June 2, 1978, Gusto record review: Nuggets of wisdom from Jethro T. Megahertz

 

Another visit with my imaginary nemesis.

June 2, 1978, Gusto record review

        There was no answer at the doorbell and I was about to leave a note for that legendary media wizard, Jethro T. Megahertz, when I heard his deep, well-modulated, school-of-broadcasting voice waft down from somewhere above the treetops. I looked up to see him adjusting something on a huge steel superstructure.

        “Hold on, I’m coming, you benighted typewriter jockey,” he shouted. “It’ll just take a minute to get down to your level.”

        “What on earth is that contraption?” I yelled back. “Did somebody sell you the Eiffel Tower?”

        “Au contraire,” he chuckled as his hand-tooled leather boots descended the final set of stairs. “This is the world’s most powerful radio antenna. Now I don’t have to wait for the local album-oriented stations to play the new releases. This little baby lets me tune in the places where our programming comes from these days – Atlanta and the whole state of Michigan.”

        “Megahertz, you’re a desperate man,” I frowned. “Not to mention crazy. What drove you to this?”

        “Three things,” he sighed. “The first one was the movie, ‘FM.’ The second one was the stuff in Elvis Costello’s song ‘Radio Radio’ about how the airwaves are so controlled. And the third thing was hearing the Guess Who’s ‘Hand-Me-Down World’ twice in one afternoon. I decided I didn’t want any more hand-me-down radio, so I’m going straight for the source. Which is Michigan and Atlanta.”

        “Oh, come on, Megahertz,” I contended. “The local guys are doing the best they can. What do you want to hear, anyway?”

        “To begin with,” he snorted, “there’s half a dozen things you yourself have reviewed this year. Nick Lowe’s ‘Pure Pop for Now People.’ Ian Dury’s ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll,’ which is what I always figured this business was all about. Or how about Kate Taylor? The stations play the obvious things, but when it comes to anything else, you’ve got to take a chance on it for $6. Then after enough of us have gone and taken a chance, the stations figure it’s safe for them to take a chance. And they don’t even have to pay for their records.”

        “So what’s the point, Megahertz?” I asked.

        “The fact that more and more albums are being sold by fewer and fewer artists,” he shot back. “The first five-twelfths of 1978 have seen the biggest music biz profits in history, but there haven’t been any new sensations. The point is that they’re out there and nobody gets to hear them. After all, who else is going to put up the world’s tallest radio antenna?”

        “OK, Megahertz,” I conceded, “who’s being overlooked?”

        “Lots of folks,” he proposed. “Where do you want to start? Here’s a fertile field – female singers. There’s a ton of them. For instance, Helen Reddy. That’s right, Helen Reddy. Her ‘We’ll Sing in the Sunshine’ on Capitol was produced by Kim Fowley, the guy who gave us the Runaways. Finally, somebody’s done up Helen Reddy right. It still sounds like her, but it’s never dull or insipid. It’s even a little fun hearing her do the Beatles’ ‘One After 909.’”

        “Amazing,” I said. “What else?”

        “Two extraordinary voices from the British Isles,” Megahertz resumed. “One belongs to Mary O’Hara, who plays the Celtic harp too on her live concert at Royal Festival Hall in London. That’s on Chrysalis. The other belongs to 19-year-old Kate Bush, who was discovered by Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour.

        “O’Hara has an incredible story. She debuted 20 years ago, but then she married an American poet who died of Hodgkins disease. Grief-stricken, O’Hara became a nun. She just came back last year. She’s got a voice as clear as Irish spring water, though all those years in the convent makes every song sound like a hymn. Still, she’s beautiful.

        “Kate Bush’s album is called ‘The Kick Inside’ on Capitol’s Harvest label. She’s also got an incredible high voice, but she gets a little more risqué. She wrote all 13 songs herself, the best of them being a towering thing called ‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes.’ Her English Numero Uno hit, ‘Wuthering Heights,’ is on the album too.”

        “Megahertz,” I scoffed, “next thing you’ll be telling me you like Lawrence Welk.”

        “Not so,” he replied, “but Mary O’Hara might appeal to Welk’s ilk. Or maybe to the John Denver-Barry Manilow fans. And Kate Bush is the next Joan Armatrading, just wait and see. Meanwhile, let me tell you about two other ladies – the next French disco queen and the next lady to follow Crystal Gayle on the country-crossover route.”

        “Who are they?” I prompted.

