Volunteers [RCA Victor, 1969]
A puzzler--no matter how many times I listen, I can't connect. Every time Grace Slick lilts out "Up against the wall, motherfuckers", a phrase I think we can all agree has lost its currency by now, I want to laugh out loud and I don't find the instrumental cuts very inspired, either. It's hardly a bad album of course and everyone seems to dig it a lot but everyone may be wrong. B

>Musically, Rock and Roll hall of Fame charter member Sam Cooke is a stumper. His voice wasn't just smooth and gritty at the same time, it was also infinitely relaxed--for the many who adore it, a sing-the-phonebook voice. But he was so intent on the pop market that some curmudgeons might prefer the phone book to his orchestral accompaniments. Fortunately, these albums avoid his clumsier commercial endeavors. Even so, bypass Best of for Abkco's 30-track Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964, which includes all of its 15 songs. But Night Beat gets points for conceiving pop as lounge R&B rather than violin schlock, even if Cooke isn't always up to the blues-tinged standards he covers and tries to write. And Live at the Harlem Square Club, recorded at a black venue, takes his hits fast and rough. Mythmakers claim this is the real Cooke, which he would have denied. But it's an impressive document whose rousing climax suggests what might have ensued if he hadn't died two years later.

Weezer [DGC, 1994] :(

The Definitive Collection [Geffen/Chess, 2006]
I hope a few young folks out there are aware that the inventor of rock and roll made his bones with six genre- and generation-defining '50s hits: "Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven," "School Day," "Rock and Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," and "Johnny B. Goode." I also hope they'll believe that he later wrote three equally titanic songs: "Almost Grown" and "You Never Can Tell," in which his patented American teenager goes out on his own and gets married, and the sub rosa celebration of the Freedom Rides "Promised Land." And I hope they won't be surprised to learn that those nine titles are only the cream of a 10-buck, 30-tracks-in-75-minutes collection whose most dubious selection both the Kinks and the Rolling Stones thought choice enough to cover. ("Beautiful Delilah," to be precise--I've come around on Berry's sole #1, the naughty 1972 sing-along "My Ding-a-Ling.") Bo Diddley excepted, Berry was the most spectacular guitarist of the rock and roll era, and every '60s band learned his licks. His bassist-producer was the capo of Chicago blues, his pianist entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on his own recognizance, and his drummers were huge. Yet though the size of his sound was unprecedented, the penetrating lightness of his unslurred vocals was as boyish as the young Eminem's because the crystalline words meant even more than the irresistible music. In the hall of mirrors that is Chuck Berry's catalogue, this is where to get oriented. But be forewarned that there's also a 71-track three-CD box that slightly overplays his blues pretensions and Nat King Cole dreams, and that this one could tempt a person to covet that consumable too. I dare you to find out. A+

Once Upon a Time/The Singles [PVC, 1981]
Like Jim Morrison, greatest of the pop posers, Siouxsie Pseud disguises the banality of her exoticism with psychedelic gimmicks most profitably consumed at their hookiest, and voila. Although two of the four unavailable-on-album 45s on this compilation go nowhere, most of these nightmare vignettes are diverting placebos, of a piece even though they span three years of putative artistic development. B+

Busy Body [Epic, 1983]
Not counting "Superstar" and "Until You Come Back to Me," which perish in the tragic flood of feeling that finishes this album off, the only songs here that might conceivably survive without their support system are "I'll Let You Slide," which Luther lets slip, and the one that donates its title to the venture. Nor does Luther augment the support system's golden-voiced rep by sharing "How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye" with Dionne Warwick, who cuts him from here to Sunday. In short, he sounds like an ambitious backup singer. C+

Vacation [I.R.S., 1982]
Bizzers will no doubt rend their overpriced garments when this fails to follow Beauty and the Beat into Platinum City, but all its failure will prove is that you can't build a wall of sound (much less an empire) out of tissue paper. The uniform thinness of the non-Kathy Valentine songs here does clear up the mystery of why virtual non-writer Belinda Carlisle gets to play frontwoman--her voice fits the image. B-

