Alive, She Cried [Elektra, 1983]
This collection of unearthed concert tapes isn't without its virtues--Robby Krieger a white blues twister on "Little Red Rooster" and Jim Morrison remains an effective focus as long as he just sings. But when he deigns to read his poetry aloud or lays one of his narcissistic come-ons on some unsuspecting teenager, it is to feel grateful for kids too young to have experienced the fabled Jimbo charisma firsthand that there are no new rock stars. C+

It's Hard [Warner Bros., 1982]
Tommy's operatic pretensions were so transparent that for years it seemed safe to guess that Townshend's musical ideas would never catch up with his lyrics. And it fact they didn't--both became more prolix at about the same rate. This isn't so grotesque as All the Blind Chinamen Have Western Eyes, but between the synths and the book-club poetry it's the nearest thing to classic awful English art-rock since Genesis discovered funk. Best tune: "Eminence Front," on which Townshend discovers funk. Just in time. Bye. C

Giving You the Best That I Got [Elektra, 1988]
Where five years ago Baker was a soul singer who honored the traditional soul audience's lounge leanings, now she's an arena-lounge singer manufacturing generalized intimacy for 26-to-45s. Rid of funky minor-label producer-songwriter Patrick Moten, she composed two tracks for Rapture and worked on a third. Here she's down to two collaborations as the credits edge toward El Lay--if Britten-Lyle and the Perris have anted up, can Carole Bayer Sager and Toto be far behind? She's not a total loss yet--despite the universal lyrics and inflated choruses, three tracks make something of her established standards. But unless she suffers reverses I wouldn't wish on Frank Sinatra, she'll never risk an interesting album again. C+

Decade of Decadence '81 to '91 [Elektra, 1992] :(

Completely Well [Bluesway, 1969]
A year ago I thought BB King was the greatest live act there was and I've treasured several of his lps, including Live at the Regal and Blues is King, and astute management has succeeded in transforming him into the major star he should have been ten years ago, but his music is not improving. There is no reason why someone as sweet-voiced as BB shouldn't cut his blues with ballads but all too often they lean into schmaltz. This is a good lp, especially on side one. But Live at the Regal is so much better. B

Silvertone [Warner Bros., 1985]
Like his East Coast counterpart Marshall Crenshaw, Isaak comes to his sources as a professional musician, not a bohemian dabbler. This is attractive, only his sources aren't as rich as Crenshaw's, and neither is his talent. Reflective modernized rockabilly played for echoing atmosphere. B

This Is the Everly Brothers [Music Club, 1996]
Before they moved to Warners, which has never flattered their modest gift with the modest collection it deserves (although the 1968 concept album Roots is sweet), Cadence made hay off the teen classics now hawked by half a dozen reissue labels (including Rhino, where they begin an endless box). All of the key moments are on this collection, which lists for $10, and while some may prefer the $20, 31-cut Laserlight triple-CD, I find that too soon their harmonies start sounding neat rather than sharp. This is their very best, epitomizing a strain of pubescence that can't be trusted to repress its horniness past the end of the song. To their elders they're always polite. With their peers they fuss, fight, and--in their all-they-have-to-do-is-dreams--fuck around. A

Best of Bee Gees Vol. 2 [RSO, 1973]
What a pathetic comedown--the melodies soggy, the harmonies strained, the lyrics deadly dull. Fifteen songs plus lyric sheet means they're really selling it, too. Exactly four of these songs made the US top 20 which coincidentally is also how many good ones I count here and that's being generous. C

Would You Lie With Me (In A Field Of Stone) [Columbia, 1974]
If you think the Orgy-Gel dolls they sell in the back of cheap skin mags are sexy, you may find this fifteen-year-old the hottest thing since the waitress who brought you the screwdrivers in Winnemucca. Cute little ass, better-than-average pipes, and Billy Sherrill's usual "who gives a shit if the title cut is commercial?" country album. Upped a notch for no strings. B-

Bananarama [London, 1984]
The girl-group version of Tony Swain and Steve Jolley's black harmony trio, Imagination, Bananarama suffer from Swain-Jolley's characteristically detached mix, which sounds dreamy when Leee Johns is coming on and untouchably dreamlike when these lucky lasses blend their voices in song. They also suffer from the songs, which despite their solid hooks don't give you much to grab onto either. B-

Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive [A&M, 1981]
Put this on the shelf in front of Bowie's Pin Ups, Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll, and Costello's Almost Blue. Granted, Jackson doesn't sing as well as any of them, not to mention Cab Calloway or Louis Jordan, who originated most of the '50s r&b novelties here revived. But he obviously gets a kick out of this stuff, and that counts for something. What counts for much much more is that MCA has slipped three budget Louis Jordan compilations into better record stores. B

>Where for most rock historians the '50s begin circa 1954, musicologist Zak's angle is to encompass the entire decade. For him, the game changer was the man who symbolized the pop establishment rock and roll displaced: Columbia Records production chief Mitch Miller, auteur of Frankie Laine's "Mule Train," Johnnie Ray's "Cry," and Rosemary Clooney's "Come On-A My House" as well as his own "The Yellow Rose of Texas." What unites these "novelty" records is that each, like many early-'50s hits from Miller and others, constituted a unique soundscape whose only natural environment was the studio. Thus they challenged recording's performance-based, ear-on-the-wall ethos. Zak believes that although rock and roll began with different materials, it found new ways to exploit and embellish the novelty aesthetic.

