TEN YEARS AFTER

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND Live/1975-85 (Columbia)

by John Mendelssohn

On the sunny, balmy Monday this was released, the local deejays said, absenteeism in San Francisco broke all records, as tens of thousands of otherwise loyal employees called in sick so they could get in record shop lines to buy it and then go to the beach or Golden Gate Park to spend the day digging it. Shortly thereafter, National Public Radio reported that, except for the balminess, beach, and Park, the pattern was identical across the land. Excitement over a record album’s release hadn’t been so nearly universal since Sgt. Pepper reached the racks on the first day of June, 1967.

Brilliant as he is onstage, The Boss actually didn’t seem that likely a prospect for a live album. Artists who go in for a lot more “sweetening”—overdubbed instrumental ornamentation and production flourishes, that is— are actually much likelier, since they sound much more different live. If I’m not mistaken (between the times the album went on sale and my review had to be stapled to the carrier pigeon, I barely had time to listen to the whole new album, let alone old ones), few of the arrangements here are radically different from those on the album versions. And at least one—that of “No Surrender”— does the song no good at all. Pared way down instrumentally, it sounds like the winning entry in a Dylan-ca.-1963-Composealike contest.

Speaking of “No Surrender,” it was (or at least it seemed) only 72 hours ago that Born In The U.S.A. finally abandoned the charts and airwaves. Isn’t it a molecule vainglorious to ask us to virtually buy it all over again?

Maybe not. One of the most amazing things about El Jefe is that he sings as though his very life depends on what he’s singing, whether he’s singing it for the first or jillionth time. He breathes new fire into most of the more fiery stuff here, and the brave lads of the E Street Band do their share as well, with the result that even the most overfamiliar Born stuff sounds new and vital. “Cover Me,” for instance, here features a dramatically psychedelic introduction, “I’m On Fire” a couple of very brief but very hilarious Elvis Costello impressions. And “Born In The U.S.A.” itself is absolutely brutalizing—and even terrifying at the end, when Bruce starts screaming as though possessed by something a great deal less salubrious than usual.

The album reminds us that there is no more thrilling sound in modern rock than that of The Boss roaring (as in “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”) like all 10 of the 10 Mightiest Soulmen in History of the Heroism of Little Guys—or, for that matter, of The Big Man’s sax kicking in— over the thunder of the E Street Band. Indeed, there are stretches—such as that including, in order, “Two Hearts,” “Cadillac Ranch” and “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)”—of sheer rock ’n’ roll heaven here, stretches of music so rollicking, so exuberantly performed (just listen to the Mighty Max lose control of himself and turn into Keith Moon at the end of “Hearts”!) that the little hairs on your goosebumps’ necks will stand on end.

But let’s be honest with one another. When he got to “This Land Is Your Land” and the stuff from the Nebraska album in concert, you headed for the snack bar or lavatory, and I was right behind you. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself ducking into the kitchen to whip up a delicious snack when it comes on here. Nor should we be ashamed—it is strictly dullsville. If he were really a nice guy, II Capo wouldn’t make countless defenseless millions of us listen to so much of his generally painful harmonica playing. A little joke, you see.

In concert, “Seeds,” aby-thenumbers expression of rage for the plight of the homeless of Houston set to ’50s Guitar Cliche No. 34, struck these old ears as evidence that The Boss was succumbing to the same affliction from which John Lennon suffered for a year or two before and after his Some Time In New York City, whereby one is incapable of reading about any injustice anywhere without feeling compelled to write a song about it. I’m no crazier about it on record. Nor is “Racing In The Streets,” which I always hoped against hope was a sly self-parody, any less tedious here than heretofore, Roy Bittan’s (characteristically) wonderful ivory-tickling notwithstanding.

As far as the new material’s concerned, The Boss turns in a rendition of "Fire” (once a hit for the Pointer Sisters, of all people) that I suspect I’d find unnervingly sexy if I were a woman or gay.

