The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 154

THE MORNING CALL. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1985 A71 RECORDS quickly, like blocks of ice on THE O'JAYS: Love Fever (Philadelphia International) MORRIS DAY: Color Of Success (Warner Bros.) WYNTON MARSAL1S: Black Codes (From The Underground) (Columbia) Tips was, which is to say he's no singer at all. The frantic single "Party All the Time" isn't bad, but that has more to do with the song's writer-arranger-performer. Rick James, than it does with the lackluster Murphy, whose labored falsetto is not exactly compelling. One eyebrow-raising revelation is that the hip, cynical Murphy is a preachy, over-sentimental songwriter, with the terrible Me, Us, We" and My God is Color Blind" on hand as two embarrassing examples.

Stevie Wonder contributed a couple of songs and produced one of them, but even he can't get the wingless warbler airborne. Murphy's name may sell him some records his voice moves you up and down and in and out, and where Shalamar sweeps you into a careening vortex of soul 'n' rock, this group nudges you along with gentle funk grooves that invite both inspired dancing and casual listening. Not unlike Imagination, another British trio worthy of its sources. Loose Ends borrows liberally from American without being parasitic. Songs like the title track, "Hangin" on a String" and "Music Takes Me Higher" have a glassy sheen that might be coolish on first listen.

But between the tasteful jazz touches and the vocal trade-offs of Jane Eugene and Carl "Macca" Mcintosh, things begin to warm up fast. The band is a little too quiet at times "Let's Rock" is painfully mistitled but for the most part Loose Ends makes good with the mellow, allowing relaxed rhythms to build into affecting songs. Rarely has smooch music sounded so dignified. If' mrtLj a hot pavement, i RAY PARKER Sex And The Single Man (Arista) Oh, Ray, you're such a whiner. You sell 10 million copies worldwide of the theme to the movie "Ghost-busters," and you're still not happy.

So what if Huey Lewis thought you ripped off "I Want a New Drug." "Girls Are More Fun," you say. Wonder how Robert Hazard and Cyndi Lauper feel about that? "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," you sing on "I'm a Dog." Well, you said it, not me. This was one record I hoped would skip. Paul? DEAD KENNEDYS: Frankenchrist (Alternative Tentacles) It's midnight in America. Most human beings have been made obsolete.

The ones with jobs are robotized wage slaves, benenc mans pollute the landscape; call it "empty plastic culture slum suburbia." Xenophobic vigilantes pridefully show their kids weapons. Pesticides are exported to underdeveloped countries, leading to deformed babies. "The magic of the marketplace" results in death squads and starvation. At home, queer, punk and bum bashers keep the city streets clean. For the young, MTV, a corporate creation, touts a phony new frontier.

Jello Biafra, the Dead Kennedys' chief hellion, chronicles these ills on the DK's third LP as he continues his caustic, sarcastic and savage attack on the American Way. As before, the music verges on hardcore, and though perhaps static too much of the time, has hints of psychedelia and prickly Gang Of Four guitar. In "Stars and Stripes of Corruption," Biafra sees hope if people will change. Turns out Jello's a cynical humanist, not a nihilist. It may be midnight, but Biafra knows the darkest hour is always be fore dawn.

llm. The Dead Kennedys will be at the West Cata-sauqua Playground Building tonight. For information, call 262-2141 or 264-1016. 0tmm wwntsai What an ace fly-boy clown this Morris Day is! It's obvious that much of his solo debut is a parody, right? I mean, who else but Day would improvise a dance out of someone's frantic attempts to get out of the path of a falling tree? Even the intro to "The Oak Tree" is a put on: Think that's seductive panting you hear? No, fool, it's the rasp of a saw! Ha! And listen how well Morris does his ex-good buddy Prince on the title track, right down to the throaty, hesitant-but-anxious vocals and solid punk-funk beat direct from the the royal song book. (The tune is Day's final vinyl about leaving The Time.) Lest anyone think he's merely ripping off his old chums, Morris intersperses mock news flashes giving a minute-by-minute update on his career moves.

If you don't connect with Day's tongue-in-chic humor, the LP wears (very) thin (very) fast. With lines such as "Don't criticizeTry to realizeI'm Number One in the end," Day clearly has no qualms about piling the sugar into his own tea. But just as the joke starts really going stale, on comes "Don't Wait for Me," a song full of tension, tormented bluesy guitar and a smoldering vocal reminiscent of Percy -Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman." And on "Love Addiction" he admits to actually having met that rarest of creatures a woman who put him down. Day's fans will eat this record up. It's got a good sound and a smooth-talking way.

I just wish it wouldn't fool around so much. EDDIE MURPHY: How Could It Be (Columbia) EMM Ml Murphy strikes me as a black Richard Harris. Harris, the scenery-chewing ham-bone from awful movies like "Orca" and Bo Derek's "Tarzan," took time out from his acting career in the '60s to turn out a few bad albums, one of which included the hit "MacArthur Park." Murphy careens into a similar career turn here, and although he has it all over Harris as a movie star, he's not the singer Richard I The 19th album from this veteran trio shows it's still going strong with a familiar Philly soul sound that's been updated with modern funk effects. Those high-tech touches work best on the driving "Can't Slow Down," the opening cut, and on the title track, which starts out sounding very much like a traditional O' Jays song before funkmeister Reggie Griffin turns on the electronic wizardry. "Just Another Lonely Night," a mid-tempo love song, is another highlight.

