Permanent Waves #23/#24/#25
It took me so long to find out-- but I found out!
Welcome, or welcome back, to Permanent Waves, a weekly expedition into the power pop (and beyond!) of the year 1980.
After a two-week absence, your favorite weekly retro music column has finally returned in all its glory! I’ve had family visiting, plus none of the albums I was listening to were quite clicking with me, and it only made sense to wait until I had a proper ZAMN in the barrel. So get ready for a seventeen-course feast of 1980- surely, there’ll be a little something here for everyone. Let’s mindset!
WEEK 23
Cheap Trick - Found All The Parts
On their debut album only three short years ago, Cheap Trick were scrappy rock omnivores, blending glam sex appeal and garage snarl with the kind of ruthless efficacy that can only come from years of nonstop touring. And you know what? We got “Surrender” out of it, and from a certain perspective that’s enough proof of their method. By the time the band was headlining The Budokan, they certainly had a more legitimate claim to the power-pop throne than The Knack. In my estimation, though, the ability to drive throngs of teenagers into hysterics is a far more trivial thing to have in common with the Fab Four than many industry-types would like to believe, and Cheap Trick, true to their name, are cheaper artists than the bands they worship— and not just as in less expensive. This bite-sized patchwork of live and studio odds-n-ends has substantially more charm to it than last year’s flop LP Dream Police (seriously, their “Day Tripper” might out-riff the original article), but the three originals leave me no less unconvinced that Rick Nielsen is the sort of cynic who can either harden his heart against the allure of celebrity, or find much interesting to say about it. Lucky thing that frontman Robin Zander, who co-writes the soppy “Take Me I’m Yours”, sings pretty enough to come on as soft-hearted as he pleases.
VERDICT: NICE
The Kinks - One for the Road
I’ve never really been convinced that Ray Davies is truly one of The Great Rock Songwriters, but he clearly wants to be, in a very compellingly Mindset way, and that gets me through most of The Kinks’ 70s albums even on the many, many occasions he tries too hard at an idea that just isn’t substantial enough to justify the effort. The best thing I can say for this double-live album is that it doesn’t sound like anybody is trying too hard: the whole band sounds confident and comfortably in-their-bag. I wish the material was a bit more evenly spread across their oeuvre, though— the six songs from their not-that-great last album Low Budget drag it down a lot. Plus, y’know, all these songs are already available elsewhere, without the crowd noise.
VERDICT: SKIP
The Chords - So Far Away
Can there be any such thing as too much power pop mindset? Do you think I’m just going to roll over for any old punk band who covers “She Said, She Said?”. Look: The Chords seem like nice kids, kids I have a strong instinct to root for, kids who believe in the power of rock. But both primary songwriter Chris Pope and primary singer Martin Mason are believers not because of what Paul Weller and Pete Shelley’s music did for them, but because of what it did for Paul Weller and Pete Shelley, and that makes all the difference: their adolescent angst is a copy of a copy of a copy. There are hints here that they at least have a sense of humor (“Hold On, I’m Coming”, a promise to fuck their girls’ woes away, is a cute joke, if not necessarily a clever one) and a touch of the ol’ existential dissatisfaction (“Happy Families”, get this, suggests that many families aren’t happy at all, and pretend otherwise to keep up appearances! The rank dishonesty!!). But Paul Weller and Pete Shelley have both already been prolific enough that none of us should have to settle for hints. The “She Said, She Said” cover really is quite nice, though. Mindset of the week: Now the kids have gone, so you can’t pretend / You’re both like strangers, you can’t comprehend / No one but yourself, with who to fight / Everything’s the same but nothing’s quite right
VERDICT: FINE
Iron City Houserockers - Have A Good Time But… Get Out Alive!
