Consumer Guide '80s: P

Pajama Slave Dancers: Cheap Is Real (Pajamarama, 1985) Like most collegiate humor, this isn't as funny as it thinks it is, and like most collegiate humor it holds up against competing professional product. "Farm Rap" is recommended to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "No Dick" to the Meatmen. And from nerd-macho proem through lyric-sheet verses to the climactically yearning chorus of "I want to play hide-the-salami with you," the magnificent "I Want to Make Love to You" is on a level with Spinal Tap itself. B

Robert Palmer: Riptide (Island, 1985) If we're to take the old fashion plate at his word (yeah sure), his pop breakthrough (finally! after all those good reviews!) was inspired by an affair with a high roller--holdings in Singapore and IBM, great dancer, like that. Sounds daunting, I must say. And as usual, what makes him barely listenable is his holdings in r&b. C+

Robert Palmer: "Addictions" Volume 1 (Island, 1989) Is this fraud really the Dorian Gray wannabee of jacket photos? I don't know, and unless the women he beds are a lot more interesting than the models who populate his videos, I don't even want you to tell me. Rather than a tax-exiled roue, I prefer to imagine him as a secret straight who takes the fast train to his modest Surrey estate after a hard day's posing in London, arriving in time for a civilized dinner with wife and children before plopping in front of the VCR with a bottle of cognac. Honesty compels me to acknowledge, however, that my wife doesn't think he's a fraud--once spied him buying groceries just around the corner, and liked what she saw. In a world where male rock critics get Sheena Easton and Kim Gordon--who owns Palmer's only great song, "Addicted to Love," the way Junior Tucker owns "Some Guys Get All the Luck"--she's got a right. But I still give the grades around here. B-

Graham Parker: Another Grey Area (Arista, 1982) Mixed success isn't becoming to Parker, who can no longer blame his bad personality on unemployment. By replacing the Rumour with studio regulars, he's lost the edgy drive that used to help his bitterness cut through, and his revitalized melodic craft only takes him so far--if hooks don't justify kneejerk sentimentality, they don't justify jerkoff paranoia either. B

Graham Parker: The Real Macaw (Arista, 1983) In which Parker finally justifies his abandonment of rock and roll outcry for self-referential studiocraft by more or less acknowledging the private sources of his bitterest protests. The male chauvinism he mocks in the opener is almost certainly his own, and the love he can't take for granted right afterwards is probably his wife's, which in the end proves more durable than he's afraid it will. That's why he's glad to have a glass jaw, why he's advised to ignore everything that sounds like chains, and why except for one misplaced complaint side two is a happy-to-ironic-to-credibly-sappy paean to a marriage that has lasted--talk about your miracle a minute--one whole year. B+

Graham Parker: The Mona Lisa's Sister (RCA Victor, 1988) No rocker this sarcastic has any right (I didn't say business, though who knows what bizzers see in him at this late date) coming on so relaxed, and no rocker this relaxed has any right coming on so sarcastic. Add 'em up and you got smug. Cover: "Cupid." Auxiliary art reference: Bosch. Now are you impressed? C+

Graham Parker: Human Soul (RCA Victor, 1989) Latest objects of his bottomless rancor: sugar, hamburgers, mailman (black). But not his lost youth--his lost youth makes him feel all gushy inside. C

Graham Parker and the Shot: Steady Nerves (Elektra, 1985) "I'm not exactly into humor," he observes in "Canned Laughter," and truer words were never spoken--unless you count "Mercury Poisoning," I don't think he's cracked a joke in ten years. So maybe he should give it a try. I know sensitivity didn't work. But squeezing out one more round of angry hooks doesn't work either. B-

Ray Parker Jr.: The Other Woman (Arista, 1982) Blessed with a one-track mind in a twenty-four-track world, he provides all the basic vocal and instrumental parts on an unannounced concept album about "romance," i.e., sex with all the fixings. Sometimes he's merely raunchy--"The Other Woman" and "Streetlove" are male and female versions of sex-for-its-own-sweet-obsessive-sake, and in "Let's Get Off" they come together. But at other times he gets serious, which is to say raunchy and romantic, upping the ante with leave-him-for-me speeches and patient propositions ("anyplace you like" refers to body parts, not apartments). Even when he proposes marriage it's only because the lady's stuff is so good he wants his name on it. Couldn't say how many positions he knows--in "It's Our Own Affair," he swears his partner to secrecy. But I'm sure he's got them all written down for the follow-up. A-

Ray Parker Jr.: Greatest Hits (Arista, 1982) Parker is that ever rarer prize, an inspired journeyman. His music is eloquently unobtrusive, and while he doesn't talk his songs, he has no need for vocal pyrotechnics he couldn't muster--his stylishly textured conversational timbre, halfway between a murmur and a purr when he's turning it on, is a cunning interpretive device. In a subgenre whose practitioners hone their sexual personas as sharp as Cole Porter rhyme schemes, he can't be said to have come up with something new--the secure, sincere superstud is a role Teddy Pendergrass exploited less cleverly for years. So this collection is just the thing for those benighted who can't believe they need more than one piece of long-playing ass-man jive. Well, actually they don't--necessity has nothing to do with it. A-

Ray Parker Jr.: Woman Out of Control (Arista, 1983) "I Still Can't Get Over Loving You," his sweetest, sexiest hit ballad ever, rips Brit synth-pop as shamelessly as "The Other Woman" ripped the Stones, but his grip becomes less definitive on the very next tune, which barely loosens the hem of Prince's garment. And side two holds on strictly to Ray's tried and true. B

Ray Parker Jr.: Chartbusters (Arista, 1984) Greatest Hits is definitive, "Ghostbusters" a contemporary classic available in seven- and twelve-inch formats, and this a redundancy from an artist whose contract is coming up. B-

Ray Parker Jr.: Sex and the Single Man (Arista, 1985) Maybe Ray is getting jaded--pussy comes so easy now that he no longer bothers to hone his come-on. Whether he's scoring on sensitivity (oh really, "Men Have Feelings Too"?) or studsmanship (though I do enjoy the bone and puddy-tat lines in "I'm a Dog"), he's putting out just enough to get her into the car. The sole exception is "I'm in Love," in which a workaholic falls for "an interesting girl" who doesn't have a job. Workaholic--now that sounds like the real Ray to me. B-

Ray Parker Jr.: After Dark (Geffen, 1987) No no no, Ray--"Let you play with my tool after dark" isn't really a double entendre. It's a little, you know, obvious. And forget Alexander O'Neal--he can sing. That's why he doesn't need double entendres. C+

Ray Parker Jr. & Raydio: Two Places at the Same Time (Arista, 1980) Leading off with one polite Chic rip and closing out with another, this well-named piece of product is the kind of hither-and-yon effort that signals commercial alarm. Sometimes fawningly pop, othertimes hyperbolically party-hearty, it scores in neither mode. And with this guy, scoring is all. C+

Ray Parker Jr. & Raydio: A Woman Needs Love (Arista, 1981) Parker's mild-mannered description of what happens to those stingy with, er, respect--"You might come home early and get your feelings hurt"--typifies his understated autofunk. Playing guitar, synthesizer, piano, and drums as well as his home bass, which doesn't sound like a lead instrument either, he serves up eight tunes that bump and/or swoon into ear and/or ass with undeniable and virtually unrecallable effectiveness. I like every one, really. But don't ask me which is which--or why it matters. B+

Van Dyke Parks: Jump! (Warner Bros., 1984) Parks is a naughty choirboy and Kathy Dalton is auditioning for the Broadway lead, but theatrical preciosity is all you can expect from a musical comedy concept album anyway. What you don't expect from musical comedy is exotic Americana like Parks's irrepressible arty vernacular verbal and musical puns, which combined with his rich melodies compensate for the annoyances. B+

Parlet: Play Me or Trade Me (Casablanca, 1980) Even though P-Funk's second-string auxiliary has no Dawn Silva or Jeanette McGruder, this comes on as strong as Never Buy Texas From a Cowboy, because it doesn't take much for funk to come on strong. Just a few dance-phrases is all--"help from my friends," "play me or trade me," "now button it up, I'll put it away." Endurance is something else. Watch them do their thang indeed. B

Parliament: Trombipulation (Casablanca, 1980) Reports of George Clinton's demise are premature, but there's reason to worry about his body tone. Although the transcendent silliness of "Agony of Defeet" recalls past glories, the quotes from Bach, Brylcreem, and Mother Goose are dim echoes of the sharp confidence games of yore, and on occasion this sounds kind of like Fuzzy Haskins & Co. Hmm. B-

Parliament: Greatest Hits: P. Funk, Uncut Funk, the Bomb (Casablanca, 1984) Clinton, Collins, Worrell & Co. always saved their funnest riffs (and scored their smashest hits) for P-Funk's kiddie half, which means that these radio-length condensations of the peaks toward which their concerts unwound (and around which their albums cohered) constitute their most tuneful and atypical LP. In a band that made a point of prolonging foreplay, it's like a serial climax, and the effect can be exhausting and even disorienting. But as you might imagine, it's also very exciting, an opportunity to concentrate on the deep vertical pleasures of music that makes forward motion a first principle. And as you ought to know, it was always the dense layering of whomever's guitar, Worrell's keyboards, Collins's bass, and Clinton's crafty vocal arrangements that made their forward motion stick. A

Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels: Live 1973 (Sierra, 1982) I don't know why it took eight years, but after several botches on A&M here it is, a satisfying live-posthumous from the inventor of country-rock, for which he is not to blame. All five A-songs are more forceful on GP, but these versions (recorded in downhome Hempstead, Long Island) have a grace and lightness that for once show off the advantages of folkie roots, as does the new stuff on side two. Emmylou fills her appointed role, N.D. Smart II keeps things moving smartly, and a good time is had by all. B+

Dolly Parton: 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (RCA Victor, 1981) How you respond to this quasi-concept album about (of all things) work, which offers exquisitely sung standards from Mel Tillis, Merle Travis, and (I swear it) Woody Guthrie as well as Parton originals almost as militant as the title hit, depends on your tolerance for fame-game schlock. I'd never claim Johnny Carson's damaged her pipes or her brains, but that doesn't mean I have to like Music City banjos and Las Vegas r&b. B+

Dolly Parton: Heartbreak Express (RCA Victor, 1982) If Willie and Merle, her equals as country artists, can turn into premier pop singers, why can't Dolly? Maybe because she's justifiably smitten with her physical gifts. Just as she can't resist pushup bras, she can't resist oversinging, showing off every curve of a gorgeous voice that's still developing new ones. On the other hand, maybe it has to do with why she wears wigs, which if I'm not mistaken is because she doesn't really like her hair. B-

Dolly Parton: White Limozeen (Columbia, 1989) The crossover that marked her new label affiliation never got to the other side, so she lets Ricky Skaggs call the shots--these days he's commercial. Except on the Easter song, he cans the production numbers, and since she can still sing like a genius anytime opportunity knocks, her most country album in years is also her best. Of course, even genius country singers are dragged by ordinary country songs. And though the borrowings are better-than-average, she no longer writes like a pro without help--here provided by, such is life, Mac Davis. B

