HARRY NILSSON ALBUM REVIEW BY R. MELTZER (VILLAGE VOICE, MARCH 22, 1976)

I actually find Duit on Mon Dei, Sandman and Knillsson to be among his most fascinating stuff, if not exactly his best. The first two are like the entrails of Lennon's Lost Weekend, only w/ Van Dyke Parks and steel drums.

And incidentally, what's the deal w/ Van Dyke Parks and basketball? He's like 4'8", but there seem to be all these stories of him hooping it up w/ the likes of Nilsson and Brian Wilson. Weird...

(the artist i'll always call prince)prince plays basketball in his high heels

I actually just got done getting these cuts into shape for a myspace page on Vom that Mike Saunders is putting together. As a result, I came to have two basically mint copies of the 7". It's as lo-fi as can be but somehow keeps it together so the cuts entertain. "Too Animalistic" is good. "Electrocute Your Cock" and "Animalistic" are both in the regular Angry Samoans set list. If you're in soCal, see 'em in Pomona on October 8, four days from now.

"Lavender Hill Mob Is Quite Bearable" (Village Voice, 3/14/77)

http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/EvangelRecords/niche/images/l/LavenderHillMob.gif

Now that there ain't a single decent band in the whole USA excepting the Dictators maybe it's time to set yer sights northward to the land of hockey (cause it's closer than Jamaica or the British Isles in more ways than one) and I don't mean Canada the whole big slab of ice: talkin bout Quebec - the Texas of the Tundra - which has already given us the Ville Emard Blues Band and Beau Dommage. Too bad if you don't know French but this time it ain't even necessary cause these guys all speaka dee English: Montreal's Lavender Hill Mob on UA records and tapes.

I mean like most times you do a cheezy review for a classy rag such as this one y'gotta look hard for a *concept* to wrap the whole thing around but I tell ya I just *like* this stuff, y'know? Like I never listen to an album more'n once or twice during the review process but I've already *eardrummed LHM six goddam times* cause it's so, uh, *refreshing*. Well at least four-five cuts of it and that's a rather astronomical figure for one thin alb these days. And speaking of astronomy they got this one called "The Loneliest Man on the Moon" which has the greatest ooh-ooh harmonies in years and all sorts of *viable* psychedelic-era studio trickery like your standard serious yoyo band'd be overly wary of to say the least. Like these're genu-wine *kids* by jingo - just as innocent as the Ramones if maybe from 180 degrees away - plus they got Quebec to make the farflungness of it all seem all the more synthetically a priori de rigueur (some foreign words for ya). Snatches of "Lucy in the Sky" (in *total* context by some stroke of etc.), "Everyone's Gone to the Moon," Dwight Twilley and 10cc (a *people's* 10cc, kinda); The *real* "Rocket Man" (i.e. the alienation is both more science-fictiony and more humanly palpable - it ain't either fagged out or limey in its orientation).

"The Party Song" is the disco version of "I Will Follow Him," "My Sweet Lord" Meets Barry White, "Black Is Black" Meets "Sing This All Together," and the Who Meet the Beach Boys all rolled into one. Kind of a "Kids Are Alright '77." A '70s stripmining of the '60s *very* reminiscent of the Beatles' own '60s stripmining of the '50s - bout time someone did it right (giving us back our *birthright* f'rchrissakes). "No One Compares" is the first new addendum to teenage romantic pain in a couple years at least: "I toss and I turn in my bed at night/I tried not sleeping alone but it's just not right." Eric Carmen/"I Wanna Make It With You" but with an *irony* that most pop goons (Eric and Bread included) never have in their arsenal - might even be "Image of a Girl '77." "Chibougamou" is Asleep at the Wheel as played by Paul Butterfield with harmonies courtesy of the Association. As interesting a bit of Canadiana as has reared its head since Joni's "Raised on Robbery." "Losing You" is a metallically eerie "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" without any of the joy if that's what Elton's whatsis had going for it, "Sexy Sadie"'s lingering sourness transmuted into a dandy orchestration of the everpopular fear of loss.

That's already five tracks I think, yeah five. Anyway, there's still one more, "Head Over Heels." *Very* martial: the rock-n-roll love police on horseback or goosestepping or whatever. Good cut.

Anyways what you got here is eclectic as hell, on a par with 'Moby Grape '69'. Feels a *lot* like that sort of particular-year-in-time's musings over all the rock-roll givens but without the Grape's encroaching termninality. When you get down to it the whole thing strikes me (whoever the hell *I* am) as the sorta project the Beatles could've embarked upon if they'd decided to musically *go somewhere* after the White Album instead of doing 'Abbey Road' (a/k/a Terminal City). Yeah an 'Abbey Road' with balls is what it 'tis. Okay?

