Consumer Guide '70s: M

Mary Macgregor: Torn Between Two Lovers (Ariola America, 1977) I consider it significant that Peter Yarrow's first commercial success of the decade is an Olivia Newton-John substitute, albeit one who's willing to admit she fucks around. C

Machine: Machine (RCA Victor, 1979) "There but for the Grace of God Go I," with lyric entirely by August Darnell, is irresistible musically--still the disco disc of the year. The two tracks with lyrics partly by August Darnell are mildly arresting musically. And the other four are ordinary Isleys-influenced black pop/funk/rock. B-

Magazine: Secondhand Daylight (Virgin International, 1979) If it weren't for the two great singles--"Shot by Both Sides" (available on Real Life, now also released domestically) and "I Love You You Big Dummy" (a B-side Beefheart cover)--I'd be certain this was the most overrated band in new-wave Britain. And given the grandiose arrangements, ululating vocals, and published-poet lyrics, I'm pretty sure anyway. Back in the good old days we had a word for this kind of thing--pretentious. C

Cledus Maggard & the Citizen's Band: The White Knight (Mercury, 1976) Negatory, C.W. McCall. And back it down, Firesign Theatre. This tribute to the aural graffiti of the trucker's South is surrealism in everyday life for sure. B+

Taj Mahal: The Real Thing (Columbia, 1971) Taj's second straight two-album set is a live one, featuring sidemen from John Simon and John Hall to Kwasi DziDournu, four count-'em four tubas, and ten count-'em ten titles. Lots of fun, but as you might expect, things get very loose, especially when the tubists lay their burdens down. B

Taj Mahal: Happy Just to Be Like I Am (Columbia, 1971) This relaxed, witty survey of musical Afro-America is strongest when its compositions verge on interpretations. You hear the steel drums on "West Indian Revelation" and realize that the foreign lilt of "Chevrolet" is Caribbean. You hear "Black Spirit Boogie" and realize how many ways there are to keep an acoustic guitar solo interesting once you've acquired a natural sense of rhythm. And you hear "Oh Susanna" and realize it's back to where it once belonged. B+

Taj Mahal: Sounder (Columbia, 1972) The first soundtrack ever patterned after a field recording, this suite/montage/succession of hums, moans, claps, and plucked fragments, all keyed to Lightnin' Hopkins's gorgeous gospel blues "Needed Time," is regarded by one trustworthy observer, Greil Marcus, as Taj's most eloquent music. But even Greil doesn't know anybody who agrees. I've always regarded field recordings as study aids myself. C+

Taj Mahal: Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff (Columbia, 1972) Heard in the wake of one of Taj's magic shows, the live side seemed an amusing simulation, but no more--the call-and-response goes on too long at 3:40. This might also be said of the 8:40 Spanish guitar (banjo?) solo on side two. The record earns its title, though--the Smithsonian ought to hire this man. Latest instrument: the Pointer Sisters. B

Taj Mahal: Ooh So Good 'n Blues (Columbia, 1973) Taj hasn't used drums on a record since Happy Just to Be Like I Am, but he rocks so easy it took me till now to notice. On "Little Red Hen" he matches the Pointer Sisters strut for strut, and though that's the only great one he also renews "Dust My Broom" and "Frankie and Albert," earns a medal from fat liberation by reviving "Built for Comfort," and picks two time-honored tunes out of his National steel-bodied. In short, his best in years, only what experimental genie drives him to flaw every one of his albums? Here it's "Teacup's Jazzy Blues Tune," named after his jazz-loving brother-manager and featuring a virtually inaudible upright bass solo. A-

Taj Mahal: Mo' Roots (Columbia, 1974) Taj hies to the West Indies, singing part of "Cajun Waltz" in French and part of "Why Did You Have to Desert Me?" in Spanish and translating "Blackjack Davy" into reggae. Reggae predominates, a natural extension of his sleepy, sun-warmed blues. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't rather hear the Slickers do "Johnny Too Bad." B+

Taj Mahal: Music Keeps Me Together (Columbia, 1975) In which Taj doffs the mask of folklorist and reveals himself as a pop singer in a vaguely Caribbean-Brazilian mode. Vagueness--and worse, cuteness (what they do to Joseph Spence's "Roll, Turn, Spin")--provided by the Intergalactic Soul Messengers Band. Best cut: a folkloric Caribbeanizing of "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man." C+

Taj Mahal: Satisfied 'n Tickled Too (Columbia, 1976) Better the Intergalactic Soul Messengers Band, who improvise less and back more (though unfortunately they compose more too), than the East-West Connection Orchestra, who root Taj in Philadelphia on "Baby Love" (no, not that "Baby Love"). And better John Hurt's title tune and Taj's "Ain't Nobody's Business" than either. B-

Taj Mahal: Music fuh Ya (Musica para Tu) (Warner Bros., 1976) This time the Caribbeanization adds steel drums and a pervasive calypso beat to the country-blues vocal phrasing and jazz-voiced horns, and finally an appropriate smoothness is achieved. The songs aren't much, but "Sailin' Into Walker's Cay" cancels out his bass player's tedious "Curry," and if you have to listen easy you might as well relax with this. B

Taj Mahal: Brothers (Warner Bros., 1977) Movie music for a film about George Jackson. It's even got a whole side of new songs. George Jackson would have seen through it. C-

Taj Mahal: The Taj Mahal Anthology: Volume 1 (Columbia, 1977) About time somebody whittled Taj's experiments down to a few classics, and nice to hear a blues album by him, even one from '66-'71. He sure is more idiomatic than any of the white guys who were doing revivals back then. Though he uses drums and electric guitars most of the time, he doesn't pattern himself on the hard, shouting Chicago style of Muddy Waters and such intense Delta forebears as Robert Johnson--his singing is assertive yet relaxed, like an unmenacing Lightnin' Hopkins with a healthy admixture of John Hurt. He does get too relaxed at times, even with "Six Days on the Road" to keep him alert. But this is where to begin. A-

Taj Mahal: Evolution (the Most Recent) (Warner Bros., 1978) Things finally get going toward the end of side two with an insane Howlin' Wolf imitation and a calypso-blues trucking song complete with CB. But by then the flaccid fusions and anonymous collective compositions have turned the same steel drums which sounded so fresh on Music fuh Ya into an annoyance, like a combination cymbal wash and synthesizer on a bad disco record. C+

Mahavishnu Orchestra/John McLaughlin: The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia, 1971) He couldn't very well call it the John McLaughlin Lifetime, but that's what it is--with Billy Cobham a somewhat heavier Tony Williams, Rick Laird subbing for fellow Scot Jack Bruce, violinist Jerry Goodman and keyboard man Jan Hammer vainly filling in Khalid Yasin's organ textures, and McLaughlin back on electric guitar. The raveups aren't quite as intense as "Right On," though "Awakening" and "The Noonward Race" come close, but McLaughlin has a much clearer idea of how to make a rock band work than Williams. No vocals is the right idea--imagine what claptrap he'd come up with putting the beyond into words. To change pace he provides more of the noble, elemental themes he introduced on Devotion--my favorite is "The Dance of Maya," which breaks into a blues about halfway through. Mistake: "A Lotus on Irish Streams," a lyrical digression featuring Goodman, who ought to be watched closely at all times. A

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Birds of Fire (Columbia, 1973) In which the inner mounting flame is made flesh? Something like that. The celestial raveups are more self-possessed, the lyrical interludes less swoony, and the modal themes are as grand as ever. A-

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Between Nothingness and Eternity (Columbia, 1973) This live album is as rough as they're liable to get on record--I even hear a quote from "Sunshine of Your Love," and the raveup on Jan Hammer's simple rock tune "Sister Andrea" is a ballbuster. Empty patches are inevitable but remarkably few. I'm beginning to wonder, though, how long McLaughlin can make his fusion work. Because this is jazz, McLaughlin and Cobham really do improvise (about the others I sometimes have my doubts). But because it's rock the notes and accents they play don't matter all that much--what communicates is the concept, which is mostly a matter of dynamics and which hasn't changed at all over three albums. Not that the improvisations count for nothing, or that striking new melodies--which are in short supply here--couldn't keep things interesting for quite a while. But it's not going to be automatic. B+

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Apocalypse (Columbia, 1974) McLaughlin was right to decide to revamp. But hiring a vocalist, a string section, Michael Tilson-Thomas, and the London Symphony Orchestra isn't revamping. It's spiritual pride pure and simple--or else impure and complicated. C

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Visions of the Emerald Beyond (Columbia, 1975) Well, it's surprisingly funky, though not dirty-funky--dinky-funky, sort of. Michael Tilson-Thomas is nowhere to be perceived. It's got the usual words of wisdom and choirs of angels. But mostly it's just, er, green--electric green. C+

Mahavishnu Orchestra/John McLaughlin: Inner Worlds (Columbia, 1976) McLaughlin's return to a small group would seem overdue, but in fact he's right on time--trapped in the dead end he saw looming ahead of him way back in 1973, which is why he resorted to orchestrations in the first place. Yup, John's got himself a funk fusion group just like Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham. Stu Goldberg (come back, Jan) and Ralphe Armstrong (composer of "Planetary Citizen") are the sidemen, Narada Michael Walden the coauthor. Walden has better technical control of funk rhythms than a lot of jazz-oriented players, but he's squeamish about grease, and as a result his tunes tend to be cute even when they're good. McLaughlin, meanwhile, tends to be impressive even when he's repeating himself. But not that impressive. B-

The Main Ingredient: Greatest Hits (RCA Victor, 1973) The Moments with class and/or a sense of moderation, which goes to show what's important in life. "Everybody Plays the Fool" is catchy black pop. Everything else they play isn't. C

Mallard: In a Different Climate (Virgin, 1977) In case you ever wonder what happened to Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, a few of them joined up here, playing an electric music that recalls country blues (not to mention the Captain himself) in both the guttural density of its sound and the downhome surrealism of its lyrics. Hard to tell it's them only because Beefheart, that lovable eccentric, retains legal rights to their lovable stage names, thus compelling musicians he once induced to remain anonymous to revert to their unknown monikers. B

Mama Lion: Mama Lion (Family Productions, 1972) Lynn Carey, who fronts this outfit, makes speed-screamers like Lydia Pense sound like the demi-Janises they wish they could be. Together with her producer, her bassist, and her guitarist, she has written the first rock song I've heard about sex between woman, but if Lynn really dug her sisters so much she'd hire some female musicians. It would help. Continual intensity is supposed to communicate passion, but this doesn't even convey lust, except for something boring, like success. D-

The Mamas and the Papas: People Like Us (Dunhill, 1971) You can blame this on the march of history, stylistic evolution, what have you, but it's not just that we've changed--so have they. John Phillips now reserves his inspiration for his solo LP, where his heart is, and overall the level of simple effort is so sappy it's startling. C-

Man: Be Good to Yourself at Least Once a Day (United Artists, 1972) Authenticated by one Jones (guitarist Micky) and one Williams (drummer Terry), this collective hails from Wales, where human life as we know it began eons ago. No great songs or great solos among these four tracks, but plenty of audible camaraderie--sounds like a cross between the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service of eons ago, albeit steadier than either, which is too bad in the former case and a good thing in the latter. Upped a notch for historicity. B

Man: Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics (United Artists, 1974) Compounding once and future Iceberg Deke Leonard with two Help Yourselfers and the minimum quota of Williamses and Joneses, this is the best record to come out of San Francisco in quite a while, pretty impressive for a band that never saw the Golden Gate till after the thing was released. The chemistry's right, that's all--Leonard's eccentric dissonances and gullet-model wah-wah are sweetened by the Help Yourselfers and rolled with a steady rock by Williams and Jones. Unphilosophical but trenchant, short on tunes but chocked with riffs. B+

Man: Slow Motion (United Artists, 1974) Micky Jones's trebly runs against Deke Leonard's slashing slides are what twin guitar was invented for, and the band keeps getting tougher and catchier. Bet I know where their name originated, though--in an unusually oppressive sense of Woman-as-Other. One of 'Em even steals Deke's Fender. But there's hope--on the last song he blames himself for Her perfidy. B+

Man: The Welsh Connection (MCA, 1976) In which the loose but significant jams of yore are transmuted into the sinuous but banal instrumentals of our own day. New keyboardist Phil Ryan doubles on philosopher's stone. C+

Melissa Manchester: Melissa (Arista, 1975) Manchester is very sexy in a barely disciplined, almost blowzy way--maybe a touch overexpressive, a little too liberal with her emotions. "I Got Eyes" is nice juicy fuck music and "Stevie's Wonder" the ultimate fan letter from someone who's found a new model of overexpressiveness. Both transcend the rest of the album, which in turn transcends the popped seams and middling Midlerizations of her first two LPs. B+

Melissa Manchester: Better Days and Happy Endings (Arista, 1976) The lyric zaniness that justified her defensive overstatement and good cheer last time proves a flimsy virtue, collapsing beneath the weight of her own success. Maybe she only does want to make us happy, but that should make us sad. C-

Melissa Manchester: Melissa Manchester (Arista, 1979) For a flukey moment there she was Bette Midler turning into Stevie Wonder, but that was long before her discovery by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now she's Shirley Bassey turning into Debby Boone. C-

The Mandrake Memorial: Puzzle (Poppy, 1970) This may just be one of those Complete Works that couldn't possibly be worse than any of its parts, like the Moody Blues' whatchamacallit, but just think--it might be another rock opera. Like Nirvana's Amazing Story of Simon Simopath. Or The Moth Confesses, by the Neon Philharmonic. D

Barbara Mandrell: The Best of Barbara Mandrell (Columbia, 1977) These minor early-'70s hits aren't what her admirers consider the best (that's coming out right now on Dot), but they do foreshadow her concept, in which she applies her limpid center and soft edges to such soul classics as "Show Me" and "Do Right Woman" and then sells them to the country audience--by upping the tempos, oddly enough. Hard to figure what's so innovative--didn't that Presley guy do something similar? And when he went to Vegas, he went on his own terms. C+

Barbara Mandrell: The Best of Barbara Mandrell (ABC, 1979) Barbara's real secret isn't that she's a country singer who listens to Shirley Brown. It's that she's a country singer who reads Helen Gurley Brown. C+

Mandrill: The Best of Mandrill (Polydor, 1975) I approve of their Latin-funk concept and I'm struck by their name--a mandrill is one mother of a baboon, and what do you think a man drill might be? But their music has proven disappointingly tame. Even the big hit sequence on side one--"Fencewalk" to "Git It All" to "Hang Loose"--isn't exactly a rampage. Which is probably why the hits weren't go-rillas. C+

The Manhattan Transfer: Coming Out (Atlantic, 1976) As the memory of the way they demean their material onstage fades, I find I can admire and even enjoy their second album. The scatter-shot eclecticism of the first LP has been aimed--especially on side one, which I much prefer--at the kind of novelty tunes, rock and non-rock, that everyone who listened to pre-Beatles radio loved. The anonymity of the oldies Tim Hauser here unearths--it took me weeks to remember that Roy Hamilton (he of "Unchained Melody") came back with "Don't Let Go," I still can't place "Zindy Lou," and even the Motown remake is from Kim Weston--makes a case for the theory that pop music is a delightful but essentially inexpressive industrial product. But the newer songs, several of which are inexpressive only in spite of themselves, destroy the illusion. B

Barry Manilow: Manilow II (Bell, 1974) Manilow arouses all the distrust that a man who achieved affluence making advertising music deserves: even if he is as sentimental sometimes, as his hit would indicate, he has no right to be. Nevertheless, a couple of songs written with someone named Enoch Anderson, who must deserve better, stick with me. The jingle strikes again? C

Barry Manilow: Tryin' to Get the Feeling (Arista, 1975) Inspirational Verse: "I've been alive forever/And I wrote the very first song/I put the words and melodies together/I AM MUSIC/And I write the songs." You've heard that one, eh? It figures. But do you know who wrote the song? Bruce Johnston. C-

Barry Manilow: Live (Arista, 1977) So rock and rollers can't stand him and what else is new? Well, two aperçus. One, he is beyond the pale of New York chauvinism. And two, all the best commercials in his notorious "Very Strange Medley" were written by other composers, just like his hits. C-