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris: Trio (Warner Bros., 1987) By devoting herself to Nelson Riddle and operetta, Sun City scab Linda Ronstadt has made boycotting painless, but her long-promised hookup with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris will be hard to resist if the vocal luxuries of the mainstream biz make you swoon. Acoustic country delving from "Farther Along" and Jimmie Rodgers to Kate McGarrigle and Linda Thompson, it's a slightly scholarly yet sometimes thrilling apotheosis of harmony--three voices that have triumphed in the winner-take-all of the marketplace making a go of cooperation. Free of tits, glitz, and syndrums for the first time in a decade, Parton's penetrating purity dominates the one-off as it once did country music history. The only one of the three who's had the courage of her roots recently, Harris sounds as thoughtful up front as she does in the backup roles that are her forte. And while Linda's plump soprano will always hint of creamed corn, she's a luscious side dish in this company. B+

Passage: Passage (A&M, 1981) Though I wish he wouldn't dedicate this venture (or his life) to "Our Savior, Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth," that's not why (Brother) Louis Johnson pisses me off (cf. Al Green, Maria Muldaur). He pisses me off because he's as sterile and chickenshit as the polite elevator funk he uses to sell his message--too chickenshit to mention, for instance, that he believes "Mr. Jewish Man" and "Mr. Muslim Man" are doomed to burn in hellfire. Heed my advice, people. When somebody tells you to "say good-bye to the reasoning/That's standing in your way," think some more. And when somebody tells you that without Jesus "you can't be livin'," take a deep breath. D-

Pavement: Slay Tracks (1933-1969) (Treble Kicker EP, 1989) These San Franciscans really don't like CDs--where a rap sample scratches a little, their pissed-off speedtoons jangle through the cracked pickup of an old GE portable. Though this mannerism is irritating at first, the toons themselves are so punky (and toonful) that it endears in the end. What ever happened to Camper Van Beethoven? "Box Elder." And they go on from there. A-

Teddy Pendergrass: TP (Philadelphia International, 1980) With the Futures doing backup and Stephanie Mills doing duet and Ashford & Simpson doing their number and Cecil Womack doing himself proud, this may well be the definitive Teddy. Only once does he break into a fast tempo, which is fine with me, because schmaltz is the man's meat. He needs, he demands, he comes on hard, he comes on subtle, he goodtimes, he longtimes--in short, he inspires heavy petting, and we all know what that can lead to. A-

Teddy Pendergrass: Greatest Hits (Philadelphia International, 1984) Heard in retrospect, Teddy's solo ascendancy seems a quantum more relaxed than his indenture with Harold Melvin--the aural equivalent of Tom Selleck, though Teddy isn't quite so coy about how much pussy he gets. It also seems more seminal than I would have figured, the inspiration for midtempo come-ons by everybody from Jeffrey Osborne and Al Jarreau to the creaky old O'Jays and Isleys. Teddy even induces a normal guy like me to enjoy this deplorable trend. Slick-talking greaseballs like Eddie Levert and Ronnie Isley are a social menace, but hunks like Teddy are just wonders of nature. And thank God there aren't too many of them. A-

Teddy Pendergrass: Workin' It Back (Asylum, 1986) Forget platonic love--this is platonic sex. I mean, the man is the best-known paraplegic in America; when he sings songs called "Never Felt Like Dancin'" or utters lines like "The thought of your body has got me erect," their status as mere collections of signs is understood literally by his fans. And thus their status as fantasy can be approached literally as well. Helps that while only "Love 4/2" is up to, let us say, vintage Jerry Butler, just about every cut at least maintains the atmosphere. Also helps that he's transferred his vocal savvy to however much of his body he's got left. B+

Penguin Cafe Orchestra: Penguin Cafe Orchestra (Editions EG, 1981) Not since Another Green World has ambient music sounded this rich. The big difference is that the instruments are mostly acoustic--Simon Jeffes does count electronic organ and ring modulator among his fourteen, but he runs more toward ukelele and pennywhistle, and the ensemble includes violin, cello, and oboe. The tempos are poky, the playing tender, impulsive, and a bit ragged, and the mood nostalgic--although it's my bet that melodies this minimal were unheard of in fin-de-siècle pop. A-

Penguin Cafe Orchestra: The Penguin Cafe Orchestra Mini Album (Editions EG EP, 1983) Simon Jeffes outlines a music from everywhere that could easily turn into a music for nowhere: "music which is influenced by the above [classical, rock, jazz, folk] but also by African, Japanese, Venezuelan, Celtic (Scottish and Irish), Cajun, Reggae, and other sources." But where Paul Winter, whose program isn't all that dissimilar, is half pundit and half mooncalf, Jeffes's gentle wit, unmystical posture, and fondness for urban life combat vague-out. Whether he also reaches the "heart of our own time and culture," however, is another matter. His eccentric post-folk orchestrations seem more like escapes to me--into fantasy, into a future with reassuring connections to the past. Which makes this an odd piece of product. "The Penguin Cafe Single" is more useful here than the premature Music From the Penguin Cafe. The two new pieces are simple, charming, and very slight. And the three finest tunes, two in new but hardly definitive live versions, are also available on the nonmini album they put out in 1981, the length of which better suits the leisurely pace of Jeffes's panpop impressionism. B

Penguin Cafe Orchestra: Broadcasting From Home (Editions EG, 1984) Marginal differences count for plenty with these subtlety specialists. More emphatic production bespeaks sharper conception--sometimes dramatic, sometimes representational, sometimes self-consciously atmospheric. The music is "better"--and therefore relatively (marginally) conventional. It's lost its incidental aura, and despite the instant appeal of compositions like "Heartwind" and "Music for a Found Harmonium," an edge of charm. B+

Pere Ubu: New Picnic Time (Chrysalis, 1980) Recitative, animal noises, and industrial waste for the ear threaten their precarious (by definition) art-rock balance. "A Small Dark Cloud" is mostly voice and sound effects, "The Voice of the Sand" mostly whisper and sound effects, "All the Dogs Are Barking" barely more. Then again "Jehovah's Kingdom Comes!" rocks, and "Goodbye" is as quietly hypnotic as it's supposed to be. When David Thomas starts off crowing "It's me again!" he's not really boasting--he's hitting us with the very best he has to offer. A-

Pere Ubu: The Art of Walking (Rough Trade, 1980) It's impossible to wish these utopian singers of the industrial pastorale anything but the best. But between the passages of synthesizer buzz and the fond talk of birdies, fishies, and horsies (pace Patti, they do call it "Horses"), you have to figure that neither Red Crayola's Mayo Thompson (in for Tom Herman) nor the one true God (David is now a Jehovah's Witness) is counseling anybody to rock out. Undestructive violence is a hard act to continue. B+

Pere Ubu: Ubu Live: Volume 1: 390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo (Rough Trade, 1981) Recapping the Hearthan and Blank Records period that a born-again Crocus Behemoth will never look in the eye again, this is a find for fans who missed the early singles and the Datapanik EP (source of four songs, with another previously unreleased and seven more from The Modern Dance). Material and performance are fine, with variant lyrics and new guitar and synthesizer bits mitigating (though not eliminating) the redundancy factor. But most of these recordings were intended for reference only, and that's how they sound--devoid of aural presence. For demo addicts, tape traders, and incorrigible cultists like me. B+

Pere Ubu: Song of the Bailing Man (Rough Trade, 1982) In his Jehovah's Witness phase--which could last the rest of his life--David Thomas is just like any other eccentric "progressive." With Mayo Thompson and Anton Fier replacing Ubu's two committed rockers on guitar and drums, the group can't carry him along on populist pulse anymore, which means that although Thomas's compositional ideas may be "original" and "interesting"--and unlike most art-rock, this music deserves both adjectives--how compelling you find the gestalt depends on the power of Thomas's private obsessions. Once again the man outdoes himself--some of these lyrics actually read as poetry. But it's minor poetry for sure--his musings on the ineluctable wonder of the natural order go deeper than, say, Peter Hammill's damn fool doomsaying, but they're long on whimsy and short on tension. As Christian rock goes, it's smart stuff, but as Christian art goes I'll take Graham Greene. B+

Pere Ubu: Terminal Tower: An Archival Collection (Twin/Tone, 1986) Side one is the long unavailable Datapanik in the Year Zero EP, itself comprising two indie singles and a compilation cut and as powerful a sequence as side one of Dub Housing nevertheless. Side two collects the kind of oddments that rarely cohere on LP, yet here the outtakes and B sides and stray singles come together as a record of David Thomas's slide or progress from willed optimism to blessed whimsy. In short, this is a gift from God--a third Ubu album from the former Crocus Behemoth's pre-God period. A-

Pere Ubu: The Tenement Year (Antone's, 1988) Yes, this is Ubu--four of the seven players were on Dub Housing. But before Scott Krauss was brought in--can't expect much backbeat with Chris Cutler hogging the drums--it was also the most recent edition of David Thomas's Pedestrians/Wooden Birds making a rock move. So what's astonishing isn't just the high spirits and good faith, both rare enough on reunions, but the singleness of purpose. It's not as if Thomas's crotchety nature-boy mysticism has been blown away--one of these songs is an attack on zoos. But the momentum of the backbeat and the electric clamor of the whole move straighten him out and toughen him up, while at the same time his loving, surrealistic sarcasm dominates the music, with Allen Ravenstine reaching untold heights of kooky reintegration. This record proves not only that good-hearted eccentrics can live in the world, but that they can change it for the better. Every song stays with you, but the one for the ages is "We Have the Technology," which leaves you thinking that we just may and we just may not. Thank you, Scott Krauss. A

Pere Ubu: Cloudland (Fontana, 1989) "We'd never been asked to write a pop record before," David Thomas says. "I guess it never occurred to anyone." Thomas was happy to oblige. No private visions of decaying cityscape, just equally obscure (and evocative) love songs, down on their knees to rhyme with please. Produced mostly out of Ubu's old Ohio home, then smoothed down and hooked up in London, their signature avant-garage survives with its stop-and-go effects and unsalable recitative in fine fettle. If you're a fan, the six Stephen Hague-produced or Daniel Miller-remixed cuts will sound misbegotten at first. But if you're really a fan, you'll come to recognize them as the urban pastoral of Thomas's whimsical period adapted for the cheap seats, which deserve the attention. A-

Carl Perkins: Original Sun Greatest Hits (Rhino, 1986) [CG80: Rock Library: Before 1980]  

Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Majestics: Mystic Miracle Star (Heartbeat, 1982) Found the hypnogroove a little flat even for a Clash producer's reggae record until I discovered that the Majestics' bottom was two guys named LaVilla and Schwartz. But if they're more rock than rockers, they're perfect for the legendary Perry, who does a mean Dylan on harp and whose crazed rhyming puns and mystagogical patter sound like Marcus Garvey on Highway 61. Move over Jesu, here come Jah. B+

Steve Perry: Street Talk (Columbia, 1985) The head Journeyman's USA for Africa cameos were so discreetly intense and discreetly tossed off they made me wonder what I'd been missing. Now I know--musical gastroenteritis. Pat Boone didn't understand, so why should Steve Perry--oversinging signifies not soul and inspiration but will and desperation. Upped a notch for good intentions, and just in case Sam Cooke has finally taught him a lesson. C

