RECORDS

RECORDS

WHO’S THE BOSS?

JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP The Lonesome Jubilee (Polygram)

Just got through watching the video of John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” on TV.

The swaggering little brat obviously thought he was pretty cool stuff back then, when in fact, he was beggin” for a swift kick in the behind. Which only makes his invigorating new opus, The Lonesome Jubilee, all the more satisfying. No doubt you’ve observed Mellencamp’s steady transformation from rock fool to populist defender (it’d be hard to miss). What you probably haven’t appreciated fully is the genuine depth of his feelings. Well, friends, here’s the perfect opportunity.

The Lonesome Jubilee may be a collection of tunes depicting ordinary folk struggling to survive tough times, but, for us casual listeners, it’s also about learning to shake your wellworn cynicism. While all sorts of good people (Bruce, Steve Earle, et al.) have recently chronicled the non-glamorous life, no one has rendered its frequent heartbreaks and occasional victories with more aching power than Mr. Meliencamp. Naturally, it’s hard to believe any big-deal pop star would really be interested in such a thing, but John boy clearly is. Give him half a chance, and you’ll be convinced.

Yep, these rough ’n’ ready songs are bursting with plenty o’ spirit, any way you slice ’em. Sprawling, loosejointed rockers like “Paper In Fire” and “Hot Dogs And Hamburgers” set the tempo, staking out a turf where hitting the right groove is more important than technical exactitude. In keeping with Mellencamp’s professed love of ’60s classics, “Hard Times For

an Honest Man” recreates the country spunk of the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman,” (thanks to Lisa Germano’s swinging fiddle) while “Cherry Bomb” offers sweet nostalgia in the vein of the Rascals’ “Groovin’. ”

Although Mellencamp’s hearty, husky vocals are exciting stuff—note his Dylanesque gruffness on “Paper In Fire” and the vigorous white soul shouting throughout—it’s all in the name of giving the songs that compelling oomph. And oomph they do! Without romanticizing, the jumpy “Down And Out In Paradise” paints chilling portraits of endangered lives, framed by John’s angry barks and hard staccato shots from stickman Kenny Aronoff (Can anybody think of a more inventive rock drummer today?). “Check It Out” and “The Real Life” shift the spotlight from material to emotional deprivation, yet reinforce the impression something’s desperately wrong with our American Dream. Don’t be surprised if a chill creeps up

your spine when Meliencamp sighs: “This is all we’ve learned about living.”

I know what you skeptics are thinking—but the answer is “no”: The Lonesome Jubilee is not pretentious. There’s an edgy quality to the performances that keeps Meliencamp rooted in the here and now, rather than up on some cliched workingclass Olympus. He sings “There’s too many people with empty hands” raspy and breathless, because it’s a fact, not a pose. And if reaching out to all the oppressed in “We Are The People” seems a bit presumptuous, so be it. Rock ’n’ roll has done far too little to fight the tide during the age of Reagan, so just hearing him talk about racism and the homeless constitutes an improvement.

Not forgetting sterling contributions by all concerned, including accordionist John Cascella and backing singers Pat Peterson and Crystal Taliefero, The Lonesome Jubilee is one heck of

a record. Besides crackling like the dickens from start to finish, it’s got a good heart and plenty of soul. You can’t do much better than that.

Jon Young

DEF LEPPARD

Hysteria

(Polygram)

GUNS N’ ROSES Appetite For Destruction (Geffen)

