THE REPLACEMENTS Pleased To Meet Me (Sire)

by Ira Robbins

Like some stray dog you find in an alley, Minneapolis’s Replacements are a scruffy mongrel of a band: uncontrollable and ugly, but somehow irresistable. You sense intelligencesensitivity, even—behind the drippy, unfocused eyes and wobbly walk, but when you reach down to pet it, the muttfink spins around and bites you on the leg.

Pleased To Meet Me is the Mats’ first studio date since sacking guitarist Bob Stinson, who evidently embraced the band’s fuck-up ethos with a tad too much enthusiasm. To singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg’s—and perhaps producer Jim Dickinson’s—credit, the de-Stinsonized Mats mostly sound the same as ever; a sloppy genius pile of melodyladen guitar noise, amazing vocals and brilliantly savage lyrics, intermingled with lowkey bits of wistful reflection, half-cocked experimentation and an overriding don’t-give-adamn attitude.

Without actually impeding the music, Westerberg’s obvious artistic development, the landslide of critical/college radio adulation and the pressures/temptations of major-label land has had an effect. Fans who now prematurely mourn the erosion of the band’s iconoclastic edge may not be wrong long. But when I tell you this record contains the Mats’ first AOR/CHR/whatever-R sell-out—“Can’t Hardly Wait,” shyly buried at the end of side two—I can also swear that it’s great; a disturbingly calm song built on a guitar riff (echoed by superb Memphis-sound homwork) that casually twists your underpants around your ears.

Pleased To Meet Me is full of such apparent contradictions. “Valentine” boasts one of the wickedest backbeats heard since Charlie Watts last had brown hair, while “Skyway,” a solemn, sensitive ballad about sleeping (literally) on the road, forgoes percussion entirely. “Nightclub Jitters” is an offthe-mark attempt at capturing the same sort of ambience as Tim’s “Here Comes A Regular,” but the tinkling piano and string bass comes off more hokey than smokey. “Alex Chilton,” on the other hand, nails its point like a Magic Johnson stuff.

The Replacements have long invited elemental comparisons to the Rolling Stones and their offspring (e.g., Aerosmith, Kiss, Cheap Trick, N.Y. Dolls). Like Watts’n’Wyman, Chris Mars and Tommy Stinson are such a sublimely mindscrew rhythm section, you tend to forget they’re there; Westerberg’s sloppy guitar and vocals walk the same rugged path of self-destructive rock crazitude that has kept the Glimmer Twins alive all these years. Righteously raunchy workouts like “Shooting Dirty Pool,” “Red Red Wine,” “I Don’t Know” (a bitchy view of the rock road life with great gutbucket sax) and “I.O.U.” (“nothing”) could all have come off Exile, but those limey lugs never wrote lines as cleverly cutting as Elvis Westerberg’s trenchant wit spews forth here.

I love this band. It doesn’t matter at all that they’ll probably never make a flawless album: “perfection,” by definition, is a meaningless aspiration for them. No one who really cherishes the traditional precepts of rock ’n’ roll—energy, guts, excitement, teenagehood, recklessness, rebellion-can fail to grip what’s so incredible about the Replacements.

Color me impressed.

DAVID BOWIE Never Let Me Down (EMI)

The Picture of Dorian Bowie, in which the master remains young but his music begins to limp. Or the boy who cried wolf, so that when he’s finally being sincere we don’t believe him. How about cats that have nine lives? David Bowie’s gone through at least twice that.

Disclaimer. Ziggy Stardust is one of my all-time favorite albums; it was in my Top 10, printed in these very pages not too long ago. I’ve gone along with the Thin White Duke long after he’d turned into the sad, Pierrot parody of himself in final decline (“Ashes To Ashes”), the last time the Man of a Thousand Face Dances donned an interesting one. The inevitable artistic nosedive occured with (no surprise) his biggest commercial success, the underrated “Let’s Dance” single, which worked on a musical, if not metaphysical, level. Since then, except for the title song to Absolute Beginners (I’m a sucker for a Bowie croon), the pickings have been very slim indeed. The album which contained “Let’s Dance” was a hodge-podge and the one that followed, Tonight, an acknowledged wipe-out.