This Philly five-piece seems to be getting pegged as Springsteen wannabes, and I do hear the similarity, especially on “Old Man Bar”, but what I really hear is Tom Petty, with a splash of Graham Parker. And don’t get me wrong, The Houserockers hit the mark genially enough for the most part: I like The Heartbreakers just fine, occasionally I even love ‘em (and a splash of The Rumor is the exact right amount). There’s certainly nothing that tugs heartstrings like “American Girl” on Have A Good Time, though, nor even anything that rocks as hard as “I Need to Know”. They’re just an ordinary bar band, really, with a lot of ordinary songs about bars, containing ordinary observations of the things that happen in bars (from “Junior’s Bar”: she’s just seventeen, but she’s old enough for me, how insightful). Joe Grushecky should probably stick to those pleasant, jangly riffs— not every lyricist can be a Springsteen, but Petty’s whole appeal is that anyone can do it, and regardless of how true that actually is, coming up shorter than him is a dire sign indeed.
VERDICT: SKIP
Pharoah Sanders - Journey to the One
Pharoah Sanders has the kind of resume that should intimidate anyone writing about jazz, let alone a novice like myself, so it’s a lucky thing that Journey to the One is so palpably dominated by a very classic, almost rockist double-album enthusiasm and excess. This is certainly no dinner background ambience, but John Hicks’ backdrop for Sanders’ trademark screeching sax on album opener “Greetings to Idris” is unfailingly warm, even generous, “After the Rain” and “Soledad” are both soothing, meditative and nearly skronk-free, and “You’ve Got to Have Freedom” is downright earwormy. So, lest you turn away for fear of some atonal Ornette Coleman-y racket, for 72 minutes this really didn’t tax my ears too badly at all, and unlike Splendido Hotel It’s deeply-felt enough that I could relax to it without falling asleep. It’s not over-slick either, with the possible exception of “Think About the One”, which wouldn’t be far out of place on an Earth, Wind and Fire album. Dangerously close to a ZAMN, but the standards are higher for Coltrane associates- one more track with a sitar, and he’d probably have me hooked for good.
VERDICT: NICE
Ted Nugent - Scream Dream
No.
VERDICT: NUGE
WEEK 24
Klaatu - Endangered Species
The fifteen minutes of fame which these prog-pop softies got out of baseless speculations that they were secretly the Beatles is about up. Thus, the meanie bobeanies at Capitol records are now twisting the poor lads’ arms into making formulaic soft-rock pabulum. That’s the word from the fans, at least. Personally, I think failure to weather a little corporate arm-twisting is a telltale sign your prog-pop wasn’t worth that much to begin with, and I find about half of this album to be exactly as charming as (albeit plainer than) “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”. “I Can’t Help It” sounds like Brian Wilson finding his way back to the simple pleasures of the electric guitar after years in a psych(edelic/ological) wilderness, “Knee Deep in Love” would have outclassed most of The Hollies’ 1974 reunion, and “All Good Things” is a tender, Harrisonian requiem for John Woloschuk’s loyal doggy— awww! Sadly, the rest of the album tries for perkier, crunchier rock, to eye-rollingly unconvincing results. “Sell Out Sell Out” would be trite coming from any punk, and it’s doubly so coming from actual sellouts like these. Mindset of the week: Sell out, sell out / that’s the name of the game / Sell out, sell out / Everybody can play
VERDICT: FINE
The Motels - Careful
This one was especially disappointing: not only is this album not good, it’s bad enough that I revisited the Motels’ 1979 debut to see if it was as solidly good as I remember it being, and it wasn’t! Not at all!! This is the kind of album that makes me sympathize with the crowd who write off “new wave” as a cop-out term for artists who want to borrow a bit of punk’s cool without committing to its iconoclasm. Turns out, what I liked about Motels was “Total Control”, a tormented slow burn played so low-key that it becomes gripping in a banality-of-evil sort of way. It proves Martha Davis has a very real eye for the hollow social fictions perpetuated by boomer-era pop, but for some ungodly reason she’s convinced that her only medium ought to be five-piece rock so slight and so mirthlessly well-behaved that everything about it vanishes from your mind the instant the song ends. Meta-commentary on the ephemeral nature of her subject, I guess, but that’s no excuse for being boring.