Herbie Mann: Discotheque (Atlantic, 1975) "You know what that is?" said Carola, looking up from her book in astonishment. "That's an easy-listening version of `Pick Up the Pieces.'" Almost. The disco people seem to like this, but what do they know? After all, if the Chinese hordes were to overrun our nation, Herbie would be on the racks in a month with an LP called Little Red Book, and Chou might well like that one. D+

Manfred Mann: Chapter 3 (Polydor, 1970) This horn-dominated no-guitar band succumbs to the chief pitfall of the approach, achieving fullness by sacrificing spontaneity--or rather, the appearance of spontaneity. And Mike Hugg never seems to go above a whisper. Which may be why the songs he sings come back to haunt me sometimes. C+

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Manfred Mann's Earth Band (Polydor, 1972) Mann has always embraced rock and roll's art-commerce dichotomy with uncommon passion--he used to rave on about jazz to the fanmags in the "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" days. This extraordinary cult record achieves the synthesis. Almost every song is defined by a hook that repeats over and over--the phrase "down on my knees" in "Please Mrs. Henry," the galvanizing guitar riff that runs through the almost-hit "Living Without You." But the doo-wah-diddy is continually threatened by an undercurrent of jazzy disintegration--the Cecil Taylor piano jangles that close "Jump Sturdy" or the discords that dominate the closing instrumental. The deliberately characterless vocal ensembles and square rhythms defy today's pseudo-soul norm, and Mann's songs--especially the brilliant "Part Time Man," about not getting a job after World War III--are indecisive and a little down. In short, the perfect corrective to the willful brightness of boogie optimism. A+

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Glorified Magnified (Polydor, 1972) Somebody here has been contemplating Mahavishnu--not just Manfred himself, but guitarist Mick Rogers, who generates transcendental density with more rockish ideas than any would-be jazzman would deem mete. More cerebral, more electronic, and more improvisational than the first Earth Band album--but without its pop or literary gratifications. B+

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Get Your Rocks Off (Polydor, 1973) In which my favorite cult band returns to the mordant good sense of its debut album and gives guitarist Mick Rogers room to make some unsynthesized noise. John Prine's "Pretty Good" is pretty great, and "Buddah" is the devotional song of the year, which is why it's spelled like the record label rather than the wise personage. A-

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Solar Fire (Polydor, 1974) As this group moves closer to the jazzy style it no doubt covets, it begins to show the corners of its rhythmic box. As well as minimal self-knowledge--Mann's strength has always been song interpretation, after all. You think that's why this album has no writer's credits, not even for a familiar-sounding extravaganza called (here) "Father of Day, Father of Night"? I bet they wrote this silly stuff themselves. Ah, self-expression. C+

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: The Good Earth (Polydor, 1974) Manfred has learned just enough about the synthesizer to be dangerous, as his previous album proved, but at least this one, intended to be "more accessible," improves with listening. Two songs are homely enough to justify the name of this progressive-identified intragalactic conspiracy: "I'll Be There" and "Be Not Too Hard." B-

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Nightingales and Bombers (Warner Bros., 1975) Space doodlers at their worst, these guys bristle with intellectual energy at their best, setting the self-conscious funkiness of songwriters like Dr. John and Randy Newman in a formalistic, futuristic rock context. This time Bruce Springsteen and Joan Armatrading get the treatment, and the result is a surprisingly songful album, their most gratifying in two or three years. Just in time for Mick Rogers to take his guitar and go home. Guess he prefers doodling. B+

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: The Roaring Silence (Warner Bros., 1976) Side two is so slavish in its heavy-metal pretensions that it sounds like a parody that doesn't come off. Which is why I'm inclined to give up on this band and describe side one as two worthy songs stretched out of shape on a synthesizer. If this is what the audience Mann has found on tour wants, he should retreat to the studio. C

Michael Mantler: Movies (Watt, 1978) Great title for the ultimate soundtrack demo, utilizing the chops and sound of Larry Coryell, Tony Williams, Steve Swallow, and Carla Bley on bracing (if rather detached) compositions that unite the conventions of jazz group writing with those of twentieth-century European music. Sticks to the ribs. A-

Diana Marcovitz: Joie de Vivre! (Kama Sutra, 1976) This woman suffers from Don Rickles's syndrome--when she gets serious, watch out for flying horseshit. But "The Colorado of Your Mind" ("Go shove it up, the toochas of your mind!") and "Drop Dead" are nasty and hilarious, the kind of songs that are adjudged "offensive to our listeners" by sensitive (male) program directors. Martin Mull should have a tenth of her spirit. B-

Jon Mark: Songs for a Friend (Columbia, 1975) In which jazz-rock (what? you don't remember Mark-Almond, the supergroup?) expresses its deepest yearnings. The inner sleeve lists the names of forty-one string players and eleven businessmen, but the first side ends with the singer threatening to quit on his boss, a Mr. Rosenfeld. Mark's business manager is named Michael Rosenfeld. Subtitle: "Bird With a Broken Wing Suite." D-

Mark-Almond: Mark-Almond (Blue Thumb, 1971) Despite a few jarringly saccharine choral bits and some dumb screeching, this mostly instrumental enterprise by John Mayall grads Jon Mark and Johnny Almond is indeed relaxing--so relaxing people are getting excited about it. That's what happens when you confuse enlightenment with more mundane contemplative states. Miles Davis's In a Silent Way on the one hand and Booker T.'s Melting Pot on the other are just as pleasant and offer both thrills and substance underneath. This offers neither. C+

The Mark & Clark Band: Double Take (Columbia, 1977) Twin brothers who play twin grand pianos, among the five highest-paid unrecorded acts in America after doing three shows a night in Fort Lauderdale for four years, the Seymours have finally agreed to take Ferrante & Teicher to the rock and roll masses. Insprational Verse: "A world without feelings, they're just cold corporate dealings/You beg, you borrow, and you steal/There is nothing real." D-

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Natty Dread (Island, 1975) You'd figure the loss of vocal and songwriting input from Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston would be crippling, and reggae melodies being what they are that's the way I heard it at first. But the I-Threes pitch in like comrades rather than backup (can the Blackberries or the Sweet Inspirations claim the same?), and while the material has thinned out slightly I'm sure there are guys in Kingston who would kill for Marley's rejects. "No Woman, No Cry," a masterpiece on the order of "Trench Town Rock" or "I Shot the Sheriff," encourages him to bend and burr his sharp timbre until it's lyrical and incisive both at once. Lyrical and incisive--that's the combo. A

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Rastaman Vibration (Island, 1976) If side one makes it seem that reggae has turned into the rasta word for boogie--even to a Trenchtown tragedy recited with all the toughness of an imprecation against litter--the unimpassioned sweetness of most of side two sounds like a function of reflective distance, assured in its hard-won calm. Some of it's even better. The Haile Selassie speech recreated here as "War" is stump statesmanship renewed by a believer, and if the screams that open the second side don't curdle the corpuscles of the baldheads who are being screamed at, then dread is gone from the world. B+

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Live! (Island, 1976) The rushed tempos take their toll in aura: "Trenchtown Rock" can be far more precise, painful, and ecstatic; like most live albums this relies on obvious material. But the material is also choice, unlike most live albums it's graced by distinct sound and economical arrangements, and the tempos force both singer and the band into moments of wild, unexpected intensity. I used to think Natty Dread's "No Woman, No Cry" was definitive. A-

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Exodus (Island, 1977) As with so many black artists from this country, Marley's latest lyrics seem a little perfunctory, mixing vague politics of dubious depth with hackneyed romantic sentiments of dubious depth, and so what? Marley is not obliged to devote himself to propaganda. As with so many black artists from this country, the music is primary here, a message appropriate to his condition is conveyed by the unrushed rhythms and the way the sopranos share equally with the instruments and the new wariness of his phrasing and dynamics. Some of the cuts are flat, but if the O'Jays were to put five or six good ones on an LP--including two as striking as "Jamming" and "So Much Things To Say"--we'd call it solid and enjoyable at least. That's what this is. B+

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Kaya (Island, 1978) If this is MOR, it's MOR like good Steely Dan--MOR with a difference. Marley has sung with more apparent passion, it's true, but never more subtly, and his control of the shift in conception that began with Exodus is now absolute. He hasn't abandoned his apocalyptic vision--just found a day-to-day context for it, that's all. A-

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Babylon By Bus (Island, 1978) Here's another one of those live doubles I'd love to love--because I still think they're a great band when it's customary to put them down, and because the night I caught was magnificent. But I prefer the studio versions of every one of these songs (including "Punky Reggae Party," available as an import single). In other words, here's another one of those live doubles. B-

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Survival (Island, 1979) It's great in theory that Marley is once again singing about oppression rather than escape, but in practice the album's most powerful political statement is the diagram of the slave ship on the cover and inner sleeve. There's a world of difference between songs of experience like "No Woman, No Cry" and songs of generalization like "So Much Trouble." And it's a difference that Marley and his musicians are too damn sophisticated to make the most of. B

The Marshall Tucker Band: A New Life (Capricorn, 1974) If I were from the South, I imagine I'd love this record, because it would be about me, which would be some kind of relief. Since I'm from New York, I have to complain about the almost complacent evenness of the band's aural landscape even as I take off from an occasional rill and dig into their heimische rural mysticism. B

The Marshall Tucker Band: Greatest Hits (Capricorn, 1978) I can distinguish Tucker from the other boogie bands because they favor cowboy hats, but danged if I can tell their albums apart. Country people know one cow from the next, too, but poor deracinated souls like me refuse to be bothered until A&P runs out of milk and r&r runs out of gimmicks. Toy Caldwell does write pretty good songs for a boogie man, though, about one a year to go with the album, and it's nice to have them all in one place. Pure boogie mythos, with lots of "Ramblin'" and "Searchin' for a Rainbow," though I'm pleased to report that there are more miners and, yes, cowboys here than gamblers, a reassuring token of social responsibility. I recommend this album. It's as near as you can get these days to hearing that old steam whistle blow. A-

Moon Martin: Shots from a Cold Nightmare (Capitol, 1978) Hook fiends will love these ten catchy little numbers, but me, I'm put off by Martin's pop drawl--"tender" or "excited," he's dispassionate in a way that doesn't suit his musical or lyrical directness. Or maybe it's just that eight songs about treacherous girls are four or five too many. B

Steve Martin: Let's Get Small (Warner Bros., 1977) Martin's style of tastelessness is refreshing--you know he'd do a blue routine or a moron joke if he could come up with one that was funny. But it's not true that he's unsullied by topicality; his definitively post-hip humor is as bound to time and place as Mort Sahl's, less "pure" than Bill Cosby's or Jerry Lewis's (not to mention Buster Keaton's). And having listened to this record shortly after making his acquaintance in concert, I find that most of it doesn't wear especially well. Pardon me. B

Hirth Martinez: Hirth from Earth (Warner Bros., 1975) Martinez sings like Dr. John out of breath from doing the samba: he is interested in UFOs, not really as stars to guide us but as occasions for metaphorical speculation. Unclassifiable funky objects of this sort used to appear at a rate of about a dozen a year; now they're down to three or four. Thank Robbie Robertson, who produced. B+

Hirth Martinez: Big Bright Street (Warner Bros., 1977) I like a man whose dream of utopia goes "And they never grew old/And they never caught a cold," and I like this record. Hirth has learned to use his wizened voice more forcefully without relinquishing any of the amateurism that is his special charm, and since John Simon is a relatively reticent and eccentric producer, the funky gloss that so often accrues to El Lay favorites never turns to glitz. B+

Groucho Marx: An Evening with Groucho (A&M, 1972) I know it's sacrilegious to say this, but they should have gotten to him about five years earlier. C

Carolyne Mas: Carolyne Mas (Mercury, 1979) Mas is one of those folksingers who likes "good" rock and roll so much that she feels honored to contribute kitsch poetry like "Snow" and kitsch pop like "Do You Believe I Love You" to the genre. So I was surprised to find myself enjoying four of these songs and getting off on two, "Sadie Says" and "Quote Goodbye Quote." Only you know what? Her guitarist, David Landau, turns out to have cocomposing credits on three songs here, and they just happen to be my three favorites. Wonder how he sings. B-

Mashmakhan: Mashmakhan (Epic, 1971) Gene Lees says: "I like Mashmakhan first of all because it swings. There is an enormous difference between swinging and pounding. Most rock music does the latter: it just jumps up and down in one place, with no sense of rhythmic propulsion. Sadly, people who dig it are incapable of hearing real swing when it occurs." And on and on, every word bought by Epic, concluding: "This is a hell of a good group." I dare you to spend money to decide which of us is right. D

Barbara Mason: Love's the Thing (Buddah, 1975) Not all soul singers bloom with age; some of them just get older. Ten years ago, young and foolish Barbara was cooing "Yes I'm Ready" as if the male seduction fantasy were her own, and it probably was. Now she sounds petulant, calculating, self-centered, not brave or sensitive enough to have a go at sisterhood nor bright enough to risk autonomy. Her sole commitment: fighting over men with other women. And she doesn't even have the guile to sheathe her whine. D+

Dave Mason: Alone Together (Blue Thumb, 1970) I know, the real heavy in Traffic, great songwriter, poor Stevie is lost without him, Delaney & Bonnie on tour, rakka-rakka-rakka. I love "Feelin' Alright" myself. But I've never wondered for a second what it means, and only when the music is as elemental as "Feelin' Alright" can such questions be overlooked. I mean, songs have words. This is both complex and likable-to-catchy, with a unique light feel that begins with the way Mason doubles on acoustic and electric. But he doesn't have the poetic gift that might justify his withdrawal from "games of reason" in the immodestly entitled "Just a Song." Songs have words. B

Dave Mason: Headkeeper (Blue Thumb, 1972) A year and a half and three abortive collaborations later--this guy is a love expert?--he's back on the market with five new studio songs and five old live ones, two from Traffic and three from Alone Together. He claims this is his label's idea. Should have stayed with Mama Cass. Or better still, brother Derek. C

Dave Mason: Dave Mason Is Alive (Blue Thumb, 1973) The playing is predictable, the discography incredible: one new song, five from Alone Together (one also available in yet another live version on Headkeeper), and one from the Traffic days (ditto). With love form Blue Thumb Records, or so they claim. C-

Dave Mason: It's Like You Never Left (Columbia, 1973) Once again Mason, whose music has all but disappeared amid corporate machinations over the past few years, can offer new material in finished studio versions, and I bet he's genuinely happy about it. The vague romantic dolor of his songs, after all, is a professional gimmick rather than a personal commitment, and the welcome-back-folks title probably expresses his very deepest feelings. But for me it's like I was never here in the first place. C

Dave Mason: The Best of Dave Mason (Blue Thumb, 1974) Pretty hard to do a nine-song compilation on a guy who recorded only sixteen songs for you, especially when the eight best--not counting two live remakes of old hits--are already on one album. Valiantly, Blue Thumb has selected one tune from Dave Mason Is Alive and four from Headkeeper in addition to the four good ones from guess where. And I bet it'll fool some people. C-

Dave Mason: Dave Mason at His Best (ABC, 1975) Q: Given ABC/Blue Thumb's limited options, how much can this best-of differ from last year's? A: Well, it replaces "Walk to the Point" with the title tune from Headkeeper. Q: Why? D+

Dave Mason: Very Best of Dave Mason (ABC, 1978) ABC has finally compiled a Dave Mason album as good as Alone Together by the simple expedient of omitting only the worst and longest of Alone Together's eight songs (two of which have now appeared on five of Mason's six ABC/Blue Thumb albums), adding the two live Traffic-originated tracks, and sticking on one from Headkeeper. Engaging throughout, especially compared to his Columbia stuff, and true to Mason's place in history. With his gentle, multipercussive impetus, warm but basically characterless vocals, skillful hooks, and dippy lyrics, the man is the father of California rock-pop. Loggins & Messina, the Doobie Brothers, Pabo Cruise, every folkie who ever tried to swing a little, where would any of them be without Dave? Docked for wellspringing. B-

