Jackrabbit Slick

STEVE FORBERT'S ALBUM Jack Rabbit Slim is Bruce Springsteen street music thrown into a Barry Manilow package of syrrupy cliches. Forbert has the formula, the solo instrumentals, the rough voice and the street subjects, but these components lack Springsteen's raw spontaneity and power. Where Springsteen bursts with energy and originality Forbert wallows in the listless and trite.

This album comes as a complete disappointment after Forbert's first effort, Alive on Arrival, an invigorating and unself conscious album that successfully bears comparison to Springsteen and even early Dylan. In songs from Alive like "Going Down to Laurel" and "Settle Down" Forbert is an unharnessed storyteller, combining spirited music and effective ballads.

In Jack Rabbit Slim Forbert focuses his energies on a self-conscious attempt to expand on the style of his first album. This straining results in songs that are unispired, muscially repetitive and lyrically fragmented.

Forbert's songs often contain sensual imaginative passages, but he never extends his melodic inspiration through an entire number. The evocative refrain of "Make it all so real" is made numbing by sheer repetition. And he squelches another glimmer of inspiration, the opening bars of "Romeo's Tune" with similar redundancy. This song, the album's current hit, features a handful of lilting syntheziser phrases evocative of young lover's passion. Forbert can't vary these phrases, however; they recur ad nauseum.

He compounds the pain of the musical monotony with trite lyrics:

Hey Meet me in the Middle of the Day

Let me hear you Say Everything's O.K.

Bring me southern kisses from your room

Hey meet me in the middle of the night

Make me feel all right

Let me smell the moon in your perfume

No passion or urgency carries this song, and no story either. "Romeo's Tune" is representative of other songs on the album, a collection of phrases strung together seemingly out of convenience.

In January 23-30 Forbert skips randomly from the "plain on the old runway," to "drinking beers in the honky tonk," to riding out to a country bridge," then asks "where am I when the preacher speaks?" If the attempt is impressionistic or stream of consciousness, the result is complete confusion. This song also epitomizes forbert's lyrical ineptitude. Forbert doesn't include a sheet of lyrics with his album, and with such profundities as

It's often said life is strange but oh yes

Compared to what?

grouped with the phrases about runways and honky tonks it's understandable why he didn't. With his harmonic and acoustic guitar, Forbert has attempted a peaen to Dylan but it fails embarassingly because his lyrics can't match the poetry of the old Dylan. Harmonica riffs not withstanding "Highway 61" never sounded so good.

Another Forbert lyrical gem is the tune "Complications"--a song so syrupy that despite its definitive beat, hardly deserves to be classes as reggae:

Hey complications

Complications going down

Complications in your lifetime

Complications all around well I say

Hey complications

The dull and uninspiring music makes Forbert's attempt at eclecticism a disaster.

The saddest, thing about this album is that Forbert does have talent. He showed it in his first album and reveals glimpses of melodic and instrumental imagination in this one. His voice on both albums is a classic rock voice--a rasp both palatable and effective.

THE SCENARIO is almost too obvious: record executives hear the energy-packed Alive on Arrivaland construct the plastic formula enabling Forbert to become the Barry Manilow of the street-punk-rocker crowd. Alive on Arrival is an uncut gem. Unfortunately the attempted refinement of Jack Rabbit Slimmarred the original stone. Maybe next time Steve Forbert can restore it.