Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 14

MaWlMMMimam Mlnnoapolis TrltMin July 10, 1981 Yoko's tribute to John: Touching sentiment or tasteless profiteering? 2C YOUR CHOICE SPARKOMATIC 8 TRACK OR CASSETTE AMFM MPX CAR STEREO rl REG. frCi 7688 IP- Alii fell? 'VWWMlMi S- hi mmmmmtimtimmiiM 0 SR3O0 Tone Balance Controls MonoStereo Selector LocalDistance Switch Stereo Indicator Light Audio Power: 9 Watts 0 SR304 REG. 99.97 SR305 Five Detented Slide Controls 97 by Yoko Ono's memorial to John be offended by what they see as Among the British ska bands, Madness and the Specials among them, the six-member English Beat has received the least attention in this country, even though this may be the best of the lot The band has managed in this, its second LP, to carve out its own personal style of Jamaican rock. The rhythms are tricky but danceable "Monkey Murders" approximates the Caribbean Carnival party mode, while other songs are more strictly reggae and ska (the earlier variant on Jamaican pop-rock that surfaced in England in the early '60s). But the most distinctive feature of the band's sound comes from Saxa, the Jamaican-born saxoponist whose horn lines weave in and out in languorous fashion.

True, lead vocalist David Wakeling sounds a bit too much like Elvis Costello for comfort But the record, over all, is Irresistible. "Mecca For Moderns." The Manhattan Transfer. Atlantic SD 1(031 Side two of the new Manhattan Transfer album also is irresistible. Side one finds this gifted quartet working in the vein of jazz-rock-pop fusion, and some fairly hokey material is the result: A contemporary do-wop ditty titled "Boy From New York City" and an audio cartoon called "Spies in the Night" (done in the manner of "Twilight Zone," off the previous "Extensions" album). Production and performance values are high, as always, even on these lightweight gimmicky numbers.

But the efforts efforts apparently to give the quartet a kind of contemporary pop appeal are wasted. With side two, the group takes up its own special field of expertise, the jazz vocal, and with material worthy of that expertise two wonderful numbers in particular: Vocal arrangements (by Janis Siegel and Jay Graydon) of Count Basie's "Corner Pocket" (otherwise known as "Until I Met and of Charlie Parker's "Confirmation," arranged by Milcho Leviev and featuring a scat solo by the great Jon Hendricks. The finale, equally ingratiating, is an acappella version of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," arranged by Gene Puerling of the Hl-lo's. No one, except maybe Hendricks, works more skillfully in this style these days than the members of Manhattan Transfer. Maybe next time around they'll get hip and do an entire album of such.

"Seam Clan." Yk Odo. Cef-iei RectrtU (Warner Bros.) CHS MM. It was said long ago that America is the only place where a writer can make a bundle off his own nervous breakdown a reference at the time to F. Scott Fitzgerald's essay "The Crack Up." The sentiment seems odd today, however, in an era when people divulge the most intimate details of their sex lives or their personal anguishes in their memoirs or on TV talk shows. Seemingly everybody is out to make a bundle off their own crack-ups, or at least to validate the experiences by going public to prove to themselves, If not to the world at large, that the experiences actually happened.

So, the question is: Why shouldn't John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, release an album of songs depicting her reaction to Lennon's death, an album with a photograph of her husband's blood-splattered glasses on the cover? In an era when there are no private moments, no private griefs, this makes perfect sense. Surely, had Fitzgerald's crack-up taken place 40 years after it did, the author would have put together, instead of an essay that only a few would have read, an album of "very personal songs" about all the "changes" he had gone through, with the hope that the album would at least go platinum. Thus, one approaches "Season of Glass" with reservations (though to be fair about it, Ono's motivation obviously isn't money. Need we point out: The widow is well-fixed). The very idea of the album is off-putting, nonetheless, as are some of the details of the project The glasses on the cover, the four gun shots (followed by a scream) at the beginning of one of the songs, the chilling torrent of verbal abuse that suddenly bursts forth in the song "I Don't Know Why." Some, no doubt, will see the album as tasteless and macabre In Its effects.

Others, surely, will be moved by it Ono has chosen, In fact, not to dedicate the album to her husband, killed by an assassin, as all the world must know by now, on a New York City street Dec. 8. As she explains in a brief liner note, "All I can say is that John was right here (in the studio) with me, busy trying to arrange things for me. That is why this album is not dedicated to him. He would have been offended.

He was one of us." Some of the songs were written before Lennon's death, and parts of the album, the straightforward love songs, in particular, make the effort to Adjust Tone Balance Separate Balance and Fader Controls Locking Fast Forward and Eject Switch FM Muting Loudness 45 Watts While some are certain to be moved Lennon, others are just as certain to macabre commercialism. seem merely a continuation of "Double Fantasy," the LP that Ono and Lennon collaborated on just before Lennon's death. Still, it's hard not to interpret all the songs in the light of the murder of Ono's husband, of her subsequent grief and attempts to create a new life for herself, even In the Instance of the two most Innocuous songs on the album: "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" does it have to be like this You and 1 I.wanted us to be and "Dogtown" think of my friends They were once not so Despite the weakness of at least two of the songs, "Season of Glass" is Ono's strongest musical effort to date, certainly the strongest in the light pop-rock vein that she took up with Lennon in "Double Fantasy," a far cry, all told, from the avant-gardeisms of her late-60s work. Ono's quivering, thin soprano, as always, is an acquired taste and works best, perhaps, in the dolly-and-Iace, I Michael Anthony rinky-tlnk 1920s mode of "Turn of the Wheel" and "Will You Touch Me," counterparts of "I'm Your Angel" on the "Double Fantasy" album. The very notion of singing about the most terrible grief in such an (to contemporary ears) artificial mode carries a distancing and compelling irony that the entire album might have profited from.

