Reviewed by: CHRIS ALBERTSON, NOEL COPPAGE, PAUL KRESH, PETER REILLY, JOEL VANCE.
AMERICA: Hearts. America (vocals and instrumentals); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Midnight; Bell Tree; Old Virginia; People in the Valley; Sister Golden Hair; Tomorrow; and six others. WARNER BROS. BS 2852 $6.98. M8 2852 $7.98, M5 2852 $7.98. L9B 2852 $8.98.
Performance: Excellent
Recording: Excellent
I began listening to this album with no great expectations, but by the third song the excellence of the arrangements and production was so evident-and so comforting-that the rest of the disc moved easily and pleasantly.
America still dispenses tuneful, if basically bland, pop-oriented pastiches of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but let's face it: as pabulum goes, it's remarkably well prepared.
The man responsible for the arrangements and production of "Hearts" is George Martin, and it's high time he got some kind of award.
Before he became associated with the Beatles (and it is fair to say that Martin's skills, which are diplomatic as well as musical. helped the Beatles immensely). Martin produced the recordings of the Goons, featuring Peter Sellers, who were the Monty Python of the Fifties. Whether dealing with lunatic comedy, the farthest reaches of rock, or the very tuneful and straight-ahead pleasantries of America, Martin has always brought to his productions taste combined with an understanding of both what performers want to do and what they are capable of doing. He is a very accomplished gentleman, is Mr. Martin, and without ...
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Explanation of symbols:
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Monophonic recordings are indicated by the symbol
The first listing is the one reviewed; other formats, if available, follow it.
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... him the history of recent pop music would have fewer great moments. J.V.
HOYT AXTON: Southbound. Hoyt Axton (vocals, guitar); Jerry Scheff (bass); Mike Botts (drums); John Hartford (fiddle); Doug Dillard (banjo); Linda Ronstadt (backing vocals); other musicians. / Love to Sing; Southbound; Lion in the Winter; Blind Fiddler; Pride of Man; Nashville; Whiskey; and six others. A & M SP-4510 $6.98.
Performance: Pleasin'
Recording: Very good
If you're not familiar with Hoyt Axton, try to imagine Mac Davis with a lot more talent and a lot more taste, if that isn't too much of a strain. Maybe it would help to remember that Hoyt's mama wrote Heartbreak Hotel. He turned out interesting. His duet with Linda Ronstadt, Lion in the Winter, quickly became a staple on country music stations, raising their quality average by several points. Axton has a deep-voiced Southern kind of sentimentality, which helps him make Greensleeves enmeshed with House of the Rising Sun sound more like real music than most people could nowadays, but which also inspires him to overdo the between-lines groaning in Blind Fiddler, which needs all the understatement it can get. Then there are some worthless songs included, such as No-No Song, which he helped write and should have left in the fumbly hands of people like Ringo Starr. But Pride of Man and Speed Trap (Out of State Cars) and such make up for the lapses. I know how it must sound, asking you to pay attention to yet another roughneck poet, but I think this one's for real. N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JEFF BECK: Blow by Blow. Jeff Beck (guitar); Max Middleton (keyboards); Phil Chenn (bass); Richard Bailey (drums). You Know What I Mean; She's a Woman; Constipated Duck; AIR Blower; Scatterbrain; and four others. EPIC PE 33409 $6.98, PEA 33409 $7.98, PET 33409 $7.98.
Performance: Outstanding
Recording: Excellent
I am not very familiar with Jeff Beck's career beyond the basics: former lead guitarist for the Yardbirds, considered one of the three most important guitarists in rock (Clapton and Hendrix are the others), inventor of some of the dodgier possibilities of the electric instrument (such as deliberate feedback), and general enfant terrible. But, after listening to "Blow by Blow"-produced, with his customary infallible taste and discretion, by George Martin--I can only say that Mr. Beck ought to drop all pretense of being a rocker, since he is obviously too talented to be confined in that category.
A guitarist can easily fiddle with the dials on his electric instrument and come up with a lot of claptrap, but Jeff Beck is far from being satisfied with making a racket. He actually has the taste and sense to: (1) choose tunes that have real structure to them, (2) play variations that allow for creativity but do not violate the boundaries of the tune, and (3) make these variations brilliant. All this from a rock guitarist? I wouldn't have believed it, but here it is.
Clapton, Hendrix, and the late Duane Allman expanded the technical possibilities of their instruments, as did Beck. But it seems that only Beck has gone beyond mere technique, however accomplished, to what the point of playing any instrument is: the making of music. "Blow by Blow" might just turn out to be the album of the year. - J.V.
CHER: Stars. Cher (vocals); orchestra. Mr. Soul; These Days; Bell Bottom Blues; Love Enough; Just This One Time; and six others. WARNER BROS. BS 2850 $6.98, M 82850 $7.98, M 52850 $7.98.
Performance: Cher Bared!
Recording: Good
For sure, Cher's personal life is a hell of a lot more interesting than her singing.
"Sonny Seems To Be Carrying Torch!"
" Cher Leaves Dave Geffen For Greg Allman!!"
" Cher Testifies About Wild Hollywood Drug Party!!!"
" Cher's Father Sues Her For Libel!!!!"
And so on.
Well, if you feel that the excitement of following her glamour-drenched life is getting too much for you, try her new album; it'll calm you down in a big hurry. She's sorta inta-deeper-material-y'know, like Janis Ian's
Stars and Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come, and her whole attitude is more-on-the serious-sida-Cher-y'know. But as she bares her newly found soulful self in track after track, even going so far as to tackle Jimmy Webb's Just This One Time, one cannot but notice that Cher doesn't sound any different here-which is to say, she sounds pleasant enough, but so unremarkable that she might be one of a dozen other singers. Her talent still consists of her startling looks, her inbred chic, her flair for costume, and a quickly developing skill at sketch comedy, all of it firmly visual. On records she continues as the Invisible Woman--the cover tells you who's singing, and I suppose her fans just mentally con jure up the rest. I wouldn't want to call her a no-talent as a singer. No siree, no more than I'd want to read that " Cher Has Jury In Tears In Slander Suit Against Reviewer!!" -P.R.
CHICAGO: Chicago VIII. Chicago (vocals, instrumentals). Anyway You Want; Harry Truman; Never Been in Love Before; Long Time No See; Ain't It Blue?; Old Days; and five others. COLUMBIA PC 33100 $6.98, 0 PCA 33100 $7.98, PCT 33100 $7.98.
Performance: Mediocre
Recording: Good
The evolution of Chicago is probably about complete. It has gradually gotten away from the box-square self-consciousness of its "jazz-rock" sound-which has already been milked for its prestige value and serves only to date the group-and now it is casting about in several styles: one cut here is folkish, another uses the sighing-strings jazz-ballad approach, another is polite honky boogie, and so on. But Chicago is still one of the dullest outfits ever to waddle down the yellow brick road. Unfortunately, it is also extraordinarily successful, so its music has a consistent smug ness about it which comes only when a band moves from simple self-confidence to a sense of its own infallibility.
