Aug. 12, 1977 record review: Punk-rock arrives!

     

                                          

                                                  Aug. 12, 1977

Rock

          The people who make Barbie dolls must have taken over the Top 40. The charts have treated us to an endless summer of cute, cuddly Peter Framptons, Peter McCanns, Shaun Cassidys, Stephen Bishops and David Dundases. It’s enough to make a serious rocker sell his AM radio for scrap.

          But heart-throbs, after all, are one of the constants of the music business, like bread in the supermarket. Since the current batch devotes itself to exploitation instead of breaking new ground, sooner or later it’ll run out of yeast.

          Consider the boyish Dundas – “David Dundas” (Chrysalis CHR-1141) – a gushy British song-and-dancer in the Leo Sayer mold, asking to be the stick on your lollipop and then soft-shoeing with commercial writer Roger Greenaway. Their hit, “Jeans On,” was first a commercial. Shades of Barry Manilow!

          And then there’s McCann – “Peter McCann” (20th Century T-544) – the epitome of singles-bar smoothies. Like the rest of them, he’s got one good line. His claim to fame is that he wrote Jennifer Warnes’ hit, “Right Time of the Night,” and he repeats the formula to score again with “Do You Wanna Make Love.”

          Even old-time counter-culturists have succumbed. The Grateful Dead’s “Terrapin Station” (Arista AL-7001) is shot through with violins and other trappings of the marketplace. Donna Godchaux’s rendition of Motown’s old “Dancin’ in the Street” is enough to make one pull up a curb and go to sleep.

          This season of dreams may be about ready for reveille, however. And if anybody on the scene today is going to open people’s eyes and ears, it’s the British punk-rockers. This summer has seen their first landing on our shores and the ripples are raising quite a fuss.

          A writer in Rolling Stone calls the Sex Pistols’ clangorous “Anarchy in the U.K.” the best single of the decade. Billboard magazine, meanwhile, now counts four discernible types of punk-rock.

          There’s art-punk (the Lou Reed-Velvet Underground School – Patti Smith and Television); punk-punk (the Ramones and most of the British); throwback punks (the revivalists) and the we-ain’t-no-punks punks (the more complex bands like Blondie and the Dictators).

          Punk in England is a catch-phrase for what a year ago was called Third Wave, the newest roll-over of American rock and blues that swept Trad Jazz and Skiffle out of the Isles in the early ‘60s. In its simplicity and raw anger, it’s not much different from early Beatles, Rolling Stones, Yardbirds and the Who.

          The best introductions to this rough-and-ready genre is via the dark resonances of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger and the Dave Edmunds revivalist masterpiece, “Get It.”

          Veteran Edmunds has never lost his devotion to the two-four beat and the leather-jacket school of vocalizing. He’s the guiding light on a beguilingly heady collection of undergrounders like Wreckless Eric and Elvis Costello on a British compilation, “A Bunch of Stiffs” (Stiff Records SEEZ-2), that’s available in the local record import bins. Jill Read’s powerhouse version of the Chantels’ old “Maybe” here is a killer.

          Next, meet Robert Gordon, a Washington, D.C., revivalist whose debut album, “Robert Gordon with Link Wray” (Private Stock PS-2030), looks like it was released from a time capsule buried in 1957.

          Linked up with Wray, the guitarist who menaced the ‘50s with his instrumental, “Rumble,” Gordon steams through antique replicas like “Boppin’ the Blues” as if he were Gene Vincent himself.

          His miss-you ballads have so much vulnerability and innocent charm that one can hardly help but take him in, hair-slick grease and all. Backed up by Rob Stoner and Howie Wyeth from the Rolling Thunder Revue, he delivers an immaculate remake of Eddie Cochran’s old “Summertime Blues” too.

          The British punk bands use oldies to lure listeners into the rest of their harsh music. Eddie and the Hot Rods’ “Teenage Depression” (Island ILPS-9457) is enhanced over the original English version with four live standards recorded at the Marquee Theater in London.

          The inclusion of “96 Tears,” the Who’s “The Kids Are All Right,” the “Gloria-Satisfaction” medley and Bob Seger’s “Get Out of Denver” broaden the intensity of the crisp drum-and-guitar-driven numbers like “Get Across to You” and firmly establish a hold on the past.

          Like many other British groups, Eddie and the Hot Rods deny the punk label, but share the rough vocals, aggressive lyrics and unpolished guitar-bass-drums setup. So does the Jam’s “In the City” (Polydor PD-1-6110), although it isn’t quite as minimal as “Teenage Depression” and in many ways it’s easier to warm up to.

          The Jam’s title tune is an especially insistent two minutes and 17 seconds. The group rams it along like the Who on amphetamines. Other tracks, like “Non-Stop Dancing,” cross the Peter Townshend power chords of guitarist Paul Weller with early Stones harmonies. They revive the Beatles’ revival of “Slow Down” and the “Batman Theme.”

          The Jam’s two patently offensive tracks – “Time for Truth” and “Art School” – address the patent rottenness of things in dreary old England, a concern that consumes the most distinctive of the punk bands, the Stranglers.

          The Stranglers’ glossy “IV Rattus Norvegicus” (A&M SP-4648) is the most successful punk record in Britain. It’s been among their top albums for more than a month. This quartet has evoked comparisons with such American bands as the Velvet Underground, the Seeds and the Doors.

          The Stranglers are as rotten and nasty as their name suggests. They vilify everything in their path. “Down in the Sewer,” a four-part epic, sums up the horror of their grisly visions. They’ve drawn flak for their attitudes toward women in lyrics like these from “Sometimes”:

          Someday I’m gonna smack your face    

          Somebody’s gonna call your bluff

          Somebody’s gonna treat you rough

          You’re way past your station

          Beat you honey till you drop …

          “Hanging Around,” the sexist “Peaches” (“Walkin’ on the beaches, lookin’ at the peaches …”) and a rock and roll outlaw number, “(Get a) Grip (on Yourself),” are catchy enough to inspire morbid fascination. What’s more, the Doors comparison is evident everywhere.

          Dave Greenfield’s keyboards seem ready to break into “Light My Fire” at any moment. Leader Hugh Cornwell has the kind of deadpan rasp that Jim Morrison used in his Oedipal masterpiece, “The End.”

          What clinches it all are bassist Jean-Jacquel Burnel and drummer Jet Black, who lay down a mean, most effective rhythm, with Burnel hammering bridges between phrases with devastating effect.

          The bitter glory of the Stranglers makes “Ultravox!” (Island ILPS-9449) seem a bit pale in comparison, even though the quintet is produced by former Roxy Music and David Bowie collaborator Brian Eno.

          A pity, because there’s weird and wonderful stuff in here – a vicious “Saturday Night in the City of the Dead,” the grandiose “The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned” and their triumph of alienation, “I Want to Be a Machine,” full of Eno’s spacey effects.

          Does this mean punk has come of age? Not quite. But this new British invasion and its American counterpart have the potential for blowing the lid off today’s pastoral pop scene. These scruffy, unruly rockers are starting to look like the stars of tomorrow.

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IN THE PHOTO: The Stranglers.

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FOOTNOTE: This reviewer totally welcomed punk’s return to the excitement of the late ‘50s and mid ‘60s. And what powerful stuff it was, especially that Stranglers album. The refrain from “Peaches” still runs through my head.