The opening songs are impressive: "Goodbye Sadness," "Mindweaver" and the haunting "Even When You're Far Away," with their starkly, spare arrangements. But even stronger are "I Don't Know Why" and the dreamy, child-like "Toy Boat" (Just after "Mindweaver" we hear a brief conversation between Ono and Sean, Ono and Lennon's 5-year-old son, as Sean begins to tell a children's story.) Surely the best of these songs would hold up even without reference to the murder that occurred last December, would, in fact transcend topicality. But to make a totally effective work of art out of her own grief, a work of the stature of Tennyson's "In Memorium," has escaped Ono, even though many Lennon-Ono fans will be moved by the project "Wha'ppen?" The English Beat. Slre.SRK J57. SPARKOMATIC POWER BOOSTER 36 Watts of Distortion Free Power For Only REG.

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488-7279 ST AUl HM WHIT! af AD AVI 77 A OCAS MIUCMST CUNTia H-OOIO 721-6533 am 645-7751 t4 twmiwa Avt no 533-1506 Will IT PAUt iwiao aoaiaT 457.5010 touTHvirw touAai KIVIK PALIS NO MAIN ST. aocHfin I0JTMT (f OT7 FITS MOST CARS AND TRUCKS Yoko Ono New Yerk Timet Service New York, N.Y. Some people are of the opinion that today's pop songwriters wouldn't know a good tune or a sophisticated lyric if it hit them over the head. Apparently, the publishers of "Makin Whoopee," the 1928 standard by Gas Kahn and Walter Donaldson, disagree. They have filed a copyright Infringement suit against Yoko Ono charging that her song "I'm Your Angel," from the best-selling John Lennon-Yoko Ono "Double Fantasy" album.

Is "largely copied from and substantially similar to" "Makin' Whoopee." They are asking $1 million in punitive damages and requesting injunctions that would prohibit the marketing of "I'm Your Angel" in any form. They want all existing copies of the song, on records, tapes and sheet music, "impounded and destroyed." This suit is the latest in a series of plagiarism actions that have raised some fundamental questions about the nature of popular music. Jazz and classical pianist and composer Keith Jarrett has sued rock songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, charging that they appropriated material from one of his pieces for their successful "Gaucho" album. And several years ago, former Beat-le George Harrison was convicted of "unconscious plagiarism" because of his song "My Sweet Lord," which was melodically similar to Phil Spec-tor's "He's So Fine." Lawsuits like these encourage speculation on the broader issue of what constitutes originality in popular music. No matter how generally one defines "pop," it is melodically and harmonically circumscribed.

Pop melodies are usually simple enough for an untutored listener to at least attempt to sing along with, and while chord progressions can be clever, they seldom are as dense or potentially confusing as the chord structures routinely used in jazz, Steely Dan and a few other mavericks notwithstanding. separate ways. The harmonic structures of the verses are somewhat similar, but they are not identical, and the bridge of "I'm Your Angel" is radically different from the "Makin' Whoopee" bridge in every sense melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, structurally. Adding to the legal confusion is that jazz musicians habitually quote four or more bars of various popular songs in their improvised solos. Furthermore, it is common practice in jazz to write new melodies using entire chord sequences from popular songs.

Are these kinds of similarities enough to constitute plagiarism? That will be left up to the courts to decide, of course, but also for many songwriters to ponder in the meantime. Gift Certificate nuBBEy Gift Certificate (only one grH certificate may be used per table) 5 Up to $3.00 may be applied on purchase of any items from Embers menu with a minimum purchase of $6 99 per table. Not usable with any other coupon or special offer or tak out orders NO CASH REFUNDS Gift Certifi- cate must be turned in for credit on your meal. ONvgoodlMy tl 0OAM-SO0PM OFFER GOOO THROUGH JULY 13, 1081 at Tain Ohm area retamnta. 11 ii i ii in i inn ij The limited melodic and harmonic language of pop has been used and re-used for generations, making similarities between songs inevitable; it is actually surprising that plagiarism suits are not a more common occurrence.

Traditionally, questions of plagiarism In popular music have focused on whether melodies were similar or identical, and the term "melody" is generally understood to signify a significant portion of a complete melody usually eight or more bars. In the Yoko Ono case, the first three bars of "Makin' Whoopee" and 'I'm Your Angel" do sound identical, melodically and harmonically. But beginning with the fourth bar, the melody of "I'm Your Angel" rises sharply, forming a distinctive little figure, where the melody of "Makin Whoopee" simply repeats itself. And from this point on, the melodies of the two songs go their OPEN 24 HOURS DDDDDDBaDBa I I I I I 1 i i i i i Gift Certificate (only on grtl carMicat may tw uaed per table) Up to $3.00 may be applied on purchase of any items from Embers menu with a minimum purchase ol $6.99 per table. Not usable with any other coupon or special ofler, or take out orders.

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