Never Let Me Down [EMI America, 1987]
Maybe he's lost touch so completely that he's reduced to cannibalizing himself just when the market dictates the most drastic image shift of his chameleon career. But maybe this is just his way of melding two au courant concepts, Springsteenian rock and multiproducer crossover. After all, why pay good money to outsiders when your own trunk of disguises is there for the rummaging? Of course, crossover artistes can generally sing. When Bowie wants to play the vocalist, he still puts on a bad Anthony Newley imitation. C+

Two Rooms--Celebrating The Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin [Polydor, 1991]
Where most tribute albums hitch second-raters to the famous fans who've been sweet-talked into signing on, this superstar showcase aims to turn the tributees into de facto titans, minting much moolah in the process. Sinéad O'Connor was born to cover, and Rod Stewart is reborn for a day. But the material proves less than titanic--it's just plastic, inspiring or enabling Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, even the Beach Boys and the Who to construct simulacra of their better selves. As for Sting, Hall & Oates, Bruce Hornsby, Jon Bon Jovi, Wilson Phillips, Phil Collins, and even George Michael, they don't have better selves--they have accidents, none of which happen here. B-

Disintegration [Elektra, 1989]
With the transmutation of junk a species of junk itself, an evasion available to any charlatan or nincompoop, it's tempting to ignore this patent arena move altogether. But by pumping his bad faith and bad relationship into depressing moderato play-loud keyb anthems far more tedious than his endless vamps, Robert Smith does actually confront a life contradiction. Not the splintered relationship, needless to say, although the title tune is a suitably grotesque breakup song among unsuitably grotesque breakup songs. As with so many stars, even "private" ones who make a big deal of their "integrity," Smith's demon lover is his audience, now somehow swollen well beyond his ability to comprehend, much less control. Hence the huge scale of these gothic cliches. And watch out, you mass, 'cause if you don't accept this propitiation he just may start contemplating suicide again. Or take his money and go home. C+

Love Tracks [Polydor, 1978]
Not only does this lead off with "I Will Survive" (which I--unlike most--find too long in the eight-minute version now included on the repressed album), and "Stoplight," a piece of inspired girl-group foolishness, it winds down into commendable filler-plus. Faves: "You Can Exit" ("If you don't like the size/If you don't like the fit" of what?) and "Anybody Wanna Party" (which for once might induce me to). A better--and cuter--Freddie Perren album than Best of the Sylvers. B+

Ramones Leave Home [Sire, 1977]
People who consider this a one-joke band aren't going to change their minds now. People who love the joke for its power, wit, and economy will be happy to hear it twice. Hint: read the lyrics. A

There's The Rub [MCA, 1975]
The great journeyman English blues-cum-heavy band of which it has been said "When they stand onstage and wield their guitars, it is as though they're brandishing swords," until they start digging in and you realize it's more like shovels. D+

Dozin' At The Knick [Grateful Dead, 1997]
For years I've sought concrete proof that two decades of Deadheads weren't the marshmallow-ears the world believed, but after several concert tapes failed to get over I decided I had more pressing business than finding the good nights that were probably still there. Now, finally, after several half stabs (Hundred Year Hall, Fallout From the Phil Zone), comes this four-hour three-CD document from historic Albany, New York. Solid new Bob Weir opener, coupla excellent! Bob Dylan covers, Brent Mydland more Rod McKernan than Page McConnell, creaky and transcendent "Black Peter," "Walkin' Blues" and "Jack-a-Roe," the nightly "Drums" and "Space" excursions scenic enough. And above all, that mesh of the tight and the shambolic that on their best nights rendered their music responsive and interactive in a way marshmallow-heads will never understand and therefore never hear. A-

City of Refuge [Tim/Kerr, 1997]
"My category is alternative, period," avers the last intelligent person to make such a claim in this millennium. He doesn't want to be folk or New Age, and who can blame him? But if he were, some rich dunderhead might insist that he treat blues and pop rarities to his dolorously deliberate touch, like on those old Reprise albums Byron Coley sneers at. Instead he's encouraged to stagger toward an obscure destination mere mortals would noodle around, dumbfounding bystanders with the scraps of sound that flake off his beard as he goes. Once in a while tunes poke through the refuse, notably that of "Chelsey Silver, PleaseCall Home." These occasion proud huzzahs from young fools who can only forgive themselves such emoluments after a good cleansing scourge of spare solo indirection. Their self-disgust is our loss and Fahey's ticket to wankdom. Even the meandering Cul de Sac get more out of him. C+