Persian Gulf: Changing the Weather (Raven EP, 1984) Except maybe for Rank and File (who are bitterer) and Springsteen & Co. (who are grander), I can't think of an American band whose account of the world is more unflinchingly on. Conscious rather than correct, without a hint of hardcore's parricidal/misogynistic hysteria, these seven songs are constricted and expansive, sour and ebullient all at once. Hal Shows understands his own anarchic/apocalyptic impulses, and his Lennonesque rhythm guitar provides the extra momentum he needs to stay on top of things. A

Persian Gulf: The Movie (Raven, 1986) Barking out lyrics loud and clear over an uncommonly forthright groove, Hal Shows led this band to a left-field EP debut two years back, and I wish he'd tried to repeat, because at album length his forthrightness gets out of hand. The world his best lyrics create isn't what the band's music makes it seem--it's an untrustworthy place where being a little crazy can help you get by, full of implicit regrets and sidelong insults and allusions that mean more than they add up to. But when he tries to spell things out in protest or satire, or boil them down into haiku, he seems less than a little crazy. B+

Peter and the Test Tube Babies: Peter and the Test Tube Babies (Profile, 1987) In this time of micromargins and cults subdividing like paramecia, we gravitate toward bands that hark to whatever obscure titans we picked up on when obscurism was a harmless sideline. For me it was the Vibrators, the wildest and tightest of Britain's trad rockers in punk disguise, and I bet these guys were there. Despite the chiming expansiveness of the hooks and song lengths, they're the same nasty group, driven to drink by their microcultish prospects. B+

Pet Shop Boys: Please (EMI America, 1986) The music's blandness is part of the quite well-executed concept: articulating the ambivalent romanticism, immodest hopes, and not-so-quiet desperation behind the suburban facade of the people who create Smash Hits pop, and maybe consume it, too. I hum most of the catchily namby-pamby tunes and ponder most of the yearningly cynical lyrics, but the moments I really love are provided by sound effects--sirens and breaking glass so skillfully integrated into the synthesized textures that at first I didn't notice they were there. A-

Pet Shop Boys: Disco (EMI-Manhattan, 1986) Serious about not being taken seriously, they set Shep Pettibone (or is that Pet Sheppibone?) to remixing their greatest hit, then ask Pet/Shep, Arthur Baker, and the Latin Rascals to remix three other fairly nifty songs from the only album they've ever released. Just for variety, the lead cuts are the B sides from their great hit and their lesser hit, and I confess I'm glad to own both, brand names and all. Also, "West End Girls" does hold up quite nicely for 9:03. Still . . . B

Pet Shop Boys: Actually (EMI-Manhattan, 1987) Calling Neil Tennant a bored wimp is like accusing Jackson Pollock of making a mess. Since the bored wimp is his subject and his medium, whether he actually is one matters only insofar as the music sounds bored and/or wimpy--and only insofar as that's without its rewards and revelations. From Dusty Springfield to hit Fairlight to heart beats and from insider shopping to kept icon to Bowiesque futurism, this is actual pop music with something actual to say--pure commodity, and proud of it. A-

Pet Shop Boys: Introspective (EMI-Manhattan, 1988) What a cerebral band--if they keep on at this rate, they'll inspire more deep thinking than David Bowie and Henry Cow combined. The textures on their bubble-salsa statement are so cheesy that it takes forever to penetrate to its intellectual essence, which lends the cheese its savor. And as a pop aesthete I'm offended by the pace--average cut length on this six-song disco mix is a languorous 8:20. Guess I'm just a sucker for lyrics that give Ché Guevara his due. A-

Tom Petty: Full Moon Fever (MCA, 1989) He wanted something off-the-cuff and got lucky: except for the punk putdown and the pseudo-Dylan throwaway, both nice on their own terms, nary a lyric nor tune clashes with the terrific early-Byrds cover. If guys made roots-rock albums anymore, anything here would spruce one up. B+

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Hard Promises (Backstreet, 1981) Hard to gainsay the class solidarity of a rich rock star who sues his record company to keep his list price down to $8.98. And glancing at the lyric sheet, I was pleased to note that the antiboho number--"Kings Road," in which a Pakistani tries to sell Tom funny-looking English underwear--had a lighter touch than usual. The reason I hadn't noticed, unfortunately, is that Petty clobbers the thing like he's singing about how much he hates the road. Elsewhere he's more understated, fortunately, but it just goes to show you--no matter how much they respect the working fan, rich rock stars do tend to fill up on themselves. B

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Long After Dark (Backstreet, 1982) Petty's been complaining that he's tired, and this holding action--from a guy not noted for vanguard engagements when he's fit to fight--shows all the signs. In case you were wondering, he can't live with them and he can't live without them. C+

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Southern Accents (MCA, 1985) Petty's problem isn't that he's dumb, or even that people think he's dumb, although they have reason to. It's that he feels so sorry for himself he can't think straight. Defending the South made sense back when Ronnie Van Zant was writing "Sweet Home Alabama," but in the Sun Belt era it's just pique. The modernizations of sometime coproducer Dave Stewart mitigate the neoconservative aura somewhat, but unmitigating it right back is Petty's singing, its descent from stylization into affectation most painful on side one's concept songs. Side two is less consequential, and better. Note, however, that its show-stopper is "Spike," in which a bunch of rednecks, I mean good old boys, prepare to whup a punk. It's satire. Yeah sure. B-

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (MCA, 1987) For such a downhome guy, Petty has a major instinct for the news hook. Here, after defying premium pricing, reconstructing the South, and touring with somebody famous, he exploits the Dylan connection once again. In the tradition of his new hero, Petty's plan was no plan--he and the guys just went into the studio and these songs came out. And whaddaya know? Stick the thing in your playback mechanism of choice and these songs come out--for the first time in his career, the man sounds like the natural he's worked so hard at being. B+

Bob Pfeifer: After Words (Passport, 1987) When half of the greatest couple band this side of X makes a solo album that broods obsessively about a broken relationship, we're entitled to our biographical assumptions. Damn right it's more fun to fuss and fight than to sit home feeling sorry for yourself, but the idea is to illuminate this truth, not prove it. B-

P-Funk All-Stars: Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (Uncle Jam/CBS Associated, 1983) Though side one shows off songs so tuneful and witty they'd have me doing handstands if they showed up on a Cameo or Gap Band album, their raggedy-ass elan doesn't quite suit the spritz they generate. Anyway, songs aren't George Clinton's gift to the world. Side two is George Clinton's gift to the world. You pump up and down, you pump up and down, you pump up and down, and then you break it down. A-

The Pheromones: Yuppie Drone (PVC EP, 1986) Two folkie "brothers" with cheap electronic instruments as well as acoustic guitars. Also with half-decent day jobs, I bet--they know the texture of selling out. Their jabs at the international monetary system and the world leader they dub the Great Rondini are simple and telling, and there can never be too many of them. B+

Esther Phillips: Good Black Is Hard to Crack (Mercury, 1981) No longer the blueswoman slipping into a more fashionable rhythm, Phillips has made that light, guitar-accented dance beat her own, and here she pursues it without compromises--no violins or fancy horns, just the groove. Only occasionally is the material more than adequate, but to hear her twist a song's natural shape against the smooth pulse and background harmonies is to wonder which is going to crack first. B+

Willie Phoenix: Willie Phoenix (A&M, 1982) Phoenix knocked me out on sheer pizazz fronting a raw, Beatley band called Romantic Noise at Max's three or four years ago; here he surfaces as a Springsteen convert and almost does it again, although after a dozen plays I wonder whether Romantic Noise's songs matched its pizazz. God knows Phoenix doesn't go for ersatz John Cougar epics--his tribute is all musical style, which since his voice outrings Springsteen's can be pretty impressive until the drama calls your attention to the words. B-

Phranc: Folksinger (Rhino, 1985) You don't come back to a singer-songwriter w/guitar-and-harmonica for music no matter how winning her "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." You come back because you really like her. As a "life-loving" jock who can do without female mud-wrestling and people who crash handicapped parking spaces, Phranc is familiar enough as a general type. But little things like her name and her flattop set her off from the Olivia separatists, and so do big things, like her sweet sense of humor and her two-newspapers-a-day habit. After all, you can do without female mud wrestling and people who crash handicapped parking spaces yourself. A-

Phranc: I Enjoy Being a Girl (Island, 1989) The first uncloseted lesbian to bed down with a major label since Isis, and what does she come up with? The cover design of the year and an album so arch it crumbles without a proscenium. Not that she never gets away with it--the chamber-styled Toys R Us tribute and the praisesong to Martina that spells out her nation of origin are worth hearing even after you know the jokes. Moreover, the few "sincere" numbers disappear instantly. But any record that makes its most effective political statement on behalf of child-eating polar bears is resorting to weirdness as a protective device. B

Astor Piazzolla: Tango: Zero Hour (American Clavé, 1986) Until Piazzolla, I never gave a thought to tango, which I conceived vaguely as the music of displaced Europeans slumming their way through an American limbo, compounding angst and self-regard into ridiculous sexual melodrama. But now that I put all that down on paper, it seems both kind of interesting and ripe for destabilization. Piazzolla has been exploring both possibilities since 1946 and claims this is the best of his 40 albums. True semipop, dance music for the cerebellum, with the aesthetic tone of a jazz-classical fusion Gunther Schuller never dreamed. A-

Astor Piazzolla: The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (American Clavé, 1988) Suddenly hot in Dollarland at age 67, Piazzolla is flooding the bins, with his earlier American Clave albums reissued by Pangaea (structure and sustained intensity make Tango: Zero Hour an unusually unsoporific CD), a Montreux concert with Gary Burton available from Atlantic Jazz, and a collaboration with Lalo Schifrin out on Nonesuch. Piazzolla has even less to do with jazz than Gary Burton; he's closer to Bartok the composer than to Ellington the orchestrator, and tends to limit improvisatory space. But the symphonic accompaniment of Schifrin, an Argentinian who straddles pop and classical himself, rarely obtrudes and sometimes even amplifies, so those who prefer their exotica with cushions should opt for Concerto para Bandoneon/Tres Tangos. Me, I don't find Piazzolla's music so alien that it can't be absorbed full force, in the acerbically melodramatic compositions he creates for his quintet. Conceived for a theatre piece, this collection is episodic even given the composer's penchant for abrupt mood shifts. But its historical overview, beginning with the "primitive" tango that shook a younger pop world, is just the thing to provide the hint of roots rock and rollers prefer in their exotica. Oh those crazy urban folk. A-

Astor Piazzolla: La Camorra: La Soledad de la Provacación Apasionada (The Solitude of Passionate Provocation) (American Clavé, 1989) Maybe I'm getting sated--how many jazz-classical-tango suites does a Yank rock and roller need? Still, as someone who never had much use for Red Headed Stranger, I note that the historical metaphor this time is the guapo--a "hero or hoodlum," hold the hero. Also, the ruminative interludes suggest that Piazzolla's gift is for passion rather than romanticism. B+

Pinhead: Where Are You? (BSharp EP, 1983) Six unhurried songs from a Vermont band given to satire (and music) whose hale, unsmartalecky tone could never happen in the city. Inspirational Verse: "There were these birds called butterflies/They used to fly inside of the sea/We had this stuff called oxygen/It used to hang from all of the trees." B+

