RECORDS

RECORDS

DEPARTMENTS

JETHRO, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

BoDEANS

Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams (Slash/Warner Bros.)

by Billy Altman

Considering what a shambles most so-called “roots” bands are making out of plain old rock ’n’ roll these days, it’s a distinct pleasure to discover an album with as much simple respect for, and exhilaration in, the basic elements of the form as is displayed on the debut effort of Waukesha, Wisconsin’s BoDeans. For once, thank heavens, we have a band that doesn’t find it necessary to act as if they’re missionaries out to “educate” America about the glory that was, and could/should be again —the BoDeans play their rockabilly, blues, and r ’n’ b originals with the pedestal smashed, the gloves off, and every man for himself. The only things on their minds are listed in the album title, and they aim to either find ’em or at least raise a good deal of hell in the search. “Come on pretty baby, come on out and see,” they sing on side one’s rave-up closer, “Angels.” “There’s a whole wide world waitin’ on you and me... We ain’t gotta worry tonight/ We ain’t gotta run, it’s alright/They don’t let no angels out at night." The BoDeans sound young and foolish and excited and un-mannered and a more than a little raw around the edges, and if that ain’t what rock ’n’ roll was—and still is—meant to be like, then I’m in the wrong racket.

In Sammy Lianas’s and Kurt “Beau” Newmann, the BoDeans are blessed with two excellent lead singers, with Lianas’ gritty voice perfectly suited for tunes like the outlaw ballad "She's A Runaway” (please, powers that be, make this a single, and fast), the lusting-after-in-my-mind— ancf-body “Ultimately Fine” ("Hi heels and lipstick, dresses so tight/She’s got you turnin’ left when you wanted-to go right,” sings Sammy, while the band shifts into sweaty overdrive behind him), and the wind-er-upand-let-er-rip “Strangest Kind” (inspirational verse: "There’s the love between my mama and papa/lt's the strangest kind that I've ever seen”), while Newmann’s lighter, more soulful touch nicely balances out the group’s sound on songs like the aforementioned “Angels” and the album's sleeper, “Say You Will,” a sensual swayer with just the perfect touch added by Mitchell Froom’s guest organ.

Add to this the distinctive harmonies Lianas and Newmann achieve together on “Fadeaway” or “Still the Night,” as well as the fine instrumental blend mixed by T-Bone Burnett (who’s had an important hand in more good things over the past few years than probably any other producer on the planet), and you can understand why I'm here giving a hearty thumbs-up to this record. Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams is an unassuming, unpretentious rock ’n' roll record— almost artless in its purity of essence. For once, an American band that’s true to its school.

GTR (Artista) EMERSON, LAKE & POWELL

(Polydor)

The ’80s are half over; is it time for the ’70s revival yet?

But seriously, folks...no, better backtrack, I can’t be totally serious about this. This is the return of progressive rock. We are talking supergroups filled with veteran musicians, people with classical training and obedient fingers, men able to juxtapose bombast and nuance within the same composition and live to tell their business managers. Not too many of 'em around these days—most of their peers have disappeared into soundtracks, the studios, or New Age Nirvana —so the music sounds fresher than it probably is. I don’t actually hate these LPs, even though each of ’em makes me cringe at the beginning.

Since gtrs are sexier than kbds, we’ll save 'em for last. Now ELPow—ya want Carl Palmer, ya got the wrong continent—don’t sound too bad for a studio band with no live experience a»a unit, but anyone with high expectations has gotta be an incurable romantic. You got one guy who’s done soundtracks all decade. You got another who, after releasing a pair of so-so solo records, played am-l-Asia-or-aml-Memorex-or-am-l-History until his credibility was on par with Howdy Doody’s. Rounding things out, you have a guy who’s here partly because of his last name’s initial.

That’s being kinda cruel to Cozy Powell, who fills the drum seat just fine. Since he throws out fewer rhythmic red herrings than his predecessor, he helps keep the bottom solid. Emerson also exhibits less gratuitous flash than before and when he trots out his trademarks, like the organ break on “The Miracle” and the synth solo on “Touch And Go,” he wisely keeps them short. He’s a much more effective orchestrator than soloist here and his bold, brassy timbres are a welcome change from the bell sounds so many synthesists prefer these days.