This album includes not only the de rigueur wall-size color poster, but also a Chicago logo decal you can iron on to your T-shirt or face. Hats and horns! - J.V.
JUDY COLLINS: Judith. Judy Collins (vocals, guitar, piano); David Spinozza. Steve Goodman (guitars); Eric Weissberg (steel guitar, dobro); Don Brook (harmonica); other musicians. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; Angel Spread Your Wings; Houses; The Lovin' of the Game; Song for Duke; Send in the Clowns; and six others. ELEKTRA 7E-1032 $6.98, 0 ET8-1032 $7.98, TC5-1032 $7.98.
Performance: Yes (I) and no (I)
Recording: Very good
Judy Collins can pull off a lot of unlikely capers because she's a good person, a good, honest, fine, brave person, and she has such wonderful big blue eyes besides. But she can't pull off the bizarre lunacy that attends the song selection on the second side of this disc.
Salt of the Earth, Brother Can You Spare a Dime, and I'll Be Seeing You are ridiculous things for her to be singing in that earnest, straightforward-pretty way of hers. The first side, particularly the taste behind it, is really good, making it all the more puzzling. In the past, Collins has shown a tendency to let down about once per album, which anyone could endure as long as her eyes didn't turn brown, but she-or at least the album-stays in a second-half slump this time. Her singing of Steve Goodman's City of New Orleans is all right, and the instrumentation, with Goodman himself in there playing one of the better acoustic guitars and Don Brook playing one of the better harmonicas, can't be faulted. But for some reason she lets Eric Weissberg, one of the better steel players, attempt to sing harmony. So much for that one. The really good stuff. on the other side, includes Jim Webb's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Stephen Sondheim's Send in the Clowns, Collins' own Houses, and a great job on a less than great song, Pat Garvey's The Lovin' of the Game, with a non-singing Weissberg and Brook carrying the heavy work. I see by the slightly different front-and-back cover photos that Judy's eyes stayed blue. Somewhere in there the music turned brown. N.C.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
ROBERTA FLACK: Feel Like Makin' Love.
Roberta Flack (vocals); orchestra. Feelin' That Glow; I Wanted It Too; Early Ev'ry Midnite; Mr. Magic; and five others. ATLAN TIC SD 18131 $6.98, 0 TP 18131 $7.98, CS 18131 $7.98.
Performance: Joyous
Recording: Excellent
There's been a great deal said and written about Roberta Flack's fire and vitality and of how superbly alive she is as an artist, but not really enough about the pure joy she can communicate. This fine new album has sever al tracks that are disappointing from the repertoire viewpoint, but Flack takes it all in stride, lazing along, gathering and strewing rosebuds as only she can, and freely and hap pily using her enormous natural gifts to be deck even the average and the mediocre. She is able to bring the most quiescent material to brimming life and to add her own special hints of her pleasure in doing it. When she does encounter a really fine piece of writing, such as Stevie Wonder's I Can See the Sun in Late December, the combined effect of her lus trous technique and superior material is downright stunning. The production here is first-rate, with the good sense to stay clear of Miss Flack when she's doing her thing which she does wonderfully well. P.R.
GEORGE GERSHWIN: From Tin Pan Alley to Broadway. George Gershwin, R. O. Erlebach, Cliff Hess (piano rolls). Honky Tonky; Arrah Go On I'm Gonna Go Back to Oregon; Chinese Blues; Story Book Ball; A Young Man's Fancy; and fifteen others.MARK 56 RECORDS 680 two discs $11.96.
Performance: Panoramic pound-along
Recording: Good
George Gershwin, as practically anyone who has been to the movies knows, went to work ...
------- JUDY COLLINS: such wonderful big blue eyes.
... at the age of fifteen as a piano pounder on 28th Street in New York, which was where Tin Pan Alley is said to have been located, and made fifteen dollars a week. To supplement his income, he also started recording piano rolls, and the Mark 56 people have managed somehow to assemble twenty of these into a two-record set. It is not quite as fascinating as their earlier albums in which Gershwin rehearses scenes from Porgy and Bess and plays his own pieces, but it's interesting enough to hear the young Gershwin sometimes with the help of another pianist embellishing perfectly ghastly tunes with his own characteristic touches to make them sound better than they really were. Yet honky-tonk and banal the tunes remain until we get to the contributions of such as Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin, where his open admiration is reflected in his playing. He also clonks out one of his own first songs, I Was So Young, as well as his Come to the Moon, Kickin' the Clouds Away, So Am I, and Sewanee, which was a flop when introduced at the Capital Theatre in 1919 in a show called Demi tasse Revue, but wowed the world when Al Jolson sang it later in Sinbad at the Winter Garden. When Gershwin plays his winning and sophisticated That Certain Feeling, we seem to be entering an era where the player piano at last was capable of reproducing some subtleties of fingering and dynamics, and the true Gershwin charm finally comes across.
But by then the program is ending. P.K.
HOT TUNA: America's Choice. Jorma Kaukonen (vocals, guitar); Jack Casady (bass); Bob Steeler (drums). Sleep Song; Funky #7; Walkin' Blues; Invitation; and four others. GRUNT BFL1-0820 $6.98, BFS1-0820 $7.98, BFK I-0820 $7.98.
Performance Regular
Recording: Good
Jorma Kaukonen is one of the musicians I regard highly enough to tout, in my quiet way; Jack Casady probably is the most spacey bass player I've heard: and I'll go along with what ever drummer they want to use. But still it seems every other Hot Tuna album is just routine. This is one of those, more blues-based rock of the Cream mode. It seems to me that Kaukonen, an amazing sound-effects man with the electric guitar, is limiting himself with this kind of straight-ahead part, which calls for a lot of loud chording that lousy pickers could do as well, together with solos that just can't approach the textures he achieves on the acoustic guitar. His singing keeps get ting better, though, and the material really isn't bad. The cover is, as Hot Tuna covers always are, gaudy and not as funny as it was intended to be; this one supposedly represents a box of wash-day product. It is a fairly pleasant album (the drummer is crisp, which helps), with nothing really bad in it. But this is a group of talented musicians capable of something quite beyond fairly pleasant albums. - N.C.
BEN E. KING: Supernatural. Ben E. King (vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Supernatural Thing (Parts I and II); Your Lovin' Ain't Good Enough; Drop My Heart Off, Extra-Extra; Imagination; and four others. ATLANTIC SD 18132 $6.98.
Performance: Smooth
Recording: Very good
------ MANHATTAN TRANSFER: a perfect little gift for Mick and Bianca.
I delight in seeing justice done: I'm happy to know that Ben E. King, a valuable and experienced vocalist, has a comeback hit, Supernatural Thing. King has been out in the cold for some time--the wheel of fortune sometimes turneth exceeding slow-and he was in danger of disappearing altogether or being raised from the grave every few years to appear at oldies concerts. But now he is back and it's good to have him.
I only wish that the material in this album were worthy of King's talents. He is, after all, the man who first sang Save the Last Dance for Me and Stand By Me. Those songs had some melody or sentimental hokum to them, which gave King a chance to show what he could do--a little embellishment here, a little caution there--in a delicious display of a knowledgeable singer's technique.
