star? And if God had meant Rick James to croon sweet nothings at Smokey Robinson, why did He create Teena Marie?

Yes, it's true. Mr. Been-Around links hands with Mr. Shop-Around to promote something called "Ebony Eyes," and when these two get to shmoozing over the sheer quantity of brown-skin babies on God's green earth, small discretions count. So let it be known that Smokey's politer: "May I just say I love you" versus "Girl you're such a score." What saves the ballad is its classic schlock value—growly whispers and quivery falsettos. This is corny. But pretty. And touching. Which is certainly not the word to describe the cameo by Billy Dee Williams, the only man 11 know who's perceptibly oilier than' Rick the Slick. Billy Dee duly proves he has the musical soul of Mazola, delivering his spoken monologues for "Tell Me" in high dudgeon and emitting rude gasps at the terminal end of ardor.

When all these bloods huddle on one piece of plastic, Rick has a problem (it's his plastic). A problem which, if I may take a wild guess, isn't really either grasping or ghoulish. It's just jealousy. For instance, we may never know who's playing the raggedy-uppity riffs that decorate these grooves because RJ credits himself with writing, arranging, producing, and performing on every instrument except the ones you have to blow. (I think he wants us to notice that he's as gifted as Prince.) Stylewise, too, Rick's rivaling. So he not only does Mr. 1999, does Isleys, does Kurtis, even does Luther and the Jackson kid. And he does them right, with a lot of savvy and respect. But he's trying to prove the wrong thing. You see, Rick, we always knew you had talent—we just didn't know you had dignity.

Despite the presence of Serious Artists on his wax, Rick can't resist freaking it up: the guy who's never penned a lyric that wasn't already a catchphrase has no oratory to protect. Hence the bad puns ("Holy Smokes and gee Wiz") and bad logic of "1,2,3" (that's how easy kinky love can be, according to Rick and his bicoastal bassline, if "I love you and she loves me."). Hence the semantic melee of the title cut, in which Rick explains that no "dictionary book" has the right word for his frigid lady and then hits upon "hot." Hence "New York Town," wherein Rick isn't really celebrating big-city communion so much as grousing about cab service, and now sorely in need of not a dictionary, but an atlas: "People rushing uptown.*, .from Harlem to Manhattan."

Anyone this short on reason is bound to be lax on rhyme. And melody. And harmony. To be candid, songcraft is a goner here. But when it comes to production, James could put a damp groove to "Little Ducky Duddle." First he strips the song down to a heated synth-&drum hum, after which every sound that emerges from the basement really protrudes, then he uses those sounds editorially, playing them for their psychological as well as their musical values. The simpering of synthesizers is actually flirtatious. The guitar sounds so very manual it says "get plucked." Sustains are just plain audacious.

And audaciousness is, in Rick's Jamestown, the higher ground to ascend to. So Cold Blooded is a vain and shameless disc. So what? It's got a good beat, and you can flaunt to it.

Marjorie Spencer

BAD BRAINS Rock For Light (PVC)

Hardcore's latest entry, the B. Brains' Rock For Light, offers rastafari slam-ritual unraveled in a first-of-its-ethnicity celebration of the post-Pistols punk genre. The running hypothesis explaining so-called pervasive pathways of h-core USA correlated a knee-jerk, retaliatory rage of the bored to white middleclass/spoiled rich brats disaffected from mom and dad's square scene. Emphasis on the caucasoid polarity here reflects an enigmatic reality. That blacks have no axe to grind (and where better to grind?), that no unrepetant negroid rage has thus far connected with appropriate channels in the context of punk-gestalt stirs the cauldron of curiosity. Waist-deep in Reagan tyranny and affirmative reaction, 1983, you would think, provides fertile ground for new hate— new whatever.

Exemplary as (maybe) the leading underedge of a rising tide (?), Rock For Light waxes signif in the above sense of things beyond the requisite two-chord drones and pseudofeedback tantrums. Nugentoid/Black Flag six-stringing sounds remotely mean or hate-inspired; instead, a diffused smattering of revolution/ apocalypse/peace/love/Jah:

It's time for us to fight and die This time for us and you know why

With revolution in the air And people changing everywhere

Step forward now, no need to hide,

We can't lose with Jah on our side.

The really cool thing about this one ("Joshua's Song")'s the way the lead singer barfs the syllables in no discernable synch w/the song speed. It's like an arbitrary match of backing tracks, the words spewed out in furious hyena stomach-hold. This trick is revealed many times henceforth, virus-like in its fever-pitch affectations. "We Will Not," for example, choruses drums, gtrs and slobbering voice incantation:

"We will not do what they want or do what they say/Oh no/We will not do what they want or do what they say/Oh no..."

