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fRock Tonight: Freaks, Earaches, AcerbityBy JEREMY GILMANRock music fans tonight can enjoy three concert appearances of variable quality in houses throughout New York.The Baker-Gurvitz ArmyThe Academy of MusicGinger Baker has returned to the realm of heavy metal with a new band, new album, and new sound. The legendary percussionist, formerly a member of such super-groups as Cream and Blind Faith, has recently finished a stint in Nigeria, where he studied, among other things, primitive drum languages.His last attempt of a band in his post-Clapton days, Ginger Baker’s Airforce, had the dubious distinction as the most tasteless, inconsequential, and downright boring groups in this era of muck rock. The Airforce has now given way to The Army, in which Baker and the Gurvitz brothers (Adrian on lead guitar and Paul on bass) pound out pulsating riffs marked by Baker’s personal, gut-slamming brand of drumming andAdrian Gurvitz’s dive-bomb guitar licks.The results are quite savorable (listen, especially for “Mad Jack”), and it seems that this revitalized three-man militia will certainly conquer many long lost Gingy Baker freaks as well as hard rock fanatics.Kiss Jo JoGunneThe Beacon TheatreIf you have weak ears or a sensitive stomach—STAY AWAY! These two bands flaunt decibels, feedback, and raunch with tidbits of music thrown in for the critics.Kiss, the concert’s headliner, is more a spectacle of glitter and farce that it is an assemblage of practicing musicinas. The bandmembers frolic about on stage, clad in ludicrous leather outfits and bearing uncanny resemblances to facial amputees.The music is pure raunch, with simplistic, overpowering guitar riffs fused with ballsy, often raucus vodals. Unfortunately, this sedentary brand ofmuzak has found an impressively wide audience, especially among pre-pubescent glam ireaks, and their two albums, Kiss and Hotter than Hell have been commercially successful.Produced by keyboardist and former Spirit member Jay Ferguson, the band archieves a petty, “over-worked amplifier” sound which can prove rather monotonous after the first set.All said, this show should produce more than adequate earaches but provide and excellent opportunity to experience an increasingly popular area in the multi-faceted realm of rock music.Loudon Wainwright III and OrleansAvery Fisher HallLoudon Wainwright III is a mediocre Dylanesque vocalist, a pleasant, airy musician, and a veritable genius of comedy. There is no spiff to this artist; none of the decadence or triteness of the flash rockers, nor is there a preoccupation with pure music.Wainwright presents each song as a concept within itself, wherein the lyrics and theme, in all their inanity and complexity generate the work’s motif. This leads to a very evocative performance, and one which can certainly not be shrugged off as a good old-fashioned belly laugh. In fact, most of his songs are painfully caustic, much like George Bernard Shaw with a guitar.Also on this bill is an up and coming group called Orleans. They have recently completed a series of immensely successful smaller-time gigs and now appear ready to make a huge splash in the world of the heavies.Their music is art, and, indeed, their art is music, devoid of all the side-tracks and digressions which have turned many a musician from artist to spectacle. Orleans, with tight vocal and instrumental virutosity, dynamic live acts and textural flawlessness (their recently released single “Let There Be Music” comes immediately to mind), is assured a comfortable niche in the galaxy of rock.
Newspaper Details
New York Columbia Spectator
New York, New York, US
Fri, Mar 21, 1975
Page 1
Full Page
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