Matching Mole: Matching Mole's Little Red Record (Columbia, 1973) On the band's debut LP, never released in the U.S., Robert Wyatt proved his right to transliterate the French machine molle with the quavery, exquisite "O Caroline," then guided the mostly instrumental album through what sounded in turn like Mahavishnu with a sense of humor, gently chaotic musique concrete, and the folk-rock of inspired amateurs. But here, in another installment of that endless soup opera The Curse of the Art Rockers, he changes keyboard players. The villain's name is Dave McRae, and I grant you he's not as highfalutin as Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman--this is avant-garde fatuity, very modular and/or atmospheric. Guitarist Phil Miller tries his best with songs about God and the initiation of a lesbian virgin, and Wyatt plays mouth and drums. But both of them let McRae take the album away. C+

Ian Matthews: Tigers Will Survive (Vertigo, 1972) I know that Matthews (Fairport Convention, Matthews Southern Comfort) is one of the best acoustic-type performers around. I enjoy him at clubs. But they tell me that all the tunes on the record catch up to you, and after listening a dozen times I'm up to two--"Da Doo Ron Ron," which had a head start, and "The Only Dancer." B-

Ian Matthews: Some Days You Eat the Bear, and Some Days the Bear Eats You (Elektra, 1974) This is Matthews's eighth album of the decade (fifth solo), and though people still tell me he's deserving, I think he epitomizes the homogeneity of the new (country-rock) schlock. If the proof of his acuity is his covers of such songs as "Propinquity" and "Blue Blue Day" and "Da Doo Ron Ron" and (on this LP) "Ol' 55" and "Dirty Work" and "Do I Still Figure in Your Life" and "I Don't Wanna Talk About It," the proof of his soft edges is that the originals are always more idiosyncratic. C+

Matthews' Southern Comfort: Matthews' Southern Comfort (Decca, 1970) In which Ian Matthews splits from Fairport Convention, hires a (good) pedal steel player, and sings like an angel. As you know, angels keep their intelligence discreetly concealed--no one would suspect that the song that goes "Alright, everything's alright" bears the title "A Commercial Proposition," or that the drip who begs "Please Be My Friend" is off his rocker. The sobbing overlaid on Steve Barlby's "The Watch" does hint openly at irony. But what can the man who wrote "Colorado Springs Eternal" know from irony? C+

Matthews' Southern Comfort: Second Spring (Decca, 1970) Disappointed though I am by the folky localism cum chauvinism of recent Pentangle and Fairport, Matthews's mid-Atlantic compromise is worse. Basically, he's James Taylor--without the whine, which I'd consider a real improvement if I could imagine Taylor "interpreting" the bitter "Jinkson Johnson" so bright and upbeat it sounded like Poco. C

Matthews' Southern Comfort: Later That Same Year (Decca, 1971) This one really is pretty--except when guitarist Carl Barnwell gives him love letters to read (long-winded, too: "Sylvie" runs 6:08 and "For Melanie" 6:50), he selects very lissome melodies. And no dumb lyrics, either. But when you're so single-minded about singing pretty it's hard to convince anyone you care what the words mean. B-

John Mayall: Jazz/Blues Fusion (Polydor, 1972) Old blues guys plus old jazz guys? I always thought a fusion was something new. C-

John Mayall: New Year, New Band, New Company (Blue Thumb, 1975) And a brand new batch of clichés. C-

John Mayall: Notice to Appear (ABC, 1976) What a title--is that how he knew his trial by studio was due? Granted, the first side did almost convince me that Allen Toussaint could produce a seductive rock and roll album for anybody (except maybe James Cotton) (and Allen Toussaint). But then I listened to side two. C+

Curtis Mayfield: Curtis (Curtom, 1970) Initially I distrusted these putatively middlebrow guides to black pride--"Miss Black America" indeed. But a lot of black people found them estimable, so I listened some more, and I'm glad. Since Mayfield is a more trustworthy talent than Isaac Hayes, I wasn't too surprised at the durability of the two long cuts--the percussion jam is as natural an extension of soul music (those Sunday handclaps) as the jazzish solo. What did surprise me was that the whole project seemed less and less middlebrow as I got to know it. Forget the harps--"Move On Up" is Mayfield's most explicit political song, "If There's a Hell Below We're All Gonna Go" revises the usual gospel pieties, and "Miss Black America" has its charms, too. B+

Curtis Mayfield: Roots (Curtom, 1971) Last time he announced his lack of "concern or interest in astrology," so when the zodiac showed up as a packaging motif I began to get nostalgic for the Impressions. But though the vagueness that was Curtis's chief flaw runs rampant musically ("Love to Keep You in My Mind" goes nowhere slowly) and lyrically ("Underground" is one long mixed metaphor), it's not all that bad--the relaxed, natural groove of Mayfield's falsetto and his rhythm section are both seductive. Only on the lead cuts, however--especially the heavy-breathing sex opus "Get Down"--does he sweep you off your feet. B-

Curtis Mayfield: Super Fly (Curtom, 1972) I'm no respecter of soundtracks, but I can count--this offers seven new songs (as many as his previous LP) plus two self-sustaining instrumentals. It's not epochal, but it comes close--maybe Mayfield writes tougher when the subject is imposed from outside than when he's free to work out of his own spacious head. Like the standard-setting "Freddie's Dead," these songs speak for (and to) the ghetto's victims rather than its achievers (cf. "The Other Side of Town," on Curtis), transmitting bleak lyrics through uncompromisingly vivacious music. Message: both candor and rhythm are essential to our survival. A-

Curtis Mayfield: Back to the World (Curtom, 1973) It grieves me to report that I've listened to this ten times and can't remember a riff--except for the one that goes soo-perfly, I mean few-churshock. C

Curtis Mayfield: Sweet Exorcist (Curtom, 1974) No, Curtis has not latched onto another lucrative soundtrack. In fact, he claims to have written his exorcist song (about a female sexorcist) before there was an exorcist movie. He could have avoided this confusion by calling the album "To Be Invisible" after its only interesting song, from the less lucrative Claudine soundtrack, where Gladys Knight sings it better than him. Mayfield's next lp: The Great Ratsby. C

Curtis Mayfield: America Today (Curtom, 1975) I had hoped the featureless doodling of his post-Super Fly albums just meant he was treading water while transferring from Viewlex to Warner Comm. Instead it appears that he was seeking new standards of incoherence. D+

Curtis Mayfield: Give, Get, Take and Have (Curtom, 1976) This meanders more than is conscionable, though Curtis has been drifting through the ozone for so long that you don't notice at first. (For orientation purposes, compare Gladys Knight's "Mr. Welfare Man.") But I am most pleased to report that the opener, "In My Arms Again," is the first top-notch song he's written for himself since "Super Fly," (somebody bad riffing on guitar--sounds like . . . Curtis Mayfield), and that the three that follow rock and roll. B

Mac McAnally: Mac McAnnally (Ariola America, 1977) Although it does often sound pat, as folk stoicism will in a post-folk context, the first side comes across pretty outspoken for a Mississippi singer-songwriter with royalties in the bank--the heroine of one song is a rape victim who murders both assailant and judge after the latter lets off the former. Side two is Joe South. B-

Paul McCartney: McCartney (Apple, 1970) As self-indulgent as Two Virgins or Life With the Lions, yet marketed as pop, this struck me as a real cheat at first. But I find myself won over by its simulated offhandedness. Paul is so charming a melodist (and singer) that even though many of the songs are no more than snatches, fragments, ditties, they get across, like "Her Majesty" extended to two minutes. And though Paul's do-it-yourself instrumentals stumble now and then, the only one that winds up on its fundament is the percussion-based "Kreen-Akrore." Maybe Linda should take up the drums. She wouldn't be starting from any further back than hubby. B

Paul McCartney: Band on the Run (Apple, 1973) I originally underrated what many consider McCartney's definitive post-Beatles statement, but not as much as its admirers overrate it. Pop masterpiece? This? Sure it's a relief after the vagaries of Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, and most of side one passes tunefully enough--"Let Me Roll It" might be an answer to "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Jet" is indeed more "fun" than "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey." But beyond those two the high points are the title track, about the oppression of rock musicians by cannabis-crazed bureaucrats, and the Afro-soul intro to "Mamunia," appropriate from relatives of the Nigerian children who posed for the inner sleeve with Sah and helpmates. C+

Paul and Linda McCartney: Ram (Apple, 1971) "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" is a major annoyance. I tolerated McCartney's crotchets with the Beatles because his mates balanced them out; I enjoyed them mildly on McCartney because their scale was so modest; I enjoy them actively on "Monkberry Moon Delight" because it rocks and on "Smile Away" because it's vulgar and funny. But though nothing else here approaches the willful rhythm shifts and above-it-all silliness of the single, most of the songs are so lightweight they float away even as Paulie layers them down with caprices. If you're going to be eccentric, for goodness sake don't be pretentious about it. C+

Paul McCartney & Wings: Red Rose Speedway (Apple, 1973) Having decided that rock and roll was fun, a good enough idea within reason, he then decided that fun wasn't so much sex and humor and high spirits as aimless whimsy, and here he finally achieves disaster with that idea. His new love ballad meanders hopelessly where "Yesterday" shifted enticingly, and his screaming Little Richard tribute now sounds like Dicky Do and the Don'ts. Quite possibly the worst album ever made by a rock and roller of the first rank--unless David Crosby counts. D+

Mary McCaslin: Way Out West (Philo, 1974) Without self-dramatization--she favors plain melodies and commonplace imagery and her singing is gamely unhistrionic--this woman explores Joni Mitchell's territory with equal intelligence, more charm, and no drums. Her album is a rough song cycle in which she responds to the footloose incorrigibility of the musicians she loves by getting in a car with a guitar herself--without romanticizing the process. A-

Mary McCaslin: Prairie in the Sky (Philo, 1976) I consider it just that the most convincing cowboy-based music in years should come from a woman who starts off with this request: "Pass me by if you're only passing through." The voice is high and lonesome, not given to gush; the instrumentation is built around an acoustic guitar, but accommodates a single French horn, a drumset, or both, when appropriate; the songs--both borrowed and original--are a lesson to L.A. cowboys everywhere from an L.A. cowgirl who makes her records in Vermont. B+

Mary McCaslin: Old Friends (Philo, 1977) Side two begins brilliantly, seguing from "My World Is Empty Without You" to "The Wayward Wind," two unjustly forgotten chestnuts from disparate traditions that are freshened immeasurably by McCaslin's eccentric, exacting mountain style. But "Blackbird," which leads to a charming "Don't Fence Me In," has been overrecorded, and the finale--the title cut and sole original--is flat. Side one's three highlights are nice enough, but "Oklahoma Hills" doesn't live up to Arlo's, much less Woody's, and "Pinball Wizard" is a weird, brave mistake. In short, the interpreter's dilemma--attagirl, but no cigar. B+

Mary McCaslin: Sunny California (Mercury, 1979) I could warn ya that Linda and Nicolette's prior claim on all early-'60s revivals is established conclusively on the lacklustre arrangements on "Cupid" and "Save the Last Dance for Me." But would Linda or Nicolette risk putting five of their own songs on a major-label debut? They don't even have five of their own songs. B-

Mary McCaslin & Jim Ringer: The Bramble and the Rose (Philo, 1978) On record as much as live, two folkies whose solo work runs from pleasant (Ringer) to special-if-flawed (McCaslin) make up a whole equal to the sum of its parts, which is quite enough--her precise, slightly astringent soprano is the other half of his offhand baritone. In addition to the only version of "Geronimo's Cadillac" you need to own, this revives traditional mountain songs so matter-of-fact and out-of-this world that you can understand why folklorists devote their lives to the stuff. And on the finale, "Hit the Road Jack," the dry, intelligent humor they share--hers mock-prim, his nice-gruff--finally reaches the surface. A-

Delbert McClinton: Victim of Life's Circumstances (ABC, 1975) Any old boy who can get arrested for "cuttin' up some honky with that bone-handled knife" has earned this perfect new-rockabilly title. But as you might expect, he has more to say in the action-packed tales of adventure ("Honky Tonkin'," "Morgan City Fool") than when he's trying to prove he's a grownup ("Lesson in the Pain of Love," "Troubled Woman"). B+

Delbert McClinton: Genuine Cowhide (ABC, 1976) Texas partisans tout this whoopersnapper as God's own leather-lunged, bicentennial, rockabilly truth, but I can't hear it. He's not ravaged enough; his crazy enthusiasm sounds too professional, too glib; there are none of those spaced-out moments that lend such vulnerability, and credibility, to a Billy Swan. Does this mean I'm complaining that Delbert sings too good? Could be. B

Delbert McClinton: Love Rustler (ABC, 1977) McClinton's cult sentimentalizes bar music. The fact that bars encourage a relatively innocent functionality--pleasing a small concrete audience rather than a [ . . . ] make them any more "authentic" than studios: McClinton is essentially a male Texas version of Linda Ronstadt--a strong-voiced, versatile singer who doesn't seem like an especially interesting person. This means not only that he's at the mercy of songwriters and arrangements but also that he isn't likely to have very distinctive taste in either. The title cut is a classic, and several of the remakes are worth hearing more than twice, but asa whole this album is as pleasant and forgettable as a Friday night out. B-

Delbert McClinton: Keeper of the Flame (Capricorn, 1979) McClinton's cult sentimentalizes bar music--having established that a saloon is as fruitful a nexus for music as a studio, they go on to claim that it's better ("more authentic"). But despite his superior sense of rhythm, Delbert's basically a male Texas Linda Ronstadt--a strong-voiced, versatile performer who doesn't come across on record as an especially interesting person. This not only puts him at the mercy of songwriters and arrangements but limits his taste in both. Album number five, his second for Johnny Sandlin and Capricorn, is probably his best since number one--funkier but less directly dependent on r&b, longer on originals than his last two for ABC, and opening with great readings from Chuck Berry and Randall Bramblett. In short, as enjoyable and forgettable as a Friday night out. B

O.B. McClinton: If You Loved Her That Way (Enterprise, 1974) Inspirational Verse: "She found a way to raise her child and make a livin'/But no man wanted Dixie for a wife/Some folks said she was a wanton woman/But all she wanted was a better way of life." C-

Jimmy McCracklin: High on the Blues (Stax, 1971) Some think McCracklin's faintly plosive moan is distinctive. I think it's a type--ideal for outposts of deep soul, but only serviceable (or a little more) as pure instrument. And you know what? The deep soul drumming of coproducer Al Jackson almost puts it across. B

George McCrae: Rock Your Baby (T.K., 1974) The folks in Miami liked the single so much they extended it through an entire album--literally for eight minutes, then figuratively over long stretches of closely related rhythm track, with McCrae's serviceable but emotionally limited falsetto on top. Funny thing is, the single is so durable they almost got away with it. B

Gwen McCrae: Rockin' Chair (Cat, 1975) I was relieved to be left tepid by this LP's original release, since it was getting embarrassing to wax warm over Miami every time out. But the newly added title hit, almost as irresistibly Memphis-cum-disco-with-a-hook as hubby's "Rock Your Baby," transforms it into more warm wax, tuff enuff to make you wonder what ever happened to soul music. B

Gene McDaniels: Outlaw (Atlantic, 1970) Vaguely left doggerel plus a few jazzy harmonies do a cultural ripoff make. Of course, it's true that as a token of his honesty he wanted to call it A Hundred Pounds of Horseshit. But the rack jobbers wouldn't let him. C-

Chuck McDermott and Wheatstraw: Last Straw (Back Door, 1976) As befits a Yale dropout, McDermott makes country music with an edge of educated subtlety--the comic sendups of cars and compulsive consumption sound quite a bit more political than Jerry Reed's, the forlorn laments a whole lot more existentialist than George Jones's. Yet Jerry Reed and George Jones are definitely the comparison: McDermott may sound a little like Phil Ochs or Keith Carradine in their country personas, but his voice is stronger and more country. The drawback is the ragged backup from Boston's finest, who sound like folkies who have not yet developed any viable equivalent for slickness. B+

Country Joe McDonald: Paris Sessions (Vanguard, 1972) Amazing. The man (repeat: man) has written feminist songs that are both catchy and sensible. Despite the real/honest prison poem and the silly, outdated record fan routines, his best in about five years. B+