But the material here is 1975 mechanical soul music, two-chord, half-a-lyric stuff in which a grunt or a gasp or a "heh, baby" is given the same weight as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" King tosses off these stillborn songs like a short beer. Oh, what he could do with a good song! Won't someone please give him one? - J.V.
MANHATTAN TRANSFER. Manhattan Transfer (vocals and instrumentals). Opera tor; Candy; Gloria; Blue Champagne; Java Jive; Heart's Desire; and six others. ATLANTIC SD 18133 $6.98, OO TP 18133 $7.98, CS 18133 $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording Good
This is a silky salon job that will probably be most appreciated by the "in" group in pop social circles. Aaron Russo is Bette Midler's manager, which just might have given him a little clout around Atlantic, since he also manages Manhattan Transfer and one hand does, even in the pristine world of pop music, tend to lave the other. The album is produced (very well, incidentally) by Ahmet Ertegun, who isn't precisely chopped liver over at At lantic; he founded the label some years ago in order to make records that he and his friends would enjoy listening to. The album itself is a clever rehash and remembrance of the temps perdu of the big-band sound of the late Thirties. Michael Brecker's tenor sax solo in Operator is very fine indeed, as is the guitar work of Ira Newborn in Java Jive, but Manhattan Transfer's vocal "stylings," as they used to say, though good enough, are hardly invigorating. Still, as I was saying to Elton the other day, it's a perfect little gift for Mick and Bianca to play when they're flying down to Rio in their jet and ennui threatens. - P.R.
JOHN MAYALL: New Year, New Band, New Company. John Mayall (vocals, harmonica); vocal and instrumental accompaniment. Sit ting on the Outside; Can't Get Home; Step in the Sun; To Match the Wind; Sweet Scorpio; Driving On; and four others. ABC/BLUE THUMB BTSD-6019 $6.98, 8307-6019H $7.95, 5307-6019H $7.95.
Performance. Okay
Recording Very good
There are eight people in John Mayall's new band. It does not take eight people to play watered-down white blues based on watered down black blues based on the post-1945 urban blues style. But they play it anyway.
Thank you very much, and good night. J.V.
KEITH MOON: Two Sides of the Moon. Keith Moon (vocals, drums); instrumental accompaniment. Crazy Like a Fox; Solid Gold; Don't Worry Baby; One Night Stand; Teen age Idol; Back Door Sally; and four others. MCA/TaAcic 2136 $6.98, MCAT 2136 $7.98.
Performance: Poor
Recording: Okay
Keith Moon is the Who's great drummer. John Entwistle. the bassist for the group. re cords very entertaining and delightfully vicious tunes on his own solo albums. Entwistle is vulgar sometimes, but that is all right, since he has wit. Mr. Moon. however, does not. He is merely vulgar. And his solo album-a mediocre imitation of an Entwistle album-is pointless. J.V.
ELLIOTT MURPHY: Lost Generation. Elliott Murphy (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano); instrumental accompaniment. Hollywood; A Touch of Mercy; History; When You Ride; Bittersweet: and five others. RCA APLI-0916 $6.98, OO APSI-0916 $7.98, APK I-0916 $7.98.
Performance: Competitive
Recording: Very good
Elliott Murphy has the kind of gimmicky act record companies are always willing to spend money promoting; that is, it's a composite of familiar, safe-looking gimmicks- a little Dylan, a little Bowie, a little Springsteen, some nostalgia to make it all personal. Scared people who advance in corporate politics under stand these things, having heard them enough times in the last decade, thanks to their kids.
Murphy also has a right to make a living as an entertainer, as he can carry a tune, write a tune, and handle the language better than some. He's a competent hack, that's what he is, and don't get all riled up thinking "hack" is something nasty. The difference between the competent ones and the incompetent ones is more important than who is or isn't one, and we've suffered many incompetent ones promoted more extravagantly. Murphy just doesn't have untainted credibility on the subjects he discusses, and he doesn't have much to offer in the way of unusual performing skills either. The vocals here are hidden in or obscured by the instrumentals in several selections. even though the words are supposed to be the thing, but if they brought up the vocals, the thinness of Murphy's singing would be a problem. This album isn't quite as tuneful as his previous one, but that's hardly a major consideration. It's simply not all that important, and at the same time it is well enough crafted to do no damage. -N.C.
PASADENA ROOF ORCHESTRA. Pasadena Roof Orchestra (instrumentals); John "Pazz" Parry (vocals). Paddlin' Madelin' Home; Love in Bloom; Nagasaki; Muddy Water; and nine others. ISLAND ILPS-9324 $6.98, Y81-9324 $7.98.
Performance: Contrived
Recording: Good
As if the British weren't already mired down enough in the past, they still keep looking back into the distorting mirror of the bygone
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The Proficient Eagles
As far as I'm concerned, country-rock has proved to be a total dead end. When the fusion really worked, as it did in the dazzling surface textures of certain tracks by the Lovin' Spoonful, Moby Grape, the Youngbloods, the Byrds, the Allman Brothers in their Blue Sky moments, or even the roughhewn (and slightly mad) best work of the Burrito Brothers and the late Gram Parsons, it was one of the most appealing of all the rock hybrids. Unfortunately, what it has boiled down to of late is usually an adenoidal kid from the Bronx pretending to be a redneck while singing mawkish nonsense to the accompaniment of a steel guitar. You all know who I mean: Poco, with their infuriatingly moronic grinning optimism; the unspeakably banal Souther-Hillman-Furay Band; Loggins and Messina ... the list is endless. And while I'm on the subject, the Cosmic Cowboy fantasy these groups purvey is, as far as I'm concerned, fully as boring and corny as all that sci-fi/pseudo-decadent androgyny offered by the glitter contingent.
Which may be why I'm so disappointed in the Eagles: they seemed at first to promise so much more. When Take It Easy blasted onto the airwaves in the summer of 1972, it was so obviously a major record that one naturally assumed this was a group to be reckoned with. It was perfect: a real fusion song that didn't compromise either of the forms it was working with, complete with bracing harmonies, a charming lyric, powerful Who-esque playing and production, and an arrangement that built from start to finish. A classic by any standards.
Needless to say, nothing they've done since has come even close to that one magnificent moment. The first album was totally forgettable (except that Witchy Woman sounded like an unconscious parody of the score for a John Ford western at just the point the Indians are massing on the horizon); "Desperado" was an unqualified dud (do you really care if you ever hear Tequila Sunrise again?); and the third album ... well, Already Gone was good enough to be a hit, but any competent band could have made a rocker like that, Best of My Love is so soppy that I rate it my major AM annoyance so far this year, and as for the rest, despite the opinions of various friends whose opinions I respect, the mere thought of having to listen to their version of Tom Waits' similarly execrable and sentimental Old '55 is enough to make me break out with the hives.
