The Michigan Doily-Tuesday, December 2, 1980-Page 7

Springsteen forges 'The River'

-~ 4.

ape

Forbert relaxes
and rocks out

By FRED SCHILL
I Steve Forbert looks reality straight in
the, eyes-and cracks up. Little Stevie
Orbit, his third album, leaves a host of
denuded bogeymien floating belly-up in
its wake as Forbert manically confron-
ts and dismisses the sharks circling
nearby.
Frankly, the album is more an exer-
eisein musical hedonism than anything
else" After falling prey to a disastrous
sophomoric jinx on Jackrabbit Slim,
oriert has booted the producer of that
charade and caused the sweetsy string
and horn arrangements so indigenous
to that album to become extinct.

°LIME

perhaps the only thing that ought to
be-love. Forbert's simple, bass-
anchored love songs are endearing for
their unassuming charm and for their
respect for the most basic of values,
while his romping rampages against
high-society pretentiousness eschew
cynicism in lieu of pointed parody.
Forbert has laced the album with a
commendable variety of musical
styles, ranging from the country-swing
harmonica .instrumental "Lucky" to
jaunty, churning rockers of the sort
that Paul McCartney calls "permanent
wave."
AND AT LEAST his hedonism is a
bouyant one. Certainly Forbert does not
confront the serious perplexities of
modern culture with philosohpical
sophistication or idealistic aplomb, but
on the other hand he's having a helluva
lot more fun enjoying the show.-
Forbert is a wanderer with a road-
map, stopping for the recovery of a
debutante sick of "her father with his
railroad ties" in "Get Well Soon,"
criticizing the critically cynical in
"Laughter Lou," begging for the affec-
tions of a "Schoolgirl" on the way out of
town,- reflecting only in the quiet
moments in between.
This is a celebration. Little Stevie
Orbet is not great art, but it is damn
good rock and roll. It is a festivity for
the hedonist and an admonishment of
the sourly sardonic, but it is most im-
portantly a delightfully infectious romp
in the hay just for the hell of it.
"Don't look at me/So quizically,"
Forbert chides on his way out. "I've got
nothing nice to say/These things are all
clear as the day/But, oh boy you're just
too fucking slow/'Cause if you have to
ask you'll never know.r"
That's the gospel according to For-
bert-laugh at 'em as you walk away.
When the Grim Reaper comes to take
Forbert away, Steve will no doubt find
the whole thing hilarious..

-By RJ SMITH
If only The River had been marketed
as The Great Lost Wuzzy Barrymore
and the Barnstormers Album. If only it
had been hailed by the K-Tel folks on
late night TV as a wonderful relic from
some long-forgotten- band of the six-
ties-then we might be able to put
everything about The River into per-
spective, and enjoy it for what it is.
When most of the tunes from Bruce
Springsteen's new album come over the
radio it's time for some major volume-
raising. But put the album on your tur-
ntable and you hear a little rattle, one
that crescendos by the final song. It's
the sound of the Springsteen Image
breaking down, piece by piece. There's
an attitude built into The River, a view
of what life has to offer and of how
much one should struggle to work
oneself into the throbbing, risky side of
everyday life, that symbolizes a retreat
for Springsteen.
The songs on The River are under
four minutes, and these are the most
straightforward arrangements he has
ever come up with. But at times it's
only as if he has learned to build
miniatures. The bombast of stuff like
the x-minute opus "Jungleland" now
gets atomized to fit the briefer song
lengths. Springsteen hasn't learned
how to make his throw-away songs
sound like throwaways-thus
something like "Ramrod" or "Cadillac
Ranch" becomes a bit overplayed, and
"Drive All Night" never fails to have
me digging my fingernails into the wall.
IN AN ATTEMPT to get a hyper-live
sound, Springsteen has created an al-
bum with more sharp little noises than
a bowl full of Rice Crispies.
Everywhere one checks there are
jangly guitars, baby rattle-drums,
harmonica trills, all seeming to have
been recorded inside a coffee can. All of
which sounds terrific coming over the
radio, but tends to pile up over four
sides.
There are some things that the
album's crisp and lofty airs are perfec-
tly suited for. The aforementioned "The
Ties That Bind" is a song that benefits.
abundantly from the overall sound. It's
a simple, even brittle melody, but