Dreamboat Annie [Mushroom, 1975]
As apparently spontaneous pop phenomena go, a hard-ish folk rock group led by two women is a mildly interesting idea especially when their composing beats that of the twixt-Balin Starplane, whom they otherwise recall. Note I said mildly. C

Tiffany [MCA, 1987]
As a commercial strategy, following a merely schlocky cover of a schlock-rock classic with the better of two schlock ballads was aces--number-one singles, double-platinum LP, what more could a svengali ask? But she's got better in her. This is a fantasy album about the growing pains of a wholesome California teen, flexing her sexuality slightly as she moons over that soulful Mexican boy, with two schlock classics of its own: "Should've Been Me," jealously obsessing on an ex-boyfriend's jacket, and "I Saw Him Standing There," which drags a rock and roll classic through the mud by its cheesy Prince-schlock synth riff. Beatlemaniacs who aren't even dead yet will roll over in their graves. I can't wait. B

1999 [Warner Bros., 1982]
Like every black pop auteur, Prince commands his own personal groove, and by stretching his flat funk forcebeat onto two discs worth of deeply useful dance tracks he makes his most convincing political statement to date--about race, the one subject where his instincts always serve him reliably. I mean, you don't hang on his every word in re sex or the end of the world, now do you? A-

The Best of The Guess Who [RCA Victor, 1971]
What do haters have to gain by putting down all this prime popcraft? Is AM acceptance so tainted that these proven riffs and melodies shrivel the soul upon contact? Or does the way Burton Cummings shift so effortlessly from croon to growl to smooth just make him "slick" as they say? I have noticed ever since the romantic loss documented in "These Eyes" that Cummings has become unnecessarily spiteful. But then again, songs that put down women and people who work for a living have never bothered AM haters before. B

Christopher Cross

Meltdown [1980s]

Rockbird [Geffen, 1986]
It's her achievement and her curse that just listening to the record you'd think she never went away. Vocal technique and vocal identity are sharper than when she withdrew from the fray five years ago, and the songs are brasher and more insouciant than on The Hunter or KooKoo or Autoamerican. If the sound could be a mite fresher, that's because the world is now overrun with the dance-rock Harry made possible--just as it's overrun with cartoon sexpots carrying tunes, whose collective existence give her a larger identity problem she refuses to confront. But it's also because the late '70s were Harry's heyday. Not too many pop icons get more than one of those. B

Best Shots [Chrysalis, 1989]
Remember when she was marketed as New Wave? Cher without the innocence, chutzpah, acting ability, or "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves", she "retired" to raise a family. Pretty sure she's a good mom to her kids. Pretty sure, anyway. C

Everybody Knows [MCA, 1996]
Tricia had a dream, and by 1985 she was in Nashville pursuing it--studying "music business," as her bio says, at Belmont College. An internship and some demo singing later, she had signed with MCA, where she now epitomizes the blandness of today's quality country. Not that she's bad or anything. Her voice is big and precise, and she ends up with a good song or two on every album--including this one, where she doesn't ruin strong titles by Kevin Welch and Steve Goodman and brings off a terrific Matraca Berg line about chocolate and magazines. But if songwriters love her so much, it must be because she brings nothing to the song but what they put there. The same cannot be said of Willie Nelson, George Jones, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks--even Shania Twain. In pop music, good taste isn't timeless. It's boring. B

The Secret Value of Daydreaming [Atlantic, 1986]
Just when you thought it 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 positive. After this one stiffs I bet he follows up with a song about "people who criticize." C-

McCartney II [Columbia, 1980]
The diy instrumentals of McCartney bespoke an appealing modesty and newfound sense of freedom. This one was recorded on a 16-track with an engineer in attendance. Its songs are mere sketches, doodles, and unfinished demos by a man who occasionally scores a hit in order to prove he's a genius. Which he isn't. C

Dokken

Meltdown [1980s]

Valotte [Atlantic, 1984]
I'd hoped to let this one die in dignified silence--figured you couldn't blame the boy for trying. But as it's now sold over 500,000 RIAA-certified copies, discretion is useless. Anyway, I do blame him for trying. Aside from the eerie vocal resemblance, this is bland professional pop of little distinction and less necessity--tuneful at times, tastefully produced of course, and with no discernible reason for being, more Frank Sinatra Jr. than (even) Hank Williams Jr. Julian seems well brought up, a credit to his long-suffering mom. I suggest he invest his royalties in medical school--or else, if he's so keen on not wasting his genetic heritage, launch a career in the visual arts. C