And the new one? You guessed it ... the same old same old. You can predict every lick, every other lyric line, and there are two really horrendous bummers-a six-minute exercise in old-style psychedelia in which Bernie Leadon's banjo does a ridiculous sitar imitation (Journey of the Sorcerer), and what may be the world's first c-&-w cocktail song, I Wish You Peace. In fairness, I must also point out that there are one or two bits I like a little, and the end of Hollywood Waltz attains some real tinselly grandeur as the instrumentation builds up relentlessly.
I can't explain why the group hasn't done any better than they have. Glenn Frey has a terrific rock voice, whether he's faking a country twang or not, the rest of them are great harmony singers, and instrumentally they're as proficient as any band in the world.
My suspicion is, simply, that the genre itself is played out. Rock, as we all know, is all about the endless manipulation of the cliché, and I'm reasonably certain that unless there's some genius out there we don't know about yet none of the country-rock clichés are going to be manipulated very interestingly in the foreseeable future. They certainly aren't on "One of These Nights." More's the pity.
-Steve Simels
THE EAGLES: One of These Nights. The Eagles (vocals and instrumentals). One of These Nights; Too Many Hands; Hollywood Waltz; Journey of the Sorcerer; Lyin' Eyes; Take It to the Limit; Visions; After the Thrill Is Gone; I Wish You Peace. ASYLUM 7E-1039 $6.98, ET-81039 $7.98, TC-51039 $7.98.
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..... for a trendy giggle or two at the sheer tackiness of it all. Some of the results are superb.
Angus Wilson's For Whom the Cloche Tolls.
for instance, which appeared in 1953 (and probably gave Patrick Dennis a hint or two about his later Auntie Mame), is the funniest book ever written about the Twenties; Sandy Wilson (no relation) created a minor work of art in his Twenties pastiche, The Boy Friend, as did Ken Russell, who moved the period up to the Thirties in his musical film version of it.
But these were creations based on great love and great knowledge of the periods they were about. The Pasadena Roof Orchestra, regard less of the California associations in its name, seems to be an attempt to parody the old and very great Ray Noble Orchestra, which was the most popular musical group in England during the Thirties. Unfortunately, nobody involved in this album seems to have really listened to that splendid orchestra's recordings (and why not a re-release of some of them, EMI?), and the result is a tame, listless run through of songs of the Twenties and Thirties with all the tricks and curlicues of the period but none of the elegance or heart. John "Pazz" Parry makes a few feints at copying the style of Noble's vocalist, Al Bowley, but he remains, as does the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, the palest watercolor in comparison to the vivid Art Deco original. P.R.
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JOHN PRINE: Common Sense. John Prine (vocals, guitar); Steve Goodman (guitar);
James Brown (organ); Larry Muhoberac (piano); Peter Bunetta (drums); Tommy Cath ey (bass); other musicians. Middle Man;
Common Sense; Way Down; My Own Best Friend; Forbidden Jimmy: Saddle in the Rain; That Close to You; and four others.
ATLANTIC SD 18127 $6.98, TP 18127 $7.98, CS 18127 $7.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Very good
I'm not enthralled by John Prine's major shift of emphasis here, but this thing is so consistently good-sounding it's worth having. Prine seems, as Dylan did, to be moving from a topical period to a stint as an absurdist folk (-rock) poet. At the same time, as also happened with Dylan, he seems to be paying more attention to how it all sounds, how the instrumentation can be profitably fattened up, the rhythms better exploited, and so forth.
The difference in the ways he and Dylan do these things, stylistic idiosyncracies aside, is a difference in musical sophistication and com poser savvy, coming down to such practical matters as Dylan's having a better grasp of what minor chords can do and a few other small, important things like that. But for one more album's duration, Prine's simple way with melodies holds up well, and his way with words at least was never looser. "She was leaning on a juke box/And was lookin' real good/Like Natalie Wood/On a Pontiac hood" is the kind of thing he just keeps tossing off here. You move from one interesting tangle of language to another- it isn't too difficult to listen through his similarities to Dylan to the differences, Prine's uniqueness-but I guess I don't like dealing with dadaism much. Too much like keeping track of a dart game whose players are blindfolded.
There are some hot issues around nowa days, and, as always, they need alert, articu late, truthful observers such as Prine on the scene. But no, not now, says he, I'm going to lay up in my room for a while and play with these words. Maybe it comes down to a matter of degree, and a little bit of this now will lead to a lot of something else later. And even here Prine doesn't drop all the way out; a new, closer kind of peer friendship is one of the turns I and a couple of good film directors seem to see our society about to take, and Prine gets into that in He Was in Heaven Before He Died. And then, and then, he--well, he boogies on outa here, is what he does, with Chuck Berry's You Never Can Tell.
He'd already boogied about in the middle some, though, and if you can curl up with the best of that (Forbidden Jimmy) and some headphones, you'll probably wind up feeling a little better. Saddle in the Rain and the title song are especially good-sounding cuts, too, Prine's pal Steve Goodman deserving special notice, and somebody ought to get an award for Best Folk-Rock Use of Horns for some punchy work in several selections. Mostly, the album is not about anything, but it gives you something with Prine's signature on it. And gives it to you in such a nice way, is the thing.
- N.C.
LUCKEY ROBERTS: Ragtime King. Charles Luckeyeth Roberts (piano); Garvin Bushell (clarinet, alto saxophone); Herbert Cowens (drums); Joe Benjamin (bass). If You Knew Susie; St. Louis Blues; By the Beautiful Sea; Honeysuckle Rose; and seven others.EVEREST FS 304 M $5.98.
Performance: Available for weddings, etc.
Recording: Good
Charles "Luckey" Roberts died over seven years ago, but the notes for this album would have us believe he is still active. Furthermore, this collection of trivia, obviously released in order to cash in on the current Scott Joplin renaissance, has as little to do with ragtime music as Horowitz playing Chopin. Except for bassist Joe Benjamin, who gets in a few worthwhile solos, the group sounds like some thing sent over from the local musicians' union for a bar mitzvah.
Roberts made his first recordings for Columbia in 1916, but they remain unissued. His accompaniments for entertainer Bert Williams reveal but a fraction of the talent he is said to have possessed, and subsequent recordings-made in 1946 and 1958 for the Circle and Good Time Jazz labels-appear to be those of an artist already past his prime. I don't know when these selections were made, but they should not have been. C.A.
SMOKEY ROBINSON: A Quiet Storm. Smokey Robinson (vocals); orchestra. Love Let ters; Coincidentally; Happy; Wedding Song; and three others. TAMLA T6-337S1 $6.98, T-337T $7.98, T-337C $7.98.
Performance: Good
Recording: Excellent
Here's a beautifully produced and recorded album by Smokey Robinson. He performs.
with his usual pliant ease, another collection of his own songs, and there is some entertainment to be found in Happy and Love Letters.
The main problem with Robinson's work is that he has a broad streak of marshmallow sentimentality which, while it may be genuine on his part, eventually seizes me in the kind of clammy embrace that means turn-off. P.R.
