records

Rip It Up, Issue 12, 1 June 1978, Page 10

records

Marley delivers the Goods

Prime ™ Time Television

Television Adventure

Elektra

Television have a lot to live up to. Their first record received such universally good press that any sign of faltering, however slight, might be taken as evidence that it was all too good to last. v ; The obvious way out for their second album would have been to carefully reconstruct their debut , Marquee Moon, in the best tradition of second albums. Instead, Adventure covers new ground. Side Two has a strong resemblance to Marquee Moon, but Side One contains five songs . which are more closer to the traditional concept of rock and roll songs, and which could help Television to make the step from being fashionable to' being established. -s i JtT t> r tirfrti rtf Wf'tiQ&fv UhJ 18 8 turning into the Pink Floyd of the Blank Generation, as the long guitar work-outs are kept in check, and a much wider range of styles is revealed, from the neo-Byrds 12-string of “Days” to the rock and roll of “Fox-Hole”. It is hard to believe that they

have gone far enough to persuade New Zealand’s timid radio programmers to let the record anywhere near their turntables, but they seem likely to impress a lot of those who do hear. ' One thing is for sure, Adventure should convince everybody who is still in any doubt that Television have nothing whatever to do with the punk label. They demonstrate enough versatility to dispel the possibility of the band being caught in a stylistic strait-jacket, and have nothing in common with the pin-head bop of the Ramones. As a final pointer to the band's possibilities, the last song on Side One, the ethereal “Carried Away’’ does away with the usual two-guitar backing to float along on Tom Verlaine’s organ playing like some latter-day “Whiter Shade of Pale” . Whether he will use this kind of format more is debatable, but it shows up the extent to which vename anu ms uemu a.e aware ontne dangers of becoming too highly stylised. Very few bands could have made Marquee Moon, even fewer could have followed it up with an album that was signific- . antly different, yet every bit as good. Francis Stark

Bob Marley & The Waiters Kaya Island It’s like . . . you reach a certain spot, right? In your journey, it’s like you’re driving down the highway and you reach a rest-place and you go in and get a cup of coffee and t’ing and this an that. Slow down and take it e-e-e-easy . . . ‘Easy Skanking’, y’know.” Bob Marley on Kaya. Let’s get this right out in the open: Kaya is 1978's most rankin’ commercial elpee a celebration. Well . .. Exodus was for Marley the first record in the new phase of his musical expression. A rhythm & blues, soul, disco synthesis within the bounds of reggae. An approach designed to win him a larger audience without sacrificing any originality. His ploy has proved remarkably successful, especially in Britain and Europe where he has undoubted number one status. Bob has always had an ear for good music outside the reggae idiom. Catch A Fire, a masterpiece and his first Island release displayed art-rock overtones Pink Floyd, King Crimson etc. A return to a more traditional reggae stance delivered Burnin',

Natty Dread, Live and Rastaman Vibration. These albums, all of them excellent, kept his audience growing steadily. It was not until Exodus however that the real potential Marley audience could be seen.^ Now Kaya . . . These songs were largely recorded at the sessions for Exodus. They represent however a lighter more optimistic view of the world, rather than the call to arms Exodus portrayed . . . and, to my mind, Kaya is a superior album because it is so much fun. A party album par excellence! Not one bad note, wasted lyric or indulgent solo. Marley 1 s voice could not be better. Every phrase has that sexual, knowing, lilt. Obviously Bob Marley is setting himself up as the prophet come superstar of reggae music. Some may dislike his stance but one can’t discount his courage and, if you believe in music, he cannot be faulted. Personally I can't wait for the next step in the Marley plan for world reunification. So ... If you want one album to wash away those disco overdose blues . . .Kaya is the one. Rastarfari! Seen! Ras Roger Jarrett

Bob Dylan Masterpieces CBS

Bob Dylan may not be in the Elvis Presley class yet, but he is getting pretty heavily ' anthologised. After Greatest Hits Volume I, II and 111 comes Masterpieces, about two hours of selected Dylan songs, ranging from "Song to Woody”, off his first album, to “Lay Lady Lay” from Hard Rain. Of course, it doesn’t include any cuts from Dylan's two Asylum albums, and thus contributes further to the burial that Planet Waves seems doomed to suffer. For the statistics freaks, the only album ( not represented is (of course) Dylan; the albums with the most songs (four each) are Freewheelin', Bringing It All Back Home, and Desire; there are six songs not previously available at 33 l A RPM (except for those of you who have an original mono pressing of Greatest Hits Vol. I, who, of course, have “Positively 4th Street”) and

there must be scores of other ways of categorising the contents of Masterpieces. The six sides seem to have been arranged with some kind of thematic plan in mind. Some of them obviously adhere to a common type. Side four, for example, has a representative sample of the ‘protest’ songs, and side six of love songs. Some of the others are a little harder tq typify, but you can’t help feeling that they have been arranged, and not just thrown together. I don’t know how much Dylan himself had to do with the selection, but it is speculations and little historical considerations that make retrospective albums interesting. As always, there could be quibbles with various omissions, but it is hard to see how they could have been accommodated without extending the collection out to four discs. Still, I would have liked to have seen “Visions of Johanna”, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You”, “The Wicked Messenger”, “Man in Me”, and “You’re a Big Girl

Now” in there somewhere. Perhaps we’ll have to wait until Masterpieces Vol 11. If you don’t own yourself any great number of Dylan albums, I suppose this would suffice, although any compilation reduces the feel generated by a single album. For those of you who have some of the more obvious Dylan landmarks, this is an ideal way of fleshing out your stock. For those of you who aspire to the lot, I know there is no hope, and even one new or variant recording, would persuade you to buy Masterpieces. The fact that there are seven, including the singles, “4th Street”, "Could You Please Crawl Out Your Window" and “George Jackson”, means there is no way out. Some people are train spotters, some collect paua shell jewel boxes, some people look through second-hand shops for original mono copies of Greatest Hits Vol. I. Francis Stark