MILLIE JACKSON—Hard Times (Spring) :: Millie Jackson sure isn’t kidding when she sings “The Blues Don’t Get Tired Of Me.” In the title song, she enumerates a former lover’s “charms”: “He beat me every night...he killed the dog...he put roller skates on granny’s crutches,” and on “Blufunkes,” she limns the current situation: “Everybody’s suffering from Reaganomics/They got nuclear fright and atom bomics.” But Dear Millie tells us that to overcome adversity, all you have to do is “Put funk in your blues.” It may be simplistic advice, but sure gets Millie through, as we find put in the hilarious mini-drama “Mess On Your Hands/. Finger Rap.” Of course, you’ll have to buy the record to find out how TWO WRONGED WOMEN TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS, since the radio version is heavily bleeped—remember, Jackson has a certain, er, quotient to maintain. Even with the expletives deleted, though, Hard Times (get it?) delivers the goods, since Millie Jackson is one of the best straight ahead soul singers around. And that’s no shit. J.F.

THE NITECAPS — Go Straight To The Line (Sire):: This NYC quartet, led by whippersnapper John Xavier (a.k.a. X Sessive in his CBGB mainstay period) is in love with the idea of infusing their rock ’n’ roll with all the soul man dynamics they can beg, borrow, or appropriate. And if some of it suffers from pointlessly overextended song endings, too many italicized exclamation points from the Uptown Homs, and Xavier’s tendency to saturate his vocals with showboat maneuvers, then give them points for convincingly making their rock ’n’ soul music work on a good 50% of this debut. Especially invigorating is a full throttle remake of Wilmer & the Dukes’ “Give Me One More Chance” and the tremendously exuberant “The New Me.” Wonder if Miami Steve’s worn out his copy yet.