It occurred to me of late that most of the records reviewed in this column this year have represented one front of the rock scene while another area has been virtually ignored. I'm referring to jazz-rock, that artificial pigeon-hole for mainline jazzmen selling out and small-time pop artists attempting to progress. However, it's not that phoney a field now, and a recent spate of releases serves to illustrate this.

First, there is an album by CCS, the new home of the grand old man of British rock, Alexis Korner, who was singing the blues in London clubs while the Stones were still at school. It's a big band, about twenty pieces, with a strong woodwind/brass section. The players were hand-piced to provide the best elements of the jazz and rock worlds, including fine players from the training grounds of the Dank worth and Heath bands. Also present are such performers as Harold McNair and Tony Carr, who mix tours of America with such artists as Donovan with work as accredited jazz and studio musicians. Every player is a name in his own right, and to list all their credits would take too long here.

The conductor is John Cameron, who, with a background of formal musical studies at Cambridge, has worked in almost every field of the music business. Finally, production is by Mickie Most.

With this accumulation of talent it's not surprising that the album is tremendously powerful and polished. With confidence they can adapt Jethro Tull's Living in the Past as a sweaty syncopated jive in five-time, and treat an old spiritual in seven, slipping into thirteen when that gets boring. There are no empty, weak points, though the timbre of the arrangements varies considerably.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the music is its overpowering sexuality, in the Shirley Bassey mould. All those phallic brass instruments pounding and blasting, rampant, hot, and rhythmic. There are moments of contrast, however, though these do not detract from the excitement generated.

Cover versions of material by the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin are also included, with some excellent original material. While you're there, take a look at the beautiful Rak label this album carries.

"Actors in the cast of six, we moved on down the road. It couldn't be much farther, it's only three more inches - on the globe. Whistle stops and bunny hopes from Pittsburgh to L.A. Don't think the day will ever come when we go our separate ways. Friends of feeling, feeling the pleasure and the pain that's part of living. Together with a common bond, enchanted by a magic wand, led by a crazy band baton, together - with a common bond."

So begins Common Bond, a new album by the Ides of March (Warner Brothers). While not as tempestuous as CCS, this sextet features strong vocals in songs that are built on a solid organ/guitar/brass foundation. Some of the tracks are reminiscent of Blood, Sweat and Tears - indeed, Superman is a straight copy of the BS&T version. Its composer, Jim Peterik, is chief vocalist for the Ides of March. The music is commercially oriented, though it draws freely from jazz sources. While rhythmically strong it retains a strong melodic character as well.

The Allman Brothers Band's Idle wild South provides an excellent selection of highly professional jazz material. Led by the brothers Duane and Greg Allman, on guitar and organ respectively, this seven man group performs well in a wide range of styles. Most of the songs are by Greg Allman or the group's other guitarist Dicky Betts. They're good, harmonically and melodically strong, and Greg's vocals suit them well.

The album reveals a talented combination of musicians who successfully explore the extent of the styles they adopt. There are regions of brilliance like the beautifully effective recurring guitar figure in Midnight Rider. A Santana-Style number, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, is wonderfully charismic as well as being technically adventurous. Innovation and good musicianship lend quality to this album.

Chase (Epic) is a nine man combination led by Bill Chase on trumpet. Formerly of Herd, this guy is a phenomenon, an energizer who, by the strength of temperament and prodigious technical resources, can create an uncommon drive.

Unlike a number of previous attempts at jazz-rock fusion. Chase does not dilute either of its elements. The members have a high level of musicianship as well as an unusual capacity for openness and flexibility. On this first album, the scope of this singular group becomes immediately clear. All the crisp trumpet solos are by Bill, but it is the group sound and presence which particularly distinguish Chase.

The core of the Band's character is excitement, and the ingredients of that excitement are numerous and precise - the rhythmic drive, the intricate harmonic textures, the symbolic relationship between the human and instrumental voices, the remarkable fullness of the band's impact.

Possibly you recall Get it on a brassy single released earlier this year. The five part Invitation to a River deserves special mention as a multilayered evocation of a turbulent emotional collision with a falling, fatal ending. There is a finely honed use of a trumpet expression for dramatic pruposes, including cascading lines of brass that create kaleidoscopic patterns.

It is particularly impressive that Chase refuse to indulge in effects for their own sake. Honest excitement is part of the Chase credo. Their music makes rewarding listening.

-Zeke

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band: Live

Elektra

Butterfield is one of those eternal enigmas in blues; a white man. Well, I don't intend to argue the case for white blues, in fact I don't much care. Butterfield grew in Chicargo and was listening to blues in Negro bars from his early years. He played with people like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters, and when his own band was started most of its members had similar backgrounds. None of which proves that Paul Butterfield can play the blues, but he, at least has more claim than alienated Englishmen living in tree houses.

The present album is approximately Butterfield's fifth. His style has changed over the years. His first album was very hard and rough Chicargo blues, and following this he performed much the same function in the resurgence of interest in blues that Mayall did in England. Butterfield's was among the first of American electric bands to begin using a horn section, and, again like Mayall, a large part of Butterfield's success stems from getting together excellent side men and making them a tight unit. Butterfield has never had the trouble with his horn sections that leaders like Mayall had (i.e. unrestrained blowing as relief from continual riffs) and one suspects he is quite a disciplinarian. The horn section in the band now is not brilliant, but makes no mistakes and often is reminiscent of the horn sound of Chicago. Gene Dinwiddie, who at one time played bass with the band now is on tenor sax, is surprisingly good, and on one track So far, So good launches into an arhtthmie, atonal solo that is rather like John Coltrane and is very good indeed. Generally, with the exception of Dinwiddie and possibly George Davidson, the drummer, this band is not a band of virtuosi. The sideman are very adequate, making no errors, but of course this is all Butterfield needs to build on.