Jolene [RCA Victor, 1974]
"Jolene" proves that sometimes she's a great singer-songwriter. "I Will Always Love You" proves that sometimes she's a good one. Porter Wagoner's "Lonely Comin' Down" proves that sometimes she should just sing. Her own "Highlight of My Life" proves that sometimes she should just shut up. And the rest proves nothing. B-

Never Gone [Jive, 2005]
Lest you doubted it, this is grotesque, and not just because stardom ruined Nick Carter like so many young people before him. It's more that nobody loves a man group. Blue-balled yearning becomes AJ-said-you-swallowed whining, which wasn't the formal challenge their Swedish Svengalis signed on for. Maybe they could learn their instruments and call themselves a man band, which rhymes. An album of Four Lads covers is also a thought. C

Angel Clare [Columbia, 1973]
Those of you who forgot just why you hated Simon and Garfunkel ought to hear what this castrati manque does to Randy Newman's "Old Man." Is all that sweetness intended ironically? I bet Randy doesn't think so. Point of information: His name contains the word "art." C-

Not a Moment Too Soon [Curb, 1994]
McGraw draws his phony drawl so tight he sounds like a singing penis--one of those guys who can make his prepuce mime the Pledge of Allegiance when his boner is right. He got interested in country when he heard about farmer's daughters, and learned everything he knows about Choctaws and Chippewas from Chief Nokahoma. Still hasn't outearned his daddy, though. C+

>Describing Jimi Hendrix's performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, Christgau wrote "Grasping and grunting on the brink of sham orgasm as he flicked his tongue at the great crotch in the sky, he made his way through eight or ten indistinguishable songs. Hendrix played what is being referred to as 'heavy' guitar, which in this case I suppose means he was loud. His antics can be seen as a crude parody of rock theatrics but that doesn't mean I have to like it." He went on to refer to Hendrix as a "psychedelic Uncle Tom."

Freedom of Choice [Warner Bros., 1980]
Hey now, don't blame me--I was insulting them back when your roommate still thought they might be Important. Now that that's taken care of itself we can all afford to sit back and laught a little. Robot satire, indeed--if anyone ever teaches a rhythm box how to get funky, a Mothersbaugh will be there to plug it in. B

At San Quentin [Columbia, 1969]
Much weaker than Folsom Prison or Greatest Hits, which is where to start if you're just getting into Cash. Only ten songs, one of which is performed twice. The other was written by Bob Dylan. C+

The Winning Hand [Monument, 1982]
This twenty-song mix-and-match isn't even monumental in theory, because two of these "kings and queens of country music" haven't earned their crowns--BL is a rock and roll princess who never really graduated, KK a frog ditto. But BL is also a pleasing bedroom-voiced journeywoman who turns in half of a surprisingly definitive "You're Gonna Love Yourself in the Morning." The other half comes from WN, who's on nine cuts and sounds like he's thinking even when he also sounds like he's asleep. DP teams with WN on a surprisingly definitive "Everything's Beautiful in Its Own Way," but sounds more at home on the album's two utter unlistenables--"Ping Pong," in which DP at her cutesiest is outdone by KK at his klutziest, and "Put It Off Until Tomorrow," in which DP kisses KK's warty little head and he croaks back. B-

Don't Cry Now [Asylum, 1973]
In which everything that was raunchy and country about her is ironed in Dave Geffen's laundering machine, abetted by John David Souther, who must have told her that "Sail Away" was just another pretty song. You think she's gotten used to playing the dumb bimbo for so long that she's started to turn into it? C

Just Another Band From L.A. [Bizarre, 1972]
You said it, Frank. I didn't. C

Thrust [Columbia, 1974]
Switched-on Herbie lights it up one more time for all the Con Edison fans. C+

The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess [Island, 2023]
This is a shamelessly catchy album about the sexualization of a once devout Christian born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz who grew up--comfortably enough, I'm guessing, as the daughter of a veterinarian and a registered nurse--in a trailer park near Springfield, Missouri. At 17 she signed a record deal with Atlantic that went phffft, so at 20 she relocated to L.A. for to seek her fortune in show business full-time. Not that the foregoing bio is more than hinted at in these songs, all of them voiced by a thrill-seeking post-teen who gets around; even the seeking her fortune part has to be inferred. The sexualization, however, is explicit and thematic, there for the delectation of anyone with working genitalia--male or female, the songs go both ways, although the guys fade out and the gals are so much nicer in general. I mean, she's not reticent with the physical details. As the album goes on, her demonstrative soprano, captivating tunes, and runaway grooves come to seem inextricable from the encounters and relationships that occasioned them. "Phew," you almost want to say. "Slow down a little, girl!" A

The Secret Value of Daydreaming [Atlantic, 1986]
Just when you thought he couldn't get any worse he decides he has a right to be doing this, thus surrendering the aura of vulnerability that was Valotte's only spiritual virtue. And when this one stiffs I bet he comes up with a song about "people who criticize." D+

Wall of Sound: The Very Best of Phil Spector 1961-1966 [Phil Spector/Legacy, 2011]
This one-CD Philles comp reflects the murderer's loss of his mad grip on his overrated legacy and brings its limitations front and center. Of course there are great records among these 19 oddly sequenced selections--by a generous count, as many as a dozen. But there are also three Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans tracks, including the regrettable "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." Especially given the Crystals classics here that feature La La Brooks or Barbara Alston, these should be enough to convince you to skip the simultaneously released Darlene Love best-of. The Ronettes songs are the only ones in which the lead singer is personable enough to carry material less inspired than "He's a Rebel," "Uptown," and "A Fine Fine Boy." Sometimes, anyway--their much better best-of is spotty nonetheless. Too often, Spector's wall of sound was a miasma. Respect him as a girl-group maestro even more gifted than the Shirelles' Luther Dixon. The great exception isn't the Righteous Brothers, who have worn poorly. It's "River Deep Mountain High." A