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Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 20. August 8 1977

Rock

page 12

Rock

Rock header

Return to Forever

Jazz in the mid-seventies is so closely interwoven with rock elements and, more recently and more thoroughly, with soul elements, especially the inescapable disco beat, that jazz addicts may begin to question the honesty and worth of musicians who continually use the disco beat underneath carefully worked out, repetitive and often boring horn riffs, guitar licks and so forth. There seems to be far less emphasis on solo improvisation. Solos are either short and sharp, sounding as if it had been rotated by the arranger; or are long meandering excuses with no hope of gaining interest from the incessant two chord disco shuffle beneath. Vocal passages have gained importance in this "pop-jazz" phase, the lyrics being mostly soul-food rehashes. When Stevie Wonder released "Music of my Mind" in 1972, it was obvious that this was the very best of "new" soul music owing much to the ideas of jazz musicial but now these musicians are in their turn being influenced by the Wonder-recipe which, second time around, unfortunately begins to taste somewhat stale.

Narada Michael Walden plugged himself in to these formulae and came up with a dull and trivial set. Chick Corea and Stanely Clarke in Return To Forever, although they have been influenced by the commercial values of the disco beat, do not drown their musical artistic integrities by the over-observance of the laws of certain formulae The stance they take enables them to head towards a greater public acceptance as well as creating music which is well above the level of trite. As Corea says "our intention remains the same — musical fun with no barriers of style of type of audience". It is just that — musical fun played extremely well. And I like the record because of that. The material is not that exciting, but the way it has been fitted together is. Corea on all keyboards strides through the performance with complete assurance; Clarke puts together some technically brilliant solos and contributes two fine songs; Joe Farrell blows all the reed solos — he's good; Gayle Moran, although not as important a singer as Flora Purim was to the early RTF, is clear and exacting. One thing I like most on the album are Corea's brass arrangements on all tracks. They are quite adventurous and overwhelming, giving RTF a much larger sound than usual.

There are only six songs — listen to each one. They are all enjoyable musical fun.

— Tim Nees

The Alan Parsons Project

Drawing of a person smoking a pipe leaning on a tree stump

"The story of the rise of the machine and the decline of man, which paradoxically coincided with his discovery of the wheel . . . and a warning that his brief dominance of this planet will probably end because man tried to create Robot in his own image" is how Alan Parsons descrobes the theme of his [unclear: secono album] 'I Robot'. This vision of the not-too distant future where the modern day technological drive has made human hands and brains completely redundant is appropriately illustrated by the cover scene which shows a robot standing dominant against a background of bewildered looking people trapped inside a tangle of plastic conveyor tubes.

Alan Parsons began his involvement with the creation of record albums as the engineer on the Beetle's 'Abbey Road' and McCartney's 'Wildlife' and 'Red Rosa Speedway' Since then he has produced a number of top selling singles L.P's including "He aint heavy, "He's my Brother" and "The Air that I breathe" by the Hollies, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", Cockney Rebels records and Al Stewart's "Modern Times" and "Year of the Cat".

"Dark Side of the Moon" is the work that this record most closely resembles, using a similar mode of composition and format. A variety of instrumental themes are interspersed between some fairly straight forward commercial numbers.

Side One begins with the title track which is a six minute instrumental treatment of the main theme. The rest of the side is taken up by four vocal melodies, two of which, "Some Other Time" and "Don't let it show" are particularly pleasant. The only thing which spoils the former is Steve Harley's voice.

Side Two begins with a catchy rhythmic funk number a la Norman Whitfield, followed by some production technoflash which serves only as a 3½, minute space filler. This leads into a laid back Pink Floydish sounding number which could easily have come off "Moon", The album ends with two tracks running together : "Total Eclipse" and "Genesis Ch 1 V. 32", which paint an effective picture of the final technological Armeggedon.

Generally the production gives the music an international metallic electronised treatment and while this does not detract from the music it is something one would need to be in the right mood to enjoy. The record as a whole serves as a vehicle to [unclear: sowcase] Alan Parsons' production talents, while at the same time providing some interesting and creative music.