Pink Floyd: A Collection of Great Dance Songs (Columbia, 1981) With the rerecorded "Money" sporting a livelier bottom to protect them from truth-in-titling and felonious injury charges, this gathers up their tuneful moments, which have always been far between--so far between, in fact, that even the unconverted may miss the ersatz symphonic structures in which they're properly embedded. B+

Pink Floyd: The Final Cut (Columbia, 1983) Though I wish this rewarded close listening like John Williams, Fripp & Eno, or the Archies, it's a comfort to encounter antiwar rock that has the weight of years of self-pity behind it--tends to add both literary and political resonance. With this band, aural resonance is a given. C+

Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse of Reason (Columbia, 1987) "One Slip," which provides the title at just the moment the singer is so "decadent" as to copulate with a woman, is no less sexist than the rape-fantasy cover of Roger Waters's Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. "The Dogs of War," ID'd with blues bottom, could almost be the tin soldiers of Waters-as-Floyd's The Final Cut. In short, you'd hardly know the group's conceptmaster was gone--except that they put out noticeably fewer ideas. C

Pink Floyd: Delicate Sound of Thunder (Columbia, 1988) Like the tour it documents, this is supposed to show that Floyd doesn't need "Another Brick in the Wall." Like A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which contributes five songs to a disastrously dreary opening, it proves instead that no matter who's the nice guy, Roger Waters is the writer. C

The Pistons: Flight 581 (Twin/Tone, 1981) There's nothing especially forbidding or avant about these six Minneapolis boys, but chances are they'll never get to Milwaukee and not for lack of talent, though they could use a singer. It's just that they're obviously in it for the art. This is generic rock and roll for the sheer formal pleasure of it--now pop, now punk, now Stones, now nice, now nasty, usually nasty. B+

The Pixies: Surfer Rosa (4AD/Rough Trade, 1988) By general consensus the Amerindie find of the year, and I'll say this for them: they're OK. Aurally articulate but certainly not clean, much less neat, with guitar riffs you actually notice and a strong beat that doesn't owe any subgenre. Feature a woman as equal partner--no separatism or blatant gender aggression. If I was on the lookout for contemporaries who proved my world wasn't coming to an end, I might overrate them too. In fact, maybe I still do. B

The Pixies: Doolittle (4AD/Elektra, 1989) They're in love and they don't know why--with rock and roll, which is heartening in a time when so many college dropouts have lost touch with the verities. You can tell from the bruising riffs, the rousing choruses, the cute little bass melodies, the solid if changeable beat. But not from any words they sing. They'll improve in direct relation to their improved contact with the outside world. Getting famous too fast could ruin them. B+

Robert Plant: Pictures at 11 (Swan Song, 1982) Plant's recreations of Led Zep's sonic feel with more mundane musicians is quite impressive, always the operative superlative with him. It's also more insinuatingly hooky than Led Zep ever was. But the insinuation makes one wonder what's being insinuated, which brings one to the question of meaning, which brings one full circle back to almost nowhere. B

Robert Plant: Now and Zen (Es Paranza, 1988) Plant's two earlier solo albums were striking and forgettable--bankable self-indulgences that turned a profit on brand loyalty alone. Because they had the virtue of existing, they inspired loose talk about who "really" led his former band, probably from people who secretly believed pomp made the band artistic. This time he looks to solidify his future by imitating his past--even sampling it, an idea he says he got from Rick Rubin (what a card), or hiring his former band's guitarist for a solo. At its best, it's far from forgettable. Overall effect is a cross between his former band and the Cars. B

Plasmatics: Coup D'Etat (Capitol, 1982) Now that they've copped to heavy metal tempos, they could last as long as Judas Priest, although since the HM hordes do demand chops, Wendy O. might be well advised to try singing with her nether lips. Not only can't she carry a tune (ha), she can't even yell. Inspirational Thing She Says Backward on Outgroove: "The brainwashed do not know they are brainwashed." Inspirational Message Scratched on Outgroove: "You were not made for this." D-

Plasticland: Plasticland (Enigma, 1985) The fairyland psychedelica and many-hued outfits on the cover led me to dismiss the music as camp satire or idiot nostalgia. But "Euphoric Trapdoor Shoes" and "Rattail Comb" work for their laughs, and other songs achieve an even greater complexity of tone. The group's Anglophile diction can be prissy or sarcastic or acid-wild; their music is gimmicky and even silly sometimes, but like "She's a Rainbow" or "Itchycoo Park" it's also melodic and pleasurable and strong. Almost alone among the neopsychedelics, they actually have something to say about the '60s: they understand that to write lines like "Loneliness is a sad companion/Loveliness is all she feels" may well mean you're foolish but doesn't necessarily make you a fool. B+

The Plastic People of the Universe: Passion Play (Bozi Mlyn, 1980) In its heretical return to a time-honored people's form, its appropriation of available spiritual values as an antidote to materialist oppression, and its embrace of the Christ who "blasphemed against the order of the world," this smuggled religious message from the long-suffering Czech anarchists makes perfect sense. Out of context, however, it's a little hard to take--happy though I am to have a trot, I don't find myself personally enriched when I read along with the Biblical texts and stories. And despite the obsessive bass lines and ostinatos, the only "rock" it brings to mind is Henry Cow, which on a strictly compositional level seems purer to me. But that's not to say that this whatever-it-is music, masterminded by free saxophonist Vratislav Brabanec, isn't satisfying on its own terms--or to mention that side two, especially the long, painful "Father, Father," makes my stomach churn every time I concentrate. B+

The Plastic People of the Universe: Leading Horses (Bozi Mlyn, 1983) Though it was the grim everyday comedy of Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned that made it not just a stirring document but the ultimate bootleg album, somehow they've gone and lost their sense of humor. Must have to do with their leaders going to jail and their concert sites getting torched. Yet through it all their sound has remained their own, just about the only "European"-"rock" synthesis that never stinks of sentimentality, of pretentiousness. And the aura of dour mockery around Vratislav Brabanec's saxophone on side one gives the odd turns of the lyrics (printed in Czech with translations on the inner sleeve) a significance they couldn't generate on their own. Unfortunately, side two is so dirgelike it'll attract only those with an established appetite for stirring documents. Upped a notch for staying alive anyway. A-

The Plimsouls: Everywhere at Once (Geffen, 1983) I explain the "underground" rep of these L.A. power-poppers by asking myself whether I wouldn't be mystified by the Fleshtones if I lived in L.A. As befits an L.A. band, they make more of a show of hitcraft, martialing coherent lyrics to actual emotional effect on a couple of slower ones, and less of a show of partymania. And I don't like the Fleshtones' records a whole lot either. B-

The Pogues: Red Roses for Me (Stiff, 1984) Having been left tepid by Irish music from the Chieftains to Clannad, I filed this after a token try. Drumbeats or no drumbeats, I figured it was just beyond me. And some of it is--reels that aren't rockin', accents further garbled in the speedfolk rush. But in general this bunch of disaffected limeys, not all of them from the site of the troubles, yoke the indelible bitterness of the Irish horror to a more adaptable punk rage. Tepid it ain't. B+

The Pogues: Rum Sodomy and the Lash (Stiff, 1985) "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" comes from Australian folkie Eric Bogle, one of the least commanding singers in any hemisphere you care to name, but its tale of Gallipoli is long as life and wicked as sin and Shane MacGowan never lets go of it for a second: he tests the flavor of each word before spitting it out. I associate this technique with producer Elvis Costello, who probably deserves credit as well for the album's clear, simple musical shape. But none of it would mean much without the songs--some borrowed, some traditional, and some proof that MacGowan can roll out bitter blarney with the best of his role models. Try "The Old Main Drag," about Irish lads tricking, or "The Sick Bed of Cuchulain," about Irish heroes dying. A

The Pogues: Poguetry in Motion (MCA EP, 1986) Though I could skip the reel and fear this got released Stateside for its upbeat mood, any of the three new Shane MacGowan songs would add something to Rum Sodomy and the Lash. It's not as if upbeat has to mean escapist, or even happy. Just somewhere this side of desperate. A-

The Pogues: If I Should Fall from Grace With God (Island, 1988) With Steve Lillywhite out to prove he's both a true punk and a true son of Eire, neither pop nor rock nor disco crossover stays these groghounds from the swift accomplishment of their appointed rounds. Lillywhite is so permissive he lets Shane MacGowan slur the words Elvis Costello forced him to enunciate, and at tempos like these you can be sure there are plenty of them. Politics, down-and-outers, New York, the broad majestic Shannon--just don't lose your lyric sheet. B+

The Pogues: Peace and Love (Island, 1989) After I secured a CD, with both digital definition and the lyric sheet Island pulled from the vinyl correcting their chronic incomprehensibility, this phonogram finally began to make sense to me. But the horns still betoken folk-rockers moving on rather than the brass bands I bet they're supposed to evoke. And the trot convinces me that Shane MacGowan will remain the only Pogue in the down-and-out hall of fame. B

Poi Dog Pondering: Poi Dog Pondering (Columbia, 1989) Their psychedelic world-music rep won't prepare you for what they actually sound like, which is a circa-'86 Brit shambling band that knows how loose is too loose. Imagine the Mighty Lemon Drops with extra percussion singing about breakfast, sex, and wonder in a place where central heating just isn't an issue. Honolulu, Austin, what's the dif? They're Sun Belt hippies either way, glad to be alive where the living is easy. B+

Buster Poindexter: Buster Poindexter (RCA Victor, 1987) Entranced by the commercial potential of this novelty act, I forgot how novelty acts translate to plastic. The Upfront Horns overstep themselves by half, the inflections are too Jolson for their own good, and even if the television audience is never the wiser, the material is pretty obvious. I want more "Screwy Music" and "Hot Hot Hot," less "Smack Dab in the Middle" and "Good Morning, Judge." And while it's kinda hip to pick up on songs that Al and Aretha were covering back when you favored fishnet hose, it's also foolhardy, especially when you're hard pressed to beat Eric Burdon at "House of the Rising Sun." B+

Buster Poindexter: Buster Goes Berserk (RCA Victor, 1989) Be kind and call it Bette Midler's Disease. Or remember what they used to say (stupidly, but why quibble) about the Dolls: you had to be there. Even then the flat-on-its-face overstatement of recorded Buster is pretty appalling. Intimations of minstrelsy he's always subsumed live become all too Negroid with the melon-chomping bass man of "Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well?," even the Sarafina-backed "All Night Party." And Buster's no better at bigtime schmaltz than David was. I begrudge him nothing. But I don't want to say thanks for the memories yet. B-

The Pointer Sisters: Pointer Sisters' Greatest Hits (Planet, 1982) In the four years since Richard Perry aimed these former eccentrics (see MCA's reretro Retrospect, 1981) at the middle of the radio, they've had three top-ten hits, three top-five hits, three you remember: "Fire," "Slow Hand," "He's So Shy." With a couple of minor exceptions, which are also the two remaining top-thirty entries (would markets were always so efficient), everything else has been El Lay assembly-line crapola. Everything Perry included on this kiss-off to Elektra distribution, anyway. B-

