RECORDS

Rip It Up, Issue 39, 1 October 1980, Page 8

RECORDS

Carlene Carter Musical Shapes Warner Bros We all have our musical dreams. In the early 70s mine was to hear an album of songs John Fogerty might write for Elvis Presley, with Credence Clearwater Revival backing Elvis. On a rather less cosmic scale, the musical alliance of Carlene Carter with her husband Nick Lowe’s band Rockpile delivers on the promises such a teaming suggests. Carter has a great country-rock voice, with the personality Linda Ronstadt lacks, and Lowe's production, aided by the throwback rockabilly guitar of Dave Edmunds, hints of Sun Records at the time Carter’s step-father, Johnny Cash, was just finding out about little white pills. Carter’s musical roots are given full measure with a song written by her mother (“Ring Of Fire’.’), and one by her grandfather, A. P. Carter (“Foggy Mountain Top”). The newest of the Carters is herself a fine writer, and when she picks other writers to cover she has the daring to take on a song that overturns the country stereotype of the husband as the boozer in the family. In “To Drunk (To Remember)” it’s the lady behind the bottle. If you ever loved Gram Parsons, or wished Emmylou Harris would loosen up a little, Carlene Carter is your kind of singer. Phil Gifford The Residents Nibbles RTC Whilst other bands play with concepts (stand up Devo) the Residents are concepts. They are four faceless and nameless characters who originally sprang up in Louisianna in the early seventies and then moved to their present hide-out, San Francisco. On their own Ralph Records (euphemism for vomiting) they've recorded six albums, a bundle of fortyfives and now a compilation, Nibbles, consisting of past album tracks and singles. The Residents use Zappa-Beefheart methods of humourous surrealism as a basis for their own odd but wonderful little excursions into parody and irreverence. Like Beefheart they evoke moods by the sheer idiosyncrasy of their arrangements which can vary from the tinkling Chinese cadences of “Rest Aria", the C&W dig of “Laughing Song’’ to the love-song satire of “Blue Rosebuds”. Two tracks are culled from their third album. Third Reich'n’Roll, which was their treatment of twenty-nine rock classics that they loved or hated. “Gloria" has been effectively mutilated virtually beyond recognition, but that's in the Residents’ favour, and "Good Lovin’ ” has also been re-arranged with similar electronic manipulation. And all this a good three years before the Flying Lizards et al seized on their own facile re-interpretations. It is to be hoped that Nibbles is merely the entree for the main course of Residents’ albums and it would be particularly nice to sit down to Third Reich ’n ’Roll and Eskimo before too long. George Kay

