plause. But these are merely druthers; you won't a marked lack of originality or is merely a legitimate get me to admit that this album has anyflaws! attempt to work within an established genre. But Paul Kresh despite the fact that I reallylikesome of this ersatz - Liverpool stuff (especially such recent Raspberries CLEO LAINE: Live!!! at Carnegie Hall. Cleo Laine efforts asTonight),there's an air of selfconscious- (vocals); John Dankworth (clarinet and saxophone); ness about even the best of it that largely spoils it Anthony Hymas (piano and electric piano); Daryl Runs - wick (Fender bass and upright bass); Carmine D'Amico for me.. It's all, somehow, too clever for its own (guitar); Graham Morgan (drums); John Dankworth arr. good, as are the earnest appeals to an imagined and cond.Intro; I Know Where I'm Going; Music; Teenage Consciousness that it all too often comes Wish You Were Here (I Do Miss You); Gimme aPig couched in. Foot and a Bottle of Beer: You Must Believe in Spring; Which is why Big Star's very unselfconscious Perdido; Control Yourself; Send in the Clowns; Ridin' High; Bill; Big Best Shoes; Stop and Smell the Roses; second album on Ardent, "Radio City," is such an Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone.RCA unabashed delight The songs are as unforced and LPL1-5015 $5.98, ® LPSI-5015 $6.98, © LPKI-5015 natural sounding as the models they're based on, $6.98. and when the band does get down to the kind of naïve, adolescent love songs that you really haven't heard in years, for a change you believe the senti- ments expressed. There's realfeelingin them. Alex Chilton, the band's lead singer and writer, is a remarkable character. In the late Sixties, still a GOLDEN AGE ECHOES: teenager, he sang, in an extremely gruff, Southern, BIG STAR r -&-b style, with a group called the Boxtops. It seems, however, that all the while he was aping Ray Their new "Radio City" for Ardent reveals Charles on records, he was at home trying to sing them as unabashed students of the Beatles like Paul McCartney and play guitar like Jim Mc - a fact of life, here in 1974, that everybodyGuinn. That's roughly where he's at now, as a listen IT'Smisses the Beatles. I miss them, you miss them, to the album's standout tracks,September Gurls misses them, and, more important, andBack of a Car,will demonstrate. But all the artists like Blue Ash, Stories, Badfinger, and the songs on "Radio City" are cut from similar cloth - Raspberries miss them-so much so, in fact, that in other words, from the kind of melodic, atmos- they've taken to making records on which they pre- pheric pop music that groups like the Zombies, tend tobethe Beatles. One's reaction to this sincer- the Beach Boys, and the Who were making in est form of flattery depends, as some critics have 1966 -and they're almost all first rate. And as if pointed out, on whether or not you think it displays that weren't enough, the album is recorded in a de- liberately anachronistic way (some of it is even in BIG STAR:Jody Stephens, Alex Chilton, Andy Hammel mono, Phil Spector will be happy to learn), and the effects reinforce the impression one assumes Chil- ton was trying to make-that these are previously undiscovered masters by a superb, unknown group from that warmly remembered Golden Age. I didn't care for the band's first record, which was much slicker and more contemporary in feeling, but with this new one I'm beginning to think that some of the incredibly exaggerated claims made for them have a basis in fact. Of course, whether or not Chil- ton and his co-workers can sustain this level of ex- cellence is open to question, but "Radio City" is a knockout album, and you miss it at your peril. Steve Simels

BIG STAR: Radio City. Alex Chilton (guitar and vocals); Andy Hummel (bass); Jody Stephens (drums). 0My Soul; Life Is White; Way Out West; What's Going Ahn; You Get What You Deserve; Mod Lang; Back of a Car; Daisy Glaze; She's a Mover; September Curls; Morpha Too; I'm in Love with a Girl.ARDENT ADS 1501.

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