`.- Sounds fill every crack on frrf t Sheila E.'s Romance 1600: Be -bop bass, timbal rolls, background nattering and hot, hot percussion.

Sounds fill every crack: Be -bop bass abruptly in September of '77 when lines, trademark timbal rolls, back- Marc Bolan, the elflike singer/songwrit- ground nattering that sounds like stage er/guitarist/front man of the group, was actors in a crowd scene, and hot, hot killed in a car crash. percussion. Busy as it is, you can still The material here is from 1969 to make out individual instruments and 1973, the period of T. Rex's fullest flow- virtuoso turns. For a self -produced al- ering. Songs like "Ride a White Swan,"

bum, there's a healthy sense of per- "Jeepster" (which I once named a par- spective. akeet after), "Telegram Sam," "Metal Of course, endemic to anything self - Guru," and, of course, "Get It On" produced is self-indulgence. Ms. Es- sound as fresh now as when they were covedo's voice, while adequate, is new-surprisingly so. Other equally fine I. hardly the equal of her or her band's cuts have never been on a U.S. album playing. Her occasional spoken -word before, among them "Hot Love," "Raw 1.11-2b bits are embarrassingly inept. Can't Ramp," "Solid Gold Easy Action," "The say she doesn't have her own sound, Groover" and "Born to Boogie." 15, though, and her songwriting already Tony Visconti produced everything shows signs of shedding its purple here, and, more than a decade later, it Prince-liness. Her second album is like sounds as vital, witty, clever, and up- some people's tenth. Frank Lovece to-date as ever. The simplicity of the songs wears very well over time. MIR T. Rextasy: T. Rex T. Rextasy has the hits and more. Warner Bros. 25333-1, $8.98. Jim Bickhart has executed some su- perb and informative liner notes that Sound: B Presentation: A place the group in the flow of pop - This long -overdue retrospective, a music history and give some sense of 15 -track anthology, adds up to a very context to the songs. Romance 1600: Sheila E. concise and complete listen to the joys T. Rex was about how much fun rock Warner Bros. 1-25317, $8.98. of T. Rex. 'n' roll could be. Their music still is. T. Rex dominated the English pop Michael Tearson SoLnc: B Performance: B charts for several years at the begin- As insufferably affected as Sheila E. ning of the '70s; they were a nonstop Heart is (E.-what a great last name!), she's hitmaking machine that produced Capitol ST -12410, $8.98. also got genuine guts. Not many per- some of the best cotton -candy rock formers would follow a gold -record de- music ever. Their one big American hit Sound: C+ Performance: C- but with such a radio programmer's was the memorable "Get It On (Bang a When Heart began as a recording nightmare. Not strictly jazz or funk or Gong)," recently made a hit anew by act, there weren't a whole lot of hard - rock 'n' roll, Romance 1600 does ooze The Power Station. The ride ended rock bands with women in them. Ten with all three. As percussionist/vocal- years later they still have the capability ist/producer Sheila Escovedo gaily of playing and singing but seem to be suggests, the more the better. stricken with writer's block. Their new At the same time, there's certainly a album features a preponderance of lot of romance going on in Romance outside material, all of it weak, and 1600. In fact, it's a regular Harlequin singer Ann Wilson doesn't deliver a paperback on vinyl, an album you single vocal with even a shred of con- could take to the beach. "Dear Michel- viction. The result is a potpourri of dull, angelo,' for instance, is a period ro- generic rock that sounds contrived mance, with an Italian peasant fanta- and, ultimately, grating. sizing about the Renaissance man to This wasn't always the case. When the background of slithering tenor -sax we last left the group, they were writing lines. "A Love Bizarre," cowritten with good songs ("'Even It Up" was a terrif- Sheila's mentor, Prince, is a 12 -minute ic single), had control over the bulk of ode to decadence-not real deca- their repertoire, and seemed ready to dence, but the Dallas/Dynasty deca- drive forward in a straight -ahead, dence Americans find so delicious. somewhat soulful direction. But their "Toy Box" sings the joys of female au- new record company seems content to toeroticism. "Yellow" gives the confes- turn them into a faceless, boring, and sions of a high-school tease-with, completely substandard corporate heavens to Freud, male vocalists snap- rock entity with no real character. ping out her interior monolog. Marc Bolan of T. Rex Jon & Sally Tiven

140 AUDIO/JANUARY 1986