Megan McDonough: Megan Music (Wooden Nickel, 1972) A male pianist cowrote a few of these songs, presumably concentrating on the melodies, since the lyrics run the gamut from rock music to rock bands to failed love affairs, most of them with rock musicians. Maybe she should find another scene. But then maybe she couldn't be a singer-songwriter. Best line: "But babe I get lost taking off my sweater." C

McFadden & Whitehead: McFadden & Whitehead (Philadelphia International, 1979) The anthemic power of "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" made me think these guys were ready to take over, but all it meant was that every year or two they write a great song. The disco disc has gone gold, and is recommended. B-

MC5: Back in the U.S.A. (Atlantic, 1970) A severe disappointment at first--a rather obvious and awkward attempt, I thought, to tailor a record to some dimly conceived high school "underground," with titles like "Teenage Lust" and lines like "Young people everywhere are gonna cook their goose/Lots of kids are working to get rid of these blues" (political italics mine). But the music had its way with me. Under Jon Landau, the 5's style has become choppier, harder, and more concise; when his discipline is imposed on the soaring Sinclair-meets-Coltrane expansionism of their Elektra album, as on "Looking at You," the tension is pyrotechnic. The only failure is the ballad, "Let Me Try." But all that will make this album an undeniable success is for it to sell--with propaganda, that's the test. Which means it will probably remain an ambiguous experiment. A-

MC5: High Time (Atlantic, 1971) At its best, this combines the anarchic energy of John Sinclair's album with the pop control of Jon Landau's album. "Sister Anne" is a passionate farewell to a Catholic boyhood, and the jazz climax, however ill-conceived sonically (the horns sound funny after all those guitars), gets where it's going, fast. Mistake: "Miss X," an atrocious fuck-me-babe ballad. Some things they'll never learn. B+

Kate & Anna McGarrigle: Kate & Anna McGarrigle (Warner Bros., 1976) A folkie apotheosis--dry and droll, tender, sweetly mocking its own sentiment, unfailingly intelligent. With melodies that are fetching rather than pretty (cf. Jean Ritchie) and lyrics that are not above a certain charming, even calculating, vulgarity (cf. Loudon Wainwright III). A

Kate & Anna McGarrigle: Dancer With Bruised Knees (Warner Bros., 1977) Not as tuneful as some might wish, but even a bright melody must strike artists this subtle as unseemly, rather obvious. Rarely has the homely been rendered with such delicate sophistication: these women spend sixty or seventy grand trying to make a studio approximate a living room, or maybe a church basement on production numbers, and succeed! They are prim, wry, and sexy all at once, with a fondness for family life as it is actually lived--a repository of strength, surely, but also a repository of horrors--that is reflected in their version of folk instrumentation. Rather than on-the-road guitars (with their attendant corn about the wimmin at home) they rely on accordion, piano, organ; once when they need a drum they get the kind of oompah beat you still hear in parades. Even better than the debut, albeit harder. A

Kate & Anna McGarrigle: Pronto Monto (Warner Bros., 1978) The blandout of this quiet but piquant duo is being blamed on producer David Nichtern's all-too-steady hand. And sure, I'd prefer tempos that deviated more than five degrees from dead ahead and tasty licks that didn't whisper monosodium glutamate. But I also expect that these tough, smart women consented readily enough to his devices, especially as their own songwriting now aspires to a sweet directness that Nichtern himself is better at (compare his "Just Another Broken Heart" to Anna's "Oh My Heart" or Kate's "Come Back Baby"). And I'll trade you Ann's "Bundle of Sorrow, Bundle of Joy" for the next Maria Muldaur album sound unheard. B+

Bat McGrath: From the Blue Eagle (Amherst, 1976) Unlike so many singer-songwriters, McGrath sounds like he comes from somewhere--upstate New York, as it happens. Instead of attaching generalized reflections to the most surefire melodies available, he writes lyrics that evoke specific locales and situations--like Jimmy Buffett when he's good, or Tom T. Hall with a more literary flair. Granted, anyone who believes a wino is "free" should check in his thesaurus under "nothin' left to lose," but the abundant compassion, humor, and detail of these brief ballads make you want to hear them again. A small find. B+

Bat McGrath: The Spy (Amherst, 1978) Although he's a nice singer, McGrath is bound in by the mildly jazzy conventions of contemporary folk music. But his songs still say more about how it is for all those formerly young guys with beards who chose to live in the country back around 1970 than all the paeans to homemade bread coming out of Vermont, Colorado, and Marin. B

Jimmy McGriff and Junior Parker: The Dudes Doin' Business (Capitol, 1970) A waste. Vocalist Parker, an underrated blues pro, and organist McGriff, who has a name as a soloist but is better off accompanying, should produce a more than passable record almost automatically. But not when they're burdened with strings, insipid soprano choruses, and hopelessly inappropriate material. Is a bluesman singing "The Inner Light" supposed to make contact--and money--in St. Albans? Sonny Lester--remember that name--produced. C+

Roger McGuinn: Roger McGuinn (Columbia, 1973) From L.A. session men to Charles Lloyd eight-miles-high to Bruce Johnston ooh-ooh to Clark, Clarke, Crosby, Hillman & McGuinn, Roger's solo debut sounds more coherent than any Byrds album since Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which must prove he's an auteur. Jacques Levy plays the Gram Parsons catalyst, but since Levy only writes lyrics the chemistry is a good deal less powerful. And it does worry me that Levy worked on all the good cuts: the ones about highjacking, love in Vietnam and "my new woman," and especially "I"m So Restless," the best state-of-the-music song since "All the Young Dudes." B

Roger McGuinn: Peace on You (Columbia, 1974) McGuinn seems to have done a whole album about breaking up with his wife or somebody. Which is fine, no law against it. But real country singers have more of a knack for such things. When Charlie Rich sings "God ain't gonna love you" (in the title tune, which Rich wrote), the blasphemy comes as a shock. McGuinn just sounds churlish. C+

Roger McGuinn: Roger McGuinn & Band (Columbia, 1975) And band's songs. C

Roger McGuinn: Cardiff Rose (Columbia, 1976) I'd written him off before Rolling Thunder, too, but this record, produced by fellow Roller Ronson and featuring various tour buddies, rocks wilder than anything he ever did with the Byrds. Unfortunately, it's more confusing than astonishing. The factitious folk songs about piracy and the Holy Grail make fewer contemporary connections than the real folk song "Pretty Polly." Ditto the previously unrecorded donations from fellow Rollers Mitchell and Dylan. Imagining how Dylan might sing "Up to Me," which sounds like a forerunner of "Simple Twist of Fate," you begin to miss the quavery McGuinn or yore. And the song that's actually about Rolling Thunder is pretty sickening. B-

Roger McGuinn: Thunderbyrd (Columbia, 1977) I hate the name-dropping title, but this is McGuinn's best since his solo debut, including a tongue-in-cheek version of Dylan's mystical-romantic "Golden Loom," a psychedelic reminiscence, and good-to-great covers from George Jones, Tom Petty, and--the conceptual triumph--Peter Frampton. B

McGuinn, Clark & Hillman: McGuinn, Clark & Hillman (Capitol, 1979) Despite the occasional Byrdsy guitar run, this is pure supersession, a purposeful AOR move by pros out for a quick killing, anonymously accomplished in the music and contentless in the lyrics. Granted, McGuinn's vocals are outstanding--look at the company he's keeping--and his "Don't You Write Her Off" is a genuine grabber. But it's also the simplest thing on the record. Moral: at least you can make having nothing to say sound like fun. C

McGuinness Flint: McGuinness Flint (Capitol, 1970) Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle's consistently tuneful tributes to America and other romances derive most of their character from the jolly-English quirkishness of the band's folk-rock. Only "International," one of their two attempts at a weightier lyric, is anywhere near as irresistible as "When I'm Dead and Gone," and "Brother Psyche" indicates why they usually play it safe. B

Ellen McIlwaine: Honky Tonk Angel (Polydor, 1972) McIlwaine falls into all the overambitious traps--she dramatizes, she vaunts her range, she improvises when she should just sing--and yet she gets away with it, because enough of her grand attempts work. It's good to hear a woman play bottleneck guitar (in an appropriate context, too) and the two times she goes up an octave on "God" in "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" almost justify a whole side. B

Ken McIntyre: Home (Inner City, 1976) I'm not proud. I know damn well that one reason this quartet recording (issued in Europe in 1975 but unavailable here until recently) is my favorite new jazz release of the year is that it features 10 distinct tunes, only one of them a ballad. That's at least three bonus melodies, almost all in jumpy African bred meters. McIntyre plays reeds in the eclectic, jagged-to-lyrical modern manner, and his support--Jaki Byard on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, Andrei Strobert on drums--is as good as it gets. A-

Ian McLagan: Troublemaker (Mercury, 1979) In which the fifth Face, his mates dispersed to the Stones, the Who, Meher Baba, and Hollywood, makes a Faces album as good 'n' raucous as, oh, Long Player. He's more convincing taking a pot shot at the Hollywood Face than movin' out (on guess what kind of person) or seducing a virgin (that's the Hollywood Face's specialty). But if men will be boys, this is how they should go about it. B

John McLaughlin: Devotion (Douglas, 1970) McLaughlin reminds me as much of Duane Eddy as of John Coltrane--he loves electric noise for its own sake and rocks more naturally than he swings. Here Buddy Miles provides his usual ham-handed thump, a universe away from Tony Williams's sallies, and McLaughlin just marches along on top, his tone supremely heavy by choice. But like Coltrane, though in a much more detached way, he can get enormous mileage out of harmonic ideas whose simplicity is probably one source of the spirituality he generates. Rarely has a rock improvisation been more basic or more thoughtfully conceived than on the title track, where he and Larry Young trade the same elemental motif for so long it turns into an electric mantra. A

Mahavishnu John McLaughlin: My Goal's Beyond (Douglas, 1971) What a mind-fuck! Just when I have him pegged as the Duane Eddy of the Aquarian Age he goes acoustic on me! "Peace One," "Peace Two," yeah yeah yeah--it's easy when you don't plug in. Conjuring peace out of chaos the way Devotion does is the real trick. And while like most white people I've failed to develop my taste in sitar music. I don't like the looks of this Mahalakshmi on the cover--she's white too, and I'll bet she got on the record the same way Sri Chinmoy got to write the notes. Sitar sound effects from George Harrison are one thing--that's just rock and roll. John's goal is supposed to be beyond. B

John McLaughlin: Electric Guitarist (Columbia, 1978) In which the top musicians in fusion are gathered by the man who made it all possible to show the genre off aesthetically--no funk vamps, no one-run solos, no twaddle about the harmony of the universe. The project has a certain stillborn aura--it doesn't swing a lot, there is a reliance on Speedy Gonzalez climaxes, and snatches of such deathless melodies as "Holiday for Strings" and "Mohammed's Radio" are audible. Still, repetitiousness is minimized, and there are good ideas and lots of sensitive interaction. And it didn't sell diddley. B+

John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, John Surman, Stu Martin, Karl Berger: Where Fortune Smiles (Pye, 1971) Recorded in New York in 1969, when McLaughlin's studio appearances were amazing everyone from Jimi to Buddy to Miles, this prefigures Mahavishnu's fusion at an earlier, jazzier stage. Pretty intense. The rock guy (drummer Martin) sounds a lot more original than the jazz guys (keyboard player Berger and--especially--saxophonist Surman), but only the justifiably ubiquitous Holland (on bass) can keep up with McLaughlin. And believe me, even if in historical fact it's McLaughlin who's trying to keep up, that's how it sounds. B+

John McLaughlin with the One Truth Band: Electric Dreams (Columbia, 1979) Indicating that when fusion grows up it may achieve the artistic significance of the "cool" jazz of the '50s. Personally, I never had much use for Barney Kessel in the first place. I grant you that Kessel never had a drummer who could roil it up like Tony Smith. But he also never had a drummer who helped sing "Love and Understanding." Ugh. B-

Don McLean: American Pie (United Artists, 1971) The title cut is the great novelty song that may be about the death of rock and roll or may be about its refusal to die. The other material here indicates that McLean himself believes the former, but since it also indicates that he couldn't have composed "American Pie"--he just took dictation from the shade of Buddy Holly, who must be taking some pretty strong drugs up there to make such a mistake--you might as well judge for yourself. And do so like a real novelty-lover, by buying the single--unless you're in the market for a song about how nobody understood Van Gogh. C-

Don McLean: Don McLean (United Artists, 1972) More dreck from your unfriendly doomsaying hitmaker. Question: Why does he say "I feel like a spinnin' top or a dreidel" without explaining how a dreidel differs from a spinning top? Point of information: McLean's pubbery is called Yaweh Tunes, Inc. Point of order: No one who has sailed with Pete Seeger should put this much production into an album. C-

Jackie McLean: New Wine in Old Bottles (Inner City, 1979) The first side of Monuments, the funk record RCA has put out with McLean, is more than passable--although the tunes are ordinary and the groove is a little dead, McLean puts out and the groove isn't that dead. But Monument has jazzbos up in arms, and this record is why--the best McLean album in over a decade and it's not on a "major" label. The saxophonist's work here surpasses that on his European SteepleChase outings because the rhythm section of Hank Jones, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams encourages him to think as fast as he can play, which is plenty fast. He thinks just fine when he slows down, too, although Joe Raposo's "Bein' Green" is unworthy of him. Yet another reason Charlie Parker played bebop. A-

Jay McShann: The Big Apple Bash (Atlantic, 1979) Those who want blues from the 12th Street and Vine will enjoy McShann's album with T-Bone Walker (on Classic Jazz). This is something else--Kansas City jazz rendered by an instrumental ensemble that never gets bigger than the mid-'70s Rolling Stones. And although I'm no aficionado of the horn chart, I enjoy the interplay of instrumental colors on standards by Waller, Basie, Ellington, and McShann. B+

Ralph McTell: You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here (Paramount, 1971) "Streets of London," a gentle attack on folkie self-pity, is one of the several appealingly melodic urban miniatures, and it doesn't stop there. McTell is so softhearted he ought to check in with a cardiologist (maybe that's why he sounds so sad all the time), but he's not empty-headed; he knows what his world-view portends. Hence, "First and Last Man," a celebration of a real primitive--the epoch isn't identified, but I'd guess Neanderthal. So why is he in the studio with Gus Dudgeon? Beats me, but it doesn't hurt. B+

Meat Loaf: Bat out of Hell (Epic, 1978) Here's where the pimple comes to a head--if this isn't adolescent angst in its death throes, then Buddy Holly lived his sweet, unselfconscious life in vain. The lyrics offer wit amid heat and power (will "lyric-sheet verse" soon turn into the macho converse of "greeting-card verse"?) and the music pulls out the stops quite knowingly (will Phil Spector soon be remembered as the Rachmaninoff of rock and roll?). Occasionally it seems that horrified, contemptuous laughter is exactly the reaction this production team intends, and it's even possible that two percent of the audience will get the joke. But the basic effect is grotesquely grandiose. Bruce Springsteen, beware--this is what you've wrought, and it could happen to you. C-

The Meditations: Message from the Meditations (United Artists, 1978) A new group has to score singles often in Jamaica before getting an album, and with three singers--including two distinctive high tenors--sharing writing and lead vocals, this is a nice one. Just wish it featured more island chauvinism--if I'm not mistaken, "Running From Jamaica" gets on those who emigrate to Canada, Britain, the States, and Africa--and less of the male kind. B

Melanie: Gather Me (Neighborhood, 1971) Unlike my straightlaced friends, I've always dug the idea of Melanie--Edith Piaf as Brooklyn waif, preaching the hippie gospel in that absurdly flexible and resonant alto. But I've found the reality cloying. Here she grows up just enough. "Brand New Key" is one of those impossible celebrations of teen libido that renew one's faith in AM radio. "Steppin'" is the best breakup song since "It's Too Late," and though side two slips badly toward the end, she's rarely a simp this time out. B+