Reviewing a Bowie album is an awesome’ y. task. Invariably, one is expected to relate the tf&y. <:■ album to the man’s past output his multiple ffyff identity changes, and this is often made .no ■£&''■ ’"easier by Bowie himself. (in this case check *" "Ashes To Ashes" and "Fashion”). On first impression, Scary Monsters seems to come on like a more metallic Lodger, but this is as deceptive as first impressions often are. This is quite a different album, one that wears . its intentional reference points like a well-disguised badge. In a way, it’s almost. a potted history of Bowie’s, career and influences. One way or another, there are traces of Lennon ("It’s No Game No. 1”), Iggy ("Scary Monsters”), Talking Heads, Ronson, Reed, and more often than not his own past. There are references to "The Laughing Gnome", "Space Oddity’.’, "Bewley Brothers", “Jean Genie”; • "Fame” and "Heroes", amongst others. It’s an album of songs that, unlike those on Lodger, are both musically and lyrically com- . plete, especially musically. It ts some achievement to be able .to combine musicians like . - Townshend, Fripp, Alomar and Davis with such . force and coherence, and Monsters manages it with ease. Scary Monsters is a very good album, which, after Lodger, both surprises and pleases me. The case is in no way closed. - Simon Grigg Dr. Feelgood Case Of The Shakes United Artists . ' Late 1980, and the ninth Dr. Feelgood album leeps out of the speaker? and lurches into the wilds of rhythm ’n’ booze. The cover proudly - proclaims, “Perfect. For Parties”, and ' it doesn't lie. This record feels like Friday night at your local stomp its breath reeks of booze, Hand it’s iJBMHBSHBHHfiftSpjffiBBH Opening with "Jumping From Love To Love” (credited to the band and Bat Fasterly a - Nick Lowe pseudonym?) and Larry Wallis’ "Going Someplace Else", we find the relaxed/ • ■ edgy feel that Feelgoods do so well, and Nick Lowe’s production is so damn full! ; .J . J " . The tempo is up, the steam engine builds to bursting as we hit Nick’s own "Best In The World", Lee .Brilleaux’s-tough vocal delivery bouncing off Gypie Mayo’s guitar. But the needles really hit the red on a Wallis/Feelgoods track, "Punch Drunk”, as Mayo grabs Wilko Johnson’s sound and makes it all his own. Side. One closes with an oddity: Otis Rush’s ‘.‘Violent Love”; an acoustic country blues with an almost jazzy vocal from Brilleaux. Weird? ; Perhaps, but iLworksHHHBBBMBBHI^H Side Two sees a return to acoustic on the Lowe/Feelgood song "Who’s Winning” a real Dave Edmunds feel on the rhythm backing, but once again . Brilleaux’s vocal makes it undeniable Feelgoods. All in all, Case Of The Shakes is a fine album, a must for anyone disappointed with its predecessor, Let It Roll, in fact, a "must for anyone with a taste for .rock'n’roll/R&B. Feelgood are shaking, with a vengeance. Dave McLean Joni Mitchell Shadows And Light Asylum . , That’s Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers singing "I’m Not A Juvenile Delinquent" in the introductory collage on Side One. Lymon, one of rock’s less-publicised drug deaths, also wrote ■ "Why Do Fools Fall In. Love” that. starts Side • Four and whose title a cynic might say sums up ■ everything Ms Mitchell wrote on her first six albums. If “Stay” was the. hit off Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty, then I suppose “Fools” could be the big one for Joni off this -double live set. He said wearily.'. /'.'' / ’. So much for the inconsequential aspect to this impeccable double live set, . a release which accurately mirrors Joni Mitchell at the ■ end of the 70s and assuredly updates the ; previous Miles Of Aisles. "Woodstock”, is here, a my-back-pages closer. to Side Four, but this is mainly recent Mitchell music, from the era when she stretched out beyond; the college graduate, hippie and coffee bar folk audience ,/ she had utterly . conquered, and made a real play for the respect of musicians/ And her own hang-the-record-sales high musical standards. "In France ' They Kiss On Main Street”, “Coyote” and "A Free Man . In Paris” have . replaced the "Big Yellow Taxis" and “Chelsea Mornings’" as easily-recognised loosening-up ■ exercises, and ‘‘Edith' And The King Pin”, "Amelia", . "Furrv Sinqs The Blues” and i, “Hejira” more than equal their slow, wandering, beautiful contemporaries from the early to . mid-70s live sets. . Two tracks-here also from the cautiouslyreceived Mingus, both' relishing their, distance from the original project, and both startlingly well presented by an /enviable band. ECM I “ guitarist Pat Methney gets a lovely, ringing tone' i from his one pick-up 175 admirably suiting ) ' his very melodic style. His supreme moments ; come as he moves out of "Amelia" into his own ; . solo on Side Two. Don Alias’ percussion lends perfect colouring, and Jaco Pastorius plays, as usual, as if constantly bathed in a spotlight. : • Joni Mitchell’s ambitions have thinned her ’ . following" somewhat, but Shadows And :Light, l ..beautifully sung, recorded and performed, is an ! ideal review of the recent peaks for those who have fallen off the pace. . • Roy Colbert.