The Pointer Sisters: Break Out (Planet, 1984) It's supposed to be tragic that these long-running pros have walked away from America's rich musical heritage in pursuit of the pop buck, but as someone who's always had his doubts about their historical depth, I think the electrodance they settle on here suits them fine. Certainly Richard Perry has assigned songs that throw the new style in your face--titles like "Automatic" and "Neutron Dance" and "Dance Electric" may offend those who wish they still dressed like the Savoy. All jobs well done, I say. B+

The Pointer Sisters: Greatest Hits (RCA, 1989) What a strange story. First they abandon retro chic for the Richard Perry mainstream, with three gems and much dreck to show for it--only the gems save the premature best-of that marked the departure of Perry's Elektra-distributed Planet label for RCA. After one ground-breaking hit, the only decent regular-release album of their lengthy career adds three more classics to their oeuvre, all in the perfervid robot-disco style of "I'm So Excited." And then--and here's the really weird part--it's over. Five years after Break Out, with scads of failed group and solo projects behind and a Motown contract ahead, this postmature best-of lives and dies with the same four robot-disco classics (remixed, though at least not newly remixed) and the same three mainstream gems. I hate to think what they spent their money on. A-

Poison: Open Up and Say . . . Ahh! (Enigma/Capitol, 1988) Hard rock trash as radio readymades, these cheerful young phonies earn their Gene Simmons cover art. A residue of metal principle spoiled the top 40 on their debut, but here they sell out like they know this stuff is only good when it's really shitty. "Nothing but a Good Time" and "Back to the Rocking Horse" are clubby arena anthems, "Look but You Can't Touch" mocks cock-rock with a self-deprecating gesture, and the Loggins & Messina remake has been waiting to happen for 15 years. B+

Polecats: Make a Circuit With Me (Mercury EP, 1983) From their colorized art-school quiffs to their synthesized Dave Edmunds production values, these guys aren't rockabilly, they're technopopabilly. T. Rex cover, Bowie cover, "Juvenile Delinquents From a Planet Near Mars," even "Rockabilly Dub"--effervescent muzik built from the solidest chords mankind has known. B+

The Police: Zenyatta Mondatta (A&M, 1980) Not to be confused with Regatta de Blanc, I don't think, this is where the latest vanguard of musicianly postminimalist abandons all pretense of pop (or reggae) mindlessness. Stewart Copeland's rhythms skank plenty while looting the whole wide world. Andy Summers's guitar harmonies are blatantly off-color, his melodic effects blatantly exotic. And Sting's words are about stuff--itchy general, teacher not petting with teacher's pet, plus, ahem, the perils of stardom. Summing it all up is their first true hit and only true masterpiece: "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da." B

The Police: Ghost in the Machine (A&M, 1981) It's pointless to deny that they make the chops work for the common good--both their trickiness and their simplicity provide consistent pleasure here. But with drummer, manager, and booking agent all scions of a CIA honcho, I have my doubts about their standing as a progressive force. Whether you're following in the old man's footsteps, offing the motherfucker, or striving for a livable compromise, roots like that leave you twisted, if only to the tune of a middlebrow cliché like Sting's "There is no political solution." In the kindest construction, say their politics are as astute, liberal, and well-meaning as those of Pete "Won't Get Fooled Again" Townshend, who also needs reminding that we're not just spirits in the material world--we're also matter in the material world, which is why things get sticky. B+

The Police: Synchronicity (A&M, 1983) I prefer my musical watersheds juicier than this latest installment in their snazzy pop saga, and my rock middlebrows zanier, or at least nicer. If only the single of the summer was a little more ambiguous, so we could hear it as a poem of mistrust to the Pope or the Secretary of State; instead, Sting wears his sexual resentment on his chord changes like a closet "American Woman" fan, reserving the ambiguity for his Jungian conundrums, which I'm sure deserve no better. Best lyrics: Stew's "Miss Gradenko" and Andy's "Mother." Juiciest chord changes: the single of the summer. B+

The Police: Every Breath You Take: The Singles (A&M, 1986) Though they're thought of as slick, no putative pop band of this era has aired more pretensions. The new-agish textural excursions (not the chords and structures that flesh out their tunes) are excised here, but Sting is scarcely less pompous when servicing the marketplace than when expressing himself in the privacy of his own throwaways. From the love object with the dress of red to the dreams of imaginary energy sources, from sexist condescension to Sufi twaddle he's one step up the evolutionary ladder from Billy Joel. He's got loads of musical gifts. He's even got verbal gifts. But he's tried to convert the sharpest couplet he'll ever write--"De do do do, de da da da/They're meaningless and all that's true"--into a philosophy of life. He's just lucky it was possible musically. A-

Polyrock: Polyrock (RCA Victor, 1980) The same sopranos who sound so right choraling through coproducer Philip Glass's rockish hypnorhythm pieces make this arty dance-rock band sound like, dare I say it, disco. At other points the music whispers, I feel constrained to add, Philip Glass. The strangulated vocals I blame on, who else, David Byrne. That it almost gets over anyway is a credit to crescendo techniques developed by, that's right, the Feelies--who could have used some coproduction themselves. B

The Pontiac Brothers: Fiesta en la Biblioteca (Frontier, 1986) Their dense mix is twixt-punk-and-pop Replacements with plenty of Huskers thrown in, their idea of cover tribute the Dead's "Brown Eyed Woman." So say they're a roots band the way the Exile Stones were, shading their guitar barrage into bottleneck and fingerpick. The songs are mostly on it, too. But Hunter & Garcia had tuffer attitude--beyond the occasional one-line hook, medium equals message here. Again. B+

The Pontiac Brothers: Johnson (Frontier, 1988) First they were Stones clones, then replacement Replacements, their rough-hewn ways a joy to those who find the former too slick and/or the latter too clever. Me, I take pleasure in how closely they resemble their superiors without surrendering their independence--you never get the feeling they're trying to be anybody but themselves. Also enjoy their sonics, lyrics, hooks, etc. B+

Iggy Pop: Soldier (Arista, 1980) This is sheer product--hard uptempo sessions with the pickup band that featured Glen Matlock and Ivan Kral. But the formula serves him well; he can apparently generate satirical energy over a clean rock bottom at will. Play this a few times and in two years you'll still recall five songs when you put it on again: "Dog Food," "I Snub You," "Loco Mosquito," "I'm a Conservative," "Play it Safe." And all the others will sound pretty good. B+

Iggy Pop: Party (Arista, 1981) Although the music's "tight," and sometimes kinda hip rhythmically too, I guarantee it took him longer to get the Uptown Horns on the telephone than to write these lyrics. Iggy: "Ivan, what rhymes with `touches my feet'?" Ivan: "How about something with `creep'--about how you're not a creep, you know?" "But Ivan, I am a creep." "No one will ever know." C+

Iggy Pop: Zombie Birdhouse (Animal, 1982) Granted artistic freedom by idealist entrepreneur Chris Stein after three albums of hard-rock self-formulization for bad old Clive Davis, the Ig comes up with the most experimental record of his career. Which sucks. Don't blame music-meister Rob duPrey, whose settings maintain stylistic continuity yet generate a certain theoretical interest of their own. Blame the slogans, social theory, in-jokes, bad poetry, and vocal dramaturgy he had to work with. B-

Iggy Pop: Choice Cuts (RCA Victor, 1984) Give or take some song-shuffling and a minor substitution, side one of this strange piece of product comprises side one of Ig's 1977 Bowie-produced The Idiot and side two comprises side one of Ig's 1977 Bowie-produced Lust for Life. Makes you think Bowie knew what he was doing--"Jimmy, please, what do you say we put the, ah, less accessible things on the B?" Though I would have subbed with "Success," that's a quibble on such a consistent album, and though I find that the less accessible things retain their narrow interest, I admit that this is the first time in the '80s it's occurred to me to listen to them. Obviously, no one who owns the originals needs this record, but dollarwise students of that long-ago time should be grateful. Too bad they'll never hear "Dum Dum Boys." A-

Iggy Pop: Blah-Blah-Blah (A&M, 1986) You could point out that The Idiot and Lust for Life were cut with the Bowie of Low and "Heroes" while Blah-Blah-Blah was cut with the Bowie of Let's Dance and "Dancing in the Streets." Or you could surmise that copping to conscience did even less for Ig than finding true love did for Chrissie Hynde. C+

Iggy Pop: Instinct (A&M, 1988) Twixt the thematic if hardly definitive "Cold Metal" and the humorous if hardly hilarious "Squarehead," Mr. Big Dick makes like the gargoyle he is, crooning in his ghastly Vaughan Monroe baritone when he isn't asserting his tenuous connection with HM, which whatever its offenses is at least popular, and punk, which whatever its offenses is at least arty. If Bowie can't save him and Laswell can't save him, maybe he gone. C+

The Pop-O-Pies: White EP (415 EP, 1982) New wave's first Grateful Dead tribute band (Minor Threat don't count, they're not new wave) feature hardcore and rap versions of "Truckin'" as well as the real thing. Also "Timothy Leary Lives" (which they regret) and "The Catholics Are Attacking" (which they also regret). They'd obviously better be as funny as they think they are. I think they are. A-

The Power Station: The Power Station (Capitol, 1985) Problem's not Bernard Edwards's textures or Tony Thompson's pulse. It's not the condescending concept that united them with young posers John and Andy Taylor. (How to Tell Them Apart: Andy's guitar has six strings, John's only four!) It's not even the Taylors' songs, though I'll take the T. Rex and Isleys covers and so will you. Problem's old poser Robert Palmer, whom the Taylors thought a suitable Simon Le Bon substitute. Ask any Duranie: he's got wrinkles, and they're not as cute as Bruce's. And even when he didn't the little girls understood. C+

Power Tools: Strange Meeting (Antilles, 1987) Obliging fellows that they are, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Melvin Gibbs cede this trio to guitar tastemaster Bill Frisell, yielding his strongest music and their nicest. Somehow the effect is basically atmospheric whether they're new-aging "Wadmalaw Island" or covering "Unchained Melody" or wrecking "The President's Nap" or pulling out the rage on "Howard Beach Memoirs." Yet somehow they're always funky as well. Nice and strong--especially nice. B+

Prefab Sprout: Two Wheels Good (Epic, 1985) Paddy McAloon is a type we've met many times before--the well-meaning cad. Expressing himself with a grace befitting an intimate of Faron Young and "Georgie" Gershwin, he's sweet enough to come out on the losing side sometimes, but in the end he'll probably "let that lovely creature down," because he can't resist a piece of ass. J.D. Considine calls this music "Steely Dan Lite," which suggests the crucial contribution of producer-sideman Thomas Dolby but misses its pop-folk roots. Reminds me more of the justly obscure, unjustly forgotten Jo Mama--or of Aztec Camera if Roddy Frame were a cad. B+

Elvis Presley: This Is Elvis (RCA Victor, 1981) Almost half of this two-record soundtrack comprises previously unreleased live tapes, usually of songs we have in studio versions--some forgettable (the two Chuck Berrys on side three), some historic (the Dorsey-show Joe Turner medley). In any case, the point is documentation, and for once I approve. Even trivia like "Viva Las Vegas" and "G.I. Blues" work in this context--in fact, it makes the context, just like the interviews (try Hy Gardner's) and intros (Ed Sullivan's). In short, buy The Sun Sessions (now midline-priced) and Gold(en) Records first, but this is the overview. A-