Melanie: Four Sides of Melanie (Buddah, 1972) Two of which you can skip: the formless formative stuff (she's eternally callow so who needs it, though "I Really Loved Harold" and "Somebody Loves Me" are nice) and the unspeakable contemporary covers (Dylan, Taylor, and Jagger as Blake, Keats, and Coleridge). But even without "Brand New Key" her hits have their charms--"What Have They Done to My Song Ma" and "Nickel Song" on one theme and "Lay Down" and "Peace Will Come" on the other. And except for the labored "Psychotherapy" the weird stuff is quite amusing. She ought to ask herself, though, why the two best cuts on her best-of are the aforementioned tune, and "Christopher Robin," by A.A. Milne. B-

Melanie: Photograph (Atlantic, 1976) When she was a twenty-four-year-old child-woman she got points for her changeable voice and naive candor. But as she pushes thirty the voice is a given and the naivete an embarrassment. C+

Melanie: The Best of Melanie (Buddah, 1977) In which Arista buys Buddah and perpetrates a literal corporate ripoff, yanking ten songs from Buddah's thoughtful if flawed twenty-three-cut Melanie compilation--including her epochal misreadings of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Ruby Tuesday." Title recognition, you know. C-

Terry Melcher: Terry Melcher (Reprise, 1974) Most will find this producer's daydream sterile at best and noxious at worst, but I like the song about his shrink and am fascinated by his compulsion to defend his Manson connections. With the requisite show of wealth and taste, he insists that he's only a spectator--why, he wouldn't even know about the hand jive if it weren't for Soul Train. Alternate title: It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Watching. B-

Melton, Levy and the Dey Brothers: Melton, Levy and the Dey Brothers (Columbia, 1972) Barry Melton, once the energetic young comer behind Country Joe, has done a classic Marin County cool-out. He always loved soul music, so now he makes laid-back soul music. I prefer Gamble and Huff. A sly, plaintive road song, "Highway 1," wasn't written by anyone in the band, and the rest varies between pleasant and unremarkable. Melton's previous solo album was tasteless, but at least it had some passion. C

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: I Miss You (Philadelphia International, 1972) For most of the eight-and-a-half minutes of the title cut, one Blue Note attempts a calm rapprochement with his estranged wife over the telephone while the others shout, moan, and sob his unspoken feelings--summed up by the title, which must repeat a hundred times. But not even their top-forty breakthrough, "If You Don't Know Me by Now," matches up. Gamble, Huff & Co. show off their skill at instrumental deployment and Melvin provides gorgeous vocal arrangements, but too often it all adds up to noble banalities sententiously expressed. And sometimes the banalities aren't so noble. B

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: Black and Blue (Philadelphia International, 1973) The lead singer's name is Theodore Pendergrass, not Harold Melvin, which you'd only know by reading Soul or Jet--he's not mentioned anywhere on the record or double-fold jacket. Pendergrass boasts just about the most powerful voice ever to hit soul music, though not the richest or most overwhelming. Although his smashes are dance tunes like "The Love I Lost" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed," his real calling is big ballads, especially ones that assert dependence--"Is There a Place for Me," "I'm Weak for You." But did they have to kick things off with "Cabaret"? B+

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: To Be True (Philadelphia International, 1975) Black suffering above the poverty level is the lyrical twist of "Bad Luck" and "Where Are All My Friends" (written not by Gamble-Huff but by Carstarphen-McFadden-Whitehead), and to Pendergrass's credit he seems to get it--even makes a few asides. He also generates tremendous romantic authority--you really believe he wants to meet up with her "Somewhere Down the Line." He doesn't do the impossible for "Pretty Flower," though, and given the credibility of most of what remains--not to mention the intrusion of the mysterious Sharon Paige--the impossible is all that would push this over the line for me. B+

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: Wake Up Everybody (Philadelphia International, 1975) The sustained dynamics of the title track get me past its muddle-headed lyrics--Gamble-Huff sometimes act as if "hatred, war an' poverty" came along just as they were running out subjects. And I can still go along with Teddy Pendergrass's tender strength. But sometimes he sounds a little more insecure than I think he intends--he's prone to bluster and chest-pounding, and some of his grunts are almost coughs. Anyway, he's gone. B+

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: Collector's Item (Philadelphia International, 1976) Harold Melvin could no more give Teddy his due than he could sing lead himself, so he includes a Sharon Paige feature instead of another slow, vulnerable one--if not "To Be True" or "I'm Weak for You," then why not "Yesterday I Had the Blues," which was a hit? And Kenny Gamble could no more get off his high horse than he could do the dishes, so he includes the inevitable piece of male-chauvinism-as-moral-posture, "Be for Real," instead of "Satisfaction Guaranteed," which was a hit. And for all that this compilation is the best Teddy Pendergrass record you can buy. A-

The Members: At the Chelsea Nightclub (Virgin International, 1979) The inheritors of English punk haven't turned to power pop; they're putting their energies into reggae. Britain's own indigenous black music, with the r&b syntheses of the Stones rather than the blues imitations of the Savoy Browns serving as precedent. The crude feel and committed socioeconomic awareness of this album recall 1977, but the rhythms and tempos leave room for their rebellious-suburban-lad-escaped-to-the-city to give forth with a slyer kind of humor. B+

Eric Mercury: Electric Black Man (Avco Embassy, 1970) All things considered--tasteless hype, demeaning concept, kudos from David Clayton-Thomas, violins-and-wah-wah production, oh, the exploitative stupidity of it all--this isn't a complete disaster, because Mercury is a fairly strong singer. Maybe some day he'll put out a fairly strong album. C

Mer-Da: Long Burn the Fire (Janus, 1972) A follow-up to There's a Riot Goin' On by a group identified as "Black Mer-Da" on the disc itself, before someone at Janus got cold feet. No more riots here than with Sly, or course--just self-hate, misogyny, desperate poverty, and senseless violence, as out-of-tune voices declaim strangely catchy tunes over loitering funk patterns and jagged guitar. "Sometimes I wish I'd never been born," they announce flatly, and they can really get flat. But the most surreal passage comes toward the close of "My Mistake," when "I should have killed her instead" (author's note: of the friend he caught fucking her), horrifying enough as a surprise endline, is transformed into a little piece of art-funk, repeated amid various instrumental configurations by an off-key chorale that sounds positively transported. B+

The Meters: Struttin' (Josie, 1970) The New Orleans M.G.'s swing, but not smoothly, the way a big band does--their Caribbean lilt is pure second-line, as elliptical as a saint's march. They're the secret of Allen Toussaint-produced hits by Lee Dorsey, Aaron Neville, and Ernie K-Doe, and because they put out riffs rather than songs their own LPs are consistently danceable and listenable. Of course, to do better than that the band would have to come up with more good riffs in a year than most rhythm sections manage in a decade, and usually they compromise a little--only two r&b hits here, plus several other tracks that might have been, "Wichita Lineman" not among them. B+

The Meters: Cabbage Alley (Reprise, 1972) Just what do these people want? They're still making up titles like "Gettin' Funkier All the Time," even singing one called "Do the Dirt." But they're also stretching out a catchy little number called "Stay Away" with what annotator Barry Hansen refers to gingerly as "some most unusual electronic adventures" and putting voice to Neil Young's "Birds" and their own "Lonesome and Unwanted People." And what can it mean that the catchiest little number of all has no words and two titles--"You've Got to Change (You've Got to Reform)"? B

The Meters: Rejuvenation (Reprise, 1974) Although it's worth noting that their first hit for Warners, "Hey Pocky A-Way," is as old as the second line, it's also worth nothing that they're getting results from their experiments--namely, the twelve-minute funk fusion "It Ain't No Use." And if most of the time the vocals are neutral at best, what this bunch of amateurs makes of "Just Kissed My Baby" isn't dreamed of in Three Dog Night's philosophy. B+

The Meters: Cissy Strut (Island, 1975) Unless you happen to be dancing, it takes a slightly inappropriate aesthetic concentration to, er, appreciate a whole album of party instrumentals. But this compilation of thirteen turn-of-the-decade r&b hits (plus album tracks) the Meters cut for Josie is worth the strain. The secret: listen to Ziggy Modeliste. He plays more off-beats and eccentric patterns than any soul drummer you ever heard, yet never breaks up the band's spare, clever riff structures; it's almost as if he's the lead. These cuts are short and catchy. Not one of them is as amazing as Rejuvenation's "It Ain't No Use." But every one works. A-

The Meters: Fire on the Bayou (Reprise, 1975) Thanks to new conga player Cyril Neville, the singing has gotten better, but no matter how much I love "They All Ask'd for You," I'm not sure that's good. Distracts us from the drummer. And maybe it distracts the drummer, too. B

The Meters: Trick Bag (Reprise, 1976) Doing James Taylor and the Rolling Stones. Writing a song about pollution solutions, and one called "Find Yourself" that's more embarrassing than the one called "Disco Is the Thing Today." And covering Earl King's title tune magnificently. Why, oh Lord, why? C+

The Meters: New Directions (Warner Bros., 1977) Outside of New Orleans the Meters are a cult band. All they accomplish by going pop/disco is the loss of their critical rep (whatever that's worth) and the erosion of their sales base. Yet leaving Allen Toussaint for David Rubinson was evidently the right move--he respected them so much he was even sparing with the Tower of Power. A very good commercial funk record, right down to covers that go with their natural beat--one from Peter Tosh and one from Allen Toussaint. B+

Metro: Metro (Sire, 1978) Chansons de l'amour esquinté--très chic, très sophistiqué, et plutôt ennuyeux. Un Alpha Band Européen avec sexe, peut-être, ou un Roxy Music pour le cabaret. A propos en Anglais, et tant pis. C+

Augie Meyers: You Ain't Rollin Your Roll Rite (Paramount, 1973) Doug Sahm's faithful organist has a rather shallow voice, but he knows good material and occasionally writes some--"Sugar Blu" is the way Doug ought to be opening his sets these days, and the title song sounds like advice to rock and rollers who get lost on their way to legendhood. Straightforward Tex-Mex like they don't hardly make no more. B

Augie Meyers: Finally in Lights (Texas Re-Cord, 1977) The jazzy coda doesn't ruin "Sky High," "Deed to Texas" is chauvinism at its most forgivable, and in general this is good fun. But though Meyers has grown as a singer he has nothing to add to "Release Me," and though he half-earns the right to contribute seven of his own songs I bet he knows "Baby, Baby" is sheer filler. B-

Miami: The Party Freaks (Drive, 1974) Inspirational Verse: "Girl with the see-through pants on/ I can see through to your bone/ What I see is outta sight/ Tell me, can I love you tonight?" C-

Lee Michaels: Tailface (Columbia, 1973) In which a self-proclaimed "Garbage Gourmet" makes up a joke so dumb that it took me four months to get it. Setup: Michaels, an organ player by trade, switches to guitar. Punch line: A cross between "Louie Louie" and "Do You Know What I Mean" that occupies an entire album. All reet! B+

Bette Midler: The Divine Miss M (Atlantic, 1972) Midler thinks "cabaret" encompasses every emotion and aspiration ever transfixed by pop music. People who've seen her like this record more than people who haven't, which isn't good. But as someone who's been entranced by her show many times I'm grateful for a production that suggests its nutty quality without distracting from her voice, a rich instrument of surprising precision, simultaneously delicate and vulgar. I'd ease up on the '60s nostalgia by replacing "Chapel of Love" with "Empty Bed Blues," but anybody who can expose "Leader of the Pack"'s exploration of the conflict between love and authority has a right. A-

Bette Midler: Bette Midler (Atlantic, 1973) Side two does seven great songs with umpteen instruments in just over fifteen minutes, a perfectly amazing miracle of concision. But side one is less than hot. Two (why two?) just-wrong Johnny Mercer songs lead into a properly excessive intro to Ann Peebles's "Breaking Up Somebody's Home" that is destroyed inside of two minutes by an improperly excessive, funkless production. Bette's overstatement works on "Surabaya Johnny" and "I Shall Be Released," but I've heard better. Most important, why isn't there one song by a contemporary composer here? Dylan doesn't count--I'm talking about Randy Newman, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Joni Mitchell, maybe James Taylor or Cat Stevens, she's always made me believe in miracles. As it stands, this record is perilously close to the ostrich nostalgia of her dumbest fans. B+

Bette Midler: Songs for the New Depression (Atlantic, 1976) It's going too far to claim that she's taken on a corporate personality--a very unusual individual does definitely peek out through the curtain of groupthink that hides these songs from the singer and from us. But that individual seems to have taken on so many advisers because she's afraid of herself, and such fear is not attractive in an artist of Bette Midler's power. No matter what your voice teachers tell you, wackiness is not something to modulate. C+

Bette Midler: Broken Blossom (Atlantic, 1977) So she can translate Billy Joel into Phil Spector--she has nevertheless become, at least on record, just another pop singer, albeit with a few interesting idea. I ask you, is the redemption of Billy Joel fit work for a culture heroine? C

Bette Midler: Live at Last (Atlantic, 1977) Her fans may find some of the material on this live double-LP repetitious--I could do without five minutes of "Delta Dawn" myself--and her overripe singing will offend those she offends anyway. But she's never recorded fifteen of these twenty-five songs, a few repeats are enhanced by the particulars of this performance, and others gather meaning in theatrical context. A typical stroke: prefacing the glorious tearjerker "Hello in There" with campy, occasionally unkind patter about ladies with fried eggs on their heads, so that the song's romanticized heroine and the weird and depressing fried egg ladies both seem to have something in common with Bette, and therefore with each other. A-

Bette Midler: Thighs and Whispers (Atlantic, 1979) The songs are pretty good, and when you listen up they get better, their apparent flatness undercut by little touches of drama, comedy, or musicianship. But the songs aren't that good. And they don't get that much better. C+

Midnight Rhythm: Midnight Rhythm (Atlantic, 1979) At last a whole disco album that actually brings off all the disco tricks--exploding out of the speakers, washing over the room, and so forth. The thump of the bass drum never dominates the rhythmic pulse, and the lyrical tag lines avoid the words "dance," "dancer," "dancing," "dancin'," and "disco"--until an orgasmic break (repeated once) that goes "Dancin', dancin', dancin', dancin'." Monofunctional but potent. A-

Mighty Clouds of Joy: It's Time (Dunhill, 1974) You'd figure the showiest of all gospel groups would sell out with some flair, but the vocal transfigurations--that old Wilson Pickett (and Julius Cheeks) unhh born again--aren't the only reason this is one of the best LPs ever to come out of Philadelphia. For once, the songs--many of them from producer Dave Crawford, whose spirit must have been moved--include virtually no filler, not even (especially not even) the one that takes off from the group's name. Nicest conceit: how hard it is to be soft in a "Stoned World." A-

Mighty Clouds of Joy: Kickin' (ABC, 1975) Dave Crawford, whose debut production with this group explored the spiritual affinities between showbiz gospel and studio soul, here returns to form by exploiting shared commercial asininities. Don't be fooled if they get the great exception, "Mighty High," onto DJ turntables; Joe Ligon singing "You Are So Beautiful" is even more depressing than Billy Preston. B-

Mighty Clouds of Joy: The Very Best of the Mighty Clouds of Joy (ABC, 1978) This two-disc set presents the pre-crossover Peacock-label gospel and the "appeal to Pop/R&B audiences" as a continuum, and while I'm still a fan of the Clouds' first Dave Crawford LP, guess which period sounds better. Is it the formal purity of the Peacock stuff, leaving the excitement to Joe Ligon's falsetto-piercing shouts, that makes their sermonizing seem so unpresumptuous? Or does the music just go with the message, as in the overbearing orchestrations of the more recent "God Is Not Dead" and "Look on the Bright Side"? One thing I know--gospel songs are written by mortals, too, and all the faith in the world isn't going to make a good one out of a bad one. An acceptable one, maybe. B+

Mighty Diamonds: Right Time (Virgin, 1976) On the purely aural, preverbal evidence--the sweet, precise harmonies and arrangements, the intent beat--you'd figure they were singing songs of love, or at least sexual mastery. Ditto from their foolish stage act. But in fact there are no broken hearts in these lyrics, only broken bodies, and the exultation is the exultation of oppression defied. In other words, this follows reggae conventions as Americans know it, and on a few cuts conventional is how it sounds. Usually, though, lead singer Donald Sharpe sounds as if he's learned all this more recently than the Bob Marley of Rastaman Vibration. A-