Geoff Churchman

Dickey Berts and the Great Southern Arista

"Dickey Betts and the Great Southern" is a classic example of the solo album syndrome — member of successful group strikes out on own, gets recording deal and throws together a bunch of songs and is about as interesting as the rest of them. More then anything else, this record embodies complacent musical regionalism, the lifes-style of the affluent Southern rock musician — the cover photo depicts Dickey and his band of good old boys, all imbued with a warm bourbon haze, lounging around the lawns of someone's ancestral mansion, rehearsing a few hot licks amidst the trappings of success. A far cry from dole queue rock indeed.

Proceeding to the album's aural content, "Dickey Betts and Great Southern" turns out to be an exercise in the tradition of the Allman Brothers Band, the leading exponent of Southern rock until its demise. Unfortunately Betts has neither progressed nor allied himself with musicians capable of complementing his playing and singing with some original touches of their own. The result is somewhat one - dimensional if in imaginative songs combining blues, and country influences, centred on Betts' lead and slide guitar playing. The mood is uniform throughout, and songs with similar tempos and instantly forgettable words tend to merge into each other. The album's great strength is in the playing. Indeed each song is more or less memorable inasmuch as it showpieces Setts' guitar. Great Southern do their stuff perfectly adequately, albeit somewhat mechanically.

Drawing of a snail being stood on

On to the songs themselves : there is some tasty harp oh "Out to Get Me" and "Run Gypsy Run", country-boogie with organ, drumming and twin lead passages recalling the Allman Band of earlier days. "Sweet Virginia (not the Jagger-Richard song) is the token hymn to the Fatherland, with Betts crooning dutifully in the Southern tradition then getting the blues on "The Way Love Goes" throwing in soulful organ and a few minor chords for good measure.

Betts is a controlled, tasteful guitarist and plays a fine slide guitar, simultaneously smooth and raunchy. He lets it rip on "Out to Get Me" and "California Blues", redeeming the letter's extreme ordinariness with his tasty picking. His guitar playing is immaculate throughout, possibly at its finest on "Bougainvillea" with a carefully constructed solo building to a climax with additional overdubbed lead passages.

All in all, one for country-rock enthusiasts who get off on Bett's instrumental dexterity, and best avoided by those irked by pedestrian lyrics and the reiteration of worn out musical cliches. But perhaps I've judged the record out of its fitting context — for full effect, get yourself a hot sunny day, out there on the porch in your rocking chair under the magnilias, drinking sour-mash and sniffing white lines off a mirror with rolled up thousand dollar bills — play this record and you'll be surprised how meaningful it suddenly becomes.

— Andrew Delahunty.

American Stars 'n Bars

American Stars n Bars evidences a 70:30 good, bad dichotomy, but it is apparent that despite the temporal gaps separated by the thickness of the vinyl this division does not follow an arbitrary topside/backside split. The concerns that occupied so much of Zuma have been replaced by Young with a more settled view of himself as 'the big rock star', a stance several times removed from that of the earlier 'loner' and one in which he seems decidedly more comfortable. As improvements go it weighs in at about 500 percent.

AMERICAN star'n bars NEIL YOUNG

Some historical data might be in order to inform readers that the schizophrenic aspect evinced by the material's spacing is a natural consequence The first half consists of 1977 tracks cut with the aid of the Bullets, another of Young's backing agglomerations who just happen to include Linda Ronstadt.

These recent tracks represent the distillation of the more modern facet of Young's forays into the studio and, surprisingly, the greater proportion of it works. The pre-present day tracks — collected on side two — are infinitely more intriguing and span 1974 - 76, an exercise so often transformed into an excuse for an artist to release anything he might have been able to force past the mixer's scissors. Fortunately here it's not the case, and amidst these only the tailender is a downright failure. There are the cognoscenti who would submit that Young can't sing in tune, his appeal having more to do with his distinctive vocal twang, and to whom the prospect of Young carrying this song, Homegrown, with only a doubletracked vocal tine would be enough to induce a coronary thrombosis. This horrendous rendering was originally a good idea, especially in the contest of a 'Conserve New Zealand Forest's campaign, but here the overall effect is ludicrous. He is not only more than usually whining, but this which starts with eerily plangent guitar (Young's) silhouetting the doleful vocal, gradually falling awat to his acapella (sic) posturing is merely awful.

