The Michiaan Daily-Thursday, November 1, 1979-Page 5 RECORD S r -- A By DENNIS HARVEY Fleetwood Mac's nickname "Big Mac" is more than just a coy acknowledgement of their astonishing financial success. The name has a slightly cynical ring to it, because in- deed the group manufactures music the way MacDonald's produces burgs: For mass consumption. Tusk, the new Fleetwood set, is aimed to please ,o~rrvdlvI and you'll doubtlessly be listening to it for the next year whether you like the group or not. The storm of hype that Warner Bros. has only begun to let loose on the public will make it difficult for anyone who is even mildly interested to resist plunking down some cash and buying the thing. The company's lure is bound to be a smash success, because the records have been produced on a level of shrewd commercialism that matches the surrounding hype. Tusk is a pop Double Cheeseburger, with 'the works. The packaging en- shrines the actual product in more elaborate slickery than has been seen since the advent of the Fun Meal. The two LPs are buried somewhere in the, midst of one jacket and no less than FOUR inner sleeves, all of which have been tastefully art-deco-rated in clever, surrealistic collages and photos designed to keep -the poster -business hopping for months to come. Let's face it, one does not put a Fleetwood Mac record on the stereo in order to gain meaningful social insights or have one's consciousness raised. Over the last twelve years the group has evolved, through innumerable. changes in personnel and direction, from a classic all-male British blues unit into the ultimate co-ed example of L.A. musical packaging. Only Mick Fleetwood and John McVie remain from the 1967 line-up, and even they seem background figures In the new Mac's personality. Composer-singers Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham have provided virtually all the material since the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac, which established the ground rules for everything the group has done since. Rumours, released in 1977 after a typically endless and meticulous production schedule, took the quintet into an almost ridiculous sphere of suc- cess, spawning no less than five 'on- ster-selling singles and the world's first bout with Stevie Nicks mania. RUMOURS remains one of the quin- tessential if not one of the best discs of the 1970's, its huge sales a testament to how well Fleetwood's members managed to crystallize various elemen- ts of folk, rock and pop into a seamless, but soulless. mainstream fusion. We may hope for more from Fleet- wood Mac, but we can expect only the impersonal pleasures of perfectly craf- ted commercial pop. Rumours says ab- solutely nothing of importance ("Don't stop thinking about tomorrow/it will soon be here" could not pass as a major statement, folks), but it certainly wmn- &-i good, with all those catchy little tunes wrapped up in an unbeatably sleek production job. The grumbling minority noted, however, that for all its aesthetic virtues Rumours was merely an improved revision of the earlier. Fleetwood Mac disc. AFTER WAITING for three years and enduring innumerable false alarms about the long-delayed Tusk release (originally slated for about a year ago), one may well expect more than just a four-sided encore presentation of what the group has done before. That's exactly what the new set fails to do. With a single exception, Tusk's twenty songs are frighteningly content to retread the now-familiar Rumours sound. the Mac's are no Beatles, and the two-album format merely stretches their abilities rather than opens up new space for invention and fun. From the start, the arrangements are a bit less appealing, the melodies a lit- tle less catchy than expected. The band members are trying as hard to please as ever. But as the four sides drag on and the key word becomes "repetition," one is merely given more time to notice the kinks beneath the misleadingly smooth surface: the tone of cynical self-interest in Lindsay Buckingham's lyrics, the gooey sen- timent of Christine McVie's, and the weightless pseudo-mysticism of Stevie Nicks. All the nasty little flaws that Rumours' clean Top 40 sound managed to disguise rise to the surface on Tusk, whose tracks aren't quite so crisp or at- tractive. THE SOLE.exception in this rather dismal harvest of musical catchiness is "Tusk," the title cut. Here, things for once get a little adventurous. Over the roar of a crowd and Mick Fleetwood's only arresting drumwork (a kind of mock jungle beat), Buckingham and Nicks rasp out deliberately ambiguous, vaguely embittered lyrics: "Why don't .you tell me what's