Elvis Presley: Elvis: The First Live Recordings (The Music Works EP, 1982) In which the pre-RCA tyro finds a groove while making nice for squealing young country fans. What's amazing about the groove is that it's drumless, loose if not at all improvised, far more like blues and/or folk music than even his earliest studio work. What's amazing about the nice is how lascivious it is--when he invites his gal to "do what we done before" in "Baby Let's Play House," you can just about see her legs sticking over the back of the couch. Both features are more amazing on side one's relatively obscure covers than on side two's documented classics. B+

Elvis Presley: Elvis: A Legendary Performer: Volume 4 (RCA Victor, 1983) Deemed a worthy addition to the canon by hagiographers who label the First Live Recordings EP a rip, this apocrypha--dominated by bent unreleased versions (and songs) that include a genuinely embarrassing duet with Ann-Margret and a priceless live "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" in which the King collapses into giggles before he's done with the first chorus--marks the unchallenged ascension of Elvis Unmasked among the faithful. It's a fascinating document. I'd rather listen to the EP. B

Elvis Presley: A Valentine Gift for You (RCA Victor, 1985) I know he invented rock and roll, in a manner of speaking, but I have news for you--that's not why he's worshiped as a god today. He's worshiped as a god today because in addition to inventing rock and roll he was the greatest ballad singer this side of Frank Sinatra--because the spiritual translucence and reined-in gut sexuality of his slow weeper and torchy pop blues still activate the hormones and slavish devotion of millions of female human beings worldwide. Beginning and ending with the schlock masterpieces "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "Can't Help Falling in Love" and rescuing tracks from such renowned works of phonographic art as the Viva Las Vegas EP, the Spinout soundtrack, and the Something for Everybody album, this may not be a religious experience, but it comes close. My only real complaint is Peggy Lee's (not Little Willie John's) "Fever." Because in this company I really miss "It's Now or Never." A

Elvis Presley: Reconsider Baby (RCA Victor, 1985) Peter Guralnick's contention that this blues singer is "unencumbered by myth or self-consciousness" doesn't survive the widely admired title (and lead) track. Especially by the late '60s, he's a white boy who knows he's getting fonky--and who doesn't surround himself with especially fonky musicians. So rhythms falter, and arrangements get out of hand. The great singer and hillbilly cat puts his weird stamp on almost every tune anyway. But despite the uncensored "One Night," and the salacious "Merry Christmas, Baby," only once does he outdo himself--on the unreleased Sun master "Tomorrow Night," which was already pretty ethereal in Lonnie Johnson's original. A-

Pretenders: Extended Play (Sire EP, 1981) The medium-priced four-to-six-track twelve-inch is introductory product suited to young bands who are getting their songwriting shit together (or have already shot their songwriting wad). For this young band, however, it's interim product--two singles that went nowhere on the charts, one B side that goes nowhere period, one B side that goes to Cuba with Bo Diddley, and a live version of a single that already went somewhere (though live it goes even further). All of it you've heard before, and some of it you'll hear again, when they get their follow-up album shit together. B+

Pretenders: Pretenders II (Sire, 1981) Even though "The Adultress" comes off as an empty boast, I find Chrissie Hynde more memorable when she's dishing than when she's wishing--her tough surface has more depth than her heart of gold. Anyway, it's always the words I remember, not the melodies. I mean, I never thought they were such hookmeisters to begin with, but at times this relies so much on texture and flow it sounds like a punk Hissing of Summer Lawns. Which is kind of an achievement, actually. B+

Pretenders: Learning to Crawl (Sire, 1984) "I'm not the kind I used to be/I've got a kid, I'm thirty-three" is certainly a quotable quote, and whether rock-and-rolling her baby or growling at fat cats Chrissie Hynde backs it up. It's as if two deaths in the family plus her fruitful union with Ray Davies have convinced her beyond any lingering adolescent doubt that other people are there; Chrissie the fuck-off queen always had these humanistic attitudes in her, and it's good to hear her make the thin line between love and hate explicit. Unfortunately, they're still only attitudes, which is to say that like her mate she hasn't thought them through all that much, and as a result the impressive songcraft here doesn't bear hard scrutiny. But since unlike her mate she keeps her nostalgia under control, she gets her comeback anyway. A-

Pretenders: Get Close (Sire, 1986) She's in a mature relationship, she loves motherhood, and she earns her keep fronting a band. The new guys are funkier than the old guys, the tunes are up to par, and despite "How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?"--it's offensive to dis black pop when your idea of on-the-one is "Fame" cops--her lyrics are pretty mature, with a sisterly offering I'd like to hear some soul man put across. But let's face it--it's hard to make exciting music out of a mature relationship even when fronting a band is the meaning of your life. B

Pretenders: The Singles (Sire, 1987) In a pop environment where even honest artists make a virtue of fabrication, Chrissie Hynde expresses herself. Her fierce, instinctive independence makes even Joan Jett's aggressiveness seem like a pose; unlike Patti Smith, she doesn't append an avant-garde escape clause to her deal with the rock and roll verities. Accessible though they are, her song structures follow no formula anyone else could copy, growing spontaneously (she tells us) out of a personal rhythmic relationship to beats and riffs much too powerful and uncute to be called hooks, which is what they are. Since she has the sense of humor of your average ayatollah, her self-righteousness can be a drag--this is her best album because the radio audience keeps her in line. But she's so tough that there's no reason to think it's her testament. A

Prince: Dirty Mind (Warner Bros., 1980) After going gold in 1979 as an utterly uncrossedover falsetto love man, he takes care of the songwriting, transmutes the persona, revs up the guitar, muscles into the vocals, leans down hard on a rock-steady, funk-tinged four-four, and conceptualizes--about sex, mostly. Thus he becomes the first commercially viable artist in a decade to claim the visionary high ground of Lennon and Dylan and Hendrix (and Jim Morrison), whose rebel turf has been ceded to such marginal heroes-by-fiat as Patti Smith and John Rotten-Lydon. Brashly lubricious where the typical love man plays the lead in "He's So Shy," he specializes here in full-fledged fuckbook fantasies--the kid sleeps with his sister and digs it, sleeps with his girlfriend's boyfriend and doesn't, stops a wedding by gamahuching the bride on her way to church. Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home. A

Prince: Controversy (Warner Bros., 1981) Maybe Dirty Mind wasn't a tour de force after all; maybe it was dumb luck. The socially conscious songs are catchy enough, but they spring from the mind of a rather confused young fellow, and while his politics get better when he sticks to his favorite subject, which is s-e-x, nothing here is as far-out and on-the-money as "Head" or "Sister" or the magnificent "When You Were Mine." In fact, for a while I thought the best new song was "Jack U Off," an utter throwaway. But that was before the confused young fellow climbed onto the sofa with me and my sweetie during "Do Me, Baby." A-

Prince: 1999 (Warner Bros., 1982) Like every black pop auteur, Prince commands his own personal groove, and by stretching his flat funk forcebeat onto two discs worth of deeply useful dance tracks he makes his most convincing political statement to date--about race, the one subject where his instincts always serve him reliably. I mean, you don't hang on his every word in re sex or the end of the world, now do you? A-

Prince and the Revolution: Purple Rain (Paisley Park, 1984) Like the cocky high speed of the brazenly redundant "Baby I'm a Star," the demurely complaisant "Thank you" that answers "You're sheer perfection" signals an artist in full formal flower, and he's got something to say. Maybe even a structure: the frantic self-indulgence of "Let's Go Crazy" gives way to a bitter on-again-off-again affair that climaxes in the loving resignation of the title song--from in-this-life-you're-on-your-own to in-this-life-heaven-is-other-people (and-you're-still-on-your-own). But insofar as his messages are the same old outrageous ones, they've lost steam: "1999" is a more irresistible dance lesson for the edge of the apocalypse than "Let's Go Crazy," "Head" and "Jack U Off" more salacious than the groundout "Darling Nikki." He may have gained maturity, but like many grown-ups before him, he gets a little blocked making rebel-rock out of it. A-

Prince and the Revolution: Around the World in a Day (Warner Bros., 1985) It's pretty strange, given that he looked like a visionary not long ago. But this arrested adolescent obviously don't know nuthin about nuthin--except maybe his own life, which for all practical purposes ended in his adolescence, since even for a pop star he does his damnedest to keep the world out. So while his sexual fantasies are outrageous only in their callous predictability and his ballads compelling only as shows of technique, they sure beat his reflexive antinomianism and dim politics. Which suggests why the solid if decidedly unpsychedelic musical pleasures our young craftsman makes available here don't wash. Only the crass "Raspberry Beret" and maybe the crooning "Condition of the Heart" are worth your time. B-

Prince and the Revolution: Parade (Paisley Park, 1986) Musically, this anything but retro fusion of Fresh's foundation and Sgt. Pepper's filigrees is nothing short of amazing. Only the tin-eared will overlook the unkiltered wit of its pop-baroque inventions, only the lead-assed deny its lean, quirky grooves, both of which are so arresting that at first you don't take in the equally spectacular assurance with which the singer skips from mood to mood and register to register. I just wish the thing weren't such a damn kaleidoscope: far from unifying its multifarious parts, its soundtrack function destroys what little chance the lyrics have of bringing it together. Christopher is Prince, I guess, but nothing here tempts me to make sure. I'd much rather find out whether the former Rogers Nelson really takes all this trouble just so he can die and/or make love underneath whatever kind of moon, or if he has something less banal in mind. A-

Prince: Sign o' the Times (Paisley Park, 1987) No formal breakthrough, and despite the title/lead/debut single, no social relevance move either, which given the message of "The Cross" (guess, just guess) suits me fine. Merely the most gifted pop musician of his generation proving what a motherfucker he is for two discs start to finish. With helpmate turns from Camille, Susannah, Sheila E., Sheena Easton, he's back to his one-man-band tricks, so collective creation fans should be grateful that at least the second-hottest groove here, after the galvanic "U Got the Look," is Revolution live. Elsewhere Prince-the-rhythm section works on his r&b so Prince-the-harmony-group can show off vocal chops that make Stevie Wonder sound like a struggling ventriloquist. Yet the voices put over real emotions--studio solitude hasn't reactivated his solipsism. The objects of his desire are also objects of interest, affection, and respect. Some of them he may not even fuck. A+

Prince: The Black Album ((unlabeled), 1988) Uncle Jam's sonic wallop and communal craziness are the project's obvious starting point, though Prince will never be as funny. Even better, they're also its finish line. Except for "When 2 R in Love," easily the lamest thing on two otherwise distinct records, the bassy murk never lets up, and at its weirdest--an unpleasant impersonation of a dumbfuck B-boy that's no lost masterpiece and far more arresting than anything on the official product--it's as dark as "Cosmic Slop." With retail sources drying up (I have a fourth-generation dub from a relatively inside source myself), those who pine for heavy funk should nag their local dealers. This is capitalism, so supply'll meet demand, right? A-

