SHTICK IN THE MUD
After five albums and almost ten years of intermittent brilliance, Randy Newman achieves a number one single with a nastily amusing ditty.
RANDY NEWMAN Born Again (Warner Bros.)
After five albums and almost ten years of , intermittent brilliance, Randy Newman achieves a number one single with a nastily amusing ditty. He proceeds to sing the tune on a weekend network, television show and give his critics what we used to call in my neighborhood a Bronx cheer. Thus giving rise to they Shavian fnaxim, �Rock satire is what closes on Saturday Night Live.� Creative tastelessness is abrasive and provocative; jokey crudity as shtick is usually just irritating. Little �Criminals is the weakest of Newman�s first half-dozen albums, but doesn�t cross that line. Almost all of Born Again infuriates, the way Roth�s Our Gang does, or Altman�s A Wedding, or a particularly unfunny evening on Sat. Nt. Live. It�s the slapdash work of an artist who, for the moment, seems determined to justify all the' attacks his detractors have flung at him. Does anything fall as flat as shallow satire? Newman�s greatest stuff—most of 12 Songs and Good Ol� Boys, parts of Sail Away (the title track) and his debut (�Davy The Fat Boy�)— drew, and deserved, comparisons to Robert Johnson, William Faulkner, Lorenz Hart, Stephen Foster, Thornton Wilder, and Fats Domino. Born Again makes all the praise sound giddy, and it wasn�t.