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Mel Torme: A Little Older, Still a Pro
--------Mel Torme cuts the cake at a birthday celebration at New York's
Maisonette
SOME performers. Lord knows, strut and fret their hour on the stage and are heard no more: others seem to go on forever. Mel Torme is, thanks be, one of the latter. His latest recording is Atlantic's new "Live at the Maisonette," and "live" is certainly the word for it. Chritically christened in his youthful years as "the Velvet Fog"--the very nub and essence of crooning blandness, that is--Torme, now fifty, has managed to leap, not walk, clear over the generation gap and land, vigorously triumphant, on the other side.
I hope I may be forgiven when I confess that I had long thought of him as a closed case, a limited yeoman talent trudging dutifully but joylessly back and forth along the Miami Beach-Las Vegas- Los Angeles night-club axis in response to some faint summons from an aging and diminishing band of followers.
His television appearances I found easy enough to take, but singularly lacking in urgency. All of that--or maybe it's just all of me--has changed. For the last four years this singer has been opening the fall season at the Maisonette Room in New York's St. Regis hotel with a verve and a style that have fairly set the rafters to ringing. He has proved him self there a wizard among arrangers. the most winning of personalities, and, as a singer, a man who has learned to find gold even in mines we would have sworn were played out.
In short, the velvet fog has lifted, and the fellow behind it turns out to be a dynamo of musical energy and enthusiasm.
It is good to have the latest of his Maisonette visitations on record-this one was re corded on the premises last September. From the first moment when the imperishable Torme struts out to greet his patrons ("Oh, you're beautiful!"), the atmosphere seems to tingle with a special excitement. The singer pays tongue-in-cheek tribute to his classy surroundings by opening the proceedings with a sophisticated little piece of irony called The Jet Set ("The good life--that's the only way to fly"). Then he settles down for a hushed and serious treatment of What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life-and not a glass is heard to rattle. "A beautiful song," he comments. and after another "You're beautiful," shifts into high gear for a rapid-but not vapid- tiptoe through that hardy perennial Mountain Greenery. He then sets out to reduce the whole place to tears with an irresistible study in self-pity entitled It Takes Too Long to Learn to Live Alone, concluding side one in a burst of period exuberance with Get Your Kicks on Route 66.
ALL this while, the crowd has been audibly if slowly warming up to Mel Torme, and side two will melt any remaining icicles of reserve: he launches into one of the longest Gershwin medleys in night-club history, a fifteen-minute cycle of no less than seventeen Gershwin songs. He really knocks himself out, counter pointing the melody of one old favorite against an accompaniment drawn from another, working bits of the Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F into the mosaic of the over all design, speaking in tongues in homage to Ella Fitzgerald (who still sings these songs better than probably anyone else alive) until he climbs, right there before his stunned auditors, a dizzying flight of musical steps, that star-studded Stairway to Paradise. And the applause thunders in, as well it should, from every side.
An astute man in the programming department, Torme drops quickly back down to present reality with a clever Stevie Wonder number called Superstition and winds up the evening-or at least the one presented on this album-with The Party's Over. This listener was sorry to hear it.
What, besides some newly discovered vitamin, can account for the infectious energy projected by this half-century-old entertainer? In part, it's the intelligence and ingenuity of the arrangements, most of which are the singer's own. Another is the room-filling build-up in an ecstatic style he seems to have learned at the feet of such singers as Miss Fitzgerald and the once (and deservedly) celebrated Frances Faye. The playing of the Al Porcino Orchestra also has more than a little to do with it. The rest-and there's a lot of that can only be attributed to the mystery factor that enables an authentic talent to broaden and develop over the years instead of freezing into mannerism, becoming a mere parody of itself. I am left to say to Mel Torme only what he keeps telling his audiences at the Maisonette: "You're beautiful." -Paul Kresh
MEL TORME: Live at the Maisonette. Mel Torme (vocals); orchestra, Al Porcino cond. Introduction; Jet Set; What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life; Mountain Greenery; It Takes Too Long to Learn to Live Alone: Route 66; Gershwin Medley; Superstition; The Parry's Over. ATLANTIC SD 18129 $6.98, TP 18129 $7.98, CS 18129 $7.98.
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RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
LEON RUSSELL: Will o' the Wisp. Leon Russell (vocals, piano, bass, synthesizer, clavinet, clarinet, guitar, etc.); Teddy Jack Eddy (drums); Steve Cropper (guitar): other musicians. Little Hideaway; Make You Feel Good; Can't Get Over Losing You; My Father's Shoes; and seven others. SHELTER SR-2138 $6.98, CD SRT-2138 $7.98, SRC-2138 $7.98.
Performance: Uh-good
Recording: Very good
Leon Russell has given me a lot of fun through the years, most of it nasty, malicious fun at his expense, but still fun. Certain friends and I would feel culturally deprived if we couldn't use Leon's "uh-hev" from Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms as a formal greeting, or if we couldn't quote Leon (in something from that horrible live album) when inquiring whether certain sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and other sensations "make you want to go Woo Woo." This album has some funny stuff in it, though, that may not have been 100 percent unintentional. I wouldn't put it past Leon to have planned it so those Japanese instruments in Can't Get Over Losing You sound just slightly like something cooked up by the Monty Python bunch. The reason I suspect that may be tied to the fact that at last Leon has again shown some craftiness in his song-writing. I always thought Delta Lady was no fluke, but I surely didn't have the evidence to back up such a wild idea. Here, at last, is some. My Father's Shoes may catch your head first: and then you'll notice, incredulous ly, that Back to the Island becomes increasingly pleasant as Russell shovels the clichés into it; and then along comes Deep River, which is just a rinking-tinking dandy. Rus sell's voice, of course, is still not a work of art, or even of very good engineering, but it's kind of a friendly voice, for all its posturing. And one of the better features of this album is how disciplined he seems to be with the instrumentals. There are some familiar excesses in Little Hideaway, but once the thing hits its stride it doesn't break it. I was impressed in listening to Russell's country album by how well musicians play behind him-he must be treating them well, communicating with them and I'm impressed by that again. What I'm saying, Leon ol' buddy, is uh-hey. this'n almost makes me want to go Woo Woo. - N.C.
TELLY SAVALAS. Telly Savalas (vocals); orchestra. / Think of You; What's New; Try to Remember; Didn't We; But Beautiful; and five others. AUDIO FIDELITY A FSD 6271 $6.98.
Performance: For fans
Recording: Good
I am so sick of Telly Savalas oozing around my TV screen like some giant, malevolent amoeba in his role as Kojak that I found I could easily contain my rapture at the appearance of his new album. Aunt Myrt is going to love it, of course, as will most of the ladies over fifty or so who, along with small children, seem to make up his fan club. Everything is all very kuss die Hand (or "gondinental," as Tante Rifka might say) in Savalas' versions of such pulse raisers as Try to Remember, Didn't We, and Last Time I Saw Her. He's professional enough, in a grisly way, and the production by John Cacavas has a diamond-pinkie-ring sort of assurance, but I still had the feeling I was sitting in a vat of mayonnaise. What Savalas' kiddie fans will make of all this, I have no idea. But I'm positive that Grandma will get the message. Oh, Granny, how could you? - P.R.