Then it's back to a "Stranglehold" loop at warp speed.

But there's nothing especially vitriolic spelled out anywhere—if intimated at all. Plus and minus the lyrics, the grinding thrash-outs of gtroverdrive are unfocused (= boring) and not terribly differentiated or attention-grabbing. The barrage of speed-rock, cumulatively speaking, winds up a muddled soup somewhere in the hyper-space of things. Not all that hyper either; in the atlas of recorded tempos, Rock For Light lags far behind, say, Rhino 39 or Bridgeport's amazing Lost Generation.

"Banned in D.C.," "Coptic Times" (good title) and the previously touted "We Will Not" are amongst a handful of superb crank-outs. But add to this a few extended reggae meanderings (very average) and the balance of not-too-superb two minute fillers and you finish with what otherwise might have been an excellent EP. Credit producer Ric "Shake It Up" Ocasek with lackluster parametrics of sound and disposition. Ocasek's weak production annuls what could have been the Tyranny And Mutation of black-punk/reggae's Hyde/Jekyll duality of demeanor.

Gregg Turner

AZTEC CAMERA High Land, Hard Rain (Sire)

NEVER A BACKWARD GLANCE: Imagine a perfect world, where some human somewhere has the wisdom, taste and fortuity to take Love's Forever Changes, the third Velvets album, Neil Young's first and "Expecting To Fly," and Jackson Browne's "Song For Adam," and combine them into something that, in this new and perfect world, would not sound utterly derivative, or the work of some half-assed rock critic whose reach vastly exceeded his or her ability. Not old, done up as new. Just new.

Well, the world ain't perfect. But High Land, Hard Rain comes close. Aztec Camera's first album, written,, arranged and performed mostly by Great Scot Hope Roddy Frame, sounds younger than yesterday and not necessarily stoned, just beautiful. Get the picture? In fact, Elvis Costello's new fave rave sounds not unlike a few "artists" who graciously filled that 1970-76 era always written off as being vacuous by people with short memories or even shorter yardsticks. Hey, Danny Kirwan put out records like this after leaving Fleetwood Mac. Tranquility managed two before Terry Shaddick went bye-bye; can we afford to ignore that this anonym would later co-write "Physical" for Olivia NJ? Roddy can't.

In the superbly ironic "Consolation Prize" from the superbly ironic You Can't Hide Your Love Forever album by the superbly ironic Orange Juice — Aztec Camera's former labelmates on Scotland's defunct Postcard label—one can hear OJ's similarly-influenced Edwyn Collins declaring "I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn's" shortly before announcing he'd never be "man enough" for the object of his affection. Granted this is conceptually superb—is it merely ironic that Aztec Camera's young Mr. Frame has taken this fashion note to heart and actually wears similar fringe? Upon hearing "Set The Killing Free," an A.C.B-side, and visualizing the fringe-favoring guitarist playing a stinging, blistering lead guitar attack, might one be forgiven for composing a mental image of a brash, former Buffalo Springfield guitarist performing, perhaps, "Mr. Soul"?

MAYBE A FACTUAL GLANCE: Aztec Camera's Roddy Frame has spoken highly, in interviews, of Neil Young, of Jackson Browne, of Bob Dylan. Hard Rain. Get it? From Dylan to.. .Byrds. Fringe.. .like Roger McGuinn's. Byrds...with David Crosby. A sense of deja vu. "Deja Vu".. .written by David Crosby. From the album of the same name by Crosby, Stills, Nash and...Young. Neil Young. More fringe. Bruce Botnick: "Forever Changes started out as a project Neil Young and I were going to produce." OK. Forever Changes orchestrated by David Angel. David Angel...he orchestrated part of Fever Tree, an album containing "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing." By Neil Young.

NEVER A FORWARD GLANCE: Aztec Camera do not sound like anybody but Aztec Camera, a very young band—Roddy Frame himself is just 19—with the sort of influences you can point out, admire, maybe notice a similarity here and there in chord structure with those same influences, but otherwise enjoy. Certain snatches, musical and verbal, jump out at you. Lyrics like "They call us lonely but we're really just alone." Like "I'd try to lead you but I'd crush your hand," or "You're free to push me and I'm free to fall." Good stuff, potentially great stuff, and there'll be more.

NEVER A GLANCE AT ALL: Anyway, it's probably the best album I've heard all year, and I can freeassociate with the best of 'em.

So can Roddy.

Dave DiMartino