Prince: Lovesexy (Paisley Park, 1988) He's a talented little guy, and this has plenty of pizzazz. But I'll take The Black Album's fat-bottomed whomp over its attention-grabbing beats and halfway decent tunes any day, and despite appearances it sure ain't where he explains why sexiness is next to godliness--lyrically it's sloppy if not pseudo if not stupid. This is doubly bothersome because added religious content is what it's supposed to have over its not terribly shocking alternative. Leading one to the obvious conclusion that the real reason the little guy made the switch was that he was scared to reveal how, shall we say, unpop he could be. B+

John Prine: Storm Windows (Asylum, 1980) Finally Prine has fun in the studio without falling bang on his face like he did at Sun. Unless you count the spy at the House of Pies, the closest the lyrics come to existential absurdity is "Living in the Future"--"We're all driving rocket ships/And talking with our minds/And wearing turquoise jewelry/And standing in soup lines." But he's not throwing them away; you can tell because he's no longer slurring like 8 A.M. on the Tuesday of a lost weekend. And with Barry Beckett in control, his latest band negotiates the changes between happy and sad like 11:30 on a Friday night. Not stunning, but real smart, real relaxed--one to play. A-

John Prine: Aimless Love (Oh Boy, 1984) Prine's reappearance on his own label suggests that the reasons for his absence were more corporate than personal. The songs suggest that he's not reading True Love on the back cover for solace or satire. Only "The Bottomless Lake," copyrighted in 1977, falls into his wild-ass whimsy mode, and only the musically retiring "Maureen, Maureen" gets any more acerbic than that. B+

John Prine: German Afternoons (Oh Boy, 1988) Just in case you were wondering, this relaxed, confident album is where Prine comes out and admits he's a folkie, opening with an A.P. Carter tune he's been performing for a quarter century and commandeering sidemen from New Grass Revival and suchlike. The songs are straightforward and homemade, their great theme the varied love life of a man whose wife Rachel plays bass and sings harmony here and there, though not on the extended beer commercial "Out of Love," nor on "Bad Boy," about "how to be guilty without being Catholic." B+

Professor Longhair: Crawfish Fiesta (Alligator, 1980) Why is this record better than all other Professor Longhair records? Well, the backup is more sympathetic (sweet and sour horns) and the songs well-chosen (rhumbafied blues from Muddy Waters and Jay McNeely and Walter Horton) and Fess's tendency to waver off pitch on the vocals is turned to advantage (cf. Dr. John). Also, there aren't that many Professor Longhair records--two U.S. LPs total for the man who invented modern New Orleans piano. And now he's dead. A

Professor Longhair: The Last Mardi Gras (Atlantic/Deluxe, 1982) Recorded live in two nights in 1978 by the odious Albert Goldman, this full-price double-album has a look of crass class--how many "Tipitina"s does the world need? And indeed, a few of the new tunes are genre exercises and many of Fess's vocal deviations fail to qualify as the jazzy fantasias Goldman palms them off as. Nevertheless, his Longhair is better performed (as well as much better recorded) than Nighthawk's Mardi Gras in New Orleans oldies and a lot steadier than Harvest's Live on the Queen Mary. And though the hard, punchy drive of Alligator's Crawfish Fiesta makes for a more consistently exciting record, the lazy insouciance of the tempos and horn parts here sure feels like New Orleans to me. A

Professor Longhair: Rock 'n' Roll Gumbo (Dancing Cat, 1985) Everybody should own a Longhair album, and this exceptionally consistent 1974 session--which adds two tracks and a hotter piano mix to the sporadically available French version--won't disappoint. It's got Gatemouth Brown on guitar and fiddle and makes an excellent companion piece to Alligator's peakier Crawfish Fiesta, with which it shares a tough uptempo edge and zero songs, not even "Bald Head" or "Tipitina." It does, however, duplicate a lot of material on Atlantic's endlessly seductive double live Last Mardi Gras. So cogitat emptor, and kudos to none other than George Winston for making such reflection possible in the good old U.S.A. A-

Professor Longhair: Houseparty New Orleans Style (Rounder, 1987) If you don't know why Fess is a national treasure of obstinate localism--not rock and roll or blues or even r&b, just Nworlins--these lost recordings from just after his 1971 revival will teach you a lesson. Fess's wobbly vocals and careening piano apotheosized the city's crazy independence the way Allen Toussaint's did (if not does) its pop affability. With eight of fifteen songs otherwise available, novices can skip it if they promise to start somewhere else. Treasure hunters need only be apprized that Snooks Eaglin is on every track and Ziggy Modeliste behind four. A-

The Proletariat: Soma Holiday (Non-U/Radiobeat, 1983) The hardcore debut of 1983 doesn't sound very hardcore, which may not bode well for the movement--this is like a more rigorous, less cosmic PIL. There's a touch too much Geddy Lee in Richard Brown's vocals, but he sure doesn't think like Geddy Lee--avoiding tantrum and who-am-I?, these spare slogans are underpinned by actual left theory, though not much practice. Entire stanza: "Lines form/Stretch for blocks/City blocks/Many wait/Benefits/Stigmatized/Sit and wait/Benefits/Bread." B+

The Psychedelic Furs: The Psychedelic Furs (Columbia, 1980) They're a posthippie band who satirize hippie fatuousness as well as a punk-era band who send up anti-hippie orthodoxy, but I love them for simpler reasons: they're great junk and they sound like the Sex Pistols. Richard Butler's phrasing and intonation owe so much to Johnny Rotten's scabrous caterwaul that he's got to be kidding and ripping him off simultaneously, and the calculated rave-ups recall the overall effect sought by the punk godfathers, who were always somewhat grander than their speedy, compulsively crude epigones. That's what makes the Furs great junk--it can't be great unless the possibility remains that it's really pretentious. A-

The Psychedelic Furs: Talk Talk Talk (Columbia, 1981) Don't let Richard Butler's heartfelt snarl and Vine Ely's pounding pulse stun you into thinking that this merely recapitulates a great formula. It's richer melodically, texturally, and emotionally: Butler's '70s-'60s mind games have evolved into the bitter double nostalgia of a reluctant romantic who half-believed in 1967 and then half-believed again in 1976. And if commitment gives him problems, at least he's passionate about sex. I loved the first Furs album because it seemed so disposable; I love this one because it doesn't. A

The Psychedelic Furs: Forever Now (Columbia, 1982) It's not band breakdown (Duncan Kilburn's sax replaced, John Ashton's guitar gone) nor pop sellout (Todd Rundgren in for Steve Lillywhite at the board) nor tired songcraft (hookier than the junk-punk debut if more ornate than the powerhouse follow-up) that makes this quite entertaining album less than credible. It's the half-life of cynicism as a public stance. Last time Richard Butler's surprising new emotionality made for a winning world-weariness, but this time it sounds just slightly pat, more or less what you'd expect from a quite likable phony. A-

The Psychedelic Furs: Mirror Moves (Columbia, 1984) Tired of the sardonic fake Pistolese, Richard Butler turns his heartfelt dispassion to an approach that bears the same relation to Bowieism as the earlier Furs did to punk. His seducerama is in the manner of an aging matinee idol who isn't quite as famous as he thinks he is; he sings as if he's known you for years even though you're both perfectly aware that so far your relationship goes no further than his offer of a lift back to your place. And if you're feeling detached enough yourself, you just may take him up on it. B+

The Psychedelic Furs: Midnight to Midnight (Columbia, 1987) As his pose proves ever more profitable and baroque--dig that silken-haired punk déshabille--Richard Butler reminds me more and more of Glenn Miller, who in his time also provided a lush, enthralling, perfectly intelligent alternative to the real thing. Butler's snarl is a croon, his harsh guitar sound a grand echo, his selfish rage a soothing reminder that some things never change. B

The Psychedelic Furs: All of This and Nothing (Columbia, 1988) This best-of sounded tired last summer, but when I returned it to the turntable around Election Day, "President Gas" presented itself as prophecy and Richard Butler's existential fatigue as the decade's great romantic stance. Pitting his penchant for beautiful melody against his penchant for ugly guitar and wrapping it all up in the mournful ennui of his carcinomic baritone, Butler is an unapologetic poser, but the pose takes on unexpected dignity when you hear how faithfully he's explored it over what is now a full-length career. He rages against the dying of the light, and refuses to play the cornball in the process. A

The Psychedelic Furs: Book of Days (Columbia, 1989) Because this was unmistakably the P-Furs and unmistakably a stone bore, I figured we must have overrated this band. No one ever accused them of having the funk, after all. Comparison with Talk Talk Talk and even Forever Now soon set me straight, however. Before slipping into chronic depression, Richard Butler intoned amid chaos--the dissonant drones that here parade by in formation detonate all over the earlier records, which makes most of the difference. And although this isn't as lugubrious as you first fear, speed also matters. Usually folks who quit drinking stop sounding sorry for themselves afterwards. C+

Public Enemy: Yo! Bum Rush the Show (Def Jam, 1987) It may seem redundant to accuse a rapper of arrogance, like accusing a politician of seeking power, but Chuck D takes the bully-boy orotundity of his school of rap elocution into a realm of vocal self-involvement worthy of Pavarotti, Steve Perry, or the preacher at a Richard Pryor funeral. And while I know the idea is to play him off the wheedling motor-mouth of his boy Flavor-Flav, why should I like the great man's fan any more than I like the great man? They've got literary chops--amid puns more Elvis Costello than Peter Tosh, their "Megablast" is cutting anticrack narrative-propaganda--and they make something personal of rap's ranking minimalist groove. But there's no fun in these guys, which given the intrinsic austerity of the groove means not much generosity either. B+

Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def Jam, 1988) Chuck D is so full of shit Chuck E can dis him: "You know Public Enemy are punk rockers, 'cause they bitch about rock crits and airwaves so much." To which I'll add: "And make art about conflicts with the law that as a scion of the middle class (albeit an Afro-American and a second-generation leftist) D's avoided in real life." That said, the leader gets points for oratory, political chutzpah, and concealing his own asininity. If I'd never encountered him and Professor Griff in the public prints, I'd still figure them for reverse racists--last cut boasts that "Black-Asiatic man" got here first as if he should therefore inherit the earth. But their "freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude" wouldn't in itself have clued me to their contempt for the black audience, because these dense, hard grooves are powered by respect: musically, no pop in years has reached so far while compromising so little. Bill Stephney, Hank Shocklee, and Terminator X juice post-Coleman/Coltrane ear-wrench with the kind of furious momentum harmolodic funk has never dared: the shit never stops abrading and exploding. Yet it holds fast, a revolutionary message D's raps have yet to live up to--which isn't to say that isn't a lot to ask or that they don't sometimes come close. I mean, me and Chuck E like punks--D's not the first talented asshole to front a great band. In fact, he's in a grand rock and roll tradition. A+

