OnD
ISC
r AN MORRISON
Beautiful Vision
(Warner Bros.) Here’s a scenario: Wil
liam Blake and W.B Yeats are
swooped up in a cosmic time ray and
transported to the Sixties where
they're exposed to a relentless barrage
of soul and R&B records, after which
the poetic pair's respective con
sciousnesses are fused together and
transplanted into the pudgy body of a
wacked-out Irishman who used to
front a rock group called Them.
Maybe it didn't happen quite like
that, but after listening to Van Morri
son's latest solo album (his 14th), one
begins to wonder Beautiful Vision is a
glorious, screwball affair featuring Van
the Man in the throes of spiritual
ecstasy, reveling in his Celtic roots,
celebrating his heartfelt hodgepodge
of religious beliefs and summoning up
his uncanniest of musical chops
Song titles like "Aryan Mist." "She
Gives Me Religion," "Dweller cm the
Threshold” and Across the Bridge
Where Angels Dwell" tell part of the
story, with Morrison knee-deep in
mystical hyperbole, quoting from
tomes as diverse as the Bible, the
Bhagavad-Gita. Alice Bailey's Glamour
—A World Problem and Jack Kerouac s
On the Road But then, on the stun
ning. funny ‘ Cleaning Windows,' Van
forgets all the portentous deity
dropping to deliver a simple first
person narrative from a “workin man
in my prime" who washes windows on
week days and then goes “blowin
saxophone on the weekend in some
downtown joint”
Either way' — adrift in metaphysical
hooey or wiping clean his squeegee —
Morrison gets away with it. Flanked by
a trio of cooing female backup singers.
Van grunts, groans, growls and warbles
like a man possessed, while his band
churns out rhythms and riffs that com
bine the earthiness of Tupelo Honey
and the august, ethereal strains of Ast
ral Weeks with a funky verve (check
out Pee Wee Ellis sax on "Cleaning
Windows”) heretofore unmatched in
Morrison's career
Steven X. Rea
ZOU REED
The Blue Mask
(RCA) Our story thus far Lou Reed,
famed for penning such exercises in
rock decadence as "Heroin" and "Walk
on the Wild Side," cleans up his act
and opts for the decent life. He mar
ries (a woman, even) settles down and
stops writing songs about junkies and
senseless violence, ultimately releasing
an album of (almost) conventional
love songs, Growing up m Public,
some two years ago.
Now there’s an update: Reed's mel
lowing has (thankfully) not been total
While fans could congratulate him on
his new-found personal contentment,
there was evidence that his creative
powers were not at their height. Grow
ing up in Public, for all its good inten
tions, suffered from self-conscious
lyrics and amorphous music. Reed's
best work had addressed themes of
ugliness and despair with a heroic di
rectness — hearts-and-flowers senti
ments didn’t seem to suit him.
The Blue Mask is a distinct step in
the right direction. If not up to the
standards of his startlingly innovative
work with the Velvet Underground
(his brilliant band in the Sixties), it
nevertheless shows that he retains the
grit and honesty that were his
trademarks. His latest LP doesn't find
him denying the changes in his life
style, but it does show him capable erf
more than mundane love songs.
The album's real strength, however,
is its fierce musical approach. Sup
ported by a new band. Reed plays
guitar with a slashing edge that's sadly
been missing from his records for
some time The atonal screechings he
reveled in back in his Velvet Under
ground days are heard once more in
"Waves of Fear' and “The Blue Mask '
Complementing his renewed playing
abilities. Reed's singing has regained
much of ns old dramatic nuance.
Barry Afftmao
WIGHT TWILLEY
Scuba Divers
(EMI)' And now I'm back again, with a
hole in my shoe/I'm back again, now
everything's new ..”