His Hand In Mine [RCA Victor, 1978]
Between its mawkish self-righteousness, simulated heavenly hosts, and secular sell-outs, the title cut epitomizes why us backsliders have permanent doubts about fundamentalist culture, not to mention the thought of RCA making money off two dead messiahs at once. C

Normal as Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day [Verve, 2009]
Though I wish I believed McKay would have discovered Day if the 87-year-old box office queen hadn't devoted half her adult life to animal rights, the spritz, groove, sweetness and delight of this project not only raise Day from the shallow grave of the camp canon but give McKay a chance to grow up without going all sententious or stodgy. If by some mischance she's contracted the writer's block that can afflict kids who've spent years unable to staunch the river of new songs within--the only original is one of the few forgettables--then McKay has a future as an interpreter. At first the jazzy lightness of her arrangements seems like a distortion. But when you compare Day's "Crazy Rhythm" or "Do Do Do"--even the radio transcription of "Sentimental Journey" or a "Wonderful Guy" so much less brassy than Mary Martin's--you remember that like every Cincinnati girl of her era Day grew up with swing and probably resented the orchestral overkill she was saddled with. McKay's covers are jazzier and kookier than anything Day would have dared, or wanted. But to borrow language she's used for Day, they're "uncluttered, sensual and free, driven by an irrepressible will to live." A

Waylon Jennings

Distinctions Not Cost-Effective [1970s]: Waylon lets you know he has balls by singing like he's twisting them, I wrote about the self-serving Ladies Love Outlaws, and although I've softened on him some since, even come to enjoy him when Willie is there to cut the grease, his macho melodrama will always rub me the wrong way.

Distinctions Not Cost-Effective [1980s]: Once you either loved or hated him. No more.

Tapestry [Ode, 1971]
Pacific rock, sure, but with a sharpness worthy of a Brooklyn girl--if there's a truer song about breaking up than "It's Too Late," the world (or at least AM radio) isn't ready for it. Not that lyrics are the point on an album whose title cut compares life to a you-know-what--the point is a woman singing. King has done for the female voice what countless singer-composers achieved years ago for the male: liberated it from technical decorum. She insists on being heard as she is--not raunchy and hot-to-trot or sweet and be-yoo-ti-ful, just human, with all the cracks and imperfections that implies. And for the first time she has found the music--not just the melodies, but the studio support--to put her point across as cleanly and subtly as it deserves. A-

Search and Nearness [Atlantic, 1970]
Talk about acid casualties--these guys are victims of psychedelica even if they never touched the stuff. But those who ignore the atrocious title and listen to the songs are in for a surprise, because this is no Freedom Suite. In fact, it may be their most consistent regular-release LP--only one waste cut per side. If the Rascals are spouting universalist truisms, so is every other soul band these days--usually without coming up with anything as original or unpretentious as the warmly tongue-in-cheek "Right On." The only problem is that that's the high point--no new classics for Aretha to cover. Special surprise: Dino Danelli's modal jazz instrumental "Name." B+

Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2 [Asylum, 1982]
I admit it--this made my A shelves after the Bellamy Brothers softened me up. But that was unjust to the Bellamy Brothers. The Eagles are slimy not smarmy, pulchritudinous not purty, multiplatinum titans not singles artists, pretentious cynics not small-time con men, Topanga Canyon not San Fernando Valley. Sure their tunesmanship, zeitgeistheit, and guitar goodies were fun on the radio. But the next time I weeded my shelves, they were tracked to the reference collection. B-

Laura Branigan

Distinctions Not Cost-Effective [1980s]: With her big, anonymous voice and safe Irish-American girl looks, she went gold in 1982. But dancepop's fickle and Laura's none too talented. So she retired to Vegas and, unusual for a star of such caliber, decided to stage a "comeback." Guess she liked the crowds.

52nd Street [Columbia, 1978]
Billy Joel is a lot like Elton John and Leo Sayer in that he's got the same knack for omnivorous hummability. But when Elton is (was) good, he balanced out the smarm with camp. Billy on the other hand sounds like he wants you to actually believe the words he's singing. Yuck. B-

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

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-