The album is, of course, live and this is a great help to any blues band. The audience here is very responsive, and my only complaint is that the engineering and production don't quite convey the power of the band. The horn section sounds a little washed out, and the bass is rather squelched.

Now, the dreaded track by track analysis. This is a double album, and few double L.P's ever manage to have consistently good material on every track. Of ten tracks here two are pretty mediocre and far better left out (in my opinion). Anyway the first track is Everything Going to be Alright which opens with the heavily aggressive and masculine Butterfield harp - he is a brilliant harmonica player and makes most other white harp players sound weak, cliched and prissy. Love Diserre now a Butterfield standard, follows and the hand whips easily through the difficult rhythums of this song. Driftin and Driftin a slow blues classic, follows and this has a fab-gas-gear harp solo of 2-3 minutes by Butterfield, again a powerful performance. Number Nine on side three is an exciting (truly!) up-tempo jump number, and the standard page break Born Under a Bad sign is given a subtle and restrained treatment that is a vast improvement on the Cream version.

Follwing this is the most interesting side four. The first track, Get Together Again was written by Butterfield and consists of his playing electric piano in a repetitive rhythmic riff, with handclaps in the background, and singing of;

So you think your jorney is coming to an end Its just the beginning friend.

The paino is vaguely country blues in style, and the singing vaguely gospel but the whole thing is very clever and moving and shows surprising lyrical sophistication. Dinwiddie's sax solo on So Far, So Good has already been mentioned, but it's interesting that this blues band doesn't need to confine itself to strict forum.

I couldn't really class this as an essential album for people interested in any kind of good music, bit if you like blues or soul I'd say it was essential, and if you have some spare bread it's a good buy. You'll note that I've cunningly avoided deciding whether whiteman can play de blues.

The Northumbrian Thug.

Leonard Cohen

Songs of Love and Hate

CBS/Polygram

Many people seem to have expected a rehash of Cohen's first two L.P's (Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs from a Room) and have consequently expressed disappointment at his latest release. But their hastily tossed off opinions are decidedly unjust - no great artist is content with only one masterpiece, and no two of his works are the same. And Leonard Cohen is, in my opinion, one of the finest, greatest, bestest poet-novelist-composer-singers of the contemporary "pop" music world (All Cohen's fans will here readily agree, all others don't know what they're missing).

The songs on Cohen's first record were bitter, honest, pathological - those on this record are in the same category (though even more intense and consuming), but the voice which once still retained a mellowness in the midst of recollections of despair, lost or dead loves, the anguish of emptiness, suicide etc, has now become harsher, even more resigned, even gentler - it caresses the words, rather than sings them, lingers over them as if considering them still -will they convey the soul/gut feelings he wishes to lay bare before us? But I think it is compassion which distinguishes Cohen from all other poet-singers, and on this LP this characteristic has found fuller expression than before;

Now if you can manage to get your trembling finger to behave.
Why don't you try unwrapping a stainless steel razorblade
That's right it's come to this
Yes it's come to this
And wasn't it a long way down
Was't it a strange way down.

-Dress Rehearsal Rag

And the suffering he sings of is not only the agony and emptiness of another accurately, objectively observed, it is also his suffering - he has been through much sadness and pain because he leaves himself open to every shade of human experience, he remains vulnerable. "Everybody I meet wipes me out" is how he puts it. Someone else put it this way: "Leonard Cohen. . . gives the impression that he expects the world to pounce on him and ravage him down to his skeletal reamains - not because he is who he is, but because he is absolutely incapable of constructing any kind of deliberate defence."

Unless his music and his writing are his defences, a means of introducing compassion to the heartless, passion-less self-interest objectivists who rule everywhere, so that they will protect now ravage. Cohen confesses to often imagining himself as ruler of the world, not because he really wants to be, but because he feels that it is time that a "loser" ruled. If he was ruler of the world, he would hand over power to women, because he believes in the matriarchel state - he wants women to hurry up and take over because "they really are the minds and force that hold everything together - they can set men free". But I digress (a little).

Songs of Love and Hate has eight tracks, each one poignantly beautiful, each one delicate and tender, each one gentle and sad. Listening to Cohen always makes one sick with longing for those carefree childhood days of playing by the river or roaming local hillsides, because those days are forever gone, they have been transformed from living experiences into remembered experiences Listening to Cohen conjures up memories of past romances - some that lasted all day - others which began so beautifully, then laded or soured.

For Cohen's songs are memories - hence the folornness, the sadness hich penetrates every song - it is the sadness of loss. But at the same time these songs are life-assertive becuase they bring us up against the pain and sadness of life, and show us that we carry on living, often to find the happiness we seek: "let's sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter."

Cohen's backing group on this record is The Army, which consists of two vocalists, Carlynn Hanney and Susan Mussmano, and four musicians, Ron Cornelius, Charlie Daniels, Bubba Fowler and Bob Johnston. I've never heard of any of them before (except Bob Johnston, who produces Cohen's records), and I don't know anything about them — perhaps some local aficionado can supply information. The child singers are from the Corona Academy in London, and Paul Buck master is responsible for the truly beautiful string and horn arrangements - just listen to that cello - its Pure Sound. This is expert record production - the balance between vocals and instruments is perfect. It is harmony in the fullest sense of the sord.

So, if you're a Cohen fan, or if you're not, this is a Must record, it can't be put too strongly.

Rupert