The Definitive Collection [Geffen/Chess, 2006]
I hope a few young folks out there are aware that the inventor of rock and roll made his bones with six genre- and generation-defining '50s hits: "Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven," "School Day," "Rock and Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen," and "Johnny B. Goode." I also hope they'll believe that he later wrote three equally titanic songs: "Almost Grown" and "You Never Can Tell," in which his patented American teenager goes out on his own and gets married, and the sub rosa celebration of the Freedom Rides "Promised Land." And I hope they won't be surprised to learn that those nine titles are only the cream of a 10-buck, 30-tracks-in-75-minutes collection whose most dubious selection both the Kinks and the Rolling Stones thought choice enough to cover. ("Beautiful Delilah," to be precise--I've come around on Berry's sole #1, the naughty 1972 sing-along "My Ding-a-Ling.") Bo Diddley excepted, Berry was the most spectacular guitarist of the rock and roll era, and every '60s band learned his licks. His bassist-producer was the capo of Chicago blues, his pianist entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on his own recognizance, and his drummers were huge. Yet though the size of his sound was unprecedented, the penetrating lightness of his unslurred vocals was as boyish as the young Eminem's because the crystalline words meant even more than the irresistible music. In the hall of mirrors that is Chuck Berry's catalogue, this is where to get oriented. But be forewarned that there's also a 71-track three-CD box that slightly overplays his blues pretensions and Nat King Cole dreams, and that this one could tempt a person to covet that consumable too. I dare you to find out. A+

The Best of Early Ellington [MCA, 1996]
Although it doesn't approach RCA's long-lost Flaming Youth and touches fewer famous classics than Columbia's fainter, cleaner two-CD Okeh Ellington, this warm, scratchy disc leads out of his tangled discography into his '20s music, which traffics in a rinky-dink novelty more rock and roll than his glossy big-band dance charts. At first only a few familiar tunes stand out from the delicate audacity and raucous detail of the sound. But soon every theme kicks in, every silky clarinet solo and bumptious plunger mute. Ellington called this jungle music because white folks would never have believed he heard the modern city so much better than they did. They learned, kind of. A

American Fool [Riva, 1982]
The breakthrough crossover fluke of the year has it all over his predecessors in REO Speedwagon. Bob Seger has been dreaming of riffs with this much melodic crunch since Night Moves and when I don't think too hard into the hows or whys it more than satisfies my mainstream cravings. But the guy's a phony and not in a fun way, either. Anyone who has the gall to tell teen America that when you're past sixteen, the thrill of living is gone has been slogging towards stardom for so long that he never noticed what happened to Sean Cassidy. C

Peter Gabriel [Atco, 1977]
Even when he was Genesis, Gabriel seemed smarter than your average art-rocker. Though the music was mannered, there was substance beneath its intricacy; however received the lyrical ideas, they were easier to test empirically than evocations of spaceships on Atlantis. This solo album seems a lot smarter than that. But every time I delve beneath its challenging textures to decipher a line or two I come up a little short. B+

Breakfast In America [A&M, 1979]
I enjoy a hooky album as much as the next guy, so when this one elicited vague grunts of pleasure I looked forward to listening in detail. But the lyrics turned out to be glibe variations on the usual Star Romances trash and in the absence of a vocal personality (as opposed to accurate singing) or rhythmic thrust (as opposed to a beat) I'll wait for this material to be covered by artists of substances, say, Tavares or the Doobie Brothers. C-

More You Becomes You [Drag City, 1998]
Feature: "The lonely, ever uncool, always corny piano man." Bio: "Liam Hayes' new record is not just about pop, it IS pop in the classic (circa 1973) sense of the term." Wha? Has Chicago moved to another planet? (Again?) Hayes's closest relative by far is Palace Inc. CEO Will Oldham whittling mountain music down to a doleful whisper. If he's anything, and his aesthetic is so attenuated you have to wonder, he's cool, and if his aesthetic is about anything it's about being about. Hayes's snaillike, lachrymose presongs resemble no pop in history, much less 1973. (1973?) And while it's possible to imagine a piano man this anonymously self-absorbed, no cocktail lounge would permit him to sing--unless he owned it, I guess. C+