Was it really worth the wait? Four years and nearly two million dollars later, Def Leppard has finally unveiled their new “masterpiece.” What Hysteria’s constipated production reveals is that the worst thing that’s happened to Def Leppard is not Rick Allen’s accident, but success. What’s missing here is the heart of the band. Def Lep have lost their youthful kick, attitude and focus. Instead, they’ve slathered on the echo, effects and formulas. Buried in processing, you can barely understand a word Joe Elliot is singing—but that’s OK. The lyrics you can hear (“love is a bomb,” “walk this way”) are either cliches or non-sequiturs. And the once biting guitar licks that helped put these guys at the forefront of the new wave of British metal now sound like Andy Summers’ spacey doodle outtakes. Even the Leps’ trademark harmonies have become swollen and predictable. The one guy who is doing something new is drummer Rick Allen, but only out of necessity. His parts, with or without the aid of sampling and computers, sound as good, if not better, than ever. Hysteria’s real tragedy is that it has no great rock songs, merely sweetened jams (“Women,” “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” “Rocket,” “Armegeddon It”). Only the ballads, “Love Bites” (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the more galvanizing “Love Hurts”) and “Love And Affection” are sustained ideas and real compositions.

Photos by (left) (top right) (bottom right)

The sticker on the album proudly announces Hysteria has 12 songs and 63 minutes, as if it’s a squeezably soft supermarket item. But it’s no bargain. The whole spiel would probably take half an hour if most of these numbers weren’t salted with dub sections (“Rocket”—6:34) and Sgt. Pepperings (“Gods Of War”—6:32). And the sound quality, for all the dough spent, is dirt poor. Then again, none of Hysteria is any worse than the throwaways that filled out High ’N Dry or Pyromania. It just doesn’t equal Def Leppard’s best stuff (“Foolin’,” “Photograph,” “Rock Of Ages”), or anyone else’s, either. While the Leps have been caking on the studio makeup for four years, a guy from New Jersey has effortlessly stolen their hard pop thunder. Now, after straining and squeezing out their Pyromania follow-up, Def Leppard ought to get right back on the pot, like management mates Metallica, and knock off a sloppy, happy EP of covers in three weeks. Maybe then, they’ll remember what rock ’n’ roll feels like.

What Guns N’ Roses, on the other hand, have got going for them is feel, but that’s about it. They’re another L.A. schmatta and tattoo band trying to walk this way on the wild side— what hath Aerosmith wrought? Begging us to feel their serpentines (“Welcome To The Jungle”), bragging of their acquaintance with cheap wine (“Nightrain”) and more dangerous substances (“Mr. Brownstone”), sex (“Anything Goes”) and the law (“Out Ta Get Me”), Guns N’ Roses try desperately to convince us they’re sleazier, nastier Hollywood mothers than the rriotliest crue. If it isn’t especially shocking, it’s because it’s all been done before, and with tougher hooks and sharper lyrics—namely by the Stones, whose L.A.-based Exile On Main Street phase is an obvious model for GN’R’s sound and image. But then, early Elvis, with merely the power of suggestion, was a lot more threatening than these little snots, whose idea of a great line is “It’s so easy, so f—’ easy.”

The guitar duo of Joe Perry clones Izzy Stradlin and the mysterious nolast-named Slash (whose street credibility might be harmed by the rumor that his family are close personal friends of that famous gutter rat David

Geffen) is edgy and energetic, if not unique. GN’R’s liability is their stiff drummer, who’s got all of the finesse of Ritchie Valens’ brother Bob in the La Bamba flick. But the band’s ace is singer W. Axl Rose, who’s a better Tyler mimic than the thousands who’ve been crawling out of their holes recently. (Question: If people want to imitate someone who can’t sing, why don’t they get with the program and imitate Lemmy?) Young W. not only beats Vince Neil and other L.A. pussycats, he’s a better singer than the old Boston wailer himself. This guy

may actually be a great talent. One cut, he comes off like Brian Johnson (“Nightrain”), the next drops down an octave to Johansen-doing-Eric Burdon level (“It’s So Easy”), then turns into Janis Joplin (“Paradise City,” “Sweet Child 0’ Mine”)! But what’s even more interesting than his chameleon vocal colors is the outright sentimental streak of his “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and the strangely moralistic tone that informs his reading of the Jungle’s “delights.” He approaches Hollywood’s sleaze the way Paul Schrader did in Hardcore as a voyeur

who’s horrified rather than tantalized. Maybe the fact that he comes from the same state as John Mellencamp is something Rose ought to exploit— he can’t hide it. If he can get beyond the limitations of Guns N’ Poses, he could become someone to take very seriously.

