RECORDS

Rip It Up, Issue 39, 1 October 1980, Page 13

RECORDS

Ultravox Three Into One Island - Whether you love or hate Ultravox, there's no denying their influence on the music of the eighties. They may be responsible for such atrocities as Gary Numan and Mi-Sex, but their influence, does extend further, to ; include' the new electronic units, Orchestral Manoeuvres, Pink Military and possibly even 'Joy. Division.. Essentially, Three Into One is a greatest hits album. It comes at a time when both the reformed Ultravox and original vocalist John Foxx are,riding high with separate careers. As a documentation of their first three albums it couldn't :be bettered, .as both .the . track selection and cover design are excellent. vjßoßßSS From the first album we get the superb “Dangerous Rhythm”, “The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned", and the doubtful "My Sex”. Ha Ha. Ha 'supplies “Rockwrock”, "The Man Who Dies Every Day” and "Hiroshima' Mon Amour”, while Systems of Romance has three in . a row, with “Slow Motion”, "Just For A Moment” and "Quiet Man”K£HOOOHM Bonus of the album is the inclusion ; of “Young Savage", surely the band’s most frantic effort, and previously only available on IIingIeieIease?MBWBWMHMBWCTKM If you have never bought an Ultravox album, don’t wait ; for Vienna, grab this one. It is as perfect a testament as ypu could hope for. . Mark Phillips Daryl Hall & John Oates Voices RCA • - Just where Hall & Oates 5 it on the rock shelf as we enter the 1980 s is not entirely clear. They've rocked a lot harder since the soulfulness ("She's Gone”) ' aid featherweight brilliance ("I’m Just A Kid”) )f album one, but soul has invariably been a re irning point, if no longer a major trademark. A/hat .-they have done, consistently, is produc albums with at least a couple of genuinely c. -mmendable and replayable tracks on each occasion and Voices is no exception to that. ' - * -J? ’ As on the pair’s last album, the departures and surprises are on the second side. The six on Side One are a fairly unified bunch of rocklove songs, the backings tight-fisted and hard, the tempo arrow always pointing up. Vocally Hall doesn’t get much opportunity to show what he can do with a real melody, and lyrically too, nothing major is attempted. . 'Your kiss is on my list’ is not the sort of hook line that can stand being repeated 48 times in one song, reasonably close to Smokey Robinson geniuscorn as it possibly is. ..“Hard To Be In Love With You”, with a strong four-step chorus, is the best of them,, while "Gotta Lotta Nerve", a play with doo wop, is the pointer for an essentially retrospective Side Two. “You’ve Lost That Lovin' Feeling” begins, a good cover, though the songs from this era were so often so good that really only Linda Ronstadt can’t make them sound worth buying again fifteen years on. "Africa", which' has nothing at all to do with Eno’s expectations for the current decade, and "Diddy Doo Wop" are both great fun, the former borrowing the Cadets and Bo Diddley, the latter Dion and Del Shannon. And interrupting this pair and "Lovin' Feeling” is the album’s one classy soul ballad. Organ-led and vocally strong, it's a good one.Voices mixes rock product and a belief in what should be done (by Hall & Oates) in 1980 with some bouyant and obviously-enjoyed nostalgia. The latter ensures the record keeps its head above water. Roy Colbert A mazing Rhythm Aces How Do You Spell Rythum? Warner Bros The only hard thing about the Aces is trying to pin down the kind of music they play. • In so many bands the lines are firm. In the Aces you can switch from stone country, as in the rather hokey “Give Me Flowers While I’m Living” on this album, to white soul of the kind Van Morrison sang on his under-rated A Period Of Transition. r On "How The Hell” the balance is .tipped strongly in the soul direction, with the Morrison connection firmly established with a steaming cover of “Wild Night”, which makes Morrison's original version, which featured cocktail lounge piano, sound almost effete. : For a real ’ trip into Redding-Pickett-Etta James territory try “I, Got The Feeling", a song written by Muscle Shoals guitar player Eddie Hinton,' a white man who, when he sings himself, sounds a lot like Otis Redding. If ”l Got The Feeling” had a black female chorus behind Russell Smith's passionate vocal, it could be straight off a Stax album from 1965. • ' If you saw .the Aces live you know how great they are. On this record producer' Jimmy

Johnson has captured that hot sound. If ever the south deserved to rise again it's with music like this. Phil Gifford The Photos Epic This album smacks of a concerted effort to cash in on everything that's trendy. Get a moderately good-looking girl and a handful of mean but pretty guys, feed them a solid diet of Blondie, the Pretenders and the Motels, and with any luck, they just might produce something similar. The Photos don't even make a decent job of concealing their influences. Singer Wendy Wu tries to copy the sulky good looks of Chrissie Hynde and the vocal style of Debbie Harry. She may have the cheekbones, but she certainly doesn't have the pipes. Her voice is a rather nasal whine, and merely sounds apologetic when singing "I Just Don't Know What To Do