The group's forays into topical territory "All Eyes on Africa" and "I Love America" are the only disasters, doomed by "See Dick lyrics. Otherwise, this is a solid effort from some old dogs with new tricks. MAURICE WHITE (Columbia) J0, f-f- Earth, Wind Fire had a string of hits for which White was largely responsible. But unlike Lionel Richie, who hopped out of the Commodores, White retains little of the energy he displayed with his group on his first solo LP. Ben E.

King's "Stand By Me," the album's first single, gets the treatment: smooth and spare until the instrumental buildup modulates to the big vocal. But what are these disco tracks in Magic" and "Children of doing here? Today's question: Is Maurice any relation to the Bee Gees' Maurice Gibb? LOOSE ENDS: A Little Spice (VirginMCA) fi Of Where George Clinton TO Marsalis' need to dazzle his audience with naked virtuosity is gone, thankfully replaced by a thoughtful, calculated approach. His trumpet playing has become less breathy and, in the meantime, much clearer. On his fourth jazz album for Columbia, the kid from New Orleans has a definite concept in mind: the black -codes of this nation's Civil War era, a series of laws written to deny black Americans everything except what they needed to be kept alive as working animals. Marsalis updates the codes, saying they apply to artists who "have chosen to be barometers of trends, not individuals making their own way Marsalis also has written six of the seven cuts on this disc and clearly makes his own way.

He gets some valuable assistance from brother Bradford on saxes and Kenny Kirkland on piano, both members of the group that toured the U.S. with Sting. Worth decipher ing. 11 CRUZADOS (Arista) CIVUZ A 5 In Spanish "cruzados" means "crusaders;" in Southwest street slang, "someone of mixed blood." But don't expect Los Lo-bos-style Latino roots music on this debut, for the ethnicity stops largely with this quartet's name. This is a solid, thoroughly commercial, and rather unadventur-ous mainstream rock 'n' roll record, with songs about dreams slipping away and busted relationships and echoes of Tom Petty, John Cafferty, British blues rock and Southern boogie.

Cruzados includes El Paso natives Tito Larriva (vocals, guitar) and Chalo Quintana (drums), former members the highly respected L.A. band, The Plugz. But Cruzados' biggest asset is guitarist Steven Huf-steter (he did the "Repo Man" soundtrack with Larriva). When Hufsteter gets rolling, as he does on "Hanging Out in California" and "Wasted Years," the songs are almost impressive. Most of them, however, disappear from memory won't.

BAR-KAYS: Banging The Wall (Mercury) ZAPP: The New Zapp IV (Warner Bros.) Now that the Prince revolution is can the counter-revolution be far behind? Let's hope not. The Bar-Kays, whose James Alexander dates back to mid-'60s, Memphis, Stax Records and Otis Redding, have copped Prince's vocal, percussion and production style. The group even mimics his royal badness's randy lyrics. "Wall" displays one of the music industry's first warning labels: "This album contains lyrics which may be considered objectionable by some listeners." Hmmmm. That may help sales.

The material certainly won't. Any group that equates love with nuclear weapons-- without irony, mind you as in "Missiles On Target," gets my "Star Wars" vote for a quick deep six. As for the "new" Zapp, it's less of the same Roger Troutman having made a career out of minimal percussion, hand claps and the Vocoder but now with those all-pervasive Prince influences. Listening to "Com-putur Love," one can't help imagine machines singing to machines. Doesn't Roger know voices now can be synthesized to sound like Japanese geishas instead of IBM computers? 1 11 HERBIE HANCOCK AND FODAY MUSA SUSO: Village Life (Columbia) 0 J- I don't recall ever hearing anyone accuse Hancock of playing it safe, so it's no great surprise that this eclectic jazz-funk-dance-pop-etc.

artist takes a chance with his new LP. Hancock went into a Tokyo studio for two days last year with his DX-1 digital synthesizer and performed duets with Gambian Foday Musa Suso, who plays a giant 21-string instrument called the kora. It has been likened to the sitar, because the musician can play rhythm, harmony and melody all at once, but it sounds more like a mandolin. Hancock clearly takes the back seat to Suso, blending so subtly that it's sometimes a struggle to tell he's there. The sound is decidedly low-key, almost mystical, with a sort of hybrid Eastern-African feel.

It's also repetitive and, ultimately, tedious, particularly oh side two, where "Kanatente" crawls on for almost 20 minutes with only occasional African chanting to relieve the monotony. The first two songs on the first side "MoonLight" and "Ndan Ndan Nyaria" are barely distinguishable from "Kanatente." The closest thing to a change of pace is the last song on side one, "Early Warning," on which Suso switches to talking drum, but alas, it's by far the shortest cut here. I suppose one man's self-indulgence is another man's innovation, but I prefer my experimental medicine in smaller, tastier aoses..