It’s been a very short three and a half years since that last LP, so DB’s new one is being greeted as a comeback in some quarters. Hell, when you’ve been away for that long, anything’s a comeback. He has taken an inordinate amount of care with it, but that doesn’t mean the record doesn’t rock ’n’ roll (just as a pair of negatives can turn out to be positive). The problem’s in the idea department. Supporters will no doubt see Never Let Me Down as a savvy synthesis of previous Bowie incarnations; its detractors a desperate plundering of his own past without a unifying coherent vision: I’m leaning toward the latter.

I recently interviewed film director John Landis on David Bowie as a performer (he directed him in Into The Night). After much thought, he suggested the thing that impressed him most about Bowie was “his professionalism”— that and his bad teeth. Anyway, the point is, David Bowie has never pretended (oh, yeah?) to be anything more than an actor coolly playing a role; he’s always mocked the notion of rock messiahs, and on Never Let Me Down, he gives the people what he thinks they want... a David Bowie retrospective or, a look back at his career.

The single “Day-In, DayOut,” a herky jerky throwback to the winning hiccupy popfunk of "Let’s Dance,” is a good start, even if the buzzwords mean little and the disturbing video less. "Time Will Crawl” is Aladdin Sane apocalypso glitter-trash, but the difference is in the level of selfconsciousness; while its predecessor’searnestness resulted in inadvertent humor, the new song’s harrowing imagery isn’t very funny at all. "Beat Your Drum” harks back to the super-romantic Bowie of ‘'Heroes,” and comes complete with a Frippertronic guitar solo courtesy of new addition Peter Frampton. “Never Let Me Down” is Bowie as John Lennon circa “Fame,” right down to the vamping funk guitars. The synthesized, stylized crowd noises which open "Zeroes” recall the alienation effect of "Ziggy Stardust,” while the “Within You Without You” psychedelic sitar goes back to the art-pop lyricism of The Man Who Sold The World. This game goes on. The doomy spoken intro to “Glass Spider” comes straight from Diamond Dogs, the gnarled inside-out guitars of “New York’s In Love” echo Lodger, while “ ’87 And Cry” shamelessly rips off “Roadrunner” by way of “White Light/ White Heat.” And I keep waiting for Mick Ronson to come in with the solo from “Sufragette City” on “Too Dizzy.” The only novelty is the falsetto’ed Prince-like soulshuffle of “Shining Star,” and that’s marred by a scratchy backbeat which purposefully disrupts the most interesting vocal performance on an album not filled with them.

I guess you could say Never Let Me Down did just that; let me down. Maybe it’ll make a good primer for first-time Bowie students. Maybe they’ll go back to Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, even Scary Monsters. And on CD, too! Hey, David Bowie ain’t stupid. He hasn’t run out of creative energy by a long shot. Just things to say.

Roy Trakin

I THE CULT Electric (Sire)

The word is this group is going to make it big this year which means you’ll have to finally learn to distinguish them from the Call, the Cure, the Church, the Cysts.. .Their last album Love, didn’t quite break out, though you probably heard the single "She Sells Sanctuary.” Electric, produced by Rick Rubin, is extremely clean sounding middleweight metal (substantial crunch, but judiciously meted out excess) which should appeal to those put off by the unrestrained vulgarity of the real thing. Heavy metal for people with taste. Ha ha. Anyway, enough of this unstructured introductory matter, let’s go right to the part where I fulfill my critical function by coming up with a phrase that succinctly sums up the flesh, blood, and soul of the ensemble in question. And today’s phrase is: these guys bite the big one.