Deborah Frost & Albert Bouchard

PAUL KELLY & THE MESSENGERS Gossip (A&M)

Aussie rock came of age in 1986 with the emergence of Crowded House, whose delectable debut album picked up where Rubber Soul left off. Now we get Kelly & Co., with their sprawling evocation of Dylan & the Band’s Basement Tapes. In its original form, the 15-track Gossip LP (or 17-track, hour-long CD) contained two-dozen cuts, but there’s still more than enough on this pruned American version to qualify the record as epic.

Like Dylan in his Woodstock period, Kelly has written a passel of grainy vignettes based on primal themes, like offing Dad (“Before The Old Man Died’’), taking revenge on the bearer of bad tidings (“Don’t Harm The Messenger”), watching one’s mate wither away (“Incident On South Dowling”), going berserk in the heat of battle (“The Execution”)—I mean, is this guy death-obsessed or what?! He sings these songs/fables in a reversed and rustic Nashville Skyline whine/drawl (somewhere between Mark Knopfler and Lloyd Cole), which underscores their arcane character.

Frankly, all this well-crafted esoterica would be about as exciting as watching paint dry were it not for the presence of the Messengers, a scintillating four-piece rock ’n’ roll band that never fails to make Kelly’s tunes seem cool and crunchy, even when they’re nothing of the sort. These guys (guitarist Steve Connolly, keyboardist Peter Bull, bassist Jon Schofield, and drummer Michael Barclay) embroider the material with all sorts of ear-catching details—fuguey Hammond organs, glistening guitar fills, Godzilla bass lines, trap-door percussion and the like—that serve to overtly express the psychological undercurrents Kelly’s austere vocalizing only intimates. At times, he and his bandmates seem more like friendly adversaries than allies—and the band invariably comes out on top.

Of the 17 cuts here (yup, I got the CD), a half-dozen are yawners, and another half-dozen are passable narratives animated by taut arrangements/performances. The remaining five are tasty indeed—and that adds up to half a standard album’s worth. The only “serious” song among ’em is the aforementioned “The Execution,” whose harrowing plotline is strafed relentlessly by a tracer guitar riff incendiary enough to make the Edge jealous. “Darling It Hurts” (A&M’s choice for the first single) is a roadhouse rocker with dangerously high blood pressure and a Felix Cavaliere doppelganger on the Hammond. Zealous vocal harmonies lift the choruses of the furious folk-rocker “Leaps And Bounds” to Celticanthem heights.

Best of all, though, are the soulfully spooky “Last Train To Heaven” and the Beatlesque “Before Too Long.” On these two songs, Kelly discovers the vocal/compositional niche that evades him elsewhere on Gossip. To his credit, he doesn’t write filler, and his ambitions are admirable. With the sturdy support of the Messengers, Kelly can pursue his vocation adventurously—knowing that when he stumbles, they’ll be right there below him with the net. Once he makes the distinction between quantity and quality (self-editing is a learnable skill) and zeroes in on his true voice, Kelly will be more than an audacious upstart— he’ll be a force to be reckoned with. In the meantime, the best thing he can do is keep the boys in the band happy.

Bud Scoppa

TOM WAITS FOR NO ONE

TOM WAITS Frank’s Wild Years (island)

Oh boy! The new Tom Waits album is out—and you can interpret “out” any way you wanna. It’s available—and it’s out there.

Where? Some strange side of Chicago, I guess, where the stage production of Frank’s Wild Years played during the summer of ’86. This record is as much the Chicago of the Art Ensemble and Sun Ra as it is the old stomping ground of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, while this music resembles rock’s primal past more than its (primarily) pristine present.