Springsteen makes it sound like a mat-
ter of untellable conviction. Everything
about this song is sooo fine, from the
stunning opening to the drum infused
bridge that sounds like heaven being
pulled down, to the' wholly infectious
way he and the back-up voices sing "the
ties that bi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-
yi-yind." There's a moment in the mid-
dle of "The Ties That Bind" that may
be the finest thing on the album-after

confection so pure and simple it
demands to fall apart. But from
Springsteen's opening shout it's utterly
believable, nearly relentless in a
way-his singing is like the nail that
manages to hold a piece of sugary
sweet cake to the wall. Time and again
he comes up with unexpected ways to
deliver a line: the gleeful lurch with
which he presents "You Can Look (But
You Better Not Touch)," the way he
sounds as if he's been run over as the
band drives away on "I'm A Rocker,"
the perfection in the way he sings of
how his "memories come back to haunt
me" in "The River."
SPRINGSTEEN IS an artist who has
often been accused of overinflating the
symbolism in many of his charac-
teristic songs. Thus it is such a
remarkable thing to listen to "The
Price You Pay," one of his typical
Drive Into The Night sagas. It's a song
in which the metaphorical drive turns
into Moses' journey across the desert to
the Promised Land. In the past it might
have been too much for Springsteen to
handle; here, it is the album's crowning
moment. Revealing a mirage-like
desert tableau, Springsteen infuses the
desires we all have for a more
satisfying, perhaps merely tolerable
life with rich, but not ponderous impor-
tance. The significance of our longings,
Springsteen says, is not in whether they
are ever answered. Moses 'led, his
people to the promised land but was
unable to enter it himself. It's an unset-
tling end-the end of a life, really-and
one which cannot be thought of sim-
plistically as a success or a failure. The

an enthusiastic saxophone solo the band
drops out for one stop-gap moment,
Springsteen races up the lyrics like
someone vaulting the Berlin Wall
without looking back to see if he made it
in one piece.
Springsteen's singing here may in
fact be the most unexpected develop-
ment on The River-it grasps here what
The Boss has never approached before,
never even tried to approach. "Hungry
Heart," for example, is a singalong

THE ALICE LLOYD PLAYERS PRESENT
3 PAYS SYEUGEA(E IONESCO
THE LESSON
THE LEADER

CONTEMPORARY
DIRECTIONS
ENSEMBLE
performing new music of our time
MAURICE DELAGE
Quatre Poemes Hindous
MARIO DEVIDOVSKY
Synchronisms No. 6 for piano and tape
HARRIOSN BIRTWISTLE
The Fields of Sorrow
H. K. GRUBER
Frankenstein (American premiere
of the Chamber Version)
CARL ST. CLAIR, conductor
SATURDAY, DEC. 6,1980
8p.m.
RACUlM AUDIORIUM
ADMISSION FREE
Concert Prelude at 7:30 p.m.
In Rackham Assembly id@

4,
4 4
* .4
* .4
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I. 4
.9
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journey to that which all of us want is
all we can hope for, "The Price You
Pay" lays clear. It's tidal flow, the waft
in Springsteen's voice, the lyrical
juggling of American desert with Sinai
desert; all create a feeling that what is
least vital about our lives is grasping:
our goals. What is most important, it.
seems, is the journey we take to get
them.
That all probably sounds, well,
monumental: on its own terms it really
is. But the problem running through
The River is that the album refuses to
address the world that produced it. Pop'
music dies when it relates only to itself
when it doesn't refer to much beyond
the studio or outside the mind of the
recording artist. And old Bruce, the
working man's hero, has been living out
of his own lunchbucket far too much
lately-he's circumscribed an envelope .:
of outdated rock and roll fairytale and
blue collar cliches around him. ey
may mean a lot to the guy, and they
See RIVER, Page 9

Dec. 4, 5,
Alice Lloyd

THE BALD SOPRANO
and8. 8:00 P.M.
d Hall Tickets $2.00
For More Information Cot/ 764-5946 or 764-5947

*'



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t ..

NOW FORBERT IS doing things his
ay, which translates into just plain
aving fun. The album reveals a
command of musical form that Forbert
has previously exhibited only in his
concerts. The intimacy and innocence
of Alive.on Arrival is gone, along with
the: country-boy-goes-to-the-big-city
facade it depended on.
Forbert can no longer get by with that
innocence business, having achieved
commercial and artistic success, and
he has the fortunate good sense not to
even try. Instead, he has achieved
aturity with a comical vengeance, at-
tacking the absurdities of the jet set
with a repertoire of pungent repartee
that would make Don Rickles shrivel in
embarassment.
Forbert is on a joy ride through life,
to use his own metaphor in "I'm an
Automobile." "I ain't so good' in bed,
babe/But I'm hell on wheels," he puns
en passant, and plays upon this tran-
sient theme throughout the album.
J FORBERT WANTS to exploit mor-
tality now, "while I'm here upon this
circumstance called Earth," he says in
"A Visitor." This carpe diem mentality
dominates the album's wry, often
twisted lyrics.
The only thing taken seriously is

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