With Myself”_ The kindest thing that can be said about the other three Photos (Steve Eagles, Dave Sparrow and Oily . Harrison) is that they are competent. Of originality there is not a spark. On "Do You Have Fun".and "Irene", they manage to construct a catchy chorus. "Now You Tell. Me" and "All : I Want" are clones oh, mid-period Blondie, and not very good ones at that. A bonus is an eight-track album called The Blackmail Tapes, recorded in a garage some two months after the band was formed. It just serves to show what a good producer and good studios have done to dress up a very uninspired sound. Others have done this before, and much better. Don't call us ... Duncan Campbell Philip Lynott - Solo In Soho Vertigo Lynott’s .reasons for instigating this solo album are difficult to understand or justify. From the songwriting angle he IS Thin Lizzy and as such he has, you would think, sufficient musical outlet without needing to involve himself in the indulgence that dominates Solo in Soho. With a band as fully-realised as Lizzy, Lynott could nurture his hard-boy Irish fancies without too much being said, but on this album his lack of. any new ideas and shallowness of character are , laid bare. Downey and Gorham are in regular attendance but they’re held firmly in check and can only watch as Lynott moves from the maudlin tones of “A Child's Lullaby" and V- “Girls” . to the corny aimlessness ' of "Yellow Pearl”, "Ode to a Black Man" and the

dreadful word-play of "Talk of 79". Only the opening. gambits, "Dear Miss Lonely Hearts" and "King’s Call" warrant any praise, and that would be scant enough. . ; So Lizzy aren’t there to bail him out but in the last analysis on Solo in Soho Lynott can’t' be saved from himself as. he's now.reaching the tail-end of his creative span if the last two Lizzy albums and this one are any indication. Reach back to Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox for Lynott’s golden period as I’ve a feeling we won't see him near that standard again. George Kay Various Artists How Was The Air Up There K-Tel With an awful lot of bands these days telling you all about how they are reviving the sixties, it is interesting to hear just what the sixties were really like.. Although this album does not have the breadth of Nuggets, the original album of this type, it does sport excellent liner notes, an intelligent selection, apparently not dictated by label politics, and some classic New Zealand songs. It is highly recommended. ■ It is worthwhile listing the bands represented. They are; the Fourmyula. Peter Nelson and the Castaways, Barri and the Breakaways, the La De Da's, Hubb Kapp and the Wheels,'Ray Columbus and the Invaders, the Pleazers, Dave Miller and the Byrds, the Librettos, the Troubled Minds, the Hi Revving Tongues, Chants R&B, the Four Fours, the Ahmed Dahman Group, Larry's Rebels, the Avengers and the Underdogs. Are you ready for Hubb Kapp and the 'Wheels? Stephen McDonald

CBS Jazz Best Ofs ... Mahavishnu Orchestra Eric Gale Return To Forever Stan Getz Tom Scott This is an exciting history of some important forces in jazz-rock in the Seventies. Unlike some "BesJ 0f..." compilations, these are intelligently conceived and attractively presented, with informative liner notes by such established jazz critics as Leonard Feather. Warmly recommended as examples of jazzrock development, they provide shortcuts to the building of a record-collection of leading contemporary jazz artists. Guitarist John McLaughlin helped pioneer the fusion of jazz and rock with his Mahavishnu Orchestra, exploring new approaches built on the improvisations of Mites Davis’ electronic works. Exciting high energy music emerged, characterised by loud, melodic solos from McLaughlin’s double barrel guitar, Jan Hammer’s creative synthesizer work, and Billy Cobham’s driving drum solos, with the interesting addition of compound meters derived from Indian music. Cobham was later to become a creative artist in his own right, as shown in his compilation in this series. It is an interesting companion to one released last year of his best work on Atlantic. Like McLaughlin, the Chick Corea and bass player Stanley Clarke (Return to Forever) were fired by religious missions McLaughlin followed guru Sri Chinmoy and declared music was the language of the spirits white the others

sought higher plains through Scientology. Corea spoke of trying to reach as many people as possible white retaining a musical integrity. Both groups suffered personnel changes the first of the three Return to Forever groups is not included on the compilation concerned, but both the RTF and Mahavishnu records flow well, despite the difficulty imposed by trying to represent various stages of a group’s development on one album. The mission of saxophonist Tom Scott is more straightforward to derive the "maximunYemotion" from his music. His compilation is easily accessible. He along with Bob James, Joe Sample and Larry Carlton who back some of the tracks, graduated from being a session musician and helped open the jazz door to those of the seventies generation not satisfied with disco and current pop. Another sought-after session musician was guitarist Eric Gale another member of the unofficial gentlemen's club Bob James produces most of his tracks. His influences were gospel (hear the powerful "Oh Mary Don’t You Weep”), early rhythm and blues and great sax players like Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins. Tenorman Stan Getz didn't like all that was going on in the 70’s. He fought against the jazz artists he saw replacing musicianship with volume, substance with fashion and electronic gimmickry to capture easy attention. His collection reflects the cool but subtle approach which made him a legend without the bad taste he saw in others. Nigel Horrocks