I found Patti Smith’s “Because The Night” insufferably overblown, and The Boss’s is hardly less so. It’s a vivid testament to his stature that he won’t be ridiculed savagely for the minstrelshowishness of the Stax classic "Raise Your Hand.” He doesn’t exactly make Edwin Starr’s “War” his own. But “Paradise By The C” is a witty and rollicking instrumental in the tradition of The Champs’ “Tequila.” And he sings Tom Waits’s infinitely corny “Jersey Girl” with such conviction and tenderness that your heart breaks anyway. Exquisite.

The “Born In The U.S.A.” tour stuff, all recorded on digital 24-track equipment, is an audiophile’s delight, just as it was live. Such gorgeous highs! Such ambiance! The sound can get pretty mushy elsewhere, though, nowhere moreso than in “Because The Night” and “Candy’s Room.” And the poor Big Man’s sax solo on “Badlands” sounds as though it was recorded from somewhere on the Arizona State University campus other than where he was playing it.

On the repertoire front, it’d’ve been grand to hear the versions of, say, Manfred Mann’s “Pretty Flamingo,” idol-cum-protege Gary (U.S.) Bonds’s “Quarter To Three,” or Yes’s Talek Of Topographic Oceans that Bruce and the boys briefly enjoyed playing as their final encore around the turn of the decade. Another little joke, don’t you know.

Would it have been too much trouble for somebody to have annotated the deluxe booklet that accompanies the album, so that we’d know where and when the many photographs inside were taken, and exactly who’s in ’em? (We know that Neal Preston took the one on the cover, and that, no fault of Neal’s, it’s almost indisputably the least flattering of anyone ever. How can you help but like a guy who, like The Boss, didn’t insist on using the infinitely more flattering one from page 15?)

All together now: We want the movie to which this ought to have been the soundtrack! We want the movie to which this ought to have been the soundtrack! We want the movie to which this ought to have been the soundtrack!

THE PRETENDERS

Get Close (Sire)

There’s something really bothering me, and I’ve got to get it off my chest: this isn’t the Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde has no business calling this band the Pretenders. James HoneymanScott and Pete Farndon are in their graves, and for some strange reason, drum-beater extraordinaire Martin Chambers is out in the cold. (He shows up all too briefly on the last track, a successful psychedelic cover of Hendrix’s “Room Full Of Mirrors.”) Robbie McIntosh, in the band since Learning To Crawl, is now a veteran showing the ropes to brand new rhythm section T.M. Stevens and Blair Cunningham. Give me a break. Call it the Chrissie Hynde Experience or the start of a fabulous solo career. I’m sure the record company thinks it’s bad business to stop using the band (brand) name, but screw that; it takes tarnished brass balls to call this band the Pretenders. It’s just not right, but it looks like we’re stuck with it.

Get Close, the first "Pretenders” album in nearly three years, turns out to be an up and down affair. Sometimes it’s great; other times it’s a bit of a mess. Producers Bob Clearmountain and Jimmy lovine do their usual fine job in terms of crisp clarity, but I think they lack some of the ambience that longtime producer Chris Thomas (there goes the fifth Pretender) used to provide. Sometimes you get the feeling that they’re walking on eggshells when they should be cracking the whip. That might partially explain how a pair of stinkers like “Dance!” (talk about your unearned exclamation points!) and “Tradition Of Love” (in the tediously sprawling tradition of “Private Life”) snuck in here. (Fortunately, Hynde’s head only wanders aimlessly into the ozone on one other cut, the funked-up, Princely “How Much Did You Get For Your Soul?” which tries too hard and wears thin fast.)

On the remainder of Get Close, Chrissie and Co. are sitting on top of the world. “My Baby,” marred briefly at the end by the roar of a crowd, builds beautifully, as Chrissie Hynde once again shows herself to be the most expressive female vocalist in rock ’n’ roll. (Do I detect a few Joni Mitchell inflections? I must be confusing her with Marti Jones.) Robbie McIntosh’s guitar break rings out with Merseybeat magic. Take that, R.E.M. This girl’s in love and it sounds so right.

