Consumer Guide Album

Si Kahn: Unfinished Portraits [Flying Fish, 1984]
At his best, Kahn writes like the gifted local organizer he still is sometimes; his political commitment is bound up in the incidents that precede issues. But his modest folkie renown seems to have cut him off from his sources in much the way that superstardom starves pop genius at the root. With one exception (El Salvador as seen by a farmboy-turned-soldier), the best songs here are the most personal: two for the new love of his life, one for a gay coworker. The political stuff is often generalized, conceived to serve an idea, and while he gets away with it sometimes (an antiharassment song that kicks off from the turn-of-the-century "It's the Same the Whole World Over"--smart), he does seem to think that "It's not how large your share is/But how much you can share" is an inspirational couplet. B