Consumer Guide Album

Denise LaSalle: Rain and Fire [Malaco, 1986]
LaSalle earns enough in Malaco's songwriting stable to limit her recording career to a humdrum album every year or two, and since that's all she managed as a perpetual also-ran, there was no reason to hope for serendipity. But here she learns her revenge from the soaps and her tune from George Jackson, throws role model Sylvia Robinson a cover, name-drops all over a toot-toot follow-up, and demonstrates what Millie Jackson might be today if she hadn't put on airs--a teller of truths too raunchy for the country moralists who prime but fail to satisfy her market. Highpoints include the eight-minute saga "It Be's That Way Sometime" and dovetailing critiques of the hard-on, "Dip, Bam, Thank You Ma'am" and "It Takes You All Night" ("To do what you used to do all night"). Plus this Inspirational Verse: "They can't eat no more, no sir/They got anorexia nervosa." B+