SEALS & CROFTS: I'll Play for You. Jim Seals (vocals, guitar, banjo); Dash Crofts (vocals, mandolin): other musicians. I'll Play for You; Blue Bonnet Nation; Golden Rain bow; Fire and Vengeance; and five others. WARNER BROS. BS 2848 $6.98, OO M 82848 $7.98, M 52848 $7.98.
Performance: Very good
Recording: Very good
There's still a not-quite-realized quality about Seals and Crofts that, in this album, seems to have settled in and put its feet up. Some thing's missing from the words, and maybe also from the blend of the voices, even though as musicians they are thorough pros. Some how they seem to keep signaling what I read as Stand By for Significance, and then they just go on being adamantly bland. Partly, it may have something to do with the times, which seem to be pressuring everyone to re hash Tin Pan Alley. Seals and Crofts, here as always, clearly represent themselves as going beyond that, hut-possibly because little is bothering them-they don't really take you on much of a trip. Maybe you can imagine yourself in some far-out place anyway, as people did with all those Hermann Hesse books, but you ought to consider giving your self a little more of the credit for making the travel arrangements. This is still, of course, a pleasant album and stands up well to comparisons with other albums. As Martin Mull says, it just doesn't go that extra mile. N.C.
CARLY SIMON: Playing Possum (see Best of the Month, page 73)
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
JIM STAFFORD: Not Just Another Pretty Foot. Jim Stafford (Vocals and guitar); orchestra. Lady Greenfeet; Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne; I Ain't Working; Midnight Snack; and seven others. MGM M3G-4984 $6.98, OO M8H-4984 $7.98.
------ JIM STAFFORD: an appealing c-&-w Buster Keaton
Performance: Fun and funny
Recording: Good
There's a touch of c-&-w Buster Keaton about Jim Stafford that I find very appealing. Deadpan, earnest, and often thwarted, Stafford always seems either to find that I Got Stoned and I Missed It, or to have the amiable-appearing young girl roar, "I know karate smarty/And I carry a knife..." and You'll Never Take Me Alive. Just a trifle winded. perhaps, but still undaunted, Stafford reaches his comedic high point with the Bronteish tale Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne. Seems that Stafford is in his hotel room in his shorts, drinking beer, when he notices that a woman across the street is entertaining a bulldog with champagne. Brooding over this for the next few weeks, he finally musters up enough courage to go over and ring her bell, "Cause any woman that'll get a bulldog drunk/Would have to be good to me." But "Then the bulldog staggered out the door/And he said 'How do you do?'/But the lady bit me on the leg/And I said 'I love you too'." The more I hear it, the more I'm convinced that it's my favorite track of the year. Strange, aren't I? Not to mention Stafford. P.R.
STEELY DAN: Katy Lied. Donald Fagen (vocals); Walter Becker (guitar); instrumental accompaniment. Black Friday; Bad Sneakers; Rose Darling; Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More; Doctor Wu; and five others. ABC ABCD-846 $6.98, 8022 846 $7.98, 5022-846 $7.98.
Performance: Okay
Recording: Clean
I admire Steely Dan--or, more accurately, I admire Walter Becker and Donald Fagen as writers and melodists--but I am disappointed in this album. A Steely Dan outing usually includes one outstanding tune. This time they get close but never quite make it. Though some of the writing here is taut and fine, Steely Dan too often depends for melody on fill-ins played by a number of guitarists, including Becker and the little-known but greatly accomplished Hugh McCracken. The fills attempt to bolster the performances, but nothing can replace the absence of a real melody or improve a mediocre one.
There may be extenuating circumstances. The group is temporarily in flux, the regular supporting musicians having departed. Here the back-up is provided by studio men, and although their efforts are professional, there is a lack of the spirit which only the interplay of a living, working band can spark. Still, Steely Dan at half power is better than most other groups at full power. Maybe next time around they'll come up with some of the peculiar, arresting melodies of which they are capable. I live in hope. - J.V.
AL STEWART: Modern Times. Al Stewart (vocals, guitar); Simon Nicol (guitar); Tim Renwick (guitar); Peter Woods (keyboards); George Ford (bass); other musicians. Carol; Sirens of Titan; What's Going On?; Not the One; and four others. JANUS J XS 7012 $6.94, 8098-7012 H $7.95.
Performance: Quo vadis. Al, baby?
Recording: Very good
Al Stewart probably has a plan of some kind. His previous album dealt with some of the larger historical events, and this one, in addition to what's implied in the title (styled after one of the songs), has imagery of rusty trains, wooden benches that contain no travelers or Irish lady authors, and a girl who walks like Greta Garbo and talks like Yogi Bear. The lad is driven by some vision, but I can't quite make out what it is. His stuff continues to sound oddly bookish, and not simply on the surface--where, in this case, he makes up a song for Malachi Constant, hero (well, main character) of Kurt Vonnegut's worst book but somewhere in the attitude toward how words are written and sung. His singing apparatus is tidy and competent but singularly unspectacular; the voice sounds bookish too, about five-foot-seven in a bow tie. He has a better-than-average way of putting things, though, and usually writes a decent tune to put them in. His backing here seems to suggest that rock in the middle Seventies can be tasteful without being excessively dull, and that, like so many things about Stewart, surprises me in some tiny, obscure way.-N.C.
B. J. THOMAS: Reunion. B. J. Thomas (vocals); orchestra. Real Life Blues; Crying; Doctor God; Sea of Love; City Bo s; and five others. ABC A BDP-858 $6.98, 1:11) 8022-858 H $7.98, 5022-858 H $7.98.
Performance: Flat
Recording: Good
B. J. Thomas has a flat, weary style that makes for tepid, boring listening. There's a little spirit in (Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Did Somebody Wrong Song-but not very much. Most of the time Thomas sticks to a style close to Johnny Cash's, but since the voice itself is reminiscent of Johnny Ray, and since he doesn't seem to have the energy to do much with either factor, the listener is left indifferent. P.R.
FRANKIE VALLI: Closeup. Frankie Valli (vocals); orchestra. My Eyes Adored You; Swearin' to God: I Can't Live a Dream; Why; and four others. PRIVATE STOCK PS 2000 $6.98, 8300-2000 H $7.98, 5300-2000 H $7.98.
Performance Flabby
Recording: Poor
Frankie Valli's album and his flabby performances have a fake Fifties sound that made me think of Fabian, Annette Funicello, beach party movies, Edsels, and, eventually, the Franco-Prussian war. This last because it holds even less interest for me than the goings on in the Eisenhower Era--I grow listless at the mere thought of even trying to find out why it happened. - P.R.
LESLIE WEST: The Great Fatsby. Leslie West (guitar, vocals); instrumental accompaniment. Don't Burn Me; House of the Rising Sun; High Roller; I'm Gonna Love You thru the Night; E.S.P.; Honky Tonk Woman: and four others. PHANTOM BPI.1-0954 $6.98. BPS141954 $7.98. (6) BPKI-0954 $7.98.