Of course, there are embarrassing moments. Like the nineminute opener, where ELPow cart out every cliche in their book, complete with an arena harangue lyric by Lake. And like the following “Learning To Fly,” which never gets off the ground in its search for the AOR formula.

Responses to the rest of the material will likely fall along lines of generation and taste. The dinosaur in the back of my skull grins at “The Miracle,” while more recently-indoctrinated brain cells react with horror, noting that even Ultravox at their most overwrought never approached this. “Love Blind” has some hit potential while the light, jazzy “Step Aside” could be covered by Sade, if she’s as good at keeping a straight face as she appears to be. An antiwar anthem is overshadowed by an effectively heavy-handed adaptation of “Mars, The Bringer Of War,” from Holst’s The Planets. Back at the dawn of the 70s, one Robert Fripp “borrowed” heavily from “Mars” for a composition of his “own” on King Crimson’s second LP; this time around, Emerson and crew give credit where credit is due. I guess that’s progress.

While ELPow is a reunion of sorts, GTR is a new collaboration for all concerned, most notably, Steves Howe and Hackett from Yes/Asia and Genesis respectively. The results are kinda like turning over a new leaf...and finding the flipside of the old leaf, but the gtrists do work well together. Both Howe and Hackett are texturally-aware team players and producer Geoffrey Downes helps ’em avoid the guitar synth cliches of the past couple of years.

The problems, for me, begin in the choruses of the first tune, where the voices congeal together in a sweet mess that Styx to the back of my throat, causing a knee-jerk porcelain bowl reaction. But hey, Howe was the guy who taught me to totally ignore rock lyrics in the first place—did you listen to Yes for Jon Anderson’s cosmic chipmunk chirpings?—so I can wade through side one for the breaks in “Jekyll And Hyde” and “Here I Wait” without too much hassle.

But it’s side two that’ll keep the dinosaurs happy, particularly near the end. “Imagining” is reminiscent of both Yes and Gentle Giant at their peaks, while “Hackett To Bits” recalls several of Steve's past instrumentals with the added bonus of Howe’s fleet fingers. It’s like...it’s like the guitar lines are playful squirrels, scampering up the Tree of Life, where the roots are the Works of the Masters, the trunk is the rhythm section and Max Bacon’s voice is lost amongst the branches, reaching out to the audience.

Can I leave now?

Michael Davis

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

Another View (Verve)

Into the hands of today’s waiting worshippers—and yet, the mystery remains. Together, these nine Velvets tracks manage to touch every base of the Legend: yes, they were out-oftune, bottom-line primitive, and fueled more by mistrust than mojo. Yes, the few lyrics audible here alternate between deadpan jaunty (“Hey Mister Rain, woncha follow me down”) and broad burlesque humor ("Ferryboat Bill woncha please come home/You know your wife has married a midget s son/That s the long and short of it du-den-doo-DOO!”). Yes, the modal drone of John Cale’s cranky viola can grow tiresome, just as the brain eventually starts to bounce under the simplistic onslaught of Mo Tucker’s relentless backbeat.

But however grudging one aims to be, clearly discernible within this handful of artifacts are the things which inspired artists as varied as Chris Burden, Jonathan Richman, Iggy Pop, Sam Shepard, Patti Smith and Deborah Harry. And, aside from Cale-mates like LaMonte Young, the only precursor one really detects is Dylan.

It’s a true Mies van de Rohe proposition: how did so much come from so much less? Taking in a ghostly, doodling and jangling instrumental like “Hey Mister Rain (Version I)” from anyone else’s juvenilia would almost certainly prove a barren, out-ofcontext experience. (And, with reference to those self-conscious pantywaists grinding out “similar” wimpified homage from shore to shore these days, the less said the kinder.)

Besides, “Hey Mister Rain (Version II)”—on Side 2—really does suggest above anything else the sort of “torture tapes” played in camera to captive juries in sensational serial murder trials. Nothing on this collection, in fact, is gonna send you zigzag straight to your heart...that was and remains the Velvets’ whole conundrum. No embellishments, no involvement (except in the process of the music’s actual moment), and no “conceptual” consistency. Side one’s "Ride Into The Sun” is a pretty little instrumental; “Guess I’m Falling In Love” (also instrumental) packs the ultimate garage wallop—a Mack truck crashing into row of stubborn madmen doing it in the road with tubas. “Ferryboat Bill” is a prototype for American freakout tracks to come. And the LP’s closer—5:18’s worth of Lou Reed doing “Rock And Roll” in a way which shows you why Mitch Ryder’s Detroit got interested— is coup de grace, crystalline and perversely uplifting.

