Consumer Guide Album

The Raisins: The Raisins [Strugglebaby, 1983]
All but the schlockiest variants of what must still be called mainstream rock are listing toward marginality so fast that soon the whole genre will be a purist specialty like white blues. Overlooking a few organ arpeggios and obvious guitar solos, these four Adrian Belew-produced Ohioans do their passion proud, with Rob Fetters's funny but not parodic (or slavish) Springsteen impression on "Miserable World" a typical high point. The songs stick, too, though the lyrics are matter-of-fact enough about bent sex to make me wonder what the really kinky people in Cincinnati are like. Then again, in Cincinnati a purist mainstream rock band may well define kinky. B+