Or maybe it’s just the contemporary pop of a parallel universe, one where the drum kit hasn’t been pieced together yet. It sounds like Waits scattered a percussion playpile throughout a junkyard, tossed the sticks to his skinman, and then told him to play die whole landscape. This frees up the music from the control of old Mama Heartbeat, but, hey, who needs her when bad Lady Lurch is on the prowl?

Of course, this puts more pressure on the bass to keep things together. But Tom’s always put a lot of weight on die bass, and his bottom end boys keep these tunes wobbling but still on their feet. The occasional horns sound like Maceo Parker (of James Brown fame) and Rahsaan Roland Kirk shaking saxes with each other, and when you hear the wheezing pump organs and the meilotrons that smell like last week’s cheese pizza, just remember that Waits was the guy who wrote “The Piano Has Been Drinking” back when he was making normal-sounding records.

All this musical weirdness does a good job of mirroring the changing mental/emotional states of the play’s central character, Frank, who dreams of “taking” New York while nearly freezing to death on an East St. Louis park bench. His reality is awash with dreams and desires; his drunkenness squints painfully at moments of sobriety.

Frank’s kaleidoscopic consciousness demands a ridiculous range of characterizations, and Waits is up to the challenge. He stumbles brilliancy from a babbling shaman' to a Vegas showman, from a Weilly coyote to a born-again bluesman dying down on Harry Partch’s farm. Frank vacillates between upbeat statements of intent and ballads of regret; Tom sings from the raw essence of each song and if that means delivering falsetto sandpaper through a Radio Shack bullhorn, he’s game.

Now, in between the jungle tangos and the mid-East banjo boogies, there is also some rock ’n’ roll. "Hang On St. Christopher” suggests the offspring of a liason between LA. Woman and Captain Beefheart’s Clear Spot, hitting the road to Reno with half

The Marlboro Man lives!

a tank of regular, a Bible and a lobotomy. “Yesterday Is Here” could be a welcome addition to Chris Isaak’s repertoire, while “Cold Cold Ground” is saved from the grave by some deft accordion courtesy of LobO David Hidalgo.

On the whole, then, this LP turns out to be looser, leaner and loonier than either Rain Dogs or Swordfishtrombones, so if you’re just discovering this guy, you might wanna begin with one of those. If you’re more overtly adventurous, however, come on in. The water’s blind!

Michael Davis

I MADONNA (& FRIENDS) Who’s That Girl (Sire)

I look forward to the release of each new Madonna film with the same witless anticipation I would the results of our local duck blind lottery if I favored the slaughter of migrating waterfowl. I mean, the gal gives good pistil (some say stamen), but her collective

acting performance could easily qualify her for the National Wandering Patients Registry.

Her records are a lot better. Except, this isn’t a Madonna record. It’s not even a bad Madonna record. It’s a bad Michael Jackson record. Face it— she’s been borrowing bigtime from M.J. since the day she donned her first lawn and garden accessories. Now that she’s risen to the top (like the ticks in the untreated tube), she ain’t about to change horsies. Now we know what Michael’s hiding from.

This being a “Various Artists” conglomeration, it’s time to break out the old der/de-and-conquer strategy. In the time-chuckled-over tradition of soundtrack LPs, you the buyer get a couple of songs you want and a bunch of fly hors d’oeuvres. If you, the buyer, don’t mind forking over tall dollars for less than half a Madonna album, fork on.

The big M’s four tunes here will in-

spire none but the most true-blue Madonna junkies to leap about like loggerhead turtles in a hatching frenzy. I’ll admit I can’t resist the title cut, though. It’s got that special kind of catchiness that grabs you on the first exposure and holds on tightly enough to be cast in Alien III. Plus nifty Spanish lyrics that I can’t figure out nohow. I tried my Fawcett World-Wide Spanish-English Dictionary, but kinda doubt she’s singing either of my probable translations: “How much is this bunch of asparagus” or “Can I have these enlarged here?”