Slow but never (unlike 99 percent of their devotees) slobbish; hard of edge yet never delivered of a Final Word—16 years from sudden death, this mess of historic confluence represents pretty well that set of puzzling fascinations which was the original Velvets.

Cynthia Rose

JOE JACKSON

Big World (A&M)

His last two albums yielded one memorable moment apiece; both “Steppin’ Out” and “You Can’t Get What You Want” became hits, big hits. But Joe Jackson wants more than high chart positions; he’s after respect, he wants recognition as a musical adventurer, a regular risk-taker. His latest effort takes several chances. The question is whether they were worth taking in the first place.

Big World is a three-sided, digital, live, direct-to-two-track recording. No overdubs, no remixing. Recorded in three performances at the Roundabout Theatre in N.Y.C. featuring Jackson plus three (guitar, bass, drums) and additional back-up vocalists.

On paper I’m intrigued by the no-nonsense simplicity of it all and find the whole undertaking to be thoroughly commendable. On vinyl, I’m sharply disappointed by the lousy results. May I briefly count the ways?

(1) Supposedly side four is blank because Jackson didn’t want to include any filler. These 15 songs therefore represent the cream of his crop. He’s in big trouble since 75 percent of them are feeble efforts.

(2) He’s become needlessly hung up on the compulsion to keep changing musical styles like a guy who can’t find a pair of pants that fits. Reggae, big band swing, salsa, Tin Pan Alley, etc.—I’ll trade it all for one good rock ’n’ roll selection from Look SharpI Now he’s in his U.N. phase, spewing out inscrutable Oriental hogwash (“Shanghai Sky” and the title cut) and Charles Aznavour-in-the-redlight-district ramblings ("Fifty Dollar Love Affair”).

Look, pal, if I want international flavoring on my turntable I’ll slap on Domenico “Volare” Modugno or Kyu “Sukiyaki” Sakamoto, OK? You’re clearly out of your league.

(3) His frequently verbose lyrics need serious pruning. They are just as frequently preachy, self-righteous, painfully solemn and overly eager to take semiacerbic potshots at easy targets (“The Jet Set”). He’s standing on a wobbly soapbox.

(4) Jackson’s vocal style has deteriorated. He’s much too quick to fall back on his peevish, whiny, pseudo-snarl. He sounds positively curdled on a droner like “Man In The Street” and you can feel the rose wilt between his teeth on “Tango Atlantico.” For cranky, sneering irritability, it’ll be hard to top the disastrous overkill of “We Can’t Live Together.” (If I’d known what was coming on the bridge I’d have begged him not to cross it.)

Surprisingly, this review has a happy ending due to the fact that Jackson remains unpredictable. When he deigns to rock, he comes out swinging. "Precious Time” is a frantic tension-builder with some hellbent chickenscratch guitar. “Right And Wrong” hits a cool groove while Jackson strangulates the chorus and stings lightly. “Tonight And Forever” is bashed out like a shot. It’s fast, it’s furious, and she’s got his head in a whirl— my kind of unbeatable combination.

And then there’s “Home Town,” which would make a great single and took me by complete surprise towards the end of side three. If I may be so blasphemous, it’s far superior to “My Hometown” (and I’d love to hear it follow “Small Town” on the radio someday). It flies right by, all bittersweet loss and intensified longing. You can’t go home again—but sometimes you wish you could. The way “accumulate” is pronounced, the way the guitar echoes the deft clarity of James HoneymanScott, the way Jackson’s voice aches so beautifully on that final chorus—it’s all superb. And considering most of what came before it, it’s downright miraculous. Pray for its release as a 45.