Actually, I was kind of liking this record—it makes a nice, if familiar, loud buzz and thump to fill your living space—until, just doing my job, I started listening closer aind reading the lyric sheet. I am convinced that the lyric sheet is, for more groups than not, a bad concept. Sgt. Pepper popularized the idea, and 20 years later what one remembers are not the great lyric sheets one has curled up with, but rather those smart souls who knew that a certain ambiguity worked in their favor—I doubt, for example, if middle period Stones (Exile included) or early Costello or even the first few Clash records would’ve had quite the same impact if they had spelled it all out for our perusal. And it doesn’t help that these happen to be the silliest lyrics I’ve had my attention intentionally directed toward since I can’t remember. Some exemplary examples: "Poor man sad man you should be a glad man/Stand up for your rights peace talkin’ about peace /Good dog bad dog roll over and play dead/Do it again baby peace peace dog yeah” (“Peace Dog”); “I saw the devil/The contrary man/I saw the devil down the long long road/He said to me boy, boy, boy/I want your soul/I said no/Yeah yeah” (“King Contrary Man”—great title, guys); “Jim was a boogie man/took a shotgun in his hand/turned on dude candy man,” enough, I can’t go on. That last gem was from “Outlaw.” A glint of intentional humor in any of these songs might mitigate the effect. Hard to say. The impression one gets from the lyrics, with their stilted attempts at down and dirty sentiments, the wanton piling on of unrelated cliches, and the insertion of lines and in one case (“King Contrary Man”) whole verses that seem to belong in other songs, is of an imitation far removed from the original inspiration.

They fare a little better with the music, though the sense of them knowing the what but not the why of things persists (their cover of “Born To Be Wild” is emblematic—slowed down and flabby, garnished with prefab hysteria). Stealing in music is traditional and not necessarily bad—it’s what you do with the pilfered licks that matters. What the Cult do with the riff from “Start Me Up,” Robert Plant’s "Baby, baby, baby” and Billy Duffy’s 20-years-ofmetal-in-under-60-seconds solos, is use them in the service of a well-polished mediocre band destined to sell a lot of records this year.

Richard C. Walls

TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS

Let Me Up

(I’ve Had Enough)

(MCA)

Had enough of what? Putting out bloated double live albums with horns and background singers? Backing (hopefully) revitalized Bob Dylan on tour? Changing producers in the middle of a record?

These recent moves may have suggested a band searching for new directions— but the wheel continued turning, and now they’re pretty much back where they started stylistically, albeit with a decade’s experience under their belts. Fortunately for them, their initial inspirations (Byrds, Stones) are highly influential at the moment, so the Heartbreakers can go back to their roots and remain trendy at the same time.

So on Let Me Up..., these guys sound thoroughly sure of themselves and are not seeking any outside help. They arrange and play all the instruments, while Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell take care of the production and the songs, collaborating with Mr. Dylan only on the first single, "Jammin’ Me.”

“Jammin’ Me” sets the tone for about half of this recordrock ’n’ roll in the 70s Stones style, sweaty urgency sweetened just a tad by their smoother vocal blend. “The Damage You’ve Done” and “How Many More Days” fall just short of Exile-era intensity maybe, but the title track is snarly enough to have made Dirty Work.

Not that their folk rock side is negelected. Petty’s always been a first-rate McGuinner, but the dour sentiments of “It’ll All Work Out” and the curlicue guitar solo on “A Self-Made Man” hint that these guys may have caught up with Richard Thompson as well. No complaints here.

Granted, we’re in the late ‘80s, so there’s a certain amount of high-tech creep happening also. The backing tracks to “All Mixed Up” and “My Life/Your World” could have been borrowed from the Cars while the singer of “My Life” could be Mark Knopfler’s double instead of Mr. P. Everyone tries out a new machine now and then, but a new throat, Tom?

Overall, this is a lot solider album than I expected from the Heartbreakers at this late date.

Still don’t know what’s been keeping Tom and the boys down, but as long as they can get it up for LPs like this every couple of years, I ain’t gonna bitch.