Guess Who [ABC, 1972]
Bluesy soul records aren't getting any easier to come by, and who am I to complain about one with the great B.B. King contributing guitar parts? "It Takes a Young Girl" and "Better Lovin' Man," which sound like standards that somehow passed me by, more than make up for the clumsy "Summer in the City" and the rereremade "Five Long Years." But the singer obviously isn't getting any younger, and when he begs comparison with Lorraine Ellison and Howard Tate on "You Don't Know Nothing About Love" he's risking more than he ought to. Which is admirable, in a way. B+

C'Mon, C'Mon [A&M, 2002]
No dolt, she figures it's in her best interest to sound like one--as well as an insider outsider like Gush and Bore, whose horrible lessons in playing it safe she takes to heart. "We got rockstars in the Whitehouse/All our popstars look like porn," she whines on the first track, which the "hit" tops by claiming, "I don't have diddly squat," while dissing her "friend the communist" (who I bet isn't, and I also bet doesn't deserve the putdown). And those are the good songs. Soon here come Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, turns of phrase like "Lay it like it plays [a little dumb, but OK]/Play it like it lays [wha?]" and "With broken wings we'll learn to fly" and (am I missing some irony here?) "Life is what happens when you're making plans." Over this I'd take not the White House (where she'd go in a second if invited politely) but certainly porn (which I note without prejudice she is). C+

Peter Gabriel [Mercury, 1980]
Peter Gabriel on Atco gives way to. . .Peter Gabriel on Mercury, replacing DIY DOR with pessimistic art-rock minidrama, while side two opens with "Games Without Frontiers," about a different kind of internationalism, and closes with "Biko," about a different kind of Africanism. Either he underestimates his own strengths or his audience or both. B-

Sunshine, Lollipop, and Rainbows: The Best of Lesley Gore [Rhino Legacy, 1998]
depressingly boy-identified for a proto-feminist icon ("She's a Fool", "Judy's Turn To Cry") *

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) [RCA Victor, 1983]
In theory I've always been ok with synthpop duos, especially when the result is pop as stark and hooky as what David Stewart provides here. You might even say that Annie Lennox has a bono vox. But these people are fools and pretentious fools at that. Just remember: When they say everybody's out to use or get used, be sure to go along for the ride you paid for. C+

The Best of Chet Baker [Riverside, 2004]
Baker was the genius journeyman for whom Dave Hickey devised the freelancer's epitaph: "If This Dude Wasn't Dead, He Could Still Get Work." He recorded some 60 albums, and although I know I slightly prefer this 15-track '50s selection to Hickey's "all-time favorite record" Chet Baker Sings, and much prefer it to Bluebird's jazzier 1962 Chet Is Back!, I'm not about to explore them all. His adore-the-melody trick has its limits unless his white Oklahoman affect touches you like it does Hickey, the white Texan son of a swing musician with bebop dreams. So this is ideal. As someone who's always preferred Baker's singing to his trumpet, I was surprised to find that three vocals were only one short of what I would have preferred (words on "It Never Entered My Mind" later on, please), and surprised to swoon for the instrumental opener, a 1952 "My Funny Valentine" the notes claim was a hit. I was also surprised to hear more romance--and less "cool"--in this "My Funny Valentine"'s lyricism, sensuality, and bassline than in the contemporaneous version that opens Miles Davis Plays for Lovers. Thank Baker's smooth, soft, full, breathy sound. Thank Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, and (on the two jazz compositions) Johnny Griffin. Thank Paul Chambers. Thank the melodies. A

>Defying these odds, Lady Gaga is complex. She's compared to Madonna not because both emerged from dance music but because nobody since Madonna has wielded celebrity so audaciously, a failure of collective nerve for which the pop singer who looked like a movie star is partly to blame. The visualization of music that began with MTV gave us other beauty queens--the still-fine Tina Turner, the then-exquisite Whitney Houston. But as history played out, all the pop dollies named above inhabit the world Madonna made--a world in which female vocalists are obliged to be far more glamorous than the "girl singers" who rose up after the big band bubble popped. However "attractive" they were, Doris Day, Patti Page, Jo Stafford, et al. didn't have to play the sex bomb.