Yeah, the 180 rule could be a strong possibility. Saunders keeps telling me he corresponded with Bangs -- true! -- and LB furnished lyrics for him which he intimated he should've turned into songs. He turned everything else he jotted down on pieces of paper into demo tunes and having received most of them over the years, they usually worked pretty good. There was something skedded to be published in Japan called "Kill for Satan" which had about forty of these things on it, mostly from the last fifteen years, but the label floated or the guy flaked, can't remember which. I have one of the masters so it could still show up somewhere I suppose.

No, it's all Metal Mike. There's a great song called "Partyin' with Satan" that was recorded on a cassette machine but sounds like much much better. It's quite a mish mash of styles, some of the material taken from old Metal Mike CDs and throw it down live in the studio sessions with whatever musicians he was able to drag along at the time.

Pitting, patting, trying not to step on the cracks
In Europa, where we saw no sharecropper shacks
Reciting our Mallarme
Those films with Tom Courtenay
And your hand in mine
One the sidewalks of Calais
Oh no, I shan't forget ...

I just remembered the name of a Paul Revere & the Raiders hit I've been trying to remember the name of for a couple days. "Good Thing," that was one of those Paul Revere classics packed with what is known in the vernacular as anti-tongue pressure, lots of not-so-rapid-fire changes of direction in the music most of them bogging things down or erasing things completely. Well, that was *Paul Revere and the Raiders* and this is just *the Raiders*. And even though Paul is still around somewhere (his picture is on the cover) his crudeness is not. And their blatancy due to this crudeness has given way to systematic blatancy, which can't be beat either.

"Let Me!" opens things up and I'll be danged if it's not "Turn on the Green Light" by the American Breed without much camouflage at all except some real mean BIG SOUND. There's an Iggy type "all riiiight" in there too, anybody can play or sing anything but unless the inclination is constant it's gonna slip sometimes so finally it's just Mark Lindsay once more. A good fake ending and then - a "Monkey Man" holler reentry. As if transitions need excuses!

"Don't Take It So Hard" is loaded with Jaggerisms by way of "Kicks" (vintage Raiders) but there's also a "you" that reeks of "Hey *you* ... get offa my cloud" so some of the derivation is direct (although even more years out of focus). Then there's a touch of - huh? - Tony Kosinec and some stereo movement between channels (reminiscent of what Columbia once did with their acquisition the Buckinghams, as if the Raiders weren't appropriate for that just yet).

Those two are Mark Lindsay arrangements/productions but "I Had a Dream" is good old Terry Melcher back in the fold: Jan & Dean, yawns, the Association. Unbeknownst to most, the Association happens to be so archetypal an L.A. sound that it shows up in such stuff as C.S.N.&Y. and the Raiders are more than entitled.

"Too Much Talk" (back to Mark Lindsay) is - of all things in heaven and earth - "Paperback Writer" but by way of the early Bee Gees. And the lyric - "Too much talk and not enough action, everybody worries about satisfaction ..." - is it Barry McGuire or is it the Stones? And there's a V.D. Parks ballad interlude in the middle.

"Just Seventeen" is "hard rock" as in Hard Rock, but not the kind they used to do, instead it's Man, Mandala, P.G.&E., maybe Uriah Heep except I've never heard Uriah Heep so I'm not about to go out on a limb. Anyway it's teenage obviousness with a little Stooges' "1970" thrown in, not even the MC5. A little "what's my name" from "Sympathy for the Devil" too. Gee, they used to be such an original band!

"Gone Movin' On" begins with some heavy-handed Buddy Holly but whenever it slips it's just Jagger again, that's all. Then one more move into something on another level so it's the Everly Brothers, or was it the Everly Brothers to begin with?

"The Boys in the Band": Steppenwolf, Notorious Byrd Brothers.

"Cinderella Sunshine": the lyric interferes so it's not much more than the Monkees version of Satanic Majesties. But it calls to mind all the long-forgotten prerequisites for the acceptance of a once-simple group once it made the jump to Wagnerian orchestration. The prerequisite was it had to be good to begin with in order to generate enough ad hominem pressure, that's why "Tapioca Tundra" never made it and "Lucy in the Sky" did. The vocal - always a Paul Revere tipoff even when their playing was good - doesn't tip things off until the end when it gets really slipshod. The piano sounds just like the marimba in "Under My Thumb."

The vocal really gets lame in "Mr. Sun Mr. Moon" but it's occaionally brightened by touches of Bryan Maclean and the piano that starts things off has something to do with Steve Miller.

More soft stuff with "Do unto Others," because it's the only other Terry Melcher item of course. There's not a stitch to cover the lame Association/Joe South/Biff Rose lyric so it's even more like the American Breed than that other cut. And there's a long, long drum fadeout that reminds me of a drum part that Marvin & Tammi once stole from the Beach Boys (give me a month and I'll remember exactly what).

"We Gotta All Get Together," yes we do, and once again it's Steppenwolf to help us. But is it in the vocal or the playing? Hard to tell which the resemblence stems from. Some of it's out of "Mighty Quinn" and the end has a choir which at first sounds like either a pack of black chicks or a pack of Neil Youngs. But then it's obvious that it's just them. The Raiders. Mighty good album!