Dwight Twrilley is unarguably back
Seven years after his “I'm on Fire”
torched the Top 20, three years since
his last album, the boyish Southwest
ern popster returns Twilley has a new
label and a new album, but it sounds
suspiciously like someone else's
music
It took me halfway through the first
side of Scuba Divers to realize I wasn 't
listening to the new Tom Petty album
Even taking into account regional sim
ilarities and both musicians' fondness
for buzzy Bvrds-tan arrangements. I'm
Back Again" and "Somebody to Love”
(DT's current single) uncannily re
semble the mealy-mouthed Floridian
at his worst. These are tepid pieces,
exercises in recycling that add little
and annoy plenty They're not isolated
instances either, the flipside offers
"Dion Baby," weak-kneed pop of the
most dismissible stripe, and "Cryin'
over Me,” an unsubtle attempt to
toughen up that cops its lick from—of
all the tired warhorses — Led Zep's
"Whole Lotta Love ”
Twilley's return isn’t all bad, the title
track, while nonsensical lyrically, packs
some charge, and "Touchm' the
Wind.” which breaks the Pern lock of
Side One, achieves the kind of yearn
ing romanticism that so rightly earned
Twilley praise in the wake of his first
(with Phil Seymour) lp, Sincerely "1
Think It's That Girl” is standard
Beaiie-esque stuff, good for a spin or
two
The lack of inspiration on Scuba Di
vers may have any number of causes
Apparently, the tracks were recorded
over a period of time, at different loca
tions, for several prospective labels Or
maybe the well's simply gone dry Or
the genre that Twilley works —
melodic, Sixtievinflected pop-rock —
may have yielded all its going to yield
in terms of riffs and rhyme Whatever
the causes, Twilley's return delivers
much less than fans who fell for "Fire,"
"TV1' or "Twilley Don't Mind" had a
right to expect
Gene ScuUttti
QKEJH REISSUES
(EPIC) Culled from a half-century of
pivotal American music, brilliantly and
copiously annotated, handsomely
packaged — Epic Records' five-album
ten-LP reissue of the best from the
gold mine vaults of the venerated
Okeh label may be the mosi significant
reissue series of recent years
Okeh Records (1918 1969) was
known primarily as a purveyor of
'race music," that euphemistic appella
tion that encompassed |azz, R&B, soul
and the blues during each of those
genre s halcyon eras This beautifully
conceived and presented series further
documents the label's forays into
Western Swing With two-album pack
ages highlighting the company's con
tributions to each of these musical
forms, the listener is treated to the
early recorded work of such pivotal
names as Muddy Waters, Major Lance,
Bob WilLs, Little Richard and Ahmad
Jamal cheek by |owl wifh such forgot
ten greats as Johnny Shines, Billy But
ler and the Enchanters, the Light Crust
Doughboys and the ineffable
Sandmen Screamin' Jay Hawkins
shares the grooves with Doc Bagby on
Okeh Rhythm & Blues. Sons of the Pio
neers segue to Emmett Miller & His
Georgia Crackers on Okeh Western
Swing. Victoria Spivey compliments
The Yas Yas Girl on Okeh Chicago
Blues and on and on It's a marvelous
cornucopia, a musical motherlode that
delights, astounds and preserves
Davtn Seay
TN pRINT
Pinball
JERZY K.OSINSKJ
Bantam Paperback, $7.95
Goddard's not your typical rock
superstar. No Hollywood Bowl
concerts, no corporate-sponsored na
tional tours, no full-color magazine
cover shots of his dates or his arrests
— in fact, no photos at all. Goddard
wants the impossible to sell three mil
lion records a year while maintaining a
private life and identin, despite (or be
cause of) his fans.
To that end. he's managed an
anonymity so complete that not even
the executives at Nokturn Records
have seen his face, or learned the ad
dress of his secret recording studio
home How Goddard becomes the
prey of a fan desperate to know him is
part of the story Jerzy Kosinski tells in
Pinball The rest o.f the story' is not so
straightforward. It involves Patrick
Domostroy, a faded composer who's
seduced into assisting the desperate
and evil Andrea Gwvnplaine; Donna
Downes, a sensuous black Chopinist
whose ambition at the piano needs
Domostroy's experienced touch to
succeed; and Jimmy Osten, the Clark
Kent flip side of Goddard
Kosinski's preocupation with a
celebrity’s right to privacy is under
standable He was, after all, only hours
away from meeting Sharon Tate for
dinner at her home when an airline
luggage mix-up prevented him from
taking his flight to Los Angeles and a
ringside seat at the Manson murders
It's his Harold Robbins-style perspec
tive on male-female relationships, and
women in general, that’s hard to
figure Pianist Donna Downes speaks
for all of Pinball's lascivious ladies
when she tells of the night when
‘ Marcello and I returned to the bar I
was still excited. My whole body oozed
sex, and I spun from one orgasm to
the next Like heartbeats, they kept on
coming—for as long as I wanted ...”
