RECORDS

Rip It Up, Issue 41, 1 December 1980, Page 18

RECORDS

Various Artists Rock Against Racism Virgin Rock Against Racism was formed as a foil to the insidious bigotry which has surfaced in Britain in recent years, through such obscenities as the National Front and the British Movement. During 1977, 1978 and 1979, RAR organised a series of nationwide concerts, featuring artists who've never been afraid to take an overtly political stance, and whose sympathies conformed with those of the organisers. RAR’s banner has not flown as strongly in 1980, so this album serves as a reminder of what they were fighting for. The stars of all the shows are featured, and the royalties go to RAR. A noble gesture on Virgin’s part, and not a bad slab of plastic either. On one album, you get several slices of heavy reggae, courtesy of Steel Pulse, The Cimarons, the Barry Ford Band, Matumbi and Aswad. Elvis Costello contributes the appropriate 'Goon Squad’, X-Ray Spex recall '77 with 'Oh Bondage Up Yours’, and Stiff Little Fingers get abrasively militant on 'Law And Order'. The Members spit on the ‘G.L.C.’ (Greater London Council, ace legislators against rock), the Mekons and the Gang Of Four challenge established boundaries, Carol Grimes gets very soulful, and Tom Robinson's 'Winter Of 79’ wraps up the package with a big left hook. Rock against racism, smash it ...

Duncan Campbell

Rockpile Seconds of Pleasure F-Beat Take four guys who love playing together, a brace of Nick Lowe songs, selected tasteful covers (Joe Tex, Chuck Berry is there actually a Chuck Berry song that hasn’t been covered?) add an excellent production, not too fat, not too thin, and what have you got? Rockpile's Seconds Of Pleasure, their “first solo album’’. This is an excellent record, loaded with good humour and great playing and potential hit singles. 'Teacher, Teacher’, the american single, is this album's ‘Girls Talk’. 'Heart', a Nick Lowe/Rockpile credit, has been written a thousand times before, but in the hands of Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Billy Bremner, and Terry Williams it sounds just as fresh and vital as ever. 'Knife and Fork' sounds like Edmunds did it in 71/72. 'Wrong Way’ appears to be the English single, a strange choice, as this Difford/Tilbrook (of Squeeze fame) song is the album's weakest moment. It’s strong enough to grace and complement anyone else's album, but it's got stiff competition here. ‘When I Write The Book' sees an Attractions’ organ sound

(played by Edmunds), under Nick Lowe's vocal, on a great little pop song that really shows up the faults on 'Wrong Way’. The album finishes strongly with 'You Ain’t Nothing But Fine, Fine, Fine' pure Edmunds' guitar, rock’n'roll for the fun of it. Makes you want to go straight back to the start. So Rockpile finally record together under their own name it could have easily been a mishmash of disjointed songs under the guise of democracy, but it ain’t it's a great record. Buy it, play it loud, stare at the great gatefold sleeve, marvel at the production, but most important of all, dance! Dave McLean

A thletico Spizz 80 Do A Runner A&M It’s just a matter of where you are really. If you happen to be a good English band, and you are signed to a major label, chances are that someone 12,000 miles away will end up reviewing you. It's not that I don't like this record I do. It's just that there are local bands who are equally talented, and even if they do get a record out, they are lucky to have it played on the radio. Gripes aside, Do A Runner is a fine, if flawed album. It contains some great rhythmic guitar, especially on Side Two, although, on 'Airships' a little economy would have helped. It’s a

logical follow-up to their Rough Trade singles, but it is a pity that some of the humour has been lost in the transition to A&M. For the record to live up to its full potential, it has to be played loud. Loud enough for the bass to thud through you, to make your ears ring, and the neighbours sell up and move to Australia. The only weakspot is the variable quality of the lyrics. The impotent anger of ‘European Heroes' and the Numan imagery of ‘New Species’ don't work at all. But fortunately, the overall sound does. And give it more than a few plays. Like decent wines, it takes time, but it’s worth it. Simon Grigg