Performance Good
Recording: Good
Actually, this is pretty good dinosauric hard rock, if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. West is a screamer rather than a singer, so he gets tiresome after a while; if all the tunes are not in the same key, then they are loaded with the same amount of decibels. West is also a good mechanical guitarist in a limited way. He doesn't do anything that a six-month guitar student couldn't handle on an acoustic model, but, amplified on an over kill electric instrument such as West plays, it sounds impressive. Good party music. - J.V.
BOBBY WOMACK: I Don't Know What the World Is Coming To. Bobby Womack (vocals, guitar, bass): other musicians. / Don't Know; Superstar; Git It; Check It Out; Jealous Love; It's All Over Now; and five others. UNITED ARTISTS UA-LA353-G $6.98, EA353-H $7.98. CA353-H $7.98.
Performance: Overacting
Recording: Good
Almost all of this album is devoted to Mr. Womack roaring away in his hoarse voice to no great purpose that I can hear. Although he has been a professional songwriter for many years and has recently become known as a performing artist, he has very little style of his own. His efforts are loaded with every cliché of pop music imaginable.
There are two bright spots, however. One is his tune it All Over Now, an early hit for the Stones in the mid-Sixties. Womack's performance isn't particularly good, but he is joined by Bill (Ain't No Sunshine) Withers, who shows how it should be sung. Git It is an instrumental with some wordless vocals in the middle: the organist is William "Smitty" Smith, the former captain of the Canadian quartet Motherlode (When I Die), which was one of the finest small groups in the history of rock or jazz in the last thirty years. Although he is not credited, it sounds as though Smith is also singing on the track. It doesn't really make much difference whether you listen to Womack or not, but if you ever come across the first Motherlode album (Buddah BDS 5046), get it at all costs and listen to the glorious Smitty. - J.V.
COLLECTIONS
RURAL BLACK RELIGIOUS MUSIC: Sorrow Come Pass Me Around. Ephram Carter: Sorrow, Come Pass Me Around. Willard Artis "Blind Pete" Burrell: Do Remember Me; A Little Talk with Jesus Makes It Right; I Shall Not Be Moved. Babe Stovall: The Ship Is at the Landing; When [sic' the Circle Be Unbroken. And nine others. ADVENT 2805 $6.98 (from Advent Productions, P.O. Box 635, Manhattan Beach, Calif. 90266).
Performance: You shall not be moved
Recording: Home variety
The Library of Congress has been making field recordings of this nature since the early Thirties, and this album of recordings made between 1965 and 1973 indicates that there are at leas( some rural black Americans whose muss. icinains unaffected by times and trends. I cry thing in this album is very folksy and authentic but unfortunately not very good from a musical standpoint. For instance, Robert Johnson's (not the Robert Johnson) Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down pales by comparison to Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down, recorded for the Library of Congress by Bozie Sturdivant in 1942. It's the same song, but whereas Sturdivant's ren dering is artistically on a par with Bessie Smith at her best and soulfully deeper than anything Bessie ever recorded, Johnson's performance is the pitiful, though no doubt sincere, whimper of an old man. Furry Lewis, heard here on one track, can he heard to much greater advantage on his Vocalion recordings of the late Twenties and on the commercial sessions he did after his "rediscovery" in the early Sixties. Similarly, Napoleon Strickland's Motherless Children is no match for Blind Willie Johnson's very moving 1927 Columbia recording of the same song. And if you want to hear your religious black music sung a cappella I suggest you forget Katie Ma Young's By the Grace of My Lord, I've Come a Long Way and check out Marion Williams' rendition of the Dr. Watts hymn Shall These Cheeks Go Dry.
Since the tape recorder became accessible to the common man, those following in the footsteps of the Lomaxes have almost be come a crowd. Though this has resulted in much important documentation of our musical and folkloric heritage, all that glisters is not gold. -C.A.
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The Stones--On Disc and Tour
WELL, here it is the summer of 1975 and the Rolling Stones are touring again, for which we can only praise the Lord; if there's anything that can shake us-meaning the rock audience-out of our collective doldrums, it's having the Stones back on the road. There's drama in the air this time, a sense of some thing crucial impending, and the stakes are very high indeed. In terms of the Stones' fu ture, this is rather obvious, but I'm referring as well to the future of rock itself. A friend of mine has the depressing theory that the late efflorescence of German bands such as Kraftwerk may kill it for good in the next two years; if the high-school kids I've talked to lately are any indication, he may be right.
In the meantime, both of the Stones' record companies have new releases out, although neither of the discs is really new-the Munich album the band has been working on for the last several months has been delayed until September after the tour dust will have settled. Atlantic has rushed out "Made in the Shade," which is simply a greatest-hits pack age culled from the Stones' four releases on that label since 1971, and London (via Abkco and Allen Klein) has simultaneously favored us with a single (praise the Lord again, for what good is a summer without a Stones single?) and an album of previously unreleased vault material recorded at various times throughout the band's long career.
To take the Atlantic album first: as greatest-hits packages go, it's reasonably well programmed, and since my copies (and probably yours as well) of the originals are pretty scratched up, it's nice to have all these great songs together in a spanking new pressing, especially considering that the cover art and title are simply perfect. I must nit-pick, how ever; the absence of Moonlight Mile, perhaps the song from "Sticky Fingers," is somewhat annoying, and there is simply no excuse for the failure to include Through the Lonely Nights and Let It Rock (the B-sides of, respectively. It's Only Rock 'n' Roll and the English version of Brown Sugar), among the finest things this band has ever committed to vinyl and nowhere available on LP. This was clearly the time to rectify that situation, and I'm pretty damn annoyed that nobody thought enough about Stones fandom to do it. Then again, that kind of seemingly random thoughtlessness has been part of the Stones' own who-gives-a-hoot stance for so long (it's their charm, really) that I can't say I'm surprised either.
The Abkco album is another kettle of fish entirely, a sort of Stones equivalent of the Who's "Odds and Sods." The difference is, however, that when the Who put their out takes together, they assembled the lot them selves, and they saw to it that they put their best foot forward in the process. In the Stones' case it would appear that they simply dumped a load of tapes on Allen Klein in or der to extricate themselves from the ridiculous legal hassles they've been having with him for lo these many years (did I say "random thoughtlessness"?). This is all typically very unclear, of course; the parties involved have been making all sorts of contradictory remarks about just how the tracks were selected and even who actually owned them.
Mick Jagger has already indicated that he feels much of the material is substandard, an opinion I would be inclined to take seriously-except for the fact that he's said much the same thing about lots of their old records, including some of the best ones. As far as "Metamorphosis" is concerned, however, I'd say on the evidence that he's about half right.
Some of this stuff is pretty feeble, the ballads (such as Each and Everyday of the Year) in particular, even though they are, in a period way, kind of charming. The real turkeys are Heart of Stone, an early hit inexplicably done here as a c-&-w tune without a hint of the fury or menace of the original, and a downright amateurish run-through of the great Memo from Turner, its only redeeming virtue being the chance to hear the original last line, in which Jagger offhandedly ob serves "You schmucks all work for me." That, needless to say, is somewhat ironic given the situation vis-à-vis Klein and the Abkco folks who made this grave robbery necessary.
