Consumer Guide Album

Jeff Beck: Flash [Epic, 1985]
With his customary focus, loyalty, and consistency of taste, the mercurial guitarist plumbs a "new" idea copped from such innovators as Foreigner and Duran Duran--funk-metal fusion. Pitting Rod Stewart (on a convincing if utterly context-free "People Get Ready") and Arthur Baker (out to produce Foreigner and Duran Duran and apt to do a damn good job of it) against Wet Willie's vocalist and Cactus's drummer, he nevertheless turns in the best LP of his pathologically spotty career by countenancing Nile Rodgers's production on five tracks. So what do we have here? We have half a good Nile Rodgers album, more or less. B