Michael Davis

I JULIAN COPE Saint Julian (Island)

Unless you’re one of those nerdnicks who charts each little blip on the British pop scene, the name Julian Cope won’t ring too many bells. Mr. C was top drip in the Teardrop Explodes, an over-hyped early ’80s band that supposedly played nouveau psychedelia. In reality, the group was another undercooked stew of half-formed ideas, probably recorded too soon for its own good. No big deal there.

Well, Cope’s time has obviously come at last, because Saint Julian is one fine, compelling platter o’ sounds. His first American solo LP, following some U.K.-only efforts, this sprawling disc realizes all the unfocused ambitions of his Teardrop days and adds some intriguing new twists to boot. Above all, note the strong, albeit prickly, vision—Saint Julian surveys our wretched earthly state and looks heavenward for help. Is there no relief? Hard to tell for sure what Cope believes.

Enough about heavy content for now, since the record’s sonic wonders hit ya first. Like Ziggy-era Bowie or early Roxy Music, Cope makes robust rock ’n’ roll tha$ ranges far and wide in its quest to give your ears a thrill. “Eve’s Volcano” and the title cut soar on the wings of lush melodies, buoyed by elegant arrangements; add gimmicky effects, which he wisely didn’t, and you’d have flower-power pop circa 1968. “A Crack In The Clouds” casts a mournful spell reminiscent of Roxy’s “Sea Breezes,” with even more authority, perhaps. Listeners preferring their big sounds to rock out will dig “World Shut Your Mouth” and “Trampolene,” high-powered combinations of crunch and class. And for a dose of raw power, “Spacehopper” rattles and clangs wickedly, while the manic “Pulsar” features a riveting impression of Iggy at his most possessed: A really big variety shoe, y’know?

Saint Julian is coherent, rather than chaotic, because of Cope himself. Though no prize as a singer, our Julian is an engaging performer who can mutter “I keep my love in a little brown bag” with the surly authority of ol’ Jim Morrison, then trill sweetly, Sting-like “Here I stand awaiting a loving command.” And either way, he seems to be having great fun, thus guaranteeing mucho entertainment for you, the listener. Cope’s just plain personable, which allows him to transcend the often-dense production of Ed Stasium and Warne Livesey, not to mention ride herd on his driving little band. (Gold stars to drummer Chris Whitten and bassist James Eller, by the way.)

Back to the Message. While the album’s title and pseudoreligious cover imagery may seem like cheap attempts to provoke outrage, I suspect Cope is deadly serious. Almost every tune alludes to man’s alienation from God. In the title track he sees “millions dying” and rages, “remind me not to pray to you;” “Screaming Secrets” finds Cope howling “Jesus help me” as he pursues paradise. Or consider the following outburst from “Eve’s Volcano," set to the jauntiest of tempos: “I can’t seem to win/My heart starts beating and I’m covered in sin.” Dwell on this stuff and you start to get the creeps.

But hey, it’s only a record, one with pleasures that far outweigh its shortcomings. Saint Julian can be served as light entertainment, meaty food for thought and about anything else, depending on your mood. Has Julian Cope created a classic? Time will decide. In the meantime, enjoy.

Jon Young

AL GREEN Soul Survivor (A&M)

Word on the street sez Al Green’s new LP is his return to secularism, which ain’t truly so. Not that it makes a difference—since the big grits-dunk and stage-fall sent the cuddly one scooting away from carnal knowledge and toward salvation, he’s still managed to come up with some fine records. Higher Plane (’81) and I’ll Rise Again (’83) ain’t quite Call Me (73) or The Belle Album (’77), but they’re soulful every which way, and they’ll convert nonbelievers (to the singer, that is). Reunited with old produce^ Willie Mitchell and old drummer Leroy Hodges on ’85s He Is The Light, Al settled back into the comfy bubblegum-Stax sway of yore, but on the follow-up, Mitchell and Hodges are gone, and so is the groove—the idea here is to get the Reverend on heathen radio, and ain’t no pre-disco bump gonna pass the mass-muster in the modern age.