Mighty Diamonds: Ice on Fire (Virgin, 1977) Just as an assassination attempt doesn't commit Bob Marley to propaganda, so the best reggae album of 1976 doesn't commit the Mighty Diamonds to the music of Jamaica. Here they bid to become just another black harmony group, yoking Allen Toussaint's production to the Kingston beat and covering "Tracks of My Tears" (well). We could use another black harmony group, but unfortunately. Toussaint isn't noted for his work with groups, and like most harmony-group albums (not to mention reggae albums) this sounds samey even as it switches unpredictably from Toussaint songs to Mighty Diamonds originals. B

Mighty Diamonds: Deeper Roots (Back to the Channel) (Virgin International, 1979) Most of these songs confidently cross jingle and chant, and Donald Shaw sings in his chains like a true son of Smokey. But never once do the riddims become anthemic. For advanced reggae students only. B

Buddy Miles: Them Changes (Mercury, 1970) His work on Band of Gypsies and Devotion surpasses anything he ever did with the Electric Flag, but that's due to the artistic maturity of Hendrix and McLaughlin, not of Buddy Miles. His singing is too thin to carry two consecutive cuts, his drumming has to be exploited by subtler musicians, and the title cut is the only decent song he ever wrote. C

Frankie Miller: Frankie Miller's Highlife (Chrysalis, 1974) Macon meets New Orleans in Glasgow for a lesson in Scots soul, historical division. Allen Toussaint provides the New Orleans, but though his songs ("Brickyard Blues," yeah) certainly stand out, he doesn't hog the stage--Miller's rough warmth and knowledge of literature keep the album in play. B+

Frankie Miller: The Rock (Chrysalis, 1975) If like me you have a taste for English soul singers who have taste in American soul exemplars, you will be pleased to learn that Henry McCulloch does a hell of a Steve Cropper imitation. But Miller is no Joe Cocker (not to mention Toots Hibbert) (not to mention . . . ) and he was better off writing fewer songs. B

Jacob Miller: Dread, Dread (United Artists, 1978) Miller had never impressed me with Inner Circle on Capitol, so I put aside this solo effort without much pain. Then an adept suggested I flip the loudness switch and turn up the bass and treble--advice that applies to all of Tom Moulton's reggae remixes for U.S. UA. Boom--different music. The Rasta homilies area little thin and the remakes of "Why Can't We Be Friends" and "Dock of the Bay" unnecessary, but "Tenement Yard" is neither, and I love Miller's basic vocal trick, which makes him sound like a kid imitating a machine gun. The adept tells me Inner Circle sounds better in Jamaican too. B+

Roger Miller: Dear Folks Sorry I Haven't Written Lately (Columbia, 1973) I mourned Miller's writing block actively; now I wish it would come back. He's turned into one more Nashville sentimentalist. Example: This album transforms "My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died" into "My Mother Used to Love Me But She Died" and adds superfluous soulettes. D-

Steve Miller: Number 5 (Capitol, 1970) The songs about going to the country, going to Mexico, and eating chili are more substantial than those about Vietnam, Jackson-Kent, and the military-industrial complex. Fortunately, all three of the latter are supposed to bring the album to a rousing (zzzzz) climax, which leaves side one free to bring you back humming. B

Steve Miller: Rock Love (Capitol, 1971) Those who deemed Number 5 a throwaway should find number six instructive: one side of live "blues," one of dead "rock." C-

The Steve Miller Band: Recall the Beginning . . . A Journey from Eden (Capitol, 1972) I think this is a concept album in which Miller's rejection by a female drummer named Kim symbolizes "all the pointless suffering/Humanity." But I don't intend to make sure. C-

The Steve Miller Band: Anthology (Capricorn, 1972) Says Miller in the notes: "Always before, you know, people more or less needed to be fans to like the albums. Oh, I mean there'd be some good cuts and a couple of not-so-good cuts, and then some cuts I don't even like to remember. But Anthology is what I always wanted to make--two good LPs that'll hold up." And you know what? That's so accurate I won't bother quibbling about "Motherless Children" or "Baby's House." But what can it mean that thirteen of the sixteen survivors were recorded three years ago? B+

The Steve Miller Band: The Joker (Capitol, 1973) As a spacey rock prophet he's terrible (who isn't?). As a blues singer he's incompetent (I wouldn't come on in his kitchen for a glass of water). But as a purveyor of spacey pop-rock blues, he has his virtues. Question: what the hell is "the pompitous of love"? The Medallions wouldn't tell me. B-

The Steve Miller Band: Fly Like an Eagle (Capitol, 1976) Miller's eccentricity--James Cotton harp amid the Sam Cooke amid the technologized ditties--has no center or even epicenter except for the pastoral antimaterialism so common among exurbanite rock tycoons. But in the end his borrowed hooks and woozy vocal charm are an irresistible formula. Finds good covers, too--"Mercury Blues" (copyright 1970 by K.C. Douglas, whoever he is) fits right in. B+

The Steve Miller Band: Book of Dreams (Capitol, 1977) This one avoids significance as aggressively as a Coca-Cola commercial (unless "My Own Space" counts). And thanks to the sidemen's songs, it isn't as catchy as a Coca-Cola commercial. Not to mention Fly Like an Eagle. B-

The Steve Miller Band: Greatest Hits 1974-1978 (Capitol, 1978) In which Miller selects seven tracks from Book of Dreams (I'd omit the garbled non-original "Jungle Love" and the long synthesizer intro to "Jet Airliner," but he did bag every good one), six from Fly Like an Eagle (an easier job), and one from The Joker (ditto), revealing a California singles artist as likably lightweight as Jan & Dean. This music may recycle blues riffs, but its spirit is pure escapist pop; country living replaces surf and cars as utopian metaphor and Miller's voice, always too slight for real blues, sounds suitably out-of-it. As philosophy it's venal, but as unabashed diversion it's pretty nice. After all, was he ever good for anything else? A-

Millington: Ladies on the Stage (United Artists, 1978) June and Jean Millington led Fanny, an all-female band that never made a good album but was always hot live. They're now responsible for this Vegasy non-nutritive sweetener. And where the hell is Alice de Buhr, anyway? D

Charles Mingus: Three or Four Shades of Blue (Atlantic, 1977) Mingus's elitist aesthetic theories have always put me off his music, so when I'm told that the oldies on side one have been recorded with more fire in the past, I can only respond that now I'll want to hear them for myself. Side two is the best composed bebop I've come across all year; Larry Coryell and Sonny Fortune contribute their sharpest performances since fusion became commercial, and that's the least of it. A-

Charles Mingus: Cumbia and Jazz Fusion (Atlantic, 1978) I know I'm not supposed to say this, but I've never bought Mingus as Great Jazz Genius--Important Jazz Eccentric is more like it, I'd say, especially in his more ambitious compositions. The 27-minute title fantasia is rich, lively, irreverent, and enjoyable, but it's marred by overly atmospheric Hollywood-at-the-carnival moments, while the kitschy assumed seriousness of "Music for 'Todo Modo'" almost ruins its fresh big-band colors. B+

Mink DeVille: Mink DeVille (Capitol, 1977) Those who believe "underground" rock means a return to basics and nothing more will cheer this sleek, friendly white r&b record, because they'll understand it. Those who insist on learning something new about the basics will continue to prefer the Ramones and Blondie, or Springsteen and J. Geils. B

Mink DeVille: Return to Magenta (Capitol, 1978) The main thing wrong with Willie DeVille is that he hasn't had a new idea since he decided he didn't like acid in 1970. Even as the songpoet of greaser nostalgia he's got nothing to say--the most interesting writing on this record is an old David Forman tune--and the romanticism of his vocal style makes me appreciate George Thorogood. C+

Sugar Minott: Black Roots (Mango, 1979) This is Jamaica pop, by which I mean modestly tuneful Rasta talk mellifluously sung. Pleasant, but nothing to base a canon on--only "Oppressors Oppression" (makes a wise man mad) and "Two Time Loser" (in love careless love) will do more than make you hum along. B

The Miracles: City of Angels (Tamla, 1975) Tom Smucker, explaining why this was included in his annual top ten: "Motown moves to L.A. and likes what it finds. It's very important that in an era when people don't like cities some people can still find them romantic. And that L.A. is the city. And that Motown are the people." This is sweet and true, but it ignores the point, which is that this record is a riot. In fact, its achievement is so complete, so true to itself, that the lurking possibility of a put-on can't be dismissed. Space makes it impossible to reprint Inspirational Verse (Q: If the first line is "Homosexuality" and the rhyming word is "society," what's the third line? A: "Well I guess they need more variety"), but print doesn't do it justice anyway. You have to hear the intonations, the falsettos, the backups, the orchestration, some of which can be credited to producer Freddie Perren. All this plus: the first soul song about an underground newspaper. B

The Miracles: Greatest Hits (Tamla, 1977) No one could replace that rich falsetto anyway, but there are less squeaky ones around than Billy Griffin's. I blame Freddie Perren for bringing out the worst in him, though--Griffin wrote "Love Machine," the only positive pleasure here. C+

Joni Mitchell: Ladies of the Canyon (Reprise, 1970) Joni's new dependence on piano implies a move from the open air to the drawing room--or at least living area--that's reflected in richer, more sophisticated songs. Sometimes the wordplay is still laughably high school--"lookout thru the pain" my eye. But "Both Sides Now" was only the beginning, and this album offers at least half a dozen continuations, all in different directions. Side two leads off with songs to a (real) FM DJ and a (figurative?) priest and includes her versions of "Woodstock" and "The Circle Game" as well as my own favorite, "Big Yellow Taxi," an ecology song with a trick ending. A-

Joni Mitchell: Blue (Reprise, 1971) As Joni grooves with the easy-swinging elite-rock sound of California's pop aristocrats, her relation to their (and her own) easy-swinging sexual ethic becomes more probing. But thoughtfulness isn't exactly making her sisterly--I've even heard one woman complain that she can't sing Joni's melodies any more. Well, too bad--they're getting stronger all the time, just like the lyrics. From the eternal ebullience of "All I Want" to the month-after melancholy of "Blue," this battlefront report on the fitful joys of buy-now pay-later love offers an exciting, scary glimpse of a woman in a man's world. A

Joni Mitchell: For the Roses (Asylum, 1972) Sometimes her complaints about the men who have failed her sound petulant, but the appearance of petulance is one of the prices of liberation. If this has none of the ingratiating ease of Blue, that's because Mitchell has smartened up--she's more wary, more cynical. Perhaps as a result, the music, which takes on classical colors from Tom Scott's woodwinds and Bobby Notkoff's chamber strings, is more calculated. Where the pretty swoops of her voice used to sound like a semiconscious parody of the demands placed on all female voices and all females, these sinuous, complex melodies have been composed to her vocal contours with palpable forethought. They reward stubborn attention with almost hypnotic appeal. A

Joni Mitchell: Court and Spark (Asylum, 1974) The first album she's ever made that doesn't sound like a musical departure--it's almost standard rock, For the Roses gone mainstream. But the relative smoothness is a respite rather than a copout, the cover version of "Twisted" suggests a brave future, and she's the best singer-songwriter there is right now. Even the decrease in verbal daring--the lyrics are quite personal and literal--makes for a winning directness in songs like "Help Me" and "Raised on Robbery." Now all I want to know is whether "Free Man in Paris" is about David Geffen. A

Joni Mitchell: Miles of Aisles (Asylum, 1974) The two Joni-with-guitar/piano/dulcimer sides of this live double are impossibly tedious even though she's learned to sing songs that were beyond her half a decade ago--if she was so crazy about folkie-purist records she would have gone that way in the studio originally. The two new songs are mere bait--they wouldn't be on the album if she'd recorded them before. And the two sides with the L.A. Express establish her as the most gifted of the new folky-jazzy singers--I mean, Kenny Rankin should just forget it. B-

Joni Mitchell: The Hissing of Summer Lawns (Asylum, 1975) Mitchell's transition from great songwriter to not-bad poet is meeting resistance from her talent and good sense, but I guess you can't fight "progress." Not that she's abandoned music--the supple accompaniment here is the most ambitious of her career. But if she wants jazz she could do better than Tom Scott's El Lay coolcats, and the sad truth is that only on a couple of cuts--"The Jungle Line" and "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow"--do these skillful sound effects strengthen the lyrics. The result is that Mitchell's words must stand pretty much on their own, and while she can be rewarding to read--"The Boho Dance" is a lot sharper than most I'm-proud-to-be-a-star songs--she's basically a West Coast Erica Jong. If that sounds peachy to you, enjoy. B

Joni Mitchell: Hejira (Asylum, 1976) Album eight is most impressive for the cunning with which Mitchell subjugates melody to the natural music of language itself. Whereas in the past only her naive intensity has made it possible to overlook her old-fashioned prosody, here she achieves a sinuous lyricism that is genuinely innovative. Unfortunately, the chief satisfaction of Mitchell's words--the way they map a woman's reality--seems to diminish as her autonomy increases. The reflections of a rich, faithless, compulsively mobile, and compulsively romantic female are only marginally more valuable than those of her marginally more privileged male counterparts, especially the third or fourth time around. It ain't her, bub, it ain't her you're lookin' for. B+

Joni Mitchell: Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (Asylum, 1977) This double album presents a real critic's dilemma--I'm sure it's boring, but I'm not sure how boring. Insofar as it isn't, Jaco Pastorius deserves as much credit as the artiste. Just the way it did on Hejira, his bass enables her to deal with the syntheses that obsess her--melody and rhythm, form and anima. But only on the title cut does he enable her to realize them. B-

Joni Mitchell: Mingus (Asylum, 1979) Okay, okay, a brave experiment, but lots of times experiments fail. There's more spontaneity, wisdom, and humor in the 2:25 of Mingus "raps" than in all her hand-tooled lyrics, and her voice isn't rich or graceful enough to flesh out music that gains no swing from a backing band a/k/a Weather Report. C+

McKinley Mitchell: McKinley Mitchell (Chimneyville, 1978) A small miracle: Bobby Bland meets Brook Benton in the timeless realm of the not-quite-folkloric, where soul and blues sound precisely contemporary and strings voice old horn riffs with no suggestion of sellout. Mitchell's seven tunes don't measure up to the other three--"Dream Lover," "You're So Fine," and a classic blues from the early '70s called "Open House at My House." But it doesn't matter, because this is one of those groove records on which ordinary songwriting is transmuted by perfect pacing and unshakable stylistic conviction. A-

Moby Grape: 20 Granite Creek (Reprise, 1971) At first I thought this reunion album lacked magic, but these guys sound remarkably whole for a band that failed to take over the world in 1967. You can hear the country undertone now, but you can also hear why you missed it--at their most lyrical these guys never lay back, and lyricism is something they're usually rocking too hard to bother with, though their compact forms guarantee poetic justice. Full of hope as they foresee their doom, stoned and drunk and on the move and yet always together, and above all intense, they should have at least taken over the country. All they really lacked was a boss, and what could be more American than that? B+

The Modern Lovers: The Modern Lovers (Home of the Hits, 1976) These legendary sessions, produced by John Cale for Warners in the early '70s but never released, still sound ahead of their time. Jonathan Richman's gift is to make explicit that love for "the modern world" that is the truth of so much of the best rock and roll: by cutting through the vaguely protesty ambience of so-called rock culture he opens the way for a worldliness that is specific, realistic, and genuinely critical. Not that he tries to achieve this himself--he's much too childlike. Sometimes his unmusicianship adds a catch to a three-chord melody and his off-key singing unlocks doors you didn't know were there. But other times he sounds like his allowance is too big, as worldly as Holden Caulfield with no '50s for excuse--the first rock hero who could use a spanking. A

Essra Mohawk: Essra Mohawk (Asylum, 1974) Here is a vocalist who should throw away all her Leon Russell records. When she calls herself a "full-fledged woman," it sounds like "pool player's" woman, which given her persona makes more sense. D

Molkie Cole: Molkie Cole (Janus, 1977) Well! Who would imagine in this day and age? An eclectic English pop group whose songs recall Revolver, Mungo Jerry, and the Hello People (although that may just be the clown makeup). Where do you think they might be from? Cleveland, apparently. B-