Her other three tracks are simply el stinko in any tongue. “Causing A Commotion” rides in on a killer bass line you could almost hang pregnant gorillas from, but dissolves into the sort of buzzing, clicking and whining occasionally heard in the background of a Jacksons mix. Way in the background. “Look Of Love,” an attempted blockbuster ballad, exhibits uselessness beyond discussion, while her final effort on this disc, the percussion-ravaged “Can’t Stop,” at least bears some novelty value. Right, and so does a trick boutonniere.

The butt of the iceberg is the five remaining tracks here. Club Nouveau’s unbearably fonky “Step By Step” did get a rise out of me. Weighing in at just under five minutes, it’s the sort of rhythm bore sometimes included so+: «at reviewers can go to the bathroom without missing anything.

The dealer passes on Michael Davidson and Duncan Faure’s brilliant noises, but I should probably mention Coati Mundi’s unforgettable “El Coco Loco” since we’re here. We all know what “el” and “loco” are, and my handy dictionary says “coco” means either coconut palm or bogeyman. Hope that helps. All the song consists of is some fool yelling “I’m bad! I’m so, so bad!,” which I thought was kinda funny. After all, Madonna has never expressed any sense of humor in public, except for her choice of spouses.

So laugh it up, Madonna fans, or should I say ventiladors? You wanna know in plain and simple terms what this record really is? Well, pardon my espanol, but it’s nothing but a big pile of (inaudible)...

Rick Johnson

JOE ELY

Lord Of The Highway (Hightone)

As anyone with half a brain will tell you, successfully mixing together rock and country is a very difficult thing to do. These days a lot of praise is flying through the air for guys like Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle (both of whom put the extra weight on the country portion). So I recently got to wondering: does anybody remember when Joe Ely was valiantly trying to blaze a similar trail several years ago? Before Yoakam was afraid to walk around without his hat and Earle began his multiple divorces, Ely was out there, shooting hard for the killer synthesis of western and roll—and getting criminally ignored for his efforts..

Most of his albums were maddeningly uneven—and this new one’s certainly no exception. But when he was on—and his red-hot band put it to the floor as he belted out one of those atmospheric originals—he was close to unbeatable. I’d say he really hit his stride around ’80-’81 when he made Live Shots, an excellent sampler of some of his most shining moments, and the wonderful Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, which was his best work to date.

Photo by

It’s been over three years since Ely’s last record, and I was all set to gear up for this new one. Lord knows I’ve tried harder than hell to like it a lot, but it is ultimately a disappointment. As previously stated, most Ely records are very much up-and-down affairs. So while you have Joe going at the top of his form (“Everybody Got Hammered”), you also have Joe hitting the bottom of the barrel (the interminably meandering “Letter To L.A.” to which I can only add: Return To Sender).

Elsewhere, longtime friend/associate/songwriting contributor Butch Hancock checks in with a pair of likeable-if-lesser efforts. The title cut is the better of these, and Ely’s current

band seems to think so too, as they put more power behind it. Sorry to flash back again, but this band, though a strong unit and featuring Bobby “Where’s Mick and Keith?” Keyes, is no match for the smoking outfit Ely ran wild with at the turn of the decade.

It’s really odd. For every two-bit throwaway like “Me And Billy The Kid” (so they never got along—big deal) or the Stones-ish “Are You Listenin’ Lucky?” there’s a colorful contender like “My Baby Thinks She’s French” (especially when she kisses) and “Don’t Put A Lock On My Heart,” which somehow manages to go from Buddy Holly to Bobby Fuller to Billy J. Kramer. Strangely sublime, to be sure.