Craig Zeller

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED

PHILIP GLASS Songs From Liquid Days (CBS)

PETER GORDON

Innocent (CBS y

by Richard C. Walls

Philip Glass has become the most ubiquitous of modern serious composers (and just check out his mug on the cover of Liquid and you’ll know why I didn’t put quotes around “serious”), even for those of us whose main source of culture is that humming dynamo in our living room that we have our VCR hooked up to. To wit, PBS not long ago debuted Koyaanisqatsi, a travelogue for potheads graced by Glass’s signature sonorities and repetitions, while Bravo, the cable station for those who didn’t put Brewster’s Millions on their must-see list, showed all 10,200-plus seconds of his Satyagraha, an opera about Ghandi, among other things. All of which was piddle, exposure-wise, compared to the unreluctant composer’s recent appearance on the muchmaligned SNL, when he essayed a few tunes from his latest platter, which, he informs us in his liner notes, is the first to concentrate on "the song form as such.” Maybe, but, despite input from David Byrne, Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, the Roches, and Linda Ronstadt, this is not, by any stretch of the genre, a pop album, or an album that would fall into any sub-category therein. It’s a Philip Glass album.

Glass has approached his “song form as such” project like an arrive who wants to play major league ball and hires the Yankees for the gig (OK, so I did see Brewster’s Millions. WHAT OF IT?). He’s enlisted some of the finest of contempo song form lyricists, and then written music for what they’ve submitted (personally, I’d be suspicious that they would submit rejects from their own albums). It may look good on the marquee, but it’s not the best way to go about this song form stuff; when music and lyrics come together it often sounds like a forced match. For example, Simon has offered a rather petite epiphany ("Changing Opinions”) but Barnard Fowler’s vocal and Glass’s music are into sweeping emotions writ large. Vega’s lyrics for “Lightning” have a fast, confessional rhythm (“And it’s happening so quickly/As I feel the flaming time/And I grope about the embers/To relieve my stormy mind”) that one associates with a certain type of folk song but Glass’s music has a choppy urgency that’s running on a different track than Vega’s lyrics. His collaboration with Byrne works best. Davy is in his upbeat Little Creatures mode on “Liquid Days Pt. I,” and his rhetorical, arrhythmic lyric style is easily molded to Glass’s purposes. Unfortunately, their other effort, “Open The Kingdom” finds Byrne at his most irritatingly opaque—too bad, ’cause Glass’s grandeur reaches an ecstatic peak here. Overall, the album is a mishmash of lyric styles with the accompanying music consistently Glasslike.

Too many cooks make for a mildly intriguing curio. A more successful curio in CBS’s Masterworks series is Peter Gordon’s Innocent (is that a segue, or what?). Gordon, erstwhile coconcocter (with percussionist David Van Tieghem) of the Love Of Life Orchestra, is another "serious” composer with the ambition of reaching a wider audience, though this time the quotes around “serious” are ap-

propriate. Gordon is really a parodist (of a very subtle stripe) who takes mainstream pop instrumental cliches and uses them to elucidate his slightly skewed vision. Give it a casual listen and this sounds like VH-1 material—pleasant melodies, sporadic fusion and post-disco dance music influences, exotic but generally in-the-pocket percussion effects. A closer listen reveals a motif running through the album which is both its point of view and its subject matter— innocence, the loss of and longing for. You can hear it in the shamelessly simple, open-road hummability of “Afternoon Drive” or directly expressed in the lyrics of the mock-gospel “The Day The Devil Comes To Getcha” (which Gordon co-wrote with Laurie Anderson) as well as the wonderfully goofy “Heaven,” written by Jill Kroesen. Another kind of innocence is evoked in the white-go-go-boots-in-heat number "Diamond Lane” (which was actually recorded back in ’80; the Farfisa organ marks it as a new wave period piece); even a blatant political fragment like “Psycho (i.e., Reagan)” expresses a funny/innocent outrage-over an industry-gonemad rhythm, whistles, and a wellplaced scream every few bars, a gravelly sub-human voice mumbles, “He wants to take away your liberty/This guy’s a psycho.” No deep analysis, just anger untroubled by ambiguity-innocence almost consumed by alienation (it’s a rueful laugh the song elicits).

It’s difficult to describe the attitude conveyed throughout this album; Gordon seems to be laughing both at and with much of his material—immersing himself in a willful innocence he's much too sophisticated to believe in (though he wants to, at times...). This is a fun and funny album and I hope it’s basic unclassifiability won’t hurt it too much in the marketplace. I’m sure it won’t scare off somebody like yourself.