The dominant feature of the new material is the interplay between Young's jangly phrasing and Ben Keith's glistening pedal steel — sort of Neil Young meets the ghost of the Grievous Angel, albeit somewhat more raunchily. The opener The Old Country Waltz — has one of those lyrics that just about wraps everything up neatly :

"They were playing that old country waltz.
In this empty bar echoing off the wall,
When I first got the bad news that you set me free,
The band played the old country waltz ..
Well, I loved and I lost, and I cried,
The day that the two of us died,
Ain't got no excuses, I just want to ride,
I just want to play that little country waltz".

The lyric shows a firm handling of archetypal country concerns, and combined with Young's whining could possibly come off as a disaster, except that it's delivered here with a degree of forceful honesty that enables it to stay well clear of being either maudlin or mawkishly pretentious. Saddle up the Palamino is spiced with more jangly guitar, sufficiently abrasive for it to appeal on a rock and roll level. Linda Ronstadt's support vocals imbue it with a texture of highly wrought eroticism — great for driving yourself to distraction.

Hey Babe and Hold Back the Tears, unfortunately, display the whingeing side of the whine, and together they comprise a gaping hole right in the middle of the side, so the less said about that the better. Hold Back the Tears tails off rather loosely with an inconclusive refrain about ". . . just around the next corner ..." and suddenly you're slammed with a wall of wailing guitar introducing Bite the Bullet, a fierce slash the likes of which Young hasn't committed to vinvl since the days of After the Gold Rush. Amidst the flailing guitars Ronstadt end Young trade off perfectly. When Young gets as good as he gets here damn few get any better. 'No prizes for guessing which particular bullet he's thinking of biting.

Side two stirs one into thinking about Young's management and just what in the hell they've been doing since Gold Rush, and how much good material is still sitting in the can. The kicker for the side is Bethlehem Star, recorded in 1974 with Emmy Lou Harris — just two years after Gram Parsons' ashes circled into the still desert air above San Bernardino, and it's brilliant. No slight to Ms Ronstadt, but it could almost be a logical and superior conclusion to the material on the first side. As a friend noted it is a personal song, Young getting right down to the bone, and is best treated as an aural experience, one to be heard. Harris adds a gorgeous harmony, in her own inimitable style, the whole piece neatly laced with harmonica, shrieking like a siren in the middle of the night.

The truly strange Will to Love follows. Young's interpretation of the Hendrix 1983, A Merman I Shall Turn To Be science fiction opus shaded and coloured with phasing and echo. Perhaps not quite as successful as Hendrix but an interesting departure from the normal run of things. Like A Hurricane is another demented, vicious slash showcasing guitar along the lines of Bite the Bullet, et, extended and with emphasis on the guitar, ripping through several changes to catharsis: and Homegrown, dismissed earlier, deservedly.

So — not as consistent as On the Beach or Zuma, but its highspoet equal anything he's put down since Gold Rush — and the Emmy Lou Harris duet is worth the price of the album alone. How, in 2:42, he—apparently lackadaisacally and with so little effort — managed to force in so much of import frizzles the brain.

Flatulence, incurred by the frittering away of profit (on God knows what) from previous albums and masterpieces means that this album only amounts to seven tracks which are in any way healthy, and from an artist of Young's calibre I think we are entitled to demand total consistency. Young may be sincere in wanting to make the revolutionary statement of 1977, and one would have to be dense to miss the title's tie in with the Confederacy, but such smugness rings hollow in the light of his lifestyle. That he was, however, prepared to make something of a political statement — be it brazen effrontery, or motivated by vestiges of rebellious spirit left over from 1968 — attests to the fact that Young is definitely not to be sneezed at. And the music gives added weight to the implication in the title, initially, so what is at first seen as overbearing pretentiousness ultimately transcends the tweeness implied by the title, Neil Young — along with Presley, Dylan, Jackson Browne, Brian Wilson, Lou Reed and not too many others is one of the few real artists spawned by the American rock ethos, and when his hits outweigh his misses — as they do here — the results are nothing short of pretty damned astounding.

— Patrick O'Dea.