Thankfully, though, only two cuts on Soul Survivor get the full CD-ready Winwood-peppy crossover-glossy emasculation-treatment: Besides being side^openers, “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” and "Soul Survivor” are the only tracks “arranged” by producers Eban Kelly and Jimi Randolph, and except for the keyboards in the former, “all instruments” on both songs are played by Randolph—such is life after Prince. Otherwise, we get two covers of long-despised schmaltz landmarks, both ambiguous enough lyric-wise to serve either holy or unholy purposes; the souped-up “You’ve Got A Friend” runs pretty smooth ’til Billy Preston enters the picture, and, “He Ain’t Heavy” comes off so muzaky it’s almost not there, which is just as well. And we get two renditions of sacred standbys, one ("Yield Not To Temptation”) too nauseatingly saccharine to even discuss, the other (“23rd Psalm,” for which Al somehow takes writer credit) actually kinda spooky, with Christ’s servant even quivering like a Moslem mullah on the high notes.

Which leaves the LP’s three best numbers—a signifyin’ hand-clapper with an OK sprung bassline and some farout speaking in tongues ( Jesus Will Fix It”), a 50-second fragment that actually approximates that classic Memphisera bounce (“So Real To Me”), and my personal pick to click, an intimate lust-croon that I’d call the most gorgeous Sam Cooke rip since Steve Perry’s “Foolish Heart” ("You Know And I Know”). All told, a pretty mediocre disc—too many Al Green bylines (his least smarmy God-records don’t have any), lame remake choices (this guy’s taken Joe South, Dionne Warwick, Lulu, the Bee Gees, Hank Williams, and the Doors all the way to heaven in the past), too much anonymous background-chorustry, and the cat be needin’ a rhythm section bad.

Which ain’t to say I don’t still “worship” him. Come hell or Hi (Records) water, Al beats the satin-sheet out of love-bunny disciples like Luther Vandross and Freddie Jackson (and beats the Jesus out of fellow born-agains like U2 and Stryper), no problem—loose, toasty, playful as a poundpuppy, his voice soaks even the most maudlin MOR in greasy Georgia-boy charm, then swoops exultingly through the Pearly Gates smack-dab into your tingle-center. I’m giving up asparagus (pr Lent in hopes that the Zeus upstairs will make “You Know And I Know” a big hit. Next step: hook Al up with Slayer.

Chuck Eddy

DON’T SLEEP IN THE SUBWAY, NELSON

PRINCE

Sign O’ The Times (Paisley Park)

Jim Feldman

by

Unlike Bruce Springsteen I and (to be 7/mely) U2, Prince 1 neither accepts nor embraces I any populist iconic status. His 1 persona—a literally brilliant I construction of tabloid titillaI tion, oddball antics, melodraI ma/mystery, and kaleidoscopic I visuals—is blatant show biz, I but with a demanding and/or I indifferent edge: it builds on I public prurience (“ControverI sy,” couplet 2: "Am I black or I white/Am I straight or gay”— I etc.) and comments on it I ("Controversy,” couplet 1: “I I just can’t believe/AII the things I people say”) by eccentric exI aggeration. His musical and I lyrical concerns reflect a per1 sonal philosophy—“I wish I there was no black and white/I I wish there were no rules” J (“Controversy” again)—mark I him as a true radical in the I mainstream music business. I Yes, he wants us to buy his reI cords, but ultimately he I doesn’t care what we think. I (Just two of many examples: I He followed up Prince, a huge I success with black fans, with I Dirty Mind, which not only 1 alienated that following, but ! which he also knew would be I unable to garner much airplay I of any kind. And after the * megasuccess of Purple Rain, he released the textbookpsychedelic Around The World In A Day; actually, this move may be interpreted as the sole instance in which he did consider the public, as the LP had incredible shock value; but it also rang false, and thus became the exception that proves my point.)