Her phrasing is equally alluring on “When I Change My Life” wherein she tantalizingly reels off a series of l’ll-be-better resolutions and leaves you hanging wondering if and when that day will come. As with “My Baby,” keyboards are used with subtle aplomb. "Light Of The Moon,” one of three she didn’t write, proves that Hynde is so intoxicating a singer that she can take cosmic crapola couplets like “Color the wind/And search deep within,” and make them feel fascinating. When she spins that chorus off its axis she’ll turn your head around.

“I Remember You,” “Hymn To Her” and “Chill Factor” are all straightforward and memorable, but nothing else on side two packs the emotional power of “Don’t Get Me Wrong.” Once again, I’m deliriously reminded what a tremendous singles band the original Pretenders were, and that’s no small compliment coming from a guy with three thousand 45s sitting on his shelves. The embracing, up-and-at-’em jubilance of it all is quite irresistible and the band’s jet propulsion floors me. The cymbal smashes on the bridge made me cheer for Chambers. Then I realized it wasn’t him.

Whatever you end up calling the band, one thing’s for sure: Chrissie Hynde’s still special— so special—she’s gotta have some of your attention. Give it to her.

Craig Zeller

IDLE RETURN

BILLY IDOL Whiplash Smile (Chrysalis)

by Billy Altman

Talk about the difference between expectation and fulfillment. About a month before Whiplash Smile hit the stores, I was listening to the radio when the pre-album released single from it, “To Be A Lover,” hit me, unawares, square in the solar plexus. For the first minute or so, I couldn’t really tell who was performing the song; after all, a boogie woogie piano and female backup vocalists chirping “have mercy!” are not exactly the first things that spring to mind as staples of a Billy Idol recording. But soon, amidst the alternately tempting and taunting moans and shouts of the singer, I began to get this image in my mind. Of a face. Of a mouth. Of a lip snarl. And I realized I could hear that snarl. That snarl that’s in Elvis Presley’s voice right at the top of the choruses in “Little Sister.” The snarl that’s in Jim Morrison’s voice in “My Eyes Have Seen You,” and in Iggy’s voice in “Search And Destroy.” The same one, exactly. I’d seen it on Billy Idol’s face many times before, but I’d never heard it. And now there it was, on the first piece of new music he’d put out in three years. And a whole album of this was coming? Hot damn.

Well, it’s now a month later, and I wish that “To Be A Lover” was still all the new music I’d heard from Billy Idol in three years. Because the excitement and the (to quote the already invoked Mr. Pop) raw power exhibited on “To Be A Lover” are, unfortunately, not really evident in too many other places on Whiplash Smile. And, since it’s the only non-original song on the album, one can’t help but conclude that the much-reported difficulties that Idol was having in coming up with material for this LP never really were surmounted. Most of the songs here just don’t function well enough as songs to capture your attention and hold it for very long. And with most of the tracks clocking in at around five minutes, that spells trouble.

Lord knows where Idol would be on this album without Steve Stevens. The guitarist does everything he can to stir things up, adding some much needed energy and focus to such fragmented and diffuse offerings as “Soul Standing By,” “Man For All Seasons,” and “All Summer Single,” but, invariably, it’s never quite enough to disguise the fact these just aren’t very good songs. In the best of Idol’s past work, you felt like you were in the middle of a cauldron full of slowly simmering tension. At any moment, things could explode— that’s what “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” were all about. Here, however, Idol just stirs and stirs, and the pot never boils. The LP’s leadoff track, “World’s Forgotten Boy” (hello again, Iggy), is a rather apt microcosm of what’s wrong with the album. It starts out sounding like it’s revving up, but then the wheels start spinning round and round and it goes nowhere. The lyrics, mainly unintelligible (as they are, I should point out, throughout almost the entire record), are spewed out grudgingly over a skeletal melody that eventually just aimlessly crashes into a churning mishmash of a chorus equally as aimless. It sounds like a bad imitation of himself.