So there you have it. You wonder why someone as clearly talented as Ely had to wait so long between releases, and then was only able to come up with a handful of worthwhile material. I’ve still got my hopes up high for him and the next one could be memorable all the way. Then everybody will get hammered. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Craig Zeller

THE MONKEES Live 1967 Missing Links Pool It! (Rhino)

As I pound out these words of wisdom, sometime in the middle of August, Mercury has lined up with Venus, and people are talking about a new spiritual awareness 20 years after the Summer Of Love. And while Satan and Jesus continue to fight for your right to party well into the next century, pity the five thousand blessed and pious souls who gathered at 6 a.m. in the snow on Mt. Shasta. Stripped to their spiritual bare flesh, they awaited psychic penetration, a poke into a shared wet and ready orifice of consciousness from their beloved Mayan Master in the sky. BUT IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, nowhere on the planet did it happen, at least not at that moment in time because, if the truth be known, the great psychic sex act from above has ALREADY TAKEN PLACE!!

And, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I suppose what I’m talking about is the real Harmonic Convergence— the one that the Shasta snow-disciples and their comrades all over the world missed out on completely: live, out-

taked and freshly-recorded studio Monkees—three new albums converging harmonics from 20 years apart. 1967 lines up with 1987, and the cosmic forces of attraction and repulsion are no less than mindboggling.

The Mayan and Aztec warlords of Mt. Rhino records’ have transmitted these frequencies on vinyl for the world to decipher. There are three Monkee emissaries now because the one known as Nesmith has opted out for newfound missionary work. This leaves the Father, Son and Holy G., otherwise known as Tork, Dolenz and Jones, to enlighten the spirituallystarved masses. But first, let’s return to the year ’67...

Live 1967 is so mind-screwing, conscious-altering, one wonders if the world as we know it deserves so wondrous a symbol. Assembled and mixdown-produced from decrepit two-decade old tapes by Rhino in-house studio whiz Bill Inglot, remarkable foremost is the fact that this is—in reality—the Monkees actually playing/performing-, i.e., no studio overdubs or faked-out representation of live show-stuff. What you hear then, must have really happened—throng-strong teen-screaming girls, the pre-harmonically converged, voicing their vitriolic howls of approval when this is called for. The audience sounds young, like on the child-side of 15, and when Micky D. tells ’em “OK, on three we’re gonna take a picture of you out there. So get ready for the flash on three... Ready? One.. .two.. .FLASH!!” it sounds sorta like when your mom got a cheap clown-for-rent to keep the kids’ attention at the birthday party.

The playing is, uhm, generally what you’d expect—other than the fact you wouldn’t expect they’d be playing at all. But, as noted above, this is very much the case. “Last Train To Clarksville,” “Mary Mary,” and “I’m A Believer” sound recognizably similar to the studio renditions (a good sign); however, it’s the run-through of “Steppin’ Stone” that’s borderline demonic. In fact, in the previous referred to mind-screwing consciousness-alteration dep’t, “Steppin’ Stone” hits the veritable jackpot with grungy layers of Monkmen-induced white noise and otherwise atonal musical moves: you’d swear they’re covering the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray.” It’s that amazing!

The outtakes album, Missing Links, is slightly less remarkable. The songs span the years ’66—’69, and most of the material waxes not-so-distinctive relative to the radio-played chart-tunes from those days. This is no doubt the reason why these were unreleased outtakes to begin with, though it is, on the other hand, unfair to stamp the collection as “for-archivists-only.” Side one’s Goffin-King “I Don’t Think You Know Me” is trace-able to the vein of Beau Brummels facsimiles from that time. Nesmith’s “Nine Times Blue” is a not-at-all bad Dylan/Byrds ballad, while the “legendary” (Rhino’s descrip) “All Of Your Toys” is just not the stuff legends are made of. Still, the Jones-penned “War Games” is slightly freaky if for no other reason than as an uncharacteristic entry in previously unchartered realms of Monkmen social commentary.

But was this an era (aura??) of enlightenment only to precede a period of evil and foul tidings?