It could be that the cardboard
women like Donna effectively serve to
point out the existential despair that
only Kosinski's men are capable of
feeling. Or, it could be that the pop
novel formula of sin-seduction-and
servitude doesn t easily adapt to the
serious and worthy questions Kosinski
seems to have in mind about privacy
and society's expectations of its artists
Or. it could be that Kosiaski hasn't
noticed that the mechanics of pinball
have been replaced by electronic
video games, and that the mechanical
sex of the pop novel has been re
placed by living, breathing sensuality
in the best fiction of the Eighties
R. Sue Smith
Majipoor Chronicles
ROBERT SIIATRBERG
Brtam Books, $595
Majipoor Chronicles is not really a
novel — it is a collection of short
stories set on the planet Majipoor, the
world of Silverbergs Lord Valentine's
Castle The stories are linked with an
ingenious narrative device — Hissune,
Lord Valentine's successor-designate, is
allowed to delve into the Hall of Rec
ords, where telepathicaliy encoded
memories of the citizens are stored
We see Hissune, at first merely a mi
schievous boy, grow and mature as he
lives these people’s lives Some of
them are giants of intellect and cour
age, some are petty, lost in their prej
udices and hatreds All are fascinating,
and all help Hissune to understand the
world he will one day rule.
Indeed, the only time one can truly
smell blood flowing through the tales
is during the numerous and varied
sexual encounters. In fact, sexuality is
the most dominant form of physical ac
tion. This is by no means an insur
mountable problem: Silverberg s talent
is so strong that his concern for these
people and their lives pierces the veil
of intellectual satyriasis
Majtfxxjr is a fascinating creation, a
tree which will undoubtedly bear addi
tional fruit, but it is to be hoped that
further adventures will be experiences
of fuller spectrum — it is something of
a cheat to give us such a tantalizing
world, and then limit our perception
of it.
Steven Barnes
Sound Effects
SIMON FRITH
Pantheon, $8 95
Simon Frith leads an intriguing
double life: on the one hand he is a
professor of sociology at the University
of Warwick, hngland — a most respec
table position — and on the other a —
smirk — rock critic The happy con
vergence of these two ^pemingly con
tradictory employments is a writing
style which, transmitted to us via col
umns in Creerri and (presently) New
York Rocker and now through this
book, is consistently informed and
thought-provoking.
In Sound Effects Frith sees
rock’n'roll (which he uses to describe
chiefly the Fifties form) and rock as a
cultural phenomenon grounded in the
youth and leisure activities of the past
(particularly the 1920s) but with a
value and meaning all its own The
book is structured around a
production/consumption theory of
rock culture — the chapters are titled
'Making Music,” Making Money,”
“Making Meaning" and so on — but the
emphasis is important: Frith's analyses
of the means of production and of
marketing are vital but not unprece
dented; his real concern is how music
is consumed, an area he feels lias been
unjustly neglected He explores with
great insight and care the uses of rock:
as background music for teenage activ
ity, as the rallying point for youth
"community,' as a means of making
sease out of one s existence
Sound Effects is clearly intended as a
text and is, as Frith himself introduces
it, “a solid and generally sober work "
Thus, the going may be slew at times
— a comparison between the Frankfort
School and Marxist theories of mass
culture doesn't exactly make for fun
reading — but Frith lias a way of mak
tng sense out of even intellectually
abstract concepts
Mikel Toombs
Are the Kids All Right?
JOHN G FULLER
Times books, tlj SO
Rock and roll will never die, but
you just might That seems to be
the message John G. Fuller is attempt
ing to convey in this gripping recrea
tion of the infamous Who concert at
Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum on
December 3, 1979 Fuller's unique —
and certain to be controversial —
theory endeavors to explain the forces
that contributed to the deaths of the
eleven fans who were asphyxiat
ed as they stood among the huge
crowd waning to enter the Coliseum
Using the Who concert as a focal
point, Fuller traces the history of hard
rock violence from the mid Sixties
clashes between England s Mods and
Rockers to recent disturbances at Van
Flalen concerts and argues tliat such
disturbances result from a hidden
death wish on the pan of the rock
generation Fonunately, Fuller keeps
his theorizing from becoming too dry
by combining it with fascinating bio
graphical information on Jimi Hendrix,
Janis Joplin, the Doors, the Rolling
Stones, the Who and other such rock
superstars. The central story of the
events leading us to the disaster at the
Who concert is suspensefully told, and
makes the book difficult to put down
Richard Graham