Oddly enough, the LP’s softer cuts work much better than the hard-edged ones; the country flavored “Sweet Sixteen” and the LP’s closer, a folk-metal alloy ballad called “One Night, One Chance,” at least carry a bit of emotional weight that’s discernible through the haze. But a whole album that lived up to the promise of “To Be A Lover” is what I wanted from Billy Idol. And knowing that he’s capable of it just makes Whiplash Smile that much more of a disappointment.

ROBERT WYATT

Old Rottenhat (Gramavision) Nothing Can Stop Us (Gramavision)

Robert Wyatt has a singing voice quite unlike any you’ve ever heard; it’s a plaintive but cool near-androgynous croon, displaying the high, clear timbre of an other-worldly torch singer. It’s a voice which first received international notice when Wyatt was drummer and occasional singer with the art-rock-cum-jazz group Soft Machine. That band of intrepids, and Wyatt, achieved a respectable cult status, but after leaving and forming the short-lived Matching Mole, he suffered a calamitous fall out of a window at a party which left him paralyzed from the waist down. For a less hearty soul that would be the end of the career bio; instead Wyatt released Rock Bottom (’75), a collection of pleasantly eerie, haunting (an unavoidable word when discussing this guy) collection of “drones and songs” which featured the erstwhile drummer’s new keyboard concerns, and which this reviewer considers one of the great undiscovered records of the ’70s—effortlessly eccentric, moving despite its obfuscations, a gem.

After that, not too much was heard from Wyatt (he was featured prominently on some dreadful Mike Mantler records) until the release a few years back of Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard and now this double deal from Gramavision. Both of these records contain fairly recent material, Rottenhat having been available for a year or so as an import, Nothing being a collection of singles.

Old Rottenhat is completely original songs with all instruments played and virtually all vocals sung by Wyatt, but it’s personal in a way you might not anticipate—instead of rummaging through his private life, Wyatt deals almost exclusively here with matters political. And for some reason he’s chosen to convey his messages in the plainest way possible—unsweetened by metaphor or poetic wordplay, the lyrics are almost painfully spare. And since Wyatt’s perspective is lefty/sincere, he falls into a familiar old lefty coot mode— analysis dry as dust, hardly wetted by drops of pinched irony. When, on "Alliance,” he sings “You’re proud of being middle class (meaning upper class)/You say you’re self sufficient (but you don’t dig your own coal)” you wince, not because this is a hard truth, but because the observation is made so artlessly. Even some of the song titles—“The United States Of Amnesia,” “The Age Of Self,” “Mass Medium”—may draw sighs from those who like their sermons a littie less dourly obvious (and hey, I’m in sympathy with much of what he’s saying).

In fairness, some of the lyrics do try harder than others, and “Gharbzadegi” has a nice typical Wyatt coda (extended, spacey) with the repeated refrain “So out of touch/words take the place of meaning.” In fact musically the album’s just fine— though there’s nothing as compolling here as Rock Bottom's sense of a person drowning and then emerging irrevocably changed, tentatively testing the shape of his new consciousness. Still, there’s plenty of the old drones and antic twists of melody, with Wyatt’s sad sonorities giving these homely homilies a soulful edge.

Nothing Can Stop Us may be a less distracting pick for the uninitiated, since it’s largely made up of other people’s songs. Wyatt’s lonesome space cowboy voice is best displayed on Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding” and “Strange Fruit,” that gruesome ballad about lynching made famous by Billie Holiday (so this too is a political album, only less didactic). Also notable are a ’40s novelty song called “Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’,” its upbeat jauntiness made creepy in light of subsequent revelations about Uncle Joe; “Caimenera,” which the liners describe as “virtually the national anthem of Cuba,” but which you’ll recognize as a folkie standard; and a moving version of Chic’s “Now I Am Free,” a great vehicle for revealing the optimistic core of Wyatt’s sad, sad voice. “’Round Midnight,” though, is a little disappointing (it seemed a natural), the singer a little uneasy with Monk’s arching melody.