Molly Hatchet: Flirtin' With Disaster (Epic, 1979) Some doctrinaire new wavers see the rapid success of this Jacksonville sextet as a reactionary portent, but as an old Skynyrd fan I can't get upset. They do boogie better than, let's see here, Missouri, Bama, Crimson Tide, .38 Special, Wet Willie, Atlanta Rhythm Section, or (mercy sakes) the Charlie Daniels Band. Really, they sound pretty good. Only one thing missing: content. C+

The Moments: The Moments Greatest Hits (Stang, 1977) "Love on a Two Way Street" is this classic falsetto group's only pop breakthrough because it's their only pop tune--Sylvia Robinson gets lots of mileage out of Harry Ray's tenor, but she's not Thom Bell or Eugene Record. For that matter, Ray isn't Russell Thompkins or Eddie kendricks--I love the proto-disco moans on "Sexy Mama" and the overarching agony of "I Do," but for the most part he projects a romanticism so transparent that its artificiality shows through. A one-disc selection might work, but two means twenty certified r&b hits that never venture five miles over the speed limit. B

Eddie Money: Eddie Money (Columbia, 1978) Sorry, girls (and guys)--live inspection reveals that the sleek stud on the cover (and in the ads) is as pudgy and sloppy as his voice. He even has jowls. Watch those cheeseburgers, Eddie boy, or you'll never get to the caviar. C-

Monty Python: Another Monty Python Record (Famous Charisma, 1971) Inspired cover and some very funny internal jokes, plus Karl Marx trying to win a living room set on a quiz show, but overall too British subtle-eccentric. C+

James Moody: Feelin' It Together (Muse, 1974) On Parker-Gillespie's "Anthropology" (astonishing) and "Kriss Kross," the anguish and wit of Moody's second-generation bop reed playing sounds as fresh as if black humor hadn't come to mean something quite different, and when he chooses to divert or soothe he is often intelligent and sensuous. But sometimes (acceding, I suspect, to the more trivial imagination of pianist Kenny Barron) his lyricism becomes so lightweight that its intricate sophistication serves only to disguise its lack of substance. Or maybe I mean that the man should give up the flute. B+

Keith Moon: Two Sides of the Moon (Track, 1975) It's hard to imagine the auteur of this alternately vulgar, silly, and tender travesty/tour de force as anyone but Keith Moon; his madness translates not only to film (Stardust, Tommy) but even to the supersolo studio jobs that this parodies so deliciously. I presume they thought it was funny to mix the backup singers (Nilsson, Nelson, Flo & Eddie) up in front of the guy with his name on the cover. And it was. B

The Moonglows: Return of the Moonglows (RCA Victor, 1972) On the one hand, this revival of the great '50s group is obviously a money-making scheme. On the other hand, ex-Moonglow and Motown producer Harvey Fuqua has done a serious updating job--strings, after all, are the correct studio equivalent of the group's smooth polyphonous style, and "I Was Wrong" fuses the two periods beautifully. But there were strings in the '50s, too, and it meant something for the Moonglows to replace them with voices. On both hands, I'd rather listen to the real stuff. C+

Jackie Moore: Sweet Charlie Babe (Atlantic, 1973) Figures that this should fall somewhere between state-of-the-art and great-mean soul: the five hits go back to "Precious, Precious" in the winter of '71, with the two latest cut at a funkier-than-usual Sigma in Philadelphia and the others by a simpler-than-usual Crawford-Shapiro team at Criteria in Miami. Moore's voice is simultaneously sweet and rough, an unusual combination in a woman, and the songs are pretty consistent. But she lacks not only persona but personality, so that what in technical terms is pretty impressive stuff never goes over the top. B+

Dorothy Morrison: Brand New Day (Buddah, 1971) Except for a strange "Spirit in the Sky" (she does it straight, whatever that means) and a few other stirring renditions of white people's music (who besides BS&T can ruin "Hi De Ho"?) this attempt by and with the young woman who sang lead on "Oh Happy Day" succeeds only moderately. B-

Jim Morrison: An American Prayer (Elektra, 1978) Subtitle: "Music by the Doors." Auxiliary subtitle: "Poems, Lyrics and Stories by James Douglas Morrison." Like every Morrison exploitation, this one is done with love--the Doors play like they've never been away. What it exploits, however, is a bad poet who got a chance to jack off with both hands when he didn't have to carry a tune. If you think lines like "Large buxom obese queens" or "We need great golden copulations" or "To propagate our lust for life" or "Death and my cock are the world" read bad, you should hear him recite them. C

Van Morrison: His Band and Street Choir (Warner Bros., 1970) Morrison is still a brooder--"Why did you leave America?" he asks over and over on the final cut, and though I'm not exactly sure what he's talking about, that sounds like a good all-purpose question/accusation to me--but not an obsessive one, and this is another half-step away from the acoustic late-night misery of Astral Weeks. As befits hits, "Domino" and especially "Blue Money" are more celebratory if no more joyous than anything on Moondance, showing off his loose, allusive white r&b at its most immediate. And while half of side two is comparatively humdrum, I play it anyway. A

Van Morrison: Moondance (Warner Bros., 1970) An album worthy of an Irish r&b singer who wrote a teen hit called "Mystic Eyes" (not to mention a Brill Building smash called "Brown Eyed Girl"), adding punchy brass (including pennywhistles and foghorn) and a solid backbeat (including congas) to his folk-jazz swing, and a popwise formal control to his Gaelic poetry. Morrison's soul, like that of the black music he loves, is mortal and immortal simultaneously: this is a man who gets stoned on a drink of water and urges us to turn up our radios all the way into (that word again) the mystic. Visionary hooks his specialty. A+

Van Morrison: Tupelo Honey (Warner Bros., 1971) Van seems to be turning into a machine and a natural man simultaneously. I like the machine a whole lot--this super-bouncy product is almost as rich in cute tunes as The Shirelles' Greatest Hits. But I worry that domestic bliss with Janet Planet--who here abandons liner notes to pose with hubby fore, aft, and centerfold--has been softening Van's noodle more than the joy of cooking requires. A-

Van Morrison: Saint Dominic's Preview (Warner Bros., 1972) "Jackie Wilson said it was reet petite," he shouts for openers, and soon has me believing that "I'm in heaven when you smile" says as much about the temporal and the eternal as anything in Yeats. "Listen to the lion," he advises later, referring to that lovely frightening beast inside each of us, and midway through the eleven-minute cut he lets the lion out, moaning and roaring and growling and stuttering in a scat extension that would do Leon Thomas proud. The point being that words--which on this album are as uneven as the tunes--sometimes say less than voices. Amen. A-

Van Morrison: Hard Nose the Highway (Warner Bros., 1973) The relaxed rhythms are just lax most of the time, the vocal surprises mild after St. Dominic's Preview, the lyrics dumbest when they're more than mood pieces, and the song construction offhand except on "Warm Love." B-

Van Morrison: It's Too Late to Stop Now (Warner Bros., 1974) Songs that wore poorly or were just lame in the first place have more force and rightness on this exemplary live album than in their studio versions, and "Here Comes the Night" sounds fresher than it did in 1965. In addition, Morrison documents his debt to blues and r&b definitively--you can hear Bobby Bland all over the record, and cover tributes are paid as well to Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, and Sam Cooke. A

Van Morrison: Veedon Fleece (Warner Bros., 1974) I count it as progress that his muse is feeding him baseball metaphors, but Morrison hasn't vented his Gaelic soul so unabashedly since Astral Weeks. He'd get away with it if there were more than one decent song on side two. Soothing, evocative late-night music that indulges his discursive side. Favorite title: "You Don't Pull No Punches but You Don't Push the River." B+

Van Morrison: A Period of Transition (Warner Bros., 1977) "It Fills You Up" and "Heavy Connection" work on chant power alone, but even they go on a little too long, and in general this is an unexciting record--but not definitively. It's full of the surprising touches--the (borrowed) instrumental intros to the blues that opens side one and the jump tune that opens side two, a throw-in couplet about Amsterdam that might as well have Van's fingerprints on it, and even the can't-always-get-what-you-need chorus on "Eternal Kansas City"--that signify talent putting out. I don't know; maybe that's depressing proof that this isn't just a warmup. But after three years, let's say it is. B

Van Morrison: Wavelength (Warner Bros., 1978) Unlike A Period of Transition, this is a good Van Morrison record, as up as any he's ever made, but it's certainly not a great one. You might pay attention to side two, an evocative reinterpretation of Van's America fixation, but side one is nothing more (and nothing less) than class programming. B+

Van Morrison: Into the Music (Warner Bros., 1979) The rockers are a little lightweight, the final cut drags halfway through, and that's all that's wrong with this record, including its tributes to "the Lord." You might get religion yourself if all of your old powers returned after years of failed experiments, half-assed compromises, and onstage crack-ups. Like that other godfearing singer-songwriter, Morrison has abandoned metaphorical pretensions, but only because he loves the world. His straightforward celebrations of town and country are colored and deepened by his musicians--especially sprightly violinist Toni Marcus (feh on Scarlet Rivera)--and by his own excursions into a vocalise that has never been more various or apt. The only great song on this record is "It's All in the Game," written by Calvin Coolidge's future vice-president in 1912. But I suspect it's Van's best album since Moondance. A

Pablo Moses: I Love I Bring (United Artists, 1978) A lot of these charming, moralistic reggae ditties have the lyrical and melodic simplicity of Sunday School hymns--"Be Not a Dread" could almost be a roots "Jesus Loves the Little Children." And whoever devised the synthesizer riffs that set off Moses's spacey singsong deserves a gold star. A-

Mother Earth: Satisfied (Mercury, 1970) Tracy Nelson doesn't touch everyone, but once she does, she carries you away. She can be sexual and spiritual not successively but on the same note and breath; she seems to suffer and to transcend suffering simultaneously. Vocally, Mother Earth is now Tracy Nelson, and although in theory I miss the male voices--especially Robert St. John's, whose songwriting always added something too--I'm not really complaining. Yet this record is a slight disappointment. I love it, but I know that my prejudices are strong and that only once--on her own composition, "Andy's Song"--does Tracy burst calmly into free space as she does so often on the two previous Mother Earth lps and on Tracy Nelson Country. Recommended unequivocally to her cadre and equivocally to the benighted. A-

Mother Earth: Bring Me Home (Reprise, 1971) On the face of it this is a slight improvement, introducing three major songs--the Eric Kaz side-openers and Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road." And if the powerful, arresting arrangement of Kaz's "Temptation Took Control of Me and I Fell" isn't as far out as what the original band used to try in San Francisco, it's certainly played with more assurance. Still, when you've boiled it down to backing up a singer and the songs, both had better be special all the time. And they ain't. B+

Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co.: Like a Duck to Water (Earthquack, 1976) Synthesizer mantras recommended to those exploring the space between Eno and Philip Glass, with the warning that they're more sober than the lighthearted name-title-label might make you hope. B

The Mothers: Fillmore East, June 1971 (Bizarre, 1971) The sexist adolescent drivel that hooks these moderne mannerisms should dispel any doubts as to where Big Mother finds his market--among adolescents and sexists of every age and gender (bet he gets more adults than females). It must tickle Frank that a couple of ex-Turtles are now doing his dirty work. Probably tickled him too to split the only decent piece of rock and roll (or music) here between two sides. C-

The Mothers: Just Another Band From L.A. (Bizarre, 1972) You said it, Frank, I didn't. C

The Mothers: Over-Nite Sensation (DiscReet, 1973) Oh, I get it--the soft-core porn is there to contextualize the serious stuff. Oh, I get it--the automatic solos are there to undercut the serious stuff. Oh, I get it--the marimbas are there to mock-trivialize the serious stuff. But where's the serious stuff? C

The Mothers of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh (Bizarre/Reprise, 1970) Talk about "montage"--the construction here is all juxtaposition, the composition all interruption. Together with some relatively straightforward instrumentals and "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama," the album's two finest strokes--a metal remake of Little Richard's "Directly From My Heart to You" and "Oh No" a devastating reply to "All You Need Is Love"--would make for a highly enjoyable album. But if Brecht considered pure enjoyment counterrevolutionary, Zappa considers it dumb--that's why he breaks in constantly with dialogue and vocal or electronic sounds whose musical interest/value is essentially theoretical. I find most of these engaging enough to think I might want to listen again some day. But all that means is that I enjoy it, quite moderately, in spite of itself. B+

The Motors: The Motors (Virgin, 1977) Good label, good name, good image, even a reference from Ducks Deluxe, but beware--this is your basic homogenized bombast. The giveaway is the logo. Remember the Consumer Guide rule: never trust a group with a logo. C

The Motors: Approved by the Motors (Virgin, 1978) Last time, they essayed a commercial takeoff on punk, which they traced back to Grand Funk Railroad rather than the Stooges; this time (punk having been declared economically unsound by English bizzers), they have a go at power pop and come out sounding like the Foundations rather than the Small Faces. Since reformed pub rockers are more comfortable with cuteness than with power, this is an enormous improvement--"Airport" is as funny as any Nick Lowe genre piece and catchy enough to do jingle duty at Gatwick. Unfortunately, just to keep up their pseudo-punk credibility, they also include a equivocal celebration of sadism. I mean, fun is fun. B+

Mott the Hoople: Mott the Hoople (Atlantic, 1970) Despite the hype, these guys strike me as an ordinary hard rock combo. Their sameyness is not disguised by the melange of influences on side one--early Kinks, Bob Dylan, Sir Douglas, Bob Dylan, Sonny Bono, Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan--and on side two this melange is quickly boiled down to its medium: sloppy hard rock with heavy leanings, big on post-Kingsmen instrumentals. C+

Mott the Hoople: Brain Capers (Atlantic, 1972) After a debut album that pitted imaginative borrowing against imitative self-expression, Mad Shadows and Wild Life descended thrashing and caterwauling into the depths of rock and roll psychodrama--what could one expect of "improvisations" based on such faceless "originals"? So this is a heartening reverse--not only do they unearth Dion's suppressed farewell to junkiedom, "Your Own Back Yard," and a good old Youngbloods number, but they provide originals that can stand behind them. Unfortunately, the two exceptions take up more than twelve minutes. B

Mott the Hoople: All the Young Dudes (Columbia, 1972) Those enamored of the dirty sound Guy Stevens got out of (or imposed on) this band complain that David Bowie's production is thin and antiseptic, but I always found their Atlantic albums fuzzy, and anyway, the material is powerful enough to overwhelm such quibbles. Mick Ralphs and Verden Allen make catchy. Bowie's title tune captures the spirit of a dispossessed younger (than me, Bowie, or Mott the Hoople) generation united by a style against time. The Velvet Underground cover is definitive. And Ian Hunter does more than get away with a long, slow, pretentious one at the close--"Sea Diver" is a triumph. A-

Mott the Hoople: Mott (Columbia, 1973) Ian and the boys are definitely too self-referential, and they don't entirely convince me that they've earned our credence as the great failed band of the new loser mythology. But as rock and roll this is damn near irresistible, sure to stand as a textbook of killer riffs 'n' hooks. Even the throwaways are ace, except maybe for Mick Ralphs's Spanish guitar showcase. And not only has Ian's Dylan fixation become funny, but Ian knows it. A-

Mott the Hoople: The Hoople (Columbia, 1974) "Roll Away the Stone" and maybe "Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll" are classics in their neoclassical mode, which is also to say that they're nothing new, and the marginal stuff is quite undifferentiated. I suspect that Ian Hunter's ego, which he deserves, is crowding out the others. And I know for sure that Ariel Bender flashes more ego than Mick Ralphs ever did, and that he deserves none of it. B

Mott the Hoople: Rock and Roll Queen (Atlantic, 1974) Mick Ralphs's title tune--which is to "Starfucker" as Bad Company is the Rolling Stones--defines the virtues and limitations of this raucous compilation. Rescuing serviceable rockers from all of their Atlantic albums and utilizing only the most simple-minded covers ("You Really Got Me" and "Keep a Knockin'"), it presents pre-Bowie Mott as an endearingly crude touring band, with enough hooks to keep things going. And it draws on only five minutes of Brain Capers. B+