This must be the case, for foul tidings abound from the actual brandnew 1987 Monks album, called Pool It! No sign of converging harmonics between the grooves, no signs of life at all. To say this was the worst record ever made might be surrendering to runaway hyperbole. Still, this thing is so god-effin’-awful, it’s tantalizingly close to the so-terrible-it's-a-riot side of the slate. The first real big problem is the choice of material: it’s of an especially, er, limp-wristed caliber, and I say this with no offense directed to the homosexually-oriented CREEM reader. Arrangements and instrumentation glue together some twitty amalgam of “Stayin’ Alive” era Bee Gees to the soulful stomp of Englebert Humperdump. Add to this a liberal dose of horns and bad boogie-woogie six-string rhythms, and, well, welcome to Rhino’s nightmare! An expensive one at that, say some sources, wishing to remain anonymous. The single, “Heart And Soul,” is as forgettable as it is fast-forwardable. Nothing on this record really comes alive or even passively suggests the more memorable moments of preconverging times. The Tommy James-scribed “Don’t Bring Me Down” is a hapless mess. Only one track, called “Midnight”—some strange “Year Of The Cat” hallucination (I wouldn’t kid you!)—waxes close to listenable. I’m guessing it’s Davy doing the Al Stewart impersonation).

What’s so downright bizarre, in fact, is this record’s refusal to cop to anything Monkees. You’d never in a zillion light years guess that this disc had any affiliation with the resurrected band—it goes so out of its way to disown the legacy of sounds-past: What’d these guys have in mind when they got back together? You’d think that if they’re dishing out semi-liberal doses of the oldies in recent live (reincarnations, then the newly released sonics might attempt to ape, in some way, the same idea. Second in the “you’d-think-that” dep’t—maybe it’d be a swell idea to have the boys record tunes from contemporary deemed-to-be neo-hip artists (like the Bangles or whatever). Certainly way back when, they did not indulge in all that much Tony Bennett or Doris Day. S’posedly for this one, so the story goes, material was solicited from all quarters, and the sweepstakes winners are as evidenced in front of your ears. Sad dudes, the Monkees, and even sadder is whoever’s responsible for this abysmal bar-band-at-Disneyland swill. For a crime this heinous, person or persons responsible should be forced to sit through 144,000 consecutive screenings of Head, A Clockwork Orange style.

The sun sets ingloriously; the world embarks on a new, more wretched path. Hail Satan. So what is folk music anyway? A music indigenous to the folk, as opposed to, say, music created by an industry or Tin Pan Alley or some entity consciously set up for the production of a consumer item with calculated appeal? Folk music is organic, which explains its subject matter—it arises from the need to express common cultural beliefs (usually through stories), the need to protest and to

Gregg Turner

Photo by

THERE’S A RIOT GOIN’ON

JUDY COLLINS Trust Your Heart JOAN BAEZ Recently

PETER, PAUL & MARY No Easy Walk To Freedom BRUCE COCKBURN Waiting For A Miracle THE WASHINGTON SQUARES

The Washington Squares (Gold Castle)

celebrate. And it is spontaneous, mobile, and cheap to produce (being traditionally the music of non-property owners with limited resources)— which explains the simplicity of its commonest format, a voice and a guitar. This kind of music still exists, in varying degrees of authenticity, but it’s not quite the music the general public thinks of when they think of folk music; rather they (we) think of practitioners of the collegiate folk “revival” of the late ’50s/early ’60s, music offered to the receptive among the middleclass young as a seemingly more serious and more meaningful alternative to a pop/rock scene preoccupied with shaking up the hormones and loosening up the pocketbooks of 13-year-old girls.

Flash forward about 30 years—and how the times have changed.. .or have they? Of course they have, and the pop/rock scene is much too complicated, sadly fragmented, to be summarized in this review; and yet isn’t it interesting that when musician/ manager Danny Goldberg wanted to start a record label aimed at boomers, particularly those who desire a more (let’s say) “mature” product than MTV offers, he started his roster with both veterans and descendants of that impure but sincere collegiate folk scene which had served a similar function way back then?

