ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Dear Robert Palmer,

It's about your third LP, Some People Can Do What They Like. It's disappointing, and I'll tell you why. I expected so much after Vinegar Joe and Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley. Sally was a real gem, especially the Sailin' Shoes-Sally medley. I'd barter most of side two of the new LP for the segues and choruses in that medley. I admired the way you roped the Meters into the rhythm section and harnessed Little Feat into your studio. Your voice was miked way up, a running crease in the silky embellishments of the band. The production and approach were meticulous. You could have come off Listerine antiseptic but no, it was understated and subtle. I like that. When you live at the border of immoderation you can appreciate restraint.

The second LP, Pressure Drop, with its ethnic impressionism, was also a feat. It took guts to infuse a song by Toots and the Maytals with so much invention that it no longer sounded borrowed. The songs in your own hand-writting, like Fine Time and Which Of Us Is The Fool, were full of crafty hooks, enticing lines, and no stinkers. It was kid gloves all the way, nary a  neanderthal thrust in sight. Civilized high-IQ man with capacity for tenderness, affection, and wild longings meets dirty reggae in Chocolate City and mates it with high-rank musicians while he stands at the fulcrum, exuding gray-flannel finesse. Nice. I could have lived without a few of Gene Page's million strings; well, all right, you were fascinated with Motown/Love Unlimited razzmatazz as you had earlier been lured by Stax/Volt. But your voice was still in sharp focus, and the music was practice made perfect.

I remember you last spring at the Bottom Line. Such mathematically strenuous physicality, suggestive and subdued; as one male publicist put it, "Some of the most sophisticated and mature women in New York are wetting their knickers over him." After all, rhythm and whites are getting enough kicks in the butt. What it needed was a stroke, a caress, some austere sparkle. You were promising that. The effect was Pouilly Fuisse. So far, terrific.

"Ah, Palmer, he makes his living off of other people's music," said a guy at Boston's Orpheum Theatre a few weeks ago. He'd come to see you for the second time and paid $26 for a pair of seats. Even at sporadic sound levels, you delivered a concentrated study in hot throat and intricate off-the-cuffness. Your neophyte nine-piece band was flexing its synergies.

But the material on Some People isn't up to par. The single, Man Smart Woman Smarter, is about the best thing on the record besides Lowell George's Spanish Moon. But ideas that were fresh not too long ago are sealed off here by 32-track calculus and airtight image. Nothing jumps off the grooves, everything's stuck inside a tableau. The big beat, Caribbean or otherwise, overrides your interpretive insights and renders all subtlety inoperative.

Of course, your time has come, and I'm as glad as anybody. Timing, and the momentum gained from the first two records, should make Some People a best-seller. God knows your good looks don't hurt either; just watch you don't turn into the Marquis de Facade. But as a devotee from way back, I'd call this record the end of a tether. You can't follow up a follow-up with another follow-up. Next record will have to move its pretty feats off the cover versions and onto your own mountain.

One more thing. Enough already with those album covers. What do airbrushed behinds, wax women, and prossie chic have to do with music? Who are you addressing in those photographs? I remember your telling me that the Sally jacket was inspired by Godard's Alphaville and the Pressure Drop scenario was prompted by painters like David Hockney. You were also a newspaper graphic designer. Fine. But what's the point of half-nude maidens from the demimonde every time out? It excludes rather than embraces the rest of us romantics, so cut it out.

Look, you're smart enough to suss all this. None of the critics dished Some People because they don't want to dismiss you all that easily, you're too intelligent and craft-conscious. None of us wants to write you off; a mediocre Robert Palmer record is still better than 98 percent of the shlock that passes for music. Do hurry up and do something staggering. It took Boz and Elvin a while too, but they delivered. And, dammit, you promised. Until then, I remain,

Respectfully yours

Susin Shapiro (The Village Voice - Dec. 1976)