Wyatt will probably remain a cult item, but if you’re tired of rock/pop’s current phase of timidity and stasis (with dissenters neatly ghettoized on MTV) then here’s something that may amuse you—a light, dry voice with some pretentions, but a unique and stimulating bouquet.

Richard C. Walls

ROBYN HITCHCOCK & THE EGYPTIANS

Element Of Light (Relativity)

Good morning, all of you; I trust your visit to the United States Bureau of Bad Songs will be a pleasant one. For the firsttimers in the crowd, this is where, musically speaking, we separate wheat from chaff, greatness from gaffe, the songs that work from the ones which, sadly, must remain unemployed. Our staff has been trained to detect the slightest rhythmic turbulence, melodic anomalies or halfhearted harmonies that they come across. Perseverance and persistence are stressed here, not kindness or compassion. We inspect every configuration on the market and while we prefer those LPs/CDs/cassettes which contain a majority of bad songs, we make note of every stinker we discover, even if it’s on a socalled “good album.”

As an example, well, wait a minute...OK, management has decided to (gulp!) give us an extra challenge today. Though this is not at all standard operating procedure, I’m to use the new LP by Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians as my presentation.

At one point, we had high At one point, we had high hopes for Hitchcock around here. We were told he was sort of a new Syd Barrett, which was fine with us. Syd was an extreme case of a pop star cracking under pressure; his post-Pink Floyd repertoire, while not totally unlistenabie, contained a handful of ditties that were so bizarre that, well, some of us have fond memories of Barrett around the Bureau.

But enough of him. This Hitchcock fellow released two albums last year, one studio, one live, which, well, to be frank, once it’s been determined that a record contains no bad songs, there isn’t much for us to do with it, y’know? If it happens three times in a row, the proper authorities are notified.

Now this current Robyn Hitchcock record has a rather nondescript pale cover and...a lyric sheet, which could be useful. Yes, he’s definitely one of those for whom rock ’n’ roll means never having to say you’re sorry for being strange. Here, he’s threatening to burn someone’s bongoes, while over here, he’s got songs about soap and fish behavior. But since this is the man who has written good songs about lightbulb heads and iron sledges, we II take nothing for granted. If you’ll follow the guard, er, guide to the Courtesy and Consumption Area, I’ll be back with my report in an hour.

I’d like to say thank you and congratulations to those who found their way back here—I’d like to, but I’m sorry to say our presentation has to be cut short today. Normally, we’ll find some inferior material and ridicule it for your listening pleasure, but evidently, finding a bad song on a Robyn Hitchcock album is like finding a needle in a haywire. It’s like for this guy, melody and harmony and insanity are all one. Although I’m not authorized to deal with any good song directly, I can say that the record as a whole is quite musically varied and that, on several tunes, Hitchcock more closely resembles the highly consistent John Lennon than the aforementioned Barrett. The cover’s color suggests a white album from an earlier era, yet he saves his best Beatles harmonies for...but I cannot say. I do have to file my report, however.

Just one request. Hitchcock has become a potential nuisance for the Bureau, in part because he has so many records released in England. Our preliminary, off-the-record research indicates that there are few, if any, bad songs on those albums either, and that his record company is entirely capable of releasing them in the United States should the demand warrant it. So if we can just keep him our little secret, everything will...

