Still Alive and Well: Johnny Winter CBS SBP 474 106.

Second Album: Roy Buchanan Polydor 2391 062.

Communication: Hookfoot. OJM OJL 34833.

Reviewed by Pat O'dea.

Times have been hard for Johnny Winter over the last two years. He spent most of that period off the road coping with a nervous breakdown [unclear: tho]rought about by the pressures of his sudden transformation from bluesman to guitar hero, and his own self-prescribed palliatives to counter the resultant stress. He snapped under the strain, but when you hear "I'm alive and well/every how and then I know it's kinda hard to tell/but [unclear: m] alive and well," punched raspingly across his characteristically flailing guitar lines, you know the means it.

"Rock me, Baby", his solitary nod in the direction of his blues roots, boots the album off it a blistering pace and, barring two minor side excursions — one into country and western and one into a schmaltzy ballad — sets the tone for the remainder of the record. Winter cuts loose from the basic riff of rock 'n roll with some electrifying, almost mesmerising, slide work which builds into a frantic solo. Below the incendiary guitar work, Randy Jo Hobbs and Richard Hughes supply a rock solid bottom. Too much seconal", the other Winter original, winds the tempo down slightly and pushes a suitably jagged dobro-mandolin interplay to the forefront, with tasty flute embellishments from Jeremy Steig.

Rolling Stones' fans get a bonus in the form of "Let it Bleed" which again focuses attention on the quicksilver slide and "Silver Train" — reportedly written for Johnny by Jagger-Rich[unclear: ard] — and the strongest track on the album. It could have been lifted straight from "Exile on Main Street", so similar is Winter's phrasing to Jaggers. Still alive and well, you betcha. And Kicking, too.

Roy Buchanan has been around for a long, long time — almost 20 years in fact — but he's finally starting to break through, after paying his dues in session work for people like Lieber and Stoller and clubbing. During this time, he's also made a lot of heavy friends. Friends like the Band's Robbie Robertson, who had this to say about him: "Roy is the first great rock guitarist I ever heard. He's wonderful."

Phonogram didn't release his first album because the single taken from it sold about five copies, which is an out-and-out bummer, because any one track on this second is enough to leave most guitarists trembling in their boots. If he catches on with the record-buyers like John McLaughlin, and he should, perhaps Phonogram will belatedly, as is usually the case, release his earlier material. Buchanan commands such a complete mastery over his chosen instrument that two tracks alone from "Second Album" are enough to rocket him into the Clapton class, and perhaps even a little ahead. This is not a joke. His back-up group is distinctly pedestrian and the vocals, thankfully, are restricted to three numbers. Nevertheless, in each case they convey adequately lyrics that are stark in their simplicity, almost skeletal, but are still deadly effective.

The music works best when the guitar is the feature, as on "After Hours", a 6:13, 12-bar epic during which Buchanan displays a remarkable sensitivity in wringing out a wide range of tonal textures. A "Dust my Blues [unclear: vpc] flurry introduces "Tribute to Elmore James" and develops over Dick Heintze's rolling puno base into a nimble-fingered solo exploring the Fender's full potential. Now about that first album.....

"Communication" is Hook foot's third album and after intensive listening the only thing that disturbs me is that they haven't received more in the way of recognition lor their efforts. In this world of androgynous slush and clinical classical rip offs, bands which play straightforward, no nonsense rock bands like Hook foot — sometimes have trouble making themselves heard throughout the schlock or noticed in the overflowing record bins.

There's no revolution going on here, just four extremely competent musicians — who in elude Elton John spinoffs Caleb Quaye and Roger Pope and who are not out to bore you with any unnecessary frills. Basically they are a dual guitar line-up who, while a trifle shaky in the vocal department, could trade licks with their American cousins, the Allman Brothers, and still come up smiling.

The Quaye persona dominates Hook foot, which is not to denigrate his abilities. It's just that the two outstanding numbers, "Crazy Day Running Around" and "Here I come" were both written by Quaye's fellow guitarist. Ian Duck, and feature both of them swapping vocals and breaks as if they were demon-driven. Freddy Gandy on bass and Pope on drums are no sluggards cither they're as tight as any of the Tamb-Stax house combinations and several times as heavy. So, if you're ted up to the back teeth with the demented rantings of paranoid psychotics, gagging on the latest guru's protege and the sould brothers and sisters aren't getting it like they should, what's left that's still got quality? Here it is.

String Driven Thing: String Driven Thing (Charisma 6369 923).

Reviewed by Richard Best.

Aside from The Mothers who cultivate bad looks. String Driven Thing take the prize for Ugliness. Forget the man with the hair and you got one guy with buck teeth and crossed eyes, another with monstrously thick eyebrows who'll be freaking the Roxy in 1975, and a woman you'd look twice at to see if you had her right. An unsympathetic society has kept these people home on Saturday nights and 'twas a good thing.

String Driven Thing make uncompromisinly electric music and if it all sounds a mite crazed at first hearing, it's cos you haven't beard anything New for that long.

SDT are English. Shel Talmy of Millie Small fame produced and they sound like the once potent Curved Air might and should have been. Fragile folk and when you start dismissing it all as acoustic neuroses — a snatch of neo-classical violin that kinda jolts you.

"Circus" is one of those maniac English folk songs scratching on confusion: Take me to the circus/I wanna see the lion/l wanna sec the tiger In a Jefferson Airplane influence "My Real Hero", it's a Seatrain violin and: Who's feeling who? and God doesn't play in a rock 'n roll band.

It's pretty shaky stuff and nobody'll make it a staple in any day in the life. It makes a change though and if they weren't so goddamn ugly they'd beat the pants off Fairport Convention.

Geordie: Geordie (EMI EMC-3001)

Reviewed by Richard Best.

Geordie rock like a 46" tit, they play worse than Slade and I love 'em. They're English natch (when did you ever hear a raw American band) and they boogie through 11 tunes with slammed guitar chords, no finesse whatever and some real Dastard Noize.

Five stars lor insolence cos there's nothing new here, it'll insult Gordon Campbell and it's draught beer yah-hoo clamour.

Do ya wanna know how bad it is: me mate can't even get stoned to it!!

Eat It: Humble Pie (A&M AML— 34826/7).

Reviewed by Richard Best.

I was a sad kid when Steve Marriott left the Small Small Faces in 1968 and came up with a tasteless kid supergroup called Humble Pie. As Safe As Yesterday Is and Town and Country were dull, competent exercises in nadir.

"Itchycoo Park" had withered with pure acid and for a while it looked like Odgen's Nut Gone Flake was the End.

Then, Rock on. Rockin' the Fillmore and Smokin' and unedited joy. You could dance to these lips and it was (almost) Raw Power without no pretension and make-up.

Eat It? — maybe good things don't last forever. It's spunky all right and Steve Marriott still rocks like like a devil. Four sides split neatly into soul, rock, acoustic and live and three Negro women, The Blackberries, who fill it out rather well.

I don't know why but Eat It doesn't quire gell. Maybe four sides is too much or the Pic got ate at the Fillmore. I wanna dance to rock and Status Quo and Slade do it better than these guys. I wanna rip and with due respect to Marriott and the "personal acoustic slide", I can't rock to that.

Listen to "Beckton Dumps" on side four and hold the tears when echoes of "Lazy Sunday" filter through. Shit, we danced to that one, eh?