But time does weird things and some who could once pass as foikies on the strength of their formal attribute no longer come close. Take Judy Gollins (puh-leeze): Judy started out with guitar, good lungs, and folk material but was already well on her way to being a show-biz pop chanteuse by the late ’60s. Fortunately, it was a good time for chanteusing even if, like Collins, you didn’t write most of your own material; Leonard Cohen, Lennon/McCartney and Dylan made for choice covers. Since the late 70s, however, Collins has been favoring show tunes and maudlin originals, made more blobby by unimaginative string arrangements. Her Gold Castle debut, Trust Your Heart (right off, bad advice), is no exception. The songs of trembling girlchild anticipation here are every bit as much an attempt at eternal adolescence as heavy metal, and just as stupid. And recording “Amazing Grace’ * for the 5,000th time doesn’t make the album folkish; in fact some of the songs, with their brain-idle mysticism and withdrawfrom-life’s-problems lyrics, sound less like something coming up from the grassroots than down from the mountaintops. Judy should hang out awhile with Joari Baez who, for her Gold Castle effort, Recently, has come up with a viable folk/adult contemporary synthesis. She also covers songs—Dire Straits’ “Brothers In Arms,” U2’s

“MLK” (you know, the one that sounds like the Stone’s “Moonlight Mile’’), and Peter Gabriel’s “Biko”— which indicate that she still has her antennae up, so to speak. I must admit to some ambivalence in the past regarding the famous Baez soprano— though it was always used in the service of equality and liberty, when this citizen would hear her unfurl that

horse-scaring, Margaret Dumont of a voice, my first impulse was always to stick pins in it. But on Recently, she eschews her pompous high pitches for a forceful middle-range. This plus two good originals and a version of “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” that won’t make you laugh, add up to a recommendation.

Another approach is made by Peter, Paul & Mary on No Easy Walk To Freedom; instead of a new, improved PP&M, they do pretty much what they did in the early ’60s. This gives the album a not unpleasant anachronistic aura—they go for a sincere simplicity and pull it off by being direct and unselfconscious. The album comes complete with collegiate revival staples: painfully felt love songs, one for the kiddies (“Right Field”), a spiritraiser (“Weave Me The Sunshine”), political nostalgia (the title cut), political-contempo (“El Salvador”), and, inevitably, a sea chanty (“Greenland Whale Fisheries”—all together now!). Any more commentary on my part would be superflous—this is a brand name product, and you know exactly what you’re going to get.

Moving from vets to descendants, Gold Castle offers a two-record anthology of songs by Canadian singer/ songwriter Bruce Cockburn, Waiting For A Miracle, culled from 17 years and 15 albums. Cockburn has a folkie strain in his work, though not dominant, recalling somebody like Jackson Browne. The earliest cuts show this influence most; by the end of the chronologically-ordered album, the music has become harder and more aggressive, as have the lyrics, with lines like “If I had a rocket launcher/some son-of-a-bitch would die’’ and “you don’t really give a flying

fuck about people in misery” (this last is one of several bitter lines in “Calf It Democracy”). Throughout the collection Cockburn displays a lively melodic sense, and the ability to write careful, quotable lyrics (I’ll restrain myself) that don’t sound too forced, too crammed, or too show-offy. Recommended for those looking for some intelligent non-trendy music (we know you’re out there).

Finally, consider the Washington Squares and their eponymous Gold Castle debut. Here’s a group that has achieved a synthesis of new wave (i.e., ’60s pop/rock without the birth pains) and folk—drums and bass keep things tight, vocals and lyrics come out of the tradition. As for their appearance-typical beatnik garb as envisioned by Time magazine circa 1960^—it’s a caricature which supplies the quotes, the necessary distancing to allow an ’80s group to make unabashed statements of protest and hope. Whereas Peter, Paul & Mary’s album may occasionally make an upto-date dude wince, the Squares, though dealing with the same sentiments, sound perfectly acceptable. Proof that the folk tradition, if only of the collegiate brand, lives on and is viable (it’s a good album), though I could have done without the train song. Train songs are dumb.

Richard C. Walls