CULTURE CLUB

From Luxury To Heartache (Virgin/Epic)

I knew that Culture Club had really arrived on that day back in 1984 when my mother-in-law, a certified National Enquirer subscriber, asked me, “What’s the truth about this ‘George Boy?’” But my own Mrs. Malaprop-by-marriage hasn’t mentioned Mr. O’Dowd again for over a year now, so I take it that Boy George’s star doesn’t reside in the same firmament with tabloid lifers Forsythe and Evans any longer.

Now we’ve got rock scene observers who are treating Boy George’s plunge from checkoutlane sainthood as some kinda judgement day, as though he’s got to put his frocks back into the closet and get by on music alone from now on, same as real heman types like Eddie Van Halen. It strikes me as a bit ironic that Boy George is getting smacked with this musical gender test at this late date, as Culture Club have always made with the bright pop music, no matter what image of the band the media were sending out to play in traffic.

Lots of adult-contempt stations slotted “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” into heavy rotation long before they knew what Boy George looked like, and my mother-in-law conceded that he had a good voice even after she fussed about his finery. Subsequent Culture Club songs, especially “Church Of The Poison Mind” and “Karma Chameleon,” sounded tuff enough to ring anybody’s gong, video-aided or not. By the time of “The War Song,” Culture Club had taken Paul McCartney’s concept of “silly love songs” into a whole new time-warp.

So even though it’s been well over a year since Waking Up With The House On Fire, Culture Club’s new From Luxury To Heartache isn’t a last desperate grab at the public’s fickle emotions, but another batch of the bright audio candy that made the band worthwhile listening in the first place. Like its predecessors, From Luxury To Heartache has a few weak moments, but it also has good songs that are so good that they carry the whole album. Culture Club are past masters of the all-conquering single.

“Move Away” ’s sweet pulse is all over the radio already, so I won’t belabor that song. But if you haven’t heard “I Pray” or “Gusto Blusto” yet, you’re in for a Pop Tart of a treat. The former song is a gospelly big beat pounder with a classic Helen Terry (or is this Jocelyn Brown?—-she’s great, whoever) vocal backing up Boy George's fast-food lead. And “Gusto Blusto,” the would-be Limey street phrase of the summer, also happens to be a soul/disco rouser complete with zazz guitar and a well-wrought-up chorus. “Thank you BABY!” bawls Boy, in a jet-blast blooze of an expression.

So it’s time for the wearin’ of the red, gold, & green again, top o’ the dowd and all that. I predict that From Luxury To Heartache will hang around the U.S. charts for a good long run, especially with past popsoul dominators Hall & Oates off in the corporatesponsored ozone these days. Maybe it’ll still be on the charts when Elton John goes in for his first tooth implant.

Richard Riegel

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (EMI America)

Imagine my embarrassment, on hearing this, about having helped make David Bowie the entertainment phenomenon he is today. (I wrote an article about him once, and my approving review of his The Man Who Sold The World album inspired no less [or more] than CREEM’s own Dave DiMartino to begin his own career in rock journalism. [The more I say, the deeper the hot water I get myself into!])

Certainly it’s Bowie’s prerogative to be too preoccupied with other facets of his career as Mr. Multi-Faceted to care that much about his music anymore. But if he insists on writing songs as attentively as you or I might fill out a crossword puzzle (as he seems to have been doing since “Modern Love”), why must he keep recording them?

He must have spent all of 15 minutes on “Absolute Begin-

ners,” the title song of the musical film adaptation of Colin Maclnnes’s novel about preBeatles British teen life. There isn’t a thing to it. It’s got a portentuous-sounding chord change every couple of bars that the production makes much of, strings, big drums, and a mob of background singers, but no melody to speak of. Its lyrics sound dashed-off. Ultimately, it’s all decoration, a big production with no song underneath, no real idea and no real emotion—albeit lots of the ironic vocal bluster Bowie’s always thought so amusing. “That’s Motivation,” his other track, is no improvement.

