CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY monotone gravel. He didn’t seem to write any melodies anymore, just chord changes. Let me tell you, it got real depressing, and it didn’t look like Waits could separate himself from his image long enough to see what was happening. Well, a couple years later, let’s welcome Tom Waits back to the music of the living. His lyric orientation hasn’t changed, for he’s still cataloguing the creatures and vices of the night as seen through his hipster humor (“ Don’t you know there ain’t no devil / there’s just God when he’s drunk” ). But the musical end has. Gone, for all but two songs, is Waits’ jazzy piano, and out has come an electric guitar. A dirty-sounding guitar. And there are melodies! “ Jersey Girl,” a tender (!) love song, has one. So does “On the Nickel,” the theme song from the movie of the same name. Not that Waits has rocked out — most of the songs move at a ballad or dirge pace, but it’s just so refreshing to hear Tom Waits trying hard again. B + Steve Forbert Nemperor JZ 36595 Little Stevie Orbit Steve Forbert burst upon the national scene in late 1978 with a style, both musically and visually, typical of an early ’60s folkie: jeans jacket, harmonica rack, modestly long curly hair, infrequent and spare use of backup musicians. Following his first album with a slightly overproduced second one in 1979, Forbert garnered a hit single, although no one could have predicted that a folky tune would make it in the strongest year of the disco and new wave radio battles. With Little Stevie Orbit, Forbert has become more biting in his energies and commentaries, toughening up his music but not really changing the style. The hallmark of that style is the soaring but funky, almost majestic, double keyboard (piano and organ) music that Dylan, Procol Harum, The Band and Bruce Springsteen have all perfected. Other songs feature tasteful orchestration. Although Forbert was raised in Mississippi and visions of rural America are frequently evoked in his songs, he has few “ country” mannerisms. His husky, untrained voice has little of the twangy nasality that characterizes country singers. His harmonica technique is dedicated to the lonesome Dylan style with harp in rack, not the sweet, hand-held country version. Most of all, there is a jubilance to Forbert’s music, a jumpy kind of energy. Sometimes it’s expressed with innocence, as in his happy love songs (“ Song for Carmelita” ), but he also expresses bitterness and anger over the circumstances of a rich girl’s upbringing (“Get Well Soon” ). Other moods include come-on (“ Schoolgirl” ) and mournful sensitivity (“ Lonely Girl” ). But there is a refreshing optimism about Steve Forbert’s music and vision that even I can be optimistic about. B + John Prine Asylum 6E 286 Storm Windows John Prine, once a hillbilly mailman from Chicago, has spent almost a full decade trying to live up to his first album. The mainstay of his humorous, sensitive style — word play that reveals a wistful, cryptic or depressing side — was fully realized on several of the classic songs of the early ’70s . . . “ Hello in There,” “ Illegal Smile,” and “ Sam Stone,” to name a few. And Prine’s voice, like Dylan’s with a little more twang, was the perfect foil for his songs which some called cynical. Prine has had several good albums and lots of great songs since then, but there’s always been that shadow. He’s still adept at the kind of twisted ballad of unrequited love that quietly dismantles cliches as it goes. And this album features a lot of such tunes. For instance, Prine essays rockabilly as he has in the past, only this time he doesn’t fall victim to the herky-jerky rhythms that ruined his previous attempts. The best of these is “ Just Wanna Be With You” . . . who can resist the sentiment: “ Outside my window / a bird once flew / now 1 don’t care / what kind of gum I chew / and oh baby / I just wanna be with you.” On the title tune, Prine expresses a much different feeling, a loneliness described by the sensations of a prairie winter. “ Sleepy Eyed Boy” is another finely wrought ballad on this album with the “ place” not so well established. Storm Windows shows that Prine has pared his lyrics down to a very narrow, personal range, but that’s the biggest knock against the music. Most of the songs work quiet nicely indeed. B + Jackson Browne Asylum 5E 511 Hold Out Jackson Browne, a master lyricist with an apocalyptic bent, has turned his vision towards “ Disco Apocalypse” on this new album. Some accuse Jackson of purveying cheap emotions here, but I think it’s more the case of Jackson, with his flat, California country-rock nasality, taking a Bruce Springsteen turn (he has shown up on stage with Bruce several times recently). Hold Out is made up almost entirely of songs with a strong rock feel: lots of chorded piano work mixed with the careful, throbbing slide guitar of longtime cohort David Lindley. Among the fastest and hardest of these current songs are three that are set in nightlife scenes. First is the aforementioned “ Disco Apocalypse,” an extraordinarily naive statement of the “ romance” to be found in discos. “ Boulevard” speaks of teenage prostitution, with a much more gritty but simplistic realism. And although critics have taken Jack- son to task for the schmaltzy insincerity of his talk-over part at the end of “ Hold On, Hold Out,” that insincerity might be intentional, for Jackson implies that the song takes place in a pick-up bar. Then there are three love songs, two of them proclaiming his sins, and one an acceptance of an affair’s finish. All could have happened in the scene Jackson set previously , although they seem too personal to be fiction. Not so much has really changed in Jackson’s work. Mostly it has been in his lyrics. The best of them have always been intelligent, but in becoming a viewer of the Hollywood nightlife, Jackson has adopted a more compact, even simpler, way of expressing himself. The rock ’n’ roll is a sound he’s always used for several songs per album. Thus, it’s still Jack- son Browne to me, although not great Jackson Browne. B Casual, intimate, and family dining in the comfort of our bucket seats. Enjoy fine steaks, seafood, omelettes and sandwiches. Home-style cookin’ and lots of it at pre-gas-shortage prices. The Rolls Royce of Restaurants This has got to be the classiest potata ever. The HOTPOTATA Cafe 422 SW 13th Portland, Oregon 223-7573 HALLOWEEN SALE October 17-31 20% off most stuff Everything you ever needed but never knew. Closed Tuesdays. 316 SW 9th 223-0767 43
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