going on/why won't you tell me who's on the phone/Don't say that you love me/just tell me that you want me." Then the U.S.C. Trojan Marching Band unexpectedly half-buries the tune in brass, a pounding drum solo disrupts things entirely, and the number even- tually fades away into an intriguingly confused oblivion. The precise purpose of the song may be obscure or non- existent, but there's a refreshing imagination and a surprising willingness to take chances at work here. THIS TRACK aside, Tusk takes pitifully few risks. Its predictability leaves the listener restless, too free to dissect the failings of the group's current leading figures. Lindsay Buckingham is clearly the new guiding force behind Mac; he provides nearly half of the material on the LP, and is given special acknowledgement in the producing credits. But as a producer, he doesn't. provide the binding vision that the diverse members and styles need. As a result, Tusk is just an uninspired collec- tion of songs; they don't lead to each other smoothly or add up to any kind of whole unit.' Buckingham's own songs are a mixed bag, divided between draggy slower tracks and variable upbeat tunes. When he attempts to wax emotional, as on "Walk a Thin Line," the lyrics are so banal and the pace so sluggish that the song contradicts its title. The expan- siveness of four full sides allows him to indulge in more playfulness than usual on his upbeat compositions. The problem is that Buckingham's sense of fun seems strained, even when it works. "What Makes You Think You're the One" and "I Know I'm Not Wrong" manage to bluff their way through by sheer ear-banging force, with their clanging percussion effects and pseudo- spontaneous whoops and howls in the background. UNFORTUNATELY, even these suf- ficiently jolly cuts bear a slight but suspicious resemblance to the standard ELO sound, a comparison that makes clearer the ordinary commercial intent of Buckingham's rather forced high spirits. Most of his other rockers merely fall apart, cracking on the rocks of mediocre writing.9 Stevie Nicks' decline is less im- mediately apparent. Her big number, "Sisters of the Moon," opens with a tan- talizingly snaky drumbeat, but we soon become aware that it's the same old Nicks, milking the same old woman-of- mystery image. Two years' absence and a serious rival in the form of Deborah Harry have robbed Nicks' sultry child-woman act of most of its in- tial intrigue. Her compositions on Tusk are typically attractive but less fruitful retreads of-territory already covered in her mostinspired moments, "Dreams" and "Rhiannon." Only the new "Beautiful Child" has enough silky guile in its arrangement to avoid pain- ful familiarity. By merely giving us more of the same sleight-of-hand act she's been peddling for' five years, Nicks finally reveals what lies under her carefully nurtured surface aura - nothing. She's just a tease, another pop posture, a slightly less menacing graduate of the Grace Slick school of vocal growls and facial scowls. . THE REAL loser on Tusk, however, is Christine McVie. Her rather soppy ballads were never among the highlights of the Mac bag of tricks, although sometimes there was enough facile prettiness written into the melodies (as in Rumours' rather Fleetwood Mac touching "Songbird") to overcome the sentimental excess of the lyrics. On the new set she too often sinks in her own sea of wet banality, providing Tusk with its low point when, on side three, her dismally drippy "Brown Eyes" is followed by her almost equally inert "Never Make Me Cry." McVie's routine vocals, usually well-guarded by better material and arrangements, are mercilessly exposed. There are mildly interesting things on Tusk from time to time: a few pretty choral effects, and one or two other nice touches. But tlese bits are just extra sauce on a largely stale Big Mac. Though Tusk is as well-crafted as any of the recent Mac LPs, it never reaches the level of cool exhilaration that "'You Make Loving Fun," "Dreams," "Go Your Own Way" or "The Chain" achieved on Rumours. Though they can't seem to come up with tunes of the same strength, the group stubbornly sticks to their light- weight ideas and petty emotions. In- deed, of all the.Mac-recorded songs sin- ce the 1975 arrival of the Buckingham/Nicks team, only Nicks' overlooked "Landslide" on Fleetwood Mac seemed to strike a chord of something deeper than Top 40 emotion. Tusk is easily among the ten most eagerly awaited albums of the decade, at least in terms of public interest, yet it's arguably less inventive than any of the others that might be put in that class. Fleetwood Mac plays things safe again, but