...what’s that? You want to hear some of the songs? Sorry, that’s not possible. Besides, you wouldn’t want to walk into work tomorrow singing, “He’d never make love to a loaf of bread/Unless of course he found one in his bed,” would you? You wouldn’t want to smooch up to your husband with, “Your perfect lover’s never there/And if she was, she wouldn’t be—and neither would you,” unless you... ...what’s that? You would? And you? Well, I’ll have to direct you persistent ones—there always seems to be a few—to the United States Bureau of Good Songs. They’ll be more than happy to help you. You just cross the parking structure, go down the stairway of knives, turn right at the bottomless pit, and it’s the thirty-third unmarked door on your left. You can’t miss it.

Michael Davis

Aretha (Arista)

JAMES BROWN

Gravity (Scotti Bros.)

ARETHA FRANKLIN

Ladies and gentlemen, the Godfather and the Queen of Soul, Mr. James Brown and Ms. Aretha Franklin. Whether you hail ’em as living legends—or rudely point out that both have seen better days—ya gotta admire the way these two originals refuse to accept moldy oldie status. Aided by producer Dan Hartman, JB escaped from oblivion recently with “Living In America,” while ’Retha recruited Narada Michael Walden last year for “Freeway Of Love,” her greatest single in many moons.

Maintaining the old momentum, however, poses a challenge neither has met fully with their new LPs. On Gravity, the responsibility belongs to Hartman, who’s come up with a whole LP’s-worth of familiar sounding material in the vein of “Living In America” (included here). There’s a virtual glossary of Brown’s trademarks: hardstomping grooves, clanging guitars, swaggering horns and, of course, plenty of The Man himself. On big-beat tracks like the title song and “Turn Me Loose, I’m Dr. Feelgood,” Brown hoots, growls, sputters, barks, and whatever, as he has a thousand superbad times before— almost to the point of self-parody.

That’s why Gravity is ultimately a tad depressing. In his prime, the Godfather was a wild man with a bizarre streak, possessed by a funk fever that made him do the unexpected. Hartman has reduced him to a predictable formula, smoothing off the gritty edges in his voice (aided by Father Time), and making him essentially just a participant on a producer’s album.

On the bright side, the album does deliver solid entertainment. And it boasts “Living In America,” a hot little tune even if JB isn’t the author. Fans can cheer a rare Brown organ workout on the ballad “Return To Me,” and sweat to fiery alto sax work from old buddy Maceo Parker on “Goliath.” Nevermind the wimpy. Steve Winwood synth solo (“How Do You Stop”) or Alison Moyet’s unnecessary vocal trade-offs (“Let’s Get Personal”). Better to have James back this way than not at all.

Aretha Franklin, on the other hand, never went away in the first place, but her golden era seemed to be long gone until “Freeway Of Love” came along. Sensibly, Aretha reunites Lady Soul with producer Walden on six of the nine tracks. Although the LP doesn t turn her into a museum piece the way Gravity does Brown, it’s plagued by problems aplenty. Most of the material is pretty mild, from the embarrassing six-minute dance throwaway, “Rock-A-Lott,” to the maudlin balladry of “Do You Still Remember.” There’s an illconceived duet with George Michael, who’s easily outclassed, and a corny romantic matchup co-starring the dependable Larry Graham. Keith Richards produces a chaotic version of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” requiring her to shout (which she doesn’t do so well) rather than sing (which she does).

In fact, the eccentric vocals are the record’s real downfall— Franklin chooses overkill over finesse throughout, trying to prove she still has her youthful power. Swooping excesses ruin the rousing “He’ll Come Along” and crush a featherweight ballad like “Look To The Rainbow.” She can still raise the dead with the right turn of a phrase, but she’s gotta lighten up.

Happier moments include the heart-tugging sentiment of “An Angel Cries,” and “Jimmy Lee,” a crisp, soaring pop tune with Top 10 stamped all over it. Otherwise, Aretha is a half-baked effort by a great talent who probably doesn’t care all that much ’cause she knows she’s still capable of getting it right the next time—if she really wants to.

