Popular Music

ny and Ivory; Super Freak; Star Wars; Shannon. Every Fifties doo-wop cliche is DISCS AND TAPES and six others. RHINO RNLP 852 $8.98 lavished on You Don't Bring Me Flowers, REVIEWED BY (from Rhino Records,1201 Olympic exposing the song's pompous, fatheaded Boulevard, Santa Monica, Calif. 90404). mediocrity. Possibly the most hilarious CHRIS ALBERTSON burlesque is of Super Freak, which is sung Performance: Excellent as a whining, innocent ballad. PHYL GARLAND Recording: Excellent Cheers for the musicians, for the con- Satirical albums are rare enough in rock, cept, for Rhino Records, and for the won- ALANNA NASH and this one is not only very funny but derful cover. J. V. MARK PEEL

PETER REILL Y Angela Bofill: STEVE SIMELS a skilled "Teaser" JOEL VANCE

ABC: Beauty Stab.ABC (vocals and in- strumentals). That Was Then but This Is Now; Love's a Dangerous Language; IfI Ever Thought You'd Be Lonely; The Pow- er of Persuasion; and eight others. MER- CURY 814 661-1$8.98, © 814 661-4 $8.98; © 80146 612, no list price. Performance: Stingy Recording: Good ABC's debut, "Lexicon of Love," wedded kid -glove strings and a tails -and -top -hat disco beat to a romantic posture that was all moonlight and shattered crystal. Their second album finds them on an austerity budget: the strings have been largely re- placed by guitars, the debonair wordplay by blunt one-liners, the gay pace by a heavier, less playful beat. Even Martin Fry's vocals are stingy-there's less vi- brato, less melodrama, less emoting. It's like the difference between a Parisian ca- baret and a Brooklyn social club. Trouble deadly accurate. The premise is conveyed ANGELA BOFILL:Teaser.Angela Bo - is, ABC belongs back in that cabaret. by the album cover, which parodies the fill (vocals); vocal and instrumental ac- They're glamour boys,not punks or front page of a sleazy tabloid newspaper. companiment. Call of the Wild; Nothin' roughnecks. And they wouldn't last a The lead story is about a band on a USO But a Teaser; Still a Thrill; Crazy for minute in Brooklyn. M.P. tour in 1959 that was captured by Com- Him; Penetration; and four others. ARIS- munists and held in captivity for twenty- TA AL8 8198 $8.98, © AC8-8198 $8.98. the United RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT four years. Now back in Performance: Very good States, they are given sheet music by the Recording: Excellent BIG DADDY. Marty Kaniger, Tom Lee State Department so that they can play (vocals, guitars); David Starns (vocals, current popular songs. Angela Bofill has grown from a teenage guitar, keyboards); Bob Wayne (vocals, The result is the richly deserved skew- sexpot into an adult sexpot right before keyboards); Gary Hoffman(vocals, ering of a dozen modern tunes, many of our very ears. She has, in the process, be- drums). I Write the Songs; You Don't which deserve euthanasia. / Write thecome a much more skilled performer Bring Me Flowers; Bette Davis Eyes; Ebo- Songs is cheerfully destroyed with a triple without losing any of her natural fiery at- layer of stylistic anachronisms from the tack and superb rhythmic sense. She's in Explanation of symbols: Marcels (Blue Moon), Danny and the fine form here, racing from track to track, 3 = digital -master analog LP Juniors (At the Hop), and the Monotones making perhaps her best efforts and ef- © = stereo cassette (Book of Love). The Star Wars theme is fects in Nothin' But a Teaser. Much of the = digital Compact Disc done as a Duane Eddy/Ventures-type in- credit for the sustained excitement level ®= eight -track stereo cartridge strumental, revealing just how weak amust go to producer Narada Michael = direct -to -disc recording concoction it is without a full symphony Walden. The by -now compulsory duet = monophonic recording orchestra playing it. Hotel California is with another pop star is You're a Special treated as if it were Runaway sung by Del Part of the with Johnny Mathis. P.R.

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