this time they haven't satisfied a Big Mac attack. DANCE JAZZ Nov. 3-Dec.15. BEG. 2-3:00 INT. 3-4:00 ADVANCED 8 AFRICAN also offered CALL 668-7731 evenings DANCE SPACE 621 E. William $28 for 7 wk. session Join the Arts Page 100 Hutchins Hall Law School "M s9 Nov.21& 03 6:30,B8:15,10:00 I, ,, By GILLIAN BOLLING The rise of Nicolette Larson in the field of popular music parallels the familiar story of the dancer who steps out of the chorus line and becomes a star. Last year, after singing back-up vocals for Neil Young, The Doobie Brothers and others, Larson came out with her solo debut album, Nicolette. This year she follows her first siue- cessful album with another, entitled In The Nick of Time. Larson doesn't write most of the songs on this album, in fact she only collaborated on the writing of In The Nick of Time's title cut. To Larson's credit, the other songs are written by a diverse assortment of authors, and thus she avoids falling prey to the problem or redundant material. THE GREAT VARIETY of music desplayed on the album is one of its Strangest points. Larson's voice has a beautifully clear range that adapts easily to the myriad of styles and presented on In The Nick of Time. She sings a couple of fun honky-tonk tunes such as l"Daddy' by Bobby Troup and "Dancin' Jones" by Jerry Lieber, and also brings new life to a 1965 Supreme's song, "Back in My Arms." On "Rio de Janeiro Blues," which features an arrangement by the Memphis Horns, Larson shows an instinctive feel for jazz as well. The rest of the album features rhythm and blues, and some fine rock and roll, but is noticeably missing the country flavor present on many of the cuts from her first album. In a recent interview for Rolling Stone, Larson justifies this shift, saying, "I'm not a country singer. Through the first album and tour, I got into rock and roll more." Nicolette Larson's voice is sweet, strong and possesses an infinitely listenably quality. Her albums grow on the listener as they become more familiar. Of course, the album contains the usual few songs about broken hear- ts, but hersincerity brings a singular freshness to this popular theme. Her lighter delivery is appropriate in bringing a whimsical note to a funny, song called "Trouble," Which features these lyrics: "Now you're so fat your shoes don't fit on your feet, you got trouble And its tailor-made Oh, mama, lay your head down in°the shade LARSON WEAVES her vocals around those of The Doobie Brothers' lead vocalist, Michael McDonald, on "Let Me Go Love," a song he authored, demonstrating how beautifully her voice blends with that of another. It will be a shame if in her well-deserved recognition as a solo vocalist, she does less back-up singing, since her voice always adds such a highly complimen- tary dimension to those she accom- pames. With such a fine second album as In the Nick of Time, Nicolette Larson need not worry about having to step back in- to the "chorus line." She is a singer with a great voice and vast expressive talents of a genuine star. is more than just an ordinary paper. TUET It comes complete with all the inside P info on University Affairs. From ad- LITERING ministrative decisions to fraternity HTC4lIIN antics you can count on the Daily to S1'10G keep you informed. LOADhia, )trnING, LOU WG, POETRY READING NOON LUNCHEON Homemade Soup 8 Sandwich 75C with Jacqueline Moore Abu Baker and Lo Banislako Reading from their works. Thursday, Nov. 1 7:30 p.m. Michelle Russell Organizer and Activist: "Arts and Politics" Friday, Nov. 2 802 Monroe (corner of Oakland) I KGUILD HOUSE, a The Ann Arbor Film CoopersitV Presents at Aud. A: $1.50 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1 HENRY V (Laurence Olivier, 1944) 8 only-AUD. A A film that inspired war-torn England to rally against the Nazis. The action begins in a 16th century London theater bnd then shifts to the fields of France, where Henry and his troops fight the Battle of Agincourt. From that point on, the film is a magnificent landscape for the adaptation of one of Shakespeare's greatest histories. With ROBERT NEWTON, LEO GLENN. Tomorrow: Animation night with VINTAGE ANIMATION: THE EARLY WORKS, THE ANIMATION OF MAX FLEISHER, and ANIMATION OF SUZAN PITT at MLB. I m The University of Michigan Alumni Association in cooperation with The School of Music present aali~iiiBIhlesl ~it, ..- . -- P(ouiiJ L In Joint Concert With The I i Lon Jewel U-M Dept. of Theatre & prama SHOWCASE PRODUCTION TONIGHT AT 8:00 Wis~consin 8ingers NOV. 2, 1979 8:00 p.m. POWER CENTER J I ~4I f ., PITCHER NIGHT 1 .00 off I Ll I nvtac ni ito ninmhim for IV] I By Wole Soyinka Thurs. Nov. 1 El 14 I r.