Mott the Hoople: Greatest Hits (Columbia, 1976) Hits my ass. Never heard "Foxy Foxy" on the radio, and never want to. But the other new one, "Saturday Gigs," recapitulates quite movingly a banal theme this collection fleshes out with real wallop: a band and its fans. Four songs is too much overlap with Mott, but this is the essence of Mott the Hoople as a group, which always needed Ian Hunter and always did more than back him up. A-

Mountain: Mountain Climbing (Windfall, 1970) We all know they're the original Cremora--what this makes clearer is that they're Jack Bruce's third of the jar. On "For Yasgur's Farm" Felix Pappalardi emulates JB's self-dramatizing vocal propriety as well as his bass lines, but when Leslie West runs an acoustic guitar solo from raga to flamenco without ever touching the blues you know he's not doing an Eric Clapton tribute. Can't fit the humongous "Mississippi Queen" into this theory, but I can tell you who wrote "Theme for an Imaginary Western": Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. C+

Mountain: Flowers of Evil (Windfall, 1971) You can't deny these boys are pros--they know how to pace an album, hard ones and soft ones and golden oldies and rhinestone originals, and I still love their famous fat-skinny counterpoint on stage. But any group that can attach a line like "Proud and gentle was the loving of the last two island swans" to a great hard rock tune has got to be doing something wrong. C

Mountain: The Best of Mountain (Windfall, 1973) Mountain Climbing is the only album of theirs I've ever enjoyed even momentarily. This selects all of its enjoyable tracks and adds relatively classy filler like "Nantucket Sleighride" (heavy-metal myth discovers America) and "The Animal Trainer and the Toad" (one of two songs on this record to mention Beethoven). So I guess it's better. But it's not that much better. C+

The Move: Shazam (A&M, 1970) Its enthusiasts to the contrary, this is hardly the greatest rock and roll record ever to thump down the pike. It's just an artier version of the overly self-conscious mode I call stupid-rock, simultaneously gargantuan and prissy, like dinosaurs galumphing through the tulips. It would be a lot worse if it weren't so funny, but it would also be a lot less funny if it were a little better. Recommended to Stooges fans who just found a five-dollar bill. B-

The Move: Looking On (Capitol, 1971) Anyone who doesn't believe heavy metal is a Yurrupean plot will kindly inform me which B the countermelodies on this one were stolen from. Not Berry or the Beatles, believe me. C+

The Move: Message from the Country (Capitol, 1971) I have reservations about any record that falls into the dubious category of hard rock for critics, but am willing to grant that to climax a side of music from Brobdingnag with a Johnny Cash imitation is to show truly transcendent chutzpah. In fact, after brief acclimatization I like every cut. What seemed forced on Looking On now seems comic--there are parodies here of everything from weedy Yes-style vocals and wimpy Baby-style acoustics to rockabilly and music hall. And melodic moves that sounded glued on now seem integral. Recommended to those who like the idea of Grand Funk Railroad better than the reality. A-

The Move: Split Ends (United Artists, 1973) "Do Ya"--rated single of the year in the rock press, apparently the only place it was distributed--signals a phase in the Move's career that comprises four songs, three uncharacteristically rock-and-rolly and all prime. Most of what remains here was first released on the more exotic Message From the Country (already a cut-out), which I also admire. Consistently good stuff, although the styles do grate. A-

The Move: The Best of the Move (A&M, 1974) I could trot out the complaint that this double-LP would make a good single, but why bother? Comprising the band's 1967 U.K. debut LP and a lot of uncollected forty-fives, with two sets of notes and detailed discographical data, this is a labor of love that lists at only a buck over the one-record price. Anyway, they wouldn't pick the same cuts I would: my fave is "Wave Your Flag and Stop the Train," which they regard as a Monkees imitation--not a very exact one, I'd say, but close enough to the pop at which they supposedly excelled. I love rock and roll--I just want it to be better. Bands like the Move feel hemmed in by rock and roll--they want it to be different, or more. When they succeed, as the Move finally did, it's often better too. But usually it's less. B

Geoff Muldaur and Amos Garrett: Geoff Muldaur and Amos Garrett (Flying Fish, 1978) Because Garrett's amiable baritone and astringent guitar tend toward blues, this is more coherent Muldaur than either of his Warner solos. And I assume a limited budget curbed some of his sillier experimental fancies, which couldn't have hurt. But his fondness for genteel schlock--tunes by Chopin and Tchaikovsky, a rancid chestnut called "Beautiful Isle of Somewhere"--still grates. B

Geoff & Maria Muldaur: Pottery Pie (Reprise, 1970) On side one, the nice tunes from the predictable variety of traditional and contemporary sources are too unfocused to be more than pleasant, but the flip is a modest postfolkie treat. "Me and My Chauffeur Blues" shows off Maria's sexiest moods--coy, melancholy, swoony, demanding, and at the end she and her chauffeur come together--while "Death Letter Blues" shows off Geoff's most haunted blues voice. In between he camps up "Brazil," she strolls through "Georgia on My Mind," and Jim Kweskin asks Mel Lyman for further instructions. B

Geoff & Maria Muldaur: Sweet Potatoes (Reprise, 1972) I really like this album, especially when Geoff gets nasty on "I'm Rich" and the sophomoric cheap shot "Kneein' Me," both of which he wrote. But Chuck Berry's "Havana Moon" gives away his limitations. "Havana Moon" simply isn't a very good song--it's only "interesting," as a pop aberration that has nothing to do with the thrust of Berry's music. Muldaur's version works quite well only because it singles out how "interesting" (and obscure) the song is. And too often "interesting" is all he wants to be. B+

Maria Muldaur: Maria Muldaur (Reprise, 1973) Cut by cut, this bid to contemporize Maria's nouveau-jug music (two songs each from Wendy Waldman and David Nichtern, one each from Dr. John and Kate McGarrigle) is intelligent and attractive. But the overall effect is just slightly aimless and sterile. Maybe it's Muldaur's quavery voice, which only rarely has driven me to attention, or the low-risk flawlessness of the Lenny Waronker/Joe Boyd production. Or maybe it's just the curse of the jugheads--not knowing how to make good on your flirtations with nostalgia. B+

Maria Muldaur: Waitress in a Donut Shop (Reprise, 1974) In which a new '50s nostalgia, beatnikism, is manipulated to exploit reasonable doubts and fears about sex-role redefinition. No woman hip (or even tasteful) enough to love Skip James has the right to pretend there's such a thing as an earth mother. And if the production last time was too safe, this is what it was guarding against--ecch-lectic cliches. C+

Martin Mull: Martin Mull (Capricorn, 1972) Firesign Theater/Cheech & Chong equals Randy Newman/Martin Mull. B-

Martin Mull: Normal (Capricorn, 1974) Not funny. D+

Mungo Jerry: Mungo Jerry (Janus, 1970) One accidental if inevitable hit reveals this English jug band as the best novelty group since the Coasters, though the Royal Guardsmen and the Chipmunks aren't what I'd call heavy competition. Great hostling noises, an echo-chamber parody that could make Stan Freberg turn to commercials, and a fair share of dirty talk. But just as Alvin's falsetto used to wear thin after a while, so does Mungo's drawl--and kazoo. B

Mungo Jerry: Mungo Jerry (Pye, 1975) Long after vanishing in the States they were making like the next Creedence over there, releasing six French singles in 1971 alone and cracking top ten in England three more times. Their mood quickly shifted from old- to good-timey, always vaguely entertaining and sometimes on target, as in the affectionate but critical getting-old song "You Better Leave That Whiskey Alone." But leader Ray Dorset never showed the kind of acuity as a singer or writer that turns bands into Creedences over here. B

Elliott Murphy: Aquashow (Polydor, 1973) The music here sounds so middle-Dylan that it inspired me to play Blonde on Blonde, after which unfair comparison I began to suspect Murphy of glibness. But although his themes aren't new and he does come at them like a know-it-all, that's not his fault--he does know quite a bit, maybe more than is good for him, and the quick phrases merely shield a plausible sincerity. Special concern: inter-relations between women's self-knowledge (and lack of it) and the emotional disappointments of sexual love. None of which you're obliged to notice until you enjoy the music a dozen times. A-

Elliott Murphy: Lost Generation (RCA Victor, 1975) The mistake is Paul Rothschild's production, too tasty and anonymous to support the innocence that made Murphy's basically tinny voice and underachieved rock and roll convincing. Deprived of the benefit of the doubt, Murphy's awkward literaryness starts to stick out. You wonder whether his lost generation was really shaped with a "technicolor carving knife." You wonder just how much he knows about Eva Braun. You wonder why the two strongest cuts on the record--the love songs on side one--are the ones you notice last. And in the end you hope the next record makes it. B

Elliott Murphy: Street Lights (RCA Victor, 1976) This time I can't blame the production--if anything, Steve Katz's understated hard rock and adept background voices lend emotional weight to songs that would otherwise sound hopelessly immature. Murphy's voice has always been callow, but whereas two-and-a-half years ago he came across as a compassionate kid who reached out toward the world as a natural function of this self-discovery, now he sounds like an effete young man who strikes out at the world as a natural function of his self-involvement. The distinction is less than clear-cut, and perhaps too sharp to apply to an artist of such laudable moral ambition, but anyone who praises someone whose "wounds are open for the sake of art" (ugh! what a line!) has never heard the one about the heart and the sleeve. C+

Elliott Murphy: Just a Story from America (Columbia, 1977) If anyone can write a rock ballad to a deposed Russian princess made famous by Ingrid Bergman it's Murphy--the image sums up the F. Scott Fitzgerald/Rhett Butler (and Eva Braun?) side of a boy-man who's also heir to the traditional reverence for Jimi Hendrix and James Dean. Instead, the song is the embarrassing epitome of a record on which Murphy sounds spoiled instead of sensitive, presumptuous instead of ambitious, and about as comfortable with rock and roll as Roderick Falconer. C-

The Walter Murphy Band: A Fifth of Beethoven (Private Stock, 1977) What a ripoff. Here I am expecting disco versions of "Claire de Lune," Carmina Burana, and at least three Brandenburg concerti, and what do I get but eight tunes by W. Murphy? Take it from me, Walter--from Beethoven you make great schlock, transcendent schlock even, but from Murphy you just make schlock. D+

Anne Murray: Snowbird (Capitol, 1970) An honest if rather clumsy pop country album from the Canadian who had a well-deserved hit with the title song. Her corny and superfluous "Get Together" is more than made up for by (believe it or not) the best cover version of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" I know, and if "Running" is a little stiff, you tell me how many other pop country artists sing the praises of draft dodging. B-

Anne Murray: Annie (Capitol, 1972) Since her first hit Murray has personified pop at its most unaffected, nice in all the obvious ways--intelligent, cheerful, warm, even wholesome. The strongest of her five albums offers ten realistic, deeply felt songs, including "You Made My Life a Song," the most unpained come-back-if-you-break-up-with-your-new-love I've ever heard. I like every cut. Just wish I loved one. B

Anne Murray: Danny's Song (Capitol, 1973) Murray's kind of pop must flirt with blandness if it is to be seductive at all, and this time she Goes Too Far. Conventional material is a big problem--even the title tune has been defined elsewhere, and by Kenny Loggins. In fact, there are a couple of live tracks here that have been defined elsewhere by Murray herself. C+

Anne Murray: Love Song (Capitol, 1974) I worry that my former second-favorite clean-cut female singer will do a Helen Reddy and begin reminding me of Doris Day, but if anything this is a move toward La Vern Baker--"Just One Look" and "You Won't See Me" rock with expected grit. She should have left Kenny Loggins when the leaving was good, and I wish more of her MOR packed as much domestic drama and fresh-air sincerity as "Another Pot 'o Tea" or "Real Emotion," but this is her best to date. B

Anne Murray: Country (Capitol, 1974) Say what you like about countrypolitan, Murray has a lot more roots than Olivia Newton-John--is Hank Snow from Melbourne or Nova Scotia? And say what you like about strings, Brian Ahern's are a lot more thoughtful than Billy Sherrill's--is a cliché only authentic when it becomes a habit? But though the country audience deserves credit for giving Murray a hearing, this compilation proves that it doesn't bring out the very best in her. Wish somebody could figure out what does. B

Anne Murray: Highly Prized Possession (Capitol, 1974) This is a hair and a half form capturing her amused, husky sweetness and square-jawed sex appeal, and I'll settle. Ballads, message songs, and medium-tempo heart-tuggers have all been slightly upgraded, and the reggaefied Bobby Darin and her latest Beatles cover rock as good as Ronstadt. B+

Anne Murray: Together (Capitol, 1975) Tom Smucker, who should know, says the difference between the departed Brian Ahern and Tom Catalano, the producer Murray has inherited from Helen Reddy, is the difference between Revisionist Anti Schlock and Assumed Schlock. If Schlock is "materialism in a Dionysian mode"--innocent, like Las Vegas as Tom Wolfe explains it--then Assumed Schlock "takes consumption for granted as consumption turns into smug middle-class accumulation." In other words, all the Canadian songwriters in the world can't overcome the extravagant dullness of these arrangements: the rock 'n' roll cut could be Giselle MacKenzie in 1956. Say it ain't so, Annie. C

Anne Murray: I'll Always Love You (Capitol, 1979) Murray's third album with Jim Ed Norman continues her gradual revitalization. Norman does clean, honest, Nashville-quality work, Murray gives forth with the old sensible spunk, and the singles break country and cross over just like they're supposed to. But the potential a few of us perceived in her five years ago is gone. Then Murray seemed to have a shot at women's pop, in the honorific way that term was used after Warhol and the Beatles--a Canadian gym teacher who could rock and roll, a militantly ordinary audience with a lesbian fringe. Now she's just quality MOR, singing the El Lay songbook (only two Canadian composers here, one of whom is Jesse Winchester) like a down-to-earth Emmylou, or Linda without charisma. Which means that exactly how good her records come out no longer matters. B-

David Murray: Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, Volume 1 (India Navigation, 1978) Rarely do I find much use for jazz that not only abandons theme but disdains melodic development, as both "Obe" (which runs 18 minutes) and (more modestly) "Nevada's Theme" do here. But Murray's saxophone and Lester Bowie's trumpet speak polymorphically enough to sustain simple interest, and to make up for the futuristic abstractions there's "Bechet's Bounce," a gently satiric, fiercely infectious Dixieland romp. A-

Junior Murvin: Police and Thieves (Mango, 1977) Great rhythm tracks, better-than-average falsetto, and two compelling cuts leading into eight pleasant ones make for a more than passable and slightly less than recommended reggae LP. B

Musique: Keep on Jumpin' (Prelude, 1978) Just to reassure anyone pinheaded enough to suspect that I've gone over to The Enemy, I thought I'd mention this disco cult item, one of those tragedies of amyl nitrite poisoning that so distress sympathetic observers like myself. To start with the worst, half the record is devoted to a stupefying pop melody yclept "Summer Love" for 6:17 on side one and "Summer Love Theme" for 8:00 on side two. By comparison, the serviceable dance mix of the title track shines, and the headliner would be brilliant in any company: 8:20 of spare polyrhythm that never stops jumpin' and might be mistaken for the Wild Magnolias in the age of mechanical reproduction (except that it's faster). The problem is the title, which not surprisingly dominates the lyric. I grant that ("Push, push") "In the Bush" is a phrase that sticks in the mind, but so is "sit on my face." I can imagine dancing to either in the heat of the 8:20. But would we have anything to say over coffee the next morning? C+

Mutiny: Mutiny on the Mamaship (Columbia, 1979) In which former P-Funk drummer Jerome Brailey--a/k/a Him Bad, Bigfoot--leads a noisy revolt against "George Penatentiory," who stands accused of faking the funk. The charge isn't fair, but Brailey proves he's no clone (and earns his sobriquets) with a boomingly bottom-heavy LP that's more lowdown powerful than anything the muthashippas have ever tried to do. And if his lovey-dovey moves are received--unlike George, Brailey never led a great harmony group--his horn and guitar parts are far out indeed. Hope there's an answer record. A-

M: Compilations

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