VERDICT: SKIP
Al Jarreau - This Time
Al Jarreau sings much of This Time in a panicked, almost Barry Gibb-esque staccato I find quite entertaining, but the music just isn’t enough fun for him to really shine. Basically every song is an interchangeable slurry of overpolished smooth jazz and easy-listening R&B, even the Chick Corea cover. Committing more whole-heartedly to either slick pop or fussy fusion would probably do him good— it’s hard to imagine he couldn’t at least get a few more memorable hooks out of the former, or solos out of the latter. That dreary-looking album art doesn’t say it all, but it certainly says enough. Too professional and pleasant to hate, too generic to like.
VERDICT: FINE
George Jones - I Am What I Am
I get why people are wild about “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, really: refusing to let go of lost love until your dying breath is a quintessentially country sentiment, and George Jones, Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman render it to a rare degree of purity. In all honesty, I still find it pretty saccharine, a real pity party of a track. And I’m sorry to say, the lion’s share of I Am What I Am winds up in the same boat. This all just sounds like fogey music to me. 49-year-old Jones tackling both the showbiz of courtship (“A Hard Act to Follow”) and his prodigious alcoholism (“Bone Dry”) with a measure of good humor sees side two off nicely, and I’ll concede the melodies are mostly sticky after only a couple spins, even if only by dint of their predictability. But I can only tolerate so much drinking-to-forget-her. The world’s moved on without you, old man: we do uppers to forget now, and Jones certainly knows enough about uppers by now to justify some disappointment that he comes across nearly as square as he was twenty years ago.
VERDICT: FINE
Pere Ubu - The Art of Walking
As a lover of a powerful, charismatic voice and a firm skeptic of the avant-garde, I was put off by David Thomas’s “singing” within about 2 seconds of the first song on his band Pere Ubu’s first album, and possibly even more put off by the sour, grating tension of the band’s playing. Give me a damn award for open-mindedness, though, because after only a few short listens I was kinda nodding along to it! Pere Ubu are certainly not power pop in any sense at all, but they’re true-blue punks nonetheless. Their liberal use of abrasive guitar and keyboard textures is tempered by their keen musicianship (and in particular by a propulsive drummer in Scott Krauss), and their overall tunelessness can’t stop them from coming up with memorable lyrics or infectious, shout-along hooks. Pere Ubu fans, up top, how about that “Final Solution”? Hell of a song, hell of a song. All that said: The Art of Walking is crap. Pretentious, ugly, goes-nowhere, unlistenable crap, an amplification of everything annoying and much-too-much about this band and an abandonment of everything that made those qualities shine— most crucially, a fucking pulse. The lyrics are all dadaism at its very most nihilistic, and by “nihilistic” I really mean “apathetic”, and by “apathetic” I really mean “lazy”.
VERDICT: SKIP
Blue Öyster Cult - Cultösaurus Erectus
The hard-rockin’ Long Island stalwarts follow up Mirrors, their little-loved bid for mainstream stadium stardom, with a set of songs that firmly reconnect the Cult to the gonzo irony and fanciful lyricism of their earlier years, and you’d hardly know they’d ever taken a break from it. Much the same as Mirrors, and Spectres, and even Agents of Fortune, this album too rarely gets weird enough to escape the feeling that the band doesn’t fully trust the audience to follow their literary aspirations beyond their crunching riffing. Unlike those albums, Cultösaurus Erectus is produced by metal heavyweight Martin Birch, which means that the riffing can be an end to itself (See: “Monsters”, “Lips in the Hills”). Even if “Deadline” comes in a hair shy of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” or “Godzilla” or “In Thee” for radio potential, I’m daresay it’s their most consistent album yet.