        “The Frenchwoman is Madleen Kane, whose first album is ‘Rough Diamond’ on Warner Bros.,” he explained. “Kane does that breathy, sexy thing over the rhythm machine better than anybody since Donna Summer.

        “The country singer is Janie Fricke in ‘Singer of Songs’ on Columbia. Once you wade through the sappy Billy Sherrill production and all the guilt-tripped cheating songs on side one, you get to the real stuff on side two. The love songs. Real come-hither items like ‘Please Help Me, I’m Falling’ and ‘What’re You Doing Tonight’ and ‘Weekend Friend.’ We’ll be hearing a lot of her.”

        “OK, Megahertz,” I interrupted, “but the complaint I hear from rock fanatics around town isn’t about women singers. They want the hard-core stuff.”

        “Well,” he surmised, “it’s not a good year for progressive rock. Bill Bruford, who comes from Yes and King Crimson, should have the best album of the lot in ‘Feels Good to Me’ on Polydor, but only half of it feels good. Maybe the problem is that I can’t get into Annette Peacock’s weird vocals. Never could.

        “But there’s other stuff that can set folks off,” he continued. “The best guts and grit of the sprint comes from the guy who used to sing with the New York Dolls. That’s David Johanson on Blue Sky. ‘Funky But Chic’ pretty much sums it up. If the Rolling Stones sound half this good, it’ll be a miracle. And then there’s Generation X on Chrysalis, who do a wild version of John Lennon’s ‘Gimme Some Truth’ before they ram home their own stuff like ‘Wild Youth,’ ‘Wild Dub’ and ‘Ready Steady Go.’ Too bad they didn’t arrive last fall, before punk became passé. They’re one of the best punk bands going.

        “But the real mind-blower,” Megahertz added, “is Ry Cooder’s ‘Jazz’ on Warner Bros. All this great old sleepy-time-down-South stuff from the ‘20s. Salon jazz, he calls it. ‘Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now.’ A couple Bix Beiderbecke numbers. Something from Jelly Roll Morton. Some old shuffle-along things like ‘Shine’ and ‘Nobody.’ It’ll open your ears and your eyes as well.

        “Then there’s George Thorogood and the Destroyers on Rounder Records, the folk label. If people had kept playing the blues as hard and satisfying as Thorogood does, I never would’ve stopped listening to them. This stuff will knock down walls. Thorogood is going to be at the Belle Starr in Colden, by the way. The dates are July 7 and 8.

        “With all kinds of authentic excitement around, I don’t see why radio stations go for the imitation stuff,” Megahertz asserted. “Take something like Blue Jug on Ariola, which is great bunch of funky backwoods rockers in the mold of The Band. And Louisiana’s LeRoux on Capitol, which is how the Doobie Brothers would’ve played if they’d ever actually left their California dreamland and checked out New Orleans.

        “And how about the honest-to-god California surf-music soul of Walter Egan’s ‘Not Shy’ on Columbia? Producer was Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac, with Stevie Nicks on harmonies. Maybe you’ve heard ‘Magnet and Steel’ on the radio. Don’t know why they picked that one for the single. Practically everything else on the record has more life to it.”

        “Sounds great, Megahertz,” I said, “but that tower’s making me a little nervous. Any final advice?”

        “Yes, indeed,” he intoned. “A few musts to avoid. Stay away from Bonnie Tyler. ‘It’s a heartache’ is OK, but a whole album of her Rod Stewart rasp gets tiring. Very tiring. Also stay away from David Bromberg’s ‘Bandit in a Bathing Suit,’ which is as obnoxious as the female desperado on the cover.

        “Don’t even think about the Cooper Brothers, which is still another Southern-style rock band, even though they’re from Canada. Then there’s the Heaters, which attempt to cross punk with Fleetwood Mac. They don’t make it either way. Finally, you know the soundtrack from the movie, ‘Grease?’ Boring, even with John Travolta and Sha Na Na. Now excu-u-u-use me, I’ve got to climb up on my tower and make a few more antenna adjustments. I still can’t bring in Grand Rapids.”

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IN THE PHOTO: Kate Bush promo photo by Gered Mankowitz from the 1978 session used for the U.S. album cover for "The Kick Inside." 

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FOOTNOTE: Jethro T. Megahertz had a pretty good batting average here. He was right on the money with those debut albums by Kate Bush and George Thorogood. The albums from Walter Egan, David Johanson and Louisiana's Le Roux are overlooked classics. And Generation X gave us Billy Idol.