Courtesy of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, who’ve never been noted for the sparseness of their sound, there’s entirely too much production on this album. Consider Style Council’s “Have You Ever Had It Blue,” which offers the attentive listener the rare pleasure of getting to hear Paul Weller scat. Langer and Winstanley surround it with so many strings and girl singers and so much Latin percussion and gorgeous baritone sax vamping that you almost don’t notice that Weller’s voice isn’t nearly up to this sort of material. But this ain’t horseshoes.

By the time you get to the beginning of Ray Davies’s “Quiet Life,” midway through Side One, you’re so grateful for the respite from the massed strings and girl singers and Latin percussion that it takes you a few bars to notice that Ray’s never sung more dreadfully, and that the song plays like a cruel selfparody. To make matters worse, the track quickly gets nearly as over-orchestrated as everything else to that point.

If you get the impression that Absolute Beginners isn't likely to join The Harder They Come and Saturday Night Fever on the epochal soundtrack album list, you’ve gotten the impression I’d hoped to convey.

Don’t think, though, that the album’s a complete washout. Consider that, in Beginners' wake, it will no longer be possible to say that, if you’d heard one Sade (pronounced “Sadie”) track, you’d heard them all, as “Killer Blow” has a bass fiddle solo and an up-tempo interlude toward the end. (I’m being sarcastic.) Gil Evansls “Va Va Voom,” a big band jazz affair with what sounds like a chimp cooing happily along, 8th Wonder’s “Having It All,” and Working Week’s Latin-flavored "Rodrigo Bay” are all fairly pleasurable listening, if not exactly unforgettable, and I’d go at least a little bit out of my way to hear the apparently West Indian Slim Gaillard’s witty swing number “Selling Out,” which has to do with the quest for what you and I call a pot at the end of the rainbow, but which Slim knows as crepes suzette.

Write EMI America and demand that they issue it as a single. Tell them that it’s the price of a single or nothing, that you’ve no intention whatever of buying this whole album. They’ll snarl a little bit, but they’ll respect you for it in the end.

John Mendelssohn

DUCK SOUP

JOURNEY Raised On Radio (Columbia)

by Gregg Khrushchev Turner

The day goes drifting by in sleepy Claremont, California, just less than an hour east of East L.A.; the smog creeps down the

canyons from the industrial toxic waste-pile called Covina into La Verne and Pomona and eventually reaches these parts. In the fast-approaching horse latitudes of summer, this is an unwholesome portent of grizzly daze to come. However, in the same breath it should be mentioned that 10,000+ foot Mt. Baldy’s just a shot away, high above any of the airborne carcinogens sealed beneath an inversion layer clinging tight to virtually all of Southern California 'round this time of year. Keep in mind, the months from October to, say, mid-April are fragrant with the overwrought wildlife of fall/winter /spring... There’s lots of possums—and racoons—’round this neck of the woods, and in fact the people here are quite proud of the fact that Claremont boasts one of the more impressive native possum populations, no doubt indigenous (few immigrants, one supposes...).

There’s a Chesapeake Bay Retriever close to the Grad School’s Math office on 10th Street and one of the more amazing things that hits you upon first encounter with the

beast is just how close the . resemblance is to a Lab, a K Chocolate Lab ’cause CBR’s are I brown-coated; this one has ice | blue eyes and a long pink I tongue. She’s a real cutie. One * day, I was late to seminar, something to do with Partial Differential Equations (my research interest is numerical Linear Algebra, particularly matrix norms as bounds on the spectral radius) and she was sprawled out on the grass, one eye open, sleeping the heavy sleep of a dog. And I wanted to be a dog in the worst way—I mean, maybe there’ve been past lives and this has, in fact, been the case—but right at that particular moment I really really wanted to go canine.

Roky Erickson once upon a time claimed he had a brain hernia and electric autoharp virtuoso Bill Miller of Marin County has patents pending on a kiddie cereal-to-be called Oswald Crunches (cheerios with cross-hairs in the middle—high fiber).

And I’ve listened to this new Journey alb, I honest 2 god have; please believe this is the case. If your cup of tea is Mantovani meets Foreigner—go for it

(they’re a three-piece now; bassist Ross Valory and skinman Steve Smith have exited—this leaves gtrst Neal Schon, ex-Baby Jon Cain and the singer, Mr. tent-head himself, Steve Perry). Me? Well, a dog’s life still sounds awfully good, y’know??