Steely Dan Gaucho MCA Donald Fagen and Walter Becker certainly look like guys who have made a pact with the Devil, or somebody not a lot different. Their records, as Steely Dan, are so slinky and seductive the barbs in the lyrics sink in painlessly until one day all the bland on bland radio stations are playing a song ‘Babylon Sisters' about going to bed with two underage girls, when the Barlett crowd thinks the real dirt is “if it don’t fit, don’t force it.” Musically Gaucho is as seamless as anything released by Steely Dan. In many ways the brilliance of Fagen and Becker is best appreciated in the performances they get from session musicians, who with other rock stars resort to the same old rent-a-riff. Not much chance of that here. Fagen and Becker apparently write charts for most instruments, and their approach to music is possibly the reason the only non-original they’ve ever done was a Duke Ellington song. Ellington, too, was an exciting arranger. Musical progression is not really a point to be made with Steely Dan. The jazzy Latin feel to so many Dan songs has always created its own space and time, and Gaucho has that same atmosphere of timelessness. No tricks, no gimmicks, just endlessly interesting and intelligent composition. Lyrically they have always been clever, sneaky little punks. They got sacked from Jay and the Americans for offering a song with the catchy chorus, “throw out your gold teeth and see how they roll”, and how much they enjoy seeing critics trying to read the signs in the entrails of their writing was shown when their last album, A/a, arrived, like Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, with a review as liner notes. If there is a theme in Gaucho it's a glide through the world of drugs and drug deals. “It’s a glamour profession/The L.A. concession” croons Fagen, "illegal fun/Under the sun." It's a world of “Cuervo Gold" and “fine Columbian” where love is a “spasm, like a Sunday in T.J.” Life is "cheap, but it's not free.” Violence is near the surface. "I loved you more than I can tell/But now it’s stomping time." On the last track on the album, 'Third World Man’, the violence spills over. / saw the fireworks I believed that I was dreaming Till the neighbours came out screaming He's a third world man. Belong exciting as well as intelligent is one of the hardest balancing acts in rock. Fagen and Becker have pulled it off again. Phil Gifford

Stevie Wonder Hotter Than July Motown A female Shakespeare of your time With looks to blow Picasso’s mind Your body moved with grace and song . Like symphonies by Bach or Brahms ... Hello, Stevie. Or is it Michael Franks? It’s getting hard to tell the two of them apart now. Wonder’s saving grace is that he can still turn out a good dance number. In fact, Hotter Than July contains some of the sharpest foot music he's put down in a long time (witness 'Master Blaster’). But the lyrics! A random sample is quoted above, and the rest aren’t much better. Wonder these days seems unable to avoid either gooey sentimentality (‘Do Like You’) or drippy politicising ('Master Blaster’ and 'Happy Birthday’). The melodies are all you come to expect from Wonder (pick any album), and his ear for a tune certainly hasn’t deserted him. His backing musicians are of the highest calibre, including

David Bowie’s drummer, Dennis Davis, to my mind one of the best stickmen alive today. The credit list is yards long and the whole shebang is, of course, digitally recorded. There’s even the address to write if you want to join 'Stevie Wonder's Universal Family.’ I have been trying very hard to avoid using the word ‘pretentious’, as it's one I've abused a bit lately. But Stevie Wonder just begs for it. At least he doesn’t go on about plants this time. Duncan Campbell

Cheap Trick

All Shook Up Epic

Rick Nielson worked Cheap Trick so hard through the late 1970’s it was a surprise only one band member (Tom Petersson) finally cried enough. It was that determined relentless work schedule that enabled the Trick to claw their way into America's first division. The body of Dream Police was purportedly done before Trick hit the big time, but the record nevertheless sounded like a band desperately trying to make music concomitant with their newfound status: music for football stadiums. All Shook Up faces similar problems, and the opener ‘Stop This Game' is a particularly bad example of Trick at their most desperate and overblown. Things fortunately get back to the jukebox fire and re-rum Move moves of yore through the rest of the first side until the laboured ‘World's Greatest Lover’ and occasionally again on the second side but the creative spark is definitely on the wane There is definitely no 'Surrender' here. The last track here even clones ‘Tusk’. As one of the most accomplished plagiarists of all time, Neilson should really be mining finer sources than this. Phil Spector used to talk of the importance of contributing to rock, as opposed to just riding alongside it. Cheap Trick have rarely threatened to contribute, but they do entertain. The less weighty moments of All Shook Up definitely deliver in that area and ‘I Love You Baby But I Hate Your Friends' is a title worth smiling at. Roy Colbert