Prince’s self-declared freedom from commercial and critical expectations accounts for much of his potency as current pop’s master eclectic and synthesist, which fact one listen to Sign O’ The Times makes abundantly dear. OK, it should have been a single LP, just because—but the relatively lesser cuts would compromise a pretty terrific album in themselves. In my opinion, Sign O’ The Times is Prince’s best record since Dirty Mind (still my fave)—but not merely because the songs are so well developed and so immediately enjoyable. Rather, never before has Prince so skillfully, effortlessly, and fully revealed himself as that rarest of beings— the uninhibited and fearless child of modern pop music. Essentially a one-man show (the Revolution pops in on the livefrom-Paris “It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night”; Wendy and Lisa, Sheila E., Sheena Easton, and a couple of other artists help out here and there; and Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss take care of, respectively, all sax and trumpet parts), Sign O’ The Times offers up pop, rock, sweet soul, funk, ballads, acid rock, metal, psychedelia, a hymn and a kiddie song; there are references galore—Sly Stone, the Beatles, James Brown, Little Richard, Joni Mitchell (even a snatch of “Help Me”), Jefferson Airplane, etc., as well as earlier Prince. There’s no need to waste space on examples— you’ve got ears. But Prince isn’t playing “I can do this, I can do that, and I can do that, too.” With unerring control, he mixes it all up, and the results are logical and big fun. Giving the record a startling sense of spontaneous invention, he juxtaposes wildly varying vocal and instrumental textures, tempos, harmonies—and, hot damn, it all works.

Sign O’ The Times is a party album, and—mercifully, in a society in which abstinence is the hateful and ignorant answer to the AIDS crisis—Prince reminds us yet again and most emphatically that sex is still the best way to have a good time. But like the rest of us, Prince is growing older, and three songs—“If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “Strange Relationship,” and “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man”—focus maturely and honestly (and cleverly) with the psychology of relationships.

Sex, love and dancing form the substance of Prince’s extremely personal message on Sign O’ The Times. Only in “The Cross” does he deal with religious salvation. As for politics, he confronts the world situation in the title cut—but again, in personal terms. The end may be near, as the headlines scream, and something must be done, but Prince isn’t about to lead us into battle; instead, sublimely, he cuts directly to the moral imperative that will lead us to act—“Let’s fall in love, get married, have a baby/We’ll call him Nate (if it’s a boy).” (Unfortunately, in the same song, he teams up with Nancy Reagan and all the other hypocrites who “just say no” in his take on “reefer.”) But as already mentioned, Prince isn’t asking for approval. Nevertheless, except for that one brief lapse of good sense, Sign O’ The Times deserves mass approval.

I BRYAN ADAMS Into The Fire (A&M)

Unfortunately I can’t add a thing to Michael Davis’s review of Bryan Adams’s Reckless, as published in the April ’85 issue of this magazine. Everything Davis said then goes double for Adams’s new Into The Fire, as this megapopster’s had two whole years to grow, but hasn’t gained an inch. Davis hit the totem pole right on the head when he described fair-haired Bryan’s sound as “a sandpaper sandwich made with a whole lotta bread.”

For you folks who enjoy destroying your healthy minds 12 ways, Into The Fire extends the lyrics’ cliche-quotient to dangerous new levels. Check out these title-tells-all selections: “Heat Of The Night,” “Victim Of Love,” “Hearts On Fire,” “Only The Strong Survive.” (Good Lord! Even Foreigner put that chestnut down their digital Insinkerator by now.) But Bryan’s many fans seem to love their obviousness obvious. Memo to Harlequin Books: you should invest in acquiring Bryan Adams’s fan club mailing list now, if you need a whole new generation of consumers who can’t recognize emotion unless it’s written in platitudes 30 feet high.