Jon Young

THE THERMOS STANDS ALONE

ALICE COOPER Constrictor (MCA)

RATT Dancing Undercover (Atlantic)

by Joe (Born Again Pagan) Fernbacher

Simply put, Alice Cooper’s Constrictor is less an anomaly in this day and age than Ratt’s Dancing Undercover is. One assumes, while the other presumes. Alice, unlike Ratt, is, was, and probably always will be the living personification of the teenage years and all their accompanying loneliness, frustration and psychosis; loneliness and teenage being the primal forces that not only created rock ’n’ roll in the first place, but continues to suckle it at its steeltipped teat to this very minute, demanding its daily doses of rhythmic, anthemic, protomanic, psychobabeling loud-screamsoutta-the-wasteland kinda stuff.

Put even simpler, Alice Cooper’s Constrictor is about the leering fantasy of getting laid when you know deep down in your teen heart of darkness that you’re the local nerd, hodad, geek, wimp, wusp, asshole, etc., whereas Ratt’s Dancing Undercover presumes sexual conquest and all the ennui surrounding the emotions of knowing you’re gonna get laid ’cause it’s part of the rock ’n’ roll instructions booklet that come with dolling yourself up and joining a slick pud-rocker band, which is, after all, what Ratt’s all about.

Point in fact: the first song on Alice’s Constrictor is called “Teenage Frankenstein,” a blitzkrieg ode to the teenaged outsider sullenly walking down the streets, listening to all those crowded, squabby voices in his head telling him about the vagaries of life and the verities of death, especially someone else’s. This song, in its own weird way, takes up where Alice left off on “I’m Eighteen” and “Is It My Body,” both quintessential teenbeat classics long and oft acknowledged.

From there, Constrictor takes us through the usual tour de Alice, starting with his leer ’n’ cheek zombie vaudeville pagan death chant, “Simple Disobedience,” a side glance into an alternate universe’s edition of Pat Robertson’s son busily decapitating Pope dolls while Dad’s out in the garden waiting for his latest God-O-Gram to flash across his video screen. It then scuddles into the nearly anthemic “The World Needs Guts” —and, hey, anthems ain’t that easy to write these days—into a pair of decliptiude and sensual sonic sextoons, “Trick Bag” and “Crawlin’ ” Finishing up this particular hell stomp is “The Great American Success Story,” an anti-yuppie statement for those of us who bought the entire ’60s concept and haven’t had a steady job, let alone gotten laid, since—and “He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask),” a noisy slashaganza which brings us back to our teenage Frankenstein, only now he’s stopped wandering the streets without purpose, his next step in the antiloneliness drill being the systematic demise of all those jerks out there who are getting laid. It’s good to have Alice, the real man behind the reptilian mask, back. Let’s lissen a little more carefully because he knows one thing: we’ve still got a long way to go.

Ratt’s Dancing Undercover, on the other hand, sucks.

I really don’t want to say anymore than that, but I suppose I must. Ratt started out being oily Aerosmith imitators and have since gone the way of the world, opting for the slick, two percent low-fat homogenized prodigal sonics and metal machismo you expect outta the Bon Jovi and Sammy Hagar school of pudrockers. They could easily be the house band for the Playboy Channel, y’know, softcore noise all the way. Pop metal has its place—and in my house, it’s usually in the wastebasket.

Honestly, this record is so homogenized that I put it on, and an hour later forgot that it had even played. It has noidentity, no pazzazz, nothing. OK. All bile aside, the two songs where Robbin Crosby takes on lead guitar chores-"Drive Me Crazy" and "Looking For Love"-show the possibilties this band could have if they just pulled their wicks out ta the shaky puddin' long enough to at least pay attention to their own potential. I don't have to talk about any of the other songs `cause you'll be hearing and hearing and hearing each and every one of them on MW for the next year or so. Dan cing Undercover will be a smash hit LP. Constrictor will struggle for every inch of ground it covers. That's the way of the world.

Oh yeah both records were produced by Beau Hill. Is that supposed to mean some thing!?!?