FORTUNATELY, there are also some terrific things here, and if the Stones don't like them, I for one don't care. Out of Time, perhaps the neatest straight pop tune they ever wrote, is done here to a fare-thee-well, with a fantastic vocal and some cracking-good production touches-far superior to either of its prior public incarnations. There's also a Chuck Berry tune (you're shocked, I'm sure) called Don't Lie to Me that rocks along in great good spirits, with Wyman throwing in that wonderful bass riff from their version of I'm Moving On: a few folkish things that sound as if they came from the "Aftermath" era-an irresistibly wistful seduction song called If You Let Me, for example; and, best of all, a rocked-up rendition of an obscure Stevie Wonder tune, I Don't Know Why, with a blistering lead from Keith and a choked-up soulful vocal by Mick that together make it one of the most powerful things they've ever done.
Overall, "Metamorphosis" is certainly entertaining, and no more rag-tag, really, than "December's Children," the 1966 set London put together from various English cuts of differing vintage; nobody, to my knowledge, has ever groused about that. The Stones, after all, are at their best when they're sloppy, and here we have them with all their lovable warts (as a certain ex-President might have put it) in full view. For all its faults, it's fun, which is more than can be said for far too many of the slick, high-polish LP's some of our major artists are shoving on us today.
But I do wonder what the public's reaction to it will be. I wonder especially what the younger Stones fans, who picked up on the band only after their sound had begun to get, so to speak, more refined, will think of all this.
I guess that's part of the drama I mentioned at the beginning. If those kids can accept it (and I fervently hope they can), then rock and-roll, the most vital and overwhelming pop music of the twentieth century (if you'll par don my critical pontificating) may still be here to stay, despite the fast-approaching Invasion of the German Androids. One way or another. this looks to be an interesting summer.
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I WROTE the above a few days before the Stones' tour began, and, as you may have gathered. I was worried. I wasn't the only one, of course; while at the airport, in fact, preparing to fly to Baton Rouge to see my heroes at their out-of-town opening, I chanced across a magazine article that articulated those worries in an extremely pessimistic way. I disagreed with it almost reflexively, but as it was written by Nik Cohn, the brilliant English pop scribe who did the text for Rock Dreams, I couldn't exactly dismiss it either. I 'thought Cohn's central thesis-that the Stones, because of the inevitable attrition of the years, had become a self-parody (if a brilliant one; he hedged on the music)--was more a lament for his own lost youth than any thing else. Still, an awful lot has happened in the decade since the Stones first came to prominence. In, 1966 Ed Sullivan wouldn't let Jagger sing Let's Spend the Night Together on television, but today someone as totally bland as Paul Anka has a Top Ten hit called I Don't Like to Sleep Alone (they even had it on the Muzak tape on my flight). That may be progress of a sort, but if there's no one left to shock any more, where does that leave the band that practically invented outrage? I decided finally that Cohn was partly right: that band (the one that used to urinate on gas station walls to make the front pages) doesn't exist any more. But on the other hand, the teenagers who came to see the Stones at the concert I attended never saw them, they probably don't know about that Ed Sullivan show, and they may not even remember the song involved. To those kids, the Stones are a band that appeared in 1971 with Brown Sugar, or a band they first encountered at their neighbor hood movie houses in Gimme Shelter. So whether or not the Stones are still juvenile delinquents is mostly irrelevant.
That made me feel better, but I still had nagging doubts; all of us old-timers did after "Goats Head Soup," and the last album was a comeback only of sorts. It seemed the question was no longer whether or not the Stones were still the World's Greatest Rock-and-Roll Band (something to be considered, surely, after the trauma of Mick Taylor's departure), but whether being the WGRRB was a worth while ambition. Could rock still mean some thing more than "That's show biz." and could the Stones prove it? Somehow a lot seemed to be riding on that.
But I'm delighted to report that my fears were groundless; the Stones in 1975 are (or were, since by the time you read this their latest assault on America's larger concert halls will have just wound up) as strong and vital as ever, maybe more so than ever. The sense of strain, of fatigue, that many of us noted on the 1972 tour is gone; the band seemed completely comfortable in their new roles, and the show they put on and the music they made transcended the mere professionalism of most other bands with a kind of ease that was a joy to behold, especially because the audience so clearly picked up on it.
This was not a nostalgia package; there was a lot that was new in the act. Yes, Ron Wood acquitted himself brilliantly in the second guitar slot; I'll miss the kind of seamless floating lines that Taylor dispensed, but Wood plays with equal fire, and he complements Keith far better. And there were surprises-Wood on bass for the first time since 1968, Bill Wyman's debut on synthesizer, and Jagger's first-ever appearance as a rhythm guitarist. The band as a unit even allowed itself, with a total lack of self-consciousness, to share the stage with Billy Preston for a number or two. Best of all, everybody was a star this time out. Taylor, bless his heart, never really seemed to fit on stage, and it was wonderful to see Wood and Richards doing their level best to carry the weight along with Mick-just like the old days when Brian Jones used to mug shamelessly in a good-natured attempt to upstage the other two front-men.
It is significant that when Jagger sang You Can't Always Get What You Want, hardly an out-and-out boogie number, the crowd was almost as ecstatic as they were for the straight rockers that are usually considered the band's raison d'etre. In fact, it's more than significant: it's heartening. For what that song is about--a mature acceptance of life's pain as well as its rewards, and, most crucially, the realization that good times have to be earned--is something much more important than the kind of narcissistic Look-At-Me-I'm-Wonderful bushwah that most of the Seven ties rockers have been trying to peddle to today's kids, and there's no doubt in my mind that both band and audience understood that.
The kind of love I saw pass in both directions across the stage in Baton Rouge is very rare these days. It happens with the Who, and sometimes with Rod Stewart and Faces, but it took the Rolling Stones to really make me aware of it. And, unlike Nik Cohn, I think that in the long run that feeling, and the music that accompanies it, are going to mean much more than the Stones' initial stance of adolescent rebellion and blues purism. That was fun in its day, to be sure, and I'll always regret I never got to see that band in the flesh. But this band ... well, I can only say I hope you got to see them too. You need them as much as they need you.-Steve Simels
THE ROLLING STONES: Made in the Shade. The Rolling Stones (vocals and instrumentals): other musicians. Brown Sugar; Tumbling Dice; Happy; Dance Little Sister; Wild Horses; Angie; Bitch; It's Only Rock 'n' Roll; Heartbreaker; Rip This Joint. ROLLING STONES COC 79102 $6.98, 0 TP 79102 $7.98, CS 79102 $7.98.
THE ROLLING STONES: Metamorphosis. The Rolling Stones (vocals and instrumentals): other musicians. Out of Time; Don't Lie to Me; Each and Everyday of the Year: Heart of Stone; I'd Much Rather Be with the Boys; (Walkin' Thru the) Sleepy City; Try a Little Harder; I Don't Know Why; If You Let Me; Jiving Sister Fanny; Downtown Suzie: Family: Memo from Turner; I'm Going Down. ABKCO ANA-I $6.98.
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