While I’m on my acne-soapbox here, I should go on record as opposing the press’s tired comparison of Bryan Adams to John Mellencamp. Yeah, they both wear jeans well, and they both vocalize hoarse and sincere, but the life-saving difference in Mellencamp is that he readily confesses to his humble-Hoosier identity in almost every song, whereas Adams designs his material to be so rigidly generic that you never get a clue to his origins. He’s so all-American (in a displayed-at-the-checkout sense) that he was probably hatched in Taiwan.

Waitaminute! I’ve just been handed a bulletin! My-daughter-the-lover-of-(almost)-everything-Canadian, Ms. Sarah Riegel, has informed me that Bryan Adams actually hails from the Province of British Columbia, or “Lotus Land,’’ as she calls it. However, she’s no fan of the guy, she thinks that Adams and all the other Canuck pop poseurs—Corey Hart, Glass Tiger, Rush and Margaret Trudeau—should be exiled to the Lower 48 where, she claims, they belong. Sarah eminently prefers her Canadian r ’n’ r to emanate from the identity-rich likes of D.O.A., Martha & The Muffins, and ail of those 20-odd Vancouver hardcore outfits named for small prairie rodents who voted Social Credit in 1938.

Hear that, Bryan? If you’re going to capture at least one natural-born American teen (flesh of my flesh) out there, you’re going to have to revert to kind pronto. She likes her Canadians real Canadian, and if you get ethnic quick you can redeem yourself artistically and make the summer of ’89 the best days of your life. Eh, Bryan?

Richard Riegel

A MAN CALLED PETER

PETER WOLF Come As You Are (EMI)

Rick Johnson

by

I never could stand Faye Dunaway. Oh, all right—I’ll admit that after the first time I watched her crawling all over Warren Beatty in Bonnie & Clyde, my underpants had to be designated a National Marine Sanctuary, but that’s it. By the time she got around to her bizarre interpretation of Joan Crawford as a Little League mom of the living dead in Mommy D., I’d had enough.

Never could figger what a dyed-in-the-woof like Peter Wolf saw in her, either. I know rock stars are infatuated with actresses and models, but, to me, it’s just further evidence that most musicians’ brains couldn’t even pass the Saran Wrap Challenge. So I was glad to hear it when they split up, thinking that Wolf could be successfully reintroduced to the wild.

Well, it took awhile, but Pete finally made it, even though he definitely went looking for trouble when he made this LP. The Woof himsejf sez he “tried to capture the energy and personality of early rock ’n’ roll” by assembling a house band and recording “live” in the studio. Kind of reminds me of the Wild Kingdom show where they went looking for sea snakes. On purpose!

But anyhoo, Come As You Are is one animal of a record, fellow arm chair game wardens. I know that choosing between the performance and the material as the chief selling point here is as important as remembering to pierce your kumquats before cooking, but this time out, Wolf shines in both categories. And his idea to put together that house band was right on target. None of that session-man-of-themonth club here, no siree. Pete acknowledges that “they can make great technical contributions, but can also end up sounding cold and uninspired.” Session reviewers is what this business needs.

Don’t recognize most of the names here, so let’s just say this is one hoppin’ band. When they get going on his better comps, like the title cut or “Can’t Get Started,” they sound a lot like what’s-his• name’s E Street Band on a particularly inspired night. Slick guitar, humongous drums—and a horn section that should be arrested for hooting a concealed weapon.

Wolf is in top voice throughout, howling like a man who’s having his tonsils put back in. In fact, before playing “Thick As Thieves,” you might I want to have a fire wall conI structed around your earI drums.

Most of the mid-tempo cuts I are sharp too. You won’t feel I like a spectator at the fungus I races. Don’t miss “Magic I Moon,” a surprisingly tasty baiI lad, but consider missing the I one major dog, “Love On Ice,” I which sounds too much like I the Stones sniffing around Billy Squier’s fire hydrant.

Last item on the agenda: hey, Pete! Grow your beard back nowl Without it, you don’t look like a Peter Wolf. You just look like a Peter.