Public Image Ltd.: Second Edition (Island, 1980) In which former three-chord savage J. Lydon turns self-conscious primitivist, quite sophisticated in his rotten way. PIL complements Lydon's civilized bestiality by reorganizing the punk basics--ineluctable pulse, impermeable bass, attack guitar--into a full-bodied superaware white dub with disorienting European echoes. Much of the music on this double-LP version of the exorbitant three-disc, forty-five r.p.m. Metal Box is difficult; some of it fails. But the lyrics are both listenable and readable, and thanks to the bass parts even the artiest instrumentals have a leg up on, to choose a telling comparison, Brian Eno's. Don't say I didn't warn you, though--it may portend some really appalling bullshit. No matter what J. Lydon says, rock and roll doesn't deserve to die just because it's twenty-five years old. J. Lydon will be twenty-five years old himself before he knows it. A-

Public Image Ltd.: Flowers of Romance (Warner Bros., 1981) J. Lydon's right--rock and roll is boring. And needless to say, so's rock criticism--in a multimedia age I should be able to write my reviews in scratch-'n-sniff. If I could, this one would smell like an old fart. I mean, rock and roll may be boring, but at least it's boring in an engaging way. Bassless Araboiserie is interesting in a boring way. C+

Public Image Ltd.: PiL (Virgin EP, 1983) Comprising the "Public Image" theme song that made us believe Johnny was forever back in innocent 1978, the magnificent recent A side "This Is Not a Love Song" in two versions, and the self-indulgent recent B side "Blue Water" in one, this is obviously some kind of rip-off. But since it's possible that he'll never record anything else you want to own, you might rip him off back by scarfing it up while you've got the chance, thus avoiding messy compilations later. A-

Public Image Ltd.: This Is What You Want . . . This Is What You Get (Elektra, 1984) The howls of outrage greeting this album come from smart optimists who just realized they'd been had. In fact it's no more cynical than The Flowers of Romance, and since it does maintain a groove as well as glinting sardonically on occasion, it's also more fun to listen to. But that's not to say it's fun to listen to. Where Second Edition throbs and The Flowers of Romance thuds, this shrieks, with some of history's ugliest and most useless horn parts--including the one that ruins "This Is Not a Love Song"--leading the way. C+

Public Image Ltd.: Album (Elektra, 1986) John Lydon's name on the sticker, combined with his sudden eagerness to shoot the shit with representatives of the press, has everybody confused. This isn't a Lydon record that (the conveniently uncredited) Bill Laswell happened to produce, it's a Laswell record custom-designed for Lydon, with whom the auteur shares a disappointed revolutionary's professional interest in power. Just abstract the production style Laswell's adapted to artists as diverse as Mick Jagger and Herbie Hancock, think Sex Pistols, and you'll get something like this, as clinical as brain surgery and as impersonal as a battering ram, with unlikely virtuosos playing the Cook and Jones parts. It kicks in because they're both cold bastards; it feels out of whack anyway because Lydon can't match Laswell's commitment and still has too much integrity to fake it (and maybe also because he has never been in the same room with most of the musicians in this "band"). B+

Public Image Ltd.: Live in Tokyo (Elektra, 1986) This 1983 U.K. release was PIL's second live album in three years. It documents the lost work of a pickup band that toured for money. It was brokered in the U.S. as part of the price of their commercial album ha-ha. For a new label ho-ho. Bizzers--they never learn. C

Public Image Ltd.: Happy? (Virgin, 1987) As sheer aural sensation, this may be PIL's best, synthesizing the deep dubwise pessimism of The Metal Box with the sharp studiowise pessimism of Album. But as total experience, it's product. My favorite line was "We want your money" until I realized it really went "We want your body"--another antisex rant, jeeze. Transcending John's unwavering self-regard is "Fat Chance Motel," a definitive piece of aural sensation apparently conceived during a desert vacation he apparently didn't enjoy. B

Public Image Ltd.: 9 (Virgin, 1989) Johnny's gotten so tired and cynical he can't cut to anywhere new: no matter how hard he tries (and as a working professional he does try), he's stuck with his own ideas. Stephen Hague is a tabula rasa--when he does the Pet Shop Boys he seems smart, when he does Spigue Spigue Sputnik he seems false, when he does Erasure he seems blank. So when he does PIL he seems blank with a few harsh cross-rhythms. And if you consider it corny of me to pick on Johnny's electrodance record, let me observe that if he'd gone to Iggy Pop or George Clinton things would be just as bad. Maybe worse. C+

The Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet: Breakthrough (Blue Note, 1986) Pullen, a prodigious pianist who can nail anything from r&b to 12-tone, and Adams, a brawny tenor modernist with a taste for blues, have been gigging together since Charles Mingus's death left them bandless, and though I've missed their shows and regretfully filed their records (where? where?), I'm now convinced they've got the hottest working group in the music. Part of the evidence is the breakneck hour that constitutes Soul Note's Live at the Village Vanguard--Vol. 2, on which Pullen plays actual music at tempos that would put Yngwie Malmsteen in traction--McCoy Tyner telling Cecil Taylor jokes on reds, sort of. But this direct-metal-master recording has more to it, easing into ballad and samba between great dollops of high-speed virtuosity. The secret is symbiosis--Pullen makes Adams go out, while Adams discourages Pullen's shows of Tayloresque concert technique. Proving that the right synthesis of in-the-tradition tradition and avant-garde tradition is all the concept world-class jazz players need. A

Pulnoc: Live at P.S. 122 ([bootleg], 1989) [1989 Dean's List: 1]  

James & Bobby Purify: The Best of James & Bobby Purify: Do It Right! (Arista, 1985) They seem like nice boys and they certainly have nice voices, but whole glee clubs of cousins from Florida could claim the same. The enduring value of their pop soul is a bizzers' triumph--from Muscle Shoals backing, to Don Penn and Steve Cropper filler, to this vinyl document, selected and annotated by Mitchell Cohen to finesse whole paragraphs of invidious comparison. B+

Pussy Galore: Right Now! (Caroline, 1987) All these postdadaists want is to provide the forbidden visceral thrill of rock and roll at the moment they snatch it away as an impossible fake--to be the-thing and not-the-thing simultaneously. How much more could they ask of life? They have fair success, too, commanding an impressive palette of horrible noises and effectuating a pretty good beat for art-rock. But what you remember in the end is the snatch; you're left to mull over a concept that will thrill only those whose lived experience verifies it. Me, I don't find Route 66 has run out of kicks quite yet. B

Pylon: Gyrate (DB, 1980) Vanessa Ellison's bellowed admonitions, Randy Bewley's guitar gradients, Michael Lachowski's peripatetic bass, and Curtis Crowe's prodigious roundhouse drumming add up to an unmistakable sound. I'm impressed. But I wish they'd come up with a few more riffs/melodies as deliberate and haunting as those of "Volume" and "Stop It" and the foolishly omitted "Cool." And while I admire their bare-boned lyrical concept, often the unpretentiousness seems mannered, like some comp-lit cross between Robbe-Grillet and Ted Berrigan. B+

Pylon: Chomp (DB, 1983) The only band named after a Faulkner novel, and that's what I like about the South. Though I honor their collective front, and believe in my heart that Curtis Crowe is the great musician here, I know for damn sure that the one who makes me murmur "Oh yeah, that one" five seconds into each of these twelve tracks is Randall Bewley. And suspect the reason I can say no more is Vanessa Briscoe, who looks a lot earthier than she turns out to be. A-

Pylon: Hits (DB, 1989) From the cradle of Southern civilization, all of Gyrate and half of Chomp, and I'd still do it the other way round. Also all four sides of two superb seven-inches. "Cool" booms out like the art-DOR sleeper of all time, its only rival "Never Say Never," while "Crazy" and "M-Train" leave the LP stuff wondering what to do. Plus lyrics, which answer many nagging questions and inspire others. How does one grade this pricy embarrassment of riches? I guess one gives it the benefit of the doubt for the singles, which merit digital technology, and the band's big yet spare and spacy sound, which suits it. A-

P: Compilations

Peripheral Vision (Zoar, 1982) Ah, these boho compilations. As a belated and partial convert to No New York, I still don't get Mars, and I bet in 1986 I won't get the Hi-Sheriffs of Blue or the State or I/S/M or (Gawd) Crazy Hearts, certainly not all four, even if I do like Mars by then. Unless they've all improved as much as Mofungo has since 1978, of course. I hope the album V-Effect deserves is better recorded than these two cuts, which are the best-sounding things here in more ways than one nevertheless. Which leaves the Scene Is Now, whose "Finding Someone" should be the single, and the Ordinaires, who combine the nicest parts of Glenn Branca and the Moody Blues and more power to them. Ah, these boho documents. B

Phases of the Moon: Traditional Chinese Music (Columbia, 1981) Blessed with neither roots nor technical insight, I come to this 58-minute collection of 11 subtle, surprising instrumental pieces--most of folk origin, though three are postrevolutionary and one "a treasure of Chinese classical music"--as a sublime novelty record. That is, I get off on its strangeness, and why not? Though the mood is quiet the total effect is far from ambient, not just because things do get loud at times but because most of these melodies are instantly arresting. They don't repeat as insistently as Western folk tunes do, either. At times I wonder if I'm back in sixth grade memorizing "Minuet in G" and "Hall of the Mountain King" for Mrs. Tully, and I find that the thing can grate if I start playing it two or three times a day. But why do I keep putting it on? What a trip. A

Phezulu Eqhudeni (Carthage, 1985) There's nothing folkloric about the firm yet intricately catchy bass-and-guitar rhythms of the Makgona Tshohle Band--like so many rock-and-rollers before them, these are country people permanently displaced to the city. And if Boer culture has produced a singer with half the intrinsic humor and spirit of Mahlathini, I assume he or she is thinking seriously about exile. A-

Popeye (Boardwalk, 1980) The orchestrations are Kurt Weill meeting Lionel Newman at the Firesign Theatre, and the actor-vocals are as overheard as a Robert Altman soundtrack. Composer Harry Nilsson hasn't worked this hard since Schmilsson; arranger Van Dyke Parks hasn't worked this wisely since Song Cycle. So although nothing will appease my hunger for the glorious and inexplicably omitted "Everything Is Food," which I trust Neil Bogart will release as the B side of a disco disc, this beats Xanadu, Flash Gordon, and Urban Cowboy combined--as a movie, and as a piece of vinyl. A-

Prelude's Greatest Hits (Prelude, 1983) "Beat the Street," "I Hear Music in the Streets," "Must Be the Music," "Body Music," "Shake It Up (Do the Boogaloo)." Get it? From salad days to dog days, this is bootstraps disco. There's an unplayable Euro side that gets even worse than the bland Quebecois ingenue France Joli, and in general the programming is frustrating--just like dancing in discos, if you're not an adept. But New York dance music has always been rawer than the movie version. These one-shots were made for each other. B+

Propeller (Propeller, 1981) This cooperatively produced eighteen-song tape hang together for a simple reason--none of these ten Boston bands was born to rock. Not that they don't try; not that they don't often succeed. But they come to their (often punk-funked) popsongs self-consciously, with an awkwardness that is consistently charming. Only the Neats (healthy minimalists) and CCCP-TV (nervous about sex) come up with two sure-shot bounce-alongs, but only V: is totally engaging. Theme songs: Art Yard's "The Law" ("Language must go on and on and on") and Chinese Girlfriends' "Let's Be Creative" (alternate title: "Let's Be Ironic"). Assured of its grade because it costs only $4 from 21 Parkvale Avenue #1, Allston, Massachusetts 02134. B+

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