Rod Stewart Foolish Behaviour Warner Bros After the creative low point of his career, the Blondes Have More Fun album, Rod Stewart redeems himself with Foolish Behaviour. After a brief quote from an old, old British radio comedy (Hancock’s Half Hour? The Glums? God, it’s driving me crazy) theme, the album jump starts with ‘Better Off Dead’, a lurching rocker that has more than a hint of the Rolling Stones’ 'Rip This Joint’. But that’s only a prelude to the album’s big production, ‘Passion’, perfect for the dance halls and already getting plenty of radio play. Carmine Appice's bass drums are so up-front that the unwary listener can be pureed. Bui while this is the pivot of the album it is not the sole distinguishing feature that ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy' was on Blondes. Stewart seems to have rediscovered his sense of humour and, more importantly, his sense of melody. There are songs here to rank with his best earlier work. For those with long memories, listen to 'Oh God, I Wish I was Home Tonight’ and hear the shade of Gasoline Alley, with Jim Cregan doing a guitar part that could almost be an ode to Woody (Ron, not Guthrie). Much as I like ‘Passion’, the simple emotion of Stewart’s delivery (reminiscent of the great ‘Mandolin Wind’) makes this song a personal favourite.

Stewart’s regular group is on most tracks. Guesting here and there are Valerie Carter (vocals), Colin Allen (drums) and Tim Bogart (bass).

It’s not a Gasoline Alley or an Every Picture Tells a Story and Stewart has yet to match those early peaks but Foolish Behaviour is more than enough reason not to write the old rocker off. Ken Williams

Tom Waits Heart attack And Vine Asylum This album is a desperate mixture of triumph and tragedy. Triumph in its heartfelt brilliance, tragedy in marking another chapter in the personal downhill slide of Tom Waits.

Waits is the original downtown stumblebum, hand around a bottle and foot on the throttle. He doesn't just act it out, he lives it. Nobody could write such lucid visions of life and love on the rocks without having experienced them personally. Sadly, the lifestyle seems to be overtaking him. His voice, never a thing of beauty, is now beyond repair, victim of too many bottles and Old Golds. He’s just turned 31, but he sounds 60. The music on Heartattack is written for a movie called 'On The Nickel’. From the sounds of it, it’s a chronicle of Skid Row. The movie’s title track is a tearjerking picture of old men dreaming of the bottle they've just finished and the next one to come. By contrast, the album's title is Waits at his raunchiest. ‘Downtown’ and 'Mr Siegal’ work in a similar vein, but they’re artificial highs. A sense of melancholy fills the rest of the album, and hits much closer to home. Heartattack And Vine is a musical milestone. But the lasting impression is of a dying flower. I only hope I'm wrong. Duncan Campbell

The Kinks Kinks Kinda Kinks The Kinks Kontroversy Pye A vital missing link in the rock chain is restored with the re-issue, in original mono, of the Kinks’ first three albums from 1964 and 1965. The debut album is a treasure trove of rock trivia. Here is the original version of ‘Stop Your Sobbing’. There is 'You Really Got Me’, with the distorted guitar Jimmy Page claims to have played, though Ray Davies says it was his brother Dave. Most of the non-originals are taken at a pace, and with about the level of skill, that would have slotted in perfectly with the first wave of punk. Johnny Rotten could hardly have sounded more tortured than Ray Davies trying to slug his way through 'Beautiful Delilah’. Kinda Kinks is a halfway mark between the raw enthusiasm of Kinks, and the dawning of the more familiar Davies’ sophistication on The Kink Kontroversy. Kontroversy is the only album of the three that doesn't need historical or nostalgic backing to be worthwhile. Especially good is the song Bowie covered on Pin-Ups, ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone'. The most interesting thing in 1980 about the Kinks of the mid-60s is that of all the groups of the time the Kinks show more ties to today’s bands than any of the others. Phil Gifford