Pop Records
Midsummer madness
Duncan Fallowell Pink Fairies: What A Bunch of Sweeties (Polydor £2.00). I love this album. Those still under the misapprehension that rock music is just a moronic row will have their belief confirmed by this. It pounds away forever, heavy boogie fuzzed out with messy guitars and sweaty drums. Wild undiscriminating noises, particularly during the long first track on the second side, from a Portobello band who used to play benefits—from Gay Lib to adventure playgrounds—and may still do. It ends with a horrible version of the great Beatles rocker, Saw Her Standing There.'
Sha Na Na: The Night Is Still Young (Kama Sutra £2.00). Sha Na Na operate the slickest, funniest 'fifties-send-up routine to come out of America, glittering in studs and gold lame and oily, leathery sidestepping. On the cover they look a tough bunch, though I daresay they all hail from Yale or somewhere. That's how it usually turns out. They are at their best too when performing the 'fifties and early 'sixties classics. Without their own pantomime and the show-biz power of that original music, they seem less remarkable. This album of self-penned pastiche songs is a very professional piece of work with many earcatching moments, particularly in the vocal department, but overall it would not hold you for long.
Lord Sutch: Hands Of Jack The Ripper (Atlantic £2.09). It is a pity Lord Sutch can't play guitar or sing or write songs. If he could he might well be famous by now because his kind of camp rock theatre is currently very popular and becoming more so. Sutch protests that he was using make-up, coffins, sequins and God knows what else long before Alice Cooper was born. I can well believe it. So was Arthur Brown. And I daresay someone else was doing it before them. That isn't the point. Charades can be tremendous fun but one has to deliver the goods in musical terms and in a time of professional and extreme eccentricity, Sutch's manner is too music-hall, too straight, too unthreatening. Anyway, if you own a record shop play it aloud. It will encourage people to buy heavy albums, if not this one.
Jo Zawinul (Atlantic £2.09). At the point where experimental jazz and rock intersect you will find the Austrian, Jo Zawinul, playing sweet dreamy piano. On record, at least. Recently he has been playing in Weather Report at Ronnie Scott's with a much heavier electronic emphasis, and sometimes losing out on innuendo and feeling. Wonderfully mobile music nonetheless, as is (in more reflective mood) this album. Assisted by Herbie Hancock, Miroslav Vitous (Weather Report's celebrated bassist), Woody Shaw etc, and using two percussionists, Zawinul in a series of personal tone poems explores an immense tonal range with an ease and imagination which leaves Miles Davis's mouth hanging Open.
Velvet Underground: Live At Max's (Cotillion £1.49). For my money, the VU are the most exciting and original rock group America has produced. To all intents and Purposes they don't exist anymore but their first album back in 1967, introducing the combined brilliance of Lou Reed and John Cale, still sounds like one of next year's releases. Unfortunately nobody taped them live in those early days but in the absence of such a recording, this one might do. As the price suggests, it is an amateur cassette recording from Summer 1970, preserved by chance and now turned' into an album. With Lou Reed and Stirling Morrison on guitars and the Yule Brothers on bass and drums, it provides an authentic whiff or two of a great band in decline. Reed and Cale still prosper however.
Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace (Atlantic £3.69). Recorded live in a Los Angeles baptist church, with John Cleveland on piano and the Southern Californian Community Choir plus band, Aretha Franklin cannot go wrong. She is so obviously at home, over all four sides of this gospel album, that her voice takes on a double assurance and seems to draw out the enthusiasm of her associates. This is not a package of hysterical bible thumping. Its atmosphere is relaxed and fun-loving, with a hip rhythm section to prevent anyone squatting on their laurels. Beautiful.
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