VERDICT: NICE
WEEK 25
The Angels - Dark Room
Thank god for third chances, because that’s how many it took for me to admit that I L-O-V-E the fourth album from Sydney hard rockers The Angels (known as Angel City outside their native Australia to avoid confusion with a much worse glam band called Angel). On Dark Room, I hear the pure, distilled essence of what power pop mindset has to offer the dudebro pub-metal crowd spearheaded by The Angels’ buddies AC/DC. This band’s instincts are for tough, simple slash-and-burn riffing, shout-along choruses, a certain macho swagger. To be sure, all three of those things are present and accounted for here. But to my ears, it’s undeniable: these songs sound like hard-drinkin’ hard-rockers saying to themselves “Who’s to say we can’t we be just as witty as a guy like Nick Lowe?” And sure, maybe they are not, in fact, nearly as witty as Nick Lowe. But unlike Lowe, whose instincts are for sarcasm and cynicism, these blokes are exactly earnest enough to make their punk-adjacency homey and inviting without sacrificing an ounce of power, and frontman Doc Neeson has a good voice for the stuff to boot. And they’re certainly wittier than AC/DC. Mindset of the week: The Tonight Show on closed-circuit TV / Close investigation shows the star is me / Making jokes about your mental health / No names mentioned, look at yourself
VERDICT: ZAMN
Bob Dylan - Saved
Eugh, the multimillionaire p-p-poet is still all-in on the Jesus-freak stuff. Thanks but no thanks. I haven’t heard a note the man’s recorded since the wildly overhyped Blonde on Blonde, to tell the truth, and this album makes a strong case that I haven’t been missing out on much. A bigger fan than me would probably go into this hoping that Dylan’s oh-so-lauded pen had produced any halfway original musings on the matter of Christian faith— No such luck. My agnostic ass was just hoping for a little folksy charm, and Dylan’s tiresome reliance on that cheesy gospel choir leaves me as SOL as the true believers.
VERDICT: SKIP
Tequila - Viva Tequila!
Viva Tequila! benefits a lot from my having heard fellow Madrileña new-wavers Radio Futura only a month or two ago. This hot young five-piece has actually been kickin’ around the movida since ‘76, three years longer than Radio Futura, and you can definitely hear it on their third album, both in how tight the band is and in the heavier classic-rock influence that dominated the early days of the punk explosion. They’re not quite as handy with a reggae groove (see: album lowlight “No Llores”), but they more than make up for it with lead singer Alejo Stivel’s winsome delivery, and with their command of the Chuck-Berry-on-crank kickassery made famous by such luminaries as Wreckless Eric and The Sex Pistols. A damn shame I’m stuck appreciating this album from across a language barrier.
VERDICT: NICE
The Lambrettas - Beat Boys in the Jet Age
Like The Chords, The Lambrettas could be comfortably dismissed as Jam wannabes, but the difference to my mind is the Lambretta’s commitment to capital-F Fun. “Da-a-ance” (perfectly stylized to remind you of that infectious chorus non-melisma every time you read it) and “Beat Boys in the Jet Age” both soar, unencumbered by the furtive meaningfulness their more lauded peers can’t do without. The rest isn’t as special— the single “Page 3” is much more we-have-All Mod Cons-at-home, and their ska rendition of the Coasters’ classic single “Poison Ivy” stinks like rotten cod. I still think they have a lot more potential than The Chords; low bar to clear, innit?
VERDICT: NICE
Bread and Butter - Monday Morning
This recording-studio product masterminded by two lyricist/composer brothers makes what’s known in Japan as “city pop”, which blends all manner of Western pop influences, typically with a predominant streak of smooth jazz and/or soft rock, into a glitzy soundtrack for Toyko’s rapidly-expanding upper middle class. A lot of it, you may have guessed, winds up a bit too rich for my blood, but on an album like EPO’s Down Town, which we covered back in week 12, it can also make pure pop confection out of the kinds of disparate stylistic reference points that only seem disparate at all until their subcultural baggage gets lost in translation. If there’s one thing I miss on Monday Morning, it’s a central, charismatic vocal presence like EPO— I can’t even find any vocalists credited as performers here! It’s faceless in a pretty literal sense, and that makes it forgettable, but one good melody forgives a lot, and “Japanese Woman”, helpfully sung in my native English, is a prizewinner, a breezy delight that I hope I never tire of. Hope to hear more of whoever that singer was at some point!
VERDICT: FINE