>Since you may not have noticed "the girl who never wears pants" declining the sex bomb role, let me quote what a friend-turned-source told one of Gaga's dozen-plus biographers: "Interscope is a long, long road which actually involves a lot of people thinking she's great to have around, but"--here's the money shot--"not pretty enough to be a pop star." Universal Music flagship Interscope is Gaga's label, three separate tentacles of which have their logos on her first album, and "around" means as a songwriter, in particular for the Pussycat Dolls, Universal's attempt to create a slut group in the sense that Ponzi schemer Lou Pearlman once created boy groups. Her Italian nose too big for her narrow face, Gaga really isn't pretty enough to be a pop star in the world Madonna made. Rarely does a paparazzo catch her sipping Kristal at some restaurant where the doorman has to pass on your shoes. She calls her fans "little monsters" because unlike those other pop stars, she's Other. The most gay-identified major star since Madonna only more so, she doesn't pretend her fans are all normal. Instead, she pretends they're all abnormal.

>To me, this feels like virtue rewarded. I always considered my struggle with black music awkwardly moralistic, the white guilt trip, but as usual the real issue turned out to be aesthetic. To be blunt, black music is better. The apparent strength of white music in whatever present always seems to deteriorate. Stephen Collins Foster preferred his sentimental ballads to his "Ethiopian songs," and Paul Whiteman thought that he was doing the Muse a favor by whitening the "discordant jazz, which sprang into existence . . . from nowhere in particular," but we remember "My Old Kentucky Home," not "Poor Drooping Maiden," and listen to King Oliver while relegating Whiteman's music to the gramophone museum.

>This time, though it really seemed as if we'd escaped fate. Only a year ago, the white rock fan who dismissed what was judiciously referred to as "the soul sounds"--as if only a stylistic preference, not a race or a culture, was involved--had some credible arguments. We know the wheezing pop of the early '50s was cured by that shot of rhythm-and-blues because R&B was realistic instead of sentimental, idiosyncratic instead of mass-produced, free of show biz nonsense, and rooted in a genuine community. But by the late '60s it was soul music, which was to R&B and gospel what black power was to civil rights, that seemed unrealistic, artificial and showy, although the paradox was that it sounded worst when it tried to assimilate white modes. The excesses of the soul myth proved that black people were far from immune to the pretentious floundering that so often accompanies new consciousness.

>In contrast the best white music--not that déclassé AM bubblegum, but what was then called underground even though it was the staple of an entire industry--was the voice of a youth subculture that had reached full flower after a dozen years of nurture. It was vital, sensual and real, and not only that, it boogied.

Jump! [Warner Bros., 1984]
Parks is a naughty choirboy and Kathy Dalton is auditioning for the Broadway lead, but theatrical preciosity is all you can expect from a musical comedy concept album anyway. What you don't expect from musical comedy is exotic Americana like Parks's irrepressible arty vernacular verbal and musical puns, which combined with his rich melodies compensate for the annoyances. B+

Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows: The Best of Lesley Gore [Rhino Legacy, 1998]
depressingly boy-identified for a proto-feminist icon ("Judy's Turn To Cry", "She's a Fool") *

My War [SST, 1984]
Depleted after three years by the kind of corporate strife I'd always assumed they were too cynical to fall for (which may be, after all, why they did) Henry Rollins's adrenalin gives out and the collective depression is monumental--Gregg Ginn adds only one new classic to his catalogue of noise guitar solos while grinding out brain-damaged cousins of luded power chords on the three dirges that waste side two while side one features Rollins telling the audience how much he smiles, something I'd never noticed before. B-